[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., ALA., ARIZ., CALIF.
July 30 TEXAS: DA's Office Seeking Death Penalty Against Alleged North Side Murderer The man who is charged with shooting and burning 2 men in Northern San Angelo may get the death penalty. In the early morning of March 20 police responded to 4800 block of North Chadbourne where they found the burned body's of Jared Lohse and Jack "Chubby" Harris Jr. Preliminary autopsy reports for Lohse and Harris determined the manner of death was homicide resulting from gunshots wounds. Chadwick, who was developed as a suspect early on in the investigation, was already in custody at the Tom Green County Jail on unrelated charges when the murder complaints were signed. He has been in the Tom Green County Jail since the murder. He is charged with murder of multiple people. On July 26 District Attorney Allison Palmer made a notice of intent to seek the death penalty toward Chadwick. His initial pretrial is scheduled for August 7. (source: sanangelolive.com) PENNSYLVANIA: Former Pennsylvania Prison Superintendent Describes Toll of Working on Death Row A former Pennsylvania death-row prison superintendent says working on death row makes corrections personnel feel “less human” and “can be profoundly damaging” psychologically. Cynthia Link (pictured) served as the Superintendent of Pennsylvania’s State Correctional Institution at Graterford from 2015 to 2018, during a period in which the prison housed more than 20 of the Commonwealth’s death row prisoners. In a July 16, 2019 op-ed for Penn Live, Link describes the psychological toll that corrections officers face when working on death row. She explains the challenging nature of working with condemned prisoners even in a state such as Pennsylvania, which has not carried out an execution in 20 years. “Few outside of my profession realize how difficult capital punishment is for the staff; even when executions are not being carried out, housing death row prisoners can be profoundly damaging,” she writes. Enforcing the “inhumane” conditions on death row causes extreme stress and prevents corrections officers from doing the jobs they were trained to do. “Politics, policy and post order often kept us from providing professionally prudent care,” Link says. “Death row was designed to provide temporary housing prior to an execution,” Link says, “but today’s death-sentenced prisoners live inhumanely for many years or decades while staff struggle to help them survive their ‘temporary’ stay.” In an effort to protect corrections officers, Pennsylvania limits them to two year “tours of duty” working on death row and monitors them for mental health problems. Despite those efforts, the stress of the assignment has serious effects on officers. Link explains: “Some officers indulge in alcohol, drugs or other dangerous behaviors to find relief. Some isolate and leave their families. Some have even taken their own lives when it becomes too overwhelming. The stress on death row staff is seldom-discussed but undeniably real. Each tour of duty on death row makes you feel less human.” At its peak, more than 250 prisoners were incarcerated in Pennsylvania’s three death-row facilities. Most eventually had their convictions or death sentences overturned in the courts after spending years in solitary confinement, where they had no contact visits with their lawyers and family members, yet were subject to strip searches each time they left their cells. The prisoners were eventually transferred from the old Graterford Prison (pictured, below) to a new modern supermax facility less than a mile away. Link draws a parallel between the outdated, crumbling building in which death-sentenced prisoners had been held, and the death penalty itself as a policy “relic.” “Prisons eventually outlive their usefulness and turn into relics of an unfamiliar past. Maybe the death penalty is a relic that can also be replaced. I know that doing so would remove a huge burden from the lives of corrections staff.” She urges Pennsylvania’s government to consider prison workers as they make decisions about capital punishment. “As government officials in Harrisburg contemplate what to do about the death penalty, I urge them to factor in the human toll it takes on Pennsylvania’s corrections profession. Death sentences punish them, too.” Numerous corrections officers have spoken about the difficulty of working on death row and carrying out executions. In 2017, a group of correctional officials from around the U.S. warned Arkansas about the extreme impact of the state’s proposal to execute eight people in 11 days. Former Georgia warden Allen Ault has been an outspoken critic of capital punishment, sharing stories of his own experiences conducting executions. Frank Thompson, who held high-ranking positions in prisons in Oregon and Arkansas, wrote, “Many of us who have taken part in this process [of executions] live with nightmares,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., ARIZ., CALIF., WASH.
April 18 TEXASimpending execution Death Watch: King Set to Die for James Byrd LynchingLast-minute appeal seeks new trial as King maintains his innocence Only 2 of 2019's 5 (so far) scheduled executions have taken place; the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Mark Robertson a stay on April 8 – 3 days before his execution date – "pending further order." Robertson's last appeal alleges his trial counsel purposely excluded black jurors for fear they wouldn't be sympathetic to the white defendant. And John King, sentenced to die for the infamous murder of James Byrd Jr. in 1998, now hopes to be the next inmate spared – if only temporarily – by the courts. Byrd's modern-day lynching led to Texas' James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act, signed into law in 2001 by Gov. Rick Perry, which controversially (at the time) included not only race but "sexual preference" in its protected classes. And in 2009, Barack Obama signed the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. King's friend Lawrence Brewer was executed in 2011; the 3rd man convicted of Byrd's murder, Shawn Berry, will reportedly be eligible for parole in 2038. With his execution set for Wednesday, April 24, King's counsel filed appeals on April 10 at the CCA and at state district court in Jasper, where the crime took place, which reaffirm his longstanding claim that he got out of Berry's truck before Byrd was notoriously dragged behind it to his death. King says he told his original counsel he wanted to present this claim at trial and attempted to replace them when they refused and eventually conceded his guilt; his appeal cites the U.S. Supreme Court's 2018 ruling (in McCoy v. Louisiana) that defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to insist counsel maintain innocence at trial, as well as a similar ruling by the CCA, and asks for a completely new trial. On March 20, King also filed a petition for clemency with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which also insists he was not present for Byrd's murder and cites Brewer's reported statement that he had been pressured to frame King rather than Berry because of King's criminal record and affiliation with white-supremacist prison gangs. (Brewer did not testify at King's trial.) If no stay is granted, King will be the 3rd Texas execution this year, and the 561st inmate killed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. (source: Austin Chronicle) PENNSYLVANIA: Mumia Abu-Jamal gets new hearing in 1981 police death A former Black Panther and death row activist convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer decades ago will get a new appeals hearing after the city prosecutor on Wednesday dropped his opposition to it. Mumia Abu-Jamal, 64, is serving a life sentence after spending decades on death row in the 1981 slaying of Officer Daniel Faulkner, who had pulled his brother over in an overnight traffic stop. Abu-Jamal, who was shot during the encounter, was largely tried in absentia at his 1982 capital murder trial, after being removed over his repeated objections and efforts to serve as his own lawyer. A former radio journalist, Abu-Jamal's prison writings made him a popular cause among death penalty opponents worldwide -- and a foe of police unions and the slain officer's widow. The attention to his case quieted after his death sentence was set aside over flawed jury instructions in 2011, and his appeals appeared exhausted. However, in December, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Leon Tucker granted Abu-Jamal a new chance to argue his initial appeal after the U.S. Supreme Court said a former Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice had improperly heard a murder case he had overseen as Philadelphia district attorney. The justice, Ronald Castille, had done the same in Abu-Jamal's case. District Attorney Larry Krasner initially fought Tucker's order, fearing it could affect a large number of cases. On Wednesday, he dropped his challenge, citing a revised ruling from Tucker that narrows the scope of his order. Krasner agreed that Castille should not have worn "2 hats" in the case, a fact made more egregious, he suggested, by the discovery of a 1990 note Castille sent Gov. Robert Casey about "police killers," urging him to issue death warrants to "send a clear and dramatic message to all police killers that the death penalty actually means something." "Although the issue is technical," said Krasner, a longtime civil rights lawyer, "it is also an important cautionary tale on the systemic problems that flow from a judge's failing to recuse where there is an appearance of bias." Castille told The Associated Press last year that Abu-Jamal's lawyers never asked him to step down from the appeal. He served as district attorney after Abu-Jamal's murder trial. He said his colleagues on the Supreme Court "knew I'd signed off on the appeal (filings), but I had nothing to do with the trial."
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., LA., KY., CALIF., ORE., USA
March 29 TEXASstay of execution Supreme Court halts execution of Texas inmate seeking to allow Buddhist spiritual adviser in death chamber The Supreme Court agreed Thursday night to halt the execution of a Texas inmate, Patrick Henry Murphy, after he argued that the state was refusing to allow his Buddhist spiritual adviser to accompany him into the chamber. "The State may not carry out Murphy's execution," the court said in an unsigned order, "unless the State permits Murphy's Buddhist spiritual adviser or another Buddhist reverend of the State's choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the execution." Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch would have denied the stay. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote to explain why he voted to grant the application. "The government may not discriminate against religion generally or against particular religious denominations," Kavanaugh wrote. The case marks the 2nd time in recent weeks that the justices have been asked to put an execution on hold because a prison policy allows Christian or Muslim chaplains who are prison employees to be present, but not advisers of other religions. The prison forbids advisers of other denominations who are not prison employees into the chamber out of security concerns. The cases pit an inmate's claims of religious liberty against prison officials who say the requests are meritless and simply last-ditch attempts to avoid execution. Murphy, on death row for the murder of police officer Aubrey Hawkins in 2000, was scheduled to die at 7 p.m. ET on Thursday, but the court stayed the execution after 9 p.m. In a flurry of last-minute petitions, lawyers for Murphy said the state violated his religious liberty because it blocked the Rev. Hui-Yong Shih from being present in the execution chamber. Back in February, in a strikingly similar case out of Alabama, a deeply divided Supreme Court split 5-4 and allowed the execution of an inmate, Domineque Ray, go forward despite the fact that Ray argued that his religious freedom rights were violated when the prison barred his imam from being present at the execution. The Alabama prison only employed a Christian chaplain. The conservatives on the court said they acted because Ray had waited too long to seek review. But Justice Elena Kagan wrote a scathing dissent, joined by the 3 other liberal justices on the bench, calling the majority's move "profoundly wrong." "Here, Ray has put forward a powerful claim that his religious rights will be violated at the moment the State puts him to death," Kagan wrote, saying that the treatment "goes against the Establishment Clause's core principle of denominational neutrality." She said her colleagues in the majority should have allowed the lower court to hear the claim in full. Supporters of religious liberty also heavily criticized the Conservatives' vote. Writing for the National Review, David French called it a "grave injustice." In explaining his vote in the Texas case Thursday night, Kavanaugh offered one reason -- in a footnote -- that might explain why he voted in favor of Murphy after he had cleared the way for Ray's execution. "I conclude that Murphy made his request to the State in a sufficiently timely manner, one month before the scheduled execution," Kavanaugh wrote. Kavanaugh also said that states had 2 options going forward: allow all inmates to have a religious adviser of their religion in the execution room or allow inmates to have a religious adviser, including a state-employed chaplain, only in the viewing room, not the execution room. "What the State may not do, in my view, is allow Christian or Muslim inmates but not Buddhist inmates to have a religious adviser of their religion in the execution room," he said. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had argued in briefs that the court should rule against the inmate because "he is dilatory, he fails to show likely success on the merits for a variety of reasons, he fails to show irreparable harm" and that the prison's execution protocol that prohibits chaplains who are not employees from the execution chamber has been in place since July 2012. Paxton said the policy is meant to ensure the "safety and security" of the execution process. The case prompted a friend of the court brief filed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit law firm. Lead lawyer Eric Rassbach said he was filing the brief to "clarify the law" because he was concerned that the "time-compressed nature" of the appeal could "obscure" important religious liberty issues at stake, and that the justices were sure to face similar petitions in the future. "The right of a condemned person to the comfort of clergy -- and the rights of clergy to comfort the condemned -- are among the longest-standing and most well-recognized forms of religious exercise known to civilization," he wrote. "Texas is no doubt capable
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., ALA., MISS.
March 21 TEXASimpending execution Death Watch: “Texas 7” Member Contests “Law of Parties”A robbery ended in a police officer death while Patrick Murphy waited outside. Current Texas law holds him responsible. If the state has its way, 57-year-old Patrick Murphy of "Texas 7" infamy will be executed on March 28, though he didn't commit the murder that landed him on death row. Murphy, along with 6 other prisoners (including Joseph Garcia, who was executed in December), achieved the biggest prison escape in Texas history in 2000 when they broke out of a maximum-security facility near San Antonio armed with stolen weapons. The men committed several robberies across Texas before hitting a sporting goods store outside of Dallas on Christmas Eve, an act which went awry, leading to the shooting death of Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins. Murphy, however, maintains he did not wish to participate in the robbery and instead waited outside in the car. He, Garcia, and four others were caught in Colorado soon thereafter (the 7th committed suicide), and each was sentenced to death for Hawkins' capital murder under the controversial Texas "law of parties," which allows accomplices to another felony – such as robbery – that results in murder to be held responsible for the slaying even if they had no part in the killing. As his death date nears, Murphy, who was originally serving a 50-year sentence for aggravated sexual assault, has asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute his sentence or offer a 90-day reprieve to await possible new "bipartisan and bicameral" legislation. Several bills have been filed this Lege session, including Sen. Juan Hinojosa's Senate Bill 929 and Rep. Jeff Leach's House Bill 4113, which would prohibit executions of those found guilty of capital murder under the law of parties (section 7.02(b) of the Penal Code). So the filing asks the BPP to "recognize that Murphy should not be executed when his conviction was obtained pursuant to a charge" that state lawmakers have "recognized cannot sustain a death sentence." If nothing else, the filing argues, Murphy's execution should be put on hold until the fate of the bills is known, so the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals could reconsider his case if the law is changed. Murphy's BPP filing also points out that while Texas law allows juries to sentence an accomplice of a lesser crime to death, under the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, a defendant "can only be" executed for the crime "if he was a major participant in the felony." But Murphy's trial jury was never asked to determine whether or not he played a major role in the robbery that resulted in Hawkins' murder. Hence, executing him without putting this question before a jury would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment. Killing Murphy, the filing argues, who "neither fired a shot at Officer Hawkins nor had any reason to know others would do so," would "simply be vengeance." In addition to his commutation plea, Murphy has asked the CCA to reconsider its April 2006 Denial of Relief, or otherwise allow him to file for a rehearing. Like his motion before the BPP, Murphy's CCA filing cites pending legislation and violation of his constitutional rights. However, here Murphy's counsel notes that the proposed legislation would not "provide relief for those" like Murphy, because the change in law would only apply to criminal proceedings that start on or after the effective date of Sept. 1, 2019. Instead, the motion insists, "The same concern that has led these legislators to propose the now-pending legislation is nonetheless present in Murphy's case." It's been a long legal fight for Murphy; his last round of appeals – largely arguing ineffective counsel – ended in denial at SCOTUS in November. Without intervention, he'll the 3rd man executed by the state this year and the 5th member of the "Texas 7" to be put to death, leaving only Randy Halprin alive. Though Halprin has not yet been given an execution date, he has also maintained he didn't fire any of the 5 guns that killed Hawkins. (source: Austin Chronicle) ** Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present42 Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982present-560 Abbott#scheduled execution date-nameTx. # 43-Mar. 28Patrick Murphy--561 44-Apr. 11Mark Robertson--562 45-Apr. 24John King---563 46-May 2--Dexter Johnson--564 47-Aug. 21Larry Swearingen565 48-Sept. 4Billy Crutsinger566 (sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin) USAcountdown to nation's 1500th execution With the execution of Billie Wayne Coble in Texas on February 28, the USA has now executed 1,493 condemned
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., LA., OHIO
June 5 TEXASfemale to face death penalty DA to seek death penalty in Henderson case Henderson County District Attorney Mark Hall intends to seek the death penalty against Sarah Henderson, the woman charged with capital murder in the shootings of her 2 young daughters. "Although the state is making its election at this time not knowing the ultimate result of the evaluations, and whether the defendant is found to be competent or incompetent and later restored to competency, the state elects to seek the death penalty in this case in order to allow the jury that will hear the case the opportunity to impose the punishment it deems appropriate, should the defendant be found guilt of capital murder," court records show. Hall filed his election to seek death on Friday. He has said he had a June 1 deadline to make a decision on the punishment if Henderson is found guilty. A hearing was conducted on April 27 after defense attorneys filed a motion for examination to determine competency. Judge Scott McKee of the 392nd Judicial District Court entered an order for examination to determine Henderson's competency. Dr. Tom Allen and Dr. Timothy Proctor were appointed to examine the defendant. Henderson, 30, has pleaded not guilty after being indicted in January on 2 counts of capital murder, attempted murder and assault on a public servant. A jury trial has been scheduled for Jan. 28, 2019. She was arrested on Nov. 2, 2017, at her Payne Springs home. Henderson County Sheriff Botie Hillhouse said at the time she had planned the murders of Kaylee and Kenlie for a couple of weeks and that she tried to kill her husband, Jacob Henderson, before the gun malfunctioned. The girls were 5 and 7. In a 911 call, Jacob asked for help for his wife before asking a dispatcher to "disregard" the call. 3 hours later, he made another 911 call to report that his wife had shot the girls in their heads. "The assault on a public servant arose 2 days later while Henderson was being held in the Henderson County jail, where she is accused of striking a detention officer while he was attempting to release her from restraint," according to reports. McKee provided prosecutors and defense attorneys Steve Green and John Youngblood a restricted and protective order - that is, a gag order. Henderson remains in the Henderson County jail on $1 million bond each on the capital cases and a combined $100,000 bond on the other counts. (source: Athens Daily Review) ***--female may face death penalty Details released for Wichita Falls woman charged in capital murder of Abilene man A Wichita Falls woman has been accused of being the 2nd person involved in the fatal shooting of an Abilene man last month after police received a Crime Stoppers tip and a recorded jail phone call. Precious Nicole Tillery, 19, has been charged with capital murder. She was in the Wichita County Jail Monday morning in lieu of $2 million bail. Eric Glenn Lee II, 22, is also facing capital murder. If found guilty of the capital felony, Tillery and Lee would be sentenced to life without parole or the death penalty. Court documents revealed Tillery was on probation for an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon at the time of the shooting. She had initially been charged with aggravated robbery for the Feb. 28, 2016, stabbing of a man in the 400 block of Bailey Street. In that incident, Tillery claimed he had stole money that belonged to her and reportedly dug through his pockets and then took his Oklahoma identification card. She was indicted for aggravated assault on April 21, 2016. She accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to 8 years deferred probation after pleading guilty on Oct. 26, 2016. According to the arrest warrant affidavit for the capital murder: Wichita Falls police were called to the scene of a shooting in the 1000 block of Juarez Street around 12:56 a.m. on April 17. A detective was called to the scene around 1:25 a.m. When officers arrived on scene, they found 28-year-old Matthew Liggins in front of the address with multiple gunshot wounds to the upper torso. Liggins was taken to United Regional Health Care System, where he later died from his injuries. A witness told responding officers that she was in the front passenger of Liggins' vehicle and identified a possible suspect as Lee. The witness was taken to the Wichita Falls Police Department by detectives to be further interviewed. At the station, the witness said Liggins had driven them from Abilene to Wichita Falls to pick up a friend who had been robbed by Lee earlier in the day. She said they didn't know that the friend had been robbed until after they arrived in Wichita Falls. When they arrived the apartments, the witness said Liggins contacted Lee and told him that they were outside. The witness said Lee and a person with brown and black dreads ??? she thought the person might be a
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., ALA., MISS.
Feb. 7 TEXAS: New punishment trial begins for convicted murderer Stanley Griffin Convicted murderer Stanley Lamar Griffin returned Tuesday to a Brazos County courtroom where a second jury will hear punishment testimony to decide his fate -- a hearing that comes almost 6 years after he was sentenced to death for killing a single mother and injuring her son. The retrial for the punishment phase was ordered in 2016 by the state's highest court after deciding that the slaying of the 29-year-old College Station woman and the attack on her 9-year-old son didn't meet the standard required for a death penalty case. The jurors heard Tuesday from 14 witnesses called by the prosecution, many of whom testified about Griffin's tendency toward aggression and violence. Among them was Jodie Piacente, whom Griffin was convicted of attacking in 1990. He served 13 years of a 20-year sentence in prison for the crime before moving to the Bryan-College Station area. Griffin was arrested in September 2010 after authorities found Jennifer Marie Hailey dead in her apartment off Pedernales Drive. Her son knew the suspect and identified him by name to police later that morning; DNA evidence tied Griffin to the crime scene, according to testimony in the 1st trial. In that 2012 trial, Griffin was found guilty of capital murder in the strangling death of Hailey and for choking and stabbing her son with a garden trowel after killing her. That ruling was overturned when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals voted 6-3 that there was not enough evidence to prove capital murder. Such a conviction requires the state to prove that Griffin killed a person while also committing another felony, such as kidnapping, robbery, aggravated sexual assault, arson or burglary. Capital cases don't allow for aggravated assaults, injury to a child or attempted murder as the secondary crime. Prosecutors argued in the 1st trial that Griffin had effectively kidnapped the boy by ordering him to his room. The sentencing retrial will determine how long Griffin will spend in prison. The 52-year-old faces between 5 years to life in prison. Brazos County First Assistant District Attorney Brian Baker told jurors in his opening statement that they would be seeking the maximum sentence -- life behind bars. "We're going to ask you [the jury] to protect anyone and everyone in this man's path," said Baker, outlining decades of consistent violent behavior exhibited by Griffin. Griffin's defense declined to make an opening statement, reserving the right to do so after the state wraps up its case. Piacente, who was the 1st to testify Tuesday, said she first met Griffin in Webster, Texas, as a neighbor and acquaintance of her then-boyfriend. Shortly after that boyfriend moved out of the apartment where she and her 2 children lived, Piacente said she was awakened in the middle of the night to find Griffin standing over her. She said he told her he noticed her door was open and came inside to make sure everything was OK. As she was walking him out, Piacente said Griffin went to the kitchen, and she noticed the living room window had been shattered. Piacente said he returned with a knife, which she managed to knock away before he began to choke her. After a struggle, and with the assistance of her son, who distracted Griffin, Piacente was able to escape and alert police to the attack. The 10-woman, 3-man jury -- 1 is an alternate -- also heard from Andrea Calixte, whom Griffin dated for the more than 5 years leading up to Hailey's death, and her son, Jordan Maupin, with whom Griffin often clashed. During the several years of their on-and-off relationship, Calixte said there were several instances of verbal abuse and a few physical altercations -- 1 of which resulted in a broken tooth and cut lip after she said Griffin pushed her down and she fell into a clay pot. Griffin was arrested and served several months in jail for the offense, after which Calixte said she was convinced to give him another chance. Calixte said Griffin told her on multiple occasions during the relationship that he would kill both her and her children if she ever left him. Maupin, who was a teen at the time Griffin and his mother were in a relationship, said in his testimony he had an adversarial relationship with Griffin. He testified that Griffin was frequently verbally -- and occasionally physically -- abusive toward him. In what he said was Griffin's first instance of violence toward him, Maupin said the man choked him and briefly lifted him off the ground by his neck. Maupin said he tried to tell his mother about the abuse, but it was dismissed at the time; Calixte testified that she does not remember being told of any violent incidents until later in the relationship. Eventually, Calixte said she was able to save up enough money to rent her own apartment without Griffin's knowledge, and get herself and
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Feb. 4 TEXASimpending execution Texas man vowed to forgive whoever killed most of his family; then he learned it was his son Rage and faith warred inside Kent Whitaker as he lay in a hospital bed with a 9mm bullet hole 6 inches from his heart. It was December 2003, and the pillars of the Houston-area man's life had just been ripped down. A husband of 28 years, he was now a widower. Of his 2 college-age sons, 1 was dead and the other was recovering from a gunshot wound. A man of faith, he was burning at God for letting tragedy strike. His anger tightened specifically around the unknown shooter who had ambushed the 4 as they came home from a family dinner. "All I could feel for this person was an incredibly deep and powerful hatred," Kent told The Washington Post this week. "Just thinking about how I could inflict pain on him." But Bible verses also pushed into Kent's thoughts. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him," he recalled. "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." Although the settlement brings closure, families said they still are searching to forgive. Revenge was a dark path he did not want to step down, Kent realized, so he resolved to forgive the shooter. Lying in the hospital bed, it seemed impossible. But he would do it. No matter who it turned out to be. "As soon as that happened, there was a warm glow that flowed over me," Kent said. "It took the fire out of me." What Whitaker didn't realize then was that the man he would have to forgive was his surviving son, Thomas "Bart" Whitaker. In the spring of 2007, Bart was convicted of orchestrating, along with two accomplices, the murders of his mother, Tricia, 51, and younger brother, Kevin, 19. During the attack, Bart was purposely shot in the arm as a way of diverting suspicion. Jurors sentenced him to death. Throughout the appeals, however, Kent has stayed by his son's side -- and remains there today, as the state prepares for Bart's Feb. 22 execution. With time running short, the Whitakers have filed a request with Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend a sentence commutation, to life in prison, to Gov. Greg Abbott. Kent's forgiveness is the bedrock of the petition. The board's role is to provide a check on the justice system when it fails, Kent said this week. His son's sentence was flawed because no one -- neither Kent nor Tricia's family -- pushed for his execution. "I feel the whole decision to pursue the death penalty was an overstep," Kent said. "This isn't just a case of a dad who is ignoring the truth about his son. Believe me, I'm aware of what his choices have cost me." The Whitakers' last-shot appeal is framed by a dramatic debate working through courtrooms across the country, the same issue spotlighted by the recent sentencing hearing for Larry Nassar. When more than 160 abuse survivors marched into a Michigan courtroom to testify about the fallout from the disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor's abuse, it amplified the power of victim's' participation in the legal system. Kent's appeal channels the same question: How can justice be served if victims are not involved in the process? "Texas claims to be a victims' rights state. It's something we're proud of," Whitaker told The Post. "I'm asking for the board to recognize victims' rights means something even when the victim is asking for mercy, not just when they are asking for vengeance." Although investigators initially thought the Dec. 10, 2003, shooting was the work of a burglar interrupted in the middle of a break-in, clues began pointing elsewhere. Drawers were pulled out in the house, consistent with a break-in, but the contents of the drawers were still neatly organized, not ransacked. Also, the only item missing from the house was Bart's mobile phone. Why leave everything else except a phone? Also, on the night of the murders, Bart had invited the family out to dinner because he wanted to celebrate his upcoming college graduation. But police learned Bart was not about to graduate college. He wasn't even enrolled in school, a fact he had kept hidden from his parents. For 7 months after the shooting, Bart lived at home with his father. Police told Kent his son was a suspect and warned he still could be in danger. "He continued to deny it, and the police continued to say he was their suspect," Kent told The Post. "I didn't know who was telling the truth. I told the police, 'If I see something, I'm going to tell you. But I'm not going to abandon my son. I'm going to stand with him through all of this even if he's responsible.'" Police found their strongest lead when a former roommate of Bart's came forward and said the 2 had plotted earlier to kill the Whitakers. Investigators recorded a phone conversation between the 2. Although Bart said nothing specific about the killings, he did agree to pay the roommate $20,000. Then he
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., ALA., OHIO
June 17 TEXAS: Larry Fitzgerald, face for Texas death row, dies at 79 Larry Fitzgerald, former Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman, sits on the sofa in his living room in what had been his quarters in Huntsville. He witnessed more than 200 executions during his 8 years as the face of the nation's busiest death chamber. He died June 12. As prison system spokesman, Fitzgerald was the face of the nation's busiest death chamber for 8 years. Friends and relatives remember his wit, empathy with death-row inmates and his notorious gallows humor. Larry Fitzgerald, who for years was the Texas prison system's spokesman, working as the public face of the busiest death chamber in the nation, died June 12 at his Austin home, according to his family. Fitzgerald was the Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman for 8 years during which Texas was building new prisons and dealing with the attention drawn by then Gov. George W. Bush's run for the presidency. He was inevitably drawn into stories about the death penalty and Texas' approach to it, fielding inquiries from American media he said were generally cordial and foreign outlets that he said treated him as if he personally sharpened the executioner's axe. A hard-drinking, chain-smoking archetype of a public relations era now past, Fitzgerald, according to a 2014 Texas Monthly article, once showed his mischievous streak by taking a newly hired spokeswoman to a prison on the pretense of educating her about the business - only to lead her "past dozens of newly shorn arrivals who had been divested of not just their hair but all their clothes." Fitzgerald's obituary - most of which he wrote himself - notes that as a prison system spokesman he "witnessed 219 executions, allowing him to meet many state, national and international media types. Big whoop." But as the public face of a notorious prison system, "If Larry said it, you could take it to the bank," said Michelle Lyons, the co-worker Fitzgerald had led past the cluster of nude inmates. "He was, quite simply, the face of TDCJ and he always will be." Fitzgerald is survived by his wife, Marianne Cook Fitzgerald; daughter, Kelly Anne Fitzgerald; and son, Kevin Lane Fitzgerald. He died from what his wife said was a serious internal disease, for which he had been in hospice care. The family is planning a public memorial, though they are still working out the details, Marianne Fitzgerald said. Clyde Larry Fitzgerald was born Oct. 12, 1937, in Austin, according to his obituary. He was the son of a government land man and a schoolteacher, according to an article by Houston Chronicle reporter Mike Ward, one of the many Texas journalists Fitzgerald grew to know over the years. Fitzgerald graduated from McCallum High School and attended the University of Texas. He worked for years at radio stations around Texas as a disc jockey, reporter and news director, developing the authoritative voice he would employ before the cameras. He worked in political campaigns for Bill Hobby, who was then the lieutenant governor, and Ann Richards during her run for governor. His obituary notes that he "was proud that he kept one particular promise he had made to himself: never vote Republican." (source: Austin American-Statesman) PENNSYLVANIA: Convicted killer 'should go to the very top' of execution list, judge says A Lancaster County man has been formally sentenced to death for fatally stabbing a woman and her 16-year-old daughter because they were going to testify against him in a child sexual assault trial. Lancaster County President Judge Dennis Reinaker ordered the sentence Friday for 40-year-old Leeton Thomas and said if Pennsylvania lifts a moratorium on the death penalty, Thomas "should go to the very top of the list." Thomas, 40, was found guilty by a jury Tuesday of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder in the June 2015 killings of 44-year-old Lisa Scheetz and her daughter. The Quarryville man was also convicted of attempted homicide for severely wounding Scheetz's then-15-year-old daughter after breaking into the family's East Drumore Township home. She testified at trial and identified Thomas as the killer. The jury decided on the death sentence Wednesday night. (source: WHTM news) GEORGIA: Prison bus was 'tank of piranhas' as guards slain; death penalty sought for escapees Convicts on a Georgia prison bus appeared to laugh and jump around as 2 corrections officers were shot to death earlier this week in an escape that prompted a nationwide manhunt. The callousness of the crime has authorities preparing to seek the death penalty for accused killers Ricky Dubose and Donnie Russell "Whiskey" Rowe. "We've got too many of these savages out here. We need to keep them caged up and send those to hell that we can," Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said Friday, a day after Rowe and Dubose were caught south of Nashville,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., ALA., LA., OHIO
April 13 TEXAS: Death Row Inmate Rodney Reed Loses DNA Appeal The state's top criminal appeals court is refusing to allow additional DNA testing of evidence in the lengthy Central Texas death penalty case of Rodney Reed. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals says the request by Reed's attorneys was the latest of a number of legal moves to unreasonably delay his execution for the April 1996 abduction, rape and strangling of 19-year-old Stacy Stites. Her body was found off the side of a road in Bastrop County. Reed was arrested nearly a year later when his DNA surfaced in another sexual assault. He sought tests on more than 40 items collected in the murder investigation. Reed long has insisted he and Stites had a consensual sexual relationship and that her police officer fiance more likely was her killer. (source: Associated Press) PENNSYLVANIA: Defense: Test Murder Weapon in Death Penalty Case An attorney for a man on death row in the shooting death of a Pennsylvania police officer is asking that the murder weapon be tested to make sure it didn't go off by accident. The (Easton) Express-Times (http://bit.ly/2p8MjRc ) reports that defense attorney Jonathan Polonsky brought up the idea at a hearing Wednesday in Northampton County Court in the case of 51-year-old George Hitcho Jr. He was convicted of 1st-degree murder and sentenced to death in the 2011 shotgun slaying of Freemansburg police officer Robert Lasso, who responded to a disturbance call at Hitcho's home. Polonsky argued that his client's former attorney should have had the gun tested to counter an argument by prosecutors that had the weapon not jammed after the fatal shot, the defendant would have kept firing. (source: Associated Press) VIRGINIAimpending execution With Execution Date Approaching, Evidence Suggests Teleguz Is Innocent Pressure is building on Governor Terry McAuliffe to grant clemency in the case of a former Harrisonburg man who could be executed later this month. New evidence suggests prosecutors and police used questionable tactics to convict him, and witnesses who pointed a finger at him are now admitting they lied. Ivan Teleguz faces execution this month for a crime that supporters say he did not commit. When a young Harrisonburg mother was brutally murdered more than a decade ago, police were anxious to find the killer, and DNA from the crime scene led to Michael Hetrick - a man who said he didn't even know Stephanie Sipe and had no motive to kill her. Detectives thought the woman's former boyfriend and the father of her child hired Hetrick, and they urged him to confirm that theory: "The police just fed him every detail of their case. They even gave him this document that laid out their entire theory of the case, and said, 'We want you to read this so you can understand the facts of the case." Elizabeth Peiffer - staff attorney at the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center - says officers then called the Commonwealth's attorney, who said she would ask for the death penalty unless Hetrick could confirm that Ivan Teleguz was behind the killing. "That if he didn't give them Ivan - if he didn't repeat this story back to them, his own life would be in jeopardy - that they would seek the death penalty, and he would get it," she explains. Hetrick then said he was hired by Teleguz, and 2 other men testified that's what happened. One of them - an immigrant from Kyrgystan - was promised help in getting a visa from the federal government to save him from deportation. The other was told he might face the death penalty if he didn't implicate Teleguz. In court, attorney Peiffer says, the prosecutor claimed Teleguz had also committed a murder in Pennsylvania. "They told jurors that this is how he solves his problems. He has people commit murder for him, and jurors were really scared," she says. "They sent out a question to the judge during deliberations asking if he had their addresses, and the judge had them instructed that he did have this information, and jurors were so scared that they very quickly sentenced him to death." But it turned out the Pennsylvania murder they described never happened, and the 2 men who originally linked Teleguz to the crime in Virginia have since said they lied. Now the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center and the law firm Kirkland and Ellis are asking the governor to pardon Teleguz or at least commute his sentence so he won't be executed. "We have asked that he grant a full pardon, because we believe the current state of the evidence, with 2 of the key prosecution witnesses recanting their testimony that no juror could have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." And, Peiffer says, public support for Teleguz, who - along with his family -- left the Soviet-controlled Ukraine as a child to avoid religious persecution, is growing. "Not only do we have over 113,000 people
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA.
April 4 TEXAS: Supreme Court Will Take up 3rd Harris County Death Penalty Case This Year After recently ruling in favor of 2 Harris County death row inmates, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to take up yet another Houston death penalty case this year. Carlos Ayestas was sentenced to death for his role in a 1995 home invasion, in which Ayestas and two others tied up a 67-year-old woman with duct tape and strangled her to death. His guilt is not at issue in the case - but his appellate attorneys argue that if the jury at his sentencing hearing had known he was schizophrenic and addicted to cocaine they would have decided against execution. Ayestas's original defense lawyers did not reveal this during the sentencing hearing. The only mitigating evidence they presented about Ayestas were 3 letters submitted by the Harris County Jail's English-as-a-2nd-language teacher, who said Ayestas was an attentive student. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to take up the case on the grounds of ineffective counsel, deciding whether the U.S. Fifth Circuit erred when it denied Ayestas additional resources to dig up evidence showing that his original lawyers failed him. The justices denied to consider the case on one other basis Ayestas's attorneys put forth: that Harris County District Attorney's Office prosecutors sought to execute him based in part on his immigration status. In 2014, Ayestas's appellate attorneys with the Texas Defender Service discovered an internal "Capital Murder Summary" memo never shared with Ayestas's trial defense counsel. In the memo, prosecutor Kelly Seigler lists 2 "aggravating circumstances" that support sentencing Ayestas to death. One was the brutal nature of the senior citizen's murder. The other was the fact that Ayestas was not a U.S. citizen. He was an undocumented immigrant from Honduras. As the Texas Attorney General's Office noted in its brief opposing Ayestas's appeal, someone later crossed out that second immigration-status reason, and it was never presented to the jury. The Supreme Court justices did not explain why they would not consider whether the U.S. Fifth Circuit erred when it declined to hear out Ayestas's claims that prosecutors sought his execution for discriminatory reasons. The Fifth Circuit's basis for declining that argument last March was that Ayestas's defense counsel didn't try hard enough to discover the Capital Murder Summary memo until more than a decade after his trial - reasoning the Texas Defender Service argued was flawed in its Supreme Court writ. "Mr. Ayestas's case is about the right to be fairly charged and defended," his attorneys, Lee Kovarsky and Callie Heller, said in a statement. "From the charging decision through the federal habeas process, Mr. Ayestas has been denied his constitutional right to nondiscriminatory treatment and effective representation; these are rights to which all criminal defendants, especially those facing a death sentence, are entitled." This is the 3rd time this year that a Harris County death penalty case is in the Supreme Court spotlight. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Houston death-row inmate Bobby Moore, whose attorneys have maintained that he is mentally disabled and should not be executed. The court ruled that Texas's method of determining whether death-row inmates are mentally disabled, which is sometimes likened to the "Lennie test," a reference to the John Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men, is invalid. And in February, justices ruled in favor of Duane Buck. At his sentencing hearing, an expert witness called by Buck's own attorney suggested on the stand that because Buck is black, he posed a greater "future danger." The court ruled Buck is entitled to a new hearing. In the Texas Defender Service's brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of Ayestas, they began by quoting Chief Justice John Roberts's opinion in the Buck case: "[T]his is a disturbing departure from a basic premise of our criminal justice system: Our law punishes people for what they do, not who they are." (source: Houston Press) Supreme Court to hear another Texas death penalty caseThe U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear the Texas death penalty case of a Honduran national who was convicted for his role in a 1995 murder of 67-year-old Santiaga Paneque during a Houston home invasion. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear the Texas death penalty case of a Honduran national who is arguing that a federal appeals court wrongly denied him resources to investigate and provide evidence of substance abuse and mental illness. Advocates for Carlos Ayestas believe that if a jury had heard he had a history of cocaine addiction and mental illness, they may not have sentenced him to death for his role in a 1995 murder of 67-year-old Santiaga Paneque during a Houston home invasion. State officials have dismissed such
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., LA., OHIO
April 1 TEXAS: As execution looms, juror in Hurst Putt-Putt murder hopes to change law When Sven Berger looked around at the other jurors in the deliberation room during a 2008 capital murder trial, he knew that the majority wanted the death penalty. He also knew he didn't. But he voted for it anyway. It's a decision he still regrets, and one he says he wouldn't have made if the law had been clearly explained in that Tarrant County courtroom. He'd sat in the courtroom and listened to how Paul Storey, the 22-year-old defendant in an ill-fitting suit, and another man had robbed Putt-Putt in Hurst and fatally shot the assistant manager, 28-ear-old Jonas Cherry. Berger knew Storey was guilty, he said in a recent Texas Tribune interview, but in his gut, he didn't believe the man would be a future danger to society, a requirement in issuing the death penalty in Texas. What Berger didn't realize - in part because of the language in the jury instructions - was that his vote alone could have blocked the jury from handing down a death sentence and given Storey life in prison without the possibility of parole. Thinking that he'd have to convince most of his fellow jurors to spare Storey from execution, he didn't fight as the jury deliberated, Berger said. When the life-or-death questions went around the table, he answered like everyone else. Now, with Storey's execution set for April 12, Berger and at least 2 state lawmakers are hoping to change jury instructions in death penalty cases. "The judge instructed us that any vote that would impose a life sentence would require a consensus of 10 or more jurors," Berger wrote in a letter to the Senate Criminal Justice Committee last week. "With the vast majority of the other jurors in the room ... voicing their vote for death, I seriously doubted I could persuade 1, let alone 9 other jurors, to vote to incarcerate Mr. Storey for the remainder of his life, and I switched my vote." 'I was shocked' To hand down a death sentence in Texas, the jury's decision must be unanimous. If even 1 juror disagrees, the trial automatically results in a sentence of life without parole. But the jury instructions don't say that, and, under state law, no judge or lawyer can tell jurors that either. Instead, deliberations in a trial's sentencing phase focus not on death versus life, but on 3 specific questions the jury must answer: is the defendant likely to be a future danger to society? If the defendant wasn't the actual killer, did he or she intend to kill someone or anticipate death? And, if the answer is yes to the previous questions, is there any mitigating evidence - like an intellectual disability - that the jury thinks warrants the lesser sentence of life without parole? To issue a death sentence, the jury must unanimously answer "yes" to the first 2 questions and "no" to the last question. But, the instructions state, to answer "no" to the first 2 questions or "yes" to the last, 10 or more jurors must agree. What those complicated instructions don't say is that a single juror can deadlock the jury on any of the 3 questions, eliminating death as an option and triggering an automatic life without parole sentence. Berger didn't get the distinction. "I'm appalled that Texas' capital jury instructions misled jurors about the implications of their vote, and find it unconscionable that men and women like me, with the power of life and death, are told that they must act only as a single group, and that their individual voice doesn't matter," Berger wrote in his letter. He's not the only one upset. Democratic Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr. of Brownsville and Rep. Abel Herrero of Robstown filed bills in the Texas Legislature to strike the language that says ten or more jurors must agree to answer against the death penalty, and also remove a sentence that bars judges or lawyers from telling jurors what their votes mean. And Republican Rep. John Smithee, of Amarillo, has since signed on to Herrero's bill as a co-author. Senate Bill 1616 and House Bill 3054 have both been referred to committee. "I was shocked to learn that the instructions in place actually lie to jurors who are tasked with quite literally making a life or death decision," Lucio told the Tribune, saying religious advocates first informed him of the current jury instructions. 'A guessing game' The bills might not make much headway in a Republican-dominated legislature that tends to avoid anything that could affect the death penalty. Though no opposition has come forward yet (neither bill has even been granted a hearing), prosecutors would likely fight it if it gained traction. "In a death penalty case, the jury's job in sentencing is to answer the special questions required by the law, not decide the ultimate sentence. This bill informs them of the effect of their vote and basically encourages any hold-out jurors to try to hang the jury on
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN. GA., FLA., ALA., TENN.
July 8 TEXAS: British woman on Texas death row may be spared as new evidence surfacesA hearing this week for Linda Carty presents her with hope that she might avoid death penalty amid evidence prosecutors coerced false witness testimonies A British woman who has been on death row in Texas for 14 years has been given renewed hope that she might be spared execution by an appeal hearing at which devastating evidence was presented that prosecutors had coerced false testimony from key witnesses. Linda Carty, 57, has a high profile in Texas as one of just 6 women facing execution in the state and as a British citizen by dint of her birth in St Kitts at a time when the Caribbean island was still a British colony. Her case has been highlighted in documentaries and championed by the likes of Bianca Jagger and the British government. Carty has always protested her innocence on charges that in 2001 she commissioned three men to carry out the kidnapping and murder of her neighbor, Joana Rodriguez, in a plot to steal the victim's 3-day old baby. Previous attempts to appeal her death sentence have failed, despite the absence of any forensic evidence against her and the fact that she was represented at trial by a defense lawyer who spent only 2 weeks preparing the case. Close observers say that this week's hearing before a single judge appointed by the Texas court of criminal appeals takes her plea of innocence to another level. The hearing, that is likely to be concluded with the judge's opinion in early September, presents her with the greatest hope yet that she might secure a retrial. Michael Goldberg of the law firm Baker Botts, who has been Carty's lawyer for the past 13 years, said that it was highly unusual that his client had even reached the stage of a post-conviction evidentiary hearing. "We were very happy when the Court of Criminal Appeals granted us this hearing, since it rarely does in Texas," he said. Goldberg added that "now that we've concluded the hearing, the evidence that we were able to present shows even more conclusively that Linda's rights in the 1st trial were abused and that a new trial is required". During this week's hearing, Goldberg spent 8 hours cross-examining Connie Spence, the lead prosecutor in the case who still works as a supervisor for the Harris County district attorney's office in Houston. Part of that cross-examination related to the explosive affidavit given in 2014 by Charles Mathis, a former agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration. In the affidavit, Mathis recounted how he had recruited Carty as a confidential informant who could provide useful information to the DEA on drug dealing in the city given her expertise as a trained pharmacist. He said that when he told Spence that he did not want to testify at trial against Carty, the prosecutor threatened to concoct a story about him having had an affair with the defendant. "I was shocked when Spence said this ... I felt Spence was threatening and blackmailing me into testifying." The judge heard further allegations that the prosecutors had fabricated evidence, destroyed essential case notes and emails that might have helped the defense and withheld several recorded witness statements that should have been handed over to the defense team. Both Spence and another prosecutor on the case who also still works for the DA's office appeared at the hearing, and both denied that they had done anything to coerce evidence from any of the witnesses. According to a report of the hearing by the Houston Chronicle, Spence told the judge: "Defense had access to the evidence any time they wanted to look." Closing arguments in the appeal will be presented on 29 August, and the judge has indicated he will give his opinion within the first 10 days of September. Should the judge recommend a retrial, it will then be up to the full court of criminal appeals to decide whether or not to act upon his advice. (source: The Guardian) PENNSYLVANIA: Death-row inmates can get federal legal helpThe Federal Community Defender Office represents 4 out of 12 death row inmates in the York County Court of Common Pleas. Hector Morales got on the witness stand in the York County Court of Common Pleas on Jan. 19, 2011, and told jurors that he didn't kill Ronald "Country" Simmons to prevent him from testifying in a drug case. Instead, Morales testified, the 2 worked out an agreement. He was going to give Simmons, 42, a discount on drugs - and the occasional freebie. The jury didn't buy it. And on March 1, 2011, jurors came back with a punishment for the crime: death. Now, Morales, 33, is asserting that his constitutional rights were violated. He's arguing the prosecution committed misconduct during the trial, and that his previous lawyers were ineffective. "I am innocent of the crimes for which I was found guilty," Morales wrote in court documents filed on
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., ALA., MISS., LA.
April 7 TEXAS: Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present19 Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982present-537 Abbott#scheduled execution date-nameTx. # 20-June 2---Charles Flores538 21-June 21--Robert Roberson---539 22-July 14--Perry Williams540 23-August 23Robert Pruett-541 24-August 31Rolando Ruiz--542 25-September 4-Robert Jennings---543 26-October 19---Terry Edwards-544 (sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin) PENNSYLVANIA: DA seeks to bar insanity defense in trooper ambush caseThe latest of many pretrial motions says Eric Frein's lawyers did not tell prosecutors about insanity plan Pike County District Attorney Ray Tonkin wants to bar attorneys for accused trooper killer Eric Matthew Frein from presenting an insanity defense. Tonkin's motion, filed April 1, states that under state law, a defendant who intends to claim insanity or mental infirmity must advise prosecutors the claim will be raised. "If a defendant in a criminal case seeks to use a mental health defense, they are required to file notice, and then the prosecution has an opportunity to have the defendant examined by an expert," Tonkin said. "Without the proper notice being filed, the prosecution is not able to have the defendant examined by another expert." The time frame for filing pretrial motions is 30 days, Tonkin said. In this case, the defense received several extensions. Frein's attorneys, William Ruzzo and Michael Weinstein, filed several pretrial motions in February and March, but have yet to file notice of an insanity defense. Ruzzo and Weinstein did not return a call for comment. According to Tonkin's motion, any evidence of insanity or mental retardation should be excluded because the 30-day time frame ended in February. Frein's attorneys have yet to file notice of an intent to use an insanity defense. Miranda violation alleged Frein, 32, of Canadensis, is charged with killing Cpl. Bryon K. Dickson II of Dunmore and seriously wounding Trooper Alex T. Douglass of Olyphant during an ambush on Sept. 12, 2014, outside the Blooming Grove barracks. After a 48-day manhunt that stretched across Pike and Monroe counties and involved hundreds of local, state and federal officials, authorities captured Frein on Oct. 30, 2014. Frein is charged with 1st-degree murder of a law-enforcement officer, criminal attempt to commit 1st-degree murder of a law-enforcement officer, terrorism and threatening to use weapons of mass destruction, among other charges. Frein pleaded not guilty and is being held in the Pike County Correctional Facility without bail. Tonkin is seeking the death penalty. On March 15, attorneys Ruzzo and Weinstein filed a motion asking Judge Gregory Chelak, who is presiding over the case, to move the trial out of Pike County or bring in a jury from another county due to the extensive pretrial publicity in the case. Frein's attorneys also filed motions on Feb. 17, asking the judge to suppress statements Frein made to police following his arrest. According to Frein's attorneys, police violated Frein's Miranda rights against self-incrimination when they continued to question him after he refused to sign a waiver of his rights and told officers he did not want to discuss "any crime." This was after Frein informed police of where he had stashed some rifles while on the run. A motion challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty was also filed by Frein's attorneys. Judge Chelak will take the defense and prosecution motions under advisement and issue a ruling at a later date. According to Tonkin, the hearing on the motions to suppress statements made by Frein to police following his arrest and the constitutionality of the death penalty is scheduled for April 19. The hearing on the change of venue/venire motion is scheduled for June 3, Tonkin said. Also, a May court date is expected, but according to Tonkin, that date is likely to change. (source: pikecountycourier.com) GEORGIA: New Play ABout Troy Davis Shows Both Sides"Beyond Reasonable Doubt: The Troy Davis Project" examines both sides of this controversial death penalty case. A new play opening Friday at Synchonicity Theatre provides an unusual take on the Troy Davis death penalty case, which gained international attention in 2011. "Beyond Reasonable Doubt: The Troy Davis Project" presents directly conflicting opinions of the case equally. One act points to his guilt, while the other act points to his innocence. "A lot of times, audience members are told what to believe, and I think that's a very easy position to take," said playwright Lee Nowell. "But I think audience members are smart enough to make their own
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., OHIO, MO., OKLA., NEB.
Sept. 25 TEXAS: Texas Is Making Its Own Execution Drugs, Oklahoma Inmate Alleges Many death penalty states have struggled to obtain a lethal injection drug that Texas has consistently been able to procure. In a filing Thursday in Oklahoma, lawyers provided evidence that Texas sold pentobarbital to Virginia in August. The state of Texas is making its own execution drugs and has sold them to at least 1 other death penalty state, an inmate facing execution in Oklahoma alleges in a court filing Thursday. His attorneys point to documents that show the Texas Department of Criminal Justice sold pentobarbital to Virginia in late August. Pentobarbital is a sedative that many death penalty states, including Oklahoma, have claimed is impossible for them to get their hands on. As a result, some states have turned to midazolam, a drug that critics argue is significantly less effective. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of midazolam in executions this June. The records submitted as part of the new filing show that Virginia received 150 milligrams of the drug. Under the heading "Name of Supplier," the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is listed. The labels do not identify the pharmacy that prepared the drug. However, the lawyers for the Oklahoma inmate state that the labels were created by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which they also allege "is compounding or producing pentobarbital within its department for use in executions." On Friday, Texas confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it sent the execution drugs to Virginia. A spokesman said it was to repay Virginia for having given Texas drugs in the past. "In 2013, the Virginia Department of Corrections gave the Texas Department of Criminal Justice pentobarbital to use as a back up drug in an execution," spokesman Jason Clark said. "Virginia's drugs were not used." "The agency earlier this year was approached by officials in Virginia and we gave them 3 vials of pentobarbital that [were] legally purchased from a pharmacy. The agency has not provided compounded drugs to any other state. Texas law prohibits the TDCJ from disclosing the identity of the supplier of lethal injection drugs." In a statement, the Virginia Department of Corrections said it intended to use the pentobarbital next week. "The Department did recently obtain pentobarbital from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice," spokesperson Lisa Kinney said. "That pentobarbital is scheduled to be used in the Oct. 1 execution of Alfredo Prieto. There was no payment involved." Kinney added that questions about who made the drug would have to be directed to Texas. The lawyers raise these issues to make the argument that Oklahoma could avoid the use of the controversial midazolam drug in its executions. It could do so, they argue, by purchasing pentobarbital from Texas, like Virginia, or by "compounding or producing pentobarbital in the same manner as does TDCJ." States have struggled to obtain execution drugs for years after makers enacted more stringent guidelines to keep them away from states that would use them for executions. The idea of a state-run lab making its own death penalty drugs is something Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster raised last year, although many wondered how it could be done. Missouri, like Texas, has had no trouble obtaining pentobarbital. (source:BuzzFeedNews.com) * Texas shared its execution drugs with Virginia Texas prison officials acknowledged on Friday that they have supplied at least 1 other state with execution drugs - but the original source of those drugs remains shrouded in secrecy. The disclosure came the day after a death-row inmate claimed in court papers that Texas is now making its own lethal injection drugs and had shared vials of them with Virginia. In a statement, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice confirmed it gave three vials of pentobarbital to the Virginia Department of Corrections. "The drugs have been tested for purity and will expire in April 2016," the statement said. "State law prohibits the agency from disclosing the identity of the supplier of lethal injection drugs," it said. Several death penalty states have passed laws to keep the source of their execution chemicals confidential to protect pharmacies that mix them from negative publicity and protests. Defense lawyers say the secrecy rules also prevent inmates from investigating whether the drugs that will be used to kill them are unadulterated. States across the nation have struggled to obtain execution drugs because pharmaceutical companies have been pressured to stop selling them to prisons for lethal injections. Virginia has not executed anyone since the 2013 electrocution of Robert Gleason. Texas, on the other hand, has put to death 10 prisoners this year. The details of its shipment to Virginia were first revealed in a court filing by Richard Glossip, who is
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., KY., TENN.
May 22 TEXAS: Execution Drugs to be State Secret Under Legislation Headed to Governor Manufacturers of execution drugs will be shielded from public scrutiny, helping to keep Texas' capital punishment machine in working order, under a bill headed to the governor's office. On Tuesday, Senate Bill 1697 cleared its final hurdle with a favorable vote in the House. If signed into law by the governor, as expected, the bill will keep information about anyone who participates in executions or supplies execution drugs confidential. This bill is about trying to protect innocent people who are just doing their job, said Rep. John Smithee (R-Amarillo), the bill's House sponsor, on Tuesday. That rationale was voiced numerous times by supporters as the bill moved through both chambers, but there's little evidence that Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) personnel or suppliers of execution drugs are at risk. The names of those involved in carrying out executions have never been revealed by TDCJ. The real issue is whether citizens should be able to access information about lethal-injection drugs. Until last year, the identify of lethal-injection drug suppliers could be acquired through a public information request. In May 2014, then-Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that TDCJ could keep the information secret. The ruling came after the Department of Public Safety sent Abbott a threat assessment report that claimed publicly linking a supplier or manufacturer of execution drugs would present a substantial threat of physical harm and should be avoided to the greatest extent possible. That decision was a shift from 3 previous rulings in which the attorney general???s office had found that TDCJ failed to prove that disclosing the information would create a substantial threat of physical harm. The May 2014 ruling came as Texas' supply of execution drugs was rapidly dwindling. In 2012, the state turned from a 4-drug cocktail to a single injection of pentobarbital. According to a Texas Tribune timeline, by August 2013 TDCJ had only 4 vials of the drug remaining, prompting the state to turn to compounding pharmacies, lightly regulated facilities that typically mix drugs for individual patients. In October 2013, the Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy requested that TDCJ return pentobarbital it had sold to the agency after the company began receiving unwanted media attention. In a letter to TDCJ, Jasper Lovoi, the owner of Woodlands, said he had been made to believe that his company's role in supplying the drugs would be kept private. I find myself in the middle of a firestorm that I was not advised of and did not bargain for, Lovoi said in the letter. During the House debate on SB 1697 Tuesday, Smithee said that manufacturers - such as compounding pharmacies - are refusing to sell lethal injection drugs to Texas and other states because of threats of violence. But when Rep. Terry Canales (D-Edinburg) asked him to elaborate on those threats, Smithee couldn't provide examples. Canales is the author of a stalled bill that would require TDCJ to post information about execution drugs, including the manufacturer, on the agency's website. A similar exchange took place during debate in the Senate last week. Sen. Joan Huffman (R-Houston), SB 1697's author, said that when information about the manufacturers of execution drugs was previously disclosed, it had a chilling effect on reputable pharmacies wanting to provide these compounds to the state of Texas. She said that investigations by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) had led to the determination that credible threats had been directed at suppliers of lethal-injection drugs. But when pressed, Huffman couldn't cite specific examples. No details of the DPS investigations have been made public. According to Austin-based attorney Philip Durst, lawmakers have been unable to point to specific threats because there haven???t been any. Durst is one of the plaintiff's attorneys in an ongoing lawsuit against TDCJ seeking disclosure of the name of a particular compounding pharmacy supplying execution drugs to the state. Durst told the House Corrections Committee at the end of April that based on his assessment of evidence provided by TDCJ and DPS during the lawsuit, there have been no threats of violence against drug suppliers or manufacturers in Texas or in any other state. Evidence presented by TDCJ in its motion for summary judgment includes emails to drug suppliers that read more like scoldings than threats and a link to a blog post about the Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy that includes an illustration of an exploding head. The post encouraged readers to write reviews of the pharmacy on Google+, sign a petition and contact the American Pharmacists Association. A state district court sided with the plaintiffs in December 2014 and ordered TDCJ to reveal the name of the lethal injection drug
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., ALA., OHIO, W.VA.
Feb. 20 TEXAS: Rodney Reed From Death Row: I'm Not Giving Up About 4 hours east of Bastrop, in the small town of Livingston, is a maximum security prison better known as death row. For the past 17 years, it's been Rodney Reed's home. He spends about 22 hours each day in a cell, clinging to hope and maintaining his innocence. It's not just what I'm going through, it's what my family is going through, Reed said. I kind of get emotional when I think about what's going on with them. At the moment, Reed said a radio is his only contact with the world. As the days tick down on his life, he can't see the countless protests and vigils calling for his freedom taking place across the state. The only updates come when family members see him through the glass. My baby boy, he tells me that he has faith, said Reed. I have to hold on, I have to hold onto that. Reed is scheduled to be executed March 5. A Bastrop jury convicted him nearly 2 decades ago for the 1996 murder of 19-year-old Stacy Stites. I try not to entertain what the state is trying to do to me, I don't want to entertain it, Reed said. But on Wednesday he was forced to. Reed said that before his interview with KEYE TV he was told to complete paperwork for the state identifying which of his family members could be in the room when he's executed. It also outlines what to do with his remains. KEYE TV asked Reed if he thinks it's possible the state will put him to death. I think that it's possible, he said. I hope that they don't, but it's possible that they will. Reed says he has known others on death row who have left and never come back, and he knows the routine, but it's not something he wants to focus on. I have to treat every day the same, he said. I mean I'm not going to curl up in a corner -- nothing like that -- and stare at the celling all day. I'm going to continue to listen to my music, continue to read and continue to be me. Reed also knows, as have others before him who have also maintained their innocence, that you can return from the brink. At the moment Rodney Reed's fate rests with the courts and Governor Greg Abbott. While campaigning for governor, Abbott spoke to KEYE TV in 2014 on his position on the death penalty in general, saying, I want to ensure sure that it's administered with absolute fairness and justice. Abbott said, I led the advancement in this last session to ensure we would have broad-based DNA testing in any death penalty case. If the death penalty is going to be imposed we must be sure that the person who receives the death penalty really did commit the crime. But at each recent hearing, the state consistently fought against additional DNA testing, along with new testing for evidence that's never been through the process, including the belt used to strangle Stites. Reed's attorneys believe the state is ready to move forward with the execution, rather than admit the possibility that the new findings and testimony in Reed's defense show he's innocent. What the state is trying to do here, in our view, is rush the execution date before we can get to the evidence that establishes Mr. Reed's evidence, said Reed's attorney Andrew MacRae. Their latest appeal argues new forensic evidence, from three renowned forensic pathologists, which they say shows it's impossible for Rodney Reed to be guilty. There are also affidavits from 2 of Stites' coworkers saying they kncew Reed and Stites were in a relationship. It would back up the story Reed has been telling since his conviction. I've been in this fight, this struggle that long. I'm not giving up -- not my hope, not my faith, Reed said. For now he waits, spending the majority of his time reading, thinking about family and supporters, and glancing at pictures. I look in their eyes, I look at their smiles, and I see the love, he said. With lingering questions, did the state get it right or will an innocent man run out of time? KEYE TV reached out to the office of the Governor and Attorney General for a comment on this case, but have not heard back. (source: KEYE TV news) Man who killed officer loses death row appeal A convicted killer sent to Texas death row for fatally shooting a Dallas police officer working an off-duty security job at a club more than 13 years ago has lost a federal appeal. Lawyers for 32-year-old Licho Escamilla argued before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that his trial attorneys were deficient for not producing evidence about his troubled childhood - evidence that could have persuaded jurors to sentence him to life in prison, the lawyers said. But the 5th Circuit ruled late Wednesday that evidence of the crime outweighed any mitigating evidence not presented to jurors. Court records show that Escamilla had a history of violence and that Officer Christopher James was 1 of 2 people he killed. James was shot multiple times in the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., MISS.
Feb. 16 TEXASimpending execution Family, advocates fight to prevent Reed executionThe family of Rodney Reed, family of his victim and a renowned anti-death penalty advocate are uniting, hoping for a stay of execution. With days left before convicted killer Rodney Reed is executed, his family and members of the victim's family united Sunday to fight for a stay of execution. I'm the brother of Rodney Reed, an innocent man on death row, said Roderick Reed, Rodney's brother. Rodney Reed is scheduled to be executed March 5. The Bastrop man was convicted for killing Stacey Stites in 1996. 17 years later, Roderick Reed fights for his brother's life. There's evidence out there that's never tested, Roderick Reed said. There was witnesses that we're never called. He had lazy lawyers. Look, all I'm asking and the message I want to ask is: just give him a fair trial. Days before Reed is scheduled to be executed, his family is gathering powerful supporters. In the beginning, I thought we were alone, Roderick Reed said. Sister Helen Prejean, an anti-death penalty advocate and author of 'Dead Man Walking,' The Innocence Project - a group that works to absolve wrongfully convicted people, and even certain members of Stites' family are joining the Reed family's fight. I don't think he did it, said Heather Stobbs, Stites' cousin. I don't think he's guilty. With growing support, the Reed family filed a writ of Habeas Corpus. They've filed requests to do DNA testing on evidence and asked for a stay of execution. Reed's lawyers expect answers from the Criminal Court of Appeals within the next couple of weeks. There will likely be a final opinion, said Quinncy McNeal, Attorney for Rodney Reed. It will move from the Criminal Court of Appeals. If Mr. Reed doesn't get relief there, it will move up to the federal level. A long time and a lot of effort for one family's only wish. I'm asking for justice that's it, Roderick Reed said. (source: KVUE news) ** Innocent Man Fights for Reform After 12 Years in Solitary Anthony Graves was 26 in 1992 when he was arrested for murdering 6 people in Somerville, Texas, outside Houston. At his trial, the prosecution presented no physical evidence to tie him to the scenes of the crimes, but he was nevertheless convicted and sentenced to death. It wasn't until the key witness in the trial recanted his testimony, weeks before Graves was to be executed, that new light was cast on his case. A judge later ruled that the prosecutor had withheld evidence and threatened witnesses, and ordered that Graves be released. Graves had already spent 18 years in prison, including a dozen in solitary confinment, by the time he regained his freedom in 2010. Now 49, Graves said the psychological damage of long-term isolation can linger. Solitary confinement is a system designed to break a man's will to live, he said. You're sitting there, in a little cage, day in and day out, year in and year out, waiting for the state to execute you or release you. After leaving prison he would suddenly burst into tears for no particular reason and had difficulty sleeping, though his condition has since improved. Still, there are things Graves saw and heard all those years that he can't forget. I witnessed men just literally, literally losing their minds, he said. More than 6,500 inmates in Texas live in solitary confinement, according to a report published last week by the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project. The figure does not include inmates who are living in solitary on death row. On average, prisoners remain in solitary confinement in Texas for almost 4 years, with more than 100 prisoners remaining in solitary for more than 20 years, the report states. The conditions in which these inmates live impose such severe deprivations that they leave prisoners mentally damaged, and they are more likely to commit crimes again once they are released, according to the ACLU report. We met with people who were profoundly mentally ill. So mentally ill we didn't feel comfortable sharing their stories in this report, said attorney Burke Butler, a researcher who helped produce the report. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice holds 4.4 % of its prison population in solitary confinement, the report states - about 4 times the national average. This is in part because of the sheer size of Texas' prison population, Butler said, but also because the state automatically places in isolation prisoners believed to have gang ties. Nearly 1/2 the people in solitary are said to be gang-affiliated. But they are often misclassified for reasons as simple as having old gang tattoos, Butler said. An array of subjective decisions by prison personnel can also land inmates in solitary, such as the 19-year-old Butler spoke to who said his confinement was punishment for throwing milk at a guard. Texas prisoners in
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., MISS., OHIO
Jan. 17 TEXAS: Court Suspends Death Row Inmate's Lawyer Over Late Filing On Wednesday, the judges of Texas' highest criminal court told a defense attorney named David Dow he would not be able to practice in front of them for the next year. The Court of Criminal Appeals decided that Dow had filed a motion to stop the execution of his client, Miguel Angel Paredes, too late, and that since he'd done the same thing in a different case in 2010, he will now be suspended. Neither the court nor Dow, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center and one of the best known death penalty defense attorneys in the country, will comment publicly. But this move is the latest evidence of an ongoing feud in Texas between lawyers who appeal on behalf of inmates facing executions, Dow chief among them, and the judges who rule on their claims. On the surface, the fights have been about deadlines, but, as criminal justice blogger Scott Henson described Dow's relationship with the judges back in 2009, Basically these folks just don't like each other on a level that transcends any given issue. Miguel Paredes was executed last October for a triple murder of gang rivals, committed in 2000. The summer before the execution, he wrote a letter to Dow asking for help, and Dow volunteered - without being appointed to the case - to investigate Paredes' claims. It took a while owing to Dow's busy schedule, but he found that Paredes' original lawyer had called no witnesses at the trial and that Paredes was allowed to waive an early appeal while on anti-psychotic medications. Dow filed an appeal and a call for a stay 7 days before the execution. The court said he should have filed it the day before. The court has explicitly said the deadline is 7 days before an execution, but in practice, attorneys know that they must have it in eight days before. It wasn't the first time Dow had clashed with the court over deadlines. One evening in October 2007, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review Kentucky's lethal injection protocol, Dow and his colleagues raced to write a new appeal for their client Michael Richard. As they worked to argue how the Kentucky case mirrored their own, they later said, their computers broke down, and they asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to wait 20 minutes after its 5 p.m. deadline so they could deliver the appeal by hand. We close at 5, was the response by the court's head judge, Sharon Keller. Those 4 words became a rallying point for the death penalty's opponents and made her a villain (Sharon Killer) in newspaper editorials across the country. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers sent a complaint about her actions to the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct. The commission's report on the matter called Keller's conduct not exemplary of a public service, but cast firm doubt on Dow's computer breakdown story and took him to task for making inaccurate statements in the press about how soon the appeal was actually ready, which spun out of control into a public groundswell of opposition against Judge Keller. In June 2011, Keller's court issued a new rule about filing deadlines. A pleading would be deemed untimely if it was filed fewer than 7 days before the scheduled execution date. The rule goes on to say that a request for a stay of execution filed at 8 a.m. on a Wednesday morning when the execution is scheduled for the following Wednesday at 6 p.m. is untimely. Dow filed a motion to stay Paredes' execution at 12:37 p.m. on Oct. 21. The execution was set for Oct. 28 at 6 p.m. It was more than 7 days in advance, but violated the rule's example. Pull out a calendar if you find this all a bit confusing. At a hearing last month, Dow went before the court to defend his late filing. The court found that he and his partner failed to show good cause for the untimely filings. In Dow's corner are defense attorneys who think the narrow and peculiar application of deadline rules allows the judges to avoid what went wrong at the original trial. The judges were focusing very narrowly on 15 hours of time rather than the case as presented, said Kathryn Kase, director of the Texas Defender Service and a former colleague of Dow???s. It's somewhat like saying, 'You were working too late in the emergency room,' while not focusing on the grievous injuries the patient has. As for the trial defense lawyer, who called no witnesses even as his client faced a death sentence, the judges had no complaints. (source: Texas Tribune) ** Capital murder trial costs county Information from the county auditor's office indicates that so far, the Gabriel Armandariz double homicide case has cost Young County about $427,334 and will likely cost taxpayers much more than that by the time the trial concludes. The Jeremy Thornburg murder case that concluded last October cost Young County $42,897, but a
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Sept. 23 TEXAS: Jury selection underway in Williams murder case It is day 2 of jury selection in the Eric Williams murder case. Williams and his wife, Kim, have been charged with capital murder for the slayings of Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse on Jan. 31, 2013, and Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, on March 30, 2013. 3 prospective jurors were interviewed on Monday - the 1st day of jury selection - in the Auxiliary Court at the Rockwall County Courthouse by members of the prosecution and defense teams, 2 men and 1 woman. The process to seat 12 people is slated to take weeks with the trial set to begin on Dec. 1. The trial itself may take between 2 and 3 weeks with the possibility of jurors being sequestered once deliberations begin. Dallas County Criminal Court No. 7 Judge Michael Snipes is overseeing the case but had to step aside on Monday to attend to cases on his docket back in Dallas. Snipes was appointed to hear the case in 2013 after 422nd District Court Judge B. Michael Chitty recused himself. Snipes was replaced by Judge Webb Baird of Paris who handled the rest of the day's proceedings. During the first day of jury selection, the prospective jurors were questioned about their views on the death penalty, as well as should a defendant be given life without parole, and whether they had seen news of the killings in the media. Philosophically, I believe in the death penalty, but I would not want to pull the switch, the 1st prospective juror said. When pressed further about pulling the switch by prosecutor Jerri Sims, he said it was a hard question to answer because of his Christian beliefs. Can you do it or not? Sims asked. He said he could. He also was asked about news of the killing in the media. I don't pay attention to local news, he said. I think [I heard about] a judge and his wife being killed in Kaufman County. I don't know their names. Sims also asked him about his thoughts on gun control. I think it is unconstitutional, he said. The Constitution is clear in my opinion. Sims asked him if he owned guns, and he said he had rifles, shotguns and handguns. Does that make me a gun nut? he asked. Maybe. He also said law enforcement is becoming too militarized, and that police have too much power. Williams defense attorney Matthew Seymour questioned the 1st prospective juror, first keying in on media coverage. Seymour asked, based on publicity surrounding the case - which was moved to Rockwall County from Kaufman County after Snipes granted a change of venue - asked the juror if he had formed an opinion. No sir, he said. Seymour then questioned him about the death penalty as the only form of punishment in a capital murder case. If [a defendant] committed a murder and continues to be a threat to the public ... I would have some questions, he said. I am not sure how you would judge that with certainty. I don???t think the death penalty should be the only appropriate punishment. The prospective juror said Timothy McVeigh deserved the death penalty because of the women and children he murdered in Oklahoma in 1995. That rises to a different level, he said. He planned it and it took a long time. It seemed evil. It is hard to reconcile in my mind how he could do that. It is an intentional act of evil that consumed his mind. That appears to be different than a normal murder. Prosecutor Tom D'Amore and defense attorney Doug Parks questioned the 2nd prospective juror. That juror did not hesitate when questioned about the death penalty. He said he strongly believes in it as a form of punishment and has no problem with lethal injection as the method. The 2nd prospective juror also said he can be fair and listen to both sides of the case because he has the ability to listen to the facts. I could not say guilty if not proven beyond reasonable doubt, he said. The candidate said he had heard about the case through the media. Parks asked him whether he recognized anyone on the list of witnesses set to testify during the Williams murder trial. The prospective juror said he did not know the people. He also said he did not know the victims in the case. Parks said he was concerned about the candidate's strong stance on the death penalty. If [someone] commits a crime heinous enough for the death penalty, I am all for it - a crime where an individual has thought out, planned and executed it without remorse, he said. If a defendant is put to death, he will not commit a 2nd crime. Once the candidate left the courtroom, Parks objected to him being chosen as a juror. Baird denied the motion. The 3rd prospective candidate was questioned by prosecutor Toby Shook and defense attorney John Wright. When asked whether she believes in the death penalty, she said she did. I believe there is a place for it, yes, she said. A society without laws or punishment
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., WASH., USA
Sept. 15 TEXAS: We recommend Bert Richardson for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 3 Deep experience in the law. Impeccable credentials. Exposure to a range of issues. Energy. Intellectual engagement. Widely traveled. If these are ideal qualities for a member of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Republican Bert Richardson is an ideal candidate for Place 3 on November's ballot. Richardson, 58, was a state district judge in San Antonio for 10 years before taking senior status and assignments to cases across 45 Texas counties. The cases he's handled reflect some of the big challenges in criminal justice. Richardson is also board certified in criminal law, a qualification achieved by fewer than 2 % of lawyers. Richardson has been involved with numerous death penalty cases, both as a prosecutor in Bexar County and as a judge. His observations to this newspaper on capital punishment are remarkable for a jurist: Richardson said there is no consistency in Texas in deciding when to seek the death penalty and that the state could benefit from a review process similar to one used by the U.S. Justice Department. Richardson once worked as a federal prosecutor. Richardson's Democratic opponent, John Granberg, 38, is an El Paso criminal lawyer and former assistant county prosecutor who says he would improve the court's awareness of immigration law. With no experience in state appeals or death cases, Granberg lacks credentials needed for this post. Libertarian Mark W. Bennett also appears on the ballot. (source: Editorial, Dallas Morning News) * No-Knock Raid Leads To Dead Officer But No Drugs: Prosecutors Pushing For Death Penalty Anyway A no-knock raid is a law enforcement technique designed to search for incriminating evidence while taking suspects by surprise. However, on the morning of May 9, it left one officer dead and another injured. Now prosecutors in Killeen, Texas, are hoping to impose the death penalty on the suspect, 49-year-old Marvin Louis Guy (pictured above), in spite of the fact that no drugs were found. The Washington Post writer Radley Balko looks at why this may not be such a good idea. Perhaps this was a major drug operation that justified a pre-dawn, no-knock raid. But it doesn't seem like it from the evidence found, Balko said. I'd imagine that a good percentage of households in Texas have at least 1 firearm and that a good percentage of households elsewhere in America have cellphones and a set of walkie-talkies [items found in the raid]. While there was a drug pipe found at the scene, this suggests drug use, not distribution, and Balko rightly points out that while an informant saw white bags of cocaine transported in and around the house, criminal informants are not typically that reliable. But all of that is mostly beside the point, Balko concludes. The fact that the police didn't find any drugs in the house suggests that Marvin Louis Guy didn't know he was shooting at cops. Drug dealer or no, unless he had a death wish, it's unlikely that a guy would knowingly fire at police officers when he had nothing in the house that was particularly incriminating. Still, the Killeen Police Department lost one of its own in 47-year-old Officer Charles Chuck Dinwiddie, and that isn't lost on the prosecution, notes KWTX. The outlet originally broke the news prosecutors would be seeking the death penalty in spite of the probability that Guy, awakened at 5:30 a.m/ by the no-knock raid, was simply shooting wildly at what he believed to be armed intruders. His gunfire also struck the femur of Officer Odis Denton, 37, who underwent surgery and was later released from Scott White Hospital. Guy also shot 2 additional officers, who were unharmed due to the bullets striking protective gear. While the evidence presented thus far does not indicate that police had substantial reason to believe Guy was a drug dealer, the case is still in the early stages of being tried, so it'll be interesting to see how it develops. (source: Inquisitr) PENNSYLVANIA: Death penalty trial to open in 2012 slaying of suburban Philadelphia baby, grandmother Jury selection is scheduled Tuesday in the trial of a suburban Philadelphia man accused of having killed a baby and her grandmother in a botched kidnapping plot. 27-year-old Raghunandan Yandamuri of Upper Merion could face the death penalty if convicted of 1st-degree murder in Montgomery County Court. Prosecutors allege that he kidnapped 10-month-old Saanvi Venna from her family's King of Prussia apartment in October 2012 and killed the baby's grandmother after the woman tried to protect the child. The girl's body was found several days later. Yandamuri plans to represent himself on charges of first and second degree murder, kidnapping, burglary and robbery. The trial was scheduled to open last week but was delayed to allow him to look into forensic
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., MISS., OHIO, KY., USA
July 4 TEXAS: Mass murderer who was spared death penalty gets erased by time A tragic, little-remembered anniversary in Dallas history passed nearly unnoticed last weekend. 3 decades ago last Sunday, on June 29, 1984, Abdelkrim Belachheb murdered 6 people in a restaurant-club called Ianni's near the intersection of LBJ Freeway and Midway Road. It remains Dallas' worst mass murder. The motive for the murders was his injured sense of personal importance: A woman at the bar had allegedly called him a monkey and shoved him away on the dance floor. Belachheb got a 9-mm handgun out of his car, returned to the bar and started shooting. He killed 4 women and 2 men: Marcell Ford, Janice Smith, Linda Lowe, Ligia Koslowski, Frank Parker and Joe Minasi. Another man was shot but survived. Police traced the gunman to a friend's house less than 2 hours later. Belachheb was a Moroccan citizen who for years had drifted from one low-rent job to the next. He was also a narcissistic sociopath and an all-around failure in life who blamed his problems on everybody but himself. The profile fits other criminals who have committed similar atrocities. His case was a landmark, but not because of the body count. Sadly, homicidal lunatics with a lot more firepower have since done much more damage. Belachheb's rampage was eclipsed 3 weeks later when a gun nut in San Ysidro, Calif., killed 21 people at a McDonald's. Belachheb's case did, however, inspire a change in Texas' death-penalty law - because Belachheb wasn't eligible for the death penalty. Texas author Gary Lavergne wrote a book about the case and its aftermath in 2002. He explains that at the time of the Ianni's murders, Texas law was specific in limiting a capital charge to murders that took place with certain circumstances, such as during the commission of another felony or killing a police officer. Those circumstances did not include multiple victims. If the Ianni's murderer had killed 1 person and stolen a dime from her purse, he could have been sentenced to death, Lavergne wrote. If he had walked off with an ashtray or a stolen fork off a table, he could have been sentenced to death. Instead, Belachheb was soon tried and sentenced to life in prison. During the following legislative session, state lawmakers added a multiple victims provision to the death-penalty statute. In his book, Lavergne doesn't make any sweeping generalizations about capital punishment. But his title, Worse Than Death, sums up the author's conclusion that life in prison - for the egomaniacal, self-important Belaccheb, at least - really was the worst punishment possible. Lavergne writes: In cell 108 of Pod F, at the High Security Section of Ad Seg [administrative segregation] of the Clements Unit in Amarillo, sits a man who wallows in self-pity and finds something to complain about nearly every moment of his life. He believes everyone is out to pick on him, he hates the food, and believes he is being harassed and even tortured. Every day he awakens in the same miserable surroundings knowing why he is there. Today, 12 years since that was written, prison records show that Belachheb still lives on the same unit. He'll turn 70 in November, a forgotten old man whose life is ticking away in a prison cell. The state didn't execute him, but it did, as the saying goes, throw away the key. His victims and their families cannot forget, of course. But for everyone else, time has moved on. Abdelkrim Belachheb is a distant name from a largely forgotten past. He is nobody. (source: Dallas Morning News) PENNSYLVANIA: Man no longer facing execution in 1982 Pa. slaying A judge has removed the death sentence imposed on a man convicted in the murder of a south-central Pennsylvania woman more than 3 decades ago. Lebanon County President Judge John Tylwalk instead sentenced Freeman May on Wednesday to life in prison without possibility of parole. May, 56, was convicted of the 1982 stabbing death of Kathy Lynn Fair, 22, whose remains were found 6 years later in woods in Lebanon County. The judge ruled in April that May was incapacitated and incompetent to proceed after a forensic psychologist testified that he suffered from a delusional disorder. District Attorney David Arnold said the life term was the only appropriate solution since the law is crystal clear that you cannot execute a mentally incompetent defendant, the Lebanon Daily News reported. So while it's frustrating that Freeman May was not executed after his initial death sentence, we have no choice but to respect the fact that he cannot be executed now or in the future under Pennsylvania law, he said after the hearing. May was convicted of killing Fair, a young mother, and sentenced to death in 1991. The sentence was reversed but reinstated after a second penalty phase hearing in 1995. An appeals court again lifted the death sentence but it was
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., ALA.
June 18 TEXAS: Marching Through The Desert To End The Death Penalty It's 93 degrees in Texas today. And Rev. Jeff Hood is walking 200 miles across the state. What would compel somebody to do that? He wants to end the death penalty... and he is not alone. Rev. Jeff Hood is a Southern Baptist pastor, deeply troubled by his denomination's stance on capital punishment. And he is troubled because he lives in the most lethal state in the US. Texas has had 515 executions since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 - the next state in line is Oklahoma with 111. That means Texas is responsible for 37% of the executions in the US. Jeff has been a long-time organizer and Board member for the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, a movement that is gaining some serious momentum these days. A growing number of Texans - and Americans in general - are questioning the death penalty. A recent ABC poll shows we are over the tipping point, with more than half of Americans being against the death penalty and in favor of life in prison, putting death penalty support at a new low. For some it is the racial bias - in Texas it is not uncommon for an African-American to be found guilty by an all white jury. In fact, in considering future dangerousness, a criteria necessary for execution in Texas, state experts have argued that race is a contributing factor, essentially that someone is more likely to be violent because they are black - prompting articles like the headline story in the NYTimes about Duane Buck: Condemned to Die Because He is Black. For others, the issue is more of an economic one - often the decisive factor on execution is not guilt or innocence but whether one is rich or poor... whoever doesn't have the capital gets the punishment as the old adage goes. And for others still, it is the Constitutional part, the cruel and unusual element - as equal justice under the law should mean you get the same punishment for a crime done in Connecticut as in Texas which is clearly not the case, with over 80% of executions coming from 2% of the counties in the US. And more and more folks are feeling the cruelty of it all, wasting so much energy and resources on how to kill people to show that killing is wrong. In fact there has not been an execution since the botched Oklahoma execution over a month ago, which left a man writhing in pain for 45 minutes before he died of a heart attack. It's not just liberals anymore, but all sorts of reasonable people (including conservatives and faith leaders) who are convinced that we can do better than this as a country... and we must. For Rev. Jeff Hood it is his faith that drives him. As he likes to say: The death penalty makes us both killers and victims. Only love can heal us. He began his journey by meeting with the men on death row, for whom he is a spiritual advisor. As he left the prison he said, The wind of God is at my back and set out on the 200 mile journey through the desert. I got to talk with him today, and he emphasized how his faith has shaped his views on the death penalty. We discussed the victims of violence, the heroic families like Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation and Journey of Hope, folks who are further traumatized by the 10 years of trials and millions of wasted dollars that go toward each execution, and especially the fact that taking another person's life does not bring back their lost loved ones. Jeff and I also talked about Jesus, the lens through which we read the Bible and the world around us. He is haunted by the way Christianity has been misrepresented when it comes to execution. There is a cross on top of the execution chamber in Huntsville, he said sadly. It's a contradiction that not enough Christians recognize - Jesus was a victim of the death penalty, not a proponent of it. Jeff described his hope that if more and more Christians embraced Jesus's life and teaching we would end the death penalty in America, for it's strongest pillars are in the heart of the Bible belt. He is hopeful, and so am I. As we ended the call he described all the gracious hospitality he has received - folks bringing him gifts, water, food, and smiles. One of the congregations hosting him are the United Methodists, whose church policy prohibits the death penalty: We believe the death penalty denies the power of Christ to redeem, restore, and transform all human beings. Amen. One of his favorite stories was an encounter with one passer-by who stopped to talk with him, not entirely convinced of where she stood on the issue. He explained how Jesus' command to love your neighbor as yourself and to love your enemies makes it difficult to execute, and she responded: Damn, that makes a lot of sense. Indeed it does. The Gospel is good news. The merciful will be shown mercy. March on, brother Jeff. I hope with every step you take, every mile you walk, we get a little closer to the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA.
March 3 TEXAS: Justice for Louis Castro Perez! The 5th Circuit Court has released an opinion denying relief to innocent Texas death row prisoner Louis Castro Perez. Many folks will be familiar with the case through Louis' sister, Delia Perez Meyer, who sits on the board of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. Delia has been a tireless advocate for her brother and all death row prisoners. She has travelled the world in the fight to win death penalty abolition. For some time, Louis has been fighting to win DNA testing of several items found at the crime scene that contain the DNA of an unknown person, including on a bloody towel wrapped around a knife found at the crime scene! For more facts about the physical evidence and issue in this case please check out: http://nodeathpenalty.org/get-the-facts/justice-louis-castro-perez-test-all-dna The latest appeal for Louis was based on an issue of ineffective assistance of counsel. The 5th Circuit had previously rendered a judgement denying Louis relief. His lawyer then had 30 days to respond, however, she failed to respond to a 30 day deadline for filing a new motion with the district court. In fact this attorney received notification of the deadline and without alerting Louis or the other consulting attorney on the case, she decided on her own not to respond to the motion, effectively abandoning her client. In March of 2012, after being made aware of the error, the court granted a motion to allow Louis to reenter the appeal that his lawyer should have made. However, late last week the 5th Circuit vacated that order, and has decided to let the original judgement of denial of relief stand. We will continue to fight for justice for Louis Castro Perez and against any execution date! The full judgement from the 5th Circuit can be read here: http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions%5Cpub%5C13/13-70002-CV0.pdf (source: CEDP) *** Prosecutors: Man Expresses No Remorse For Killing Austin Cop Prosecutors who secured a death penalty conviction of a 26-year-old man in the slaying of an Austin police office told jurors time and again that the killer expressed no remorse for the shooting. Travis County jurors were reminded during the capital murder trial and the penalty phase that Brandon Daniel was not sorry for the death of officer Jaime Padron. Jurors were told he remained a danger to others. Witnesses to the shooting at an Austin Wal-Mart testified that Daniel at one point said, I killed a cop, and laughed. The jury after 8 hours of deliberation condemned Daniel to death Friday for the April 2012 killing of Padron. The jury had the option of sentencing Daniel to life imprisonment without parole. Austin police Chief Art Acevedo was in court Friday along with a large contingent of law enforcement officers. The Austin American-Statesman reports the prosecution's portrayal of Daniel as a calculating, remorseless killer was answered by the defense's claim that he's a brilliant computer scientist with a history of depression and suicidal tendencies. Defense attorney Russell Hunt Jr. told jurors that Daniel was under the influence of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax when Padron was shot, and said his mental state had been deteriorating. Hunt argued that with proper medication and a structured environment Daniel could contribute to society. We tried to bring you the answer as to why such a young person with a bright future fell so quickly, Hunt said. Contrary to the prosecution's argument, Daniel had told a former girlfriend in a letter that he was unbelievably remorseful for what he did to Padron and his family, the defense team said. Employees of the Wal-Mart store called police after seeing Daniel stumble through the aisles. Daniel ran when Padron approached him. Padron tackled him and the 2 struggled before Daniel pulled a handgun and shot Padron at close range. Jurors took only an hour Feb. 21 to convict Daniel of the killing. (source: Associated Press) PENNSYLVANIA: Death takes a holiday 2 Philadelphia Common Pleas Court juries last week passed on imposing the death penalty in 2 homicide trials. On Friday, a jury sentenced Fernando Real, 31, to life in prison without chance of parole after finding him guilty of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder for a double slaying in 2002 in Frankford. Real was convicted of the Sept. 9 shootings of Byron Story and Marcus Herbert, both 18, in what police called a drug-related robbery-murder. Both teens were shot about 4:30 a.m. outside Herbert's home in the 5200 block of Hawthorne Street. Story was shot in the head and died on the sidewalk; Herbert was shot twice in the back and died 13 months later. Judge Glenn B. Bronson ordered mental health and presentence reports and set Real's formal sentencing for April 25. Assistant District Attorney Gail Fairman prosecuted the case; defense attorney Gerald A. Stein handled the trial
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., MISS., OHIO
Oct. 8 TEXASimpending execution Judge rejects killer's bid to halt execution over drug A Houston federal judge has a rejected a Lubbock killer's bid to stop his pending execution by claiming that the state's planned use of a lethal drug purchased from a Woodlands compounding pharmacy could inflict constitutionally unacceptable pain. U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes turned aside Michael Yowell's claims, noting that, while people of goodwill can debate death as a penalty ... the death penalty is consitutional. Yowell, 43, is scheduled to be put to death Wednesday for the May 1998 murder of his mother, father and grandmother. He had sought an emergency stay to allow examination of whether the use of pentobarbital purchased from Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy would be cruel and unusual. The Associated Press reported the state purchased the drug from the area pharmacy after exhausting its supply with September executions. Prison spokesman Jason Clark Monday confirmed his agency had purchased eight 2.5-gram vials of the drug, which frequently is used to euthanize cats and dogs. Each execution requires 5 grams of the drug, Clark said. Clark did not immediately respond to a question concerning whether the state would return the lethal drug as requested by pharmacy owner Jasper Lovoi, who could not be reached for comment. In a letter to state officials dated Oct. 4, the pharmacy objected that its name had been made public and asked that the pentobarbital be returned. Yowell was joined by condemned killers Thomas Whitaker and Perry Williams in seeking a halt of executions using the newly acquired drug. Yowell was sentenced to die for strangling his mother and fatally shooting his father before setting the family home on fire. His grandmother later died of injuries suffered in the blaze. Whitaker, 33, was sentenced to die for a 2003 Fort Bend County double murder; Williams, 32, for a 2000 abduction and murder. In another setback for Yowell, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected his 11th-hour appeal without comment. (source: Houston Chronicle) *** Texas inmate to die this week loses federal appeal The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday an appeal from a Texas death row inmate set for execution this week for killing his parents in Lubbock 15 years ago. Michael Yowell, 43, is set for lethal injection Wednesday in Huntsville. Attorneys unsuccessfully argued Yowell had poor legal help during his trial and in early appeals of his conviction and death sentence. Yowell was convicted and condemned for the deaths of his father, John, 55, and mother Carol, 53, whose bodies were found in the rubble of their home after an explosion and fire in May 1998. His mother had been strangled and his father was shot. Yowell's 89-year-old grandmother suffered serious injuries in the blast and fire and died two weeks later. Yowell confessed to the slayings, saying he needed money to support his $200-a-day drug habit. Prosecutors said he killed his parents, opened a natural gas valve and fled the house. It eventually blew up. Attorneys also tried to halt the scheduled lethal injection with a civil lawsuit involving Yowell and two other death row prisoners. A federal district judge in Houston rejected the suit on Saturday and a lawyer in the case said Monday she would appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The prisoners challenged the state's use in executions of pentobarbital obtained from a compounding pharmacy not subjected to usual federal scrutiny, arguing the drug adds an unacceptable risk of pain, suffering and harm. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has turned to a compounding pharmacy, which custom makes drugs, because its previous supply of the sedative expired last month. Several companies have been refusing to sell their products for use in executions or have bowed to pressure from capital punishment opponents, leading to a drug shortage in death penalty states and forcing states to switch lethal drugs or use compounding pharmacies. Our base line contention is we, the public, have to be concerned about transparency and accountability by a state agency that's carrying out the gravest of all possible duties, an attorney for the inmates, Maurie Levin, said Monday. Texans may not like death row inmates demanding constitutional process ... but if we don't enforce them here, just because we don't like the plaintiff, then what's the next place? Court filings in the lawsuit showed the owner of a suburban Houston compounding pharmacy that's the source of the prison agency's newly purchased pentobarbital supply is asking to have the drugs returned, saying the sale placed him in the middle of a firestorm of the inmates' lawsuit, media inquiries and hate mail and messages. State attorneys said prison officials did nothing improper. Yowell's arguments try to create controversy where none exists, said
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., ALA.
July 20 TEXASnew death sentence Man gets death penalty in 1992 killing of 6-year-old It took more than 2 decades for Angelo Garcia's mother to see her 6-year-old son's killer sent to death row. On Friday, she said it was worth it. It's the greatest news, and it took 21 years, the woman said after jurors sent Obel Cruz-Garcia to death row for the 1992 slaying. It was good when they got the DNA, but this is better. Cruz-Garcia marks the 1st defendant from Harris County this year to receive the death penalty. Over the past 2 weeks, jurors heard a brutal story about a home invasion that turned into a rape that turned into a kidnapping and murder. They also learned it was the sexual assault that ultimately led police to identify the 45-year-old. Cruz-Garcia was serving time for kidnapping in Puerto Rico in 2007 when DNA from the 15-year-old rape kit tied him to the 1992 case. Cruz-Garcia and another man were wearing ski masks when they broke in to the family's south Houston apartment around midnight on Sept. 30, 1992. The child's mother and stepfather testified they were part of the defendant's cocaine-trafficking operation. They said they were tied up while the duo ransacked the home. The men then fled with Angelo in a car driven by a third man, who testified that Cruz-Garcia and the other suspect took the child to a Baytown lake, where he was stabbed. His remains were found in the lake about a month later. On Monday, jurors convicted Cruz-Garcia of capital murder after deliberating about 4 hours. After days of more testimony, they sentenced him to die Friday. Thinking about the time between crime and punishment left the victim's family weeping after the verdict. 'Waited all these years' We just waited all these years, all this time, and it finally happened, said Angelo's brother, James Garcia, with tears in his eyes. Cruz-Garcia, who jumped bail on a felony drug case to flee the country 2 days after the abduction, was brought back to Houston in 2008 for trial. Prosecutors praised the verdict after jurors deliberated about 7 hours over 2 days. It's an important decision, and sometimes it takes some people a little bit longer to get there, said Assistant Harris County District Attorney Natalie Tise. All in all, they weren't deliberating all that long. Defense lawyers for Cruz-Garcia said they were disappointed and that the defendant is focused on his appeal. Cruz-Garcia did not react to the verdict when read by state District Judge Renee Magee. He was pretty even-keeled through the entire trial, said defense attorney Mario Madrid. He didn't show a lot of emotion during the trial or after trial. Cruz-Garcia has denied any involvement in the home invasion, the abduction or the child's death. (source: Houston Chronicle) *** Sheriff says prosecutors will seek death penalty against Eric and Kim Williams Prosecutors will go before a Kaufman County district court on Friday, July 26 and formally announce they will be seeking the death penalty for Eric and Kim Williams, accused of 3 murders earlier this year. Kaufman County Sheriff David A. Byrnes gave that information to a crowd of Kaufman Lions Club members at the organization's weekly meeting on Friday (July 19). Judge Michael Snipes of the Criminal District Court No. 7 of Dallas County will be in Kaufman to sit on that pre-trial proceeding, according to his court coordinator. Snipes was appointed as the presiding judge on the capital murder cases after 422nd Judicial District Judge B. Michael Chitty recused himself. We're going to try to seat a jury in Kaufman County, Byrnes said, heading off questions about whether or not a trial would be held here. We think we can do that. We think the people of Kaufman County deserve to hear this case. Byrnes was the club's guest speaker at its luncheon and was asked there to talk to members about the events that began in late January. Jan. 31st, at 8:43 a.m., changed Kaufman forever, Byrnes began. Mark Hasse was assassinated on his way to work. Hasse, a Kaufman County assistant district attorney, was shot and killed at the scene, 1 block from the courthouse. On March 30, the day before Easter Sunday, district attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia were shot and killed in their home. In subsequent weeks, former justice of the peace Eric Williams was jailed for sending a terroristic threat by email. Days later, during an interview with law enforcement, his wife Kim Williams confessed that she had been the driver of the vehicle that had carried her and her husband to both murder scenes and said her husband was the shooter in both cases. Both McLelland and Hasse were the prosecuting attorneys in the 2012 trial of Eric Williams that saw a jury hand down 2 guilty verdicts on state jail felony charges. Chitty was the presiding judge on that case. The result of that trial saw Eric
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., MO., IND.
March 22 TEXASimpending female execution Texas Women's Death Row Inmate Seeks Delay In Execution Convicted killer Kimberly McCarthy, who's held on women's death row in Gatesville, is asking a state district judge in Dallas to halt her execution, which is now scheduled for April 3. McCarthy, who avoided execution with a last-day reprieve in January, asked State District Judge Larry Mitchell in a court filing Friday to put off the April 3 lethal injection until the fate of a bill related to issues in her case that was introduced March 6 in the Texas Legislature is determined. Attorney Maurie Levin contends McCarthy's 1998 trial jury may have been unfairly selected on the basis of race. A bill proposed by Sen. Royce West and Rep. Eric Johnson, both Dallas Democrats, would bar racial discrimination in capital case prosecution. Levin argues that McCarthy, who's black, was the subject of racial discrimination by the jury of 11 whites and only 1 black that convicted her. McCarthy was convicted and sentenced to death in November 1998 for the July 21, 1997 murder of her neighbor, Dorothy Booth, 71, at Booth's home in Lancaster. Evidence showed McCarthy went to Booth's home on the pretense of borrowing sugar and then stabbed the retired professor 5 times and hit her in the face with a candelabrum. She cut off Booth's left ring finger to take a diamond ring and nearly severed Booth's left little finger as well, evidence showed. She fled with Booth's purse and wedding ring and later bought drugs with the stolen money, used the stolen credit cards and pawned the stolen ring, evidence showed. On Jan. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court without comment, refused to review McCarthy's case. McCarthy is 1 of 10 women on women's death row at the Mountainview Unit in Gatesville, but the only one with an execution date. (source: KWTX News) PENNSYLVANIA: Man will face the death penalty in stabbing case Fayette County District Attorney Jack R. Heneks Jr. announced Thursday that he will seek the death penalty against Henry Clay Crawford, the man accused in the stabbing death of a North Union Township woman in January. The announcement came just before the formal arraignment for Crawford, 56, of North Union Township, who pleaded not guilty to criminal homicide and burglary for allegedly killing Lisa Tupta, 49, inside her 326 Easter St. home. In seeking the death penalty, Heneks alleged certain aggravating circumstances exist, including prior violations of protection-from-abuse orders, a felony murder, torture and a significant history of felony convictions. The acts of domestic violence occur in our county and across our nation on a disturbingly frequent basis, Heneks stated. There is no single method to reduce and terminate domestic violence. However, as a prosecutor, I am determined to use all available tools at my disposal to do so. State police said neighbors called to say someone had broken into Tupta's home on Jan. 28, and when they arrived to investigate, Crawford was found hiding in a closet with the knife. Tupta suffered a stab wound to the chest as well as other injuries during the assault, and died later at the Uniontown Hospital. Tupta had a protection-from-abuse order in place against Crawford at the time. After entering the not guilty plea, Crawford???s attorney, Public Defender Jeffrey Whiteko questioned the death penalty notice. The Commonwealth needs to a be a little more specific on the aggravating circumstances, Whiteko said. Specifically, he told President Judge John F. Wagner Jr. that simply saying Crawford tortured Tupta was not sufficient. Heneks indicated he was confident prosecutors could prove the element of torture, but he asked Wagner for 10 days to file more specific information about that aggravating circumstance. In a press release, Heneks said he consulted with investigators and prosecutors about seeking the death penalty, and did not make the decision lightly. I am acutely aware of the ultimate consequence my decision can bring, he said. Heneks said that through a grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, he will have additional resources to take a comprehensive approach toward domestic violence. With the help of newly appointed domestic and sexual violence prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Meghann Mikluscak, and a yet-to-be-hired detective dedicated to those types of cases, Heneks said his office will establish protocols to support victims through the criminal justice process. It saddens me when our office is requested by victims to drop charges against perpetrators of these crimes, Heneks said. While I understand the reasons articulated by those victims for doing so, the consequences of halting prosecutions are haunting, as demonstrated in the case against Crawford, he added. In seeking the death penalty against Crawford, Heneks said he wanted to make it clear to
