[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, ARK., MONT., PENN.

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 15



TEXAS:

MAP: Capital murder trial of man accused of killing 3 sons, mother-in-law 
begins today


Hidalgo County prosecutors will seek the death penalty for the 1st time in more 
than 4 years at a trial set to begin Monday.

Roberto Rojas allegedly killed his 3 children and mother-in-law in a rampage 
the night of Dec. 6, 2008.

In the days after the slayings, Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputies said Rojas 
admitted to killing his children and mother-in-law because he was upset his 
estranged wife, Amelia, had enrolled in classes at the University of Texas-Pan 
American.

Amelia, 27, had been living with their three sons at her parents’ home north of 
Alton.

That night, Rojas told deputies, he entered the house and fired fatal shots 
from a .45-caliber pistol at her 3 sons — Osiel and Mauro Rojas, and Silvestre 
Garza — who ranged from 3 to 8 years old. He allegedly delivered the same fate 
to his mother-in-law, 45-year-old Amelia Rivera Flores.

Rojas allegedly shot his wife and was beating her over the head with a 
.22-caliber rifle when her father, Ruben Flores, came home to find the carnage.

Flores managed to wrestle the gun away from Rojas, beating him over the head 
until the rifle’s stock broke apart.

Amelia Rojas fell into a coma that night, but later recovered. Deputies 
arrested Rojas, 45, who was charged with capital murder.

The case has snaked its way through the 398th state District Court ever since.

‘SOUND LAW ENFORCEMENT’

It’s not often that Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra has pursued 
the death penalty since he first took office in 1982.

Since 1976, Hidalgo County has sent 16 murderers to death row. Only 2 have been 
executed. Another 11 remain on death row; the 3 others had their sentences 
reversed.

But in certain cases, Guerra said, the death penalty is the only realistic 
punishment for a crime. With Rojas, the number of deaths leaves no choice, 
despite the added costs of prosecution, he said.

“When it comes to county security, I think the worst thing we can do is try to 
save money by not doing sound law enforcement,” Guerra said. “In the long run, 
it’s going to cost us more.”

That, and the district attorney said he must consider whether the possible 
blowback from the community if a man who killed several people is allowed to 
live the rest of his days from a prison cell.

Texas executes more murders each year than any other state. But only four 
counties — Harris, Dallas, Bexar and Tarrant — account for roughly half of all 
the state’s death sentences since 1976.

“I think it’s interesting Texas gets painted with such a broad brush when it’s 
only a small number of counties that account for most of who is on death row,” 
said Kristen Houlé, executive director of the Austin-based Texas Coalition to 
Abolish the Death Penalty.

Indeed, Hidalgo County’s rate stands far below other population centers in the 
state.

Harris County, home to Houston, sent 286 people to death row at the end of last 
year. Dallas County has sentenced 102 murderers to death; Bexar County has 
tallied 76.

LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE?

Only since 2005 has Texas law allowed district attorneys to pursue life without 
parole in capital murder cases — an alternative to the death penalty that is 
the maximum sentence in the 25 other U.S. states that prohibit capital 
punishment. “We’ve seen a 70 % drop in new death sentences since 2003,” Houlé 
said. “A big part of that is the sentencing option of life without parole.

“It’s a punishment that punishes those who are truly guilty and protects 
society.”

Jurors chose that alternative in 2009 — the last time local prosecutors sought 
the death penalty — when they spared an Hermanos Pistoleros Latinos gang member 
the death penalty in the murder of 23-year-old Larissa Cavazos, an aspiring 
speech pathologist slain in 2005.

But the jury followed prosecutors’ recommendation in 2007, when they sentenced 
Douglas Armstrong, 41, who murdered of Rafael Castelan, 60, outside a Donna bar 
in 2006.

Witnesses testified they had seen a “large black man” attacking Castelan before 
he threw him to the ground and sliced his throat with a box cutter. Armstrong 
then robbed Castelan before fleeing the scene.

“I am not guilty,” Armstrong told Judge Noe Gonzalez after he learned the 
sentence. “Even though I respect what the jury said, I will keep my head up and 
keep trying.”

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Armstrong’s request to overturn his 
sentence in 2010, saying jurors based their verdict on overwhelming evidence 
collected at the scene and the witnesses’ testimony.

Guerra said he considers a defendant’s prior record, “the damage that was done 
in the case” and circumstances when deciding whether to pursue the death 
penalty.

Pursuing the death penalty costs taxpayers more than other murder cases, with 
more court hearings and a lengthier jury selection process that can take 
months, rather than a few days.

Guerra said his position on capital punishment hasn’t wavered throughout his 
career.

“I’ve always believed in the death penalty,” he said. “Some people may say I’m 
a bad Catholic, but I say I’m a good Catholic. But that remains to be seen.”

(source: The Monitor)

********************

Rick Perry's Death Penalty Stance May Be A Tough Sell Nationally


In tough-on-crime Texas, supporting the death penalty is practically a 
political prerequisite, and Gov. Rick Perry has nailed that qualification, 
overseeing the executions of 230 prisoners, more than any other modern governor 
of any state.

“He certainly would stand out among other governors,” said Richard Dieter, 
executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “But that’s just 
sort of a given in Texas.”

As Perry considers a bid for the White House, experts say his willingness to 
implement the death penalty and his adamant denial of the possibility Texas may 
have executed an innocent man could have mixed campaign consequences.

During his 10-year tenure, Perry has overseen nearly half of the 470 executions 
in Texas since the death penalty was reinstated in 1974. In that time, public 
opinion about the death penalty has evolved as DNA evidence and other modern 
forensic science developments have cleared many wrongfully convicted inmates 
across the country. More than 130 death row inmates nationwide have been 
exonerated since 1973 — including 12 in Texas — according to the Death Penalty 
Information Center. A 2010 Gallup News poll found that public approval of the 
death penalty had dropped from an all-time high of 80 % in 1994 to 65 percent 
in 2009.

A number of states, including Illinois, New Mexico, New York and New Jersey, 
have in recent years stopped using the death penalty.

Despite the uncovering of wrongful convictions in Texas and other states, 
though, Perry has granted few requests for clemency in death penalty cases. 
“Clemencies are rare everywhere, but they’re particularly rare in Texas,” 
Dieter said.

Perry can only grant clemency to an inmate if the Texas Board of Pardons and 
Paroles recommends it. The board reviews hundreds of requests each year from 
former prisoners and from inmates who want their sentences reduced or their 
criminal records cleared. From 2001 to 2009, the board considered more than 
2,000 applications. It recommended clemency in more than 530 cases related to 
all kinds of crimes, and Perry granted about 30 % of them.

Perry has commuted the death sentences of 31 inmates. The great majority of 
those commutations — 28 — involved cases in which the defendant was a juvenile 
at the time of the crime. Perry begrudgingly commuted those sentences in 2005, 
after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not execute those who were 
younger than 18 at the time of their crime. “While these individuals were 
convicted by juries of brutal murders and sentenced to die for their heinous 
crimes, I have no choice but to commute these sentences to life in prison,” 
Perry said at the time.

In 2 other cases, Perry commuted to life in prison the death sentences of 
inmates who were proven mentally retarded, another group of individuals the 
nation’s highest court has excluded from the death penalty.

And in the only other case, Perry commuted the death sentence of Kenneth Foster 
to life in prison after his attorneys argued he was not the shooter in the May 
1996 murder for which he was convicted but only drove the getaway car. Foster 
was sentenced under Texas’ “law of parties,” which allows capital punishment 
for individuals who may not have been the killer but who were parties to the 
crime. Perry said, as he granted the commutation just hours before Foster was 
to be executed in August 2007, that he hoped lawmakers would re-examine the law 
of parties. Despite efforts to repeal the law in the two legislative sessions 
since then, it remains on the books.

2 of Texas' highest-profile death penalty recent cases continue to shadow 
Perry. The case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for an 
arson that killed his three daughters, has roiled the criminal justice 
community in Texas and nationwide. Since Willingham's execution, public reports 
have revealed that Perry’s office was aware that serious scientific questions 
had been raised about evidence used to convict Willingham. Perry has dismissed 
the reports of scientists who concluded Willingham was not responsible for the 
blaze and has called him a guilty “monster.” The Texas Forensic Science 
Commission continues to investigate the science used in the Willingham case, 
and the Innocence Project continues its fight to prove that Texas killed an 
innocent man.

Anthony Graves is the most recent Texan to be freed from death row after 
proving his innocence. He spent 14 years on death row and four years in 
isolation at the Burleson County Jail before prosecutors dropped the charges 
against him. He had initially been convicted based on the testimony of the 
actual killer, Robert Carter, despite the lack of any physical evidence tying 
Graves to the brutal murders or any clear motive for the crime. Twice, Graves 
was nearly executed.

Still, Perry, during a campaign stop days after Graves’ release in October, 
said the case showed that the state’s criminal justice system is working. “I 
think we have a justice system that is working, and he’s a good example of — 
you continue to find errors that were made and clear them up,” Perry said, 
according to a report in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. “That’s the good news 
for us, is that we are a place that continues to allow that to occur. So I 
think our system works well; it goes through many layers of observation and 
appeal, et cetera.”

This week, the Texas comptroller paid Graves $1.45 million for the time he 
spent behind bars after Perry signed a bill that enabled him to be compensated. 
But Graves’ lawyers said much work remains to ensure that Texas doesn’t make 
the same mistake again.

Perry’s gubernatorial challengers — both his GOP rival U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey 
Hutchison and Democratic former Houston Mayor Bill White — last year tried to 
make hay of his handling of the death penalty. Neither candidate made much 
headway, and the topic was hardly a matter of debate during the campaign.

But how the controversies over wrongful convictions and the death penalty play 
out on a national scale could be different, experts said.

In the GOP presidential primary campaigns, Perry’s tough-on-crime credentials 
likely only stand to help him among conservative voters. “There’s not a lot of 
concern among his target audience with these kinds of questions,” said Jim 
Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. In 
the primaries, other candidates would have to work hard to make the death 
penalty an issue damaging to Perry, he said, and as the governor has shown in 
his home state, there’s a slim chance such an attack would meet with success.

But if he becomes the party’s presidential nominee, Perry’s stance on the death 
penalty could present a bigger challenge, said Larry Sabato, director of the 
Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. In Democratic-leaning 
states, Sabato said, Perry’s commitment to capital punishment is likely to hurt 
him. But, he added, it’s not as though Perry would carry those states anyway.

The bigger question, Sabato said, is how the issue affects swing states where 
many voters are not strictly aligned with either party. For many independent 
voters, Perry could be seen as an even more conservative version of President 
George W. Bush, an impression only deepened by his ardent support of the death 
penalty.

“To the average American, he’s going to be another Texan, but an even tougher, 
harder-edge Texan,” Sabato said. “For swing states, that’s going to be a tough 
sell.”

(source: Business Insider)






ARKANSAS:

Judge strikes down more of Arkansas execution law


Circuit Judge Tim Fox ruled from the bench after a hearing today that Arkansas 
law giving the Arkansas Correction Department leeway to use any type of drug 
for lethal injections was unconstitutional.

Executions have been halted in Arkansas because of the lawsuit over executions 
and questions about the quality of the sodium thiopental Arkansas had on hand. 
That supply was turned over to federal drug officials. Fox's ruling today 
prevents state prison officials using their discretion in finding another 
execution drug if they can't properly obtain sodium thiopental. Both the state 
and Death Row inmates who brought the suit plan appeals of rulings in the case.

Jeff Rosenzweig, an attorney for Death Row inmates, explained that the judge 
found the law delegated too much authority to the Correction Department. But he 
said the inmates believe the ruling still leaves prison officials with too much 
discretion on drug choice.

(source: Arkansas Times)






MONTANA:

Montana State Prison modifies execution protocol


The Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge announced on Monday that it has modified 
its protocol for conducting executions in order to address changes in the 
availability of certain drugs and as a part of routine assessment of the 
procedures that are conducted whenever an execution date is set.

The modifications include a provision allowing for the use of a substitute drug 
as the fast-acting barbiturate that causes unconsciousness and ensures the 
inmate will not experience pain during the process of injecting the other drugs 
as part of the lethal injection process.

This provision is necessary due to the inability to obtain sodium thiopental, 
which was the initial drug that Montana and other states had used in executions 
until the manufacturer ceased production recently.

The new protocol permits use of a substitute drug - pentobarbital - which has 
survived court challenges and been used successfully in other states.

Other changes include additional safeguards to ensure that the drug is properly 
administered and, therefore, that the condemned is completely unconscious.

Mike Mahoney, who signed the document on his last day as the Montana State 
Prison warden on August 12, emphasized that the adjustments to the 149-page 
document are neither novel nor experimental, as they have proven effective when 
used in other states with extensive experience in carrying out executions. He 
also noted that the review resulting in the changes was prompted by a district 
judge setting an execution date last fall for convicted double-murderer Ronald 
Smith.

Mahoney noted, "Although that date eventually was vacated by the courts, we 
responded the way we always do when confronted with an imminent execution. We 
go through the procedures established and used in the past to determine if they 
can be refined based on what we have learned from previous executions and what 
is happening in other states regarding execution-related developments."

It was that routine process that led to the revisions in the protocol, he 
added. "With the revised protocol in place, Montana State Prison is prepared to 
respond to a court order directing an execution be carried out and to fulfill 
its obligation in a safe, humane and professional manner."

The changes include refining definitions of such items as the operations 
security chief, news media staging area and setup officer. The changes also 
require a "qualified official" appointed by the warden to sign the death 
warrant following an execution and clarify the timeline for inventorying items 
needed to conduct an execution.

Other changes in the protocol:

* Clarify timing of event starting with receipt of a death warrant through 
post-execution procedures

* Add security measures such as a prohibition on cell phones in the execution 
chamber and establishment of security zones

* Create new provisions for storage and handling of drugs used in an execution

* Clarify qualification for the person setting up intravenous lines for 
administering lethal injection

* Specify the training required for the executioner and allows the executioner 
to be a contract employee

* Reduce the number of media witnesses from four to three, to comply with state 
law

(source: KXLH News)






PENNSYLVANIA:

Western Pa. 'kill-for-thrill' defendant wants execution halted, attorney for 
new appeal


A man sentenced to death for killing a western Pennsylvania police officer in 
1980 wants a stay of execution now that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has 
rejected a request for a new trial. He also wants a court-appointed attorney to 
assist him with yet another federal appeal.

The Federal Community Defender Office in Philadelphia filed the motion in U.S. 
District Court in Pittsburgh for John Lesko, 52, formerly of Homestead.

The state Supreme Court in February rejected a 2006 ruling by a Westmoreland 
County judge that Lesko's attorney was deficient during the 1981 trial and a 
1995 resentencing hearing.

Lesko and his co-defendant, Michael Travaglia, have pursued separate appeals 
since being sent to death row in 1981. Both were convicted of first-degree 
murder for killing Apollo police Officer Leonard Miller on Jan. 3, 1980, days 
after killing three others in what prosecutors have said was a 
"kill-for-thrill" rampage.

Gov. Tom Corbett has yet to sign a death warrant since the February ruling, but 
federal defense attorney Samuel Angell argues in a 10-page motion filed late 
Friday that "a death warrant is imminent."

The motion said if that happens, Lesko will be removed from his cell at the 
State Correctional Institution-Graterford and put in a segregated area under 
state death penalty protocols.

Among other things, Lesko would be confined alone around the clock "with 
progressively more invasive restrictions placed on his liberty as the execution 
date approaches." That would include visits closely supervised by a guard, 
restricted telephone access, a requirement that Lesko name next of kin to 
dispose of his body and undergo counseling about his execution, and even be 
"fitted for a jumpsuit to wear to the execution."

Lesko wants a stay of his death warrant so he "is not needlessly subjected to 
these procedures," the motion said.

Westmoreland County District Attorney John Peck said when the Supreme Court 
rejected Lesko's appeal in February that Lesko could still raise the same 
issues in the federal habeas corpus appeal now being sought.

County Judge Richard McCormick Jr. ruled in 2006 that Lesko deserved a new 
trial because his defense attorney, Rabe Marsh III, was ineffective for failing 
to present mitigating evidence that could have prompted a jury to spare the 
death penalty at a 1995 re-sentencing hearing. McCormick said Marsh should have 
raised issues including Lesko having an abusive childhood and mental problems 
that could have made him ineligible for a death sentence.

A few days after McCormick's ruling, Lesko's attorney at that time, Robert 
Dunham, said Lesko was willing to please guilty in return for a life sentence.

Peck appealed, resulting in February's Supreme Court decision. Peck did not 
immediately return a call for comment Monday on the new appeal motion, but has 
said repeatedly that the case is so heinous that not pursuing the death penalty 
would render capital punishment meaningless.

Lesko and Travaglia were sentenced to death for Miller's murder, which ended a 
rampage in which they killed three other people beginning shortly after 
Christmas 1979.

The men killed Peter Levato, of Pittsburgh, in a wooded area near the 
Loyalhanna Dam on Dec. 27, 1979, then killed Marlene Newcomer, of Leisenring, 
Fayette County, that New Year's Eve after picking her up hitchhiking.

The third victim was William Nichols, who died Jan. 2, 1980. The Mount Lebanon 
church organist was kidnapped and dumped in an icy Indiana County lake after 
being tortured, including having an ashtray emptied into his mouth.

Lesko and Travaglia were in Nichols' stolen car when they sped past Miller 
several times until the officer chased and pulled them over. Miller was shot as 
he approached the car.

(source: Associated Press)