August 13 TENNESSEE----new death sentence Man Convicted of murdering 2 elderly women gets death penalty In Memphis, a man accused of killing 2 elderly women last year was sentenced today in court. James Christopher Riels will receive the ultimate punishment - death. Riels was hired by 1 of the victims to paint her east Memphis home. He admitted he killed the 2 elderly women last April in an attempted robbery. During this weeks trial it came out that Riels was on drugs and wasn't in the right frame of mind during the murders but in the end the jury determining his fate showed no remorse. This afternoon after almost 4 hours of deliberation the jury came back with the death penalty. Prosecutor Jerry Harris says, "The defendants family is very honorable and we feel for them but the defendant deserved this -- this was one of the most heinous cases I've seen in my 30 years --- this is horrible." Both sides expect appeals but even if the death penalty should get overturned -- Harris says Riels will be locked up for the rest of his life. (source: WREG News) NEVADA: Condemned man's brother details final visit on Nevada death row The brother of Terry Jess Dennis, a Washington state man executed late Thursday for strangling a woman in Reno in 1999, said Dennis told him in their final meeting just hours before his lethal injection that he was sorry he "screwed up his life" - but wasn't remorseful about the murder. "He said he wished he hadn't screwed up his life so bad, and went down this spiral of drugs and alcohol. He wished he would have been a better brother, father, friend," Gary Dennis told The Associated Press. "But he said he didn't feel bad about the crime. I found that pretty disgusting that he wouldn't admit some remorse to me." The brothers grew up in Alderwood Manor, Wash., a suburb of Seattle. Gary Dennis, who declined to give his current residence, spent nearly three hours with his brother Thursday in a small visiting room at Nevada State Prison. He said he had "no sympathy for murderers" - but still urged his brother to consider an appeal that would have stopped his execution. But the condemned man refused, describing his lethal injection as "an easy way to go, relatively painless," the brother said, adding that's what Dennis had said he wanted for several years. "It's not like it happened yesterday and he made up his mind today," Gary Dennis said. Gary Dennis also said that during a Tuesday visit his brother told him "it felt good to kill somebody." But on Wednesday, he said his brother - whose mental problems include bipolar disorder - told him "he didn't remember much about it." During Thursday's final visit, Dennis, 57, also was asked by a prison staffer if he wanted to speak with his estranged wife, Bonnie Dennis, who tried to reach him by telephone. He said he didn't. Bonnie Dennis said she left a message stating, "My heart is with him and my prayers, and I love him although I don't love the choices he made. Farewell." She also said that at Dennis' trial she saw his videotaped confession to police, in which he described in detail how he strangled Ilona Strumanis after several days of drinking vodka and beer and having sex in a motel room. She believed he wasn't exaggerating. "I had been on the end of that same kind of rage," she said in a telephone interview, adding that when Dennis drank or used drugs "he was like a demon." Court records show Dennis claimed he had been drinking since he was a teenager, had been jailed at age 14 for marijuana use and had made his first suicide attempt in 1966. His early substance abuse was confirmed by his brother, who said that as a teenager Dennis started "hanging out with a bad crowd" in their hometown of Alderwood Manor. "About 20 years ago I told him to stay away because he was drinking, drugging, thieving a lot," Gary Dennis said. "He was just somebody I didn't want around me." "He was screwed up," he added. "He was the most cynical person that I've ever been around. He just saw conspiracies in everything." After he was contacted late last year by lawyers trying to persuade his brother to appeal, Gary Dennis said he renewed contact. He said he decided to spend as much time as possible with his brother this week "because I didn't want to regret later on not being there." During their final meetings, Gary Dennis said, "We talked about fishing, different movies, events in our childhood. Basically he just wanted someone to talk to, so I listened a lot. He wanted to unload. He was nervous, but steadfast in his commitment" to go through with the execution. "I asked him how he'd feel when he went to the death chamber and he said he'd just be relieved it's over," Gary Dennis said. He added he arranged to have his brother's remains cremated. "I'm having the ashes shipped to me and I'll put them in the creek where we used to fish when we were kids," he said. (source: Associated Press) OHIO: Conviction, death sentence upheld for Ohio inmate in killing of 4 In Cincinnati, a federal court on Friday rejected an appeal by a man convicted and sentenced to death for the 1991 killings of 4 people at a Youngstown housing project. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against the appeal by Willie Williams Jr., 47. The decision upheld a lower court ruling in 2002. State courts already have upheld his conviction and sentence. Williams claimed that his trial was unfair. He asked the appeals court to overturn his conviction and grant him a new trial. Appeals judges John Rogers and Jeffrey Sutton ruled, however, that Williams failed to present evidence to support his claim. In a dissent, Judge Gilbert Merritt said he would have thrown out the conviction because it appeared that the trial court allowed the prosecutor to load the jury with jurors who said they favored the death penalty. That violated Williams' constitutional right to an impartial jury in criminal prosecutions, Merritt wrote. "Williams was not adequately protected from juror bias in favor of the death penalty," the judge wrote. "Those jurors who disfavor the death penalty were excused for cause, those who favor the automatic imposition of the death penalty for murder were not excused for cause." Williams was convicted of aggravated murder, kidnapping and aggravated burglary for the abductions and killings. Police said Williams strangled or shot them on Sept. 1, 1991, because he wanted to regain control of drug trafficking at the housing project. He remains on death row at the Mansfield prison. No execution date is pending for him. Williams' lawyers plan to ask the appeals court to set aside Friday's decision and rehear the case as a full court, said John Gibbons, one of the defense lawyers. (source: Associated Press)
