April 11
GEORGIA----impending execution
Georgia prepares to execute Kenneth Fults despite 'racist, unfair' trial
An American man is due to be put to death on Tuesday evening in Georgia despite
serious concerns over his sentencing and Amnesty International saying his trial
was unfair and racist.
Kenneth Fults, 48, who is black, admitted murdering his 19-year-old white
neighbour Cathy Bounds. He killed her in 1996 at the end of a week-long rampage
which begun with the intention of killing his ex-girlfriend's new lover, and
saw him stage a series of robberies before breaking into Bounds' trailer to
commit a burglary. But, finding her unexpectedly at home, he bound her with
electrical tape and shot her 5 times.
He pleaded guilty and was sent to trial to be sentenced.
"Once he pled guilty, I knew I would vote for the death penalty because that's
what the n----- deserved" ---- Statement from juror Thomas Buffington
But Amnesty argue that he should never have been handed the death penalty,
because his overworked court-appointed lawyer failed to do his job - repeatedly
falling asleep in the courtroom - and because 1 of the jurors admitted after
the trial that he wanted "that n-----" to be put to death, regardless of
whether he committed the crime.
Fults' lawyers obtained a signed statement from juror Thomas Buffington in
which Buffington, who is now dead, explained his reasoning for handing Fults
the death penalty. "I don't know if he ever killed anybody, but that n----- got
just what should have happened," he said. "Once he pled guilty, I knew I would
vote for the death penalty because that's what the n----- deserved."
Another juror said following the trial that they were not told by Johnny
Mostiler, the lawyer, about the extent of Fults's mental problems. He has the
reading age of a 9 year old, and his IQ puts him in the bottom 3 % of the
population.
"I don't believe he had a fair trial," the juror said, according to Amnesty.
"Mr Fults's current lawyers have told me about how Mr Fults was neglected and
abandoned as a child and that he is mentally retarded. Mostiler didn't bring
this up at trial and he should have, so that we would have known more about Mr
Fults before we talked about whether to give him the death penalty."
International law bans use of the death penalty on people with mental or
intellectual disabilities.
Only the State Board of Pardons and Paroles can grant clemency, and petitions
have been set up calling for the board to review the decision.
And the scheduled execution comes at a time of increasing international
interest in America's legal system, thanks partly to television dramas such as
the re-telling of the OJ Simpson case, Netflix's Making a Murderer, and the
wildly popular justice podcast Serial.
If he is put to death, Fults will be the 4th person Georgia has executed by
lethal injection this year. A 5th man, Daniel Anthony Lucas, was scheduled last
week to be put to death on April 27 for killing a Jones County father and his 2
children, 1 by 1, in 1998.
The only other time Georgia has executed as many as 5 people in a year was last
year, and in 1987.
(source: The Independent)
FLORIDA:
Jury to decide if Kirkman receives death penalty in 2006 murder
A jury will decide Monday if the mastermind behind the death of a former beauty
queen should be sentenced to death.
The jury found Vahtiece Kirkman guilty on Friday in the 2006 murder of Darice
Knowles.
Prosecutors said they plan to show the jury the cruelty of the crime as they
seek the death penalty for Kirkman. They said they might have been kinder if
Kirkman shot Knowles, but instead she was bound, gagged and buried alive
beneath cement.
Jurors will hear testimony about some of Kirkman's previous felony convictions,
including the 2006 murder of Willie Parker, which prosecutors believe Knowles'
knowledge of was the motive behind her death. Kirkman is already serving a life
sentence for Parker's death.
"Life in prison is not enough," Assistant State Attorney Greg Konieczka said.
(source: WFTV news)
*************
Life or death?: Twice-convicted killer to learn fate this week
Prosecutors today will argue that a 37-year-old Cocoa man plotted in cold blood
to kidnap, beat and then bury a a Bahamian student alive after fearing she was
talking with police about his connections to another slaying.
A 12-member jury found Vahtiece Kirkman guilty of 1st-degree premeditated
murder and kidnapping 22-year-old Darice Knowles, a former beauty contestant
visiting friends in Cocoa. Now the sentencing phase of the 2-week long death
penalty trial - featuring several witnesses, Cocoa investigators and others
discussing the motive, the impact on Knowles' family and the pain suffered in
the last moments of the victim's life - begins today at the Moore Justice
Center.
Today's sentencing is not the 1st time Kirkman has faced the death penalty in a
murder conviction. In the latest trial, at least 1 witness had to be forced to
testify after failing to turn up while Kirkman, whose arm was in a cast from an
unknown injury, complained about the delays in the case and even his own
defense counsel.
While the same jury in this case unanimously rendered a guilty verdict in the
case on Friday, a new Florida law allows only ten members of the same panel to
recommend a death sentence. The judge will then review the jury's
recommendation and sentence Kirkman to either life or death.
Last week, prosecutors showed jurors photographs of a gruesome crime scene,
detailing the last moments of life for Knowles as she was smothered with a mix
of concrete and dirt in a deeply wooded area of State Road 524 in Cocoa. The
remains of the woman were found in 2010 - nearly 4 years after she was reported
missing by her family - and linked through genetic testing to Knowles.
Cocoa Police Chief Mike Cantaloupe, whose agency investigated the case, issued
a statement about the verdict on Friday afternoon.
"At least a dozen agencies assisted us in this investigation. We are very
pleased with the outcome of the trial," he said, referring to efforts that
extended several weeks to comb through the wooded area using volunteers and
specialized equipment to find Knowles' fragile remains encased in concrete.
"This case affected all of us at the Cocoa Police Department and the many
partner agencies that handled the investigation. For the family, it will never
come close to healing the hurt of losing their loved one in such a violent
manner, but it is the start of closure that may bring them peace," the chief
said in the statement, adding that the Knowles family remain in his prayers.
The testimony in the penalty phase is expected to take several days.
(source: Florida Today)
USA:
Race and the death penalty in US spotlight
Advocates for 2 African Americans on death row for murder are seeking a
reprieve for both men on the grounds their trials were tainted by racial bias,
taking their campaigns all the way to the US Supreme Court.
Amnesty International is waging a last-ditch effort to secure a stay for
Kenneth Fults, 47, who is due to be executed by lethal injection on Tuesday in
the southeastern state of Georgia for the murder of a white woman 20 years ago.
Fults was sentenced to death after pleading guilty to shooting Cathy Bounds 5
times in the back of the head.
But 8 years later, an investigator working with his lawyers spoke to a juror in
the case, Thomas Buffington, aged 79 at the time, who used a racial slur when
referring to Fults.
"Once he pled guilty, I knew I would vote for the death penalty because that's
what that nigger deserved," Buffington, who has since died, told the lawyer
under oath.
Georgia's State Board for Pardons and Paroles was to rule Monday on an appeal
for clemency filed by Fults' lawyers in which they highlight allegations of
racial bias but also characterize him as intellectually impaired and the
product of a violent, neglectful childhood.
Should that fail, his last resort would be an intervention by the Supreme
Court, which rejected a previous appeal by his lawyers' last year. His lawyers
have asked the court to take up the case again.
The Fults case has drawn relatively little media attention in the United States
-- partly because the allegations of bias surfaced long after the trial.
But on April 22 the Supreme Court rules on whether to take up a much
higher-profile case -- that of Duane Buck -- which involves similar allegations
of racial bias in the trial process.
Buck was sentenced to die in Texas in 1997 for shooting dead his ex-girlfriend
and a friend, in front of her children.
His attorneys do not dispute his conviction for the double murder, but they
argue that racial considerations entered into his sentencing, infringing his
rights under the US Constitution which guarantees the right to an impartial
jury.
- 'Profound impact' -
During the 1997 hearing, psychologist Walter Quijano testified that blacks pose
a greater risk of "future dangerousness" than whites.
Under Texas law, a person can be sentenced to death only if shown to pose a
danger to society and the prosecutor cited this testimony in asking for capital
punishment.
"This was a case that did not have an enormous amount of evidence speaking to
the question of future dangerousness," said Christina Swarns, litigation
director at the legal defense fund of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People.
"Mr Buck did not have prior convictions for violence, so having this expert in
the field saying that because of his race he was going to be dangerous in the
future, it clearly had a very profound impact on the jury."
The Supreme Court has intervened once before in Buck's case, granting a stay
hours before his scheduled execution in September 2011.
At the time, several of the justices qualified as "bizarre and objectionable"
the testimony of the psychologist, but the court stopped short of agreeing to
review the case.
- Procedural error -
The Court's decision this month whether or not to take up the now-emblematic
case comes as the vacancy left by the death of 1 of its 9 justices, Antonin
Scalia, has created a likelihood of split 4-4 rulings.
Both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have now published editorials
calling for Buck to be granted a new trial.
"A man was sentenced to death at least in part because of his race -- a
violation of his constitutional rights," wrote the Los Angeles Times in urging
the Supreme Court to grant him a hearing.
Both papers highlighted the fact that other men sentenced to die in cases
involving testimony by the same psychologist were granted fresh hearings. But
Buck's death sentence still stands because of a procedural error by his
lawyers.
Advocates for Buck also cite strong evidence of prejudice in Harris County,
Texas, where he was sentenced and which accounts for 9 % of all capital penalty
sentences meted out in the United States.
Studies have shown Harris County prosecutors were 3 times more likely to seek
the death penalty against African Americans than against white defendants
between 1992 and 1999. Juries in the county were also more than twice as likely
to impose capital punishment on African Americans.
Kate Black, a member of Burk's defense team, invokes his good conduct during 18
years in jail as a further argument in his favor:
"If Mr Buck is given a new, fair sentencing hearing the jury will see that he
has not posed any future danger and has in fact been a model prisoner," she
told AFP.
(source: Daily Mail)
_______________________________________________
A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu
DeathPenalty mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty
Unsubscribe: http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/options/deathpenalty
