[Deathpenalty] [SPAM] death penalty news----MISS., PENN., USA, CALIF., N.C., ARIZ./OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

March 19


MISSISSIPPI----impending executions

2 executions scheduled in Mississippi


Mississippi authorities are preparing to execute two men this week: a one-time 
Eagle Scout convicted of sexually assaulting and killing his former boss' wife 
and a paroled murderer convicted of raping and beating a woman and then killing 
her by running her over with his car.

Larry "Matt" Puckett, 35, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection 
Tuesday for the 1995 death of Rhonda Hatten Griffis of Forrest County. William 
Mitchell, 61, is scheduled for execution Thursday in the death of Patty 
Milliken, who was killed in Harrison County the same year.

Puckett had become an Eagle School in high school and graduated just months 
before he was charged with killing Griffis, a 28-year-old mother of 2. He was 
preparing to enter the Navy at the time.

Griffis was sexually assaulted and killed in her home on October 14, 1995. On 
that day, Griffis' mother, Nancy Hatten, heard a "scream and a thud" coming 
from her daughter's house next door and found Puckett inside holding a club, 
court records said. Puckett went after the mother with the club, but Griffis' 
husband had just arrived and Puckett fled after a brief struggle, court records 
said.

Griffis' husband went to get a gun and found his wife's body.

Puckett was caught two days later. He told investigators that he had gone to 
the Griffis' house to burglarize it, and he claimed Griffis' husband killed the 
woman in a jealous rage. Puckett's friends and family also say he is innocent 
and started online petitions to collect signatures to support him.

Griffis' mother said it doesn't matter what Puckett says about being innocent: 
"He did it."

"I caught him in her house with the club in his hand," Hatten told The 
Associated Press. "Her husband wasn't anywhere on the premises at the time. He 
drove up later."

Hatten described her daughter as a woman who deeply loved her husband and 
children and stayed busy taking care of them.

An only child, Griffis was nearly finished with college when she became 
pregnant and dropped out to make a home. She hoped someday to finish her degree 
in social work at the University of Southern Mississippi.

"She loved us and helped us and did what she could do for us," Hatten said. 
"She was always a joy to us."

Puckett was sentenced to death on Aug. 5, 1996. He has spent some of his time 
on death row writing essays for websites and contemplating his death.

"Now picture yourself surrounded by big burly men with firm grips on you as 
they direct you to the execution chamber. The excitement and base fear course 
through you like no other time in your life. You sweat, you pant, you want them 
to stop. They won't, they can't, the whole process is inexorable," he wrote. 
"Ironically, at the moment of your death your body proves to you are the most 
alive."

Puckett filed a petition Wednesday asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block his 
execution. Puckett's lawyers argued that prosecutors kept blacks off the jury 
and his former attorneys never properly challenged his conviction and sentence 
on those grounds during his appeals.

Puckett is white. The jury was all white.

Puckett's attorney, Keir Weyble, said "there were real, serious constitutional 
violations at Matt's trial — the kind that usually require reversal and 
re-trial."

"Among other things, the proof of race discrimination in the selection of the 
jury is overwhelming, and the state has never even seriously contested it," 
Weyble said.

Glenn Swartzfager, an attorney for Mitchell, said in an email Friday evening 
that he planned to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to block the execution. He 
declined further comment.

Mitchell, 61, had been out prison on parole for less than a year for a 1975 
murder when he was charged with raping and killing Milliken, a 38-year-old 
store clerk.

As a young adult, Mitchell had served in the Army but by the 1990s, he had a 
long criminal record and had spent much of his adult life behind bars. He was 
charged twice with beating women in 1973. In 1974 he was charged with killing a 
family friend and stabbing her daughter.

On Nov. 21, 1995, Milliken disappeared after walking out of the Majik Mart 
convenience store where she worked in Biloxi to have a cigarette with Mitchell. 
Her body was found the next day under a bridge. She had been "strangled, 
beaten, sexually assaulted, and repeatedly run over by a vehicle," according to 
court records.

Dr. Paul McGarry performed the autopsy and testified that there were f5 tire 
tracks on her body.

"According to McGarry, Milliken apparently lived long enough to experience the 
crushing injuries that ruptured her kidney, liver, and spleen; broke almost 
every rib; broke her spine; broke her collarbone; and, tore open her lungs and 
heart vessels," court records said.

The AP was unsuccessful in attempts to find and interview Milliken's relatives.

Executions in Mississippi take place at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at 
Parchman at 6 p.m. on the date for which they are scheduled.

An anti-death penalty group called Mississippians Educating for Smart Justice 
is planning a rally Monday at the state Capitol for the men.

(source: NEMS360.com)

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

Killer set to die Thursday----Coast man on death row since 1998 for slaying of 
woman


A Coast man will be executed Thursday for the murder of a Biloxi store clerk 
who was beaten, strangled, sexually assaulted and still alive when she was run 
over with a car in 1995.

William “Jerry” Mitchell, 61, is scheduled to be the second killer put to death 
by lethal injection in a week at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at 
Parchman.

Mitchell has been on death row since 1998, when a Harrison County jury found 
him guilty in the slaying of 38-year-old Patty Milliken. He was on parole for a 
previous murder when a Biloxi police officer found Milliken’s body, nude and 
mutilated, under the Popp’s Ferry Bridge on Nov. 22, 1995.

Milliken had lived in Gulfport a couple of years and was a cashier at a Majik 
Market on Popp’s Ferry Road. The mother of 4 disappeared from the store near 
the end of her shift.

Milliken had called her son to tell him she would be home in 15 minutes, and 
stepped outside the store to smoke a cigarette with Mitchell, court papers 
show. A few minutes later, a co-worker cut his finger and went outside to get 
Milliken to relieve him while he bandaged it.

Milliken had disappeared, but her purse, car keys and cigarettes were still in 
the store. Her co-worker reported her missing.

Officer Tim McKaig, now a detective, went looking for Mitchell that night to 
question him about the disappearance. There was no reason to believe she had 
been killed, and a camera crew from “Coast Justice,” a locally produced 
reality-based TV series aired on WXXV, was following police work.

McKaig testified he found Mitchell in the backyard at his father’s house on 
Croesus Street. “Before I could say anything,” McKaig said, “he said, ‘Who’s 
there?’ and I said, ‘Police. I just want to talk to you,’ and he ran.”

Mitchell sped off in his Pontiac Grand Am. Police saw his car at a U.S. 90 gas 
station, and he sped off again with five police cars pursuing him. His car 
crashed into a chain-link fence near the CSX railroad tracks and Caillavet 
Street. The “Coast Justice” crew filmed it.

Mitchell was on parole for the 1974 murder of Irene Edwards, also killed in 
Harrison County. He had stabbed her to death with 2 butcher knives when he was 
home from college 1 weekend.

>From missing to murdered

The morning after Milliken disappeared, a police officer who had heard of a 
missing woman stopped under the Popp’s Ferry Bridge to look for her. He found 
her body under the north end of the bridge.

(source: Biloxi Sun Herald)






PENNSYLVANIA:

Pennsylvania and the Death Penalty


In the past year, the appalling injustice of Pennsylvania’s death penalty 
system has been the subject of review and debate among the state judiciary, 
lawyers and the media. 2 new judicial reports and a recent death sentence for 
an indigent defendant in Philadelphia further bolster the case to abolish the 
system.

In February, a report by a Philadelphia judge ordered by the Pennsylvania 
Supreme Court found that the amount the city has long paid court-appointed 
private lawyers in death cases is “grossly inadequate” and has increased “the 
risk of ineffective counsel.” A RAND study in December similarly found that low 
pay and lack of support for court-appointed lawyers in Philadelphia were 
significant factors in inadequate legal representation. The consequences have 
played out in legal appeals: of the state’s capital convictions since 1976, 32 
percent were reversed or sent back for new hearings because of errors by 
lawyers, according to an investigation by The Philadelphia Inquirer last 
October.

Another Philadelphia judge issued an order late last month suspending the work 
of a committee of judges and lawyers charged with identifying lawyers qualified 
to represent death penalty defendants. The committee came up with 12 names, 
which the judge said was “insufficient to meet the immediate needs.” He stopped 
the committee from doing further work, and, expressing frustration, put the 
task in the hands of a single judge.

On Feb. 29, a Philadelphia jury sentenced Derrick White to death for murder — 
in part because his lawyers provided the kind of ineffective counsel that has 
drawn harsh criticism for decades in the city.

Barely 20 when arrested in 2010, Mr. White received a death sentence after his 
lawyers failed to take the most rudimentary steps for capital cases. They did 
not enter as evidence records about his background or hire a death penalty 
expert to help prepare the case. The closing argument about whether he deserved 
death or life without parole was rambling and all but pointless, lasting 15 
minutes.

Although Pennsylvania has carried out only 3 executions since 1976, its system 
is no less barbaric for that fact. 205 inmates are on death row. The White case 
underscores the state’s continuing failure to meet constitutional standards in 
capital cases. It is well past time for the state to stop its machinery of 
death.

(source: Editorial, New York Times)






USA:

Federal funds help crime labs struggling with DNA evidence backlogs


12 years ago, Congress passed a bill aimed at bolstering the capacity of state 
and local crime labs. It was known as the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act. 
The ensuing effort now bears the more modest title of DNA Backlog Reduction 
Program. But even with the new name, it is an ambitious venture.

Since 2006, Congress has poured $785 million into helping fix the logjam in DNA 
evidence collection at the state and local levels through this and other 
programs.

There’s no question that a serious problem exists. Recent advances in science 
and technology have made DNA a more useful tool for convicting the guilty and 
exonerating the innocent, but major backlogs persist, despite broad 
acknowledgment that delays in processing DNA evidence are keeping criminals on 
the streets.

“A lot of it is supply and demand,” said Kermit Channel, director of the 
Arkansas State Crime Laboratory. “Because the technology offers so much more 
today than even 5 or 6 years ago, law enforcement is asking for more and more 
from us.”

Federal help is making a difference. Between 2004 and 2010, the Backlog 
Reduction Program, run by the National Institute of Justice, has funded 
completion of 172,761 cases and significantly increased state and local DNA 
laboratory capacity. Channel credits federal funding with dramatically reducing 
the Arkansas backlog — which peaked at 18,000 cases in 2005 — to 4,200 now.

“Without those funding sources, we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are 
today,” Channel said. Federal grants have allowed the state to invest in more 
sophisticated equipment that sorts through evidence faster, as well as nine 
additional staff members to process the evidence.

Still, while the crime lab is now able to stay up to date with homicides and 
sexual assaults, property crimes remain a major driver of the state’s backlog. 
Processing evidence of property crimes is critical, Channel said, not just for 
solving those offenses but also for investigating others that may have been 
committed by the same person.

This is because in addition to analyzing DNA evidence recovered from crime 
scenes, crime labs maintain databases that hold DNA profiles of certain 
convicted offenders. State and local DNA databases and the national DNA 
database, connected through the FBI-run Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, 
have become important tools for solving crimes in cases for which there are no 
suspects. As of January 2012, CODIS had led to 171,800 “hits” or matches and 
assisted in more than 165,100 investigations, according to the FBI.

As the utility of DNA databases in solving crimes has become apparent, state 
policies have expanded to require that more DNA be collected and processed for 
inclusion in those databases. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo helped pushed througha 
bill that would require DNA from any person convicted of almost any crime to be 
included in a database, and about half of states now include DNA from arrestees 
who have not been convicted of crimes.

While inclusion of additional offenders and arrestees has made CODIS more 
useful, it has also clogged crime labs and raised concerns about privacy for 
individuals who have not been convicted, said Sara Katsanis, a researcher at 
Duke University’s Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy.

(source: Washington Post)






CALIFORNIA:

California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty


When my aunt was murdered by her own son, my cousin Manuel, the local DA pushed 
for a death sentence against my family's wishes. I know what it’s like when a 
DA just doesn’t listen.

Now, District Attorneys are turning a deaf ear on California voters. Even 
though SAFE California submitted more than enough signatures to qualify for the 
November ballot, each and every day, 58 District Attorneys continue to wield 
the power of death sentences in every county across California.

That’s why I’m speaking out to urge every California District Attorney to stop 
seeking death sentences until voters can decide for themselves this November.

I first heard about my aunt’s murder while watching the evening news in 
Spanish. Manuel was in the midst of a psychotic break related to a terrible 
illness. But we never got the sympathetic calls that we expected from 
authorities. Instead, we got a low blow from a DA who wanted the death penalty.

We couldn’t afford a private attorney so we worked day and night alongside 
public defenders. Eventually the obvious became clear to everyone -- including 
the DA -- and Manuel was sentenced to spend the rest of his life locked up. It 
may sound strange, but that was a gift for my family.

This November, the people of California should have the same opportunity to 
choose real justice over the death penalty's hollow promise. In the meantime, I 
hope you'll join me to ask California’s District Attorneys to hear voters out 
before seeking any more death sentences.

Death penalty trials re-open deep wounds for families like mine with court 
dates, autopsy photos, and reenactments. More often than not, cases end with an 
inmate’s death from old age or natural causes even after families are forced to 
revisit terrible events and even if a family does not want it. It’s just not 
right.

Life in prison without the possibility of parole offers real justice for 
victims -- justice that is sure and swift. Trials with a sentence of life 
without parole are over in a matter of months. SAFE California also requires 
inmates to work in high-security prison and to pay restitution into a victims’ 
compensation fund. And it sets aside $100 million in budget savings to solve 
some of the many unsolved rape and murder cases and to protect our families.

The people of California will decide on November 6, 2012 whether to keep the 
hollow promise of our broken death penalty, or replace it with life in prison 
with no chance of parole. California's DAs must listen.

~~~~

Deldelp's aunt was murdered by her own son, Deldelp's first cousin. Deldelp is 
now the Northern California Outreach Coordinator for California Crime Victims 
for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and a spokesperson for the SAFE 
California campaign to replace the death penalty with life in prison without 
parole.

(source: California Progress Report)

**********

Panel Throws Out Orange County Man’s Death Sentence


The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Friday tossed out the second death 
sentence imposed on a former Newport Beach resident for a 1977 drug-related 
murder near Fresno.

The panel said Richard L. Phillips was denied a fair trial with respect to the 
death penalty because the prosecutor allowed Phillips’ ex-girlfriend to testify 
falsely that she received no benefits in exchange for her testimony.

The ruling leaves Phillips’ conviction for the first-degree murder of Bruce 
Bartulis intact. Judge Stephen Reinhardt, writing for the panel, said Phillips 
would have been convicted regardless of Susan Colman’s testimony, but that 
jurors might not have accepted the prosecution’s special-circumstance 
felony-murder theory if it knew that Phillips had escaped criminal charges by 
testifying.

Phillips was already one of the state’s longest-serving death row inmates in 
2001, when the Ninth Circuit ordered a district judge to reconsider his claims 
of ineffective assistance of counsel and prosecutorial misconduct.

He was sentenced to death in 1980 for the murder. He was also convicted of the 
attempted murder of Ronald Rose.

The prosecution’s case was built on the testimony of Rose and Colman. The 
evidence was that Phillips met the victims when they were building in his 
neighborhood and offered to let them in on a cocaine deal for $25,000 each, and 
also offered to supply them with stolen housing insulation.

The 2 paid him part of the money and agreed to bring more. At a roadside 
meeting off Highway 99 in Madera County, however, Phillips shot the 2 men, then 
poured gasoline on their car and on them and set it afire.

Rose, despite being badly burned and shot five times, got out of the car and 
started running. Phillips struck him with the car, and then drove off, but Rose 
survived.

Phillips was arrested several months later in Salt Lake City. Authorities 
seized a letter he wrote from jail that appeared to order the recipient to kill 
Phillips’ mother, who planned to testify for the prosecution, and to harm or 
kill other witnesses.

Phillips claimed he was being framed. He said he was in Sacramento at the time 
of the crimes.

The California Supreme Court upheld his convictions but overturned his death 
sentence in December 1985, citing evidentiary errors, including the admission 
of the letter.

While awaiting a 2nd penalty trial, Phillips brought a series of habeas corpus 
petitions challenging the guilty verdict and special-circumstance finding. In 
one, he claimed that prosecutors had withheld statements by Colman that there 
had been “a mutual shoot-out” involving Phillips and the victims.

Phillips’ trial lawyer, Paul Martin, testified that had he known of the 
statements, he might have argued “an alternative defense of self-defense and 
mutual shoot-out” instead of presenting the defendant’s alibi. The judge, 
however, denied relief, finding that Martin had the statements.

At the 2nd penalty trial in 1995, the defense claimed that the bullet that 
killed Bartulis was fired by Rose.

Phillips admitted lying at the first trial. He said he never planned to rob the 
victims, that there had been a shoot-out, and that he saw a revolver in Rose’s 
hand.

After the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the second death sentence, Phillips 
brought his federal habeas corpus petition. Reversing course from his 
previously denied state petition, Phillips’ lawyers now argued that Martin knew 
of Colman’s statements and should have used them to present a case based on the 
supposed shoot-out instead of the “hopeless” alibi defense.

Prosecutors responded that Martin had presented a “stellar” defense. They also 
offered a declaration from Martin in which he did his own reversal of course 
and swore that he would not have presented the “shoot-out” defense in any event 
because he couldn’t have done so without presenting false testimony.

He said in the same declaration that he “never thought Phillips’s alibi defense 
had any merit.”

Senior District Judge Robert Coyle denied the petition originally, without an 
evidentiary hearing. After the Ninth Circuit remanded, he held a new hearing, 
based on depositions, and then again denied relief.

Reinhardt, writing Friday for the same panel, said Coyle acted within his 
discretion in relying on depositions rather than live testimony to reconsider 
the petition. He also said that while the alibi defense was “ill-advised,” 
Martin did explain to the defendant that it was unlikely to succeed given 
Phillips’ refusal to provide specifics, and did locate a witness who partially 
corroborated the defense, so the tactical choice was reasonable under the 
circumstances.

But the judge concluded that absent the “deplorable” conduct of then-Madera 
County District Attorney David Minier, jurors might have, and likely would 
have, concluded that Colman lacked credibility. This in turn, might have led to 
acceptance of the defense argument that theft of the victims’ wallets was not 
part of a robbery plot, but rather a theft incident to the murder, making the 
special circumstance of felony murder inapplicable.

Minier later became a Madera Superior Court, and is now retired.

“Over the course of his habeas proceedings Phillips has established that, 
contrary to her testimony and Minier’s statements, Colman was offered and 
received significant benefits from the state in exchange for testifying as she 
did,” including immunity from prosecution in connection with the case, 
Reinhardt said. Minier, he added, violated due process both by failing to 
disclose the benefits to the defense, and by allowing Colman to testify falsely 
that she didn’t receive anything for her testimony.

Senior Judge Betty B. Fletcher concurred.

Senior Judge Andrew Kleinfeld dissented from the reversal, arguing that there 
was “overwhelming evidence” that Phillips intended to rob the two men, as well 
as to kill them.

The case is Phillips v. Ornoski, 04-99005.

(source: Metropolitan News-Enterprise)



NORTH CAROLINA:

Springsteen addresses death penalty on Greensboro stop


Bruce Springsteen is coming to Greensboro, and although music is the order of 
the day, he'll be doing more than playing his hits.

The famous rocker is also lending his support to People of Faith Against the 
Death Penalty, a national group based in Carrboro. Springsteen donated 4 
tickets and side-stage passes for Monday's concert in the Greensboro Coliseum 
to the group, which sold them as a fundraiser.

The organization also will have a table to distribute literature at the 
coliseum and will collect donations and petition signatures.

Stephen Dear, the group's executive director, says Springsteen has given the 
group similar support at past concert tour stops in North Carolina.

Among Springsteen's famous songs is the Oscar-nominated "Dead Man Walking," 
written for the anti-death penalty film of the same name.

(source: Associated Press)






ARIZONA/OHIO:

Competency and death-row challenges


The Supreme Court a quarter century ago ruled that it would be unconstitutional 
to execute an insane individual, and it decided in 2002 to extend that ban to 
the mentally retarded. Earlier, in 1966, it had ruled that federal courts 
should not allow a death-row inmate to give up any legal challenges while he 
was mentally ill. But the Court has never decided whether an individual has any 
right, under the Constitution or any federal law, to actually be competent in 
order to take part in a federal habeas review of his case or to have the case 
put off indefinitely. On Monday, it agreed to rule on those issues, accepting 
new cases from Arizona and Ohio.

Those were the only cases granted review following last week’s private 
Conference. In another significant order, the Court refused, without comment, 
to allow the state of Louisiana to pursue directly before the Justices its 
claim that the Census Bureau acts unconstitutionally when it counts 
undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Louisiana contended that including 
those without a legal right to remain in the country as part of the U.S. 
population gives states with a high percentage of such immigrants an unfair 
right to added seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The case was 
Louisiana, et al., v. Bryson, et al. (docket 140 Original). The Court’s refusal 
to hold a trial on that issue does not bar Louisiana from seeking to raise it 
in a lower federal court.

The Justices’ agreement to take on 2 new death-row cases brings the Court back 
to an exploration of the rights of individuals who have been sentenced to death 
in murder cases and then are found to be mentally incompetent. If they are 
actually insane, they cannot be executed, under the Court’s 1986 decision in 
Ford v. Wainwright. The mentally retarded were also shielded from execution by 
the 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia. Those rulings meant flat bans on the 
death penalty. But the Court has not sorted out what other legal rights the 
mentally ill on death row have when, having failed in challenges in state 
court, they turn to federal courts to press their legal claims.

Officials in 17 states joined in urging the Court to spell out what a federal 
court is to do in a habeas case when a death-row inmate is found to be 
incapable — because of a mental defect — of helping out his lawyers in pursuing 
a habeas challenge. State officials object to having such a case put on hold 
indefinitely, because it leaves the state uncertain about whether it can carry 
out death sentences. Such cases, they argue, should proceed to decisions on 
whether the inmate has any valid complaint about his state trial, and do so 
whether the inmate takes part or not.

Ohio officials, in their appeal in one of the two new cases, argued that a 
Sixth Circuit Court ruling ordering an indefinite delay will bring “Ohio’s 
capital litigation to a halt. Under the Sixth Circuit’s extraordiinarily loose 
standards, any prisoner can make a minimal showing of incompetence, demand a 
hearing, and secure an indefinite stay of his habeas proceedings.”

That argument came in Tibbals v. Carter (docket 11-218), urging the Supreme 
Court to clarify what it meant in in a seldom-cited ruling decades ago in the 
case of Rees v. Peyton. In its initial ruling in that case, in 1966, the Court 
ordered a competency hearing for Virginia death-row inmate Melvin Davis Rees, 
Jr., before it would decide whether to allow him to withdraw his court 
challenge. In a brief order about a year later, it put the case on hold 
indefinitely, and never again returned to it. Rees died in prison in 1995.

The Sixth Circuit interpreted the Rees decision, together with a federal law 
allowing judges to order competency hearings for an accused individual before 
proceeding with a trial, as creating a statutory right to be competent during a 
habeas proceeding after a state conviction had become final. But the Circuit 
Court said there was no constitutional right to be competent during state 
death-penalty proceedings. It ordered an indefinite delay in a habeas case 
involving Sean Carter, who was sentenced to death for murdering his 68-year-old 
adoptive grandmother in 1997. After his state conviction became final, Carter 
had sought a federal habeas remedy, but later was ruled by a federal judge to 
be mentally incompetent to deal with his lawyers.

The Supreme Court on Monday granted Ohio’s petition in that case, and in a 
separate order, aslo accepted review of Ryan v. Gonzalez (10-930), an appeal by 
Arizona officials supported by 15 other states. In that case, the Ninth Circuit 
Court found a right to be mentally competent during habeas proceedings, based 
on a different federal law than the one cited by the Sixth Circuit in the 
Carter case. The law at issue in the case of Ernest Valencia Gonzalez, an 
Arizona death-row inmate, was a statute that provides a right to a lawyer for a 
state prison inmate who is too poor to afford one in a federal habeas case. 
Gonzalez, sentenced to death for a 1990 murder, later raised an issue of his 
competence. When state officials took the case on to the Supreme Court, 
Gonzalez had not yet had a competency hearing, but his habeas was was on hold.

The Supreme Court last year asked the Justice Department to provide the federal 
government’s views on the Arizona petition. U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. 
Verrilli, Jr., replied that, while the government disagreed with the Ninth 
Circuit’s view that there was a right to be competent during a habeas case and 
its view that the individual claiming incompetence had a right to an indefinite 
delay of his case, the Gonzalez case was not a proper one for review of the 
issue. He cited the fact that Gonzales’s competence had not yet been 
established, and other procedural limitations.

The Justices, however, granted the Arizona officials’ petition. Both of the new 
cases will be argued and decided in the case starting October 1.

(source: SCOTUS blog)

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

Court to hear Ohio appeal over death penalty delay


The Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals from 2 states objecting to federal 
court-ordered delays for death row inmates claiming serious mental health 
issues.

The justices said Monday they will take up the cases from Arizona and Ohio in 
the fall.

In each case, a death row inmate won an indefinite delay from federal judges 
based on disputed claims of mental incompetence to understand the proceedings 
against him and aid in his own defense.

Sean Carter was sentenced to death for raping and killing his adoptive 
grandmother in 1997. Ernest Valencia Gonzales received a death sentence for a 
murder in Arizona in 1990.

The cases are Ryan v. Gonzales, 10-930, and Tibbals v. Carter, 11-218.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Court to hear Ariz., Ohio appeals


The Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals from 2 states objecting to federal 
court-ordered delays for death row inmates claiming serious mental health 
issues.

The justices said Monday they will take up the cases from Arizona and Ohio in 
the fall.

In each case, a death row inmate won an indefinite delay from federal judges 
based on disputed claims of mental incompetence to understand the proceedings 
against him and aid in his own defense.

Sean Carter was sentenced to death for raping and killing his adoptive 
grandmother in 1997. Ernest Valencia Gonzales received a death sentence for a 
murder in Arizona in 1990.

The cases are Ryan v. Gonzales, 10-930, and Tibbals v. Carter, 11-218.

(source: Huffington Post)

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

Supreme Court to hear death row mental competency cases


The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it would decide whether a federal law on 
the appointment of attorneys requires that death row inmates have their legal 
proceedings put on hold if they are mentally incompetent to assist their 
lawyers.

The justices agreed to hear a pair of cases from Arizona and Ohio and decide 
the reach of a law that provides that a poor death row inmate pursuing a 
federal appeal after conviction be entitled to the appointment of attorneys.

The Obama administration took the position in one of the cases that federal 
courts have the inherent authority to put such proceedings on hold if the 
inmate was mentally incompetent.

Administration lawyers said the law at issue neither categorically requires nor 
rules out a stay of such proceedings. It said the law provided for the 
appointment of an attorney but does not guarantee a right of mental competence 
to assist the counsel in post-conviction appeals.

The case from Arizona involved Ernest Gonzales, who in 1991 was convicted of 
murder and sentenced to death. In 1999, he filed a federal habeas appeal and an 
attorney from the public defender's office was appointed to represent him under 
the federal law.

His attorneys said in 2006 that he had become mentally incompetent and was 
unable to assist them in the case. A U.S. court of appeals then put the 
proceedings on holding pending a determination of his mental competency.

The case from Ohio involved a similar stay of post-conviction proceedings, this 
time involving Sean Carter, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 
1997 murder of his adoptive grandmother.

An appeals court put on hold his federal habeas proceedings on the grounds he 
suffered from mental illnesses, was incompetent and was unable to communicate 
information to current attorneys who have been claiming ineffective assistance 
of counsel by his trial lawyer.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the two cases during the term that 
begins in October with a decision likely early next year.

The Supreme Court cases are Charles L. Ryan v. Ernest Valencia Gonzales, No. 
10-930, and Terry Tibbals v. Sean Carter, No. 11-218.

For Ryan: John Todd, Arizona Assistant Attorney General.

For Gonzales: Leticia Marquez of the Office of the Federal Public Defender for 
the District of Arizona.

For Tibbals: Alexandra Schimmer, Ohio Solicitor General.

For Carter: Linda Prucha, Supervisor of the Death Penalty Division, Ohio Public 
Defenders Office.

(source: Reuters)