July 4
TEXAS:
More court review ordered for Bastrop County murder case
The state's top criminal appeals court is asking the trial court in a lengthy
Central Texas death penalty case to further review the legality of DNA testing
of evidence.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruling Wednesday is the latest in a long
appeals process for convicted killer Rodney Reed. He's on death row for the
rape-slaying 20 years ago of 19-year-old Stacy Stites, whose body was found off
the side of a road in Bastrop County.
Reed was arrested nearly a year later when his DNA surfaced in another sexual
assault case. He long has insisted he and Stites had a consensual sexual
relationship.
His attorneys want more testing of items. They've argued Stites' police officer
fiancee later imprisoned for improper sexual contact is a more likely murder
suspect.
****************
Top court upholds death sentence in 1975 slaying case
The top Texas criminal court has upheld the conviction of a Central Texas man
sent to death row 3 years ago for the 1975 rape-slaying of a 20-year-old woman
in San Marcos.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday rejected arguments from
62-year-old Willie Jenkins that DNA evidence was faulty and insufficient to
prove he killed Sheryl Norris at her apartment. She was a secretary at the
Texas Crime Prevention Institute at what's now called Texas State University.
Attorneys also challenged jury instructions and contended misconduct by a juror
should have resulted in a mistrial.
A national DNA database in 2010 tied the long-unsolved case to Jenkins, who was
at a California state hospital for violent sexual predators. Trial witnesses
tied him to 5 rapes in California and Texas.
(source for both: Associated Press)
FLORIDA:
Abolish the death penalty
I have a brother on Death Row. So have you.
Execution of a human being is contrary to the will of God, contrary to
civilized society, and contrary to any concept of the family of humanity.
Execution is premeditated murder. The conspirators are the governor,
legislators who allow it to continue and voters who elect them, judges,
prosecutors, juries and executioners.
The process of condemnation and execution is unjust for well-demonstrated
reasons and stupid for well-known practical reasons.
I speak for the Episcopal Peace Fellowship of Pensacola. Others will join me.
If you love God's creation, or simply believe your conscience forbids you to
tolerate this bizarre practice of ritual killing, join us and tens of thousands
of others in fighting to abolish the death penalty.
William M. Sloan, Pensacola
(source: Letter to the Editor, Pensacola News Journal)
LOUISIANA:
Orleans public defender wins, death penalty groups lose as state redirects
money for indigent defense
In New Orleans and across Louisiana, public defenders are starting off the new
fiscal year on better footing.
Gov. John Bel Edwards and the Legislature held steady the total amount of
funding the state kicks in for indigent defense, while voting to shift more of
that $32 million to the front lines.
But the shift has taken a toll on the agencies that represent defendants in
capital cases, both at trial and in years of appeals after convictions. 2 of
those outfits, the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana and the New
Orleans-based Capital Defense Project of Southeast Louisiana, say their budgets
have been cut in half, with each losing about $1 million.
A bill that Edwards signed June 17 requires the Louisiana Public Defender Board
to dole out at least 65 % of its budget to local district defenders, an
increase of nearly $5 million from what the state board had been delivering to
local defenders in recent years.
The biggest beneficiary is the Orleans Parish Public Defenders Office. It will
see a nearly $1.5 million increase in state money, bringing its total budget to
$7.9 million. That figure assumes funding from the city stays level at $1.5
million, with a modest decline in revenue from fines and fees generated largely
from traffic tickets.
A long slide in the number of traffic tickets written across Louisiana - the
biggest revenue source for most public defender offices in the state - reached
a crisis point last year. More than a dozen district defenders curtailed
services, cut staff or turned away poor defendants, leaving more than 1,000
arrestees in Louisiana without attorneys.
Ultimately, the Legislature spared those offices a steep projected cut in the
state's annual supplement to local funding, though advocates note that a
largely "user-funded" system remains shaky, with reform elusive.
In Orleans Parish, Chief Public Defender Derwyn Bunton described "a burst of
resources that's going to delay and mitigate some bad things."
The extra cash will mean an end to a hiring freeze and other stiff cutbacks
that Bunton resorted to over the past year to grapple with a severe budget
shortfall.
The added money will allow him to add perhaps 8 lawyers to his depleted staff
and to beef up contracts for private attorneys to handle cases in which his
office has a conflict, Bunton said.
"The good news is we're getting an increase," Bunton said. "But because of the
problems created over the last year, we'll be dealing with a backlog of
wait-listed and some refused cases."
In January, Bunton's office began turning away scores of violent felony cases,
citing an overworked staff and the loss of experienced attorneys in his office.
The dire budget picture prompted one Orleans Parish judge to order the release
of 7 inmates accused of violent crimes, citing a lack of money to represent
them - a ruling that has since been blocked on appeal.
As it stood Friday, 54 indigent defendants remained on waiting lists for
lawyers in New Orleans, according to figures provided by Bunton's office. They
have gone without lawyers for as long as 5 months, though most have been
waiting for shorter periods.
That list has been whittled down from more than 400 at one point. Some ended up
hiring private attorneys. For others, judges appointed pro bono lawyers to
handle their cases. District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's office refused charges
in some cases, while Bunton's office has made room for others.
However, Bunton bristled at the notion that the dwindling roster of
unrepresented defendants suggests the problem wasn't as bad as it looked.
"The size of the list should not be diminished by the ingenuity of
desperation," Bunton said. "Just because you get a lawyer in 6 months and a day
doesn't mean no harm happened. This is the Bill of Rights, not a line at
Rouse's."
Chief State Public Defender Jay Dixon said most but not all local offices will
benefit from the shift in state funding. But the statewide funding troubles are
far from over, he said.
For one thing, he said, the money may not last the year.
It also doesn't account for some 300 cases in which a recent U.S. Supreme Court
ruling demands new sentencing hearings for inmates who are serving life prison
sentences without the possibility of parole for crimes committed while they
were juveniles.
Just a few of those hearings could cripple smaller parish defenders' offices,
he said. In New Orleans, some 70 juvenile lifers are awaiting new hearings, at
a cost that Dixon pegged at as much as $50,000 apiece for cases that reach a
full-blown hearing.
What remains, as district defenders like Bunton try to dig out of a fiscal
hole, is a local funding structure that relies mainly on traffic ticket
revenue, which for various reasons has slid by some 30 % since 2010, Dixon
said.
"I'm grateful to the governor, who basically protected our budget, but we've
been talking about the shortage in funding for years and we're still in the
same place," Dixon said. "The number of tickets keeps going down. As long as
local funding keeps dropping, it's putting lipstick on a pig."
Whether the Legislature intended it or not, the shift of money to local offices
has spelled trouble for capital representation, which saw overall state funding
drop from $10 million to a little more than $6 million.
The Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana has scored some hard-fought
victories in recent years. It helped secure the 2014 release of death row
inmate Glenn Ford, then saw a 6-2 U.S. Supreme Court majority grant death row
inmate Michael Wearry a new trial this year in a 1998 murder case.
But the new legislation has left the agency $1 million short and forced it to
reduce its staff from 22 to 12, said Gary Clements, the group's director.
"All I can tell you is we put in very high-quality work, and we see positive
results," Clements said. "We see the population of death row decreasing.
Prosecutors apparently don't seem to like that result."
Whether the organization will have to turn away some cases or delay others
remains uncertain, he said. "We still have attorneys. We still have support
staff. We're still open for business," he said.
Also taking a $1 million hit was the Capital Defense Project of Southeast
Louisiana, which handles capital cases at trial in various parishes that don't
have qualified attorneys to handle them. Few such cases arise these days in
Orleans Parish, but director Kerry Cuccia said the volume fluctuates.
His budget was reduced from $2.1 million to $1.1 million in the legislative
restructuring, he said.
Cuccia said he heard proponents of the legislation argue that too much was
being spent on capital defense, though he said, "I'm not sure that translated
into a purposeful thing to reduce" funding for capital defense, rather than
simply a bid to stanch the tide of red ink among local public defenders
offices.
"The fiscal problems this Legislature and the governor had to face in this
session were mammoth," he noted.
Cuccia said the Legislature has taken some steps over the years to bolster
funding for poor defendants, increasing the state's contribution and in 2012
approving a $10 increase in the fee that convicts and traffic violators must
pay to support indigent defense. But that increase hasn't done much to solve
the problem.
"I would not say the Legislature kicked the can down the road," Cuccia said.
"They tried to address it. The things they have done have not worked out to
provide enough for what the demand is."
(source: The Advocate)
KENTUCKY:
ATTORNEY SAYS CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS ON A DOWNWARD SPIRAL
A Kentucky native who has helped overturn dozens of death sentences says it's
"inevitable" that the death penalty will come to an end in the United States.
It remains legal for now in 31 states including Kentucky, but attorney Stephen
Bright says capital punishment is on a steady downward trend toward abolition.
Bright is president and senior counsel at the Atlanta-based Southern Center for
Human Rights. Last month, he won a new trial for a Georgia death-row inmate,
when the U-S Supreme Court, in a 7-to-1 ruling, said the defendant's
constitutional rights had been violated at trial. The 68-year-old Bright has
now won all 3 of the capital cases he has argued before the nation's highest
court.
He grew up on a farm outside of Danville in the 1960's, in a community that at
that time was, in his words, "still segregated for the most part." Bright says
he was influenced by Martin Luther King Junior.
Bright was student body president at U-K when protests against the Vietnam War
reached their boiling point on campus, and he was arrested. By 1974, he had
graduated from U-K's law school and began working for the Appalachian Research
and Defense Fund in rural Kentucky. But Bright says his opposition to the death
penalty began well before then.
Bright has led the nonprofit legal defense center in Atlanta since the early
1980's, but still maintains a part-time home in his native Boyle County. He
believes the Kentucky Legislature will eventually agree with him that the death
penalty takes too long and costs too much.
(source: WCLU news)
MISSOURI:
Getting to know Jim and Genie
We would like to introduce you to James and Regina Wood. They are friends of
ours. But many of you already know them.
Genie was a nurse in our community for many years. She may have touched your
life while working at St. John's/Mercy Hospital for 27 years. Jim has been a
teacher/coach in Springfield's public schools and now is at the Catholic high
school. He has influenced you or your children for over 30 years. They will
celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary this year.
They are also the parents of Craig Wood. Craig is charged in the kidnapping and
homicide of Hailey Owens in 2014. He is now awaiting trial. The Greene County
prosecutor intends to seek the death penalty. Certainly, Hailey and her family
deserve justice. But there is no justice to be found in the death penalty.
Hailey's parents, family and friends have suffered a nearly insurmountable loss
in a horrific tragedy. Our community has rallied around them - and rightfully
so. Many in the community supported us, too, when our son Damon died in an
accident nearly 16 years ago. We get the heart-wrenching emptiness, the waves
of grief and the actual physical pain resulting from the deep emotional trauma
of the loss of a child. We cannot know the grief resulting from knowing
violence was inflicted on a little girl. Nor do we entirely grasp the drawn-out
grief over years of facing the possibility of a son being executed.
Hailey's murder caused ripples of pain. Our son's death caused ripples. And the
threat of Craig's death is causing and will continue to cause ripples for
years. At the center of this pain are the parents. Having suffered the loss of
a child ourselves, we cannot condone the possible killing of Craig Wood with
the pain it will bring to his parents and others.
But even now, Jim and Genie are verbally assaulted. Some friends who came to
their defense are hassled, and multiple finger pointing and comments while in
public continue.
The demand for justice does not justify the harassment, nor does it justify use
of the death penalty.
There is no proof for the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent.
Its use falsely implies closure for the victim's family. And it is more costly
than life imprisonment without parole. For these reasons and others we have
become supporters of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
Also, importantly, the death penalty removes the possibility of a person's
redemption. This may only come with time, and as a compassionate people, we
should allow this opportunity.
It has been said many times in many ways, "Justice without compassion is
cruelty; compassion without justice is chaos."
Let us be a community seeking justice and giving compassion.
(source: The News-Leader)
NEBRASKA:
Deputy in Beatrice 6 case denies telling suspects to confess or face the death
penalty
The Nebraska sheriff's deputy whose 1985 homicide investigation helped convict
6 people later cleared by DNA tests said in court Wednesday that he never made
any threats to gain a confession.
The defense wrapped up its case with the testimony of Gage County Deputy Burt
Searcey, who once again defended himself against allegations that he led a
reckless investigation and manufactured evidence to solve the cold-case rape
and homicide of Helen Wilson of Beatrice.
Attorneys will make closing arguments Thursday morning, and the jury is
expected to begin deliberations by the afternoon. A similar trial 2 years ago
ended after jurors could not reach a verdict.
Members of the Beatrice 6 have sued Gage County and its investigators for
alleged civil rights violations and the more than 70 combined years they served
in prison. In 2008, DNA testing of blood and semen preserved from the crime
scene failed to match the 6 but did lead state investigators to an Oklahoma man
who died in 1992.
Joseph E. White, the only 1 of the 6 to maintain his innocence, had his
conviction reversed. Ada JoAnn Taylor, Thomas Winslow, James Dean, Debra
Shelden and Kathy Gonzalez, all of whom pleaded to lesser charges, were all
pardoned.
Searcey still stands behind his 27-year-old investigation.
Testifying for the 2nd time on the 18th day of the trial, he denied several key
allegations made by the plaintiffs.
"Did you ever tell any of the plaintiffs they better come clean or they're
going to get the death penalty?" asked Jennifer Tomka, co-counsel for Gage
County.
"Never," Searcey said forcefully.
Dean testified earlier in the trial that on the day of his arrest, authorities
told him to lay face-down on the ground. Dean alleged that Searcey then put his
boot against Dean's face and told him he was under arrest for the murder of
Helen Wilson.
Searcey denied it Wednesday.
He also denied that he fed sensitive crime scene information to the suspects, a
practice experts say can help a suspect craft a false confession without
genuine firsthand knowledge of a crime.
"When you took on this investigation ... was it your goal to get these 6 people
and railroad them?" Tomka asked.
"My goal was to solve the case," Searcey replied.
Under intense cross-examination by lawyers for the 6, Searcey acknowledged
several spots in videotaped interrogations where he revealed crime scene
information after suspects repeatedly give wrong answers about key details. He
brushed it off by saying he was simply asking questions.
Taylor, Dean and Shelden all initially denied involvement in the killing. But
at White's 1st-degree murder trial in 1989, they gave similar testimony.
Searcey also testified Wednesday that he knew he had included some invalid
information in sworn affidavits used to make the first 2 arrests in the case.
But he said he reported what his informants had told him, suggesting that it
was up to the judge to determine whether the deputy had provided enough
evidence to justify the arrests.
"I put in my affidavits what I felt I could possibly prove," he responded.
Searcey also said it was important to find a match for the Type B blood found
in Wilson's apartment. That person was Kathy Gonzalez, although forensic tests
in 1989 showed that her blood lacked a key genetic marker found in the killer's
blood.
Searcey said the lack of a match with the genetic marker mattered little to
him.
"I was going for the Type B blood," he said.
(source: Omaha World Herald)
OKLAHOMA:
City in Oklahoma Renews Fight for 'Old Sparky,' Electric Chair Taken by State
The city of McAlester, Oklahoma, is preparing to breathe new life into a feud
over an instrument of death - the electric chair that the state used for more
than 6 decades to execute 82 inmates.
The tiny city has long coveted the chair known as "Old Sparky," which became a
relic when the state sidelined it in the 1970s in favor of lethal injections,
as a tourist attraction.
But the state Department of Corrections, which spirited it away for its own
now-shuttered museum, has refused to return the oak chair first used in 1915 to
McAlester, where the state penitentiary and its execution chamber are located.
After an initial attempt in 2014 to regain custody of Old Sparky, the city let
the issue lapse. But now officials say they're preparing for a new bid to
return the chair to its rightful home - this time, for good.
"It's a very important historical artifact for the city of McAlester and the
state of Oklahoma, and it should not be kept locked away in a warehouse,"
McAlester Mayor John Browne told NBC News. "It should be on display."
The City Council last week discussed a move to authorize officials to draft a
letter to the state demanding the return of the chair. A formal decision is
likely at next month's meeting, Browne indicated.
Councilman Buddy Garvin, who for years has pressed the issue, said if the DOC
doesn't comply, the city would take legal action.
"It's ours, and we want it," Garvin said. "It's black and white."
Officials with the Department of Corrections did not respond to a request for
comment on McAlester's new threat.
But in 2010, the department's lawyer told the city in a letter that "there is
no evidence that the chair was properly transferred to the city pursuant to
law," and therefore McAlester didn't have a rightful claim to it, according to
local news reports.
The dispute springs from some dealing that occurred in 1980, when McAlester
gained control of the chair after the item's retirement as state executioner.
The city later loaned it to a private museum in McAlester, the Tannehill
Historical Museum, where it remained on display until 1989.
At that time, the DOC planned to open its own museum at the site of the nearby
state penitentiary, and asked for the chair back. The city agreed to loan the
chair to the prison, and Old Sparky went back to its original home - the
penitentiary - where it was displayed inside the visitors center.
There it remained, along with other macabre prison memorabilia, until 2011,
when the museum run by the Oklahoma Prisons Historical Association was
definitively shuttered.
The city at the time said it had an agreement with the association that if the
chair wasn't displayed there, it would be returned. But the DOC wanted proof,
and the city didn't have the concrete evidence.
Garvin, the McAlester city councilman, told NBC News the city now has the goods
to prove it is the rightful owner of the chair, though he couldn't provide the
details.
The Department of Corrections had previously came up with another reason it
couldn't return the chair.
In April 2014, Oklahoma's use of lethal injection became a political issue
after an inmate died from a heart attack following an initially botched
execution. The state temporarily halted its executions and the use of a 3-drug
lethal injection cocktail while it determined what went wrong.
At the time, the state told the city that it was holding on to Old Sparky in
the event that the chair was its only option for executing inmates.
But that reason no longer exists. The Supreme Court upheld the legality of
lethal injections in June 2015.
Given that Oklahoma would no longer need the electric chair as a backup,
McAlester officials say the time has come for the state to relinquish the
chair.
Asked by NBC News where the chair is being stored as its fate hangs in the
balance, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman replied by email that she
didn't know and "no one is disclosing the location."
Garvin said he'd like to see the chair return to McAlester by August, when the
city plans to observe the 75th anniversary of the murder of a prison warden and
a deputy there when 4 inmates escaped from the state penitentiary. 3 of the
inmates were killed in a shootout, and the 4th was executed using Old Sparky 2
years later, in 1943.
August also marks 50 years since the last Oklahoma inmate was strapped into the
chair to die. The doomed murderer, James French, is still remembered for his
famous last words: "How's this for your headline? 'French Fries.'"
James Tannehill, whose museum hosted the electric chair in the 1980s, said he's
in the process of expanding the site and would be willing to keep the chair
again for posterity and to preserve history.
He's just worried that if no one acts, Old Sparky will be left to rot - or wind
up where it doesn't belong.
"If everyone blows this thing off and doesn't think anything about it, it will
eventually disappear and you won't find a living soul to tell you where it is,"
Tannehill said. "It'll be in some politician's den."
(source: NBC news)
ARIZONA:
Arizona Death Penalty Case Continues: State Has Not Promised To Rule Out Future
Midazolam Use
Parties in the lawsuit over the state's death penalty protocol met in federal
court Wednesday for a hearing. The drug midazolam Arizona previously used in a
botched execution was the topic of discussion.
The hearing centered around a core issue - whether or not the Arizona
Department of Corrections (DOC) could promise it would never use midazolam
again, under any circumstance.
Currently, the state's supply of the lethal injection drug is expired, and it
cannot get any more.
Lawyers for the DOC argue because of those reasons and because the state has
removed midazolam from execution procedures, the case is moot.
Lawyers representing the 7 inmates on Arizona's death row said it's not,
because the DOC can change policy back whenever they feel, and refuses to say
it would never use the drug, if there were different circumstances.
"We're surprised, frankly, that the state of Arizona would not say, today, that
it will not use midazolam, period, going forward regardless of whether it's
available or not," said plaintiff lawyer Mark Haddad.
The state said it would consider "tightening up" how procedures can be changed
by the DOC.
The federal judge gave the state 30 days to explain how it won't be able to use
midazolam in the future.
(source: KJZZ news)
CALIFORNIA:
Caryl Chessman sentenced to death
In January 1948, a man in a grey Ford used a red spotlight to pull over couples
parked in lover's lanes outside of Los Angeles. He robbed the couples, and on 2
occasions, pulled the women off to his own car where he demanded they perform
"unnatural sex acts". The media dubbed the man the "Red Light Bandit".
After the last attack, Los Angeles police received notification that a clothing
store had been robbed by 2 men in a grey Ford. 2 police officers spotted the
vehicle and began to chase it down. The car took off, going over 70 mph. When
the cops finally caught up, they arrested the driver, Caryl Chessman.
Charged with the Bandit crimes, Chessman opted to serve as his own attorney at
trial. The facts against him were clear to the jury.
The grey Ford had been stolen January 13th, right before the attacks took
place.
The victims identified a .45 pistol as the weapon he had brandished, one that
Chessman tossed out of the car as the patrol car had caught up with him.
A pen flashlight was found in the car, which the victims had said was used.
Police officers testified that Chessman had admitted to committing the crimes.
All 3 witnesses, including the women who had been assaulted, testified that he
was the one who had done it.
On July 3rd, 1948, the jury found him guilty, without mercy.
This meant that under the "Little Lindbergh Law" he was eligible for the death
penalty, and the jury elected he should be put to death.
Chessman argued that he had never admitted the crimes. He first claimed to be a
victim of mistaken identity, then that he was a victim of a conspiracy to have
him killed.
During the 12 years between his conviction, and his death, he avoided 8
execution deadlines. During this time, he claimed that the real Bandit was
known to him, and he would provide evidence of this 50 years from the time
California rejected a moratorium on the death penalty.
Though many put that date to be sometime in 2007, as a moratorium was passed in
1957, any evidence offering proof that he was not the culprit has yet to come
to light.
(source: The Examiner)
USA:
Withheld Evidence by Prosecutors Leads to 30 Years on Death Row
The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office intentionally withheld critical
evidence in 1986 when it prosecuted 18-year-old Terry Williams and won a death
sentence. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the
Pennsylvania courts, putting the prosecution's wrongdoing on display.
At Terry's trial, the prosecution told the jury a story: at age 18, Terry had
killed 56-year-old Amos Norwood for "no other reason" than to rob him. The
prosecutors described Norwood as a kind man who volunteered at church. But they
knew much more about Norwood than they let on. When they withheld that
information from the defense and from the jury, they violated the law.
Terry had grown up in a terror-filled household, the victim of beatings by his
mother and stepfather. He was 6 when an 11-year-old neighbor, someone he
considered to be like a big brother, first lured him with promises of food -
something that he often didn't have at home - and then sexually assaulted him.
Terry was repeatedly sexually abused and exploited by adults, including 1 of
his middle school teachers.
Among Terry's many abusers was Amos Norwood, who had begun sexually exploiting
and physically abusing Terry when he was 13. The prosecutors had evidence of
Norwood's history of abusing young boys, including Terry, yet they hid it. The
jury never heard evidence that Terry had snapped that night because Norwood had
been sexually abusing him, violently. The prosecution also hid from the jury
evidence that Norwood had sexually exploited other teenage boys for years. The
jury voted for death. Had they known the truth, it would have made all the
difference.
In fact, it had made the difference in Terry's trial for killing Herbert
Hamilton less than a year earlier. Hamilton was a 50-year-old man who had been
sexually abusing Terry and other teenagers. But because that jury heard the
evidence about Terry's past and Hamilton's abuse, they didn't sentence Terry to
death. He was convicted of 3rd-degree murder. In the Norwood trial, the
prosecution wasn't going to let that happen again.
Despite that conviction, Terry's death sentence case wound through the appeals
process for more than 25 years. All the while, the prosecution insisted that it
had no evidence of any illicit sexual activity by Norwood against Terry or
others. The truth only came to light decades later, as Terry's execution date
neared and his new attorneys finally obtained access to the prosecution's
files. When Terry's lawyers brought the suppressed evidence to the
post-conviction court's attention, it found that the Philadelphia District
Attorney's Office had acted unconstitutionally in concealing this evidence from
the defense. The court granted Terry a new sentencing trial.
The District Attorney's Office appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, with
Chief Justice Ronald Castille at the helm. Castille had formerly served as the
longtime elected district attorney of Philadelphia and had authorized his staff
to seek the death penalty against Terry. In campaigning for his seat on the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Castille touted his record of obtaining a
staggering 45 death sentences as Philadelphia's district attorney, including
Terry's.
When Terry's case reached the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, his attorneys urged
Castille to recuse himself, due to his prior role in the case. He refused.
Under Castille's lead, the court reversed the lower court's decision and
reinstated Terry's death sentence. Then on June 9, in Williams v. Pennsylvania,
the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that given his role as a former prosecutor in
the case, Chief Justice Castille should have recused himself from considering
Terry's case. It was especially troubling to the court that Castille was
presiding over a case that called into question the integrity of his former
subordinates.
Unfortunately, the kind of prosecutorial misconduct that occurred in Terry's
case is far too common; it infects trials involving the most minor charges to
the most serious. Only in capital cases, though, can prosecutorial misconduct
kill.
We have seen too many narrow escapes from death sentences obtained by
prosecutors willing to violate the Constitution in order to win. In Birmingham,
Alabama, our client Montez Spradley was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to
death. Prosecutors and law enforcement officers never disclosed that they had
paid their star witness in the case more than $10,000 for her testimony.
Fortunately, after years of aggressive litigation, Montez regained his freedom.
Yet through the end, prosecutors steadfastly denied any wrongdoing.
A few weeks ago, Texas prosecutors finally dropped murder charges against Kerry
Max Cook, nearly 40 years after the crime took place. Kerry was convicted on
the basis of false evidence that the prosecution concealed for years -
misconduct a court found "egregious" and "pervasive." As a result, Kerry served
20 years on death row for a crime he did not commit. Even after dropping the
charges against him at last, the prosecutors vowed to oppose Kerry's efforts to
prove his innocence and obtain the compensation to which he is entitled for his
wrongful incarceration.
While exposing the prosecution's wrongs eventually led to freedom for Montez
and Kerry, many people, like Cameron Todd Willingham, have been executed
despite strong evidence of innocence in a case involving prosecutorial
misconduct. The Williams decision was a very small step on the path of holding
prosecutors accountable for their wrongdoing, from a court that has all too
often looked the other way in the face of egregious prosecutorial behavior. We
must work to root out prosecutorial misconduct wherever it is in our justice
system, but first, we must do away with its power to take a life. We must
abolish capital punishment.
Death is too high a price to pay for a prosecutor's hubris.
(source: Anna Arceneaux is Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Capital Punishment
Project----The Davis Vanguard)
************
In Dissents, Sonia Sotomayor Takes On the Criminal Justice System
The Supreme Court term had barely gotten underway in early November when
Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued her f1st dissent. A police officer's "rogue
conduct," she wrote, had left a man dead thanks to a '''shoot 1st, think later'
approach to policing."
Justice Sotomayor would go on to write 8 dissents before the term ended last
Monday. Read together, they are a remarkable body of work from an increasingly
skeptical student of the criminal justice system, one who has concluded that it
is clouded by arrogance and machismo and warped by bad faith and racism.
Only Justice Clarence Thomas wrote more dissents last term, but his agenda was
different. Laconic on the bench, prolific on the page and varied in his
interests, Justice Thomas is committed to understanding the Constitution as did
the men who drafted and adopted it centuries ago.
Justice Sotomayor's concerns are more contemporary and more focused. Her
dissents this term came mostly in criminal cases, and were informed as much by
events in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 as by those in Philadelphia in 1787.
She dissented again in January, from Justice Antonin Scalia's final majority
opinion. Joined by no other member of the court, she said the majority in 3
death penalty cases might have been swayed by the baroque depravity of the
crimes.
"The standard adage teaches that hard cases make bad law," she wrote. "I fear
that these cases suggest a corollary: Shocking cases make too much law."
9 days after Justice Scalia died in February, on the day the 8 remaining
members of the Supreme Court first returned to the bench, Justice Sotomayor
laid the groundwork for what would turn out to be her most important dissent of
the term.
The question in the case, Utah v. Strieff, No. 14-1373, was whether prosecutors
could use evidence obtained by the police after illegal stops. A lawyer for the
state told the justices that the Constitution allowed this if there had been an
outstanding arrest warrant for the person the officer happened to stop.
There is logic to the position. The warrant existed before the illegal stop. It
called for the suspect's arrest. Searching people in the process of arresting
them is prudent and constitutional. The contraband the Utah officer found was
real. There may be better ways to discourage unlawful stops than by suppressing
evidence.
But, as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote, "the life of the law has not been
logic; it has been experience."
At the argument in February, Justice Sotomayor asked the first 6 questions,
ripping into the state's lawyer with a blast of real-world experience rooted in
the Black Lives Matter movement.
"What stops us," she asked, "from becoming a police state and just having the
police stand on the corner down here and stop every person, ask them for
identification, put it through, and, if a warrant comes up, searching them?"
A moment later, she answered her own question.
"If you have a town like Ferguson, where 80 % of the residents have minor
traffic warrants out, there may be a very good incentive for just standing on
the street corner in Ferguson and asking every citizen, 'Give me your ID, let
me see your name.'"
Last month, Justice Thomas, writing for a 5-justice majority, accepted the
state's logic.
Justice Sotomayor, a former prosecutor who grew up in a housing project in the
Bronx, responded with an unusually direct dissent.
"Do not be soothed by the opinion's technical language," she wrote. "This case
allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and
check it for outstanding traffic warrants - even if you are doing nothing
wrong."
"If the officer discovers a warrant for a fine you forgot to pay," she
continued, "courts will now excuse his illegal stop and will admit into
evidence anything he happens to find by searching you after arresting you on
the warrant."
In many communities, she said, the tactics the court endorsed will allow the
police to search people almost at will.
"It is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this type
of scrutiny," she wrote.
She cited precedents, naturally. But she also named major works on the
African-American experience: W. E. B. Du Bois's "The Souls of Black Folk,"
James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time," Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow"
and Ta-Nehisi Coates's "Between the World and Me."
You might be forgiven for thinking she was suggesting some summer reading for
her fellow justices.
3 days later, Justice Sotomayor dissented again, this time from a ruling that
said the police do not need warrants to conduct breath tests when they arrest
people for drunken driving.
"I fear," she wrote, "that if the court continues down this road, the Fourth
Amendment's warrant requirement will become nothing more than a suggestion."
Most of the justices, including some of its more liberal members, are inclined
to give the police the benefit of the doubt. Justice Sotomayor is more apt to
see encounters with the police through the eyes of the powerless, as tinged
with humiliation, danger and worse.
"For generations," she wrote in the Utah case, "black and brown parents have
given their children 'the talk' - instructing them never to run down the
street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of
talking back to a stranger - all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will
react to them."
Her 1st dissent of the term arose from an attempt to serve an arrest warrant
for a misdemeanor probation violation. Disinclined to be arrested, the subject
of the warrant, Israel Leija, instead led the police on a high-speed car chase
on an Interstate highway north of Tulia, Tex.
The authorities set up a spike strip to try to disable Mr. Leija's car. But
Chadrin L. Mullenix, a Texas state trooper who had earlier that day been told
he was not "proactive enough," had a different plan. He positioned himself with
a rifle on an overpass.
A superior told Mr. Mullenix to "stand by" and "see if the spikes work first."
Mr. Mullenix instead fired 6 shots, killing Mr. Leija. The car then hit the
spike strip and rolled over twice.
Mr. Leija's family sued, saying Mr. Mullenix had used excessive force, and an
appeals court let the case proceed. The Supreme Court reversed that court's
ruling, in an unsigned opinion.
Justice Sotomayor said she was struck by Mr. Mullenix's "glib comment" after he
finished shooting Mr. Leija. "How's that for proactive?" Mr. Mullenix asked.
"The comment seems to me revealing of the culture this court's decision
supports," she wrote, alone on the court.
(source: New York Times)
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