Executed man's case reopened

[Modem Butterfly]

Justice delayed is justice denied.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/07/12/execution.investigation.ap/index.html

ST. LOUIS, Missouri (AP) -- Citing grave concerns that Missouri executed an innocent man, a coalition that includes a congressman, high-profile lawyers and even the victim's family pointed to evidence Tuesday that they said could clear Larry Griffin's name.

Prosecutors have decided to reopen the case of Griffin, who was convicted in 1981 in the murder of Quintin Moss, a 19-year-old drug dealer who was shot to death. Griffin maintained his innocence to the end, but was put to death in 1995.

Now, many people, including some members of Moss' family, believe him.

"What I have heard recently is very troubling and leads me to believe an innocent man was executed for this murder, while the real killers have not been brought to justice," said Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Missouri, who spoke at a news conference Tuesday with other supporters of Griffin.

[Modem Butterfly]

1. This makes me so freaking angry.

From the article above:

The news conference followed a report compiled by a University of Michigan Law School professor who discovered new information on the case in the last year. The report suggests that:

The first police officer at the scene of the 1980 shooting, Michael Ruggeri, now says that the story told by the supposed eyewitness was false, even though Ruggeri's own testimony at trial supported what the witness said.

A second victim of the shooting, Wallace Conners, has said he was never contacted by the defense or the prosecution. Conners, now 52, who was wounded in the attack, said the supposed eyewitness was not present at the shooting.

"I tell all you all, Larry Griffin did not commit this crime," Conners told reporters. "Larry Griffin definitely wasn't in the car."

[acmejack]

2. And these fools wish to "streamline the appeals process"!!

How do you make this right? A prime example of the problem with capital punishment. What do you death penalty advocates consider an acceptable margin of error? We know that it is impossible to be right each and every time, no matter how hard we mere mortals try. So is it 10%, perhaps 1%, how many of the innocent shall we murder in the name of justice?

[Modem Butterfly]

3. Well said.

[Gormy Cuss]

4. Not all death penalty proponents believe in streamlined appeals

One of the reasons that the approval rating for the death penalty is so high is that many of the proponents really just want it available for extreme circumstances. They aren't the 'hang'em high' crowd.

The most vigorous defenders of the death penalty on the other hand would look at the picture of young Larry Griffin and think "he was probably guilty of something else." Those zealots don't care if he was innocent of this crime. Those zealots don't want to know that the older Larry Griffin (in the 1992 interview) looks like a sensible guy who could have contributed to the community.

Note how 'streamlining' sounds benign. It's no accident. IMHO, the appeals process should be streamlined in terms of time from conviction to final appeal but not in terms of the number or type of appeals. The wrongly convicted should not languish in jail for a decade before an appeal sets them free. Of course, those shouting for streamlining want to short circuit the appeals process.

[Modem Butterfly]

5. Here's a handy chart on some of the difficulties in Griffin's case

http://www.quixote.org/ej/grip/reasonabledoubt/chart-Larry%20Griffin.html

[Gormy Cuss]

9. Well, there you go.

The victim may have murdered his brother, and Griffin was known to have a criminal history (non-violent though it may have been), so it must have been him. Why look for anyone else?

:rant:

The sad reality is if you're from a low-income community and you've had any scrapes with the law, chances are good that you'll get screwed in a situation like this.

(thanks for the link, Modem)

[MadHound]

6. The only thing suprising about this article,

Is that it took this long before these sorts of stories started popping up here in Missouri. This is a very pro-death penalty state, with only Texas exceeding Missouri in the number of executions performed yearly.

It is something of an open secrect in the state about how shoddy the jurisprudence in a death penalty case is. If you are poor, black, and on trial for your life, the odds are stacked against you. Overworked public defenders can't provide an adequate, much less the stellar defense needed to conduct a death penalty trial, simply because they don't have the time, energy and support to do such. And with the latent racism in this state, a black man has two strikes against him already going in.

This is just one more example of many many as to why the death penalty should be abolished. Even one innocent death is too many, and until our justice system system can be one hundred percent reliable in such cases, the death penalty should be off the table.

[H2O Man]

7. In 1967

a good friend of mine was tried for a savage triple murder that had occured the previous year in a Paterson, NJ tavern. Both he and a friend were convicted in a trial where the prosecutor demanded the death penalty. In the next twenty years, the case would become the longest, in terms of the most appealsfiled and heard, in the history of the United States. In 1985, a federal judge hearing what could have been the last appeal was exposed to not only information about police and prosecutorial misconduct, and significant legal errors by the judge who had presided over a 1976 retrial, but also police files that showed that by 1976, the police were fully aware that the two men that were being charged yet again were not the murderers.

Although the movie "The Hurricane" is a Hollywood production, rather than a documentary, it gives a pretty good feel for the case. My man Rubin was very close to, as he is want to say, "fried to a bacon rind" for something he simply did not do, and John Artis almost died for simply being with Rubin when he didn't commit the crime.

Thus, while there may be some merit in even discussing the death penalty for those who are indeed guilty of heinious crimes, I am convinced that it should gono further than that discussion .... because too many innocent people have died for something they didn't do. And, as far as long appeals go, it should be remembered that the very longest and most complex appeal in U.S. history set two innocent men free after serving 20 years.

[Modem Butterfly]

10. Wow.

[Name removed]

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