June 11
TEXAS: Prosecutors weighing death for man charged in slaying In Edinburg, Hidalgo County prosecutors are contemplating seeking the death penalty against an Alabama man charged with robbing a 60-year-old Donna resident and slashing his throat with a box cutter in April. Douglas Armstrong, 36, is facing capital murder charges in connection with the April 21 death of Rafael Castelan, who was found lying in the alley between South Seventh and South Eight Street. Witnesses said they saw Armstrong attack Castelan as Castelan walked home from the H.E.B. on Miller Street. Capital murder is the highest felony in the Texas Penal Code and is punishable by either life in prison or the death penalty. A grand jury indicted Armstrong on capital murder charges because the stabbing allegedly occurred in the course of another crime - a robbery. Armstrong is set for trial before Judge Noe Gonzalez in the 370th state District court. At Armstrong's formal arraignment Wednesday, Assistant District Attorney Joseph Orendain announced prosecutors were leaning toward seeking the death penalty. However, they will meet this week to finalize what penalty Armstrong will face in trial, which is set for Aug. 14. Orendain said prosecutors will announce their decision in a June 26 hearing, where Armstrong's attorneys, Nereyda Morales-Martinez and Keno Vasquez, will ask the judge to reduce the $1 million bond a Donna municipal judge set against Armstrong. "We are still waiting for information from various states," said Orendain, explaining why prosecutors have not finalized which penalty they might seek against Armstong. Armstrong was born in Alabama but has lived in Georgia and Ohio. Records show he moved to Hidalgo County in January and worked as a forklift operator in Donna. Armstrong was arrested in Clayton County, Georgia in 1998 and charged with "terroristic threats and acts." He was convicted of that charge and served about 6 months in prison. Morales-Martinez was appointed to his case Wednesday and said she had not had time to review her client's case because of another murder trial she was working in this week. Shortly after Castelan's slaying, Donna police found Armstrong changing out of bloodied clothing at the Sunshine Bar on Hooks Avenue. He told police he tried to help Castelan and denied stabbing or robbing him. Hidalgo County juries have only sent 15 people to death row, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Of those, two have been executed and 10 are awaiting execution. Three have had their sentences commuted to life. If given the death penalty, Armstrong would be the 1st African-American sent to death row in this county. The last person from Hidalgo County sent to death row was Rodolfo "Kreeper" Medrano in August 2005, in connection with the January 2003 murders of 6 men in Edinburg. 2 other alleged Tri-City Bomber gang members - Juan Raul Navarro Ramirez and Humberto "Gallo" Garza - are also on death row for that slaying, as well as a 3rd gang member, Robert "Bones" Gene Garza, who was sentenced to death for a separate multiple homicide in Donna in 2002. (source: The Monitor) ********************* Wrongly convicted of murder, man moves on with life----Experts say lawyer, system failed him. To survive in prison, Jim Tenny says, one must first abandon all expectation. You drive out the anger at your attorney, whose defense left you wrongly convicted of murder. You accept as false your hope that the system will recognize its terrible mistake. And when everything you've trained yourself to be is betrayed by the promise of freedom, you hold back until you hear the judge say, "Mr. Tenny, you are free to go." Tenny heard those words from Llano County Judge Gil Jones on March 8, nearly seven years after another judge sentenced him to 65 years in prison for killing his girlfriend Joyce Mulvey. He never said he didn't kill her. He trusted an attorney to make a case that he had done it in self-defense. When the attorney and a jury failed him, Tenny resolved, above all, to survive. Tenny could not allow himself to expect, to hope, that a federal judge would eventually believe his story and assign to him a million-dollar defense that would win him a new trial and his freedom. Tenny, 53, wonders whether his case, one of a growing number of murder cases in Texas that have been retried or overturned, is evidence the system works, as his prosecutor believes. Or whether it suggests, as his defense lawyers suspect, that many more would be freed if only they could afford better representation. Or maybe Sam Newton Jr., the inmate who taught Tenny the law while he was in prison, is right: The system is simply and irretrievably corrupt. Tenny has now had months to wonder about it, living with old friends on a little ranch near Wimberley. There is work here for a man like Tenny, who is good with his hands. And there are hours to think, late evenings with a glass of wine, rocking on the hanging chair on his friends' cool patio. "I spent many hours of weeping after I got out," Tenny says. "There wasn't any sadness to it. Or resentment over what happened to me. Just this amazement that there were so many people who put heart and soul into doing the job." Life of leisure Tenny was the kind of boy who let life wash over him: smart enough but not particularly ambitious. "He was just never able to find himself," says his mother, Shirley, who lives in Cedar Hills, Mo. When he got out of the Navy in 1974, he hitchhiked around the country for 4 years, playing his guitar, taking welding and carpentry jobs. Tenny met his former wife, Gwendolyn, when he blew into Blanco in 1978. She was 19 and had never been to a dance or on a date. They had four children, all of them delivered at home by Tenny. Nathan is now 24, Joshua 22, Keenan 20 and Paul 18. Money was always short, and Gwendolyn, who declined to be interviewed for this story, chafed at her husband's reluctance to get a steady job. She divorced Tenny in 1989, when their oldest was 7 and the youngest 1. The kids stayed with Gwendolyn. "I guess I was never a workaholic. I liked my leisure," Tenny says. "I guess I could have been a better husband, and I've always tried to be a good dad." Tenny thought he'd gotten a second chance when he met Joyce Mulvey in 1993 at the Renaissance Market on 23rd and Guadalupe. Tenny was making religious and novelty items out of wood. Mulvey was a regular, selling her beadwork. She was 13 years his senior but fit and a good match for Tenny's easy temperament, he says. The couple put everything they had into two trailers on 2 acres in Blanco, one for living in and one for Tenny's woodworking, in 1997. In May, Tenny's son Joshua, then 13, upset the balance. He couldn't get along with his stepfather, and when he asked to move in, Mulvey resisted. Mulvey had raised 3 boys of her own and wasn't about to start in raising any of Tenny's, he says. Tenny didn't think he had any choice. If Joshua couldn't move in, Tenny would move out. For several days, Tenny and Mulvey avoided each other. Tenny would learn later that Mulvey told friends she would burn down the trailer with Tenny in it rather than give it up to creditors. On May 11, Tenny was separating things he had shared with Mulvey, music, photographs, an old stereo, when she came home. A fatal fight They talked a little about their split, and an argument became a bloody brawl. Mulvey came at Tenny with a gas can, splashing him in the eyes and mouth and down his front. She tried flicking a lighter, and Tenny will never know why it didn't light. Tenny later testified that he punched Mulvey twice in the face, breaking her nose. She bloodied his skull with a dinner plate and stabbed him twice, puncturing his lung and missing his heart by less than an inch. In a hand-to-hand struggle, Tenny testified, he plunged the knife into Mulvey's stomach and back. Tenny made 2 911 calls before STAR Flight airlifted him to Brackenridge Hospital. "I don't even remember making those calls. I was just trying to get her to stop coming at me. When she did, I did chest compressions on her, but all that was coming out was blood," he says. "Basically, I just, I couldn't believe it happened," Tenny told the jury in his first trial. "I was just, I just felt like, oh, my God. Oh, my God, you know." Blanco County charged Tenny with first-degree murder while he recovered at Brackenridge, his left ankle handcuffed to the bed. Tenny hired a local attorney, John Bennett, who had been suggested by another lawyer one of his friends knew. Tenny's parents came up with a $5,000 retainer. Tenny was confident: "No 12 people in the world are going to find me guilty of murder when I tell my story." Thomas Cloudt, the prosecutor, was surprised that Tenny testified that he killed Joyce Mulvey in self-defense. At the start of the trial, Bennett seemed to be arguing a case for voluntary manslaughter. "Judging from the reaction of Mr. Bennett, the self-defense argument of his client came as a surprise," Cloudt recalls. "I don't think the jury saw him as an innocent man; they saw him as a man who bludgeoned and stabbed this woman." When contacted at his law office in San Marcos, Bennett expressed disappointment that the case was being rehashed. "I've just been beat to death with this," Bennett says. "For the record, I have no comment." To the end of the trial, Bennett did almost nothing to change the jury's view, according to transcripts. Seven witnesses who later provided sworn statements attesting to Mulvey's anger and her intention, who said they were alarmed by her threats against Tenny, did not testify. Cloudt interpreted Bennett's move as a tactic, one that might have been sound under the circumstances. 2 of the 7 witnesses were, at the time, under indictment for child indecency. In less than an hour, the jury found Tenny guilty of murder. Cloudt offered to recommend a sentence of 10 years if Tenny would testify against one of the indicted witnesses. He says he knew nothing that could help their prosecution. The judge, Charles Hearn, handed down a sentence of 65 years. "Nothing prepared me for it. I was numb. But even after the sentencing, I thought that Bennett had done a good job," Tenny says. "It wasn't until later that I realized that a trial is really more of a show. People don't really understand the law." New life, new rules For the next 6 years, Tenny says, he acted on instinct. He sought out older inmates to help him navigate the complicated prison dance. Don't gossip. Never use the N-word. Don't even think it. Always have a way out. Tenny used his job as a cook to carve out a place in the Darrington Unit in Rosharon, south of Houston. He knew precisely whom to give the extra pork chop to or when to make peanut butter sandwiches for the infirmary nurses. He took his share of punches, one of them knocking out two of his teeth, but he understood that it was safer to remain angry on the inside. He began ordering books of Eastern philosophy. His routine of morning meditation and solitary walks in the yard gave him the air of an ascetic. "Jim Tenny was DIFFERENT because he is like myself. He has self respect and dignity and integrity," Sam Newton Jr. wrote last month from his prison cell. "There are not many in here who maintain those attributes, as you sure as Hell don't develop them in here." Newton had become an institution, helping dozens of fellow inmates research, write and file criminal appeals. Tenny became his prize pupil. "I spent months with the Black's Law Dictionary. It took me days and days to understand what 'beyond reasonable doubt' means." What Tenny learned, beyond the courtroom jargon, was what Bennett had failed to do. Tenny filed a 22-page petition for a writ of habeas corpus, questioning the legality of his imprisonment, on June 25, 2001, in U.S. District Court in Austin. In effect, the writ argued that the state was holding Tenny illegally because Bennett had failed to represent him properly. After reading Tenny's writ, federal Judge Sam Sparks ordered an evidentiary hearing. "For me, Tenny was an easy one," Sparks says. Bennett "didn't put on any evidence. He couldn't possibly have mounted an adequate defense." Sparks so believed Tenny had received a poor defense that he sought out Bill Schuurman, whose Houston-based firm, Vinson & Elkins, took a prominent role among the firms in pro bono legal work. Sparks was not concerned that Schuurman, a patent lawyer, lacked criminal defense experience. He selected a firm that had the resources to carry through on Tenny's case. "A good attorney knows how to try a lawsuit and look up the law," Sparks says. Schuurman and Avelyn Ross, an eager young associate, joke that they didn't know what habeas corpus was. But they promised to do everything they could for Tenny. "What impressed us about Jim was how reasonable he was," Schuurman says. "He wasn't angry. He explained how difficult it was to get anyone's attention from prison, and he seemed genuinely grateful for ours." Ross and Schuurman assembled a team of volunteer lawyers from the firm, enlisted Austin criminal attorney David Sheppard, a veteran in trying murder cases, and began a new investigation. Vinson & Elkins estimated the value of its assistance in time and expenses at well over $1 million. In April 2004, Sparks ordered the state to give Tenny a new trial or release him. His ruling was upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Vinson & Elkins team asked for a change of venue to Llano County, and on Feb. 27, Tenny was tried a second time for 1st-degree murder. Sheppard and his team made its case for self-defense. After nearly 10 hours of deliberation, the jury compromised and convicted Tenny of aggravated assault. Its sentence of 5 years was less time than Tenny had already served in prison. Did the system work? Both the prosecution and the defense claimed that the outcome was a victory for the judicial system. "I don't think money influenced the outcome; I think the circumstances did," Cloudt said. "I don't feel insulted by the outcome or view it as anything untoward. Do I believe Mr. Tenny committed a murder? Yes, I do. I think the jury came to a compromise." Schuurman has come to believe that the system fails when people like Tenny cannot afford good representation, that perhaps the pool of top-flight pro bono attorneys is too small, that there isn't enough accountability for lawyers. "I really think something is wrong with the system when there are so many people who cannot have good representation," Schuurman says. "We all want this system to work, but if we all don't work hard, the system breaks down." Tenny says he would like to hold Bennett accountable, but he isn't exactly sure how. He is convinced that there are others in prison who might be freed if they had the help he had, but so far, Tenny hasn't applied what he learned to any of their cases. Ed and Shirley Tenny say they've seen a spiritual growth in their son. "You might say that I couldn't have gotten this experience any other way," Tenny says. Still, they worry. At 53, Tenny has no savings, no Social Security and no job, his mother says. "We think now is the time for him to get out and do it himself," she says. "I'm just not ready to deal with the responsibility yet," Tenny says, swinging in a late afternoon breeze. "There's a lot of work to do out here. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else." (source: Austin American-Statesman) *********************** Greg is awaiting the judgement of the 5th Circuit concerning his petition for a COA (denied by Texas courts). Greg has asked us, as friends and supporters to ensure his case and legal documents are readily available and in the public demain. While he already has one or two websites, these are not all linked; his new website link is at: http://www.freegregwright.com Also, if you or any of your colleagues are in a position to generate further interest in this case of actual innocence, we would be grateful. Most of the trial and subsequent appeals, including the latest (and state opposition response) files, are available from this new site. Many thanks for your time. FLORIDA: A homicide prosecutor uses yoga to find and share spiritual peace Prosecutor David Frankel prepares to stand before a jury by standing on his head. He practices nonviolence, except when he's trying death-penalty cases. He deals with the pain of victims, and sting of defeat at trial by remembering the Hindu teaching that suffering is an "illusion." Still, it's a struggle. Frankel prosecutes some of the ugliest homicide cases in South Florida -- a mentally ill teenager who beat his father to death with a baseball bat, an elderly man killed when doused with acid, a man accused of the rape and murder of his own mother-in-law. But each Wednesday night, Frankel can be found sitting on the floor of a courthouse conference room, leading a class of yoga students through a series of stretching and breathing exercises. Frankel says the ancient art helps him deal with the stress, anger and grief that come with his work. "Yoga isn't about turning things off and not thinking about it. Yoga is about trying to find space -- space between those thoughts and who you are," he later says from his office, where his yoga instructor certificate is displayed beside his law degree. "I can feel great sorrow, but it doesn't stop me from doing my job." Frankel's free yoga class is attended by courthouse employees and lawyers accustomed to a legal system that, like Frankel, is full of twists and contradictions. "He's a very talented guy, both in the courtroom and in yoga," said capital crimes defense attorney Raag Singhal, who said Frankel is both intensely devoted to his work and relaxed, his low-key mannerisms out of step with the stereotypical image of a hard-line prosecutor. Frankel's love of yoga evolved over his lifetime. He was first inspired in childhood by a "nutty" grandmother, a vegetarian who was into the body-bending postures decades before they graced the covers of fitness magazines and became the exercise du jour of celebrities. Frankel, 45, says he is from an otherwise normal, Jewish family in North Miami Beach. As a kid, he politely tolerated his grandmother's kookiness. His active interest in yoga started in law school. Frankel recalls that life at the University of Miami became all about getting the right grades and the right internships. That academic stress, combined with a painful break-up, caused him to hit rock bottom emotionally. For the physical benefits, he began practicing yoga with the least competitive group possible -- a room of 80-year-old women at a local public school. Yet his philosophical devotion to yoga didn't fully develop until he became a prosecutor and started working in Broward County's sex crime unit in the early 1990s. Listening to children testify to what family members did to them disturbed Frankel to his core. "I think that's worse than the dead bodies," he said. "That's when I first began looking at yoga as a spiritual thing. I needed something." Frankel moved from the sex crimes unit to the career criminal division and was promoted in 2002 to homicide cases. He now practices Hinduism, but adds that yoga is "a spiritual pursuit that fits into all religions." Hinduism is the world's oldest religion, with beliefs that center on reincarnation and karma. Nonviolence also is a basic tenet, creating a dilemma for Frankel in death-penalty cases. He wants to fight for justice, but understands that some see the death penalty as taking it too far. "I see both sides of the issue," he said. "I know the [judicial] system is a good one, and I have a role in it. I don't take any personal pride or ego from it." On a recent Wednesday, just after 5:15 p.m., Frankel enters a large conference room in the public defender's office -- normally enemy territory for an assistant state attorney -- where more than a dozen people on yoga mats wait. Gone are his usual suit and tie. He wears a yellow T-shirt, white linen pants rolled up above the ankles, and a pair of flip-flops. He says hello, sits cross-legged on the ground and begins reading from an ancient Hindu scripture. The story is about an impending war, classic good vs. evil. The benign warrior does not see what good can come from killing his fellow man, so he asks Krishna, a Hindu god, for advice. Krishna says that it is honorable for a warrior to fight because that is his role in life, and that suffering is an "illusion." "There is neither slayer nor slain," Frankel reads quietly. "You were never born and you will never die." It is easy to see that the lawyers in the room identify with the warrior. Frankel certainly does, later explaining that he struggles with accepting defeat in the courtroom. It's something he confronts unconventionally during a case, by pointing out the weaknesses in his prosecution to juries, a tactic he thinks builds credibility. "People don't want to front their weaknesses because of fear, because, 'I'll lose, and if I lose, then I'm not a good lawyer," he said. "When you go back to your office and the phone rings and they say, 'You have a verdict,' you're walking to court knowing you might get kicked in the gut." One of the biggest kicks for Frankel was losing a case in which a former Miami Dolphin was accused of paying several men to firebomb the house of a former business associate. The associate, who ran from his burning house with his wife and three children, was convinced of the ex-player's guilt. A jury wasn't and let him walk. "I felt like I had let them down," Frankel said of the family. Despite the yoga, he admits, he is by no means an expert and still struggles with things "of this world." Yoga helped him through a painful divorce. When he isn't working, he likes to play the guitar and garden around his home in Fort Lauderdale. In yoga class, Frankel leads the room in a series of backbends, headstands and poses with exotic names like Cobra, Corpse and Downward Facing Dog. The soft hum of a vacuum cleaner and janitorial crew in another part of the building are the only sounds to disturb their meditation. The class lasts nearly 2 hours. "It's interesting, having someone who could be your opponent at any given moment," yoga enthusiast and public defender Anne Lemaster says of Frankel. "But it's not about what's in the material world. It's about finding balance. It's an escape." (source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel) USA: Cool guy of true crime plays me like a cheap guitar It was hot Thursday. Not hot enough to sizzle your brain like a fried egg in a cast iron skillet, but hot. The man waiting for me in the lobby was cool - cool like Steve McGarrett from "Hawaii Five-O," except his heavy mane was shaded white, and he didn't wear a snappy suit like Jack Lord, just an opened white shirt, and he didn't say "Book him, Danno," and he wasn't from Hawaii. But Eddie was cool - like a California gumshoe straight from a 1950s dime store "whodunit." In fact, that's just why Eddie had come to see me, to talk about detective stories, quirky mysteries and murder. About men sent to the slammer, men who cry like parrots who have memorized one word: "Innocent." Forgive my cheesy, pulp fiction intro. It was inspired by reading the material of Edwin D. Krell, former reporter for the Houston Chronicle and the Globe-Democrat and the author of "1,600 true mysteries" for the long gone "Inside Detective" and "Front Page Detective" magazines. The Olivette resident wouldn't tell me his age. "Just say I'm old enough," Krell said. A few weeks ago, during a St. Louis Press Club event, Krell reminisced about his days at the Globe and about his side gig as a Midwest correspondent for detective magazines distributed by Dell Publishing Company. "In those days, newspapers didn't pay much," Krell explained after we'd sat down to talk. "Dell paid about 200 bucks per story and 10 bucks per photo. That was good dough back then." Krell called asking if I'd be interested in discussing his eventual full-time job as a detective magazine writer. "It's too sedate in here," Krell said as we walked through the Post's newsroom. Back in his day, he said, newspapers were bustling places filled with chain-smoking reporters, clacking typewriters and cursing editors. "What do you guys use nowadays? Word processors?" he asked before telling me he still cranks out stories on an old IBM Selectric typewriter. One of those stories helped save a convict 72 hours before his scheduled execution. That story started in 1958 after he'd written about two men convicted of a double murder during a grocery store holdup in Uniontown, Ohio. The magazine received letters from readers trying to secure a new trial for one of the convicts, Dale Bundy. His alleged accomplice, Russell McCoy, implicated him in the Uniontown killings after Bundy told police McCoy had killed his half sister and her husband. After his arrest in early 1957, McCoy told police it was Bundy who was the trigger-man in the grocery store killings. Bundy was sentenced to the electric chair based largely the testimony of McCoy, who pleaded insanity for his crimes. Krell interviewed reporters, police officers, prosecutors and trial witnesses. A woman in Texas who read Krell's story testified at Bundy's new trial that she saw McCoy enter the Uniontown store alone. The jury set Bundy free just 3 days before his execution date. Krell left a stack of his other detective stories with me. A detailed 1955 "Inside Detective" story, titled "A Murder That Never Happened," told of Harold Emrich, 19, sent to prison for 25 years for murdering a woman who coroners stated had died of natural causes. Emrich admitted that he and a few friends had broken into the woman's house and stole cash after her death. But one of his cohorts told police Emrich killed the woman, and he was sent to jail for 25 years. Krell's story detailed how the sheriff and prosecutor coerced the confession. Emrich was released shortly after the story was published. St. Louis police Maj. F.J. "Pete" Vasal and Krell co-wrote a book in the 1980s titled "Killer Cops." Krell has another manuscript based on the real-life story of a California man, Robert E. Williams, who confessed to murder simply to get the attention of an estranged girlfriend. The man, who was given a 25-year sentence, confessed to another murder while in prison, just to prove how he had faked the first confession. For his troubles, Williams received another life sentence. His case, dubbed the "Strangest in the history of crime in California" by a local newspaper, took a bizarre turn after Williams proved his own innocence after he was paroled in 1975. Tenacious undercover skills and dogged dedication is well-documented in Krell's work. A part of me hoped the seasoned reporter simply felt a kinship of sorts. But, I get the impression he hopes to attract a publisher, the sort still interested in crime fiction noir. That's OK. I enjoyed reading Krell's work . . . even if he played me like a three-stringed, cheap guitar, purchased from a roadside vintage shop by a wrongly convicted blues musician heading to Memphis for one last concert, like a one-note parrot singing a song of innocence. (source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch) SOUTH CAROLINA----2, including female, face death penalty Death penalty trial of couple set to start Jury selection is scheduled to start Monday in the death penalty trial of David Edens and Jennifer Holloway. The pair have been charged with the 2004 kidnapping and murder of Upstate businessman Jim Cockman, 71, and are scheduled to be tried together. They are being prosecuted by 13th Circuit Solicitor Bob Ariail because Cockman is believed to have been abducted from a Greenville County location near his Gowensville home. Authorities found Cockman's body in a freezer in Sevierville, Tenn., in September 2004 after he had been missing for 9 days. Cockman died of suffocation, according to an autopsy by the Greenville County Coroner's Office. Shortly after the couple's arrest, Holloway, 28, told investigators she and her common-law husband, Edens, 35, had wanted to steal a GMC Suburban that Cockman had for sale, according to an affidavit filed by federal agents who participated in the investigation. When Edens and Holloway met the Greenville County businessman to look at the vehicle, they forced him into the back of the car, put duct tape on his mouth and drove to their home in Tennessee. When Edens and Holloway discovered that Cockman was dead, they put his body in a freezer, the affidavit stated. They later moved the freezer to a storage facility where investigators eventually found the body. FBI Agent Robert Scott said Edens and Holloway had contacted several other people who were selling cars before allegedly carjacking Cockman. He also said that Holloway claimed to have heard voices in her head. Edens and Holloway's capital murder trial will consist of 2 phases. In the guilt phase, the jury will hear evidence and decide whether the couple are responsible for Cockman's death. If the jury finds the defendants guilty, then the trial will shift to the penalty phase, where jurors decide on a sentence of death or life in prison. Capital trials typically take about 2 weeks. (source: Spartanburg Herald Journal) NEW JERSEY: Death penalty panel needs more time It's been 43 years since New Jersey executed anyone, a fact that prompted lawmakers to form a special commission to study the death penalty. In their 1st meeting, Friday, commission members decided that they need more time. The law that created the commission gave it until Nov. 15 to forward precommendations to Governor Corzine and the Legislature on whether the death penalty should be abolished or the law prescribing it changed. But the Rev. M. William Howard Jr., the commission chairman, said a date beyond Nov. 15 is needed. "We shouldn't rush with this," said Howard, pastor at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark. He said the group would ask the Legislature for an extension. Attorney General Zulima Farber, a commission member, suggested the panel seek an additional 3 months. She said that would allow the commission to work but not delay pending cases that could involve the death penalty. The group was formed this year to study capital punishment in a state that reinstated the death penalty in 1982, but hasn't executed anyone since 1963. The state has 10 men on death row, but the legislation that created the commission imposed a moratorium on executions until 60 days after the panel completes its work. No execution was imminent when the moratorium was imposed. Sharon Hazard-Johnson, whose parents were killed in their Pleasantville home in 2001 by death row inmate Brian P. Wakefield, attended the hearing and said she was worried. "I am very concerned that this is a bid to abolish the death penalty," she said. "I hope they can be fair and square." The commission was formed to study whether the state's death penalty law is fairly applied, how much it costs, whether it deters crime and if it should be abolished. Howard declined Friday to discuss his position on the death penalty. He is former president of the National Council of Churches, which opposes the death penalty. The panel includes clergy, family members of murder victims, law enforcement officials, attorneys, the state's public defender, a retired state Supreme Court justice and the former senator, John Russo, who sponsored the death penalty law. Corzine, a Democrat, opposes the death penalty. He is the first elected New Jersey governor to oppose it since Brendan Byrne, who left office in January 1982. "The governor remains fundamentally opposed to the death penalty and looks forward to reviewing the committee's report," Corzine spokesman Anthony Coley said. Last year, New Jersey Policy Perspective, a liberal think tank, said the state has spent $253 million in the past 23 years on a death penalty that hasn't been used. (source: Associated Press)
