[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----MO., CALIF., ALA., N.Y., N.C., ILL.

Mon Feb 5 07:14:26 UTC 2007

Feb. 1

MISSOURI:

Bill calls for hold and review of death penalty----Proponents say guilt of
some death row inmates is unsure.

A call for a moratorium on the death penalty has come from an unlikely
source - a Republican proponent of the death penalty.

Rep. Bill Deeken, R-Jefferson City, has proposed legislation that would
put an end to all executions in the state of Missouri until 2011. The
legislation also calls for a commission on the death penalty to be created
in the state to review the implementation of the death penalty in past
cases and assess pending death penalty cases.

Deeken said the Missouri Catholic Conference asked him to propose the
legislation, even though he is a proponent of the death penalty in some
cases.

"I am not against the death penalty. But what I am for is to make sure
that any person that is sentenced to death is the right person," Deeken
said.

Deeken said he thinks that DNA evidence has led to the realization that
the death penalty has not been implemented fairly in all cases. He said
that for this reason it is necessary for the state to review the practice.

"If I was on a jury, and I found out I had put someone to death that was
not guilty, it would bother me for the rest of my life," Deeken said.

The proposed commission would consist of a broad cross-section of death
penalty experts throughout the state, including a representative and a
senator from both parties, as well as a family member of a murder victim
and a family member of an individual on death row. It would look at issues
regarding the death penalty and report its recommendations and findings to
the governor, members of the legislature and the Missouri Supreme Court by
2011.

Deeken said that while he isn't optimistic about the bill's chances, he
hopes the legislation will gain traction for the future.

"Do we think we're going to get this passed this year? No. Bills just
don't get passed in one year," Deeken said. "The main thing we want to do
is get a hearing and get it out there and make people aware of what we are
doing. And we are trying to just do what's right."

Rita Linhardt, a spokesperson for Missourians to Abolish the Death
Penalty, said that her organization believes it is important for the state
to stop and review the death penalty system and make sure proper justice
is done.

"In Missouri, we feel that we've had 66 executions, but nobody has really
taken the time to see how our system works and whether or not we have
flaws in the system," Linhardt said.

Although her organization seeks to end all executions in the state of
Missouri, Linhardt said that, at the very least, it is important for the
state to establish uniformity in cases in which they seek to implement the
death penalty.

The bill faces opposition from Rep. Van Kelly, R-Norwood, the chairman of
the House Corrections Committee. He called the implementation of a death
penalty commission "another layer of bureaucracy" and said that he
believes the death penalty process is taking too long already. Kelly said
he recognized the importance of validating the guilt of those on death
row, but said that he trusts the current system of appeals to deal with
the issue. He also said that often in the death penalty debate, it is
important to remember that victims have no voice and that imposing a
moratorium would only delay justice for their families.

Rep. Rodney Hubbard, D-St. Louis, an opponent to the death penalty in all
cases, co-sponsored the legislation and said he thinks that a moratorium
bill would be a step in the right direction toward addressing other issues
surrounding the death penalty. He said that the state should start looking
at lack of education as a root cause of violent crime.

"My philosophy has always been 'educate them now or incarcerate them
later,'" Hubbard said.

(source: Columbia Missourian)

CALIFORNIA:

Justice isn't always easy to grab on to----The case of DeWayne McKinney
gives us much to reconsider

DeWayne McKinney came to Sacramento this week in search of his pound of
cash from a system that once was certain he was a coldblooded killer and
then changed its mind. To borrow a phrase, what a long, strange trip it's
been, complete with the swearing-in of the man in the dark suit on the
white horse who came to speak up for him Wednesday afternoon.

>From the witness stand the day before, in the near-empty hearing room,
DeWayne McKinney more than once used the word "predicament" to describe
his 19 years behind bars, including stints at Folsom and San Quentin,
three stabbings and a suicide attempt. Predicament, eh? A master of
understatement, you might say. A man who was taken in when he was 20 and
didn't emerge into society again until he was 39.

Now 46 and freed from his life sentence since January 2000, McKinney's
biography suggests that nothing has been easy. Nor, it appears, will be
getting the $700,000 he's asking from the state board that reimburses
people wrongly convicted.

McKinney is financially comfortable because of business ventures, so in a
way, the compensation request is the final step on the way back.

Before the hearing began Tuesday, McKinney said the award would remove
whatever stigma remains.

But to get the money  based on a formula of $100 a day for each day behind
bars  he must prove his innocence. The attorney general's office is
arguing otherwise, and a state official said he's not aware of a case
where money was awarded over the attorney general's objections.

It is not a token objection. In a 66-page report, the A.G.'s office
concludes that "not only has McKinney not demonstrated his innocence, the
evidence certainly seems to suggest that he was indeed the Burger King
killer."

Enter the man who took the stand after lunch Wednesday. Orange County
Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas flew in for the occasion and told the hearing
officer that he asked for McKinney's release from prison in 2000 because
his investigators convinced him that 2 other men had committed the
robbery-murder at the fast food restaurant in Orange in December 1980.

Irony filled the room. Rackauckas was the young deputy D.A. who tried
McKinney in 1982 and had asked for the death penalty. Had the jury gone
along, McKinney may well have been executed before Rackauckas changed his
mind on his guilt in 2000.

Before Rackauckas took the stand, I turned to McKinney in the row behind
me and asked if the situation seemed surreal, another word he'd used when
testifying. "Everything has been pretty much surreal," he said, "not just
this proceeding, but the whole case."

Rackauckas spent about 75 minutes answering questions from both sides.
Mike Farrell, a deputy attorney general, made it rather obvious he thinks
Rackauckas' investigators bought a bogus story from two habitual criminals
who said they knew who committed the Burger King murder of night manager
Walter Bell, shot once in the back of the head as 4 other employees were
herded into a freezer.

The D.A. countered that the investigators were savvy enough to spot a
phony story. He also noted that 2 of the 4 employees had backed off their
identifications of McKinney over the years. In fact, the 4 identifications
formed the core of the case against McKinney, against whom there was no
physical evidence.

Rackauckas squared off against Farrell and, at times, sounded like the
kind of defendant that prosecutors always gripe about. He couldn't
remember some things, parried some of Farrell's more barbed remarks and at
one point drew chuckles when Farrell was boring in on the credibility of
the two men who exonerated McKinney. After the hearing officer overruled
an objection, Rackauckas said he didn't remember the original question,
then ad-libbed to Farrell: "I don't particularly want you to repeat it."

Irony and comedy!

Rackauckas deserves kudos for showing up. He didn't have to. He wasn't
subpoenaed. He knew he'd be opposing a fellow law-enforcement agency. He
knows the act of freeing convicted killers can backfire. He had already
expedited McKinney's release seven years ago. He could have made up an
excuse for not coming to the compensation hearing, which is all about
money.

"He's been really honorable in this entire process," said Jeff Rawitz, an
attorney representing McKinney. "He couldn't have been a more stand-up guy
in our contacts with him."

Rawitz said beforehand he didn't know how far Rackauckas would go in
defending McKinney's innocence.

When he asked him on the stand, Rackauckas paused a moment, then said, "I
think it's likely he didn't commit the murder."

Farrell pounced on the hesitation and asked if it were a difficult
question. Rackauckas said it was because it is difficult to quantify
doubts.

"Do you think he could be the Burger King killer?" Farrell asked.

"I think that's possible," Rackauckas said.

For those who think that's waffling, I disagree. It'd be ridiculous to say
he knew McKinney was innocent in a case that doesn't yield certainty.
Still, I confess to some surprise that Rackauckas put so much stock in 2
hard-case criminals' counter-story about the Burger King murder, but he
certainly didn't do it to curry favor. In other instances, these are the
kind of stories that prosecutors in many jurisdictions dismiss out of
hand.

Since Rackauckas didn't, you'd think a hearing officer would, in turn, put
serious stock in the remarks of a district attorney who originally
prosecuted the man seeking restitution.

After his testimony, Rackauckas talked a few minutes with me and a
colleague. He said he wasn't happy about opposing the A.G.'s office but
felt he had a duty to testify. He said the issue of McKinney's
compensation wasn't part of his motivation in coming. He reiterated that
he supported McKinney's release in 2000 because he was no longer convinced
beyond a reasonable doubt of his guilt. However, he said, he doesn't
second-guess the decision to try him 25 years ago and is not in any way
tormented by it.

We didn't have enough time to probe his psyche. I don't know if he'll
reflect on his original certainty of someone's guilt  built on various
pieces that once seemed to fit  only to realize a man did 19 years in
prison and may be innocent.

That seems to me to be the point of McKinney's saga. We want a system of
both truth and justice, but because human beings run it, we sometimes get
neither. The Burger King case centered on eyewitness identifications,
which remains an area ripe for abuse when not handled properly. A retired
professor who has researched the subject for 30 years testified that most
wrongful convictions stem from eyewitness accounts.

I told Rackauckas my head was spinning. He nails McKinney in 1982, then
springs him, then practically gets accused of letting a killer go free,
then comes to testify on his behalf. It's a justice system temporarily
upside down.

The angriest guy in the room should have been McKinney. He's the one who
did hard time in the 1980s and '90s while Rackauckas was climbing the
professional ladder. But McKinney has said since his release he holds no
grudges and that, somehow, he grew up in prison and figured out a lot of
things.

It all happened for a reason, McKinney said.

If only the rest of us could figure out what that reason was and try to
get it right next time.

(source: Column, Dana Parsons, Los Angeles Times)

ALABAMA:

Melendez comes to UA, tells story of exoneration, freedom-----Ex-death row
inmate calls for death penalty abolition

Just more than 5 years ago, Juan Roberto Melendez was an inmate awaiting
execution in a Florida prison. Today, however, Melendez is a free man,
traveling the world and giving speeches on his story, his faith and the
abolishment of the death penalty.

On Tuesday, Melendez was a guest speaker at the UA School of Law, where he
spoke to a classroom full of law students and other guests.

According to close friend and colleague Judi Caruso, Melendez's story is
one of "triumph and justice," and is also a key case in exploring the
problems of the death penalty in our country.

Melendez's story began in May 1984 when he was arrested for first-degree
murder and armed robbery of a cosmetics school owner in Auburndale, Fla.
After a one-week trial in September 1984, Melendez was convicted and
sentenced to death row, where his term started in November 1984.

Melendez was convicted on the word of David Falcon, a police informant,
and John Berrien, a former friend of Melendez, with both saying they new
Melendez had committed the crime and Berrien saying he was an accomplice
to the crime. No physical evidence existed that tied Melendez to the
crime.

"His initial reaction was a very strong anger," Caruso said. "He knew he
wasn't supposed to be there. He just knew that the prosecution could never
prove the case and that justice would prevail, but when it didn't it was
very tough for him."

Melendez said, though, that anger is something he learned to deal with
while imprisoned.

"I learned to let the anger go away," he said. "It wasn't the hating type
of anger, it was the type of anger that kept me going."

Sixteen years and three appeals later, a tape of the confession of the
real killer, Vernon James, surfaced. James' defense attorney made the tape
one month before his trial began and copies had been sent to the
prosecution as well. The tape not only contained the confession but also
quoted the real killer as to other crimes he had confessed.

"Juan said that there were really two miracles in his exoneration. The
first was that the tape itself was found. The second was that the case had
gotten moved from Polk County to Hillsborough County, [Fla.]," Caruso
said. "In Polk County, you could say they were practicing the good ol'
network. What it took was an individual judge to look at all of the
evidence without any ties to anything and decide that he needed to be
free."

The real murderer had been killed by a police officer two years after Juan
had been sentenced. Sixteen witnesses came forward to say James had also
confessed his guilt to them, and on Jan. 3, 2002, Melendez was freed.

"The average time of length an inmate spends on death row in Florida is
nine to 10 years. Juan was very, very fortunate to be on 16 years, which
was enough time to allow the tape to resurface," Caruso said.

Edward Miller, a third-year law student, said he has seen a lesson in
overlooking minute details in cases such as Melendez's.

"2 of the biggest things for me are for one, what seems like a job to me
in law school could be details that are irksome sometimes, but to others
they could be the difference in them living and dying," Miller said. "The
2nd is that you should never be bored.

"To imagine being bored with any part of this job and not giving the
effort that could change someone's life completely is, to me, selling
freedom short."

Millie Worley, a 2nd-year law student, said Melendez's presentation was
"very moving and insightful."

"It certainly raises some of the serious questions about how we address
appeals and evidence in post-conviction death row inmates," Worley said.
"I'm sure it's something that's going to stick with me."

Ryan Ammons, a second-year law student, said that along with the insight
Melendez offered, it reinforced Ammons' belief in examining the
infringement upon human rights he sees in the execution of inmates.

"I have a lot of sympathy for human rights abuses that go on in our own
country," Ammons said. "I was already very sympathetic towards that cause,
but it's good to hear someone who fought when their rights were taken
away.

"I think this can teach us that some cases, if pushed hard enough from the
outside, can still work out."

Melendez works with Caruso in a program known as the Juan Melendez Voices
United for Justice. Both are also board members of the National Coalition
to Abolish the Death Penalty. Melendez said though he is free, he still
has many wishes for the future.

"I'm still a dreamer," Melendez said. "I still pray to God every night to
get the death penalty abolished."

(source: The Crimson White, University of Alabama)

NEW YORK:

Geography and Emotion Helped Sway Jurors Vote

They were police detectives, shot at close range, in the backs of their
heads. Fellow officers and relatives filled the courtroom, day after day,
during the trial of the man accused of pulling the trigger, who mostly
kept his emotions to himself.

Add to that where the jurors came from  Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island
and Long Island, but not Manhattan. And that the detectives knew, and were
known in, the neighborhood, which gave the case a strong local connection
unlike, say, a case involving terrorist acts overseas.

Taken together, all those elements were so powerful, death-penalty
specialists said yesterday, that the jurys verdict seemed almost
inevitable. The seven women and five men decided that the defendant,
Ronell Wilson, should die.

That made him the 1st person to face death in a federal case in New York
since the 1950s, a fate that other defendants have managed to avoid, even
though some of them have been accused of killing far more people. "There
was a confluence of factors," said Deborah W. Denno, a professor at
Fordham University School of Law. "I think it's highly unlikely there will
be another case with all these particular elements anytime soon."

For that reason, she and other lawyers interviewed yesterday said they
doubted that the Wilson verdict signaled a shift in public attitudes about
the death penalty. Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University
of Maryland, noted that advances in DNA testing have uncovered faulty
convictions and made juries nationally more hesitant to impose the death
sentence. But he said there were no such doubts in the Wilson case.

"This case is one that shocks the conscience," he said. "The brutal nature
of it, I think, aligned the stars for this kind of verdict."

Still, some attitudes may have changed. Several years ago, when Attorney
General John Ashcroft ordered United States attorneys to seek the death
penalty, he ran into resistance in New York, where some prosecutors feared
such a possibility could cause jurors to acquit.

Counting Mr. Wilson, there are now 47 federal prisoners on death row. But
prosecutors in New York have failed to obtain death sentences in recent
years, even in closely watched terrorism trials involving embassy bombings
in Africa in 1998.

Some death-penalty opponents said that the Wilson case proved the
exception because the victims were police officers.

Ronald J. Tabak, a special counsel at the Manhattan law firm of Skadden,
Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and the president of New York Lawyers Against
the Death Penalty, said that when New York changed its law on capital
punishment in the 1960s "in what was considered a virtual abolition of the
death penalty," the murder of a police officer remained a death-penalty
offense.

The last federal inmate to be executed in New York State, Gerhard Puff, in
1954, had been found guilty of killing an F.B.I. agent during a bank
robbery. At the state level, no trials involved the killings of police
officers between when the death penalty was reinstated in New York in 1995
and when it was invalidated in 2004, according to Kevin Doyle, the New
York State criminal defender. Nor did any of the federal cases tried in
New York since 2001.

But in the Wilson case, death-penalty lawyers said, the jury could not
have missed the large turnout of police officers and relatives.

"It's hard to resist that kind of pressure," said David A. Ruhnke, a
lawyer who is representing a convicted drug trafficker in another federal
death-penalty case in Brooklyn, that one involving racketeering and
murder.

Last week, the judge in that case told the prosecutors that the Justice
Department should drop its push for the execution of the defendant,
Kenneth McGriff. The judge, Frederic Block, said that pressing on to the
penalty phase of the trial would be absurd and a total misappropriation of
taxpayer dollars.

In analyzing the Wilson verdict, some death-penalty lawyers said they had
figured that sooner or later, a jury in New York would vote to send a
defendant to die. Mr. Tabak said that of the 7 state cases that ended in
death-penalty verdicts between 1995 and 2004, all but 2 originated in the
area that makes up the federal Eastern District: Brooklyn, Queens and
Staten Island, and Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island.

Lawyers consider prospective jurors in those areas more likely to support
the death penalty than those in Manhattan. Still, some lawyers said the
importance of geography was minimal when compared to the particular
circumstances of the Wilson case.

"It was the kind of case that no matter where it tried and no matter where
it was brought, the likelihood of a death verdict was high," Mr. Ruhnke
said. "Sometimes the facts of a case simply blot out everything else."

Other death-penalty lawyers said the Wilson trial differed from those
involving drug dealers accused of killing other drug dealers, or those
involving terrorists. Twice in 2001, a federal jury in Manhattan
deadlocked over whether to impose the death penalty on 3 terrorists in the
1998 bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed
more than 200 people, including 12 Americans. In the federal courts, a
deadlock means the defendant is automatically sentenced to life in prison.

They were police detectives, shot at close range, in the backs of their
heads. Fellow officers and relatives filled the courtroom, day after day,
during the trial of the man accused of pulling the trigger, who mostly
kept his emotions to himself.

Add to that where the jurors came from  Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island
and Long Island, but not Manhattan. And that the detectives knew, and were
known in, the neighborhood, which gave the case a strong local connection
unlike, say, a case involving terrorist acts overseas.

Taken together, all those elements were so powerful, death-penalty
specialists said yesterday, that the jurys verdict seemed almost
inevitable. The 7 women and 5 men decided that the defendant, Ronell
Wilson, should die.

That made him the first person to face death in a federal case in New York
since the 1950s, a fate that other defendants have managed to avoid, even
though some of them have been accused of killing far more people. "There
was a confluence of factors, said Deborah W. Denno, a professor at Fordham
University School of Law. "I think it's highly unlikely there will be
another case with all these particular elements anytime soon."