The Fight for Life
"You see a lot of cases where attorneys do not have the expertise
or the resources to prosecute, then inequities and unfairness occur."
Andrew Parnes
By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer
Andrew Parnes Photo by Willy Cook
A gargoyle on the desk of Ketchum attorney Andy Parnes represents Keith
Wells’ demons.
Wells was Idaho’s most recently executed murder defendant, killed in
1994, and the only person to be executed in the state since 1957. He was a
"volunteer," in the parlance of death row, meaning he was sentenced to death,
but waived his right to appeal.
"Wells believed that demons drove him at the time of the
killings," Parnes said.
Parnes, who took the case during the sentencing phase, said he and his
co-counsels believed Wells was not rational, and appealed the case to the federal Ninth
Circuit Court, which heard it on the scheduled day of execution.
"All we were asking for was a doctor’s viewpoint and the court
said ‘No.’ How did the courts know he was competent if there was never any
hearing on his mental state?"
Parnes faxed the court documents to the U.S. Supreme Court, which stayed
the execution for a few hours but declined to hear the case. Wells was executed at 2 a.m.
the following morning.
Wells’ case was one of many death penalty cases Parnes has handled.
Fifty-four years old and a New Yorker by birth, he is one of the foremost opponents of the
death penalty in the Western states.
Parnes obtained a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, and ran the
Stanford Workshops on Political and Social Issues program before deciding to attend law
school at the University of California at Berkley in 1975. His goal was to specialize in
economic law, but fate intervened when Parnes assisted an attorney friend with an
attempted murder trial in Oakland.
"That got me interested in criminal law," he said.
An internship at the federally funded Public Defender’s program
followed while he was still in school, in Hunter’s Point, a San Francisco ghetto.
After graduation in 1978, Parnes practiced criminal defense law.
During a 1980 ski vacation to Sun Valley, he fell in love with his future
wife, Kate, a skier working as a waitress at the old Chart House in Elkhorn, and working
as a substitute teacher. (Kate Parnes is now on the Blaine County school board).
Eventually, he recalled, "she came to California, but we always kept coming back up
because she loved it here." In 1990, the couple and their three children settled
permanently in Ketchum.
Parnes had begun specializing in death penalty work in the late 1980s, due
to California’s large death row population. All 550 of those inmates are housed in
San Quentin State Prison. He is currently working on six of those cases, commuting between
Idaho and California to meet with prisoners and co-counsels at San Quentin.
Idaho has 21 convicts on death row, in Boise. Several of those people,
Parnes contends, should not be there.
"In Idaho, which is a very small state [population wise], with a lot
of solo practitioners," Parnes said, "there were, in the early and mid-80s,
good-hearted, good-intentioned people, who did not have the resources to defend these
cases."
As the result of Parnes’ help, two of those defendants are now off
the row.
One was Freddie Paz, a man so delusional, Parnes said, he "does not
believe that the person who was shot was actually shot." Because of the nature of his
mental health his death sentence was commuted.
The other involves the ongoing case of Tom Gibson, accused of murdering
two people--one in Spokane, Wash., the other in Idaho in 1980. A federal court reversed
his conviction on appeal based on ineffective assistance of trial counsel, Parnes said.
Eventually, Gibson pleaded to second-degree murder, and the case went into mediation with
Parnes, his two co-councils from Seattle, Idaho’s Attorney General, the mediator from
the federal Ninth Circuit, and the local prosecutor.
Parnes said Gibson maintained he was present at the killings but was not
the murderer. Parnes contended Gibson is "absolutely not the person who did the
killings." As a result of Parnes’ work in mediation, Gibson, who has already
served 18 years, will be released Jan. 1, 2003.
When murder defendants receive an inadequate defense, or are charged by a
prosecutor’s office that lacks the means to thoroughly investigate the crime, Parnes
said, "the imposition of the death penalty becomes arbitrary and capricious."
"The real thrust is it’s not just, it’s not fairly enforced
in the country. There’s so much racial bias and bias to try to resolve cases. What
lawyers [ideally] are doing out there is protecting society’s rights. We make sure
the cops and prosecutors are following the rules. It’s a matter of checks and
balances."
Columbia University Law Professor Jim Liebman has claimed that nearly 68
percent of death penalty cases have been reversed in either the guilt or penalty phases.
States have paid large sums of money as compensation in capital cases to some who were
wrongly convicted.
Parnes gave as an example the case of two men who served 18 years on death
row in California but are now free men. He said that at the time of the murders for which
they were indicted, they were actually in custody in another county. The prosecutors hid
this information, and the defendants were falsely identified.
"It’s unfair," Parnes said, "but if they had been
executed it would have been outrageous."
Since Illinois resumed the use of capital punishment in 1977, 12 people
have been executed and 13 have been freed from death row for various reasons. This year
Gov. George Ryan called for a moratorium on all executions in the state.
In New Hampshire, the State Legislature voted in March to abolish the
death penalty, but Gov. Jeanne Shaheen vetoed the bill.
Parnes readily acknowledges many people on death row are guilty. However,
he contends that because of the death penalty, "as a society we spend way to much
time, money and attention in the media on these (murder) cases. Crime is more widespread
on a lower level."
He makes his case statistically. There are 3,000 people on death row in
the United States versus 4.5 million on probation and parole, and about 2 million
incarcerated.
"Number one, I think if we took all those resources and put it into
drug programs, and education, we would reduce murder."
Though he makes practical arguments against the death penalty,
Parnes’ feelings about it were formed in childhood. He said he was "raised with
a belief that we shouldn’t take others’ lives--that the government should not
take lives."
"I think more and more people are opposed, not because it’s a
moral issue, though I think it should be, but [because] we don’t want to take someone
out and lynch them," he said. "We want to be fair. I think that is where the
sentiment is going. Even South Africa abolished the death penalty after Apartheid. So why
do we have it? There’s a movement around the world--if the United States is so
interested in human rights why do [we] have the death penalty?"
When most folks think of criminal lawyers, summoned up are the
high-profile types who’re called in to be part of a dream team of lawyers, or appear
on morning television expounding on their takes on trials.
Meanwhile there are unsung soldiers who fight in the trenches of justice
and in the backwaters of the country for the neglected and derided.
"In 1972 the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional. There was hope
that they would not reinstate it," Parnes said. But the U.S. government did
re-activate the death penalty in 1977.
Governmental crimes are the most immoral in Parnes’ opinion, where
people like Hitler and Eichmann gain control and create an atmosphere where the slaughter
of other people is encouraged. But he still believes that a "life in prison is
appropriate punishment."
The European Union stipulates that to be a EU member a country must not
have the death penalty.
Internationally, capital punishment is widely considered as a human rights
issue.
Seemingly, less than evolved countries that have no death penalty are
Turkey, Yugoslavia, Iran, Russia, China, and Afghanistan, Parnes said.
And, he said, that’s a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s
prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. What the court interprets this to mean is
that if death is imposed in a wanton and capricious manner then it cannot be imposed.
"The courts have determined that you cannot say ‘the punishment
for this is death, and nothing else.’ There have to be alternatives." Parnes
said. "There is no mandatory death penalty."
Maintaining a high level of righteousness is part of the process for
Parnes.
