Jan. 6
TEXAS:
Executions under Rick Perry, 2001-present-----269
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982-present----508
Perry #--------scheduled execution date-----name---------Tx. #
270------------Jan. 22--------------------Edgar Tamayo-------509
271------------Feb. 5---------------------Suzanne Basso-------510
272------------Mar. 19-------------------Ray Jasper-----------511
273------------Mar. 27-------------------Anthony Doyle-------512
274------------Apr. 3--------------------Tommy Lynn Sells-----513
275------------Apr. 16-------------------Jose Villegas--------514
276------------May 13--------------------Robert Campbell------515
277------------May 29--------------------Edgardo Cubas--------516
(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
************************
Dallas DA Craig Watkins is on record as saying he is "conflicted" about the
death penalty, but nothing is further from the truth. Recent DMN articles
indicating that Dallas County leads the state in producing new death sentences
make a mockery of Watkins' claim.
He should have the courage to simply admit that he is pro-death penalty and
that has no problem whatsoever in seeking that penalty against various
defendants.
As usual, Texas led the nation last year in executions, carrying out 16, more
than double that of 2nd-place Florida. There are currently 6 executions
scheduled in Texas between Jan. 9-Apr. 16.
The rest of the nation (and world) is overwhelmingly slowing or ending its
usage of executions. The Dallas DA seems proud to continue this state's trend
of adhering to an outdated, racist, error-prone and barbaric practice, all in
the outrageous name of "justice."
" Dallas will never be a truly world-class city as long as it is led by
individuals who have no problem pursuing policies violative of human rights.
(source: Letter to the Editor, Rick Halperin)
CONNECTICUT:
Penalty phase to begin in murder trial
A jury is scheduled to begin hearing evidence on whether a man should get the
death penalty for killing 2 adults and a 9-year-old girl in Bridgeport.
The penalty phase of the trial of former Trumbull resident Richard Roszkowski
is to start Tuesday in Bridgeport Superior Court. The jury has two choices:
lethal injection or life in prison.
Roszkowski, 48, was convicted in 2009 of capital felony and murder for fatally
shooting his ex-girlfriend, Holly Flannery, 39, her daughter, Kylie, 9, and
Thomas Gaudet, 38, in 2006. Roszkowski stalked Flannery after she broke up with
him and falsely believed she and Gaudet were romantically involved.
(source: Associated Press)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Accused Baby/Grandma Killer Says Police Forced Confession
Raghunandan Yandamuri, who faces the death penalty for the 2012 slaying of a
Merion County, Penn., Indian American baby and her grandmother, said at a
pretrial hearing Jan. 2 that police forced him to confess.
In a video interview taken Oct. 26, 2012, Yandamuri described in detail how he
killed 10-month-old baby Saanvi and her visiting grandmother, Satyavathi Venna.
But Yandamuri and his attorney are now attempting to suppress the video, saying
police coerced the young software programmer into confessing that he committed
the heinous crime.
Yandamuri has pleaded not guilty to all charges. However, in the police video,
Yandamuri stated that he had plotted the kidnapping of baby Saanvi in an
attempt to get $50,000 in ransom from her parents, Latha and Venkata Venna
Konda.
Yandamuri and his wife Komali knew the Kondas before the attack, and were
frequent visitors to each other's homes.
At the pre-trial hearing, Yandamuri said police were forcing him, and telling
him he committed the crime. "They are forcing me," he said. "They are saying,
'you did it,'" said Yandamuri, as reported by The Inquirer.
Police arrested Yandamuri at a blackjack table at the Valley Forge Casino
Resort near his King of Prussia home. Montgomery County Detective Paul Bradbury
testified at the pre-trial hearing that Yandamuri willingly cooperated with law
enforcement after his arrest.
But the Andhra Pradesh native alleged he asked police to let him call his
pregnant wife, but said they refused. He also alleged that police told him he
would be unable to see his wife if he did not cooperate, and that he would be
convicted of a double murder if the case went to trial.
In the 14 months since his arrest, Yandamuri has recanted his initial
confession to police, saying 2 men were the actual killers.
Montgomery County Court Judge Steven T. O'Neill did not make a ruling on
whether Yandamuri's confession video would be allowed at the trial.
In his chilling 21-minute interview with police - which has been released by
several news media, including India-West - Yandamuri stated that he went to the
Konda's home mid-afternoon Oct. 22, 2012, with a 4-inch kitchen knife,
intending to kidnap baby Saanvi for a ransom of $50,000. A couple of hours
earlier, Yandamuri said he printed out 10 copies of a ransom note at his
workplace, GSI Commerce.
"My intention was not to kill anyone or harm anyone. I only tried to kidnap the
baby," he said during the police interview last year.
But Yandamuri's plans went awry as he knocked on the Kondas' apartment door.
Satyavathi Venna opened the door. "I showed her the knife and told her clearly,
'I don't want to harm you or the baby. Please stay back.'"
As Yandamuri picked up Saanvi, Venna moved towards Yandamuri in an attempt to
rescue her crying granddaughter. Yandamuri lunged at Venna with his knife,
slitting the grandmother's neck and dropping the baby in the process.
"I couldn't think of what was happening. I was out of control," Yandamuri told
police in the interview, adding that he tried to stop Saanvi's crying by
stuffing his handkerchief in her mouth. When one handkerchief did not muffle
the cries, Yandamuri told police he put 2 handkerchiefs in Saanvi's mouth, and
then got a towel from the bathroom, which he tightly tied around the baby's
mouth and neck.
Yandamuri said he found the grandmother lying on her side, unconscious. He then
went to the Vennas' bedroom and found a suitcase filled with jewelry, which he
took. He then found a 2nd suitcase, and put Saanvi, the knife and jewelry in
it, zipping it up halfway. He then took the fire escape down to the ground
level and walked to another building in the complex, which has a gym.
Yandamuri said he then took Saanvi out of the suitcase and placed her in the
steam room. He then went to his apartment, took a shower, put on the same
clothes and went to his office. The alleged killer hid some of the stolen
jewelry behind a vending machine, then put the rest back into the suitcase,
along with the bloody knife, and threw all evidence into a nearby river.
In his note, Yandamuri had demanded that Latha Venna show up at a Baja Fresh
restaurant in the neighborhood with all the ransom money. But Yandamuri told
police that he did not go to the restaurant, but instead went to his
apartment's gym, with a bottle of milk for Saanvi. "She was not alive," he
calmly told police.
Asked if he was remorseful for his actions, Yandamuri said: "I'm really sorry
for what happened. I have a good job, a good wife, good parents: one moment has
ruined my whole life."
"I know the pain the parents must be going through," he said. Yandamuri is
scheduled to be cross examined Jan. 13.
(source: indiawest.com)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
Convicted double-murderer Stanko seeking new trial in Horry County case
Twice-convicted murderer Stephen Stanko, who is awaiting the death penalty in
separate Horry County and Georgetown County cases, is seeking a new trial here
by claiming his lawyers failed to properly defend him against one of the
capital murder charges.
Stanko on Monday filed a motion for a post-conviction relief proceeding that
could potentially grant him a new trial in the shooting death of 74-year-old
Henry Turner of Conway. An Horry County jury convicted Stanko of the murder in
2009 and the state Supreme Court last year upheld that conviction. A
post-conviction relief proceeding is the next step in the judicial process.
Stanko also was sentenced to death after being convicted in 2006 by a
Georgetown County jury in the death of his 43-year-old live-in girlfriend,
Laura Ling.
Stanko, in court documents filed Monday, said his lawyers failed to present
evidence that jurors had been prejudiced by widespread pre-trial publicity.
Stanko said those lawyers also failed to present mitigating evidence during the
sentencing phase of his trial. The filing does not state what mitigating
evidence was available.
Stanko also revived an argument he made during his supreme court appeal, in
which he challenges a state law that exempts all citizens over the age of 65
from jury service. Stanko says that exemption prevented him from having a jury
pool drawn from a fair cross-section of the community, as guaranteed by the
U.S. Constitution. The state Supreme Court ruled that the over-65 population is
not a distinctive age group possessing "cohesiveness of ideas, attitudes or
experiences that distinguishes them from the rest of society."
Stanko's crime spree took place in April 2005, when Stanko killed Ling in the
Murrells Inlet home that he shared with her and Ling's then-15-year-old
daughter, who also was assaulted. Stanko took Ling's car, drove to Turner's
home in Conway and killed him before stealing Turner's pickup truck.
Stanko then fled to Columbia, where he claimed he was a New York millionaire
and flirted with several women at a downtown restaurant. From there, Stanko
traveled to Augusta, Ga., and met another woman and spent the weekend with her
before he was arrested there. Stanko told the woman he was a businessman in
town for a golf tournament.
In his defense, Stanko claimed a brain defect caused him to not be aware of the
criminal responsibility for his actions.
(source: myrtlebeachonline.com)
FLORIDA:
A Tale of 2 Executions----Back in the Miami Vice era, a burglar in a Florida
drug crime witnessed 6 murders but refused to pull the trigger. Why was he put
to death 26 years before the lead killer - and against the wishes of his jury?
The capricious nature of the death penalty was on full display on August 5,
2013, when the state of Florida executed John Errol Ferguson. More than 3
decades had come and gone since he'd received a death sentence for his role in
what came to be known as the Carol City killings. It was the longest time lapse
between death sentence and execution in United States history, due largely to
the extraordinary degree of mental illness Ferguson had exhibited since well
before his arrest for the murders.
But in the hundreds of news stories about the Ferguson case, there was barely a
word about Beauford White, one of the other men who had been with Ferguson
during the murders. Perhaps it was because White had been executed 26 years
earlier, and his name had faded from memory. Or perhaps the public had
forgotten, or never known, that the jury convicting Beauford White didn't want
him to be executed.
Jury verdicts are considered sacrosanct in American jurisprudence, particularly
where the death penalty is concerned. Proponents of capital punishment have
long argued that death sentences imposed by 12 jurors must be respected above
any claims of bad lawyering, prosecutorial misconduct, judicial mistakes, or
myriad other errors. Verdicts in capital cases are different than in all other
cases in one crucial regard: the decision whether someone should live or die is
a moral one, rather than factual or legal. Unlike a guilty verdict, which is
reached through group deliberation, a life or death sentencing decision in a
capital case is the product of individual reflection: each juror weighs the
arguments for life imprisonment or execution on his or her own. The vast
majority of states that have a death penalty require a unanimous vote by a jury
before the death penalty is applied. But 3 states - Florida, Alabama, and
Delaware - do it differently. This is how Beauford White came to be executed
against his jury's wishes.
8 people had been forced to lie on the floor, their hands tied behind their
backs, and shot in the back of the head.
As a literary device, it might work well to trace the parallel lives of John
Ferguson and Beauford White. But the truth is that their lives ran at opposing
angles, at least as far as the crime and its aftermath were concerned. So the
night of the Carol City killings is as good a place as any to start their
story. On July 27, 1977, Ferguson, identifying himself as "Lucky" and posing as
an employee of Florida Power and Light, entered a house in a suburb of Miami.
Shortly thereafter, he pulled a gun and demanded drugs, money, and jewelry from
the female inhabitant. His co-conspirators, Beauford White and a man named
Marvin Francois, joined Ferguson inside the house; all of the men were armed.
Eventually, 7 more people entered the home, including the woman's boyfriend and
the owner of the house.
At this point, the prosecution and defense versions of the story veer away from
each other. The state claimed that the killers wanted to eliminate the
witnesses; lawyers for White argued that their client was along for the
robbery, but the murders were part of a prearranged contract involving only
Ferguson and Francois. In either case, 2 facts were undisputed: 8 people had
been forced to lie on the floor, their hands tied behind their backs, and shot
in the back of the head (2 miraculously survived). And Ferguson and Francois
had pulled the triggers. This was not a whodunit.
Everyone agreed that White had never attempted to kill anyone, or even intended
that anyone should be killed - that he had, in fact, tried to talk Ferguson and
Francois out of killing. While White took his share of the drugs, money, and
jewelry, the testimony revealed that he appeared to be in shock after the
murders, his eyes glazed over and his expression blank, "just sitting there
like he seen a ghost." And then there was this testimony of his refusal to
cover up the crime, from the man who drove the killers to the crime scene:
Q: Somebody said something about getting rid of the .38, I think is what you
said before we took the break.
A: Yes. Marvin [Francois] and Ferguson was talking about getting rid of the
guns. They asked Beauford to get rid of it.
Q: What did Beauford say?
A: Beauford said, "I ain't getting rid of nothing."
So the picture was clearly drawn for the jury: Beauford White had not killed or
attempted to kill - had, in fact, been shocked that killing had occurred - and
was unwilling to join in the cover-up afterwards. When the jury sat down to
decide if White was the worst of the worst, it wasn't even close. All 12 voted
that life imprisonment for him was more appropriate than execution.
John Ferguson did not fare nearly as well in front of his jury. Logic dictated
that he was the leader - at the very least, he was the first to enter the house
and pull a gun, the 1st to bind and blindfold a victim - and it was clear that
Ferguson, along with Francois, had placed the eight victims on the floor and
shot them in the back of their heads. While there was evidence that Ferguson
had been mentally ill for some years before the date of the crime, he was
clearly sane under any legal definition of insanity; and with 6 murders and 2
near misses on the docket, the jury had little choice. At the end of May 1978,
less than a year after the slaughter in Carol City, the jury unanimously
recommended that John Errol Ferguson be executed by the state of Florida.
***
It is reasonable to wonder how Beauford White, the man who received a unanimous
jury vote for life, came to be executed in 1987, while John Ferguson managed to
avoid a similar fate until 2013, even with a unanimous vote for death. There is
no single explanation, as there rarely is when the death penalty is concerned,
but a good starting point is the Florida sentencing law.
When the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional in the landmark 1972 case
Furman v. Georgia, Florida became the first state to pass a new death penalty
statute, 6 months later. Most of the country soon followed suit, but Florida's
law had a quirk that only Alabama and Delaware adopted: The jury's vote
regarding life or death was a recommendation, not a decision. The trial judge
alone would determine the sentence.
2 years later, however, the Florida Supreme Court weighted the jury
recommendation: For a judge to override a jury vote and change a life vote to a
death verdict, "the facts suggesting a sentence of death should be so clear and
convincing that virtually no reasonable person could differ." Regardless of
what the jurors thought, Beauford White's fate rested with the trial judge,
Richard S. Fuller.
Judge Fuller was a scoutmaster, a medic in a MASH unit, and a personal injury
lawyer. Tall, distinguished, and with a memorable head of white hair, he is
recalled by South Florida lawyers as the guy you might select if you were
looking to cast a judge in a movie. One of those same lawyers remembered him in
a legal brief as a man "who would send an individual to the electric chair." He
presided over the consecutive jury trials of the three defendants in the Carol
City killings, and Beauford White found himself sandwiched between the 2 actual
killers.
Marvin Francois was first, and when the jury recommended a death sentence,
Judge Fuller followed their recommendation three days before the Beauford White
trial started. When imposing a sentence in a capital case, a Florida judge is
obligated to determine reasons a defendant should live and reasons he should
die - these are called mitigating and aggravating circumstances - and then
weigh them to determine the sentence. Judge Fuller found no mitigating
circumstances in Francois's case. (His future appeals proved fruitless, and he
was executed in 1985.)
The foreman of the jury said, "We voted for life because we did not see a shred
of evidence indicating that White himself actually took part in the killing."
Beauford White's case was surely much more complicated than Francois's. The
crime itself was horrific, but White had not taken part in the killings, and
had in fact argued against them. 12 jurors heard the evidence and voted to
spare him, no small fact according to the Florida Supreme Court. Were their
voices to be ignored? Could anyone have said that no reasonable person would
have voted for life, after 12 citizens selected randomly from the community
just had?
Yes - Judge Richard S. Fuller. In weighing the arguments for a death sentence
against those for a life sentence, Judge Fuller once again found no mitigating
circumstances - not White's failure to kill, not his shock after the killings,
not even his opposition to the killings. At the end of April, 1978, Beauford
White was sentenced to death.
In May, John Ferguson's jury unanimously recommended death, and Judge Fuller
imposed that sentence as well. Of the 3 decisions, this one was likely the
easiest for the judge: Only a month before, Ferguson had confessed to killing 2
17 year olds in the course of a robbery/rape, a crime that 6 months later
resulted in 2 more death sentences imposed by the same judge. There was some
evidence that Ferguson had mental health problems - he had been committed
previously to a state mental hospital - but Judge Fuller was not sufficiently
moved to consider his mental illness a mitigating circumstance. In fact, as
with Francois and White, Judge Fuller found no mitigating circumstances at all
for John Ferguson.
***
The cases moved on to the Florida Supreme Court. The Ferguson case hit a little
speed bump when the court found that Judge Fuller had misapplied the law
regarding mental illness as a mitigating circumstance But another judge ran
through the procedure properly and reimposed a death sentence.
Beauford White's sentence didn't meet with any resistance at all - the Court
had no problem affirming Fuller's decision to override a unanimous jury, ruling
that "the only colorable mitigating circumstance was the ... consideration that
the defendant was not the triggerman."
Colorable? That was a strange way to put it, particularly since all 12 jurors
had found White's lack of participation in the murders as the reason to
recommend a life sentence. Indeed, the foreman of the jury, in an interview
almost 10 years after White's trial, said, "We voted for life because we did
not see a shred of evidence indicating that White himself actually took part in
the killing. We knew he was present, and we knew he was guilty of something, we
just didn't know of what crime it was. We couldn't be sure he was guilty of
murder, so we voted to spare his life."
But it didn't matter what the foreman thought - or what anyone else on the jury
thought, for that matter. Judge Fuller had decided that the jury was wrong, and
the Florida Supreme Court had found his decision "so clear and convincing that
virtually no reasonable person could differ."
Capital cases follow a well-worn appellate path, and the next stop for White
and Ferguson was post-conviction. This is the stage where defendants go back to
the trial court and allege mistakes or omissions that took place the 1st time
around. But while both men found themselves at the same stage, their legal
postures were profoundly different. Ferguson now had 2 more death sentences to
deal with - the murders of the 2 17 year olds had been merged with the Carol
City killings for purposes of his appeal - but his extensive mental health
history and brutal upbringing had required a complex investigation that slowed
his appeals dramatically.
White, on the other hand, had already persuaded every member of his jury that
he should live. His post-conviction case took a very different turn from
Ferguson's, and a considerably luckier one in 2 ways. His case was now in the
hands of Judge Herbert Klein, a man far more predisposed towards mercy than
Judge Fuller. And while White's case was pending, the United States Supreme
Court had decided the Florida death penalty case of Earl Enmund.
Like Beauford White, Earl Enmund hadn't killed or attempted to kill anyone. And
like White, Enmund was clearly guilty of a robbery during which people had been
killed. Overruling the Florida Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court
determined that death was not a valid penalty for a person who neither took
life, attempted to take life, nor intended to take life. Enmund v. Florida
appeared to be a home run for Beauford White. At least Judge Klein thought so;
applying the Enmund case, he vacated White's death sentences, and the case once
again went to the Florida Supreme Court.
Courts don't like to be reversed, and it is impossible to read the Florida
Court's opinion without feeling the justices' resentment: "We have no doubt
that Enmund, overturning as it did centuries of law, represents a major change
in constitutional law and that we are obligated to revisit this case in order
to determine if Enmund prohibits the imposition of the death penalty under the
facts and circumstances of this case."
Not surprisingly, the Court found no prohibition. Stating that White had done
nothing to "disassociate himself" from the murders, the Florida Supreme Court
reimposed the death penalty on him. Not all 7 justices agreed - of them thought
that the Enmund case required a life sentence for White, and one came right out
and said that the Florida Supreme Court had no business sentencing anyone to
death, which was what it was doing by overruling Judge Klein. But 2 negative
votes did not change the outcome for Beauford White. On a Florida jury, even a
unanimous recommendation was not the final word about life or death. But a
simple majority was more than enough for the Supreme Court of Florida.
***
Since Beauford White had received a life recommendation from all 12 of his
jurors, his lawyers initially had little reason to contest the facts of the
Carol City killings. But as the 1st President Adams said more than 200 years
ago while defending reviled British troops in the Boston Massacre case, facts
are stubborn things. And as White's case wound its way through the courts on a
profoundly dangerous spiral, some stubborn facts surrounding the crime itself
began to surface. Not small facts, either - facts that raised questions about
who the victims were, and how the investigation of the crime had been
conducted.
The Florida Supreme Court had noted that "the essential facts" of the case were
not in dispute: an hour after the robbery had begun, the owner of the house and
5 of his friends had "arrived," subsequently becoming victims of the robbery.
One of those friends, Johnnie Hall, had survived the shooting and become the
main witness for the state. But Hall was not the innocent bystander portrayed
at the trial. And the lead investigator in the case, Detective Robert
Derringer, was not the police officer the jury and judge might have assumed he
was.
To understand who they really were, it is necessary to revisit the Miami of the
late 1970s and early 1980s - a city drowning in cocaine and cash.
South Florida brought 3 things together in the late 1970s: proximity to
Columbia, a landscape that lent itself to easy access by small planes and
boats, and an extraordinary willingness by all branches of the government to
look the other way. When the drug boom hit, fisherman stopped fishing and used
their boats for drug imports. Luxury cars flew off lots, and the Miami Federal
Reserve branch found itself with a surplus of $5 billion in $50 and $100 bills
- more than the next 12 Federal Reserve branches in the country combined. And
one other thing happened: Miami became the homicide capital of the country.
Law enforcement was not oblivious to Dade County's sudden shift in fortunes.
While the Carol City victims initially seemed to have had the bad luck of
walking in on a robbery, the police knew better. A police document written 4
days after the crime, but never revealed to the defense, summarized the true
nature of the circumstances: "Charles Ceasar Stinson, N/M, 35, of Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, was in Miami with the intention of making a large cocaine buy.
Charles Stinson contacted his associate, Gilbert Williams, N/M, 35, of Miami,
who is his contact in Miami, in an effort to arrange the cocaine deal. Gilbert
Williams utilized John Hall, N/M, 45, to make the arrangements to buy the
cocaine."
The memo went on to describe how the victims and TTthe owner of the house had
been involved in the drug deal. The fact that John Hall was an active player in
a drug conspiracy, rather than an innocent man who happened to stumble into the
wrong house, was only half the issue. At trial, Hall was the main witness in
the case, and it was he who testified that the murders took place to eliminate
the witnesses, rather than as a prearranged hit Beauford White had nothing to
do with.
The cocaine, the violence, the incredible amounts of cash - all of these things
had a predictable impact on the Dade County police force. A federal
investigation in the early 1980s had revealed that during the period of the
Carol City killings, the lead detective in the case, Robert Derringer, and
another detective involved in the investigation, Fabio Alonso, had been deeply
involved with drug dealers and their profits.
In all, 7 officers involved in the Carol City case were implicated in a
large-scale drug operation that involved, among other things, stealing drugs,
money, and jewelry from the residences of homicide victims. Derringer was
ultimately convicted of income tax evasion and unlawful appropriation of
property and sentenced to six years in federal prison. Alonso received a
10-year sentence.
Finally, there were considerable new revelations about Beauford White himself.
His trial attorney had spent very little time looking into his own client's
background - the law that requires such information to be taken into account in
capital cases was in its infancy in the late 1970s when White's case first came
to court. But nine years later, the obligation to discover, understand, and
present a defendant???s history was better known, and it turned out White's
background was stark and sympathetic. His mother, who started having children
at 12 and had had her 5th by the age of 20, was routinely and savagely beaten
by his father, Ernest - and when his father was not beating her, Beauford
himself became the target. When he was three, his father knocked him out cold,
driving his teeth through his tongue; a doctor later concluded that this
assault and others were the likely cause of seizures that plagued Beauford
through his lifetime.
The lead detective in the case, Robert Derringer, had been deeply involved with
drug dealers and their profits.
When Ernest White left the family to go to Detroit, his mother took up with a
series of men just as abusive, eventually killing one of them and going to
prison for a 7-year sentence. Beauford, abandoned time and time again as a
youngster and now without a mother or a father, nonetheless shone in school. 25
years later, in a statement given to Beauford's lawyers, his junior high school
principal recalled him as "an ideal young person ... academically gifted ... He
probably would have been a straight-A student if he would have had some
stability in the home and a place to study ... one of those kids that a teacher
looks forward to being around." Another teacher described him as "truly one of
my tops"; a 3rd said the reason she remembered him all those years later was
because "I liked him so much."
He was reportedly a terrific athlete as well - Leroy Cromartie, a supervisor
for the Miami Recreation Department, told the lawyers that Beauford had had
"major league potential." (And Cromartie would have known - his son Warren was
a successful first baseman and outfielder with the Montreal Expos.) Cromartie
went on to detail the drug culture that eventually sucked Beauford into its
maw, and the addiction that eventually overcame his potential. Then he said the
same thing dozens of other witnesses had said: "It tears me up to see what
happened to Beauford, but I know too well how it happened. I would have
appreciated the chance to explain all of this to his judge and jury."
Was there time for these new revelations to save Beauford White? By now, his
case had already been denied once in the federal courts, and his new lawyers -
death-penalty specialists who worked well under the pressure of an execution
warrant - rushed to get the previously hidden information in front of a judge
before it was too late.
With less than 2 weeks to go before White's scheduled execution, the Florida
Supreme Court refused to even consider the new claims. "It is clear ... that
this 11th hour petition is an abuse of process," the Court wrote in an opinion
that ran less than 500 words. A request for a stay of execution a few days
later compelled the same court to complain, "The fact that we are dealing with
a death sentence does not excuse [White's lawyers'] failure to abide by the
Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure." Time was running out.
***
While White was already in the homestretch of his last appeals, Ferguson's
lawyers were still in state court, working to piece together their client's
complex and dysfunctional background. There was no doubt that Ferguson had
suffered from a serious mental illness since well before the crimes that had
put him on death row, but the cause of the illness was proving impossible to
pinpoint. As a child he had been forced to move nearly a dozen times, fleeing
his violent and drunken father or his mother's many boyfriends; sometimes the
family moved simply to find a place with electricity and running water. When he
was 13, his father died from the effects of alcohol abuse, and shortly
thereafter he was committed to a state school. He dropped out in 9th grade; a
medical report indicated that he was "beat up by kids and ... a loner
throughout his life."
It's unclear what circumstances allowed a state mental hospital to release a
paranoid schizophrenic despite his imminent danger to the public. It hardly
seems possible, but Ferguson's life took a severe turn for the worse when he
was 21: He was shot 4 times by the police, once in the head. Those around him
noticed an immediate impact on his behavior, which often became irrational and
inexplicably hostile. From the day he was shot to the day of his arrest in the
Carol City killings, he spent the majority of his time in mental hospitals and
the rest of it committing crimes; twice, he was found not guilty of robberies
by reason of insanity. It was during this 8-year period from 1969 to 1977 that
the true scope of John Ferguson's mental instability became known.
Psychiatry is not an exact science. Different doctors bring different
perspectives to their examinations, and mental illnesses wax and wane. Thus,
the consistency of Ferguson's diagnoses, through 11 evaluations by seven
different doctors, is the most compelling evidence of just how ill he was.
Virtually every evaluation echoed the same 3 words: schizophrenia, psychosis,
and hallucinations. His symptoms were consistent as well - he was conversing
with his deceased father, he refused to sleep in jail because "they" put
scorpions on his bed, he suffered from headaches caused by roaches and "very
small" people that had been placed inside his brain.
And every evaluation came with a warning or a recommendation: Ferguson had
"such a severely damaged ability to distinguish between right and wrong" that
he "would commit illegal acts," wrote one doctor. Warned another, his "degree
of irrationality coupled with a rather impulsive, explosive and aggressive
nature makes him a rather dangerous person both to himself and to others." A
3rd concluded that he was "dangerous to the point where he is considered
homicidal." Finally there was this: Ferguson "has a longstanding, severe
illness which will most likely require long-term inpatient hospitalization.
This man is dangerous and cannot be released under any circumstances."
Almost 40 years later, it's unclear what circumstances allowed a state mental
hospital to release a paranoid schizophrenic despite his imminent danger to the
public. But Ferguson was on the streets on July 27, 1977, when he participated
in the Carol City killings. He would not be free much longer, and the doctors'
warnings, unheeded when they might have done the most good, were now all that
stood between a life of incarceration and execution by the state of Florida.
***
Proponents of capital punishment commonly argue that death penalty appeals are
endless, that the same issues are litigated over and over, and that
technicalities often free the most heinous murderers. It's safe to say that
none of these things happened in the case of Beauford White. By the summer of
1987, he had already had his claims rejected by the state and federal courts,
and he was in desperate straits.
A last-ditch effort in the federal courts was all that remained. The judge who
would hear the final appeal of Beauford White was the newly appointed Stanley
Marcus, fresh from heading the United States Attorney's Office that had
indicted and convicted the lead detectives in the case. Marcus had already
denied White's appeal once, but that was before the drug conspiracy among the
victims or the corruption of the investigating police officers had come to
light - before the very real possibility that the main eyewitness had lied
about the crime. Surely the former United States Attorney would see the
significance of these new revelations, especially since the jury had voted
unanimously for life without even knowing what Judge Marcus now knew.
On the night of August 25, 1987, from 4:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., a hearing
concerning the fate of Beauford White took place in the Federal Court House in
Key West Florida. Less than 24 hours later, in an opinion a higher court later
referred to as "carefully reasoned," Marcus made quick work of the defense
arguments. Evidence that the victims were involved in drug trafficking, and
that the murders were planned executions by Francois and Ferguson, had no
bearing on "whether White was guilty of the 1st degree murder charges and
whether the death penalty had been properly imposed." The fact that the main
eyewitness had lied about his business in the drug house and his own
involvement "was not central" to the issue of White's guilt, and "in no way"
exonerated him. The subsequent criminality of many of the police officers
involved in the investigation of the case - officers convicted and incarcerated
by the U.S. Attorney's office run by Marcus before he became a judge - is not
mentioned at all in his 35 page opinion.
The case moved quickly from there. The next day, the United States Supreme
Court denied review; the appeals had run their course. 2 Justices, Brennan and
Marshall, disagreed with the denial. Noting that White had been "duped into
what he later discovered was a planned contract murder of 1 or 2 of the
victims," that he was "visibly shaken afterwards and refused to help dispose of
the weapons," and that the trial judge had disregarded the jury's unanimous
recommendation, the justices argued that White's execution was "inexcusable."
But they were the only two, and on August 28, 1987, Beauford White died in the
Florida electric chair. 2 other men, in Alabama and Utah, were executed as
well, making it the 1st time in modern United States history that 3 men were
executed on the same day.
***
In retrospect, Judge Marcus's opinion seems to squarely address the main issue
in the case. "We are firmly convinced," Marcus wrote, "from a detailed review
of the newly discovered evidence, that there is no reasonable probability that,
had this evidence been disclosed to the defense, the results of the proceedings
would have been any different." In other words, if the defense had known that
the main eyewitness was lying, that the police were corrupt, that the killings
were actually an orchestrated hit rather than a late decision to eliminate the
witnesses - would any of it have made a difference to Judge Fuller? Was there
any evidence at all that might have persuaded him to go along with the jury
recommendation for a life sentence?
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens noted that elected judges "must
constantly profess their fealty to the death penalty."
Perhaps not. It turns out only one other person in American history has ever
been given a death sentence and then executed after a 12-0 jury recommendation
of life: Bernard Bolender. After deliberating 6 hours and then convicting him
of 4 murders, Bolender's jury deliberated only 12 minutes before unanimously
voting for life in prison. His lawyers claimed that the jury reached its
startlingly quick decision because of questions regarding Bolender's guilt. But
the trial judge overrode the jury's recommendation, imposing a death sentence,
and Bolender was executed in 1995. The judge in that case? Richard S. Fuller.
In a sworn affidavit, Jimmy Della Fera, one of Bolender's lawyers, wrote that
"the judge assigned to the case, the Honorable Richard S. Fuller, was
predisposed to impose death and that there was not much that could be presented
in the way of mitigation that would make any difference to Judge Fuller ... I
did not think it mattered much what the jury recommended because the judge had
the final say. As it turned out, the jury did recommend life, and Judge Fuller
overrode that recommendation and imposed death." It's possible that White's
fate was sealed not when he stood by and watched 6 people killed, but when he
was assigned to Judge Fuller's courtroom.
***
It took 26 years for the circle to close on Carol City, and for most of that
time, John Errol Ferguson's lawyers argued that their client could not proceed
with his appeals because he was too mentally ill to meaningfully consult with
them. The Florida courts disagreed: They acknowledged that at one time he had
"suffered from a mental disorder that had symptoms associated with paranoid
schizophrenia," but that since 1994, his mental health had improved so as to
make him "no longer a disruptive member of his prison environment." Indeed,
rather than finding him overtly psychotic and too dangerous to be walking the
streets, as the doctors who evaluated Ferguson before the killings had, the
Florida courts concluded that his disorder was in remission and that he was
malingering or exaggerating his symptoms.
This was far from the universal view of the medical community, however.
Virtually every criminal trial involving a mental health opinion has expert
testimony from both the prosecution and the defense, and such cases routinely
devolve into a battle of experts. Ferguson's certainly did. At every one of
Ferguson's hearings, doctors were lined up on both sides, and more than a dozen
of them concluded that he was too mentally ill to proceed. In every instance,
however, the state prevailed, and slowly but inexorably his case moved toward a
conclusion.
As the date of his execution neared, Ferguson's attorneys claimed that he was
incompetent to be executed. In other words, he was too mentally ill to
rationally understand the reason he was being executed. By this time there was
little talk of Ferguson being a malingerer. Everyone agreed that he was a
paranoid schizophrenic with grandiose religious delusions about being the
Prince of God. But the last court to take a look at his case, the 11th Circuit
Court of Appeals, was not persuaded of his incompetence: "That most people
would characterize Ferguson's Prince of God belief, in the vernacular, as
'crazy' does not mean that someone who holds that belief is not competent to be
executed." On August 5, 2013, John Errol Ferguson was executed by the state of
Florida. His final words, spoken calmly, were, "I just want everyone to know
that I am the Prince of God and will rise again."
***
Judicial override is not yet a thing of the past in Florida, though the Florida
state's Supreme Court (in the case of Alfredie Steele) has asked its state
legislature to rewrite the death penalty statute and "decide whether it wants
Florida to remain the outlier state." Thus far, the legislature has taken no
action. And while the Florida trial courts have not overruled a jury
recommendation of life since 1999, the repercussions of the practice can still
be felt today. In 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh
Circuit upheld the override of Matthew Marshall from more than 20 years
earlier. He remains on Florida's death row awaiting execution.
Override of jury sentencing has its greatest vitality in Alabama. Whereas
Florida ruled in 1975 that great weight should be given to jury
recommendations, its neighbor to the north declined to follow the same rule.
Alabama's legal code, updated in 1981, declares, "While the jury's
recommendation concerning sentence shall be given consideration, it is not
binding upon the court."
And Alabama chooses its judges in partisan elections. This fact plays a huge,
if predictable, role in sentencing outcomes. As far back as the 1930s, Alabama
judge James Edwin Horton was quickly booted out of office after granting the
"Scottsboro Boys" a new trial following a thoroughly racist and unfounded
capital rape prosecution. Since then, judges have been stressing their "law and
order" bona fides at election time, and poll numbers in Alabama strongly
suggest that supporting the death penalty is a vote-getter.
The 1995 Supreme Court case Harris v. Alabama allowed the state's override
policy to stand. The sole dissenting voice belonged to Justice John Paul
Stevens, who observed that capital judges may be "too responsive to a political
climate in which [those] who covet higher office - or who merely wish to remain
judges - must constantly profess their fealty to the death penalty." He added
that the danger of judges "bend[ing] to political pressures when pronouncing
sentence in highly publicized capital cases is the same danger confronted by
judges beholden to King George III." Justice Stevens then noted a striking
disparity: Alabama judges had vetoed only 5 jury recommendations of death, but
had condemned 47 defendants whom juries would have spared. By 2011 those
numbers had become even more extreme: 98 overrides for death, only 9 for life.
The U.S. Supreme Court hasn't heard a case on judge override since 1995. In the
last decade 23 men, all of them in Alabama, have been sentenced to death after
their juries recommended a life sentence; 3 received unanimous votes for life.
One of those cases, that of Mario Dion Woodward, nearly reached the Supreme
Court in November, but the justices declined to hear it. Only Justices Sonia
Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer objected to the denial of certiorari - Sotomayor
noted that Alabama judges "appear to have succumbed to electoral pressures."
The New York Times's editorial board chimed in the same day, arguing that a
death penalty "should not be imposed by a judge who is worried about keeping
his job."
Whether Richard S. Fuller - who left the bench more than two decades ago and
passed away in 1997 - was worried about keeping his job when he overruled
unanimous life recommendations would be cold comfort to Beauford White or
Bernard Bolender. As for the dozens of men now similarly situated on death row,
the Supreme Court's recent refusal to heard the Woodward case is a
disappointing reminder that electoral pressure on state judges is still
constitutionally permissible. In 2000, Harold See, a member of the Alabama
Supreme Court, ran for chief justice with a television advertisement about
upholding death sentences; the narrator intoned that the judge was "fighting
against minor technicalities that would let criminals off."
Until the state of Alabama changes its laws or the U.S. Supreme Court takes up
the challenge, it appears that a jury's decision as to who should live or die
may remain little more than a minor technicality.
(source: The Atlantic)
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