death penalty news July 23, 2004
LOUISIANA: Lafayette Grand jury set in Gillis inquiry A Lafayette Parish grand jury is set to hear evidence Wednesday in the case of Sean Vincent Gillis, who is accused in a series of killings in the Baton Rouge area and the death of an Acadiana woman. Gillis has admitted killing eight women from 1994 until his arrest by Baton Rouge authorities in April. Days after Gillis was taken into custody, Lafayette Police said he confessed to the October 2000 death of Marilyn Joyce Nevils. Police say Gillis admitted that he had picked the woman up in Lafayette, killed her and then dumped her body on a levee in East Baton Rouge Parish. Prosecutor Keith Stutes says the case, as it stands now, is based largely on Gillis' confession, but investigators have been working to corroborate his statements with physical evidence. Stutes says at least one piece of physical evidence has been found, but he declined to comment on what it was. District Attorney Mike Harson said his office is seeking a first-degree murder indictment against Gillis. The charge carries a possible death penalty. (source:. AP) ========================= NEW JERSEY: South Jersey Man Reindicted In Death, Burning Of Infant Son A Burlington County father has been reindicted on a murder charge in his infant son's death, a case taken back to the grand jury because of a state Supreme Court decision regarding New Jersey's death penalty. Kevin Abrahams, 27, of Burlington City was originally indicted last year in the 2002 death of 8-month-old Sage Tyler Morgan-Abrahams, whose body was subsequently burned in a fireplace. Prosecutor Robert D. Bernardi announced a year he planned to pursue the death penalty in the case. In February, the state Supreme Court ruled that grand jurors considering homicide cases should decide if there are circumstances that could warrant the death penalty. Before the ruling, prosecutors made the call on whether to pursue a capital case. The indictment returned Thursday charges Abrahams with capital murder and hindering apprehension, Bernardi said. Authorities allege Abrahams beat the infant in a fit of rage and that the child's mother, Jessica Morgan, did not seek medical care for her injured son, who died a day after the beating. Morgan also did not object when Abrahams said he was going to burn the baby's remains in a fireplace. Morgan pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter and conspiracy to hinder apprehension and is expected to be a witness against Abrahams, her former boyfriend. The couple were arrested in Florida in July 2002, where they had gone after the child's death. Authorities began investigating when Morgan's mother contacted Burlington City police to report the apparent disappearance of the baby. (source. AP) ========================= SOUTH CAROLINA: Cheney to help DeMint in S.C. -- Quick visit shows that Bush camp is confident president will win state Vice President Dick Cheney will drop in on Myrtle Beach this afternoon, but the only people who'll be able to see him are those who have paid $1,000 to attend a fund-raiser on behalf of Republican U.S. Senate nominee Jim DeMint. Some political observers say that his turning down the opportunity to do some S.C. campaigning illustrates how confident the Bush-Cheney ticket is of again carrying the state that gave them 59 percent of the vote in 2000. "I don't think they're going to waste time hanging around South Carolina when they have chores they've got to take care of in Michigan and Ohio and West Virginia and Pennsylvania and whatever," said Neal Thigpen, a political science professor at Francis Marion University in Florence and a Republican activist. The vice president will campaign next week on the West Coast, while President Bush is planning a month of intensive campaigning, beginning in the Midwest. However, Cheney is scheduled to be back in South Carolina Aug. 9 for another invitation-only fund-raiser, this time in Spartanburg. Cheney's visit today to the Myrtle Beach Convention Center will be his first trip to South Carolina since he spoke at a fund-raiser in Columbia on July 28, 2003. The vice president is scheduled to speak at 6:30 p.m. Beforehand, he and DeMint will attend a VIP reception, where donors must pay an additional $2,000 to attend. According to Horry County Republican Party Chairman Duane Oliver, the DeMint campaign expects to raise $700,000 by attracting 500 to 700 donors. DeMint's Democratic opponent, Inez Tenenbaum, is showing no interest in having either member of her party's national ticket come into the state for her. "That's really up to them," said Adam Kovacevich, Tenenbaum's campaign spokesman. "If they decide to come to South Carolina, Inez will be there with them. But that doesn't alter our approach to this race, which is that people are looking for an independent-minded senator." In keeping an arm's length distance from the national ticket, Tenenbaum is following a familiar script for Democrats in the South, political experts say. "DeMint will do his best to align himself with the Republican national ticket and will try to tie Inez Tenenbaum to the national Democratic ticket, which is just not that popular in the South," said College of Charleston political science professor Bill Moore. Tenenbaum, meanwhile, is trying to stake out the middle of the road. She has said that she favors the death penalty, that she favors banning late-term abortions unless the health of the mother is in danger, and that she supports a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. Moore said Tenenbaum "will emphasize her role as being basically a South Carolina senator, as opposed to a national Democrat." Although the Democrats' vice-presidential candidate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, is an S.C. native and won the state's Democratic presidential primary in February, Moore said it's unlikely he could be much help to Tenenbaum. "You have John Kerry at the top of the ticket," Moore said, "and John Kerry is not going to play well in South Carolina." Although the Massachusetts senator is running neck-and-neck with President Bush in national polls, virtually no one thinks he can carry South Carolina. "The fact is that South Carolina is the most Republican state in the Deep South," Moore said. "The Republican Party has become dominant in statewide elections. In presidential elections, it's only voted Democratic once since 1960, and that was in 1976." Even so, political analysts are expecting Tenenbaum, who is serving her second term as South Carolina's elected state Superintendent of Education, to run a strong race, by virtue of her political skill and her personal popularity. In both the 1998 and the 2002 state elections, she received more votes than any other candidate of either party. (source: Charlotte Observer)
