RTP-area local music and culture

[grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>]

This is one of several reasons why I didn't vote for Mike Easley, and 
why I wouldn't vote for him if for some stupid reason the DLC decided 
any random southern governor was the correct choice for president in 
2008. He's a fucking bloodthirsty bigot, and I don't care how many 
four-year-olds he sends to preschool.

Ross

p.s. his wife is cute, though:  http://home.nc.rr.com/mrdork/o/

Duncan Murrell wrote:
> I wasn't thinking of blue-state red-state jeremiads when I read that 
> subject line. I was thinking of this:
>
> NO DEFENSE FOR DEATH
>
> 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-- ch-scene: the list 
> that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene