May 6 TEXAS: Central Texas man on death row maintains innocence as many believe his trial was unfair Jurors sentenced Rodney Reed to death after DNA evidence showed he'd had sex with 19-year-old Stacy Stites, found strangled in the brush off a remote country road. Rodney Reed But a decade since Mr. Reed, who is black, first proclaimed his innocence, the case that rocked the small Central Texas town of Bastrop remains on appeal amplified by an online movement to free Mr. Reed and continued scrutiny of Texas' use of the death penalty in racially charged cases. While Mr. Reed sits on death row, his attorneys are standing by his theory: that he was having a secret, interracial affair with Ms. Stites and that Ms. Stites' police officer fianc found out and killed her. And they're arguing that Mr. Reed's trial was botched from the get-go from sloppy police work and lack of legal counsel to a dearth of evidence linking Mr. Reed to the murder. No blacks were chosen for Mr. Reed's jury. Stacey Stites "From all outward appearances, there is certainly tremendous doubt about Rodney's guilt," said Jim Marcus, a University of Texas law professor who has represented death row clients at the state and federal level but is not involved in Mr. Reed's defense. "At the very least, there is no question vital information that should've been before the jury was not." Mr. Reed's attorneys know they face an uphill battle. Courts maintained his conviction before, and state prosecutors say nothing has changed. "They've got the right man," said Debra Oliver, Ms. Stites' sister. "Every time we go through this, we have to relive her murder. I absolutely believe Rodney Reed is the man who did this." Mr. Reed declined to be interviewed for this story. Not found with pickup Investigators started searching for Ms. Stites on the morning of April 23, 1996, after she failed to show up for an early shift at the Bastrop H-E-B grocery. The red pickup her fianc, Jimmy Fennell Jr., said she'd taken to work was recovered at the high school, but Ms. Stites' body was found in a remote, wooded area. She was half dressed and appeared to have been strangled with her own belt. Mr. Fennell, who was set to marry Ms. Stites in 3 weeks, was initially a suspect but apparently not a serious one. The pickup was returned to him promptly after the murder, defense attorneys say, before forensic testing on it was finished. Mr. Fennell sold the truck a day later. And investigators never got a search warrant for the apartment Mr. Fennell then a Giddings police officer and Ms. Stites shared, even though it was the last place she'd been seen alive. A year after the murder, investigators matched the semen found in Ms. Stites' body to Mr. Reed, then 29, whose DNA was already on file over a previous sexual assault charge. Prosecutors charged him with Ms. Stites' murder, alleging he'd stopped Ms. Stites on her way to work, raped, strangled and sodomized her, then dumped her body before leaving the truck at the high school. Mr. Reed had been accused of rape several times in the past though the one time he was charged and tried, he was acquitted. The other accusers were women he knew or had dated in the past. Defense attorneys called the state's case an unlikely stretch. None of Mr. Reed's hair or footprints were found on or near Ms. Stites' body. There was no indication of how Mr. Reed, allegedly on foot and without a weapon, had stopped Ms. Stites in her car. A search of the red pickup found only Mr. Fennell's and Ms. Stites' fingerprints, though Mr. Reed was the one who had allegedly abandoned the car at the high school. "The state's theory that whoever had sex with [Ms. Stites] killed her was flawed from the very beginning," said Reed attorney Morris Overstreet, who went before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals this month to request a new trial. Prosecutors believed the semen would be enough for a Bastrop County jury. It was along with the fact that Mr. Reed's own story changed. At the time he was questioned about Ms. Stites, Mr. Reed was in jail for an unrelated cocaine charge, and he denied knowing her. When the DNA evidence against him was revealed, he told investigators that he'd been having an affair with Ms. Stites and that he'd had sex with her the day before the murder. He said they kept it a secret because of Mr. Fennell's position with the police department and because they feared racial discrimination over the relationship in their small town. At Mr. Reed's trial, a state expert testified that the semen collected by investigators had to have been planted in Ms. Stites' body that morning not the night before. Since the trial, forensics specialists retained by the defense have argued that's not necessarily the case. Relationship witnesses The purported relationship was never fully fleshed out in his trial. Mr. Reed's camp says it's because his original attorneys didn't do their job; they say they've now got affidavits from 9 witnesses who can vouch for the relationship. "They railroaded my son," said Mr. Reed's mother, Sandra. "I knew Stacy. She came to our house. I know my son is innocent." But prosecutors say the affair theory is outlandish. They say the witnesses, many of whom are family members or have criminal records, aren't trustworthy and have changed their stories. "There is no credible evidence the relationship ever existed, no reliable witness testimony," said Assistant Attorney General Tina Miranda. "To claim something has been excluded is absolutely ridiculous." Mr. Reed's attorneys also note that the trial never touched on beer cans found near Ms. Stites' body. Repeated DNA tests on saliva found on the cans ruled out Mr. Reed. But they couldn't rule out another local police officer a close friend and neighbor of Mr. Fennell's. Mr. Reed's attorneys say the beer cans never came up in court because prosecutors didn't turn the DNA report over to them before trial. State attorneys vehemently deny they withheld the report; Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for Attorney General Greg Abbott, said that in 2001, a court concluded that the state provided the lab reports to the defense attorney. The attorney general's office helped Bastrop County prosecutors with the trial. Ryan Polomski, a filmmaker whose graduate thesis on the Reed case evolved into an award-winning documentary, said there are enough questions about the trial to give pause. "Am I 100 % sure Reed didn't do it? No," he said "But I am 100 % sure he didn't get a fair trial." Now, two additional witnesses have also joined the defense roster. One woman has testified she saw Ms. Stites and Mr. Fennell arguing outside a convenience store hours after Mr. Reed was alleged to have killed her. Another, a Dallas-area police officer, was in a police academy class with Mr. Fennell and said she heard him say he would strangle his girlfriend with a belt if he ever found she had cheated on him. State attorneys call these claims far-fetched; they say that the convenience store witness didn't come forward until after Mr. Fennell arrested her for drunken driving and that no other police officers in Mr. Fennell's academy class recall hearing the belt comment. "My client has been long ago vindicated by a jury and various appellate courts of any involvement in the Stacy Stites killing," said Bob Phillips, Mr. Fennell's criminal defense attorney. The insinuation that Mr. Fennell was involved "would be laughable if it weren't so outrageously unfair." But recent charges against Mr. Fennell are adding fuel to the fire for those who believe he could've played a role in Ms. Stites' killing. Last year, he was indicted for allegedly kidnapping and raping a woman in his custody while on a domestic disturbance call for the Georgetown Police Department. Mr. Fennell has resigned from the department while he awaits trial. "I'm not going to try our case in the press," said Mr. Phillips. "My client feels innocent because he is innocent." (source: Dallas Morning News) ************************ Execution Date Set for Mexican A Mexican-born prisoner whose death sentence set off an international dispute and a Supreme Court rebuke of the White House received an execution date of Aug. 5. The prisoner, Jos E. Medelln, was sentenced to death by lethal injection for his participation in the gang rape and strangulation deaths of 2 teenage girls 15 years ago in Houston when they stumbled upon a gang initiation rite. The Supreme Court in March refused to hear Mr. Medelln's appeal, saying President Bush overstepped his authority by ordering Texas to reopen his case and the cases of 50 other Mexican citizens condemned for murders in the United States. Texas refused to comply. During Mr. Bush's 6-year tenure as Texas governor, 152 inmates went to the state's death chamber, the nation's busiest. But he took the side of Mr. Medelln and 50 other Mexican citizens on death rows around the country after the International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that their convictions violated the 1963 Vienna Convention, which provides that people arrested abroad should have access to their home country's consular officials. The international court said the Mexican prisoners should have new court hearings to determine whether the violations affected their cases. The Supreme Court said Texas could ignore the world court. (source: Associated Press) GEORGIA----impending execution Executions likely resumed today----Comer group to hold vigil at Arch A Madison County Christian community will hold a vigil tonight at the University of Georgia Arch to protest the scheduled execution of William Earl Lynd for the 1988 murder of his girlfriend. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld lethal injection in Kentucky - and last week, a federal court judge found Georgia's execution method is similar to Kentucky's - the state will end a 1-year break in executions and open the door again to protests, like the one planned by Jubilee Partners at 6:30 today. For the organization's members, known more for their work with international refugees at their community in Comer, the nation's 7-month stay of executions was a welcome pause, said partner Al Lawler. "For people inside the movement, or who know folks on death row, everybody knew (that decision) was going to come back," Lawler said. "But it's kind of a relaxation not to have to look at (an execution list) every week. It's a pleasure not to have anything coming in." The group's work against the death penalty - which members oppose on theological grounds as well as on fairness issues - also includes visiting death row inmates at the state prison in Jackson. Until the middle of the 1990s, Jubilee Partners also buried executed people whose families did not claim them, Lawler said. Another group since has developed a death row burial fund, to which Jubilee Partners contributes, he said. "We've got about a half-dozen people who were executed buried out here in our cemetery," Lawler said. Although that's not needed anymore because of the burial fund, "we stand ready to do what we always have done," he said. The latest challenges against the death penalty have not questioned the constitutionality of capital punishment itself. The Kentucky case involved only a narrow question about that state's 3-drug method of lethal injection. But the effective moratorium may have changed some people's thinking about the death penalty, said Laura Moye, chairwoman of Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and a regional director for Amnesty International. "I think it still kind of creates a time for a pause and a time to reflect on the death penalty and the system," said Moye, whose group will gather tonight in protest at the Jackson prison. A number of high-profile exonerations of death row inmates in recent years - including a North Carolina man just last week - have showed cracks in the justice system, Moye said. "While the nation sort of plugs away with executions, we have one after another of these exonerations coming out," she said. "People are sort of skeptical about the system working." The climate of thought about the death penalty in Georgia, however, has not shifted, Moye said. The fact that some legislators tried to cut funding for indigent defense and some opposed shoring up the way police officers gather eyewitness evidence shows that not many minds have been changed, she said. Lynd's case doesn't exactly highlight the issues of possible innocence or unfairness that groups like Moye's use to work against capital punishment. "It's not the most sympathetic case that we've ever seen," Moye said. A jury in 1990 convicted and sentenced Lynd to death for murdering Virginia "Ginger" Moore, his girlfriend at the time, in Berrien County. Lynd shot Moore in the face with a pistol after an argument, authorities said. Lynd shot Moore again after she regained consciousness, put her in his car trunk and drove to bury her near a farm outside Tifton, stopping along the way to shoot her a final time, according to authorities. (source: Athens Banner-Herald) ****************** Executions Resume Today, Death Penalty Still Cruel and Unusual Barring a last-minute stay of execution, death row prisoner William Lynd will be murdered by the state of Georgia tonight. Several years ago at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Leslie Martin was strapped to a table and hooked up to an IV through which a series of chemicals -- a sedative, a paralytic and finally a poison -- flowed into his veins in order to draw the life out of his healthy, 35-year-old body. He remained very much himself even during his final moments, a sort of death row class clown, telling his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, "You're fired," just after he received the fatal dose. Following the execution, Smith fielded confused questions about whether Leslie's remark had been in earnest. Smith explained that it was just a running joke between them, one thing that remained humorous to Leslie when everything else was being taken from him. William Lynd faces a similar fate in Georgia Tuesday. Lynd has the distinction of being the first person executed in the United States in seven months -- a period in which there was a de facto death penalty moratorium while the United State Supreme Court considered, and rejected, convicted murderer Ralph Baze's argument that his own execution by lethal injection in Kentucky would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. With several more executions lined up in death-penalty states across the country, it is important to once again focus the debate on the stark reality that the death penalty extinguishes the lives of breathing, joking, flawed and thoroughly human beings. Even if the means of taking those lives were as gentle as touching the forehead of the condemned, the ultimate challenge to our humanity would be just as vivid as a gallows, a guillotine or a firing squad. When representing people facing the death penalty, I have filed motions challenging the constitutionality of lethal injection. I have also filed motions seeking to compel the state to provide a public execution for my clients or to mandate that the jurors who decide their cases be forced to witness the execution process themselves. While I certainly believe that people should not be made to suffer unnecessarily, I believe we should also be uneasy with the suggestion that an execution can be a peaceful medical procedure. We are talking about taking people's lives and it is incredibly dishonest to conceal the actual violence of the act of taking someone's life against their will. Methods of execution that force us to confront the brutality of what we are doing more honestly express both society's rage against crime and the brutality of its consequences. For instance, there was the misery of Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis's execution in a Florida electric chair, when blood poured from his head and his contorted face could be seen through the poorly fitted mask as he struggled to stay alive, breathing ten breaths after the electricity stopped. Or the flames that sometimes shoot from the orifices of people in the electric chair. Or the extended "cut down" procedures necessary for inmates with bad veins who are being killed by lethal injection. Or the humiliating bowel releases of people hanged in the public square. As our country resumes executions following the Baze decision, we must be mindful of the fact that extinguishing the life of a healthy person who wants to live cannot be done without violence. Whether William Lynd is led kicking and screaming to the gallows in a public square or goes to his death quietly, without any expression of pain as he succumbs to the poison flowing unseen in his bloodstream -- he has not died peacefully. And we should know that -- no matter the manner of execution -- he never will. (source: Billy Sothern, a New Orleans anti-death penalty lawyer and a Soros Justice Media Fellow, is a frequent contributor to The Nation and the author of Down in New Orleans: Reflections From a Drowned City (California); AlterNet) VERMONT: No death penalty in robbery killing, feds say Federal prosecutors say they wont seek the death penalty in the case of a New York man accused in a drug robbery and killing. U.S. Attorney Thomas Anderson says Acting U.S. Attorney General Mark R. Filip decided capital punishment wasnt warranted in the case of Roger Aletras, 35, of Bronx, N.Y. Aletras is charged with use of a firearm resulting in murder which is punishable by death, or life imprisonment and four other charges stemming from the 2002 slaying of accomplice Kevin Arkenau. Prosecutors say the 2 traveled from New York City to South Burlington, where they allegedly stole 50 pounds of pot and a car at a motel. The next day, Arkenau was found dead in a Saratoga Springs, N.Y., hotel room. (source: Burlington Free Press) CALIFORNIA: Court voids inmate's death sentence----Judge Lance Ito was 1 of 3 prosecutors who failed to turn over confession in killing, state justices rule. In a unanimous decision, the California Supreme Court found Monday that a San Quentin inmate was wrongly sentenced to death in 1982 for murder because Los Angeles district attorneys -- including current Superior Court Judges Lance A. Ito and Frederick Horn -- withheld a confession to the killing by their star witness. Adam Miranda was convicted in 1982 for the murder of Gary Black at a Los Angeles mini-mart. He also was charged with a 2nd murder in the stabbing death of Robert Hosey, which made Miranda eligible for the death penalty. The main witness on the Hosey charge against Miranda was Joe Saucedo, a convict. But even as Saucedo was testifying against Miranda, the prosecutors had a letter in which Saucedo confessed that he had committed the crime, Miranda's lawyers told the Supreme Court in their petition. Then-Deputy Dist. Atty. Ito, who is now a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge best known for presiding over O.J. Simpson's murder trial, placed this letter in Miranda's file without disclosing its contents to Miranda's lawyers, the court determined. Miranda's lawyers found 4 more witnesses who testified that Saucedo had confessed to them he was the murderer. The district attorney's office knew about the confessions while seeking the death penalty against Miranda, his attorneys said. The California Supreme Court agreed and determined that the death penalty sentence was improper. The letter in which Saucedo made his confession is referred to as the "Montez letter" because it was written by inmate Larry Montez. The letter contradicted Saucedo's testimony at Miranda's trial that Miranda had stabbed Hosey while Saucedo tried to stop him. " . . . We conclude that a reasonable probability -- that is, a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome of the proceeding -- exists that if the Montez letter had been disclosed prior to [Miranda's] trial, the outcome of the penalty phase would have been different," the court wrote in its decision. Besides Ito, the other prosecutors were Curt Hazell, now a special operations assistant district attorney in Los Angeles, and Horn, now an Orange County Superior Court judge. Ito said in a hearing that he remembered seeing the letter but did not know why it was never turned over to the defense. Horn said that when he took over the case after Ito, he didn't remember seeing the letter, and Hazell, who took over after Horn, said he didn't either. Horn and Hazell said they assumed all relevant material had already been turned over to the defense. Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, said Monday that prosecutors will not decide for at last 60 days whether to retry the penalty phase of the case. George Hedges and other anti-death penalty lawyers who took over the case 20 years ago after Miranda had been convicted, originally had no idea the Saucedo confessions existed, they said Monday. After a 2-year fight in federal court, the defense team finally was able to look at the district attorney's files, which contained the letters, they said. "The Miranda case represents yet another indictment of the death penalty," Hedges said. "We have been through a 20-year struggle to locate evidence the D.A.'s office intentionally withheld that showed our client did not commit the murder that placed him on death row 26 years ago." (source: Los Angeles Times) *********************** CA Supreme Court overturns sentence for death row inmate Adam Miranda still could face execution even though the California Supreme Court threw out his death sentence. The court ruled Monday that Los Angeles County prosecutors failed to disclose that a key witness who testified against Miranda confessed to the murder himself. "When the case is returned to us, we'll make a decision on how to proceed, whether to retry the penalty" phase, District attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said. The capital case was prosecuted in 1982 by three deputy district attorneys, including Lance Ito, now a Los Angeles Superior Court judge who oversaw the O.J. Simpson murder trial. The case "represents yet another indictment of the death penalty," George Hedges, an attorney for death row inmate Adam Miranda, told The Associated Press. Miranda was convicted of first-degree murder for killing Gary Black while committing a robbery, and has served 26 years on San Quentin's death row. During the penalty phase of his trial, prosecutors introduced testimony of Joe Saucedo, who told the jury he witnessed Miranda stab Robert Hosey 2 weeks before he killed Black. Hosey later died of stab wounds. In 1996, defense attorneys received Miranda's case file and found a letter by inmate Larry Montez, who claimed that Saucedo confessed to Hosey's murder while in an adjacent cell at the Los Angeles County Jail. "There in the back of one of the files was an envelope containing a confession to the murder by the star witness the prosecutors used to condemn our client to death," Miranda's other attorney, Kerry Bensinger, said in a statement. The court ruled that the prosecution "violated its obligations," by not sharing the Montez letter with Miranda's defense attorneys. After being convicted for Black's murder, Miranda pleaded guilty to second-degree murder of Hosey. Monday's ruling overturns the Hosey conviction, but Miranda is still serving life without parole for Black's murder, said Hedges. The ruling cites 2 reports by a court-appointed referee, San Diego Superior Court Judge Roger W. Krauel. Ito, who was first assigned to the case as a deputy district attorney, told Krauel that he saw the Montez letter but did not recall delivering it to Miranda's attorney. Ito testified that he maintained an "open file policy" and usually went over evidence page by page with the defense attorney "to ensure that the defense had a copy of everything." Curt Hazell, currently a special operations assistant district attorney, and Frederick Horn, now an Orange County Superior Court judge, later took over the prosecution of Miranda's case. They both filed a declaration saying they had no memory of the Montez letter and assumed that previous prosecutors had shared any relevant evidence with the defense. Krauel's 2nd report concluded that 3 other people knew that Saucedo admitted to Hosey's murder and were willing to testify against Saucedo in the Hosey case. Gibbons said Hazell, who eventually tried the Miranda case, didn't take it over until the jury was selected and wasn't aware of the letter. (source: Associated Press) **************** Death penalty goes on verbal trial tonight Veronica Luna said she will speak about her uncle on death row, the flaws in the system and the injustices of the death penalty at a national anti-death penalty speaking tour tonight from 7 to 9 p.m. The senior SJSU social work and sociology double major, who has been a part of The Campaign to End the Death Penalty since 2006, will speak in the Student Union's Ohlone Room along with other guests affected by the death penalty. "My big thing is I really want to educate," Luna said. "I was like anyone else, not really thinking about the death penalty until my uncle was facing death." Luna said her uncle, James Trujeque, has been on death row since 1997 and his 1993 gang-related case was the biggest in California's history. "I tell them it's not C.S.I. - there was no DNA or corroborating evidence or fingerprints or blood samples," Luna said, "only informants, other gang members, who got lesser sentences." Bill Babbitt, boardmember of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, is also scheduled to speak. "I voted for the death penalty in 1978," Babbitt said. "I didn't know much about it at the time." Babbitt said he turned in his brother Tim to authorities, who was later executed after being told that he would not receive the death penalty. "Now it's my family, and I'm taking a closer look at it. Death came knocking on my door, and guess what?" Babbitt asked. "I got an education overnight." SJSU's Cesar Chavez Community Action Center has joined with Families to Amend California's Three Strikes and The Campaign to End the Death Penalty for the event. "Those who are passionate about a certain issue having to do with social justice," Maribel Martinez, program coordinator for the Cesar Chavez Community Action Center said, "we will help work with them to produce an event to raise awareness for more students in the community." Martinez said it took 2 weeks from the day she first talked to Veronica to set the date for the event. When Luna visited her uncle at San Quentin state prison, she said she would see other men a day before they were executed, which made her think about joining a campaign. "Stan 'Tookie' Williams was there the same time as my uncle," Luna said. "I saw him walk past me the day before his execution. Honestly that was a big turn for me." Luna said after seeing Williams, she got involved with The Campaign to End the Death Penalty, a nationwide grassroots organization, with Bay Area chapters in Oakland and San Francisco, to support what they were doing and they pushed her to the forefront. "I was there to support them, but they needed me to speak," Luna said. At first, she said she didn't know if she could be there emotionally while her uncle was on death row. "It was overwhelming," Luna said, "but at the same time there was so much support, and I felt like I wasn't alone." Luna has spoken at events in Chicago, San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland. Tuesday's event will include other guest speakers who have been affected by the death penalty. (source: The (San Jose State Univeristy) Spartan Daily)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., VER., CALIF.
Rick Halperin Tue, 6 May 2008 10:47:48 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
