July 24
TEXAS----death row inmate, foreign national, dies
Mexican national on Texas death row dies of cardiac arrest
After more than 2 decades on Texas death row, a Mexican national convicted of
killing 3 teens in El Paso died in bed early Sunday of cardiac arrest, a prison
spokesman confirmed.
Officials found 49-year-old Ignacio “Nacho” Gomez in his cell on the Polunsky
Unit around 5:37 a.m. and took him to a Livingston hospital, where he was
pronounced dead just over an hour later.
The 49-year-old had long suffered from mental illness, and spent much of his
time behind bars in the prison psychiatric ward. According to his lawyer, he
wasn’t competent to be executed.
(source: Houston Chronicle)
************************
Exonerated death row inmate fulfills mission
14 years ago, I reviewed the innocence claim of Texas death row inmate Anthony
Graves for the Judicial Process Commission in Rochester. I concluded that
Graves’ claim was meritorious. I wrote about his case in “Justicia,” JPC’s
newsletter.
Graves also asked me to help get his case more national attention.
“I want this case of injustice exposed on a national stage to bring attention
to the serious flaws with the death penalty,” he said. “I feel very strongly
that this is why I’ve been chosen to experience such injustice.”
On March 8, 2006, Graves wrote to me again: “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but
the courts have overturned my conviction, and ordered the state to retry me or
turn me loose. I’m totally speechless for the past several days. I’ve never
prepared myself for a favorable ruling because I’ve been so used to receiving
negative news. But they have finally gotten it right. And the opinion they’ve
written speaks volumes about the prosecution’s conduct. I can’t believe it. My
attorney said that the opinion is pretty much air tight and there’s no way the
courts would ever accept an appeal from the state to review it. This is so mind
boggling! It’s like a dream that I’m afraid to wake up to.”
On an August night in 1992, in Somerville, Texas, six people including 5
children were beaten, stabbed, shot and left to die in a burning house. One of
the children was the son of Robert Earl Carter. Four days earlier, Carter
learned the child’s mother had filed a patrimony suit against him. The police
investigation focused on Carter after he attended the victims’ funerals with
bandages on his ears, face and hand, all concealing burns.
After failing a polygraph test, Carter admitted guilt. Not wanting to implicate
his wife — who had a burn on her neck immediately after the fire — and pressed
by police who doubted Carter committed the crime alone, Carter said Anthony
Graves, his wife’s cousin, had helped him.
Carter, his wife and Graves all were indicted. Shortly before Graves’ trial,
police had Carter undergo another polygraph test. Afterward, Carter told the
district attorney that his wife was his accomplice and Graves was not involved.
Nevertheless, Carter was warned that if he refused to testify against Graves,
Carter’s wife would be tried for murder. The withholding of this information by
prosecutors prompted the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals to overturn Graves’
conviction and to conclude that Graves would likely have been acquitted had the
jury been given this information. Although at trial Carter testified that
Graves was his accomplice, Carter told many people before and after Graves’
trial that Graves was innocent. He said he testified against Graves to protect
his wife. In his final statement before he was executed, Carter said, “Anthony
Graves had nothing to do with it. I lied on him in court.”
Carter’s wife was not put on trial. Graves was convicted and given a death
penalty.
It was later shown that wounds prosecutors claimed were inflicted by a knife
like one owned by Graves could have come from any single-edged knife. Also,
investigation by Graves’ appellate lawyers cast doubt on the credibility of
jailhouse informants and guards who testified they overheard Graves make
inculpatory statements to Carter.
Charles Sebesta, the Burleson County district attorney who prosecuted Graves,
offered no plausible motive for Graves’ participation in the murders. An alibi
witness for Graves didn’t testify because she received a threat she would be
prosecuted as an accomplice if she testified on Graves’ behalf.
My own review of his case also revealed that Graves consented to a polygraph
test. Sebesta claimed Graves failed it. But authorities refused to give the
polygraph charts of Graves or Carter to Graves’ attorneys. Warren Holmes, a
highly respected criminologist and polygraph expert, offered to evaluate these
charts after I appraised Holmes of Graves’ case. I concluded that the most
plausible explanation for the unwillingness of Texas officials to relinquish
the polygraph charts was their concern the charts would support Graves’ claim
of actual innocence.
In his book, “Executed on a Technicality,” David Dow wrote, “The Texas
Innocence Network, which I direct, has been working with Graves’ lawyers to
establish his innocence. The dogged team of students is led by Nicole Casarez,
a lawyer and journalism professor.” I had several phone conversations with
Casarez, who shared with me the trials and tribulations of endeavors to save
Graves from execution, and her joy with the Court of Appeals decision.
After 12 years on death row, Graves remained incarcerated at the Burleson
County Jail while the state would repeatedly set and reset trial dates.
Finally, the state acknowledged Graves’ actual innocence, dropped all charges
and awarded Graves $1.4 million for the years he spent wrongfully imprisoned.
Graves used the money to establish the Anthony Graves Foundation to help other
wrongly convicted prisoners and to provide re-entry services for people
released from prison. He also opened a small health clinic to provide free or
low-cost care to people released from prison and their families. Graves’
grievance against the DA, whose prosecutorial misconduct led to Graves’
wrongful conviction, resulted in his being disbarred, prohibiting him from
practicing law in Texas.
Since his exoneration in 2010, Graves has testified before the U.S. Senate
Judiciary Committee about the harms of solitary confinement, has sat on panels
hosted by the American Bar Association and the American Civil Liberties Union
that focused on criminal justice reform, and has been a keynote speaker for
events hosted by organizations including the Anti-Defamation League, Amnesty
International, the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, the American
Academy of Psychiatry and Law, and the Houston Forensic Science Center. Graves’
story was featured on “48 Hours” in an episode titled “Grave Injustice,” which
won an Emmy Award. Graves created the Nicole B. Casarez Scholarship fund at the
University of Texas to help aspiring criminal defense attorneys.
Last year, Beacon Press published Graves’ compelling book, “Infinite Hope: How
Wrongful Conviction, Solitary Confinement and 12 Years on Death Row Failed to
Kill My Soul.”
Back in 2006, I didn’t succeed in honoring Graves’ request to me to help get
his case more national attention. Graves did that on his own four years later
after he was fully exonerated.
As he writes in his book, “I sustained myself through the longest nights with
the simple assurance that God is good. And now that I’m living as a free man, I
have known this to be true. I’ve been blessed with opportunities to travel the
world and tell my story. I’ve been asked to speak in front of national and
international audiences. I’m doing the work I was meant to do — sharing my
story in hopes that all of you out there will keep the faith, find your purpose
and prepare for the opportunity to effect change in a world that desperately
needs reform.”
(sourc: Joel Freedman, mpnnow.com)
*********************
Baptists call for chaplains to be allowed in execution chamber
At least 10 Baptists endorsed an interfaith statement urging the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice to reconsider a policy that bars chaplains from
the execution chamber.
“Clergy have the right to minister to those who have placed themselves in their
care, up to and including the moment of death,” the letter to TDCJ officials
said. “The state cannot, and should not attempt to, regulate spiritual solace.
Placing a wall between a prisoner and clergy violates the religious liberty
that has characterized our nation since its founding.”
More than 180 faith leaders representing at least a dozen religious traditions
signed the letter asking the TDCJ to permit chaplains of all faith into the
death chamber at the request of condemned inmates. While they noted a diversity
of opinion about the death penalty itself, the religious leaders presented a
unified front in urging the state to allow chaplains in the execution chamber.
“Our concerns are moral, ethical, and rooted in our nation’s constitutional
guarantee of the free exercise of religion, even for those condemned to death
and the faith leaders who advise them,” said the letter to Lorie Davis,
director of the TDCJ Correctional Institutions Division.
Copies also were sent to other TDCJ officials—Bryan Collier, executive
director; Jeremy Desel, director of communications; and Timothy Jones, deputy
director of religious services, which includes the chaplaincy department.
‘Small but vital form of human compassion’
Baptists who endorsed the call for change included Joe Brake from Trinity
Baptist Church in San Antonio; Jeni Cook, a retired federal chaplain from
Woodland Baptist Church in San Antonio; Butch Green, Cooperative Baptist
Fellowship field personnel in Houston; Michael Gregg, pastor of Royal Lane
Baptist Church in Dallas; Marv Knox, field coordinator of Fellowship Southwest
and member of Valley Ranch Baptist Church in Coppell; Rick McClatchy, field
coordinator CBF Texas and member of Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio; C.
Clay Pickens from Brentwood Baptist Church in Houston; Tim Schaefer from Royal
Lane Baptist Church in Dallas; Carolyn Strickland from Wilshire Baptist Church
in Dallas; and Garrett Vickrey, pastor of Woodland Baptist Church in San
Antonio.
They joined Buddhist, Catholic, Disciples of Christ, Episcopalian, Evangelical
Lutheran Church of America, non-denominational Christian, Presbyterian, Reform
Judaism, United Church of Christ and United Methodist faith leaders in urging
the TDJC to reconsider a policy the agency adopted earlier this year.
“The significance of the physical presence of a chaplain at a condemned
person’s last moment is difficult to overstate. In the State of Texas, death
row prisoners are denied contact visitation, touched only by TDCJ personnel,
and spend 23 hours a day in solitary confinement,” the religious leaders stated
in the letter.
“The physical companionship of a chaplain in the execution chamber is a small
but vital form of human compassion in an otherwise dehumanizing process. The
presence of a chaplain or spiritual adviser in the viewing room is no
substitute for this direct ministry.”
Hannah Cox, national manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death
Penalty, echoed the concerns raised by the faith leaders.
“Texas’ decision is an assault on the sacred conservative principle of
religious liberty,” Cox said. “The right to exercise one’s faith should not be
denied to any American, including those condemned to death. Government
interference in the practice of religion should not be tolerated, and clergy of
all faiths should be allowed at executions in Texas.”
Policy changed in April
On April 2, TDCJ’s Correctional Institutions Division published a revised
execution procedure that removed all chaplains from the execution chamber. The
change came just days after the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the March 28
execution of Patrick Murphy, based on his complaint of religious
discrimination.
TDCJ had denied Murphy’s request to have a Buddhist priest with him during his
execution, noting only its own Christian and Muslim chaplains were allowed to
be present in the chamber.
“It is my hope that the Correctional Institutions Division will restore the
sacred tradition of allowing a chaplain to be present in the execution room to
minister to the condemned, and that the chaplain could be of that person’s
religious choice,” McClatchy said.
“I belong to a faith tradition which values the practice of ministering to the
executed. It was Jesus who modeled this type of ministry to the men being
executed with him. My American civic values also lead me to believe that even
those condemned to death and the faith leaders who advise them are guaranteed
the right to the free exercise of religion.”
Texas has 10 executions scheduled from Aug. 15 through Nov. 6, 2019. Last year,
Texas accounted for 13 of the 25 executions in the United States.
To date this year, Texas has carried out 3 of the 10 executions nationwide.
Four other scheduled executions, including that of Patrick Murphy, were stayed
by state or federal courts.
Since 1982, Texas has executed 561 people. Only John King—the last person put
to death in Texas, on April 24—was denied the right to have a chaplain present
in his last moments.
(source: baptiststandard.com)
FLORIDA:
Death penalty sought in case of former Miami high school assistant principal
accused of killing teacher
A former Miami-area high school assistant principal is facing the death penalty
after being accused of killing a fellow teacher, according to CBS Miami.
Officials say, Ernest Roberts, formerly an assistant principal at Norland High
School, is being charged with first-degree murder in the death of 41-year old
Kameela Russell, a well-known teacher at Norland High.
Russell was last seen on May 15 and her body was found 10 days later wrapped in
a tarp in a canal near Roberts’ home.
/ Police arrested Roberts and he pleaded not guilty.
Roberts currently remains in jail without bond.
According to officials, Russell was last seen pulling up to her aunts home near
NW 203rd Street and 15th Avenue but suddenly pulled back out of the driveway.
CBS Miami says this was the last time anyone saw her before she suddenly
vanished and her body was found several days later in a Miami Gardens canal.
Russell and Roberts have been friends since they were children and he is also
the God Father to her two children, says CBS Miami.
According to an arrest warrant, on May 20, Roberts contacted a school employee
telling him to “go to a specific file cabinet inside a conference room at the
school and find a note.”
The note read, “Do you know anyone that can chop up a car? If so or make it
“disappear” take these keys. It’s behind the speedway racetrack on 441 by
County line. Friends are gone and need it to disappear. If not leave + I’ll
work it out later. Thrown this note away!”
There was also keys to an Audi left with the note.
Instead of following the directions on the note, the employee called the
police, according to CBS Miami. Detectives recovered the note and keys.
Authorities say, the school employee also sat down with detectives and told
them about the first phone call Roberts made to him on May 15.
During the call, the arrest warrant states Roberts said, “I did something
crazy.” The employee says Roberts told him, “He confronted an intruder in his
mother’s house and hit the person with the bat. Roberts then went on to share
that, “He not only hit the intruder with the bat, but killed the intruder. He
admitted to the employee that he wrapped the body in a tarp wrap and dragged
the body through the house leaving a trail of blood stains. Roberts also asked
the employee how to get rid of blood stains. The employee jokingly told him to
use Clorox because he thought he was kidding about the incident at the time.”
On the day Russell’s body was found, the warrant states that her body was
wrapped in a tarp in the clothes she wore the day she was seen in a
surveillance video walking into Roberts’ home.
A verification of a death certificate shows that Russell died from a blunt head
injury and her death was ruled a homicide, according to CBS News.
Roberts is currently awaiting trial set for October.
(source: WCTV news)
************************
Death Penalty Sought In Case Of Former Norland High Assistant Principal Accused
Of Killing Teacher
Prosecutors announced they will seek the death penalty in the case of a former
assistant principal, accused of killing a fellow teacher.
Former Norland High Assistant Principal Ernest Roberts is charged with
first-degree murder in the death of Kameela Russell, a popular teacher at the
same school.
She disappeared on May 15th and her body was found days later in a canal near
Roberts’ home.
Police arrested Roberts and he pleaded not guilty.
Roberts remains in jail with no bond.
Russell, a 41-year-old mother of 2, was last seen May 15 as she pulled up to
her aunt’s home along NW 203rd Street and 15th Avenue and suddenly pulled back
out of the driveway. Then she vanished and her body was not found until 10 days
later when it was pulled from a Miami Gardens canal.
Russell and Roberts have known each other since they were children and he is
the God Father of both of her children.
On May 20, five days after her disappearance, Roberts was supposed to chaperone
a school trip to Washington D.C. That same day, a school employee called
investigators to report that “Roberts called him that morning and told the
employee to go to a specific file cabinet inside a conference room at the
school and find a note,” according to his arrest warrant.
The note read: “Do you know anyone that can chop up a car? If so or make it
“disappear” take these keys. Its behind the speedway racetrack on 441 by County
line. Friends are gone and need it to disappear. If not leave + I’ll work it
out later. Thrown this note away!”
Along with the note, were the keys to an Audi.
Instead of doing what the note asked of him, the employee called the police.
Detectives recovered the note and the keys.
That same employee, in a face-to-face meeting with detectives, told them about
the first phone call from Roberts on May 15.
In that call, the arrest warrant states Roberts said, “I did something crazy.”
The employee says Roberts told him, “He confronted an intruder in his mother’s
house and hit the person with a baseball bat.” In a later conversation, Roberts
told him, “He not only hit the intruder with the bat, but killed the intruder.
He explained he wrapped the body in a tarp and dragged the body through the
house leaving bloodstains. Roberts also asked the employee how to get rid of
bloodstains. The employee told him he could use Clorox but thought he was
kidding about the incident at the time.”
Russell’s body was found in the canal on May 25. The warrant states her body
was wrapped in a tarp and in the same clothes she was wearing the day she was
seen in the surveillance video walking into Roberts’ home.
A verification of death certificate revealed Russell died from blunt head
injury and her death was ruled a homicide.
According to Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Roberts began working at
Miami-Dade County Public Schools in August 2004. He started working as a
teacher at Miami Norland Senior in December 2012. In August 2017, he was
appointed Assistant Principal at Norland. He was transferred to Linda Lentin
K-8 Center in February 2019. His transfer had no association with the Miami
Gardens Police Department investigation. He has no prior disciplinary history
with the District.
Roberts trial is scheduled for October.
(source: CBS News)
OHIO:
Jury recommends death sentence in Parma Heights prison pen-pal double-murders
Jurors on Tuesday recommended that Thomas Knuff be executed for fatally
stabbing his former prison pen-pal and the man she lived with, then trying to
hire a man to set fire to the home that housed their decaying bodies.
The same jury that last month convicted Knuff of charges including aggravated
murder that made him eligible for the death penalty took about three hours to
determine that he should pay the ultimate penalty for the April 2017 crime
spree that left John Mann and Regina Capobianco dead.
Common Pleas Court Judge Dena Calabrese, who presided over the six-week trial,
will sentence Knuff in August. Calabrese can either accept the jury’s
recommendation and impose a death sentence on Knuff, or sentence him to life in
prison.
Knuff befriended Capobianco through an inmate-to-inmate pen-pal program in the
2000s and moved in with her and Mann on Nelwood Road in Parma Heights in April
2017 when he was released on parole, after serving 15 years for an aggravated
robbery conviction.
Capobianco’s felony record meant that she and Knuff could not both stay in the
same house, and prosecutors contended at trial that the 2 got into an argument
after Mann chose to keep Capobianco in the house over Knuff. Knuff stabbed her
to death and then killed Mann during the argument, prosecutors said.
Capobianco was stabbed six times, and Mann was stabbed 15 times, a pathologist
from the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office testified.
Knuff and his lawyers maintained that he acted in self-defense after he
stumbled upon Capobianco stabbing Mann. Knuff took the knife from her and tried
to tend to Mann, but Capobianco grabbed another knife from the kitchen and
attacked Knuff, cutting his finger, his lawyers said. Knuff killed Capobianco
in self-defense, and Mann died from the injuries inflicted by Capobianco, his
lawyers said.
Knuff sought to cover up the killings because he feared he would go back to
prison for a parole violation, even though he acted in self-defense, his
lawyers said.
In the weeks that followed, Knuff came up with several different cover stories
to explain his injury and why he needed a new place to stay, prosecutors say.
He told his girlfriend, Alicia Stoner, that he cut his finger in a bar fight,
and told his son that a group of black drug dealers broke into the house and
attacked him, Mann and Capobianco. He went to a Medina County hospital when his
finger became and infected, and told the nurse that he stabbed two people in
self-defense, prosecutors said.
Knuff eventually confided to Stoner that he had killed someone and needed to
dispose of a body, and asked her to buy him power tools. He told her that he
planned to cut them up like title character from the Showtime serial-killer
series “Dexter” so police couldn’t find evidence on their fingertips,
prosecutors said. He never made good on the plan.
Stoner, a former prison social worker who met Knuff while he was locked up the
in Trumbull County Correctional Facility, pleaded guilty last year to charges
that accused her of helping Knuff to dispose of the bodies and was sentenced to
probation.
Knuff broke into 2 beauty stores and stole cash from the registers. He was
arrested on June 13, 2017 in the break-ins, more than a week before police knew
Mann and Capobianco were dead.
Knuff escalated his cover-up scheme after his arrest. He wrote to Robert De
Lugo from jail, asking him in great detail to burn down the house, starting in
the bedroom with “the most incriminating s—t,” which prosecutors said was a
reference to the decaying bodies of Mann and Capobianco. He also directed
Stoner to pay De Lugo and buy materials to help start the fire, prosecutors
said.
De Lugo did not follow through with the plan.
While all this occurred, Parma Heights police had still not found the bodies of
Capobianco and Mann.
Capobianco’s relatives reported her missing in the days after the killing, but
Parma Heights police officers never tried to enter the home. They interviewed
Knuff, who lied and said he believed the two had gone to stay with friends in
Canton, prosecutors said.
Neighbors called police weeks after the killings to report a smell of rotting
meat emanating in the neighborhood, and officers entered the home and found raw
meat that had been left on the kitchen table, prosecutors said. Officers
assumed the smell came from the meat and disposed of it, then left the house
without searching any of the other rooms.
Police eventually went back into the house on June 21, and a detective
discovered Capobianco’s skull buried under debris in the bedroom, prosecutors
said. Authorities then found Mann’s body within minutes, and launched a
homicide investigation.
(source: cleveland.com)
ILLINOIS:
Danville man who spent 23 years on death row for 1980 murders dies in prison
A Danville man whose death sentence was commuted in 2003 by then-Gov. George
Ryan has died from medical issues while in prison.
Charles Silagy, 69, died this month while in custody, said Lindsey Hess of the
Illinois Department of Corrections.
Silagy had been in prison since 1980 — spending about 23 of those years on
death row — for the murder of his girlfriend and her sister.
5 days after the 2 women’s bodies were discovered on Valentine’s Day morning,
Silagy confessed.
He told investigators that he began choking girlfriend Cheryl Block, 32, in the
truck as they drove home from a strip club where they’d gotten into an
argument. After stopping the truck and continuing to beat, kick, then stab her
with a pocketknife, he left her body and returned to the trailer the 2 shared
with Ms. Block's sister, Anne "Marty" Waters, 29, and stabbed her to death as
well.
A Vermilion County jury convicted Silagy of the crimes 5 months later.
Nearly 40 years since his conviction, Silagy was an inmate at the Pontiac
Correctional Center when he was pronounced dead at OSF Saint James Medical
Center in town, according to Livingston County Coroner Danny Watson.
Watson said the cause of death was “medical.”
Silagy had been one of the state’s longest residents of death row in January
2003, when Ryan commuted the sentences of 157 inmates scheduled to die. 8 years
later, former Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation abolishing the death penalty in
Illinois.
Silagy was originally sentenced to die 3 years after Illinois reinstated its
death penalty in 1977. His execution by electric chair was scheduled for Nov.
7, 1980.
Though he had fired the public defenders representing him after his conviction
and asked the jury to sentence him to death, he eventually changed his mind in
prison and filed legal documents to have his conviction overturned.
Over the next 20 years, Silagy’s post-conviction case was heard in various
court hearings but ultimately ended with him still on death row three years
before Ryan’s commutation of his sentence.
Through the years
A timeline of the Charles Silagy case:
— Feb. 14, 1980: Silagy becomes angry after his girlfriend, Cheryl Block, 32,
goes to a male strip show with her sister, Anne 'Marty' Waters, 29. He picks
Ms. Block up from the club, choks and beats her, then drags her into a
cornfield and stabs her to death. After returning to their trailer, he gets
into an argument with Ms. Waters and beats and stabs her to death with a
kitchen knife. Silagy flees to Kentucky, where he is arrested a day later and
gives a lengthy confession to police 5 days after the murders.
— July 1980: Silagy is convicted of murder following a jury trial. He fires his
public defenders and asks the jury to sentence him to death, which it does.
— 1988-89: Silagy files a petition in federal district court in 1988. After a
2-day hearing in July 1989, Judge Harold Baker upholds Silagy’s conviction but
overturns his sentence, declaring the Illinois statute on the death penalty
unconstitutional.
— 1990: The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals reverses that decision and upholds the
statute and Silagy’s sentence.
— April 1991: The Illinois Supreme Court grants a stay of execution to allow
Silagy to pursue a 2nd post-conviction petition that claims he was denied due
process because the trial court failed to conduct a fitness hearing to
determine whether he was able to represent himself. Silagy claims he was
mentally incompetent during his sentencing hearing, and his attorneys claim he
had brain damage for various reasons, including a childhood of physical and
sexual abuse, head injuries and chronic alcoholism. They also say he was taking
twice the normal dosage of Darvocet, a painkiller, which altered his mind.
— 1999: At a hearing on whether Silagy should have had a fitness hearing in
1980, Fifth Judicial Circuit Judge Richard Scott finds he was entitled to one,
and that a retrospective fitness hearing could be conducted.
— 2000: At the conclusion of that hearing, Scott finds that Silagy was mentally
competent at his sentencing hearing.
— Jan. 12, 2003: Former Gov. George Ryan commutes the sentences of Silagy and
other inmates on Illinois' death row to life in prison.
— July 12, 2019: Silagy, serving his life sentence at the Pontiac Correctional
Center, is pronounced dead at a Pontiac hospital due to medical issues,
according to the Livingston County Coroner’s Office.
(source: The News-Gazette)
KENTUCKY:
'I want him dead, I want the death penalty that's what is running through my
mind'; family reacts to seeing murder suspect in court
Anthony Lewis, the suspect in Marlena Holland Hurts murder, appeared in court
for the 1st time Tuesday morning.
During the appearance that lasted around 5 minutes, Lewis was appointed a
public defender.
Lewis has a previous conviction in Harlan County and was awaiting trial in
Leslie County on a rape charge when the murder allegedly happened.
His next court appearance is set for August 6th at 9:00 a.m.
(source: WMYT news)
MISSOURI:
Divided Missouri Supreme Court Rules Against Craig Wood in Hung-Jury
Death-Penalty Appeal
A divided Missouri Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the
state’s death-penalty statute against a challenge to its requirement that the
trial judge decide a capital defendant’s sentence in cases of a penalty-phase
hung jury. In a 4-3 decision issued on July 16, 2019, the court rejected a
claim brought by Craig Wood (pictured) that hung-jury judicial sentencing
violated his Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury. A 5-2 majority of the
court also denied relief on Wood’s claims that the prosecution improperly
presented irrelevant evidence to inflame the jury and deliberately misled the
jury into believing that the victim’s family wanted Wood to be put to death.
Wood was convicted of the 2014 murder of Hailey Owens, but his jury deadlocked
on the appropriate sentence, reportedly splitting 10-2 in favor of a death
sentence. Under Missouri law, when a jury cannot unanimously agree on a
sentence, the jury is declared hung and the judge decides sentence. Wood’s
lawyers argued that this violated the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in
Hurst v. Florida, which held that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial
entitles a capital defendant to have a jury, rather than a judge, find all
facts that are necessary for a death sentence to be imposed. The court majority
relied on a 2013 Missouri decision that pre-dated Hurst, which held that as
long as “the jury finds the facts making a defendant eligible for a death
sentence, the Sixth Amendment does not prohibit the circuit court from
resolving the jury’s penalty phase deadlock by imposing a death sentence.” It
ruled that the jury’s unanimous finding of six aggravating factors satisfied
that requirement, and that its weighing of aggravating against mitigating
circumstances—which did not produce unanimity—was not a factfinding requiring
jury unanimity.
Missouri and Indiana are the only states that allow a judge to impose a death
sentence when the jury deadlocks on sentencing. Alabama permits judges to
impose death when 10 or more jurors recommend the death penalty.
3 judges disagreed with the majority’s view of the sentencing law. In an
opinion written by Judge Laura Denvir Stith and joined by Chief Justice George
Draper and Judge Patricia Breckenridge, the dissenters said that weighing and
comparing evidence is a classic element of the jury’s factfinding function.
“[B]alancing and weighing of evidence to reach a verdict has historically been
the province of the jury,” they wrote. “[J]urors are asked to balance the
evidence in making factual determinations every day.”
Judge Stith and Chief Justice Draper also dissented from the majority decision
on 2 other issues. First, they would have vacated the death sentence because
jurors had improperly been shown photos of 29 guns recovered at Wood’s house
that had nothing to do with the Owens killing. The majority said the evidence
was admissible because it showed that Wood had selected a small gun so as to
more easily cover up the murder. The dissent said, “the gun evidence became a
centerpiece of the trial and went far beyond what was necessary to present the
facts deemed relevant,” and cited precedent that found such evidence “tends to
overwhelm reason and to associate the accused with the atrocity without
sufficient evidence.”
Judges Stith and Draper also would have overturned Wood’s death sentence on the
grounds that the prosecution improperly urged the jury to “speak for [Hailey’s]
family” by imposing a death sentence after successfully blocking the defense
from presenting testimony from Owens’ mother that she did not want Wood
sentenced to death. The majority rejected Wood’s argument, saying that his
trial lawyer had waived the issue by failing to raise it in the motion for a
new trial and that it did not meet the standard of “plain error” resulting in
“manifest injustice” necessary for reversal. The dissenters disagreed, writing,
“Whether this comment would require reversal in another case, it manifestly
should do so when, as here, it was the prosecutor who successfully kept out
evidence that Hailey’s mother did not in fact want him to receive the death
penalty. We have not only a comment by the prosecutor in violation of the rules
prohibiting telling the jury the family’s wishes as to punishment, therefore,
but we also have the prosecutor deliberately misrepresenting those wishes to
the jury.”
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
WYOMING:
Federal appeals court: Wyoming prosecutors can again seek death penalty for
Dale Wayne Eaton
A Wyoming man who kidnapped, raped and murdered a woman in 1988 and was
convicted of the crimes more than a decade later could still be subject to the
death penalty, according to a Tuesday ruling from a federal appeals court in
Denver.
Dale Wayne Eaton, 74, was Wyoming’s only death row inmate from his 2004 jury
conviction on four felonies until 2014, when a federal judge in Cheyenne
overturned the jury’s sentence of death. Judge Alan Johnson ruled that Eaton’s
court-appointed defense lawyers had performed deficiently at sentencing and
vacated his conviction but gave prosecutors the opportunity to again seek to
sentence him to death.
In Eaton’s latest appeal, he had asked the Denver appeals court to deny
prosecutors that option, but, in its Tuesday opinion, the 10th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals declined to do so.
Former Natrona County District Attorney Mike Blonigen, who tried Eaton in 2004,
said Tuesday evening he was not largely surprised by any portion of the
opinion. He said he expects any appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court before
resentencing would likely not be heard. The trial prosecutor declined to say
whether he would like to handle the sentencing hearing, saying that was a
decision entirely up to Dan Itzen, who replaced him as district attorney in
January. Itzen could not be reached by phone Tuesday evening.
Attorney General Bridget Hill, whose office handled the 10th Circuit appeal,
typically does not comment on ongoing cases. She declined by email Tuesday to
diverge from that policy.
Sean O’Brien, the Kansas City lawyer and law professor who led Eaton’s appeal,
did not immediately respond to a late afternoon call for comment.
The case began more than 30 years ago, when authorities began investigating
Lisa Marie Kimmell’s death. The Billings, Montana, woman’s body turned up in
the North Platte River, but investigators hit a decade of dead ends.
In 1998, after Eaton was convicted of assault and sent to Wyoming State
Penitentiary, authorities took his DNA and found it matched evidence found on
Kimmell’s body. Investigators, however, did not immediately make the finding
public. In 2002, authorities unearthed Kimmell’s car on Eaton’s property in
Moneta, about an hour from Casper.
In 2003, the Natrona County District Attorney’s Office charged Eaton with
Kimmell’s death, and Blonigen took the case to trial in early 2004. After 2
weeks in the courtroom, jurors convicted him of every charge he faced —
1st-degree premeditated murder, felony murder, aggravated kidnapping,
aggravated robbery and 1st-degree sexual assault — and Eaton’s case went to
sentencing. Days later, the jury found Eaton should be put to death.
The Wyoming State Public Defender’s Office appealed the case in 2005, beginning
a series of post-conviction proceedings that have not yet been resolved.
Judges halted execution dates set for 2008 and for 2010, when Eaton appealed to
the federal system. In 2014, Johnson, the Cheyenne judge, vacated Eaton’s
sentence and gave prosecutors a 120-day deadline to seek a new sentencing
hearing. Eaton asked Johnson to order the state court to sentence him to life
without parole, but the judge declined to do so.
Eaton appealed to the 10th Circuit and the 120-day time frame expired. The
federal district court ruled prosecutors, however, could still pursue a hearing
to impose the death penalty. Eaton appealed the decision as well, and the 10th
Circuit judges on Tuesday largely ruled against him on all 4 issues he brought.
In its 43-page ruling, a panel of three judges first considered a set of
arguments born of an appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court, where Eaton argued
his lawyer had offered deficient representation at trial. The federal panel
agreed with the state appeals court’s ruling, however, that because Eaton was
mentally competent his trial lawyer could not be deficient when he did not
contest competency. The opinion, penned by Judge Nancy Moritz, likewise denied
an argument that Eaton should have been allowed on appeal to bring new evidence
on the issue.
A 2nd set of arguments state that Eaton’s constitutional rights were being
denied when Johnson allowed a new penalty hearing. The federal panel, however,
ruled the state-level sentence would be able to fairly incorporate whether and
how the passage of time has prejudiced the sentencing hearing.
The 10th Circuit likewise rejected the final two arguments brought by Eaton’s
lawyers. Although they had argued Johnson improperly determined that Eaton is
still subject to the death penalty, the appellate panel ruled his arguments
before the state court contradicted his federal arguments. In response to his
final argument, that prosecutors suppressed evidence of their connection to a
trial witness, the judges ruled the issue as appealed was irrelevant upon
reversal of the sentencing decision.
(source: Casper Star-Tribune)
OREGON:
Readers respond: Death penalty isn’t the answer
Regarding Steve Duin’s column, “The most powerful argument for the death
penalty” (July 12): Of the powerful arguments the horrific Angela McAnulty case
presents, the death penalty is at the bottom, if on the list at all. The most
powerful arguments are for better mental health access and awareness, better
child protection services, and a more vigilant society and school system to
identify, report and follow up on potential issues, along with anything else
that could possibly save another child from this fate.
Cases like this should prompt an examination of our society: How and where can
we do better protecting our children from predators and the mentally ill
(especially ones in their own families)? Killing Angela McAnulty does nothing
but help some in our society feel better. It doesn't act as a deterrent. Death
penalty cases cost society more than lifetime imprisonment. Our justice system
will always make mistakes and killing someone can't be undone. Further, having
Angela McAnulty alive may lead to a better understanding of her condition: how
to identify it, see warning signs and possibly prevent it. Killing McAnulty
might feel like justice but working to save another child from this fate is the
best way to honor Jeanette.
Francis A. Halpin, Portland
(soruce: Letter to the Editor, The Oregonian)
USA:
Death Penalty Continues to Wane in U.S.----Death row’s population down in 2017
for 17th straight year
Death row’s population declined for the 17th straight year in 2017, while the
duration from sentence to execution increased to 20 years, three months, the
federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reported Tuesday, continuing an overall
drop in capital punishment across the U.S.
The number of inmates under sentence of death fell by 94 to 2,703, a figure
that would shrink further if it excluded more than 900 condemned prisoners in
Colorado, Oregon, Pennsylvania and, as of March, California, which have
declared moratoriums on executions. An additional 59 federal inmates were on
death row, up by one over 2016.
The 23 executions in 2017 were half the number in 2010, although slightly more
than the 20 carried out in 2016. Only 8 of the 32 states with capital
punishment conducted executions in 2017; in May, New Hampshire abolished its
death penalty.
Even though the 34 new death sentences imposed in 2017 outnumbered the 23
executions, an additional 105 inmates left death row for other reasons. 21 died
of natural causes, the bureau reported, 2 died by suicide and 1 died in a
traffic accident.
The data confirm that imposition of the death penalty is concentrated in a
handful of states. Texas executed 7 inmates in 2017, followed by Arkansas with
4 and Alabama and Florida with 3 apiece.
“Texas is still the big driver of all the execution activity, because Texas is
the one state that puts a lot of people on death row and actually executes
them,” said Lee Kovarsky, a law professor at the University of Maryland.
Capital cases tend to be concentrated in larger counties in states with the
death penalty, Mr. Kovarsky said. “You need a well-heeled county,” he said,
because “it’s gotten so expensive to produce a death sentence and also to
convert a death sentence into an execution.”
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority, reinforced by last year’s
appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has expressed increasing frustration
with procedural tactics inmates employ to delay their executions, as well as
abolitionist campaigns that led drugmakers to restrict the use of their
products to end an inmate’s life.
“The Constitution allows capital punishment,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for
the court in April, rejecting an inmate’s claim that a lethal-injection
protocol put him at risk of excruciating pain. Over the liberal justices’
dissent, he complained of “pleading games” inmates could try to delay their
executions, and observed that “pressure from anti-death-penalty advocates
induced the company that manufactured sodium thiopental to stop supplying it
for use in executions. As a result, the State was unable to proceed with
executions,” further delaying just punishment.
The span between sentence and execution grew by 3 years, 3 months over 2016—and
7 years, 6 months from 2007.
Dissenting from the Gorsuch opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer called attention to
such delays.
“It may be that there is no way to execute a prisoner quickly while affording
him the protections that our Constitution guarantees,” he wrote.
(source: Wall Street Journal)
******************
Biden: I’ll Scrap Federal Death Penalty
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden answered critics of his support for
the 1994 federal crime law by proposing elimination of the federal death
penalty and other changes at odds with the earlier legislation, the Washington
Post reports.
Biden’s plan would also offer states incentives to abolish the death penalty,
with death row prisoners receiving life-without-parole sentences instead.
Other provisions in Biden’s new policy proposal: decriminalize marijuana and
expunge past cannabis-related convictions; end the disparity between sentences
for powder and crack cocaine; do away with all incarceration for drug use
alone; end cash bail; terminate the federal government’s use of private
prisons.
It includes a provision to ensure that people who are imprisoned are treated
humanely and that women in custody are provided health-care protections. The
plan would invest $1 billion annually in juvenile justice reform, give states
incentives to stop incarcerating minors, and create a $20 billion grant program
to spur states to move from incarceration to crime prevention and eliminate
mandatory-minimum sentences.
The release of Biden’s criminal justice plan comes about a week before the next
round of televised Democratic primary debates, when his record is expected to
come under renewed scrutiny. His support for the 1994 crime bill has been
criticized by both Republicans and Democrats, who argue that it led to mass
incarceration and tilted the system unfairly against African Americans.
He telegraphed earlier this month that he was reconsidering his support for
capital punishment over his three decades in the Senate, telling a New
Hampshire audience, “By the way, congratulations to y’all ending the death
penalty here.”
(source: thecrimereport.org)
*********************
Every top 2020 Democrat now supports ending the death penalty
Joe Biden has reversed a major sticking point from his time in the Senate.
The former vice president has joined up with nearly every Democrat running for
president, revealing that he supports ending the death penalty nationwide.
Biden previously supported the death penalty, but in his criminal justice plan
unveiled Tuesday, he said he'll work to abolish the death penalty at both the
state and federal levels.
Biden unveiled a sweeping criminal justice platform on Tuesday, which
acknowledges that "too many people are incarcerated in the United States — and
too many of them are black and brown." So he's pledged to "root out the racial,
gender, and income-based disparities in the system" while rerouting criminal
justice toward "redemption and rehabilitation."
Part of that plan includes eliminating the death penalty because "over 160
individuals who’ve been sentenced to death in this country since 1973 have
later been exonerated," Biden's website reads. So if he's elected, Biden says
he'll "work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal
level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government's example."
That plan puts Biden in line with Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and pretty much every other 2020
Democrat. Biden had advocated for capital punishment while in the Senate , but
appeared to be dropping that stance over the past few months.
(source: theweek.com)
_______________________________________________
A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu
DeathPenalty mailing list
DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu
http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty
Unsubscribe: http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/options/deathpenalty
