[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----OHIO, IND., OKLA., FLA.
Dec. 16 OHIO: Straw considers making appeal for death row Scot Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is considering lodging a fresh appeal to get Kenny Richey off Death Row. Mr Straw and Foreign Office officials are looking at making representations as a friend of the court to the sixth US circuit court of appeals when it reconsiders his conviction for murdering a toddler. It had originally said that his incarceration for almost 20 years was wrong and he should either be retried or released. But the US Supreme Court ruled last month its decision was inadmissible because the court of appeals had considered fresh evidence. The Ohio court in Cincinnati will now have to reconsider the case. Today, a Foreign Office spokesman said that following a meeting with Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael and fellow campaigners for Mr Richey, the Foreign Secretary Mr Straw and his officials were considering a new appeal to the Ohio court. A friend of the court advises the court but is not part of the defence team. A spokesman said: Ministers and officials are now considering an 'Amicus Curie' appeal to the Ohio court, as a friend of the court rather than a participant, to get Kenny Richey off death row. We have serious concerns about his conviction and we don't support British citizens being given the death penalty in America or indeed anywhere else. Mr Carmichael, MP for Orkney and Shetland, described this week's meeting at the Foreign Office as constructive. He was joined by Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, who has spent 2 decades defending death sentence cases in the US, Sara MacNeice of Amnesty International and Yasmin Waljee of Lovells, a firm of solicitors working on Mr Richey's behalf. Mr Carmichael said: Last month's ruling by the US Supreme Court was extremely disappointing. However, Foreign Office officials have made it clear that they recognise that they will play an important part in the months ahead. The constructive meeting we held left me feeling fairly confident that they will do all they can to help secure justice for Kenny Richey. Mr Stafford Smith said: The British Government's intervention has been critical in the past to help British nationals facing execution. The United States Supreme Court is using obscure technicalities to keep a man on death row. His original trial was a travesty of justice. An innocent British man was sentenced to death thanks to the incompetence of his court-appointed lawyer. Now we need the British Government to take strong action to ensure that the US authorities are not allowed to use technicalities to deny Kenny justice. Human Rights groups have branded his lengthy imprisonment as barbaric and accused the Supreme Court of overturning the appeal on a technicality. His family have vowed to keep up the fight to free him despite last month's decision. The Ohio court ruled by two to one that Richey's defence team made basic errors at his 1986 trial when he was persuaded to waive his right to jury trial in favour of a 3-judge panel. But the Supreme Court said it had taken new evidence into account and should revisit the case. A spokeswoman for Amnesty International said the latest decision by the Supreme Court was inhumane and typical of the US justice system, where judges are elected to get convictions. Shadow foreign secretary William Hague declined to comment. (source: The Scotsman) INDIANA: Couple devote lives to ending death penalty Before long -- and it's never long enough -- Alice and Bert Fitzgerald will again ring the bell of their Episcopal church. Someone else will have been executed in Indiana. The clangs are the couple's ministry and the community's reminder. A lot of symbolic value, the bell ringing, Alice Fitzgerald said. Certainly it brings it home to me. The Fitzgeralds urge an end to the death penalty and, in the meantime, occasionally attend execution vigils. They befriend death-row inmates, and Alice Fitzgerald has sent birthday cards to those condemned. She recently became vice president of a coalition called the Indiana Information Center on the Abolition of Capital Punishment. The day she and I met, a man convicted of murder in North Carolina was to be put to death. It was the 1,000th execution in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1977. The Fitzgeralds were invited to a protest of that dubious milestone in Indianapolis. Instead, Bert Fitzgerald played Santa that evening for a group of young girls. That was after the Fitzgeralds had put in full, typically trying days as mental health therapists. At their secluded home atop a hill, their five cats and two dogs cannot be spoiled enough. The Fitzgeralds lead fulfilling lives outside of the politics of death. They feel compelled to do what they can until this country does differently, however. The system is broke, Bert Fitzgerald said. Could it ever be fixed? Very doubtful. Alice Fitzgerald takes heart,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----VA., N.J., ARIZ., ILL., N.C., PENN.
Dec. 16 VIRGINIA: Appeals court upholds Suffolk man's death sentence A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a Suffolk man's death sentence in the slaying of his former girlfriend. Dexter Lee Vinson, 42, was convicted of capital murder, carjacking, abduction with intent to defile and sexual penetration with an inanimate object. In May 1997, Angela Felton was abducted and taken behind a vacant house, where a witness heard her plead with Vinson to leave her alone. Felton, 25, was cut on her arms, neck, trunk, buttocks and genital area. She also was choked with a rope, and a car door was slammed on her head. A 3-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected Vinson's claim that his trial attorneys had a conflict of interest because one was suing the other for employment discrimination at the time of the trial. Vinson also claimed his constitutional right to a competent defense was violated and that the prosecution improperly withheld evidence. The appeals court found no merit in those claims. On the Net: Appeals court: http:http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov (source: Associated Press) ** Warner sets precedent for DNA testing Gov. Mark Warners decision to order DNA testing in 31 long-closed criminal cases has led to the freedom of 2 men who were wrongly convicted of rape. In speaking about their exonerations Wednesday, Warner called post-conviction DNA testing in such cases the only morally acceptable course. He must now apply that same standard to the Roger Keith Coleman case, where the stakes are even higher. Virginia residents deserve to know whether the state executed an innocent man in their name 13 years ago. DNA testing - not available at the time of Colemans conviction and a less precise science at the time of his execution - holds the tantalizing potential to resolve lingering doubts about his guilt. Coleman, 34, was executed in 1992 for the rape and murder of his sister-in-law, 19-year-old Wanda McCoy, in her Buchanan County home a decade earlier. He died proclaiming his innocence. That Coleman claimed he didnt do it is not uncommon; a majority of prisoners claim to be innocent, or framed, or a victim of the system. But there are other factors at play here. Colemans inexperienced trial lawyers were handling their 1st death penalty case. Many in the community had already presumed his guilt and were ready to move on to a public hanging. His appeal was marred by a missed deadline and procedural mistakes. Those details might be immaterial. After all, a guilty man can receive a botched defense and still be guilty. But the death penalty requires a higher standard. For this reason, courts no longer appoint young, inexperienced lawyers to represent indigent defendants in capital cases. Scientific testing of forensic evidence also has changed in the past decade. At his trial, prosecutors argued Coleman raped his sister-in-law because his blood type matched semen found on the victim. Years later, some early DNA tests were inconclusive and couldnt rule Coleman out as the rapist and killer. The imprecise, early science says Coleman could be the killer, but so could .2 % of U.S. men. Thats not a huge pool of possible killers, but neither is it air-tight evidence tying Coleman to the crime. The DNA evidence, in this case a swab of semen found on the victims body, still exists; its tucked away in a private California laboratory for safekeeping. The courts have refused to allow the testing - ruling the public has no right to know the answer to this troubling question. With a stroke of his pen, Warner could give the order that would end the debate. The testing might prove once and for all that Coleman was a vile killer. It might prove he was an innocent man, executed by tragic mistake. A third option exists; the sample might be too small or too old and degraded to yield conclusive results. Such a result would be disappointing, but it would not undermine the states judicial system. The biggest risk to Virginias judicial system is for the governor to do nothing. Justice demands DNA testing in this case. Warner should do the only morally acceptable thing and order the tests before he leaves office in January. (source: Editorial, Bristol Herald Courier) ** Nikolaus Johnson says he's tired of coming to court The former gang member charged with killing a Bristol police officer told a judge Thursday he's tired of his case, tired of waiting for a trial and tired of dealing with his lawyers. The next time his case comes up in court, he wants to stay in jail. I don't have time for these games, man, he told the judge. I know what's going on. It's my life, and it's not a joke. Everybody alive knows there's no way possible I can receive a fair trial in this county. The judge let Johnson, 27, speak in court for the 1st time Thursday as he asked to fire his defense lawyers, Jim Bowman and Stacy Street. The hearing turned into a rant as he
