Aug. 11 NEW YORK: Pataki Introduces Bill to Restore Death Penalty Gov. George E. Pataki introduced a bill this week to fix a provision of the state's capital punishment law that was recently invalidated by New York's highest court. But even the governor's aides said it stood little chance of passing. The governor's bill, introduced in the State Senate late on Monday, would overhaul a central part of the law that the Court of Appeals said was flawed and violated the State Constitution. The June 24 ruling effectively suspended the death penalty in the state. Specifically, the court found that the statute improperly required judges to tell jurors in capital cases that if they deadlocked and failed to reach a verdict during the penalty phase of a trial, the judge would impose a sentence that would leave the defendant eligible for parole after 20 to 25 years. The bill to fix the flaw proposed two changes. First, juries would be given a 3rd option, imposing a sentence of life in prison with parole when sentencing convicted murderers. Previously, they could only dole out sentences of either capital punishment or life in prison without parole. Second, if a jury deadlocked, a sentence of life without parole would be imposed, and juries would be told of that provision before sentencing. The proposal would apply both to pending cases and to crimes committed prior to the effective date of any change in the law, a legislative analyst said. Viewed politically, the governor's release of the bill seemed to put the Democratic Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, in a bit of a spot before the fall elections, raising the issue of whether he would help push through the measure or let stand a sense of satisfaction among some Democrats that there is now a de facto moratorium on imposing the death penalty. Even before the details of the bill could be digested, however, an aide to the governor was saying that the legislation was effectively dead, because of a perceived lack of interest in the Assembly. But a spokeswoman for Mr. Silver said the governor's bill was still being studied and the matter was still the subject of negotiation. "There were broad conversations on a variety of different options," Eileen Larrabee, the spokeswoman, said Tuesday. After the court ruled, the governor, Mr. Silver and Joseph L. Bruno, the Republican State Senate majority leader, all pledged to correct the flaw in the death penalty law. Nevertheless, Democrats in the Assembly held a meeting in which many members expressed serious misgivings about reviving the law, enacted in 1995 after Mr. Pataki pushed for it in his successful election campaign against Mario M. Cuomo, an ardent opponent of capital punishment. Still, with support from Republican Assembly members, many lawmakers said a fix to the death penalty law could still pass in the Assembly, and Mr. Silver weeks ago had said it would be helpful for him to see a proposal. John E. McArdle, a spokesman for Mr. Bruno, said the bill the governor sent up was identical to the latest proposal put forth by the Assembly, a contention that Ms. Larrabee disputed. For his part, Mr. Bruno said he would like to fix the death penalty law this week. (source: New York Times) CALIFORNIA: Death Penalty to Be Sought in Fresno Case In Fresno, prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty against a man charged with shooting 9 of his children in his Fresno home. The announcement was made Tuesday after "a careful review of the facts and applicable law," according to a news release from the office of Fresno County District Attorney Elizabeth Egan. Marcus Wesson's public defender, Peter Jones, told The Fresno Bee that he was not surprised. "From our standpoint, we have been preparing on the assumption that they would seek the death penalty," Jones said. "Obviously, our hope was that they would elect not to." A hearing was scheduled Wednesday to discuss delaying the trial from Sept. 14 until mid-December. Wesson is charged with shooting 9 of his children, ages 1 to 25, on March 12. Officers were called to his home by 2 women who were trying to retrieve their children from inside the Wesson household. Wesson, 57, is also accused of 13 sex crimes, including rape, with each of the victims believed to be family members. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. (source: Associated Press) FLORIDA: Alleged Leader in Fla. Killing Had Record When he was 16 years old, the suspected ringleader of a home invasion last week that left 6 people dead promised he would never commit another crime if a judge was lenient on an auto theft charge he faced. "I never want to return here again," Troy Victorino wrote the judge in 1993 in a letter from the Volusia County Correctional Facility. But the judge sentenced him to 4 years in prison and 2 years of house arrest, according to court records released Tuesday. Over the next few years, Victorino repeatedly returned to jail and prison. Victorino, 27, is now back behind bars. He and 3 teenage co-defendants were charged with 1st-degree murder for allegedly stabbing and bludgeoning to death 6 people Friday in a Deltona house -- apparently over an Xbox video game system. Victorino has a long criminal past. He was out of prison by January 1996, but was arrested again less than 3 months later for savagely beating an acquaintance with a stick, an aggravated battery. In June 1996, he violated terms of his house arrest and was sentenced to 6 months of electronic monitoring. A month later, he was found to be in violation again and was sentenced to another 5 years in prison. In 1997, a jury convicted him of the aggravated battery charge and he got another 5-year sentence. He was released in 2002 and has spent 8 of the last 11 years in prison. His mother, in a letter to the judge before one of his sentencing in 1996, said her son was sexually abused by a caregiver's son starting at age 2, an ordeal that "led to emotional scars that very few can fathom." Sharon Victorino said her son had been treated for depression since age 8 and had attempted suicide. "In a matter of a few days, you will be seeing before you my son... He will stand before you at 6-foot-6 tall, looking very much like a man," Sharon Victorino wrote. "In actuality, Troy is but a boy." Victorino was arrested July 29 on a felony battery charge, accused of punching a man over a car debt. He was released on $2,500 bond and visited his probation officer for his regular check-in the day before Friday's murders. He should have been arrested then for violating his probation, said state officials who fired Victorino's probation officer and three of his supervisors Monday. Police said the killings were the culmination of an argument between Victorino and one of the victims, Erin Belanger, 22. Authorities say the source of the dispute was an Xbox video game system and clothes owned by Victorino but taken to Belanger's apartment. The murders took on political overtones Tuesday as a lawmaker said a judge likely wouldn't have released Victorino on the $2,500 bond had he known his previous criminal history. Rep. Kevin Ambler, a Republican, who in 2003 sponsored a bill that would require more information be given to judges about defendants during their 1st court appearance, blamed his own Republican House leadership for failing to make the measure a priority. He also pointed to a bill he filed this year that would have allowed judges to order electronic monitoring for defendants released on bail. "The Florida Senate passed the bill, only to have the Florida House of Representatives under outgoing Speaker Johnnie Byrd block its passage, which may have led directly to these unfortunate deaths," Ambler said in a statement. Wayne Garcia, campaign manager for Byrd's U.S. Senate campaign, responded in a statement that any suggestion that Byrd wasn't committed to law enforcement was "ridiculous." (source: Associated Press) ALABAMA: Man Gets Death Penalty For Killing Elderly Woman----Detective Raises Possibility Of Other Suspects In Bessemer, a man already serving life in prison for a robbery conviction was sentenced to death Tuesday. Michael Brown, 27, was accused of killing an elderly Hueytown woman back in October 2001. Brown was convicted of breaking into Betty Kirkpatrick's home, where he robbed her and then smothered her. Police said Brown made away with $91, some costume jewelry and Kirkpatrick's 1986 Thunderbird. "We're just glad there's closure to it and appreciate all the jurors," said Rick Kirkpatrick, the victim's son. Shirely Cooley, a close friend of Brown, testified, saying the suspect is a good man. Then, detective Charles Hagler took the stand and said the case is still open and that there could be other suspects. This possibility is a concern for Brown's family members. "I know he didn't do it. I know he didn't get a fair trial. (The) police department didn't investigate anything they were supposed to investigate. I think it was wrong that he got the death penalty," said Lisa Brown, the suspect's mother. However, those close to the victim are glad this day has come. "(I'm) relieved and so thankful that this turned out the way it did. They showed no remorse or anything, and we were really apprehensive about that, and justice was done," said Pat South, the victim's friend. (source: NBC News, Aug. 10) MISSISSIPI: Death row: 69 inmates, 97 victims waiting on justice ---- Spate of inmate mental retardation appeals latest impediment to executions Look at the 68 faces listed on the death row inmates page. What do you see? The inmates' families, death penalty opponents and human rights organizations see a system plagued by police and judicial error, race and class discrimination and moral objections to the death penalty. They look at these faces and see that all are someone's child, someone's spouse or loved one, someone's sibling or someone's friend. After facing Mississippi Circuit Court juries, they have something else in common as well. All have dates with death at the hands of the state of Mississippi, one of 38 U.S. states that still utilizes it. For them when the desperate, confusing legal machinations run their course it all comes down to the calendar, the clock, the executioner and the needle. Will they ride that needle? Or will a judge hundreds of miles away stay their appointed execution? For Mississippi's death row inmates, those are the only relevant questions. Inextricably tied to the 69 faces on this pages are 97 Mississippi murder victims. All of the 69 have been convicted of committing at least one the 97 murders. All the victims were someone's child, someone's spouse or loved one, someone's sibling or someone's friend. The families and friends of those victims, pro-death penalty groups and victims' rights organization see a system plagued by endless appeals on legal technicalities that they believe ignore the suffering of the victims and extend more rights to the living than the dead. In the final analysis, justice comes to all in this maddening equation of the most violent crimes and the most violent punishment this state affords in the form of an object lesson in waiting. These are the faces of Mississippi's death row inmates. All save one are residents of Unit 32 at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. In those environs recently cited in federal litigation by American Civil Liberties Union lawyers as being among the worst prison conditions in America they await their dates with the executioner. Some have been on death row for as long as 23 years. Others have been on "the row" for only a matter of months. Many have come and gone from Unit 32 during an endless array of appeals which continue for years. Some winning new trials only to be returned to "the row" by new juries. Some currently await appeals that may spare them from death based on their mental status, new DNA evidence or technical or procedural evidence at issue before appellate court judges. King Death row inmate Mack Arthur King is representative of the winding path from a capital murder conviction to an actual execution. King, 45, was sentenced to death in 1980 for the murder of 84-year-old Lela Patterson. The elderly woman was found beaten, strangled and drowned in the bathtub of her rural Lowndes County home. At the time of his arrest, King had some of the victim's belongings. He was granted a new trial in 1998 based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling which held that a common Mississippi jury instruction that told jurors they could consider whether a crime was "heinous, atrocious and cruel" in their deliberations. The high court ruled that those words couldn't be understood and defined by average jurors and gave more than 20 Mississippi death row inmates new trials based on the ruling. King was again convicted and sentenced to death in the 1998 retrial. But King submitted another appeal that was heard by the state Supreme Court based on a comment to jurors made by the trial court judge in the retrial. The comment to the jury: "Sympathy has no place in your deliberations." For a time, King played the legal equivalent of the "hokey-pokey" with his death sentence. On June 25, 2004, King was returned to death row and is awaiting execution. Mrs. Patterson the victim has been dead for 24 years. The latest legal hurdle as Mississippi seeks to enforce the death penalty is a number of new appeals by death row inmates on the issue of mental retardation based on a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling handed down in the Atkins v. Virginia case. In that case, the court ruled that execution of the mentally retarded violated the 8th Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment. While psychiatric experts generally define retardation as having an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 70 or lower, the U.S. Supreme Court left it to the states to develop their own criteria to ensure that mentally retarded people are not executed. The state Supreme Court has ruled that trial court judges will follow the guidelines in the Virginia decision, including the American Psychiatric Association's definition that an IQ score of 70 is the limit of retardation. Death row inmates David Blue of Leflore County and Mack C. Wells of Forest have already had their death sentences changed to life in prison without the possibility of parole based on findings of mental retardation consistent with the Virginia case. Dozens of Mississippi death row inmates have filed mental retardation claims, Assistant Attorney General Marvin "Sonny" White has confirmed. White has told this newspaper that it will be "a while" before another execution takes place in the state because of the mental retardation appeals. White told The Associated Press last October that defense attorneys are raising retardation claims on people with 95 IQs. "They may not be successful in them, but they are still litigating it," he said. Executions didn't occur in Mississippi from 1964 until 1983 following a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions. After executing 106 inmates between 1940 and 1964, Mississippi ceased the practice after the court ruled the death penalty statutes in 40 states including Mississippi unconstitutional in the case Furman v. Georgia. But the court allowed states to amend those statutes and reinstate the death penalty in another Georgia case in 1976. Mississippi has executed 6 death row inmates since the death penalty was reinstated. Jessie Darrell Williams, 51, was executed Dec. 11, 2002, by lethal injection for the 1983 rape and mutilation murder of 18-year-old Karon Ann Pierce. Williams' execution followed the July 2002 lethal injection of Tracy Alan Hansen, the state's 1st execution since 1989. In addition to appeals on the merits of the death penalty and the mental status of inmates, Mississippi has been challenged by the National Prison Project and others over housing conditions on death row. All male inmates are housed in Unit 32 at Parchman while the lone female death row inmate is housed at the Rankin County Correctional Facility at Whitfield. In his May 21, 2003, decision U.S. Magistrate Jerry A. Davis wrote: "No one in a civilized society should be forced to live under conditions that force exposure to another person's bodily wastes. "No matter how heinous the crime committed, there is no excuse for such living conditions," Davis said. State Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps said last month that the state is repairing faulty toilets and making other changes to improve conditions on death row, as mandated by court orders. Epps estimated it will cost about $330,000 to make the changes. If all changes were to be made throughout the maximum security unit, he said the cost would be about $800,000. The National Prison Project sued over conditions on death row, including complaints that inmates were subjected daily to excessive heat, human excrement, biting insects and the constant noise and screams of mentally ill prisoners. Since 1998, all Mississippi death row inmates face lethal injection. Prior to that, the state utilized the gas chamber, the electric chair and hanging as execution methods. The electric chair was outlawed in 1954. (source: Opinion, Clarion-Ledger, August 8)
