April 28
OHIO:
Trial in Parma Heights prison pen-pal killings begins with jury selection
Jury selection began Friday in the trial of a man accused of fatally stabbing
his former prison pen-pals in their Parma Heights home in May 2017, then
leaving their bodies behind as he carried out more crimes.
Thomas Knuff, 44, faces the death penalty if a jury convicts him of the most
serious charges.
He is currently being held on $50 million bond on charges including aggravated
murder, conspiracy, offenses against a human corpse, aggravated burglary and
robbery in the May 11 slayings of John Mann, 65, and Regina Capobianco, 50, at
Mann’s home in the 6200 block of Nelwood Road, near Ackley Road.
Prosecutors say Knuff also solicited 2 people to set fire to the bedroom where
he left the couple’s bodies, and broke into 2 businesses in the days after the
killings.
Capobianco met Knuff through a prison pen-pal program while Knuff was serving a
12-year sentence on aggravated robbery and breaking and entering charges. The 2
wrote letters to each other for about 10 years, police said.
Police said that Capobianco and Mann picked up Knuff from the Lorain
Correctional Institution when Knuff was released from prison on April 11, 2017.
They took him back to Mann’s home.
Capobianco’s sister reported her missing to Stark County authorities the next
month, and investigators found Mann and Capobianco dead from the knife wounds
on June 21, 2017.
Knuff was also charged with escape after officials said they foiled a plot to
escape from his jail cell within months of his arrest.
Sheriff’s department employees reported in December that they found fake
sheriff’s badges, a printout of a map, spools of thread and a blade fashioned
out of a lens from a pair of eyeglasses and a homemade fanny pack inside of
Knuff’s cell.
One of Knuff’s lawyers, Craig Weintraub, disputed the seriousness of Knuff’s
plans, and said the items more resembled a Halloween costume than tools of a
legitimate jailbreak.
(source: cleveland.com)
TENNESSEE----impending execution
Donnie Edward Johnson is scheduled to be executed at 7:10 pm EDT, on Thursday,
May 16, 2019, at the Riverbed Maximum Security Institute in Nashville,
Tennessee. 68-year-old Donnie is convicted of the murder of his wife,
30-year-old Connie Johnson, on December 8, 1984, in Memphis, Tennessee. Donnie
has spent the last 34 years on Tennessee’s death row.
According to Donnie, he grew up in an abusive family and began his criminal
career at the age of six or seven, stealing whatever he wanted. By the time he
was a teenager, he had resorted to armed robbery. He was also involved in
street drag racing. Donnie was married with two children. Donnie continued his
criminal life, hiding it from his family, while maintaining a steady job as a
salesman at a camping store.
On December 8, 1984, Donnie Johnson was working at Force Camping Sales in
Memphis, Tennessee, along with Ronnie McCoy, who was signed out of a Penal
Farm, where he was serving a four month sentence for false reporting. Johnson’s
wife, Connie arrived at the store at the end of the work day. According to
McCoy’s testimony, he left Johnson and Connie alone in the sales office. When
he returned, Johnson showed him Connie’s body. Johnson had killed Connie by
suffocating her. McCoy then helped dispose of her body.
The following day, Johnson recruited his boss to help search for his missing
wife. Connie’s body was found inside of her vehicle, with a plastic bag stuffed
in her mouth. They only set of keys to the vehicle were discovered in Johnson’s
truck, along with several other personal belongings of Connie.
Johnson has denied killing his wife, saying he left McCoy and Connie alone in
the office and McCoy killed her for the $450 in shopping money he had given
her. Initially, Johnson denied any involvement in his wife’s murder, nor did he
initially implicate McCoy.
Johnson was sentenced to death on November 25, 1985.
Please pray for peace and healing for the family of Connie Johnson. Please pray
for strength for the family of Donnie Johnson. Please pray that if Donnie is
innocent, lacks the competency to be executed, or should not be executed for
any other reason, that evidence will be presented prior to his execution. In
past letters written to The Forgiveness Foundation Christian Ministries, Inc.,
Donnie has expressed his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Please pray that his
relationship with Christ will continue to grow and give him strength and peace
during this time.
(source: The Forgiveness Foundation of Christian Ministries)
ARKANSAS:
A non-fatal error Overturned death penalty case a horrible outcome
"The allegations at issue here are condemnable, but the ugliness of a given
allegation cannot supersede the most basic due process principles guaranteed to
all citizens by our constitution."-- Josephine Linker Hart
What’s the point?
A convicted killer’s case is overturned on errors the prosecutor and judge
should have been able to navigate.
Arkansas Supreme Court in Mauricio Alejandro Torres v. State of Arkansas
The most basic due process principles.
That's how Justice Hart described what were not followed in the trial of
Mauricio Torres, who as of Friday the Arkansas Department of Correction still
listed as one of the 30 men occupying the state's Death Row.
Perhaps the paperwork hasn't shown up yet. It had been only a week, after all,
since the Arkansas Supreme Court threw out Torres' 2016 conviction and death
sentence by jury in Benton County. Between Nov. 15, 2016, and April 17, 2018,
Torres was a convicted child killer, guilty in the death of his 6-year-old son,
Maurice "Isaiah" Torres.
The boy died March 30, 2015, at a medical facility in Bella Vista. A medical
examiner testified the boy's death was caused by a bacterial infection, the
result of being sodomized with a stick. The medical examiner also said the
autopsy found multiple healing and healed wounds and blunt force trauma to the
child's head and other parts of his body.
The stick was punishment, Torres' attorneys acknowledged in trial. That
inhumane punishment was dished out while the 2 were in Missouri. The boy died
as a result after their return to Benton County, and that's where the murder
case was to be filed.
For almost 2 1/2 years, the people of Benton County could feel that justice had
been carried out, that a man -- scratch that, an individual -- who could so
treat a child had faced a jury of his peers who clearly communicated that in
Benton County, such brutality would not go unanswered by our system of justice.
Then, on April 18, the Supreme Court in Little Rock turned back the clocks. At
this moment, Mauricio Torres might still be listed as a death row inmate, but
he is not a convicted killer. In legal terms, his case was reversed and
remanded -- in other words, the guilty verdict is vacated and the case is sent
back to Benton County to be tried again.
And a sickening feeling descends upon those who felt that sense of justice in
2016.
What's going on? Forgive us if we boil this down too simply, but let us
explain: The prosecution, led by prosecutor Nathan Smith, built its case on a
misapplication of law and the trial judge, Brad Karren failed to require jurors
to be clear and specific as to the reasons they convicted him and sentenced him
to death.
We could try to make villains of the Supreme Court for its decision, but we
cannot. For all its warts, laws and the rules by which people are tried are
there to ensure the government -- that is, the prosecutors and the judges --
does not play fast and loose in order to gain a conviction. Remember the Duke
lacrosse team debacle? That's the kind of injustice that can happen in the name
of justice when rules are not followed.
It is a reasonable expectation that prosecutors and judges know these rules,
and they apply these rules with diligence. And that's particularly true in a
capital murder trial involving a possible death penalty, in which it's a given
that the case will be scrutinized for years to come, in excruciating detail, by
anti-death penalty crusaders.
Zealous prosecution is demanded. Overzealous prosecution, on the other hand,
can become exactly what took place at the Arkansas Supreme Court on April 18.
Reversed and remanded.
Torres gets a new trial because, as explained by the Supreme Court:
"... the State conceded in oral argument that it could not have charged Torres
with rape in Arkansas. If Torres could not have been charged in this state,
that necessarily means that the elements of rape could not have been met in
this state. If the elements of rape cannot be met, rape cannot serve as an
element of capital murder. ...
Here, the death is the consequence or result of the rape, but death is not an
element of the rape offense. The flaw in the State's argument is that
regardless of whether Torres was charged with rape, pursuant to our law
regarding felony-murder, the State must prove that an element of the underlying
felony occurred in this state.
The State cannot establish that Arkansas had jurisdiction to reach the conduct
alleged to have been rape. Because of this, the rape felony murder is
insufficient, which in turn taints the entire verdict because the jury
completed a general verdict form. Stated differently ... because of the
general-verdict-form formulation, we are unable to determine which
formula--rape felony murder or child-abuse-murder--the jury based its
conviction on.
That's all the Supreme Court needed to overturn Torres' conviction. But Justice
Hart, in a concurring opinion, pointed out more failings in the Benton County
trial. Prosecutors used old allegations of child abuse against Torres in the
sentencing phase of the trial.
The prosecution used those allegation to "supply an aggravating factor" at
sentencing, but Torres was never charged in those cases and the statute of
limitations has expired. Hart notes that Torres never faced a criminal charge,
then as time went by, his ability to defend himself on the allegations
dissipated over the years. "Then these accusations were used to sentence him to
death," Hart wrote.
Another violation of due process, according to Hart.
This is a horrible outcome made necessary by a botched trial the Supreme Court
could not ignore. Everyone involved faces the prospect of a new trial. Going
through one such trial is difficult enough.
A defendant who was, for a while, on Death Row, gets new opportunities for plea
bargains or a different outcome in a new trial.
And the public has to wonder whether the prosecutor and judge are taking care
of the important details vital to seeking justice in the tragic death of a
6-year-old boy.
(source: Editorial, Northwest Arkansas Democrat & Gazette)
OKLAHOMA:
Unable to purchase execution equipment, Oklahoma poised to build the device
itself
For nearly 25 years, Oklahoma had a three-step process for killing killers.
If you were one of the 112 death row inmates put to death during that time
frame, the process played out like this:
The 1st drug would numb you. Then the 2nd drug would kick in and paralyze you
to keep you from moving around on the death chamber table. The final drug would
be administered to stop your heart.
Bing. Bang. Boom. Good night.
So imagine everyone’s surprise when, about 10 minutes after he was deemed
unconscious and as the heart-stopping potassium chloride was supposedly being
administered, Clayton Lockett, the 111th person to be put to death in Oklahoma
by lethal injection, opened his eyes.
Lockett had been convicted more than a decade prior of murdering Stephanie
Neiman, a tough Perry girl who had recently graduated from high school and
unwittingly crossed paths with Lockett one night as he and his accomplices were
robbing a house.
Lockett’s crew drove Neiman and her friend, Bobby Bornt, out to a side road and
dug Neiman a grave. Lockett wanted them to keep quiet about the robbery but
Neiman stood her ground. Lockett shot her twice with a shotgun and had her
buried in a roadside grave his accomplice had dug even though Neiman was still
alive. Lockett threatened Bornt not to tell a soul, lest he end up in a shallow
grave of his own.
Later, during Lockett’s court proceedings, Bornt wrote a victim impact
statement, saying he believed lethal injection was “too easy a way” for Lockett
to die.
In a way, he got his wish.
Inside the death chamber, to everyone’s astonishment, Lockett began to writhe
and buck on the table. He was supposed to be blacked out and unable to breathe.
His heart should have already stopped beating. Yet here he was.
“This s--- is f------ with my mind,” he said. “The drugs aren’t working.”
The blinds were closed, shielding journalists and witnesses from what was
happening in the death chamber. About 15 minutes later, then-Oklahoma
Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton called off the execution, but
it was too late. By 7:06 p.m., 43 minutes after the execution had begun,
Lockett was dead.
***
Whoever becomes the next person to be executed in Oklahoma is going to face an
entirely different experience than the last one.
Oklahoma was the 1st state to adopt lethal injection as an execution method in
the 1970s, the 1st state in the nation to use pentobarbital (a powerful
sedative) in executions and eventually could become the 1st state to use
nitrogen hypoxia in the death chamber. (2 other states, Missouri and Alabama,
have OK’d nitrogen hypoxia for use in executions, though none have yet been
carried out.)
Or it might not. When it comes to the death penalty, Oklahoma is Sisyphus
pushing a rock up a steep hill.
It turns out the same problems that plagued the state to the point it turned
away from its old execution method are making it difficult for it to turn the
page to its new one.
Department of Corrections Director Joe Allbaugh, who replaced Robert Patton
after Patton’s departure in late 2015, has lamented the difficulties DOC faced
trying to acquire execution drugs. He said drug suppliers feared backlash from
anti-death penalty advocates and no one would sell the drugs to DOC.
It was so bad that in 2018 Allbaugh told reporters he had called “all around
the world, to the back streets of the Indian subcontinent, to procure drugs.”
And while nitrogen hypoxia is no less controversial an execution method than
lethal injection — critics have called it untested and pointed out that it’s
not even an accepted way to kill cats and dogs — it was supposed to at least be
an easier process. You simply replace someone’s oxygen intake with an inert
gas, such as nitrogen. Out goes the carbon dioxide and in goes nitrogen.
In theory, the person painlessly suffocates before they even realize they’re
not getting oxygen.
But in a meeting at the Oklahoma District Attorney’s Council last month,
Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter told attendees the state couldn’t obtain
a device that would “appropriately introduce nitrogen into an individual’s
system.
“The dead ends that the director has experienced are at a point where we may
and in fact we are likely to look to a state manufacturer to develop the
machine,” Hunter said. “It really shouldn’t be that complicated.”
He said it would take a device that could regulate the introduction of nitrogen
through a tube and into an airtight mask over the face of the to-be-executed
inmate.
Hunter said he’s confident that inert gas inhalation would “pass Eighth
Amendment scrutiny,” but “the challenge is getting the equipment that we need,
and we’re at the point where we’re probably going to look for an in-state
manufacturer.”
When Hunter announced in March 2018 that Oklahoma would be turning to the
nitrogen hypoxia method, he said he thought the state could resume executions
by the end of the year.
That didn’t happen. Now Hunter has said that if everything goes well with
testing he thinks he can get it “submitted to court for review by the end of
the year,” setting the stage for executions to resume in 2020.
“People in this state in 2016 reaffirmed their support for the death penalty
(voters overwhelmingly supported a state question to enshrine the death penalty
in Oklahoma’s state constitution) so we don’t have to apologize to anybody for
supporting what the body politic believes needs to be the appropriate
punishment for first-degree murder,” Hunter said.
***
The paramedic who was supposed to set Lockett’s IVs the night of his execution
tried and failed numerous times over the course of an hour to get a line
started, according to state investigators. That’s not necessarily unusual —
inmates have been known to sometimes starve themselves and refuse liquids
leading up to their execution, believing it shrinks their veins making them
harder to stick.
To compensate, prison staff finally located a useable vein in Lockett’s right
leg. This IV placement would leave Lockett exposed below the waist, so staff
draped a towel over his groin to maintain his modesty.
Later, as they were attempting to start over and stick Lockett again (despite
not having any drugs left,)the nervous doctor — a backup to the prison’s
regular execution physician — placed the link in Lockett’s femoral artery
rather than his femoral vein.
Place an IV in the femoral vein and drugs are administered properly. But stick
the artery, where blood travels faster, and blood can pool back into the
needle.
(source: Enid News & Eagle)
NEBRASKA:
Ernie Chambers' bid to repeal death penalty falls short
State lawmakers fell far short of advancing a bill to repeal the death penalty
on Thursday, with only 17 of the 49 senators supporting repeal.
Much of the sometimes contentious debate centered on whether repealing capital
punishment would ignore the will of Nebraska voters, who voted in 2016 to
overturn the Legislature’s repeal of the death penalty.
State Sen. Julie Slama of Peru, the Legislature’s youngest member, said
repealing capital punishment now would show “flagrant disregard” for the vote,
which restored the death penalty by 61% to 39%.
Others disagreed, including Sen. Ernie Chambers, who has led the fight to
repeal the death penalty during his four-decade tenure in the Legislature. LB
44 was his latest bill to eliminate the death penalty.
Chambers, the Legislature’s oldest senator, said matters like death should not
be subject to a public vote, quoting from the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling
that struck down the states’ capital punishment policies then in effect. Many
states then amended their policies and reinstated the death penalty, including
Nebraska, which is one of 30 states that still have the punishment.
The senator said that many heinous murders do not result in the death penalty
and that every other developed country in the world has banned its use.
“The death penalty is degrading,” he said, “and its very existence runs against
what this country supposedly stands for.”
Chambers — who has only the 2019 and 2020 sessions to serve before he’s
term-limited — said he does not believe in miracles and doubted that his effort
to repeal capital punishment would be successful this year.
Debate on the measure delved into biblical teachings about killing, the
evolving position of the Roman Catholic Church and the role of Gov. Pete
Ricketts and his family in financing the campaign that restored capital
punishment.
Some senators blamed the death penalty for the $28 million court judgment
against Gage County, where six innocent people were wrongfully convicted in
connection with a murder there after being threatened with the death penalty.
Some gave false testimony, and others agreed to falsely plead guilty — but DNA
evidence later tied the slaying to an Oklahoma man.
Sen. Steve Lathrop of Omaha, who opposes the death penalty on moral grounds,
said if it was any other state program, it would have been repealed long ago
because it is so ineffective and so randomly imposed. He called it “death by
incarceration” because inmates sit for 25 years or longer before their appeals
are exhausted.
Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha said senators can’t consider themselves
“pro-life” and support the death penalty. But Sen. Suzanne Geist of Lincoln
said that she’s “pro-innocent life” and that heinous crimes deserve the
ultimate penalty.
Sen. Adam Morfeld of Lincoln said that if senators really respected the “will
of the people,” they would join him in protest over the Ricketts
administration’s slow progress in implementing another voter-approved measure,
the one to expand Medicaid.
Debate became heated at times. One issue was whether conservatives in the body
were forcing a vote on LB 44 so they could get lawmakers to record their
support or opposition and use that in future elections. After the 2015 vote to
repeal, 3 death penalty opponents lost reelection bids, in part because of
their votes.
One death penalty foe, Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln, said the vote was
taken Thursday in recognition of Chambers’ long effort to do away with capital
punishment. This year might be Chambers’ last chance to get a vote on the
issue, she said.
The vote was 25-17 against advancing the bill, with seven senators either
absent or present and not voting. LB 44 is not likely to return to the agenda
this year, but Chambers could introduce another repeal bill in 2020.
Chambers, who is a master of using legislative rules to block legislation,
pledged to “get even” with senators who opposed him during the rest of the 2019
session. The session ends in early June.
Nebraska carried out its 1st execution in 21 years and its 1st by lethal
injection on Aug. 14. Carey Dean Moore, 60, decided to drop all appeals of his
death sentence for the 1979 killings of Omaha cabdrivers Reuel Van Ness and
Maynard Helgeland.
(source: Kearney Hub)
NEW MEXICO:
Blame my brain: A killer’s bold defense gets a court hearing
Anthony Blas Yepez didn’t deny beating an elderly man to death in Santa Fe, New
Mexico, 6 years ago in a fit of rage. But after learning that he had a rare
genetic abnormality linked to sudden violent outbursts, he argued for leniency,
saying he wasn’t fully in control of himself when he committed the crime.
The claim seemed like a stretch to the judge, prosecutors and some scientists.
But Yepez took it to the New Mexico Supreme Court, which agreed to consider it.
The court’s decision — still months away — could accelerate a trend in the
criminal justice system: the use of behavioral genetics and other neuroscience
research, including the analysis of tumors and chemical imbalances, to explain
why criminals break the law. The rapidly developing field is forcing officials
to confront new questions about how changes in the brain influence behavior —
leading some to rethink notions about guilt and punishment.
This cutting-edge evidence, collected through brain scans, psychological exams
and genetic sequencing, has been deployed in a range of ways: to challenge
whether a defendant was capable of premeditated murder, whether a defendant was
competent to stand trial, whether a defendant should be put to death. Most of
those attempts to use neuroscience as a defense have failed, researchers say.
But some — about 20 percent, according to one study — have worked, winning
defendants new hearings or reversals.
That is troubling to researchers who fear some of the tactics push the
boundaries of science.
“The law at the moment exists in this gray zone where everyone acknowledges
that both genetic and environmental factors could affect culpability,” said
Owen Jones, a Vanderbilt University law professor who directs the Research
Network on Law and Neuroscience. “But how do you know when, and how much?”
A TEST FOR BRAIN SCIENCE
Yepez’s journey to this frontier began with a mail-order DNA test.
In October 2012, he was charged with 1st-degree murder for beating to death the
boyfriend of his girlfriend’s mother. He admitted to attacking the 75-year-old
victim during a drunken dispute. But he said he could not remember much of it,
and could not explain why he’d reacted so violently. He seemed bewildered at
what he had done, according to Ian Loyd, a public defender who was assigned to
represent him.
A few months later, as they prepared for trial, Loyd attended a conference in
Washington. One of the speakers was forensic psychiatrist William Bernet.
Bernet told the story of a Tennessee murder defendant, facing the possibility
of the death penalty, who persuaded a jury in 2009 that he deserved a less
severe punishment. The defendant had argued that a genetic deficiency — a
variant of a gene named MAO-A, which regulates aggressive behavior in men —
along with abuse he had suffered as a child were partly to blame for his crime.
The mutation’s impact on criminal behavior was first documented in 1993 in
members of a Dutch family with a severe version that has since been found in a
handful of families worldwide. There are less extreme, and less rare, versions
that have been linked to an increased risk of criminal convictions — but only
among men who also suffered from abuse as children. Some researchers began
dubbing MAO-A the “warrior gene,” a term that was picked up by documentary
filmmakers, talk show hosts and consumer-DNAtesting companies.
Loyd frantically scribbled notes, thinking of Yepez. “Maybe he’s got this gene
too,” Loyd recalled thinking.
Loyd went online and found a commercial genetic testing company, FamilyTreeDNA,
that charges $99 to determine if someone has the MAO-A deficiency. He had one
of his investigators visit Yepez at the Santa Fe County jail, where he swabbed
Yepez’s cheek for cells. A few weeks later, the results came back positive.
“This is the defense I want to pursue,” Loyd told Yepez.
The consumer test wouldn’t hold up in court, so Loyd called Bernet, a professor
emeritus at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, who suggested getting a
geneticist to perform a more comprehensive test. The geneticist, David
Lightfoot, concluded that there was “no doubt” that Yepez had the MAO-A
mutation, according to court filings. A psychologist also administered a series
of tests on Yepez, who said he’d been mistreated as a child, including beatings
with a belt buckle, according to Loyd.
A judge held a pretrial hearing in January 2015 to decide whether those
findings could be used as evidence. A doctor testifying for the defense said
the MAO-A deficiency and claims of abuse made Yepez “predisposed to committing
violent behavior.” But prosecutors argued that the science was not reliable,
and that the connection with the murder was weak. The judge refused to allow
it.
Four months later, a jury - unaware of Yepez’s genetic mutation - convicted him
of second-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to 22 years in prison.
Yepez appealed. A higher court said the judge should have allowed the genetic
evidence, but did not overturn the verdict, saying it wouldn’t have made a
difference because a second-degree murder conviction didn’t require showing
Yepez had “specific intent” to kill his victim. Yepez appealed to the New
Mexico Supreme Court, which agreed last fall to hear the case.
Yepez, who remains in Lea County Correctional Facility, could not be reached
for an interview. But his lawyers said they hope the state Supreme Court will
grant him a new trial, this time using the genetic evidence to help explain the
killing.
Helen Bennett, the lawyer representing Yepez before the state Supreme Court,
said the case will test how neuroscience is complicating determinations of
whether someone intended to commit a crime.
“These genetic markers and the way we’re learning how they operate in the brain
makes the determination of intent much more nuanced,” Bennett said.
A GROWING STRATEGY
The growth of neuroscience evidence — typically in the form of brain scans and
psychological tests — dates back about three decades. It has most often been
used to seek leniency for juveniles or against the death penalty for killers.
But the strategy has expanded to a wider set of cases.
A few years ago, Nita Farahany, a law and philosophy professor at Duke
University, set out to measure neuroscience’s growing influence in the criminal
justice system. She found more than 2,800 judicial decisions from 2005 to 2015
in which defendants had cited neuroscience in their arguments. The crimes
ranged from fraud and kidnapping to drugs and murder. About 20 % of those
defendants had a favorable outcome of some kind, such as a new hearing to
consider whether to include the evidence at trial or the reversal of a prior
ruling.
“Year after year, more and more criminal defendants are using neuroscience to
bolster their claims of decreased responsibility for their criminal conduct and
decreased moral culpability relevant to their sentencing,” she wrote in a study
published in the January issue of the Annual Review of Criminology.
She has cited as an example a California man whose lawyers persuaded a judge in
2008 that he was incompetent to stand trial on charges of murdering his mother
by showing he’d been diagnosed with developmental disorders. In another case,
in Arizona, a man charged with possession of a load of marijuana gave a
confession and then tried to recant, saying a brain injury and severe migraines
prevented him from understanding that he had waived his right to remain silent.
The judge didn’t believe him. In a 3rd case, a woman who was convicted of
first-degree murder in 2011 in the killing of her friend during an argument
said her mental illness and a brain tumor played a role, and a Massachusetts
court agreed, overturning the conviction.
Many such claims overstate the science, Farahany said — neuroscience may be
able to help understand someone’s predispositions and proclivities, but can’t
say what they were thinking or feeling at the time of the crime. That is why
many scientists object to its use in the courtroom.
Behavior is determined by a multitude of forces within the brain, with genes
only providing a starting point, researchers say. A person’s experiences or
environment play a large role. And it’s difficult to show a direct cause and
effect involving a particular condition.
Henry Greely, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford
Law School, who collaborated with Farahany on her most recent study, said that
if he were a judge in Yepez’s case, he probably would not allow the MAO-A
evidence.
“It’s not going as far as junk science, but it’s close,” he said.
Even so, he added, attempts by criminal defendants to use neuroscience “will
increase, even if legislatures and courts try to stop them, because there are
so many different ways you can try to bring it up.”
Many scientists and researchers point out that prosecutors, too, might one day
seize on neuroscientific evidence, using it to argue that a defendant is
dangerous and should be punished harshly.
Bennett, Yepez’s lawyer, said it was important to push the criminal justice
system to embrace neuroscience and think differently about why people do bad
things.
“We have a duty as citizens to listen to that science and make informed
decisions before we take away another person’s freedom,” she said.
(source: KRIS TV news)
WYOMING:
Death penalty foes prepare for another repeal campaign
8 states have abolished the death penalty in the past 2 decades. Capital
punishment opponents in Wyoming have tried many times to follow suit, with a
repeal bill having been introduced in the state Legislature nearly every year
this decade.
Each time, the effort has failed.
Most bills are dead on arrival, failing introduction by committee vote. In the
2018 budget session, Laramie Democrat Charles Pelkey attempted to bring a death
penalty repeal bill to the floor but failed to achieve the two-thirds margin
required for introduction.
Something different happened this winter. Backed by Cheyenne Republican Jared
Olsen, a death penalty repeal bill — for the first time in history — slowly
gathered the momentum it needed to clear the House, eventually passing onto the
Senate by a healthy 15-vote margin.
But despite that unprecedented level of support, the Wyoming Senate shot down
the bill as it neared the finish line.
Olsen, however, is not discouraged. In a Thursday interview with the Casper
Star-Tribune, Olsen said he will do all he can to ensure 2020 is the year
Wyoming finally repeals the death penalty.
“We will bring a bill during the 2020 budget session to repeal the death
penalty,” Olsen said. “We’re hoping between now and then to build more
consensus and more support through education. We believe that is a missing
component between failure and success. Those legislators who took the time to
learn about the cost, learn about the moral considerations and really think
about their decision, made the right choice. And those we maybe didn’t get —
whether it was the full education component or who we didn’t spend the right
amount time with — we think we can change a lot of those hearts and votes.”
Efforts to change those minds, he said, will begin next week.
At noon Tuesday on the steps of the Wyoming Supreme Court, Olsen — joined by
ACLU of Wyoming Director Sabrina King — will kick off a statewide education
campaign to gain support for ending the death penalty.
The 2019 repeal effort bore a number of notable differences from years past. In
hearings and in the halls of the temporary capital in Cheyenne, a mix of
individuals — from legal experts to religious representatives and, at one
point, an exonerated inmate from Illinois’ death row — lobbied lawmakers. Those
efforts, however widely supported, were largely confined to the Wyoming
Legislature — one of the reasons King said the effort wasn’t successful.
“There is always a need for a good public discussion for the mobilization of
people on the ground and in legislators’ districts to really make the eventual
repeal of the death penalty a statewide-supported effort,” King said. “That’s
what we’re trying to put legs to. We feel we know that support is in, but we
want to bring people in and give them the ability to voice their opinion and
say to their legislators, to say to the governor, ‘We want to repeal the death
penalty. This is something we support. So let’s do it now.’”
King said Thursday that the effort will focus on educating local leaders and
Wyoming residents from the town and county levels all the way up the ladder. In
addition to receiving assistance from religious and civil groups, the effort
would have a dedicated social media campaign, a website and, further down the
road, a campaign organizer with the explicit purpose of spreading the message
of repeal statewide.
“Our hope is, by launching the campaign and really moving this work forward, we
can help formalize that coalition and really bring together a broad base of
people around Wyoming who are interested in ending the death penalty and really
try to shift the money, time and resources involved in that to other things,”
she said. “It’s very rare when you have an issue so many people are behind
where you could actually make that happen.”
Meanwhile, Olsen has planned other means of eliminating the death penalty,
including prospects of introducing a bill within the Joint Appropriations
Committee to eliminate a chunk of the roughly $1 million in funding it costs to
keep the law on the books each year.
“I can’t say right now that my immediate strategy will be to reduce it to zero,
but we will take a really hard look at making some adjustments to the funding
during the 2020 budget session,” Olsen said.
Other options remain as well. Though a ballot initiative – a difficult prospect
in Wyoming – is not on the table, Olsen pointed to a recent moratorium on the
death penalty that was unilaterally implemented by California Gov. Gavin
Newsom, something Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon could pursue if he chose to.
The legislative option, however, remains the most realistic one, and the only
means of permanently eliminating the death penalty. In budget years, lawmakers
need a 2/3 majority on the floor to have noncommittee bills heard. Olsen, given
this year’s level of support, believes he can make that happen.
“Based on our sponsorship alone and our votes, we have the 2/3 we need, and
there were some missing members who were committed ‘aye’ votes this year,”
Olsen said. “We know we have the votes, and I feel we’ve grown the votes
through our efforts.”
(source: Jackson Hole News & Guide)
CALIFORNIA:
California Killer Accused of Beheading Cellmate
One convicted killer has been accused of beheading another in what authorities
call an exceptionally sadistic torture slaying at a California prison.
Corcoran State Prison inmate Jaime Osuna removed several body parts from his
cellmate, Luis Romero, Assistant Kings County District Attorney Phil Esbenshade
said Friday. Charges accuse Osuna, 31, of repeatedly cutting Romero last month
using what the prosecutor called a sharp metal object wrapped in string and
attached to a handle, reported the Law Vegas Review-Journal.
It’s not clear how much happened while Romero, 44, was still alive or whether
anyone heard the overnight assault, but “we do believe that the victim was
conscious during at least a portion of the time,” Esbenshade said in an email.
“This is the most gruesome case that I have seen in terms of heinousness in the
slaying.”
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is conducting an
internal investigation, spokeswoman Terry Thornton said. As a result, officials
wouldn’t provide more details on how prisoners are monitored overnight.
Osuna pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges at his 1st court
appearance Thursday. They include several special circumstances that could
bring the death penalty, including that the slaying “was especially heinous,
atrocious, or cruel, manifesting exceptional depravity.” However, in March
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on capital punishment.
Defense attorney Melina Benninghoff was appointed to represent him but was home
sick Friday and did not respond to telephone and email requests to comment on
his behalf, according to Fox News.
Osuna also is charged with torture, mayhem and weapons possession. The torture
charge alleges that he acted “with the intent to cause cruel and extreme pain
and suffering for the purpose of revenge, extortion, persuasion and for a
sadistic purpose.”
The state corrections department said guards found Romero dead in his cell
about 7:30 a.m. March 9 at the prison, which houses more than 3,300 inmates
about 220 miles (354 kilometers) south of Sacramento.
Investigation revealed that Romero bled to death from “multiple sharp force
trauma injuries,” and his body was mutilated, according to an autopsy report
released Friday.
Osuna was sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty in 2017 to
killing Yvette Pena, 37, at a Bakersfield motel in 2011, according to media
reports at the time.
Romero also was serving a life term for a Los Angeles County slaying, but with
the possibility of parole.
Osuna has been transferred to a Stockton prison for inmates needing medical or
mental health care, though officials wouldn’t say why, citing privacy laws.
Corcoran State Prison is a complex, multi-mission institution comprised of the
following facilities: Level 1, Level III, Level IV, Administrative Segregation
Unit, Security Housing Unit, Protective Housing Unit,Prison Industry Authority,
a fully licensed Correctional Treatment Center, Long Term Restricted Housing
and Enhanced Program Facility.
(source: lawofficer.com)
USA:
Christensen's lawyers say he's abandoning mental-health defense
Accused kidnapper and killer Brendt Christensen is abandoning his mental-health
defense, his lawyers said Friday.
If he is convicted at his trial in June of kidnapping resulting in the death of
visiting University of Illinois scholar Yingying Zhang in June 2017, his
lawyers had been planning to argue that Christensen has a severe mental illness
on the spectrum of schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders in an attempt to
avoid the death penalty.
But in a filing Friday, they said "Christensen decided to formally withdraw"
his mental-health defense notice Thursday.
No reason was given, but his lawyers said they notified prosecutors "as soon as
possible and explained that Mr. Christensen will not be speaking to the
government's mental-health experts next week."
The mental-health exams were scheduled to begin Monday.
Christensen withdrew his mental-health defense after U.S. District Judge James
Shadid denied this week a number of restrictions his lawyers wanted to place on
the examinations by the government's mental-health experts.
For example, Christensen's lawyers asked that the expert not question him about
the facts of the crimes he's charged with, since their experts didn't ask about
that.
"For a variety of reasons, Mr. Christensen instructed his own experts not to
question him about the facts and circumstances of the crimes with which he is
charged," his lawyers wrote. "He likely will use evidence of his 'long-standing
condition to argue that he was operating with impaired capacity on the day of
the offense.'"
But Shadid denied this motion.
"In the event that defense experts argue Defendant suffered from impaired
capacity on the day of the offense, Defendant will have put the matter of his
mental state during that time into dispute," he wrote Wednesday. "His own
decision not to allow defense experts to question him on the offense does not
mean that the United States receives an unfair advantage by asking questions
that are necessary to confirm or rebut Defendant's argument."
Shadid also denied the defense's request to restrict the expert from
questioning Christensen about ADHD, as they said it wasn't a "differential
diagnosis for Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder," after prosecutors provided a
PDF of the diagnostic manual indicating it was a differential diagnosis and
underlining the part that mentions ADHD.
"The Court finds there can be little dispute about this," he wrote Thursday.
"As such, in addition to denying Defendant's request, the Court directs
Defendant to provide an explanation of the basis for his statement."
Urbana attorney Steve Beckett, who is representing Ms. Zhang's family, said he
was shocked by the withdrawal of the mental-health defense.
"I can sort of see a strategy," he said. "It also could be the client saying,
'I'm not going to talk to that guy.' It's very puzzling."
Beckett said Christensen's decision to withdraw the mental-health defense
should mean it won't be brought up during trial.
It was never going to be part of the guilt phase, but the defense had been
planning to use Christensen's mental health to avoid the death penalty during
the sentencing phase.
"I don't think that the prosecution can use it, certainly not at the guilt
phase," Beckett said. "If it's not presented (by the defense), then the
government doesn't get to present it either. In my view, there would be no
discussion about expert testimony about ... any diagnosed conditions."
Christensen's lawyers said in December that they would be seeking a
mental-health defense. The trial was initially scheduled to start in April, but
because they weren't able to find an expert who would be able to testify at
that time, it was pushed to June.
Later Friday, prosecutors filed a "motion for clarification" about the
defense's notice asking whether they'll still be able to have their
mental-health expert examine Christensen next week and questioning whether it
was a ploy to further delay the trial.
"The United States is aware of a similar case in which the defendant refused to
be examined by the United States' experts, and then 'changed his mind' and
asked the Court for a continuance so that he could submit to such an
examination and raise a mental health defense at trial," prosecutors wrote.
That attempt failed, prosecutors said, though an appellate court indicated that
it may have been successful if the defendant refused to be examined based on
his attorney's advice.
So prosecutors said they wanted to confirm who made the decision to withdraw
the mental-health defense.
"The United States is concerned ... that the existing record is insufficient to
support a determination that the defendant has knowingly and voluntarily
decided not to present such evidence after considering all of the consequences
of that decision," they wrote. "The United States requests that the Court
clarify the defendant's understanding of these issues through a colloquy in
open court."
They also said the government expert's exam could still go on as scheduled
without harming Christensen, as the results wouldn't be disclosed to
prosecutors until the penalty phase, and only if Christensen sought a
mental-health defense.
Prosecutors are also asking that any mental-health evidence be barred from
trial.
Not only do they argue that experts who examined Christensen should be barred,
they also say that any testimony that implies he has a mental-health condition
should be barred.
This would include, they argue, the experts who were going to testify about
Christensen's visits to the UI Counseling Center.
The defense had been planning to use this expert during the sentencing phase of
the trial to argue that the UI Counseling Center did not give adequate
follow-up care after Christensen visited in March 2017 and described homicidal
and suicidal thoughts.
3 months later, Ms. Zhang was last seen June 9, 2017, entering Christensen's
car near a bus stop on campus.
Christensen told the FBI he let her out a few blocks away, while prosecutors
believe he took her back to his apartment, where FBI biologists are expected to
testify that Ms. Zhang's blood and DNA were found.
She is presumed dead by the FBI, though her body hasn't been located.
(source: The News-Gazette)
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