Newspaper priorities: exonerated death row inmate, not important

The following letter was sent to the Asheville Citizen-Times by local attorney Frank Goldsmith. We should all be paying attention.

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Dear AC-T Editors and Publishers,

On Friday I was contacted by a nice young woman who is working as an intern for your newspaper, who asked if I would agree to be interviewed about the case of Glen Edward Chapman, the Catawba County man who was recently released from Death Row after being incarcerated for over 15 years for crimes he did not commit. I agreed because of the importance of the story, which exposes the substantial frailties of our system of justice. When I arrived for the interview, I was surprised to learn from the intern that her editor – I do not know which one – had decided that the story was not sufficiently newsworthy to merit inclusion in the weekend edition. The young lady did not tell me that in order to criticize the editor or the paper, but simply to let me know why I would not be reading the story in the Citizen-Times over the weekend.

I find this baffling – all the more so after weighing the significance of the stories that turned up in the weekend edition. This case is about a man who was very nearly sent to his death because police detectives lied at trial, covered up the existence of a confession by the real killer, ditched the results of a photo lineup in which someone else was positively identified, hid witness statements that pointed to innocence, and altered other witness statements to make them better fit the officers’ theory of guilt (it was those fabricated statements that were disclosed to the defense lawyers, to throw them off the track). It is a case of official corruption so striking that I cannot see how any responsible journalist could decide that it is not “newsworthy.” The deceit was compounded by the complete ineptness of the lawyers assigned to defend Chapman at his trial, as well as by other flaws, including forensic medical evidence that questions whether one of the victims’ deaths was actually a homicide at all.

I realize the Asheville Citizen-Times is a small regional paper that gives prominence to items of local interest. But even if locality is the criterion for coverage, this case has connections to Western North Carolina, if only any of the paper’s editors had bothered to inquire. Most people in the state consider Hickory, where the alleged crimes occurred, to be part of Western North Carolina. Every member of Chapman’s post-conviction defense team is from Asheville or Marion. Our mitigation specialist and investigator, Dr. Pamela Laughon, is a well-respected professor of psychology (and chair of that department) at UNCA. Several of her UNCA psychology students worked on the case under her supervision. Our other investigator, Lenora Topp, lives and works in Asheville. Jessica Leaven, my co-counsel, formerly practiced in Asheville and has family here, although she recently took a job in Chapel Hill. I practice in Marion and live in Buncombe County. Of course, I would hope the paper would not exclude any story that has significance for our system of capital punishment merely because the news is not sufficiently provincial.

I am not raising this issue merely to see my name in print. Frankly, having been interviewed about the case by all of the major newspapers in the state and by several television stations (including WLOS), as well as by CNN, NPR, and other media, I would be just as happy if a story ran about this case and omitted any mention of me. On the other hand, I am very concerned that our criminal justice system lacks any meaningful safeguard against the possibility that the truth-finding process will be perverted by unscrupulous officers bent on justifying an arrest, even when the result is to send an innocent man to his death in the execution chamber. I believe your readers need to understand the gravity of that flaw through a story about a man who was unjustly robbed of 15 years of his life. If such a story is not newsworthy, I do not know what is. The state’s major newspapers, including the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer, have each written excellent editorials (in addition to their front-page news coverage) about the case and its exposure of the frailties of our criminal justice system, yet all the Asheville Citizen-Times chose to do was bury a very small story taken entirely from a wire service in the inside pages of Section B. Even The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ran stories with more information.

If this were an isolated failure on your paper’s part, perhaps it would be understandable. But last November, after Judge Robert Ervin of Morganton issued his ruling finding that the officers had lied and concealed evidence, on the basis of which he awarded Mr. Chapman a new trial, your paper was completely silent, despite the statewide coverage at that time, including pointed editorials in the News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer. On that occasion I made sure you knew about this significant ruling by a respected judge, because on the day after it appeared, I e-mailed to you a copy of a press release from the Center for Death Penalty Litigation (which you should already have received from the Center the day before), as well as links to some of the other news articles. I followed that up with another inquiry to make sure my messages were received. I heard absolutely nothing in reply, and your newspaper completely ignored the story.

I gave an interview to the intern anyway, since she genuinely seemed interested in the case. She appears to be very competent and has, I believe, a bright future as a journalist. I can only hope that she succeeds in finding a position with a paper capable of recognizing news worth reporting.

Sincerely yours,

Frank Goldsmith

~ by bothwellsblog on April 7, 2008.