Hello, I Work at the Tennessee Attorney General's Office
How exactly do you sleep at night if you work at the Tennessee attorney general's office, which has worked to keep Paul House on death row for two whole years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he was “likely innocent”? Can someone explain that to me?
In 1985, House was convicted of killing Carolyn Muncey in rural Union County based on a very simple theory: He raped her and then bludgeoned her to death so she couldn't be identified. The state had forensic proof: The victim's blood splattered on the defendant's jeans.
But as the years rolled by, the state's case unraveled. First, DNA evidence showed that the semen found on the victim's clothes did not belong to House. Second, the blood found on House's jeans actually spilled onto them somewhere in the evidence room after the autopsy. Finally, the victim's husband, a gravedigger named William Muncey allegedly confessed to the murder and admitted to 60 Minutes' Ed Bradley that he hit her “when she called me a bad name or something.”
But none of that was enough for former Tennessee Attorney General Paul Summers, the well-coiffed conservative whose reaction to the exonerating DNA evidence was characteristically shallow: Just because he didn't rape her doesn't mean he didn't kill her.
Really? Is that really your final answer? Unreal.
Under Summers' successor, Bob Cooper, the AG's office has mobilized against House, seemingly conspiring to keep an ailing man in prison even though there is not a single lawyer over there who can possibly come up with a theory for how and why he killed Muncey. Earlier this year, the AG's office appealed a federal judge's perfectly logical ruling to release or retry House—I mean, how in the world can you not give House a new trial after new evidence punched comet-size holes in the case that convicted him? Cooper has never deigned to explain himself. That's a good thing, though, because what exactly would he say? We don't want to admit a mistake so we're going to try to keep a 'likely innocent' man behind bars?
So yes, today is a good day for Paul House and for anyone else who thinks that if we're going to throw someone on death row, we should probably know they're guilty. But I would like to return to my original question: How exactly do you sleep at night if you work at the Tennessee attorney general's office?
Comments
Matt,
Good to see that you are at it again, holding Tennessee's feet to the fire of justice.
Though every case is different, a version of the Alice in Wonderland-type saga that is playing out in the Paul House case is playing out in other Tennessee death penalty cases.
The Attorney General's Office categorically opposes all attempts to correct the failures of justice in these death penalty cases. Since so many of these capital trials are unfair and render unreliable results, it is the rule, rather than the exception, that post-trial examination of these cases by the courts is warranted.
As an attorney for one death row inmate who was sentenced to death 21 years ago, we have been litigating for the past eight years in an attempt to get a ruling from the courts that the case the prosecutor presented to the judge and jury at the inmate's trial was false. Over the years, the Attorney General has claimed, not that the trial was fair, but that the courts should not rule on the inmate's claim of the trial's unfairness. So far, they have been successful.
In another case, my client is going back for a retrial 27 years after his death sentence was imposed in 1981. It took the courts that long to correct the failure of justice in that case, laregly because of resistance to the court's ruling by the Attorney General.
In yet another case, I am representing an inmate who was sentenced to death 25 years ago in 1983 and whose case has been pending in one court for the past 17 years, since 1991. The court awarded him a new sentencing hearing 8 years ago based on the failure of his attorney to represent him in the sentencing part of the trial. Since then, the Attorney General has successfully resisted our attempts to get the court to rule on the validity of his conviction.
People wonder why these death penalty cases go on forever. The answer is that the system is broken and the state has been unwilling to fix it.
Bill Redick
Posted 07/02/2008 at 04:38:19 PMA source of never-ending amazement and fascination to me is the degree to which Tennessee Government officials lustily cling to imbecilic positions. Fortunately, they've never had much opportunity to inflict their asinine officiousness on me—that is, beyond compelling me, white haired and toothless, to display proof that I'm over twenty-one in order to purchase a bottle of beer. The Paul House case is our beer sales rule evolved to full official maturity.
Tennessee's official tail wageth the great volunteer dog, methinks. And beneath the tail, is nastiness. Stinking. And now, a new saying might even be coined in our lovely state: 'The right way, the wrong way, and the Tennessee way.'
Shame, shame on you, official servants. And particularly shameful is the persistence of your pernicious official stupidity. An “Alice in Wonderland saga” describes eloquently, even exquisitely, the sad story of Paul House. Damn trouble is, Alice was just a story and Paul House is real. His plight is signal proof of the perniciousness. And sadly, there but for the grace of God, go we all.
Posted 07/02/2008 at 08:12:50 PM