Jurors follow judge in urging Morales clemency

[Judi Lynn]

(The date doesn't appear on this article, at KESQ News, Channel 3. The following article is dated)

Jurors follow judge in urging Morales clemency

SAN FRANCISCO Six of the jurors who voted to execute Michael Morales more than two decades ago now want Governor Schwarzenegger to spare him from execution.

In a clemency petition submitted by lawyers for Morales yesterday, the jurors say their decisions to vote for execution were based on fabricated testimony.

The statements from the jurors come a week after the judge in the case also urged Schwarzenegger to spare Morales from his execution scheduled for February 21st.

Like the six jurors, Judge Charles McGrath wrote to Schwarzenegger saying that he now doesn't believe the testimony of a jailhouse informant who testified in the case.
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http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=4471662&nav=9qrx

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LAWYERS FOR MORALES RENEW CLEMENCY BID
02/08/06 1:45 PST
By Bay City News Servce

Lawyers for an inmate scheduled to be executed on Feb. 21 told Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Tuesday that six of the original jurors as well as the trial judge now support changing the sentence to life in prison without parole.

Attorneys Kenneth Starr and David Senior included statements from the jurors in the 1983 trial in a renewed plea for clemency for Michael Morales.

The attorneys wrote that the judge and six jurors "respectfully, but emphatically, urge that you exercise your lawful authority to spare Michael Morales from execution."

Morales, 46, of Stockton, was given the death penalty for murdering 17-year-old Terri Winchell of Lodi in 1981. He was also convicted of raping her.

The attorneys have asked the governor for clemency on the grounds that Morales is "deeply repentant" and that a jailhouse informant who was a key prosecution witness allegedly lied.
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http://www.cbs5.com/localwire/localfsnews/bcn/2006/02/08/n/HeadlineNews/MORALES-CLEMENCY/resources_bcn_html

[Judi Lynn]

1. A Death Sentence Built on a Lie -- Governor Must Grant Morales Clemency

A Death Sentence Built on a Lie -- Governor Must Grant Morales Clemency
Commentary, Michael Kroll,
New America Media, Feb 08, 2006

Editor's Note:If Michael Morales is executed on Feb. 21, it will be over the objections of the very judge who sentenced him in the first place. The very foundation of the jury's death sentence, writes New America Media contributor Michael Kroll, has since collapsed. Kroll works with incarcerated juveniles who write for The Beat Within. He is the founding director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

SAN FRANCISCO--If the federal court does not stay Michael Morales' execution, now scheduled for Feb. 21, on grounds that lethal injection is cruel and unusual, then Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be faced with his third life-or-death decision in as many months: Should he commute a death sentence into a sentence of life in prison without parole? In December, the governor rejected clemency for Stanley Williams, whose plea rested on his redemption based on the good works he had done while on death row. In January, Clarence Allen was put to death after the governor rejected his plea for mercy based on his advanced age and poor health. Both men insisted on their innocence despite the fact that both had been convicted of multiple murders.

So why should Gov. Schwarzenegger grant clemency in this case, when guilt is not contested and neither redemption nor infirmity is the foundation for the request? The answer is that in the case of Michael Morales, the very foundation of the jury's death sentence has collapsed, stripping the process of the reliability that such a sentence demands.

Even the judge who imposed the sentence of death against Morales, having learned that testimony the jury relied on to impose the death penalty was a lie, has now renounced the jury's verdict and his own part in a flawed process. In a letter dated Jan. 25, 2006, to Gov. Schwarzenegger, Judge Charles McGrath (appointed by Ronald Reagan) wrote that if he had known at the time what was later discovered by the Attorney General -- that the witness was lying -- he "would not have let the death sentence stand... Under such circumstances, executing Mr. Morales...would constitute a grievous and freakish injustice."
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http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=1f671aa202bd3b54698c9091beca8014

[Kagemusha]

2. So um if the testimony was a lie why haven't the courts overturned this?

And how can this man be deeply repentant for a crime he didn't commit? Just wondering since "Tookie" proclaimed his innocence throughout, however inconsistent with an appeal for *clemency* that was. (More consistent with a campaign for a pardon. And perhaps Morales is more deserving of a pardon anyway, if he's innocent.)

Morales seems to be claiming innocence as well so I don't understand why the HELL the lawyers are claiming this man is deeply repentant.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Why the snotty "um?"

More from the second article you find offensive:

Starr, a former independent counsel who is now dean of Pepperdine University Law School, and Senior also strongly disputed the prosecutors' claim that a sworn statement from another witness that was included in the Jan. 27 clemency petition was fabricated.

The attorneys said a defense investigator interviewed the witness, Morales' former housemate Patricia Felix, twice before she signed a declaration on Jan. 25 repudiating some of her trial testimony.

On Feb. 2, Felix gave prosecution investigators a conflicting sworn statement in which she said she had not signed the earlier statement and never talked to anyone representing Morales.

Starr and Senior wrote, "The prosecuting officials persist in their shameful efforts to coerce false testimony and suppress favorable evidence."
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I'd say that if a right-wing asshole like Kenneth Starr says there's something wrong with this case, that you can't just vaporize the man without making a big mistake, there's something wrong. Right-wing assholes simply adore capital punishment, especially for "minority" citizens.

[Kagemusha]

4. If there's that kind of problem, don't just not fry him, set him free!

Don't just say he's guilty but he's not guilty enough to fry him, geez. That's no way to deal with this. He's guilty or he's not, and if he's not, he shouldn't be in prison in the first place.