June 24
TEXAS:
Texas march against legal lynchings
Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement activists participated in the Juneteenth
parade and festival on June 18 in Houston's historic Third Ward at Emancipation
Park, which was bought and established by freed slaves in 1872. The Abolition
Movement makes the connection between slavery and what exists on Texas prison
farms today.
"We recognize the continuum from lynchings after the Civil War to the legal
lynchings that occur now in Huntsville, Texas, where 537 people have been
executed by the state of Texas since 1982,' said Joanne Gavin, a founder of the
Abolition Movement in the mid-1990s and a veteran of Mississippi's Civil Rights
Movement.
Joining the Abolition Movement at the parade were veterans of Houston's Black
Panther Party, whose leader, Carl Hampton, was murdered by Houston police a few
blocks from Emancipation Park. Houston cops were judge, jury and executioners
of Hampton, a brilliant revolutionary and charismatic leader until his death in
1970. Also in the contingent was the Committee to Free Juan Balderas, who has
been on Texas death row since 2015.
(source: Workers World)
FLORIDA:
Attorney for Orange County teen murder suspect argues trial should be delayed
Attorneys for Sanel Saint-Simon want his trial be delayed until the Florida
Supreme Court makes a ruling on the death penalty.
"I have very serious concerns about rushing this to trial," said Carolyn
Schlemmer, defense attorney.
His attorneys spent nearly an hour Friday arguing his case needs to take a back
seat to the Hurst and Perry cases currently pending with the Florida Supreme
Court.
Saint-Simon is accused of beating, then dumping his girlfriend's daughter,
Alexandria Chery, in a field in 2014 near the Polk-Osceola County lines.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in January that Florida's death penalty cases were
unconstitutional and didn't give jurors enough of a vote.
"We do not have finalized capital jury instructions," Schlemmer said.
A case tried right now would be lacking the instruction manual for how a jury
should decide between life and death.
His trial has already been delayed once over questions about the future of
Florida's death penalty.
The idea that the Hurst case could have any impact on new death penalty cases
is legally questionable. But the Perry case is looking for answers on whether a
full 12 members of the jury should be deciding on death instead of 10. And
whether cases already under prosecution when the state revised the death
penalty in March, should be covered by the new rules.
"We all want it done correctly. And we all want it to be done lawfully," said
Ryan Vescio, assistant state attorney.
Meanwhile, Saint-Simon's attorneys tried to have the judge throw out
potentially incriminating statements allegedly made by Saint-Simon when he was
first questioned by investigators. The defense argued he thought he was under
arrest when he was not.
The judge ruled the entire interview will be admissible at trial.
(source: WFTV news)
**********
Evidence points to earlier Markel murder attempt
Prosecutors say Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera traveled to Tallahassee in June
2014 during a thwarted attempt to execute Dan Markel.
A Leon County judge delayed the decision to set a bond for 33-year-old Garcia
Friday as his attorney looked to interview Tallahassee Police investigators.
Garcia pleaded not guilty to charges of 1st-degree murder in the July 2014
shooting of Markel, a Florida State law professor and prominent legal scholar.
On July 18, 2014, Markel was found slumped over the steering wheel of his car
with 2 gunshot wounds to the head.
Prosecutors say the June trip was cut short when a Miami rental car company
found out Garcia and Rivera were in Tallahassee. The car was rented for local
use only. Cappleman said the company pinged the GPS on the car and Rivera and
Garcia immediately turned around and headed back to Miami.
Garcia was arrested May 25 in Broward County where he was held until transport
to Tallahassee a few weeks later.
In a Broward County Jail phone call with his girlfriend Katherine Magbanua,
Garcia said he wanted to put the ordeal behind him and once he was released,
"get the hell out of Dodge," he said. "And just put all this sh** behind us."
His South Florida attorney Jim Lewis argued that the state has only
circumstantial evidence against Garcia, nothing concrete. However, he indicated
that local attorney Zack Ward could possibly join the defense team to work
during the sentencing phase.
"All they've got is theories," Lewis said. "No facts. No eye witnesses. No
physical evidence. No confessions. No statements. This man should not be held
here without a bond."
Chief Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman is seeking the death penalty.
She asked that Garcia be held without bond or at the minimum a $1 million bond.
She conceded concrete, physical evidence could not place Garcia as the shooter,
but that other evidence would prove otherwise.
"As far as I know there is no DNA at the crime scene. I don't have a witness
that will say 'I saw Mr. Garcia kill Mr. Markel, so (Lewis) is right to that
extent," Cappleman said. "But there is a mountain of other evidence that I
think will be sufficient to reach my burden beyond a reasonable doubt at
trial."
Prosecutors released dozens of pages of investigative materials - which include
crime scene and suspect photos, videos, cell phone records - used to build
their case against Garcia, Rivera and others.
More arrests are expected in the case.
Court documents point toward members of Markel's ex-wife???s family, chiefly
her mother and brother Donna and Charles Adelson as being connected to the
murder-for-hire plot that ended in Markel's shooting.
Cappleman called Magbanua, who was in a romantic relationship with Charles
Adelson and is the mother of two of Garcia's children, a suspect and possibly a
witness in the case.
Police say Garcia and Rivera were "enlisted" to kill Markel, 41, in connection
with the child visitation proceedings in the aftermath of his acrimonious
divorce.
The motive for Markel's murder, court documents say, "stemmed from the
desperate desire of the Adelson family" that his ex-wife Wendi Adelson and the
couple's 2 young sons be allowed to move to South Florida.
Garcia and Rivera drove from Miami in a rented Toyota Prius, police say, and
stayed in Tallahassee for several days before shooting Markel.
Garcia denied ever being in Tallahassee. Meanwhile, Rivera, who was questioned
three days after Garcia's arrest, at first denied ever traveling to the Capital
City. However, Rivera, an inmate in a federal prison outside Orlando on
unrelated charges, changed his story when police showed him a photo of the 2
men in the Prius.
(source: Tallahassee Democrat)
OHIO:
Prosecutor: Marion County judge's ruling puts death penalty in jeopardy
A Marion County judge this week dropped the death penalty elements from a
convicted murderer-rapist's sentence on the grounds that there were
similarities to a Florida death sentence ruled unconstitutional by the U.S.
Supreme Court this year.
Because Florida and Ohio have similar sentencing and procedural guidelines,
defense attorneys argued that Maurice A. Mason, sentenced in 1994 for raping
and beating to death Robin Dennis, then 19 and pregnant, should not be
executed.
The case could have implications in other capital cases in Ohio, said Marion
County Prosecutor Brent Yager, who disagreed with Monday's decision by Marion
Common Pleas Court Judge William Finnegan.
"I was surprised," said Yager. "I believe that there is a distinction between
the death penalty in Florida and in Ohio."
The Florida case, Hurst versus Florida, also involved a murder conviction, and
was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in January that a Florida
judge's ruling on the death penalty sentencing violated the defendant's 6th
Amendment rights to a trial by jury.
Finnegan, in his ruling, wrote that the Hurst decision makes clear that the
Sixth Amendment requires juries make specific findings to authorize the death
penalty.
Ohio, he wrote, "has no provision for the jury to make specific findings
related to the weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors," and thus is
unconstitutional.
Yager said Ohio differs from Florida because juries here directly decide the
aggravating circumstances in a capital case used in the penalty phase and
sentencing, although judge's have the ability to commute the death sentence in
lieu of life in prison.
In Florida, the court, or judge, must give "great weight" to the jury's
recommendation, but then must independently weigh the aggravating and
mitigating circumstances before rendering the sentence, the high court ruled
8-1, according to Finnegan's 50-page ruling.
Yager said the ruling is frustrating, in part because victim families and
lawmakers expect swift and certain justice.
"Ohio and the state legislature have decided we still should have a death
penalty in Ohio," said Yager. "But based on the judge's ruling here, if this
stands, our death penalty would be unconstitutional. This decision does become
a statewide issue."
Yager said he plans to file an appeal with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals
in Lima.
Mason's attorney, Kort Gatterdam, said the decision should "withstand scrutiny
from higher courts and will become the law of this state ... and could become
the basis to eliminate the death penalty in Ohio."
The Dispatch highlighted the case five years ago to describe the difficulties
in carrying out a death sentence given a barrage of appeals and legal filings.
Mason chased Dennis through a barren field, dragged her down, raped her and
beat her to death with a nail-studded board.
A judge, based on the jury's recommendation, sentenced him to death on July 7,
1994.
4 years later, a federal appeals court ruled that Mason's attorneys failed to
say enough about Mason's drug and violence-filled childhood during the penalty
phase of the trial. That mitigating evidence typically is used by juries to
balance out the aggravated elements, in this case that Mason had used a weapon
and committed rape.
The case was ordered back to Marion County Common Pleas Court for a new
sentencing. But legal maneuvers prevented that from happening within a required
180 day window. Eventually, the Innocence Project collected DNA evidence in
hopes of proving Mason innocent.
Mason, now 52, has been moved from death row to a regular cell at the Mansfield
Correctional Institution. With no sentence on record for the murder conviction,
he technically is eligible for a parole hearing. But the Ohio Department of
Rehabilitation and Correction and the parole board have said that won't happen
his ultimate sentence for murder is resolved.
5 years ago, Dennis' father, Ted Travis, said: "No one can possibly believe
this is the way the system is supposed to work."
Rep. Greta Johnson, a Democrat from Akron is a former death penalty prosecutor
from Summit County, said families deserve better.
"There is really nothing we can do as lawmakers that will give them the day
back before these acts happened. And that's all that they want."
(source: Columbus Dispatch)
ARKANSAS:
Strong evidence against capital punishment
Just this week Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge was almost gleeful in
stating her intent to set execution dates for several inmates on the state's
death row. I worry about people who think capital punishment represents the
great pinnacle of justice. Given her demonstrated proclivities to shill for all
manner other ultra-conservative, anti-science and anti-environmental causes,
the fact that she champions an ineffectual and draconian punishment philosophy
is nauseatingly predictable. At least she's consistent.
Apart from the fact that Arkansans have elected themselves a philosophically
dubious figure for their Attorney General, looms the fact that we as a state
haven't figured out that the death penalty serves neither the interests of
justice nor the taxpayers.
By way of preface, I understand why someone who was the victim of a violent
crime or the people they leave behind might seek the stinging retribution that
only an eye for an eye can bring. Even so, I don't come to my views as a mere
spectator.
I have been present several times to watch someone take their last breaths
after being shot. I've been at many grizzly crime scenes that give me haunting
memories I will take to my own grave. I've heard the shrieks and howls of
anguish. I've seen that last gasp push a mouthful of blood onto the dark
street.
As such, I understand why another death might seem like the only possible way
to even the human score. The question I always come back to in this debate is
simple: Does capital punishment make us better as a society? The weight of
evidence suggests it does not.
The most common argument for it is deterrence. In other words, when would be
murderers see convicted killers put to death, they will think twice before
committing their own crimes.
Few social science studies reach the near unanimity that death penalty
researchers do about deterrence: the death penalty has almost no deterrent
effect. In fact, states without capital punishment have much lower homicide
rates. Add to that the fact that the South accounts for 80 % of U. S.
executions and has the highest regional murder rate.
One can also argue against the death penalty from an economic cost perspective.
Here again, researchers are nearly unanimous. The cost of an execution and the
concomitant appeals process that every citizen of this nation is due -
regardless how wretched they may be - far outpaces the cost of life
imprisonment. It is actually much cheaper on average to incarcerate someone for
life than it is to execute them.
Third, it's irrevocable. Once we've killed someone, they can't be brought back
to life. Since 1973, 151 death row inmates have been exonerated. From
2000-2007, there have been nearly a half dozen every year. As science improves,
this number will likely increase. For states like Texas that emphasize the
speed from conviction to execution this sets up the very real potential of
executing an innocent person.
As a comparison, 140 other countries either as a matter of law or practice
abstain from capital punishment. This number includes a number of predominantly
Muslim nations. On the other side of the coin, we share the retentionist
spotlight with places like, Chad, North Korea, Uganda and Yemen.
These few facts alone give us enough pause to answer my basic question: Does
capital punishment make us a better society? It allies us with some of the most
barbarous societies on Earth. It is more costly than life without parole. It
can't be undone. It has no demonstrable deterrent effect. In fact, it appears
to have the opposite effect. It contributes to a culture of violence; and
perhaps most importantly, it reduces us to committing the same fundamental deed
as the monster we seek to punish.
Of course, the death penalty appeals to people who are governed by an overtly
redneck and naive sense of right and wrong. It is simplistic. It calls to the
baser urges of humanity. Fortunately, America is for the most part in the
business of rising above a Hobbesian state of nature. It's time Rutledge and
her ilk mature in their sensibilities.
(source: Pine Bluff Commercial)
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