April 10 ALABAMA: Lawyer opposing death row helps save bomber's life----Advocate had role in other plea pacts The lawyer who brokered the agreement to spare the life of Eric Rudolph, the convicted serial bomber, has helped to keep other high-profile defendants off death row -- including Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. That lawyer, Judy Clarke, has been described as a "1-woman Dream Team" by a colleague who helped her defend Susan Smith, the South Carolina mom who avoided a death sentence after being convicted of drowning her two boys in 1995. (The Dream Team of lawyers helped to acquit O.J. Simpson of the murder of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and a waiter, Ronald Goldman, in 1994.) Clarke helped Kaczynski to arrange a plea and avoid a death sentence, and on Friday, Rudolph followed suit, agreeing to plead guilty to the deadly 1996 Olympic park bombing in Atlanta, a fatal 1998 abortion clinic blast in Birmingham, and two others in Atlanta in 1997. A staunch opponent of capital punishment, Clarke works for the federal defender's office in San Diego. "She just doesn't believe in the death penalty, so she does everything she can to keep that from happening," said Doug Jones, who was US attorney in Birmingham as the clinics were bombed. In court, where she typically wears dark suits with floppy bow ties, Clarke showed what appeared to be an easy familiarity with Rudolph. She often leaned over to whisper to him or occasionally put a hand on his shoulder to make a point. Rudolph, believed to be a follower of a white supremacist religion that is anti-abortion, anti-gay and anti-Semitic, became an almost mythic figure to some in the region as he eluded a manhunt in the Appalachian wilderness that lasted more than 5 years. He was captured in Murphy, N.C., in 2003 and charged with carrying out a string of bombings that killed 2 people and wounded more than 120. Clarke has Southern roots; she grew up in Asheville, N.C., not far from where Rudolph built his bombs. This could have helped Rudolph get comfortable enough to make the bargain, said Jones, who has known Clarke for years. "I think she obviously ended up being critical in this case," Jones, who is now a lawyer in private practice, said yesterday. Clarke herself, who rarely grants interviews, did not return messages seeking comment. A former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Clarke gained prominence with the Susan Smith case, when she convinced jurors that Smith did not deserve to die for drowning her sons by strapping them in a car and driving it into a lake. She gave her $83,000 fee for the case to a group that defends the poor in capital cases. Before an Alabama judge appointed her to represent Rudolph, Clarke was assisting with the defense of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only US defendant charged in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Rudolph will receive four consecutive life terms if judges agree to the plea arrangement; hearings are set for Wednesday. He may be sent to the same federal prison in Colorado that houses Kaczynski. Rudolph still must tell judges enough about the crimes to prove that he really committed the bombings. He directed authorities to stashes of 250 pounds of stolen dynamite and a bomb in western North Carolina. That information helped prompt prosecutors to make the agreement. But Rudolph apparently isn't under any requirement to explain how or why he launched the string of bombings. Emily Lyons, a nurse who was critically wounded in the Alabama bombing, said she was troubled by the possibility that she may never know what really happened. Rudolph's remote-controlled bomb, which prosecutors say was housed in a green toolbox disguised with fake greenery, blasted away Lyons' memory of that day as it caused severe wounds to her body. "I have no concept of what a bomb does except for what happened to me," Lyons said in an interview. "I want to know what happened. I want them to piece the day together for me." (source: Associated Press) MISSISSIPPI: Death row inmate found dead days before hearing Mississippi corrections officials are investigating the death of inmate Jason Glen Taylor. Department of Corrections spokeswoman Tara Frazier said Taylor, 25, was found dead Friday in Unit 32 at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Unit 32 houses death row. Details of Taylor's death were being withheld pending an investigation, she said. Taylor was scheduled to appear in Harrison County Circuit Court on Monday on a motion for a new trial, said Assistant District Attorney Lisa Dodson. Donald G. Rafferty, one of Taylor's attorneys, said he didn't know the details of his death, "but I am very saddened by the whole tragic event. The crime and now this have ruined a lot of people's lives." Taylor was sentenced to death following his conviction in the Oct. 12, 2002, robbery and slaying of 18-year-old Chelle Cazeaux. She was shot in the back and struck in the head while working alone at the General Nutrition Center near Super Wal-Mart on U.S. 49. A Harrison County jury convicted Taylor on Nov. 6. (source: Associated Press) OHIO: Experts: Insanity, death penalty in highway shootings tough sell Both sides in the trial of a man charged in highway sniper shootings face challenges with arguments of death penalty or insanity, in a case that will turn on intent. Did the gunman who unnerved residents and drivers over five months mean to kill? And if he did, did he understand then that his actions were wrong? "It's going to be a horse race," said Andrew Haney, one of three attorneys for Charles A. McCoy Jr., a 29-year-old with a history of paranoid schizophrenia. Jurors being selected this week will decide if McCoy goes to prison, possibly death row or to a mental hospital. Because he has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity, outright acquittal is considered a remote possibility. The only person struck was killed in two dozen shootings at vehicles, a house and an elementary school that occurred mostly around the Interstate 270 beltway on the city's south side. A school canceled classes, drivers changed their routes and thousands of people called in tips to investigators before the shootings stopped last year. McCoy, of Columbus, is charged with aggravated murder and assault in 12 shootings. His trial in Franklin County Common Pleas Court is expected to last about a month. Unless he told police a motive, law professors say it will be hard to prove that firing his collector's handgun toward houses, a school and moving vehicles meant that he intended to kill the people inside. That proof would be essential for the 8 attempted murder charges and the possibility of a death sentence. On the other side, McCoy's attorneys are using one of the most unpopular and least successful strategies in a jury trial. Many juries see the insanity defense as tantamount to confessing but trying to escape punishment. "The most realistic outcome is prison, and not a mental hospital nor death row," Ohio State University law professor Joshua Dressler said. "I would expect this is a case where the death penalty would not be obtained." It would take three separate unanimous votes for the jury to recommend a death sentence. They would have to convict McCoy of aggravated murder in the death of Gail Knisley, 62, who was being driven to a doctor's appointment; agree that the killing was part of a pattern of behavior trying to kill 2 or more people; and, after a sentencing phase, recommend execution. Franklin County Prosecutor Ronald O'Brien said he has to prove only that McCoy intended the "natural and probable consequences" of firing at a moving vehicle with a person driving it. He compared it to firing into a crowded stadium knowing that someone could get hit. "I don't agree that intent to kill is a foregone conclusion," said Max Kravitz, a Capital University law professor who also has done criminal defense work. "I don't think this should be a death case." Even the stadium example doesn't show intent to kill, Dressler said. Instead, it shows "depraved" indifference for life, which could support a murder case but not an aggravated murder conviction. Most of the defense's evidence will involve McCoy's 10-year history of paranoid schizophrenia, which causes delusions and inappropriate emotions. The insanity plea is used in fewer than 1 percent of felony cases and rarely succeeds, said Thomas Hafemeister, director of legal studies at the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Those who try it and fail tend to get longer sentences than those who just plead innocent, Hafemeister said. Those who win tend to spend about twice as much time hospitalized as they would have spent in prison if convicted. McCoy is different because of the length and severity of his illness, attorney Haney said. "A good number of defendants who seek to employ this defense have either no history or a short history," he said. But O'Brien said McCoy's actions show he wasn't insane. When the manhunt focused on Interstate 270, the shootings occurred on other highways. When McCoy's family turned in his guns and police asked him for permission to test them, he drove 36 hours to Las Vegas, where he was arrested in March 2004. But delusions also can prompt running, said David M. Siegel, a professor at the New England School of Law in Boston. "They can think, I need to get out of this county because the devil's coming," he said. 12 people will have to decide the motives of a man who once told his girlfriend the government was using electrical appliances to spy on him, and who after his arrest could calmly admire the Grand Canyon and joke with federal and sheriff's officers on the FBI flight to Columbus. On the 9-seater plane, one agent joked that the bathroom was so small, no one could have a bowel movement. McCoy laughed, then said, "Yeah, we wouldn't want to hit any cars, would we?" (source: Associated Press) VERMONT: Death penalty upheld in Vt. murder case A judge has rejected a second attempt to throw out the death penalty in the upcoming trial of Donald Fell, who is charged in the kidnapping and murder of a woman4 years ago. Fell is charged with kidnapping Teresca King in Rutland and taking her to New York state, where she was beaten to death. US District Judge William Sessions ruled 2 years ago that the federal death penalty was unconstitutional in Fell's case. That decision was later reversed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City. Fell's defense team then filed another motion attempting to throw out the death penalty as a possible punishment. This week Sessions refused to grant the request. "Fell's 1st argument, that the [Federal Death Penalty Act] fails to avoid sentences of death for the factually and legally innocent, raises a fundamental challenge to the legality of the death penalty under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment," the judge wrote. "The argument raises profound questions about the finality of the death penalty in a system of justice that, like any human endeavor, is less than perfect. Nevertheless, Fell's challenge has been squarely rejected by the Second Circuit." Sessions wrote in his earlier decision that the federal death penalty denies defendants' right to due process. He wrote that the law permits evidence and procedures that could not be used during a trial to be used for sentencing people to death, specifically, in the Fell case, a statement alleged accomplice Robert Lee gave to authorities after his arrest. The judge said prosecutors would not be allowed to introduce the statement by Lee at trial because Lee has since died. But Sessions said that under federal law, the statement would be admissible during the sentencing phase. Sessions wrote that Fell should have the same right to confront and cross-examine a witness against him during the death penalty phase as he did during a trial, but the Second Circuit did not agree. Sessions's latest ruling comes as attorneys in the case are preparing for trial, with jury selection set to begin May 2. (source: Associated Press)
