[Mb-hair] NYTimes.com Article: An Inexplicable Vote for Death

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An Inexplicable Vote for Death

October 9, 2004
 


 

Paul Gregory House was convicted of murdering a neighbor in
1985, before the era of DNA typing. The Tennessee jury that
found him guilty was told that the semen found on the body
of the neighbor, Carolyn Muncey, matched his blood type.
The jury, citing the fact that Mrs. Muncey had been raped,
said Mr. House should be sentenced to death. 

It's hard to believe that the jurors would have come to
that conclusion if they had known that the semen's DNA
matched that of Mrs. Muncey's husband, Hubert, not the
defendant. A 15-judge United States Court of Appeals panel
in Cincinnati that heard a request to reopen the case knew
that. Yet the judges recently voted, 8 to 7, that Mr. House
should neither be freed nor given a new trial. They were
not swayed by six witnesses implicating Mr. Muncey. Two
said Mr. Muncey had told them he had killed his wife while
he was drunk. 

That eight judges would condemn a man to be executed under
these circumstances is shocking. What's worse is that the
judges divided along partisan lines. The eight judges
appointed by a Republican president voted to keep Mr. House
on the road to the death penalty. Six judges appointed by a
Democrat wanted to free him, and the seventh called for a
new trial. It's hard to dismiss the thought that the
Republicans voted as a show of support for capital
punishment, not on the merits of the case. 

For Mr. House, the next stop is the Supreme Court. For the
rest of us, his case should serve as a reminder that when
we elect a president, we are also deciding the makeup of
our courts. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/09/opinion/9sat2.html?ex=1098341440&ei=1&en=e2c3ef0a4cd34d75


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