Nov. 18
TEXAS----impending execution
Texas Set To Execute Man Who Says His Lawyers Have "Abandoned" Him----Raphael
Holiday is set to be executed Wednesday for burning 3 children to death in
2000. Holiday has asked the Supreme Court to stop his execution, claiming his
court-appointed lawyers have refused to help him.
A Texas man is slated to be executed Wednesday for burning 3 children to death
- including his 18-month-old daughter - despite his claims that his
court-appointed attorneys have "abandoned" him.
In March 2000, Raphael Holiday moved out of the house he shared with Tami Lynn
Wilkerson and their 18-month-old daughter, Justice, along with Wilkerson's 2
other daughters - Jasmine DuPaul, 5, and Tierra Lynch, 7. Wilkerson had filed
charges against Holiday and sought a protective order against him after she
learned he had sexually assaulted Tierra, according to court documents.
On Sept. 5, Holiday returned with a gun and threatened to "burn the house down
with everyone it it." He then ordered everyone to sit on the couch and made
Wilkerson's mother, Beverly Mitchell, pour gasoline all over the house, court
records show.
Mitchell said she saw Holiday "bend down," after which the fire started. All 3
children died in the fire, while Holiday stood outside and watched, court
documents stated.
Holiday has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution on the grounds
that his 2 court-appointed attorney abandoned him when he wanted to pursue
avenues of legal appeal that had not yet been exhausted.
His appeal, filed by a pro-bono lawyer, claims that Holiday's 2 lawyers,
appointed under the Criminal Justice Act (CJA), announced that they were
through with the case "and then actively blocked Mr. Holiday's efforts to
substitute" them, despite having instructed him to look for other death penalty
lawyers.
Holiday says his execution should be stopped for new counsel to be appointed.
He also claims that after the 2 lawyers, James "Wes" Volberding and Seth
Kretzer, refused to file petitions seeking clemency - on the "cynical
assumption that clemency has no chance" - they eventually "hrew together" a
"sham clemency application" in 48 hours without Holiday's knowledge.
"We decided that it was inappropriate to file [a petition for clemency] and
give false hope to a poor man on death row expecting clemency that we knew was
never going to come," Volberding told The Dallas News.
Kretzer said in a court letter that they also recognized the "political
realities" of Texas.
Last week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a motion to replace the
2 attorneys.
Holiday's most recent appeal states that "irreparable harm" will occur if he is
executed without him having a "meaningful opportunity to seek clemency and
develop unexhausted constitutional claims."
The state responded by saying Holiday's appointed counsel have "sworn their
commitment" to represent him and that he had failed to propose alternative
counsel to take their place.
After the Supreme Court denied a petition to review the case in June,
Volberding and Kretzer informed Holiday in a letter that they would not file
additional appeals or seek clemency from the governor, Dallas News reported.
They also opposed a motion filed by an appellate lawyer who helped Holiday by
asking the court to assign him new attorneys and threatened her with sanctions.
Holiday could become the 13th person to be executed by Texas this year.
(source: buzzfeed.com)
*************
Area man set to be executed for arson-related deaths
A 36-year-old man convicted of killing 3 children by setting fire to their
rural Madison County home 15 years ago is set to be executed today.
Raphael Holiday's execution warrant becomes valid at 6 p.m. If there are no
ongoing appeals at that time, officials will go ahead with the execution by
lethal injection.
The United States Supreme Court denied a petition in June by Holiday's lawyers
to review the case, after which his lawyers decided they would not take any
further appeals, saying it would only give the inmate "false hope."
Gretchen Sween, a lawyer in Austin, agreed to try to find new attorneys for
Holiday, saying he had the right to "conflict-free counsel willing to pursue
all relief available to him."
That request was denied by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth
Circuit, so Sween appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court didn't immediately make a ruling. Sween couldn't be reached
for comment.
A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said Holiday will
begin his day in Livingston -- where death row inmates are housed -- with
extended visits with family and friends.
He will be transported to Huntsville at an undisclosed time, then checked in
and given a new uniform.
Prison officials will take the Grimes County native to a small holding cell
just outside the execution chamber, where he'll be able to make more phone
calls to friends and family.
He gets his last meal at 4 p.m. -- whatever the rest of the inmates are having
-- and the execution will be carried out two hours later, unless there's a
pending appeal.
He will be the 13th prisoner executed this year in Texas, which carries out the
death penalty more than any other state, and 26th convicted killer executed
nationally this year.
Holiday was convicted in June 2002 of killing 3 young sisters, including his
own 18-month old daughter.
He was found guilty of 3 counts of capital murder in the deaths of Tierra
Lynch, 7, Jasmine DuPaul, 5, and 18-month-old Justice Holiday.
Prosecutors said Holiday forced the victims' grandmother at gunpoint to douse
the living room in the cabin on Lou Bee Lane in gasoline while the girls were
sitting on the couch, then he lit the living room on fire.
After it ignited, he sped away in the grandmother's car, hit a police car that
had arrived outside the cabin and then led officers on a chase that ended 2
counties away when he wrecked.
"I was at the house, the house blew up," he told an Associated Press reporter
recently from a visiting cage outside Texas' death row. "I don't know how the
fire started."
Defense attorneys said the fire was started by the pilot light on the stove.
Investigators said they found the remains of the children huddled together on
what was believed to be a couch.
Holiday had a record of violent behavior toward the children. The children's
mother had been granted a protective order 6 months before the fire -- writing
that Holiday had sexually assaulted the 7-year-old.
Prosecutors at Holiday's 2002 trial said he sought revenge because he was
getting ready to stand trial for sexually assaulting the girl.
"I loved my kids," he recently told the AP. "I never would do harm to any of
them."
Prison officials said the girls' mother, Tammy Wilkerson, planned to witness
Holiday's execution. She declined to speak with The Associated Press.
According to a 2002 Eagle story, Wilkerson addressed Holiday after he was
sentenced to death.
"You may have destroyed my life, but not my memories," Wilkerson told Holiday
through tears. "You can't take those away from me."
Holiday said from prison that he was outside when the fire broke out.
"I was panicking," he said, explaining why he sped off in a stolen car. "I
think it was crazy for someone to say I spoke of harming my kids. That doesn't
make sense."
(source: The Eagle)
*************
Why Texas county known for death sentences has given none in 2015 ---- As the
state prepares to execute its 13th person this year on Wednesday, the case of
Harris County, where 124 offenders have been executed, reflects shift among
juries and prosecutors in opting for life sentences instead of death penalty
Yosselyn Alfaro was celebrating her 21st birthday at a friend's apartment when
the bullet went through her brain. 2 17-year-olds, Daniel Munoz and Veronica
Hernandez, also died after shots to the head.
2 others were injured. One held his mutilated jaw in place so he could tell the
authorities who did it: Jonathan Sanchez.
The 27-year-old had a string of previous arrests. Prosecutors alleged that at
the time of the murders 2 years ago, he was a gang member on a drug binge who
sent threatening text messages to a man who lived at the Peppermill Place
complex in north-west Houston. Then he turned up, talked his way in and started
shooting.
In the county that metes out more completed death sentences than any other in
the US, in the state that executes more people than anywhere else in the
nation, it seemed obvious that prosecutors would seek the death penalty for
such a horrific crime and almost inevitable that they would get it.
Yet, as the Houston Chronicle reported, the jury that convicted Sanchez of
capital murder last week opted to spare him from a lethal injection. He was
sentenced to life without parole. It was an outcome at odds with Texas's
well-earned reputation.
On Wednesday, Raphael Holiday is set to become the 531st Texas inmate executed
since 1976, and the 13th this year, for starting a house fire that killed 3
young girls, including his 1-year-old daughter.
Some 124 offenders have been executed after convictions in Harris County, which
includes Houston. If Harris were a state it would be second in total
executions, behind Texas and 12 deaths ahead of Oklahoma.
Yet no one has been sentenced to death in Harris County this year. Across Texas
there have been only 3 death sentences in 2015, and the 1st came as late as
October. The previous low in a calendar year was 8.
"We now have more cases this year where jurors rejected the death penalty than
where they imposed it," said Kristin Houle, executive director of the Texas
Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
"I think it's the culmination of several things," said Tim Cole, a former
district attorney in Texas who tried death penalty cases. Cole believes that
the rising number of DNA-based exonerations has made jurors more cautious and
sceptical, that the introduction of a life without parole option for capital
cases in 2005 has had a major effect, and prosecutors are seeking death less
often.
"I think that it is reflective of the change in attitude," Cole said of
Sanchez???s life sentence. "About 2 or 3 years ago, I began to detect a
difference." While polls show a majority of Texans are still in favour of the
death penalty, Cole suggested that many would be more circumspect if they found
themselves on a jury. He pointed to the case of Gabriel Armandariz, who was
sentenced to life imprisonment in March for strangling his 2 young sons near
Fort Worth, though prosecutors had sought death.
"Does killing Gabriel make you feel better? Does it make the small town where
it happened say, 'Yeah, we killed that sorry SOB?' What good is more death?"
his attorney asked the jury during closing arguments.
While Texas prosecutors will not shirk from asking for death sentences for the
most egregious murders, Cole said, their risk-v-reward calculations have
evolved.
"If you seek death and you don't get it, you've just spent months and perhaps
millions on a case you could have [quickly] pled to a life sentence," he said.
And with capital punishment no longer a core issue for voters, elected
officials worry less about seeming soft on crime if they choose to seek life
without parole instead.
"Texas continues to execute more people than any other state, but in many
respects the number of executions in the state is misleading. It reflects death
sentences that were imposed many years ago," said Robert Dunham, executive
director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
"In fact there has been a substantial reduction in new death sentences in
Texas, a reduction that suggests the death penalty is in decline there as well
as elsewhere in the country."
Texas has also improved the quality of its legal representation for indigent
defendants, Dunham said - though court documents indicate that Holiday tried to
replace his attorneys after they said that last-ditch attempts to halt his
death would be futile.
Holiday and the Georgia inmate Marcus Johnson, scheduled to die on Thursday,
are likely to be the last 2 executions in 2015. That would leave the nation
with 27 executions this year: the fewest since 1991, down from 35 last year and
the modern-era high of 98 in 1999, according to the Death Penalty Information
Center.
It will be the 7th successive year that the number of executions has declined
or remained level.
6 states have carried out executions this year, compared with 13 in 2011. The
number of stays of execution has grown, reflecting legal challenges and
dwindling drug supplies that have seen states including Texas resort to
desperate and dubious measures.
"While Texas has ultimately been able to obtain the drugs to execute people, it
is feeling the pinch from the pharmaceutical boycott," Dunham said.
(source: The Guardian)
*************
Exonerated After 18 Years in Prison, Black Man Fights for Reform
Anthony Graves was convicted in 1994 in Texas of murdering a woman, her
daughter and her 4 grandchildren. Later proven to be innocent, Graves spent
many years in prison, including 12 years on death row waiting to be executed
for a crime he did not commit.
"You took 18 years of my life," he said, referring to the Texas criminal
justice system. "You tried to murder me and I want to stay in your face every
day to remind you that we need to do better."
Graves has used some of the $1.5 million he was awarded by the state of Texas
for his wrongful imprisonment to further the cause of reforming the criminal
justice system.
There have been 1,700 people exonerated in the United States since 1989,
according to the registry kept by Michigan State University Law School.
The Innocence Project, a non-profit group that helps investigate cases in which
wrongful conviction is suspected, cites 333 cases since 1989 in which DNA tests
resulted in exoneration. The racial breakdown from that figure was 206 African
Americans, 101 Caucasians, 24 Latinos and 2 Asian Americans.
The former Texas death row inmate says many of the problems in the criminal
justice system across the United States affect people of all races, especially
if they are poor. Graves, who is black, spent more than 18 years in the Texas
prison system.
The 49-year-old said inequality is the biggest problem. Poor people, regardless
of color, cannot afford the best defense attorneys, he noted, and often are
pressured by police and prosecutors to take a plea bargain for a lower sentence
rather than face many years in prison.
While this practice reduces the need for full jury trials and is seen by
prosecutors as more efficient, it also can result in innocent people with
inadequate representation and little knowledge of the legal system pleading
guilty to crimes they did not commit.
Graves wants citizens to use their power in the democratic system to seek
criminal justice reform.
"We can do it; we have the power to do it," he said.
Graves travels the country using his own personal story to illustrate what he
calls the "injustice of the justice system."
"I use my story to educate people," said Graves, "but more importantly, keep it
on people's minds about the injustice that is going on in our criminal justice
system."
The court in Burleson County, Texas convicted Graves in 1994. 6 years later,
the chief witness against him recanted his testimony. Graves was still in
prison, though, when law professor David Dow brought the case to Nicole
Casarez, an attorney and professor of journalism at the University of St.
Thomas.
"He [Dow] came into class one day and said, 'Who wants to work on a case that
is a death row case, and it has a lot of investigation and a short time fuse,"
said Casarez. "And my students and I put up our hands and volunteered and it
turned out to be Anthony's case."
In 2010, the work done by Casarez, her students and others paid off with the
release of Graves from prison and a declaration of his innocence. In June, the
State Bar of Texas disbarred the district attorney who prosecuted Graves after
its investigation of the case uncovered misconduct.
The problems Graves sees are the same ones cited by many criminal justice
experts and law enforcement leaders - including disparities in sentencing
between blacks and whites, the imprisonment of people with mental illness or
drug addictions, an increase in the number of infractions that can result in
someone being jailed and mandatory minimum sentences for some crimes.
Both Graves and Casarez are encouraged by the interest in criminal justice
system reform on college campuses and by what appears now to be largely a
bipartisan effort. The 2 major political parties agree on little else these
days.
"I think stories like Anthony's make a big impression on students and it
inspires them to go out and vote and try to make a difference," said Casarez.
For his part, Graves expresses little bitterness about his lost years, saying
he is more concerned with the future than the past. Although he came close to
be executed for a crime he did not commit, he has not made the death penalty
the main focus of his call for reforms.
He and Casarez also spoke of problems with the alternative sentence of life in
prison, which excludes any legal representation after it is imposed. They say
it also is possible that some innocent people are serving life sentences and
have no access to attorneys who could help them appeal their convictions.
Now Graves is applying his singular perspective to help law enforcement get it
right when it comes to forensic evidence. He was appointed in June to the board
of the Houston Forensic Science Center.
(source: Voice of America)
CONNECTICUT:
It's Up to Court, Not Prosecutors, To Say What Death Penalty Law Is
I am staging an intervention. On Nov. 10, the state asked the Supreme Court to
stay the resentencing of Cheshire home invasion killer Steven Hayes until the
court decides "what impact, if any, the final judgment in Santiago [declaring
the death penalty unconstitutional] has on pending death penalty appeals." The
request comes hard on the heels of the state's unsuccessful attempts to alter
or delay Santiago itself, which included the unusual (moving for a stay of the
judgment after the denial of a motion for reconsideration) and the audacious
(moving to strike Justice Andrew McDonald's entire concurrence).
Enough is enough. The state's state of denial about Santiago threatens to
unravel a key thread in the tapestry of justice: public acceptance of the
legitimacy of final judgments.
Although we now take as a given "the province and duty of the judicial
department to say what the law is," an independent judiciary is a radical and
recent invention. Less than 2 centuries before Marbury v. Madison, Sir Edward
Coke lost his place as England's Lord Chief Justice because he dared tell King
James I that, despite a claim of royal prerogative, "he would do that should be
fit for a judge to do." We were in Coke's day as humans have been for nearly
all of history: A government of men, not laws.
Like every judge before Coke and since, moral authority alone supported his
defiance. Legislatures hold the purse strings and governors have the muscle;
courts depend on the collective belief of those they judge that obedience is
the better part of valor. Such a shared belief is, as Lady Bracknell said of
ignorance, "a delicate, exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone." Or, as
President Andrew Jackson put it in response to Worcester v. Georgia, a case
that gave Native Americans sovereignty over their lands: "John Marshall had
made his decision, now let him enforce it."
The specter of "now let him enforce it" looms over our legal landscape. During
the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus
and one of his commanders defied an order from Chief Justice Roger Taney to
release a suspected Confederate saboteur. National conflagration aside, we
decide in court what other countries decide on the battlefield - but not
without strain. The U.S. Supreme Court strove mightily to ensure a unanimous
decision in Brown v. Board of Education, lest a dissent encourage Southern
disobedience, and Chief Justice Earl Warren added the phrase "all deliberate
speed" to the opinion for the same reason. Even when unanimity breaks down and
the stakes are incredibly high - as in Bush v. Gore - we still accept the
judiciary's right to "say what the law is."
However, judicial authority is a quixotic beast; like Bing Bong, Riley's
imaginary friend in the movie "Inside Out," its existence flows from our belief
that it exists. Courts have the power to pronounce judgments only so long as we
accept that they do. The moment that our acceptance ceases, cracks appear in
the foundation.
This brings us to the state's denialist response to Santiago: Leaving aside its
scathing motion to strike the concurring opinion, the state titled its motion
for reconsideration, a standard filing in an important, 4-3 case, a "motion for
argument," a bit of snark that left no doubt of the state's view of the
judgment. Though the state Supreme Court denied the state's motions, it then
ordered supplemental briefing in another, already-argued death penalty appeal,
State v. Peeler, "addressing the issues raised in the state's motion [for
supplemental briefing and argument] including the effect of the final judgment
in Santiago II." Stare decisis being what it is, one might think that "the
effect" of Santiago would be clear as a bell: The death penalty is
unconstitutional for Russell Peeler, too. However, the order gave the state the
chance to brief issues that, in the view of the three Santiago dissenters, at
least, it had not had in Santiago.
The state then sought a stay in Santiago, ostensibly to avoid a legal train
wreck should Peeler reach a different conclusion about the death penalty's
constitutionality than did Santiago. With the ink barely dry on the denial of
the state's motion for reconsideration, one would think that an impossibility,
but here's the rub: 1 of the 4 members of the Santiago majority, Justice
Flemming Norcott Jr., is no longer on the court; and his replacement, Justice
Richard Robinson, has never sat on a death penalty case.
The court's 6-1 denial of the motion for a stay in Santiago suggests that the
state will not undo a judgment so recently done, but the motion itself is the
problem. I have litigated against, and have enormous respect for, the
prosecutors in the Santiago, Peeler and Hayes cases: They are smart, ethical
and passionate attorneys, truly, as the rules of ethics demand, "ministers of
justice." And so, I offer this conclusion, as a respectful colleague: The
state's stubborn refusal to go gentle into that good night has the potential to
undermine public acceptance of judicial authority. The next losing litigant may
try similar tactics, or may simply defy the judgment altogether, or worse, and
down that slippery slope lurks the grim specter of "now let him enforce it."
(source: Daniel Krisch is a partner at Halloran & Sage in Hartford, where he
focuses on appellate and civil litigation----ctlawtribune.com)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Alleged killer of Corrections Officer Eric Williams attempts to avoid death
penalty
The defense for a New Mexican Mafia member facing trial in the 2013 stabbing
death of a corrections officer from Nanticoke has asked a judge to strike the
prosecution's intent to seek the death penalty, citing a maturing society's
"evolving standards of decency."
In a nearly 400-page motion filed Oct. 6 in U.S. District Court, the defense
for Jessie Con-Ui argues against imposing the federal death penalty for several
reasons, claiming among them the punishment is "carried out in an arbitrary and
capricious manner that is akin to being struck by lighting."
In a response filed Monday seeking the motion's denial by U.S. District Judge
A. Richard Caputo, prosecutors claim the defendant's arguments are in stark
contrast to long-standing legal principles and overwhelming authority to the
contrary.
Appealing to the court's sense of decency is merely an attempt to have it rule
in contradiction to prevailing law, which it cannot do, wrote Assistant U.S.
Attorney Francis P. Sempa.
Con-Ui, 37, faces the death penalty in the Feb. 25, 2013 murder of Corrections
Officer Eric J. Williams, 34, at U.S. Penitentiary Canaan in Wayne County. In
their response, prosecutors argue Williams' murder was carried out in an
"especially cruel, heinous or depraved manner."
Despite the defendant's complaint that insufficient evidence has been provided
in the prosecution's allegations, prosecutors argue clear video evidence from
prison surveillance cameras show Con-Ui ambush and kick Williams down a flight
of stairs before pinning him down and stabbing him over 200 times with multiple
shanks.
After being escorted from his cell after the attack, Con-Ui allegedly said,
"Hey, man, I am sorry but I had to do what I had to do. I am sick of all your
people's disrespect," according to an FBI report filed earlier this year.
Con-Ui was also reportedly upset that Williams had previously ordered a search
of Con-Ui's cell, according to court documents.
Prosecutors argue Con-Ui's propensity for violence justifies the death penalty.
Con-Ui was at Canaan serving an 11-year prison sentence stemming from a 2003
guilty plea for his role in a drug ring run by the New Mexican Mafia. Following
that sentence, he was set to begin serving a life sentence after pleading
guilty in 2008 to 1st-degree murder.
Court documents claim Con-Ui agreed to or participated in several separate,
uncharged incidents while incarcerated between 1999 and 2010, including
stabbing another inmate with a homemade knife and assaulting a fellow inmate
with a food tray.
While out of jail in 2013, Con-Ui agreed to participate in the murder of a law
enforcement officer but was arrested in Arizona before the murder could be
carried out.
Con-Ui is currently an inmate at a supermaxium facility in Florence, Colorado
known as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," according to the Bureau of Prisons
website.
His trial is scheduled to begin in July, 2016.
(source: Times Leader)
DELAWARE:
Panel weighs in on death penalty, criminal justice reform in Delaware
With a new legislative session around the corner, some groups are coming
together for another push to end capital punishment in Delaware.
Experts on race, the Delaware legal system and civil rights weighed in on
racial bias within the criminal justice system.
Delaware Supreme Court Chief Justice Leo Strine said it's a deeply rooted issue
that won't be fixed overnight.
"I do believe that our pervasive history of institutional racism has created
huge structural problems in our society that we have far from remediated yet
and we have a lot of time to go, to get the job done," he said.
The experts discussed the cycle of poverty among communities suffering from
high rates of black men in prison.
Keynote Speaker Tamika Mallory said the Black Lives Matter movement is about
finding justice for those communities.
"We want to matter in the same way you matter," she said.
The panel discussion was hosted by local civil rights groups who are generating
support for death penalty repeal legislation in Delaware. The panel urged
communities to continue the conversation about race and criminal justice
reform.
(source: WDEL news)
GEORGIA:
5 Things Wrong With Georgia's Death Penalty ---- On the eve of the next
execution, a look at the state's history of bad lawyering and faulty evidence.
Since December 2014, Georgia has executed a man whose drunk lawyer bungled the
case, a man with intellectual disabilities, a veteran with post-traumatic
stress disorder, and a woman who planned but did not actually commit murder.
On Thursday, the state will put to death a man who was not conclusively
identified by DNA from the crime scene.
These cases are no outliers; they are emblematic of a particularly harsh time
in our state's history when death sentences were handed out frequently despite
substantive and procedural flaws. And they encapsulate what's wrong with
capital punishment in Georgia.
Here, a closer look at those flaws.
Offering ineffective assistance of counsel
Georgia's statewide public defender office opened in 2005, and in the past 10
years, there has been a sharp decline in death sentences. Before 2005, however,
the right to counsel was a crapshoot for capital defendants. Robert Wayne
Holsey was convicted and sentenced to death in 1997 for armed robbery of a
convenience store and the murder of a Baldwin County Sheriff's Deputy Will
Robinson. Andy Prince was appointed to represent him. Prince chose not to
present a defense based on Holsey's intellectual disability; he retained a
psychologist but never presented evidence of any tests or opinions about
Holsey's condition. Tests later confirmed that Holsey had an IQ of 70, a
borderline intellectual disability diagnosis. If Prince had shown jurors that
Holsey was intellectually disabled, his execution might have been barred under
the Supreme Court's mandate in Atkins v. Virginia.
Prince drank a quart of vodka each night during Holsey's trial (he eventually
was sentenced to prison and disbarred for his conduct in another case). He
brought in an inexperienced attorney to assist him on the eve of the penalty
phase and told her to handle mitigation issues. Prince was paid $3,500 by the
state to hire a mitigation specialist but didn't do so. If he had, the jury
might have learned that Holsey was beaten as a child for wetting the bed until
he was 13 years old. A state court judge later found that Holsey had received
ineffective assistance of counsel and ordered a new sentencing hearing. But the
Georgia Supreme Court reversed that judge's ruling and reinstated Holsey's
death sentence. Robert Wayne Holsey was executed December 9, 2014.
Executing veterans with mental illness
Andrew Brannan was a decorated Vietnam veteran who was convicted and sentenced
to death for the 1998 murder of Laurens County Deputy Sheriff Kyle Dinkheller
during a traffic stop. In Vietnam, Brannan saw many die, including 2 commanding
officers, and had survivor's guilt during the following decades. His service
records praise Brannan for outstanding conduct in a combat environment. Brannan
had no criminal history and had been declared "100 % disabled" by the Veterans
Administration due to PTSD in 1990 and bipolar disorder in 1996. Brannan had
been living in a shack in the woods without water or electricity.
The traffic stop escalated wildly into a gunfight between Brannan and Deputy
Dinkheller after Brannan became erratic and pulled a rifle from his car. The
episode was recorded on the dashboard camera of the patrol vehicle. Deputy
Dinkheller died at the scene. The jury never heard the details of Brannan's
military service or heard from his VA psychiatrist about Brennan's PTSD - or
that he had not taken his medication for several days before the crime. Andrew
Brannan was executed on January 13, 2015.
Applying an impossibly high standard of proof for intellectual disability
Georgia made history in 1988 when it became the first state to ban the
execution of people with intellectual disability (formerly known as mental
retardation). But today, Georgia is the only state to require a defendant to
prove his intellectual disability "beyond a reasonable doubt," a standard that
has, predictably, proven nearly impossible to overcome. In 2002 when the
Supreme Court decided in Atkins that it was unconstitutional to execute people
with intellectual disability, Georgia maintained its high standard of proof
while other states applied the lower, "preponderance of the evidence" standard.
Warren Hill was convicted and sentenced to death in 1991 for killing a fellow
prisoner. The State's doctors quickly declared that Hill was not "mentally
retarded," clearing the way for his execution. A decade later, however, they
came forward and admitted they had been wrong; that Hill was intellectually
disabled beyond a reasonable doubt. But procedural barriers prevented Hill's
new diagnosis from ever being considered in Georgia's courts or federal courts.
Warren Hill was executed on January 27, 2015.
Arbitrarily applying the death penalty
Kelly Gissendaner was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of her
husband, Douglas Gissendaner, in 1997. While Gissendaner was legally culpable
for murder, she was not the person who killed her husband; she was not even
present at the crime scene. Her boyfriend agreed to carry out the planned
killing, and now is serving a life sentence. He is eligible for parole in 7
years, because he made a deal with prosecutors. Gissendaner's death sentence
was the 1st since the reinstatement of the death penalty in Georgia in 1976 in
which a person who did not commit the murder was sentenced to death.
While incarcerated, Gissendaner was a model prisoner, helping fellow inmates
who were contemplating suicide. Her case for parole garnered support from Pope
Francis and Former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher, who has
recently opposed the death penalty. The Board of Pardons and Paroles heard a
renewed request for clemency and pleas from her children to spare her life. Her
request was denied. Kelly Gissendaner was executed on September 30, 2015.
Scheduling executions despite inconclusive DNA evidence
Marcus Ray Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of
Angela Sizemore in 1994. Johnson's conviction rests on dubious eyewitness
testimony and inconclusive physical evidence. The blood on the ground at the
site where she was murdered was never tested, for example, and none of
Johnson's DNA was found inside or near the car where her body was found.
Johnson was first scheduled to be executed in 2011 but he was granted a stay
after police belatedly turned over new biological evidence from the murder
scene. That evidence was tested but was not conclusively linked to Johnson. At
that hearing, a forensic pathologist also testified that the pocket knife,
which prosecutors claimed was the murder weapon, did not test positive for
blood and did not match the victim's wounds. Johnson's new trial motion was
nevertheless denied. A request for clemency has been made to the Board of
Pardons and Paroles, who will hear his case on November 18. His execution is
scheduled for November 19, 2015.
(source: themarshallproject.org)
LOUISIANA:
Abbeville man receives 2nd indictment on 1st-degree murder
An Abbeville man already jailed on a 1st-degree murder charge faces a 2nd count
after a grand jury indicted him in a 2nd killing.
A Vermilion Parish grand jury on Monday handed down a 1st-degree murder
indictment against Derrick "Deebo" Mitchell, 24, in the Dec. 7, 2012, shooting
death of Kyle Trahan, the 15th Judicial District Attorney's Office said.
The killing happened days before the Dec. 20, 2012, shooting death of Darrell
Broussard Jr., in which Mitchell was indicted earlier this year.
Mitchell was apprehended in California in September some 6 months after he was
mistakenly released from a Tensas Parish prison. He's since been held at the
Vermilion Parish jail without bond and could face the death penalty if
convicted in either case.
(source: The Advocate)
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