[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., MONT., ARIZ., MISS.

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 30


PENNSYLVANIA:

Death row inmate Scott Wayne Blystone pushes for retrial


Attorneys for a death row inmate from Fayette County who was convicted in the 
1983 murder and robbery of a hitchhiker has asked a federal appeals court to 
review a separate federal ruling overturning a conviction in a local 1977 
double murder case.

Federal public defenders for Scott Wayne Blystone, now 55, filed a petition 
with the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals asking those judges to look at 
a recent U.S. District Court decision in Pittsburgh ordering a retrial for 
David Joseph Munchinski. Blystone also is seeking a new trial.

Blystone has been on death row for 2 decades for his conviction in the death of 
Dalton Smithburger Jr. Prosecutors contended Blystone robbed Smithburger of $13 
before shooting him 6 times in the back of the head.

Yesterday, Blystone's public defenders filed paperwork with the appellate court 
in Philadelphia arguing that the alleged prosecutorial misconduct in 
Munchinski's case involved "the same individuals who had prosecuted Mr. 
Blystone's case."

In Munchinski's case, Judge Lisa Pupo Lenihan ruled recently that Fayette 
prosecutors withheld key evidence in a 1977 double murder for which Munchinski 
was convicted of committing in 1986. He was convicted then for the slayings of 
James Alford and Raymond Gierke in Fayette County.

Munchinski, now 59, has mounted numerous appeals during the years, saying 
prosecutors hid a police report that suggests a purported witness was in 
Oklahoma when the killings occurred.

Lenihan ruled that prosecutors withheld evidence that resulted in convictions 
"that are unworthy of confidence."

Blystone also has previously argued that information was kept from the jury 
that convicted him. However, the state attorney general's office has repeatedly 
countered Blystone's own lawyers acted on specific instructions from Blystone, 
himself, during the original trial not to contest the death penalty.

(source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)






MONTANA:

Juries should have power to decide aggravating circumstances, attorneys 
say----Attorneys Argue that Death Penalty Law is Unconstitutional


The attorneys for a Kalispell man accused of murdering a woman and her daughter 
on Christmas Day are seeking to declare the state’s death penalty 
unconstitutional.

Tyler Michael Miller, formerly known as Tyler Michael Cheetham, is accused of 
shooting to death his ex-girlfriend Jaimi Hurlbert, 35, and her daughter, 
Alyssa Burkett, 15, last December. He faces capital punishment if convicted.

Miller’s attorneys, public defenders Noel Larrivee and Edmund Sheehy, filed a 
motion to declare Montana’s death penalty unconstitutional in June. His counsel 
reiterated the motion’s points during an Aug. 23 hearing in front of District 
Court Judge Stewart Stadler.

Sheehy argued that the state’s death penalty law incorrectly gives judges the 
power to determine if there were aggravated circumstances warranting capital 
punishment.

In their June filing, the attorneys wrote state law violates the U.S. 
Constitution, which, in part, requires that, “other than prior convictions, any 
fact increasing a penalty beyond the statutory maximum must be submitted to a 
jury, and proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The attorneys cited a U.S. Supreme Court decision Ring v. Arizona, in which the 
court holds that juries should decide if there are aggravating circumstances to 
support the death penalty.

According to Ring v. Arizona, Montana is one of four states that give capital 
sentencing fact-finding power and capital punishment sentencing power entirely 
to judges.

The attorneys also argue that Montana law violates the Constitution because 
juries are not allowed to determine if there are mitigating factors that would 
prohibit the death penalty.

The Flathead County Attorney’s office filed notice of its intent to seek the 
death penalty in Miller’s case in March. The paperwork, filed by County 
Attorney Ed Corrigan, portrays Miller as remorseless and premeditating in the 
murders.

Miller’s case marks the 1st time since the 1983 conviction of Ronald Allen 
Smith that the Flathead County attorney has sought capital punishment.

Stadler has not said when he will rule on the defense attorney’s motion. Miller 
has a mental competency hearing scheduled for Sept. 28. Previous filings 
indicated that he has a history of substance abuse and psychiatric conditions.

(source: Flathead Beacon)






ARIZONA:

Jury finds Arizona man guilty in quintuple murder of extended family in 
suburban Phoenix


An Arizona man was found guilty on Monday of five counts of murder and other 
charges in the 2006 killings of an extended family of 5. A Maricopa County 
Superior Court returned the verdict against 34-year-old William Craig Miller on 
Monday after less than 2 full days of deliberations. In addition to 5 counts of 
1st-degree murder, the jury found Miller guilty of 4 counts of solicitation of 
1st-degree murder and 1 count of burglary.

Miller was convicted of fatally shooting 30-year-old Steven Duffy and Duffy's 
girlfriend, 32-year-old Tammy Lovell, in their east Mesa home on Feb. 21, 2006. 
Both were former employees of Miller's who were police informants against him 
in a 2005 arson case.

Also killed were Duffy's brother, 18-year-old Shane Duffy, and Lovell's 
children — 15-year-old Cassandra and 10-year-old Jacob.

Monday's conviction means Miller now faces the death penalty. Miller already is 
serving a 16-year prison term after being convicted in March of burning down 
his Scottsdale home to collect insurance money.

"Today's verdict finally brings a measure of justice to a shockingly brutal 
crime that stunned the entire community," Maricopa County Attorney Bill 
Montgomery said in a statement. "Now we move forward in pursuit of a just 
punishment."

Prosecutors will begin making arguments for the death penalty in court on 
Tuesday.

Miller's attorneys called no witnesses to the stand to testify on his behalf 
during the trial.

The Arizona Republic reported that in her opening statements, prosecutor 
Kristen Hoffmeyer described Miller as an "arrogant braggart" who at first tried 
to hire four men to carry out the killings but ended up acting alone when they 
wouldn't cooperate.

"He eliminated them as witnesses, and he eliminated their family because there 
was to be no witnesses left," Hoffmeyer said.

Hoffmeyer showed graphic photos of the crime scene, prompting the victims' 
family members to cry in court. Miller declined to attend the trial.

In his opening statement, the Republic said that defense attorney Eric Kessler 
urged jurors to keep an open mind.

"Things are not always as they seem," Kessler had said.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Justice a long time coming


There's a whirlwind of violence, then a stretch of silence.

John Bryant Jamison stayed conscious for 42 crushingly painful minutes. He was 
a doctor. He knew his gunshot wounds were fatal and that he could not be saved.

Anthony Chaney had almost 17 years to think it over before he took his lethal 
injection for Jamison's murder.

Jennifer Wilson lay dead for 3 weeks, her family and a legion of searchers 
unaware of her location or even if she was alive. Her killer, Richard Bible, 
was in a cell on death row for 21 years. His June execution was Coconino 
County's most recent.

Todd Smith is still alive, awaiting his execution. He was sentenced to death in 
1997 for the brutal murder of an elderly couple near Ashurst Lake. Online 
prison records show he'll be up for a standard inmate classification review in 
June 2012, some 15 years after he entered prison and 17 years after his crime.

The wheels of justice turn slow when it comes to capital punishment. Arizona 
has executed 28 men since it lifted a 30-year moratorium on the death penalty 
in 1992. Only four of them were on Death Row for fewer than 10 years. Excluding 
those outliers, the average residence is about 19 years.

This is nothing new to Arizona -- and nearly 1 in 5 death row inmates has been 
in prison for 20 years or more. 6 have been awaiting execution for at least 25 
years. One has been there for 31 years.

Nor is there anything this state -- which has a relatively small death row 
population of 128 -- can do about the guarantees to appeals.

Phoenix lawyer Steve Twist is a longtime advocate for victims' rights 
nationwide. He takes care to point out that advocates like himself don't want 
to just speed up executions; legitimate cases of innocence should always be 
given consideration. What he wants is to eliminate unnecessary delays.

"The effect may be the same but that's really what we're trying to do," he 
said. "It's not a matter of getting people into the death chamber faster. It's 
a matter of doing it in a way that protects everyone's rights, including the 
victims'."

AN ANGRY YOUNG SON

Anthony Chaney attempted more than a dozen appeals and other maneuvers over the 
years he sat on death row for killing John Jamison.

His victim was a family man and the chief of radiology at what later became 
Flagstaff Medical Center. He enrolled in the police academy in his mid-30s to 
be an unpaid reserve deputy.

He was called in on busy days like Sept. 6, 1982 -- Labor Day -- to keep more 
eyes and ears on Flagstaff. His death in the line of duty was the sheriff's 
office's first since 1919, and only one other has followed, in 1983.

While other deputies were working the county fair, Jamison was on regular 
patrol. He drove toward Chaney's campground near the Turkey Hills east of town 
to back up a deputy who wasn't responding to radio calls -- as it turned out, 
because Chaney, an ex-con on the run from some recent burglaries, and his 
accomplice girlfriend had disarmed him and handcuffed him to a tree at 
gunpoint. Jamison apparently had no idea what he was approaching and had no 
time to react to what has been called an ambush: a hail of gunfire from an 
AR-15 rifle, fired by Chaney when he came upon Jamison after cresting a hill on 
a rural dirt road.

John Milton Jamison II -- "John" is a family name, and he was named for his 
grandfather -- was 13 when his father died. By the time Chaney was executed in 
2000, the younger Jamison was, like his father, a police officer. He is 
currently a sergeant with the Coconino County Sheriff's Office, the same agency 
his father joined as a reservist.

The younger John was deeply angry about his father's death at Chaney's hands. 
The first and last time John saw the man that he called an "animal" was on the 
day of his execution. He looked at him through the glass partition in the death 
chamber, and he felt like Chaney stared back. And he rued that he did not stop 
by his father's medical office, like he often did, in the days before his 
death. Grieved, he rode his bike to the mortuary while his father was being 
prepared for burial and asked to see his remains. He didn't until the funeral.

But when Chaney was sentenced to death in 1983, it sounded good to the young 
man. He hated Chaney, and frankly, his feelings didn't change much over time. 
He reflects now with sadness for his father and a more matter-of-fact tone 
about Chaney.

"I'm just glad I don't have to deal with it anymore," he said. "It's a load 
off, to say the least."

There was a roller coaster of emotions: He'd get excited that the execution was 
around the corner, then deflate when it wasn't. He worried that Chaney would 
get out, or that his appeals for mercy would be granted, or that the death 
penalty would be abolished before he was executed. And as a police officer of 
nearly 20 years now, he understands how the system works.

JENNIFER'S PINK RIBBON

So does Billy Trimble.

Trimble was one of the lead investigators on the Jennifer Wilson case. The 
now-retired Flagstaff Police Department detective said he knew from the very 
start that Richard Bible's case would take a long time.

It was frustrating. He knew it involved a life, Bible's. But it also involved 
Jennifer's, a 9-year-old Yuma girl vacationing in Flagstaff in summer 1988. 
Bible kidnapped the girl as she rode her bike on Old Walnut Canyon Road, 
molested and bludgeoned her.

Bible, who claimed to the end that he was not guilty, attempted at least 15 
appeals and other delays. The U.S. Supreme Court denied his stay request the 
day before his execution.

Bible's execution was the first and only one for Trimble, a veteran cop.

"It's done now for me," he said. "A calm came over me when we walked out of 
that room that day, something I hadn't felt for a long time. Michael (Rice, the 
case's lead detective from the sheriff's office) and I turned to each other and 
almost at the same time said, 'We can retire now.'"

They already had, years before, but in their minds, Bible needed to die before 
they could find closure.

Then Trimble took the pink ribbon off his shirt and found Jennifer's mother. 
He'd had the ribbon since Bible's trial, and pinned it to the visor of every 
truck he'd owned since.

"I gave the ribbon back that day," he said.

ADVOCATE: OBSTRUCTIONISTS INFLUENCE SYSTEM

The work continues for Twist, who became close with Wilson's parents when they 
joined him in the quest to further crime victims' rights. He said nobody wants 
a rush to judgment with human life.

"That having been said, there is no rush to judgment in our system," he said.

Courts need to be as attentive to victims as they are to defendants, which he 
said is not the case, and has been a failed part of his reform efforts.

"Written into the Constitution of Arizona is the right to a speedy trial and 
also the right to a prompt and final conclusion of the case after the 
conviction and sentence. That right is similar to rights that are now 
established in other states to create a system that for victims that will be 
free from unreasonable delay," said Twist, a former chief assistant attorney 
general for Arizona and a law professor at Arizona State University. "Everyone 
understands that the constitutional right of the defendant to a lawyer that has 
time to prepare is important and needs to be protected but these cases, 
particularly Death Row cases, should not take decades to resolve, because those 
decades are not simply matters of academic or legal dispute among lawyers and 
judges and professionals. The delay is a deeply inflicted trauma on families 
who can't understand how it is that a just society can take so long to come to 
a final conclusion."

Coconino County Attorney David Rozema has a similar sympathy for survivors.

"The federal courts have created an appeals process that now typically lasts 20 
years or more. This is excessive and wrong. The hardship that this delay causes 
to victims is immeasurable," he said. "Every new delay tactic and appeal 
creates new uncertainty and suffering for the victims. In the 2 capital cases I 
have been involved in, both of the surviving families needed the finality that 
only comes when the sentence is finally imposed. Until then, the black cloud of 
uncertainty and fear colors their world and prevents them from being able to 
truly move on."

THOUGHTS FROM THE MIDDLE

Twist attributed the delay in executions to anti-death penalty advocates, who 
he said turn to judges rather than the polls or lawmakers and use the law in an 
obstructionist way.

"Ultimately their hope is, through a manipulation of the legal process for so 
long, that the public will grow weary of the length of time and the cost and 
not see any alternative and simply throw up their hands and abolish the death 
penalty," he said. "That's what they want."

JoBeth Jamison, Dr. John Jamison's daughter, has complex, layered thoughts 
about the man that killed her father and the justice system that executed him. 
She can't say with certainty if she is for or against the death penalty, 
preferring to view it on a case-by-case basis.

She doesn't say, either, that Chaney should have been spared. She believes in 
his guilt. She was 10 when her father died and she grew up with the specter.

Her father was her hero, but upon his death, she knew nothing else. She's had 
Anthony Chaney in her life since she was a child, and still does as she writes 
a memoir about her experience as a victim of a death row killer's crimes.

The wait itself didn't seem so bad for her, because it was installed in her 
life at an early age and life continued as normally as possible. But when the 
execution happened, it hit as hard as the murder.

She did not attend or testify at Chaney's trial. She had "feelings by osmosis" 
-- she accepted how adults relayed things to her, and didn't form her own 
opinions until she had graduated college, moved to Europe and expanded her 
horizons.

"What I was able to do in that time was develop my own perspective, get 
information that that I didn't have before and just really look at it from a 
knowledgeable perspective," said JoBeth, now working as a writer in Sedona, "as 
opposed to having every decision about it handed to me or beat into my head 
because it was just in my surroundings, and that's really what it was like 
here."

She said this without bitterness, and does not deny anybody else their feelings 
about the murder. She admitted that she has felt conflicted about not taking a 
strong stance either way about Chaney's fate, and she admitted there was a 
certain mourning in putting to bed such a significant, yet painful, part of her 
life.

She did not attend the execution with her brother John. She was sitting on her 
friend's porch in Tucson that day and felt an "angry wind" come from the 
direction of Florence. A few minutes later, she got a confirmation that it was 
done.

For his part, John acknowledges Chaney's death was a long time coming -- "I 
felt like the phone was off the hook for a few years" -- and that executions 
could be done faster, but they have to be done right.

"I wouldn't be a proponent of the death penalty if it wasn't thorough," he 
said.

John has children of his own. His youngest is his only son, John Bryant II, not 
quite 3 years old. He will never meet his granddad and eventually, he'll learn 
how his grandfather died. But because John keeps his photo prominently 
displayed, his children will know him and hear that he was a kind and generous 
man.

(source: Arizona Daily Sun)






MISSISSIPPI:

Iuka Woman Appeals Death Penalty Sentence----Michelle Byrom Convicted In 
Husband's Death


Mississippi death row inmate Michelle Byrom wants a federal judge to hold a 
court hearing related to her death sentence.

WTVA-TV reported that attorneys for Byrom filed court requests this month for 
the hearing.

The 54-year-old Iuka woman is one of three people convicted in the murder of 
her husband, Edward Byrom. He was killed at the couple's home in 1999.

During her 2000 trial, testimony focused on a plan with her son and another man 
to kill her husband. Michelle Byrom was in an Iuka hospital when Edward Byrom 
was shot and killed.

She was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.

(source: Associated Press)