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Thread: Tony Mitchell Sidden - North Carolina Death Row

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    Tony Mitchell Sidden - North Carolina Death Row




    Facts of the Crime:

    Convicted and sentenced to death in 1995 in the 1982 murders of Garry Sidden and his sons, Galvin and Garry, Jr.

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    July 18, 2011

    Sidden’s sentence is still unresolved

    A year after Tony Mitchell Sidden was sentenced to death in 1995 for murdering two Traphill boys, the N.C. Supreme Court denied his direct appeal and issued a scathing opinion.

    The high court wrote, “It is hard to find a case to compare with this one. The facts in this case demonstrate a wanton cruelty which is beyond comparison. The defendant kidnapped two young boys and kept them locked first in the trunk of his automobile while he murdered their father and then in an attic before killing them.

    “We can only imagine the terror the two boys felt as they awaited their fate. The torture endured by these two children removes any doubt that the sentence of death in this case is proportionate” when compared to other capital cases.

    The boys Sidden murdered in July 1982 were Garry Sidden Jr., 16, and his brother, Galvin, 10. Their father was Garry Sidden Sr.

    Garry Sidden Sr. was murdered by Sidden and Anthony Ray Blankenship outside his home on Traphill Road. The boys were killed because they witnessed their father’s murder.

    Tony Sidden and Blankenship were convicted in Yadkinville of first-degree murder in 1994 and received life sentences for killing Garry Sidden Sr. Blankenship, in a separate trial at Yadkinville in the early 1990s, received two other life terms for murdering the boys.

    After being denied by the N.C. Supreme Court, Sidden’s attorneys appealed his convictions and death sentences to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case.

    In 1999, his lawyers filed a motion for appropriate relief and were allowed to subpoena certain law enforcement records.

    The appeals process in this case pretty much came to a standstill for five years until 2004 when Judge Mark Klass of Statesville told Sidden’s newest set of attorneys to get busy on this appeal. The status hearing on this case came about because District Attorney Tom Horner called the attorney general’s office and complained about the inactivity.

    Sidden’s original appellate attorneys said he was unhappy with them and was refusing to cooperate. Amazingly, Klass appointed two new lawyers.

    Inmates aren’t supposed to be able to pick and choose which court-appointed counsel will represent them.

    Since then, this motion for appropriate relief has gone nowhere. Klass, who still has the case, has not heard the motion. There is no reason for it.

    Klass conducted another status hearing on June 28, 2010 with defense attorneys and an assistant attorney general who is representing the state.

    No one has given a really satisfactory explanation as to why this appeal has gone nowhere, though Sidden’s lack of cooperation probably had something to do with it.

    But you’ve got to wonder what a defendant’s lack of cooperation has to do with anything. Sidden, like any other inmate, has no incentive to cooperate unless it benefits him. Klass could have—and should have— ruled on this motion for appropriate relief years ago. Instead, he has just let it sit there.

    Beyond this, attorneys handling capital appeals, if allowed to do so, will delay the process anyway they can. It’s simply the way the game is played.

    The current focus of Sidden’s appeal is largely on Jesse Lord, a prison informant who provided key trial testimony in 1995 at Taylorsville. The trial was held there because of heavy publicity in Wilkes County.

    If not for Lord’s testimony, it is unlikely that Sidden would have been convicted of killing the boys. Sidden told him about the killings while they were in federal prison together in Petersburg, Va.

    No one but the killer could have provided Lord with such accurate information, even down to details of the area in which the killings took place.

    It’s been over 28 years since these murders took place. Since then, Sidden has used every means possible to avoid a date with the death chamber at Central Prison in Raleigh. Just about anybody would do the same.

    The ones at fault for this delay are judges and attorneys who have allowed, even fostered, this manipulation. It is beyond time for this case to move ahead.

    I understand that the death penalty in the U.S. is controversial. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have banned it, as have all other western nations.

    The appeals process with regard to the death penalty is extremely expensive and convoluted. There is no guarantee that a condemned inmate will ever be executed.

    Statistics show that it is far cheaper to house an inmate for the rest of his or her life than to pay for the uncertain process of pursuing an execution.

    In the meantime, North Carolina continues to pay court-appointed lawyers to file and pursue appeal after appeal. Our fiscally conservative state legislators should pay attention to this.

    I think it is time for the General Assembly to recognize the futility of continuing to fund this process. A sentence of life without parole for the crime of first-degree murder is sufficient. It permanently takes the offender out of the general population.

    http://www.journalpatriot.com/opinio...9bb30f31a.html

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