Rick Halperin
Thu, 1 Jan 2009 12:13:21 -0600
Jan. 1 NORTH CAROLINA: Death row adds just one in '08 North Carolina finished 2008 with just 1 defendant sentenced to death, a record low since the penalty was reinstated 31 years ago. The single capital murder conviction continued a downward trend fueled by better criminal defense lawyers and new laws that exclude the mentally challenged and make prosecution evidence more accessible. In North Carolina, more people on death row were exonerated in 2008 2 than were sentenced to death. A de facto death penalty moratorium in North Carolina as the courts, state officials and the medical profession debate the ethics of lethal injections has prevented anyone from being executed for the past 2 years. 13 juries could have chosen death for defendants. Only 1 in Forsyth County did. In November, a jury there gave the death sentence to James Ray Little III for shooting a cab driver to death 2 years ago in Winston-Salem. "Only 1 death sentence, when you think about it, is extraordinary," said Gerda Stein, a spokeswoman for the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, which represents death row defendants who appeal their sentences. The numbers suggest juries are less likely to impose the ultimate punishment. In 1996, there were 60 capital trials resulting in 34 death sentences in North Carolina. The decline in death sentences is a national trend, but North Carolina's is among the most pronounced, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. Several changes in state law have made it less likely for those charged with 1st-degree murder to face execution. Before 2001, district attorneys had to seek the death penalty in cases with aggravating circumstances, such as homicides committed during armed robberies. But that requirement was lifted and now prosecutors often seek life without parole in such cases. Court statistics show a steep drop in death sentences since that change. Other recent laws have opened prosecutors' files to defense lawyers, barred the death penalty for defendants with IQs of 70 or below, and allowed DNA testing of biological evidence that might exonerate those convicted of a crime. The state has also set up the Office of Indigent Defense Services, which is intended to provide better representation of criminal defendants who lack the resources for effective counsel. Tom Horner, president of the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys, said the de facto moratorium might be influencing prosecutors' decisions to seek life without parole instead of the death penalty. Capital murder cases are much more expensive and time consuming, he said, because defendants are entitled to additional services that include more expert witnesses and test juries. "It's just a tremendously different beast than just trying someone non-capitally," said Horner, the district attorney for Alleghany, Ashe, Wilkes and Yadkin counties. Jeremy Collins, director of the N.C. Coalition for a Moratorium, said the state should enact laws to remove bias from murder trials. In 2007, the state House passed a Racial Justice Act, which would allow condemned inmates to use statistics to try to prove their race was the reason they were sentenced to death. The legislation is pending in the Senate. A UNC study in 2001 found defendants were more likely to face the death penalty if the victim was white. Collins also said the state needs to examine the fairness of death sentences that occurred before reforms that gave prosecutors the option to not seek the death penalty and guarded against inadequate defense counsel. "At some point we are going to have to look at our standards of decency," Collins said. "Do we continue to execute people under our old laws?" Horner said there's no need to tinker further with death penalty laws. He urged state lawmakers to vote on whether the state should allow executions to continue. State lawmakers continue to examine the death penalty. In 2 weeks, a committee will begin looking at whether those with severe mental disabilities should face capital punishment. (source: Greensboro News-Record) MISSOURI: Poplar Bluff man's death sentence upheld by jury in Cape Girardeau County A Poplar Bluff, Mo., man was returned to death row Monday afternoon after he again was sentenced to die for killing his infant daughter's grandmother. Terrance L. Anderson was sentenced to death in accordance with the verdict, said assistant attorney general Robert Ahsens III. A Cape Girardeau County jury had reached that verdict in November after hearing testimony from multiple witnesses for the state and defense. The jury's death sentence was identical to what another Cape Girardeau County jury handed down in January 2001 after it convicted Anderson of 1st-degree murder in the July 1997 death of Debbie Rainwater. Anderson also was convicted of killing Stephen Rainwater and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of probation or parole for his death. In July 2006, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the 32-year-old's death sentence and ordered a new penalty phase be held in his case before Presiding Circuit Judge William Syler. Before formally sentencing Anderson, Syler considered a motion for judgment of acquittal, or in the alternative, motion for a new trial filed by Anderson's attorney, Sharon Turlington with the Capital Public Defender's Office. "There was not a great deal of discussion about [the motion]; the court is familiar with the points they raised," Ahsens said. He said the court denied the motion for new trial and proceeded to sentencing. Ahsens said Syler could have sentenced Anderson to life in prison without the possibility of parole. "He had that option [but] most judges follow the verdict of the jury, and Judge Syler did that," he said. Sentencing in cases such as Anderson's doesn't "normally take that long," Ahsens said. Syler, who Ahsens described as an experienced judge, went over Anderson's post-conviction rights, "pronounced sentence he's probably on his way back to prison." At the time of the murders, Anderson and the Rainwaters' then-17-year-old daughter, Abbey Rainwater, had dated and had an infant daughter together. The Rainwaters were killed July 25, 1997, at their home. Armed with a stolen handgun, Anderson forced his way into the Rainwater home, where he shot Debbie Rainwater in the head as she held his infant daughter. Anderson then ambushed Stephen Rainwater in the front yard when he arrived home. When Anderson forcibly entered the Rainwater home, the couple's daughters, Abbey and Whitney, then 11, as well as two of Abbey's friends, were there. After Abbey Rainwater ran for help, Anderson used Whitney, his daughter and one of the friends in an attempt to lure his ex-girlfriend and the other friend out of hiding. During November's penalty phase, Ahsens said, he put on evidence of the crime, as well as "some information about the impact of the murder on the girls and the rest of their families." The defense, he said, argued Anderson was operating under "extreme emotional distress over the difficulties he was having with Abbey Rainwater." One of the defense witnesses was Anderson, who testified on his own behalf. Ahsens said Anderson admitted he had gone to the Rainwater home "with the purpose to kill both of the Rainwaters, and kill Abbey as well." Anderson's testimony, he said, included "a lot of inconsistencies between what he said, what other people said and what the physical evidence demonstrated." (source: Daily American Republic) NEVADA: Supreme Court rejects petition in Reno murder case The Nevada Supreme Court has refused to overturn a conviction and death sentence imposed on Avram Nika. He was convicted of the August 1994 murder of a Reno man who stopped along Interstate 80 to help him after his car broke down. The victim, Edward Smith, suffered 3 skull fractures and a bullet wound to the forehead. Nika was arrested 5 days later in Chicago driving Smith's BMW. After his conviction, he petitioned the court arguing his counsel was ineffective during trial. The Supreme Court granted him an evidentiary hearing into his claims, which concluded his trial lawyer was not ineffective. He petitioned again arguing the prosecution withheld information about an agreement with a jailhouse informant who testified Nika had admitted the killing. When that petition was rejected, he filed another version raising a laundry list of complaints including that jury instructions in his trial were faulty and that there were numerous errors in his penalty hearing. The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday there were no serious flaws in the jury instructions because the new rule he said wasn't properly applied didn't exist until after Nika's case was decided. 5 members of the court rejected all of Nika's claims for relief. But 2 justices, Michael Cherry and Nancy Saitta, filed a dissenting opinion. They agreed with the majority in rejecting Nika's claims the guilty verdict should be thrown out. But they said they would grant him a new penalty hearing because of several problems which, taken together, prejudiced Nika at sentencing. Among those is that he is from Romania and spoke very limited English at the time. The high court granted a new penalty hearing in a Las Vegas death sentence case. Edward Lee Jones was convicted of the 1991 death of his girlfriend Pamela Williams. She was stabbed 36 times with a butcher knife. The justices unanimously agreed that Jones was not properly represented by counsel during his penalty hearing. They cited numerous examples of prosecutorial misconduct during closing argument, arguing facts that weren't in evidence including that the victim Jones' girlfriend begged for her life and that her son was traumatized by seeing her body. "These egregious instances of prosecutorial misconduct occurred throughout the penalty phase closing argument," the court wrote. Yet the defense lawyer made no objections. In addition, the defense conducted no investigation to counter prosecution arguments calling for a death sentence. "Because Jones was prejudiced by counsels omissions, we conclude that he is entitled to a new penalty hearing," they concluded. (source: Nevada Appeal) CALIFORNIA: Jury calls for execution of rapist, murderer A serial rapist who escaped one death sentence for murder when capital punishment was declared unconstitutional should be executed for sexually assaulting and killing a woman at a reservoir in Lafayette 30 years ago, a Contra Costa County jury has decided. The same jury convicted Darryl Kemp, 72, on Dec. 4 of murdering Armida Wiltsey, who was 40 when she was reported missing after failing to pick up her son from school Nov. 28, 1978. Deputies found her body that night a short distance from a trail at the Lafayette Reservoir, her favorite place to jog. The jury that returned Tuesday's death-penalty recommendation "did a great job," Deputy District Attorney Mark Peterson said. "I'm very satisfied with the verdict. My only disappointment is that Darryl Kemp will not be executed tomorrow. He has been a violent predator his entire life and deserves the death penalty." Superior Court Judge John Kennedy will formally sentence Kemp on March 20. He has the option of sending Kemp to prison for life without the possibility of parole. Kemp is already serving a life sentence in Texas for raping several women. Wiltsey's former husband, Boyd Wiltsey, said Wednesday from his home in Sublimity, Ore., that he was "relieved that this was all over. I think the jury did the absolutely correct thing. This guy doesn't deserve to live in our society." Kemp was a convicted murderer who had been paroled to Pleasant Hill 4 months before Armida Wiltsey was slain. His death sentence for killing a nurse in Los Angeles in 1957 had been commuted when the death penalty was declared unconstitutional in 1972. Kemp was later convicted of the Texas rapes and was incarcerated in that state when DNA evidence linked him to Wiltsey's slaying. Her rape and killing at the popular Lafayette Reservoir set the community on edge. Women who walked or jogged on the paved trail around the reservoir began pairing up, while police hypnotized witnesses to develop sketches of possible suspects. Kemp came under suspicion after Walnut Creek police arrested him two days after the killing on charges of prowling. Detectives with the sheriff's office took samples of Kemp's hair but were unable to match them to a hair found on Wiltsey's body. The case was reopened in 2000 as part of the sheriff's office's review of unsolved killings. Sheriff's Detective Roxanne Gruenheid realized that blood found under Wiltsey's fingernails could be analyzed for DNA evidence. By March 2003, the state DNA lab in Richmond had matched the crime scene evidence to Kemp's genetic profile contained in a database of convicted felons. Kemp's hair samples were also linked to the crime using DNA, and a blood sample taken from him also confirmed the match. (source: San Francisco Chronicle) VIRGINIA----new execution date End of the line for convicted murderer to come on Feb. 19 For convicted killer Edward N. Bell, the end is now all but certain, and it will come Feb. 19. A Winchester Circuit Court judge set the date for Bell's execution during a conference call between the Jamaican national's legal team and the office of Republican Attorney General Bob McDonnell. Bell was convicted in 2001 of the 1999 murder of Winchester police Sgt. Ricky L. Timbrook and sentenced to death. He pursued a number of appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which dismissed his case earlier this year. Judge Dennis L. Hupp signed the 3-paragraph execution order Tuesday morning. "This court hereby orders that the death sentence of Edward Nathaniel Bell be carried out on the 19th day of February 2009, at such time of day as the Director of the Department of Corrections shall fix," the order states. All Virginia executions are carried out at 9 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center near Jarrat. A member of Bell's legal team said they'd been expecting the date ever since the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed their client's final appeal in November. Feb. 19 "is close to the latest time that it could be set by law," said James G. Connell, a member of Bell's appellate legal team. Tuesday's order shifts the fight from the legal front to the world of politics, and the desk of Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. "Right now we're focused on a clemency petition," Connell said. The team will submit a written filing not unlike a legal brief to the governor in the near future. The Virginia Constitution gives Kaine unfettered power to delay, commute or even wipe away Bell's death sentence. He has shown a willingness to use that power in the past. Kaine intervened just days before Bell's last scheduled execution date in April, postponing all executions in order to give the U.S. Supreme Court more time to consider the constitutionality of lethal injection. Bell's lawyers could file a 2nd federal appeal, but a judge would be required to turn away the appeal unless his lawyers found new evidence that "could not have been discovered previously through the exercise of due diligence," according to federal law. Even then, the new information would have to be so convincing that "no reasonable factfinder would have found the applicant guilty of the offense." Bell has been even closer to execution before, but never with so few legal recourses. He was originally scheduled to die in January 2005, but a U.S. District judge stepped in and stopped the execution pending a federal review of Bell's case. That stay was lifted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, clearing the way for an April 2008 execution date. Kaine's moratorium pushed the date back until July. Chief Justice John Roberts issued an indefinite stay not long afterward. Failing action by Kaine or the courts, Bell is likely to be moved to Greensville either in late January or early February. (source: Northern Virginia Daily)