June 6
TEXAS:
Justices will hear major death penalty case
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether executing a condemned
prisoner after decades in solitary confinement violates the Constitution. The
justices also will consider how the state that leads the nation in executions
determines who is mentally competent enough to die.
The Texas case of Bobby James Moore dates back 35 years, when he shot and
killed a grocery store clerk during a botched robbery. His attorneys now say
Moore's mental competency was gauged using a decades-old definition of
intellectual disability, rather than current medical standards. They also say
executing someone after so long on death row constitutes cruel and unusual
punishment.
Texas leads the nation in executions with 537 since 1976, nearly 5 times the
total of any other state.
The death penalty has divided the court for decades. That was most evident last
June, when the justices ruled 5-4 that states could continue to use a
controversial sedative as part of their lethal injection protocols. 4 justices
spoke up - 2 in favor, 2 against - and Justice Stephen Breyer said the court
should consider the overall constitutionality of the death penalty.
Breyer raised 4 issues - the potential for mistakes, racial and other
disparities, decades-long delays, and increasing numbers of states and counties
abandoning capital punishment. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg signed on to his
dissent.
"Rather than try to patch up the death penalty's legal wounds 1 at a time, I
would ask for full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty
violates the Constitution," Breyer wrote.
Since then, the court has refused to take on a case testing whether capital
punishment remains constitutional. But viewing Breyer's dissent as an
invitation, lawyers for death-row inmates continue to send up new cases.
The high court has made it more difficult to execute prisoners with such
disabilities over the years. A landmark ruling in 2002 ended capital punishment
for people with what was then referred to as mental retardation. In 2014, the
court barred states from using only a strict IQ standard to determine
competency. The Texas case could tighten up standards further.
(source: USA Today)
***************
Jurors to decide fate of capital murder defendant on Monday
A Bell County district court jury will hear closing statements from both the
state and defense beginning at 10 a.m. Monday, after which they'll retire to
decide if a former police officer is guilty of killing another.
David Gene Risner, 59, a former police officer himself, is facing the death
penalty if convicted of the June 2014 shooting death of Little River-Academy
police Chief Lee Dixon.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys both rested their cases Friday in Judge John
Gauntt's 27th District Court on Friday and Gaunt released the jury with
instructions to return at 10 a.m. Monday to hear final arguments, the court's
charge to the jury and to begin deliberations on Risner's guilt.
Dixon, 54, died June 19, 2014 outside a residence in the 100 block of Allison
Drove where he'd been sent to investigate a report of a man with a gun, an
affidavit issued in the case says.
Jury selection in Risner's trial began April 6 with questionnaires being filled
out by 2 large groups of prospective jurors.
In Texas, when a death penalty is sought, jury selection must be done
individually, rather than in a group because of the sensitivity of the charge
to the jury.
If the jury finds Risner guilty but declines to assess the death penalty, he'll
be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
At some point during the encounter the day he died, the affidavit says, Dixon
radioed Bell County asking for assistance and a short time later callers were
reporting a shooting at the address.
The affidavit issued in the case says Risner, himself, made the call to 911 to
report he had shot a police officer at his home.
Deputies found Dixon dead on the front porch.
Risner has remained in the Bell County Jail without bond on the capital murder
charge since his arrest and on bonds totaling $16,500 on separate charges of 3
counts of resisting arrest, 1 charge of theft and 1 of providing a false
identity to police officers, the jail log says.
(source: KWTX news)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Treiber asks for more time in death-sentence appeal
Erie County's lone death row inmate is set to get more time to file a federal
appeal.
Stephen Treiber wants his petition, which had been due by Thursday, to be filed
Aug. 8, according to a motion his lawyer filed in U.S. District Court in Erie
last week..
The state Attorney General's Office, which prosecuted the case, agreed to the
extension, Treiber's lawyer, Hunter Labovitz, of the Federal Community
Defender's Office, in Philadelphia, wrote in the motion.
Treiber, 47, formerly of Millcreek Township, was convicted in Erie County Court
in 2002 of setting fire to his house and killing his 2-year-old daughter,
Jessica, to avoid paying $250 in monthly child support. A jury sentenced him to
death.
Labovitz wrote that the complexity of the Treiber case requires more time to
file Treiber's appeal petition, called a writ of habeas corpus. Labovitz also
asked U.S. District Judge Kim R. Gibson, of Johnstown, to allow him to file a
100-page brief rather than a 30-page brief. Gibson has yet to rule.
The video could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or
because the format is not supported.
Labovitz wrote that he "needs additional time to ensure that the Petition is a
professionally competent pleading reflective of the seriousness of this case."
Treiber, who is at the State Correctional Institution at Greene, exhausted his
appeals in the state system on Aug. 17, when the state Supreme Court upheld his
conviction and death sentence.
Treiber was scheduled to be executed on May 2. His federal appeal, filed in
March, stayed his execution.
Pennsylvania, which has executed 3 inmates since the U.S. Supreme Court
reinstated the death penalty in 1976, hasn't put anyone to death since 1999.
Treiber's federal appeal first will go before Judge Gibson. It will then go to
the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The 3rd Circuit has shown a penchant for granting relief to death-row inmates,
including some from Erie County, which once had 5 inmates awaiting capital
punishment.
The other Erie County inmate who last had been on death row with Treiber was
David Copenhefer.
Copenhefer was 65 when he died in prison of natural causes in January 2013.
The 3rd Circuit in September 2012 upheld Copenhefer's death sentence, which
Senior U.S. District Judge Maurice B. Cohill Jr. had set aside in 2002. Cohill
ordered a new sentencing hearing for Copenhefer.
(source: goerie.com)
CALIFORNIA:
Boyfriend Of Murder Victim Who Was Drained Of Blood Facing Death Penalty
For one aspiring screenwriter, life may have imitated art, according to charges
filed in the case of a murder victim found drained of blood. In a bizarre twist
that could have come straight out of one of the screenwriter's graphic novels
about a serial killer, Iana Kasian was found murdered in the most gruesome way,
according to a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's
Office.
Now Huffington Post reports her estranged boyfriend, 35-year-old Blake Leibel,
has been charged with murder, mayhem, aggravated mayhem, and torture, plus
special circumstance allegations which make him eligible for the death penalty.
The Canadian native, who has been living in West Hollywood, allegedly killed
Kasian between May 23 and May 26, with her body being discovered last Thursday
after authorities forced their way into the apartment where Leibel had
barricaded himself with furniture.
The bizarre twist in the story, besides the fact that the victim's blood was
drained from her body, is that Leibel had written about a serial killer in one
of his graphic novels back in 2010, titled Syndrome. The villain in the graphic
novel hangs victims from their ankles and slashes their throats to drain them
completely of blood, echoing some of the injuries that occurred to Kasian, who
was only 30 years old at the time of her murder.
As if the murder allegedly committed by Leibel wasn't horrific enough, the
victim had just given birth to the couple's 1st child at the beginning of May.
On top of the usual stress to a relationship that comes along with a newborn
baby, Leibel had been arrested on May 20 on suspicion of sexual assault,
although no details of that arrest or alleged crime have been made available to
the media or the public at this time.
It appears that arrest triggered the conflict between the couple that prompted
Kasian to pack up and move back into her mother's home, where she stayed until
making a return visit back to her old apartment to meet and speak with Leibel,
according to Huffington Post. Leibel had been released on $100,000 bail at the
time of the alleged disappearance and murder of Kasian.
Leibel is now being held without bail on the latest charges filed against him
in the death of Kasian, but unfortunately if the charges against him are true,
Leibel's current incarceration without bail comes a little too late for the
woman who came from her native Ukraine in 2014 to study law and make a better
life for herself in California. Kasian's sister, Zhenia, spoke with the
National Post about her family's devastating tragedy.
"For me it's a big loss. I do not know how to live without my beloved sister."
This case may create another legal battle, over custody of the couple's child,
who is currently in the care of Kasian's mother. Leibel is the heir of a
wealthy family in Toronto, including his deceased mother, who was the heiress
to a fortune from the plastics industry. The Los Angeles Times reports Leibel
received a monthly allowance of $18,000.
Ronald Richards, who was representing Leibel in the case not related to the
current murder charges, says he was shocked to hear about his client's arrest
on the murder and mutilation (mayhem) charges.
Leibel is currently being held in Los Angeles County Jail with his next
scheduled court appearance on June 14. Prosecutors are still deciding whether
they were pursue the death penalty in the case.
(source:inquisitr.com)
USA:
Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Death Penalty Case
The U.S. Supreme Court refused a request to decide whether the death penalty is
unconstitutional.
Lamondre Tucker, who murdered his pregnant girlfriend in 2008, asked the court
to grant certiorari in Tucker v. Louisiana to rule on the constitutionality of
the death penalty. Justice Stephen Breyer dissented from the denial of
certiorari, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Breyer has long argued against the constitutionality of the death penalty as
currently applied. Breyer noted that Tucker may have been wrongly sentenced, as
the district in which he was sentenced imposes 1/2 the death sentences in
Louisiana even though it only accounts for 5 % of the state's population and
homicides.
Capital punishment has always been a controversial issue in the United States
and worldwide. In April 2016, Virginia's General Assembly voted to keep secret
the identities of suppliers of lethal injection drugs.
In February 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected a
Georgia death row inmate's legal challenge to the death penalty.
In January 2016, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood stated that he plans to
ask lawmakers to approve the firing squad, electrocution, or nitrogen gas as
alternate methods of execution if the state prohibits lethal injection.
The Supreme Court ruled in January 2016 in Kansas v. Carr that a jury in a
death penalty case does not need to be advised of mitigating factors, which can
lessen the severity of a criminal act. The jury also does not need to be
advised that mitigating factors do not need to be proven beyond a reasonable
doubt like aggravating factors.
(source: legalreader.com)
**************
To Stop Bad Prosecutors, Call the Feds
Prosecutors are the most powerful players in the American criminal justice
system. Their decisions - like whom to charge with a crime, and what sentence
to seek - have profound consequences.
So why is it so hard to keep them from breaking the law or violating the
Constitution?
The short answer is that they are almost never held accountable for misconduct,
even when it results in wrongful convictions. It is time for a new approach to
ending this behavior: federal oversight of prosecutors' offices that repeatedly
ignore defendants' legal and constitutional rights. There is a successful model
for this in the Justice Department's monitoring of police departments with
histories of misconduct.
Among the most serious prosecutorial violations is the withholding of evidence
that could help a defendant prove his or her innocence or get a reduced
sentence - a practice so widespread that one federal judge called it an
"epidemic." Under the 1963 landmark Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland,
prosecutors are required to turn over any exculpatory evidence to a defendant
that could materially affect a verdict or sentence. Yet in many district
attorneys' offices, the Brady rule is considered nothing more than a
suggestion, with prosecutors routinely holding back such evidence to win their
cases.
Nowhere is this situation worse than in Louisiana, where prosecutors seem to
believe they are unconstrained by the Constitution.
This month, the Supreme Court will consider the latest challenge to
prosecutorial misconduct in Louisiana in the case of David Brown, who was 1 of
5 men charged in the 1999 murder of a prison guard. Mr. Brown said he did not
commit the murder, but he was convicted and sentenced to death anyway. Only
later did his lawyers discover that prosecutors had withheld the transcript of
an interview with another prisoner directly implicating 2 other men - and only
those men - in the murder.
This is about as blatant a Brady violation as can be found, and the judge who
presided over Mr. Brown's trial agreed, throwing out his death penalty and
ordering a new sentencing. But the Louisiana Supreme Court reversed that
decision, ruling that the new evidence would not have made a difference in the
jury's sentence.
David Brown's case is a good example of how every part of the justice system
bears some responsibility for not fighting prosecutorial misconduct. State
courts often fail to hold prosecutors accountable, even when their wrongdoing
is clear. Professional ethics boards rarely discipline them. And individual
prosecutors are protected from civil lawsuits, while criminal punishment is
virtually unheard of. Money damages levied against a prosecutor's office could
deter some misconduct, but the Supreme Court has made it extremely difficult
for wrongfully convicted citizens to win such claims.
This maddening situation has long resisted a solution. What would make good
sense is to have the federal government step in to monitor some of the worst
actors, increasing the chance of catching misconduct before it ruins peoples'
lives. The Justice Department is already authorized to do this by a 1994
federal law prohibiting any "pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement
officers" that deprives a person of legal or constitutional rights.
The department has used this power to monitor police departments in Los
Angeles, New Orleans, Detroit and Seattle, among other municipalities with a
history of brutality, wrongful arrests, shootings of unarmed civilians and
other illegal or unconstitutional practices. For the most part, the results
have been positive. Since prosecutors are also "law enforcement officers,"
there is no reason they and their offices should be immune from federal
oversight.
Of course, many district attorneys' offices will balk at being put under a
federal microscope. But nothing else has worked to prevent misconduct by
prosecutors, and the Justice Department is uniquely equipped to ferret out the
worst actors and expose their repeated disregard for the law and the
Constitution.
(source: Editorial, New York Times)
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