Jan. 9 USA: No more defending the death penalty Sometimes we think that holding on to a belief for a long time is reason enough never to let it go. But if that were the case, then there would be no need for discourse and no opportunity for growth or change. In short, after decades of believing, with some strong reservations, that capital punishment was necessary and could be administered fairly, I have finally, after years of argument with several friends (and, incidentally, my wife) come to believe that it isn't and it can't. During the years I was a working journalist, I came into contact, one way or another, with the stories of dozens of killers, including Gerald Stano, who reportedly bragged at great length about his murders of somewhere between six and 41 women. Stano confessed so much and so graphically that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents who drove him from one body-dumping site to another over a period of several weeks had to take turns driving because they were sickened by the outpouring. As I recall the other four reporters with whom I worked on a weeks-long investigation of the Stano case, most of them basically opposed to capital punishment, voted unanimously in a straw poll that he should be executed. We had spent hours listening to parents, husbands and friends of his victims talk about their losses and we had also spent hours reading one report after another citing the details of his brutal crimes. There is no doubt that Stano and a few others I remember would easily meet the requirements frequently ascribed to death row inmates in Texas: "needs killin'." And that was the basis of my longtime support, despite my overall liberalism, of the penalty for those rare cases in which there is an almost total certainty that the accused committed the crime and that the crime was particularly horrible. This I argued despite the fact that the United States is the last of the industrialized and allegedly civilized nations (unless you want to count China - I don't) to have the death penalty, and despite that it is vastly more costly to execute (considering appellate court costs) someone than it is to just keep them in a cell. I also argued despite knowing deep down inside that governments that can get as screwed up as ours simply aren't qualified to decide who should live and who should die. But I also remember the case of half-brothers William Riley Jent and Earnest Lee Miller, who were sentenced to death and came within 16 hours of execution for allegedly gang-raping, beating and then burning a woman to death in 1979. The 2 spent 9 years on death row before the alleged eyewitnesses to the murder recanted their testimony; a reporter found fingerprint evidence that identified the victim and supported an alternative explanation for the death that did not involve Jent and Miller, and an appellate court found that prosecutors acted with "callous and deliberate disregard of truth and fairness" in obtaining the conviction. I also remember a Pasco County sheriff blaming their release on "communist" journalists he said would bear responsibility when they killed again. Both have lived peacefully since their release 17 years ago this month. I wish I was one of the "communist" journalists the sheriff castigated, but I am saddened to say that I was as taken in by the bogus case as everyone else. The system does get it wrong, frequently, as we learn in case after case where DNA evidence proves the innocence of alleged rapists and, last month proved the innocence of a man on death row for the alleged rape and murder of his mother-in-law in Maryland. Nobody will ever make it right for him or for Jent and Miller, but we, as a society, could have made it a lot more, and irrevocably, wrong for them and for us. An appellate court can overturn a conviction; it can't restore life to the wrongfully executed. (source: Column, Jay GLidewell, St. Petersburg Times) FLORIDA: Johnson Appealing Sentence Despite Past Failures Convicted murderer Paul Beasley Johnson, whose drug-addled killing frenzy ended 3 peoples lives in 1981, was at one time less than 24 hours away from being strapped into Florida's electric chair. Now, 25 years after his killings, Johnson still awaits execution. When or whether he will ever receive the legal system's ultimate punishment remains unknown. Bob Sparks, a spokesman with the Florida Attorney General's Office, said Johnson has sought eight appeals in his case since his 2nd conviction in 1988. So far, court records show Johnson's efforts have been unsuccessful at the local trial level, the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. Johnson has one pending issue under review before the Florida Supreme Court about whether his death sentence is unconstitutional. But how many appeals are left remains up to him, Sparks said. Johnson's lawyer, Terri Backhus of Tampa, did not return calls seeking comment for this story. Johnson, 56, a former Eagle Lake carpenter, was 31 years old on the cold evening of Jan. 8, 1981, when he began his bloody rampage, which continued into the early morning hours of the next day. In the end, 3 people were fatally shot -- Winter Haven cab driver William Evans, 21-year-old Darrell Ray Beasley and Polk sheriff's Deputy Theron A. Burnham. Amy Reid was traveling with Beasley, her friend, just prior to his death. Reid and Beasley had agreed to give Johnson a ride. He asked them to stop so he could relieve himself on the side of the road. She still remembers frantically fleeing after Johnson pulled a gun on Beasley. "I am very upset that (Johnson) continues to ask for appeals when he knows in his heart that he's guilty," said Reid, 45. "I don't wish death on anybody, but nobody gave Ray the choice to an appeal. Nobody gave any of those people a choice. Nobody stopped to ask them." Sparks said Johnson's long stay on death row is "out of the ordinary" but he attributes the holdup to the case's convoluted history. "25 years is a really long time," he agreed. Over the years, Johnson has been through 3 trials -- one ending in a mistrial and the other 2 resulting in convictions. After his 1st conviction in September 1981, Johnson spent several years filing appeals before the Florida Supreme Court granted a stay less than 24 hours before his scheduled execution on Feb. 18, 1986. The court would later order a new trial for Johnson, finding that Circuit Judge Randall McDonald should have sequestered the jury during deliberations. Johnson's retrial ended abruptly because of juror misconduct. His 3rd trial in 1988 again produced convictions on all counts. "If you get a new trial, that starts the whole (appellate) process over again," said Richard Dieter, executive director to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington D.C. Johnson has spent about 17 years on death row since his last trial. Combined with the approximately 5 years he spent on death row before he was granted a new trial, he has spent 22 years there. The average length of stay for the state's current death row population is 12.74 years, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. The inmate who has been on Florida's death row the longest is Gary E. Alvord, 58, who received his death sentence in 1974. Johnson's stay on death row is also higher than the nationwide average, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. "The average is much less," Dieter said. "The typical case is more like 10 years." However, the average includes some defendants who voluntarily go to their deaths rather than pursue potential appeals, Dieter said. The majority of death row defendants chose to exhaust any appeals they have, he said. "It is a slow and cumbersome process," he said. In addition, Dieter said, the appellate process also tends to be slower in states with large death row populations, such as Florida and California whose death row inmate totals are more than 300 and 600, respectively. In California, Dieter said some defendants have had to wait about four years for a lawyer to help file their first appeals. In comparison, states like Virginia with about 25 people on death row can move a defendant from sentencing to execution in about six years, he said. (source: The Ledger) VIRGINIA: DNA retested in death penalty case Death penalty opponents praised Gov. Mark R. Warner's order for DNA testing that could determine whether Virginia sent an innocent man to the electric chair in 1992. Warner said he ordered the tests because of technological advances that could provide a level of forensic certainty not available when initial DNA tests were conducted. If the tests show Roger Keith Coleman did not rape and kill his sister-in-law in 1981, it will mark the first time in the United States that an executed person has been scientifically proved innocent, according to death penalty opponents. "This is a proper action for the governor to take," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center. "It's not right to shy away from a difficult question or even shy away from reopening cases when there is a chance that something new might be learned." Coleman was convicted and sentenced to death in 1982 for the murder of 19-year-old Wanda McCoy, his wifes sister, who was found raped, stabbed and nearly beheaded in her home in the coal mining town of Grundy. His attorneys argued that he did not have time to commit the crime, that tests showed semen from two men was found inside McCoy and that another man bragged about murdering her. Coleman was executed May 20, 1992. Four newspapers and Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey organization that investigated Colemans case and became convinced of his innocence, sought a court order to have the evidence retested. The Virginia Supreme Court declined to order the testing in 2002, so Centurion Ministries asked Warner to intervene. A former prosecutor in the case did not object to the tests and said he was confident they would confirm Colemans guilt. Tom Scott said a mountain of other evidence pointed to Coleman as the killer: There was no sign of forced entry at McCoy's house, leading investigators to believe she knew her attacker; a pubic hair found on McCoys body was consistent with Colemans hair. (source: Associated Press)
