So I've sat here for six hours trying to write my story for the Covering Courts and Trials class, and ended up writing 3000 words that I posted first on Book of Days. Now I'll get to take a break before I shape 1000 words that sound more lke an article than a ramble.
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Q. Do you have any recollection about anything that he said?
A. Oh, yeah, he said they had been into an argument and he slapped her and she fell and hit her
head and it killed her and he didn’t mean for it to happen.
Q. Was he intoxicated?
A. He was drinking real heavily, yeah.
Q. Was he emotional?
A. Very.
Q. All right. How very is very?
A. Well, he was crying and just all to pieces.
Q. All right. How long had he been there before he told you about this incident?
A. Maybe 10 or 15 minutes, not real long.
Q. Did he say what they were arguing about?
A. He had wanted to go to a dance or something or another and was wanting to go somewhere
else. That is what they got into an argument over.
Q. What did you do when you heard Little Hube say he hit his wife and she died?
A. I freaked out and run him off.
Q. You freaked out?
A. I freaked out and ran him off.
Q. Okay. After the party did you tell anybody about this?
A. Not that night. The next day I went to Union County and tried to talk to some law people
and —
Q. Would they listen to you?
A. Went to Union County to the Sheriff’s Department. I tried to speak to the Sheriff but he was
real busy. He sent me to a deputy. The deputy told me to go upstairs to the courtroom and
talk to this guy. I can’t remember his name. I never did really get to talk to anybody.
Q. Tried to tell them?
A. Yeah.
Q. Did you talk to your mother about it?
A. A little later on there wasn’t a whole lot said about it, but she was the one that took me to the courthouse.
Q. Your mother went with you to the courthouse that day?
A. She drove me. I didn’t have a vehicle.
Q. Did you know Carolyn Muncey?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Are you aware of whether or not Little Hube had ever abused her or beat on her?
A. She was constantly with black eyes and busted mouth.
Testimony of Kathy Parker, Nashville resident, testifying to a federal district court in Tennessed on behalf of Paul House, who is on death row for Carolyn Muncey's murder.
Is this a Supreme Court preview, or an episode of CSI?
Well, it's House v. Bell, which turns out to be both.
Not that I've ever seen that show, actually, but I thought I'd be wrestling more with precedents than with blood spatters, missing or planted evidence, semen-stained jeans, or a theory that an entire rape-murder can be committed, in a rural area without a car, inside of 50 minutes. I didn't know that Paul Gregory House, who has been on death row since 1986, has multiple sclerosis - of the most advanced kind, which may kill him before anyone tries to strap him down for the lethal injection or gas chamber.
It's all about the DNA, of course.
It's all about the revolution
in our thinking about the death penalty thanks to the careful work of
attorneys, all around the country, who have re-opened investigations
that were done sloppily, or ineffectively presented, the first time.
And it's all about politics. Paul Gregory House was 2/3 of the way to exoneration when 8 of 15 appeals court judges declared he was probably innocent and he deserved a new trial. But a year later, when they could have made it official, four of those 8 judges, appointed by Democrats, had been replaced by George Bush. Their replacements said no, he still hadn't established reasonable doubt - despite DNA evidence, despite eyewitnesses, despite affidavits that shot down, or at least seriously questioned, the forensic evidence offered by the prosecution.
And it's all about the word "no."
Specifically the "no" in the following paragraph from Sandra Day O'Connor:
a petitioner must show that, in light of the new evidence, it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The focus on actual innocence means that a district court is not bound by the admissibility rules that would govern at trial, but may consider the probative force of relevant evidence that was either wrongly excluded or unavailable at trial. The district court must make a probabilistic determination about what reasonable, properly instructed jurors would do, and it is presumed that a reasonable juror would consider fairly all of the evidence presented and would conscientiously obey the trial court's instructions requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Schlup v. Delo, the 1995 Supreme Court opinion quoted above, offered both hope and frustration to defendants with newly discovered evidence, as it instructs judges to imagine themselves that Platonic "reasonable, properly instructed juror." In its poetry, it's also proved a Rorschach blot, taken up by both sides. And to Judge Dan Boggs, a grizzled veteran of the Sixth Circuit, "no reasonable juror" means exactly that: not a single juror. Basically, the Sixth Circuit panel demanded that every single piece of evidence put out by the prosecution be directly refuted before it could order a new trial.
Is this all too arcane? Should I get back to the blood?
Continue reading "gateways, blood spatters and pen de mort" »