Extreme justice

North Carolinians in the last few days have seen the extremes of punishment that this state delivers to murderers.

Steven Van McHone, 35, a substance abuser from the age of 12, was executed Friday by lethal injection for the 1990 slaying of his mother and stepfather. McHone's appellate lawyers couldn't compensate for the failures of his trial lawyer, Terry Lee Collins. Witnesses testified before a jury that McHone had downed a bottle and a half of whiskey plus a pitcher of beer before killing Mildred and Wesley Adams Sr. in their Surry County home. Adams' son, Wesley Jr., saw the killings, but insisted at the trial that McHone was sober.

Collins' investigation didn't uncover a self-contradicting statement from the younger Adams that might have helped McHone during his trial's penalty phase. And former District Attorney James L. Dellinger Jr. didn't disclose the statement.

Now, prosecutors are required by a 2004 law to open all investigative files to defense lawyers in felony cases. What's more, Dellinger has been forced out of the D.A.'s office because of forgery charges, and Collins has been disbarred over a fake driver's license scheme.

Separation from all contact with law-abiding people is proper punishment for convicted murderers. North Carolina recognizes as much now by sentencing only half a dozen or so killers to death every year. On close inspection, they increasingly seem to be, not necessarily the most egregious cases, but the unluckiest ones.

Luck, of a sort, was with biochemical researcher Ann Miller Kontz when Raleigh police began to suspect her in the 2000 arsenic poisoning death of her husband, Eric. Two of the state's top defense lawyers, Joseph B. Cheshire V and Wade Smith, took her case. They negotiated a bargain under which she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Kontz, now 35, was sentenced to 25 to 31 1/2 years in prison.

Justice is supposed to be blind to class, the same as it is blind to race, sex, ethnic origin and so on. The cases of McHone and Kontz can't help but leave the impression that when it comes to class, which easily can influence the quality of a defendant's legal representation, Tar Heel justice has 20-20 vision.