Sept. 16
TEXAS:
Federal defender files claims on behalf of Rubio
An attorney representing convicted child killer John Allen Rubio wants the
conviction tossed, claiming Rubio’s appointed defense did not represent him
properly and that his case was handled by a district attorney that was steeped
in scandal and misconduct.
Jeremy Schepers, supervisor of the Capital Habeas Unit and federal public
defender, filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus this month in the U.S.
federal court in the Southern District of Texas, “declaring unconstitutional
and invalid his (Rubio’s) conviction for capital murder as well as the
resulting death sentence.”
A jury in 2010 found Rubio guilty in the beheading of Julissa Quesada, 3; John
E. Rubio, 14 months; and Mary Jane Rubio, 2 months. The 3 children were those
of his common-law wife Angela Camacho.
The children were smothered, stabbed and mutilated, according to Brownsville
police investigators. Their decapitated bodies were stuffed inside trash bags
and found near a bedroom door.
According to a confession Rubio made to police, he admitted to killing the
children in 2003 because he believed there was an evil presence in them. He
even asked one of the officers who first arrived at the crime scene to place
him under arrest, according to the officer’s statement.
Rubio, 39, a Brownsville native, remains on death row at the Polunsky Unit in
Livingston, Texas.
Camacho, 39, pleaded guilty to murder in 2005 and was sentenced to life in
prison and remains in custody at the Christina Melton Crain Unit in Gatesville.
She is eligible for parole March 3, 2043.
Schepers lists 9 claims for relief in why Rubio’s conviction should be tossed
out and he be given a new trial.
Mental Health
According to the writ, Rubio’s attorneys failed to include the appropriate
mental health expert on his defense team. Rubio was being represented by
attorneys Ed Stapleton and Nat C. Perez Jr.
“Trial counsel’s failure to assemble the minimum required defense team
prejudiced Rubio at the competency trial, and at both the guilt/innocence and
punishment phases of the trial on the merits,” the writ alleges.
Had Rubio’s defense team retained a consulting mental health expert, “they
would have recognized the need to present testifying experts regarding, among
other things, Rubio’s exposure to extreme trauma beginning in utero and
continuing into adulthood,” the writ states.
According to that document, Rubio suffered from neuropsychological deficits,
significant brain damage and various psychiatric conditions. “All such
testimony would have been highly relevant to Rubio’s competency at the time of
trial, his sanity at the time of the offense, and punishment,” the writ further
states.
During Rubio’s February 2010 competency trial, his mother, Hilda Barrientes,
testified that she drank a 6 pack of beer on a daily basis while she was
pregnant with her son. She also admitted to at one time doing cocaine, but
couldn’t recall if she did the drug while pregnant with Rubio.
Barrientes testified that Rubio would make comments to her that “God would tell
him he was the chosen one.” She testified that she did not try to get any help
for him “because I didn’t think he had a problem.”
Ineffective Counsel
The writ claims that defense attorney Stapleton was in over his head. This was
his 1st death penalty case. Instead of hiring a qualified mental health expert,
Stapleton decided that he would be the team’s mental health “expert,” the writ
says.
“He failed to recognize the need to pursue red flags that Rubio suffers from
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE), brain
damage, severe trauma, and other psychiatric issues,” the writ stated.
According to the writ, Stapleton’s failures prejudiced Rubio’s competency
trial, as well as the guilt/innocence and punishment phase of the trial.
The writ also states that during a state habeas hearing both Stapleton and
Perez acknowledged that they “provided ineffective assistance to Rubio.”
At an Aug. 8, 2010 state post-conviction hearing, Stapleton and Perez both said
they provided ineffective assistance to Rubio, the writ claims. “Stapleton
testified that he was ineffective under oath, and Perez yelled, from the jury
box: We provided ineffective assistance of counsel,” the writ states.
The jury deliberated for 3 hours and found Rubio guilty on 3 counts of capital
murder.
State Misconduct
Armando R. Villalobos was the sitting Cameron County district attorney at the
time of Rubio’s capital murder trial.
It’s alleged in the writ that Villalobos didn’t give Rubio’s defense attorneys
favorable pleas or dismissals because there were no hefty payoffs to be given
to Villalobos. “While Villalobos was abusing his position for personal
enrichment, and that of his office, he was also personally prosecuting Rubio,
an indigent defendant who could not afford to buy Villalobo’s favor,” the writ
stated.
The writ states that the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office — under
Villalobos’ reign — engaged in a broad pattern of misconduct and abusive
prosecutorial tactics both before and during Rubio’s trial. “This misconduct
pervaded the CCDA’s actions in Rubio’s case, rendering Rubio’s trial
fundamentally unfair in violation of his constitutional right to due process,”
the document stated.
The filings read that Villalobos farmed out civil asset forfeiture cases to his
friends in exchange for kickbacks, he bribed judges and used “ill gotten” money
to fund Rubio’s prosecution. “His actions contributed to an atmosphere in which
Rubio could not receive a fair trial,” the writ alleges.
In addition, Villalobos blacklisted Rubio’s attorneys and his staff was told
not to receive probation or plea bargain agreements for their cases, the
document further alleged.
“The intent was clear — make these attorneys undesirable to the clients,” the
writ stated.
Villalobos responded in a May 2010 writ that the DA’s office is not obligated
to negotiate plea bargains.
According to the Schepers writ, Rubio’s attorneys wanted to work with the DA’s
office on a plea agreement in the capital murder case.
The Schepers writ also claims the DA’s office lied when stating how much it
paid a star expert at the trial. The writ states The Forensic Panel was paid
over $400,000 for their involvement in the case, though the state represented
to the Court that the expert “was not paid that much.”
At a pretrial hearing, “Rubio’s lawyers complained about the gross injustice of
the State paying one of its experts hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the
defense was being starved of resources,” the write stated.
Other claims against Villalobos were that the prosecution violated the trial
court’s gag order to drum up publicity for Rubio’s trial and that Villalobos
decided to seek the death penalty based on the results of a survey the district
attorney conducted in the community.
Villalobos was tried and convicted in May 2013 on one count of violating the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, one count of
conspiracy to violate the RICO Act, and 5 counts of extortion.
The conspiracy also involved a former judge, a former state representative,
lawyers and other defendants who were caught up in a scheme in which money was
exchanged for favorable outcomes in criminal and civil cases. He was sentenced
to 13 years in federal prison and remains incarcerated at the Forrest City
Correctional Institution in Arkansas. He is scheduled to be released on Sept.
4, 2025.
(source: Valley Morning Star)
NEW JERSEY:
Judge Daniel Coburn, involved in landmark NJ right to die case in 1970s, dies
at 76----Former Superior Court Judge was Karen Ann Quinlan’s attorney in
landmark case
Retired Superior Court Judge Daniel R. Coburn, who as the top public defender
in Morris County represented Karen Ann Quinlan in a landmark “right to die”
court case in the 1970s, died on September 11. He was 76.
The Quinlan case received national attention as an early legal test of the
right to die issue.
Quinlan, then 21, fell into a coma in 1975 after combining alcohol and Valium
and suffered severe brain damage after extended respiratory failure. Her
parents went to court to have her removed from ventilators, a move the New
Jersey Supreme Court approved in 1976.
With her parents consent, Quinlan continued to be fed with a feeding tube. She
died in 1985.
Gov. Brendan Byrne nominated Coburn, then 36, to serve as a judge of the Morris
County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court in January 1980 to replace Judge
John M. Newman, who had been elevated to the Superior Court.
The Coburn and Newman nominations were blocked by 2 Republican State Senators
from Morris County, John Dorsey (R-Boonton) and James Vreeland (R-Montville).
The Republicans were using Coburn as leverage to propel another family court
judge, former Morris County Prosecutor Donald Collester, to the Superior Court.
They also wanted Byrne to name Montville Municipal Court Judge Herbert Friend
to replace Collester.
Coburn and Newman were Democrats.
Byrne refused the Dorsey-Vreeland deal and a standoff went on for nearly a
year.
Angered by the delay, Newman withdrew his name from consideration, resigned
from the bench and returned to his law practice.
During the impasse between Byrne and the senators, state Public Advocate
Stanley Van Ness appointed former Assistant Morris County Prosecutor Michael
Murphy to replace Coburn as public defender.
Dorsey criticized Van Ness for paying for 2 public defenders, a practice the
Republican senator called “featherbedding.”
Byrne outlasted Dorsey and Vreeland, who finally signed off on the Coburn
nomination in November 1980. Both Morris GOP senators served on the Judiciary
Committee. Vreeland voted to release Coburn’s nomination, but Dorsey abstained.
Collester eventually made his way to the Superior Court.
Coburn was later elevated to the Superior Court and spent 12 years as a judge
before retiring in 1992.
After leaving the bench, Coburn became a television commentator and handled a
murder inquiry in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He later served as Morristown
Municipal Prosecutor and a a member of the New Jersey Death Penalty Study
Commission.
In 1969, Coburn served on the staff of the New Jersey Criminal Law Revision
Commission. He had also taught at Rutgers University Law School.
Coburn is survived by his daughter and grandson.
Visitation will be held on Monday from 5-7 PM at the Bailey Funeral Home in
Mendham. A funeral service is scheduled there at 7 PM.
(source: newjerseyglobe.com)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Court must act on Pa. death penalty
As state lawmakers continue to dawdle on much-needed reforms to Pennsylvania’s
death penalty, the state’s Supreme Court has been asked to strike down capital
punishment in its entirety.
The court should do just that.
The death penalty in Pennsylvania has become a broken, indefensible system and
legislators have proven themselves either unequal to or disinterested in the
task of fixing it.
There’s plenty to fix, from a costly appeals process that averages 17 years to
the embarrassingly high percentage death row inmates of color to the troubling
number of convictions that are later overturned.
And there is a plan to fix it: It has been well over a year since a report by
the bipartisan state Task Force and Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment
documented the many flaws in the state’s death penalty process and offered up
recommendations for reform.
Among the sensible proposals: Establishing a state-funded office to provide
adequate legal representation in capital cases and “enactment of a Racial
Justice Act to statutorily allow death sentences to be challenged on a
statistical basis.”
But what should have been a starting point for legislative action instead seems
to have become a dimming memory. A pair of state lawmakers earlier this year
announced plans to pursue legislation to end capital punishment in
Pennsylvania.
State Rep. Christopher Rabb, D-Philadelphia County, and Frank Ryan, R-Lebanon
County, said in June they were putting together a bipartisan coalition and
drafting legislation in an attempt to eliminate capital punishment in
Pennsylvania.
"One innocent life taken at the hands of the state is too many," their bill's
memo states.
But little has been heard from the pair — or any other legislator — on the
issue since.
All of which led to last week’s court hearing, in which critics of the death
penalty urged the court to abolish the death penalty as unconstitutional.
The move is led by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who cited some
eye-opening statistics. Among them: In a state where African-Americans make up
11 percent of the population, about half of the current death row inmates in
Pennsylvania are black, as are 82 % of those from Philadelphia.
No less troubling is the number of cases that are reversed. More than 1/2 of
the 441 death sentences handed down since the death penalty was reinstated in
the late 1970s have been overturned, Assistant Federal Defender Timothy Kane
told the court during last week’s hearing.
In fact, this concern was raised by the Task Force and Advisory Committee.
“There is no way to put procedural safeguards in place that will guarantee with
100% certainty that the Commonwealth will not execute an innocent person,” the
committee’s report states.
Pennsylvania hasn’t put a defendant to death in 20 years and only 3 executions
have been held since the death penalty was reinstated. While there are 137 men
on death row, a moratorium on state-sanctioned executions issued by Gov. Tom
Wolf issued in 2015 remains in place.
Still, despite what the inaction of the Legislature would indicate, there is
urgency to the issue. As the state task force’s recommendations for much-needed
reforms continue to gather dust, an expensive, biased and too-often erroneous
process remains in place.
If state lawmakers refuse to correct the egregious defects and inequities in
the state’s capital punishment system, the state’s Supreme Court should strike
it down altogether.
(source: Editorial, York Dispatch)
USA:
The Court Cases Shaping The Future Of Tribal Jurisdiction
In 1881, Crow Dog shot Brulé Lakota tribal chief Spotted Tail. The crime
eventually led Congress to pass the Major Crimes Act, which stripped tribes of
the ability to prosecute many crimes that occurred on their lands, sending them
instead to U.S. district court.
In 1881, an altercation between two members of the Lakota's Brulé band ended
with a gunshot that continues to reverberate through American Indian law today.
After Crow Dog killed Spotted Tail on the Great Sioux Reservation, the tribal
council found Crow Dog guilty and required he pay restitution to the victim's
family. Then federal authorities charged Crow Dog in U.S. district court, where
he was sentenced to death. He appealed, arguing the U.S. lacked jurisdiction
because his crime had occurred on tribal land and both victim and perpetrator
were Sioux. In 1883, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed.
2 years later, Congress passed the Major Crimes Act, placing under federal
jurisdiction serious offenses — including murder, assault, arson and larceny —
committed on reservations.
That law, still on the books today, is a "relic of colonialism," according to
Kevin Washburn, dean of the University of Iowa College of Law.
"It was very explicitly an effort to control what happens on Indian
reservations," said Washburn, a member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma who
has also served as a federal prosecutor and assistant secretary for Indian
affairs. "It was sometimes framed as, 'These Indians are uncivilized. They
don't properly account for a murder.'"
Over the years, Congress and the courts would not only chip away at the
sovereignty rights of tribal governments, they would create a dizzying
jurisdictional maze. Now, litigation may determine the future of tribes' right
to judicial self-determination.
'The Root of a lot of Problems'
The federal government has waxed and waned in its recognition of tribes'
judicial authority between the treaty era, when the U.S. negotiated with tribal
governments as foreign nations, and the current self-determination era, when
the U.S. began treating reservations like states.
Many laws remain on the books from the termination era, when the U.S. ceased to
recognize several tribes, and gave states authority over reservations.
I don't know of anywhere in the U.S. you can slug a police officer and get away
with it ... unless you're a white person on an Indian reservation.
Those include Public Law 280, which passed in 1953 and gave some states
jurisdiction over crimes on most Indian reservations within their borders.
Robert Anderson, director of the Native American Law Center at the University
of Washington, said the jurisdictional shift worsened inequities in law
enforcement, because "racism is rampant in these states with large Indian
populations."
In 1978, the Supreme Court further limited tribes' enforcement power. Mark
David Oliphant, a white man living on the Suquamish Tribe's Port Madison Indian
Reservation, was charged in tribal court after he drunkenly punched a tribal
police officer. He appealed, claiming that, as a nonmember, he wasn't subject
to tribal law. The high court agreed, stripping tribes of the ability to
prosecute any interracial crime.
Melissa Tatum, a law professor at the University of Arizona, called the ruling
"a sudden, convulsive change that was the root of a lot of problems."
"The Supreme Court said in its decision, 'tribes have unusual laws that
outsiders can't be expected to know, and therefore it's unfair to hold them to
that standard,'" she said. "But I don't know of anywhere in the U.S. you can
slug a police officer and get away with it ... unless you're a white person on
an Indian reservation."
The Violence Against Women Act peeled back part of the Oliphant decision by
allowing tribes to prosecute nonindigenous offenders in domestic violence
cases, Washburn said. But he expects that law will eventually be challenged at
the Supreme Court.
"It could happen in a habeas-type proceeding," he said. "I think in the next 20
years it will get to the Supreme Court, and there will be a determination as to
whether it's constitutional for tribal governments to exercise jurisdiction
over non-Indians."
The Fight for Oklahoma
Other litigation could expand or contract the bounds of tribal jurisdiction
sooner.
One such case, which has been wending its way to the high court for 20 years,
will decide whether large swaths of Oklahoma are technically still owned by
tribes, and who can prosecute crimes committed there.
In 1999, Patrick Dwayne Murphy stabbed George Jacobs on an Oklahoma roadside,
leaving him to die. A state court jury convicted Murphy, sentencing him to
death. Patrick Dwayne Murphy, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, has argued
his murder charge should have been tried before a federal jury. His case is
pending before the Supreme Court.
Murphy appealed, pointing to a jurisdictional wrinkle: He and his victim were
both members of the Muscogee Creek Nation, and the road where the murder took
place is within the original boundaries of the Muscogee reservation. That
means, Murphy argued, the crime should have been tried in federal court under
the Major Crimes Act.
The state countered that the reservation was disestablished when Oklahoma
became a state. But the Tenth Circuit disagreed, siding with Murphy.
State prosecutors had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the death
penalty case before the jurisdictional issue was raised, Tatum said, and that's
driving a historical look at whether the boundaries of the reservation were
ever diminished or disestablished.
"It's a question of history, of whether this is still Indian Country," Tatum
said. "It's very clear it doesn't meet the current test for disestablishing or
diminishing the reservation, but the Supreme Court could change the test."
The case was argued last year, but justices put off a decision until the next
session, after requesting more briefing. Should the high court uphold the Tenth
Circuit's ruling, about half the state could be considered Indian Country.
Federal prosecutors have sided with Oklahoma. They don't want their workload to
grow tenfold with cases that might otherwise go to district attorneys.
But tribal governments have raised their hands, volunteering to take on wider
jurisdiction, and noting they already have cross-prosecutorial agreements with
several counties, said Anderson, who is also an attorney at Kanji & Katzen
PLLC, the firm representing the Muscogee Creek Nation in the case.
"They're saying, 'We'll take it. It elevates our sovereignty back to where we
think it's always been and should be,'" he said. "To the extent there needs to
be intergovernmental cooperation, I think the Creeks have demonstrated in the
briefs that they've got a lot of arrangements with other local governments
there."
Unique Status
Another case making its way up the courts could nullify the special citizenship
status enjoyed by members of 573 federally recognized tribes. The suit itself
boils down to a custody dispute over 2 small children.
Jennifer and Chad Brackeen, a white couple living in Texas, adopted a child
with Navajo and Cherokee parents. Then, they sought custody of his younger
half-sister. But the baby's aunt, who lives on the Navajo reservation in
Arizona, would like to adopt her.
I think in the next 20 years ... there will be a [Supreme Court] determination
as to whether it's constitutional for tribal governments to exercise
jurisdiction over non-Indians.
Under the Indian Child Welfare Act, indigenous children in foster care should
be placed with kin, with other members of their tribe, or with families from
other tribes. ICWA passed in 1978, during the self-determination era, to
counteract 20th-century policies that took indigenous children from their
parents and placed them with white families or in boarding schools meant to
inculcate them into "American" culture.
Yet the Brackeens won primary custody of the girl. A state court judge
literally split the baby, ordering that she spend summers with her biological
family. The Brackeens and the state of Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit,
arguing ICWA violates the constitution's equal protection clause,
disadvantaging Native American children based on their race.
A 3-judge panel disagreed, finding ICWA is "based on a political classification
that is rationally related to the fulfillment of Congress's unique obligation
toward Indians."
But the case may not be over yet. Marc Rylander, a spokesman for the Texas
Attorney General's Office, said the state and the Brackeens "anticipate seeking
further appellate review of the important issues raised by this case."
The Brackeens' case doesn't directly affect jurisdiction. But the argument ICWA
is racially discriminatory could ripple throughout American Indian law, which
recognizes tribal membership as a political affiliation, not a racial identity.
That status is why Indian Country criminal cases go to federal and not state
court, under the high court's 1977 U.S. v. Antelope ruling.
Gabriel Antelope, a member of the Coeur d'Alene tribe, appealed a federal
murder conviction, arguing the Major Crimes Act was racially discriminatory.
Had his crime not occurred on a reservation, he would have been tried in Idaho
state court, where his charge and the punishment would have been less severe.
The high court found the Major Crimes Act relied not on racial identity, but
the "unique status of Indians as a separate people, with their own political
institutions."
The ruling meant that Native Americans could be subject to harsher punishments
for crimes simply because they occur on a reservation.
"Mr. Antelope, who was prosecuted, didn't want to be subject to federal
jurisdiction," Anderson said. "But if you talk to tribal leaders, they're
uniform in the view that paramount federal authority is much better than having
state authority over Indian Country."
That's because the political affiliation that sends cases to federal court has
also protected special gaming, hunting, water and land rights.
"It goes to Congress' power in Indian affairs, which has been used to the
detriment of tribes for most of our history, but for the benefit of tribes in
recent years with ICWA and other statutes that elevate tribal governments,"
Anderson said. "If this statute falls based on a race discrimination argument,
a lot of these other statutes will be open to similar attack."
Federal jurisdiction recognizes tribes' sovereignty instead of making them the
wards of states. And, Anderson says, given the racism indigenous defendants
have encountered in Public Law 280 states, federal jurisdiction may very well
aid access to justice.
"The principle underlying that decision is that tribes are separate
jurisdictions from the states and they're free of state power," he said.
(source: law360.com)
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