June 14
NORTH CAROLINA:
Death-Row Prisoner Alleges North Carolina Prosecutors Used Racist Training
Document to Strike Black Jurors
A North Carolina death-row prisoner is seeking a new trial based on allegations
that prosecutors in his case used a training document steeped in racist
stereotypes to manufacture pretextual reasons to exclude African Americans from
serving on his jury. In a June 4, 2019 court filing in the appeal of Russell
William Tucker (pictured), 2 national experts say that the Forsyth County
prosecutors unconstitutionally exercised their discretionary juror challenges
on the basis of race to strike all five black jurors from his case. Bryan
Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, says that the
prosecution’s use of pre-prepared reasons contained in the training document
shows that the “race neutral” justifications the prosecution offered for their
strikes were pretextual. Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, an historian and the director of
the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, says that the
reasons extracted from the training handout are outgrowths of false white
supremacist myths about African Americans and “themselves evince racial bias.”
Tucker was sentenced to death in February 1996 for the 1994 murder of a K-Mart
security guard. In selecting the jury in his case, prosecutors David Spence and
Robert Lang relied on a document, “Batson Justifications: Articulating Juror
Negatives,” distributed in a prosecutorial training session to offer facially
race-neutral justifications if the prosecutor’s use of discretionary jury
strikes were challenged. Both prosecutors and defense lawyers may peremptorily
challenge a limited number of jurors to remove them from the jury pool and they
do not have to give a reason for doing so. However, those strikes may not be
used to remove jurors because of their race, and in 1986, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that if the defense challenges a strike, the
prosecutor must provide a race-neutral explanation for doing so. Tucker’s
petition alleges that prosecutors used language directly from the training
document to justify their strikes, citing jurors’ “monosyllabic” replies, “body
language,” or their opinion that the juror had “no stake in the community.”
In an affidavit supporting Tucker’s petition, Stevenson called “[t]he North
Carolina Batson Justifications handout … another example of the common
prosecutorial response to Batson: prosecutors came up with ways to conceal
racial bias, and avoid findings of Batson violations, by developing ‘reasons’
that would likely be deemed race-neutral, and therefore, acceptable to
reviewing courts.” Stevenson said that, despite appearing race-neutral, “many
of the listed reasons are based on longstanding racist stereotypes that have
been used to deny rights to Blacks for centuries.” Kendi—whose National Book
Award-winning book Stamped from the Beginning traces the roots of anti-black
racist ideas from colonial times to the modern era—described many of the
reasons contained in the training handout as a modern application of the same
types of language used to justify Jim Crow policies, segregation, and voter
suppression. “[M]any of the reasons listed on the Batson Justifications handout
and offered to the court as ‘race neutral’ reasons to remove Blacks from Mr.
Tucker’s jury were not race neutral at all,” he wrote in an affidavit.
“Instead, many of the listed reasons are based on longstanding racist
stereotypes that have been used to deny rights to Blacks for centuries.”
Racial discrimination in jury selection remains a widespread problem in
death-penalty cases, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Batson. A Michigan
State University study of North Carolina prosecutorial jury strikes or
acceptances of more than 7,400 jurors from 173 capital cases tried over a
twenty-year period showed that prosecutors across the state consistently struck
African-American jurors at approximately twice the rate of other jurors. Yet a
2016 study of Batson challenges in North Carolina found that, “[i]n the 114
cases decided on the merits by North Carolina appellate courts, the courts have
never found a substantive Batson violation where a prosecutor has articulated a
reason for the peremptory challenge of a minority juror.” A 2015 New Yorker
article on the discriminatory tactics used by prosecutors highlighted the same
training document that is being challenged in Tucker’s appeal. The issue has
reached the U.S. Supreme Court several times in recent years. In May 2016, the
U.S. Supreme Court granted a new trial to death-row prisoner Timothy Foster
after finding that Georgia prosecutors had invented pretextual reasons for
striking every black juror from his case. On March 20, 2019, the U.S. Supreme
Court heard oral argument in Flowers v. Mississippi, an appeal from a
Mississippi prisoner who had been tried six times. Over the course of his six
trials, prosecutors removed all but one black juror. The Court has not yet
issued a decision in that case.
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
SOUTH CAROLINA----new death sentence
Death sentence for father who killed his 5 kids
A South Carolina father was sentenced to death Thursday for killing his 5
children with his own hands. After they were dead, he drove around with their
bodies for 9 days before dumping them in garbage bags on the side of an Alabama
dirt road.
Timothy Jones Jr. showed no emotion as the jury delivered the verdict after
less than two hours of deliberation. They also could have sentenced him to life
without parole.
The same Lexington County jury convicted Jones of five counts of murder last
week in the deaths of his children, ages 1 to 8, in their Lexington home in
August 2014.
Prosecutors pushed for a death sentence. Solicitor Rock Hubbard told jurors in
his closing argument earlier Thursday that if any jurors had doubts whether
Jones deserved the death penalty, all they had to do is consider the 5 garbage
bags where he dumped their bodies in rural Alabama.
But a lawyer for Jones told jurors they alone could show mercy — if not for a
father who killed 5 kids with his own hands, then for a family that has seen so
much death and still wants to love Jones, even through prison bars.
Jones' father hung his head in his hands as the verdict was read and other
family members appeared to cry.
Jones is just the 2nd person to be sent to South Carolina's death row in 5
years. The state has not executed anyone since 2011 and lacks the drugs to
carry out lethal injection.
Hubbard began his closing argument by asking if the jurors had ever heard of a
crime more horrendous than what they had listened to over four weeks of
testimony.
Jones, 37, has been selfish all his life, trying to break up his father's
second marriage because he wasn't getting enough attention and controlling his
wife's every decision, Hubbard said.
When his wife left him, Hubbard said, Jones couldn't stand that his control was
over. With custody of his children, the computer engineer with an
$80,000-a-year job mistreated any of them who showed any intention of wanting
to be with their mother instead of him, Hubbard said.
Jones first killed 6-year-old son Nahtahn in a "white hot rage" after the boy
confessed on the phone to his mother — but not to his father — to breaking an
electrical outlet, Hubbard said.
Over the next several hours, Jones went and got cigarettes, taking his oldest
daughter so she wouldn't call for help, and leaving the three other kids with
their brother's body.
Then he made a decision, just like the one the jury was called upon to make,
the prosecutor said.
He sentenced his kids to death," Hubbard said.
In a confession, Jones said he strangled 7-year-old Elias with his hands and
chased down 8-year-old Merah before choking her. He then used a belt to choke
2-year-old Gabriel and 1-year-old Abigail because he said his hands were too
big.
That deserved death and not life, Hubbard said.
A life sentence "is just send Timmy to his room, make him think about what he
has done" Hubbard said. After killing the children, Jones loaded their bodies
into his SUV and drove around the Southeast U.S. for 9 days before dumping them
in 5 black garbage bags on a dirt road near Camden, Alabama. He was arrested
hours later after an officer at a traffic checkpoint in Smith County,
Mississippi, said he smelled a horrible odor of decomposition.
Hubbard ended his closing argument with those bags. Prosecutors entered photos
showing what was inside the bags into evidence, but didn't show them to the
jury. Jurors could have chosen to look at them during deliberations if they
wanted.
"If you have any doubt for the appropriate sentence for that man, look in the
bag!" Hubbard said.
The defense focused on what his lawyers called undiagnosed schizophrenia made
worse by drug and alcohol use. Jurors last week rejected their arguments that
Jones was not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty but mentally ill.
During his closing argument Thursday, defense lawyer Casey Secor instead
focused on how much Jones is loved by his family even after the killings. His
grandmother, father and siblings all asked jurors to spare his life .
How much more death does the Jones family have to endure? How many more
funerals does this family have to go to? How many more tears do they have to
shed? How much more heartache to they have to endure?" Secor said.
The children's mother also said she wouldn't choose the death penalty for Jones
because she's against capital punishment, but would respect the jury's
decision.
Secor said under the law, any juror could decide on life for any reason or for
no reason at all.
You can punish Tim severely with a punishment of life in prison without the
possibility of parole and be merciful to the people who still love these
children," Secor said.
(source: Associated Press)
GEORGIA----impending execution
Georgia killer makes last meal request ahead of execution
Marion Wilson Jr., the convicted murderer scheduled to be executed next week,
has made his last meal request, authorities announced Thursday.
Wilson faces the death penalty for the 1996 shooting death of 24-year-old
Donovan Corey Parks, an off-duty prison guard who wanted to become a counselor
for inmates.
Wilson has attempted to halt the execution, slated for 7 p.m. on June 20, but
he went ahead and told the state what he wants to eat on his final day. As
other condemned inmates do, Wilson requested a high-calorie meal.
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole has scheduled a clemency hearing for
June 19, the day before the planned execution. If put to death, Wilson would be
the 2nd Georgia prisoner to die from an injection of pentobarbital this year.
Wilson’s co-defendant Robert Butts was executed in May 2018.
Butts had known Parks from working with him at Burger King. On March 28, 1996,
Butts and Wilson saw Parks, who had just left Bible study, at Walmart. They
asked Parks for a ride and attacked him after he agreed, prosecutors said. The
defendants were in the Folk Nation gang. Prosecutors said heightened status in
the gang was the motive for the crime.
Wilson grabbed Parks’ neck tie so tight it later had to be cut off, and Butts
killed him with a gunshot to the head from a sawed off shotgun, prosecutors
said. They stole his car and left him dying on the ground.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
FLORIDA:
Man faces death penalty for killing 2 men over drug debt
A confessed hit man for a Mexican drug cartel faces the death penalty in
Florida for killing 2 men over a drug debt.
The Ocala Star-Banner reports Jose Manuel Martinez was convicted Thursday of
1st-degree murder. Jurors will return next week to recommend execution or life
in prison. All 12 jurors must agree for Martinez to receive the death penalty.
Authorities say Martinez fatally shot 20-year-old Javier Huerta and 28-year-old
Gustavo Olivares in November 2006 because of a debt over 10 kilograms of
cocaine. Their bodies were found in a pickup truck near the Ocala National
Forest.
Martinez's DNA was found on a cigarette in the truck. He was arrested in 2013
at the Arizona-Mexico border.
Martinez told investigators that he's killed more than 30 people. He's been
convicted of 10 killings and 1 attempted murder.
(source: Associated Press)
OHIO:
Jury convicts Parma Heights parolee in pen-pal slayings; death penalty phase
awaits
A Parma Heights parolee will face the death penalty after a jury on Thursday
convicted him of killing a former prison pen-pal and the man she lived with in
2017, then trying to hire a man to burn the home where their bodies were
eventually discovered.
After a 7 week trial, jurors deliberated for 2 days before they found Thomas
Knuff guilty on more than 20 counts in the deaths of Regina Capobianco, 50, and
John Mann, 65.
Family members of the victims cried as Common Pleas Court Judge Deena Calabrese
read the verdicts.
The trial now moves to the penalty phase, where the same jury will hear
additional evidence and decide whether to recommend a sentence of death or life
in prison. That phase is set to begin July 22.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said the verdict is a step toward
delivering justice for the families of Capobianco and Mann.
“The victims welcomed this defendant into their residence when he had no other
place to stay, only to be repaid by being viciously attacked and murdered,”
O’Malley said.
Knuff befriended Capobianco through an inmate-to-inmate pen-pal program in the
2000s, and went to stay with the pair at the home they shared on Nelwood Road
in Parma Heights. Knuff was released from prison on parole in April 2017 after
serving 15 years for an aggravated robbery conviction.
Capobianco’s felony record meant that both she and Knuff could not both stay in
the same house, and prosecutors contended at trial that the two got into an
argument after Mann chose Capobianco over Knuff. Knuff stabbed her to death and
then killed Mann, prosecutors said.
Capobianco was stabbed 6 times, and Mann was stabbed 15 times, a pathologist
from the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office testified.
Knuff covered up the crime by moving the bodies into the bedroom, wrapping them
with blankets and covering them with garbage, prosecutors said. He also
scrubbed the walls of blood spatter and removed pieces of carpet soaked with
blood, prosecutors said.
He took Mann’s car and left the bodies in the home where they decayed for more
than a month.
Capobianco’s relatives reported her missing in the days after the killing, but
Parma Heights police officers never tried to enter the home. They interviewed
Knuff, who lied and said he believed the two had gone to stay with friends in
Canton, prosecutors said.
Neighbors called police to report the smell, and officers entered the home and
found raw meat that had been left on the kitchen table, prosecutors said.
Officers assumed the smell came from the meat and disposed of it, then left the
house without searching any of the other rooms.
Police went back to the house on June 21, and a detective discovered
Capobianco’s skull in the bedroom, prosecutors said. Authorities then found
Mann’s body within minutes, and launched a homicide investigation.
Knuff, whose finger was badly cut during the stabbings, told several different
stories about how he cut his finger in the days that followed the killings,
prosecutors said. He told his son that he fended off a group of drug dealers
who had beaten up Mann and Capobianco, and he told his girlfriend, Alicia
Stoner, that he cut himself in a bar fight.
He went to an area hospital after the cut became infected, and his finger was
amputated. He told the nurse there that he had cut his finger after stabbing 2
people, according to his medical records.
Knuff eventually confided to Stoner that he had killed someone and needed to
dispose of a body, and asked her to buy him power tools. He told her that he
planned to cut them up like title character from the Showtime serial-killer
series “Dexter” so police couldn’t find evidence on their fingertips,
prosecutors said. He never made good on the plan.
Stoner pleaded guilty to charges that accused her of helping Knuff to dispose
of the bodies and was sentenced to probation.
Knuff broke into two beauty stores and stole cash from the registers. He was
arrested on June 13, 2017 in the break-ins, more than a week before police knew
Mann and Capobianco were dead.
Knuff escalated his cover-up scheme after his arrest and solicited Robert
DeLugo to burn down the house.
In a handwritten letter that prosecutors read during the trial, Knuff directed
DeLugo, whom Knuff referred to as “Big Bro,” to burn down the house to dispose
of the bodies. Knuff specifically told DeLugo to set fire in the bedroom, where
“the most incriminating s--t” was, the letter read.
He was referring to the decomposed bodies of Mann and Capobianco, prosecutors
said.
He also directed Stoner to pay DeLugo and give him flammable materials to carry
out the arson.
DeLugo did not carry out the crime and was never charged.
After the discoveries, Knuff maintained to police that he acted in
self-defense. His lawyers at trial said Knuff came back to the house on May 11
and found Capobianco stabbing Mann, and tried to stop the attack. He took the
knife from her and tried to tend to Mann, but Capobianco grabbed another knife
from the kitchen and attacked Knuff, cutting his finger, his lawyers said.
Knuff then killed Capobianco in self-defense, his lawyers said.
Knuff sought to cover his deeds because he feared he would go back to prison
for a parole violation, even though he acted in self-defense, his lawyers said.
(source: cleveland.com)
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