Slow justice spares man's life
Saturday's No. 2 editorial.
People who urge swifter justice on death row should think about Glen Edward Chapman.
He could have been executed long before spending 14 years on death row, but that wouldn't have been justice. Just the opposite.
Chapman, 41, was released this week when all charges against him were dropped. Last year, a judge ruled he deserved new trials for the two 1992 murders in Hickory police and prosecutors said he committed; Wednesday, the Catawba County district attorney said there wasn't enough evidence to try Chapman again.
The case against Chapman was badly flawed. Evidence that would have cast doubt on his guilt was withheld, and a lead investigator might have lied in court. Prosecution witnesses later recanted their testimony: "If anyone asked me at trial, I would have testified that police pressured me into testifying and that I did not believe Edward killed anyone," one said in an affidavit.
These aren't technicalities but significant issues that were recognized in Superior Court Judge Robert Ervin's 182-page order for new trials. It was the state that employed "technicalities," arguing against Chapman's motion on the questionable grounds that his contentions should have been raised in earlier appeals.
When a man's life is at stake, justice demands fairness. A conviction and death sentence can't be allowed to stand when evidence was denied or even fabricated. In Chapman's case, it took many years and the help of new attorneys who began work on his behalf in 2002 to set things right. "Swift justice" would have meant injustice.
Chapman hasn't been given a proclamation of innocence. It can't be said with certainty that he didn't commit the murders of Betty Jean Ramseur and Tenene Yvette Conley. But prosecutors didn't have sufficient evidence to prove that he did; they didn't in 1994, and they don't now. Chapman was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death. He can thank the slow pace of justice for keeping him alive long enough to go free.