Nov. 27 TEXAS----impending execution Evidence at Issue as Woman's Execution Nears - Lawyers for Frances Newton, convicted of killing her family in Houston, seek new tests. On an April evening in 1987, Adrian Newton and his 2 young children were found dead in their northwest Houston apartment, all shot at close range. The following year, Frances Newton - 23-year-old Adrian's wife and the mother of Alton, 7, and Farrah, 1 - was convicted of their murders and sentenced to death. Her motivation, prosecutors said, was to collect $100,000 from life insurance policies taken out shortly before they were killed. Newton, 39, is scheduled for execution Wednesday. She would be the 3rd woman and the 1st African American woman to be put to death in Texas since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1982. The distinction has attracted more than the usual scant attention given to executions in Texas, where 23 inmates have been put to death so far this year. But the circumstances of Newton's conviction have also set her case apart. During the 17 years in which Newton's case has wound through state and federal courts, her lawyers say, the circumstantial evidence against her has never been independently examined. Her original defense attorney, Ron Mock - who has been suspended three times by the Texas Bar Assn. and is no longer allowed to take court-appointed capital murder cases - interviewed no witnesses before the trial. Ballistics tests key to convicting Newton were conducted by the now-discredited Houston Police Department crime lab. Nitrite traces found on her clothing - which could have come from a gun blast or something as common as garden fertilizer - can now be more precisely tested to determine its source. With her federal and state appeals all but exhausted, Newton's lawyers petitioned the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles this month to issue a 120-day reprieve to allow for a thorough look at the evidence. The Harris County district attorney's office opposes a reprieve, saying her conviction has been upheld by a series of state and federal judges. "Her case has been reviewed by every possible court," prosecutor Roe Wilson said. "She killed her 2 children and her husband. There is very, very strong evidence of that." But David Dow, Newton's current lawyer, said that because her side of the story was never fully investigated, the courts were presented with an incomplete picture. "The issues we're raising have never been reviewed by anybody," he said. "It's therefore impossible for any court to have considered the evidence of her innocence, because no one sought to gain it." At her trial, Newton accused a drug dealer she knew only as Charlie of killing her family in a dispute over money owed by her husband, also a dealer. Newton was estranged from her husband at the time, living with him but dating someone else. When she found an unfamiliar gun in her home, she testified at trial, she took it out of the apartment as a safety measure. As her cousin watched, she hid it in an abandoned building next to the cousin's home. The gun later was traced to Newton's boyfriend, who said he kept it in a bedroom dresser that Newton easily could have opened. Ballistics tests showed that the gun was the weapon used to shoot Adrian Newton in the head and the 2 children in their hearts. Newton's lawyers now question the validity of ballistics tests conducted by the crime lab, whose flawed analysis in recent years has been an embarrassment to the force. For instance, during another capital murder trial, a Houston police firearms expert identified the murder weapon as .25-caliber, when in fact it was an easily distinguishable .22-caliber pistol. Newton's lawyers want an independent lab to conduct a new ballistics test. They also question the source of the nitrite particles on the skirt Newton wore on the night of the murders. But Wilson, the prosecutor, said additional testing wouldn't matter in this case. "The jury was aware that fertilizer can also show a positive for nitrites" but chose to disregard it, she said. There are other doubts. Tests conducted on Newton's hands shortly after the killings showed she had not recently fired a gun, according to her petition to the parole board. And blood stains leading from Adrian Newton's body in the living room to the children's bedrooms indicated the shooter dripped blood, although no trace was found on Frances Newton, her clothes or the gun. Neither was there evidence of blood - or a quick cleanup - in the sinks and shower of the Newtons' apartment, her lawyers said. In upholding her conviction in 1992, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals wrote that her explanation of events leading up to the murders was not reasonable. "A more cold-blooded, calculated act of violence is difficult to imagine," the judges wrote. Trial witnesses said Newton had forged her husband's signature on insurance policies taken out a month before the murders. As her execution date neared, Newton's request for a reprieve was a last-ditch "ploy to get more time," said Frank Pratt, a sheriff's deputy who helped investigate the case in 1987. But John LaGrappe, one of Newton's attorneys, called it a long-delayed search for justice. "In all these years, the police, her lawyers, no one ever investigated whether she was telling the truth. This woman was abandoned by the legal system," he said. "But if she's lying, these tests will hang her. She should get the chance to do them so that there will be no questions." (source: Los Angeles Times) ************************* Sister behind movie to speak Wednesday Sister Helen Prejean, whose ministry to Louisiana death-row inmates and families of their victims became the best-selling book and film "Dead Man Walking," will speak at Travis Park United Methodist Church at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The Oscar-winning 1996 film, starring actress Susan Sarandon as Prejean and Sean Penn as a death row inmate, opened a dialogue on the morality of capital punishment. She's helping to lead a campaign for a moratorium on executions. (source: San Antonio Express-News) *************************** Cost of legal aid for poor mounts----Harris County sees an 80% rise since defense act was OK'd in 2001 -- RESOURCES ON THE WEB - Texas Task Force for Indigent Defense: www.courts.state.tx.us/tfid -- The cost of providing lawyers for poor defendants in Harris County has risen about 80 % since the legislature set new criminal defense standards in 2001. The Fair Defense Act, which took effect Jan. 1, 2002, required counties with court-appointed lawyers to adequately compensate them. Since then, far more local defendants have received court-appointed lawyers, and these lawyers have been paid more per case. For the 12 months ending Sept. 30, indigent defense costs in local felony, misdemeanor and juvenile courts neared $20 million, compared with $11 million 3 years ago. In Dallas County, these costs rose only 12 % during the same period and are now near $18 million. But dollars don't tell the whole story. The number of indigent cases in Dallas is falling, but in Harris County it has shot up 75 percent in the past two years, from 42,667 to 74,879. The number of defendants who are indigent rose from 38 % to 61 %. Troy McKinney, who was president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association when the act was implemented, said one reason for the latter increase is that judges are setting higher bonds, causing people to remain in jail longer. "Five years ago a 1st-degree felony might have a $20,000 bond," McKinney said. "Today, it may have a bond of $50,000. So the odds of remaining in custody are greater." Defendants in jail "get an appointed lawyer almost automatically." "I think there are clearly some people who would not have gotten a court-appointed lawyer before and are getting one now," McKinney said. "The county is supposed to have guidelines as to who is indigent and who isn't, but that is pretty much up to ... each judge." The increasing share of indigents in local courts is mirrored across Texas, rising from about 30 percent in 2001, before the act took effect, to nearly 40 percent in 2002 and nearing 50 % in 2004, said Bill Mesaros of the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense. The Legislature created the task force to help counties meet the demands of the new law and compile data on compliance. State District Judge George Godwin, who was presiding judge of felony courts in Harris County when they were preparing to cope with the act, said the measures adopted included a new fee schedule that gave appointed lawyers their first pay raise in a decade or more. "We expected at least a 30 % increase in the amount spent in attorney fees when the act became effective," Godwin said. "And we saw that immediately. "They are being compensated a great deal more than they used to be," he said. "You pay the trial lawyer a good chunk and the appellate lawyer a good chunk and then there is a writ in capital cases." The $20 million figure includes felony, misdemeanor and juvenile courts, but felonies are the big ticket. Indigent defense costs in misdemeanor courts were $2.5 million of the total in fiscal year 2004, said court administrator Bob Wessels, and juvenile courts ran far less. The costs may be leveling out, though. The big leap came early, when the price tag rose from $11 million in 2001 to $16 million in 2002. It was $19 million in 2003 and $20 million in 2004. But these numbers also suggest that the available dollars are being stretched thin. As the number of indigent cases has risen since 2002, per-case expenditure slipped from $378 to $263. To improve the quality of indigent defense, McKinney suggests a tax-funded public defender's office like the one in Dallas County. The idea garners little support among judges and defense lawyers. A recent article in Texas Lawyer quotes Jeanette Green, the Dallas County chief public defender, as saying, "We're about half the cost of a court-appointed attorney." But Godwin is skeptical about creating another county office with basically the same infrastructure and staff as the district attorney, albeit on a smaller scale (not all defendants are indigent). "Both systems have drawbacks," he said. "You're getting that done in Harris County without all those fringes and physical costs." While dollars can't measure the quality of indigent defense, task force statistics indicate Dallas County spends slightly more per case than Harris - $265 to $263. "If a (nonappointed) lawyer in private practice took a case at $263, every other lawyer in town would laugh at him and consider him incompetent," McKinney said. A fair rate for a noncapital felony, he said, is $2,000 to $3,000 for a day's work. (source: Houston Chronicle) NEW YORK: Fix the death penalty, don't kill it After the state's highest court threw out the sentencing procedures of New York's death penalty law five months ago, Speaker Sheldon Silver said the Legislature would quickly fix the statute. He did not keep the commitment, and now his Assembly appears resolved to make sure capital punishment is dead and buried. Silver announced last week that his Democratic colleagues would hold two hearings on the death penalty, ostensibly to gather facts about the nine-year-old presently inoperable law. But their true intent leaps off the page when reading of the long list of questions the Assembly plans to address. To wit: "Is it possible to design a death penalty law which is fairly administered and consistently applied, free from impermissible racial, ethnic or geographic bias, and prevents the conviction of the innocent?" And: "Is the death penalty an appropriate societal exercise of retribution against persons who commit intentional murder?" And: "What evidence is there that New York's death penalty or the death penalty in general deters intentional murder more effectively than other sentencing options?" Those weighty and worthy questions go to the heart of the debate over capital punishment. They extend far beyond the easily remedied legal issue cited by the Court of Appeals in putting capital punishment on hold last June. And Silver, who pronounces himself a supporter of the death penalty, acknowledges he has far more on his mind than formulating a bill to patch the law, as the state Senate did. "The Legislature is now faced with the profound question of whether the death penalty should be reinstated in New York," he says, which is true only because the Assembly's death penalty opponents have seized on the court ruling to put the law on trial. And that minority is now in command because it needs only to sit idle to inter the statute. That must not happen. The law was enacted in 1995 after years of battling between the Legislature and then-Gov. Mario Cuomo, who adamantly blocked every move toward capital punishment. As such, the statute is clearly the will of the people as expressed in the collective judgment of their elected representatives. If it's to be repealed, it should be wiped off the books in the same fashion - as a clear expression of the collective political will. On a subject this profound, it would be very wrong for one group of lawmakers to impose its position on the public at large by exploiting a narrow court ruling. (source: Editorial, New York Daily News) CALIFORNIA: New execution date imminent for death-row inmate The pending execution of a longtime death row inmate from San Mateo is back on but Donald Beardslee wont likely learn the date until after the new year. On Monday, the California Supreme Court lifted its stay to the execution of Donald Beardslee who is convicted of killing two women more than two decades ago. The move places the ball back in the local courts jurisdiction for the presiding judge to set an execution date. A hearing to set that date hasnt even been scheduled yet, making his execution unlikely until into the new year. "They dont really like to execute people around the holidays," said Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. The stay was placed in October after Beardslees longtime counsel, Steven Lubliner, stepped down and his new attorney asked for more time to prepare a clemency bid. Mondays decision moves Beardslee back in position to be the 1st California inmate put to death in 3 years unless the governor issues a pardon. Beardslee, 60, will also be the 1st San Mateo County inmate executed since capital punishment was re-instated in 1978. Beardslee was sent to death row in 1984 for the murders of Stacey Benjamin, 19, and Patty Geddling, 23, 3 years previous during a day-long crime spree. Beardslee allegedly helped another drug dealer, Frank Rutherford, kill the 2 women in revenge for Benjamins alleged cheating in a drug transaction. The jury believed he shot Patty Geddling twice with a shotgun and slashed Benjamins throat. Only Beardslee, on parole for a Missouri murder, was sentenced to death for his role. In January, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco declined to reconsider his sentence. On Oct. 4, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Beardslees appeal and only Lubliners resignation bought him a reprieve. (source: San Mateo Daily Journal) *************************************** Voting for death sentence difficult for jurors forced to decide He was a philandering husband convicted of murdering his young and very pregnant wife in a sensational case that shocked a community. His name wasn't Scott Peterson, though. It was Todd Garton, and a Shasta County jury in 2001 said he deserved to die. "I signed the document that the jury found for death and I think about that a lot," said Fred Castagna, who served as jury foreman. "It was emotional during deliberations, but I don't lose sleep over it." Some jurors who helped send other killers to death row expressed almost identical feelings about their experiences. They sat through months of testimony that toggled between traumatizing and monotonous. They grappled with religious, moral and legal issues during emotional deliberations. Gruesome images from the crime scenes and the pain of the victims' parents as they testified about their loved ones still haunt them today. The jurors were overwhelmingly convinced of the killers' guilt, yet sending someone to death row presented one of the toughest decisions of their own lives. "I have strong religious beliefs, and this wasn't like I had to decide what kind of ice cream to buy," said Brian Bianco, who served as foreman of the Santa Clara County jury that convicted and condemned Richard Allen Davis to death for killing Polly Klaas. Nevertheless, Bianco said he has never doubted that he made the right decision, reached after four agonizing days of deliberations. It took the Shasta County jury just 70 minutes of deliberations to condemn Garton, who was convicted of hiring a hit man to kill his 29-year-old wife, who was eight months pregnant. "There wasn't any real reason to mull it over," said foreman Castagna. "It was pretty clear that this guy was evil, that he had concocted this scheme to get his wife killed. " Garton, convicted of 2 1st-degree murder charges, is one of three men sentenced to die because a fetus perished during a slaying. Peterson could be the fourth such convicted killer to join the 640 other inmates on San Quentin's Death Row. Only 10 inmates have been executed since California re-instituted the death penalty in 1992. Castagna said the five months of sometimes graphic testimony during the guilt phase "pretty much drove" the death verdict. "You can't help but consider the fact that you'll have to decide punishment if you find him guilty," he said. "That's always in the back of your mind, but you try not to let it influence you." Determining punishment before such deliberations begin is a common experience for many death penalty jurors, according to an ongoing study by the Capital Jury Project at Northeastern University. About half the 1,300 capital case jurors questioned for the study said they had made their sentencing decisions during the guilt phase of the trial, according to chief investigator William Bowers. "That's perhaps the most profound thing we found," said Bowers, who sometimes serves as an expert witness for those facing the death penalty. "That's a major departure of how it's supposed to work. You're supposed to wait for instructions." What's more, Bowers said that many jurors vote for death because they fear the killer will some day be set free, even if a sentence of life without parole is an option, as it is in the Peterson case. "There's a pervasive anxiety that the defendant will be back on the streets," Bowers said. That anxiety played a major role in a Santa Clara County jury sentencing William Dennis to death in 1988. He was convicted of the Halloween night machete slashing of his ex-wife and her 8-month-old fetus as the victim's 4-year-old daughter cowered behind a couch. "What it came down to for us was that we were not convinced that life without the possibility of parole meant that," jury foreman Forrester Sinclair said. "We decided we had to have him removed from society forever." Sinclair said he doesn't have any regrets, but does expect to feel a little discomfort when Dennis eventually gets an execution date. Sinclair said his mind wasn't made up when the Dennis jury began deliberating punishment, but it appeared several other jurors had already determined to vote for death when they convicted him of 1st-degree murder for his ex-wife's death and 2nd-degree for the fetus' death. "I got the impression some of the people were predisposed to the death penalty," he said. Peterson, 32, was convicted this month of 1st-degree murder in the death of Laci Peterson and of 2nd-degree murder in the death of her fetus. Arguments in the penalty phase of his trial are scheduled to begin Tuesday. (source: Mercury News) ************************************** Peterson jury has life or death decision----Sentencing phase of trial begins Tuesday He was a philandering husband convicted of the shocking murder of his young and pregnant wife. His name wasn't Scott Peterson, though. It was Todd Garton, and in 2001, a California jury said he deserved to die. "I signed the document that the jury found for death, and I think about that a lot," said Fred Castagna, who served as jury foreman. "It was emotional during deliberations, but I don't lose sleep over it." If the experience of Castagna and others involved in death penalty cases is any guide, the jurors in Peterson's murder trial will have to grapple with raw and deep religious, moral and legal issues as they decide whether he lives or dies. Arguments in the penalty phase are scheduled to begin Tuesday, but experts say many of the jurors may have made up their minds about what punishment the 32-year-old former fertilizer salesman deserves. Jurors who have sent people to death row say even though they were overwhelmingly convinced of their guilt, settling on the death penalty was one of the toughest decisions of their lives. "I have strong religious beliefs, and this wasn't like I had to decide what kind of ice cream to buy," said Brian Bianco, who served as foreman of the jury that convicted Richard Allen Davis of kidnapping and killing 12-year-old Polly Klaas. Nevertheless, like Castagna, Bianco said he has never doubted that he made the right decision in sending Davis to death row after four agonizing days of deliberations. It took a jury just 70 minutes to condemn Garton, who was convicted of hiring a hit man to kill his 29-year-old pregnant wife. "There wasn't any real reason to mull it over," Castagna said. "It was pretty clear that this guy was evil, that he had concocted this scheme to get his wife killed." Garton, convicted of 2 1st-degree murder charges, is one of three men in California sentenced to die because a fetus perished during a slaying. Peterson could be the 4th. Castagna said the 5 months of sometimes graphic testimony during the guilt phase of the trial "pretty much drove" the death verdict. "You can't help but consider the fact that you'll have to decide punishment if you find him guilty," Castagna said. "That's always in the back of your mind, but you try not to let it influence you." Determining punishment before deliberations in the penalty phase is a common experience for many death penalty jurors, according to an ongoing study by the Capital Jury Project at Northeastern University. About half the 1,300 capital case jurors questioned for the study said they had made their sentencing decisions during the guilt phase of the trial, according to chief investigator William Bowers. "That's perhaps the most profound thing we found," said Bowers, who sometimes serves as an expert witness for those facing the death penalty. "That's a major departure of how it's supposed to work. You're supposed to wait for instructions." What's more, Bowers said that many jurors vote for death because they fear the killer will someday be set free, even if a sentence of life without parole is an option, as it is in the Peterson case. "There's a pervasive anxiety that the defendant will be back on the streets," Bowers said. That anxiety played a major role in the 1988 death sentence of William Dennis, who was convicted of the Halloween night machete slashing of his ex-wife and her 8-month-old fetus as the victim's 4-year-old daughter cowered behind a couch. "What it came down to for us was that we were not convinced that life without the possibility of parole meant that," said jury foreman Forrester Sinclair. "We decided we had to have him removed from society forever." Peterson faces death or life in prison without parole for the murders of his wife, Laci, and the fetus she carried. His lawyer has asked the California Supreme Court for a new jury and a change of venue for the trial's penalty phase. An appeals court turned down the request last week. (source: Associated Press) ********************************* Thrashed by Charge of Murder - Skateboarding fans and businesses aid Neil Heddings' defense fund. He blames his outlaw image for allegations that he killed his son. Pro skateboarder Neil Heddings carved out a reputation based almost as much on the pentagram tattoo on his chest and his rebellious lifestyle as his mastery of backyard pools and plywood half-pipes. He named his youngest son Budweiser, sported a shaved head and traveled the globe performing for young crowds and earning thousands of dollars a year from skateboard companies to help hawk their newest boards and gear. That image served him well in West Coast skating circles. Heddings says it worked against him the morning of Nov. 23, 2002, when a San Jacinto police officer walked into a bedroom and found the skater with the lifeless body of his 2-year-old son, Marcus, cradled in his arms. Three months later, Heddings, 30, and his 25-year-old girlfriend, Christine "Pinky" Rams, were charged with beating the boy to death. They are scheduled to stand trial on 1st-degree murder charges Feb. 1 in Riverside County. Heddings blames the boy's death on an undiagnosed medical condition or neglect by Marcus' mother in San Diego. An autopsy determined that Marcus sustained nearly a dozen sharp blows to the head, probably with a fist. The injuries were at most 2 days old, and Heddings and Rams were the only adults with Marcus during that time, prosecutors allege. Yet Heddings' claims of innocence have drawn support not only from many fellow skateboarders but also from usually cautious corporate America. The Vans skateboard shoe company contributed $1,000 to Heddings' defense fund, and a former subsidiary of Nike held a fundraiser for him at a Portland, Ore., skate park. "In no way are we trying to pass judgment on this case or get in the police's way, but the skateboarding community is in his corner," said Chris Strain, vice president of marketing for Vans. "The guy needs help." For most corporations, supporting an accused child murderer would be unthinkable. But skateboard companies are different. They know that the subculture they market to revels in its fringe, anarchist reputation, said David Carter, a sports business author and instructor at USC's Marshall School of Business. "Vans and the others understand the role [Heddings] plays in their critical target market," Carter said. Many of Heddings' supporters call the prosecution a sham, saying police prejudice against skateboarders runs deep."Neil is one of us," said Jake Phelps, a friend of Heddings and editor in chief of Thrasher, a skateboarding magazine. "He's the type who'd kick in your fence to go skate in your empty pool. He chose that path, this beer-swilling, wild life. But you live by that blade and you die by that blade. The pig sees you do something, and he'll fry you. It's religious zealotry, man. It's us versus them." Homicide Investigation Heddings said he found Marcus dead on a Saturday morning on the boy's homemade bed, a few unpainted 2-by-4s cobbled together around a mattress. At least 10 minutes went by before Heddings called 911, prosecutors allege. San Jacinto police arrived at the sparsely furnished home to find bruises on the boy's head and body, and started to investigate the death as a homicide. When questioned, Heddings dropped hints that Marcus' mother might be responsible. He told police that his son had visited his mother in San Diego 4 days earlier and had come back lethargic and throwing up. Rams offered another explanation. She told the officers that Marcus slipped and struck his head while she was giving him a bath the day before his death. As a precaution, county child protective services was called in to take custody of the 2 other children in the home: Heddings and Rams' son, Budweiser, and Rams' other child by a different father. "Look, I'm a pro skater. People still draw conclusions when they look at you, and I really believe I was preconceived from the start by police," Heddings said in a telephone interview from jail. "When they first came into my house, they didn't look at the toys we had for the kids. They looked at me, and they looked at [Rams] and they said, 'Take their kids.' Guilty." Rams' former husband, Ronald Rams, told detectives that on the night before Marcus was found dead, Christine had phoned him in tears saying the kids were "driving her crazy." He told police that Christine referred to Marcus as an "ugly" child and a "little piece of .," according to court testimony. Heddings and Rams were arrested together March 3, 2003, and secretly tape-recorded while in the backseat of a patrol car - a key piece of evidence already used against them in a preliminary hearing. "Don't turn on me," Rams told Heddings. "You don't turn on me, I won't turn on you," he said. Both were charged with murder, even though the prosecutor handling the case said he didn't know which one allegedly delivered the fatal blows. "They both had a duty to protect that child," Riverside County Deputy Dist. Atty. Kelly Hansen said. "One person either inflicted the damage or failed miserably to protect Marcus." In Portland, Ore., and in Heddings' nearby hometown of Newberg, hundreds of skateboarders have rallied to defend their jailed comrade, holding fundraisers and mailing in checks that have provided more than $40,000 for his defense fund. Auto Mowdown, a Watsonville, Calif., skateboard company, is designing a special "Neil Heddings" board with all the proceeds going to his defense, and more fundraisers are in the works. Last year, a big event was held at the Savier Warehouse in Portland, a skater's paradise equipped with a large particle-board skating bowl, plywood ramps, half-pipes, metal rails and a live, ear-splitting punk band. The warehouse was owned by the skateboarding shoe company Savier, which was owned by Nike at the time and has since been sold. "Let's hear noise for Neil!" Mike Estes, a warehouse manager, roared into a microphone, prompting 200 skaters to pound their boards against the wooden ramps. Estes was raffling boards, T-shirts and a truckload of other donated skateboard gear. "Improve your chances of winning something, and improve Neil's chances of getting out of jail!" Dozens of skaters opened their wallets, forking over more than $1,500. They knew the money was going to help two accused child killers. But many of them, teenagers and parents alike, said they were skeptical of the charges. "I think this is a prejudged case, and the reason I came here was to support the idea that you are innocent until proven guilty," said Vic Nogueroa, 40, of Portland, who was with his son. "I know if you don't have a lot of money, it's easy to get railroaded in this country's legal system." A Nike corporate official who knows Heddings said Savier held the fundraiser independently of the shoe giant but added that he didn't object to the event. "Neil's a good dude," the executive said, adding that he did not want to be identified because he did not want to embarrass Nike. Loyalty to Heddings runs deep in Portland. He was a fixture at Burnside skate park, a sketchy collection of concrete bowls and mounds that skateboarders clandestinely built under the Burnside Bridge, paving over an old hobo camp along the Willamette River. Heddings was a foul-mouthed, beer-loving street punk, his friends say with pride, the very image that skateboard companies use to sell shoes and baggy shorts. "Neil was not into corporate contests; he was more of a backyard pool, street skater," said his friend Jason Beaudry of Portland. He partied hard and was once arrested for smacking a man on the head with a skateboard during a fight. His tattoos include a checkerboard pattern on his feet, which was inspired by the pattern on his first Vans skateboard shoes. Heddings' friends said it was his image that made him an easy suspect. But Hansen, the prosecutor on the case, said he didn't care "if the whole world was backing Neil." "It's shallow to think the police arrested these two because of their tattoos," Hansen said. "When no one else was present when the child was hurt, you have to ask how else could these injuries occur. I wish human beings were better to their children. Unfortunately, some of them just lose it." Heddings and Rams have sat in jail since their arrest, unable to pay their $500,000 bail. Their other children remain in the custody of Rams' mother. Their defense centers on two explanations for Marcus' death: that the injuries were inflicted while the boy was staying with Susie Moyer, Marcus' mother, in San Diego; and that Marcus possibly had a chronic medical condition. Heddings said from jail that he was convinced Marcus was suffering from a medical condition, such as encephalitis, that could have made him prone to brain injury. "I don't know what happened to Marcus, but there were medical problems, and that's the whole ifs, ands or buts," Heddings said. Moyer acknowledged that she didn't provide the best home for her son. She was living in a cheap motel, had an abusive boyfriend and still was a heavy user of methamphetamine around the time of Marcus' death. But she adamantly denies having anything to do with the boy's death. When Marcus came to San Diego for what would be his final visit, he arrived looking battered and bruised, she said. "Financially, I didn't have anything. I could only pay for the [motel] room and to feed him," Moyer said. "A hospital visit, or an emergency room bill would've been a problem." Hansen said any attempt to implicate Moyer is a ruse. The head injuries Marcus suffered were not caused by a fall or an illness, according to court testimony by county forensic pathologist Mark Fajardo. The injuries were caused by severe blows to the head, he said. Heddings, in a letter to Big Brother skateboard magazine in March 2003, proclaimed his innocence: "I want everyone in the world to know how proud I am of my son; how proud I am to have been his father. I thank the powers that be for the time I got to spend with him," Heddings wrote in his plea for support. "I want to let the world know one other thing: Me and my girlfriend didn't hurt my boy, let alone murder him. We don't belong in jail and we need to get out of here." Early Love of Skating The Riverside County Jail is far different from the inviting three-bedroom home where Heddings was raised, in the Quaker-founded town of New- berg. The home's gravel driveway is lined with the Portland area's signature rosebushes, and yellow and green walnut and apple trees surround the house. Just before he turned 10, Heddings received a green plastic skateboard as a Christmas present. He tried wrestling, baseball and football, but none held his interest like skating, said his mother, Shirley Bookey of Portland. Heddings left for California the day after high school ended, hoping to join up with the world's great skaters. He never competed in ESPN's X Games or other heavily sponsored, highly promoted national skateboarding events, but his skating skills still brought in enough money to live on. Heddings earned $30,000 to $50,000 a year over the last decade, according to his mother. He has performed in competitions and demonstrations in Europe, Asia and Australia as a member of a skate team sponsored by Independent Truck Co. of Santa Cruz. He remains a sponsored rider for Randoms Hardware, a skateboard company in Encinitas that still sells "Heddings" bolts - decorated with pentagrams. Although Heddings is a "utility player" and nowhere near the league of skateboard icon Tony Hawk, he has earned a loyal following because of his "hard edge" and anti-establishment attitude, said Vans spokesman Chris Overholser. "He was at his peak when he was arrested, at his best ever," said Sean Lafferty, a longtime friend from Portland. Marcus' mother said her young son was always thrilled to watch his father wow the crowd at one of his favorite San Diego County skateboard parks. When Moyer was given some of Marcus' cremated ashes, she went to the park and sprinkled them next to the concrete. (source: Los Angeles Times)
