Try and Try Again
It turns out the same district attorney who prosecuted Paul House for murder 23 years ago plans to retry him, despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death row inmate is likely innocent.
Earlier this year, a federal judge ordered the state to either release House or try him again for the murder of Carolyn Muncey. Given that post-conviction DNA evidence proved he didn’t rape the victim after all—essentially gutting the prosecution’s case—a retrial seemed unlikely, not to mention an utter waste of time and money.
But not so fast, says Paul Phillips, district attorney general for Tennessee’s 8th judicial district. Not only does Phillips foresee a retrial within 180 days, he plans once again to handle the prosecution personally.
In the meantime, the inmate—who suffers from advanced multiple sclerosis—will be released to the care of his mother. The state attorney general unsuccessfully fought his release, and at this point does not plan to appeal the matter further.
So what does the House camp think of all this?
“Feel free to try him again. We don’t care, because the next jury that hears this case is going to acquit him,” Stephen Kissinger, the inmate’s federal public defender, told the Scene last month.
Comments
Well the system is full of it all over the nation. My son was convicted of murder. No DNA, no gun, no nothing, just the word of a sister of another accused of doing the deed. And now she thinks she made a mistake. What a crock for the innocent people and their families to go the system to see the truth and let go; and the whole time the real person is living large.
They want to try him again. We have new evidence to substantiate his innocence as we told his lawyer just after the first trial, but we are coming up short with our defense fund.
thats why many of our convicted persons are in prison so long. Funds get short and the system's public defenders can not be unbiased in representing our sons and daughters. To fast to convict and too slow to vindicate.
Posted 05/07/2008 at 05:19:02 PMThe system just will not admit wrongful thinking or injustice.
Posted 05/07/2008 at 05:31:25 PM"Given that post-conviction DNA evidence proved he didn’t rape the victim after all..."
Might he not hve killed her?
His past record was not exactly sterling.
Posted 05/07/2008 at 05:32:47 PMJohn:
In the original prosecution, the whole theory of the case revolved around rape as the motive for the murder. Without the rape, the prosecution has no motive. Moreover, in order to have committed this crime, House would have had to run through more than 2 miles of densely wooded terrain in a very short amount of time, in order to get back home by the time that he was known to have been at home. It would have been very difficult even for an athlete in good condition to have managed, and House was no athlete. But the blood evidence overruled this logistical problem in the jury's mind, and the jury was unaware of the botching (or tampering) of the blood evidence. Finally, there is the matter of Carolyn Muncey's husband. The DNA evidence they found on her turned out to come from him. A year or two after House was convicted, a couple of women came forward saying that one night, when Mr. Muncey was drunk, he told them that he had been the one who killed his wife.
Lack of physical evidence, lack of credible motive and difficulty of opportunity (posed by the improbability that House could sprint back home in the dark), combined with a now plausible alternative theory to the case (the husband did it) are what led the Supreme Court to say that no jury could hear all the available evidence today and conclude that House was guilty.
Posted 05/07/2008 at 06:38:00 PM