Newspaper editorials contain both opinions and factual assertions supporting those opinions. Editorial writers, like everyone else, are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts, as the saying goes. Professionalism requires that the facts in an editorial be checked as carefully as those in a news story.
Last week the Los Angeles Times failed this standard and published an editorial that blatantly misrepresented the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in Calderon v. Thompson, 523 U.S. 538 (1998). In so doing, the Times defamed the Court and, even worse, misled its readers on a vitally important public issue they will be voting on shortly.
Did anyone at the Times actually read the opinion before publishing this editorial, or did they just regurgitate the propaganda fed to them by the anti-death-penalty lobby? It is difficult to believe they read it.
Last week the Los Angeles Times failed this standard and published an editorial that blatantly misrepresented the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in Calderon v. Thompson, 523 U.S. 538 (1998). In so doing, the Times defamed the Court and, even worse, misled its readers on a vitally important public issue they will be voting on shortly.
Did anyone at the Times actually read the opinion before publishing this editorial, or did they just regurgitate the propaganda fed to them by the anti-death-penalty lobby? It is difficult to believe they read it.
The editorial concerns Thomas Thompson, who was executed for murder in 1998. Thompson was convicted of the rape and murder of 20-year-old Ginger Fleischli and sentenced to death. His claims that he did not rape Ginger and that he did not kill her are different, and the difference is important.
"I did not rape her, I only murdered her" is not a claim of innocence, and any residual doubt on that issue presents a far less compelling reason to entertain yet another challenge to a judgment that has already been reviewed multiple times. That is why the U.S. Supreme Court has established different standards for claims of actual innocence versus claims that only go to the sentencing circumstances. See pages 559-560 of the Supreme Court opinion.
The Times gives a one-sided rendition of the facts that reads like a brief for the defendant. Then it says this.
For starters, the statement that the Ninth "did, in fact, throw out the conviction" misleads by ambiguity. Most readers would think that this means the Ninth threw out the murder conviction. It did not. The murder conviction was upheld time after time by every court to consider it on the merits. It was upheld by the California Supreme Court on direct appeal. It was upheld again by the California Supreme Court on habeas corpus. The murder conviction was upheld again by the federal district court on habeas corpus, although that court did decide that the rape charge needed to be retried due to errors of defense counsel. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit then upheld the murder conviction again on appeal and reinstated the rape conviction. The full Ninth Circuit then rejected a claim to rehear the case. (Two judges later claimed not to have gotten the memo on rehearing, but two is not enough to grant it and no others even called for a vote.)
Then Thompson asked for further reviews by a couple of different means, submitting a statement by his co-defendant that the federal district judge found conflicted with Thompson's own statements and the physical evidence and the co-defendant's own prior statements. The judge was unimpressed and denied the motion. But the Ninth Circuit reconsidered its own prior denial of rehearing, reinstated the district court's judgment requiring a new trial on the rape charge, and, oddly, remanded the case to the district court to reconsider the murder charge in light of the vacation of the rape charge. That is odd because the district court had already considered the murder charge in light of its own ruling on the rape charge and found that the murder conviction should stand. There was nothing to reconsider, but in any case a remand to reconsider is not "throwing out."
The bottom line of the first point is that the Ninth did not "throw out the [murder] conviction." The Times leads its readers to believe that, and it is simply false.
The last two sentences of the block quote above imply that the U.S. Supreme Court held that the procedural rules controlled without regard to actual innocence. How else would one understand "Procedure trumped justice"? But that is false. Actual innocence is an exception to procedural bars under the Supreme Court's extensive jurisprudence on the subject, and the Court carefully considered the innocence claims.
What case did Thompson's lawyers make to the high court that he was innocent of the murder? According to the Supreme Court, "Thompson makes no appreciable effort to assert his innocence of Fleischli's murder." (Page 560, emphasis added.) Did the Times editorial writers read that before they wrote "Procedure trumped justice"? Doubtful. I suspect that they just accepted what the Proposition 62 proponents fed them without checking.
Thompson was represented by top lawyers, including the renowned Quin Denvir. If there was "a strong argument to be made that [Thompson] may, in fact, not have been guilty of murder," as the Times says, wouldn't they have made it?
Thompson did make his case on the rape charge, and the high court considered that case on the merits. The case against Thompson on rape was strong (see pp. 560-561), and Thompson himself provided powerful evidence by lying through his teeth. "The point is beyond dispute; since Thompson lied about almost every other material aspect of the case, the jury had good reason to believe he lied about whether the sex was consensual." (P. 562.)
None of this made it into the editorial. The Times led its readers to believe that the high court ruled purely on procedure and did not consider the justice of the case, and that is false.
The Los Angeles Times disgraced itself with this editorial.
"I did not rape her, I only murdered her" is not a claim of innocence, and any residual doubt on that issue presents a far less compelling reason to entertain yet another challenge to a judgment that has already been reviewed multiple times. That is why the U.S. Supreme Court has established different standards for claims of actual innocence versus claims that only go to the sentencing circumstances. See pages 559-560 of the Supreme Court opinion.
The Times gives a one-sided rendition of the facts that reads like a brief for the defendant. Then it says this.
So why wasn't this miscarriage of justice uncovered in the appeals process, and why wasn't the execution stopped? The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals did, in fact, throw out the conviction and harshly criticized the prosecutor's use of two conflicting narratives of the same crime. But the U.S. Supreme Court, citing a missed deadline by the 9th Circuit, overruled that decision. Procedure trumped justice.How is this wrong? It's a long one.
For starters, the statement that the Ninth "did, in fact, throw out the conviction" misleads by ambiguity. Most readers would think that this means the Ninth threw out the murder conviction. It did not. The murder conviction was upheld time after time by every court to consider it on the merits. It was upheld by the California Supreme Court on direct appeal. It was upheld again by the California Supreme Court on habeas corpus. The murder conviction was upheld again by the federal district court on habeas corpus, although that court did decide that the rape charge needed to be retried due to errors of defense counsel. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit then upheld the murder conviction again on appeal and reinstated the rape conviction. The full Ninth Circuit then rejected a claim to rehear the case. (Two judges later claimed not to have gotten the memo on rehearing, but two is not enough to grant it and no others even called for a vote.)
Then Thompson asked for further reviews by a couple of different means, submitting a statement by his co-defendant that the federal district judge found conflicted with Thompson's own statements and the physical evidence and the co-defendant's own prior statements. The judge was unimpressed and denied the motion. But the Ninth Circuit reconsidered its own prior denial of rehearing, reinstated the district court's judgment requiring a new trial on the rape charge, and, oddly, remanded the case to the district court to reconsider the murder charge in light of the vacation of the rape charge. That is odd because the district court had already considered the murder charge in light of its own ruling on the rape charge and found that the murder conviction should stand. There was nothing to reconsider, but in any case a remand to reconsider is not "throwing out."
The bottom line of the first point is that the Ninth did not "throw out the [murder] conviction." The Times leads its readers to believe that, and it is simply false.
The last two sentences of the block quote above imply that the U.S. Supreme Court held that the procedural rules controlled without regard to actual innocence. How else would one understand "Procedure trumped justice"? But that is false. Actual innocence is an exception to procedural bars under the Supreme Court's extensive jurisprudence on the subject, and the Court carefully considered the innocence claims.
What case did Thompson's lawyers make to the high court that he was innocent of the murder? According to the Supreme Court, "Thompson makes no appreciable effort to assert his innocence of Fleischli's murder." (Page 560, emphasis added.) Did the Times editorial writers read that before they wrote "Procedure trumped justice"? Doubtful. I suspect that they just accepted what the Proposition 62 proponents fed them without checking.
Thompson was represented by top lawyers, including the renowned Quin Denvir. If there was "a strong argument to be made that [Thompson] may, in fact, not have been guilty of murder," as the Times says, wouldn't they have made it?
Thompson did make his case on the rape charge, and the high court considered that case on the merits. The case against Thompson on rape was strong (see pp. 560-561), and Thompson himself provided powerful evidence by lying through his teeth. "The point is beyond dispute; since Thompson lied about almost every other material aspect of the case, the jury had good reason to believe he lied about whether the sex was consensual." (P. 562.)
None of this made it into the editorial. The Times led its readers to believe that the high court ruled purely on procedure and did not consider the justice of the case, and that is false.
The Los Angeles Times disgraced itself with this editorial.
