Set the Death Penalty as Punishment
for Prosecutorial Misconduct in Death Penalty Cases
September 1, 2001
Here's a report
of yet another outrageous example of prosecutorial misconduct in a death
penalty case:
Dennis Counterman, who has an
I.Q. in the mid-70's, was sentenced to death for setting a fire in his house
that killed his three young sons.
The only direct evidence
against him
came from his wife, who
testified that she had been awakened by the sound of a lighter and then
saw her husband at the bottom of the stairs with a bucket.
Mrs. Counterman, who is
mentally retarded, also testified that her children did not have a
history of setting fires.
But the prosecutor withheld
the following evidence from Counterman's lawyers:
- "...on the day of the
fire, Mrs. Counterman told a police officer that the couple's oldest
son, Christopher, had awakened her, told her that there was a fire, and
that she had then awakened her husband.
- "Mrs. Counterman told
another detective a similar story."
- "On the day of the
fire, a neighbor told police that Mrs. Counterman had told her that a
month before the fire Christopher had burned the curtains in his
bedroom."
- "Another person told
the police that she had seen Christopher set a rug on fire."
Counterman's conviction has
been thrown out, before the state had a chance to kill him.
How about a law that says the
penalty for withholding exculpatory evidence will be the same penalty the
defendant faced at trial? I bet there would then be a lot less
withholding of evidence in death penalty cases! (And hopefully in
other types of cases as well.) |
