[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----GA., N.C., ORE., PENN.
Sept. 15 GEORGIA: Court upholds cop killer's death sentence The federal appeals court has upheld a death sentence against man who killed a sheriff's deputy, even though the condemned inmate's lead lawyer drank a quart of vodka every day during trial. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, in a 2-1 decision issued Thursday, said that even though Robert Wayne Holsey's trial lawyers did not do a competent job, their deficient performance did not prejudice the outcome of the trial. Holsey sits on Georgia's death row for fatally shooting Baldwin County Deputy Will Robinson after an armed robbery of a convenience store in December 1995. Holsey's appellate lawyers noted that his lead trial lawyer, Andrew Prince, drank a quart of vodka every night of Holsey's trial because he was about to be sued and prosecuted for stealing client funds. During Holsey's appeal, Prince testified that he probably shouldn't have been allowed to represent anybody because of his condition. In its ruling, the 11th Circuit said the key question was not whether Holsey's lawyers were ineffective. It was whether their deficient performance prejudiced the outcome to the point there was a reasonable probability Holsey would not have been sentenced to death. Judge Ed Carnes, writing the majority opinion, said the abundant aggravating factors - such as the fact Holsey killed a deputy to avoid arrest and had a prior armed robbery conviction - outweighed any additional mitigation evidence Holsey's lawyers could have presented to the jury had they been doing their job. Judge J.L. Edmondson concurred with the decision, but he indicated it was a close call as to whether the poor performance of Holsey's lawyers prejudiced the outcome of the trial. In dissent, Judge Rosemary Barkett said the jury never learned that Holsey was subjected to abuse so severe, frequent and notorious that his neighbors called his childhood home the torture chamber. Holsey's mother beat him with an extension cord, shoes and a broom and would hold his head under the bathtub faucet, Barkett wrote, also citing testimony that the house was infested with roaches and reeked of urine and rotting food. Had the jury heard more about Holsey's horrific child abuse, Barkett wrote, there is a substantial probability he would not have been sentenced to death. Carnes disagreed. He noted that the jury heard details of Holsey's abuse during the 1997 trial and said the more exhaustive details of it that emerged on appeal were not enough to strike down the death sentence. Holsey's lawyer, Brian Kammer, said the jury was not presented enough evidence because Holsey's lead trial attorney opted to anesthetize himself with vodka rather than prepare adequately to defend against the death penalty. The 11th Circuit majority appears similarly to have anesthetized its sense of justice. Lauren Kane, a spokeswoman for state Attorney General Sam Olens, said her office had no comment on the court's ruling. (source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution) NORTH CAROLINA: Man accused of killing wife caught in Charleston A man who was released from death row in Florida more than 2 decades ago and now accused of murdering his wife Thursday night in north Charlotte has been arrested. Charleston police arrested Joseph Shabaka Brown at a Holiday Inn Express on Friday afternoon. Police said Brown murdered 71-year-old Mamie Caldwell Brown at the Oaks Apartments on Shadow Oaks Drive around 9 p.m. Thursday night. CMPD detectives have traveled to Charleston to bring Brown back to Charlotte to face murder charges. Brown spent 14 years on death row in Florida after a murder conviction before being released in 1986. Brown, who also goes by the name Shabaka WaQlimi, relocated to North Carolina from Washington, D.C. in 2010, according to ncronline.org. He was convicted of raping and murdering Earlene Treva Barksdale in 1974. Barksdale was the wife of a prominent lawyer in Tampa, Florida, but a key witness who testified at the trial later admitted to lying. The witness claimed he heard Brown confess to the murder but retracted those statements. Brown's lawyer at the time was Richard Blumenthal, currently a Democratic Senator in Connecticut. Brown, 62, was freed after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1985 that blood and ballistics evidence showed he was innocent and the prosecution intentionally hid that evidence. He was released a year after that ruling, and the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office did not retry him. Brown is 1 of just a few hundred people to be freed from death row on innocence or dropped charges in the last 40 years, according to ncronline.org. He was just 15 hours from execution on October 17, 1983 before a federal judge issued a stay. Mamie Brown died in what is being described as a brutal fight and was hit stabbed with a knife and another blunt object, police said. It's
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, CALIF., VA., MO., OKLA.
Sept. 15 USA (MICHIGAN): Death penalty decision in Lansing killing delayed in federal court in Grand Rapids The government has delayed making a recommendation on whether alleged members of a violent Lansing street gang will face the death penalty in an alleged drug-related killing. Federal prosecutors were to advise U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker on Friday if any of the 5 remaining defendants would face the death penalty. But the government requested an adjournment because U.S. Attorney Patrick Miles Jr., appointed this summer by President Barack Obama, needed to familiarize himself with the case before making a recommendation to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. The Justice Department received Miles' recommendation on Aug. 16, and wants to schedule mitigation conferences with certain defendants and their attorneys. Because of that, a final decision is not likely to be made until January 2013, Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy VerHey wrote. Mustafa Abdul-Qadir Al-Din, Walee Abdulazeem Al-Din, Charles Kunta Lewis Sr., Ralphael Remier Crenshaw and Nicholas Brown await trial in the July 23, 2010, killing of Shayla Johnson during a robbery at her Lansing home. Demetris Kline and Dion Lanier are serving 20-year sentences in federal prison after they earlier pleaded guilty to charges. The government says the defendants are part of gang called the Block Burners, who robbed others of cocaine and marijuana then sold it themselves. They face multiple charges. Johnson was taken from her home, forced into the trunk of a vehicle and shot when she resisted, an indictment says. In court records, a defense attorney called the crime barbaric. Members and associates of this gang promoted and were actively involved in acts of violence, often involving firearms, in efforts to obtain drugs and drug proceeds by way of force, threats of force, armed robbery and kidnapping for profit for their own personal gang, VerHey wrote in court records. He said that Johnson's killing was done in an especially heinous, cruel or depraved manner. (source: Michigan Live) CALIFORNIA: Prop. 34 and Seeking to End the Death Penalty Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the arsonist who started the 2003 Old Fire in the San Bernardino Mountains. The jurors will make that decision, but California voters will have a say too. Proposition 34 on the November ballot would end the death penalty in California and replace it with life in prison without the possibilility of parole. If passed, Prop. 34 would reverse another ballot measure, Prop. 7, which voters passed in 1978. Sacramento attorney Don Heller wrote that voter initiative at the request of then-State Senator John Briggs. I wrote it with the intent of writing a perfect legal document. Which I did. It was well crafted. It met all the constitutional standards and it's never been overturned in any aspects by the US Supreme Court. Heller says. Jerry Brown was governor at the time, and celebrated crime sprees like the Manson killings and 2 assassination attempts on President Gerald Ford were still fresh in voters' minds. Heller remembers California as a western state with a taste for frontier justice, and Prop. 7 got more than 71 % of the vote. It was a culture of hanging 'em high from the big oak tree, Heller recalls. It was a western mentality of free thinkers and speedy punishment for criminal behavior. But executions in California were anything but speedy. Since Prop. 7 passed, California has executed just 13 men and the death row population has grown from zero to more than 700. The average time between conviction and execution is nearly 18 years. Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento says his group has pushed time and again to reduce that wait by streamlining legal appeals. If the legislature would do its job and pass the reforms correctly, and we've had bills in committee many, many times and they've always been killed in committee, we could get this done, Scheidegger says. Scheidegger strongly opposes Prop. 34, saying simply the inmates on death row deserve to die. These are crimes far worse than the typcial murder. These are cases of serial rape and torture, people torturing and murdering children, and life in prison without parole simply isn't a sufficient punishment, he says. But Don Heller, who wrote California's death penalty law, kept an eye on it as it was implemented. And he didn't like what he saw. One of the things I noticed immediately, which surprised me, was that the qualitiy of lawyers representing defendants in death penalty cases was suboptimal, Heller says. Heller calls himself a conservative Republican. But he now believes his ballot measure in his words, was a colossal mistake that needs to be changed. He's supporting Proposition 34. I'm a believer in law and order. I think that's the primary objective of government
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
Sept. 15 INDIA: Hoshiarpur: Killers of 16 yr old to be executed on Oct 5 The court has fixed date and execution of the accused in the killing of a 16 year old boy Abhi Verma. District and Sessions Judge GK Dhir ordered execution of Jasvir Singh and Vikram Singh Walia on October 5 at 9 am in the Central Jail Patiala. The duo had abducted and killed Abhi, son of a local goldsmith for ransom in February 2005. The court also directed the Jail Superintendent to take necessary steps in this regard and prepare a report after executing the death warrants. On December 21, 2006, the sessions court had sentenced Vikram, Jasvir and Sonia (Jasvir's wife) to death. The Punjab and Haryana High Court had confirmed the death sentence which was later commuted to life imprisonment but only for Sonia by the Supreme Court in January 2010. Later, the death-row convicts filed a special leave petition in SC on grounds of Section 364-A (kidnapping for ransom) was unconstitutional, but the plea was dismissed. Ravi Verma, father of the deceased, had applied in the sessions court for the death warrants of the convicts through his counsel. Verma, though welcomed the order but expressed his dissentment that the court had taken too much time in giving the judgement. A student of Class 9 in the DAV School, Abhi also known as Harry, was kidnapped on his way to school on February 14, 2005. The abductors had demanded a ransom of Rs 50 lakh, however, the dead body of the boy was found from a village in Jalandhar district. The boy had died due to overdose of choloroform and fortvin (pentazocine). The executions, if carried, will break a de-facto moratorium on death penalty as no execution has taken place in India for the past eight years after Dhanajoy CHatterjee was executed on August 14, 2004 in Calcutta. It may be recalled that Balwant Singh Rajoana, co-accused in former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh's assassination was to be hanged on March 31, 2012 but the orders were stayed following large scale protests in Punjab against his execution. (source: Punjab Newsline) GAMBIA: Death Row Deadline Approaches In The Gambia: Will 38 Inmates Survive The Weekend? If Gambian President Yahya Jammeh sticks to his word, Saturday will be the end of the line for 38 death row inmates. On Aug. 19, Jammeh promised that 47 inmates would be shot by Sept. 15, according to a report form Amnesty International. He then ordered firing squad executions of 9 convicts, which took place on Aug. 23. Those were the 1st state-sponsored executions since 1985. The Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh has promised to execute all death row inmates on Sept. 15. There has been no official word on the death row deadline since then, but human rights organizations will keep a close watch on the situation as Sept. 15 comes and goes. Audrey Gaughran, the Africa Director for Amnesty International, said in the report that these prisoners could very well be innocent of serious crimes. Unfair trials are commonplace in the country, where death sentences are known to be used as a tool against the political opposition and international standards on fair trials are not respected, she said. The number of grossly unfair trials is shocking and an especially serious concern in cases where the death penalty is handed down. Jammeh first came to power in a 1994, following a military coup. The Telegraph reports that in a stroke of luck, then-sergeant Jammeh was the 1st soldier to reach the presidential palace after the former leader had fled. The lowly noncommissioned officer quickly claimed power for himself, and has ruled ever since. His tenure has been full of outlandish episodes. Jammeh once claimed to have invented an herbal cure for AIDS. He has prosecuted suspected sorcerers in an attempt to avenge the death of his aunt. He even created a new title for himself: His Excellency Sheikh Professor Doctor President. Under his rule, the Gambia has suffered slow development and economic stagnation. This tiny sliver of a West African country stretches along the Gambia River. It is surrounded on all sides by Senegal, except where a narrow coastline abuts the Atlantic Ocean. Nearly half of its nearly 2 million people live below the poverty line, according to the CIA. The national economy depends largely on international aid; other revenues come from worker remittances, agriculture, and tourism. Critics of Jammeh say he squanders public money on wasteful projects at the expense of infrastructure, healthcare and education. The Gambia has a nominally democratic political system, though the last presidential election was widely condemned as rigged. Jammeh claimed 72 % of a popular vote in November of 2011, securing another 5 years in office. (source: International Business Times) * Gambia's President Jammeh halts executions amid outcry Yahya Jammeh staged a coup
