[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, CONN., PENN. FLA., ALA., LA.
June 23 TEXAS: Death Watch: New Rodney Reed FilingDeath row inmate's lawyers seek retrial Attorneys for death row inmate Rodney Reed have filed a supplement to the Feb. 2015 brief seeking a retrial on his death penalty case, arguing that new evidence has come their way that further indicates that Reed is not responsible for the April 1996 murder of Stacey Stites. The brief, filed June 7 to the Court of Criminal Appeals and Reed's trial court in Bastrop, points to a conflicting detail in the timeline of former Giddings Police Officer Jimmy Fennell, Stites' fiance and the man Reed defenders believe is actually responsible for killing Stites. Since Fennell first gave his official statement to police 2 days after Stites' body was found, the understanding was that he spent the night of April 22 at home with his fiancee - beginning at 8pm or 8:30 - and that he slept through her early morning departure for work at H-E-B. (Fennell testified in court to this chronology, as well.) But according to a recent interview with Curtis L. Davis - a Bastrop County Sheriff's deputy who at the time was one of Fennell's best friends - Fennell told Davis that he spent the night of April 22 drinking beer with fellow police officers by his truck after Little League baseball practice. Davis said Fennell told him the next morning that he didn't return home to Stites until 10 or 11 o'clock that night. Reed's lead counsel, Innocence Project attorney Bryce Benjet, explained in the 19-page brief that Davis revealed this conflicting detail during an April interview with CNN. The network is currently producing a special for its show Death Row Stories about Reed's case and the efforts to save his life. (Indeed, the Chronicle was in Living???ston, where death row inmates are housed, when CNN's crew interviewed Reed.) Benjet wrote that he had not been aware of the interview until one of CNN's producers asked Benjet to comment "about certain statements made by Officer Davis." He said that a producer of the show allowed him and an assistant to view "portions of the interview with Officer Davis and to briefly review a transcript of the entire interview." CNN declined to release a copy of the interview or the transcript for use with the filing. Benjet expects the "relevant portions" of the recording to be part of the special when it airs. A representative for CNN told the Chronicle that there is currently no airdate for the episode. Benjet argues that Fennell's conflicting chronologies concerning how he spent the evening before Stites' murder further represents evidence of Fennell's consciousness of guilt, and that the notion of his drinking well into the night on April 22 would put him out of his and Stites' apartment at a time that 3 forensic pathologists have concluded was the actual time that Stites was killed. The state's theory holds that Stites was abducted by Reed and killed on her way to work on April 23, around 3am. Reed's Feb. 2015 petition for a retrial was rooted in the scientific conclusion that Stites actually died before midnight, on April 22, and that her body was moved from one location to another after she had been killed. The 2015 filing also notes that Davis accompanied Fennell through much of what the state accepts to be his discovery process of his red pickup truck after the murder, and notes how Davis signed out of a 12-hour work shift on April 22 after only 1 hour because of what he described as a "broken tooth." Davis then spent the next 3 days away from work on leave for a "personal death." The filing further notes how there is no documentation of any attempt by the police to interview Davis or otherwise establish whether he could have driven Jimmy Fennell home after dispensing of Stites and the truck. The idea that Fennell was providing conflicting statements in the aftermath of Stites' murder aligns with six other instances listed by Benjet in the initial 2015 application for a rehearing. Benjet also implies that Fennell provided false testimony during trial, and that the state's failure to provide this information on trial constitutes a violation of due process under Brady v. Maryland. (Fennell is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence that began in 2008 after he accepted a plea deal on charges that he raped a woman while on duty as a police officer in nearby Georgetown.) "In this case, the State failed to disclose Fennell's inconsistent statement as to his whereabouts on the night of April 22, 1996," Benjet wrote. "Even though the trial prosecutors may not have been aware of what Officer Davis learned from Fennell, Officer Davis was a Bastrop County Sheriff's Officer. And the [BCSO] was the lead agency investigating Stacey's murder. Accordingly, Officer Davis' knowledge of what Fennell told him is imputed to the State." Reed most recently faced an execution date of March 5, 2015, but saw his execution stayed 2 weeks earlier,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, CONN., PENN., FLA., ALA.
May 2 TEXAS: An Ex-Marine Killed 2 People in Cold Blood. Should His PTSD Keep Him From Death Row? At 12:44 p.m. on March 6, 2009, John Thuesen called 911. "120 Walcourt Loop," he told the dispatcher, breathing hard. "Gunshot victims." The dispatcher in College Station, Texas, asked what had happened. "I got mad at my girlfriend and I shot her," he said. "She has sucking chest wounds..." He'd not only shot Rachel Joiner, 21, but also her older brother Travis. Thuesen had broken into the house after midnight, not sure what he'd do but wanting to see his estranged girlfriend. She was out with her ex-boyfriend, but when she returned later that morning, things "got out of hand." Thuesen, a 25-year-old former Marine reservist, called 911 and almost immediately expressed remorse. When he was arrested, he repeatedly asked the police about the victims and tried to explain why he'd kept shooting Rachel and her brother: "I felt like I was in like a mode...like training or a game or something." The prosecution in the case gave it's opening statement on May 10, 2010. With DNA evidence and no other suspects, it only took prosecutors three days to make their case. Over the next week, the defense team touched on the facts that Thuesen suffered from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from his service in Iraq, but pleaded for leniency in his sentence. None of that swayed the jury: On May 28, 2010, he was sentenced to death. While on death row, Thuesen was given new lawyers, death penalty experts from the state's Office of Capital and Forensic Writs. In Texas, there are often 2 trials, 1 to determine guilt or innocence and the 2nd to determine sentencing. Lawyers argued in their 2012 petition to have both the death penalty and the conviction vacated, and for a new sentencing trial, arguing that if his lawyers had served him adequately, "John Thuesen would not be on death row today, awaiting an execution date." In July 2015, Judge Travis Bryan III - the same judge who had presided over the criminal trial - agreed, and ruled that Thuesen's lawyers hadn't adequately explained the significance of his PTSD to jurors, and how it had factored into his actions on the day of the murders. Bryan also ruled that Thuesen's PTSD wasn't properly treated by the Veterans Health Administration. He recommended that Thuesen be granted a new punishment-phase trial. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals could rule on Bryan's recommendation at any time. The ruling on his case has implications for a question that has concerned the military, veterans' groups, and death penalty experts: Should service-related PTSD exclude veterans from the death penalty? An answer to this question could affect some of the estimated 300 veterans who now sit on death rows across the country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But it's unclear how many of them suffer from PTSD or traumatic brain injuries, given how uneven the screening for these disorders has been. Experts are divided about whether veterans with PTSD who commit capital crimes deserve what is known as a "categorical exemption" or "exclusion." Juveniles receive such treatment, as do those with mental disabilities. In 2009, Anthony Giardino, a lawyer and Iraq War veteran, argued in favor of this in the Fordham Law Review, writing that courts "should consider the more fundamental question of whether the government should be in the business of putting to death the volunteers they have trained, sent to war, and broken in the process" who likely would not be in that position "but for their military service." In a 2015 Veterans Day USA Today op-ed, 3 retired military officials argued that in criminal cases, defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges often don't consider veterans' PTSD with proper due diligence. "Veterans with PTSD...deserve a complete investigation and presentation of their mental state by the best experts in the field," they wrote. Courts "should consider the more fundamental question of whether the government should be in the business of putting to death the volunteers they have trained, sent to war, and broken in the process." That idea is utterly unacceptable to Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a California-based victims-of-crime advocacy group, who contends a process already exists for veterans' defense attorneys to present mitigating evidence. To him, a categorical exclusion would be an "extreme step" that would mean "1 factor - always, in every case - necessarily outweighs the aggravating factors of the case, no matter how cold, premeditated, sadistic, or just plain evil the defendant's actions may have been." But presenting a case for service-related PTSD often doesn't happen. Richard Dieter, the former director of the Death Penalty Information Center and author of its report "Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty," says PTSD d
