04/06/01
ROBIN DeMONIA
News staff writer

An inmate who asked to be sentenced to death - for a crime he insists he didn't commit - said he has found what could be a major flaw in his defense strategy.

He might get electrocuted.

Thomas Douglas Arthur, 59, said he asked for death so the case would get extra scrutiny from appeals courts. Instead, he could not get a lawyer, missed the deadline to file his last appeals, and is scheduled to go to Alabama's electric chair on April 27.

"If something don't happen real soon, they're gonna kill me for something I didn't do," said Arthur, who was convicted in the 1982 murder of Troy Wicker in Muscle Shoals. "They're literally going to fry me alive."

But Attorney General Bill Pryor argues that the time for appeals has passed.

Death penalty opponents have said the case highlights a major weakness in Alabama capital cases: The state doesn't ensure lawyers for Death Row inmates after their first round of appeals.

Most states have public defenders or some other system for appointing lawyers in capital appeals. In Alabama, more than 30 of the state's 185 Death Row inmates have no lawyer.

While Arthur hunted for a lawyer, he missed an April 2000 deadline to file his second round of state appeals and a June 1999 deadline to file any federal appeal.

Pryor said Arthur could have filed without a lawyer, as other inmates have done. Now, he said, courts have no reason to consider Arthur's appeal.

But he said it's not as if Arthur didn't have his day in court. "Three separate juries convicted him and recommended he be sentenced to death," Pryor said.

Twice, the verdicts were overturned in state appeals courts because of missteps by a prosecutor or judge. After his third trial in 1991, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the conviction.

While the case has never been heard in federal court, Pryor said the evidence was overwhelming that Arthur killed Wicker in exchange for $10,000 from the victim's wife, Judy Wicker. Arthur was on work release from a previous murder conviction at the time of Troy Wicker's death.

"This was an egregious case," Pryor said.

But New York lawyer Arnold Levine, who started representing Arthur this year, attributed the outcome largely to "woefully inadequate" legal representation Arthur received at trial.

Defense lawyers not only failed to make use of evidence that helped Arthur's case, but also introduced some evidence that hurt him, Levine said in a court filing last month.

The defense introduced a transcript from the trial of Mrs. Wicker, who later became the chief witness against Arthur. Instead of raising questions about Mrs. Wicker's testimony, the transcript featured the damaging testimony of her sister and mother.

"Defense counsel's error effectively provided two additional prosecution witnesses who directly implicated Mr. Arthur in the death of Troy Wicker," the court filing said.

At the same time, defense lawyers failed to introduce phone records and past trial testimony that would contradict a witness who claimed she got the bullets for Arthur, Levine said in the court filing.

Patricia Yarbrough Green testified that she got the bullets before 4 p.m. the day before Wicker's murder, and immediately gave them to Arthur. But another witness, who died after Arthur's second trial, testified that he bought the bullets for Ms. Green and did not give them to her until after 6 p.m.

Phone records place Arthur at 6:11 p.m. that day at his work release job, at least 20 minutes away from where prosecutors say he picked up the bullets, Levine said.

Since the records weren't introduced, jurors weren't aware of any discrepancy, the court filing said.

The filing points to a number of other flaws in Arthur's trial, which was conducted in Jefferson County because of the publicity the case had received in northwest Alabama.

Among other things: