Feb. 8
FLORIDA:
Discussion tonight on Florida public radio
"Death Penalty and Lethal Injection" will air 7 PM Eastern time Wednesday,
Feb 8 on "Florida on the Line" broadcast on public radio.
There will be also be a discussion of the Unanimous Jury Verdict for Death
Penalty bill (HB 663 - Sentencing in Capital Cases).
Participants are Rep. Jack Seiler, bill co-sponsor, Abe Bonowitz of CUADP,
and Willie Meggs, prosecutor.
If you cannot receive this broadcast on radio, it will be available on
their website. Participation call in phone number is (800) 926-8809.
(source: Palm Beach Post)
IOWA:
Advocates push for death penalty debate
The leading death penalty advocate in the Legislature, an anti-abortion
Republican, says there is no conflict between his belief that life should
be preserved and his desire to execute those who prey on children.
"I don't think you can be any more pro-life than to want to defend the
lives of the most vulnerable of our citizens ... '' said Sen. Larry
McKibben, R-Marshalltown. "I absolutely believe this is pro-life because
I'm fighting for something that will deter the deaths of these people that
can't defend themselves."
McKibben has drafted a bill that would authorize the death penalty in
cases in which a child is kidnapped, sexually abused and murdered.
To avoid one issue that might give abortion foes trouble, the bill
specifies that a pregnant woman sentenced to death must first give birth
before the sentence is carried out.
McKibben said the bill was prompted by the slaying of 10-year-old Jetseta
Gage, who was abducted from her home in Cedar Rapids last spring. A former
family friend, Roger Bentley, 38, of Brandon, was sentenced to life in
prison for kidnapping and murder.
A similar case, the August 1994 kidnap-slaying of 9-year-old Anna Marie
Emry, of Grinnell, prompted the last serious death penalty debate. Larry
Lane Morgan is serving a life sentence in that case.
(source: Washington Evening Journal)
**************
Jetsetta Gage's relative speaks out on death penalty
A relative of the 10-year-old Cedar Rapids girl who was kidnapped,
sexually assaulted and murdered last spring has joined a campaign to get
the death penalty reinstated in Iowa. Jenny Slight, Jetsetta Gage's great
aunt, says justice was not really served with last week's conviction of
Roger Bentley, the man accused of killing Jetsetta, because Bentley won't
be put to death. She says she's had a lot of people come and tell her what
they'd like to do, and she says she tells them to write to the
legislature.
Slight has this warning about potential sex offenders. She says, "These
people are like chameleons. They will adapt and be anything you want them
to be. They will be your friend, they will be your neighbor, anything you
want them to be, because they are chameleons." Slight says you have to be
aware of the people who're around your children. She says, "They (sex
offenders) don't have something stamped on their forehead to say 'I'm
bad'. So you need to check everybody out. Not trust anybody."
Slight spoke this (Wednesday) morning at a news conference in Newton, an
event arranged by State Senator Larry McKibben, a Republican from
Marshalltown who is pushing to reinstate capitol punishment in Iowa for
those who kidnap, rape and kill kids. McKibben says Democrats in the Iowa
Senate are blocking a debate on his death penalty bill. McKibben is
planning similar events around the state and he'll be joined -- as he was
in Newton -- by Republican candidates for the state senate who support the
death penalty.
(source: KGRN News)
SOUTH DAKOTA----death row inmate seeks to drop appeals
Letter: Death row inmate wants to "face execution"
A death row inmate in South Dakota says he wants to end his appeals and
"face execution."
24 year-old Elijah Page, of Athens, Texas, pleaded guilty to murdering a
Spearfish man and was sentenced to die by a judge. The sentence was upheld
by the South Dakota Supreme Court last month.
The request comes in a handwritten letter containing Page's name and
signature. Page's lawyer says he knows about the letter and that it's his
understanding Page wrote it.
The letter seeks to exonerate another death-row inmate: Briley Piper, of
Anchorage, Alaska. In the letter, Page says he had threatened to kill
Piper if Piper didn't go along with the March 2000, torture/slaying of
19-year-old Chester Poage of Spearfish.
A court hearing is set for March 1, to determine if Page understands the
consequences of his request.
(source: Associated Press)
OHIO:
New discoveries about the Lucasville uprising
Dear friends in the media and others,
I am giving a talk at the Eisenhower Center on the Mansfield campus of
Ohio State University at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday February 23 about "The
Lucasville Uprising: New Discoveries."
The new material supplements my book Lucasville: The Untold Story of a
Prison Uprising, published in August 1994.
In the talk I continue to argue that the judicial process for Lucasville
defendants has been so flawed that, as in New York State after Attica, the
State of Ohio should declare a general amnesty.
Specifically, I show the following. 1. Among the 26,000 persons in
southern Ohio who signed petitions and letters in 1993 calling for use of
the death penalty in Lucasville cases were at least 4 trial jurors in
State v. Scales and State v. Wells, and seven former hostage correctional
officers who testified in a number of trials. One of these officers,
Darrold Clark, advocated arming guards at the Southern Ohio Correctional
Facility and told the governor: "Shoot one of those suckers and they'll
back off from a riot." 2. Defendant Cannon was convicted on the basis of
testimony by a jailhouse informant who alleged facts that the prosecution
knew or should have known to be physically impossible, and defendant
Skatzes was sentenced to death for 2 murders, one now known to have been
committed by others, and the second involving a single massive blow to the
head that 2 other prisoners were also held to have committed. 3. Justice
Pfeifer of the Ohio Supreme Court has flagrantly violated the Code of
Judicial Conduct by publicizing his views on particular cases in newspaper
columns while those cases were still on appeal. Indeed Judge Pfeifer
published a pervasively erroneous narrative of the evidence in the Skatzes
trial under the headline "Ohio inmate deserves death" in the official
newspaper of 3 courts to which Skatzes will predictably appeal, including
the Ohio Supreme Court on which Pfeifer sits.
I am sending you this material more than 2 weeks in advance of the talk so
that, to whatever extent you desire, you can verify my assertions by means
of the backup materials or otherwise.
The talk and backup materials [are linked below]:
MANS.doc is my talk in Word;
PetitionsAL.pdf is a memo by Attorney Alice Lynd describing her research
on the petitions, together with illustrative petitions and a trial jury
venire, in pdf because the documents had to be scanned (yet to be
updated);
StargerCannonMemo.doc is a memo in Word by Attorney Colin Starger of the
New York Innocence Project on the trial and appeals of Derek Cannon;
PfeiferLetter.pdf is my 16-page single-spaced letter to Justice Pfeifer,
detailing both his violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct and his
misrepresentation of the facts in the Skatzes trial;
JudicialConduct.pdf is the newspaper article signed by Justice Pfeifer and
entitled, "Ohio inmate deserves death for role in 1993 Lucasville riot,"
and Canon 3 of the Ohio Code of Judicial Conduct.
Please feel free to use this material in any way you consider appropriate.
I would be happy to answer any questions. Please contact The Free Press
for Staughton Lynd's contact information.
(source: Attorney Staughton Lynd, The Free Press, Feb. 6)
CALIFORNIA:
A Death Sentence Built on a Lie -- Governor Must Grant Morales Clemency
[Editor's Note:If Michael Morales is executed on Feb. 21, it will be over
the objections of the very judge who sentenced him in the first place. The
very foundation of the jury's death sentence, writes New America Media
contributor Michael Kroll, has since collapsed. Kroll works with
incarcerated juveniles who write for The Beat Within. He is the founding
director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.]
In San Francisco, if the federal court does not stay Michael Morales'
execution, now scheduled for Feb. 21, on grounds that lethal injection is
cruel and unusual, then Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be faced with his
3rd life-or-death decision in as many months: Should he commute a death
sentence into a sentence of life in prison without parole? In December,
the governor rejected clemency for Stanley Williams, whose plea rested on
his redemption based on the good works he had done while on death row. In
January, Clarence Allen was put to death after the governor rejected his
plea for mercy based on his advanced age and poor health. Both men
insisted on their innocence despite the fact that both had been convicted
of multiple murders.
So why should Gov. Schwarzenegger grant clemency in this case, when guilt
is not contested and neither redemption nor infirmity is the foundation
for the request? The answer is that in the case of Michael Morales, the
very foundation of the jury's death sentence has collapsed, stripping the
process of the reliability that such a sentence demands.
Even the judge who imposed the sentence of death against Morales, having
learned that testimony the jury relied on to impose the death penalty was
a lie, has now renounced the jury's verdict and his own part in a flawed
process. In a letter dated Jan. 25, 2006, to Gov. Schwarzenegger, Judge
Charles McGrath (appointed by Ronald Reagan) wrote that if he had known at
the time what was later discovered by the Attorney General -- that the
witness was lying -- he "would not have let the death sentence stand...
Under such circumstances, executing Mr. Morales...would constitute a
grievous and freakish injustice."
How did this happen? The short answer is that when Michael Morales was
arrested along with his cousin, Ricky Ortega, for the rape and murder of
17-year-old Terri Winchell and placed in the San Joaquin County Jail, an
inmate named Bruce Samuelson was also a resident there.
Samuelson is a jailhouse snitch, well-known for his willingness to give
information to the authorities in exchange for leniency. Samuelson has a
long criminal record. His adult probation officer from 20 years ago, Vicki
Wetherell, still remembers him as a person with "brazen disregard for the
law or the conditions of probation," adding that "his attempts to avoid
responsibility by making up obvious lies reflected a consistent pattern of
deception and antisocial tendencies."
The use of jailhouse informants -- contemporaneous inmates who claim to
have extracted the confessions of killers while awaiting their trials --
is a regular feature of death penalty trials. Samuelson told the jury that
Morales had confessed to him in jail, and gave chilling details about how
he planned the murder and how he boasted about it many months later. His
testimony was particularly relevant in the jury's verdict for death
because he provided the evidence of a "special circumstance" -- a
requirement to elevate 1st-degree murder to capital murder. Calling it
"the cornerstone" of the government's case, presiding judge McGrath
stated: "Mr. Samuelson's testimony describing the confession was the only
evidence to support the single special circumstance...that made Mr.
Morales eligible for the death penalty."
At the time of the Morales' trial, Bruce Samuelson was facing six felony
charges, which led Parole Officer Vickie Wetherell to recommend "immediate
commitment to state prison." Instead, after writing to Morales' prosecutor
promising that he could provide the evidence that would guarantee a
conviction with special circumstances (death penalty), the prosecutor
dropped 4 of the 6 charges against him, and managed to get court approval
of a very light county jail sentence for the remaining 2 charges in
exchange for his damning testimony. "I had no doubt that without the plea
bargain, such a repeated offender would have been sentenced to prison,"
Wetherell has declared. "The fact that Samuelson escaped full adjudication
and punishment was disconcerting."
But how do we know that what Samuelson told the jury was a lie? Because
when asked years later by the attorney general how he managed to elicit so
much damning information from the accused in a crowded jail cell without
any other inmate hearing their alleged conversations, Samuelson boasted of
his Spanish language skills ("I was very fluent in it, reading, writing
and speaking, both formal and informal, or 'Spang/lish,' 'ghetto Spanish'
and in educated Spanish") and asserted that he and Morales had conducted
their confessional sessions in Spanish. There is only one problem with
this explanation: Michael Morales, a 4th-generation American, does not
speak Spanish!
This raises the question: How did Samuelson get the specific details about
those involved in this crime if not from the defendant himself? Good
jailhouse informants have become quite adept at gleaning details from the
public record by passing themselves off as parties to the legal process or
as law enforcement officials entitled to confidential information.
Unfortunately, this is all too common. When 13 of those condemned to death
in Illinois were later exonerated, the Illinois Commission on Capital
Punishment found that nearly half were convicted as the result of false
testimony of jailhouse informants. In California, more than 200 inmates
have been released from prison since 1989 because of unreliable trials,
and, according to a recent report conducted by San Francisco Magazine, 1
in 5 was convicted on the basis of false testimony of such informants.
The case of Michael Morales is exactly what executive clemency is designed
to address, especially because, unlike those 200 California inmates who
have been released, there is no remedy for the execution of a man who does
not qualify for execution under the law. The basis of his death sentence
was a lie. Gov. Schwarzenegger has the power to undo the lethal effects of
that lie, if he has the courage to do the right thing, whether politically
correct or not.
(source: Commentary, Michael Kroll, Pacific News Service)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Judge Stays Execution Of Convicted Rapper----Christopher Roney Convicted
Of Killing A Philadelphia Police Officer
A Philadelphia judge stayed the execution of a rapper convicted of killing
a Philadelphia police officer during a botched bank robbery.
Christopher Roney, 36, had been scheduled to die by lethal injection next
month for the January 1996 killing of Lauretha Vaird.
Vaird, 43, was shot in the chest after responding to a silent alarm at a
PNC Bank branch in northeast Philadelphia. She was Philadelphias first
female officer to be slain in the line of duty.
Roney performed as a rap singer under the name "Cool C." 2 accomplices,
Warren McGlone and Mark Canty, received life in prison.
Roney and McGlone attained local notoriety with such songs as "Going
Steady" and "The Glamorous Life."
Roney's execution was put on hold until his post-conviction litigation is
resolved, according to the order issued by Judge Gary Glazer on Wednesday.
(source: Associated Press, Feb. 3)
