Trail Shards

Missouri Dead Row inmate gains lifetime to prove innocence

2011-01-10T18:12:00.000-08:00

Two days before his scheduled death, a Missouri inmate who insists he is innocent of murder saw his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment Monday, Jan. 10, by Gov. Jay Nixon.

Nixon gave no explanation for his decision, but Rick Clay's lawyers had told the Missouri Supreme Court that a federal court had found misconduct by the prosecutor in the original murder trial. The federal court had ordered a new trial in state court, which did not occur because a federal appeals court reversed the order.

Just four days before Nixon acted, the state high court had rejected Clay's request for a stay of execution and scheduled his death for Jan. 12.

According to the Associated Press:

Clay was convicted of killing Randy Martindale of New Madrid in 1994 but has maintained his innocence. Nixon's statement did not explain why the governor decided to commute the sentence, and in fact said that after an exhaustive review, the governor is "convinced of Richard Clay's involvement in the senseless murder of Randy Martindale" and finds "the evidence clearly supports the jury's verdict of murder in the first degree."

Nixon spokesman Scott Holste said the written statement "will be the extent of comment from the governor or his office."

Nixon's cautious maneuver partly reflects his history in the case: as state attorney general in the 1990s, Nixon supervised the prosecutor who obtained the death penalty against Rick Clay and whose misconduct has repeatedly been at issue in multiple Missouri criminal cases.

While seeking a stay from the state Supreme Court, Clay's lawyers had urged court to pay them sufficiently for research into the conduct of former prosecutor Kenny Hulshof. They listed three separate cases in which courts, including the state Supreme Court, had found problems with Hulshof's work.

The attorneys wrote:

Although many of the allegations of misconduct against Hulshof have been litigated in the federal courts, counsel have a good faith belief based on initial inquiries that additional investigation may produce more evidence supporting the misconduct allegations. Counsel have no funding to pursue this investigation on their own, or to take the more efficient, effective, and economical route of having a trained investigator do the required work.

Clay's lawyers also noted the recent case of Dale Helmig, who spent 13 years in prison following a conviction based on Hulshof's work, only to released from prison in December after Missouri courts ruled that Helmig's conviction was wrongly obtained. Helmig may face retrial in the murder case, and he is out on bail.

Clay is represented by Elizabeth Carlyle of Columbus, Mo., and Jennifer Herdon of Florissant, Mo., who argued that they believe in Clay's innocence but are hampered in representing him because they can't maintain a livelihood working exclusively on his complicated case without court funding.

To execute a potentially innocent man, who possesses many additional characteristics that are ideal for clemency considerations, before counsel have had a chance to present all relevant information to the courts, the parole board, and the Governor, would offend even the strongest arguments in support of the death penalty.

Missouri Supreme Court selects special master to investigate Reggie Clemons' bid for new trial

2009-06-30T23:10:00.000-07:00

A Jackson County judge will help the Missouri Supreme Court decide whether Reggie Clemons gets off death row, possibly for a new trial to determine whether he's actually innocent of crimes for which he faces two death sentences.

Clemons and another man were violently beaten by police to extract incriminating statements regarding the deaths of two sisters who were pushed from Saint Louis' Chain of Rocks Bridge into the Mississippi River in 1991, according to a petition for writ of habeas corpus filed June 12.

As "special master," Judge Michael Manners will hold hearings to investigate Clemons' habeas corpus claims, the state Supreme Court announced Tuesday.

Clemons was scheduled to die June 17, but the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the execution on June 5 while that court considers Clemons' separate appeal challenging the legality of Missouri's lethal injection procedures.

In Clemons' 1993 trial, prosecutors presented no evidence that Clemons planned or participated in murder, Clemons' habeas corpus petition says.

Instead, the prosecution presented statements from Clemons and testimony from another man, who were both beaten by police during the investigation of the Chain of Rocks deaths.

That other man, Thomas Cummins, has since received a $150,000 settlement from the city of Saint Louis for his claims that he was beaten by the investigators who obtained false statements from him, the petition said.

"The complaints of police brutality and fabrication raised independently by Cummins and Clemons involve the exact same police officers, the exact same investigation, virtually identical forms of beating, and took place only 48 hours apart from each other," the petition said.

The hours of police beatings he endured did not persuade Clemons to confess to the murders, but his coerced statements "implicated him in crimes preceding the murders," the petition says. Clemons, 19 at the time of the murders had no prior criminal convictions.

"Despite evidence that Clemons was beaten by police and that the statement was coerced, the statement was allowed into evidence at Clemons' trial," the petition says.

Evidence of the beating was apparent even to the first judge who encountered Clemons. "At Clemons' arraignment on April 9, 1991, right after his violent interrogation, the presiding judge noted Clemons' injuries and ordered that Clemons be examined at the emergency room at the Regional Hospital," the petition says.

Without Clemons' statement, the prosecution of Clemons would have depended on testimony:

By Cummins, "who could not attribute any specific wrongdoing to Clemons and who could not even say that Clemons was present on the concrete platform from which the Kerry sisters were pushed," the petition says.
By another man who said he could not see the platform at the time of the murders and did not see who pushed the girls.

Prosecutors asserted during Clemons' trial that a co-defendant, Antonio Richardson (who received a separate trial), committed the murders, and that Clemons was an "accomplice," the petition says.

Convicted, Richardson received a death penalty that has since been reduced to a life sentence by the state Supreme Court; that obligates the court to at least reduce Clemons' death penalty to life in prison, the petition says.

Answering a college friend's question about the election's outcome

2008-11-06T20:53:00.000-08:00

Hey [overlander],
What do we think now???? I must say I am a little less "enthusiastic" than many others I have heard about, but every once in a while, when, say John Lewis begins to talk about how far we have come, I can't help but start shedding a tear!!!

Here's my reply:

I wanted Barack to win because I think he holds real clear values of a sort that I want the president to hold. He seems over endowed with leadership skills: sharp tactical wits, persuasive communication skills, keen character judgment, calm situation appraisal abilities, strong sympathetic and empathetic impulses, unyielding determination, and so forth.

What I'm saying is, I didn't vote for Barack because he's black (or "half black" as a usually likable co-worker said right before I said, "Oh, you mean kind of like Thomas Jefferson's slaves?"). If Harold Ford of Tennessee had been the candidate, I'd have been very unhappy with the Democrats because I haven't heard much from him that I agree with.

I like the things Obama said, and of course I like the way he said them. I took a little online test and found out that I agreed with about 80 percent of his positions. I bet that will shrink over time.

Oddly, I think I was more susceptible to Election Night euphoria because there was a slight element of surprise to witness the transcendent happiness and pride so many Americans felt in breaking through this racial barrier.

Of course, you know that I was outraged by the race-based attacks on Obama from Hillary, ABC, Fox, CNN and McCain's campaign, but that's not the same thing as rooting for Obama because he's black. (On the other hand, I was dubious about commentators who said McCain's "socialist" criticism was race based because I recall that Joseph McCarthy used that insult very successfully against white people, and I had expected that attack to come much sooner than it did, and I'd expected that attack to come primarily from Fox and Joe Scarborough and George Will and all the serious pundits instead of from the Republican candidate and his running mate.)

And I was very impressed by Obama's ability to unify people of different races, but that's also not the same thing as rooting for him because he's black, although it's probably pretty close.

Beyond race, though, Barack was a brilliant strategist in this campaign. Beating Hillary in the caucuses allowed him to build a multi state organization that came in handy this week. He yielded absolutely nothing harmful in negotiations over Florida's and Michigan's decertified primaries, demonstrating the sort of toughness any president needs. His campaign's extraordinary calm throughout the race was amazing to watch. His ability to bait opponents into overcommitting to a line of spurious criticism before he fully and devastatingly debunked it revealed incredible tactical savvy, a real sense for how to influence public opinion, a crucial leadership skill. In decision after decision, he smoothly chose the best options. He seems very skilled at personnel choices. Biden seemed like a goofy choice, but Biden performed perfectly in the debate, destroying Sarah Palin without leaving a drop of blood anywhere.

Honestly, I wonder what would have resulted if, during the financial meltdown, McCain had had millionaire executive Mitt Romney as his running mate. I suspect the Republicans could have won the "experience" argument then, although the Republican base might have so thoroughly revolted at the notion of a "liberal" Mormon that the outcome would have been unchanged. And of course, Mormons have their own burden of bigotry to overcome, even though it's hard to feel sorry for them as victims of bigotry when they go around believing Native Americans are actually a lost tribe of Jews.

But seriously, each time I hear or read Barack's words about Ann Nixon Cooper, I don't just fight back tears, I nearly choke on sobs. So clearly, Obama's race means something to me.

Take it away, Barack:

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the colour of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.