June 1
TEXAS:
Coryell County seeking death penalty in child death case
A Gatesville man with a history of arrests for sexually abusing children was
indicted on a capital murder charge Wednesday in the January death of a
2-year-old boy.
Chet Shelton, 27, of Gatesville, was arrested and booked into the Coryell
County jail after his arrest on Jan. 13. Coryell County District Attorney Dusty
Boyd confirmed his office will be seeking the death penalty in any upcoming
trial.
According to an arrest affidavit, Shelton was tasked with babysitting the
Gatesville toddler, Makai Brooks Lamar, for most of the day while the boy's
mother worked a double shift at a local restaurant.
The child's mother came home for a break from work and reported the child was
fine at that time, the affidavit said. When the mother was back at work,
Shelton said he found the child not breathing and took the child to a
neighbor's home where a Coryell County Deputy Sheriff lived, according to the
affidavit. The child died a few hours later at Coryell Memorial Hospital.
Police almost immediately began treating the 34th Street home in Gatesville as
a crime scene and began investigating the child's bedroom where they found
bloody bedding and pillows.
In the arrest affidavit, police highlight several inconsistencies with
Shelton's story regarding what happened in the hours before Lamar's death,
saying the child's mother ensured police Lamar always slept clothed and in a
diaper.
"When Shelton took the infant child to the neighbor's house for medical
assistance, the infant was wearing no clothing, not even a diaper," the
affidavit said.
Perhaps most troubling are the injuries to Lamar confirmed by an autopsy in
Dallas. The preliminary cause of death was labeled as blunt force trauma as the
child had numerous injuries to his head and internal organs.
The affidavit said the child had also been sodomized, causing "severe, distinct
trauma" to the child.
Shelton's criminal history includes 3 counts of aggravated sexual assault of a
child in May 2007, 3 counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child in December
2007, 2 counts of aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury in October
2010 and 4 counts of indecency with a child by sexual contact in May 2007.
However, many of Shelton's most serious sexual crimes against children were
eventually downgraded to injury to a child, which does not carry a sex offender
registration requirement.
Shelton is currently in the Coryell County Jail where he awaits his trial on at
least $500,000 in bonds.
(source: Killeen Daily Herald)
OHIO:
Seman attorneys challenge death penalty
Attorneys today in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court argued three motions
dealing with the death penalty in the Robert Seman case.
Defense attorneys have challenged the constitutionality of the death penalty in
Ohio as well as motions by prosecutors to dismiss jurors against the death
penalty during jury selection and whether the indictments asking for the death
penalty were worded properly.
Judge Maureen Sweeney said she will issue her rulings shortly.
Seman, 46, is accused of starting a fire March 31, 2015, killing Corinne Gump,
10 and her grandparents, William and Judith Schmidt at their Powers Way home.
Seman was to go on trial the day of the fire for raping Gump.
He faces 10 counts of aggravated murder with death penalty specifications.
(source: vindy.com)
INDIANA:
Juror questionnaire work continues in death penalty case
With jury selection set to begin in about 6 months, attorneys involved in a
capital murder case involving a Gary police officer killed in the line of duty
continue to work on preparing a questionnaire for potential jurors.
"The questionnaire will be done very shortly," said lead counsel Rich Wolter
Jr., who represents Carl Le'Ellis Blount. "We have had good dialogue with the
state."
Blount faces the death penalty if convicted in the July 6, 2014, shooting death
of Gary police Patrolman Jeffrey Westerfield, 47, a 19-year veteran. Blount,
27, of Gary, has pleaded not guilty.
During a brief hearing Wednesday before Lake Superior Court Judge Samuel
Cappas, Wolter said discovery is ongoing and the defense team is waiting for
additional information on the state's firearms examination. Wolter said a
firearms expert has been hired by the defense to conduct a separate
examination.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Jan. 9, and Blount's trial is scheduled to
start Feb. 6.
Westerfield was shot in the head in his police car on 26th Avenue near Van
Buren Street as he followed up on a domestic disturbance involving Blount and
his girlfriend early on July 6, 2014. Westerfield had communicated car-to-car
for a description of Blount, who was on the phone with his half-brother when
Blount said he had to hang up after seeing a police officer with his spotlight
activated in the area, records state.
(source: Gary Post-Tribune)
ARIZONA:
Supreme Court: Jurors must hear of alternative to death penalty
Jurors deciding whether to sentence someone to death are entitled to be told
that in Arizona, the only alternative is life behind bars, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled Tuesday.
In an unsigned opinion, 6 of the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court said it was
a mistake for a Maricopa County Superior Court judge to block the defense
attorney for Shawn Patrick Lynch from telling jurors that if they did not
sentence him to death that he would be sentenced to life behind bars, with no
possibility of parole. Denied that information, the jurors sentenced Lynch to
death.
The ruling is important, not only in this case but other murder trials. In
essence, the high court is saying that jurors, told someone would never get out
- and never pose a risk to anyone else - might decide not to impose the death
penalty.
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, whose office prosecuted the case, had
no comment.
Justice Clarence Thomas, in his dissent, acknowledged that Arizona had
abolished parole as an option in these kinds of cases.
But he pointed out that, at least technically speaking, there was a
possibility, albeit remote, that Lynch could be released: He could get a
recommendation after 25 years from the Board of Executive Clemency, with the
governor having the final word.
And Thomas dismissed requiring a trial judge to tell a jury that Lynch is
ineligible for early release as "nonsense.'
Thomas also said requiring Lynch to be resentenced, this time with jurors
having new information, ignores the "sheer depravity' of the crime that
resulted in the death penalty.
According to court records, Lynch and Michael Sehwani met James Panzarella in
March 2001 at a Scottsdale bar. All three went to Panzarella's residence early
the next morning.
The victim's credit cards were used during the next 2 days.
Panzarella was eventually found in his home, tied to a chair with his throat
slit.
Police also found credit card receipts from purchases made that morning at a
supermarket and convenience store.
Lynch and Sehwani were arrested later that day. Sehwani had Panzarella's credit
cards and checks in his wallet.
In the truck and motel room he and Lynch were using, investigators found the
keys to Panzarella's car, a pistol belonging to the victim and a sweater with
Panzarella's blood on it.
Blood on Lynch's shoes matched the victim's DNA.
During sentencing, prosecutors argued that jurors should consider Lynch's
future dangerousness when determining proper punishment. But the trial judge
refused to let defense counsel tell the jury that under Arizona law, the only
alternative sentence was life without parole.
The majority, in Tuesday's ruling, conceded that there was a chance Lynch could
be released after 25 years. But the justices said that was not enough of a
possibility to let jurors think if they did not sentence Lynch to death that he
might be released.
Sehwani separately pleaded guilty to 1st-degree murder and theft, and was
sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of any form of early release.
The majority in its opinion also brushed aside arguments by prosecutors that a
future Legislature could alter the laws and once again make parole an option,
as it was in Arizona prior to 1994.
The justices said that would effectively undermine the whole precedent the high
court set decades ago when they first concluded that jurors need to know what
are - and are not - the options for a judge in deciding whether to impose the
death penalty.
(source: Kingman Daily Miner)
USA:
Democracy, the death penalty and the Supreme Court
1 Louisiana county accounts for half the state's death sentences - even though
it has just 5 % of the state's population and 5 % of its homicides.
On Tuesday, Justice Stephen Breyer cited this fact about Caddo Parish,
Louisiana, in a dissenting U.S. Supreme Court opinion arguing that the death
penalty is unconstitutional. The "arbitrary" factor of geography, Breyer
proposed, is a reason to think that the death sentence is cruel and unusual
punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.
Is Breyer right? Last June, in a case called Glossip v. Gross, Breyer filed a
dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, arguing that the
death penalty was unconstitutional under all circumstances. In that opinion he
also expressed concern that the accident of geography affects who gets a death
sentence.
Tuesday's opinion, also joined by Ginsburg, was a dissent from the court's
refusal to hear a capital case coming out of Caddo Parish. The opinion expands
on the geography rationale in particular.
Breyer wrote the opinion partly to renew attention to his general argument, and
partially because Caddo Parish is one of the most notable national outliers in
death sentences. Breyer cited a New York Times article stating that between
2010 and 2014, Caddo Parish gave out more death sentences per capita than any
other county in the U.S.
To evaluate how convincing Breyer's argument is, it's worth starting with his
idea that arbitrary enforcement makes the death penalty cruel and unusual. Here
he draws inspiration from the Supreme Court's 1972 opinion in Furman v.
Georgia, which put capital punishment in the whole country on temporary hiatus.
There was no single rationale on which five justices agreed in the Furman case.
But one particularly powerful argument was that of Justice Potter Stewart, who
said that the death penalty was "cruel and unusual in the same way that being
struck by lightning is cruel and unusual." Among all those who committed
heinous crimes, he argued, it was "a capriciously selected random handful upon
whom the sentence of death has in fact been imposed."
Stewart and his colleagues were focused on procedural arbitrariness - the fact
that judges and sometimes juries had almost unlimited discretion in deciding
whom to execute.
It was partly for this reason that the court allowed the death penalty to be
reintroduced in the U.S. starting in 1976. The logic was that, once laws had
been improved to reduce this sort of procedural discretion, the death penalty
was no longer going to be applied arbitrarily.
Breyer's notion of arbitrariness is different. The procedures for sentencing
used in Caddo Parish are no different than procedures used anywhere else.What
is different in Caddo Parish seems to have been one man: former acting district
attorney Dale Cox. Under district attorney Charles Scott, Cox led a series of
death penalty cases. When Scott died in April 2015, Cox became acting district
attorney. He attracted national attention with an interview in which he said,
"I think we need to kill more people." Other comments made Cox (a white man)
seem racist, to boot.
All this sounds - and is - horrifying. The idea that one prosecutor could
vastly expand the number of executions in a place does seem arbitrary. As
Breyer put it, "One could reasonably believe" that if the petitioner in
Tuesday's case "had committed the same crime but been tried and sentenced just
across the Red River in, say, Bossier Parish, he would not now be on death
row." Potter Stewart's "struck by lightning" analogy seems in this sense to be
borne out.
But the aftermath to Cox's interview is also significant. In the wake of the
bad publicity caused by his comments, Cox decided not to run for district
attorney. In November 2015, Caddo Parish voters elected James Stewart, an
African-American, as district attorney to finish out Scott's 5-year term.
Notice what this means: the high rate of death sentences imposed in Caddo
Parish was the product of the democratic process. Cox was seeking death penalty
under the guidance of Scott, who was elected. Stewart may not pursue the same
set of policies. If he doesn't, it will be because the public has spoken and
rejected those policies.
Why should the democratic process matter when it comes to the geography of the
death penalty? The answer lies in a notion that Breyer himself has embraced in
other contexts: the idea that states should function as laboratories of
democracy.
The origins of this idea go back to Breyer's idol, Justice Louis Brandeis, who
wrote in a 1932 dissent that "it is one of the happy incidents of the federal
system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a
laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the
rest of the country."
Brandeis was a progressive pragmatist, and Breyer is a progressive pragmatist.
Both believe in the value of real-world experiment to see whether a social
policy actually makes the world better place. Both believe the judiciary should
stand aside and allow social experiments to run.
In his 2011 book "Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View," Breyer
approvingly quoted Brandeis, adding that the value of trying different
approaches is a reason to make sure that "states have constitutional leeway to
experiment."
Terrible as it may sound, choosing to seek the death penalty whenever it's
legally permissible to do so is a classic example of experimental democracy. So
long as the Supreme Court says the death penalty is legally permissible when
the procedures are performed correctly, it's logically within the rights of
individual states -- or individual counties within states -- to become heavy
execution zones.
That's a terrible idea, to be sure. But it's a terrible idea that can be
corrected by experience. And whatever else it is, the decision isn't arbitrary
-- at least from the perspective of the voters.
(source: Noah Feldman, a Bloomberg View columnist, is a professor of
constitutional and international law at Harvard----Washington Post)
*************
Stop the Killing----Seeking the Death Penalty for Dylann Roof Is Wrong
On May 24, United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that the
Justice Department would seek the death penalty against Dylann Roof, who shot
and killed nine African Americans and wounded another at Emanuel African
Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. "The nature of the
alleged crime and the resulting harm compelled this decision," Lynch argued,
citing the racial hatred behind the killings, the targeting of a church Bible
study to "magnify the societal impact" of the attacks, and Roof's lack of
remorse as factors in the government???s deliberations. Roof faces murder
charges in state court as well, and the local prosecutor is also pursuing the
death penalty.
No mitigating factors appear to be at work in this case: the crimes are
heinous, and Roof's guilt is undisputed. As details emerged after his arrest,
it was learned that Roof had a website that trafficked in white supremacist
ideas and symbols, and haunting photos surfaced that included one of Roof
holding a handgun and Confederate flag as he icily stares at the camera. He
also published a 2500-word manifesto on his website outlining how he came to be
a white supremacist and why he chose Charleston for his murderous rampage. The
depraved motivations for the killings are as clear as the basic facts of the
case.
All this could make it seem as if the trial and eventual sentencing of Roof
would be a bad moment to reassert objections to the death penalty. Roof's crime
is precisely the kind likely to be held up by defenders of capital punishment
to justify its continued use. But just the opposite conclusion should be drawn.
Most death-penalty cases aren't nearly as unambiguous as Roof's: guilt and
innocence are often harder to discern, and such judgments always take place in
a flawed, racially biased criminal-justice system. The Charleston shootings are
the exception that proves the rule. The stark clarity of Roof's case should
actually serve to underscore all the reasons to hope and work for an end to the
death penalty.
The death penalty should be opposed first of all because of our fallible
criminal-justice system. Because there is the possibility of getting a verdict
wrong, the state should never impose an irrevocable punishment. The risk of
executing an innocent person should weigh heavily against whatever arguments
are made for capital punishment. This is not just a theoretical worry: from
1973 to 1999, there was an average of 3 death-row reversals a year. From 2000
to 2011, the average was 5 per year. According to the Death Penalty Information
Center, that amounts to more than 150 inmates sentenced to death who ended up
being exonerated. Organizations like the Innocence Project continue to work to
overturn wrongful convictions, helping free what they call a "staggering number
of innocent people."
A crime such as Roof's, undertaken in the name of white supremacy, should also
be a reminder of the deep-seated racial injustices that still mark the United
States, not least in the application of the death penalty. Since 1976, people
of color have accounted for 43 % of executions and make up 55 % of those now on
death row - numbers far disproportionate to their share of the general
population. Numerous state-level studies have confirmed this bias. A 2015 study
of Washington state jurors, for example, found they were 4 1/2 times more
likely to recommend the death penalty for a black defendant than for a white
one charged with similar crimes. Racial bias also affects the way juries are
selected. The evidence on all these matters is overwhelming.
It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to imagine how these grave problems with
administering the death penalty could be eliminated. There is no way to
guarantee that executions would be resorted to only in the most clear-cut
cases, such as Roof's: if the option to execute dangerous criminals is
available, the pressure to use it will follow. Taking our bearings from the
most heinous and hateful of murders is a profound mistake.
The deepest argument against the death penalty, however, remains a moral one:
every human life possesses dignity, and the taking of life is always an affront
to that dignity. Executing a murderer does not bring back his victims and it
perpetuates the violence that has plagued American society for too long. If
there are alternatives available - and in the contemporary United States, there
certainly are - they should be used. Perhaps the extraordinary example of the
families of Roof's victims should guide us here. As President Obama put it in
his remarks just days after the shooting, "in the midst of unspeakable grief"
these families responded "with words of forgiveness." Of course, the grace of
individual Christians is no substitute for the work of our criminal-justice
system. But if the state should not confuse justice with mercy, neither should
it confuse justice with vengeance. The response of the victims' families has
pointed us toward a better way.
(source: The Editors, Commonweal Magazine)
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