People often ask Pulitzer-winning journalist turned author, Raymond Bonner, if his new book, Anatomy of Injustice: a Murder Case Gone Wrong—which took nearly twelve years to reserch and write—is a labor of love.

“Actually, it’s a labor of outrage,” Bonner said, when he spoke on Sunday afternoon at a LA book party given in his honor.

Outrage is only one of the array of emotions evoked by Bonner’s riveting account of the case of Edward Lee Elmore, a 23-year old, dirt-poor black handyman with an IQ of 61, who was arrested, tried and convicted of killing a 76-year-old white woman, a murder he almost certainly did not commit, then sentenced to death for the crime.

Every form of injustice seems to be present in the true crime tale of Ellmore’s legal railroading: prosecutorial misconduct, racial prejudice, planted and withheld evidence, staggeringly callous and disinterested defense attorneys, a lying jailhouse snitch coached by the prosecution (but who years later suffered an attack of conscience and confessed to his perjury)… and more.

In choosing this particular case to deconstruct, Bonner got a cast of great characters that give the story near-novelistic richness. Most prominent among them is a remarkable heroine in the form of Diana Holt, a law student working as an intern for the South Carolina Death Penalty Resource Center (who had her own traumatic personal story) who took up Elmore’s cause after several failed appeals by other attorneys, and whose obsession with seeing justice done for Elmore never wavered after she passed the bar and became a crack appeals lawyer. It was Holt’s dogged work and determination that eventually got him off death row.

Yet still he remained in prison That took a withering ruling by the 4th circuit court of appeals vacating his conviction, along with the publication of Bonner’s book to finally persuade a prosecutor to cut a deal that allowed Elmore his freedom earlier this month, after 30 years behind bars, most of those years spent fighting the threat of execution.

As the reader follows Elmore’s almost unbearably painful journey through the justice system, Bonner gives us an informative and deeply disturbing look at the issue of capital punishment in general by taking us deep into the workings of the legal machinery to see all the ways matters can and do go awry, then showing us how nearly impossible it is to set things right, once an injustice has been rendered—even in the face of factual innocence.

The event for Bonner was hosted by Laurie Becklund, and her husband Henry Weinstein, both former reporters for the LA Times. (Beckland is now an author and Internet publisher, while Weinstein, who is also an attorney, is teaching at UC Irvine’s law school. )

Guests who had come to meet Bonner included such criminal justice types as Judge Arthur Alarcon, formerly of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the co-author of last year’s study looking at the yearly cost of the death penalty in California, and .

There were also two exonerees at the book party, Thomas Goldstein, who served 24 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, and Gloria Killian, who served 17 years before her conviction was set aside, and who now runs, The Action Committee for Women in Prison and who has her own book coming out soon.

Other guests included LA Times columnist and editor at large, Jim Newton, and his wife, LA Times legal counsel, Karlene Goller, along with Geneva Overholser, the director of USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism, and actor Mike Farrell who is also president of Death Penalty Focus and his wife, actress, Shelley Fabares.

As luck would have it, on Sunday Bonner’s book was reviewed glowingly on the front page of the New York Times Book Review. Here’s a clip:

This much we know to be true: On a cold winter weekend in early 1982, somebody murdered 76-year-old Dorothy Edwards. Apparently she knew the perpetrator, since she let him into her handsome home on a quiet side street in Greenwood, S.C. The crime itself was horrific. She was beaten with a blunt object, stabbed repeatedly — one ear was almost severed — probably sexually assaulted; her body was stuffed into a bedroom closet, where it was discovered on Monday afternoon, Jan. 18. The next day the police arrested Edward Lee Elmore, a 23-year-old handyman whom Edwards had recently hired to do a few odd jobs around the house. He was formally charged with first-degree murder on Jan. 21, tried in the second week of April, found guilty by a jury that deliberated for two and a half hours, and sentenced to death.

We know this as well: As of this writing, there have been 1,283 executions in the United States since 1976, when the Supreme Court ended its four-year moratorium on capital punishment. There have also been 134 death row exonerations, almost half of them since 1999. In his mesmerizing new book, “Anatomy of Injustice,” Raymond Bonner, a onetime prosecutor and a former investigative reporter and foreign correspondent at The New York Times, makes a persuasive case that Elmore ought to be added to the list of the innocent. Instead, he spent nearly 30 years in the South Carolina state penitentiary, most of that time on death row, trapped by a complex of forces that too often warp the legal process, even when a man’s life hangs in the balance.

I raced through Bonner’s un-put-down-able book about Elmore in less than 48-hours, slowed down only by such pesky needs as working, eating, running with the dog, and sleep.

LATER THIS WEEK I’LL HAVE NEWS ABOUT OTHER MUST-READ BOOK, JUMPED IN BY JORJA LEAP.

Jumped In is part memoir, part an academic researcher’s journey that takes us deep into the causes of—and solutions to—gang violence, with with highly-regarded-researcher and violence reduction expert Leap as our guide.

In the meantime, you can hear Jorja discuss her important new analysis of Los Angeles gang life on Tuesday night 7:30 at Skylight books.

See you there!

PS: All Leap’s proceeds from the book will be donated to Homeboy Industries.

Skylight Books
7:30 pm
1818 N Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, California 90027

PPS: Here’s Leap talking with Larry Mantle at KPPC.

A few days ago, human rights lawyer Bryan Stevensen gave a talk at TED’s yearly spring event in Long Beach.

For those of you not terribly familiar, TED is a nonprofit devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.

Since then it’s expanded to be an international brand for brilliance, innovation and inspiration.

Last week TEDs spring talks took place and Stevensen—who is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization that litigates on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders and others whose trials are marked by racism and misconduct—was one of the much-ballyhooed speakers.

At the end of the his 24-minute talk, Stevensen received what was reportedly one of the longest and loudest ovations from the audience in TEDs history.

And it wasn’t just that they stood and clapped and clapped and clapped. They wouldn’t sit down.

One of the cases that Stevenson’s group, the Equal Justice initiative, is presently representing is that of Anthony Ray Hinton, who has been on death row in Alabama for more than 25 years.

It seems the whole case against Hinton rests on four bullets. No one saw Hinton at the crime scenes, there’s no other evidence linking him, and there is compelling reason to believe he was at work at the time the shootings took place.

The state said the bullets, recovered at the two crime scenes, matched the gun that was recovered at Hinton’s mother’s house. During the appeal, three different forensic experts—including the FBI’s main expert on firearms markings—said that the bullets did NOT come from Hinton’s gun….

Anyway, there’s more on the story plus links to multiple newspaper articles on the case here.

ANOTHER CASE OF INNOCENCE DISREGARDED WITH EDWARD LEE ELMORE…

The case of Edward Lee Elmore, which was hideously mishandled by police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and the judiciary, is documented with riveting precision in Pulitzer Prize–winner Raymond Bonner’s brand new book, Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong.

Then less than a month after Bonner’s book was published Elmore was released from prison but, as Bonner writes in this NY times op ed, the victory was bittersweet. Here’s how his essay opens:

EDWARD LEE ELMORE turned 53 in January. For more than half his life, the soft-spoken African-American who doesn’t understand the concept of north, south, east and west, or of summer, fall, winter and spring, was in a South Carolina prison, most of it on death row.

On Friday, Mr. Elmore walked out of the courthouse in Greenwood, S.C., a free man, as part of an agreement with the state whereby he denied any involvement in the crime but pleaded guilty in exchange for his freedom. This was his 11,000th day in jail.

Mr. Elmore was convicted in 1982 for the sexual assault and murder of an elderly white widow in Greenwood. His trial lasted only eight days, including two spent picking the jury. The state concealed evidence that strongly pointed to Mr. Elmore’s innocence and introduced damning evidence that appears to have been planted by the police. For three decades lawyers for Mr. Elmore, who were convinced of his innocence, sought to get him a fair trial.

Headlines and news stories about men being released from death row based on DNA testing suggest that this happens often. But it doesn’t. Once a person has been convicted, even on unimaginably shaky grounds, an almost inexorable process — one that can end in execution — is set in motion. On appeal, gone is the presumption of innocence; the presumption is that the defendant had a fair trial. Not even overwhelming evidence that the defendant is innocent is necessarily enough to get a new trial. “Due process does not require that every conceivable step be taken, at whatever cost, to eliminate the possibility of convicting an innocent person,” Justice Byron R. White wrote for the majority in a 1977 case, Patterson v. New York.

In other words, innocence is not enough….

RACIAL DISCREPANCIES FOUND IN SCHOOL DISCIPLINE

According to new data from the Department of Education, black students are far more likely to be disciplined harshly in public schools. Tuesday’s New York Times has the story. Here’s how it opens.

Although black students made up only 18 percent of those enrolled in the schools sampled, they accounted for 35 percent of those suspended once, 46 percent of those suspended more than once and 39 percent of all expulsions, according to the Civil Rights Data Collection’s 2009-10 statistics from 72,000 schools in 7,000 districts, serving about 85 percent of the nation’s students. The data covered students from kindergarten age through high school.

One in five black boys and more than one in 10 black girls received an out-of-school suspension. Over all, black students were three and a half times as likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers. …

During his 8 years in office, former Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti had no problem telling his prosecutors to push hard to get death sentences for those he thought deserved it. Now Garcetti is one of those leading the charge for a ballot proposition to replace the state’s capital punishment statute with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

The Ventura Star has story on the issue that is a must read for anyone who wishes to have an opinion—for or against—the death penalty in the state of California.

Here’s a clip:

…..It takes five years just to appoint an attorney to handle a condemned murderer’s automatic appeal to the state Supreme Court, and typically five more years for the court to decide his case. The state habeas corpus proceedings take another two years. Then constitutional issues are raised in federal courts, where it typically takes 10 years for those cases to make their way through to the court of appeal — where relief is granted nearly 70 percent of the time, resulting in either new trials or new penalty proceedings.

Since the death penalty was reinstated in California in 1978, judgments of death have been rendered 812 times. The resolution of those cases to date: 718 inmates are incarcerated on San Quentin’s death row, 55 condemned inmates have died of natural causes, 19 have committed suicide, six died from other causes, one was executed in Missouri for a separate crime. And California has carried out just 13 executions.

As of 2008, there were 30 people who had been on death row for more than 25 years.

The cumulative cost for all this, above what taxpayers would have borne had the ultimate penalty been a life sentence without possibility of parole, is estimated at $4 billion. Just this year the cost of having the death penalty on the books is estimated at from $120 million to $184 million.

The record leads to one blunt conclusion, expressed by the authors of an exhaustive study published earlier this year in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review: “California has the most expensive and least effective death penalty law in the nation.”

That reality has been enough to make a convert of Garcetti, who has joined with other past participants in carrying out the death penalty such as former San Quentin warden Jeanne Woodford and Don Heller, the attorney who wrote the state’s death penalty law, to say the system just doesn’t work — not for taxpayers and not for public safety.

“You have people involved in the process who have reached the same conclusion,” he said. “It’s ineffective, and we can’t afford it.”

This death penalty case about returned mail and multiple oversights on the part of lackadaisical court clerks and ball-dropping lawyers seemed to get a positive hearing from everyone but Scalia who reportedly was the only obvious contra.

The AP’s Mark Sherman has the story.

Here’s how it opens:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The tale of returned mail and a missed deadline might seem comical if it did not involve a man trying to stave off execution. Supreme Court justices had harsh words Tuesday for lawyers who abandon their clients and a state legal system that does not seem overly concerned.

At the end of a lively hour of arguments, it appeared the court would order a new hearing for Alabama death row inmate Cory Maples, who had lost the chance to appeal his death sentence because of a mailroom mix-up at the New York law firm Sullivan and Cromwell and the diffidence of a local court clerk.

Two Sullivan and Cromwell lawyers had been pressing Maples’ claim that his earlier legal representation was so bad that it violated the Constitution – until they both left the firm without telling him or the Alabama courts.

Deadlines usually matter a lot at the Supreme Court, where a few years back a defendant who was late to file an appeal because the judge gave his lawyer the wrong date still lost his case. Another principle the court often holds dear is that it’s tough luck for defendants whose lawyers make mistakes.

But Tuesday’s case, perhaps because it involves the death penalty, was the rare instance when the court seemed prepared to grant some leeway on both counts.

Justice Samuel Alito is a former federal prosecutor who often votes for the government in criminal cases. But he said he did not understand why Alabama fought so hard to deny Maples the right to appeal when the deadline passed “though no fault of his own, through a series of very unusual and unfortunate circumstances.”

FYI: Maples isn’t arguing innocence at this point, only basic fairness in being allowed an appeal. Nice to see the Supremes responding.

The NY Times has this editorial on the case.

FEDS: NO GUNS OR AMMO FOR MED MARIJUANA USERS…..MONTANA: OH, REALLY? SEZ YOU!

Oh, how, I love the folks in my other home state.

This is by Charles Johnson from the Missoulian. A clip to get you started.

Attorney General Steve Bullock voiced his objection Monday to the U.S. Justice Department over its recent memo banning the sale of guns or ammunition to licensed medical marijuana users and urged the agency not to prosecute anyone for now.

Bullock wrote U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder about the Sept. 21 memo from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to licensed gun dealers. The memo said it is illegal for medical marijuana cardholders to buy guns and ammunition, and illegal for dealers to sell these products to them.

The letter from Bullock followed criticism of the policy last week from all three members of Montana’s congressional delegation, Sens. Jon Tester and Max Baucus, and Rep. Denny Rehberg. A firearms advocacy group and a medical marijuana group had earlier blasted the memo.

Bullock told Holder said he’s willing to work with the U.S. Justice Department staff “on exploring a reasonable solution to the problems created by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives letter.”

The goal, he said, is to find an approach that works for the Montana and the other 15 states and the District of Columbia that have legalized medical marijuana.

“This would be much better than the type of unilateral proclamation represented by the ATF letter, which was issued without any advance notice or discussion with the elected officials who represent more than one-fourth of this nation’s population and one-third of its states,” Bullock wrote.

“In the meantime, I respectfully request that the Department of Justice not pursue any criminal prosecutions against law-abiding citizens in Montana who exercise their constitutional rights to possess guns and enjoy hunting, or the licensees who are implicitly threatened by ATF’s letter.”

Bullock said Montana had about 200,000 hunters last year, and the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks sold more than 580,000 hunting licenses. As Montanans purchase guns and ammunition from sporting good stores, some of them may also have medical marijuana cards, he said.

Go Big Sky!

(For the record, I’m a wine drinker, not a toker—med or otherwise. And I don’t like guns. However, that isn’t the point. But thank you for inquiring.)

THOUGHTS IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE EXECUTION OF TROY DAVIS

The execution of Troy Davis was deeply disturbing for large numbers of Americans—and for many elsewhere in the word.

In the hours since Davis died at 11:08 Georgia time on Wednesday, September 22, there has been a flood of columns, news stories, tweets and random opining.

Some of the opinions have featured sloppy thinking. For instance, there were many comparisons to the Casey Anthony case that, when pulled apart, don’t hold up logically.

Then the cyber vigilante group Anonymous reportedly plans a “Day of Vengeance” against the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole. (NOTE TO ANONYMOUS: YOU’RE NOT HELPING!)

Yet there are other essays and articles that surfaced after Davis’ death that are very much worth your time. —like this story by Mansfield Frazier writing for the Daily Beast.

Frazier tells how, on Wednesday morning, the day of the execution, six high ranking retired corrections officials, people who had personally “been there” when it comes to state executions, weighed in forcefully on the Troy Davis case. The six—including Dr. Allen Ault, the retired director of the Georgia Department of Corrections and former warden of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, and California’s own former CDCR director and former warden of San Quentin Jeanne Woodford—sent a joint letter to Georgia corrections officials and Gov. Nathan Deal asking them to urge the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to reconsider the decision they made Tuesday, Sept. 20, to deny Davis clemency.

Here is some of what they wrote:

“Like few others in this country, we understand that you have a job to do in carrying out the lawful orders of the judiciary. We also understand, from our own personal experiences, the awful lifelong repercussions that come from participating in the execution of prisoners. While most of the prisoners whose executions we participated in accepted responsibility for the crimes for which they were punished, some of us have also executed prisoners who maintained their innocence until the end. It is those cases that are most haunting to an executioner.

“We write to you today with the overwhelming concern that an innocent person could be executed in Georgia tonight. We know the legal process has exhausted itself in the case of Troy Anthony Davis, and yet, doubt about his guilt remains. This very fact will have an irreversible and damaging impact on your staff. Living with the nightmares is something that we know from experience. No one has the right to ask a public servant to take on a lifelong sentence of nagging doubt, and for some of us, shame and guilt. Should our justice system be causing so much harm to so many people when there is an alternative?

“We urge you to ask the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to reconsider their decision. Should that fail, we urge you to unburden yourselves and your staff from the pain of participating in such a questionable execution to the extent possible by allowing any personnel so inclined to opt-out of activities related to the execution of Troy Anthony Davis. Further, we urge you to provide appropriate counseling to personnel who do choose to perform their job functions related to the execution. If we may be of assistance to you moving forward, please do not hesitate to call upon any of us….”

Two more stories that might interest you: one is by death row attorney and law professor David Dow. The second is by Slate’s legal reporter, Dahlia Lithwick. The two essays are interesting to read together in that Dow and Lithwick each take a different side of the question: Will Troy Davis be the tipping point in America’s feeling toward capital punishment?

AS LA CRIME CONTINUES TO DROP, LASD SHOOTINGS OF UNARMED SUSPECTS GOES UP

The LA Times’ Robert Faturechi reports on the study just released on Thursday by Merrick Bobb, special counsel to the LA County Board of Supervisors and the founding director of the Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC)

Here’s a clip:

Those shootings jumped from nine in 2009 to 15 last year, according to the report. Last year also saw the highest proportion of people shot by deputies who turned out to be unarmed altogether.

The Sheriff’s Department already requires its patrol deputies to do scenario-based shooting training every two years. According to the report, though, almost a third of the deputies who shot at people before seeing an actual gun failed to meet that training requirement.

According to the report, the number of officer-involved shootings generally correlates with the criminal homicide rate. But in the last two years, as the homicide rate in Los Angeles County has fallen, the number of Sheriff’s Department shootings has risen.

NOTE: LIGHT BLOGGING today. Back to full force on Monday.

7:05 pm Eastern time

US SUPREME COURT DELAYS EXECUTION IN ORDER TO CONSIDER A STAY

Twitter had it first, but then around 7:15 a few news stories emerged. Here’s the story from the Guardian. Troy Davis was schedule to be executed on Wednesday at 7 pm eastern.

Here is some additional information from MSNBC.

“We are in a delay, waiting for a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court,” Peggy Chapman of the Georgia Department of Corrections told NBC News. “There has not been a reprieve issued.”

About 200 Davis supporters gathered outside the Jackson prison cheered as news of the lethal-injection delay spread. Police were on hand to deal with any possible disturbance if the execution goes ahead.

The last-ditch effort with the U.S. Supreme Court came just 45 minutes before the execution was scheduled and after state officials refused to grant Davis a reprieve in the face of calls for clemency from former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI and others.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Georgia’s Supreme Court had rejected a last appeal by Davis’ lawyers. Earlier, a Butts County Superior Court judge also declined to stop the execution. Davis was convicted in the 1989 slaying of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail.

In their U.S. Supreme Court filing, Davis’ attorneys said “substantial constitutional errors” were made when the lower courts denied his claims that “newly available evidence reveals that false, misleading and materially inaccurate information was presented at his capital trial in 1989, rendering the convictions and death sentence fundamentally unreliable,” NBC News reported.

7:53 pm

DEMOCRACY NOW LIVE STREAMING UNTIL 9 P.M. FROM OUTSIDE PRISON

Here’s the link.

Martina Correa, Davis’s sister is extremely impressive, by the way.

Here is the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s timeline. The AJC has a reporter also with Mark Allen MacPhail’s mother, Anneliese, whom they wrote was “….surrounded by friends and relatives at her home, was leafing through photos of her son, and in her words ’smoking like a steam engine’ as she awaited word on whether the execution would proceed tonight…”

SCOTUS DENIES STAY. TROY DAVIS DIED AT 11:08 PM EASTERN.

Here’s the timeline from the AJC:

11:25 AJC reporter Rhonda Cook and other media witnesses report that Davis addressed the MacPhail family directly from the gurney and again proclaimed his innocence, asked mercy for those about to kill him and asked his friends and supporters to continue working to get to the truth of officer MacPhail’s death.

11:08 Davis pronounced dead.

10:57 State Attorney Generals office notifies MacPhail’s mother Anneliese “[Davis] is on the gurney, the needle is in.”

10:52 ORDER IN PENDING CASE 11A317 DAVIS, ANTHONY TROY V. HUMPHREY, WARDEN:

The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied. (Link to SCOTUS.)

10:31 About 150 remaining Davis supporters were still in prayer outside the state Capitol 10 minutes after hearing the stay had been denied.

10:27 “I’d like to have some peace now that it’s over,” Anneliese MacPhail mother of murdered officer Mark Allen MacPhail to CNN.

10:18 Davis’ attorneys say the U.S. Supreme Court has denied the stay.

10:08 State Attorney Generals office notifies MacPhail’s mother Anneliese they have received an email from the U.S. Supreme Court to expect word in another 10 to 20 minutes.

The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington was more eloquent than most other reporters in writing about Troy Davis’s last words. In fact Pilkington has consistently done a better job than most in conveying the unfolding facts of the matter, but not bleaching the meaning out of the circumstances, when reporting on the wrenching Davis case.

Moments before he was put to death, Troy Davis lifted his head from the gurney to which he was strapped and looked the family of Mark MacPhail, the police officer for whose murder he was convicted, directly in the eyes.

“I want to talk to the MacPhail family,” he said. “I was not responsible for what happened that night. I did not have a gun. I was not the one who took the life of your father, son, brother.”

He then appealed to his own family and friends to “keep the faith”, said to the medical personnel who were about to kill him “may God have mercy on your souls”, and laid his head down again.

He was administered with a triple lethal injection of pentobarbital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, and at 11.08pm he was pronounced dead.

The debate about what happened in Georgia’s Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson late on Wednesday night will continue long after the gurney has been put away. In the final gruesome hours of waiting, the American judicial system at its very highest echelons was involved – including the US supreme court, which issued the decisive final ruling. The decision to press ahead with the death sentence despite serious doubts over Davis’s guilt drew accusations that this was the system at its most grotesque.

It was Davis’s fourth execution date, and it was dragged out, for more than four hours, to what must have been tortuous effect for the prisoner and his family.

Davis, 42, became the 52nd man to be executed in Georgia since the same supreme court reinstated the death penalty in 1973. His lawyers and thousands of supporters around the world were convinced that an innocent man had been sent to his death.