[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, TENN., CONN., ARK., ILL., FLA.

[Rick Halperin]

March 6



TEXAS----impending execution

Man to die for killing wife and her boyfriendMMO<

Keith Thurmond seethed as his estranged wife moved in with a neighbor across 
the street from his Montgomery County home.

Then when deputies served him with a court order that took away his 8-year-old 
son and placed the boy in his mother's custody, Thurmond told a friend he was 
"very mad and was going to do something stupid."

On Wednesday evening, the 52-year-old Thurmond faces execution in Huntsville 
for fatally shooting his wife and the neighbor more than 10 years ago.

His lawyer has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the lethal injection.

It would be the 3rd execution this year in Texas.

(source: Associated Press)






TENNESSEE:

Court upholds conviction and death penalty for Nickolus Johnson


The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals rejected a request by convicted killer 
Nickolus Johnson to overturn his first degree murder conviction and death 
penalty.

Police said Johnson shot Bristol Tennessee Police Officer Mark Vance during a 
domestic violence call on November 27, 2004.

In the appeal, Johnson claimed several improprieties during the trial.

Here's the link to the full ruling issued Monday, March 5th, by the Tennessee 
Court of Criminal Appeals.

http://www.tncourts.gov/sites/default/files/johnsonnickolusopn.pdf

(source: TriCities.com)






FLORIDA----new death sentence

Kalisz gets death penalty in Hernando murders


John Kalisz, who shot and killed a Dixie County sheriff’s captain after a 
bloody rampage in Hernando County that left 2 women dead and 2 others clinging 
to life, was sentenced to death today for the Hernando crimes.

Karen Voyles/Gainesville Sun Kalisz, 57, already has been sentenced to life in 
prison for killing Capt. Chad Reed on Jan. 14, 2010 in a shootout on U.S. 19 in 
Cross City.

Reed had confronted Kalisz in a convenience store parking lot after he had been 
chased from the Brooksville crime scene. Kalisz was shot 6 times in the 
exchange of gunfire.

Kalisz received the death penalty from Circuit Judge Daniel Merritt Sr. for the 
murders of his sister, Kathryn “Kitty’’ Donovan, and her office manager, 
Deborah Tillotson, at Donovan’s home-based business.

He also shot his niece, Manessa Donovan, and Amy Green, at the Brooksville 
house.

On Jan. 23, a Hernando County jury found him guilty on all counts in just 96 
minutes. The jury later that week took only 57 minutes to recommend the death 
penalty.

Kalisz agreed to a plea bargain and admitted on Feb. 10, 2010 that he killed 
Reed in exchange for a sentence of life in prison without parole. Reed's widow, 
Holly, had agreed to the deal because she wanted to spare her 2 young sons from 
a painful trial and years of appeals.

(source: Gainesville Sun)






CONNECTICUT:

Prison guards train for possibility of execution


Even as state lawmakers debate whether to abolish the death penalty, prison 
guards have been training for an execution.

Correction Commissioner Leo C. Arnone said the training began after he heard 
that a Death Row inmate might waive his appeals. So he asked Correction 
Department officials what they would do if they had to execute one of the 
state’s 11 Death Row inmates. They told him they didn’t know, he said.

The state’s last execution occurred 7 years ago in 2005, when serial killer 
Michael Ross waived his appeals and was put to death by lethal injection.

Only 2 members of the team involved in that execution still are working for the 
state, Arnone said.

It’s unclear whether any Correction Department employees continued training for 
executions after the Ross execution.

Death row is at Northern Correctional Institution in Somers. The execution 
chambers are at the adjacent Osborn Correctional Institution.

Arnone said he’s looking to federal guidelines and studying execution practices 
in other states. At least one state employee traveled to Texas last year to 
witness an execution there. Texas employs a similar method to Connecticut’s 
lethal injection, Arnone said.

Correction Department spokesman Brian Garnett said Monday that the training is 
part of keeping up with state rules.

“The department has an obligation to ensure that we maintain a high level of 
proficiency in our ability to carry out the law, and that is what we’re in the 
process of doing,” he said.

Garnett declined to say how many employees traveled to Texas, how much the trip 
cost, or whether any other money has been spent on training. He also wouldn’t 
say how many employees were involved and whether the state had spent any money 
on other materials as a result of the training.

The training started almost a year ago, Garnett said.

The training comes as lawmakers debate repealing the death penalty for future 
crimes — a measure critics say would halt all executions in the state. Gov. 
Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat, has said he would sign such a bill.

The measure failed to clear the Senate last year after Dr. William A. Petit 
Jr., the only survivor of the Cheshire home invasion in which his wife and 2 
daughters were murdered, met with lawmakers to persuade them not to abolish the 
death penalty.

Should the measure come before the Senate this year, it’s expected to be 
another close vote. Meanwhile, supporters and opponents of repealing the death 
penalty said the training is in keeping with the law .

Rep. Gary A. Holder-Winfield, D-New Haven, has led in the effort to repeal the 
death penalty. “I don’t think we’re going to execute anyone, but the current 
law is that we do execute,” he said.

Sen. John A. Kissel, R-Enfield, opposes repealing the death penalty. His 
district includes death row and the execution chambers. “I would guess that 
they have to be ready for that at all times,” he said.

Kissel said that some death row inmates could be nearing the end of their 
appeals. Some have been there for more than 20 years, and little has happened 
in their appeals in the last 5 years, he said.

He acknowledged the state Senate could have enough votes to repeal the death 
penalty for future crimes — historically, the measure has had the votes to 
clear the House of Representatives but not the Senate. But Kissel warned that 
he and other Republicans could filibuster to block the move, saying the debate 
could take as long as 2 days.

“We have a great caucus,” he said. “I think the vast majority of my colleagues 
on the Republican side feel very strongly on this.”

Kissel also has argued that even if the law limits repealing the death penalty 
to future crimes, it could end executions altogether. That’s because a judge 
could decide the death penalty is a “cruel and unusual punishment,” he said, 
based on “evolving society standards.”

“They will look at the law, even though it is prospective, and use it to show 
that the societal standards of Connecticut have changed,” Kissel said.

Union officials also have given the execution training the OK, Salvatore 
Luciano, executive director of the American Federation of State, County, and 
Municipal Employees Council 4, said. His union represents prison guards.

The Correction Department cleared the change with the union, and the employees 
preparing for executions are a volunteer-only force, he said.

(source: Journal Inquirer)






ARKANSAS:

State Supreme Court Rejects Death-Row Inmate’s Appeal


The state Supreme Court today rejected the latest appeal by a Fort Smith man 
sentenced to die for stabbing his estranged wife to death on a city street.

The high court upheld Thomas Leo Springs’ capital murder conviction and death 
sentence in the Jan. 21, 2005, slaying of Christina Springs, rejecting his 
argument that he received ineffective counsel at his trial in Sebastian County 
Circuit Court.

Christina Springs was riding in the front passenger seat of a car driven by her 
sister when Thomas Springs rammed his vehicle into the car at a busy Fort Smith 
intersection. Thomas Springs then got out of his vehicle, shattered the 
passenger window of his sister-in-law’s car, began beating his wife’s face into 
the dashboard, then went back to his car and retrieved a knife which he used to 
stab his wife repeatedly.

Springs, 49, argued on appeal that his trial attorneys, Chief Public Defender 
John Joplin and Cash Haaser, a deputy public defender, were ineffective 
because:

—They failed to interview his son and failed to call his son as a witness 
during the penalty phase.

—They failed to object to “gross misstatements of the law of mitigation” made 
by then-Prosecuting Attorney Steve Tabor during closing arguments.

—They failed to object to testimony that Springs had threatened a jailer while 
awaiting trial.

—They failed to object to the introduction of written victim-impact statements.

—They failed to question prospective jurors about possible bias related to the 
fact that Springs is black and his wife was white.

—They failed to explain properly Springs’ right to present unfavorable 
testimony about his wife during the penalty phase, resulting in Springs 
unknowingly waiving his right to present that evidence.

In its unanimous opinion today, the Supreme Court said Springs did not 
establish a reasonable probability that the testimony of his son or a different 
description of the law of mitigation would have resulted in a different 
sentence.

Regarding Springs’ other arguments, the court said Springs did not show that 
his attorneys’ actions fell outside the bounds of reasonable professional 
judgment. Springs supported many of his arguments with conclusory statements 
instead of citing specific acts and omissions constituting ineffective counsel, 
the court said.

“Conclusory statements cannot be the basis of post-conviction relief,” Justice 
Donald Corbin wrote in the opinion.

The Supreme Court rejected a previous appeal by Springs of his conviction and 
sentence in December 2006

(source: Booneville Democrat)






ILLINOIS:

Convicted Killer William Heirens Dies After Over 65 Years In Prison


William Heirens, the so-called “Lipstick Killer” jailed for more than 65 years 
after confessing to the murders of three women and a 6-year-old girl around the 
end of World War II, has died in prison.

Heirens, 83, was found unresponsive in his cell at Dixon Correctional Center, 
and was taken to the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center, where he 
was pronounced dead at 8:45 p.m. Monday, officials told the Sun-Times Media 
Wire.

He had been suffering from renal failure and hypertension, reports WBBM 
Newsradio’s Bernie Tafoya.

Heirens was the longest-serving inmate ever in Illinois. He was convicted first 
of the 1945 slayings of Frances Brown, 32, and Josephine Ross, 43, in their 
apartments in Uptown and East Lakeview, respectively. He was also convicted of 
the dismemberment of 6-year-old Suzanne Degnan, of the Edgewater neighborhood, 
the following year.

Heirens was known as the “Lipstick Killer” because of a message scrawled in 
lipstick in Brown’s apartment, at 3941 N. Pine Grove Ave. in the East Lakeview 
neighborhood: “For heavens sake catch me before I kill more. I cannot control 
myself.”

At the time, Heirens was 17 and attending college at the University of Chicago. 
He was sentenced to 3 life prison terms.

But there have been nagging doubts about Heirens’ convictions for decades.

In 1995, attorney Jed Stone told CBS 2 that a reexamination of the case showed 
that fingerprint evidence used against Heirens was “fraudulent” and may have 
been planted at one of the murder scenes by police. Experts also said 
handwriting samples used against Heirens were not actually his.

Heirens himself maintained all along that he confessed only because authorities 
said he would get the death penalty if he did not.

Heirens told CBS 2’s Walter Jacobson in 1988 that he decided to confess “when 
they told me I wasn’t going to get a fair trial – they said, ‘There is no 
possibility you are going to get a fair trial.’ Back in ’46 at 17, I wanted to 
live.”

But WBBM Newsrasdio’s Regine Schlesinger reports Suzanne Degnan’s older sister, 
Betty Finn, says she never had a moment’s doubt that he strangled Suzanne and 
threw her sister’s dismembered body parts into sewers around her home on 
Kenmore Avenue.

“We outlived him,” said Finn, who was just 10 years when her sister was 
kidnapped from her bend and brutally murdered.

Year after year, Finn has gone before the prisoner review board to oppose 
parole for him.

“(It’s) very painful to have to do that. But we just felt that if we didn’t do 
it – my brother and I – and he got out and some child was hurt, we just 
couldn’t live with that,” she said.

Heirens was most recently up for parole in 2007, but it was denied.

Finn says she can breathe much easier now that she knows she’ll never have to 
again publicly relive the horror of what Heirens did.

(source: CBS News)






FLORIDA----new death sentence

Man gets death penalty for double-murder


A Tampa Bay area man has been sentenced to death for killing his sister and 
another woman.

A Hernando County judge followed a jury's recommendation Tuesday in sentencing 
57-year-old John Kalisz. He was convicted in January of two counts of 
1st-degree murder, 2 counts of attempted murder and 1 count of armed burglary.

Authorities say Kalisz killed his sister, Kathryn Donovan, and her office 
manager, Deborah Tillotson, and wounded 2 others at a Brooksville home in 
January 2010. He killed Dixie County sheriff's Capt. Chad Reed in a shootout 
later the same day in Cross City.

Kalisz received a life sentence as part of a deal with prosecutors last year 
after pleading guilty to killing the deputy.

(source: Associated Press)