April 18
TEXAS:
Of course innocent people have been executed
The question for the state House candidates during a recent Editorial Board
meeting involved Texas' death penalty - whether they support it.
I paraphrase. Ina Minjarez, a former prosecutor, said that the justice system
has its flaws, but, yes, she supports the death penalty.
I don't mean to pick on her. Texas candidates for the death penalty are as
ubiquitous as cheese on Tex-Mex. And whoever is elected will make a perfectly
fine representative, whether it is Minjarez or her opponent, Delicia Herrera.
But Minjarez's wording was distressingly familiar.
Flawed? How much less than perfect is tolerable in a system that imposes a
sanction that, once executed, cannot be walked back from? "Executed" being the
exact right word there.
About 1,400 people have been executed since 1976 in the United States. There
were, as of recently, 3,035 people on death row. And there have been, since
1973, at least 150 exonerations from death rows. Texas comes in 3rd among the
states, with 12.
So, given the number of exonerations, what do we suppose are the chances that
nary another innocent person is left on a death row somewhere to wait for the
needle and slow death? And once you answer that question - truthfully - how do
you answer the next one?
Just how much collateral damage is acceptable?
You see, these days, if you haven't reached the conclusion that unjustly
convicted people have been executed and that no amount of improvement will
remove human flaw from the system, you haven't been paying attention to the
system, humans or current events.
The flaws are common knowledge. So it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that
a lot of folks are pretty much OK with the execution of innocent people - as
long as the overwhelming majority killed by the states really are monsters.
2 Texas cases in particular trouble me. One is the now infamous case of Cameron
Todd Willingham, executed in 2004. He was convicted in the arson deaths of his
3 daughters on evidence that, it is now abundantly clear, was fictional or
flawed. The forensic evidence pretty much points to no arson at all. A
jailhouse witness to Willingham's alleged confession recanted, but this was
kept from the defense. And that witness, it appears, was given a deal for his
testimony and, he says, was coerced - this, too, kept from the defense.
Others have a longer list of men wrongfully executed, Texas figuring
prominently. Besides Willingham, I call your attention to Carlos DeLuna,
executed by Texas in 1989 for the stabbing death of a convenience store clerk
in Houston. It seems clear that another Carlos committed the crime.
Right; due process has been followed. OK, but the evidence should have at least
prompted new trials as a matter of justice. The system, of course, tends to
cling to legality - due process. That is not the same thing as justice.
But why tippy-toe? Of course innocent people have been executed. This doesn't
require much of a leap, particularly with Willingham. There is, by the way, a
proposal, by Democratic Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. of Brownsville, for a
constitutional amendment to ban the death penalty in Texas.
I recently asked a couple of statistician friends whether there is a rule in
their field that says if something happens often enough, it's certain to happen
again. No, there are just too many variables. And I'm still certain that
innocent people will be executed as long as there is a death penalty because of
a few of those variables - human error and prosecutors' desire to win.
A couple of societal currents also intrude. Capital punishment exists because
of an illusory belief that it guarantees safety - and, if we're honest, because
we crave eye-for-an-eye retribution. So we continue to tweak in pursuit of
something else illusory - a system with no errors.
Later, one of my friends shared a joke, inadvertently on point: 3 statisticians
go hunting. 1 shoots and misses the deer by 3 feet to the left. The other
shoots and misses 3 feet to the right. The 3rd guy exclaims, "We got it!"
Substitute any profession that operates with plus or minus margins of error.
Dear candidates and sundry elected officials: As you cannot logically guarantee
perfection in our police and courts, I hope margin of error and due process are
enough of a security blanket for you when it comes to the death penalty.
Personally, I find it flimsy covering.
(source: Opinion, Ricardo Pimentel, San Antonio Express-News)
FLORIDA:
Death penalty question could delay Luis Toledo murder trial
The trial of a man accused of killing his wife and her 2 children could be
delayed.
Luis Toledo, 33, was expected to go to trial later this summer, but a death
penalty issue before the Florida Supreme Court could push the trial back.
Toledo's wife Yessenia Suarez, 28, and her children, Thalia Otto, 9, and
Michael Otto, 8, disappeared from their Deltona home in October 2013. They have
not been found.
Investigators said Toledo confessed to killing Suarez, but denied killing the
children.
A hearing is scheduled for Monday in the Toledo case to discuss the death
penalty issue.
(source: WFTV news)
ALABAMA:
8 men have walked free from Alabama's death row in 39 years----These men spent
71 years on Alabama's death row before their release. All death row prisoners
received new trials when the state's death penalty statute was ruled
unconstitutional in 1980.
For more than 3 years, Randal Padgett's world consisted of the 40 square feet
between the walls of his cell on Alabama's death row.
When he was released, he had to learn how to live in wide open spaces - and
sometimes he learned the hard way.
"One time I was parking up next to a building, and I just ran into the building
because I couldn't judge the distance," Padgett said.
Padgett is 1 of 8 men who have gone free after serving time on death row in
Alabama since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. 2 more - Wesley Quick
and Louis Griffin - have had death sentences overturned, but are still serving
time for other crimes. 56 men have been executed in the same time.
The most recent case is William Ziegler, who was freed yesterday after pleading
guilty to aiding and abetting the murder of Russell Allen Baker. He won a new
trial after a circuit court judge found numerous problems in his original
trial. Ziegler had been on death row since 2001.
Padgett spent a fraction of that time behind bars - about five years in county
jail and death row. But during that time, his son learned how to drive and his
daughter entered middle school, all milestones he'll never get back.
Padgett was convicted for the brutal murder of his wife. The couple had
separated before Cathy Padgett was found in 1990 stabbed more than 40 times in
their home in Marshall County. Padgett won a new trial when an appeals court
ruled that prosecutors didn't give the defense enough time to review blood
evidence. The jury in the 2nd trial found him not guilty.
Even though it was an adjustment, freedom was intoxicating for Padgett.
"While you're on death row, it's like you're underwater and you're going to
drown," Padgett said. "When you get out, it's like you're coming up for air."
Padgett's release came more than 15 years after the first release from
Alabama's death row. Charles Lee Bufford was a prisoner in Wilcox County when
he was arrested in the 1977 murder of Probate Judge Roland Cooper, Jr.
Bufford was working on Cooper's property, as part of an informal work-release
program. Cooper was found bludgeoned to death, and Bufford was arrested miles
away in Selma, where he was driving Cooper's car.
Bufford was convicted and sentenced to death in 1978, but he and all death row
prisoners received new trials when the state's death penalty statute was ruled
unconstitutional in 1980. Investigators couldn't produce much fingerprint or
footprint evidence at his 2nd trial, just a damaged and incomplete written
confession Bufford made after his arrest.
Bufford's lawyers highlighted the shoddy evidence, and the jury returned a
verdict of not guilty. Reporter Alvin Benn covered the retrial for the
Montgomery Advertiser.
"He had been on death row for four years when he was retried and I'll never
forget asking one of the jurors how they could acquit someone who admitted his
guilt with all the evidence against him," Benn wrote in an e-mail. "She said,
and I quote: 'We thought 4 years was enough for what he did.'"
James "Bo" Cochran also won a new trial in the early 1980s, after the U.S.
Supreme Court struck down Alabama's death penalty statute. It was the 2nd of 4
trials for Cochran, who didn't get released until 1997, 21 years after his
conviction in the Jefferson County murder of Stephen Ganey.
Cochran, who was arrested running away from the scene of a robbery-murder, was
ultimately released after his attorney argued that he could not have moved the
victim's body while he was running away from the police. A jury ruled that he
was not guilty and set him free.
Walter McMillian went directly to death row after his arrest in the Monroe
County murder of Ronda Morrison. This unusual, and illegal, move by prosecutors
came up several times during his appeal process, which also exposed serious
prosecutorial misconduct. Attorneys for the state had suppressed evidence
favorable to McMillian, and relied heavily on unreliable witnesses.
McMillian always insisted his conviction had more to do with racial bias than
the evidence at the scene.
"The only reason I'm here is because I had been messing around with a white
lady and my son married a white lady," he told the New York Times in a prison
interview.
Gary Drinkard spent 5 years on death row for the murder of Dalton Pace, a
junkyard dealer. But his conviction relied largely on the testimony of his
half-sister, and he was released in 2000 after a new trial. Drinkard said his
lawyers in the 1st trial weren't up to the task of defending him in a death
penalty case. The Alabama Supreme Court threw out his 1st conviction and
ordered a new trial.
Gary Wade Moore also walked free after serving time on death row. He was
released in 2009 after serving about 7 years for the Morgan County murder of
Karen Tipton. Misconduct by prosecutors in his 1st trial led to a 2nd, when the
jury acquitted Moore.
None of them served as much time as Anthony Ray Hinton, who walked free 2 weeks
ago. For more than a decade, he and his attorneys asked for new tests on the
gun that linked him to the murders of two fast food restaurant managers in
1985. Recent tests ultimately ruled that the bullets found at the crime scenes
couldn't be conclusively linked to the gun or to each other.
"I shouldn't have sat on death row 30 years," Hinton told Al.com. "All they had
to do was test the gun. But when you think you are high and mighty and you're
above the law you don't have to answer to nobody, but I've got news for you.
Everybody who played a part in sending me to death row you will answer to God."
Looking back at his own case, Padgett said the state took away more than just
years. When he entered prison, he had 32 acres and a good job. When he was
released, he didn't have a penny to his name, since he spent all of it on his
defense.
Alabama legislators passed a law in 2001 to provide compensation for those who
have been wrongfully convicted, but the legislature has to appropriate the
funds. So far, no prisoner released from death row in Alabama has received
compensation, Padgett said.
Before he was arrested, he thought he would be able to retire by age 55.
Padgett will turn 65 this year, is still working, and still has some legal debt
to repay. Retirement may never happen for him, Padgett said.
"I don't ever think I'll get back to where I was," Padgett said.
(source: al.com)
*******************
Our death penalty mistakes leave blood on our hands
The thing about death, it's final. There's no coming back, no review, no room
for further evidence or reconsideration or reversal. When you're dead, you're
dead. Gone.
The thing about the death penalty in America, we're just not very good at it.
We get it wrong. Even if you believe the death penalty is morally right, and
effective, if you are honest you have to acknowledge that we kill people we
shouldn't kill. And we try hard, and at great expense, to kill more.
In the 40 years since the death penalty was reinstated in Alabama, after a U.S.
Supreme Court ruling imposed a moratorium, Alabama has killed 56 prisoners. 8
people have been set free from our state's death row over the same years, and 2
others removed but kept in prison for non-capital crimes.
The ugly terms that come up repeatedly in these cases reflect inevitable human
weakness, they reflect that we are just not good at this business of deciding
who to kill: racial bias, prosecutorial misconduct, police misconduct, planted
evidence, false evidence, faulty evidence, failure to disclose evidence,
inadequate defense of the indigent, buying jurors and corrupt jury selection.
Alabama is the only state in the union that has judges overrule juries to
impose sentences of death. We wrongly convict a disproportionate number of
black people and poor people, and kill more of them.
Because we're just not very good at this, an entire industry has built up
around our death rows. It usually takes decades to kill someone for a crime.
There are rounds of expensive appeals, reviews, retrials. These lead us at
times to find that someone sentenced to death was not, in fact, proved guilty
beyond doubt. Now and then someone is shown to be clearly innocent. Hopefully
that happens before they are, you know, dead.
This is not justice.
Our Founding Fathers accepted almost 250 years ago, and built into our justice
system, the long held notion that it is better that 10 guilty men go free than
that one be wrongly punished. This should especially apply to our efforts to
impose death. Better that a thousand guilty men live than that one innocent man
die at the hands of the state. Our hands.
Some say that in using the death penalty, we the people are trying to play God.
Maybe, maybe not. But for certain, we are just not very good at it. Amid all
the angst and anger in the debate about capital punishment -- about its
morality, its effectiveness, its justness -- there is this practical point: We
get it wrong.
Being human, we will continue to get it wrong. We must stop pretending that
it's right.
(source: Editorial Board al.com)
LOUISIANA:
Exonerated Death Row Inmate Meets the Former Prosecutor Who Put Him There
When Glenn Ford walked out of prison for the first time in 30 years, he had a
state-issued debit card for $20. His prison account had $0.24. Everything he
owned fit into 2 cardboard boxes.
Until he was freed last March, Ford, now 65, had been one of the
longest-serving death row inmates in the United States.
He was convicted in 1984, but then exonerated of 1st-degree murder after a new
informant came forward and cleared him of the crime.
His former lawyer, Gary Clements, was by his side on his client's 1st day of
freedom.
"Nobody ever finds out the truth. Sometimes they don't find out in time. Here
they did," Clements said. "That's a blessing. To say that justice has arrived
now, it's a little 30-years-too-late."
The person responsible for putting Ford behind bars is Marty Stroud, who
prosecuted the original case back in 1984.
Stroud has now apologized to Ford, writing in a letter to the editor of the
Shreveport Times in Shreveport, Louisiana, "I was not as interested in justice
as I was in winning. ... I apologize to Glenn Ford for all the misery I have
caused him and his family."
"That case, I'll never be able to put it to rest," Stroud told "Nightline."
Ford's case began in 1983, when Isadore Rozeman, a local watch dealer in
Shreveport, was found shot dead inside his home repair shop. Within days, the
police zeroed in on Ford, who had done yard work for the victim.
Ford was put on trial and after 7 days. Even though there were no eyewitnesses
and no murder weapon, the jury came back with a guilty verdict and a death
sentence, sending Ford to death row.
At the time, Stroud said he was "very pleased" with the verdict and went out
and celebrated. But now, he is saying it wasn't a fair fight.
"The deck was stacked on one end," he said.
Ford's court-appointed defense team had almost no experience and no resources.
"The lawyers had never even stepped foot in the courtroom before," Clements
said. "They never tried a case and here they are defending a capital case."
Stroud reluctantly admitted he further stacked the deck against Ford by
ensuring that the jury was all white.
"I knew I was excluding individuals we felt would not seriously consider the
death penalty," he said. "Looking back on it, I was not as sensitive to the
issue of race as I am now."
Ford's outmatched defense team was also never told about the confidential
informants working for law enforcement who pointed the finger at 2 other
suspects, brothers Henry and Jake Robinson, for Rozeman's murder.
Ford had told police the brothers gave him some items to pawn -- items, Ford
later learned, that were stolen from the murdered watch dealer's home.
While Ford sat on death row, the brothers remained free and, according to
authorities, may be responsible for 5 other homicides. Both brothers are now in
jail charged with other crimes. Neither, however, is charged with Rozeman's
murder.
Ford's current attorney, William Most, said Ford's case challenges people's
notion about how this nation works.
"The guy who didn't commit the murder is the one who is put in jail and
sentenced the death," Most said. "And the ones who were part of it were let
free to commit other crimes."
Ford would still be on death row today if not for a confidential informant who
told police in 2013 that Jake Robinson confessed to him regarding the killing
of Isadore Rozeman.
In Louisiana, exonerated former inmates like Ford are eligible for as much as
$330,000 in compensation payments. But when Ford petitioned for the money a
judge denied his request, saying that while Ford didn't kill Rozeman, he was
not completely innocent because he may have known about the shooting beforehand
because of his communication with the brothers.
It's a claim Ford fiercely denies.
So, his proponents argue, after being locked up for 30 years, the state turned
its back on Ford and left him virtually penniless.
"If we truly have a system of justice in this country, Glenn would be
compensated for what was done to him," Most said. "So the extent of whether we
have a system of justice, we'll see -- but, you know, I see no justice in
Glenn's story."
Stroud admitted that he should have done more to help Ford, saying in his
letter to the Shreveport Times that Ford "deserved every penny owed to him,"
and that "to deny Mr. Ford any compensation for the horrors he suffered ... is
appalling."
"It's an extremely big deal for Marty Stroud, the lead prosecutor to do this,"
Clements said. "He could have just sent an apology to Glenn, but he put it out
in his community."
But now, Ford needs that restitution money more than ever. Just months after
his release, he was given a different kind of death sentence. He was diagnosed
with stage IV lung cancer.
He currently survives on donations and is cared for by a staff of volunteers,
including John Thompson, another exonerated prisoner, who now operates a home
for exonerees.
Ford is now much frailer and easily fatigued, having lost half his body weight.
He said he was shocked when Stroud published that letter apologizing to him and
his family.
When Stroud wanted to apologize to Ford in person, Ford had mixed feelings
about seeing the man who put him away for 30 years. But he granted the meeting,
and "Nightline" was there with cameras rolling.
"I thought about this for a long, long time," Stroud told him. "I want you to
know that I am very sorry. It's a stain on me that will be with me until I go
to my grave, and I wasn't a very good person at all. I apologize for that."
Ford said anger is not his driving force and he holds nothing against the
former prosecutor. But after having 30 years taken away from him, Ford
reluctantly told Stroud, "I'm sorry. I can't forgive you."
(source: ABC news)
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