Justice delayed breaks human hearts

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By ELIJAH GOSIER

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 29, 2001

There is a reason the law is represented by a scale and not a heart. Scales don't give a value to sympathy. Scales have no appreciation for tragedy. They are not moved by pity.

The law doesn't care about the wishes of an old woman dying of cancer. It cares about evidence, that elusive thing called truth and that more elusive thing called justice.

As callous as it may sound, this is the way it should be.

That's the way Vel Thompson wishes it were. But from where she stands, the only piece of attire justice is wearing that seems appropriate is the blindfold. Otherwise, justice would have to see that her son is innocent.

A month ago, Vel Thompson's crusade on her son's behalf seemed to have ended in victory. A date had been set to hear evidence that Michael Morgan is innocent of the crime for which he is serving his eighth year in prison.

Chances are that hearing would have won Morgan his freedom.

But it didn't happen. A technical problem with the papers filed requesting the hearing apparently derailed the process.

The state says it is has done additional investigating and is satisfied the right man is in prison. Any rehearing of evidence is in the hands of Morgan's attorney. Michael Schwartzberg, who has represented Morgan in prior proceedings, said he has filed a motion to have the new evidence heard and is awaiting a judge's determination.

The new evidence would be worth at least reasonable doubt. Gerald Wright, the man who went to prison along with Morgan for raping and shooting a St. Petersburg woman, said in a letter and to an interviewing police officer that Morgan was not with him when he committed the crime. He said another man -- who bears a striking resemblance to Morgan -- was the one.

Wright later recanted the statements, realizing they constituted admissions of his own guilt with possible damage to future parole chances.

"He has no credibility," said Richard Ripplinger, the assistant state attorney who handled the case until a new prosecutor was named recently. A jury has spoken in Morgan's case, and Ripplinger is reluctant to question its verdict.

Morgan was convicted primarily on the weight of the victim's eyewitness identification. Could she, under the unimaginable duress of being raped and shot, have remembered enough detail of the assailant's face to distinguish it from a lookalike?

Recent studies -- and the number of prisoners who have been freed after DNA analysis -- suggest that witnesses are among the least reliable sources of evidence. In addition, shortly after the assault, the victim stood a couple of people behind Morgan in the short service line at Atwater's Cafeteria, then dined near him in the small restaurant without recognizing him.

So Morgan's mother, Vel Thompson, is stepping up her crusade again.

This time she is motivated by more than her belief in her son's innocence. This time, she is motivated by some of those things that don't register on the scales the law uses.

Thompson cares about an old woman dying of cancer. The woman is her mother, Morgan's grandmother. She practically raised Morgan while Thompson chased a college education and then a job that took her around the world and away from home too often.

Nurses say the woman constantly asks about Michael.

Doctors say she is fighting courageously, but at 85 years of age, she will lose the fight soon.

Thompson is racing against the inevitable, her hopes riding on the notoriously slow justice system.

There is tragedy here, no matter when the hearing is held or what its finding is.

It is commendable that the state is so conscientiously loyal to the jury's verdict, but it would be even nobler if it had been just as conscientious in providing the jury with all the evidence it needed to make a sound decision.

Eight years is too long for questions of guilt to go unanswered. That should be especially so to the people whose job is to care about truth and evidence and justice, the things that move their scales.

Time is devastating for mothers and sons, people who care about things that move the heart, people who do care about the last wishes of an old woman dying of cancer.

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