July 24
TEXAS:
Gunman's grandmother testifies in death penalty trial
The grandmother of a 23-year-old man who faces the death penalty for killing
two people, including a Bellaire policeman, testified Wednesday that he was
developmentally challenged as a boy and, she believes, it carried through to
his adult life.
Prosecutors were quick to point out that Harlem Lewis III graduated from high
school with "almost straight A's" and was accepted at University of Houston
Downtown.
"He was the caregiver, the caretaker," Lewis's grandmother, Willie Henderson,
said on the witness stand. "But he had problems socializing, verbalizing."
Lewis was convicted last week of capital murder. Jurors are now determining his
punishment.
Henderson was the 1st witness called by Lewis's defense team after prosecutors
rested early Wednesday.
Prosecutors' last witness was Daniel Norman, son of slain Bellaire Corporal
Jimmie Norman. The son testified that his father loved his job, sports and
family gatherings.
Prosecutors spent more than two days working to convince jurors that Lewis will
be a future danger to society, even the "society" of prison, a requirement for
the jury to send him to death row.
Former friends testified Lewis participated with them in four armed robberies
over two days and helped burglarize cars and homes. No one was injured or
convicted in the crimes.
Lewis's defense team is trying to persuade the jury to send Lewis to prison for
life without parole, the only other option. They have to convince jurors that
there is enough mitigating evidence, which can be anything, to spare Lewis's
life.
In court, attorney Tyronne Moncriffe showed several pictures of Harlem Lewis as
toothy young man posing with family as he grew up surrounded by family.
His defense team also called forensic psychologist Dr. Matthew Mendel who
testified that Lewis's IQ was tested twice, with the results being 71 and 76.
"He is pretty severely intellectually limited," Mendel said. He said 95 percent
of people in any given room with Lewis are smarter than him.
The psychologist said he believes Lewis did so well in school because his
father was so strict, forcing him to either work in the family's auto shop or
study, never socializing with friends.
After he graduated high school and moved out, Lewis smoked a lot of marijuana
and started stealing with his friends, his lawyers said. He also failed out of
college while taking remedial courses.
Defense attorney Pat McCann characterized Lewis as a frightened kid, "spitting
distance from retarded" who made a horrific mistake on Christmas Eve 2012 when
he was scared.
Last week, jurors saw video of Lewis fleeing the police, then struggling with
Norman before shooting him once in the head. Less than a second later, Lewis
can be seen fatally shooting Terry Taylor, a good Samaritan trying to help
Norman. The police chase ended in the parking lot of Taylor's Maaco body repair
shop on Bellaire Boulevard.
(source: Houston Chronicle)
******************
Executions under Rick Perry, 2001-present-----276
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982-present----515
Perry #--------scheduled execution date-----name---------Tx. #
277------------Sept. 10-----------------Willie Trottie--------516
278------------Sept. 17------------------Lisa Coleman---------517
279------------Oct. 15------------------Larry Hatten----------518
280------------Oct. 28------------------Miguel Paredes--------519
281------------Jan. 14------------------Rodney Reed-----------520
282------------Jan. 21-------------------Arnold Prieto--------521
283------------Jan. 28-------------------Garcia White---------522
284------------Feb. 4--------------------Donald Newbury-------523
285------------Feb. 10-------------------Les Bower, Jr.-------524
286------------Mar. 18-------------------Randall Mays---------525
(sources for both: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
Convicted killer to receive new sentencing hearing
A convicted killer will get a 2nd chance to escape death row, after the state
Supreme Court ruled Wednesday he should get a new sentencing hearing.
John Edward Weik, 47, of Moncks Corner, was given a death sentence for murder
and a life sentence for burglary after killing his ex-girlfriend in
Knightsville in 1998.
But Wednesday's ruling indicates Weik's attorneys didn???t do enough to present
jurors with mitigating circumstances that could have convinced them to forego
the death penalty.
One of his attorneys, in fact, is now suspended from practicing law.
"We cannot conclude that counsel made any reasoned, strategic choices regarding
which witnesses would testify - there simply was no mitigation strategy," the
court said.
Weik shot and killed his ex-girlfriend Susan Krasae at her home after an
argument.
It was reported then that Krasae told Weik he wasn't to see their son again.
Weik retreated to his truck, then grabbed a shotgun, still loaded from hunting,
and returned to shoot her 4 times.
"I popped another shell into her. It felt good. Popped another shell into her.
It felt better; popped another shell into her. It felt even better," the
Summerville Journal Scene reported he told police.
Weik also said he was ready for the death penalty. He surrended without a fight
not far from the crime scene.
It took a jury only 15 minutes to convict him, and not quite an hour to give
him the death sentence.
Yet the Supreme Court's ruling says Weik's attorneys failed him by overlooking
evidence their own investigators had turned up of Weik's horrific childhood and
the mental illness prevalent within his family - evidence that could have
changed the outcome of his sentencing.
The Supreme Court ruling details testimony from Weik's siblings that alleged
their father, Russell Weik, beat them, would lock them in the
non-air-conditioned attic for hours, would make the boys stand in the yard at
attention for hours through the night, and that he was a compulsive hoarder who
claimed to be an undercover operative for the CIA.
One sibling said Russell Weik was particularly hard on John Weik because he was
"slow."
"To be sure, Russell is a psychotic, very disturbed individual," the court
said.
As the jury considered Weik's sentence, it never heard of the "severe abuse" he
endured because his attorneys didn't bother to read their investigators'
reports and thus were unaware of the "wealth of information that had been
uncovered," the court said.
Summerville Town Councilman Walter Bailey was the First Circuit Solicitor at
the time.
After reading the court's opinion Wednesday, he said his 1st thought is of the
family that must re-live the murder and trial nearly a generation later.
Yes, he said, there were probably things the defense team could have done
better, but "if they had done those things I don't believe the result would
have been different."
Testimony about a brutal childhood is a double-edged sword, Bailey said.
Had any of Weik's siblings taken the stand to testify about their abusive
father, Bailey would have simply asked why the sibling hadn't murdered anyone,
having grown up in the same environment, he said.
(source: Berkeley Independent)
GEORGIA:
Trial motions heard for pending death penalty case
Motions were heard in Jones County Superior Court for an upcoming death penalty
case in preparation for the trial, which is scheduled for January.
Superior Court Judge James Cline presided over the July 15 proceeding, which
consisted of several motions by the defense team for Terrence Sanchez Burney.
Burney was arrested Oct. 17, 2008, for the murder of 76-year-old Joseph
Kitchens with co-defendant Tyrone Terrell Richardson. The pair was indicted for
the murder Feb. 10, 2011, as well as for the murder of Thomas Griffis.
Griffis was killed in his Gray barbershop July 25, 2008, and Kitchens was found
dead in his Bradley home three months later, Oct. 17. No arrests were made in
the Griffis murder, but Burney and Richardson were arrested hours after
Kitchens' body was found by Jones County deputies.
District Attorney Fred Bright filed notice in August of 2011 that the state
would be seeking the death penalty for both defendants, and Richardson was the
1st up for trial.
(source: : The Jones County News)
OHIO:
Prosecutors accuse judge of death-penalty bias in Akron capital murder case
Summit County prosecutors accused a judge of being biased against the death
penalty in a quadruple homicide and asked the Ohio Supreme Court to remove her
from the case.
Prosecutors asked in a written motion to the Ohio Supreme Court that Summit
County Common Pleas Judge Mary Margaret Rowlands be removed from presiding over
the case after she called a supervisor in the prosecutors office and asked him
to take the death penalty off the table.
Rowlands has 15 days to respond to the complaint and Supreme Court justices
have no set timetable to rule on the matter. The trial, which was set for
opening statements on Thursday, is now postponed until Monday.
"The judge is not permitted to comment on any matter currently pending before
the Court," said a prepared statement released by Rowlands' staff on Thursday.
"The judge will be filing her response by the end of business tomorrow, in
accordance with the procedure outlined by the Ohio Supreme Court. It is the
judge's understanding that her written response will be available to the
public."
Deshanon Haywood, 23, of Akron, was scheduled to begin trial on Thursday on
aggravated murder charges in the heroin-related quadruple murder of 4 people,
including a suspected heroin dealer.
Brad Gessner, the Chief Counsel for the Summit County Prosecutors office, said
in an affidavit filed with the Ohio Supreme Court that Rowlands called his
office on July 3 and asked that he remove death penalty specifications from the
case.
Gessner's affidavit says that Rowlands told Gessner she talked with the
victims' families and believed they would be unopposed to dropping the death
penalty from the case. She also told Gessner that the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court
of Appeals would never let the death penalty stand against Haywood because his
co-defendant in the case - Derrick Brantley - was already convicted and
sentenced to life in prison, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit says Rowlands also said removing the death penalty from the case
would save money, that that it would reduce the trial length from about 8 weeks
to about 2 weeks and would also allow Brian LoPrinzi, the trial prosecutor, to
get a break.
LoPrinzi, in an affidavit, wrote that Rowlands asked him to drop the death
penalty during an "off-the-record" conversation in her chambers on June 27.
The call lasted about 10 to 15 minutes, Gessner's affidavit says. Gessner asked
for Rowland's disqualification in a 54-page filing that alleges Rowland's is
biased against the death penalty in the case.
Rowlands "does not have an open mind regarding the death penalty in this case,"
the filing says.
Haywood's defense attorneys - Brian M. Pierce and Joe Gorman - called the
filing a "stall tactic" and argued that prosecutors are dissatisfied with the
jury selected to hear the case.
They also asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the case because they argue Ohio
law stipulates that judicial disqualifications have to be filed at least 7 days
before the trial.
"This is a clear attempt to prevent the commencement of the trial not based on
bias or prejudice but the state's disapproval with the present composition of
the jury," the attorneys' filing says.
The quadruple homicide on April 18, 2013 was heroin-related, and one of the men
killed, Ronald Roberts, 24, was a heroin dealer, prosecutors say. Prosecutors
believe Haywood and Brantley were trying to steal Roberts' heroin at the time.
Brantley and Haywood then fatally shot Roberts and the other 3 - Kem Delaney,
23, Maria Nash, 19, and Kiana Welch, 19 - at least once in the back of the head
on April 18, 2013 at a townhouse on Kimlyn Circle.
All suffered multiple gunshot wounds, authorities said.
Brantley, 22, of Akron, was sentenced to 4 consecutive life sentences after
being convicted of aggravated murder and other charges at his trial in June.
The jury in the case decided against recommending the death penalty.
(source: cleveland.com)
KENTUCKY:
Condemned Kentucky inmate seeks new trial in woman's 1989 death
A death row inmate from Eastern Kentucky has asked a federal judge to throw out
is conviction and sentence, saying a judge erred in accepting his guilty plea.
In a petition filed in federal court in Lexington, 47-year-old Donald Herb
Johnson says a judge in Floyd County didn't recount all the rights he'd be
giving up by admitting to stabbing Helen Madden to death on Oct. 30, 1989.
Johnson also claims he may not have been competent at the time to enter the
plea.
Madden was attacked at the Bright and Clean Laundry in Hazard where she worked.
Johnson entered the guilty plea on Oct. 1, 1997.
Johnson's attorneys claim their client wasn't properly medicated as recommended
by a psychologist in 1994. The attorneys said Johnson abruptly ended interviews
with the doctor several times. After being medicated, Johnson later said he
stopped talking about Madden's death because "he had been told not to by 'the
voices'."
"I would never have pled guilty if I had known I could defend against this case
based on sanity. If I had known there was a psychologist willing to say I was
insane, I would have insisted on going to trial," Johnson said in an affidavit.
Kentucky is currently under a court order suspending all executions in the
state. A judge in Frankfort is planning to hold a trial about how the state
evaluates the mental capacity of condemned inmates in the days leading up to an
execution.
Kentucky has executed 3 people since the reinstatement of the death penalty in
1976.
(source: Associated Press)
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