Posted on 02/10/2006 7:24:22 PM PST by NormsRevenge
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - State and local prosecutors said Friday that former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr and another lawyer representing a death row inmate submitted to the governor forged letters from jurors who were falsely portrayed as wishing the condemned man would be spared.
"We showed each person the declaration on their behalf and they all said they didn't say that," said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
Starr and Los Angeles attorney David Senior are the clemency lawyers for Michael Morales, a 46-year-old Stockton man on death row for murdering and raping a 17-year-old San Joaquin County girl 25 years ago.
Morales is scheduled to be executed Feb. 21.
Earlier this week, Starr and Senior submitted to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declarations from six Ventura County jurors who said they thought Morales deserved clemency because some of the testimony at his trial may have been fabricated.
But on Friday, the San Joaquin District Attorney's office sent Schwarzenegger a new batch of sworn statements from five of those jurors saying they not only still supported capital punishment for Morales, but had never spoken with the defense investigator who claimed to have secured their signatures.
Reached Friday evening, Senior said he stood by the validity of the affadavits he and Starr sent to Schwarzenegger and suggested that the jurors might have gotten cold feet when they were contacted by prosecutors in the last two days.
"When the D.A. and A.G. show up with badges and guns and say whatever, they can intimidate a lot of people and that's their game," Senior said.
Starr was not immediately available for comment, said a spokeswoman for the Pepperdine School of Law, where Starr is the dean.
None of the five jurors involved in the legal tug-of-war, whose names were blacked out of the competing clemency documents to protect their privacy, could immediately be reached for comment.
The latest round of material prosecutors delivered to the governor late Friday included a sarcastic comment from a juror who said the defense had misspelled the juror's name on the signed document submitted by the Morales team.
"Aside from the fact that the declaration is a complete fabrication, I never would have signed a declaration under penalty of perjury that included a misspelling of my name without at least correcting the misspelling," one juror said, according to the declaration authorities gave to Schwarzenegger.
The governor's spokeswoman Margita Thompson declined to address the dispute, saying only that the governor, when deciding on clemency, will consider "all the information that is provided to him when making the decision."
San Joaquin County prosecutor Charles Schultz said the letters sent to the governor last week were "untrue" and "pure fiction."
Kathleen Culhane, the San Francisco private investigator who Starr and Senior said had interviewed the jurors, declined comment.
Morales was tried in Ventura County in 1983 because of too much pretrial publicity in San Joaquin County, where he killed Terri Winchell.
They got Ken Starr, who they hate more than a heterosexual carnivorous SUV, committing shenanigans in court - BUT! - he was trying to save a noble minority murderer from Amerikkkka's racist death penalty!
Kabooom go their brains! Look John Kerry's already popped:
L
Kerry was at the Olympics? He sure gets around. ;-)
It sure doesn't sound to me as if this guy was intimidated by the prosecutor.
I was never a great fan of Starr's. He pulled his punches in the clinton investigation, and he delayed far too long, giving clinton time to spin himself out of trouble.
If the papers are fake, they'll be a wake.
Starr and Senior could have been duped.Maybe the investigator forged the documents?
If they ARE fake, I suspect the investigator who collected them forged them without defense counsel's knowledge. Starr certainly would never be involved in something like this.
"Starr and Senior could have been duped.Maybe the investigator forged the documents?"
There is another possibility. The defense bar works very hard to disqualify all reasonable people from juries. Maybe they were so successful in this case that they secured a jury with a number of idiot who will agree with whomever spoke to them most recently and will sign statements on both sides of an issue.
That would explain this group of 5 or 6:
1. Voting for death when influenced by others on the jury.
2. Saying they wished the guy they voted to execute could be spared.
3. Saying they did not say they wished the guy they voted to execute could be spared.
We often seek lowest common denominator juries and not surprisingly get them.
Ken Starr screws up again? This is news?
Ken Starr gets $168 million in the Clinton case--all from taxpayers--achieves nothing. Ken Starr goes off to a happy sunset with his staff, very rich.
Starr is an embarrassment, except to RINOs, merely pigging at the public trough. He prolonged a process to increase his revenues, and accomplished nothing.
His poor performance and self-aggrandizement, assured that he would never be put forth for a Federal Court appointment. GWBush never put him on a short list. A complete jerk. Let him rest in obscurity.
Well, D'uh! Why do you think Hitlery got away with the Foster murder, and Toon got away with... (to much to list)?
I saw that picture from the Olympics earlier and thought the very same thing. Bravo!
Why is the defence or prosecution allowed to communicate with jurors in a death penalty case?
This is jury tampering pure and simple.
No. It is okay to contact the jurors after they've rendered their decision .
So these forged letters were submitted after the jury rendered its decision. But why is this not subornation in the penalty phase?
This jury had finished its work. It had been released. There was no more work for it to do.
Did you know that Kavanaugh had a hand in limiting the Foster material that appeared in the Independent Counsel's record?
The Kavanaugh that GWB has nominated to a seat on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
Then why is Hillary blocking consideration of his nomination?
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