April 26
SOUTH CAROLINA:
State will seek death in Melton trial; Brutal slaying of Kershaw County woman
expected to go to court early next year
The state will seek the death penalty in the case of a man arrested and charged
in the rape and beating death of a Kershaw County woman in December 2011.
A spokeswoman for Fifth Circuit Solicitor Daniel E. Johnson's office said
attorneys for the state have been in meetings with law enforcement and the
judge assigned to the case and expect to try it early next year. The case will
be tried in the Fifth Circuit because investigators believe the actual murder
occurred in Kershaw County, whch is in the Fifth Circuit. But a portion of the
incident that led up to the killing occurred in Chesterfield County, which is
in the Fourth Circuit.
Beverly Hope Melton, 30, of 3885 Victory Road, was kidnapped after she left a
convenience store near Jefferson in Chesterfield County on Dec. 26, 2011.
Melton's body was later found in a field near the Mount Pisgah area after
23-year-old Nickolas Jermaine Miller lead authorities to her body.
The brutal slaying has gained statewide notoriety. Friends and sympathizers
gathered at a vigil recently, to honor Melton's memory
Investigators say Miller ran Melton off the road, kidnapped her, raped her, and
beat her to death with a baseball bat. Miller is charged with murder,
kidnapping and criminal sexual assault.
Kershaw County Sheriff Jim Matthews has described the crime as one of the worst
he's ever seen and said no punishment could hand out would be justice enough
for Melton.
"I saw what he had done," Matthews said. "If there ever was a death penalty
case, this is one."
Matthews has said investigators do not believe Miller knew Melton.
"To our knowledge, he did not know her. She was just a random victim," Matthews
said.
Matthews said robbery does not appear to have been a motive.
"He didn't take her pocketbook," Matthews said, "so it appears the motive was
sexual assault."
The incident began in Chesterfield County, where then-Chesterfield County
Sheriff Sam Parker said surveillance camera footage showed the suspect
"harassing" Melton while she was inside Jack's convenience store on South Main
Street in Jefferson and when she was at the station's gasoline pumps. Parker
said the suspect followed her from the store to a remote location on Angelus
Road in Jefferson -- inside the more than 45,000-acre Carolina Sandhills
National Wildlife Refuge.
It was there the suspect passed her and pushed her vehicle off the road toward
a ditch. Then, the sheriff said, the suspect kidnapped Melton and took her to a
separate location in Chesterfield County where he sexually assaulted her.
After the assault, investigators said, Melton was driven to Kershaw County
where she was beaten to death with a baseball bat.
"It was very brutal ... probably in the 37 years of my career, this was one of
the worst I've seen," Parker said. "There was just no reason for it. It was
absolutely ridiculous."
(source: SC Now)
GEORGIA----new death sentence
Man gets death sentence for stabbing teen cousins to death with screwdriver
A man who pleaded guilty to killing 2 teenage cousins after raping 1 of them
was sentenced to death by lethal injection on Wednesday.
Mr. Jeremy Moody, 35, pleaded guilty last week to killing 15-year-old
Delarlnova "Del" Mattox and 13-year-old Chrisondra Sierra Kimble after raping
Chrisondra in April 2007, according to the Fulton County District Attorney's
office.
The teens were reported missing after they walked from their homes to an Old
National Highway store to buy snacks on April 5.
The next day they were found naked in a wooded area behind Bethune Elementary
School with multiple stab wounds to their heads and necks, the district
attorney's spokeswoman Ms. Yvette Jones said.
Investigators said Mr. Moody had confronted the teens with a screwdriver in an
attempt to rob them.
"Moody raped the young girl and then stabbed both teens dozens of times in the
head, throat and chest areas with a screwdriver," Ms. Jones said. "Moody later
confessed to his girlfriend who notified police. He was arrested at the
Greyhound Bus station a day after the murders."
After 5 1/2 hours of deliberation, jurors returned with the death penalty and
Mr. Moody was immediately transferred to the Georgia Diagnostic and
Classification Prison in Jackson where he will eventually be executed, she
said.
6 of the charges against him, which include 2 counts of murder and kidnapping,
carried death as the maximum penalty. He was also convicted of rape, aggravated
assault and armed robbery.
For the non-death penalty charges, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Mr.
Christopher Basher added 3 consecutive life sentences plus 40 years to the 2
death sentences.
Mr. Pete Johnson, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, said
prosecutors sought the death penalty because the circumstances of the murders
fit the state's criteria for capital punishment cases - if the murder occurs
during another capital felony, in this case the rape of Chrisondra, according
to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Mr. Johnson also said the killings were carried out in a manner that was
considered torture, and reflected an abandoned heart or a depraved mind - more
state-mandated criteria for death penalty consideration, the paper reported.
"The fact that 13-year-old Chrisondra Kimble was stabbed approximately 17 times
in the head and neck with a screwdriver and raped at the same time...while her
15-year-old cousin "Del" Mattox Jr. was stabbed almost 40 times in the head and
chest with a screwdriver, impaling his skull and going into his brain would
qualify for a death penalty case," Mr. Johnson said.
Although Mr. Moody was arrested a day after the teens disappeared, it took
prosecutors 6 years to bring the case to trial because he continued to
intentionally injure himself in the Fulton County jail, prosecutors said.
The victims' grandmother, Ms. Vivian Mattox, told Channel 2 Action News that
her family is pleased with the outcome.
"We just knew justice was going to be served," Ms. Mattox said.
During sentencing, defense attorneys attempted to show that Mr. Moody was an
unstable drug abuser who was the product of growing up around drug-addicted
parents.
"We were saddened that (jurors) didn't give the mitigation evidence as much
consideration as we thought it warranted," defense attorney Mr. Maurice Kenner
told the AJC. "We plan on filing an appeal or motion for a new trial within the
next week. We think there are some areas of error."
(source: The Examiner)
FLORIDA:
House votes to speed up executions
Despite warnings that Florida will shrink the appeals of the innocent, the
Florida House passed a bill Thursday designed to accelerate the execution of
many of the 404 inmates on Florida's death row.
By a 84-34 vote, the House passed HB 7083, the "Timely Justice Act of 2013" and
sent it to the Senate, where a companion measure is expected to be taken up
Friday.
Sponsored by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Shalimar, and Sen. Joe Negron, R-Palm City, the
bill creates a new process that establishes a system to determine which inmates
on death row have exhausted their post-conviction appeals and requires the
governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days, after a Supreme Court review.
The execution would then have to take place within 180 days.
The process would accelerate the execution for some, "but only those whose
guilt or innocence is not in question," Gaetz said.
The measure prohibits lawyers for death row inmates from using certain defenses
in capital cases, requires that the North Florida region be allowed to hire
full-time lawyers to provide defense in capital cases, and it puts penalties on
lawyers accused of being ineffective counsel.
Florida's inmates on death row wait an average of 13 years before they are
executed. Among the 404 people awaiting execution now, 155 have been there for
more than 20 years and 10 have been there for more than 35 years.
Gaetz said the changes will end what he called "legal gamesmanship and legal
quibbling" by lawyers.
"The only thing we're getting rid of are those types of motions that don't
speak to someone's guilt or innocence," he said.
During an impassioned debate in which several members quoted the Bible,
proponents reflected on the unfairness of the delayed executions on victims'
families.
Opponents said speeding executions would weaken an already unfair system and
cited the statistics: In the last decade, Florida has freed 13 men who were
falsely convicted. Collectively, they served more than 200 years in prison.
"It's not like those who commit these crimes are not being punished," said Rep.
Dwayne Taylor, D-Daytona Beach. "They are locked in a cage for 32 years or
more. That is a form of justice. Maybe not swift or fast enough for some."
Then he invoked the words of the Bible: "Judge ye not least you be judged.
Those of you who are without sin cast the first stone. Those of you who are
without sin cast the 1st vote yes."
Rep. Kionne McGhee, a freshman Democratic from Miami, said he met a man who had
been exonerated who told him that during his years of incarceration he "didn't
have a voice. He felt the process had rushed him through."
McGhee said that if the intent of the bill is to save money, "it will probably
work."
But he urged his colleagues to consider what they are doing. "1 life is one too
many to rush this process through," he said. "Allow the court system to handle
this process. Allow those folks on death row to have an opportunity."
Legislative analysts estimate the state spends between $326,093 and $296,032
per inmate before an execution.
Since 1976, when the state reinstated the death penalty, Florida has executed
74 inmates. Proponents say that only California, which has 724 inmates on its
death row, has a longer wait for execution.
The Florida Supreme Court has appointed a committee to revise the existing
rules to ensure that capital cases can move more quickly through the court
system and plans to release its study in September.
Gaetz said the state can't control the federal court proceedings, but the
reforms, along with any reforms to be adopted by the Florida Supreme Court,
could reduce the average to less than 10 years.
He then added: "Rep. Taylor is so right. Only God can judge - but we can sure
set up the meeting."
(source: Miami Herald)
************************
Convicted serial killer Gary Hilton to be returned to Florida to face death
penalty
Serial killer Gary Michael Hilton received a life sentence Thursday for the
killing of an elderly North Carolina couple, but he will soon be back in
Florida where he faces the death penalty for his slaying of Crawfordville nurse
Cheryl Dunlap.
"He will spend the rest of his life and die in a cage or at the hands of a
Florida executioner," John and Irene Bryant's daughter Holly said after the
U.S. District Court hearing in Asheville, N.C. "He'll never be able to hurt
anyone else."
Hilton, 66, has been convicted of murdering four people in the woods of 3
states during a 3-month spree that began in October 2007 with the kidnapping
and killing of the Bryants in the Pisgah National Forest.
About 6 weeks later, he abducted Dunlap from the Leon Sinks Geological Area and
killed her - cutting off her head and hands in an attempt to conceal his crime.
A month later he captured, killed and dismembered 24-year-old hiker Meredith
Emerson on Blood Mountain, Ga. He was arrested soon after at an Atlanta-area
convenience store as he tried to rid his Chevy Astro van of blood-soaked
camping gear.
Hilton confessed to Emerson's killing in exchange for a life sentence in
Georgia, but was extradited to Florida and prosecuted for Dunlap's murder. A
unanimous Leon County jury convicted him in 2011 and recommended the death
penalty. After his Florida conviction, he was charged by federal prosecutors in
the Bryants' case and pleaded guilty last year.
Dunlap's cousin, Gloria Tucker said she was "outraged" Hilton was able to work
the legal system by pleading guilty and seeing his sentencing delayed for more
than a year.
"I am glad that Hilton will soon be in Florida's custody on death row," Tucker
said. "However, I feel that the proceedings in North Carolina were a complete
waste of time and an insult to the Bryant family."
After the hearing Thursday, 1 of the victims' sons, Bob Bryant, said North
Carolina prosecutors should have sought the death penalty.
"I wanted a bullet put in his head, and I think they should have done it 5
years ago," he said.
Before his sentencing, Hilton offered a brief apology to the court.
"Your honor, I do have remorse," he said to U.S. District Judge Martin
Reidinger. "I am sorry."
Holly Bryant said she detected a smile on the defendant's face.
"For him to laughingly say he's sorry is a slap in the face," she said. "He
beat my mother in the head. He shot my father in the head. Sorry is not
enough."
Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Ann Howard said details of
Hilton's transfer back to death row in Starke are not immediately available
because of security concerns.
But, she said, "I can promise you, he is coming back to Florida."
(source: Tallahassee Democrat)
*************************
South Florida man gets death sentence for old lady's murder
A South Florida man was sentenced to death Thursday for fatally stabbing an
elderly woman in her Little Havana apartment.
A Miami-Dade judge followed a jury's 7-5 recommendation in sentencing
40-year-old Victor Guzman. The Miami Herald reported that he was convicted last
year of 1st-degree murder.
Prosecutors say Guzman targeted 80-year-old Severina Dolores Fernandez in
December 2000 after seeing her fetch a newspaper outside of her home. She was
later found naked and stabbed 58 times.
Guzman cut himself during the attack, leaving DNA evidence at the scene. That
same DNA turned up 2 years later in the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Miami
Beach.
Guzman was finally linked to both crimes in 2004, when his DNA was entered into
a state database for a probation violation.
Prosecutors urged the death penalty because of the "heinous, atrocious and
cruel" nature of the crime, but Guzman asked for mercy at his hearing Thursday.
"I have to pay the consequences, but for the past 10 years, I've done good
things," Guzman said. "I've helped many families."
Guzman also said that he started a Christian ministry while in jail.
"I don't want to justify myself. I'm willing to pay the consequences. But if
granted the opportunity to remain alive, I could be a blessing to many people."
Defense lawyers asked for life in prison. They said Guzman was an alcoholic
with a bad upbringing. The attorneys also pointed to the divided jury
recommendation, which was only 1 vote away from a tie.
(source: Bradenton Herald)
LOUISIANA:
Continuance granted in DeSoto capital murder trial
State District Judge Robert Burgess has delayed the 1st-degree murder trial of
37-year-old Brian Horn.
The Times reports ( http://bit.ly/15JwLpX) Burgess issued a 3-page order
Wednesday granting a defense motion for a continuance. He made the decision
with an eye toward May 1, which is the deadline he set to determine the case's
readiness.
It also is the date the DeSoto Parish Police Jury was to have deposited $25,000
into an account in the 15th Judicial District in Lafayette to cover costs
related to jury selection for the June 24 trial. The actual trial proceeding
would be moved to DeSoto District Court.
Horn, 37, of Keachie, faces charges of 1st-degree murder and aggravated
kidnapping in the March 30, 2010 asphyxiation death of Justin M. Bloxom, 12, of
Stonewall. Horn, a twice-convicted sex offender, faces the death penalty if
convicted.
Defense attorney Daryl Gold termed the ruling as "well thought-out, appropriate
and well-reasoned. And I think that his ruling is correct. I have never heard
of anyone taking a writ on a judge's ruling when a motion for continuance has
been granted. When one is denied, that's one thing, but when a continuance is
granted, I've never heard of that."
Burgess states in his ruling that he recognizes the "disappointment,
frustration and even anger that a further delay in trial may cause. However, in
a case of this magnitude and complexity, prudence dictates, and justice
demands, that it proceed only when there is a reasonable certainty that it does
so with proper regard to all of the various interests."
(soure: Daily Comet)
MISSISSIPPI----new execution date
State Supreme Court sets May 7 for Manning execution
A May 7 execution by lethal injection was set today for death row inmate Willie
Jerome Manning.
He was convicted in the murders of 2 Mississippi State students in Oktibbeha
County.
On March 25, the U.S. Supreme Court denied his petition to review his case,
then the Mississippi Attorney General's Office asked the state's highest court
to re-set his execution.
Manning's attorneys insist he is entitled to DNA and other forensic testing. He
also assets that one of the state's witnesses has changed his trial testimony.
Today's order denying that request was written by Justice Michael Randolph and
supported by Chief Justice William Waller Jr., and justices Randy Pierce, Ann
Lamar and Josiah Coleman.
Voting to grant the tests were justices Jess Dickinson, Jim Kitchens, David
Chandler and Leslie King.
All the justices agreed to deny his claims of ineffective counsel and witness
recantation.
The minority-vote judges also signed onto 2 separate objections.
The majority writes that Manning's conviction and sentenced "were based on
substantially more evidence than he now challenges."
"Our examination anew of the record reveals that conclusive, overwhelming
evidence of guilt was presented to the jury," the order states.
Manning, now 44, received 2 death sentences for the 1992 slaying of MSU
students, Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller.
On Dec. 11, 1992, their bodies were discovered in rural Oktibbeha County. Both
had been shot to death and Miller's car was missing. The vehicle was found the
next morning.
Prosecutors said Manning was arrested after he attempted to sell certain items
belonging to the victims.
In the minority objection, Justice King said he would grant Manning the
fingerprint and DNA testing, as well as consideration of whether race wrongly
was used as a jury selection factor.
(source: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal)
KENTUCKY:
Kentucky criminals must have access to evidence for DNA testing, Supreme Court
rules; High court says convicted killers deserve to have hair checked
2 offenders serving life sentences for murder based on "highly circumstantial
evidence" should have access to evidence to conduct DNA testing that wasn't
available at the time of their trial, the Kentucky Supreme Court unanimously
ruled Thursday.
Issuing a harsh rebuke to prosecutors who opposed the tests, the court said "we
are mystified, if not amazed, that the commonwealth has such little interest in
the possibility that DNA testing might lead to the prosecution and conviction
of a guilty person heretofore uncharged and now at large."
The Meade County commonwealth's attorney had opposed testing, a decision
defended by the Kentucky attorney general's office.
Kentucky was 1 of only 2 states that required post-conviction DNA testing only
in death-penalty cases - although the General Assembly this year passed a bill
providing for testing after convictions for violent and serious felonies.
The ruling came in the case of Garr Keith Hardin and Jeffrey D. Clark, who were
convicted in 1995 in the 1992 murder of Rhonda Sue Warford in Meade County.
Clark's lawyer, Linda Smith, director of the Kentucky Innocence Project, said
the opinion will "benefit everyone because it will allow the guilty to be
convicted and the innocent to go free."
The court said offenders must be given access to test material if the evidence
from it could change the result with "reasonably certainty." Smith said the
ruling will work "hand in hand" with the new law, which doesn't apply to
pending cases or to offenders who pleaded guilty.
Mary Warford, the victim's mother, said she still thinks Hardin and Clark are
guilty and that she'll fight to keep them in prison.
Hardin, 43, is at the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex in West Liberty,
and Clark, 42, at Luther Luckett near La Grange. Both are eligible for parole
next April.
The case captured wide attention because police and prosecutors said it was
satanically inspired, but the court noted that the commonwealth's expert
testified the murder did not appear to be a satanic ritual sacrifice.
Defense lawyers, including attorneys from the Kentucky Innocence Project, had
sought DNA testing of 3 hairs found in the victim's hand, saying it could show
the killer was another suspect who allegedly confessed to friends that he had
committed the crime.
But prosecutors, including former Meade Commonwealth's Attorney Kenton Smith,
wouldn't turn over the evidence. They argued that the jurors knew when they
convicted Hardin and Clark that the hair might have belonged to a 3rd person.
The attorney general's office defended that decision, saying DNA testing would
at most "implicate a 3rd person," rather than exonerate the defendants. It also
noted that state law does not provide for DNA testing for a noncapital
defendant.
But the Supreme Court reversed a Meade Circuit Court ruling and said Hardin and
Clark are entitled to do the tests.
Writing for the court, Justice Bill Cunningham said that, given the victim was
killed after a violent close-range struggle, matching the unidentified hairs to
the suspect who allegedly confessed or to anyone else in the federal DNA
database of convicted offenders would with "reasonable certainty change the
verdict."
The court also noted that the Innocence Project offered to pay for the testing
and do it at a fully accredited lab.
In an unusual rebuke to the commonwealth, the court said: "We proclaim that
evidence admitted into criminal trials in this state belongs to the
Commonwealth of Kentucky. It does not belong to the commonwealth's attorney.
The latter is charged with the duty to preserve and protect the integrity of
evidence, not to hoard it."
Kenton Smith, who retired in 2008, said he had no comment, and the attorney
general's office didn't respond to a request for comment.
Stabbed to death after attempting to fend off an attack, Warford, who lived in
Louisville, was found in April 1992 in Meade County's Dead Horse Holler,
clutching 3 strands of hair, including 2 gray ones, in her right hand.
Microscopic analysis - the testing available at the time - showed only that the
gray hairs didn't belong to the victim, or to the 2 men charged with her
murder.
In Jefferson County, the commonwealth's attorney's office in recent years has
had has a policy of allowing post-conviction DNA testing for any crime, as long
as it is "relevant" and the offender pays for it.
Some Kentucky prosecutors have argued that extending post-conviction DNA
testing beyond death penalty cases could swamp the state crime lab and be
prohibitively expensive if the state were forced to pick up the tab.
(source: Courier-Journal)
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