[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, IDAHO

[Rick Halperin]

August 12



TEXAS----execution

Violent Texas inmate executed for double slaying


A twice-convicted killer with a history of violence that continued even
after he was sent to death row was executed Tuesday for gunning down 2
video store workers during a robbery 14 years ago in Dallas.

"I love all y'all. I forgive all y'all. See y'all when you get there,"
Leon David Dorsey IV said in his final statement. "Do what you're going to
do."

Dorsey, 32, acknowledged his sister when witnesses filed in but didn't
direct any comments to the relatives of his victims.

He was pronounced dead at 6:27 p.m. CDT, 9 minutes after the lethal drugs
began to flow.

Dorsey was the seventh prisoner executed this year in the nation's most
active death penalty state and the first of two inmates scheduled to die
this week. 2 more are to die next week.

The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year upheld his conviction and death
sentence and no late appeals were filed to try to block Dorsey's lethal
injection.

Prison records showed that since Dorsey arrived on death row 8 years ago,
he's had at least 95 disciplinary cases, including a 2004 attack where he
used an 8 1/2-inch shank to stab an officer 14 times in the back. The
officer's body armor prevented serious injuries.

Less than 2 weeks ago, authorities recovered another shank from his cell.
His threats of violence kept prison officials from making him available
for media interviews as his execution date approached and his frequent
disciplinary issues kept him in a prison system classification reserved
for the most troublesome inmates.

"He's mean," Toby Shook, a former Dallas County assistant district
attorney who prosecuted Dorsey for capital murder, said, calling him a
"true psychopath."

"Wherever he's been he's done stuff like that," Shook said. "He's very
smart, very organized. ... He just was always headed in this direction.
Every day he was looking to hurt someone. It was the only satisfaction he
got in life."

Dorsey already was in prison, serving 60 years after pleading guilty to
killing a woman during a convenience store robbery, when a Dallas police
cold case squad gathered enough evidence to tie him to the unsolved
shooting deaths four years earlier of James Armstrong, 26, and Brad
Lindsey, 20, at a Blockbuster Video store in East Dallas where they
worked.

Evidence showed Dorsey, who called himself "Pistol Pete," cased the place
on Easter Sunday night in 1994, then returned after midnight to steal $392
from a cash register. He shot the workers when Armstrong had difficulty
opening a safe at gunpoint and Lindsey tried to run.

Most of the crime was recorded on security cameras in the store.

Dorsey initially was questioned about the slayings after his girlfriend
reported to police that he had admitted the shootings to her. But police
initially believed the 18-year-old was too tall, based on images from the
security tape.

"Leon is a fairly tall fellow," said his trial attorney, Doug Parks. "The
question is whether he was too tall to be the person in that video. That
basically was the defense. The physical evidence showed it was not him
regardless of what he said."

When the case was reopened in 1998, Dallas authorities had the tape
analyzed by the FBI and determined Dorsey could have been the gunman.

"He got away with it a long time because technology hadn't caught up to
him," Jason January, who prosecuted the case with Shook, said.

Five months after the video store killings, Dorsey killed a 51-year-old
Korean woman, Hyon Suk Chon, at the convenience store she managed in
Ennis, south of Dallas. He was in prison for that slaying when he was
questioned again about the double slaying and confessed.

"You hate to see that, knowing that potentially if the technology had been
as good when the crime was committed, someone else would not have been
killed," January said.

Dorsey also admitted the murders to a reporter in an interview from prison
while he was awaiting trial.

"I've done cut folks; I've done stabbed folks; I've killed folks," he told
The Dallas Morning News. "But it don't bother me."

The interview was among evidence prosecutors used to convince a jury he
would be a continuing threat, 1 of the criteria for the death penalty in
Texas.

Dorsey at age 12 moved to Waxahachie to live with his grandparents after
he was booted from Germany where his mother was stationed in the Air
Force. Records show when he was 14 he took a gun to school and fired it.
At 16, he fired at a couple driving in a car.

"He'd walk down the street with a sawed-off shotgun tied to his arm and
with a coat on and then just throw it open - just to see the reaction of
people," Shook said. "He's a piece of work."

On Thursday, Michael Rodriguez, one of the infamous "Texas 7" prison
escapees, has volunteered for execution for his part in the fatal shooting
of a Dallas-area police officer, Aubrey Hawkins, during a robbery while he
and the 6 other escapees were fugitives in December 2000.

Dorsey becomes the 7th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in
Texas, and the 412th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on
December 7, 1982. Dorsey becomes the 173rd condemned inmate to be put to
death in Texas since Rick Perry became governor in 2001.

Dorsey becomes the 19th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in
the USA and the 1118th overall since the nation resumed executions on
January 17, 1977.

(source: The Houston Chronicle)

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

3 charged with capital murder in Harris County slaying


3 people have been arrested and charged with capital murder in the death
of a man shot during an Aug. 2 robbery at his north Harris County home.

Armed with shotguns, Jacque Garrett and Christopher Wiley, both 21, and
Trenard Battle, 19, forced their way into Carl Bray's home in the 22000
block of Wellington Bend, authorities said.

The 3 may have targeted Bray because of an expensive sports car at the
home, said Sgt. Bryan Pair, Harris County Sheriff's Office Homicide
Division.

They demanded money and beat Bray, 49, before shooting him. Bray was
pronounced dead at the scene.

The 3 fled on foot with an "undisclosed" amount of money, said Pair.

All remain in the Harris County Jail, held without bond.

The investigation remains open.

"We're looking to make sure we've located everyone who was involved," said
Pair (source: The Houston Chronicle)






IDAHO:

Duncan's death penalty hearing to start Wednesday


For the next several weeks, fifteen Idahoans will review one of the
state's most gruesome crimes, deciding whether it was so heinous and
depraved that it warrants the death penalty.

And Joseph Edward Duncan III - the convicted killer at the middle of it
all - may decline to offer any substantial defense.

The death penalty hearing, which will have 12 jurors and 3 alternates,
begins here Wednesday morning before U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge.

Duncan isn't new to the legal system. A convicted pedophile originally
from Tacoma, Wash., his past is littered with arrests and prison time for
crimes ranging from stolen cars to rape and molestation. He is suspected
in the 1996 slayings of 2 half-sisters from Seattle, and is charged with
the 1997 killing of a young boy in Riverside County, Calif.

But in 2005, he came to Idaho. He stalked a family and then entered their
Coeur d'Alene home, murdering 13-year-old Slade Groene, his mother, Brenda
Groene, and her fiance, Mark McKenzie. Then he kidnapped the 2 youngest,
9-year-old Dylan Groene and then-8-year-old Shasta Groene, and fled.

Duncan was free on $15,000 bail in a Minnesota molestation case at the
time. He had been charged with molesting a 6-year-old boy at a Detroit
Lakes school playground in July 2004.

He pleaded guilty to the murders in state court in 2006, and in January
2007 the federal government charged him with 10 felonies for the trauma he
inflicted on Dylan and Shasta. They were threatened, sexually abused and
tortured in the remote Montana wilderness, according to court documents,
before Duncan shot young Dylan to death. Then he packed up Shasta and
returned to Coeur d'Alene, stopping in the middle of the night for a meal
at a Denny's restaurant. It was there that a waitress recognized Shasta
and called police.

In December, Duncan pleaded guilty to the federal charges, clearing the
way for a federal jury to decide his fate.

The case won't be easy, the judge has warned the potential jurors. They'll
have to review horrendous evidence, including a videotape Duncan made of
the "sadistic sexual abuse" of Dylan. They may hear poignant testimony
from Shasta, the sole survivor of the attacks.

What they likely won't hear is any mitigating evidence designed to lighten
Duncan's culpability. Duncan is representing himself, with former defense
attorneys serving only as "standby counsel," a sort of legal resource for
Duncan as he presents his case. One of the standby lawyers is Judy Clarke,
the former director of the Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington and
Idaho who helped keep Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, 1996 Olympics bomber Eric
Rudolph and convicted child killer Susan Smith all off death row. Clarke
has argued in court that Duncan is irrational and not mentally competent
to represent himself. She's also said that he doesn't plan on offering any
mitigation, such as evidence of his own traumatic childhood.

But Lodge has found that Duncan is competent to represent himself, though
he, too, thought it was a bad idea.

The jurors won't be the only ones watching the case. News media from
around the region are expected to attend. Judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals may be monitoring the case as they weigh a request
brought by The Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, Wash., to keep the
proceedings fully open to the public - including any testimony by Shasta.
And prosecutors from Riverside County, Calif., are following the case,
said Ingrid Wyatt, a spokeswoman for the Riverside County district
attorney's office.

"Certainly we've been monitoring it all along, and we're just waiting for
the case to be finalized so Mr. Duncan can be extradited here in Riverside
County, so the victim's family here can have their day in court," she
said.

The court will open Wednesday morning with prosecutors and Duncan making
their final challenges to the potential jury pool, whittling the group
from 61 people to 12 jurors and three alternates. Opening arguments from
the prosecution and from Duncan - should he choose to give one - will come
next, Lodge said.

(source: Fort Mil Times)