April 21
OHIO:
Accused killer wants evidence thrown out; Attorneys for a sex offender
suspected of killing 3 Ohio women want evidence against the man thrown out.
Michael Madison's attorneys said police should have had a search warrant when
they looked through a garage where a body was found.
Madison is charged with killing the women and leaving their bodies in trash
bags in a rundown East Cleveland neighborhood. He has pleaded not guilty.
The bodies were found last July after police were called about an odor coming
from a garage.
The Plain Dealer reported Madison's attorneys also want a judge to dismiss
other evidence, including statements he made to police.
He is scheduled to go to trial July 21 and could face the death penalty if
convicted.
(source: Sandusky Register)
************************
Prosecutor to submit filing to Ohio parole board considering mercy for
condemned inmate
An Ohio prosecutor plans to submit his position on whether a condemned killer
facing execution next month for a Cleveland produce vendor's 1983 slaying
should receive mercy.
Attorneys for defendant Arthur Tyler say he should receive clemency partly
because a 2nd defendant repeatedly admitted being the shooter.
They also argue a jury was coerced into issuing a death sentence and that a
prosecutor and some of Tyler's defense attorneys at trial had a conflict of
interest.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty planned to file a motion on Tyler's case
Monday afternoon ahead of Tyler's clemency hearing Thursday.
The Ohio Parole Board makes a recommendation to the governor, who has the final
say.
The 54-year-old Tyler is scheduled to die May 28.
(source: Associated Press)
TENNESSEE:
Ex-lawman Jason Holt in Grainger County court on murder, robbery charges
Jason Bryan Holt, a former lawman accused of executing 2 people during a drug
store robbery, is in Grainger County Circuit Court on Monday.
Prosecutors announced in September they will seek the death penalty for Holt,
who was arrested shortly after the robbery.
Holt is accused of fatally shooting 2 people and wounding 2 others while
robbing the Down Home Pharmacy in Bean Station on May 23.
According to investigators, after store owner Stephen Lovell gave Holt drugs he
demanded, Holt ordered Lovell and 3 other people to their knees, and shot each
execution style.
Lovell and a customer, Alexander Sommerville, 72, died from their wounds.
Employees Alexia Gail Wilson, 45, and Janet Colleen Cliff, 46, survived their
wounds.
Holt is a former Bean Station Police Department officer, and also worked
briefly for the Grainger County Sheriff's Office.
In 2006, he was placed on judicial diversion after being charged with burglary
and theft of narcotics from the Bean Station Police Department.
(source: Knoxville News Sentinel)
OKLAHOMA----impending execution
Oklahoma Man Faces Execution Tuesday In 1999 Death
An Oklahoma death row inmate who's been trying to find out more about the drugs
the state would use to kill him is facing execution unless a court intervenes.
Clayton Lockett was convicted of shooting 19-year-old Stephanie Nieman with a
sawed-off shotgun and watching as she was buried alive in 1999. He has filed
court papers to learn more about Oklahoma's execution protocol, but has not
challenged his sentence.
State courts differ on who should address stays of execution for Lockett and
another inmate, Charles Warner. Warner faces execution next week.
A lower court judge has ruled Lockett and Warner are entitled to know who made
the drugs that will be used at their executions.
Barring intervention, Lockett will be executed Tuesday night at the Oklahoma
State Penitentiary in McAlester.
Lockett refused to appear at his February clemency hearing, where the board
voted 4-1 to deny his request.
According to prosecutors, on the night of the killing, Lockett, one of his
cousins and a friend entered Bobby Bornt's home in Perry seeking repayment of a
$20 debt. They bound Bornt and beat him with a shotgun while his 9-month-old
son slept in the next room.
Nieman and a friend dropped by to invite Bornt to a party and were subsequently
bound with duct tape. Nieman's friend was beaten and raped by 2 of the men
before the victims were loaded into 2 pickup trucks and driven to a rural dirt
road.
Lockett admitted in the confession that he originally intended to kill the 3
adults because he feared police would learn he had violated terms of his
probation from a previous felony.
After Nieman said she would tell police, he forced her to kneel while Shawn
Mathis, a co-defendant, took about 20 minutes to dig a shallow grave. Lockett
shot the girl in the shoulder, pushed her into the grave and shot her again in
the chest before ordering Mathis to bury her alive.
According to an attorney general's report on the crime, the 3 laughed about how
tough the woman was as the dirt piled up atop her.
At the time of the killings, Lockett was a 4-time convicted felon. He's also
been cited for bad behavior several times in prison since the conviction.
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA:
Seal Beach shooting case casts spotlight on jailhouse informants; Questions
over evidence gathered by informants for the O.C. district attorney's office
may have repercussions in other cases.
A legal fight over the use of jailhouse informants has thrown the emotionally
charged trial of the man accused of committing the deadliest shooting in Orange
County history into jeopardy and will probably have repercussions in other
high-profile cases.
The battle has shifted the spotlight from the case against Seal Beach shooting
suspect Scott Dekraai to prosecutors and informants, who have testified for
weeks in hearings over allegations by the defense that jailhouse snitches were
unconstitutionally deployed to gather information, and their work was then
routinely concealed from defense attorneys.
On the witness stand, the head of the district attorney's homicide unit
conceded that his office has failed to disclose information, including evidence
gathered by informants, to defense attorneys in multiple cases. He insisted the
errors were not malicious but agreed the evidence should now be turned over.
The revelation could potentially lead to new trials for accused killers and
convicted criminals now serving prison sentences.
The hearing has also exposed the workings of 2 prolific jailhouse informants
who were repeatedly tapped by law enforcement. One said he may have killed up
to 6 people but is hoping his informant work will lead to his release. Another,
a onetime shot caller for the Mexican Mafia, is hoping for a break in his own
3-strikes case.
Days after Dekraai arrived at the county jail, Fernando Perez, a longtime gang
member with 2 pending cases, told deputies and prosecutors the shooting suspect
had talked about his crimes. Officials responded by putting a recording device
in Dekraai's cell, according to court records and testimony.
Prosecutors told the defense about the informant's statement and the recordings
- which they hope will help put Dekraai on death row. What they didn't say was
that Perez had a long history as a jailhouse snitch.
Only after a judge ordered the prosecution to hand over details about Perez's
work did a picture emerge of an informant who had managed to land incriminating
information on at least 9 inmates, including 2 other defendants facing the
death penalty - 1 accused of dismembering a neighbor in a double killing, the
other convicted last year of killing his ex-girlfriend's family and burning
their bodies, according to court records and testimony.
The defense also learned that soon after Dekraai arrived in jail, he was moved
to a cell next to the informant, according to the records.
To protect the constitutional rights of suspects, courts have ruled that
informants working as government agents cannot deliberately elicit statements
from defendants after charges have been filed.
Perez testified that he never tried to get information from anyone and that
defendants simply trusted him. He said he turned to informant work because it
was the right thing to do, though he acknowledged it would help with his legal
problems.
Before he became an informant, Perez helped prepare "hard candy" lists of
people to be killed for the Mexican Mafia. But as an informant, he seemed to
view himself as part of a law enforcement team, writing to deputies about
completing missions and loving his "little job," court records show.
"I just want to get back home with my kids and I'll do whatever it takes to get
there," Perez told a detective in an interview about Daniel Wozniak, the man
accused of dismembering his neighbor.
In testimony over nearly 3 days, for which he was given immunity, Perez
acknowledged lying multiple times - including under oath in his own case and in
a letter to a judge asking for mercy.
Assistant Dist. Atty. Dan Wagner said Perez was never offered anything in
exchange for information, but allowed that "one would be naive to think Mr.
Perez wasn't seeking a benefit."
Robert Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at
Northwestern University School of Law, said prosecutors often don't make formal
benefit agreements, meaning informants are free to testify that they were never
promised anything.
"The real problem is there's an expectation of a reward for doing what he's
doing," Warden said. "Almost invariably the person is rewarded."
Like Perez, Oscar Moriel insists he never tried to get inmates to talk to him
about their crimes. Yet testimony shows he documented inmates' confessions in
multiple cases.
Charged with attempted murder and other crimes in 2005, Moriel produced
hundreds of pages of notes detailing his steady work in the county jail,
according to records and testimony.
But Moriel's voluminous notes were not fully disclosed - in 1 murder case in
which Moriel testified, only 4 of more than 300 pages were given to the
defense, according to records.
The defendant, Leonel Vega, is now serving a life sentence.
On the witness stand, Wagner, the assistant district attorney, said he now
believes Vega "needs to have a full set of those Moriel notes ... to look at
and to determine if he is entitled to relief." He has also recommended that
other defendants, including two reputed gang members, also get evidence that
has not been turned over.
In testimony during the informant hearings, for which he was also granted
immunity, Moriel described a dark past for which he had never been punished.
As a gang member, he said, he would regularly go out "hunting" for rival gang
members - he was involved in at least a dozen shootings in which 5 or 6 people
may have died, he said, but he has not been charged in those cases.
Scott Sanders, Dekraai's public defender, asked Moriel if he should do life in
prison for the killings he committed.
"Who's to decide that scale of justice?" the informant replied. "I hope I get
out soon one day.... I'm doing my part to cooperate. Does that speak volumes? I
would hope so."
Wagner, who did not prosecute Vega or the 2 reputed gang members, blamed
federal agents keeping information from prosecutors and oversized caseloads for
the failures to disclose evidence.
In the Dekraai case, he said, he did not hand over information until ordered by
the judge because he did not fully understand case law regarding informants.
"There's no systemwide conspiracy to ... cheat the defendants," Wagner told
Sanders. "You have lots of facts that are dead wrong. But you do have some
facts that are right."
In Los Angeles, a scandal more than 2 decades ago involving jailhouse
informants pushed the county to adopt tough policies restricting their use.
Now, prosecutors must obtain permission from a committee before using a
jailhouse informant as a witness. Other counties have been reluctant to adopt
similar policies, experts say.
The Orange County hearing, which began in mid-March, may last another 3 weeks -
significantly longer than Dekraai's actual trial is expected to last.
Dekraai's attorneys say the evidence shows a pattern of misuse of informants
and withholding information, which should have serious consequences. They have
asked the judge to throw out the death penalty against their client, recuse the
district attorney's office and prohibit the recordings from being used at
trial. A ruling is expected before the start of Dekraai's trial, now set to
begin June 9.
(source: Los Angeles Times)
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