Death Penalty
AL Prosecutor Rebuked By State AG
Posted Sep 14, 2007 8:40 PM CST
By Martha Neil
An Alabama prosecutor who testified in support of a convicted murderer in his successful appeal of his death sentence has been rebuked by the state attorney general.
Robert E. Owens, the Shelby County district attorney and the prosecutor in the case in which LaSamuel Gamble was convicted, testified that it would be unfair to put Gamble, now 29, to death when his co-defendant, Marcus Presley, who actually shot the victims, was not going to be executed, reports the New York Times. Presley originally was sentenced to death also, but his sentence was overturned because he was 16 at the time of the crime. Gamble was then 18.
A judge last week effectively commuted Gamble's death sentence to life imprisonment, but the attorney general, Troy King, announced Wednesday that he would seek to reinstate the death penalty.
“It’s difficult for me,” says Owens. “I’ve been a career prosecutor. I don’t like taking a position that’s not what my victim would like to take, but I couldn’t lay my head on my pillow at night if I stood by and let a person who didn’t kill somebody be executed when the person who did kill somebody was not.”
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Comments
Tyrone Townsend
Sep 16, 2007 5:31 PM CST
First and foremost I must applaud both the prosecutor and District Attorney Ownes for putting politics and public opinion aside to do the right, ethical and honorable thing under the law. Prosecutors have a higher responsibility to seek justice over conviction rates and far to many choose piling up convictions to enhance and further their careers. This was a clear case of what would have been a clear miscarriage of justice if they had not stepped forward. It took I am sure a lot of soul searching and contemplation to take such a stand in the bible belt where we reside, an ironic fact also. Here where we vocally tout our religious beliefs and where the attorney general himself campiagned on moral values and the sanctity of life for the unborn, is clearly confused when he somehow does not also see the sanctity of the life of those same individuals postpartum. Justice is not a transient or unstable element that shifts and changes with the status of its seekers, it is the same for all. So when different people get vaying results when faced with the same legal responsiblities and consequences, justice has been waylayed or denied.
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