[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----ILL. CALIF., USA, CONN.

[Rick Halperin]

July 26


ILLINOIS:

Jury deliberates in retrial of Illinois woman accused of killing son


A prosecutor pressed jurors Tuesday to convict a woman being retried in
the fatal stabbing of her 10-year-old son, calling a Texas death-row
inmate's confessions to the 1997 killing "an excursion into fantasy land."

"If you count on me to explain in logical terms why a mother would kill
her son, you'd be waiting for eternity," Ed Parkinson told jurors in his
closing arguments in the case of Julie Rea-Harper, charged with 2 counts
of 1st-degree murder in the death of her only child, Joel Kirkpatrick.

While acknowledging investigators have uncovered no clear motive,
Parkinson said "we don't have to prove the why."

"We have to prove the who, and the who is sitting right there," he said,
pointing to Rea-Harper.

Defense attorney Ron Safer fired back, calling the prosecution's case
"riddled with red herrings" against a client he said was wrongly accused
by authorities who rushed to judgment and never took as serious her claims
that a masked intruder killed her boy when the evidence proves it.

"It couldn't have been her. End of story," Safer said during closing
arguments, pointing the finger to Texas inmate Tommy Lynn Sells'
confessions to Joel's death. "He is big reasonable doubt" warranting
Rea-Harper's acquittal.

Jurors, hearing the case in this lakeside community about 70 miles east of
St. Louis on a venue change from Lawrence County, deliberated for about 5
hours Tuesday before being sent home. They were expected to return
Wednesday morning.

Earlier Tuesday, Circuit Judge Barry Vaughn denied Safer's request to
throw out the charges, saying a jury should decide whether Rea-Harper
stabbed her son a dozen times in her rural Lawrence County home early Oct.
13, 1997.

Rea-Harper, 37, was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to 65 years in prison.
An appeals court dismissed her conviction on a technicality and ordered a
new trial.

Prosecutors have claimed Rea-Harper killed Joel months after another legal
setback in trying to win back custody of the 5th-grader from the boy's
father.

On Tuesday, Parkinson said the evidence pointed to Rea-Harper - not an
intruder he labeled "a phantom" - as the killer, saying a sleeping Joel
was attacked with a steak knife from Rea-Harper's own kitchen.

The prosecutor also said the home showed no signs of forced entry or a
struggle, countering Rea-Harper's claims that she tussled with the masked
intruder in a house she believed she'd locked.

"There were only two people in the house - one is dead, the other is
here," Parkinson said, saying Rea-Harper's description of the suspect as
"a boy" 14 to 17 years old hardly fits Sells, who was 33 at the time.

A police sketch using Rea-Harper's description of the intruder, Parkinson
said, bore a striking resemblance to Joel.

In calling for Rea-Harper's acquittal, Safer countered that evidence
proves her innocence, including the absence of Joel's blood on her hands,
arms, legs and clothes at a crime scene where the killer, forensic experts
testified, would have been saturated, with Joel losing half his blood.

Joel's blood also was found on a backdoor, something Rea-Harper couldn't
have staged there with her pristine hands, Safer said. Rea-Harper's
nightshirt also had Joel's blood on its back - something the woman
couldn't have put there herself, making it transferred to her by the
killer, Safer argued.

"The blood evidence proves there was a 3rd person," he said, adding that
the flawed investigation included the failure to fingerprint the crime
scene or look for trace evidence such as hair fibers.

"If they had some evidence of motive, they'd lead the case with it," he
said. "Sane people do not act for no reason," unlike "heartless, soulless,
dark people like Tommy Lynn Sells."

Sells, 42, is on death row for knifing a 13-year-old girl to death in her
bedroom in her family's Texas mobile home in 1999. He has admitted to and
been charged with killing a 13-year-old girl in Springfield, Mo., 2 days
after Joel's death.

Sells claims he has randomly killed more than a dozen people, and he's
suspected in dozens more slayings across the country - many involving
children.

Hoisting a courtroom trash can for effect, Parkinson called Sells'
statements "garbage," saying the inmate initially called the killing
random, then insisted it was supposed to be a contract hit targeting
Rea-Harper. Earlier this year, he recanted.

"Tommy Lynn Sells is a piece of junk," Parkinson said.

(source : Associated Press)






CALIFORNIA:

Panel Seeks to Curb False Confessions----Officials urge a law that would
require taping of jailhouse interrogations and a warning to juries if a
suspect's statement wasn't recorded.


A blue ribbon commission studying reform of California's criminal justice
system recommended Tuesday that the state adopt a law mandating electronic
recording of all jailhouse interrogations.

If an officer fails to make an audiotape, the law should require that the
jury be instructed to view the defendant's statement with caution, the
California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice said.

The commission also urged California law enforcement agencies to videotape
all custodial interrogations of felony suspects, but did not recommend
making it a requirement only because the cost would be prohibitive, said
Gerald F. Uelmen, a Santa Clara University law professor who is the
commission's executive director.

Rather, the commission, headed by former California Atty. Gen. John K. Van
de Kamp, recommended that the Legislature provide grants aiding police
agencies that want to implement videotaping.

The report emphasized that false confessions have been identified as the
2nd most frequent cause of wrongful convictions.

"Although it may seem surprising that factually innocent persons would
falsely confess to the commission of serious crimes, the research provides
ample evidence that this phenomenon occurs with greater frequency than
widely assumed," the commission said.

"The research suggests that false confessions are often extracted from the
most vulnerable suspects," including juveniles, the mentally disabled and
the mentally ill, the report stated. However, the commission cautioned
that "even fully competent and rational persons may be victimized by
coercive interrogation techniques."

The commission cited June testimony from two wrongfully convicted men:
Christopher Ochoa, who was tried in Austin, Texas, and Harold Hall, who
was tried in Los Angeles. Each man said he doubted he would have been
convicted if his interrogation had been recorded and a judge and jury had
been able to see the coercive techniques used against him.

Ochoa told the commission that he had admitted to participating in a
murder and agreed to testify against another man only after he had been
threatened with the death penalty. Ochoa and Hall were later exonerated.
Hall has a damage suit pending in Los Angeles federal court against local
officials.

The report emphasized that taped interrogations provided considerable
benefits to law enforcement, including protection against claims of
misconduct.

The recommendations were adopted unanimously by 18 members of the
commission, with only one member, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca,
abstaining. Baca's spokesman, Steve Whitmore, said: "The sheriff believes
this deserves further study and a wider range of consultation before
action is taken."

Those who voted in favor included California Atty. Ge. Bill Lockyer, Los
Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton, 3 district attorneys, a federal
judge from Sacramento and Los Angeles County Public Defender Michael
Judge.

2 law school professors who have studied false confessions praised the
report's recommendations as a boon to suspects and law enforcement.

"I am ecstatic that such a broad-based commission has recommended the
electronic recording of custodial interrogations in serious felony cases.
I am very pleased that the commission has recognized that police-induced
false confessions can destroy lives," said Northwestern University law
professor Steven A. Drizin, co-author of a study on false confessions
cited by the commission.

Drizin said he wished the panel had made a stronger recommendation on the
consequences of failing to record an interrogation. "I would have liked to
have seen a recommendation that there be a presumption that the
interrogation is inadmissible where there has been an inexcusable failure
to record," Drizin said. "But the use of a jury instruction is a good
compromise."

"I think the recommended rule is exactly right," said University of
Michigan Law School professor Samuel R. Gross, co-author of a study on
wrongful convictions cited by the commission. "I hope that the sanction"
of a warning to the jury "is enough to get prosecutors and police
departments to speed the transition to a time when recording
interrogations is as routine as wearing sterile gloves in an operating
room," Gross said.

(source: Los Angeles Times)






USA:

Declaration of Human Rights Should Be Law


What exactly is the United States' position in national and international
laws of peace and human rights?

The framers of the Constitution famously left such questions out
altogether, and this oversight was corrected by the appended Bill of
Rights. Article 7 of the Bill of Rights says no one shall be "deprived of
life, liberty or property, without due process of law." But "due process
of law" is nowhere defined.

Interestingly, Article 13 of the Bill of Rights says that no one shall be
subjected to "slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment
for a crime." Ratified in 1865, the loophole was never repealed, so this
article allows slavery and involuntary servitude of convicted criminals.

No where in the Bill of Rights are any principles or ethical guidelines
established concerning the circumstances under which the United States may
declare and wage war.

At present, the Congress is up in arms because the Supreme Court's recent
decision to hold the president's administration to the Geneva Conventions.

Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said, "I don't think we're
going to pass something that's going to have our military servicemen
subject to some kind of international rules."

So what do the Geneva Conventions say? The third establishes standards for
the treatment of prisoners of war ("internees"). The 4th establishes
standards for the treatment of inhabitants of occupied territories.
Article 3 of both documents prohibit torture and a wide range of abuses,
from "outrages upon personal dignity" to "murder," while permitting
executions by "regularly constituted courts." The 4th convention is a
bizarre document. For example, safety zones may be established for
"children under 15, expectant mothers and mothers of children under 7" but
not for men and women generally unless "wounded, sick and aged." In
contrast to the United Nation's 1948 Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, the Geneva Conventions permit death sentences. (The texts are
on-line at www.globalissuesgroup.com.)

Unlike the fatally ambiguous Bill of Rights, which makes no human rights
provisions in its concept of "due process of law," and the hawkish Geneva
Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a beautifully
lucid document. In Article 3 it asserts, without conditions, "Everyone has
the right to life, liberty and security of person." In Article 4: "No one
shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall
be prohibited in all their forms." In Article 5: "No one shall be
subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment."

Thus, it prohibits capital punishment. Although the 18th-century Bill of
Rights permits capital punishment, the subsequently ratified Universal
Declaration of Human Rights should have eliminated it. In Article 8 of the
Bill of Rights it prohibits "cruel and unusual punishments." In the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5, it states, "No one shall
be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment."

] Whether or not the current U.S. government considers itself and its
military bound by "some kind of international rules"-the international
community ought, in my opinion, to hold it to the international laws of
peace, human rights and justice as framed in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and the Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal (1950).

The Nuremberg Principles define war crimes. One principle Americans should
be familiar with is Principle II, wherein "The fact that internal law does
not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under
international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from
responsibility under international law."

Thus American torturers, though free from punishment in the Supreme Court
decision-which merely ruled that torture is not permissible-should be
tried by an international court. Should George W. Bush be tried for such
crimes against peace defined in the Nuremberg Principles as planning and
waging a war of aggression and spearheading a policy of torture and
military tribunals? The Nuremberg Principles (number III) states clearly,
"The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime
under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government
official does not relieve him from responsibility under international
law." Should U.S. military personnel be tried for "murder" and
"ill-treatment" of "civilian population or in occupied territory, murder
or ill-treatment of prisoners of war"? Principle IV states: "The fact that
a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does
not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a
moral choice was in fact possible to him."

It is my opinion that the United States should be bound by international
law and subject to international tribunals. If it is not-and at present it
is not-there is no way to preserve the United States from the path of
military domination of the globe and totalitarianism here and abroad.

(source: Berkeley Daily Planet --Jacqueline Sokolinsky is a Berkeley
resident )






CONNECTICUT:

Set Rules For Death Row Cases


For those convicted of capital crimes, the chances of receiving the death
penalty are much higher in the Waterbury judicial district than anywhere
else in the state. Of the 7 men on Connecticut's death row, 5 were
successfully prosecuted by the office of State's Attorney John Connelly.

The unfettered discretion that regional prosecutors have in seeking the
death penalty and the subjective factors that might go into making that
decision account in large part for the disparity.

U.S. attorneys, in contrast, must follow a fairly elaborate set of
guidelines, including approval from the Justice Department in Washington,
before they can ask for the death penalty in a federal case. Other states
have similar directives.

Connecticut should be in that league.

To his credit, Hartford Superior Court Judge Edward Mullarkey has agreed
to hear a first-of-a-kind motion in the case of Jessie Campbell III that
the absence of rules makes the Connecticut process of choosing who is
marked for death unconstitutional.

In so doing, Judge Mullarkey has authorized Mr. Campbell's attorneys to
subpoena 12 of the 13 regional prosecutors and Chief State's Attorney
Christopher Morano to explain their personal standards for seeking the
death penalty.

A jury in May convicted Mr. Campbell of murdering 2 Hartford women in
2004, but was deadlocked on whether to sentence him to death, as
prosecutors wanted, or to life in prison without parole. The motion was
filed in advance of a 2nd penalty hearing before a new jury in September.

A ruling by Judge Mullarkey in Mr. Campbell's favor would automatically
trigger a life sentence. That would almost certainly be appealed to the
Connecticut Supreme Court, which in turn could determine, once and for
all, whether the random nature of death penalty prosecutions is
constitutional.

The Courant has long opposed capital punishment. But if the death penalty
has to exist, there should be formalized procedures on its application.

(source: Editorial, Hartford Courant)