[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., MISS.
Feb. 16 TEXASimpending execution Family, advocates fight to prevent Reed executionThe family of Rodney Reed, family of his victim and a renowned anti-death penalty advocate are uniting, hoping for a stay of execution. With days left before convicted killer Rodney Reed is executed, his family and members of the victim's family united Sunday to fight for a stay of execution. I'm the brother of Rodney Reed, an innocent man on death row, said Roderick Reed, Rodney's brother. Rodney Reed is scheduled to be executed March 5. The Bastrop man was convicted for killing Stacey Stites in 1996. 17 years later, Roderick Reed fights for his brother's life. There's evidence out there that's never tested, Roderick Reed said. There was witnesses that we're never called. He had lazy lawyers. Look, all I'm asking and the message I want to ask is: just give him a fair trial. Days before Reed is scheduled to be executed, his family is gathering powerful supporters. In the beginning, I thought we were alone, Roderick Reed said. Sister Helen Prejean, an anti-death penalty advocate and author of 'Dead Man Walking,' The Innocence Project - a group that works to absolve wrongfully convicted people, and even certain members of Stites' family are joining the Reed family's fight. I don't think he did it, said Heather Stobbs, Stites' cousin. I don't think he's guilty. With growing support, the Reed family filed a writ of Habeas Corpus. They've filed requests to do DNA testing on evidence and asked for a stay of execution. Reed's lawyers expect answers from the Criminal Court of Appeals within the next couple of weeks. There will likely be a final opinion, said Quinncy McNeal, Attorney for Rodney Reed. It will move from the Criminal Court of Appeals. If Mr. Reed doesn't get relief there, it will move up to the federal level. A long time and a lot of effort for one family's only wish. I'm asking for justice that's it, Roderick Reed said. (source: KVUE news) ** Innocent Man Fights for Reform After 12 Years in Solitary Anthony Graves was 26 in 1992 when he was arrested for murdering 6 people in Somerville, Texas, outside Houston. At his trial, the prosecution presented no physical evidence to tie him to the scenes of the crimes, but he was nevertheless convicted and sentenced to death. It wasn't until the key witness in the trial recanted his testimony, weeks before Graves was to be executed, that new light was cast on his case. A judge later ruled that the prosecutor had withheld evidence and threatened witnesses, and ordered that Graves be released. Graves had already spent 18 years in prison, including a dozen in solitary confinment, by the time he regained his freedom in 2010. Now 49, Graves said the psychological damage of long-term isolation can linger. Solitary confinement is a system designed to break a man's will to live, he said. You're sitting there, in a little cage, day in and day out, year in and year out, waiting for the state to execute you or release you. After leaving prison he would suddenly burst into tears for no particular reason and had difficulty sleeping, though his condition has since improved. Still, there are things Graves saw and heard all those years that he can't forget. I witnessed men just literally, literally losing their minds, he said. More than 6,500 inmates in Texas live in solitary confinement, according to a report published last week by the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project. The figure does not include inmates who are living in solitary on death row. On average, prisoners remain in solitary confinement in Texas for almost 4 years, with more than 100 prisoners remaining in solitary for more than 20 years, the report states. The conditions in which these inmates live impose such severe deprivations that they leave prisoners mentally damaged, and they are more likely to commit crimes again once they are released, according to the ACLU report. We met with people who were profoundly mentally ill. So mentally ill we didn't feel comfortable sharing their stories in this report, said attorney Burke Butler, a researcher who helped produce the report. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice holds 4.4 % of its prison population in solitary confinement, the report states - about 4 times the national average. This is in part because of the sheer size of Texas' prison population, Butler said, but also because the state automatically places in isolation prisoners believed to have gang ties. Nearly 1/2 the people in solitary are said to be gang-affiliated. But they are often misclassified for reasons as simple as having old gang tattoos, Butler said. An array of subjective decisions by prison personnel can also land inmates in solitary, such as the 19-year-old Butler spoke to who said his confinement was punishment for throwing milk at a guard. Texas prisoners in
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., MISS., OHIO
Jan. 17 TEXAS: Court Suspends Death Row Inmate's Lawyer Over Late Filing On Wednesday, the judges of Texas' highest criminal court told a defense attorney named David Dow he would not be able to practice in front of them for the next year. The Court of Criminal Appeals decided that Dow had filed a motion to stop the execution of his client, Miguel Angel Paredes, too late, and that since he'd done the same thing in a different case in 2010, he will now be suspended. Neither the court nor Dow, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center and one of the best known death penalty defense attorneys in the country, will comment publicly. But this move is the latest evidence of an ongoing feud in Texas between lawyers who appeal on behalf of inmates facing executions, Dow chief among them, and the judges who rule on their claims. On the surface, the fights have been about deadlines, but, as criminal justice blogger Scott Henson described Dow's relationship with the judges back in 2009, Basically these folks just don't like each other on a level that transcends any given issue. Miguel Paredes was executed last October for a triple murder of gang rivals, committed in 2000. The summer before the execution, he wrote a letter to Dow asking for help, and Dow volunteered - without being appointed to the case - to investigate Paredes' claims. It took a while owing to Dow's busy schedule, but he found that Paredes' original lawyer had called no witnesses at the trial and that Paredes was allowed to waive an early appeal while on anti-psychotic medications. Dow filed an appeal and a call for a stay 7 days before the execution. The court said he should have filed it the day before. The court has explicitly said the deadline is 7 days before an execution, but in practice, attorneys know that they must have it in eight days before. It wasn't the first time Dow had clashed with the court over deadlines. One evening in October 2007, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review Kentucky's lethal injection protocol, Dow and his colleagues raced to write a new appeal for their client Michael Richard. As they worked to argue how the Kentucky case mirrored their own, they later said, their computers broke down, and they asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to wait 20 minutes after its 5 p.m. deadline so they could deliver the appeal by hand. We close at 5, was the response by the court's head judge, Sharon Keller. Those 4 words became a rallying point for the death penalty's opponents and made her a villain (Sharon Killer) in newspaper editorials across the country. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers sent a complaint about her actions to the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct. The commission's report on the matter called Keller's conduct not exemplary of a public service, but cast firm doubt on Dow's computer breakdown story and took him to task for making inaccurate statements in the press about how soon the appeal was actually ready, which spun out of control into a public groundswell of opposition against Judge Keller. In June 2011, Keller's court issued a new rule about filing deadlines. A pleading would be deemed untimely if it was filed fewer than 7 days before the scheduled execution date. The rule goes on to say that a request for a stay of execution filed at 8 a.m. on a Wednesday morning when the execution is scheduled for the following Wednesday at 6 p.m. is untimely. Dow filed a motion to stay Paredes' execution at 12:37 p.m. on Oct. 21. The execution was set for Oct. 28 at 6 p.m. It was more than 7 days in advance, but violated the rule's example. Pull out a calendar if you find this all a bit confusing. At a hearing last month, Dow went before the court to defend his late filing. The court found that he and his partner failed to show good cause for the untimely filings. In Dow's corner are defense attorneys who think the narrow and peculiar application of deadline rules allows the judges to avoid what went wrong at the original trial. The judges were focusing very narrowly on 15 hours of time rather than the case as presented, said Kathryn Kase, director of the Texas Defender Service and a former colleague of Dow???s. It's somewhat like saying, 'You were working too late in the emergency room,' while not focusing on the grievous injuries the patient has. As for the trial defense lawyer, who called no witnesses even as his client faced a death sentence, the judges had no complaints. (source: Texas Tribune) ** Capital murder trial costs county Information from the county auditor's office indicates that so far, the Gabriel Armandariz double homicide case has cost Young County about $427,334 and will likely cost taxpayers much more than that by the time the trial concludes. The Jeremy Thornburg murder case that concluded last October cost Young County $42,897, but a
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., MISS., OHIO, KY., USA
July 4 TEXAS: Mass murderer who was spared death penalty gets erased by time A tragic, little-remembered anniversary in Dallas history passed nearly unnoticed last weekend. 3 decades ago last Sunday, on June 29, 1984, Abdelkrim Belachheb murdered 6 people in a restaurant-club called Ianni's near the intersection of LBJ Freeway and Midway Road. It remains Dallas' worst mass murder. The motive for the murders was his injured sense of personal importance: A woman at the bar had allegedly called him a monkey and shoved him away on the dance floor. Belachheb got a 9-mm handgun out of his car, returned to the bar and started shooting. He killed 4 women and 2 men: Marcell Ford, Janice Smith, Linda Lowe, Ligia Koslowski, Frank Parker and Joe Minasi. Another man was shot but survived. Police traced the gunman to a friend's house less than 2 hours later. Belachheb was a Moroccan citizen who for years had drifted from one low-rent job to the next. He was also a narcissistic sociopath and an all-around failure in life who blamed his problems on everybody but himself. The profile fits other criminals who have committed similar atrocities. His case was a landmark, but not because of the body count. Sadly, homicidal lunatics with a lot more firepower have since done much more damage. Belachheb's rampage was eclipsed 3 weeks later when a gun nut in San Ysidro, Calif., killed 21 people at a McDonald's. Belachheb's case did, however, inspire a change in Texas' death-penalty law - because Belachheb wasn't eligible for the death penalty. Texas author Gary Lavergne wrote a book about the case and its aftermath in 2002. He explains that at the time of the Ianni's murders, Texas law was specific in limiting a capital charge to murders that took place with certain circumstances, such as during the commission of another felony or killing a police officer. Those circumstances did not include multiple victims. If the Ianni's murderer had killed 1 person and stolen a dime from her purse, he could have been sentenced to death, Lavergne wrote. If he had walked off with an ashtray or a stolen fork off a table, he could have been sentenced to death. Instead, Belachheb was soon tried and sentenced to life in prison. During the following legislative session, state lawmakers added a multiple victims provision to the death-penalty statute. In his book, Lavergne doesn't make any sweeping generalizations about capital punishment. But his title, Worse Than Death, sums up the author's conclusion that life in prison - for the egomaniacal, self-important Belaccheb, at least - really was the worst punishment possible. Lavergne writes: In cell 108 of Pod F, at the High Security Section of Ad Seg [administrative segregation] of the Clements Unit in Amarillo, sits a man who wallows in self-pity and finds something to complain about nearly every moment of his life. He believes everyone is out to pick on him, he hates the food, and believes he is being harassed and even tortured. Every day he awakens in the same miserable surroundings knowing why he is there. Today, 12 years since that was written, prison records show that Belachheb still lives on the same unit. He'll turn 70 in November, a forgotten old man whose life is ticking away in a prison cell. The state didn't execute him, but it did, as the saying goes, throw away the key. His victims and their families cannot forget, of course. But for everyone else, time has moved on. Abdelkrim Belachheb is a distant name from a largely forgotten past. He is nobody. (source: Dallas Morning News) PENNSYLVANIA: Man no longer facing execution in 1982 Pa. slaying A judge has removed the death sentence imposed on a man convicted in the murder of a south-central Pennsylvania woman more than 3 decades ago. Lebanon County President Judge John Tylwalk instead sentenced Freeman May on Wednesday to life in prison without possibility of parole. May, 56, was convicted of the 1982 stabbing death of Kathy Lynn Fair, 22, whose remains were found 6 years later in woods in Lebanon County. The judge ruled in April that May was incapacitated and incompetent to proceed after a forensic psychologist testified that he suffered from a delusional disorder. District Attorney David Arnold said the life term was the only appropriate solution since the law is crystal clear that you cannot execute a mentally incompetent defendant, the Lebanon Daily News reported. So while it's frustrating that Freeman May was not executed after his initial death sentence, we have no choice but to respect the fact that he cannot be executed now or in the future under Pennsylvania law, he said after the hearing. May was convicted of killing Fair, a young mother, and sentenced to death in 1991. The sentence was reversed but reinstated after a second penalty phase hearing in 1995. An appeals court again lifted the death sentence but it was
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., MISS., OHIO
Oct. 8 TEXASimpending execution Judge rejects killer's bid to halt execution over drug A Houston federal judge has a rejected a Lubbock killer's bid to stop his pending execution by claiming that the state's planned use of a lethal drug purchased from a Woodlands compounding pharmacy could inflict constitutionally unacceptable pain. U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes turned aside Michael Yowell's claims, noting that, while people of goodwill can debate death as a penalty ... the death penalty is consitutional. Yowell, 43, is scheduled to be put to death Wednesday for the May 1998 murder of his mother, father and grandmother. He had sought an emergency stay to allow examination of whether the use of pentobarbital purchased from Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy would be cruel and unusual. The Associated Press reported the state purchased the drug from the area pharmacy after exhausting its supply with September executions. Prison spokesman Jason Clark Monday confirmed his agency had purchased eight 2.5-gram vials of the drug, which frequently is used to euthanize cats and dogs. Each execution requires 5 grams of the drug, Clark said. Clark did not immediately respond to a question concerning whether the state would return the lethal drug as requested by pharmacy owner Jasper Lovoi, who could not be reached for comment. In a letter to state officials dated Oct. 4, the pharmacy objected that its name had been made public and asked that the pentobarbital be returned. Yowell was joined by condemned killers Thomas Whitaker and Perry Williams in seeking a halt of executions using the newly acquired drug. Yowell was sentenced to die for strangling his mother and fatally shooting his father before setting the family home on fire. His grandmother later died of injuries suffered in the blaze. Whitaker, 33, was sentenced to die for a 2003 Fort Bend County double murder; Williams, 32, for a 2000 abduction and murder. In another setback for Yowell, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected his 11th-hour appeal without comment. (source: Houston Chronicle) *** Texas inmate to die this week loses federal appeal The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday an appeal from a Texas death row inmate set for execution this week for killing his parents in Lubbock 15 years ago. Michael Yowell, 43, is set for lethal injection Wednesday in Huntsville. Attorneys unsuccessfully argued Yowell had poor legal help during his trial and in early appeals of his conviction and death sentence. Yowell was convicted and condemned for the deaths of his father, John, 55, and mother Carol, 53, whose bodies were found in the rubble of their home after an explosion and fire in May 1998. His mother had been strangled and his father was shot. Yowell's 89-year-old grandmother suffered serious injuries in the blast and fire and died two weeks later. Yowell confessed to the slayings, saying he needed money to support his $200-a-day drug habit. Prosecutors said he killed his parents, opened a natural gas valve and fled the house. It eventually blew up. Attorneys also tried to halt the scheduled lethal injection with a civil lawsuit involving Yowell and two other death row prisoners. A federal district judge in Houston rejected the suit on Saturday and a lawyer in the case said Monday she would appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The prisoners challenged the state's use in executions of pentobarbital obtained from a compounding pharmacy not subjected to usual federal scrutiny, arguing the drug adds an unacceptable risk of pain, suffering and harm. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has turned to a compounding pharmacy, which custom makes drugs, because its previous supply of the sedative expired last month. Several companies have been refusing to sell their products for use in executions or have bowed to pressure from capital punishment opponents, leading to a drug shortage in death penalty states and forcing states to switch lethal drugs or use compounding pharmacies. Our base line contention is we, the public, have to be concerned about transparency and accountability by a state agency that's carrying out the gravest of all possible duties, an attorney for the inmates, Maurie Levin, said Monday. Texans may not like death row inmates demanding constitutional process ... but if we don't enforce them here, just because we don't like the plaintiff, then what's the next place? Court filings in the lawsuit showed the owner of a suburban Houston compounding pharmacy that's the source of the prison agency's newly purchased pentobarbital supply is asking to have the drugs returned, saying the sale placed him in the middle of a firestorm of the inmates' lawsuit, media inquiries and hate mail and messages. State attorneys said prison officials did nothing improper. Yowell's arguments try to create controversy where none exists, said
