Death-Penalty Costs

To the Editor:

Your Aug. 22 Week in Review article "Life After Death Row" did not mention James William Cochran, who was condemned to die in 1979 and acquitted in 1997 after he was granted a new trial because of the systematic and unconstitutional striking of blacks from his jury.

The stories of people like Mr. Cochran, who were condemned to die and then exonerated would not have occurred without the extraordinary effort of hundreds of lawyers who dedicated thousands of hours worth tens

of thousands of dollars pro bono to review these convictions and to develop and present the arguments

that set these people free.

These lawyers filled a breach that should be filled by our state governments but sadly is not. It seems as if

the public wants the death penalty, but it does not want to pay the costs of providing competent counsel to those subject to the ultimate sanction.

LAWRENCE J. Fox

Ithaca, NY

Aug. 24, 1999

(The writer is chairman of the American Bar Association's

Death Penalty Representation Project).

The New York Times

OP-ED

Sunday, August 22, 1999

In America

BOB HERBERT

Near-Death Experience

"I was in a state of shock," said Ellen Reasonover. "I was terrified."

In December 1983 a jury in St. Louis deadlocked over whether to impose the death sentence on Ms. Reasonover, who had been convicted of murdering a gas station attendant. It is believed the vote was 11 to 1 in favor of the death penalty. A unanimous vote was required for a death sentence to be imposed, so Ms. Reasonover's life was spared by a fright-eningly thin margin.

It's a good thing because we now learn that she wasn't guilty. And that's the biggest problem with the death penalty. Sometimes you get the wrong person. One more vote and Ellen Reasonover would have been shoved unfairly and ignominiously into eternity.

Instead she was sentenced to 50 years in prison without parole, and she served more than 16 grim years of that sentence before a Federal judge ruled this month that she had been improperly convicted and ordered her released.

I talked to Ms. Reasonover last week. She was struggling with some of the technological marvels of the last few years. "I never heard of call-waiting," she said. "And I had to learn what a cell phone is and a pager."

She was 24 and the mother of a 2-year-old girl when she was arrested.

She's 41 now and her daughter Is 18.

"I didn't think I would be convicted," Ms. Reasonover said. "I thought that when I finally got to trial I was

going to explain to the judge that I was innocent, just tell him everything that had happened, and then he was

going to let me go home."

Ms. Reasonover was convicted of murdering James Buckley, a 6-foot-8-inch gas station employee who was severely beaten and shot seven times with a rifle. Ms. Reasonover became a suspect when, after viewing a television report about the murder, she voluntarily contacted the police to offer information that she thought might be helpful. She said she had stopped by the gas station to get some change to use at a nearby laundromat.

As her latest lawyer, Cheryl Pilate, put it: "There was nothing to tie Ellen to this. She came forward originally

as a good citizen to report a suspicious character she'd seen at the gas station, and the next thing she knew

they had turned her into their suspect."

The case against Ms. Reasonover was based almost entirely on the testimony of two jailhouse snitches she encountered after she was arrested.

The snitches, Rose Jolliff and Mary Ellen Lyner, were both heroin junkies with long arrest records. They hit the criminal-justice jackpot by testifying that Ms. Reasonover had told them in a jail cell that she had committed the crime. Jolliff got cash and Lyner, who

admitted she was "looking for a deal," was spared a lengthy term in the state penitentiary.

"When I first went to prison I was depressed," said Ms. Reasonover. "I cried a lot and I couldn't sleep. Then I

got a job working at night, cleaning the bathrooms, sweeping and mopping the floors, pulling the trash. So

that was a little better."

She said guards constantly propositioned her for sex and when she refused sometimes beat her. Fellow inmates taunted her.

She read whatever she could get her hands on and wrote endless letters proclaiming her innocence to people she felt might help - the Pope, Nelson Mandela, Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton and their wives. "I even thought about writing to Chelsea," she said.

Years passed. She contacted the Centurion Ministries, an organization in Princeton, N.J., that seeks justice for the innocent, and they eventually took up her cause.

In a decision handed down three weeks ago, U.S. District Judge Jean Hamilton ruled that the case brought against Ms. Reasonover was "fundamentally unfair." Two conversations that were secretly recorded by the police and that were favorable to Ms. Reasonover's defense were withheld by the prosecution. They came to light at a Federal court hearing just two months ago.

Had those conversations been disclosed, Judge Hamilton said, the jury "would have been entitled to find" that Ms. Reasonover was "a credible witness whose testimony was corroborated" by the tapes.

Ms. Reasonover, who is black, said she understands that the lone holdout against the death sentence was a white woman. "I always wondered who that white lady was that didn't vote to put me to death," she said. "I'd like to meet her so I can thank her."