Paradis Lawyers Say Gibson To Admit Killing

Attorneys said on Monday that one of those testifying at next week’s clemency hearing for condemned murderer Donald Manuel Paradis will be Thomas Gibson, the man who says he was the killer and Paradis was not involved.

“He’s going to testify before the Commission” on Pardons and Parole, appeals attorney Edwin Matthews said during a call-in show on KIDO radio in Boise.

Gibson, who is awaiting execution along with Paradis for the 1980 murder of 19-year-old Kimberly Ann Palmer, is at the center of Paradis’ claim of innocence.

The commission has scheduled May 15-16 for the hearing. Short of a conditional pardon pending a new trial, Paradis is seeking commutation of his death sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

With all state appeals exhausted, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has also scheduled an Aug. 9 hearing on Paradis’ last-ditch round of federal appeals.

Co-appeals attorney William Mauk concedes that the federal courts have relied on technical grounds to previously reject most of what Paradis calls new evidence proving his innocence, although a decision to hold a hearing at this late stage in the proceedings is being taken as a hopeful sign.

Paradis, 47, maintains he was the victim of misconduct by the prosecution and incompetence by his late trial attorney, underscored by the fact that Gibson, 44, has repeatedly admitted that he killed Palmer in Spokane - not Idaho - and that Paradis was not there at the time.

The two motorcycle gang members were scheduled to be tried together in June 1981 when Gibson sent a note to 1st District Judge Gary Haman on the morning the trial was to begin, declaring that Paradis had nothing to do with killing Palmer.

According to the clemency petition, that prompted Haman to order separate trials, allowing Paradis to call Gibson at his. But Paradis defense attorney failed to have Gibson tell that to jurors.

Then at his own 1981 trial, the petition pointed out, Gibson testified that he knocked Palmer out at the house in Spokane and she was choked by a third man - all while Paradis was absent.

Eighteen months later, Gibson signed an affidavit again exonerating Paradis and made the same statements in a 1983 deposition.

Skeptics point out, however, that Gibson gains as well by his admissions because, if accepted, he would be freed from Death Row in Idaho and then have to be tried for the 16-year-old Palmer murder in Washington.

But the case Paradis has laid out to save his life has brought together an unprecedented group of religious leaders supporting his petition for clemency. And it is led by Tom Blackburn, a conservative minister who believes in the death penalty and reluctantly met Paradis 12 years ago as he stood on the verge of execution only to win another stay.

Today, he is on a crusade to save Paradis’ life, and he brought together 13 leaders from a broad religious spectrum to pray for justice on Sunday.

During an emotional prayer service at Blackburn’s Community Christian Center in Garden City, they charged that Paradis was a victim of stereotyping, poor legal representation and a misdirected court system.