The Reggie Clemons Case

The Reggie Clemons case reads like a manual for anti-death penalty advocates: no physical evidence links him to the crime, alleged police coercion, prosecutorial misconduct, questionable eye-witness testimonies, inadequate legal representation, a stacked jury, and questions of race, according to Amnesty International.

Reggie Clemons was convicted and sentenced to death in St. Louis, Missouri as an accomplice in the murder of two white women in 1991. The women, Julie and Robin Kerry, were killed as they fell from the Chain of Rocks Bridge into the Mississippi River.

Along with Clemons, three other youths were arrested and three of them, all African-American, were given the death sentence. One of them, Marlin Gray, was executed in 2005. The fourth man, Daniel Winfrey, was offered a lesser offense in exchange for testifying against Clemons.

As stated before, no physical evidence linked Clemons to the crime. His conviction relied mainly on two eye-witnesses, the first of which was Winfrey. The second eye-witness was Thomas Cummins, cousin of the two victims, who initially was picked up by authorities and confessed to the crime. He later identified Clemons and the other suspects as the perpetrators and charges against him were dropped.

In addition to the questionable testimonies, there seems to have been clear misconduct throughout the criminal justice process. To begin with, Clemons claims that he confessed to raping one of the victims under the pressure of police brutality. Two other suspects also alleged the same mistreatment and witnesses attest to seeing Clemons’ face swollen following the police interrogation. Clemons retracted the confession and maintains his innocence of all charges.

As is the case with many capital cases, inadequate legal representation for Clemons was clear and Clemons’ lawyer was later suspended from practicing law after various complaints were filed. In addition, there was clear prosecutorial misconduct, according to four federal judges who have all agreed that the prosecutor’s tactics were overly aggressive and abusive. The prosecutor compared Clemons, who had no criminal record, to a serial killer. Again, the prosecutor received various complaints from both state and federal courts.

The question of race is one that plays in very clearly in the Clemons case. There have been clear trends shown concerning biases regarding the race of the victim. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, over 75% of cases that result in execution were when the murder victim was white, even though only about 1/2 of murder victims nationally are white. In the Clemons case, both of the victims were white, the two main eye-witnesses were white, and the three convicted defendants were black. In addition, a 2002 U.S. District Court judge ruled that the death sentence of Clemons should not stand since six prospective jurors were excluded improperly in jury selection, resulting in a stacked jury that was unrepresentative of the population of St. Louis. This ruling, however, did not stand and was overturned by a higher court on technical grounds.

Clemons has a new hearing date set for March 5th, 2012 and there will be a huge push among abolitionists throughout the country to get him off death row. Regardless of your moral feelings on capital punishment, is seems clear that a country which considers itself to be a bastion for human rights around the world, would want to end a system which is clearly racially skewed and rife with mistakes that have put innocent men to death before and, if not stopped, will do it again. Missouri has executed 68 people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Let’s not add one more name to that list.

Article also published at The Progressive Playbook.

Photo credit: Amnesty International

Moving toward a Moratorium

A report released on The-News-Leader.com by Andrew Welsh-Huggins of the Associated Press today announced that Ohio’s 30-year-old death penalty law will be examined by a committee, which was convened by Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor. According to O’Connor, the purpose of the committee is not to decide if Ohio should have capital punishment, but rather to build a fair and impartial analysis of the law. During the time of the committee, which was given just over a year to complete the study, there will be an unofficial moratorium on the death penalty in the state, as three executions have already been postponed and another inmate has requested a postponement of his Nov. 15 execution date as well.

While this is not an end to the death penalty in Ohio by any means, it is a signal that dialogue has begun surrounding the issue, a dialogue that will hopefully spark debate among the additional 33 states in the U.S. that still have capital punishment on the books. After all, the systemic issues with Ohio’s capital punishment system are certainly not unique to the state. In fact, the issues with capital punishment go far deeper than simply a moral issue of whether it is permissible for the State to take the life of one of it’s citizens. The death penalty system is one that is clearly unbalanced in terms of race, class, and geography.

According to The Death Penalty Information Center, 96% of the states where the death penalty has been reviewed have shown a clear pattern of race-of-victim or race-of-defendant discrimination. Additionally, over 75% of the murder victims in cases that resulted in execution were white, despite the fact that only 50% of murder victims are white. In terms of socio-economic imbalance, nearly all the defendants in capital cases cannot afford their own attorneys and are given court-appointed attorneys, which, according to recent studies in states like Pennsylvania, such as this one, these court-appointed attorneys are often over-worked and under-paid, and many times lack the experience necessary to take on a capital case (read more here). Within states that allow the death penalty, the quality of representation or the likelihood that a court will pursue the death penalty often varies from county to county, making the system one that is not only rife with classism and racism, but also one that is arbitrary, based more on the color of the victim’s skin and on the county the crime was committed in then on the severity or proof of the crime.

And not only is this system a gross violation of human rights in this country, it is also costs more than life without parole. The Death Penalty Information Center notes that in Kansas, capital cases are 70% more expensive than cases of life without parole. In Florida, it costs the state $51 million a year over what it would cost to give all first degree murder cases life without parole. This trend is similar across all 34 states with the death penalty still in place. In such difficult economic times, it is hard to imagine why a system which has been proven to be a failure in terms of deterrence of future crimes and which is clearly racially skewed, geographically skewed, and socio-economically skewed, is allowed to continue in this country. With fewer and fewer people in support of the death penalty every year, it is time that we have some serious debate about our criminal justice system and our medieval capital punishment system. Ohio has begun the discussion. Now it is time for the remaining 33 states to do the same.

Article also published at The Progressive Playbook.