July 7
FLORIDA:
Executions and laws governing them evolve in Florida----It’s been 109 years
since the earliest documented execution by hanging in Polk County. Plenty has
changed in the state of Florida concerning executions in the past century.
In the spring of 1910, Florida Gov. Albert Gilchrist signed a death warrant
mandating that Robert Dekle of Polk County be hanged for killing another man
and a woman 6 months earlier after an argument over a dice game.
It may be the earliest documented execution to have taken place in Polk County,
said Myrtice Young, historic preservation manager at the Polk County History
Center.
It also may have been the last.
At that time and until 1924, the responsibility for carrying out the governor’s
execution mandates fell to the county sheriffs, prompting the county to build a
gallows in the Polk County Jail around 1917. It’s uncertain how many times it
was used, if ever, before the state assumed control of executions in 1924, but
it remained in the county’s jailhouse for more than 50 years as a silent
testament to a bygone era.
“I remember seeing that gallows in the jail when I started working at the
Sheriff’s Office in 1972,” said Sheriff Grady Judd. “There was a trapdoor in
the floor, and in the ceiling there was an eye hook, where the rope went
through.”
When the county expanded the jail in the 1970s, a worker on the construction
crew snatched up the discarded trapdoor, along with some bars and other
memorabilia, and assembled a makeshift museum at his Lakeland home, Judd said.
When he died about a decade later, his wife called the Sheriff’s Office, asking
if the department wanted his collection.
“That’s Polk County history, so we definitely wanted it,” Judd said.
The Sheriff’s Office kept the trapdoor in storage until a place could be
identified to display it. That place came along about 20 years ago, when the
Polk County History Center opened in the county’s 1908 courthouse in Bartow.
The steel trapdoor remains as part of the center’s collection.
State takes control of executions
By 1924, sheriffs across the state convinced legislators that the state
Department of Corrections should assume responsibility for executions, and the
method should shift from hanging to electrocution. On Oct. 5, 1924, Frank
Johnson of Duval County became the 1st to die in Florida’s electric chair.
Since those early days, Florida’s laws governing the imposition of the death
penalty have remained fluid — changing to meet new standards in state and
federal law.
Until 1972, juries made their sentencing recommendations in death penalty cases
based on a presumption of death, said Tenth Judicial Circuit Public Defender
Rex Dimmig, whose office represents indigent defendants in Polk, Highlands and
Hardee counties.
“A jury had to have a majority vote to recommend mercy,” he said. “Otherwise,
the defendant got the death penalty.”
But a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1972 changed that, along with other elements
of the death penalty process.
The nation’s high court ruled that states, including Florida, were imposing the
death penalty arbitrarily, without a standard by which all cases were measured.
As a result, the sentences of the 96 inmates on Florida’s death row were
commuted to life imprisonment, and the Florida Legislature had to draft a law
including uniform standards. In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Florida’s
revised law, reinstating the death penalty statewide.
The state’s standards established a list of aggravating factors that
prosecutors could argue in seeking the death penalty, which can be used only in
premeditated murder cases. The changes also shifted the presumption — juries
now assumed a convicted murderer would get a recommendation for life
imprisonment unless there was a compelling reason to recommend the death
penalty, Dimmig said.
Under the law, the presiding judge decided whether prosecutors had proven those
aggravating factors.
That law remained in effect for 40 years — until the U.S. Supreme Court’s
ruling in Hurst vs. Florida in 2016 again upended the state’s death penalty
process.
Process declared unconstitutional
In January 2016, the nation’s high court ruled in a Pensacola murder case that
Florida’s death penalty process was unconstitutional. The justices ruled that
the state’s practice of giving judges, and not jurors, the authority to decide
whether the state had proven the aggravating factors supporting a death
sentence was flawed. As the legal finders of fact, only jurors held that
authority, the court ruled.
That ruling put death penalty cases across the state on hold until the
Legislature could revise the state’s death penalty law to reflect the Supreme
Court’s mandate.
That revision came in 2017, when the Legislature not only mandated that juries
decide which of the aggravating factors, if any, prosecutors have proven, but
also that juries agree unanimously on a sentencing recommendation. Before the
change, 12-member juries could recommend death based solely on a majority vote.
Revisions to the law also prohibited judges from overriding a life
recommendation and imposing a death sentence. They could, however, override
death and impose a life sentence.
(source: The Ledger)
*********************************
Executions and laws governing them evolve in Florida----Since 1927, Florida has
executed 9 Polk murderers
Earl “Poker Bill” London was the 1st to die.
On an April day in 1927, as London continued to assert his innocence, the state
took his life for killing Polk County Sheriff’s Deputy John E. Harrelson, who
was gunned down four months earlier as he pursued London and an accomplice for
robbing a grocery store.
Had he been convicted 4 years earlier, before the state assumed responsibility
for all executions, London might have been hanged in the gallows at the Polk
County Jail. But as it was, he became the 13th inmate statewide, and the 1st
from Polk County, to die in Florida’s electric chair.
In the decades that followed, 8 more Polk County men would die at the hands of
the state — all having been convicted of murder. 7 were electrocuted; 1 died by
lethal injection.
-- George Washington James, 54, was the 100th Florida inmate to die when he
was executed Oct. 29, 1943. A jury found him guilty of gunning down Wilmon
Green on Jan. 10, 1942. It was the second death warrant Gov. Spessard Holland,
a Bartow native, had signed on him, according to news reports. When Holland
signed the initial warrant, James’ lawyers appealed on grounds there had been
no black residents in the jury pool for James’ trial, creating a bias against
James, a black man. The appeal was repeatedly rejected, leading to the 2nd
death warrant. James became one of 35 inmates to be executed under Holland, who
signed more death warrants than any Florida governor before or since. He served
from 1941 to 1945.
-- Ernest Harper, 30, was executed Sept. 6, 1948, after pleading guilty to the
robbery and hatchet murder of Thomas P. Smith, a 68-year-old Winter Haven
bookkeeper, in August 1947. He became the 128th inmate executed by the state
when he died in the electric chair. He was a black man, like London, James and
Herman Barwicks, who would die in 1956. 2 more black inmates from Polk County
would later die by electrocution — Daniel Morris Thomas and Willie Jasper
Darden.
-- Elwood North, a Lake Wales mortician, drew nationwide attention in June
1951 when he was accused of killing Betty Albritton, widow of wealthy cattleman
I.W. Albritton, who had died suddenly under mysterious circumstances. She had
changed her will 4 days earlier, naming North as the sole benefactor to her
estimated $50,000 estate, and North, who recently had befriended the widow, was
alone with her as she took her last breath, according to news reports at that
time. He embalmed her and she was buried within four days of her death, leaving
no opportunity for an autopsy and raising questions about how she died. North,
35, was quickly arrested and convicted of 1st-degree murder, and his lawyers’
appeals were denied all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. North was among
three inmates executed Oct. 4, 1954, and he maintained his innocence to the
end.
-- Herman Barwicks, the last of 3 inmates to die by electrocution on Feb. 20,
1956, said nothing as he calmly walked to Old Sparky, the oaken execution chair
built by inmates in the 1920s. Barwicks, 28, had been convicted of killing his
common-law wife, Beatrice McNeal, 2 years earlier. -- Daniel Morris Thomas,
alleged leader of the Ski Mask Gang that terrorized Central Florida in the
mid-1970s, fought for his life to the very end. Convicted in 1977 for the fatal
shooting of Charles Anderson and the rape of his wife during a home-invasion
robbery in Polk City on New Year’s Day 1976, the 37-year-old Thomas kicked,
shouted obscenities and tried to bite the prison guards as they strapped him
into the electric chair on April 15, 1986, according to reports in The Ledger.
One guard pulled Thomas into a headlock as the condemned inmate fought his
captors. Thomas refused his last meal, and when asked if he had any final
words, he recited a lengthy statement accusing politicians of using the death
penalty for their own political gain.
Pending executions in 2019
These are the inmates whose death warrants remain active in the U.S.
Aug. 15: Stephen Michael West, Tenn.
Aug. 15: Dexter Johnson, Texas
Aug. 21: Larry Swearingen, Texas
Aug. 22: Gary Ray Bowles, Florida
Sept. 4: Billy Jack Crutsinger, Texas
Sept. 10: Mark Soliz, Texas
Sept. 25: Robert Sparks, Texas
Oct. 1: Russell Bucklew, Missouri
Oct. 2: Stephen Barbee, Texas
Oct. 16: Randall Mays, Texas
Oct. 30: Ruben Gutierrez, Texas
Nov. 3: Charles Rhines, So. Dakota
Nov. 6: Justen Hall, Texas
Dec. 5: Lee Hall Jr., Tenn.
Note: In 2019, there have been 2 inmates die on death row, Ohio has taken 3
executions off the list until an acceptable lethal-injection protocol is
established, while 4 others have been stayed or rescheduled.
[source: Death Penalty Information Center]
-- Willie Jasper Darden spent 14 years on Florida’s death row and dodged 5
death warrants before he was executed March 15, 1988 for the death of James
Carl Turman, who was shot between the eyes during a September 1973 robbery at
his Lakeland furniture store. On the day he was executed, Darden’s last meal of
steak and eggs went untouched, and after guards strapped him into the execution
chair, Darden continued to maintain his innocence in his final statement. He
said he bore no guilt and was going with a clear conscience, and he thanked
those who had supported his fight for justice. He was 65.
-- Phillip Atkins was executed Dec. 5, 1995, for killing his 6-year-old
neighbor, Antonio “Tony” Castillo, in September 1981. At his trial in 1982,
Atkins admitted to sexually molesting the boy and hitting him with a steel rod
out of fear he would tell his parents about the molestation. His lawyers told
jurors he had the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old child. Gov. Bob Martinez
had signed Atkins’ death warrant in October, and it was set to expire at noon
Dec. 5. Atkins, 40, was pronounced dead at 10:17 a.m. that morning. Atkins had
told prison officials he didn’t want a last meal, and turned his back when
offered a steak dinner. Instead, he drank 2 glasses of orange juice before
entering the execution chamber.
-- Eddie Wayne Davis was the 1st condemned inmate from Polk County to die by
lethal injection when he was executed July 10, 2014. 19 years earlier, a jury
had convicted him of kidnapping, raping and suffocating 11-year-old Kimberly
Waters, his former girlfriend’s daughter, and leaving her body in a trash bin.
Davis, 45, had no last words, but did eat a hearty meal earlier in the day of
chopped steak with onion gravy, home fries, corn, Brussels sprouts, cherry ice
cream and a Dr. Pepper. Then he spent some time with his mother and a Catholic
spiritual advisor. Strapped to a gurney with his left arm extended, Davis
murmured prayers as the execution team prepared for his death around him.
Eleven minutes after the drugs began flowing into his veins, Davis was
pronounced dead.
Since October 1924, when Frank Johnson of Duval County became the 1st condemned
murderer to be executed by the state, 294 condemned inmates have died in
Florida’s electric chair or by lethal injection, according to the Department of
Corrections. Most recently, convicted rapist and serial killer Bobby Joe Long,
65, of Tampa, died by lethal injection on May 23 at Florida State Prison near
Raiford, 34 years after he had been condemned to death.
Less than 3 weeks after Long was executed, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his 2nd
death warrant since taking office in January, ordering the execution of serial
killer Gary Ray Bowles, 57, for the 1994 murder of a Jacksonville Beach man.
Bowles is scheduled to die by lethal injection Aug. 22.
(source: News Chief)
LOUISIANA:
Jury selection continues through weekend----Prospective jurors need ability to
consider both life in prison and the death penalty
Jury selection continued Friday in Lafayette for the trial of a 57-year-old man
accused of 1st-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Louisiana State Trooper
Steven Vincent in 2015.
The trial of Kevin Daigle will take place in Lafayette after a full change of
venue was granted last year by Judge Clayton Davis.
As of Friday, 10 panels of jury members had been questioned and 55 potential
jurors had been “death qualified.” That means those people told the prosecution
and defense they had the ability to consider both life in prison or the death
penalty should Daigle be convicted.
More potential jurors will still be picked before a jury is seated and
alternates are finalized.
Vincent, a 13-year veteran of the Louisiana State Police force, was 44 when he
died Aug. 24, 2015.
Davis previously granted a motion by the defense to limit law enforcement
presence in the courtroom during Daigle’s trial. Additionally, some evidence in
this case remains under seal.
The prosecution team is composed of Lea Hall, Jacob Johnson, and Charles
Robinson of the Calcasieu Parish District Attorney’s office. The defense team
is made up of Kyla Romanach and Bruce E. Unangst.
Daigle’s defense team had continually pushed for a full change of venue for
trial, saying the team did not feel Daigle would get a fair trial in Calcasieu
Parish because residents of this area are emotionally invested in the loss of
Vincent.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Because of that factor, the jury selection process can take longer than usual.
Calcasieu District Attorney John DeRosier said the prosecution is looking for
“fair and impartial jurors” who can look at the case, weigh the evidence and
make their determination based on those things.
Romanach, during earlier questioning of potential jurors, told them the death
penalty is never “required.” She told prospective jurors they need the ability
to be able to consider both life in prison and the death penalty.
Those who cannot consider both are excused from serving on the jury.
If convicted of 1st-degree murder, the trial would move into the penalty phase
where jurors would hear testimony and decide if Daigle should receive the death
penalty.
Jury selection is expected to continue through the weekend in 15th Judicial
District Court in Lafayette.
(source: americanpress.com)
OHIO:
2 Columbus men charged in internet cafe robberies, including one involving
fatal shooting
2 Columbus men have been charged in connection with a series of armed robberies
at local internet gaming cafes, including one that resulted in the deaths of 2
people.
Deshan Townsend and Desjuan Harris appeard in federal court Friday.
The investigation was a joint operation between the Columbus Police and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI was involved because the cafes
are engaged in interstate commerce, making the crimes that occurred there
federal crimes.
Townsend and Harris were arrested by a Columbus SWAT team July 3.
The criminal complaint said two suspects went into Players Paradise on East
Broad Street during the early morning hours of Jan. 20.
According to court documents, the 2 tried to force their way past a female
employee and into the business’ office, which is when they were confronted by
an armed security guard.
Court documents state 1 of the suspects shot and killed both the guard, Joseph
Arrington, and his wife, the female employee, Karen Arrington.
The criminal complaint also alleges Townsend and Harris were responsible for an
earlier robbery at the same location, and another robbery at a diffent internet
cafe on Alum Creek Drive.
More arrests are possible, police said.
“This investigation is ongoing,” Ben Glassman, the U.S. Attorney for the
Southern District of Ohio, said. “If you take a close look at the complaint,
there’s an indication that these 2 were not the only people involved in these
robberies — so the investigation is ongoing and hopefully we will get to the
bottom of the entire scheme.”
The criminal complaint charges Townsend with 3 counts of interfering with
interstate commerce by robbery, 3 counts of brandishing a firearm during a
crime of violence, and 2 count of use of a firearm during the commission of a
crime of violence.
Harris is charged with 2 counts of interfering with interstate commerce by
robbery and 1 count of brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence.
Neither Townsend nor Harris is currently facing murder charges in connection
with the Jan. 20 incident.
If convicted of current charges, Harris could face life in prison. Townsend,
who has an additional charge of using a firearm, could face the death penalty.
(source: WCMH news)
ARKANSAS:
Death row inmate begs for mercy in teen’s case
Life on death row is taking its toll on Scotty Gardner.
From his cell in the Varner Unit, Gardner continues writing me letters in
support of the 2 boys accused of killing Elvia Fragstein. But, his tone has
changed.
Initially, Scotty was OK with the fact that he didn’t put up a fight in court.
He was OK with receiving the death penalty at the time. His thoughts on this
have changed, and now he hopes he can influence Faulkner County residents to
not sentence either of the Pine Bluff teens accused in the Fragstein case to
death.
The younger of the teens, Robert Smith III, cannot be sentenced to death
because he was 16 years old when the alleged offense occurred. A juvenile
transfer hearing in his case wrapped up Wednesday. However, no decision has
been made as to whether it will stay in adult court or move to the juvenile
division yet.
Smith’s older cousin is scheduled to stand trial in late September. Tacori D.
Mackrell faces a death sentence if found guilty.
Scotty feels these two are too young to be subjected to the death penalty. In
his own case, he now wishes he would have accepted a plea offer from local
prosecutors.
The death row inmate met with his attorney in late May. While his former
defender, Katherine S. Streett, stopped by to check in on Gardner, he says she
also reminded him he had the chance to take an offer from the state. It was
Scotty’s decision to face a jury -- a jury that found him guilty of capital
murder within 15 minutes and deliberated for about an hour before deciding he
would receive the death penalty.
“I told her the worst mistake wasn’t murder, it was making Faulkner County give
me the death sentence,” Gardner writes of his recent conversation with his
former attorney. “Kate reminded me I could have took a plea. I couldn’t say
anything other than ... I wish I would have.”
Facing a Faulkner County jury “ain’t no game or no joke,” Gardner said.
He asks for mercy. Not for him, but for Smith and Mackrell. As before, I find
so much hypocrisy behind Scotty’s letters.
Scotty claims the reasoning behind these letters has nothing to do with his
case, but to shed light on Smith and Mackrell’s cases. To make a plea with area
residents not to sentence the teens to death.
Where was this need for mercy when Scotty strangled Susan “Heather” Stubbs to
death in 2016?
Jail is not a great place to be, Scotty said. He also said he has learned life
on death row is worse.
“I know while your in jail you think damn, I just need some air — you just want
[to] go outside and move around — maybe play ball with your buddies, maybe just
look around,” he wrote. “Well, on death row it’s worse. I can’t go out on the
yard. I can’t go to the chow hall. I can’t get a job. I can’t do anything but
sit in this cell.”
As he listens to the yelling and screaming of other inmates each day, Gardner
said he hopes his words will remind others that “killing them isn’t justice.”
(source: Times Record)
UTAH:
Police expert: here’s what could have led to finding MacKenzie Lueck’s remains
After Friday’s announcement that police recovered the body of murdered
University of Utah student MacKenzie Lueck in Logan Canyon, nearly 75 miles
from where she was last seen, it brings up questions as to what led law
enforcement to that area.
Until Friday, the public has only known about the investigation and search at
suspect Ayoola Ajayi’s home in Salt Lake City.
It was in the home’s backyard that police said they found human tissue matching
MacKenzie’s DNA, in a burn pile in the backyard.
In a press conference Friday morning, Salt Lake City Police and Salt Lake
County District Attorney Sim Gill couldn’t give information on what tipped
investigators off to where they found her remains in Logan Canyon.
However, a law enforcement expert is giving a few possibilities, based on his
experience with investigations.
Chris Bertram, a retired deputy chief from the Unified Police Department, said
there are 2 probabilities.
“One is that he is cooperating, and we as the public just don't know that,” he
said in an interview Friday afternoon.
Bertram, now a private investigator and assistant professor at Salt Lake
Community College, indicated that if Ajayi is now cooperating with police, it
could be because a plea deal is in the works.
Another way the investigation may have taken police to Logan Canyon could have
been from digging into Ajayi’s background and technology data.
“It's important to remember that he lived in Logan,” Bertram said. “He may have
been comfortable with that area. As investigators have done the backgrounds on
him, they may have found areas that he was very familiar with or that he liked
to go to.”
In addition to that background information, he said police could have used
technology to trace and track Ajayi’s whereabouts during key moments in the
days after MacKenzie went missing.
“In that case — traveling or following cell phone sites, or tracking on his
phone, or maybe a tracking on the GPS in his vehicle — they may have absolutely
downloaded that and then able to determine where he was,” Bertram explained.
If they were able to find a specific location, he said investigators could have
gone and searched from there.
“They could have used other tools, like cadaver dogs or other type[s] of
technology, cameras in the area to determine where he was, and that could have
led them to the body,” Bertram said.
With the remains now recovered, he talked about how that could help answer some
huge questions in the investigation into her death.
“Can they determine how she died, and what were circumstances of that? What
surrounded that?” Bertram asked. “That will, again, strengthen for the district
attorney the case that they have, whether this is a capital case or a homicide
case.”
If this turns into a capital case, that could mean the state would seek the
death penalty or life in prison.
For now, with the discovery of Lueck's remains, Bertram said District Attorney
Sim Gill has enough to file formal charges and go to trial.
“Unless the subject is cooperating and they're making a deal arrangement, I
think at this point Sim has everything he needs to formally charge him,”
Bertram said. “Especially with the charges that he was booked into jail on.”
Ajayi is in the Salt Lake County Jail on suspicion of aggravated murder,
aggravated kidnapping, obstruction of justice and desecration of a body.
Gill said in the press conference Friday morning that they expected to file
charges early next week.
(source: Fox News)
USA:
‘WORSE THAN MURDER’----Could Secret Cables Have Saved Ethel Rosenberg From the
Electric Chair? Even as Ethel Rosenberg was strapped into the electric chair
for spying for Moscow in 1953, decrypted cables might have spared her. But they
were released only decades later.
At 8:11 on the evening of June 19, 1953, Ethel Rosenberg was strapped into the
electric chair at the New York State prison known as Sing Sing. She was 37
years old and the mother of two young sons. The chair, made of oak and iron,
had killed hundreds of convicted criminals over the years, including her
husband, Julius Rosenberg, a few minutes before. But the chair was not always
reliable, which was one reason inmates gave it the cynical name “Old Sparky.”
Two years earlier, when both Rosenbergs were convicted of spying for Moscow,
Federal Judge Irving R. Kaufman had handed down their death sentences. The
Rosenbergs’ crime, he said, was “worse than murder.” But in fact the penalty
was not about justice. It was about vengeance for a loss the American public
felt was so enormous that someone must be made to pay a horrible price.
It was “as if a society turned its magnifying lens on these people until they
caught fire and were burned alive,” said novelist E. L. Doctorow, whose The
Book of Daniel was a fictional account of the case.
(source: The Daily Beast)
*********************
Prosecutors struggle with criminal justice reform
Prosecutors are the most powerful people in the criminal justice system. As
sentencing guidelines and mandatory sentencing have diminished the influence of
judges, prosecutors have filled the void.
Prosecutors have an enormous amount of discretion. A prosecutor can decide who
gets charged; who gets a favorable plea; who goes to trial; and who walks with
a slap on the wrist. Some reform-minded practitioners have complained that
prosecutors’ laser focus on obtaining convictions and securing prison sentences
are a major reason for the soaring cost of mass incarceration.
There are an estimated 2,400 prosecutors’ offices across the country. The
biggest threat to the authority of prosecutors is from within. New prosecutors
are getting elected and bringing with them new ideas and a departure from the
old mantra “tough on crime.”
In Ferguson, Missouri - rocked by the unrest following the killing of Michael
Brown - Wesley Bell, a Ferguson city councilman, who worked with the Department
of Justice on the federal consent decree to reform the police department,
decided to run for district attorney.
He beat 7-term incumbent Bob McCulloch who refused to indict the police officer
who killed Brown. According to the ABA Journal, under McCulloch’s watch, the
Department of Justice “issued a scathing report that held the Ferguson Police
Department accountable for a sustained and egregious pattern of racial
profiling and abuse.”
In Orange County, Florida, Aramis Ayala pulled-off an upset victory over an
incumbent making her the first African American state’s attorney in Florida’s
history.
Just 2 months after taking office, Ayala announced that her office would no
longer seek the death penalty, arguing it was costly, inhumane and did not
deter violent crime or promote public safety. Florida Governor Rick Scott
challenged her prosecutorial discretion. Ayala sued, challenging Scott’s
authority to remove cases from her jurisdiction, but she lost in the Florida
Supreme Court. According to the ABA Journal, her office instituted a 7-attorney
panel to review all 1st-degree murder cases to determine whether the death
penalty would be appropriate. She won’t run for reelection in 2020.
Larry Krasner unexpectedly won the district attorney’s seat in Philadelphia. He
had been a public defender and a civil rights attorney, often taking on the
police.
Krasner instituted immediate reforms, according to the ABA Journal. He
announced the office would no longer prosecute sex workers with fewer than 3
prior offenses; would not prosecute marijuana possession cases; and would not
seek cash bail for low-level offenses.
Some current prosecutors are not accepting reform as inevitable. The district
attorney’s office in San Diego has proposed that plea bargains include a
provision that the defendant forego any future benefit from criminal justice
reform measures - including legislation or court decisions that might reduce
sentences.
There is no question that a defendant could waive his right to appeal in
exchange for a plea deal. However, the defendant knows the strength of his case
and the specific rights he is giving up. The district attorney in San Diego is
asking defendants to give up a right or privilege not yet known.
Robert Weisberg, a criminal law professor at Stanford University, told The
Marshall Project that the deals could raise constitutional questions.
Pleas must be knowing and voluntary and it is not clear if a person can give up
a right that does not yet exist.
“This one is pushing the envelope as far as it can go,” Weisberg said. “It’s a
pretty slick and aggressive prosecutorial move.”
The actions of the San Diego District Attorney’s Office may soon run afoul of
the separation of powers. The California legislature is considering a Bill that
would prohibit prosecutors from forcing defendants to waive yet unknown rights
in exchange for a favorable plea.
If such a law is enacted district attorney’s will be foreclosed from seeking
such waivers.
(source: Matthew Mangino, Dodge City Daily Globe)
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