[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, VA., UTAH, FLA.
March 31 TEXASfemale faces death sentence Jury finds former Lufkin nurse guilty of capital murder An Angelina County jury has found a former Lufkin nurse guilty of capital murder in connection to the deaths of 5 patients. She now faces no better than life in prison for the crime and could be put to death. Kimberly Clark Saenz, 38, of Pollok, was charged with capital murder and 5 counts of aggravated assault. She was found guilty of injecting bleach into the bloodstream of kidney dialysis patients. The jury also found her guilty of 3 counts of aggravated assault and not guilty on 2 other counts of aggravated assault. Sentencing testimony for Saenz will begin at 9 a.m. Monday. She faces the death penalty for the crime and no less than life in prison without parole. The jury found Saenz not guilty of counts 2 and 4, which were aggravated assault charges involving Carolyn Risinger and Graciela Castenada. She was found guilty of counts 1, 3 and 5, which involved Marva Rhone, Debra Oates and Marie Bradley. Count 6 was the capital murder charge, meaning the jury believed Saenz was guilty of killing at least 2 of the following: Clara Strange, Thelma Metcalf, Garlin Kelley, Cora Bryant and Opal Few. Starting around 4:50 p.m., officers at the courthouse began searching everyone going into the courtroom individually, before a verdict was read. The jury began deliberating the charges around 1 p.m. Thursday until 7 p.m. Jurors picked back up where they left off at 9 a.m. Friday. Jurors did not take a break for lunch. Saenz's defense team argued she was being used as a scapegoat for DaVita Dialysis Clinic to excuse the unusually high number of deaths in April 2008. Kim Saenz's guilty verdict is justice served for Jamina Agnew's family. You can't bring my grandma back no matter what, said Agnew. Her grandmother, Cora Bryant, was 1 of the 5 dialysis patients who died from bleach injections at the Lufkin DaVita Clinic in April 2008. I heard her 1st video testimony in court. The 1st week, I knew then that she was guilty, said Agnew. Thursday, jurors began deliberation, reflecting on 4 weeks of intense testimony. 14 hours later, a verdict reached as it appeared the sun would set on another day. When the 1st verdict was read, there was kind of a gasp that went through the courtroom. And, she dropped her head the 1st guilty. The 1st one they read was a guilty verdict, said Lufkin author, John FoxJohn. FoxJohn is penning a novel about the trial. He says the verdict answers many unsolved questions. 5 people lost their lives. From the beginning, I've said that somebody's guilty for these 5 people. I didn't know who, and I've told people all along that the 12 jurors was going to have to decide who was guilty. And, they did. And, we have to respect that, said FoxJohn. Saenz is now in the Angelina County Jail, waiting to learn her fate at sentencing. Agnew hopes Saenz will meet the same end as her grandmother. Because she killed my grandma, so I felt somebody need to do the same to her, said Agnew. The victims of this is who I really feel sorry for. I mean it was a lot of victims involved, said FoxJohn. Tears and sobs from victim's families filled the courtroom as the guilty verdict was announced. Only Kimberly Saenz can explain her tears as she was escorted into a sheriff's car. My heart goes out to Kimberly Saenz's family. I feel sorry for her, but we have relief now. We can go on and put this behind us, said Dezmond Scott, the grandson of victim Cora Bryant. (source: KTRE News) * Jury finds US nurse guilty of bleach murders A former Texas nurse accused of killing 5 of her patients and injuring 5 others by injecting bleach into their kidney dialysis tubing was found guilty on Friday of capital murder. Kimberly Clark Saenz, 38, was fired in April 2008 after a rash of illnesses and deaths at a Lufkin dialysis clinic run by health care giant DaVita Inc. She was charged a year later. Her trial began on March 5. Defence lawyers argued that Saenz was being targeted by the clinic's owner for faulty procedures at the facility, including improper water purification. They also suggested that officials at the clinic, about 200 kilometres northeast of Houston, fabricated evidence against her. Prosecutors described claims Saenz was being set up by her employer as absolutely ridiculous. The mother of 2 now faces life in prison or a death sentence. Prosecutors had said they would seek the death penalty if Saenz was convicted. Prosecutors had described Saenz as a depressed and disgruntled employee who complained about specific patients, including some of those who died or were injured. Her lawyers said she had no motive to kill any patients. 2 patients who were at the clinic on April 28, 2008 testified that they saw Saenz use syringes to draw bleach from a cleaning bucket and then inject it into the IV lines of 2 patients
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, ILL., CONN.
March 5 TEXASfemale to face death penalty Texas nurse faces death penalty for patient deaths Paramedics were making so many trips to a dialysis clinic in the East Texas city of Lufkin, a top fire department official wrote an anonymous letter to state health department inspectors pleading for somebody to take a look at the place. In the last 2 weeks, we have transported 16 patients, the mid-April 2008 note said. This seems a little abnormal and disturbing to my med crews. Could these calls be investigated by you? State medical surveyors within days showed up at the DaVita Dialysis clinic in the Texas Piney Woods community about 125 miles northeast of Houston. By then, EMS had been called as many as 30 times that month, including seven for cardiac problems, and made at least 19 runs. 4 people had died. Over the previous 15 months, there had been two calls, according to the Texas Department of Health Services. On Monday, Kimberly Saenz, a 38-year-old nurse who worked at the clinic, was set to face trial for 1 count of capital murder that accuses her of killing as many as 5 patients and 5 counts of aggravated assault for injuring 5 others. With the inspectors present April 28, 2008, two patients undergoing dialysis said they suddenly didn't feel well and two others reported separately they saw Saenz inject bleach into dialysis tubing used by fellow patients Marva Rhone and Carolyn Risinger. Saenz, who had worked there for 8 months, was sent home, police were summoned and the clinic was shut temporarily amid fears patients were in immediate jeopardy. The next day, Saenz was fired. A year later, an indictment listed sodium hypochlorite, commonly known as bleach, as her deadly weapon that killed the 5, including Rhone and Risinger. The disinfectant is a normal cleaning solution used at medical facilities like the dialysis clinic where Saenz worked as a licensed vocational nurse, an entry-level health care position. If jurors convict the mother of two in the trial expected to last a month, prosecutors have said they'll seek the death penalty. Jurors also could choose life without parole as punishment. She has pleaded not guilty and has been free on bail. A motive was unclear. She has no motive to kill anyone, one of her lawyers, T. Ryan Deaton, has said. All parties involved in the case were under a gag order from State District Judge Barry Bryan that blocks them from speaking about it outside the courtroom. Kimberly Saenz is a good nurse, a compassionate, a caring individual who assisted her patients and was well liked, Deaton said in a recent court motion. Saenz herself swore in an affidavit she had no previous felony record. But Angelina County District Attorney Clyde Herrington, in pretrial court documents, listed about a dozen instances of wrongdoing he planned to present to jurors, including allegations Saenz overused prescription drugs, had substance abuse and drug addiction problems, was fired at least 4 times from health care jobs, put false information on an employment application and sought a health care job in violation of terms of her bail. Bryan said last week he understood a plea bargain offer from prosecutors had been withdrawn after Saenz's lawyers rejected it. Federal investigators examined blood tubing, IV bags and syringes used by the patients who could spend 3 days a week tethered for hours to a machine that filters their blood - a job their kidneys can no longer do. A Food and Drug Administration report found some samples linked to some of the victims tested positive for bleach while others showed bleach may have been present at one time. According to policy at the clinic, bleach was used in various concentrations to clean blood from surfaces, chairs used by patients and internal parts of machinery. Then chemical reactive agents were used to confirm bleach residue had been removed and the cleaned areas were safe. Deaton has insisted his client is being made a scapegoat for mistakes and policy violations at the clinic. State health department investigators found dozens of adverse occurrences like incomplete and undated entries on logs required to document the disinfecting procedures. He also has questioned findings that bleach was the source of the problems. Chest pain and cardiac arrest are not specific for bleach infusion, he wrote in a motion. A review of the clinic's records by an inspector affiliated with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found Saenz was on duty for 84 % of the instances where patients suffered chest pain or cardiac arrest. Deaton downplayed the finding, saying one other clinic staffer was there for all of the instances and another for 89 %. About 3 dozen people worked at the dialysis center, which was shut for about 2 months before reopening. Joel Sprott, an attorney DaVita Inc., operator of the Lufkin clinic, said the Denver-based company
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS
Feb. 29 TEXASexecution Leader of 'Texas 7' prison-break gang put to death The leader of the fugitive gang known as the Texas 7 was executed Wednesday for killing a suburban Dallas police officer during a robbery 11 years ago after organizing and pulling off Texas' biggest prison break. George Rivas, 41, from El Paso, received lethal injection for gunning down Aubrey Hawkins, a 29-year-old Irving police officer who interrupted the gang's holdup of a sporting goods store on Christmas Eve in 2000. The seven inmates had fled a South Texas prison about two weeks earlier. The gang was caught in Colorado about a month after the officer's death. One committed suicide rather than be arrested. Rivas and 5 others with lengthy sentences who bolted with him were returned to Texas where they separately were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to die. Rivas became the 2nd of the group executed. I do apologize for everything that happened. Not because I'm here, but for closure in your hearts, Rivas said Wednesday evening in a statement intended for Hawkins' family. I really do believe you deserve that. The slain officer's relatives were absent, but 4 officers who worked with him and the district attorney who prosecuted the case attended on his family's behalf. They stood in the death chamber watching through a window just a few feet from Rivas. The inmate thanked his friends who were watching through another window and said he loved them. A Canadian woman whom Rivas recently married by proxy, also looked on. I am grateful for everything in my life, Rivas said. To my wife, I will be waiting for you. 10 minutes later, at 6:22 p.m., he was pronounced dead. More than 2 dozen police officers in uniforms stood quietly in a line outside the Huntsville prison during the execution, then walked in unison to stand behind the state criminal justice spokesman as he announced Rivas' death. Texas' parole board voted 7-0 this week to reject a clemency petition for Rivas. No 11th-hour appeals were made to try to head off the execution, the 2nd this year in the nation's most active death penalty state. Rivas and accomplices he handpicked for the escape broke out of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Connally Unit, about an hour south of San Antonio, on Dec. 13, 2000. They overpowered workers, stole their clothes, broke into the prison armory for weapons and drove off in a prison truck. They left behind an ominous note: You haven't heard the last of us yet. While out of prison, they supported themselves by committing robberies. Hawkins was shot 11 times and run over with a stolen SUV driven by Rivas as the gang held up a sporting goods store closing on the holiday eve. They drove off with loot that included $70,000 in cash, 44 firearms and ammunition for the guns. They were arrested a month later in Colorado, ending a six-week nationwide manhunt. One of the fugitives, Larry Harper, committed suicide as officers closed in. In 2008, accomplice Michael Rodriguez, 45, who at the time of the breakout had a life term for arranging the slaying of his wife, ordered his appeals dropped and was executed. The 4 others remain on death row awaiting the outcome of court appeals. Today is not about George Rivas, said Toby Shook, the former Dallas County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Rivas and the others for Hawkins' death. Today is about justice for Aubrey Hawkins and Aubrey's fellow police officers. Rivas planned the escape while serving 17 life sentences for aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery and another life sentence for burglary. One of his trial lawyers, Wayne Huff, has said Rivas picked accomplices for the breakout who probably were more dangerous than he was and failed to consider they might get caught doing robberies. When that cop pulled up, no one knew what to do, Huff said, calling the officer's slaying just a tragic situation. Rivas and 2 other members of the fugitive gang were arrested at a convenience store near a trailer park in Woodland Park, Colo. 2 others were in a motor home at the trailer park, where Harper shot himself to death. The last 2 were apprehended at a motel in Colorado Springs, Colo. The men had told the people who ran the RV park they were Christian missionaries from Texas, but a neighbor recognized them as the case was profiled on the America's Most Wanted TV show and called police. The 4 Texas 7 members still awaiting execution are Patrick Murphy Jr. 49; Joseph Garcia, 40; Randy Halprin, 34; and Donald Newbury, 49. Newbury was set for injection in early February but was spared, at least temporarily, by a U.S. Supreme Court order. Rivas becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 479th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982. Rivas becomes the 240th condemned inmate to be put to death since Rick Perry became
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, IND., ALA., PENN., CALIF.
Feb. 27 TEXASimpending execution Escapee who killed Irving officer in 2000 is ready to die In the months leading up to his 2000 escape from a South Texas prison, George Rivas had made up his mind that he would gain his freedom or die trying. Roughly 11 years later, the mastermind of one of the most daring prison escapes in Texas history is just days from execution. His attorney has told him that his appeals are exhausted and that a reprieve, unlikely for a cop killer, could come only through clemency. Yet the leader of the Texas Seven escapees said he is at comfort with the finality that will come Wednesday. In a way, it is his final escape. It's bittersweet, Rivas told the Star-Telegram. Bitter because I hurt for my family, for them. Sweet because it's almost over. Rivas organized the Dec. 13, 2000, escape of the 7 inmates, including a rapist, murderers and robbers, who fascinated and terrified the state and nation as they eluded authorities. On Christmas Eve, the convicts, dressed as security guards, robbed an Irving sporting goods store when police officer Aubrey Hawkins confronted them. Rivas has said he shot Hawkins repeatedly, including three times while Hawkins had his hands up. The 29-year-old officer died a few hours later. The murder spurred a nationwide manhunt for Rivas and his fellow escapees. Rivas says he feels guilt for his actions and doesn't back away from comments he made years ago that he deserves to die for his crime. But he says he knows that many refuse to believe the remorse of a man who has admittedly lied before to save himself. With the clock ticking down, he says he has little reason left to lie. Rivas is being kept at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, a mostly wooded area about 40 miles east of Huntsville, with hundreds of others on Death Row. Dressed in white prison garb, Rivas, 41, is heavier than he was 11 years ago. His hair is no longer dyed blond, he no longer wears glasses, and he is cleanshaven. As a former escapee, he is under some of the prison's most restrictive conditions, but he said he has no plans for another breakout. Instead, during an interview, he was reflective. While his faith now sustains him, he said, he also lives with a gnawing self-reproach for his crimes. Rivas said he thinks often of Hawkins -- especially each anniversary of his bloody death. On Christmas Day, too, he knows there's a son without a father because of him. Hawkins was married and the father of a 9-year-old son when he was murdered. Of Rivas' many regrets, he said, one is that I didn't find Christ sooner. Rivas said the prison walls have a way of replaying the wrong decisions he has made in his life, the reruns of what could have been. He could have gone into the military or even law enforcement. Instead, his fate is to die a killer. But he has a favorite passage from the Book of Luke, Chapter 23. In it, Christ promises a criminal being crucified alongside him that even he will be in paradise. Mick Mickelsen, a Dallas attorney representing Rivas, said he has represented several death row inmates and had 2 clients executed. They were not as calm as Rivas, he said, adding that Rivas has told him he sees his execution as his parole. People may find that hard to believe, but people of faith can do terrible things. George is a strong-minded person. He's more intelligent than most people I have represented on Death Row. He's always struggled with being imprisoned. Obviously, that's what led to that desperate escape. Hawkins' widow, who has remarried, could not be reached for comment. Irving police declined to discuss the case or Rivas' execution. Robbing and killing Rivas was a career criminal when he broke out of prison with 6 other inmates, men he says he chose because he believed they had changed and weren't likely to hurt anyone, though the escape was predicated on subduing guards and others through violence. Rivas wanted more than anything to be free from prison and the life sentences for aggravated kidnapping and burglary that resulted after the last of his meticulously planned robberies went bad in 1993. By the time he escaped from the Connally Unit near Kenedy, he had served 7 years and 7 months in prison. After a coordinated plan, conceived and led by Rivas, the 7 inmates overcame guards and gained access to the prison armory before speeding away as free men in a prison vehicle. The farther Rivas got from the prison, the less dread he felt, until he was finally in a state of elation. He imagines it was what a bird feels like when it is let out of a cage after years and years. I felt like I was floating, he said. Rivas, ever a planner, had still another plot after the escape: to commit more robberies, steal money, gain fake identification and split from the others. Rivas' plot to rob an Irving store was similar to many of the robberies that had sent him to prison: At closing
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, ALA.
Feb. 27 TEXAS: High Court Won't Hear Death Row Inmate's Evidence of Innocence The U.S. Supreme Court today refused to consider stopping the execution of Larry Ray Swearingen, a Texas death row inmate who says newly uncovered evidence proves his innocence. Swearingen's lawyers had asked the high court to decide for the first time whether executing an innocent person constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Constitution. Lower federal courts declined to intervene in Swearingen's case in part because, as the law now stands, even uncontested scientific proof of innocence isn't a valid reason for a federal judge to stop an execution. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who opposed Swearingen's request for a Supreme Court hearing, said Swearingen's new scientific testimony doesn't outweigh a mountain of other evidence that Swearingen is guilty of capital murder. Federal courts also don't need to intervene because Texas's justice system provides methods for review of innocence claims, the state attorney general's brief said. A state court has said it will consider Swearingen's claims, Abbott said. Swearingen also could get a pardon or commutation from Texas Governor Rick Perry. 'Brooding Omnipresence' Questions about the constitutionality of executing an innocent person are a brooding omnipresence in federal law that have been left unanswered for too long, Judge Jacques Wiener wrote in a 2009 ruling on Swearingen at the New Orleans- based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Swearingen's appeal might be the very case for the Supreme Court to recognize actual innocence as a ground for federal habeas relief, Wiener wrote. Swearingen was sentenced to die for the murder of 19-year- old Melissa Trotter, a college student who disappeared on Dec. 8, 1988, and was missing for 25 days before her body was discovered in Sam Houston National Forest, north of Houston. Swearingen, who knew Trotter and was seen with her on the day she disappeared, was considered a suspect early in the police investigation. He was arrested Dec. 11, 1988, on unrelated warrants and has been in jail ever since. Medical Examiner Swearingen's lawyers say forensic specialists -- including the medical examiner who testified for the prosecution -- have looked at evidence that wasn't considered at Swearingen's trial and now agree that Trotter's body was placed in the forest no earlier than Dec. 18, 1998, a week after Swearingen's arrest. More than that, Swearingen's lawyers say medical examiners who looked at tissue samples say Trotter's internal organs were in a condition suggesting that she was killed no more than several days before her body was found. The Innocence Network, an umbrella group of more than 60 organizations that helps prisoners uncover favorable evidence, said in a friend-of-the-court brief that Swearingen has an airtight alibi -- he was in jail when the victim was murdered. Imposing the death penalty on someone who isn't guilty of a capital crime, Swearingen's lawyers said, would violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment and the 14th Amendment's due process protections. Trotter's Hair Texas authorities said strands of Trotter's hair were found in Swearingen's truck, and fibers matching Swearingen's jacket, bedroom carpet and truck upholstery were found on Trotter's clothing. Cleaning Swearingen's trailer after Trotter's body was discovered, the suspect's landlord found part of a torn pair of pantyhose that, prosecutors said, matched hosiery used to strangle the victim. Swearingen's case involves rules for habeas corpus petitions, which let federal judges intervene in criminal cases if there is reason to believe an inmate's rights have been violated. In a 1993 Supreme Court decision, seven justices said they at least presumed, for argument's sake, that the Constitution prohibits putting innocent people to death. The high court, however, has never turned that hypothetical discussion into a concrete rule of law. Earlier Investigation The court ruled in 1993's Herrera v. Collins decision that new evidence, by itself, says nothing about whether a defendant's rights were respected during an earlier investigation and trial. An inmate needs additional evidence of a separate constitutional violation to warrant a federal court's involvement, the high court ruled. Federal habeas courts do not sit to correct errors of fact, but to ensure that individuals are not imprisoned in violation of the Constitution, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for a 6-3 majority. Claims of actual innocence based on newly discovered evidence have never been held to state a ground for federal habeas relief absent an independent constitutional violation occurring in the underlying state criminal proceeding. 'Truly Persuasive' Rehnquist acknowledged the stakes would be keenest in death penalty cases. We may assume, for the
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, VA., ARIZ., US MIL., N.C., PENN., NEB.
Feb. 17 TEXAS: Texas Running out of a Drug for Death Penalty Last year Texas administered the death penalty to 13 inmates, which was double the amount of any other state. The state has been well known for its fondness of the death penalty, and now it seems, according to The Guardian, that it only has enough of one of the deathly drugs for six more proceedings, which will last it until June of this year. Pentobarbital is the drug in question. It is injected along with 2 other drugs, and the maker of this drug, Lundbeck, has long disapproved of this drug’s usage in the death penalty. As of July 1, 2011, the company announced that it would no longer be outsourcing the drug to U.S. states that use it as capitol punishment. This decision not only affects Texas, but 34 other states in the U.S. that allow the death penalty. The company’s statement at the time was, “Lundbeck is dedicated to saving people’s lives. Use of our products to end lives contradicts everything we are in business to do. Lundbeck is opposed to the use of its product for the purpose of capital punishment.” While the drug has been approved to treat seizures and act as a sedative, it also has a much darker history. This drug has long been used in connection with euthanasia and is legally used to do so in countries such as Switzerland and the Netherlands. It is very noble for Lundbeck to stand up for its values, but that does not mean this drug is not being used for death in other places. Texas is not the only state running low; Georgia only has enough of the drug to cover 4 more deaths. This begs the question of what these states will look to when they are out of their supplies. Will they stop administering lethal injections, like so many other states who have had to deal with controversial cases, or will they seek different options? Texas has had 476 executions since 1976, and 238 of those have occurred since 1998 when Governor Rick Perry took office. This has been something Perry is said to be very proud of. Texas has already executed one prisoner this year, and the next execution is set to happen on February 28. 12 states held executions last year. Texas was followed by Alabama with 6 cases. Ohio had 5 cases last year, but now has put their death penalty on hold due to inconsistencies. Arizona executed 4 prisoners last year; Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi each had 2; and Virginia, Missouri, South Carolina, and Delaware each had 1 apiece. (source: Bangstyle.com) * TDCJ has enough drugs to carry out executions in 2012 Despite continuing shortages of the drug used in lethal injection executions in Texas, the Texas prison system has enough to carry out scheduled executions. According to a recent report in The Guardian, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is running low in one of these drugs. The British newspaper reports that TDCJ only has enough pentobarbital, a sedative that is 1 of the 3 drugs used in the mixture for lethal injections, left to carry out 6 more executions before the supply runs out thus delaying future death sentences from being carried out. The supply is low because Lundbeck, a Danish company that manufactures pentobarbital, blocked the sale of the drug to U.S. prisons on July 1, 2011, rather than see it used to carry out capital punishment. The Guardian reports that Maya Foa, an investigator with the human rights group Reprieve, has calculated that Texas has 27 vials of pentobarbital in stock and that the state needs 2 vials per execution and 2 more in reserve in case it is needed. According to Foa’s calculations, that is enough to carry out around 6 lethal injections. TDCJ spokesman Jason Clark said the agency could not disclose more information on the subject because of a ruling in the case the Texas Department of Public Safety vs. Cox Texas Newspapers, which protects public disclosure of highly intimate facts, but he did issue a statement on The Guardian’s report. “There are several inaccuracies in the Guardian article; however, consistent with past practice, the agency will only confirm that we have enough drugs on hand to carry out all scheduled executions,” Clark said. There are 6 executions on the schedule to be carried out this year in Texas. The next offender set to die is Anthony Bartee on Feb. 28. Bartee, a convicted rapist, was found guilty and sentenced to death for the 1996 murder of a 37-year-old man in San Antonio. (source: Huntsville Item) VIRGINIA: Va. legislature considers expanding death penalty The Virginia House of Delegates has advanced a bill that would make a broader range of criminals eligible for the death penalty. House Bill 389, proposed by Delegate Todd Gilbert, R-Woodstock, would redefine the “triggerman” rule in murder cases. The term “triggerman” refers strictly to the direct perpetrators of homicide, according to the current state law. Delegate
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, MISS., S.DAK., IND.
Feb. 6 TEXAS: Historical Plaque to Honor Exonerated Inmate Man cleared by DNA testing after his death The grave site of Timothy Cole, the first Texas inmate posthumously exonerated by DNA testing, will get a new historical marker Monday. Cole was convicted in 1985 and, until his death in prison in 1999, had fought for his freedom the entire time he was incarcerated. In 2007, the Innocence Project of Texas began to investigate on his behalf and eventually proved his innocence. According to their research, Cole was erroneously convicted due to eyewitness misidentification and improper forensic science. The real perpetrator was found after he confessed to the Innocence Project. Cole was the first Texas inmate to be exonerated by DNA testing after his death. With that, and because of his fight for justice, The Texas Historical Commission has chosen to honor Cole with a historical marker. Additionally, the state of Texas passed the Timothy Cole Act, which increases compensation paid to exonerees to $80,000 per year served. According to the Innocence Project, the state also created the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions to study the prevention of wrong convictions in the state of Texas. Cole's ceremony will take place at 4 p.m. at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Fort Worth. Prior to the ceremony, a 90-minute presentation will be held at The Texas Wesleyan School of Law titled The Truth about Tim Cole and Texas Justice. (source: NBC News) MISSISSIPPItemporary stay of impending execution Judge temporarily blocks Mississippi execution A federal judge has temporarily blocked the execution of Mississippi death row inmate Edwin Hart Turner. Turner was scheduled to die Wednesday for the deaths of 2 men killed during a robbery spree in 1995. U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves on Monday halted the execution. Turner's lawyer, James Craig with the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, asked Reeves to stop the execution. His argument was that a Mississippi Department of Corrections policy prohibited Turner from getting tests that could prove he's mentally ill. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has said Turner's lawyers are bringing up old arguments that have been rejected by the courts before. (source: Associated Press) SOUTH DAKOTAnew death sentence Berget sentenced to death in guard killing A judge on Monday sentenced a South Dakota inmate to death for his part in the killing of a prison guard during an unsuccessful escape attempt. Rodney Berget, 49, pleaded guilty to killing Ronald R.J. Johnson on April 12 — Johnson's birthday. His accomplice, Eric Robert, also pleaded guilty in Johnson's death and in October was sentenced to death. Second Circuit Judge Bradley Zell said any mitigating factors in the case were outweighed by the depravity of the crime before sentencing Berget to die by lethal injection. Mr. Berget, may God have mercy on your soul, Zell said. Zell had to find at least 1 of 5 aggravating factors existed to warrant the death penalty. Those factors were: the death of a correctional officer, the manner of death, where and why it occurred, and the defendants' criminal background. Berget is serving life sentences for attempted murder and kidnapping. Prosecutors said during the pre-sentencing phase that Berget had tried to escape several times before the April 12 incident. He was first sent to the South Dakota State Penitentiary as a teenager for stealing a car. Since then, his crimes have become increasing violent, Zell said. South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley said after the death sentence was handed down that it was the only viable option. Rodney Berget has led a life of pain and destruction, Jackley said, surrounded by the family of Ronald Johnson. He said Berget's sentence will act as a deterrent to other inmates who may think about committing similar acts. He denied that by executing Berget, the state was simply carrying out the inmate's wish to die. Berget's lawyer, Jeff Larson, said during his opening statements that his client is not a monster, and described how Berget had been taken from his mother as a child and placed with his alcoholic father who beat him. Berget is the second person in his family sentenced to die. His older brother, Roger, was executed in 2000 for the 1985 killing of a 33-year-old man in Oklahoma. Larson left the courthouse after the verdict was read without addressing media. Johnson was working alone the morning of his death in a part of the prison known as Pheasantland Industries, where inmates work on upholstery, signs, custom furniture and other projects. Prosecutors said that after the 2 bashed Johnson's head with a pipe and covered his mouth with plastic wrap, Robert put on the guard's uniform and carted a large box toward the prison gate with Berget inside. Both inmates were apprehended before leaving the grounds.
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, DEL., GA., CALIF.
Jan. 17 TEXASfemale death sentence reduced Woman's death sentence in slaying of couple reduced If Chelsea Richardson felt relief at her death sentence officially becoming a life sentence, she did not show it in court Tuesday. The 27-year-old did not visibly react when visiting Judge Steve Herod accepted the sentencing agreement reached by prosecutors and her defense attorney for the 2003 murders of Rick and Suzanna Wamsley of Mansfield. In a baggy yellow jail jumpsuit and dark-rimmed glasses, Richardson only spoke to acknowledge that she waived her right to appeal. The hearing was mostly formality. The state's highest criminal court overturned the death sentence for Richardson in November. She was condemned by a Tarrant County jury in 2005 for the deaths of her boyfriend's parents in Mansfield. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the punishment phase of Richardson's trial was affected by misconduct by a former prosecutor who withheld evidence from the defense. Richardson and her boyfriend, Andrew Wamsley, were convicted of capital murder in separate trials. Authorities said Andrew Wamsley, Richardson and a friend, Susana Toledano, killed the couple so that Andrew Wamsley could inherit his parents' $1.56 million estate. Richardson was the only one to receive the death penalty. Under the new sentence, she must serve 40 years before she is eligible for parole, though she will get credit for time served. Relatives of Richardson and the Wamsleys attended Tuesday's hearing. Richardson's mother, Celia Richardson, said afterward that she still believed her daughter to be innocent. She said she felt that her daughter was being swept under the carpet after an error-filled police investigation and trial. Totally screwed up, she said, describing her daughter's case. Rick and Suzanna Wamsley's family members released a statement through a district attorney's office spokeswoman. In the statement, they said they supported the plea bargain because the alternative would have meant returning to court for a new penalty phase, and reliving the painful details of the crime once again. Family members said they plan to fight paroles for all the criminals involved. There is no such thing as closure for such a tragedy, the statement said. Our family will be reminded of this horror each anniversary of Rick and Suzy's death, each holiday without them, all of the family celebrations without them. The hearing lasted about five minutes. After Herod pronounced the sentence, Richardson whispered something to her attorney, ran a hand through her long brown hair, adjusted her glasses and walked with a courtroom officer out the door. (source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram) DELAWARE: Statement of Governor Jack Markell Regarding the Commutation of Sentence of Robert Gattis Pursuant to my authority under Article VII, Section 1 of the Delaware Constitution, I have decided to commute the sentence of Robert Gattis to life in prison without the possibility of parole, subject to the conditions set forth below. I realize my decision may cause pain to the family and friends of Shirley Slay. For that, I deeply apologize. In reaching this conclusion, I give great weight to the decision of the Board of Pardons. In the exercise of its constitutional duties, the Board thoroughly reviewed Mr. Gattis’s application for clemency and the State’s response. The Board studied the entire historical record of this case, carefully listened to the statements made by parties on both sides, and had the opportunity to look Mr. Gattis in the eyes and question him. Having done so, the Board took the unusual and perhaps historic step of recommending, by a 4-1 margin, that Mr. Gattis’s death sentence be commuted to life without parole. I take the Board’s considered decision seriously. Over the last two decades, executions pursuant to death penalty sentences imposed by the State have proceeded only in the absence of an objection from the Board of Pardons and the multiple courts having jurisdiction over the case. In essence, the multiple checks and balances that are in place have historically been in alignment before the extraordinary action of executing a criminal defendant proceeds. While I have supported the imposition of the death penalty in the past and I consider Mr. Gattis’s crimes to be heinous, I am not prepared to move forward with imposition of the sentence in this case. I undertake this commutation after thorough review of the record presented and substantial contemplation. I have read Mr. Gattis’s application for clemency, the state’s response, and Mr. Gattis’s reply. I have reviewed the many affidavits submitted. I have spent substantial time considering the harm endured by Ms. Slay and her family, Mr. Gattis’s history, and the merits of the clemency application. I have prayed. At the end of the day, although I am not free from doubt, I
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, ORE., UTAH
Nov. 22 TEXAS: Jo Ann Chavez's mother wants death penalty It's been more than 8 years since Maria Castañeda's 1st born child, Jo Ann Chavez was murdered in 2003. Her remains were discovered 2 years later, buried in a Willacy County ranch. We've all been hurting, it still hurts…we miss her,” Castañeda said. “She was the most lovable daughter that I had. She's never spoken out about her daughter's death, but Castañeda broke her silence Tuesday as she waited for the jury's verdict in the capital murder case against Wilfredo Padilla. He's the alleged Mexican Mafia leader who prosecutors claim ordered Chavez’s murder. Castañeda said it's been a long, painful wait in their pursuit for justice and she can only think of one verdict. “We're just hoping that he gets the death penalty, Castañeda said. Jurors began deliberating Monday, after listening to closing arguments from both defense and state prosecutors. Tuesday, they deliberated for at least 6 more hours, reviewing some dozen pieces of notes or evidence presented to them during the trial. Castañeda said she's ready for their verdict, even if it's not guilty. Then I’ll just have to live with it - God will do justice, Castañeda said. The mother is anxious for the verdict, because after all these years, Chavez hasn't had a proper burial. Her remains were kept as evidence for the trial. We do already have plans to have the funeral services,” she said. Most of all Castañeda said after the verdict, they'll have closure and can continue remembering her daughter's life, rather than her death. She was a very, very lovable daughter, understanding,” a tearful Castañeda said. “When she would see me upset, she would (tell me), ‘mom put a smile on your face.’ She would hug me, have me up there and give me a kiss.” (source: Valley Central News) Impending executions in Texas date--# under Gov. Perryname--# in Texas since 1982 Jan. 26--240--Rodrigo Hernandez---47850 % of all Tx. executions carried out under Gov. Perry, since 2001 Feb. 1---241---Donald Newbury--479---more than 50 % of all Tx. executions now carried out under Gov. Perry's tenure Feb. 29--242---George Rivas-480 Mar. 7---243---Keith Thurmond---481 Mar. 28--244---Jesse Hernandez482 (sources: TDCJ Rick Halperin) OREGON: Oregon Governor Says He Will Block Executions Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon on Tuesday said he would halt the execution of a death row inmate scheduled for next month and that he would allow no more executions in the state during his time in office. “It is time for Oregon to consider a different approach,” Governor Kitzhaber, a Democrat elected last fall, said in a news conference in Salem on Tuesday afternoon. “I refuse to be a part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer; and I will not allow further executions while I am governor.” Oregon, which uses lethal injection, has executed just two people since its voters approved the death penalty in 1984, and both of those inmates waived certain rights to appeal, making them so-called volunteers. The state, which has 37 inmates on death row, last executed someone in 1997. It has been one of at least 7 states that allow the death penalty but have not used it in more than a decade, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But Oregon’s status appeared likely to change after Gary Haugen, a twice-convicted murderer, waived several appeals and asked to be executed. Mr. Haugen, convicted of killings in 1981 and in 2003, has testified that the death penalty wastes taxpayer money and is unjustly carried out. But in a court appearance in October, Mr. Haugen said: “This is going to be one time where I just don’t do a lot of talking, because I’m ready, your honor. Because I’m ready.” Outside groups fought to stop the execution, but late Monday the Oregon Supreme Court ruled, 4 to 3, to allow it to go forward. By Tuesday morning, Governor Kitzhaber’s office had scheduled his afternoon announcement. The governor, a physician who served 2 previous terms, from 1995 to 2003, noted that he had allowed the two earlier executions to go forward under his watch. “They were the most agonizing and difficult decisions I have made as governor and I have revisited and questioned them over and over again during the past 14 years,” Governor Kitzhaber said. “I do not believe that those executions made us safer; certainly I don’t believe they made us more noble as a society. And I simply cannot participate once again in something I believe to be morally wrong.” Noting the length of time many inmates spend on death row, often more than 20 years, he said Oregon had an “unworkable system that fails to meet basic standards of justice.” He said there was a wide sense the death penalty process was
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, CONN., FLA., S.DAK., ORE., CALIF.
Oct. 25 TEXAS: Texas death row inmate hoping for new DNA tests asks court not to dismiss civil rights suit A Texas death row inmate just weeks from execution asked a federal court Monday to keep his civil rights lawsuit alive while his attorneys try to get knives and other evidence turned over for new DNA tests they claim will show he didn’t kill his girlfriend and her sons nearly two decades ago. But prosecutors who say Henry Watkins Skinner is just trying to delay his death with a merit-less request asked the court to rule in their favor and dismiss the lawsuit. Skinner, 49, came within an hour of lethal injection last year before the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and now has a Nov. 9 execution date. His lawsuit claims the state violated his civil rights by withholding access to the evidence he wants tested. Monday’s hearing came after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in March that Skinner could ask for the untested evidence, but left unresolved whether the district attorney had to surrender those items. A state court will make that decision. Skinner’s attorneys asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Clinton E. Averitte to recommend the civil rights suit not be dismissed until the state court acts. A final ruling on the lawsuit will be issued by U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson in Amarillo. The request for DNA testing is the third from Skinner but the first since a state law about evidence testing took effect Sept. 1. The new law allows DNA testing of evidence even if the offender chose not to seek testing before trial. Rob Owen, one of Skinner’s attorneys, said in an emailed statement that lawmakers intended the new law “to reach” Skinner. “The state should stop wasting taxpayer money fighting the DNA testing in Mr. Skinner’s case,” Owen wrote. “At a minimum they should drop their insistence on executing Mr. Skinner on November 9 so that the courts have adequate time to settle this issue.” Prosecutors maintain the new law doesn’t apply to Skinner, his claims about the evidence aren’t new and other courts have already decided the issue. Skinner “still has not demonstrated” how additional DNA testing will prove his innocence, attorney general’s spokeswoman Lauren Bean said in an email. She accused him of “resorting to gamesmanship.” “Because Skinner has not met the standards required by law and does not seek to test newly discovered evidence, the Court should deny his claims and prevent Skinner from further delaying justice for the victims’ families,” Bean wrote. Skinner was sentenced to death for the 1993 deaths of his girlfriend, 40-year-old Twila Busby, and her sons Elwin “Scooter” Caler, 22, and Randy Busby, 20. The victims were strangled, beaten or stabbed on New Year’s Eve at their home in Pampa in the Texas Panhandle. About three hours after their bodies were discovered, police found Skinner hiding in a closet in the home of a woman he knew. Tests showed that blood of at least two victims was on him, and authorities said a trail of blood led police from the bodies to his hiding place a few blocks away. Skinner has acknowledged being inside the house where the killings took place but has insisted he couldn’t be the murderer because he was passed out on a couch from a mix of vodka and codeine. In a hand-written Aug. 31 affidavit, Skinner told the court: “I am actually, factually and totally, legally and any other definition, innocent of this crime.” However, documents the attorney general’s office filed in court Monday said Skinner offered to plead guilty to first-degree murder before his 1995 trial in exchange for a life sentence. Plea negotiations often are kept confidential, but Skinner’s federal appeal on ineffective counsel claims waived that privilege, the new document said. The evidence now being sought was not tested at the time of Skinner’s trial because his lawyer feared the results would hurt his case. But his attorneys now argue that forensic DNA testing “has a strong likelihood of confirming Mr. Skinner’s claim.” The untested evidence includes vaginal swabs taken from Busby during an autopsy, fingernail clippings, a knife found on the porch of Busby’s house, a second knife found in a plastic bag in the house, a towel with the second knife and a jacket next to Busby’s body. Skinner contends that Caler, who had several stab wounds, likely bled on him while trying to roust him from his stupor. Skinner has said the woman’s blood likely got on his clothes because they were nearby as she was being bludgeoned with a pickax handle. He and his attorneys point to the woman’s now-deceased uncle, Robert Donnell, as the possible killer. (source: Associated press) CONNECTICUT: Jury to decide if Komisarjevsky gets death penalty The penalty phase for Joshua Komisarjevsky -- convicted of raping and murdering Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters during a July 2007 home invasion in Cheshire -- is set to
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., OHIO, NEB., USA
Oct. 18 TEXAS: Evidentiary Hearing Granted to Evaluate New Evidence Regarding the Actual Innocence of Robert Gene Will FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE On October 19, 2011 a limited evidentiary hearing will take place for Robert Will who has resided on Death Row for 9 years. Robert Will has always maintained his innocence and instead declared another man shot Deputy Hill,the police officer Robert Will was sentenced to die for killing in 2002. Now a new witness has joined the voices of 3 others who support Robert Will’s innocence claim and have provided affidavits to the courts. This witness will give testimony to the courts on October 19ththat they saw the real killer shortly after the shooting with blood on him. The police never investigated the real shooter because he is the son of a police officer. Dawn Bremer, the spokesperson for the Robert Will Defense Committee commented on the importance of the developments in the case, “This hearing can open the door to letting the truth finally be brought to light and justice being served not only for Mr. Will, but for Deputy Hill’s family by clearing an innocent man and putting the focus on the real murder.” Robert Will’s case is not unique and is in fact very similar to Troy Davis’, the death row prisoner who was murdered by the state of Georgia on the night of September 21, 2011. Davis also proclaimed his innocence until the very end and hundreds of thousands of people rallied to his side, here in the United States and around the world. Seven of the nine original witnesses recanted their testimony and no actual evidence exits to tie Davis to the murder of the police officer he was convicted and sentenced to death for killing. Since 1976 over 130 people have been exonerated from death row in the United States despite strict regulations around petitioning for new factual evidence to be reviewed by a jury and judge. The family of Deputy Barry Hill was devastated by the loss of Mr. Hill. Robert Will’s family, a young son Robert Will hasn't seen since his incarceration in 2000 should not have to suffer that same fate. Someone killed Deputy Hill on December 4th, 2000. Robert Will is not that guy. (source: TDPAM) PENNSYLVANIA: Washington County DA to seek death penalty in elderly woman's death Washington County District Attorney Steve Toprani's office will seek the death penalty against one of three California family members charged in connection with the stabbing death of a 92-year-old woman in her home in July. Assistant District Attorney Michael Lucas gave formal notice Tuesday that the office will seek the death penalty against David A. McClelland, 56, who is charged with murdering his neighbor, Evelyn Stepko, on July 18. We filed notice with the court and the defendant this morning that we believe there were aggravating factors in the homicide case against David A. McClelland in as far as the death was deliberately committed in the commission of another felony, said Toprani's chief of staff, Steven Fisher. The elder McClelland, his wife, Diane, 48, and his son, David J. McClelland, 36, a former part-time Washington Township police officer, are awaiting trial on charges related to Stepko's murder and for stealing money from her over the past 2 years. The three were formally arraigned before Washington Judge Paul Pozonsky this morning. Diane McClelland does not face homicide charges, but is accused of benefitting from the proceeds of the multiple burglaries at Stepko's home. State police allege McClelland and his wife filed for personal bankruptcy before the 1st burglary on Aug. 4, 2009. After that, they started going on gambling sprees at Meadows Racetrack Casino and bought expensive vehicles. The elder McClelland worked as a handyman for Stepko up until she was murdered, according to state police at Belle Vernon. Stepko was found at the bottom of her basement stairs. She died of 2 stab wounds to her neck and blunt-force trauma to her chest, authorities said. Police said David A. McClelland was receiving $1,000 a month in disability benefits, and his wife was making about $22,000 a year as a grocery store clerk. Last year, police allege, she paid $43,844 in cash for a 2009 Lincoln Navigator and later paid $11,750 in cash for a Grand Am for her stepson. McClelland and his son have admitted their roles in Stepko's murder, according to police. When police questioned Diane McClelland, she maintained that she was unaware her husband and stepson allegedly were burglarizing Stepko's home. She said the money spent at the casino and on the vehicles came from winnings from a private, illegal lottery and a $9,000 income-tax refund. Her stepson told police she knew about the burglaries, according to the affidavit of probable cause. Fischer said it is premature to say whether Diane McClelland and David J. McClelland will testify for the prosecution at trial against the elder
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, OHIO, USA, FLA., CONN., CALIF., ORE.
Oct. 15 TEXAS: 8 exonerated men released from death row will give presentation in Corpus Christi Ron Keine came within in 10 days of being executed in New Mexico's gas chamber before another man confessed. If a man is serving a life sentence and you make a mistake you can release him, Keine said. If you've made a mistake after you killed him there is nothing you can do about it. Keine spent 2 years on death row for the 1974 kidnapping and murder of a University of New Mexico college student until the killer, Kerry Lee turned himself in for the murder of William Velten. Keine is one of eight men, who later were found to be innocent, who on Saturday will be part of a presentation on life on death row and the death penalty. The event begins at 4 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church, 6901 Holly Road. Those scheduled to speak are Clarence Brandley, a former Texas inmate, Dan Bright, Gary Drinkard, Jeremy Sheets and Greg Wilhoite. We're here to put a face on the death penalty, Keine said. We want people to know it can happen to anyone, like us, who were just normal people. The Corpus Christi stop is part of the Texas Witness to Innocence Freedom Ride which will make presentations in 30 location in 7 days. We're hoping that these stories will open the community's mind about problems in Texas with the death penalty system, organizer Hooman Hedayati said. We want to build the support against the death penalty especially for those that were wrongfully convicted. In 2009, 52 inmates were executed throughout the country. 24 of those executions were in Texas. Ann Smith, a member of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty local chapter, said the discussion with the men will allow the community to understand the harshness of the prison and justice system. It's very dramatic, she said, and it says something about human error, prison costs and how it affected these men. Keine said that despite another man confessing, he had to wait months for his release. It wasn't until Lee detailed where Velten's body was hidden and where to find the murder weapon that Keine was granted a new trial. A judge later quashed the murder indictments and Keine and three friends were free. The death penalty is archaic, barbaric and morally wrong especially wrong, Keine said. No justice system can ever be the best that executes their own people. There is no reason to kill people. The Rev. Philip Douglas of Unitarian Universalist said not every person will agree with wanting to abolish the death penalty, but the men's stories still should be heard. I'm hoping that people will come and listen with open minds, he said. Hopefully it will lead to larger and more reasonable conversations about when we decide as a state or government to take someone's life. IF YOU GO What: Texas Witness to Innocence Freedom Ride Where: Unitarian Universalist Church, 6901 Holly Road When: 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday Information: visit www.witnesstoinnocence.org (source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times) OHIO: Death sentence upheld in YSU student’s slaying The 7th District Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction and death sentence of the man convicted of the 1985 murder of a Youngstown State University student. Bennie Adams appealed to the court after having been found guilty and sentenced to death in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court in 2008 for the murder of Gina Tenney. The appellate court heard oral arguments in the case in August and issued a ruling Friday. Tenney, a 19-year-old YSU student who was Adams’ upstairs neighbor in an Ohio Avenue duplex, was strangled Dec. 29, 1985. Her frozen body was found in the Mahoning River near West Avenue the next day. Adams was indicted for the murder in 2007 after a DNA match was found in evidence that police had preserved for 22 years. Adams, 54, is on death row. Undue delay in prosecution is one of the 21 allegations of legal and procedural error presented by Attys. John B. Juhasz and Lynn A. Maro, who are representing Adams. The court filing included 528 pages. (source: Youngstown Vindicator) USA: The Death Penalty’s De Facto Abolition A new Gallup poll reports that support for the death penalty is at its lowest level since 1972. In fact, though, the decline, from a high of 80 % in 1994 to 61 % now, masks both Americans’ ambivalence about capital punishment and the country’s de facto abolition of the penalty in most places. When Gallup gave people a choice a year ago between sentencing a murderer to death or life without parole, an option in each of the 34 states that have the death penalty, only 49 % chose capital punishment. That striking difference suggests that more Americans are recognizing that killing a prisoner is not the only way to make sure he is never released, that the death penalty cannot be made to comply with the Constitution and that it is in every way indefensible. But there are other
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, IND., OHIO, N.C., TENN., USA
Oct. 7 TEXASfilm review ‘Incendiary: The Willingham Case’: Justice gets burned Given the zeitgeist about the death penalty and the execution of innocent people from the Troy Davis Case – and the presidential campaign of Texas Gov. Rick Perry – the timing couldn’t be better for the release of the documentary, “Incendiary: The Willingham Case.” This film, by Steve Mims and Joe Bailey Jr., is just what its title implies: a match being lit to a tinderpile of flimsy evidence that led to the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas in 2004 after his 1992 conviction for setting the fire that killed his 3 babies. Yet this isn’t a high-minded discourse on the morality of execution in general. Nor is it about the notion of reasonable doubt. Rather, it is about the science of fire investigation, the ignorance of fire investigators whose “expert” testimony sent Willingham to the death chamber, and the concerted CYA efforts by Perry and his minions when questions about that same fire science were raised. In each instance, Texas gets a failing grade: for its lack of willingness to address its own ignorance, for its insistence on supporting outdated methods that were since debunked by science, and for its bull-headed refusal to consider the possibility that a mistake was being made in Willingham’s case. But then, this is a state which, 3 times, has elected a governor who calls evolution “a theory that’s out there” and regularly refers to climate change as a hoax. He’s a Christian who has not a single doubt about the record number of people his state has executed. And now he’s a serious contender for president. Mims and Bailey start with the science: how, for years, fire investigators were taught the lore that was passed down from one fireman to another – and how much of this supposed “technique” for fire investigation was later debunked by chemists and physicists, studying the properties of fire. The film then turns its attention to the Willingham case: of a perpetual ne’er-do-well, the father of a 3-year-old daughter and infant twins who was known as a short-tempered troublemaker. He had been in trouble for spouse abuse in the past but was still trying to make a go of it with his long-suffering wife in the small town of Corsicana, Texas. Willingham awoke from a nap one morning shortly before Christmas, 1991, to find his clapboard house engulfed in flames. He ran out of the house and, according to neighbors, then tried to get back in to save his children. But the flames and heat were too intense and all 3 children died. In short order, the local fire investigators decided the evidence pointed to arson and tagged Willingham as the culprit. He was poorly represented at trial (by a court-appointed attorney, who is interviewed in the film about his own belief that Willingham was a monster who killed his own children) – and sentenced to death. As his appeals worked their way through the courts, death-penalty opponents took up his case and brought in fire scientists, including Gerald Hurst and John Lentini, both of whom appear in the film. They assembled a lengthy report explaining why the fire investigation evidence that convicted Willingham was badly flawed and why the fire was not, in fact, arson. Their report, however, was ignored by the courts and dismissed by both Gov. George W. Bush, and by Perry, who replaced Bush as Texas governor. Willingham, protesting his innocence to the last moment, was executed in 2004. The last half of the film is about the subsequent attempts to get the report before the state fire investigation board and to change the state’s standards for fire investigation. Again, Perry does his best to be an obstruction – going so far as to replace the head of the board the day before the board is supposed to meet to consider the report. As a documentary, “Incendiary” is decidedly even-handed, even as it raises the temperature of those watching. It presents a press conference by Willingham’s widow, who claims that, in his final hours, Willingham admitted that he had killed the children, without commenting on her motives for suddenly coming forth with a statement that refuted everything she had previously said – on the day of an exoneration hearing for the late Willingham, accompanied by a lawyer from the law firm of former Bush attorney general John Ashcroft. Yet the dispassionate explanations of fire science by Hurst and Lentini seem so clear, so unbiased, that the legal travesty becomes clear. So does Perry’s stubborn insistence on his own rightness. This isn’t a film about the rightness and wrongness of the death penalty. It is about human unwillingness to admit a mistake, even at the cost of an innocent human life. Tragedy compounds tragedy in “Incendiary: The Willingham Case,” showing that, in Texas, the main interest of those who govern is self-interest. (source: Marshall Fine.Author and film
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., USA
Oct. 2 TEXAS: Is the death penalty about to die?Millions of dollars wasted on capital punishment in Texas. In 2003 there were 28 death sentences handed down in Texas, and last year, only eight. Harris County, which accounts for more than 100 of the 314 people on death row, saw no new death sentences in 2008 or 2009 and only two in 2010. Bexar County has seen only three death sentences since 2007. It looks like Texas is having second thoughts about death sentences, and executions. In 2010, Texas carried out 17 lethal injections, the fewest since 2001. Texas isn’t about to abolish the death penalty, but it may be starting to move away from its infamous grip on the death penalty. There are 3 factors afoot: There is mounting concern about the execution of innocent people. No one wants to see an innocent person executed. With 12 individuals exonerated and freed from Texas’ death row since 1987, we know the system isn’t faultless. Has Texas actually executed an innocent person? No one knows for certain, but death penalty scholars point to 3 executed prisoners who had credible claims of innocence: Cameron Todd Willingham, Ruben Cantu, and Carlos De Luna. The Texas Forensic Science Commission’s April 15 report did not address Willingham’s actual guilt or innocence in the Corsicana house fire that killed his 3 daughters. However, 9 fire experts who reviewed his case concluded there was no evidence of arson. Investigative reporting by the Chicago Tribune on the De Luna case and by the Express-News and Houston Chronicle in 2006 on Cantu threw considerable doubt on the actual guilt of both men. It is immoral to have executed an innocent one. The financial costs of the death penalty are staggering. Fiscal conservatives question whether it is worth the price. The cost of a capital trial, the appeals process, time on death row and the execution itself cost an estimated $2.3 million in 1992, according to the Dallas Morning News. In today’s dollars, that would be more than $3.6 million. In short, millions of dollars are wasted on a capital sentencing system in Texas. The money could be much better spent on improving policing functions, expanding restitution programs and developing more drug treatment programs — all of which would do far more to enhance public safety than having a death penalty. Finally, there is an alternative to the death penalty — a sentencing option that Texas lawmakers adopted in 2005: life without parole. In 2010, Texas juries handed down three life-without-parole sentences in capital cases. The point is, juries don’t have to hand out death sentences. Texas may be the death penalty capital of the United States, but, even here, the tide may be starting to turn. (source: Roger C. Barnes chairs the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of the Incarnate Word; GEORGIA: Troy Davis Mourned as a Martyr by 1,000 in Ga. Sent to death row 20 years ago as a convicted cop killer, Troy Davis was celebrated as martyr and foot soldier Saturday by more than 1,000 people who packed the pews at his funeral and pledged to keep fighting the death penalty. Family, activists and supporters who spent years trying to persuade judges and Georgia prison officials that Davis was innocent were unable to prevent his execution Sept. 21. But the crowd that filled Savannah's Jonesville Baptist Church on Saturday seemed less interested in pausing in remorse than showing a resolve to capitalize on the worldwide attention Davis' case brought to capital punishment in the U.S. Benjamin Todd Jealous, national president of the NAACP, brought the crowd to its feet in a chant of I am Troy Davis — the slogan supporters used to paint Davis as an everyman forced to face the executioner by a faulty justice system. Jealous noted that Davis professed his innocence even in his final words. Troy's last words that night were he told us to keep fighting until his name is cleared in Georgia, Jealous said. But most important, keep fighting until the death penalty is abolished and this can never be done to anyone else. After 4 years of extraordinary appeals, every court that examined Davis' case ultimately upheld his conviction and death sentence for the 1989 slaying of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail, who was shot twice while trying to help a homeless man being attacked outside a bus station. MacPhail's family and prosecutors say they're still confident Davis was guilty. Regardless, questions raised by Davis and his lawyers garnered support from thousands worldwide, including dignitaries such as former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI. The night Davis was executed, protests were held from Georgia to Washington, from Paris to Ghana. During a call-and-response litany at the funeral, the congregation chanted in unison: We pray to the Lord for our souls and the soul of Troy Davis, martyr and foot soldier. He
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, ARIZ., USA
Sept. 29 TEXAS: Killer in Odessa burglary-slaying loses appeal The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld the death sentence of an Odessa man given a new sentencing hearing because a psychiatrist at his 1st trial cited race as a factor in whether he would continue to be violent. Michael Deal Gonzales was convicted of killing an elderly couple during the burglary of their Odessa home in 1994. His case was among a half-dozen reviewed by the Texas attorney general's office because of testimony from Walter Quijano, the former chief psychologist for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. A new punishment trial was held for the 38-year-old Gonzales in 2009 and he again was sentenced to death. His appeal, rejected by the court Wednesday, focused on trial court jurisdiction, jury selection and the constitutionality of the Texas death penalty (source: Associated Press) *** 12th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty 2 PM on October 22, 2011Austin, Texas at the State Capitol The 12th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty will be held in Austin at 2 PM on October 22, 2011 at the Texas Capitol. Join the Facebook event page. Each October since 2000,people from all walks of life and all parts of Texas, the U.S. and other countries have taken a day out of their year and gathered in Austin to raise their voices together and loudly express their opposition to the death penalty. The march is a coming together of activists, family members of those on death row, community leaders, exonerated former death row prisoners and all those calling for abolition. The annual march is organized as a joint project by several Texas organizations working together: Texas Moratorium Network,the Austin chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty,the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement,Texas Students Against the Death Penalty,Texas Death Penalty Education and Resource Center, Kids Against the Death Penalty, the Texas Civil Rights Project, Amnesty International - UT Chapter and national organizations including Journey of Hope … from Violence to Healing and Witness to Innocence. (source: TMC) ** The condemned in Texas can no longer choose their last meal On September 21st Lawrence Russell Brewer ordered up a feast: 2 chicken-fried steaks smothered in gravy, a supersized cheeseburger, an omelette, fried okra, fajitas, a pizza, a pound of barbecue, half a loaf of bread, and, for pudding, ice cream and fudge with peanuts on top. But when it arrived, he decided not to eat any of it. He may well not have been hungry. Mr Brewer, a white supremacist, was about to be executed for a murder committed in 1998, when he and two other men tortured a black man, James Byrd Jr, and dragged him to death behind a truck. It was one of the most notorious crimes in modern Texas history, and one that had already changed the law; in 2001 Rick Perry, the newly inaugurated governor, signed a bill mandating stricter penalties for hate crimes. Now Mr Brewer’s final request has brought another change to Texas justice. On September 22nd John Whitmire, a state senator from Houston, sent an angry letter to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. “Enough is enough,” he wrote; such privileges are “ridiculous”. The department’s director agreed, and announced that from now on all prisoners will get the same meal. The last meal has always been a strange aspect of executions. Eating is for people with a future. Some offenders resist the irony, and request nothing but a glass of water. But most accept some final comfort. And in reading their requests the bathos of the ultimate penalty is impossible to ignore. People facing execution want sugar, salt, fat, and phosphates—fried chicken, ribs, hamburgers, ice cream, pie, pop. This move by Texas comes at a time when many people are a little queasy about the death penalty anyway. Nearly two-thirds of Americans support capital punishment; but many of them were horrified during a Republican presidential debate last month, when the audience cheered the fact that Mr Perry had then presided over 234 executions as governor of Texas (Mr Brewer made the 236th). And last week hundreds of people protested outside a Georgia prison as that state executed a man, Troy Davis, who was convicted on testimony that was later recanted. Will American support for the death penalty soften as a result of any of this? As the Brewer case makes clear, the death penalty is a sickening business. The grim theatrics of an execution debase the executioner. But capital crimes are also repulsive. And so hopes for abolition are probably still unrealistic. (source: The Economist) The Controversial Willingham Case: What Rick Perry Knew and When On the day in 2004 that her 1st cousin Cameron Todd Willingham was scheduled to be executed in Texas, Patricia Cox had good reason to
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., KAN., CALIF.
Aug. 29 TEXAS: Roundtable to discuss Death Row minority defendants -- Roundtable to discuss Death Row minority defendants A panel of scholars and legal experts will discuss the impact of the death penalty, particularly on minority defendants at a roundtable to be held 6-8 p.m. at the University of St. Thomas in the Jerabeck Center’s Scanlan Room, 3800 Montrose Blvd. Topics to be addressed include capital punishment, disregard of Geneva Conventions and other accords concerning consulates and detained nationals. Panelists include: Ricardo Ampudia, a journalist, former Mexican Consul General of Houston and author of “Mexicans on Death Row,” which explores the history and ethics of capital punishment and how it affects the sentencing of Mexicans in the U.S. Scott J. Atlas, a former litigation partner with Vinson Elkins, who led the legal team that won the release of Ricardo Aldape Guerra, an undocumented worker who spent 14 years on Texas’ death row. He was the first Mexican National ever released from Texas’ death row. Nicole Casarez, attorney and UST professor, who teaches journalism, media law, public relations and media ethics. Casarez’s affiliation with the Texas Innocence Network has led to investigative work on several capital and non-capital cases, including that of Texas death row inmate Anthony Graves. David R. Dow, founder of the Texas Innocence Network, author of “The Autobiography of an Execution.” The event is free and open to the public, and is followed by a book-signing by Ampudia. (source: yourhoustonnews.com) GEORGIA: Arraignment of Jamie Hood postponed A Clarke County Superior Court judge postponed this morning’s scheduled arraignment of accused cop-killer Jamie Hood. Hood was supposed to have appeared before Judge H. Patrick Haggard to plead guilty or not guilty to a 70-count indictment that accuses him of murdering Athens-Clarke Senior Police Officer Elmer “Buddy” Christian in March and shooting to death another man, Kenneth Omari Wray, in December. Haggard put the arraignment on hold indefinitely after District Attorney Ken Mauldin on Friday filed notice of intent to seek the death penalty for Hood. With the death penalty now in play, the court must follow what’s called Unified Appeal Procedure — a system that sets the order in which trial judges schedules pretrial hearings before arraignment. The process fast-tracks pretrial appeals to the state Supreme Court, such as challenges to the makeup of the jury pool or arguments to suppress evidence. A Clarke County grand jury indicted Hood in June, signing off on a long list of charges, including murder, armed robbery, carjacking and kidnapping. An arraignment like the one scheduled for this morning gives a defendant a chance to hear the charges against him, but most waive that option. (source: Athens Banner-Herald) KANSASnew death sentence Kansas jury recommends death for Kahler An Osage County District Court jury has recommended the death penalty for Kraig Kahler in the slayings of 4 family members. The jury agreed with an assistant attorney general, who on Monday urged them to impose the death penalty, saying each of the 4 slaying victims died in anguish. Kahler’s wife, 2 daughters and his wife’s grandmother “all died with an awareness that gave them the torture of slow death,” said Amy Hanley, the assistant attorney general. They died with the awareness Kahler was armed with a gun, shooting at them and that he intended to kill each, Hanley told the jury. “This is the proper case,” Hanley said, to impose the death penalty, pointing to 2 aggravating circumstances she said justified the death penalty. More than 1 person was killed, and the 4 victims were murdered in a “heinous, atrocious or cruel manner,” she said. “He murdered them all, one-by-one,” she said. The jury began deliberations at 2:30 p.m. on whether to recommend the death penalty or life in prison without parole. On Friday, an Osage County District Court jury convicted Kahler of capital murder, 4 counts of 1st degree murder and 1 count of aggravated burglary, all tied to the Nov. 28, 2009, rampage in a Burlingame home. Kraig Kahler is former director of the Columbia Water and Light Department. Before deliberations Monday, defense attorney Amanda Vogelsberg read 2 notes to jurors from Kahler’s 12-year-old son. “I do not want my dad to receive the death penalty because it would be hard on my grandparents,” the 1st note said. The 2nd note said, “I do not want my whole family gone.” Defense attorney Tom Haney told jurors there were 12 mitigating circumstances that outweigh the aggravating circumstances. Kahler had no criminal history, he was operating under extreme mental and emotional stress, and he had a severe mental illness that impaired his ability to think and control his actions, Haney said. Haney also noted the statement by Kahler’s son, the lone
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, ARIZ.. ARK., CALIF.
Aug. 20 TEXAS: New death penalty law could affect Wichita Falls law enforcement Most citizens of Wichita Falls favor the new Texas law which makes anyone who murders a child under age 10 eligible for the death penalty. A man who works for the Wichita Falls ATT office was surprised today (Saturday) to learn that the previous law in Texas only applied the death penalty to someone who murdered a child under age 6. He said, I personally think this will be a good change in the law. Anyone who intentionally murders a child under 10 should be eligible for the death penalty. A Wichita Falls lady said, Anything that decreases the murder of children is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. If this stops the murder of one child it's a good law. John Stride and Shannon Edmonds, of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, were recently in Wichita Falls to discuss changes in criminal laws by the 82nd Texas Legislature which will affect Wichita Falls law enforcement. (source: Wichita Falls Law Enforcement Examiner) ARIZONA: E-mails detail FDA's efforts to avoid responsibility regarding execution drug In late September 2010, the Arizona Department of Corrections obtained the drug sodium thiopental from a small pharmaceutical supply house in London to carry out an execution by lethal injection in October. The supply house was not registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to export the drug, nor was the drug approved by FDA, but FDA officials in Phoenix nonetheless allowed the drug into the country. Though the Corrections Department fought hard in court to keep the source of the drug secret, days before the October execution was carried out, The Arizona Republic learned that it had been imported from England. From documents obtained this week from the FDA under the Freedom of Information Act, The Republic has learned that the revelation touched off inquiries into how the drug made it to Arizona and other states that had already been importing it from England and elsewhere. Then, the FDA, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol all consulted with the White House to address questions about the legality of the imports and to justify bending the rules to get it to prisons for executions. The documents released by the FDA offer an insider's view of an agency struggling to keep itself from being dragged into the national legal debate over drugs used in state executions. Some of the released documents were supposed to be redacted to conceal certain details, but encryption failed. Those e-mails show, among other things, that the FDA, with the approval of unnamed persons at the White House, shifted responsibility for allowing the drug's import to Customs. That was done to avoid legal liability and to shield the FDA from any appearance of involvement with the death penalty. One high-placed FDA official wrote on Nov. 2 that even if the agency issued a statement that it had not reviewed the drugs for safety, efficacy or quality . . . it will insert FDA into the death-penalty cases because attorneys will try to use the statement as a means to open proceedings on the safety of the imported drugs. By the end of 2010, the FDA officially stated it would continue to defer to law enforcement on all matters involving lethal injection, and the e-mails show that it had deferred approval of the drug imports to Customs. When asked for comment, Shelly Burgess, an FDA spokeswoman, said in an e-mail response, This involves a matter in litigation and the agency does not comment on matters of litigation. Dale Baich of the Federal Public Defender's Office in Phoenix, one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to force the FDA to police the drug imports, also received the FDA documents whose redactions were visible. He said he declined to review them because of attorney ethical considerations. It is hard for me to say because I have not seen the documents, Baich said. But it appears that the FDA was concerned, as were we, about how Arizona obtained the drugs. We have alleged the drugs were illegally imported and the FDA fell short in its duty under the law. This information seems to support our claims. The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California is also suing the FDA for information about thiopental imports, and this week's FOIA release was partly spurred by the ACLU's requests. The FDA meanwhile, asked the federal public defender, the ACLU and The Republic to return the unredacted materials. The Republic declined. By May 2010, sodium thiopental was scarce in the United States, and by late September of that year, as Arizona was preparing to execute its first prisoner in 2 years, the drug was virtually unavailable domestically because the only U.S. manufacturer had ceased production. Arizona, like other states, scrambled to find it overseas. The 1st Arizona thiopental
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, ALA., USA, FLA., MISS.
July 30 TEXAS: Condemned inmate Swearingen gets reprieveIt's the 3rd time he's been spared in teen's death Death row inmate Larry Swearingen has dodged an execution date for a third time in the 1998 slaying of a Montgomery County college student. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Thursday that new evidence in Swearingen's appeal raised the issue of due process violation. The court remanded the case to the 9th state District Court in Montgomery County for a hearing. Swearingen was set to die by lethal injection Aug. 18. He won reprieves in January 2007 and January 2009, each handed down a day before his execution. Swearingen's attorney, James Rytting, said his client was convicted on false forensic testimony. A former Harris County medical examiner who testified during Swearingen's capital murder trial changed her testimony in 2007. It was a courageous decision by the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals, Rytting said. It was the right decision, and it acknowledges the science in this case is powerful proof that Mr. Swearingen could not have committed the crime. 'Claim is unfounded' Montgomery County prosecutor Bill Delmore said Swearingen's new evidence is the same evidence from previous appeals, which were denied. We're surprised and disappointed that he took the same argument and supplemented it with additional reports from different pathologists and convinced the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that it is a legitimate issue, Delmore said. We remain confident that our evidence will ultimately show his innocence claim is unfounded and the jury that found him guilty beyond reasonable doubt reached the right verdict. Swearingen was convicted in 2000 for the kidnapping, strangulation and sexual assault of Melissa Trotter, who was last seen with Swearingen on the Montgomery College campus on Dec. 8, 1998. Her body was discovered on Jan. 2, 1999, in Sam Houston National Forest in Montgomery County with a partial pantyhose around her neck. Prosecutors said Trotter was killed on the same day she was abducted, and their evidence was bolstered by an autopsy report by former Harris County Medical Examiner Joye Carter. She had determined that Trotter's body had been in the woods for 25 days, placing the date of death on Dec. 8. But Carter now says, after reviewing the case in late 2007, that Trotter's remains had been in the forest no more than 2 weeks, placing the date of death on or after Dec. 12. Swearingen was in jail on Dec. 11, 1998, on an unrelated charge and remained there until his trial. Swearingen, 40, has maintained his innocence from the beginning. In a 2007 interview at the Polanski Unit in Huntsville, he said he had an alibi and that police did not thoroughly investigate the case. Sandra Trotter, the victim's mother, said the family is devastated over the stay. She said the only consolation is that he is still on death row and not able to hurt other women. How long can they examine this evidence? Trotter said. From the victims' rights view, when does this end? It's hard to understand how he can have so many rights. The state appeals court granted Swearingen's first stay on Jan. 23, 2007, because Swearingen filed a motion saying he had new insect evidence that proved his innocence. His attorneys had an expert witness who estimated Trotter's time of death after Dec. 11, 1998, based on insects found near her body. After listening to testimony in a subsequent hearing, state District Judge Fred Edwards denied Swearingen's request for a new trial. An appeals court affirmed the decision. Swearingen's 2nd stay was granted by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 26, 2009. The court found his due process rights were violated. His appeal was based on the insect evidence and new pathology evidence, Carter's reversal on the time of death, that contradicted state evidence. Other evidence found Rytting also found experts, including current Harris County Medical Examiner Dr. Luis Sanchez, who said Trotter died after Dec. 11 and as late as Dec. 18. With the latest reprieve, prosecutors said they again are prepared to refute Swearigen's evidence. They have retained an entomologist who has reviewed the case and has concluded that, based on insect activity, Trotter died a day or two after her Dec. 8 disappearance, Delmore said. Delmore, who recently took over handling post-conviction cases for the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, said entomology evidence is more reliable than pathology evidence when estimating time of death. He said when Carter testified during the 2000 trial, no one, not even the pathologist for the defense, questioned the date of death. Delmore's predecessor, former Montgomery County District Attorney Marc Brumberger, said in previous interviews that prosecutors had strong evidence linking Swearingen to the crime, including fibers and hair found in his truck, his
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, MISS., DEL., US MIL., S. DAK., OHIO, USA, CAL.
July 29 TEXASstay of impending execution Criminal Appeals Court Grants Rare Execution Stay In a rare move Thursday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, stayed the scheduled August 18 execution of Larry Swearingen. He was convicted of the 1998 rape and murder of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter. The Montgomery Community College student’s body was discovered in the Sam Houston National Forest on Jan. 2, 1999, nearly a month after she disappeared from campus. Witnesses said they saw Trotter leaving the campus with Swearingen on Dec. 8, 1998 — the last time she was seen alive. Swearingen’s lawyers have filed repeated pleas in state and federal court urging jurists to consider their arguments that forensic science proves that the 40-year-old inmate could not have committed the crime, because he was in jail when Trotter was murdered. Swearingen was arrested on Dec. 11, 1998 — 3 days after Trotter disappeared — on unrelated traffic warrants. He has been incarcerated ever since. Swearingen admits he had lunch with Trotter the day she disappeared, and he said the 2 were friends and had sexual encounters. But he is adamant he did not rape and murder her. “The district attorney took evidence of a friendship and turned it into a murder,” Swearingen said in an interview with the Tribune at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston a day before the stay was issued. Entomologists, pathologists and an anthropologist who examined the evidence from Trotter’s body have said that she could not have been in the forest for longer than 2 weeks. Her body, the experts report, showed only enough decomposition to have been in the woods for a few days to, and at most, 2 weeks. That means her murder would have happened after Swearingen was jailed. In 2007, Dr. Joye Carter, the Harris County medical examiner who testified at Swearingen’s trial that Trotter had been in the forest for 25 days, reviewed new evidence and submitted an affidavit in which she concluded the murder happened within two weeks of the day Trotter's body was discovered. James Rytting, Swearingen’s lawyer, said he hopes the stay will give defense lawyers the opportunity to have a full court hearing on the forensic science. But prosecutors in Montgomery County are confident in Swearingen’s conviction. “The circumstantial evidence is about the strongest I’ve ever seen,” said Bill Delmore, Montgomery County assistant district attorney. Swearingen had a criminal record and a history with the local police and was quickly identified as the main suspect in the case. Among the key pieces of evidence in the prosecution’s case was a pair of pantyhose. One leg of the lingerie was found around Trotter’s neck. Police said the other was found in Swearingen’s home. They also reported finding cigarettes matching the brand Trotter smoked at Swearingen’s house. Investigators also found Trotter’s hair in Swearingen’s truck. And pieces of school papers belonging to Trotter were found near Swearingen's parents' home. A jury sentenced him to death in July 2000. Sandy and Charles Trotter said they are certain that Swearingen killed their daughter. Sandy Trotter said they were “extremely” disappointed that his execution was stayed a 3rd time. She said she was frustrated with the judicial system and distraught at the prospect of new court hearings that focus on the disturbing details of the decomposition of her daughter’s body. For them, Sandy Trotter said, Swearingen’s execution would bring closure to a tragic chapter in their family’s life and allow them to focus on a happier future. “None of them have the balls to stand up and say, ‘This is it, you’re outta here, Swearingen,'” she said. (source: Texas Tribune) MISSISSIPPI: Panel upholds vacating of death penalty for Hodges A federal appeals panel has ruled that because of erroneous jury instructions, Quentin Wren Hodges was denied a fair sentencing hearing when he got the death penalty for the slaying of his ex-girlfriend's brother. A 3-judge panel for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld a decision by U.S. District Judge Michael Mills, who vacated Hodges' death sentence last fall. Hodges was convicted in 2001 in Lowndes County. The trial judge told jurors that if they failed to unanimously agree on a punishment, he would have to sentence Hodges to life with the possibility of parole. Mills said that was a mistake by the judge, and the appeals panel agreed. Mills said Hodges was not entitled to parole, and the judge's error likely confused the jury. The attorney general's office has appealed Mills' ruling to the 5th Circuit. If left unchallenged, prosecutors would have to go back the Lowndes County Circuit Court for a new sentencing hearing for Hodges. Attorney General Jim Hood did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Hodges' attorney, Robert McDuff of Jackson, praised
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, MD., KAN., UTAH, MO., OHIO
Feb. 16 TEXAS: Texas lawmaker moves to impeach appeals judge A Texas lawmaker is trying to impeach a judge on the state's highest criminal appeals court for what he calls neglect of duty in a death penalty case. Rep. Lon Burnam filed a resolution Monday seeking to start the process against Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Sharon Keller. Keller refused to keep the court offices open after 5 p.m. on Sept. 25, 2007, when attorneys for Michael Richard said computer problems were delaying their efforts to file late appeals of his death sentence. Richard was executed that night by lethal injection for the rape and murder of a Houston-area woman. (source: A ssociated Press) * Texas is Number 1 Exporting State for 7th Consecutive Year The U.S. Department of Commerce has named Texas the top exporting state in the nation for the seventh year in a row based on 2008 export data. Texas exports increased more than 14 % over the last year, totaling $192.14 billion, approximately $23.92 billion more than 2007. Maintaining our rank as the nation's top exporting state is proof positive that Texas has sound policies in place to cushion it from the effects of an economic downturn, said Gov. Perry. By maintaining low taxes and reasonable and predictable regulations, business in Texas can continue to flourish, ensuring our ongoing position as a top exporting state and competitor in the global marketplace. Texas' top export recipients in 2008 were Mexico, Canada, China, the Netherlands and Brazil which respectively imported $62.08 billion, $19.2 billion, $8.4 billion, $7.06 billion and $5.96 billion in Texas- manufactured goods and services. Texas' top exporting industries in 2008 were chemicals, computers and electronics, machinery, petroleum and coal, and transportation equipment which posted increased exports of 9.5 %, 5.1 %, 9.3 %, 72 % and 2.74 %, respectively. For more information regarding 2008 export data, please visit: http://governor.state.tx.us/ecodev/business_resources/international_business_and_recruitment/ (source: Office of the Governor, Press Release) MARYLAND: O'Malley asks churches to help end death penaltyGovernor to testify on issue before Senate panel later this week Gov. Martin O'Malley said today his effort to get the votes to repeal capital punishment in Maryland is not done, and he asked the religious community to help by petitioning lawmakers facing a difficult decision. I need your help. I really and truly do on this death penalty legislation, O'Malley told about 300 people attending the African Methodist Episcopal Church Legislative Day. It is not done. The governor also urged repeal supporters not to take any votes for granted on the issue. I need your help writing letters. I need your help persuading. I need your help even talking to delegates and senators that you may think are probably already with us, O'Malley said. You never really know. 2009 General Assembly session Photos O'Malley is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee on Wednesday, where his bill to replace capital punishment with life in prison without the possibility of parole is scheduled to have a hearing. A similar bill failed on a 5-5 vote in 2007 on a committee where the swing vote still appears to be elusive. Last year, when the committee again appeared to be short of the votes to move the bill to the full Senate, lawmakers decided to create a commission to study capital punishment. O'Malley is hopeful the commission's recommendation to repeal the death penalty will help move the proposal forward. We have a real shot this year, O'Malley said. The governor pointed out that Maryland just had the 2nd biggest reduction in homicides since 1985 -- and that capital punishment had nothing to do with the drop in murders, because the state currently has a de facto moratorium on the death penalty. The governor attributes the decline in murders to better cooperation between law enforcement agencies and early intervention in the lives of young people who are at risk to themselves and others. These are the things that save lives and they cost money, and the death penalty diverts money from the very things that we know save lives, O'Malley said. In December, the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment recommended on a 13-9 vote to repeal the state's death penalty law, citing racial and jurisdictional disparities in how it is used. The report also cited a study by the Urban Institute that found it cost $1.1 million to prosecute a case in which the death penalty is possible but not sought, while it cost $1.8 million to pursue a case that unsuccessfully sought capital punishment. A case that resulted in a death penalty typically cost $3 million, according to the study. A minority report signed by eight of the commission's 23 members argued that the law should be kept on the books because Maryland rarely and carefully uses capital punishment. If O'Malley's
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news------TEXAS, PENN., VA., OHIO
Feb. 10 TEXASexecution Texas Bathtub Killer executed A Louisiana man condemned for strangling and drowning a suburban Dallas woman, charged with the slaying of a 2nd and blamed for the rapes of at least five other women was executed Tuesday evening. Asked if he had any final statement, Dale Devon Scheanette paused and said, My only statement is that no cases ever tried have been error free. Those are my words. No cases are error free. Scheanette then told the warden he could proceed. He selected no witnesses for his death. 6 relatives of his 2 murder victims watched as he took his final breath. He never looked at them. 9 minutes after the lethal drugs began to flow, he was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m. Scheanette, 35, became known as the Bathtub Killer after 2 women at the same apartment complex in Arlington in 1996 were found dead in half-filled bathtubs, strangled, raped and bound with duct tape. He was sent to death row for the Christmas Eve 1996 slaying of Wendie Prescott, 22, and charged but not tried for killing Christine Vu, 25, 3 months earlier. Scheanette, acting as his own lawyer, had appeals rejected Monday in the federal appeals courts. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles also voted 7-0 to turn down a clemency request. A woman identifying herself as Scheanette's sister filed a three-page handwritten motion on his behalf Tuesday with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking a reprieve so he could get a court review of the appeals rejected Monday. The high court turned down the appeal less than an hour before Scheanette was scheduled to die. The slayings that terrorized the suburban Dallas-Fort Worth area went unsolved for more than three years because detectives couldn't match a fingerprint at the murder scenes to anyone in criminal databases. Finally, in 1999, Scheanette was arrested for a burglary outside Dallas and his prints were tied to the killings. DNA then strengthened the confirmations and also pointed to his involvement in the other rapes. He personifies evil, said Greg Miller, the Tarrant County district attorney who prosecuted Scheanette in 2003. I've been doing this 35, 36 years. I've had others who have killed and done bad things. But he's at the top of the list. Prosecutors and defense lawyers said it was uncertain what set Scheanette off. Evidence showed that at some time before the Prescott and Vu killings, the native of Ouachita Parish in northern Louisiana had lived at the apartment complex where both women lived and died. Scheanette declined to speak with reporters as his execution date neared. At his trial, lawyers tried to show the evidence was insufficient to convict him. We brought in his family to show he had a pretty good family unit and that he got along well, said J.R. Molina, his trial attorney. The DNA evidence, the fingerprint evidence that came in, were very strong. Several other instances of burglary, break-ins and rapes that he committed, that was pretty strong evidence to show to a jury. Prescott's aunt and uncle, concerned when she failed to show up for a shopping trip with her sister, went to her apartment and found her dead. I hope he asks God to forgive him and save his soul, Brenda Norwood, Prescott's aunt, told The Dallas Morning News. I had to forgive because I can't live like that. I can't hate him for what he did because that would not bring Wendie back. You have to move on. After jurors convicted him of capital murder for the Prescott slaying, prosecutors in the punishment phase of the trial called to the witness stand 5 women who testified how they were beaten, threatened and raped by Scheanette. I am convinced that testimony of those 5 women was very therapeutic for them, Miller said, describing the women as crying and hugging 1 another after leaving the witness stand. It was a pretty moving event. ... It was a miracle he didn't kill any of the other women. Miller, however, said he was left to wonder how many others Scheanette may have raped or killed. The possibility certainly exists, said Tommy LeNoir, the Arlington homicide detective who investigated the slayings. I will tell you this, without reservation, that the right person is in this position, that the person who took the lives of these 2 ladies, I have absolutely no reservation that the person responsible is Dale Scheanette. Scheanette becomes the 7th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 430th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7th, 1982. Scheanette becomes the 191st condemned inmate to be put to death since Rick Perry became governor in 2001. On Thursday, another inmate linked to multiple slayings and rapes was set to die. Johnny Ray Johnson, 51, was convicted of the 1995 rape-slaying of Leah Joette Smith, whose head was slammed repeatedly into a cement street curb in Houston after she refused to have sex with him. Scheanette becomes the 10th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., WIS., UTAH, WASH.
Feb. 4 TEXASexecution--volunteer Parolee who used bat to kill woman, son executed A parolee convicted of using a baseball bat to fatally bludgeon his girlfriend and her teenage son at their home in San Antonio was executed Wednesday night. Nothing I can say can ever change the past, David Martinez said from the death chamber gurney. Asking for forgiveness or saying I'm sorry is not going to change anything. I hope you can find peace from all the pain I've caused you all these years. Martinez looked at friends and relatives and told them that he loved them, advising them to keep on going and it will be OK. As the drugs began taking effect, he mouthed, I'm sorry. I truly am. He shook his head vigorously, raising it up from the gurney pillow and then closed his eyes. He was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m., 8 minutes after the lethal drugs began to flow. Among the witnesses was Belinda Prado, who was 10 when she witnessed the murders of her mother and brother. She testified against Martinez at his trial. An uncle held her as she watched Martinez die and she had to use a wheelchair to leave the witness room. Martinez, 36, won permission from the courts to stop appeals attempting to spare his life. I'm not crazy, Martinez said recently from death row as his punishment neared. It's not that I've given up. I accept it ... Why prolong the process? Martinez was on parole after serving 5 months of a 5-year sentence for attempted sexual assault when he was arrested for the slayings of Carolina Prado, 37, and her son, Erik, 14. At the time of his arrest at his grandmother's home in San Marcos, where he fled after the killings, he'd also been sought for nine months for refusing to report his parole officer. Prado's younger daughter, Belinda, told a Bexar County jury in 1995 she saw him beat her brother's head. She said she was awakened by the sound of the bat. Martinez ordered her to be quiet or she would meet the same fate, then tied her up. After he left, the girl freed herself and walked to her grandmother's house nearby. Rosa Ramirez found her grandson's body then called San Antonio police, who found Prado's body. I feel like it just happened, Ramirez, 72, told the San Antonio Express-News, adding that she has forgiven her daughter's former boyfriend. God says you have forgive to be forgiven. Martinez told officers who arrested him that he killed them just like cockroaches. In a statement to police, he said the slayings occurred after he drank a 12-pack of beer and a large bottle of rum. He later testified at his trial, however, that police coerced him into making a confession and denied any role in their deaths. From prison, he wouldn't discuss the crime. I'm not insensitive to the victims' family, to my family, but nobody wins, he said. There are some things not meant to be learned. I don't mean to be evasive, but what they have to realize is that publicity is not going to get more out me than that. I'm sorry people are dead, of course. Martinez, known as Snoopy and Bam Bam, had a lengthy juvenile criminal history in the Rio Grande Valley that began at age 13 when authorities said he broke into a neighbor's house and stole her panties. When he was 16 in 1988, he received juvenile probation for 6 burglaries and eventually was placed with the Texas Youth Commission. 3 years later, he pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault for an attack on a McAllen shoe store manager. He received a probated sentence, then went to prison for probation violations. He was released on parole and was sought as a parole violator when he was arrested for the double slaying in San Antonio. I'll never forget that guy, A.J. Dimaline, who spent nearly 8 years as a Bexar County assistant district attorney, said. He was the baddest person I ever prosecuted. He claimed he was intoxicated, that the lady befriended him but got tired of him and was ready to kick him out. He was just a mean, mean guy. He has no redeeming qualities and doesn't deserve to take another breath, in my opinion. Martinez becomes the 6th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 429th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982. Martinez becomes the 190th condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas since Rick Perry was elected governor in 2001. 2 more executions are set for next week in Texas. Dale Scheanette, 35, is set to die Tuesday for the Christmas Eve 1996 rape-slaying of Wendie Prescott, 22, a teacher's aide, at her apartment in Arlington. 2 days later, Johnny Ray Johnson, 51, faces lethal injection for the 1995 rape-slaying of a Houston woman, Leah Joette Beane, 41. Martinez becomes the 9th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1145th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. (sources: Associated Press Rick Halperin) PENNSYLVANIA: Attorneys for Reading murder suspect seek to bar death penalty Defense attorneys asked a
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, TENN., FLA.
Jan. 27 TEXASimpending execution Execution set for Wednesday for convicted killer When a man ranting about voices telling him to kill was picked up by police in Del Rio and taken to a state hospital for a mental evaluation, authorities didn't know he already was being sought for a rampage that left four people dead more than 300 miles away. 2 weeks later, authorities determined the man in the Kerrville State Hospital was Virgil Martinez, a fugitive Houston security guard. Martinez had given them a fake name when he was brought in for mental health treatment that prosecutors said was a ruse to evade police trying to find him. On Wednesday, Martinez, 41, was set to die for the October 1996 fatal shootings of his ex-girlfriend, her 2 small children and a neighbor at a trailer home outside Alvin in Brazoria County, south of Houston. Veronica Fuentes, 27, had been shot 14 times; her 5-year-old son, Joshua, 5 times; his sister, Casandra, 3, 3 times; and John Gomez, 18, 8 times. Gomez had been helping the woman watch her kids. Before dying, he identified the gunman as Fuentes' former boyfriend. Martinez would be the 4th Texas inmate executed this year and the first of two on consecutive nights this week. Senseless murders, Jerome Aldrich, who was one of the prosecutors at Martinez's 1998 trial, recalled. The death penalty is very appropriate in these circumstances. David Dow, a University of Houston law professor, said Monday he hoped to get the lethal injection delayed so lawyers can be certain Martinez is competent to be executed. He seems to us to have some potentially significant mental illness issues, said Dow, who works with the Texas Defender Service, a legal group that represents death row inmates. Don Vernay, a New Mexico lawyer who had been representing Martinez in federal court appeals, argued unsuccessfully that temporal lobe epilepsy suffered by Martinez caused the shooting frenzy. The problem was, it was a bad crime, Vernay said. Martinez declined to speak with reporters in the weeks preceding his execution date. Just before his sentencing at his trial, Martinez told the court: God knows my heart. I'm innocent. At trial, Martinez was defended by Jeri Yenne, who later was elected district attorney in Brazoria County. I don't think it's appropriate for me to comment, she said when asked about the status of the case. It's been real important for me to maintain my boundaries as district attorney. I did everything we could from an advocacy perspective, she said of her defense. We also want to make sure the system properly reviews it. I don't think I should talk about the particulars. In 2004, a federal appeals court ordered a hearing to look into Martinez's claims defense lawyers didn't present enough evidence about his medical condition being responsible for the shootings. Lawyers said pursuing that strategy would have contradicted Martinez's assertion going into the trial that he didn't do the shooting. Witnesses testified they saw Martinez shoot Fuentes in the front yard of the trailer park. Her two children were found dead in their beds, both shot in the head at point-blank range. Gomez, identified as a family friend from Houston, was gunned down as he ran to Fuentes' aid. Prosecutors combined all four slayings into a single capital murder charge. Police concluded a single 9 mm gun fired all the bullets. Police recovered a holster for the gun in Martinez' car and a box designed to house the same caliber weapon in his mother's Houston home, where he lived. The murder weapon, however, never was recovered. The shootings occurred a short time after Fuentes had ended a one- or two-month relationship with Martinez. On Thursday, Texas prisoner Ricardo Ortiz was set to die for the retaliation killing of Gerardo Garcia, 22, a fellow inmate at the El Paso County Jail in 1997. Garcia died of a lethal injection of heroin. Another inmate, Larry Swearingen, was set to die Tuesday but his punishment was stopped on Monday by a federal appeals court so questions about forensic evidence can be resolved. Swearingen was condemned for the 1998 abduction and slaying of Melissa Trotter, 19, a college student in Montgomery County. (source: Associated Press) * Court stay in death case It was a relief to see a stay issued in federal court yesterday in the scheduled execution of a Montgomery County man who might have been behind bars when his alleged murder victim was killed. Doubts have lingered over the conviction of Larry Swearingen for months, ever since a medical examiner essentially recanted her pivotal testimony about the probable time of death of the victim, college student Melissa Trotter. Yet state courts have declined to examine the expert's new analysis on its merits, citing a technicality to move the case along. Something's wrong here. A key expert witness says her testimony created the wrong impression, and Texas courts don't come to grips with it? The case
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS
Jan. 26 TEXAS: College student killer get reprieve A federal appeals court on Monday stopped this week's scheduled execution of a man condemned for abducting, raping and strangling a 19-year-old suburban Houston woman 10 years ago. Larry Swearingen, 37, faced lethal injection Tuesday evening for the death of Melissa Trotter, whose body was found Jan. 2, 1999, in the Sam Houston National Forest south of Huntsville. The discovery came 25 days after she was last seen leaving the library at Montgomery College near Conroe. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reprieve came in response to questions from Swearingen's attorneys about the timing of Trotter's death. Swearingen insisted he couldn't have killed the woman because he was in jail for outstanding traffic warrants when newly evaluated forensic evidence indicates her body was dumped in the woods not far from his home. Swearingen's lawyer, James Rytting, said he was told of the ruling by the court but hadn't seen it at midday Monday. I can't jump up and down yet because I don't know what it says, he said. I just don't know how long it's going to be before we have to go through this stuff again. Swearingen would have been the fourth condemned prisoner executed this year. 2 more executions are scheduled later this week in the nation's most active death penalty state. This is unique, Swearingen told The Associated Press last week from death row last week. How many cases happen after a defendant is in jail? Prosecutors had opposed efforts by Swearingen's lawyers to the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court. Rytting contended deterioration of Trotter's body would have been much more severe than it was when found, raising the possibility somebody else dumped it in the woods. A medical examiner testified at Swearingen's trial in 2000 that she believed Trotter was killed the same day she disappeared. But seven years later, the coroner submitted an affidavit changing her opinion, basing her judgment on temperature data compiled by Swearingen's defense. The new opinion, also supported by other forensic experts, said Trotter's body was in the woods for considerably less than 25 days. The appeals court said Swearingen's due process rights were violated because prosecutors sponsored the false or misleading testimony from the medical examiner and that if she had been provided additional information from them she could have testified more accurately about the timing of the victim's death. The court, in returning the appeal to a federal district judge for review, also said Swearingen's trial lawyers should have better cross-examined the coroner and developed evidence from Trotter's body tissue. Judge Jacques Wiener Jr. wrote a concurring opinion to address the elephant that I perceive in the corner of this room: actual innocence. I conceive the real possibility that the district court to which we return this case today could view the newly discovered medical expert reports as clear and convincing evidence that the victim in this case could not possibly have been killed by the defendant, Wiener said. The judge, however, complained that under existing Supreme Court rulings, lower federal courts faced with actual innocence claims may have no choice but to deny relief to someone who is actually innocent. Wiener said the full 5th Circuit or the Supreme Court may want to clarify the issue and use Swearingen's case as the precedent. Someone else killed the girl, Rytting said. It's impossible (Swearingen) threw that body in the woods. Similar appeals pointing to forensic evidence discrepancies were rejected in state courts. State lawyers said temperature data cited by the inmate is not accurate for the crime scene because it was taken at airports miles away. Swearingen was arrested 3 days after Trotter was last seen. At his trial, he said Trotter met him at the college campus the day of her disappearance but they both left separately. Witnesses said she left the library with him. The 2 had met 2 days earlier at a Lake Conroe marina. Evidence showed Trotter was in Swearingen's trailer in Willis and in his pickup truck, where detectives found hair that had been forcibly pulled from her head. Another section of the pantyhose used to strangle Trotter was found in the trash outside Swearingen's trailer. Cigarettes found in his home matched the brand the victim smoked. Swearingen said his now ex-wife smoked the same brand. Cell phone records from the day Trotter vanished showed he was in the area where her body eventually was discovered. Swearingen had a history of at least 2 accusations of rape plus an allegation of assault on an ex-wife, but charges never were brought against him. He had a previous conviction for burglary when he was 18, for which he spent 3 days in jail and 3 years on probation. I'm not a choir boy, he said. Like everybody, I have skeletons in my closet. But being a knucklehead doesn't equate to being a killer. 2
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, VA., N.H., PENN., LA.
Jan. 21 TEXAS: DNA expert links defendant to McKinney quadruple murder scene A DNA expert linked the defendant in a 2004 quadruple murder to items found at the McKinney crime scene. Raul Cortez is a possible contributor to DNA found on pieces latex gloves caught on duct tape used to bind victim Rosa Barbosa, Dr. Rick Staub told the Collin County jury Wednesday. Cortez and Eddie Ray Williams, 26, are charged in the March 12, 2004, shooting deaths of Rosa Barbosa, 46; her nephew, Mark Barbosa, 25; and his friends Matthew Self, 17, and Austin York, 18. The killings occurred inside Rosa Barbosa's home. Both defendants are charged with 5 counts of capital murder 1 count for each of the 4 victims, and an additional charge for more than 1 murder occurring during the same incident. Williams told a Collin County jury on Tuesday how he and Cortez gunned down a McKinney woman during a botched robbery, then killed the 3 young men who walked in on the crime. Williams told the jury that Javier Cortez, Raul's brother, came up with the plan to rob Rosa Barbosa, who worked at a McKinney check-cashing business. Javier had been watching her and thought she took money home to cash checks for Mexicans who don't have green cards, Williams testified. He told the jury that he agreed to participate in the robbery but that his accomplices didn't say anything about killing her. Williams testified that on the night of the crime, he knocked on Rosa Barbosa's door and asked her if she'd seen his lost puppy. Raul and Javier ran around me and pushed the woman to the ground, he told the jury. The Cortez brothers couldn't find any money in the home, so they forced the bound woman to give them the key and alarm code to the check-cashing business. Then Raul disappeared and I heard a pop, Williams testified, describing how Rosa Barbosa was killed. About that time, the other 3 victims walked into the home. When they came in, Raul just opened fire, Williams testified. The barrage of bullets didn't kill the youths, and one of the young men tried to run out the door but was caught by Raul Cortez, Williams testified. All 3 young men were herded into Mark Barbosa's bedroom. Raul gave me the .25 and told me to shoot them, Williams testified. I shot Mark once and the other one twice. He told the jury that Raul Cortez killed the 4th victim. (source: Dallas Morning News) ** URGENT ACTION APPEAL - From Amnesty International USA 21 January 2009 UA 17/09 - Death penalty / Legal concern USA (Texas) Larry Ray Swearingen (m), white, aged 37 Larry Swearingen is scheduled to be executed in Texas on 27 January. He was sentenced to death in 2000 for the murder of Melissa Trotter in 1998. He maintains his innocence of the murder. Several forensic experts have provided statements and testimony supportive of his claim. Melissa Trotter went missing on 8 December 1998. Larry Swearingen was arrested three days later, and has been incarcerated ever since. The body of Melissa Trotter was found in a forest on 2 January 1999. Larry Swearingen was tried for her murder, and sentenced to death. On 14 January 2009, Larry Swearingen's lawyers filed an appeal in the US Supreme Court to stay his execution on grounds of innocence. The petition argues that the State's only theory of guilt, which was that Mr. Swearingen killed the victim and left her body in the forest on December 8, 1998, twenty-five (25) days before the corpse was recovered on January 2, 1999, is not just implausible, it is utterly impossible. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the motion for a stay of execution. In support of this innocence claim, the petition cites the opinions of three current or former Chief Medical Examiners and another forensic pathologist. One of these experts, Dr Joye Carter, is the former Chief Medical Examiner of Harris County in Texas who performed the autopsy of Melissa Trotter and testified at Larry Swearingen's trial. At the trial she had testified that in her opinion, Melissa Trotter's death had occurred 25 days before her body was found. In an affidavit signed in 2007, Dr Carter stated that she had looked again at the case and changed her opinion. She stated that she had reviewed the autopsy report and photographs and also several pieces of forensically important information that, to the best of my recollection, were not made available to [me] during trial or pretrial proceedings. This information included video footage of the crime scene taken on the day Melissa Trotter was found, medical records giving Melissa Trotter's weight immediately prior to her disappearance, and the temperature data for the area in which she was found for the period 8 December 1998 to 2 January 1999. In her affidavit, Dr Carter concluded that Melissa Trotter's body had been left in the forest within two weeks of it being found. If accurate, this would mean that the body was dumped at a time when Larry Swearingen was already in custody. Another
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, ALA., MD., CALIF.
Dec. 7 TEXAS: Harris sends nobody to death row First I learn that Houston's air is getting cleaner. Now I learn that we haven't sentenced a single scumbag murderer to death this entire year. This is not the city I signed up for. In 1999, Houston displaced Los Angeles as the smoggiest city in the nation. This year we set a record low with only 16 days exceeding federal standards for ground-level ozone, smog's main ingredient. In 2003, the year I moved here, Houston sent 9 murderers to death row. That was 35 % of the state's death sentences that year, an amount that is more than twice our 16.5 % share of the state's population. From 15 a year to zero In 2004, we did even better, accounting for fully 1/2 of the 20 Texans who landed on death row. Back in the 1990s, a less populous Harris County was even more prolific in sending murderers to meet their Maker or not. For the 5 years beginning 1993, Harris County condemned more than 15 annually, contributing 39 % of the state's migration to death row. But this year, which for capital crime trial purposes is basically over, we've contributed precisely zero % to the state's nation-leading cadre of dead men walking. The Rosenthal factor? I know what you're thinking: That's what happens when at the beginning of the year you banish the tough-on-crime likes of Chuck Rosenthal for minor indiscretions such as using his office computer for racist, romantic and obscene e-mails. (Separate e-mails, not racist, romantic and obscene all in one.) And, oh yes, defying a federal judge's direct order by erasing a couple of thousand other e-mails that could have proved even more entertaining. But acting District Attorney Ken Magidson declines to take either credit or blame for the county's paltry annual contribution to death row. Magidson said he personally reviewed each capital crime to see if prosecutors could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they met the standards set by law for the death penalty. Only 2 death-penalty cases were presented to juries. In one of them, prosecutors agreed a plea bargain of 60 years during the trial. In the other one, the defendant was acquitted, more on which below. Statistics from the past 3 years agree with Magidson's suggestion that he wasn't the difference. From 2005 through 2007, Harris County condemned just 7 men, or 15 % of the Texas total. Prosecutors throughout the state appear to be seeking the death sentence less often. This year only 16 cases have come to trial (and one currently under way). In addition, juries appear to be showing more skepticism. One found the accused not guilty. One jury hung on the question of guilt. 4 juries found the accused guilty but chose life sentences without possibility of parole. One was the jury in the sole Harris County death penalty case that of Juan Quintero, an illegal immigrant convicted of shooting a police officer 4 times in the head during a traffic stop. When you have a Texas jury refusing to give the death penalty to an illegal immigrant who killed a cop if the significance of that doesn't speak volumes, nothing will, said David Dow, an anti-death penalty activist and professor at the University of Houston Law Center. Dow believes that Texas juries have joined the national mainstream. The recent passage in Texas of the sentence of life without parole offers some jurors a satisfying alternative to death (which is why Rosenthal and other Texas district attorneys long opposed it). What's more, say Dow and others, with the advent of highly publicized DNA-based exonerations, jurors across the country have become more concerned about imposing the death penalty. In August, Michael Blair was released after 14 years on Texas death row. DNA evidence cleared him of the 1993 rape of a 7-year-old girl. Dow notes that while Texas jurors seem to have joined the rest of the nation in increasing concern about the finality of the death penalty, state officials seem to be uniquely stubborn. In other states, executions have been slowed. But not in Texas. According to figures compiled by the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Texas this year has performed 18 executions, exactly the number as the rest of the nation combined. The runner-up was Virginia with 4. Florida executed only 2. Texas already has 11 executions scheduled for next year, running only into March. Only 1 is from Harris County. Tarrant County has 3. So it looks like we may lose our title as the Death Penalty Capital of America. (source: Rick Casey, Houston Chronicle) ALABAMA: Execution is revenge, not closure The recent scheduling of 5 executions by the Alabama Supreme Court (with input from the attorney general) leads me to ask you to engage in a brief thought-experiment with me. Forgive the example which speaks to my Catholic background. --Assume that Mehmet Ali Agca had killed Pope John Paul II that day in 1981 in St. Peter's Square. --Assume that all of the world's more than 1
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, WASH., ALA., MD., NEV., ILL.
Dec. 2 TEXAS: Robert Sparks may face capital punishment for deaths of wife, stepsons Nicoletta Agnew plans to walk into a Dallas courtroom this morning and face the man she believes killed her daughter and 2 grandsons: her son-in-law. Although it will be the 1st time the 48-year-old woman will have seen Robert Sparks since before his arrest days after the September 2007 slayings, she said she will harbor no malice toward him. I know he did a bad thing. But right now it's not like I want to hurt him or anything, Ms. Agnew said. I don't know what happened with him. Robert's the one who has to live with it. As he was being arrested after a three-day police hunt, Mr. Sparks told reporters that his 30-year-old wife had been trying to poison him with the help of her sons. Mr. Sparks' attorney, Paul Johnson, could not be reached for comment. If Mr. Sparks, 34, is convicted of fatally stabbing his wife, Chare Agnew, and his stepsons, Harold Sublet, 9, and Raeqwon Agnew, 10, he faces the harshest possible punishment death. Prosecutors say he also sexually assaulted his 2 teenage stepdaughters. Nicoletta Agnew wants to see him punished, but she doesn't think taking his life is the proper penalty. I would just want him to stay in prison and suffer day by day. I wouldn't want him to die for that, Ms. Agnew said. But Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said other family members have told his office they fully support seeking a death sentence. Collectively there are several victims of this crime. According to the other victims that we have contacted, they want to go full speed ahead, said Mr. Watkins, who added that he plans to talk with Nicoletta Agnew before the trial starts. A couple of months ago, the district attorney's office honored the wishes of Karen Lafon's family in another capital murder case. The family asked the district attorney to give her killer a plea deal for life in prison because Ms. Lafon did not believe in the death penalty. But the way Chare Agnew and her sons died was so heinous, said Mr. Watkins who has publicly acknowledged his own reservations about the death penalty that this was a case that really shocked my conscience. Even though my personal views may not be in line with the law, I have to enforce it, Mr. Watkins said. This is one of those cases that I feel needs to be enforced in this manner. In a rare occurrence, Mr. Watkins said he will also help prosecute Mr. Sparks by questioning at least one witness during the trial. Mr. Watkins said he plans to actively prosecute more cases. The case began Sept. 15, 2007, when 911 operators received a chilling call. My name is Robert Sparks and I just killed my wife and the two boys, he told the dispatcher, according to Mr. Sparks' arrest warrant affidavit. You need to get over there fast. ... I left two girls in the closet. When Dallas police arrived at the couple's southeast Dallas home, they found Chare Agnew and her sons dead. Inside a closet, they discovered Ms. Agnew's two teenage daughters bound and gagged. Mr. Sparks also faces aggravated sexual assault charges in the attacks on the girls. Dallas police began a massive search for Mr. Sparks and announced that they believed he had taken a bus to Austin. The next day authorities say he returned to North Texas and hid in South Dallas hotels. On Sept. 18, authorities say Mr. Sparks stole a van and led police on a chase through Oak Cliff, shooting at officers along the way. Police blocked him into a dead-end street, surrounded him and took him into custody. I know my daughter and my grandchildren are gone, Nicoletta Agnew said. But I don't hate ... [Mr. Sparks]. I did at first. Now I don't know what I'm going to feel when I see him in person. (source: Dallas Morning News) ** 2 Texas death row inmates lose at Supreme Court The U.S. Supreme Court refused appeals Monday from 2 Texas death row inmates, including a Mexican national convicted of gunning down 3 El Paso teenagers a dozen years ago. Ignacio Gomez had asked the court to review his capital murder conviction for the 1996 shooting deaths of 16-year-old twin brothers Michael and Matthew Meredith and 19-year-old Toby Hatheway Jr. The 3 were shot in an apparent retaliation for some broken windows at the home of Gomez's mother. Their bodies were buried in a shallow grave in the desert. In a 2nd case, Edward Lee Busby Jr. also was turned down by the high court, which refused to review his conviction for the 2004 suffocation of 77-year-old retired TCU professor Laura Lee Crane, who was abducted from a Fort Worth grocery store parking lot. In the El Paso case, Gomez, whose 39th birthday is Tuesday, was turned down earlier this year by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He had argued that he was unconstitutionally deprived of his rights under an international treaty. At the time of the slayings, court documents show he was in the United States legally and living in El Paso with
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news-----TEXAS, FLA., ALA. CALIF., UTAH
Nov. 12 TEXASimpending execution Harris County man to die for slaying 14 years ago Apparently irate over his girlfriend leaving him, George Whitaker III showed up at her parents' house brandishing a .45-caliber pistol and demanded to get in. His ex-girlfriend, Catina Carrier, wasn't at the home in Crosby, east of Houston in Harris County. But by the time he left, the woman's sister was fatally shot and her mother and another sister were seriously wounded. On Wednesday, Whitaker was set to die for the slaying of 16-year-old Shakeitha Carrier more than 14 years ago. Whitaker, 36, would be the 16th Texas inmate executed this year and the 1st of 2 scheduled to die on consecutive nights this week in the nation's most active death penalty state. Whitaker's conviction and death sentence for the 1994 fatal shooting was upheld in the appeals courts and the U.S. Supreme Court last year refused to review his case. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles earlier this week unanimously rejected a clemency petition asking the former mechanic's death sentence be commuted to life in prison. Whitaker declined to speak with reporters as his execution date neared. Evidence showed Catina Carrier met Whitaker in high school, began dating him after graduation and then the two lived together and became engaged at Christmas 1993. She decided to leave him by the following April because he became abusive and often took the money she was making. She went to live in secret with another friend because she feared Whitaker. On June 15, Whitaker retrieved a .45-caliber pistol he had pawned and drove with friends to her home under the guise of returning some of her things. He pulled the gun on Mary Carrier, the mother of the girls, after she refused to let him in the house. Testimony showed he forced his way in, shot her, pistol-whipped her 5-year-old daughter, Ashley, then ran upstairs and fatally shot Shakeitha, known as Kiki, in the head. Mary Carrier was shot a 2nd time when she tried to flee the home, but she and Ashley survived although they both suffered permanent injuries. Mary Carrier lost the use of her right hand. Ashley Carrier, whose skull was fractured in two places, remains brain damaged, authorities said. Whitaker was shot and wounded the next day by Harris County deputies trying to arrest him at an apartment where he was drinking beer with another girlfriend. Authorities said he had jumped from a window and was shot in the hip as he appeared to be reaching for a pistol. Mary Carrier testified against him at his trial. Catina Carrier also testified how she was mentally and physically abused by him. One of her friends testified how she was abducted a few days before the shootings and forced at knifepoint to call Catina Carrier as Whitaker attempted to lure his ex-girlfriend to a meeting place. Whitaker's mother testified his father was a strict disciplinarian, that her son never was violent in her presence and that Whitaker twice had tried to kill himself when he was 20. He had no previous prison record. Whitaker's earlier appeals argued his trial lawyer was ineffective in not calling a mental health expert to testify, that jurors should have been told a life sentence would have ensured him at least 40 years in prison, and that his death sentence was unconstitutional. On Thursday, Denard Manns, 42, faced execution for the 1998 fatal shooting of Michelle Robson, 26, at her apartment in Killeen. Robson was a Fort Hood soldier living off the base. 3 more Texas prisoners are set to die next week. (source: Associated Press) *** 7 US executions scheduled in next 10 days Over the next 10 days, 7 death row inmates are scheduled to be executed in the United States. 5 of these condemned men are in Texas, a state that has carried out 15 of the 31 executions in the US so far this year. Barring a last-minute reprieve, George Whitaker III will die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Wednesday evening at the Texas execution chamber in Huntsville, north of Houston. The next day, prisoner Denard Manns is set to be put to death. 3 more Texas executions are planned for next week: Eric Cathey on Tuesday, November 18; Rogelio Cannady on Wednesday, November 19; and Robert Hudson on Thursday, November 20. 2 executions are scheduled in other states: Gregory L. Bryant-Bey in Ohio, and Marco Allen Chapman in Kentucky. Chapman would be the 1st person put to death in Kentucky in 10 years. George Whitaker, 36, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1994 murder of Shakeitha Carrier, his ex-girlfriend's sister. His former court-appointed lawyer, retired state District Judge Jay Burnett, petitioned the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend that Republican Governor Rick Perry commute his sentence to life in prison or grant a 30-stay so that his petition could be reviewed. In his petition to the pardon board, Burnett argued that his client was unjustly condemned to death because
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., MICH., CALIF., PENN.
Oct. 21 TEXASimpending execution Northeast Texas man set to die in burglary-slaying Condemned inmate Joseph Ries looked to the U.S. Supreme Court to keep him from the Texas death chamber Tuesday evening for the slaying of a 64-year-old Northeast Texas man during a burglary almost a decade ago. Ries, 28, faced lethal injection for breaking into the rural Hopkins County home of Robert Ratliff, fatally shooting him as the man slept, then driving off in the victim's car. Ries would be the 12th prisoner executed this year in the nation's most active death penalty state and the 1st of 2 scheduled to die this week. 2 were executed last week and 2 more are set to die next week. Ries' lawyer, James Terry Jr., asked the Supreme Court court to halt the punishment and examine the case, contending among his arguments that Ries' rights were violated because his earlier appeals were handled by an incompetent attorney. Terry also argued Ries' trial lawyer failed to adequately show jurors how Ries was raised by a drug-addicted and alcoholic mother whose parental rights twice were revoked, and how Ries was abused in some of the dozen foster homes where lived. We've got a system that's broken and at every level it's been broken for him, Terry said. He acknowledged the crime was horrible but contended Ries' life had been shaped by the failures of those whose legal and moral duty was to help him. Ries had lived at Ratliff's home in Cumby, about 65 miles northeast of Dallas, but Ratliff kicked him out after he suspected Ries of stealing some items. On Feb. 18, 1999, Ries stole Ratliff's farm pickup for a trip to San Antonio. He and a friend, Christopher Lee White, also 19 at the time, returned 3 days later to take Ratliff's Lincoln Continental because the truck got poor gas mileage. Ratliff wasn't home, so they broke in and stole 2 rifles, drove the pickup into a pond until it sank, then waited behind a barn until he came home and went to sleep. Ratliff was shot, then they drove off in his Lincoln. Ratliff's body was found by a relative. Why Mr. Ries decided to stop and murder him, it's beyond me, said Martin Braddy, the Hopkins County district attorney who prosecuted Ries. That's something only he can understand. He had the keys and he was leaving the house when they killed him. It just seemed so cold and callous and so useless. Ries was arrested by police in Lawton, Okla. He was driving Ratliff's car, which by then had been reported stolen, and was wearing Ratliff's hat. Prosecutors said Ries was the triggerman. A jury in Sulphur Springs deliberated seven minutes before convicting him. We don't have a lot of violent crime here, and so our jurors are not callous to it, Braddy said. I imagine citizens in other jurisdictions see murders all the time, a part of everyday life, but not here. So it probably took some people aback. Ries, who said drug use in high school worsened when he found easy access to drugs while attending Texas AM-Commerce, said he was high when the shooting occurred. I'm not sure exactly what happened, he said recently in an interview outside death row. He said he remembered stealing the pickup, driving to San Antonio and getting high and driving back. The next thing I know, I'm sitting in a car freaking out, he said. I'd killed somebody. He said he was high when he was arrested and when he made a videotaped confession to police. The prospect of death was frightening in a way, Ries said, but added that he'd accepted Christ into his life and was prepared for it. Life is just a bridge, he said. Jurors who decided Ries should die also were told of his auto thefts, property damage, poor impulse control, disregard for rules and anger toward some relatives. White, his accomplice, was tried separately and received life in prison. On Thursday, another condemned inmate, Bobby Wayne Woods, 42, was scheduled to die for the 1997 murder of Sarah Patterson, the 11-year-old daughter of his ex-girlfriend. Her throat was slashed when she and her 9-year-old brother were abducted from their home in Granbury, about 25 miles southwest of Fort Worth. *** High court won't review convictionMan on death row says attorneys were ineffective in triple murder trial The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to review the conviction of a Nueces County man on Texas death row for the slayings of a 24-year-old Corpus Christi woman, her young son and her mother. Jose Villegas, 33, was convicted of capital murder for the fatal stabbings of his ex-girlfriend Erida Perez Salazar; her son, Jacob, 3; and her mother Alma Perez, 51. Salazar was stabbed 32 times, her son 19 times and mother 35 times. A television and car also were taken from the home. Salazar's father, returning home from jury duty in 2001, found the body of his wife and had a neighbor call police. He then went back into the house and found his daughter and grandson also dead. A neighbor told police she saw Villegas leaving
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news-----TEXAS, FLA., USA
Oct. 14 TEXASexecution Convicted child killer executed in Texas A former East Texas truck repair shop owner was executed Tuesday evening for fatally shooting a 22-month-old boy in a spree that also killed the child's parents. Alvin Kelly thanked God, expressed love to friends and relatives and denied committing the murder that led to his execution. I pray this gives you some peace, Kelly said from the death chamber gurney, looking at four relatives of the slain family. I know you believe that you're going to have closure tonight. As I stand before God today, the true judge, I had nothing to do with the death of your family. Kelly, 57, said he would ask God to not hold that against them. At the same time, he acknowledged killing another man for whom he was serving time when he was charged in the death of the 22-month-old, who died in 1984 in Gregg County, about 100 miles east of Dallas. As the drugs were administered, he began singing a hymn praising God for coming into his life. I thank you Lord Jesus for remembering me ... , he sang as the drugs took effect and he slipped into unconsciousness. 12 minutes later, at 6:30 p.m. CST he was pronounced dead. The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to review his appeal. His lawyer returned to the high court with another appeal, asking for a reprieve while the justices examine a Tennessee case about whether poor death row inmates seeking clemency from state officials have a right to taxpayer-paid attorneys. About 2 hours before his scheduled execution time, the justices turned down the appeal. Kelly, in an interview last week outside death row, said he didn't want a reprieve and looked forward to go home to God. That's what this is all about, he said. I have friends and family who are sad. But I am happy. I'm not going to die. I have eternal life. Kelly already was serving a 30-year prison term for murder when he was convicted of killing Devin Morgan, the 22-month-old son of Jerry and Brenda Morgan. Relatives discovered the bodies at their home in Spring Hill, a few miles northwest of Longview. Several items also had been taken, including a car, at least 5 guns and some television and stereo equipment. The murders went unsolved for 6 years until a man in Michigan told authorities that his former wife, who also had been married to Kelly, had information about the case. Prosecutors said his ex-wife never felt she could come forward because she feared Kelly, who turned to drug dealing and manufacturing after his truck repair business cratered because of his drug addiction. By then, Kelly said he had found religion in the Gregg County Jail, where he was being held on a drug charge and then was implicated in the aggravated sexual assault of two fellow inmates. He turned down several plea deals to confess to the three slayings, saying that accepting the offers would force him to lie. If I was guilty, I would plead guilty, he said from death row. But I can't stand before God on a lie. He also denied the possibility he was so strung out on methamphetamines at the time of the shootings that he couldn't recall them. If I did it, I'd remember, he said. If I did it, I'd admit to it. And while acknowledging he once viewed himself as a gangster, he insisted prosecutors wanted to make me out to be some John Dillinger. Kelly Kubecka, who was 10 when her aunt, uncle and nephew were killed, represented her family witnessing Kelly's execution. When it comes to what he did to our family, I think he deserves it, she told the Longview News-Journal. But it's been so long. He has sat behind bars for so long now. At Kelly's trial, prosecutors presented evidence that showed Jerry and Brenda Morgan had been city marshal reserve officers, and Kelly's motive was that they were providing information about him to authorities. He said with his previous murder conviction, plus convictions for burglary, weapons possession, controlled substance delivery and possession and aggravated sexual assault, I didn't stand a chance. I still love Texas, he said. I love bluebonnets. Texas didn't put me here. I put me here, by my lifestyle. I'm not pious. I'm not holy. I'm an old sinner. Scheduled to die on Thursday is Kevin Watts, 27, convicted of the execution-style shootings of 3 people during a robbery at a San Antonio restaurant in 2002. Kelly becomes the 10th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 415th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on Dec. 7, 1987. He's among a dozen condemned inmates scheduled to die over the next 6 weeks. Another lethal injection is set for Thursday. Kelly becomes the 166th condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas since Rick Perry became governor in 2001. Kelly becomes the 26th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1125th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. (sources: Associated Press Rick Halperin) FLORIDAfemale could face death
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news-----TEXAS
Oct. 12 TEXAS: Race for DA puts justice system on trialBradford and Lykos emphasize reform, so many minor offenders get treatment rather than a cell Harris County voters looking for a district attorney candidate with a tough on crime theme are out of luck this fall. The situation is a startling departure from the law-and-order tone set for the last 30 years by Republican former district attorneys John B. Holmes Jr. and Chuck Rosenthal. But Rosenthal resigned in disgrace early this year, opening the door for Democratic candidate C.O. Bradford and Republican candidate Pat Lykos, former police officers who have never prosecuted a criminal case, to put the local justice system on trial instead. Bradford, the former Houston police chief, and Lykos, a former felony court judge, make sure to mention, in a county known nationwide for its frequent use of the death penalty, that the worst criminal offenders should be prosecuted to the hilt. But, despite substantive differences between the contenders, they both put greater emphasis on reforming the system so that many minor offenders get drug or mental illness treatment rather than a cell in the already crowded jail. Simply locking everybody up for everything isn't going to get us out of the process we are in now, Bradford said. Our taxes are high, the jails are full and crime continues to go up. So let's exercise good stewardship of fiscal resources, reduce crime and understand that most people who commit offenses are salvageable, they can be rehabilitated, but they must be given realistic opportunities to reintegrate back into our society. That's not occurring and there are a number of reasons for that ... There are a lot of people who make a lot of money, billions of dollars, designing, building, constructing (prisons) and there's not a concern about whether you are guilty or innocent. They get paid to keep a warm body there. That's not justice. Lykos called this a critical period in our county. We have a tarnished law enforcement system. It is bad for justice, it is bad for public safety and it's bad for business. I pledge to you to restore public trust and confidence in the district attorney's office. I do not want to see youngsters with a (juvenile justice) record that will irreparably cloud their future and will prevent them from going into certain occupations, she said. Substantial differences Besides party label, race and gender, the differences between the candidates in the Nov. 4 election come down to background and experience as well as a few of their proposals for running the district attorney's office. Bradford, who would be the county's 1st black district attorney, was police chief from 1996 to 2003 after starting in HPD as a street cop. For most of his tenure, fear of crime declined as measured by public surveys. But a trio of scandals splattered the police chief toward the end, eventually leading to his retirement. With roots going back several years before 1996, the incompetence and falsifications of the HPD crime lab came to full light during Bradford's watch, leading to exonerations for a few convicts. Bradford denied allegations by former HPD workers that they had warned him of a deep crisis. Both candidates call for an independent crime lab that would serve all law enforcement agencies in the region. Lykos makes sure to remind voters of the crime lab debacle and the misguided arrest by HPD of almost 300 people on trespassing charges at a Kmart in 2002, another incident that Bradford said he did not know about in advance. Surely I made some mistakes, as it relates to being chief of police, in some capacity for seven years there, Bradford said. But anyone who has not made a mistake has not made decisions. Because (Lykos) hasn't led a large organization and she hasn't supervised attorneys, she doesn't have that type of experience. He said there were 10 lawyers among the 2,000 civilians and 5,000 officers on the police force when he was chief. In 2002 a grand jury indicted Bradford on a perjury charge for allegedly lying under oath in a disciplinary hearing about an officer. A judge threw out the charges in 2003 for lack of evidence and Bradford called the case a misuse of power by prosecutors. Now Bradford calls for changes designed to make grand juries more diverse. Former grand jurors and others say the recruitment of grand jury volunteers favors older whites who can afford to meet 2 workdays a week. Bradford said the county should consider choosing grand jurors at random as is done in federal courts. Lykos, who impaneled dozens of grand juries during two decades on the bench, said judges still need to screen volunteers. As chief, Bradford upgraded the domestic violence unit and established a crisis intervention team for encounters with mentally ill suspects. Coincidentally Lykos, who would be the county's first female DA, aimed many of her creative sentencing approaches at healing family strife and getting
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, WYO., MD., ILL., USA
Sept. 30 TEXAS: Professors, judge, deacon present views on death penalty On Thursday, Sept. 25, the University of Dallas School of Ministry hosted a panel discussion on the death penalty. This panel was the third installment of the ministry school's seminar series. The four panelists were Candace M. Carlsen, a magistrate for the Criminal District Courts of Dallas County; Dr. Richard Dougherty, associate professor of politics at UD; Dr. John Norris, associate professor of theology at UD; and Deacon Joseph Milligan, who has helped establish support groups for the families of murder victims in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Religion reporter for the Dallas Morning News, Jeffrey Weiss, moderated the discussion. Dr. Brian Schmisek, dean of the School of Ministry, introduced the panel. Carlsen spoke 1st, focusing on what the law currently is regarding the death penalty. She explained how the Supreme Court has diminished the situations in which the death penalty can be imposed and extended the rights of the accused. Dougherty's presentation focused mainly on correcting what he called the pro-life position, which he described as anti-abortion and pro-capital punishment. The Catholic Church allows for capital punishment, he said, citing Article 2267 of the Catholic Catechism, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. He then went on to argue that the country has not been successful at keeping convicted criminals from committing more crimes, citing several cases where the criminals broke out of prison and committed more crimes. Norris also explained the contemporary Catholic teaching on the death penalty, arguing in favor of the position that if there's any way to protect the innocent without taking a life, the state should not take that life. He placed special emphasis on prudence and weighing potential escapes with possible wrongful convictions. Presenting last, Milligan spoke from an experiential point of view. He told the story of his acquaintance with Jeffrey Dillingham, a convicted murderer who received a death sentence. Dillingham converted to Christianity while in prison and then converted other inmates. Milligan walked with him on the day of execution, and he ended his presentation saying, If you have never experienced an execution, I would suggest that you do so and then make a judgment. At the end of the individual presentations, Weiss, the moderator, took questions from the audience for the panelists. (source: University of Dallas University News) TENNESSEE: New juror bias motion filed in death penalty case Defense attorneys in East Tennessee's 1st federal death penalty case have requested a hearing on possible juror bias if the judge in Chattanooga rejects a defense motion for a mistrial. Rejon Taylor was convicted earlier this month of murder during hijacking of a vehicle and murder during a kidnapping in the August 2003 fatal shooting of Atlanta restaurant owner Guy Luck on a rural road near Chattanooga. The sentencing phase of Taylor's trial has been delayed to Oct. 6. U.S. District Judge Curtis L. Collier has privately asked jurors about any exposure to media reports. Those reports include a prosecutor saying the black defendant in jailhouse phone calls referred to jurors as racist rednecks. (source: Associated Press) WYOMING: Rolle avoids death penalty A jury in Casper has decided against imposing the death penalty on Donald Rolle, the man convicted last week of kidnapping and murdering a woman he once dated. The jury of 8 men and 4 women deliberated for 3 hours Tuesday before reaching their verdict. Their decision means 47-year-old Rolle faces life in prison without parole. The jury last week found Rolle guilty of kidnapping and murder in the death of 40-year-old Jennifer Randel. Natrona County District Attorney Michael Blonigen on Tuesday urged jurors to give Rolle death, telling them that Randel suffered a cruel death. Defense lawyer Vaughn Neubauer asked the jury to spare Rolle's life, saying he had suffered an abusive childhood. (source: Associated Press) * Rolle: 'I believe in the death penalty' Remember Nov. 3, and remember what Jennifer got. Those were Donald Rolle's closing instructions to the jury that could decide today whether he lives or dies. The law says that the death penalty is appropriate in this case, Rolle said Monday afternoon, during a 9-minute statement that capped the 16th day of his capital murder trial. I believe in the death penalty. Rolle, 47, didn't directly ask jurors to either impose the death penalty or spare his life. Nor did he apologize to the family of Jennifer Randel, the Casper woman he kidnapped and murdered on Nov. 3. He did say Randel's killing shattered people's worlds and he believed in an eye for an eye. I'm guilty, he said, looking toward the jury from the witness box. You found me guilty. Now it's time for responsibility, and it's time to
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., DEL., OHIO
Sept. 16 TEXAS: Alleged romantic link raises appeal questions Legal experts have criticized a judge and a small-town Texas prosecutor, calling their alleged sexual affair in the years before trying a death penalty case stupid and a black eye to the system. They say the alleged affair between former Judge Verla Sue Holland and ex-Collin County District Attorney Thomas O'Connell raises ethical questions and could lead to appeals from inmates who claim their trials were tainted by bias. Definitely there are people locked up ... saying: 'Wait a minute. I was convicted in this judge's court,' said Fred Moss, a Southern Methodist University law professor. It's such incredible bad judgment because it throws every conviction into doubt. The alleged affair, an apparent open secret 20 years ago in Collin County legal circles, became part of the public record again last week. Lawyers for death row inmate Charles Dean Hood sought a stay of execution in the nation's busiest death penalty state, arguing Holland was biased because of her relationship with O'Connell. About 30 former prosecutors and federal and state judges signed a letter sent to Gov. Rick Perry by lawyers for Hood, convicted in 1990 of fatally shooting two people in Plano. The letter states that a sexual relationship, which Hood's lawyers say the judge and prosecutor acknowledged under oath during depositions last week, would have had a significant impact on the ability of the judicial system to accord Mr. Hood a fair and impartial trial. Hood received a reprieve, although the alleged affair was not the reason. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals wants to reconsider whether the jury instructions were flawed. The appearance of impropriety is absolutely there and it does affect the integrity of the system, said Rick Hagen, president of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. And you can't deny that. Attorneys for Holland and O'Connell declined to discuss their clients' depositions, citing a gag order. In an affidavit, former assistant district attorney Matthew Goeller said it was common knowledge that the judge and prosecutor had a romantic relationship from at least 1987 until about 1993. Hood was tried in 1990. Moss, the SMU professor, said such a relationship, if true, would be so stupid if they were actually trying cases in her court while they were having an affair. What it does is bring the whole system into question, Moss said. It's a real black eye to the system and very unfortunate. It shakes the confidence of the public in the criminal justice system. Bill Boyd, Holland's attorney, said Hood's original court-appointed lawyers were experienced litigators who were in the courthouse every day and heard every rumor or innuendo. He said their decision not to ask Holland to recuse herself is a sign of their faith in her fairness. This wasn't their first rodeo, Boyd said. If there were any hint or suggestion or chance that they weren't going to get a fair trial, someone would have raised it. Neither Holland nor O'Connell have been publicly disciplined by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct or the State Bar of Texas. Hood's lawyers have said in court papers that Holland, while on the state appeals court, recused herself from about 80 % of cases from Collin County. Her attorney said she routinely stepped aside whenever she had any prior involvement in a case, such as being the presiding judge or simply signing a search warrant. Boyd said Holland is embarrassed by the attention brought by the case. O'Connell's attorney, Richard A. Sayles, said the ex-prosecutor regrets the controversy, adding, On a professional level, I don't think he is upset that defense lawyers are trying every possible grounds they have for a stay of execution. O'Connell was the county's elected district attorney from 1971-82 and from 1987-2002. Holland was a state district judge from 1974-96 before moving on to the Court of Criminal Appeals from 1997-2002. Both are retired. McKinney, the county seat, was a small Texas town when O'Connell was first elected, still decades away from becoming a wealthy bedroom community to Dallas. Those small-town roots still show. Boyd, now Holland's attorney, is a former DA who hired O'Connell as an assistant prosecutor. Once O'Connell became the DA, he hired Holland as one of his two assistant prosecutors. She was in charge of juvenile cases before becoming a judge, said John Charles Hardin, a McKinney lawyer since the mid-1970s. County officials say it is impossible to determine how many cases O'Connell prosecuted in Holland's court. O'Connell, as an elected official, had a vested interest in every one of them. But it was unusual for the district attorney to appear in the courtroom. It was very rare for Tom O'Connell to actually try a case, Hardin said. He was an administrator. He ran his office and let his assistants manage the courts. Besides Hood, there are four other death row inmates convicted in Collin
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA.
Sept. 14 TEXAS: Man receives death penalty for fatal shooting at Hurst Putt-Putt Paul David Storey will die for fatally shooting a Hurst Putt-Putt employee during a robbery 2 years ago. A Tarrant County jury deliberated nearly 90 minutes before deciding Mr. Storey's fate Friday morning, two days after finding him guilty of murdering Jonas Paul Cherry on Oct. 16, 2006, as Mr. Cherry opened the Putt-Putt Golf Games. Mr. Storey, 23, the 1st of 2 men to stand trial in the case, cried Friday when the death sentence was read by State District Judge Elizabeth Berry. Several jurors did, too. It was a fair verdict, said Robert Foran, a Tarrant County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Mr. Storey along with co-prosecutor Christy Jack. What the jurors saw was a man who was executed. The evidence showed that Mr. Cherry, 28, was shot numerous times in the head and legs. This was a senseless offense, Mr. Foran said. He forced a man to his knees then executed him as that man begged for his life. Mr. Cherry's mother, Judy Cherry, told Mr. Storey after the sentence was announced that he did not appear remorseful. You didn't have to kill him, she said. You could have just robbed the place. I don't think you could have chosen to kill a better man. He was not only our son, he was our friend. Mr. Storey's attorneys, William Ray and Larry Moore, had asked the jury to sentence Mr. Storey to life without parole. Mr. Storey, they argued, would not be a future danger in prison. They asked the jury to put away any anger they might have had toward their client and the crime. This thing happened in an instant, and Paul will pay for this decision for the rest of his life, Mr. Moore said. Give him that option. Where is the evidence that he is a continuing threat to society? Mr. Storey, of Fort Worth, was arrested days after the shooting. Some of the most damaging evidence against him came from videotaped statements Mr. Storey gave to Hurst police. He told investigators that he and a friend, Mark Porter, stumbled upon an ongoing robbery after car trouble forced them into the Putt-Putt's parking lot. Mr. Storey later told investigators he destroyed evidence, including tapes he recovered from the Putt-Putt's surveillance cameras. However, the one tape remaining showed Mr. Storey's SUV and a partial license-plate number. Mr. Porter, 22, is also charged with capital murder. He is awaiting trial and could also face a death sentence. (source: Dallas Morning News) Sex scandal hits death row caseTony Allen-Mills A LEGAL scandal over a judge's affair with a prosecutor in Texas has raised embarrassing new questions about the fairness of the state's criminal justice system and its zeal for carrying out the death penalty. Lawyers are demanding a new trial for Charles Hood, a convicted double murderer and death row inmate whose execution has been scheduled and postponed six times, most recently last Tuesday. US legal scholars have been appalled by reports that Verla Sue Holland, the judge who presided over Hoods 1990 trial, was at the time conducting a clandestine affair with Thomas OConnell, the state attorney who was prosecuting the case. Several law professors agreed that however compelling the evidence in the case, it was unthinkable for a murder trial to proceed if the judge and prosecutor were romantically involved. Hoods lawyers announced last week that both Holland and OConnell had admitted to the affair under oath in depositions given to a federal judge. They had an intimate sexual relationship for many years, the lawyers wrote in a reprieve request to Rick Perry, Texass Republican governor. William Sessions, a former director of the FBI, was among a group of 22 prominent former judges and prosecutors who also urged Perry to halt the execution while the affair was investigated. I can't understand how anyone could reach the conclusion that there's no bias, added David Zarfes, associate dean of the University of Chicago law school. Hood had been working as a bouncer at a strip club in Plano, Texas, when he was arrested in 1989 for robbery and the murder of both his boss Ronald Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace, a former dancer at the club. For the past 18 years Hood has been exhausting his avenues of appeal. As his latest execution date neared, his lawyers finally tracked down a former assistant prosecutor who claimed the affair was common knowledge at the county bar; but the appeals court dismissed the new evidence as hearsay that could have been presented earlier. As an outcry grew in legal circles, Hoods lawyers urged Perry to grant a reprieve on the grounds that a clandestine affair between judge and prosecutor amounted to a shocking and devastating indictment of the Texas criminal justice system. A federal judge eventually agreed Holland and OConnell should testify under oath. But to the dismay of Hood's lawyers, their statements were ignored when the appeals court
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news-----TEXAS, GA., OHIO
Sept. 13 TEXAS: Man gets death penalty for killing Putt-Putt employee Paul David Storey killed Jonas Cherry during a 2006 holdup at the Hurst Putt-Putt Golf Games and robbed the business of less than $700. He will now have to pay with his life. A Tarrant County jury took less than 2 hours Friday morning to sentence the 23-year-old Fort Worth man to death by lethal injection. That decision came despite pleas from Storey's family, former teachers and friends to spare his life during testimony Thursday. Defense attorneys Bill Ray and Larry Moore also said the former Putt-Putt employees life was worth saving. People make bad decisions, but do they deserve to die? Marilyn Grant asked during her testimony Thursday for her son. They dont. Please spare my sons life. Prosecutors Christy Jack and Robert Foran sought the death penalty against Storey for killing Cherry, 28, on Oct. 16, 2006, at the Hurst business in the 600 block of Northeast Loop 820. Time after time, Foran and Jack reminded the jury of seven men and five women that Cherry, an assistant manager at the Hurst Putt-Putt, begged for his life after giving the robbers the money. The same jury convicted Storey of capital murder on Wednesday. A possible accomplice The man police say was Storeys accomplice, Mark Porter, 22, is also charged with capital murder in the shooting death. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Porter, whose trial is scheduled to begin in the next few weeks. The victim Cherry, a Keller resident and 1997 graduate of Paschal High School, had worked at area Putt-Putt businesses for more than 10 years. Cherry was married with no children. The holdup and killing Storey and another person rushed into the Hurst business on the morning of Oct. 16, 2006, and took Cherry into an office, according to testimony in the trial. After removing surveillance tapes in the office, the robbers ordered Cherry to open a safe and fill a bag with cash. Cherry was shot twice in the head and twice in the legs as he knelt, according to the testimony. The robbers then fled. The arrest Investigators got a lead after they found a surveillance tape that the robbers missed. The images showed a maroon 2-door Ford Explorer leaving Putt-Putt. Hurst police received a tip that the vehicle belonged to Storey. (source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram) GEORGIA: Troy Anthony Davis' execution stands, Georgia parole board says-7 of the 9 witnesses against the convicted cop killer have changed their stories. The Supreme Court is set to hear his appeal, after his execution date. Georgia's parole board on Friday denied clemency for a man set to be put to death for killing a police officer, even though seven of the nine witnesses who testified against him have since changed their stories. Troy Anthony Davis, 38, is set to be executed at 7 p.m. Sept. 23 at a prison in Jackson, Ga. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear Davis' appeal Sept. 29. On Friday, Davis' attorney, Jason Ewart, said he would file an emergency stay with the high court, asking the justices to take up the case as soon as possible. It's probably the hardest thing I've ever had to hear, Ewart said of the parole board's decision. The hardest thing I've ever had to do was to tell Troy we're denied. Davis was convicted of killing Mark MacPhail, a Savannah, Ga., police officer, in August 1989. At the time, MacPhail was working his 2nd job, as a Burger King security guard. He was fatally shot after rushing to help a man who had been beaten outside a bus station. Police did not recover a weapon, and prosecutors relied on witness testimony to convict Davis. Since then, most of the witnesses have altered or cast doubt on their versions of events sworn in affidavits. Some said they were pressured by police to make their original statements. In March, the Georgia Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, rejected Davis' request for a new trial after reviewing the recantations. (source: Los Angeles Times) Death Penalty Is Upheld in Publicized Georgia Case A Georgia parole board on Friday upheld the death sentence of a man convicted of killing a Savannah police officer in 1989, despite a group of witnesses who recanted their testimonies against the convict. It was the 2nd time in 2 years that the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency for the man, Troy A. Davis, despite his lawyers claims of police misconduct. Mr. Davis, 39, is scheduled to die by lethal injection in Jackson, Ga., on Sept. 23, unless the United States Supreme Court agrees to hear an appeal. A county jury in 1991 convicted Mr. Davis in the 1989 murder of Mark Allen MacPhail, an off-duty police officer moonlighting as a security guard who was shot to death while responding to a late-night fight at a Burger King in Savannah. Mr. Davis testified he was at a nearby pool hall and left before Officer MacPhail arrived. The prosecution offered no murder weapon, DNA or
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news-----TEXAS
July 29 TEXAS: Legendary DA's convictions thrown out by DNA testing The late Henry Wade was district attorney of Dallas County, Texas, from 1951 to 1986 Wade and his team had conviction rates over 90 % DNA testing has overturned 19 convictions by Wade and his successors New DA, critics charge shoddy investigations, win at all costs culture As district attorney of Dallas for an unprecedented 36 years, Henry Wade was the embodiment of Texas justice. A strapping 6-footer with a square jaw and a half-chewed cigar clamped between his teeth, The Chief, as he was known, prosecuted Jack Ruby. He was the Wade in Roe v. Wade. And he compiled a conviction rate so impressive that defense attorneys ruefully called themselves the 7 Percent Club. But now, 7 years after Wade's death, The Chief's legacy is taking a beating. 19 convictions -- 3 for murder and the rest involving rape or burglary -- won by Wade and 2 successors who trained under him have been overturned after DNA evidence exonerated the defendants. About 250 more cases are under review. No other county in America -- and almost no state, for that matter -- has freed more innocent people from prison in recent years than Dallas County, where Wade was DA from 1951 through 1986. Current District Attorney Craig Watkins, who in 2006 became the 1st black elected chief prosecutor in any Texas county, said that more wrongly convicted people will go free. There was a cowboy kind of mentality and the reality is that kind of approach is archaic, racist, elitist and arrogant, said Watkins, who is 40 and never worked for Wade or met him. But some of those who knew Wade say the truth is more complicated than Watkins' summation. My father was not a racist. He didn't have a racist bone in his body, said Kim Wade, a lawyer in his own right. He was very competitive. Moreover, former colleagues -- and even the Innocence Project of Texas, which is spearheading the DNA tests -- credit Wade with preserving the evidence in every case, a practice that allowed investigations to be reopened and inmates to be freed. (His critics say, of course, that he kept the evidence for possible use in further prosecutions, not to help defendants.) The new DA and other Wade detractors say the cases won under Wade were riddled with shoddy investigations, evidence was ignored and defense lawyers were kept in the dark. They note that the promotion system under Wade rewarded prosecutors for high conviction rates. In the case of James Lee Woodard -- released in April after 27 years in prison for a murder DNA showed he didn't commit -- Wade's office withheld from defense attorneys photographs of tire tracks at the crime scene that didn't match Woodard's car. Now in hindsight, we're finding lots of places where detectives in those cases, they kind of trimmed the corners to just get the case done, said Michelle Moore, a Dallas County public defender and president of the Innocence Project of Texas. Whether that's the fault of the detectives or the DA's, I don't know. John Stickels, a University of Texas at Arlington criminology professor and a director of the Innocence Project of Texas, blames a culture of win at all costs. When someone was arrested, it was assumed they were guilty, he said. I think prosecutors and investigators basically ignored all evidence to the contrary and decided they were going to convict these guys. A Democrat, Wade was first elected DA at age 35 after three years as an assistant DA, promising to stem the rising tide of crime. Wade already had spent four years as an FBI agent, served in the Navy during World War II and did a stint as a local prosecutor in nearby Rockwall County, where he grew up on a farm, the son of a lawyer. Wade was one of 11 children; 6 of the boys went on to become lawyers. He was elected 10 times in all. He and his cadre of assistant DAs -- all of them white men, early on -- consistently reported annual conviction rates above 90 %. In his last 20 years as district attorney, his office won 165,000 convictions, the Dallas Morning News reported when he retired. In the 1960s, Wade secured a murder conviction against Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who shot Lee Harvey Oswald after Oswald's arrest in the assassination of President Kennedy. Ruby's conviction was overturned on appeal, and he died before Wade could retry him. Wade was also the defendant in the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. The case began 3 years earlier when Dallas resident Norma McCorvey -- using the pseudonym Jane Roe -- sued because she couldn't get an abortion in Texas. Troubling cases surfaced in the 1980s, as Wade's career was winding down. Lenell Geter, a black engineer, was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to life in prison. After Geter had spent more than a year behind bars, Wade agreed to a new trial, then dropped the charges in 1983 amid reports of shoddy evidence and allegations Geter was singled out because
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, MISS., VA., ARIZ., CALIF.
July 3 TEXAS: Judge stays Arlington man's execution, plans hearings A state judge in Sherman has postponed the July 22 execution date of Lester Leroy Bower Jr. and plans to hold hearings that could involve the Arlington man's claims of innocence. Bowers stay of execution, signed late Monday by Judge Jim Fallon, was the latest twist in a case that began nearly a quarter-century ago when 4 men were found shot to death inside an airplane hangar near Sherman. In 1984, Bower was convicted and sent to Texas' death row, where he has survived five execution dates during a lengthy appellate process. Prosecutors contended at his trial that Bower, now 60, killed Bob Tate, Ronald Mayes, Jerry Mack Brown and Philip Good during the theft of an ultralight aircraft. But defense lawyers have uncovered witnesses who allege that other men were the killers and that the massacre occurred during a drug deal gone bad. My reaction is mixed, Shari Bower, the condemned man's wife, said Wednesday of the stay. We've been doing this for 24 years. By the same token, this is what we've been praying for, to get back into court and have someone look at the evidence. Now our prayers are going to go out that this judge will see the validity of all this. News of Bower's stay also inspired complicated emotions among survivors of the victims, including Lorna Mayes Murphy, the only daughter of Ronald Mayes. Murphy was 13 when her father was slain and named her first child after him. You learn to live with that over the years, she said Wednesday of her grief. You dont hear about it. You don't talk about it. But now, when it comes back, this sadness, this sense of loss, it's like losing him all over again. . . .There has to be some closure for the families. Yet Murphy said the new evidence has raised questions in her mind about whether the right man was convicted. I want to believe theyve found the man who did this. I want to believe it was Bower, Murphy said. I can't help it when theyre starting to bring other evidence up. Did they get the right person? And if they didn't, they need to find the right person. I just want it to be right. I want it to be done and be over. Mayes' widow and Murphy's stepmother, Paula Mayes, said Wednesday she has no doubt that Bower is the killer. Bowers stay was another devastating setback in her ongoing attempts to heal, she said. I mean, there is enough evidence against him that it would almost convince people there was an eyewitness, Paula Mayes said. To me, he [Bower] is the scum of the earth. I have forgiven him and tried to move on, but he keeps weaseling his way back into my life and I think it's wrong. This has been going on for 25 years and it's all about his rights. What about our rights? The case From the time of his arrest, Bower, a family man and chemical salesman, has denied involvement in the killings. He has acknowledged visiting the hangar the afternoon of the crimes to buy an ultralight aircraft from Tate. But when first questioned by investigators, Bower repeatedly denied making the trip to the hangar, fabrications that likely played a large role in his conviction. He was arrested when parts of the ultralight belonging to Tate were found in his Arlington residence. Bower was also known to have the same kind of weapon and exotic ammunition that was used in the massacre. But 6 years after the killings, a witness came forward to tell defense lawyers that her then-boyfriend talked about participating in the killings and mentioned three accomplices. The wife of one of the other alternative suspects recently told defense investigators that she overheard similar discussions about the slayings. Lawyers for Bower say they have confirmed several other key aspects of the new scenario. The names of the witnesses and suspects have been kept under court seal. In recent motions, Bower's lawyers have asked Fallon to allow new DNA analysis of hair and cigarette butts found at the crime scene. The defense hopes that the testing might link one of the other suspects to the crime. Citing the new evidence, Bower has also asked Fallon to set aside his conviction and death sentence. The judge could consider both requests during hearings in the next few weeks. We do very much appreciate an opportunity to present those issues when the parties and the court are not operating under the emotional pressure that comes with an imminent execution date, defense lawyer Anthony Roth said. Did they get the right person? And if they didn't, they need to find the right person. I just want it to be right. I want it to be done and be over. (source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram) MISSISSIPPI: Attorneys ask for stay of execution Attorneys for Mississippi death row inmate Dale Leo Bishop are asking for a stay of his scheduled July 23 execution. A motion filed Thursday reiterates earlier claims that Bishops' last lawyer did not provide him with adequate legal representation. Bishop, who is 34, was sentenced to
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., FLA., USA
May 29 TEXAS: HIP HOP ACTIVIST WALKS 1700 MILES TO TEXAS TO PROTEST DEATH PENALTY Andre Lattalade, also known as Capital X, a hip hop artist and activist, will be in Houston on Friday, May 30, as the last part of a 1700 mile walk which started on March 31, 2008. The walk started in New Jersey where the death penalty has recently been abolished. It is ending in Texas, the leading death penalty state in the nation with 405 executions since 1982. Texas currently has 14 (!) executions scheduled, the first one being Derrick Sonnier on June 3. Called the Walk 4 Life, Capital X has walked through 10 of the 12 states with the highest execution rates in the U.S. He is walking to protest the death penalty and to shed light on the inhumane treatment of prisoners on death row. Capital X can be contacted directly at 281-818-8935 and at projectrevolution2010 at gmail.com . On May 30, at 8am, Capital X will begin a walk through downtown Houston (starting at Jackson and Commerce Streets) which will end at KPFT Radio, 419 Lovett Blvd, around 10 am. Also on May 30, at 10pm, a Salute to Capital X Concert will take place at Advant Garden, 411 Westheimer, in Houston. Capital X and several other artists will perform at the concert. On June 3, Capital X plans to protest the execution of Derrick Sonnier at the Walls Unit in Huntsville. (source: TCADP) * No decision on death penalty in capital murder case Prosecutors are nearing a decision as to whether to seek death by lethal injection for a Mesquite man, indicted on a charge of capital murder in connection with a fatal stabbing in Greenville last November. Hunt County District Attorney F. Duncan Thomas said he is leaning toward seeking the death penalty for John William Trotman III, should Trotman be convicted of capital murder, based in part on his conversations with the family members of the victim in the case. I've spoken with them twice and the family thinks the death penalty is appropriate, Thomas said. At this point, we probably will be seeking it. We'll probably make that decision in the near future. Trotman, 26, remains in custody at the Hunt County Jail in lieu of $1 million bond on a charge of capital murder in connection with the Nov. 12, 2007 death of Ryon Rhoden of Greenville. An interim hearing was conducted Wednesday in the 196th District Court, at which time Judge Joe Leonard scheduled another interim hearing for June 25. Trotman has pleaded not guilty. Trotman was arrested following what the Greenville Police Department claimed was a combination robbery and homicide at a residence in the 3700 block of Bourland Street. A capital murder charge is filed when the murder alleged is committed in connection with the commission of a second major felony, such as robbery, kidnapping, rape or another murder. Those convicted of capital murder face a sentence of either life in prison or death by lethal injection. A criminal complaint filed as part of court records indicated Rhoden was at the residence with his sister when Trotman was alleged to have entered the home carrying a knife and demanding money. Rhoden was in the restroom at the time and the sister told authorities she thought Trotman was joking at first. Rhoden came out of the restroom and he and Trotman began fighting, according to the complaint. The sister joined in, but the two were unable to overpower Trotman. Rhoden received several stab wounds, including one to his upper right chest, as well as lacerations. The sister also received several cuts before Trotman left the residence. Rhoden was transported to Presbyterian Hospital of Greenville where he was pronounced dead. The vehicle in which Trotman was riding was later found at his girlfriends house. Blood was found inside the vehicle and on some items of clothing Trotman was allegedly wearing the day of the murder. The girlfriend told officers Trotman threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the incident. Officers took Trotman into custody initially for the offense of terroristic threat/family violence and later charged Trotman with the capital murder offense. (source: The Herald-Banner) GEORGIA: Hope grows to save DavisAdvocates push for commutation of his sentence. Advocates fighting the execution of Savannah's Troy Anthony Davis are seeing a hopeful sign in the State Board of Pardons and Paroles' commutation of another convicted murder's death sentence. Samuel David Crowe was granted clemency May 22 just hours before he was scheduled to be put to death for the 1988 slaying of Joseph Pala. He became just the third person to have his death sentence commuted in 17 years. The move could signal a willingness by the board to halt the execution of Davis, whose backers insist he is innocent; most of the eyewitnesses at his trial have since recanted at least parts of their testimony. I think it's hopeful in that it shows the board was considering the plea for mercy in a very serious
[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, MO., NEV., UTAH, ARIZ.
April 16 TEXAS: Galveston D.A. braces for critics over Baby Grace caseFamily members support the decision not to seek the death penalty The Galveston County district attorney is hunkering down for a firestorm of criticism following his decision Wednesday to seek life imprisonment rather than the death penalty for the mother and stepfather of Riley Ann Sawyers, known as Baby Grace until her battered body was identified. Arguing that his decision was dictated by the law, District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk said he will not seek the death penalty for Royce Clyde Zeigler II, 25, and his wife, Kimberly Dawn Trenor, 19, both of Spring. I expect a backlash, but we're not in this office to make decisions on where the popular emotional points may be directed, he said in an interview following a pre-trial hearing for Zeigler before District Judge David Garner. Garner set a Nov. 3 trial date for Zeigler and Trenor, accused of killing 2-year-old Riley on July 25 in a brutal disciplinary session, storing her body for up to 2 months in a plastic container and finally tossing the box into West Galveston Bay. Sistrunk said a 2007 ruling by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals made it impossible for him to obtain a death penalty verdict that would withstand appeal. Riley's family supports Sistrunk's decision, said family attorney Laura DePledge. Riley's grandmother, Sheryl Sawyers of Mentor, Ohio, and the girl's father, Robert Sawyers of Painsville, Ohio, met with Sistrunk in December and urged him to seek a life sentence rather than the death penalty, DePledge said. They support the decision of the Galveston County prosecutor, DePledge said. They would much prefer (Zeigler and Trenor) spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulder wondering who is going to attack them. Sheryl Sawyers is unable to sleep because she hears Riley screaming for help, DePledge said. I want them to try to sleep at night and hear her like I do, she quoted Sawyers as saying. Law professors said Sistrunk took a courageous stand in resisting the popular outcry for the death sentence. Thank God there is a prosecutor in this state that is exercising discretion, said former state District Judge Lupe Salinas, now law professor at the Thurgood Marshal School of Law at Texas Southern University. Salinas said the political pressure to seek the death penalty outweighs the law in too many instances. Too many look at the polls, look at what the possibilities might be of an election and that's where our system suffers, he said. Geoffrey Corn, law professor at South Texas College of Law, said, I think it does show courage. It shows a prosecutor that's committed to fulfilling his ethical obligations. Sistrunk, who is serving his 2nd term, said his decision could be a political liability when he is up for re-election in 2010. Since Sistrunk took office in January 2003, records show 4 guilty verdicts in capital murder cases and 1 not guilty. 3 guilty verdicts were by plea. He said he made his decision after seeking advice from other prosecutors at a capital murder seminar 2 weeks ago. Sistrunk said he was abiding by a 2007 Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruling that would make it nearly impossible to obtain a death penalty decision that would withstand appeal. The ruling concerned a special question that a jury must answer to arrive at a death penalty decision: Will the accused be a future danger to society? The jury must answer yes for the death penalty. The appeals court ruled in the case of Kenisha Eronda Berry of Beaumont, convicted in the death of her infant son, Malachi, that the slaying of her child was insufficient to prove that she would be a future danger to society, Sistrunk said. Sistrunk said that meant a jury would therefore be unable to find that Zeigler or Trenor would be a future danger to society. Corn said he was surprised at Sistrunk's decision. I'm not so sure you take it off the table at this point in the process, he said. Corn said that, although he didn't have all the facts that Sistrunk had, his reading of the Berry case showed that the court was concerned the state relied on the evil nature of the crime to support future dangerousness. The court found that the evilness of the crime was not enough. He said it might have been possible for Sistrunk to show future endangerment by the nature of the crime rather than whether it was evil. Sistrunk did not respond to an e-mail asking if the appeals court decision would apply to Travis Mullis, 21, of Alvin, awaiting trial on an accusation that he stomped his 3-month-old son to death to make him stop crying. Zeigler and Trenor are charged with capital murder and evidence tampering in connection with the Riley's death. Judge Garner is expected to set Trenor's trial date at a hearing Thursday. Riley's remains were found in a plastic container by a fisherman in West Galveston Bay on Oct. 29. Zeigler and Trenor are accused of killing Riley on July 25 during
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March 31 TEXAS: 7 Mexican-born Texas death row inmates lose at Supreme Court 7 Mexican-born inmates on Texas' death row lost their bids for appeal Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court, following the court's ruling last week that another Mexican-born inmate's case couldn't be reopened despite an order from President Bush. Justices last week voted 6-3 against hearing the case of Jose Medellin, convicted of the rape-slayings of 2 Houston teenagers 15 years ago, saying Bush overstepped his authority by trying to order Texas to reopen Medellin's case. That decision removed a legal hurdle blocking Medellin's execution. An international court ruled in 2004 that the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row around the United States violated the 1963 Vienna Convention, which provides that people arrested abroad should have access to their home country's consular officials. The International Court of Justice, also known as the world court, said the Mexican prisoners should have new court hearings to determine whether the violation affected their cases. But the Supreme Court said Texas could ignore the international court's ruling in favor of granting new hearings. The 7 inmates whose cases were denied review Monday are among 14 native Mexicans on death row in Texas. Inmates whose cases were rejected include Cesar Fierro, one of the longest-serving condemned prisoners in the state. Fierro, 51, was convicted of the 1979 robbery-slaying of an El Paso taxi driver. He's been on death row more than 28 years. Other condemned prisoners to lose Monday: -Ruben Cardenas, 37, convicted of the rape-slaying of a 16-year-old girl abducted from Edinburg in 1997. -Felix Rocha, 31, convicted of the slaying and robbery of a security guard outside a Houston club in 1994. -Virgilio Maldonado, 42, condemned for a 1995 robbery and slaying at a Houston apartment complex. -Robert Ramos, 53, convicted of the 1992 slayings of his wife and 2 children at their home in Progreso in Hidalgo County. -Humberto Leal Garcia, 35, condemned for the abduction, rape and fatal bludgeoning of a 16-year-old San Antonio girl in 1994. -Ignacio Gomez, 38, convicted of the fatal shooting of 3 people in El Paso in 1996. Mexico, which has no death penalty, sued the United States in the world court in 2003. Mexico and other opponents of capital punishment have sought to use the world court to fight for foreigners facing execution in the U.S. In another Texas death row case Monday, the Supreme Court refused to review the conviction of an inmate condemned for strangling a 65-year-old Fort Worth man with 2 wire coat hangers and then leading police on a 4-hour chase in a stolen 18-wheeler. Elkie Lee Taylor, 47, has been contending in appeals he shouldn't have been condemned because he is mentally retarded and ineligible for the death penalty under a Supreme Court ruling. Taylor was convicted of capital murder for the 1993 robbery and murder of Otis Flake at his Fort Worth home. Authorities said it was the 2nd killing linked to Taylor over an 11-day period. Like the Mexican-born inmates rejected by the court Monday, Taylor does not have an execution date. All executions are on hold until the Supreme Court decides a Kentucky case that challenges the constitutionality of lethal injection, the method used for capital punishment in Texas and most other states with the death penalty. A decision in the case is expected by early summer. (source: Associated Press) ** The cost of justiceCounties join public defender office Regionalism has its advantages, such as cost-sharing on the most expensive criminal cases - such as those involving capital murder charges. Potter and Randall counties, therefore, have joined with nearly 2 dozen other West Texas counties in an effort to reduce the cost of trying defendants charged with the most serious criminal offense the state provides. Both counties have been feeling the capital murder pinch for some time now, as they have seen the cost of providing defense counsel for indigent defendants rise. The West Texas Regional Public Defender for Capital Cases office is funded by a $3 million grant from the Texas Taskforce for Indigent Defense. That money will come back to the participating counties in the form of payment for legal services delivered to defend those charged with capital murder. As Randall County Criminal District Attorney James Farren noted, Finances play a role in whether or not we seek the death penalty. Grant money administered by an umbrella agency would make it easier for the county to seek the death penalty. Jack Stoffregen, chief defender for the office, said the agency plans to open a Potter-Randall area office by July 1. Although counties and other local jurisdictions guard their autonomy jealously, as they should, they also should realize the cost benefits of tag-teaming public services when the need arises. The escalating costs of
