THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 28, 1995 TAG: 9507210224
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: KALEIDOSCOPE: THE DEATH PENALTY
SOURCE: By ROBERT J. HUMPHREYS
Commonwealth's Attorney, Virginia Beach
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines
It has been apparent to me for some time that in the lexicon of The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, or at least in that of its so-called Criminal Justice Team, the word ``prosecutor'' is essentially equivalent to ``Imperial Stormtrooper.'' This bias is most recently apparent in ``Slayer's innocence argued on Internet'' by Staff Writer Joe Jackson (news, June 13).
Had Mr. Jackson, instead of simply ``surfing'' the Internet, gone to the public record and reviewed the court file and transcript of the 1986 trial and appeals of Joseph O'Dell, he would have learned the following:
Witnesses placed him in the County Line night club on South Military Highway and testified that he left shortly before the victim, Helen Schartner.
After the media published reports of the rape and beating death of Ms. Schart-er, Mr. O'Dell's girlfriend called police and advised that O'Dell had returned home on the night of the murder with blood on his clothes; she turned the bloody clothing over to Virginia Beach police.
O'Dell told police two separate versions of how blood came to be on his clothes. At first, he claimed the blood was his own and later that the blood belonged to someone he had been in a bar fight with. He also claimed to have an alibi for the time of the murder.
Police checked out O'Dell's alibi and found it to be non-existent. Nor could anyone remember any barroom fight involving O'Dell.
Although DNA evidence was not in widespread use or generally accepted in the scientific community at the time of O'Dell's trial, the state Forensic Laboratory determined that the bloodstains on O'Dell's clothing were consistent with that of the victim, Helen Schartner, as to blood type and enzyme type and inconsistent with that of O'Dell.
O'Dell exercised his constitutional right to represent himself; as a result, the prosecution and the court bent over backwards to ensure that he was given every opportunity to establish his innocence if he could. He was provided by the court, at taxpayer expense, legal resources and expert witnesses to a level unprecedented before or since in Virginia. His hand-picked serology expert, Joe Guth, testified but did not impress anyone, least of all the jury, with his level of expertise. On the other hand, one of the expert witnesses used by the commonwealth is Dr. Henry Li, director of the Connecticut Crime Laboratory and also currently a consultant and expert witness for the defense in the case of O. J. Simpson.
The jury convicted O'Dell of capital murder and rape; and because of a long history of convictions for crimes of violence, including another murder, the jury recommended that O'Dell be sentenced to death.
Since his case has been on appeal, O'Dell and his lawyers, who seem to take the attitude that anything goes in trying to keep a murderer from being executed, have contacted witnesses who testified against him at trial urging them to recant their testimony and threatening legal action against them if they do not. (To date, no witness has recanted.)
During court proceedings, O'Dell was given the opportunity to utilize the now-accepted DNA analysis of the bloodstains on his clothing. The analysis was performed and O'Dell's lawyers refused to release the results to the court or the attorney general but insisted that the results were evidence of his in-no-cence.
O'Dell and his lawyers completely fabricated the results of the DNA testing in their brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, prompting Justice O'Con-nor to comment that O'Dell may actually be in-no-cent.
Following this comment from Justice O'Connor, the attorney general obtained a court order for the release of the DNA results over the vehement objections of O'Dell and his lawyers. One should ask, Why would they try so hard to suppress this so-called ``evidence of innocence''?
The DNA report commissioned by O'Dell and his lawyers actually corroborates O'Dell's guilt. There is a three-probe DNA match indicating that the bloodstains on O'Dell's clothing is indeed consistent with the victim Helen Schartner's DNA as well as her blood type and enzyme factors.
There is certainly no truth to O'Dell's accusation that evidence was suppressed or witnesses intimidated by the prosecution. Prosecutors Al Alberi and Steve Test did a superlative job in presenting the evidence despite the trial judge's permitting the case to become far more of a circus than anything now going on in California. To any courtroom observer (and I was one), Joseph O'Dell got a trial that was more than fair. He had access to resources comparable to the prosecution and he made the most of it. Death Row in Virginia and throughout the country is populated almost entirely by innocent men who were railroaded by the prosecution - just ask them. Apparently Joe Jackson has.
Joseph O'Dell is a rapist and a murderer. This was the conclusion of the jury and it is amply supported by the trial record and O'Dell's own DNA report. He has killed before; and in my judgment, if he is ever released, he will kill again. The death penalty is reserved for the worst of the worst. This was such a case and Joseph O'Dell is such a person.
Since The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star have apparently determined that it is not profitable for reporters to dig for those pesky things that, in my business, we call facts, your product as illustrated by this story has become more pulp fiction than journalism.
KEYWORDS: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT DEATH ROW RAPE MURDER by CNB