Salon.com > David Lindorff

Another strike against the death penalty

Tue, 25 Jun 2002 23:49:00 +0000

It's not the 1960s-era Warren Court, but in two remarkable decisions in the past week, the U.S. Supreme Court has lifted the death penalty from more than 370 formerly doomed prisoners -- 10 percent of the total death row population -- and opened the door to new appeals by hundreds more.

The decisions Monday and last Thursday stunned both sides in the contentious debate over capital punishment. Opponents cheered the unexpected victories, saying the rulings made over the opposition of Chief Justice William Rehnquist marked the most significant turn in the debate in 25 years. Advocates were left to wonder what has happened to a court that had been widely considered the most conservative in half a century.

Some analysts, however, suggested that the court's fundamental support for capital punishment likely remains intact, and that conservative justices who joined Monday's ruling may have been trying to pare away cases that are most vulnerable to criticism at a time when pointed questions have arisen about the overall integrity and fairness of the death penalty.

Making sense of the Mumia Abu-Jamal decision

Thu, 20 Dec 2001 01:12:00 +0000

Mumia Abu-Jamal, arguably the world's best-known death-row inmate, has been saved from the gallows, but not from a life in prison.

After mulling the habeas corpus appeal of the incarcerated journalist and former Black Panther for over two years, U.S. District Judge William Yohn on Monday issued a carefully worded decision overturning the penalty-phase verdict of the jury that sentenced Abu-Jamal to death in July 1982 for the slaying of Daniel Faulkner, a white, 25-year-old Philadelphia police officer.

Yohn overturned the death verdict on the narrow grounds that the jury had been wrongly instructed about the rules of mitigating circumstances that might apply to Abu-Jamal. Specifically, he agreed with Abu-Jamal's claim that the jurors had been led to believe, incorrectly, that any finding of mitigating circumstances on his behalf would have to be agreed to unanimously by the panel. In fact, since 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that if even one juror on a panel finds a mitigating circumstance in a defendant's favor, that must be weighed in the jury's decision on whether to vote for death.

Mumia’s all-or-nothing gamble

Fri, 15 Jun 2001 14:50:00 +0000

Mumia Abu-Jamal, the black Philadelphia activist and journalist facing execution for the 1981 killing of a police officer, announced in March he was dumping his crack legal team headed by veteran attorney Leonard Weinglass, saying he had lost confidence in it. He has replaced it with two relatively untested newcomers to the complex and technical minefield of death-penalty law, where a single misstep -- whether based on a poorly conceived strategy, or on overconfidence and inexperience -- can be fatal.

Jamal's new legal team joins the case at a crucial moment, as the former Black Panther waits to see whether a federal judge in Philadelphia will agree to hear his last-ditch habeas corpus appeal of his death penalty and conviction on first degree murder charges. After this he has no more automatic right to appeal. It also represents a major shift in strategy. Rather than challenging the fairness of his original trial and subsequent appeals on constitutional grounds, he is now asserting his absolute innocence in the case.

Sneak attack

Wed, 25 Apr 2001 19:30:00 +0000

It can get tough being a freelancer. People just seem to take advantage of you. Publishers pay you late, or sometimes not at all; the IRS audits you more frequently than it does other people; you don't get any paid vacations or any health benefits; and, of course, the hours are terrible.

But I always figured that when it came time to send my daughter off to college, we'd make out all right on the scholarships. It would be the first time, maybe the only time, that a low salary and zillions of business expenses would be an advantage.

So I put a lot of effort into those infamous scholarship forms this year as my daughter prepared to graduate from high school. I did them all -- the federal government's Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the College Board's College Scholarship Service form for private college assistance -- and hoped for some hefty grants from her chosen schools.

Little did I know that the financial aid gnomes at America's private colleges and universities have no more affection for -- or faith in -- us freelance types than the grim auditors at the IRS.

The death penalty’s other victims

Tue, 02 Jan 2001 20:00:00 +0000

Ellen Reasonover found out the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished. When the St. Louis resident approached police with information she thought might help them catch the killer of a gas-station attendant, they arrested her instead, based on highly circumstantial evidence.

Constructing a case against her by relying on the testimony of two jailhouse snitches, the state sought the death penalty. An all-white jury convicted the young black woman, and all but one member of the panel voted to have her executed. Earlier this year, a federal judge threw out her conviction, ruling that the witnesses -- with the knowledge of the prosecutor -- had fabricated their testimony. So after serving 18 years in prison, Reasonover was released.

Reasonover's jury was ready and willing to believe the prosecutor's case at least partly because, as in all capital cases, the jury pool had been carefully, and legally, purged of anyone who had doubts about the death penalty -- a category that conveniently and disproportionately includes African-Americans and women. The very people many experts say are most likely to question prosecutors' arguments and hold to a presumption of innocence -- death-penalty opponents -- had been systematically kept out of the jury box.