April 5 FLORIDA----execution//volunteer Florida inmate who dropped appeals executed for 1999 slaying An inmate who pleaded guilty to strangling a woman who gave him a ride home from a bar was executed Tuesday, after firing his attorneys and dropping his legal appeals. Glen Ocha's execution came hours after Gov. Jeb Bush said he thought about delaying it out of respect for Pope John Paul II's death, but decided against it because of sympathy for the victim's family. Bush's office said Ocha, 47, was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. That was a few minutes after an anonymous executioner injected a lethal cocktail of 3 chemicals to stop Ocha's heart and his breathing. In his final statement, made from his death gurney just before the lethal cocktail was administered, Ocha said, "This is the punishment that I deserve." He also said, "I would like to say I apologize to Carol Skjerva, the girl that I murdered, and her family and her friends." After the statement he closed his eyes, he breathed heavily for about a minute and then there was no further movement. Ocha had waived a jury trial and pleaded guilty to the Oct. 5, 1999, killing of convenience store employee Skjerva, 28, who had given him a ride home from the Kissimmee bar where he worked. After having sexual relations, Ocha said, he choked her 3 times until his arms got tired. He then hanged Skjerva from a kitchen door and drank a beer while she died. Ocha, who changed his name in prison to Raven Raven, received a final meal Tuesday morning. He received final visits from two Catholic priests, the Rev. Dale Recinella of Macclenny and retired Bishop John Snyder from Jacksonville, plus a visit with his brother, Martin Ocha, said Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections. Bush, a convert to Roman Catholicism, told reporters earlier Tuesday in Tallahassee that "I actually was prepared to delay the execution out of courtesy for and respect for the pope's passing." But he also said he has a duty to state law and has sympathy for the victims. Bush's decision drew criticism from Abe Bonowitz, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. He had said Ocha's execution would be "suicide by governor." Greg L. Hill, who was appointed as a backup attorney for Ocha, met with his client Monday evening at the prison and said it was Ocha's desire "to accept responsibility for his actions." He met his victim at a bar in Kissimmee, where he engraved beer mugs. He was drunk and high on Ecstasy when she drove him home and they had sex. He said he became enraged when Skjerva told Ocha she was going to tell her boyfriend and made fun of his anatomy. After hiding her body inside a home entertainment system in his garage, Ocha took Skjerva's car and drove to Daytona Beach. He confessed to the killing when he was arrested for disorderly intoxication. Ocha would not let a public defender present evidence to avoid execution. After the state Supreme Court affirmed his conviction in 2002, Ocha filed a motion with the trial court to drop his appeals and dismiss his attorneys. In May, the Supreme Court ordered the trial court to hold a hearing on his mental competency. Ocha discharged his state lawyer, Mark Gruber, when he was ruled competent June 11. Ocha had warned that he will kill again if he did not receive the death penalty. Of the 16 inmates executed under death warrants signed by Bush, 7 did not fight their execution. Ocha was the 60th person executed in Florida since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty and the 1st since May 26, when John Blackwelder who was so intent on being executed that he killed a fellow inmate and pleaded guilty. Florida resumed capital punishment in 1979; only Texas (340), Virginia (94), and Missouri (62) have executed more condemned inmates since the death penalty was re-legalized in the USA on July 2, 1976. Ocha becomes the 13th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 957th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977. On the Net: Florida Department of Corrections: http://www.dc.state.fl.us/ Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty: http://www.fadp.org (sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin) NORTH CAROLINA: Judge allows prosecution to seek death penalty Accused of killing a Duke University recruitment coordinator, Thomas Anthony Pitt stands a chance of becoming the 1st person in 8 years to receive the death penalty in Durham. Assistant District Attorney David Saacks said Tuesday that at least one "aggravating factor" exists in the case: Evidence that the May 2004 slaying of Curt Blackman was particularly brutal, or "especially heinous, atrocious or cruel" in legal parlance. Saacks told Judge Orlando F. Hudson that Blackman was stabbed numerous times, blindfolded, gagged and bound at his hands and feet. "It was grisly," the prosecutor said. Hudson gave Saacks the go-ahead to seek capital punishment. An aggravating factor must be identified in 1st-degree murder cases before the death penalty can be sought. To vote for capital punishment, jurors must be convinced that the aggravating factor outweighs any offsetting factors in mitigation, and that it is "sufficiently substantial" to merit the death penalty. One common aggravating factor is that a murder was committed for financial gain. That factor also might be used against Pitt, according to Saacks. Death or life in prison without parole are the only possible punishments for first-degree murder. And it is the only crime in North Carolina for which jurors, rather than a judge, decide the punishment. Pitt is accused of fatally stabbing 38-year-old Blackman in the victim's Hilton Avenue apartment. A Trinidad native, Blackman was coordinator for graduate recruitment and minority programs in Duke's office of graduate student affairs. Friends and relatives said he had planned to begin studying for a doctorate at Northwestern University in Chicago last fall. Indictments allege that Pitt, then 22, stole a DVD player and digital camera from Blackman and pawned them. They also allege that armed robbery was the murder motive. Police have said Pitt and Blackman were acquainted before the slaying. In Durham, no one has been sentenced to die since 1997, when Todd Charles Boggess was convicted of fatally beating Wilmington honor student Danny Pence in northern Durham County, off Terry Road. But because of legal technicalities, the state Supreme Court recently ordered a new trial for Boggess. A date for the proceedings has not been set. Only one person is currently on death row as the result of a Durham case: Isaac Jackson Stroud, who faces execution for the 1993 torture slaying of high school teacher Jocelyn Michelle Mitchell. Last year, prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty against Anthony Patterson Jr., who was accused of kidnapping, killing and robbing Durham Regional Hospital nurse Tia Monae Carroway in July 2002. As it turned out, however, Patterson was allowed to plead guilty in October and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. (source: Herald Sun) PENNSYLVANIA: Judge tosses Pa. death row inmate's sentence 15 years after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Pennsylvania's death-penalty law in the case of Scott Wayne Blystone, a federal judge has ordered that he be resentenced on grounds that his lawyer failed to provide an adequate defense. U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster in Pittsburgh said Blystone's court-appointed lawyer failed to develop or present mitigating evidence that might have spared Blystone from being sentenced to die, even though such evidence was abundant. The judge said that violated the constitutional guarantee that accused criminals are entitled to the assistance of counsel. "Trial counsel's ineffective assistance so infected the sentencing phase of (the) trial that it undermined the court's confidence in the outcome of that proceeding," Lancaster said in a 130-page decision issued Thursday in a civil habeas corpus proceeding. Blystone, now 48 and incarcerated at the state prison in Greene, was convicted of first-degree murder and robbery in the September 1983 death of hitchhiker Dalton Smithburger Jr. in Fayette County. Blystone robbed Smithburger of $13 before shooting him 6 times in the head. The mitigating-circumstance provision was the linchpin of a 1990 Supreme Court decision that upheld Pennsylvania's death-penalty statute and removed threats to similar laws in 13 other states. By a 5-4 vote, the justices said the Pennsylvania statute did not violate the Constitution's ban on mandatory death sentences, like those struck down in other states that required executions for specific crimes, such as killing a police officer, or specific types of offenders. Pennsylvania law allows sentencing judges and juries to weigh both aggravating and mitigating factors in deciding whether murderers should live or die. A death sentence is mandatory only when there is at least one aggravating circumstance and no mitigating factor. In Blystone's case, jurors in Fayette County Common Pleas court counted the fact that the murder was committed during a robbery as an aggravating factor. Blystone's public defender, Jeffrey Whiteko, did not assert any mitigating circumstances. Whiteko talked to Blystone, his parents and one sister, but Blystone refused to testify or allow his parents to testify at the sentencing hearing. Though the lawyer begged the jury to spare Blystone's life, "because the defense neither presented nor argued to the jury mitigating evidence, it had no discretion to spare Blystone's life," Lancaster wrote. In subsequent appellate proceedings, other lawyers produced mitigating evidence that included witnesses who described Blystone's upbringing in a dysfunctional and abusive family; his own abuse of alcohol and drugs; expert diagnoses of Blystone's psychiatric problems; and a record of his good behavior in various institutions. Whiteko did not immediately return a telephone message left at his office Tuesday. Robert Dunham, an assistant federal defender in Philadelphia who is part of Blystone's current legal team, noted that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued standards for lawyers appointed in capital cases only last year. Such lawyers now must have obtained jury verdicts in at least eight "significant" felony trials and take specialized training before they are eligible. Previously, a lawyer with no criminal trial experience could be appointed in a death-penalty case. Blystone's lawyer had barely three months' experience as a lawyer, had not previously tried a homicide case and was preparing for more than a dozen other jury trials in the 6 months he had to prepare for Blystone's trial, Lancaster said. "The system appointed a lawyer with so little experience and so little training that it was a virtual impossibility that he'd be able to provide meaningful representation," Dunham said. The state attorney general's office has not decided whether to appeal the reversal of Blystone's sentence to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, but "we disagree with the court's ruling," said spokesman Kevin Harley. Under Lancaster's order, if the state does not hold a new sentencing hearing for Blystone within 4 months, his sentence will automatically be reduced to life imprisonment. (source: Associated Press) ARKANSAS: Court Rejects Appeal from Arkansas' Death Row A divided federal appeals court has dismissed an appeal filed by an Arkansas death row inmate in a bid to avoid execution for killing a university student at a Little Rock laundromat. The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Saint Louis also ruled that Terrick T. Nooner wasn't competent to represent himself and drop his appeals. But that ruling has no effect, since his appeal was ruled without merit. Nooner was sentenced to die for the March 16, 1993, slaying of Scott Stobaugh, a University of Arkansas at Little Rock student. Nooner had filed seemingly contradictory court papers -- one seeking to stop his execution and a later one seeking permission to drop his appeals.The appeals court earlier directed an Arkansas federal court to determine whether Nooner was competent to drop his appeals. U.S. District Judge Stephen Reasoner ruled that Nooner was competent, but also went on to weigh Nooner's initial petition and ruled it was without merit. Tuesday's decision from the appeals court agreed with Reasoner's rejection of Nooner's appeal, but disagreed with the judge's ruling that Nooner was competent to drop his appeals. (source: Associated Press) LOUISIANA: How Much Are Death Row Inmates Costing You? He was dubbed a serial killer. Now 15 years later a Shreveport man is still appealing his death penalty sentence. Back in 1990 Nathaniel Code was found guilty for murdering 8 innocent people over a span of 3 years. Code is appealing his sentence saying his lawyer was inefficient. This Thursday and Friday will be Code's appeal hearing. Attorney's say guilty verdicts followed by years of appeals like Code's come out of the taxpayers` pocket. "The Judge has to be there, the clerk has to be there, people have to bring the inmate from Angola" says Assistant District Attorney Catherine Estopinal. "As far as spending money to keep redeciding the same thing I don`t agree with it" says Rebecca Dean, a taxpayer. "I would rather pay more money to save an innocent person rather than have a person die for really no reason, just to save money" says Rudolph Glass also a taxpayer. Bossier District Attorney Schuyler Marvin estimates the process alone costs the taxpayer 25,000 over a 5 year period. Angola says housing an inmate costs between 20-25 thousand a year. (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: Judge: Prosecutor fabricated tainting of death penalty jury The former Alameda County prosecutor who claimed he conspired with a trial judge to exclude Jewish jurors in a capital case that sent the defendant to death row is a liar, a judge ruled Tuesday in an opinion forwarded to the California Supreme Court. Judge Kevin Murphy, appointed by the Supreme Court to investigate the allegations from John Quatman, said the former prosecutor's assertions "are not true" and that he is "dishonest and unethical." Last month, Quatman testified before Murphy that he colluded with now-deceased Alameda County Superior Court Judge Stanley Golde to exclude Jews so it would more than likely send a killer to San Quentin State Prison. Quatman recalled a private lecture about excluding Jews he said the judge gave him on April 28, 1987, while they were picking a jury in the capital case of Fred Freeman, a white man later sentenced to death for killing a bar patron during a robbery in Berkeley. Judge Murphy, however, concluded after a weeklong trial that the conversation never took place, that no Jews were unlawfully removed and that Quatman "had a motive to embarrass the Alameda County District Attorney's Office in general, and District Attorney Tom Orloff in particular." Murphy noted that Orloff had disciplined Quatman, now a Montana criminal defense attorney, for making disparaging remarks to a female colleague. Murphy said Quatman's "anger continued" even after Quatman left the office years ago, and that it took 16 years for Quatman to come forward with the allegations. The Supreme Court ordered Murphy to investigate Quatman's allegations when they surfaced 2 years ago and likely would have granted Freeman a new trial if the allegations were proven true. The court is not likely to do so now. Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said the office was "alarmed" by Quatman's allegations "and urged the Supreme Court to direct a fact-finding mission." Barankin said Murphy "reached the correct conclusion." Following Quatman's allegations, other Alameda County defense lawyers have told the California justices that the Alameda County district attorney's office had an unwritten policy, in violation of federal and state law, of excluding Jews and black women from capital juries from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. The policy was based on the theory those jurors would be lenient to defendants. Orloff and his predecessor, John Meehan, have steadfastly denied the allegations, and the justices have not addressed them. Orloff was not immediately available for comment Tuesday. Freeman's attorneys did not immediately return telephone calls. Excluding jurors based on religion, race or ethnicity violates state and federal law and creates grounds for a new trial. The case is in re Fred H. Freeman, S122590. (source: San Diego Union-Tribune)
