The State of Florida is set to execute
a man who has spent half his life on death row. Former plasterer and
drywall worker
Robert Waterhouse is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Feb. 15
in a case that has drawn belated but intense interest from Amnesty
International and other corners.
Waterhouse, 65, was convicted of the
rape and murder of Deborah Kammerer on the night of Jan. 2, 1980, in
St. Petersburg, Fla. At the time of the arrest, Waterhouse was on
parole after serving a prison sentence for second-degree murder.
Waterhouse has consistently denied any involvement in the Kammerer
murder.
Shaky representation has plagued
Waterhouse throughout his entire ordeal within the prison system. So
many lawyers
have tried his case that he has lost count of how many have
represented him. His relationship with one lawyer was so poor that he
tried to fire him, but Judge Robert Beach, having a background
primarily in commercial law, disregarded Waterhouse’s concerns and
insisted he stay on.
Judge Beach, the man who twice
sentenced Waterhouse to death, displayed his prejudice early on and has
been quoted as
saying that “the subject is a dangerous and sick man and that many
other women have probably suffered because of him.”
A further source of controversy in this
case concerns the unavailability
of DNA evidence, which had been destroyed. This was a basis of a 2005
appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, which was denied.
Most recently, a witness has stepped
forward to contradict the testimony at trial of a bartender who
stated Waterhouse left the bar with Kammerer on the night of the
murder. In a sworn statement dated Jan. 9 and reported by Amnesty
International,
the new witness (who also worked at the bar) claimed that it would
have been impossible for the bartender to have seen the exit from
where she said she was at the time. The new witness said he had seen
Waterhouse leave the bar with two white males, not with the victim.
He further alleges that he was interviewed by police at the time, and
that he had told them this, but that the detective had seemed
“disinterested” and subsequently “accused [me] of
trying to protect a murderer.”
The Florida Supreme Court rejected
arguments to spare his life on Feb. 7.
The Waterhouse case illustrates the
fundamental injustice involved in the use of the death penalty in the
United States. Death rows are populated almost entirely by poor
people who lacked adequate representation. While we are taught that
defendants are “innocent until proven guilty,” the circumstances
of the investigations and legal proceedings that result in someone
being sentenced to death often look more like a rush to judgment. The
death penalty is a form of legal lynching that is used to terrorize
the working class.
