Nov. 25 VIRGINIA: Stop This Execution Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner (D), who has less than 2 months left in office, has not stopped a single execution during his 4-year term. He would do well to break that streak in the case of Robin Lovitt, who is scheduled to die Wednesday for a pool hall murder in Arlington in 1998. Mr. Lovitt came close to execution in July but was saved when the Supreme Court slapped a stay on the case -- thus letting Mr. Warner temporarily off the hook for deciding Mr. Lovitt's fate. But the justices later decided not to hear the matter, so the governor is now the last hope for mercy. Mr. Warner would send a strong message about the integrity of Virginia's criminal justice system if he granted Mr. Lovitt's petition for clemency. The Lovitt case is not the sort of crime that typically yields a death sentence. Mr. Lovitt was convicted of stabbing a friend named Clayton Dicks after Mr. Dicks surprised him while he was stealing the cash box at the pool hall. Mr. Dicks was a night manager there, and Mr. Lovitt formerly worked there. It's a terrible crime, but capital murders generally involve some particularly horrifying factors that are not present here. More important, the state destroyed all physical evidence that Mr. Lovitt might seek to test to prove his long-standing claim of innocence. Under Virginia law, the commonwealth must preserve physical evidence, and Mr. Lovitt's case is a good example of why. The evidence of his guilt is substantial, but it is not overwhelming. The testing at the time of his trial yielded nothing firm; retesting material with improved methodology might prove more conclusive. But unfortunately, there's nothing left to test. This is not, it seems, because of any malicious effort to prevent Mr. Lovitt from exonerating himself but because of an administrative blunder in which a court clerk -- despite objections from subordinates -- had almost all of the trial exhibits destroyed. The absence of malice was important as a legal matter to the courts that reviewed the case. But for Mr. Warner, permitted by law to commute Mr. Lovitt's sentence to life without parole for whatever reason he finds compelling, motive ought not to matter. Mr. Lovitt is in no better shape by virtue of the evidence having been destroyed by accident. In a case where some doubt clouds a conviction, the state has frustrated the sort of retroactive DNA testing its laws are designed to facilitate. Under such circumstances, an execution should not go forward. (source: Editorial, Washington Post) NORTH CAROLINA: Ex-prosecutors fight sanctions----The State Bar is asked to dismiss charges that allege prosecutorial misbehavior in a '96 trial 2 former prosecutors have asked the N.C. State Bar to dismiss charges that they lied and withheld evidence in a 1996 murder trial that ended with a penalty of death. The 2 prosecutors -- Kenneth Honeycutt, the former district attorney in Union County, and Scott Brewer, now a District Court judge in Rockingham -- argued that the State Bar has no business pursuing the case because a Superior Court judge already held them blameless on several of the charges. Honeycutt also explained why he removed a critical passage from a document he submitted to the trial judge: The missing portion was a part of a constantly changing "to-do list," Honeycutt said. If Honeycutt and Brewer are found guilty, punishment could range from a written reprimand to the loss of their law licenses. The charges stem from the case of Jonathan Hoffman, who was sentenced to death in 1996 in the robbery and murder of Danny Cook, a jewelry store owner in Marshville, southeast of Charlotte. The key evidence against Hoffman was provided by a cousin, Johnell Porter, who was facing long prison terms in South Carolina and in federal prison for bank robbery. According to the State Bar, Honeycutt agreed to reward Porter for his testimony at trial with immunity from state and federal prosecutions, money, a reduction in his federal sentence and help with a pending South Carolina sentence. Honeycutt delivered on his promise, according to court papers and the bar's complaint. Porter's prison sentences were reduced by at least 15 years, he was not prosecuted for at least a dozen serious crimes in Charlotte, and he pocketed several thousand dollars in reward money. Hoffman's attorneys alleged that Honeycutt and Brewer withheld information on the deal, even though case law and a judge's order required them to share the evidence. In April 2004, Superior Court Judge W. Erwin Spainhour ordered a new trial because the federal immunity deal had been withheld. Hoffman's attorneys could have used the deal to undercut Porter's credibility on the stand. Honeycutt and Brewer did not seek or participate in the federal immunity agreement, Spainhour ruled, and didn't know anything about it, a finding the 2 brandished in their official responses to the bar. "The State Bar should not be allowed to file an action which seeks to either establish facts different than those already found by Judge Spainhour or impose discipline for matters that Judge Spainhour found were either unknown to or not the fault of Mr. Honeycutt," Honeycutt said. Honeycutt also criticized what he called "a number of unsubstantiated, untrue and misleading allegations" in his reply. The Bar has charged that Honeycutt had deleted information favorable to Hoffman from a document that prosecutors submitted to the trial judge. On the day that Porter testified, the judge ordered Honeycutt to give him any statements Porter had made. Honeycutt handed over several pages. Satisfied there was no evidence favorable to Hoffman, the judge sealed the documents. The judge did not know that some of the documents had been changed. The records of an Oct. 5 jailhouse meeting, for example, contained a copy of Honeycutt's notes rather than the original, and several items were missing. The original notes, discovered years later in Honeycutt's files by Hoffman's attorneys, said, "Meet with US Att. and get some concessions made to Porter in the event he testifies for us." The State Bar will likely argue that the deleted portions indicate the prosecutors knew about the federal immunity deal. Honeycutt, however, said the deletion had been in a "to-do list" that he changed during the trial. "As these were a to do list and work product, this list could [be] and was changed at various times before and during the trial as an item was no longer needed or new items were added," Honeycutt's reply said. "Various copies of this to do list might have been printed at different points in time." Attorneys for Honeycutt and Brewer did not return phone calls. It's unclear what role, if any, Porter will play in the Bar hearing, which is scheduled for March. Porter had testified at trial that Hoffman had admitted the robbery and murder when the 2 were jailed on the same cellblock in Charlotte. Porter,released from prison in September, said in a recent interview that Hoffman had never told him anything in jail about the robbery. Porter said he agreed to testify because he believed Hoffman had stolen $20,000 from him while Porter was jailed. Porter also believed that Hoffman had ratted him out for an October 1995 bank robbery. "He killed my dog, and they wanted me to kill his cat," Porter said. "They let me improvise on the stand." Hoffman's new trial is expected next year. (source: News-Observer) NEW JERSEY: Study N.J's death penalty The death penalty doesn't work in New Jersey. In the past 23 years, since New Jersey reinstated the death penalty, no inmate has been executed. Of the 60 death verdicts returned by juries, most were replaced with life terms. Ten people are on death row today. But there has been one clear result of New Jersey's death penalty: The state's taxpayers have lost out on $253 million. That's the estimated cost of the death penalty in New Jersey, according to "Money For Nothing? The Financial Cost of New Jersey's Death Penalty," a report released Monday by New Jersey Policy Perspective, a research group. With a record like that in New Jersey -- and an even worse record nationally, where questions continue to arise regarding the guilt of executed inmates -- maybe it's time the state took a closer look at ending this barbaric system. A pair of bills that would replace the death penalty in New Jersey with a life term are stuck in the Legislature and have only minimal support from tri-county legislators. If you want to see the state stop wasting money on a broken system, contact your legislators and ask them to co-sponsor and push for passage of Senate bill 1212 and Assembly bill 3569. Or, if you have time, join with members of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, at 10 a.m. Dec. 8 in Trenton to protest. (source: Editorial, Courier Post) **************** Need for reform -- Costs, non-use make death penalty a loser New Jersey has a death penalty on the books, but not in practice. No one has been executed in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1982 following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling a few years before. There is no reason for the state Legislature to allow the current state of affairs to continue. If we wish to have the death penalty, let's figure out a way to use it. If not, let's do away with it. We prefer the latter option for the simple reason it has proven so difficult to administer the death penalty fairly. As the law stands now, a defendant must first be found guilty by a jury. After that happens, a second trial is held to consider whether the defendant should be executed. That 2nd proceeding includes the introduction of "aggravating," and "mitigating" factors for the jury to consider. If the jury comes down in favor of execution, that ushers in multiple appeals. Death penalty opponents Monday cited a study by New Jersey Policy Perspective that said the state has spent $253 million on various death penalty cases since 1982. We have no independent verification of that number, but the group's point is well taken. The Legislature should do away with the death penalty -- something that does not exist in practice -- in favor of life without parole. State Sen. Anthony R. Bucco, R-Boonton, who backs the death penalty, says he worries about a cop killer, or a child killer, getting away. That's a legitimate worry, but let's be practical: life without parole is not getting away. Governor-elect Jon Corzine has said he opposes the death penalty. We hope he will push the Legislature to get rid of something that isn't even being used. (source: Editorial, Morris County Daily Record, Nov. 23)
