The New South 1999

How could this have happened? Deputy Nathaniel Manzie, suffering from lung cancer and residing in a nursing home in Selma, suffered an anxiety attack when state troopers came to take him down to Monroeville to be questioned. He feared for the safety of his family. His blood pressure soaring, he spoke by phone with the judge and denied witnessing the beatings, though he stuck to his story that he had never seen Brian give a waiver of his rights to the sheriff. These waivers were key in Brian’s conviction, since the confessions would not have been admitted without them. Did Judge Kittrell continue the hearing until proper testimony could be obtained from all parties? No, he stopped the hearing and ruled against Brian.

I was honored to be with Brian most of his last day, along with his family and other loved ones. Brian was, perhaps, the most courageous person I have ever known. He spent that day making us feel good, assuring us that he was okay, that the stay of execution was going to come. I also knew it was coming. It seemed there was no way that the courts could look at the new evidence and not grant a stay. Many prominent people were convinced that the case against Brian Baldwin was faulty. The Pope, Jimmy Carter, Coretta Scott King, John Lewis, and 25 other members of the Black Congressional Caucus, the Archbishop of the Alabama Diocese had all been so certain of the injustice at every level in Brian’s case that they had all written the governor urging him to grant a stay so that a proper investigation could get under way. The rational mind said, "It’s coming, it has to come. If there is one iota of doubt they can’t go forward. It would be murder...."

And murder it was. The killing machine rolled forward and took the life of Brian Baldwin. But not before he was in the electric chair, waiting for over 40 minutes while Alabama’s death squad was fiddling with the phones to the governor’s office. Forty minutes, waiting to be electrocuted. Siegelman should have stopped the execution until all testimony was heard. We were talking about innocence here, not of any wrongdoing, but innocence of capital murder. Eighty innocent people have been released from death rows across the country since we resumed executions in 1977. How many more never got to prove their innocence, like Brian?

Brian’s codefendant, executed in 1996, had written a confession back in 1985 that Brian was not even at the scene of the crime. He had apologized on TV for the murder right before his execution. Three people who were in the jail at the time of the coerced confessions had given affidavits about the beatings. "Missing" tapes that were a crucial part of his trial were found in the court reporter’s private file after she had denied their existence. The transcripts did not reflect what was in the tapes. The "missing" murder weapon was not missing and it had been examined for blood and fingerprints and had none. Brian’s clothing had no blood on it while Ed Horsley’s did. Other footprints and tire tracks were found at the crime scene but not Brian’s, nor those of the car he had stolen.

To be certain, Brian was no saint. He had been a juvenile offender. But he was not a murderer. The court believed him in 1977 when he "confessed," but suddenly he was not believable when he explained that he had confessed because the confession was beaten out of him. In that sham of a hearing, he pleaded for a polygraph test. The FBI expert for the Southeast was brought to the prison to administer it. The attorney general’s office managed to block this. He pleaded for DNA testing, to prove that no rape had occurred, for although he was never charged with rape, it was always alleged and portrayed as fact by the media. Mysteriously, the test could not be done because the material was "lost."

So, it is business as usual in Alabama. In January, outgoing governor Fob James commuted Judith Ann Neeley, a white woman who definitely committed the murders for which she was convicted. I’m glad for her and I respect James’s decision. Governor Siegelman, who came to office with huge support from the African American community has also seen much of his legislation pass through favorably because of efforts on the part of Black legislators. Yet one can only shudder at the irony that his predecessor, a definite Old South icon, stopped the execution of a white woman and Siegelman couldn’t find it in his heart to do the same for a Black man whose guilt was in question. For me, and for many of the people who knew and loved Brian Baldwin and the many people nationally and worldwide who rallied to his support, there is only sorrow and disgust at the injustice and immorality of the actions taken by the state of Alabama. This is 1999 in the New South.  Z

Claudia Whitman is coeditor of Frontiers of Justice, Vol. 1, The Death Penalty and Vol. 2, Coddling or Common Sense? and editor/contributor of the forthcoming Saga of Shame-How Race Sets the U.S. Death Penalty Agenda.