Feb. 15 ALABAMA----16-year-old may face death penalty Chilton youth indicted for Bibb murder Attorney General Troy King presented evidence to a Bibb County grand jury late Friday that resulted in indictments and the arrests of 2 men for capital murder and assault. The charges arise from a drive-by shooting into the vehicle of a Bibb County couple, in which Steven C. Spears Jr. was fatally wounded and the assailants viciously beat his wife, Monica Spears, with a chain. The attack occurred on Alabama Hwy. 139 on Dec. 10, 2004. Troy Edward Connell, 16, of Chilton County, and Jimmy Lamar Killingsworth Jr., 28, of Shelby County, were arrested by the Bibb County Sheriff's Department and the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, and are being held in the Bibb County Jail without bond. "Unexpected violence invaded Bibb County on Dec. 10, shocking all who lived there," King said. "[Friday's] indictments are the first steps in the journey toward justice. I was proud to be able to be at the sides of the Spears family and to present this case to the grand jury in Centreville [Friday]. I look forward to obtaining justice for Monica Spears, her family, and the people of Bibb County." Both Connell and Killingsworth are charged with the same 4 counts: 3 different charges of capital murder for killing Steven Spears, and 1 charge of 2nd degree assault committed against Monica Spears. State law specifies various circumstances of killing that may be charged as capital murder, and the murder of Spears involved three different elements that constitute capital murder: attacking with a deadly weapon into a vehicle and killing a victim, firing a deadly weapon from a vehicle and killing a victim, and killing a victim during the course of a robbery. King was assisted at the grand jury by Assistant Attorneys General Kenneth Steely and Don McMillian, and the case was investigated by ABI Cpl. Johnny Tubbs and Bibb County Sheriff's Dep. Jody Wade. No further information about the investigation or about the alleged crimes other than that stated in the indictments may be released at this time. If convicted, the defendants face the death penalty or life imprisonment without parole for the killing of Steven Spears and one to 10 years for the assault of Monica Spears. (source: The Clanton Adviser) SOUTH CAROLINA: Judge allows cameras in courtroom for death penalty trial Cameras will be allowed in the courtroom during the death penalty trial of a man charged with killing 4 people in North Carolina and South Carolina. Lawyers for Quincy Allen, 24, asked Judge G. Thomas Cooper Jr. to keep the cameras out when his trial starts Feb. 28. But Cooper rejected the motion Monday. Allen is being tried for the shotgun deaths of 44-year-old Dale Evonne Hall and 22-year-old Jedediah Harr in the summer of 2002. Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott has said the killings were part of a multistate crime spree. Allen has already been sentenced to life in prison in North Carolina for killing a clerk and a customer at a convenience store in Dobson, N.C. in August 2002. (source: Associated Press) OKLAHOMA----impending execution Slaughter says he is innocent Jimmie Ray Slaughter is counting the days, hoping someone will listen. "The truth is out there and I think we've done our part in trying to bring it out," Slaughter said in a Tuesday interview with the McAlester News-Capital. The 57-year-old death row inmate is scheduled to die March 15 for the murders of a girlfriend and their daughter. Prosecutors say he's guilty. He, his attorneys and others - including a former investigator on the case - say he's innocent. And both sides have been saying the same things for years. In the longest criminal trial in state history - the transcripts run more than 60,000 pages - Slaughter was convicted of killing 29-year-old Melody Wuertz and their 1-year-old daughter, Jessica Wuertz. Both were found shot to death in their Edmond home. Melody Wuertz had also been stabbed in the chest and her body had been mutilated. Prosecutors said part of that mutilation was in the form of occult symbols and that Slaughter was a practitioner of the occult. "There's absolutely no truth to that," Slaughter said. "I never had anything to do with that stuff." What about books found in his Guthrie home? "I'd buy a lot of books that I never read," he said. "My wife was an avid reader. She'd read anything." A drawing of the alleged occult symbol resembles a letter R with several other lines extending from it. A former major in the U.S. Army Reserve, Slaughter had been activated during the first Gulf War and sent to Fort Riley, Kan. That's where he was when military police officers accompanied Edmond investigators to question him about the case. It's also less than 40 miles from where his now ex-wife, his children and Slaughter himself say he was the day of the murders. "I knew absolutely nothing about it until the Edmond police came to Fort Riley and questioned me, my wife and my kids about it and accused me of committing the crime," he said. At the time, Slaughter's two daughters from his second marriage were 6 and 10. "They were old enough to know where we were and what we'd been doing," Slaughter said. "At the time the police say the murders took place, we were shopping in Topeka, Kan." Basically, prosecutors contend Slaughter drove approximately 4 1/2 hours, scaled a 6-foot stockade-type fence and murdered Melody and Jessica Wuertz between 10 a.m. and noon on July 2, 1991, before driving back to Kansas and meeting his wife and children at a Dillard's store at 5 p.m.- from which he was able to produce a time-stamped receipt. Dennis Dill, a former Edmond police officer identified in some court documents as the lead investigator on the case, said he was not allowed to check the route Slaughter is supposed to have taken. Therefore, he said, there are no witnesses or videotapes that can place Slaughter along the route on the day he was supposed to have traveled. Dill also noted that undigested food in Jessica Wuertz' stomach was identical to food fed her the night before prosecutors say she was killed. "If she was killed when they say, the food would have been digested and she'd have had breakfast food in her stomach," he said. Slaughter's attorneys, Robert Jackson and Steve Presson, say the whole case against him is shaky; that the conviction was based on faulty science, faulty police work and innuendo. Prosecutors contend the case was sound. One key piece of evidence, a single hair found at the crime scene, was said by prosecutors to have come from one of Slaughter's co-workers at Fort Riley. According to prosecutors, he had carried the hair, whether inadvertently, by being carried on clothing, or on purpose. Prosecutors "were able to argue quite forcibly that Slaughter had unknowingly transferred the hair," Jackson said. "That was a powerful piece of evidence that placed Slaughter at the crime scene." However, a mitochondrial DNA test - which was not available at the time of the trial - showed prosecutors were wrong, that the hair did not come from the co-worker. "Had the jurors known that, that the prosecutors were wrong, it possibly could have resulted in a non-conviction," Jackson said. Assistant Attorney General Seth Branham said a prosecution retest of the hair was "inconclusive." The DNA evidence was not allowed in Slaughter's latest appeal because the deadline for filing it had passed. Also during the trial, experts said that the bullets used to kill the Wuertz' family could be traced to a box of bullets found in Slaughter's gun safe. But the process used for matching bullet composition, called bullet lead analysis, has come under fire in recent years and has been deemed unreliable by some scientific groups. The National Academy of Sciences, in a 2004 study for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, found that the process was not as reliable as had once been thought. In fact, the Academy said, "because of variations in the bullet manufacturing process, there is inadequate data to support statements that a crime scene bullet came from a particular box of ammunition or that it was manufactured on a given date." Branham said the type of bullet used in the killing, and the type found in Slaughter's home, were comparatively rare, since they had to be special ordered from England. One of Slaughter's co-workers at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Oklahoma City told police she had mailed Slaughter soiled underwear and hair that were later found at the crime scene, prosecutors say. The woman committed suicide and never testified in court, so there was no way of cross-examining her or trying to find holes in her story, Jackson said. (Coming Monday: Former Edmond police officer Dennis Dill says investigation focused solely on Slaughter, excluding other suspects, and defense attorneys were never told of possible exculpatory evidence.) (source: McAlester News-Capital, Feb. 12) KENTUCKY: Paper's bid to disclose state's execution protocols rejected A Circuit Court judge has denied a request by the Herald-Leader to release the state's written protocol on how it executes death row inmates. Franklin Circuit Court Judge Roger Crittenden said he thought releasing the protocol would create a security threat to inmates and correction staff at the Eddyville State Prison, where executions take place. Releasing the information to the public "would necessarily result in inmate access to the same information, which could then be used to threaten security and disrupt the execution process," Crittenden wrote in a Feb. 11 decision. Crittenden further stated that the Department of Corrections has provided the media with "significant information regarding the execution process, including the names of the drugs used as well as access to the execution chamber." Herald-Leader Editor Marilyn Thompson said yesterday that the newspaper was still studying the decision and had not decided yet whether to appeal. But Thompson said the paper still thinks that the written step-by-step instruction should be public. The newspaper filed its request after a lawsuit was filed on behalf of two Death Row inmates, Thomas Clyde Bowling and Ralph Baze, in August. The lawsuit says Kentucky's method of execution violates a prisoner's rights under the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment. As part of the lawsuit, the Department of Corrections had filed at least 2 different redacted protocols under seal. Much of the information that was redacted had to do with the identities of the execution team. The newspaper had asked that the redacted versions be unsealed. (source: Herald-Leader)
