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.
