[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, N.C., IND., WYO., ARK.

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 27


TEXAS:

Texas jury to get smuggling deaths trial


A jury that has heard four weeks of sometimes emotionally wrenching
testimony from survivors of the nation's deadliest human smuggling attempt
will soon get the case - without hearing directly from the defendant
himself.

Closing statements were set for Monday in the retrial of Tyrone Williams,
charged with 58 counts of conspiracy, harboring and transporting illegal
immigrants. He faces a possible death sentence if convicted.

The case, which has been paused since Nov. 20 because of Thanksgiving, had
some last-minute drama last week as an attorney for Williams told the
judge outside the presence of the jury that his client, against his
advice, had expressed interested in testifying.

Williams' lead defense attorney, Craig Washington, told U.S. Judge Lee
Rosenthal that if Williams went ahead with plans to testify, Washington
wanted to go on record that he was against it.

But after talking with Washington, Williams changed his mind.

Authorities say Williams was part of a smuggling ring that tried to
transport more than 70 illegal immigrants from Mexico, Central America and
the Dominican Republic in his airtight tractor-trailer from South Texas to
Houston in May 2003.

Williams abandoned the trailer at a truck stop near Victoria, about 100
miles southwest of Houston, after the immigrants succumbed to the heat
inside. Nineteen of them died from dehydration, overheating and
suffocation.

Prosecutors argued Williams ignored the immigrants cries for help during
the four-hour trip and failed to turn on his trailer's air conditioning
unit, which they said might have prevented the deaths. Several survivors
called by Williams' attorneys testified the air conditioning unit was
turned on during the trip.

During the journey, the immigrants' body temperatures rose as high as 113
degrees.

Survivors testified they couldn't understand how Williams didn't hear or
feel as the immigrants desperately banged on the trailer's walls and
shouted they were dying and needed to be released.

Washington countered that his client couldn't hear the cries from the
packed trailer until it was too late.

A jury convicted Williams last year on 38 transporting counts, but he
avoided a death sentence because the jury couldn't agree on his role in
the smuggling attempt. However, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
rejected the decision, saying the verdict didn't count because the jury
failed to specify his role in the crime.

Williams, 35, a Jamaican citizen who lived in Schenectady, N.Y., is the
only one of 14 people charged in the case who is facing the death penalty.

So far, 7 people have been sentenced to prison in the case. Sentencing for
3 others is pending. Charges against 2 were dismissed, and 1 man remains a
fugitive.

(source: Associated Press)






NORTH CAROLINA----stay of impending execution

LeGrande gets a stay of execution


Death row inmate Guy LeGrande received a stay of execution today after a
hearing where a judge determined that three psychiatrists should be
allowed to observe him. LeGrande, 47, was to be executed on Friday. He was
sentenced to death for the 1993 murder-for-hire of Ellen Munford, the
estranged wife of one of LeGrande's co-workers.

Superior Court Judge William R. Bell gave the psychiatrists 45 days to
complete their observations and evaluations.

LeGrande's lawyers Jay Ferguson and Jim Coleman had requested the
evaluations and have described the inmate as psychotic and delusional. Up
to this point, Le Grande has refused to talk psychiatrists, and Bell noted
that he could not force him to speak with the doctors.

Prosecutors have disputed the claim that LeGrande, who represented himself
during the initial trial, is mentally ill.

********************

Rewards explored in death row case----Lawyers seek cause for retrial


LeGrande is to die for the 1993 murder of Ellen Munford.

HEARING TODAY; EXECUTION SET FOR FRIDAYGuy LeGrande will be at the Stanly
County courthouse today for a competency hearing.

His appellate lawyers say LeGrande, who is scheduled to be executed
Friday, is psychotic and delusional and did not receive a fair trial
because he acted as his own attorney. Prosecutors say LeGrande is a
manipulative, intelligent and articulate man who was capable of
representing himself and should die for his crimes.

LeGrande, 47, was sentenced to death for the 1993 murder-for-hire of Ellen
Munford, the estranged wife of one of LeGrande's co-workers. LeGrande was
recruited to commit the killing by Tommy Munford, who offered to pay him
$6,500 from the life insurance proceeds. LeGrande shot Ellen Munford twice
in the back.

Recent efforts by LeGrande's lawyers and the state Attorney General's
Office to have LeGrande evaluated appear to have failed -- LeGrande has
refused to talk to the doctors. So it is unclear how the judge will
determine whether LeGrande is competent and whether his execution should
proceed.

****

Barbara Taylor was a key witness at death row inmate Guy LeGrande's 1996
trial: She testified that LeGrande confessed to her about killing his
co-worker's wife.

LeGrande's lawyers, who are trying to stop his Friday execution, wonder
whether prosecutors withheld information about plans to pay Taylor several
thousand dollars for her testimony. They say LeGrande had a right to know
there was $5,000 to be doled out to witnesses who testified against him so
the jury could consider that when evaluating the witnesses' motive for
testifying.

Instead, LeGrande's lawyers say, prosecutors revealed before trial that
Taylor received $200. Based on recently obtained documents, it appears she
may have been paid $3,500.

"I think jurors would have viewed Barbara Taylor differently if they knew
she was going to receive several thousands of dollars in payment," said
Durham lawyer Jay Ferguson, who along with Duke University law professor
Jim Coleman, represents LeGrande.

The two lawyers are handling LeGrande's last-minute appeals and clemency
petition without his consent. LeGrande, described by his lawyers and
others as psychotic and delusional, insisted on representing himself at
his trial, during which he urged the jury to sentence him to death. While
acting as his own appellate lawyer, he has not fully pursued his appeals.

A former Stanly County assistant district attorney who helped prosecute
LeGrande denies hiding any information about any deals or payments to
witnesses.

This is the latest argument from LeGrande's lawyers about why his
execution should not go forward. All of their arguments boil down to this:
LeGrande did not get a fair trial, and he deserves a new one or a lesser
sentence.

LeGrande, 47, was sentenced to death for the 1993 murder-for-hire of Ellen
Munford in Stanly County, east of Charlotte. Munford's estranged husband,
Tommy, recruited LeGrande to do the killing for a $6,500 share of a
$50,000 life insurance policy. Prosecutors dispute the claim that LeGrande
is mentally ill, instead describing him as an intelligent, manipulative
killer.

Files LeGrande missed

LeGrande's lawyers' latest appeal is complicated by the fact that while
acting as his own appellate lawyer, LeGrande did not request copies of the
prosecutors' and investigators' entire files -- files that all death row
inmates are entitled to obtain.

Ferguson did not get access until Oct. 30 to more than 6,000 pages of
records and documents in LeGrande's case that had not previously been
reviewed. Typically, appellate lawyers take up to nine months to read such
material, figure out what was known before trial and what was not, and
evaluate what might be the basis for an appeal, said Thomas Maher,
executive director of the Durham-based Center for Death Penalty
Litigation, a nonprofit law firm that handles appeals for death row
inmates.

"To do it under time pressure, if not impossible, it is extremely
difficult," Maher said.

Based on his review so far, Ferguson believes prosecutors may have
withheld information about payments to witnesses. But Ferguson
acknowledges that he does not know whether Taylor actually received
$3,500, because he is still tracking down payment records.

What Ferguson does know is that former Stanly County Sheriff Joe Lowder
sent a letter in 1994 asking the Governor's Office for $5,000 in reward
money to help capture Ellen Munford's killer. After Taylor came forward
with information, LeGrande was arrested and charged with murder in 1995.

Before LeGrande's April 1996 trial, a judge ordered prosecutors to reveal
whether any witnesses received money. In August 1996 -- four months after
LeGrande was convicted -- the sheriff wrote to the governor that the
$5,000 should be split among four witnesses, including $3,500 to Taylor.

There were three other witnesses that Lowder suggested be paid a total of
$1,500 for their assistance. But Ferguson said prosecutors only disclosed
one had been paid $100 before trial.

Taylor's testimony was key to prosecutors securing a murder conviction
against LeGrande. The only other witness to connect LeGrande to the
killing was Tommy Munford, who had a deal with prosecutors to plead to a
lesser charge, avoid the death penalty and testify against LeGrande.
Munford is eligible for a parole hearing next year.

Beyond Taylor, Ferguson questions whether prosecutors had a deal with
another witness that they failed to disclose. Greg Laton, who knew about
Munford's plans to have his wife killed, testified against LeGrande but
was never charged for providing the murder weapon to Tommy Munford.
Ferguson also notes that Laton had two pending felony charges at the time
of his testimony. After Laton testified, Ferguson said, he saw one charge
dismissed and got probation on the other.

Prosecution's view

The N.C. Attorney General's Office, which is arguing for LeGrande's
execution to go forward, had not filed a response to Ferguson's motion
before the holiday break.

Michael Parker, the current district attorney in Stanly, Anson, Union and
Richmond counties, who did not prosecute LeGrande, said his office has
turned over all its records on the case to Ferguson.

"It's my understanding that LeGrande was given information about reward
payments prior to the trial," Parker said. "It's my understanding that the
other payments were made after the trial -- as much as six months after
the fact."

Ferguson counters that prosecutors should have disclosed the existence of
the $5,000 in reward money and that witnesses could receive some portion.

The prosecutors who handled LeGrande's case were Kenneth Honeycutt,
Parker's predecessor, and David Graham, now an assistant district attorney
in Mecklenburg County.

In an e-mail message to The News & Observer, Graham wrote that the legal
ethics rules prohibit him from talking about pending cases. "However," he
wrote, "I can tell you that I would never have participated in hiding from
either the court or the jury any information concerning any reward for, or
any 'deal' with, a prosecution witness."

Honeycutt, who is now in private practice in Monroe, could not be reached
for comment.

Honeycutt's other case

This is not the 1st time a death row inmate has claimed Honeycutt withheld
information about deals with and money paid to a key witness.

In 2004, Jonathan Hoffman was awarded a new trial because he and his
lawyers were not told that his cousin -- the prosecution's star witness --
got a deal with federal prosecutors to avoid further prosecution on the
opening day of Hoffman's trial. Hoffman's lawyers also argued Honeycutt
failed to reveal that the cousin received immunity from other state
charges, help reducing his South Carolina sentence and several thousand
dollars in reward money.

Honeycutt and his assistant, Scott Brewer, now a District Court judge,
were charged with prosecutorial misconduct by the N.C. State Bar, the
state agency that disciplines lawyers. The state Bar accused the pair of
committing 23 violations of the rules that govern lawyers in their
prosecution of Hoffman. The charges were dismissed on technical grounds.

If Honeycutt was involved, Michael Howell, one of Hoffman's lawyers, said
the courts should closely scrutinize such a claim.

"Anything he has touched, I believe should have special consideration,"
Howell said.

(source: News & Observer)






INDIANA:

"Surviving the Death Penalty" Now Available


A book about one of Indiana's most heinous crimes hit shelves this
weekend.

The book, called "Surviving the Death Penalty," is about the murder of the
Gilligan family in 1980.

Donald Ray Wallace, Jr. was convicted for the murders of Patrick and
Theresa Gilligan and their 2 young children. He was executed for those
crimes in 2005.

Theresa Gilligan's sister, Diana Harrington, and her husband, Ted, wrote
the book about both the victims and the criminal.

They also chronicle the 25 years of court battles that followed the
murders leading up to Wallace's death.

The book is available at Barnes and Noble or online at Amazon.com.

(source: WFIE News)






WYOMING:

Judge to consider death row inmate's appeal


Jessica Martinez started working last year in the mailroom of the Wyoming
State Penitentiary in Rawlins. She says she asks another worker to handle
whatever mail comes for James Martin Harlow, the man who's on death row
there for killing her husband.

Harlow, 36, was sentenced to death for murdering Cpl. Wayne Martinez
during a 1997 escape attempt. 2 other inmates involved were sentenced to
life in prison.

"At first, it was really hard, but now, it's not so bad," Martinez said of
working in the penitentiary where Harlow is confined. She said there are
still many workers at the penitentiary who knew her husband before he was
killed on the job.

Starting Dec. 4, U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer will hold a hearing
in Cheyenne to consider Harlow's claims that he didn't receive a fair
trial.

If Brimmer agrees, he could grant Harlow a new trial or order a new
hearing solely on the issue of whether Harlow should be put to death. An
appeal is likely regardless how the judge rules.

Jessica Martinez says she may try to attend some of Harlow's court
hearing. But she says she believes the legal system has already taken long
enough.

"I wish it would just be over and done with already," Martinez said of
Harlow's case. "I wish it was over."

Martinez said that since her husband died, she has raised their four
children by herself.

"The fact of the matter is he killed a man," Martinez said of Harlow. "And
now, the whole family is suffering for it."

But Harlow's current legal team claims he didn't receive an adequate legal
defense before a jury sentenced him to death. Harlow's team claims
prosecutors cut secret deals with other inmates to reward them for their
testimony against him.

Pat Crank, Wyoming attorney general, said his office is working hard to
prepare for the federal court hearing.

"Overall, his issue is he received ineffective assistance of counsel, and
we don't believe that's accurate," Crank said. "So we'll try to convince
Judge Brimmer that their claim doesn't have merit."

Keith Goody, a lawyer in Alpine, defended Harlow at his original trial.
After the trial, Goody was fired from the Wyoming Public Defender's
Office.

During Harlow's original case, Goody called then-State Public Defender
Sylvia Hackl to the stand to question her about her refusal to take him
off of other criminal cases to allow him to spend more time on Harlow's
defense. The conflict between Goody and Hackl was covered extensively in
the press at the time.

In a recent interview, Goody called Harlow's trial and conviction, "a
terrible miscarriage of justice."

"I think there was definitely a conflict in the public defender system
that acted to Mr. Harlow's detriment," Goody said.

Judge Brimmer has appointed lawyer Sean D. O'Brien of Kansas City, Mo., to
represent Harlow in his death penalty appeal. Lawyer Terry Harris of
Cheyenne also represents Harlow.

In their petition challenging Harlow's conviction and death sentence,
O'Brien and Harris state that Hackl wrote warnings to then-Gov. Jim
Geringer that there might be negative media coverage about her dispute
with Goody. Harlow's lawyers now claim that Hackl showed more loyalty to
Geringer than she did to Harlow, her office's client.

Goody also says Harlow suffered a devastating setback at trial when Judge
Kenneth Stebner prohibited Goody from questioning prospective jurors on
their feelings about the death penalty.

"I feel there were a lot of people who served on that jury who shouldn't
have served," Goody said. "And had I had been able to (question) the jury
panel, I would have been able to get to the bottom of that. In the trade,
it's called ADP: automatic death penalty."

Harlow was originally sent to prison for the 1985 rape and murder of a
cousin, Tammy Schoopman, in Rock Springs. He served most of his time at
the Nebraska State Penitentiary but was sent back to Wyoming shortly
before Martinez was killed.

Harlow's lawyers charge that his original defense team was negligent in
failing to research and present evidence of how well Harlow did in the
Nebraska prison.

"Had counsel undertaken such an investigation, they would have been able
to present a positive picture of Mr. Harlow as a 'stand-up' man of
integrity and honor, respected by his peers and prison staff," his lawyers
wrote.

Harlow's lawyers say other inmates have said that officials negotiated to
release them from prison or otherwise reward them in exchange for their
testimony against Harlow, but that prosecutors essentially denied that any
deals had been reached with witnesses during Harlow's original trial.

Crank said he's doesn't believe Harlow's contention that other inmates
received deals in exchange for their testimony against him.

"I think the function of his prior criminal history and the act that the 3
of them did in concert justifies the death penalty," Crank said. "And the
jury decided that based on everything they heard."

(source: Casper Tribune)






ARKANSAS:

Clemency advice to new governor


To: Gov.-elect Mike Beebe.

I am delighted that you are our governor-elect, and, for a change, I
happily look forward to the next few years!

I know and accept that you support the death penalty, which I oppose. I
also know you to be a man who believes in fairness. It is because I know
both things about you that I send this unsolicited advice about clemencies
as you put together the Beebe governor's office.

First, please do not allow a form letter saying that you cannot grant
clemency because a jury made the decision. YIKES! Juries, prosecutors and
law enforcement make terrible errors sometimes. The Innocence Project at
Cordoza Law School has proved the innocence of 187 people convicted of all
kinds of crimes all across this country. There are 123 people who have
been freed from death rows after their innocence was proved. Another 2
dozen were executed in spite of evidence of innocence. You know how
difficult it is to get a court to accept evidence of innocence because
there are technical requirements for when and how such proof is presented.
So you, my friend, will become the only person who always has the ability
to review the contentions made by an applicant for clemency, and your
review must be independent of any other.

One of my least favorite people, Kenneth Starr, former special counsel on
the Whitewater investigation and now dean of Pepperdine Law School,
recently said something very wise while on a panel examining the death
penalty:

"[M]y own experience in recent years - in the Robin Lovitt case in
Virginia ... and in the still-unfolding Michael Morales case in California
- suggests to me that governors and their advisors are tending to neglect
this historic role of clemency and pardon in the system," Starr said.

"Michael Morales' case is illustrative of what I think is a terrible
trend, abject deference to the judicial system with its inevitable flaws
and a frank unwillingness on the part of virtually every governor in the
country, and those who advise them, to fulfill their assigned role in our
constitutional structure."

I hope that you will become the first governor of Arkansas, within my
knowledge, to actually fulfill your constitutionalresponsibilities
regarding clemencies.

It is critical that your staff review crimes, especially those that
yielded a death penalty, to learn whether others committing comparable or
similar crimes were given lesser charges. It is also crucial that your
staff learn whether others committing comparable or similar capital
murders were allowed to plea bargain.

Just the other day, I read about a plea bargain given to a man who had
gunned down his wife in the street while she clutched their four-month-old
child. He took the child from his dying wife and then shot her 3 more
times. In a plea bargain, this murderer's charge was reduced to 1st-degree
murder, meaning that he can be eligible for parole one day. I do not
disagree with the prosecutor's actions in this case, but I will point out
that the most recent arrival on death row is a man who stabbed his wife to
death on a street less than 200 miles away. I'm certain that you see there
is no equity in this.

The 1st execution date you will probably set will be for a man convicted
in the county where I live. He was burglarizing homes and at one killed
the homeowner. Also in my county, a man who participated in the
imprisonment, rape, sodomy and eventual death of a young teen-ager was
allowed to take a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty. There is no
logic to this. Why is the 1st one worse than the other?

There are many other examples of the lack of standards for "most heinous."
Prosecutors are human beings who react to horrible crimes in their
districts, just like the rest of us do. The mere fact that 61 % of the men
on Arkansas's death row are black, compared with less than 15 % blacks in
the population, and the fact that most murderers are white, indicates
bias, albeit probably unintentional in most cases.

Sometimes people get the death penalty because they had a terrible lawyer
or because the victim's family are community leaders or because they are
black and nearly always because they are poor. For whatever reason, they
are not offered a plea bargain like the vast majority of people charged
with capital murder. In spite of what the State Hospital says, some of
them are simply not competent to stand trial. Sometimes death row inmates
are innocent.

I hope you will select a pardons and clemencies advisor who has had
significant experience in criminal justice, including some defense
experience. And it is very important that you not use your appointments to
the Parole Board as political payoffs (as Gov. Mike Huckabee has
occasionally done) since these people must make serious decisions about
the lives of people who come before them.

After the courts have finished reviewing a death penalty case, you, my
governor-elect and my friend, must be the Equalizer. I ask only for
fairness. In many cases, there is no other place for fairness to happen
except through the clemency process.

(source: The Arkansas Times ---- Betsey Wright, an activist on death
penalty issues, is a former chief of staff to Gov. Bill Clinton. Ernest
Dumas is on vacation. )