Sept. 17 TEXAS: Murder Suspect Appears Before Lubbock Judge The man accused of killing 29-year-old Summer Baldwin made his 1st appearance in front of a Lubbock judge on Friday. Rosendo Rodriguez III, 25, was calm and straight-faced as he was charged with murder. Officials say he could possibly be put to death for his crime. Rodriguez walked out of a Lubbock courtroom silent after being charged with murder. Police say he beat Baldwin to death, then stuffed her body inside of a suitcase and left it in a Lubbock dumpster. It was found at the Lubbock Landfill on Tuesday. Officials arrested Rodriguez near his parent's home in San Antonio on Thursday. Lubbock District Attorney Matt Powell says he's confident they have the right man in custody. "Good police work tracked him through cell phone records, debit card purchases ... and they were able to track his whereabouts and pinpoint him to that location," he says. Rodriguez could potentially face additional charges, even the death penalty, because Baldwin was 5 weeks pregnant when she was killed. "We will look at the autopsy and let them determine the course of the fetus and if there's 2 or more people killed, or a child under 6, he could potentially face capital charges," says Powell. Rodriguez had studied at Texas Tech and was a member of the Omega Delta Phi fraternity until, the group's president, Mike Solis, says, the "brothers" voted to remove him. "He pledged in 1998 and he was a member until 2000 when we blackballed him for reasons I can't disclose," says Solis. "I would imagine most thought when a young lady's found at the landfill that the chances of solving it were slim and here we are, less than 48 hours later, and we have a suspect in custody," says Powell. Wal-Mart surveillance video from 3:30 a.m. Monday shows Rodriguez buying the suitcase that police say Baldwin was found in. Police reports say the bar code on the suitcase found and the one purchased matched. Reports also show police tracked Rodriguez's debit card to the purchase of the suitcase and disposable gloves. Police say Rodriguez killed Baldwin sometime between midnight when she was last seen and 3:30 a.m. Monday, when he was buying the suitcase. KAMC-28 spoke with Rodriguez's dad, Rosendo Rodriguez II. He says this is totally out of character for his son. "I beleive in my son's innocence," he says. "His life has not been perfect, but the overwhelming majority has been good in his life. This is inconceivable to me, but I am biased. He is my son." Rodriguez's father says his son attended Texas Tech for a few years beginning in 1998, but did not graduate. He says he enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves last year, but contrary to other reports, he did not go to Iraq. He also says Rosendo has a son with a previous girlfriend, who will turn 4 in November. Sources have told KAMC-28 that Rodriguez is being kept separate from another inmate, who is believed to be the father of Baldwin's unborn baby. (source: KAMC News) ******************************** Order in the court: Texas justice to cost more The Texas Legislature may have been unable to come up with a plan to pay for public education (despite 5 tries at it), but the 1 thing lawmakers made sure they got done during the most recent special session was a bill increasing the salaries of state judges. Perhaps it was just sheer coincidence that lawmakers' retirement pay is linked directly to judges' salaries. Whatever was the motivation, taxpayers, as usual, will be stuck with the tab - and here is where they'll get poked. Potter County District Clerk Caroline Woodburn pointed out during the Sept. 12 commissioner's court meeting that the fee for civil filings will increase by $37 beginning Dec. 1. And in case you haven't guessed, the fee increase is earmarked to pay the increasing salaries of state judges. Before the generosity of legislators, district judges were getting by on a yearly salary of $108,000. An increase of 23 % will raise it to $125,000 a year, and, interestingly, lawmakers with 10 years of service get a 20 %increase in their retirement pensions. Now taxpayers know from where that money will be coming - their wallets. (source: Editorial, The Amarillo Globe-News) ************************** Marine arrested in killings----He is the 2nd man held in deadly 2003 attack on a Sugar Land family A 2nd suspect has been arrested in the slayings of a mother and son in their home. Patricia Whitaker and her son, Kevin, were shot in a Dec. 10, 2003, attack that left her husband and other son, Bart, wounded. Steven Champagne, 23, was taken into custody Wednesday in Camp Pendleton, Calif., on a charge of capital murder, Sugar Land police said Friday. Police spokeswoman Pat Whitty said Champagne is in the U.S. Marine Corps. Police expect him to be brought back to Texas in the next few weeks. He was being held in the San Diego County Jail without bail. Investigators said in court documents that Champagne, Chris Brashear, 23, and Bart Whitaker, 25, carried out the shooting spree. Brashear was arrested Monday night and has been charged with capital murder. He is being held in the Fort Bend County Jail without bail. Police have not disclosed a motive for the slayings. According to court documents, Brashear was the triggerman and waited inside the house with a 9 mm pistol for the family to come home, firing on the Whitakers when they walked in the door. Investigators said Champagne told police that Brashear and Bart Whitaker acted as though they were wrestling for the weapon and that Whitaker was shot during the staged scuffle, according to court documents. The documents say Champagne was parked on another street and drove the getaway car for Brashear, who was taken into custody Monday night at his attorney's office in Houston. Bart Whitaker has not been charged, and is the subject of a missing-persons report filed by his family last year. In July 2004 Bart Whitaker left the city, saying he feared he would be charged with a crime he didn't commit. In addition to Whitaker, his father, Kent Whitaker, 57, was wounded in the attack. Patricia Whitaker, 51, and Kevin Whitaker, 19, died on the 1st floor of the house in the 1100 block of Heron Way from gunshot wounds to the chest. (source: Houston Chronicle) VERMONT: The Dealth Penalty in A Culture of Victimization And Kitsch Vermont has no death penalty. Still, federal prosecutors demanded that Vermont hold a capital punishment trial in a recent federal murder case which crossed a state line. And a jury of twelve Vermonters delivered the first death sentence in 50 years -- another notch in Bush's belt as the feds contrived to teach liberal Vermont a lesson. Accompanying that verdict, there is now a push to bring capital punishment back at the state level. There are 2 entrances to the Federal Building in Burlington. One is near the corner of a busy street; it is wrapped around that corner -- for maximum visibility -- that we held our weekly vigils against bringing the death penalty to Vermont. Yet the press massed itself daily at the other entrance, a smaller, mid-block one, half-hidden by luxuriant trees. Why? Because it was there that "the family" emerged for lunch or dinner. It was there they could be exhaustively interviewed and photographed for their every response to the courtroom events. In the room itself, one whole side of the public seating was marked off as "reserved". For whom, the sign was tacit. But that was where the family and their friends sat, sparsely, compared to the larger public packed into an equal space on the other side. The empty seats around them were treated as sacred space, not for outsiders. It was a rare courtroom visitor who was clueless enough not to take the hint. The family. The word brings up Elian Gonzalez and Terri Schiavo. Even the defense counsel in his summation, chose to praise the family, that very family whose insistance before the trial sought death for their client, and whose performance before the jury and in the media did much to condemn him. That family was extolled as a prime example of what their client never had -- a loving clan that could come together to support one another in hard times, and celebrate in good ones. A model family which had overcome its many hardships. If only Donny had had one... In a country where more than half of marriages end in divorce, where single-parent households are now in the majority, "Family" has taken on iconic, white-hat status. Elections are won on "family values". All our holidays feature "family fun". You want to be a bad guy? Target the family. Worse, turn them into victims. The family played their media hand with skill. I am not suggesting that their pain over the murder was not authentic. I don't know what many things they were really feeling, or who was advising them on their strategies. Perhaps they were even played by the media more than they played it. But the overall effect was such as to achieve their goal -- to get a death verdict from a Vermont jury for the 1st time in half a century. Perhaps they felt justice was served. Perhaps it was merely revenge. But what they said they wanted was "closure". We found much support as we stood Wednesdays at noon against the death penalty. Yet there were still many passers-by who felt otherwise. "An eye for an eye," they would yell from their cars, or "They kill us-we kill them!" While the rest of the western world has long put capital punishment behind it, the United States perversely bucks the trend. For years, Amnesty International has indicted the US for its killing of juveniles, killing the mentally ill, for the wide regional disparities in executions, for the arbitrariness of those selected for execution, the obvious role of race in those selections, the systematic exclusion of opponents of the death penalty from juries, the use of peremptory challenges to exclude blacks from sitting on capital trial juries, especially if the defendant is black, for the assignment of inexperienced, often incompetent counsel to indigent offenders, for a whole array of procedural bars to appeal, for the increasing unwillingness of federal courts to consider new constitutional questions, and for the very narrow view of the role of clemency taken by governors and pardon boards. All these, says AI, puts the US outside the norms of international behavior. No technical or bureaucratic problems were present in the Fell trial. Fell's guilt was admitted, and his legal representation was competent and strong. The judge was attentive, and scrupulously fair. The drama was focussed on one question only -- would the jury unanimously ask for death? The answer was yes. Whence the still strong American embrace of the death penalty? I suggest it arises from two spurious needs, both of which have been normalized by a bizarre combination of collateral damage from our war-making and politically-correct "sensitivity". The 1st is obvious; the 2nd less-so. One of the hallmarks of our contemporary culture is its curious competition for victim status. In addition, since 9/11, our administration has actively flown the banner of the victimized, crucified, vengeful Christ. Now that we as a nation have suffered so, we have a right to judge and punish. The city on a hill. And our punishment is far from unholy: we kill in order to redeem. As we continue to victimize others around the globe, it is most convenient to proclaim our American selves as victims. And national claims trickle down to groups and individuals. Whites claim victimization by affirmative action, males by feminism, Republicans by "the liberal media", the rich by "big government" - and so forth, a whole convenient upsidedownism whereby victimization is seen not only as a right, but as a claim on resources. The competition is fierce. Think for a moment about the demands of the Victim's Rights Movement. First of all, it is now unquestioned that murder victims are more than those killed, but are now legally seen as all friends and family affected by the crime, expanding the test of victimhood to the suffering of those left behind, whose emotional performances seem so persuasive to juries. A new spotlight for "the family". For the most part these people insist on vengeance as the only possible "closure" for their distress, a word that has been recently taught them by the political culture and its media-as if the effects of a murder are ever "closed". Protecting the community via life without parole will simply not serve. Though it would achieve immediate closure of the case -- no further appeals, no further media attention to open old wounds -- still "real" closure concerning a murdered loved one is sold to us as requiring the death of the murderer. That psychiatry does not support such dynamics (see David Brizer's essay, p xxx) is neither here nor there. Life imprisonment just isn't satisfying. Concerning the jurisprudence of sentencing, what the Victims' Rights Movement has done is to substitute private for public justice, normalizing a sense of entitlement to the death penalty. Only a satisfying personal experience will do , and this now becomes the only adequate gesture for the rest of the community. The goal of the Victims' Rights Movement is to repersonalize criminal justice so that the public -- and potential juries -- must declare an alliance with either the victim or the offender. Criminal sentencing thus becomes a test of loyalty to one's community - a dangerous new path which predisposes toward the punishing needs of the emotionally involved. Rehabilitative strategies are overlooked, rejected as not sufficiently reparative to the new class of victims. Capital punishment becomes the ultimate assertion of righteous indignation, and the highest form of public victim-recognition. No less a legal figure than former Attorney General Janet Reno has raised victim status to absurd heights: "I draw most of my strength from victims," she said, "for they represent America to me: people who will not be put down, people who will not be defeated, people who will rise again and stand again for what is right. You are my heroes and heroines. You are but little lower than the angels." Is victimhood, then, not a goal worth striving for? The elevation of extended victims to sub-angelic status has two major consequences. First of all it normalizes and legitimates revenge in place of retribution, opening society to suffer an unending chain of reciprocal act of vengeance. We see this result playing out overtly in the Middle East, and covertly in the consciousness of people of color in this country, and around the world. By creating victims, we become the new victims, and victims are beatified. And in this beatification, legitimate questions of restorative justice are passed over: -- Just what are the real needs of those who have been harmed? What, on deeper questioning, is really important to them? On surveys and in interviews, victims have most often indicated that acknowledgement by the perpetrator of the damage he or she has done is crucial, and would go a long way to easing them. Quite often questions need answering which would otherwise gnaw: why?, how?, what were the details of the death? Imaginations haunt; facts set to rest. -- And what about the defendent's needs? Restorative justice belongs to all parties, before any situation can be in some measure "restored". Again, as surveyed, perpetrators most often need to acknowledge what has happened, and in some way make amends. They don't know how to do that, and the system does not help them. We are opoen to helping those soldiers psychologically wounded from killing Iraqi innocents, but not a civilian who has killed one of our own. Aiding both victim and perpetrator would restore as best it could. Further killing restores very little. A further social dimension of embracing the vengeful victim plays out in the political sphere: revenge killing by the state becomes part of a strategy of governance that makes us fearful and dependent on the illusion of state protection, that divides rather than unites, that promises simple solutions to complex problems. The number of men and women condemned to die grows each year, and we are treated to the spectacle of people running for public office on the basis of how many they are prepared to kill. Tough on crime, it's called. Caught up in the contemporary cultural preoccupation with identifying and paying homage to "real" victims, the idea that criminals can be victims too all but disappears, and deeper sociological, political and cultural issues are ignored as the white hats simply execute the black ones. Any mature engagement in responding to society's most severe social problems is shouted down by victims' claims for lethal "closure". Constitutional guarantees of equal treatment under the law are overlooked. Our fragile democracy increasingly calls for strong symbols of public sovereignty, like expanding jails and capital punishment. The desire for victim status, and a fearful aversion to non-government violence lead to a apprehensive attitude toward others. Increasing fear and frustration mark the current American condition. The focus on victims functions as a strategy of political legitimation. The centrality of crime to governing, especially in a democratic state, requires citizens who imagine themselves to be victims, potential victims or those responsible for the care victims. As criminals are demonized, many ordinary citizens are enlisted as authorizing agents and appreciative, applauding audience for America's own brand of lethal violence. To be for capital punishment is to be a defender of traditional morality against permissivism and of the rights of the innocent over the rights of the guilty. Down with protesters. Up with the fall from grace, with no prospect for redemption. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, we are all victims. And can the land of the free ever evolve to crawl out of such embracing, larger, muck? Let's look at the muck to determine its adhesiveness. There is a concept in the Russian language known as poshlust. Speech or attitudes or states of soul that are poshlust-y embrace values that are almost, but not quite, kitsch , containing some level of authentic thought or emotion, but nevertheless, more -- or less -- subtly -- trumped-up, false or phony. A quintessential example of poshlust appeal is contained in the defense summation to the jury I described at the opening of this chapter. For diagnostic purposes, this allusion is worth quoting in full: We see such devotion and love in [the victim's] family, that [it] is overwhelming. They have been here every day in support of Terry, because that's all they have left. That's --that's what they, that's where they have committed as a family and have come together. And, you know, and that doesn't, that never even came close, close to existing to what the childhood that Donnie had. And isn't it important? How -- and that's what -- that's what this mitigation is -- our mitigation case is all about. Don't underestimate the power, the significance of, of a father figure, someone to care, someone to nurture, someone to provide. Don't underestimate the power and significance of a mother's love for her children. Look, look at what it's done, what it's done for the King family. They will never -- and it was poignant when Michael -- the grandson's letter was read, and he said -- and he compared it to 9/11, and it definitely -- their family will never be the same, and America will never be the same. But America is not destroyed, and when you see their faces and heard their testimony about their love for Mrs. King, their family's not destroyed. It can't be because they have too much of those protective, nurturing factors that exist, that are what we all -- that makes us who we are. Surely, overwhelming love, devotion and commitment are worth rewarding. And yes, nurturing fathers are rare enough and nice. The comparison of a death in the family to the world-shaking 9/11 may have its metaphorical value. And while the assertion that "America is not destroyed" may be somewhat nearsighted, still the co-appeal of both prosecution and defense to the jury's patriotism (if for opposite purposes) is probably a universally-endorsed tactic of the times. The summary, however, bodes ill. For it seems there cannot be "too much of those protective, nurturing factors...that are what we all -- that make(s) us what we are." The Oprah-appeal of this language, this thinking; the culture that feeds on it, that somehow seems to need and support it; the implied be-all, end-all prioritization of untutored emotion which we see amply demonstrated in every facet of contemporary American culture -- this is not a likely milieu to transcend the kind of selfish emotionalism with which victims demand harsh penalties "for closure". That a defense lawyer in a capital case would -- buoyed along by these normative phrases, and counting on the jury's receptivity to them -- would lionize the very family asking for his client's death is a self-defeating notion, lethal, as it turned out, to the defendent. What was the defense inhaling? Only air polluted by ubiquitous poshlust could create such confusion. Not once in my hearing were the non-poshlust-y dimensions seriously presented to the jury as a challenge: -- that, if they disapproved of murder, should they really be willing to cooly, and premeditatively, murder someone? -- that there is no scientific psychological evidence for "closure" after demanding death. Indeed, that families and jury members often suffer after doing so. -- that the US stands alone among western nations in exacting the death penalty, and that they must question the reasons for such exceptionalism. -- that there were likely Rovean political reasons for retracting the government's previously agreed upon plea bargain -- and did they want to cooperate with this? Instead, the defense strategy focussed entirely on the poshlust-y dimensions of Fell's horrible childhood. Why? Because poshlust is the reigning language and currency of the land, the only dimension one can assume operative in a juror? Or in a voter? Or a consumer? Or a 17-year old wanting to "serve his country" and help "establish democracy and freedom across the world"? As long as poshlust rules American culture and American hearts, and is offered up to juries, we may have a hard time joining the majority of the world in opposition to the death penalty. In this, we are truly victims. Notes: 1. Some family members of victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, after personally witnessing Timothy McVeigh's execution, complained he did not suffer enough: he just closed his eyes and went to sleep. 2.See Nabokov's hilarious -- and ominous for us -- section on poshlust in Chapter 3 of his book on Nicolai Gogol. 3. Poshlust is worse than kitsch because kitsch is obvious: garden gnomes, or a fluorescent Elvis painted on black velvet, or "Support the Troops" on magnetic yellow ribbons. 4. A week after the Fell verdict, a Georgia jury sentenced Eric Rudolph, a multiple murderer involved in terrorist attacks on abortion clinics and the Atlanta Olympic games, to life without possibility of release. Unlike Fell, Rudolf was only partially repentent. He apologized to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing victims, with no mention of the abortion clinic victims, whom he seemed glad were killed or wounded. An eye for an eye, after all. But Georgia, unlike Vermont, is already a death-penalty state. And William Sessions is not one of its federal judges. The government did not have to make a point by rejecting his plea bargain. (source: Left Hook) NORTH CAROLINA: Accused boyfriend faces death penalty----Aggravating factors cited in death of former UNCC volleyball star Mecklenburg prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Seyi Tayo Odueso, who is charged with murder in connection with the July slaying of his girlfriend, former UNC Charlotte volleyball star Christy Ann Galvin. Galvin, 26, was found slain in her bed. Her car, a silver 2003 Nissan 300Z, was missing. Authorities in New York found Odueso, 27, trying to cross into Canada. He was driving her car. During a hearing this week, Mecklenburg Assistant District Attorney Marsha Goodenow informed Odueso and his lawyers that prosecutors would seek the death penalty. Goodenow told Superior Court Judge Bob Bell that there were one or more aggravating factors in the killing. She did not elaborate. Within the past 3 weeks, 4 suspected killers have been convicted in Charlotte in domestic slayings. 2 men and a woman were sentenced Thursday to prison terms ranging from nearly 8 years to 15 years. 2 weeks ago, Mecklenburg Assistant District Attorneys Beth Freeman and David Maloney obtained a 1st-degree murder conviction in the 2002 domestic slaying of 32-year-old Antron Norman Lindsey. Rodney Craig, 33, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for murdering Lindsey, his ex-girlfriend. Defense attorney Mark Foster said Friday that Craig will appeal, challenging evidence prosecutors were allowed to introduce involving allegations of prior domestic violence against Lindsey and his ex-wife. Foster said Craig also will challenge the judge's decision to allow police officers to testify about alleged violence and other misconduct against Lindsey. The defense, Foster said, couldn't cross-examine Lindsey. "My client was convicted primarily on his alleged past bad behavior," Foster said. Lindsey was shot in the head, chest and arms. "The defendant made the decision to murder Antron Norman Lindsey -- a mother, daughter, and sister," Freeman told the Observer. "The murder was malicious, brutal, and it was personal. "Antron pleaded for her life in her last moments, but the defendant ignored her pleas and took something that did not belong to him, the life of Antron Lindsey. By his own actions, the defendant imposed upon himself a life sentence." Freeman said Craig shot Lindsey as she sat on a bed. When she tried to get up, the prosecutor said, he shot her two more times, including in the head. "Sadly, I don't think the trial answered the question of `why' Antron's life was taken," Freeman said. "But, hopefully, there is some peace for Antron and for her family in knowing that the person who took her life has been held accountable." (source: The Charlotte Observer) KENTUCKY: Jury Deliberating In Local Death-Penalty Case----Parker Faces 3 Murder Charges In Lousiville, jurors began deliberating Friday afternoon in the Kenneth Parker murder trial. Parker faces 25 charges, including 3 counts of murder and 4 more counts of attempted murder. He's the reputed leader of the Victory Park Crips gang. Defense and prosecuting attorneys made their closing remarks Friday morning and early afternoon, and jurors got the case after 2 p.m., WLKY NewsChannel 32's Julia Harding reported. If they convict Parker, he's eligible for the death penalty. In his closing arguments Friday, Parker's defense attorney, David Meija, reminded jurors that his client is on trial for murder -- among other charges -- not for being a gang member or leader. "No one has identified Kenneth Parker as a participant in any of these (killings)," Meija said, before sounding almost sarcastic. "He was in the Victory Park Crips. Isn't that enough?" Meija also said there is no proof that Parker committed the crimes, but prosecutor Tom Van de Rostyne painted a much different picture of the defendant in closing statements, Harding reported. "Kenneth Parker is a cold, calculating killer," he said. "He kills who he wants to, where he wants to and when he wants to." Jurors brought overnight bags to the court, indicating that they've been told to prepare for perhaps a long weekend of deliberations. (source: The LouisvilleChannel) WASHINGTON: Attorneys debate legality of death penalty for child killer----A judge will issue a written decision on whether Richard Clark can be executed for the rape and murder of 7-year-old Roxanne Doll. A Snohomish County judge on Friday said he will issue a written decision in the case of a 7-year-old girl's killer who claims he shouldn't be executed because he is mentally retarded. Superior Court Judge Thomas Wynne heard attorneys' arguments on a claim that the state's death-penalty statute is unconstitutional because it potentially allows for a mentally retarded person to face the death penalty. The argument came in the case of Richard Matthew Clark, 36, who was convicted in the 1995 rape and murder of Roxanne Doll of Everett. A jury found him guilty of aggravated murder, and in a special sentencing proceeding said he should die. The state Supreme Court upheld the conviction but said the jury had heard too much information during the sentencing hearing. The court sent the case back to Snohomish County for sentencing, which could wind up being nearly a full-blown trial. Clark's lawyers, Jeffrey Ellis of Seattle and Kevin Cole of Mercer Island, in July claimed that Clark is mentally retarded and should not face execution. Instead, they argue, he should receive life in prison without the possibility of release. Courts around the United States have ruled since 2002 that mentally retarded people may not be executed. Washington fails to adequately protect mentally retarded defendants, Ellis told Wynne on Friday. "The problem, your honor, is in the state of Washington a person who is mentally retarded can still be executed," Ellis told the judge. The claim raises some questions, including whether it is up to the the judge or the jury to decide whether Clark is mentally retarded. There's also the question of how much proof is needed to make that determination. In Washington, an IQ of 70 or below is the mark set by the Legislature as the mental retardation level. Clark's lawyers maintain his IQ hovers only a point or 2 above 70. Ellis said he's prepared to bring in experts from around the world, if necessary, to show that the 70 IQ mark is not a rigid number in settling on mental retardation. Deputy prosecutor Seth Fine said Ellis is wrong. "The Legislature is entitled to employ a fixed standard to determine what degree of intellectual deficiency is sufficiently significant to prevent imposition of the death penalty in all cases," Fine said. "The (state) statute is constitutional as written." Clark's sentencing trial is now set for March. Wynne said he will probably take a couple of weeks to issue his decision. (source: The Herald)
