[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ARIZ., NEV., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 2


ARIZONA:

Jodi Arias' lawyers say 3 witnesses on her behalf won't testify in open court


Lawyers for Jodi Arias have asked a judge to take the death penalty off the 
table at her sentencing retrial because three witnesses on her behalf have 
refused to testify in open court.

The attorneys said in court filings last week that the witnesses fear they'll 
be harassed or threatened if they testify.

The lawyers say the refusal means Arias can't get a complete defense as a jury 
hears evidence over whether to sentence her to life in prison or death for the 
killing of her former boyfriend, Travis Alexander.

The 3 witnesses in question haven't been publicly identified, but defense 
attorneys have described them as a longtime Arias boyfriend, 1 of her former 
co-workers, and a person who was a friend of Alexander before he met Arias.

The Maricopa County Attorney's Office, which is prosecuting Arias, declined to 
comment on the request to throw out the death penalty.

Arias was convicted last year of murder in Alexander's 2008 death, but jurors 
deadlocked on her punishment. A new jury is deciding her sentence.

An appeals court decision last week overturned a ruling that closed the 
courtroom as Arias' 1st witness testified. Her lawyers previously said the 
witness would testify only in a closed courtroom.

Some of the testimony in question was conducted in private. The Arizona 
Republic and three Phoenix TV stations - KPNX, KPHO and KTVK - protested the 
closure and ultimately succeeded in getting the ruling by Maricopa County 
Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens thrown out.

The Arizona Court of Appeals suggested in its ruling last week that the 
previously unidentified witness might have been Arias herself, though it 
remains unclear.

The news organizations are now urging Stephens to release a transcript of the 
Oct. 30 testimony.

The Arias case has been marked by secrecy since the conclusion of the first 
trial, where salacious and violent details about Arias and Alexander were 
broadcast live around the world.

Since then, the judge has held 1 secret hearing after another and barred the 
broadcast of footage from the sentencing retrial until after a verdict is 
reached.

Arias' lawyers had argued that daily broadcasts of the trial would lead to 
defense witnesses backing out for fear of being harassed or threatened.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Supreme Court could nullify murder conviction


A man convicted of the brutal murder of a Buckeye librarian could escape not 
only the death penalty, but his conviction, because of alleged bias by the 
judge.

Without comment, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld a federal appellate 
court ruling that Richard Hurles was entitled to an independent, unbiased 
hearing into his claim against Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Ruth 
Hilliard.

The high court, in essence, upheld the finding that Hilliard acted in ways that 
could call her impartiality into question.

Monday's ruling does not guarantee Hurles a new trial, but it gives him a 
hearing in federal court that he was denied in state court.

Stephanie Grisham, spokeswoman for the state Attorney General???s Office, said 
Monday that the office believes his claims can be dismissed after the hearing.

Factors cited by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals raise questions about 
Hilliard's impartiality, including her personally interceding in 1 of Hurles' 
pretrial appeals, a move that was rejected by the state Court of Appeals.

Hilliard, who has since retired, has consistently refused to answer questions 
about the case.

Monday's ruling could have much broader implications. Assistant Attorney 
General Lacey Gard, in asking the high court to take up the issue, warned that 
the 9th Circuit ruling, left undisturbed, could set a new precedent requiring 
judges to have evidentiary hearings in all similar death penalty cases.

Court records show that Hurles, on parole after serving nearly 15 years in 
prison for prior crimes, went to the library in Buckeye on a November afternoon 
in 1992. He attacked librarian Kay Blanton by attempting to rape her, and then 
stabbed her 37 times.

He left the library, cleaned himself up, discarded his bloody clothes and fled 
on a bus to Las Vegas.

When the state decided to seek the death penalty, his court-appointed counsel 
sought the assistance of another lawyer. When that was rejected by the judge, 
he filed an appeal.

It was what happened then that led to the case getting to the Supreme Court.

The state itself did not contest the appeal. But Hilliard filed her own 
response with the Court of Appeals, describing the murder as brutal and saying 
the state's case against him was "very simple and straightforward, compared to 
other capital cases."

The state appellate court ruled it was improper for Hilliard to have inserted 
herself into those proceedings before the trial itself ever started and any 
evidence had been produced.

He was found guilty and, based on practices at the time, Hilliard herself 
sentenced him to death.

Hurles filed petitions for post-conviction relief, alleging among other things 
that Hilliard was biased based on her pretrial filings with the appellate 
court.

But it was Hilliard herself who heard that claim.

She ruled in her own favor, finding Hurles offered no factual evidence to 
support his claim. But she did not hold an evidentiary hearing, which would 
have allowed Hurles to develop that evidence.

"Even worse, she found facts based on her untested memory of the events, 
putting material issues of fact in dispute," wrote Judge Dorothy Nelson for the 
9th Circuit.

"In effect, she offered testimony in the form of her order," Nelson continued.

"Hurles had no opportunity to contest Judge Hilliard's version of events that 
took place years before," the judge wrote.

(source: Arizona Daily Star)






NEVADA:

State to release findings from study on death penalty costs


State auditors this afternoon are expected to release findings from a study on 
the cost of administering the death penalty in Nevada.

The capital punishment debate here tends to draw more fiscal than moral 
objections from critics, who point to an overburdened criminal justice system 
whose state corrections department spends nearly $300 million per year. By 
comparison, Utah - whose population is about 4 % higher than Nevada's, 
according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates - spends about $260 million per year 
on corrections.

The audit, which is due by Jan. 31, is expected to calculate not just 
incarceration costs, but also expenses for legal counsel - both defense and 
prosecution - for all court proceedings and for associated costs such as 
investigators, mitigation specialists and experts.

A 2012 UNLV study backed by the Clark County Public Defender's Office found 
that public defense attorneys spent double the time on capital murder cases as 
opposed to noncapital murder cases. Clark County's caseload is the largest in 
the state.

"We expect that the results will be consistent with all of the studies that 
have been done before about the death penalty, which show it's more expensive 
to pursue the death penalty than life without the possibility of parole," said 
Nancy Hart, president of the Nevada Coalition Against the Death Penalty. 
"Without the death penalty, we'd free up lots of resources for other public 
safety needs."

The state audit results will be announced at an afternoon legislative meeting 
in Carson City. The meeting, which begins at 1 p.m., will be video conferenced 
to Room 4401 of the Grant Sawyer State Office Building in Las Vegas.

To listen live, visit www.leg.state.nv.us and click on the calendar link.

(source: Las Vegas Sun)






CALIFORNIA:

California attorney general defends death penalty


California's attorney general filed court papers Monday defending the 
constitutionality of the state's death penalty.

Attorney General Kamala Harris urged the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to 
overturn a lower court decision invalidating the penalty.

In July, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney tossed out the death sentence of 
Ernest Jones, a Los Angeles man convicted in 1995 of raping and murdering his 
girlfriend's mother 2 years earlier.

Carney said it takes too long to carry out executions in California and that 
capital punishment is arbitrarily applied in the state.

Jones appealed to the federal courts after the California Supreme Court upheld 
his death penalty.

Since the current death penalty system was adopted 35 years ago, more than 900 
people have been sentenced to death but only 13 have been executed.

"California's system for carefully reviewing capital convictions and sentences" 
takes time, Harris wrote. "It might be hastened if the state had no resource 
constraints, or less interest in ensuring the accuracy and legality of its 
judgments in capital cases."

The judge's ruling had little effect on the current state of California's death 
penalty. A federal judge put executions on hold in 2006 after finding 
California's lethal injection procedures were severely flawed and ordered an 
overhaul.

Since then, a new death chamber has been constructed and new regulations 
drafted on how to carry out lethal injections.

The state has yet to present the updates to the judge because a state judge 
ruled that the new regulations have been improperly drafted.

(source: Associated Press)






USA:

New trial location asked for Tsarnaev----Publicity again cited in petition


Lawyers for accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have again asked a 
federal judge to move the trial, arguing that ongoing publicity is prejudicing 
the jury pool.

"The nature and extent of the impact of the Marathon bombings and related 
events and the pretrial publicity engendered by those events require a change 
of venue if Mr. Tsarnaev is to receive the fair trial by a panel of impartial, 
indifferent jurors guaranteed by the United States Constitution," Tsarnaev's 
lawyers argued in a court filing Monday.

US District Court Judge George A. O'Toole Jr. rejected an earlier request to 
move the trial, saying Tsarnaev's lawyers failed to show that an impartial jury 
could not be found. But Tsarnaev's lawyers argued in their new motion Monday 
that the ongoing media coverage of the case and law enforcement leaks of 
non-public information to the media are further spoiling the jury pool.

"The Fifth and Sixth Amendment guarantees of due process and a fair trial by an 
impartial jury can only be effectuated if courts monitor new threats to the 
fairness of the proceedings as they arise," the lawyers argued.

Tsarnaev, now 21, is slated to go to trial in January on charges that carry the 
possibility of the death penalty for his role in the April 15, 2013, bombings, 
which killed 3 people and injured more than 260. He and his older brother, 
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, also allegedly shot and killed an MIT police officer.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a violent confrontation with police in 
Watertown while trying to flee the area.

O'Toole has said he plans to summon at least 1,200 potential jurors from 
Eastern Massachusetts for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's trial, beginning Jan. 5.

The request for the change of venue would mean moving the trial out of Eastern 
Massachusetts; Tsarnaev's lawyers have argued that too many potential jurors 
from this part of the state have been saturated by the ongoing media coverage 
of the case, including the coverage of the cases of 3 of Tsarnaev's friends, 
who were convicted of lying to investigators.

"All of these media references serve to keep the Marathon bombings and 
subsequent events fresh and raw in the public consciousness," the lawyers 
argued.

"The strong emotional and community response evidenced in the pretrial 
publicity demonstrates that potential jurors from the Eastern Division of the 
District of Massachusetts can only be presumed to feel a personal stake in the 
outcome," the argued.

The lawyers submitted a survey by an independent consultant that found that 37 
% of the respondents from Eastern Massachusetts believe Tsarnaev deserves the 
death penalty, and 51 % either attended or ran in the Marathon in 2013. The 
lawyers proposed moving the trial to Washington, D.C., where 19 % of 
respondents said Tsarnaev deserved the death penalty, and 11 % said they had 
participated or knew someone who participated in the Marathon in 2013.

In a separate filing Monday, Tsarnaev's lawyers asked the judge to follow 
certain legal standards to determine whether a person's views on the death 
penalty would be reason to exclude them as a potential juror.

(source: Boston Globe)