Birmingham Blues

An inmate from the Prichard City Jail died yesterday after being beaten up by another inmate.  Died.  Of massive brain injury.  He was incarcerated because of unpaid fines related to parking tickets and misdemeanor arrests.  He was mentally ill.  He was 42, and he died with his mother at his side, watching her child slip away from her.

The beating took place on August 31, following a dispute over changing the channel on the jail TV.  The attacker was first charged with second degree assault, but that charge was later reduced to third degree.

Take a minute to absorb this.  Something is very wrong here.  I don’t know about you, but I feel sick.

The state Supreme Court has again delayed the execution of Thomas Arthur, who was convicted of the 1982 contract killing of Troy Wicker Jr. The decision came in the wake of dueling affidavits, one from another inmate confessing to the crime and another from the victim’s wife, who put out the contract, swearing Arthur was the killer.

Initially, Judy Wicker said an intruder raped her and killed her husband. She had injuries consistent with her story, and investigators collected a rape kit along with other evidence. Nonetheless, she was accused of having her husband killed for insurance money, convicted of murder, and given a life sentence. Only later did she accuse Arthur, with whom she was having an affair at the time of the murder. In exchange for her testimony, prosecutors recommended parole, and she was released from prison after 10 years. Arthur, who has admitted to a previous murder, has always denied this one. (For some background on the case, see here and here.)

Arthur’s lawyers have been pushing for some time now to have DNA tests run on the rape kit, contending that the results could indicate that another person was present at the time of the murder. OTOH, if the DNA is a match for Arthur, it would certainly bolster the case against him. Prosecutors have refused to run the tests, and the governor has refused to order them to do so (there’s some dispute as to whether or not he has that authority). Today, we find out that the state has lost the evidence in question, so, unless someone finds it — or perhaps “finds” it — the testing will never happen.

I’m curious. Just how long has the state known the rape kit was missing? Yes, this case is 26 years old. Evidence could have been misplaced or discarded long before the tests were requested. But given the high profile coverage over the past year or so, I’d think someone would have checked on it before now. So was it lost in the sands of time, or did it disappear recently?

And if it does turn up, would the state just run the damn tests already?

Set your TiVos, VCRs, or eyeballs to see follow-up coverage of the Siegelman case on “60 Minutes” (CBS, tonight at 6:00 CDT) and “Verdict with Dan Abrams” (MSNBC, tomorrow night at 8:00 CDT).

I don’t subscribe to the theory that former Gov. Don Siegelman was as pure as a newly-shorn lamb. (After all, what successful politician is? Even the best of them are forced into compromises and alliances that make the idealist in me scream “foul!”) But there is much about this case that stinks to high heaven, and as I’ve said here many times before, the Bush administration has only itself to blame when the Justice Department comes under suspicion of political prosecution.

From the 11th Circuit Court ruling that ordered Siegelman’s release pending appeal:

“After thorough review of this complex and protracted record, we conclude Siegelman has satisfied the criteria set out in the statute, and has specifically met his burden of showing that his appeal raises substantial questions of law or fact [emphasis mine],” the judges wrote.

In the interest of justice, those questions must be addressed. (Yeah, even justice for Richard Scrushy, who is not a favorite of mine. IMO, the prosecution was smart to try Siegelman and Scrushy together; public anger over Scrushy’s HealthSouth acquittal almost certainly fueled a “get him any way we can” feeling.) In the interest of restoring confidence in our justice system, Congress must continue to investigate the apparent subversion of the Bush Justice Department.

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If you want to keep Congress focused on this investigation, contact House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy. Send your feedback to “60 Minutes”. And if you’d like to contribute to Gov. Siegelman’s defense fund, use this address:

Siegelman Legal Defense Fund
P.O. Box 430116
Birmingham, AL 35243

A Georgia man was freed from prison yesterday after DNA tests proved he was not guilty of a 27-year-old rape. John Jerome White was convicted on the basis of the victim’s eyewitness testimony and sentenced to life in prison. He was paroled in 1990, but two subsequent convictions, one for drugs and one for robbery, resulted in his return to prison to serve the rest of the life sentence. Tests on hairs collected from the crime scene — tests that weren’t available in 1980 — implicate another man, one who has a previous rape conviction. Unfortunately, the victim, who was 74 at the time of the attack, didn’t live to see the right person brought to justice.

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Last week the US Supreme Court stayed the execution of Thomas Arthur pending its ruling on several cases challenging execution by lethal injection. The Birmingham News points out that this delay gives Gov. Riley yet another opportunity to order testing of DNA evidence in the case, something Riley has so far — and inexplicably — refused to do.

Arthur was convicted of the 1982 contract killing of Troy Wicker, at least in part based on the testimony of Wicker’s wife, Judy, with whom he was having an affair.

Judy Wicker was accused of paying Arthur to kill her husband for the life insurance. At first, she blamed the crime on an intruder who she claimed also raped her. She had injuries consistent with that story, and semen was present and collected along with other evidence.

Even so, she was convicted of the murder, and she was sentenced to life in prison. When prosecutors agreed to recommend parole, Judy Wicker changed her story and testified against Arthur. She got out of prison after 10 years. The prosecutor who recommended parole earlier had been a private attorney representing Mrs. Wicker.

The DNA evidence collected at the time was not tested because the technology wasn’t available. Now it is. Why not test it? Here’s what I said back in October:

…Thomas Arthur is not a nice person. He’s not an upstanding citizen. He had a prior murder conviction. He shot (but thankfully did not kill) a prison guard during an escape attempt before his final conviction. He shouldn’t get out of prison. But if he didn’t kill Troy Wicker, he shouldn’t die for it.

And if we, as citizens of this country, won’t demand that DNA evidence be evaluated before we carry out the ultimate penalty, well, that doesn’t speak too well of us as a society. “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” may be good campaign strategy, but it’s a terrible way to run a justice system.

Even Troy Wicker’s sister has joined the chorus requesting DNA tests. She wants to be sure. Gov. Riley, give her what she wants. Remember your slogan for Amendment One? Once again, it’s time to “Do the Right Thing”.

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Click here to contact Gov. Riley and ask him to order DNA tests in the Thomas Arthur case.

John D. R. Atchison, a Florida Assistant US Attorney, succeeded in his second attempt to commit suicide yesterday. He was being held in a Michigan federal prison on three felony counts, including a charge of crossing state lines with the intent to have sex with a person under the age of twelve — in his case, a fictional five year old girl (I posted about his arrest here).

Atchison, 53, was arrested last month at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after weeks of Internet conversations between the prosecutor and a detective posing as the mother of a 5-year-old girl, authorities have said.

He was carrying presents for the girl, including a doll and hoop earrings, and also had sexual materials, including petroleum jelly.

After his arrest Atchison was placed on suicide watch, but it was lifted at the request of the defense, after Atchison assured a U.S. magistrate he wouldn’t harm himself.

Two days later, Atchison used a sheet in his Sanilac County jail cell to try to hang himself around 4 a.m. Another inmate yelled out to jailers, who kept Atchison from hurting himself, according to Sanilac County Sheriff Virgil Strickler. Atchison was later moved to the Milan prison.

If he was guilty as charged, he was one sick and twisted man. Still, his family and friends are grieving today, and I am sorry for them.

H/T, Natalie in comments to the earlier post

Or maybe Bob Riley, who, inexplicably, doesn’t want to permit DNA testing in death penalty cases. Alabama is now one of only eight states that won’t give inmates at least some access to DNA evidence that wasn’t available at their trials.

State lawmakers across the country are adopting broad changes to criminal justice procedures as a response to the exoneration of more than 200 convicts through the use of DNA evidence.

All but eight states now give inmates varying degrees of access to DNA evidence that might not have been available at the time of their convictions. Many states are also overhauling the way witnesses identify suspects, crime labs handle evidence and informants are used.

At least six states have created commissions to expedite cases of those wrongfully convicted or to consider changes to criminal justice procedures. One of them, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, will hold a hearing this month on remedies for people who have been wrongfully convicted.

Laws in several states, including Illinois, New Jersey and North Carolina, have bipartisan backing, with many Democrats supportive on civil rights grounds and Republicans generally hoping that tighter procedures will lead to fewer challenges of convictions.

Seems to me both of those are good reasons for reform. As the statistics in the article show, people are wrongly convicted of crimes in the United States. They may not be the nicest, most upstanding citizens. Some of them may be criminals. But if the wrong person is convicted, the right person will never face punishment for that crime. Not only do we wrongly imprison, possibly execute, an innocent person, but the victims and their families don’t get real justice.

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