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Helping Karl
Why Help Karl?
The web address lifeforkarl was registered to make a point.
Karl was sentenced to death in 1997 for capital murder, a crime for which he confessed when arrested in July 1996. Karl acknowledges his arrest for, in his own words, "a terrible crime committed years earlier in my past" and has expressed great remorse for his crime without reservation ever since. This expression of remorse has been widely documented, including in a recent interview with the BBC.
Therein however lies the rub. Karl was denied the opportunity in his trial to stand in the witness stand and in person testify his remorse before the jury.
Karl totally accepts he should be severely punished but not that the punishment should be his execution.
In his appeal to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2007 Karl argued that his lawyer at the time was ineffective in not adequately explaining to him a plea bargain offered by the prosecutors at the time. The prosecutors had provided Karl with the option of accepting two life prison terms in exchange for pleading guilty to murder. He also argued in his appeal that his attorneys were deficient for not calling any witnesses during the critical guilt-innocence process of the trial, and even more damningly made the recommendation to also exclude Karl from appearing in person as a witness in his own trial. This decision eliminated the possibility of expressing remorse directly to the jury.
The court denied Karl's request for appeal saying that his attorneys during the original trial had undertaken a 'reasonable strategy' because of 'overwhelming evidence that included a signed confession, fingerprint matches, DNA evidence and a rifle cartridge'. The jury in Karl's original trial had taken just seven minutes to convict him.
Severely compounding the situation was the apparent lack of skill and care undertaken by Karl's attorney and since reported in the American press. The Austin American Statesman in 2007 published an investigative series accusing appellate attorney Toby Wilkinson of 'submitting habeas corpus motions largely copied from letters by his death row clients' and on which he performed 'minimal editing and none of the required research'. (1)
The abuse Karl suffered during childhood which included rapes and the severe effect that this had had on Karl in his later life had not been argued as mitigating circumstances. Additionally his attempts to reform over the five years between the time of the crime and his arrest were not aired in court.
Our choice of lifeforkarl as a web address therefore emphasises that Karl should be given the opportunity to appeal against his death sentence and for this to be commuted to a life sentence. He should also be provided with legal support and representation that is both effective and fair, of which it now appears he was originally denied in his trial.
(1) Michael Graczyk Associated Press 11th May 2007
READ THE SANTA FE REPORTER'S INTERVIEW
WITH KARL'S MOTHER
