Does it matter who we kill?
Source: NYTimes.com
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/19/us/19death.html
Title: "Lawyer Reveals Secret, Toppling Death Sentence", by Adam Liptak
Date: January 19, 2008
Maybe there's a reason so many lawyers are going to hell. Some days, it would seem, that's their only choice.
This is not the first time the courts have saved Mr. Atkins' life. In 2002, his case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned its prior opinion and spared Atkins' life in ruling against the execution of the mentally retarded. While Virginia contends that Atkins is not mentally retarded, the issue may well be rendered moot by this latest decision. Citing prosecutorial misconduct, a state court commuted Atkins' sentence.
York County attorney Eileen Addison denies the misconduct, and has described it in a court filing as "false and libelous". Yet there seems to be fifteen minutes missing from the recording; the session start and end times are two hours apart, and there is only 105 minutes recorded.
So what has happened here? Is the commonwealth satisfied as long as somebody dies? Or should they make sure they've got the right guy? The law, apparently, is specific about who dies, and the accusation, if credible, casts serious doubt on the legitimacy of the prosecution's contention that Atkins was the trigger.
So if the people are going to kill someone, what right do they have to be confident they're killing the right person according to the law? Or does it just not matter?
Source: NYTimes.com
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/19/us/19death.html
Title: "Lawyer Reveals Secret, Toppling Death Sentence", by Adam Liptak
Date: January 19, 2008
Maybe there's a reason so many lawyers are going to hell. Some days, it would seem, that's their only choice.
For 10 years, Leslie P. Smith, a Virginia lawyer, reluctantly kept a secret because the authorities on legal ethics told him he had no choice, even though his information could save the life of a man on death row, one whose case had led to a landmark Supreme Court decision.
Mr. Smith believed that prosecutors had committed brazen misconduct by coaching a witness and hiding it from the defense, but the Virginia State Bar said he was bound by legal ethics rules not to bring up the matter. He shared his qualms and pangs of conscience with only one man, Timothy G. Clancy, who had worked on the case with him.
“Clancy and I, when we were alone together, would reminisce about this and more or less renew our vows of silence,” Mr. Smith told a judge last month. “We felt that there was nothing that could be done.”
But the situation changed last year, when Mr. Smith took one more run at the state bar’s ethics counsel. “I was upset by the conduct of the prosecutor,” Mr. Smith wrote in an anguished letter, “and the situation has bothered me ever since.”
Reversing course, the bar told Mr. Smith he could now talk, and he did. His testimony caused a state court judge in Yorktown, Va., to commute the death sentence of Daryl R. Atkins to life on Thursday, citing prosecutorial misconduct.
(Liptak)
This is not the first time the courts have saved Mr. Atkins' life. In 2002, his case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned its prior opinion and spared Atkins' life in ruling against the execution of the mentally retarded. While Virginia contends that Atkins is not mentally retarded, the issue may well be rendered moot by this latest decision. Citing prosecutorial misconduct, a state court commuted Atkins' sentence.
Mr. Smith had represented Mr. Atkins’s co-defendant, William Jones. In a tape-recorded debriefing session with prosecutors on Aug. 6, 1997, Mr. Jones told his version of the 1996 killing of Eric Nesbitt, whom the two men had robbed and forced to withdraw money from a bank machine.
The crucial point was who had shot Mr. Nesbitt. Under Virginia law, only the triggerman was eligible for the death penalty.
“As he began to describe the positions of the individuals and the firing of the shots,” Mr. Smith said last month, referring to his client, a prosecutor “reached over and stopped the tape recorder.” According to Mr. Smith’s testimony and a memorandum he prepared soon after the debriefing, the prosecutor, Cathy E. Krinick, said, “Les, do you see we have a problem here?”
The problem was that Mr. Jones’s account did not match the physical evidence. “This isn’t going to do us any good,” Ms. Krinick said, according to Mr. Smith.
For 15 minutes, Mr. Smith said, prosecutors coaxed and coached Mr. Jones to produce testimony against Mr. Atkins that did match the evidence. They flipped over a table and pretended it was a truck. “We used a chair, or something like that, to simulate the open door,” Mr. Smith testified, “because only one of the doors on the truck would open.”
When the tape was turned back on, Mr. Jones’s story bolstered the case against Mr. Atkins as the triggerman. The Atkins defense did not learn of the coaching session for a decade, when Mr. Smith was freed from his ethical obligation not to prejudice his own client’s case. Mr. Jones was sentenced to life in prison, and his case is concluded.
(ibid)
York County attorney Eileen Addison denies the misconduct, and has described it in a court filing as "false and libelous". Yet there seems to be fifteen minutes missing from the recording; the session start and end times are two hours apart, and there is only 105 minutes recorded.
So what has happened here? Is the commonwealth satisfied as long as somebody dies? Or should they make sure they've got the right guy? The law, apparently, is specific about who dies, and the accusation, if credible, casts serious doubt on the legitimacy of the prosecution's contention that Atkins was the trigger.
So if the people are going to kill someone, what right do they have to be confident they're killing the right person according to the law? Or does it just not matter?