JURIST - Hotline: <u>Cone</u> death penalty case shows priority of authorities is really to protect convictions

Julien Ball [Administrative Coordinator, Campaign to End the Death Penalty]: "The State of Tennessee wants to execute Gary Cone on a technicality. It is beyond dispute that the prosecution withheld crucial evidence in the case. Cone argued that he suffered from amphetamine psychosis when he committed a double murder and should be spared the death penalty. The prosecution withheld a witness statement confirming Cone's drug use, yet called his claim of drug addiction "baloney." Now, because he did not introduce evidence of which he had no knowledge earlier in the appeals process, the State claims that his grounds for appeal are "procedurally defaulted." In other words, the State of Tennessee would rather send a man to his death than allow a remedy to its own misconduct.

Unfortunately, the prosecution is not exclusively to blame for this miscarriage of justice. A number of courts have ruled against Cone, forcing the U.S. Supreme Court to hear oral arguments on the case last week. Sadly, the court system often values finality over fairness. Georgia death row prisoner Troy Davis, for example, has received three execution dates because no court will admit evidence from seven witnesses who have recanted their testimony. In Chicago, Illinois, dozens of men languish in Illinois prisons because Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan will not initiate evidentiary hearings for prisoners with strong evidence of electro-shock, suffocation and beatings at the hands of Chicago police. The priority for too many police, prosecutors and judges is to protect the convictions that they and their colleagues helped secure, not to ensure justice. A criminal justice system that operates in this fashion is unfit to decide who lives and who dies. The time to abolish the death penalty is long overdue."