[Reader-list] criminal justice and death penalty - "The Thin Blue Line" Sarai s creening

[veena]

For all those interested  in  following up on  issues  raised  by   Errol
Morris' excellent documentary, "The Thin Blue Line" [1988]  at its recent
Sarai  screening on 18.02.2005.

Apparently Randall Adams  was ordered to be released in 1989 pending a new
trial by the Texas Court of Appeals. The prosecutors did not seek a new
trial due to substantial evidence of Adam's innocence, most  of  it
detailed  in the movie, The Thin Blue Line. 

David  Ray Harris,  whose  testimony against Randall Adams, led  to  the
latter's sentencing to death row  for the 1976 murder of police officer,
Roger Woods, was  executed on 30 June 2004. Harris  was sentenced for
killing  Mark Mays after attacking him and attempting to kidnap his
girlfriend, Roxanne Lockard,  in September 1985. He was never charged in the
Woods case. 

the following is  a brief excerpt  from
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/harris916.htm


...Harris gained notoriety for implicating Randall Dale Adams, a hitchhiker
he had picked up in a stolen car, in the 1976 death of Dallas police officer
Robert Wood. Adams, who had no previous criminal record, served 12 years in
prison and came within three days of execution in 1979 before his sentence
was commuted to life in prison. Adams was released from prison in 1989, a
year after the release of Errol Morris' 1988 documentary "The Thin Blue
Line," which suggested he had been wrongly convicted. 

Appeals seeking to keep Harris from the death chamber Wednesday challenged
the reliability of testimony from psychologists at capital murder trials who
advise jurors of the likelihood a convicted murderer will be a continued
danger to society, one of the questions jurors must answer in deliberating a
death sentence. Another appeal challenged the drugs Texas prison officials
use in lethal injections. Harris' lawyers argued that the three-drug
combination would "likely cause an excruciatingly painful death" and violate
Harris' constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. 

U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore in Houston issued a temporary
restraining order Tuesday against the injection procedure. State lawyers
appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to get the
order lifted, said Tom Kelley, a spokesman for the attorney general's
office. 

Harris had initially said he and Adams were both in the car when it was
stopped by the officer. He later testified that he had lied about Adams'
involvement, though he stopped short of saying he committed the murder
himself. Harris has never been charged in the officer's death. "Did Randall
Adams kill Robert Wood?" Adams' attorney, Randy Schaffer, asked Harris
during a 1988 hearing requesting a new trial. "No, he did not," Harris
replied. "Randall Adams knew nothing about this offense and was not in the
car at the time." Harris turned down requests from The Associated Press for
an interview...



A  detailed  investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that  under Gov.
George W. Bush, Texas executed dozens of Death Row inmates whose cases were
compromised by unreliable evidence, disbarred or suspended defense
attorneys, meager defense efforts during sentencing and dubious psychiatric
testimony... 

'Dr. Death' testifies 
In the annals of the death penalty in Texas, few figures have proved as
controversial as James Grigson, a Dallas psychiatrist who came to be known
among defense attorneys and the media as "Dr. Death." 

Grigson was reprimanded twice in the early 1980s by the American Psychiatric
Association, then expelled from the group in 1995 because it found his
testimony unethical and untrustworthy. In his heyday from the mid-1970s
through the late 1980s, Grigson helped send scores of people to Texas' Death
Row. 

Grigson repeatedly claimed that he could predict that defendants would be
violent again-even though in many of those cases Grigson never even examined
the defendants. Instead, he responded to hypotheticals posed by prosecutors
in which they described a defendant's criminal history. 

This type of psychiatric testimony played a critical role in the cases of at
least 29 defendants executed in Texas since Bush became governor. Grigson
testified in 16 of those cases. 

Grigson said recently that over his career he has testified in 166 capital
cases in Texas, all but nine for the prosecution. 

With his folksy charm, Grigson made things easy for juries. He measured
defendants on a 1-to-10 scale, with 10 representing the worst kind of
sociopath. He placed many there-and some past that point, up to 12, 13, even
14. 

On questions of future dangerousness, Grigson also offered guarantees. He
testified that Bernard Amos "most certainly" would be violent in the future,
though he did not examine him. 

James Clayton was "absolutely certain" to be a repeat offender, Grigson told
a jury. Asked by a prosecutor if William Little would be violent in the
future, Grigson left no room for doubt. "It's an absolute," he testified.
"It's not 99.5 or 99.8. It's absolutely 100 percent sure." Grigson hadn't
examined Clayton or Little, either. 

Some jurors say Grigson's testimony had a significant impact. "You couldn't
help but listen to what he was saying. [He's] a doctor. He had a lot of
influence on what we decided," said Myron Grisham, one of the jurors in
Stoker's case. 

Another psychiatrist, E. Clay Griffith, often testified along the same lines
as Grigson-making predictions without examinations. Danny Lee Barber was a
"10 plus" on a scale of 1 to 10. Griffith testified that James Fearance
would be at the "highest number, however you're going to judge it." David
Wayne Spence, Griffith testified, was as "severe, in my opinion, as one can
get." 

Such bold predictions sometimes misfired. Grigson, who had testified during
the punishment phase of Randall Adams' 1977 trial, described Adams as a
"severe sociopath." Adams had no prior criminal record and eventually was
freed from Death Row, thanks in large part to the documentary, "The Thin
Blue Line." 

Grigson has made a career of testifying in criminal cases. He charges $150
an hour, and in the 1980s he was in such demand from prosecutors that he
usually earned more than $150,000 a year, according to court records. 

The controversy surrounding Grigson made him less attractive to prosecutors.
He now only testifies in one or two capital cases a year, although he
remains busy with other court cases. 

In an interview, he defended his work. "I feel like I really have helped the
image of psychiatry rather than hurt it," Grigson, 68, said. "I've really
brought psychiatry out of the clouds." 

For more see :
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=17&did=450