Death Row Inmate Retried, Acquitted

[Judi Lynn]

Last updated: February 18. 2004 12:55PM
Death Row Inmate Retried, Acquitted

By ESTES THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer

A prisoner taken off death row after a judge ruled prosecutors withheld key evidence in his murder trial was found not guilty Wednesday in a second trial.

Alan Gell, 28, has spent a decade behind bars in the 1995 murder of retired truck driver Allen Ray Jenkins, who was shot twice during a robbery. After the verdict, Gell hugged his attorneys and his mother wept in the courtroom.

He was immediately allowed to go free. When asked what he was going to do, he responded: "Go home, where I should have been years ago."

The case has led to calls for North Carolina to impose a moratorium on executions, and the verdict likely will fuel the debate.
(snip/...)

http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040218/APA/402180809&cachetime=5

[MidwestTransplant]

1. Damn activist Judges

[lazarus]

2. did you see this?

From the end of the article:

Gell's acquittal came less than two weeks after Darryl Hunt was cleared of all charges in a 1984 rape and killing in Winston-Salem. Hunt, who was found guilty of the murder of Deborah Sykes at two jury trials, was freed in December after a DNA test pinned the crime on another man, who has since confessed.

On that same day, Feb. 6, the state Supreme Court overturned two death sentences, ordering a new trial in one case and a new sentencing in the other.

[Mandate My Ass]

3. I did see that

So what're the chances of finding the real killers and bringing them to justice after all these years?

We just had a case here in PA where a man was exonerated by DNA testing 22 years after his conviction. The prosecutors still didn't want to admit what a huge mistake had been made and tried to fight his release. What a farce.

[Say_What]

4. Makes one wonder how many innocent people have been executed

and why the US so kill-happy... :puke:

[lazarus]

5. I've said it before

The death penalty is wrong. It's barbaric, it's sickening, and it's just plain wrong.

If for no other reason than because there's no way to make restitution when a mistake is made. This man has been released. We can't give him those years back, but he's ALIVE. Had he been executed, we'd have never known he was innocent, and the real killer would have gotten away.

That's a travesty.

I can't imagine anything more frustrating than being convicted of a crime I didn't commit. Kafka nailed it perfectly.

[Say_What]

6. 900th execution looms

Here's an AI report released today...

<clips>

On 11 February 2004, the White House spokesman accused those raising questions about President Bush's military service record during the Vietnam War of engaging in "gutter politics", asserting that "the American people deserve better". What the country needed, Scott McClellan added, was an "honest discussion" about leadership.

The subject of Vietnam will again come into view as the United States of America approaches another chilling milestone in its ugly history of judicial killing. Next week, the USA is set to carry out its 900th execution since this policy resumed in 1977. A former Vietnamese refugee is scheduled to become the 900th prisoner to be put to death, and a Vietnam War veteran is due to become the 901st a few hours later. While their cases show how the death penalty is part of a cycle of violence, they also illustrate the unfair nature of the capital justice system and why there is an urgent need for principled leadership on this issue.

Amnesty International believes that an honest assessment of the death penalty, free from the distorting effects of "tough on crime" politics, can only lead to the conclusion that this is a fundamentally flawed policy - cruel and brutalizing, prone to discriminatory and arbitrary application, and carrying the inescapable risk of irrevocable error.

More than 600 executions have occurred in the USA since 1995 alone. President Bush is a leader who is indelibly linked with this period of the death penalty - one in three of the execution warrants carried out between 1995 and 2000 crossed his desk as Texas governor. As such, Amnesty International believes that this President could, if he so chose, lead his country into a much-needed rethink on its increasingly isolated position on capital punishment.

<http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/usa/document.do?id=a5070c2157bcef1b80256e3d00688c34>

[indy thinker]

8. If I remember correctly

The only man whose execution was stayed by Gov Bush was Henry Lee Lucas

[happyslug]

13. And he was innocent of the Crime.

Now Lucas was NOT an innocent person (He was quilty of other Murders, he was a serial murder) but of the actual crime Lucas was sentence to death for, it was clear Lucas COULD NOT have commited that murder (Time sheets with Lucas's signature on the time sheets exists for the same date and time of the murder, time sheets filed out in Florida while the crime occurred in Texas).

Thus it was clear Lucas was in Florida when the murder occurred. That was the murder Lucas was sentenced to death for. Even with that evidence Bush wanted to execute Lucas until Bush was told it would look bad that Bush executed a man for a crime that man Could not have done AND THE GOVERNOR KNEW IT AT THE TIME OF SIGNING THE EXECUTION PAPERS.

[saigon68]

14. BUSH executed a retarded guy

Remember how he told his captors to "SAVE" the Pie until AFTER the "execution" --- because he'd be back to eat it later.

[Mandate My Ass]

15. Actually that happened under Clinton's watch

That and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 were my two biggest diappointments with President Clinton. :(

[Say_What]

19. So did Jeb, but the Texecutioner executed a man who

suffered from both mental illness and mental retardation.

<clips>

...In April 2000, the UN Commission on Human Rights urged all states that maintain the death penalty "not to impose it on a person suffering from any form of mental disorder; not to execute any such person."

U.S. constitutional law is in line with some of these international safeguards. The execution of the insane - someone who does not understand the reason for, or the reality of, his or her punishment - violates the U.S. Constitution (Ford v Wainwright, 1986).

Yet as recently as January 21, 2000, Larry Keith Robison, diagnosed with schizophrenia, was executed by the state of Texas. On June 22, 2000, Thomas Provenzano, who suffered from severe delusional episodes and believed he was Jesus Christ, was executed by the state of Florida. On August 16, 2000, John Satterwhite, who suffered from both mental illness and mental retardation, was executed by the state of Texas. Others with mental illness who have been executed in the U.S. in violation of international law include: Pernell Ford (Alabama); Bert Hunter (Missouri); and Juan Soria (Texas).

http://www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/mental_illness.html

[Say_What]

18. Bush: The Death Penalty Governor aka the Texecutioner

Strictly a political descision according to this BBC article. Lucas was a serial killer. Also, as the article points out, there was one reprieve--also strictly politics as usual.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/773945.stm

[Mechatanketra]

11. Executing the innocent: bingo.

All the arguments about the ostensible morality or justice (or lack thereof) about executing murderers is ultimately moot, because the real problem is that as long as we have the death penalty, we will at some point be executing the innocent.

Death penalty advocates may be right that imprisonment is insufficiently severe punishment for some crimes, that it doesn't 'balance the scales' enough -- but too bad. That kind of 'perfect justice' can only be wielded by perfect people, and we don't have any.

[benfranklin1776]

20. Agreed.

Nothing invented in the history of mankind has been perfect, why should one expect then that our justice system achieve perfection and only incarcerate or execute the guilty. The fact is that our justice system is grossly imperfect and the quality of justice one recieves is usually directly proportional to the amount of resources one possesses. Indeed 80 percent of all criminal defendants are represented by public defenders who do as good a job as they can under the circumstances, but the fact is that they are grossly limited by large caseload and inversely limited investigative resources from giving everyone the absolutely best representation possible, even in capital cases. I recall here in PA then Governor Ridge opposed an effort to fund training for capital defense lawyers because he didn't want the lawyers trained by the capital appeals division of the Philadelphia Public Defenders Office because they had too much success on appeal! http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20010425deathpenalty4.asp This is why life without parole is a much preferable alternative. If a mistake has occurred and the wrong person convicted, then it can be corrected. An execution can't be reversed on appeal. For those who are guilty effectively their life has been taken from them. They have no life beyond the confines of their cell and they are no further threat to society. The very real risk of execution of the innocent is avoided while society's interest in being protected and in punishing of the guilty is served. It is the best alternative.

[ConcernedCanuk]

7. Exactly why the death penalty is wrong, well, except for the fact

.
.
.

That to intentionally kill another human is just BASICALLY wrong.

I have never understood the rationale for executing prisoners, the old "eye for an eye" doesn't fly with me

and fiscal savings can't be justified . .

and lately, the number of overturned convictions on decade old DNA evidence is alarming enough to warrant suspension of all death penalties . .

and of course, there's the odd chance that witnesses will lie . . .

and so on . .

(sigh)

[peacetalksforall]

9. Eleventh Commandment - Throw Out the Death Penalty

There are some cultures and religions that are superior to Christianity, Christians being the dominant factor in law making in our country.

What happened to the old Catholic Church teachings?

[diamond14]

10. cheers for the CHEMISTS....making those bastards honest.....

DNA testing has certainly exposed a LOT of corruption in OUR legal system....the Chemists are the heros here.....the District Attorneys should be ashamed of themselves...


you may recall...DNA testing became extraordinarily popular after the blue dress.....yet still, many states will not pay for DNA or even allow DNA testing to exhonorate falsely-accused people in their prison systems....we still have a long way to go, but we're getting there.....

Virginia has one of the best systems....and has even matched old evidence to show patterns of killing and caught the killers so many years later....and also had to release people from prison who were falsely accused....but at least Virginia has put some money into it...enough to begin cleaning up old backlogs....


it's still pathetic that THOUSANDS of rape evidence kits are waiting to be tested for YEARS....so those criminals remain on the loose....

[Judi Lynn]

12. Update on Mr. Gell:Acquitted of murder, former N.C. inmate seeks investig

(snip)
Posted on Thu, Feb. 19, 2004





Acquitted of murder, former N.C. inmate seeks investigation

ESTES THOMPSON

Associated Press


LEWISTON, N.C. - Alan Gell walked out of the Bertie County Courthouse to freedom he hadn't known since 1995 when he was arrested for the murder of a retired truck driver he'd never met.

"I'm 29 and having to start life when the average 18-year-old does," he said Wednesday, after a jury that heard the evidence in Gell's retrial acquitted him of the shotgun slaying of Allen Ray Jenkins.

Gell has spent most of the past nine years on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh or in solitary confinement in the Bertie County Jail awaiting his trials.

"There ain't no way to get the time back," he said as he sat in his mother's living room, about 16 miles from the courthouse in Windsor and across the road from the blue and white mobile home where he lived and was arrested.
(snip/...)

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/7986413.htm

[SOS]

16. Anyone notice

that the pro-execution crowd, highly vocal on the recent Florida child murder case, are silent on this one?

[Mandate My Ass]

17. Yup. Stone cold silent

Especially the ones who promote expediting the appeals process. That way, embarrassing developments like finding out someone is actually innocent don't crop up to dampen their bloodlust.