Thread: Quintero sentence baffling to many

May 21, 2008, 2:19AM
Quintero sentence baffling to many
Was it result of good lawyering or a change in political climate?


By MIKE TOLSON
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

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It sounded like a foolproof recipe for a death sentence: an admired and respected police officer shot in the back by an illegal immigrant whose history included criminal convictions for drunken driving and indecency with a child as well as deportation.

But a Harris County jury decided otherwise, shocking most people who paid even the slightest attention to a trial in which the shooting itself was never an issue and the defendant's character offered little to praise.

Danalynn Recer, one of the attorneys for Juan Quintero, said the lesson to take from the jury's decision to give him life without parole instead of death is that the people of Harris County are far from the bloodthirsty yahoos of national caricature.

"We had a smart and thoughtful jury," Recer said. "The people of Harris County do not respond in the automatic, knee-jerk way that we are led to believe. I'm proud of this jury. They saw his humanity."

University of Houston law professor David Dow, who heads the Innocence Network, which investigates potentially troubled capital convictions, said the jury's decision is the result of good work done by Quintero's lawyers to portray a troubled person, not a monster. He does not think it reflects the national trend away from imposing death sentences.


'Brilliant legal tactic'
"I think we may be in a new climate," Dow said. "But I think the lesson in this case is that the lawyering matters a lot. The defense strategy of front-loading all the evidence about his mental problems in the guilt/innocence stage (of the trial) was a brilliant legal tactic. It had the jury thinking from the first stage of the case that there is something wrong with this person. And even in Harris County, the death penalty capital of the world, when the jury thinks there is something wrong with a person that interferes with his judgment, they will be willing to not impose the death penalty."

Another death penalty expert, Adam Gershowitz of the South Texas College of Law, also was unwilling to make too much of the verdict other than it was unexpected.

"It's very surprising," Gershowitz said. "I find it hard to believe that this case is the result of that trend (of fewer death cases). I think it has to be the result of this particular jury. If they seated another jury tomorrow, it could come to a different conclusion."

There is no disputing that death sentences in the United States are in decline. The total has dropped steadily from 326 in 1995 to just over 100 in 2007. Abolitionists claim the public taste for capital punishment has diminished because of exonerations and other well-publicized shortcomings of the criminal justice system.

Experts also point to the widespread use of life without parole laws. Only one of the 36 states that permits capital punishment — New Mexico — does not have a life without parole provision in its penal code. There is a general consen- sus that the sentencing option tends to reduce death sentences.


Average down sharply
Texas added the life without parole measure in September 2005. Over the past three years, juries in the state have returned death sentences in 14, 11 and 15 cases, respectively. The yearly average over the previous decade was 34, and the lowest previous total was 23.

The overall effect on capital prosecutions may be hard to deny. But to Dianne Clements, head of the victim rights organization Justice For All, the Quintero case falls into a different category — the unpredictable jury.

"Juries are quirky," Clements said. "Not having sat through the testimony, I don't know quite what to say. If there is a death-appropriate case, this is it. On the face of it, it looks like they made a mistake."

mike.tolson@chron.com





http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 93606.html

(('Brilliant legal tactic'
"I think we may be in a new climate," Dow said. "But I think the lesson in this case is that the lawyering matters a lot. The defense strategy of front-loading all the evidence about his mental problems in the guilt/innocence stage (of the trial) was a brilliant legal tactic. It had the jury thinking from the first stage of the case that there is something wrong with this person. And even in Harris County, the death penalty capital of the world, when the jury thinks there is something wrong with a person that interferes with his judgment, they will be willing to not impose the death penalty." ))

It doesn't matter if you are GUILTY of Capital Murder it matters only that "the lawyering matters a lot" thus this killer gets off because his lawyer won on techincal points.

"The people of Harris County do not respond in the automatic, knee-jerk way that we are led to believe. I'm proud of this jury. They saw his humanity."

They saw his humanity?? Like his humanity when he shot the police officer in the back or when he tried to molest a child? That humanity?