[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 2


USA:

A Millionaire Club of High Court Justices


On a Supreme Court dominated by seeming millionaires, the only woman
justice and the only bachelor appear to be the wealthiest of its 9
members.

In the justices' financial disclosure forms for 2005, Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg reported assets valued at between $6.4 million and $28 million,
while Justice David Souter listed assets worth between $5.6 million and
$26.3 million.

But they are not alone in the Court's millionaire club. Only Justices
Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy reported assets with a maximum
possible value of less than $1 million.

The 2005 forms of 8 of the justices were made public in June, but Justice
Antonin Scalia received an extension on the filing deadline for
undisclosed reasons. With the recent release of Scalia's form, it is now
possible to rank the justices in order of assets reported, not including
homes.

The justices' holdings are reported in ranges of value, making precise
totals impossible to calculate. For example, the estimate of Souter's
wealth could be inflated by the fact that his investment in the Chittenden
Corp., a Vermont bank holding company, is listed in a category that ranges
from $5,000,001 to $25 million.

Several of Ginsburg's assets are in the $1,000,001 to $5 million range,
including her husband's salary as counsel to Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver
& Jacobson. Martin Ginsburg, a tax expert, is also a professor at
Georgetown University Law Center.

In descending order, here are the ranges for the other justices' asset
totals, calculated by adding the lowest possible amounts and then the
highest:

Stephen Breyer: $4,125,080-$15,440,000

John Roberts Jr.: $2,235,063-$5,860,000

John Paul Stevens: $1,590,018-$3,480,000

Antonin Scalia: $700,019-$1,595,000

Samuel Alito Jr.: $665,025-$1,740,000

Clarence Thomas: $150,006-$410,000

Anthony Kennedy: $65,005-$195,000

As they often do, the financial disclosure forms also bear statistical
witness to some of the controversies, life changes, and oddities justices
faced in the past year.

Scalia reported reimbursements for several trips to New York City,
including one to serve as grand marshal for the Columbus Day parade and
another to address journalists and others at the invitation of media giant
Time Warner.

When Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons, at the last minute, declared
the talk off the record, sharp-elbowed New York journalists revolted and
found creative ways to report what Scalia said, anyway. Daily News gossip
columnist Lloyd Grove wrote about what Scalia "might have said," including
a pronouncement that he was trying to get out and about more.

"My kids have been working on me to get out and do more public
appearances," Grove quoted Scalia as saying. "They think it makes it
harder to demonize you -- and I agree." That campaign, still in progress,
produced 24 reimbursed trips in 2005.

Another of Scalia's trips, reimbursed by the Federalist Society, is
described blandly as: "Sept. 28-Oct. 1 - Denver, CO,
Lectures/Transportation, Food, and Lodging." It was the Ritz-Carlton hotel
in Bachelor Gulch, to be precise, and the trip coincided with the
swearing-in of Roberts as chief justice back in Washington. That
coincidence gave ABC News the fodder to report, with video, that Scalia
was playing tennis when Roberts was being sworn in.

Speaking of Roberts, his form indicates that one of the chores he attended
to before he was sworn in as chief justice was selling some of his stock
holdings. In the week before he joined the Supreme Court, he shed
relatively small amounts of stock in Agilent, AstraZeneca, and Coca-Cola,
among others. But he retained larger holdings in Time Warner, Dell, and
Microsoft.

Roberts' decisions may reflect a problem that judges face when they sell
securities to avoid conflicts of interest: They have to pay capital-gains
taxes on the sale. High-level executive branch employees who sell stocks
for that reason are allowed to defer their gains by investing in
replacement property within 60 days. A bill that would grant the same
deferral to judges has passed the House of Representatives and is pending
before the Senate.

Stevens' form evokes the memory of a happier day, Sept. 14, when he threw
out the first pitch at a Chicago Cubs game, wearing a Cubs jersey bearing
his name. His form notes that he was provided a "box suite seating 12
[and] food."

(source: Legal Times)






OHIO:

No evidence was hidden in Noling case, state says


The Ohio attorney general's office has asked a federal judge to deny a
death-row convict's plea to move his appeal to state court based on claims
that prosecutors withheld evidence.

State lawyers contend, in a motion filed this week in U.S. District Court
in Cleveland, that evidence wasn't concealed in the death penalty case of
Tyrone Noling, and that recent news reports raising questions about his
guilt were "a rehash of decade-old issues and facts" already tried.

Noling was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the murders of
Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig, a Portage County couple.

Last month, The Plain Dealer published stories about Noling's case that
raised doubts about his guilt. The articles presented evidence that wasn't
offered at Noling's trial, such as warnings from a psychologist hired by
the prosecution that a key witness might make up testimony to win
immunity.

3 supposed accomplices had confessed to participating in the 1990 killing
of the Hartigs, naming Noling as the shooter. They later recanted, saying
they lied to save themselves because an investigator for the prosecutor's
office threatened them. They also claimed he twisted their words and
provided them with details of the slayings when they agreed to testify
against Noling.

Portage County Prosecutor Victor Vigluicci has said his investigator did
nothing wrong.

After The Plain Dealer's articles ran Aug. 13, Noling's attorneys asked
that his case be returned to state court. They said they did not have some
of the evidence cited in the article, evidence that The Plain Dealer
obtained through public records requests to the Portage County
prosecutor's office.

State lawyers maintain that the newspaper's findings, on which Noling's
charge of withheld evidence is based, were "unsubstantiated" and wouldn't
have helped his case.

"While the bits and pieces of information from The Plain Dealer expos may
withstand the uninformed perusal by the general public," state lawyers
wrote, ". . . they are a patchwork quilt filled with so many holes that
they cannot hold up" in court.

In one instance, the attorney general's office stated it could not locate
any document in the prosecutor's files indicating that an alternate
suspect The Plain Dealer had written about refused to take a polygraph.

The Plain Dealer obtained a copy of the document from the prosecutor's
office through a public records request. To see a copy of it, go to
www.cleveland.com/doubts.

U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent will rule on the motion before deciding
whether to let Noling's conviction stand.

(source: Cleveland Plain Dealer)