June 14 NEW YORK: Death row inmate in Texas confesses to 1987 western N.Y. killing A former drifter has confessed to killing a suburban Buffalo hairdresser after she left a western New York bar in 1987. But authorities in Lockport in Niagara County say serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells won't be charged because he's already on death row in Texas after admitting to killing more than a dozen people in several states. Suzanne Korcz was 27 when she disappeared after leaving a bar in Lockport in May 1987. The disappearance remained a mystery until her remains were found last September in a wooded area in Lockport. Korcz had owned a hair salon in Amherst. Police say earlier last year, Sells told Texas Rangers he killed Korcz after he had hopped a freight train and gotten off in Niagara Falls. Authorities say Sells is suspected in another 50 to 75 across the country. He's facing execution in Texas for killing a girl in 1999. (source: Associated Press) FLORIDA: Cop killer fighting execution----To avoid penalty, Jones claiming he's retarded In the latest bid to save his life, a man on death row for killing a Tallahassee police officer is claiming he is mentally retarded and should not be executed. Clarence Jones, 50, was sentenced to death in the 1988 murder of Ernest Ponce de Leon, the 1st Tallahassee police officer to be gunned down in the line of duty. Jones is one of hundreds of defendants across the country challenging their death sentences after a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that executing the mentally retarded is unconstitutional, a "cruel and unusual punishment" barred by the Eighth Amendment. When the court ruled, Florida was one of 18 states that already prohibited executing a mentally retarded defendant. But the Florida Supreme Court has refused to overturn Jones' death sentence once before. The justices were not swayed by other arguments in 1999 that Jones had a traumatic childhood, including early exposure to drugs and alcohol, and that his trial attorney was ineffective. This time, his first stop is Leon County's felony court, with a hearing set before Circuit Judge Kathleen Dekker on June 23. She will decide whether Jones is retarded. If she rules he is retarded, he can use that as evidence and appeal his sentence to the Florida Supreme Court. That's because the state's trial judges decide the facts; appellate courts consider the legal issues. Jones' lawyer, Terri Backhus of Tampa, did not respond to calls or an e-mail last week. In court documents, she said an "IQ test in public school" given to him at age 12 scored him at 67, "in the moderately retarded range." Under mental-health standards, however, a defendant has to have been diagnosed by a doctor as retarded before age 18 - often a challenge for death-row inmates, said one lawyer with expertise in death-penalty challenges. "The poor, the miserable, the dispossessed, they don't get diagnosed," said Jenny Greenberg, now director of the Florida Innocence Initiative, which is not working on Jones' case. But Assistant State Attorney Eddie Evans, representing the state in this month's hearing, said he does not think Jones is retarded. "He escaped; he was the leader of the group; he got the drop on 2 police officers," Evans said. "Can a person like that be so deficient that he doesn't know what he's doing?" Fatal shootout Here's what happened on July 8, 1988, according to reports: Ponce de Leon and rookie Officer Greg Armstrong were called to a Lake Bradford Road coin laundry to check out a suspicious green Chevrolet Impala. Jones, Irvin Griffin Jr. and Henry Goins, who had escaped from a Maryland prison, were inside the car. By that time, Jones already was a 10-time felon, having spent much of his life behind bars. A woman, Beverly Harris, was traveling with them; they were making their way to New Orleans. The men were planning to rob a credit union near the coin laundry when Ponce de Leon and Armstrong approached. Ponce de Leon had just enough time to call in the car's tag; 31 shots rang out in 2 minutes. Ponce de Leon, who was not wearing a bulletproof vest, was shot in the chest and died at the scene. Armstrong, now a TPD sergeant, was not hurt and returned fire. Jones and Griffin were wounded. They took the slain officer's weapon and broke into a nearby house, where they were caught. Harris wasn't charged and eventually testified against Jones and Griffin, saying Jones was the shooter. Griffin, 45, is serving life without possibility of parole. Goins, 43, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 30 years. He served only 14 years before being turned over to Maryland authorities in mid-2003, according to Department of Corrections records. Fighting over a biscuit Since first being imprisoned, Jones has had 11 disciplinary incidents, DOC records show. They include fighting another inmate, trying to bribe a correctional officer to give him a handcuffs key and threatening another inmate in an argument over a biscuit. Jones also has spent some of his time in prison seeking pen pals on the Internet. "I hope you wouldn't judge me by my environment or looks but know me for the person I am inside," Jones once wrote on a Web site for death-row inmates seeking international pen pals. "I think this is ridiculous," said Ponce de Leon's mother, 84-year-old Josephine Mingle of Jacksonville. "He wasn't retarded to break out of jail or use guns or steal money." Ponce de Leon was a 40-year-old divorced father of two and a former juvenile probation counselor. As a police officer, he once sheltered a homeless kitten in the back seat of his patrol car. His son, Patrick, died from kidney problems at 28. His daughter, Kimberly, now in her 30s, is a cosmetologist in Miami and has two children of her own. The children were not close to their father, whose wife divorced him while he served in Vietnam, Mingle said. Tallahassee police Sgt. Ken Sumpter, president of the Big Bend Police Benevolent Association, said he was unaware of the latest court action. "The murder of Ponce was a cruel and horrible act," he said. "It's unfortunate that 17 years after that murder, (Jones) is still able to file these appeals." Though prosecutors depict Jones as the ringleader, Greenberg said anyone who truly is retarded "doesn't mastermind a thing." "The death penalty should be reserved for the worst of the worst, and somebody without a fully functioning brain should be excluded," she said. What's Next A judge will decide at a hearing in circuit court June 23 whether Jones is retarded. After that, he can appeal his sentence to the Florida Supreme Court. MENTAL RETARDATION DEFINED "... Significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the period from conception to age 18." (source: Florida Statute 921.137) (source: Tallahassee Democrat) OHIO: Clemency hearing set for Spirko The clemency hearing for a man convicted of killing the Elgin postmistress 23 years ago has been scheduled for Aug. 23. John Spirko's clemency hearing is less than a month before his Sept. 20 scheduled execution. Spirko will not be at the hearing, which takes place before the 9-member parole board, but a member of the board will interview Spirko and relay his remarks to the rest of the board, said Andrea Dean, a spokeswoman for the state prison system. Spirko was sentenced to death for the 1982 murder of Elgin Postmistress Betty Jane Mottinger. Mottinger was abducted from the post office Aug. 9, 1982. Her body was found Sept. 18, 1982, in a soybean field in Findlay. She had been stabbed multiple times. At the hearing, Spirko's attorneys, family, friends and spiritual adviser will have a chance to speak on Spirko's behalf. Prosecutors and the victim's family also will have a chance to explain their side to the board. Each side is given an hour, state prison officials said. The parole board will not issue a decision that day, instead will issue a report with its findings and a recommendation on clemency to Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, who makes the final decision, Dean said. Spirko has exhausted his appeals but recently has asked a federal judge to reconsider his conviction after prosecutors dismissed charges against his alleged co-defendant who was in an out-of-state prison for 2 unrelated murder convictions. That man, Delaney Gibson Jr., was released from prison last year. (source: Lima News) ******************** High court reinstates murder conviction When he got word yesterday that the U.S. Supreme Court had reinstated the conviction of the man who killed his mother, Chris Stout didn't jump for joy. Instead, the Dublin man's thoughts drifted to Mary Jane Stout, his Italian mom, who he said "loved everybody." "I know what she'd be saying. "Bambino, don't worry about it." She was good people." "We won at the U.S. Supreme Court, the most powerful court in the world. They say he did it," an elated Stout added. In a unanimous decision, the court reinstated the murder conviction for John David Stumpf but essentially left to a lower court the decision whether the killing of the New Concord woman should have resulted in the death penalty. Stumpf, 45, was convicted of murdering Mrs. Stout and shooting her husband, Norman, on Sept. 13, 1984. He and friend Clyde Wesley stopped at the couple's Guernsey County home off I-70 and asked to use the telephone. Stumpf pleaded guilty to firstdegree murder and was sentenced to death for murdering Mrs. Stout. However, after several failed appeals over the years, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned both the conviction and death sentence in April 2004. Ohio Solicitor Douglas R. Cole said the Stumpf decision is "a pretty solid win for the state of Ohio. "This is a case where, 20 years after the crime had been committed, the 6 th Circuit comes in and vacates the conviction. We found that to be very concerning." Cole said the 6 th Circuit judges, at the order of the Supreme Court, must now revisit Stumpf's sentencing. He could be sentenced to death again or to life in prison. The new sentencing then could be appealed to the Supreme Court, Cole said. According to court documents, Stumpf shot Mr. Stout. But he has said Wesley fired the shots that killed Mrs. Stout. The high-court decision written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor reversed the appeals court's ruling, in part because under Ohio law "aides and abettors" also can be convicted of aggravated murder. Stumpf's attorney, Alan M. Freedman, could not be reached yesterday. The high court heard the case April 19. Chris Stout, a former corrections officer, said the court ruling was a "whole lot of weight off my shoulders." He said Attorney General Jim Petro, Cole and Steve Mayer, of the attorney general's capital crimes section, are "all heroes in my book. I wouldn't say that about a lot of people, not even John Wayne." Last year, the 6th Circuit erroneously announced that the court had upheld Stumpf's conviction and death sentence, then retracted the statement less than 24 hours later. "I am so glad that I live in the state of Ohio," Stout said. "I thought there wasn't anybody going to fight this except me." (source: Columbus Dispatch) ******************* North Carolina professor may lead UC law -- Harvard graduate favored as dean after national search A University of North Carolina law professor is the top choice to become the next dean of the University of Cincinnati's law school. Louis D. Bilionis, also a member of the national board of directors for the American Civil Liberties Union, was selected by a search committee to replace Joseph Tomain, who now is a dean emeritus. If the university's board of trustees approves the appointment, Bilionis would take over July 1 as the 29th dean in the law school's history. He also would become the second new dean this year at UC, where the deans of four of the school's 15 colleges have resigned in the past year. In May, UC's College of Medicine selected David M. Stern, former dean of medicine at the Medical College of Georgia. The university still is looking for new deans at the engineering and business colleges. UC officials describe Bilionis, who could not be reached for comment Monday, as a scholar in constitutional law, criminal law and evidence. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Bilionis has written extensively about the death penalty and constitutional rights. He was among lawyers nationwide who wrote former Illinois Gov. George Ryan urging him to consider granting clemency to death-row inmates after concerns arose about the fairness of the system in that state. He also has participated in several cases heard by the U.S. Supreme Court as well as state and federal appeals courts. Bilionis, a Massachusetts native, has been a professor at North Carolina since 1988. UC spokesman Greg Hand said the search committee, consisting of faculty, students and community representatives, conducted a national search that lasted about 7 months. The committee was chaired by Karen Gould, dean of UC's McMicken College of Arts and Sciences. UC's college of law was founded in 1833. (source: Cincinnati Enquirer)
