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Motherly Love Like the High Court, Paul House’s mother believes her son is innocent. photo: Sarah Kelley
When the U.S. Supreme Court proclaimed that “no reasonable juror” would convict Tennessee death row inmate Paul House of murder given the evidence now available, the condemned man’s mother was certain he’d be home by Christmas. Eager for her son’s homecoming, she readied his long-vacant bedroom and even prepared a few home-cooked meals, including his favorite chile verde burritos with Mexican rice.
Six months later, though, his room remains unoccupied, his bed neatly made. And Joyce House has since wrapped up her homemade dishes and placed them in the freezer. “They’ll keep,” she says with motherly assurance.
After the Supreme Court issued an opinion in June casting serious doubt on Paul House’s guilt, his mother says she just knew he would be released. “I think everyone believed that, even the attorneys,” she says. And while the hopes of Paul House and his supporters have been repeatedly raised and then dashed during his 20 years on death row, this certainly seemed like the most promising turn of events thus far, making the latest standstill especially disappointing. During a recent interview inside the offices of the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing (TCASK), Joyce House shared her frustration, telling the Scene, “I thought they would exonerate him by now, or that he would get a new trial at least. Instead they’ve done nothing.”
Although the Supreme Court affirmed Paul House’s likely innocence and permitted him to pursue exoneration using post-conviction DNA evidence, which points the finger at the victim’s husband instead of House, his future remains uncertain as the lower courts take their time deciding how to proceed.
“My frustration is that the Supreme Court said nobody would convict this guy today, yet he sits on death row while the federal courts and possibly the state courts argue about whether this man got a fair trial,” says Stephen Kissinger, the federal public defender who took House’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court and won.
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Following the high court’s ruling, it took the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals nearly four months to order lawyers for both House and the state to submit briefs addressing whether the case should be remanded to state court, possibly for a retrial. (The state, by the way, stands by House’s conviction and death sentence.) The briefs from both sides aren’t due until late December, and it’s unclear when the Court of Appeals might make a decision.
Meanwhile, House, who now must use a wheelchair and suffers from the degenerative disease multiple sclerosis, will almost certainly spend another birthday—he’ll be 45 on Dec. 19—and another Christmas not only behind bars, but facing a death sentence. Since he was diagnosed with MS several years ago, his mother says he’s received minimal medical treatment in prison. These days, she says his health care regimen is limited to a vitamin in the morning and a Tylenol PM to help him sleep at night. Citing confidentiality restrictions, Tennessee Department of Correction spokeswoman Dorinda Carter won’t verify any details about House’s medical care, or even whether he’s being treated for MS.
When Joyce House visited her son last Saturday, she noticed an open gash above his eye that she says appeared to need stitches. Apparently, her son had fallen out of his wheelchair and hit his head on the concrete floor four days earlier. Not only had the cut gone untreated, Joyce House says, her son indicated that he had been wearing the same blood-soaked gown until just before her visit.
Joyce House says there are times when it seems her son has resigned himself to the thought of dying in prison. “He says, ‘It’s never gonna happen, Mom. I’m never coming home.’ I just keep giving him hope and telling him he’ll be home by Christmas.”
But even Joyce House knows that’s doubtful unless Gov. Phil Bredesen steps in and promptly orders her son’s release from Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security prison. And given the governor’s reluctance to intervene in past capital cases, such a move is unlikely, at least at this point.
House was convicted in 1985 for the murder of 29-year-old Carolyn Muncey in rural Union County. At trial, the prosecution argued House raped the victim and then bludgeoned her to death so he could not be identified. The supposed rape was the only motive prosecutors presented, and it was the aggravating factor used to justify sentencing House to death.
Although House maintained his innocence all along, he spent more than a decade on death row before there was any hope of proving he wasn’t guilty. Years after his conviction, a DNA test proved the semen found on Muncey’s clothes did not belong to House, but instead belonged to her husband, William Hubert Muncey. According to friends and neighbors, William Muncey, known as “Little Hube,” drank heavily and frequently abused his wife, and in fact the two were seen arguing the night she died.
In addition to DNA test results debunking the prosecution’s suggested motive, two witnesses came forward after trial and indicated “Little Hube” had confessed to the crime.
Apparently, Little Hube still resides in Union County, where the late 60 Minutes reporter Ed Bradley tracked him down for a piece that aired on CBS two years ago. He admitted to Bradley that he would occasionally hit Carolyn Muncey “when she called me a bad name or something.” He said he would smack her or backhand her, “nothing serious.” But he claimed that he’s since changed, having quit drinking and found religion. As for the stories of two witnesses who claim he confessed to killing his wife, he said, “They have to be making it up.”
Crippled and Shackled A debilitated Paul House, last year, at Riverbend prison. photo: ericengland.net
There’s also proof of evidence tampering, specifically that the bloodstains found on House’s blue jeans were planted in a lab after the murder. Last year a Scene cover story (“Innocent on Death Row?” March 31, 2005) delved deeply into the case, revealing a prosecution riddled with holes and possibly even misconduct.
“The central forensic proof connecting House to the crime—the blood and the semen—has been called into question,” Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote on behalf of the majority. “This is the rare case where—had the jury heard all the conflicting testimony—it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror viewing the record as a whole would lack reasonable doubt.”
And while the crux of the state’s case against House rested on the premise that he raped Carolyn Muncey, former Tennessee Attorney General Paul Summers, who left office only recently, reacted to the Supreme Court ruling by stating that just because House didn’t rape her doesn’t mean he didn’t kill her. And even if House is exonerated, new Attorney General Bob Cooper says that, though he will look into it, “I have confidence in the work of this office under the previous attorneys general in this case.”
Because of the state’s unwillingness to back down and the failure of the courts to expeditiously act despite mounting evidence in favor of House’s innocence, Kissinger say he’s looking to Bredesen to intervene. “We’re hoping the governor will use his authority to set Mr. House free in a proper manner, instead of letting him languish on death row while the courts deal with the fairness of his trial.”
Just last week, Joyce House wrote her first letter to the governor, pleading with him to “do the right thing” and grant her son a full pardon.
But because an execution date has not been set for House, it’s unlikely Bredesen will insinuate himself into the matter. “It’s the governor’s policy to let it remain in the courts until all judicial remedies have been exhausted,” says Lydia Lenker, the governor’s spokeswoman.
Although the governor has made it clear he supports capital punishment, advocates for Paul House say this case isn’t a question of being for or against the death penalty. Rather, it’s a case in which a man might be executed for a crime he did not commit.
“This is a case where the judicial process is not doing what it should, and it’s time for the governor to step up. Regardless of how you feel about the death penalty, innocent people should not be on death row,” says Alex Wiesendanger, associate director of the TCASK.
If the governor fails to free House outright and a new trial is ordered, Wiesendanger believes the state would have no choice but to drop the case against Paul House. “There is no more evidence to present in favor of House’s guilt. There are no eyewitnesses, and no forensic evidence that would hold up."