Jan. 29
TEXAS:
Former DA Millsap honored
Death penalty opponents Saturday honored their newest convert - a former
Bexar County district attorney who some believe sent an innocent teenager
to his execution.
The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty gave a Courage Award to
Sam Millsap, who renounced capital punishment last year after learning
that his administration might have used perjured testimony to win a death
sentence in 1985.
Millsap's rejection of the death penalty completed an evolution that began
nearly 6 years ago when he called for a temporary halt on executions,
arguing that reforms were needed to make the system more reliable.
Millsap's about-face in 2000 seemed bold for someone who had sent 4 men to
death row, but the lawyer now describes it as half-hearted.
"I simply didn't have the courage (then) to say what should have been
said," Millsap told the audience at the Texas Coalition's annual
conference in the Marriott Northwest.
New questions about the guilt of Ruben Cantu, who was sentenced to death
while Millsap was district attorney, have since convinced him that the
justice system can never be foolproof enough to fairly deal out death.
Cantu's conviction rested on the testimony of a single witness - a witness
who came forward last year and told the Houston Chronicle that police
pressured him into falsely accusing the then-17-year-old defendant.
Although Cantu was executed in 1993, current District Attorney Susan Reed
has re-opened the case and is examining the question of whether he was
wrongly convicted.
(source: San Antonio Express-News)
****************
PROTECT US-----Houston must act quickly and decisively to bring a wave of
violent crime under control
In 1958, Houston had the nation's highest murder rate, with 15 homicides
per 100,000 residents. In 1981, after Houston tallied more than 700
homicides, the city was dubbed murder capital of the United States. After
years of diminishing crime rates, the number of violent crimes in the city
again is ticking upward. This time, Houstonians must act to head off the
next bloody crime wave before it crashes over us.
According to Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt, the overall crime rate is
down by 2.2 %. But the rate of violent crime, including homicides,
robberies and gang mayhem, is up - by 2.3 % through November 2005,
compared with the same period in 2004. Hurtt noted that most of the
violence is committed against people who are themselves criminals. That
might comfort Houstonians living in safe neighborhoods, but it provides no
relief to the innocent bystanders who daily dodge bullets in
crime-infested apartment complexes.
Houston homicides were up 23 % in 2005. Of the slayings that occurred
between Sept. 1, 2005, and Jan. 21 of this year, 25 involved Katrina
evacuees, as perpetrator, victim or both. Whether this statistic arose
because of the trauma of lives disrupted, imported New Orleans gang
violence or some other reason is a question Houston police and social
services agencies must answer in order to control it.
No one should make former Louisianans scapegoats for rising criminality.
This city's crime rate was trending upward long before the Aug. 29
hurricane caused an estimated 150,000 Louisianans to come here. As Hurtt
told the Chronicle editorial board on Wednesday, HPD had formed special
units to clamp down on exploding crime in Southwest Houston as far back as
early last year. Despite a series of police sweeps that netted 500
arrests, crime in that area continues to surge. Recently, residents sought
help from the New York-based Guardian Angels, a grass-roots crime
prevention organization.
Hurtt is asking for help - from the very residents who fear for their
lives in the hundreds of sprawling apartment complexes that dot the
Southwest Freeway corridor.
"The only way we're going to be successful is if citizens step up," the
police chief said. "If they see something or they hear something, we need
to know."
But people also need adequate police protection. Residents should report
suspicious activity, but the police know where the hot spots are. Hurtt
should devise ways to raise law enforcement's profile in these areas to
prevent rapes, assaults and murders.
Hurtt said he is working with City Council to compel landlords whose
apartment complexes are magnets for bad actors to hire police officers to
provide security or to pay fees to cover additional police protection.
That is a good idea. Most of the homicides that occurred during the last 4
months of 2005 took place at apartment complexes, though this type of
housing constitutes only half of the city's dwellings. Apartment managers
should be required to provide adequate lighting and evict bad actors.
Over the long term, however, City Council must address HPD's severe staff
shortages in both police and civilian ranks. Money to upgrade outdated
police radios and computers must be found. Hurtt said additional funding
would allow him to station more officers on bicycle and foot patrol around
and inside apartment complexes, which can provide better crime deterrence
than drive-by patrols.
Crime waves come in cycles. Fending off the wave building in Houston will
prove difficult and costly. But the city and its residents will pay a much
higher price, in money and lives, if we do not act swiftly to curb violent
crime before it careers dangerously out of control.
(source: Editorial, Houston Chronicle)
***************
A killer returns
Convicted murderer Tommy Lynn Sells quietly returned to Del Rio this week.
He was brought back to attend a state district court hearing in early
February at which the date of his execution will be set.
Sells arrived at the Val Verde County Sheriffs Office about 5 p.m.
Thursday in the company of Sheriff A. DWayne Jernigan and Lt. Roy Barrera,
who had made the 800-mile round trip to Livingston to pick him up.
Jernigan handled Sells frequently after his arrest in early 2000 and
throughout his trial later that year. Jernigan and Barrera drove Sells to
Huntsville after a jury here decided that Sells would get the death
penalty.
Sells was arrested Jan. 2, 2000 for the vicious stabbing death on Dec. 31,
1999 of a 13-year-old girl in her home in the Guajia Bay subdivision near
Lake Amistad.
During that home invasion and attack, Sells also slit the throat of the
13-year-olds roommate, an 11-year-old girl named Krystal Surles. Krystal
survived the attack and testified against Sells.
Sells was found guilty of capital murder during a trial here in September
2000 and sentenced to death.
Jernigan timed his arrival with Sells back at the sheriffs office on FM
2523 to occur late Thursday, after all of the offices regular support
staff had gone home for the day.
The car carrying Sells was driven into the sally port, an outdoor bay
secured by locking gates topped with jagged coils of concertina wire.
Inside the deputies squad room, Jernigan began fingerprinting Sells.
The sheriff first held Sells right hand, then his left and guided each
thumb and finger in turn onto a raised, revolving plate onto which a thin
coat of black ink was spread.
One by one, Jernigan rolled Sells fingers and thumbs in the ink to coat
them, then, one by one, rolled the fingers or thumbs onto their
corresponding spaces on the fingerprint card.
The process took about 10 minutes.
VVSO Chief Deputy Terry Simons and Barrera, as well as a handful of other
deputies formed a loose semicircle around Sells and the sheriff.
Simons and the other deputies watched the fingerprinting in a state of
relaxed vigilance, far enough away not to appear as though they were
hovering, close enough to quickly subdue Sells should something go wrong.
Lt. Janis Manis stood closer to the pair, holding a chain attached to the
chain around Sells waist like a leash.
"Tommy and I had an uneventful trip," the sheriff observed as he took
Sells' fingerprints.
The sheriff then asked Sells if he objected to the presence of this writer
in the squad room.
"I'm not giving any more interviews to the press," Sells said, looking up
and at me.
Then he grinned and said, "Just kidding."
I asked him if I might take a few photographs, and he said he didn't mind.
After he was fingerprinted, Manis handcuffed his wrists. A chain ran from
the handcuffs around his wrists to the chain encircling his waist, and his
ankles were shackled, allowing him only a slow, shuffling walk.
Outside the deputies' squad room, in the long gray corridor that joins the
sheriffs office and the jail, a contingent of about eight GEO Group
jailers waited for Sells.
Before taking him to the jail, they detoured into the criminal
investigations division's conference room.
Sells had expressed a desire to talk to the VVSOs chief investigator, Lt.
Larry Pope, who with Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. John Allen, a
Texas Ranger who has since retired, led the investigation that put Sells
on death row.
The guards directed Sells to a chair in the conference room, but Pope was
unwilling to leave his office.
Simons guided Sells into Pope's office and shut the door.
"How come you didn't send me a damn Christmas card?" Pope joked after
directing Sells to "drag up a chair."
Sitting nearly knee-to-knee, the 2 began a conversation that lasted almost
half an hour.
To say they talked like old friends would be giving their relationship a
weight and an intimacy that has never existed and which can never exist.
Say instead that they are two people who have gone through a terrible,
traumatic experience together, an experience that has scarred them both
and altered the course of both their lives.
(source: Del Rio News-Herald)
USA:
Alito's 'Murder Board' a Mix of the Legal Elite
The well-handled U.S. Supreme Court nominee is now a fixture in the
political process, and much of the credit goes to those so-called murder
boards, or preparation sessions for the Senate confirmation hearings.
The lawyers participating on the murder boards represent a mix of
government and nongovernment attorneys with backgrounds in the legal areas
most likely to interest the senators.
Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito, who appears headed to
near-certain confirmation in the U.S. Senate, was shepherded through all
of the murder boards by a team that included Steve Schmidt, special
advisor to the president in charge of the White House confirmation team,
and Harriet Miers, counsel to the president.
Also present during all of the practice sessions was Shannen W. Coffin,
general counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and a former partner in
Washington D.C.'s Steptoe & Johnson, as well as Alito's main liaisons with
the Senate-Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., who, ironically, had been tapped by the
White House to guide Miers through the process until she withdrew her
nomination, and Republican lobbyist Ed Gillespie, former chairman of the
Republican National Committee.
THE VALUE OF REHEARSAL
That these murder boards have been successful is obvious, said Beth
Bonora, a jury consultant with Bonora D'Andrea in San Francisco.
"It's true for everyone that if you are required to think on your feet and
want to answer in a particular way, walking through ahead of time helps,"
said Bonora. "Lawyers all the time, with or without trial consultants,
rehearse and prepare for court.
"There are other questions that are much more policy issues about Supreme
Court nominees and what they ought to be rightfully forthcoming about in
their answers," she added. "But that's different from the question of
whether preparation helps -- it does."
Not surprisingly, the nongovernment attorneys who participated in some of
the murder boards included former stars of the administrations of Ronald
Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, such as former U.S. Solicitor
General Theodore Olson, who has returned to his post as head of the
constitutional and appellate practice at Los Angeles-based Gibson, Dunn &
Crutcher.
Another participant was Charles J. Cooper, partner in Washington's Cooper
& Kirk, a former assistant attorney general at the helm of the Office of
Legal Counsel in the Reagan Justice Department.
In one session, Alito faced a very familiar face: his former law clerk,
Adam Ciongoli, now senior vice president and general counsel at Time
Warner Inc. Ciongoli also served as counsel to former Attorney General
John Ashcroft from 2001 to 2003.
Timothy Flanigan, general counsel for corporate and international law at
Tyco International Ltd., also was a participant.
Flanigan had his own experience with the Senate process recently after
being nominated as deputy attorney general-second in command to Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales.
But his experience, unlike what Alito has undergone, was less successful.
Bush was forced to withdraw his nomination after a number of senators
questioned his role in developing the policies that led to torture and
abuse at Guantnamo Bay and Iraq's Abu Ghraib prisons.
Flanigan, a former Justice Department official in George H.W. Bush's
administration, had had experience then with judicial nominations,
including that of Justice Clarence Thomas.
Other nongovernment lawyers helping with the murder boards included
Michael A. Carvin, partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, a former
deputy assistant attorney general at DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel.
The conservative Federalist Society continues to play an influential role
in judicial nominations. Leonard Leo, the society's executive vice
president, was a murder board participant. And academia offered John
Manning of Harvard Law School, head of the Office of Legal Counsel when
Ashcroft led the Justice Department.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. reportedly underwent at least a dozen
murder boards in preparing for his hearings.
A BIT OF CONTROVERSY
The practice became somewhat controversial during the Alito hearings when
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., asked the judge whether he was coached by a
White House lawyer-Benjamin Powell -- who was involved in constructing the
legal justification for the Bush administration's domestic wiretapping
program involving the National Security Agency.
Powell, who was a regular participant in the Alito murder boards, recently
received a recess appointment as general counsel to the director of the
Office of National Intelligence.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., also questioned the use of murder boards
because of the unhelpful "polish" that they put on nominees.
Despite those concerns, murder boards are most likely here to stay.
(source: National Law Journal)
MARYLAND:
Death penalty opponents rally----Demonstrators assemble in Annapolis a
week before scheduled execution of Evans
For the 2nd time in as many months, death penalty opponents gathered
outside the governor's mansion yesterday with little more than a week
before a convicted killer could be executed.
They chanted and paced. They carried signs. And they expressed
disappointment that they were in Annapolis again, protesting the scheduled
execution of Vernon Lee Evans Jr. less than 2 months after the lethal
injection of Wesley Eugene Baker.
"It's extremely frustrating and it's extremely daunting," said Rachel
Messer, 24, of Washington. "But we're not going to stop until it's stopped
because it's such an important issue. In this kind of movement, you meet
the friends and relatives of death row inmates and you realize the people
on death row are just people and they have real lives, too."
The protest was the 1st in a series of events that anti-death penalty
activists have organized leading up to the week of Feb. 6, when Evans is
scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection.
The schedule includes an interfaith prayer service Thursday night at New
Shiloh Baptist Church in Baltimore, a protest Saturday afternoon outside
the Supermax prison in Baltimore that houses death row inmates, and a
vigil the evening of Feb. 6 outside the castle-like former state
penitentiary in the city where Maryland's execution chamber is located.
Activists also have organized a gathering Tuesday evening at Grace
Memorial Baptist Church in Baltimore, during which Evans is expected to
call from prison and address the audience through a speaker phone.
The 56-year-old Baltimore man was sentenced to death in 1992 for the
contract killings of two Pikesville motel clerks. David Scott Piechowicz
and Susan Kennedy were gunned down April 28, 1983, with a MAC-11 machine
pistol in the lobby of the Warren House Motel. Another inmate on
Maryland's death row, drug kingpin Anthony Grandison, also was sentenced
to death in the case, convicted of offering Evans $9,000 to kill 2
witnesses scheduled to testify against him in federal court.
Evans' then-girlfriend testified at trial that she watched Evans walk into
the motel on the day of the murders with a machine gun in a canvas bag and
then wiped down the still-smoking weapon at his request when he returned
to the car about 15 minutes later.
Many at yesterday's protest argued that Evans did not have competent legal
representation at his sentencing hearing. An appeal is pending before
Maryland's highest court on that issue.
They referred to a witness to the killings who was never called to testify
at trial but who told police -- and later an appeals court hearing Evans'
post-conviction arguments -- that the shooter was 5 feet 8 inches tall.
Evans, whose nickname was Shorty, is 5 feet 2 inches.
And they wondered when Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. will act on a University
of Maryland study that found geographic and racial disparities in the
state's imposition of the death penalty.
"I hope the governor will give my son clemency and take those shoes off
his feet because they don't fit," said Vernon Evans Sr., 76, a retired
insurance agent and tavern owner. "My son has been wearing these shoes --
these accusations -- for 23 years."
The protest attracted dozens of people from Baltimore, Washington and the
cities' suburbs, including Shujaa Graham, 55, acquitted of murder in 1982
after 4 trials and nearly 5 years on California's death row. He lives in
Takoma Park.
Eddie Withers, 55, a West Baltimore resident and entertainment promoter,
compared the fight against the death penalty to Moses' efforts to save the
Israelites -- a long, hard mission that ultimately will prove successful.
"This is no deterrent to crime," he said of capital punishment.
"State-sanctioned execution is no different from the man out on the street
who does the crime."
Ehrlich was not at the governor's mansion during the demonstration. He
attended the 10th annual Maryland State Police Polar Bear Plunge yesterday
at Sandy Point State Park.
(source: Baltimore Sun)
*****************
Protesters call for halt to Evans execution
Dozens of people, including relatives of Vernon Evans and opponents of
capital punishment, rallied outside the governor's mansion Saturday to
stop Evans' execution. The protesters asked Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to
grant clemency, chanting: "Maryland's death row is unfair. Break the
needles, smash the chairs."
Evans, 57, is scheduled to be executed during the week of Feb. 6 for the
1983 contract killing of two Baltimore County motel clerks.
His attorneys have several appeals pending. They argued in U.S. District
Court in Baltimore on Friday that the execution would violate
Constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Attorneys
and doctors said Evans' history of heroin use so badly damaged his veins
that Maryland's execution procedure could subject him to excruciating
pain.
Evans' sister, Gwen Evans, said in a brief telephone interview Saturday
that his relatives planned to deliver a letter to Ehrlich asking for
clemency.
The letter details the family's claims that Evans did not receive adequate
representation at his sentencing hearing and that his conviction and death
sentence were based on the testimony of an unreliable eyewitness.
"Vernon has served 22 years in prison for a crime he did not commit," Gwen
Evans said, reading from the letter.
Evans was sentenced to die for the murders of Scott Piechowicz and his
sister-in-law, Susan Kennedy, who were gunned down in the lobby of the
Warren House Motor Hotel in Pikesville. He admitted that he was paid
$9,000 by drug dealer Anthony Grandison, who had wanted Piechowicz and his
wife dead because he believed they were going to testify against him in
criminal trial. Kennedy was killed by mistake when Evans mistook her for
her sister.
Grandison also is awaiting execution in a state prison.
(source: Associated Press)
PENNSYLVANIA:
The remade Ray Ray Krone talks about his life a year after a makeover
A year ago, Ray Krone revealed his Extreme Makeover to his family, friends
and the entire country.
The nation's 100th exonerated death-row inmate had been wrongly convicted
twice in the 1991 murder of a Phoenix barmaid.
He became known as "the Snaggletooth Killer" because experts said his
ragged teeth matched a bite mark found on the victim.
The ABC TV show "Extreme Makeover" gave him a makeover - including new
teeth - to erase that image.
Krone recently reflected on his makeover while relaxing on his farm in
Conewago Township.
"It was all worthwhile, and I'm just thankful for the opportunity," he
said during a sit-down interview Tuesday.
Here are excerpts of what Krone had to say:
Q. How has the Extreme Makeover changed your life?
A. Just what a bizarre - almost surreal - opportunity that was. . . . It
really fell in my lap. . . . The next thing they're flying me out to
California, and we started the process.
I really had . . . anxiety or real concern about why would I even want to
do this. I mean, Ray Krone talks about his experience with the Commission
on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons Tuesday at his home in Conewago
Township. -- it's embarrassing to be homely enough to have to be on
"Extreme Makeovers" or something.
And then when they told me what they wanted to do and why they wanted to
do it - to give me something back for those 10 years that the state wasn't
willing to repay me for and to tell my story about being called "the
Snaggletooth Killer."
This was all an opportunity to help build me as Ray Krone . . . and to
help my family.
To be a victim the rest of your life, to be hardened or heart-broken or a
shattered person for the rest of your life after tragedy is not something
our loved ones would want for us. It's something that we have to find -
the strength, the encouragement, the faith - to do better, to better
ourselves.
Q. What did you like best about it?
A. 2 things. On a personal, spiritual level, the people that I met out
there that were part of this show and the other contestants that were like
me. . . . I felt a part of that group so that gave me a sense of, again,
community.
On the other side of it, just my personal ego, it felt good to be
pampered. It felt good to be held out there to say, "Well, you're going to
be the star of the show. Your show's going to be a 2-hour-long show."
The teeth alone were just such a special thing. I don't have to wear my
wig anymore. I wore that for a short time after I got out, but my hair did
grow out somewhat. While I wasn't overly concerned about the hair, it was
still part of the process.
We all have our insecurities about our looks. . . . The most beautiful
person still has something they don't like about themselves. So any time
we can help somebody feel better about their personal looks, again it
makes a better person, a more positive person, which is what I want to be.
Q. What did you like least about it?
A. One big thing that bothered me was it was Christmas and New Year's and
Thanksgiving that I was away from home. That's time for family and
friends, so I did miss that. . . . There were times when I was in the
dentist's chair for eight, nine, 10 hours. . . . While I didn't enjoy
being overly stressed as far as all the medical stuff in one day's time .
. . I still understood their point and their side of it. So that
understanding was enough to say, "Well, this ain't so bad. Just think
about the end product."
Q. If you could do it all over, would you do it again?
A. The Ray Krone now - no, I wouldn't because I already did it once. But
if the opportunity was again the first-time opportunity, I'd probably have
the same little anxiety at first.
But again, what really convinced me to do it was not the makeover for me,
but my family and friends . . . said, "Ray, you've been going around
speaking to people, telling them what happened to you, trying to change
our country and public opinion about the death penalty, about the justice
system." They said, "You think about the people that you're going to reach
on national television." That's why I did it. . . . So yeah, I would have
to do it again, because that was the reason I did it the 1st time.
Q. Do people still ask you about your Extreme Makeover?
A. People all around the country did see it, and when I still travel and
speak, people bring it up. Every now and then they'll say, "Well, don't
you know him? He was on 'Extreme Makeovers.'" . . . It adds to what I do
now, and it's something for people to talk about and identify with.
Q. Have you worn the $3,200 Stefano Ricci pinstripe suit the producers
bought for you since the show aired?
A. No, I have not. . . . But I tell you this, I actually have plans on
wearing it. I haven't been to anything formal where I would break out a
$3,000 suit, but I think I might take it (to a meeting with Commission on
Safety and Abuse in American Prisons) for one day because it is hanging in
my closest. May as well get some use out of it.
Q. When we talked about your life a year ago, you said you were still
looking in the rearview mirror. Has that changed?
A. Absolutely. The book wasn't completely closed yet. There was still the
last chapter: the lawsuit. They were still trying to dig into my past,
trying to make me look bad, in some way responsible for my arrest. Typical
legal tactics that you do in lawsuits. So while that was still going on, I
had to be careful. It was still part of that past that we weren't free of
yet.
But now we are free. . . . Now I can start looking to a future and make
long-range plans.
Q. Where do you see yourself heading in the future?
A. I really would like to start going back to school. I've got to work out
my schedule. I'd like to get involved in some type of community projects
helping youth.
But again, I'm still taking the baby steps and really reintegrating back
into society and to my life now.
****************
Security to be tight during trial of Selenski
Plans are under way to increase security at the Luzerne County Courthouse
when the capital murder trial for Hugo Selenski begins.
Some tactics the sheriffs department will rely upon are similar to those
the U.S. Secret Service takes before and during a presidential visit.
Authorities will use several vehicles with tinted glass. One will
transport Mr. Selenski while the others will be used as decoys. They will
travel different routes to the courthouse each day of trial. A canine
trained in detecting contraband will be led around the courthouse.
Mr. Selenski is accused of killing 2 of 5 people whose remains were found
at his Kingston Township home on June 5, 2003. Prosecutors are seeking the
death penalty.
Traffic may be stopped during Mr. Selenskis transport, and sheriff
deputies armed with assault rifles will be posted outside.
Fears of drastic action
"It's going to be heightened, I can guarantee you that," said Sheriff
Barry Stankus. "We have a lot of concerns. I'll feel more comfortable when
Mr. Selenski is inside the courthouse. I can control the atmosphere
inside, but I can't control the atmosphere outside."
Sheriff Stankus said he fears someone who developed an admiration of Mr.
Selenski, 32, may do something drastic.
That's why Sheriff Stankus feels Mr. Selenski should be held at the
Luzerne County Correctional Facility during his trial, which is set to
begin with jury selection on Feb. 21.
"It's safer traveling two blocks in 5 minutes than traveling 10 miles," he
said.
"Anything could happen in that 10 miles. You could have a mechanical
breakdown or someone trying to interfere with the transport. You don't
know and I don't want to take that chance."
Mr. Selenski has been held at the State Correctional Institution at Dallas
since Oct. 13, 2003, when he surrendered to authorities after he escaped
from the county prison 3 days earlier. The distance is about 10 miles
between the courthouse and SCI-Dallas.
Taking no chances
Sheriff Stankus said there haven't been any problems transporting Mr.
Selenski from SCI-Dallas to the courthouse for previous hearings. But he's
taking no chances when the trial begins.
"It's going to change with the trial," Sheriff Stankus said. "I have to be
concerned for the safety of my deputies, Mr. Selenski and the jurors."
Anyone entering the courtroom will be searched and scanned with a
hand-held metal detector, he said.
"If someone has a purse or a bag, be prepared to dump it out if you want
to go inside," Sheriff Stankus said. "My primary concern is safety. We're
taking no chances."
(source: Times-Tribune)
NEW YORK:
New archive collects prisoners' last pleas for life
When the last court says no and the clock ticks on execution, a prisoner's
only chance is a plea for mercy.
That's when death row's dry legal phrases turn into tales of personal
struggle told through children's letters, baptism certificates, photos,
even poetry.
Now, the University at Albany has begun the first national attempt to
collect these last requests, along with other records, providing an
intimate look at one of America's most divisive issues.
The 1st boxes arrived this month from a private donor at the university's
new National Death Penalty Archives. Inside were 137 pleas, mostly from
the South and all since 1977 when the Supreme Court reinstated the death
penalty. Some were addressed to then-Texas governor George W. Bush, with
bold titles ("Earl Washington Jr.: An Innocent Man") and arresting
sentences ("We believe, as strongly as human beings can believe, that the
life of James Adams is in your hands today solely because he is a poor
black Southerner.").
Capital punishment was back on the national stage last month as Crips gang
founder Stanley Tookie Williams and supporters pleaded for his life in
California but failed. And earlier in December, North Carolina put Kenneth
Lee Boyd to death, the 1,000th execution in the U.S. since the death
penalty resumed in 1977.
The archive's co-founders admit their quest is a step behind: Most of the
people in those file folders are already dead. But the archive could help
researchers learn what can go wrong in the justice system, with the goal
of trying to fix it before more are executed.
Recent projects across the country have scrutinized the cases of death row
inmates for mistakes, sometimes getting reduced sentences or setting
people free. The archive makes it possible to take that effort back in
time. Patterns of past mistakes can be documented and changes recommended.
The files will be open to the public, giving advocates, lawyers,
journalists and others a look at some of capital punishment's more human
details. The archive also contains interviews with inmates and jurors and
other personal writings.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty
Information Center, says the collection is invaluable for others who want
to file petitions. "We have often received requests for this kind of
information," he wrote in an e-mail.
"When you read those petitions, some of them cry out that something very
bad occurred," says James Acker, an archive co-founder and professor of
criminal justice.
Take the case of Virginia's Calvin Swann. 2 weeks before his scheduled
execution for murder in 1999, students at Skidmore College in upstate New
York were asked to help on a last-minute petition for clemency. They
worked around the clock in shifts with an alumnus, a New York-based
lawyer. They found state-employed doctors had diagnosed Swann as
schizophrenic at least 41 times and committed him to psychiatric hospitals
at least 16 times.
"Yet, under the mental health system that existed in years past, Calvin
was repeatedly released without supervision or treatment," the petition
reads.
The argument worked and Swann was granted clemency.
But clemency is rare, says Charles Lanier, the archive's other co-founder.
Besides 167 inmates whose death sentences were commuted when Illinois Gov.
George Ryan left office in 2003, only 63 others have been spared since
1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Of the 137 cases in the new archives, just 15 got clemency, a vacated
death sentence or a new trial.
Most prisoners still try and their efforts are found in the archive's
bulging files, "a gold mine of things that wouldn't show up in legal
papers," says Bill Bowers, who recently moved his Capital Jury Project, a
national research effort into how juries make decisions, to Albany from
Northeastern University.
One file holds two pounds of letters in support of confessed murderer
William Neal Moore of Georgia, including ones from relatives of the
victim. "Billy was just a stranger in the wrong place at the wrong time,"
one relative wrote. "Now we feel like we know him, and ... he's be welcome
in our homes." Clemency was granted.
Whoever filed the petition for murderer James Lee Clark of Texas strayed
far from legalities into Albert Einstein anecdotes and passages from "The
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." The petition ends with footnote No. 34: "I
encourage everyone to listen to the Dallas Wind Symphony's rendition of
'Stars and Stripes Forever' ... RealAudio and MPEG-3 versions are
available." Clemency was denied.
Collecting the rest of the pleas will be a challenge, the archive's
co-founders say. They quickly found petitions are not always treated as
public record. Thirty-six states have death penalty laws, and 2 others,
New York and Kansas, have laws that have been declared by courts to be
unconstitutional. Some states are reluctant to release the papers.
One reason is family privacy, Acker says. "There is no shortage of stories
that describe just horrendous upbringings." At the end, the details of
abuse and mental illness are brought out for sympathy, because the
prisoner has nothing more to trade on.
And a governor usually has few guidelines to go on but conscience.
Which is why Acker and Lanier are collecting these pleas for public
record, mostly on their own time, with no outside funding.
"You would think anyone with a life-or-death decision would want the best
information possible," Acker says.
(source: Associated Press)
