Nov. 6
TEXAS----impending execution
Texas man on death row has 'no illusions': wife
Texas death row inmate Hank Skinner, set to be executed Wednesday, has "no
illusions" about his fate despite pending appeals, his French wife said
Saturday.
Anti-death penalty activist Sandrine Ageorges, who met and married Skinner
while he was on death row in the 1990s, said her husband is "handling the
situation quite well despite everything."
"He has no illusions about an overly politicized system to expect that the
truth will carry the day," she told AFP in an email.
Ageorges said she is "realistic, and thus worried," adding that "the political
dimension is taking over and that does not reassure me at all."
Skinner's fate depends in part on Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is running for
president while boasting of his support for capital punishment.
Texas courts have denied requests by Skinner's lawyers for DNA tests he claims
would exonerate him.
Skinner was convicted of bludgeoning his girlfriend to death and fatally
stabbing 2 of her children.
Barring a reprieve, his execution has been set for November 9.
Skinner has not denied being present in the home at the time of the killings
but he has insisted that DNA collected at the site could clear him as a suspect
in the 1993 crimes.
Texas has refused to carry out the tests on evidence found at the home ever
since a jury convicted him in 1995. Skinner's attorneys are asking an appeals
court to reconsider the request.
Skinner has maintained his innocence since the beginning. He has also enjoyed
the support for 10 years of Northwestern University journalism professor David
Protess, who has rerun the investigation with his students as part of the
school's "innocence project."
(source: Agence France-Presse)
***********
Impending executions in Texas
date------# under Gov. Perry----name------------------# in Texas since 1982
Nov. 9----238--Hank Skinner------------------------------477
Nov. 16--239--Guadalupe Esparza-----------------------478----50 % of all Tx.
executions carried out under Gov. Perry, since 2001
Jan. 26--240--Rodrigo Hernandez-----------------------479----more than 50 % of
all Tx. executions now carried out under Gov. Perry's tenure
(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
*****************
Lawyers urge court to stay Texas inmate's execution
Lawyers for a Texas death row inmate urged an appeals court Friday to stay his
execution, just days before he is due to be put to death, to allow for DNA
testing that could prove his innocence.
Hank Skinner, who has been on death row for 16 years, is set to be executed on
Wednesday for bludgeoning his girlfriend to death and fatally stabbing 2 of her
children.
The criminal appeals court "should stop the rush to execution so that it can
give Mr Skinner's appeal the close attention it deserves," attorney Robert Owen
said in a statement, pointing to "powerful and unanswered" questions over
whether his client actually committed the crime.
Skinner, who is married to French death penalty activist Sandrine Ageorges, got
help from across the Atlantic on Friday when France expressed "concern" and
called on Texas to put off the execution.
"As judicial appeals in the state of Texas and at the federal level have not
been exhausted, France considers it essential that the November 9 execution
date be lifted," the French foreign ministry said.
The latest appeal came after a US District Court judge denied Skinner's third
request for DNA testing on Thursday.
Skinner, 49, has not denied being present in the home at the time of the
killings but he has insisted that DNA collected at the site could clear him as
a suspect in the 1993 crimes.
The state has long refused, citing a restrictive state DNA testing law. But
lawmakers made changes to the law this year that lifted many of the
restrictions.
Skinner's appeal also garnered further support after over 120,000 people signed
an online petition urging Texas Governor Rick Perry, a Republican presidential
candidate, to halt his execution.
Most of the signatures on the Change.org petition were added after Thursday's
ruling.
"We urge you to uphold the very standards you are promoting as part of a very
much needed criminal justice reform and we ask you to demand the withdrawal of
the execution warrant and that DNA testing be granted to Mr Skinner in the best
possible time," the petition read.
"We trust you to do the right thing for justice and for the truth in Texas,
before it is too late."
The US Supreme Court granted a stay of Skinner's execution less than an hour
before he was due to be put to death last year. The high court sent the case
back to a lower court to rule on Skinner's DNA testing request.
(source: Agence France-Presse)
********
Foster: DNA testing can prove vital in murder cases
People who support the death penalty in theory have had moments of discomfort
with some of its practical applications of late.
I’m among them.
While I believe capital punishment is the only appropriate sentence in certain
situations, it should be reserved for those cases where doubt is virtually
nonexistent.
I understand that such situations are rare. But I believe the death penalty
should be, too.
Usually, questions about a condemned person’s guilt center on a lack of hard
evidence that unequivocally tie him to the crime. Witness recollections can be
unreliable, and witnesses have been known to recant their testimonies.
But in the case of Henry Skinner, whom Texas officials are set to execute on
Thursday, the problem isn’t a dearth of evidence. It’s the state’s obstinate
refusal to consider it.
Skinner was convicted in 1995 of bludgeoning his girlfriend to death and
stabbing her 2 adult sons to death in 1993. Skinner lived in the home where the
murders occurred and admits he was in the house during the murders. But he
maintains his innocence, insisting that he was passed out from a
cocaine-and-alcohol binge when the 3 were killed.
At his trial, prosecutors argued that it is unlikely that Skinner slept through
3 murders committed just feet away from him. But as Radley Balco pointed out
for Huffington Post this week, “toxicology experts testified that Skinner had
far too high a concentration of the drugs in his system for him — a slight man
at the time — to have killed an adult woman and her 2 adult sons. At best he
was groggy. He was likely unconscious.”
I’ll post a link to the details of the case on my blog, but Skinner’s fate
hinges on DNA results from evidence that has never been tested.
How could this happen?
Skinner’s defense team was led by a disgraced former prosecutor who had
prosecuted Skinner for another crime years earlier and who was a friend of the
trial judge. That lawyer made a strategic decision not to request the testing
at Skinner’s original trial, assuming that the results would implicate Skinner.
But as Balco writes, this approach was against Skinner’s wishes. He wanted the
testing. And in 2000, when preliminary tests done for Nancy Grace’s television
show demonstrated a good chance that hairs the dead woman was clutching when
she died did not belong to Skinner, the prosecutor put a stop to the whole
effort.
Unfortunately for Skinner, Grace’s producers didn’t have the authority of a
court order. And so, 18 years after the murders and four days before Skinner’s
execution, plenty of evidence — blood from the murder weapon, blood from a
jacket left in the home, a rape kit taken from the victim, scrapings from under
her fingernails and the hairs she was holding when she died — remains
unexamined.
I’m not saying Skinner is innocent. He may be guilty. But I can’t understand
why the district attorney would not be fighting for the DNA testing, for the
confidence of Texans in general and for her own peace of mind.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry could issue a 30-day stay to allow for the DNA testing.
Balco points out that George W. Bush did this as Texas governor in 2000,
granting a stay for consideration of DNA evidence against Rickey McGinn. The
results affirmed McGinn’s guilt, and he was executed.
“McGinn may have lied his way into another month of life, but the state of
Texas got confirmation it was executing a guilty man. That hardly seems like a
bad deal for Texas,” Balco writes.
Perry is campaigning for president as a pro-life governor. I know some don’t
believe capital punishment is consistent with a belief in the sanctity of life.
That’s a discussion for another day. But on this we can agree: People who truly
regard life as sacred don’t send people to death amid legitimate questions
about their guilt.
In the 1992 movie “A Few Good Men,” Tom Cruise’s character laments evidentiary
rules: “It doesn’t matter what I believe. It only matters what I can prove!”
But even that may not be enough for Skinner.
(source: Column; Jennifer Foster is a political enthusiast who writes a column
for the Opelika-Auburn News)
GEORGIA:
‘When times are bad, people feel it will help’
Over the years, Jimmy Berry has kept more than 50 killers from the death
chamber, including infamous clients like Fred Tokars, a lawyer who set up the
shotgun-murder of his wife, and Lynn Turner, who poisoned her boyfriend and
husband with antifreeze.
Juries in the U.S and Georgia have been sentencing fewer defendants to death in
recent years. But Berry, 68, a Cobb County native who started out in real
estate law, has seen three clients receive the ultimate sentence since 2007.
Joshua Drucker was sentenced to death last month by a Cobb jury for a double
slaying in 2004. Stacey Humphreys, who killed two real estate agents in 2003,
was sentenced by a Brunswick jury. And Michael Ledford was condemned by a
Paulding County jury for the 2006 sexual assault and murder of a bicyclist on
the Silver Comet trail.
Berry is known for being overloaded with cases that few other lawyers want,
cases that eat up weeks of time and pay little. He said the intense publicity
surrounding Georgia’s execution of Troy Davis, a convicted cop killer who
insisted on his innocence until the end, may have actually hurt other death
penalty defendants.
Q: What did the Davis case do to future death penalty cases?
A: I think it might have had some backlash on cases coming up. People will say,
“This case is not like Troy Davis. They have a confession and eye witnesses.”
They may see Troy Davis as a poster child for what a death penalty case
shouldn’t be. They might say, “The prosecution has this [evidence] and that, so
we should give it.”
Q: You argue the death penalty, and its appeals, is costly. Supporters may know
it, but politically, it’s still popular.
A: I don’t know if the South will ever change. Politically, legislators aren’t
willing to take that step.
Q: What are the keys to waging a successful death penalty defense?
A: You never know what jurors will take note of or how they feel. Picking a
jury is the key to keeping a person off death row. I just believe there’s good
in every life. People do terrible things but a life is a life. I feel strongly
the death penalty is not good for society.
Q: Juries are often fickle in how they mete out the sentence.
A: You might have the same type of murder in one county and [prosecutors] ask
for it, and, in the next, they don’t. There should be someone — maybe the
attorney general — who should look at the cases and weigh the circumstances.
Q: The trend seems like it’s going against the death penalty. In 1998, 294
defendants [nationally] were sentenced, but last year it was only 112.
A: I’m hopeful people are looking at that. We’re the only civilized country
that has it.
Q: But, at the same time, it’s popular. Gallup polls show it with 64 % support.
A: I don’t know if it’s the economy. When times are bad, people feel it will
help. Statistics show it does not deter crime. In England, they used to hang
pickpockets, but in the crowd at the hangings, there were more pickpockets
there picking pockets.
Q: What are the toughest areas in death penalty cases?
A: The Brunswick area is tough because of all the people connected with law
enforcement. Columbus has always been tough. And Cobb County is pretty
conservative, and not only with the death penalty.
Q; You seem a little down when talking about this.
A: You have to stay optimistic. I think people get a wrong perception about
defense lawyers. It’s not to get people off. It’s to protect someone’s
constitutional rights. If a person gets arrested, they’re going to want their
constitutional rights protected. Otherwise, we’d be a police state — whoever
gets arrested goes to jail without a trial.
Q: Who’s been your toughest opponent?
A: Jack Mallard [a former Fulton and Cobb prosecutor] and I have tried a lot of
cases. But they are all tough. It’s not the DA who’s difficult. It’s the facts.
They are just often difficult things to get around.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
USA:
After years of secrecy, Pentagon seeks order to let public view hearing for
accused Cole bomber
Pentagon prosecutors have filed a sealed motion with the Guantánamo war court
that apparently proposes allowing the general public for the 1st time to watch
military proceedings against an accused al Qaida terrorist.
The filing for now is secret because intelligence experts from the Defense
Department and other U.S. agencies have 15 business days to scrub it of
classified information.
But the heading of the motion, "public access to this Military Commission via
transmission of open court proceedings to remote locations for victim and media
viewing," suggests it’s a push to allow members of the general public to view
proceedings in the case of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, a Saudi-born Guantánamo
captive accused of masterminding al Qaida’s October 2000 suicide bombing of the
USS Cole.
A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday at Guantánamo in the case. Nashiri is
charged with murder in the deaths of 17 American sailors killed in the attack
on the warship off Yemen. Nashiri could be sentenced to death.
The hearing will be Nashiri’s first appearance before the war court and will
include a reading of the charges against him. It will be the first time he’s
been seen in public since his 2002 capture in the Arabian Gulf region and
disappearance into a network of secret CIA prisons. A congressional inquiry
found that he was waterboarded and interrogated while agents loaded a gun and
revved a drill near his head.
The Navy has arranged a closed-circuit television feed so family members of the
victims can watch the proceedings at Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia. The
Pentagon separately has set up a 100-seat viewing center 200 miles away at Fort
Meade, Md., for reporters covering the proceedings. Only 20 reporters have
signed up, however, leaving at least 80 seats vacant at Fort Meade that could
be used by members of the public. How many additional spots might be available
at Norfolk was uncertain.
One of Nashiri’s lawyers said Saturday that the defense team would study the
request, but in principle they want the American people to see the proceedings.
"I think it would be useful for the public to see exactly how haphazard the
system is," said Indianapolis death penalty defender Rick Kammen, part of the
Saudi-captive’s four-lawyer Pentagon-paid defense team.
"I think the more the public sees this system the more they will understand
that it really is the kind of secretive expedient justice that we’re afraid
of."
Media organizations seeking greater transparency have proposed that C-SPAN or
other organizations be allowed to broadcast the proceedings. But a Pentagon
spokesman, Dave Oten, said Saturday that broadcast beyond closed-circuit
viewing is forbidden under "federal court rules" that ban recording federal
criminal proceedings. Were a channel to broadcast the trial, someone could
record it, he said.
He did not make clear why the U.S. Supreme Court can issue an audio recording
of its proceedings and the Pentagon can’t unilaterally choose to do the same
from the war court, which the Bush administration created in response to the
Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and President Barack Obama subsequently reformed
in collaboration with Congress.
Until now, the Pentagon has rigidly restricted access to the Guantánamo trials
to three types of observers:
- Journalists under military escort traveling to Guantánamo after approval by
the Secretary of Defense’s Public Affairs division. A 60-bed tent city was
built near the Guantánamo court facility to accommodate them.
- Legal observers under escort by the prison camps’ Distinguished Visitors
unit. They have included delegates from the American Bar Association, American
Civil Liberties Union, Heritage Foundation and Human Rights Watch.
- 5 citizens with companions invited by the prosecution’s victims rights
advocate. They’ve been chosen by lottery from a pool of people who submitted
their names as al Qaida victims, mostly family of suicide attack dead and
wounded.
Wednesday’s hearing will be the 1st time the military proceedings will be
viewed inside the United States, a development that will allow dozens more
people to watch. The arrangements for the reporter viewing center came at the
request of news organizations. The Pentagon had long planned to allow closed
circuit viewing by survivors of victims.
The remote telecasts of the proceedings will be delayed by 40 seconds to allow
a courtroom censor at Guantánamo to activate a white noise machine to shield
sensitive information that might surface at the hearing.
A trial date for Nashiri has yet to be set. Army Col. James Pohl is presiding
over the case.
(source: Miami Herald)
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