July 26
TEXAS----death row inmate seeks to drop appeals
Texas court seeks to clear up whether inmate in CO's slaying wants to die----An
appeals court asked a trial court to determine whether an inmate sentenced to
die for a CO's death really is volunteering for execution
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals asked a trial court Wednesday to determine
whether a 51-year-old prisoner sentenced to die for a corrections officer's
death during a 2007 escape attempt in Huntsville really is volunteering for
execution.
Condemned inmate John Ray Falk Jr. filed his own document last month seeking to
get rid of his lawyers and "expedite this process with as much swiftness as
this court might allow," the state's highest criminal court said in its 4-page
ruling. The filing came after Falk initially sought to represent him in the
appeals process, then said he wanted his appeals waived, and later decided to
retain attorneys.
The court gave Falk's trial court 30 days to resolve any questions, then gave
parties in the case another 30 days to submit legal briefs.
Falk last year pleaded guilty and received the death penalty for the death of
Texas Department of Criminal Justice corrections officer Susan Canfield.
Canfield was killed in September 2007 trying to block the escape of Falk and
another inmate, Jerry Duane Martin, from a work detail at the Wynne Unit prison
in Huntsville. A truck stolen by Martin hit her horse. Falk already was a
convicted murderer serving a life prison term, and Martin was serving 50 years
for attempted capital murder. They were among about 75 inmates working in a
vegetable patch outside the Wynne Unit prison at the northern edge of
Huntsville.
Authorities said the escape began when Martin used the ruse of a broken watch
to get close to an officer and snatch a weapon. He tossed it to Falk and ran to
steal the truck. Canfield was hit as they sped off while shots were being
fired. Her head struck the truck, killing her.
The prisoners abandoned the pickup about a mile away and carjacked a woman at a
bank drive-thru. Huntsville police pursuing them shot out a tire in that car.
The inmates fled on foot.
Falk was apprehended within an hour. Martin was caught a few hours later,
hiding in a tree.
Martin was executed in 2013 after requesting no additional appeals be filed in
his case.
(source: Associated Press)
FLORIDA:
Jury recommends death penalty in case of St. Johns Co. double murder
A St. Johns County jury chose unanimously the death penalty in the case of
James Colley, Jr.
Last week, the same jury spent 2 hours deliberating before returning a verdict
of guilty on all counts, including 2 counts of 1st-degree premeditated murder
of Amanda Colley and Lindy Dobbins.
The sentence comes after the defense team spent 2 days asking jurors to
consider the prescription and illicit drugs in Colley's system, the domestic
violence he witnessed as a child, and his caring family values.
In closing arguments, defense attorney Garry Wood asked the jurors have mercy
on the 38-year-old defendant.
"This is a human being we're talking about," Wood said. "According to the
state's own testimony, Mr. Colley was upset, he was enraged. He's an impulsive
person, but that doesn't aggravate this into a case where the death penalty is
warranted."
Assistant prosecutor Mark Johnson replayed a frantic 911 call made by Amanda
Colley during the shootingsand detailed the gunshot wounds during the state's
closing arguments. Johnson told jurors the murders deserved a punishment of
death because of aggravating factors that made the crime "atrocious and
heinous."
"There was no justification for what happened," Johnson said. "The choices he
made [were] for his own selfish desires because he couldn't let go, because he
was losing control and this was the only way he could regain control."
(source: firstcoastnews.com)
********************
Jurors spare life of gang member. He didn't pull trigger, but will spend life
in prison
Frantzy Jean-Marie, a suspected gang member convicted last month of killing a
confidential informant and his girlfriend 15 years ago, had his life spared
Tuesday, but will spend the rest of it prison.
The same jury that convicted Jean-Marie, 35, of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder,
4 counts of attempted murder and conspiracy and racketeering last month, spent
just over an hour deliberating life or death for the 35-year-old who
prosecutors say belonged to a violent and murderous street gang known as the
Terrorist Boyz.
The 12-member jury spared Jean-Marie's life after reaching the conclusion after
his four-month trial that ended in June, that he did not pull the trigger - but
was guilty of the murder of Armstrong Riviere and his girlfriend Stephanie
Adams at a Northwest Miami-Dade apartment complex in March of 2003. During the
same trial, Jean-Marie was acquitted of the murders of 2 men who were shot to
death as they left Jumbo's Restaurant in October 2002.
Prosecutors argued that the Terrorist Boyz had discovered Riviere was working
with federal law enforcement to shut down the gang's activities and had marked
him for death. Florida law allows for a 1st-degree murder conviction if the
defendant didn't pull the trigger, but took part in a crime that led to a
murder.
"It's really a hollow victory. But the object was to keep the guy off death
row," said Jean-Marie's defense attorney Jimmy Della Fera. "What do you say to
the man? Congrats, you're not going to death row."
Under recently enacted Florida law, jurors must be unanimous for a defendant to
received the death penalty.
The case, mired in legal wranglings for more than a decade, became one of the
most expensive death penalty cases in recent South Florida history. The
prosecution team, led by Assistant State Attorney Joshua Weintraub, said the
Terrorist Boyz were responsible for 12 murders and dozens of other shootings in
the North Miami area that shook the community to its core and ended in the
early 2000s. Gang members have been charged with only 9 of those murders.
Among those allegedly killed by gang members was a man suspected of urinating
on the grave of a gang member's brother, a 13-year-old boy shot dead while
riding a bike and a pregnant womoan who identified the gang's alleged
ringleader as someone who ripped her off.
Other gang members indicted along with Jean-Marie in 2008 were Johnny Charles,
also known as the "Angel of Death," Benson Cadet, Max Daniel and Robert St.
Germain. St Germain pleaded guilty 2 years ago and agreed to a 12-year
sentence. The others are awaiting trial.
Jean-Marie's defense team argued that several of the gang member who testified
against their client, lied and only did so to receive reduced sentences.
In a fiery defense of Jean-Marie on Tuesday, attorney Terry Lenamon interrupted
Weintraub dozens of times during closing arguments, objecting to everything
from Weintraub's claims that Jean-Marie was a gang member to pictures of the
murder victims Weintraub posted in front of the jury box. He continually lashed
out at the assistant state attorney, forcing the prosecutor to complain to
Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Dava Tunis that Lenamon was out of line. She
told Lenamon to tone it down.
"The government of the state of Florida has gotten up here and said kill this
man [Jean-Marie]," Lenamon said to jurors during his closing Tuesday. "We know
he's not the shooter by your own verdict."
In a form the jurors filled out after they found Jean-Marie guilty in June,
jurors checked off a box that said they found him guilty of the murders of
Riviere and Adams, even though they suspected he didn't pull the trigger.
Riviere was a witness in a gun case in which gang members were accused of
stealing 33 weapons from a store - several of which were believed used in later
crimes.
"You've done your job," Lenamon told jurors before they deliberated on
Jean-Marie's sentence. "Mr. Jean-Marie is never getting out of jail, ever."
Jean-Marie will serve 2 life sentences for the deaths of Riviere and his
girlfriend, Adams.
(source: Miami Herald)
LOUISIANA:
Louisiana A.G. Floats Electrocution, Firing Squad as Death Drugs Remain
Scarce----Republican A.G. tries to bring Dem. Gov's execution freeze to an end
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (R.) on Tuesday called on Gov. John Bel
Edwards (D.) to take action to end Louisiana's death penalty moratorium,
echoing law enforcement leaders nationwide frustrated with stalled death rows.
Landry, who is seen as a possible future challenger for the governorship,
released a letter Tuesday evening in which he called on Edwards to back a
number of changes to state law, including the introduction of different
execution drugs and the legalization of alternatives to lethal injection. This
would make it easier to proceed with executions, which Landry believes the
Governor is dragging his feet on implementing.
This is the 2nd letter Landry has sent to Edwards on the topic, with the 1st
being in response to the Louisiana Department of Corrections' announcement that
it would yet again stay all executions in the state. The stay was prompted by
litigation in Hoffman v. Jindal, an on-going federal court case with a
plaintiff claiming that Louisiana's lethal injection protocol violates the
Eighth Amendment.
Landry informed Edwards that he would instruct all of his employees to cease
defending the DOC in the case, a decision Landry said came after "exhaustive
efforts" to get Edwards to actually enforce the death penalty.
In a response to Landry, the governor's office blamed the law, rather than the
governor, for the continuing moratorium. However, Landry claimed in his Tuesday
letter that the secretary of corrections had said it was Edwards who did not
wish to see executions restarted.
America's death rows remain full-to-bursting, a byproduct of nationwide efforts
by death penalty opponents to gum up the machinery of execution. This strategy
has been implemented, for example, by litigation challenging the constitutional
licitness of certain forms of lethal injection, as well as lobbying of foreign
pharmaceutical firms to block the export of drugs like thiopental and
pentobarbital, both used historically to great effect in executions.
There has been a moratorium on the death penalty in Louisiana since 2016; the
last time the state actually executed one of the seventy-some men on its death
row was 2010. The moratorium was initiated thanks to Hoffman: As part of the
suit, plaintiff Jessie Hoffmann demanded to know the specifics of Louisiana's
protocol as it will be implemented on him.
Answering this question is harder than it may seem, because the state has
struggled to obtain the drugs needed to actually execute any of the convicts
currently on death row. Landry's letter called on the governor to back policy
changes that would ameliorate this problem by expanding the number of drugs
available to the Department of Corrections: for example, permitting the single
use of Midazolam, without the currently required addition of hydromorphone, as
an execution drug.
Landry also wanted the governor to support the use of compounding pharmacies,
which create small quantities of drugs, to circumvent pharmaceutical companies
and allow the Department of Corrections to make execution drugs itself. The
state had previously considered purchasing execution drugs from a Tulsa, Okla.,
compounding pharmacy, but that pharmacy was not legally permitted to sell
outside of the state.
In addition to expanding the number of drugs available, Landry called for using
other methods of execution where lethal injection was not an option. A proposed
bill attached to Landry's letter stipulates the use of nitrogen hypoxia,
hanging, firing squad, or execution in the event that lethal injection is
unavailable.
If Louisiana implemented Landry's proposal, it would join the list of states
giving up on lethal injection and embracing execution methods that are cheaper
and less dependent on pharmaceuticals.
Oklahoma became the 1st state to announce the use of nitrogen hypoxia, which
kills painlessly through suffocation with nitrogen, in March. Utah permits the
use of the firing squad, while Tennessee has the electric chair. And Nevada and
Nebraska are considering the deadly opioid fentanyl as an option. Such
proposals indicate the desperation of states unable to implement their own laws
thanks to activist litigation and lobbying.
However, it is unlikely that Edwards will sign on to such ideas. The governor
has avoided expressing an opinion on the death penalty, choosing to say that he
will enforce the law, and focusing on his state's success at lowering its
1st-in-the-nation incarceration rate. Landry called on Edwards to make clear
whether or not he actually supported the death penalty.
"Again, I ask: where do you stand?" Landry wrote. "If you truly stand with
crime victims and their families, then you will affirm your support with
action."
(source: freebeacon.com)
TENNESSEE----impending execution
Is Tennessee Going to Torture Billy Ray Irick to Death?----Medical experts say
excruciating pain is certain for the condemned inmate under Tennessee's lethal
injection protocol
"There's no debate about midazolam at all."
That was Dr. David Lubarsky's testimony in Davidson County Chancery Court last
week during the trial over Tennessee's lethal injection protocol. With Billy
Ray Irick scheduled to be put to death on Aug. 9 for the 1985 rape and murder
of a 7-year-old girl named Paula Dyer - and with the state determined to
execute more death row prisoners as soon as it can - 33 inmates are challenging
the new three-drug protocol that would be used to kill them.
500 milligrams of midazolam, to sedate the prisoner. 100 milligrams of
vecuronium bromide, to paralyze the prisoner. 240 milligrams of potassium
chloride, to stop the heart.
The trial concluded Tuesday afternoon with impassioned closing arguments from
both sides, and a ruling is expected by the end of this week.
The inmates' lawsuit contended that the new protocol, adopted by the state in
January, amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, particularly because of
midazolam, the first drug in the cocktail. They cited warnings from one of the
state's own consultants who said that because midazolam "does not elicit strong
analgesic effects," a person being executed "may be able to feel pain from the
administration of the 2nd and 3rd drugs." And according to the experts the
inmates' attorneys brought to court - which included Lubarsky, a leading
anesthesiologist, and Dr. David J. Greenblatt, whose research on midazolam is
considered the fundamental and crucial literature on the drug - that is
understating it.
"Midazolam is not a general anesthetic," Lubarsky testified. "There is no
argument about that."
In surgical settings, he said, he would never use the drug on its own, because
it's just not strong enough to render a patient insensate - that is, unaware
and unable to experience physical sensations. Lubarsky said anesthesiologists
will often give patients midazolam ahead of surgery to calm their nerves. They
refer to it as "a martini in a syringe.' But it is simply not debatable, he
said, whether people respond to "noxious stimuli" when they have only been
given midazolam. If you give someone midazolam, in other words, they are going
to feel what you do next - particularly if what you do next is inject caustic
chemicals into their veins.
Attorneys representing the state seemed hardly concerned with disputing this
point. They called experts who cited Drugs.com to dismiss concerns about
midazolam. One of their experts, Nashville's chief medical examiner Dr. Feng
Li, agreed that most benzodiazepines are not reliable anesthetics but said
midazolam was an exception to that rule. He could not provide a source for that
claim.
In his closing argument, Deputy Attorney General Scott Southerland spent little
time on the efficacy of midazolam because, he said, it was almost entirely
irrelevant. What mattered when it came to the legal challenge against
Tennessee's lethal injection protocol, he argued, was that the inmates had
failed to meet the legal burden established by the United States Supreme Court
in Glossip v. Gross - that death row prisoners challenging an execution method
must provide a feasible and available alternative. Federal Public Defender
Kelley Henry, the lead attorney representing the condemned inmates, argued that
the state could have obtained pentobarbital, but Southerland dismissed that
claim as nonsensical. Tennessee's previous lethal injection protocol used
pentobarbital, and was upheld as constitutional. If the state could have
obtained that drug and avoid the legal challenge altogether, he said, they
would have done so.
Moreover, Southerland cited the high court's decision in Glossip that the
Oklahoma inmates in that case were unlikely to succeed in their claim that
midazolam's inclusion in the state's lethal injection protocol made the
protocol unconstitutional. Southerland pointed to that decision to argue
against the notion that a multi-drug protocol beginning with midazolam, like
Tennessee's, would amount to torture. It's not cruel and unusual, he said, and
did not meet the threshold of subjecting an inmate to pain for the purpose of
pain. (Southerland did suggest that a certain amount of pain could be justified
in eye-for-an-eye terms. The Constitution does not require that an inmates'
execution be peaceful or painless, he said. "It certainly wasn't pretty or
peaceful for the victims of many of the 33 plaintiffs.")
The law may well be on his side. After all, as Southerland argued in his
opening statement at the beginning of the trial, so long as the death penalty
is constitutional in the United States, then there must be some constitutional
way to carry it out.
If Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle comes down on the state's side of the argument,
then it is very likely that Irick will indeed be executed in just more than 2
weeks by way of lethal injection - starting with midazolam. And the trial will
serve as a basis on which to predict just what he will experience.
The efficacy of midazolam was indeed at the heart of the Glossip case and, as
Lubarsky testified, there is overwhelming agreement among experts that it
cannot spare an inmate from feeling the effects of the 2nd 2 drugs in a 3-drug
protocol. An amicus brief submitted in that case by 16 professors of
pharmacology affirmed that as fact.
Seven states have used midazolam as the 1st drug in a 3-drug lethal injection
cocktail, and each one has had an execution in which an inmate showed signs of
awareness after a consciousness check that was supposed to confirm they were
not. The Tennessee inmates' case included testimony from people who witnessed
executions in each of those 7 states. 1 witness described a man on the gurney
in Alabama grimacing and raising his arm long after receiving an injection of
midazolam; another described an inmate in Arkansas writhing and making choking
sounds before he died. The inmates' attorneys also cited autopsies showing that
21 prisoners whose executions began with midazolam experienced pulmonary edema,
essentially drowning in their own fluids.
Lubarsky testified last week that he has used the paralytic vecuronium bromide
in medical settings. Giving it to someone who is not under general anesthesia,
he said, would be "as if you're basically locked in a box and someone has
covered your mouth, and your lungs and your brain are screaming." He likened it
to being buried alive.
He???s also used potassium chloride, the chemical meant to stop an inmate's
heart. In a clinical setting, he said, even a small dose administered too
quickly will cause a patient to scream out in pain. It's a highly caustic
chemical, he said, and to be given the amount called for in Tennessee's lethal
injection protocol would be like being burned alive.
In his closing argument, Southerland dismissed such testimony, suggesting it
was hyperbolic, reiterating that the Constitution does not require a painless
execution and arguing that the drugs wouldn???t take all that long to take
effect even if they did cause pain.
The vecuronium bromide, he said, would stop an inmate's breathing in 1 to 2
minutes. The potassium chloride - the caustic drug Lubarsky testified would
make someone feel as if they were being burned alive from the inside - would
stop the heart in 45 seconds to a minute.
Billy Ray Irick, a man with a history of severe mental illness, may well
experience all that horror described by doctors and medical experts and
execution witnesses, the state seemed to concede. But it won't last more than a
few minutes, unless something goes wrong - as it has in numerous other
executions around the country.
Still, Southerland said: "This does not amount to torture. It is not cruel and
unusual punishment."
(source: Nashville Scene)
********************************
Mentally ill shouldn't be executed
I was concerned to learn about Billy Ray Irick's long history of severe mental
illness and psychosis at the time he committed the murder for which he now
faces death. Mr. Irick should certainly be in prison for what he did and has
been for over 30 years, but given his severe mental illness, the death penalty
is not appropriate.
I appreciated the description of Sen. Richard Briggs, who is also a medical
doctor, of severe mental illness as a "medical, biological and pathological
disease of the brain." The senator goes on to say that "if a diabetic person
were driving a car and their blood sugar dropped and they passed out and hit
someone on the sidewalk, the death penalty would not be on the table." He's
right. Why is it different for those with a brain disease?
I fear this is a line Tennessee should not step over, for the sake of our
justice system and our reputation. The money used to carry out such a sentence
could better be used to provide more mental health services for our young
people.
Julia Turner, Tellico Plains
(source: Letter to the Editor, Knoxville News Sentinel)
NEBRASKA:
Aubrey Trail's attorney wants his client's property preserved
An attorney for the man accused of the premeditated murder of Sydney Loofe
wants a judge to stop a landlord from selling or destroying the items left
behind in a Wilber apartment, where Loofe was last seen alive, according to
court documents.
Left behind in Aubrey Trail and Bailey Boswell's basement apartment at 621 West
Seventh St., were shackles, a lion rug, various elephant figurines and an
assortment of stuffed animals that included 56 Beanie Babies, according to a
notice made by the landlord.
The state has turned the apartment back over to the landlord, Alan Koll, who
owns the home and rented the apartment to Trail.
Koll informed Trail on July 17 that he needed to claim his property by month's
end or pay the cost of storage, nearly $2,900, or it would be sold or
destroyed, according to court records. Koll did not return a request for
comment Wednesday night.
That prompted Trail's court-appointed attorneys to file motions Wednesday for a
judge to give them time to inspect the apartment they believe is the alleged
murder scene and order the preservation of the property for testing of possible
evidence.
"Preservation of the scene and the evidence contained within it is vital and
material to the defendant's defense," Ben Murray said in his motion.
According to investigators, Loofe went to the home while on a date with Boswell
on Nov. 15.
The Lincoln woman's family reported her missing the next day after she didn't
report to work at Menards.
Her dismembered remains were found in rural Clay County on Dec. 4.
Investigators believe Boswell and Trail bought items used in Loofe's killing
earlier Nov. 15, and that she died of homicidal violence.
They allege the 24-year-old was strangled overnight Nov. 15 using an electrical
cord.
Trail has told investigators and news reporters Loofe's death was an accident.
The inventory includes clues to what investigators have focused on in the
apartment, including the washer and dryer, which reportedly had parts removed
by the FBI, and several empty picture frames from the master bedroom.
Most of the items describe in the inventory are routine household items.
However, some tell of the antique dealing Trail had conducted, including old
Civil War memorabilia, old electric train parts, cast-iron toys, coin display
holders and an 1853 Jewish bible, the inventory said.
Trail and Boswell's antique dealings first gained notoriety following their
arrests in late November as persons of interest in Loofe's disappearance.
They have since been convicted of a fraudulent rare coin scheme that duped a
Kansas couple out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Both Trail and Boswell face charges of 1st-degree murder and unlawful disposal
of human remains in Loofe's death.
The Nebraska Attorney General's Office is seeking the death penalty in Trail's
prosecution. A decision on whether to seek the death penalty in Boswell's case
has not been made public.
Both remain at the Saline County jail without bond.
Boswell is set to be arraigned next month.
(source: Lincoln Journal Star)
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