 |
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
 |
Holton case shows it's time to bring the death penalty to justice
© St. Petersburg Times I support the death penalty for grievous crimes. Nothing less is justice. I do not care in the slightest whether it is or is not a "deterrent." Yet no supporter of Florida's death penalty can stomach or tolerate what was revealed this week in a two-part series by St. Petersburg Times staff writer David Karp. It is irrefutable proof that our "justice" system is capable of sending a man to his death wrongly. We have to change it. If we do not change it, then we will have to get rid of the death penalty altogether. In the Tampa murder case of Rudolph Holton, who was recently freed after 16 years on death row, we had the perfect storm of injustice. (You might have missed it, since they let him out amid the Super Bowl hoopla). We had a prosecutor who cared mostly about winning. ("I am sorry it happened," that prosecutor, now in private practice, says now. "At the time I believed what I was doing.") We had an indifferent judge who made clear his opinion about the "so-called" defense, who moved the trial along without potentially important witnesses, and who imposed death on the spot. We had a jailhouse snitch, who testified under oath that Holton had confessed the murder to him. This snitch -- who had been facing up to life in prison -- instead got probation in exchange for his testimony. Yet Holton's jury -- which is supposed to weigh the snitch's incentive for lying -- was told at the trial that he was facing only three years in prison. How does the state explain such an untruth? Clerical error. (By the way, the snitch keeps changing his story.) A piece of physical evidence in Holton's case -- a hair in the victim's mouth -- "had to" have been Holton's, the prosecutor told the jury. Years later, when DNA testing was developed, the state fought bitterly not to use it in Holton's case, calling his request "a delaying tactic." The hair turned out to be the victim's own. There's more. A fundamental rule of fairness in American justice is that defendants are entitled to know evidence that tends to show their innocence. In Holton's case, the victim had accused another man of raping her anally (sorry to be so graphic, but it's important) just one week before her death. When she was killed, she was raped in the same way again. Yet police never questioned the other man -- and Holton's lawyers did not learn of this police report until 14 years later. Neither can we soothe our consciences about Rudolph Holton by saying that eventually, "our system worked." The system most emphatically did NOT work. The only reason Holton is free today is because an idealistic, rebellious lawyer named Linda McDermott bucked that system and her own office, at the risk of her career. (Even that office of state-paid lawyers for death cases would now be eliminated under Gov. Jeb Bush's proposed budget. Great. We can sink to the level of Texas, notorious for cases in which court-appointed hacks slept through trials.) Even one case like Holton's is enough, but there have been several. The pattern is similar: lack of physical evidence, shaky eyewitnesses, a convenient jailhouse snitch, and police and prosecutors who stretch because they "know" the defendant is guilty. Make no mistake: The overwhelming majority of inhabitants of death row certainly are guilty. They are there based on irrefutable evidence. But it would be a relief to all of us to know how many are rock-solid and how many cases are like Holton's. I do not advocate an Illinois-style, blanket pardon. But a systematic review is in order. Let the governor name the staunchest advocates of death, and the strongest opponents, and let them work together to do it. What would we do with the results? I don't know. But even if the governor ended up pardoning a half-dozen men and left almost 400 others facing the needle, it hardly would be an outbreak of bleeding-heart liberality. In last Friday's column I incorrectly listed Luis M. Ruiz as a candidate in Tampa's City Council District 5 race. Ruiz initially filed for the seat but did not qualify. He supports another candidate in the race, Kevin White, the finance director of a large auto dealership.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
|
Times columns today From the Times Metro desk |
