Dec. 16 OHIO: Straw considers making appeal for death row Scot Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is considering lodging a fresh appeal to get Kenny Richey off Death Row. Mr Straw and Foreign Office officials are looking at making representations as a "friend of the court" to the sixth US circuit court of appeals when it reconsiders his conviction for murdering a toddler. It had originally said that his incarceration for almost 20 years was wrong and he should either be retried or released. But the US Supreme Court ruled last month its decision was inadmissible because the court of appeals had considered fresh evidence. The Ohio court in Cincinnati will now have to reconsider the case. Today, a Foreign Office spokesman said that following a meeting with Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael and fellow campaigners for Mr Richey, the Foreign Secretary Mr Straw and his officials were considering a new appeal to the Ohio court. A friend of the court advises the court but is not part of the defence team. A spokesman said: "Ministers and officials are now considering an 'Amicus Curie' appeal to the Ohio court, as a friend of the court rather than a participant, to get Kenny Richey off death row. "We have serious concerns about his conviction and we don't support British citizens being given the death penalty in America or indeed anywhere else." Mr Carmichael, MP for Orkney and Shetland, described this week's meeting at the Foreign Office as "constructive". He was joined by Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, who has spent 2 decades defending death sentence cases in the US, Sara MacNeice of Amnesty International and Yasmin Waljee of Lovells, a firm of solicitors working on Mr Richey's behalf. Mr Carmichael said: "Last month's ruling by the US Supreme Court was extremely disappointing. However, Foreign Office officials have made it clear that they recognise that they will play an important part in the months ahead. "The constructive meeting we held left me feeling fairly confident that they will do all they can to help secure justice for Kenny Richey." Mr Stafford Smith said: "The British Government's intervention has been critical in the past to help British nationals facing execution. The United States Supreme Court is using obscure technicalities to keep a man on death row. "His original trial was a travesty of justice. An innocent British man was sentenced to death thanks to the incompetence of his court-appointed lawyer. Now we need the British Government to take strong action to ensure that the US authorities are not allowed to use technicalities to deny Kenny justice." Human Rights groups have branded his lengthy imprisonment as "barbaric" and accused the Supreme Court of overturning the appeal on a technicality. His family have vowed to keep up the fight to free him despite last month's decision. The Ohio court ruled by two to one that Richey's defence team made basic errors at his 1986 trial when he was persuaded to waive his right to jury trial in favour of a 3-judge panel. But the Supreme Court said it had taken new evidence into account and should revisit the case. A spokeswoman for Amnesty International said the latest decision by the Supreme Court was "inhumane and typical of the US justice system, where judges are elected to get convictions." Shadow foreign secretary William Hague declined to comment. (source: The Scotsman) INDIANA: Couple devote lives to ending death penalty Before long -- and it's never long enough -- Alice and Bert Fitzgerald will again ring the bell of their Episcopal church. Someone else will have been executed in Indiana. The clangs are the couple's ministry and the community's reminder. "A lot of symbolic value, the bell ringing," Alice Fitzgerald said. "Certainly it brings it home to me." The Fitzgeralds urge an end to the death penalty and, in the meantime, occasionally attend execution vigils. They befriend death-row inmates, and Alice Fitzgerald has sent birthday cards to those condemned. She recently became vice president of a coalition called the Indiana Information Center on the Abolition of Capital Punishment. The day she and I met, a man convicted of murder in North Carolina was to be put to death. It was the 1,000th execution in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1977. The Fitzgeralds were invited to a protest of that dubious milestone in Indianapolis. Instead, Bert Fitzgerald played Santa that evening for a group of young girls. That was after the Fitzgeralds had put in full, typically trying days as mental health therapists. At their secluded home atop a hill, their five cats and two dogs cannot be spoiled enough. The Fitzgeralds lead fulfilling lives outside of the politics of death. They feel compelled to do what they can until this country does differently, however. "The system is broke," Bert Fitzgerald said. "Could it ever be fixed? Very doubtful." Alice Fitzgerald takes heart, though, in softened public support for capital punishment. The public is increasingly aware that innocent people are sometimes sentenced to die. A hopeful development? "It's the only way to be," said Sarah Kramer of Columbus, a peace activist who channeled Alice Fitzgerald's early interest. "We have to assume decency will win." Alice Fitzgerald had paid no more attention to the death penalty than do many of us. She recalls being upset, but preferring not to dwell on it, when Utah stood killer Gary Gilmore before a firing squad in 1977. In 1997, Kentucky also resumed executions, and this newspaper profiled Harold McQueen, the 1st in line to die. A poor and poorly educated man, a drug abuser not prone to violence, McQueen reminded Fitzgerald of too many people she treats. She had assumed government executed only the worst of the worst. Not to pardon his crime, but McQueen struck Fitzgerald as more hapless than monstrous. She and her husband drove to Louisville to join others likewise repulsed. McQueen was electrocuted that night, and the Fitzgeralds came to believe in injustices about who is executed, where and why. "I hadn't known much about the inequities in the system," she said. "I didn't know how poorly people can be represented. I didn't even know what happened, that much." Bert Fitzgerald usually rings the bell, but Alice Fitzgerald is much more involved generally. "She says if she doesn't do it, who will?" her husband said. She has gotten to know several inmates on Indiana's death row and on the federal government's, which is in Terre Haute. She visits, when possible. Calls, too. She most faithfully writes and reads what she is written. "I always loved letter-writing," she said, and this provides an outlet. She offers them not legal aid but a kindly ear, a trusty shoulder. "Really, the most important thing, I get to know them as people," she said. "Their humanity, their inner core of goodness." Alice Fitzgerald smiles thinking of one inmate who amazingly perks her up with his positive attitude. She shares not so much her indignity about their situation but mundane basics, say, about how a pet is driving her bonkers. The inmates' cases are not off-limits but neither are they the focus. Fitzgerald may be the only person inmates find willing to listen, to look beyond their worst moments. "It's a friendship which they've very rarely known, if ever," Kramer said. "One without demands or judgment." Alice Fitzgerald helped organized death-row artwork for an exhibit recently in Indianapolis. As a leader of the anti-death-penalty group, she will be in the midst of legislative lobbying. Fitzgerald appreciates that Gov. Mitch Daniels commuted 1 death sentence but is disappointed that 5 men have been executed in Daniels' 1st year in office. Fitzgerald keeps the governor apprised of her opinion and appears at clemency and parole hearings. "Just to try to draw lots of attention to it," she said. The bell alone must not be nearly enough. "Unfortunately," she said, "there's been a lot of bell ringing this year." (source: Courier-Journal) OKLAHOMA: Tulsa Judge Denies A New Trial For Convicted Murder Wade Lay No new trial for convicted killer Wade Lay. That was a Tulsa County District Court judge's ruling Thursday morning. The News on 6's Heather Lewin was in the courtroom for the judge's decision and Lay's outburst at the result. Wade Lay had to be removed from the courtroom after getting into a shouting match with the judge and prosecutors, even hurling an obscenity at the judge as he was dragged out. Thursday's hearing was the final testimony in Lay's request for a new trial. He and son Christopher Lay murdered a bank security guard last year. Chris Lay was sentenced to life in prison; his father got the death penalty. Attorneys for Wade Lay, who represented himself during the trial, say because one of the jurors recognized a witness and no one told the judge, the 1st trial should be thrown out. The juror later testified he thought the witness looked familiar, but didn't realize he'd met her before in a local bar, until after the trial was over. The judge ruled that because both defendants admitted their guilt in court and that the woman recognized by a juror was not testifying about facts of the crime, but simply the defendants' character. Her testimony had no impact on the outcome of Wade Lay's case. Tulsa County prosecutor Doug Drummond: "the idea is that the juror somehow had some kind of preconceived notion that he took back into the deliberating room that made him rule the way that he did. There's not even a scintilla of evidence that shows that in this case and in my mind it's light-years away from any type of juror misconduct or any unfair trial to Wade Lay." Because this is a death penalty case, Wade Lay still has the ability to file another appeal. (source: OKTV) FLORIDA: Steele transferred to Pinellas County jail Alfredie Steele, the man accused of fatally shooting Pasco sheriff's Lt. Charles "Bo" Harrison in 2003, was transferred from Sumter County to the Pinellas County jail on Wednesday at the request of the Public Defender's Office. Public Defender Bob Dillinger, one of Steele's lawyers, made the request, according to Assistant Public Defender Tom Hanlon. But Hanlon said he could not comment on why. Dillinger did not return calls seeking comment on Thursday. Steele had been held without bail in the Sumter County jail since his arrest June 3, 2003, 2 days after he is accused of killing Harrison in a sniper-style shooting as the 57-year-old sat in his patrol cruiser in Lacoochee. Jail records show Steele was booked into the Pinellas County jail Wednesday about 3 p.m. Steele, 22, faces a charge of 1st-degree murder and the death penalty if convicted. His case had been on hiatus until October, when the Florida Supreme Court struck down a judge's decisions on how to apply the state's death penalty statutes to the case. Steele, who is from Lacoochee, has pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set. (source: St. Petersburg Times)
