Nov. 30
TEXAS----impending execution----Death row inmate sues Texas parole board for
having too many ex-law enforcement members
A 'Texas 7' escapee scheduled for execution filed a lawsuit this week alleging
that there are too many men and too many former law enforcement officials on
the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
Joseph Garcia, who is slated to die Tuesday, currently has a plea for clemency
in front of the 7-member board, asking them to recommend a commutation nearly 2
decades after he was sentenced to die for a prison break-out and crime spree
that left a police officer dead.
The board would normally be expected to issue a recommendation Friday - 2
business days before the planned execution. But mid-day Thursday, Garcia's
attorneys filed a federal lawsuit seeking to prevent the board from making a
decision until a more representative set of members can be appointed.
Currently, the suit notes, the board is "stacked with individuals whose
background places them firmly on the side of the State and law enforcement."
A spokesman for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles did not respond to a
request for comment.
By law, the there's a limit on the number of former prison employees who can be
on the parole board, though it hasn't always been that way. When the
legislature first began regulating the board's membership in 1997, the only
requirements were that members had to be representative of the "general public"
and that they had to have lived in Texas for 2 years.
In the late 1990s, a number of inmates sued the parole board, including
notorious Houston ax killer Karla Faye Tucker, who alleged that the whole
clemency process was so "inadequate" as to violate her due process rights. She
lost, but in another lawsuit that same year a federal court found that "a flip
of the coin would be more merciful than [the Board's] votes."
On the heels of public criticism and media scrutiny, the legislature added a
new requirement in 2003, limiting the number of former Texas Department of
Criminal Justice employees who could be on the board at any time to 3.
Even though the current board includes only two former TDCJ employees,
attorneys allege, all but one of the seven voting members has a law enforcement
background, including past jobs as police officers and county sheriffs.
"Eighty-five percent of the Board members, then, are either former employees of
TDCJ, law-enforcement officers, or both," Garcia's lawyers wrote. "The failure
of this Board to be 'representative of the general public' is highlighted by
the fact that approximately 0.4% of the Texas population are law-enforcement
officers and 0.15% are TDCJ employees."
The 7th board member is a former adviser to Gov. Greg Abbott.
On top of that, 6 of the board's members are men, a distribution that's also
not representative of the general population.
Given all that, the lawsuit asks for an injunction to bar the parole board from
making a decision on clemency until the governor appoints a more representative
board.
The newly filed lawsuit came hours after Garcia's attorneys sent the governor a
letter begging for a 30-day reprieve in light of media reporting regarding the
source of the state's execution drugs.
Citing unidentified documents, a BuzzFeed News report on Wednesday identified
the Houston compounding pharmacy believed to be one of two that mixes up the
batches of pentobarbital used in the Huntsville death chamber.
Since the Braeswood-area business had a track record of safety violations
documented by the state, Garcia's attorney's asked the governor for a reprieve
to give them time to investigate.
The governor's office did not respond Thursday to the Chronicle's request for
comment on the letter.
At the time of the notorious escape that eventually landed Garcia on death row,
he was already in prison for a crime out of Bexar County, where he stabbed a
man at least a dozen times. Since then, he's repeatedly framed the slaying as
self-defense and not murder.
In December 2000, he was serving time at the Connally Unit when he teamed up
with six fellow prisoners to plot the biggest break-out in Texas prison
history.
In a carefully orchestrated plot months in the making, the 7 inmates took
hostages, busted into the prison armory, stole weapons and stormed out of the
unit in a prison truck. After a crime spree across the state, on Christmas Eve
the men held up an Oshman's sporting goods store and ended up killing Irving
police officer Aubrey Hawkins.
Afterward, the crew fled and were captured a month later in Colorado, living in
a trailer park and posing as Christian missionaries. Though one of the men
killed himself rather than surrender, the other 6 were captured and sent to
death row. 3 have since been executed.
Though Garcia said he never fired a shot, he was convicted under the law of
parties and sentenced to die. If his appeals, request for reprieve, and
clemency plea all fail, he'll become the 12th Texas prisoner put to death this
year.
(source: Houston Chronicle)
******************
Pablo Melendez, Jr.: Atheist Innocent On Death Row?
When I reached out to an atheist on death row, if you'll recall, all I really
aimed to find out was what life was like behind bars for a heathen. But when
Pablo Melendez, Jr. wrote back to me from Texas' death row, what I got was a
glimpse into an absolute travesty of justice.
Pablo wrote to me, kind enough to answer my simple questions about life on
death row as an atheist. He barely mentioned his case, but he said just enough
that I needed to know more. I couldn’t find much out there on the web and so I
asked him for more information on his case. He referred me to a book called, No
Justice, No Victory: The Death Penalty in Texas by Susan Lee Campbell Solar.
When I looked it up, I was disappointed to find out that the only place willing
to ship it to Canada was charging over $60 for it. I couldn’t afford to spend
that on a book and so I reached out to you for help. One of you was generous
enough to have it sent to me. I can't thank you enough, because this case, I
very strongly believe, needs to have more light shed on it.
In the time since my first posts about Pablo, click here and here for those,
I’ve been able to read more about his case and I have also received another
letter from him. Today, I'm going to shed some light on the biggest problems in
Pablo’s case, and next week, I will publish the latest letter from our fellow
infidel on death row in Texas.
The Problems With Pablo's Case
If you were to buy the State’s version of events, it’d go something like this:
Michael Sanders and Tommie Seagraves pull into a car wash late one evening in
Fort Worth, Texas. They pull up next to a payphone to make a call when they're
approached by a man wielding a gun demanding their money. Just before midnight,
the stranger shoots Seagraves in the neck, and despite Sanders' pleas to let
them go, proceeds to fire his gun at Michael's back. Michael Sanders is shot 4
times and falls back into his truck’s cab where he quickly dies from his
wounds. Seagraves, however, manages to survive and is able to give the police a
pretty detailed description of his assailant. The shooter, very clearly, had a
goatee, a ponytail and a tattoo on his right shoulder. Two other eyewitnesses
corroborated this description and a composite sketch was drawn up:
Many months after the crime took place, a tip came in that implicated Pablo
Melendez, Jr. an 18-year-old gang member who’d had trouble with the law before.
They picked Pablo up, mounted a case, tried him and he’s been sitting on death
row ever since.
It's an open-and-shut case, according to the State of Texas. They got the bad
guy, he’s set to die, and none of us have to worry about it again (save for
Pablo's family and the prison and medical staff who have to kill him), right?
Wrong. Enter Gracie Jett, the mother of the murder victim, Michael Sanders, who
happens to have balls of steel. None of this made sense to her. None of it
added up. Gracie wanted to know what happened to her son and so she began her
own investigation. The problems in the case she couldn’t get past are as
follows:
1. If the shooter was Pablo Melendez, an 18-year-old boy who was, at the time,
unable to grow a beard, why did the composite drawing from Seagrave’s
description include extensive facial hair? In a parole photo taken a week
prior, Pablo’s face was as smooth as a baby's bottom and his hair neatly
trimmed and short. According to Seagraves, the shooter had had a ponytail and a
tattoo on his right shoulder, neither of which applied to Pablo. 2 other
witnesses, totally unrelated and unknown to Seagraves and Melendez, reported
the same features on the shooter. Pablo, aside from being Hispanic and male,
didn't match the description in any other way. In fact, he’d had the precise
opposite features to those that witnesses had very carefully described.
2. Upon demanding to see photos of her son’s corpse, Gracie discovered he’d
been beaten up. According to No Justice, No Victory: The Death Penalty in Texas
by Susan Lee Campbell Solar, Gracie said "his nose was broken, his face was
skinned above the eye. The report said his eye was swollen." This contradicts
the state's version of events. Nowhere in their narrative did a beating take
place.
3. The tip that came in implicating Pablo was from another member of the gang
Pablo had belonged to, who was facing 12 years in prison for attempted murder.
He was given a plea bargain in exchange for testifying against Melendez. His
name was Johnny Ayala and his brother-in-law, Robert Gonzalez, Jr., was the
gang's leader, whose brother, Roel Gonzalez, happened to look familiar: he was
a dead-ringer for the composite drawing of the suspect in Michael Sanders'
murder.
4. After one of the eyewitnesses testified at trial that the man she saw
fleeing the scene was Pablo Melendez, Gracie’s daughter, Mickey approached her.
She showed the witness, Susie Carillo, a photo of Pablo and asked if that had
been the man she saw. Carillo said no. When Mickey pressed her on why she’d
testified it was at trial, Carillo said she’d been in a bad mental state as
she’d just lost her son, and the pressure the prosecutors had put on her to
identify Melendez had been unbearable. Despite this, she demanded to see the
suspects in a lineup – demands that went ignored. And so, in her weakened
mental state, she broke down and did as the prosecutors asked.
5. Nearly all of the state’s witnesses against Melendez were related in some
way or another to the man who bore an uncanny resemblance to the composite
drawing, Roel Gonzalez. He even had a tattoo where the description said the
killer had one and where, at the time of the killing, Melendez had none. The
gang members who testified against Melendez also walked away with the reward
money for tips in this case.
6. The testimony of eyewitnesses, such as Jeffrey Jackson, had been excluded
from the trial and kept from the defence team – testimony that would have
painted an entirely different story of what went down that night. When the
defense team tracked Jackson down he said, without hesitation, that he’d be
happy to go on the record with his version of events. When they returned
several days later to have him sign his statement, the BBQ restaurant owner
suddenly had a different tone and refused as though he'd been threatened.
Jackson later ignored a subpoena to appear in court and give his testimony and
there is physical evidence, in the form of a note from the prosecutor's desk,
that implies they’d been in contact with Jackson about the matter, perhaps even
suggesting that he would face no consequences if he didn't show up to testify.
7. Pablo Melendez, it is claimed by the prosecution, confessed to the crime,
but his confession consisted of nothing more than the admission he didn’t know
if he did it or not because he had been so high. The “confession” was also
written in English, which he did not speak, read or write at the time he was
asked to sign it. Recall, he was an 18-year-old boy at the time. He also didn’t
know how to read or write in his native Spanish.
When you break it down, the case against Melendez rests on two things: a tip
from his fellow gang member who got, in exchange for his testimony, less time
in prison for the charge he’d been facing and the testimony of his fellow gang
members who, in testifying, took reward money and deflected the spotlight from
their leader’s brother, who looked exactly like the composite sketch of the
suspect.
If you were to tell me there was a better case that illustrated reasonable
doubt, I'd not believe you. There is ample reasonable doubt here, and the state
of Texas is getting ready to kill this man.
In 1999, Pablo's appeal was denied.
If this doesn't alarm you, someone needs to shake you awake. Get the defib
paddles out and check your pulse, because you should be boiling. Especially
you, Texans. They're taking your tax money and they’re going to use it to kill
a man who may very well be innocent. If you're not absolutely livid, you simply
haven't got a heart.
We know Pablo had been in trouble before. We know he struggled with addiction
and was headed down a path that was going to lead to prison or death at some
point or another. We know he wasn’t exactly a stand-up citizen, but there is no
evidence, whatsoever, that suggests he's killed anyone, ever.
Gracie Jett and her daughter Mickey both strongly believe that the wrong man is
being punished for Michael’s murder. So much so, that both of them have made
repeated contact with Pablo. Mickey has even gone to visit him on death row.
They are certain that the man who killed their beloved son and brother is Roel
Gonzalez and it would appear he's gotten away with it.
What are your thoughts on Pablo's case? What questions do you have for him that
I can send in my next letter? Let me know in the comments! If you would like to
write to Pablo or send him books to read (he was amazed to find out there are
atheist books), let me know: mo...@godlessmom.com
(source: Courtney Heard; patheos.com)
FLORIDA:
St. Patrick Church to ring its bells in honor of death row inmates
Churches across 17 counties will ring their bells in unison today in honor of
the 344 people on death row in Florida.
St. Patrick Church, at 500 NE 16th Ave., will host the second annual
Gainesville Cities for Life event at 6:30 p.m., said Deacon Lowell “Corky”
Hecht, the director of the prison ministry for the Diocese of St. Augustine.
The event will feature three speakers, a Q&A and ringing of the bells.
Cities for Life is an international day that calls for the end of the death
penalty in honor of when Italy ended its death penalty on Nov. 30, 1786, Hecht
said.
The speakers at the event include criminal appeals lawyer Sonya Rudenstine,
anti-death penalty activist Christine Henderson and Herb Donaldson, whose uncle
was executed and is believed to have been innocent, Hecht said.
Hecht, who has served as a deacon for 27 years, has worked with the inmates at
Florida State Prison, Union Correctional and smaller prisons around the
Catholic district for the past two years. He prays with inmates, gives them
communion and provides religious books for them to read.
Outgoing Gov. Rick Scott has scheduled an execution for Jose Jimenez on Dec.
13, Hecht said. Jimenez was convicted of killing a Miami woman in 1992,
according to the Orlando Sentinel.
Hecht has known men who have been executed and has spoken with men in solitary
confinement right outside their cell door, he said.
Catholics should stand against the death penalty in order to preserve the
preciousness of human life, he said.
“It’s extremely hard to rationalize why, as a civilized society, we do this,”
Hecht said.
Abigail Moritz, a 20-year-old UF business administration sophomore, will
volunteer at the demonstration by introducing speakers.
Moritz said the death penalty is not talked about as much as it should be and
more young people should get involved.
“We cannot just rely on older generations to take care of things for us,” she
said.
Last year, 45 people attended the first Gainesville Cities of Life event, Hecht
said. He hopes more than 100 people attend this year.
While there will be an opening and closing prayer, the event is not strictly
for Catholics, Hecht said. The demonstration will close with a candlelighting
ceremony.
“When we light these candles, it’s like taking ownership for 1 soul, 1 person,”
Hecht said.
(source: The (Univ. Florida) Independent Alligator)
****************
Lawyer wants judge to toss death penalty for man accused of shooting 6 people
in Sanford
Defense lawyers for the man accused in 2 shootings that left 2 people dead and
4 others hurt want to know if their defendant will face the death penalty.
Allen Cashe is accused of killing LaTina Herring and her 8-year-old son Branden
during a domestic dispute in March 2017. Herring’s father and 3 others were
also shot but survived.
Cashe’s trial is scheduled to start in January. On Thursday, a judge heard a
long list of motions by Cashe's public defender. Many of those motions focused
on the sentencing phase if Cashe is found guilty because Cashe could face the
death penalty.
"It's come to a point in our country where the death penalty is evolving,”
public defender Jeff Dowdy told the judge. “We would urge that you declare the
death penalty unconstitutional."
While the judge denied that motion, and several other motions related to
Florida’s lethal injection procedure, he did allow some motions involving the
jury for the sentencing phase to be revisited at that time.
Cashe was being held at the Orange County jail, but the judge ordered that he
be held instead at the Seminole County jail until the trial so his defense team
can prepare.
Police said the shootings started with an argument over keys. Herring told
police Cashe had the keys to her home and refused to give them back. While
speaking to Herring, police received a 911 call from Cashe stating that Herring
had the keys to his vehicle. The victim returned the keys to Cashe at a gas
station in Sanford, and both parties left separately.
Police said they later received a 911 call about the former couple getting into
a 2nd argument over property, this time at the home. The officer went to the
home and was able to settle the argument once more, police said.
Officers arrived at the home, and found Herring and Cashe fighting in the front
yard, arguing over Cashe returning the keys, which were later located inside
the home.
According to police, Cashe then collected some of his clothing and was
preparing to the leave the home. The victim brought out a bag, saying it was
filled with more of Cashe’s belongings. Cashe refused to take the bag and left.
Herring asked if officers would take the bag with Cashe’s belongings and hold
it for safekeeping. Inside the bag, officers found a Glock 22 handgun and
ammunition.
Soon after that, police said the received another 911 call from someone
reporting that Herring, her father and her children had been shot.
Police said Cashe drove away from the scene and randomly shot 2 bystanders at
West 24th Street and South Marshall Avenue. Both bystanders survived.
(source: WFTV news)
NEBRASKA:
Bailey Boswell pleads not guilty to murder, dismemberment charges in death of
Sydney Loofe
Bailey Boswell, 1 of 2 people accused in the death and dismemberment of Lincoln
store clerk Sydney Loofe, pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges of 1st-degree
murder and improper disposal of a body.
Boswell, 24, entered the plea in writing, which cancels a planned Dec. 17
arraignment in Saline County District Court. The plea comes a week after
District Judge Vicky Johnson rejected Boswell's motion to nullify the state's
death penalty.
Both Boswell and her 52-year-old boyfriend, Aubrey Trail, face the death
penalty if convicted.
The pair had been living at an apartment in Wilber, Nebraska, at the time of
Loofe's disappearance. Loofe, who worked at a Menard's store in Lincoln,
disappeared a year ago after arranging a date via Tinder with Boswell. The
clerk's body was found 3 weeks later in a rural area about 50 miles west of
Wilber following extensive searches by local, state and federal law enforcement
officers.
Trail, in calls to reporters, has claimed that he was responsible for Loofe's
death and that Boswell was not in the room when it happened.
Trail is scheduled to go on trial in June in Saline County. A trial date for
Boswell has not yet been set.
(source: Omaha World-Herald)
NEVADA:
Lawyer: Man picks death penalty risk over Las Vegas judge’s sentence
Covered in neo-Nazi tattoos, Bayzle Morgan would rather face the death penalty
than be sentenced by a certain Las Vegas judge, his lawyer said Thursday.
More than 7 months after prosecutors said they would not seek capital
punishment for Morgan, he’s now trying to pull back on a plea to 1st-degree
murder for killing 75-year-old Jean Main inside her home in 2013.
"My client’s position right now is that he’d rather be given the death penalty
than be sentenced by (District) Judge (Michelle) Leavitt,” attorney Dayvid
Figler said.
Moments earlier inside the judge’s courtroom, when Leavitt asked whether the
27-year-old Morgan had pleaded guilty because prosecutors withdrew the death
penalty, the defendant spoke up: “I don’t care about that.”
When he entered his plea in April before District Judge Eric Johnson, Morgan’s
lawyers said they planned to ask for a minimum of 21 years behind bars in the
murder case. Morgan was later assigned to Leavitt’s courtroom after she took
over Johnson’s homicide cases.
"The only reason he entered into his guilty plea was because of his comfort
with Judge Johnson and interactions with Judge Johnson,” Figler said. “If he
does not get to be sentenced by the judge who he entered his plea in front of,
then it’s his desire to withdraw his guilty plea."
Prosecutors are expected to ask a judge to send him to prison for life without
the possibility of parole, but if he is allowed to pull back on the deal, he
could once again face capital punishment.
Figler added that Morgan “strenuously objects" to Leavitt deciding “any issue
of merit with regard to his case."
But Chief Deputy District Attorney Giancarlo Pesci said, “There is no
expectation expressed in the plea canvas. You can’t create one after the fact
because you have sour grapes."
Leavitt pointed out that neither Morgan nor his lawyers negotiated to ensure
that Johnson handed down his sentence.
"If you want to file a motion to withdraw your guilty plea and put the death
penalty back on the table, I guess I’m just literally shocked by that
statement,” the judge said. “Shocked."
Morgan, whose tattoos were covered with makeup during a 2016 robbery trial in a
separate case, also pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to commit burglary,
burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon and robbery with a deadly
weapon.
A swastika within a clover is permanently etched under Morgan's left eye. The
words “Most Wanted” are scrawled across his forehead. “Baby Nazi” is tattooed
on his neck, and two white supremacist tattoos are where his eyebrows should
be. On Thursday, his head was shaved, and he had a thin, light brown beard.
Jurors convicted Morgan in the robbery trial, and he is serving a sentence of
about 3 to 9 years at High Desert State Prison in Indian Springs.
Prosecutors said the slaying of Main occurred just days before the unrelated
robbery.
Also according to prosecutors:
In May 2013, Morgan broke into Main's home in the 8000 block of Green Pasture
Avenue while she was alone, pistol-whipped her over the head so hard that the
trigger guard broke into pieces, then shot her in the back of the head. Her
boyfriend found her face-down in a 1st-floor bathroom.
A getaway driver, identified as Keith Smith, now 49, left when he heard
gunshots but returned and saw Morgan with a suitcase of items from the victim’s
house. Smith was sentenced to 4 to 10 years in prison on burglary charges.
Police recovered a laptop, a Kindle Fire, a purse with $800 and keys to a
Cadillac Escalade at Morgan’s residence when he was arrested.
(source: Las Vegas Review-Journal)
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