Clemency

A former death penalty investigator pleaded guilty Monday in Sacramento County Superior Court to perjury, forgery and falsifying documents on behalf of four death row inmates. Under terms of a settlement deal, Kathleen Culhane pleaded guilty to two counts of forgery, one count of perjury and one count of filing false documents, said Culhane's defense attorney, Stuart Hanlon.

Karen Orehowsky decided to join the Beltway lobbying crowd not long after getting a phone call from her mother, back home in Iowa. Her mother told her she had a new pen pal, a former drug dealer by the name of Phillip Emmert who was serving a 27-year sentence in federal prison. Orehowsky was alarmed to hear that her 62-year-old mom was corresponding with an inmate. But her mother assured her that Emmert had reformed and did not deserve his long sentence.

The federal clemency system is approaching gridlock as a surge in applications for pardons and commutations has resulted in the largest and most persistent backlog of cases in recent history, according to federal data obtained by the Los Angeles Times. As of Oct. 1, more than 3,000 petitions for clemency filed by federal prisoners were pending with the Office of the Pardon Attorney, Justice Department statistics show.

In the spring of 1986, lawmakers had become alarmed by reports of urban crime waves linked to crack, then a new and highly addictive form of cocaine. News reports were full of images of writhing "crack babies" deeply addicted to the drug through their mothers, doomed to "a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority," as one columnist observed. The sudden death that June of basketball star Len Bias galvanized Washington into passing extraordinarily strict drug laws.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided he will not hold a private clemency hearing for condemned inmate Clarence Ray Allen, who is scheduled for execution Jan. 17 for commissioning the murders of three people while he was behind bars. Schwarzenegger did not offer a reason for his rejection, which came in a one-sentence letter from his legal affairs secretary to lawyers over the New Year's holiday.

California's oldest condemned inmate asked a federal judge late Wednesday to block his execution next week, saying it would be cruel and unusual because of his age and health problems. The last-ditch legal move by attorneys for Clarence Ray Allen follows a decision a day earlier by the California Supreme Court rejecting the same challenge. Allen is to be executed Tuesday. "Mr.

Condemned killer Clarence Ray Allen was denied clemency Friday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said the 75-year-old murderer's life should not be spared just because he is old and in ill health. Although Allen still has an appeal pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, Schwarzenegger's decision increases the likelihood that Allen, who will turn 76 on Monday, will be executed Tuesday at San Quentin State Prison.

California prison officials executed 76-year-old murderer Clarence Ray Allen at the state prison here early today after his final appeal was turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court. His death was announced at 12:38 a.m. by Elaine Jennings of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Allen, who turned 76 Monday, was by far the oldest of the 13 convicts executed in the state since California restored the death penalty in 1977 and the second oldest in the nation.

In a highly unusual development, a judge who condemned a killer to die has asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency. Michael A. Morales is to be executed Feb. 21 for the 1981 killing of Terri Winchell, a Lodi high school student. Ventura County Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath, appointed by Gov. Ronald Reagan, said in a letter to the governor that he believes the sentence was based on false testimony from a jailhouse informant.

The San Joaquin County district attorney's office Monday strongly urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger not to grant clemency to convicted murderer Michael A. Morales, scheduled to be executed Feb. 21 at San Quentin State Prison. Morales was sentenced to death in 1983 by Ventura County Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath after a jury unanimously recommended that the state take Morales' life for the brutal 1981 slaying of Terri Winchell, a 17-year-old Lodi high school student.