May 4
COLORADO:
Father Of Man Accused Of Killing Stepmom Wants Death Penalty For Son
The stepson of a well-known veterinarian on Colorado's Eastern Plains, and
another man, are accused in her murder and appeared in court on Tuesday.
The crime has left the families and the small town of Burlington stunned.
Police arrested Dylan Eason, 19, and Isaiah Churchwell, 24, after finding Dr.
Cynthia Campbell Eason beaten to death inside her own home. Both appeared in
court in Kit Carson County to be advised of the charges that include 1st-degree
murder, aggravated robbery, burglary, and theft.
Dylan Eason and Churchwell sat in court showing little emotion as 13th Judicial
District Court Judge Kevin Hoyer told them the nature and penalties of the
crimes they're held in custody for.
Cynthia Eason, a beloved veterinarian, was found dead inside her home due to
blunt force trauma. Police say after allegedly killing her the defendants fled
with belongings they had stolen from her home.
Cynthia Eason's husband, Jon Eason, who's also the father of accused killer
Dylan Eason, attended Tuesday's hearing. He and other family members didn't
want to talk outside court.
On Facebook, however, Jon Eason wrote that he wants the death penalty for the 2
whom he says killed his wife over simple greed.
"I'm so engulfed in hate, that I want my kid and his friend to pay with their
lives," Jon Eason posted on Facebook.
Attorneys for the defendants asked the judge to set a bond but that request was
denied. Their next court appearance is a status conference set for June 14.
Churchwell is the brother of a teenager who was found dead 5 years ago. Josh
Churchwell's body was found in a suitcase near Ruby Hill Park in Denver. He
also lived in Burlington at the time of his death. The murder has never been
solved.
(source: CBS news)
UTAH:
A Utah inmate could face the death penalty after pleading guilty to killing his
cellmate
Court records say 35-year-old Steven Crutcher pleaded guilty to murder Monday
in the death of 62-year-old Roland Cardona-Gueton. A jury will decide in
January whether Crutcher should be sentenced to death or remain in prison
without the possibility of parole.
Cardona-Gueton's April 2013 death was originally investigated as a suicide.
Prosecutors say in court papers that Crutcher confessed to strangling
Cardona-Gueton at the Central Utah Correctional Facility in a letter sent to
Sanpete County Attorney Brody Keisel last July.
Crutcher's attorneys wanted the letters kept out of the trial and are appealing
a judge's decision to allow them.
Keisel says Crutcher will be allowed to withdraw his plea if the Utah Supreme
Court decides in his favor.
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA:
Derek Connell, 29, eligible for death penalty if convicted
A northwest Bakersfield man charged with killing his mother and stepfather is
eligible for the death penalty if he is convicted.
Tuesday in court, Judge Michael Bush announced 29-year-old Derek Connell is
eligible for the death penalty.
That statement made, despite Connell's attorney, Paul Cadman, asking for bail.
The defense attorney also asked to block media from shooting video inside the
courtroom and said because of the media Connell is already being tried by the
public.
Judge Bush also denied that request at which point the attorney attempted to
block 17's camera view and gave Connell a notepad to cover his face.
Connell faces 2 counts of 1st-degree murder in the deaths of his mother and
stepfather.
Early Saturday morning police responded to a suspicious circumstances call on
the 5000 block of Lily Pad Court.
Police found Connell as they arrived on scene and inside the home found his
mother, Kim Higginbotham, and his stepfather, Christopher Higginbotham, dead
with apparent gun shot wounds.
Connell is scheduled to appear in court again on May 11 for arraignment.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled to take place within ten days of that
arraignment.
(source: Kern Golden Empire)
*************
Closing arguments begin in Berkeley-Oakland death penalty case: 'Alaysha saw
her killer' and he saw her
After 4 weeks in trial, with 13 days of testimony and 36 witnesses, prosecutor
John Brouhard began his closing arguments Monday in the double homicide case
that could result in the death penalty for Darnell Williams Jr. if the jury
finds him guilty.
Williams, 25, has been charged with 8 felonies and several special
circumstances in connection with the fatal shootings in 2013 of 8-year-old
Alaysha Carradine in Oakland and 22-year-old Anthony "Tone" Medearis III in
Berkeley less than 2 months later.
"This defendant is committed to what he calls street justice," Brouhard told
the jury. He described how, bent on "retribution and revenge" after the killing
of his friend Jermaine "Third" Davis in Berkeley, Williams set out to get back
at the person he believed was responsible.
"He's not grieving the death of his friend, he is preparing for war," Brouhard
told the jury. "He lured 3 children to a door and then he unleashed a barrage
of gunfire when they least expected it."
It was an emotional day for relatives of Alaysha and Medearis, as Brouhard
described in detail the killings, played video from an officer's body cam and
flashed autopsy photographs on screens as part of his elaborate presentation.
At one point, he set up a timer in front of jurors to illustrate just how long
3 minutes and 15 seconds could be: the time, he said, between when Williams'
phone had pinged off a tower near the apartment where Alaysha had been a guest
at a sleepover, and the time the first 911 call about her shooting came in.
Prosecutor: Corroboration, corroboration, corroboration
The prosecution relies heavily on statements by 2 key witnesses - Britney
Rogers and Laquana Nuno - who say Williams told them what he did on Wilson
Avenue at the home of the estranged family of Antiown "Twanny" York, who has
been identified by authorities as Davis' killer.
The stories of both women are similar, Brouhard said, and some of the details
they shared could only have been known by Alaysha's killer. Take the couch.
Grandmother Clara Fields testified she was resting on the couch after a long
day of work when the shooting took place. Rogers told police Williams had
described to her, hours after the shooting, having seen a woman on the couch at
the Wilson Avenue home, and continuing to fire his gun.
"The defendant is providing details that show you that he was there. He knows
facts about that murder that only ... the killer would know," Brouhard told the
jury.
Police did an exhaustive search to find out whether the detail of the couch, in
2013, had ever appeared in the media. Brouhard said it had not, adding that, if
it had, "you can bet your boots" the defense attorneys would have brought it in
as evidence. "It's not out there," he added.
Brouhard said Rogers, Nuno and Williams' own cell phone records tell the same
story of the night of Alaysha's shooting, July 17, 2013. Williams started at a
gathering in West Oakland with Rogers, went to East Oakland for "a meeting"
after Davis was killed, then ended up at the Wilson Avenue apartment where the
shooting took place before returning to Rogers' West Oakland home. The cell
phone records are not exact but Brouhard said they put Williams in the area of
all the locations described by both women.
Both women said Williams confided that someone told him where York's "baby
mama" lived, took him there and pointed out the house to him. Brouhard said, at
11:10 p.m., an incoming call to Williams pinged off a tower near the Wilson
Avenue apartment, but went to voicemail. The phone was then powered down. At
11:14 p.m., the first 911 calls about the shooting began to come in.
Brouhard showed on a map how the cell tower data put Williams "in the range" -
within blocks - of the murder scene in the minutes before the shooting. He said
he didn't have Williams' exact location, but that what he had was enough: "What
we know from these records is that he's close."
Both women said Williams walked up to the door alone.
The kids had been playing upstairs when the bell rang. They came downstairs and
stopped to pick up some toys before going to the front door. Brouhard described
how Amara York, then 7, opened the door after asking "Who is it?" and expected
to find her mother on the other side of the metal security screen.
The shooter heard a child's voice. He had taken time, Brouhard said, to point
his weapon at an angle toward the ground, between 38 and 48 inches high. He
waited for the knob to turn, then opened fire.
Prosecutor: "Alaysha saw her killer"
"He waited to be sure that his targets, the reason he's there, are really where
he needs them to be," Brouhard said. Alaysha was mortally wounded, struck in
the base of the neck. Amara was hit in the shoulder, and her little brother, 4
at the time, was grazed across the belly. At the end of the hallway, on the
couch, Fields was struck by a bullet in the femur. It remains there today.
Brouhard showed the jury a photograph of pink and yellow dowels piercing
through the wooden interior door on Wilson Avenue to illustrate the downward
trajectory of all 13 bullets fired that night: "This photograph is disturbing
because this photograph unmistakably shows you where the defendant was aiming
his gun."
The rods also showed that the door was opening throughout the shooting. Amara
ran back and slammed it when the gunfire stopped, her grandmother testified.
Brouhard said Alaysha herself, in the ambulance en route to the hospital,
before screaming that she was dying, said she had seen "a man" when a paramedic
asked her about the identity of her shooter. Amara, too, said she saw a man,
who was wearing a black hoodie, holding a gun. (Rogers said she also saw
Williams in a black hoodie that night.) Brouhard described both girls'
statements as important evidence in the case.
"During this horrific murder, Alaysha saw her killer. Amara saw him as well,"
Brouhard told the jury. "That's so important because it shows you: Not only
could they see him, but he could see them."
Prosecutor: "This phone is the DNA"
Brouhard described Williams' cell phone - recovered by police hours after the
Sept. 8, 2013, shooting in Berkeley that killed Medearis, the night Williams
himself was arrested - as an "invaluable" piece of evidence.
Authorities found on that phone more corroboration of Rogers' statements in the
form of 2 photographs: 1 of a green camouflage bulletproof vest she saw
Williams wearing the night of Alaysha's shooting, and another featuring a gun,
chrome with a black handle, she said looked the same as the one she saw him
come home with that night.
Brouhard said phone records show Williams had that gun before and after the
shooting. A photograph of the gun, a SIG Sauer P228, was taken by the camera on
Williams' phone July 9, about a week before Alaysha's shooting. And a
time-stamped text message including that photo put the gun in his possession
less than 2 days after it, Brouhard said. In the text, Williams identified the
gun as his own and said he was looking to buy more.
Williams told police in September: I've had the same phone for 5 months
Brouhard described that photograph, which was only discovered in April after
Williams insisted on having access to his phone records, as "devastating
evidence." The guns were never recovered from either shooting, but a firearms
expert testified that he knew of no other firearm in the world, other than the
SIG Sauer P228, that could have fired the bullets that killed Alaysha. (Bullets
and casings were recovered at the scene, and he used those, along with a test
weapon, to make his analysis.)
The prosecution had previously pointed to numerous photographs of Glock pistols
on Williams' phone as indicators he had access to the type of weapon that later
killed Medearis.
Describing the selfies of Williams from the phone that were shown in court
throughout the trial, recordings of him on the phone that were part of a
wiretap investigation tied to the case, and Williams' own reports to police -
in September 2013 - that he'd had the same phone for 5 months, Brouhard said
Williams' phone "is always connected with the defendant."
Brouhard said, despite their best efforts, authorities had been unable to find
DNA associated with the defendant at the scene. But he asked the jury to focus
on the corroborating statements of Rogers and Nuno, along with the data and
location information linked to the phone, as they considered the case.
"I don't have any DNA for you," he told the jury. "This phone is the DNA in
this case."
Brouhard took the entire day Monday to outline elements of his case and the law
to the jury, most of which related to Alaysha's killing. He began to discuss
the Medearis homicide late Monday afternoon. He is scheduled to continue that
effort Tuesday morning, and be followed by arguments from the defense team.
Brouhard will then have a chance to offer a rebuttal before the jury is excused
for deliberation, which could occur Wednesday.
(source: berkeleyside.com)
****************
Death sentence questions over OC Sheriff records
A convicted killer's death sentence may be in question as a court hearing
Thursday will review defense assertions that the Orange County Sheriff's
Department failed to turn over all records to the defense during trial.
An Orange County Superior Court judge granted an evidentiary hearing following
the death penalty conviction of a Costa Mesa killer of 2 victims to determine
if his due process rights were violated.
Daniel Patrick Wozniak's attorney has argued in court papers that authorities
withheld notes from sheriff's deputies in the Orange County jail that might
have shed a better light on his client while in custody, something that could
have been used to argue against the death penalty.
Judge John Conley ordered the evidentiary hearing following disclosure that
some writings of the sheriff's deputies were not turned over to the defense
before the trial.
The hearing will continue Thursday with sheriff's Cmdr. Adam Powell continuing
to testify.
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas issued a statement late today
that essentially put the blame on jailers.
Rackauckas said he "expects police officers to tell the truth and pursue
justice."
Rackauckas said his "team made repeated, specific, pointed requests of the
Orange County Sheriff's Department for all records kept by OCSD jail deputy
sheriffs concerning inmates such as Fernando Perez."
Rackauckas also said his office "visited offices located at the OCSD jail to
personally inspect all categories of their records."
Rackauckas said that "additional notes were produced in court ... that were not
previously produced to OCDA despite the requests made and the visit to the
OCSD. The OCDA finds it distressing that these notes would be withheld from the
OCDA, the court and the public until this hearing."
Rackauckas said Sheriff Sanda Hutchens "assured" him that "she will take
appropriate internal action to address this issue."
Wozniak was scheduled to be sentenced this month, 6 years after the killings of
26-year-old Samuel Eliezer Herr and 23-year-old Julie Kibuishi.
Wozniak was deep in debt in May 2010, facing eviction and without money for his
pending wedding, when he concocted a plan to kill his neighbor, Herr, and throw
police off the trail by making it look like Herr murdered and raped his female
friend, Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy argued at trial.
Wozniak, who grew up in Long Beach, further tried to confound investigators by
dismembering his 1st victim and dumping the body parts in the El Dorado Nature
Center in Long Beach, Murphy said.
Wozniak's attorney, Scott Sanders, persuaded an Orange County Superior Court
judge to boot Rackauckas' office off the death penalty phase trial for Scott
Dekraai, the worst mass killer in the county's history. That ruling is under
appeal.
In Dekraai's case, Sanders also argued evidence was withheld and that an
informant violated Dekraai's constitutional rights by questioning him while he
was represented by an attorney.
Perez, who was one of the informants who came in contact with Dekraai, also
spoke with Wozniak in the jail. Perez said he could supply information to
prosecutors on Wozniak, but Murphy said no thanks because Wozniak had confessed
and there was little value to Perez's statements.
(source: mynewsla.com)
OREGON:
Doctors testify for defense in Nelson murder trial
Lawyers representing a man on trial in Lane County for the 2012 murder of
22-year-old Eugene resident Celestino Gutierrez Jr. on Tuesday called 3
witnesses to support their contention that their client's crimes are linked to
his military service.
A psychiatrist, a psychologist and a biomechanist who has studied traumatic
brain injuries all testified in A.J. Scott Nelson's capital murder trial.
Defense attorneys are trying to convince the jury that Nelson, 26, suffered an
untreated head injury in 2009 when an armored vehicle carrying him and other
Army soldiers was destroyed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Nelson's combat
experience, his lawyers contend, led him to later be diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress disorder.
Nelson faces a potential death penalty if found guilty of aggravated murder. 2
other people have already been convicted in Gutierrez's slaying.
The defense's hope is that the jury will find that Nelson's mental state
interfered with his ability to form the intent to commit the alleged crimes.
(source: The Register-Guard)
USA:
Are Long Death Penalty Delays Unconstitutional?
On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected Richard Boyer's petition for review of a
federal appeals court ruling that, in turn, rejected his argument that
California's long (and continuing) delay in carrying out his death sentence
amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Dissenting from that denial in Boyer
v. Davis, Justice Stephen Breyer strongly suggested that he would find a
constitutional violation in the 32 years that Boyer has been on death row.
To Court watchers, the Breyer dissent was hardly surprising. Last year, in a
dissent from a decision upholding Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol, Justice
Breyer called on his colleagues to reconsider the constitutionality of the
death penalty. Justice Breyer offered long delay as 1 of the chief reasons for
concluding that the death penalty is unconstitutional. He cited statistics
showing an average delay of 18 years between sentence and execution. He
calculated that at current rates, "the average person on death row would spend
an additional 37.5 years there before being executed." Thus, Boyer's case is
hardly an outlier.
But why is delay problematic? Don't death row prisoners benefit from execution
delays? Would a death row prisoner be better off being swiftly executed?
According to Justice Breyer, long delays are problematic for 2 reasons. First,
life on death row is miserable. Quoting an earlier dissenting opinion by
Justice John Paul Stevens, Breyer wrote that delay "subjects death row inmates
to decades of especially severe, dehumanizing conditions of confinement,"
aggravated by the anxiety caused by uncertainty about whether and when
execution will occur. Second, Breyer argued that long delay undermines the
retributive interest served by, and any deterrent value of, the death penalty.
Unsurprisingly, Justice Breyer's call for re-examination of the validity of the
death penalty did not go unanswered. In particular, the late Justice Antonin
Scalia wrote a characteristically spirited response. At one point he even said
that Justice Breyer's dissent was full of "gobbledy-gook."
Without attempting a point-by-point rebuttal of Scalia's concurrence in the
Oklahoma case, I want to respond to what may strike readers as his best
argument: execution delays are chiefly the result of the extensive procedures
that the Court's liberals have required for carrying out an execution; those
same liberals should not be permitted to bootstrap those delays to invalidate
the death penalty.
What Causes Delay?
The premise of the anti-bootstrapping objection may be wrong. It is not obvious
that all or even most of the delay between a death sentence and the execution
of the condemned results from legal requirements imposed by the Supreme Court.
For example, Justice Breyer notes in his Boyer dissent that Boyer's 1st jury
could not reach a verdict, that a 2nd trial resulted in a conviction that was
ultimately reversed by the California Supreme Court based on police misconduct,
and that the time between the commencement of Boyer's 3rd trial and the final
state court disposition of his appeal was 14 years. Justice Breyer quotes a
California commission that found that the state's own system for administering
the death penalty was "dysfunctional." Most of that dysfunction is not
attributable to requirements imposed by federal judges or justices.
Indeed, in recent decades, Congress and the Supreme Court have reduced the
procedural obstacles to imposing and carrying out the death penalty, chiefly by
cutting back on the scope of federal habeas corpus. The most important cutbacks
were contained in the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act
(AEDPA). Among other things, AEDPA places a 1-year statute of limitations on
the filing of habeas petitions - which can be shortened to 6 months if a state
complies with certain optional procedures. The same provision that requires
petitions to be filed within a year of the conclusion of state court
proceedings also disallows a 2nd or successive petition, absent extraordinary
circumstances.
To be sure, Supreme Court case law may also lead to delays in state court
proceedings. For example, a state cannot impose a mandatory death sentence.
Thus, the so-called penalty phase of a capital trial will typically take longer
than the post-conviction sentencing that occurs in most non-capital cases. And
although states frequently devote woefully inadequate resources to
state-appointed counsel to conduct factual investigations, where resources are
adequate, such investigation can take time. In order to be able to make the
best available argument for her client, a capital defender will want to
interview family members and other people who can help establish that the
mitigating circumstances outweigh the aggravating ones. Ensuring that these
added steps were carried out adequately can add time to the back end of a
capital case by complicating the ensuing state court appellate proceedings.
Necessary Delay
Would it be possible to streamline capital proceedings? Sure. China and Iran
carry out executions swiftly, with the entire period from arrest to execution
taking much less time than the amount of time a typical American prisoner
spends on death row. But these countries also hold trials in secret without
what we would regard as even minimal due process.
If one thinks that particular procedural requirements for the death penalty are
unnecessary or not properly connected to the Constitution, then one can make
that argument. But it should not count as an objection to a procedure necessary
to ensure fairness in the application of the death penalty that the procedure
causes delay.
By the same token, however, didn't Justice Scalia have a fair point when he
said that his liberal colleagues should not then turn around and invoke the
very delay that they think is necessary for procedural fairness as a ground for
invalidating the death penalty? That objection has a superficial appeal, but it
is ultimately mistaken.
Consider an analogy. Suppose that I invent a jetpack that allows users to fly.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission conducts extensive testing and concludes
that it should not be sold except with safety equipment that, when deployed,
would add so much weight to the jetpack as to make it useless. Does that mean
that I should be able to sell the jetpack without the safety equipment?
Of course not. If the only way to make the jetpack reasonably safe is to make
it inoperable, then the jetpack should effectively be banned.
Likewise with respect to the death penalty. If the only way to make the death
penalty minimally fair is to impose substantive and procedural safeguards that
add delay - and if that added delay would itself violate constitutional norms -
then the death penalty must be banned.
To be clear, I have not argued here that Justice Breyer is right in his
suggestion that undue delay renders the death penalty unconstitutional. But if
he is wrong, it is not because fairness requires special death penalty rules
and standards that lead to delay. Proponents of the death penalty will need to
look elsewhere for persuasive arguments that the punishment is permissible even
for people who spend decades on death row.
(source: Miochael Dorf, verdictjustia.com)
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