Death Penalty on Trial by Bill Kurtis

Author:Bill Kurtis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2010-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Jeffrey Jones must bear his share of the blame for Ray’s problems. Granted, Jones was grossly underpaid and he was clearly sandbagged by Dr. Rawson’s phony video; even an experienced trial lawyer like Chris Plourd didn’t catch the manipulated video until it was too late. Still, Jones was an ineffective defense counsel. His worst mistake was to make such a bad choice for his bite mark expert. Perhaps if he had devoted more time to the case he would at least have discovered the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. These days any viewer of Cold Case Files would know where to go for expert testimony.

It’s a shame. Jones genuinely wanted to help the accused. But he was clearly in over his head in the Ray Krone case, and his inexperience resulted in a death penalty conviction.

The Gary Nelson case shows us a more egregious level of defense attorney incompetence. After Nelson was apprehended and charged with killing the six-year-old Georgia girl in 1980 he was tried, found guilty of her murder, and sentenced to death—all in only two days.

Nelson’s court-appointed lawyer, Howard McGlasson, was struggling with personal financial problems and a divorce, which certainly did not make Nelson’s trial a priority. McGlasson was paid $15-20 an hour, and although this was his first capital case, his request for co-counsel was denied. During the death penalty phase, the defense attorney offered an eight-sentence argument on behalf of his client.

At trial Nelson insisted he had not been at the crime scene, claiming he had gone to visit a friend. In the short investigation by the defense attorney, his friend was not at home, but other people were there and McGlasson visited with them. When calling witnesses to the stand, McGlasson mistakenly called the friend who was not at home and had not seen Nelson that night, as opposed to the willing others who had. It ruined Nelson’s opportunity for an alibi. In a two-day trial, there’s not much room for error especially if the defense lawyer fails to ask for a recess so he can go find the other witnesses who would have provided an alibi.

In 1984, McGlasson was disbarred for mishandling a client’s money.

The American Civil Liberties Union has written, “Ineffective counsel takes many forms including lack of preparation, failure to object to unreliable evidence, failure to present key evidence to the jury and conflict of interest.”

In Illinois alone, Governor George Ryan noted that thirty-three of the more than 160 death row inmates were represented at trial by an attorney who was later disbarred or at some point suspended from practicing law. How does this happen?

One reason is that there is no special bar or set of qualifications for death row defense lawyers in most states. Any lawyer can try a capital case. Why is that? The medical profession recognizes that no individual doctor can be proficient in every medical problem or procedure. Orthopedists do not perform brain surgery. Dermatologists don’t deliver babies. Those physicians who choose to specialize are required to prove their competency before a peer board of review.

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