Jan. 5 OHIO: Death-penalty trial nears in '05 case An orientation for potential jurors is scheduled for Friday. The death-penalty jury trial of Antonio Jackson is to begin next Monday before Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. Jackson, 28, of Summer Street, will go on trial for the Aug. 6, 2005, aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and rape of Sierra Y. Slaton, 19, of Vestal Road. A co-defendant, Antwon Lanier, 25, of Mahoning County Jail, is charged with committing the same crimes against Slaton. Laniers capital jury trial is to begin March 2 before Judge Durkin. The prosecution alleges Slaton was raped in South Side Park before being taken to McKelvey Lake on the East Side, where she was shot multiple times in the head at point-blank range and thrown into the water. Slaton was found floating in McKelvey Lake at 6:30 p.m. Aug. 7, 2005. The death-penalty specifications say Slaton was killed while the other crimes were being committed against her and as part of a pattern of conduct in which 2 or more people were killed. An orientation for between 90 and 100 prospective jurors for Jackson's trial is set for Friday. Beginning next Monday, prospective jurors will be interviewed by the lawyers and judge individually and out of earshot of other potential jurors until 12 jurors and 4 alternates are chosen. If the jury convicts Jackson of any of the death specifications, the same jurors will return at a later date to hear testimony concerning what penalty should be imposed and to recommend a life or death sentence. Prosecuting the Jackson case are Dawn Cantalamessa and Jennifer McLaughlin, assistant county prosecutors. The defense lawyers are John B. Juhasz and Lynn Maro. Jackson will face another capital jury trial before Judge Durkin later this year in the Nov. 20, 2005, drowning death of another woman, Tahnee Jackson (no relation), 29, of Cassius Street. Jackson is charged with aggravated murder in that case, in which the victims nude body was found shortly before 4 a.m. floating in a creek in a wooded area near Erie Street and Earle Avenue on the South Side. Jackson is charged with the aggravated robbery and kidnapping of the murder victim and of a woman who survived that attack. The same death specifications that were attached in the Slaton case apply against Jackson in the November 2005 case. Besides these cases, the only other capital case pending here is that of Curtis Young, whose jury trial is to begin in April before Judge Maureen A. Sweeney. Young, 25, of Center Street, is charged in the July 31, 2007, shooting deaths of Helen Moore, 29, of Cassius Street, her nearly full-term baby and her 8-year-old son, Ceonei Moore. The death-penalty specifications against Young say that the crimes involved the slaying of 2 or more people and of 2 victims under the age of 13. The forthcoming capital murder trials follow two such trials in which defendants were convicted in October. One of them resulted in a 310-year prison term for 18-year-old Michael A. Davis, who was spared from the death penalty after being convicted of setting the Jan. 23, 2008, Stewart Avenue house fire that killed 6 people. The other capital trial last fall resulted in a death sentence for Bennie Adams, 51, for the Dec. 29, 1985, strangulation of 19-year-old Gina Tenney, whose body was found floating in the Mahoning River. That case was reopened after a DNA match was found in evidence police had preserved for 22 years. Another capital murder trial was averted in November when Terrance Tate, 23, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child endangering and drew a 15-year prison term in the April 2006 beating death of 1-year-old Javonte Covington. (source: Youngstown Vindicator) VIRGINIA: Va. sets execution date for Winchester cop killer A Virginia inmate is scheduled to be executed next month for killing a Winchester police officer in 1999. Winchester Circuit Court set a Feb. 19 execution date for 44-year-old Edward Nathaniel Bell. Bell was sentenced to death for killing Sgt. Ricky Timbrook. Prosecutors said Bell shot Timbrook in the face because he feared the officer would find him carrying a gun or drugs. Bell's execution previously was delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court's consideration of lethal injection procedures. The court upheld the execution method in April. A Virginia inmate is scheduled to be executed next month for killing a Winchester police officer in 1999. Winchester Circuit Court set a Feb. 19 execution date for 44-year-old Edward Nathaniel Bell. Bell was sentenced to death for killing Sgt. Ricky Timbrook. Prosecutors said Bell shot Timbrook in the face because he feared the officer would find him carrying a gun or drugs. Bell's execution previously was delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court's consideration of lethal injection procedures. The court upheld the execution method in April. (source: Associated Press) PENNSYLVANIA: Retarded strangler has deal to leave Pa. death row A man who strangled a 68-year-old Pennsylvania woman in 1994 will get off death row and spend life in prison instead. Forty-year-old Jose Marrero was sentenced to death in October 1994. He murdered 68-year-old Elizabeth Smith, of Erie, after breaking into her apartment in January 1994. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated Marrero's death sentence in 2006 after state and federal rulings barred the execution of mentally retarded defendants. Marrero's IQ has been tested in the mid-50s, lower than the American Psychiatric Association's 70-point standard for retardation. Marrero will be resentenced Thursday via teleconference in Erie County. District Attorney Brad Foulk says he agreed to the life sentence without parole because he can't prove Marrero isn't retarded. (source: Associated Press) MARYLAND: More Groups Than Thought Monitored in Police Spying----New Documents Reveal Md. Program's Reach The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored -- and labeled as terrorists -- activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing bike lanes. Intelligence officers created a voluminous file on Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling the group a "security threat" because of concerns that members would disrupt the circus. Angry consumers fighting a 72 % electricity rate increase in 2006 were targeted. The DC Anti-War Network, which opposes the Iraq war, was designated a white supremacist group, without explanation. One of the possible "crimes" in the file police opened on Amnesty International, a world-renowned human rights group: "civil rights." According to hundreds of pages of newly obtained police documents, the groups were swept into a broad surveillance operation that started in 2005 with routine preparations for the scheduled executions of 2 men on death row. The operation has been called a "waste of resources" by the current police superintendent and "undemocratic" by the governor. Police have acknowledged that the monitoring, which took place during the administration of then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), spiraled out of control, with an undercover trooper spending 14 months infiltrating peaceful protest groups. Troopers have said they inappropriately labeled 53 individuals as terrorists in their database, information that was shared with federal authorities. But the new documents reveal a far more expansive set of police targets and indicate that police did not close some files until late 2007. The surveillance ended with no arrests and no evidence of violent sedition. Instead, troopers are preparing to purge files and say they are expecting lawsuits. The effort, made public in July, confirmed the fears of civil liberties groups that have warned about domestic spying since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Interviews, e-mails, public records and an independent state review reveal that police in Maryland were motivated by something far narrower: a query about death penalty activism directed to a police antiterrorism unit that was searching for a mission. But some observers say Sept. 11 opened the door. "No one was thinking this was al-Qaeda," said Stephen H. Sachs, a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general appointed by Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) to review the case. "But 9/11 created an atmosphere where cutting corners was easier." Maryland has not been alone. The FBI and police departments in several cities, including Denver in 2002 and New York before the 2004 Republican National Convention, also responded to the threat of terrorism by spying on activists. Sachs's review, released in October, condemned the Maryland spying as a severe lapse in judgment. No one has been reprimanded or fired, and the undercover trooper has been promoted twice. To date, the activists listed as terrorists are not known to have experienced any related limits in their travel, employment or financial transactions. State police officials have provided only glimpses of their intelligence-gathering and have defended some of it as necessary to ensure public safety at potentially contentious protests. Although they have provided related documents to the American Civil Liberties Union and Maryland lawmakers, they have not given the same records to The Washington Post under the Public Information Act. The department declined to make the officers involved available to answer questions. Some sources spoke on condition of anonymity because of the case's sensitivity. Ehrlich also has declined to comment; senior police officials say he was never briefed on the program. The newly discovered documents do, however, reveal for the 1st time the stated purpose of the operation: "To assess the threat to public safety by various protest groups, and identify high threat groups for continued monitoring." * * * The documents and law enforcement sources say the operation began in 2005 with a simple request from Maj. Jack Simpson, a field commander in special operations. In late February, he called Lt. Greg Mazzella in the intelligence division and asked for a threat assessment of protests expected before the scheduled execution dates for 2 men on Maryland's death row. After trawling the Internet, an analyst reported a "potential for disruption" at both executions. Mazzella dispatched a corporal who needed experience in undercover work to the Electrik Maid community center in Takoma Park, where death penalty foes were organizing rallies. At a rally to save Vernon Evans Jr. outside the Supermax prison in Baltimore a few weeks later, the woman who said her name was Lucy McDonald asked veteran activist Max Obuszewski how she could learn more about passive resistance and civil disobedience. The activists recall that she had a genial disposition and refreshing curiosity, and she quickly became a fixture at meetings and rallies of death penalty opponents and antiwar activists. She used a laptop computer at meetings, but the activists say no one was alarmed. "Maybe I wondered what she was typing," said Mike Stark of Takoma Park. "But you always check yourself. In our movement it's very important to be outward and not paranoid." The trooper provided weekly reports to her bosses, logging at least 288 hours of investigative time. She did not return phone calls seeking comment, and The Post is not identifying her because of concerns about compromising her cover in other possible operations. The logs described silent vigils outside the prison and a ceremony of poetry and songs to commemorate the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. The activists pledged nonviolence. Yet she closed several entries this way: "Due to the above facts, I request that this case remain open and updated as events warrant." The woman's bosses considered her surveillance a low-risk training exercise; it quickly expanded to the antiwar movement as she met activists whose causes overlapped, police said. Intelligence commanders discussed the spying at their daily briefings and made Lt. Col. Thomas Coppinger, then the chief of the intelligence bureau, and Superintendent Timothy Hutchins aware of it, law enforcement officials said. Coppinger and other officers involved in the case declined to comment. The program emerged after the antiterrorism squad had been whittled from almost 65 to a dozen. Hutchins's predecessor, Ed Norris, a hard-charging former Baltimore police commissioner, had built up the division after the Sept. 11 attacks to fight terrorist threats. But when Norris was forced out by corruption charges in 2004, the unit was gutted. Most of the computers and other high-tech equipment for intelligence troopers were literally ripped out of the walls, law enforcement sources said. "We concentrated on what we could do best, rather than a little bit of everything," Hutchins said. When Simpson called, the unit finally had a mission. Greg Shipley, a police spokesman, said the undercover operation spanned months as the death penalty cases saw their timelines grow and the executions delayed. Other intelligence gathering was prompted by planned protests largely to ensure that no violence occurred, Shipley said. Investigators had concerns about the potential for "counter-demonstrations" to planned protests, he said. Current Superintendent Terrence Sheridan said in a Nov. 25 letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery) that police had a right to monitor activists in public forums. "Presence at a rally, a demonstration, gathering information from open sources such as the Internet, etc. are all part of the collection of the knowledge and information crucial" to police work, Sheridan wrote. * * * The undercover trooper's early moves were sometimes clumsy. She sent e-mails from a domain linked to the state police that could easily have been uncovered with an Internet search. She sprinkled truth across her cover story, once revealing her home county. She suddenly changed her name to Lucy Shoup and offered a new e-mail address, claiming a change in marital status. She asked lots of questions but never shared her thoughts, activists say. She also tried to use her new friendships to learn more about other groups. Then, with Evans's execution stayed, the woman disappeared. "Lucy was no more," Obuszewski recalled. Meanwhile, the intelligence-gathering expanded in other directions, to activists in New York, Missouri, San Francisco and at the University of Maryland. Shane Dillingham's primary crime, according to the 6-page file classifying him as a terrorist, was "anarchism." Police opened a file on the doctoral student in history a week after an undercover officer attended a College Park forum featuring a jailhouse phone conversation with Evans. Investigators also tracked activists protesting weapons manufactured by defense contractor Lockheed Martin. They watched two pacifist Catholic nuns from Baltimore. Environmental activists made it into the database, as did three leaders of Code Pink, a national women's antiwar group, who do not live in Maryland. PETA was labeled a "security threat group" in April 2005, and by July police were looking into a tip that the group had learned about a failing chicken farm in Kent County and planned on "protesting or stealing the chickens." A "very casually dressed" undercover trooper attended a speech by PETA's president that month and waited afterward to see whether anyone talked about chickens. Nobody did. Police had turned to the database in a low-cost effort to replace antiquated file cabinets. The Washington High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a regional clearinghouse for drug-related criminal information, offered its software for free. But the database did not include categories that fit the nature of the protest-group investigations. So police created "terrorism" categories to track the activists, according to the state review. Some information was sent directly to HIDTA's main database as part of an agreement to share information. Putting the activists into the database was "a function of nothing more than the insertion of a piece of paper in a paper file in a file cabinet," Sheridan wrote. But labeling them "terrorists," he said was "incorrect and improper." The activists fear that they will land on federal watch lists, in part because the police shared their intelligence information with at least 7 area law enforcement agencies. HIDTA Director Tom Carr said his organization's database became a dead end for the information because law enforcement agencies cannot access the data directly. The database instead acts as a "pointer": Investigators enter case information and the database indicates whether another agency has related material and instructs investigators to contact that agency. The activists were not a match with any other data, Carr said, and their information has since purged. "The problem lies in the fact that once [the state police] checked it out and found it was not accurate, they should have removed it from the system," Carr said. "And they did not do that." * * * The surveillance program became public largely because of documents released during a trespassing trial for Obuszewski, the nuns and another activist arrested during an antiwar rally at the National Security Agency. The documents showed that Baltimore intelligence officers were tracking them. The American Civil Liberties Union then filed public records requests with several law enforcement agencies. When the state police refused to release what they had, the ACLU sued. O'Malley condemned the monitoring as a politically motivated mistake and moved quickly to seek answers. He appointed Sachs, who had prosecuted Catholic activists for raiding a Selective Service office in 1968. Sachs called the spying a "systemic failure" that violated federal regulations and said police were oblivious to the activists' rights to free expression and association. The Maryland State Police have changed their policies and plan to solicit advice from the ACLU, the General Assembly, prosecutors and police about regulations that would raise the bar for intelligence-gathering to "reasonable suspicion" of a crime. Some activists have responded by redoubling their efforts. Pat Elder, a Bethesda advocate who organizes a demonstration on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the gates of Lockheed Martin's headquarters, sent a public message to police last month on a local Web site. "Did it ever occur to you that we're on the side of the good guys and you're not?" Elder wrote in an open letter to the NSA, the Maryland State Police and Montgomery police. "How do you think it makes us feel to know you're looking over our shoulders this way?" (source: Washington Post) *************** Washington Post Refuses to Disclose Identity of Maryland Police Spy The Washington Post has conducted some strong reporting on the Maryland State Police's campaign to spy on activists from 2005 to 2007. But in its latest report on how the scandal was more expansive than originally thought, the Post decided not to identify one of the police officers who worked undercover to spy on various individuals and activist groups in the state. According to a front-page article in the Jan. 4 Post, the reporters covering the scandal, Lisa Rein and Josh White, indicated that they are aware of the actual identity of this particular state police offer but are declining to disclose her name because the newspaper claims it might compromise her efforts to conduct future undercover operations for the Maryland State Police. Of course, these future operations could include spying on activists, similar to the surveillance work she previously conducted. This Maryland State Police spying campaign is an extremely unsavory and nefarious episode because it represents another huge step by a police agency in the United States, with vast financial resources at its disposal, to monitor, follow and track individual citizens. In this particular case, dozens of individuals were labeled as "terrorists" in the state police's database for engaging in nonviolent activities, including opposing the death penalty, opposing the U.S. war on Iraq, campaigning to establish bicycle lanes along highways in the state, promoting human rights, advocating for animal rights, and protesting weapons manufacturers. By not identifying the real name of the undercover police officer, the Post becomes an accessory to future transgressions and misdeeds committed by the Maryland State police officer who used the aliases Lucy Shoup and Lucy McDonald as she masqueraded as an activist opposed to the death penalty and the U.S. war on Iraq. In their Jan. 4 article, Rein and White wrote: "The trooper provided weekly reports to her bosses, logging at least 288 hours of investigative time. She did not return phone calls seeking comment, and The Post is not identifying her because of concerns about compromising her cover in other possible operations." In Europe, Communist regimes conducted similar secret police operations. For example, East Germanys Ministry for State Security, commonly referred to as the Stasi, deeply penetrated most segments of East German society, including unofficial political groups. Like the Maryland State Police, the Stasi monitored political behavior among East German citizens. As with the Posts decision not to publish the name of the Maryland State Police officer, publishers in East Germany did not disclose information that they deemed harmful to the regime. While the government-operated press in East Germany was subject to pre-publication censorship, the news media in the United States and other Western states practice self-censorship in order to remain in the good graces of government authorities, especially police, military and intelligence agencies that may be engaging in abusive and insidious activities. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, East German citizens demanded access to the files kept by the Stasi, similar to the campaign in recent months by U.S. activists to obtain the secret files kept by the Maryland State Police. In 1992, following a declassification ruling by the new reunified German government, the Stasi files were opened, leading people to look for their files. In Maryland, the state police have made available heavily redacted versions of the files for some of the people upon whom the agency spied starting in 2005. The Post article indicates the surveillance activity continued until late 2007, long after Democratic Gov. Martin OMalley took office in January 2007. Previous reports placed the blame for the abuse on state police officials associated with the administration of Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a right-wing politician who served one term as governor. The Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union notes that "despite the clear infringement of First Amendment rights, no Maryland law prohibits this outrageous law enforcement conduct or provides remedies for wrongful targets." The ACLU says it knows that the Maryland State Police "has not acknowledged the full scope of their wrongful spying program: there are more targets than have been acknowledged, the spying occurred over a longer period of time than has been acknowledged, the MSP as of this writing continues to illegally deny wrongful targets copies of their files." The group says it will be lobbying during the upcoming session of the Maryland General Assembly for legislation, dubbed the The First Amendment Protection Act of 2009. The legislation [pdf] would: * Prohibit covert criminal intelligence investigations and dossier compilation of individuals and groups based solely upon political, social or religious activities and beliefs, absent articulable suspicion of criminal activity. * Establish oversight and accountability to ensure law enforcement activities are related to legitimate law enforcement purposes; ensure that criminal intelligence files contain only accurate and relevant information; and ensure that only accurate and relevant criminal intelligence information is disseminated to national security and other law enforcement agencies. * Provide remedies for wrongful targets of objectionable law enforcement spying and First Amendment violations. (source: Press Action) *************** Evidence condemns the death penalty I object very strenuously to the title of Scott D. Shellenberger's column "Evidence supports death penalty in Md." (Commentary, Dec. 30). He admits that the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment voted 13-9 for repeal of the death penalty. So obviously the majority of commission members believe the evidence calls for an end to executions. Those of us who attended the commission's open hearings know that the evidence indicated that racism, classism, geographical disparities, etc., affect the application of the death penalty in Maryland. And a majority of the commissioners did not believe the death penalty could be fixed. As an abolitionist and an organizer, I know that valuable time and resources should not be spent on trying to change the opinion of those who are never going to change. But I know that eventually the death penalty will be repealed. It is a barbaric practice that tarnishes all involved - from the prosecutor to the jury members to the judge to the governor to the execution team. It is a practice most civilized states and countries long ago abolished. The arguments made in the column are misleading at best. For example, I was in Annapolis when Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project testified before the commission. And Mr. Shellenberger failed to point out that Mr. Scheck's testimony indicated that even the latest technology does not rule out the possibility that an innocent person will be executed. I will be in Annapolis lobbying members of the legislature this session and arguing that the death penalty must be repealed. No one has the right to take another person's life. Max Obuszewski----Baltimore (source: Letter to the Editor, Baltimore Sun)
