The lethal effect of snitches

OPINION

If the federal court does not stay the execution of Michael Morales, now scheduled for Feb. 21, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be faced with his third life-or-death decision in as many months.

In December the governor rejected clemency for Stanley Williams, whose plea rested on his redemption based on the good works he had done while on death row. In January Clarence Allen was put to death after the governor rejected his plea for mercy based on his advanced age and poor health. Both men insisted on their innocence despite the fact that both had been convicted of multiple murders.

So why should Schwarzenegger grant clemency in this case, when guilt is not contested and neither redemption nor infirmity is the foundation for the request? The answer is that in the case of Morales, the very foundation of the jury's death sentence has collapsed.

Even the trial judge, having learned that testimony the jury relied on to impose the death penalty was flawed, has now renounced the jury's verdict and his own part in the process. In a letter dated Jan. 25, 2006, to Schwarzenegger, Judge Charles McGrath (appointed by Ronald Reagan) wrote that if he had known at the time what was later discovered by the Attorney General's Office — that a key witness was lying — he "would not have let the death sentence stand."

How did this happen? The short answer is that when Morales was arrested along with his cousin Ricky Ortega for the rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Winchell and placed in the San Joaquin County Jail, an inmate (and jailhouse informant) named Bruce Samuelson was also a resident there.

The use of jailhouse informants is a regular feature of death penalty trials. Samuelson told the jury that Morales had confessed to him in jail, and gave chilling details about how he had planned the murder and how he had boasted about it many months later.

At the time of the Morales trial, Samuelson was facing six felony charges. But after writing to Morales's prosecutor with a promise that he could provide the evidence that would guarantee a conviction with special circumstances — making Morales eligible for the death penalty — the prosecutor dropped four of the six charges against him and managed to get court approval of a very light county-jail sentence for the remaining two charges.

When asked years later by the attorney general how he'd managed to elicit so much damning information from the accused in a crowded jail cell, without any other inmate hearing the alleged conversations, Samuelson asserted that he and Morales had conducted their confessional sessions in Spanish. There is only one problem with this explanation: Michael Morales, a fourth-generation American, does not speak Spanish.

The case of Michael Morales is exactly what executive clemency is designed to address. Schwarzenegger has the power to undo the lethal effects of false testimony — if he has the courage to do the right thing. *

Michael Kroll

Pacific News Service

Michael Kroll works with incarcerated juveniles who write for The Beat Within. He is the founding director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, DC.