June 21
TEXAS:
Tarrant County man faces death penalty, accused of killing ex-girlfriend and
her young daughter
Prosecutors will seek the death penalty against a Euless man accused in the
2018 strangulation of his ex-girlfriend and her 10-year-old daughter in an east
Fort Worth apartment.
Paige Terrell Lawyer, 39, is charged with capital murder in the killing of
O’Tishae Womack and her daughter Kamyria Womack on April 6, 2018.
Womack’s twin 4-year-old sons had been in the apartment at the time of the
slayings, but they were not injured, according to an arrest warrant.
Prosecutors filed their intention to seek a death sentence against Lawyer a few
weeks ago in Criminal District Court No. 396.
The last case on which local prosecutors sought the death penalty was in
October 2017 against Miguel Hernandez, who was arrested naked in the bed of his
pickup truck and charged in the July 27, 2014, slaying of James Bowling.
Bowling, 56, was strangled after what police said was a violent fight during a
burglary attempt. A Tarrant County jury found Hernandez guilty, but sentenced
him to life without parole.
Lawyer was arrested April 8, 2018, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Suspect texted threats to victim
According to the arrest warrant obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in
2018, O’Tishae Womack and her sister had taken a walk in a park together on
April 5, 2018.
During their walk, the sister told police, Lawyer passed them several times, as
if checking up on them. He also kept calling and texting O’Tishae Womack.
Among the texts that Womack would receive that day from Lawyer was one that
said, “BEFORE I LEAVE I WILL KILL YOU.”
Her sister said Womack called later that same day, asking her sister to please
pick up her children from school because Lawyer was planning to come over to
get some stuff from the apartment.
The sister told investigators that Womack later came to her house to pick up
the kids, saying she’d return later that evening because Lawyer was still at
her apartment.
She never came back, the sister told police, according to the warrant.
Womack’s mother is believed to have been the last one to talk to her.
The mother told investigators she had gotten a call from her daughter about
10:30 p.m. on April 5, 2018, in which Womack said she was going to come over
because Lawyer was refusing to leave her apartment.
“This was the last time that anyone can confirm that O’Tishae Womack was
alive,” according to the warrant.
The bodies of Womack and her daughter were found the next day an an apartment
in the 200 block of Shady Lane Drive.
Lawyer remained in the Tarrant Jail on Thursday in lieu of $500,000 bail on the
capital murder charge. He also was being held on 2 Fort Worth assault charges
and bail was $1 million.
Tarrant County death penalty cases
The last time the death penalty was given by a Tarrant County jury was against
Amos Wells in 2016.
Wells was convicted on Nov. 3, 2016, of capital murder in the deaths of his
pregnant girlfriend Chanice Reed, 22; her mother, Annette Reed, 39; and Chanice
Reed’s 10-year-old brother, Eddie McCuin, on July 1, 2013.
Rodolfo Arellano was selected to face the death penalty for capital murder in a
case where he abducted his estranged wife in April 2016, tied a 119-pound chunk
of concrete on her and tossed her off the Lake Worth bridge to drown.
But Arellano pleaded guilty in January and received a sentence of life without
parole.
There are 8 pending defendants who are facing the death penalty in Tarrant
County.
(source: star-telegram.com)
GEORGIA----execution
Georgia inmate is the 1,500th person executed in the US since the death penalty
was reinstated
A Georgia inmate convicted in the killing of man who gave him a ride in 1997
died by lethal injection Thursday, the state's Department of Corrections said.
Marion Wilson Jr. is the 1,500th person to be executed in the United States
since the return of the death penalty in 1976, according to the Death Penalty
Information Center.
His execution was carried at 9:52 p.m. ET at the Georgia Diagnostic and
Classification Prison in Jackson, Georgia after the US Supreme Court denied a
stay of execution.
Wilson was sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of Donovan Corey Parks in
southeast Atlanta. Parks was found dead on a residential street after he gave
Wilson and another man a ride from a Walmart store. Parks had gone to the store
to buy cat food and accepted to give them a ride when they approached him in
the parking lot, authorities said.
Wilson was been convicted in Baldwin County, Georgia of malice murder, felony
murder, armed robbery, hijacking a motor vehicle, possession of a firearm
during the commission of a crime and possession of a sawed-off shotgun,
according to the state's office of the attorney general.
The State Board of Pardons and Paroles met to consider clemency for Wilson on
Wednesday but ultimately denied his request, officials said.
There are 48 inmates on Georgia's death row.
(source: CNN)
***********************
After execution, victim’s brother hopes to finally find peace
Christopher Parks came here to watch a man die.
He sat on a pew Thursday night in the small death house at the Georgia
Diagnostic and Classification Prison. He watched as state workers gave Marion
Wilson, 42, a fatal dose of pentobarbital. The inmate was on a gurney, IV lines
releasing the drug into his veins, slowing his breath.
The execution was punishment for the 1996 murder of Parks’ brother. Donovan
Parks, 24, was an off-duty corrections officer in Milledgeville, studying to
become an inmate counselor, when a sawed-off shotgun blast to his head ended it
all.
A flurry of last-minute appeals couldn’t save Wilson.
As death drew near, his 23-year-old daughter, Tykecia, was huddled outside with
a group of anti-death penalty protesters. She began screaming, “I want my
daddy, I want my daddy back!” A man picked her up and carried her away as she
wailed and wailed.
In the death house, Wilson released his final words.
“I ain’t never took a life in my life,” he said, suggesting his co-defendant
had pulled the trigger, according to the Associated Press.
Wilson’s words, of course, meant basically nothing to Christopher Parks.
Parks, who was 18 in 1996 and now works in cyber security for the U.S.
government, came here not caring what Wilson had to say. He came here, he said,
because seeing Wilson dead was the best chance for him and his family to begin
recovering after 23 years without Donovan.
Death penalty abolitionists often speak of how difficult years of delays are
for victims’ families. Parks has heard those arguments, as well as arguments
that the state shouldn’t kill even people who’ve done unspeakable things.
Opponents also call it wrong to allow killers’ families to suffer because of
what the killers have done.
But Parks said he figures the opponents haven’t been through the type of
torment his family has.
His life is worse in so many ways without Donovan — the writer, the artist, the
kindhearted soul who seemed to mint grace.
Surely, the brother thought, life without Wilson breathing would be better.
The brothers
When Christopher Parks was little, he had nightmares.
He asked his brother if he could sleep in the bed with him. Donovan — 6 years
older, the gentle type — told Christopher to climb into the twin bed.
Christopher instantly felt safe, that night and many others, because of
Donovan.
Donovan helped Christopher believe in the goodness of people.
But Christopher still had nightmares. On March 27, 1996, he woke up from one
about something happening to Donovan.
Shaken, he walked into the den and found Donovan stretched out on the couch.
“Donovan,” Christopher recalls saying, “I’m so glad to see you because I
dreamed someone murdered you.”
“I’m fine,” Donovan reassured calmly.
Hours later Donovan really was dead.
The gang, the helper
As Wilson’s attorneys tried to halt the execution, they asked the Board of
Pardons and Paroles to consider the inmate’s childhood. The lawyers said myriad
traumas had left Wilson with neurological damage hampering his decision-making
skills.
His mother Charlene Cox, who declined to comment but asked the parole board for
mercy, used drugs and drank in the 4 or 5 months before she realized she was
pregnant, the clemency petition said. She took little Marion around South
Georgia as she bounced between toxic and abusive boyfriends, who made Marion
live in filth. The boy often ran away just to find food.
Eventually he roamed the streets and joined the Folk Nation gang. In 1996, he
had a baby girl, Tykecia.
Weeks later, on March 28, 1996, Donovan Parks went to Walmart to buy cat food
after Bible study. Wilson was at the store with fellow Folk member Robert
Butts. Butts knew Parks because they’d worked together at Burger King.
Butts said they needed a ride. Parks said OK.
As Parks drove, Butts pulled a sawed-off shotgun from inside the sleeve of his
black Colorado Rockies jacket. Someone — Wilson claimed Butts, prosecutors
claimed Wilson — pulled Parks’ tie and forced him out of the car. As Wilson
would later tell it, he only thought Butts was going to rob Parks.
Someone — it still isn’t clear who — fired one shot into Parks’ head.
The motive to kill, prosecutors said, was elevated status in the gang.
After the men drove away in the Acura, Parks’ father, Freddie, pulled up. His
girlfriend’s house happened to be nearby. The pellets in the shot had so badly
mangled Donovan Parks’ face, the father didn’t recognize the son.
‘I haven’t been the best’
Christopher Parks has been to the death chamber before.
It was in May 2018. He sat with his wife, Crystal, and saw Butts on the gurney,
IV lines in his veins, eyes closed.
Butts did not apologize. His last words were a mumble: “It burns, man.” It
looked peaceful to Parks. That made him angry.
“I think about how my brother was snatched from his car by his necktie, and his
necktie was so tight he probably couldn’t breathe or speak to beg for his life.
I think about how he was laid down on the cold asphalt and he was murdered —
for being nice,” Parks said with contempt. “What I saw in that execution was
humane. It was a man being put to sleep as if he were getting a root canal.”
It bothered Parks that Butts didn’t apologize. But he eventually decided it
didn’t matter, and it wouldn’t matter if Wilson did. Words, Parks said, can’t
help.
In the past year, knowledge that Butts is dead hasn’t helped Parks either, but
he said that’s only because he wanted Wilson dead too.
The murder hurts Parks, a father of four, every day. It has made him less of a
believer in the goodness of the people. It has made him angrier, sadder and
more cynical.
He admits: “I haven’t been the best son I could’ve been. I haven’t been the
best father I could’ve been. I haven’t been the best husband I could’ve been.”
He wants to change.
‘Real justice’
As Parks prepared for Wilson’s execution, he grew angry again.
He thought about how much the government had spent to keep Wilson alive and
fighting. He thought about seeing his brother in the hospital. His head was
wrapped in a bandage to hold in his brains, and his face seemed frozen in the
last expression it held in life: he looked terrified, the brother thought.
Parks wishes he could go just one day without seeing that image in his mind.
But Parks liked to imagine the execution, one part in particular.
The “real justice,” he said, would come right before Wilson entered the death
chamber, knowing he would die. It’s a blessing for most people not to know when
they’ll die, Parks said, but he liked that Wilson would be deprived of that
blessing because Wilson and Butts took it from his brother.
Once that moment passed for Wilson, the 42-year-old was on the gurney, not
apologizing, just like Butts. Tykecia Wilson was somewhere hurting, wishing her
dad didn’t have to go, wondering why the Parks, Butts and Wilson families all
had to know death like this.
The last breath came at 9:52 p.m.
Parks had decided many years ago that his recovery from his brother’s death
required the deaths of the men responsible for his brother’s death. Now he had
his wish.
He left the death house for the last time, hoping to heal.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
FLORIDA:
Guilty on all counts in Jupiter triple murder trial; jurors to weigh death
penalty
Guilty of 3 counts of 1st-degree murder, and 1 of attempted murder — the 1st
man to go on trial for the Jupiter Super Bowl Sunday triple murder now faces
the prospect of the death penalty.
Testimony went on for most of 7 days, but it took jurors just over 2 hours
Thursday to find Christopher Vasata guilty.
Vasata showed no emotion as the verdicts were read.
Sighs of relief could be heard among family members of the victims. After the
hearing ended, they shared hugs and tears with each other, and with prosecutors
and the case’s lead detective.
On the night of Super Bowl Sunday 2 years ago, Vasata and at least 1 other
masked gunman burst into a backyard, killing Brandi El Salhy, Kelli Doherty and
Sean Henry.Each died of multiple gunshot wounds. Henry was shot 17 times.
During closing arguments, prosecutors said there was no denying the
premeditation.
“There’s one purpose, one purpose and one purpose only — to kill, brutally,”
said prosecutor Jill Richstone, holding the AK-assault-style rifle used in the
crime. “And guess who’s DNA is on it? Remember she said she swabbed here and
here, where you’re going to hold it. Chris Vasata."
The defense, in its final presentation to jurors, maintained the State had
failed to prove Vasata’s intent.
“It is not enough to simply prove that Mr. Vasata was there,” Assistant Public
Defender Elizabeth Ramsey said. “It is not enough to say his DNA is present.”
Vasata’s legal team had pointed to another triggerman who was never arrested.
“Luke Kutsukos was the shooter, he was there,” Ramsey said. “He is the
individual that had the greatest motivation for committing this crime.”
The defense referred to Kutsukos as a drug dealer rival of party host Charles
Vorpagel, who survived the attack, and victim Sean Henry.
Vorpagel testified during the trial he thought one of the gunmen that night was
Kutsukos, and that he Henry earlier considered killing Kutsukos over an alleged
theft from a friend.
And the defense contended Vasata, who was also shot in the rear, may have been
trying to mediate the feud.
Prosecutors dismissed such a notion.
“If you look at all the items here that we know were part of the crime, this is
not a mediation starter kit, this is a murder starter kit right here” said
prosecutor Chrichet Mixon, pointing to a table bearing the firearms used in the
killings.
With the 1st-degree murder conviction, there will now be a 2nd, penalty phase
of the trial. That’s when the jury will consider imposing the death penalty,
which prosecutors are seeking.
Each side will present evidence why Vasata should or should not receive death
as his sentence.
Judge Joseph Marx told the 12 jurors, as well as the 2 alternates, to return
Wednesday. The penalty phase proceedings are expected to take 2 days.
The 2nd man who’s been charged in the triple murder, Marcus Steward, will be
tried later. No date has been set.
(source: CBS News)
***********************
Florida sheriff's deputy accused of soliciting 9-year-old girl----Lawyers want
to delay new sentencing trial for man convicted of killing girl
Lawyers will ask a judge Thursday for more time to prepare a new sentencing
trial for a Florida man on death row for kidnapping, raping and killing
11-year-old Carlie Brucia.
In April 2018, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new hearing for Joseph Smith
because the jury that recommended the death sentence wasn't unanimous. Death
sentences in Florida now require a unanimous vote.
Smith, who has been on death row for more than a decade, appealed his
conviction last year under the state's updated death penalty law.
The 2004 case received national publicity after a Sarasota car wash
surveillance camera captured images of Smith grabbing Carlie's arm and leading
her away.
Smith was sentenced to death in 2006.
(source: WTSP news)
MISSISSIPPI:
Supreme Court rules for black death row inmate over prosecutor's racial
bias----The court sent the case back to Mississippi for further proceedings.
The Supreme Court on Friday reversed the conviction of a Mississippi death row
inmate who said the state prosecutor repeatedly kicked black people off the
jury each of the s6 times he was tried for the same murders.
The court sent the case back to the state for further proceedings. Justice
Brett Kavanaugh authored the 7-2 majority opinion, which was joined by Chief
Justice John Roberts, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel
Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
The ruling was a victory for Curtis Flowers, who is black. He was tried 6 times
for the 1996 murder of 4 furniture store employees in Winona, Mississippi,
where he had recently worked. Of the first 5 trials, one conviction was thrown
out over questions about evidence and 2 resulted in mistrials.
But in the other 2 trials, state courts found that the prosecutor in the case,
Doug Evans, wrongly excluded potential jurors on the basis of their race. In
the case before the Supreme Court involving his 6th and most recent trial,
Flowers again accused the prosecutor of impermissibly removing blacks from the
jury.
When a jury is being selected, lawyers for each side are allowed to exclude a
certain number of jurors for potential bias or other cause. But they are also
allowed to make peremptory strikes, which require no explanation.
3 decades ago, the Supreme Court said prosecutors cannot use those strikes to
remove jurors solely because of their race. In rulings since then, the court
has explained how judges are to evaluate whether race was an improper factor in
jury selection.
Lawyers for Flowers, who could face a 7th trial, told the justices that Evans
has a history of pushing blacks off juries. In his opinion Friday, Kavanaugh
wrote of Flowers' case: "The numbers speak loudly. Over the course of the first
4 trials, there were 36 black prospective jurors against whom the State could
have exercised a peremptory strike. The State tried to strike all 36."
A key issue for the justices was how far back courts should go in examining a
prosecutor's record in deciding whether juror exclusions in a specific case
were motivated by racial bias. Sheri Lynn Johnson, the lawyer for Flowers, said
there is no limitation on the history.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented. Thomas asked a few
questions when the case was argued in March, breaking his 3-year courtroom
silence. He wanted to know if the defense lawyers used any peremptory
challenges to exclude potential jurors.
Told that they did, Thomas asked, "And what was the race of the jurors struck
there?" The answer: only whites.
(source: NBC News)
*******************
Supreme Court Strikes Down Conviction Of Mississippi Man On Death Row For 22
Years
The Supreme Court has struck down the conviction of an African American
death-row inmate who was prosecuted 6 times for the same crime and by the same
prosecutor, a man with a history of racial bias in jury selection.
Writing for the court's 7-2 majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, "The
numbers speak loudly. Over the course of the first 4 trials, there were 36
black prospective jurors against whom the State could have exercised a
peremptory strike. The State tried to strike all 36."
Curtis Flowers has spent 22 years on death row in Mississippi. In his cases,
the same prosecutor struck 41 of 42 black jurors.
Justice Clarence Thomas, the court's only black justice, had the minority
opinion, which was joined in part by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
"The majority's opinion is so manifestly incorrect that I must proceed to the
merits," Thomas wrote. "Flowers presented no evidence whatsoever of purposeful
race discrimination by the State in selecting the jury during the trial below."
Thomas added, ""If the Court's opinion today has a redeeming quality, it is
this: The State is perfectly free to convict Curtis Flowers again. Otherwise,
the opinion distorts our legal standards, ignores the record, and reflects
utter disrespect for the careful analysis of the Mississippi courts. Any
competent prosecutor would have exercised the same strikes as the State did in
this trial. And although the Court's opinion might boost its self-esteem, it
also needlessly prolongs the suffering of four victims' families. I
respectfully dissent."
For decades the Supreme Court has wrestled with the question of racial
discrimination in jury selection, setting down its most rigorous rules in 1986.
But policing the way those rules are applied by the lower court has proved
problematic, and the court has repeatedly struck down convictions by all-white,
or close to all-white juries.
Flowers' case is anomalous only because of the number of times he was tried by
the same prosecutor and the prosecutor's repeated misconduct.
Doug Evans, a district attorney in Winona, Miss., prosecuted Flowers, a black
man who prior to this case had no criminal record, 6 times.
During that time the state Supreme Court t3 times threw out his murder
conviction for prosecutorial misconduct.
The misconduct was not some technicality. It ranged from misleading the jury
about evidence that did not exist to striking prospective jurors based on race.
In the 4th and 5th trials the prosecutor ran out of strikes, meaning he had
used up the limited number of prospective jurors he could eliminate from the
jury for no reason. As a result, two black jurors were seated, and the juries
deadlocked.
But in the 6th trial, with 1 black juror, the jury convicted, and the
Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the conviction, ruling that this time there
had not been any racial discrimination in jury selection.
Now, it's up to the state of Mississippi whether it will try him again for a
7th time.
(source: npr.org)
LOUISIANA:
D.A. wants death penalty for man accuse of bludgeoning woman, children with
hammer
Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick Jr. today announced prosecutors
will seek the death penalty for Terrance Leonard. A grand jury indicted Leonard
on 4 counts of 1st degree murder and 1 count of attempted 1st degree murder for
the March 6 deaths of Kristina Riley, 2 of her children, and her niece. Leonard
is also accused of attacking another of Riley's children, who survived the
attack.
"After consulting with my staff and receiving input from the victim's families,
I have decided that my office will seek the death penalty," said Connick.
Authorities say Leonard admitted attacking the children and niece of Riley,
with a hammer as they slept. According to authorities, Leonard hid the bodies
of the 2 children he killed in the initial attack in a closet so as not to
arouse his girlfriend's suspicion when she returned home early in the morning
of March 6. Detectives say when Kristina Riley arrived, Leonard attacked and
killed her.
Sheriff Joe Lopinto described the crime scene that day as shocking and
gruesome.
"This person should never see the light of day and the first chance that he
gets to be off of this earth, I'm okay with that," the sheriff said.
(source: radio.com)
KENTUCKY:
Kentucky prosecutor drops death penalty, saying witness lied
A death penalty case has unraveled in Kentucky, where a prosecutor said he
can't go forward because a key witness can't be truthful at trial.
Hardin County prosecutor Shane Young said no physical evidence shows Aaron
Pearson was complicit in the murder of 71-year-old Arnold Norman Hall.
Young said testimony from another suspect, Eloysia James-Venerable, was key to
a conviction. She was given a plea deal limiting her time to at least 20 years
if she would tell the truth.
But the prosecutor said she's proven untruthful, and he can't pursue capital
punishment if he's "not 100% certain" about her testimony.
The News-Enterprise reports that Pearson accepted a plea deal of 15 years on
lesser charges. Young said he'll now pursue a life sentence for his former key
witness.
(source: Associated Press)
TENNESSEE:
Death penalty possible for Jefferson County man, if convicted in pedestrian
deaths
The man police say killed random pedestrians by intentionally driving into them
appeared in court Thursday for the 1st time since the tragedy.
William David Phillips is charged with 3 1st degree murder charges and an
attempted 1st degree murder charge. 2 murder charges stem from the deaths of
Sierra Cahoon and her 2-year-old son, Nolan. The 3rd charge was filed once
investigators learned Cahoon was pregnant.
The attempted murder is for Tillman Gunter, who told police he was hit on East
Main Street. Gunter was transported to the hospital for his injuries. Another
victim, an employee inside the building police say Phillips drove into, was
injured. Charges have not been filed for that victim at this point.
District Attorney General Jimmy Dunn, who serves Tennessee’s 4th judicial
district, is prepared to take on the case. He couldn’t go into specifics on the
case, but he did shed some light, broadly, into 1st-degree murder charges.
Because an affidavit shows Phillips claims to hear voices, a legal expert told
us a defense attorney could argue against 1st-degree murder and push for a
lower-level charge, including manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, or
voluntary manslaughter.
For a 1st-degree murder conviction, Dunn will have to prove premeditation and
intention to a jury. If Phillips were to be convicted, his sentencing options
would include the death penalty, life in prison without the possibility of
parole or life in prison.
“My mind is not been made up yet, but we’ll look at all the issues. We look at
all of the statutes and determine then what we are going to do,” Dunn said.
“There’s good and bad things about whatever the penalties are. That’s something
that weighs very heavily on any prosecutor’s mind, as to what is the proper way
to handle a particular case. It takes a lot of thought, It takes a lot of
research, and for me, it takes a lot of prayer.”
Phillips’ next court appearance is a bond hearing. It is set for next Tuesday.
(source: WATE news)
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