March 30 FLORIDA: New sentencing for only woman on Florida's death row Citing a flawed defense, a judge has granted a new sentencing hearing for the only woman on Florida's death row. Virginia Larzelere, 52, of Edgewater was sentenced to die for scheming to get at her husband's insurance by hiring her son to gun him down in his dental office as a patient sat in the waiting room in 1991. A jury split 7-5 in favor of the death penalty. Her son, Jason Larzelere, was acquitted of killing his adoptive father and accepted a $75,000 insurance settlement in 1994. He was 18 at the time of the slaying by a masked gunman. Volusia Circuit Judge John Watson, who presided over the mother's 1992 trial, released an order Monday saying her lawyers did not present important evidence during the original penalty phase. The Florida Supreme Court unanimously affirmed her conviction in 1996. Watson concluded her attorneys did not spend enough time preparing for the penalty phase and noted her jury did not hear evidence about her mental health and that she had been sexually abused as a child. "I wish her the best," said attorney John R. Howes, one of Larzelere's lawyers in the early 1990s. "Any time someone gets a death sentence overturned, God bless them. I don't want her executed. God bless her." ******************** Wrongly Convicted Could Seek $200,000 From State Faced with the case of a man who spent 22 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit, a House panel Wednesday approved a proposal that would let innocent people who are wrongfully imprisoned seek either $200,000 or a package of health and education benefits. The offer, though, falls far short of what Wilton Dedge wants from the state, his lawyer told the House Claims Committee. "You don't have very much and what you've got is not very good," said Talbot "Sandy" D'Alemberte, a former president of the American Bar Association and Florida State University. Seven months after being cleared by DNA results, Dedge is facing a hard battle in his fight for restitution. Dedge wants lawmakers to give him $5 million for the nearly 8,000 days he spent in prison, for his lost wages, the money his family spent to defend and visit him and the work done by the lawyers who fought for his exoneration. The House proposal would simply allow Dedge and others like him to ask the Legislature for the $200,000 or benefits package. It would not prohibit people from seeking a larger amount from the Legislature if they have won a lawsuit. Dedge hasn't filed a lawsuit. D'Alemberte reminded the committee that the state had fully compensated citrus growers whose trees were destroyed in the 1980s after the state mistakenly believed they were contaminated by canker. "If we care about the taking of property, there should be full compensation for the taking of liberty," D'Alemberte said. Rep. John Quinones, who chairs the committee, said the state can't "put a price on liberty." "There's no way we're going to be able to compensate someone wholly," said Quinones, R-Kissimmee. D'Alemberte pointed to the cost of the work that Dedge had done in prison - and the costs incurred by his parents, who spent their retirement savings and mortgaged their house to defend him. "Does the state have any sense of moral responsibility for returning the value of labor?" he asked. Quinones and D'Alemberte agreed that not many people would be eligible for the proposed process, which wouldn't apply to people who pleaded guilty or no contest. Jennifer Greenberg, director of the Florida Innocence Initiative, said the idea was "woefully inadequate all the way around." "The damage done to these folks by the state is all-encompassing, is devastating," she said, adding it's not simply a matter of depriving someone of a normal life. "It is survival in the most brutal living conditions in our state," she said. Paul Harvill, a former investigator for state lawyers representing death row inmates, called the bill shameful. "The bill is simply, in my opinion, inadequate justice and compensation," he said. Harvill said people in state prison and county jail live in fear of being raped or stabbed. "Incarcerated, you feel like you're the walking dead," he said. "And you may end up dead." (source for both: Associated Press) OHIO: Death row appeal denied by supreme court The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear an appeal from an Ohio prisoner who is one of the longest-serving death row inmates in the state for the 1982 killing of a postal worker. John Spirko claimed the state's case against him was weakened when death penalty charges against his co-defendant were dropped last year. Spirko, who has maintained that he's innocent of the murder, also says prosecutors withheld key evidence and presented a false case. An important element of the Van Wert County prosecutor's case was a witness who recognized co-defendant Delaney Gibson, a friend of Spirko, near the Elgin post office on Aug. 9, 1982, the day that postmistress Betty Jane Mottinger, 48, disappeared. Mottinger's body was found a month later in a soybean field 50 miles from the northwest Ohio town, wrapped in a paint- splattered curtain. She had been stabbed about 15 times in the chest and stomach. Her purse and approximately $750 in cash, postage stamps and money orders were missing from the Elgin post office, police said. Spirko contacted police in October 1982 and offered to trade information about her death in exchange for help on unrelated assault charges. Police said Spirko told them details of the killing that the public could not have known, but Spirko's lawyers said that information could have come from secondhand repetition rather than by participation. No physical evidence tied Spirko to the murder. He was convicted of the killing based largely on his statements to police and the testimony of the eyewitness who had seen Gibson near the post office. Prosecutors had alleged that Spirko participated in the kidnapping and killing of Mottinger along with Gibson. In an appeal, Spirko's lawyers argued that Gibson could not have kidnapped Mottinger because he was eight hours away in Asheville, N.C., the night before the woman disappeared. Gibson was charged in the Mottinger killing, but was convicted in an unrelated murder and served time in a prison in Kentucky from 1983 to 2001. Van Wert County Prosecutor Charles Kennedy said charges against Gibson were dropped because by the time he was released, the case against him was too old to try. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld Spirko's conviction and death sentence. Spirko, who remains at the Mansfield Correctional Institution, was sentenced to die in 1984. About 5 Ohio inmates sentenced to death in 1983 also remain on death row, prison system spokeswoman Andrea Dean said. "Pending any other further appeals, we will move forward and ask the Ohio Supreme Court to set an execution date," said Kim Norris, a spokeswoman for Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro. Messages seeking comment were left Monday for Spirko's attorney, Thomas C. Hill. The case is Spirko v. Bradshaw, 04-972. (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: A $5 million wrongful death lawsuit filed in 2003 against convicted killer Scott Peterson has been amended to seek $25 million. The move came Monday as the father of slain schoolteacher Laci Peterson joined the lawsuit filed previously by her mother, Sharon Rocha. A jury found Peterson guilty last year on 2 counts of murder in the deaths of his pregnant wife and the fetus she carried. He is now in San Quentin State Prison. During the sentencing hearing March 16, Laci's father, Dennis Rocha, told Scott Peterson that he didn't like him from the start of the relationship "because you were always so arrogant, thought you were better than everybody else - a rich boy from San Diego and we're just farm people. Laci loved you, and I respected her feelings. You're in love with yourself is your problem." Dennis Rocha's attorney, Gary S. Davis, acknowledged it will be difficult to collect money from Peterson in prison but said the lawsuit intends to keep the 32-year-old former fertilizer salesman from profiting from the murders. "If he ever thinks of doing anything to line his own pockets, we'll be all over it," Davis said. Sharon Rocha's attorney, Adam Stewart, said he is still researching Scott Peterson's assets, including the now vacant home the couple shared and a $250,000 life insurance policy. Successfully suing Peterson "may be a symbolic victory, but one that gives some peace of mind to Sharon," Stewart said. A hearing on the matter is set for April 22. (source: Associated Press) VIRGINIA: Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner signed a highly technical yet deeply important reform to the commonwealth's criminal justice system last week. The bill, proposed by the state's new Indigent Defense Commission, responds to the appalling number of criminal appeals dismissed by state courts not because they lack merit but because of missed filing deadlines by attorneys. In a statement, Mr. Warner rightly noted that Virginia was "one of the strictest states in the nation with respect to procedural defaults of this kind" and described the bill as "a responsible and needed reform." The bill, pushed by Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax), does not entirely cure the problem, which we described in a series of editorials last year. Until the courts change their own Byzantine rules -- which require the dismissal of appeals when key documents are filed even a single day late -- incompetent or simply overburdened lawyers will continue to blow cases. Yet the new law does create a far simpler and more reasonable process for reinstating blown appeals that will not jeopardize a convict's future ability to challenge his conviction as the price of restoring the lost appeal For those inmates now being irrationally denied appellate review of their trials or sentences -- some of whom may be innocent of the crimes for which they are serving time -- this will make a critical difference. That this bill was controversial shows how far Virginia has to go in forging a justice system of which the state can be proud. Its passage was by no means a foregone conclusion: The state attorney general's office opposed it as "unnecessary," and the state Supreme Court raised concerns as well. While it ultimately passed both houses of the General Assembly overwhelmingly, it survived key committee votes by only narrow margins. Moreover, the defaults bill was the only significant step the General Assembly took this year to improve the state's woeful indigent defense system. The legislature once again balked at lifting the obscenely low statutory caps on fees for court-appointed lawyers, mustering only a small amount of new money that will still fail to fully fund even the existing caps. Missing filing deadlines is only one way for an inadequate lawyer to fail a client with tragic results. Until legislators create and fund a system for providing reasonable counsel to poor people accused of crimes, gross injustices will surely continue. (source: Editorial, Washington Post)
