Consider This...

November 9, 2004

If Frank Chandler is indeed executed this coming Friday morning as scheduled, then it will no longer be possible for anyone in North Carolina to say that the death penalty is fair.

If it were fair, then Chandler would have been convicted of premeditated murder, since capital punishment is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the worst. Instead the jury in Chandler’s case found that the murder was not premeditated, yet jurors still gave Chandler a death sentence because they held that the accidental murder was committed for financial gain (despite the fact that Chandler did not gain financially from the incident).

If it were fair, then Chandler would have had a decent attorney to defend him; instead, he had Terry Collins, who was finally disbarred and sent to jail in 1998 on felony forgery charges (but not before he had helped send no fewer than five of his clients to death row). Newly discovered evidence now suggests that Collins had used drugs on more than one occasion with the state’s star witness in Chandler ’s capital case (a detail that was conveniently omitted when Collins questioned that witness).

If it were fair, then the N.C. Supreme Court would have signed off on his execution without reservation. Instead, one of the most prominent jurists in the state, conservative former Justice Bob Orr, went so far as to visit Gov. Mike Easley last week to ask for clemency for Frank Chandler. Orr dissented when the state Supreme Court upheld Chandler ’s death sentence, and Orr only dissented in four of the more than 200 capital cases he heard while on the bench.

If it were fair, then prosecutors would have revealed to Chandler ’s attorneys that their star witness was a paid informant who got a sweetheart deal in return for his damning testimony, which was almost entirely responsible for sending Chandler to death row. The district attorney responsible for withholding this information was later bounced out of office for financial improprieties.

A 2002 study published by the Common Sense Foundation found that one out of six N.C. death-row inmates had lawyers at trial who have been disciplined by the state bar. Of all the attorneys listed in this report, Terry Collins has the horrible distinction of having put the most men on death row. Frank Chandler is the first of Collins’ clients to reach an execution date.

So besides the fact that Frank Chandler’s trial jury didn’t think Chandler murdered Doris Poore on purpose, and besides the fact that his defense lawyer was one of the worst in the state, and besides the fact that the prosecutors cheated to get a death sentence, and besides the fact that a prominent Supreme Court Justice is begging for Chandler’s life to be spared, this case might be called fair.

A life sentence is one of the options for Gov. Mike Easley. Few cases cry out for life more than Frank Chandler’s does.