Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Stop me if I sound like a broken record...

...but there is yet another innocent guy on death row. I've written about him before, but his case is so utterly compelling, he is certainly worth another posting.

His name is Paul House and he is in Tennessee. His appeals are running out.

The other day, a columnist for the Daily Tennessean had this to say:

Before Wednesday, I had never met House but wrote a column in this space last Sunday saying he was still on death row despite the fact that 6 of the 15 judges on the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals said House is not guilty of Carolyn Muncey's murder and should be freed immediately. A seventh judge on the court of appeals said in a dissenting opinion that House should at least have a new trial.

"I would like to be set free, but I would accept a new trial," House told me as he sat in a wheelchair in a visiting room in Riverbend's infirmary.

House suffers from multiple sclerosis and cannot walk on his own. His attorney, federal public defender Stephen M. Kissinger of Knoxville, has said he is afraid House won't live long enough to see his case appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"They have found so much stuff over the years that makes you wonder what are all those Republicans on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals thinking about," House added. He was referring to the fact that the 8 judges on the Sixth Circuit who voted to uphold his death penalty were all appointed by Republican presidents.

Since House's conviction in 1986 for Muncey's 1985 murder, which he was accused of committing during an attempted rape, DNA has shown that the semen evidence used to help convict House was really that of her husband, Hubert Muncey. The physical evidence of blood tying House to Carolyn Muncey's murder has also been rebutted.

To read the whole piece, go here.


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