An Inexplicable Vote for Death

["F A B I O C C H I::" <eco_fabiocchi at tin.it>]

October 9, 2004
An Inexplicable Vote for Death
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/09/opinion/9sat2.html

Paul Gregory House was convicted of murdering a neighbor in 1985, before the 
era of DNA typing. The Tennessee jury that found him guilty was told that the 
semen found on the body of the neighbor, Carolyn Muncey, matched his blood 
type. The jury, citing the fact that Mrs. Muncey had been raped, said Mr. House 
should be sentenced to death.
It's hard to believe that the jurors would have come to that conclusion if they 
had known that the semen's DNA matched that of Mrs. Muncey's husband, Hubert, 
not the defendant. A 15-judge United States Court of Appeals panel in 
Cincinnati that heard a request to reopen the case knew that. Yet the judges 
recently voted, 8 to 7, that Mr. House should neither be freed nor given a new 
trial. They were not swayed by six witnesses implicating Mr. Muncey. Two said 
Mr. Muncey had told them he had killed his wife while he was drunk.
That eight judges would condemn a man to be executed under these circumstances 
is shocking. What's worse is that the judges divided along partisan lines. The 
eight judges appointed by a Republican president voted to keep Mr. House on the 
road to the death penalty. Six judges appointed by a Democrat wanted to free 
him, and the seventh called for a new trial. It's hard to dismiss the thought 
that the Republicans voted as a show of support for capital punishment, not on 
the merits of the case.
For Mr. House, the next stop is the Supreme Court. For the rest of us, his case 
should serve as a reminder that when we elect a president, we are also deciding 
the makeup of our courts.