More than two decades after Ventura County Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath con­demned Michael Morales to die, McGrath is ask­ing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemen­cy because the con­vic­tion was like­ly based on false tes­ti­mo­ny from a jail­house infor­mant. Morales is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on February 21. McGrath’s let­ter was includ­ed in a clemen­cy peti­tion filed by Morales’ attor­neys, David Senior and Kenneth W. Starr, dean of Pepperdine Law School and a for­mer federal judge. 

In his let­ter to Schwarzenegger, McGrath said that exe­cut­ing Morales would be ​“a griev­ous and freak­ish injus­tice.” McGrath not­ed that in exchange for tes­ti­mo­ny giv­en by the jail­house infor­mant, pros­e­cu­tors dropped four of six felony charges against him. The infor­mant tes­ti­fied that while he and Morales were togeth­er in a crowd­ed cell­block, Morales con­fessed in Spanish to the rape and mur­der of Terri Winchell. A lat­er inves­ti­ga­tion by the state attor­ney gen­er­al dis­cov­ered that Morales does not speak Spanish. McGrath’s let­ter stat­ed that the infor­man­t’s tes­ti­mo­ny con­vinced the jury that the killing was egre­gious, and his tes­ti­mo­ny was the only evi­dence to sup­port the sin­gle spe­cial cir­cum­stance that made Morales eli­gi­ble for the death penalty. 

McGrath told Schwarzenegger that California law requires judges to review the death ver­dicts of jurors to pro­tect ​“the integri­ty of the judi­cial sys­tem, pub­lic con­fi­dence in the admin­is­tra­tion of the state’s pow­er to impose death and the rights of defen­dants to indi­vid­u­al­ized sen­tenc­ing deci­sions.” He then added that had he known of the infor­man­t’s false­hoods, ​“I would not have let the death sen­tence stand, and the awe­some deci­sion to spare his life would not be before you at this time. Under such cir­cum­stances, exe­cut­ing Mr. Morales would frus­trate the design of our sentencing laws.”

If exe­cut­ed, Morales would be the first Latino exe­cut­ed in California since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed. Senior and Starr note that the deci­sion to bring their client up on cap­i­tal charges was fueled by racial and eth­nic con­cerns and that the dis­trict attor­ney who pros­e­cut­ed Morales did not seek the death penal­ty in six oth­er egre­gious crimes that hap­pened dur­ing the same peri­od, includ­ing the beat­ing death of a black teenag­er by a white male.

(Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2006). See New Voices, Clemency, and Race.

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