"‘A Very Likely Miscarriage of Justice’," is the title of an editorial in today's New York Times.
The power to pardon is an essential means of justice, allowing a governor to right what the law got wrong. Gov. Jerry Brown of California has been asked to commute to time served the sentence of Shirley Ree Smith, who was convicted in 1997 of killing her grandson and has already served 10 years of a 15-years-to-life sentence. We urge the governor to commute her sentence so she does not now have to return to prison as a result of a misguided Supreme Court ruling.
Ms. Smith was convicted of shaking her grandson to death. When the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned her conviction in 2006, it found “no demonstrable support” for it. There was “no physical evidence” and “no other evidence” of the severe bleeding or swelling that are the most common signs of shaken baby syndrome. The court concluded “there has very likely been a miscarriage of justice in this case.”
This fall, however, five years after Ms. Smith was released, the Supreme Court overruled the Ninth Circuit, which means that she must complete her sentence unless it is commuted. The Supreme Court acknowledged that “doubts about whether Smith is in fact guilty are understandable.” They include what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent, that Ms. Smith was poorly represented at trial when “competent counsel” may have won the case. But the court’s majority ruled — after a bitter six-year, three-review tug of war with the Ninth Circuit — that the federal appeals court did not have enough authority to overturn the state court’s conviction.
In a Delaware capital case, AP reports, "Del. convicted killer facing Jan. 20 execution files clemency petition with Board of Pardons." It's written by Randall Chase, via the Republic. An alternate version is available via the Wilmington Journal.
The state Board of Pardons will meet next week to consider a clemency request from a convicted killer who is scheduled to be executed later this month.
Attorneys for Robert Gattis filed the clemency petition Tuesday, asking the board to recommend that Gov. Jack Markell commute Gattis' death sentence to life in prison without parole.
The 49-year-old is scheduled to be executed Jan. 20 for the 1990 shooting death of his former girlfriend, Shirley Slay, 27. The board will meet Jan. 9 at the state's maximum security prison in Smyrna to consider the request for clemency.
Attorneys for Gattis say commutation is appropriate because the courts have never properly considered the physical and sexual abuse that Gattis suffered as a child as factors weighing against the death penalty.
"What we're asking really is for the pardons board to take a look at this evidence," said Karl Schwartz, a federal public defender who is helping represent Gattis. "Nobody has contested it."
Cathy Rossi, a spokeswoman for Markell, said the governor had not seen the petition for commutation, and that it would be premature to comment before the board considers it.
"The governor knows from having served for ten years on the Board of Pardons that it will carefully review and consider Mr. Gattis's petition," Rossi said in an emailed statement.
And:
His attorneys say that when Gattis was sentenced to death almost 20 years ago, defense attorneys and trial judges did not have a clear understanding or adequate appreciation of the impact of child abuse on a defendant's subsequent behavior as an adult.
Lawyers who represented Gattis at trial and on appeal immediately after his conviction have submitted affidavits acknowledging that they did not adequately raise those issues, but arguments about Gattis' abusive childhood were procedurally barred in later appeals because they had not been raised earlier in the case, according to his current attorneys.
More information on the clemency effort for Robert Gattis, and a petition organized by supporters, is available at the link.
The Louisville Courier-Journal carries the AP report, "Condemned inmates pursuing funds for clemency bids," It's by Brett Barrouquere.
Two Kentucky death row inmates are hoping brain scans and mental tests will bolster their cases for a rare grant of executive clemency that would spare their lives.
Ralph S. Baze Jr., condemned for killing a sheriff and deputy in eastern Kentucky in 1992, has asked a federal judge to grant him funding for a brain scan and testing as he prepares to ask Gov. Steve Beshear for clemency.
Baze's request, filed Wednesday in federal court in Lexington, comes just more than two weeks after U.S. District Judge Jennifer Coffman in Louisville granted $7,500 to 66-year-old Parramore Lee Sanborn to pursue a possible claim of brain damage or abnormalities as he seeks to stave off execution for the 1983 kidnapping, rape and murder of Barbara Heilman in Henry County.
"This information may lead to a more accurate diagnosis and would not duplicate information already available to the governor," Coffman wrote on Dec. 12.
The tests part of a bid to get Beshear to do something that's only happened twice in the 35 years since the reinstatement of the death penalty in Kentucky — a commutation of sentence for a condemned inmate.
Gov. Paul Patton in December 2003 commuted to life in prison the death sentence of Kevin Stanford, who was 17 at the time of 20-year-old Barbel Poore's slaying in 1981 in Louisville. Gov. Ernie Fletcher did the same for James Earl Slaughter in December 2007, finding his defense counsel so deficient that the attorney did not know his client's real name. Slaughter was convicted of killing Ester Stewart of Louisville in 1983.
And:
Neither inmate is facing an imminent execution. Kentucky is currently barred by a judge from carrying out a lethal injection because of issues with the state's protocol. Kentucky also lacks a supply of sodium thiopental, one of three drugs used in a lethal injection.
Related posts are in the clemency index.
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