Perhaps one of the more stunning instances of prosecutor misconduct in a death penalty case surfaced in November when a North Carolina lawyer admitted sabotaging his client's appeal. Greensboro defense attorney David B. Smith said in an affidavit that he let his co-counsel miss an appeal filing deadline because he felt his client, Russell Tucker, should die for the 1994 slaying of a Kmart security guard. Smith admitted in court papers that he suffered from depression and insomnia after being assigned to Tucker's case in 1998. A week before Tucker was scheduled to be put to death, the North Carolina Supreme Court issued a stay on his execution and ordered a lower court to appoint new lawyers for Tucker. When people become aware of cases like Tucker's, Rust-Tierney said, they realize that something is wrong with the system.
People are fair-minded and want justice done.
They want people to be punished, but they want the punishment and the process to be fair. Still, death penalty supporters say moratorium advocates fail to address the question over whether the prisoners they are fighting for are really guilty of their crimes. Those on death row in the U.S. receive the greatest due process in the world. Sharp agreed that the push for a moratorium would not be stalled by the Bush administration. But he argued that Bush only received criticism for his stance on the death penalty because he happened to govern Texas, which executed 40 prisoners in 2000.