April 2
TEXAS----impending executions
Tommy Lynn Sells' attorney tries to push execution date back
Convicted killer Tommy Lynn Sells' attorney filed a suit in Houston federal
court in a last attempt to block Sells' execution scheduled for Thursday.
Jonathan Ross, Sells' attorney, argues that the state has refused to release
details of the lethal injection drug, and that violates constitutional rights.
Ross also said the information was allowed by a lower Texas court but was
blocked by the Texas Supreme Court. The Texas Supreme Court wanted to put the
case on the hearing schedule, but that would have been after the scheduled
execution date for Sells and Ramiro Hernandez Llanas. A suit was filed on
behalf of both men.
Ross also asked for time to file a petition on behalf of his client, depending
on what the federal judge decides. The federal court is expected to make a
decision by Wednesday whether to grant the attempt to push Sells' execution
date back.
(source: KENS5 news)
**********************
Texas fights disclosure of execution drug supplier's identity
2 days before Texas is set to execute its 1st inmate with a new batch of drugs,
the state prison agency remained determined Tuesday to keep its supplier a
secret, citing threats of violence to pharmacies that sell drugs used in lethal
injections.
Since obtaining a new supply of the drug pentobarbital 2 weeks ago, the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice had cited unspecified security concerns in
refusing to disclose the source and other details about the sedative it plans
to use to put inmates to death.
But in a brief filed Tuesday with the state attorney general's office, Patricia
Fleming, an assistant general counsel for the Texas prison system, argued that
a supplier in another state received a specific threat of physical violence.
"An individual threatened to blow up a truck full of fertilizer outside a
pharmacy supplying substances to be used in executions," Fleming wrote.
As such, she argued, an open-records request filed by an attorney for a
condemned inmate seeking the drug maker's identity should not be granted.
Questions about the source of drugs used by states to carry out lethal
injections have arisen in several states in recent months as numerous drug
makers -- particularly in Europe, where opposition is strongest to capital
punishment -- have refused to sell their products if they will be used to carry
out executions.
That has led several U.S. prison systems to compounding pharmacies, which are
not as heavily regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as more
conventional pharmacies.
A batch of pentobarbital Texas purchased from such a compounding pharmacy in
suburban Houston expired at the end of March. That pharmacy refused to sell the
state any more drugs, citing threats it received after its name was made
public. That led Texas to its new, undisclosed suppler.
An attorney for inmate Ramiro Hernandez-Llanas, set to die later this month,
had filed an open-records request with the Department of Criminal Justice March
11 seeking the name of that supplier. The agency had until March 25 to either
provide the records, set a specific date to provide them or seek a decision
from the attorney general's office that would allow it to withhold the
information.
In 3 past such opinions, the attorney general's office has directed the agency
to release records about its lethal injection drugs. Fleming, in the request
filed Tuesday, argued that circumstances have changed since 2012, the last time
the attorney general's office said the information should be disclosed.
"It is the (prison system's) opinion that release of the information at issue
creates a risk of physical harm to pharmacy personnel and customers in and
surrounding the pharmacy," she wrote.
Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Greg Abbott, said before
receipt of Fleming's request that the office had 45 business days to reply.
That timing is an issue for both Hernandez-Llanas and Tommy Lynn Sells, who is
scheduled for execution on Thursday.
"Even for the fastest court case you could ever imagine under the Public
Information Act, it would involve weeks at least, and probably more like months
before you ever get to a .... hearing in it," said Bill Aleshire, an Austin
attorney experienced in open government issues.
Unwilling to wait, attorneys for both men asked a federal court on Tuesday to
either force state prison officials to disclose the drug source or delay the
executions while the issue is addressed.
The inmates "are entitled to discover how the state plans to put them to
death," said attorneys Jonathan Ross and Maurie Levin.
Last week, they won an order from a state court that directed prison officials
to identify the new provider of pentobarbital, but only to attorneys for the 2
prisoners. The Texas Supreme Court put that order on hold on Friday and set a
deadline for briefs that will arrive after the Sells and Hernandez-Llanas'
scheduled execution dates.
The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday asked the court to compel the agency to
immediately disclose the drug source information so the sedatives can be tested
to determine they are "safe and will reliably perform their function, or if
they are tainted, counterfeited, expired, or compromised in some other way."
It also seeks a court order halting the 2 executions so the inmates are "able
to litigate their right to be executed in a manner devoid of cruel and unusual
pain," the lawyers said.
State attorneys have argued the new drugs have been tested and fall within
acceptable ranges for potency. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected
similar arguments from a Missouri death row inmate who was later put to death.
(source: Associated Press)
*******************
U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Appeal to Stop Execution of Mexican National in
Texas
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected on Monday an appeal made by the lawyers of
Ramiro Hernandez Llanes, a Mexican national that will be executed in Texas on
April 9.
The appeal was one of the last resources available to prevent the execution of
Hernandez Llanes, who was condemned of killing a man that employed him in his
ranch in Kerrville, Texas.
According to a report from the AFP, quoted by Yahoo News, Llanes' lawyers had
requested the Supreme Court to revise the Mexican man's case arguing that he
was not properly informed about his consular assistance rights after being
arrested, and deficient legal help.
However, this resource was dismissed by the Supreme Court, without the Court
revealing the reasons to reject the appeal, which is why Hernandez will be
executed by lethal injection on April 9 at 6:00 p.m., local time, in
Huntsville, Texas.
Born in Tamaulipas, Mexico, Hernandez Llanes, 44, was sentenced to death in
2000 for the murder of Glen Lich, 48, who hired him in his San Antonio ranch in
1997. Hernandez was also accused of repeatedly raping Lich's wife after the
murder.
According to KSAT.com, in 1997, the Mexican man's defense argued that he was
mentally handicapped, and could not be sentenced to death, however, this
resource wasn't approved.
Ramiro Hernandez Llanes will become the 10th Mexican to be executed in the
United States since the death penalty was reactivated in 1976.
Hernandez Llanes is one of the 51 Mexicans sentenced to death in the US,
protected by the International Court of Justice, a measure which orders the US
to revise all the cases under the premise that the arrests and trials presented
violations to their guarantees as foreign citizens.
(source: Latino Post)
******************
'Fiesta Killer's Execution Could be Delayed Due to Drug Source Issue
A suspected serial killer who murdered, among other people, a 13 year old girl
in Del Rio and 9 year old Mary Bea Perez, who was kidnapped during Fiesta 1999
is set to be executed later this week, but the execution could be delayed over
a debate over the source of the state's lethal injection drugs, 1200 WOAI news
reports.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is appealing a ruling by a state judge
in Austin last week ordering it to reveal the source of a new batch of the
sedative Pentobarbital which it obtained last month. The last of the state's
old batch of drugs, which was acquired from a compounding pharmacy in The
Woodlands, was used for an execution last week.
State officials point out that a death penalty opponent threatened to 'blow up
a truck' outside the pharmacy which supplied the Pentobarbital, pointing out
that it would be dangerous for the state to reveal the source of the drugs.
But Maurie Levin, a civil rights attorney who is representing TDCJ inmates in
the case, says when it starts talking about killing its own citizens, the
government needs to be as transparent as possible.
"The TDCJ's continuing attempt to fight disclosure of this information seeks to
bend the law to shield their actions from the light fo day," Levin said. "This
kind of extreme secrecy prevents our courts from being able to ensure that
executions are carried out in a human manner, in full compliance with all state
and federal laws," Levin said.
Tommy Lynn Sells is the worst of the worst. In addition to Mary Bea Perez,
Sells, who uses the nickname 'Coast to Coast,' in reference to the places where
he says he murdered people, also slashed the throat of a girl in Del Rio, and
raped, shot, or strangled as many as 6 other people, mainly little girls. He
also killed an entire family, including a pregnant mom. He is set to be
executed Thursday ngiht.
But Sells has had several execution dates in the past, which have been delayed
due to legal intervention.
The Austin judge did not say he would delay Sells' execution if the state
didn't fork over the name of the place where it obtained the drugs, but lawyers
for the convicted killer are expected to use that ruling to seek a delay if
TDCJ does not comply.
(source: WOAI news)
FLORIDA:
Truehill could be sentenced to death May 16 in FSU grad student's murder
Quentin Truehill, who was found guilty of 1st-degree murder and kidnapping in
February for the 2010 killing of Florida State graduate student Vince Binder,
could be sentenced to death May 16.
The sentencing date was recently scheduled after a St. Johns County jury
recommended on March 7 that Truehill receive the death penalty.
A judge will make the final decision on whether Truehill will receive life in
prison or the death penalty.
Binder, 29, went missing April 2 while walking home from a friend's house in
southwest Tallahassee. 26 days later, following an intensive search, his body
was found in St. John's County near Interstate 95.
Truehill, 26, from Louisiana, was arrested on April 12, 2010, in Miami. His
co-defendants, 26-year-old Peter Hughes and 43-year-old Kentrell Johnson, are
awaiting trials on 1st-degree murder and kidnapping charges in Binder's murder.
(source: Tallahassee Democrat)
MISSISSIPPI:
Think Mississippi's death penalty system is fair? Then don't read this.
If the state of Mississippi had finished what it started, Michelle Byrom would
be dead right now. Instead, based on revelations about confessions kept from a
jury and an alleged case of perjury, the state's Supreme Court on Monday tossed
out Byrom's murder conviction and ordered a new trial - but also ordered that a
new judge conduct it.
And this is after the case had already gone through the regular channels of
appeal, as Oxford, Miss., legal blogger Tom Freeland pointed out:
"This is extraordinary and unprecedented to my knowledge. The order says that
considering the petition - which I am told raised innocence issues - "the
petition is well taken and should be granted." The entire conviction - not just
the sentence - is vacated for a retrial.
"This is after the case has been tried, on direct appeal to the Mississippi
Supreme Court, on certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, on post
conviction to the Mississippi Supreme Court, certiorari again, and then the
federal district court and Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Next time someone
says that a death sentence is fine because of all the judges who looked at it,
remember Michelle Byrom."
Byrom won a new trial based on a last-ditch post-conviction relief filing
submitted Feb. 24, more than a month ahead of her March 27 scheduled execution.
The case involved the 1999 murder of her abusive husband, Edward Byrom.
Michelle Byrom was in a hospital being treated for pneumonia when the killing
took place; she was accused of masterminding the hiring of Joey Gillis, a
friend of her son, Edward Byrom Jr., to kill her husband.
But confessions and other evidence surfaced - some of which wasn't presented to
her attorneys or the jury - that the son had killed his father to end
long-running physical and verbal abuse. The state ultimately convicted Gillis
and the son of post-crime related charges, and notably didn't convict Gillis of
pulling the trigger. Yet his role was key to the case against Byrom, who was
convicted on a capital murder charge in part based on alleged perjured
testimony by her son.
Yeah, it's a mess, with enough confusion and probable cause to cast serious
doubt over whether Byrom received a fair trial, at the least, and suggests that
she likely is innocent. Details of apparent confessions from the son don't
leave a lot of room for debate.
Pro-death penalty advocates may argue that this case proves the system works
because Byrom has not been executed and gets another chance to defend herself.
True. But it took extraordinary legal work to make that happen, and as we all
know, not all defendants get such legal help. And wrongful convictions are not
as rare as many would like to think.
Such pervasive imperfections in a system that, in the case of capital murder
charges, ends with the state execution of a citizen should not be accepted in a
mature, civilized society.
(source: Los Angeles Times)
************
Death Penalty flawed by imperfect human nature
In June 1989, my client Leo Edwards was the last man in Mississippi to be
executed in a gas chamber. I watched as Leo's head flapped uncontrollably
against an iron post for several minutes before he was pronounced dead.
As I watched him struggle to die, I believed that Leo was guilty of the crimes
for which he was charged - murdering a man during a robbery spree following his
escape from the Louisiana State Penitentiary. I did not then, and do not now,
excuse his crimes.
However, I also believed that, like so many of the clients I have represented
during three decades working on behalf of condemned men and women, Leo was
sentenced to die by a flawed system in which the rules were openly flaunted by
the prosecution. Had the system been fair, I do not think he would have been
sentenced to die.
Leo Edwards was prosecuted by the long-serving elected district attorney, Ed
Peters, who had a reputation for striking African-American prospective jurors
from jury service. Indeed, Peters admitted in a newspaper article in July 1983
that, when he was presented with blacks on a jury panel his philosophy was to
"get rid of as many" as he could. Peters said blacks were less law-enforcement
oriented than whites. Peters later testified that he exercised that philosophy
at Leo Edwards' trial, resulting in the all-white jury that sentenced Leo, a
poor black man, to death.
This clear racial bias was never addressed because Leo's case was too far along
by 1987, when the U.S. Supreme Court set new standards for reviewing claims of
race discrimination in jury selection. But for a bit of poor timing, I am
confident that Leo would have been awarded a new trial. The fact that Leo died
while other condemned men were pardoned was completely arbitrary.
I have spent the past three decades advocating for convicted murderers. They
are people whose lives have been deemed worthless by the vast majority of
society. They have killed and so they deserve to die, the standard reasoning
goes.
However, my career has taught me that executions say less about the criminals
than they do about us, the society that carries them out. The system reflects
our biases and blind spots. Just like us, it is susceptible to error and
prejudice and, sometimes, an indiscriminate desire for revenge. Like our
country, it favors the privileged and takes the heaviest toll on the poor and
mentally ill.
As a young lawyer starting out in Mississippi, I had little competition for
capital defense work. At that time, attorneys appointed to represent poor
capital defendants were paid a maximum of $1,000 per case, no matter how much
time they spent. Occasionally, we recruited a large law firm from New York or
Washington D.C. to represent a death row inmate for free. Most often, death row
inmates were poorly represented by attorneys with little time or interest in
their cases.
Trying to stem the tide of executions was an unending battle, in which we were
vastly outmatched. Some of my clients were picked for execution because of my
mistakes, or the mistakes of other attorneys. My client Edward Earl Johnson,
who was just 17 years old at the time of his crime, was executed despite my
doubts about his guilt. There seemed to be grave injustices in every case, but
no rhyme or reason why some lived and some died.
When I arrived in North Carolina in 1989, then one of the leading death
sentencing states in the nation, things were much the same.
During the past 25 years, I have worked alongside a team of dedicated people to
win many important victories and reforms. 5 death-sentenced men have been
exonerated in North Carolina. Many other clients have been saved from execution
because of serious injustices in their cases. New laws ensure that defendants
now receive an adequate defense and have rights to examine the evidence against
them. 1 or 2 people a year are now sentenced to die in North Carolina, down
from an average of 25 a year in the 1990s. No one has been executed since 2006.
Yet, none of those victories has erased the problems at the root of our capital
punishment system. Racial bias still taints trials. Defendants are still chosen
for death arbitrarily. Those sentenced to die are still overwhelmingly poor and
mentally ill. Judges and lawyers, including myself, still make mistakes.
Innocent people are still imprisoned.
No matter how many reforms we enact, these basic facts will never change. Our
capital punishment system is created and carried out by human beings, who are
by their nature imperfect and prone to error.
Over the years, I have gotten to know many of my clients and cared deeply about
what happened to them and their families. Some were innocent and others were
clearly guilty. Some were remorseful, while others were angry or
uncommunicative. Many were mentally ill or disabled. Four of them were
executed.
What I have learned from trying to save their lives is that they are no more or
less human than myself - and that none of us is perfect enough to decide who
lives and dies.
(source: Ken Rose is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Death Penalty
Litigation in Durham----laurinburgexchange.com)
********************
AG Hood Wants Explanation in Byrom Death-Sentence Reversal
The office of state Attorney General Jim Hood is asking the Mississippi Supreme
Court to "enter a reasoned opinion stating the basis the reversal of the
conviction of capital murder and sentence" of Michelle Byrom.
Byrom was convicted and sentenced to death for allegedly conspiring to hire a
hit man to kill her husband in 1999. However, after several pieces of
information Byrom's jury never saw came to light, including several alleged
confessions from Byrom's son who stated his mother was not involved with the
murder, the state's high court this week reversed her sentenced and gave her a
new trial with a new judge.
In the motion, special assistant to the AG Marvin White Jr. writes that state
and federal courts have already dispensed with each of Byrom's claims.
"Each and every claim that Byrom presented to this Court had been addressed on
the merits either by this Court or the federal courts on habeas corpus review,"
White's motion states.
White writes that there is "an absolute need to know" the reasoning behind the
Byrom decision "so as to avoid the same errors at the new trial."
"The State would assert that the Court has embarked on an unprecedented course
of action that leaves everyone questioning why," the motion states.
It goes to say: "... We are left only to speculate at the Court's reasoning.
This is not the manner in which cases are reversed. Without any guidance from
this Court, the State is doomed to repeat the presumed errors upon which this
conviction was reversed.
"With all due respect the State would respectfully submit that the Court should
stay the proceedings in this case until such time that a reasoned written
opinion issues from the Court stating the basis for the reversal of this death
penalty conviction that has survived all previous challenges in this Court and
the Federal courts."
(source: Jackson Free Press)
LOUISIANA:
Ex-death row inmate speaks up about the pressures of capital punishment
July 19, 1996. This day would lead to a 6-by-9 foot prison cell, convictions of
1st degree murder and rape and a sentence of death for a then 22-year-old Damon
Thibodeaux.
But Tuesday, Thibodeaux sat a free man in a blue "Witness to Innocence" T-shirt
on the Farber Hall stage. He was exonerated and released from prison Sept. 28,
2012 - more than 15 years after his initial trial.
"You can't have a death sentence and 15 years of your life taken away and not
be angry," he said. "But I've redirected it at as a driving force to put my
life back together."
Thibodeaux was joined at the University of South Dakota by Steve Kaplan, a
senior of counsel to the Minneapolis law firm Fredrikson & Byron, for the
Farber Forum event, "Lessons From Louisiana: The Damon Thibodeaux Story,
Capital Punishment and Criminal Justice."
Thibodeaux and Kaplan, who led the Texas native's post-conviction legal team
from 2001-2012, deconstructed what led to his false confession. They also
tackled the pressure capital punishment puts on the legal system during the
forum, which was hosted by the W.O. Farber Center for Civic Leadership,
Political Science League and Criminal Justice Club.
The crime began with Thibodeaux's step-cousin Crystal Champagne, 14, who was
found dead along a levee - badly beaten and with a piece of red extension cord
around her neck. Thibodeaux had just gotten to town and was among the suspects
brought in for questioning about her murder.
Thibodeaux cannot talk specifics about his police interrogation because of two
lawsuits he filed last September in Louisiana in response to his wrongful
conviction. But Kaplan said that after a 9-hour interrogation and 30 hours with
no sleep, Thibodeaux confessed to having consensual and non-consensual sex with
the victim, before beating and murdering her.
This confession, Kaplan said, is false. It was inconsistent with numerous crime
details, from the color and kind of cord used to strangle the victim to
Champagne's body showing no signs of semen or other evidence indicating rape.
But he was still convicted by a jury, Thibodeaux said, that was practically
falling asleep in their seats.
"The (legal) system went off the rails with Damon's case," Kaplan said.
Thibodeaux said there was a time in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola
that he doubted whether his innocence would ever be proven and he dropped his
appeals.
"(Prison) is designed to eat the hope out of you," Thibodeaux said. "(Prison
guards) want you to realize the only way out is on that execution table."
The 15 years he spent on death row was an "intense mental battle."
"You can't lose your emotions. That tends to shut you off, to make you cold,"
he said. "Sadly, you have to feel all those emotions, but I don't know, you
just feel helpless."
In 2007, based on evidence of Thibodeaux's innocence, the Jefferson Parish
District Attorney's Office began a joint reinvestigation with the Innocence
Project and the rest of Thibodeaux's legal team. The reinvestigation consisted
of DNA and forensic evidence testing of the crime scene and other physical
evidence and interviewed numerous fact witnesses - until his conviction was
overturned in 2012. Thibodeaux became the 141st innocent death row inmate to be
exonerated since the U.S. Congress reinstated capital punishment in 1976.
Kaplan pointed to a culture he has witnessed from death penalty states in the
deep South that leads to wrongful conviction cases like Thibodeaux's - an area
of the country the former death row inmate even referred to as the nation's
"death belt."
"The question of who lives and dies is not a legal question," Kaplan said. "It
is a moral, religious, cultural and many times, racial question. A jury of 12,
with no frame of reference to first-degree murder, should not be able to make
that call."
The crowded Farber Hall audience engaged the two speakers with questions, one
from a law student who asked Thibodeaux if it was accurate to assume he was
against the death penalty, even after meeting men on death row who had
performed heinous crimes.
"I don't believe we as humans can allow ourselves to kill each other. In regard
to the legal system - we get it wrong," Thibodeaux said.
Thibodeaux also posed a question to the law students in attendance, asking them
if they have any plans to be a prosecutor or defense lawyer. While a few raised
their hands for each, his advice to all of them was always to seek for justice,
because no matter the outcome, they will never fail.
Sophomores Lauren Cass, Alex Eriksen and Kendra Dale all said they were
enamored by Thibodeaux's story, and even more so, how he was ever convicted in
the 1st place.
"I'm a chemistry major, and I just don't know how he could get sentenced to
death with like absolutely no forensic evidence," Cass said.
"I had no idea how much politics plays into the courtroom, I feel so secluded
from these issues in South Dakota, it's frustrating," Dale said.
While each member of the audience had their own thoughts following the forum,
Thibodeaux said he hopes the influence he has now on students is to make sure
they do not take their lives for granted.
"Most of these students are just coming into the world. I hope my story keeps
them - keeps them on a moral path," he said.
(source: The Volante)
TENNESSEE:
Jurors now deliberating in death penalty case of Memphis man who has killed
before
Jurors have begun deliberating whether death is the appropriate punishment for
a Memphis man who helped kill a New York visitor during a robbery.
The jury convicted Calvin Rogers, 43, Monday on 1st-degree murder charges in
the 2010 death of 21-year-old Ameer Althaibani, who had gotten engaged 6 months
earlier and came to spend time with relatives in Memphis before returning to
Brooklyn for his wedding. He and 2 cousins got lost Sept. 17, taking a wrong
turn off the interstate when they encountered Rogers and another man near North
Hollywood and Poplar.
After they convicted Rogers, jurors were told about Rogers' criminal history -
including convictions for a 2nd-degree murder in 1991 and a 2002 aggravated
assault. Prosecutors Pam Stark and Reginald Henderson argued that Rogers' past
is an aggravating circumstance that merits the death penalty. They also argued
that he put more than 1 person at risk, teaming with an accomplice to shoot at
the victims' car with Althaibani and the victim's 2 cousins inside.
Defense attorneys Robert Parris and Charles Mitchell argued that Rogers is
"clinically mentally retarded," that this murder isn't among "the worst of the
worst" and that the fatal shot came from their client's cousin, Scott Lee. They
also told jurors that Lee, convicted of 1st-degree murder in January, is
serving a sentence of life with the possibility of parole - a punishment they
said also would be appropriate for Rogers.
Rogers would be age 90 before being eligible for parole.
Defense attorneys also argued that Rogers' mother was age 15 when he was born
and he had a difficult childhood, which for years included being passed from
relative to relative.
Prosecutors argued that Rogers is the one who told the victims, "Y'all are
gonna die tonight," before 9 shots from 2 different guns peppered the victims'
car.
(source: Memphis Commercial Appeal)
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