February 1
TEXAS:
Texas still doesn't have a law on intellectual disability and the death
penalty. Will that change this year?----Nearly 2 decades after the U.S. Supreme
Court said it was unconstitutional to execute those with intellectual
disabilities, Texas still has no process on determining the condition — leaving
life-and-death decisions in the hands of courts with very different methods.
The 86th Legislature runs from Jan. 8 to May 27. From the state budget to
health care to education policy — and the politics behind it all — we focus on
what Texans need to know about the biennial legislative session. More in this
series
Texas judges have begged the state Legislature for years to come up with a
process for determining whether death penalty defendants are intellectually
disabled and therefore ineligible for execution.
After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that executing people with
intellectual disabilities is cruel and unusual punishment, states were left to
come up with their own methods of defining the condition. But the Texas
Legislature hasn’t done so, leaving that job to the courts — resulting in a
hodgepodge system of deciding the crucial question of whether a person facing a
death sentence should be spared from execution.
Texas’ top criminal appeals court stepped in and created its own test for
deciding intellectual disability for death row inmates, but in 2017, the U.S.
Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional because it used decades-old
medical standards and a set of nonclinical questions the Supreme Court said
advanced stereotypes, including how well an inmate could lie.
The Texas court later said it would use current science in its test, but the
inmate whose case sparked the Supreme Court ruling is arguing to the high court
that Texas’ system remains just as flawed as before.
A handful of Texas Democrats are hoping that the controversy and the threat of
another defeat in the Supreme Court will motivate their colleagues in the
Legislature to finally establish a procedure to determine if someone is
ineligible for execution — before a capital murder trial even begins. Similar
legislation has been proposed for years and gone nowhere.
“There’s a disconnect between the U.S. Supreme Court and our court down here,”
state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, told The Texas Tribune. “We just want
to make sure that we’re doing justice, that we’re following the law.”
Thompson and state Sen. Borris Miles, another Democrat from Houston, have filed
bills this session that would allow a capital murder defendant to request a
hearing to determine intellectual disability before trial. Under the proposed
legislation, if a judge determines the defendant is intellectually disabled —
defined as having a low IQ with deficits in practical and social skills since
youth — the death penalty would be taken off the table and the defendant would
receive an automatic life sentence without the possibility of parole if
convicted.
Two other House Democrats, Joe Moody of El Paso and Armando Walle of Houston,
signed on as co-authors of Thompson’s legislation when she filed the bill
earlier this week.
Advocates for the bill point out that legislatures in most other death penalty
states have created a uniform pretrial procedure guiding courts on how to
determine whether a defendant is intellectually disabled. In Texas, prosecutors
often simply don’t seek the death penalty when there is a credible claim of
intellectual disability, and sometimes juries are told to weigh the issue after
convicting someone — when they’re deciding between life and death during a
trial’s punishment phase.
In at least one case, a Texas judge granted a pretrial hearing on the question
— just as the current legislation proposes — only to have that decision
appealed by prosecutors. The case landed in the lap of the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals, which slammed the Legislature for not taking action.
“Without a unified procedure, intellectual-disability determinations may vary
from county to county, court to court, and case to case,” Court of Criminal
Appeals Judge Michael Keasler wrote in a 2015 opinion in the case. “The gravity
of defendants’ intellectual-disability claims are too weighty to be subject to
such disparity.”
Prosecutors largely agree that a determination of intellectual disability
should be handled before a sentence is handed down, according to Shannon
Edmonds, director of governmental relations at the Texas District and County
Attorneys Association. But he said past legislation has failed in part because
of disagreements over timing: Should the decision be made by a judge before a
trial begins or by jurors after hearing the facts of a case?
“Part of the fundamental problem is not the standards or the science, it’s who
gets to decide and when do they get to decide it,” he said. “That’s been a
sticking point for 20 years.”
Edmonds also said the bill could add costs to death penalty trials by adding
another hearing to an already lengthy trial process. Thompson, meanwhile,
argued that the hearings would likely save millions by reducing appeals and, in
cases where a judge finds a defendant intellectually disabled and takes the
death penalty off the table, eliminating the punishment phase of the trial.
Hoping to spark change
Elsa Alcala was a judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and has watched
as previous bills to address this issue have died quickly and quietly, usually
without any hearings.
This year, she is hoping Bobby Moore will act as a catalyst at the Capitol.
Moore was sentenced to death more than 38 years ago after fatally shooting a
Houston store clerk during a robbery. For the last five years, the question of
his mental capacity has wound through the courts.
After a lower court ruled in 2014 that Moore was disabled, the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals reversed the decision, faulting the court’s use of current
medical standards to reach its conclusion rather than the Court of Criminal
Appeals’ test — which used older standards and its own set of questions.
When the Supreme Court tossed out the Texas appeals court’s ruling in 2017 and
sent Moore’s case back for further review using a test based on current medical
standards, even the prosecutor handling Moore’s case requested that his
sentence be changed to life in prison. The Court of Criminal Appeals again
rejected the plea, ruling that Moore wasn’t intellectually disabled under
either set of medical standards.
Moore’s lawyers have again appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, where
the pending decision from the justices has caught the attention of many death
penalty critics.
“The Bobby Moore case has given the state of Texas a black eye in many ways in
the sense that we just haven’t done a good job in this area of the law,” said
Alcala, a Republican who was on the appeals court during both Moore rulings but
voted against the majority both times.
After not seeking re-election last year, Alcala now serves as a policy director
for the Texas Defender Service, an advocacy group critical of Texas' death
penalty practices. She told the Tribune she hopes the problems highlighted in
Moore’s case push lawmakers to take action this year.
“Maybe the Legislature will view it as a ripe opportunity to step in and to
correct it,” she said.
But in a Republican state with the busiest execution chamber in the nation by
far, state lawmakers have generally been wary of any changes that appear to
weaken the state’s tough death penalty laws. Edmonds warned that many of those
pushing for a tweak to this aspect of the death penalty have a bigger agenda as
well.
“The goal of many pushing a change in this area is not to exclude just people
with intellectual disability from the death penalty,” he said. “Their goal is
to exclude everyone from the death penalty.”
But the climate may be shifting. At a Texas Tribune event in November,
conservative state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, said he’s not afraid of tackling
changes to the death penalty, “nor should any legislator be.” He went on to say
that there are innocent men on death row and he’d consider a moratorium on
capital punishment.
Still, even the lawmakers proposing the legislation say their bill is not an
attack on the death penalty.
Miles said he’s not against executing those convicted of heinous crimes, but "I
want to make sure that before we do that, they’re at the right mental
capacity.”
(source: Texas Tribune)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
Bill in the State House makes 2nd attempt to bring the electric chair back to
South Carolina
A bill in the South Carolina State Senate is looking to resurrect a bill that
would bring the electric chair back to South Carolina as a form of capital
punishment.
The bill, introduced by Senator Gerald Malloy (D-Darlington), passed 26-13 on
Wednesday. In readings of the bill, hanging and the firing squad were also
mentioned as additions to the death penalty bill.
A similar bill also passed the State Senate in 2018, but did not pass in the
State House.
The electric chair was first used in South Carolina in August 1912 and was last
used in 2008, according to the Department of Corrections' website. The state of
South Carolina has executed 43 people since the ban on capital punishment was
lifted in 1985.
The last person put to death in South Carolina was Jeffrey Motts in May 2011
for the death of his cellmate. He was the 1st inmate to be put to death in the
nation with the 3-drug lethal injection cocktail that included pentobarbital.
It replaced thiopental, which had become scarce in the U.S. prior to his
execution.
In South Carolina, the youngest person executed in the state was 14-year-old
George Stinney in 1944, and his death was exonerated in 2014; the oldest person
executed in the state was 66 years old. The 1st execution in South Carolina by
lethal injection was carried out on Aug. 18, 1995.
As of Jan. 31, 2019, there are 36 people on death row in South Carolina.
(source: WIS TV news)
FLORIDA:
Resentencing of convicted killer Adam "Rattlesnake" Davis further delayed
One of the Bay Area’s most notorious murderers is getting a 2nd chance to get
off death row.
Adam "Rattlesnake" Davis was convicted of killing his girlfriend’s mother
almost 20 years ago.
He was given the death penalty, but after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on
Florida’s death sentencing rules, Davis is one of many inmates asking for a 2nd
chance at life.
His resentencing is months away but during a status hearing Thursday, there was
a setback that could further delay the process.
Davis was convicted in the 1998 plot he and his girlfriend, Valessa hatched to
kill her mother, Vicki Robinson, by shooting bleach in her veins with a
syringe.
When that didn’t work, Davis slashed her throat.
Vicki's body was found stuffed in a trashcan.
Valessa was convicted of 3rd-degree murder and spent 13 years in jail. She was
released in 2013.
After the 1999 trial, the jury sent Davis to death row, but their decision was
not unanimous. That's the part of Florida's death penalty procedure the Supreme
Court said was unconstitutional.
Davis will be resentenced due to that ruling, but in court Thursday his
attorney, Rick Terrana told the judge he needs an extension.
Terrana said he was handed boxes of old evidence from the attorney who handled
Davis' appeal.
"I went to pick them up. There were 17 boxes of transcripts, all kinds of court
testimony," said Terrana.
The judge agreed Terrana should have more time to prepare for the resentencing
and scheduled a new status hearing for April 25.
(source: Fox News)
ALABAMA----impending execution
Alabama agrees to nix Christian chaplain in Muslim inmate's
execution----Domineque Hakim Marcelle Ray, an Alabama death row inmate, is
challenging the state on religious grounds after prison officials denied his
Muslim spiritual advisor access to the execution chamber.
Alabama prison officials are willing to waive the presence of a Christian
chaplain in the state execution chamber after a Muslim inmate said it would
violate his religious rights, but lawyers for the condemned argued in court
Thursday he should have access to his imam in the moments before his death.
Domineque Ray this week filed a stay of execution, which is slated for Feb. 7,
to challenge Alabama's practice of placing a Christian prison chaplain with
inmates in the state execution chamber. Ray argued in court documents that he
should have access to his Muslim spiritual adviser in the moments before his
death.
Failing that, Ray requested the Christian prison chaplain not be present.
On Thursday, the Alabama Department of Correction acquiesced to Ray's 1st
request but said security concerns required Holman prison to limit the
execution to chamber to corrections employees.
Stephen Hahn, Ray's co-counsel, argued Thursday training non-employee spiritual
advisers to be present in the execution chamber should not be a barrier to
providing inmates their religious rights.
"Why does Mr. Ray not get the same benefit that Christian would?" Hahn asked
the court.
Ray was sentenced to death in the 1995 rape and fatal stabbing of 15-year-old
Tiffany Harville of Selma. Months before his death penalty trial, he was
sentenced to life for a 1994 slaying of two teen brothers, The Associated Press
reports.
"The State of Alabama and the victims of Ray's crimes have an interest in
seeing Ray held accountable for his horrific rape and murder of
fifteen-year-old Tiffany Harville," ADOC's motion to dismiss states.
Ray met with Holman prison Warden Cynthia Stewart last week to request
religious accommodations related to his execution, according to court
documents. Ray first asked that a Muslim spiritual leader, an imam, take the
place of Holman's Christian prison chaplain in the execution chamber. When
Stewart denied that, Ray asked that no chaplain be present, which Stewart also
denied, court documents state.
Federal Judge Keith Watkins questioned the last-minute stay filing, asking why
Ray didn't push back on the protocol months earlier. Hahn said Ray was unaware
of the protocol before his conference with Stewart.
ADOC policies allow a death row inmate's chosen spiritual adviser visitation up
to 5:15 p.m. on the day of an execution, when they are then allowed to view the
execution from a witness room adjacent to the execution chamber.
Ray's lawyers on Thursday also filed an amended complaint requesting a stay of
execution to consider Ray's late opt-in for death by nitrogen hypoxia.
Gov. Kay Ivey signed legislation into law last year allowing condemned inmates
to choose the death by gas, which is essentially a hypothetical method. Alabama
joined Oklahoma and Mississippi to allow the execution method, but no execution
in the country has actually carried out the method. Proponents of the
legislation said it is a more humane way to kill people, but its unclear how
such an execution would be carried out. Methods ranging from a gas chamber to a
gas mask have been floated.
Ray did not opt-in during the allowed window last year, court records state,
but changed his mind this week after conferring with his imam.
"At the time of the effective date of Senate Bill 272 and thereafter, Mr. Ray
sincerely believed that electing a method of execution was akin to assisting in
a suicide, which is forbidden in the Islamic faith," the complaint states. "As
such, Mr. Ray did not submit an election to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia
within the 30-day window provided under Senate Bill 272."
Richard Anderson, a lawyer for the state, said the nitrogen opt-in was an
"obvious" attempt to delay his execution.
Watkins said he plans to rule in a written order Friday.
Ray's spiritual adviser, Imam Yusef Maisonet, attended Thursday's hearing
alongside Imam Wali Rahman, who is a previous adviser to Holman's Muslim
inmates. Rahman said they worked on a volunteer basis, sometimes driving from
Mobile twice a week on their own dime, while the Christian chaplain is an ADOC
employee on state payroll.
"We're going to hear cases like this again," Rahman said. "There should be a
staffed imam that inmates have access to equally as inmates have access to a
Christian chaplain. We respect Christian rights as to how their inmates want to
die. The state is not giving all equality."
Maisonet said in Islam, it is important for the dying person to recite a
statement of faith, called the Shahada.
"Those should be his last words, and keeping me outside breaks that
relationship," Maisonet said.
(source:Montgomery Advertiser)
****************
Disturbing details surface in trial for Huntsville man facing death penalty for
murders of wife, son
Defense attorneys for a Huntsville man accused of killing his wife and son say
he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, but prosecutors told the jury that he
had no history of mental illness.
A jury of seven men and nine women (panel of 12 with four alternates) was
seated Thursday afternoon at the Madison County courthouse. The prosecution and
defense gave their opening statements and testimony got underway in the trial
for Stephen “Marc” Stone, who is charged with capital murder in the deaths of
his wife and young son nearly 6 years ago.
Investigators say Stone strangled his wife, Krista, and strangled and drowned
the couple’s 7-year-old son, Zachary.
Huntsville police found the bodies inside the family’s home on Chicamauga Trail
in south Huntsville on Feb. 24, 2013.
Krista was the mother of three children, including Zachary, a 2-year-old
daughter and a 4-year-old daughter. Zachary was in 1st grade at Mountain Gap
Elementary.
PROSECUTION’S OPENING STATEMENT
Tim Gann, Chief Trial Attorney for the Madison County District Attorney’s
Office, began his opening statement explaining that the day before the murders,
the Stone family made plans for Marc’s parents to come and visit.
That morning, between 5:30-6 a.m., Stone got up, wrote a note to say he was
going for a drive and then left.
Krista was home with the children waiting on her in-laws. They got there and
had a good time, but Marc was AWOL and didn’t take his cell phone.
Later in the evening, his parents left and around 8 p.m., Stone called his wife
to check in.
He said he was in Montgomery coming home.
Around midnight, he arrived at the house and everyone was asleep.
“He comes in and gets in bed with his wife. Krista is not having it. She has
spent all day there with his family and he disappeared for no reason. She’s mad
and upset about what happened. She gets up out of the bed and they’re having a
discussion about the events of the day,” Gann said.
They moved the discussion to the far end of the house to the TV room away from
the other bedrooms.
“They sit on the couch and in the midst of their domestic dispute, it reaches a
breaking point and he attacks her,” Gann told the jury. “He goes for her throat
immediately, holds her down and chokes her and even puts his elbow into it.”
Gann said Krista was “fighting, clawing and scratching with everything she’s
got and pleading for Jesus to help her.”
He stated that Stone crushed her neck and left her on the couch and then went
into Zachary’s room, where he was asleep on his bed wearing dinosaur pajamas.
“He walks over to his child, covers his face and attacks him too. He goes right
for his neck as well, and he chokes him, but he can’t quite kill him,” Gann
said.
Stone stopped when Zachary started having convulsions. According to the
prosecution, he let go of the boy, walked into the bathroom, and turned the
water on in the tub while his son was convulsing.
“While drawing water, he grabs his son and plunges him into the water and holds
him under. Zachary was alive when he hit the water. He fought, but a first
grader is no match for a grown man. He died in that bathtub and Marc left him
there floating while he went to deal with Krista’s body,” Gann said.
He told jurors that Stone put Krista in bed, and got Zachary, wrapped him up
and put his body in the bed as well.
“That outlines the capital murder case. But that’s not the end of the story.
The next morning when the girls wake up, he loads them into the car and takes
them to Leeds where his parents live,” Gann explained.
He went to Walmart where he ran into an investigator with the Leeds Police
Department. Stone asked him where closest police department was and then
dropped his girls off at his parents’ house.
He walked into Leeds PD and told the staff that he had just killed his wife and
son in Huntsville, Gann said.
Stone then told investigators what he did, gave them his home address and they
called Huntsville police to go over to the house where they found the victims
in a back bedroom.
Krista and Zachary were in bed next to one another covered up, Gann said.
Stone has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or
defect.
That means the defense has to prove that he was suffering from a severe mental
disease when he committed the murders to the point where he could not
appreciate the nature of the wrongfulness of his actions and did not know right
from wrong with clear and convincing evidence.
“Marc Stone had absolutely no history of mental illness,” Gann told the jury.
There was evidence their relationship was suffering, he added.
“There was a certain level of frustration building and dissatisfaction.
evidence of pornography addiction and abuse. Krista was the leader of the
family and out shined Marc in every way,” Gann stated.
“Motive is important and when you look at their relationship, there were
troubles,” he went on say. “You’re going to see a man who was at the end of his
rope, depressed and unhappy with his life.”
Investigators say Stone told them he had been depressed and that during the
time of the murders, it was a “weak period.”
“Stone said something broke inside of him and after doing the killings he felt
free,” according to Gann. “He murdered Krista and Zachary and knew exactly what
he was doing while he was doing it.”
DEFENSE’S OPENING STATEMENT
Larry Marsili, Stone’s defense attorney, told members of the jury that they
need to “put your head over your heart in this matter.”
He went on say that the case is different than most any other case that comes
before a jury for trial because for the most part, “we would agree with 90-95
percent of what Mr. Gann told you.”
On that “fateful day” in February 2013, Marc had taken off and said he needed
to go on a drive, Marsili told the jury.
He knew his parents were coming to visit and left his cell phone at home.
He contacted his wife to tell her that he was coming back.
“When he got back, he did the things that Mr. Gann told you about. There are
minor differences about the way that it unfolded but the crux of the case is
that he strangled his wife and then did the same thing to Zachary. And then
after he started convulsing, he placed him in the tub. And he was still alive
at that point and drowning was a contributor to his death,” Marsili said.
After all of that happened, Marc got the girls ready and went to Leeds.
He went to the police station and confessed.
“I want to be very clear. This case is not just about his wife. This case is
not just about his 7 year old son. If that’s what the case was about, we
wouldn’t have a trial,” Marsili stressed to the jury. “This is about what was
going on in his mind at the time that this happened. That’s the part of the
case that’s in dispute and that’s the part of the case we’re asking you to
focus on.”
He acknowledged that mental illness cases can cause some skepticism.
“The evidence is going to be clear that Marc is not faking this illness,”
Marsili stated. “It will show clearly and convincingly that Marc was unable to
comprehend the harmfulness of those tragic events.”
He says 3 doctors did an evaluation on Stone and all came to the same
conclusion that he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.
“At the time this tragedy, suffering from a severe defect that made him unable
to appreciate the criminality of his actions,” Marsili added.
Lt. Wilbur Griffin with the Leeds Police Department was first on the stand.
He is the officer who encountered Stone and his daughters in Walmart after the
killings.
He says Stone stopped him and asked him where closest police department was
located so he gave him directions.
He said the children were dressed as if they were going to church and Stone was
just dressed casually, and he didn’t notice anything unusual about them.
Griffin paid for his items in Walmart and left the store.
About an hour later, he got a call to come to the police station and noticed
that Stone was there.
He told Lt. Griffin that he would like to turn himself in.
Griffin thought at first that he was referring to a traffic citation.
He asked Stone what he did and said Stone replied: “I just killed my wife and
my son.”
Griffin placed him in handcuffs and asked where it happened. Stone told him
Huntsville and gave him the address.
“He said he left son and wife in the back bedroom with candles around,” Griffin
testified.
Griffin called Huntsville police to provide them with the information and
inquired about the little girls he saw with Stone in Walmart. Stone informed
him that he left his daughters at his parents’ house so Griffin sent an officer
over to the home to check on them.,P> He was calm, Griffon said about Stone,
adding that Stone did not become agitated or hostile throughout their
interactions.
Sgt. Glen Eaves, a longtime Huntsville Police officer, was called to testify
next. He was the supervisor on duty on the south side of town when Leeds police
called to tell them about Stone.
He told the jury that officers went to the family’s home, knocked on the door
and no one answered.
So they went to the back of the house to make entry and when they got to the
back bedroom, the door was locked.
They got it open and “saw a lady in bed with a child and they were covered up
like they were going to sleep, and they were deceased,” Eaves said.
The officers pulled back and notified the chain of command, as well as the
homicide and crime scene units.
They also told Leeds PD that they found the bodies and to keep Stone in custody
until he could be transferred back to Huntsville.
The jury saw crime scene photos Thursday afternoon. They will see autopsy
photos on Friday as the trial continues.
It’s expected to go into next week.
(source: WAFF news)
******************
Alabama prosecutors to seek death in 2006 disappearance
Alabama authorities say they'll seek the death penalty for a man charged with
capital murder in the disappearance of an Auburn woman nearly 13 years ago.
Prosecutors announced the decision Wednesday in Lee County during a hearing for
38-year-old Derrill Richard Ennis.
Ennis has pleaded not guilty in the death of 24-year-old Lori Ann Slesinski,
who was last seen in Auburn in 2006. The Opelika-Auburn News reports his trial
is set for February 2020.
Slesinski's mother reported her missing, and her burned-out car was found the
next day. Police say Ennis knew Slesinski and became a person of interest but
left Auburn after being questioned.
Ennis was arrested last summer in Pilot, Virginia, where court documents
indicate he was living.
Authorities haven’t said if they’ve located Slesinski’s remains.
(source: Associated Press)
ARKANSAS:
Last of Arkansas execution drugs expire, law fix sought
The last of Arkansas' lethal injection drugs expired on Thursday, and
legislators in the coming weeks are expected to consider changes to state law
that officials say they hope will allow them to resume executions nearly two
years after the state put four men to death over an eight-day period.
Arkansas doesn't have any executions scheduled, and state prison officials last
year said they wouldn't search for any new lethal injection drugs until a law
keeping the source of drugs secret is expanded to cover manufacturers. The
state's supply of midazolam, a controversial sedative used in the state's
execution process, expired Thursday. Its supply of the other 2 drugs used —
vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride — expired last year.
Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said her office is working on a proposal to
expand the drug secrecy law, as well as a measure to address the state Supreme
Court's ruling striking down Arkansas' law giving the prison director authority
to determine whether an inmate is mentally competent to be executed.
"It's important the state of Arkansas carry out these sentences," Rutledge
said. "It's important for justice. It's important for the families of these
victims."
The court in late 2017 and again last year ruled that the state must release
the package insert and labels for its execution drugs, noting that the law did
not specifically prevent the drugmakers from being identified. Rutledge said
the proposed legislation would exempt the insert and labels from the state's
open records law.
Arkansas was sued in 2017 after it refused to release the labels and inserts.
The Associated Press has previously used the labels — with the manufacturer's
name blacked out — to identify drugmakers whose products would be used in
executions. The state Supreme Court has allowed the state to redact other
information from the labels, such as the lot and batch numbers of the drug.
Arkansas put 4 inmates to death over an 8-day period in April 2017 under a plan
that had originally called for executing 8 inmates before the state's previous
supply of midazolam expired.
(source: Associated Press)
OKLAHOMA:
Julius Jones attorneys petition U.S. Supreme Court
Defense attorneys for death row inmate Julius Jones petitioned the U.S. Supreme
Court on Monday.
Jones is on death row in Oklahoma for the 1999 murder of Paul Howell, who was
shot and killed in Edmond during the theft of Howell’s SUV.
At issue is the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals’ dismissal of a petition by
Jones, which sought a hearing to present new evidence of racial bias in his
case, said Dale Baich, federal public defender.
“We are waiting for the case number from the court,” Baich said Wednesday
morning.
OCCA was petitioned to deal with the juror who used the “N” word when
deliberating a sentence for Jones, Baich said. The juror was not removed from
the trial.
“He made a statement in front of other jurors, ‘We should just take that N… out
and shoot him behind the jail,’” Baich explained. “We found that out during our
investigation in the case and presented it to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal
Appeals.”
There’s also an Oklahoma race study that concludes an African American who
kills a white male is 3 times more likely to get the death penalty, Baich said.
Baich maintains that evidence shows a juror harbored racial prejudice that
influenced his vote to convict and sentence Jones to death.
Howell was with his sister and two children returning from a shopping trip when
he was rushed by 2 men. Howell was shot in the head, his body thrown out of the
car and his two legs were broken by the retreating SUV after he slammed to the
ground. He survived for a few hours longer.
Jones’ attorneys suggest that no court has ever considered all the evidence in
the case, and specifically the racial bias.
Baich said the questions presented by this case are the following:
• Whether newly-discovered evidence establishes that racial prejudice
influenced the decision of at least one juror to convict Mr. Jones and sentence
him to death in violation of his rights under the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth
Amendments to the United States Constitution?
• Whether Oklahoma’s capital post-conviction statute, specifically Okla. Stat.
Ann. tit. 22, § 1089(D)(8)(b), and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals’
application of the statute in Mr. Jones’ case, denies Mr. Jones an adequate
corrective process for the hearing and determination of his newly-available
federal constitutional claim in violation of his rights under the Fourteenth
Amendment’s Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses?
Jones was 19 at the time the shooting took place. Codefendant Christopher
O’Neal Jordan testified against Jones. Jordan was sentenced to prison for 30
years before he would be eligible for release. Jordan was released from prison
after 15 years.
Jones maintains his innocence. Baich says the jury convicted the wrong man,
Jones, of 1st degree murder.
(source: The Claremore Daily Progress)
NEVADA:
Nevada's Future: 'Broken' death penalty could be banned in 2019 legislative
session
Ely State Prison is over 300 miles away from Reno — only a couple miles off the
Loneliest Road in America.
Deep within Nevada's only maximum security prison is death row, which currently
houses 79 of the state's most brutal convicted killers.
But there's a good chance that none of them will be executed.
"It's a broken system. It's too broken to fix," said Nevada ACLU policy
director Holly Welborn.
No one has been put to death since Daryl Mack in 2006. The recent Scott Dozier
case faced countless legal challenges, and Dozier ultimately hanged himself in
his prison cell.
There's not one pharmaceutical company that wants its drugs used in lethal
injection executions. Most recently, Alvogen sued the Nevada Department of
Corrections —claiming that NDOC obtained its paralytic drug illegally.
"You get an order from a court to perform your duties of the day and you can't
do it," said NDOC director James Dzurenda.
"It's kind of frustrating."
Dzurenda opened up in an interview with News 4-Fox 11 about the Dozier case,
which was delayed multiple times because of last-minute court decisions.
"You have an inmate that really, to me, enjoyed going back and forth to court.
He enjoyed the publicity of the media giving him attention," Dzurenda said.
He acknowledged that the seemingly endless delays in Dozier's case probably
pushed him over the edge to suicide — but said his greater concern was for the
victim's family.
"I think it's horrible that they are constantly almost feeling like they're
being re-victimized over and over again."
The Dozier case alone cost the state prison system well over $1 million if you
include construction costs for the $860,000 death chamber in Ely, Dzurenda
said.
The Nevada Attorney General's office hasn't yet responded to News 4-Fox 11's
public records request seeking to find out how expensive the Dozier case was
for the AG's office.
For the 1st time in decades, there's a decent chance that capital punishment
could be banned in Nevada.
Governor Steve Sisolak recently expressed his opposition to the death penalty
in an interview with The Nevada Independent editor Jon Ralston.
2 separate bills addressing the death penalty have already been proposed for
the 2019 state legislative session, one of which would 'abolish capital
punishment.'
In previous legislation seeking to ban the death penalty, the maximum penalty
for Nevada inmates was reduced to life in prison without the possibility of
parole.
Welborn said banning the death penalty is the ACLU's 'ultimate goal,' but
predicts it will be a challenge.
"We also have some Democrats who are just vehemently opposed to repeal. It's
not going to be an easy fight. It's a conversation we have to continue to
have," Welborn said.
(source: KRNV news)
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