Dec. 2 TEXAS: Bexar DA has a history in execution under probe----The ex-judge looking into innocence claim of man put to death calls her role minimal The San Antonio district attorney who promised Wednesday to vigorously investigate the innocence claim of Ruben Cantu was a player in the case well before his 1993 execution. During her days as a Bexar County judge, Susan Reed rejected Cantu's death-sentence appeal in 1988 and later set his execution date, records show. But Reed, who was elected district attorney in 1998, said she does not remember Cantu and considers her previous involvement minimal and mostly procedural. She said her staff has already requested thousands of pages of court, jail and police records related to the case. Cantu, 17 at the time of the murder-robbery in San Antonio, was executed Aug. 24, 1993. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday, Reed emphasized that her office is just beginning its investigation into claims of Cantu's innocence. But she said she is more concerned about "whether there is a murderer out there and whether there is someone who committed perjury that led to someone being executed." Her review was prompted by a Chronicle investigation last month that detailed how the lone eyewitness and the convicted accomplice to the November 1984 murder both now say that Cantu was never at the crime scene. A 3rd man, who never testified at Cantu's trial, has claimed that Cantu was in Waco. Cantu was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the robbery and shooting death of Pedro Gomez. Juan Moreno, another victim who barely survived the robbery, was the key witness against Cantu at trial. Moreno, who still lives in San Antonio, has said that police persuaded him to identify Cantu as the killer. Cantu's co-defendant, David Garza, then 15, is in prison in Beaumont on an unrelated case and has named another San Antonio man as the killer. A third man, Eloy Gonzales of San Antonio, said he and his brothers were in Waco with Cantu at the time of the crime. Reed's office so far has not interviewed those 3 men, in part because lawyers still are collecting and reviewing records, Reed said. 'Public has a right to know' Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, called Reed's decision to review the case a great "initial step." But he also has asked the governor to take the case to the Governor's Criminal Justice Advisory Council. "There ought to be an independent review in addition to the fine work coming out of the prosecutor's office," said Ellis, who is a member of the advisory council. "The public has a right to know if the state of Texas has made a mistake in the administration of the death penalty." Ellis is among several lawmakers and advocates who have called for action by the Criminal Justice Advisory Council, though the group has not previously tackled such a case. "The reality that Texas may have executed an innocent man should shock us all into action," Ellis said in a statement Wednesday. "If the facts we now have are accurate, this was a catastrophic failure of the entire Texas criminal justice system and demands investigation." Kathy Walt, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, said the committee is not "set up to look at individual cases." Walt said Perry is unlikely to act until Reed makes findings of fact. Reed, who also serves as president of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, said she thinks such investigations can and should be conducted by local prosecutors. "I think the responsibility lies with the jurisdiction and the person elected in that jurisdiction." Legal ethicist Robert Schuwerk, a University of Houston law professor and co-author of The Handbook of Texas Lawyer and Judicial Ethics, said Reed's former role as a judge should not disqualify her as a fact-finder. In fact, it might motivate her to dig deeper. "It isn't automatically a conflict," Schuwerk said. "She could have slammed the door on it. Basically, if I were a judge and I had ruled that somebody deserved to die and then it came out that maybe there was evidence suggesting that he wasn't there or he was innocent, I sure would want to get to the bottom of it." Reed's role Reed's involvement as a judge in the Cantu case came after she took the place of former Bexar County District Court Judge Roy Barrera Jr., who presided over Cantu's 1985 death-penalty trial. As Bexar County's 144th District Judge in 1988, Reed reviewed Cantu's writ of habeas corpus, which argued that a sentence of death constituted cruel and unusual punishment since Cantu was a juvenile at the time of the offense and testimony from the lone eyewitness in the case was unreliable. In the interview Wednesday, Reed said she rejected those arguments without hearing testimony because, she said, they had been raised and rejected by other courts. "The court having reviewed the writ of habeas corpus filed by Ruben Cantu and having considered the allegations is of the opinion the writ should be denied and no need for an evidentiary hearing exists," reads the ruling, signed by Reed on Jan. 6, 1988. Later, at a hearing, Cantu personally told Reed, "I'm not guilty," according to an old San Antonio Express-News brief. Reed said she does not remember that brief encounter. Deep digging urged Nancy Barohn, an attorney who represented Cantu during his appeal, said she hopes that Reed's staff digs beyond the paperwork. "If she just gets the file and takes a look, it can't be much different from the file" she reviewed as judge, Barohn said. Sam Millsap Jr., a lawyer who was the elected Bexar County district attorney in 1985, said it was not surprising that Reed ruled against Cantu as a judge in 1988 since "none of the things (recently) discovered were available to her." But Millsap also urged a more thorough review. "The state of Texas needs to be looking at the fundamental question of whether or not the system is reliable enough to produce the level of certainty that ought to be required in civilized society before people are executed." Perry had no comment about the Cantu case in a recent press conference. But Walt said she thinks Cantu's case was not unique and that innocence questions also have been raised about other death row cases in Texas, such as that of Leonel Herrera of Edinburg, executed in 1993. "We've had these kinds of confessions before in other death-penalty cases," Walt said last Tuesday. "It's happened before." (source: Houston Chronicle) ****************** >From Murder to Mercy One rationale behind the death penalty: the ultimate crime, murder, is punished with the ultimate punishment, execution. Through this meting out of an eye for an eye, the families of the murdered see their suffering assuaged. Or at least that's what some in the pro-death penalty victims rights movement believe. But the equation is never quite that simple. At the National Anti-Death Penalty Conference held in Austin from October 27-30, relatives of murder victims found common cause with the families of convicted murderers who have been executed or are on death row, linked together in opposition to capital punishment through shared sorrow over the loss of lives. To kick off the conference, which included workshops, a protest march, and a film festival, 20 family members of the executed gathered for the 1st time to launch "No Silence, No Shame," a campaign to draw attention to the damage wreaked upon their broken families. They participated in a ceremony in which each person laid 2 roses together - one for the individual executed, one for the murder victim. At a workshop on reaching out to the families of murder victims and death row inmates, Robert Meeropol, who was six when his parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were put to death by the U.S. government for spying for the Soviet Union (see "A Radical in the Family," July 4, 2003), discussed his experience with the death penalty. Meeropol said that he grew up wanting to see the government officials who ordered his parents execution punished by death, but has since "come to view capital punishment as a human rights abuse." "Who speaks for the children of the executed?" he asked. "We know how many people are on death row, but we dont know how many children have parents on death row." Also at the conference were a number of participants in "the Journey of Hope," a 15-city Texas speaking tour of churches and schools led by relatives of murdered and executed individuals who share an opposition to the death penalty. Marietta Jaegar-Lane described her transformation into a death penalty opponent after her seven-year-old daughter was kidnapped in Montana and killed in 1973. "I came to realize to kill someone in my daughters name would be an insult to her life," said Jaegar-Lane. "She was worth something more honorable, noble, and beautiful than a state-mandated death." When her daughter's killer called her exactly one year after the kidnapping to taunt her, Jaegar had been praying for him every day, learning to forgive. She was able to draw enough details out of the man for the FBI to identify and capture him. George White, who was wrongfully convicted for the murder of his wife and sentenced to life in prison only to be exonerated 6 years later, reminded the victims of their unique role. "We are storytellers, stories we wish we didn't have to tell," said White. "What is the journey? Planting seeds. It is up to you Texas folks to take these seeds and make them grow. We are family, related not by blood but by the blood of our family members." (source: Texas Observer) ***************************** Veteran prosecutor to run for DA post----Dallas County: GOP candidate Shook had key role in Texas 7 trials Longtime felony prosecutor Toby Shook announced Thursday that he plans to seek election as Dallas County district attorney next year. "I've been a career prosecutor more than 22 years - my passion is for prosecution," Mr. Shook said. "I want to continue that service as the district attorney and lead these prosecutors to become the best office in the nation." Mr. Shook, a Republican, has prosecuted some of the highest profile cases in the county. He took part in more than 20 death penalty trials and was the lead prosecutor against the six surviving members of the Texas 7 prison gang. All 6 were sentenced to death for their roles in the shooting death of an Irving police officer in December 2000. "I don't think there will be anybody in the county that has the experience that I bring to the table," Mr. Shook said. "I feel I'm the most qualified person that can get justice done for victims of crime." The announcement prompted attorney Dan Hagood to cancel his plans to enter the race, saying he would instead support Mr. Shook. "I think he's the finest prosecutor in the country," he said. Mr. Shook's entry into the race means there will be 2 candidates who played critical roles in the Texas 7 trials. Judge Vickers Cunningham, who presided over the 6 trials, has said he will step down from the bench Monday so that he can run for district attorney. Mr. Hagood said he believes the bragging rights for the trials' outcomes belong to Mr. Shook. "Every one of those trials was tried by Toby Shook, and every one of them resulted in a death sentence," he said. On Thursday, District Attorney Bill Hill promoted Mr. Shook to become the office's "felony trial bureau chief." The position was vacated when Steve Tokoly retired. In that position, Mr. Shook will focus on training and advising felony prosecutors on upcoming cases, but he said he will continue to handle some trials himself. Jostling for political support began soon after Mr. Hill announced last month that he would not seek a 3rd term as district attorney. Until then, no Republican Party challengers had emerged to face Mr. Hill in the March 7 primary. Besides Mr. Shook and Judge Cunningham, at least three other names have surfaced as possible Republican candidates, including District Judge Janice Warder, County Judge Dan Wyde and Becky Gregory, deputy U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas. Craig Watson, B.D. Howard and Larry Jarrett have said they plan to run for the job as Democrats. (source: Dallas Morning News) ******************** One Error Is One Too Many: Review and fix Texas' death-row system Texas leaders have long asserted that the state's renowned death chamber has been error-free since reinstatement of capital punishment. Now a lone voice convincingly challenges that claim. It's the voice of the single eyewitness who now recants testimony that sent a San Antonio man, Ruben Cantu, to the death chamber in 1993. The Cantu execution should trouble any Texan - even capital-punishment supporters - who expects the utmost standard of justice before the state takes a life. As documented by a Houston Chronicle investigation, that standard doesn't appear to have been met before Mr. Cantu was put to death at age 26 based solely on eyewitness testimony. He died for the murder of Pedro Gomez, one of two construction workers shot repeatedly by two assailants as they slept in a partially built house. The other worker, Juan Moreno, survived grave wounds to become the state's star witness. But he now maintains that Mr. Cantu was not his attacker. An illegal immigrant at the time, he says police pressured him for his testimony. During appeals, Mr. Cantu's attorney - a novice in capital cases - did not contact the star witness to see whether his story held together. She told the Chronicle she had no money for an investigator to interview her client's alleged accomplice despite receiving a note from him that the "case with Ruben is real messed up." Today, that assessment is shared by the trial judge, prosecutor, jury forewoman and defense attorney. We couldn't agree more. For that reason, we endorse Sen. Rodney Ellis' call that the governor's Criminal Justice Advisory Council review the Cantu case to see whether it represents a tragic failure of the system. This page has previously called for lawmakers to enact a moratorium on capital punishment to repair intolerable flaws in the system. The Cantu case is ample cause to renew that call. Additionally, we ask the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to re-examine each of the 410 pending death-row cases to determine whether each defendant received competent, properly funded counsel. Extra scrutiny is called for in any conviction based solely on eyewitness testimony. Texas has executed 355 people since 1982. Even one avoidable mistake is an outrage. (source: Dallas Morning News) ************************ Victims group says inmates killed 1,895 people With the 1,000th execution in the nation's modern era of capital punishment looming as early as Friday, a Texas victims' rights group says the 1,900 or so people killed by those prisoners should be getting more attention. Houston-based Justice For All said Thursday that an estimated 1,895 people were killed by the inmates who have been executed since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume. She reviewed news accounts, Internet sites and appeals court decisions that include case histories, among other sources, to compile what she said is a conservative estimate of slayings. "I just don't have time to go back and look for prior murders," said Hall, who assembled the list for a Justice For All Web site. "A lot of people are on parole for prior murders when they commit the murder that ends them up on death row. I know there's a lot more, probably 2 for 1, I would guess." Texas, which in 1982 became the first state to use lethal injection as its method of capital punishment, has carried out 355 executions. A convicted killer from North Carolina was set to become No. 1,000 early Friday unless the courts or that state's governor intervened. Hall said it's impossible to calculate the toll taken on other people aside from the slaying victims. "Anybody who witnesses the execution, the prison staff, jurors, judges, the court clerk and bailiffs, neighbors, co-workers, cousins - there's an unbelievable number of lives that each person who's murdered touches," she said. An anti-death penalty organization, the Death Penalty Information Center, in Washington, has labeled the nation's 1,000th execution a "somber milestone." But another pro-death penalty group, the California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, echoed Hall's sentiments, saying much more attention should be paid to victims. The group estimates 558,000 Americans have been murdered since 1977. "This is hardly the time for us to feel sorry for the killers," said Michael Rushford, president of the Sacramento-based organization. Hall said it's easier to have sympathy for offenders because their pictures are in the news, their family is in the courtroom. Survivors of murder victims are "put on the back shelf," she said. "It needs to bother us," Hall said. "It needs to be something that stays with us. That could be your mom, or brother." On the Net: Justice For All: http://www.jfa.net Death Penalty Information Center: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org Criminal Legal Justice Foundation: http://www.cjlf.org/ http://www.kristv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4190523&nav=Bsmh (source: Houston Chronicle) ILLINOIS: 3 Burge cops get immunity in torture case 2 former detectives and a district commander have been granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony in a police torture investigation, prosecutors said Thursday. The move could signal a turning point in the investigation of claims that detectives working under former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge routinely used electric shock, Russian roulette, beatings and attempted suffocation with typewriter covers to force confessions from suspects in their custody. Special prosecutor Edward Egan identified the three men given immunity as Michael Hoke, a former head of internal affairs who has since retired; Daniel McWeeny, a former detective who is now an investigator for the Cook County state's attorney's office; and Patrick Garrity, a former department polygrapher who now is the Morgan Park police district commander. Egan said Thursday that his nearly four-year investigation was nearing an end. But both he and lawyers for two of the witnesses cautioned against concluding that the immunity agreements meant those men would testify against Burge or his colleagues. Torture allegations date to the 1970s, when Burge was a commander on the South Side. Burge was fired in 1993 by the Chicago Police Board for torturing a murder suspect. In April 2002 Cook County's chief Criminal Court judge, Paul Biebel, appointed Egan, a former judge and prosecutor, and former prosecutor Robert Boyle to investigate what ultimately turned out to be more than 100 separate allegations. Egan said Thursday that the investigation could result in either a final report or criminal charges, possibly as early as this month. Though they have been investigating the allegations of torture, it remains unclear whether Egan and Boyle could bring any charges for the actual abuse of suspects, because of the statute of limitations. Other possible charges, however, could focus on a conspiracy to cover up the torture. Egan would not say if the three police officers, who in the past have insisted they knew nothing of torture, were cooperating with prosecutors. But he said all three had provided a summary of what their testimony would be before the decision was made to grant them immunity. "It was something we felt should be done with our investigation and so we did it," he said in an interview. "You can't draw any inference one way or the other" from the decision. Flint Taylor, an attorney who has filed federal civil lawsuits seeking damages on behalf of alleged torture victims, said the decision to grant the three officers immunity could be "extremely significant." "I'm hopeful that under the grant of immunity these individuals have told the truth about Burge and his men," Taylor said. "If they have, it should without doubt lead to indictments." The statute of limitations and the refusal of police officers to testify against colleagues have long been considered the leading obstacles for the special prosecutors. Officers have asserted their 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination during sworn depositions taken as part of civil lawsuits by those who claim they were tortured. Attorney James Sotos said Thursday his client, Garrity, simply wanted to be able to testify in a civil suit brought by former death row inmate Madison Hobley--who was pardoned and freed by former Gov. George Ryan--without fear that the special prosecutor would use that testimony against him. Other civil suits alleging that police detectives tortured inmates are pending as well. "If you're hearing Pat Garrity flipped, you're really getting bad information," Sotos said. "His concern was that if he testified, they could use the act of testifying as an overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy. ... This is a development that we're very happy and excited about." Garrity, reached at the Morgan Park District station, declined to comment. Efforts to reach Hoke and his attorney were unsuccessful. Egan said he and Boyle asked Biebel's permission to make the immunity agreements public, so they could inform attorneys involved in the various civil cases--which are being heard in U.S. District Court here--about the immunity grants. "We felt the judge in the federal District Court should be apprised of this, as well as the plaintiffs and the lawyers for their co-defendants," Egan said. Richard Sikes, who represents McWeeny, declined to discuss McWeeny's testimony. But, he said, "If anybody were to print that Dan McWeeny has 'flipped,' I believe that would be not true." McWeeny, who has been a state's attorney's investigator for about eight years, said he had appeared before the grand jury under the grant of immunity but declined to discuss his testimony. "I did go down there and I did testify," he said. "I was told not to discuss with anyone anything I testified to because of grand jury secrecy. I don't think I'm allowed to talk to anybody." Torture allegations have dogged the Police Department for decades. Burge was fired by the Police Board for torturing Andrew Wilson, who was suspected of murdering two police officers. Wilson was convicted and is serving a life prison term. Burge is living in Florida. In his last days in office in January 2003, Ryan cited the torture allegations in granting pardons to 4 death row inmates--Aaron Patterson, Hobley, Leroy Orange and Stanley Howard. Egan said he hoped the investigation would be completed by the end of the year or just after the 1st of next year. He said no decision had been made on whether to release a report or seek indictments. (source: Chicago Tribune) *************** Ill. death penalty case back in court A 10-year-old girl by the name of Jeanine Nicarico helped to transform the debate over the death penalty in America. In 1983, Jeanine was kidnapped from her home outside Chicago, raped and murdered. During the two decades that followed, two men were tried over and over amid allegations that sheriff's deputies and prosecutors concealed and fabricated evidence and put lying jailhouse snitches on the stand. Ultimately, Rolando Cruz was acquitted at his 3rd trial in 1995, and the charges against Alejandro Hernandez were dropped the same year after his conviction was overturned for the second time. The furor over the case set in motion a chain of events: It led to other investigations in Illinois that freed prisoners wrongfully convicted of murder. It played a key role in then-Gov. George Ryan's decision to suspend all executions and clear out the state's death row in 2003 of all 167 inmates. And it helped change the terms of the death penalty debate in the United States. Instead of arguing over the morality of capital punishment or whether it deters crime, politicians and activists found themselves questioning the reliability of the criminal justice system and contemplating the risk that an innocent person might be put to death. "This case helped break the myth that the system is infallible," said Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Rob Warden, director of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, said: "I do not believe any of this would have happened without the Cruz case." Both sides of the death penalty debate were reminded of that this week when 49-year-old Brian Dugan, who implicated himself in the crime a full decade ago, was finally charged in Jeanine's slaying. Dugan is already serving two life sentences for the murder of a little girl and a woman. "The thing that is so important here is that if (prosecutors) had had their way, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez would be dead today," Warden said. The case against the two men had more twists than a Scott Turow novel. They were originally found guilty and sentenced to death, but one conviction after another was thrown out by the state Supreme Court. The case came roaring back in 1996 when former prosecutors and DuPage County sheriff's officers were charged with lying and concealing evidence. They were later acquitted. The furor played a major role in Ryan's decision to assemble a Commission on Capital Punishment in 2000 to determine what was wrong with the state's death penalty system, which had wrongfully convicted 13 men since Illinois reinstated capital punishment in the 1970s. Ultimately, Ryan concluded that the system was "haunted by the demon of error" and that the risk was too high that an innocent person might be executed. Also, the Jeanine Nicarico murder was "sort of the really big case that drove the media to look at others" around the country, said Illinois defense attorney Theodore Gottfried, a commission member. Locke Bowman, legal director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago, said the case was instrumental in changing the discussion of the death penalty. "The unraveling of the case was so dramatic and so fraught with problems that I think that in Illinois the case began to focus attention away from the topics that had dominated the death penalty debate and toward the question of innocence and systemic error and wrongful convictions," he said. The commission made two major recommendations that were prompted in part by the Jeanine Nicarico case, urging that interrogations of murder suspects be recorded and that a judge determine the reliability of jailhouse informants before they testify. Both of those were adopted by the Legislature. In the past few years, the state has also given the Illinois Supreme Court greater power to throw out unjust verdicts, offered defendants more access to evidence and barred the death penalty in cases that depend on a single witness. Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich has kept the moratorium on executions in place while he sees how the changes work. (source: Associated Press) KANSAS: Kline: Alito likely to be key in death penalty case Atty. Gen. Phill Kline said Thursday he may need U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito on the court to successfully defend the Kansas death penalty. "Quite honestly we are arguing to try to survive another day," Kline said. Kline will defend the states death penalty statute before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday. The Kansas Supreme Court struck down the law, saying it was unconstitutional because juries weighed evidence in the penalty phase of capital murder trials in a way that favored death sentences. The complex legal issues have been made even more complicated by the situation on the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Sandra Day OConnor announced her intention to retire, but when Chief Justice William Rehnquist died in September, she was forced to say on the court until another member was seated. President Bushs nominee Alito, a judge on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is expected to face a rigorous Senate confirmation process. OConnor is often a swing vote in 5-4 decisions, but if she is off the court before a decision is handed down in the Kansas case, Kline may have a 4-4 tie, he said. Traditionally, ties made when a new justice is coming on board are re-argued, he said. LHS grad making 2nd high court appearance (12-02-05) "If Justice OConnor is the swing vote and the court does not announce its decision before Justice Alito is confirmed, her vote will not count," Kline said. Others involved or observing the case confirmed that Kline may be right. "The problems of Justice O'Connors position are certainly significant on any close case," said Washburn University law professor Bill Rich. Rich added, "The court on death penalty cases has frequently been divided 5-4, and Justice O'Connor has been a key swing vote, and more recently has been voting to limit the application of the death penalty." He said the court's deliberations on the Kansas case could take months, certainly longer than it may take to get a replacement on the court. If all tie cases are re-argued, Alito, or whoever is the new justice, will "really be put under the spotlight," he said. Donna Schneweis, coordinator of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, said there were numerous ways the case could be determined, including a ruling that the U.S. Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over the state issue. "There are so many variables in this, it's really hard to know which way it will go," she said. "It will just be another legal dilemma in our state's death penalty history. Depending on how the decision goes, it's entirely possible that there will continue to be litigation related to this case for some time," she said. (source: Lawrence Journal World) ALABAMA: Suspected Serial Killer Gets Death Penalty A suspected serial killer was sentenced to death in Mobile for the rape and murder of a woman whose slaying led authorities to link him to more than 10 other killings. Circuit Judge Charles Graddick called Jeremy Bryan Jones "a danger to civilized society" as he sentenced him to die by injection. Before Graddick sentenced him, Jones told the court: "God will have the final say." An appeal is automatic. (source: Los Angeles Times) VIRGINIA: Death penalty politics----Virginia's governor made the courageous choice to commute an inmate's death sentence to life in prison. Now he faces an even more difficult decision. Virginia, whose 94 executions are 2nd only to Texas since 1976, escaped the dubious distinction of the nation's 1,000th when Gov. Mark Warner commuted Robin Lovitt's death sentence Nov. 30 to life in prison. Warner recognized that Lovitt's execution would be fundamentally unfair because of a court clerk's arguably inadvertent but inescapably illegal destruction of key evidence, a pair of scissors that Lovitt contended could establish his evidence through modern DNA testing, while he was still appealing his conviction. The governor's decision was responsible and courageous. Although he is leaving office under Virginia's one-term limit, there was an element of risk to his potential presidential candidacy. It helped, no doubt, that Kenneth W. Starr, the former independent counsel, was one of Lovitt's advocates. That made the point that fairness in something so fateful as the death penalty is neither a liberal cause nor a conservative one but a universal human value. The Lovitt case was an easy call, however, compared to another decision that Warner needs to make before his term ends next month. It concerns DNA testing for Roger Keith Coleman, who met his death in Virginia's electric chair 13 years ago still insisting on his innocence of the rape and murder for which he was condemned. DNA testing has helped to exonerate 163 prisoners, including at least six on death row and another who died of cancer before he was cleared. But it was not available at the time of Coleman's 1982 trial, where blood and hair samples and the testimony of a jailhouse informant that he had confessed the crime were used against him. Jailhouse snitches are notorious for lying, however, and blood and hair evidence is primitive compared to modern DNA analysis such as that sought for the sperm sample saved from the Coleman trial. Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey organization that helps prisoners claiming to be innocent, asked Warner 2 years ago to authorize the test. He has hinted recently that he will agree but has yet to confirm this. It would be easy, but wrong, for the governor to dismiss the issue as moot. If Coleman was telling the truth, it meant not only that an innocent man was sacrificed on the altar of death penalty politics, but that a guilty man remained free. One prospect is as intolerable as the other. There may be people who would prefer that a killer escape to being confronted with proof that an innocent man died in his place. But that is not the point of view of most Americans, and it surely cannot be shared by anyone who would deserve to be their president. (source: Editorial, St. Petersburg)
