June 2
KENTUCKY:
Competency of man accused in 6-year-old's stabbing death questioned
The family of a central Kentucky boy who was killed during a home invasion was
back in court Wednesday to face his accused killer.
Ronald Exantus, 32, is accused of killing 6-year-old Logan Tipton in December
2015.
His competency to stand trial was addressed Wednesday in court.
The Indianapolis man was arrested after police said he broke into a home in
Versailles and stabbed Logan to death while he sleeping.
Exantus said he had a psychotic break and doesn't remember stabbing the
6-year-old.
"Ronald Exantus murdered our beloved boy randomly in cold blood and for his own
disgusting reasons. We do not believe he is insane and we will be waiting
patiently for the evidence to prove this in his inevitable trial," Logan's
mother, Heather Tipton, said.
The judge will review the state's psychiatric evaluation in August to determine
whether he understands the charges against him and is able to help his
attorneys defend him.
Exantus' attorney said that after his psychotic break, it took doctors months
to snap him out of psychosis.
"That's a tired defense," Heather Tipton said.
Tipton's family filled 2 rows in the courthouse, wearing the young football
player's number.
His father said that if he could, he would take his son's place.
"I miss everything about my son. Everything," Dean Tipton said.
The family said that if anything good has come out of Logan's death, it has
been the generosity of the community.
They said a donation of more than $110,000 allowed them to move into a new home
with their 4 children.
If Exantus is found competent to stand trial, attorneys said it could be at
least another year before the death penalty case goes to trial.
(source: WLKY news)
ARIZONA:
U.S. Supreme Court rules against Maricopa County judge in death penalty case
Jurors deciding whether to sentence someone to death are entitled to be told
that in Arizona the only alternative is life behind bars, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled Tuesday.
6 U.S. Supreme Court justices said it was a mistake for a Maricopa County
Superior Court judge to block the defense attorney for Shawn Patrick Lynch from
telling jurors that if they did not sentenced him to death he would be
sentenced to life behind bars with no possibility of parole. Denied that
information, the jurors sentenced Lynch to death.
The court issued an unsigned opinion.
The ruling is important, not only in this case but other murder trials. In
essence, the high court is saying that jurors, told someone would never get out
- and never pose a risk to anyone else - might decide not to impose the death
penalty.
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, whose office prosecuted the case, had
no comment.
Justice Clarence Thomas, in his dissent, acknowledged that Arizona had
abolished parole as an option in these kinds of cases.
But he pointed out that, at least technically speaking, there was a
possibility, albeit remote, that Lynch could be released: He could get a
recommendation after 25 years from the Board of Executive Clemency, with the
governor having the final word. And Thomas dismissed as "nonsense" requiring a
trial judge to tell a jury that Lynch is ineligible for early release, at least
at this point.
Thomas also said requiring Lynch to be resentenced, this time with jurors
having new information, ignores that is was the "sheer depravity" of the crime
that resulted in the death penalty rather than any specific fear by jurors that
Lynch would get out in the future.
According to court records, Lynch and Michael Sehwani met James Panzarella in
March 2001 at a Scottsdale bar. All 3 went to Panzarella's residence early the
next morning.
The victim's credit cards were used during the next 2 days.
Panzarella was eventually found in his home tied to a chair with his throat
slit.
Police also found credit card receipts from purchases made that morning at a
supermarket and convenience store.
Lynch and Sehwani were arrested later that day. Sehwani had Panzarella's credit
cards and checks in his wallet. And in the truck and motel room he and Lynch
were using they found the keys to Panzarella's car, a pistol belonging to the
victim and a sweater with Panzarella's blood on it,
Blood on Lynch's shoes matched the victim's DNA.
During sentencing, prosecutors argued that jurors should consider Lynch's
future dangerousness when determining proper punishment. But the trial judge
refused to let defense counsel tell the jury that under Arizona law, the only
alternative sentence was life without parole.
The majority, in Tuesday's ruling, conceded that there was a chance Lynch could
be released after 25 years. But the justices said that was not enough of a
possibility to let jurors think if they did not sentenced Lynch to death that
he might be released.
Sehwani separately pleaded guilty to 1st degree murder and theft and was
sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of any form of early release.
The majority in its opinion also brushed aside arguments by prosecutors that a
future legislature could alter the laws and once again make parole an option,
as it was in Arizona prior to 1994. The justices said that would effectively
undermine the whole precedent the high court set decades ago when they first
concluded that jurors need to know what are - and are not - the options for a
judge in deciding whether to impose the death penalty.
(source: azcapitoltimes.com)
CALIFORNIA:
Oakland: Jury deliberates in Darnell Williams death penalty trial
A jury began deliberations Wednesday to determine a sentence for convicted
murderer Darnell Williams, in Alameda County's 1st death penalty trial in 4
years. Williams, 25, shot and killed 8-year-old Alaysha Carradine the night of
July 17, 2013 in East Oakland while she was at a sleepover at a friend's house.
Several weeks later, Williams chased Anthony Medearis, 22, down in Berkeley
after a dice game, shooting him in the back.
A jury will now have to decide whether to recommend the death penalty or life
in prison without parole. After instructions from the Judge Wednesday morning,
they began deliberations.
It's the 1st time Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley has
recommended a death penalty prosecution for trial since she took office in
2011. The last time an Alameda County jury considered the death penalty was in
2012, for convicted triple-murderer David Mills, a case from O'Malley's
predecessor Tom Orloff.
"Under the right circumstances, a jury gives the death penalty sentence. This
is that case," prosecutor John Brouhard said Tuesday.
In his closing statements Tuesday, Brouhard asked the jury to show no mercy to
the killer. He said the last sensations the 2 victims had were "fear and
terror" as they died horrific deaths.
"It's a terrible thing to murder an 8-year-old child, words can't describe it,"
he said.
The 12-person jury of 7 women and 5 men -- the same jury who convicted Williams
of both murders -- must consider both the aggravating and mitigating factors in
this case to reach an unanimous decision on what sentence to recommend. The
aggravating circumstances for example, can include a defendant's criminal
history and violent past, that could increase his culpability to show that he's
deserving of the death penalty. Some factors can be connected to the
defendant's developmental years, for example growing up with a mental illness
or in extreme poverty.
In Williams' case, the defense presented evidence that he suffered from a
troubled childhood, growing up with both parents in and out of jail or prison.
He suffered from anti-social personality disorder, or commonly known as a
"psychopath," who thinks of consequences but then disregards them and acts
impulsively, according to a psychiatrist who testified at the trial last week.
Brouhard presented evidence to the aggravating factors, regarding Williams'
criminal history and "his commitment to violence." He had a prior felony
conviction for assault with a gun in 2009 for shooting a man in Berkeley.
Williams also attacked a man while in prison for that felony in 2011, and tried
to rob and jump a man in jail July 2014. Exactly one year after Alaysha's
murder, July 17, 2014, while in jail for these crimes, correctional officers
found him with a shank underneath his mattress -- a metal weapon he sharpened
to a point on one side, Brouhard said.
"He will continue with the violence until he can't anymore," he said.
(source: eastbaytimes.com)
USA:
Only 2 Justices Want To Tackle Whether The Death Penalty Should End----Stephen
Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are virtually alone in this effort.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned away an appeal from a Louisiana death row
inmate that posed a question that has long vexed the justices: Is the death
penalty cruel and unusual punishment?
A majority of the court's members didn't say why they didn't want to answer the
question, but presumably some of them thought the court already answered it 40
years ago, when it reaffirmed the constitutionality of capital punishment after
a brief moratorium.
It could also be that other justices, fearing a split ruling, simply want to
wait it out until Merrick Garland or someone else fills the vacancy created by
the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, a staunch proponent of the franchise.
Garland himself has said he views the legality of the death penalty as settled
law.
Whatever the court's behind-the-scenes rationale, it won't hear the case of
LaMondre Tucker, who was convicted of murdering his pregnant girlfriend when he
was only 18 and later sentenced to death.
The heinousness of Tucker's crime didn't stop Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader
Ginsburg from saying they would have given his case a cold, hard look.
The pair, but particularly Breyer, has been on a crusade to get the Supreme
Court to reconsider its assumptions about the death penalty as a constitutional
form of punishment - in a day and age when it appears to be on life support.
Breyer pointed out that Tucker, who was barely an adult and had an IQ of 74 at
the time of the crime, may have only received the ultimate punishment because
of where he lived: Caddo Parish, a Louisiana county that is responsible for
nearly half of the death sentences doled out in the state.
"Given these facts, Tucker may well have received the death penalty not because
of the comparative egregiousness of his crime, but because of an arbitrary
feature of his case, namely, geography," Breyer wrote, in a dissent joined by
Ginsburg.
That's one of the assumptions about the imposition of the death penalty that
Breyer attacked in his own dissent in Glossip v. Gross, an explosive case that
upheld Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol last summer.
Since then, Breyer has been beating the drum that he'd like to hear a case
about "the need to reconsider the validity of capital punishment under the
Eighth Amendment" including factors such as the excessive delays to mete it
out, the countless cases of innocent people sentenced to death, or its plain
arbitrariness.
"One could reasonably believe that if Tucker had committed the same crime but
been tried and sentenced just across the Red River in, say, Bossier Parish, he
would not now be on death row," Breyer wrote on Tuesday.
Breyer and Ginsburg probably won't get to hear the case they want any time
soon, but that won't stop America from letting the death penalty die a natural
death: Louisiana, where Tucker is on death row, won't see a new execution until
at least 2018. The drugs needed to carry out lethal injections are drying up.
(source: Cristian Farias, Legal Affairs Reporter, The Huffington Post)
US MILITARY:
Soldier sentenced to die for 2003 murders pins hopes on Supreme Court
California native Hasan K. Akbar joined fellow convicted killer Dwight J.
Loving on the military's death row 11 years and several legal curves ago.
Now, aided by some prominent allies, Akbar wants the Supreme Court to reverse
his death sentence by revisiting its own decades-old decision in a case brought
by Loving. It's a capital punishment challenge that gives justices a rare
opportunity to march into matters of military law.
It's also a challenge that illuminates the hard, close quarters of the
military's Leavenworth, Kansas-based death row, where Akbar and Loving account
for 1/3 of the doomed inmate population.
Akbar's appeal, moreover, reaches the Supreme Court just as Justice Stephen
Breyer is making clear his own readiness to revisit the underlying question of
whether capital punishment is constitutionally permissible.
"Not only is (Akbar) offering a substantial constitutional challenge to a death
sentence, but his challenge, if affirmed, would invalidate the entire scheme by
which the military justice system currently imposes capital punishment,"
attorneys for the National Institute of Military Justice wrote in a brief filed
in support of Akbar's case.
In 1996, when the Supreme Court decided Loving's case, Akbar was studying
engineering at the University of California, Davis. The Los Angeles native,
born Mark Fidel Kools, had struggled through college but was within a year of
completing the academically rigorous double-degree program.
Akbar's father had served time in prison, as had Loving's father, whom a
defense lawyer described as "an alcoholic, with a rap sheet 4 pages long."
Akbar's father, though, converted to Islam while incarcerated and Akbar
excelled in high school, while Loving dropped out.
Convicted of murdering 2 men while stationed in 1988 at Fort Hood in Texas,
Loving began appeals that, against the odds, reached the Supreme Court in 1996.
Few soldiers get that far. In the last 5 terms, the high court has decided 385
cases. None came via the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, the summit
of the military justice system.
In what amounted to a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court upheld Loving's death
sentence. The justices reasoned that the president, as commander in chief,
could set the aggravating factors that might justify a death sentence.
Akbar's case, some think, gives the court a strong reason to revisit the issue.
"If the court was ever going to pay any attention to the military justice
system, this would seem to be a compelling case in which to do so," Stephen
Vladeck, a professor at American University's Washington College of Law who
co-wrote a brief supporting Akbar, said Wednesday.
Several factors were subsequently considered in Akbar's sentencing, after he
was convicted of killing 2 soldiers and wounding 14 in a March 23, 2003, attack
at a U.S. Army staging base in Kuwait.
"This case involved many aggravating circumstances, including (Akbar's) murder
of 2 military officers, his use of grenades, the extensive injuries to some
officers and the impact of the attack on the unit as it prepared for battle,"
the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces concluded last year.
But in the 20 years since the Supreme Court rejected Loving's challenge to his
sentence, some law has also changed. The question pushed by Akbar's attorneys
and allies is whether this change undermines the 1996 Loving decision and
thereby earns Akbar another chance.
"I want to apologize for the attack that occurred. I felt that my life was in
jeopardy, and I had no other options. I also want to ask you to forgive me."
Court-martial statement by Hasan K. Akbar
In particular, the Supreme Court, in a landmark 2000 decision called Apprendi
v. New Jersey, concluded that facts that enhance a punishment must be submitted
to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. A follow-up 2002 decision added
that this standard applied to aggravating factors used in imposing the death
penalty.
"This revolution in the court's understanding of aggravating factors has swept
away Loving's foundations," Akbar's attorneys wrote in their Supreme Court
petition, adding that "the fundamental nature" of aggravating factors has
changed.
Citing these Supreme Court cases, the defense attorneys argue that Congress
must determine the elements that make for a military capital offense, because
it is Congress that's responsible for writing the law that the president
executes.
Potentially boosting the odds that the Supreme Court will take Akbar's case,
the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the National Institute of
Military Justice, and the Air Force and Navy-Marine Corps appellate defense
divisions all filed briefs on his behalf.
The government's response, which is due next Wednesday, will rely at least in
part on the military court's 3-2 decision rejecting Akbar's challenge and
concluding that any legal error was "harmless."
"We will continue to adhere to the holding in Loving unless the Supreme Court
decides at some point in the future that there is a basis to overrule that
precedent," Judge Kevin A. Ohlson wrote.
(source: mcclatchydc.com)
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