Jan. 30
INDIANA:
Major Davis II speaks for 1st time since arrest in officer's death----Davis
calls prosecutor's office 'vindictive'
Major Davis II is now in his 7th month behind bars.
He's the focus of a death penalty case following the July 2014 shooting death
of Indianapolis Metro police officer Perry Renn.
"I pray for Officer Renn and his family in light of their loss, but I was not
the one who took his life," Davis said, in his first TV interview since his
arrest.
Davis' statement is a contradiction to the volume of evidence that places him
at the scene of the crime.
Documents show IMPD responded to reports of shots fired near 34th and Forest
Manor after 9:23 p.m.
Emergency dispatchers received calls for help that have not been made public
because of the pending trials.
Among the callers was LaTasha Ruffin, who's the mother of Davis' children.
The Marion County Prosecutor's Office says Ruffin on the recording reportedly
said, "The police just shot my f*ing boyfriend," and then added, "They shot
each other."
Officer Renn died from the injuries received in the line of duty.
An AK-47 variant rifle was found next to where Davis fell.
The 25-year-old Davis was initially reported dead, but he was revived by
emergency medical personnel.
RTV6 reached out to Davis' family in November and via email they agreed to talk
last week at the Marion County jail.
While Davis declined to speak about the shooting, he agreed to talk about the
ongoing legal case and the possibility of the death penalty.
Since Davis mentioned Officer Renn by name, Call 6 Investigator Rafael Sanchez
asked about the deadly incident.
Sanchez said, "A lot of folks believe the wrong person died that night. They
believe you should have been the one to have died, because they believe you are
the one who caused someone's death. Do you understand that?"
(source: theindychannel.com)
TENNESSEE:
DA to seek death penalty for teen accused of Roan Mountain murder
District Attorney General Tony Clark filed notice this week in Carter County
Criminal Court that the state will seek the death penalty against one of the 2
teens charged with 1st-degree murder in the death of Danny Ray Vance.
Clark is seeking the death sentence for Anthony Joseph Lacy, 18, Roan Mountain.
The state is not seeking capital punishment for the co-defendant in the case,
Demetrice Cordell, 19. The 2 are accused of going to Vance's home on July 4 to
rob him.
Vance's body was found at 10 that morning, lying on the front porch of his
Heaton Creek home. He had a fatal injury to the back of his head caused by
blunt force. A large rock, which had broken in 2, was found nearby. Vance was
wearing an empty holster on his hip. Family and friends said Vance normally
carried a .380-caliber Smith and Wesson pistol in the holster.
The 2 teens were early suspects in the investigation and were questioned a
short time later at the residence of Cordell's grandfather. Vance's pistol was
reportedly found in a gym bag. Investigators said Lacy admitted he killed Vance
by hitting him in the head several times with the rock.
Clark, in his notice to the court, gave 2 specific aggravating circumstances
for seeking the death penalty.
The 1st circumstance was that Lacy was previously convicted of another felony
involved the use of violence. Lacy has not yet been convicted of that case,
which is an attempted 1st-degree murder charge levied after an Oct. 23 incident
where Lacy allegedly beat Carter County Corrections Officer Dwight Lacey with a
mop handle while Lacy was being held in pretrial confinement. Lacey was injured
so badly he has only recently been able to return to work.
In the event that Lacy is not convicted in that case, Clark said that
aggravating circumstance will be withdrawn.
Clark said the 2nd aggravating circumstance was that Lacy "knowingly committed"
the Vance murder while attempting to rob him.
Lacy is also facing another aggravated assault charge stemming from his
pretrial confinement at the Carter County Jail. That charge stems from an
alleged incident Aug. 30 in which corrections officers responded to an
altercation and reported finding Lacy standing up and inmate James Buckingham
lying on his back under a bunk in a pool of blood. The washer of a fire
sprinkler head was believed to be the weapon used in the attack and guards
found evidence of digging in the concrete of the cell.
Because of the number of charges Lacy has received while in pretrial
confinement, the teen has been transferred to the custody of the Department of
Corrections.
During his tenure as district attorney, Clark has sought the death penalty in
only 1 other case, Howard Hawk Willis in Washington County. Only one Carter
Countian, David McNish, is currently on death row. He was convicted on Aug. 15,
1984. 2 other Carter Countians, William Matney Putnam and Donna Sexton, pleaded
to life sentences to avoid the death penalty in 1990. The youngest person on
death row is Sedrick Clayon of Shelby County. He is 31 years old and has only
been on death row for a month. A few on death row were only 21 when they were
sentenced.
(source: Johnson City Press)
OKLAHOMA:
Pain and punishment; Richard Glossip and the death penalty
Worldwide attention has been fixed on Oklahoma State Penitentiary recently as
Oklahoma is one of a handful of state's pushing ahead with state-funded
execution for convicted murders.
Capital punishment has come under fire recently as lethal injection drugs
became unavailable, opening the door for last-minute legal maneuvering and
re-igniting the discussion on cruel and unusual punishment.
According to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, the average execution age
is 38 years old. Most prisoners will be housed on death row, known as H-Unit,
12 years before their time is up.
Richard Glossip has lived on H-block for 17 years. His execution date was
delayed twice, and is currently on stay by the U.S. Supreme Court.
"It's like you're in a tomb," Glossip said during a rare death row interview
with Ali Meyer. "Just waiting to die so they can finish it off."
Glossip's tomb was sealed shut by 2 juries following the brutal murder of Barry
Van Treese.
Van Treese was the owner of the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City in 1997. The
motel handyman bludgeoned him to death while he slept.
The state first arrested the young handyman, Justin Sneed, and then went after
Glossip alleging a case of murder-for-hire.
"My daughter begged him not to go that day. She was 7 (years old)." said Barry
Van Treese's widow, Donna Van Treese.
The murderers left Barry Van Treese's 7 children fatherless; his wife a widow,
the single-mom of 5 young kids.
"The toughest job I've ever had ... How do you tell your kids they're never
going to see their dad again?" Donna said.
18 years since the day she lost her husband, and Donna Van Treese is ready for
his killer to die.
She is unconcerned about a dignified or merciful death.
"Really not. Did his victims, or any of the victims, have any choice in the way
they died?" said Donna Van Treese. "Would I wish a cruel death on anyone? No.
I'm hoping that it is quick."
Justin Sneed was the state's star witness, and the only proof Glossip was
involved at all.
Both sides agreed, Richard Glossip wasn't even in the room when Barry Van
Treese was murdered.
Prosecutors said hiring out the murder was worse.
Justin Sneed was spared his life. Prosecutors cut a deal so that Sneed was
given a life sentence in exchange for his testimony against Richard Glossip.
Glossip said he was also offered a sentence of life in prison without the
possibility of parole, but he declined the deal, because he refused to plead
guilty for a crime he said he didn't do.
"We say now that we're going to reserve the death penalty for the worst killers
in the worst killings. But it's clear in this instance that Mr. Glossip did not
have the capability of taking another life." said Glossip's attorney, Mark
Henricksen. "It seems bizarre that the person who did get a life sentence and
the person who did not is a few days away from execution."
The U.S. Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment.
"The Supreme Court has expressed that we will not execute people cruelly. We
will not torture people to death. It goes against American values, and Oklahoma
certainly has not persuaded me that we've prevented that." Henricksen said.
The Oklahoma death chamber has a fresh coat of paint now, an updated protocol,
and a to-do list 49 inmates long.
A few doors down from the execution chamber, Glossip, steadfastly declaring his
innocence, says they have the wrong man.
Glossip had always maintained he is guilty of helping Sneed cover up the
murder, after the fact. But, he said he had nothing to do with the planning of
the crime.
"After the fact I made some stupid decisions. I'm not saying I didn't." said
Glossip. "If stupid's a crime, I'm guilty of being stupid. But I've sure paid
my price for that."
The Van Treese family has full confidence in the judicial process and in the
verdict for both Glossip and Sneed.
"Without a doubt in my mind, they have who was responsible for masterminding
it, and who was responsible for covering up afterward, and who was responsible
for the actual crime." Van Treese said.
The U.S. Supreme Court will soon weigh in on Oklahoma's death cocktail and the
question of whether it serves up sufficient portions of mercy and justice.
"The dying part doesn't bother me. Everybody dies. But, I want people to know I
didn't kill this man. I didn't participate or plan or anything to do with this
crime." Glossip said.
Donna Van Treese will not go to McAlester to witness the execution of her
husband's killer.
(source: KFOR news)
CALIFORNIA:
Tentative ruling: California must adopt execution process
California must adopt a new process for executing condemned inmates after
nearly 3 years of delays, a state judge ruled Thursday in a lawsuit filed by
crime victims.
The tentative ruling by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Shellyanne Chang does
not order the state to resume executions, which have been on hold since 2006.
But she said corrections officials can't wait any longer to find a new way to
conduct executions if they are reinstituted.
The lawsuit seeks to force state corrections officials to adopt procedures for
a single-drug, barbiturate-only method of execution.
Chang found that the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has a
duty to adopt execution procedures, but has the sole discretion to decide how
the state will carry out the death penalty.
The department said it has been drafting new lethal injection regulations,
without putting them into effect since Gov. Jerry Brown said in April 2012 that
the state would switch to a single-drug lethal injection.
No executions can occur until the new rules are adopted by the department.
The department is reviewing the tentative ruling, said spokeswoman Deborah
Hoffman. She previously said a nationwide shortage of execution drugs is
slowing the process.
Chang's ruling will take effect unless officials can change her mind after oral
arguments scheduled for Friday.
The suit was filed by a victims' rights organization on behalf of two relatives
of murder victims who said they are affected by the delays.
Executions in California have been halted by a series of legal challenges over
the past 8 years. State policy currently calls for using a series of 3 drugs to
put condemned inmates to death, but the lawsuit cites a 2006 ruling by a
federal judge who said California could resume executions if it began using a
process that only uses barbiturates.
The plaintiffs argue that at least eight other states are now using a
court-approved one-drug process and California should follow their lead.
The state attempted to have the lawsuit thrown out, but Chang found that the
relatives have a right to file the legal action.
Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice
Legal Foundation, which filed the lawsuit, called the tentative ruling a
victory for crime victims.
"This is an area that has been evolving in the law, whether victims have any
rights at all" or must merely watch the legal and regulatory process play out,
Scheidegger said. The tentative ruling means victims do have rights when it
comes to influencing state policies, he said.
Other legal challenges might still block executions even if new procedures are
adopted.
A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled in July that carrying out the death
penalty takes so long in California that it amounts to unconstitutional cruel
and unusual punishment. Attorney General Kamala Harris is appealing that
ruling.
(source: Associated Press)
*************************
Los Al Death Penalty Case Gets 3rd Judge in 3 Days Amid Charges of
Prosecutorial Misconduct----Defense for both Mass Murderer Scott Dekraai and an
actor accused of killing a man in a Los Al Theater alleges wide widespread
misconduct.
Another Orange County Superior Court judge was assigned today to oversee a
double-murder suspect's trial, marking the 3rd jurist switch within a week.
Judge James Stotler recused himself on Tuesday from the case of 30-year- old
Daniel Wozniak, concluding he could no longer be impartial. Stotler stepped
down amid defense allegations of misconduct in the use of jailhouse informants
by sheriff's officials and prosecutors.
The case was then assigned to Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas
Goethals, who has been presiding over the case of convicted mass killer Scott
Dekraai, who is making similar allegations of misconduct and is represented by
the same attorney as Wozniak.
But prosecutors objected to Goethals handling Wozniak's case, so it was
reassigned today to Orange County Superior Court Judge John Conley.
Wozniak's attorney, Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, wants the Orange
County District Attorney's Office off the case -- a remedy he is also seeking
in Dekraai's case -- and has signaled that he will seek to have every judge in
the county disqualified from overseeing Wozniak's death penalty trial.
Sanders is seeking an evidentiary hearing, much like the one he had in
Dekraai's case, that backs up his allegations that sheriff's officials
illegally used jailhouse snitches to solicit incriminating statements from
defendants, including Wozniak.
Sanders contends the snitches are using threats of retaliation by the Mexican
Mafia if some inmates don't confess to the informants. At issue in Wozniak's
case is the contact the defendant had with informant Fernando Perez.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy has argued that Perez was not yet
working for the government when he chatted up Wozniak and would not be a
witness in the trial anyway.
Also at issue in the Wozniak case is an interview the defendant did for the
MSNBC program "Lockup." Sanders alleges the interview was a set up by the
defendant's jailers to make him look bad, but the producer of the program said
she was not directed by sheriff's officials to interview Wozniak.
Last week, Stotler expressed some anxiety at the length of Sanders' expected
motion to recuse the District Attorney in the case, which could be up to 20,000
pages. He also refused to budge on a Feb. 13 trial date, despite Sanders'
claims that he needed more time to file his motion.
The current Feb. 13 trial date is expected to be rescheduled because Murphy has
another trial set for the month.
(source: patch.com)
*********************
'Selfish' Scott Peterson Deserves Death, CA Says
Before Scott Peterson, the sleepy town of Modesto, Calif. - population 201,000
- made its name as the birthplace of wine behemoths Ernest and Julio Gallo and
legendary filmmaker George Lucas, who immortalized the town in his 1973 ode
"American Graffiti."
But on Christmas Eve, 2002, Peterson's wife of five years Laci - 8 months
pregnant with the couple's 1st child - went missing. Peterson said he had left
early that morning to go fishing at the Berkeley marina on the San Francisco
Bay, 90 miles away, and that Laci was alive and well when he left.
As days passed and the search for Laci Peterson and the unborn Conner
intensified, the media swarmed to Modesto. Despite Peterson's best efforts to
keep his name and face from being associated with his missing wife, one woman
took notice and called the Modesto Police Department tip line: Peterson's
mistress, Amber Frey.
Conner's body washed ashore on April 13, 2003, in Richmond, a few miles north
of the Berkeley marina. Laci's badly decomposed body was discovered a short
distance away the following day.
Police arrested Peterson for the murders on April 18, in San Diego County.
Besides changing his appearance - he had grown a goatee and dyed his hair -
police found $15,000 in cash and foreign currency, two driver's licenses, 4
cellphones, clothes for all sorts of weather and a considerable amount of
survival gear when they searched Peterson's newly purchased Mercedes during the
arrest.
After moving the trial from Stanislaus County to San Mateo County due to the
extraordinary amount pretrial publicity in Modesto, prosecutors conviced jurors
to convict Peterson of killing Laci and Conner in November 2004. They returned
a death penalty verdict the following month, and San Mateo County Superior
Court Judge Alfred Delucci, now deceased, sent Peterson to death row at San
Quentin State Prison in March 2005.
7 years later, Peterson appealed his death sentence to the California Supreme
Court. In a 423-page document filed in July 2012, Peterson maintained his
innocence and said that the worldwide pretrial publicity - coupled with
erroneous evidentiary rulings by Delucci - made it impossible for him to get a
fair trial.
But in a 519-page answer filed Monday, the state countered that Peterson's
consuming desire to be free of Laci and Conner led him to commit the murders.
"Fueled by a trifecta of selfishness, arrogance and wanderlust, Scott Peterson
decided to take matters into his own hands by planning and carrying out the
murders of his wife and unborn child and then dumping their lifeless bodies
into San Francisco Bay," the response, penned by deputy prosecutor Donna
Provenzano and signed by Attorney General Kamala Harris, stated.
"Thankfully, the forces of nature did not oblige Peterson in his attempt to
hide the evidence of his crimes," the document continued. "Although he was
successful in ridding himself of those perceived irksome responsibilities, all
the while portraying himself as the consummate husband and family man,
ironically, Peterson forfeited his freedom in the end."
Peterson received a fair trial through the efforts of Delucci, "an experienced
and respected jurist," Provenzano wrote.
"The trial court shielded the legal process from the searing gaze of the public
and the media," she added. "The trial court's unrelenting dedication to the
fairness of the proceedings also enabled the parties' attorneys to perform
their respective functions in an effective manner geared toward divining the
truth and helping the jurors to reach just verdicts."
The document also praised the work of the jurors, who endured 3 months of jury
selection, a nearly 5-month-long guilt phase, and 2 rounds of sequestered
deliberations in the case.
"Based on the compelling evidence adduced at trial, the jury fairly concluded
that appellant, in an unmitigated act of selfishness and arrogance extinguished
two beautiful lives - one of which appellant made certain would never see the
light of day," Provenzano wrote. "The jurors duly considered whether there was
anything about appellant's character, background, or actions that merited
leniency.
"Having properly evaluated the penalty phase evidence, the jury determined
appellant deserved the penalty of death. Thus, the criminal justice system did
not fail Scott Peterson. On the contrary, the process was fair and the verdicts
just," the filing stated.
Peterson's response is due March 27, although the high court routinely grants
delay requests in high-profile cases.
The last execution carried out in California took place in 2006. A number of
state and federal challenges of the Golden State's use of lethal injections has
led to a de facto moratorium on the death penalty here, and the California
Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice has opined that death
sentences are unlikely to ever be carried out due to excessive delays at the
appellate level and the high court's crushing backlog of death-penalty reviews.
(source: Courthouse News)
USA:
Why Are IQ Scores Still Being Used To Determine Who Is Fit To Be Executed?
This investigation was reported by Dana Goldstein and Maurice Chammah for The
Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization focused on the U.S. criminal
justice system.
Ever since the Supreme Court ruled that prisoners suffering from "mental
retardation" - a now outdated term - could not face the death penalty in the
2002 case Atkins v. Virginia, debates about whether a felon qualifies for
execution have often revolved around a single number: an IQ score. On Tuesday,
Georgia prisoner Warren Hill was executed for the 1990 beating death of a
fellow inmate. His attorneys argued unsuccessfully that his IQ of 70
disqualified him for the punishment. This evening, Texas is set to execute
Robert Ladd for beating a woman to death with a hammer in 1996. His attorney
has pointed out that Ladd's IQ of 67 would disqualify him from execution in
most other states.
Last May, the Supreme Court built on the Atkins decision by ruling that Florida
could not exclusively use a simple IQ cut-off when it determined who was fit
for execution. "An IQ score is an approxi???mation, not a final and infallible
assessment of intellectual functioning," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote,
demanding a more holistic approach by medical professionals. "Intellectual
disability is a condition, not a number."
But how did IQ numbers become so central in death penalty cases in the first
place? And why, even after the Supreme Court challenged their usefulness, are
we still hearing about them?
The roots of these questions go back more than a century. IQ - intelligence
quotient - dates to 1905, when the French psychologist Alfred Binet developed
the 1st IQ test. Binet made clear that his test was not a measure of "innate"
intelligence and should be used chiefly to identify children who needed help in
school. Yet American eugenicists quickly popularized IQ as a tool for
identifying people supposedly predisposed to crime, promiscuity, and low
achievement in school and life. Courts and state agencies sometimes ordered the
sterilization of people with low IQ scores. By 1925, IQ tests were in wide use
in American public elementary schools to track students toward either the
vocational or academic curriculum. Early IQ exams asked questions that required
cultural knowledge, such as: "The forward pass is used in: tennis, handball,
chess, football (circle one)." Unsurprisingly, IQ scores were correlated with
race, class, and immigration status.
By the time Robert Ladd first took an IQ exam in 1970, at age 13, the testing
was more sophisticated. As part of a psychiatrist's evaluation, ordered after
Ladd committed arson, Ladd sat for the Wechsler intelligence test, which
required less factual knowledge and more performance, such as verbally
repeating a series of letters or numbers back to a proctor. Yet the test also
included questions on vocabulary and arithmetic. That meant Ladd's score of 67
reflected not only his innate ability, but also his exposure - or lack thereof
- to educational opportunities at home and in school. Regardless of the
still-raging debate over whether IQ measures nature or nurture, a large body of
late 20th century research seemed to suggest the scores were, in fact, related
to criminality. In the widely-cited 1977 paper, "Intelligence and Delinquency:
A Revisionist Review," Travis Hirschi and Michael Hindelang of the State
University of New York at Albany cited a number of studies showing that IQ was
a stronger predictor of juvenile delinquency than a family's socioeconomic
status. In 1985, criminologists James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein
published "Crime and Human Nature: The Definitive Study of the Causes of
Crime." Summarizing the IQ research of the period, they wrote that some
criminals, such as forgers and embezzlers, tended to have higher IQs than the
larger prison population, but murderers and rapists typically had low IQs.
Herrnstein went on to co-author, with Charles Murray, "The Bell Curve," the
1994 book that ignited a firestorm by resurrecting the old argument that some
racial groups were less intelligent than others.
Meanwhile, more inquiries into the relationship between IQ and lawbreaking had
appeared. A 1993 longitudinal study of 13-year-old boys showed that those with
low IQ were more likely to commit crimes in the future, even when the
researchers controlled for class, race, and motivation to do well on the exam.
These are the types of findings that predominated in the pre-Atkins era. Yet
newer research complicates the notion of IQ as the most telling link between
cognitive ability and crime. Measures of self-control, for example, now seem to
be more reliable than either IQ or class status in predicting whether children
go on to break the law as adults. The American Association of Intellectual and
Developmental Disabilities emphasizes that IQ is just one measure of limited
functioning and identifies other factors, including gullibility and the ability
to follow directions, use money, or understand a schedule.
Nevertheless, when the Supreme Court ruled against the execution of the
"mentally retarded" in 2002, many states, including Alabama, Florida, Kentucky,
Virginia, and Idaho, started using IQ scores as a simple, unambiguous standard.
Even after the court told Florida last May it could not use a single numerical
cut-off of 70 to prove disability, the confusion surrounding IQ and its
application in death penalty cases has continued. Often IQ tests conducted by
experts for the defense and prosecution produce conflicting numbers. IQ scores
have a 5-point standard of error in either direction, and an individual's score
can change over time. (Hall's score ranged between 60 and 80 over multiple
tests. Although Ladd took the Wechsler exam 45 years ago, his score of 67
figured prominently in his defense team's strategy over the past year.) What is
considered an average score shifts over time as well.
Additionally, although the court has ruled against a simple numerical cut-off,
defense attorneys can still use these numbers to argue - particularly in the
media - against the standards in states that don't use IQ numbers. Even after
the Hall v. Florida decision, it's up to states to decide how to ascertain
intellectual disability, and many of these standards are far less friendly to
defendants than IQ tests; Georgia, which executed Hill this week, demands
intellectual disability be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt." Such a standard
represents a desire for objective certainty in a realm - the human mind - that
is endlessly complex and even obfuscated.
And prosecutors are able to exploit that uncertainty when defendants take IQ
tests after a crime has been committed, since prosecutors can argue that
defendants are purposefully not doing their best, explained capital defense
attorney John Blume. "It's pretty hard to overcome the possibility that the
person might be malingering."
Texas, where Ladd is set to be executed this evening, still relies on the 2004
court decision Ex Parte Briseno, which said judges could consider a variety of
factors. These include whether a defendant is able to "hide facts or lie
effectively," respond to "external stimuli" with "rational and appropriate"
conduct, and "show leadership." The court left more specific requirements up to
the state legislature and made a passing reference to Lennie Small, a character
from John Steinbeck's novella "Of Mice and Men," as someone who might be
disabled but might also still deserve execution. The author's son, Thomas
Steinbeck, recently said he wasn't happy about this, and that "the character of
Lennie was never intended to be used to diagnose a medical condition like
intellectual disability."
(source: Huffington Post)
US MILITARY:
Forcibly shaven, Fort Hood gunman wants to keep top lawyer
The gunman who killed 13 people at a Texas military base in 2009 appeared in
court Thursday without the beard he had fought to keep, and said he wanted to
keep his lead appeals lawyer. Any change of counsel could complicate an already
delayed review process.
Nidal Hasan attended the hearing at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he is being
held on the military death row. He no longer has the facial hair he wore during
his August 2013 trial, where he was convicted and sentenced to death for a
November 2009 rampage inside a medical readiness building at Fort Hood in
Central Texas.
A Fort Hood spokesman confirmed Hasan's beard had been forcibly shaved
according to military guidelines.
Nearly 18 months after his conviction, Hasan has not yet had his case reviewed
by top Fort Hood officials, as required in the military criminal justice
system. If Fort Hood's commanding general approves Hasan's death sentence, he
would then receive two mandatory reviews by military appellate courts and
possibly the U.S. Supreme Court.
While he represented himself at trial, Hasan's appeals are being handled by a
team led by Lt. Col. Kris Poppe, who has been named a military judge. In his
new position, Poppe is subordinate to Col. Tara Osborn, Hasan's trial judge,
who is now the chief trial judge of the Army.
Osborn on Thursday questioned whether Poppe could keep handling Hasan's
appeals, a position that requires him to try to find mistakes with Osborn's
handling of the trial.
"My concern is Maj. Hasan's defense counsel now works for the trial judge," she
said.
But Hasan told Osborn after conferring with another defense lawyer privately
that he wanted to keep his counsel in place.
"I do not want you to substitute someone else for Col. Poppe," said Hasan, who
appeared alert in court and at one point laughed softly with his lawyers during
a break.
Poppe argued he could handle both positions.
"I believe there's not even a smidgen of concern about full representation of
Maj. Hasan," he said. "The 2 can be reconciled."
Osborn asked the prosecution and the defense to state their positions in
writing by next week.
Osborn ordering Poppe off the case could create grounds for a challenge by the
next attorney to lead Hasan's appeals, said Geoffrey Corn, a military law
expert who teaches at South Texas College of Law.
Corn said the post-trial process for Hasan was taking much longer than a
typical military case. But, he added, "That has been the unifying theme of
everything in this case. Nothing has been routine."
One unordinary hiccup was Hasan's now-shaved beard. Hasan insisted on keeping
the beard at trial in what he said was an expression of his Muslim faith. The
judge on his case before Osborn was removed from the case by a military appeals
court after he tried to order Hasan to be forcibly shaved.
Osborn allowed Hasan to keep the beard despite it violating Army grooming
rules.
Fort Hood officials did not immediately respond to a request to release a new
photo of Hasan.
(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
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
