August 5 OKLAHOMA: State Court Of Criminal Appeals Denies Stay For Death Row Inmate In Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has denied a Tulsa death row inmate's request for a stay of his August 11th execution. The court Thursday also rejected Kenneth Eugene Turrentine's request to postpone his clemency hearing. The hearing's set today before the Pardon and Parole Board at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. Turrentine is scheduled to be executed for killing his girlfriend in 1994 during a shooting spree in Tulsa. He was convicted of the shooting deaths of his 39-year-old girlfriend, Anita Richardson, her 22-year-old daughter, Tina Pennington, and 13-year-old son, Martise Richardson. A federal appeals court later threw out convictions for the slayings of Martise Richardson and Pennington. (source: Associated Press) USA: Jailed in Murders, Buried in Honor When the cremated remains of Russell Wayne Wagner, a 52-year-old U.S. Army veteran who served for three years during the Vietnam War, were laid to rest last week in Arlington National Cemetery, he was honored with military pallbearers, a bugler playing taps and a 3-shot volley from a firing party. After that, things got complicated. Wagner was honorably discharged from the Army in 1972, but he spent the last 2 1/2 years of his life serving two consecutive life sentences for the 1994 murders of an elderly couple in Hagerstown, Md. The couple's son, Vernon G. Davis, said he did not believe it when first his niece, and then a reporter from the Herald-Mail of Hagerstown, told him this week about the July 27 Arlington burial. "I said: 'Nah, that ain't true. That ain't right,'" he said. "I just didn't want to believe it." A veteran himself who served in an honor guard for President John F. Kennedy, Davis, 66, said that knowing someone was buried at Arlington would connote certain things for him. "As a veteran, I would think that he loved his country, that he loved the people, that he loved the United States and was willing to die for it -- not to do what he done to Mom and Dad." "There's no sense in him being down there like that," Davis added. "Not with the heroes we've got coming back from the war." Wagner was convicted in 2002 in the stabbing murders of Daniel Davis, 84, and Wilda Davis, 80, in their Hagerstown home. A previous trial ended in a hung jury. Wagner died Feb. 2 at the Maryland House of Corrections Annex in Jessup. A prison spokesman said that Wagner was found unresponsive in his cell and that foul play and medical conditions had been ruled out. Steven Kessell, deputy state's attorney for Washington County, said the cause apparently was a heroin overdose. All that cemetery officials knew was that the sister of a deceased veteran had requested that her brother be buried there and that she had hand-carried the ashes to the cemetery. Lori Calvillo, a spokeswoman for the cemetery, said that she first heard about Wagner's criminal past Wednesday and that Army officials were gathering details of the case and would decide whether his burial was appropriate. She said it would not be difficult to remove his ashes from the columbarium, a structure for housing cremated remains. She added that the marble "niche cover," similar to a headstone, had not been delivered. Davis, a retired maintenance mechanic who lives with his wife in Hagerstown, said he planned to go to the cemetery this weekend with his family to see the site and push for Wagner's removal. "What they do with him after they pull him out of there," he said, "that's up to them." But the ashes might not be going anywhere. Although Wagner's criminal history came as a surprise to the cemetery, his crimes do not necessarily exclude him from an Arlington burial. "A capital crime and being sentenced to life in prison without parole, or a death sentence, would preclude him from being buried in Arlington," Calvillo said. Anything lesser would not. According to a spokeswoman at the Washington County judiciary, Wagner was eligible for parole. Furthermore, as someone who served on active duty in the armed forces and was honorably discharged, he was eligible for a "standard" burial there (for "full" honors -- including a band, a caisson and a military escort -- more stringent requirements have to be met). For an Army private first class, as Wagner was, pallbearers for his service would have been provided by the 3rd Infantry at Fort Myer. The cemetery does not do background checks on those buried there, Calvillo said, adding that it is up to their families to share such information. Wagner's sister could not be located for comment. In the 1960s, the Department of Defense denied an Arlington burial to a decorated World War II veteran who had been chairman of the New York State Communist Party and had been convicted for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. After a 3-year legal fight by his family, he was buried at Arlington. In 1997, Congress passed legislation barring those convicted of capital crimes from being buried in a national cemetery. The law was enacted to preclude any possibility that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh, a Persian Gulf War veteran, would be buried at Arlington. For most convicted criminals, however, there are no restrictions. So does this mean that others among the 290,000 people buried in the cemetery could be convicted killers? "It is definitely a possibility," Calvillo said. "If you're eligible, you're eligible." (source: Washington Post) CALIFORNIA: Double-slaying suspect defended The older brother of a gang member accused of fatally shooting 2 men near downtown Pinole -- allegedly because one was wearing red, a color claimed by a rival gang -- said Wednesday he can't believe his brother, a construction worker and father of three, is capable of such a brutal act. "Justice will be served," said Vincent O'Campo, brother of Daniel Ruiz, 25, who was arraigned Wednesday in a Richmond courtroom on 2 counts of murder that could make him eligible for the death penalty. "They will find the person who did this." Outside the courtroom, O'Campo, 39, acknowledged that his brother has been in the Sureo gang, which claims the color blue. Ruiz has past convictions for assault, drunken driving and spousal battery, and faces pending charges of vandalism, battery and drug possession, court records show. In November 2000, he cold-cocked a surgeon who had just removed his wisdom teeth. Ruiz is accused of killing David Gregory, 18, of Hercules and Darren Kretchmar, 21, of Pinole on Saturday in Fernandez Park, shooting both in the head at close range. He is also accused of shooting 19-year-old Richard Male of Pinole in the upper body. Prosecutor Barry Grove said Wednesday that Gregory and a young woman who survived the shooting had both been wearing red, but said none of the victims were gang members. Ruiz was soon arrested while trying to hide in a nearby backyard. A woman who was with him has not been located, nor has the gun, police said. ************************** Prison locked down -- fighting and weapons San Quentin prison is on lockdown after a series of fights that began Monday and led to the discovery of several weapons, officials said Wednesday. 8 prisoners have been placed in administrative segregation, said prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon. The fights were between groups of Caucasian and Latino inmates, he said. Prison officials believe guards prevented another fight from occurring Tuesday afternoon but found weapons on the ground and in a garbage can. The lockdown, which means all prisoner activities, except visitations and medical appointments, have been suspended, is likely to last several more days, Crittendon said. (source for both: San Francisco Chronicle) ******************************* Judge Opens Secret D.A. Records to Scrutiny A Los Angeles federal judge has opened the door for defense attorneys to conduct a potentially significant investigation of secret records on the district attorney's unethical use of jailhouse informants in the 1970s and '80s, legal experts said. U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz ruled that attorneys for Thomas L. Goldstein could investigate charges of widespread corruption in the district attorney's use of such informants. Goldstein - who spent 24 years wrongfully imprisoned on murder charges, partly on the word of a jailhouse informant - filed a civil rights lawsuit against Los Angeles County and Long Beach after he was freed last year. Matz emphasized in his ruling that Goldstein's case "does not focus on a violation limited to one actual prosecution." "Plaintiff claims that decades-long operations of the largest prosecutor's office in the United States violated constitutional rights of many individuals," Matz wrote. "The practices consisted of failing to provide required ethical supervision and discipline; creating barriers to the dissemination of information within its ranks; assigning personnel in a manner that perpetuated these violations; and ignoring findings of an investigative body." After problems with jailhouse informants erupted in 1988, a special county grand jury was convened, which 2 years later issued a report saying that the district attorney's office had "failed to fulfill the ethical responsibilities required of a public prosecutor." The investigation, which showed that prosecutors frequently presented the same dubious informants in multiple cases without telling defense attorneys, led to a significant reduction in their use. But the district attorney failed to ensure that all attorneys in the office shared information about deals they had cut to persuade informants to testify, Goldstein's lawyers charged in their suit. Goldstein also said prosecutors had exhibited a pattern of presenting false confessions obtained by jailhouse informants. Gigi Gordon, the Los Angeles defense attorney who played a critical role in unearthing the way jailhouse informants were used in the 1970s and '80s, said, "There is documentation about this which I have seen that it was quite deliberate" that the district attorney's office avoided setting up a system to distribute information about rewards for jailhouse informants. "It was understood that if they did do it, they would have to give up a huge amount of information," Gordon said. Prosecutors by law must disclose to the defense all exculpatory information, and, since a 1972 Supreme Court ruling, have been required to reveal any benefits given in exchange for informants' testimony. Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, declined to comment on the ruling, except to say, "We would defer to our attorneys on this, the county counsel." Deputy County Counsel Roger Granbo said the county is thinking about an appeal. Pasadena attorney Ronald O. Kaye, Goldstein's lead lawyer, said he was very pleased with Matz's "courageous" ruling. Kaye said he and his colleagues would pursue extensive discovery that he believed would reveal heretofore undisclosed information about the use of jailhouse informants at the time of Goldstein's case and afterward. Long Beach police officers arrested Goldstein in November 1979 on suspicion of the shotgun slaying of John McGinest. Goldstein was prosecuted by Deputy Dist. Atty. Timothy Browne, who has since retired. Goldstein's conviction was based largely on the testimony of an eyewitness who later recanted and of a jailhouse informant who a judge later said "fits the profile of the dishonest jailhouse informant." A Marine veteran who served in Vietnam, Goldstein, now 56, maintained from the start that he was innocent. He was released 16 months ago after five federal judges ruled that his constitutional rights had been violated. A state court judge dismissed the charges against him "in furtherance of justice." That judge cited a lack of evidence against Goldstein and the "cancerous nature" of the case. Prosecutors sat mute in the courtroom during Goldstein's trial when jailhouse informant Edward F. Fink lied in testifying that he was getting nothing in return for his testimony, court records show. In reality, Fink received significant benefits for his testimony, a point emphasized by federal judges who overturned Goldstein's conviction. Prosecutors dropped 1 case against Fink and reduced charges in another. Fink, who had 3 felony convictions and a heroin habit, was arrested at least 35 times, including 14 times in Long Beach. He died in 1994. Goldstein asserted in his civil rights suit that the district attorney had violated his constitutional rights by having a policy and practice of "using confessions obtained by jailhouse informants which were false and fabricated." The suit also contended that the district attorney's office had a policy of "failing to disseminate" information within the office "about the benefits jailhouse informants receive in exchange for assistance in securing convictions." Goldstein's attorneys also asserted that the county "failed to create a system and failed to train deputy district attorneys who handle jailhouse informants" despite being aware of "the obvious risks of not creating such a system." Moreover, the suit alleged that in the late 1970s, before Goldstein's prosecution and 1980 conviction, "two prosecutorial agencies conducted inquiries into claims by a jailhouse informant that he knew of improper conduct by" district attorney's office personnel "with regard to confessions allegedly made to a jailhouse informant." Those inquiries and the conclusions that the agencies reached were "never indexed or widely distributed" within the district attorney's office, "and subsequently the informant served repeatedly as a witness in criminal trials." The informants were not identified in the suit. Even before Goldstein was prosecuted, his attorneys asserted, the district attorney's office "considered the creation of a system to track the benefits provided to jailhouse informants and other impeachment information, but no such system was instituted." "This has far-reaching implications," said Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who sat on a blue-ribbon commission that reviewed the operations of the district attorney's office in the mid-1990s. Matz's ruling could "really shake things up" in the district attorney's office, she said. "This is open season on looking into how they handle disclosure and other ethical issues." Gordon said she had once obtained a court order that gave her access to secret information grand jurors saw when they were investigating jailhouse informants. But before she could look at it, prosecutors dismissed the case against her client. "There is information in transcripts sitting in a safe that is relevant to the claims in this case," Gordon said. Matz's ruling, she said, gives Goldstein's lawyers "a clear shot" at obtaining that material. In another part of his ruling, Matz dismissed claims that Deputy Dist. Attys. Ann Ingalls and Patrick Connolly kept Goldstein incarcerated after a federal appeals court ordered him released pending a possible retrial. Matz ruled that the prosecutors were immune from the suit. (source: Los Angeles Times) FLORIDA----new death sentence Man Gets Death for Killing Wife After Sex A man who got angry with his wife because she wanted to cuddle after sex when what he really wanted to do was watch sports on television was sentenced to death for killing her with a claw hammer. Christopher Offord, 30, was sentenced Wednesday by Circuit Judge Dedee Costello, who said the brutality of the crime outweighed any mental problems Offord may have had. "The defendant struck his wife approximately 70 individual blows after spending a happy interlude with her," the judge said. "Her desire to cuddle after sex does not justify the extremely violent, brutal response of the defendant." Offord pleaded guilty to 1st-degree murder in the 2004 slaying of Dana Noser, 40, at his apartment. He confessed to a bartender at a sports bar before his arrest. He told investigators that his wife had been nagging him to come back to bed. Offord did not speak in court but said in a jailhouse interview in June: "I figured I killed her so I deserve to die." ******************** Couey's Attorneys Ask for Judge's Recusal In Inverness, attorneys for a sex offender accused of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford say they are being rushed to trial and are seeking to have the judge removed from the case. Assistant Public Defender Daniel Lewan said in a motion this week that Circuit Judge Richard Howard is not giving the defense enough time to prepare for a case that could have more than 300 witnesses. The judge rejected a defense motion last month to delay John Couey's trial until the summer or fall of 2006, setting a trial date of Feb. 6. Prosecutors said the latest motion lacks "any factual basis." Couey has pleaded not guilty to capital murder, kidnapping and sexual assault in Jessica's death. The girl disappeared from her home Feb. 23. Her body was found March 19, buried behind a mobile home where Couey was staying. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty. (source for both: Associated Press)
