August 3
KENTUCKY: Teen's killer avoids death sentence After venting his fury and frustration Monday at the sentencing hearing for his daughter's killer, Charles Farmer stomped out of the Kenton circuit courtroom, a torrent of angry words trailing in his wake. Once outside, his wrath turned to anguish as he let out a banshee-like wail that echoed through the tension of the packed courtroom. In the deathly still, the only sound heard was Farmer's great heaving sobs for his only child -- raped, killed and stuffed under a bed at the age of 13. "My time started April 27, 2003," Farmer said, referring to the date Tiffany Farmer was killed in Aaron Dishon's apartment in Covington. "It ain't gonna end. It cost me my marriage. It cost me my child. He's killed me. He killed 2 people here." As Farmer was leaving the courtroom, he stared at the back of Dishon, who had sat facing forward, quiet and unmoving, throughout the 15-minute tirade. "You want to look at me and say you're sorry?" Farmer spat out. "Look at me, punk." Dishon, 22, who earlier had pleaded guilty to charges of murder, rape, tampering with evidence and theft, said nothing. Shortly afterward, Circuit Judge Patricia Summe sentenced Dishon to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years. It was part of a plea agreement worked out with Kenton Commonwealth Attorney Bill Crockett, in which Dishon admitted his crimes and Crockett chose not to seek the death penalty. Tiffany Farmer was an 8th-grader at Twenhofel Middle School. She normally lived with her father in Independence, but was staying with her mother in Covington the weekend she was killed. Police found her naked body stuffed under a bed in Dishon's apartment, just down the block from her mother's house, the same day her mother reported her missing. Although Dishon pleaded guilty to raping the girl, his attorney, Mary Rafizadeh, insisted the sex they had was consensual. Rafizadeh also denied that any form of forced oral or anal sex occurred. As Rafizadeh spoke, the more than 2 dozen friends and members of Farmer's family looked on in outrage. They were upset that Rafizadeh was talking about the teen's sex life. They also were livid at Crockett, who they said lacked the courage to take the case to trial and seek the death penalty. "The so-called justice system didn't work for Tiffany," said her aunt, Jan Farmer. "But it worked for her killer and for Mr. Crockett." Jan Farmer said no one stood up for Tiffany while she was being raped and killed in Dishon's bedroom. Similarly, she said, no one stood up for the teen while her reputation was being desecrated in the courtroom. "You are nothing more than a coward," Farmer said, looking directly at Crockett. "Tiffany deserved a trial. She deserved justice. She's not getting it here today." Crockett's office initially said it would seek the death penalty against Dishon, but agreed to the plea bargain because of the difficulty of proving that 1st-degree rape took place during the course of the murder, a prerequisite for subjecting Dishon to execution. Without the rape conviction, the maximum sentence against Dishon would have been life without the possibility of parole for 20 years, 5 years less than he was sentenced to Monday. Crockett said little during the hearing, except to ask Summe to follow the plea agreement. He said he understood the family's rage and disappointment, and choose to let them have their say unanswered. "Their little girl got killed," he said. "I can't blame them for being upset. It was a horrific crime. But it's a good resolution." Summe, who allowed the victims to speak at length but tried to limit them from directly addressing Dishon or his attorneys, also said the plea agreement was justified. In addition to the term of life without parole for 25 years for the murder, Summe sentenced Dishon to 20 years for the rape, five years for the tampering and 12 years for theft. She ordered him to pay court costs, $10,000 to the public defender's office, and an unspecified amount in restitution to the victim's family. Any money that Dishon or his relatives earn from the crime or its accounts will be turned over to the Farmer family or to the state victim's compensation fund, she said. Still, she acknowledged that she could do or say little to ease the family's torment. "I hope that for Tiffany's sake, you all have some good days along the way, and not just bad days," she said. (source: Kentucky Post) CALIFORNIA: Jury recommends death for Justin Helzer, killer of 5 people A jury recommended the death penalty Tuesday for Justin Helzer in the deaths of the daughter of blues guitarist Elvin Bishop and an elderly couple as part of a bizarre crime spree 4 years ago. The jury also recommended life in prison without the possibility of parole for Helzer's role in the deaths of 2 other people. Those murders were committed by his brother and a friend, both of whom pleaded guilty. As the jury of 10 women and 2 men entered the courtroom, some were red-eyed and tearful, holding each other's hands. Several people in the courtroom were crying and said "Yes!" as the verdict was read. Helzer, who had interrupted his trial to say he wanted to die, stared straight ahead and appeared unmoved. Even the judge shed tears as she thanked the jury for their service. Judge Mary Ann O'Malley will formally sentence Helzer on Sept. 24. Before the jury began deliberating his punishment on Thursday, prosecutors described Helzer, 32, as a cold-blooded and arrogant killer who deserves the death penalty. Helzer's lawyer, Daniel Cook, pleaded with jurors to "find compassion in your heart," saying that Helzer was under the control of his older brother and was remorseful for his crimes. Helzer, his older brother Glenn and a friend, Dawn Godman, killed five people during the crime spree in the summer of 2000. The killings of Selina Bishop, her mother, Jennifer Villarin, her mother's boyfriend, James Gamble, and Ivan and Annette Stineman of Concord, were part of an extortion scheme to earn money for a self-awareness group the Helzers said would hasten Christ's return to Earth. The bodies of Bishop and the Stinemans were sawed up and stuffed into gym bags, their jaws removed to prevent identification, and the bags were thrown into the Mokelumme river. Glenn Helzer already pleaded guilty and faces the death penalty. His sentencing phase will begin this fall. Godman also pleaded guilty and testified against Justin Helzer in exchange for a lengthy prison sentence. (source: Associated press) USA: US: record numbers in prison and on parole A report released July 26 by the US Department of Justice reveals that the prison boom in the United States shows little signs of slowing, despite a significant decline in crime rates in the past decade. What the report terms the "correctional population," all those in prison or jail as well as on probation and parole, reached a new record of almost 6.9 million as of the end of last year. This figure, about 3.2 % of the adult population, is nearly as large as the population of New York, the nation's largest city. According to the Justice Department statistics, the number of people under correctional supervision has skyrocketed from 1,842,100 in 1980 to almost 6.9 million today, a rate of increase of nearly 400 % in less than 25 years-a period when the country's population, by comparison, grew by less than 20 %. Even though the crime rate has fallen, tougher sentencing rules and conditions of parole, along with the ongoing campaign for the imprisonment of low-level drug offenders, are continuing to produce record numbers. The number of those in jails and prisons remains over 2 million, a figure it reached several years ago. As of 2003, 691,301 were hold in local and county jails, and 1,387,269 in federal and state prisons. These numbers represent a 3.9 % jump in the jail population and 2.3 % for those in prisons, compared to the previous year. A record 4.8 million adults were on probation or parole in 2003, an increase of 73,000 over 2002. Of this total of 4.8 million, 4,073,987 were on probation, an increase of 1.2 % over 2002, and 774,588 were on parole. Probation generally constitutes a substitute for imprisonment after conviction of a crime. Parole consists of continuing supervision after inmates have served part of a prison term. Texas, the leader in prisons and capital punishment nationwide, had 534,260 on parole or probation. California followed with 485,039. The US prison population is already the highest in the world. During the 1990s there was a period when Russia, after the collapse of the USSR, had the distinction of the highest rate of incarceration. Recently, however, widespread amnesties have been implemented to ease enormous overcrowding in Russian jails. On the heels of the record prison-building boom and rise in expenditures for police and prisons in the last quarter-century, the US is now unchallenged in this category. In 1980 the number in prison or jail was 503,000. By 1990 this had reached more than 1,148,000, and by 2000 it was 1,937,000. The growth rate has fallen slightly since the beginning of this century, but at current rates the figure for those imprisoned will reach about 2.5 million by the end of this decade. The social implications and significance of these numbers are rarely discussed in the media or "polite society" and they didn't get serious mention at the recently concluded Democratic Convention in Boston. But the quadrupling of the number of men and women in prison, on probation or parole in less than a generation is the direct result of government policies, implemented by both capitalist parties in bipartisan fashion on a local, state and federal level. It amounts to a virtual police-state assault on sections of the working class. Minority workers and the poorest sections of the working class generally have been singled out. About 56 % of those on probation are white, 30 % black, and 12 % Hispanic. Among the parolees, 41 % are black and 18 % Hispanic. This compares to a total black and Hispanic population of about 25 % in the country as a whole. Tougher sentencing policies and the so-called war on drugs of the last several decades has had a devastating impact on black men, even though drug use itself is no higher among racial minorities than among the population as a whole. One in 8 black men in their 20s and 30s are behind bars, compared to 1 in 63 white men. For black male high school dropouts, 41 % of those between 22 and 30 years old were locked up as of 1999, and this astounding figure is probably even higher today. There are numerous economic, political and social considerations behind this conscious policy of repression and imprisonment of the most oppressed and vulnerable layers of the population. One thing can be stated with certainty: the 400 % growth in the prison population has little to do with the crime rate. Crime figures were useful in encouraging the law-and-order drive, but the prison boom had very different purposes. It is primarily a means of dealing with the problem of chronic joblessness, and above all of dividing the working class on the basis of law-and-order demagogy, using thinly disguised racial stereotyping and fear. The prison boom has produced a million or more new jobs for prison guards and others, largely in poverty-stricken rural sections of the country where no other jobs are available. It has also served to "improve" the official unemployment rate, since those behind bars are not counted as jobless. The growth of the prison population has also provided a supply of virtual slave labor in certain labor-intensive sectors of the economy, as the use of prison labor has grown rapidly. Although the prison boom has certainly been expensive, it has so far been judged by the authorities to be worth the costs. The statistics on imprisonment, released by the federal government itself, expose the lie that capitalism, following the collapse of Stalinism and various forms of national reformism around the world, has resolved its contradictions and proven its superiority as a system of social organization. As one academic authority on imprisonment stated last year, "Why, in the land of the free, should 2 million men, women and children be locked up?" Why, indeed? The "land of the free" is characterized today by levels of inequality that are common in the poorer sections of the globe. The bourgeois democracy that developed and the democratic rights that were won in struggle in the first 200 years of American history are not compatible with these levels of social polarization. Under conditions where millions of manufacturing jobs have disappeared in the last 20 years, and where most sections of the economy have been deregulated to remove all restrictions on exploitation and profit-making, there is simply no future for millions of workers and young people. The response of the ruling oligarchy is not spelled out directly. It is framed in terms of "public safety," the war against crime, and today the "war on terror." And it means, quite simply, relentless attacks on the living standards and democratic rights of the working class at home as well as abroad. The future for millions of workers and youth is to end up behind bars or to be used as cannon fodder in imperialist wars, such as the current war in Iraq. On a per capita basis, the US imprisons three times more of its people than Iran, 4 times more than Poland, five times more than Tanzania and 7 times more than Germany. This is one very significant sign of the depth of the social and economic crisis in the very center of world capitalism. (source: World Socialist) OHIO: Timely reminder of US injustice -- Today, Kenny Richey celebrates his 40th birthday. But will life soon begin again for an innocent man on Death Row, asks John Watson IMAGINE it is your 40th birthday today. In your honour, a small procession, led by your wife and 3 pipers, carries a large, personalised birthday cake and more than 1000 greetings cards signed by well-wishers. A few placards appear, bearing your most fetching photo. The media arrive and inquire after your well-being. Word spreads that more than 200 MPs and MSPs have signed their names to a legal document in your support. You might think yourself a pretty lucky person. Except that the recipient of all this good will is Kenny Richey, the Scot on death row, a man who may instead have been the victim of some outstandingly bad luck. Despite his predicament being described by Amnesty International as "one of the most compelling cases of apparent innocence human rights campaigners have ever seen", Kenny is spending yet another birthday behind bars in the Mansfield Correctional Institute in Ohio. Think back to your life in 1987 and imagine being locked up ever since for a crime you insist you did not commit. Consider that this would make today your 6609th day behind bars. Do this and you might see why Kenny needs all the support he can get. Kenny Richey grew up in Edinburgh before moving to the United States to live with his father. Just one week before he was set to return to Scotland, two-year old Cynthia Collins died in a fire in the apartment where she lived with her mother. Suspicion fell on Kenny, who was arrested, convicted of setting fire to the flat and sentenced to death. The prosecution painted a picture of Kenny as a jilted lover, intent on murdering his former girlfriend Candy Barchet and her new partner Mike Nichols as they slept in the early hours of June 30, 1986. Their flat was underneath the one belonging to Hope Collins, the 2-year-old's mother. The prosecution argued that the principle of "transferred intent" should apply, so that while Kenny had meant to kill the adults in the flat below, in killing the sleeping girl above he should still be found guilty. THE prosecution case rested on several key contentions. Kenny had agreed to baby-sit the girl on the night in question, they said, and had taken the opportunity to disable the flat's smoke detector when doing so. This all suggested premeditation, and the carpet in Hope Collins' flat appeared to bear traces of flammable liquids, petrol and paint thinners. The three-judge panel found Kenny guilty of aggravated murder, an offence carrying the death penalty in Ohio. Kenny has continually insisted that he is innocent, and refused a plea bargain whereby an admission of guilt would have seen his sentence reduced, and no doubt meant that he would be free today. As with most Death Row inmates, he could not afford his own lawyer and was provided with one by the state. Working on his first ever capital case, his inexperienced lawyer failed Kenny on several counts - by not questioning prosecution evidence, by not hiring experts and by not allowing Kenny to testify. Against the prosecution's 34 witnesses, he called only six. He failed to hire a fire expert, did not examine the fire scene himself and failed to challenge numerous inconsistencies in the prosecution's case or bring out exculpatory evidence. For instance, Cynthia, the girl who tragically died, was known to have had a "plays with matches" tendency, and the fire department appears to have been called to the flat three times in the fortnight before the fatal fire. The local fire chief initially declared the incident an accident, but later denied he'd ever done this. Yet the building was not cordoned off - as it should have been if arson was suspected - and the fire chief authorised the flat's charred contents being taken to the local dump. In March 1997, new evidence was presented to the court, including testimony from experts showing that the fire in the flat had the characteristics of an accident, rather than arson. The evidence was ruled inadmissible, since it should have been brought up at previous appeals. Kenny's latest appeal was heard by the 6th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals more than a year ago and we are awaiting the result. If this is unsuccessful, he will have an opportunity to make an appeal to the US Supreme Court, which could be followed by a final execution date. Kenny Richey's last chance will then lie in a grant of clemency by the governor of Ohio. As the end of the legal process draws nearer, public and political support becomes more crucial. Kenny's birthday wish is to have the chance to clear his name, and Amnesty International is working with human rights charity Reprieve and Kenny's own supporters to ensure that he gets it. THE birthday parade described above was taking place at the US Consulate in Edinburgh this morning, bringing one more reminder to the US authorities that Kenny is in our thoughts. Just a few weeks ago, more than 200 MPs and MSPs signed their names to an Amicus Curiae brief supporting Kenny, to be submitted to his ongoing appeal. Literally "friend of the court", an Amicus brief represents a request by outside agencies to have their opinion heard by the court. Last week, newspaper reports indicated that the UK Government, is intending to make its own formal submission. This is a welcome step that has long been requested by Kenny's supporters. I hope the 1000 birthday cards will be received by Kenny as a strong symbol of hope that justice can prevail. For these are no ordinary birthday cards. They are an urgent reminder to the US authorities of the need to review Kenny's case, as well as tangible proof that people here haven't forgotten a Scot on Death Row in America. (source: John Watson is programme director for Amnesty International Scotland; The Scotsman)
