[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., N.C., GA., ALA., ARK.
June 19 TEXAS: How many doses of lethal injection drugs does Texas have? With execution drugs in short supply across the nation and increasing secrecy about the companies that provide them, The Texas Tribune is keeping track of movement in the state’s supply. 06 doses expire June 5, 2019 06 doses expire June 27, 2019 15 doses expire Jan. 12, 2020 Scheduled executions Jul 31 Ruben Gutierrez Aug 15 Dexter Johnson Aug 21 Larry Swearingen Sep 4 Billy Crutsinger Sep 10 Mark Anthony Soliz Oct 2 Stephen Barbee Recent inventory changes -1 dose May 1, 2019 Drugs removed from stock +15 doses April 29, 2019 Drugs added to inventory -1 dose April 24, 2019 Execution of John William King Since 1977, lethal injection has been the method for executing Texas criminals sentenced to death. But the drugs used in executions have changed over the years, as the state has struggled to get a hold of enough life-ending doses. Texas, along with other states that hold executions, has been engaged in a battle for years to keep an adequate inventory of execution drugs. Currently, the state uses only pentobarbital, a sedative it has purchased from compounding pharmacies kept secret from the public. To promote transparency, The Texas Tribune has obtained the inventory history and current supply of execution drugs held by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The information, collected through continuous open records requests, is updated regularly with the available doses and recent changes to the state’s inventory. In 2011, drug manufacturers began blocking their products from being used in lethal injections. As Texas’ struggled to perform executions, it turned to compounding pharmacies, state-regulated agencies that mix their own drugs without federal regulation. When one pharmacy’s name became public, the owner said he received threats, and asked for the drugs to be returned. Texas refused, and the state Legislature passed a law in 2015 to maintain the privacy of any person or business involved in an execution, from the person who inserts the needle to the company that sells the drug. Since then, Texas has kept enough pentobarbital in stock for scheduled executions, faring better than some other states. But the drugs haven’t come easy. In 2016, Pfizer, the last-remaining open-market manufacturer of drugs that were used in executions, banned its products from being used for that purpose. Afterward, states that had regularly performed executions halted the practice as they are unable to obtain any drugs. Others rushed to schedule executions ahead of the expiration dates of their limited supply of drugs or switched to using a controversial sedative, midazolam, which was involved in botched executions in Oklahoma and Arizona. Texas has been able to keep an adequate supply on hand, but part of that is because the state has repeatedly extended the expiration date of doses in stock — retesting the potency levels as the expiration date nears and then relabeling them. The practice has drawn sharp criticism from death penalty defense attorneys, who say the old drugs are causing painful executions. Even with its relative security, Texas is always looking for new supplies. In 2015, the state attempted to import from overseas a drug previously used by Texas in executions, sodium thiopental. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration seized the drugs and later ruled that they couldn’t be brought into the United States because they were unapproved and misbranded, but the state is fighting that ruling. also: see: https://apps.texastribune.org/death-row/ (source for both: The Texas Tribune) * Man convicted in fatal 2013 shooting of West Texas deputy faces death penalty A Nueces County jury convicted a man in the 2013 fatal shooting of a West Texas sheriff's deputy. The jury found Gary David Green guilty of capital murder Monday in connection with the death of Upton County deputy Billy "Bubba" Kennedy, court records show. Green, who is now facing the death penalty, was arrested in October 2013 after a shootout at a McCamey convenience store, according to the Associated Press. The trial was moved from West Texas to South Texas because of a change of venue. McCamey — which is in Upton County and has a population of around 2,000 people — is about 50 miles south of Odessa. After weeks of jury selection, testimony began last week before visiting judge Tessa Herr. The jury returned a verdict in less than half an hour, according to a court official. The trial's punishment phase is expected to start Wednesday. In Texas, capital murder is punishable by either life in prison without parole or the death penalty. According to a news article from the Odessa American, Green's credit card was declined at the convenience store and he demanded free gas. He was approached by Kennedy and another deputy, who ran a check
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., S.C., FLA., LA., ARK., NEB., WYO., USA
April 26 TEXASimpending execution Death Watch: Was Dexter Johnson Condemned by His Own Attorney?Inmate's new co-counsel seeks to terminate longtime attorney for bad lawyering Dexter Johnson isn't going to die without a fight. The 30-year-old, who suffers from brain damage and schizophrenia, has filed a flurry of court motions since his death date was set in December by a Houston judge – several months before the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his last round of appeals. With his execution scheduled for May 2, Johnson has stay requests filed in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and in federal district court in Houston. Johnson also has a motion pending in the Houston court to terminate his longtime appellate counsel Patrick F. McCann; in February, U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett denied an earlier request to remove McCann but also appointed the Federal Public Defender's Capital Habeas Unit as co-counsel, directing FPD to "explore" Johnson's claims of ineffective counsel assistance. According to FPD's April 5 filing, their review of McCann's work cast "serious doubt on the constitutionality" of Johnson's conviction and death sentence, while leaving "no doubt" that McCann's work on the case "falls far below prevailing professional norms." McCann, who was appointed Johnson's appellate attorney on the day he was sentenced to death in 2007, failed to collect the trial team's "voluminous" files, which FPD calls the "most basic duty of post-conviction counsel in a capital case" and "essential" to provide "competent" representation. During his years as Johnson's only attorney, FPD alleges, McCann failed to raise "numerous viable claims for relief" in state and federal courts, including Johnson's likely intellectual disability, his trial counsel's conflicts of interest as a former Harris County prosecutor, and errors by the Houston police crime lab, along with numerous mistakes made by McCann himself. Another appeal was filed in the CCA on April 22. Johnson was sentenced to death in 2007 for the double murder of a young couple whom he and several friends carjacked and robbed before Johnson allegedly raped the woman and shot the pair. During his trial, jurors were told of other murders Johnson was suspected of committing. Despite his age (he was 18 at the time) and his schizophrenia, jurors returned a guilty verdict in 2 hours. In closing, the lawyers of FPD offered: "Absent a stay of execution, Mr. Johnson will not receive the meaningful assistance of counsel he is entitled to." After James Byrd's killer John William King was executed Wednesday evening, Johnson is in line to be the 4th man killed by the state this year. (source: Austin Chronicle) On the Execution of John William King Wednesday in Texas, an avowed white supremacist, John William King, was executed for his part in the gruesome killing of James Byrd Jr. in 1998. King and his friends Shawn Berry and Lawrence Brewer beat James Byrd then chained him to the back of their pickup and dragged him for miles along a country road. Still alive during his ordeal, Byrd was finally killed when he hit a culvert and his right arm and head were torn off. If you have the stomach for it, you can read the whole sickening story here. Berry was sentenced to life in prison. Brewer was executed in 2011 and King yesterday. Brewer and King never expressed remorse for their crimes saying they would do it again if they had the chance. King had several racist tattoos: a black man hanging from a tree, Nazi symbols, the words “Aryan Pride”, and the patch for a gang of white supremacist inmates known as the Confederate Knights of America.[19] In a jailhouse letter to Brewer that was intercepted by jail officials, King expressed pride in the crime and said that he realized while committing the murder that he might have to die. “Regardless of the outcome of this, we have made history. Death before dishonor. Sieg Heil!” King wrote.[2] An officer investigating the case also testified that witnesses said that King had referenced The Turner Diaries after beating Byrd. So here we have 3 guys who are just about as despicable and disgusting specimens of humanity that you can imagine. What is your reaction? Should Brewer and King have been executed? I’m a Catholic and my church teaches that the death penalty is wrong. Until recently the wording in our teaching on the matter has been that the death penalty should not be used, but it still left an opening for its use in extreme circumstances, but more recently Pope Francis has changed this article in the Catechism to read: 2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y. PENN., GA., FLA.
June 26 TEXASimpending execution Houston serial killer denied clemency 2 days before scheduled execution With 2 days to go before his scheduled date with death, Houston serial killer Danny Bible on Monday lost out on a bid for clemency. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied the aging prisoner's plea in a 6-0 vote, according to his attorneys. He's now scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday in the Huntsville death chamber. But the 66-year-old condemned killer still has a shot at a stay from the federal courts, where his attorneys have launched a lawsuit claiming he's in such poor health he can't be executed. That claim is currently in front of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Bible was sentenced to death in 2003, after he confessed to the 1979 slaying of Inez Deaton. The young mother had been stabbed 11 times with an ice pick and left along the slope of a Houston bayou. Northern California detectives still trying to identify the infamous Zodiac Killer who targeted victims in the late 1960s and taunted investigators with letters say they hope to try the same DNA tracing technology recently used to arrest a suspect in another string of cold-case serial slayings - those blamed on the East Area Rapist. In 1984, he was sent to prison for killing his sister-in-law Tracy Powers and her infant son Justin. Then, he killed her roommate, Pam Hudgins, and left the woman's body hanging from a roadside fence. He was released after 8 years behind bars, and went on to rape and molest multiple young relatives, including a 5-year-old. In 1998, he raped a woman in a Louisiana motel room, then stuffed her in a duffel bag before she broke free and called for help. Bible was eventually caught in Florida and extradited to Louisiana, where he confessed to his crimes. But in their clemency petition, Bible's lawyers wrote that he'd admitted to the earlier slaying in exchange for a promise of avoiding the death chamber - a promise they said was "clearly not honored by the state." Attorneys also told of Bible's transformation from 4-time killer to remorseful Christian, and said that he's no longer a future danger given his poor medical condition. Bible has Parkinson's and uses a wheelchair, a fact that has come up repeatedly in appeals over the past decade. Texas has already executed 6 men this year, including another Houston serial killer, Anthony Shore. Aside from Bible's, there are 8 other death dates on the calendar in Texas. ** Things to know about Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan and Houston 'honor killings' The death penalty trial of Ali Irsan, a Jordanian immigrant accused in a pair of "honor killings, began Monday. Irsan, a devout Muslim, is accused of killing his daughter's husband and her best friend because she converted to Christianity and marred a Christian. On trial: Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan, a 60-year-old Jordanian-American who is the father of 12, is on trial before state District Judge Jan Krocker. The victims: 1.) Coty Beavers, the 28-year-old husband of Nasreen Irsan, 2.)Gelareh Bagherzadeh, an Iranian medical student and activist, and Nasreen's best friend. Prosecution: Special prosecutors Jon Stephenson, Marie Primm and Anna Emmons were appointed because Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg recused her office. The case: Ali Irsan is accused of tracking down Bagherzadeh as she arrived at her Galleria home in January 2012 and, with his son, and shooting her. He is also accused of stalking his daughter and Beavers and shooting him 7 times in November 2012. The defense: Defense lawyers Allen Tanner and Rudy Duerte have argued that the 2 crime scenes have nothing to do with each other and that they were not part of the same plan or scheme. The punishment: If convicted of capital murder, Irsan faces the possibility of life in prison without parole or the death penalty. (source for both: Houston Chronicle) NEW YORK: Cornenll's Death Penalty Worldwide Institute Training 'A Network of African Lawyers' To Fight Against Capital Punishment Lawyers from more than 13 countries have gathered at Cornell to receive training for representing clients facing the death penalty. On June 18, the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide kicked off its 2nd annual Makwanyane Institute. The institute aims to train capital defenders and prepare them for the intricacies of capital offense trials in many different countries. Prof. Sandra Babcock, law, founded the DPW in 2011, building off of her previous work with death penalty cases in sub-Saharan Africa. According to Babcock, she had worked in the region for 11 years and wanted to continue the work on a deeper level. "We provide training to brilliant dedicated lawyers who otherwise have no access to training and how to effectively represent people facing capital punishment," Babcock said. The Makwanyane institute, named
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., GA., FLA., MISS., OHIO, NEB., USA
Aug. 14 TEXASimpending execution Texas Readies to Kill Man - Who Killed No One - for Murder Jeffery Wood on track to be the 'least culpable person executed in the modern era of death penalty' His execution is scheduled for Aug. 24, which is "just 5 days after his 43rd birthday, for a crime that everyone, including prosecutors, admits he did not commit,"Jordan Smith wrote at The Intercept. He's been on death row since 1998. 2 years earlier, as the Austin Chronicle reported, he was arrested for the murder of Kris Keeran, a gas station attendant in Kerrville. Wood didn't fire the bullet that killed Keeran. In fact, he wasn't even inside the building. He was in a pickup truck in the parking lot when his friend Daniel Reneau shot Keeran in the face during a botched robbery. Wood jumped out of the car and ran inside when he heard the gunshot. There, Reneau pointed his gun at Wood and told him to make off with the Texaco's surveillance camera and VCR. So why is Wood about to face a lethal injection of pentobarbital? Hooman Hedayati, an attorney and a member of the Texas Moratorium Network Board of Directors, explained in an op-ed at the Austin American-Statesman last month: Wood was convicted and sentenced to die under Texas' arcane felony-murder law, more commonly known as the "the law of parties" - for his role as an accomplice to a killing, which he had no reason to anticipate. Under the law of parties, those who conspire to commit a felony, like a robbery, can be held responsible for a subsequent crime, like murder, if it "should have been anticipated." The law does not require a finding that the person intended to kill. It only requires that the defendant, charged under the law of parties, was a major participant in the underlying felony and exhibited a reckless indifference to human life. In other words, neglecting to anticipate another actor's commission of murder in the course of a felony is all that is required to make a Texas defendant death-eligible. Human rights group Amnesty International issued an "urgent alert" Friday to help stop the execution, noting that Wood "has a history of emotional and intellectual impairments, and an IQ consistently assessed at about 80." An additional troubling aspecting of the case, Amnesty writes, is that A prerequisite for a death sentence in Texas is a jury finding of the defendant's "future dangerousness." At Jeffery Wood's sentencing, the prosecution called Dr. James Grigson, a discredited psychiatrist dubbed "Dr. Death" who regularly testified at Texas capital sentencings as to his certainty that the defendant would commit future acts of violence, a form of testimony for which by 1998 he had already been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association. The prosecution nevertheless presented such testimony at Jeffery Wood's trial, without informing the jury of his expulsion. Meanwhile, the defence lawyers made no arguments, put on no witnesses, and presented no mitigation evidence. They "sat mute" throughout, noted the federal judge in 2005. The case prompted roughly 50 Evangelical leaders from across the county to write to Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday, urging them to stop the execution. "Officials have a moral obligation to rectify this mistake and stop this execution while they still can," they wrote, adding, "It deeply troubles us when the criminal justice system concludes that some of the most vulnerable in society can be executed and disposed of." From the Washington Post's lengthy reporting Friday on the case: "If executed this month, Wood will be the 'least culpable person executed in the modern era of death penalty,' said Scott Cobb, president of Texas Moratorium Network, a group that advocates against capital punishment." (source: commondreams.org) NEW YORK: How Thomas Edison powered the 1st electric chair - and totally botched the execution The streets were still lit by flickering gaslights in the late 1880s and '90s; electricity was a developing technology, one often viewed with fear and skepticism by critics who worried that it was unsafe. During this same time, a fierce battle was being waged throughout the United States. There were no shots fired - just electrical sparks, fierce public safety debates, newspaper editorials and court cases. It was called the "War of Currents," and it referred to the competition between rivals Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse and the 2 large electrical companies they helmed: Edison Electric Light Company and Westinghouse Electric Company, respectively. While the fight was technical and wonky in nature - would the direct-current electricity (DC) used by Edison become the new standard or would the alternating current (AC) used by Westinghouse prevail? - the conflict was ultimately over who really invented the light bulb and who would lay claim to the newer, brighter
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., VA., FLA., OHIO
April 5 TEXASimpending execution 'Vampire' killer who scalped 12-year-old boy then drank his blood to be executed tomorrow A murderer who cut the throat of a 12-year-old boy, drank his blood and sickeningly mutilated the body will be executed tomorrow. Pablo Lucio Vasquez, 38, killed 12-year-old David Cardenas in April 1998 in the town of Donna in Texas. On the night of the murder Vasquez, then 20, attended a party with his 15-year-old cousin Andy Chapa and met the boy. Afterwards the 3 were walking home when when Vasquez - who was drunk and high on cocaine - picked up a pipe and hit David over the head, then cut his throat. The cousins took David's body to a field, where they scalped him, cut off one of his arms and part of the other and removed the skin from his back. They also robbed him and then attempted to crudely hide the body under aluminium sheets. Vazquez was quickly picked up by police and admitted the murder. He also told officers he had drunk his blood. Chapa later testified that Vasquez killed the boy because the child did not "give him what he wanted." During his trial, Vasquez said: "The devil was telling me to take [David's head] away from him." On a videotaped confession shown to the jury, he said: "One side of my head said, 'You did wrong'. "The other side said, 'Keep doing it. Keep doing it'."' The Austin Chronicle reported that Vasquez argued that he had serious learning difficulties and is mentally ill, and therefore incompetent and should not be executed. Judges rejected the claim. Vasquez, if his sentence is carried out, will be the 6th Texan executed this year, and the 536th since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Chapa was sentenced to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty for his role. 3 others were convicted of helping to cover-up the murder. (source: mirror.co.uk) NEW YORK Winston Moseley, murderer of Kitty Genovese, dies in prison The man who killed Kitty Genovese, the woman whose public slaying on a quiet Queens street became a symbol of witness indifference and the big city's collective apathy, has died in prison 52 years after his gruesome crime, state officials said. Winston Moseley, 81, formerly of South Ozone Park, was pronounced dead at 3:10 p.m. on March 28 at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, said Patrick Bailey, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. The cause of death has not been determined, but Moseley's body was scheduled for an autopsy, officials said. He was serving a sentence of 20 years to life on convictions for murder, 2nd-degree robbery and 2nd-degree attempted kidnapping. He was originally given a death sentence but that was reduced to life in June 1967 shortly after the state's death penalty was abolished. A state appellate panel ruled that the court did not properly consider Moseley's mental health. Moseley later confessed to killing at least 2 other women. Moseley's crimes were committed in Queens and Erie County, but he was best known for the chilling March 13, 1964, stabbing death of Catherine "Kitty" Genovese, 28, of Kew Gardens, for which he was convicted on June 11, 1964. Genovese, who was randomly targeted after she drove home from her job as manager of a bar in Hollis, parked in a Long Island Rail Road parking lot and was stalked, raped and stabbed to death in 2 attacks occurring over half an hour as residents - it was rumored and later debunked - heard her screams and glanced out of their windows, but did not move to call police or intervene. The alleged reluctance of witnesses to get involved despite Genovese's bloodcurdling shouts seemed to symbolize the apathy of the nation's largest city as its citizens were loath to get involved out of fear of reprisals: Reports in newspapers said as many as 38 witnesses from neighboring buildings did nothing to save Genovese. "The indifference of those people appalled me," Harold R. Florea of Wantagh told Newsday in April 1964 as he started a neighborhood watch group. "It may be due partly to fear. But it seems to me it's mostly an ingrained reluctance on the part of bystanders to butt into somebody else's business." The crime was a case study for law, psychology and criminal justice students. For decades, it was a sobering cautionary tale, detailed in history books and retold by campus public safety experts during college orientation. It gave rise to the term "Genovese effect" or the "bystander effect." The bystander effect refers to the fact that people are less likely to offer help when they are in a group than when they are alone," wrote Melissa Burkley, professor of social psychology at Oklahoma State University, in Psychology Today. But a new book about the case, "Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime that Changed America," and an upcoming documentary, raise questions about whether the witnesses were
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., PENN., VA., N.C., S.C., OHIO, KAN.
March 23 TEXAS: With support of US Supreme Court, Texas authorities execute mentally ill man Adam Kelly Ward, a severely mentally ill Texas man sentenced to death for the 2005 murder of 44-year-old Michael Walker, was executed Tuesday evening by lethal injection. Ward, 33, was the 9th person executed in the US so far this year and the 5th in Texas alone. Roughly 2 hours before the execution, the US Supreme Court rejected Ward's appeal. The high court refused to comment on the case, signaling its support for the barbaric practice of murdering the mentally impaired. Ward was given a lethal dose of pentobarbital at the Walls Unit in Huntsville after 6 p.m. local time, according to the Associated Press. As it took effect, he took a deep breath followed by a smaller one and then stopped moving. He was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. Ward had been on death row less than nine years after being convicted and sentenced to death in 2007. During that trial, a psychiatrist testified that Ward suffered from a psychotic disorder which caused him to "suffer paranoid delusions such that he believes there might be a conspiracy against him and that people might be after him or trying to harm him," according to court documents. Evidence of Ward's paranoia, delusions and bipolar disorder was presented in his initial trial and subsequent appeals court trials, with a federal district court noting that by age 15 Ward "interpreted neutral things as a threat or personal attack." He was found to have begun exhibiting delusional tendencies as early as the 6th grade, leading the court to declare, "Adam Kelly Ward has been afflicted with mental illness his entire life." The details surrounding Ward's murder of Walker clearly indicate that his mental illness of delusions and paranoia prompted him to commit the murder. Walker was a code enforcement officer who was inspecting Ward's property in Commerce, a town 65 miles northeast of Dallas. The Ward family had been cited numerous times for violating housing and zoning codes. Witnesses said that the 2 got into an argument when Walker began taking pictures around the perimeter of the Ward property, prompting Ward to spray Walker with a hose he had been using to wash his car. Ward's trial lawyer, Dennis Davis, says that Walker then told Ward that he was calling for back up, which Ward interpreted as meaning that the police were coming to kill him. "He had no idea that was the exact wrong thing to say to that person," Davis told AP. After Walker made the phone call, Ward went into his house, returned with a gun and shot Walker nine times. Ward later testified that he believed Walker was armed, telling AP, "Only time any shots were fired on my behalf was when I was matching force with force, when this man had pulled a gun on me and he pointed it at me and was fixing to shoot me, which is self-defense." There was no evidence demonstrating that Walker had a weapon, suggesting that Ward had suffered a psychotic episode. Davis told AP, "When I stepped in front of the jury, I said, 'I'm not going to be so callous and look you in the face and say my client didn't kill this man. He killed him but you have to understand why. These delusions he has caused the situation.'" Despite Ward's mental illness clearly prompting him to commit the murder, state and federal courts repeatedly rejected his appeals for a life sentence in lieu of the death penalty. Most recently, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Elsa Alcala rejected Ward's last petition with the state last Monday. In issuing her verdict, Alcala said, "As is the case with intellectual disability, the preferred course would be for legislatures rather than courts to set standards defining the level at which a mental illness is so severe that it should result in a defendant being categorically exempt from the death penalty." Any appeals to the state legislature in Texas for reforms to such laws will fall on deaf ears, as the state's legislature remains among the most reactionary in the country. At present, there are 249 inmates on death row in Texas. The state has carried out by far the most executions since the death penalty was reinstituted in the US following the 1976 Gregg v. Georgia Supreme Court decision, executing 535 people, or more than a third of the total executions. These have included many individuals convicted of crimes committed as juveniles and the mentally impaired. (source: World Socialist Website) * Baptist minister arrested in death penalty protest A Texas Baptist minister was arrested March 22 in a civil disobedience protest of the execution of a man who claimed he was mentally ill when he shot and killed a city code enforcement officer in a dispute over trash in 2005. Jeff Hood, an advocate for abolishing the death penalty who writes a column for Baptist News Global, found it symbolic that Texas carried out the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., VA., N.C., FLA.
March 22 TEXASimpending execution U.S. Supreme Court considering whether to spare Texas man from executionSupreme Court weighs whether to exectute man The U.S. Supreme Court was considering whether a Texas man who killed a city worker in 2005 should be spared from a lethal injection, as his lawyers argue that a ban on executing mentally impaired prisoners should be extended to him. Adam Ward's attorneys say he's delusional and should not be put to death because of his mental illness. His execution is set for Tuesday evening and would be the 5th this year in Texas and 9th nationally. Ward, 33, insists he was defending himself when he killed code enforcement officer Michael Walker, who was taking photos of junk piled outside the Ward family home in Commerce, about 65 miles northeast of Dallas. "Only time any shots were fired on my behalf was when I was matching force with force," Ward told The Associated Press last month from a visiting cage outside death row. "I wish it never happened but it did, and I have to live with what it is." Evidence showed the 44-year-old Walker had a camera and cellphone but no weapon. In a videotaped statement to police following his arrest, Ward said he believed Commerce officials long conspired against him and his father, described in court filings as a hoarder who had been in conflict with the city for years. Evidence showed the Ward family had been cited repeatedly for violating housing and zoning codes. In their appeal to the high court, Ward's attorneys renewed arguments that he is mentally ill and contended his execution would be unconstitutional because of evolving sentiment against executing the mentally ill. The justices have ruled that mentally impaired people, generally those with an IQ below 70, may not be executed. However, the court has said mentally ill prisoners may be executed if they understand they are about to be put to death and why they face the punishment. State attorneys, who said evidence showed Ward's IQ as high as 123, said the late appeal did not raise a new issue, meaning it was improper and without merit. They also disputed claims of changing attitudes about executing the mentally ill. Evidence of Ward's delusions, paranoia and bipolar disorder was presented at his 2007 trial and resurfaced in earlier unsuccessful appeals. The Supreme Court last October refused to review Ward's case. "It's frustrating, tormenting, it's depressing," Dick Walker, the father of the man killed, said Monday. "I believe in appeals. I really do. ... It shouldn't drag on for almost 11 years." Witnesses said Michael Walker was taking photos of the Ward property on June 13, 2005, when he and Ward got into an argument. Walker told Ward he was calling for assistance. Ward thought that meant police were on their way to kill him, Ward's lead trial attorney, Dennis Davis, said last week. "Mr. Walker walked into a hornet's nest and didn't know it," Davis said. Walker made the call and waited near the back of his truck. Ward went inside the house, emerged with a .45-calibre pistol and started firing. Walker was shot nine times. "I think the only thing he was there for was harassment," Ward said from prison. Dick Walker, an emergency medical technician when the shooting happened, was the first medic to arrive at the Ward property. He said he "had to intubate my own son on scene to save his life." He said he's spent years "getting rid of my anger" and in the last year prayed to forgive Ward for the slaying. Still, he believes the punishment is justified. "I do want him to get the sentence he was given by the jury, and he definitely deserves it," said Dick Walker, who planned to witness Ward's execution. (source: Associated Press) ** Wife of Van Cliburn pianist charged with capital murder in death of daughters Police have charged the estranged wife of Van Cliburn piano competition winner Vadym Kholodenko with capital murder after she was found stabbed and her daughters were found dead last week in Benbrook, southwest of Fort Worth. Authorities believe Sofya Tsygankova, 31, killed her daughters and stabbed herself before her husband was scheduled to pick up his children for a regular visit. She is recovering at a hospital, where she's being held in lieu of $2 million bail, Benbrook police announced Monday. "We have probable cause, reason to believe that she committed the homicides," Benbrook police Cmdr. David Babcock said, adding that police collected physical evidence at the scene. Kholodenko, a Ukrainian pianist who performs with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, called 911 Thursday morning after he found his daughters dead in their beds and their mother in an "extreme state of distress," police said. Police said his daughters Nika Kholodenko, 5, and Michela Kholodenko, 1, had no visible signs of trauma. Initial autopsy reports came back inconclusive,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., PENN., N.C., FLA., MONT., USA
Oct. 6 TEXASexecution Texas executes inmate for killing man in $8 robbery A convicted killer in Texas was executed Tuesday for fatally shooting another man in a robbery that yielded just $8. No late appeals were filed for Juan Martin Garcia, who was lethally injected for the September 1998 killing and robbery of Hugo Solano in Houston. Solano, a Christian missionary from Guadalajara, Mexico, had moved his family to the city just weeks earlier so his children could be educated in the U.S. Garcia, 35, apologized to Solano's relatives in Spanish in the moments before the execution. Solano's wife and daughter sobbed and told the inmate they loved him. "The harm that I did to your dad and husband - I hope this brings you closure," he said from the death chamber gurney, his voice breaking. "I never wanted to hurt any of you all." He told his sister and several friends in English that he loved them. "No matter what, remember my promise," Garcia said. "No matter what, I will always be with you." As the dose of pentobarbital began, he winced, raised his head and then shook it. He gurgled once and snored once before his movement stopped. He was pronounced dead 12 minutes later, at 6:26 p.m. CDT. Solano's wife, Ana, and her daughter raised their arms in an apparent prayer inside a death chamber witness room. Afterward, Ana Solano said she wished the execution had not taken place and that she accepted Garcia's apology because it came "from his heart." She said a person deserves to survive so they can share what they learn from their mistakes with others in similar situations. "It's about God. It's about Jesus," she said. In an interview with The Associated Press last month, Garcia acknowledged he shot Solano but denied the robbery, an accompanying felony that made it a capital case. Garcia, who was linked to at least 8 aggravated robberies and 2 attempted murders in the weeks before and after Solano's death, also insisted jurors had unfairly penalized him because he didn't take the witness stand in his own defense at trial. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review Garcia's case in March. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected a clemency request from him last week. Evidence at the 2000 trial and testimony from a companion identified Garcia, who was 18 at the time of the killing and a street gang member, as the ringleader of 4 men involved in Solano's shooting and robbery. Garcia, his 2 cousins and another man had already carried out a carjacking when they spotted the 36-year-old Solano early on Sept. 17, 1998, getting into his van to go to work. Eleazar Mendoza, who was sentenced to 55 years in prison for aggravated robbery, testified that Garcia approached Solano and pointed a gun. Mendoza said Garcia ordered Solano to surrender his money then shot him when he refused. Garcia told the AP that it was Mendoza's idea to rob Solano and that Solano escalated the confrontation by resisting. "He punches me," Garcia said from a visiting cage outside death row. "First thing that came through my mind is that the dude is going to try to kill me. He grabbed the gun with both of his hands and it discharged." Solano was shot 4 times in the head and neck. Another defendant, Raymond McBen, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for aggravated robbery and paroled a year ago. The 4th man charged, Gabriel Morales, was given a life sentence for capital murder. 3 more Texas inmates are scheduled for executions in upcoming weeks. They include Licho Escamilla, who is set to die next week for the 2001 shooting death of Dallas police officer Christopher Kevin James. Garcia becomes the 11th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 529th overall since Trexas resumed capital punishment on Dec. 7, 1982; Garcia becomes the 11th condemned inmate to be put to death since Greg Abbott became Governor in Jan. 2015 Garcia becomes the 23rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1417th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. (sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin) *** Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present11 Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982present-529 Abbott#scheduled execution date-nameTx. # 12-October 14---Licho Escamilla---530 13-November 3---Julius Murphy-531 14-November 18--Raphael Holiday---532 15-January 20 (2016)-Richard Masterson533 16-January 27---James Freeman-534 17-February 16--Gustavo Garcia535 18-March 9--Coy Wesbrook--536 (sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin) *** Death penalty still on table Trial could start in April Prosecutors said as of Tuesday they still plan to seek the death penalty
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., FLA., OHIO, COLO., USA
Aug. 6 TEXAS: NICARAGUAN NATIONAL FACING EXECUTION IN TEXAS Bernardo Aban Tercero, a Nicaraguan national, is scheduled to be executed in Texas on 26 August for a murder committed in 1997. The poor quality of the legal representation he received at trial and during state-level appeals is at the center of his clemency bid. Click here to view the full Urgent Action in Word or PDF format, including case information, addresses and sample messages. Robert Berger was shot dead on 31 March 1997 during a robbery of a dry cleaners in which he was waiting with his five-year-old daughter, in Houston, Texas. Bernardo Aban Tercero was arrested in 1999 when re-entering the USA having returned to Nicaragua after the crime. In 2000, he was convicted of capital murder. At the sentencing, the prosecution argued that this crime and his alleged involvement in crimes in Nicaragua after he left Texas showed that he would be a future danger – a prerequisite for a death sentence in Texas. Among other things, the prosecutor described the defendant as a “beast” and a “demon”. The defense lawyers did not object to these inflammatory comments meaning that this issue was forfeited on appeal. In a bare mitigation case, the defense presented members of the defendant’s family as character witnesses and to argue that he was capable of rehabilitation. A jail chaplain testified that he had shown remorse. The jury voted for the death penalty. The defendant’s inexperienced lawyers had done little investigation into possible mitigation and presented no expert testimony to the jury – such as from a mental health expert – or from anyone else who could describe how the defendant’s childhood in Nicaragua – marked by abject poverty, war and exposure to toxic pesticides as a child laborer – might have impacted his life and conduct. Following the trial, the lawyer appointed for state habeas corpus appeals failed to raise a single claim outside of the trial record (the purpose of such appeals), and did not conduct his own investigation of the case or of the mitigation failure by the trial lawyers. In 2006 a leading Texas newspaper published an investigation into the poor quality of capital defense representation in the state. The two lawyers appointed to represent Bernardo Aban Tercero for state level appeals featured prominently in this review. Bernardo Aban Tercero grew up in extreme poverty in Nicaragua. He was raised by his elderly grandmother after he was abandoned by his mother as a baby and his father refused to have anything to do with him. The family had no electricity or running water, and no access to health care. They lived in an area greatly affected by the civil war in the 1970s and 80s. Poverty meant that even the children worked. According to his clemency petition, which provides the executive authorities with mitigating evidence not presented to the jury, Bernardo Aban Tercero worked in the fields for years from the age of 10. Planes would spray toxic pesticides every two days, with the workers below not provided protective gloves or masks. Bernardo Aban Tercero was among those who became sick and vomited after such sprayings, and suffered severe headaches. Relatives have said that he was one of the worst affected. A neuropsychological assessment is currently being produced for the clemency effort. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION An employee of the dry cleaning business where the murder occurred said that she had helped to orchestrate the robbery with Bernardo Aban Tercero, who lived with her sister and needed money. According to the record, there was a co-defendant who fled to Mexico and was never tried. At his trial in 2000, the defense argued that Bernardo Aban Tercero had lacked the intent necessary for capital murder. The only witness called by the defense, to counter the 17 witnesses presented by the prosecution, was the defendant himself. He testified that the victim Robert Berger had tried to grab his gun and it had gone off during the ensuing struggle. He also alleged that the employee had been a willing participant in the plan. The prosecution maintained that specific intent could be inferred from evidence that he had used threats to coerce the employee into her participation, that he had taken a loaded gun with him into the dry cleaners, and that he had shot the victim because he could identify him. The jury convicted him ofor capital murder and, after voting yes to the “future dangerousness” question and finding no mitigation to warrant a life sentence, sentenced him to death. Click here to view the full Urgent Action in Word or PDF format. Name: Bernardo Aban Tercero (m) Issues: Death penalty, Unfair trial, Legal concern UA: 176/15 Issue Date: 6 August 2015 Country: USA Please let us know if you took action so that we can track our impact! EITHER send a short email to u...@aiusa.org with “UA 176/15” in the subject line, and include in the body of the email the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., PENN., FLA.
July 30 TEXAS: Living without the death penalty in Texas Texas has gone nearly 7 months into 2015 without imposing the death penalty. In some cases, juries declined to send another convicted killer to Texas' death row, opting instead to put them behind bars for life. It's part of a trend of the death penalty falling out of favor not only with juries but also with prosecutors who seek it - even in Texas, the nation's death penalty leader, where a record 49 death sentences were handed down in 1994. The numbers show, according to former veteran District Attorney Tim Cole, that applying the death penalty is no longer the go-to or indispensable tool that prosecutors once regarded it. We're proving as a state that we can live without the death penalty, says Cole, who had a reputation as a no-holds-barred lawman through four terms as DA for Archer, Clay and Montague counties. Now a Fort Worth defense attorney, Cole was keynote speaker at this year's annual meeting of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. In a guest column for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram last week, he stated, Texas should join the 19 U.S. states where the death penalty has been abolished. Cole elaborated in a follow-up interview with this newspaper, which has been calling for an end to the death penalty since 2007. Cole said his rationale is not rooted in moral objections to taking a life. Rather, he said, years of seeing the justice system's deep flaws and the arbitrariness of capital punishment caused him to take his stand. If you could show me a perfect system, I'll give you the death penalty, Cole said. But error-free and evenhanded it's not and will never be. We agree with Cole: A system that allows the possibility of fatal error cannot be defended. The growing list of wrongfully convicted men in Texas appears to be making a difference in the jury room. Further, Cole has seen from the inside how community and financial pressure bear on a DA's decision to seek one punishment vs. another. That means, he said, that a similar crime could mean the death penalty in one county but a prison sentence a few miles away in another jurisdiction. It comes down to the call of a single elected official whose annual budget may or may not bear the expense of a murder trial. Cole does not foresee a day that state lawmakers will abolish the death penalty in Texas, but he said they should at least clean up the system. For example, prosecutors should be barred from making deals for the testimony of jailhouse snitches to secure an execution, Cole said. It's a ghastly practice at the center of many notorious Texas murder cases that have unraveled. In the meantime, Cole said he looks forward to a permanent decline in use of the death penalty. We hope so. It appears that routinely sending dozens of defendants to death row each year is a thing of the past. That's a bright spot in a state that once justified its liberal - and, sometimes, reckless - use of capital punishment. Ex-DA on death penalty From an interview with former District Attorney Tim Cole: If you can show me a perfect system, I'll give you the death penalty. But you can't. You can't show me a system that's so perfect that you could show me we'd never execute an innocent person. I don't think our Legislature will ever vote it out. I don't think they'll abolish it. I think at some point it will kind of wither away, and the Supreme Court may say, one of these days, it violates the Eighth Amendment. There are probably a lot of people who have already been executed where those cases would not be death penalty cases these days. It's become more acceptable for a district attorney not to seek death. (source: Editorial, Dallas Morning News) NEW YORK: The Wrong ManThe Story of the Only NYPD Officer Ever Sentenced to Death - 100 Years Ago Today A century ago today, Charles Becker became the first and only NYPD officer to be executed on death row. But was the cop framed for a famous gangland murder? When it came to scandal, the Tammany leader Big Tim Sullivan said, New York was a 9-day town. But in the case of the murder of his friend Herman Beansie Rosenthal, a gangster and gambling house proprietor, Sullivan's adage proved spectacularly untrue. Charles Becker, an NYPD lieutenant, was 1 of 5 men convicted of the murder, and he remains the only New York City police officer sent to the electric chair. Though the case was sensational and the conviction a travesty, Becker is little remembered today, and defended less. Both failures are all the more disgraceful because the prosecution was undertaken for a noble cause, that of political reform in general and police reform in particular. As with any criminal trial that is transformed into social allegory, the cause trumped the case; facts that contradicted it were held not as false but as heretical, demanding suppression instead of debate. Later
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., DEL., ALA., OHIO, NEB., USA
May 12 TEXASimpending execution Convicted killer of 3 in Houston asking for execution delay Derrick Dewayne Charles was a convicted burglar wanted by authorities for ignoring mandatory meetings with his parole officer when he was arrested for killing his 15-year-old girlfriend, her mother and her grandfather at their home in Houston 13 years ago. 10 months later, Charles pleaded guilty in May 2003 to capital murder, leaving a Harris County jury to decide whether he should spend the rest of his life in prison or be sent to death row. Jurors decided he should be executed after hearing about his extensive juvenile record, his burglary conviction and the details of the killings. Charles, now 32, is set for lethal injection Tuesday evening. His attorneys are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution. He would be the 7th convicted killer executed this year in Texas, which carries out the death penalty more than any other state. The Houston man is 1 of at least 3 Texas inmates scheduled for lethal injection over the next several weeks. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has said it has enough pentobarbital to carry out 2 of the executions, meaning the prison agency would need to replenish its supply of the difficult-to-obtain sedative for capital punishment use or find a substitute drug to replace it. Worried about future shortages, the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature is considering changing state law to keep the identity of execution drugmakers confidential. Suppliers have reported being threatened by death penalty opponents, and the Texas Senate on Monday approved a measure that even would keep death row inmates from knowing where the state is getting the drugs used to execute them. Charles was arrested a day after the bodies of Myiesha Bennett, her 44-year-old mother Brenda Bennett, and 77-year-old grandfather Obie Bennett were found at their northeast Houston home. People who knew them became alarmed after not hearing from them for several days. Relatives have said Brenda Bennett wasn't thrilled with her daughter's relationship with Charles, who was 19 at the time. Attorneys for Charles who are seeking to get the punishment halted say he is mentally incompetent for execution and that the courts should authorize money for psychologists and investigators, so the defense can develop those arguments. The Supreme Court has said condemned inmates must be aware they are about to be executed and have a rational understanding of why they're being put to death. Charles was diagnosed as mentally ill when he was a child and was deprived of care and medication while growing up, one of his attorneys, Paul Mansur, told the justices in a filing. This evidence ... raises substantial concern that the state of Texas may execute an incompetent inmate, Mansur said. Another appeal argued that the trial court violated Charles' constitutional rights by refusing to appoint psychiatric experts and investigators. State attorneys are opposing any delay in the punishment. They say questions about whether Charles is mentally incompetent for execution were rejected by courts earlier and that his lawyers improperly filed their constitutional challenge. There is simply no evidence of any inherent mental illness or psychosis that might call into question Charles' competency to be executed, Texas Assistant Attorney General Fredericka Sargent told the justices. Court records show a warrant was issued for Charles in February 2002, 2 months after he was paroled after serving 8 months of a 3-year burglary sentence. He met once with his parole officer, then failed to show up for other required sessions. Charles was arrested at a Houston motel where Brenda Bennett's car was found. Police have said he told them he beat and strangled Obie Bennett. Myiesha Bennett was choked with an extension cord, beaten with a box containing stereo speakers and hit with a TV. Brenda Bennett was thrown into a water-filled bathtub along with a plugged-in TV. When that failed to electrocute her, she was dragged through the house, raped and strangled. Court documents indicate that Charles said he smoked marijuana soaked in embalming fluid before the killings, then hallucinated while committing them. (source: Associated press) * Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present6 Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982present-524 Abbott#scheduled execution date-nameTx. # 7---May 12Derrick Charles--525 8--June 3Les Bower526 9---June 18---Gregory Russeau--527 (sources: TDCJ Rick Halperin) *** Senate Approves Bill to Keep Execution Drug Providers Secret A state Senate measure to keep the names of execution drug providers from the public won initial approval on Monday in a
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., MD., N.C., GA., FLA.
Jan. 3 TEXAS: Executions under Rick Perry, 2001-present-279 Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982-present518 Perry #scheduled execution date-name-Tx. # 280Jan. 15--Richard Vasquez---519 *** *** Executions under Greg Abbott, 2015-present Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982present Abbott#scheduled execution date-nameTx. # 1Jan. 21---Arnold Prieto520 2Jan. 28---Garcia White-521 3Jan. 29---Robert Ladd--522 4Feb. 4Donald Newbury-523 5Feb. 10---Les Bower, Jr.---524 6Mar. 5Rodney Reed-525 7Mar. 11---Manuel Vasquez-526 8Mar. 18---Randall Mays-527 9Apr. 9Kent Sprouse--528 10---Apr. 15---Manual Garza-529 11---Apr. 28---Robert Pruett--530 12---May 12Derrick Charles--531 (sources: TDCJ Rick Halperin) NEW YORK: Mario Cuomo a Rare Voice Against the Death Penalty in Tough on Crime EraAs Republicans and many Democrats rallied behind capital punishment, Cuomo never wavered in abolitionist views. Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo opposed the death penalty at a time when it was favored by 3/4 of Americans. The progressive legacy of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who died Thursday at the age of 82, spans many milestones, from calling out President Ronald Reagan's City on a Hill to expanding health care. His consistent opposition to the death penalty was especially notable, given the tough-on-crime rhetoric that reigned during much of his career. Over the course of his governorship, he vetoed 12 bills that would have reinstated the death penalty in the state - 1 for every year he was in office. The death penalty legitimizes the ultimate act of vengeance in the name of the state, violates fundamental human rights, fuels a mistaken belief by some that justice is being served and demeans those who strive to preserve human life and dignity, Cuomo said when vetoing one such proposal in 1991. At the time, the death penalty was wildly popular, both with politicians and with the public - for much of the 1980s and and early 1990s, more than 3/4 of Americans favored it. Some blamed Cuomo's defeat to fellow democrat Ed Koch in the 1977 mayoral run-off on Cuomo's opposition to capital punishment. However, once he won the New York governorship in 1982, Cuomo never backed away from his abolitionist views, even refusing to extradite convicted murderer Thomas Grasso, who was being incarcerated in the state, to Oklahoma, where Grasso had been sentenced to death. Meanwhile, the use of the capital punishment expanded across the country after the Supreme Court reversed a previous ruling that had suspended it and allowed Georgia execute a convicted murder in 1976. With new guidelines being set by the court, states reinstated the death penalty, many using lethal injection for the 1st time. During his 1992 presidential campaign, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton returned to his home state to oversee the execution of a convicted murderer who was believed to be severely brain injured from when he tried to shoot himself. By 1994, Congress had passed a bill that added more than 40 federal offenses that could be punished by death penalty, including kidnappings that result in death, drive-by shootings that result in death, sexual abuses that result in death and certain drug-related crimes. A Roman Catholic, Cuomo's stance was moral one, but he often backed up his opposition to the death penalty by citing criminologists who said it didn't deter crime. As a deterrent, the death penalty is surprisingly ineffective, he wrote in his 1996 book Reason to Believe. No persuasive evidence exists that official state killing will make our citizens, or even our police officers, safer. There is, in fact, evidence to the contrary. He argued that crime was best prevented by bulking up other elements of the criminal justice system and as governor he expanded the state's prison system at a record rate. Nevertheless, his opposition to capital punishment made him a high-profile target for politicians seeking to gin up public support for being tough on crime. Violent drug-related murders or police shootings would revive the the criticisms. Any bad crime that would come along that would get attention from the media and public outrage ... the death penalty was brought up because New York didn't have it, says Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., VA., S.C., LA., OHIO, IL., CALIF., USA
Nov. 1 TEXASnew death sentence Man gets death penalty in 1980 Texas slaying A man who once did pesticide work at a Central Texas woman's home has been sentenced to death for her 1980 slaying in a cold case solved with DNA evidence. Steven Thomas was sentenced Friday in Georgetown. A Williamson County jury on Monday convicted him of capital murder in the killing of 73-year-old Mildred McKinney. Thomas was charged in 2012 after investigators say his DNA that was obtained in a drug-related federal case matched evidence from the unsolved attack on McKinney. Investigators say the woman was sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled. (source: Associated Press) *** Inmate asks court to review his legal defense; Black convict says he had a relationship with white murder victim A black inmate on Texas' death row who claims he had a clandestine relationship with a white woman but did not rape or kill her is asking the Supreme Court to take his case. Rodney Reed tells the court that his trial lawyers did a poor job defending him and he suggests that the victim's finance, a police officer now imprisoned for a sex crime, could have been the killer. The secret affair that Reed claims he had with Stacey Stites, after first denying he knew her, is one among many unusual and sometimes conflicting aspects of a case that has aroused passionate support from those who believe he is innocent and equally fervent cries that he sould be put to death. A judge has set Reed's execution date for Jan. 14. The Innocence Project is working the case. At this stage, Reed's lawyers want the Supreme court to order a federal judge to evaluate Reed's argument that his constitutional right to a competent defense was violated. The court could say as early as Monday what it will do. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said in court papers that Reed's appeal amply supports a pattern of delay but raises no issues worth the justice's time. Abbott noted that 11 state and 5 federal judges have rejected Reed's claim of innocence, and this rejection is not for lack of effort or resources. Stites was 19 years old in April 1996 when her body was found along a rural road outside Bastrop, about 30 miles southeast of Austin. She had been strangled; the medical examiner said there was evidence of a sexual assault. Reed was arrested almost a year after the slaying when his DNA surfaced in the investigation of an unrelated sexual assault case and it matched genetic evidence from Stites' body. He first said he didn't know the victim, then asserted he kept the relationship a secret from police because he did not want to be considered a suspect. Reed's lawyers also have described the racial aspects of the case as explosive. Reed said he and Stites had been involved in a romantic relationship for several months. The sperm found on the body was his, but he said the sex was consensual. It was not the 1st time Reed tried to deflelct a charge of sexual assault by saing the woman consented. Using that argument, he had been acquitted of a 1987 rape. But the jury in the Stites case didn't buy his story, especially after the medical examiner's testimony buttressed the prosecutinon's case that the sexual assault ccurred just before the killing. The defense team has suggested the killer could have been Stites' finance, Jimmy Fennell Jr. The former polcie officer is serving a 10-year prison term for kidnapping and improper sexual activity with a women in his custody. Fennell initially was 1 of several suspects in Stites' death, but investigators could not match the DNA they found at the scene. Authorities never sought to search Fennell's apartment, even though he and Stites lived there together and it's the last place she was seen alive. (source: Dallas Morning News) *** Prosecutor calls Steven Thomas 'the face of evil' as jurors weigh fate After 8 hours of deliberation, the jury has sentenced Steven Thomas to death. Thomas, 56, was convicted Monday of capital murder. McKinney, 73, was beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled at her Williamson County home. Thomas was arrested in 2012 because DNA he was required to provide for a federal drug charge matched DNA found at the crime scene. If he receives life in prison, he would be eligible for parole in 20 years under the law that was in effect in 1980. Prosecutor Josh Reno said there were no mitigating factors in Thomas' life. Beginning in his 20s when Thomas worked for a pesticide company, he stole pills from customers, threatened to burn down the apartment of a friend, abused his wife, threatened his brother with a gun and dealt drugs, Reno said. In his 30s Thomas shot a gun at his neighbor's truck, got so high on drugs that his son couldn't wake him up, threatened his ex-wife so much that she got a protective order against him and was arrested for possession of drugs and
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., PENN., DEL., N.C.
Sept. 11 TEXAS: Death Watch: The Capital Aggrevation QuestionDoes Lisa Ann Coleman deserve to die? On Friday, Sept. 5, the Office of Capital Writs (the state agency charged with representing inmates appealing a death sentence) filed an application for retrial with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on behalf of Lisa Ann Coleman, a 38-year-old Arlington woman found guilty in the July 2004 kidnapping and subsequent starvation death of 9-year-old Davontae Williams. Williams, the son of Coleman's partner Marcella Williams (who pled guilty to the crime in 2006, and is now serving life in prison), was found in Marcella's apartment dead and weighing 35 pounds, with evidence of beatings throughout his body. The post-conviction investigation - filed 12 days before Coleman's Sept. 17 execution date - cites 4 affidavits from witnesses who spent time around the Arbors of Arlington apartment complex, where Williams suffered and eventually died. One is by a longtime resident, Sheila London-Hall, who functioned as an unofficial apartment complex neighborhood watch. Several kids around the Arbors regularly referred to London-Hall as Grandma, and she earned a reputation for calling Child Protective Services on any of her suspicions. The witnesses had varying degrees of familiarity with the Williams household, though they all claim to have seen the 9-year-old unrestrained and in good spirits at shops and around various residential functions in the months, weeks, and days immediately leading up to his death. Such affidavits are important, OCW contends, because of questions surrounding the legitimacy of the kidnapping charges that helped raise Coleman's charges to capital murder. Lead attorney Brad Levenson writes that the trial attorneys failed to investigate and present readily available evidence to disprove the kidnapping aggravator that made Coleman's crime death eligible. Indeed, the Court of Appeals referred to the allegation that Williams had been kidnapped in his own home as counterintuitive during Coleman's direct appeal; even the 5th Circuit considered the kidnapping aggravator the weakest component of the capital charge in 2010. Levenson believes the 4 new affidavits prove that Coleman was not denying others access to Davontae in the time leading up to his death, and should be enough to warrant a retrial. Had this reasonably available evidence been presented at trial, he writes, there is reasonable probability that ... at least one juror would have harbored reasonable doubt as to whether Coleman committed a kidnapping. Should Coleman's execution take place, she will become the 9th woman put to death in Texas since the mid-1800s, the 9th inmate executed this year, and the 517th since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty in Texas. (source: Austin Chronicle) ** Wendy Davis Still Supports The Death Penalty Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis, the Democratic nominee for governor, is not backing away from her support for the death penalty. I do support the death penalty and I will be prepared to carry it out, Davis said in a Wednesday interview with HuffPost Live. Davis, who is running against state Attorney General Greg Abbott (R), said she believes capital punishment is appropriate when heinous crimes are committed. Texas has the highest execution rate in the country. Since 1976, 515 people have been executed in the state, including seven in the last year. When asked about studies that have shown that as many as 4 % of death row inmates are innocent, Davis said Texas had made progress on that front in recent years. I've also been very supportive of making sure that we are providing everyone with due process rights to assure that we never execute an innocent person, she said, noting that she favors advanced DNA testing before the death penalty is carried out. Abbott favors the death penalty as well. Several botched lethal injections around the country in recent months have raised questions about the morality of capital punishment. Davis acknowledged this in the interview. I of course respect the constitutional provisions to assure that we don't have cruel and unusual punishment, she said. And as governor, I will work to assure that this is the case. A June Washington Post/ABC poll found that 52 % of Americans would prefer that convicted murderers spend life in prison rather than receiving the death penalty. (source: Amber Ferguson, Huffington Post) NEW YORK: Bring back NY death penalty Rochester Police Officer Daryl Pierson lost his life trying to bring a convicted felon to justice. In New York State, punishment for an officer's murder is limited to life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole. After his killer is tried, convicted and returned to prison, he will be fed, clothed and sheltered on the taxpayer's dime. He will also have the opportunity to harm other prisoners
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., PENN., VA., N.C.
May 14 TEXASimpending execution Texas to execute man for Houston officer's slaying When Houston police arrested Jeffrey Demond Williams for gunning down a plainclothes officer working an auto theft assignment, the slain officer's handcuffs dangled from one of Williams' wrists. Witnesses said they saw the officer, 39-year-old Troy Blando, start to cuff Williams, who then began struggling, grabbed a gun under his clothing with his free hand and shot the 19-year police veteran before running off on foot. Williams, 37, was set for lethal injection Wednesday evening. He'd be the 6th Texas prisoner executed this year. Officers found Williams a block from where he shot Blando on May 19, 1999. Besides the handcuff, he still was carrying the 9 mm pistol determined to be the weapon used to fatally shoot Blando in the chest. Attorneys for Williams appealed Tuesday to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the execution, after lower courts refused to do so. They contend that he received poor legal help in earlier appeals, and that those lawyers should have argued that his trial lawyers had failed him. The trial lawyers should have provided jurors with more than superficial mitigating evidence of Williams' mental impairment to show he did not deserve a death sentence, they said. There is a reasonable probability, but for trial counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different, attorney Jonathan Sheldon told the high court. State attorneys have said Williams' appeals were strategically filed with his execution imminent, that no federal law authorizes the court relief being sought and that arguments raised were wholly unpersuasive on the merits, according to Georgette Oden, an assistant Texas attorney general. Blando was in an unmarked vehicle, working surveillance at a southwest Houston motel where authorities suspected auto theft activity. Williams pulled into the parking lot about 9 a.m. driving a Lexus. A check of the license plate showed the car was reported stolen the previous week. His fingerprints were found on the Lexus and also on Blando's vehicle, evidence showed. The mortally wounded Blando managed to radio his location and tell a dispatcher he'd been shot. He also provided a description of his attacker and exchanged gunfire with him. I don't know about you, but I know about me, and I want to get somebody there to save my life, Lyn McClellan, the former Harris County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Williams, said last week. That's in my mind, I'm all about preservation. Instead, Blando was focused on his job, McClellan said. Here's the guy, here's what he looks like and here's what he's wearing. And of course, one handcuff on his wrist. It ought to be easy to identify him, the former prosecutor said. The fact he takes time to give a description of the person and the direction of travel, it's just beyond pale, beyond the line of duty. And that's what these guys do all the time. At his trial, lawyers tried to show Williams was unintelligent, had emotional problems and didn't deserve to die. Prosecutors said Williams had good parents and plenty of chances at help, even from the U.S. Navy, which discharged him after disciplinary problems. Evidence showed Williams gave investigators five taped confessions the day he was arrested. Williams said he fired in self-defense, feared Blando could have been a carjacker and didn't know Blando was an officer. In another confession, he acknowledged knowing he was shooting a policeman. Court records show Blando, although in plain clothes, was carrying his badge around his neck. Testimony and confessions also linked Williams to four robberies, another shooting and an attempted robbery. Williams would be the 498th Texas prisoner put to death since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982. At least 8 others have executions scheduled in the coming months. (source: Abilene Reporter-News) Convicted Houston cop killer set to die Wednesday Attorneys for a 37-year-old Texas death row inmate are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution this week for the fatal shooting of a Houston police officer 14 years ago. Jeffrey Demond Williams is set for lethal injection Wednesday evening in Huntsville for gunning down 39-year-old Troy Blando. Blando was working as a plainclothes officer doing auto theft surveillance when he stopped Williams, who was driving a stolen Lexus. As Blando was putting handcuffs on Williams, he was shot. Williams' lawyers argue his punishment should be halted while the high court reviews whether his legal help at his trial and in earlier stages of his appeals was deficient. When Williams was arrested shortly after the shooting, he was still wearing the officer's handcuff on one of his wrists. (source: Associated Press) ** Defense doesn't dispute
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., PENN., DEL., S.C., TENN., ARIZ., USA, COLO., ORE.
April 21 TEXASimpending execution Despite prosecutor's deal with snitch, Cobb loses appeals Richard Cobb was just 18 when he and a friend, 19-year-old Beunka Adams, robbed the B-D-J's convenience store in Rusk, taking 2 female clerks and a customer hostage. The pair drove the 3 hostages to a nearby field known as the pea patch, raped 1 of the clerks, and tied up all 3. Cobb shot the customer, Kenneth Vandever, killing him; either Cobb or Adams - it remains unclear which - shot each of the clerks. Both were wounded, faked death, and ultimately survived. The murderous pair was turned in to police by Adams' cousin a day after the crime; the state sought, and obtained, a death sentence for each defendant. On April 25 the state intends to execute Cobb - almost a year to the day after it carried out the death sentence on his accomplice, Adams. If the schedule remains on track, Cobb would be the 497th inmate put to death in Texas since 1982. Cobb has appealed his sentence, arguing in part that prosecutors violated their duty to turn over to his defense evidence that could have been used during the punishment phase of his trial to impeach a jailhouse witness. William Thomsen testified that while in jail awaiting trial Cobb bragged about his crimes, said he would commit additional crimes if he could, that he likely wouldn't have been caught if he'd killed the 2 clerks, and that he got like a rush from shooting Vandever. (In a courtroom outburst, Cobb denied saying that.) Thomsen also testified that he was not given any deal or done any favors by the state in exchange for his testimony. As it happened, that wasn't entirely accurate: In January 2003, the prosecutor, Elmer Beckworth, penned a short letter to Thomsen's parole officer, advising that he would not seek to prosecute Thomsen on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The letter had been put into Adams' file, but not Cobb's; it was turned over a day before closing arguments, but the defense chose not to use it, a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in a May 2012 opinion. 2 months after Cobb was convicted and sentenced to death in 2004, a prosecutor reviewing Adams' file found another letter, this one from Thomsen, written in 2002, reminding Beckworth that during a meeting a week earlier the prosecutor had agreed to completely clear his pending weapons charge and to have a parole hold lifted so that Thomsen could be released; in the letter Thomsen also offers additional details about what Cobb told him about the robbery and murder. Cobb then appealed, citing the failure of prosecutors to turn over this 2nd letter. But each of Cobb's appeals has been denied, and on Feb. 21 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the case. (source: Austin Chronicle) NEW YORK: Ball renews call for death penalty for cop killers, terrorists In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, which killed 3 people last Monday, and the subsequent assassination of an MIT police officer on Wednesday night, New York Senator Gregory Ball (R-Patterson) Saturday renewed his call for the reinstatement of the death penalty for terrorists and in cases involving the intentional murder of a police officer, peace officer or employee of the Department of Correctional Services. Ball, who is chairman of the Senate Veterans, Homeland Security and Military Affairs Committee, said New York State is terror target number 1, and we need our governor to make the death penalty for cop killers and terrorists a top priority. The senator said the death penalty is a fitting deterrent that will act as protection for those men and women who leave their loving families daily and put their lives at risk every day to protect the rest of us. The death penalty was taken off the table after a 2004 State Court of Appeals ruling. (source: Mid Hudson News) PENNSYLVANIA: Dr. Kermit Gosnell Trial: The Prosecution Rests After 5 weeks of difficult and gruesome testimony, the prosecution rested in the murder trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. Defense attorney Jack McMahon will now have the chance to lay out his case to the jury. Here's a look back at the courtroom action from week 5. Prosecutors accuse the 72-year-old doctor of running a rogue clinic that ignored the state ban on third-term abortions and 24-hour waiting periods and maimed desperate, often poor women and teens by letting his untrained staff perform abortions and give anesthesia. He is accused of using outmoded drugs and unorthodox methods to force women to endure labor and deliver live babies who were killed with scissors by staff. The standard practice here was to slay babies. That's what they did, said Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore in her opening statement, repeating a 2011 grand jury report that called the clinic a house of horrors. Prosecutors say Gosnell profited handsomely - police found $250,000 in cash
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., CALIF., S.C.
Nov. 3 TEXASimpending execution Hank Skinner, Texas Death Row Inmate, One Week From Execution Despite Untested Evidence A week from yesterday, Texas death row inmate Henry Hank Skinner is scheduled to be executed for the 1995 murders of Twila Busby and her 2 adult sons. If that happens, it may be the biggest travesty of justice in the modern death penalty area. That isn't necessarily because Skinner is innocent. He may be guilty. I don't know. The problem is that the state of Texas also doesn't know. There is DNA from the crime scene that could exonerate Skinner -- or could affirm his guilt -- that has never been tested. That includes blood from the murder weapon, blood from a jacket left in Busby's home, a rape kit taken from Busby, scrapings from under Busby's fingernails and hairs she was clutching at the time of her death -- hairs that likely came from her killer. For more than a decade, Hank Skinner's legal team has tried to get that evidence tested, at no cost to the state of Texas. And for more than a decade, the Texas 31st District Attorney's Office has refused. Skinner isn't exactly a poster boy for wrongful conviction. He had previously been convicted of assault, and by his own admission he was at the scene of the crime the night of the murders. Skinner's neighbor and ex-girlfriend told police that Skinner came to her home after the crime and implicated himself, then rattled off a number of contradictory stories. But Skinner has maintained from the night he was arrested that he was passed out from a mixture of alcohol and codeine when the murders were committed. His defense team has produced testimony from toxicology experts who say Skinner had far too high a concentration of the drugs in his system for him -- a slight man at the time -- to have killed an adult woman and her two adult sons. At best he was groggy. He was likely unconscious. The state did conduct DNA testing on blood smears on Skinner's shirt, which matched two of the victims. But that could be consistent with Skinner's story, which is that he woke to find the bodies and tried to jostle the victims to see if they were still alive. In 1999, journalism students at Northwestern University's Medill Innocence Project began investigating Skinner's case. Andrea Reed, Skinner's neighbor and ex-girlfriend, told them police had pressured her into giving false statements about Skinner, and that she no longer stood by the statements she gave on the night of the crime. The students also identified another potential suspect. Friends and acquaintances of Busby say she had recently been stalked by an uncle named Robert Donnell. Busby told friends that Donnell had recently raped her. The students also discovered that Donnell had approached Busby at a party on the night of her death, and that neighbors had seen him cleaning and repainting his truck a few days after the murders. Donnell had also been seen wearing a windbreaker similar to the one left at the crime scene. Donnell died in a car accident in 1997, two years before the Medill class took up the case. He was never considered a suspect by the police or the district attorney. It's possible that a reasonable person might review the Medill students' work and still not find it convincing enough to overturn Skinner's conviction. Perhaps Reed's recantation years later isn't as credible as her statements to police on the night of the murders. Maybe it isn't plausible that Skinner could have slept through three violent murders, even while under the influence of booze and codeine. What's simply unfathomable -- especially if you believe the criminal justice system is in any way a quest for truth -- is that there is evidence that could confirm or disprove Skinner's story, and that he could be executed before it gets tested. On a 2000 episode of the Nancy Grace show, Skinner advocate and Medill Professor David Protess challenged the then-D.A. to test the hairs Busby held at the time of her death. The prosecutor agreed. But when preliminary mitochondrial testing suggested a good chance that the hairs didn't belong to Skinner, the prosecutor halted any further testing on the hairs or on any of the remaining untested evidence. They only tested the material they thought would implicate Skinner, Protess told me in an interview last year. They fixated on their suspect, and once they thought they had enough for a conviction, they stopped. The D.A.'s office has since been dogged in its determination to proceed with the execution of Hank Skinner before there's any more testing. Texas law does give inmates the right to post-conviction DNA testing if they can show such testing would establish their innocence, but prosecutors in the case have argued for the last 10 years that the law does not grant testing to inmates who could have requested such testing at trial but did not. The courts have agreed. The justification for
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, N.Y., GA., ILL., MISS.. N. DAK.
Oct. 24 TEXAS: Prosecutors Not Worried About Death Row Cases Review Prosecutors do not believe a review of cases where people may have been wrongly convicted because of mistakes made by the Houston police crime lab will affect the outcome of 24 death penalty cases, KPRC Local 2 reported Tuesday. A panel is looking at 180 cases that have been identified as being potentially flawed. In the cases under review, investigators found the lab's serology department mishandled blood or body fluid evidence. These are all cases that have been designated by the Bromwich investigation as cases which saw lab problems. The lab problems may not play any role in the conviction or they may be major, said Bob Wicoff, appointed defense attorney. 24 of those convictions are death penalty cases and 14 of the defendants have already been executed. So, does that mean innocent men have been put to death? Prosecutors said not likely. So far, the DA has reviewed all but 2 of the death penalty convictions. We have not found a case yet through the review that it actually impacts the guilt or innocence of that person, said Roe Wilson, an assistant Harris County prosecutor. In those cases, prosecutors contend there was overwhelming evidence beside the blood and body fluid found on the scene that convinced jurors to convict. A case in point -- the Malibu Gran Prix murders, which was one of the worst mass killings in Houston history with 4 dead. Richard Wilkerson and Kenneth Ransom were executed for the killings even though there was blood found at the scene that didn't belong to the killers or the victims. But Wilson said that doesn't mean someone else committed the crime. There were two confessions in the case. Wilkerson confessed. Ransom admitted the offense, Wilson said. They told people afterwards they had done it. They split the money up, I mean there's just overwhelming evidence. Crime lab mistakes with DNA testing have led to at least 3 wrongful convictions. But prosecutors said guilt or innocence rarely hinges on serology evidence. Serology is an indicator and it's not a smoking gun, Wilson said. In the cases under review, 8 inmates are still awaiting execution. 2 have been granted new trials based on the evidence. Prosecutors said all of those inmates have been notified that there are questions about the accuracy of serology testing in their cases. (source: Click2Houston.com) NEW YORK: Death Penalty Blocked Again in Wendy's Killings The State Court of Appeals ruled this morning that John B. Taylor, who was sentenced to death for his role in the murders of 5 people at a Wendys in Flushing, Queens, in May 2000, cannot be put to death. The 4-3 ruling [pdf] by the states highest court reinforces its ruling in 2004 that a central provision of the states capital punishment law violates the state constitution. It would take action by the Legislature to bring back the death penalty, but Assembly Democrats have shown little inclination to do so. In 2004, the high court ruled that an instruction judges were legally required to make to jurors in capital cases was unconstitutional. A judge was required to tell jurors that if they could not choose unanimously between a sentence of death and one of life without parole, he or she would impose a sentence that would make the defendant eligible for parole after 20 to 25 years. The Court of Appeals ruled in June 2004 that those instructions gives rise to an unconstitutionally palpable risk that 1 or more jurors who cannot bear the thought that a defendant may walk the streets again after serving 20 to 25 years will join jurors favoring death in order to avoid the deadlock sentence. Mr. Taylor, who was sentenced to death by a jury in 2002, was the last remaining inmate on the state's death row. In his case, Queens prosecutors argued that the judge handling the case had effectively inoculated jurors from the concern by telling them he would almost certainly impose consecutive terms totaling more than a century behind bars. 3 of the judges, including Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, essentially said in their opinion that the previous ruling was not open to wiggle room and that it was not the courts role to rewrite the law in this area to make it constitutional. 3 of the judges dissented, saying, among other things, that no coercive instruction was made in the Taylor case. The swing vote was made by Robert Smith, who was in the dissent in the 2004 ruling. While he wrote in his own opinion that he agreed with much of what the dissenters in this current case wrote, he said the 2004 case rendered the death penalty statute wholly invalid. I wish it were otherwise. Mr. Taylor's case will now be returned to the State Supreme Court for sentencing; because of sentencing guidelines, he will receive life without parole. (source: New York Times) ** Court Of Appeals Affirms Death Penalty Unconstitutional The last remaining inmate on New York State's
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., W. VA., LA., N. MEX., USA
May 28 TEXASimpending execution//female Texas woman on death row still represents rarity Cathy Lynn Henderson is set to become 12th woman executed since 1977 Henderson convicted in death of infant she was babysitting Henderson says death accidental; wasn't thinking straight when she fled with body A neighbor in a suburban Austin neighborhood appeared to be the perfect babysitter for Eryn Baugh's infant son and his 2-year-old sister. She's the most sweet, endearing person in the world and put forward this good Christian front, Baugh said of Cathy Lynn Henderson, who lived 2 blocks away. She could sell snow to an Eskimo. But just weeks after Henderson started working for the Baughs, 3-month-old Brandon was dead and Henderson had fled the state. The infant's body was found buried 60 miles away with his skull crushed, wrapped in his yellow-trimmed white blanket and stuffed into a box that previously held Bartles Jaymes wine coolers. Henderson, 50, is set to die in less than 3 weeks for the 1994 slaying that made her one of the most hated women in Texas. She would be just the 12th woman among the nearly 1,100 convicted killers executed since capital punishment resumed in the United States in 1977. Henderson insists Brandon died in an accidental fall and that her decision to bury him and flee was made in panic, not in cold blood. It's apparent I wasn't thinking clearly, Henderson told The Associated Press recently from the state's female death row outside Gatesville. I think I was in shock, disbelief. I just didn't know what I was doing. That baby was dead. I didn't want to deal with that. There was too much sorrow. It hurt, it hurt, she said, tearing up. When I look back at it, it does kind of look like I was guilty, doesn't it? Henderson's case has been championed by Sister Helen Prejean of Dead Man Walking fame. Supporters say new engineering data interpreting Brandon's skull fracture could better support Henderson's contention the child's death was an accident and her life should be spared. What I would like to happen is to either get a new trial or charge me with what I'm really guilty of, and murder is not one of them, even injury to a child is not one of them, Henderson said. I think involuntary manslaughter, negligence, something in those areas, because I did not wake up to intentionally harm Brandon. Henderson is scheduled to be executed on June 13. It was postponed from last month after her lawyers won a delay. We're getting experts, a new kind of expert for head injuries, said Prejean, based in New Orleans. They look into the physics of it. Recalling that morning 13 years ago, Henderson said Brandon was cranky, so she was swinging him around to try to calm him. I fell. I stepped on a toy. He flew out of my hands. He hit the bottom of the garage, which had been converted to a playroom, she said. After hitting the concrete floor, he stopped breathing, she said. Henderson said she tried CPR for an hour. Why not call 911? I knew that was a dead end, she replied. I had tried for too long myself. What good would it have been? She fled, driving Brandon's sister and her own preschool daughter to the home of a relative, paying an 11-year-old there $10 to watch them. Even though I reacted abnormally, that doesn't make me a bad person, she said, crying. I just didn't want to face what happened. I felt responsible. I took a life. That is very hard to deal with, especially a child. Travis County prosecutors and Brandon's parents aren't buying it. If a child sustains an accidental fall, we're going to freak out and get help, prosecutor Dayna Blazey said. We're going to run to a neighbor, call 911. That's human nature -- not to put the baby in a wine cooler box, throw it in the trunk of a car and bury it in a shallow grave. Then she flees to Missouri and changes appearance. A medical examiner testified Brandon's injuries were inconsistent with an accidental fall of about 4 feet but were the equivalent of a fall from a 2-story building. We're not talking about linear skull fractures, Blazey said. The entire back of his head was shattered. But in a new appeal filed late last week, Henderson's lawyers included an affidavit from the medical examiner who had previously testified against her. Dr. Roberto Bayardo, who retired last year as Travis County's chief medical examiner, said based on new scientific evidence presented to him by the experts hired by Henderson's legal team, he cannot determine with a reasonable degree of medical certainty whether Brandon Baugh's injuries resulted from an intentional act or an accidental fall. Eryn Baugh said Henderson had him completely fooled. Just tell me what happened that day. Tell me exactly what she did and why she did it. Then she can ask me for forgiveness. I'll probably give it -- once she drops the lies and tells the truth. There's been too many years of lying. We just want her to come clean, he said. Henderson insisted she
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., ARIZ., LA., N.C.
May 7 TEXAS: Executions on the upswing At a time when execution chambers across the country sit unusually idle, Texas is putting more Bexar County murderers to death than ever before. This week's execution of a kidnapper who shot his victim over an open grave will be the year's 4th for a local killer, matching the county's previous record set in 1998. By 2007's end, the total is expected to reach twice as high. The 5th, 6th and 7th are already scheduled and an 8th may soon follow, pushing the number well above the 0.5 executions the county has averaged annually since Texas introduced the electric chair in 1924. The spike appears especially pronounced because, for the moment, San Antonio's share of executions rivals the rest of the country's outside Texas. Only four executions have occurred outside Texas so far this year. Identifying all the dynamics that drive execution rates is difficult if not impossible, but the work of 2 local lawyers at opposite ends of the process helps explain this year's burst of Bexar County retribution. All but 2 of the cases originated during Steve Hilbig's tenure as district attorney in the 1990s, when local homicide rates peaked and then dropped sharply. Hilbig's 2 terms yielded 22 death penalties, according to state records, a 57 % climb over the same previous span. At one point, his staff obtained 3 separate death sentences within 6 days. Was there a conscious effort to use the death penalty? The answer is no, recalled Hilbig, now an appeals court judge. But I was certainly aware it was there and we used it in appropriate cases. As the convicts appealed, they bumped into federal and state laws enacted in the mid-1990s. Designed to speed up executions, the new rules limited claims death row inmates could file and almost certainly contributed to Bexar County's current spate of execution dates. Eventually, the inmates' appeals reached the windowless office of Yogi McKelvey, a staff attorney in the local federal courthouse and a walking encyclopedia of San Antonio's capital crimes. 5 years ago, McKelvey started working full-time with the federal judges to review the death penalty challenges that are measured by the box load. The first year, the lawyer waded into the cases that could be stacked 3 crates high. By 2002's end, only one was ready for a judge to decide, but the pace soon quickened. With McKelvey's help, the judges completed 5 cases in 2003, 7 in 2004 and still more the next year. 2005 was without a doubt the busiest year we've had in terms of disposing of death penalty cases, he said. That year, the federal judges completed a dozen, including all but one of the local cases that are scheduled to end this year with lethal injections. Perhaps more than any other factor, this burst of productivity fixed the cases on similar timelines and set the stage for a cluster of executions. Next, the cases traveled in close succession to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. By early this year, they'd arrived at the end of the legal line, the U.S. Supreme Court. Typically, when the high court rejects a death penalty appeal from Bexar County, the state attorney general's office contacts local prosecutors. This year, the e-mails kept coming and the phone kept ringing. We've noticed in the past couple weeks that we've been getting calls from the attorney general's office saying: 'OK, this guy's done. Set an execution date. This guy's done. Get an execution date,' said Alan Battaglia, the Bexar County district attorney's chief of appeals. This flurry of execution dates would avenge a grim collection of robberies, gang violence, ransom demands and murder-for-hire that together claimed 11 victims. One victim, a 29-year-old USAA employee named Theresa Rodriguez, died in her driveway, shot by a hit man solicited by her husband. The triggerman, Rolando Ruiz, arrived on death row in 1995. Since then Rodriguez's father has waited while the convict challenged the adequacy of his defense. Whenever Texas executed inmates, Eddie Sanchez would notice the dates of their crimes. Often, he'd wonder why they'd reached the Huntsville gurney more quickly than his daughter's killer. A dozen years passed before the call came last month. Ruiz's final day had been scheduled for July 10. The date would add to the sudden increase in executions of inmates from Bexar County, but nothing about the pace of the actual sentence appeared abrupt or accelerated to Sanchez. It's a delayed justice, he said. (source: San Antonio Express-News) * Murder trial for Killeen man set to begin today The capital murder trial for a 22-year-old Killeen man accused of participating in the 2005 killing of a Fort Hood captain in his Harker Heights home begins today at the Bell County Justice Complex. Matthew Allen Harris is charged with capital murder in the June 3, 2005, death of Capt. Jason Luz Gonzalez. Harris has been in the Bell County Jail since June 20, 2005, on a
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, N.Y., FLA., NEB., N.C.
April 30 TEXAS: Death Sentences on Mexicans Draw Scrutiny by U.S. Supreme Court The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether dozens of Mexicans on death row are entitled to a new hearing because they weren't notified of their right to seek consular assistance upon their arrest. The justices today said they will hear arguments from Mexican national Jose Ernesto Medellin, a convicted murderer facing execution in Texas. State courts rejected his bid for a hearing even though President George W. Bush called for reconsideration of the case, along with those of 50 other Mexicans. Bush acted in 2005, a year after the International Court of Justice concluded the inmates' rights had been violated. The Texas court's decision would result in the execution of a foreign national by a process that defied the federal government's paramount authority in the matter of our international relations,'' Medellin's attorneys argued in their appeal, filed in Washington. The Bush administration and the Mexican government joined Medellin in urging the high court to take up the case. Texas officials say the administration is encroaching on the rights of states to enforce their own rules of criminal procedure. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says that under state law Medellin waived his right to argue about consular notification because he didn't raise the issue until his conviction and death sentence had been upheld on appeal. It is hard to conceive of a law less appropriate to be abrogated by presidential fiat,'' Abbott argued. Medellin was convicted in a Texas state court of taking part in the 1993 gang rape and murder of two teen- age girls in Houston. 2nd Trip The case is making its second trip to the nation's highest court. The justices agreed in 2004 to hear arguments from Medellin, then backed out of the case so that the lower courts could consider the implications of Bush's determination. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals then concluded Medellin wasn't entitled to a new hearing, saying neither Bush's position nor the World Court ruling could trump the state's rules of criminal procedure. Article 36 of the Vienna Convention requires government officials to immediately notify a detained foreign national of his right to seek assistance from his consulate. Medellin says that he wasn't aware of that right during his trial and that Mexican authorities didn't learn of his detention until he wrote to them after his conviction was upheld in 1997. Texas prosecutors say Medellin had the assistance of two court-appointed lawyers who opted not to seek consular help. The state also says he hasn't shown he was harmed by any violation of his rights. As of March 28, 124 foreign nationals, 55 of them from Mexico, were on death row in the U.S., according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The issue of consular rights has been raised in several dozen of those cases. Of the 55 Mexicans, 14 are in Texas and 34 in California. The justices will hear arguments during their 2007-08 term, which starts in October. The case is Medellin v. Texas, 06-984. (source: Associated Press) NEW YORK: Don't revive deathEven for cop killers and terrorists The killing of a law enforcement officer is always a tragic event. But passing a death penalty bill, as the Republican-controlled State Senate seems inclined to do sometime soon, is not the right answer. It might give a few senators some momentary emotional relief and score a few political points, but it won't save the lives of police officers. There has been some sentiment for reinstating the death penalty since the state's Court of Appeals found a key provision unconstitutional in 2004 and said: Under the present statute, the death penalty may not be imposed. The Assembly, controlled by Democrats, reacted by studying the issue at length in public hearings. In the process, some key death penalty backers changed their position, and the reinstatement bill died in committee in 2005. But the Senate has never given up on reviving the death penalty. Last week, 3 state troopers were shot. One died, apparently from friendly fire. The Senate wants to pass a bill allowing the death penalty for cop-killers and terrorists. It's futile. For one thing, some studies have shown that law enforcement officials are killed at higher rates in states with the death penalty than in those without. For another, even though Gov. Eliot Spitzer backs the death penalty, the Assembly does not. The Senate is just posturing. (source: Editorial, Newsday) *** PAC irked by support for death penalty Assemblyman Tim Gordon surprised death penalty opponents last week when he declared his support for capital punishment for cop killers -- 6 months after he accepted a campaign contribution from an anti-death penalty group. Gordon, an independent, received $500 from New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty's political action committee in October. The PAC gave out $16,000 last
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y.
April 22 TEXAS: Abolishing the death penalty Call adds to hopeful signs Re: Death no more We cannot support a system that is both imperfect and irreversible, April 15 Editorials. I applaud The Dallas Morning News. As the editorial points out, the death penalty is both imperfect and irreversible, which has led to wrenching cases of innocent people being released from death row and the strong possibility that innocent men have been put to death. Years of study have shown that the death penalty does little to deter crime and that defendants' likelihood of being sentenced to death depends heavily on whether they are rich or poor and the race of their victims. Fortunately, there also have been signs of progress. Governors who oppose capital punishment have been elected in several states, including Virginia and Maryland. Executions in 2006 were at a 10-year low. And legislators have mounted serious efforts to abolish the death penalty in Maryland, Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico. Those actions and your call to abolish the death penalty are signs that we are getting closer to a time when we can end capital punishment and restore some measure of fairness and integrity to our criminal justice system. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., Washington One mistake is too many Re: Opposing a repeal Mike Hashimoto explains three reasons that Texas should continue capital punishment, April 15 Points. I commend your editorial calling for the abolition of the death penalty. It's a courageous stand. I also commend Mike Hashimoto's column opposing your board's position. He makes a reasonable and articulate case for the death penalty, one that ultimately I am not persuaded by. My primary reason for opposing the death penalty is expressed by the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal: Justice and truth are two such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately. We know that we've executed innocent people. How many is too many? For me, the number is one. Bill Holston, Dallas 2 reasons to keep death 2 important arguments against a death penalty moratorium have not been stated. As we have seen in recent years, prison escapes do happen. Several escaped prisoners killed an Irving police officer. Had they been executed, this courageous officer might still be alive. Silly as it sounds, no one who has been executed has escaped and hurt an innocent person. Second, without the possibility of a death penalty, those who are serving life without parole would have no incentive to follow prison rules. Even if they kill a guard or fellow inmate, no further punishment could be applied. Jim Brierton, Temple Death can't be taken back Congratulations on the reversal of your death penalty position. I came to the same conclusion when the governor of Illinois placed a moratorium on executions, after more than a dozen people on death row were exonerated by DNA evidence. We are now finding many people in Dallas County convicted of crimes but later proven innocent. The death penalty cannot be undone. As a citizen, I could not live with an innocent person being put to death in error. Bill Armstrong, Dallas Leaving out some injustice I applaud and join your call for a moratorium on the death penalty in Texas. If our system is about justice, let justice be done. Murdering a murderer is illogical and immoral. Additionally, I must take issue with Mike Hashimoto's editorial. He writes (in bold letters), It's applied fairly, accurately and sparingly. He then spends the next nine paragraphs debunking the death penalty opposition's myths. Not once does he mention the most glaring and pervasive injustices, that poor people are much more likely to be executed. They are more likely to be prosecuted, less likely to be offered a plea deal and more likely to lose their case because of inadequate representation. He also leaves the reader with the impression that he believes no innocents have been executed. Can he be so nave? Thank you for the courage of your editorial. Randy Richardson, Dallas Tired arguments in support Mike Hashimoto thinks his excuses for supporting state killing are unique, but like the death penalty itself, they are old and tired. The death penalty is not punishment, since the offender learns nothing from being murdered. Ignoring vast amounts of evidence, like Texas being one of the most dangerous states in the country to be a police officer, only sends the message he is not interested in the truth. It comes as no surprise that he looks at only half the facts when it comes to racism and the death penalty. It is not just the race of the offender that matters but the race of the victim. The overwhelming majority of people on death row are there for killing white victims. His conscience is clear, because he has drawn the line and stopped asking how the state murdering people for political gain is superior to any other excuse for killing someone.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., WASH., US MIL., N. M.
Jan. 31 TEXAS: Texas executes man for killing 2 A man was executed Tuesday for killing his pregnant wife and mother-in-law 4 years ago. Christopher Swift, who spurned appeals that could stop or delay his execution, made no final statement. Receiving the death penalty is what he's wanted from Day 1, from the first day I met him, said Derek Adame, one of Swift's trial lawyers. Swift was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m., 7 minutes after the dose of drugs began, in front of five friends. No relatives of survivors attended the execution. Evidence showed Swift's 5-year-old son watched as the former laborer and parolee stabbed and strangled his 27-year-old wife, Amy Sabeh-Swift, in the family recreational vehicle in Irving. She was eight months pregnant. He then took the boy to Lake Dallas and strangled his wife's mother, Sandra Stevens Sabeh, 61, at her home. The boy was found the next day, April 30, 2003, wandering the lobby of a hotel in Irving where his father had rented a room. Swift had left after the child fell asleep. Hotel staffers fed the boy breakfast and let him watch cartoons in the lobby but called police after no one claimed him and he grew frightened. When police arrived, the child told them his father had killed his mother and grandmother. Officers found their bodies, and Swift was arrested within hours. Defense lawyers tried to show Swift should be found innocent by reason of insanity. Prosecutors presented witnesses who said Swift knew what he was doing and was not insane. He never denied doing the killings, prosecutor Lee Ann Breading said. (source: Associated Press) NEW YORK: Federal death penalty jury: NYPD officers' killer had no remorse Ronell Wilson proclaimed at his federal death penalty trial last week that he was truly sorry for the execution-style slayings of 2 undercover detectives during a gun buy gone awry. On Tuesday, he learned the hard way that the jury didn't buy it. Jurors - after unanimously agreeing that they believed Wilson was still dangerous and had no remorse - made him the first federal defendant in more than 50 years to receive a death sentence in New York City. The last time was in 1954 for a bank robber who killed an FBI agent. The jury had found Wilson, 24, guilty last month of 2 counts of murder, along with robbery, carjacking and firearms charges. At the guilt phase of the trial, prosecutors claimed the defendant knew that Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin were undercover New York Police Department detectives when he climbed into the back seat of their unmarked car on the pretense of selling them an illegal gun on Staten Island in 2003. Both officers took bullets to the head, Nemorin after he pleaded for his life. An accomplice testified that he and Wilson were in on a plot by a violent drug gang to rob the undercover detectives, believing they were carrying $1,200 to buy guns. But the defense contended there was no convincing evidence the men knew their victims were police officers. I'm not good with words, Wilson read from a statement last week, addressing the victims' families. I wish I could explain myself more better, but I am truly sorry for the pain I have caused them all. On Tuesday, the jurors left the courthouse in Brooklyn without speaking to reporters about their two days of deliberations at the trial's penalty phase. But a verdict form that asked them to weigh several competing factors told part of the story. According to the form, all 12 jurors agreed with the defense that Wilson suffered through a rough background - that he was exposed to drugs and violence, that his parents were substance abusers, which resulted in poor parenting, and that he had a history of physical and mental problems as a youth. But asked to list the number of jurors who thought that Wilson had taken responsibility for his actions, the response was zero. It was the same when asked if the defendant has remorse for the murder of detectives Andrews and Nemorin. The jury also agreed that Wilson represents a continuing danger to the lives and safety of other persons, even behind bars. The prosecution had presented evidence that the defendant had made threatening phone calls from jail while awaiting trial. As the jury foreman announced the death sentence in a packed courtroom, Wilson showed no emotion. But one person seated with the victims' families could be heard calling Wilson a dead man. A union official later claimed the defendant stuck out his tongue in defiance before he was led away; his lawyers said they didn't see it. I just want to say thank you to God and thank you to the jurors, Rose Nemorin, the widow of one of the slain officers, said outside court. The same courthouse has been the venue for an unprecedented 3 simultaneous death penalty trials - Wilson's and those of a notorious druglord and a gang member accused of shooting a man in the head to pay off a debt to a cocaine supplier. Jurors were still deliberating in the druglord's
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., OHIO, ILL.
Jan. 15 TEXAS: Texas will consider death penalty for repeat sexual predators Texas lawmakers are talking tough about cracking down on sexual predators who prey on children. Some propose the death penalty for repeat offenders, potentially creating hundreds more death row inmates in a state that already executes more than any other. Other ideas include mandatory long sentences for 1st-time offenders or eliminating probation. But opposition is flaring from unexpected sources: prosecutors and victim advocates. They fear some of the proposals would make it harder to get convictions and, perhaps, put children in even more danger by giving molesters incentive to kill the only potential witness to their crimes. And there's the question of whether the death penalty in sex offenses is even constitutional. We support the intent, said Torie Camp of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault. We're concerned about the unintended consequences. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, a Republican who won a 2nd 4-year term, has led the charge for tougher penalties for child molesters, calling for a 25-year minimum sentence after the 1st conviction when a victim is less than 14 and the death penalty option for repeat offenders. The idea is to prevent these kinds of crimes, said Dewhurst spokesman Rich Parsons. It sends a clear signal and maybe these monsters will think twice before committing a crime. Gov. Rick Perry, also a Republican, said Texas is a tough on crime state and he's open to tougher penalties, including the death penalty. A recent case in West Texas will likely fan the debate. Dwayne Dale Billings, 21, a registered sex offender, was charged with aggravated sexual assault of a 9-year-old autistic girl who went missing in Odessa earlier this month. She was found alive in his home. Dozens of sex offender bills have already been filed for the 140-day legislative session that began Jan. 9. Proponents want Texas to join states cracking down with tough Jessica's Laws, named after a girl who was abducted and killed in Florida, and become one of a handful that could put some repeat offenders to death. Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said Texas is already tough on sex offenders. Most already serve their entire sentence without parole and are subject to civil commitment if experts deem them dangerous upon release. We are tough (on sex offenders.) Tougher than hell. We lead the nation in tough. Whitmire said. But you've got to be careful. Crime victim advocates worry the death penalty may lead to more murder victims. Child sex cases often have no witness other than the victim. If the punishment for raping a child and raping and killing are exactly the same, Camp said, the rapist may kill so that witness is no longer there. In family cases, a child molested by a parent or grandparent may be pressured not to testify if the perpetrator faces a long prison sentence or the death penalty, Camp said. The death penalty raises a key constitutional issue. In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a death sentence for a Georgia man convicted of raping a woman, calling it an excessive penalty for the rapist, who as such, does not take human life. Even so, Florida, Montana, Louisiana, Oklahoma and South Carolina have already passed new death penalty laws for sex offenses against children, said Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Resource Center in Washington, D.C. It is a trend. It's a strong, symbolic gesture Dieter said. But I don't see it being used very much. No one has been executed under the laws, but one Louisiana inmate is on death row for the rape of an 8-year-old girl. That case is still being reviewed by state and federal appeals courts, Dieter said. Dieter and legal experts say it is unclear whether the Supreme Court would make a distinction between an adult or child victim when considering the death penalty in a sex case. Parsons said Dewhurst's office believes a state law could be tailored specifically to deal with child victims and survive court challenges. Many prosecutors are wary of tinkering with the state's death penalty system. Change can bring unintended consequences which may not look like anything until some smart lawyer picks up on it, said Shannon Edmonds, spokesman for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association. Change a comma and it's going to be the basis for an appeal, Edmonds said. All it takes is one little problem to grind the whole system to a halt. Whitmire said if the death penalty proposals being considered today were already in the law, 2,900 current prison inmates could be facing the death sentence. Texas already has nearly 400 inmates on death row. We'd have to build a lot of execution chambers, Whitmire said. Prosecutors and victims groups instead want lawmakers to expand limits on witness testimony in sex cases and make it easier to prosecute ongoing abuse. The Texas Association Against Sexual Assault
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., PENN., ARIZ., MO.
Sept. 27 TEXAS: Nanny prosecutors link boy's injuries to beatingMcKinney: Expert testifies marks on head match nails in cabinet door Testimony in a Collin County courtroom Tuesday indicated that prosecutors believe a 14-month-old boy's nanny beat his head against a kitchen cabinet door, inflicting the severe brain damage that killed him in October. During testimony on the 2nd day of Ada Betty Cuadros Fernandez's capital murder trial, prosecutors connected exposed nail heads in a cracked cabinet door to bruises on Kyle Lazarchik's head. Tearful start to trial Andra Lewis Krick, the prosecution's evidence analyst, said the nails in the cabinet door taken from the Lazarchiks' kitchen and displayed in court were the same distance apart as 2 small bruises on Kyle's right temple. Ms. Cuadros Fernandez, Kyle's nanny, is accused of intentionally killing the boy, who died Oct. 15 after two days on life support. She has repeatedly denied purposely hurting Kyle. I never hurt that baby. Never, she said in an audio recording made by McKinney police investigators. She also said that she wished she were dead instead of Kyle. I want to switch with him, she said in the recording, played Tuesday in court. I'm sorry ... because I bumped his head. In that same interview on Oct. 13, Ms. Cuadros Fernandez, 28, told police that earlier that day, Kyle had started choking, vomiting and convulsing after eating lunch. Ada Betty Cuadros Fernandez Then, after police said they didn't believe her, she changed her story, saying she bumped Kyle's head on a door frame while carrying him to the playroom. Later she changed her account again to say that Kyle fell off the kitchen counter the night before. Laurie Ewing, Ms. Cuadros Fernandez's attorney, called Kyle's death a tragic accident. She said he fell from the kitchen counter and hit his head again the next day. But testimony given by Dr. Sheila Spotswood, a Dallas County medical examiner, paints a different picture. As Collin County prosecutor Greg Davis displayed photographs of Kyle's autopsy on a large screen, Dr. Spotswood used a laser pointer to circle the overlapping bruising on Kyle's scalp and head. She described how Kyle's brain was swollen and bleeding, and his eyes were hemorrhaging. Dr. Spotswood said the bruising pattern on his head shows that there were more than 2 impact sites and does not fit the defense's explanation. It would be two impacts with that ... [defense] scenario, Dr. Spotswood said. And neither would be with very much force, not enough to cause injuries to the eyes or multiple bruises. Causing the death of a child younger than 6 is considered capital murder and is punishable by life in prison or a death sentence. Before Kyle was injured, Ms. Cuadros Fernandez, a native of Peru, had told the Lazarchiks that she planned to move home, but she agreed to stay to help them interview her replacement. She had a one-way plane ticket to leave on Oct. 29. On the audio recording, Ms. Cuadros Fernandez told police that she cared for Kyle and his twin brother, Ryan, as if they were her children. She said that even though they are identical twins, she could tell them apart, especially based on their personalities. Kyle was the calmed-down one. He can be in one place all day long, Ms. Cuadros Fernandez said on the recording. His brother is more active. ... But sometimes they switch. Some of Ms. Cuadros Fernandez's family members have been at the trial both days, along with a handful of Spanish-language news agencies. Testimony resumes Wednesday morning at the Collin County Courthouse in McKinney. (source: Dallas Morning News) *** Hate crimes still run rampant in our society On June 7, 1998, James Byrd Jr. was beaten, chained to a truck and dragged three miles to his death in rural Jasper County, Texas. Mr. Byrd was black, his murderers were white. According to the autopsy, Byrd was probably alive when his right arm and head were severed from his body. Following the sub-human murder, the men disposed of Mr. Byrd's partially dismembered body in the town's black cemetery, then went to a barbeque. Later that year, the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act was introduced in the Texas legislature. No one doubted - from local law enforcement to the FBI - that the brutal murder had been motivated by racism. Two of the murderers, in fact, were self-avowed white supremacists. Regardless of the horrific nature of the crime and the apparent racist motives of the murderers, the bill died in a Senate subcommittee. The suspicion at the time was that the bill had been allowed to die in committee because sexual orientation had been added to the bill's list of prosecutable offenses. The belief was that Senate Republicans had killed the bill to spare Governor (and presidential candidate) George W. Bush the inevitable political fallout he would face if he vetoed the bill. Conventional wisdom at the time was that Governor Bush would have been
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., FLA., ARK.
Sept. 1 TEXAS: New trial date is set in Swearingen case A judge set a Nov. 27 trial date this week for one of the men charged with capital murder in connection with the January 2004 deaths of a Corpus Christi man and woman. This will be the 3rd trial for Darrell Lee Swearingen in connection with the death of Isaac Eli Maldonado, 18, and Maldonado's girlfriend, Jenna Kay Patek, 19. Swearingen's 1st 2 trials ended with the juries deadlocked. Maldonado and Patek were shot on the 2nd floor of Maldonado's mother's house while they slept, police said. (source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times) Corrections officers to get raise in October Texas Department of Criminal Justice correctional officers at state prisons, including units in Beeville, will see a salary increase in their October paychecks. Gov. Rick Perry and the 2005 Legislature approved the annual salary increase last year. The latest pay increase will be effective in October and add about 3 % to their annual salaries, giving a correctional officer with 9 months' service an annual salary of $26,400, or about $2,200 per month. The beginning salary for a new officer also will be boosted to $1,870.48 per month, which increases to $2,024.98 after 3 months, service. (source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times) Behind the barsTour offers glimpse at jail cleanup The media tour's destination, Pod 6P of the Nueces County Jail, was not among those photographed in June by federal marshals and held up as emblematic of unacceptable conditions throughout the facility. Nevertheless, the tour guides from the sheriff's department said Thursday, its fresh paint and repaired plumbing fixtures are evidence of the progress they have made throughout the jail. Sheriff Rebecca Stutts said security conditions allowed the tour of 6P because there were few prisoners inside that pod. She said she called the tour in response to requests by the news media to inspect the facility after the removal of the federal prisoners. Reporters and photographers were asked not to show inmates' faces or to describe the layout of the facility. In the past six months, the jail has failed inspections from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, and in June, U.S. Marshals pulled federal prisoners. Those prisoners were a significant source of revenue - $45 a day for each, and the rough estimate was 100 federal prisoners a day. The sheriff's office said Thursday that much has changed in 6P. The smell of fresh paint hung in the air as men in black- and white-striped prisoner garb covered the walls in an institutional beige. But Stutts said more work must be done to pass inspection. Jail standards has told me that until it is all done, it'll fail, she said. Terry Julian, executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, said any future inspection would be unannounced, but the commission has not received word that the jail is ready. We will continue to work with the jail and provide technical assistance, Julian said. Until it is complete, there is no need to spend money and send an inspector. Meanwhile, the department continues its attempts to bring the facility up to state standards. Chief Deputy Jimmy Rodriguez said the department has entered a standing contract with a plumber to repair the more than 3,000 valves in the facility - one of the biggest sources of routine maintenance concerns. Acoustic tiles, installed when the jail was built in 1991 to dampen the sound of 72 prisoners held in a concrete cube, also have been removed. Prisoners complained that pieces of the decaying tiles fell into their food. Jail officials will not replace those tiles, and now will monitor the pod for excessive noise levels. Stutts acknowledged that noise level could impact officer safety. If guards find it is difficult for inmates to hear orders, she said, the sheriff's office would go before the Commissioners Court to request a new ceiling. Julian said there is no specific jail standard governing noise level. Rodriguez said that while no prisoner ever submitted a written complaint about the tiles to jail staff, the jail standards commission heard those complaints from prisoners and faulted the facility for it. They are the same tiles you see in restaurants, Rodriguez said. Sheriff's officials also expressed frustration with the slow pace of progress. Waiting for contractors has delayed some repairs. Security concerns also have slowed progress. Jail officials have to shift prisoners to different pods to allow some work to be completed. Other maintenance problems continue to mar the progress. In the shower area, which marshals faulted for excessive mold in one shower stall, an air-cooling pipe continues to collect condensing water. That water drips from the freshly painted ceiling, down freshly painted walls. The long streaks of water leave open the possibility of more mold, and the continued loss of revenue from the federal
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, N.Y., CALIF., FLA.
April 14 TEXAS: A strange twist of justice for the killer of a high school teacher Ronnie Joe Neal, a killer sentenced to die, remains more than 250 miles from death row. 8 days after a jury rejected his claim of mental retardation, a doctor is trying to determine his mental competency. You read that correctly. Before Neal can be transported from the Bexar County Jail to death row in Livingston, he must be competent to understand his sentence. Smart criminal that he is, Neal skipped his sentencing hearing last week. Then, before jurors rendered their verdict, Neal swallowed a stash of prescription pills. He was hospitalized, then released and placed under suicide watch in an isolation cell at the county jail. So Neal has yet to be formally sentenced for the slaying of a schoolteacher and can't be sent to death row. And he can't be formally sentenced if there's a question about his mental competency. Neal's recent suicide attempt - even if it was staged - raises a mental health question. You could call the turn of events dumbfounding. District Attorney Susan Reed, for one, has never seen anything like it. This is a unique situation as far as I can remember, says Reed, who has spent more than a quarter century as district attorney, district judge and prosecutor. A mental health expert hasn't decided if he's mentally competent to be read his sentence. During the sentencing hearing, 4 mental health experts testified that Neal is not mentally retarded. Retardation, though, is not the same as mental incompetency. Competence has to do with understanding and being able to converse with counsel, Reed says. Retardation has to deal with your mental level and ability to adapt to society. In short, a person can be mentally incompetent but not retarded. Is Neal mentally competent? We won't know until next week. Defense lawyers have requested a mental health evaluation of Neal. District Judge Sid Harle agreed to the request and ordered a physician to determine if Neal is competent to be sentenced. The physician will interview Neal on Monday and report back to the judge. Harle is, understandably, trying to be cautious. After jurors sentenced Neal to die, word reached the DA's office that Neal's suicide attempt might have left him brain dead. Adding to the mystery, relatives went on television to say no one would tell them Neal's medical condition. Had Neal lost consciousness? Was he in a coma? Rumors swirled. A jail spokesman, meanwhile, said privacy issues prevented the release of details about Neal's' health. For a while, almost no one knew if the man who took Diane Tilly's life had taken his own. Turns out Neal wasn't dead. He was in the jail infirmary, locked in an isolation cell, more than a 4-hour drive from death row. What happened during Neal's suicide attempt is unclear. What's clear is the attempt fulfilled a written death wish. In a letter to Harle, Neal wrote that he'd rather take his own life than attend his sentencing. I'm not going to beg you or the (district attorney) for my life, Neal wrote. You all can have it. If Neal is found mentally incompetent, he will be held until he regains competency. And if that never happens? That's never come up, says Assistant District Attorney Dan Thornberry. He may go to death row, but he can't be executed until he's competent. I suppose he would be held for life. Prosecutors, of course, expect Neal will be found competent. This is, after all, a man who orchestrated an elaborate plan to break out of jail in Rusk County. A killer who plotted Tilly's death and used his daughter to win the teacher's trust. Dumb he is not. Neal might be bright enough to meet death on his own terms. ** No leniency for teacher's teen killer Pearl Cruz, the 16-year-old who helped prosecutors send her father to death row, pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison Thursday for her own part in the killing of an Alamo Heights teacher. It was the most severe punishment possible for Cruz, who led investigators to the deserted field where she and her father killed Diane Tilly as she pleaded for her life. District Judge Laura Parker cited the grave nature of the crime as she rejected a request from Cruz's attorney for leniency. I want to make sure that you are highly motivated to stay on the right path, Parker said. I wish things were different. The hearing, which lasted barely 10 minutes and had the feel of a legal formality, marked the last expected courtroom appearance for Cruz, who had testified in disturbing detail about how she and her father, Ronnie Joe Neal, plotted the robbery and murder of the Robbins Academy teacher on Nov. 22, 2004. After her father's conviction in March, Cruz returned to the witness stand last week during the penalty phase of his trial and testified not as her father's accomplice, but as his victim. Cruz told jurors that he sexually abused her for 2 years before she gave birth to
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, N.Y., VA., CALIF., FLA.
Feb. 15 TEXASimpending execution 4th condemned killer this year set to die tonightResponsible for murders of 2 local cabdrivers, inmate blames childhood Before he shot the United Cab driver 3 times in the head, his girlfriend testified, Clyde Smith Jr. asked Victor Bilton about his family. Bilton, who normally didn't work after dark, might have told the man about his daughter, Pamela, who was flying home that night from visiting her brother in California. He might have mentioned that he decided to take a few late fares while he waited to pick her up. Bilton never made it to the airport. Eventually, Smith confessed to robbing and killing both Bilton, 51, and Yellow Cab driver David E. Jacobs, 45, whom he shot three times in the head with the same .38-caliber Smith Wesson. It was Jacobs' murder, on Feb. 6, 1992, that landed him on death row. If put to death as scheduled tonight, he will be the 4th person executed in Texas this year. And Smith, in a recent death row interview, said he is not optimistic about any last-minute stays. Bilton's family recently reflected on the life of a man they say never felt unsafe behind the wheel of his cab. When United Cab asked if he wanted a safety shield installed between his front and back seats, Bilton had refused. He liked to talk to his customers. My daddy wouldn't pass judgment on anybody, said Pamela Bilton Beard, who was 20 on March 22, 1992, the night she waited 4 hours at Hobby Airport for her father. But Bilton had picked up his last fare at the downtown Hyatt Regency - a nice-looking couple from a nice-looking hotel who asked him to drive to 655 Maxey, a wastewater plant in a remote part of northeast Houston where Smith shot Jacobs the month before. She (the girlfriend) testified that they dressed up nice so people would pick them up, Bilton Beard said of the trial. It was premeditated, it was calculated, (he) knew exactly what he was doing. Smith told investigators he robbed Bilton to help with his girlfriend's bills. He robbed Jacobs to pay for a rental car. Jacobs' wallet yielded $110. Bilton carried $120. Won't let his family come Bilton Beard will attend Smith's execution with her brother, his wife and several other family members who still recall Bilton's warm sense of humor 14 years after his death. No one from Smith's family will attend. He won't let them. He divorced me and he denied me, and I don't have no child, it look like, said his mother, Ruth Maye, who never visited her son in prison. Maye said she and other family members in Mississippi had planned to go to the execution to see Smith one last time, and claim his body - which he signed away to an unnamed friend. Smith, who ran away at age 15, told police he would rather be in jail than in his mother's house. Maye said she was a good mother to a stubborn child who wouldn't listen to her and got in with the wrong crowd. I don't know what happened to him, Maye said. But according to affidavits filed by some of Smith's 5 siblings - only 2 of whom had the same father - Smith, who was no stranger to drugs and alcohol, ran away to escape excessive beatings by both his mother and the 5 men she married and divorced as they were growing up. Didn't stay put for long After spending time on the streets and at a boy's home, Smith moved back to Houston, where he had lived until he was 9, to live with his father, Clyde Smith. His mother warned him that there ain't nothing left in Texas but death. Smith's father turned him away, and Jacobs and Bilton were killed about a year later. Smith was 18 years old at the time. The men were only 2 of the 86 taxicab and livery drivers murdered while on the job nationwide in 1992. In the 1980s, 15.1 of every 100,000 taxicab drivers lost their lives to murder. Though the murder rate has dropped since the mid-1990s, when cabs were first equipped with emergency alarms and cameras and could be tracked throughout their city routes, a 2000 report by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration revealed that cabdrivers are still 60 times more likely than other workers to be slain on the job. Smith now says he was only an accessory to the murders and that others pulled the trigger. The three confessions he recorded upon his arrest, he says, were made under pressure from homicide investigators. Points to violent childhood While Smith's appellate lawyer does not deny his involvement in the killings, he says his life could have been spared had his trial attorney presented evidence regarding Smith's violent childhood to the jury that sentenced him to death. The literature sort of shows that that stuff is important to jurors, attorney F. Clinton Broden said. Whether it would've made a difference in this case, I don't know. But he should have had the chance. In a sworn statement, his trial lawyer said he conducted a complete investigation and found no evidence of any abuse. But Smith's lawyers have claimed in a string of failed appeals
[Deathpenalty]death penalty news-----TEXAS, N.Y. FLA., VA., USA
Feb. 3 TEXAS: DA withdraws death penalty from capital murder case Gaines County District Attorney Ricky B. Smith will not seek the death penalty in the murder case against Daniel Lee Flores, 30, who is accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend in 2003. Flores is accused of killing 18-year-old Erica Muro on Jan. 26, 2003, in Seminole. In an 11:15 a.m. filing Thursday, Smith noted his death penalty withdrawal without explanation. ... The State hereby withdraws the Notice of Intent to Seek the Death Penalty and advises the Court that the State will not seek the death penalty if the defendant, Daniel Lee Flores, is found guilty of capital murder, Smith wrote in his filing. Defense attorney Woody Leverett of Midland said the news was good for his client, who is already serving a life sentence for shooting a police officer the night of the alleged murder. It will be much less time consuming now, because there won't be any more individual voir dire of the jury, said Leverett. You don't have near the investment in selecting a jury. It streamlines the process considerably. Leverett said he expects attorney Randol Stout of San Angelo to continue defending the case with him. Flores is accused of shooting Muro twice in the head, according to reports at the time. At approximately 9:30 p.m. that day, Lt. Darrell Hobbs went to Flores' residence, located at S.W. 11th St., in Seminole, to investigate a possible shooting. Flores shot Hobbs as the officer approached a back door. Flores was convicted for attempted capital murder in 2003 and sentenced to life in prison. Smith had originally filed a notice to seek the death penalty on Nov. 4, 2004, according to his Thursday filing. Smith would not comment on the case. Publicity just killed us over there in Seminole over this case, he said of his reasoning not to speak publicly about his desire not to seek the death penalty. Last week, 106th District Judge Carter T. Schildknecht said it became clear it would be impossible to pick a jury in Seminole for the case because too many people either knew about the case or those involved. She declared a mistrial and supported a change of venue. Leverett said though his client is looking at the possibility of another lengthy sentence if convicted, having the death penalty removed from the equation eases the tension any attorney experiences in a death penalty case. It cuts down a lot on the fingernail chewing a lot in my office, Leverett said. *** Accused killer's attorney allowed to withdraw service The attorney representing a man accused of killing one woman and suspected in the disappearance of another withdrew himself from the case Thursday. Albert Rodriguez, a San Antonio attorney, filed a motion with the court earlier this week to be removed as counsel for 26-year-old Rosendo Rodriguez III. The motion was granted Thursday. Rodriguez is accused of killing Summer Baldwin and stuffing her body in a suitcase that was later discovered at a city-owned landfill. Authorities also named Rodriguez during a subsequent court hearing as a suspect in the disappearance of 16-year-old Joanna Rogers. Two Lubbock lawyers, Jeff Blackburn and Greta Braker, were named as replacements during a Thursday hearing; however neither had been hired Thursday to represent Rodriguez. Rodriguez remains at the Lubbock County Jail in lieu of a $500,000 bond. (source for both: Lubbock Avalanche-Journal) NEW YORK: Defense Asks Court To Separate Issues In Taylor Appeal The death penalty came to an end in New York a year and a half ago, but in the case of John Taylor, the man convicted of murdering 5 Wendy's employees, there remains plenty to argue about. As Mr. Taylor, 41, sits on death row, his attorneys at the Capital Defender Office are trying to expedite his appeal based on the June 2004 ruling from the Court of Appeals in People v. LaValle, 3 NY3d 88, which struck down the death penalty because its deadlock provision forced jurors to weigh a parole-eligible sentence against a death sentence. To the mind of Kevin M. Doyle, head of the Capital Defender Office, putting aside all other procedural and constitutional claims to concentrate on the deadlock provision would save resources for the prosecution, the defense, the Court and the state, which is maintaining a death row at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora solely for Mr. Taylor. The remaining issues would be considered later. Prosecutors from the office of Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, however, contend that LaValle does not apply to Mr. Taylor's case, since the trial judge understood the provision's flaws and crafted a unique jury charge to resolve them. Mr. Brown's office argues further that bifurcation would in fact waste time and prove more costly. Beyond the legal arguments are political concerns. The composition of the Court of Appeals is due to change perhaps this year and certainly next. Depending on which administration
[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., TENN., NEV., IND.
Dec. 13 TEXAS: 19 convicted killers put to death in Texas in 2005 Pints of Blue Bell ice cream purchased for the men housed in the Polunsky Unit of Texas' death row usually mean one thing - someone is about to die. In what's become somewhat of a tradition, a condemned inmate preparing for execution empties his prison trust fund and uses the money to buy the handful of inmates on death watch each a $1.29 pint of ice cream. I used to like ice cream, condemned inmate Luis Ramirez said. But now I eat it out of respect. Ramirez had eaten his share of pints before buying a round himself in October, when he was executed for the 1998 murder-for-hire plot in which a San Angelo firefighter was killed. Ramirez was 1 of 19 Texas prisoners executed by lethal injection in 2005, 4 less than in 2004 but about average for the past decade in the nation's most active death penalty state. Texas accounts for more than 1/3 of all the executions in the United States. The year marked the 3rd execution of a woman in Texas. Frances Newton, 40, was put to death in September for the 1987 shooting spree that left her husband and two children dead. Nationally, she became the 11th woman put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 allowed capital punishment to resume after a decade-long hiatus. After spending almost 20 years on death row, Troy Kunkle was executed in January for the $13 robbery and fatal shooting of a Corpus Christi man, while Alexander Martinez, on death row for only about 2 1/2 years, voluntarily went to the death chamber in June, asking appeals be stopped so he could die for killing a Houston prostitute in 2001. But the largest single exodus from Texas death row occurred after the Supreme Court ruled in March that it was unconstitutional for states to execute anyone convicted of crimes committed when the offenders were under age 18. As a result, Gov. Rick Perry commuted the sentences of 28 condemned inmates to life prison terms, making them eligible for parole after 40 years behind bars. While these individuals were convicted by juries of brutal murders and sentenced to die for their heinous crimes, I have no choice, Perry said. Among the inmates were Efrain Perez and Raul Villarreal of Harris County, convicted with 3 others for a highly publicized gang-rape and fatal beating of 2 teenage girls in Houston, and Robert Springsteen of Travis County, convicted in 2001 of the infamous Yogurt Shop slayings a decade earlier when 4 teenage girls were bound, gagged and shot in the head. The Supreme Court also ruled that a black Houston man wrongly was condemned for a slaying in Dallas 20 years ago, ruling 6-3 that Thomas Miller-El's jury unfairly was stacked with whites. Miller-El is back in Dallas awaiting a new trial. In another case with ramifications for Texas, President Bush in February ordered states to conduct new hearings for 51 Mexicans on death row who said they were denied legal help from their consulates in violation of international law. More than 2 dozen foreign-born inmates at least 16 from Mexico - are on Texas death row, and the presidential order effectively halted executions for those inmates until the outcome of the hearings. At least 15 convicted killers joined death row in 2005, down from 22 from the previous year. The decline mirrors a national trend that reflects better legal help for capital murder defendants and court decisions blocking death sentences for those under 18 or determined to be mentally retarded. The Legislature this year approved a law that gives juries in capital cases the option of deciding on a life-without-parole sentence. Previously, Texas juries could choose only between death or life in prison, with parole possible after 40 years. Texas had been 1 of 3 states among the 38 with the death penalty without the life without parole option. There has been little impact from the new law so far because it affects only crimes committed since Sept. 1. At least 9 inmates are set for executions in the 1st quarter of 2006, 3 in January, ensuring a small but conscientious group of death penalty opponents will protest in Huntsville when executions are scheduled. I think the interest kind of ebbs and flows, said Dennis Longmire, a criminal justice professor at nearby Sam Houston State University who said attendance has been up over the past 10 years at the quiet demonstrations where he regularly holds a candle. I think there's a lot more public awareness of some of the laws and frailties of the system, and I hope there's going to be more attention given to it, he said. I know people are much more suspect about the integrity of the system. * A look at the 19 inmates executed in 2005 Here's a look at the 19 Texas inmates executed in 2005 and their crimes: - Jan. 4: James Porter, 33, for using a smuggled rock wrapped in a pillowcase to fatally pummel Rudy Delgado, 40, a convicted child molester, during a May 2000 assault at a state prison
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., OHIO, FLA., USA, IND., N.C.
Nov. 9 TEXASexecution Convicted serial rapist executed for killing teacher In Huntsville, a convicted serial rapist was executed tonight for the strangling and attempted rape of a suburban Houston elementary school teacher 12 years ago. His voice choked with emotion, Charles Daniel Thacker expressed love to his family and friends and apologized. I am sorry for the things I have done, he said. I know God will forgive me. Thacker asked the two spiritual advisers who were his witnesses to keep track of his daughter for him. I will miss you guys. I love you, he said. As the drugs began flowing, he said that he would get to see Mom. One of the needles was in his left hand and another on his right arm. He asked his witnesses to tell his attorney that they couldn't find a vein on my arm. The issue of injection procedures was in his appeals that were rejected by the Supreme Court about 30 minutes before his execution. He gasped several times as the drugs took effect and was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m., 9 minutes later. Thacker argued he was innocent of the death of Karen Gail Crawford, 26, who was attacked outside her apartment in Tomball in northwest Harris County. At the time of the April 1993 offense, Thacker had been out of prison about eight months after serving less than 4 years of 2 12-year sentences for robbery and sexual assault. After a Harris County jury convicted him of capital murder, the same jurors condemned him after hearing from at least a half dozen victims who testified how he raped or attempted to sexually assault them. Thacker's relatives testified he had been molested as a child by his mother's boyfriend and underwent counseling. Appeals attorneys tried unsuccessfully to delay his punishment, contending new DNA testing should be performed on evidence and challenging the execution procedures and the questions asked of jurors who decided Thacker should die. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles this week refused to commute his sentence to life in prison and refused a request to delay the punishment for 120 days. Thacker, 37, a native of Lorain County, Ohio, declined to be interviewed in the weeks leading up to his execution, but on a Web site where death row inmates seek pen pals acknowledged he was in the area when Crawford was attacked up to no good with 2 other guys looking for stuff to steal and sell. There was no evidence of others involved. Thacker's truck was found in the apartment complex parking lot, and witnesses reported seeing him loitering in the area. On his Web site, Thacker suggested Crawford accidentally died because of CPR efforts. The second-grade teacher was surprised from behind while at a community mailbox at her apartment complex and was dragged into a restroom. A search began when a passer-by spotted a key dangling from Crawford's open mailbox and her car was nearby with her dog inside. A maintenance worker found the women's restroom nearby locked but was surprised to hear a male voice from inside. When the door opened, the worker was blasted with pepper spray from the fleeing man, whom he later identified as Thacker. Other residents who chased the man as he ran into a wooded area also said it was Thacker. Crawford was found unconscious inside the restroom. Police using tracking dogs found Thacker hiding in a yard. Authorities found a hair belonging to the victim in Thacker's underwear, Thacker wanted the DNA testing to support his claim he was not involved in Crawford's death. An autopsy showed Crawford had been choked or was held in a hammerlock, leading to her death 2 days later. The women who testified he raped or tried to rape them ranged in age from 13 to 64. I remember he was a particularly dangerous guy, recalled Joe Owmby, a Harris County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Thacker. You get the feeling that sometimes when you have violent robbers something went wrong in a capital murder. But with him, you didn't get the feeling something went wrong, that he just hadn't gotten up the nerve to kill anyone yet. He was stalking these women and he was going to kill. Thacker becomes the 17th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 353rd overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982. 2 more condemned killers face execution in the state next week and another is on the schedule for December; at least 6 already are set for early next year. Thacker becomes the 114th condemned inmate to be put to death since Rick Perry became Governor in 2001. Thacker becomes the 49th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 993rd overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977. (sources: Associated Press) Judge limits visits to condemned killerTighter security comes as a lawyer suggests staffing shortfalls played a role in the escape Condemned killer Charles Victor Thompson will be barred from contact with the outside world, except
[Deathpenalty]death penalty news---TEXAS, N.Y., OHIO
Sept. 12 TEXASimpending female execution Does she deserve to die? Well, her trial lawyer doesn't know Maybe Frances Newton shot her husband and two children to death in 1987. Maybe she didn't. The public cannot be certain of her guilt, but she's going to die for the crime anyway. Newton was denied a basic requirement for a fair trial - a competent lawyer. Her attorney at trial was the notorious Ron Mock, whose shoddy work in capital murder trials is well known in legal circles. He has been repeatedly disciplined by the State Bar of Texas, and has since been disqualified from handling capital cases. No less than 16 people whom Mock represented were sent to death row. Mock apparently did no investigation of Newton's claims of innocence. When asked by a trial judge, he could not name a single witness he had interviewed on Newton's behalf. How many times must this scene be repeated before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state Board of Pardons and Parole or the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes in death sentences won on defense incompetence? A competent lawyer should be provided for defendants facing the death penalty. The rule of thumb in Texas seems to be that only those who can afford a competent lawyer are entitled to one. Newton couldn't afford a good lawyer, so the state appointed Mock to represent her. She is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday despite plenty of doubt her new lawyers have raised regarding the triple murder for which she was convicted. Tom and Virginia Louis, the parents of the man Newton was convicted of killing, have their doubts. We are the parents of Adrian Newton and the grandparents of Alton and Farrah Newton . . . We were willing to testify on Frances' behalf, but Frances' defense lawyer never approached us, they said in a letter to the Board of Pardons and Parole asking for leniency. Indigent defendants must rely on the state system. The state's court-appointed lawyer system has improved significantly in the past five years because of legislation aimed at weeding out incompetent lawyers and recruiting better lawyers for people who can't afford to hire their own. The 2001 Texas Fair Defense Act does set minimum requirements for attorneys representing capital murder defendants. (The emphasis is on minimum.) But those who were convicted before 2001 were under a system that declared any lawyer with a pulse and law license competent. That included lawyers who slept during trial or were doped up as they prepared for trial. It included lawyers who did little or no investigation. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refuses to hear any new evidence or facts in Newton's case - and many others like it - because those facts were raised after court deadlines expired. And that's the rub. The state appeals court is not deciding Newton's case based on the merits of new facts or legal issues. It has rejected her appeal because she missed a deadline. We've said it before, but it's worth repeating: Race, ethnicity, income and geography are all factors in the imposition of death sentences. As long as Texas has a death penalty, capital defendants should have access to competent legal counsel. Newton didn't get that. For that reason, she should be spared. (source: Editorial, Austin American-Statesman) ** Death penalty the topic of program A local church will stage a program on the death penalty next week. The Second Wednesday program sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Galveston County will feature The Empty Chair, a 42-minute documentary examining the aftermath of murder. The program looks at the families left behind, their lives torn apart by the random loss of a loved one. The film was made by Jacqui Lofaro and Victor Teich, partners in the documentary film company, Justice Productions. Five years in the making, the film debuted at the Hamptons International Film Festival in 2003 and was later invited to screen at the Vermont International Human Rights Film Festival. The 90-minute program will also feature music by Tony DiNuzzo, president of the fellowship. 3 decades after sentencing guidelines were approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, the death penalty is still being unpredictably applied to a small number of defendants, according to findings of the Death Penalty Information Center. An investigation by seven Indiana newspapers in 2001 found that the death penalty depended on factors such as the views of individual prosecutors and the financial resources of the county. 2 Indiana counties have produced almost as many death sentences as all of the other Indiana counties combined. According to the center, about one in four death row inmates in Texas was defended by a lawyer who has been reprimanded, placed on probation, suspended or banned by the state bar from practicing law. The program will be followed by coffee and conversation. +++ What: The Empty Chair, a discussion of the death penalty. When: 7 p.m.
[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., ILL., MISS.
Sept. 11 TEXAS: Women's deaths remain unsolvedPolice hope new sketches will aid cases of 4 found in an area dubbed the 'Killing Fields' More than 20 years after the body of a young woman was found in a field near Interstate 45, authorities have made no arrests in connection with her death or those of 3 others found in the same Killing Fields. The 4 unsolved deaths remain a thorn in the side of League City police officers who for years have aggressively sought the culprit. Not only do the deaths remain part of a cold case, but authorities still have not been able to identify 2 of the 4 victims. Police have released sketches of the 2 unidentified women whom authorities have dubbed Jane Doe and Janet Doe. Now police, with the help of an FBI forensic artist, are releasing sketches of the 2 women to resemble what they would have looked like before their deaths. After a brainstorming session, League City police Capt. Pat Bittner said someone suggested having the sketches redrawn and take some years off them. It's possible that the families hadn't seen these girls for several years before we found them. Their families may not even know they're dead. They assume they're dead because it's been so long. We need to get these pictures out to show them not as old as they were when we found them, but as old as they were when they last left home. A forensic artist at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., drew the black and white sketches that show each of the unidentified women. The skeletal remains of Jane Doe were discovered in the field in the 3000 block of Calder Road, just west of the interstate, by children riding dirt bikes on Feb. 2, 1986. She had been shot in the back. Police believe Jane Doe died six weeks to 6 months before being discovered and was about 25 years old. She is described as being between 5 feet 5 inches and 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing about 140 to 160 pounds. She had shoulder-length, light reddish-brown hair and had a distinct gap between her upper front teeth. Her autopsy showed healed fractures of the ribs. First victim found in '84 Investigators believe Janet Doe died a month to 4 months before her skeletal remains were found in the same field on Sept. 8, 1991, by horseback riders. Police believe she was about 31 years old. Janet Doe had a small frame and stood between 5 feet and 5 feet 3 inches tall, weighed about 100 to 130 pounds and had long, fine, light brown hair. She also had low-quality upper dentures and may have had difficulty moving her head because of poorly healed fractures in two ribs. On the same day police were probing the area for clues in the death of Jane Doe, investigators came across the body of 16-year-old Laura Miller. Miller, a Clear Creek High School sophomore, had been missing since shortly after the Miller family moved to League City in September 1984. The teen disappeared from a neighborhood convenience store. She had gone there with her mother to use the telephone because theirs was not connected yet. Her cause of death was not determined. The 1st victim, Heidi Villarreal Fye, 23, a cocktail waitress, was found after a dog carried her skull to a nearby house on April 4, 1984. She had vanished 6 months earlier after walking from her parents' home to use the telephone at the same convenience store where Miller was last seen. The medical examiner noted Villarreal had broken ribs and may have been beaten to death. All 4 victims were found nude, leading investigators to suspect sexual assaults. Dad heads EquuSearch Police believe the identities of Jane and Janet Doe will help solve the deaths of all 4 women. Tim Miller, the father of Laura Miller, said he hopes the new sketches will lead to the 2 women's identities. He does not believe that the 2 women are from the area. Once we get them ID'd, then maybe law enforcement will have a little bit more to work with, said Miller, who heads up Texas EquuSearch, a mounted search and recovery team he founded to help find missing persons. Bittner said police have a pool of suspects, although no charges have been filed in any of the 4 deaths. Anyone with information about the unsolved murder cases is asked to call the League City Police Department at 281-338-4173, the FBI at 202-324-3000 or Texas Missing Person Clearinghouse at 800-346-3243. * Texas loses link to justice in Mexico -- The apparent closure of a unit helping to punish criminals across border is criticized Hunting down the alleged killer of an 18-year-old woman - found sexually assaulted, strangled and stuffed under her bed 10 years before in the tiny town of Natalia - was a campaign promise of Medina County Sheriff Gilbert Rodriguez in 2000. He just wasn't exactly sure how to go about it. He lacked money, manpower and jurisdiction: The suspected killer was a Mexican national who shortly after the crime hightailed it across the border, where fugitives are safe from extradition if they face the
[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., US MIL., N.C.
June 26 TEXAS: Death penalty unacceptable to victim's children When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Gretchen Burford and her husband were traveling in the South. Wanting to mourn the slain civil rights leader, they went to a white church, but no one there talked of King. Then they attended a service at an African-American church, where a charismatic black minister spoke movingly of the loss. He told them that if you want to change things, you have to do it yourself, said Burford's daughter, Maureen, now 43. That was a transformative experience for my mother. From that point to her death by stabbing two decades later at a busy Peninsula intersection, Gretchen Burford's life followed her passion for social justice: She helped found a school in East Palo Alto. She crusaded for civil rights. And she became a criminal-defense attorney, defending some very bad guys. That passion, that experience, is one reason why her 2 daughters and son oppose the death penalty for the man finally accused of murdering her, Tyrone Hamel, 39, now a Texas prison inmate. It is an unusual case, all the more so because DNA evidence from a sweatband in a hat led authorities to Hamel 17 years after Burford's death. The crime sticks in memory: Prosecutors say Hamel lay in wait in Gretchen Burford's car on Feb. 26, 1988, forcing her to drive to a Wells Fargo ATM at San Antonio Road and El Camino Real. After she was unable to withdraw money, her assailant is alleged to have stabbed her in the side with a 12-inch knife as the car careened into oncoming traffic. Struck in an artery, Burford emerged from her Toyota Camry, saying He stabbed me, and then died. Newly remarried 13 days before, she was 49. The Santa Clara County DA's Office has filed special circumstances against Hamel, alleging the killing occurred during a kidnapping and robbery. That could result in the death penalty. If this isn't a special circumstances case, I can't imagine what is, said Chief Assistant DA Karyn Sinunu, who knew Burford. Life in prison As a practical matter, however, the DA's office has not sought the death penalty recently. And prosecutors point out that filing special circumstances also allows them to seek life in prison without parole. Nonetheless, Maureen Burford, now a counselor and musician in Vermont, has considered what she would say if called to testify during the penalty phase of Hamel's trial. She believes her duty to her mother would lie in speaking against execution. She would have held out hope, even for someone who committed a crime like this, Maureen said. She wasn't simplistic. She knew that not everybody is going to respond to the opportunity for change. But I don't think she viewed that as a process that ends with death. In an e-mail made public Thursday, Maureen Burford and her siblings, Peter Burford and Martha Burford, said their mother believed in an intrinsic goodness at the heart of every person. Redemption This is not to say that she did not believe in individual responsibility, or appropriate consequences for criminal acts, the e-mail went on. It's simply that the words 'evil' or 'eternal damnation' were not in her vocabulary. We are certain that she would want justice served, yet hold out hope for redemption. When I talked to Maureen Burford last week, she told me she opposed capital punishment even in the months after her mother was killed. I know that conviction isn't going to change, she said. The one thing that did change is a sense of understanding of why people would advocate the death penalty. My guess is Gretchen Burford's children won't have to testify in a death-penalty phase. Hamel is already doing a life term plus 60 years for rapes and robberies in Texas. He isn't going anywhere. The case here promises to cement his life in prison. Yet you have to admire the convictions of people who honor their mother's legacy by saying that they aren't buying the easy notions of closure -- an eye for an eye, a life for a life. The death penalty feels like a very simplistic way of looking at life, Maureen told me. Not a wise way. (source: Mercury News) ** Rally opposes death penalty With a hot sun blazing down, a speaker at an anti-capital-punishment rally said Texas is the true hellhole as far as the death penalty is concerned. You are standing in a state that is the worst killing jurisdiction in the Free World, Rick Halperin of Dallas, head of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, told about 300 gathered outside the Fort Worth Convention Center. The rally was held as a public witness against the death penalty and was part of the Unitarian Universalist Association national assembly, which continues through Monday. Some of the 4,000 delegates to the assembly carried signs reading Death Penalty is Dead Wrong, Fight the Urge to Kill and Death Doesn't Deter Crime. The Rev. William Sinkford, president of the Unitarian
[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y.
July 27 TEXASimpending execution Condemned killer says DA failed to investigate abuse claimsDavid Martinez requests new trial just days ahead of scheduled execution. David Martinez, set to be executed Thursday for the 1997 rape and murder of Kiersa Paul on the Barton Creek greenbelt, is seeking a new trial by arguing that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle's office shirked its duty. The last-gasp appeal accuses prosecutors of failing to adequately investigate allegations that Martinez, now 29, was sexually abused as a teenager by his father and his father's boyfriend, practitioners of a sadomasochistic lifestyle who - until recently - eluded defense investigators while living a kind of underground life, the appeal states. Martinez's guilt is not in dispute. But had the jury known about the abuse, it might have sentenced Martinez to life in prison rather than death, said Gary Taylor, Martinez's lawyer. The body responsible for conducting a criminal investigation of those (abuse) allegations is basically the district attorney's office, which is same office seeking a conviction in this case. If they substantiate and further our claims, then they hurt their case, Taylor said. It creates a conflict. Earle's office rejects the conclusions in Martinez's appeal, which was distributed Tuesday to the nine-member Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. We were never presented with what seemed to be credible evidence that a sexual assault occurred, as is insinuated, said Bryan Case, director of the district attorney's appellate division. Especially in light of the fact that the most likely contributor of that kind of credible evidence, if it existed, was sitting in jail and had every opportunity and motivation to let us know. Paul, a cashier at a central Austin bakery who was taking a break from the University of Minnesota, was found eight years ago this week - strangled and raped with her throat slashed eight times and an X carved on her chest. The brutality sparked fears that a predator was stalking one of Austin's most beautiful and prized locations. But within a day, police narrowed their search to Martinez, a troubled acquaintance of the 24-year-old woman. Instead of relief, however, the arrest confronted Austin with a powerfully wrenching story of loss. It began in the mid-1990s, when Julie Anderson - adopted as a child and living in Austin - tracked her biological family to Minnesota. Suddenly, Paul had a big sister to go with her 2 younger siblings, and the 2 women formed an immediate friendship. And so it was natural that a few years later Anderson invited her sister to Austin when Paul needed a break from school and the northern winters. Paul flourished in Austin, where she made friends and satisfied her love of the outdoors with bike rides along the Barton Creek greenbelt. That's where she rode her bike on a July evening to meet a friend nicknamed Wolf because she felt sorry for him. A jogger found her body the next morning. A day later, police arrested Martinez, also known as Wolf. Martinez had Paul's bike, and her blood was found on his pocketknife. The jury needed only 15 minutes to find Martinez guilty, then 3 hours to sentence him to death. Paul's close-knit family watched all of the trial, filling 3 benches in the courtroom. This week, a woman who answered the phone at the Bloomington home of Paul's uncle said the family would not discuss the case. It's just so hard. It's a difficult time right now, she said. Martinez, who declined a request to be interviewed, lived on the streets for a time before Paul's death. He left home after a dispute with his father, Ray Martinez, and his father's partner, Evan Muller, who had launched a business selling sadomasochistic paraphernalia when David Martinez was 16, his appeal states. Trial testimony listed conflicting accounts of abuse from Martinez, who said in a presentence report that he was physically and emotionally abused by both his parents, but told a psychiatrist that no sexual abuse occurred. The sexual abuse allegations became clearer in Martinez's 1st appeal, which listed 3 people who were prepared to testify that he was abused by his father and Muller. But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in denying the appeal last year, noted that defense attorneys could not substantiate abuse allegations and that witnesses gave differing accounts of what occurred in Martinez's home. In fact, both the defense and the prosecution tried, and failed, to subpoena Ray Martinez for the 1998 trial. Nor could he be found during Martinez's 1st appeal. With time running out, Taylor recently launched another search for Martinez's father, using almost $10,000 from a private source that Taylor refused to divulge. After a 4-state search, an investigator found Ray Martinez in the back yard of his Michigan home, wearing only a thong and nipple rings, the appeal points out. Ray Martinez denied knowledge of abuse but refused to directly
[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., OHIO
July 15 TEXAS: URGENT ACTION APPEAL UA 222/04 Death penalty / Legal concern July 15, 2004 USA (Texas) Robert Aaron Acuna (m), Latino, aged 18 At a trial about to begin in Harris County, Texas, the prosecution is intending to seek a death sentence against Robert Acuna for a crime he is alleged to have committed when he was 17 years old. International law, recognized by almost every government in the world, prohibits the use of the death penalty against those who were under 18 at the time of the crime. Robert Acuna is charged with the murder of Joyce Carroll and her husband James Carroll, aged 74 and 75 respectively. Both were shot dead in their home in Baytown, near Houston, on 12 November 2003. Jury selection for Robert Acuna's trial began this week. The trial proper is scheduled to begin on 2 August 2004. The lead prosecutor is Assistant District Attorney Renee McGee. Her co-prosecutor is Assistant District Attorney Vic Wisner. The District Attorney of Harris County is Charles A. Rosenthal. The United Nations Guidelines on the Role of Prosecutors requires, among other things, that prosecutors be made aware of...human rights and fundamental freedoms recognized by national and international law. The Guidelines state that prosecutors must respect and protect human dignity and uphold human rights in peforming their duties. BACKGROUND INFORMATION Recognizing that the immaturity of young people and their capacity for growth and change renders the death penalty a singularly inappropriate punishment in such cases, international law bans the execution of child offenders, people who were under 18 at the time of the crime. The Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (ratified by 192 countries), the American Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty, all have provisions exempting this age group from execution. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has found that the prohibition on the execution of anyone who was under 18 years old at the time of the crime is now a peremptory norm of international law (a jus cogens norm), from which no country can exempt itself. Since 1990, Amnesty International has documented 36 executions of child offenders in eight countries - the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the USA, China and Yemen. The USA carried out 19 of the executions, more than all other countries combined. It is the only country which claims for itself the right to carry out such executions in its normal criminal justice system. The DRC has abolished the special military courts which led to the execution of a child offender in 2000; Yemen, Pakistan and China have abolished the death penalty against child offenders (although there are some residual problems in enforcing the law in the latter two countries); Saudi Arabia and Nigeria now deny such use of the death penalty; and Iran appears to be in the process of abolishing the death penalty for under-18-year-olds. Nineteen of the 38 death penalty states in the USA set 18 (at the time of the crime) as the minimum age for death penalty eligibility, and another 12 states are abolitionist. Thus 31 US states, as well as the federal government, do not use the death penalty against child offenders. Of those states that do, Texas is by far the leading perpetrator, accounting for a third of the country's condemned child offenders, and 13 of 22 executions of child offenders carried out in the USA since 1977. Six of the last seven such executions were carried out by Texas executioners. More than a third of the child offenders on death row in Texas and approximately one in seven of those currently condemned nationwide, were prosecuted in Harris County, where Robert Acuna is facing the death penalty. No whole state in the USA, apart from Alabama (and the rest of Texas), has more child offenders on death row than this single Texas jurisdiction. In its October 2004 term, the US Supreme Court will revisit its 1989 decision allowing the execution of offenders who were 16 or 17 at the time of the crime. Its decision is expected in early 2005. In 2002, four of the nine Supreme Court Justices described the execution of child offenders as shameful and a relic of the past. RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible: - expressing sympathy for the family and friends of Joyce and James Carroll, and explaining that you are not seeking to excuse the manner of their deaths, to minimize the suffering caused, or to express any opinion on the guilt or innocence of the accused; - explaining that you are deeply concerned that the Harris County District Attorney's Office is intending to seek a death sentence against Robert Acuna if it obtains his conviction, despite the fact that he was under 18 years old at the time of the crime;
[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., CALIF.
Nov. 27 TEXASimpending execution Evidence at Issue as Woman's Execution Nears - Lawyers for Frances Newton, convicted of killing her family in Houston, seek new tests. On an April evening in 1987, Adrian Newton and his 2 young children were found dead in their northwest Houston apartment, all shot at close range. The following year, Frances Newton - 23-year-old Adrian's wife and the mother of Alton, 7, and Farrah, 1 - was convicted of their murders and sentenced to death. Her motivation, prosecutors said, was to collect $100,000 from life insurance policies taken out shortly before they were killed. Newton, 39, is scheduled for execution Wednesday. She would be the 3rd woman and the 1st African American woman to be put to death in Texas since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1982. The distinction has attracted more than the usual scant attention given to executions in Texas, where 23 inmates have been put to death so far this year. But the circumstances of Newton's conviction have also set her case apart. During the 17 years in which Newton's case has wound through state and federal courts, her lawyers say, the circumstantial evidence against her has never been independently examined. Her original defense attorney, Ron Mock - who has been suspended three times by the Texas Bar Assn. and is no longer allowed to take court-appointed capital murder cases - interviewed no witnesses before the trial. Ballistics tests key to convicting Newton were conducted by the now-discredited Houston Police Department crime lab. Nitrite traces found on her clothing - which could have come from a gun blast or something as common as garden fertilizer - can now be more precisely tested to determine its source. With her federal and state appeals all but exhausted, Newton's lawyers petitioned the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles this month to issue a 120-day reprieve to allow for a thorough look at the evidence. The Harris County district attorney's office opposes a reprieve, saying her conviction has been upheld by a series of state and federal judges. Her case has been reviewed by every possible court, prosecutor Roe Wilson said. She killed her 2 children and her husband. There is very, very strong evidence of that. But David Dow, Newton's current lawyer, said that because her side of the story was never fully investigated, the courts were presented with an incomplete picture. The issues we're raising have never been reviewed by anybody, he said. It's therefore impossible for any court to have considered the evidence of her innocence, because no one sought to gain it. At her trial, Newton accused a drug dealer she knew only as Charlie of killing her family in a dispute over money owed by her husband, also a dealer. Newton was estranged from her husband at the time, living with him but dating someone else. When she found an unfamiliar gun in her home, she testified at trial, she took it out of the apartment as a safety measure. As her cousin watched, she hid it in an abandoned building next to the cousin's home. The gun later was traced to Newton's boyfriend, who said he kept it in a bedroom dresser that Newton easily could have opened. Ballistics tests showed that the gun was the weapon used to shoot Adrian Newton in the head and the 2 children in their hearts. Newton's lawyers now question the validity of ballistics tests conducted by the crime lab, whose flawed analysis in recent years has been an embarrassment to the force. For instance, during another capital murder trial, a Houston police firearms expert identified the murder weapon as .25-caliber, when in fact it was an easily distinguishable .22-caliber pistol. Newton's lawyers want an independent lab to conduct a new ballistics test. They also question the source of the nitrite particles on the skirt Newton wore on the night of the murders. But Wilson, the prosecutor, said additional testing wouldn't matter in this case. The jury was aware that fertilizer can also show a positive for nitrites but chose to disregard it, she said. There are other doubts. Tests conducted on Newton's hands shortly after the killings showed she had not recently fired a gun, according to her petition to the parole board. And blood stains leading from Adrian Newton's body in the living room to the children's bedrooms indicated the shooter dripped blood, although no trace was found on Frances Newton, her clothes or the gun. Neither was there evidence of blood - or a quick cleanup - in the sinks and shower of the Newtons' apartment, her lawyers said. In upholding her conviction in 1992, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals wrote that her explanation of events leading up to the murders was not reasonable. A more cold-blooded, calculated act of violence is difficult to imagine, the judges wrote. Trial witnesses said Newton had forged her husband's signature on insurance policies taken out a month before the murders. As her execution date neared,
[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., FLA., WIS.
Feb. 17 TEXAS: From Criminal Lawyer to Criminal (Editor's note: The following is the 1st of 2 articles profiling one lawyer's battle with addiction. The 2nd article will published onNYLawyer.com on Wednesday, February 23, 2005.) Keith Jagmin stood behind the counsel table in the 68th District Court of Dallas County sporting a blue suit, red patterned tie and closely cropped beard -- looking every inch the lawyer. The only problem was he wasn't. He hadn't been an attorney since the day he resigned from the practice of law in 1998, with a State Bar of Texas disciplinary committee nipping at his law license. His face was flush, evidence of the anxiety that marked the importance of the day. To ease his angst before the hearing began, he seized the opportunity to chat with friends who had gathered in court on Jan. 21 to support him in his petition to get his law license reinstated. Some of those assembled were recovering addicts just like him, lawyers who had gone through hell and back, fighting the ravages of addiction and a grievance committee, hoping to keep their practices together and their lives together -- some succeeding better than others. Jagmin hoped, certainly prayed, that his would be a success story, and that Judge Charles Stokes would rule that Jagmin had satisfied the legal standard found in 11.03 of the Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure that the best interests of the public and the profession, as well as the ends of justice would be served by his reinstatement to the bar. Representing Jagmin was Dan Garrigan, an associate with the Law Offices of Brett B. Stalcup in Dallas. The white-haired Garrigan made an opening statement that was more of an outline sketching the details of Jagmin's journey to addiction and back. In 1987, Jagmin was a highly respected member of the Dallas criminal bar and board certified in criminal law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. By 1995, he was addicted to pain pills as well as crack-cocaine, drawing the concern of the Texas Lawyers Assistance Program and the scorn of the District 6A Grievance Committee. Five of Jagmin's clients complained he had taken their money without performing legal work in return. On Jan. 2, 1996, the committee suspended his license for 90 days, tacking on an additional 3-year probated suspension. But this ethical slap wasn't enough to keep him from spiraling down still further until he was sentenced to six years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for obtaining a controlled substance by fraud. Only behind bars did he hit bottom, losing his freedom along with his 3 children. Only in prison did he start his recovery, beginning his clean time while doing his hard time. Facing sobriety in the structured environment of a prison cell was one thing. After his release in February 2000, he confronted the toughest challenge for any recovering addict: daily life. But Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers (LCL), a 12-step support group for impaired attorneys, gave Jagmin a new sense of belonging and purpose. He spent the next 6 years trying to convince his children that he would no longer disappoint them and the legal community that he no longer needed its discipline. But the State Bar remained unconvinced. Before Judge Stokes, assistant disciplinary counsel David Jones opened his case by stating, The State Bar feels it is early. We are not certain that he [Jagmin] has touched all his bases and should be reinstated at this time. Even though Jagmin had been told that the Bar nearly always fights reinstatement, he grew fearful he wouldn't get a 2nd chance. And even if he was reinstated, disciplinary rules required him to re-take the bar exam -- a daunting task for someone at 24 years of age, much less the 53 he was now. There really wasn't any basis in law to oppose our petition, Jagmin says. The whole thing came down to, Was I ever going to be fit again?' Jagmin's story is a cautionary tale for the legal profession. According to numerous studies, attorneys have a higher incidence of depression, alcoholism and chemical dependency than the general population. Like so many lawyers, Jagmin was a perfectionist, driven to succeed in a profession premised on winning and losing. What he claims was his addictive personality had found mostly healthy expression in his criminal law practice, as he gained self-esteem, not from a job well done, but from winning in trial. And in the area of criminal law, where defense attorneys maintain that nine out of 10 of their clients are factually guilty, the wins are hard to come by. Like many good lawyers, Jagmin's personal identity was wrapped up in his professional identity. He says he had no problems with drugs until after he tried a death penalty case in Dallas, representing Ricky Morrow, a career criminal who had shot and killed a bank teller. Jagmin says he was so consumed by the case that the normal professional distance between attorney and client somehow collapsed. To Jagmin, it felt
