Nov. 29
USA:
Newt: Give the death penalty to drug cartel leaders
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says he supports using the
death penalty as punishment for leaders of drug cartels who bring drugs into
America.
Gingrich made the comments when asked in an interview with Yahoo! News if he
still stands by a bill he introduced in Congress in 1996 allowing those
convicted of smuggling drugs to be put to death.
“I think if you are, for example, the leader of a cartel, sure,” Gingrich told
reporter Chris Moody. “Look at the level of violence and the level of violence
that they’ve done to society.”
Elaborating, he said: “You can either be in the Ron Paul tradition and say
there’s nothing wrong with heroine and cocaine or you can be in the tradition
that says, ‘These kind of addictive drugs are terrible, they deprive you of
full citizenship and they lead you to a dependency which is antithetical to
being an American.’”
“If you’re serious about the latter view, then we need to think through a
strategy that makes it radically less likely that we’re going to have drugs in
this country.”
Also in the interview, Gingrich said his campaign has begun exploring the
option of getting protection from the Secret Service. The only Republican
candidate for president so far with protection is businessman Herman Cain.
“We’ve explored it with them, and I think at the moment I would prefer not to
do it as long as we could,” Gingrich said. “I prefer as much as possible to
remain open to people.”
(source: The Daily Caller)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Senate derails Racial Justice Act
The state Senate on Monday rewrote the Racial Justice Act, a two-year-old law
that allowed death-row inmates to use statistical evidence of racial bias to
challenge their sentences.
On a 27-17 vote, senators approved Senate Bill 9, titled No Discriminatory
Purpose in the Death Penalty. It now goes to Gov. Bev Perdue. There was no
immediate word on whether the governor would sign the bill.
Perdue did sign the Racial Justice Act into law in 2009, saying it would ensure
death sentences were imposed "based on the facts and the law, not racial
prejudice."
Republican lawmakers and the state's prosecutors tried to minimize the impact
of the new law, insisting it was only a fix. "This is not a repeal of the
Racial Justice Act," Sen. Thom Goolsby, a Republican from Wilmington, said on
the Senate floor. "It's a reform, a modification."
But earlier in the day, in response to a question from Sen. Josh Stein, a
Raleigh Democrat, the Senate staff acknowledged that passing the bill, SB9,
returned the law to what it was before the Racial Justice Act went into effect.
"This is an utter and total repeal," Stein said.
The vote followed a public hearing before a Senate judiciary committee in which
impassioned pleas were made on both sides of the issue from the families of
murder victims and from death-penalty opponents.
The state's district attorneys in recent weeks stepped up a campaign that they
have been waging against the two-year-old law. The campaign took on a new
urgency because the first case is scheduled to be heard in January in
Cumberland County. Prosecutors unsuccessfully tried to have the judge hearing
the case removed. Failing that, they submitted to legislators a resolution
signed by all but one of the district attorneys in the state calling for
immediate changes to the act.
All but three of the 157 people currently on death row have sought hearings
under the new law, including cases that seemed to have nothing to do with race.
But a study found murder defendants were 2 1/2 times more likely to be
sentenced to death if at least one of the victims was white, and raised
questions about how frequently blacks are excluded from serving on juries.
The prosecutors have insisted that anywhere from two dozen to nearly 120
inmates now on death row could be eligible for parole under the law, even
though the Racial Justice Act specifies that the only option available for an
inmate who has had a death sentence commuted is life in prison without parole.
Both sides cite different court cases to prove their point.
The campaign continued earlier Monday when 16 prosecutors and several families
of murder victims held a news conference in the statehouse to emphasize the
emotion behind the debate. Relatives recounted the crimes in raw, gut-wrenching
details:
A father told of his 11-year-old daughter who had been raped, chased across a
field and her throat slashed. A sister recounted the execution of her brother,
a Johnston County sheriff's deputy whose last words to the gunman were, "Please
don't."
Many of those same people also spoke at the Senate committee hearing in the
afternoon. To make their case, both sides used African-Americans, as crime
victims, as prosecutors, as the wrongly accused.
Darryl Hunt reminded the committee that he was 1 of the 7 death-row inmates who
have been exonerated; five of them, like him, were African-American. He spent
19 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit.
"I was one vote away from the death penalty," Hunt said. "I had 11 whites and
one black on my jury. If you think that race did not play a factor in my case,
then you're not living here in North Carolina."
Goolsby referred on the Senate floor to the remarks by victims' families.
"We have a moral obligation to make sure justice is served in these cases," he
said. "The Racial Justice Act has very little to do with race or justice.
Instead, it's turned out to be a Trojan horse, a back-door attempt to end the
death penalty in North Carolina."
Sen. Floyd McKissick, a Durham Democrat who was the primary author of the
Racial Justice Act, made his own impassioned speech to defeat the new bill. He
asked fellow senators what they would do if they were accused of a crime and
each time a prospective juror who was the same race was stricken from the jury.
"We've come a very long way over the last 50 years," McKissick said. "We've
made a lot of progress as a society and as a country. We can all share in that
pride. But there's still remnants that exist, remnants of institutional racism,
remnants of hatred in the hearts and minds of people."
(source: News & Observer)
************
NC Senate Votes to Repeal Death Row Law
The North Carolina Senate has voted to repeal a landmark state law allowing
death row inmates to appeal their sentences by using statistical evidence to
show the influence of racial bias.
The Monday night vote means the repeal measure now heads to the desk of Gov.
Beverly Perdue, who signed the 2009 Racial Justice Act into law.
A Perdue spokesman said the governor will review the bill before making a
decision.
The largely Republican supporters of the measure said the Racial Justice Act,
in its current form, will clog up the courts with appeals from scores of death
row inmates. They say the law amounts to an unofficial death penalty
moratorium.
But supporters say the law helps ensure fairness in how capital punishment is
administered.
(source: Associated Press)
FLORIDA:
Death row inmate Wyatt loses appeal in Vero murder case
Death row inmate Thomas Wyatt has lost another state Supreme Court appeal of
his convictions of murdering 4 people during a multistate crime spree that
included 3 deaths in Vero Beach, court records show.
During May 1988, Wyatt and an accomplice, Michael Lovette, ran away from a
North Carolina prison road gang. In Jacksonville, they stole a Cadillac with a
gun in it and drove to Vero Beach, where they robbed a Domino's Pizza on May
17, 1988, and fatally shot the three employees, according to trial records.
Then they fled west on State Road 60, burned the Cadillac near Yeehaw Junction,
and got rides to a bar in Brandon, where they met Cathy Nydegger.
Her body was found shot in the head along State Road 60 a few miles from the
burned Cadillac.
Wyatt's appeal was in the death of Nydegger. Previously, the Supreme Court
upheld his separate conviction in the deaths of the Domino's Pizza employees.
On Nov. 23, the Supreme Court turned down his latest appeal that included
challenging the testimony of two witnesses: a prison inmate Wyatt whom confided
in after his arrest in South Carolina and an FBI agent who researched the
bullets used in the murder.
Wyatt said the inmate, Patrick McCoombs, lied in saying Wyatt confessed to
murdering Nydegger. Wyatt allegedly told McCoombs that he killed her "just
because he wanted to see her die ... she ain't nobody," according to court
records.
However, McCoombs' testimony contained facts that "would not have known unless
Wyatt had told him," the Supreme Court wrote in ruling that Wyatt's claim was
without merit.
The court turned down Wyatt's challenge of an FBI agent who testified that the
bullet found in Nydegger matched the type Wyatt was known to have had.
The court found no problems in the trial court limiting testimony about Wyatt's
mental problems. During his trial, Wyatt presented witnesses who said he had an
abusive childhood and his mother was mentally ill and was often hospitalized.
At times, his mother ran around their home naked, according to court files.
Family members said his father prodded Wyatt into fighting to make him a man.
Early in his childhood, Wyatt started having problems with the law and drugs.
After Wyatt's arrest, he told investigators a person inside him named Jim would
take over when he drank. Officers quoted him as saying, "Jim went crazy in
Florida" and killed people. "Jim needs to be killed before he hurts people
again."
(source: TC Palm)
KENTUCKY:
Hearing set for Greenville man convicted of kidnapping and rape
Arguments will be made Tuesday in the case of a Western Kentucky man who's
death sentence was overturned by a U.S. district judge.
Robert Keith Woodall pleaded guilty in 1998 for the kidnapping of 16-year-old
Sarah Hansen in Greenville.
A jury sentenced Woodall the death sentence for the kidnapping and rape of
Hansen, but a U.S. district judge overturned that sentence in 2009, saying that
a state judge improperly instructed the jury before sentencing.
The case is set for 1:00 p.m. Tuesday in Cincinnati.
(source: WFIE News)
CALIFORNIA:
Before sentenced to death, Home Depot killer shouts: 'I'm innocent'
An ex-convict blurted "I didn't kill anybody, I'm innocent" Monday moments
before he was sentenced to death for the special circumstances murder of the
manager of a Home Depot during a botched robbery in 2007.
Jason Russell Richardson, 40, was convicted in April 2010 of murdering Tom Egan
during a midmorning robbery Feb. 9, 2007. Egan, the night manager, was trying
to protect his employees when he was shot in the stomach.
On Monday, Richardson sat surrounded by sheriffs deputies as he interrupted a
tearful and eloquent victim-impact statement from A.J. Egan, the victim's
widow, and shouted, "I didn't kill her husband ... I didn't do it."
When Superior Court Judge William Froeberg threatened to remove him from the
courtroom, Richardson responded, "I'm done." A.J. Egan ignored the killer as
she read her statement. Read her full remarks here.
Richardson, she said, "permanently tore my life apart, robbed me of my world,
stripped me of my happiness, my hopes, my dreams when he murdered my husband
Tom.
Two prior juries deadlocked on whether to recommend that Richardson receive the
death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole. But a third
jury voted unanimously last month that Richardson deserves the maximum
punishment, in part because of his violent past and because of the impact the
murder had on Egan's family, especially A.J. Egan and their young twin
daughters.
Froeberg concurred with that recommendation on Monday, calling "a cancer on
society...who has little or no regard for any life other than his own. The
judge ordered Richardson to be transported San Quentin Prison to await his
execution – a legal process that could take years.
No condemned killer has been put to death in California since 2007 as attorneys
argue whether lethal injection as a method of putting someone to death should
be considered cruel and unusual punishment.
Richardson will join 58 other Orange County killers on death row, some of whom
have been appealing their death sentences for as long as 30 years. He is
entitled to an automatic appeal.
Deputy District Attorney Cameron Talley said Monday that Richardson, who has
prior convictions for rape, grand theft and domestic abuse, has earned the
death penalty.
"He didn't even have the decency to let his victim's widow finish her
victim-impact statement," Talley said later. "He's an evil man...If he could
die twice, I'd try him again."
Defense attorneys George Peters and Richard Schwartzberg contended that
Richardson was a drug addict who was the product of a horrible, violence-filled
childhood where he was raised by an alcoholic grandmother and a drug-addicted
mother who had a series of violent boyfriends and connections to the Hell's
Angels.
Richardson wore a painter's suit as a disguise when he walked into The Home
Depot at the Tustin Marketplace carrying a gun and demanding money from the
safe. Witnesses testified that Egan tried to protect his employees by getting
between them and the gunman and by trying to dissuade Richardson from going
ahead with the robbery.
Egan followed Richardson up to a cashier and was talking with him when
Richardson shot him at close range in the stomach.
A store surveillance camera captured Egan crumpling to the ground, and
Richardson stepping over his body after he grabbed about $500 from the cash
register.
Egan died 2 hours later from massive internal bleeding. He was a retired U.S.
Marine sergeant.
Richardson was linked to the crime scene when his DNA was found on a dirty sock
carrying ammunition that he accidentally dropped inside the store.
(source: Orange County Register)
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