Oct. 21 TENNESSEE: Death penalty still a question in Lloyd case Huston Foley Lloyd will have to wait to learn whether prosecutors will seek his death in connection with the slaying of a Bledsoe County prison nurse and her 4-year-old daughter. At a hearing in Cumberland County Criminal Court, prosecutors did not file information whether they will seek the death penalty in the June 3 shooting deaths of 27-year-old Kimberly Wyatt and her daughter, Sarah. Mr. Lloyd, 48, is charged with 2 counts of 1st-degree murder, felony murder and aggravated assault, according to court records. Prosecutors said they hope to make a decision soon. (source: Chattanooga Times Free Press) MASSACHUSETTS: Far-off governor's race painfully revisits Florida trooper's killing----A lawyer who helped get the officers killer off death row faces questions in Massachusetts race. The lawyer held up her fathers shirt and 13-year-old Alicia Hayes hid her face in her mother's sleeve. Hayes, now 34, still remembers it: the khaki uniform of a Florida state trooper, blackened by her fathers blood. He last wore it 2 days before Christmas 1973, the day Carl Ray Songer shot him dead on a Citrus County road. Another thing Hayes remembers: Deval Patrick, the lawyer who helped get her father's killer off death row. Last week, Hayes saw Patrick's face again in a news clipping from Boston, where he leads the race to become Massachusetts' governor. Early this month, Songer again made headlines, when Patrick's Republican opponent began airing gritty, black-and-white commercials recreating the roadside murder. "While lawyers have a right to defend admitted cop killers," the ad concludes, "do we really want one as our governor?" A week after the ads began appearing, polls showed Patricks opponent gaining on him. Trooper Ronald G. Smith died on a dirt road just north of Crystal River, a week shy of his daughter's 2nd birthday. The 28-year-old rookie had stopped to check on a blue Impala parked on the side of the road. 2 hunters crossing the road nearby witnessed what happened next. Ronald Jones, 20, stepped out and handed Smith his identification papers. Then the trooper opened the rear door, his hand on his gun. The hunters didn't know Songer was lying in the back seat until they heard the shots. Smith staggered back, emptying his revolver, his shots going wide. "It was over so quick. In all, there were 11 shots fired in 8 seconds," one hunter told the Associated Press. Songer and Jones sped off, but the hunters shot out their tires. Jones ran for the woods. The hunters shot him through the foot. A pathologist testified that five bullets hit Smith: 2 in the chest, 1 in the neck, 1 in the arm and a 5th in the leg. The 2nd hunter told the AP, "There was no pulse. No heartbeat. Nothing." *** Oklahoma police already were looking for Jones and Songer when the shooting occurred. The pair had walked off a work-release job, where Songer was serving a 3-year sentence for car theft, his 3rd conviction. After a drug-fueled drive to Miami, they had turned for home when they ran into Smith. Jones got a 2-year sentence as an accessory after the fact. Songer, then 23, was sentenced to death. For the next 11 years, Songer's appeals delayed his execution. Gov. Bob Graham finally signed a 3rd death warrant for Feb. 5, 1985. Songer was little more than a week from the electric chair when the 13-year-old Alicia watched Patrick defending her fathers killer in that Inverness court room. A judge denied the appeal. "We thought it was over with at that point," Alicia Hayes said. Patrick, then an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, kept trying. Less than 24 hours before the execution, Patrick won a reprieve. A year later, the appeals court ruled that Songer had been denied his right to present evidence of his good character. Prosecutors tried to get the death penalty reinstated, but in 1989, the court resentenced Songer to life with no chance of parole for 25 years. He has been denied parole twice. After defending Songer, Patrick went on to serve in the Clinton administration as assistant attorney general for civil rights. A child of Chicago's tough South Side, he looks likely to become Massachusetts' 1st black governor. Patrick, 50, defended his record after the Songer ads began airing. He said, "I am proud of the work I have done, and I will not have it trivialized or minimized by someone who has never seen the inside of a courtroom," the Lowell (Mass.) Sun reported. *** Alicia Hayes, a former military contractor, lives in Alabama with her husband and 2 sons. She had no idea that her fathers killer was making headlines in a far-off governor's race. Early this month, Brooksville lawyer Tom Hogan Jr. called her. She remembered him from Songer's many appeals. After Patrick had the sentence overturned, Hogan fought to get Songer put to death. Hogan told her he had received a call from Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, Patrick's opponent. Her campaign wanted to fly Hogan to Boston for a press conference. Could Hayes come, too? Hayes' husband had just returned from a year in Iraq, and she had enrolled in school full time. She couldn't go, but she gave Hogan a statement that he read in Boston. Republicans have dubbed Songer the Willie Horton of Patrick's campaign, after the convicted murderer whose escape and violent crimes helped derail the 1988 presidential aspirations of former Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis. Healey's campaign slammed Patrick as soft on crime, criticizing his defense of Songer and his advocacy on behalf of a convicted rapist. 2 local polls released on Oct. 10 and 12 showed Patrick still holding a double-digit lead to become the state's 1st black governor. But Healey had whittled the margin to its narrowest yet. Hayes finds Patrick's defense mystifying. "I don't understand how someone can support and be proud of allowing a man that has committed a crime like that an opportunity to go free." Songer comes up for parole again in 2009. Hayes said she'll be there to oppose it. "It just seems like it's never ending." (source: St. Petersburg Times) OHIO: New hearing for convicted killer Spisak In Cincinnati, a federal appeals court on Friday ordered a new sentencing hearing for Frank Spisak, who is on death row for aggravated murder in the shooting deaths of three men over seven months in 1982 near Cleveland State University. A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of Spisak, a self-described neo-Nazi who repeatedly sought a sex- change opera tion while await ing execution. But the panel ruled that Spisak, 55, had received ineffective counsel during the sentencing phase of his trial and that a judge's instructions to the jury were unconstitutional. Spisak was convicted on 4 counts of aggravated murder in July 1983 and sentenced the following month in the deaths of 3 men near the CSU campus. A state appeals court later set aside one of the 2 convictions involving the same victim. A message was left with Attorney General Jim Petro's office seeking comment on how the state would proceed. (source: Associated Press)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TENN., MASS., OHIO
Rick Halperin Sat, 21 Oct 2006 10:40:01 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
