[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO, TENN.
Oct. 11 TEXAS: The fight to save Rodney Reed from execution in Texas In 1998, Rodney Reed, who is African-American, was sentenced to death by an all-white jury in Bastrop, Texas, for the rape and murder of Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old white woman. He's scheduled to be executed on Nov. 20. Reed, now 53, maintains his innocence. The only evidence used to convict him was DNA that Reed says was present because he and Stites were having a secret affair — a claim Stites's cousin corroborates. Reed's defense attorneys believe that further DNA tests of the crime scene could prove his innocence, but their requests have been denied, leading them to file a lawsuit in federal court. They also recently petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution, citing "new and comprehensive evidence for innocence." Among the new pieces of evidence Reed's lawyers cite are statements from two witnesses who claim they have information that links Stites's then-fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, to the crime. Fennell, a former police officer in Giddings, Texas, was recently released from prison after serving 10 years for the kidnapping and assault of a woman. There were critical inconsistencies in Fennell's accounts of where he was and what he was doing the night of the murder. One of the new witnesses who's come forward is a life insurance salesperson who said that while Fennell was applying for a policy he threatened to kill Stites if she ever cheated on him. The other witness, a sheriff's deputy in Texas's Lee County, said he overheard Fennell say to Stites' body at her funeral, "You got what you deserved." In addition, forensic experts who implicated Reed at trial have recanted, while forensic pathologists have said the prosecution's theory of Reed's guilt is medically and scientifically impossible. That Reed is still on death row despite all the evidence casting doubt on his guilt is indicative of the larger issues around the death penalty — particularly as it pertains to race. In the U.S., race is the single greatest predictor of who gets the death penalty, not the severity of the crime. Even though whites account for just 55 % of murder victims nationwide, they account for 80 percent of murder victims in cases resulting in an execution. Those convicted of killing white victims are three times more likely to be sentenced to death than those convicted of killing non-white victims. The disparities in who is executed are especially stark in Texas, which has the nation's third-largest death row population and accounted for more than 1/2 of all the executions in the U.S. last year. Of the states with more than 10 people currently facing execution, Texas has the highest number of minorities on death row. While African Americans make up only 12.6 % of Texas's population, 43.9 % of its death row inmates are Black. These statistics are particularly alarming when one considers that 166 people have been exonerated from death row. Of these, nearly 1/2 are Black, and nearly 50 are Black men from the South. Reed's family has organized a grassroots effort called the Reed Justice Initiative that is working to save Reed's life while also supporting families who are dealing with similar situations. Reed's cause also has help from the nationally recognized anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean and the Innocence Project, which has launched a petition seeking to halt his execution. "The evidence supporting Reed's innocence is uncontradicted and undeniable, and without the Supreme Court's intervention, I fear the State of Texas may execute an innocent man," said Bryce Benjet, Reed's lawyer and senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project. (source: Facing South) ** New Podcast: Texas Lawyer James Rytting on Junk Science and the Execution of Larry Swearingen In the latest episode of Discussions with DPIC, Texas capital defense lawyer James Rytting discusses the case of his client, Larry Swearingen, and the junk science that led to the execution of a man legitimate science strongly suggests was innocent. Rytting describes the false forensic analysis presented under the guise of science in Swearingen’s case, the appellate process that makes it “almost impossible” to obtain review of new evidence, and the persistent problem of wrongful convictions. Larry Swearingen was executed on August 21, 2019 after multiple courts declined to review evidence supporting his innocence claim. In the interview, Rytting explains the problems with the prosecution’s “smoking gun,” a piece of pantyhose used to strangle the victim, Melissa Trotter. The prosecution told the jury that a matching piece of pantyhose had been found in Swearingen’s home. In reality, that supposedly matching piece of the pantyhose had not been discovered in 2 initial searches of Swearingen’s house. It was only “found” in a 3rd search of the residence after Trotter’s body was
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., LA., OHIO
Oct. 10 TEXAS: With a wide variety of headlines dominating both global and domestic news, it is easy to overlook that today is World Day to Abolish the Death Penalty. It is clear that since the early 1980s, the majority of the world's nations have become better educated about the inherent flaws of every death penalty system in the world, and have committed themselves to the defense, protection and advocacy of human rights and human dignity. Sadly, the US is not one of these nations. We continue to embrace an archaic, barbaric, racist and mistake-prone system in which we justify hanging, gassing, electrocuting, shooting and chemically poisoning some convicted felons in the perverted notion of "justice". Texas itself leads the entire free world in executions since we resumed the practice in 1982. As we go to the polls next year, we would do well to hold our politicians accountable to all human rights issues, and ideally support someone who at the very least is willing to help make America a death penalty-free nation. Rick Halperin, Amnesty International (source: Dallas Morning News) *** Journalist talks about reconciling faith and career of covering executions Michael Graczyk, a parishioner at a Catholic church in Montgomery County, Texas, has personally witnessed more than 400 executions of Texas inmates in death penalty cases in his career as a journalist. An Associated Press reporter since 1983, Graczyk retired last year and still freelances for AP, continuing to witness executions, including 9 scheduled through the end of this year. "When you walk into the death chamber, you check your emotions at the door. I usually check my emotions at the prison gate," he said. "I've gotten to know many of the inmates through interviews. I also have sentiments for the families of the victims, who have to wait 10 or 20 years for the punishment to be carried out." Since Catholic teaching is pro-life, from conception to natural death, Graczyk reconciles the two parts of himself with a Scripture passage. "I look to the biblical passage 'render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.' Since this is the government doing these, I can remain faithful to the teachings of the church," Graczyk told the Texas Catholic Herald, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. "The Catholic Church many times has been alone in its protection of life from conception to natural death. Liberals opposed to capital punishment are often times in favor of abortion. Conservatives are against abortion, but then favor the death penalty," he said. Executions used to be front-page news and network TV news regularly covered them, but now they are relegated to inside pages or a few seconds of a sound bite. "Back in the 1980s, it used to be a really big deal and significant media event. Executions should never be considered routine, but there does seem to be a public acceptance of it," he said. Hundreds of protesters would show up, many times for midnight candlelight vigils that included both pro-death penalty and anti-penalty protesters. "Some of those were Sam Houston University students who came from down the road in Huntsville. Now maybe there is a core group of protesters ranging from 1 to 2 dozen who show up in the heat, rain or cold," he said. But studies have not been able to conclude whether capital punishment is a deterrent for others not to commit crime. "I've interviewed hundreds of inmates and none of them said that capital punishment would have prevented them from crime," he said. 2 of the 9 scheduled for execution by the end of the year are part of the group of prisoners who escaped in 2000 and were convicted of fatally shooting a 31-year-old police officer on Christmas Eve in Irving. One of the toughest cases Graczyk remembers covering is the dragging death of an African American man, James Byrd Jr., killed 21 years ago in a hate crime on a secluded road outside Jasper. 2 white men were executed in the case, John William King, executed this past spring, and Lawrence Russell Brewer was put to death in 2011. A 3rd participant, Shawn Allen Berry, was sentenced to life in prison. "Emotionally, the Jasper cases were real tough. We went to Jasper, saw the 3 guys arrested, went to the asphalt road where it happened and there was still blood," he said. He also recalled covering the execution of the 1st woman on death row since the Civil War. Karla Faye Tucker was given a lethal injection in 1998 for killing 2 people with a pickax during a burglary. But Graczyk said he doesn't see any strong enough movement to stop executions in Texas. "It remains a hot topic, but there is no appetite in the Texas Legislature to stop it. The U.S. Supreme Court may shut it down again like they did in the 1960s until executions were resumed a decade later," he said. In 1964, judicial challenges to capital punishment resulted in a de facto
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., NEV., USA
Oct. 5 TEXASstay of 2 impending executions Texas Courts Halt 2 Imminent Executions Texas state courts have halted the executions of 2 condemned prisoners who had been facing imminent execution dates. On October 4, 2019, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the October 10 execution of Randy Halprin and directed a Dallas trial court to consider his claim that the religious bigotry of the judge who presided over his case denied him a fair trial before an impartial tribunal. The previous day, a Henderson County District Court judge withdrew the death warrant that had scheduled Randall Mays to die on October 16, amid concerns that Mays may be mentally incompetent. The twin rulings were a dramatic development in the continuing saga involving the Lone Star State’s efforts to execute 13 prisoners in the last 5 months of 2019. A DPIC analysis of those cases found that they raised troubling questions of innocence, significantly flawed legal proceedings, junk science, and diminished culpability arising from one or more of mental illness, intellectual disability, youthfulness, and chronic exposure to trauma. Supported by a coalition of national and local Jewish organizations, Halprin, who is Jewish, filed petitions in the state and federal courts seeking a stay of execution and a new trial based upon recently discovered evidence of his trial judge’s virulently anti-Semitic statements and beliefs. He supported his claim with affidavits from court personnel who said that his trial judge, Vickers Cunningham, disparaged Halprin as “a f***in’ Jew” and “g**damn k**e,” and made racist comments about his Latino co-defendants. One court employee said Cunningham had bragged that, during their trial, “[f]rom the w**back to the Jew, they knew they were going to die.” Halprin’s defense team began investigating Cunningham’s possible anti-Semitic bias after learning from a report in The Dallas Morning News in 2018 that Cunningham had put provisions in his will that conditioned his children’s inheritance upon marrying a straight, white Christian. Halprin’s current counsel, assistant federal defender Tivon Schardl, praised the state court’s decision, as “a signal that bigotry and bias are unacceptable in the criminal justice system.” “A fair trial requires an impartial judge, and Mr. Halprin did not have a fair and neutral judge when his life was at stake,” Schardl said. Mays’ death warrant was withdrawn by Henderson County District Judge Joe Clayton after defense lawyers moved to have May declared incompetent to be executed. The defense motion said that prison mental health personnel had recently diagnosed Mays with schizophrenia and prescribed him anti-psychotic medication. A forensic psychiatrist reported that Mays’ mental health condition has deteriorated, that he is increasingly delusional and incoherent, and that he claims the prison guards are poisoning the air vents in his cell. Mays was convicted and sentenced to death for killing 2 county sheriff’s deputies. The competency pleading says he believes he is to be executed because he has designed a process for creating renewable energy that threatens the interests of the oil companies. Judge Clayton wrote that he withdrew the execution date so the court could have time to “properly review all medical records submitted.” (source: Death Penalty Information Center) *** "Texas 7" member Randy Halprin wins stay of execution amid claim of anti-Semitic judgeHalprin's lawyers had requested the stay amid allegations that the judge who handled his case made racist and anti-Semitic comments during his time on the bench. Editor's note: This story contains explicit language and has been updated throughout. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted the execution of Randy Halprin on Friday, less than a week before he was to be put to death. Halprin, one of the infamous "Texas Seven" — who were convicted in the 2000 murder of a police officer during a more than month-long prison escape — had recently argued that his trial was biased because his judge was "a racist and anti-Semitic bigot." Halprin, who is Jewish, said in his latest appeal that former Judge Vickers Cunningham had described Halprin as “a fuckin’ Jew” and “goddamn kike” shortly after the trial. Cunningham also admitted to putting stipulations in his will that his children could only receive inheritance by marrying a straight, white Christian, as was first reported by The Dallas Morning News in 2018. The Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas’ highest criminal court, stopped Halprin’s execution, set for next Thursday, and sent the case back to the Dallas County trial court for further review of the claims. "A fair trial requires an impartial judge – and Mr. Halprin did not have a fair and neutral judge when his life was at stake," one of Halprin's attorneys, Tivon Schardl, said in a statement
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA.
Sept. 7 TEXASimpending executions Convicted killer of 2 set for execution Fort Worth attorney Greg Westfall labeled Mark Anthony Soliz the “poster child for how stupid the death penalty is.” Former Johnson County Sheriff Bob Alford called Soliz one of the most dangerous men he ever dealt with. Barring an unlikely reprieve, Soliz will almost certainly draw his last breath sometime between 6 p.m. and midnight on Tuesday. Soliz, 37, who has spent the last 7 years on death row at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, will be transported to Huntsville about 30 miles away where he will be put to death by lethal injection. Johnson County jurors in the 413th District Court sentenced Soliz to death on March 23, 2012, for the June 29, 2010, shooting death of Nancy Hatch Weatherly, 61, in her home near Godley. Soliz earlier that same day shot Ruben Martinez, a delivery man, in the parking lot of a Fort Worth convenience store. Rushed to John Peter Smith Hospital, Martinez died 13 days later. Soliz, at the conclusion of his trial, displayed no emotion as Judge Bill Bosworth read the jury’s verdict. Soliz’ accomplice, Jose Clemente Ramos, pleaded guilty to capital murder on Aug. 10, 2012, and received life in prison without parole. Should his date hold firm, Soliz will become the 6th person executed in Texas this year. Life on death row Robert Hurst, communications officer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, points left toward 3 gray buildings. “That’s death row,” Hurst said. “There’s about 210 men there now. The women, they’re kept at Gatesville.” The inmates get about six hours per week outside recreation time should they choose to take advantage of it, but always alone. Otherwise they remain in their single cells even during meals. “No TV,” Hurst said. “Some have a radio but most don’t. They can get newspapers or magazines as long as they’re approved.” TDCJ did away with the last meal request about a decade ago. “One guy requested a huge smorgasbord of food then didn’t eat any of it,” Hurst said. “After that they decided to stop doing that. So that one guy screwed it up for everyone else. Now they get a variety to choose from, usually a choice of a meat, chicken or fish dish.” 2 death row inmates are already in the small booths in the visitor’s section. One looks around occasionally but otherwise stares into space. The second ignores his chair choosing instead to poise himself in a crouched position on a small shelf beneath the phone in his booth. He alternates between looking around and reaching up to touch the ceiling. Both, Hurst explains, are either waiting for their visitors or have already had their visit and are sitting tight until someone comes to take them back to their cells. Soliz, scheduled to arrive any moment, never shows. Although he agreed several days earlier to an interview he pulls a last minute change of mind. Subsequent requests from jailers fall on deaf ears and he refuses to budge. Unfortunately, Hurst says, such is his choice. The jailers can’t force him to talk if he doesn’t want to. Hurst and his fellow workers come off surprisingly courteous and upbeat given the nature of their jobs. Attempts to contact family members of Weatherly and Martinez were also unsuccessful. The cost of justice “It was our most expensive and longest trial in the county’s history,” Johnson County District Attorney Dale Hanna said. “The expense of these type trials is just staggering.” Soliz’ trial cost the county $903,544.13, County Auditor Kirk Kirkpatrick said. Of that total, defense costs ate up $782,517.17 and prosecution expenses $120,891.13. That amount covers only Soliz’ original trial in the 413th District Court. The state footed the bill for the many appeals that followed pushing the total cost to well above $1 million. The trial involved costs that can’t be measured in dollars as well. “It took a year just to prepare for that trial,” Johnson County Assistant District Attorney Martin Strahan said. “I’ve worked on seven capital murder cases since I’ve been here but Soliz was the only death penalty case I’ve had. Fortunately, they’re pretty rare. It takes a lot out of you working a case like that, but in those situations you want to make sure you’re 100 % right. We thought, based on his record, he was a very dangerous person who would hurt other people if there was ever any chance he might be let loose, which is why we decided to go with the death penalty option.” Former Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Christy Jack assisted the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office in the case against Soliz. This because the chain of events constituting Soliz’ crimes stretched from Tarrant to Johnson County. Jack said she’s worked several capital murder cases both as prosecuting and defense attorney. “Every one you try changes and takes a little bit out of you,” Jack said. “Because you’re
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO, UTAH, WYO.
July 25 TEXAS: Prosecutors to seek death penalty against accused serial killer of elderly peopleBilly Chemirmir is linked to the deaths of 19 people, according to criminal court records and civil lawsuits. Dallas County prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty for a 46-year-old man charged with 12 murders of elderly women and linked to 7 other deaths of elderly people. Billy Chemirmir, 46, is charged with 7 counts of capital murder in Dallas County and 5 counts of capital murder in Collin County, where he also faces 2 counts of attempted capital murder. Chemirmir is also accused of killing 7 other elderly people, according to lawsuits filed against an upscale senior living center. The lawsuits allege Chemirmir posed as a maintenance worker at The Tradition-Prestonwood, where he killed and robbed 8 elderly women and one elderly man. The suits say the senior living center failed to provide adequate security and hid Chemirmir's connection to the string of deaths. In each death, excluding the death of 89-year-old Solomon Spring, the elderly women were found smothered in their homes. In most of the cases, the deaths were initially deemed natural. Chemirmir was arrested March 21, 2018, on a murder charge in the smothering death of 81-year-old Lu Thi Harris. After his arrest, Chemirmir was also charged in Collin County with 2 counts of attempted capital murder in an attack of a 92-year-old woman the day before Harris was killed and the attack of a 93-year-old woman in October 2017. Chemirmir has been indicted in the deaths of: Phyllis Payne, 91, on May 14, 2016 Phoebe Perry, 94, on June 5, 2016 Norma French, 85, on Oct. 8, 2016 Doris Gleason, 92, on Oct. 29, 2016 Minnie Campbell, 83, on Oct. 31, 2017 Carolyn MacPhee, 81, on Dec. 31, 2017 Rosemary Curtis, 76, on Jan. 17, 2018 Mary Brooks on Jan. 31, 2018 Martha Williams, 80, on March 4, 2018 Miriam Nelson, 81, on March 9, 2018 Ann Conklin, 82, on March 18, 2018 Lu Thi Harris, 81, on March 20, 2018 He is linked through lawsuits to the deaths of: Joyce Abramowitz, 82, on July 20, 2016 Juanita Purdy, 83, on July 31, 2016 Leah Corken, 83, on Aug. 19, 2016 Margaret White, 87, on Aug. 28, 2016 Solomon Spring, 89, on Oct. 2, 2016 Glenna Day, 87, on Oct. 15, 2016 Doris Wasserman, 90, on Dec. 23, 2017 (source: WFAA news) FLORIDA: Here’s Why Juries in Death Penalty Trials Might Not Be So Fair, Impartial After All You have the right to a fair trial by a jury of your peers, but researchers argue your “peers” typically end up being mostly white. Alisa Smith, Chair of the Department of Legal Studies at UCF, told Spectrum News that findings from the University of California in recent decades show African Americans are more likely to be disproportionately excluded from death penalty trials. “You can’t exclude a juror based upon race, but you can exclude a juror based upon a belief or a perception that they can’t be fair and impartial,” Smith explained. The findings show that as African Americans become more anti-death penalty, the likelihood of them being excluded in these trials as a juror increase. The research is reflected in the triple-murder trial of Central Florida man Grant Amato, who is accused of killing his parents and brother. 10 people out of the 12 person jury are white, and the alternates are 3 white men. The point of death qualification is to identify jurors who can be fair and impartial in deciding the ultimate punishment. But Smith says it doesn’t always work that way. “That question alone tends to bias a jury toward a group of individuals who are more likely to impose the death penalty,” she explained. While there is no cookie-cutter solution, Smith argues that a potential solution is to have 2 separate juries — 1 for the trial and 1 for the penalty phase. (source: baynews9.com) ALABAMA: Judge will decide Thursday if Lionel Francis should get death penalty for killing young daughter A Madison County Circuit Judge will decide Thursday if Lionel Francis will get the death penalty for killing his 20-month-old daughter. Francis, 37, was convicted in May of capital murder in the death of Alexandria Francis. The child was shot in May 2016 at the family’s home on Lockwood Court. Francis didn’t testify at this trial, but he told police the shooting was an accident. The prosecution’s case included testimony from a state medical examiner who said the nature of the child’s wound indicated the gun was pressed tightly to her forehead before he pulled the trigger. The child’s mother, Ashley Ross testified she was changing her clothes, with her back to Francis and her daughter when she heard the shot fired. Ross’s testimony shook the courtroom at Francis’ trial, as prosecutors played her anguished 911 call pleading for medical attention. The jury also heard her one phone conversation with Francis’ where she angrily dismissed his
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., LA., MO., OKLA., NEV., USA
January 30 TEXASimpending execution 30 years after killing a Houston police officer, Robert Jennings is set for executionJennings is expected to be put to death on Wednesday for the 1988 murder of Elston Howard. His sentence has been complicated by constantly evolving death penalty law — changes his lawyers are citing in a last-ditch attempt to stay his execution. Robert Jennings has been on Texas’ death row for nearly 30 years. On Wednesday, the 61-year-old is set to die in the nation’s 1st execution of 2019. Jennings was sentenced to death in the 1988 murder of Houston police officer Elston Howard. According to court records, Jennings walked into an adult book store to rob it, and Howard was there arresting the store clerk for a municipal violation. The clerk testified that Howard had no time to even reach for his gun before Jennings shot him multiple times, killing him. The lengthy stretch of time between Jennings' 1989 sentencing and his scheduled execution shines a light on the complications that can arise during the appeals process in the face of constantly evolving death penalty law. In their current attempt to halt Jennings' execution, his lawyers are zeroing in on changes in how death penalty juries weigh "mitigating evidence"— factors that can lessen the severity of the punishment that are largely based on the defendant's background, like an abusive childhood or intellectual disability. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court points out that, at the time of Jennings' trial, Texas juries were not told they could opt for a sentence of life in prison rather than death if they believed the defendant’s background or character warranted mercy — a key aspect of death penalty trials now. Rather, the so-called "special issue" questions Texas juries were required to answer after finding someone guilty of capital murder asked them to determine whether the murder was deliberate or provoked — and whether the defendant was a potential future danger. At the punishment portion of Jennings 1989 murder trial, where the jury was supposed to answer those questions, the prosecution brought up Jennings’ long rap sheet — he had been to prison multiple times for aggravated robbery, and had been released on parole only 2 months before Howard’s murder, according to court records. In his confession to police after his arrest, he also confessed to several other robberies in the 2-month span. Meanwhile, Jennings’ lawyers only brought forth a Harris County jail chaplain, who said Jennings wasn’t “incorrigible,” in reference to potential danger posed. The jury also heard Jennings’ recorded confession, where he admitted he had been drinking and using drugs and expressed remorse for the shooting. But days before the trial, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in an unrelated case that a death penalty jury must be specifically directed to determine whether mitigating evidence warrants sparing the defendant from execution. In an attempt to address the ruling at the last minute, Jennings’ jurors were told after closing arguments to consider any mitigating evidence already introduced and, if they found it appropriate, to answer against the death penalty in one of the already-existing questions. The jury was unconvinced, and Jennings was sentenced to death. It wasn’t until more than a decade later that the Supreme Court again took up the issue and determined that telling a jury to weigh mitigating evidence by overwriting an existing special issue is not constitutional. Jennings’ lawyers have argued that the jury’s inability to properly weigh his drug use and how remorseful he was for Howard’s death warrants him a new trial with the new special issue questions, which now include a question on mitigating evidence. They’ve also said if the trial counsel had known to raise other mitigating evidence, including mental deficits and a troubling childhood, the jury would have reached a different conclusion. “It gets extremely complicated because the law evolves and then the question is: Do new decisions get applied retroactively?” Randy Schaffer, one of Jennings’ lawyers, told The Texas Tribune. But not every death sentence handed down before juries were instructed to consider mitigating factors was tossed after the Supreme Court ruling. Rather, the nation's highest court said it depended on the nature of the evidence presented at trial. So far, the courts have ultimately said Jennings’ remorse doesn’t make the cut — though he did get one execution date taken off the calendar as a Texas court took up the issue in 2016. Jennings’ lawyers have argued against the court decisions by pointing to dozens of other capital murder cases that got new sentencing trials after the Supreme Court rulings. Specifically, they point to the case of Arthur Williams, another man who was sentenced to death for the murder of a Houston police officer under the old punishment
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., MISS., ARIZ., ORE., USA, US MIL.
December 14 TEXAS: DA will seek death penalty in murder of 20-month-old Central Texas girl Milam County prosecutors will seek the death penalty in the trial of a man indicted Thursday for capital murder in the death of a 20-month-old Rockdale girl. Shawn Vincent Boniello, who’s also known as Shayla Angeline Boniello, 30, remains in the Milam County Jail. The Milam County Grand Jury handed up a capital murder indictment against him Wednesday morning in the death of Patricia Ann Rader, who died on the evening of Dec. 3 at her home in Rockdale. “Upon receipt of the draft of an offense report…from the Rockdale Police Department…the Milam County District Attorney’s office will seek the penalty of death for the defendant,” County/District Attorney Bill Torrey said in a press release early Thursday afternoon. "District Judge John W. Youngblood has requested the Texas Capital Defender’s Service in Austin, to represent the defendant," Torrey said. Officers, firefighters and paramedics responded to the girl’s home at around 5:45 p.m. Dec. 3 after receiving a report of an unresponsive child. Paramedics performed CPR at the scene, but were unable to revive the girl. Boniello was arrested that night and was initially charged with child abandonment/endangerment, but on Dec. 4 was also named in a complaint charging capital murder. (source: KWTX news) ** Death sentences remained near historic low levels in Texas in 2018, yet state’s capital punishment system still plagued by racial bias, geographical disparities, and fundamental unfairnessAll 7 death sentences in 2018 imposed on people of color The number of death sentences and executions in 2018 was consistent with lower use of the death penalty in Texas over the last 10 years, according to a new report from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP). New death sentences remained in the single digits for the 9th time in 10 years, with Texas juries condemning seven individuals to death. All 7 men sentenced to death in Texas in 2018 are people of color. Juries rejected the death penalty in two capital murder trials, while two other capital cases were declared mistrials. For the third year in a row, no one was resentenced to death in Texas. "The death penalty landscape in Texas has changed significantly over the last 20 years,” said Kristin Houlé, TCADP Executive Director and author of Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2018: The Year in Review. “Not only have the number of death sentences and executions declined by staggering percentages, but the chorus of voices raising concerns about the application of the death penalty grows louder and more diverse every day.” As use of the death penalty declines, its application remains geographically isolated. Only 4 counties in Texas have imposed more than one death sentence in the last 5 years. The 2 counties that have imposed the most death sentences since 1974 – Harris and Dallas – together account for just 2 new sentences since 2015. The death penalty also continues to be disproportionately imposed on people of color. Over the last 5 years, more than 70% of death sentences have been imposed on people of color. The State of Texas put 13 people to death in 2018, matching the number of executions carried out in 2015. It was 1 of just 8 states nationwide to carry out executions in 2018 and accounted for more than 1/2 of all U.S. executions this year. The cases of those put to death in Texas in 2018 involved claims of innocence, ineffective assistance of counsel, religious discrimination, and false testimony, among other serious issues. In 2018, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) stayed half as many executions as it did in 2017, granting reprieves to 3 individuals with claims related to intellectual disability or incompetency to be executed. 3 other people with execution dates received reprieves, including a rare clemency grant. On February 22, 2018, less than an hour before the execution of Thomas “Bart” Whitaker was set to begin, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a proclamation sparing his life and commuting his death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole in accordance with a unanimous recommendation from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. It was the 1st clemency grant in Texas in more than a decade and only the 3rd since the resumption of executions in 1982. Since 2014, a total of 24 individuals – including 3 this year – have been removed from death row in Texas for reasons other than execution. During this same time period, 50 people have been put to death. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2017 ruling in Moore v. Texas continued to impact Texas death penalty cases. That decision found the state of Texas must use current medical standards for determining whether a person is intellectually disabled and therefore exempt from execution. In 2018, the CCA
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO
December 1 TEXASimpending execution Clemency denied for 'Texas 7' prisoner scheduled for execution A day after suing the Board of Pardons and Paroles, Texas death row prisoner Joseph Garcia lost his long-shot bid for clemency when the 7-member board denied him a favorable recommendation to the governor. He is currently scheduled for execution Tuesday in Huntsville. The 47-year-old was sentenced to die nearly 2 decades ago for his role in the state's biggest prison break, a carefully plotted scheme followed by a crime spree and the slaying of a suburban Dallas police officer. Even though the 7-member parole board unanimously rebuffed his request for a lenient recommendation, Garcia has a number of other claims pending in the courts as well as a request for reprieve in front of the governor. "We are obviously disappointed," said defense lawyer Mridula Raman. "Justice could be served by having Joseph spend the rest of his life in prison. It is unfortunate that the board puts politics over fairness and mercy." In December 2000, Garcia was serving time for a Bexar County slaying when he teamed up with 6 fellow prisoners to break out of a maximum-security prison south of San Antonio. Fleeing canines and helicopters, the men drove to Houston where they pulled off 2 store robberies to stock up on supplies and money before heading north toward Dallas. There, on Christmas Eve, the crew of escapees robbed an Oshman's sporting goods - and on their way out, killed Irving police Officer Aubrey Hawkins. The men drove through a blizzard and headed to Colorado, where they were caught a month later posing as Christian missionaries and living in a trailer park. Though 5 gunmen fired shots and 1 of them - ringleader George Rivas - confessed to shooting the cop, Garcia has long maintained he never opened fire. Still, he was found guilty and sentenced to die under the law of parties, a controversial statute that can hold non-shooters as responsible as triggermen. Challenging the use of that statute has become the center of one of Garcia's last-ditch legal battles. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled against him in that appeal on Friday, but in a 17-page dissent Judge Elsa Alcala wrote that "evolving standards of decency" might mean it's no longer permissible to execute someone who never intended to kill, and that it might not serve a penological purpose. Late Friday, Garcia's attorneys appealed up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The same day, his legal team filed a federal lawsuit over the state's lethal injection supplier. Echoing a letter sent to the governor earlier in the week, the suit focuses on concerns stemming from a BuzzFeed News report on Wednesday that identified the Houston compounding pharmacy believed to be 1 of 2 responsible for making up the batches of pentobarbital used in the Huntsville death chamber. Since the Braeswood-area business had a track record of safety violations documented by the state, Garcia's attorney's asked the federal court to ban the state from using drugs compounded there or to simply call off Garcia's execution. In addition to the new filings on Friday, Garcia has an appeal challenging the Bexar County conviction that originally put him behind bars; a lawsuit alleging the state's parole board has too many ex-law enforcement members; and a request for reprieve in front of the governor. (source: Houston Chronicle) ** State-Sanctioned Secrecy Shields Texas’ Death Penalty Machine from ScrutinyNew revelations about the source of Texas’ execution drugs underscore the risks of capital punishment shrouded in secrecy. Shortly before he died by lethal injection earlier this year, Anthony Shore, Houston’s infamous “tourniquet killer,” exclaimed that he felt a burning sensation. Later that month, condemned killer William Rayford reportedly grimaced and writhed on the gurney during his final moments. Chris Young, executed this summer over the objections of his victim’s surviving son, was one of several death row inmates who said he could feel the drugs burning in his throat before he died. On Wednesday, Buzzfeed News reported that Texas buys execution drugs from Greenpark Compounding Pharmacy in Houston, which state health officials have repeatedly cited for dangerous practices in recent years, including for giving kids the wrong medicine and forging quality control documents. After the Buzzfeed report, lawyers for Joseph Garcia — set to die Tuesday for his role in a deadly 1999 prison escape — urged Governor Greg Abbott to give Garcia a 30-day reprieve, saying the revelation raises questions about the quality of Texas’ death drugs. Killing Garcia next week, his attorneys argue, subjects him to the “unreasonable risk of a cruel execution." Secrecy has always been a part of the American death penalty machine. Executioners donned hoods when the condemned were hanged in the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO, TENN.
July 20 TEXAS: In Houston death penalty cases, many judges carry a 'rubber stamp,' lawyers find Harris County judges routinely "rubber stamp' the prosecution's proposed version of events at a key point of death penalty appeals, pushing condemned prisoners closer to execution with little regard for defense claims, a new study finds. Some legal experts say the study reveals a "rigged" system where the state is effectively ghostwriting appeals decisions that judges sign off on, often without allowing hearings and sometimes within just a few days. "This is the heart of the reason the Texas death penalty system is so broken," said Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center. The year-long study of roughly 200 proceedings was first published in a federal appeal filed earlier this year by defense lawyer Jim Marcus. It says that in the vast majority of death penalty cases - more than 9 times out of every 10 - judges are simply accepting prosecutors' arguments, sometimes adopting their language, spelling errors and all. But judges and prosecutors rebuffed the study's claims, pointing out that if courts are consistently siding with the state, it doesn't mean they're wrong. These are, after all, men and woman already tried and convicted in front of a jury. Each case is unique, they emphasize, and while defense lawyers are supposed to be zealous advocates for their clients, prosecutors are supposed to be neutral defenders of justice. Among the skeptics: Judge Elsa Alcala, a former Harris County jurist now known as the most outspoken death penalty critic on the state's Court of Criminal Appeals. "I'm not totally convinced that because you have some percentage that says something that that really tells you a lot," Alcala said. "We're judges because we're required to use our judgment." Yet the vast majority of the time, that means agreeing only with the state. 'State's proposed findings' After a jury doles out a death sentence, the years-long "post-conviction" appeals process delves into a "finding of facts." Each side gets to lay out their version of what's happened and present new evidence that could merit a new trial - or at least a hearing to figure out whether that's necessary. The proposed findings might be a dozen pages or a hundred, and the attached exhibits can occasionally be far more voluminous than that. Once they're submitted, the judge reviews each set, a process that can require sifting through stacks of trial transcripts and years of court or medical records. Jurists might write their own set of findings, or they might pick and choose pieces from each. But, according to the law review analysis, Harris County judges typically sign off verbatim on what the prosecution submits, sometimes in just a day or 2 and sometimes without bothering to correct repeated spelling errors, duplications, typos or change the title - "state's proposed findings" - at the top. Those sorts of errors, defense lawyers say, suggest that the judges aren't reading the paperwork in front of them. The findings are just one step of a lengthy appeals process, but it's a critical one because later on down the road, judges defer to those findings and technical rules give them a lot of weight. Unfavorable findings can torpedo a defendant's odds of success in federal appeals. That's why some said the data might go a long way toward explaining how the Lone Star State - and Harris County in particular - became ground zero for capital punishment. "Texas executes death-row prisoners at more than 3 times the rate of the nation as a whole," Dunham said. "But that doesn't mean the system works." Instead, he said, it might mean that death row prisoners aren't getting hearings or "meaningful review" of their appeals, making it easier to push through executions despite claims of innocence or intellectual disability. Local defense lawyer Randy Schaffer accused "lazy" judges of not reading the paperwork in front of them, while attorney Pat McCann described the phenomenon of "rubber stamping" as "so common it's become a joke" among defense lawyers. The Chronicle attempted to contact all of the 47 jurists whose decisions were referenced in the study. Of those who were still alive and reachable, most did not respond or declined to comment. A few - such as Alcala - offered detailed explanations. "I don't think there's anything per se wrong with it," she said, "if it is in fact what the judge believes." One-sided numbers The decision to review roughly 200 sets of findings all stemmed from 1 case: that of death row inmate Tony Medina. The 43-year-old former gang member has long proclaimed his innocence in the 1996 Harris County drive-by that sent him to death row. His case includes a number of troubling claims, including witness coercion, withheld evidence and bad lawyering on the part of a famously overworked trial attorney who never won a
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO, TENN., ARK., UTAH, ARIZ., NEV.
July 12
TEXASimpending execution
Death Watch: Faith in ExecutionsReligious beliefs barred a potential juror
from Christopher Young's trial. Did that cause his sentencing?
Possible religious discrimination might grant a Texas death row inmate another
trial. Christopher Young filed an application for relief with the Texas Court
of Criminal Appeals on July 2, arguing that the discrimination against a
potential juror, based on her church affiliation, tainted his original trial.
Young was 21 when he shot and killed Hasmukh Patel during an attempted robbery
of a gas station. Before his trial, a woman was struck from the jury based
"solely" on her affiliation with a Baptist church where "some members"
ministered to prisoners, because the prosecution believed this could imply that
she favored the defendant. Today, Young's counsel claims the potential juror's
personal beliefs were never questioned, which was allowed under Casarez v.
State, where the CCA held that peremptory challenges made on the basis of a
potential juror's religious affiliation do not violate the 14th Amendment's
Equal Protection Clause.
The latest appeal, however, was granted in light of 2011's Devoe v. State, when
the CCA ruled that Casarez should be read as only "challenges made on the basis
of personal religious belief are permissible." Young's lawyer Jeff Newberry
said "the whole case hinges on the 2011 decision being the new law." The
Alliance Defending Freedom, a public interest organization that protects First
Amendment rights, along with a group of 23 "Faith Leaders," have filed amicus
briefs in support of Young's request for a new trial. According to one, if the
court upholds its original decision, it will "essentially create a rule that
says it is permissible for the citizens of Texas to be discriminated against in
the courtroom for freely exercising their right to affiliate with a particular
church."
Young's attorneys also filed a clemency petition with the Texas Board of
Pardons and Paroles on June 25, referencing Thomas Whitaker, who received
clemency in February ("Justice for Whom?" Feb. 16). That outcome has inspired
more Texas lawyers to seek clemency for their death row clients, but Newberry
believes the similarities between his client's case and Whitaker's set Young's
apart. As Whitaker's father asked the state to spare his son's life, Patel's
son Mitesh has asked the state to spare Young's.
The petition states Mitesh told Young's counsel that "boys who lose their
fathers traumatically have a 50-50 shot of being successful despite that
trauma. Mitesh was; Chris was not." (Young was a child when his own father was
murdered.) Now, Mitesh wants Young's sentence commuted so that Young can be a
"father to his daughters." The petition asks the board to focus on the
"important facts." Aside from Mitesh's plea, it states Young "is truly
remorseful," and that his life has "positive value, both as a father and as a
former gang member who can counsel other inmates." Newberry expects the board
to vote on Young's case on Friday, July 13.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied Young's last appeal in January. If rulings
continue in the state's favor, Young will be executed on Tuesday, July 17.
Already, Texas has executed 7 inmates this year, with another 6 scheduled
before November.
(source: Austin Chronicle)
FLORIDA:
Man, 66, could still face death penalty if convicted in cold case
murderJames Leon Jackson charged in 1984 rape and murder of 10-year-old
Tammy Welch
Despite his age and infirmity, a 66-year-old man could still face the death
penalty in the cold case murder of a 10-year-old girl -- if he is convicted.
James Leon Jackson is charged in the 1984 rape and murder of Tammy Welch.
Jackson was considered a suspect all along but wasn't charged until 2013.
In 2016, Jackson's lawyers filed a motion to block the state attorney's office
from seeking the death penalty, per the U.S. Supreme Court's Hurst ruling.
At a hearing Tuesday, the judge denied that motion.
Other motions to preclude the death penalty are pending, and Jackson???s
lawyers now want a psychiatric evaluation done.
Jackson's trial is set for the end of the month.
(source: WJXT news)
*
After 20 years on death row, wrongly imprisoned man starts new life in Tampa
An Ohio man found not guilty after spending 20 years on death row is relocating
to Tampa through an organization that helps the recently exonerated rejoin
society.
When he was exonerated and released after 20 years in prison, he struggled to
rejoin society. Now, thanks to the Sunny Center, he will get the fresh start he
was dreaming of.
Derek Jamison's life was stolen at just 23-years-old. He was sentenced to death
for a murder he didn't commit.
"It was hell," Jamison said. "On earth."
Jamison was sentenced to death in 1985, charged with the robbery and murder of
a bartender at a restaurant in
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., LA., TENN., S.DAK., CALIF., USA
June 20 TEXASimpending execution Texas assures court it can carry out aging death row inmate's execution The Lone Star State is confident it can kill Danny Bible. Earlier this month, the aging Houston serial killer filed a last-minute lawsuit arguing that his veins are so bad and his health problems so severe that he can't be put to death - or it'll turn into a painfully botched procedure. But the state of Texas begged to differ, touting its long history of successful executions. "Texas is the most prolific death-penalty state in the nation," the state wrote in a Friday afternoon court filing. "Bible provides no example of a Texas execution, performed under the current protocol, gone horribly awry because of vein failure." Officials say that a Florida killer's screams of "murderers!" during his execution were not caused by the drugs used for the lethal injection. The 66-year-old 4-time killer, who is set for execution on June 27, pointed to bloody botched procedures in other states. In February, a lethal injection team in Alabama spent hours poking Doyle Hamm before calling off his execution. The year before that, Ohio found itself in a similar place with condemned killer Alva Campbell. But that hasn't happened here, the state pointed out in its response. "Texas is not Ohio or Alabama, and the court should give little consideration to isolated examples of problematic executions in other states when it has numerous uneventful Texas executions upon which to base its opinions," state attorneys wrote. "Bible has not managed to present even a single instance of defendants failing to successfully access a vein during an execution." The state raised a number of other points, alleging that the condemned killer should have raised the issue sooner and pointing out that prison medical staffers have managed to draw blood for medical testing over the past year. But Bible's lawyers fired back in a Monday court filing, calling out the state's "inflammatory rhetoric" they deemed "devoid of any viable argument." "Defendants' response is most notable for the things absent from it," attorneys Jeremy Schepers, Nadia Wood and Margaret Schmucker wrote, noting that the state doesn't dispute Bible's host of medical conditions ranging from edema to obesity to Parkinson's disease. The state also "attempts to obfuscate" the "real issue" as to whether its execution procedures represent a substantial risk of harm to a man in Bible's medical condition. That particular claim, defense lawyers argue, the state didn't really refute. This isn't the first time a Texas death row prisoner has fought his sentence by questioning the lethal injection process. But other recent cases focused on the possibility that the drugs themselves would cause suffering, a claim that could more generally apply to any death row prisoner. Bible's argument focuses more narrowly on the possibility that he, specifically, is unfit to execute. Instead, his lawyers have suggested alternative methods such as a firing squad or nitrogen gas in order to decrease the risk of suffering. Bible was initially sent to death row in 2003, more than 2 decades after the crime that landed him there. A former drifter, Bible's lengthy string of violence dates back to at least 1979. That May, a passerby found the bloodied, half-naked body of Inez Deaton along the slope of a Houston bayou. She'd been stabbed 11 times with an ice pick before her killer posed her corpse by the water. For nearly 2 decades, Deaton's slaying went unsolved - but Bible's violent streak continued. In the years that followed, Bible terrorized women in the Midwest, once setting his girlfriend's car on fire because he didn't like her haircut. After he returned to Texas and settled west of Fort Worth, he murdered his sister-in-law Tracy Powers and her infant son Justin. Then, he killed Powers' roommate, Pam Hudgins, and left her body hanging from a roadside fence. Following those killings, he fled to Montana, where he kidnapped a woman and raped an 11-year-old girl, according to court records. Eventually, he was caught and in 1984 he pleaded guilty to Hudgins' murder. He was sentenced to 25 years for the killing and 20 years for a Harris County robbery. He was released on parole 8 years later, under a since-repealed mandatory supervision law. While still on parole, he raped and molested multiple young relatives, including a 5-year-old. Then in 1998, he raped Tera Robinson in a Louisiana motel room before stuffing her into a duffel bag when he became enraged that he couldn't maintain an erection. The woman broke free and called for help. Bible was eventually caught in Florida, and freely admitted to his crimes under questioning. Weeks after he was sentenced, Bible narrowly escaped death during a head-on-collision on the way to death row. The officer behind the wheel of the prison transport vehicle, 40-year-old
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., COLO., CALIF.
June 8 JUNE 8, 2018: TEXAS: The Legacy Of James Byrd, Jr. 20 Year After His Lynching20 years later, Houston Matters discusses the hate crimes legislation Byrd's vicious murder inspired. 20 years ago today, on June 7, 1998 in Jasper, Texas, about 130 miles northeast of Houston, James Byrd, Jr. was heading home. The 49-year-old black man accepted a ride from Shawn Berry and his friends, Lawrence Russell Brewer and John King. Byrd new Berry from around town. He wasn't a stranger. But instead of driving Byrd home, Berry drove to a remote country road, where the 3 white men severely beat Byrd, chained him to their pickup truck, and then dragged him to death, for nearly 3 miles. The 3 men were white supremacists and were tried and convicted of murder. Brewer and King received the death penalty. Berry received a life sentence. The vicious killing shocked the nation and helped prompt passage of state and federal hate crimes legislation. To look back at the legacy of Byrd and the laws his death inspired, Houston Matters talks with Dena Marks, of the Anti-Defamation League in Houston and Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis. (source: houstonpublicmedia.org) *** He Pocketed His Victims' Organs. Was His Death Penalty Trial Fair?As Andre Thomas faces execution for three gory murders, a court questions jury bias and his competency. Warning: This story contains graphic content that could be disturbing to some readers. It's been 13 years since a floridly psychotic black man named Andre Thomas was sentenced to die. He killed his estranged white wife, their young biracial son and the wife's other biracial child. He then stabbed himself 3 times and laid down next to his victims, expecting to die. When he didn't, he walked 5 miles to his father's house in Sherman, Texas, carrying his victims' organs in his pockets, and tried to call Laura, the woman he'd just killed. 5 days after his confession to police, he decided he would heed Matthew's Biblical advice: "If thy right eye offends thee, pluck it out." And so he did. Then, after being sentenced to death row 4 years later, he decided to gouge out his other eye. Then he ate it. Texas has always argued that Thomas deserved the death sentence, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday ordered both state attorneys and defense lawyers to submit more evidence and legal arguments on the merits of 2 timely issues in capital punishment law: jury bias and the competency of defendants when they kill. Was Thomas competent to stand trial? At first all sides agreed he wasn't and Thomas was sent to a state psychiatric hospital. Then, just 7 weeks later, after state doctors gave him heavy doses of the anti-psychotic drug Zypreza, those same doctors said that he now could be tried. They said his psychosis, which had presented itself for a decade before the murders, was not organic, but had been "exaggerated" by drugs and alcohol in his system. Thomas's case was well told by Brandi Grissom in a piece titled "Trouble in Mind" in Texas Monthly in March 2013. Thomas was a smart, likeable kid, who loved to study the Bible, growing up poor in Sherman. But his slide into madness began around age 9, when he started complaining about the angels and the demons arguing with one another in his mind. He was in and out of trouble with the law, and repeatedly tried to kill himself, and through it all he had no adequate medical care that might have allowed him and his victims to avoid the horror that happened in March 2004. The competency question in the Thomas case falls neatly into recent Supreme Court precedent. In 2002 the court outlawed the execution of intellectually disabled capital defendants, a decision they reinforced in 2014. In 2005 the court outlawed the execution of juvenile murders. In each instance the court's majority focused on levels of culpability and the capacity of the defendant to understand either the nature of the crime they had committed or what capital punishment would mean as a retributive response to it. The 5th Circuit ruled that it does not want to explore the question of mental illness and the death penalty but that does not mean the justices will be so constrained. Thomas was convicted by an all-white jury that contained at least three members who spoke openly about their opposition to interracial marriage. One juror told lawyers and the judge during jury selection that "the bloodlines shouldn't be mixed." Another juror who sentenced Thomas to death said that the children from an interracial couple would "not have a specific race to belong to." Yet another juror said that interracial relationships were "contrary to God's intent." Thomas' trial attorney never aggressively challenged these statements. During the oral argument Tuesday at the 5th Circuit (listen here), Thomas' current lawyer Catherine Carroll argued that jury
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO, TENN., ILL.
June 1 TEXAS: 3rd East Texas inmate gets 2018 execution date An East Texas man has been given an execution date for 2018. After the United States Supreme Court denied his appeal, an East Texas judge signed off on an execution date for Daniel Acker, 46, of Sulphur Springs. Acker is scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 27. In 2001, Acker was sentenced to death for March 2000 murder of 32-year-old Marquetta George. In February 2000, Acker and George moved into a rented trailer home, shortly after they met. On the evening of Saturday, March 11, 2000, the pair went to a rode before heading to the nightclub, "bustin' Loose," according to documents presented in court. The couple got into an argument at the club and witnessess, who testified at Acker's trial, said he threatened to kill George that night. Documents state Acker was kicked out of the club, but returned several times looking for George. "Around 9:15 a.m. on March 12, Acker went to the home of George's mother, Lila Seawright, still searching for George," court documents state. "Seawright testified at trial that Acker told her that if he found out George had spent the night with another man, he was going to kill them. Seawright replied that no one was worth going to the penitentiary for murder. Seawright testified that Acker shrugged and replied, 'Pen life ain't nothing. Ain't nothing to it.'" Later that morning, after Acker returned to the trailer he shared with George, a bouncer, identified as Robert "calico" McKee, at "bustin' Loose," brought George to the trailer. McKee told Acker he had taken George to her father's house to spend the night. Acker testified in court he did not believe McKee was telling the truth because he drove by George's father's house the previous night when he was looking for her. According to Acker, George admitted she spent the night with Calico. Acker then asked George where Calico lived and she said she would show him, but instead, she ran out of the trailer. Neighbors testified George darted from the trailer, screaming for them to call law enforcement. Acker followed her, grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder, forced her into his truck and sped away. Sedill Ferrell, who owned a dairy farm in Hopkins County, found George's body and contacted the sheriff's office. Acker turned himself in to a law enforcement officer and was arrested. George's body was found less than 3 miles from the trailer where she lived with Acker. Acker was convicted of kidnapping, then murdering George. An autopsy revealed she died from strangulation and blunt force trauma. Acker is the 3rd East Texas inmate to be dealt an execution date for 2018. TROY CLARK On May 7, Troy James Clark, 50, of Smith County, received his execution date in the 7th District Court. The State of Texas will put Clark to death by lethal injection on September 26, the day before Acker. On May 1, 1998, Clark was condemned for the torture and drowning murder of his former roommate, Christina Muse, 20, of Tyler. According to evidence presented in court, Clark and a co-defendant, identified as Tory Gene Bush, hit Muse with stun gun, beat, bound and kept her in a closet before drowning her in a bathtub. Prosecutors said Clark and Bush then stuffed Muse's body into a barrel with cement mix and lime before dumping in a ravine. Her body was discovered 5 months later by Tyler police. According to the Associated Press, the motive behind the crime was Clark and Bush feared Muse would snitch on them for using and selling methamphetamine. Bush pleaded guilty to the charge of murder intentionally causing death on August 7, 2000, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In October 2017, the Supreme Court of the United States refused Clark's appeal claiming he had insufficient legal counsel during his 2000 trial in Smith County. Clark's prior convictions include: June 24, 1987 - Possession of a controlled substance - Cocaine (Released August 27, 1987 on parole) January 8, 1993 - Possession of a controlled substance X2 (Released February 23, 1996) According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Clifton Williams will be put to death on June 21, 2018, for the murder of Cecilia Schneider, of Tyler. On July 9, 2005, Williams, then 21, entered Schneider's home before stabbing, beating and strangling her to death. He then burned her body. Williams stole Schneider's purse and car and left the scene. Officials arrested Williams a week later. In 2006, he was found guilty in the court of former judge Cynthia Kent and sentenced to death. He was originally set to be executed on Thursday, July 16, 2015. However, he received an 11th hour stay of execution from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals until questions about some "incorrect testimony" at his 2006 trial could be resolved. In a brief order, the court agreed to return the case to the 114th District Court in Tyler to
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO, KY., OKLA., CALIF., WASH.
March 28 TEXASexecution Lubbock group protests death penalty on night of Rodriguez's execution "God of compassion," read the vigil program. "You let rain fall on the just and the unjust. Expand and deepen our hearts so that we may love as you love, even those among us who have caused the greatest pain by taking life." The rain stopped just long enough for the Friends of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty group to hold signs with messages against execution in front of St. John's United Methodist Church Tuesday night on University Avenue as 38-year-old Rosendo Rodriguez was set to by executed in Huntsville. Minutes before he died, Rodriguez espoused the same message as the vigil group, calling for the end of the death penalty. Rodriguez was sentenced to death for the 2005 rape and killing of 29-year-old Summer Baldwin. He also admitted to killing 16-year-old Joanna Rogers. Both women were from Lubbock. The 4 solemn participants said they had different reasons for attending the vigil. Beth Pressley, organizer of the group, said they meet for prayer and sign holding from 5:45-6:15 p.m. each time there is an execution in Texas. Pressley wore a T-shirt that read "pro life," and said that is the message of the group. "We don't like the state killing people in our name. We don't think it's necessary," Pressley said. "There was a time that you maybe had to worry about violent criminals getting out (of prison), but that's not really the case anymore. People have the chance to repent." Pressley said because this was a local case, she has followed the crime since the beginning. "It was frightening. It was sad. I remember being very glad that they finally caught the guy and got him off the street," Pressley said. "But now we have 3 families who are hurting. Killing somebody isn't going to make those daughters come back." Participants prayed for peace for all involved people: the victims' families, Rodriguez's family, the court system, prison employees and all others on death row. Phoenix Lundstrom had a more personal connection with Rodriguez. During the prayer portion of the vigil, Lundstrom read a letter she recently received from Rodriguez that indicated faith was on his mind in his last few weeks. Lundstrom said her son Mitchell Wachholtz met Rodriguez around 10 years ago when they were in neighboring prison cells. Wachholtz is serving a 99-year sentence at the Darrington Unit in Rosharon. He was convicted of murder in the 2007 death of Chase Pendleton. Lundstrom said her son has found his calling in life, in part because of Rodriguez. "Rosendo started talking to my son about Jesus. Now my son is in his 3rd year of seminary school at Darrington," Lundstrom said. "Rosendo was one of the key people in bringing my son from a street-wise punk to a real man of God." The group dispersed around 6:20 p.m. Rodriguez was pronounced dead at 6:46 p.m. (source: Lubbock Avalanche-Journal) * 'Suitcase killer' at execution: 'I'm ready to join my father' A San Antonio man who became known as the "suitcase killer" was executed Tuesday evening in Texas for the slaying of a 29-year-old Lubbock woman whose battered, naked body was stuffed into a new piece of luggage and tossed in the trash. Rosendo Rodriguez III had also confessed to killing a 16-year-old Lubbock girl and similarly disposing of her body in the trash in a suitcase. Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Rodriguez spoke defiantly for 7 minutes and never apologized to relatives of his victims watching through a window. "The state may have my body but they never had my soul," Rodriguez said. He also urged people to boycott Texas businesses to pressure the state into ending the death penalty and reiterated issues raised in late appeals that were rejected by the courts. "I've fought the good fight, I have run the good race," he said. "Warden, I'm ready to join my father." Rodriguez, who turned 38 Monday, received a lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital, injected by Texas prison officials. 22 minutes later, at 6:46 p.m. CT, he was pronounced dead. The execution was the 4th this year in Texas and 7th nationally. The U.S. Supreme Court, less than 30 minutes before Rodriguez was taken to the death chamber, rejected an appeal to block his punishment. Rodriguez's lawyers told the justices lower courts improperly turned down appeals that focused on the medical examiner's testimony at Rodriguez's trial for the September 2005 slaying of Summer Baldwin. State lawyers said the high court appeal was improper, untimely and meritless, and "nothing more than a last-ditch effort," according to Texas Assistant Attorney General Tomee Heining. Workers at the Lubbock city landfill spotted a new suitcase in the trash, opened it and discovered the body of Baldwin, who was 10 weeks pregnant. Detectives used a barcode label sewn to
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Feb. 23 TEXAS: Governor Abbott commutes death sentence of Thomas Bartlett Whitaker Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Thursday that he has commuted the death sentence of Thomas Bartlett Whitaker. Whitaker was set to be executed Thursday night for the 2003 murders of his mother and brother in their Sugar Land home. He admitted to running a murder-for-hire plot to have them killed in order to collect inheritance money. A gunman also shot Whitaker as an attempt to cover up his involvement. His father, Kent Whitaker, was also shot but survived. Thomas "Bart" Whitaker attended Baylor University for several semesters. Baylor's Assistant Vice President for Media Communications Lori Fogleman said Whitaker was a Baylor student from the fall semester of 1998 to the spring of 2001. He did not graduate. Kent Whitaker was instrumental in getting his son's case before the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles which on Wednesday unanimously recommended that Governor Abbott commute Whitaker's sentence from death to life in prison. Gov. Greg Abbott released the following statement: "As a former trial court judge, Texas Supreme Court Justice and Attorney General involved in prosecuting some of the most notorious criminals in Texas, I have the utmost regard for the role that juries and judges play in our legal system. The role of the Governor is not to second-guess the court process or re-evaluate the law and evidence. Instead, the Governor's role under the Constitution is distinct from the judicial function. The Governor's role is to consider recommendations by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and view matters through a lens broader than the facts and law applied to a single case. That is particularly important in death penalty cases. "In just over three years as Governor, I have allowed 30 executions. I have not granted a commutation of a death sentence until now, for reasons I here explain. "The murders of Mr. Whitaker's mother and brother are reprehensible. The crime deserves severe punishment for the criminals who killed them. The recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and my action on it, ensures Mr. Whitaker will never be released from prison. "The decision of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles is supported by the totality of circumstances in this case. The person who fired the gun that killed the victims did not receive the death penalty, but Mr. Whitaker, who did not fire the gun, did get the death penalty. That factor alone may not warrant commutation for someone like Mr. Whitaker who recruited others to commit murder. Additional factors make the decision more complex. "Mr. Whitaker's father, who survived the attempt on his life, passionately opposes the execution of his son. Mr. Whitaker's father insists that he would be victimized again if the state put to death his last remaining immediate family member. Also, Mr. Whitaker voluntarily and forever waived any and all claims to parole in exchange for a commutation of his sentence from death to life without the possibility of parole. Moreover, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously voted for commutation. The totality of these factors warrants a commutation of Mr. Whitaker's death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Mr. Whitaker must spend the remainder of his life behind bars as punishment for this heinous crime." (source: KXXV news) ** Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present30 Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982present-548 Abbott#scheduled execution date-nameTx. # 31--Mar. 27Rosendo Rodriguez III--549 32--Apr. 25Erick Davila---550 33--May 16-Juan Castillo--551 (sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin) FLORIDAnew death sentence Jury recommends death for man who raped, killed Florida girl Cherish Perrywinkle Jurors who took less than 15 minutes to convict a Florida man last week of abducting, raping and killing an 8-year-old girl have now decided he should be executed. The Jacksonville jury voted unanimously Thursday after about 2 hours of discussion that 62-year-old Donald Smith should receive the death penalty. If just 1 of the 12 jurors had voted against execution, Smith would have instead faced life in prison. During a 2-day sentencing phase, experts testified that Smith is a psychopath who lacks control over his impulses. Doctors also described Smith as callous, uncaring, manipulative and lacking empathy. Smith was convicted last week in the 2013 death of Cherish Perrywinkle, who was abducted from a Walmart store in Jacksonville after he befriended her mother. In tearful testimony during his trial, Rayne Perrywinkle said she thought Smith was a good Samaritan because he had offered to buy her children clothing. Multiple jurors were crying as they
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA.
Feb. 22 TEXAS: Man who plotted his family's murder will not be executed, governor says The governor of Texas decided today to spare the life of a convicted killer who carried out a plot to kill his parents and his brother. About 40 minutes before the scheduled execution, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced he would grant clemency to 38-year-old Thomas "Bart" Whitaker. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, in a rare recommendation, voted unanimously Tuesday in favor of the "lesser penalty" of commuting Whitaker's death sentence to life behind bars without the possibility of parole. “In just over three years as governor, I have allowed 30 executions. I have not granted a commutation of a death sentence until now," Abbott said in a statement. “The murders of Mr. Whitaker’s mother and brother are reprehensible. The crime deserves severe punishment for the criminals who killed them. The recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and my action on it, ensures Mr. Whitaker will never be released from prison." Bart Whitaker was convicted of capital murder for the shooting deaths of his mother, Tricia Whitaker, and his younger brother, Kevin Whitaker, in an attack he devised at the family's Sugar Land, Texas, home in December 2003. Bart's father, Kent Whitaker, was also shot during the attack, but survived. Kent Whitaker said he has forgiven his son and became his most outspoken advocate. "I love him. He's my son," Kent Whitaker told "20/20." "I don't want to see him executed at the hands of Texas in the name of justice when there's a better justice available." On Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, in a rare recommendation, voted unanimously in favor of the "lesser penalty" of commuting Whitaker's death sentence to life behind bars without the possibility of parole. Prosecutor Fred Felcman, who was also the original prosecutor in the case, told ABC's Houston station KTRK on Tuesday that he was disappointed by the parole board's recommendation. "I guess the 12 jurors' opinion means nothing to the parole board," Felcman said. "20/20" sat down with Kent Whitaker awhile he awaited the board’s decision on his son’s fate. He said that Bart has learned Spanish in prison and was teaching some inmates English, while helping others earn their high school diplomas. "I have seen such change in him," Kent Whitaker said of his son. "He's been incarcerated for 11 years. That's 4,000 days. He's done a lot of work himself and he's struggled hard to try to find out what it was that went wrong in his mind." "There's a mental illness issue here that we still don't quite understand," the father added. "But he has learned how to recognize the danger points and to work around them. I want the opportunity to spend years watching him grow. And there's so much that he can do." Kent Whitaker said he recognizes the horrible crime his son committed, saying, "I live with it every day... and nobody's denying it." "Forgiveness is absolutely critical if you want to heal from your loss," he continued. "It is the only way that you can get the bitterness out, and the bitterness is going to stay there and it's going to affect your relationships in ways that you can't even see or recognize. But it's going to negatively affect them. I was able to forgive on the night of the shootings." On Dec. 10, 2003, Bart Whitaker announced to his family that he had finished his final exams at Sam Houston State University and would be graduating. To honor his achievement, his parents presented him with a Rolex watch. That night, the family went to a popular Cajun restaurant to celebrate. Photos taken from that night show Bart smiling for the camera, but he told "20/20" in a 2009 interview that he knew at that moment that an intruder had entered their home and was waiting for their return. If everything went according to his plan, his brother, mother and father would all be dead within minutes. "I don't really know a better term for how I was feeling [that night], other than I was on auto-pilot. I wasn't even aware of myself," Bart Whitaker told "20/20" in 2009. "I wanted them dead," he added. "It was my idea." When the family arrived home, Bart, knowing what awaited his family inside, ran down the driveway, saying he needed to grab his cell phone out of his car. Kevin Whitaker, 19, was the first one to open the door and was shot in the chest, then his mother followed and was also shot. Next, his father was wounded, too -- he was shot through the right chest and arm, breaking his humerus bone. Bart said he then ran into the house and pretended to try and catch the shooter. They wrestled a bit and then Bart was shot in the arm to make him appear to be a victim. "It was to distance me from the guilt," he told "20/20" in 2009. "But also I think on an internal level it was me realizing that there was no way that I could come out of this
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., MO., NEB., UTAH, CALIF.
Feb. 22 TEXAS: Jury selection put on hold in death penalty trial Jury selection in the trial seeking the death penalty against 1 of 2 men accused of gunning down U.S. Border Patrol Agent Javier Vega has been postponed until March 26. Gustavo Tijerina-Sandoval is 1 of 2 men accused in the August 2014 shooting death. A pool of more than 400 potential jurors was called into the 197th state District Court on Feb. 12. By Feb. 14, only a handfull of potential jurors had been interviewed. "We are not even half way there," said Jessica Carrizales, 197th District Court court coordinator. Wednesday, she confirmed over the phone that Tuesday was the last day of jury selection until March 26. The next round of jury selection will take up to 3 weeks and trial is expected to begin in late April. Tijerina-Sandoval, of La Villa, and Ismael Hernandez-Vallejo, of Weslaco, are charged with capital murder and attempted capital murder in the shootings of Javier Vega Jr. and his father, Javier Vega Sr., who survived. Tijerina-Sandoval's trial comes to court after more than 3 years of hearings. It's been nearly 4 years since Vega was murdered while defending his family during a fishing trip in Willacy County. According to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection news release, Javier Vega Jr. attempted to draw his weapon when the men approached the family and was shot in the chest. (source: The Monitor) Rosendo Rodriguez asks for stay of execution, citing settlement with chief medical examiner Rosendo Rodriguez, III, sentenced to death for the murder of a pregnant woman and her unborn child, asked for a stay of execution on Tuesday, based on the actions of Lubbock County Chief Medical Examiner Sridhar Natarajan. Natarajan said he performed the autopsies in the Rodriguez case and testified at his trial. The motion cites a case filed by Dr. Luisa Florez under the Texas Whistleblower Act back in 2015, claiming that Natarajan delegated critical decisions to a senior forensic nurse, Honey Haney Smith. The motion claims that Smith would frequently serve as Natarajan's proxy, "making decision that only a duly deputized medical examiner should be making." The motion cites the claim that Natarajan was not performing his own autopsies, but was instead delegating the "cutting, removal of tissue and organs, and collection of forensic evidence to technicians who were not licensed or trained doctors or forensic pathologists." The lawsuit also claimed that Dr. Natarajan conspired with Nurse Smith to backdate autopsy reports. Dr. Natarajan and Lubbock County settled this lawsuit on Nov. 7, 2017, paying Dr. Florez the sum of $230,000. The motion claims that Lubbock County District Attorney Matt Powell was aware of this lawsuit and failed to disclose it to Rodriguez, resulting in a violation of his due process rights. The Rodriguez execution was scheduled for March 27, but his legal team is now asking for a stay so they can investigate how the autopsies were conducted in this case, and how that may have affected his conviction. Rodriguez rejected a plea deal that would have given him life in prison back in October 2006. (source: KCBD news) FLORIDAimpending execution Legal experts ask U.S. Supreme Court to stay Eric Branch's execution A group that includes former Florida Supreme Court justices and Circuit Court judges has banded together to file a brief in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the high court to stay Eric Branch's upcoming execution to address what they believe is an unconstitutional application of the law. Branch is scheduled to be executed Thursday for the 1993 murder of University of West Florida student Susan Morris. He has been on death row for almost 25 years after an Escambia County jury in 1994 recommended the death penalty with a 10-2 vote. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida's death penalty law in 2016, and state law was then changed to mandate a jury unanimously sentence someone to death. The decision was based on another Escambia County case, that of Timothy Hurst, and has since been referred to as the Hurst ruling. The Escambia County Circuit Court, and subsequently the Florida Supreme Court, have determined the Hurst ruling does not retroactively apply to Branch's case because too much time has passed since the murder. Last week, Branch appealed his case on the same grounds to the U.S. Supreme Court after exhausting all appeals on the local and state levels. Once documents were filed at the federal level, it opened the door for the former justices and judges to file a "friend of the court" brief, which is a way for people not directly involved in cases to offer their opinion on a case. In their brief filed Thursday, the group wrote that the state had implemented an "unconstitutional retroactivity rule" in Branch's case. It further urged the U.S. Supreme Court to
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA.
Feb. 11 TEXAS: Willacy to seek ultimate penalty Nearly 1 century has passed since a person convicted and sentenced to death in Willacy County has been executed by the state of Texas. This week, 1 of 2 men accused of shooting and killing an off-duty Border Patrol agent and injuring the man's father in rural Willacy County will stand trial in the 197th state District Court. The Willacy County District Attorney's Office is seeking the death penalty for both men, who are being tried separately and have pleaded not guilty to the charges. Gustavo Tijerina-Sandoval, a La Villa man, is charged with capital murder and attempted capital murder for allegedly shooting and killing Javier Vega Jr. of Kingsville and injuring the agent's father, Javier Vega Sr. of La Feria, in August 2014. Ismael Hernandez-Vallejo of Weslaco faces the same charges. Authorities have said the murder took place while the suspects robbed the Vegas, who were on a fishing excursion with their family. While 86 years have gone by since the last convicted murderer in Willacy County was executed, another 8 decades have passed since the Willacy County District Attorney's Office has secured a death sentence after a murder conviction. According to Texas Department of Criminal Justice online death row records, which date back to 1923, just 2 people from Willacy County have been sentenced to die in Huntsville. Both of those cases date back to the 1930s. Those stories have largely been forgotten, until now. HISTORY UNCOVERED The 3rd floor of the Willacy County Courthouse, which was built in 1922, used to be a jail. Nowadays, the physical memories of that jail remain. There are bars and jail doors, and memories of inmates told through jailhouse graffiti. But these days, instead of prisoners, the jail cells hold court records. In one of those cells, off in a corner of the jail, is a large black file cabinet. That's where staff from the Willacy County District Clerk's Office found the case files for Estanislado Lopez and Pio Quesada. Lopez and Quesada were held on the very same floor and sentenced to death in the courthouse that holds the only records of the cases against the men. Lopez pleaded guilty to murdering Jesus Villareal on Aug. 24, 1931, and was electrocuted less than 1 year later on June 10, 1932. Quesada pleaded guilty Jan. 22, 1937, to killing Fernando Ramirez on Nov. 27, 1936. Unlike Lopez, Quesada's sentence was commuted and he was never executed. Efforts to discover why Quesada's sentence was commuted were not successful. Unlike modern day death penalty cases that can take years to work their way through the courts, Lopez and Quesada were charged, tried and sentenced within 1 week of their arrests. The appeals process was just months-long. And for Lopez, his sentence was carried out less than one year after he pleaded guilty. However, the case files for the men still contain all of the documentation and are in excellent condition. There are indictments, arrest warrants, handwritten notes, Western Union receipts, and even appeals and notices of court-appointed attorneys; all neatly folded handbills reminiscent of the shape and size of a warrant that a proverbial western lawman would pull out of the pocket of their duster. AXE MURDER In July of 1930, Lopez, a San Antonio man who lived at a residence just northeast of downtown in the Alamo City for 8 years, traveled to Raymondville to pick cotton. The details of what transpired next are held in handwritten notes taken by authorities at the Harris County jail from an account given to them by a man named Francisco Moreno and a confession they took from Lopez, which still bears the man???s signature. In a coincidence, Moreno was arrested in Houston and placed in a cell with Lopez. Unfortunately for Lopez, Moreno was 1 of the 7 farm workers staying in a house about 4 miles east of Raymondville, along with Lopez, when the murder occurred. "When I was put in the cell ... Lopez covered up his face and would not let me see him. I told Lopez to take his hands down from his face I want to see who you are," Moreno told authorities in Houston according to the records. Moreno stated that he never saw the murder because they were all asleep, but when they woke up to a dog barking at sunrise and discovered the body, Lopez was long gone. While sharing a cell, Moreno asked Lopez where he went after the killing. "Lopez said he stayed in the brush 3 or 4 days and then went some place around Ft. Worth and then to Waco and then to Bryan, then Lopez said to me not to tell any one about the killing at Raymondville Texas for they will put me in the electric chair, he did not tell me how he killed this man," Moreno said, according to the records. Lopez killed the man by striking him with an axe while he slept. Lopez gave his account of the murder and signed it in the handwritten letter. The night of the murder was
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Feb. 3 TEXASimpending execution He's Fighting to Save His Family's Killer. The Killer: His Own Son Bart Whitaker set to be executed Feb. 22 for killing his mom and brother, but dad isn't giving up on him "My wife and son were murdered by a masked gunman, and my other son and I were left for dead, but survived." Those are the words of Kent Whitaker on his website, detailing the horrific crime that tore his life apart in December 2003. But, he adds, things soon got worse: The son who'd survived, Thomas "Bart" Whitaker, was later arrested and convicted for planning the attack with 2 friends, and he now awaits a Feb. 22 execution on Texas' death row. The Washington Post documents the elder Whitaker's rage in the hours just after the shootings, which had taken place as the 4 family members arrived home from a dinner out. As he stewed in his hospital bed, recovering from the bullet that had come within inches of his heart, Whitaker first vowed to "inflict pain" on the shooter, then started thinking on his faith and how God wouldn't want him to go down a path of vengeance. And so he decided then to forgive, "no matter who was responsible" - a promise made before finding out that Bart, in his early 20s, had helped mastermind the attack. Even though Whitaker and his extended family pleaded with the DA not to pursue the death penalty, prosecutors painted Bart as a sociopath who wanted his parents' money; he was convicted of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder and sentenced to die. The case of the now 38-year-old, who's been on good behavior behind bars and is about to earn his master's degree, underscores how victims should be folded into the process of doling out justice, Whitaker says. "This isn't just a case of a dad who is ignoring the truth about his son," he says. "Believe me, I'm aware of what his choices have cost me." The Whitakers have filed a petition with Texas' parole and pardons board to commute Bart's sentence to life in prison. (source: newser.com) *** Man charged in deadly assault of son's mother headed to trial in Denton County The jury trial for Ricardo Alfonso Lara-Martinez begins Monday, more than three years after he was accused of murdering his young son's mother at a local business office. The trial, which begins at 9 a.m., will be in Judge Bruce McFarling's 362nd Judicial District Court. FBI agents returned Lara-Martinez to Denton in June after he had been in custody in Mexico since February 2016. He's specifically charged in the murder of his son's mother, Maria Isabel Romero Medina, who was found dead Dec. 13, 2014, at Sanchez Insurance and Tax Services, E. McKinney St. He remains in Denton County Jail in lieu of $1 million bail. Lara-Martinez's lawyer, Denton attorney Derek Adame, maintains the woman's death was an accident. "We're optimistic," he said. "Lara-Martinez's position is this was accidental, and we're hoping that's what the evidence will show. We don't believe he was guilty, and we don't believe the state will be able to prove that." Police said Medina died Dec. 12, 2014, as a result of a deliberate assault. She suffered numerous injuries, including a fractured skull. The cause of death included strangulation, according to Lara-Martinez's arrest affidavit. Lara-Martinez and Medina had been in a custody battle for the boy, Ricardo Alekzander Lara, who was 4 years old at the time of her death. Police said it was a point of contention between the parents. "The manner in which the victim was murdered is indicative of a direct reaction to a strong emotional response, frequently seen in and known to happen in child custody cases," the affidavit states. Lara-Martinez fled to Mexico with his son shortly after police found Medina's badly beaten body at her workplace. After an Amber Alert had been issued for the boy, a man came forward to Denton police and said he had driven Lara-Martinez and his son to Mexico, according to earlier reports. Investigators obtained an arrest warrant for a murder charge as the search for Lara-Martinez continued. In early 2015, a Denton County grand jury indicted Martinez on the charge. The following year, a Mexican judge granted Lara-Martinez's extradition to the country. Police found him with his son in Mexico in February 2016 and returned the now 7-year-old boy to Texas. Then, in June 2017, Denton police investigators took custody of Lara-Martinez at DFW International Airport. Police said when he returned, he admitted to killing the woman. Other trials rescheduled Several other high-profile cases that were originally slated for Monday trials have been rescheduled. The jury trial for Earl Leroy Thompson Jr., who was arrested in June in connection with a sexual assault and attempted sexual assaults near the University of North Texas campus, is now set for April 30 in Judge Brody Shanklin's 211th Judicial District Court.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., TENN., IOWA, UTAH, ARIZ.
Jan. 19 TEXASnew execution date Fort Worth man convicted in birthday party slaying gets execution date A Fort Worth man convicted of killing a rival gang member's mother and a 5-year-old girl at a children's birthday party 10 years ago has been given an execution date. Erick Davila is scheduled to meet his fate in the Huntsville death chamber on April 25 at 6 p.m., according to court papers. A judge signed off on the death date on Wednesday. "Like that Winston Churchill movie, we shall never surrender and we intend to aggressively fight for Mr. Davila," said Houston defense attorney Seth Kretzer. The Supreme Court gave a death row prisoner a 2nd chance because one of the juror's made racist remarks. Davila, 30, is on death row for a shooting that killed Annette Stevenson and her granddaughter Queshawn, according to court filings. In April 2008, Davila drove by the Village Creek Townhouses in Fort Worth and opened fire on a rival gang member along with 15 children who were eating ice cream and cake on the front porch at the "Hannah Montana"-themed party. Court records describe a "chaotic scene" with "blood splattered everywhere." 2 other children were wounded in the shooting, but survived. Since his 2009 conviction, Davila has fought the case in appeals courts, taking his claims of bad lawyering all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court last year. Kretzer, who is co-counsel with Houston-based attorney Jonathan Landers, argued the case. In a 5-4 ruling, the justices rejected Kretzer's claims that earlier appellate counsel erred in failing to point out possible missteps made earlier by trial attorneys regarding bad jury instructions. In addition to signing off on a death date, a Tarrant County judge on Wednesday also slapped down a defense motion to disqualify the local prosecutor's office, as current District Attorney Sharen Wilson was the judge during Davila's 2009 trial and Assistant District Attorney David Richards previously served as Davila's attorney earlier in the appeals process. "We were surprised and concerned by the trial judge's denial on our motion to recuse," Kretzer said Thursday. "I'm not making up some new legal theory here that there's a conflict." Davila's death date is the 6th on the calendar in Texas this year. (source: Houston Chronicle) 'Tourniquet Killer' executed in Texas for 1992 strangling Texas carried out the nation's 1st execution of 2018 Thursday evening, giving lethal injection to a man who became known as Houston's "Tourniquet Killer" because of his signature murder technique on 4 female victims. Anthony Allen Shore was put to death for 1 of those slayings, the 1992 killing of a 21-year-old woman whose body was dumped in the drive-thru of a Houston Dairy Queen. In his final statement, Shore, 55, was apologetic and his voice cracked with emotion. "No amount of words or apology could ever undo what I've done," Shore said while strapped to the death chamber gurney. "I wish I could undo the past, but it is what it is." As the lethal dose of pentobarbital began, Shore said the drug burned. "Oooh-ee! I can feel that," he said before slipping into unconsciousness. He was pronounced dead 13 minutes later at 6:28 p.m. CST. "Anthony Allen Shore's reign of terror is officially over," Andy Kahan, the city of Houston crime victims' advocate, said, speaking for the families of Shore's victims. "There's a reason we have the death penalty in the state of Texas and Anthony Shore is on the top of the list. This has been a long, arduous journey that has taken over 20 years for victims' families." Shore's lawyers argued in appeals he suffered brain damage early in life that went undiscovered by his trial attorneys and affected Shore's decision to disregard their advice when he told his trial judge he wanted the death penalty. A federal appeals court last year turned down his appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case and the 6-member Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously rejected a clemency petition. Shore's attorneys said his appeals were exhausted. They filed no last-minute attempts to try to halt his execution. In 1998, Shore received 8 years' probation and became a registered sex offender for sexually assaulting 2 relatives. 5 years later, Shore was arrested for the 1992 slaying of Maria del Carmen Estrada after a tiny particle recovered from under her fingernail was matched to his DNA. "I didn't set out to kill her," he told police in a taped interview played at his 2004 trial. "That was not my intent. But it got out of hand." Estrada was walking to work around 6:30 a.m. on April 16, 1992, when he she accepted a ride from him. The former tow truck driver, phone company repairman and part-time musician blamed his actions on "voices in my head that I was going to have her, regardless, to possess her in some way." He also confessed to killing 3
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO, ARIZ., NEV., CALIF.
Nov. 16 TEXASnew death sentences Tracy gets death penalty for murder of Telford officer A Bowie County jury deliberated just over an hour Wednesday morning before sentencing Texas prison inmate Billy Joel Tracy to death. Tracy, 39, will face the ultimate punishment in the July 15, 2015, fatal beating of Barry Telford Unit Correctional Officer Timothy Davison. The jury had to consider 2 questions, or special issues, in arriving at Tracy's sentence: "Whether beyond a reasonable doubt there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society," and "whether taking into consideration all of the evidence, including the circumstances of the offense, the defendant's character and background and the personal moral culpability of the defendant, there is a sufficient mitigating circumstance or circumstances to warrant that a sentence of imprisonment without parole rather than a death sentence be imposed." The jury unanimously answered "yes" to question one and "no" to question 2. Each of the 9 men and 3 women on Tracy's jury was polled after 102nd District Judge Bobby Lockhart read the jury's answers. Lockhart pronounced the punishment of death after advising Tracy of his rights to appeal. A packed courtroom watched in silence, some of them with hands over their mouths, as Lockhart released the jury. Davison's brother and niece sat surrounded by Texas Department of Criminal Justice staff as the trial ended. "Justice has been a long time coming," Ken Davison said. Tracy attacked Timothy Davison as he opened the door to cell 66 and briefly turned his gaze. After knocking Davison to the floor, Tracy grabbed the officer's metal tray slot bar and wielded it like a hammer, striking Davison repeatedly in the head and face after he lost consciousness. Tracy took Davison's pepper spray before throwing him feet over head down the stairwell. As a group of Davison's fellow officers approached, Tracy fouled the air with the chemical agent and retreated to his cell. A member of the 5-man extraction team that entered the cell to remove Tracy was bitten. During the trial, Tracy's jury heard testimony concerning multiple acts of violence by Tracy and the offenses which earned him 2 life sentences and a 20-year term in 1998. The jury heard of planned and calculated attacks on officers at units of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice across the state. Defense experts and Tracy's defense team, Mac Cobb of Mount Pleasant and Jeff Harrelson of Texarkana, argued that Tracy suffers from a "broken brain" compounded by a horrible childhood and years in prison. "He didn't choose this kind of brain. Billy had bad nature and bad nurture," Harrelson said. The state argued that Tracy is an incorrigible person with a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder who will continue to murder and maim if the ultimate punishment is not imposed. "The state of Texas will never bring you a stronger case for the death penalty," argued Assistant District Attorney Lauren Richards. Lead prosecutor Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp told the jury that someone will be sentenced to death at the end of Tracy's trial. "Will it be another correctional officer with TDCJ, or will it be Billy Joel Tracy?" Crisp asked. "You decide." (source: Texarkana Gazette) ** Tennessee Colony man sentenced to death in case where 6 killed Tennessee Colony resident William Mitchell Hudson has been sentenced to death for killing 6 family members in one night in November 2015. Jurors deliberated for about 45 minutes before delivering the punishment verdict on the 2-year anniversary of Hudson's arrest; District Judge Mark Calhoon sentenced the 35-year-old man. Hudson was indicted on 3 counts of capital murder in connection with the slaying of six members of the Johnson and Kamp families on the night of Nov. 14, 2015: Thomas Kamp, 45; Nathan Kamp, 23; Austin Kamp, 21; Kade Johnson, 6; Carl Johnson, 77; and Hannah Johnson, 40. According to testimony over the trial's 11 days, the families gathered in Anderson County that weekend to celebrate the upcoming 24th birthday of Nathan Kamp, on land Thomas Kamp had recently purchased from a distant relative of Hudson's. Carl and Cynthia - the sole survivor of that night - arrived 1st, in an RV the retired couple used to travel around the country. Using a lock Tom had given them, the couple cut a lock on the gate, gaining entrance to the land Tom had recently puchased. Shortly after arriving on the land, the RV got stuck in the sandy ground near their campsite. The sound of Cynthia yelling at Carl as he tried to work the RV out of the ground made its way over to Crystal Hudson's home, where William had been staying. Friends of the Hudson family testified that they had owned the land since the 1800s, and that William had wanted to buy the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO
Nov. 14 TEXAS: Cardenas Execution Raising Questions About Treatment of Mexican Nationals In U.S. Prisons The Cardenas execution in Huntsville is raising questions about the treatment of Mexican Nationals in American prisons. News Center 23 had a chance to speak to the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs moments before and after the execution of Ruben Ramirez Cardenas. "Ruben if you can hear us, we are here for you" yell protesters outside the in the rain. Those may have been some of the last sounds heard by Ruben Ramirez Cardenas, a Mexican National, convicted of killing and Raping his 16 year old cousin back in 1997. News Center 23 had the opportunity to bear witness to the execution. Friends, family, were not present to see the passing of their loved one. Instead 4 lone protestors battling 50-degree weather in the rain and Mexican dignitaries were hoping the execution was delayed fi not avoided. Among those protestors, Gloria Ruback a representative of the TX Death Penalty Abolition Movement. She claims that she has been attending and protesting executions since the 1980???s. She says, "we found out that they can hear us back there in the room where they execute them. So to give him a little support ... maybe a smile before he's murdered." The execution, once slated for 6 PM on November 8th had visitors tense. Appeals made by Cardenas' attorney and The Mexican Foreign Ministry to the Supreme Court were to decide Cardenas' fate. They appealed to have "the DNA evidence [that] can be properly evaluated." Those appeals were rejected, and Cardenas was pronounced dead at 10:26 that same night. Jason Clark, spokesperson Texas Department of Criminal Justice talked to press immediately after the execution. He says, "Ruben Cardenas was executed for the brutal murder of 16 year old Mayra Laguna in 1997. He was the 7th person to be executed in the state of Texas this year. He did make a written last state he did not make a verbal last statement." Ruben Cardenas' Attorney, Maurie Levin states, "I am convinced that we would not be standing here now if Texas had not violated its Vieanna Convention obligations preventing the Mexican consulate when he most needed its help." "Carrying out the execution would be the equivalent to the arbitrary depravation of life, and the United States would be in Violation of its obligations under International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, The ICCPR." States Alejandro Alday Legal Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexico. Also in attendance, Susana Guerra coming from Guanajuato Mexico to wait for the execution's results. She proclaims, "We are deeply sorrowed after this result and by the execution of Ruben ... When it comes to the family, the mother, we will try our best to support her. She is sick and frail. But we will be there for whatever she needs." Mexico abolished the death penalty in 2005. Despite the execution, efforts are underway to prove Cardenas' innocence. (source: rgvproud.com) * Psychiatrist testifies convicted murderer Hudson has personality disorder A Brazos County jury heard from experts that William Hudson suffers from mixed personality disorder, alcoholism and narcissism. The defense rested Monday in the punishment phase of Hudson's murder trial. The jury will decide if he gets life in prison or the death penalty. Hudson was convicted last week for 2 of the 6 murders at a campground in East Texas. The victims ranged in age from 6 to nearly 77-years-old. The jury heard from psychiatrist David Self. He said Hudson can have his personality issues managed but he can't be cured. The defense also called Antoinette McGarrahan. She is a Forensic Psychologist. She told the jury she spent 14 hour with Hudson completing I.Q. and other tests. She believes he had average intelligence at one time but has fallen 10-15 points after repeated injury to his brain. On one test his intelligence score was 72. She talked about several cars accidents he was in including a roll over where he didn't have a seat belt on. She said damage to his frontal lobes can contribute to things including poor judgment, decision making, planning, aggression and lack of insight. The court also heard more about what serving life in Texas prisons can look like. Hudson's defense attorneys called Lane Herklotz to testify. He is a retired TDCJ employee who worked for the state prison system for more than 25 years. He described how inmates are classified when they are transferred into prison custody. Many of in the court were surprised to learn that, despite the fact Hudson is accused of murdering six people, that isn't taken into account when they classify him in the system. TDCJ has five levels, Herklotz told the court, capital murder inmates serving life usually have a roommate or on occasion live in a dormitory. He also speculated Hudson would be considered minimum to medium
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., LA., OHIO
Oct. 5 TEXAS: Irving killer who shot his baby girl, 3-year-old son wins death row reprieve An Irving father sentenced to death for the revenge killing of his children after their mother left him has been granted a new punishment trial. Hector Rolando Medina, 38, shot 3-year-old Javier and 8-month-old Diana in the head and the neck after his girlfriend left him in March 2007. He then shot himself in the neck outside his Irving home. Medina was convicted of capital murder in 2008 and sent to death row, after defense attorney Donna Winfield didn't call a single witness or present closing arguments during the punishment phase of the trial. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld a lower court's ruling that Medina should be granted a new punishment trial because of his defense attorney's "deficient performance." The Dallas County district attorney's office will decide whether to again seek the death penalty against Medina. The automatic sentence for capital murder in Texas is life without the possibility of parole. "These cases are very expensive and very time-consuming," said First Assistant District Attorney Michael Snipes. "Those two factors have to be taken into consideration, not only in this case but in every case where a defendant is death penalty-eligible." The district attorney's office is seeking the death penalty against Antonio Cochran, who is accused of kidnapping and killing 18-year-old Zoe Hastings in 2015. Justice Michael Keasler wrote in a concurring opinion that granting Medina a new punishment trial gives the convicted child killer "a 2nd bite at the apple." Keasler expressed "profound disgust" at Winfield's handling of the punishment phase of the trial, saying that the attorney "intentionally torpedoed" the case. There was a six-week break after Medina was convicted before the punishment phase began. Winfield asked for more time to bring expert witnesses to the courthouse, but the judge denied the request. In response, Winfield refused to call any witnesses or rest her case during punishment. She was thrown in jail for being in contempt of court. During a hearing requesting a new trial after Medina was sentenced, Winfield said, "I wasn't going to put on a disjointed defense of Mr. Medina. ... That wasn't fair to him or to the jury." Justice Sharon Keller wrote in a dissenting opinion that Medina's defense attorney had "fully participated in the state's punishment case, including cross-examining witnesses." Prosecutors say Medina killed his children as revenge after his longtime girlfriend left him. Elia Martinez-Bermudez testified that Medina would hold her down and force her to have sex with him. He begged her to come back after she left him in January 2007. When she did, he threatened to kill her, the children and himself if she ever left him again. In March 2007, Medina borrowed a friend's gun and a box of bullets and then refused to let Martinez-Bermudez see her children when she asked. Later that day, he shot Javier and Diana and then himself. Diana "had a tombstone before she could talk," prosecutor Felicia Oliphant said during the trial. "Is there anything sadder than that?" (source: Dallas Morning News) *** Convicted murderer Randall Mays found competent to be executed A Henderson County man found guilty of capital murder in the shooting death of two East Texas sheriff deputies, has been found competent to be executed. Randall Mays was convicted of killing Henderson County Sheriff Deputy Tony Ogburn and Paul Habelt and seriously injuring Deputy Kevin Harris in May of 2007. The ruling of competency was made by visiting Judge Joe Clayton, of Tyler and a date has not been set for Mays' execution. Prior to the imminent execution scheduled for March 18, 2015, Mays filed a motion regarding competency to be executed. According to court documents, Mays was examined by several doctors. What the court ultimately determined was that Mays' mental illness does not deprive him of his understanding. The court's findings were detailed in documents filed in Henderson County: After consideration of all the credible evidence, the Court has concluded that Randall Mays has failed to meet his burden by a preponderance of the evidence, and the Court rules as follows: While Randall Mays does have some form of mental illness, it does not deprive him of the rational understanding of the connection between his crime and the punishment received. "Since Mr. Mays has been sitting on death row, he has not been diagnosed, treated or received prescribed medications for any mental illness or obsession that has any bearing on this inquiry," the court found. During Mays' trial, jurors heard more than a week of testimony. It took jurors just under three hours to hand down Randall Mays' death sentence for the murder of Ogburn and Habelt. Mays was sentenced by Judge Carter Terrance to the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., TENN., ARK., OKLA., COLO.
Sept. 30 TEXAS: Texas Set to Execute Man Despite DNA Evidence Excluding him from Murder A Texas man on death row is scheduled to be executed on November 16, even though DNA evidence excludes him from a 1998 murder for which he was convicted. In 2000, Larry Swearingen was sentenced to the death penalty for the murder and rape of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter. Since then, Swearingen has maintained his innocence and fought for DNA testing of evidence including Trotter's clothes, the murder weapon and a rape kit. Texas courts have struck down his repeated requests. But some DNA testing has been performed. And it supports Swearingen's innocence, according to the Innocence Project. Blood from beneath Trotter's fingernails excluded Swearingen and yielded the profile of an unknown man. To this day, Trotter's clothes have never been tested for DNA and the swabs in the rape kit collected from her body were also never tested. Cigarette butts found at the scene of Trotter's murder could have been swabbed for saliva, which would reveal DNA. But they never were. Since Swearingen's conviction, Texas has made improvements with its post-conviction DNA testing statute. Swearingen was twice granted DNA testing. But the state Court of Criminal Appeals struck down his request, ruling the court should only consider whether the DNA evidence would exclude Swearingen and should not be required to "rely on the ramifications of hypothetical matches" to an unknown genetic profile. "The notion that they're expressing - which is that we only consider exclusionary results - has nothing to do with how DNA actually works," Bryce Benjet, one of Swearingen's attorneys, told The Intercept. "I don't know why they haven't figured that out, but the end result of that error is that DNA testing is no longer available to most people in prison." Under a 16-year statute, defendants have rights to testing only if several conditions are met including the requirement to establish "by a preponderance of the evidence" that "the person would not have been convicted if exculpatory results had been obtained through DNA testing." In 2011, legislators revised the statute to require unidentified DNA profiles be uploaded to a government database. The DNA found under Trotter's fingernails was not linked to a known offender, which would bolster Swearingen's claim of innocence. DNA matches to offenders in the government database occurred in roughly 42 % of 351 DNA exonerations to date, according to the Innocence Project. (source: photographyisnotacrime.com) FLORIDAimpending execution Florida Supreme Court denies Death Row inmate's appeal. Execution scheduled Thursday. The Florida Supreme Court on Friday said it won't reconsider the case of a longtime death row inmate who is scheduled to be put to death next week. The ruling means the execution of convicted double-murderer Michael Lambrix will, for now, take place as planned at 6 p.m. Oct. 5. Lambrix had filed another challenge to his death sentences - his 8th successive post-conviction motion, the court said - on the basis of recent changes to Florida's death-penalty sentencing procedures, which were prompted by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case known as Hurst v. Florida. That ruling in January 2016 demanded Florida fix its then-unconstitutional procedures. The Legislature enacted changes this spring so now a unanimous jury recommendation is required in all death penalty cases. In his latest request for the Florida Supreme Court to rehear his case, Lambrix argued that his death sentences are unconstitutional under Florida's new law because they came from non-unanimous juries. He also argued the state Supreme Court's decisions on how the Hurst opinion applied retroactively to previous death sentences was a violation of equal protection rights. Following Hurst, the Florida Supreme Court in December cemented death sentences for nearly 200 prisoners - including Lambrix - whose sentences were finalized before a June 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling referenced in the Hurst decision. The justices cited their December decision and related rulings as their reasons for denying Lambrix's request for a rehearing. The Supreme Court had also previously ruled that Lambrix "is not entitled to relief based on Hurst" because of when his sentences were finalized, which they emphasized again Friday. "While it is true that the jury non-unanimously recommended death for the 1983 murders of the 2 victims, Lambrix's sentences were final in 1986," the court wrote in its majority opinion. "No rehearing will be entertained by this court." The decision was 5-1, with Justice Barbara Pariente dissenting. The court's 7th justice, Peggy Quince, recused herself. Pariente said she preferred to vacate Lambrix's death sentences and send the case back to a lower court so Lambrix can be re-sentenced - the same process that's
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA.
August 13 TEXASnew execution date Judge sets death date for Montgomery County killer Death row inmate Larry Swearingen, a Willis man who raped a 19-year-old coed before strangling her with panty hose nearly 2 decades ago, is now set to die on Nov. 16. After 7 thwarted attempts, Montgomery County has finally succeeded in setting yet another execution date for its only death row convict, a Willis man who raped a 19-year-old coed before strangling her with panty hose nearly 2 decades ago. Larry Swearingen, convicted of killing Montgomery College student Melissa Trotter in 1998 and dumping her body in the Sam Houston National Forest, is slated to meet his fate in Huntsville's death chamber on Nov. 16, a judge ruled late Wednesday. "It still won't bring back Melissa," her mother, Sandy Trotter said in July. "There are no winners in this because we still don't have Melissa." Victim advocate Andy Kahan said it's been a "painstaking" wait for the Trotter family. "Even when you finally believe that you're going to achieve justice, until it actually happens you're questioning whether the actual execution will take place or not," he said. And in Swearingen's case, those questions are particularly well placed. This is the state's 8th effort to get Swearingen's execution on the calendar. At least 4 times, similar requests yielded a death date, but every time the Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the execution. But it is those repeated bids for testing that have become the hallmark of Swearingen's legal case. For years, his lawyers have insisted that crime scene DNA taken from evidence near Trotter's body could hold the keys to prove his innocence. But prosecutors - and higher courts - have deemed such testing unnecessary. At least twice, a trial court judge sided with Swearingen's testing requests - but each time the state slapped down the lower court's grant, ruling that new DNA wouldn't be enough to counter the "mountain of evidence" pointing to Swearingen's guilt. Swearingen and Trotter were seen in the college's library together on Dec. 8, 1998 - the day of the teen's disappearance. Afterward, a biology teacher spotted Trotter leaving the school with a man. Hair and fiber evidence later showed that she'd been in Swearingen's car and home the day she vanished. The killer's wife testified that she came home that evening to find the place in disarray - and in the middle of it all were Trotter's lighter and cigarettes. Swearingen later filed a false burglary report, claiming his home had been broken into while he was out of town. That afternoon, Swearingen placed a call routed through a cell tower near FM 1097 in Willis - a spot he would have passed while heading from his house to the Sam Houston National Forest where Trotter's decomposing body was found 25 days later. "A too trusting 19-year-old in the wrong place at the wrong time," Sandy Trotter said, recalling her daughter's death. "It's just every parent's nightmare." Swearingen was convicted and sentenced to death in 2000. He went on to file what prosecutors described as "an abundance of habeas corpus applications, pro se motions, mandamus petitions, civil-right actions, and amended pleadings in both state and federal courts." The state's Court of Criminal Appeals rejected all 7 of Swearingen's habeas appeals, and in July a federal district court slapped down a civil suit seeking to win the convicted killer more DNA testing. Through it all, Swearingen maintained his innocence. "The way I look at it, I'm a POW of Texas," the former electrician has told the media. "It's my army against their army." Even though his bids for more testing ultimately didn't pan out, Swearingen's DNA complaints sparked charges in state law in 2015. That year, lawmakers expanded access to testing by removing the requirement that the accused prove biological material - like saliva, sweat or skin cells - exists before testing evidence for it. But no amount of DNA evidence would be enough to exonerate the convicted killer, prosecutors say. Visiting Judge J.D. Langley greenlit Wednesday's decision in the 9th state District Court after Judge Phil Grant recused himself from the case in June 2016 given his prior involvement as a prosecutor during his time in the District Attorney's office. "It appears there is no necessity for an evidentiary hearing related to any issue raised in either the motion or the response," Langley wrote. "The court can find no reason to further delay the imposition of the sentence." Even at this late date in legal saga, Montgomery County prosecutor Bill Delmore still anticipates pushback from Swearingen's attorneys. "I would say I'm cautiously optimistic that if there's an execution date we might finally see the culmination of this case," he said. "But I fully expect the attorneys for Swearingen to request another stay and they've been very tenacious in the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO, MO., NEV., USA
July 28 TEXASexecution S.A. man executed after Supreme Court rejects bid for stay A San Antonio man was executed Thursday night for killing a woman in 2004 after a last-minute request for a stay to the Supreme Court was rejected. TaiChin Preyor, 46, had been on death row for 13 years after a Bexar County jury convicted him of killing Jami Tackett, 24, in a drug-related attack. Preyor was pronounced dead at 9:22 p.m., about 20 minutes after a lethal dose of Pentobarbital was sent through the veins of both of his arms. In a brief final statement, Preyor said, "First and foremost, I'd like to say, 'Justice has never advanced by taking a human life,' by Coretta Scott King. Lastly, to my wife and to my kids, I love y'all forever and always. That's it." Neither Preyor's nor Tackett's relatives were present for the execution, just 4 journalists and some corrections officers. Preyor is the 5th inmate to be executed in Texas this year, and the 16th nationally, according to data provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Earlier Thursday, Cate Stetson, an attorney representing Preyor said via email that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied an appeal and stay for her client, just hours before he was to be executed. Preyor's lawyers had argued that his appeals should be reviewed more fairly because poor legal representation had tainted his case. After that bid was rejected, Stetson then filed a petition seeking a stay from the nation's highest court. That request to Justice Samuel Alito was denied some time after 8 p.m. On Feb. 26, 2004, Preyor said he went to Tackett's Southeast Side apartment to buy drugs and that he defended himself when attacked by Tackett and her friend, Jason Garza, 20. Preyor told police he "poked" Tackett with a knife to defend himself. Preyor was arrested in the parking lot of the Grove Park Apartments in the 2500 block of Goliad Road near Interstate 37 South after he returned to the scene to look for his car keys, according to court documents. He had been covered in Tackett's blood. Tackett, whose throat was slashed, was found when her neighbors heard her screams. Prosecutors told the Bexar County jury that heard the case that Tackett also suffered defensive wounds to her hand and forearm and had cuts on her face and abdomen. Defense attorneys argued that Preyor went to Tackett's house to buy drugs from her and that she and Garza attacked Preyor when he arrived, and intended to rob him. He told police that he pulled a knife and "poked" Tackett with the weapon in an attempt to defend himself. Witnesses testified during the trial that Tackett's throat and windpipe were severed, and that she bled to death in her apartment. Neighbors heard the screams, and Garza, who was wounded in the attack, managed to escape and call 911. Preyor left the scene. He was arrested when he returned to get his keys. (source: Houston Chronicle) ** Texas executes man who claimed his lawyers committed fraudTexas carried out its 5th execution of the year Thursday evening, putting to death TaiChin Preyor in the 2004 murder of a San Antonio woman. After more than 12 years on death row, a San Antonio man convicted in a fatal stabbing was executed Thursday night. It was Texas' 5th execution of the year. TaiChin Preyor, 46, had filed a flurry of appeals in the weeks leading up to his execution date, claiming his trial lawyer never looked into evidence of an abusive childhood and his previous appellate counsel - a disbarred attorney paired with a real estate and probate lawyer who relied on Wikipedia in her legal research - committed fraud on the court. But he lost all of the appeals, with the U.S. Supreme Court issuing a final ruling in the case more than 2 hours after his execution was originally set to begin. At 9:03 p.m., he was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital in Texas' death chamber and pronounced dead 19 minutes later, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. In his final words, he mentioned his love for his wife and kids and cited a Coretta Scott King quote, saying, "Justice has never advanced by taking a life," according to TDCJ. Preyor was accused of breaking into 20-year-old Jami Tackett's apartment in February 2004 and stabbing her to death. He was found at the scene by police covered in her blood. Preyor claimed the killing was done in self-defense after a drug deal gone bad, but the jury was unconvinced. He was convicted and sentenced to death in March 2005. No witnesses for Preyor or Tackett attended the execution, according to TDCJ spokesman Robert Hurst. During his latest appeals, Preyor's attorneys argued that his trial lawyer, Michael Gross, was inadequate because he didn't present evidence of a physically and sexually abusive childhood that could have swayed a jury to hand down the alternate sentence of life in prison. "[The
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., LA.
May 19 TEXAS: Court lifts reprieve for Nicaraguan man on Texas death row The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday lifted a reprieve it gave a Nicaraguan man a day before he was to be executed 2 years ago for killing a Houston high school teacher during a 1997 robbery. The state's highest criminal appeals court had halted the scheduled August 2015 lethal injection of Bernardo Tercero, 40, after his attorneys contended Harris County prosecutors unknowingly presented false testimony at his trial in 2000 for the death of Robert Berger, 38. Wednesday's ruling affirms the findings of Tercero's trial court that last year held a hearing on the claim and determined the testimony was proper. Berger was at a Houston dry cleaners in March 1997 with his 3-year-old daughter when Tercero came in to rob the store, records show. Berger was fatally shot and the store was robbed of about $400. Prosecutors said Tercero was in the U.S. illegally at the time. Tercero, now 40, argued the shooting was acciental. He testified Berger confronted him and tried to thwart the robbery, and the gun went off as they struggled. He was arrested in Hidalgo County near the Texas-Mexico border more than 2 years after the slaying. A 2nd man sought in the case never has been found. In another case, the appeals court Wednesday denied an appeal from Bartholomew Granger, condemned for the slaying of a 79-year-old woman during a 2012 shooting rampage outside the Jefferson County Courthouse. Attorneys for Granger, 46, raised 10 challenges to his 2013 conviction and death sentence. 5 issues foused on claims his trial attorneys were deficient, 4 raised questions about the constitutionaltiy of the death penalty in Texas and the last contended he was denied his right to an impartial jury. He was convicted of fatally shooting Minnie Ray Sebolt, a bystander walking outside the courthouse in downtown Beaumont. Granger admitted he opend fire on his daughter outside the courthouse after she testified against him a sexual assault case. His daughter and her mother were among 3 people wounded. In a 3rd case, the appeals court refused an appeal from Charles Raby, 47, who was sent to death row in 1994 for killing 72-year-old Edna Mae Franklin. The court said the appeal focusing on DNA testing was improperly filed and did not rule on the merits of the argument. In 2015, the court upheld a lower court finding that results of new DNA tests didn't cast doubt on Raby's conviction for Frankling's stabbing death. The appeals court also sent back to trial in Bastrop County the case of Rodney Reed to review claims that new evidence was improperly withheld and to show prosecutors presented false and misleading testimony at his trial, where he was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1996 rape and strangling of 19-year-old Stacy Stites. Her body was found off the side of a road about 35 miles southeast of Austin. Last month, the appeals court refused to allow additional DNA testing of evidence in the case, saying the request was meant to "to unreasonably delay the execution of his sentence or the administration of justice." (source: Associated Press) FLORIDA: Matthew Caylor granted new sentencing hearing Matthew Caylor, the man convicted of strangling a 13-year-old then hiding her body under the bed of a Panama City motel, has been granted a new sentencing hearing after the Supreme Court of Florida threw out his original death sentence. In a move that was expected, the Supreme Court of Florida has ruled that Matthew Caylor is eligible for a new penalty phase. Caylor killed Melinda Hinson, 13, in a Panama City Motel in July of 2008 after raping her. In an opinion released Thursday, Justices ruled 6-0 that because Caylor's death sentence in 2009 wasn't unanimous (it was 8-4) that he was entitled to a new penalty phase. Caylor, who is now 41, is the man who murdered Melinda Hinson, 13, at the Valu-Lodge Motel in Panama City on July 8, 2008. Caylor used a telephone cord in the motel room to strangle Hinson after he raped her. He hid her body underneath the bed in the motel room then took off. Hinson's body was discovered 2 days later. Caylor's case is just the latest death penalty case to get a new sentencing phase. Last year the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that all death sentences from juries must be unanimous and that a judge can't impose a death penalty without it. So all of the convicts on death row are filing appeals of their sentences if the jury recommendation for death wasn't unanimous. So far, no new sentencing hearings in any of the cases have occurred. They're scheduled to happen within the next few months. If the recommendation for death isn't unanimous, all of the killers will more than likely be sentenced to life in prison without parole. But that determination won't be made until the new sentencing phases take place. (source: WJHG news)
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April 19 TEXAS: Condemned inmate avoids execution with life sentence for Houston crime spree A North Carolina man who spent years on Texas' death row awaiting execution was sentenced Monday to 4 consecutive life sentences, a plea bargain that Harris County prosecutors hope will keep him behind bars for the rest of his life. Randolph Mansoor Greer, 43, was on death row until 2011, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling that meant he and dozens of condemned inmates would get new sentencing hearings because of insufficient jury instructions. Those cases, called Penry retrials because of the Supreme Court case, have been winding their way through Houston's courts for years. Some have successfully been retried as death penalty cases, others have gotten plea bargains with elaborately structured pleas to ensure the former death row inmates are never free. Since Texas did not have a punishment of life in prison without parole when those crimes were committed, prosecutors and families of victims have worried that even a capital murder conviction in these cases might one day lead to parole. The decision to grant parole is made by prison officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice under the law at the time of the crime. On Monday, Greer was sentenced to 4 consecutive life sentences in a Texas prison after pleading guilty to capital murder and other crimes he committed during a 1991 spree in the Houston area, according to the Harris County District Attorneys Office. "26 years after committing a murderous crime spree, Mr. Greer has been resentenced to 4 consecutive life terms without parole," First Assistant Tom Berg said Tuesday. "Greer, now 43, has been incapacitated and will never again pose a threat to public safety." Prosecutors said his crime spree spanned 6 months. In separate incidents, he abducted and sexually assaulted 2 Houston area women who survived the attacks. He also robbed from a business, stole a car, and shot and killed Walter Chmiel, owner of the Alamo gun shop in Bellaire. Greer also committed a capital murder in North Carolina as well as sexual assaults, robberies and a home invasion. Prior to new sentencing, prosecutors consulted with survivors and the families of victims, Berg said. Defense attorneys Allen Tanner and Gerald Bourgue said it was a just result. "It was an agreement based on the fact that he was 18 at the time, and he's been a model inmate ever since then," Tanner said. "We think his prison record was helpful for him." Tanner also said mitigation experts combed through records and witnesses in North Carolina and Cleveland and were expected to testify about how Greer's troubled childhood led him to a life of crime. (source: Houston Chronicle) FLORIDA: Death penalty will be pursued against man accused of shooting Sanford mother, sonSuspect Allen Cashe faces 1st-degree murder charges The death penalty will be pursued against Allen Cashe, who is accused of killing a mother and her son and shooting 4 other people, was indicted Monday on 1st-degree premeditated murder charges, according to the Seminole County State Attorney's Office. Cashe was indicted Monday on 1st-degree premeditated murder charges in connection with the deaths of Latina Herring, 35, and her 8-year-old son, Branden Christian. Officials on Tuesday filed a notice of intent to pursue the death penalty in that case. Cashe was also indicted on 4 counts of attempted 1st-degree murder with a firearm in connection with the shootings of Latina Herring's father, 60-year-old Bertis Herring; Latina Herring's youngest child, 7-year-old Brenden Christian; and 2 bystanders, Rakeya Jackson, 18, and Lazaro Paredes, 43. Sanford police released body camera footage of Cashe and Herring had been arguing about a set of keys hours before the double fatal shooting on March 27. Police encountered the couple twice before the shooting, but no arrests were made. Cashe left Herring's home in Sanford after the 2nd police encounter, then returned around 6:20 a.m. with an AK-47, police said. Cashe is accused of opening fire on the family as they were sleeping. Herring was shot 7 times and killed in her bedroom, police said. Her 2 sons were sleeping on the couch when they were shot 3 times, the report said. Bertis Gerard Herring was shot 5 times in another bedroom. Cashe is accused of shooting Jackson and Paredes as he was fleeing the area. Assistant State Attorney Dan Faggard and the lead Sanford Police Department investigator presented information to the Grand Jury before the indictment was returned late Monday afternoon. Cashe also faces charges of burglary of a dwelling with assault or battery with a firearm, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and shooting into a dwelling. Aramis Ayala used direct verbiage from anti-death penalty group, emails showState attorney consulted few
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Feb. 18 TEXAS: Faith leaders support death-row inmate's religious discrimination claim More than 500 faith leaders across the country have endorsed a statement calling for a new trial for a Texas death row inmate claiming religious discrimination in the selection of his jury. National faith leaders including Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne of Red Letter Christians, author Brian McLaren and Baptist ethicist David Gushee issued a statement Feb. 16 supporting Christopher Anthony Young, a 33-year-old man from San Antonio, Texas, sentenced to death for killing a mini-mart and dry cleaners owner during an armed robbery in 2004. Among other things, Young argues that one prospective juror interviewed at his 2006 trial was dismissed because prosecutors believed her association with an outreach ministries program at her Baptist church might bias her against imposing the death penalty. "It is absolutely unacceptable to strike a juror based on her affiliation with her church," said Pastor Joel Hunter at Northland, A Church Distributed in Longwood, Fla., and a lead signatory. "As evangelical Christians, we firmly believe that people of all faiths and backgrounds should be able to participate as jurors." Prosecutors dismissed prospective juror Myrtlene Williams, 1 of 6 African Americans in the 60-member jury pool, because they believed her membership in Outreach Ministries at San Antonio's Calvary Baptist Church could cause her to be more sympathetic to the defendant, particularly in the punishment phase of trial. During questioning Williams said that while some members of the group visited jails and prisons in an effort to rehabilitate persons who are incarcerated, she did not personally work with prisoners. Another reason given for her dismissal was she had a daughter with a past conviction of a larceny-type offense in another state. The statement by faith leaders said her removal was wrong. "Membership in a particular church or association with a particular ministry is not a fair basis for preventing someone from carrying out her civic duty as a juror," they said. "Indeed, eliminating a particular juror based solely on her religious affiliation offends the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution." Young, who is African American, also has argued that the state used Williams' religious affiliation and daughter's criminal history as a pretext to dismiss 5 of the 6 impaneled jurists who were black. The Fifth U.S. Court of Appeals denied Young's right to appeal his conviction in August. The U.S. Supreme Court will confer March 3 about whether to accept the case. The faith leaders said they do not all agree on the morality of capital punishment and are not stating an opinion about whether or not Young deserves to die. "We do believe, however, that the process by which he was sentenced to death was tainted by the decision of the government to strike a juror, not because of her personal beliefs, but solely because she was affiliated with a ministry that works to improve the lives of the poor, the elderly, and the incarcerated," they said. "Indeed, the government struck this juror even though she did not personally work with prisoners; she was removed, in short, because of her mere association with a church that pursued its mission of aiding the weak." Gushee, director of the Center for Theology and Public Life and Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta, currently serves as interim pastor at First Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga., a flagship congregation in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. 2 years ago Gushee and other individual CBF members campaigned unsuccessfully for clemency for Kelly Gissendaner, the 1st woman executed in Georgia in 70 years and a graduate of a prison theology program sponsored by a consortium including Mercer University???s McAfee School of Theology, 1 of the CBF's partner schools. Other Baptists signing on in support of a new trial for Young include Fisher Humphreys, a retired professor at Samford University???s Beeson Divinity School and member at Baptist Church of the Covenant in Birmingham, Ala.; Mikael Broadway, associate professor of theology and ethics at Shaw University Divinity School and associate minister at Mount Level Missionary Baptist Church in Durham, N.C.; Roger Olson, Foy Valentine Professor of Christian Theology and Ethics at Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas; and Frederick Haynes III, senior pastor at Friendship-West Baptist Church Dallas. (source: Baptist News) FLORIDAfemale death sentence overturned After 2 death row stints, mother of murdered 'Baby Lollipops' no longer faces execution Ana Maria Cardona, the Miami mother twice sentenced to execution for the torture and murder of her toddler son known as "Baby Lollipops," is no longer facing death row. Prosecutors on
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., MISS., OHIO, IND.
Feb. 10 TEXASnew execution date New death date for inmate spared from execution this week A Texas death row inmate whose execution date scheduled for this week was halted because of a legal technicality has received a new execution date. Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark says the prison agency has received court documents setting 37-year-old prisoner Tilon Carter's lethal injection for May 16. Carter had been set to die Tuesday for smothering an 89-year-old man during a robbery at the man's Fort Worth home. But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued an order last Friday halting the punishment because a state office that represents death row inmates was notified of the scheduled punishment a half-day late, a violation of state law. Carter was condemned for the 2004 robbery and slaying of James Tomlin, a retired Bell Helicopter worker. (source: Associated Press) Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present22 Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982present-540 Abbott#scheduled execution date-nameTx. # 23-March 7--Rolando Ruiz--541 24-March 14-James Bigby---542 25-April 12-Paul Storey---543 26-May 16---Tilon Carter--544 27-June 28--Steven Long---545 28-July 19-Kosoul Chanthakoummane---546 (sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin) FLORIDA: Florida Supreme Court Upholds Sentence for Killing Guard The Florida Supreme Court is upholding the conviction and death sentence for a man who killed a Daytona Beach corrections officer. The court on Thursday rejected arguments by Enoch Hall that his attorney mishandled his case. The court also noted that his sentence should remain in place because a jury unanimously recommended the death penalty. Hall was serving life sentences in the sexual battery and kidnapping of a 66-year-old woman when he killed a corrections officer. Hall stabbed 50-year-old Donna Fitzgerald 22 times with sheet metal in 2008. Fitzgerald was alone while supervising Hall and others in an inmate work program. An investigation determined Hall may not have been eligible for the program, and Fitzgerald should've had a radio or body alarm to summon help. (source: WTXL news) ** Death sentence tossed out in Florida drive-by shooting case The Florida Supreme Court is throwing out the death sentence of a Jacksonville man convicted in a drive-by shooting that killed a young girl watching television at her grandma's house. The high court on Thursday upheld Rasheem Dubose's conviction for the crime, but ordered a new sentencing hearing because a jury did not unanimously agree to impose the death penalty. The court in a split decision recently ruled that death sentences require a unanimous jury recommendation if the sentence was imposed after a 2002 key ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. DreShawna Washington-Davis, 8, was killed when 29 shots were fired into her house in July 2006. Authorities said the shooting was a retaliatory strike against the child's uncle. Dubose's brothers, Terrell Dubose and Tajuane Dubose, were sentenced to life in prison for their role in the crime. (source for both: Associated Press) ALABAMA: Former Alabama death row inmates to share their stories of confinement, freedom Racism, poverty, freedom and confinement will be the focus of speeches delivered by 2 former Alabama death row inmates, sharing their stories at the University of North Alabama later this month. Anthony Ray Hinton, who spent 30 years on death row, and Gary Drinkard, who was released after 5 years, will share their stories of exoneration and wrongful conviction during a conference at UNA Feb. 23-24. The events are open to the public. Hinton walked free in April 2015 at age 52. He'd been on death row for 30 years for the 1985 murders of 2 Birmingham fast food restaurant managers. Hinton and his attorneys asked prosecutors for years to retest the gun that linked him to the crime. On April 3, Anthony Ray Hinton walked free, prosecutors dropping the charges - the U.S. Supreme Court had ordered a retrial - that he'd killed 2 men in a Birmingham area fast food managers in 1985. The bullets didn't match up beyond a doubt, the state said. Shortly before his release, new tests ultimately ruled that the bullets found at the crime scenes couldn't be conclusively linked to the gun or to each other. Hinton's conviction, he has said, is rooted in racism, poverty and failures of the criminal justice system. "We want to help people think critically about the crimes and evidence that warrant sentencing someone to death," said Stephanie Renee Adair, one of several English graduate students helping plan the conference at UNA. Incarceration
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO
Jan. 6 TEXAS: Officials: Austin might be without local DNA lab for at least 2 years The Austin Police Department's troubled DNA lab could easily be closed until summer 2018 by the time city and county officials implement a new way to analyze locally DNA evidence collected from Austin crime scenes, an Austin advisory commission estimated Tuesday. Austin police Assistant Chief Troy Gay agreed the delay was possible, though he hoped a solution would be implemented sooner. The city's Public Safety Commission unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday urging the Austin City Council to find a temporary solution within 6 months. Since June, Austin police have been sending some of their DNA evidence to the Texas Department of Public Safety to be tested, and since December, they have also been sending some of it to Dallas County. Still, DNA evidence is not being tested as often as it comes in, Gay said. A backlog existed even before police closed the lab in June. The crisis at the police department's DNA lab reached a climax last month. On Dec. 12 DPS officials, who were re-training the Austin Police Department's 6 DNA analysts, told police they had lost confidence in four of the technicians and refused to continue working with them. 4 days later, Austin's interim Police Chief Brian Manley said the lab would not reopen as previously planned. All of the DNA lab's analysts are still being paid to do administrative work, Gay said. Now that the lab won't reopen, Scott Milne, a former official with the Arizona Department of Public Safety who was recently hired to be the Austin lab's new chief forensic officer, is currently on administrative leave. "We are looking at what the future is for those employees in our lab," Gay said. Austin police officials will now rely on outside experts to help them figure out what form a future DNA lab should take, Gay said. A few ideas that Austin and Travis County officials have floated include putting the lab under the supervision of the Travis County medical examiner's office or creating a government lab that works separately from any current branch of the criminal justice system. On Jan. 26, the Austin City Council will likely vote on whether to negotiate and execute a contract with a firm that can assess the situation and determine the best way forward. However, that firm???s report could take up to 6 months to complete, Gay said. Austin police have been discussing the issue with a few different firms, Gay said. Austin will not be issuing a request for proposals because only a few firms exist that offer the service the Austin Police Department is seeking, he said. "Then, there will be commissions and meetings and panels to discuss the findings, and there won't be a decision made for at least another year," Commissioner Kim Rossmo said, predicting how long it could take to implement the report's recommendations. Rossmo said the process could take until 2020, "unless the city and the police department see this as something of urgency." The police department shut down the DNA section of its forensic lab after a state audit was highly critical of some of the lab analysts' techniques. A Texas Forensic Science Commission report released over the summer concluded that one of the lab's DNA testing practices raised "concerns about the APD DNA lab's understanding of foundational issues in DNA analysis." Commissioners also asked Gay whether Austin police have opened an internal investigation regarding how the DNA lab got to this point. According to some estimates, retesting the evidence in cases that led to convictions could cost Travis County taxpayers $14 million. "We all know what has happened here has been a colossal management failure. ... There's lots of examples of labs having problems, but I don't think there's too many where the lab completely collapses," Rossmo said. "It's obvious there were some issues here that were incredibly significant in terms of the cost. If some patrol officer on the street gets into trouble, he'll be punished. Are you doing any sort of internal investigation as to who was just asleep at the wheel, costing the taxpayers probably millions of dollars?" Gay said officials plan to rely on the outside firm to help them conduct that investigation. "I don't disagree with you," Gay said. "We believe the look-back will help us identify where the challenges were and if there were mistakes made. If those mistakes were made and they were negligent, then we will attempt to hold those individuals accountable." (source: Austin American-Statesman) Texas sues feds over death penalty drug Texas is suing the federal Food and Drug Administration over a months-long delay in access to drugs the state uses in lethal injections. State Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said Wednesday his office filed suit to gain access to hundreds of doses of thiopental sodium,
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Nov. 3 TEXAS: Death Row Inmate Sues Texas for DNA Tests With help from The Innocence Project, death row inmate Larry Ray Swearingen claims that DNA tests could prove his innocence of a 1998 murder, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has unconstitutionally denied him the opportunity to present the evidence. Swearingen sued the nine judges on the state's highest criminal appeals court on Oct. 28 in Federal Court, challenging the appellate court's interpretation of the criminal code, and demanding the release of evidence for DNA testing. "It's not a casual thing to bring a federal civil rights action, but the denial of DNA testing in a death penalty case is really something that is pretty extraordinary," said Bryce Benjet, an attorney with The Innocence Project of New York City. "We think it is appropriate for a federal judge to step in and enforce the Constitution," Benjet said in an interview. Swearingen was convicted of the 1998 murder of Melissa Trotter, of Willis, Texas, a 19-year-old freshman at Lone Star Community College-Montgomery. She was found in the Sam Houston National Forest, strangled to death by a pair of pantyhose. The state presented evidence at trial that Swearingen and Trotter had been seen leaving campus together the day she disappeared. Prosecutors said Swearingen kidnapped, raped, and murdered her after she refused his sexual advances. Swearingen's attorneys say in the new lawsuit that he was convicted "largely on the basis of circumstantial evidence." Swearingen has always maintained his innocence and has filed several motions to secure DNA testing under the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, which requires post-conviction DNA testing if such evidence would more than likely have resulted in a not-guilty verdict. His first 2 motions were unsuccessful, but the Montgomery County Court granted 2 subsequent motions for DNA testing, which the court of appeals reversed. As those motions wended through the courts, the Texas Legislature made several amendments to the DNA testing statute in the criminal code. The Legislature cited Swearingen's case as the impetus for these changes, which included expanding the definition of what "biological material" could be tested and broadening the statute to require testing of evidence that has "a reasonable likelihood of containing biological material." "His case was the subject of legislative testimony, yet still, when it gets back to the Court of Criminal Appeals, they interpret the statute in a way that denies him testing," Benjet said. The 28-page lawsuit against the Court of Criminal Appeals states that Swearingen's repeated efforts to obtain DNA testing have been "thwarted" by the appellate court's "unreasonably narrow" interpretation of the criminal code, and that its interpretation "ignores the most powerful aspects of DNA testing and sets a bar that cannot be satisfied in most cases." This alone has denied him due process, his attorneys say, and "unconstitutionally deprived [him] access to the courts" to obtain other remedies which could prove his innocence. Swearingen seeks declaratory relief that the appeals court's interpretation of the code is unconstitutional. He also sued the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Montgomery District [Court] Clerk and the Montgomery County Sheriff, to force release of evidence for testing, including the murder weapon, the rape kit, the victim's clothing and cigarette butts found near her body. Montgomery County prosecutor Bill Delmore told the Houston Chronicle last year that "a lot" of DNA testing had been done in Swearingen's case, and that Swearingen's DNA profile was matched to a hair on a pantyhose fragment found in his trailer and 2 hairs found in Swearingen's truck were matched to Trotter. "We're very confident that we have the right guy," Delmore told the Chronicle article in June 2015. "We've executed on far less." But Swearingen's attorneys call the pantyhose evidence found in Swearingen's trailer "troubling," as the pantyhose had not been found during the first 2 searches of the trailer. Also, "serious doubts have been raised about the reliability" of the tear line analysis that matched the fragment to the pantyhose found tied around Trotter's neck, according to the complaint. The only pre-trial DNA testing that revealed a male donor, taken from fingernail scrapings, excluded Swearingen, and the state offered no "plausible" explanation for the presence of someone else's DNA underneath Trotter's fingernails, his attorneys say in the complaint. They say the state speculated that "perhaps blood from an officer present during the autopsy who may have cut himself while shaving hours before inexplicably worked its way under the victim's fingernails," or that blood circulating through the morgue's air-conditioning system "somehow landed in the scrapings from Mr. Trotter's fingernails."
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., LA., OHIO
Oct. 13 TEXAS: Texas death row inmate Danny Bible loses at US Supreme Court The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused an appeal from Texas death row inmate Danny Paul Bible, who was convicted of the 1979 icepick slaying of a woman who went to his house in Houston to use a telephone and was found later stabbed 11 times, raped and dumped on the bank of a bayou. The high court offered no comment on its rejection. Bible, 65, does not yet have an execution date. Court records show Bible has confessed to 4 killings, including 20-year-old Inez Deaton, whose slaying went unsolved for nearly 2 decades. He wasn't tied to her death until 1998 when he was arrested in Fort Myers, Florida, for a Louisiana rape and told authorities about killing Deaton in Houston and a woman and her baby west of Fort Worth in North Texas. Bible previously served prison time after pleading guilty in 1984 in Palo Pinto County to killing another woman. Texas Department of Criminal Justice records show he arrived in prison with a 25-year sentence for that slaying plus 20 years for a robbery conviction in Harris County but was released in February 1992 to Montana. While out of prison on a form of parole known as mandatory supervision, Bible "lived a life of extreme violence," according to a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling earlier this year when Bible's appeal of his death sentence was rejected. It's that appeal that went to the Supreme Court. At his 2003 capital murder trial in Houston for Deaton's death, prosecutors provided evidence of robberies, thefts, assaults and abductions, including the rape of an 11-year-old girl in Montana and his confessions to repeated sexual assaults of young nieces from 1996 to 1998. Bible contended in his appeal that his lawyers, during the punishment phase of his capital murder trial in Houston, were deficient for not objecting to prosecutors' re-enacting a rape and how Bible tried to stuff his victim into a duffel bag. He also said in the appeal that he is disabled and in permanent pain after the prison van carrying him to death row in 2003 crashed, killing a corrections officer and the driver of another vehicle involved in the wreck. Bible's appeals attorney, Margaret Schmucker, said Tuesday that her next option could be to seek clemency from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, although Abbott and previous governors have little history of commuting death sentences to life in prison. Bible is "not a danger to anybody," Schmucker said. "He can't get out of a wheelchair by himself. He can't lift his arms. He can't do anything." He also has a Louisiana sentence of life without parole, she said. (source: Associated Press) *** Race shouldn't matter in sentencing, but it does In 1995, Duane Edward Buck was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend and her friend. During his sentencing hearing, the prosecution presented evidence of Buck's potential for recidivism, based on his criminal history, conduct, and demeanor. In defense, his court appointed attorney called a clinical psychologist, Dr. Walter Quijano, as an expert witness, who stated that he believed Buck's "black" race increased the likelihood of future dangerousness. Buck was subsequently sentenced to death and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction and sentence. On October 5, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court heard an oral argument on Buck's case. His new attorney, Christina A. Swarns, claims that his previous counsel was ineffective by knowingly calling an expert witness who testified that race was a factor in evaluating future dangerousness. Although the circumstances of Buck's conviction were not up for debate, his attorney asked the Justices to order "a new, fair sentencing hearing." Although the Justices described what happened during the sentencing phase of Buck's case as "indefensible" and "abysmal," they raised considerable concern that the outcome of his case wouldn???t be impacted, if a new sentencing hearing were granted. The circumstances surrounding Buck's arrest were aggravating. His crimes were gruesome, he wasn't remorseful, and he had committed various acts of domestic violence prior to the murders. However, his defense attorney maintained that, "putting an expert scientific validity to this pernicious idea that Mr. Buck would be more likely to commit criminal acts of violence because he's black" led to an arbitrary death sentence decision. Her argument centered on the fact that the expert witness' testimony directly impacted the jury's future dangerousness determination, which is the prerequisite for a death sentence in Texas. The attorney for the State, Scott A. Keller, did not defend the competency of Buck's public defender nor the racially bias statements made by the expert witness. Instead, he focused on the fact that the prosecutors did not use the expert witness' testimony to make their claims for capital
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Aug. 18 TEXASimpending execution Texas death sentence for accessory challenged by defense lawyer Texas is planning to execute a man next week for a murder he did not commit. If the sentence were to be carried out, it would mark the 1st time in the United States that an accessory with so little culpability to a murder was put to death, his lawyer said. Jeffery Wood, 42, is scheduled to be executed on Aug. 24 by lethal injection. He was convicted of taking part in a 1996 convenience store robbery during which clerk Kriss Keeran was fatally shot. Prosecutors and Wood's lawyers agree that he was in a vehicle outside the store when it was robbed. But prosecutors have said Wood knew the clerk might be shot and Wood's lawyers have refuted their argument. Wood's roommate at the time, Daniel Reneau, was convicted of pulling the trigger and executed on June 13, 2002. "I am not aware of a case where a person has been executed with so minimal culpability and with such little participation in the event," lawyer Jared Tyler said in an interview. "When people think of the death penalty, they think of the worst of the worst," Tyler said. "He was sitting in the truck outside a convenience store when somebody else of their own volition decided to kill somebody." Tyler said he has filed motions with the state to halt the execution, citing culpability, tainted testimony and mental competency issues. Ten people have been executed as accessories to felony murder since the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment. (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/those-executed-who-did-not-directly-kill-victim) Under Texas' "Law of Parties," a person can be charged with capital murder even if the offense is committed by someone else. "Each party to an offense may be charged and convicted without alleging that he acted as a principal or accomplice," according to the law. Texas has said that Wood is culpable because he knew the robbery was going to take place. After the killing, he entered the store with Reneau to steal the cash box, store safe and remove a video recorder used for security. (source: Reuters) State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, is hoping to stop the upcoming execution of Jeff Wood. It's not often that a staunch conservative loses sleep over imposition of the death penalty, but state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, says he is up nights over the impending execution of Jeff Wood. The 2-term legislator has spent the past week poring over court documents and speaking with the governor's office and Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, hoping to prevent what would be the state's 7th execution of the year. Wood is set to die by lethal injection Aug. 24. "I simply do not believe that Mr. Wood is deserving of the death sentence," Leach told the Tribune. "I can't sit quietly by and not say anything." In the early morning of Jan. 2, 1996, Wood sat in a truck outside a Kerrville gas station while his friend, Daniel Reneau, went inside to steal a safe said to be full from the holiday weekend, according to court documents. When the clerk, Kriss Keeran, didn't comply or respond to threats, Reneau shot him dead. Reneau was sentenced to death and executed in 2002. Wood received his own death sentence under Texas' felony murder statute, commonly known as the law of parties, which holds that anyone involved in a crime resulting in death is equally responsible, even if they weren't directly involved in the actual killing. According to Nadia Mireles, Wood's then-girlfriend, Wood told Reneau to leave his gun at home the morning of the murder. She said Reneau put the gun down but picked it back up when Wood left the room. Her testimony was not included in Wood's trial, but it was in Reneau's. "This is the reason we have this final step by the Constitution to provide the governor the right to commute a sentence,"- State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano Prosecutors argued Wood knew Reneau would kill Keeran if he didn't cooperate with the robbery. If true, that would make him guilty of capital murder under the law of parties, which states that a person can be charged with a crime he didn't commit if he "should have anticipated it as a result" of another crime. Leach, who ranks among the most conservative Republicans in the House, is for the death penalty in the most heinous cases, he said. And he believes in the death penalty under the law of parties in cases where the accomplice was clearly involved in the murder. But when he came across Wood's case during his work for the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, it didn't seem right. "Jeffery Lee Wood's case has caught my attention unlike any death row inmate in my time in office has," he said. "Once I started digging, I couldn't stop." Now, Leach is trying to use his voice as a lawmaker to stop the execution
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May 20 TEXAS: Nueces County prosecutors seek death penalty in store clerk shooting case Nueces County prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing a store clerk owner last year. James Elizalde, 23, faces a capital murder charge in the shooting death of store clerk Ignacio Rodriguez. Rodriguez, 50, was killed about 3 a.m. Oct. 4 at a convenience store in the 3600 block of Staples Street. Capital murder carries 2 punishment options: life in prison without parole or death by lethal injection. Elizalde was seen in surveillance footage fleeing the store with 2 other men after the shooting, according to an arrest affidavit. The other 2 have not been charged and were listed as witnesses in the affidavit. A grand jury also indicted Elizalde on an evading arrest charge from a 2014 incident, court officials said. Lawyers are slated to start picking a jury on Aug. 15 in 214th District Judge Jose Longoria's court. Elizalde remains in the Nueces County Jail in lieu of more than $1 million bail. (source: Corpus Christi Caller Times) FLORIDA: Dale Recinella makes a moral case to kill the death penalty I've been a supporter of the death penalty. When I thought about it at all. Which is to say, some crimes are so heinous that only one punishment seems sufficient. But to say this is to make a lot of assumptions. It's to assume, first off, that the person being put to death is actually guilty, which isn't always the case. And it's to assume the process by which they are sentenced to death is fair and unbiased. And it's pretty clear this isn't always the case, either. So there's the idea of the death penalty, and then there's the reality. Dale Recinella, a Macclenny attorney who has served for 20 years a volunteer chaplain and for 13 years as a lay chaplain for Florida's death row, says the reality is that in Florida and elsewhere, the death penalty is "a mess in every way, shape and form." "Everyone believes this myth that it's the worst of the worst who are executed," said Recinella, who will speak at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Stuart this Saturday night and Sunday morning. "It isn't; it's the people who couldn't afford lawyers." The process itself, he said, is inconsistent, arbitrary and racially biased - with 85 p% of all executions since 1976 taking place in "the old Confederacy and the slaveholding border states." "If you have 20 people who are charged with crimes that are almost identical, who will get the death penalty?" he asked rhetorically. "The poorest, the person of color and the guy with the worst lawyer." The U.S. Supreme Court agrees capital punishment in Florida is less than fair. The court ruled in January our death penalty is unconstitutional because it gives judges too much say in the process, and doesn't give jurors enough. Now the Florida Supreme Court is deciding whether the state's 390 death row inmates should have their sentences commuted to life in prison. The Legislature tried to come up with a fix, but earlier this month, a Miami judge struck that down. Capital punishment in Florida could be on a death watch. For Recinella, the end can't come too soon. Recinella was once a Wall Street finance lawyer who in the 1980s nearly died after eating a raw oyster and getting infected with the Vibrio vulnificus bacteria. He was literally on his deathbed when he saw the light, when he said Jesus came to him and challenged him to stop living such a self-centered life. "People ask, 'Did you get the music and light?' " Recinella said in a phone interview last week. "No, I got the lecture." When he awoke the following morning, "shocked that I was not dead," he and his wife, Susan, discussed where to go from there. They started volunteering at a Tallahassee food kitchen. That led to a stint working with street people who had AIDS. That, in turn, resulted in a request that he begin working with prisoners who had HIV and AIDS. In 1998, that led to death row. Recinella had once been pro-capital punishment; what he saw - chronicled in 2 books he's written on the subject - changed his mind. But what changed his heart was his faith and his belief in human dignity. "Even people who have committed great wrongs still retain human dignity, and their life is still valuable," he said. Dignity is in short supply on death row. Prisoners are confined in 6-by-9 cages in "these large boxes of steel and concrete sitting in the middle of nowhere between Gainesville and Jacksonville." There's no air conditioning, virtually no air movement at all. "People sometimes call (death row prisoners) 'animals' - but it would be unconscionable to keep a dog in these conditions. "Their crimes are horrible," he said. "But the question is, once we have these people secured in prison, are they animals - or are they human beings?" Recinella speaks all over the country, and says he's not interested in
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May 12 TEXAS: State, Lawyers Debate Identifying Execution Drug Supplier Revealing Texas' supplier of execution drugs could have a harmful effect on the provider and as a result leave the state empty-handed, a lawyer for the state suggested Wednesday during an appeals court hearing. State Deputy Solicitor General Matthew Frederick told a 3-judge panel on the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals that a "substantial risk" comes with naming the state's supplier. Specifically, he said, people who are against the death penalty might lash out against the supplier. "Pharmacies don't have security details," Frederick said. "Their only protection is anonymity." But 3 lawyers who have filed suit to release the identity of lethal injection drug suppliers say that no "substantial threat of physical harm" exists; therefore, the information legally cannot be withheld, their attorney, Philip Durst, argued. The appeals court had challenged attorneys for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the group of 3 lawyers - who have represented clients on death row - to differentiate between risks and threats when explaining what the harm is in identifying a compounding pharmacy that has provided the state with lethal injection drugs. The court did not offer a timeline for when it would make a ruling, but either party could appeal a future ruling to the Texas Supreme Court. The 3 lawyers sued the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in 2014 after the agency refused a request to identify the compounding pharmacy that supplies the state with lethal injection drugs. The attorneys - Maurie Levin, Naomi Terr and Hilary Sheard - had made the request through the state's Public Information Act. A state district court later that year ordered the prison agency to release the pharmacy's identity because it was public information, but the agency appealed. Since then, major pharmaceutical companies have refused to supply capital punishment states with the drugs needed to execute the condemned, forcing Texas to scramble and find alternative providers. In 2015, Texas made it legal to conceal the identity of parties that supply lethal injection drugs to the state. As a result, the attorneys are challenging the Department of Criminal Justice to release the identity of lethal injection drug suppliers from before the law went into effect last September. The 3 lawyers say that identifying lethal injection drug providers makes it easier to hold them accountable. But the state argues that releasing that information could lead to physical harm of its supplier. There may be risk, but there is no sign of an imminent threat, attorneys for both sides acknowledged before the appeals court. Justice Bob Pemberton pushed back Wednesday on the state's "substantial risk" characterization, saying that there is a difference between a risk and a threat, and that individuals such as former Gov. Rick Perry have been vocal about their position on capital punishment, which hasn't led to threats being realized. A pharmacy supplier is a soft target, though, Frederick responded. Also, Frederick referenced the 2013 revelation that the Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy supplied the state with execution drugs led to significant amounts hate mail and messages. As providers have been identified over the years, they have stopped making the drugs, according to multiple media reports. Equating people who oppose the death penalty to anti-abortion activists, Durst said that such activists generally protest peacefully. There's never been anything other than "How could you?" and other responses protected by the First Amendment, he said. The judges also asked how allowing the supplier's identity to remain secret because of safety concerns would not gut the state's Public Information Act. Frederick said that keeping the identity secret falls in line with the physical safety exemption from complying with a public information request. Durst said that labeling someone or something a threat should be based on concrete evidence. Theories from experts alone is not enough, he said. "It can't be that," Durst told the panel. Until a few years ago, major pharmaceutical companies provided execution drugs to death penalty states, Frederick said. As soon as smaller companies are identified, they might leave the market, he said. "They don't want to stick around long enough to see what happens," he said. After the larger companies dropped death penalty states as clients, Texas began seeking alternative providers to make the lethal drugs, but the federal government has weighed in on a couple of occasions. In April, the Food and Drug Administration barred the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from importing sodium thiopental, a drug used in executions. Last year, Texas and Arizona reportedly tried to import execution drugs from India but were unsuccessful. (source: Texas Tribune) FLORIDA: Death
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May 10 TEXAS: Houstonians show a change in support for death penalty Have changes in attitudes, the law and forensic science combined to change Houstonians' support for the death penalty? A recent poll shows fewer Harris County citizens are in favor of the death penalty, and Harris County courts are handing down fewer death sentences. Texas has sent more prisoners to the death chamber in the last four decades than any other state. And of those sentences, more have been handed down in Harris County (126) than any other Texas county. But a recent Houston-area survey shows support for the death penalty steadily declining. The percentage of residents saying death is the most appropriate punishment for first-degree murder dropped from 39 % in 2008 to 27 % in 2016 -- the lowest result ever. Pat Monks is a lawyer and conservative Republican who contends the death penalty is too arbitrary, too expensive and too unjust. "It violates all conservative values to be for the death penalty," Monks said. Proof of that, he says, are recent exonerations, like that of Anthony Graves, who was freed from death row after spending 18 years there for a murder he didn't commit. "If you're going to kill somebody, that system has to be perfect. It's just not, that's what's wrong with the death penalty," Monks says. Last year, Harris County courts only handed down one death sentence. The number statewide has declined as well. A significant influence has been the legislature's adoption of life without parole as a sentencing option to death 11 years ago. But the death penalty in Texas remains the law, as well as a plank in the state Republican Party's platform. Jared Woodfill is an attorney and a conservative Republican who is running for state party chairman. "The reality is that the system, I don't believe, is broken," Woodfill said. He believes the death penalty should remain an option in capital cases. He insists the appeals process and improvements in DNA testing that have led to exonerations also ensure the system is just. "So there are multiple levels of protection in place to ensure innocent people are not executed. And that if mistakes are made, they are caught and reversed," Woodfill insists. Monks doesn't agree. He's urged the state Republican Party to change its platform support for the death penalty several times without success. Woodfill says it's not likely when the party convenes later this week in Dallas for its state convention. (source: click2houston.com) FLORIDA: Former chief justice pushes for death row re-sentencing The Florida Supreme Court is deciding whether 390 inmates on death row should be re-sentenced to life after the state's death penalty scheme was ruled unconstitutional. Harry Lee Anstead was the Chief Justice of Florida's Supreme Court from 2002 to 2014. 18 months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Arizona's death penalty in what is know as the Ring case, Anstead argued that Ring applied to Florida. Other justices disagreed. More than a decade later, he was proven right when the high court threw out Florida's sentencing scheme, citing the Ring decision. "This decision about Florida's statue being unconstitutional should have been made many years ago," said Anstead. Since the other justices ignored Anstead's dissent so long ago, he's now going to other former Florida Supreme Court justices in arguing that all 390 inmates on death row should now get a life sentence. "This hopefully is setting things right in a large way, not a small way, in a large way," he said. Anstead remains troubled that since his dissent, now proven right, several dozen inmates have been put to death. Gainesville killer, Danny Rolling, was among them. "A number of prisoners on death row have been put to death in Florida, and arguably, they've been put to death under an unconstitutional death penalty scheme," Anstead said. Ironically, Lloyd Duest, who was the inmate in the case in which Anstead first cited his Ring objections, has died; not by lethal injections, but by other cases. Lloyd Duest died in 2011, 8 years after justice Anstead thought his sentence should have been reduced to life in prison. While the 3 justices say all death row inmates should be re-sentenced to life, the attorney general said that everyone on death row should stay there. (source: WEAR TV news) Florida's Modified Death Sentencing Regime Is Still Unconstitutional, Judge SaysJuries in the state must unanimously impose the death penalty, a circuit judge ruled. A Florida judge ruled on Monday that the state's recently amended system for sentencing people to death is unconstitutional. Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch said that the new regime - which allows a "less-than-unanimous" jury to impose the death penalty - violates Florida's constitution, which requires unanimity. "Every verdict in every criminal case in
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., LA., CALIF.
April 30 TEXAS: Death penalty diminishes our humanity, undermines mercyBishop says God's gift of life is sacred, abandon culture of death Recently, Pope Francis captured international headlines by appealing to Christians - and particularly Catholic governmental officials - to take the "courageous and exemplary act" of ending the death penalty during the Holy Year of Mercy. The pontiff's plea reaffirmed Catholic doctrine that views capital punishment as a cruel and inhumane offense to the dignity of human life. What was noteworthy was Francis' call for Christian political leaders - especially those who profess a commitment to protecting and preserving human life - to acknowledge that commitment is not limited solely to birth, but throughout our entire lives until natural death. Francis' statement merely echoed the teachings of his predecessors. In particular, St. John Paul II's encyclical letter the Gospel of Life (1995) strongly emphasized that modern societies have the capacity to punish and isolate violent offenders by non-lethal means without resorting to killing them and denying them any hope of repentance. He argued that the instances where the use of the death penalty are justified "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent." In opposing capital punishment, neither the pope, nor the church, are oblivious to the suffering of the victims of heinous crimes. Nor do we dismiss the grief and anguish of their families. The deep pain, grief and suffering of those who have lost loved ones to violence cry out for our care and attention. They deserve our support, our deepest compassion and our voices in the call for justice. However, more killing is not the answer. The death penalty does not provide true healing for those who mourn, nor does it restore the loss of a loved one. It does not honor the victim's memory, nor does it provide justice or redeem our suffering. It is not justice nor is it redemptive. Instead, the death penalty only further erodes our society's respect for the sanctity of life. It coarsens our culture. It diminishes our humanity. It undermines our mercy. Our moral condemnation of capital punishment - along with abortion, war, euthanasia and human trafficking - are drawn from the single core tenet of our faith: that God's gift of life is sacred. That faith is not conditional, it is not what is merely politically expedient. Jesus - who was himself executed as a criminal by the state - taught us that life is sacred, and that all of us can pray for mercy and redemption for our sin through the promise of the Holy Spirit. We live in an age in which we are constantly confronted with the atrocity of suffering and violence - often against those of faith. Our moral opposition to evil in the world, and our credibility as witnesses to the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person, is demonstrated when we unite our voices in rejecting the use of the execution. This is especially critical in Texas, which is recognized around the world for the frequency at which we resort to capital punishment. So far this year the state has put 4 inmates to death. While we may be psychologically able to distance ourselves personally from the act of execution, we cannot escape that truth that in a democracy those executions are performed in our name. By ending the use of the death penalty we would urge Christian leaders - especially those who are guided by their faith - to heed Francis' call to abandon the culture of death in this state and embrace the culture of life. (source: The Most Rev. Placido Rodriguez, CMF, is the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Lubbock and leader of 135,894 Roman Catholics in the areaLubbock Avalanche-Journal) *** Appeals court lowers bail for capital murder defendant An intermediate appellate court in Waco has reduced the bail for an Arlington man charged in the July shooting death of a Crawford woman, ruling that a judge abused his discretion by setting bail at $5 million and refusing to reduce it. Attorneys for James Ray Brossett appealed his bail amount set by 54th State District Judge Matt Johnson and the judge's decision not to reduce it at a hearing in November. In a ruling made public Friday, Waco's 10th Court of Appeals reduced Brossett???s bond to $1 million and sent the matter back to Johnson's court so he can place terms and conditions on the bond should Brossett be able to secure his release from the McLennan County Jail. "We are pleased that the court of appeals granted our request and reduced our client's bond to a reasonable amount similar to the amounts set in other similar cases of accused people in similar circumstances," said Waco attorney Michelle Tuegel, who represents Brossett with attorney Walter M. Reaves Jr. Tuegel said that despite the court's ruling, she doubts Brossett will be able to post bail because he has been in jail for 8
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., USA
Jan. 20 TEXAS: As an Attorney, Death Penalty Enthusiast Ted Cruz Really Loved Describing Brutal Crimes Texas Senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz has never exactly hidden his passion for the death penalty - it's a love that speaks its name over and over whenever he talks in public. As the New York Times lays out today, his passion took a somewhat more unseemly form when he was a Supreme Court Clerk, where he seemed to take unusual relish in laying out the details of violent crimes. Cruz has always been pro-death penalty and a staunch advocate for keeping the system churning along just as it currently kills people (except, as Mother Jones pointed out, in 2010, when as a private practice attorney, he represented a wrongfully convicted man who spent 14 years on death row). He may have gotten some of that from his father; Rafael Cruz has argued from the pulpit that God himself is pro-death penalty. That enthusiasm made itself evident when he was clerking for Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist in 1996, the Times writes, and became known for his colorful briefs on death penalty appeals, which "often dwelled on the lurid details of murders that other clerks tended to summarize in order to quickly move to the legal merits of the case." That's unusual for a dry, dispassionate SCOTUS brief, and really made old Ted stand out at the office, a fact he himself was not unaware of. Per the Times: "I believe in the death penalty," Mr. Cruz wrote in his book "A Time for Truth." As he saw it, it was his duty to include all the details and "describe the brutal nature of the crime." "Liberal clerks would typically omit the facts; it was harder to jump on the moral high horse in defense of a depraved killer," he wrote. Cruz's love of death began even before that, in fact, during a clerkship at federal appellate court in Virginia with Judge J. Michael Luttig. Luttig's father was killed by a 17-year-old would-be carjacker named Napoleon Beazley in 1994. The horrible incident created a bond between Cruz and Luttig, who began working for the judge soon after. A very strong and slightly macabre bond, again, per the Times: Mr. Cruz became devoted to Mr. Luttig, whom Mr. Cruz has described as "like a father to me." During his clerkship, he presented his boss with a caricature of him and other clerks pulling a stagecoach driven by the judge. According to someone who saw the illustration, there was a graveyard behind them with headstones representing the number of people executed in their jurisdiction that year. One thing we can say about Ted Cruz: the man's character is consistent. (source: jezebel.com) FLORIDA: Denise Lee's killer among death penalty cases to be reviewed In another sign of the impact of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a key part of Florida's death-penalty sentencing system, the state Supreme Court has issued orders allowing 6 death row inmates to file briefs about how the ruling might apply to their cases. That includes the sentence of Michael King, who was convicted in September 2009 in the abduction, rape and killing of North Port's Denise Lee, 21. The same jury that convicted King also recommended 12-0 that he die for the crimes. The Florida Supreme Court's orders, issued Tuesday, are in cases that already had been scheduled for oral arguments during the `st week of February. The orders will allow lawyers for the inmates and the state to file briefs next week about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in advance of the oral arguments. The U.S. Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision, found Jan. 12 that Florida's system of imposing death sentences was an unconstitutional violation of the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury because it gave too much decision-making power to judges instead of juries. A key question is whether - or how - the ruling might apply to people already sentenced to death. Besides King, Tuesday's orders allow briefs to be filed on behalf of Richard Knight, convicted in a Broward County case; Raymond Bright, convicted in a Bay County case; Dontae Morris, convicted in a Hillsborough County case; Jacob John Dougan, convicted in a Duval County case; and Eric Lee Simmons, convicted in a Lake County case, according to court documents. In a motion filed Friday in the Florida Supreme Court, Morris' attorneys said the breadth of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling was "unanticipated" and that it should apply to Morris' case. The Florida Supreme Court also will hear similar arguments Feb. 2 in the case of Cary Michael Lambrix, who is scheduled to be executed Feb. 11. Lawyers in Attorney General Pam Bondi's office have argued that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling should not affect Lambrix, who has been on death row for more than 3 decades. (source: Herald Tribune) * Shelby Farah's mother to ask state not to execute Rhodes if found guilty Shelby Farah's mother is scheduled to
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., USA
Jan. 13 TEXASnew execution dates Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present13 Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982present-531 Abbott#scheduled execution date-nameTx. # 14-January 20---Richard Masterson-532 15-January 27---James Freeman-533 16-February 16--Gustavo Garcia534 17-March 9--Coy Wesbrook--535 18-March 22-Adam Ward-536 19-March 30-John Battaglia--537 20-April 6--Pablo Vasquez---538 21-April 27-Robert Pruett539 22-June 2---Charles Flores---540 (sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin) FLORIDA: Supreme Court: Florida death penalty system is unconstitutional Florida's unique system for sentencing people to death is unconstitutional because it gives too much power to judges - and not enough to juries - to decide capital sentences, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. The 8-1 ruling said that the state's sentencing procedure is flawed because juries play only an advisory role in recommending death while the judge can reach a different decision. The decision could trigger new sentencing appeals from some of the 390 inmates on the Florida's death row, a number second only to California. But legal experts said it may apply only to those whose initial appeals are not yet exhausted. The court sided with Timothy Lee Hurst, who was convicted of the 1998 murder of his manager at a Popeye's restaurant in Pensacola. A jury divided 7-5 in favor of death, but a judge imposed the sentence. Florida's solicitor general argued that the system was acceptable because a jury first decides if the defendant is eligible for the death penalty. Writing for the court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said a jury's "mere recommendation is not enough." She said the court was overruling previous decisions upholding the state's sentencing process. "The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death," Sotomayor said. The justices sent the case back to the Florida Supreme Court to determine whether the error in sentencing Hurst was harmless, or whether he should get a new sentencing hearing. Justice Samuel Alito dissented, saying that the trial judge in Florida simply performs a reviewing function that duplicates what the jury has done. Under Florida law, the state requires juries in capital sentencing hearings to weigh factors for and against imposing a death sentence. But the judge is not bound by those findings and can reach a different conclusion. The judge can also weigh other factors independently. So a jury could base its decision on one particular aggravating factor, but a judge could then rely on a different factor the jury never considered. In Hurst's case, prosecutors asked the jury to consider 2 aggravating factors: the murder was committed during a robbery and it was "especially heinous, atrocious or cruel." But Florida law did not require the jury to say how it voted on each factor. Hurst's attorney argued that it was possible only 4 jurors agreed with 1, while 3 agreed with the other. Sotomayor said Florida's system is flawed because it allows a sentencing judge to find aggravating factors "independent of a jury's fact-finding." 3 of Florida's current death row inmates were sentenced over the jury's life recommendation. But no judge had overridden a jury recommendation in a death penalty case since 1999, according to state officials. The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that a defendant has the right to have a jury decide whether the circumstances of a crime warrant a sentence of death. Florida's American Civil Liberties Union is calling on state officials to re-examine the sentences of all death row inmates. But Stephen Harper, a law professor who runs the Death Penalty Clinic at Florida International University, said it's unlikely the Supreme Court ruling will open the door for most Florida death-row inmates to new sentencing hearings. He said the Florida decision is based on a previous Arizona ruling that was already found not to be retroactive. "In general, it will not be retroactively applied," Harper said. But he added that Florida inmates whose initial appeals have not been exhausted may be able to argue that the latest decision applies to them. And, he said, any capital cases that are awaiting trial would likely be delayed while state legislators and the Florida Supreme Court sort out the next steps. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said her office is reviewing the ruling. News of the high court's decision stunned Florida legislators. Florida House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, who learned of the ruling while he was giving a speech to open the state's annual
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., ARK., COLO., CALIF., USA
Dec. 1 TEXAS: In retrial, man again sentenced to death for killing wife After hearing 9 days of testimony, it took a Houston jury just 15 minutes to again sentence William "Billy the Kid" Mason to death, prosecutors said Monday. Mason was convicted of capital murder in 1992 in the death of his wife, Deborah Ann Mason, and went to court again earlier this month after being granted a retrial for the punishment phase. "They understood from the beginning," Assistant Harris County District Attorney Katherine McDaniel said of the jurors who handed down the verdict. "It was just a never-ending parade of victims." She said jurors heard that Mason kidnapped his wife, then beat her to death under the Hwy. 59 bridge over the San Jacinto River in Humble because she was playing her radio too loudly on Jan. 17, 1991. He had been out of prison just 18 days after serving time for a murder and an attempted murder. "How many capital murderers also have a prior murder and an attempted capital murder?" McDaniel said. "He was just bad in every respect." She said jurors also heard testimony that Mason had risen to the rank of captain in the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a notorious prison gang. He spent more than a decade behind bars on a 55-year-sentence for robbing and killing a black man in 1977. On the day that 33-year-old Deborah Mason was killed, the couple had spent the morning smoking marijuana and drinking with friends. They got into a fight and he began to beat her in the presence of their friends. After the fight escalated, Deborah Mason was bound and gagged before being taken to the bridge where she was killed. The retrial was a result a Supreme Court ruling that determined jurors did not hear mitigating evidence in some death penalty cases from that era. He was facing either death or a prison sentence under the law as it was at the time of the slaying, which meant he could have been paroled in as little as 15 years. His attorneys argued that it was a case of horrible domestic violence, but rose to the level of a capital murder because of the kidnapping. "If he had killed her at the house, it wouldn't have been capital murder," Mason's lawyer, Terry Gaiser, said before the trial. If offered, Gaiser said, Mason would have agreed to a plea deal guaranteeing he never got out of prison. Gaiser could not be reached for comment Monday. The retrial began on Nov. 9. On Nov. 19, the jury came back with the verdict after deliberating less than a half-hour in state District Judge Marc Carter's court. It was the 2nd death penalty trial in Harris County this year. The 1st led to a sentence of life without parole for Johnathan Sanchez. (source: Houston Chronicle) GEORGIAimpending execution Clemency hearing set next week for Georgia death row inmate A clemency hearing is planned for next week for a Georgia death row inmate convicted of killing a close friend of his mother. The State Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday said the hearing for Brian Keith Terrell will be held Dec. 7, a day before he is scheduled to die. Terrell was on parole in June 1992 when he stole 10 checks belonging to 70-year-old John Watson of Covington and signed his own name on some. Watson told Terrell's mother and sheriff's officials about the theft and agreed not to press charges if most of the money was returned the next day. But the day he was to return the money, Terrell had his cousin drive him to Watson's house where prosecutors say he shot Watson multiple times. (source: Associated press) FLORIDAnew execution date Gov. Scott orders execution in Glades County murder case, the 2nd for 2016 Gov. Rick Scott has ordered the execution of a man who has been on Florida's death row for 2 murders in 1983. The execution of Michael Ray Lambrix, scheduled for 6 p.m. Feb. 11, 2016, is the 2nd already planned in the new year. Oscar Ray Bolin is scheduled to be executed Jan. 7 for murders in Tampa Bay. Lambrix was convicted in Glades County in 1984 for killing Aleisha Bryant and Clarence Moore, Jr. According to information from the governor's office, Lambrix and his girlfriend met the victims at a bar and invited them back to the trailer where they lived for dinner. Lambrix then beat Moore to death with a tire iron and strangled Bryant. He stole a gold chain from Moore's body and buried them in a shallow grave before taking Moore's car. Lambrix had escaped from work release in December 1982 while serving a 2-year prison sentence for violoating probation. But outside groups, including Amnesty International, have contested the narrative that led Lambrix to spend more than 30 years on death row. They said that Frances Smith -- who Lambrix lived with and who was the key witness against him -- was not credible and had given inconsistent statements to police. Another witness who claimed Lambrix had confessed the murders later recanted her
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO, MO.
Nov. 4 TEXAS: Death warrant for Ward delivered Hunt County Sheriff Randy Meeks was scheduled Tuesday to deliver the death warrant for Adam Kelly Ward. Meeks traveled to the Texas Department of Corrections Tuesday, as the death warrant has to be hand delivered to the agency's director by the sheriff of the county in which the conviction occurred. The death warrant was signed Monday by 354th District Court Judge Richard Beacom. Ward is set to die by lethal injection on the evening of March 22, 2016. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2007 for the 2005 death of Michael "Pee Wee" Walker, a City of Commerce Code Enforcement Officer. (source: Greenville Herald-Banner) ** Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present12 Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982present-530 Abbott#scheduled execution date-nameTx. # 13-November 18--Raphael Holiday---531 14-January 20 (2016)-Richard Masterson532 15-January 27---James Freeman-533 16-February 16--Gustavo Garcia534 17-March 9--Coy Wesbrook--535 18-March 22-Adam Ward-536 (sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin) FLORIDA: Convicted Cop Killer Dies on Death Row A man convicted of killing a Tallahassee Police officer has died on death row. The Department of Corrections confirms that Clarence Jones died of what appears to be natural causes last week. He'd been on death row for 26 years. Jones was sentenced to death for ambushing Tallahassee Police Officer Ernie Ponce de Leon during a traffic stop back in 1988. David Ferrell worked with Ponce de Leon at TPD back then. "When Ernie got murdered that morning it just... personally made me realize how dangerous this job really is," Ferrell said. "Ernie and Greg responded to a suspicious persons call down on Lake Bradford Road. It was a standard, common call and the first thing you know, it turns into a running gun battle." Ferrell says Jones' death does not bring him any closure. He still misses his fellow officer and friend and continues to fasten Ponce de Leon's picture to his bike as a way to honor him during remembrance rides. A DOC spokesman says Jones died last Tuesday, October 27th. Both FDLE and the DOC's Inspector General are investigating, which the DOC says is standard protocol in any unattended deaths. (source: WCTV news) * Convicted murderer's lawyer appeals death sentence The case against a prison escapee found guilty of killing a Florida State University student and dumping his body in a field off State Road 16 will head to the Florida Supreme Court. In June 2014, a St. Johns County jury unanimously voted to recommend the death penalty for Kentrell Feronti Johnson, who was found guilty of first-degree murder and kidnapping relating to the death of Vincent Binder, a 29-year-old FSU graduate student. But the judgment was appealed Tuesday by Johnson's lawyer, Michael Reiter, who said the Seventh Judicial Circuit "acted in bad faith" when the court failed to uphold an agreement between Johnson and the state attorney's office in Tallahassee. The Seventh Judicial Circuit serves Flagler, Putnam, St. Johns and Volusia counties. Tallahassee is in the Second Judicial Circuit, which covers Franklin, Liberty, Gadsden, Leon, Wakulla, and Jefferson counties. When Johnson was arrested in South Florida, he was interviewed by attorneys representing the Second Judicial Circuit who said they wouldn't pursue the death penalty if he helped him find the body, according to Reiter. "Johnson relied upon his bargain with the State of Florida not to pursue the death penalty if he helped locate the body of Vincent Binder. As a result of Florida's reneging on their agreement, Johnson's constitutional rights were violated," the appeal states. Reiter added, "No matter where the body was found, the death penalty was not an option (per the agreement)." He also said since Johnson had already been charged of the crimes in Tallahassee, there was no reason for St. Johns County to charge him as well. "There was no reason other than to avoid the agreement," he argued. But one state attorney's office can't bind another, Vivian Singleton, assistant state attorney for the Florida Attorney General's Office, argued. "Attorneys only have the power to prosecute in their circuit," Singleton said. "And the judge can't take sentencing guidelines away from a state attorney." And since there was no formal agreement, the Seventh Judicial Circuit has no way of knowing what the actual agreement was, she said. During the trial, Judge Raul Zambrano said he didn't have the authority to enforce the agreement, but Reiter pointed to Florida statutes that would allow it in some cases. "I believe he did have authority," he said. Johnson was not
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., MO.
Aug. 31 TEXAS: Hall Murder Trial Now Expected to Start Wednesday The trial of an accused College Station killer that has seen a number of delays has one more that will keep it from starting Monday as scheduled. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Gabriel Hall, 22 of College Station. Jury selection for the trial, which involves individual interviews with each potential juror because the state is seeking death as punishment, started July 27. The trial was scheduled to start Monday, but the jury of 12 and 2 alternates has not been selected. The majority of the panel has been chosen. Judge Travis Bryan III now hopes to have opening arguments and the 1st witness testimony on Wednesday. Hall is accused of shooting and stabbing 68-year-old Edwin Shaar to death in October 2011. Police say Shaar's wife, Linda, witnessed the attack and called 9-1-1, but was also stabbed by the 22-year-old as she sat in her wheelchair. She survived the attack. Hall later admitted to the crimes, according to police. The start of the trial has been delayed multiple times. Interviews with people in the Philippines, where Hall lived before he was adopted, and additional DNA testing required by a Texas law change have been among the reasons. Once the trial begins, Bryan says it could take anywhere from 4-to-6 weeks to complete both the guilt-innocence and punishment phases if Hall is found guilty. (source: KBTX news) FLORIDA: Jurors to decide whether Bessman Okafor gets death penaltyOkafor convicted in 2012 shooting death of Alex Zaldivar, 19 Testimony is scheduled to continue Monday in the sentencing hearing of convicted killer Bessman Okafor. Convicted murderer Bessman Okafor returned to court Friday as jurors continue to hear testimony to determine whether he should be sentenced to death. Jurors will decide whether Okafor, who was convicted last week in the 2012 shooting death of Alex Zaldivar, 19, should get the death penalty or life in prison. The defense claims that Okafor, who is already serving a life sentence, was abused as a child, and that led to problems throughout his life. A psychologist called by the defense said Okafor suffered nine out of 10 factors that cause lasting psychological and medical effect, including physical and sexual abuse. Okafor's brother and stepmother had previously testified that Okafor's biological mother beat him. "The more factors, the more likely problems. Higher dose, greater range of difficulties and greater the severity of the difficulties. It would be severely rare and surprising if someone grew up with nine out of the 10 factors, and it didn't lead to severe consequences," said Dr. Steven Gold, a psychologist who interviewed Okafor. Zaldivar's parents were in the courtroom as Gold testified that, give Okafor's background, his chances of growing up to be a successful adult were extremely low. State Attorney Jeff Ashton repeatedly interrupted Gold with objections to the defense attorney's line of questioning. Zaldivar was a witness who was set to testify against Okafor in another trial. (source: WESH news) *** 4 young suspects in machete murder could be eligible for death penalty A grand jury will be asked to issue an indictment for 1st-degree premeditated murder in the case of 4 ex-Homestead Job Corps students charged with the vicious machete killing of 17-year-old Jose Amaya Guardado. An indictment means defendants Kaheem Arbelo, Desiray Strickland, Christian Colon and Jonathan Lucas will be eligible for the death penalty. The announcement, made in court by a prosecutor on Monday, was not unexpected. Miami-Dade detectives say the group planned the grotesque murder, even digging a grave 2 days before Jose was hacked to death in June. The hearing Monday was for Strickland, 18, who appeared before the trial judge for the first time for an arraignment. The slender teen, cupping an inhaler, did not say anything in court. She sat, armed crossed, wearing a red jumpsuit designated for high-profile inmates. The case will be presented to the grand jury next month as the panel reconvenes for the fall, Miami-Dade prosecutor Alejandra Lopez told the judge. Authorities say Arbelo, Strickland and the others conspired for 2 weeks to kill Jose, a fellow student at the federally run residential school for at-risk youth in South Miami-Dade. Law enforcement sources have told the Miami Herald that the killing may have stemmed from a debt owed to Arbelo, 20, and that the accused students were known as bullies at the campus. Jose's shocking murder in June has drawn increased scrutiny on Job Corps, which operates 125 campuses across the country and falls under the U.S. Department of Labor. The program helps at-risk people between the ages of 16 and 24 earn their high-school degrees and learn vocational skills. After the arrests, federal authorities suspended fall classes at
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., LA.
Aug. 6 TEXASimpending executions Death Watch: 2 Set to DieBoth death row inmates claim murder was not intentional Although Clifton Williams narrowly avoided execution July 16, 2 Texans are scheduled for the gurney next week. Both inmates maintain that they didn't mean for the individuals they killed to die, though their opinions about their pending fates differ. Corpus Christi native Daniel Lee Lopez is scheduled to die first; he's currently slated to be strapped in at 6pm on Wednesday, Aug. 12. Lopez was driving 60 miles an hour through a neighborhood in March 2009 trying to evade cops and avoid arrest for outstanding warrants when he hit and killed 20-year veteran police officer Stuart Alexander as he was laying Stop Sticks near the highway. Lopez was eventually apprehended after being shot in the arm, neck, and chest. Then 21, he was indicted for 10 offenses, including the capital murder of Alexander. He initially pleaded not guilty, but later changed his stance. He was assigned to a psychologist, who reported that Lopez held an increasingly firm opinion that he'd rather a death sentence than live the rest of his life in prison. The state offered life in prison in exchange for a guilty plea, but Lopez pleaded not guilty and went to trial. Central to the case was debate on whether or not Lopez intentionally ran over Lt. Alexander. At times, he told attorneys that he didn't mean to do it, that his sight was affected by shots of pepper spray deployed by other officers. Yet, just prior to closing arguments, attorneys informed the judge that Lopez insisted on testifying that he did in fact mean to swerve and hit Alexander. The court rejected Lopez's request, but the jury still found him guilty on all counts, including capital murder. Lopez waived his right to a state petition for habeas corpus in April 2012 and filed his federal papers that May. The brief, largely blank application asserted 1 solitary ground for relief: that the death penalty in Texas violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. He underwent a series of competency exams and hearings in 2013, and soon after received his right to waive appeal from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. His attorneys - James Rytting, David Dow, and Jeffrey Newberry - maintain that he should never have been found guilty of capital murder, as his testimony concerning his actions continuously flipped from intentional to unintentional. They thus contest that the district court erred in accepting Lopez's waiver, as Lopez does not understand that the conduct to which he admits - an unintentional murder - does not fall within the definition of capital murder. Lopez, however, remains convinced he's made the right call. In April, he told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times that he accepts his punishment. It wasn't on purpose, he said. I killed a police officer because I tried escaping. And it was never intentional but I feel responsible. The 2nd individual, Tracy Beatty, goes to the gurney one day after Lopez. Beatty, 54, was arrested for the Nov. 25, 2003, murder of his mother, 62-year-old Carolyn Click. Beatty strangled, smothered, and/or suffocated Click during an argument at her home, and left her in the tub for 2 days before burying her in the ground beside her house and making off with her car and possessions. When questioned, he told authorities that a man named Junior Reynolds had actually killed his mother; that he then killed Reynolds and dumped him in water before returning to his mother's house to ice her in the tub and eventually bury her by the house. But the investigation turned to Beatty. During his arrest, as he was being delivered from Henderson County to the Smith County Jail, he told authorities: I really didn't mean to kill her. I came in drunk. She started bitching at me, and I just started choking her. I didn't even know she was dead until the next morning when I found her still laying on the living room floor. He was indicted for capital murder the following May and found guilty on Aug. 9, 2004. Deemed a future threat because of 2 prior felony convictions - injury to a child in 1986 and a robbery in 1988 - he was sentenced to death on Aug. 10. Attorney Jeff Haas argued in petitions for habeas corpus and appeals to the 5th Circuit that his client received ineffective assistance from counsel in two different forms: Trial counsel failed to discover and present mitigating evidence, and failed to properly present enough facts to prove Click's killing was a murder rather than capital murder. Haas pointed to one instance in particular, unmentioned during trial, in which Click and an acquaintance had an argument that a witness indicated looked as though they would rip each other's heads off. He attempted to use that testimony as evidence that Beatty had no intention to kill his mother when he showed up at her house; that a heated conversation
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO, MO.
May 23 TEXASimpending execution U.S. court denies motion to halt execution of long-serving Texas inmate A federal appeals court has denied an application to halt the June execution of Lester Bower, one of the longest-serving inmates on death row in Texas, for killing 4 men at an airport hangar in 1983. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Thursday denied a petition from Bower's lawyers, who said his planned execution on June 3 should be halted on grounds that his previous sentencing did not match U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Bower, 67, who has been imprisoned for more than 30 years, is set to be executed by injection at the state's death chamber in Huntsville. His lawyers have tried for more than 2 decades to have his conviction thrown out, saying he was found guilty due to faulty witness testimony. Bower has denied being at the hangar where the murders took place but authorities said aircraft parts found in his home and other evidence implicated him in the crimes. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal filed by lawyers for Bower, who argued that three decades on death row amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. According to Bower's court filings, he has faced imminent execution on 6 occasions during his time in prison. Bower was convicted of fatally shooting building contractor Bob Tate, former police officer Ronald Mayes, sheriff's deputy Philip Good and interior designer Jerry Brown, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said. Bower killed Tate to steal an ultralight airplane Tate was selling and then killed the other 3 when they unexpectedly showed up at the hangar, it said. (source: Reuters) * Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present7 Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982present-525 Abbott#scheduled execution date-nameTx. # 8--June 3Les Bower526 9---June 18--Gregory Russeau--527 10-August 12Daniel Lopez--528 11-August 26Bernardo Tercero--529 12-October 6Juan Garcia---530 (sources: TDCJ Rick Halperin) FLORIDA: Jury Recommends Death Penalty in Barry Davis CaseThe jury in the Barry Davis case has recommended to the court that he face the death penalty. Davis was found guilty Monday on 2 counts of 1st degree murder in the deaths of John Gregory Hughes and Hiedi Rhodes in May 2012. The jury only deliberated for an hour Friday, but during the penalty phase, head injuries have been the topic of discussion the last 3 days. After an hour of deliberating, the jury in the Barry Davis case recommended to the court that he face the death penalty for the murders of John Gregory Hughes and Hiedi Rhodes. A Spencer Hearing, which is an opportunity for the defendant's lawyers to present additional evidence to the judge before a sentence is entered, will take place at a later date. 3 final witnesses testified Friday to wrap up the month-long trial of Barry Davis. For the last 3 days, traumatic brain injuries have been the topic of discussion. The defense brought in a number of witnesses both in the clinical psychology and neuropathology fields Thursday. They testified that head injuries Davis sustained as a child from activities like football could have impacted his judgment as an adult. 1 clinical psychologist, a witness for the state, says otherwise. He has no medical health treatment historically, no contact with psychologists or psychiatrists, no medications so for me that suggests there was not recognized as to any major mental health issues in his lifetime, said Dr. Greg Prichard. The Defense Attorney's witnesses also claimed the environment of where someone grows up, depression and anxiety, mixed with a brain injury can create a disturbed individual. Davis' sister testified Friday by phone and talked about the conditions of their father's home where she stayed one summer. My eyes were red, and drained, said Kieana Davis, as she described when she went to visit her father in California. And when we went back from visiting my father and we were sent back to my mom she was very upset, and our clothes were dirty and had not been washed. After his examination, Dr. Prichard stated Davis' act of killing John Gregory Hughes and Hiedi Rhodes was not due to a mental illness or any form of depression, but rather, The behaviors associated with the crimes reflect some characterlogical or personality issues, said Dr. Prichard. Davis could either receive life in prison without parole, or the death penalty. The jury is still discussing the fate of Davis. The judge however will make the final decision. (source: WJHG news) * Case of death row inmate in Atlantic Beach father and son's murders returns to Supreme Court It's
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., LA.
April 18 TEXAS: Of course innocent people have been executed The question for the state House candidates during a recent Editorial Board meeting involved Texas' death penalty - whether they support it. I paraphrase. Ina Minjarez, a former prosecutor, said that the justice system has its flaws, but, yes, she supports the death penalty. I don't mean to pick on her. Texas candidates for the death penalty are as ubiquitous as cheese on Tex-Mex. And whoever is elected will make a perfectly fine representative, whether it is Minjarez or her opponent, Delicia Herrera. But Minjarez's wording was distressingly familiar. Flawed? How much less than perfect is tolerable in a system that imposes a sanction that, once executed, cannot be walked back from? Executed being the exact right word there. About 1,400 people have been executed since 1976 in the United States. There were, as of recently, 3,035 people on death row. And there have been, since 1973, at least 150 exonerations from death rows. Texas comes in 3rd among the states, with 12. So, given the number of exonerations, what do we suppose are the chances that nary another innocent person is left on a death row somewhere to wait for the needle and slow death? And once you answer that question - truthfully - how do you answer the next one? Just how much collateral damage is acceptable? You see, these days, if you haven't reached the conclusion that unjustly convicted people have been executed and that no amount of improvement will remove human flaw from the system, you haven't been paying attention to the system, humans or current events. The flaws are common knowledge. So it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that a lot of folks are pretty much OK with the execution of innocent people - as long as the overwhelming majority killed by the states really are monsters. 2 Texas cases in particular trouble me. One is the now infamous case of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004. He was convicted in the arson deaths of his 3 daughters on evidence that, it is now abundantly clear, was fictional or flawed. The forensic evidence pretty much points to no arson at all. A jailhouse witness to Willingham's alleged confession recanted, but this was kept from the defense. And that witness, it appears, was given a deal for his testimony and, he says, was coerced - this, too, kept from the defense. Others have a longer list of men wrongfully executed, Texas figuring prominently. Besides Willingham, I call your attention to Carlos DeLuna, executed by Texas in 1989 for the stabbing death of a convenience store clerk in Houston. It seems clear that another Carlos committed the crime. Right; due process has been followed. OK, but the evidence should have at least prompted new trials as a matter of justice. The system, of course, tends to cling to legality - due process. That is not the same thing as justice. But why tippy-toe? Of course innocent people have been executed. This doesn't require much of a leap, particularly with Willingham. There is, by the way, a proposal, by Democratic Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. of Brownsville, for a constitutional amendment to ban the death penalty in Texas. I recently asked a couple of statistician friends whether there is a rule in their field that says if something happens often enough, it's certain to happen again. No, there are just too many variables. And I'm still certain that innocent people will be executed as long as there is a death penalty because of a few of those variables - human error and prosecutors' desire to win. A couple of societal currents also intrude. Capital punishment exists because of an illusory belief that it guarantees safety - and, if we're honest, because we crave eye-for-an-eye retribution. So we continue to tweak in pursuit of something else illusory - a system with no errors. Later, one of my friends shared a joke, inadvertently on point: 3 statisticians go hunting. 1 shoots and misses the deer by 3 feet to the left. The other shoots and misses 3 feet to the right. The 3rd guy exclaims, We got it! Substitute any profession that operates with plus or minus margins of error. Dear candidates and sundry elected officials: As you cannot logically guarantee perfection in our police and courts, I hope margin of error and due process are enough of a security blanket for you when it comes to the death penalty. Personally, I find it flimsy covering. (source: Opinion, Ricardo Pimentel, San Antonio Express-News) FLORIDA: Death penalty question could delay Luis Toledo murder trial The trial of a man accused of killing his wife and her 2 children could be delayed. Luis Toledo, 33, was expected to go to trial later this summer, but a death penalty issue before the Florida Supreme Court could push the trial back. Toledo's wife Yessenia Suarez, 28, and her children, Thalia Otto, 9, and Michael Otto, 8, disappeared from their
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., MINN., UTAH, ARIZ., USA
March 23 TEXAS: Supreme Court won't hear appeal of Texas inmate who has been on death row for 30 years The Supreme Court said Monday it would not hear an appeal from an inmate who has been on death row in Texas for three decades. This decision lifts a stay that has been in place since last month and opens the door for Texas to schedule and try to carry out an execution of one of its longest-serving death row inmates. Lester Bower, 67, was convicted of shooting and killing 4 men in an aircraft hangar in 1983. He shot 1 man while trying to steal an ultralight plane this man was trying to sell, then shot the other 3 when they unexpectedly arrived, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Bower's long tenure on death row was among the reasons his attorneys argued he should be eligible for a stay. They say that his execution has been scheduled 6 times since he arrived on death row, and he has come within hours of heading to the death chamber before. Executing Mr. Bower after he has served on death row for more than 30 years under these circumstances serves no penological purpose and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, his attorneys wrote in a filing to the Supreme Court. Last month, 5 days before Bower's scheduled lethal injection in Texas, the full Supreme Court granted his request for a stay while it considered whether to hear his case. No explanation was offered, but the court's order said that if the justices decided not to hear the case, the stay would be lifted. The court's decision Monday not to hear the case comes weeks before the justices are scheduled to consider a different case involving capital punishment. The justices are going to hear a case focusing on Oklahoma's lethal-injection procedure, which relies upon a controversial drug that has been involved in problematic executions. Executions in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama have been delayed until after the court rules in that case. After the court said it would not hear the case after all, Justice Stephen Breyer argued in a dissent that the court should hear it because of an issue involving Bower's sentencing. When Bower was convicted, the jury helping decide his sentence did not consider potentially mitigating evidence, something the Supreme Court later said was unconstitutional. As a result, Beyer says this should allow for a new sentencing hearing for Bower. I recognize that we do not often intervene only to correct a case-specific legal error, Breyer wrote in the dissent, which was joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. But the error here is glaring, and its consequence may well be death. If Bower had been executed last month as scheduled, he would have been the oldest inmate executed in Texas history, according to the state's Department of Criminal Justice. As it is, he has already spent 3 times as many years on death row as the average inmate in the state. The average death-row inmate nationwide has spent about 14 years under a death sentence, Justice Department figures show. A federal judge in California last year called that state's death penalty system unconstitutional and completely dysfunctional, decrying a system he said was plagued by delays. U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney wrote this in an order vacating the death sentence of an inmate who was facing an execution nearly 2 decades after being sentenced, which Carney said violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Texas state officials argued against granting Bower a reprieve, saying that because Bower has been fighting his looming execution in the courts for so long, his lengthy tenure on row is purely of his own making. Bower's claims are nothing more than a meritless attempt to postpone his execution, the office of Ken Paxton, attorney general of Texas, said in a filing to the Supreme Court opposing a stay. The families of the victims of Bower's quadruple murder have been waiting to see Bower's sentence carried out for over 30 years now.' However, it is unclear when Bower may face the death chamber. Texas has half a dozen executions scheduled over the next three months and only one dose of its lethal injection drug left. As a result, if the state carries out its scheduled execution of Kent Sprouse on April 9, it will have no execution drugs left and 5 other executions on the calendar. States around the country are facing a shortage of lethal injection drugs, which has fragmented the way executions are carried out nationwide. (source: Washington Post) FLORIDA: Legislature should require unanimous jury vote in death penalty cases On March 16, the Senate Criminal Justice Committee voted 5-0 to pass SB664 to require unanimous jury votes in capital case penalty phase proceedings, rather than by simple majority, to recommend a death sentence Sen. Thad Altman, R-Cape Canaveral, sponsored this bill and similar versions
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO
Jan. 15 TEXASimpending execution Arnold Prieto Scheduled to Be 1st to Die in 2015 On Sunday afternoon, Sept. 12, 1993, Maria Luisa Rodriguez visited the San Antonio home of her parents-in-law Virginia and Rodolfo Rodriguez, only to discover they'd both been stabbed to death, along with the longtime nanny to the Rodriguez children, 90-year-old Paula Moran, who lived with the couple. For months, the police had no leads. But in March 1994, after receiving a series of anonymous tips, 2 San Antonio Police Department detectives traveled 4 1/2 hours up I-35 to the Dallas suburb of Carrollton, where they met with 2 local detectives, and took the great-nephew of the murdered couple, 16-year-old Jessie Hernandez, in for questioning, and shortly thereafter arrested his brother Guadalupe Hernandez and their mutual friend Arnold Prieto. After 4 hours of interrogations, Prieto, then 20, submitted a lengthy statement. In it, he provided background information about his relationship with the Hernandez brothers. Shortly after meeting Prieto in May 1993, the 2 introduced him to cocaine. By that August, Prieto had lost his job, and the 3 were meeting each night to snort cocaine and watch movies. It was starting to get out of hand, he wrote. He fell into financial trouble, losing track of payments on his rent, utilities, and car loan. Prieto would complain about his financial situation, and the 2 brothers would counter by talking about their rich uncle in San Antonio. Rodolfo Rodriguez, 72, ran a check-cashing business with his wife, 62, out of their home in San Antonio. The brothers would talk about a closet in the house that was filled with money. One day, after doing more cocaine, Guadalupe suggested that the 3 make a trip to San Antonio. They'd rob the Hernandez's relatives and head back to Carrollton, no problem. Prieto didn't remember what time they got to the couple's house, only that it was very dark. They walked up to the house; Virginia let them in. She offered them eggs, tortillas, and orange juice. In my mind, I thought nothing's going to happen and we will end up just staying the night, he wrote in his statement. He went into a bedroom with Jessie and Rodolfo; moments later, he heard Virginia scream. Prieto looked into the kitchen, he wrote, and saw Guadalupe stabbing his aunt repeatedly with a screwdriver. Rodolfo got up, but Prieto pushed him back into the bed. Jessie handed Prieto a smaller screwdriver, which Prieto used to stab Rodolfo. The 3 made their way through the house, grabbing jewelry and whatever cash they could find. At some point, Moran emerged from her room, and Jessie stabbed her with a knife. Reports say Jessie stabbed Moran eight different times. Rodolfo was stabbed 17 times, and Virginia 31. Prieto was convicted in June 1995 and sentenced to death for the 3 murders. Only 16 at the time of killings, Jessie was spared the death penalty and instead sentenced to life in prison. Charges against Guadalupe were dropped for lack of sufficient evidence. Prieto never appealed his verdict, but he did take issue with the punishment - and blamed his attorneys for the sentence. Specifically, he argued in a writ of habeas corpus filed May 8, 2002, his trial attorneys Michael Bernard and Julie Pollock failed to properly use three pieces of evidence during the punishment phase of the trial. First, they neglected to present his school records - which were not allowed as evidence during the guilt/innocence phase and showed that Prieto had very poor grades that would keep him from certain career fields. Second, they did not properly convey a doctor's expert testimony on the effect that cocaine has on someone's actions - which might have shown that Prieto had an impairment on his executive functioning. Finally, they failed to get a copy of Prieto's statement (damning and descriptive as it was) to the jury during punishment deliberations. The jury sent out a series of related notes during those deliberations, going so far as to ask whether or not, as the appeal notes, drug use and possible addiction would be grounds for mitigation. That, compounded with other questions, had the jury at a temporary standstill over whether Prieto could be considered a continuing threat to society - a condition for a death sentence. Ultimately, the appellate court concluded that Pollock had attempted to present enough mitigating evidence to obtain a life sentence in lieu of the death penalty, and that the jury's decisions were informed decisions. It also determined that the evidence of cocaine abuse was 'double-edged' because it might establish future dangerousness rather than mitigation, and that the jury already knew Prieto was a high school dropout who was partially responsible for supporting his family. At the start, it must be understood that the defense had no hope of proving that Mr. Prieto was not a future danger to society, the court
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO, CALIF., USA
Nov. 29 TEXAS: Convicted El Paso serial killer loses appeal The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has rejected a claim by convicted El Paso serial killer David Leonard Wood that he should not be put to death because he claims he is mentally disabled. The trial court held a hearing and made findings of fact and conclusions of law recommending that his application be denied because applicant (Wood) has failed to show that he is mentally retarded, according to the court order. This court has reviewed the record with respect to (Wood's) allegations. Based upon the trial court's findings and conclusions and our own review, we deny relief, the court justices said. Bert Richardson, a visiting judge, presided over Wood's post-conviction appeal. Richardson recommended that the appellate court not find Wood to be mentally disabled. According to Richardson's findings, multiple IQ tests were given to Wood over the years, with dramatically different results, which complicated the mental disability claim. Richardson submitted a formal recommendation, but it was up to the appellate court to issue a final ruling on the appeal. Richardson was elected in the Nov. 4 general election to serve as a new justice on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The Nov. 26 order handed down by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals does not address Wood's other appeal related to his request for additional DNA testing, nor does it state that a new execution date will be set. Wood was convicted in 1992 of murdering s6 young women in El Paso in 1987, and was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Wood, who is now 57, has denied killing anyone. The victims attributed to him were Angelica Frausto, 17; Dawn Smith, 14; Desiree Wheatley, 15; Ivy Susanna Williams, 23; Rosa Maria Casio, 24; and Karen Baker, 20. Their bodies were found in shallow graves near what is now the Painted Dunes Golf Course in Northeast El Paso. The golf course did not exist at the time. El Paso Police Department detectives said they also suspected Wood in the disappearances of Cheryl Vazquez, 19; Melissa Alaniz, 14; and Margie Knox, 14, of Chaparral. They were reported missing in the Northeast El Paso area in 1987 and were never found. Hopefully, this brings us one step closer to finalizing the sentence that the trial court gave Wood 22 years ago, said Marcia Wheatley Fulton, Desiree Wheatley's mother. A jury of his peers found him guilty in 1992, and here we are, still waiting. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Wood a stay of execution in 2009, the day before he was scheduled to be executed to give him time to prepare his mental disability claim. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in a separate case (Atkins v. Virginia) in 2002 that executing a mentally disabled person violates the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unjust punishment. (source: El Paso Times) ** Scott Panetti should not be executed There is no question that Scott Panetti brutally shot his in-laws to death in 1992. And there is no question that Panetti, now 56, was mentally ill at the time he committed the murders and remains mentally incompetent and in need of treatment today. But somehow, questions still linger over whether or not Panetti - who has been on death row since his 1995 conviction and who is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday - should be executed for his crimes. The clear answer to those questions is no. Panetti's tragic and sometimes bizarre case has been winding its way through state and federal courts for more than 2 decades. His tortured life of mental illness has gone on much longer. In the years before the murders, Panetti was hospitalized or involuntarily committed more than a dozen times. He collected federal disability checks because he could not work. Why his commitment was only temporary is one of many tragedies in Panetti's twisted case. It was clear years before his crimes that his illness rendered him capable of such atrocities. Despite a 14-year history of emotional and psychological disturbances that could fill volumes, including diagnoses of fragmented personality, delusions, and hallucinations as well as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and homicidal tendencies, he was found competent to stand trial. He insisted on representing himself, calling as witnesses the pope and Jesus Christ in his defense. He blamed the murders on one of his alternate personalities - a man named Sarge - whom doctors had identified years prior. His conviction and subsequent attempts to appeal his death sentence prompted a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2007 that changed the criteria under which states can execute inmates whose mental competency is in question. Defendants, the court said, must have a rational understanding of the reason for their imminent execution and once an execution date is set, be permitted to
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., KY., USA
Sept. 26 TEXAS: Is Scott Panetti sane enough to be executed? The devil is in the details There is no doubt that Scott Panetti murdered his mother-in-law and father-in-law in 1992, then took his estranged wife and daughter hostage before police talked him into surrendering. There's also no doubt that Panetti is mentally ill (among other delusions, he thinks he's in the center of a battle between God and Satan). But is Panetti too mentally ill to understand why the state of Texas wants to execute him? Texas says no, his lawyers and a raft of psychiatrists say yes, and the arbiter could well be the Supreme Court, which sometime in the next few days will announce whether it has granted certiorari for the second time in an appeal in the case. As The Times' editorial board has written, and I've argued here on the blog, the death penalty should be abolished. Beyond its inherent immorality, the death penalty is inconsistently applied, atrociously prone to error and manipulation, and inhumane even when the executioners manage to get it right. Yes, murderers act inhumanely, too, but that is not cause for a state to execute its own citizens. Especially those who are unable to understand what is happening, be it from developmental disabilities or mental illness. That's a broad principle. Now we have an added layer of absurdity. In Panetti's case, according to the petition for certiorari (it's been a long meandering legal trail), there is no dispute that he killed Joe and Amanda Alvarado, and there is no dispute that he had suffered from severe mental illness for years beforehand. In 1986, while married to his 1st wife, Panetti became convinced that someone was watching him from a creek behind their house, so he sat on the porch for hours keeping guard. Separately, he buried valuables and stacked furniture in the yard, then hosed it down. He held a devil's birthday ceremony to rid the house of evil. Understanding the cause and effect between the murder and the execution does not mean [Panetti] is sane, especially when he sees the crime through a delusional prism. The incidents form a long list of bizarre and occasionally dangerous behavior: Panetti was institutionalized 2 years before the murders after he waved a sword and threatened to kill his wife, baby and father-in-law. Then in 1992, he committed murder. Despite his mental illness - schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder - Panetti was found competent to stand trial after court proceedings for which he had been medicated. And since he was competent to stand trial, a judge ruled he was competent to represent himself in a case in which Panetti - who had stopped taking his medications - pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He dressed up in an old Tom Mix-style cowboy suit for his court appearances, asked bizarre questions and made rambling statements. He sought to subpoena Jesus Christ, the pope and some 200 others. When he took the stand in his own defense, he began talking as another person named Sarge and mimicked firing a rifle at the jury. The results, observers said, was a disastrous trial at the end of which Panetti was convicted and sentenced to death. So does Panetti know why he will be executed? In interviews with the state's psychiatrists, Panetti says yes, he killed his in-laws and that the state of Texas wants to execute him for that. But he also said God had forgiven him so there was no need to talk about that any more, that God assured him he will live to be an old preacher, and that the state of Texas is actually being used as a pawn by Satan (the plot also involves major corporations and the Bush family) to prevent him from preaching the Gospel on death row, as God wants him to do. Texas argues that the 1st part of that answer is sufficient to determine that Panetti knows the execution stems from the murder convictions. The other details - such as his belief that Texas is just a tool in a Satanic battle - don't come into play. Panetti's lawyers - and the psychiatrists who testified on his behalf - argue that mental incompetence does not mean a lack of cognitive ability. Understanding the cause and effect between the murder and the execution does not mean he is sane, especially when he sees the crime through a delusional prism. Which leaves us at this bizarre juncture: Is Panetti just sane enough to be executed? The Supreme Court has ruled in the past that someone who does not understand the connection between the crime and the punishment cannot be executed under the 8th Amendment, but it hasn???t defined where the line is drawn, preferring to let the lower courts work that out through expert testimony and a recognition of the best standards in mental health. In Panetti, the Supreme Court already ruled once that the lower courts had used a too-restrictive test to determine Panetti's competency for execution, and sent the case back for reconsideration.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., MO., CALIF.
July 16 TEXAS: Judge discounts condemned man's impact of new DNA tests A Texas judge has ruled that DNA evidence probably would not have cleared convicted killer Henry Skinner of the 3 murders that sent him to death row. Skinner, 52, was condemned for the 1993 New Year's Eve murders of his live-in girlfriend Twila Busby and her 2 adult sons, Elwin Caler and Randy Busby. Skinner, a verbally combative paralegal whose case gained international attention in anti-death penalty circles, consistently argued he had been incapacitated by alcohol and codeine when the killings occurred. Skinner twice received last-minute stays of executions as his lawyers sought to obtain testing of dozens of pieces of crime scene evidence not previously tested. Among them were a bloody knife and bloodstains found throughout the victims' Pampa home. A windbreaker that Skinner's lawyers contended might have been worn by the killer disappeared from police custody and was not subjected to DNA testing. Earlier this year, Skinner's legal team argued to Pampa state District Judge Steven Emmert that the killings had been committed by Twila Busby's uncle, who reportedly accosted her at a party shortly before her death. In a 1-page ruling, Emmert ruled that it was reasonably probable that the new DNA test results would not have led to acquittal if they had been presented at Skinner's trial. Skinner's attorney, Robert Owen, could not immediately be reached for comment. The Associated Press Wednesday reported the judge's ruling would be appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. (source: Houston Chronicle) FLORIDA: Donald Smith trial is on schedule for Oct. 6 in death of 8-year-old Cherish Perrywinkle TIMELINE OF A TRAGEDY A look at the events surrounding the abduction and death of Cherish Perrywinkle (Times are approximate). Friday morning: Police make contact with Donald James Smith at the San Jose neighborhood home where he is a registered sexual offender. 7 p.m. Friday (Dollar General): Jacksonville police say Cherish Perriwinkle's mother met Donald James Smith, 56, at Dollar General. 11 p.m. Friday (Walmart Supercenter): Cherish's mother reports the 8-year-old girl missing to police. Authorities say the mother and Donald James Smith went to Walmart after Smith offered to buy the family some clothes. 9 a.m. Saturday (I-95/I-10): Police pull over and surround Donald James Smith's white 1998 Dodge van on I-95 South near the I-10 split. 10 a.m. Saturday (Highlands Baptist Church): The body of 8-year-old Cherish Perrywinkle is found near the church. [source: Jacksonville Sheriff's Office] -- The man accused of killing 8-year-old Cherish Perrywinkle was back in court Wednesday for a hearing that took less than 5 minutes. Donald James Smith, 57, remains on schedule to have his criminal trial Oct. 6 with a potential death-penalty phase the week of Oct. 13. Circuit Judge Mallory Cooper said she also is leaving her schedule blank the week of Oct. 20 in case the trial or penalty phase runs long. Smith is accused of kidnapping Cherish at a Northside Walmart, sexually abusing her and then killing her. The girl's mother, Rayne Perrywinkle, was in court Wednesday but declined to comment. Smith is a registered sex offender released from prison 3 weeks before Cherish was killed. He is charged with 1st-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual battery. He is accused of befriending Perrywinkle and her young children at a Dollar General store in June 2013 and convincing them to go to Walmart in his van after offering to buy them clothes and food. Perrywinkle told police that Smith offered to buy the family hamburgers at the McDonald's inside the Walmart on Lem Turner Road. She let Cherish go with him, and they did not return. Cherish's body was found near a creek off Broward Rod in the morning. Police found her wedged underneath an old tree that had fallen in the grassy marsh area of the creek. Smith was arrested after his van and photo were broadcast in a statewide alert. He was stopped on Interstate 95. The case led to a tightening of the civil commitment laws in Florida. (source: Florida Times-Union) *** Florida inmate still on death row despite DNA proof of innocence discovered years ago Years of legal wrangling over conclusive DNA evidence proving his innocence led the Florida Supreme Court to overturn Paul Hildwin's murder conviction and death sentence two weeks ago. Yet Hildwin remains on death row. 28 years after his conviction for a 1985 murder, Hildwin, 54, must wait - possibly for several months - for state prosecutors to decide whether to retry the case or drop the charges. 2 weeks ago, in a 5-2 ruling, the majority of the Florida Supreme Court said that
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Mar. 1 TEXASnew death sentence Jury returns death penalty case for ex-software engineer in Austin police officer's slaying A jury has sentenced a former Austin software engineer to death for the slaying of an Austin police officer. A Travis County jury deliberated more than 8 hours Friday before condemning Brandon Daniel in the April 6, 2012, death of Officer Jaime Padron. The jury had the option of sentencing Daniel to life imprisonment without parole. Daniel was sentenced 1 week after the jury returned a guilty verdict to his capital murder charge. Padron was shot to death while answering a disturbance and shoplifting call at a Wal-Mart. Daniel had acknowledged that he was under the influence of the anti-anxiety drug during the shooting. (source: Associated Press) ** Group says it has new evidence in Texas case of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed for arson An organization that supports death row defendants it says are wrongly accused argued Friday that newly discovered documents undermine the credibility of a key witness against a Texas man executed for the deaths of his 3 children based in part on arson evidence that has since been deemed faulty. The case of Cameron Todd Willingham has been scrutinized by advocates who argue that Texas may have executed a wrongfully convicted man. Fire science experts already have repudiated much of the methodology used in his case. The New York-based Innocence Project said Friday it has discovered a handwritten note that suggests a prosecutor gave a lesser charge to jailhouse informant Johnny Webb, who testified that told Webb he killed his daughters in 1991. That would contradict claims made at trial by Webb and prosecutor John Jackson that Webb did not receive special treatment for his testimony. It's astonishing that 10 years after Todd Willingham was executed we are still uncovering evidence showing what a grave injustice this case represents, Barry Scheck, the Innocence Project's co-director, said in a statement. A fire destroyed Willingham's home in 1991 and killed his 3 daughters. A state fire marshal who studied the scene testified at Willingham's 1992 trial that the fire was arson. Scientists have since refuted many of the techniques used by arson investigators before 1992, including those used by the fire marshal in the Willingham fire. Attorneys submitted new scientific findings to Gov. Rick Perry in 2004 and asked for time to reopen the case, but Perry allowed Willingham's execution to go forward that year. Willingham maintained his innocence until his death. The Texas Forensics Commission has determined the techniques used to convict Willingham were flawed, such as the belief that crackling of windows is an indication of arson. Scientists now know the crackling happens when firefighters spray cold water on them. The Innocence Project has called for a posthumous pardon, but Perry has long declined to reconsider Willingham's guilt, calling him a monster who had killed his own children. Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for Perry, said Friday that the governor's position has not changed. Todd Willingham was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury of his peers for murdering his three daughters, year-old twins and a two-year-old, Nashed said in an email. She added: The governor agreed with the numerous state and federal courts that Willingham was guilty and the execution should proceed. In a new filing Friday with the state pardon board, The Innocence Project said prosecutors worked to have charges for Webb, the jailhouse informant, reduced from an aggravated offence with a deadly weapon to a 2nd-degree felony. Included in the filing is a handwritten note, found in files turned over by current prosecutors, that mentions a 2nd-degree robbery offence based on coop in Willingham. The note is not signed or dated. Jackson, a former prosecutor who later became a state district judge, has maintained that Webb did not receive leniency. He told The Associated Press on Friday that he had not seen the note, but believed it was likely referring to efforts he made to get Webb out of prison after Willingham's trial due to threats on Webb's safety. The file may certainly reflect that we tried to get sentencing shortened, but it had nothing to do with any agreement relative to the Willingham trial, Jackson said. Jackson said imprisoned members of the Aryan Brotherhood had threatened Webb due to his role in Willingham's conviction. We certainly had an interest in not seeing a primary witness in the case killed while he was in prison, he said. Lowell Thompson, the current Navarro County district attorney, confirmed the note was in the files he allowed the Innocence Project to inspect, but did not take a position on whether it indicated anything about the case. I've seen it, but I'm not familiar with anything it might mean or it might not mean,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news---TEXAS, FLA., ALA., LA.
Jan. 8 TEXAS: Violent deaths in Hidalgo County sheriff's jurisdiction in 2013 down from past 2 years, in line with median under Trevino Criminal acts ended 15 lives in the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office jurisdiction in 2013, authorities say. All told, at least nine people allegedly involved in killing someone last year have yet to be arrested, according to a Monitor analysis of Sheriff's Office records released last week. Sheriff's Office homicide investigators closed 8 of the cases. 9 suspects were arrested in 7 deaths. One suspect killed himself after allegedly shooting a neighbor to death. Another may or may not be charged with capital murder for allegedly shooting 2 men on his own property. Investigators continue looking for at least 2 additional suspects in 1 capital murder case. In 1 open case, none of the 3 or 4 suspected gunmen who allegedly killed a man in a drive-by shooting has been arrested - or even publicly identified. The 15 violent deaths represented a drop from the past 2 years, but Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino hesitated to take credit for the decline. Homicide is one of those crimes that it's almost impossible to prevent and it's also impossible to predict, he said. MURDER BY NUMBERS Authorities classified 9 of the deaths as simple murders. They called 5 more capital murder, meaning additional circumstances - the killing occurring during the undertaking of another felony, for example - added to the cases' severity. One death, that of Enrique Medina Jr., was categorized as manslaughter by negligence on the part of the victim's 21-year-old father, who told authorities he'd drunkenly dropped the baby in a canal. Arrests have been made in 7 deaths, signifying a crucial step in the execution of justice, Trevino said. The homicide investigator is the one that's going to avenge that criminal death, he said. The (victim's) family can't do it. Vigilante groups can't do it. Investigators closed another case because the primary suspect killed himself shortly after the slaying. In another ongoing investigation, authorities are working to determine if the man who shot and killed 2 men trying to rob him at his home should be charged with murder. Though all of the crimes occurred outside of metropolitan police department jurisdictions, Sheriff's Office documents all listed mailing addresses that included cities. Nearly 1/3 (4 of 15) of the crimes occurred at or near Mission addresses. 2 crimes apiece were closest to the cities of Alamo, Edinburg, San Juan and Weslaco. Donna and Mercedes each accounted for one criminal death. The decline in Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office jurisdiction is in line with big cities in the rest of the country. According to The Daily Beast, 8 of the 10 cities with the highest number of slayings in 2012 saw decreases in 2013. The cities with decreasing murder numbers include Houston - whose 201 slayings represent a 7 % decline from last year and the second-lowest number since 1965 - and Dallas, which has seen violent deaths decline almost 40 % in the past 10 years. GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER Homicide investigators have yet to solve 5 cases outright. All I can I say right now at this point is that we're still actively investigating all of them, said Rick Enriquez, a captain in the Sheriff's Office Homicide Unit. Though he could not specify which ones, Enriquez said investigators were pretty close to solving a couple of the open cases. A case is considered solved when an arrest warrant is issued for a suspect. 2 of the 5, like I said, we're pretty close, he said. And we're very hopeful that we'll be issuing warrants. One case investigators did not seem imminently close to cracking was the April shooting death of corrido singer Jesus Chuy Quintanilla, which Enriquez singled out as a particularly frustrating case because it produced a wealth of leads but a dearth of useful ones. A lot of information came in, he said. Every lead gets looked into, but a lot them were unhelpful. In particular, rumors circulated that Quintanilla was targeted by Mexican cartels because some of his songs referenced the notorious criminal organizations. But they remain only rumors. We don't have the evidence to prove that, Enriquez said. An arrest in 1 case allowed investigators to count it as a clearance, but they continue to search for 2 more people suspected of being involved in the slaying. My thing is: At least they have 1, said Ernesto Berraza, whose father, 62-year-old Jose, was killed during a botched marijuana robbery attempt in the driveway of his rural Weslaco home July 11. The Berrazas had no connection to the marijuana. Deputies arrested Brandon Gonzalez, 19, shortly after the shooting. But Gonzalez - whose last name is spelled with an s in court records, but a z in Sheriff's Office documents - claimed he was only a driver and did not fire the fatal shots. 2 accomplices - Anthony
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., KAN., ARIZ., CALIF.
Dec. 13 TEXAS: Appeals court orders new punishment trial for man on Texas death row since 1986 An El Paso man convicted and condemned for the slaying of an elderly woman almost 30 years ago has won a new punishment trial. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed Wednesday with a trial judge that Angel Galvan Rivera had poor legal help at his 1986 trial in El Paso. Rivera's appeals lawyers argued his trial attorneys didn't properly investigate Rivera's background or present evidence that could have persuaded jurors to opt for a sentence other than death. The ex-cook was 27 when 88-year-old Jewell Haygood was found strangled to death in the bathroom of her El Paso home in October 1984. He also was suspected in the deaths of 62-year-old Iona Dikes and 82-year-old Julia Fleenor, both found strangled at their El Paso home the same month. (source: Associated Press) FLORIDAnew death sentences Michael Bargo sentenced; Now youngest man on Florida death row An Ocala man is heading to death row for his part in the slaying of a 15-year-old boy. During a 10-minute hearing on Friday, Circuit Judge David Eddy read 21-year-old Michael Bargo's death sentence. Bargo was the last of 5 defendants to be sentenced in the April 2011 murder of Seath Jackson in Summerfield, near Ocala. It is the judgment of the law and the sentence of the court for the premeditated murder of Seath Jackson, you Michael Shane Bargo are sentenced to death, Eddy said. Prosecutors said Jackson was lured to the home where he was beaten, shot and tortured before his body was burned in a backyard fire pit. The teen's remains were then placed into three paint buckets and dumped into a limerock pit. In August, Bargo was convicted for his role in Jackson's murder. His co-defendants are serving life sentences. A jury had already recommended the death penalty by an overwhelming majority. By a vote of 10-2, we the jury recommend the court that it impose the death penalty. During a hearing last month, Bargo took the stand and maintained his innocence, telling the judge he doesn't deserve to die. I don't want to die, man. I really don't. I was 18 years old, man, said Bargo. Bargo's father and other family members comforted his grandmother as she broke down crying when the judge read the sentence. At the age of 21, Bargo will now be the youngest inmate sitting on Florida's death row. (source: Associated Press) * Pasco man sentenced to death for murder, rape of Port Richey woman A judge sentenced John Sexton Jr. to death Friday for the murder and rape 3 years ago of a 94-year-old Port Richey woman who hired him to mow her lawn. In handing down the sentence, Circuit Judge Mary Handsel called the Sept. 22, 2010, murder of Ann Parlato a senseless, pitiless crime. A jury convicted Sexton in April and recommended the death penalty, and the judge agreed after reviewing the circumstances of the case. A friend who went to Parlato's home the day after her murder found her brutally beaten body covered by a sheet. She was raped with an object and her body was mutilated and set afire. Police quickly closed in on Sexton, the victim's yard man. 3 neighbors testified they had seen him through the kitchen window the night of the murder and recognized him. Police found knives in the kitchen sink, along with a white ceramic vase that was used to bludgeon the woman beyond recognition. Another witness noticed his truck parked in Parlato's driveway and wrote down his license tag number. Finally, when detectives arrived at Sexton's Port Richey home, about a mile away from the murder scene, they found him wearing a gray USF T-shirt, khaki shorts and flip flops. The shirt and shorts were stained with Parlato's blood. A pair of Sexton's work boots found inside his home was also drenched in blood. They found Parlato's DNA under Sexton's fingernails and cuticles. Before the sentencing Friday, a relative and a friend of Parlato's addressed the judge, painting a picture of a loving, trusting elderly woman whose trust was betrayed by Sexton. He denied my aunt the ability to live her life through her natural years and I would truly hope he is not able to live his life through his natural years, said Jeri Barr, Parlota's niece. Barr also read a statement from Parlota's oldest daughter, Maryanne Parlota, who does not live in the area and was unable to travel to Pasco for the sentencing. In the statement, Maryanne Parlota said that no human being or even animal should have to endure the cruelty her mother did at the hands of Sexton. I wish you could personally experience the pain you inflicted on her, the daughter's statement said, addressing Sexton. But the next best solution, so to speak, is to condemn you to death. It seems the easy way out for you, but we are after all civilized people. Dori Cifelli, the friend who found Parlota's body, said for 3
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Sept. 10 TEXAS: No death penalty in Henderson retrial, DA says Travis County prosecutors will not seek the death penalty when Cathy Lynn Henderson is retried for the 1994 death of an infant she was baby-sitting. Henderson, who was once 2 days from execution for the death of 3-month-old Brandon Baugh, will be tried for capital murder and faces a potential sentence of life in prison, District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg said Monday. (source: Austin American-Statesman) FLORIDA: Florida Attorney General: I Erred In Asking Execution To Be Moved For Party Death row inmate Marshall Lee Gore's execution has been moved for the 3rd time. The 1st 2 times, officials rescheduled Gore's execution because Gore's lawyers claimed he wasn't sane enough for the death penalty. This time, Governor Rick Scott has rescheduled Gore's execution because of a party. After the Florida Supreme Court ruled Marshall Lee Gore is sane enough under the U.S. Constitution's 8th Amendment to face capital punishment, Governor Rick Scott set Gore's new execution date for Tuesday. But Attorney General Pam Bondi's Hometown Kick Off Campaign - the official start to her re-election bid -- had already been scheduled for that date. So, Scott says, at Bondi's request, he moved the execution. I mean we try to, you know, comply with, when another cabinet member asks for something we try to work with them, Bondi said. Scott says he didn't know at the time why Bondi had asked for the postponement. A spokeswoman for Bondi's office has said the Attorney General wanted to be available in person to carry out the duties associated with her office during an execution, but in a statement, Bondi says she shouldn't have asked for the date of the execution to be moved. The new date for Gore's execution is October 1. (source: WFSU) ALABAMA: Attorneys preparing mental health defense for Shelby County man charged in his grandmother's slaying Attorneys for a Chelsea man charged with capital murder in the 2012 slaying of his grandmother told a judge this afternoon they need more time to sift through their client's mental health records and other evidence before they can go to trial. Shelby County Circuit Court Judge Bill Bostick told the attorneys for Daniel Gentry that he would like to set the trial for as soon as possible - sometime in late January or early February. But defense attorney Barry Alvis said he believed it should be in the March to May time frame. Gentry has pleaded not guilty by disease or mental defect and defense attorneys have been gathering Gentry's mental health records from his early years to just after the commission of the slaying, Alvis said. Gentry's family has provided a box of material, he said. At one point Gentry was held at a facility in Georgia where he had attempted suicide, Alvis told the judge. Scott Boudreaux, the other defense attorney in the case, said after the hearing that in the first few months after Gentry was arrested Shelby County jailers had forcibly put him on medication for psychotic episodes and held him in a padded cell. Bostick said he would not set a trial date yet. But the judge said he will hold another hearing in October to consider motions and possibly set a trial date at that time. Alvis also told the judge that he will be gathering information on capital murder cases in Shelby County as part of a motion to bar Gentry from being sentenced to death if convicted. The motion would try to show whether there has been selective prosecution in death penalty cases in Shelby County, Alvis said. Bostick said that if previous Shelby County capital murder prosecutions become an issue in a motion then it could cause him to recuse himself from at least ruling on that motion. Bostick was a prosecutor in the Shelby County District Attorneys office from 1998 to 2011 and prosecuted a number of the capital murder cases that likely, the judge said. The judge said he wouldn't necessarily have to recuse himself from the case when he gets that motion from Alvis. Another judge could decide the issue and Bostick said he could continue with the guilt portion of the case. Assistant Attorney Generals Stephanie Billingslea and Kelly Hawkins Godwin are prosecuting the case. Gentry in June 2012 was charged in the death of his grandmother, Carrie Elaine Gentry. Carrie Elaine Gentry, a minister who allowed Daniel Gentry to live with her after he underwent drug rehabilitation, was fatally stabbed, hit with a hammer and possibly strangled, according to the Shelby County Sheriff's Office. An indictment states she was fatally attacked on either March 28 or March 29, 2012. On April 10, 13 days after she was last seen, divers located her vehicle in 40 feet of water in a Leeds quarry. Her body was inside. (source: al.com) OKLAHOMAimpending execution Execution set for Okla. death row inmate convicted in 1979 slaying of
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., ARK., MO., COLO., ARIZ.
Sept. 3 TEXAS: Man on death row 2 decades wins appeal A Harris County man on Texas death row for 20 years has won a federal court appeal that allows him to pursue claims he's mentally impaired and ineligible for the death penalty. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday in the case of 50-year-old John Reyes Matamoros. The Mexican Mafia gang member was convicted in 1992, 2 years after his 70-year-old neighbor, Eddie Goebel, died of 25 stab wounds during a break-in at his home in Houston. Matamoros was on parole at the time after serving prison time for another break-in where a pregnant woman was sexually abused. Matamoros' lawyers contended he deserved a court review because of trial testimony from a Fort Worth psychiatrist whose methodology and credibility have been questioned in other capital cases. (source: Associated Press) FLORIDA: Former West Palm Beach doctor could face death penalty in patients' deaths State prosecutors have filed court documents announcing their intent to seek the death penalty against a former West Palm Beach doctor facing 2 counts of 1st-degree murder for the overdose deaths of his patients. Authorities with the state attorney's office said Tuesday they have not made a final decision about whether to pursue the ultimate punishment for former West Palm doctor John Christensen, 61, but want to keep that option open. The case will go before the office's death penalty committee, which is expected to review it and decide whether to pursue the penalty within the next month, Chief Assistant State Attorney Brian Fernandes said. This is a case that's potentially eligible for the death penalty, he said. We want to make sure that we preserve our rights. If the state does pursue a death sentence against the doctor, it would be highly unusual. Just a handful of Florida physicians have faced homicide charges for the overdose deaths of their patients, and the majority have been manslaughter cases. West Palm Beach defense attorney Grey Tesh, who until last month represented Christensen, said he was surprised when the state sent its notice of intent to seek the death penalty. The doctor's new attorney, Richard Lubin, did not return a call seeking comment Tuesday. At least in Palm Beach County, I don't know of any doctor who has faced the death penalty on a case like this, Tesh said. In 2002, West Palm Beach doctor Denis Deonarine became the 1st in the state to be indicted for 1st-degree murder in the death of a patient who was prescribed painkiller OxyContin. He was ultimately acquitted of 1st-degree murder charges, and released from prison in December, according to the state Department of Corrections. After the trial ended, one juror told the Sun Sentinel the jury ultimately believed the patient was responsible for his own death. Christensen, who operated medical offices in West Palm Beach, Port St. Lucie and Daytona Beach, was arrested in July, after a 2 1/2 year investigation that focused on the deaths of 35 of his patients. He's facing multiple charges, including the 2 counts of 1st-degree murder for prescribing oxycodone, methadone and anti-anxiety drugs to 2 patients who later overdosed. One woman who said her 21-year-old son died as result of the drugs Christensen prescribed said Tuesday she doesn't know how to feel about the possibility he could face the death penalty. We feel that there are consequences that need to be paid, and we'll leave it up to the authorities who are involved to make the right decision, said Jacque Lauzerique, 59, of Wellington, speaking for herself and her husband. Christensen is not being charged specifically for the death of her son, but she said she was still relieved to hear of his arrest. That is not what a doctor does, she said. Tesh said he expects it will be an uphill battle for the state to get a conviction against Christensen, making the death penalty irrelevant. He said it will be difficult to connect the deaths to him, noting that 1 of the patients had other substances in her system when she died. I would be surprised if he's convicted, Tesh said. The evidence is just not going to be there, not to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. (source: Sun-Sentinel) ** Witnesses testify in convicted killer's penalty phase of trial Convicted killer Donald Williams could learn this week if a jury will let him live the rest of his life in prison or die on death row. Williams was convicted of murder and kidnapping last Thursday in the death of 81-year-old Janet Patrick in 2010. The penalty phase in the 54-year-old's trial began Tuesday in Lake County, and the state called victim impact witnesses to the stand. The state is trying to get a death recommendation. Witness Darla Blackwell was called to the stand. She was a victim of a carjacking at the hands of Williams 13 years ago. The 34-year-old told jurors how she was abducted
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., ARK., OHIO, IND.
July 24 TEXAS: Sheriff: Prosecutors will seek death penalty Prosecutors will go before a Kaufman County district court on Friday, July 26 and formally announce they will be seeking the death penalty for Eric and Kim Williams, accused of 3 murders earlier this year. Kaufman County Sheriff David A. Byrnes gave that information to a crowd of Kaufman Lions Club members at the organization's weekly meeting on Friday (July 19). Judge Michael Snipes of the Criminal District Court No. 7 of Dallas County will be in Kaufman to sit on that pre-trial proceeding, according to his court coordinator. Snipes was appointed as the presiding judge on the capital murder cases after 422nd Judicial District Judge B. Michael Chitty recused himself. We're going to try to seat a jury in Kaufman County, Byrnes said, heading off questions about whether or not a trial would be held here. We think we can do that. We think the people of Kaufman County deserve to hear this case. Byrnes was the club's guest speaker at its luncheon and was asked there to talk to members about the events that began in late January. Jan. 31st, at 8:43 a.m., changed Kaufman forever, Byrnes began. Mark Hasse was assassinated on his way to work. Hasse, a Kaufman County assistant district attorney, was shot and killed at the scene, one block from the courthouse. On March 30, the day before Easter Sunday, district attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia were shot and killed in their home. In subsequent weeks, former justice of the peace Eric Williams was jailed for sending a terroristic threat by email. Days later, during an interview with law enforcement, his wife Kim Williams confessed that she had been the driver of the vehicle that had carried her and her husband to both murder scenes and said her husband was the shooter in both cases. Both McLelland and Hasse were the prosecuting attorneys in the 2012 trial of Eric Williams that saw a jury hand down 2 guilty verdicts on state jail felony charges. Chitty was the presiding judge on that case. The result of that trial saw Eric Williams removed from office and have his license to practice law suspended by the State Bar of Texas. On Friday, Byrnes walked Kaufman Lions through the timeline of events earlier this year. Starting with Hasse, he noted that a myriad of local, state and federal agencies responded to form a taskforce that performed daily investigations related to the first murder. We really had very little evidence on that 1st case, Byrnes said. It was a public street, but we had eyewitnesses who couldn't agree on a description (of the shooter), a kind of car, the car's color, or what side of the car he got in on. The number of investigators quickly rose to 80, the sheriff said, and the task force developed information, but we did not what it meant, but we had it. It would only be later, after the murder of the McLellands, that some earlier information began to connect. And the connection came after a friend of Eric Williams, who served with him in the Texas State Guard, came forward. Byrnes said the friend told law enforcement that Williams asked him to rent a storage unit for him, because everything was still unsettled from his felony convictions. The task force later obtained a search warrant for the storage unit and found a number of weapons belonging to Williams including kinds that were of the type used in the murders. They also found a used Ford Crown Victoria that matched the description of a vehicle seen in the area of the McLelland murders around the time they occurred. Byrnes said that many lines of inquiry were pursued during the investigation, including looking at the Aryan Brotherhood and the Mexican Drug Cartel. But we never thought it was (Aryan Brotherhood), he said. And the Mexican Drug Cartel, it was out of character for them...when they do something, they want everyone to know about it. The 2 special prosecutors assigned to the case - Bill Wirsky and Toby Shook - have experience in prosecuting capital murder cases, the sheriff noted. The duo prosecuted the Texas 7 - the inmates that escaped from a Texas prison in December 2000 and were on the run until they were located a month later in Colorado, where 1 committed suicide rather that be captured. Wirsky and Shook obtained the death penalty for each 1 of the 6 remaining fugitives for the murder of Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins during their month-long crime spree. Byrnes noted that, in the aftermath of the murders, local law enforcement provided 24 hours-a-day security coverage for more than 20 county officials. That lasted for 3 days before state and federal agencies like the Texas Rangers, FBI and ATF began to help take the load off the men, and budgets, of local agencies. And, throughout, federal agencies provided other help. We got tremendous assets, manpower from the federal government, Byrnes said. They
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO
June 15 TEXAS: Senate OKs Life With Parole for 17-Year-Old Murderers The Senate on Friday approved a measure that would require judges and juries to sentence 17-year-olds convicted of capital murder to life in prison with the chance of parole after 40 years. Gov. Rick Perry expanded the agenda of the special session to include legislation establishing a mandatory sentence of life with parole for 17-year-olds convicted of capital murder. Prosecutors have said they need lawmakers to address sentencing options for those criminals after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that juveniles could not be sentenced to mandatory life without parole. The measure that senators passed Friday in a 27-0 vote - Senate Bill 23, by state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Southside Place - now goes to the House. In Texas, 17-year-olds have faced the same sentencing options as adults convicted of capital murder: the death penalty and life without parole. In 2005, the Supreme Court prohibited the death penalty for anyone younger than 18, deciding that the less-developed brains of juveniles render them less culpable for their behavior. That left only the possibility of life without parole as punishment for 17-year-olds found guilty of capital crimes. After last year's Miller v. Alabama ruling, prosecutors said they were left with no sentencing options for 17-year-old killers. Under SB 23, judges and juries would be required to hand down a sentence of life with the chance of parole after 40 years. Some senators raised concerns that SB 23 doesn't solve the constitutional problems presented in the Miller case, though. They say the court wanted judges and juries to have more options when they consider sentences for juveniles. If what they were getting at was the 1-size-fits all, do you think this gets us back in court, state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, asked Huffman during debate on the Senate floor. Huffman, a former prosecutor and state criminal judge, said the bill addressed Texas' historic policy of being tough on the more heinous offenders while still addressing the court's concerns. I do not think we're violating Miller by passing this legislation, she said. Huffman said there are 12 pending cases in Harris County involving 17-year-olds accused of murder. State Sen. Juan Chuy Hinojosa, D-McAllen, said that there are 27 juveniles currently serving sentences of life without the possibility parole and that SB 23 would allow Perry to commute those sentences to life with parole eligibility after 40 years. (source: Texas Tribune) FLORIDA: Gov. Rick Scott signs bill to speed up executions in Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill into law Friday aimed at accelerating the pace of the death penalty process in Florida that could make the governor the most active executioner in modern state history. The measure, dubbed the Timely Justice Act by its proponents, requires governors to sign death warrants 30 days after the Florida Supreme Court certifies that an inmate has exhausted his legal appeals and his clemency review. Once a death warrant is signed, the new law requires the state to execute the defendant within 6 months. In a lengthy letter accompanying his signature, Scott aggressively countered allegations by opponents that the law will fast track death penalty cases and emphasized that it discourages stalling tactics of defense attorneys and ensures that the convicted do not languish on death row for decades. The bill, which passed the House 84-34 and was approved by the Senate 28-10, allows the governor to control the execution schedule slightly because it requires him to sign a death warrant after the required clemency review is completed and only the governor may order the clemency investigation. Scott's office told lawmakers that because at least 13 of the 404 inmates on death row have exhausted their appeals, his office has already started the clock on the clemency review. If Scott were to sign death warrants for the 13 eligible inmates, and their executions were to continue as planned, he will be on schedule to put to death 21 murderers since he took office in January 2011. The only other recent governor who executed that many people was former Gov. Jeb Bush, who ordered the execution of 21 convicted killers but did it over an 8-year period. The only governor to commute a death sentence since the state passed its current capital punishment law in 1973 was former Gov. Bob Graham who reduced the sentences of seven men between 1979 and 1983 for various reasons, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The clemency provision was added at the request of Scott's general counsel, Pete Antonacci. The clemency investigation allows for the state Parole Commission to conduct an off-the-record review of the entire case and recommend whether the death warrant should be signed or the sentence commuted. Opponents warn that the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., CALIF.
Oct. 18 TEXASimpending execution Texas to execute man who killed police officer in 1998 A man who shot to death a Houston police officer in 1998 is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday in Texas. Anthony Haynes, 33, would be the 11th inmate executed this year in Texas and the 33rd in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The execution is scheduled for after 6 p.m. (2300 GMT) in Huntsville. Haynes fired a shot from his truck at a Jeep Cherokee carrying off-duty Houston police officer Kent Kincaid and his wife, Nancy, according to an account of the case from the Texas attorney general's office. The officer got out of his Jeep and approached Haynes' truck, telling him that he was a police officer and asking to see his driver's license, the account said. Nancy Kincaid said during Haynes' trial that her husband was reaching for his badge when the driver shot him in the head, according to a Houston Chronicle account at the time. (The driver) pulled his hand up and I saw the flash and I heard the pop, Nancy Kincaid testified. That was the end. He then went down. Kent Kincaid was declared brain-dead at the hospital. That same night, Haynes had committed several armed robberies, Texas officials say. I'm not a vicious psychopath who goes around wanting to take people's lives, Haynes told the Houston Chronicle in a 2001 death row interview. There was no intent to kill a cop. He did not ID himself until a second before I shot him. Haynes has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, raising questions about whether his trial lawyers were effective. (source: Reuters) *** 2 More in Line for Death Penalty; These 2 men were both 19 when they were sentenced to death Anthony Cardell Haynes Anthony Haynes claimed he didn't know that Kent Kincaid was a Houston police sergeant when he shot him in the head back in 1998. Kincaid was off-duty and driving his personal vehicle when Haynes drove by; something cracked Kincaid's windshield, and he reportedly thought Haynes had thrown something at him. He followed Haynes, and when the 19-year-old stopped his car, Kincaid approached him. Kincaid said he was a police officer, but Haynes later said he didn't know whether to believe him. When Kincaid reached behind his back, presumably for a badge, Haynes pulled out a .25-caliber gun and shot him. Anthony HaynesHaynes blamed the tragedy in part on drugs and falling in with a bad crowd of people who reportedly made a game out of shooting at the windshields of passing cars and then robbing the drivers after they stopped. As it happened, the crack in Kincaid's windshield was made by a bullet. Jurors in Haynes' case deliberated for three days before sentencing the teen to death. That sentence was overturned, however, after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Haynes' defense that an unusual jury-selection setup in Haynes' case had denied his right to equal protection under law. Indeed, 2 different judges presided over Haynes' jury selection; one heard prosecutors interview individual jurors, and a second heard the lawyers' arguments for striking from service the potential jurors. As it turned out, the state used its power to strike all but one of the black potential jurors, arguing that it was not their race that excluded them (which would be illegal), but their demeanor. But Haynes' appeal attorney argued that the judge who allowed those strikes had not actually witnessed the jurors' questioning and thus could not actually have seen whether their demeanor would be a basis on which to have them struck. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately disagreed with the 5th Circuit, ruling that there was no rule that would require a judge to personally observe the juror questioning when deciding whether a juror is lawfully struck from service. Haynes is scheduled for execution today, Oct. 18. Bobby Lee Hines Bobby Lee Hines was also just 19 when he was sentenced to death for the robbery and strangling of 26-year-old Michelle Haupt in her Dallas apartment. Now, 20 years later, he's scheduled to die for that crime on Oct. 24. But his attorney, Lydia Brandt, argues that Hines' execution should, once again, be stayed while the courts consider whether his lawyers have done enough to save his life. Hines was convicted of the 1991 murder of Haupt, who was stabbed repeatedly with an ice pick and strangled with a cord inside her apartment. Hines had been staying next door with the apartment complex's maintenance man. Police found items from Haupt's apartment, including packs of cigarettes and a bowl of pennies, under a couch where Hines had been sleeping. Hines' 1st date with death was stayed in 2003, while the courts considered a claim that he was mentally retarded and thus ineligible for execution. Although Hines had a diagnosed learning disability and was considered emotionally disturbed, the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., N.J.
Dec. 6 TEXAS: 2 Cherokee County Men Lose Death Sentence Appeals 2 Cherokee County men convicted of capital murder have failed to get their appeals approved in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Beunka Adams, 24, and Richard Aaron Cobb, 22, received death sentences in 2004 for the shooting death of Kenneth Vandever, a mentally challenged man, in 2002. Adams and Cobb were convicted of kidnapping Vandever and 2 women from the BDJ convenience store in Rusk just after midnight on Sept. 2, 2002. After robbing the store, the men drove the 3 to a remote pea patch on Cherokee County Road 2434. The men put Vandever and one of the women into the trunk and Cobb stood over them with a shotgun while Adams raped the other woman in the field. Then, the men made all 3 kneel in the field and shot them 1-by-1 from behind. Vandever was shot first, in the back. One of the women, who was raped, was shot in her upper left shoulder. The other woman fell down and pretended to have been shot; but, during testimony, she said Adams drew near and stuck the gun near her head, asking, Are you dead? She flinched as Adams prepared to fire, and she sustained a graze and powder wounds to her mouth. Assuming the 3 were dead, the men left the scene. They were arrested a few hours later in Jacksonville. Testimony showed Cobb was the one who fired the shot that killed Vandever, who was a customer at the store when the robbery and kidnapping took place. Vandever, who was 37 when he was killed, had suffered brain damage in a car accident while in college. The women, both employees at the convenience store, survived their injuries and ran to nearby homes to call police. Both of the women testified against Adams and Cobb in their criminal trials in 2004. After their convictions, Adams and Cobb filed writs of habeus corpus to appeal their convictions, but the writs were denied by Texas' highest criminal appeals court. The men may still pursue appeals through federal courts. Neither of them has an execution date yet. (source: Tyler Morning Telegraph) FLORIDA: 2 smugglers won't face death penalty in Martin County Federal prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty against 2 men accused of causing the deaths of three illegal immigrants while trying to smuggle them to Jupiter Island last year, according to court documents. No reason behind the decision is stated in court papers filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office, and the prosecutor assigned to the case couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday. Had prosecutors decided to pursue execution, it would have required approval of the U.S. Attorney General. Not seeking death means the case can be brought to trial sooner. Capt. Rickey Thompson, 41, and mate Leon Brice Johnson, 39, together face 30 federal counts, including alien smuggling resulting in death, first-degree murder, conspiracy and drug charges. Their trial is tentatively set for March, and they still face up to life in prison on some of the charges. Thompson and Brice were arrested in December 2006 after their speedboat crashed in rough seas off Jupiter Island while smuggling a group of illegal immigrants in from the Bahamas. Authorities discovered the body of Nigel Warren, a Jamaican citizen, in the surf. Other illegal immigrants from Jamaica, Haiti and Romania told authorities he was forced into the water at gunpoint, despite being unable to swim. Investigators said it was not the 1st time one of the pair's smuggling trips ended in death. In August 2006, the 2 men allegedly caused the deaths of Roselyne Lubin and Alnert Charles, both Haitian citizens, who were suspected of being forced off the boat near Jupiter Island in a similar manner as Warren. The surviving illegal immigrants picked Thompson and Johnson out of a photo line-up, but the 2 were not caught until December, when the Martin County Sheriff's Office caught them trying to get into a taxi a day after the boat crash. The men also face federal drug charges after investigators found a kilogram of cocaine and 83 pounds of marijuana on the boat in December, as well as 12 kilograms of cocaine that were dumped along with the illegal immigrants in August. Defense attorney Michael Gary Smith, who represents Johnson, said the government's decision was not unexpected, but declined to discuss details of the case. Thompson's attorney could not be reached for comment. After prosecutors announced their decision not to seek death, the judge dismissed 2 attorneys appointed to assist the defense if the government sought execution. (source: Vero Beach Press-Journal) ALABAMA: Top court holds off Arthur's execution For the 3rd time since he was sent to death row in 1983, convicted killer Tommy Arthur was spared from execution Wednesday. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay in the execution just over 24 hours before Arthur was scheduled to die by lethal injection. The stay was granted just before 4 p.m. Wednesday and was based on a petition by Arthur's
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., N.J., MO.
Aug. 31 TEXAS: Officers get crash course in new laws Vicki Pattillo didnt have to tell the story of Jessica Lunsford because it has outraged the country, and certainly every police officer has heard of the Florida girl who was raped and killed by a convicted sex offender. But Thursday at the Seguin Police Department, she recounted what happened to Lunsford, 9, in 2005 in Florida when she was kidnapped, raped and killed as searchers closed in on her attacker. He took her out of her bedroom at night, Pattillo told about 70 police officers and sheriffs deputies from Seguin and Guadalupe County. When the search intensified, he buried her alive. It was absolutely the most heinous of crimes. As a result of that outrage, states from coast to coast have passed versions of Jessica's Law that would increase the penalties for a number of sexual crimes committed against children, and in many increases the statute of limitations, meaning that prosecutions can still be mounted against perpetrators of crimes against children even though the victims have reached the age of 38. And here in Texas, raping, molesting or engaging in explicit online communication with a minor also gets more expensive Saturday when hundreds of new laws and regulations passed in the recent legislature become the law of the land. This week, Guadalupe County District Attorney Vicki Pattillo, who has appeared on national news in support of House Bill 8, which for the 1st time in Texas puts the death penalty on the table for an offense not involving death those twice convicted for raping a child under age 14 is giving a series of 3-hour classes on the new laws to law enforcement officers. The presentation, which is certified for continuing education credits for police officers, is one Pattillo also conducted after the last legislature met 2 years ago. She reviewed code changes in criminal and traffic laws and the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. About the biggest change this year will be 'Jessica's Law,' Pattillo told the assembled officers after her introduction by Chief of Police Luis Collazo. House Bill 8 the Texas version of Jessica's Law, sets a 25-year minimum sentence for sexually violent offenses against children less than 14 years of age, eliminates parole for certain sex offenders, sets a minimum of 25 years to life sentence for a new crime the continued sexual abuse of a child or children under age 14 and makes a second sexual assault of a child under age 14 a capital offense. It also mandates GPS monitoring for offenders. Jessica's Law covers the most awful of crimes committed against children, Pattillo said. A lot of these offenses are not that common here, but it could happen tomorrow and well be ready. I was very supportive of it. That doesn't mean to expect to see a capital sexual assault case anytime soon in Guadalupe County or anywhere else in Texas for that matter. No one in the United States has been executed for sexual assault since 1964. Pattillo told the assembled officers that she didn't believe any capital prosecution would be mounted here until a Louisiana mans appeal of his death sentence goes before the U.S. Supreme Court. Probably in Texas, no prosecutor will consider the death penalty until the U.S. Supreme Court makes a decision on the Constitutionality of invoking the death penalty in cases other than a murder, Pattillo said. Senate Bill 6 increases sexually explicit chatting online with a minor ages 14-16-years-old from a state jail felony to a 3rd-degree felony punishable by 2 to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. SB 378, supported by both of Seguin's representatives to the legislature, offers an amplification of the Castle Doctrine that takes away the requirement to retreat from someone in a persons home or business before resorting to deadly force to prevent threatened injury or death. Texas has always had a 'Castle Doctrine,' Pattillo said. This has been expanded to when you're outside your home. Important elements of such a defense in a case where deadly force has been used, Pattillo said, are reasonableness, that the person using the force didn't provoke the incident and that the person resorting to force wasn't involved in the commission of some other crime such as burglary or robbery. Pattillo said she was concerned about ambiguity in the law. This law has potentially created more questions than it answered, Pattillo said. These questions may have to be answered in appellate courts. (source: Seguin Gazette-Enterprise) * Saving a penpal's place in society I left the Polunksy Unit that day feeling like I would see Kenneth again. Of course, I had no basis for this gut feeling, and every reason to feel the opposite. That day, I left the busiest death row in the nation determined to fight until the end. On Aug. 24, I visited my penpal Kenneth Foster for the first time on death row. I first contacted him because of his work in the D.R.I.V.E.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO
July 22 TEXAS: Appeals court affirms man's death sentence The Court of Criminal Appeals has affirmed the death sentence of a 40-year-old Palestine man found guilty of murdering his 2-year-old biological child more than 5 years ago. Robert Leslie Roberson III, 40, of Palestine was sentenced to die by lethal injection by a 12-person Anderson County jury at the conclusion of his February 2003 trial. During the trial's guilt/innocence phase, Roberson had been found guilty of capital murder in connection with the death of 2-year-old Nikki Curtis who died of blunt force head injuries at a Dallas hospital on Feb. 1, 2002. Curtis had been transported to a Palestine hospital the previous day before being transferred to Children's Medical Center in Dallas, with the defendant claiming the toddler suffered her injuries as a result of falling from a bed. Evidence during Roberson's trial, however, showed that Curtis' fatal injuries were consistent with shaken baby or shaken impact syndrome. Testimony during the trial also indicated that the defendant had obtained legal custody of Curtis approximately 3 months before the child's death. In his appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court, Roberson raised 13 points of error, but each was determined to have no merit. The Court recently affirmed Roberson's death sentence. We are pleased with the Courts decision, Anderson County District Attorney Doug Lowe said. The defendant may request a reconsideration, but I expect Mr. Roberson's next step will be to proceed with the federal writ process. Our office remains committed to seek justice on behalf of Nikki Curtis. Roberson is currently residing on death row outside of Livingston, but will likely not have an execution date set for several years. The federal process begins with the filing of a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court, Lowe said. Ultimately, the case will make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is likely many years will pass before Mr. Roberson faces execution. Prior to being found guilty of murdering his toddler child, Roberson had been sentenced to 10 years in prison during the 1990s for burglary of a habitation. (source: The Palestine Herald) *** Counties, defendants benefit from program A state-funded 18-month pilot program expanding the services of the Bexar Appellate Public Defender Office is good news to indigent criminal defendants seeking appeals and the counties where they were convicted. The Bexar County office was created in August 2005 with funding from a state grant. Last May, the office received additional funding to hire another lawyer and a paralegal and expand its services to the 32 counties in the 4th Judicial Region. Thus far, 26 counties have signed up, said Chief Appellate Public Defender Angela Moore. Crime is a booming business across the state, court records indicate. Under the new pilot program, participating counties will refer the criminal appeals of indigent defendants to the Bexar County office, which will handle them free of charge. This will assure that experienced appellate lawyers will represent defendants in rural counties with a limited number of legal professionals. The counties in turn will be saving court-appointed-lawyer fees that come with providing legal counsel for indigent defendants. Legal appeals are not cheap. The tab for an appeal on a regular felony case can easily add up to $4,500. A death penalty capital murder case appeal can cost $16,000 or more. During its first 18 months of operation, the appellate public defender's office handled 400 appeals, significantly more than the 120 cases officials anticipated filing during that time period. If the expanded program is successful, Moore wants to establish a system where the outlying counties help support the office with an annual funding allocation that would be determined by the volume of cases they refer to the office, similar to a legal service insurance. It makes a lot of sense. Court appointed legal fees are always a big budget item for county commissioners. Having a central office handling appeals with well-qualified lawyers who are experts in that field would ensure that the money is being wisely spent and reduce claims of incompetent legal counsel. (source: Editorial, San Antonio Express-News) FLORIDA: THE SERRANO MURDER CASEWhat Serrano's trial cost us Nelson Ivan Serrano was recently sentenced to death for the 1997 slayings of 4 people in what is considered Polk County's worst mass murder. Serrano was convicted of killing Frank Dosso, 35; Diane Patisso, 28; and 2 business associates, George Gonsalves, 69; and George Patisso Jr., 26. A financial dispute led Felice Dosso and Gonsalves to fire Serrano as president of a garment-conveyor factory months before the December 1997 killings. Now that Serrano, 68, is out of the local jail and on death row at the Florida State Prison in Starke, some of the
[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., USA
Feb. 23 TEXAS: Barbee Guilty Of Murder; Could Get Death Sentence In Fort Worth, a Tarrant County jury has found Stephen Barbee guilty of capital murder. Barbee was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend Lisa Underwood and her 7-year-old son Jayden. Underwood was pregnant when she was killed, and mistakenly thought Barbee was the father. Prosecutors said Barbee killed Underwood and her son and buried their bodies in a shallow grave in northern Tarrant County. Police said Barbee led them to the grave. The punishment phase is now underway. Jurors could sentence Barbee to death. (source: CBX News) *** Hopes of Death Row bride A mother from Manchester has married a death row prisoner facing execution for murder who has won a dramatic reprieve. Rachael Ford, 32, wed but has never touched convicted killer Tony Egbuna Ford. Even holding hands is forbidden under the tough Texas jail rules. Their romance began after she wrote letters of support to him. She said: He proposed and I accepted straight away - I'd never felt that way before. She is flying to America tomorrow after an appeal gave them more time to try to prove his innocence. The couple actually met for the 1st time last October - on their wedding day - and Rachael had been due to fly to Texas tomorrow on a heartbreaking journey to watch him receive the lethal injection next month. But new DNA evidence emerged that is currently being examined. Glass The nearest to physical contact Rachael has had with her husband is putting her hand up towards his against the reinforced glass at the prison where Ford, 32, has been on death row for 13 years. Rachael, who has a 12-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, said: Initially, he tried to warn me off by stressing he was very near the end of his appeals - but I told him it didn't matter if he had 10 years or 10 days left. Rachael hopes Ford will be cleared of murdering a Hispanic teenager 15 years ago but if he isn't the 1st time she will be able to touch him is when he is dead. Ford has always denied killing Armando Murillo, 18, in a robbery. He claims mistaken identity. Rachael started writing to death row inmates as a teenager after joining an organisation that supports them. Rachael: 'I'm no Death Row groupie' AS SHE sits in the living room of her neat terraced home, Rachael Ford knows what people will think of her. I know because I've thought the same things myself about death row wives. What possesses a woman to marry a man waiting to be executed? And she says: I'm no Death Row groupie. The last thing I imagined would happen when I started writing to Tony was that I would actually marry him. But as soon as I started reading about him, I knew we were so alike. I researched his case extensively before asking if there was anything I could do. An articulate mother of 1, Rachael doesn't fit in to the mad, sad or desperate category. And her petite frame belies a steely resolve which helps in the face of vilification from pro-death penalty campaigners in America. When they found out I'd married Tony they wrote some awful things about me, but I'd rather know than bury my head in the sand. Rachael's husband, Tony Egbuna Ford, a convicted murderer, is on death row in Texas, the state that executes more prisoners than any other in America. For the past 13 years he has protested his innocence from a tiny cell furnished with a metal bunk and toilet. He is locked up for 23 hours a day. Letters Although Rachael is legally married, consummation is off the agenda. The couple have only seen each other through the reinforced glass separating them at visiting time at the prison where he was due to be given the lethal injection on March 14 - until an appeal succeeded earlier this month. But Rachael feels her husband knows her more than her own mother as a result of hundreds of letters exchanged between them. When I first started writing to him, neither of us was interested in a relationship - Tony was nearing the end of his appeals. I just wanted to offer support. I know how women are viewed who get involved with men on Death Row and I certainly didn't want to be seen as one of them. But we both realised that something was happening beyond our control. People don't appreciate that if you are writing to someone as intensely as we have you get to know them very well indeed as you are discussing issues like politics, religion that you tend to avoid in the early stages of a relationship. Rachael was raised in Bolton and educated at the private Bolton School after winning a scholarship. The 1st time she actually met Ford was on the occasion of their marriage last October. Trying to find a judge who was prepared to marry us was no mean feat, but luckily we found a female judge who was sympathetic. Tony wasn't there for that. I was accompanied by his mum and his sister. Tony is the strongest man I know. I have only had to live with this for 18 months. He had already been on
[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., CALIF.
Jan. 26 TEXAS: Death row man carried to his execution A man who murdered four people in a Texas drug dealer rip-off was carried to his execution today when he refused to leave a Texas jail's death house cell voluntarily. Asked by a warden if he had any final statement, Marion Dudley did not respond. Dudley, 33, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, had earlier said he wasn't at the house on June 20, 1992, where six people were bound and then shot, 4 of them fatally, in what authorities said was a drug dealer rip-off. He kept his eyes closed and never turned his head toward witnesses in the chamber, which included 1 of the survivors of the shooting and relatives of one of the people killed. 8 minutes later at 6.16pm CST (11.16 AEDT Thursday), he was pronounced dead. Prison officials in Huntsville, Texas, said Dudley was not combative, but that he wouldn't walk to the execution on his own. Dudley, who had a record in his home state for burglary, assault, receiving stolen property and violating probation, was the 1st Texas inmate put to death this year. 19 convicted killers were executed in 2005 as Texas maintained its notoriety as the nation's most active capital punishment state. Another murderer is set for lethal injection next week and 3 more in February. They are among more than a dozen Texas prisoners with execution dates in the first 5 months of this year. Dudley's lawyer had hoped the US Supreme Court would stop his punishment, arguing prosecutors improperly withheld from defence lawyers at his capital murder trial a letter to Alabama parole officials regarding an inmate from that state who testified against Dudley. But the high court rejected the appeal a few hours before the execution. The 2 survivors identified the then 20-year-old Dudley as one of the three gunmen who barged into the home of Jose Tovar, 32, and his wife, Rachel, then 33. In a recent interview on death row, Dudley said they were wrong. I was not, he said. Jose Tovar was fatally shot in the head, as were his wife's son, Frank Farias, 17; Farias' girlfriend, Jessica Quinones, 19, who was 7 months pregnant; and a visiting neighbour Audrey Brown, 21. Rachel Tovar and another friend, Nicholas Cortez, then 22, survived. All the victims were bound with towels or strips of sheets, hands tied behind their backs and nooses around their necks. Rachel Tovar managed to crawl to a neighbour's house for help. After watching Dudley die, Tovar, 48, said she can be at peace, knowing that I represent my family, my children, my husband. There's a little relief in me, she said, tears running down her face. But, I lived this going on 14 years and there's not ever going to be something to help me forget it. It's never going to go away. Maricella Quinones, whose sister died in the gunfire, said the execution didn't match her sister's suffering. (source: Associated Press) FLORIDA: High Court to Hear Lethal-Injection Case The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide when death row inmates may challenge lethal injection as a method of capital punishment, in a surprise decision issued after the justices dramatically stopped the execution of a Florida prisoner who was already strapped to a gurney preparing to die. Clarence E. Hill, 48, convicted of murdering a Pensacola police officer in 1982, had refused a final meal and needles had punctured his arm when the Supreme Court stayed his execution. The court said it would hear his claim that he should have an opportunity to argue that his civil rights would be violated because the chemicals used to execute him would cause excessive pain. It is a claim that has been pressed with growing frequency by capital defense lawyers around the country in recent years -- but that has generally not yet succeeded, either in lower courts or at the Supreme Court. 37 of the 38 death penalty states use lethal injection, as do the U.S. military and the federal government. Since the chemical mixtures in all jurisdictions are similar to those used in Florida, a victory for Hill at the Supreme Court could tie up the death penalty across the county in litigation, at least temporarily, legal analysts said. It certainly could be a mess, said Douglas A. Berman, a professor at Ohio State University who specializes in criminal law. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death-penalty organization, at least 25 inmates are scheduled for execution between now and the end of June, when the court would probably issue a decision. The Hill case does not ask the court to rule directly on the constitutionality of lethal injection -- which states adopted as an alternative to hanging, gas, electrocution and shooting -- even though Hill maintains that the particular mix of chemicals used in Florida would cause him an unconstitutional degree of suffering. Rather, the case raises a procedural problem: what recourse there should be for a prisoner who finds out at or near the last minute that the method
[Deathpenalty]death penalty news-----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., CALIF.
Dec. 30 TEXAS: DA Maness questions capital case Jefferson County's district attorney Thursday questioned the fairness of a recent federal appeals court's rejection of a request to remove a Beaumont man from death row because he is mentally retarded. District Attorney Tom Maness said he believed capital murderer Marvin Lee Wilson was not mentally retarded and deserved the death penalty, which he received in 1994 for abducting and killing a narcotics informant two years earlier. However, Maness questioned whether justice was served when the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week rejected Wilson's case because his lawyers missed the filing deadline. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 outlawed the death penalty for mentally handicapped criminals with an IQ below 70. Wilson's attorneys in their appeal contend that their client's IQ is 61. However, the appeal to have the sentence commuted to life without parole missed the filing deadline by more than 40 days, the appeals court said in its ruling. Wilson, 47, was sentenced to death in 1994 for the abduction and shooting death of Jerry Robert Williams, a 21-year-old Beaumont resident. However, in 1996, the Texas Court of Criminal appeals overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial after determining that prosecutors had improperly attacked Wilson's attorneys. In March 1998, a second jury sentenced Wilson to death. Following the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, lawyers for death row clients had a year to file an appeal with a case based on mental retardation. According to the Fifth Circuit court ruling, Wilson's lawyers filed his case on the last day, in both state and federal appeals courts. However, the Fifth Circuit court soon dismissed the case, saying that state-court remedies had not been exhausted. On Nov. 10, 2004, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Wilson's appeal. Wilson's lawyers then had one business day to file with the federal appeals court. The appeal was filed, but the case did not meet filing requirements laid out under federal law. Wilson's attorneys did not properly refile the case until 40 days later, according to last week's Fifth Circuit ruling. Maness, whose office won the death penalty in 1994 and 1998 against Wilson, said he didn't feel Wilson should be punished for his lawyers' errors. James Delee, one of Wilson's attorneys in the appeals case, did not return 3 calls for comment Thursday. Maness said that while it is important to have an efficient justice system, the rules should be flexible when it comes to life-or-death cases. Fifth Circuit judges in their ruling accused Wilson's lawyers of playing a game of brinkmanship, pushing a situation to the limit to gain some kind of advantage or concession. However, Maness said that should not prevent Wilson from getting fair treatment. I'm not opposed to bending the rules in this situation, Maness said. I hate to see this harsh result because lawyers were playing games. Everyone who goes through the system deserves a fair shake. Our job as prosecutor is to be advocates and seek justice (for victims), but also we must see justice is done (to defendants.). According to previous Enterprise stories, Wilson and another man shot Williams, a police drug informant, to death and left his nude body lying near the curb at Verone and Buford streets, where a bus driver found him early Nov. 10, 1992. About a week before that, Williams had provided police with a tip leading to a drug bust at Wilson's house. Wilson, who had been heard saying he was going to get Williams, left his stripped body in the street as a message to other snitches, prosecutors said. In a letter posted on the Web site www.deathrow-usa.com seeking pen pals, Wilson downplayed his criminal history and denied having anything to do with Williams' death. He attributed his criminal history to an inability to find legal work. I enjoy reading, working out, trying to learn how to draw, playing chess, and I love writing letters, but they are not able to exchange as many letters as I need to keep me comfortably occupied, so I'm pretty lonely these days, Wilson said. (source: The Beaumont Enterprise) ** Disciplinary letters detail mistakes made before inmate's escape -- Enough collective responsibility to go around We are learning more about the mistakes made by Harris County Sheriff's deputies that lead to last month's escape of death row inmate Charles Thompson. Those revelations are being found through disciplinary letters written to several deputies. That escape cost one deputy his job and several others time off work. After reviewing these documents, we're learning what the sheriff's office says helped a convicted killer walk free. Inmate Charles Thompson recalled, It was real relaxed. They play videogames. They sleep on the job. Thompson spoke from his prison cell about how easy it was to escape the Harris county jail. After that interview, new documents are now
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., PENN., CALIF.
June 16 TEXAS: Supreme Court shows flaws with death penalty The U.S. Supreme Courts most recent ruling overturning a death-penalty case in Texas shows 2 things. First, the Supreme Court has no confidence that the Texas judicial system can handle capital cases fairly. Second, it has no confidence that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals can police these problems with fairness. The court overturned the conviction of Thomas Miller-El. He was convicted of a horrific crime in Dallas County. Miller-Els guilt or innocence wasnt the question before the high court. The question is whether Texas was able to give him a fair trial. The courts message: You cant have justice if your system of putting people on trial permits racial discrimination. Miller-El is black. Eleven people in the pool of potential jurors were black. In a trial, each side is given a set number of peremptory challenges. That means attorneys can challenge a prospective jurors ability to be fair without giving a specific reason for striking him from the list. Prosecutors used their peremptory challenges to strike 10 of the 11 prospective black jurors. That might raise some red flags. It didnt in Texas judicial system. To be fair, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals did look at Miller-Els appeal. It suggested that the trial court might want to look at new U.S. Supreme Court ruling. That ruling banned any practice of disqualifying jurors that is racially discriminatory. But the trial court in Dallas didnt see any problem. Just before Miller-El was to be executed, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review his appeal again. It sent the case back to the 5th Circuit Court, broadly hinting that there were problems with the case and that the appellate court should find a way to clean up the mess. The appellate court didnt take the hint. So on Monday, the Supreme Court simply tossed out the conviction. In the majority opinion, Justice David Souter said the judicial systems argument that there just werent any problems with this case were just too weak to believe. For decades, he said, prosecutors in Dallas County had followed a specific policy of systematically excluding blacks from juries. That, obviously, is a problem. Equally obvious are the other problems that the Supreme Court has cited with the death penalty in Texas in the past. Is it the right to execute people with serious mental illnesses or with mental retardation? How about kids who commit crimes before they are old enough to drink? For a long time, The Daily News has asked the governor to declare a moratorium on the death penalty. The state should give itself a chance to study the problems and address them. It shouldnt keep trying to defend a system when so many people, including most justice on the Supreme Court, question its fairness. (source: Galveston County Daily News) FLORIDA: Miami-Dade police: man charged with murder after baby dies A man was charged with 1st degree murder in the punching death of a 2-year-old boy he was babysitting, Miami-Dade County police said Wednesday. Sam Giullaume, 32, was jailed with no bail. He is charged with 1 count of aggravated child abuse and 1 count 1st degree murder. Toddler Nicholas Ryan was punched in the stomach after Giullaume became frustrated, police said. When the child did not respond afterward, Giullaume drove him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. Investigators said Giullaume is the boyfriend of the child's mother. (source: Associated Press) ALABAMA: Jeremy Jones denies killings in several states Serial killing suspect Jeremy Bryan Jones denies killing anyone and said during a television interview aired on an Atlanta station that authorities in several states have made up alleged confessions. Jones spoke to W-G-C-L in a telephone interview from the Mobile County Jail, where he faces capital murder charges in the September death of Lisa Marie Nichols. Her body was burned in a mobile home in north Mobile County. In the interview broadcast last night, Jones cited the case of missing metro Atlanta hairdresser Patrice Endres, who disappeared mysteriously on April 15th, 2004, in Forsyth County. Earlier this year, authorities there said Jones confessed to killing her and dumping her body in a creek. Jones said authorities have records that he was working in Douglasville at the time. He said that is why he has NOT been charged. Jones is charged with killing a 16-year-old girl in Douglas County who was reported missing in March 2004. He also is charged with a Louisiana murder and has been named a suspect in at least 2 other slayings in Georgia, 2 in Oklahoma and 1 in Missouri. (source: Associated Press) PENNSYLVANIA: DA seeks death penalty John C. Eichinger may die if convicted of the stabbing deaths of 2 women who reportedly spurned his advances and two incidental witnesses - a sister and a 3-year-old child - to one of those slayings. Montgomery County
