[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----DEL., ALA., N. MEX., GA., ARK., USA, CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 10


DELAWARE:

Appeals court rejects challenge to Del. executions


A federal appeals court has denied a challenge to Delaware's use of lethal 
injection filed by an ax murderer shortly before he was executed in July.

Lawyers for Robert Jackson III filed the appeal after a federal judge in 
Wilmington ruled that the state could use pentobarbital in executions and 
refused to let Jackson re-open a 2006 lawsuit challenging Delaware's execution 
procedures.

The appeals court ruled Wednesday that the Delaware judge did not abuse her 
discretion in ruling against Jackson. The court said it was issuing it opinion 
despite Jackson's death because the appeal affected other Delaware death row 
inmates as well.

State officials switched to pentobarbital earlier this year because of a 
shortage of sodium thiopental, which had been used in previous executions.

Jackson was executed on July 29.

(source: Associated Press)






ALABAMA:

Judge requests death sentence be reversed


Madison County Judge Lloyd Little has requested that an inmate sentenced to die 
for the murder of a convenience store employee receive a different sentence.

Derrick Mason is set to be executed on Thursday, September 22nd. He was 
convicted of murder for the death of Angela Cagle at Circle K in March of 1994.

Judge Little sentenced Mason to death after he was found guilty. Now more than 
16 years later, Judge Little says Mason should not be put to death.

Little had been on the bench for 6 months when Mason's case was tried. It was 
his first death penalty case.

Judge Little sent a letter to Governor Robert Bentley requesting that the 
sentence be changed from the death penalty to life without parole.

Judge Little says that after years of experience in handling capital murder 
cases, he feels that he should not have imposed the death penalty in Mason's 
case. He says it's not to undermine or lessen the severity of the crime, but 
compared to other cases, it's a different view.

Governor Bentley has not responded to the request.

(source: WAFF News)






NEW MEXICO:

Astorga sentencing could be delayed----DA says jury pool isn’t deep enough


It’s supposed to start Monday, but there could be a huge delay in the 
life-or-death sentencing of cop killer Michael Astorga.

District Attorney Kari Brandenburg said the problem now is that there are not 
enough potential jurors to choose from.

“We knew it was going to be a problem, and that’s why we started with 1,000 
jurors and ended up with about 520,” Brandenburg said. “We thought that would 
resolve the issues of people being polarized, people knowing about the case and 
people having an opinion, and apparently that number wasn’t sufficient.”

Brandenburg said the problem lies with the fact that this is a death penalty 
case.

Astorga was convicted last year by another jury of killing Bernalillo County 
Sheriff’s Department Deputy James McGrane Jr. during a traffic stop in 2006 in 
Tijeras.

Brandenburg said many of the potential jurors who responded to the summons for 
the penalty phase of the trial have extreme views on the death penalty.

“Very few seem to be in the middle, and that’s the kind of juror that we want, 
someone with an open mind that can listen to all the testimony and evidence and 
make a decision,” she said.

Ideally Brandenburg would like to have 200 jurors to question since about 50 
percent of them are weeded out during that process.

She said they might have to start from scratch.

“On Monday we’re going to go to court, and I think that Mr. Mitchell will have 
some motions, and the court will make a decision how to proceed at that time,” 
Brandenburg said.

Gary Mitchell of Ruidoso is Astorga's attorney.

Starting the jury selection process all over would take about five to seven 
weeks Brandenburg said, which could delay the sentencing a few months.

She said this latest roadblock is a tough one for the McGrane family.

“I think it’s very disheartening to them that there’s been delay after delay, 
but they also understand why we are having delays,” she said.

News 13 was not able to reach Mitchell for comment Thursday.

(source: KRQE News)






GEORGIA:

Drucker death penalty case to begin


Joshua Drucker is slated to stand trial on murder charges this week in Cobb 
County, 7 years after he allegedly gunned down a Marietta man and his Bulgarian 
girlfriend in a meth-fueled rage.

If convicted, Drucker, 33, of McDonough could face the death penalty. Police 
say he gunned down David Andrew Robertson, 40, and Lora Nikolova, 25, after a 
brief quarrel in the kitchen of Robertson's house on April 5, 2004.

The first task for defense attorneys and prosecutors is to pare down a pool of 
about 130 potential jurors to a panel of 12 jurors and three alternates, a 
process that is expected to take about 2 weeks.

Drucker's father, the Rev. Doug Drucker, is expected to be a key witness in the 
case. The elder Drucker, a minister, reported the slayings to police after his 
son allegedly confessed to killing 2 people.

A co-defendant, Melissa Suzanne McCrayer, has cooperated with authorities and 
is also expected to testify against Drucker.

McCrayer has told prosecutors that she and Drucker used methamphetamine and 
drank alcoholic beverages before going to visit the victims, who were friends. 
When Drucker asked Robinson for methamphetamine, he allegedly became angry when 
Robinson offered only marijuana.

McCrayer said she heard a loud noise and turned to see Robinson crumple to the 
floor with a gunshot wound. Drucker shot Nikolova when she screamed and began 
hitting him, according to McCrayer's prior testimony in preliminary hearings.

McCrayer said she and Drucker fled with Robinson's gold necklace, cellphone and 
wallet and went on a 36-hour meth binge that included trips to a Mexican 
restaurant, a motel room in Sandy Springs and an Atlanta strip club before they 
were caught.

(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)



ARKANSAS:

Leaving death row not unusual overall but Damien Echols' departure a first in 
Arkansas


When Damien Echols went from death row to freedom in August, it struck some as 
miraculous.

"I've never before witnessed someone walking off death row," said Laura 
Nirider, one of Echols' attorneys. "It's surreal."

This was a first for Arkansas, said Shea Wilson, spokeswoman for the Arkansas 
Department of Correction.

"He's the only person (in the state) who has been on death row one day and the 
next day was a free man," she said.

Nationwide, the condemned have been freed at a higher frequency, though the 
number is in dispute.

Nirider, an attorney with the Chicago-based Center on Wrongful Convictions of 
Youth, said after helping to free Echols, one of the defendants known as the 
"West Memphis Three," she has refocused her efforts on an appeal in an Illinois 
case.

5 teens were convicted in the mid-1990s of raping and murdering a woman in that 
case, though the semen found on the victim didn't match any of the defendants. 
Nirider said the DNA since has been linked to a serial rapist.

"We've got other cases just as troubling, just as fascinating," though not as 
infamous as Echols' case, she said.

Through scientific advancements since the late 1980s, DNA evidence has led to 
the exoneration of 17 people in the U.S. who had been sentenced to die, said 
Paul Cates, spokesman for the Innocence Project in New York.

"The chances are extremely likely there are other people on death row who are 
innocent," he said.

The CWCY's parent organization, the Center on Wrongful Convictions, helps 
represent other cases in which there is no DNA evidence.

Rob Warden, executive director of the center, located at Northwestern 
University School of Law, said 138 death-row inmates have won their freedom 
with DNA or other evidence since 1973.

"In the vast majority of the cases, evidence came forward indicating that 
someone else committed the crimes," Warden said.

"I am convinced we have at least three more who were on death row who have not 
been exonerated," he said.

The numbers of the wrongfully condemned are likely inflated, said veteran 
prosecutor Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys 
Association in Arlington, Va.

"138? It's simply preposterous," Burns said.

"The whole goal of these groups is to do away with the death penalty to make 
the American public think we, as prosecutors, convict innocent people of murder 
all the time."

Burns said an analysis of individual cases would show that many who were freed 
likely relied on technicalities or lack of proof.

"There are a lot of people who are technically not guilty and are freed, but 
they sure as hell aren't innocent," he said.

Burns said he only sought the death penalty twice in his 16 years as a 
prosecutor in Utah. In both cases, savage killings, he got it.

"People think prosecutors want another notch on our belt," Burns said. "It's 
the last resort and is reserved for the worst of the worse."

In the Echols' case, prosecutors don't concede a mistake was made. Instead, 
they say they offered to accept a guilty plea for time served because they 
didn't think they had enough evidence to win another conviction in a new trial.

Warden said he doesn't count Echols in his numbers of the exonerated because 
Echols and his 2 co-defendants, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., 
technically pleaded guilty to murdering three 8-year-old West Memphis boys 
through an Alford Plea, a legal maneuver by which they maintain their innocence 
but agree to plead guilty because it's in their best interest.

Warden, convinced of the innocence of the West Memphis Three, called the 
prosecution's plea offer "a modern form of torture" because the defendants 
weren't exonerated.

"It's obviously disappointing that they couldn't get the full measure of 
justice that they deserved," Warden said.

The defendants blame their convictions on a false confession by Misskelley, who 
is borderline mentally retarded and claims police wore him down and fed him 
details of the crime scene.

Warden said his center completed a 2004 study of what went wrong in 111 
overturned death-penalty cases.

The No. 1 problem -- a factor in 45 % of the cases -- was faulty snitch 
testimony. That means either a jail inmate, codefendant or someone who feared 
charges opted to help prosecutors put away the defendant.

Other key problems included false confessions, misleading science and 
misidentifications by eyewitnesses.

(source: Memphis Commercial Appeal)






USA:

No 9/11 accused has gone to the gallows


In the 10 years since the traumatic 9/11 terror attacks, the United States has 
arrested nearly 3,000 on terrorism charges and convicted over 2,500, but not 
one accused has gone to the gallows.

It's not due to any great aversion to the death penalty among the Americans 
that terror suspects have escaped the death penalty as there is still support 
for capital punishment in the US and there are as many as 3,251 prisoners in 34 
of America's 50 states on the death row, according to Death Penalty Information 
Centre.

As of now, only 16 states do not have the death penalty. Since 1853, 10 states 
have abolished it, starting with Wisconsin. Wyoming followed in 1911, the 
capital city of Washington DC in 1981 and New York in 2007. Ten more are 
planning to do so.

Even so, since 1976, as many as 1,266 convicts have been executed, including 32 
this year. But all the executions have been for murders and not terrorism 
related crimes.

Given the uncertainties of the US justice system, President Barack Obama has 
largely focused on eliminating the leadership of the terror group held 
responsible for the 9/11 attack as part of his strategy to "disrupt, dismantle, 
and defeat Al Qaeda."

"The perpetrators of those attacks wanted to terrorise us, but they are no 
match for our resilience. Today, our country is more secure and our enemies are 
weaker," Obama wrote in an op-ed published in the USA Today ahead of tenth 
anniversary of the attacks.

"Yet while we have delivered justice to Osama bin Laden and put Al Qaeda on the 
path to defeat, we must never waver in the task of protecting our nation," he 
wrote without mentioning the May raid to kill the 9/11 mastermind in his 
hideout in Pakistan or a flurry of drone strikes to kill several others.

Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben 
Rhodes was more explicit in telling the foreign media that bin Laden's 
elimination was "a gigantic and both symbolic and operational victory" that 
"cemented a trend of leadership degradation" that continues.

Rhodes cited in particular the killing of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir born Ilyas 
Kashmiri, one of the top masterminds of the 2008 Mumbai attack in June and Al 
Qaeda's new deputy leader, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, in August in CIA drone 
strikes.

In all eight people charged with major terrorism crimes have been reported 
killed overseas. But in the courts, the US record has been somewhat mixed 
though the conviction rate has gone up tremendously.

Of the 196 among 345 terrorism cases brought to court since the Sep 11 attacks, 
178 have ended in convictions, either through a guilty plea or a jury's 
decision, according to a media report citing government documents.

About 8 dozen defendants are still awaiting trial and more than 50 defendants 
are fugitives overseas or being held by other countries awaiting extradition.

Apart from these, 775 detainees have been brought to Guantanamo detention camp 
established in 2002 by the Bush Administration within the Guantanamo Bay Naval 
Base on the Cuba island to hold and interrogate detainees from the war in 
Afghanistan and later Iraq.

Of these, most have been released without charge or transferred to facilities 
in their home countries and only 3 have been convicted by military court of 
various charges.

David Hicks was found guilty under retrospective legislation introduced in 2006 
of providing material support for terrorism in 2001. Salim Hamdan accepted a 
position on Osama bin Laden's personal staff as a chauffeur. Ali al-Bahlul made 
a video celebrating the attack on the USS Cole.

In March 2007, Pakistan born 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed 
during a secret hearing at Guantanamo: "I was responsible for the 9/11 
operation from A to Z."

A year later, the US Department of Defence charged Mohammed, Ramzi bin 
al-Shibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and Walid Bin Attash 
for the Sep 11 attacks under the military commission system.

But on Feb 5, 2009, charges against another person, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 
were dropped without prejudice following an order signed by Obama to suspend 
trials for 120 days as he announced plans to close the military detention 
facilities.

But with Congress posing "a chief obstacle to our efforts to close Guantanamo" 
as Rhodes said, and lawmakers opposing trials on the US mainland, Khalid Sheikh 
Mohammed and 15 other high-value detainees are still cooling their heels at the 
Cuba facility.

(source: New Kerala)






CALIFORNIA:

Romero may face death penalty in elderly murder case


The suspect in the killing a 100-year-old Sanger man could face the death 
penalty. David Anthony Romero is accused of killing Joe Fischer in early 
August. Romero was out of jail because of overcrowding at the time the crime 
was committed, and he's not the first murder suspect who had been released.

Romero turned his back to our camera Friday as his attorney entered a not 
guilty plea in the murder of 100-year-old Joe Fischer.

Police call the 47-year-old suspect a career criminal who bounced back and 
forth between the Los Angeles area and Fresno County. They say he returned to 
his family in Southern California after killing Fischer. That's when 
investigators got a break in the case.

"The suspect was actually delivered to the Torrance Police Department by family 
members and instructed to turn himself in," said Sanger Police Chief Thomas 
Klose.

Romero has a history with police in Southern California and in Fresno County. 
Three weeks before Fischer's death he was booked into the Fresno County jail 
for auto theft. He was then released because of overcrowding.

Fischer's sister is troubled by that decision. "Well that was kind of foolish, 
wasn't it with what he did?" she said. "If he'd been kept in jail, this would 
never have happened I guess."

Court records show Romero is at least the 3rd murder suspect released from the 
Fresno County jail before allegedly taking part in a murder. Jose Reyes was 
released three days before he was accused of being part of the team that robbed 
and killed Gary and Sandy Debartolo in Kerman in 2009. Leonard Roque was 
released two weeks before prosecutors say he stabbed a man to death on 
Blackstone earlier this year. Both murder suspects were previously charged with 
auto theft.

"99.9% of those people that are released early because of that do not commit 
murder," said Fresno County sheriff Margaret Mims. "I wish I had an instrument, 
some kind of measuring tool that could tell us who has the propensity to do 
that. But we don't have that tool."

Romero won't get out as easily this time around. He's in jail on a $1.01 
million bond. He's facing capital murder charges and potentially, the death 
penalty.

(source: ABC News)