May 4
PENNSYLVANIA:
Death penalty trial set for man in girlfriend's slaying
Opening statements were expected Monday in the death penalty trial of a western
Pennsylvania man charged in the stabbing death of his estranged girlfriend more
than 3 years ago.
26-year-old Jordan Clemons, of Pittsburgh, is charged in Washington County in
the death of 21-year-old Karissa Kunco. Her body was found in a wooded area of
Mount Pleasant Township in January 2012 a day after Kunco's family reported her
missing.
(source: Associated Press)
VIRGINIA:
Death sentences, executions in Virginia since 1998
The death penalty has been on the decline in Virginia and nationally. The
numbers of death sentences, followed by the number of executions annually in
Virginia since 1998:
-- 1998: Death sentences, 9. Executions, 13.
-- 1999: Death sentences, 7. Executions, 14.
-- 2000: Death sentences, 8. Executions, 8.
-- 2001: Death sentences, 4. Executions, 2.
-- 2002: Death sentences, 3. Executions, 4.
-- 2003: Death sentences, 6. Executions, 2.
-- 2004: Death sentences, 2. Executions, 5.
-- 2005: Death sentences, 1. Executions, 0.
-- 2006: Death sentences, 2. Executions, 4.
-- 2007: Death sentences, 1. Executions, 0.
-- 2008: Death sentences, 0. Executions, 4.
-- 2009: Death sentences, 1. Executions, 3.
-- 2010: Death sentences, 0. Executions, 3.
-- 2011: Death sentences, 2. Executions, 1.
-- 2012: Death sentences, 0. Executions, 0.
-- 2013: Death sentences, 0. Executions, 1.
-- 2014: Death sentences, 0. Executions, 0.
[source: Death Penalty Information Center]
(source: Post Bulletin)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Legislative roundup: Bill aims to clear hurdle for executions
A Gaston County killer's more than 2-decade stay on death row demonstrates why
North Carolina needs to resume executions, House Speaker Tim Moore told
colleagues last week.
House members were debating a plan to expand the list of medical professionals
who could monitor a state execution when the Kings Mountain Republican told
fellow House members about David Lynch's 2 1991 murders in Gaston County.
Lynch, now 55, fatally shot 12-year-old India Anderson and her father, Bobby
Anderson, and wounded several others that December morning. The Andersons were
Lynch's neighbors, and he complained that the children would play on his grass
and that the adults played loud music and had parties.
Moore said he brought up Lynch's case because it occurred near his home county
of Cleveland. Lynch's case also represents the brutal nature of many death
penalty cases where surviving family members are still waiting on justice,
Moore said.
"That's such an example of a person who committed a murder in 1991, and there
are no questions as to whether he's guilty or innocent, and he still has not
been executed," Moore said. "The only reason he killed her was she stepped on
his grass. That's just horrible."
A jury rejected an insanity defense from Lynch and sentenced him to death in
1993.
North Carolina taxpayers pay almost $35,000 a year to house him in prison,
Moore said.
House Republicans want North Carolina to resume executions after an almost
9-year hiatus.
Litigation over execution protocol halted executions in North Carolina.
Physician groups across the nation have been discouraging their members from
participating in executions.
The bill passed by House members would allow physician assistants, nurse
practitioners, registered nurses and emergency medical technicians to monitor
executions. A physician would still have to be nearby to pronounce time of
death.
"Those were the issues that needed to be addressed for executions to resume,"
Moore said.
Area lawmakers, all Republican, voted for the measure. Those members are Reps.
Dana Bumgardner, Kelly Hastings, Moore, Jason Saine and John Torbett.
The bill passed 84-33 and now goes to the Senate.
Opponents called the measure unwise. Rep. Gale Adcock, D-Wake, a family nurse
practitioner, said it was wrong to shift the responsibility to other medical
professionals who are also members of groups with ethical codes that oppose
taking lives. Her amendment to remove several of the medical professionals from
the list was defeated.
North Carolina has 149 people on death row, including 6 from Gaston County.
(source: Gaston Gazette)
FLORIDA:
Woman on death row wants new trial in kidnapping disabled couple, burying them
alive
The only white woman on Florida's death row will ask the Florida Supreme Court
to throw out her conviction and death sentence this week for robbing,
kidnapping and burying a disabled Jacksonville couple alive.
Lawyers for Tiffany Cole, 33, will argue the attorneys who represented her
during her criminal trial in Jacksonville were ineffective. Cole was convicted
of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder, armed robbery and kidnapping. A jury
recommended death by a 9-3 vote and Circuit Judge Michael Weatherby concurred.
Cole was 1 of 4 people who kidnapped Carol and Reggie Sumner, both 61, from
their St. Nicholas home in 2005 and drove them to Charlton County, Ga., where
they were buried alive.
Michael James Jackson, 27, the mastermind of the murder plot, and Cole's
boyfriend, Alan Lyndell Wade, 27, are also on death row. A 4th participant,
27-year-old Bruce Nixon, testified against the others and was sentenced to 45
years in prison for 2nd-degree murder.
They were arrested in Charleston, S.C., a week after the Sumners disappeared.
Police found Jackson with the couple's ATM cards and personal information.
In court filings attorney Wayne Henderson, who's representing Cole on appeal,
argues that defense lawyers Quentin Till and Greg Messore did a poor job during
both the criminal trial and the sentencing phase of Cole's case. Oral arguments
in Cole's appeal will occur Thursday.
Henderson argued that Till, the lead lawyer, expected to reach a plea deal for
Cole and was unprepared for trial when Cole rejected the state's offer.
Cole didn't believe she was guilty of 1st-degree murder because she didn't
personally kill the Sumners, saying that she did not "bury the bodies and
therefore was not guilty." But under Florida law someone who participates in a
crime can be found equally culpable for a murder even if they didn't pull the
trigger or directly cause the death.
Henderson also argues that Messore, who handled the penalty phase, was
unprepared because he didn't join the case until a month before Cole's trial
began and was only properly certified to be a lawyer in death-penalty cases
days before Cole's trial began.
"Cole's appointed trial counsel was ineffective in both the guilt and penalty
phases for failing to adequately investigate her background and psychological
deficiency in order to show that she was under extreme duress and effectively
under the control of her co-defendants during the time of the offense,"
Henderson said. "Had trial counsel sufficiently investigated Cole's
psychological makeup and history, they would have discovered that Cole does not
interact well with men and is generally fearful, intimidated and willing to
please."
Till and Messore never investigated Cole's mental-health or dysfunctional
family history and substance-abuse problems. During the penalty phase, the jury
heard nothing about Cole's low intelligence level and mental health.
Cole was an abused child who started running away at 12. She left home as a
teenager and turned to drugs and prostitution, Henderson said.
Cole's lawyers also didn't object to evidence that had been seized in the case
or make a motion to suppress statements Cole made after she was arrested. Till
has acknowledged that he made a tactical decision to use Cole's statements
because he believed they supported their contention that she was a minor
participant in the crime and a good person who got caught up with bad men.
But a large amount of the information introduced at trial, including that the
Sumners' strongbox was found in Cole's car, hurt Cole and letting it in had no
strategic benefit, Henderson said.
But prosecutors respond by saying that Till and Messore put on a solid defense.
Assistant Deputy Attorney General Carolyn Snurkowski, in filings to the Supreme
Court, argues that Till did look into Cole???s mental health but decided the
best defense would be to portray Cole as a non-violent good person who
exhibited aberrant behavior after getting involved with Jackson.
Till believed that bringing out the bad parts of Cole's life would not help her
with the jury and preferred they not know that she???d been a prostitute and
dealt drugs, Snurkowski said.
During a hearing to throw out the conviction, Till also testified that the
strategy in the guilt phase was to show that Cole's participation was marginal,
she was not involved in the killings and didn't know that the Sumners were
going to be killed.
Till also said during that hearing that Cole had admitted to him that she had a
bigger role in the kidnapping and murder than she'd previously said, Snurkowski
said.
Till and Messore could not be reached for comment.
The Florida Supreme Court previously affirmed Cole's death sentence in 2010. It
did disagree with Weatherby's finding that Cole's behavior in the killing was
especially heinous, atrocious and cruel because Cole didn't bury them alive
herself, but the court found that error didn't justify setting aside the
conviction or death sentence.
This 2nd appeal occurred after Henderson moved to throw out the original
conviction, and Weatherby denied the motion.
Cole was the only 1 of the 4 who knew the Sumners. At one point the couple were
friends and neighbors with Cole's father in South Carolina, and they had sold a
car to Cole and told her she was welcome at their house if she was ever in
Jacksonville.
The plan to rob and murder the Sumners evolved from knowledge Cole had about
the couple.
There are 394 people on death row and 5 of them are women. 2 women are black
and the other 2 are Hispanic.
It is unclear how long it will take the Supreme Court to rule on Cole's appeal.
But death-penalty appeals usually take months to decide after oral arguments
occur.
(source: Florida Times-Union)
LOUISIANA:
Judge: Man convicted in child's death not mentally disabled
A state judge has ruled that a Ragley man convicted in 2004 of raping and
murdering a young girl from Moss Bluff does not have an intellectual disability
that would prohibit him from being executed.
The American Press (http://bit.ly/1DQfKa6 ) reports Judge Michael Canady ruled
Friday that 40-year-old Jason Manuel Reeves is not mentally disabled.
In 2012, Canaday signed a death warrant for Reeves, who was convicted of the
November 2001 rape and killing of 4-year-old Mary Jean Thigpen. A scheduled
execution date was postponed after attorneys filed an appeal claiming Reeves
had an intellectual disability.
Federal law prohibits the state from carrying out the death penalty against
convicts with a mental disability.
(source: WHLT news)
USA:
87 Reasons To Rethink the Death Penalty
Stanley Griffin was deemed intellectually disabled when he was 16. He scored an
abysmal 65 on an IQ test, which put him among the lowest 1 % of Americans in
terms of his intellectual capacity. (An average score is 100.) He was spelling
and doing math on a 3rd-grade level. His school designated him mentally
retarded and put him in special ed. He even competed in the Special Olympics.
Out of 100 prisoners put to death recently, only 13 met the threshold for
"extreme culpability," legal researchers concluded.
As Griffin grew older, he had trouble finding and holding any job. It took him
seven tries to finally pass the test required to drive a semi truck, and when
no one would hire him even then, he resorted to manual labor. But his
contractor brother wouldn't let Griffin use power tools because he couldn't
manage them properly; Griffin was oblivious to danger, too, and would walk
dangerously close to the backhoe. He tried, and failed, to master simple
plumbing - even a Denny's application proved overwhelming. His mental
deficiencies left him unable to live alone, pay bills, or even purchase his own
clothing because he would get so flummoxed by the math.
Somewhere along the way, Griffin began getting into trouble and having run-ins
with the law. In 1990, at age 25, he was tried and convicted for burglary and
aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
He served 12, but things only went downhill after his release. He ended up
homeless, and finally, in 2012, Griffin was convicted of strangling to death
29-year-old Jennifer Hailey in College Station, Texas, and violently assaulting
her 9-year-old son, who had witnessed her murder. He was tried and found
guilty. The prosecutor asked for the death penalty and the jury obliged.
There is little question Griffin should have been locked away. At the same
time, he should never have been a candidate for the death penalty. The Supreme
Court has twice ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute people who are
intellectually disabled - a polite alternative to "mentally retarded" -
regardless of the nature of their crimes. Their "diminished capacities," the
court further noted, made such defendants far less likely to be deterred by the
threat of death, which is one of the few remaining justifications for capital
punishment.
Intellectual disability is just one of several mitigating factors that, at
least in theory, are supposed to spare people from execution. The death
penalty, the Supreme Court has noted, is intended for the worst of the worst -
offenders more depraved than your average murderer, who have what the courts
call "extreme culpability."
This is precisely why capital trials have a separate sentencing phase. At this
trial within a trial, jurors are asked to weigh evidence that might
counterbalance the heinousness of the crime, in particular intellectual
disability, severe mental illness, horrific trauma, and simply youth - the
Supreme Court in 2005 imposed a blanket ban on the execution of anyone who was
under 18 at the time of his crime - before deciding whether to impose the
ultimate penalty. In the sentencing phase for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev, for example, his lawyers argued that he was essentially just a kid in
the thrall of his charismatic ringleader brother.
The files are full of stories of men brutally beaten, threatened with guns,
abandoned, or raped by parents and neighbors and caretakers.
This setup was meant to ensure the American ideal of individualized punishment
- that the consequences suit the particular circumstances of the case. And yet
death row is crowded with people whose cases include several of these
mitigating factors.
The authors of a study published last year in the Hastings Law Journal took a
closer look at the most recent 100 executions (as of June 2013) to determine
whether any of those defendants might have been spared in accordance with the
law. As it turned out, the overwhelming majority met one or more of the
criteria: 1/3 of the executed prisoners had a documented intellectual
disability, borderline intellectual functioning, or a traumatic brain injury -
and 8 scored below 70 on an IQ test, a level of disability that should exempt a
defendant from execution. Four were 18 at the time of their crimes.
Although the Supreme Court has twice ruled that states may not execute someone
who is insane, 54 of the 100 executions studied involved prisoners who showed
symptoms of severe mental illness, including 6 cases of schizophrenia, 3 of
bipolar disorder, and 8 of PTSD. 6 had tried to kill themselves at least once.
Fully 1/2 of the condemned prisoners had histories of severe childhood trauma.
Some had witnessed the murders of loved ones. One had shot his father to
protect his mother from the man's brutal abuse. Another man's violent history
even traced all the way back to Pancho Villa, whose bandits had killed his
great-grandfather and kidnapped his grandfather during the Mexican revolution.
The files are full of stories about men who were fed alcohol as toddlers,
beaten brutally as children, shot at by stepfathers, abandoned by psychotic or
drug-addicted parents, sexually abused - in some cases raped and sodomized - by
parents and neighbors and caretakers. One teen was forcibly circumcised by a
sadistic group-home leader and gang raped by the others. The details of these
cases make for painful reading, but they go a long way toward helping explain
what makes someone a killer.
After taking all of the evidence into account, the Hastings authors concluded
that just 13 of the 100 people executed met the legal definition of "extreme
culpability." Why, then, were the other 87 sentenced to death and ultimately
killed by the state?
One of the primary explanations for errant executions is simply bad lawyering.
Judges have let a surprising number of capital defendants represent themselves
at trial - an almost certain ticket to death row. But even with a
court-appointed lawyer, the quality of the representation is, more often than
not, pretty horrendous. And to later prove that a lawyer's ineffective counsel
led to a death penalty, well, the bar is extremely high.
Local courts have handed complex death penalty cases to attorneys who have
never defended one. Defense lawyers have slept through portions of a client's
capital trial, been drunk on the job (see this extreme case), missed critical
deadlines, and otherwise proved incompetent. And whether due to laziness or
incompetence or ridiculous caseloads or a combination of those things, all too
many defenders fail to adequately scour a client's past for details that might
persuade a juror to show mercy.
Often, the mitigating details aren't presented until "it's too damn late," says
one legal expert.
As a result, the mitigating details often don't get presented until far along
in the appeals process. "But then it's too damn late," says Robert Smith, an
assistant law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and
coauthor of the Hastings Law Journal article. (Consider the case of Cecil
Clayton, a prisoner recently executed by the state of Missouri, never mind that
he was actually missing part of his brain.) The best time to keep someone off
death row is before he's sentenced - if not earlier. "If you build a good
mitigation case, you don't go to trial," Smith notes.
Which is not to say it's a slam dunk. Far from it. Raising mitigating evidence
at trial can be a dicey business. The problem, says Maurie Levin, a veteran
death penalty attorney, is that juries (and many lawyers) believe "the choice
between life and death is only about the crime." Mitigation evidence is about
"who this person is, that there's a capacity for empathy, and any reason for
the jury to think that this person is not the worst of the worst," Levin says.
"The true concept of mitigation has to be separated out from questions of
culpability or explaining the crime."
Virtually the only question truly at issue in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev,
who was found guilty on all counts, is whether he deserves to die. If the
prosecutor hadn't been so keen on pushing for the death penalty, Tsarnaev would
likely have accepted a plea of life without parole in a Colorado supermax. But
because the case went to trial, the defense strategy became all about
humanizing him and convincing jurors he was just along for the ride with his
brother.
But juries sometimes hear mitigating evidence and conclude that it makes the
death penalty more appropriate, not less. For example, in the case that led the
Supreme Court to ban the death penalty for juveniles, the trial prosecutor
argued that Christopher Simmons, who was 17 at the time of his crime, was a
prime candidate for death precisely because he was young. "Think about age," he
told the jury. "Seventeen years old. Isn't that scary? Doesn't that scare you?
Mitigating? Quite the contrary, I submit. Quite the contrary."
Research shows that when a capital defendant pleads insanity and loses, he's
far more likely to get the death penalty.
This double-edged sword is particularly sharp in cases involving mental
illness. Decades of research show that when a capital defendant pleads not
guilty by reason of insanity and is subsequently found guilty, he is far more
likely to get a death sentence. In an essay on the subject, Christopher
Slobogin, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, referenced a study showing
that a failed insanity defense is an even better predictor of whether someone
will be sentenced to death than whether the defendant had a criminal history or
had committed another crime alongside the killing. "Research shows that people
think an insanity defense is for malingerers," Slobogin told me.
Jurors, he says, also tend to view mentally ill defendants as scarier than sane
criminals - which makes them more likely to vote for death. This is perhaps one
reason the insanity defense is so rarely invoked. 1 large study across 8 states
found that just 1 % of felony defendants used it - and only about 1 in 4 of
them succeeded.
Many states don't even allow the insanity defense these days - 4 have abolished
it, and others have changed the sentencing option from "not guilty by reason of
insanity" to "guilty but insane." The latter, Slobogin says, is an attempt to
discourage the notion that a person can escape responsibility for their actions
on account of severe mental illness.
Without the insanity option, legal scholars have argued, mentally ill
defendants may be more likely to land on death row, where the ACLU estimates
that up to 10 % of the residents struggle with severe mental illness. A "guilty
but mentally ill" plea certainly didn't do much for James McVay, a South Dakota
man sentenced to death last May for killing a woman as part of his delusional
plan to assassinate President Obama. He hanged himself in his cell about four
months later.
Some states employ procedural roadblocks that make it almost impossible for a
defendant's lawyers to prove he is intellectually disabled.
While the legal definition of insanity is a narrow one, the Supreme Court has
made a categorical exemption for people with intellectual disabilities. If a
criminal has an IQ of around 70 or less, particularly when that disability was
apparent since he was a kid, he isn't supposed to be sentenced to death in the
first place. But defendants like Stanley Griffin routinely end up on death row
anyway. Slobogin suggests this is partially because the high court let states
choose how to implement its rulings, and some states employ procedural
roadblocks that make it almost impossible for a defendant's lawyers to prove he
is intellectually disabled.
Among other procedural hurdles, some states make defendants wait until the
sentencing phase of the trial to raise claims of intellectual disability.
That's problematic, because a juror may use details from the guilt-or-innocence
phase - about the planning of a crime, for instance - to draw conclusions about
the defendant's mental fitness before all of the evidence is presented. The
Supreme Court doesn't seem too inclined to fix the problem, in any case.
Justice Scalia indicated as much this past week, when he said he didn't plan on
reading the voluminous trial record in a case before the court on precisely
this issue.
Making matters worse, research suggests that jurors expect people with low IQs
to come across as more impaired - think Sean Penn in the movie I am Sam - than
they often do. So when a mentally disabled defendant appears relatively normal,
jurors may be disinclined to believe the evidence.
Beyond abolishing capital punishment, there is one reform that's been proven to
help defendants with strong mitigating factors avoid death row: providing them
with experienced, decently paid lawyers. Consider what happened in Virginia
recently. Back in 1998, juries there handed down nine death sentences, but in
four of the past five years, they handed down zero. What changed?
Virginia was once infamous for having some of the country's worst capital
defense lawyers - little surprise, since the courts only paid them about $13 an
hour. In 2003, though, state officials set up regional offices to provide
capital defendants with meaningful representation.
Virginia has saved millions by giving capital defendants lawyers who actually
know what they're doing.
The move came not long after Virginia's governor was forced to pardon Earl
Washington, a man with an IQ of 69, who had spent 17 years on death row for a
crime he didn't commit. The state was ordered to pay Washington nearly $2
million in compensation - about what it would cost to fund the capital defense
offices for a year.
The new offices are staffed with specialized lawyers, mitigation experts, and
investigators tasked with digging up the sort of information that can help keep
people off death row. The state Supreme Court predicted that they would end up
saving Virginia about $2.8 million a year. Indeed, the number of new death
sentences dropped from 6 to 2 in a single year, and has not exceeded that
since.
Only 8 people remain on Virginia's death row today. It's a sign that the state
may finally be on track to execute only the worst of the worst, thus respecting
the constitutional imperative that the ultimate punishment is reserved for the
rare case that truly warrants it.
(source: Mother Jones)
*****************
Pace of death sentences slows, even in capital punishment strongholds
A Virginia prosecutor has opted not to seek the death penalty for a man accused
of abducting and killing a local university student, a notable decision in "a
state that once operated one of the busiest execution chambers in the nation,"
according to The Washington Post.
The event represents a larger movement away from capital punishment, which has
seen a steady drop across the states in the last 2 decades in response to
declining rates of violence and a growing reliance on sentences for life in
prison without the possibility of parole.
"New death sentences in the US reached their lowest level in 40 years, the
start of the death penalty's modern era," the Death Penalty Information Center
reported at the end of last year. "The number of executions has declined in 11
of the past 15 years."
In Virginia, where Jesse Matthew, Jr. has been charged with 1st-degree murder
in the death of Hannah Graham, 5 people have been executed since 2010, compared
to 16 of the previous 6 years. Virginia has 8 people currently on death row,
but no executions are scheduled.
Experts attribute the decline in large part to the state-funded capital
defender offices, whose staff is devoted to death penalty cases, established in
Virginia in 2004.
"In the past, an awful lot of people who ended up on death row had abysmal
representation," Steve Northup, a lawyer and former executive director of
Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, told the Post. "Prosecutors
were able to take advantage. Now prosecutors know capital defendants are going
to be well represented."
But Virginia is not alone. In 2014, only 3 states - Texas, Missouri, and
Oklahoma - were responsible for 80 % of all executions in the country. And even
in Texas, the number of new death sentences has fallen by more than 3/4 since
it peaked at 48 in 1999.
Part of the reason has to do with the decline in violent crime, the LA Times
reported: In 2013, murder was down by about 40 % compared to 1990. Life
sentences without the option of parole are also becoming the preferred option
among jurors, according to the Times:
In the 1980s and beyond, jurors often said they decided in favor of a death
sentence because they feared a murderer who was sentenced to "life in prison"
would be released on parole in a decade or 3. But since the 1990s, every state
has allowed for life terms in prison with no possibility of parole.
Faced with that option, many jurors vote for a life sentence rather than death.
Public opinion has also begun to shift against capital punishment: While
majority of Americans still favor the death penalty for people convicted of
murder, the number is down to 56 % from 78 % 20 years ago, according to a
recent Pew Research Center survey.
Despite the ongoing shift in perception, capital punishment is far from its
final breaths. In the face of a shortage of the drugs needed to make the
cocktail used for lethal injections - a shortage that in recent years has led
to botched executions - death penalty states such as Tennessee and Utah have
reinstated the option to use the electric chair and firing squad as alternate
methods of execution.
Still, being sentenced to die has increasingly become a punishment of last
resort.
"In years past, you would sometimes see death sentences for simple cases of
robbery-murder. You don't see that much any more," Kent Scheidegger, counsel
for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, told the LA Times.
"When you read of a new death sentence being rendered today, it is typically
for a particularly horrific murder, which is exactly how the system is supposed
to work."
(source: Christian Science Monitor)
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