Tomorrow is the first day of National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. Victims’ families, police, court personnel and concerned citizens will be attending events in remembrance of those killed by crime and to remind us all of these tragedies. Catholic Social Services of Central Ohio is sponsoring the Kidshare Safety Poster Program. Mothers Against Drunk Driving is burning virtual candles.
Today is the last day of Alton Coleman’s life. Barring a stay of execution before 10 a.m. at Lucasville Correctional Institute, Coleman will become the fourth prisoner killed by lethal injection by the State of Ohio during the last three years. He could be the poster child for the death penalty.
At 19, Coleman was shipped to Joliet prison on a robbery plea bargain, evading kidnapping and sexual assault charges when his 54-year-old victim refused to testify. On parole, he was acquitted twice on rape charges in Ohio and Illinois. Coleman’s sister told authorities that he tried to rape her 8-year-old daughter, then asked to drop the charges three weeks later. The woman was terrified of her brother, the judge explained in court, dismissing the third rape allegation.
Finally indicted in 1984 for the knifepoint rape and murder of a friend’s daughter in Chicago, Coleman went on the run with his young lover, Debra Brown. Fifty-four days, eight homicides, as many as seven rapes, three kidnappings, 14 armed robberies, and three states later, a former friend led police to Coleman in the town where the killing spree began. His victims included children barely out of elementary school, an invalid thrown from a moving vehicle and a college professor.
Coleman and his lawyers argue he is the victim. The young Coleman, the middle of five children from a ghetto prostitute, was slow to show emotion and generally kept to himself as a child. Dubbed “Pissy” by schoolchildren for his tendency to wet his pants, Coleman was reputed to be a sexual predator at an early age. At Joliet, the prison psychiatrist labeled him as pansexual, willing to have intercourse with any object at any time – woman, man, child, whatever. Even the inmates complained about Coleman’s sexual appetite, but he earned parole anyway.
The jury that delivered Coleman’s death sentence was racially biased, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. They claim prosecutors used nine of their 12 jury strikes to eliminate qualified blacks. The pattern of racial discrimination has never been explained by the prosecution.
Coleman himself claims his counsel was inadequate, failing to investigate possibilities and introduce factors that could have spared him the death penalty. Coleman’s prenatal brain damage from his mother’s alcohol and drug abuse, his troubled childhood and his personality disorder were never introduced in court. His appeal was rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court and clemency was denied by Gov. Bob Taft. Only a phone call can save him now.
Coleman probably deserves to die for the crimes he committed. A sexual predator who frequently found his victims from friendship, Coleman will be vilified next week by the ravaged families that stood beside his savage path of destruction. It would probably be better for them to remember the schools, prisons, police, psychiatrists, juries and judges – the system – that let Alton Coleman slip away.
Andronic P. Orosan is a graduating senior in English. Your comments can be e-mailed to [email protected].
