July 23
TEXAS----new execution date
Child Killer's Execution Date Set for October
A man on death row since 1996 now faces an execution date in October for the
murder of a little boy in Corpus Christi's northside.
In September 1995, then 21-year-old Larry Hatten broke down the back door of a
home on Sam Rankin and opened fire with a .357 pistol.
Resident Tabitha Thompson was shot 4 times, but survived. Her 5-year-old son
Isaac Jackson died from 1 gunshot wound.
Hatten learned his execution date last week from District Judge Missy Medary.
(source: KRIS V news)
*******************************
Executions under Rick Perry, 2001-present-----263
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982-present----502
Perry #--------scheduled execution date-----name---------Tx. #
264-------------July 31-------------------Douglas Feldman-----503
265-------------Sept. 19------------------Robert Garza--------504
266-------------Sept. 26------------------Arturo Diaz--------505
267-------------Oct. 9---------------------Michael Yowell-----506
268------------Nov. 12---------------------Jamie McCoskey-----507
269------------Jan. 15---------------------Rigoberto Avila, Jr.----508
(sources for both: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
CONNECTICUT:
'The Cheshire Murders': HBO Documentary Reveals An Added Level Of Horror To
Unspeakable Connecticut Crime
The circumstances surrounding the small-town murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit
and her 2 young daughters, the subject of the chilling HBO documentary "The
Cheshire Murders," are so impossible, so unreasonable, that it's hard to
believe they happened at all.
"When it hits you on a gut level it kind of shuts down your brain," said David
Heilbroner, a former prosecutor who co-directed "The Cheshire Murders" with
Kate Davis.
On July 23, 2007, 6 years ago Tuesday, the Petit family - William, Jennifer and
their daughters Haley, 17, and Michaela, 11 - were the victims of a home
invasion turned triple murder at the hands of Steven Hayes and Joshua
Komisarjevsky, career burglars who had never killed before. After holding the
family hostage for hours in their Cheshire, Conn., home, Hayes drove Jennifer
to a nearby Bank of America branch, demanding that she withdraw $15,000 in cash
or her family would be killed. Less than an hour later, Jennifer was dead of
strangulation, and Haley and Michaela were dead of smoke inhalation after the
killers doused the home with gasoline and set it on fire. Jennifer was raped
and Michaela sexually assaulted before they died. William Petit, who was
severely beaten and tied to a post in the basement, managed to escape and crawl
to a neighbor's home for help just before the house went up in flames. All of
this happened while the Cheshire police were setting up a perimeter just
outside the home, on a quiet but populated residential street.
For Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her 2 daughters to die that Monday, everything
that could have gone wrong must have; multiple lifetimes' worth of bad luck had
to have descended on this good-natured, respectable family in the hours between
a Sunday afternoon trip to the grocery store and the violent deaths less than a
day later.
Komisarjevsky, who is repeatedly alluded to in the film as a suspected
pedophile, became interested in Jennifer and Michaela when he spotted the
mother and daughter in a grocery store the day before the killings. Guessing,
correctly, that they were part of a prosperous family who lived in a nice home,
he followed them there from the grocery store and made plans to come back later
that night with Hayes to burglarize the place. What happened next and why
remains a mystery; the only thing that is certain is Hayes' and Komisarjevsky's
guilt: Both offered to plead guilty and accept life in prison without the
possibility of parole. But the prosecution demanded the death sentence, and the
killers' fates became entangled in a politically charged legal battle around
the death penalty in the state of Connecticut.
For a film that shines a light on incomplete police accounts and timeline gaps,
"The Cheshire Murders" leaves us with many unanswered questions. At what point
did the burglary become murderous, and why? Why was Jennifer allowed to walk
out of the bank alone with $15,000 in cash, when just a few minutes' delay
could have allowed police to apprehend Hayes there? What were the police
outside the home doing while Jennifer and her daughter were being assaulted?
Perhaps because the film begins with burning questions about why law
enforcement did not meaningfully intervene sooner, it's easy to expect that the
documentary will examine with a fine-tooth comb what appears by all accounts to
be a tragically flawed police response.
But "The Cheshire Murders" does not purport to be a substitute for, or to
correct, a botched investigation; and in any event, the Cheshire police were
far from forthcoming about some important details. Instead the film devotes
much of its time to the effects the crime had on both the victims' and the
perpetrators' families.
"From the start we wanted to look at the ripple effects of a crime like this,"
Davis said. "It was important for us to look at the families of the
perpetrators, who suffered terribly."
"There were a lot of red flags that people didn't look closely enough at,"
Heilbroner said. "There were opportunities for people to intervene on Joshua's
behalf to prevent him from becoming the criminal that he became."
Indeed, interviews with Joshua Komisarjevsky's former caseworker, defense
attorney, family and girlfriend reveal that he was a brilliant but troubled
young man who excelled at concealing his apparent capacity for violence and
whose life could have perhaps gone another way. Steven Hayes' brothers,
conversely, do not appear in interviews to be at all surprised that Steven was
involved in such a horrific crime, and are perhaps less sympathetic toward him
than Jennifer's kindly, broken-hearted parents, who struggle to reconcile their
religious objections to capital punishment with their quiet determination to
see justice served.
One need not go further than the comment sections of news stories about the
crime to find that William Petit, a prominent physician, was viewed with
suspicion by a segment of the general public that questioned why he was able to
escape just before the house caught fire, how he recovered so quickly from his
life-threatening injuries, and why he was sleeping on a couch on the porch at 3
a.m. when Komisarjevsky and Hayes arrived at his home. In "The Cheshire
Murders," only a passing reference is made to the possibility that Petit was
more than a victim - in the offices of the Hartford Courant where reporter
Colin Poitras, who worked tirelessly to extract information about the crime
that the police were reluctant to disclose, dismissively alluded to rumors that
Dr. Petit was somehow involved.
Petit was never a suspect, and it does not appear that anyone familiar with the
case - including the filmmakers - has a shadow of a doubt. "He was really
suffering," Heilbroner said. "It was obvious the minute you got near him what a
pained mental state he was in. ... He had a hard time, frankly, getting up in
the morning."
Jennifer's sister Cindy Hawke-Renn, who, with her parents, maintains a close
relationship with Petit, has devoted herself to finding out how it is that her
sister and nieces were not saved; her amateur detective work helped alert the
husband-and-wife filmmaking team to questionable claims in the police
department's account of what happened that day. Davis and Heilbroner, who
arrived in Cheshire just weeks after the murder and began a relationship with
Cindy a few months later, said their original plan was never to go after the
police - and that Cindy is not out to get them either. She just wants answers.
"Cindy is not vengeful," Davis said. "She is not trying to bash the police."
Petit, who was a vocal advocate for preserving the death penalty in Connecticut
-- which was abolished in 2012 -- has been supportive of the police. Asked why
this might be, the filmmakers said they believe he didn't want to alienate
members of law enforcement who were key witnesses for the prosecution. "It was
in his interest to maintain good relations," Heilbroner said.
Davis and Heilbroner repeatedly reached out to the Cheshire Police Department
to participate in the film, and were repeatedly rebuffed. The filmmakers said
they warned the department that the documentary takes a critical look at the
police response. "We said, please, give us your side of the story," Davis said.
Perhaps after seeing "The Cheshire Murders," the police will wish they had.
(source: IB Times)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
Man formerly on SC death row suing prosecutors
A man condemned for decades to South Carolina's death row says prosecutors
wrongfully pursued a case against him in a widow's 1982 stabbing death,
according to a federal lawsuit.
In a complaint filed last month, Edward Lee Elmore, 54, accuses authorities of
planting evidence that implicated him in Dorothy Edwards' murder. He also says
police and prosecutors conspired to convict him of the crime and ignored
evidence that pointed to another person.
After a brief trial in Greenwood, a former textile town of about 23,000 people
in the northwest part of the state, Elmore was sentenced to death in 1982 in
the slaying of Edwards, a 75-year-old widow for whom he had done odd jobs. Her
body was found in a closet in her home, stabbed 52 times. She had numerous
broken ribs, head wounds and internal injuries.
As other death row inmates were exonerated because of new DNA testing
technology, Elmore's attorneys asked a judge in 2000 to overturn his
convictions because a blond hair found on Edwards after her death did not match
her or Elmore. Elmore's lawyers thought the blond hair may have belonged to
Edwards' next-door neighbor and they asked a judge to exhume the man's body to
test his DNA, but a judge denied the request.
In 2010, Elmore left death row when a judge ruled he was mentally unfit and
could not be executed, per a 2002 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. State
prosecutors didn't oppose a judge's decision to sentence him to life in prison.
2 years later, he left prison altogether after entering an Alford plea to
murder, maintaining his innocence but admitting there is a lot of evidence
against him. Prosecutors agreed his punishment should be the 11,000 days Elmore
had spent incarcerated.
Some of the law enforcement officials and attorneys who originally prosecuted
the case against Elmore have been dead for years, so his lawsuit is against
their estates. In the 44-page complaint, Elmore accuses the state of conspiring
against him, withholding evidence that could have helped him - including the
blond hair that for years was mislabeled - and lying during his trial.
"Edward Lee Elmore's 30-year ordeal could and should have been avoided," his
attorneys wrote.
As a result of his conviction and incarceration, his attorneys said, Elmore has
endured physical and mental anguish, as well as embarrassment and inability to
express himself freely.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, with interest, as well as attorneys'
fees. Court papers listed no attorneys for the prosecutors and officers named
in Elmore's lawsuit.
(source: Associated Press)
GEORGIA:
Ga. secrecy law on execution drugs will have to survive court challenge; New
state law that shields from public view those companies that produce and mix
execution drugs may be unconstitutional
Georgia lawmakers saw secrecy as the only way to ensure it could get drugs for
executions from businesses that otherwise would face public pressure and
pickets.
But a new state law that shields from public view those companies that produce
and mix execution drugs may be unconstitutional, a Fulton judge ruled this
week.
It's new legal territory, one that could delay future executions and could set
the stage for a protracted legal fight that the state and the nation's highest
courts will likely have to decide.
At issue is whether the public, as well as the person facing execution, has a
First Amendment-protected right to know if the drugs used in a lethal injection
came from a lab with a good history, were made by a trained pharmacist and are
safe and unlikely to cause pain in those final moments. That information is
important in determining whether another constitutional right, the Eighth
Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment, is upheld.
So far, only courts in two states have addressed the legality of such privacy
laws. A Fulton County Superior Court judge stayed Warren Hill's execution -
which was set to occur Friday for a 1990 prison murder - to allow for more time
to consider the weighty question. South Dakota's law was adopted this year,
like Georgia's, but it has not yet been challenged in court.
3 other states - Florida, Arkansas and Tennessee - have laws keeping that
information secret while a few more have policies, not as binding as statutes,
keeping the identities of lethal-injection drug providers secret.
"Sounds like it's on the cutting edge," said University of Virginia law
professor Carl Tobias, an expert on lethal injection.
Over the past few years, capital punishment states have struggled to secure
drugs to carry out executions. Pressure from death penalty opponents has
factored into big drug companies with bases in Europe refusing to sell certain
drugs for capital punishment. Sentiment against the death penalty is strong
among Europeans.
As a result of bad publicity and protests designed to force lethal injection
drug makers to withdraw or adopt end-user restrictions, state-by-state stocks
have expired, leaving states looking for other avenues. Georgia's entire stock
of lethal injection drugs expired in March. Its newest batch will expire in the
fall.
Compounding pharmacies, armed with a guarantee of anonymity, are now the
preferred method to acquire execution drugs.
"There has been difficulty acquiring the necessary medication to carry out
lethal injections," said State Rep. Kevin Tanner, R-Dawsonville, one of the
sponsors of the law that took effect on July 1.
Tanner said the legal challenge was expected.
Judge Gail Tusan wrote Thursday after hearing a motion to stop Hill's execution
that if the identity of the producer of lethal injection is a secret there is
no way to know the quality or efficacy of execution drugs.
Tanner said concerns about the quality of the compounded drugs are unfounded,
and he has "confidence" that the Department of Corrections can carry out safe
executions with compounded drugs and there is no need to make public where the
drug was made.
The new law also says the secret information cannot even be provided to the
court.
"While it is the case that such individuals (drug makers) should be free from
harassment, the court must weigh the rights of those individuals against the
rights of the condemned inmate as well as the public to know where and how
these drugs are produced," Tusan wrote.
Attorney Brian Kammer said Georgia's history suggests oversight is needed.
The Department of Corrections bought several batches of sodium thiopental from
Dream Pharma, a company operating in the back of a London storefront driving
school. But in March of last year, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration,
tipped off by the attorneys for a death row inmate, seized the state's stock
because Georgia was not registered to import drugs.
Georgia then substituted the powerful sedative pentobarbital, used to treat
seizures and to euthanize animals, for the no-longer-available sodium
thiopental. But a few months later, the Danish company Lundeck said it would
not sell its pentobarbital if it was to be used in executions.
Last year, the Department of Corrections' stock of another drug in the series
Georgia used, the paralytic pancuronium bromide, expired and there was no more
to be had. The Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva had put restrictions on how
its product could be used.
Georgia abandoned the 3-drug cocktail process and became the seventh state to
use only one drug to carry out executions.
Georgia's stock of pentobarbital obtained from a mass manufacturer expired in
March. And its supply of the sedative obtained from a compounding pharmacy will
expire on Aug. 8, according to court records.
"We know that they have been willing to cut corners and go through
unorthodox...and illegal routes to obtain their drugs," Kammer said. "They
don't get the benefit of the doubt."
Condemned killer Warren Hill escaped execution once again Friday night because
the state attorney general's office was unable to appeal a stay of execution
granted by a Fulton County judge. Hill's execution had been set for 7 p.m.
Friday earlier this week by the Department of Corrections.
The attorney general's office needed a transcript of this week's hearings
before Superior Court Judge Gail Tusan to file its appeal, and the transcript
will not be ready until Monday, office spokeswoman Lauren Kane said.
Hill's lawyer Brian Kammer, who also is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to throw
out Hill's death sentence on claims Hill is mentally retarded, said he was glad
his client was given another reprieve.
"We are deeply relieved that Warren Hill will not be executed tonight in order
for the courts to more thoughtfully deliberate Mr. Hill's mental retardation
claim and the extreme secrecy surrounding Georgia's lethal injection law,"
Kammer said.
Tusan had initially granted Hill a stay of execution on Monday and extended it
at the close of a hearing on Thursday. She said a new law that keeps secret the
identities of those who make and supply Georgia's lethal injection drugs may be
unconstitutional.
The warrant ordering Hill's execution expires at noon today. For this reason,
state attorneys will have to go back to a state court judge to get a new
warrant, which gives the state a 1-week window to carry out an execution.
(source: correctionsone.com)
ALABAMA----impending execution//volunteer
1st execution in Alabama since 2011 set for Thursday; Andrew Lackey wrote
letter asking Alabama Supreme Court to schedule
Alabama's 2nd execution in almost 2 years is scheduled for Thursday at Holman
Prison in Atmore.
Court records show that 30-year-old Andrew Lackey asked the state to set his
execution date, and has not taken action to stop it.
Lackey is scheduled to die by lethal injection at Holman Prison in Atmore for
the beating and shooting death of 80-year-old Charles Newman during a 2005
Halloween night robbery at Newnan's home in Limestone County. Lackey is to be
executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Thursday.
Lackey would be the 1st inmate executed in Alabama since Christopher T. Johnson
of Escambia County received a lethal injection Oct. 20, 2011. He was the 6th
inmate executed in 2011.
The state's executions have been slowed partly because of a legal dispute over
the drugs used in executions.
Lackey's execution was set after he wrote a letter to the Alabama Supreme Court
saying that he had "an odd request."
"Please set me an execution date. I do not wish to pursue any further appeals
for my death sentence," Lackey said in the letter to the justices, according to
court records. Lackey said he would not file any further appeals.
Court records show Lackey has taken no action to stop the execution.
In a letter to Assistant Attorney General Richard Anderson, Lackey says, "I do
not know what else I can do. Will you please help me get an execution date."
Court records show that Newman made an emergency phone call to the Athens
Police Department on Halloween night 2005 in which he could be heard saying,
"Don't do that," "Leave me alone" and "What do you want."
The police operator then heard the apparent assailant repeatedly ask, "Where's
the vault?" according to the records.
Bryan Stevenson, an attorney with the Montgomery-based Equal Justice
Initiative, said both the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals and the trial court
have ruled that the state can go ahead with Lackey's execution.
Stevenson said he and other attorneys opposed to Lackey being executed "have
argued that he is mentally ill."
"Our point is that he needs to be examined," Stevenson said.
(source: Montgomery Advertiser)
**************************
Condemned Alabama inmate Andrew Lackey attempted suicide, is mentally ill, EJI
says
An inmate scheduled for execution in Alabama on Thursday is mentally ill and
recently attempted suicide, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.
The EJI, a nonprofit organization that represents inmates and indigent
defendants, says that Andrew Reid Lackey has a lifelong mental illness and is
being treated with psychotropic medications.
Lackey, 29, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday at 6 p.m. at
Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
A Limestone County jury convicted Lackey in 2008 of the murder of Charlie
Newman. Lackey stabbed Newman 70 times, beat him and shot him on Halloween
night in 2005.
Newman, who was 80, was a paratrooper in World War II and took part in the
D-Day invasion at Normandy.
AL.com asked Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett about
EJI's report that Lackey was mentally ill and had attempted suicide. Corbett
said the department could not release information about an inmate's medical
condition without proper release forms.
Lackey last year waived his appeals and asked that his execution be carried
out.
The EJI appealed, arguing that the trial judge should have had Lackey's
competency properly evaluated before allowing him to waive his appeals. But the
Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upheld Lackey's death sentence. The Alabama
Supreme Court scheduled the execution.
Lackey wrote a letter to the trial court in January asking if he needed to do
anything else to get his execution scheduled.
(source: al.com)
***********************
Jackson Co. man on death row requests new trial
A death row inmate returned to North Alabama for new hearings in his triple
murder case.
James Brownfield was back in a Jackson County courtroom, more than 9 years
after he was found guilty of capital murder.
Brownfield was convicted of killing of his sister, Brenda McCutchen, his
brother-in-law, Latham McCutchen, and Brenda's grandson, Joshua Hodges, on
Christmas Day 2001.
On Monday, Brownfield's appeal attorneys questioned Gary Hartline about his
handling of the case while representing Brownfield.
Meanwhile, members of the victim's family were in the courtroom. They feel that
Brownfield got the death penalty and deserves the death penalty.
"It's a waste of the taxpayer's money. He's been found guilty in several
different courts and I think it's time to do something about it," said the
victims' relative, Wanda McCutchen.
The hearing is expected to last most of the week.
(source: WAFF News)
**********************
Death sentence amended for man convicted of killing Fairfield officer
A man convicted of killing a Fairfield Police officer is no longer facing the
death penalty.
In 2008, a jury found Demetrius Jackson guilty of killing Officer Mary Smith.
His death sentence has now been amended.
Shortly after Jackson was convicted, attorneys began working on his appeals
case, which is an automatic process with every capital murder conviction.
In March 2013, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the guilty verdict,
but sent the sentence back to the trial judge.
At the time of Jackson's sentencing, 10 jurors voted fro giving him life
without parole and 2 voted in favor of the death sentence. Judge Teresa Petelos
overrode the jury's recommendation, which is allowed by Alabama law, and
sentenced Jackson to death.
But the appelate judges said Petelos' reasons for overriding the jury were
unclear and told the trial court to review the information considered during
the sentencing and issue an amended sentence.
But Petelos is no longer on the bench. So when the new judge, David Carpenter,
reviewed the case, he amended Jackson's sentence to life without parole.
According to the order, he did so for a number of reasons, including:
-Jackson's difficult family life that included abuse.
-The fact that 4 members of Smith's family did not ask for the death penalty.
-The jury's "overwhelming support" for life imprisonment.
FOX6 News spoke with Rep. John Rogers, who is the godfather of Smith's
daughter, about the change. While he feels very strongly Jackson should face
death, he says the family, including his goddaughter, will not fight the
change.
"Of course she had tears in her eyes," he said of his goddaughter. "Upset when
she called me and I told her the best thing to do instaed of ruling the process
again, looking at all the photos, let's let it go."
FOX6 News attempted to reach Judge Carpenter Monday but were unable to reach
him. Petelos declined to comment for this story as she had not yet read the
ruling.
Ironically, even though Judge Carpenter has amended the sentence based on
directions from the appelate court, this doesn't mean the court has to accept
his order. But for now, Jackson will remain in jail for life without parole.
(source: WBRC news)
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