Jan. 26
TEXAS----impending executions
Death Watch: Rayford, Battaglia----Huntsville heats up
William Rayford faces his 1st execution date on Tuesday, Jan. 30, for the 1999
kidnapping and murder of ex-girlfriend Carol Hall. The 64-year-old Dallas
native was on parole at the time, as part of a 23-year sentence for murdering
his wife.
Last week, Rayford's attorney Bruce Anton asked that the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals stay Rayford's execution on grounds that testimony suggesting
that Rayford's race could make him a future threat played a role in his
sentence. The appeal also challenges the work of Rayford's trial attorneys, who
failed to raise the issue of their client's mental health (brain damage brought
on from lead poisoning), and did not pursue other alleged evidence. Anton also
cites Rayford's 16 years on death row as a form of cruel and unusual
punishment. Rayford appealed for a new trial in 2012 on similar grounds,
unsuccessfully.
Meanwhile, John Battaglia is up again - scheduled for death on Thursday, Feb.
1. He's been in Livingston since May of 2002, after he was convicted of killing
his 2 young daughters while on the phone with their mother, his ex-wife. He
narrowly avoided execution in March of 2016 when the 5th Circuit Court of
Appeals issued a stay so the trial court could consider claims of competency
("Matters of Incompetence," Dec. 2, 2016), but in September the Court of
Criminal Appeals found Battaglia competent to face his execution. He appealed
to the U.S. Supreme Court in December; justices have yet to rule.
Rayford and Battaglia would be the 2nd and 3rd inmates executed in the new
year. Huntsville has 3 others already on the calendar for this spring,
including Thomas Whitaker on Feb. 22. In 2003, Whitaker plotted to have his
brother and parents killed by a hit man. His brother and mother died; his
father, Kent, was shot in the chest but survived. Kent has never sought death
for his son, and earlier this month appealed to the state's Board of Pardons
and Paroles that they recommend Gov. Greg Abbott commute Thomas' sentence to
life in prison.
(source: Austin Chronicle)
*********************
2nd Death Penalty Hearing Pending For Donna Man's Killer
Hidalgo County prosecutors will say next month whether they'll seek the death
penalty in a 2nd sentencing hearing for an Alabama man convicted and condemned
for robbing and killing a man in Donna 11 years ago. 47-year-old Douglas
Armstrong won a new punishment hearing when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
late last year threw out his death sentence. The court ruled Armstrong's trial
attorneys were constitutionally inadequate in presenting their case for why he
should not be sentenced to death.
A Hidalgo County jury had found Armstrong guilty of robbing and slashing the
neck of 60-year-old Rafael Castelan outside a Donna bar in April 2006. If
prosecutors decide to not seek a 2nd death penalty hearing, Armstrong would
receive an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole.
(source: KURV news)
*************** Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----28
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----546
Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #
29---------Jan. 30-----------------William Rayford--------547
30----------Feb. 1-----------------John Battaglia---------548
31----------Feb. 22----------------Thomas Whitaker--------549
32----------Mar. 27----------------Rosendo Rodriguez III--550
33----------Apr. 25----------------Erick Davila-----------551
(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
PENNSYLVANIA:
5 death row inmates challenge policy of solitary confinement
5 death row inmates sued Pennsylvania prison officials on Thursday, challenging
a policy that keeps the convicts isolated most of the time and calling the
practice degrading and inhumane.
The federal lawsuit asks the court to end mandatory, indefinite solitary
confinement for the 156 men on death row at Graterford and Greene state
prisons.
The lawsuit said death row inmates are locked up alone 22 to 24 hours each day,
and their small cells are kept illuminated at all hours.
"The devastating effects of such prolonged isolation are well known among
mental health experts, physicians and human rights experts in the United States
and around the world," the lawsuit said. "It is established beyond dispute that
solitary confinement puts prisoners at risk of substantial physical, mental and
emotional harm."
The lawsuit seeks class-action status as well as a declaration that the
solitary policy violates constitutional protection against cruel and unusual
punishment and violates the guarantee of due process.
A Corrections Department official said the lawsuit was being reviewed. The
defendants are the Corrections secretary and the wardens at Graterford and
Greene.
The inmates who sued - Anthony Reid, 50; Ricardo Natividad, 49; Mark Newton
Spotz, 46; Ronald Gibson, 49; and Jermont Cox, 46 - have spent between 16 and
27 years on the state's death row. The lawsuit said the state has not provided
a meaningful way for them to challenge their confinement conditions.
The inmates say they are kept segregated inside cells the size of a parking
space. They can exercise in small, outdoor enclosures for no more than 2 hours
during weekdays but are kept in their cells around-the-clock on weekends,
unless they have a visitor. They change cells every 3 months.
The men may not participate in prison vocational, recreational or educational
programs, nor can they join in any communal worship.
The Marshall Project reported earlier this year that 20 of the 31 death penalty
states allow death row inmates fewer than 4 hours of recreation outside their
cells each day.
Pennsylvania has executed 3 people since 1976, all of whom had voluntarily
given up on their appeals. The state's death row has been shrinking, as fewer
death sentences are being imposed and appeals have resulted in some death row
inmates being resentenced to life.
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf announced a death penalty moratorium soon after he
took office 3 years ago, saying he was concerned about "a flawed system that
has been proven to be an endless cycle of court proceedings as well as
ineffective, unjust, and expensive."
Wolf has said the moratorium will say in place until a state
Senate-commissioned study of capital punishment is complete.
(source: Associated Press)
*********************
ACLU Sues Pennsylvania For Putting Death Row Inmates in Permanent Solitary
Confinement----"This is a profoundly damaging practice. It destroys people."
5 inmates on Pennsylvania's death row have spent a cumulative 115 years in
solitary confinement - more than 42,000 days with little to no human contact in
a cell the size of a parking space.
Such extreme and prolonged deprivation violates their constitutional rights
against cruel and unusual punishment, according to a new lawsuit filed today on
their behalf, as well as 151 Pennsylvania death row inmates, by the American
Civil Liberties Union and the Abolitionist Law Center.
"Defendants' years of infliction of mental and physical harm on Plaintiffs and
the Class Members strips them of their dignity and worth, transgresses
civilized society's notions of decency, and constitutes a practice that is
disavowed in modern society," the lawsuit says.
Pennsylvania automatically places death row inmates in solitary confinement,
regardless of their behavior, and they stay in those 8-by-12-foot concrete
cells 22 hours a day, every day, until they're executed or their sentence is
overturned.
Because of the rarity of actual executions in Pennsylvania - the last one
occurred in 1999, and there have only been 3 total since the death penalty was
reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976 - this effectively means death row
inmates are condemned to decades of mind-scrambling isolation. 80 % of the
state's death row inmates have been in solitary for more than 10 years,
according to the lawsuit. 1 plaintiff in the lawsuit has spent 27 years in
solitary.
"This is a profoundly damaging practice that exacerbates mental illness,
creates mental illness in previously healthy people, causes and aggravates a
whole range of physical illnesses, and it destroys people," says David Fathi,
Director of the ACLU National Prison Project.
One of the most pernicious effects of prolonged isolation, Fathi says, is what
social psychologist Craig Haney, a who studied inmates at the "secure housing
unit" in California's infamous Pelican Bay State Prison, calls "social death."
"You forget how to interact with other humans," Fathi says. "You've just
forgotten how to be a person, really."
Beyond that, there's also the fiscal argument. Holding an inmate in a supermax
cell costs 2- to 3-times as much as keeping them in the general prison
population, Fathi says.
The Supreme Court recognized as early as 1890 that solitary confinement has a
devastating effect on inmates, but courts have traditionally given wide
deference to prison managers when it comes to security.
However, the lawsuit argues the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections' policy
serves no penological purpose, and Fathi says courts have become more receptive
in recent years to claims that solitary confinement is unique from regular
prison practices.
In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the due process clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment required inmates be afforded procedural protections from being sent
to supermax confinement.
In 2015, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in a concurrence that
"research still confirms what this Court suggested over a century ago: Years on
end of near-total isolation exact a terrible price."
Both the federal government and states have been slowly rolling back their use
of solitary confinement. In recent years, both the Association of State
Correctional Administrators (ASCA) and the American Correctional Association
released new guidelines and standards limiting the use of solitary confinement.
The Obama administration also banned the use of solitary confinement for
juveniles in the federal prison system and limited the amount of time adults
can spend in solitary.
While the use of solitary confinement in the U.S. has been dwindling in recent
years, there were at least 67,442 inmates in the U.S. locked in their cells for
22 or more hours a day in the fall of 2015, according to a report last year by
the ASCA and Yale Law School.
The practice of solitary confinment was in fact invented in Pennsyvania. When
Charles Dickens visited Pennsylvania's Eastern State Penitentiary in 1842,
where the use of what we now call solitary confinement was pioneered, he
recoiled in horror.
"I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be
immeasurably worse than any torture of the body," he wrote, "and because its
ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as
scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it
extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore the more I denounce it,
as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay."
But because of a growing number of lawsuits and prison reforms, the secret
punishment is now out in the open.
(source: C.J. Ciaramella is a criminal justice reporter at
Reason----reason.com)
*****************************
Is life in solitary inhumane? Lawsuit seeks end to 'death row' in Pennsylvania
A federal class-action lawsuit filed Thursday morning by the Pennsylvania ACLU,
the Pittsburgh-based Abolitionist Law Project and 3 other law firms seeks to
move death row inmates into general population, arguing that their current
conditions are degrading, inhumane and a violation of the Eighth and 14th
Amendments.
Gov. Wolf has placed a moratorium on the death penalty in Pennsylvania - yet
156 men remain on death row, which is both a figure of speech and a literal
place in 2 state prisons where death-sentenced inmates are held in isolation
for between 22 and 24 hours a day. 80 % of them have been in solitary for more
than a decade.
"These folks have been sentenced to death. They haven't been sentenced to a
lifetime of psychological torture," said Witold "Vic" Walczak, legal director
of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. The suit was filed in the Middle District of
Pennsylvania.
He noted that other states, North Carolina and Missouri, have stopped holding
death-sentenced inmates in solitary, and that at least 4 other states are in
the process of moving such inmates out of isolation.
Pennsylvania reinstituted the death penalty in 1978, and the decision to hold
inmates in solitary was challenged in a class-action lawsuit, Peterkin v.
Jeffes, in the 1980s. A federal court found that the conditions were
acceptable.
"In the intervening time, there has been a sea change in the scientific
understanding of solitary confinement and increasing recognition by the courts
that this crosses constitutional boundaries when it is prolonged," said Bret
Grote, of the Abolitionist Law Center.
He said inmates he's visited in death-row solitary exhibit familiar symptoms:
memory loss, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts or actions. "They didn't begin
their time in solitary with mental health issues but now are on the mental
health roster," he said. "It's a trajectory of despair and hopelessness."
Last year, a federal appeals court ruled that inmates in Pennsylvania may not
be kept in solitary after their sentences have been vacated.
1 death row inmate, Robert Lark, was in isolation for years even though he had
been granted a new trial. He eventually was moved into general population after
a jury found him guilty last year, but sentenced him to life in prison rather
than death.
Only 3 people in Pennsylvania have been put to death since the penalty was
reinstated. The future of the death penalty in Pennsylvania is likely to be a
campaign issue in the governor's race. Scott Wagner, a York County Republican
running to unseat Wolf, has promised to reverse the moratorium "within 48
hours."
Philadelphia's new district attorney, Larry Krasner, pledged not to seek the
death penalty (though, more recently, he said, "You never want to say never.")
Walczak said the ACLU met with Pennsylvania corrections officials last year and
urged them to reconsider conditions for death-row inmates. "They told us they
weren't in a position to make any changes. That's why we're here today."
A spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections said it is reviewing the
lawsuit.
(source: philly.com)
VIRGINIA:
Prominent Virginia conservatives support severe mental illness exemption from
death penalty
A group of 18 prominent Virginia conservative politicians, activists and
advocates have joined together to support legislation that would establish an
exemption from the death penalty for people with a severe mental illness (SMI).
In a sign-on letter endorsed by the pro-SMI coalition Virginia Alliance for the
Severe Mental Illness Exclusion (VASMIE), the signees - which include former
Virginia attorneys general Ken Cuccinelli and Mark Earley - argue that it is
immoral and fiscally unwise to execute people who can prove they have a severe
mental illness "so severe that it prevented them from fully understanding
reality or their actions' consequences."
"Our values of fiscal responsibility and the dignity of life compel us to
support legislation to exempt defendants with severe mental illnesses from the
death penalty," the letter concludes. "This exclusion will ensure that
defendants with severe mental illness - while punished to the extent that
justice requires - are treated with dignity and mercy."
In addition to Cuccinelli and Earley, the letter includes the signatures of
former U.S. Rep. Thomas Bliley, former Republican Party Executive Director
Shaun Kenney, and other conservative leaders from across the Commonwealth.
VASMIE is supporting passage of House Bill 758 (sponsored by Del. Jay Leftwich)
and Senate Bill 802 (sponsored by Sen. Barbara Favola), which would still allow
for prosecution of capital murder against SMI defendants, who could argue for
an exemption from the death penalty during the sentencing phase of trial,
requesting a life prison sentence instead. SB 802 has been referred to the
Virginia Crime Commission for study and recommendations, but VASMIE still is
urging passage of the House version.
"While some death penalty proponents purport that executions deter murders,
there is absolutely no credible evidence to suggest that executions deter those
who do not understand their actions' consequences," the sign-on letter states.
"Thus, capital punishment is unquestionably rendered completely useless as a
general deterrent to those stricken with severe mental illnesses."
Support for an SMI exemption has also come in a separate sign-on letter from a
dozen family members of murder victims in Virginia.
(source: Augusta Free Press)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Jurors issue another verdict on the death penalty: It's time has come and
gone----This keeps happening: Wake jury rejects death penalty for 9th time in a
row
It's starting to feel like Groundhog Day in Wake County. Every year begins with
a capital trial, and every year, the jury chooses life. This week was the 9th
time since 2008 that a Wake jury said no to the death penalty. [Donovan
Richardson sentenced to life in prison for 2014 double murder]
We're hoping that, from now on, we can skip this annual ritual.
Wake is the only county in the state where a defendant has been tried capitally
every year for the past 3 years. Since the beginning of 2016, 3 of North
Carolina's 10 capital trials have been in Wake County. By contrast, Mecklenburg
County - home to Charlotte - hasn't had a capital trial since 2014.
Why has a county where a jury hasn???t agreed to death sentence in a decade
become North Carolina's leader in death penalty trials? It makes no sense.
It's not as if a capital trial is the same as a non-capital one with another
sentence option thrown in. Adding the death penalty to the mix transforms the
entire process. The defendant has a right to 2 attorneys, the jury members must
be chosen based on their willingness to impose a death sentence, the trial
lasts weeks longer, and the process costs more than 4 times as much as a
non-capital prosecution.
There's something else, too, that's starting to get repetitive in Wake County.
At every capital trial, it's a black defendant having his fate decided by an
almost entirely white jury. At the last 3 capital trials combined, there were
only 2 black jurors.
In fact, we got curious and looked back. Of Wake's 9 failed capital trials
since 2009, 7 of the defendants were black. And during those years, several
white defendants were tried non-capitally for high-profile crimes. Remember
Jonathan Broyhill, Joanna Madonna, Jason Young, or Bradley Cooper?
There are just so many reasons for North Carolina's capital county to leave the
shadow of the death penalty behind.
(source: The Progressive Pulse)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
Senate subcommittee advance bills to address lethal drug shortage for death
penalty
A Senate subcommittee pushed forward 2 measures Wednesday.
This after corrections officials said pharmaceutical companies won't sell the
lethal drugs needed for an execution. "I think everybody has to acknowledge
that there is a problem right now that the Department of Corrections can't
carry out the law," said Senator Shane Massey, R-Edgefield.
One plan would implement what's known as a 'secrecy law.' It would allow drug
companies to remain anonymous when selling the drug concoction.
The other measure would let the electric chair be used for executions if lethal
injection isn't available. "It would be a bit of a stain if the state has a law
and doesn't empower the agencies of the state to carry out the law," Massey
said.
In late November Governor Henry McMaster and the state prisons director called
on lawmakers to come up with a fix. The move came after an order from the state
supreme court set a December 1st execution date for Bobby Wayne Stone.
He's been on death row for 20 years after being convicted in the killing of a
Sumter County deputy. The execution was never carried out due to the lack of
drugs.
Lindsey Vann with Justice 360 represents inmates currently on death row. Many
of their cases are still working through the appeals process.
She said the 'secrecy bill' could open bigger problems when it comes to
transparency. "There's time to figure this out," Vann said. "The secrecy bill
won't necessarily resolve the problems the big drug companies don't want their
drugs used in lethal injections."
The state hasn't carried out an execution since 2011. Right now, inmates have
the right to choose the way they're executed.
"It's important that people know that the law is going to be carried out,"
Massey said. "I don't think it has to be passed today, but I think it needs to
be passed in session."
The bills discussed Wednesday now move to a full committee February 1. If
approved, the plans go to the Senate floor.
(source: WACH news)
FLORIDA:
Florida Death Penalty Cases Cause Strains for Legal System
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling that led to an overhaul of Florida's death-penalty
sentencing process has put financial and workload pressure on prosecutors,
public defenders and courts.
The government lawyers are grappling with fallout from the 2016 ruling, in a
case known as Hurst v. Florida, that said the state's system of allowing
judges, instead of juries, to find the facts necessary to impose the death
penalty was an unconstitutional violation of the Sixth Amendment right to trial
by jury.
The ruling set off a string of court decisions that effectively put Florida's
death penalty in limbo for 18 months and resulted in a new law requiring
unanimous jury recommendations for death sentences to be imposed.
The federal Hurst ruling affected about 180 of the state's 349 death row
inmates. The Florida Supreme Court last year began sending back some of the
cases to lower courts for resentencing, a process that is taxing the resources
of prosecutors and public defenders.
The impact on the judicial circuits is varied, depending on the number of cases
sent back for new sentencing hearings. The Florida Senate's chief budget writer
said Wednesday he is looking for data to determine whether the resentencings
are having a financial impact.
In circuits revisiting multiple cases that are sometimes decades old,
prosecutors have to "start from scratch," according to State Attorney Bill
Cervone of the Eighth Judicial Circuit, which includes Alachua, Baker,
Bradford, Gilchrist, Levy and Union counties.
"Every one of them requires that you start over and that you reassess the
viability of the case," Cervone said. "It's a dollar and a time workload issue
for us that will not go away for many years."
The costs include locating witnesses who may have moved or died, hiring experts
and finding victims, whose wishes must be considered when making decisions
about prosecutions.
It's unclear how many prosecutors are again seeking death sentences and how
many are instead opting for life sentences without parole.
"Those decisions are being made probably on a daily basis, but I don't think we
have even guesswork on how many might not be pursued for whatever reason,"
Cervone said.
The costs will vary depending on how the cases are litigated, said Pete Mills,
an assistant public defender in the Tenth Judicial Circuit who also serves as
chairman of the Florida Public Defenders Association Death Penalty Steering
Committee.
"Some will have a great deal more investigation than others," Mills said.
"Furthermore, science has come a long way in the analysis and understanding of
how the brain works."
The evolution of brain science will almost certainly translate into additional
expert witness costs and analysis for both sides.
It's also too soon to interpret the impact of the unanimous jury requirement on
whether prosecutors seek death or life in prison, Mills and Cervone said.
Under Florida's old death penalty law, a simple majority of jurors could
recommend death in capital cases. But the law passed last year required
unanimous jury decisions for the sentence to be imposed by judges.
The Florida Supreme Court has been sending back cases for resentencing if
juries were not unanimous and the sentencing occurred after June 2002. That is
when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling known as Ring v. Arizona that
served as a key premise for the 2016 ruling in Hurst.
Prosecutors who once were confident about their chances of getting a majority
of jurors to agree to a death-sentence recommendation are less certain about
whether all 12 jurors will reach consensus. Juries have produced mixed results
on the resentencings so far.
"[The unanimity requirement] has had a big impact. We are still trying to
assess individually in our communities how that will play out," Cervone said,
adding that "it's hard for us to project it" until prosecutors have a history
of how juries voted in capital cases.
Failing to seek the death penalty could be problematic for elected state
attorneys, especially in more conservative regions of the state.
"It would be foolish to ignore the political dynamic of it. That is a reality
to a greater or lesser extent in different communities across the state. We're
constitutionally bound to consider the wishes of survivors. It's to me so
grossly unfair to drag those people back in and put them through this again,
but we've got to go through that process," Cervone said.
State lawmakers haven't specifically earmarked any funds to address the
Hurst-related cases, but public defenders in some circuits will get additional
resources.
And Senate budget chief Rob Bradley, a Fleming Island Republican who is a
former prosecutor, indicated he needs more information to determine whether the
resentencings are straining resources.
"I would expect the judges working with the state attorneys and defense counsel
to use their time wisely to address these issues. If there is some expert
witness or discovery costs that are above and beyond, I would like to see some
specific data on that point," Bradley said.
The Senate has included $14 million in its proposed budget for state attorneys
and public defenders to deal with employee turnover, an issue they say has
hampered their agencies.
"The good news is that in the Senate budget, we're going to be addressing some
long-standing requests with regard to retention pay. That is going to be the
focus of the Senate for the criminal justice system," Bradley said.
(source: Daily Business Review)
ALABAMA----stay of execution
Court halts execution of Alabama inmate with dementia
The U.S. Supreme Court has halted the execution of an Alabama inmate whose
attorneys argue that dementia has left the 67-year-old unable to remember
killing a police officer 3 decades ago.
Justices issued a stay Thursday night, the same evening that Vernon Madison was
scheduled to receive a lethal injection at a southwest Alabama prison. The
court delayed the execution to consider whether to further review the case.
Madison was sentenced to death for the 1985 killing of Mobile police Officer
Julius Schulte, who had responded to a call about a missing child made by
Madison's then-girlfriend. Prosecutors have said that Madison crept up and shot
Schulte in the back of the head as he sat in his police car.
Madison's attorneys argued that strokes and dementia have left Madison unable
to remember killing Schulte or fully understand his looming execution. The
Supreme Court has previously ruled that condemned inmates must have a :rational
understanding" that they are about to be executed and why.
"We are thrilled that the court stopped this execution tonight. Killing a
fragile man suffering from dementia is unnecessary and cruel," attorney Bryan
Stevenson, of the Equal Justice Initiative, said Thursday after the stay was
granted.
The Alabama attorney general's office opposed the stay, arguing that a state
court has ruled Madison competent and Madison has presented nothing that would
reverse the finding.
Appeals courts have been divided over Madison's case.
In 2016, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halted Madison's execution 7
hours before he was scheduled for a lethal injection. The U.S. Supreme Court
later opened the way for the execution to proceed.
The court, in an unsigned 2017 opinion, said testimony showed Madison
"recognizes that he will be put to death as punishment for the murder he was
found to have committed," even if he doesn't remember the killing itself.
Justices noted then that federal courts' review of Madison's case is
constrained because of a 1996 law intended to limit federal judges'
2nd-guessing of state court decisions. State courts upheld Madison's death
sentence, and the Supreme Court, applying the 1996 law, said those decisions
should be respected. The justices have never ruled on whether someone who
doesn't remember their crime can be executed.
Madison's attorneys also have asked for a stay on the grounds that a judge
sentenced him to death, even though a jury recommended life imprisonment.
Alabama lawmakers in 2017 changed the law to no longer allow a judge to
override a jury's sentence recommendation in death penalty-eligible cases.
The Alabama attorney general's office, in opposing the stay, said the 2017
legislation was not retroactive and did not affect Madison and other inmates
already on death row.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch were opposed to the
stay, according to the order issued Thursday evening.
(source: Associated Press)
LOUISIANA:
Bossier man's fate in hands of U.S. Supreme Court
The life of a Bossier City man sitting on death row is in the hands of the U.S.
Supreme Court.
Robert McCoy was accused of killing his estranged wife's mother, step father
and son in 2008.
A jury convicted him of 1st degree murder and sentenced him to the death
penalty.
McCoy claims his constitutional rights were violated though, because his
attorney Larry English pushed for a conviction on 2nd degree murder, by telling
the jury his client did in fact murder 3 people.
English says, "In this particular case the facts were so overwhelming against
Mr. McCoy that from the very beginning this case was always about, I was going
to be standing in front of 12 people begging for his life."
English told NBC 6/Fox 33 News he was trying to save McCoy from death row.
Despite his attorney's objections throughout the trial McCoy maintained his
innocence.
McCoy is fighting behind bars for a new trial. He was unsuccessful with the
Louisiana Supreme Court.
They unanimously upheld English's method of defending him and the judge's
decision and that's how the case now finds itself in our country's highest
court.
"I had no idea it would end up involved in a landmark decision. That's going to
frame how somehow in someways the relationships between lawyers and attorneys,
so I'm humbled by it."
The Supreme Court is focusing in on the Sixth Amendment, which gives Americans
the right to legal council.
"I made the argument and I think what the court is wrestling with... what is
the lawyer's responsibility... if the lawyer believes the client is incapable
of making that decision.
English is no longer representing McCoy, but he believes this case will have
broad ramifications.
"If it was just about a lawyer failed to follow a client's wishes that case
would have never gotten to the Supreme Court.
While English and McCoy are now at the center of a national debate, English
wants the public to remember the victims - Christine Colston, Willie Ray Young
and Parkway senior and basketball player Gregory Colston.
"We should never forget there were victims in this case and they are a part of
this story also."
Last week the U.S. Supreme court heard arguments on the case. A decision is
expected by June.
(source: arklatexhomepage.com)
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