May 27 CONNECTICUT Judge Who Played Part In Ross Case Had Role As Lawyer--Lawmakers Call For A Review Of Possible Conflict Of Interest A federal judge who was instrumental in postponing serial killer Michael Ross' execution in January was involved in Ross' case 13 years ago as a lawyer, raising questions about a potential conflict of interest. Ross was executed May 13 for the killings of 4 young women in eastern Connecticut in the 1980s. U.S. District Judge Robert Chatigny's conduct in the Ross proceedings already is the subject of complaints filed with the U.S. House Judiciary Committee by state prosecutors and state Republican legislators. They plan to add the judge's 1992 involvement in the case to the complaint. "It seems very serious to me," state House Minority Leader Robert Ward, R-North Branford, said Thursday. "I believe it should be looked into by the House Judiciary Committee. ... I can't think of a logical explanation of how you could be a lawyer and an impartial judge in the same case." In 1992, Chatigny, then a partner in the Hartford law firm of Chatigny & Cowdery, sought to file a friend of the court brief with the state Supreme Court on behalf of the Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. The association sought permission to file the brief in Ross' appeal of his death sentence. Chatigny's signature is the only one on the application. In the 3-page document, Chatigny said the association "is gravely concerned about the trial court's rulings on significant evidentiary issues in this capital case and the implications of those rulings for the practice of criminal law in this state." Chatigny's motion does not take a position on the death penalty itself. The association was allowed to file a brief in the case but was not allowed to make oral arguments. There is no record that such a brief ever was filed. Chatigny, through his judicial assistant Lucia Macare, said he had no comment. Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano said he would not comment on the revelation. State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said he would not comment on what he might have done if he had known earlier about Chatigny's previous involvement in the Ross case. "The case is done," Blumenthal said. "Complaints have been filed with the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. We had grave reservations about some of the comments made during the conferences that he (Chatigny) conducted. We have to see what happens with the complaint at this point." Judiciary Committee officials did not return phone calls Thursday. On Jan. 28, just 11 hours before Ross was scheduled to executed, Chatigny set up a conference call with Ross' attorney, T.R. Paulding Jr., lawyers representing the state public defenders' office, the attorney general's office, the chief state's attorney's office and Dan Ross, Michael Ross' father. During the call, Chatigny pointed out Paulding's failure to exercise due diligence to make certain his client was competent to forgo further appeals of his death sentence. Chatigny cited a letter he had received from an inmate identifying himself as Ramon Lopez, who alleged that Ross had been brainwashed by prison officials to seek his death. "We're not in this profession to help people get killed," Chatigny told Paulding. "It's wrong. What you're doing is wrong ... What you are doing is terribly, terribly wrong. "So I warn you, Mr. Paulding ... you better be prepared to live with yourself for the rest of your life. And you better be prepared to deal with me. If in the wake of this an investigation is conducted and it turns out that what Lopez says ... is true ... I'll have your law license." Chatigny's threat prompted Paulding to postpone the execution. (source: The Day) OHIO: See death room before backing ultimate end Ah, the death penalty. Joining abortion and gay marriage to form the triumvirate of political position-defining issues, the death penalty is one of those topics that everyone seems to have an opinion on -an opinion that will not change no matter what information the other side presents. Given this, the death penalty is a topic I would normally stay away from. However, a recent experience I had compelled me to throw my voice in the ring. Throughout high school, I was notoriously undecided on how I felt about the death penalty -in fact, I vividly remember positioning my seat in the exact middle of the room as my government class separated into sides for a debate on the issue. Upon coming to Ohio University, taking a few political science and sociology classes, and becoming indoctrinated into liberalism, I took a stand: I am against the death penalty. This conclusion was mainly based on logic and facts. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, www.deathpenaltyinfo.org, 119 people in 25 states have been released from death row after it was determined they were innocent in just the past 22 years. And the death penalty is not applied fairly -a person is more likely to be sentenced to the death penalty if he or she is a minority and the victim is white. But last week, the arguments took on a whole new dimension for me. For my sociology of corrections class, I went with 11 students and 2 professors to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, which houses the death chamber for the state of Ohio. Since October 1999, 16 people have been killed by the state at Lucasville. After taking us through an empty tier of cells, the two corrections officers that were doubling as our tour guides decided that we should head over to the death house. We walked across a small lawn and entered a non-descript building. Once in there, we saw the viewing rooms where the families of the inmate and the victim watch the execution. We also saw the cell where the inmate spends his or her last 24 hours. One of our tour guides was even so kind as to reenact how the inmate and his or her family members hold hands through a small slot in the cell. Then the correction officers ushered us into the actual death chamber, where we stood just mere feet from the bed-type thing where inmates were strapped down and injected with lethal drugs. We saw the tiles on the floor where the electric chair used to sit. We saw what the inmate would see as he or she was lying there, giving his or her last words. One student even jumped up onto the bed for a few seconds. Throughout the half hour or so we were in the chamber, listening to the COs trying to justify the death penalty, yet contradicting themselves at every turn, I just stood there uncomfortably but without any real intense emotion. We returned to Athens from Lucasville around 1 p.m. At about 6 p.m., I started feeling overwhelmingly depressed. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or the stress of approaching exams, but I don't think so. I understand the arguments on both sides of the death penalty. I get the pros and cons. But I don't think anyone should really make up his or her mind on it until they spend time in the room where the state takes away the life of a human being. If you can do that, and still tell me that the death penalty is a good idea, then I'll consider your arguments. (source: Lletter to the Editor, The Post Online -- Lindsey Nelson, a junior journalism major, is The Post's city editor) ARKANSAS: Until you are dead Can a documentary save a man from execution? Damien Wayne Echols, convicted for a gruesome triple murder in 1993, hopes so. Duncan Campbell reports on the long campaign behind Paradise Lost It is, almost, the classic courthouse drama scene. The judge addresses the young man standing before him and tells him that officials will shortly "cause to be administered a continuous intravenous injection of a lethal quantity of an ultra-short-acting barbiturate in combination with a chemical paralytic agent into your body until you are dead". It may not quite pack the emotional punch of "and you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead and may God have mercy on your soul" but the end result is the same. In the documentary film Paradise Lost, both parts of which will be shown in British cinemas next week, Judge David Burnett delivers the words to Damien Wayne Echols, one of three young men convicted of the horrific killing and butchering of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993. Recalling his judgment on Echols - the other two defendants, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Miskelly Jr, were sentenced to life imprisonment - Judge Burnett says that it was never easy delivering a death sentence, and perhaps we would be able to tell that from the catch in his voice as he pronounced sentence. Indeed we can - because the trial was filmed and that footage, along with the remarkable access the film-makers obtained from the defendants and their families and from the step-father of one of the victims, is at the heart of this disturbing and riveting documentary. The catch in the judge's voice is unmistakable. Did he have more than the obvious reasons to pause in his judgment? Echols, then 18, and his two co-defendants, Baldwin, 16, and Miskelly, 17, were arrested a month after the murders, not least because, with their dark clothes and their love of heavy metal music and Stephen King books, they were seen as potentially part of a satanic cult. Echols had a not untypically teenage interest in the Wicca religion which, in this God-fearing part of the American south, was seen as even more damning. The mutilations of the boys' bodies led detectives to believe that some cult must be involved and the trio were the likely suspects. After 12 hours of questioning, Miskelly, who had an IQ of 72 and is clearly not fully aware of what is happening around him, made a confession, implicating the other two. The confession is a rambling one and includes some details that turn out to be wrong, such as the time the crime happened. None the less, he is tried separately and convicted, but declines to give evidence against the others. At their trial in 1994, "experts" on the occult explain to the jury the tell-tale signs of such cults, which include the wearing of black T-shirts. No compelling physical evidence is presented. They are convicted. The 2 film-makers, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, shoot not only the trial and the surrounding courtroom activity but keep their hand-held cameras running in the patch of Arkansas where the drama unfolded. If the style and mood seem similar to The Blair Witch Project, then it may be no surprise to hear that the pair were brought in to make Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, the follow-up to that low-budget hit. (It may be no more than a coincidence, but the website developed for Paradise Lost has been cited as a major influence on the Blair Witch's celebrated pseudo-real website.) Very soon, two main characters emerged in Paradise Lost: Damien Echols, the typical, rebellious, moody smalltown boy who doesn't fit in; and John Mark Byers, the stepfather of the murdered Christopher Byers. Byers Sr is a good ol' boy who stands 6ft 8in tall and holds a beer in one hand and a Bible in the other and who looks forward, as he reminds us on many occasions, to being able to dance on the graves of these "devil-worshipping sons of bitches" who killed his little boy. The original Paradise Lost film was bought by HBO and was aired on American cable television in 1996 with its full title of The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. It had an immediate impact, and the impression was that a serious miscarriage of justice had unfolded, as the result of what one participant described as a "modern day witch trial". Four years later, Berlinger and Sinofsky returned to the case, and made a second Paradise Lost (subtitled Revelations). The film-makers were still able to gain remarkable access to the main protagonists. By 2000, Echols, an academic-looking young man dressed significantly in white, is on death row and still anxious to protest his innocence. He has been frequently raped while inside, we are told. He comes across now as a smart, thoughtful figure. When asked if he has "found God" while in jail, he replies: "I didn't know God was lost." He has, however, lost any interest in Wicca: "I don't want to put a label on myself any more." He just wants to get out and go to college and not be famous for being that guy on death row. His 2 co-defendants, as in the trial, play much smaller parts. John Mark Byers, meanwhile, is centre stage once more. Since the first film, his wife, a heroin addict, has died in indeterminate circumstances. Byers himself is now clearly medicated up to the eyeballs, ready to return to the scene of the crime and carry out a symbolic burial of Echols, Baldwin and Miskelly, even setting fire to their "graves" as he puffs on a cigar and bellows: "You want to eat my baby's testicles? Burn, you son of a bitch, burn! I stomp on your grave!" Meanwhile, a West Memphis Three support group, inspired by the first film, has evolved. They have their own website (wm3.org) which has already had more than 2m hits. Every misunderstood teenager in a black T-shirt has clearly signed on. Many supporters obviously suspect that Byers might be the murderer, and he is well aware that even local people are starting to suggest just that. He agrees to take a polygraph test, which provides part of the drama for the film. The confrontations between the Memphis Three camp, mainly fairly savvy folk, and Byers, a trailer-trash caricature, punctuate the film as does the music of Metallica, about whom the same film-makers later made a documentary, Some Kind of Monster, in 2004. The detective who investigated the murder, Gary Gitchell, now older and greyer, says that he is certain that he got the right people for the crime: "I can go to bed at night knowing I did my job and did it well," he says. The judge is equally convinced. The relatives of the 3 defendants travel to Los Angeles to present their case on a talk show, but their contribution is never aired. We do get to see a bit of Los Angeles, however, and learn that about half the population there wear black T-shirts. Since Paradise Lost, Andrew Jarecki's 2003 documentary Capturing the Friedmans has enjoyed great critical and commercial success. The Friedmans told the story of a seemingly normal suburban family whose life was suddenly turned upside down by the arrest of the father and youngest son for paedophilia. There are many similarities between Capturing the Friedmans and Paradise Lost: the breathtaking frankness of some of the participants, the strong suggestion of a miscarriage of justice, the hand-held camera style. There is, as with the Friedmans, that slightly uncomfortable feeling that we may be voyeurs being entertained by people unaware of just how bizarre and unhinged they may seem. Both films differ from the more familiar form of British documentaries on miscarriages of justice pioneered by the now defunct Rough Justice on the BBC and Trial and Error on Channel 4. There the style was to present an unequivocal case for someone's innocence. With the Friedmans and, to a lesser extent, Paradise Lost, the audience is very much left to make up their own minds. What would we do if we were on the jury? Who do we believe? How much of our attitude is framed by our prejudices, whether towards young men with bad haircuts and attitude problems, or raging rednecks who like taking their dentures out for the camera? Paradise Lost 2 was completed in 2000, and at the time there was a feeling that Damien Echols might finally be either taking the long walk towards that lethal combination of drugs that the judge prescribed or freedom. 5 years on, he is still on death row. I am left wanting to see the 3rd instalment. &183; Paradise Lost 1 and 2 screen at the Curzon Soho, London W1, on June 3, then tour. They will be released on DVD on June 20 (Warp, 14.99) (source: The Guardian-- UK) NORTH CAROLINA: Death penalty may halt with N.C. House vote--Democratic leaders plan to push for a 2-year suspension in N.C. House Democratic leaders are planning a vote next week on a 2-year suspension of the death penalty in North Carolina. The sudden scheduling indicates solid support from leaders in the House, a major step forward for the moratorium, since the House is where it previously stalled. The Senate passed a suspension of the death penalty in April 2003, the first time such legislation had progressed that far in the General Assembly. In the House, though, then-Co-Speaker Richard Morgan, a Republican, blocked the bill from coming up for a vote. This year, House Speaker Jim Black, a Democrat from Matthews, has sole control of the speaker's chair and backs the moratorium. The death penalty suspension is scheduled for a Tuesday morning Judiciary Committee meeting chaired by the House Majority Leader, Rep. Joe Hackney, D-Orange, who also is the bill's primary sponsor. Supporters are trying to arrange testimony from former death row inmates who were freed after errors in their cases were proven. Once approved by the committee, the bill could be voted on by the full House as quickly as the same day. The House must approve the legislation by Thursday or it expires for the session. The deadline applies to most bills, requiring that they pass either the House or Senate. The moratorium bill also calls for a study of perceived deficiencies in the death penalty process, such as adequate legal counsel, prosecutorial misconduct and racial bias. Black has expressed support for a moratorium and, after polling the Democratic caucus, found a majority favor it, Black's communications director Julie Robinson told the Observer Thursday night. "He thinks it'll be a close vote" in the full House, Robinson said. Both parties appear divided on the issue. Rep. Doug Vinson, R-Mecklenburg, said he is leaning toward supporting the death penalty suspension. "Given that there's clearly been inequitable application of the death penalty," Vinson said, "it's our obligation to understand why and err on the side of life." The Senate's vote in favor of the moratorium two years ago was 29 to 21, but 6 of those "yes" votes are gone now. Democratic leaders support the moratorium, but it's uncertain whether they still have enough votes to pass it. (source: Charlotte Observer)
