Aug. 21
TEXAS----impending execution
Parole board rejects clemency for death row inmate
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has rejected a clemency petition from a
condemned prisoner facing execution this week for a triple killing in Amarillo
almost 15 years ago.
John Balentine is set for lethal injection Wednesday evening in Huntsville.
The parole board voted 7-0 Monday against recommending clemency for the
43-year-old Balentine.
He was convicted of the fatal shootings of 17-year-old Mark Caylor Jr. and 2
15-year-old friends of Caylor as they slept in an Amarillo house. Evidence
showed the January 1998 slayings culminated a feud between Balentine and
Caylor.
A federal court appeal seeking to halt the execution was rejected Friday by a
3-judge-panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Balentine's lawyer has
asked the full New Orleans-based court to reconsider the appeal.
(source: Associated Press)
USA:
Across the country, family members of murder victims have come out against
capital punishment
Victoria Coward remembers hearing the gunshots ring out from Edgewood Park, not
far from her New Haven, Conn., home in June 2007. Later that night her worst
fears were realized when detectives knocked on her front door.
Her 18-year-old son, Tyler, was dead from gunshot wounds to the head and chest.
2 years later, when police arrested and charged Jose Fuentes-Pillich, a
23-year-old who she thought was Tyler's friend, Coward had already joined a
campaign against the death penalty.
When she contacted Fuentes-Pillich after his conviction in 2010, she explained
why she didn't wish him dead.
"I told him it would be wrong for me to say, 'You should die.' That's not in
me. That's in God???s hands -- the 1st thing I need to do is forgive you for
taking my son's life," Coward recalled in an interview with The Crime Report.
Connecticut became the 17thstate to abolish the death penalty in April. As
opponents step up their national campaign, they are discovering some surprising
allies among people like Coward - challenging the long-held stereotype that the
families of murder victims automatically support capital punishment.
Coward and other relatives of murder victims were important players in
Connecticut's abolition movement, which was spearheaded by the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) and partner non-profit the Connecticut Network to
Abolish the Death Penalty (CNADP).
Submitting Testimony
She volunteered to submit testimony to the Connecticut General Assembly when a
notorious triple murder just weeks after her son was killed appeared to
galvanize a new wave of public support for capital punishment.
In the July 2007 case that made national headlines, Stephen Hayes and Joshua
Komisarjevsky, both on parole at the time, murdered Jennifer Hawke-Petit and
her daughters Michaela, 11, and Hayley, 17, in their Cheshire, Conn., home.
Michaela and Hawke-Petit were sexually assaulted before all 3 were burned
alive.
Hawke-Petit's husband, William Petit, was bludgeoned and bound in the basement.
In early 2011, when it looked as though Connecticut's death penalty was headed
for repeal, Petit met with 2 state senators who were on the fence.
State Sen. Edith Prague, a Democrat, was one of them. She said later she was
persuaded to withdraw her support for repeal because she felt Komisarjevsky
deserved to die. "They should bypass the trial and take that 2nd animal and
hang him by his penis from a tree out in the middle of Main Street," she told
the website CT News Junkie.
After the 2nd senator, Andrew Maynard, followed suit, there were no longer
enough votes to repeal Connecticut???s death penalty and the bill never made it
to the Senate floor.
It was the 2nd defeat for Connecticut death penalty opponents in 2 years. In
2009, a bill to abolish the death penalty made it to then-Gov. M. Jody Rell's
desk, only to be vetoed.
On Jan. 27, 2012, Komisarjevsky was sentenced to death by lethal injection. His
appeal is currently pending.
Changing the Conversation
With the Cheshire cases finished, and a Democratic governor in Hartford, the
ACLU and CNADP doubled down on their efforts to bring victims' survivors who
opposed the death penalty to the forefront of the statewide conversation,
according to Isa Mujahid, an ACLU Connecticut field organizer.
"There was a lot of anger among victims' family members who don't support the
death penalty," Mujahid told The Crime Report. "They were angry that Dr.
Petit's voice was getting all the attention."
Despite heavy snow, nearly 200 people showed up at the state Capitol on Feb. 29
to lobby against the death penalty and for other ACLU causes. A letter signed
by 179 members of victims' families was presented to the Connecticut General
Assembly.
The letter argued that the death penalty appeals process forced victims'
families to relive the trauma of facing their loved ones??? murderers over and
over again. Instead, the relatives said, the alternative of life without parole
might allow them to move on.
"I think in the legislature, they were a bit caught off guard by it, because
they were used to hearing from Dr. Petit and other supporters of the death
penalty," Mujahid said. "They were caught off guard by how many victims' family
members were against the death penalty."
This time, the lobbying was successful.
On April 25, Gov. Dannel Malloy signed into law a bill that repealed the death
penalty for all future cases, while leaving past death sentences in place,
including those handed down to Komisarjevsky and Hayes.
Supporters of repeal elsewhere hope that the voices of victims' families can be
similarly effective in other states. But it's still likely to be an uphill
battle.
California Initiative
Just 2 days before Connecticut's decision, California Secretary of State Debra
Bowden announced that Proposition 34 - an initiative that would replace the
death penalty with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole - had
been approved to appear on that state's Nov. 6, 2012, ballot.
Nevertheless, supporters of the death penalty say it will be harder to abolish
executions in the Golden State, where about 2/3 of the population supports the
practice, according to a September 2011 poll.
And the pro-death penalty lobby in California, as in Connecticut, includes
victims' family members who wield a lot of influence.
Marc Klaas, for example, who spearheaded the campaign for California's "Three
Strikes" law after his 12-year-old daughter, Polly, was kidnapped and murdered
in 1993, says death penalty proceedings need to be streamlined - not abolished.
Polly's killer, Richard Allan Davis, who had spent much of his life in prison
for kidnapping and violence toward women, was convicted in 1996 and sentenced
to death. Even though his sentence was upheld in a 2009 appeal, a frustrated
Klaas says he still expects to wait a long time before Davis is executed.
"I have little doubt that he'll probably outlive me if you want to know the
truth of it," Klaas told The Crime Report. "But that doesn't mean he shouldn't
be executed for the crimes he committed against my daughter, in that heinous
and hideous act."
700 Awaiting Death
Davis is one of over 700 inmates currently awaiting death in California, which
hasn't executed anyone since 2006.
That year, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ordered a moratorium on executions
in the state, after hearing complaints about how lethal injections were to be
administered.
Klaas believes the moratorium is an example of a roadblock to execution
engineered by death penalty opponents.
"Baby killers, cop killers, mass murderers; I mean really the worst people in
society have been deemed worthy of the ultimate law of the land, the death
penalty," Klaas said. "But the abolitionists have created barrier after
barrier."
When Klaas knocks death penalty opponents, he makes clear that he understands
what motivates many victims' survivors who take the opposite view.
"I know that the ones who deal with it best are those who find the will to
fight back, whether it's for the death penalty, against the death penalty or
something else" he said.
On both sides of the debate, victims' families understand enough about each
other's pain that they rarely disrespect each other, said Gail Canzano, a
psychologist whose brother-in-law was murdered in West Hartford, Conn., in
1999.
"I can tell you that as the family member of a murder victim, I have nothing
but respect for another person who's been through this," Canzano said. "The
things that unite family of murder victims are greater than those that divide
them."
But less kind words are often used for the organizational forces behind death
penalty campaigns. Both sides accuse opposing organizations of deceiving
victims' families.
Agonizing Waits
Michael Rushford, founder and president of the California-based nonprofit
Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, argues that opponents of execution have
conspired to lengthen the death penalty process, and have created the
circumstances behind the agonizing waits that victims' families endure.
"It's like if I took 20 years to chop holes in a dam and it flooded a
valley???and then I said, 'see, dams don't work,'" Rushford said.
The result, according to Rushford, is injustice for victims and their loved
ones.
"If somebody's attacking you in California you need to drag yourself onto
federal land or over the border into Nevada," Rushford said.
Tanya Greene, a lawyer who works for the ACLU, said pro-death penalty
organizations and prosecutors often don't take seriously victims' loved ones
who are against execution.
"The presumption has traditionally been that if your family member is murdered
you're in support of death penalty," Greene said. "There are people who have
had their family members taken away, and they are still hurt. They feel
bamboozled by folks who say that vengeance is what families want."
Victoria Coward, whose son was shot and killed in New Haven, said she's taking
the lessons she learned campaigning at home to other states.
In October, she's meeting with death penalty opponents in Nebraska, where 11
people are currently on death row.
(source: Graham Kates is deputy editor of The Crime Report--Salon.com)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
Judge overturns S.C. man's death sentence
A South Carolina judge has overturned a death sentence for a man convicted of
killing his estranged wife while awaiting trial on charges he had raped and
kidnapped her.
Prosecutors said Monday a judge had instead opted to sentence Louis Winkler to
life in prison, citing errors made by his defense attorney at trial. State
prison officials said Monday that Winkler was still on death row, and it wasn't
immediately clear when he would be moved to a different cell.
Winkler was sentenced in 2008 after he was convicted of murder and 1st-degree
burglary in the death of his wife, Rebekah Grainger Winkler, in her Little
River apartment.
Winker was under house arrest at the time of the 2005 shooting on charges of
kidnapping and sexually assaulting his wife. But a judge released him on bond
in 2006, and Winkler was allowed to leave his home for several hours a day.
While out on bond, prosecutors said Winkler kicked in the door of his wife's
home and shot her in the face. He hid in the woods for two weeks before he was
arrested.
The state Supreme Court upheld Winkler's death sentence in 2010. But in an
11-page ruling, Judge Ben Culbertson - who presided over a four-day
post-conviction relief trial earlier this summer - said Winkler's original
attorneys made mistakes during the trial.
During those original proceedings, Culbertson wrote, Winkler asked for new
attorneys but was denied. When jurors deadlocked after 10 hours of
deliberation, the judge told them they must reach a unanimous decision but
didn't ever explain to them how things would be handled if they remained at a
standstill.
Culbertson denied several of Winkler's post-conviction relief arguments,
including the notion that the original judge was wrong not to let him represent
himself at trial. But Culbertson did agree with Winkler that his original
attorneys were wrong not to object when the trial judge didn't tell jurors what
would happen if they remained deadlocked.
"The judge refused to answer the question both times and Winkler's criminal
trial attorneys never objected to the judge's refusal to answer the question,"
Culberson wrote. "Sentencing in capital murder cases is made by the jury and,
therefore, the jury is entitled to know the law on sentencing."
Solicitor Greg Hembree has asked state prosecutors to appeal Culbertson's
decision to the state Supreme Court, saying in a statement released Monday that
the judge "goes past ruling on the law."
Attorney General Alan Wilson's office did not immediately comment on the
request.
(source: Associated Press)
_______________________________________________
DeathPenalty mailing list
DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu
http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty
Search the Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/deathpenalty@lists.washlaw.edu/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A free service of WashLaw
http://washlaw.edu
(785)670.1088
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
