Oct. 10
ILLINOIS:
Prisoner Review Board considers clemency for woman once sentenced to die
Marilyn Mulero was sentenced to die in 1993 after she pleaded guilty in Cook
County Circuit Court to taking part in a gang revenge murder of two members of
the Latin Kings gang.
On Wednesday, the Illinois Prisoner Review Board entertained arguments by her
attorneys that the conviction is flawed and that Gov. J.B. Pritzker should
grant her clemency.
It is the 3rd time that Mulero has turned to the Prisoner Review Board. “This
was a very difficult and challenging case when we heard it the first time, and
it’s no less difficult and challenging today,” Board Chairman Craig Findley
said.
But bolstering Mulero’s case this time are allegations that a key detective in
the case, Reynaldo Guevara, was involved in framing dozens of suspects for
murder.
At a hearing at the James R. Thompson Center on Wednesday, Mulero’s attorneys
cited a series of issues that long have cast doubt on Mulero’s confession and
subsequent guilty plea.
No physical evidence connected Mulero, who was 21 at the time of the 1992
murders of Jimmy Cruz and Hector Reyes, to the crime and the gun was never
recovered.
She and 2 members of the Maniac Latin Disciples, Jacqueline Montanez, 15, and
Madeline Mendoza, 16, were arrested and charged with conspiring the murders.
Marilyn Mulero’s attorneys Lauren Kaeseberg, Justin Brooks and Lauren
Myerscough-Mueller speak to reporters after Mulero’s clemency hearing.
Mulero gave a statement to Detectives Guevara and Ernest Halverson confessing
to one of the murders. In her clemency plea she contends it came after spending
more than 20 hours in police custody. The petition contends during that time
she was denied an attorney and threatened with the death penalty and separation
from her 2 children.
After her confession she was represented by an inexperienced defense attorney
who recommended she enter a guilty plea with no conditions attached, according
to her clemency request. She then was sentenced to die by Cook County Circuit
Judge John Mannion before, in 1998, she was resentenced to life in prison
without an opportunity for parole.
But first in 2005 and again in 2014, the Parole Board provided a hearing on her
claim for clemency, after 1 of the co-defendants, Montanez, gave a statement
that she had committed both murders and Mulero had not known what Montanez was
about to do.
“I shot [Reyes] once in the back of the head,” Montanez said in a Chicago
Tribune video. “As he dropped, I came out of the bathroom and ran towards the
other one. The other one had a gun. And my co-defendant Mendoza was scared
cause you could tell that he was about to do something to her cause I’m sure he
heard the gunshot. So I grabbed the gun and just shot and when I shot it hit
him and he hit the floor.”
Following both hearings, Mulero was denied clemency.
On Wednesday, Mulero attorney Justin Brooks told the board that, fundamentally,
the case comes down to what Mulero knew before the shootings.
“The only thing that makes her culpable is if she knew that they were going to
Humboldt Park for the shooting,” he said. The idea that Montanez would commit
one murder, then hand the gun to Mulero to commit the other doesn’t add up, he
said.
“What makes more sense is that Jackie [Montanez] shot both victims and that’s
something she confessed to many times over the years.”
Focused on the more-recent accusations against Guevara, another of Mulero’s
defense team, Lauren Myerscough-Mueller told the board that Mulero’s “case has
a nexus in the pattern of abuse.” She added, “These are the same things courts
have found Guevara and Halvorsen did to others.”
Guevara has been accused of framing at least 51 people for murder. So far, 19
people have been exonerated in cases he investigated, and several include false
confessions that followed beatings or coercion.
The state’s attorney’s office opposed Mulero’s request for executive clemency.
Assistant State’s Attorney Sara Whitecotton argued that Mulero’s involvement
was clear.
“Saying that she had no knowledge is just not reasonable. She was there, she
helped facilitate the offense and she’s accountable,” she said.
The governor has no time limit on when he reviews and decides whether to accept
the board’s confidential recommendation, Craig Findley said Wednesday.
Typically, a decision is announced around a year after a hearing.
(source: injusticewatch.org)
NEVADA:
Bar Association joins appeal of Nevada death row inmate
The American Bar Association has joined an appeal challenging the death
sentence of a Nevada man it says was mentally ill when he was convicted of the
1998 hatchet slaying of a campus police officer.
The national group of lawyers and professional legal scholars is asking the
Nevada Supreme Court to block Siaosi Vanisi's execution.
It wants the justices to rule that people suffering from severe mental illness
should never be sentenced to death.
Vanisi was found guilty of murdering University of Nevada, Reno police Sgt.
George Sullivan as he was filling out paperwork in his cruiser on the campus
just north of downtown.
The native Tongan also was convicted of robbing a convenience store with
Sullivan's service revolver before he was arrested during a standoff with a
SWAT team in Salt Lake City.
******************
Death penalty retrial next year in Vegas FBI agent killing
A retrial has been set next year for a man sentenced in 1991 to die for the
killing of a Las Vegas FBI agent during a bank robbery.
Records show that Jose Echavarria arrived Tuesday at the Clark County jail in
Las Vegas from death row at Ely State Prison to await his retrial, now
scheduled in November 2020.
Echavarria was convicted in state court of murder in the shooting death of FBI
Special Agent John Bailey in June 1990.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco last year upheld U.S.
District Judge Miranda Du's ruling in 2015 in Nevada that Echavarria's trial
was unfair.
Du said Echavarria's trial judge could have been biased because he'd been
investigated previously by Bailey and the FBI on corruption allegations.
(source for both: Associated Press)
OREGON:
Let voters decide on death penalty
Like Kate Brown, who replaced him as Oregon governor, John Kitzhaber wanted to
do away with the death penalty in the state.
But at least Kitzhaber respected his constituents enough to recognize that this
matter ought to be left to voters rather than the legislative or executive
branches.
When Kitzhaber declared a moratorium on executions in Oregon in 2011, he
supported the idea of putting the issue on the ballot. This was eminently
reasonable — the last time voters decided on the death penalty, in 1984, 55%
who cast a ballot supported execution as a possible punishment.
Moreover, that vote amended the Oregon Constitution, which means the voters,
having decided capital punishment should be an option, also reserved for
themselves the option of changing their mind.
Not that the sanctity of the Constitution has proved much of a deterrent for
Brown and the Democrats who control the Legislature. They not only haven’t
shown much interest in consulting voters about the death penalty, but this year
they passed a law that severely narrows the definition of aggravated murder —
the only crime punishable by execution in Oregon.
And although their intent was that the new law would apply only to future
cases, the Oregon Justice Department concluded the law could potentially also
affect defendants who have already been convicted.
The bottom line here is that Brown and her backers in the Capitol, being
legally precluded from reversing voters’ 1984 decision, have been striving to
thwart the electorate’s will anyway.
Oregon has changed quite a lot in the past 35 years, with the electorate
trending toward the left side of the political spectrum. It may well be that a
majority would choose to remove capital punishment from the Constitution. Brown
and the Democrats should advocate for giving voters that chance.
(source: Editorial, East Oregonian)
USA:
Supreme Court Opens 2019–2020 Term with Consideration of Death Penalty Cases
The 2019-2020 U.S. Supreme Court term opened on October 7 with the Court
declining to review challenges to death-penalty court decisions from a number
of states and with the Court hearing argument in a Kansas death-penalty case
raising constitutional questions about a defendant’s right to present an
insanity defense.
Among the more notable death penalty decisions, the Court denied a petition
from an Alabama prisoner whose death sentence resulted in a judge’s override of
a jury’s life verdict, a petition from the state of South Carolina challenging
a grant of federal habeas relief, and several petitions from California and
Florida prisoners involving the aftermath of the Court’s 2016 decision in Hurst
v. Florida affirming a capital defendant’s right to a jury determination of all
facts that could lead to a death sentence. In a one-sentence statement on the
denial of review in Anderson v. Florida, Justice Sonia Sotomayor reiterated her
opposition to the Court’s continued refusal to review petitions that challenge
the Florida Supreme Court’s limited application of the Hurst decision.
The death penalty case, Kahler v. Kansas was the first case scheduled for
argument in the Court’s 2019-20 term. James Kahler (pictured) challenged his
murder conviction and death sentence, arguing Kansas law unconstitutionally
denied him the right to assert an insanity defense. Kahler suffered from severe
depression and “obsessive-compulsive, borderline, paranoid, and narcissistic
personality tendencies” when he killed four of his family members in 2009. At
trial, he presented mental health testimony that, as a result of his severe
depression, he was in a dissociative state and could not appreciate the
wrongfulness of his actions at the time of the murders. The jury was allowed to
consider evidence of Kahler’s mental illness in deciding whether he could form
the intent to commit first-degree murder.
All but 5 states—Kansas, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Utah—provide for an
insanity defense. Kansas prosecutors argued that such a defense is not
constitutionally compulsory and that the federal constitution mandates only
that the jury be able to consider whether the defendant has the requisite
mental state to be convicted of murder.
The questioning at oral argument signaled division among the Justices, but
suggested a majority of the Court had not been persuaded by the defense
arguments. Justice Stephen Breyer raised 2 hypothetical situations, one in
which a person killed someone believing the victim was a dog, the other in
which they killed someone believing that the dog told them to kill the victim.
He asked, “Why does Kansas say one is guilty, the other is not guilty?” Several
Justices inquired about the scope and practical effect of a ruling for the
defense in the case. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan and
Samuel Alito expressed skepticism as to whether Kahler would have benefited
from an insanity defense, even if it had been available.
Prior to the Kahler argument, the Court released its “first-Monday-in-October”
list of cases decided since the close of the 2018-2019 term. In Woodward v.
Alabama, the Court declined to review the constitutionality of Alabama’s
since-repealed statute that permitted the trial judge to impose the death
penalty despite a jury vote in favor of life. A Montgomery, Alabama jury had
convicted Mario Woodward (pictured), an African-American defendant, of killing
a white police officer during a traffic stop, but had voted 8-4 to sentence him
to life. The trial judge overrode the jury and imposed the death penalty. The
Court also let stand a unanimous South Carolina federal appeals court decision
overturning the death sentence imposed on Charles Williams. The appeals court
had found Williams’ trial counsel ineffective for failing to investigate and
present available mitigating evidence, including that Williams had severe
functional impairments and brain damage caused by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
Over the last several years, the Court has denied numerous certiorari petitions
in death penalty cases involving the application of its 2016 Hurst decision.
While more than 350 death sentences were imposed under Florida’s prior
unconstitutional death-sentencing statute, its state courts have declined to
grant new sentencing hearings to prisoners in more than half of the cases. The
Court again declined to take up the issue In Anderson, over a dissent by
Justice Sotomayor.
Court watchers have noted the importance of Sotomayor’s statements in death
penalty cases. A recent New York Times article examined the Justice’s record in
death penalty cases, noting that she is often alone in “bearing witness” to
what she perceives as miscarriages of justice. University of Texas law
professor Jordan M. Steiker characterized Sotomayor’s statements as “carrying
forward the tradition of Justices Brennan and Marshall.” Professor Steiker
concluded that “Justice Sotomayor is speaking to institutional actors — judges,
prosecutors, defense lawyers — to make clear that the court, or least some
portion of it, is keenly aware of problems that it is not presently able to
correct.”
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
*****************
Event to mark Catholic group’s 10-year fight against death penalty
One decade ago the Catholic Church still allowed for the death penalty under
certain conditions, and 35 states across the country permitted the practice.
As the Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN) celebrates their ten-year anniversary
this week, that number is down to 29 states, and just over a year ago Pope
Francis updated the catechism to declare the death penalty to be
“inadmissible.”
Executive director Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy believes such developments to
be a sign of “incredible momentum” and proof that the work of Catholics who
have spent years lobbying their legislators, visiting with death row inmates
and their families, and making their case against capital punishment in the
public square is paying off.
“It’s really wonderful to see just how far we’ve come. We have work to do, but
ending the death penalty in our time is possible,” says Vaillancourt Murphy of
the occasion.
Formed in 2009, Catholic Mobilizing Network was launched in an effort to aid
the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death
Penalty, which began in 2005 and aimed to help educate American Catholics on
the realities of the death penalty.
CMN built on the efforts of Catholics Against Capital Punishment (CACP), a
group founded by Frank and Ellen McNeirney, who from their home in Maryland
would send out letters and e-mails and make phone calls to mobilize Catholics
to advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.
Under the leadership of its founding executive director, Karen Clifton, who was
inspired by Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun from Louisiana who after
getting to know a death row inmate and accompanying him to his execution became
one of the world’s leading opponents of the death penalty, the organization has
worked both with the Church hierarchy and in the trenches of the criminal
justice system toward the very explicit goal of ending the practice of the
death penalty.
“For many years, I was working on global poverty and hunger. Well, probably a
decade into it, the organization I was working with started taking a really
deep look at the effects of mass incarceration and hunger in our communities,
and started making those linkages,” said Vaillancourt Murphy. “So for many
years, to work on an important issue like ending hunger, and then to begin to
see this intersectionality, with other sorts of epidemics of our time. So that
made me begin looking at this anew.”
“I have a sense of the impacts and the fallout, the shame, so many aspects of
incarceration that affect lives. And that, none of us is very removed from the
effects of mass incarceration,” she continued.
As she leads a team of six other staffers, she’s more convinced than ever that
“ending the death penalty is possible,” - and she’s excited to lead the way
forward with a team primarily made up of young people, who she believes
represent a generation that is already highly suspect of the death penalty -
Catholic or not.
“I think young people have this clarity about the value of life, and they can
spot out inconsistencies very quickly. The death penalty isn’t something that
needs to be overly convincing for them. They kind of get it right away,” she
observes.
“It doesn’t escape them that, over half the states in the United States are not
even practicing the death penalty. Like, why would we even need it? They get
that. Today, 166 people have been exonerated from death row in the modern era
of the death penalty,” she notes.
On Thursday evening, Vaillancourt Murphy and her crew of young people will
gather with long time supporters of CMN to mark their ten-year anniversary with
a celebration at the Vatican’s embassy in D.C. - all timed to coincide with the
World Day Against the Death Penalty. That same day, the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is planning to urge the federal
government to rescind execution orders set for later this year and to call on
Congress to remove the death penalty from federal law.
The evening celebration, titled “Hope over Death,” will honor Clifton and
Prejean, along with Archbishop emeritus Joseph A. Fiorenza of
Galveston-Houston, who launched the U.S. Bishops’ Catholic Campaign to End the
Use of the Death Penalty.
Although the event will pay tribute to the heroes of the past, ultimately the
event will be future-oriented, looking toward the day when the death penalty is
permanently abolished - a goal that Vaillancourt Murphy believes is very much
in sight, with repeal efforts in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming on the horizon.
“There’s no turning back. The death penalty is dying a death in the United
States,” she states. “We have to get it over the finish line, but there’s no
turning back.”
(source: cruxnow.com)
********************
Death penalty considered for inmates accused of New York internet predator
murder
Federal prosecutors could seek the death penalty for three inmates accused of
murdering a convicted internet child predator from Broome County while in
prison.
Christian Maire, a former Port Dickinson area resident who was 40 when he was
stabbed to death Jan. 2 at a federal detention center in Michigan, spearheaded
a nine-member online operation that victimized more than 100 girls nationwide —
a Michigan teen helped FBI agents bust the scheme.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in August announced first-degree premeditated murder
conspiracy indictments against Alex A. Castro, 39, Jason D. Kechego, 38, and
Adam T. Wright, 39, in connection with Maire's death. The charges are eligible
under the federal death penalty, prosecutors said in Oct. 1 court documents.
As a result, prosecutors said they are following a U.S. Justice Department
protocol in determining whether to seek a death sentence if Castro, Kechego and
Wright are convicted.
The evidence and facts of this case aren't particularly complex, Assistant U.S.
Attorney Michael Buckley said in recent court documents, but potential issues
surrounding a decision of whether to pursue a death penalty are.
Buckley said those issues require "a substantial period of time for the parties
to adequately investigate and assess."
A federal judge has scheduled a May 15, 2020 update on the status of the murder
case.
How the defense responds
Court documents say defense attorneys for Castro, Kechego and Wright anticipate
evidence will show "a systemic deliberate indifference to the safety of sex
offenders.
Prison conditions and the conduct of prison staff could play a role in arguing
for a sentence less than death, Castro's defense lawyer Michael Rataj said in
recent court documents.
The charges could also mean life-in-prison sentences, if the 3 inmates are
convicted.
How the murder was carried out
Maire was killed less than 1 month into a 40-year prison sentence for his
leadership role in a nine-member online group that manipulated girls around the
country into performing sex acts through a webcam. They snared victims by
pretending to be teenage boys and trolled popular social media sites to look
for targets.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said Castro, Kechego and Wright conspired in
December 2018 to assault and murder fellow inmates thought to be "smaller and
weaker" and, therefore, more vulnerable.
Maire was attacked with and killed by a homemade knife commonly referred to as
a "shank," according to court records.
After he was stabbed several times, the 3 suspects allegedly picked him up off
the ground and threw his body down a flight of stairs.
(source: pressconnects.com)
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