Condemned
Ga. man's lawyers claim racism
By GREG
BLUESTEIN
ATLANTA- A condemned man's lawyers urged a parole board
Friday to commute his death sentence, saying his previous
defense attorney deliberately put up a flimsy defense 18
years ago because he was "infected by racism."
Curtis Osborne, who faces execution on Wednesday for two
1990 murders, claims his attorneys failed to tell him that
a life sentence plea was on the table.
While last-minute defenses are common in capital cases,
Osborne's arguments are putting an extraordinary amount of
pressure on the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, which
last week commuted a death sentence for the first time
since 2004.
Political luminaries, including President Carter and U.S.
Rep. John Lewis have urged the board to commute the
sentence, as have former Attorney General Griffin Bell and
the ex-chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court.
Osborne, who is black, was sentenced to death for the
August 1990 fatal shooting of Linda Lisa Seaborne and
Arthur Jones. They were found shot to death in an
automobile by the side of a dirt road.
His new lawyers say that the defense attorney, Johnny
Mostiler, failed to put up an adequate defense because he
was tinged by racism. They also contend Mostiler, who is
white, told another client that Osborne deserved the death
penalty and referred to him by a racial slur.
"The system is broken," said Bill Hoffmann, an attorney for
Osborne. "Any time racism infects it, in any point of
entry, a system is going to be broken," he said. "If the
judges are racist, if the jurors are racist, if the
prosecutors are racist — and surely if the man charged with
defending a black man doesn't zealously represent the
interests of a client, the system is broken."
In a brief filed to the board, he urged for clemency
because Mostiler harbored "extraordinary racial animosity"
toward Osborne.
"Because the system broke down in this case — infected by
racism which was not discovered in time to be corrected by
the courts — it is left to this board to prevent this
racial injustice," according to the filing.
Griffin Judicial Circuit District Attorney Scott Ballard
dismissed the claims against Mostiler, who died in 2000.
"He was an outstanding criminal defense lawyer who handled
many capital defense cases and always did so very
aggressively," said Ballard. "To say he was a racist and
that it affected his representation is outlandish. He hated
to lose — and didn't care what the race of the person he
was representing was."
In documents filed to the board, Osborne's attorneys
attempted to show Mostiler had shown a history of racism
that affected his practice.
Included is a sworn affidavit from Gerald Huey, a white
Mostiler client, who said Mostiler told him: "that little
(racial slur) deserves the chair." Another Mostiler client
complained to a judge in March 2000 that he had used the
same slur to talk about the residents of an Atlanta
neighborhood.
In a letter to the board, Carter called the case "very
troubling" and urged the board to commute the death
sentence to life without parole. Former U.S. Attorney
General Griffin Bell echoed the concerns, arguing that it's
"intolerable that a person's opportunity to convince a jury
to spare his life was denied because of the color of his
skin.
The parole board, which will hear arguments from both sides
behind closed doors, has the power to commute the sentence,
affirm it or delay the execution.
Ballard said the decision should be clear by now.
"A jury heard the evidence, made the decision that he
should be executed. That decision has been reviewed and
reviewed for 17 years now," he said. "There comes a point
where you have to stand by the judgments that have been
rendered and enforce the law that's in existence — and that
time came a long time ago."
