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April 26, 2002
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Set
This Flag on Fire!
Tariq Ali
Letter to a Young Muslim
April 25, 2002
Francis
A. Boyle
Home
Brew? Biowarfare,
Terror Weapons and the US
Adam Federman
"And the Earth Wept"
Bush at Saranac Lake
Stanton
and Madsen
US
Media Interests:
Champions of Profit, Propaganda and Puffery
Aaron Hawley
Cop a Buzz Day in Vermont:
Education v. Incarceration
David
Vest
Code
Red: Politics and Wordplay at the Vatican
Bernard Weiner
Time Out! A Pause for Longer-Range
Thinking
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Standing
with the Peace Movement
April 24, 2002
David Vest
State of Politics in France:
Code Bleu
Jean Fallow
A20
in Seattle:
Cops Get Rough, Again
Kevin Alexander Gray
Help Save the Life of an Innocent Man:
Ask for Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Tanya
Reinhart
Jenin,
the Propaganda Battle
Todd May
Drowning Children, Palestinians and American
Responsibility
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Five
Days That
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Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
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Photos by Allan Sekula
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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April 26, 2002
Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Let's
Stop the Killing of an Innocent Person
by Tom Turnipseed
You can help stop the killing of an innocent person.
Richard Charles Johnson was convicted on the testimony of a person
who later admitted she lied at his trial and is scheduled to
be executed by the state of South Carolina on May 3, 2002.
Governor Jim Hodges is empowered by the
state to grant executive clemency and commute his death sentence.
The killing of innocent people is a national issue, so wherever
you live, please send a message to Governor Hodges by e-mail,
fax, or letter urging him to save the life of a man unjustly
convicted of a murder committed in 1985.
Understanding she could be prosecuted
for the murder herself, Connie Sue Hess made a sworn confession
that she committed the murder just hours before Richard Johnson's
first scheduled execution in 1999.
Although Ms. Hess' trial testimony was
credible enough to convict Johnson, her subsequent confession
was ruled not credible and a 3 to 2 majority of the South Carolina
Supreme Court upheld the ruling. Justice Waller, a dissenting
member of the Court wrote, "... I believe that to deny Johnson
a new trial in the face of a confession by someone who was admittedly
present when the murder was committed would constitute a denial
of fundamental fairness shocking to the universal sense of justice."
Justice Pleicones said, "Given the lack of physical evidence
to indicate [Johnson], and not Harbert or Hess, fired the shots
which killed Trooper Smalls, it is my opinion that Hess' confession
would probably change the result if a new trial were granted."
The scheduled execution of Mr. Johnson continues the tragedy
that began with a "joy ride" and turned into a sordid
story of sex, drugs and murder in September of 1985.
Richard "Ricky" Johnson and
Daniel Swanson, a businessman with a lengthy history of mental
illness and psychiatric treatment, left Morehead City, North
Carolina in Swanson's RV headed to Florida. Johnson and Swanson
had been together for a day and a half before Swanson picked
up two hitchhikers at a rest stop just over the South Carolina
line and everything went awry. The hitchhikers were Connie Sue
Hess, a runaway, and her friend, Curtis Harbert, who was wanted
on criminal charges.
Hess said she and Harbert had sex with
Swanson in the back of the RV with Johnson at the wheel. The
sex was corroborated in forensic reports from the autopsy of
Mr. Swanson. Hess joined Johnson in the driving compartment,
and, as they drove through Clarendon County, South Carolina,
Hess says Harbert shot and killed Swanson. They continued south
on I-95 with Johnson driving very erratically. He'd been drinking
heavily and using drugs. In Jasper County near the Georgia border,
Trooper Bruce Smalls pulled the RV over. As he stood on the steps
to the RV, he was shot and killed.
Johnson, Hess, and Harbert left the scene
with Hess and Harbert headed in one direction, and Johnson in
the other. Hess and Harbert each gave statements to law enforcement
officials. They told law enforcement and the jury that Johnson
had killed both Swanson and Trooper Smalls. But in a later statement,
Hess said that Harbert - not Johnson - killed Trooper Smalls.
At trial Hess decided to go with her first story that Johnson
had killed Trooper Smalls and Swanson.
In 1999, Hess finally confessed that
she killed Trooper Smalls and Curtis Harbert killed Swanson.
The physical evidence linking Johnson to the crime was virtually
non-existent. No gunpowder residue was found on his hands.
When arrested, Johnson was in such a
daze from alcohol and drugs that he couldn't remember anything
and was immediately hospitalized with delirium tremens. Mr. Johnson
had a history of alcohol and drug abuse accompanied by blackouts
and memory loss but no record of violence, either before or after
his incarceration. With no memory he was unable to defend himself.
The case against Johnson turned almost
wholly on the unreliable testimony of Harbert, Hess, and a jail
house snitch. Johnson was tried, convicted and sentenced to death
on two occasions, once in 1986, and again in 1988. The juries
did not hear the full story and they convicted and sentenced
an innocent man to death. Harbert and Hess were offered complete
immunity and freedom in exchange for their testimony against
Mr. Johnson.
Between the first and second trial, Ms.
Hess recanted her testimony. She asked her lawyer to contact
the sheriff and tell him that Harbert had killed both Swanson
and Smalls. The lawyer forwarded the letter to the sheriff. This
information was never passed on to Johnson or his lawyers, and
the state did not call Ms. Hess as a witness at the second trial,
claiming she was unavailable.
The jury was never informed that the
jail house snitch had made a livelihood from testifying against
other inmates.
Trooper Bruce Smalls' mother, Ms. Thelma
Blue, stated in an affidavit that "killing Mr. Johnson .
. . will not bring my son back and serves no purpose."
It is virtually unprecedented that we
are about to execute a person when another person has come forward
confessing to be the true killer. Governor Hodges is facing a
hotly contested race for re-election in November, and politicians
want to be tough-on-crime, but nobody wants to kill an innocent
person.
A politician perceived as a thumbs-down-Caesar,
who kills an innocent person, is a sure loser.
Save an innocent man by immediately writing:
The Honorable Governor Jim Hodges,
Governor of South Carolina,
Post Office Box 11829,
Columbia, South Carolina 29211,
or FAX: 803-734-9413,
or EMAIL: governor@govoepp.state.sc.us
For further information: http://www.sceja.org
Tom Turnipseed
is an attorney, writer and civil rights activist in Columbia,
South Carolina. http://www.turnipseed.net
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