May 14 TEXAS----impending execution Death row inmate loses Supreme Court appeal A Texas death-row inmate facing execution this week lost an appeal today to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices refused to review the case of Charles Edward Smith, who's set to die Wednesday evening in Huntsville. The state plans to put Smith to death for the August 1988 slaying of Pecos County Sheriff's Deputy Tim Hudson. The 61-year-old deputy was 9 months from retirement after a 30-year West Texas and New Mexico law enforcement career. Hudson was gunned down while trying to top a stolen van containing Smith and his cousin, Carroll Smith, on Interstate 10 west of Fort Stockton in West Texas. The pair had escaped from a Kansas prison. The 41-year-old Smith would be the 14th Texas prisoner to die this year in the nation's most active capital punishment state. Smith's cousin, now 50, pleaded guilty and took a life prison term. His 1st parole eligibility in 2003 was turned down. He's eligible for another parole review in 2009. (source: Associated Press) COLORADO: Dunlap's death sentence upheld The Colorado Supreme Court today upheld the conviction of Nathan Dunlap in the 1993 slayings of 4 employees at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora and ordered that the court set a date for Dunlap's execution. Killed in the Dec. 14, 1993, shooting spree were Ben Grant, 17; Colleen O'Connor, 17; Sylvia Crowell, 19; and Margaret Kohlberg, 50. Dunlap claimed that he had not received adequate representation from his lawyers during the trial. In the 115-page ruling written by Justice Nancy Rice, the state high court noted that Dunlap raised 27 issues on appeal. Many were claims that he was denied his constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel at both the guilt and penalty phases of trial. A lower court had ruled that Dunlap's two trial attorneys, Forrest Lewis and Steven Gayle, performed deficiently by failing to conduct an adequate mental-health mitigation investigation and by not objecting to a portion of the prosecution's penalty-phase closing argument. The judge said these 2 instances of substandard performance didn't individually or together affect Dunlap's trial. The Supreme Court said it agreed with prosecutors that Lewis and Gayle were diligent in their defense of Dunlap. "We agree with that the action's of Dunlap's trial counsel did not fall below the constitutionally required level of performance," Rice wrote. "As such, Dunlap was not denied his constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel and is not entitled to post-conviction relief on those grounds." Rice also said that Dunlap's other contentions of error were groundless. As a result of the decision, the Supreme Court said a stay on Dunlap's execution would be lifted. The case was sent back to the trial court to set a date for the execution. Phil Cherner, one of Dunlap's appellate attorneys, said Dunlap is far from finished in pursuing his appeals. "Mr. Dunlap will seek a stay of execution while he requests the Colorado Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling," Cherner said. "We will also seek relief in the federal courts if necessary. We continue to believe our appeal has merit and will eventually prevail." Dunlap was arrested hours after the shootings. Evidence showed that Dunlap, who had been fired from a job at the restaurant a few months earlier, had boasted to his friends and acquaintances that he would return and get his vengeance. The murder trial was moved to Colorado Springs because of the publicity surrounding the case. The trial began in January 1996, and on Feb. 26, 1996, the jury found Dunlap guilty of 4 counts of 1st-degree murder. After a week-long death penalty hearing, the same jury unanimously agreed Dunlap deserved 4 death penalties, one for each of the victims gunned down at the pizza parlor. (source: Denver Post) SOUTH CAROLINA: SC Supreme Court upholds death sentence for man in 2003 killing The state Supreme Court says a man convicted of murdering and sexually assaulting a Spartanburg woman whose naked body was found stabbed in an apple orchard will face the death penalty. Frederick Antonio Evins was seeking to overturn his conviction and death sentence for killing Rhonda Ward in February 2003. During his trial, Evins testified he stabbed Ward in self-defense when she attacked him with a knife after they had sex in the orchard. A month after his arrest, authorities charged Evins in another woman's death. Police said DNA evidence linked him to the September 2002 strangling of Damaris Adams Huff. Her body was found in a Spartanburg park. (source: Associated Press) ********************** Mother charged in 2 officer slayings over land dispute wants bail The 74-year-old mother charged as an accessory to murder in the deaths of 2 law enforcement officers slain by her son is set to ask a judge for bail Tuesday, attorneys said. Bail was originally denied for Rita Bixby when prosecutors sought the death penalty against her, saying she knew that her son, Steven Bixby, was planning to kill any officer who set foot on the family's land. The state wanted the land to widen a highway near the family's Abbeville home in northwestern South Carolina. Last month, the state Supreme Court ruled that the crime with which Rita Bixby was charged did not qualify for the death penalty. "Now that it's not a death penalty case, she should be reviewed like any other defendant," Bixby attorney Jeff Bloom said. Bloom said he will also ask Judge Alexander Macaulay to set a trial date. Bixby has been held at the Greenwood County jail for more than 3 years, charged in the December 2003 slayings of Abbeville County sheriff's Sgt. Danny Wilson and state Constable Donnie Ouzts. Prosecutors say the officers were killed over a 20-foot patch of land the state wanted for the highway project. The shootings led to a daylong standoff with police. Steven Bixby was sentenced to death in February for murdering the law enforcement officers. Rita Bixby testified during his trial that she was proud of him. "He has the right to protect his property by any means necessary," she told jurors then. Prosecutor Jerry Peace said he would argue against her bail request. "We will oppose because she's a danger to the community and a flight risk," he said. Rita Bixby's husband, Arthur, also has been charged with murder in the officers' deaths and was being held without bail. Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty against him. His trial date has not been scheduled. (source: Associated Press) MISSOURI: Life in deaths shadow ---- Condemned inmates face sorrow, regret. One after another, the condemned men arrive. Usually, this spartan room - deep inside the concrete-and-razor-wire fortress that is Potosi Correctional Center, Missouri's maximum-security prison - is used for parole hearings. But on this day, 5 CPs (capital punishment offenders) have agreed to be interviewed. These are men who live in the shadow of death, even as shadows hang over the death penalty itself. Although a majority of Americans still favor executions, polls show a dip in support - perhaps because death-row prisoners have been proved innocent by DNA tests or because of doubts about whether methods of execution are humane. The debate, not surprisingly, reverberates on death row, but in a very personal way. Every day, these men struggle with the knowledge of how - though not when - they are likely to die. They tell their stories, they share their fears. And as they do, a staff sergeant watches their every move. -Jeffrey Ferguson worries who will care for his aging parents. It won't be him. He's next in line to be executed, for a 1989 murder he doesn't remember. Back then, he'd drink until he was unconscious - a case of beer a day, some vodka. Add a little cocaine. He'd been drinking heavily since his days in the Army in Europe. But he ran a business and didn't own a gun. "The night of the crime, I dont remember going out with these guys," he says. "I dont know how I got back from there. All I know is somewhere along the way we picked up a girl and killed her for whatever reason." He's not guilty of 1st-degree murder, he insists - he was an alcoholic, and out of it. But those days are long gone; the man who described himself as "Happy-Go-Lucky Jeff" was sobered and shaken by the death sentence. "Ive gone through all the stages," he says. "Anxiety attacks. I couldnt sleep. I didnt think of anything else, but I gave it to God finally, completely. It takes years." He says he came to terms with dying, and life after death. Now, hes just waiting for an execution date. He is 52 years old. He tries to console his parents, his ex-wife, their two children and three grandchildren. "Ive hurt a lot of people by my actions. Ive had to forgive myself ... or Id keep reliving this, and thats a sin too. So, there's a lot of suffering going on." Since arriving at Potosi in 1992, he's seen dozens of friends and acquaintances taken away to be executed. Some, he believes, were innocent. He volunteers with the prison's hospice program, feeding, changing, showering and sitting with dying inmates. "Nobody should die alone in prison. It's about the worst it gets." Roderick Nunley is not looking forward to execution, but he doesn't dwell on it, either. "I'm mentally prepared to deal with it," he says. Nunley, 41, doesn't allow himself anxiety or fear. "I can't afford to feel such a feeling. This is not a place to be emotional in. That's a sign of weakness, I think. In prison it is." When Nunley was a boy, his father left the family just before his beloved older brother, his "rock," died of spinal meningitis. Sometime after that, he says, something - he won't say what - happened that left him vulnerable to drugs. In 1989, when he and Michael Taylor abducted 15-year-old Ann Harrison - when they raped and killed her - he'd been strung out on cocaine for days, he says. Otherwise, thered be "no way in the world Id have been involved." "I can't erase what happened," he says. "If I could, I would. If I could give my life for hers, I'd bring that little girl back." But he can't. And he knows nothing he can say can bring solace to the girls family or restore his own wasted life. He thinks about it sometimes, just as he thinks about his children, forced to "deal with things that I feel in my heart they wouldnt be dealing with had I not messed my life up. I've failed them." On this day, he is controlled and emotionally blank. He later apologizes, in a letter with neatly penned cursive, for "looking like a madman" in need of a shave and a haircut - luxuries he has been allowed only once a month since he was placed in "the hole," in solitary confinement, for stabbing a prison employee without warning in January 2006. He says he has no memory of it; prison officials wondered if the attack was triggered by his anxiety when the state set an execution date for Taylor. At his own execution, he does not want his mother to be a witness. "I caused her enough pain," he says quietly. "If I do get executed, it's like I tell my daughter and sons: Dont cry and feel sorry for me. If anything, cry and be happy for me cause Ill be free of this.' Im not happy here." Michael Tisius spends his days drawing pencil and charcoal portraits and poring over European history and art books: "I can't even picture myself in any situation of harm or violence ... being the person who would inflict it." If he wasn't in prison, in solitary confinement, Tisius says he'd be a tattoo artist. No fewer than 42 cover his skinny, pale body. But this is where he is, and this is where he will remain until his execution. Tisius didn't know his father, fought with his mother and wasn't close to his half-siblings. He dropped out of school, ran wild and ended up in the Randolph County Jail in Huntsville, where he shared a cell with Roy Vance. Spring me when you get out, Vance pleaded. On June 22, 2000, the 19-year-old obliged - and killed 2 guards who got in the way. Vance "was pretty much the only family I had," he says. "I mean, he wasnt family, but he treated me like family. He was like an older brother. I wasnt going to lose my own family." He's 26 now. Over time, he's taken responsibility for his actions, but he knows he can't undo them. And he hasn't asked the guards' families to forgive him: "It would be like reopening the wound. I mean, I put myself in their situation." "Everybody plays the what-if game, but there's not a whole lot of point to it," he says. "If you spend your time questioning what you did, then you're going to miss what you can do." Execution? A "cop-out," he says. Easier than life in prison. Execution means "I don't have to deal with what I did ... with the pain ... with the people Ive hurt and ... with anyone hurting me anymore." Martin Link is innocent, he insists. He's no angel, but kill a child? "I didn't do it," he says. "A kid? Come on, I've got a kid of my own." The child was 11-year-old Elissa Self - abducted, raped and murdered in 1991. Link denies it all - the prosecutors were overzealous, the DNA testing was faulty, the evidence circumstantial. "Politician prosecutors just wanted somebody," he says. "They don't care who it is." On this day, the 16th anniversary of the murder, Link is emotionally flat. "Do I own it? No, uh, uh. Nope. "I was no saint. I was on a crime spree, they said. I was cashing checks, robbing. I was on a self-destruct mission. I never denied it, but I'm not a killer." Link, a small, wiry man, grew up fatherless. He was kicked out of school in 10th grade; hed already started using drugs at age 14, and his drug use grew. Link, 44, has 2 or 3 appeals left. "You got to keep hope. You got to learn to deal with it over time," but "I don't think there is no such thing as finding peace." Links daily routine of work, TV and lifting weights helps him cope. He tries to lie low. "Im just myself," he says. "Some like me. Some hate me. Aint much I can do about it. That's the way of the world, the same way as on the streets." He says it's ludicrous to think the death penalty deters crime. "They do first and ask questions later," he says. "They always say the family wants closure on a particular case. Its not closure they want, its revenge. The death penalty is revenge." Chuck Mathenia wants to be executed, but he can't be. And so he paces in Potosis special needs unit. Mathenia was 25 when he killed his former lover, Daisy Nash, and her mentally impaired sister, Louanna Bailey, in 1984. Both were in their 70s. Hes technically still under a death sentence for the murders. But he is mentally retarded. And so, in 1994, a judge declared him not competent for execution. That puts him in an odd kind of purgatory - a very high-security, rigid confinement with no relief of death in sight. "Im trying to get executed, but I aint getting nowhere ... ," he says. "I want to be executed more than anything. Sure do." As much as he'd like to leave it, prison is the only steady home Mathenia's had. His parents died when he was 6 years old - he was never told how - so Mathenia says he cast about the Ozark foothills, from abusive aunt to alcoholic uncle to his sisters place and beyond. Then, when he was 18, he met Daisy Nash, who gave him a place to live. He mowed her lawn, helped around the place. But she wanted more, he says, and they lived together for seven years, until Nashs family urged her to force him out. He stabbed Nash with a butcher knife, rode his 10-speed bicycle to Bailey's house and killed her, too. Nash "didnt deserve to die," he acknowledges now. Guards and Mathenia's attorney say he is so disconnected from reality that he couldnt be pulled away from watching "Jailhouse Rock" the night he won a stay of execution in '93. A huge Elvis Presley fan, he'd been watching nonstop movies in the death watch cell. These days, hes not interested in television. Hes "just tired of being locked up." "It don't make no sense, you know? Being on death row and you can't get executed. And, you can't get off of death row. It's kind of messed up. "I got to pay for my crimes anyway. Ain't nothin' to it, really. Can't live forever anyway." (source: Associated Press) USA: Court ruling hinders death row appeals The US Supreme Court on Monday made it more difficult for death row prisoners to challenge their sentences, as 2 new conservative justices appointed by President George W. Bush made clear their hostility to such challenges. The recent addition of the 2 new Bush appointees, chief justice John Roberts and justice Samuel Alito, may have substantially shifted the balance of power on the court on death penalty issues, experts said. Before their appointment, the court had done much to chip away at the edifice of the death penalty, by insisting on improvements in legal representation for capital defendants and ruling unconstitutional the application of capital punishment to juveniles and the mentally retarded. At the same time, the US public has been demonstrating growing unease about the way prisoners are executed in many states and the possibility that some might be innocent. A nationwide Gallup poll last year showed a significant drop in public support for the death penalty: it showed Americans evenly divided over the best punishment for murder, death or a life sentence without parole, after many years in which capital punishment was strongly preferred. Executions last year fell to their lowest level in a decade. The 5-4 ruling split the court into conservative and liberal camps, and appears to signal that the Supreme Court is no longer going to insist so aggressively that capital defendants most of whom do not have the money to pay a top-class lawyer get a competent defence. Monday's case tested the duty of defence attorneys to find mitigating evidence that could persuade a jury to spare a capital defendant's life. The court ruled that a man, who refused to let his lawyer present mitigating evidence from certain witnesses, did not have the right to challenge his sentence on the grounds that his lawyer did not do a good enough job defending him. The prisoner claimed that he did not have effective assistance of counsel, as required by the US constitution, because his lawyer did not, among other things, uncover evidence that he had a serious brain disorder. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said the man did not deserve a new hearing because he "would have undermined the presentation of any mitigating evidence that his attorney might have uncovered". The court's 4 liberal members issued a stinging dissent: "The court's decision rests on a parsimonious appraisal of a capital defendant's constitutional right to have the sentencing decision reflect meaningful consideration of all relevant mitigating evidence," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the dissenters. He said a psychological evaluation of the man "would have uncovered...a serious organic brain disorder". (source: The Financial Times)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, COL., S.C., MO., USA
Rick Halperin Mon, 14 May 2007 20:04:30 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
