Oct. 13
USA:
Wrongly convicted walk away with scars
Even after his pardon, they called Kirk Bloodworth a child killer. After
nearly nine years in prison, Bloodworth walked away in 1993 when DNA tests
showed he was wrongly convicted of raping and murdering a 9-year-old girl.
He was now a free man, the first death row prisoner exonerated because of
DNA evidence. But his trials weren't over.
Employers were leery of hiring someone who'd spent so long in jail. When
he landed a job at a tool company, co-workers left newspaper clippings
about the crime at his workstation. Suspicions followed him like a shadow.
Bloodworth got a door-to-door fundraising job, but a homeowner recognized
him and began yelling "child killer" at him as Bloodworth stood on the
front stoop.
"I never got a fair shake," says Bloodworth, 44, of Cambridge, Md., who
works as a crab fisherman on his boat, Freedom, and is a program officer
with The Justice Project, a group that campaigns for criminal justice
reform. "It's hard to come back to this world and be accepted after you've
been in prison so long, especially to the workplace. That's very sad."
With the advent of DNA testing, more prisoners are being freed after
wrongful convictions. The pace of exonerations has jumped sharply, from
about 12 a year through the early 1990s to an average of 43 a year since
2000, according to a study by the University of Michigan. There have been
at least 328 exonerations since 1989, and about half of those since 1999
were based on DNA evidence. There are at least 41 Innocence Projects in 31
states providing legal assistance to inmates.
But as the number of exonerees grows, concerns are mounting about the
difficulties these former prisoners experience in finding employment once
they're free. While prison parolees typically get free job placement
assistance, temporary housing and counseling, the exonerated often are
released into an employment no-man's land.
They get scant help finding work. They have rsum gaps from spending years
in prison. The average time from conviction to exoneration is more than 11
years, according to the University of Michigan study. They often get
little more than a new overcoat or bus money.
Only 18 states, the federal government and Washington, D.C., have laws for
compensating the exonerated. Compensation can take years to get, and the
laws often aren't used by exonerees because they may need an official
pardon or a court must declare them innocent.
Compensation amounts can vary widely. Some states, such as West Virginia,
have no cap on the amount that can be received; others, such as Maine, set
a maximum of $300,000.
Employers are leery of hiring convicts who may have been wrongfully
convicted. Job skills are so obsolete that some exonerees have never sent
an e-mail or typed on a computer.
A large number of these men - more than 95% are men, according to the
Michigan study - grapple with emotional problems. Some have narrowly
escaped execution on death row. Others have been assaulted by other
inmates or kept in isolation. Many are angry. Some resort to crime after
their release.
"Innocent people do some of the hardest time. They never reconcile
themselves to why they're in prison. They feel their lives have been taken
away," says Justin Brooks, executive director of the Innocence Project
chapter at California Western School of Law in San Diego. "We expect them
to just start functioning in the workforce. But there's a stigma to having
been incarcerated."
Help finding jobs
Now, new efforts are getting underway to provide some employment help. A
project, Life After Exoneration, formed last year to provide support
services to the wrongly convicted after they're freed. The Berkeley,
Calif.-based group is negotiating with a private job agency in hopes of
launching a first-ever national employment services program for the
exonerated. The program would include skills assessment, training for
three or four months and job placement.
What help states offer
Just 18 states, Washington, D.C., and the federal government have
compensation laws for the wrongly convicted. Amounts are sometimes
determined by a state agency, sometimes by a court and can be capped by
law.
Final payments vary widely:
Alabama: Minimum of $50,000 for each year served.
California: $100 a day for each day served.
District of Columbia: No cap.
Illinois: Maximum $15,000 for up to 5 years; $30,000 for six to 14 years,
$35,000 for more than 14.
Iowa: $50 a day for each day served and lost wages up to $25,000 a year,
plus attorneys' fees.
Maine: Maximum $300,000. No punitive damages.
Maryland: No cap on compensation described as "actual damages sustained."
Montana: Free tuition to any school in the state's university system.
New Hampshire: Maximum $20,000.
New Jersey: Capped at twice the amount earned the year before
incarceration or $20,000, whichever is greater.
New York: No cap.
North Carolina: $20,000 a year, total not to exceed $500,000.
Ohio: $25,000 a year of incarceration, plus lost wages and attorneys fees.
Oklahoma: $175,000 maximum. No punitive damages.
Tennessee: $1 million cap.
Texas: $25,000 per year of incarceration, total not to exceed $500,000,
plus 1 year of counseling.
Virginia: 90% of the average Virginia income for up to 20 years; $10,000
in tuition to enroll in the state's community-college system.
West Virginia: No cap.
Wisconsin: $25,000 cap.
Federal government: $5,000 cap.
(sources: Adele Bernhard, professor of law at Pace University; The
Innocence Project)
It's a potent need: A survey of nearly 60 exonerees found 1/3 are
financially dependent on family or friends after they are freed.
"Exonerees identified employment as their No. 1 need," says Ernest Duff,
executive director. "These are pretty macho guys. They don't want to go
right into counseling. What they want is to go back to work."
But they have no legal right to get their former jobs back. And many find
that new employers are wary of hiring anyone who's been in jail, even if
it turned out to be a wrongful conviction.
Ray Krone, 47, of Dover, Pa., has become a public speaker against the
death penalty, traveling across the country and to Europe. He was
convicted of the 1991 murder of a female bartender and sent to Arizona's
death row. In 1995, that conviction was reversed and a new trial was
ordered. A second jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in
prison. In 2002, new DNA evidence cleared him of the crime. He was free.
Before serving a decade in prison, he'd held a $30,000-a-year job as a
postal worker. Now, he had nothing. He thought about getting his job back
but realized it was a long shot because the U.S. Postal Service was under
no legal obligation to rehire him. So he moved to a small town to be
closer to his family and now does speaking engagements and odd jobs, such
as mowing lawns, to help get by.
"Employers ask you what your job history is. What are you going to tell
them as an exoneree?" Krone says. "Coming out, it's like you're an 18- or
19-year-old again."
The past also follows the exonerated when they apply for jobs. Job
applications typically ask if applicants have an arrest or conviction
record. The exonerated must still answer "yes," even if their conviction
has been thrown out by a judge.
Employment experts say that an affirmative answer can scare off potential
employers. Some desperate exonerees even take pardon papers to job
interviews in hopes of allaying concerns.
Records often not updated
In other cases, exonerees may be freed, but their records will continue to
show they were arrested, tried and convicted. Records are not
automatically expunged, even in cases of a gubernatorial pardon. That
means that employers doing a background check may come across the
information and opt not to interview the applicant, especially with
unemployment at 5.4%, as it was in September.
There are exceptions. Some exonerees have put themselves through law
school, have parlayed their experiences into careers by going on the
public-speaking circuit, or - in a very few cases - have been hired back
by employers.
After a judge overturned his 1986 rape convictions, Lonnie Erby was freed
in 2003. He'd served 17 years. He was rehired at the DaimlerChrysler plant
in Fenton, Mo., where he'd worked before his sentence.
Some exonerees win millions of dollars in civil lawsuits, but legal
experts say that's rare. Winning a case often means exonerees must show
that those who prosecuted them engaged in misconduct. Some government
agencies also have immunity if they acted in good faith.
Instead, many exonerees get by with help from friends and family. In some
cases, the lawyer who helped clear the client sets up re-entry help, such
as counseling, or finds the client a job.
Gary Gauger considers himself one of the lucky ones. He worked as an
organic farmer before being sentenced to death for killing his parents in
1993. He was freed in 1996, and a year later 2 members of a motorcycle
gang went to prison for the murders. He received a gubernatorial pardon.
He was able to live temporarily with his sister and return to farming.
Without that fallback, he says, he would have been lost.
"I was lucky that I could go back to farming and had an established
career," says Gauger of Richmond, Va. He inherited his parents' farm. "I
was screwed up. I didn't want to talk to anyone. All the money I had I
gave to my lawyer. I still don't trust anyone."
Many exonerees feel such anger or alienation. Landing and keeping a steady
job can be difficult because of the emotional fallout from years of
resentment over the time they lost to prison.
Dana Holland can't find a job. The 36-year-old spent 10 years in prison
but was released in June 2003 after a judge found him not guilty in a
retrial of the 1993 attempted murder and armed robbery of a woman in
Chicago. He also was convicted of rape, but DNA evidence helped clear him.
He was sentenced to more than 100 years for both crimes.
The father of two teenagers worked at an industrial laundry facility
before his incarceration. But after winning his freedom, Holland says,
he's been unable to find work. He's received no compensation and is living
with his brother. He says he is in the process of trying to get some
compensation from the state, but that takes time.
He has applied to Walgreen's, food stores, meat companies and UPS. No
employer will hire him, he says, because the crimes he was acquitted of
are still on his record.
At first, he tried not telling employers about convictions. Now, he tells
them and tries to show them records from his lawyers regarding his case.
"I'm a burden on my family," Holland says. "I'll do anything that pays
bills and puts food on the table. But once you're a convicted sex
offender, employers aren't going to hire you, because they think they'll
put their company in jeopardy. You get all this publicity when you get
out. Then it dies down and you get forgotten."
(source: USA TODAY)
*****************
Too young to die?
One night in 1993, Shirley Crook was awakened by 2 burglars in her
Missouri home. She was bound with duct tape. She was dragged out of the
house. And, still alive and conscious, she was tossed from a railroad
trestle into a river where she died.
Anglers found her body and within 2 days Christopher Simmons confessed to
committing the crimes with a friend. A jury later convicted him of murder
and a judge sentenced him to death.
The law didn't deem him mature or responsible enough to vote, buy
cigarettes, drink alcohol, drive or get married in some states, but it did
consider him old enough to be executed.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether it's appropriate for
Simmons, who was 17 at the time, to pay the ultimate price.
While we think Simmons, and other minors who commit heinous acts, should
be punished, we think it is wrong to kill young people -- even if they are
young people who have killed.
If the high court agrees, it will be a landmark victory for child and
human rights advocates, but it will also be a win for death penalty
opponents, who view the possible ruling as one more way to curtail the
law.
Vermont banned capital punishment in 1964. Like a handful of other states,
officials here recognized the law as fallible, unfair, arbitrary and often
racially discriminatory.
38 states still issue death sentences, however, and there are nearly 3,500
death row inmates across the country right now.
We hope that someday the high court will change that, too. For now, we're
advocating for the 72 death row inmates who committed crimes when they
were between the ages 15 and 17.
Those who support the death penalty for juveniles say 16- or 17-year-olds
who kill are culpable, aware of their actions and should be tried as
adults. Five states have taken this position in filings with the high
court: Alabama, Delaware, Oklahoma, Virginia, Utah and, of course, Texas,
which claims 13 of the country's 22 juvenile executions since 1974.
However, their protests seem like whispers next to those opposing
executing minors: The American Medical Association, the American
Psychiatric Association, the Children's Defense Fund, religious leaders,
attorneys general from 8 states and 48 nations have weighed in with their
own legal briefs.
They argue that law prohibits behavior for teens because they are not wise
enough to understand the consequences of their actions and, similarly, the
law should prohibit death sentences for people too young to fully realize
what they do.
They point to psychological studies which offer evidence that teenagers
cannot control impulses, are subject to peer pressure and that their
brains are not mature.
And they note that the United States is one of only five countries that
still issue death sentences to minors.
The others? China, Congo, Iran and Pakistan.
(source: Editorial, Battleboro (Vermont) Reformer)
********************
Righting Old Wrongs
Inmates whose wrongful convictions are reversed in Alabama on the grounds
that they are innocent are lucky in more ways than one. In addition to
regaining their freedom, state law requires that they be awarded at least
$50,000 for each year of their incarceration. But pity those whose
wrongful convictions are dismissed on the basis of innocence in Texas.
Before they can collect a dime from the state, they will need the
endorsement of the very same district attorney's office that prosecuted
them in the first place. Advocates for the wrongfully convicted, who only
recently noticed that this provision had been slipped into the law, doubt
that Lone Star prosecutors will be eager to publicize their errors.
The increasingly widespread use of DNA tests in criminal cases has
uncovered an expanding pool of people who suffer most when justice fails
-- the unjustly convicted -- and has focused attention on the laws that
determine how to indemnify them. According to the Innocence Project at
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, 151 former convicts have
been exonerated by genetic testing in the past 15 years. The publicity
generated by their groundless convictions has prompted some states to
become more aggressive in running DNA tests to reexamine old criminal
cases. In Virginia, Gov. Mark R. Warner 2 weeks ago announced a virtually
unprecedented decision to test evidence in several dozen old cases to
determine whether new technology could overturn more prisoners'
convictions. The governor's order -- laudable but limited in scope -- may
lead to more embarrassing exonerations in a state that has already
produced 13 of them, more than any state but Illinois and New York (and
tied with Texas).
Ultimately, though, it should also strengthen confidence in the integrity
of Virginia's criminal justice system.
The growing willingness of some states to confront and correct old errors
should put a spotlight, first, on how to avoid such errors in the future.
But it also highlights the inconsistencies and inadequacies in
compensating former prisoners who were unjustly convicted. Some states
demand a governor's pardon before they will consider monetary awards for
former prisoners; others require only that a conviction be vacated or old
charges dismissed. Some bar awards to anyone who originally pleaded guilty
-- even if coerced to do so -- but was later exonerated. Tennessee sets a
maximum award for the wrongfully imprisoned of $1 million; in New
Hampshire, the maximum is $20,000. Federal law, although it is rarely
relevant in such cases, allows for a lump-sum payment of just $5,000. Only
18 states, plus the District, have any kind of law setting guidelines for
compensating the unjustly convicted.
At the very least, other states should tackle the question of how to
indemnify a person who has lost years of his life behind bars. The
underlying issues are loaded: How much, and under what circumstances,
should a state pay to right these old wrongs? But by failing even to try
to answer those questions, the government compounds an already profound
injustice.
(source: Editorial, Washington Post, Oct. 12)
TEXAS:
Fate of youngest killers in Supreme Court's hands----28 murderers on
Texas' death row will live or die by court's ruling in Missouri case
**
RESOURCES -- TEEN KILLERS IN TEXAS
- Capital murderers who were 17 or older at the time of their crimes can
be executed in Texas.
- Since 1982, the state has executed 12 such killers.
- 28 now on Texas death row.
(source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
**
The murders are brutal and hideous. The murderers are 16 or 17. And the
question before the U.S. Supreme Court today in a case from Missouri is
whether, like mentally retarded killers, young killers should be spared
execution under the Constitution's ban against "cruel and unusual
punishment."
Awaiting the justices' ruling, expected by next summer, are 28 killers on
Texas' death row who were 17 at the time of their crimes and will live or
die by the decision, and the families and friends of their victims, many
of whom insist the ultimate punishment must be carried out.
"It would have been fine with me if they had gotten life without parole,
but we're in Texas here, and they get execution," said Houstonian Adolph
Pea, whose 16-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, and her 14-year-old friend
Jennifer Ertman were gang-raped, sodomized, and strangled with a belt and
their shoelaces on their way home one night in 1993.
RESOURCES -- NATIONAL CONSENSUS?
To determine whether to ban executions of 16- and 17-year-old killers, the
justices will consider whether there is now a "national consensus"
opposing the practice.
Here's where the states stand on executing young people:
- 12: have no death penalty at all
- 31: do not allow the death penalty for those under 18 at the time of
their crimes
- 43: have not executed anyone in this category since 1976
- 38: have no one on death row who was 16 or 17 at the time of their crime
- Since 1989, when the high court last ruled on the issue of executions
for young killers, 6 states have banned executions for those under 18 at
the time of their crimes and one state has banned all executions.
- No state has lowered the age for executions.
(Source: Death Penalty Information Center)
***
One of the rapists was 14 and was sentenced to prison. The girls' 5
killers - 2 of whom were 17 at the time - were sentenced to death.
Efrain Perez, who admitted raping and strangling Elizabeth Pea, and Raul
Omar Villarreal, who bragged that he stepped on Ertman's neck when she
didn't die fast enough, are now 28 and 29, respectively. Their executions
were scheduled back-to-back for June, but were put on hold pending the
Supreme Court's decision.
"They knew exactly what they did to my daughter," Pea said as he prepared
to travel to Washington to hear today's arguments in the Missouri case. "I
think of that every day, and I say, 'Hey, they are going to die, too.' But
I wish my daughter could have been put to death like that, with lethal
injection. ... Any man, in my book, would stand up and take what he's got
coming."
Teens' immaturity cited
The problem, say those opposed to executions for the nation's youngest
death row inmates, is that the murderers weren't adults when they
committed their crimes, but adolescents still developing.
They plan to argue today that young killers, like many mentally retarded
killers, know right from wrong. But their brains are immature, making them
biologically incapable, in many cases, of controlling their impulses and
thinking through the consequences of their behavior, and are therefore
less blameworthy than adults who commit the same crimes.
"Adolescents engage in harmful, aggressive, stupid behavior - but it
passes" when they grow up, said Dr. David Fassler, a child psychiatrist
who opposes the death penalty for those under 18 because of new research
indicating the brain is still developing in teenagers.
That doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable for their crimes,
Fassler said. They should be punished severely, he said, but they should
be spared the needle.
Critics call it 'junk science'
"Junk science mumbo-jumbo," counters Dianne Clements, president of Justice
For All, a pro-death-penalty group in Houston that filed a
"friend-of-the-court" brief supporting Missouri. "The five murderers that
killed Jenny and Elizabeth just didn't know what they were doing when they
raped them and strangled them? That's outrageous. That is just a pathetic
argument and those scientists, or those anti-death-penalty doctors, should
be ashamed."
The high court last reviewed the issue of executing juveniles in a
Kentucky case in 1989. At that time, the justices OK'd executions for
killers as young as 16. Under Texas law, killers as young as 17 may be
executed.
In a 6-3 ruling in a 2002 case, Atkins v. Virginia, the justices said 31
states that once allowed executions of the mentally retarded indicated a
significant change of heart and became opponents of the practice.
Today, the court considers the case of Christopher Simmons, who was 17
when he and a young accomplice broke into the Fenton, Mo., home of a woman
in 1993, bound her with electrical tape, drove her to a railroad bridge
and pushed her off, leaving her to drown.
After the court's decision in Atkins, a Missouri court used the high
court's reasoning on the mentally retarded case to overturn Simmons' death
sentence because of his youth.
The death penalty supporters on the bench are Chief Justice William
Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Four justices -
John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter -
have written in court papers that the practice of executing juveniles is
"a relic of the past" and a "shameful practice."
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justice Anthony Kennedy both voted against
the death penalty with regard to mentally retarded killers.
(source: Houston Chronicle)
