Sept. 8
TEXAS:
Inmate's backers protest outside defender's home
Supporters of death row inmate Frances Newton reiterated their attacks
Wednesday on her trial attorney Ron Mock, whom they say bungled Newton's
defense during her capital murder case.
A small group of protesters unsuccessfully attempted to draw Mock out of
his south Houston home and confront him with their allegations.
Quanell X, who was among the protesters, accused Mock of committing a
series of errors.
He said Mock did not call any witnesses in behalf of Newton, interview any
of the state witnesses or discuss the case with his client until the day
before the trial. "He is a man of no integrity," said Quanell X, who
called Mock's defense of Newton a crime.
The State Bar of Texas suspended Mock for 35 months for disciplinary
problems unrelated to the Newton case.
Mock could not be reached for comment.
Newton, 40, faces lethal injection Wednesday for the April 7, 1987,
shooting deaths of her husband, Adrian Newton, and their 2 children.
(source: Houston Chronicle)
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FIFTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS MOVES TO HOUSTON
The New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears East
Texas federal cases, began to preside over cases at its "emergency command
post" in Houston on Wednesday.
While the court remains closed for new matters since it was displaced by
Hurricane Katrina, some oral argument panels have rescheduled certain
cases to be heard in Houston at the district court, according to the
appeals court's Web site, www.ca5.uscourts.gov.
The court is asking attorneys and litigants not to send any filings or
documents to New Orleans, and indicates that filing deadlines have been
extended.
Emergency matters, such as death penalty cases with execution dates, or
deportation matters with imminent and confirmed deportation dates, may be
filed by fax at (713) 250-5050, or mailed or delivered to the chambers of
Chief Judge Carolyn Dineen King at 515 Rusk St., Room 11020, Houston,
77002.
The court anticipates opening the clerk's office for a broader range of
matters around Sept. 14 at the Houston location, the Web site states. The
Fifth Circuit court decides appeals from the federal courts in Tyler and
throughout the Eastern District of Texas.
(source: Tyler Morning Telegraph)
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Attorney for TCB gang leader withdraws
The attorney defending Tri-City Bombers gang head Jeffrey "Dragon" Juarez
against capital murder charges for the 2003 Edinburg massacre on Monte
Cristo Road withdrew Wednesday because of severe health problems.
Juarez, 29, wrote several letters in recent months to 332nd state District
Judge Mario Ramirez asking the judge remove lead attorney Mark Alexander.
Ramirez had appointed Alexander, along with attorney Alfredo Morales Jr.,
to represent Juarez following his July 2003 arrest for the deaths of 6 men
in a pseudo-cop raid that turned deadly.
In response to Juarezs written requests to the court, Alexander said at a
pretrial hearing he would withdraw from the case. He suffered a heart
attack in June, then fluid in his lungs and an aneurism in July. An
initial trial date had not yet been set.
"Im just now recovering," Alexander said. "Theyve got me on 10
medications. I dont believe theres any way I could effectively render
service to Mr. Juarez."
Ramirez appointed Emilio Rodriguez Jr. to represent Juarez instead and
said he would give him and Morales time to prepare before finally setting
a trial date.
"Im not going to try this case until Mr. Rodriguez says hes ready,"
Ramirez said.
After the hearing, Rodriguez said he did not know how long it would take
for him to prepare for the case and that he needed to meet with Alexander,
Morales and Juarez.
Juarez is the 4th and likely last man for whom Hidalgo County prosecutors
will seek the death penalty in connection with the Jan. 5, 2003, murders
at 2 homes in and outside Monte Cristo Road.
At the time of the murders, Juarez - the major in the gangs military-style
chain of command - lived in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land, but
prosecutors and police said subordinate gang members had sought and
received his approval before proceeding with their plans to invade the
homes on Monte Cristo Road.
Pharr police arrested Juarez in July 2003 during a routine traffic stop
and has since held him in Hidalgo County Jail awaiting trial.
As one of 13 indicted in the case, Juarez is tried under Texass law of
parties, in which a person is criminally responsible for a crime another
person commits if he or she aids or conspires to commit the felony. In
capital murder cases, the law of parities allows juries to seek the death
penalty if they believe the defendant could have anticipated murder.
In the same court room Juarezs trial is scheduled, a jury sentenced fellow
Tri-City Bomber gang member Rodolfo "Kreeper" Medrano to death row Aug. 27
for lending gang members the weapons used in the murders.
Prosecutors acknowledged Medrano did not participate in the shooting and
was not at the scene of the crime, but still convinced jurors Medrano
participated in the conspiracy to rob marijuana by lending the AK-47 and
SKS assault weapons used to kill. Therefore, prosecutors argued, Medrano
could have "reasonably anticipated" his fellow gang members would commit
murder.
In addition to Medrano - who the judge ordered transferred to the state
prison in Huntsville this week - 2 others are already on death row in
connection with the Edinburg murders: Juan Raul Navarro Ramirez, 20, who
police said participated in the raid, and Humberto "Gallo" Garza, 31, the
gangs captain who planned the robbery and drove the men to the crime
scene.
Another man, Robert "Bones" Gene Garza, 22, who was indicted in the
Edinburg murders, is also on death row for the 2002 shootings of 4 women
in Donna.
6 other men are awaiting trial on the Edinburg case while in county jail,
and Edinburg police are continue to look for 2 other men thought to have
participated in the raid and to now be in Mexico: Ricardo "Rica" Cabello
Martinez Gonzalez, 22, and Juan Miguel "Perro" Nuez, 29.
(source: The Monitor)
*********************************
Without Evidence: Executing Frances Newton -- Another Texas death row case
marked by official carelessness, negligence, and intransigence
Unless the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry act to
stop it, on Sept. 14 Frances Newton will become only the 3rd woman
executed by the state of Texas since 1982, and the 1st black woman
executed since the Civil War.
Unique in that historical sense, in other ways the Frances Newton case is
painfully unexceptional. For there is no incontrovertible evidence against
Newton, and the paltry evidence that does exist has been completely
compromised. Moreover, her story is one more in a long line of Texas death
row cases in which the prosecutions were sloppy or dishonest, the defenses
incompetent or negligent, and the constitutional guarantee of a fair trial
was honored only in name.
As Harris Co. prosecutors tell the story, the now 40-year-old Newton is a
cold-blooded killer who murdered her husband and two young children inside
the family's apartment outside Houston on April 7, 1987, by shooting each
of them, execution-style, in order to collect life insurance. Newton had
the opportunity, they argued during her 1988 trial, and a motive - a
troubled relationship with her husband, Adrian, and the promise of
$100,000 in insurance money from policies she'd recently taken out on his
life and on the life of their 21-month-old daughter Farrah. And she had
the means, they say: a .25-caliber Raven Arms pistol she had allegedly
stolen from a boyfriend's house.
To the state, it is a simple, open-and-shut case, which requires no
further review. "Her case has been reviewed by every possible court,"
Harris Co. Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson told the Los Angeles
Times in November. "She killed her two children and her husband. There is
very, very strong evidence of that."
Yet despite Wilson's insistence, Newton's case isn't simple at all - and
such "evidence" as there is, is far from strong. "The State's theory is
simple, and it is superficially compelling," attorney David Dow, head of
the Texas Innocence Network at the University of Houston Law Center,
argued in Newton's clemency petition, currently pending before the Board
of Pardons and Paroles. "As we will see, however, appearances can be
misleading."
>From the beginning, Frances Newton has maintained her innocence. She has
also offered a plausible alternative theory of the crime - a theory that
neither police, prosecutors, nor Newton's own trial attorney, the infamous
and now suspended Ronald Mock, have ever investigated. Newton and her
defenders contend that Adrian, Farrah, and 7-year-old Alton were likely
murdered by someone connected to a drug dealer to whom Adrian owed $1,500.
The alternative theory has much to say for it - among other things, it
explains the lack of physical evidence connecting Newton to the bloody
murders.
Lingering questions about the physical evidence against Newton prompted
the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend, and Gov. Rick Perry
to grant, a 120-day reprieve for Newton on Dec. 1, 2004 - the day she was
last scheduled for execution. Although Perry said he saw no "evidence of
innocence" - legally, an oxymoron - he granted the 4-month stay to allow
for retesting of evidence contested by Newton's defense, including nitrite
residue on the hem of her skirt and gun ballistics evidence.
But testing on the skirt proved impossible, because the 1987 tests had
destroyed the nitrite particles, and Harris Co. court officials had stored
the skirt by sealing it inside a bag together with items of the victims'
bloody clothing - thereby rendering it worthless as evidence. The 2nd
round of ballistics testing, on the other hand, supposedly confirmed a
match between the gun prosecutors say Newton used and the bullets that
killed her family. However, that match may be fundamentally undermined -
because there is no certain connection between the gun and Newton.
According to Dow, it appears that police actually recovered at least 2,
and perhaps 3, .25-caliber Raven Arms pistols during their investigation
of the murders - conflicting evidence that neither the police nor the
prosecutors ever revealed to Newton's defense. Dow argues that it is
virtually impossible to know whether prosecutors have been truthful in
claiming that the gun that Newton admits to hiding on April 7, 1987, was
the murder weapon. "How many firearms were recovered and investigated in
this case and who owned them?" Dow asks in a supplemental petition filed
with the BPP on Aug. 25. "How many records have been withheld from
Newton's attorneys throughout this case?"
In short, there is now even more doubt about Newton's guilt than there was
when she was granted the stay - distressing Newton's many defenders, among
them Adrian's parents, 2 former prison officials, and at least 1 of the
jurors who heard Newton's case. "We never wanted to see Frances get
executed," Adrian's parents Tom and Virginia Louis wrote to the BPP on
Aug. 25. "When the trial occurred, nobody from the [DA's] Office ever
asked ... our opinion. We were willing to testify on Frances' behalf, but
Frances' defense lawyer never approached us," they continued. "We do not
wish to suffer the loss of another family member."
A Bloody Crime
In the months before the murders, Frances and Adrian Newton were having
marital problems. They were each involved in extramarital relationships,
and Adrian was using drugs. In an Aug. 30 Gatesville prison interview,
Newton told me that in addition to smoking marijuana, Adrian had developed
a cocaine habit. "He had told me he was using cocaine, but I'd never seen
that, but I saw the effects of it," she recalled. "He was home later, he
was irritable, less responsible."
But she and Adrian had been together since she was a girl, and she was
determined to work things out. That was on her mind on the afternoon of
April 7, 1987, when she and Adrian sat down and talked. "We had decided
that we were going to get through this together," she said. Adrian
insisted that he wasn't using anymore, so when they were done talking and
Adrian went into the living room "to watch TV ... I decided to be nosy and
see if he was being honest," she recalled. Quietly, she opened the cabinet
where he kept his stash.
"That's when I found the gun," she said. Newton said she immediately
recalled a conversation she'd heard earlier that day, between Adrian and
his brother, Sterling, who'd been staying with the family. "I couldn't
hear real close, but it sounded like they'd been in some trouble," she
said. "I thought I'd better take [the gun] out of there because I didn't
want it to be in the house ... I didn't want him to get into any trouble."
She removed the gun, placed it in a duffel bag and took it with her when
she left the apartment around 6pm to run some errands, she says.
Newton says it was the last time she saw her family alive.
At 7pm, after a couple of errands, Newton arrived at her cousin Sondra
Nelms' house, where the two chatted and decided to return to Newton's
apartment. As Newton backed out of the drive, she saw the duffel on the
back seat and realized she needed to hide it. With Nelms watching, Newton
retrieved the bag and walked next door into a burned and abandoned house
owned by her parents, and there (as both women later confirmed), she left
the bag.
The women arrived at the apartment around 8pm, and didn't immediately
realize that anything was wrong. Newton thought Adrian was napping - until
she saw the blood. "As Frances walked around the couch and saw his upper
torso, she immediately screamed and bolted to the children's bedroom,"
Nelms said in an affidavit. "Frances began to frantically scream
uncontrollably. I could not calm her down enough to elicit the apartment's
address."
Newton says she was shocked and dazed, but gave police as much information
as possible - including the fact that she'd just removed a gun from the
house. She told police about Adrian's drug habit, and that he owed some
money to a dealer - which Adrian's brother, Terrence, corroborated,
telling police he knew where the dealer lived. Police never pursued the
lead. "To your knowledge, was the alleged drug dealer ever interviewed by
anyone in connection with this case?" Newton's attorney asked Sheriff's
Officer Frank Pratt at trial. "No," Pratt replied.
A bullet remained lodged in Adrian's head, meaning that the blood and
brain matter would have blown back onto the gun and shooter - confirmed by
a trail of blood found in the hallway. Police found no trace of residual
nitrites (gunshot residue) on Newton's hands, nor on the long sleeves of
the sweater she was wearing. They collected the clothing she'd worn that
day. There was no blood, nor any trace of blood, on any of the items.
Which Gun?
The next day, April 8, according to trial records, police supposedly
confirmed that the gun they had retrieved from Newton's duffel bag in the
abandoned building - at her direction - matched the murder bullets. Yet
Newton was not arrested until more than 2 weeks later. Newton says that
Harris Co. Sheriff's Sgt. J.J. Freeze told her that police had actually
recovered two guns; in a sworn affidavit, Newton's father Bee Henry Nelms
says Freeze told him the same thing and added that Newton would
"eventually be released." Nonetheless, Newton was arrested 2 weeks later -
after she filed a claim on Adrian and Farrah's life insurance policies -
and charged with the capital murder of her 21-month-old daughter.
The state's primary evidence against her was elementary: Newton had filed
for insurance benefits, and the Department of Public Safety forensic
technicians had detected nitrite traces near the hem of Newton's long
skirt - although they couldn't say with certainty that the nitrites were
not her father's garden fertilizer transferred earlier that day from the
hands of her toddler daughter. For physical evidence, the state relied
primarily on the supposed ballistics match to the gun Newton had hidden.
Yet in court Freeze was somewhat vague: "I believe we talked about two
pistols," he testified. "I know of one for sure, and there was mention of
a 2nd one that Ms. Newton had purchased earlier."
There are serious questions about the prosecutors' timeline, which would
have required Newton somehow to murder her family, clean herself of any
and all blood traces and gunshot residue, and drive to her cousin's house
- all in less than 30 minutes. And since her 1988 conviction, the question
of a 2nd gun has haunted Newton's case. The ballistics evidence was
increasingly suspect in any case because of the recent history of the
Houston PD crime lab, which has been repeatedly charged with incompetent,
shoddy work, resulting in a number of exonerations and the wholesale
discrediting of the lab, which remains under investigation. The lab's
clouded reputation was one factor that prompted Gov. Perry to accept the
BPP's recommendation to grant Newton a reprieve last winter.
Although subsequent testing supposedly confirmed the ballistics match, the
search for the 2nd gun continued. And in June, Dow argued in Newton's
clemency petition, the truth finally began to leak out, and from the most
unlikely place: the Harris Co. District Attorney's Office. During a brief
videotaped interview with a Dutch reporter, Assistant DA Roe Wilson
inadvertently confirmed the existence of a 2nd gun. "Police recovered a
gun from the apartment that belonged to the husband," Wilson acknowledged.
"[It] had not been fired, it had not been involved in the offense, " she
continued. "It was simply a gun [Adrian] had there; so there is no 2nd-gun
theory."
Wilson and her boss, DA Chuck Rosenthal, quickly retracted her admission.
Wilson told the Houston Chronicle that she'd simply "misspoken," and
Rosenthal accused Dow of fabricating the idea of a second gun "out of
whole cloth." "I'm very clear," Rosenthal told The New York Times. "One
gun was recovered in the case." On Aug. 24, the Court of Criminal Appeals
agreed, dismissing Newton's most recent appeal. "The evidence in this case
was more than sufficient to establish [Newton's] guilt," Judge Cathy
Cochran wrote. "The various details that [Newton] suggests her trial
counsel should have investigated in greater detail do not detract ... from
the single crucial piece of evidence that concerns her: she disposed of
the murder weapon immediately after the killing."
Dow and his University of Houston law students persisted, and late last
month may have succeeded. In August, Harris Co. investigators provided
testimony that police may have recovered at least two identical
.25-caliber Raven Arms pistols. In separate affidavits, 2 police
investigators recall tracing firearms recovered in connection with the
murders. Officer Frank Pratt told one of Dow's students that he was
assigned a gun found in the abandoned house, which he traced to a purchase
by Newton's boyfriend's cousin at a local Montgomery Ward. He also
discovered, he told student Frances Zeon, that the purchaser had also
bought a "2nd, identical gun"; but he didn't follow up on the 2nd gun,
because "he felt there was no need to do so." Pratt said he'd written up a
report on the gun - a report Newton's attorneys have never seen.
However, Newton's attorneys do have a police report written by Detective
M. Parinello, who reported he had traced yet another firearm recovered in
connection with the case to a purchase from Rebel Distributors in Humble,
Texas, which he said also ended up with Newton's boyfriend. "The question
arises: what recovered firearm was ... Pratt investigating?" asks the
clemency petition. "Counsel does not have access to the Harris Co.
Sheriff's Department's records in this case. A request made directly to
that institution for all records in connection to its investigation of
this offense was rejected."
>From all this conflicting yet incomplete gun evidence, it seems reasonable
to surmise that there is no way to know which gun was in fact the murder
weapon, or which gun was delivered for ballistics tests in 1987 or this
year. Since the prosecution relied so heavily on a weapon that Newton
herself had delivered to them, the new evidence discovered by her
attorneys completely undermines her conviction.
At press time, Harris Co. Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. John Martin was
not able to reach Parinello or Pratt for comment but said that a captain
who worked the Newton case had said there was only one gun recovered
during the investigation. Harris Co. DA Chuck Rosenthal reiterated that,
"as far as I know" there was only one gun recovered in the case. However,
he said that even if investigators had recovered multiple firearms, and
even if each were the same brand and caliber, the fact remains that the
weapon investigators recovered from the abandoned house, which was
immediately "tagged" and "tested," matched the bullets recovered from the
victims. "Let's say, for conjecture's sake, that you ran down 50 or 100
guns, all associated with the case," he said. "The fact [is] that only one
fired the bullets and that we know where that gun came from."
Criminal Defense
As in many Texas capital cases, a large part of the problem with Newton's
appeals is that her court-appointed trial attorney, Ron Mock, never
actually investigated her case. If he had, perhaps he would've followed up
the drug dealer lead or Freeze's reported comments about a 2nd gun. Newton
and her parents implored the trial judge to allow her to change attorneys,
and Mock admitted to the judge that he hadn't talked to any prosecution
witnesses, nor had he subpoenaed any defense witness. The judge granted
the motion to remove Mock but he declined a continuance, leaving Newton
little choice but to go to trial with Mock. "It was stunning," she told
me. "[Mock gets on the stand and] says, 'I don't know anything,' and for
the judge to just dismiss it ... it was stunning." (Mock has since been
brought before the State Bar's disciplinary board at least 5 times on
various charges of professional misconduct, for which he has been fined
and sometimes suspended; he is currently suspended from practicing law
until late 2007.)
The Harris Co. prosecutors' defense of the conviction has also worn thin,
especially given Roe Wilson's supposed "misstatement" about the second
gun. To Newton's mother, Jewel Nelms, Wilson's admission is no mistake.
"I've known all the time that there was a second gun," she told Houston's
KPFT radio last month. "So I want to say again, to Roe Wilson, I thank you
... very much for letting us know, indeed, that there's somebody down
there that knows about the 2nd gun and was willing to talk about it - even
though I know it wasn't her intention to do it."
Newton's clemency petition is still pending before the Board of Pardons
and Paroles. On Monday, Sept. 6, her attorneys filed a petition with the
state district court in Houston and the Court of Criminal Appeals,
claiming that the state's failure to disclose evidence of a second gun
violated her right to due process. At press time, Gov. Perry's office had
received more than 4,000 letters, faxes, e-mails, and postcards regarding
Newton's impending execution - most imploring Perry to commute her death
sentence to life in prison. Letters about Newton's bid should be addressed
to: The Honorable Rick Perry, Office of the Governor, PO Box 12428,
Austin, 78711-2428; and to Chairwoman Rissie Owens, Texas Board of Pardons
and Paroles, Executive Clemency Unit, PO Box 13401, Austin, 78711.
(source: Austin Chronicle)
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New program aims to provide better representation for the indigent
4 years ago, when the state legislature passed the Texas Fair Defense Act
(Senate Bill 7), Houston Senator Rodney Ellis made the observation that
"poor defendants get a poor defense" in Texas. It was an assessment that
even many tough-on-crime Republicans found difficult to dispute.
As part of Bexar County's ongoing effort to improve the quality of
representation for indigent defendants, the Commissioners Court recently
approved the creation of a county Appellate Public Defender's Office.
Supporters say it brings coherence to an appellate public-defense system
plagued by personal favoritism and haphazard representation.
"Senate Bill 7 brought about some really good changes, where you were only
appointed to cases for which you were qualified," says Angela Moore, chief
appellate public defender for Bexar County. "But then what we saw was that
an abundance of appeals were going to the same 1 or 2 people that the
judges liked for some reason, or whatever, and some defendants were
falling through the cracks. Cost-effectiveness was an issue, but my big
concern was that due process be provided for these defendants."
A fiscal 2002 review by the Bexar County Auditor found that of 116 cases
paid by the auditor, 45 went to two attorneys. Because judges would
appoint these favored attorneys without regard to their workload, some
defendants would have to wait while their overloaded attorneys asked for
time extensions. It was one of the problems the Commissioners Court
attempted to solve by creating the county's appellate-defense program.
The Texas Fair Defense Act emerged in response to a study by the
Spangenberg Group that harshly critiqued the manner in which Texas handled
indigent criminal cases. Moore says Bexar County's success in implementing
the reforms of the TFDA caused the Spangerberg Group, in a 2002 follow-up
study, to rate the county 2nd in the state in indigent defense.
By providing an office whose sole responsibility is appellate defense,
county commissioners hoped to eliminate the need for judges to slog
through attorneys' vouchers, which they previously had to do on a
case-by-case basis, and to create a system of responsible representation
for indigent defendants.
"This program is here to provide one cohesive unit that's accountable:
accountable to the judges in that we have to show when things were filed,
and accountable to the taxpayers in that the Commissioners Court has some
oversight of our budget," Moore says.
According to Moore, Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed strongly
opposes the new program. "She wanted it to be squashed at the
commissioners court level," Moore says. "I don't know what her rationale
is, because we can show that this type of system - which is the national
trend - will not only provide better representation for the defendant, but
will be more cost-effective for the county as well."
Reed did not respond to interview requests from the Current.
The Appellate Public Defender's Office received 80 % of its funding from a
grant of more than $300,000 by a task force on indigent defense, with the
remaining 20 % funded by the county. Moore hopes that by the end of the
program's 4th year, it will be so efficient that it will be able to
continue without the grant.
Certainly, the office's three attorneys (with a 4th to be hired in the
near future) have experienced little idle time thus far. Only 2 weeks
after opening its doors, the office is handling 6 appellate cases,
including 1 involving the death penalty and another with a sentence of
life imprisonment."
(source: San Antonio Current)
