SEATTLE — A new appeal for an inmate sentenced to die for killing a girl in Bremerton in 1988 accuses the prosecutor of racial bias.
Attorney Tim Ford asked the state Supreme Court on Tuesday to take another look at the murder conviction of Jonathan Lee Gentry. The 56-year-old has been on Death Row since 1991 when he was sentenced to die for killing 12-year-old Cassie Holden, a Pocatello, Idaho, girl who had been visiting her mother in Bremerton.
Ford says the Kitsap County prosecutor at the time, Danny Clem, made a comment to Gentry’s African-American trial lawyer, asking, “Where’d you get your ethics, in Harlem?”
Current Deputy Prosecutor Randall Sutton told The Seattle Times (http://is.gd/NFoV5w ) the jury didn’t hear the comment and it didn’t affect the trial.
