Activists Seek to Clear Name of 14-year-old Executed in 1944

Activists are seeking to clear the name of seventh grader George Stinney Jr, one of the youngest people ever to receive the death penalty in America, according to the online magazine Suite 101. In 1944, George Junius Stinney Jr was just fourteen years old, when he became the youngest person ever sent to the electric chair.

George was allowed no legal counsel during questioning. His parents were not only refused access to him, after he was arrested, but were advised to leave South Carolina. His confession was not written down, but took place in a locked room with just the child and police officers present.

A tax commissioner stood in as George's lawyer; and he did not defend him nor cross-examine eye-witnesses. He merely asked for the boy's age to be taken into account when sentencing. The whole trial lasted just three hours, with the jury taking only ten minutes to declare him guilty, according to Suite 101.
Afterwards, George's lawyer did not file for an appeal. He didn't even advise the child that he could do so. Eighty days after the murder of two girls, George Stinney Jr was executed by the state's electric chair.

According to Suite 101, Joy James described George's execution, in States of Confinement: Policing, Detection and Prisons (MacMillan, 2000). After establishing that George was small for his age, she wrote, 'Stinney was so slight that the guards had difficulty strapping him into the chair and attaching electrodes to his leg. A mask was placed over his face, but after the first jolt of 2,400 volts, the mask slipped off, revealing his wide-open, tearful eyes and saliva coming from his mouth. The next two surges of electricity ended his young life.'

To read more: http://www.suite101.com/news/death-penalty-14-year-old-executed-in-usa-may-have-been-innocent-a391720#ixzz1a1kY2Pdp

Violent Crime Falls in Pennsylvania to Lowest Point in 8 Years

Murder was Up Slightly in 2010
Overall crime in Pennsylvania fell last year, led by an even steeper drop in violent crime, according to the Associated Press.

The Pennsylvania State Police annual Uniform Crime Report listed 932,000 reported crimes in 2010, down from 957,000 the prior year, a drop of 2.6 percent. Violent crime fell 3.6 percent, from 48,000 to 46,000, the lowest level in eight years.

Murders were up slightly, from 651 to 657, and there were also increases in burglaries and hate crimes, reported the Associated Press.
Forceable rapes were down 4.6 percent, car thefts down 6.6 percent, arsons down 9.2 percent, and assaults on police officers down 11.7 percent.

The Associated Press reported that there were 53,000 driving under the influence arrests, a 4 percent decline. Men accounted for more than three out of four of those arrests.

Supreme Court Hears Missed Appeal for Death Row Inmate

Cory Maples is on Alabama's death row.  His appeal in the lower court was rejected as untimely because the court sent the notice to his two attorneys at a prominent New York law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, not knowing they had left the firm and no longer represented Maples.

According to Reuters, the law firm's mailroom sent the notice back unopened and stamped "Return to Sender." A local attorney in Alabama for Maples also received a copy of the ruling, but did nothing. Maples missed the filing deadline to appeal to federal courts.

Gregory Garre, a former Bush administration solicitor general who is representing Maples before the Supreme Court, called the facts of the case "extraordinary and shocking," reported Reuters.

The case Maples v. Thomas, 10-63 was argued this week before the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices seemed sympathetic to Maples plight. Reuters described the response of the justices as follows:

Justice Samuel Alito told Alabama Solicitor General John Neiman that he was pushing the Supreme Court to consider a constitutional rule that would have far-reaching impact, requiring court clerks to serve documents on both sides.

Alito also asked why the state did not just allow the appeal to be filed anyway as the deadline had passed through no fault of Maples.
Chief Justice John Roberts said a prosecutor eventually sent notice of the ruling to Maples in prison. "He must have thought there was a problem," Roberts said.

Justices Elena Kagan and Anthony Kennedy seemed particular concerned that it involved a death penalty case.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that when a lawyer stops representing a client, there usually is an obligation to tell the client and the court and to arrange for someone else to take over the case.

According to Reuters, Justice Antonin Scalia was the only court member who strongly and consistently supported the state's position during the argument. He repeatedly said Maples had a local counsel who received the notice.

"Where does the Constitution say, by the way, that you have to give notice, that every judicial action has to be noticed to the parties to the case?" Scalia asked Garre.

To read more:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/04/us-alabama-execution-lawyers-idUSTRE7935TJ20111004

Prosecutor Shares Perspective on Wrongful Conviction Committee Report

Below is the full text of an op-ed in the Harrisburg Patriot-News written by Dauphin County District Attorney Edward Marsico concerning the Advisory Committee on Wrongful Convictions.  Last Friday, I wrote the first in a series of Blogs for The Cautionary Instruction at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette legal web page Ispo Facto on the subject of the Committee report.

Best way to help wrongly accused is to identify and convict the guilty

Patriot-News Op-Ed
Edward M. Marsico Jr.

As district attorney of Dauphin County, it is my duty to seek justice for all people. No one wants to see an innocent person convicted of a crime he didn’t commit.

No one wants to see a guilty person go free, nor should anyone take advantage of or manipulate the system to achieve an unjust outcome. Recommendations in a report recently issued by a Senate-created Advisory Committee to Study the Causes of Wrongful Convictions could damage the criminal justice system rather than improve it.

The committee effectively said that because it believed 11 individuals — out of 5 million prosecutions — were exonerated, the criminal justice system has to be radically changed.

The faulty assumptions and predetermined conclusions from the academics and criminal defense attorneys that dominated the committee produced a fundamentally flawed report that deserves additional scrutiny.

As a member of that committee, I believe that ensuring convictions are reliable is critically important, but so is making sure that we don’t create even more innocent victims of crime by wrongfully handicapping law enforcement. In fact, the committee never completed its original charge to study alleged wrongful convictions.

Instead, it focused on 11 cases previously highlighted in law journals and permitted claims of innocence to go unchallenged, despite facts that suggest otherwise. In many of these cases, these individuals might have been exonerated, but not all fit the definition of being factually or actually innocent.

Jay Smith is one of the report’s “exonerees” and a familiar case to central Pennsylvanians. He was a high school principal convicted of murdering a teacher and her two children. While Smith had his conviction overturned because of an alleged failure to turn over evidence to support a farfetched defense theory, that ruling did not establish his actual innocence.

In a subsequent civil case, a federal appeals court said “[O]ur confidence in Smith’s conviction is not diminished in the least. We remain firmly convinced of the integrity of those guilty verdicts.”

That is a far cry from being found factually innocent. The committee made incorrect assumptions about police practices and recommended legislation that will dictate broadly stroked policies on how police departments investigate crimes.

Instead of allowing local police to develop their own best practices, the committee wants to mandate how every police department, regardless of size, handles a criminal investigation.

Police and prosecutors want to do the right thing. And I believe they are better suited than the criminal defense bar in making those decisions. For example, in Dauphin County, when attorneys for pedophiles attacked the interviewing process of children who were sexually abused, our Children’s Advocacy Center became the first in the commonwealth to videotape interviews of those children.

Since that time, the false assertions that these children were coached have disappeared. Likewise, when allegations are made that individuals are wrongfully convicted, prosecutors have a history of taking immediate action.

When evidence surfaced that serial killer Joey Miller might have committed a murder for which another man had already pleaded guilty, then district attorney Rich Lewis took immediate action to release that man from prison.

Years later, I worked closely with Patriot-News reporter Pete Shellem when he believed an individual had been wrongfully convicted. We gave Shellem unfettered access to our files, and in two of those cases my office took action to dismiss charges, as did Adams County District Attorney Shawn Wagner in another case Shellem had investigated.

In truth, the criminal justice system deals with overwhelmingly more innocent victims of criminal acts than it does with wrongfully convicted defendants. Every year, innocent people are victimized because of wrongful outcomes in the criminal justice system.

In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, from 700 to 800 of the people arrested each year for murder have a prior homicide arrest. It is even more common for those charged with and convicted of rape to have a prior rape arrest.

Innocent victims of crime should be on our minds when we consider reforms. Changes that benefit guilty criminals through the creation of legal hurdles for cops and victims do not improve our system.

For that reason, my colleagues on the committee who work in law enforcement and represent victims prepared an independent report that further examines the cases involving alleged wrongful convictions and presents measures, including new laws allowing the increased collection and use of DNA evidence prior to trial, a pilot program on electronically recorded interrogations and expanded police training on identification procedures.

We look forward to working with all involved to develop evidence-based proposals that will truly improve the integrity of convictions in Pennsylvania. The best way to clear the wrongly accused and prevent more innocent people from becoming crime victims is to swiftly identify and convict the guilty.

EDWARD M. MARSICO JR. is Dauphin County district attorney and immediate past president of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association.

Supreme Court Chock-Full of Criminal Cases

Adam Liptak of the New York Times provides a detailed outline of criminal justice cases the U.S. Supreme Court will hear this fall. Liptak suggest, "the justices will hear an extraordinary set of cases that together amount to a project that could overhaul almost every part of the criminal justice system."

The schedule includes:

In United States v. Jones, No. 10-1259, the justices will consider whether the police need a warrant to attach a GPS device to a suspect’s car and track its movements for weeks at a time. Some appeals court judges have said that such surveillance put them in mind of George Orwell’s novel “1984.” Prosecutors say that electronic enhancement of the ability of the police to stake out and track suspects raises no constitutional concerns.


A second Fourth Amendment case, Florence v. Board of Freeholders, No. 10-945, asks whether people arrested and held for minor offenses may be routinely strip-searched.

The court will also consider, in Maples v. Thomas, No. 10-63, whether a mix-up in the mailroom of a big New York law firm should mean that a death row inmate in Alabama must lose an opportunity to appeal a decision against him.

In a pair of cases to be argued on Oct. 31 — Lafler v. Cooper, No. 10-209, and Missouri v. Frye, No. 10-444 — the justices will consider whether defendants who were not told of favorable plea deals or were advised to reject them may pursue claims for ineffective assistance of counsel. A great majority of prosecutions are resolved with guilty pleas, and more vigorous judicial supervision of how the pleas are reached would have a broad practical impact.

The court will also consider the use of eyewitness evidence, in Perry v. New Hampshire, No. 10-8974. Such evidence, as the New Jersey Supreme Court found in a major decision in August, is often unreliable and has been the cause of many wrongful convictions. The justices will consider whether trial courts must be particularly wary of allowing such evidence to be presented when it has been tainted by suggestive circumstances not created by the authorities.

And the justices will return to a subject that sharply divided them in last term’s Connick v. Thompson case, which threw out a $14 million jury award to a former death row inmate who was cleared after prosecutorial withholding of evidence in New Orleans came to light. The new case, Smith v. Cain, No. 10-8145, also comes from New Orleans and concerns similar claims of prosecutorial misconduct.

To read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/us/supreme-court-turns-to-criminal-and-first-amendment-cases.html?_r=2&ref=us



 

Florida Executes Man After 33 Years on Death Row

The 37th Execution of 2011

Florida executed Manuel Valle convicted of killing a Coral Gables police officer in 1978, the first inmate put to death since the state changed its lethal injection procedure. The doctor checked the Valle's pulse. Execution team warden Timothy Cannon then nodded and picked up the phone. “The sentence of the State of Florida versus Manuel Valle was carried out at 7:14 p.m.," reported the Gainsville Sun.

More than 33 years after being convicted Valle was executed on September 28, 2011, despite a last-minute appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. Valle pronounced dead shortly after being administered a series of lethal drugs at Florida State Prison near Starke.

For Valle, the day began when he awoke at 5:32 a.m. He visited through a glass barrier with three sisters, two nieces, a brother-in-law, and his daughter, Rebecca, who was 2 years old when her father was arrested. Later, Rebecca, one of Valle’s sisters and a niece spent an hour with him — with physical contact. By noon, Valle was alone. He showered and dressed in black trousers and a white shirt. He ate most of his last meal: fried chicken breast, white rice, garlic toast and peach cobbler. He drank a Coke. He met with the chaplain. He took diazepam to ease his nerves. And then he sat in his cell and waited, reported the Miami Herald.

He did not open his eyes while laying on a gurney with a white sheet draped over him. Cannon asked if he had last words. “No, I don't,” Valle said. Soon after the administration of the first drug, Valle looked to Cannon. His words were not audible to the witnesses, but the Sun reported that he asked, “Do I need to start counting backwards again?” Several minutes later, he laid with his mouth slack-jawed while Cannon periodically checked his breathing. Valle was then pronounced dead by the doctor nearly 20 minutes after the start of the procedure.

To read more: http://www.gainesville.com/article/20110928/ARTICLES/110929421

The Cautionary Instruction: Dueling reports on wrongful convictions

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/Ipso Facto
September 30, 2011

Last week the long awaited Report of the Advisory Committee on Wrongful Convictions was issued by the Joint State Government Commission. The very first page of the report contains a telling caveat, “The release of this report should not be interpreted as an endorsement by members of the Executive Committee of the… [Report’s] conclusions.”
The caveat was an understatement. The law enforcement and victim representation members of the Commission issued their own Independent Report included in the advisory committtee's overall document starting at Page 309.
The Advisory Committee Report and the Independent Report both agree that the primary purpose of the committee was to review cases in which an innocent person was wrongfully convicted and subsequently exonerated and offer recommendations to reduce the possibility of future wrongful convictions.
That appears to be one of the last points of agreement between the competing reports. Initially the two groups disagreed as to the definition of “wrongfully convicted.” The Committee suggested, in a footnote, the official acts which could result in exoneration: “pardons based on innocence, judicial dismissals of criminal charges after evidence of innocence emerged and acquittals on retrial based upon evidence of no involvement in the crimes.”
The Independent Report took issue with that definition, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court held that an acquittal “does not prove that the defendant is innocent.”  The Independent Report succinctly pointed out that the burden of proof in criminal cases requires proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The Supreme Court has made it clear that a jury must acquit “someone who is probably guilty but whose guilt has not been established beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The fundamental disagreement between the two reports -- did the Committee review only innocent persons wrongfully convicted. The Committee Report suggested that 11 people in Pennsylvania have been exonerated “partly or totally on the basis of DNA.” The Independent Report acknowledged that in one of the 11 cases cited by the Committee, “it is clear that and individual was wrongfully convicted.” However, considerable space in the Independent Report is dedicated to arguing that the remaining 10 individuals are not factually innocent.
Why is the definition of “wrongfully convicted” so important to the authors of the Independent Report? The Independent Report suggested, “The mis-definition of  'innocent' persons to include scores of guilty defendants means that the 'reforms' based on the mis-definition are likely to reward the guilty and make their convictions less likely in the future.” The Committee Report contended, “These exonerations challenge long-accepted assumptions in the soundness of certain practices of the criminal justice system.” The Committee Chairman, Duquesne University law professor John Rago, said "Mistakes happen—the question becomes how do we respond to our mistakes.”
Over the next couple of weeks The Cautionary Instruction will examine the recommendations put forth in the Advisory Committee Report and the Independent Report.

Visit Ipso Facto