[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----S.C., USA, N.Y., N.J.

[Rick Halperin]

May 21


SOUTH CAROLINA:

Death penalty rider out of child-sex bill in S.C.


House Criminal Laws Subcommittee A proposal to allow the state to seek the
death penalty for repeat child-sex offenders was dropped by a legislative
committee Thursday, in an attempt to get some tougher provisions approved
before lawmakers adjourn for the year.

The bill approved by the House Criminal Laws Subcommittee focuses on
requiring sex offenders to wear electronic monitoring devices.

The bill now moves to the full Judiciary Committee in an attempt to get
approval before adjournment for the year, scheduled for June 1.

There was no chance to advance the bill Thursday with the death penalty
provision included, said Rep. Murrell Smith Jr., R-Sumter, the
subcommittee chairman.

Rep. Doug Jennings, D-Bennettsville, had threatened to insist that nearly
a dozen witnesses be allowed to testify on the death penalty provision.
Jennings dropped that demand when the death penalty provision was
excluded.

(source: Associated Press)






USA:

Legal system fails the mentally ill


Every cry for social change begins with a personal tragedy. Pete Earley's
began when his son Mike, a graduate student, became psychotic.

In a Virginia emergency room, a doctor explained that while Mike was
clearly insane, he was an adult, and not an imminent danger to himself or
others. Since he refused to take medication, there was nothing they could
do.

2 days later, Mike breaks into a stranger's house, goes upstairs, and
takes a bubble bath. It requires five police officers and an attack dog to
subdue him. But even being charged with two felonies and nearly being shot
are not sufficient proof that he is dangerous, or in danger. His father,
picking up the broad hints of the police, falsely claims his son has
threatened to kill him. That gets Mike in for a 2-day observation at the
same hospital where he had been refused admittance. Even then, his
father's worries are only beginning. "How long does it take antipsychotic
medicines to work?" Earley asks a nurse.

"The nurse seemed surprised. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but just because your
son is being admitted into the hospital, doesn't mean he's going to be
treated there.'"

Thus begins a nightmare of interlocking Catch-22s, of well-meaning,
dedicated people working at cross-purposes, of a legal system that, in
short, is more insane than the psychotics it processes. Pete Earley is an
investigative journalist, and in "Crazy" he presents a gripping,
disturbing, first-hand account of mentally ill people who have stumbled
into our criminal justice system.

Earley builds a compelling case that America's legal system is distorted
by its deference to the irrational wishes of people incapable of
understanding their own best interests. But it's the individual stories
that really bring the sick system to life.

Homeless and mentally ill for decades, Alice Ann Collyer of Miami accused
an elderly woman of stealing her thoughts and pushed her. The woman was
not injured, but assaulting an elderly person in Florida is a felony. The
victim signed a complaint only when told Collyer might be hospitalized and
helped. But this was Collyer's 3rd pushing incident, and under the state's
"3 strikes" law, the minimum penalty was 5 years imprisonment.

Before she could be brought to trial, she had to be found mentally
competent. Thus began an odyssey that had lasted 1,151 days by the time
Earley met her, during which Collyer was shuttled back and forth between
the state mental hospital and jail. Because she had not been convicted of
a crime, the mental hospital could not treat her. Its job is to hold
inmates until they can be judged competent, by training them to answer
questions such as: "Do you know what you are being charged with?" After
months of this, the hospital sends the inmates back to jail.

The job of the jail is to hold the prisoners until they can be seen by a
judge. The judge requires exams by three psychiatrists, and that takes
three or so months more. Jails are never pleasant, but the psychiatric
cell block is a hellhole. The psychotic patients, for their own
protection, are held in bare cells and most are kept naked. Many don't
even have blankets to cover themselves. Of course, the jail is not allowed
to treat them against their will.

After all this, many inmates, including Alice Ann Collyer, are incompetent
again, and cannot be tried. So back they go to the mental hospital.
Everyone involved is frustrated. Everyone wonders why these people are not
being helped.

In Mike's own, far less tragic story, problem follows problem. The only
real villains in this book are the couple whose home he broke into.
Frightened and vindictive, they insist that Mike be found guilty of at
least 1 felony, which would kill his chances of a career and a normal
life. This despite pleas from the defense attorney, the prosecutors, and
even the investigating police detective that a proposed plea bargain to 2
misdemeanors will actually double Mike's punishment (to two years of
probation) and be more effective in forcing him into treatment. The true
story of how this plays out is tense and dramatic.

Mike recovers sufficiently to finish graduate school, but by then his
father has seen so many psychotics cycle in and out of sanity, and talked
to so many parents of young people shot to death by police during
psychotic episodes, that he knows he has a lifetime of profound worry
ahead.

(source: Knight Ridder)






NEW YORK:

Innocent man's release ought to give all of us pause


The case against Douglas Warney never was terribly convincing. But he was
a nobody from a poor family, a guy with a 68 IQ, full-blown AIDS, a
history of psychiatric illness, a record that included assault and
robbery. When he was convicted in 1997 of 2nd-degree murder, he
disappeared into the state prison system.

Most people thought he'd die soon. Indeed, when his lawyers petitioned for
his release on personal recognizance before his trial, they told the court
that they had made arrangements for him to stay at Isaiah House, a home
for the dying.

But last week, 10 years after the killing he was convicted of, Warney was
released from prison, cleared by DNA testing that was not available a
decade ago. An innocent man has paid 10 years for a crime he didn't
commit. If there is any upside to this injustice, it is that Warney
probably received better treatment for AIDS in prison than he had received
on the outside.

Still, Douglas Warney's story ought to make everyone who cares about
justice squirm.

In January 1996, Warney confessed to killing William Beason, 63, and a
local organizer of the Million Man March. Warney, who recanted his
confession, was initially charged with first-degree murder - which would
have made him eligible for the death penalty upon conviction.

A grand jury later indicted him for the lesser charge of 2nd-degree
murder. He was convicted, even though as William Easton, one of his
lawyers, says, his statement "had all the hallmarks of a false
confession."

Blood at Beason's home did not match Warney's, although it could not then
be determined whose blood it was. Warney said in his confession that he
cut his finger at the scene, but he had no cut and left no blood behind.

He claimed to have disposed of bloody clothes, but none were found. He
claimed to have left the crime scene in his brother's car - but the car
was no longer registered to his brother and Warney had no access to it.

Moreover, his lawyers said, Warney had an alibi. Beason was killed at 1:30
p.m., but Warney was with his sister until at least 2 p.m.

Nevertheless, his confession contained just enough detail to persuade
jurors of his guilt. Two years ago, the New York City-based Innocence
Project, which urges DNA testing to secure the release of innocent
inmates, agreed to take up Warney's case. Eventually, prosecutors agreed
to test the crime scene blood and found a match to Eldred L. Johnson, who
is already serving time for another killing. Johnson has now confessed to
the Beason homicide.

I will not 2nd-guess the judgment of the prosecutors, jury and judge in
the case. I presume they did the best they could at the time.

But that doesn't exonerate the system. Douglas Warney was sent to the
hellhole of state prison for a crime he did not commit. He cannot regain
the time stolen from him, nor can he erase the humiliation and suffering
he has wrongly endured.

The measure of a society's commitment to justice is its commitment to
protect the innocent. In Douglas Warney's case, the system failed.

There is speculation that the interrogating officers may have planted
details that shaped Warney's confession - so why not videotape future
interrogations to minimize that risk? And why not look again at a more
liberal use of DNA testing to review old convictions?

If the goal is justice, not merely conviction - if, as a society, we are
truly sorry for the injustice - we can do no less.

(ource: Democrat & Chronicle - Mark Hare has been a local columnist for
the Democrat and Chronicle since 1997. Before that, he was editorial page
editor for the afternoon Times-Union, and before that deputy editorial
page editor for the Democrat and Chronicle. He began his career there as a
reporter in 1984.)






NEW JERSEY:

Closer to killing death penalty


Another dispiriting milestone has been reached in New Jersey's endless
death penalty controversy. The Ocean County prosecutor recently decided,
with the consent of the family of the victim, that it would be fruitless
to try to reimpose the penalty on Robert Marshall.

He was convicted of hiring two Louisiana hoodlums to kill his wife, Maria
Marshall. She was shot to death in 1984 at a Garden State Parkway rest
stop, where he had driven her. He had parked the car and gotten out,
leaving her inside, open to attack.

She was blonde and pretty, the mother of their three young sons. He was a
successful insurance salesman. To neighbors in Toms River, they seemed to
have a perfect marriage. The appearances were deceiving.

He was tired of her. He was in the middle of a torrid affair with a school
administrator in Toms River. He took out a $1.5 million insurance policy
on his wife's life, naming himself as beneficiary. The stage was set.

Two shots, close range

The murder, committed with 2 pistol shots fired at close range into her
back, caused a sensation in South Jersey and, indeed, in the country. At
trial, Billy McKinnon, 1 of the hoodlums, testified that Marshall had
hired him for the killing, but that the other man, Larry Thompson, was the
shooter. The jury found otherwise. Thompson was acquitted. Marshall was
convicted of murder and sentenced to death. McKinnon copped a plea to
insurance-fraud conspiracy and was sentenced to five years in prison.

A best-selling book and a television miniseries, "Blind Faith," were
devoted to the crime. Marshall spent 18 years on death row in Trenton
State Prison, while his lawyers, who were public defenders paid by the
state, launched one appeal after another. He is still incarcerated in
Trenton State, but as a regular inmate, off death row.

The present New Jersey capital punishment law was enacted 2 years before
the Marshall killing, to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that
struck down most state death penalty laws.

Our law, including new safeguards for the accused, was found
constitutional by the state Supreme Court, which in 1991 upheld Marshall's
conviction and punishment, ending a string of 27 death-penalty reversals
based on one perceived trial defect or another.

Shifting legal battle

The following year the court held, in another look at the Marshall case,
that the death penalty was not disproportionate to the crime he had
committed, and in a 3rd review, in 1997, it rejected a claim of
ineffective defense counsel, the last appeal he could mount in state
courts.

Then the battle shifted to the federal courts, bouncing from the trial
level to the Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to the Supreme Court
and back again. Finally a district court judge ruled that Marshall's
lawyer had failed to mount an adequate defense in the penalty phase of the
trial, the circuit court upheld that ruling, and 2 months ago the U.S.
Supreme Court refused, for the second time, to hear the case.

That left to the Ocean County prosecutor, Thomas Kelaher, the decision
whether to retry the penalty phase. Marshall's murder conviction would be
unaffected. At issue would be whether he would be executed or sentenced to
life in prison without parole eligibility for as long as 30 years. Since
he has already served 22 years, he would become eligible by 2014.

So many years have elapsed since the crime that retrial would be
difficult, Kelaher concluded. Further, he told Maria Marshall's sons, the
harsh reality was that even if a new jury concurred with the first one
that execution was warranted, it would just set off more rounds of legal
wrangling, perhaps decades more of it. Maybe the best thing to do would be
to keep the man locked up as long as possible.

That is what the family opted for, and that is what Kelaher decided to do.
The case has ended in another victory for the state's public defenders,
who fight tenaciously to keep vicious killers alive, not because the
lawyers think they are innocent or are at least entitled to competent
defense but because the lawyers are emotionally and professionally
committed to blocking the death penalty.

In the end, Robert Marshall could not be executed even though our state
Supreme Court found for the first time that the defendant had been
properly convicted in this case and deserved to die, and the court never
wavered from that conclusion. Perhaps the capital punishment law is
unenforceable, a dead letter. The public defenders have yet to lose a
client. It is we, the citizens and taxpayers of the state, who are
financing their success, and we are paying dearly for it. They must be
gloating.

In search of an expected answer

In one of Richard Codey's final decisions as acting governor, he signed in
January a bill establishing a commission to study the death penalty. It is
to submit a report by Nov. 15. The measure imposes a moratorium on
executions in the interim, as though killers were lined up outside the
death chamber, waiting their turns.

The commission is to consider, among other things, whether the death
penalty is "consistent with evolving standards of decency," a phrase used
by those who oppose it. Also, the panel should study whether it costs more
to enforce the death penalty than to lock up a killer for life without
parole. I bet the answer to that is going to be yes.

It fell to Codey's elected successor, Jon Corzine, to make the
gubernatorial appointments to this panel, 5 of the 13 members. The names
were announced in late March.

3 of the 5 are black, including James H. Coleman Jr., the 1st
African-American justice of the state Supreme Court, now retired. Also,
the Rev. M. William Howard Jr., pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Newark
and former president of New York Theological Seminary, which prepares
ministers for urban churches. Howard has been tapped by newly elected
Newark Mayor Cory Booker to lead his transition team. The 3rd black
appointee is Eddie Hicks, a retired Atlantic City firefighter whose oldest
daughter was murdered six years ago. He is a staff member of New Jerseyans
for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

The 4th member is Kathleen M. Garcia of Moorestown, executive director of
the Center for Traumatic Grief and Victim Services, which counsels
relatives of homicide victims. The 5th is a reputedly hip young rabbi,
Robert Scheinberg of the United Synagogue of Hoboken, a Conservative
congregation. We can infer which conclusions Corzine expects them to
reach.

(source: Bergen Record, Opinion--James Ahearn is a contributing editor and
former managing editor of The Record)

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

TOPIC OF THE DAY: Death penalty----Amend statute to life, no parole


The old adage, all good things come in time, certainly runs true for
convicted murderer Robert O. Marshall. ("Marshall won't be executed," May
13.)

"That's great news," Marshall exclaimed to his public defender. Not only
did Marshall play the justice system and the taxpayers, but also, sadly,
his victim, his wife and her family as well.

This is just another clear example that the death penalty statute in New
Jersey has no meaning and should be amended and replaced with life without
parole, for all those convicted of purposeful and knowing murder. In
response to the November New Jersey Policy Perspective report, "Keeping
capital punishment, a waste of money," the Legislature voted to establish
a Death Penalty Study Commission to determine what the alternative should
be.

I am at a loss as to why we need another bureaucratic step in this
process. Why waste time, energy and money on a study and review that has
been ongoing for more than 20 years by the state Supreme Court. The
Legislature should amend the statute to life without parole and send it to
the governor for his signature. Let's move on. This would be "great news"
for those affected by the murderous actions of these defendants.

Phil George----OCEAN TOWNSHIP

(source: Letter to the Editor, Asbury Park Press)