Aug. 19
TEXAS:
Mother of slain Killeen man speaks out ---- Mitchell Jaudon shot dead last week
at A.A. Lane Neighborhood Park
The mother of Mitchell Jaudon, 22, of Sylvania, Ga., who was shot dead at A.A.
Lane Neighborhood Park in north Killeen last week, is speaking out against the
violence that led to her son???s death.
In an interview with the Herald, Jaudon's mother, Rachael Roberson, said
Killeen's culture of violence bears some responsibility for the death of her
son and at least 10 others who died from gun violence.
In 2015, 15 have died from homicides, according to Killeen police.
"15 homicides?" Roberson exclaimed. "Whoever is in charge here, what are they
going to do to make sure families that leave the safety of their hometown to
come here for the military - for their family to serve this country - can be
able to feel safe? My mother is leaving. My son is leaving. My family is torn
apart. My mom doesn't feel as though she can walk to the mailbox."
After their family moved from Georgia to Killeen in 2008, Roberson said she
began to notice her son changing.
"Mitchell was headed to the 9th grade when we moved here," Roberson said.
"Probably around the 10th or 11th grade, I started noticing some changes in my
son."
"I'm not going to sugarcoat anything about him."
She said Jaudon did not graduate from high school and worked odd jobs as he
struggled to complete his GED classes at Central Texas College. She said he
also struggled with marijuana addiction, but completed rehab.
On the night of his death, Roberson said, Jaudon was at their home, but didn't
tell them he was going to A.A. Lane Neighborhood Park, an area neighbors said
has become a hotbed for drug and sex activity.
Mervis Hancock, whose home and adjacent gazebo have overlooked the park for
years, said he often sees and hears drug use, fights and other chaos. He said
at least one other person was stabbed to death last year.
"It's scary," Hancock said.
"I don't want to stay here any longer. It's right up under our nose that
someone's getting killed."
Although Jaudon was at his mother's home before his death, she would not
elaborate on what he told his family that night.
"We have a slight idea, but we're not allowed to say because of the
investigation," Roberson said. "He was here with me, so I know what he said he
needed to do."
Killeen police spokeswoman Carroll Smith said it's important for community
members and residents to cooperate with each and share information with police.
She said it's also important to prevent domestic violence, which has been
linked to many of 2015's deaths.
"The police and the community can work together to decrease opportunities by
being good witnesses, contacting the police at the first sight of trouble,
reporting crimes and being active in the community," Smith said. "Refrain from
engaging in illegal drug activity and domestic violence."
If and/or when police are able to catch Jaudon's killer or killers, Roberson
said she plans to seek the death penalty.
"I'm a Christian and people say, 'Oh, well you're not supposed to,'" Roberson
said. "Listen. They left him there to die. ... They intended for my son to die.
They left him there. It's too late for teaching them morals or teaching them
values."
"I think that they are cowards of the worst kind," she said. "They took
something from me that is irreplaceable. He's my oldest son, but he was also my
friend."
It's up to the Killeen community to end the trend of increased homicide,
Roberson said.
"We need to come together as a community to say that violence can???t be
tolerated," she said. "It can't. Something has to change. Some way, something
needs to be done."
(source: Killeen Daily Herald)
CONNECTICUT:
In Death Penalty Decision, Voice of Justice Berdon Heard
Congratulations to Justice Robert Berdon, who patiently served on the Supreme
Court for years waiting for the "majority" of the court to catch up to him. It
was 1st in 1996 when all seven justices on the court considered an appeal
challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty under the state
constitution.
In that case, Berdon noted: "Today is the 1st time that each of the justices of
the Supreme Court of Connecticut has had an opportunity to speak on the issue
of whether the death penalty violates our state constitution. The majority of
this court, consisting of Chief Justice [Ellen Ash] Peters and Justices
[Robert] Callahan, [David] Borden and [Richard] Palmer, now concludes that
death at the hands of the state is not cruel and unusual punishment, while 3
justices - Justices [Flemming] Norcott, [Joette] Katz and myself - would hold
that the penalty is unconstitutional under the state constitution. The
majority's decision today prevents Connecticut from joining those humane and
enlightened states and nations that continue to ban the penalty of death. The
only remaining issue in this case is by which means Mr. [Daniel] Webb will be
put to death." State v. Webb, 238 Conn. 389, 552 (1996) (Berdon, J.,
dissenting).
Berdon began his diatribe against the death penalty in State v. Ross in 1994,
and identified any justice by name who thereafter joined the majority in its
conclusion that the death penalty "did not offend our state constitution." See,
e.g., State v. Breton, 235 Conn. 206, 261 (1995) (Berdon, J., dissenting). Some
colleagues no doubt found his dissents offensive for the way he isolated
individuals for their beliefs. Others who agreed with him sometimes wrote
separately to highlight other infirmities. "In this present dissent, I want to
expound upon my earlier position. Not only do I believe that Connecticut's
death penalty scheme violates the state constitution's prohibition against
cruel and unusual punishment, but also I am persuaded that our statutory scheme
for the imposition of the death penalty cannot withstand constitutional
scrutiny because it allows for arbitrariness and racial discrimination in the
determination of who shall live or die at the hands of the state." State v.
Cobb, 281 Conn. 285, 543 (1999). (Norcott, J., dissenting). And others added
reinforcement. "Adhering to my view that the death penalty is, in all
circumstances, cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the constitution, I
reaffirm my position that our 'society should not have the authority to sustain
an institution the nature of which is to destroy its own members. If our status
as moral creatures is to survive, the termination of our ability to accomplish
a deliberate institutionalized method of execution heads my list of desiderata
for this society.'" State v. Peeler, 271 Conn. 338, 464 (Katz, J., dissenting),
citing State v. Webb, 252 Conn. 128, 150 (Katz, J., dissenting).
Not to diminish in any way the excellent job by the public defenders
representing him, but the legal challenges in Eduardo Santiago's appeal with
regard to whether the imposition of the death penalty is an unconstitutionally
excessive and disproportionate punishment were not really new. The fact that
the many decisions following Ross did not reinvent the wheel but relied instead
on the majority's opinion in that case should not suggest the challenges in
those many cases were less than comprehensive or merely "facial." Nor were the
arguments in Santiago about whether the death penalty is sought or imposed in a
racially discriminatory manner navigated on uncharted territory. And finally,
neither was it newly discovered that Connecticut stood "as an outlier, the sole
remaining New England state in which execution remains a legal and potentially
viable option."
The decision by the legislature in 2012 that the death penalty no longer can be
justified as a necessary or appropriate tool of justice may have been the death
knell as confirmation that life imprisonment without the possibility of release
is a just and adequate punishment for even the most horrific crimes. Or as the
dissent argued, that decision may reflect merely a determination that the death
penalty had become impracticable. Whether it was truly a principled
determination that capital punishment should no longer be the policy of
Connecticut or served as a convenient basis for a change of heart by sitting
justices, the die is now finally cast and we thank Berdon for his courage and
insight, expressed so long ago. His voice is still heard.
(source: Editorial, ctlawtribune.com)
OHIO:
Ohio Planned to Import Death Penalty Drug Illegally----A letter from the FDA
warned the state that importing the drug would break the law.
The state of Ohio planned to illegally import sodium thiopental, a drug used
for executions, according to a Food and Drug Administration letter obtained by
BuzzFeed through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The June letter says that Ohio planned to "obtain bulk and finished dosage
forms of sodium thiopental." Since the drug is not available in the US, wrote
Domenic Veneziano, director of the FDA's import operation, "we assume this
product would be purchased from an oversees source."
Veneziano reminded Ohio Director of Rehabilitation and Correction Gary C. Mohr
that "there is no FDA approved application for sodium thiopental, and it is
illegal to import an unapproved new drug into the United States."
According to BuzzFeed:
The prison Ohio carries out executions in registered for a DEA license to
import the drug last year for a "law enforcement purpose," but until now it was
unknown if the state actually intended to use the license.
Ohio, like many other death penalty states, shrouds its execution drug
suppliers in secrecy. States argue the secrecy protects their suppliers from
intimidation and embarrassment, while death row inmates and open government
advocates argue it removes an important check on state power.
When Nebraska received a similar letter from the FDA last year, it came out
that the state paid an Indian dealer named Chris Harris more than $50,000 for
enough sodium thiopental to execute hundreds of prisoners. (Nebraska has since
abolished the death penalty completely.)
BuzzFeed followed up with Ohio corrections department to find out if Harris was
the planned supplier for Ohio as well.
When approached by BuzzFeed News about Harris in June, Ohio DRC spokesperson
JoEllen Smith said the department's legal division would have to handle the
matter. After spending weeks on the request, she only would say that Ohio had
not communicated with Harris's company, Harris Pharma, but did not specifically
answer the question of if the state had purchased from him directly or
indirectly. Smith did not respond to follow up questions.
Ohio's last execution took place in January 2014, when the state gave inmate
Dennis McGuire 10 milligrams of midazolam, a controversial sedative that's use
for lethal injections the Supreme Court recently upheld. Ohio plans a new
series of executions beginning in 2016.
Many reputable drug manufacturers don't want to be associated with the death
penalty, much less the botched executions that have prevailed of late. The
FDA-approved manufacturer of sodium thiopental stopped making the drug in 2011
so that it couldn't be used for this purpose. When Missouri announced plans to
use propofol, the drug found in Michael Jackson's body at the time of his
death, for executions, its German manufacturer expressed displeasure and
threatened to get the European Union to stop exporting it the US completely.
Many states are now struggling to find the drugs they need for executions.
This fact is compounded in Ohio, whose governor, Republican presidential
candidate John Kasich, signed a "secret executions" bill this winter that
exempts anyone participating in a lethal injection from public records
requests. Under the law, medical and nonmedical staff, companies transporting
or preparing supplies or equipment used in executions, and providers of the
drugs used in lethal injections are all protected from public records requests
and do not need to reveal their identity or duties.
(source: Mother Jones)
OKLAHOMA:
US appeals court orders hearing for Oklahoma man given death penalty in state
trooper's death
A federal appeals court has ordered a federal judge in Muskogee to conduct a
hearing on whether attorneys were ineffective when they represented an Oklahoma
man convicted of federal charges and sentenced to death in the shooting death
of a state trooper.
A 3-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ordered the
hearing Wednesday for 54-year-old Kenneth Eugene Barrett of Vian. Barrett
received the federal death sentence in 2005 after he was found guilty of
intentionally killing a state law enforcement officer engaged in the
performance of his duty.
Barrett was convicted in the Sept. 24, 1999, slaying of Trooper David "Rocky"
Eales during a drug raid at Barrett's home in Sequoyah County. It marked the
3rd time Barrett had been tried for Eales' death.
(source: Associated Press)
NEBRASKA:
Governor Confident of Petition Drive Success
There are 9 days left for circulators to gather enough petition signatures to
put the death penalty proposal on the Nebraska ballot.
Governor Pete Ricketts tells KLIN's Kevin Thomas on Drive Time Lincoln he
remains confident of its success.
Governor Ricketts is one of the main contributors on the petition effort to
return the death penalty to Nebraska. The petition effort follows Legislative
action last session ending the death penalty in Nebraska.
(source: KLIN news)
COLORADO:
Denver jury hears about abusive childhood of bar killer facing death penalty
A Denver jury is hearing more details about the abusive childhood of a man
facing the death penalty for killing 5 people in a botched bar robbery.
The mother of Dexter Lewis sobbed on the stand Wednesday as she described
beating her son and how he witnessed bloody fights between his parents.
Lewis was convicted of murder earlier this month for stabbing 5 people to death
3 years ago. The jury is now considering the death penalty for Lewis, who
prosecutors say went to the bar with three other men and led the attack. 2
other men have been sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.
Lewis could become the 1st person sentenced to death by a Denver jury since
1986, and the 4th person on Colorado's death row.
(source: Associated Press)
ARIZONA:
Lawyer presses insanity defense at trial over double killing
An Arizona man charged with killing his brother and then fatally shooting his
6-year-old nephew who witnessed the crime was in the throes of a psychotic
episode on the day of the 2 deaths, his attorney said Wednesday as he urged a
jury to accept his client's insanity defense.
Attorney James Wilson said he wasn't asking jurors to let Christopher Rey Licon
walk free out of the courtroom, but instead pressed ahead for a "guilty, except
insane" verdict that would spare his client the death penalty and prison time
and instead send him to a state mental hospital.
"He is not the monster the state has tried to portray him as," Wilson said
during closing arguments at Licon's trial.
Authorities are seeking the death penalty against the 24-year-old in the
December 2010 killings of his half brother, Angel Jaquez, and Jaquez's son,
Xavier Jaquez.
Prosecutors say Licon killed his brother in the Phoenix townhome they shared
over a drug dispute and then kidnapped and fatally shot his nephew in an alley
20 miles away. Investigators believe the boy either saw or heard his father die
and was killed by his uncle out of fear that the child would snitch on Licon.
Sanitation workers found the child's body. The boy, surrounded by a pool of
blood, was still wearing his school uniform and had a Burger King kid's meal
nearby.
Prosecutor Laura Reckart said in closing arguments Tuesday that Licon hasn't
proven that he suffered from a mental disease that would have prevented him
from understanding that his actions were wrong.
Wilson said family members attribute Licon's actions not to his drug use, but
rather to a chronic psychological illness. "They know that but for Mr. Licon's
mental illness, this would not have happened," Wilson said.
Wilson said Licon had lost weight, experienced hallucinations and became
detached and uncommunicative around the time of the killings.
The defense attorney pointed out the differences in Licon's appearance in a
mugshot in which his eyes looked dazed and a 2009 high school photo in which a
clear-eyed Licon wore a tuxedo.
Authorities say a neighbor witnessed Licon dragging his nephew into a car that
would be used to bring the child to the alley where he died from a gunshot
wound to the head.
Licon, then a construction management student at Arizona State University, told
investigators that he was studying at a library in Tempe at the time that his
half brother was killed. He said he came home to find his brother's body in the
townhome.
But authorities say Licon's alibi collapsed quickly after neighbors were
interviewed and other evidence was gathered.
Authorities say 2 key pieces of evidence were found inside the car Licon used
to bring the boy to the alley: a 9 mm bullet casing that matched a casing found
at Jaquez's home and a toy from the Burger King kid's meal.
Prosecutors say Licon was in an illegal drug business with his half brother and
had acknowledged selling drugs in the months before both deaths.
(source: Associated Press)
USA----re: future book release for Jan. 2016
Women and Capital Punishment in the United States: An Analytical History----by
David V. Baker
Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-9950-2----Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4766-2288-0
Not Yet Published, Available 01/2016
About the Book
The history of the execution of women in the United States has largely been
ignored and scholars have given scant attention to gender issues in capital
punishment. This historical analysis examines the social, political and
economic contexts in which the justice system has put women to death, revealing
a pattern of patriarchal domination and female subordination. The author
includes a discussion of condemned women granted executive clemency and
judicial commutations, an inquiry into women falsely convicted in potentially
capital cases and a profile of the current female death row population.
(source: amazon.com)
******************
Jury of Your Peers? Study Finds Prosecutors Exclude Blacks Because All-White
Juries Are More Likely to Convict, Support Death Penalty
According to The New York Times, a study of the Caddo Parish, Louisiana, court
system has revealed prosecutors often exclude Blacks from jury trials so they
can tip the scales of justice in their favor. The article, written by Adam
Liptak, also said prosecutors preferred to have all-white juries because Black
jurors reduced their conviction rate.
"No defendants were acquitted when 2 or fewer of the dozen jurors were black.
When there were at least 3 black jurors, the acquittal rate was 12 %," Liptak
said. "With 5 or more, the rate rose to 19 %. Defendants in all 3 groups were
overwhelmingly black."
Lawyers also said prosecutors try to exclude Black people from jury trials
because they were less likely to support the death penalty.
"Opposition to the death penalty is much more common among black people, polls
regularly show," said Kent S. Scheidegger, a lawyer with the Criminal Justice
Legal Foundation, in an interview with The New York Times. "Striking jurors for
hesitation about capital punishment is legitimate, he continued, adding that it
is largely balanced 'by defense lawyers doing exactly the same thing the other
way.'"
According to Slate, a Pew Research poll showed 63 % of whites supported the
death penalty, while only 36 % of Black people were in favor. It seems Black
people were less likely to support the death penalty because, having seen so
many Black men freed from death row, they realize how flawed the system is.
The study also revealed stark disparities in the Caddo Parish criminal justice
system. According to The New York Times, about half of the residents of Caddo
Parish are Black, but Black people made up 83 % of the defendants in the study.
The New York Times article pointed out that prosecutors often used "peremptory
challenges," which allow potential jurors to be dismissed with no explanation,
to eliminate Black residents. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that if
lawyers are accused of racial discrimination, they have to provide a neutral
justification. Liptak said lawyers offered a broad range of reasons to cut
Black jurors.
"Here are some reasons prosecutors have offered for excluding blacks from
juries: They were young or old, single or divorced, religious or not, failed to
make eye contact, lived in a poor part of town, had served in the military, had
a hyphenated last name, displayed bad posture, were sullen, disrespectful or
talkative, had long hair, wore a beard," Liptak said.
The New York Times article also said some prosecutors clearly stated they
didn't want any Black citizens on the jury.
"The case arose from the 1987 trial of Timothy T. Foster, an African-American
facing the death penalty for killing a white woman, Queen Madge White.
Prosecutors worked hard to exclude blacks from the jury," said The New York
Times. "In notes that did not surface until decades later, they marked the
names of black prospective jurors with a B. They highlighted those names in
green. They circled the word 'black' where potential jurors had noted their
race on questionnaires."
This issue is not unique to Louisiana. The New York Times said similar problems
had also been found in other parts of the country.
"That is consistent with patterns researchers found earlier in Alabama,
Louisiana and North Carolina, where prosecutors struck black jurors at double
or triple the rates of others," said The New York Times. "In Georgia,
prosecutors excluded every black prospective juror in a death penalty case
against a black defendant, which the Supreme Court has agreed to review this
fall."
Scholars say racially biased jury trials undermine the integrity of the legal
system.
"If you repeatedly see all-white juries convict African-Americans, what does
that do to public confidence in the criminal justice system?" said Elisabeth A.
Semel, the director of the death penalty clinic at the law school at the
University of California, Berkeley.
Although many Americans see jury duty as an annoyance, many of the Black people
interviewed in The New York Times article saw it as an important civic duty.
"Next to voting, participating in a jury is perhaps the most important civil
right," said Ursula Noye, a researcher who compiled the data for the report.
(source: Atlanta Black Star)
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