3/26/07 (TN):
Hollow Victory For Inmate Still On Death Row
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Paul Gregory House does not look like a man who has won a victory in the highest U.S. court. The condemned inmate is confined to a 12-by-12-foot cell in the maximum security wing of Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility prison in west Nashville - the state prison system's sick ward.
House, 45, has spent nearly half his life on death row. Several years ago he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis that has stolen his strength, along with part of his mind. He is a man waiting to die, one way or another, for a murder he says he did not commit.
The U.S. Supreme Court isn't sure he committed it, either, ruling that "conflicting testimony" that the jury did not hear might have provided a reasonable doubt. Yet, House remains under a death sentence, and the state continues to push for his execution.Meanwhile, his lawyers want a new trial to present fresh evidence, and his mother and others are appealing for his freedom atthe state Capitol.
House himself spends most days lying in a narrow prison bed, staring at the ceiling and four walls surrounding him. The little he gets around is by wheelchair. He cannot shave himself because of hand tremors caused by the disease.
He has stopped thinking about what life would be like if he was exonerated, and appears to have lost all hope of freedom. "There's nothing I really care about," he said in a recent prison interview. "I don't believe it's going to happen. I just sit around in here, lay down on my bed, watch the years go by."
DNA raises doubt
House stands convicted of killing Carolyn Muncey, mother of two young children, in the rural community of Luttrell, 25 miles north of Knoxville, on a muggy summer evening in 1985. The high court in its 5-3 decision last year said that DNA evidence from semen collected from Muncey's nightgown and underwear, along with other evidence, including new witness statements pointing the finger at her husband as the killer, were strong enough that a jury probably would not have convicted House.
"Although it is close, we conclude that this is the rare case - had the jury heard all the conflicting testimony - it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror viewing the record as a whole would lack reasonable doubt," the ruling said.
Still, the court said it was not conclusively exonerating House and that some parts of the evidence against him supported an "inference of guilt."
The court's ruling has raised new interest in the Union County murder case. State Rep. Mike Turner, a Democrat from Old Hickory, has asked Gov. Phil Bredesen that House be granted a pardon in light of the DNA evidence and the Supreme Court's decision.
Gov. Phil Bredesen's spokeswoman Lydia Lenker said Friday that he had not formally responded to Turner's request.
"The governor is very aware of this case and he is currently reviewing it," Lenker said.
In the interim, Turner is trying to convince fellow lawmakers to pass a resolution on House's behalf or, at minimum, to draft a group letter in support of House.
He said he has about 25 lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who would sign a letter.
A death penalty opponent, Turner said his group has lawmakers on both sides of that issue. "They don't want an innocent man to die on death row," Turner said. "The worst thing we could do is execute an innocent man on death row."
Turner said he was inspired to do something about House's case after reading John Grisham's non-fiction bestseller The Innocent Man. The book details the plight of a mentally ill Oklahoma man who was nearly executed before he was exonerated, in part, by DNA evidence.
"I said, 'You know, by golly, you ought to do something,' " Turner said. "People elect you to do what's right, not necessarily what's popular."
Meanwhile, in the courts, House's court-appointed attorney, Stephen Kissinger, said the state had shown no interest in expediting the request he filed last month for a new trial or his client's release. Kissinger said state attorneys had thrown up a series of procedural issues as delaying tactics to slow the process of House's appeal. He and others fear that House could die from his disease before he gets a new trial.
"They want a chance to revisit all these issues they've already lost on and bar anything that would allow us to argue for a new trial," Kissinger said.
The state attorney general's office represents local prosecutors in death penalty appeals. The Attorney General's recent motion read: "And, though (House) persists in proclaiming that he is innocent, many of the factual allegations supporting his claim have not yet been addressed by this court,"
House had prison record
House arrived in the northeast Tennessee community of Luttrell from Utah by Greyhound bus in spring 1985. He was 23 and had just been released from a Utah prison after serving five years for a rape conviction.
His mother had relocated to Knoxville after her marriage to House's father had dissolved, and she had taken up with a local man, who raised tobacco and other crops.
Carolyn Muncey was a young mother of two living nearby with her husband, Hubert Muncey Jr., who, official records would later say, was an abusive alcoholic. House and his mother, along with her new husband, knew the Muncey family.
When Carolyn Muncey disappeared on a July night, her husband was suspected the next morning. Her bloodied body was found on a nearby creek bank the next day, but authorities in the small community quickly turned suspicion to the outsider, House, who was fresh out of prison.
Evidence at the trial included a semen specimen collected from the dead woman's nightgown, which an expert witness said was from a man with the same blood type as House. Today's sophisticated DNA evidence testing didn't exist at the time. The allegation that Muncey had been not only murdered but raped led House to be sentenced to death.
In the late 1990s, DNA testing revealed that the semen was that of Hubert Muncey. Other critical pieces of evidence in the trial were small stains of the victim's blood that appeared on House's jeans. Jurors during the trial did not hear that the samples were not from a bloody struggle the night of the killing, but from corrupted or sloppy evidence-gathering - the blood samples that ended up on House's jeans had been taken during Carolyn Muncey's autopsy.
Five witnesses came forward many years later and gave testimony that implicated Hubert Muncey. All of them were friends or acquaintances of his, and longtime residents in the area with no apparent allegiances to House, according to court records.
Two said the husband tearfully confessed at a party in 1985, around the time of House's trial, that he accidentally killed his wife during an argument in their kitchen, then disposed of the body to avoid going to jail.
One other woman said she saw House arguing with his wife after she showed up at a dance, and that he hit her. Another woman said that, the morning after the killing, with Carolyn Muncey still missing, Hubert Muncey asked her to lie and provide a false alibi if anyone asked where he was the night of the murder.
House's mother has visited the oldest of her two sons, whom she knows as "Greg," in prison in Nashville every month, sometimes twice a month, since he was sentenced to die in 1986. The disease in recent years has aggressively attacked his voice and memory, making it hard for him to carry a sustained conversation.
© X-Pro 2007
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