A Prosecutor's Choice

Walter T. Barclay is dead, 41 years after he was shot and paralyzed. Justice doesn't require a murder charge.

JUST AFTER Thanksgiving in 1966, 23-year-old police rookie Walter T. Barclay was shot and paralyzed from the waist down while trying to stop a robbery in Philadelphia. Family members have described his next four decades as laden with pain, a constant struggle to deal with the physical and psychological effects of his injury.

Mr. Barclay died last month at the age of 64 in what the Bucks County, Pa., coroner characterized as a homicide -- a result of medical complications from the gunshot wound sustained 41 years before. Because of the coroner's conclusion, Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham is considering filing murder charges against the man who shot Mr. Barclay; she's scheduled to announce her decision on Tuesday. Ms. Abraham should resist the calls from Mr. Barclay's understandably aggrieved family to lodge murder charges against the shooter, 71-year-old William J. Barnes. Mr. Barnes, a lifelong criminal, was sentenced in 1968 to 10 to 20 years for attempted murder and other counts in the shooting of Mr. Barclay. Although the murder charge would arise from the same violent act, it would not constitute double jeopardy because Mr. Barnes was never charged and acquitted of murder in relation to the shooting.

But charging Mr. Barnes would not be wise, nor would it serve the public interest. Ms. Abraham would have the difficult task of proving a causal link between the gunshot wound inflicted four decades ago and the severe infection and heart failure that caused Mr. Barclay's death. The coroner's determination would almost certainly be challenged by Mr. Barnes's lawyers, with a high likelihood that they could trace the direct causes of death to more immediate or intervening factors. The fact that Mr. Barnes served significant time in jail for attempted murder also suggests Ms. Abraham should refrain from filing new charges.

We do not mean to dismiss the years of anguish Mr. Barclay suffered as a result of Mr. Barnes's actions. But Mr. Barnes served his time for the act that resulted in the officer's injury. To prosecute him now for murder seems, in its simplest form, unfair and an unnecessary kind of moral double jeopardy.