Jan. 17 NEW YORK: Morgenthau deserves to stay in the DA's job In her frequent appearances on Court TV and NBC, Leslie Crocker Snyder comes across as a smart and savvy lawyer. And as a former New York State judge for almost 20 years, she earned a reputation as a no-nonsense jurist who nonetheless got along with lawyers. But now that she plans to challenge Robert Morgenthau in the Democratic primary for Manhattan district attorney later this year, the question is who's the better candidate. Last week a slew of public-safety unions - representing, among others, police and fire department brass, court officers and state police - threw their support behind Snyder. They praised her as a tough crime fighter, someone who'll bring new energy and leadership to the district attorney's office, and declared it's time for a change. Morgenthau is 85 and can't go on forever, and these officers seem eager to get on board with whoever his eventual successor will be. But, with crime in Manhattan at its lowest level in years, I question if anything is broken in the district attorney's office and therefore whether anything needs to be fixed. The subtext for this contest is the very different styles and ideologies of the two contenders. Snyder supports the death penalty, as her fans approvingly point out, while Morgenthau opposes it. The fact that Morgenthau's office has prosecuted more than 100 police officers for various crimes since 1990 may also help to explain why the police community wants a change. While Snyder says she favors reforming the harsh Rockefeller drug laws, her critics say that as a judge she handed down terribly onerous sentences under those same laws. Despite the appeal of having a female Manhattan DA, I see no reason to replace Morgenthau. He's up in years and has a hearing problem, but from all appearances he remains mentally sharp. A spokesman for his campaign said that in the last few months he's conducted his own study of marriage laws in the state and concluded that nothing in them bars same sex-marriage. He's also created new units in his office to focus on identity theft and crimes against the elderly. What's most impressive is that he runs an office based on principle, without pandering to politics or public opinion. He's publicly called for scrapping the death penalty, joining a growing body of experts who say it doesn't deter crime, is expensive and can't be administered with a guarantee that innocent people won't be sentenced to death. And, while his office has sent thousands of felons to prison under the Rockefeller laws, activists working to repeal those laws say Morgenthau's recent appeals to make the laws less harsh helped bring among some recent modest reforms. Nor is he unwilling to admit when he's wrong. When his office learned that five black and Latino teenagers had been wrongly convicted of rape in the notorious Central Park Jogger case, it was a huge stain on the office's reputation. But his office admitted its mistakes in a lengthy report that totally exonerated the young men. New York doesn't need district attorneys who are ideologues and who pander to public opinion. It needs prosecutors who will try to do the right thing, who will own up to their mistakes and who are capable of changing with the times. Morgenthau has shown he can do all 3. David Soares, recently elected district attorney of Albany County on an anti-death penalty, drug-law reform platform, said he came to Morgenthau during his campaign and asked for his support. "He said, 'I don't get involved in politics,'" Soares told me. "I respect that. . . . He flies above it." Moreoever, Soares said, Morgenthau is a legend among prosecutors. Someday someone will succeed him. But I see no need for that to happen now. He's earned the right to do the job as long as he can. (source: Newsday) USA: Review: Death penalty foe stacks the evidence----'Innocents' author makes her case, but is this a fair hearing? In the 1990s, Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun, put a badly needed human face on the death penalty debate in the United States with her deeply personal book and subsequent searing movie, Dead Man Walking . She remains passionate about capital punishment but her new book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, is unlikely to spark the same type of dialogue its predecessor did. Unlike Dead Man Walking, where the title character, Patrick Sonnier, was clearly guilty, this book focuses on two men, Dobie Gillis Williams of Louisiana and Joseph O'Dell of Virginia, whom Sister Prejean believes were innocent. The Death of Innocents is most compelling when Sister Prejean writes about the intimate details of capital punishment: daily life with the specter of imminent death, the last-minute legal maneuverings to change the outcome, the laborious process leading to the execution itself. For most Americans, death row and the death chamber are distant places they can't quite picture and have little interest in visiting. But Sister Prejean brings both unnervingly close when she writes about the prison visiting room decorated with biblical murals, or the warden who exhorts the condemned to "Drink plenty of fluids. It'll help you." The suggestion is made, Sister Prejean notes, because fluids in the body will make insertion of the lethal injection needle easier and keep the veins from collapsing. Sister Prejean makes no pretense of presenting both sides of the death penalty issue. Her mission is to "awaken people's souls about the need to abolish the death penalty. ... I will do this work until every gurney and electric chair and gas chamber sits behind velvet ropes in museums," she writes. But The Death of Innocents would be a better book if she didn't give short shrift to the opposing view. Though she painstakingly details why she believes in the innocence of these 2 men, she says little about those who prosecuted them and found the 2 men guilty. The second half of the book, which focuses on the legal machinery of capital punishment, can be slow going even for those familiar with death penalty issues, because it suffers from the same lack of balance. Sister Prejean broadly paints prosecutors, Southern politicians such as President George W. Bush, and judges, particularly Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, as overzealous and simplistic in their beliefs. She likens Mr. Bush to a hammer. Presented with a nail, it knows to do only one thing. Mr. Bush, Sister Prejean notes "was certain that in Texas no innocent person had ever been sent to death row, much less executed. That remains to be seen." In fact, after the book went to press, Texas death row inmate Ernest Willis was released after prosecutors and judges agreed he did not receive a fair trial and probably did not commit the crime he had been convicted of 17 years earlier. The book also would have been strengthened by more than passing references to the feelings of victims' families. Sister Prejean quotes victims' relatives who agree with her viewpoint, but does not give equal time to those who don't. That failing is most apparent in the epilogue, where she mentions James Allridge, a Texas death row inmate who was executed in August 2004. At the request of her friend, actress Susan Sarandon, who portrayed Sister Helen in an Oscar-winning performance, Sister Prejean journeyed to Texas to serve as Mr. Allridge's spiritual adviser. Ms. Sarandon had corresponded with Mr. Allridge and owned some of the artwork he created during his 17 years on death row. Mr. Allridge, by many accounts, transformed his life while on death row, becoming an accomplished artist and a model inmate. Sister Prejean writes movingly of his journey to the death chamber, saying, "I hope I go to my death with a tiny fraction of the poise and grace James Allridge possessed as he stepped into eternity." Indeed, Mr. Allridge did exhibit an admirable measure of dignity, apologizing to his victim's relatives and thanking his own family for their support. But Sister Prejean never mentions why Mr. Allridge was on death row in the first place nor how his victim's relatives felt after Mr. Allridge's execution. Mr. Allridge killed Fort Worth convenience store clerk Brian Clendennen, a former co-worker, by shooting him in the back of the head as he knelt on the floor. Mr. Clendennen was also an artist, who "died with his hands tied behind his back in a stockroom of a convenience store," Mr. Clendennen's sister said after the execution. Mr. Allridge "got what he deserved." To truly spark honest debate on the death penalty, something sorely needed in Texas, this book would have been stronger if details like that had also been included. The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions Sister Helen Prejean (Random House, $24.95) ************************* Analysis: Foreign law, U.S. sovereignty Like it or not, we are entering an age when international law and international court rulings will have a growing effect on domestic law, alarming those who see a threat to national sovereignty. First Britain, and now the United States. Across the water, the United Kingdom suffered a major setback in the war against terror Thursday when the nation's highest court in the House of Lords ruled 8-1 that the darling of the Blair government -- the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001 -- violated the larger European human-rights laws. The antiterrorism law was enacted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States, which the Law Lords called "atrocities on an unprecedented scale." British authorities used the law to detain foreign terror suspects indefinitely without trial. This was much like the Bush administration's policy before Supreme Court rulings last June said foreign terror suspects had the right to have their cases reviewed by U.S. courts. The British policy violated a domestic law, the Human Rights Act of 1998, which was enacted by Parliament to implement the European Convention on Human Rights, the Law Lords said. One of the articles of the British act says, "Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person." The Law Lords said "everyone" in that context means "everyone within their jurisdiction." Since indefinite detention was applied only to foreign terror suspects and could not be applied to British nationals, it was discriminatory. Therefore, foreign nationals could be held without trial only so long as it takes to process them for deportation, the lords said. British officials, like their U.S. counterparts, do not want open trials of foreign terror suspects because much of the evidence against them consists of sensitive intelligence. Such intelligence is usually solid, but because of the way in which it is gathered it might not stand up under court scrutiny. The Blair government has said it will not release the detainees until Parliament has a chance to amend the law. On this side of the water, the Supreme Court of the United States also is getting ready to deal with the consequences of international law, in particular its effect on the executions of foreign nationals who have committed brutal slayings in this country. The justices have agreed to hear argument this spring on whether an order by the International Court of Justice at The Hague -- "the principal judicial organ of the United Nations" -- is binding on U.S. courts. The United States was an avid proponent of the Vienna Convention when it was formulated in 1963, mainly because it wanted to protect U.S. nationals overseas. Article 36 of the convention allows consuls in foreign countries to protect the interests of their nationals who are detained in those countries. U.S. diplomats signed the convention in April 1963 -- diplomats from 165 other nations did the same -- and President Richard Nixon sent it to the Senate, where it was finally and unanimously approved in 1969. Moreover, the convention has been more than an idle stack of papers. The United States itself has brought 10 cases before the International Court of Justice to enforce its protections. In 2003 it was Mexico's turn to go before the international court and ask for relief. The International Court of Justice ruled for Mexico, rejecting a 219-page U.S. counterclaim, in 2004. Specifically, the international court ruled in the case of "Avena and other Mexican nationals" that the United States had violated Article 36 of the convention by failing to inform 51 Mexican nationals on U.S. death rows that they had a right to tell the Mexican consular office of their detentions at the time of their arrests. The International Criminal Court rejected Mexico's request that the sentences of its nationals on U.S. death rows be annulled, but it did order a halt to the executions pending review in the U.S. courts of each of the Mexican cases, regardless of any procedural obstacles. So much for international law. Now for the specific case before the Supreme Court, which as usual is ugly and brutal. Jose Ernesto Medellin was 18 when, while participating in an initiation for the "Black and Whites" street gang in Houston, he was among those who raped and killed two teenage girls in a particular heinous way, a jury found. In a petition to the Supreme Court, Medellin's court-appointed lawyers contend he told arresting officers he was born in Laredo, Mexico, and was not a U.S. citizen. Nevertheless, the International Court of Justice found, he was not told of his right to contact the Mexican consul, who could have offered translation as well as legal help. Convicted and sentenced to death, Medellin lost his state appeals and asked for constitutional review of his case in the federal courts in Houston. A federal judge and, later, a federal appeals court, rejected his constitutional claims. When Medellin tried a 2nd time for review in the federal courts, using Vienna Convention grounds, his application was rejected. His attorneys then successfully asked the Supreme Court for review. Mexico, of course, has filed a brief supporting Medellin's claims before the high court. So have the 25 countries in the European Union, joined by the Council of Europe, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Perhaps the most intriguing brief in support of Medellin to arrive at the high court comes from former U.S. Ambassador Bruce Laingen, who was the highest-ranking hostage during the Tehran crisis in 1979-81. Laingen is joined in his brief by Billy Hayes, a filmmaker and writer who spent five years in a Turkish prison during the 1970s, and wrote the book "Midnight Express," which was made into a film. Laingen, Hayes and others are "U.S. citizens who have benefited from consular assistance abroad or have suffered in its absence." They say they take no position on the death penalty, only on the Vienna Convention. "Every year, a significant number of United States citizens traveling or living overseas find themselves ensnared in the criminal justice system of a foreign government," their brief said. "Consular assistance provides a vital service to these Americans, providing a desperately needed link to the outside world, and helping them navigate and understand an unfamiliar, and perhaps hostile, legal system." In other words, consular notification is not just a nuisance in the prosecution of U.S. law. It also protects U.S. citizens overseas. When the Medellin case is heard by the Supreme Court, it will be a struggle between the right of Texas to execute murderers and the power of international law, which once ratified by the Senate has the effect of U.S. law under the Constitution. It's too early to predict the outcome of the case, though at least one member of the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer, has publicly said that the high court eventually must come to terms with the impact of international law. Breyer might reasonably be expected to lead those members of the Supreme Court who feel the Vienna Convention means what it says. As the public becomes more aware of the case, it is reasonable to assume that those who see it as a threat to U.S. sovereignty will make their opinions known as well. It is just as reasonable to expect grumblings of extreme displeasure from conservative members of Congress, and from the White House, if the high court rules for Medellin before it recesses for the summer in late June. (source: United Press International) ********************** Let's have 'real' death penalty Why have a death penalty if judges and prosecutors refuse to apply it? It seems like every day we read about murderers "making deals" to avoid death. The latest was a young guy who murdered and raped two people and killed a 3rd in one spree. He got 3 life sentences! Meanwhile, we have to pay for food and clothing for the rest of these creeps' lives! I recently lost a family member to violence on the streets of "Killadelphia." Yet when trial comes around for the 20-year-old who murdered my cousin, chances are some deal will be made by prosecutors for a life sentence or less without anyone consulting our family. I can tell all of the prosecutors now that we want death! It used to be that in prisons like Sing Sing in New York, a first-degree murder conviction was an automatic death sentence and the average stay on death row was less than 2 years! Now a death sentence means you'll sit around for 20 years, write books and possibly see the light of day again. Mike Bickings, Philadelphia (source: Letter to the Editor, Philadelphia Daily News) INDIANA: Commissioner offers financial help in death penalty case A Delaware County commissioner has promised to help fund pursuit of the death penalty against a man charged in the fatal shooting of a convenience store clerk. Commissioner John Brooke, an attorney and former deputy prosecutor, recently wrote to County Prosecutor Richard Reed and offered to try to secure money to seek the death penalty for Ronald Hatfield, who is charged with murder in the Dec. 16 shooting of Carolyn Goodwin, a Rickers convenience store clerk. "You have my complete support and assistance to help fund the prosecution of Ronnie Hatfield if you decide to seek the death penalty," Brooke wrote. "I will work with you, my fellow commissioners and the court system to seek methods and manners for funding the high cost of a death penalty prosecution," he added. Reed recently told The Star Press that he had not yet decided whether he would seek the death penalty. He added that he appreciated Brooke's offer, however. "I think it's nice to have that kind of support," Reed said, adding that a death penalty case can become "a million-dollar proposition." Alan Wilson, Hatfield's public defender, said he had not heard of Brooke's offer until contacted by The Star Press. "I guess my reaction is, whatever happened to the presumption of innocence?" asked Wilson. Citing publicity in the case following Goodwin's murder, Wilson has filed a motion seeking a change of venue for Hatfield's murder trial. Delaware Circuit Court 4 Judge John Feick has set an April 27 hearing on Wilson's motion, which could see the trial moved to another county or provide for jurors to be brought in from another county. Wilson said the publicity - and Brooke's offer to help fund the pursuit of Hatfield's execution - made it more difficult for his client to get a fair trial locally. "We will pursue a change of venue as hard as we can," Wilson said. Police say the 45-year-old Hatfield - paroled from a 17-year prison sentence for armed robbery, assaulting police and weapons charges in August - shot Goodwin during a robbery at the convenience store. Reed has said he was delaying a decision on the death penalty until after getting Hatfield's records - including information about medications he received - from the Indiana Department of Correction. In his letter to Reed, Brooke wrote, "Delaware County can not be known as a county wherein someone can callously and without any feeling whatsoever murder someone in the commission of a robbery and not have to face the ultimate penalty." Brooke noted that Reed would consider the facts of a crime first, but added that he understood that county government's financial status was a consideration. Brooke noted that during his time as a deputy prosecutor he dealt with Hatfield and "was given only a slight glimpse of the evil that he could conduct in a civilized society," adding that Hatfield was "truly frightening." "I only wish that I had the authority to keep him out of civilization for a very long time," Brooke wrote. Wilson said that while prosecutors could assume guilt, "everyone else" should assume the innocence of a defendant. (source: Muncie Star Press) LOUISIANA: Freed After 44 Years, a Prison Journalist Looks Back and Ahead Wilbert Rideau, an acclaimed prison journalist and confessed killer, walked out of the Calcasieu Parish Courthouse in Lake Charles, La., a free man on Saturday night after serving 44 years for stabbing a bank teller through the heart in 1961. In Mr. Rideau's 4th trial for the killing, a jury on Saturday found him not guilty of murder, which would have resulted in a life sentence. Instead, the jury convicted him of manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 21 years, effectively freeing him. In an interview yesterday, Mr. Rideau, 62, said he had wasted no time in leaving Lake Charles, a racially divided city near the Texas border that remains fiercely split about whether he has paid his debt for the killing or whether he should have been executed long ago. "The first thing I did when we left Lake Charles was stop and get some sun shades," Mr. Rideau said cheerfully over the phone, suggesting that he needed to disguise himself. "I should get a baseball cap, too." Three all-white juries sentenced him to death for the killing in 1961, 1964 and 1970. All three convictions were overturned by appeals courts for government misconduct. The last conviction was thrown out in 2000 when a federal appeals court ruled that the exclusion of blacks from the grand jury that indicted Mr. Rideau was unconstitutional. "The 1st trial, I think, the decision was in 8 minutes," said Mr. Rideau, who is black. "This time, we had only 1 white male." The latest jury, which also contained 7 white women, 2 black women, a woman of mixed race and a black man, was from Monroe, in northern Louisiana, in deference to the tensions in Lake Charles. "They came from one of the most conservative regions of Louisiana," Mr. Rideau said. "We had some nervousness about that. These things happened 44 years ago, before many of them were even born." This time, the jury deliberated for 5 1/2 hours, returning with a verdict at 10:40 on Saturday night. Rick Bryant, the Calcasieu Parish district attorney, said the jury had ignored the evidence. "The verdict makes no sense," he said yesterday. "It's a subtle jury-nullification type of thing. The jury basically said, there is still a conviction and he's done a lot of time." Mr. Rideau has never denied that he robbed a Gulf National Bank branch in Lake Charles on Feb. 16, 1961, that he kidnapped three white employees of the bank or that he shot them on a gravel lane near a bayou on the edge of town. 2 of the employees survived, one by jumping into the swamp, the other by feigning death. But Mr. Rideau caught and killed Julia Ferguson, a teller, stabbing in her in the heart. The 2 sides at the trial last week agreed on those basic facts. They differed about whether the killing was part of a calculated plan or the result of a bank robbery gone awry committed by a hapless 19-year-old. "I've been saying for 44 years that, yes, I'm responsible," Mr. Rideau said yesterday. "But it didn't happen the way they said it. They said I lined them up execution-style. The evidence never supported that. Between the local media and the legal system, though, they pretty much did what they wanted. A lot of what the community thought, through hand-me-down word of mouth, never really happened." Mr. Rideau testified in his own defense, a potentially risky move given his acknowledged responsibility for the crime. But George H. Kendall, one of Mr. Rideau's lawyers, said the testimony was crucial. "The state's narrative was a very simple, understandable narrative," Mr. Kendall said. "We had to have an alternative narrative, and the only way we could get that out was through our client." Mr. Rideau said his initial plan was to lock up the employees at the bank and take a bus out of town with the $14,000 he had stolen. When that was foiled by an ill-timed phone call from the bank's main branch, he said, he came up with a 2nd plan. He would drive the employees far out of town in a teller's car and escape as they walked back. But they jumped from the car before he could accomplish that, and he started shooting. "If I had intended to kill those people, eliminate witnesses, I would have done it right there in the bank," Mr. Rideau testified on Thursday, according to The Associated Press. "It never entered my mind that I was going to hurt anybody." Theodore M. Shaw, the director-counsel of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which also represented Mr. Rideau, said he found it hard to reconcile Mr. Rideau's crime with the thoughtful and accomplished man he has become. "I've never lost sight of the fact that when Wilbert was 19 he did something incredibly stupid and tragic," Mr. Shaw said. "On the other hand, he's not the man he was then. It's a story of redemption." Mr. Shaw pointed to Mr. Rideau's journalistic work as proof of his transformation. As editor of The Angolite, a prison newspaper, Mr. Rideau won the George Polk Award, one of journalism's highest honors. "The Farm: Angola, U.S.A.," a documentary he co-directed, was nominated for an Academy Award. Mr. Bryant, the prosecutor, said Mr. Rideau's achievements were irrelevant. "Rideau's actions were driven by greed," Mr. Bryant said, referring to the robbery. "It's not like he's been some sort of civil rights pioneer. He's a crook." Mr. Bryant said the prosecution had been at a disadvantage throughout the trial. "It's very difficult to try a case that's 44 years old," he said. "We had 13 witnesses who were unavailable, including the 2 eyewitnesses, and we had to present them by reading transcripts." One of the survivors of the crime died in 1988, and the other was too ill to attend the trial. Mr. Rideau said yesterday that he had not dared make plans for what he would do as a free man. The pardon board recommended clemency 4 times, he said, but governors rejected each recommendation. "When you've been turned down and ridden that hope train for so long and keep getting knocked back," he said, "you stop making plans." He declined to say where he planned to live. "Undisclosed location," he said. Then he started to collect his thoughts. "I'll be 63 in about 3 more weeks," he said. "I'm walking around in sweatpants. Most people my age are retired, and I have no health insurance, no pension, no Social Security. I've got to start producing. I've got to get a job. I'd like to write. I've got so much to say. I'm going to continue, to the extent that I can, to be a journalist." (source: New York Times)
