August 18
TEXAS----impending execution
Texas death row inmate maintains innocence as latest execution date looms
"On December 8, 1998, Swearingen kidnapped and strangled a 19-year-old white
female."
This short statement is what you'll find under Larry Swearingen's death row
record for his summary of the incident. However, he's arguing that the details
of his case, and the murder of Melissa Trotter, are much more complex.
Larry Swearingen met Melissa Trotter, a 19-year-old Montgomery College student,
on December 6, 1998, where they had a conversation and exchanged numbers. They
planned on meeting up the next day, but Swearingen grew irritated when she
didn't arrive, according to co-workers.
They were spotted together on December 8 at the college library at 1:30 p.m.,
and were seen leaving together at 2:00 p.m. Melissa's car remained parked at
the school. This was the last time she was seen alive.
At 2:05 p.m., Swearingen returned a page and said he would have to call back
later because he was at lunch with a friend.
Swearingen returned to his trailer and left again sometime before 3:30 p.m.,
then returned again to the trailer sometime before 5:30 p.m., asked his
landlord some questions, then left again to pick up his wife, Terry Swearingen,
from his mother's house.
On December 11, Swearingen was arrested pursuant to unrelated outstanding
warrants.
On January 2, 1999, Melissa's body was found in Sam Houston National Forest
with a ligature made from pantyhose still tied around her neck. The police had
searched the area three times before her body was found by hunters. Swearingen
knew the area well.
Based on the state of decomposition, it was estimated that her body had been in
the woods for around 25 days, supporting the possible date of her death to be
December 8.
A supposed match to the other half of the pantyhose was found at the Swearingen
home, along with a pack of Malboro Lights and a lighter resembling one
belonging to Melissa. Neither Larry nor his wife smoked.
Fibers were found on Melissa's body matching Swearingen's jacket, car seat, and
carpet at his house. There were also hair strands in his car that looked to be
pulled from Melissa's head, showing definitively that she had been in
Swearingen's car at some point before her death.
Further incriminating evidence includes a letter that was written by Larry and
sent to his mother with the help of another inmate and a Spanish-English
dictionary from a woman named "Robin", claiming to know who Melissa's real
killer was. The letter gave insight into investigators' suspicions that
Melissa's death resulted from violence sparked by sexual rejection.
These are the undeniable facts of the case. Swearingen, however, clings to DNA
evidence and forensic science to maintain his innocence. He has been assigned
several execution dates, pushing back his death based on many of what he and
his attorneys perceive to be discrepancies.
They cite discrepancies in witness testimonies as well as cell phone records to
place Swearingen at different locations at key dates and times in the case,
according to his website.
The main focus of the defense, however, has been on the state of Melissa's
remains and DNA testing and evidence.
Statements from two other medical examiners have reevaluated Melissa's autopsy
report and estimated that based on lack of insect and bacteria colonies and
general state of her body and tissues upon discovery, the remains could have
only been in the forest for just under a week at most, even with the
near-freezing low winter temperatures. A statement such as this implies that
Swearingen is innocent since he was in jail three days after Melissa went
missing, and much longer before her estimated death according to this analysis.
One examiner allows for the exception of post-mortem refrigeration before her
body was deposited at the location, but says the absence of certain signs of
this on the body, this is not likely.
Additionally, Swearingen's attorneys have claimed that none of the DNA evidence
has definitively placed Larry at the scene of Melissa's body. Their appeals
have consisted of requests for DNA testing on Melissa's fingernail scrapings,
the ligature used for strangulation as well as the alleged other half found at
Larry's home, cigarette butts found near her body not offered at trial, various
items of her clothing, the rape kit, and hairs and hairbrush collected from the
scene.
After several appeals and a debacle involving another inmate rumored to be
taking the fall for Melissa's murder, DNA samples were finally tested, with no
conclusive evidence. Authorities were hesitant to test due to the "mountain of
evidence" already stacked against Swearingen.
Due to this process, DNA testing laws have changed in death penalty cases.
Previously, if it was unknown if there was biological evidence, it didn't need
to be tested, even if invisible to the naked eye. Now, courts can grant testing
of key evidence that has “a reasonable likelihood of containing biological
material”—such as skin, saliva or sweat. Swearingen's attorneys have used this
avenue of possibility for repeated appeals.
As of 2019, DNA testing on evidence has made no major changes to the case. DNA
on the cigarette butts found near Melissa's body only led back to the hunters
that found her.
Swearingen's case has attracted attention from many non-profit organizations
willing to back up his claims, including the Innocence Project and The
Innocence Network. Additionally, judges have given dissenting opinions.
There is no new DNA evidence left to test and no pending appeals. Swearingen's
execution is set for August 21, 2019, with no current sign of more delays.
After 2 long decades without their daughter, the Trotter family is ready to end
this chapter and obtain justice for lost Melissa.
(source: Fox News)
************************
Commissioner Koch: Why Dallas County should stop pursuing the death penalty
In my opinion the death penalty is constitutional. It is also my opinion that
there exists overwhelming evidence that the death penalty is often dispensed in
an unjust fashion. My opinion matters only because I am one of five members of
a body that funds Dallas County's efforts to bring about the death of an
individual who has committed capital murder. Ultimately, it is solely the
discretion of the district attorney to seek the death penalty in any case.
It's no secret that Dallas County is experiencing an increase in crime rates,
which many of us, including me, view to be a serious crisis. Financially,
seeking the death penalty is very expensive and only getting costlier. If the
millions of dollars spent trying and appealing death penalty cases are
redirected to law enforcement efforts right now, we have the ability to curtail
a frightening trend in crime and hopefully save lives. I think that is a better
use of funds, but that reallocation can only be set in motion if District
Attorney John Creuzot agrees to that direction. I offered the suggestion that
saved funds be used to stop human trafficking, but sadly there are so many
problems spiraling out of control that any number of enforcement uses would be
an improvement.
But more importantly, there is thorough and unbiased evidence that African
Americans and Hispanics receive the death penalty at significantly higher rates
than Caucasians. That should to give everyone pause. This analysis is focused
only on those found guilty of murder, i.e., if you have 10 white murderers and
10 black murderers, two white murderers will get the death penalty while six
black murderers will get the death penalty. Further study has revealed that the
more an individual looks stereotypically African, the greater likelihood he
will receive the death penalty within a comparison of other African Americans.
These are nationwide phenomena and the trend holds true even for juries that
are majority-minority.
So why should we care? They are all murderers, right? The answer is simple and
ancient: "To do harm is to do yourself harm. To do an injustice is to do
yourself an injustice — it degrades you. And you can also commit injustice by
doing nothing" (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations ).
The reason I have asked for a two-year moratorium is that I believe we can
study this issue and find juror screening techniques to identify implicit bias.
We can fix this, and we should at least try to fix it. While I believe that the
death penalty is constitutional under the Eighth Amendment (regarding cruel and
unusual punishment), I do believe it is ripe for a challenge under the Fifth
Amendment (regarding due process) because of the disproportionate effect on
minorities.
The U.S. Supreme Court has traditionally analyzed the penalty phase of death
penalty cases based on the specifics of each individual case presented, but
that style of analysis could be coming to an end. Statistical analysis is
continually creeping into other bodies of case law and could seriously
undermine death penalty jurisprudence. It could end the practice entirely. I
would rather be ready for those expensive challenges in the future by having
robust findings on what we are doing to make the process fair. We must hold up
findings that indicate that we have implemented screening in Dallas County to
avoid implicit bias and ultimately, injustice.
If we are going to be in the business of tax-funded, deliberate ending of life,
we should be satisfied that we are doing it in the most cautious and thoughtful
manner. The murderer is the most odious of offenders, but we must be sure he or
she receives justice regardless of the evil. As a society, we would do
ourselves a great credit by treating the most morally repugnant in a just
manner. Otherwise, we degrade ourselves.
(source: Commentnary; J.J. Koch is a Dallas County Commissioner. He wrote this
column for The Dallas Morning News)
FLORIDA----impending executuion
Serial killer of gay men set for Thursday execution
Gary Ray Bowles started his eight-month murderous binge in Daytona Beach by
killing John Hardy Roberts on March 14, 1994, inside the victim’s beachside
home and now he is set to be the 99th death row inmate executed in Florida in
modern times.
The killing spree began in Daytona Beach.
Eventually, in 1994, 6 men were savagely beaten and choked. One was bludgeoned
with a discarded toilet.
Each man fought for his life, but lost.
In every case, the victims had something crammed down their throats — a towel,
wads of toilet paper, a fistful of dirt.
On Thursday, their killer, Gary Ray Bowles, is scheduled to be executed by
lethal injection.
Executions mark the end of some of society’s most heinous killings, but they
also elicit objections to the practice of state-sponsored death. Holding the
opposing view may become more difficult when it is argued on the behalf of an
unrepentant serial murderer like Bowles, but there is still no end to the
debate about the death penalty’s value.
Bowles, 57, started his 8-month homicidal binge by killing John Hardy Roberts,
59, on March 14, 1994, inside the victim’s beachside home in Daytona Beach. He
was arrested a few days after killing his sixth victim, Walter Hinton, 42, in
Jacksonville on Nov. 20, 1994.
Bowles committed 3 murders in Florida — in Daytona Beach, Jacksonville and
Hilliard. He killed 2 other men in Georgia — 1 in Savannah and the other in
Atlanta. He also murdered a man in Wheaton, Maryland.
He would say to the world during a television interview years later how
remarkably easy it was to kill someone. Yet every killing he carried out was a
bloodbath.
“Each of the murders was brutal,” said Bernie de la Rionda, a long-time
Jacksonville-area homicide prosecutor who sought and attained a conviction and
death sentence for Bowles.
De la Riona said in every case the victims fought vigorously while suffering
from “unexplainable pain” at the hands of their killer.
“It was not an instant death,” he said. “It (wasn’t) like somebody getting shot
and dying from that gunshot. ... It was a life-and-death struggle.”
De la Rionda, 62, has tried close to 100 homicide cases during his career, with
roughly a third of them resulting in death sentences. He attended his 1st
execution in August 2017, when Mark Asay was put to death. Barring any
last-minute reprieves, Thursday will be his 2nd.
Few of de la Rionda’s successful prosecutions involved anyone who compared to
Bowles’ notoriety. The elusive serial murderer, dubbed the “I-95 Killer” during
a months-long manhunt, was profiled on TV’s “America’s Most Wanted” five times
and was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
Bowles did not answer a News-Journal request last week for an interview.
Learning to hustle
Gary Ray Bowles was born Jan. 25, 1962, in Clifton Forge, Virginia, but he
wasn’t raised there. His father died from black lung disease 6 months before he
was born.
While a child, he moved from place to place as his mother married again and
again. At least two of Bowles’ stepfathers physically and mentally abused him,
according to court testimony.
He told an interviewer in 2013 that he fought back against the last stepfather
who beat him, but it didn’t end well. His mother came to the defense of her
husband and not her son. Overflowing with resentment, Bowles left home at 14.
With only a middle school education, Bowles discovered a way to earn money.
Starting in his teen years, he prostituted himself to gay men.
Tom Youngman, a retired homicide and crime scene investigator with the Daytona
Beach Police Department, was one of a battery of investigators who interviewed
Bowles following his arrest. He asked Bowles why he chose gay men as his murder
victims.
“He said they only perform an act on him and he never did (to) them,” Youngman
said last week. “I said, ‘Well, that’s homosexuality,’ and he says, ‘No.’
“Then what are you if you’re not a homosexual?” Youngman asked Bowles.
“I’m a hustler,” Bowles replied.
Bowles drifted around the country while a teen. He lived in Illinois,
Louisiana, Missouri and Florida. His 1st arrest, a marijuana charge, came at
17.
In 1982, at age 20, Bowles was sentenced to eight years in prison in
Hillsborough County for sexual battery with a weapon. The victim was tortured
and her wounds were severe.
John Best, a retired Savannah police homicide detective, said he uncovered a
lot of heinous details about Bowles’ criminal life. The 1982 sexual battery in
Tampa, he said, was the work of a sadist.
Best provided to The News-Journal a copy of the Florida Department of
Corrections Probation Post-Investigation Report related to Bowles’ case in
which a Tampa police detective stated, “I have never ever seen a case this bad.
I have seen better pictures of victims in a morgue.”
Bowles served less than 3 years following his sexual battery conviction and
wound up in Volusia County, where he was arrested on robbery and grand theft
charges and sentenced to five more years behind bars. He served less than half
of his sentence before being paroled again in December 1993.
He gravitated to the bar scene in Daytona Beach. He knew that’s where he could
find victims to hustle.
During his time there, he fell for an older woman and lived with her in an
apartment on Fairview Avenue. She left him, according to news reports, after
she learned how he made money with gay men. Bowles later told police she also
had an abortion of his child without telling him.
That, he told authorities, was what led him to hate homosexuals. He blamed them
for killing his unborn child.
Before he and the woman broke up, Bowles had met 59-year-old John Hardy Roberts
at a beachside bar, the Barn Door on Main Street. Roberts was a single gay man
who lived near the Boardwalk.
Shortly after his girlfriend left him, Bowles moved in with Roberts.
Bowles kept pining for his lost girlfriend after he moved in to Roberts’ home.
Roberts didn’t like that. He told his new companion he had to make a choice.
The killing starts
Roberts, a native of Tennessee, lived at 504 Vermont Ave.
A friend of his came over to his house on March 15, 1994. No one had seen or
heard from Roberts in more than 24 hours.
Every door and window was locked, so the friend broke a rear kitchen door and
entered. He found his friend lying on the living room floor. He was bloodied
and had a towel stuffed in his mouth.
Daytona Beach police were called to the home. A stream of blood had run from
Roberts’ head to a nearby bedroom.
There was a marble-top table overturned. Shards of glass were spread across the
room. Food had been flung onto the floor. A broken lamp lay on the couch where
it appeared Roberts had been sitting before he was attacked.
“He probably snuck up on him,” Youngman said. “When I talked to (Bowles),
that’s what he said. He picked the lamp up, came up behind him and then hit him
and then he struggled.”
The struggle was ferocious. One of Roberts’ fingertips was nearly torn off.
The stream of blood that flowed out of Roberts’ body indicated he didn’t die
quickly. One only bleeds out that much while the heart is still pumping,
Youngman said.
Roberts was beaten and choked by his killer. Detectives later said Bowles
killed Roberts after the latter gave him an ultimatum — choose me or your
ex-girlfriend.
Police spoke to a neighbor who had come home from work around 4 p.m. the day
after Roberts was murdered. She reported seeing a man in his 30s “casually
standing” in front of Roberts’ house. He was sipping from a mug and behaving as
though nothing was wrong. When she walked back outside a few moments later, the
man was gone. Police were called hours later and found the body.
A couple days after the news broke about Roberts murder, The News-Journal
published Bowles’ name. Police said at the time that Bowles was not a suspect.
They needed information from him.
Behind the scenes, investigators had their suspicions.
“We certainly wanted to talk to him,” said Alison Sylvester, a former Daytona
Beach police detective who was the lead investigator in the case.
She said a piece of paper was found underneath the flipped table. It was from
Probation and Probation Services and it had Bowles’ name and case number on it.
“That nice calling card that he left with his name on it, that was helpful,”
Sylvester said last week.
A camera from an ATM also captured an image of a smiling Bowles attempting to
use Roberts’ bank card. He failed to extract any cash from the machine, but did
make use of Roberts’ credit cards and car. He headed north and bought gas and
food at various convenience stores before dumping the car near Nashville,
Tennessee. That’s where police lost track of him.
He showed up weeks later in Washington D.C.
Killing spree
Bowles’ next murder victim was found in Maryland. David Jarman of Wheaton was
found strangled in his home on April 14, 1994.
Witnesses said they saw Jarman with Bowles in a bar in DuPont Circle, a
historic district of Washington D.C. patronized by gay men. The pair left
together and Jarman was never seen alive again.
Authorities said a sex toy had been crammed down Jarman’s throat.
The victim’s driver’s license, credit cards and vehicle were stolen. Bowles
used one of Jarman’s credit cards to book a motel room in Baltimore, according
to a story the Washington Post published after the killing.
Again, Bowles remained one step ahead of law enforcement.
In some respects, Bowles was sloppy, Youngman said. There is no other way to
explain how he could leave behind such an obvious clue as a parole and
probation document at a crime scene and then try to get cash with a stolen ATM
card a mile or so away from the victim’s home. On the other hand, he was an
experienced drifter. Bowles knew how to remain on the lam.
Bowles headed south again and settled — at least for a few days — in Savannah.
There, he killed 72-year-old Milton Bradley.
A World War II veteran, Bradley suffered a shrapnel wound during the war and
later underwent a lobotomy. He was slow, but his pension and his family
sustained him financially and locals looked out for him. He was regularly seen
around town.
Bowles hung out with Bradley at a tavern on Lincoln Avenue. The two left
together and Bowles drove him to an abandoned utility shed on a golf course and
killed him.
“It was a violent crime scene,” said retired detective John Best, who had just
started investigating homicides for Savannah police. “It was overkill.”
The men in Savannah’s gay community were very willing witnesses. Bowles had
come on to some of them and they came away “creeped out,” Best said. They had
seen him with Bradley.
A palm print was recovered at the scene. An old toilet was used to bludgeon
Bradley. The lid and the tank were broken and there were cuts on his body, Best
said.
Dirt and leaves had been jammed into Bradley’s mouth. His windpipe was clogged.
His pockets had been turned inside out.
Eight days later, Bowles murdered Alverson Carter Jr., 47, of Atlanta. Carter
was fatally stabbed.
Six days after that, he murdered Albert Alcie Morris, 37, in Hilliard, a town
in Nassau County about 30 minutes northwest of Jacksonville.
Morris’ body was discovered inside his home by his parents.
The scenario was strikingly similar to what had happened 2 months earlier in
Daytona Beach. Morris and Bowles, according to law enforcement, were seen
together at a Jacksonville gay bar. Morris invited Bowles to stay at his home
for a few days.
Morris, also like Roberts, fought back against his attacker. Bowles used a
marble dish to beat Morris and also shot him in the chest. A towel was stuffed
into his mouth.
Bowles found something in Morris’ home that helped him prolong his fugitive
status. He discovered a driver’s license, Social Security card and birth
certificate belonging to a Timothy Whitfield. Morris’ relationship to Whitfield
is unclear, but Bowles used the Whitfield alias during the next 4 months.
Bowles was jailed at least twice during that time for minor infractions, but
law enforcement unsuspectingly booked him under the fake name. Bowles
eventually spent five days in jail for an offense committed by the real Timothy
Whitfield, but Bowles didn’t want to blow his cover, so he quietly served the
time. Police never figured out Whitfield’s real identity, even though by this
time, Bowles had been featured on a prime-time network crime show and had been
profiled in Newsweek and USA Today.
On Nov. 19, 1994, Bowles was put on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.
One day later, he murdered 42-year-old Walter Hinton, a Jacksonville floral
designer who, like Roberts and Morris, invited Bowles to stay with him.
Bowles was arrested at a day labor office the morning of Nov. 22 on suspicion
of killing Hinton. When he saw the authorities show up, he tried hiding in the
bathroom.
He was brought in for questioning. It took hours, but the suspect known as
Timothy Whitfield eventually broke down and admitted everything to Jacksonville
Sheriff’s Office detectives.
“Look, I’m tired of this,” he told investigators. “Do you really want to know
who I am? I’m Gary Ray Bowles.”
Afterward, he confessed to killing 6 men and stealing from them. He said he
wanted the killings to stop
“I’m either getting 6 life sentences or the electric chair,” he reportedly said
during his interview.
Death sentence
The Sheriff’s Office called authorities in Maryland, Florida and Atlanta to
tell them the news. Best drove down from Savannah and Youngman drove up from
Daytona Beach. They were among the out-of-town detectives who showed up to have
their face-to-face time with the killer they had been seeking for months.
“He blamed his childhood. He blamed his alcohol abuse,” Best said, recalling
Bowles’ answers to his questions.
“He just had a lot of pent-up anger,” he continued. “Sure, his childhood played
a role, but he was an opportunist. Once he robbed and killed his 1st victim, it
became easy for him after that.”
In May 1996, Bowles stunned prosecutors when he pleaded guilty to killing
Hinton. They still decided to pursue the death penalty, based on the facts of
the case. Hinton’s head was bashed with a 40-pound concrete block and he had
been suffocated with toilet paper and a wash cloth, according to court
testimony.
?(Mr. Hinton) put up a heck of a fight for his life,” de la Rionda told jurors
during Bowles’ sentencing hearing, according to a story in The Florida
Times-Union. “His skull was fractured, but his brain was still intact. He
attempted to live, in a valiant effort.”
Jurors recommended death in a 10-2 vote in July 1996. The judge sentenced him
to death later that summer. The following year, Bowles pleaded guilty to
murdering Morris and Roberts and received consecutive life sentences for those
crimes. Authorities in Georgia and Maryland declined to prosecute him.
In August 1998, the Florida Supreme Court overturned Bowles’ death sentence,
saying de la Rionda was wrong to introduce Bowles’ hatred of homosexuals as
evidence.
The following May, jurors heard evidence again on whether to recommend life or
death. They were unanimous the second time. Bowles was transported back to
death row in September 1999, where he has remained for 20 years living in a
6-by-9-foot cell.
State executions aren’t as popular
Public opinion for the death penalty has changed significantly since the
mid-1990s, when support for it reached its apex, according to the Death Penalty
Information Center in Washington, D.C., a group that doesn’t advocate for or
against the death penalty, but aims to publicize all of the system’s flaws.
Since then, support has fallen about 25 percentage points, said Robert Dunham,
the center’s executive director.
“There is rising opposition to the death penalty,” Dunham said. “People who
support it in theory can’t support it the way it is being practiced.”
Following a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2016, death sentences were halted
for a time in Florida on the basis that the state’s death penalty statute
violated the Sixth Amendment. The Florida Legislature subsequently made changes
to the law. In order for death sentences to be carried out, jurors must now be
unanimous in favor of death.
Additionally, circuit judges previously had the power to overturn a jury’s life
recommendation and sentence a 1st-degree murder defendant to death. That no
longer is the case.
The state required all post-2002 death penalty cases that did not have
unanimous juries be reviewed by the state attorneys in their respective
judicial circuits. Several of Florida’s killers are still awaiting new
sentencing hearings for murders they committed more than a decade ago.
But Bowles was sentenced in 1999 and the jury was unanimous, so his case never
came under review.
“Virtually everybody (on death row) in Florida was unconstitutionally sentenced
to death,” Dunham said, referring to those who received death sentences prior
to 2002. “The executions that happened were for those who were sentenced under
an unconstitutional process.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was sworn into office in January, has signed two death
warrants. Bowles was the second. It was signed June 11. He will become the 99th
inmate executed in Florida since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death
penalty in 1976.
Florida used the electric chair to execute condemned killers until 2000, when
the Florida Legislature passed a law that allowed for lethal injection as an
alternative method.
When an inmate is executed, the executioner, who is paid $150 and remains
anonymous, administers 200 mg of etomidate, an anesthetic agent and 20 ml of a
saline solution. Afterward, after it is determined the inmate is unconscious,
he or she is given 1,000 mg of rocuronium bromide, a powerful muscle relaxant,
and an additional 20 ml of a saline solution. After that, a fatal dose of
potassium acetate is injected, which stops the inmate’s heart.
Florida’s first execution was in 1979. It has averaged more than two executions
per year since then — some of whom have been serial killers. Serial killers
included Ted Bundy, Aileen Wuornos, David Alan Gore, Danny Rolling, Oscar Ray
Bolin and Bobby Joe Long, who was the most recent death row inmate to be
executed. He was put to death on May 23.
Florida’s long list of notorious killers has likely contributed to its
residents’ general support of capital punishment.
“I think the majority of Floridians still support the death penalty, although a
growing number have serious concerns about it,” Dunham said.
Dunham’s organization does not take a position on capital punishment, but it
does point out that states have shown an “overall inability” to administer the
death penalty fairly and non-arbitrarily, he said.
Even still, he admitted that Bowles could never be “the poster child for
abolition” of the death penalty.
No one directly involved in the Bowles investigation who spoke to The
News-Journal has any second thoughts about executing Bowles.
“I think it’s a just sentence,” said Best, who pointed out that Bowles’ violent
streak goes as far back as 1982, when he raped a woman in Tampa. “I don’t think
he’s going to be missed. Even though he’s in a prison cell, he can wake up
every day. His murder victims can’t do that anymore.”
Youngman said he thinks a death sentence is the only appropriate punishment for
Bowles. To him, the only inappropriate part has been the extended wait.
“He killed 6 people,” he said. “You can prove it, without a doubt. So why not?
It’s time.”
Last Tuesday, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously rejected Bowles’ latest
appeal, in which Bowles’ attorneys claimed he was intellectually disabled and
should be spared from execution.
23 years ago, Bowles’ trial attorneys pointed to his troubled childhood and the
abuse he suffered in an effort to convince jurors not to recommend death. The
jurors weren’t swayed, and neither was Norma Cole, Hinton’s mother, who spoke
to The Florida Times-Union after the original jury in the case recommended
death.
“I’m sorry the abuse affected him in the way it did,” she said. “I’m sorry
anyone has difficulty like that in life. But I haven’t had such an easy life,
either.”
Cole was Hinton’s last living close relative. She died in January.
(source: gainesville.com)
OHIO:
Church protests resuming of death penalty
Members and friends of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent recently held
a vigil outside the church to protest the death penalty. The vigil was
organized as a response to the recent decision by the U.S. attorney general to
resume use of the federal death penalty after a 2-decade hiatus. Church and
community activists call for an end to both the federal and state death
penalties as cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of human rights.
Andrew Rome, the Social Justice Coordinator for the Unitarian Universalist
Church of Kent, said, “Our church affirms the inherent worth and dignity of
every person, including those convicted of crimes. We stand together with
people of every faith demanding moral action to end the death penalty.” Rome
explains, “It is fundamentally wrong to execute people and call it justice.
America disproportionately executes people of color and the poor, another
symptom of white supremacy. Despite extensive appeals that make the death
penalty cost more than life imprisonment, we know that we have mistakenly
executed people innocent of the crimes for which they were charged. By
comparing states with and without the death penalty, we know that this
punishment does not serve as a deterrent to crime. There is no just reason to
continue the death penalty.”
There are currently 61 inmates on federal death row and 138 inmates on Ohio
death row.
(source: record-courier.com)
TENNESSEE:
“One By One, They’re Dying”: Activists Protest Tennessee’s th Execution in a
Year
On the Saturday before Tennessee killed Stephen Michael West, the 5th man to be
executed in the state’s death chamber since August 2018, some 20 people
gathered in a parking lot just down the road from Riverbend Maximum Security
Institution in Nashville. It was not yet 7 a.m., and the air was already thick
with humidity. People wore hats and comfortable shoes and passed around
sunscreen.
“We’re marching to offer the governor a holy moment,” Dan Mann said after
everyone had formed a circle. One of a dedicated group of religious visitors to
Riverbend’s Unit 2, which houses the condemned, Mann spoke about the last time
he saw Don Johnson, who was executed in May. Johnson became an ordained elder
with the Seventh Day Adventist Church while on death row. As his execution date
approached and his lawyers sought clemency, Johnson’s stepdaughter shared the
story of how she forgave him for killing her mother. Advocates described his
positive impact at Riverbend. But no one was able to convince Tennessee Gov.
Bill Lee to spare Johnson’s life.
Visitation to Unit 2 is held every Monday night. During the last visit before
he was taken to “death watch,” Johnson had led a prayer that still moves Mann
to tears. “He prayed for us, individually and collectively,” he recalled. “He
prayed for the governor. And he prayed that we would find peace in the
following days.” Following Johnson’s execution, 32 of the 55 men remaining on
Tennessee’s death row had signed a letter to the governor, asking if he would
come to Riverbend to pray with them. Lee, after all, had campaigned as a prison
reformer and a devout Christian before assuming office this year. But he never
responded to the letter.
With another man set to die on August 15, Mann and others formed an “ad-hoc
group of friends of current and former Tennessee death row inmates” to step up
the pressure on Lee to respond. They announced a march to take place August 10,
starting at Riverbend and ending in front of the state Capitol downtown. A pair
of banners would make the procession visible from afar. One quoted Jesus from
his Sermon on the Mount — “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive
mercy” — with the hashtag #March4Mercy. The other, courtesy of Ohio-based Death
Penalty Action, had been held outside death chambers across the country. It
read, “We remember the victims … BUT NOT WITH MORE KILLING.”
Around 7:30 a.m. Mann distributed badges bearing the names of the 32 men who
signed the letter to Lee. The marchers clipped them to their clothes. The one
reading “Stephen West” would be passed around throughout the march, author and
activist Shane Claiborne explained, so that everyone could hold him in their
thoughts. The group walked from the parking lot to Cockrill Bend Boulevard and
stopped at the entrance of Riverbend. They then set off east toward downtown
Nashville.
“There weren’t any executions for a while, and they really weren’t putting
people on death row,” Riggs said. And now, “one by one, they’re dying.”
The route was nearly nine miles long. A blue minivan followed along, carrying a
cooler full of water bottles, ready to pick up anyone who might succumb to the
August heat. The group ranged from teenagers to senior citizens, walking slowly
and stopping for breaks. Some drivers honked in support; one man offered a
donation.
As the group arrived on the campus of Tennessee State University, Pastor Kevin
Riggs of the Franklin Community Church in Williamson County, where the governor
is from, talked about a cross he wears every day, made for him by a condemned
man in his 70s. “It’s got a little bit of weight to it, so I can feel it,” he
said. “It reminds me to pray for the prisoners.”
Riggs echoed what others have said about the current atmosphere on death row.
“There’s a somberness,” he said, a feeling that “I could be next.” Until last
summer, Tennessee had not carried out an execution in nearly a decade — and, as
in other states, new death sentences have dropped year after year.
“Since there weren’t any executions for a while, and they really weren’t
putting people on death row, you’ve got this core group of inmates who, that’s
been their family for 20-plus years,” Riggs said. And now, “one by one, they’re
dying.”
It’s been just over a year since the death of Billy Ray Irick marked the return
of executions to Tennessee. At a time when many states are turning away from
capital punishment, Tennessee’s sudden killing spree has left many people
feeling shell-shocked and drained. “It’s turned into something none of us here
have ever seen before,” said Jeannie Alexander, the former prison chaplain at
Riverbend.
Tennessee was never considered one of the country’s leading death penalty
states — certainly not compared to many of its Southern neighbors. After the
state’s death penalty law was revised in the 1970s, heralding the so-called
modern death penalty era, executions did not resume until 2000. Six people were
put to death over nine years. Now Tennessee has carried out 5 executions since
last summer.
2 of those men opted to die in the electric chair — and West would become the
third. Their decision was rooted in well-founded fears that, although
electrocution is grisly, Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol may be worse.
Attorneys with the Office of the Federal Public Defender tried unsuccessfully
last summer to challenge the three-drug formula using midazolam; experts warned
the method would make the condemned feel like they were drowning and being
burned alive. Witness accounts of the subsequent executions by lethal injection
described a number of red flags. One anesthesiologist concluded that Irick had
been tortured to death.
For Tennesseans paying attention, the five executions have offered a crash
course, not only on execution methods, but in the profiles of those who end up
on death row.
The return to the electric chair is particularly horrifying to David Raybin, a
high-profile defense attorney who once worked in the Tennessee Attorney
General’s Office. Raybin was fresh out of law school in 1976 when he was asked
to write Tennessee’s revised death penalty law, based on a model “we perceived
to be state-of-the-art” at the time, as he told me last year. Decades later,
after leaving the AG’s office and becoming a defense lawyer, Raybin watched a
client die in the electric chair, a punishment he called “barbaric in the
extreme.” Although he does not oppose the death penalty in theory, he has
vocally criticized the way his law has been used in practice.
For Tennesseans paying attention, the five executions have offered a crash
course, not only on execution methods, but in the profiles of those who end up
on death row. Court filings and clemency petitions disclose lives marked by
trauma, abuse, and especially untreated mental illness. Nashville Scene
reporter Steven Hale, who has led the coverage of Tennessee’s executions — and
served as a witness for 3 — pointed out that West, like three of the others
executed since August, had a history of mental illness. In fact, he was “born
in a mental health institution, the one his mother had been placed in after she
attempted suicide while pregnant with him.”
The public’s knee-jerk response to such stories is often dismissive: Plenty of
people experience trauma without going on to kill or victimize others. Amid
fears of violent crime, abolitionists can have an especially difficult time
getting their message heard. The #March4Mercy was organized just as local news
stations were consumed by a prison escape on August 7 that left a veteran
Tennessee Department of Correction employee dead. The escaped man had not yet
been apprehended when the march was underway, and billboards showed his face
over the highways. By the time he was caught on August 11, the death penalty
was already on the table.
It was around 10:20 a.m. when the march reached Jefferson Street Missionary
Baptist Church on Nashville’s historically black North Side. Riggs, the
Williamson County pastor, was talking about a man on death row whose large
African American family organizes reunions every summer. They share photos with
him, which he then shares with visitors. “But he tells the story as if he was
there,” Riggs said. “He’ll say, ‘Then we did this,’ and ‘This is what we had
for supper,’ and ‘Then my aunt so-and-so, she told this funny story.’” If you
ask the men at Unit 2 what most concerns them right now, Riggs said, each of
them says they are worried about how this moment is affecting their families.
At the Jefferson Street church, marchers rested in the pews. Some prayed.
Others just basked in the air conditioning. As the group prepared to set off
again, Napoleon Harris, a pastor at a different church, changed into a T-shirt
that read “Stop Executions.” Harris had called on the governor to intervene in
the case of Don Johnson. But he’d also recently angrily decried Lee’s decision
to continue the state’s tradition of commemorating the birthday of slave trader
and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose bust still sits in the
rotunda at the state Capitol.
With the past 5 executions all involving white men, the death penalty’s racial
bias has gone relatively unmentioned in Tennessee. But this is starting to
change. Among those with execution dates scheduled in 2020 is Abu Ali
Abdur’Rahman, sent to death row by a prosecutor with a reputation for racism. A
Metro Nashville Criminal Court judge will soon consider a claim that the
prosecutor used “racist stereotyping” to strike black jurors at the trial. And
a major study in the Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy recently found that
black people are disproportionately represented on the state’s death row. The
trend has become more pronounced as new death sentences have dwindled. Of the 9
trials over a recent 10-year period that ended in a death sentence, the authors
found, all but one of the defendants sent to death row were black.
It was approaching noon when the state Capitol finally came into view. Sweaty
and tired but upbeat, the group carried the banners up the steep green lawn.
They then turned toward Nashville’s Legislative Plaza, gathering under a row of
magnolia trees. There were speakers, a song by a local musician, and an
invitation for passersby to join the vigil, which would last until Monday
morning. A table was set up with postcards addressed to the governor. On one
side of the cards was an image of the 32 signatures from the men on death row;
on the other, an area for people to write messages of their own.
Standing before the banners in a T-shirt featuring an image of Johnny Cash at
Folsom Prison and the words “Freedom Now,” Alexander, the former Riverbend
chaplain, held the mic in one hand and pointed toward the Department of
Correction building with the other. “There are people who work at the Tennessee
Department of Correction who are being paid to murder people that we know,” she
said. “The death certificate says ‘homicide.’ So let’s call it what it is.”
On Sunday afternoon, an East Tennessee man named Adam Braseel stopped by the
vigil. Recently released after almost 12 years in prison, he recalled his time
at Riverbend, where the execution chamber is right next door to the visitation
area. Braseel was sentenced to life in 2007 for killing a police officer. He
swore he was innocent — and his conviction was overturned in 2015. He spent 10
months as a free man back home, only to return to prison after the order was
reversed by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals. Finally, Braseel was
offered an Alford plea — a way to plead guilty and win his freedom while still
asserting his innocence. He was released on August 2.
While Braseel never faced execution, his case was a sobering reminder of the
risks of condemning the innocent to die. 2 people have been exonerated from
Tennessee’s death row in the past 10 years. Others, like Ndume Olatushani, who
spent almost 27 years in prison — 19 on death row — have settled for plea
agreements to win their freedom after being wrongfully convicted. Earlier this
year, the Innocence Project held a press conference in Nashville calling on the
state to conduct post-conviction DNA testing in the case of Sedley Alley,
executed in 2006. Alley insisted upon his innocence. “The DNA evidence should
have been tested before my father was executed,” his daughter said. “It’s too
late for my father, but it’s not too late to find the truth.”
The next few days played out like a film watched too many times.
One of Tennessee’s previous executions was carried out while Braseel was at
Riverbend, in 2009. While he did not see the man being led to the death
chamber, he had read accounts from people who watched condemned men make their
final walk. “I remember vividly just trying to imagine, putting myself in their
shoes,” he said. For its constant presence, Braseel said, the death chamber
went mostly undiscussed at the prison.
By Monday morning, some upsetting news had reached the vigil. The Department of
Correction had canceled visitation at Riverbend that night. No reason was
given. For Mann, his wife Bethany, and the others who go every week, the
Mondays before an execution are sacred — an opportunity to say goodbyes and
honor any final requests. “It’s really important to us,” he said. “And it’s
really important to the guys. They pour out of the woodwork to just have a
connection.”
Shortly after 9 a.m., the group crossed the street from the plaza to the
Capitol, to deliver the letters they had collected over the previous days. They
went through the metal detectors and up to the governor’s office, where an aide
said he would ensure that the materials would be placed on Lee’s desk. Shane
Claiborne played a song on his phone he had played in the same spot before
Johnson’s execution: a recording of Abu Ali Abdur’Rahman singing “Amazing
Grace.”
The next few days played out like a film watched too many times. On Tuesday
morning, the Department of Correction announced that West had been moved to
“death watch” shortly after midnight. At 4:15 p.m. that same day, the governor
released a statement saying he would not intervene. On Wednesday, the
Department of Correction announced that West had selected his last meal: a
Philly cheesesteak and fries.
On Thursday evening, at the usual time, a procession of cars drove back toward
Riverbend, rolling west along Cockrill Bend Boulevard, the same road the
marchers had traveled on foot less than a week before. The protesters parked in
the designated area, showed their IDs at a checkpoint, and gathered in the
field where they had stood four times in the previous year. At 7:12 p.m. — the
moment at which the protocol dictated that West would have a shroud placed over
his head before being electrocuted — they recited the Lord’s Prayer.
West’s time of death was 7:27 p.m. In a message later that night, Claiborne
urged people to join the movement. “We cannot simply sit back and watch Gov.
Lee execute, as he continues to profess his Christian faith,” he wrote. The
next execution is scheduled for December 5; a 2nd march is being planned. “We
are just getting started.”
(source: theintercept.com)
******************
Hero Down: Tennessee DOC Administrator Debra Johnson Brutally
Murdered----Tennessee DOC Correctional Administrator Debra Johnson served her
department for 38 years.
Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) Correctional Administrator Debra
Johnson was murdered in line of duty by an inmate on Aug. 7.
The 64-year-old administrator’s accused killer, convicted felon Curtis Ray
Watson, was a prison trustee, which allowed him to have special privileges due
to his “good behavior,” The Washington Post reported.
Watson turned 44 years old on Aug. 7, and was released from his cell at 7 a.m.
to go mow lawns around the prison facility as part of his work detail.
At approximately 11 a.m., prison officials noticed that a tractor and Watson
were both nowhere to be found, according to The Washington Post.
Watson had last been seen driving a golf cart outside Administrator Johnson’s
home, which was located on the prison grounds.
The 38-year TDOC veteran never showed up for work that morning.
When prison officials went to check on the administrator, they discovered that
she had been strangled to death with a cord, and that her attacker had sexually
assaulted her, The Washington Post reported.
Hours later, investigators found the abandoned tractor approximately 2 miles
from the prison facility.
Watson’s prison identification card was also recovered in the same area,
prompting a massive 5-day search for the escaped inmate.
On Sunday, Watson was apprehended in a soybean field in Henning, approximately
11 miles away from the state prison, The Washington Post reported.
He has been charged with aggravated sexual battery, first-degree murder,
escape, and especially aggravated burglary.
Prosecutors are also considering pursuing the death penalty, according to The
Washington Post.
Watson was convicted of especially aggravated kidnapping in 2013, and was
serving a 15-year sentence at the time of his escape, the Tennessee Bureau of
Investigation (TBI) said in a press release.
He also has a prior conviction for aggravated child abuse. That sentence
expired in 2011.
Administrator Johnson joined TDOC as a correctional officer in January of 1981,
the TBI said.
She led a “distinguished career” during the nearly four decades that followed,
TDOC Commissioner Tony Parker said in the press release.
According to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, Administrator Johnson went on to
serve as a sergeant, deputy warden, and warden before she took on the position
overseeing the West Region of Tennessee’s Correctional administration.
She leaves behind her mother, daughter, sons, and many other friends and family
members, the governor said.
Administrator Johnson’s son, Mychal Austin, said that his mother was a firm
believer in second chances, and that she was also deeply religious, The
Washington Post reported.
“The inmates would call her ‘first lady’ on the compound,” Austin said. “People
would start to straighten up because she was so fair and delivered every
promise she made to them. She did turn the prison around.”
During her 38 years with the TDOC, Administrator Johnson also received numerous
letters of commendation from commissioners, colleagues, supervisors, and
elected officials, according to a fundraising campaign established in her
honor.
“Ms. Johnson was an experienced and knowledgeable corrections professional who
was positive and supportive of everyone she encountered,” the page read. “Her
fellow employees looked to her as a mentor and role model and nominated her
numerous times for recognition of her outstanding contributions to the
department.”
Administrator Johnson’s daughter, Dr. Shernaye Johnson, said that her mother
“embodied the spirit of excellence,” WTVF reported.
"She was a public servant, she was loving, she was an awesome mom and not just
to us, but everyone that she contacted,” Shernaye said. “She was that mother
spirit.”
The family said they are devastated over the loss of their matriarch.
"He tore our family apart, it hurts and it's traumatic, it's gut-wrenching and
it's the saddest day of our lives,” her son, Stanley Johnson, told WTVF. “He
tore our family apart with this one.”
Despite their grief, the family said they know Administrator Johnson wouldn’t
want them to live with anger and bitterness.
"We as a family, and my mother, we are a family of forgiveness,” Austin
explained. “Our mother would want to forgive him, so we've really just been
concentrated on each other."
Administrator Johnson was be laid to rest on Friday, according to WTVF.
(source: defensemaven.io)
INDIANA:
Indiana DOC doesn’t have the drugs to kill death row inmates
The Indiana Department of Correction has confirmed the state doesn’t have the
necessary drugs to execute any of the 8 men who are on death row.
Indiana is 1 of 29 states that allows capital punishment. But it’s been nearly
a decade since the state’s last execution, and no new inmates have been added
to Indiana’s death row since 2013.
Meanwhile, the 8 men who are now on death row are sitting in state prison,
waiting to be executed.
“I think it’s cruel and unusual punishment to have someone waiting that long
for their execution,” said veteran Indianapolis defense attorney Eric Koselke.
“I can’t imagine living under the threat of death for so long.”
Koselke has been involved in about 30 death penalty cases. None of his clients
have been executed.
Eric Holmes is the longest-serving death row inmate in Indiana. He was
sentenced in 1993 for killing 2 people during a robbery, The Journal Gazette
reported.
The correction department changed the cocktail for lethal injection in 2014
when its supply of lethal injection drugs expired. Indiana, other states and
the federal government have struggled to obtain the drugs needed because many
pharmaceutical manufacturers don’t want to be associated with executions.
The lack of medication didn’t become a problem for the state until 2016 because
appeals were in process.
“We are waiting for the green light from DOC,” Attorney General Curtis Hill
said. “Inadequate supply chain has been a problem for 2 years.”
But even before the drug supply was a challenge, capital punishment was waning
in Indiana. In 1993, lawmakers started to allow life in prison without parole
as a sentence in capital cases, Huntington County Prosecutor Amy Richison said.
Richison added economics also plays a role in deciding whether to seek the
death penalty because the cost of prosecution and defense falls on counties.
(source: The Republic)
WYOMING:
Time to repeal death penalty in Cowboy State
There’s an interesting political trend in the U.S. in recent years that has
seen conservatives pushing for repealing the death penalty at the state level.
It even saw some success in Wyoming in 2019, with a bipartisan bill making its
way through the House and a Senate committee before dying in that chamber’s
Committee of the Whole. Hopefully the same legislation comes back in 2020 and
finds its way to Gov. Mark Gordon’s desk for his signature.
It’s still true that if you asked Republicans and Democrats that conservatives
are more likely to support the death penalty. The 2016 Republican Party
platform decries federal overreach in criminal justice and declares the death
penalty’s consitutionality as “firmly settled” while the Democrats call for its
abolition. Federal executions are scheduled in coming months for the 1st time
in 16 years while the president of the United States makes statements that drug
dealers should be executed. These plans and that rhetoric are certainly the
wrong direction for our country to go.
Favorability for the death penalty has declined overall, according to a Gallup
poll. It found a high point of 80% of respondants favored the death penalty in
September 1994 decline to 56% in October 2018, the lowest point since Richard
Nixon was president. Those opposed came to the same 47-year high at 41% in
2018.
The number of Republican lawmakers to sponsor death penalty repeal bills has
increased noticeably since 2012, according to Conservatives Concerned About the
Death Penalty. GOP lawmakers in 2016 sponsored such legislative measures at a
rate 10 times higher than in 2000, and more than 67% of the Republicans
sponsoring death penalty repeals were in red states, according to CCADP.
In Wyoming, it makes sense to repeal the death penalty for a variety of
reasons.
We haven’t executed anyone in Wyoming since 1992 (the one prior to that was in
1976) yet it costs the state around $1 million each year to hold onto the death
penalty, the Casper Star Tribune reported in February. The Department of
Corrections told the Casper newspaper that the average death row inmate stays
on death row for 17 years costing the state 30 % more than a general population
inmate. The Legislative Service Office found this year that the State Public
Defender estimates it will cost approximately $750,000 to staff and process
capital case requirements and activities for fiscal year 2020.
This expense comes with no real deterrent to crime, according to decades of
research reviewed by the National Research Council. The CCADP cited research
that found almost 90% of criminologists believe the death penalty is not a
deterrent, while police chiefs in 2009 ranked the death penalty as last among
ways to reduce violent crime. One might argue it can be an effective tool in
negotiating plea agreements with guilty offenders, but we think it just as
likely that innocent people would take a plea to avoid execution.
One of the best reasons to not execute people is the risk of killing an
innocent person. Sen. Brian Boner, R-Douglas, pointed out that since 1973,
about 164 inmates who have been on death row have been exonerated, the Wyoming
Tribune Eagle reported from the floor debate before the bill was defeated. How
would we reconcile executing an innocent person in Wyoming? Our guess is that
we’d be devastated, and it is not worth the risk.
There are arguments to be made about fairness in applicability of death
sentences and how carrying out executions has failed to help victims’ families.
For the sake of brevity, however, we’ll just acknowledge those too are issues.
The arguments put forth in the Wyoming Legislature in 2019 in favor of the
death penalty failed to be convincing in any way.
(source: Editorial, Laramie Boomerang)
Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne, famously made the incomprehensible and
nonsensical argument that were it not for the death penalty, Jesus Christ would
not have died on the cross, providing redemption for humanity. That’s
inapplicable to our situation today in Wyoming and it’s a real head-scratcher
as to what the senator was even thinking. Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne,
argued the death penalty remains a strong deterrent for crime, according to the
Wyoming Tribune Eagle, though we already refuted that failed position. Bouchard
also talked about the push by some to end the death penalty as a way to grow
the prison population to benefit themselves financially. The cost of providing
care for prisoners is substantial, he said, and he spoke about the potential
for having to pay for sex changes for inmates. Again, where is Bouchard getting
his information? Did we mention we’ve executed two people in Wyoming in 43
years and that the cost of capital cases is higher? And it is unlikely that
repealing the death penalty is a straight path to the state paying for sex
changes. That’s way off the map of sound reasoning. So we are using a huge
amount of resources that could go elsewhere to keep a system in place that we
almost never use and research shows doesn’t have the intended effects. It’s
time, Wyoming, to move past this archaic practice. As such, Albany County
voters should call on their legislators to pass this measure should it come
again in 2020. Each one of our local Democrats — Senate Minority Leader Chris
Rothfuss, House Minority Leader Cathy Connolly and Rep. Charles Pelkey —
co-sponsored the 2019 bill, so it’s safe to assume they will be on the right
side in the future. Local Republican Bill Haley also voted in favor when the
bill passed the House on third reading. Laramie Republican Rep. Dan Furphy,
however, voted against its passage. Sen. Glenn Moniz, another Laramie
Republican, voted against the measure when it failed 12-18 in his chamber. It
should be clear to Albany County lawmakers that those “no” votes need to move
to “yes.” You can find contact information for legislators at www.wyoleg.gov
and in most day’s print edition of the Boomerang on page A4.
ARIZONA:
Trial delayed for a man accused of killing 4 in Casa Grande
The trial date for 1 of 2 men accused of killing 4 people in Casa Grande in
2017 is being pushed back.
Rodney Ortiz had been scheduled to go on trial Jan. 22. But defense and
prosecution attorneys didn't think they'd be ready by then and asked Monday for
a vacated trial date.
According to the Casa Grande Dispatch, a new trial date for Ortiz likely will
be determined after a Sept. 30 status hearing.
Ortiz and Alec Perez are accused of killing two men and two women at a housing
complex in October 2017.
Prosecutors say they're seeking the death penalty for Ortiz and Perez and both
men will be tried separately.
Ortiz was 22 years old at the time of the quadruple murder while Perez was 31.
(source: Associated Press)
WASHINGTON:
Clallam prosecutor: Homicide cases over-taxing office----Nichols seeks funding
for 2 positions to handle increase in work
Clallam County commissioners are considering whether they should tap into the
county’s reserve to handle the significant hike in legal work caused by the
recent increase in homicides.
Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols told the commissioners Monday that he needs
to hire a 2nd victim witness coordinator — a position he’s been wanting to add
for some time — and an additional deputy prosecuting attorney in order to
handle the increased case load.
Nichols said staff, who are salaried, work “as long and as hard as is necessary
to get the job done,” but that only works for so long.
“The candle has been burning at both ends for about 6 months,” Nichols said.
“I’m not here because I want to be, but because it’s necessary to keep the
office intact.”
Nichols said that according to the Death Penalty Project, a county the size of
Clallam County will statistically have 2 to 3 murders per year, but this year
has been highly unusual.
“Right now we have nine citizens who are dead with 6 defendants and murder
trials processing,” he said. “We are well above statistically where we should
be.”
Dennis Bauer, Kallie Ann Letellier and Ryan Warren Ward are all charged with 3
counts of aggravated 1st-degree murder in the Dec. 26 shooting deaths of Darrel
Iverson, Jordan Iverson and Tiffany May.
Matthew Timothy Wetherington is charged with 4 counts of aggravated 1st-degree
murder in the deaths of Valerie Kambeitz and her 3 children, Lilly Kambeitz,
Emma Kambeitz and Jayden Kambeitz, whose remains were found following a fire at
the Welcome Inn RV Park in Port Angeles on July 6.
John R. Sutton is charged with vehicular homicide in the May 29 death of Lou M.
Galgano.
Nobody has been arrested in the Jan. 2 death of Valerie Claplanhoo.
Shay C. Darrow, who is charged with the Jan. 12, 2017, murder of his father,
Clint Darrow, is still awaiting trial.
“These are time-consuming prosecuting efforts,” Nichols said. “We have had to
delegate away from other cases.”
Nichols said his office had been able to handle the prosecution of Bauer,
Letellier and Ward, but the increased workload caused by the case against
Wetherington has pushed the office over the edge.
“In the aftermath of that, it has become clear to me we have exhausted our
ability in-house to draw on resources in the felony division or other
divisions,” he said. “We’re just at a point in time due to unforeseeable
circumstances tragic in nature that … we’re starting to fall behind.”
Nichols said that while he is asking for the additional positions, the county
should also expect higher-than normal costs in other areas, including from the
courts, preparing for trial and in public defense.
He said cases involving homicide take more than a year to resolve, sometimes 2
or more years. They often require using experts from out of state.
“I would recommend you look at what’s happening from a cost consideration now,”
he said. “As long as these continue to cycle through the system, there will be
unforeseen costs asked of the county.”
Nichols said if caseloads drop in the coming years, he would likely leave a
deputy prosecuting attorney position empty after someone leaves, but he would
likely keep the victim witness coordinator.
Commissioner Bill Peach said the commissioners should fund the 2 positions “as
soon as possible.”
“We have a reserve dedicated for needed service,” Peach said. “On cash flow,
I’d say there isn’t any question. We can provide the resources that are
necessary.”
Commissioner Mark Ozias said county officials should work together to present a
timeline and more details so that it can move forward.
(source: Peninsula Daily News)
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