February 22
TEXAS:
Texas man confesses to beating daughter, 2, to death with hammer
An office’s body camera recorded the confession Tuesday from Yovahnis Roque,
26, in the death of the girl in a home in Orange, the affidavit says.
Police say the toddler’s body was found in a closet.
In court Wednesday, a judge was explaining the capital murder charge against
Roque when the suspect blurted out: "The government made me do it." "I did not
kill my daughter. I'm moving without control," Roque said.
"I've been out of my control for a very long time," he said.
Roque and the baby lived with Roque's mother, who found the body.
Roque previously lived in Florida.
WTVJ-TV in Miami-Dade County reported the child was weeks old when her mother
was struck and killed by an impaired driver.
Roque is charged with capital murder
If convicted he could face the death penalty or a life sentence without parole.
(source: KWTX news)
***************
After Texas’ 2nd Supreme Court Loss In A Death Penalty Case, Reform Bill Lands
Key GOP Support----The chairs of 2 House committees signed on as joint authors
of a bill that would set the method of determining if a capital murder
defendant is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution.
One day after the U.S. Supreme Court once again invalidated a Texas death
sentence and bashed the state’s highest criminal court for its method of
determining intellectual disability in death penalty cases, 2 key Republican
lawmakers have signed on to a Democrat’s bill that would create a uniform
process.
On Wednesday, state Reps. James White and Jeff Leach became joint authors to
Rep. Senfronia Thompson’s House Bill 1139, which would establish a pretrial
procedure to determine if a capital murder defendant is intellectually disabled
and therefore ineligible for the death penalty. White chairs the House
Corrections Committee, and Leach leads the House Judiciary and Civil
Jurisprudence Committee.
“We’ve got to get to work here,” White, from Hillister, told The Texas Tribune
after adding his name to the bill. “The Supreme Court — not once, but twice —
stated that what we’re doing is not constitutional.”
In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that executing people with intellectual
disabilities was unconstitutional, but states were left to come up with their
own methods of defining the condition. The Texas Legislature hasn’t taken
action, instead putting the issue on individual courts, which have implemented
varied methods for deciding the crucial question of whether a person should be
spared from execution.
Often, prosecutors simply don’t seek the death penalty when there is a credible
claim of intellectual disability. Other times, juries are told to weigh the
issue after convicting someone of capital murder — when they’re deciding during
a trial’s punishment phase between life in prison or death.
As filed, Thompson’s bill, which already had joint authors in Democratic Reps.
Joe Moody of El Paso and Armando Walle of Houston and matches a bill by state
Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, would allow a capital murder defendant to request
a hearing to determine intellectual disability before trial. If a judge
determined the defendant was 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.
Advocates and the bipartisan group of lawmakers argue that a legislative change
is necessary after recent rulings put Texas at odds with the U.S. Supreme
Court.
For years, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the top criminal court in the
state, has begged lawmakers to set up a uniform process. But without movement
from the Capitol, the Texas court established its process of determining
intellectual disability in late appeals of those set for execution. The test
relied on decades-old medical standards and a controversial set of questions
the judges imposed, including how well an inmate could lie.
The Supreme Court ruled the test unconstitutional in 2017 in the case of Bobby
Moore, a man sentenced to death nearly 40 years ago in a Houston robbery and
murder. A majority of the justices said the Texas court’s questions advanced
stereotypes. Moore’s case was sent back to Texas, where the Court of Criminal
Appeals said it would use current medical standards in its decision but again
ruled Moore was not disabled, despite briefings from the prosecutor in his case
agreeing Moore had a disability.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court knocked the Court of Criminal Appeals again
without a hearing, saying the lower court’s decision-making process included
many of the same flaws as before. This time, the justices said plainly that
Moore had shown he was intellectually disabled — making him ineligible for
execution.
Leach, from Plano, said Tuesday’s ruling added fuel to his already-pending
decision to sign on to Thompson’s bill. Leach has become a rare Republican
critic of Texas death penalty practices — fighting to stop multiple executions
and saying he would consider a moratorium on the death penalty. On Wednesday,
he told the Tribune that the intellectual disability bill as filed may not be
perfect, but it needs a legislative discussion.
“This is a crucial issue for our state,” he said. “And conservatives,
Republicans, should not be afraid to engage in this discussion on the front
lines.”
(source: houstonpublicmedia.org)
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
NH Death Penalty Repeal Bill Likely to Pass in House
New Hampshire is the last state in the Northeast to have a death penalty. But
on Wednesday, a bill to abolish capital punishment in the Granite State moved
one step closer.
The House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee held an executive
session about House Bill 455, which would repeal the death penalty in New
Hampshire.
The committee voted 11 to 6 to recommend passage by the House. Committee chair
Rep. Renny Cushing, D-Rockingham, who is lead sponsor of the legislation,
predicts the House is likely to pass it.
“It’s been pretty clear for the past couple of years that the House has been
pretty strongly in favor of repealing the death penalty,” Cushing said.
Last year, a death penalty repeal bill passed both the Republican-controlled
New Hampshire House and Senate. But Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed it, and the Senate
was two votes shy of overriding that veto.
Sununu said he opposed the bill because he stood with crime victims.
Hannah Cox is the national manager of Conservatives Concerned about the Death
Penalty, a nonprofit group that supports the repeal bill. She says her own
views about capital punishment changed over time.
“I became opposed to the death penalty a number of years ago, when I first
became aware of how ridiculously high the costs were for operating the system,
and what that meant for the clearance rate for other crimes, and the burden
that these cases placed on the solvency rate for other crimes,” explains Cox.
The issue hits especially close to home for Rep. Cushing, whose father was
murdered. He similarly argues that resources spent on the death penalty could
be better used solving homicides.
“We have 128 unsolved murder cases in the state of New Hampshire,” Cushing
says, “and yet, we seem to be willing to spend millions of dollars to pursue
one death penalty case – at a time when, for the family members of the victims
of those 128 unsolved murders, they’re waiting for justice and wondering,
‘Where is the prioritization of that?'”
Only 1 person is on death row in the Granite State, which carried out its last
execution in 1939.
While Democrats currently control both the state House and Senate, House Bill
455 has bipartisan support. The House will likely vote on it in March.
(source: desertlocalnews.com)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Seaga Gillard found guilty in Wake County double murder case
A jury found Seaga Gillard guilty of 1st-degree murder Wednesday in a Wake
County double-murder case.
The jury deliberated for less than 24 hours before they decided on the verdict.
The jurors now move on to the death penalty phase of the trial.
This could become the 1st time in more than a decade that Wake County
prosecutors are successful in getting a jury to agree to the death penalty.
Gillard was charged, along with Xavier Hill, with 1st-degree murder in the
deaths of April Lynn Holland, who was pregnant, and Dwayne Garvey.
Police said the pair was gunned down in a room at the Best Value Inn in
Raleigh's Crabtree Valley in December 2016.
The crime was caught on a surveillance camera.
On Feb. 11, Prosecutor David Saacks told jurors Holland was a prostitute and
was at the hotel turning tricks. He said Garvey was her partner in selling sex.
The prosecutor laid out his case against Seaga Gillard in opening statements
Monday, Feb. 11, 2019.
The defense argued that the surveillance video was blurry and the jurors
couldn't be sure Gillard was the person in the video. They also argued that the
people shown in the video that day didn't intend on killing anyone.
"At the end of the day, it was chaotic, it was random, I submit it was tragic,
but it was not first-degree murder," Gillard's attorney Edd Roberts said.
The prosecutors, on the other hand, told the jurors, "to tell you it wasn't him
insults your intelligence."
"What I have to show to you is that at some point in the second, the
millisecond before he pulls that trigger he thought about it, he intended it
and he followed through with it. That's what I have to prove," Prosecutor Katy
Pomeroy said.
The Center for Death Penalty Litigation has criticized Wake County for
continuing to seek the death penalty even though juries in the county
repeatedly reject it.
Attorney Elizabeth Hambourger, with the center, said Gillard's case is the
tenth death penalty case in Wake County since 2008.
In each of those cases, the juries rejected the death penalty.
Hambourger represented murderer Nathan Holden in 2017 in a Wake County capital
case.
While death penalty cases seem rare in Wake County, Hambourger said they are
common with the county -- roughly 1 capital case tried per year.
However, she said most of the state is abandoning the death penalty.
"If you compare the rate of capital trials in Wake County to what other
counties are doing, it's way outsized," Hambourger said. "They are doing
capital trials at a much higher rate than other counties. And that's not
because they're bigger. I mean if you compare it to Mecklenburg, which of
course is a larger county and I would guess has more murders, certainly not
less murders, than Wake County. Mecklenburg hasn't had a capital trial in
years. But Wake County is still insisting on having capital trials on a regular
basis."
District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said she can't comment because the Gillard
trial is ongoing.
(source: ABC News)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
The future of capital punishment in South Carolina
South Carolina law makers are talking about where the state stands on the death
penalty.
The state has not executed anyone since 2011, in part, because its supply of
lethal injection has expired, and prison officials have been unable to buy
more.
There are 4 people sitting on death row from Horry and Georgetown counties.
Some law makers are talking about ways to continue carrying out executions, and
some want to end it all together, but as of right now no one is dying on death
row.
Solicitor Jimmy Richardson said Horry County was the last to try a death
penalty case in the state, and was set to try the next one. That's until
Mckinley Daniels accepted a guilty plea last month for the 2015 Sunhouse
robberies and murders. Richardson said they're not like most circuits who've
done away with carrying it out.
"It's not a quick turn around and a lot can happen in 14 years, so we didn't
know what that would be but figured there would be a change in legislation,"
said Richardson.
Representative Eddie Tallon proposed a "shield law" that will give
pharmaceutical companies anonymity to sell the state the drugs necessary for
lethal injection.
The state senate recently passed a bill switching the main way executions are
preformed from lethal injection to electrocution. The proposed bill allows
inmates to choose lethal injection if the drugs are available. It also allows
for the firing squad.
Richardson has personally worked 2 death penalty cases, Stephen Stanko and
Luzenski Cottrell. Both men still sit on death row.
"My conscience is clear. I wouldn't go that route unless I thought it was the
worst of the worst and everything else has been tried and we can't turn the
likes of you back loose on society," said Richardson.
Senator Gerald Malloy, of Darlington, proposed abolishing the death penalty. He
said he filed that to start a discussion.
"There were times that I was totally against it because I think it's
disproportionate against minorities and poor people, and I've seen some heinous
cases that are just repulsive," said Sen. Malloy.
The South Carolina Department of Corrections didn't allow News 13 inside death
row or talk to inmates, but we found someone who was allowed inside. Steve
Schonveld was a volunteer on death row in 2017.
"I found the people behind the bars are not what you see on tv," said
Schonveld.
He said they're human beings craving human interaction, in solitary confinement
for 23 hours a day.
Schonveld said they would have normal conversations, "talking about sports,
talking about family, talking about what I do for a living."
"Should we be killing them? It's a struggle with my moral compass and actually
going back there and talking to them made it even more of a struggle," said
Schonveld.
One inmate he spent time talking to was Stephen Stanko. In 2005, Stanko killed
his girlfriend Laura Ling and raped her teenage daughter in Murrells Inlet. He
then went to Conway and killed his friend and business partner Henry Turner.
"He would let me ask him pretty much anything I wanted to I felt like he was
being honest with me. He showed some remorse which I'd like to see," said
Schonveld.
News 13 asked if Stanko believed in the death penalty.
"He said he was for it in some situations, and against it in some situations,"
said Schonveld.
News 13 also asked how Stanko felt about his situation.
"He wouldn't give me an answer. He wouldn't give me an answer," said Schonveld.
Schonveld said he doesn't believe the death penalty deters crime, but the
McGarry's do. Their son Joe McGarry was a police officer killed in the line of
duty in 2002.
"I've gone through unfathomable pain, emotional pain, depression. My life was
really over December 29th," said Anita McGarry, Joe McGarry's wife.
McGarry and other officers were investigating a suspicious person when McGarry
was shot in the head. Luzenski Cottrell was convicted of his murder, and sits
on death row.
"I just want to stay alive long enough to see him take his last breath," said
Joe McGarry, Sr.
News 13 asked, "Do you think that will help bring you closure?"
Joe McGarry Sr. said, "For me it will."
"The only thing that's going to bring me closure is when I die and go to heaven
and see Joey," said Anita McGarry.
(source: WBTW news)
GEORGIA:
The Stench of Prejudice in Keith Tharpe’s Death Sentence----A juror in Mr.
Tharpe’s case signed an affidavit stating that he was a “nigger,” wondering “if
black people even have souls.”
Several years after Keith Tharpe was sentenced to death for murder in 1991, a
juror in his case signed an affidavit stating that there are 2 types of black
people: good ones and “niggers.” The juror, who was white, put the defendant in
the latter category and said that he wondered “if black people even have
souls.”
Mr. Tharpe sits on death row in Georgia. Although his lawyers assert that his
punishment was tainted by juror racism, a state court ruled against Mr. Tharpe
on that issue 2 decades ago.
Since then, state and federal courts have put procedural obstacles in front of
his efforts to appeal that ruling. Mr. Tharpe seemed to be doomed when the
Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit rebuffed him. He was set to be executed
in September 2017.
But the Supreme Court issued a last-minute stay, shaken by the juror’s
disturbing affidavit which, in the court’s words, presented “a strong factual
basis that Tharpe’s race affected [the juror’s] vote for a death verdict.”
When the Supreme Court returned the case to the 11th Circuit, it again refused
to examine the racial bias claim, offering new procedural impediments. As soon
as March 1, the Supreme Court may decide whether it will review Mr. Tharpe’s
case.
What is going on here?
The struggle over Mr. Tharpe’s fate has to do, in part, with a continuing
dispute over whether the legal system should allow jury verdicts to be
impeached by the post-verdict testimony of jurors.
For a long time, federal and state courts almost always prohibited jurors from
testifying about deliberations. In 2015, for example, after a sex crime
conviction, the Colorado Supreme Court refused to consider testimony from 2
jurors who came forward to report that a fellow juror had expressed anti-Latino
bias against the defendant and his alibi witnesses.
In an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court reversed the
Colorado court, ruling that, amid serious allegations of racial juror bias, a
reviewing court must be able to consider evidence from jurors, even if doing so
opens jury deliberations to more scrutiny than otherwise allowed.
The court acknowledged the importance of supporting the finality of verdicts,
protecting candor and confidentiality within the jury room and discouraging
efforts to flip jurors beset by regrets. But it rightly concluded that even
more imperative is eradicating racial discrimination from the criminal justice
system. Racial bias, the court declared, “implicates unique historical,
constitutional and institutional concerns” — a sentiment suggesting that even
among some conservative jurists there exists a newly energized desire to
rectify the racism that remains all too evident in our administration of
criminal justice.
More generally, the struggle over Mr. Tharpe’s case has to do with the
circumstances, if any, under which a government ought to be allowed to execute
someone.
One camp is relatively tolerant of contaminations, like racism, that might have
affected sentencing. In an unpublished memorandum to his colleagues, Justice
Antonin Scalia rebuffed a challenge to capital punishment, despite
acknowledging that “the unconscious operation of irrational sympathies and
antipathies, including racial, upon jury decisions and (hence) prosecutorial
decisions is real … and ineradicable.” The other camp is more demanding,
recognizing the need for exacting scrutiny when it comes to assessing the
validity of the most extreme form of governmental power: imposition of capital
punishment.
Some people in this camp oppose capital punishment altogether. They believe
that we cannot trust the criminal justice system to impose a penalty as
irrevocable as death. The Supreme Court of Washington State recently
invalidated capital punishment because the death penalty there “is imposed in
an arbitrary and racially biased manner.” Others in this camp tolerate the
death penalty, but only if there is no substantial whiff of prejudice.
The impending execution of Keith Tharpe cannot pass that test. There is the
stench of prejudice, not just a whiff. In this case, remember, 1 of the 12
people who voted for death voluntarily admitted that he thought of Mr. Tharpe
as a “nigger” and “wondered if black people have souls.” Under these
circumstances an execution would certainly be a miscarriage of justice. The
Supreme Court must intervene out of an elemental embrace of due process.
(source: Randall Kennedy is a law professor at Harvard and the author of
“Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word.”----New York Times
ALABAMA:
https://action.aclu.org/petition/save-rocky-myers (source: ACLU)
OHIO:
Lawson pleads guilty; could be sentenced to death
A man admitted in a Lawrence County court Thursday to aggressively murdering 4
family members in 2017 and is now fighting to avoid being sentenced to the
death penalty.
Arron L. Lawson, 25, pleaded guilty to Thursday morning in Lawrence County
Common Pleas court to murdering four people and injuring a fifth, who ranged in
age from 8 to 50, in October 2017 at their Pedro, Ohio, home.
With the plea, Lawrence County Prosecutor Brigham Anderson will still have to
prove the offenses were pre-planned and aggravated and that Lawson deserves the
death penalty.
Anderson is set to begin presenting evidence at 12:45 p.m. Thursday to prove
the aggravated factors after Lawson’s plea.
Last week, after the completion of 2 weeks of jury selection, Lawson waived his
right to jury trial and instead opted to have his case heard by a panel of 3
Ohio judges. The waiver was against the advice of his attorney, Kirk McVay.
The trial resumed Thursday, Feb. 21, after the Ohio state Supreme Court
assigned former judges Alan Corbin, Clermont County, and Janet Burnside,
Cuyahoga County, to join Lawrence County Common Pleas Judge Andy Ballard on the
panel.
Lawson’s alleged victims — Stacey Holston, 24; her son, Devin Holston, 8;
Stacey's mother and Lawson’s aunt, Tammie L. McGuire, 43; and McGuire's
husband, Donald McGuire, 50 — were shot to death Oct. 11, 2017, at the
Holstons' home.
Todd Holston, Stacey Holston's husband, also was stabbed with a pocketknife
inside the family's trailer during the attack, but survived his injuries.
Other charges to which Lawson admitted his guilt include aggravated burglary,
attempted murder and felonious assault of Todd Holston, the rape of Stacey
Holston, abuse of a corpse, kidnapping of Devin Holston, tampering with
evidence, theft of a motor vehicle and failure to comply with the order or
signal of a police officer.
(source: herald-dispatch.com)
*******************
5 men from Montgomery County are on Ohio’s Death Row. Here’s what they did
Ohio’s Death Row consists of 137 people sentenced to die and includes 5 men
from Montgomery County.
On Tuesday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said the state will not execute anyone until
it creates a lethal injection protocol that can withstand court challenges.
“Ohio is not going to execute someone under my watch when a federal judge has
found it to be cruel and unusual punishment,” DeWine said, referencing Dayton
District Court Magistrate Michael Merz.
There are no current death penalty cases pending in Montgomery County,
according to the prosecutor’s office.
The last inmate from Montgomery County to be executed was Marvallous Keene, who
was convicted of killing 6 people from Dec. 24-26 1992. Keene was executed July
21, 2009.
These men were convicted and sentenced to death in Montgomery County:
Samuel Moreland
In 1985, Samuel Moreland killed 5 people — Glenna Green, 46; her daughter Lana
Green, 23; and 3 grandchildren, Daytrin Talbott, 7; Datwan Talbott, 6; and
Voilana Green, 6.
Per an 11-year-old’s testimony, Moreland had shot his grandmother as she threw
a bottle at Moreland.
Moreland, who has always said he was innocent, last year won the right for
additional DNA testing, which has been held up.
Davel V. “Tony” Chinn
Davel V. “Tony” Chinn was found guilty of the 1989 shooting death of Brian
Jones, 21.
Chinn and a co-defendant robbed 2 men of their money and stole Jones’ car from
a downtown parking garage.
The co-defendant said Chinn shot Jones in Jefferson Twp. because Jones could
have identified him and didn’t have much money, court documents said.
Antonio S. Franklin
Antonio S. Franklin was convicted for the 1997 killings of his uncle and
grandparents.
Prosecutors said that Anthony Franklin, 38, Ivory Franklin, 76, and Ophelia
Franklin, 71, were each bludgeoned with a baseball bat and that Mrs. Franklin
also was shot in the head.
Investigators said items were taken from the grandparents and their home and
then set on fire.
Larry Gapen
Larry Gapen was convicted of using a wood-splitting maul to fatally beat his
ex-wife Martha Madewell, her companion Nathan Marshall and her 13-year-old
daughter Jesica Young to death in 2000.
In 2014, Gapen tried to get a new trial based on several claims, including
juror misconduct.
His attorney at the time said: “We’re disturbed by evidence this court was
unaware of and we’re here to bring it to the court’s attention.”
Duane A. Short
Duane A. Short was convicted of using a shotgun to kill his estranged wife,
Rhonda Short, 31, and Donnie Ray Sweeney, 32, in 2004.
The Trenton man admitted at trial that after searching for his wife for many
days, he bought a shotgun and sawed off its barrel.
He said he then took the weapon to his wife’s residence in Huber Heights, where
he shot and killed her and Sweeney.
(source: Dayton Daily News)
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