Cory R. Maples was not surprised the day he heard that a court had rejected his challenge to his death sentence. “Down here, they’re pretty serious about it,” he said in a phone call from Alabama’s death row.
But the other news left him in “a state of shock”: the two lawyers from the prestigious New York law firm who had agreed to represent him had quit, quite some time before, without so much as a goodbye.
(COURTESY OF ALABAMA DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS) - Cory Maples is on death row in Alabama.
A clerk attempted to notify the lawyers of the court’s action, but the letters were returned unopened; Maples discovered that he had missed the deadline for appealing to the next level.
“I hate to use the word ‘abandonment,’ but that’s the closest I can get to it,” Maples said. “I’m supposed to have these two lawyers from this great firm that have my life in their hands, and now I find out that they’re not even on the case anymore.”
Maples’s case heads to the Supreme Court next week, and once again the justices will be called upon to examine the intricate legal apparatus that has been constructed to ensure that the death penalty in America is carried out fairly.
It comes as questions about capital punishment and the legal process are in the public eye, as illustrated by the outcry over the recent execution of Georgia inmate Troy Davis, who proclaimed his innocence to the end.
The actions that landed the 37-year-old Maples on death row are his own: He was convicted of killing two acquaintances and driving off in a car that belonged to one of the victims. Captured in Nashville two weeks later, he confessed.
But the actions that the justices deemed worthy of review were on the part of others: Maples’s attorneys at the New York firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, for instance. Or the Alabama officials who took no further action after receiving the unopened letters and who did not inform Maples that his motion had been denied.
Maples’s new attorney, Gregory G. Garre, who served as solicitor general in the administration of George W. Bush, told the justices in a brief that the case “raises the shocking prospect that a man may be executed without any federal court review of serious constitutional claims due to a series of events for which all agree he was blameless.”
Alabama says that is nonsense.
“Maples is unquestionably guilty of murdering two people, and his conviction is now 15 years old,”writes the state’s solicitor general, John C. Neiman Jr. “He has received some sort of judicial review of every claim he has made.”
Maples’s fundamental claim is that his lawyers at his trial were ineffective. He contends that his court-appointed attorneys, paid $1,000 for their work, mounted an incoherent defense and did not try to convince the jury that he may not have been responsible for his actions because of drug and alcohol use that night.
At sentencing, he contends, his attorneys acknowledged their inexperience, telling the jury they “may appear to be stumbling around in the dark.” The jury voted 10 to 2 — the minimum number necessary — to recommend death.
Alabama, virtually alone among the states, provides no help to indigent inmates in their post-conviction appeals. But help was on the way from Clara Ingen-Housz and Jaasi Munanka, two Sullivan and Cromwell associates recruited to file Maples’s appeal on grounds of ineffective counsel.
Campaign 2012 tools
The Post Most: PoliticsMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
Featured Blogs & Columns
Loading...
Comments