GA Execution Date Wednesday -Please Write Pardon and Parole Board, Attend Vigils

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Joseph Shippen

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May 30, 2008, 11:50:47 AM5/30/08

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Dear Friends,

Unfortunately, Curtis Osborne has an execution date for this Wednesday. Please take a minute and send a letter or fax to the Board of Pardons and Paroles. I have attached a sample letter from Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Below is an article from the AJC that shows racism of Osborne’s defense attorney, who seems to have had no real desire to offer a defense. He did not even call experts at the trial that could have shown Osborne’s mental illness and addiction as well as that of his family. He apparently did not tell Osborne about the D.A.’s offer of a guilty plea in exchange for a life sentence.

There is hope that the Pardon and Parole Board may commute Osborne’s sentence. Last Friday, just hours before his scheduled execution, they communed Samuel David Crowe’s sentence to life without the possibility of parole.

If the execution does go forward, please plan to attend a vigil in your area this Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. You can find out vigil locations by going to the GFADP website: http://www.gfadp.org/TakingAction/CurtisOsborne/tabid/79/Default.aspx

Thanks for taking action to save Curtis Osborne’s life and for working to abolish the death penalty.

Peace,

Joseph

From: GF...@yahoogroups.com [mailto:GF...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of gfadp
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 12:43 PM
To: GF...@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [GFADP] Osborne in AJC: "Racist defense put killer on death row"

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2008/05/29/osborne_deat
h_penalty.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab

Racist defense put killer on death row, attorneys say
Parole board to hear case of man scheduled to die June 4

By BILL RANKIN
The AtlantaJournal-Constitution
Published on: 05/29/08

With his tall Stetson hat, diamond rings, gold chains and a thin
handlebar mustache, attorney Johnny Mostiler was for years the face
of indigent defense at the SpaldingCountycourthouse.

Known as "Boss Hog," Mostiler drove a Cadillac convertible with cow
horns as hood ornaments and, over a decade, held the contract for
Spalding's public defender work. On top of a civil practice, Mostiler
carried more than 600 indigent criminal cases at a time.

Mostiler died of a massive heart attack in 2000. On Friday, his
defense of killer Curtis Osborne 18 years ago will be the focus of
lawyers asking the Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute Osborne's
death sentence.

Osborne's lawyers from the Atlantafirm King & Spalding contend
Mostiler was so racially prejudiced he presented a paltry defense on
his client's behalf. They will allege that Mostiler, who was white,
did not tell Osborne, who is African-American, there was an offer for
Osborne to plead guilty to a life sentence.

"The system breaks down when it's infected or corrupted by racism,"
said Bill Hoffmann, one of Osborne's lawyers. "It's a fundamental
principle of our justice system that individuals be given zealous
representation. It's particularly outrageous that Mr. Osborne was
denied that because of racial bias."

In 2006, the federal appeals court in Atlantarejected claims that
Mostiler's alleged racial animosity entitled Osborne to a new trial.
The court noted that Mostiler, called to testify during Osborne's
appeal, said he recalled giving Osborne the state's offer to plead to
life in prison.

Osborne is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on June 4. He
was sentenced to death for fatally shooting Linda Lisa Seaborne and
Arthur Jones on Aug. 7, 1990.

Prosecutors said Osborne killed Jones after selling Jones' motorcycle
and not giving him the money back and then shot Seaborne to eliminate
her as a witness.

The parole board will hear the clemency request eight days after it
spared Samuel David Crowe hours before he was to be executed.

Former President Jimmy Carter, former deputy U.S. Attorney General
Larry Thompson and former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman
Fletcher are sending letters to the board, requesting clemency for
Osborne, Hoffmann said.

Fletcher, who voted in 1993 to uphold Osborne's death sentence, said
he recalled Mostiler's "apparent ineptness" because he raised so few
issues on appeal.

"As is now all too well apparent, it is Mr. Osborne who is suffering
due to Mr. Mostiler's grave shortcomings and his racial prejudices of
perhaps a lifetime," Fletcher wrote the board.

Spalding County District Attorney Scott Ballard wants the execution
to go forward.

"It's been 18 years since a jury, after hearing all the evidence and,
I believe, being presented with a very adequate defense by Mr.
Mostiler, sentenced him to death," Ballard said. "This case has been
reviewed and reviewed and reviewed. It's time to carry it out."

Long-time Griffinattorney Andrew Whalen III called Mostiler a
compassionate defender of all his clients, regardless of their race.

"I felt like he really gave it his all," he said. "He enjoyed a good
trial and a good fight in the courtroom."

As to whether Mostiler was racially biased, Whalen said, "The whole
thing sounds absurd to me. I certainly would not contend he was
racist at all."

Osborne's lawyers will provide the board with evidence from two
former Mostiler clients who said they heard him use racial slurs.

One of them, Gerald Steven Huey, said Mostiler once said of
Osborne, "That little [racial epithet] deserves the death penalty."

Both Huey, convicted in 1991 of murdering and dismembering his
drinking buddy, and Osborne were in the SpaldingCountyjail as they
awaited their trials.

Huey said that Mostiler once told him he was going to spend a lot of
money defending Huey. "He said the money he would spend on me was
going to be a lot more than he would spend on Mr. Osborne
because 'that little [racial epithet] deserves the chair,'" Huey said.

On another occasion, Huey said, Mostiler came to him with an offer
from the district attorney to plead guilty in exchange for a life
sentence. But Huey declined.

"Mr. Mostiler got furious and told me how lucky I was," Huey
said. "He said that he had an offer for Curtis Osborne but he would
never tell Mr. Osborne about it because he deserved to die."

Huey, dumbfounded, said he asked Mostiler if he was on a crusade,
according to his affidavit, signed in April 2001. "He said that he
believed that some people deserved to walk and some didn't, and if
that was a crusade then he was on one," Huey said.

In 2000, Derrick Middlebrooks, an African-American client of
Mostiler's, later convicted of drug offenses, told Superior Court
Judge Johnnie Caldwell he lost confidence in Mostiler when he heard
the lawyer use a racial epithet.

Mostiller didn't deny using the term. "I honestly can't say whether I
said it or not, I don't — I honestly don't remember," Mostiler said,
when asked by Caldwellabout it, according to a transcript of the
hearing.

"Derrick's used those terms and I've used those terms with him," he
said. "I don't use those terms out in public....If I did use it I
certainly am sorry."

Before Osborne's trial, Mostiler did not request funds for a mental
health expert or for a mitigation expert to investigate his client's
life.

Psychiatrist George Woods, an adjunct professor at the Morehouse
School of Medicine, said if experts had been hired, they would have
learned Osborne's family had a history of mental illness.

Osborne, who for years held a steady job at a furniture store,
spiralled out of control before the murders when he became both
addicted to cocaine and mentally ill, said Woods, hired by Osborne's
legal team.

"His family history was so strong, both in terms of chemical
dependency and mental illness," Woods said. "It would have been
powerful for the jury to know that the mental illness he developed
didn't just happen the day before the offense."

This is not the only time Mostiler's failure to investigate the
background of a client in a death-penalty case has been attacked on
appeal.

Frederick Whatley sits on death row for a 1995 armed-robbery
murder.At his trial, Mostiler told jurors if Whatley had stayed with
his family in Griffin, "where he had been taught right, where he had
been raised correctly, I don't think we would have been here today."

New lawyers for Whatley later investigated his background. In court
filings, they say Whatley, until he was 16, slept in the same bed
with his uncle who molested him repeatedly.