Eventually, Paradis’ Pack Of Lies Will End

Murderer Donald Manuel Paradis is living proof that, if you tell a lie often enough, some people will believe it.

His lie? “I’m innocent.”

The Idaho death row inmate has lied about his involvement in Kim Palmer’s murder for 16 years - to a Kootenai County jury, to the Idaho Supreme Court, to a U.S. Distirct Court judge, to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The jury didn’t believe him. No court has believed him.

Now, thanks to a media campaign fomented by his shrewd lawyers, Paradis has one last chance to tell his lie before facing death by lethal injection. On Wednesday and Thursday, he will try to persuade the state Commission for Pardons and Parole that he should be spared because he has “new” evidence that proves his innocence.

Justice, of course, will be delayed again.

Still, with all the misinformation swirling about this case, it’s probably a worthwhile exercise to conduct the two-day hearing. We urge the commission, however, not to succumb to calculated outside pressure and to base any decision on the painstakingly reviewed facts of the case.

Unless there truly is riveting new evidence, the commission should let justice take its course - finally.

We suspect the so-called new evidence consists largely of the contradictory statements of motorcycle gang members associated with Paradis and his crime, including death row inmate Thomas Gibson.

Supporters have made much of Gibson’s “confession” to the June 1980 murder of Palmer, shortly after the torture slaying of her boyfriend, Scott Currier, at Paradis’ Spokane home. But they fail to mention that he never has confessed under oath. Gibson would love to win a retrial, in Washington, where he easily could recant his confession.

Curiously, in his so-called 1985 confession to a Spokesman-Review reporter, Gibson said he strangled Palmer with thick baling wire. Evidence shows the petite woman was choked to death by hand. You’d think a killer would remember that small detail.

Paradis’ current predicament offers poetic justice.

Sometimes, criminals are saved by a technicality. In this instance, a technicality snagged Paradis and Gibson.

The two would be free today if Palmer had died in Washington rather than Idaho as they claim (but medical evidence refutes). They beat the rap in Washington for Currier’s murder because witnesses either were cowed or uncooperative 16 years ago.

In their killing frenzy, however, Paradis and Gibson erred by transporting Currier’s body and a dazed Kim Palmer across the state line. That blunder changed jurisdiction and forced the killers to face a Kootenai County jury.

If Paradis’ media campaign fails, he will soon meet his maker.

It will be time to settle his affairs and come clean about his crime. It will be time to tell how Kim Palmer bolted from Gibson, another thug and him. How he pursued her down a 50-foot ravine, under a barbed-wire fence, and grabbed her from behind. How he strangled her with his powerful hands and left her lifeless body face down in a creek, nude from the waist up.

It will be time to quit lying.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board