Eugene Clemons May Be Ineligible for the Death Penalty. A Rigid Clinton-Era Law Could Force Him to..

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Steve Mills
@smmills1960
·
May 28, 2021
NEW: A court document from Eugene Clemons' lawyer fell behind a filing cabinet in the clerk's office. Now, Alabama may execute Clemons without completely litigating his case.
A powerful story from @SethFW that illustrates how inmates can pay for the mistakes of others.

Ken Schwencke
@schwanksta

Eugene Clemons May Be Ineligible for the Death Penalty. A Rigid Clinton-Era Law Could Force Him to...
His lawyers presented no defense at trial. Then a clerk’s office misplaced a plea for his civil rights behind a file cabinet. Now, it’s almost impossible for the federal courts to address the…
propublica.org
3:33 PM · May 28, 2021

https://www.propublica.org/article/eugene-clemons-death-penalty

In the spring of 2000, James S. Christie Jr. left his law firm in Birmingham, Alabama, for a short drive to the Shelby County Clerk’s office. He was going to clear up some confusion, a seemingly small technical error that had been bothering him for months. The clerk’s office kept claiming that it had no record of a document Christie said he had filed at the end of the previous December. That document, and its timing, were exceedingly important. It alleged, among other things, that the trial attorneys for a man on death row had defended him so badly, neglecting to call even a single witness to convince the jury to vote against execution, that the man’s right to a fair trial had been compromised.

Christie knew Shelby County should have had proof of the document’s existence. A few months earlier, on December 27, 1999, Christie’s courier had delivered the filing to the clerk’s office and been handed back a copy, stamped at the top in red and blue with the words “received & filed,” along with the date and the clerk’s name. Christie had that copy of the document right there in his hand.

The 41-page petition contained critical information — claims no court had yet considered — about a man named Eugene Clemons. It described how his lawyers, when it came time to argue that his life should be spared for killing a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, completely ignored the long history of abuse Clemons had suffered. They’d also failed to point out that Clemons had well-documented mental disabilities: As a first grader, he was described by school officials as “educably mentally retarded.” If jurors had been made aware of Clemons’ history, of the life he had lived before he was arrested at age 20, perhaps they would have voted against his death sentence.

Christie and his colleagues had been careful to file the document a month in advance of a crucial federal deadline that had been imposed several years earlier by a controversial criminal justice law. They hoped and expected that the filing would allow Clemons’ appeal to leave Alabama courts and enter federal court, for what’s called a habeas corpus hearing. Habeas corpus, which in Latin means “you have the body” (and translates, colloquially, to “in the flesh”), can provide a vital final check against unlawful or arbitrary punishment.

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