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

Gorillas in the Myth: second edition

I’ve just released a second edition of my first book, “revisited and revised a smidgeon.” Here’s a timely excerpt, written more than ten years ago.

The crystal plummets

Raving tree huggers, myself included, sometimes claim we may be destroying planet Earth. Pie-eyed techno-idiots insist that everything will be peachy if we just dump environmental regulations and the Endangered Species Act, and let the free market rock and roll. Who is right? Is there any prayer that we can find common ground?

When I voice concern about the environment, I tend to believe that I support Life. But the truth is, my concern is for life like us. Bacteria are really neat little goobers, and we couldn’t survive without them, but they did just fine without us for about ninety percent of the time since things began to wiggle on this planet.

The urgency I feel about toxic waste or global warming involves preserving the current population of the planet. I have a fondness for oxygen-breathing, carbon-based life forms like dolphins and cats and gorillas and bats, hummingbirds and butterflies, tuna, termites, lizards—and people. Well, some people, anyway.

When I factor people into the equation, it looks as though I might be speaking the same language as the movement that has adopted “wise use” as its slogan. The wise-users are the folks who want to permit mining, grazing and hunting in national parks, and who insist that old-growth forests are a renewable resource. They claim that global warming is an illusion, that there are no foreseeable limits to the human population of our planet, and that science will solve all of our problems by some time next week. They say the only useful measure of any policy is whether it is good for people, and they’re fond of trotting out a few scientists to bolster their claims.

OK, let’s go with that.

What? Me, a raving tree hugger, ready to accept the bottom line defined by earth rapers like Rush and Chainsaw Charlie? [former Rep. Charles Taylor, R-NC] Have I been drinking to excess?

My single caveat would be that we all must be willing to rely on real science, instead of rhetoric, to settle policy disputes. I am ready to concede any environmental debate on that basis. And by “real science,” I mean the consensus of the majority of knowledgeable researchers in a given field. Why do I say consensus? Shouldn’t we demand scientific proof?

Nice idea, but science doesn’t work that way. Outside of mathematics, where everything either adds up or it doesn’t, proof is impossible.

For example, if you release a crystal goblet ten feet above a brick patio, it will probably fall and shatter. Scientifically speaking, there is actually a tiny chance that it will bounce and land safely—and a much tinier chance that it won’t even fall. But, based on our experience of gravity and bricks, most of us would agree that the crystal is history.

In the same way, if the overwhelming majority of scientists agree about a particular issue, and one or a few disagree, the odds are very strong that the majority is correct.

Ready to be blinded by science? In 1992, nearly sixteen hundred of the world’s senior scientists, including more than half the living Nobel laureates—women and men from every discipline and every continent—signed The World’s Scientists Warning to Humanity. More have signed it in the years since then. In 1993, fifty-six of the world’s scientific academies met for the first-ever world Science Summit and issued a collaborative statement.

Most of the world’s scientists agree that, if the human race is to survive, we must reach zero population growth within the present generation. We must act now to shift from fossil fuels and nonrenewable resources to sustainable technologies. We must act now to reduce introduction of toxins and pollutants into the biosphere. We must act now to protect the biodiversity upon which all life depends.

Translation: The crystal goblet is headed toward the bricks.

There is nothing wrong with using human benefit as the measure of our policies, but short-term profit is a bad gage of success if it threatens long-term survival. If you are intent on amassing a fortune to leave to your heirs, you will also need some heirs to leave it to.

Are our current environmental-protection laws necessary? Sorry, Charlie: We have barely begun.

Coming soon to Amazon.com

The very best thing about Barack Obama

by Mark Morford

Nope, it’s not what you might think. The best thing about Barack Obama has almost nothing to do with him as a person or as a leader or even as Oh My God The First Black President Who Could Really Change Everything I Mean Wow. It’s not even the wondrous oratory power or the charisma or the sweet sense of deeper change overlaid with all kinds of sparkly utopian futuriffic goodness.

There is, I think, something more. Something richer. And it’s rather startling.

See, I’ve read the profiles and the liberal fawnings and the intelligent analysis, the attempted takedowns and the right-wing smears, all the valiant attempts to dig up something dirty or problematic or frightening about Obama and his family, his past, his middle name, his beliefs and his pastor and his favorite flavor of ice cream — attempts that, rather amusingly, have all failed.

Read the rest (click here).

My campaign is delivering free Obama ‘08 signs in Buncombe County. Click here.

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

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-Wendell Berry

Asheville on the Ground per Parkside

Great coverage of the hearing (click here).

Here’s a shot of the magnolia Coleman wants to cut down showing its proximity to the Asheville City Hall.

Parkside defeat

I’ve been so busy working on my county commission campaign (click here) that I haven’t found time to post this week, but I want to give a shout-out concerning the P&Z rejection of Stewart Coleman’s Parkside project.

I’m on record calling for an investigation of the illegal sale of park property to Coleman by Buncombe County, noting the close financial ties between Coleman and Commissioner Bill Stanley’s business partner Wallace Hyde, between Hyde and Commissioner David Young, and the questionable complicity of former Asheville City Planner Scott Shuford in the deal. If I’m elected and the deal is still pending, I will use my position to demand recision of the sale and permanent protection of the park property and the historic magnolia tree.

What were they thinking?

Read more at Screwy Hoolie’s blog.