March 30 TEXAS: State: Victim had defense wounds----Witness is better suspect, defense says Prosecutors in the capital murder trial of Bevy Wilson outlined their evidence Tuesday, saying they intend to show Wilson savagely beat a 10-year-old boy and his father then went to a nearby bar and had a beer. Defense attorneys, however, said the case against their client is full of holes and prosecutors should be looking at their main witness as a possible suspect in the killing. Wilson, 46, went on trial Tuesday in the February 2003 killing of Richard Carbaugh, 34, and his son, Dominic Carbaugh, 10. Testimony will continue today in the 117th District Court. The father and son were beaten to death with a claw hammer in their Barton Street apartment in Flour Bluff. Their bodies were found next to each other, propped up against a kitchen door. Prosecutors said they plan to call a witness who will testify he saw the beating and heard Wilson before the killing accuse Carbaugh of being a child molester. In opening statements, First Assistant District Attorney Mark Skurka said Wilson stabbed the elder Carbaugh 17 times and beat him with a claw hammer before plunging a knife into his head. Skurka also said Carbaugh had defense wounds on his arms, indicating that he had put up a fight to save his life. Dominic suffered 21 blows to his head and body with a hammer or steel bar after he left a bedroom to help his father, Skurka said. Dominic had been at a family member's home earlier in the day and had returned home just before he was killed. "What started as a boy coming home to his dad ended in tragedy," Skurka said. Prosecutors intend to call a man who says he witnessed the killings, helped Wilson clean up the crime scene and then called police from a neighbor's home. Skurka said the case is full of forensic evidence, including blood from the victims that was found on Wilson's clothing, but defense attorneys said they plan use that evidence to raise doubts about the case. Attorney Scott Ellison said the prosecution's witness was himself covered in the victims' blood. Ellison also said the witness's fingerprints were found at the crime scene, while Wilson's were not. "The issue in this case is who did it," Ellison said. Wilson was on probation for an earlier aggravated assault charge at the time of Carbaugh's death. He is being held in the Nueces County Jail on a $1 million bond. If convicted, Wilson could face the death penalty. (source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times) PENNSYLVANIA: State Supreme Court rejects new trial in first Spotz killing Multiple murderer and death row inmate Mark Spotz will not get a new trial in one of the four slayings for which he was convicted, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. In 2001, the Superior Court ordered a new trial for Spotz, ruling that he received inadequate counsel before being convicted in the death of his older brother, Dustin. Spotz, 34, was sentenced to 17 1/2 to 35 years in prison in that shooting. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that Spotz needed to file a different kind of an appeal if he was seeking to address claims of ineffective counsel. Despite the ruling, Spotz's fate rests with the three death sentences he received for killing 3 women in 3 days after shooting his brother. Spotz, who is on death row at Graterford prison in Montgomery County, fatally shot his brother at their Clearfield County home on Jan. 31, 1995, and then fled, killing 3 women in Schuylkill, York and Cumberland counties on successive days before surrendering to police in a Carlisle motel room. He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in his brother's slaying and sentenced to death for murdering the 3 women. Death warrants signed by former Governors Tom Ridge and Mark Schweiker were stayed by appellate courts. Two years ago, the Vatican asked Gov. Ed Rendell to commute Spotz's death sentence, saying Spotz in prison has earned degrees in Christian counseling and worked to help young people avoid lives of violent crime. Rendell declined the request. (source: Associated Press) USA: Boost for death penalty opponents The consistent ethic approach to social issues in the Catholic world just got a little more consistent with the U.S. bishops' "Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty." While it is clear that the church does not teach by consulting opinion polls, it is nevertheless an advantage to have public sentiment moving your way. And the bishops made no small use of a December poll by Quinnipiac University that found more than 60 % of Americans supportive of the death penalty, where a decade earlier, 80 % favored executing convicted murderers. Certainly, papal teaching on the matter has had some effect. The pope has consistently spoken out against the death penalty and has personally intervened on behalf of convicted killers in the United States on several occasions. It should be instructive to bishops as teachers, however, to note that the public conviction growing around opposition to the death penalty is the fruit of persuasion based on evidence: DNA testing that has exonerated death-row inmates; state moratoriums on the death sentence; sentiment around the rest of the globe; growing concern about the unevenness of legal representation from one state to the next; and the recent Supreme Court decisions forbidding execution of the mentally retarded and those under age 18 at the time of the crime. All of that can make an impression on Catholics who begin to see executions as acts carried out not by individuals but by the state, with their tax dollars, in their name and in the name of a brand of justice that in modern society does not comport with the Gospels. Across the wide range of theological and ideological views that make up the church, no group is completely free of its "cafeteria" approach to church teachings. We all have to figure out ways to deal with details of teaching with which we might not fully agree. Certainly there are loyal Catholics who will cling to the slightest loophole to maintain their conviction that even in the face of repeated papal admonition, the death penalty is justifiable. We understand. The important thing here is that the bishops have given forces that oppose the death penalty new impetus, not to mention language and authority with which to carry on their campaign. It also brings some balance to the Catholic social justice picture following a presidential campaign in which Catholic "values" and concerns were too often construed in a distorted and narrow way. If the polls are correct, the Catholic community is out ahead on this issue and that opposition to the state executions should deepen and become more concerted as the campaign is carried to Catholic schools and parish religious education programs. (source: Editorial, National Catholic Reporter) OHIO: Supreme Court to review procedures for 'supermax' prison assignments The U.S. Supreme Court will decide what procedures corrections officials must follow before transferring inmates to super maximum-security prisons, where the most dangerous prisoners are separated from other inmates. The court was to hear arguments Wednesday in a case involving Ohio's super maximum-security prison and inmates who complained that they were not given a chance to prove they didn't belong there. In the so-called Ohio "supermax," inmates are held in 23-hour-a-day lockdown, in 90-square-foot cells built to prevent prisoners from communicating with each other. Inmates also face tighter security, with strip searches, and less access to telephones and personal items. Most states and the federal government have similar prisons. The 500-bed Ohio State Penitentiary near Youngstown opened in 1998 after a deadly inmate riot 5 years earlier at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. The state plans to move death row prisoners from the Mansfield Correctional Institution to that Youngstown prison this summer. Civil rights groups, which filed a class-action lawsuit against Ohio in 2001, say these prisons are extremely restrictive and inmates should be given an opportunity to contest a state's decision to transfer them to such a facility. "It's accepted that within the prison system, prisoners can be moved around and put in harsh or harsher circumstances, as deemed appropriate, but the conditions at supermax prisons go beyond that," said Jeffrey Gamso of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the case along with the Center for Constitutional Rights. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled last year that prisoners are entitled to hearings, with witnesses, before being assigned to the prison. The state contends that this requirement makes it impossible to neutralize the threats posed by dangerous inmates. Ohio Attorney Jim Petro, who is running for governor next year, planned to argue the case before justices. It would be the 1st time since the 1960s that a sitting Ohio attorney general appears before the high court, said Petro spokeswoman Kim Norris. The case delves into whether inmates at super maximum-security prisons are entitled to have the opportunity to argue why they should have the same freedoms that prisoners in less secure prisons have. It also requires the Supreme Court to revisit a 1995 decision that limited prisoners' rights to have hearings before they lose privileges or are disciplined for misconduct. The case is Wilkinson v. Austin, 04-495. ON THE NET----Center for Constitutional Rights: http://www.ccr-ny.org Ohio Attorney General: http://www.ag.state.oh.us (source: Associated Press)
