July 20
TEXAS:
In Houston death penalty cases, many judges carry a 'rubber stamp,' lawyers
find
Harris County judges routinely "rubber stamp' the prosecution's proposed
version of events at a key point of death penalty appeals, pushing condemned
prisoners closer to execution with little regard for defense claims, a new
study finds.
Some legal experts say the study reveals a "rigged" system where the state is
effectively ghostwriting appeals decisions that judges sign off on, often
without allowing hearings and sometimes within just a few days.
"This is the heart of the reason the Texas death penalty system is so broken,"
said Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center.
The year-long study of roughly 200 proceedings was first published in a federal
appeal filed earlier this year by defense lawyer Jim Marcus. It says that in
the vast majority of death penalty cases - more than 9 times out of every 10 -
judges are simply accepting prosecutors' arguments, sometimes adopting their
language, spelling errors and all.
But judges and prosecutors rebuffed the study's claims, pointing out that if
courts are consistently siding with the state, it doesn't mean they're wrong.
These are, after all, men and woman already tried and convicted in front of a
jury. Each case is unique, they emphasize, and while defense lawyers are
supposed to be zealous advocates for their clients, prosecutors are supposed to
be neutral defenders of justice.
Among the skeptics: Judge Elsa Alcala, a former Harris County jurist now known
as the most outspoken death penalty critic on the state's Court of Criminal
Appeals.
"I'm not totally convinced that because you have some percentage that says
something that that really tells you a lot," Alcala said. "We're judges because
we're required to use our judgment."
Yet the vast majority of the time, that means agreeing only with the state.
'State's proposed findings'
After a jury doles out a death sentence, the years-long "post-conviction"
appeals process delves into a "finding of facts." Each side gets to lay out
their version of what's happened and present new evidence that could merit a
new trial - or at least a hearing to figure out whether that's necessary. The
proposed findings might be a dozen pages or a hundred, and the attached
exhibits can occasionally be far more voluminous than that.
Once they're submitted, the judge reviews each set, a process that can require
sifting through stacks of trial transcripts and years of court or medical
records.
Jurists might write their own set of findings, or they might pick and choose
pieces from each. But, according to the law review analysis, Harris County
judges typically sign off verbatim on what the prosecution submits, sometimes
in just a day or 2 and sometimes without bothering to correct repeated spelling
errors, duplications, typos or change the title - "state's proposed findings" -
at the top. Those sorts of errors, defense lawyers say, suggest that the judges
aren't reading the paperwork in front of them.
The findings are just one step of a lengthy appeals process, but it's a
critical one because later on down the road, judges defer to those findings and
technical rules give them a lot of weight. Unfavorable findings can torpedo a
defendant's odds of success in federal appeals.
That's why some said the data might go a long way toward explaining how the
Lone Star State - and Harris County in particular - became ground zero for
capital punishment.
"Texas executes death-row prisoners at more than 3 times the rate of the nation
as a whole," Dunham said. "But that doesn't mean the system works."
Instead, he said, it might mean that death row prisoners aren't getting
hearings or "meaningful review" of their appeals, making it easier to push
through executions despite claims of innocence or intellectual disability.
Local defense lawyer Randy Schaffer accused "lazy" judges of not reading the
paperwork in front of them, while attorney Pat McCann described the phenomenon
of "rubber stamping" as "so common it's become a joke" among defense lawyers.
The Chronicle attempted to contact all of the 47 jurists whose decisions were
referenced in the study. Of those who were still alive and reachable, most did
not respond or declined to comment. A few - such as Alcala - offered detailed
explanations.
"I don't think there's anything per se wrong with it," she said, "if it is in
fact what the judge believes."
One-sided numbers
The decision to review roughly 200 sets of findings all stemmed from 1 case:
that of death row inmate Tony Medina. The 43-year-old former gang member has
long proclaimed his innocence in the 1996 Harris County drive-by that sent him
to death row.
His case includes a number of troubling claims, including witness coercion,
withheld evidence and bad lawyering on the part of a famously overworked trial
attorney who never won a death-penalty case.
Medina tried raising those issues on appeal, but the trial court shot them
down,accepting the state's findings and even leaving in repeated typos and
assertions defense lawyers said could be easily disproved by the trial
transcript.
So his attorney, Jim Marcus, teamed with 2 colleagues from the University of
Texas at Austin's Capital Punishment Clinic to a launch the study published
first in the federal appeal and later in the Houston Law Review.
The lawyers tracked down both sides' findings in 199 cases since the mid-1990s,
when post-conviction appeals laws changed. 8 of the cases were uncontested,
meaning prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed to one side's findings.
In the other 191, the prosecutors proposed 21,275 findings of fact. Harris
County judges adopted 20,261 - or 95% - of them word for word, the authors
wrote in June's law review.
In 1 case, a Harris County judge signed off on the state's proposed findings
just a day after prosecutors filed them - even though she wasn't actually
assigned to the case. And 34 out of 40 judges - those with complete records on
file - accepted every single finding the state put in front of them on death
penalty cases, the study found.
"If you found a civil court where the plaintiff won every case for 15 years, at
some point you would think either that judge has a weird string of plaintiffs
or he's in the pocket of the plaintiff," Marcus said. "It's just too incredible
to believe that in however many cases you can't find a defense lawyer who can
write a single accurate fact-finding."
But Josh Reiss, the post-conviction division chief at the district attorney's
office, said it works both ways, pointing to a handful of cases in recent years
where judges largely or entirely sided with the condemned.
"You get the impression from reading the article that the 'rubber stamping' is
1-sided," he said, "but [judges] have also adopted wholesale the defense
findings."
Some of the examples he highlighted were in the 11 proceedings for which the
authors couldn't find full sets of findings for both sides - so they weren't
included in the data.
"This is junk science," Reiss said. "It doesn't consider what the claims were,
it doesn't consider whether there was argument. This presumes that in every
case there needs to be an evidentiary hearing. Well, no there doesn't. It
doesn't take into consideration who presided over trial. It doesn't consider
the nature of the claims themselves." "If you have a judge who was the judge at
the actual trial and heard everything first-hand and knows the case like the
back of his or her hand and then let's say there were findings that were fairly
short - 3 or 4 findings," Alcala said, "then you could do that in 5 minutes,
because you were there."
Typically the findings aren't as short as 3 to 4 points, at least not in death
cases. But it's not uncommon for the judge who oversaw the trial to handle the
appeal. In fact, that happened in nearly 57 % of cases included in the study,
according to a data analysis by the district attorney's office.
Even so, defense lawyers say, the filings often include detailed new claims
that didn't come up before in court.
"The whole point," Marcus said, "is that these are claims based on new evidence
outside of the trial record."
Even if they make the time to adequately review the case and the new claims,
Harris County criminal judges - who don't have law clerks to help out, unlike
their counterparts in federal courts - say they don't necessarily have time or
resources to craft their own findings.
"We just don't have the ability to do that based on all the stuff we do every
day," said judge Susan Brown. "So we do kind of rely on the lawyers."
Fighting to be heard
The bigger issue, some experts said, is harder to quantify. In theory, if a
judge finds disputed facts that are material to a case - things that could have
actually changed the outcome - they should call in witnesses and conduct a
hearing, or at least allow both sides to argue their points even without
bringing in witnesses.
Spotty court records make it difficult to document, but Marcus and his
co-authors, Thea Posel and Jordan Steiker, say it happens rarely. The study was
only able to find definite evidence of hearings in 25 instances.
The inability to get a post-conviction hearing, according to several defense
lawyers, is a concern that extends well outside of Harris County - and some
described it as a more troubling issue than the "rubber stamping" itself.
"It's not always the case that every time they just lift prosecution language
into an order that it's inherently problematic," said Scott Henson of the
nonprofit Just Liberty. "But there are cases where the defense didn't really
get a fair shake at all."
Last year, a higher court bounced the case of San Antonio lovers' lane killer
Juan Castillo back to a Bexar County judge to look at claims of false testimony
after a jailhouse snitch recanted. The state submitted its proposed findings,
and the court signed off on them the next day - before the defense got a chance
to turn in its filings.
Castillo was executed in May, still proclaiming his innocence. But, lawyers
say, the data Marcus and his colleagues pulled together could impact future
death row cases and possibly avoid such outcomes. Already, lawyers for death
row inmate Joel Escobedo cited the study in a court filing last week - and
other lawyers have similar plans moving ahead.
"I intend to use this within the next year or 2 with cases to show the federal
system that the Harris County fact-finding has been broken," McCann said. "This
is a game-changer for a lot of us."
************************
Heat wave sparks concerns in sweltering Texas prisons
State prison officials are in emergency-response mode this week as a heat wave
bears down on a large swath of Texas, rivaling the system that triggered the
deaths of 10 inmates from heat stroke in 2011.
This time the prison system will be better prepared, said a Texas Department of
Criminal Justice official, acknowledging that a landmark settlement this year
in a civil rights case over life-threatening heat inside one prison unit played
a significant role in changing attitudes.
Despite the assurances, advocates and inmates' families voiced concerns about
the continued lack of air in many of the state's sweltering lock-ups, hinting
at the need for costlier permanent solutions to avoid more heat-wave
fatalities.
"We can't continue to have these men and women suffer in these oven-like
buildings," said Jennifer Erschabek of the Texas Inmate Families Association,
whose son is an inmate.
The National Weather Service this week issued excessive heat warnings in 59
counties across central and northeast Texas, where temperatures were expected
to hover between 104 and 110 degrees through at least Monday.
Overall, just 29 Texas prisons provide air-conditioned living units, while
another 75 facilities do not have it.
This year, state prisons adopted a more hands-on approach to mitigating the
heat risk for inmates and employees, offering air-conditioned respite areas,
cold showers, ice water, cooler meals and expanded access to electrolyte
drinks, said TDCJ spokesman Jeremy Desel.
"We just have to be inherently diligent," Desel said. "It is an issue that we
are extraordinarily cautious and careful about and we will take all protections
for our offenders and our staff."
After a Houston federal judge last summer found that guards and administrators
at a geriatric prison near Navasota had shown "deliberate indifference" to the
serious risk of deadly heat, administrators began looking at ways to prevent
harm to the most vulnerable inmates at state facilities.
Officials have started identifying inmates who have conditions or take
medication that puts them at higher risk during heat waves, but the department
has not begun large scale transfers of heat-sensitive inmates to
air-conditioned facilities, Desel said.
And although emergency protocols may be prison policy, it's another issue
entirely whether officials really look out for inmates at risk of heat stroke,
said Austin attorney Jeff Edwards. His firm brought several wrongful-death
cases on behalf of the family members of inmates who died from heat exhaustion,
as well as the federal class action suit on behalf of 1400 inmates at the
Wallace Pack Unit.
"They made a lot of noise about making changes," Edwards said. "My hunch is
there might be even more awareness of their culpability if heat-related
illnesses happen."
2 key state lawmakers who oversee corrections practices echoed that sentiment,
citing the Pack case as groundbreaking.
"1 of the outcomes of the case was that TDCJ has become much more sensitive to
heat conditions and also winter conditions,??? said state Sen. John Whitmire,
D-Houston, chairman of the corrections committee in the state Senate. "I think
they are being aggressive because they don???t want to be back in court."
Many of the older concrete cell blocks were built without consideration for
climate control in the living spaces, according to state Rep. James White, a
Hillister Republican who chairs the House committee on corrections. Now, he
said, he's involved in discussions with state prison officials and others about
a long-term plan to expand the air-conditioned spaces inside each of the
prisons.
"I think we're going to find a way to start moving toward that," he said,
noting that the cost to taxpayers is an important consideration. "I know it
doesn't mean a Carrier air conditioner in every cell block."
Cooling experts gave vastly different estimates in the Pack case, saying the
potential price tag for installing and maintaining permanent air conditioning
in the dormitories would either be $450,000 or $22 million. However, there is
no clear figure for how much it would cost to air condition living spaces at
all units.
In the meantime, facilities rely on cooled respite areas set up in the prisons'
medical clinics, chapels, libraries and administration buildings. These are
great in theory, but the reality is more chaotic, said Edwards, the lawyer in
the Pack case.
"They're functional for the odd person who needs relief, but it's difficult to
use them to get everyone away from deadly heat," Edwards said.
Doug Smith, a senior policy analyst with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition,
previously served 5 years in Texas prisons - and he remembers the toll of the
2011 heat wave.
"Men died in the gym that summer,' he said, adding that he suspected some of
their deaths were not recorded as heat-related.
Last month, a 58-year-old man who'd been housed briefly one of the at Garza
Units in Beeville later died at Hospital Galveston. Even though Desel
attributed the death to several non-heat related natural causes, the incident
caused deep concern among prisoners and their families.
Heat conditions and access to air vary from facility to facility. Smith served
part of his sentence at a transfer facility, a metal-sided building with 2
industrial fans to cool about 100 men.
"You're basically sitting in a tin box in 100-degree heat and 90 % humidity,"
he said.
Even at the units that do have better cooling systems, some advocates expressed
concerns about whether they actually work well enough to ward off the ill
effects of a heat wave.
"I feel extremely sorry for the guys housed in tin buildings because I know the
insulation is inadequate, and the heat comes down and it's unbearable," said
anti-death penalty activist Pat Hartwell, who keeps in regular contact with a
number of men on death row, which has an "ill-repaired" cooling system.
"Some of the guys are slowly smothering because the vents do not work because
of mechanical failure or guards closing them," she added.
Erschabek, the inmate family advocate, echoed those concerns, citing sweltering
conditions at the South Texas unit where her son is in prison. Though the unit
has a cooling system, she said, it's not clear that it's working properly - or
that it's up to the task of combatting triple-digit Texas summers.
"The guards line the men up at the door to perform count because it's so hot
they don't even want to go into the buildings," she said. "I appreciate ice and
maybe more showers and respite areas, but something has got to be done to where
we're not fighting this environmental issue that these buildings aren't built
to handle."
The Pack inmates in Navasota now have temporary air conditioning in the wake of
the lawsuit, and if funding comes through from the legislature as anticipated,
they will have permanent relief by the summer of 2020. Any long-term solution
for inmates elsewhere, advocates said, could require additional funding from
the legislature.
"Let's figure out what it's going to take to put air conditioning into these
units so we stop killing people," Smith said. "And maybe if we didn't have
145,000 people locked up, then maybe we could actually afford to do that."
(source for both: Houston Chronicle)
*******************
Who Gets Mercy on Death Row? Chris Young's Execution Raises Questions of Racial
Bias----The clemency process is a black box - one where hearings are rarely
held and decisions are never really explained, making it nearly impossible to
prove bias.
Secrecy is a hallmark of the death penalty in Texas, where the state masks the
identities of executioners and shields critical details about its controversial
lethal drugs from public scrutiny.
Texas' process for deciding whether condemned prisoners deserve mercy is
similarly opaque. It's unclear, for example, why members of the Texas Board of
Pardons and Paroles unanimously rejected Chris Young's request for clemency
ahead of his execution this week. Without explanation, the governor-appointed
board ignored the chorus of advocates who urged officials to commute Young's
death sentence to life in prison. Those calling for a last-minute halt to his
execution included the son of the San Antonio convenience store owner Young
murdered during the 2004 robbery that landed him on death row.
Lawyers for Young, who was black, suspect racial bias played a role in his
execution Tuesday night, the 8th death sentence Texas has carried out so far
this year. While clemency for death row convicts is exceedingly rare in Texas,
Young's lawyers point to the case of a white killer who was recently spared the
ultimate punishment after the victim's family pleaded for mercy.
"As far as we're aware, 6 guys have filed for clemency petitions where the
closest living relative of the victim opposes the execution," Jeff Newberry,
one of Young's lawyers, told the Observer. "Of those 6, only 1 was a white
petitioner. He was also the only one who got relief."
Young's case is only the most recent to question whether racial bias affects
how the death penalty is applied. While some historians call the modern death
penalty an outgrowth of a system that stretches all the way back to lynch mobs,
the courts have made challenging death sentences on racial grounds an uphill
battle. That's despite research showing black killers are more likely than
whites to receive a death sentence, as are killers of any race whose victims
are white. One recent study shows that in the 1990s, Harris County prosecutors
sought the death penalty for African-American defendants more than 3 times as
often than whites accused of similar crimes.
It's not systemic disparities but rather flagrant displays of bias that can
sometimes goose the courts into stopping an execution. Last year, for instance,
the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the execution of Duane Buck, a Houston man
sentenced to death for a double murder in 1995. At issue was an expert
psychologist who told jurors at the trial's punishment phase that Buck was more
likely to commit a violent crime in the future due to his race.
In his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts said that even brief references to
powerful racial stereotypes - in Buck's case, the myth that black men are more
"violence prone" - poison the outcome of a case, writing, "Some toxins can be
deadly in small doses."
Sam Spital, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund team that
represented Buck on appeal, said the bias in Buck's case was only
"extraordinary" because of how overt it was.
"It's unusual for an expert to openly invoke a dramatically racist stereotype,
but we all know from multiple studies, statistical analyses, and everyday
experience that racial discrimination continues to be prevalent in our society
and continues to play a very significant role in the criminal justice system,"
Spital told the Observer. "And there is no constitutional or moral basis to
distinguish a punishment that's based on open racial discrimination versus a
case where discrimination manifests itself more subtly."
How much subtlety will the courts tolerate? Lawyers challenging the death
sentence of Andre Thomas, a Sherman man who murdered his family in 2004, argue
his trial was tainted by jurors who vocally opposed interracial marriage.
Thomas, who is black, killed his estranged white wife and her 2 children while
in the throes of a psychotic episode. A panel of federal Fifth Circuit appeals
court judges who heard the case in June has yet to make a ruling. "It is no
small tragedy that in this case neither Plaintiff nor Defendants will ever know
what role, if any, racial bias has played."
Ahead of his execution this week, Young's attorneys asked a different question
- whether race plays a role in determining who on death row deserves mercy. In
their last-minute legal filing, they referenced the case of Thomas Whitaker, a
white man who had been sentenced to death for helping to plot and carry out the
murder of his family in 2003. Whitaker's father, who was wounded in the attack
but survived, successfully pressured the parole board to recommend clemency.
Last year, Governor Greg Abbott agreed and commuted Whitaker's death sentence
to life in prison.
But the clemency process in Texas is a black box - one where hearings are
rarely held and decisions are never really explained, which makes it nearly
impossible to detect toxins that are deadly, even in small doses.
Tuesday morning, hours before Young's execution, federal district court Judge
Keith Ellison rejected the request to delay. In his opinion, Ellison seemed
frustrated by the case and sympathetic to Young, but wrote that his hands were
tied. Ellison argued that it would be nearly impossible for Young to dig up
enough dirt on the clemency process to meet the high bar for stalling an
execution so late in the game (the board rejected clemency 2 business days
before Young's scheduled execution). "Those engaged in race discrimination
seldom announce their motivations," he wrote.
Ellison also lamented that the state didn't even bother to show whether Young's
petition for clemency "received any meaningful consideration, much less the
painstaking consideration that should be an irreducible minimum when a life is
in the balance."
"The Supreme Court has rightly said that discrimination on the basis of race is
'odious in all aspects, but is especially pernicious in the administration of
justice,'" Ellison wrote. "It is no small tragedy that in this case neither
Plaintiff nor Defendants will ever know what role, if any, racial bias has
played."
(source: Michael Barajas, Texas Observer)
FLORIDA:
Man Faces Death Penalty for Killing Estranged Wife, Friend
A Florida man faces a possible death sentence for killing his estranged wife
and her friend.
The Florida Times-Union reports that 38-year-old James Terry Colley Jr. was
found guilty Wednesday of 1st-degree murder. St. Johns County jurors will
return next week to decide whether Colley should be executed or serve a life
sentence.
Authorities say Colley went to Amanda Colley's home in August 2015 after
appearing in court for violating an injunction for stalking her. Prosecutors
say he shot his wife and her friend, Lindy Dobbins, as they begged for their
lives. Authorities say Colley also shot and wounded 2 of his estranged wife's
other friends.
(source: Associated Press)
*******************
Death penalty phase in Fla. begins for Conway murderer
A Florida court jury next Monday will begin considering whether to impose the
death penalty on the Maine man convicted of killing 3 men in Conway in 2007.
In May, Michael Lawrence Woodbury of Windham, Maine, pleaded guilty to the
1st-degree beating death of his cellmate at the Okeechobee Correctional
Institution that took place 8 months earlier.
At the time, Woodbury was serving 3 life sentences in Florida for having shot
and killed 3 people at the Army Barracks store in Conway.
The cellmate Woodbury confessed to killing, Antoneeze Haynes, had been serving
5 life sentences since 1993 for the attempted murder, robbery, burglary and 2
counts of kidnapping that took place during a 1990 home invasion.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement's report said Woodbury barricaded his
cell door and started to attack Haynes with a combination lock that was tied to
a sock. Haynes died from his injuries, prison officials said.
Initially at the trial before his plea, Woodbury claimed he was the victim of
an assault.
"This case is 1st and foremost, from my perspective, about how my cellmate,
Haynes, attempted to rape and sexually assault me while asleep in my bed in the
middle of the night," Woodbury said in his opening statement. "This case is
secondly about how I reacted to Haynes' rape attempt in a way that ultimately
led to his death."
After that attack and Woodbury's guilty plea, Florida officials said they would
seek the death penalty.
On July 2, 2007, Woodbury, then 31, walked into the Army Barracks store at 347
White Mountain Highway and shot store manager James Walker, 34, and 2 customers
from Massachusetts, William Jones, 25, and Gary Jones, 23.
Walker and William Jones died at the scene, and Gary Jones died later at Maine
Medical Center. The 2 Joneses were not related but were close friends who had
been camping in Maine. The 2 campers walked in on Woodbury and apparently tried
to halt his bid to steal gas money for the stolen cars in which he had been
living.
The day after the murders, Woodbury gave himself up to a Fryeburg, Maine,
patrol officer.
Woodbury has been serving a life sentence without parole in Florida since 2009.
(source: The Union Leader)
ALABAMA:
Lawyers ask judge to ban herself from overriding jury's sentence in death
penalty case
Defense attorneys are asking Madison County Circuit Judge Donna Pate to
prohibit herself from overriding a jury's sentencing decision in the case of
Stephen Marc Stone, who could face the death penalty.
Stephen Stone's death penalty trial is set for Jan. 28, 2019.
Stone, 38, is charged with capital murder in the February 2013 killings of his
wife and 7-year-old son. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty if he's
convicted.
A change in state law last year prohibits judges from reversing jury decisions
in the sentencing of capital murder convicts. But it's unclear whether the
judicial override ban applies to people who were charged before the law
changed, Stone's attorneys wrote in court papers. The judicial override ban
took effect with Gov. Kay Ivey's signature on April 11, 2017.
The law "fails to directly address the circumstances here: Specifically, a case
where a defendant is charged...prior to April 11, 2017, but neither convicted,
nor sentenced before April 11, 2017," defense attorneys Brian Clark and Larry
Marsili wrote in court records. "Mr. Stone falls into this gap created by the
Statute's ambiguity."
To protect their client's Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights,
Clark and Marsili are asking the judge to rule before trial whether she will
allow herself the choice of overriding the jury's sentence.
Has judicial override actually ended in Alabama?
Lawyers for a Huntsville capital murder convict are disputing a judge's ability
to sentence the man to death.
"It is our opinion that this case predates the law and we believe that judicial
override still applies," Madison County Chief Trial Attorney Tim Gann told
AL.com in a recent interview.
Gann wrote in court records that the judicial override question already has
been settled in a separate Madison County capital murder case. Circuit Judge
Karen Hall reserved the right to override the jury's sentence in the case of
Richard Burgin, a man who, like Stone, was initially charged with capital
murder before the law changed. After the jury sentenced Burgin to life without
parole, Hall upheld its recommendation.
Other judges around the state also have reserved the right to override jury
verdicts in cases like Stone's. In Colbert County, Circuit Judge Hal Houghston
Jr. claimed the final say in the sentencing of Benjamin Young, who recently was
sentenced to death.
Competency questioned
Judge Pate ruled last year that Stone was incompetent to stand trial and
ordered he by treated by mental health professionals. He has been released from
treatment and a new competency hearing has been scheduled for August 17.
"He's been deemed competent by the last doctor that saw him and we believe he
will be competent for trial," Gann said.
If he is deemed competent, Stone is scheduled for trial Jan. 28, 2019.
He's charged with 2 counts of capital murder for the slayings of 7-year-old
Zachary Stone and 32-year-old Krista Stone. Their bodies were found at the
family's Chicamauga Trail home in south Huntsville on Feb. 24, 2013.
Stephen Stone has been in custody without bail since that day.
(soruce: al.com)
OHIO:
Gag order for Joe Deters? No, says judge in serial killer Anthony Kirkland case
Before jurors filed in the Hamilton County courtroom where they are being asked
to consider the death penalty for serial killer Anthony Kirkland, Kirkland's
lawyers implored the judge to impose a gag order during the proceedings.
Kirkland's attorneys Richard Wendel and Tim Cutcher said Hamilton County
Prosecutor Joe Deters in a flurry of media reports made inappropriate comments
about the case.
For instance, he told The Enquirer, "Sometimes there is just pure evil in the
world." And to WCPO, Deters said, "it's total nonsense" to hold resentencing.
And to FOX19, he Kirkland statement to police, "horrible."
"Respectfully the language contained in some of these interviews was
inappropriate," Attorney Richard Wendel said. "We submit there was an attempt
to influence... public opinion on the matter."
Common Pleas Judge Patrick T. Dinkelacker refused.
"The First Amendment should be strongly upheld," the judge said. "Men and women
died for the right to free speech."
Instead, Dinkelacker cautioned attorneys to be mindful when commenting outside
the courtroom.
Deters said he was simply criticizing Ohio Supreme Court Judge Bill O'Neill,
who was the deciding vote on the re-sentence decision and has in the past said
he's against the death penalty.
"I have nothing but the greatest respect for the Ohio Supreme Court," Deters
responded.
Kirkland, 49, killed 5 women. The sentencing hearing relates to the death of
Casonya Crawford, 14, in 2006 and Esme Kenney, 13, in 2009. A judge in 2010
sentenced Kirkland to the death penalty, but the Ohio Supreme Court determined
Deters made inflammatory comments during closing arguments.
So, Kirkland must be re-sentenced. Deters is again seeking the death penalty. A
jury will hear the case and make a recommendation. If jurors recommend Kirkland
die for the crimes, only the judge could actually impose that sentence.
Kirkland served a 16-year sentence for killing Leona Douglas in 1987, released
from prison in 2003. After that, Kirkland was in and out of jail. After Esme
went missing, Kirkand was arrested and confessed to the deaths of Casonya, Mary
Jo Newton, 45, Kimya Rolison, 25, all in 2006 and Esme too.
Kirkland's lawyers are expected to argue Kirkland was physically and mentally
abused by his father until age nine, when his father left the family.
(source: cincinnati.com)
TENNESSEE:
Gov. Bill Haslam weighs clemency for death row offenders, awaits Cyntoia Brown
recommendation
Gov. Bill Haslam will issue some pardons before he leaves office.
But the term-limited Tennessee governor has not decided whether he'll grant
clemency in the highly publicized case of Cyntoia Brown, or if he'll stop an
upcoming execution.
"We haven't done any (pardons) so far. We will definitely do some in the next 6
months. I don't think you'll see a flood but I don???t think it'll be 2 or 3
either," said Haslam, during a wide-ranging interview for The Tennessean's
policy and politics podcast.
"I think we'll take a moderate approach to it."
Brown is serving a life sentence for a 2004 murder committed when she was 16.
Advocates for Brown say she was a victim of sex trafficking and killed Johnny
Allen because she thought her life was in danger.
The case has received national attention, with celebrities including Rihanna
and Kim Kardashian West calling for Brown's release.
In May, the 6-member Tennessee Board of Parole split on its recommendation to
the governor. 2 members suggested clemency for Brown, 2 thought the governor
should deny her request and 2 others thought the governor should reduce her
sentence in a way that would require her to spend at least another 11 years in
prison.
Haslam spokeswoman Jennifer Donnals said Thursday the governor has yet to
receive the formal recommendations from the board, but will review their
thoughts and Brown's application when the documentation is received.
A board spokeswoman said the final report will be sent to the governor soon.
The governor does not need to act on a board of parole recommendations, and
could issue a pardon or clemency on a case not reviewed by the board.
Haslam received and is reviewing a request from Billy Ray Irick, who is slated
to be put to death next month.
Irick, a 59-year-old Knoxville man convicted of the 1985 rape and murder of a
7-year-old girl, is scheduled to die Aug. 9. It would be the state's 1st
execution since 2009, the year before Haslam took office.
"Governor Haslam and the office's legal counsel are currently reviewing Mr.
Irick's clemency request and will make a decision in due time," Donnals said in
an emailed statement.
"Mr. Irick and several other death row offenders have requested that their
sentences be commuted to life imprisonment or time served, and each request
will be considered carefully."
Irick and other death row offenders are challenging the constitutionality of
the state's proposed lethal injection method. Davidson County Chancellor Ellen
Hobbs Lyle is expected to issue a ruling before the end of the month; an appeal
is expected regardless of the outcome. Immediately after her ruling, attorneys
for Irick are expected to ask the Tennessee Supreme Court to issue a stay of
execution to allow time for the appeal.
Bishops from the Nashville, Memphis and Knoxville archdioceses sent a letter
earlier this month to the governor calling on him to "put an end to the
fast-track executions planned for later this year," as reported in the
Nashville Scene.
Advocates also note Irick's long-documented history with mental illness as a
reason he should not be executed.
Irick's attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pardons, commutations and clemency among governor's options
Pardons, commutations and clemency all may have a slightly different impact,
depending on the recipient's current situation. For example, the governor could
commute a death sentence but order it be changed to life in prison.
Someone already out of prison could be pardoned or exonerated. An exoneration
would remove the criminal conviction from a person's record, potentially
removing a hurdle to employment.
"We'll try to do those things (for people) whose life has been restricted from
it," Haslam said.
In considering who could receive a pardon or similar action, Haslam said he's
looking at the specific details of the case but also the impact of granting a
pardon.
It's not uncommon for governors to offer clemency, commutations or pardons near
the end of their tenure.
Before Gov. Phil Bredesen left office in 2010, he commuted the death sentence
of Gaile Owens. Sentenced to death in 1986 for hiring a hitman to kill her
husband, Owens was released from jail a year after her sentence was commuted.
Haslam said he recently discussed pardons with Bredesen, who's also the leading
candidate for the Democratic nomination in the U.S. Senate race.
A spokeswoman for Bredesen's campaign confirmed the conversation occurred.
"Governor Bredesen has made it a practice to make himself available to Governor
Haslam to discuss the responsibilities of the office - particularly around the
most difficult decisions like the death penalty. That's just the way Governor
Bredesen thinks leadership in Tennessee ought to be," said spokeswoman Alyssa
Hansen.
(source: The Tennessean)
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