PAGINA NYT PER ITALOAMERICANO CONDANNATO DA UN DROGATO

    (di Marco Bardazzi)

NEW YORK, 16 MAG - Se un giudice decide da solo una condanna a morte mentre fa uso di marijuana, il processo puo' dirsi corretto? E' quanto si chiede una corte d' appello federale americana, chiamata a valutare se la scoperta della dipendenza dal 'fumo' di un giudice dell'Arizona abbia o meno conseguenze sulla pena capitale inflitta a due uomini in attesa del boia, uno dei quali e' lo scrittore e poeta italo-americano Richard Rossi.

   Il caso del 'signor Rossi' che attende la morte da 18 anni nel carcere di Florence (Arizona), rivelato dall'Ansa lo scorso settembre, ha conquistato oggi la prima pagina del 'New York Times', per le conseguenze che l'azione legale avviata da Rossi e da un altro condannato a morte, Warren Summerlin, potrebbe avere sulla gestione delle esecuzioni negli Usa.

   La Corte d'appello federale, con una decisione che ha spaccato i giudici, ha deciso che Rossi e Summerlin hanno diritto ad un'udienza per valutare se le loro condanne siano state viziate dalle abitudini di un giudice di Phoenix, Philip Marquardt, l'uomo che tra il 1982 e il 1988 decise la pena capitale per i due detenuti.

   Marquardt, dopo essere stato condannato per due volte per il possesso di marijuana, dal 1991 e' stato allontanato dalla magistratura ed ha ammesso di aver fatto uso per anni dello stupefacente, negando pero' che questo abbia influenzato le sue capacita' decisionali. ''Per la natura stessa della marijuana - ha detto al 'Times' Marquardt, 68 anni, che oggi e' un pensionato dopo aver fatto per qualche tempo il maestro di sci - non ti svegli la mattina drogato o confuso. Io entravo in aula con la testa lucida, lo sguardo lucido e assolutamente nel pieno del controllo delle mie capacita' intellettuali''.

   La difesa di Rossi sostiene il contrario e da anni, nelle istanze che ora hanno aperto uno spiraglio di fronte alla Corte d'appello federale, afferma che Marquardt durante il processo dormiva. Rossi in aula sostenne, servendosi dell'aiuto di un esperto, che erano stati gli effetti della cocaina - di cui faceva uso - a spingerlo nel 1983 ad uccidere Harold August, un uomo al quale voleva vendere una macchina per scrivere: un delitto che Rossi ha sempre ammesso e per il quale e' stato condannato. Il giudice respinse questa tesi, ma in seguito Marquardt ha assunto lo stesso consulente di Rossi per assisterlo nel suo processo.

   ''C'e' molta ironia in questa vicenda - ha detto Rossi dal carcere di Florence - perche' entrambi avevamo problemi di tossicodipendenza. Io ho riconosciuto i miei, ma lui non ha ammesso i suoi''. La Corte federale attende ora, prima di esaminare il caso Rossi-Summerlin, che la Corte suprema degli Usa si pronunci su un tema piu' vasto: la legalita' o meno del sistema giudiziario in vigore in Arizona e in pochi altri stati, dove a decidere la condanna a morte e' il singolo giudice, e non una giuria. La vicenda di Marquardt viene ritenuta molto delicata, negli Usa, proprio perche' si inserisce nel caso giudiziario all'esame a Washington - che secondo alcune stime potrebbe portare ad annullare 800 condanne a morte - e perche' entra nel campo minato della vita privata dei magistrati.

   Richard Rossi, 54 anni, figlio di immigrati italiani di Brooklyn, lo scorso settembre lancio' un appello all'Italia perche' si interessasse del suo caso, ad un anno dall'esecuzione controversa in Virginia dell'italo-americano Derek Rocco Barnabei. Rossi ha scritto un libro contro la pena capitale, pubblicato per il momento solo in Francia, nel quale sono raccolti racconti dal braccio della morte e le poesie del detenuto.

Issue in 2 Death Sentences: Judge's Drug Use

May 16, 2002

By ADAM LIPTAK

PHOENIX, May 15 - The judge bought marijuana by mail. He paid with a cashier's check, and he used the office stationery. The envelope bore a handsome imprint: "Philip Marquardt, Superior Court Judge, Phoenix, Arizona." 

Mr. Marquardt lost that job and his license to practice law after his second marijuana conviction, in 1991, and he is today a retired ski instructor in Carefree, just north of here. Now, two men he sentenced to death in the 1980's are asking courts to look into whether his use of marijuana deprived them of a fair trial.

 Their assertions test attitudes about whether using drugs while not working should be of concern in the workplace, about how much extra scrutiny is warranted in death penalty cases and about the limits of judicial privacy. Judges and prosecutors worry that allowing criminal defendants to examine the human element in the judicial process will have enormous consequences.

"There is a floodgate that can be opened here," said Robert L. Ellman, an Arizona assistant attorney general.

  When a federal appeals court ordered a hearing to consider evidence about the assertions of one of the prisoners, Warren Summerlin, the majority quoted Shakespeare:

 He who the sword of heaven will bear Should be as holy as severe.  

The dissenting judge on the three-judge panel, Alex Kozinski, noted that there was no proof that Judge Marquardt's drug use had affected his performance on the bench, and he said the decision invited intrusion into judges' personal lives.

 "Judges rightly expect to have medical histories, family tragedies, even occasional overindulgences in intoxicating substances, remain private," Judge Kozinksi wrote.

 John Pressley Todd, another assistant attorney general, said there was no principle to distinguish questions about Judge Marquardt's marijuana use from inquiries into all sorts of matters that might influence judicial decision making.

 "If this is a legitimate inquiry," Mr. Todd said, "what about a divorce or loss of a child?"

 Steven Lubet, a professor at Northwestern University Law School, said unwarranted intrusions were a real danger.

 "Desperate defendants should not be allowed to rummage through judges' personal lives," Professor Lubet said.

  But he disagreed about the assertions involving Judge Marquardt, saying, "Wherever the line is, it is somewhere well short of a double conviction for illegal drugs."

 Mr. Marquardt conceded in an interview that he used marijuana regularly in the years in which he sentenced the two men to death. Sipping a soft drink by the pool at a golf resort outside town, Mr. Marquardt talked on Monday about his past and its significance for the men he sentenced to death. He acknowledged once having had a taste for the fast life, "but it never carried onto the bench," he said.

Mr. Marquardt, 68, who spent 20 years on the bench, is fit and vigorous, and he was in a reflective mood. "By the very nature of marijuana you don't wake up drugged up or glazed over," he said. "I walked into the courtroom clearheaded, clear-eyed and absolutely in control of my intellectual abilities."

 Richard Michael Rossi, 54, whom Mr. Marquardt sentenced to death in 1988, speaking by phone from death ow in Arizona State Prison, said of the judge: "There is a lot of irony here. We both had addiction problems. I acknowledged mine. 

He didn't acknowledge his."

 At his sentencing hearing for killing a man in a dispute over the sale of a typewriter in 1983, Mr. Rossi submitted a doctor's report seeking leniency based on his cocaine addiction. But Judge Marquardt took the opposite view at the court hearing, saying, "I want it to be clear that this court finds that the cocaine addiction does not negate the factors of the cruel, heinous or depraved factors."

  Three years later, Judge Marquardt hired Mr. Rossi's doctor to prepare a report in connection with his own sentencing on drug charges, seeking leniency on the basis of marijuana addiction. He now regretted that, Mr. Marquardt said; "marijuana is just not that addictive."

 In addition to agreeing to resign his judgeship, Mr. Marquardt was sentenced to probation, fined $20,000 and forced to give up some of his retirement benefits. For his first offense, which was in 1988, a month after Mr. Rossi's hearing, Mr. Marquardt was given a suspended sentence. He was later suspended from the bench without pay for a year by the Arizona Supreme Court.

 Mr. Marquardt said he did not remember Mr. Rossi, but he said he had no doubt that the death penalty was warranted. 

"These guys have sentenced themselves," he said.

 In Arizona, judges rather than juries decide whether defendants convicted of capital crimes should be sentenced to death. The United States Supreme Court will soon decide whether that is constitutional, and the appeals court decision about Mr. Marquardt's drug use has been withdrawn while the parties wait to see how the Supreme Court will rule on that separate issue.

 Judge Marquardt also decided the fate of Mr. Summerlin, who was convicted of sexually assaulting and then killing a debt collector in 1981. On a scorching Friday in the summer of 1982, Judge Marquardt heard final arguments on whether Mr. Summerlin should be put to death, and, he said, "over the weekend."

 Two decades later, the appeals court focused on that comment. The majority was troubled, it wrote, "by the fact that Judge Marquardt deliberated and made the key life or death decisions in this case `over the weekend,' while not on the bench or on public view."

 Mr. Marquardt said he did not recall that particular weekend, but added, "I certainly haven't admitted using marijuana on the bench or during my deliberations."  Judge Kozinski wrote that "no doubt hundreds" of convicted criminals might challenge the fairness of their trials before the former judge. While Mr. Marquardt defended his conduct on the bench, he said he believed an inquiry into it was appropriate: "When you have initial proof, as Summerlin does, that the judge who sentenced him used drugs, I think that triggers an entitlement to ask questions."  

Whether justice would be served by such questioning turns in large part on how marijuana use is viewed. The chronic abuse of marijuana "renders smart people average and average people stupid," the appellate court majority wrote.  

"If it is against the law to drive a vehicle under the influence of marijuana," the majority said, "surely it must be at least equally offensive to allow a judge in a similar condition to preside over a capital trial."

 Judge Kozinski wrote that Mr. Summerlin should have offered specific evidence of on-the-job intoxication before the court ordered a hearing. He gave several examples of possible proof. One was a statement by a courtroom observer that the judge fell asleep in court.

 Mr. Rossi, whose appeal is pending before the same court, said he had offered such proof. Judge Marquardt had not presided over Mr. Rossi's trial, but it fell to the judge to resentence him in 1988 after the Arizona Supreme Court reversed a previous death sentence. The hearing started at 11:30 a.m., paused at noon for a two-hour break and ended at 4:40.

 Mary Durand, an investigator who was a member of Mr. Rossi's defense team and was at the hearing, said Judge Marquardt slept through much of it. "This was not a two-minute nod-off after lunch," Ms. Durand said. "This was slumber." She estimated that the judge slept for 30 minutes at one point, woke up and fell asleep again. She took notes at the hearing. They concluded, "Pity Marquardt slept thru most of this!"

  Mr. Ellman, who represents the state in Mr. Rossi's appeal, has reviewed the transcript of the hearing. He said there was no support in it for Ms. Durand's assertion. "The judge appears to be very coherent and tracking the evidence accurately," Mr. Ellman said.

Mr. Rossi recalled his frustration. He said he and Ms. Durand cleared their throats loudly, banged pens on the table and tried to get the court clerk's attention, all to

no avail.

 Mr. Rossi said he deserved a hearing to examine whether marijuana played any role in his death sentence. 

In his dissent in the Summerlin case, Judge Kozinski questioned just what such a hearing might show.  

"Even if Judge Marquardt did think about Summerlin while under the influence of marijuana, it's not clear why this would taint his decision," he wrote. "Does having a fleeting thought on a subject while intoxicated then vitiate all of a judge's sober deliberations? Or is the test whether the judge actually made up his mind under the influence? How would one know?"