March 17
GEORGIA:
D.A. to seek death penalty in bus stop murder case
The DeKalb County District Attorney's Office has decided to seek the death
penalty against the man accused of killing a 19-year-old woman while she sat at
a bus stop in November.
Marcaysia Dawkins was shot while waiting for a MARTA bus in the 5900 block of
Fairington Road in Lithonia.
The Nov. 23 shooting was captured on a gas station's surveillance video.
Police arrested 18-year-old Christopher Merritt. Investigators believe he may
also be responsible for a string of sexual assaults and armed robberies.
Merritt is facing several charges, including murder, armed robbery, rape and
false imprisonment.
Charisma Dawkins, Marcaysia's mother, says her daughter was going to get a
MARTA card to use to get to work for the upcoming week.
"My God. To see my daughter fight for her life. For nothing. For like $50," she
said to Channel 2's Tom Jones. "She was just a sweet, innocent child. Innocent.
She had so much to live for."
(source: WSB TV news)
OHIO:
State opposes death row inmates' request for information about compounding
pharmcies
The state wants a federal judge to reject death row inmates' subpoenas of Board
of Pharmacy information about drugs used for lethal injection in Ohio.
Lawyers for Attorney General Mike DeWine says the request by the inmates'
lawyers is too broad and would shut down the board for weeks or months as it
provided thousands of pages of documents.
The state said in a court filing Monday most if not all the documents being
requested, including inspection of compounding pharmacies in Ohio, have no
connection to a lawsuit challenging lethal injection procedures.
At issue are attempts to find out more about the state's lethal injection
process, which now calls for 2 drugs Ohio doesn't have and which may only be
available in specialty doses created by compounding pharmacies.
(source: Associated press)
KENTUCKY:
Death penalty story prompts motions in court----Judge denies request to change
venue, keeps case capital
A Davidson County Superior Court judge has denied a defense attorney's motions
to change the venue of 45-year-old Carl Kennedy's death penalty case and
declare it non-capital after she claimed a story on the state of capital
punishment published Saturday in The Dispatch could prejudice a jury.
Judge Christopher Bragg denied the motions Tuesday from Kennedy's attorney,
Lisa Dubs. Kennedy along with 2 others - David Earl Manning and Leigh Williams,
both 44 - have been charged with 3 counts of 1st-degree murder in the November
2011 deaths of Sharon F. Rushing, 61, Angela Dawn Soles, 43, and Gary Lynn
Seward, 52, all of 101 Rotary Lane in Thomasville. The state is seeking the
death penalty against all three people, but Kennedy's case is being tried
first.
In court, Dubs gave a thorough critique of The Dispatch's story, "Death penalty
remains contentious issue in state." She argued the story was "problematic" as
it mentioned a previous Davidson County death penalty case (Ricky Sanderson)
and included an interview with the victim's father (Hugh Holliman) in the
Sanderson case. She also raised objections in regard to comments made in the
story from Davidson County District Attorney Garry Frank and other remarks made
by Gene Morris, a retired prosecutor who formerly served as the Davidson County
district attorney.
In her arguments, Dubs recalled from the story that Holliman stated the
execution of Sanderson in the death of his 16-year-old daughter, Suzi, brought
him closure. She argued Holliman, a former representative in the N.C. General
Assembly, talked about if the death penalty was a necessary punishment and
about the method not being around much longer.
"I would certainly argue that is prejudicial information," she said.
Also, Dubs claimed the most problematic part of the story was the including of
Frank's prepared statement in regard to the death penalty. The district
attorney wrote to The Dispatch that while he's been the DA for 16 years he has
expended more time than anyone in Davidson County evaluating the history, use
and current application of capital punishment in the state. He explained he had
developed opinions based on that experience, but didn't believe he could
publicly express those opinions on the eve of the Kennedy trial.
Frank explained it was his responsibility to do his best to deal with every
defendant fairly and not to impact or prejudice any defendant with pre-trial
public comments. He stated capital punishment in well-defined instances is the
"law of the land" in North Carolina.
Dubs said that Frank's statement was prejudicial. She said the jury could
believe he evaluated the case and determined it was appropriate for the death
penalty.
The story also included comments from Morris. Dubs argued he was stronger in
his beliefs on the death penalty. She said he talked about the gruesomeness of
a past death penalty case and explained the only way a jury could make sure
someone doesn't murder another person is to give the defendant the death
penalty.
Dubs said there was an issue of publicity with the trial. She explained she
checked The Dispatch's website and noticed the story listed as one of the most
read. Dubs asked Bragg to transfer the case to another county where The
Dispatch doesn't have circulation.
In response to Dubs, Davidson County Assistant District Attorney Alan Martin
said it had been 16 years, two months and three weeks since Morris has been a
prosecutor in Davidson County. He added there was nothing the DA's office could
do about Morris' comments.
Bragg said Frank's statement regarding capital punishment being the "law of the
land" was an accurate reflection of the position from the N.C. Attorney
General's Office. The judge said the story's paragraph on the status of the
Kennedy trial was an accurate reflection of the case.
"It doesn't even note the names of the victim, out of a total of 44 paragraphs
in this news article," Bragg said, referring to the three deceased victims in
the Kennedy case.
Bragg said that Morris' comments were directly on the Sanderson case and did
not make a comment on the Kennedy case. The court did not have any control over
Holliman's statements, he said.
As part of the jury selection, prosecutors and defense attorneys can question
potential jurors on whether they read the story, Bragg said. He ruled a change
of venue would not be proper at this time. But the judge said he might revisit
the venue change issue if a number of jurors say they've read the story and
believe they can't be fair and impartial.
While the judge decided not to approve the motions for change of venue or
change it to a non-capital case, he placed a gag order on all of the legal
counsel involved. They are not allowed to make a statement to the media
regarding the case during the trial and during the sentencing process.
With the judge's ruling to continue trying the case in Davidson County, the
attorneys began the jury selection process Tuesday. The process to pick a jury
could take two weeks or longer as death penalty cases take more time to pick
jury members. One juror was dismissed after her views concerning capital
punishment were questioned for about 3 hours.
(source: The Dispatch)
KANSAS:
Kansas Conservatives Speak Out Against Death Penalty
To move forward with their beliefs, the Kansas Coalition Against the Death
Penalty took to the Statehouse on Tuesday.
They spoke to community members what they believe are the biggest issues with
the death penalty in Kansas. One being the amount of money wasted keeping the
death penalty in force, when no one has been executed in Kansas since 1965.
"In Kansas, we haven't actually executed anyone in 50 years. So we get all of
the benefits of paying for capital cases, and if there were any benefits to
actually executing anyone, we're not realizing those anyways," said
Representative Bill Sutton, Republican for District 43.
Many anti-death-penalty speakers were at Tuesday's event, including two death
row exonerees, who now use their experiences to teach. Ron Keine and Ray Krone
were both falsely accused of a crime punishable by the death penalty, and were
later found innocent.
"Nobody can truly understand what we went through unless you go through it. You
have to be in that cell. You have to see the guards beating people up. You have
to see what they're doing there. You have to see the guy being dragged out of
his cell to be killed," said Keine.
The group wants to keep others from facing the death penalty after being
wrongfully accused. They recently wrote a house bill that would eliminate
capital punishment.
"It replaces the death penalty with a hard 50. So instead of being able to be
up on parole or anything like that, you have 50 years in prison," said Kansas
Coalition Against the Death Penalty board member Jill Crazen.
The group is hoping to set an example for the rest of the nation.
"We as Kansans lead the nation. We've been leaders in so many issues in the
state of Kansas, and I feel that this is another one where we can be leaders.
It's very important that we repeal this and be leaders in the nation," said
Crazen.
We could find no death penalty supporters at today's meeting, and with the new
house bill currently in committee, the Kansas Coalition Against the Death
Penalty is hoping for a hearing within the next month.
(source: WIBW news)
MISSOURI----execution
Missouri executes Cecil Clayton, killer who had brain injury
Missouri executed its oldest death row inmate Tuesday, less than an hour after
the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stay his execution.
Cecil Clayton, 74, was executed by lethal injection beginning at 9:13 p.m. at a
prison in Bonne Terre, according to a spokesman for the Missouri Department of
Corrections. He was pronounced dead at 9:21 p.m.
Clayton's fate had played out in an 11th-hour legal showdown that included
questions over his mental state and stretched hours past his scheduled
execution time.
Clayton was convicted in the 1996 shooting death of Sheriff's Deputy Chris
Castetter near Cassville, Mo., a rural town about 200 miles south of Kansas
City, according to court documents.
His attorneys contended that he was unfit to be executed because of a brain
disorder. On Tuesday, they filed a brief claiming the Missouri Supreme Court
made an error in finding him competent to be executed and asking the U.S.
Supreme Court to delay Clayton's execution while his case played out in court.
In a statement, Missouri Atty. Gen. Chris Koster said: "I share the outrage of
every Missourian at the murder of [a] law enforcement officer, Deputy
Christopher Castetter. Cecil Clayton tonight has paid the ultimate price for
his terrible crime.
Clayton's lawyers had said that in the 1970s he suffered a sawmill accident in
which he lost 20% of his frontal lobe, resulting in mental instability. He did
not understand the shooting and the death of Castetter, his attorneys argued in
last-minute court filings.
Physicians are cited in court papers as saying Clayton suffered from a
"delusional disorder." The filings also cited comments from fellow prisoners
that Clayton had trouble doing such basic tasks as using a telephone and
purchasing supplies from the prison commissary.
Over the weekend, the state's Supreme Court declined to intervene in the
execution. A last-minute appeal from his attorney Elizabeth Unger Carlyle to
the U.S. Supreme Court asked for the execution to be halted.
Clayton's brain injury, his attorneys have argued, had "severely impaired his
cognitive functioning, ability to adapt to daily life, and to meaningfully and
rationally understand that the state is going to kill him."
"If we're going to execute anyone, we should execute the worst of the worst,"
Carlyle told the Los Angeles Times before the execution. "This man [Clayton]
has a hole in his brain; he suffers from dementia.... He's not the type of
person who should be executed."
Koster filed a response to Carlyle's brief Tuesday, saying that pending
litigation "does not entitle a condemned inmate to a stay as a matter of
course."
Court documents also indicate that Clayton's attorneys had objected to
Missouri's lethal injection protocol, which employs pentobarbital and offers a
condemned inmate a pre-execution sedative, such as Midazolam, if one chooses to
take it. Midazolam is part of Oklahoma's 3-drug cocktail used for executions,
which has become the subject of controversy in recent months.
Koster objected to the comparison with Oklahoma's protocol, saying that
pentobarbital is "fast-acting" and that Missouri has used it to carry out 13
"rapid and painless" executions since November 2013.
According to trial testimony, after the shooting Clayton went to a friend's
house, took out a pistol and said, "Would you believe me if I told you that I
shot a policeman. Would you believe me?" Clayton told his friend he needed him
to provide an alibi, according to testimony.
"Cecil Clayton shot a police officer, who had responded to a domestic dispute
involving Clayton, point blank in the head, killing him, as the officer sat in
his vehicle with his weapon holstered," Koster wrote in court documents
submitted over the weekend. "Clayton asked a friend if he should shoot 2 other
officers who came to the aid of the 1st ... but the friend said no, so Clayton
did not shoot them."
This year Missouri has executed 1 other inmate, Walter Storey, according to the
Death Penalty Information Center.
Missouri officials have drawn criticism for executing 3 inmates before their
final appeals had been exhausted.
Herbert Smulls was executed last year before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its
final decision on his application for a stay. The 2 prisoners executed before
Smulls also had pending appeals, and 2 federal judges admonished the state for
carrying out executions before the courts had fully vetted their cases.
Clayton had been scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. local time. The Supreme
Court issued its decision around 8:30 p.m.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena
Kagan were in favor of granting a stay of execution but were outvoted.
Clayton becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in
Missouri and the 82nd overall since the state reumed capital punishment in
1989. Only Texas (522), Oklahoma (112), Virginia (110), and Florida (90 have
executed more inmates since the death penalty was re-legalized in the US on
July 2, 1976.
Clayton becomes the 10th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the
USA and the 1404th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17,
1977.
(sources: Los Angeles Times & Rick Halperin)
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