[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS

[Rick Halperin]

April 15



TEXAS:

Healing to kill?


Medicating an insane man so that he's sane just long enough for the state
of Texas to put him to death sounds inherently wrong. Cruel. Cold.

It should trouble the soul and conscience of everyone except maybe a TV
script writer. And yet ...

What prosecutors want to do to Steven Kenneth Staley isn't the same as,
say, holding a man hostage at gunpoint long enough for him to realize that
he's about to die and then finishing him off.

That's what Staley did to restaurant manager Robert Read -- fatally shot
him after a robbery of a west Fort Worth Steak and Ale in 1989. A jury
convicted Staley of capital murder in April 1991 and concluded that he
should be executed. (One accomplice is serving 3 life sentences in prison,
and another is serving a 30-year sentence.)

Staley committed the crime and should be punished. But beyond that, the
case isn't so simple.

Staley is certifiably a paranoid schizophrenic. During his years on Death
Row, his mental illness has progressed so greatly that judges have
concluded he isn't coherent enough to understand why he's being executed.
Not unless he's on antipsychotic medication -- which he refuses to take.

That plunges the state into a moral dilemma -- and a legal one as well.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that the Eighth Amendment's ban on
cruel and unusual punishments prevents states from executing an inmate
"whose mental illness prevents him from comprehending the reasons for the
penalty or its implications."

And yet 4 years later, in a noncapital case, the court said that prisons
can forcibly medicate a mentally ill inmate if he "is dangerous to himself
or others and the treatment is in the inmate's medical interest."

State District Judge Wayne Salvant has given the state the go-ahead to
medicate Staley. The ruling will be appealed. It should be.

How should the courts balance the valid interest in following through on a
jury verdict against the individual's legitimate interest in not being
forced to take powerful drugs?

It's hard -- impossible for some -- to feel any sympathy for Staley, given
the ruthlessness of his crime.

But even those who support the death penalty for the worst of the worst
should pause to ask whether giving a man psychotropic drugs to prepare him
for lethal ones accomplishes capital punishment's aims of fitting
retribution and deterrence -- or is barbarity masquerading as justice.

(source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

*******************

Justice denied puts exonerated man on mission----Play details innocent
man's years on Texas death row


Prior to June 1977, Kerry Cook was just another 20-year-old guy from
Tyler, Texas.

Then he was sentenced to death for a rape and murder he said he didn't
commit.

Fast forward 20 years and science, not the justice system, proved he was
right.

Those 20 years in the violent world of Texas' death row were what Cook
refers to as a real-life Sisyphus story - all uphill and getting nowhere.

"It was like being in the Twilight Zone," said Cook, who is in Fort
Collins to speak at several showings of "The Exonerated," a play based on
his story - as well as the stories of five other wrongly convicted death
row survivors. Cook will also present the program "Anatomy of a Wrongful
Conviction" today at the Foothills Unitarian Church. Cook said his was a
Murphy's Law case - "Everything that could go wrong did."

A more plausible suspect - the victim's ex-boyfriend - was never arrested
in the case. A confession Cook never made was entered into evidence. The
lead investigator claimed Cooks fingerprint on the victim's patio door was
6 hours old, putting him there at the time of the murder. There is no way
to determine the date of a fingerprint.

During his appeals process, these errors were noted as "harmless" in court
transcripts, Cook said.

"Because of the politics (surrounding the case and the death penalty), no
one wanted to reverse the conviction," he said.

Death row was brutal, Cook said. He was raped repeatedly and stabbed.

When he entered the system, Cook estimated there were about 50 men on
Texas death row. When he left, there were 450. In the 1990s, there could
be as many as two executions a day.

Many pleaded guilty just to avoid the death penalty in exchange for life
in prison. Cook was offered the chance to plead guilty but said he couldnt
do it.

"It wasn't a tough choice," he said matter-of-factly. "I had no family
left. The only thing I had was the integrity of my innocence."

Eventually Cook was offered, and accepted, an Alford Plea, which allowed
him to assert his innocence but admit that sufficient evidence existed for
a guilty sentence. In 1999, he was released from prison, but it was a
hollow victory.

Two years after his release, DNA evidence came back exonerating Cook of
the crime and implicating the girls ex-boyfriend. However, the Texas
justice system has never admitted any mistake in Cooks case, and no one
else has ever been arrested for the crime.

"You call Tyler, Texas, today, and they'll still say I'm guilty," he said.
Cook, now married with a 5-year-old son, is free and his story known
throughout the world, but prison still haunts his daily life.

Finding regular employment has been next to impossible, and Cook was
recently denied an apartment in Dallas because of his criminal record.

He makes his living traveling around the world talking about his
experiences and protesting the death penalty. His book, "Chasing Justice"
is due out in January. In 2000, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen interviewed
Cook for a play they were writing about the death penalty. In October of
that year, Cook saw his story come to life at the Bleecker Street Theatre
in New York City.

Talking about his experiences and even performing in "The Exonerated" for
a while was difficult, but therapeutic, he said. In fact, it was the only
therapy he got for his ordeal.

Cook said it also helps that he knows he has made a difference. Two weeks
after a private performance of "The Exonerated" for George Ryan, the
Illinois governor commuted the sentences of more than 150 death row
inmates to life in prison.

Was it the show? Who knows for sure, but Cook said he believes it made a
difference, which is why he continues to tell his story to everyone he
can.

"Every member of an audience is a potential juror," he said.

Cook came to Fort Collins via an invitation from the Foothills Unitarian
Church and actor Lenny Scovel, who portrays Cook in OpenStages production
of "The Exonerated."

While doing research for the show, Scovel contacted Cook and has been
communicating with him for the last few months.

Scovel said he hoped by listening to Cook, audiences could get a sense of
the real people behind the statistics.

"These are real people and real experiences," he said recently. "And, as
Kerry points out, this could happen to anyone."

And Cook believes what happened to him, shouldn't happen to anyone.

"As an American society, we shouldn't be in the business of killing
people," he said.

Since 1976, 125 people have been executed. If even one of those 125 was
innocent, he said, that's 1 too many.

"Unfortunately, this is a system that makes no room for mistakes."

Cook said he looks forward to a day when the death penalty will be
abolished and new technologies such as DNA testing can give justice a
chance to truly prevail.

"Since we're in a theater, I guess it's appropriate to quote Shakespeare,"
Cook said. "Time is the judge of all offenders."

(source: The Coloradoan)