When Mose Young received a packet from the Missouri Supreme Court earlier this month, he was hop-ing the justices had agreed to consider a procedural controversy in his case. Instead he learned the court ordered his killing by state officials on late Tuesday night, July 11, officially in the opening minutes of July 12.
Young was sentenced to death for the February 1983 murders of James Schnieder, Kent Bicknese and Sol Marks in a St. Louis pawnshop. We, with the Mid-MO FOR are saddened when people kill any human be-ing and support efforts to assist in comforting those mourning the loss of their loved ones.
We condemn all violence, including our state's premeditated killing of Young, whom even if guilty should not lose his life, the most basic of rights for all humans. Several other issues are deserving of notice in Young's case as well:
Young's trial attorney Jack Walsh saw his client just once before the capital trial, for 15-20 minutes. He showed up at the jail on a Thursday, recalls Young, saying he was "ready to go to trial on Monday."
During breaks in the trial, the court-appointed private attorney visited his client in the docket with alco-hol mixed in his canned soda. Young says his attorney explained, "'I need this to take off the edge.'" Walsh called no witnesses to testify during the trial, just one during the sentencing phase, states Young.
Joe Margulies notes Walsh was disbarred soon after Young's trial and last he heard, is tending bar in the Chicago.
A grand jury, considering in March 1983 whether evidence warranted a trial be held for Young, issued a "true bill" (essentially, sufficient grounds) to try him for robbery (in a separate case). Young's initial trial at-torney James Bell, however told his client, according to Young, that the jury issued a "no true bill," ruling there was insufficient evidence to try him for the three murders.
No court document verifies Young's assertion. To date, his efforts to obtain copies of the grand jury's findings have been blocked by high courts. Bell also witnessed police arresting Young in his law office. When they dumped out the suspect's briefcase they found nothing but a newspaper. Later, according to Young, investigators say they found in a corner of the confiscated case, two rings and a watch stolen from the pawnshop.
The court assigned Walsh to the case since Bell had to cease his representation, as he became a poten-tially key defense witness. Just a few weeks before trial, however, Bell died. Not expecting such a tragedy, no one had considered having Bell file an affidavit regarding his knowledge of certain issues.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, prosecutors successfully pressed for a preliminary hearing before a sin-gle judge. It was a procedure rarely employed in St. Louis homicides (once in about six years), especially once a grand jury had already considered whether to try a case. Young told FOR, "It showed public officials began to panic, saying (among themselves) 'We've done said we have got the man'" who committed the highly publi-cized triple homicide. The state was rattled when the grand jury apparently wasn't convinced.
When he and another court-appointed attorney Michael Musich found out a few days before the hear-ing, that it regarded the murders, they submitted a document waiving his right to such a hearing. State law says such an exam "shall in no case be required where it is waived by the person charged with the crime."
Judge James Dowd nonetheless refused to accept Young's waiver. Musich strongly refuted prosecutor's claims that some witnesses were at risk to unless they testified publicly in such a hearing (No evidence was in fact presented suggesting imminent harm). He condemned the proceeding, noting he had no prior opportunity of "discovery" to independently question the state's witnesses and examine documents prior to the hearing.
In protest, Musich and Young walked out of the hearing. The attorney returned only at the order of Judge Dowd, yet he refused to cross-examine any of the state's four witnesses in an effort to show he gave the proceeding no validity.
Young acknowledges, "A lot of guys (in prison) say they didn't do it (their crimes). It is a public question. Why should we believe you?," Young has been asked, "All I can say hope-fully, it (truth) will come out in the legal system. I've said from day one, 'I did not commit the crimes.'" Young agrees he went to Lee's Pawnshop twice that day, the second time heatedly arguing with the shop's owner over some goods he wanted to sell. He was among the 8-9 people shopping there, he says, who fled when the gunfire began.
Young says the accounts of the state's star witness Ronell Bennett, a store employee, have varied con-siderably. Young says, Bennett initially told police he locked himself inside the store's basement vault when the shooting began and witnessed nothing. During the preliminary hearing, he recalled seeing Young fatally but accidentally shoot Bicknese when he apparently meant to kill Bennett. He told the court a second bullet missed him, then he retreated to the vault until police, responding to a tripped store alarm.
Young, an African- American man, was convicted of killing the three men, all of whom were White. In Missouri, eventhough Blacks comprise roughly half of all homicide victims, more than 70-% of those sen-tenced to die, were convicted of killing Whites Prosecutor Edward Rogers (now a circuit judge), during the voir dire jury- selection process, used all of his allowed pre-emptory "strikes" to exclude nine African-Americans from the jury pool.
"This case represents a racist profiling by the prosecutor in his efforts to seek the death penalty," according to one of Young's defense attorneys Joe Margulies. Law officers practice profiling by disproportion-ately pulling over more minority motorists, or in this case, pulling out Blacks from jury service.
Margulies adds, "We hope the governor (Mel Carnahan) will take seriously his commitment to end ra-cial profiling," stay Young's execution, and allow him a new trial. On June 5, Gov. Carnahan signed into law a bill formally prohibiting the practice. "Senate Bill 1053," he said, "is the official statement of the State o f Mis-souri that we as a state and as a community are adamantly opposed to racial profiling." Intervention in Young's case would help prove the sincerity of his words.
His 17 years in prison for this crime have had a devastating effect on he and his family. Both his mother and father have died while he's been incarcerated. He's been an absentee father to four boys now ranging in age from age 18 to 25. His execution could well haunt his fami-ly for generations to come.
Young says he's "seen many men taken down to be killed. They've become my brothers. It's a haunt-ing, hurtful feeling, when I talk to one man. I see him today and then realize I won't see him tomorrow."
"I really appreciate" the work of FOR and other abolitionist groups. "We got to keep on moving toward ending the death penalty. You may not be able to stop my execution but your struggles" may help spare the lives of others.