July 13 VERMONT: Vt. Jury Deliberates Death Penalty Case The lawyer for a man convicted in the slaying of a supermarket worker pleaded for his client's life Wednesday, describing for jurors the man's horrific childhood and lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse. A prosecutor told the jury during his closing statement that Donald Fell's kidnapping, carjacking and killing of Terry King warranted his becoming the 1st person put to death in Vermont in nearly 50 years. Jurors began deliberations later Wednesday in the punishment phase for Fell after his June 24 conviction. "He is damaged," Fell attorney Gene Primomo said. "He was incapable of making the morally correct decision." Fell and an accomplice, Robert Lee, kidnapped King as she arrived for work at a Rutland supermarket one morning nearly 5 years ago and took her to New York state, where they beat her to death as she prayed for her life, federal prosecutor Stephen Kelly said. "The evidence, the law and justice demand only one verdict in this case," he said. "It calls for you to impose the death sentence." As Kelly described the beating of the 53-year-old grandmother before a packed courtroom, King's sister, Barbara Tuttle, sobbed quietly. Lee later died in prison. The trial was held in federal court because the November 2000 kidnapping was in Vermont and the killing in New York state. Vermont has no state death penalty. King's abduction came as Fell, 25, and Lee were fleeing Rutland after they stabbed to death Fell's mother and a friend of hers. Fell and Lee were arrested in Arkansas three days later driving King's car. Fell's attorneys did not contest his guilt. Rather, they argued the killing spree resulted from a lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse, and physical and sexual abuse by his parents and a baby sitter. Primomo called Fell's childhood "a story of tragedy that's just beyond anything that you can imagine." In 2001, Fell agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. But the deal was rejected by then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who insisted that prosecutors pursue the death penalty. (source: Associated Press) USA: Senate bill aiming to streamline death penalty reviews would be counter-productive, witnesses say Opponents of a bill to streamline federal review of death penalty cases told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday that it fails to adequately guarantee a hearing for individuals with evidence of actual innocence. "It would bury the truly innocent under a welter of state and procedural bars," said Barry C. Scheck, a Cardozo Law School professor and co-director of the Innocence Project. He said the bill would undermine efforts to improve the legal representation of poor defendants and "inevitably, by keeping the innocent in prison and out of court, it will leave the real perpetrators free to commit more crime." Supporters of the bill, sponsored by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said long delays between convictions in capital cases and executions remain the norm, despite the streamlining provisions Congress enacted in 1996. "Ultimately this concerns victims who have been through a great deal already," said Thomas Dolgenos, chief of the federal litigation unit in the Philadelphia district attorney's office. "It's important that we not subject them to additional trauma in the federal courts." The Judiciary Committee took up the legislation 1 day after release of an investigation by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund concluding that Larry Griffin was innocent of the drive-by shooting of Quintin Moss in St. Louis, for which Griffin was executed in 1995. St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce has reopened the case. On Tuesday, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Boston issued a blistering ruling assailing Congress for similarly restricting access to courts in the Real ID Act. Enacted in May, the law sets national driver's license standards and says that aliens facing deportation can appeal only to federal appeals courts, not in lower courts. In his ruling, Judge William G. Young said the law's more expensive appeals requirement imposed a "chokehold on the free and proper exercise of the writ of habeas corpus," the constitutional privilege of citizens to challenge their imprisonment in court. At the Senate hearing Wednesday Seth B. Waxman, U.S. solicitor general under former President Bill Clinton, cited 4 death-penalty cases since 2002, including one from Missouri, in which the Supreme Court had found serious constitutional violations that had been overlooked by state courts. Had the proposed law been in place, he warned, none of those 4 cases would have gotten to federal court. As the hearing concluded, Kyl said it was not the intent of the legislation to exclude such meritorious claims - or claims of actual innocence. He said he would work with Waxman and others to fine-tune the bill's language to take those concerns into account. Kyl cited data from the Administrative Office of the Courts that suggest a mushrooming number of habeas petitions - from 13,359 that were pending before U.S. district courts in fiscal 1993 to 23,218 in 2003. Opponents of the proposed bill focused on convicted felons who had later been exonerated of their crimes. 6 of the "exonerees" were in the hearing room, among them 2 who now live in the Kansas City area. Brandon Moon spent 17 years in Texas prisons on a rape conviction. He was exonerated and freed 7 months ago on DNA evidence. His petitions for state or federal review of the case, and for DNA testing, had been repeatedly denied, with 1 federal court calling the DNA claim "patently frivolous." Moon contended that with passage of the pending bill cases like his wouldn't get to the federal courts at all. In an interview after the hearing, Moon said the right to judicial review was a crucial safeguard. "It's good to have this gateway for claims of actual innocence," he said. "But it doesn't do you any good when you put chains across that gateway and walls, so that no one can get through." Committee Chair Arlen Specter, R-Pa., asked Kent E. Cattani, chief counsel for the Capital Litigation Section in the Arizona Attorney General's office, how far Congress could go in limiting federal review. "Does Congress have the authority to strip the courts of jurisdiction on constitutional issues?" he asked. "Yes, I think the Congress has the authority to do so," Cattani said. He noted that in many death-penalty cases, appeals relate to the phase of sentencing in which the defense presents circumstances - such as a defendant's bad childhood -that could mitigate against imposing the death penalty. "There's always additional grounds of mitigation you can cite," he said. "At some point you have to cut out certain types of claims." The Senate Judiciary Committee will take up the bill at a mark-up session scheduled for Thursday. A similar bill, sponsored by Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., is before the House Judiciary Committee. (source: Knight Ridder Tribune) MISSOURI: Death sentence upheld in SEMO killing The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the capital murder conviction of Mark Anthony Gill for kidnapping and killing a Cape Girardeau County man in 2002. Gill argued that his 1st-degree murder conviction and death sentence should be overturned because he claimed an accomplice actually shot Ralph Lee Lape Jr. in an isolated New Madrid County cornfield on July 7, 2002. Gill also alleged numerous errors by the trial judge prejudiced the jury against him. In the high court's unanimous decision, Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr. said numerous inconsistencies in Gill's story and his "self-serving account" that the accomplice fired the fatal bullet made his credibility an issue for the jury to decide. Limbaugh also rejected most of the claims of trial error and said no bias against Gill resulted. At the time of the crime, Gill was living in a camper trailer on Lape's property. According to the facts as stated in the court's opinion, Gill and a friend, Justin Brown, decided to kill Lape after discovering he had a large amount of money in his bank account. After abducting Lape, they drove him to a desolate area near Portageville where they dug a grave they pushed the victim into. The shooter then twice fired a pistol at Lape, but it misfired both times. On the third attempt, Lape was shot in the forehead. Gill and Brown later withdrew several thousand dollars from Lape's bank account. Ultimately arrested in New Mexico, Gill confessed to planning and participating in the murder but alleged Brown pulled the trigger. Limbaugh wrote that the jury's recommended sentence of death was warranted as Gill's conduct displayed "depravity of mind" and "a callous disregard" for human life. "By his own account, he ignored Mr. Lape's pleas and stood by and did nothing as the gun twice misfired before Mr. Lape was shot and killed," Limbaugh wrote. "As Gill put it in his confession, he 'sold his soul' for money." The New Madrid County jury that heard the case also convicted Gill of kidnapping, armed criminal action, 1st-degree robbery and 1st-degree tampering. In addition to the death penalty, he received consecutive sentences of life in prison plus 52 years on the other charges. Gill, 34, is incarcerated at the Potosi Correctional Facility. The case is State of Missouri v. Mark Anthony Gill. (source: Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic)
