Aug. 23
TEXAS:
Former Governor and FBI Director Support Clemency for Texas Death Row Inmate
Former Texas Governor Mark White and former FBI Director William Sessions have
petitioned the State of Texas to grant clemency to death row inmate Max Soffar
because of the likelihood his federal appeal will not be decided before he
succumbs to aggressive liver cancer.
1 of Texas' longest-serving death row prisoners, Max Soffar has been on death
row for more than 33 years for a 1980 robbery at a Houston bowling alley where
3 people were shot and killed and a 4th badly injured.
Prosecutors had no forensic evidence or eyewitness to tie Mr. Soffar to the
crime, so they relied on confessions obtained from Mr. Soffar, a mentally
impaired, drug-addicted 24-year-old, after three days of questioning with no
lawyer present. He later recanted.
On appeal, a federal judge criticized the state's case as thin on evidence and
dependent on Mr. Soffar's unreliable confession. His conviction and sentence
were overturned, but the state obtained a second guilty verdict and death
sentence in 2006 after jurors were not allowed to hear evidence about an
alternative suspect or about how police can extract false confessions.
He currently has another appeal pending in federal court but his lawyers said
"[t]he reality is that the federal court process will likely not be completed
before Mr. Soffar dies."
Now 58 years old, Mr. Soffar is suffering from inoperable liver cancer. Doctors
discovered the tumor in June and told him it could be fatal within months. The
Constitution Project has filed a clemency petition to the Texas Board of
Pardons and Parole, in which Governor White and Mr. Sessions ask for
compassionate relief so Mr. Soffar can die at home.
The Dallas Morning News editorial board wrote that the clemency request, though
not likely to be granted, "serves a righteous purpose" because it exposes
another Texas capital case where "the facts consist of many hazy shades of
gray."
(source: Equal Justice Initiative)
MASSACHUSETTS:
How The Sacco And Vanzetti Trial Sparked Worldwide Protest
Today, we go back to 1927, and the final moments for 2 Boston suspected
criminals-turned-cause celebre whose lives were immortalized by Woody Guthrie
and whose story shaped the public policy of one of the Bay State's most
renowned politicians.
By the time the 1st switch was thrown on the electric chair, shortly after
midnight on Aug. 23, 1927, an enormous crowd had assembled outside the
Charlestown prison, which was surrounded by 800 police. By 12:30, word was
spreading through the crowd. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were dead.
"They were both Italian immigrants, they were both laborers and they were both
followers of an anarchist in the United States named Luigi Galliani," said
Susan Tejada, author of "In Search of Sacco and Vanzetti."
The men had been convicted of robbing, shooting and killing 2 guards who were
delivering $16,000 in payroll to a shoe factory in South Braintree, Mass.
"The entire crime, from the 1st bullet to the getaway, took less than a
minute," Tejada said.
The men were convicted despite scant, questionable physical evidence and
multiple eyewitnesses who placed them both elsewhere at the time of the crime.
Tejada says it's because the narrative of the trial was not dominated by the
facts of the case, but rather by four other factors: "Their anarchist beliefs,
their labor activism, their Italian ethnicity and their draft dodging during
World War I."
They languished in prison for years, as a dedicated defense committee sought
publicity and fought for a new trial. Motion after motion was denied, despite
the fact that witnesses recanted testimonies, another man admitted to the crime
and that evidence came to light that the judge in the case, Webster Thayer, was
less than impartial.
"Over the course of time he made astonishing prejudicial comments off the bench
about Sacco and Vanzetti being reds and Bolsheviks and how we had to protect
ourselves against them; about Sacco and Vanzetti being 'anarchist bastards,'"
Tejada said.
Initially bashed in the press for everything for their draft dodging to their
radical politics, public opinion slowly shifted - dramatically - in Sacco and
Vanzetti's favor - as people across the globe increasingly saw in their case a
justice system that was blind to justice.
"It was astonishing," Tejada said. "Protests and demonstrations and strikes all
over the United States, in Germany, England Australia, Switzerland, Paraguay,
Mexico, on every continent except Antarctica."
In the end, it was that overwhelming support that sunk their last best chance.
In the days before their execution Massachusetts Gov Alvan T. Fuller was urged
to issue a pardon. He said that he might have issued a pardon but ...
"He felt that worldwide interest in the case proved that there was a conspiracy
against the United States," Tejada said. "That's what he said."
And so on August 23, shortly after midnight, Sacco and Vanzetti were silenced,
forever. But the story doesn't end there. 50 years after their death, another
Massachusetts governor once again took up their case.
"I think today there's a very bright consensus about this," said former
Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. "A terrible injustice was done."
And so on the 50th anniversary of their execution, Dukakis issued an official
proclamation, clearing their name.
"I couldn't pardon them, posthumously," he said. "I mean, I couldn't to that
legally, but at least it seemed to me it was well worth issuing a proclamation
that a grave injustice had been done."
The decree was not without its controversy. A state senator even threatened to
impeach Dukakis over it. But looking back, Dukakis says it was worth it.
"I thought it was an important thing to do," he said. "It was the right thing
to do and I'm glad I did it. I've been a lifelong opponent of the death penalty
and the Sacco and Vanzetti case is one of the reasons for that. It doesn't make
any difference how innocent those folks might have been they're gone. It had a
very powerful influence on me."
And he points out the issues that surrounded the case, from immigration to
class to racial profiling, make Sacco and Vanzetti strikingly relevant today.
"We're looking at a suburb of St. Louis these days and most of us, I think, are
appalled at what's going on out there, so the idea that somehow these problems
don't continue is one that I don't think you can seriously accept when you look
at what's happening out there," Dukakis said.
Tejeda agrees, and points out that, in the end, Sacco himself realized as much.
"At his trial he said that life in the U.S. is good for people with money but
it's not good for the working and the laboring class, and at his sentencing, he
said, 'I know this sentencing will be between 2 classes, the rich class and the
working class, and there will always be collision between one and the other.'"
Sacco and Vanzetti were tried and convicted of a crime that most people today
conclude they never committed. And they were executed for it, right here in
Massachusetts, 87 years ago this week.
(source: WGBH news)
NEW YORK:
Revered local attorney who died was compassionate, intelligent
Local defense attorney William M. Tendy Jr. will be remembered as a
compassionate friend, an intelligent mind and an eloquent speaker, who once
persuaded a jury to spare a man's life in a capital murder trial.
Tendy died early Friday at his home in the Town of Hyde Park after a nearly
2-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly referred to as ALS
or Lou Gehrig's disease. He was 60.
"He embodies the finest in the profession, as a skilled lawyer of the highest
ability and dedication," retired New York Court of Appeals Judge Albert M.
Rosenblatt said in an email to the Journal.
"He was supremely dedicated to his wife and family, who saw him through a most
most difficult time," Rosenblatt said. "He battled his ailment as he managed
everything else in his life: with courage, conviction, and understanding."
Tendy started his career as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney's
Office in 1979. After he moved to Dutchess County in 1983, Tendy joined a local
firm, before opening his own practice in the Town of Poughkeepsie, Tendy &
Cantor, his close friend and local tax attorney James P. Constantino said.
"Bill was a great, great man," Constantino said. "He had such a compassion for
the failings of human beings."
Tendy was well-known for convincing a jury to spare Dalkeith McIntosh from the
death penalty in 1998 and instead sentence him to life in prison without
parole. McIntosh was found guilty of 1st-degree murder in the shooting deaths
of his estranged wife and her stepdaughter in the Town of Poughkeepsie on Aug.
12, 1996.
Tendy was a mentor to many young local attorneys, said Senior Assistant
District Attorney Angela Lopane, who met Tendy when she first started at the
Dutchess District Attorney's Office in 1998.
"I was immediately struck by his eloquence and his knowledge of the criminal
justice system," Lopane said. "He truly believed in searching for truth and
justice in each and every case. ... It's just such a devastating loss for the
community."
A memorial service for Tendy will be held at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at Locust
Grove on South Road in the Town of Poughkeepsie.
(source: Poughkeepsie Journal)
FLORIDA:
Case worker arrested in toddler's death
Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents say 2-year-old Tariji Gordon
suffered great bodily harm, in part to her former Children's Home Society case
manager, who was was arrested on Friday.
Agents say 27-year-old Jonathan Irizarry did not do his job via welfare checks
on the child.
Gordon's mother, Rachel Fryer, is charged in her daughter's murder, and FDLE
agents say photos recovered from her phone show swelling of her right eye and
other "defects" on her face.
They say Irizarry filed multiple reports, including the morning of her Feb. 6
death that the child was "free" of any bruises.
Reports indicate that had Irizarry done the required visual inspection of the
child's body, he would have seen multiple cigarette burns, bite marks on the
child's shoulder and patches on the girl's scalp from forceful pulling of the
child's hair.
Irizarry was booked in to the Seminole County, FL jail on 2 counts of
falsifying official records resulting in great bodily harm. The 2nd-degree
felonies have him facing a maximum of 15 years in prison.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Fryer.
(source: WESH news)
**********************
Putnam double murderer charged in Florida slaying
Serge Motti spent more than 3 decades in prison for executing a renowned
breeder of Great Danes and her assistant at a rural kennel in Kent.
9 times he came up for parole and was denied. Parole commissioners told Motti
the slayings were just too horrible - and he was too much of a risk to reoffend
- to set him free.
3 years ago, he told them for the 1st time what he thought they wanted to hear:
When he brought his father's pistol to Dinro Kennels decades earlier, he
probably did intend to use it.
"I don't know what a human life is worth but I'm very sorry for what I did," he
told them as the interview concluded. "And I'm asking for a 2nd chance, and if
I get that second chance I won't make you sorry."
It did the trick.
But just weeks after his parole supervision ended in June, the 58-year-old was
accused of shooting a man to death and trying to kill a woman during a drug
deal in Florida. Motti finds himself back behind bars, charged with 1st-degree
murder and facing the death penalty. "It doesn't surprise me," said Putnam
County Legislator Kevin Wright, the former district attorney who called the
1978 slayings among the county's most gruesome. "He was a bad guy."
The Florida case
According to an arrest affidavit by a Palm Beach sheriff's detective, Motti
arranged to buy drugs from Jernard Frederick on July 5 in the parking lot of a
Boynton Beach shopping center. Frederick, 22, and his girlfriend, Imanni
Walker, 19, waited for Motti, and when he got in their car, Motti fatally shot
Frederick in the back of the head and then fired at Walker. Motti then got into
his own car and ran over Walker 3 times as she tried to crawl away, it is
alleged.
Detectives soon got tips identifying Motti as the suspect. They learned he
lived near the crime scene and drove a Kia Optima similar to the one seen
driving over Walker.
Walker was seriously injured but survived. The next day, from her hospital bed,
she picked out Motti from a photo array and identified him as the shooter.
Motti was arrested and has pleaded not guilty. He is being held without bail.
His lawyer did not return phone calls.
He has tried repeatedly to reach his father, Sergio, with whom he had lived
since being paroled. But Sergio Motti told The Journal News he isn't
interested. One trip through the criminal justice system with his son was
enough.
"I don't respond," Sergio Motti said in a brief interview. "It's too hard. It
cost me a lot of money and a lot of heartache the first time around, and I just
don't want to go through that again."
The 'kennel killings'
In 1978, Serge Motti was a 21-year-old from Fort Lee, New Jersey, who drove a
tow truck and studied business at Fairleigh Dickinson University. On March 21,
while his unsuspecting girlfriend sat in the truck outside, he walked into
Dinro Kennels on Richardsville Road and shot breeder Rose Marie Robert, 66, and
her assistant, Rosalie Ramos, 24, execution-style. He then took a champion
Great Dane worth $20,000.
Motti reportedly was dissatisfied with a dog he'd bought from Robert and wanted
another one. Authorities arrested him a few days later at the apartment where
the show dog, nicknamed "Louie," was recovered.
The double murders rocked Kent. After mental competency hearings found him fit
to proceed, Motti agreed to plead guilty. But he tried to back out and plead
not guilty by reason of insanity. The judge rejected that and sentenced Motti
to concurrent minimum sentences of 15 years to life.
He first was denied parole in 1993, then again every 2 years until 2011. At
least twice, he sued the parole board unsuccessfully in bids to overturn its
rejections. He tried at least once to cut himself with a razor blade and had
other drug and disciplinary mishaps in his early years in prison. But by the
last hearing, he had stayed out of trouble for a dozen or so years and he'd
gotten a master's degree and a doctorate in psychology.
As late as 2009, three commissioners ruled against him with the statutory "your
release at this time is incompatible with the welfare and safety of the
community, and will so deprecate the seriousness of this crime as to undermine
respect for law."
"This crime shows complete disregard for human life as well as your willingness
to put your own desires above those of others," they wrote in their decision,
according to a transcript obtained by The Journal News.
Florida bound
2 different commissioners did not specify why they approved his bid in April
2011 - including 1, James Ferguson, who had opposed Motti's release in 2007.
Ferguson did say in the interview that the absence of any letter from the
Putnam District Attorney's Office opposing parole was a point in Motti's favor,
according to a transcript of the 2011 hearing.
"It's definitely very chilling that he would be able to get out and murder in
the same manner that he did in 1978," said Robert Layne, 64, of Grafton,
Massachusetts, who, along with his partner, Louis Bond, 67, became close
friends with Robert after buying a Great Dane from her in 1970.
Robert was raised in Kent where her mother also bred dogs, though her
specialties were Irish setters and St. Bernards, Layne and Bond said. Robert,
known as the "queen of Dane-dom" for her breeding skill, drew customers
worldwide, Layne and Bond said, as well as workers seeking to learn from her,
including Ramos, a kennel assistant originally from Ohio.
Bond said friends went before the parole board early on to protest Motti's
release but, as the years passed, many of them died. Officials also told them
that Motti likely would be released for good behavior before the end of his
sentence. Concerned for their safety, Layne and Bond said they and others in
the dog community asked to be notified of Motti's release, worried he might
confront them one day.
"I thought he was insane," Bond said. "We fully expected one day he would show
up."
Motti got out that June and moved to Boynton Beach. His community supervision
also was transferred there; it ended exactly 3 years later when he was
discharged from parole June 16.
He had told the parole board a sanitation job was waiting for him when he got
out, just until he could get something in psychology. But by the time he was
released, the man who'd promised him work had died and the job was no longer
available. Eventually he worked in sales and seemed to be doing well, his
father said.
Sergio Motti knew his son needed painkillers after undergoing back surgery in
prison. But he didn't realize he had relapsed and was using cocaine again after
getting out.
"He got back on drugs and went the wrong way. What more can I say," the father
said. "This is all very painful."
No letter on file
Wright, whose brother lives in Boynton Beach, said he's been at the shopping
center where the killing occurred 5 or 6 times.
36 years ago he was a young prosecutor when he responded to Robert's home after
the killings. He didn't end up handling the case but knew it well enough to
feel certain Motti didn't deserve parole.
"There were no mitigating factors. He was obsessed with getting that Great
Dane, and he just went up there and executed them," Wright said. "He made a
plan, and he brought the tool to make his plan work."
But Wright's office never formally opposed parole. A spokeswoman for the state
Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Linda Foglia, said a
review of Motti's file found no letters from the defense attorney, the district
attorney or the judge.
Foglia declined to discuss Motti's release or the allegations of new violence
and said the department would not make Ferguson available for an interview. She
did offer the results of the department's most recent recidivism study: Of 211
murderers released in 2009, only one returned to state custody on a new felony
conviction over the next 3 years.
Former chief incredulous
The call summoning police to Robert's house had come from a woman who often
would get the dog breeder's mail and walk it up the long driveway. The friend
was doing that when she walked into the house and found Robert on the floor,
retired Kent police Chief Donald L. Smith recalled.
After a police officer arrived and reported finding two bodies, Smith, then a
sergeant, went to the home with Chief William Balzano.
Putnam County Sheriff's investigators also responded and while the cops were
there, her phone rang. It was Motti.
"He wanted to speak to Rose about a dog. The detective took a message, then saw
Motti's number in her address book," Smith said.
A few days later, a New Jersey couple called in a tip that the killer might be
in their neighbor's apartment. The neighbor was the girlfriend, and when police
went to speak with her, Motti answered the door. A Great Dane was there with
him.
"Louie" had a scar on his back, and Motti had used shoe polish to hide it.
Balzano, though, called the dog by its name and it responded. Motti was taken
into custody.
Smith, interviewed this past week, couldn't believe Motti was free after
committing 2 murders.
"How could you let a guy like him out of prison?" he said.
Serge Motti timeline
March 21, 1978: Serge Motti, 21, fatally shoots Rose Marie Robert, 66, and her
assistant, Rosalee Ramos, 24, at Dinro Kennels in Kent Cliffs.
May 1, 1979: After pleading guilty, Motti is sentenced to the minimum -
concurrent prison sentences of 15 years to life.
July 20, 1993: Motti is rejected in his 1st bid for parole.
April 5, 2011: In his 10th parole bid, Motti is approved. He is released two
months later, and parole is transferred to Florida, where he moves in with his
father.
June 16, 2014: Motti's parole supervision ends.
July 5: Jernard Frederick is killed and his girlfriend, Imanni Walker, is
seriously wounded when they are shot in their car at a Boynton Beach shopping
center during a drug deal.
July 6: Motti is arrested at his father's home just blocks from the crime scene
and charged with 1st-degree murder and other felonies.
July 28: Following indictment, prosecutors file notice they plan to seek the
death penalty.
July 31: Motti pleads not guilty.
(source: The Journal News)
MISSISSIPPI:
Justices raising questions on Shaken Baby Syndrome
If the state Supreme Court orders a hearing in the case involving death row
inmate Jeffrey Havard, it will be the 2nd in a row involving Shaken Baby
Syndrome.
Others could follow. At least 11 people are behind bars in Mississippi - and 2
on death row - because of testimony involving that syndrome.
The syndrome has long been used to convict thousands of parents, caregivers and
others, but now questions are being raised about the science behind it.
* * *
Pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Norman Guthkelch had wondered about a medical
mystery reported for decades - some babies bleeding atop their brains, despite
little outside evidence of head trauma.
When a colleague suffered similar bleeding after riding a roller coaster,
Guthkelch suggested whiplash-type injuries were to blame. He published a paper
in 1971, warning parents about the dangers of shaking their children.
In the years that followed, shaken baby syndrome became widely accepted in the
medical community, diagnosed through a triad of symptoms: subdural bleeding
(blood collecting between the brain and the skull), retinal bleeding (bleeding
in the back of the eye) and brain swelling.
Courts recognized the syndrome, and the triad became proof of fatal abuse - "a
medical diagnosis for murder," said Deborah Tuerkheimer, author of the new
book, "Flawed Convictions: 'Shaken Baby Syndrome' and the Inertia of
Injustice."
In 1987, public questions began to arise when biochemical engineers from Penn
State University tested the hypothesis. They found shaking alone failed to
cause the blood vessels in the brain to rupture. It was only when the head made
impact that researchers observed bleeding in the brain.
Despite the findings, Shaken Baby Syndrome continued to be diagnosed and used
to prosecute.
In 1995, prosecutors in Wisconsin charged caregiver Audrey Edmunds with murder,
concluding she had shaken 7-month-old Natalie Beard to death - despite no
witnesses and no outside evidence of trauma.
She told authorities the child was fussy and so she left her with a bottle.
When she returned from helping other children, Edmunds found Natalie
unresponsive.
At trial, medical experts for the prosecution told the jury that only shaking
could explain the injuries, comparing them to a speeding car hitting the baby.
The jury convicted Edmunds, who insisted on her innocence but had no
explanation for the injuries. The judge sentenced her to 18 years in prison.
In the years since, medical belief that the shaken baby syndrome's triad of
symptoms provided ironclad proof of homicide has begun to crumble with several
studies raising doubts.
Some biomechanical studies suggest shaking a baby to death would be impossible
without also injuring the child's neck or spine.
In 2009, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended the diagnosis of the
syndrome be discarded and replaced with "abusive head trauma."
That decision came a year after the Wisconsin Supreme Court granted Edmunds a
new trial, with justices saying that a "significant dispute within the medical
community as to the cause of those injuries ... constitutes newly discovered
evidence."
After the ruling, prosecutors dismissed the charges against Edmunds, and the
mother of 3 girls walked free from prison, reuniting with her now grown
children after 11 years in prison.
"It never, ever got easier, and I never got used to it," she told Madison
Magazine in Wisconsin. "But hope became my religion. Without hope, you're
crushed."
As for Guthkelch, the pioneer of the shaken baby syndrome, he now has grave
doubts about the way his theory is being used.
He told the Medill Justice Center that he now regrets writing his 1971 paper
"because people are in jail on the basis of what they claim is my paper, when
in fact it is nothing like it."
* * *
Last week, justices ordered a hearing in the case involving Christopher
Brandon.
Pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne attributed the death in Brandon's case to Shaken
Baby Syndrome, and he did the same with Jeffrey Havard, now on death row.
Hayne acknowledged to The Clarion-Ledger there is "growing evidence" such a
diagnosis "is probably not correct."
Studies show shaking isn't able to generate enough force to cause these kinds
of injuries to a child, he said.
At the same time, he said, studies are showing that the short falls of children
can generate tremendous force when they hit a very hard surface.
In Havard's case, sexual assault was the underlying felony charge that enabled
authorities to pursue the death penalty against him in the 2002 death of
6-month-old Chloe Britt, whom Havard said he accidentally dropped.
"I didn't think there was a sexual assault," Hayne told The Clarion-Ledger. "I
didn't see any evidence of sexual assault."
Former state Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr. said he believes the high
court will order a hearing for Havard "given the strength of the new evidence,
which I think is extremely strong."
(source: Clarion-Ledger)
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