July 12 GEORGIA----execution Georgia executes man who killed lawyer in 1984 A parolee who fatally stabbed a lawyer with whom he had a relationship and dismembered the victim's body after the murder was executed Tuesday. Robert Conklin, 44, was given a lethal injection at the state prison in Jackson for the March 26, 1984, murder of George Crooks, 28. Conklin was pronounced dead at 7:44 p.m. Minutes earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had rejected 2 petitions for a stay of execution. Conklin had no final statement but did ask for a final prayer, after which he said "Amen." Sherri Parker, a friend of his, sat in the second row of witnesses. When Conklin was strapped to the gurney and before the chemicals were administered, he said "hello" and smiled at her. She waved back. As the chemicals were administered he looked at her and said "Goodbye." His chest heaved and his head tilted backward, and the woman started crying uncontrollably and left the chamber. The victim's brother, Jim, and sister-in-law represented the family as witnesses. On the evening of the murder, Crooks went to Conklin's Atlanta apartment. Conklin says he invited Crooks over to tell him that he wanted to end their relationship. But, prosecutors say Conklin's intent was to kill Crooks. Conklin's bid for clemency was denied earlier Tuesday by the state parole board. Also Tuesday, the state Supreme Court, in a 5-2 decision, denied Conklin's request for a stay of execution. Chief Justice Leah Sears said in a dissenting opinion that Conklin's trial was unfair and his conviction and sentence were "manifestly unjust." Conklin says he was fending off an attempted rape at the time of the attack. Prosecutors say Conklin acted with malice and after stabbing Crooks with a screwdriver, he cut up the victim's body and disposed of the pieces in trash bags and a garbage disposal to avoid being caught. Last week, defense lawyers filed a motion challenging Conklin's incarceration. The lawyers said Conklin deserved a new trial and they asked a judge to at least hold a hearing at which Conklin can offer proof for his self-defense claims. In the clemency petition, defense lawyers presented an affidavit from the former medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Crooks' body. The doctor, Saleh Zaki, wrote of Crooks' death that he does not "believe that this was necessarily an intentional murder case." Defense lawyers also included in the petition documents that show Conklin led a productive life while in prison, attending church services and completing a bachelor of arts program offered by Western Illinois University. He even solicited pen pals on an Internet site sponsored by a group opposed to the death penalty. But Crooks' brother said before the execution Tuesday that Conklin was after money and that is why he committed the murder. Jim Crooks said Conklin should pay with his life. "It's been 21 years of appeals. Enough is enough," said Jim Crooks, 56. A year before the killing, Conklin was released on parole from prison in Illinois following burglary, theft and robbery convictions in Princeton, Ill., Eureka, Ill., and Joliet, Ill., a Georgia parole board spokeswoman said. Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said last week that he believed Conklin deserved to be executed. Conklin becomes the 3rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Georgia and the 39th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983. Conklin becomes the 29th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 973rd overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977 (sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin) NORTH CAROLINA: Compromised anti-death penalty bill creeps through NC House A revised execution moratorium bill was scheduled to go before the House Judiciary Committee I on Tuesday (July 12). The legislation drops language calling for a two-year suspension of the death penalty, instead allowing executions to proceed while giving superior court judges the power to stay executions if procedural problems are found. The legislation has been renamed: "Study the Death Penalty/Permit Executions During the Study Absent a Judicial Stay." Rep. Joe Hackney, a Democrat from Chapel Hill who is the bills primary sponsor, said he expects the bill to receive support from the majority of the Judiciary I Committee, which he chairs. An earlier version of the bill passed the committee 8-6 in March, with committee member John Blust, a Republican from Greensboro, missing the vote. "There have been some mistakes made in our court systems which involved an innocent person being on death row," Hackney said. "We need to pause and make sure that what were doing is accurate correct and fair." Similar legislation passed the Senate in 2003 but stalled in the House Judiciary I Committee and never received a full floor vote. Co-sponsors of the bill include four Greensboro Democrats, Reps. Alma Adams, Pricey Harrison, Maggie Jeffus and Earl Jones. Harrison sits on the Judiciary I Committee with Hackney. 2 other cosponsors of the bill, Rep. Martha Alexander, D-Charlotte, and Rep. Verla Insko, D-Chapel Hill, are also members of the Judiciary Committee. Rep. Bonner Stiller, a Republican from Brunswick County who serves as vice chairman of the Judiciary I Committee, said he hasnt read the revised legislation, but expects that hell vote against it, just as he voted against the earlier version. He said his fellow House Republicans are also unlikely to support the bill. "I'm not opposed to studying or double checking any questionable case, but there are some cases where people don't deny they did it," he said. Stiller, a defense attorney, said he supports the death penalty and doesnt want to see it suspended for capital defendants who are unambiguously guilty. He cited the case of slain Boiling Springs Lake police officer Mitch Prince. "You had a police officer and a guy got out of his car, took his service revolver, and executed him," Stiller said. "He was the kind of guy you would want to stop your child because he would just say, 'Hey, you need to slow down a little bit.' He was a deacon in his church. There's a situation where the guy did it and everybody knows he did it because he was still firing the service revolver when the police arrived on the scene to arrest him. In my mind, in my heart, that guy deserves the death penalty. That fellow didnt give Mitch an opportunity for a moratorium." The revised legislation is designed to win over lawmakers like Stiller, who support the death penalty, but are somewhat sensitive to concerns that it isnt always applied appropriately. Gone is the language prohibiting the states secretary of correction from setting a date for execution any sooner than two years after the legislation is passed. In its place, the bill states that in the 2-year period a state committee studies the fairness of the death penalty, a superior court judge may issue a stay of execution following appeal by a capital defendant if the judge finds credible evidence that at least one of the following applies: factual evidence of innocence, prosecutorial misconduct, incompetent defense counsel, membership of a racial group that is disproportionately impacted by the death penalty and other factors. Stiller said he expects the "Study the Death Penalty" legislation to sail through the Judiciary I Committee, where Democrats comprise the majority, but go down in defeat in a House floor vote because of opposition from conservative Democrats. People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, an organization based in Carrboro, issued an e-mail alert on July 8 urging its members to call their representatives and urge them to support the bill. "While [People of Faith Against the Death Penalty] and its partners in the North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium would prefer a suspension of executions for 2 years, we know well that there are not enough supporters in the House to make a suspension a political reality," the e-mail alert reads. "If pass the revised bill would represent one of the most successful state laws to halt executions in the United States, short of abolition." (source: Yes! Weekly) ILLINOIS: Ex-death row inmate called drug dealer, 'man with a mission'P> A federal prosecutor portrayed Aaron Patterson on Tuesday as a drug-dealing gang leader eager to buy guns, while a defense attorney described the former death row inmate who was freed by then-Gov. George Ryan as "a man with a mission" eager to expose police misconduct. "You will hear evidence that the defendants are members of the same street gang-- the Black P. Stone gang," Assistant U.S. Attorney Carrie E. Hamilton said in her opening statement as the trial of Patterson and co-defendant Mark Mannie finally got under way after 2 weeks of delays. Patterson, 40, is charged with masterminding 2 drug conspiracies, dealing in heroin and marijuana, buying guns despite a previous felony conviction and illegally owning a machine gun. Patterson served 17 years in state prison, 13 on death row, for a double murder. As one of Ryan's last acts before leaving office in 2003, he pardoned Patterson and 3 other death row inmates while commuting the sentences of 160 other condemned prisoners to life without parole. Ryan, who said he was acting out of concern over a system that sent 13 wrongly convicted prisoners to death row, declared that none of the evidence against Patterson was credible. Patterson left prison vowing to devote his life to exposing police misconduct. "He emerged from prison a changed man, a man with a mission," who was intent on exposing police corruption, defense attorney Paul Camarena told jurors in his opening statement. But Camarena said Patterson's zeal led him into a trap set by federal agents and an informant eager to shorten his own drug-selling sentence by cooperating with the government. Hamilton, however, said that government videos and tapes would document 6 months of drug dealing capped by the illegal purchase of 4 guns. She repeatedly held up a sinister-looking MAC-10 machine pistol confiscated as federal agents swooped down on Patterson and Mannie at the close of a federal sting operation. Patterson remained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center Tuesday, where he was banished 2 weeks ago after causing disruptions at hearings that included verbal potshots at the prosecutors, bickering with the judge and a considerable amount of profanity. Last week, Patterson sent word that he wanted to return to court and U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer scheduled an 8:30 a.m. Tuesday meeting to see if he would behave himself. But he boycotted that meeting and did not use a closed-circuit TV installed so that he could watch from behind bars. Pallmeyer cautioned jurors not to jump to any conclusions based on his absence. Also missing from the defense table was attorney Demitrus T. Evans, who had staged 2 tearful walkouts in as many weeks of hearings. Pallmeyer released her from the case Monday and veteran attorney Tommy Brewer, who had represented Patterson previously, was brought in. Evans sat quietly in the spectator seats as the trial got under way. Among the witnesses defense attorneys plan to call is David Protess, a Northwestern University journalism professor whose classes in investigative reporting have focused on overturning wrongful convictions. Camarena said Protess will testify that on leaving prison Patterson studied investigative techniques that might help him in uncovering police wrongdoing. (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: S.C. Upholds 2nd Death Sentence for Defendant Whose First Trial Lawyer Was Held Ineffective The California Supreme Court yesterday affirmed the death sentence imposed for the 1984 murder of an Arizona tool salesman whose body was found inside a van in a Long Beach parking lot. The maximum penalty was not disproportionate to Robert Paul Wilsons culpability for the murder of Roy Swader, Justice Ming Chin wrote for a unanimous court. "Defendant robbed and murdered Swader, who trusted defendant by employing him and allowing him to live in his home for a period of time," Chin explained. "Defendant shot Swader twice in the head while he was asleep in order to take his money. Later, while in custody, defendant solicited the murder of a key prosecution witness who could place defendant and Swader together before the crimes." Nor, Chin wrote, does it make a difference whether, as Wilson claimed, an uncharged suspect in the case played a major role in the crime. "[C]ontrary to defendants suggestion, the alleged greater culpability of another person is irrelevant for purposes of intracase proportionality review." It was the second death sentence Wilson received in the case. In a 1992 ruling, the high court Wilsons original trial lawyer, Ronald J. Slick - now a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner - should have objected to the admission of taped telephone conversations involving the potential killing of the witness, who identified Wilson as having been with the victim in Indio just before the murder. That contradicted Wilsons original statement to police, in which he acknowledged that he often came with Swader to Southern California - Swader would buy tools here and then sell them at a swap meet in Tucson - but claimed the last time he did so was 3 weeks before Swader was killed. Chief Justice Ronald M. George, in the 1992 opinion, said Slick should have objected because the other party to the conversations was, unknown to the defendant, working for the prosecution. Since Wilson was represented by a lawyer at the time, the state was violating his right to counsel by obtaining incriminating statements from him, George explained. At the 2nd trial, prosecutors introduced the 1st-trial testimony of Donald Loar, the informant who notified authorities that Wilson wanted to kill a witness. Jurors found that there was enough evidence to convict him of 1st degree murder and to find that the killing occurred in the course of a robbery. Judge Richard Charvat, since retired, imposed the 2nd death sentence. Chin rejected the contention that police and prosecutors were less than diligent in trying to locate Loar for the second trial, noting that they did not begin searching for him until a year after the Supreme Court threw out the original conviction. The justice noted that testimony in the 2nd trial did not begin until 17 months after the high courts decision. The case was argued by Deputy Attorney General Chung Mar for the prosecution and Timothy Foley, a San Francisco attorney appointed to represent Wilson on appeal, for the defense. The case is People v. Wilson, 05 S.O.S. 3436. (source: Metropolitan News Company) VIRGINIA----impending execution Attorneys ask for stay of execution for man set to die July 27 Attorneys for a Centreville man scheduled to be put to death later this month have filed an application with the U-S Supreme Court for a stay of execution. 23-year-old Justin Michael Wolfe was convicted in 2001 of the murder-for-hire shooting of his marijuana supplier, 21-year-old Daniel Petrole Jr. Wolfe is scheduled for execution on July 27. Attorneys for Wolfe filed the request Friday -- a day after the state court denied his application for a stay of execution. They are asking the high court to address whether Virginia has the right to limit postconviction petitions to 50 pages. Prisoners other than those on death row have an unlimited number of pages to present their claims. Wolfe, Petrole and gunman Owen Merton Barber the 4th were members of a marijuana ring operating throughout northern Virginia. Another death row inmate who was scheduled for execution Monday received a stay from the court so justices can review the appeal when they return from summer break in October. The execution of 41-year-old Robin Lovitt would have been the first in Virginia in 2005. (source: Associated Press)
