May 30
TENNESSEE:
Case against man accused of killing 8 in Sumner County bound over to Grand Jury
The man accused of killing 8 people in rural Tennessee was rocking back and
forth in court as investigators described the grisly murder scenes and
discovery of multiple bodies, including one victim who was found beheaded.
Michael Cummins is charged in the mass murder in Westmoreland near the end of
April. A judge has bound over all counts of the case to a Grand Jury. But due
to the large amount of evidence, the Grand Jury won't hear it until August.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said it's the deadliest homicide event in
20 years and the death penalty could be an option in the case.
All eight victims died from blunt force head injuries, an arrest affidavit
stated. The youngest victim was just 12 years old.
TBI identified the victims as:
David Carl Cummins, the father of Michael Cummins
Clara Jane Cummins, the mother of Michael Cummins
Charles Edward Hosale, the uncle of Michael Cummins
Rachel Dawn McGlothlin-Pee, efforts by the TBI to clarify her relationship to
Cummins remain ongoing
Sapphire McGlothlin-Pee, Rachel’s 12-year-old daughter
Marsha Elizabeth Nuckols, Rachel’s mother
Shirley B. Fehrle, no known relationship to Cummins
Jim Dunn, whose head was found 25 yards from his body
Investigators took to the stand during Cummins' preliminary hearing, describing
the disturbing murder scenes. One man, Jim Dunn, was found beheaded. An
investigator did point out that it could have been removed by animal activity,
maybe even rabbits. Members of the TBI spoke about the initial discovery of 4
to 5 bodies, only to keep finding more.
Special agents started investigating Cummins and the Westmoreland murders on
April 27, when authorities found multiple bodies inside a home on Charles Brown
Road and at a second nearby scene on Luby Brown Road.
A TBI helicopter tracked suspect Cummins to a creek bed about a mile from the
first scene and SWAT officers descended to the area. For reasons still under
investigation, TBI said the situation escalated when officers came into contact
with Cummins and one officer fired at the suspect, striking him. Cummins was
transported for non-life threatening injuries.
Cummins has a criminal record and history of court-ordered mental illness
evaluation.
Back in court last August, he was again given probation and this time ordered
to attend domestic violence classes. It was just the next month that he tried
to burn down his neighbor's mobile home by stuffing garbage between the
insulation and the floorboards and setting it on fire.
He was released in January on probation, but at the time of the murders his
parole officer had been preparing an arrest warrant for probation violations.
Earlier in a separate court room, Cummins was ordered to serve the remainder of
a 10-year sentence for an assault and arson case from 2017 at a parole
violation hearing. Cummins tried to light his neighbor's house on fire. That
neighbor, Pamela Sanabria, says she feels that she would have been killed in
his alleged rampage if not for having been in Kentucky visiting her daughter.
(source: WZTV news)
KENTUCKY:
Death penalty possible in murder case
4 Elizabethtown men recently arrested on robbery and murder charges could face
the death penalty, according to Hardin County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney.
Tyler Lee Lawrence, 20, Elijah Dashon Barnett, 22, and Donyale Antoine Jones,
27, were arrested Saturday, and Temorris Mandrette Davis Jr., 21, was arrested
Tuesday by Radcliff police. All four are charged with murder in the May 22
shooting death of Lashard Harrison, 25, of Vine Grove, behind a Radcliff
apartment complex.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Shane Young said Tuesday the charges are eligible for
the death penalty. He said the men are expected to have their cases presented
before a Hardin County grand jury, possibly as soon as Thursday.
According to arrest citations, the men went to Radcliff with the intention of
robbing Harrison of money they paid him for drugs.
According to arrest citations, the men admitted to setting up a “drug deal for
a quantity of pills” and during the transaction, the men exchanged cash with
Harrison for a number of pills.
“As Harrison turned to leave, Barnett and Jones shot Harrison multiple times
causing his death,” the citation said. With Harrison shot, the men then
retrieved the cash and fled in Jones’ vehicle, according to the citation.
Lawrence, Barnett and Jones appeared Tuesday morning in Hardin District Court
where they entered not guilty pleas. They will appear at 9 a.m. June 7 in
Hardin District Court unless they are indicted by a grand jury. In that case,
their appearances will be changed to Hardin Circuit Court and a time and day
will be scheduled.
Morris is scheduled to appear this morning for arraignment in Hardin District
Court.
Radcliff Police Chief Jeff Cross said no further arrests are expected in the
case.
All of the men are being held in lieu of $500,000 cash bonds in the Hardin
County Detention Center.
Harrison, a 2012 graduate of North Hardin High School, was found dead in a
parking lot behind apartments at 1508 Pin Oak Court in Radcliff and pronounced
dead at the scene by the Hardin County Coroner’s Office.
All 4 men are charged with murder and 1st-degree robbery. Lawrence also is
charged with tampering with physical evidence.
If found guilty of murder, the men face 20 to 50 years, or life, in prison, if
convicted, or death, if a death penalty is sought in the case. 1st-degree
robbery is a Class B felony punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison, if
convicted, and tampering with physical evidence is a Class D felony punishable
by 1 to 5 years in prison, if convicted.
The murder charge is death penalty eligible since there is an aggravating
factor of robbery leading to the fatal shooting. Harrison was shot multiple
times, according to the coroner’s office and witness accounts.
Should the Commonwealth seek the death penalty, it would be the 2nd death
penalty case this year. The death penalty is being sought against Shadrach
Peeler of Elizabethtown, who is charged with killing 2 people Feb. 21 at two
different Elizabethtown locations, and shooting 2 others.
Should a death penalty be sought against the men, it would be the 2nd one in
less than 3 years for homicides at Pin Oak Court apartments.
In September 2016, Norman Hall, 71, was killed inside his apartment. Aaron
Pearson and Eloysia James-Venerable were charged. Pearson will stand trial
next month, while James-Venerable has accepted a plea deal of 20 to 50 years or
life in prison, with parole eligibility after 20 years, in exchange for
truthful testimony at the trial.
(source: The News-Enterprise)
ARIZONA:
A prosecutor’s epiphany on capital punishment
On November 8, 2000, Rick Unklesbay watched as Don Miller was killed.
Unklesbay did not intervene.
“In fact,” as he explains, “I was the person most responsible for his death.”
As a veteran prosecutor in Tucson, Arizona, Unklesbay prosecuted a score of
capital cases, winning death sentences against 16 defendants—including Miller,
who indisputably was guilty of the murder of 18-year-old Jennifer Geuder, a
single mother of a 6-month-old boy.
On the night of June 12, 1992, Geuder went to a movie with Joe Anthony Luna,
the baby’s father, from whom she was seeking child support—a mere $50 monthly
to offset the cost of diapers and formula. Geuder’s bullet-riddled body was
found early the next morning by a jogger on the outskirts of Tucson. Police
received a tip from a man who said Luna had enlisted him to take part in the
murder and mentioned that Miller had agreed to participate.
Miller promptly confessed, saying that he and Luna each had shot Geuder with a
.25-caliber pistol. Both men were charged with capital murder—but Luna, the
more culpable of the two, pleaded guilty in exchange for a life sentence.
Miller was tried, sentenced to death, and executed by lethal injection with
Unklesbay among the witnesses.
One killer dies, while a worse one lives and may someday be released—an outcome
that, for Unklesbay, exemplifies “the randomness inherent in capital
punishment”—a grotesque incongruence that, he maintains, “should lead us to rid
it from our statutes.”
In a just-published book, “Arbitrary Death: A Prosecutor’s Perspective on the
Death Penalty” (Wheatmark, $12.95), Unklesbay describes the Geuder case and
nine other capital cases he prosecuted over 35 years after joining the Pima
County Attorney’s Office in 1981. Of the 16 defendants for whom Unklesbay won
death sentences, only Miller and 1 other has been executed.
The lesson Unklesbay draws from his experience is that capital punishment is
“arbitrary and unworkable”—surprising only in that it comes from a prosecutor
who often pursued and won death penalties.
“Arbitrary Death” is a compelling, fast-moving little book (135 pages) that
ought to be required reading by every prosecutor, every attorney general, every
governor, and every legislator in the 30 U.S. states that still have death
penalties on their books.
(source: injusticewatch.org)
OREGON:
Voters should be heard on death penalty
A bill before the state Legislature that would dramatically curtail the cases
in which the death penalty could be applied has passed the state Senate and now
heads for the House.
But in the House, the bill might well run into a major roadblock: Speaker of
the House Tina Kotek has said in the past she believes such a major revision in
Oregon capital punishment laws should go before the state's voters. She said
this week that she would need to read the latest version of the measure, Senate
Bill 1013, before making a final decision — but it certainly is true that the
speaker has the power to stop a bill from advancing in the Legislature.
Here's a case where Kotek is right: This is something that the state's citizens
deserve a chance to consider.
To be fair, Senate Bill 1013 is a well-crafted and clever bit of legislation.
The bill redefines the crime of aggravated murder (the only crime in Oregon
statutes that can be punished by death), so that it includes acts of terror
that kill two or more people. The bill has been revised so that it includes two
other instances in which a defendant could be sentenced to death: cases in
which the victim was under the age of 14 or in which a defendant killed another
inmate while serving time for a murder conviction.
Other offenses that currently qualify as aggravated murder under state law,
such as killing someone during the course of a rape or robbery, would be
reclassified as another type of murder, and the maximum punishment for those
would be life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The proposed legislation also would change 1 of the 4 questions juries must
decide when considering whether to impose a death sentence. Oregon jurors now
must determine whether a person guilty of aggravated murder is at risk of being
a danger in the future. The bill would remove that question, which is fine:
It's an unfair and unscientific duty to ask jurors to tackle.
The bill passed the Senate on Tuesday on a largely party-line 18-9 vote. Among
mid-valley legislators, Sen. Sara Gelser, a Democrat, voted in favor of the
measure; Sen. Fred Girod, a Republican, voted against it.
For a bill that has drawn a measure of attention this session, the floor debate
in the Senate on Tuesday was remarkably restrained: Only Sen. Floyd Prozanski,
the influential Eugene Democrat who's led the charge on the bill, spoke.
The main argument opponents have raised against the bill — and the very point
that Kotek is pondering — is that such a major change to state law on capital
punishment should be referred to voters.
And that's what the Legislature should do.
The verdict of Oregon voters over the last century on capital punishment has
been mixed: Capital punishment was outlawed by voters in 1914 and then
reenacted in 1978. 3 years later, the state Supreme Court ruled that the death
penalty was unconstitutional, paving the way for a 1984 initiative in which
voters reaffirmed capital punishment.
Since then, though, the topic has been rarely revisited in Oregon. After
then-Gov. John Kitzhaber imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in 2011, he
made a halfhearted effort to goad the Legislature into action, but the proposal
didn't gain any traction. Gov. Kate Brown has said that she plans to continue
the moratorium, but hasn't taken much of an active role on the issue.
Oregon hasn't executed a prisoner since May 1997; the state has 32 men and 1
woman on death row.
It's very possible that the opinions of Oregonians have changed since that 1984
initiative, as the national debate over the death penalty has taken intriguing
twists and turns in the 35 years since then. But there's only one way to find
out for sure. The Legislature should let voters decide.
(source: Editorial, Lebanon Express)
USA:
In death do they part—SCOTUS justices show divisions over capital cases
Some of the court’s most interesting actions this term have occurred not in
decisions published after briefing and oral arguments, but in orders in death
penalty cases concerning whether to stay executions.
There has been an ongoing series of exchanges among the justices that reflect
their deep divisions regarding capital punishment and the more general
ideological schism in a court that is clearly split between five conservative
and four liberal justices.
Dunn v. Ray
On Feb. 7, in a 5-4 ruling, the court reversed the Atlanta-based 11th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeal’s stay of an execution in Dunn v. Ray. Domineque Ray, a
Muslim, wanted to have his clergy member, an imam, with him at the time of the
execution. Although Alabama would allow a Christian clergy member to be present
at an execution, it refused Ray’s request.
The 11th Circuit concluded that there was a substantial likelihood that the
prison’s policy violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and stayed
Ray’s execution so it could consider his claim on its merits.
The court reversed, and in a brief order stated: “Because Ray waited until Jan.
28, 2019, to seek relief, we grant the state’s application to vacate the stay
entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.”
Justice Elena Kagan—joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer
and Sonia Sotomayor—wrote a strong dissent. She explained that the clearest
command of the Establishment Clause is that the government cannot discriminate
among religious faiths. Alabama was doing exactly that by allowing a Christian,
but not a Muslim or Jewish condemned individual to have a clergy member at the
execution.
Kagan expressly disagreed with the majority that Ray had waited too long to
file his objection, explaining “there is no reason Ray should have known, prior
to Jan. 23, that his imam would be granted less access than the Christian
chaplain to the execution chamber.” She also stressed that the Court of Appeals
stay of the execution could be overturned only for abuse of discretion and that
standard was not met.
Murphy v. Collier
About 6 weeks later, on March 28, the court granted a stay of execution to
Patrick Henry Murphy, a Buddhist who objected to Texas putting him to death
without a clergy member of his faith being present. In a brief order, the court
said that “the state may not carry out Murphy’s execution … unless the state
permits Murphy’s Buddhist spiritual adviser or another Buddhist reverend of the
state’s choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the
execution.”
It was stated that Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented,
though they did not write an opinion at that time. Justice Brett Kavanaugh
wrote an opinion concurring in the grant of the application for the stay. He
stressed that the state was engaged in impermissible discrimination based on
religion: “What the state may not do, in my view, is allow Christian or Muslim
inmates but not Buddhist inmates to have a religious adviser of their religion
in the execution room.”
Can this be reconciled with what happened in Dunn v. Ray? In a footnote,
Kavanaugh simply said: “I conclude that Murphy made his request to the state in
a sufficiently timely manner, one month before the scheduled execution.” This
seems to indicate that at least for Kavanaugh there is a new principle of
timeliness that is being created, though not defined by the court.
Bucklew v. Precythe
A few days later, on April 1, the court, after briefing and oral argument,
decided Bucklew v. Precythe. Russell Bucklew, who had been sentenced to death,
argued that the method of lethal injection used by Missouri would cause him
great pain and suffering because he suffered from a medical condition,
cavernous hemangioma, which causes vascular tumors to grow in his head, neck
and throat.
He contended that the protocol for lethal injection could cause these to
rupture and for him to then suffocate on his own blood.
The court split along ideological lines, 5-4, and ruled against Bucklew.
Gorsuch wrote for the majority. He said that the test for whether a method of
execution “is whether the state’s chosen method of execution cruelly superadds
pain to the death sentence, a prisoner must show a feasible and readily
implemented alternative method of execution that would significantly reduce a
substantial risk of severe pain and that the state has refused to adopt without
a legitimate penological reason.”
The court said that Bucklew failed to meet this burden. The court also
expressed disdain for late attempts to halt executions and said: “[l]ast-minute
stays should be the extreme exception.”
Breyer wrote for the 4 dissenters and strongly objected to allowing an
execution where there was a substantial risk of serious pain. In his dissent,
he went back to Dunn v. Ray, and in a paragraph about that ruling declared: “It
might be possible to end delays by limiting constitutional protections for
prisoners on death row. But to do so would require us to pay too high a
constitutional price.”
Toward the end of his dissenting opinion, Breyer left little doubt that there
are four votes on the court to declare the death penalty unconstitutional: “And
it may be that, as our Nation comes to place ever greater importance upon
ensuring that we accurately identify, through procedurally fair methods, those
who may lawfully be put to death, there simply is no constitutional way to
implement the death penalty.”
Sotomayor wrote a separate dissent objecting to the majority’s discussion of
“last minute stays” of executions. She said that the majority’s statement
“could be read to intimate that late-occurring stay requests from capital
prisoners should be reviewed with an especially jaundiced eye. Were those
comments to be mistaken for a new governing standard, they would effect a
radical reinvention of established law and the judicial role.”
All of this prompted a response in a footnote in Gorusch’s majority opinion
defending the earlier ruling in Dunn v. Ray. Speaking of that case, Gorsuch
stated: “Yet although he had been on death row since 1999, and the state had
set a date for his execution on Nov. 6, 2018, he waited until Jan. 23,
2019—just 15 days before the execution—to ask for clarification. He then
brought a claim 10 days before the execution and sought an indefinite stay.
This delay implicated the ‘strong equitable presumption’ that no stay should be
granted.”
It is obviously unusual for the court in one case to be discussing another from
a couple of months earlier. But the story doesn’t stop there.
Murphy v. Collier again
On May 13, the court issued additional opinions in Murphy v. Collier. Justice
Samuel A. Alito wrote an opinion dissenting from the grant of the stay which
had occurred on March 28. Interestingly, he had not been listed as a dissenter
when the stay was granted. Alito described the stay as “seriously wrong” and
spoke of the “strong equitable presumption against the grant of such relief
when the applicant unreasonably delayed in raising the underlying claims.”
Alito then went on to discuss Dunn v. Ray and defended the court’s refusal to
allow a “last minute” stay of execution and said that “Murphy’s stay
application, like Ray’s, should have been denied.”
This provoked an opinion from Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice John G.
Roberts Jr., also issued on May 13. Kavanaugh noted that the stay of execution
in Murphy v. Collier caused Texas to change its policy to allow all being put
to death by the state to have a clergy of member of their religion present at
an execution and thus “the Court’s stay facilitated the prompt resolution of a
significant religious equality problem with the state’s execution protocol.”
Kavanaugh then went on to explain why he saw Dunn v. Ray as different from
Murphy v. Collier. He said that Dunn v. Ray had not been presented as an “equal
treatment case” and besides, that it was a petition filed five days before the
execution while in Murphy v. Collier it was presented 30 days before the
execution.
Lessons to learn
All of this is unusual: a recent ruling being argued over in other cases,
justices releasing opinions weeks after the initial ruling, the split among the
conservative justices. What might be learned from all of this?
The 5 conservative justices are expressing strong hostility to what they
perceive as “last minute” efforts to stop executions. The liberal justices see
this as creating new, unjustified barriers to enforcing the Constitution. This
disagreement is likely to manifest itself repeatedly in death penalty cases.
The deeper division is over capital punishment. There are 4 justices who
believe that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. But the
majority clearly sees it as constitutional and wants to lessen judicial
obstacles to its implementation. And given the stakes, truly life and death,
the justices on both sides are writing with a passion that is relatively
unusual for Supreme Court opinions.
(source: Erwin Chemerinsky, ABA Journal)
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