March 21 TEXAS: Man won't face death in Plano slaying of ex-wife----DA reassesses case before trial begins next month Curtis Armstrong's life has been spared. The Collin County district attorney recently made an about-face and decided not to seek the death penalty against the Houston-area man accused of killing his ex-wife in her Plano apartment last summer. Mr. Armstrong, 38, has been charged with fatally stabbing and beating Jennifer McCallum, a Plano nurse. His capital murder trial is scheduled to begin April 7. Instead of death, the maximum punishment Mr. Armstrong now faces if convicted is life in prison without the opportunity for parole. Richard Franklin, Mr. Armstrong's attorney, has long complained about prosecutors' original decision to seek a death sentence for his client because he said the facts of the case did not warrant it. Collin County District Attorney John Roach said this month that "there was nothing in particular" that led his office to take the death penalty off the table for Mr. Armstrong. "Mainly it was a reassessment. Once there is an indictment, the Police Department does not stop sending information, and we continue to evaluate all the evidence," he said. Last year after Mr. Roach announced that his office was seeking the death penalty in Mr. Armstrong's case, the district attorney talked at length about the circumstances that help determine whether a case qualifies for the death penalty. He said prosecutors look at the egregiousness of the offense, the terror inflicted and the likelihood that the defendant will be a continued danger to society. They also consider whether they have a case in which a jury will grant the death penalty. "It has to do with the credibility of the office and the credibility of the death penalty. If you sought it and didn't get it, there's something wrong there," Mr. Roach said last year. "We just don't take any old case because it is technically a capital murder. It has to be one in which the death penalty is warranted." Death penalty cases require more than proof that a murder occurred. The murder must have been committed during the commission of another offense, such as kidnapping, robbery, burglary, retaliation, arson, terroristic threat or another murder. It also applies to the murder of a police officer, jail employee, or a child younger than 6. Ms. McCallum did not pick up their daughter from school in May 2007, and Plano police went to her apartment to check on her. When officers arrived, they found blood on the stairs leading to her upstairs apartment unit, according to the arrest warrant affidavit for Mr. Armstrong. When Plano police found Mr. Armstrong later the same day, they discovered blood in the bed of his pickup and on the bumper. He was arrested and charged in Ms. McCallum's death. More than a week later, Plano police said Mr. Armstrong passed a jailer a note describing where to find his ex-wife's body just outside of Fairfield in a grassy median of Interstate 45 nearly an hour from Dallas. Originally prosecutors claimed Mr. Armstrong burglarized Ms. McCallum's apartment. There was a broken window. Mr. Armstrong and Ms. McCallum had been having disagreements over custody of their then-6-year-old daughter, according to court records. The girl is now living with her maternal grandparents in Plano. Ms. McCallum had accused Mr. Armstrong of having a "history ... of physical abuse" with one of his stepchildren. And Mr. Armstrong asked a judge to change the custody agreement to make him the primary caretaker of his and Ms. McCallum's child. Mr. Franklin said he does not know why prosecutors decided against the death penalty for his client but he's glad they changed their minds. "I never believed this was death-penalty-worthy, because it was basically a domestic dispute," Mr. Franklin said. But John Steven Gardner apparently was not as fortunate as Mr. Armstrong. Mr. Gardner was convicted of capital murder in November 2006 for driving from Mississippi to Westminster to kill his estranged wife. A Collin County jury sentenced him to death. The Gardner case qualified for the death penalty because prosecutors said he broke into the house and fatally shot her in the head in retaliation for trying to divorce him. But Bob Hultkrantz, Mr. Gardner's attorney, said Collin County prosecutors never had any evidence that another felony had been committed, so the death penalty should not have applied. The verdict is being appealed. "I have faith in the judicial system," Mr. Hultkrantz said. "But I also know that there are certain areas of the country that are more apt to issue the death penalty than others. "I think Collin County is one." (source: Dallas Morning News) CALIFORNIA: SF: COURT ORDERS NEW DEATH PENALTY TRIAL FOR MURDER DEFENDANT The state Supreme Court in San Francisco today overturned a death sentence for a Southern California man convicted of killing a Los Angeles police officer in 1983. The court said unanimously that Kenneth Earl Gay did not receive a fair penalty trial because his lawyers were not allowed to present evidence suggesting that a co-defendant was the person who shot the officer. The panel sent the case back to Los Angeles Superior Court for a new penalty trial to determine whether Gay should be sentenced to death or life in prison without possibility of parole. The ruling does not affect Gay's conviction for participating in the crime. The court upheld his conviction in 1993. The co-defendant, Raynard Cummings, was also sentenced to death and both his conviction and death penalty have been upheld by the court. Gay, Cummings and their then-wives engaged in a series of brutal robberies in Los Angeles County in the spring of 1983 in which store employees were threatened and beaten, according to the court. The 2 men were convicted of murdering Officer Paul Verna on June 2, 1983, during a traffic stop in the Lake View Terrace district of the San Fernando Valley area. Prosecutors alleged the motive for the shooting was to avoid arrest for the robberies. Today's ruling was the 2nd time the high court ordered a new penalty trial for Gay. In 1998, the court, ruling on a habeas corpus petition, said Gay's trial lawyer was ineffective during the penalty phase of his 1st trial in 1985. The panel's 7 justices said today the penalty retrial in 2000 was unfair because the judge refused to allow evidence that Cummings allegedly told two sheriff's deputies and two fellow prisoners that he was the sole shooter. (source: Associated Press) USA: Dozens of children in U.S. face life in prison Underage criminals cannot face the death penalty in the United States but dozens of offenders imprisoned for crimes committed when they were young teenagers will still die behind bars. The U.S. Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for minors in 2005 but 19 states permit "life-means-life" sentences for those under 18, according to a study by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). In all, 2,225 people are sentenced to die in U.S. prisons for crimes they committed as minors and 73 of them were aged 13 and 14 at the time of the crime, according to the group, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama. Elsewhere in the world, life sentences with no chance of parole are rare for underage offenders. Human Rights Watch estimates that only 12 people outside the United States face such sentences. Judicial reform advocates say the U.S. provision is an example of how harsh sentences have helped cause a jump in incarceration rates since the 1970s. The United States jails a higher percentage of its population than anywhere else in the industrialized world, these advocates say. "These kids have been swept up in this tide of carceral control that is unparalleled in American history," said Bryan Stevenson, director of the EJI. "We have become quite comfortable about throwing people away," he said. Others defend the statute, arguing it is popular with voters and gives comfort to victims to know that perpetrators of serious crimes against them will not one day walk free. They also use an "adult crime, adult time" argument -- minors who commit adult crimes should be punished as adults. "I SAW HER IN FLAMES" The case of Ashley Jones, who was 14 when she killed, illustrates the seriousness of many crimes that result in for-life sentences. One night in August 1999, Jones and her 16-year-old boyfriend, Geramie Hart, angered by her family's disapproval of their relationship, went to her home in Birmingham, Alabama. They set her grandfather on fire with lighter fluid, stabbed him and shot him dead. They also stabbed and shot dead Jones' aunt in her bedroom and set her grandmother on fire. Jones' 10-year-old sister, Mary, was asleep in bed but they dragged her to the kitchen to see the attack on her family. "I had to sit there and watch her (Ashley) torture my grandmother. I saw her in flames," said Mary Jones, recounting her ordeal in an interview in Alabaster, Alabama. "Geramie ... picked me up by my neck and pointed a gun at me and said: 'This is how you are going to die.' Ashley said: 'No, wait. I'll do her.'" They stabbed Mary Jones repeatedly, puncturing a lung, and drove off leaving her and her grandmother, whose injuries included burns, stab and gunshot wounds, to stagger outside. The questions raised by criminal cases involving teenagers are difficult to answer. Is a young teenager responsible for crimes in the same way as an adult and to what extent, if at all, should courts consider a minor's family situation and background? "It goes against human inclinations to give up completely on a young teenager. It's impossible for a court to say that any 14-year-old never has the possibility to live in society," said Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights. "LOST ALL HOPE" The Equal Justice Initiative has filed suits in six states challenging the life-without-parole sentences and has brought a case in federal court in northern Alabama over the Jones case, arguing it represents cruel and unusual punishment. Hart is also serving the same sentence. The group says a disproportionate number of the minors serving the sentence are black or Hispanic and many were tried as adults with inadequate legal counsel. Also, it says up to 70 % were given mandatory sentences. Not all those serving life-means-life sentences for crimes committed as minors are convicted killers. Antonio Nunez was convicted of multiple counts of attempted murder and also aggravated kidnapping and sentenced to life without parole for his role in a kidnap, police chase and shootout in April, 2001, in which nobody was injured. Nunez, aged 14 at the time of the crime, grew up in a part of Los Angeles where gang activity was common. In 2000, he was wounded and his brother killed in a gang-related shooting. His sister Cindy Nunez said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles the life sentence devastated her family. "He has lost all hope .... We try to keep his spirits up by saying something will change in the law," she said. Mary Jones, now 19, is attempting to reconstruct her life. She testified against her sister in court but has visited her in jail. She blames Hart for changing her sister from "the sweetest girl" into a murderer. "She should have a chance to have a life. Her life shouldn't just be taken away from her like that. Sometimes I'm kind of mad and then I'm sad," she said. "I practically lost her too because she is in prison." (source: Reuters) ******************* Democrats are wrong on death penalty, life This is something mainly for Democrats because this is dear to their hearts, capital punishment and their notion that it's not a deterrent for murder. Just this past week someone who spent 14 years in prison for murder and was released in January killed again. He killed 6 people, including his brother and two of his brother's young children. He stabbed and thought he killed 3 other children. If these people who are convicted of murder are not executed they should be sentenced to life without parole. It won't happen. Don't expect the Democrats to ever do anything about this because these are the same people who thinks it's fine to kill unborn children by the millions. So, if you're for abortion but against capital punishment, then you're probably a Democrat and definitely wrong. God bless America and those 6 innocent people in Memphis. Charles Francis----Stroudsburg (source: Letter to the Editor, Pocono (Penn.) Record) ************************ Death penalty opponents should pay bill for lifers Concerning the death penalty in these United States, for those who oppose it, allow me to put it in this perspective: For taking a human life, the person is sentenced to life in prison. This means the taxpayers have to clothe, feed, provide shelter and medical care and numerous persons to watch them for years at a cost of, I'd say, $200 a day. This includes building and grounds maintenance plus new prisons due to overcrowding, delivery of food, electricity for light, gas for heat and cooking, etc. So, maybe those opposed to it should give their names and help pay for this, then maybe they would change their minds. Tim Dawson----Normal (source: Letter to the Editor, Bloomington Pantagraph) ********************** Why Would Anyone Support Capital Punishment? In my previous column, we saw that the practical objection about executing innocent convicts can be solved by heightening the capital standard to guilt beyond any doubt. Now, lets look at some of the conceptual objections. Conceptual Objection 1: You cannot teach people that killing is wrong by killing. What punishment could we assess against criminals that wouldnt be wrong when done to innocent people? Is it inconsistent to punish embezzlers with fines? Is it inconsistent to put kidnappers in the liberty-deprived condition of prison? Would we be inconsistent, or merely brutal, to adopt a more Indonesian response to assault by publicly flagellating offenders? Precisely because every form of punishment is a form of harm to the convicted, the problem with this objection is that it proves too much, indicting all expressions of any justice system. Thats why the proper response to it is to ask why the person advocates anarchism, since only the anarchist view (that all outside impositions upon a person are wrong) is consistent with the principle of this argument. But thats probably a bit much for your nave friend in a casual discussion. Instead, ask him if he also opposes execution because of the risk that the convict is innocent. If so, then he is simultaneously arguing that all killing is wrong and that the killing of innocents is uniquely wrong. Every person who opposes capital punishment because of the risk to innocents affirms, in making that argument, that there is something vastly different between killing those who have done nothing to deserve it and killing those who have. And clearly, this is the distinction that solves this objection. Simply put, to allege that killing murderers and killing innocent citizens are the same is to deny the distinction between guilt and innocence which is the presuppositional foundation of all law in the first place. If we cannot distinguish between how we should treat lawbreakers and non-lawbreakers, we have much more elementary problems than rationally discussing the validity of capital punishment. Conceptual Objection 2: It erodes the sanctity of human life. There are two ways for our justice system to show that something is sacred: by protecting it from violation and by punishing those who violate it. Clearly, in this case, the two are interconnected. Life is uniquely precious, which is exactly why taking the life of one who deliberately takes innocent life is the only way to affirm lifes sacredness. Rather than proclaiming the preciousness of life, allowing a known murderer to live is a declaration that life is not precious enough to justify the forfeit of another life as punishment. When something is sacred, that does not mean that it cannot be violated. Rather, it means that it must be violated only in the rarest of cases and only in the most deliberate of ways. The almost absurd solemnity with which we execute people in this country is not a defect of our system, but a testament to the importance we attach to human life. Instead of eroding the sanctity of life, execution practiced with such regard actually affirms it. Conceptual Objection 3: You cant be pro-life and pro-capital punishment. First, its a mistake to assume that all pro-lifers base their view on the idea that abortion is homicide. While this is common, there are other grounds for opposing abortion. Nonetheless, Ill grant most pro-lifers do oppose abortion for this reason. According to this objection, it is inconsistent to oppose the killing of a human fetus while favoring the killing of a human murderer because one must treat all killings the same way. What so offends us about abortion is the taking of an innocent life, the destruction of someone utterly vulnerable and guilty of no wrong. Executing a murderer doesnt elicit the same response because we are, again, making the simple distinction between the innocent victim of a crime and the guilty perpetrator of that crime. Since this distinction is at the heart of our justice system, the person who cant make it is back to equating being stolen from with being fined, and being kidnapped with being incarcerated, equivocations that make a life sentence in prison every bit as problematic as execution. I am convinced that even those who grieve the death row convict do not view his death as a tragedy equal to that of his victim. In fact, Id have trouble taking someone seriously who told me that his horror at an executed murderer was equal to his horror at the original murder itself. This difference of reaction acknowledges a distinction even at an emotional level. It may not seem big enough to justify execution, but just getting opponents to admit the difference might start to erode their notion that the two are morally indistinguishable. Furthermore, if the idea is that we must oppose all homicides if we oppose any, then we might reasonably demand that such opponents also protest every form of warfare or self-defense. Obviously, most death penalty opponents are not pure pacifists, which makes them no less inconsistent on this issue than they allege pro-lifers to be. I only point this out to show that many capital punishment opponents are skewered by their own willingness to distinguish wartime and self-defense homicides from others. I am willing to concede that it would be more philosophically rigorous and less confusing to use the more cumbersome label pro-innocent-life. But we all know that rigor often yields to pith in modern discourse. Nevertheless, there are clear lines distinguishing abortion from capital punishment which this objection colors quite sloppily across. However, as a point of practical concern, ending abortion is far more important to me than continuing to execute. Id certainly rather save a few million innocent than kill a few hundred guilty. So, if I thought that opposing capital punishment would make me look more consistent to those who cant make such distinctions and thus gain their support for ending abortion, I might well consider it. But Id like to hope, perhaps naively, that we can get both issues right without pandering to such superficial thinking. In the next column, well look at the concerns that execution is unconstitutional, barbaric, motivated by hate, and degrading to the executioner. (source: Andrew Tallman is host of The Andrew Tallman Show on AM 1360 KPXQ from 5-7PM weekdays in Phoenix, AZ.----Townhall.com) US MILITARY: Death penalty sought in soldier murder case In Hwaseong, military prosecutors Friday sought the death penalty for a man charged with killing a soldier and stealing ammunition near a marine guard post along the west coast late last year. The suspect, 35, was accused of stabbing 1 marine guard soldier to death and critically wounding another as they were patrolling a base on Gwanghwa Island, west of Seoul, in December. He then ran away with the soldiers' weapons and ammunition, including a K-2 rifle and a hand grenade, prompting fears of a possible terror attack in the presidential election season. His defense claimed their client suffers from mental illness. The suspect, who cannot be identified before the ruling is made, has previously made 3 suicide attempts and has a record of receiving mental treatment. But prosecutors dismissed the claim, saying an examination of his mental status found no personality disorder grave enough to cause him to commit the crime. Prosecutors said his grudge against his former girlfriend of 10 years drove him to the murder. With such destructive behavior, he wanted her to feel pain as she had refused to reunite with him, they said. "The defendant planned the crime 2 weeks prior to its execution, studied soldiers on patrol and toured the base. He parked his car and waited for 40 minutes before they appeared," a prosecutor said, "Considering the crime was prepared in such a meticulous way, he should be isolated from society forever." The accused said, "It's too late to ask forgiveness, but I know that I've committed a serious crime. I've got no words to say to the family of the victim but I'm sorry and I will humbly receive whatever is placed on me." The father of the dead soldier, Park Sang-cheol, was full of tears. "My son is dead and he is not here. What's the use of hearing an apology?," he asked, "Please, when making a decision, consider the parents who have buried their son in their hearts." (source: Yonhap News)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, CALIF., USA, US MIL.
Rick Halperin Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:51:03 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)