Aug. 23
FLORIDA:
Fact checking the race for state attorney
If you've been watching TV this month, you can't get away from them: negative
ads. Especially with the Fourth Circuit State Attorney's race.
All of these attack ads are from PACs that back certain candidates. None of
them paid for by the campaigns.
"William Wells, aka the Monster of Mayport brutally murdered 5 people,
promising to kill again. Despite repeated plea to be executed, Nelson helped
waive the death penalty," that's the text from an ad attacking Melissa Nelson.
That claim is True. Attorney Melissa Nelson was in charge of the case.
After the family of the victims said they did not want the death penalty,
prosecutors made sure that Wells was given 5 life sentences in prison.
The attack ad went on to say, "that same year, Wells stabbed a man 21 times.
Then successfully murdered another."
The stabbing victim and the murder victim were both fellow inmates.
**
Angela Corey claims she's tough, the record says something different,"
according to an ad attacking current State Attorney Angela Corey.
Corey has been in office since 2008. She is known for pushing for the death
penalty. Her office is currently 3rd in the state in convictions, but she is
not popular with some.
Just before the August deadline, hundreds of Democrats switched party
affiliation with many of them saying they did it to vote against Corey in the
Republican only primary.
"Corey dropped carjacking charges against this man who went back on the street.
With the freedom provided by Angela Cory's failure, he committed another
robbery and murder," the attack ad claimed.
That claim is True according to our news-partner the Florida Times-Union.
The article said back in 2009 prosecutors regretted not doing more to
re-contact the victim in the carjacking to ensure he would continue to
cooperate. It said that was the key in dropping charges against Trumaine
Branch.
**
Wes White is also running for State Attorney. He had no ads attacking him that
air on TV.
(source: firstcoastnews.com)
MISSISSIPPI:
26 years later, family of murder victims want justice
In 1990, Anthony Carr and Robert Simon Junior broke into a family's home in
Quitman County, raped a 9-year-old girl and shot her parents and 12-year-old
brother before burning the house down.
Today, 26 years later, those men are still on death row.
"We want justice," Scott Parker said. Scott is one of the surviving sons of
Carl and Bobby Jo Parker, who Carr and Simon murdered. "It's not going to bring
my family back - nothing ever will. But we need some closure, one way or
another."
Carr and Simon have sought appeals for their quadruple homicide charges and had
their executions stayed for 26 years.
And now, family members of those killed are speaking out.
Simon's appeal was that he suffered memory loss after a head injury.
"There's 40 or 50-something death row inmates," added Scott. "Every one of them
could say they bumped their head."
Carr has escaped lethal injection by claiming mental retardation.
Dane Parker, Carl and Bobby Jo Parker's other surviving son, maintains the
killer's IQ was high enough to carefully preserve a ceiling fan while stealing
it in 1990.
"They knew what they were doing," said Dane. "They were so precise in what they
were doing. Like I said, they were saving wire nuts, so they knew to save them,
so they could put the fans back up."
The Death Penalty Information Center says the average time between sentencing
and execution of an inmate was nearly 16 years in 2012.
Both Carr and Simon are still listed by the Mississippi Department of
Corrections as "active" prisoners with no scheduled date for their executions.
(source: WDAM news)
OHIO:
Ohio inmate who survived '09 execution appeals to high court
A condemned Ohio killer who survived a 2009 botched execution is asking the
U.S. Supreme Court to declare that a second attempt to put him to death would
be unconstitutional.
Lawyers for death row inmate Romell Broom argue that giving the state prisons
agency a 2nd chance would amount to cruel and unusual punishment and double
jeopardy.
A divided Ohio Supreme Court rejected Broom's arguments in March. Broom's
attorneys appealed that ruling earlier this month to the U.S. Supreme Court and
filed notice of that appeal on Monday with the state court.
The state stopped Broom's execution after 2 hours when executioners failed to
find a usable vein following 18 attempts to insert needles.
The 60-year-old Broom is only the 2nd inmate in U.S. history to survive an
attempted execution.
(source: Associated Press)
MISSOURI:
Missouri Man's Death Penalty Appeal Draws National Interest
A man convicted of raping a Missouri mom and then slaughtering her and her two
kids needs more money to get a fair shot at appeal.
That's according to some of the nation's top legal defense organizations, who
have rallied around the case, saying that the federal court needs to release
more money or risk a serious miscarriage of justice.
Mark Christeson, now 37, was saved from execution in 2014 when the U.S. Supreme
Court stepped in to order that lower courts appoint new attorneys to represent
him.
Attorneys from five legal organizations, including the newly opened St. Louis
office of the MacArthur Justice Center, filed briefs last week in support of
Christeson's case. The defense lawyers argue a federal judge in Missouri's
western district subverted the high court's order when he approved just $10,000
of defense lawyers' $161,000 budget request - money they say is needed in part
because of Christeson's "severe cognitive disabilities."
Even if all the defense attorneys worked for free, U.S. District Judge Dean
Whipple's meager appropriation wouldn't be enough to pay for even 1
neuropsychologist, one of several key experts needed for the death penalty
case, the organizations argued.
"When death is on the line, such opportunities for review cannot be so curtly
denied," lawyers for the organization wrote in the brief.
Christeson was convicted in 1999 of 3 counts of 1st-degree murder in the
killings of Susan Brouk, 12-year-old daughter Adrian and 9-year-old son Kyle.
Christeson, then 18, and his 17-year-old cousin, Jessie Carter, ambushed the
young family with shotguns in January 1998 at the family's trailer outside of
Vichy, a small town about 15 miles north of Rolla.
Christeson forced Susan Brouk into a bedroom and raped her on her daughter's
bed. When Brouk's daughter recognized Carter, Christeson decided they needed to
kill them all, according to a summary from the state Supreme Court. The cousins
forced the 3 into Susan Brouk's Bronco and loaded it with her television, VCR,
car stereo, video game player, checkbook and other small items.
Christeson drove them to a neighbor's pond where he forced them out of the car
and kicked Susan Brouk to the ground.
"Christeson then placed his foot on her mid-section, and reached down and cut
her throat with a bone knife," according to the court summary.
Brouk was barely alive on the banks of the pond when Christeson slit her son's
throat twice and held the boy under water until he drowned. Christeson then
pressed Adrian's windpipe shut while Carter held her legs.
The cousins pitched all 3 bodies into the pond before driving off in the
Bronco. Christeson and Carter's plan all along had been to run away from a
sexually abusive relative, and they drove south, crossing through Texas before
heading west.
They sold the Brouks' possessions along the way and eventually landed in
California, where they were arrested and hauled back to Missouri to face murder
charges. Carter testified against Christeson and was spared the death penalty
as a result.
Christeson was convicted of the murders in state court and sentenced to die.
His court-appointed attorneys missed the deadline to appeal to the federal
court by more than 100 days, a serious error they claimed had been a
miscalculation.
Attorneys from Saint Louis University's newly formed Death Penalty Project
reviewed the case and asked the court to remove Christeson's lawyers, who would
have needed to argue against their own work to properly defend their client.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed that it would be a conflict of interest and
intervened in 2014, just hours before Christeson was to be executed.
It was an impressive accomplishment for the SLU group, but adjunct professors
Joseph Perkovich and Jennifer Merrigan, both of the nonprofit law firm Phillips
Black, have argued the U.S. District Court's later decision to slash the
defense team's requested budget by more than 90 % keeps Christeson's new
lawyers from giving him the defense his old lawyers didn't.
Mae Quinn, director of the MacArthur Justice Center of St. Louis, agrees. She
says it's particularly troubling in Missouri, where the state's top public
defender recently assigned Gov. Jay Nixon a case in hopes of highlighting
Missouri's abysmal funding of legal representation for poor clients.
"Of course, the context in Missouri, where we have such high execution rates,
where we have lack of transparency around the death penalty, where we have lack
of resources generally in our public defender system - I mean this case
presents so many of those things," Quinn says.
The National Association for Public Defense, National Association of Criminal
Defense Lawyers, National Legal Aid and Defender Association and American Bar
Association have all supported the push to better fund Christeson's defense.
The lawyers argue any death penalty case is complicated and costly, and this
one has added elements of Christeson's cognitive disabilities. Sexually abused
nearly from birth by relatives, including both parents, he comes from a central
Missouri family filled with generations of incest and pedophilia, his attorneys
say.
Numerous relatives have been convicted over the years of sexually assaulting
children in the family. The defense attorneys say experts are needed to
determine Christeson's mental state at the time of the killings.
"Lawyers can't just talk about that," Quinn says. "You need experts and
evaluations and evidence to support your claims."
(source: riverfronttimes.com)
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