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

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 3



CALIFORNIA----death row inmate dies

Death row inmate from Tulare County dies of natural causes


Death row inmate Charles Keith Richardson, 52, 1 of 2 men found guilty in the 
rape and murder of 11-year-old April Holley in Tulare County, has died.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation made the 
announcement Tuesday. He died of natural causes at the treatment center at 
Corcoran State Prison.

Richardson was sentenced to death in 1992 and had been on death row at San 
Quentin State Prison, but he was transferred to Corcoran because it has a 
licensed medical treatment facility for maximum security inmates, deputy press 
secretary Terry Thornton said.

April's murder on Dec. 3, 1988, was one of the most notorious crimes in Tulare 
County history.

Tammy Holley, April's sister, was 20 when April was killed.

"Hallelujah, thank you God," Holley said when she learned that Richardson had 
died.

She said she thinks of April often: "It hurts today, like the day I lost my 
sister."

Retired Tulare County District Attorney Phillip Cline prosecuted the case 
against Richardson when he was assistant district attorney.

"It was a notorious case and a difficult case, but justice was done in this 
case," Cline said.

The California Supreme Court upheld the death penalty sentence against 
Richardson in 2008.

April's body was found in the family's squalid home in Matheny Tract by Roger 
Rummerfield, a friend of the family who went to the Holley home to use the 
bathroom. He testified that she was clothed only with a shirt and her face was 
partially covered with water.

She had been raped, sodomized and killed by drowning, medical experts 
testified.

"She was a nice little girl," Rummerfield said Tuesday from his home in 
Modesto. "She had her whole life taken from her. She didn't do anybody any 
wrong."

Richardson abruptly left the area but was arrested about a week later.

If April were alive today, she would be 37. Her mother, Naomi, died 5 years 
ago.

In 1996, Steven Allen Brown, 46, a co-conspirator, was sentenced to death in 
the case and is on death row. In June, the California Supreme Court upheld the 
death penalty against Brown.

(source: Fresno Bee)

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

AG Files Opening Brief in Jones v. Chappell California Death Penalty Appeal


The California Attorney General filed her opening brief on December 1, 
beginning the long and drawn-out process of appealing the District Court's 
order vacating Jones; death sentence and invalidating California's death 
penalty. (Jones v. Chappell, No. CV 09-02158-CJC (CD Calif. 7/16/14); Jones v. 
Chappell, No. 14-56302 (9th Cir. 12/01/2014)) The decision and is discussed at 
http://images.law.com/sites/jamesching/2014/07/18/ninth-circuit-preview-jones-v-chappell-invalidates-california-death-penalty/#ixzz3KmG2V9Bn.

The AG's opening brief simply begins the appeals process and the Ninth Circuit 
appeal will not be completed within a year. This is especially so because the 
District Court stayed Jones' sentence until the completion of the appeal and 
therefore Jones has no incentive to hurry the appeal.

The opinion, by ruling directly on the validity of the death penalty itself, 
rather than on procedural matters involved in its implementation, is the 1st 
state-wide invalidation of the death penalty issued during the Attorney 
General's current term and many viewed the handling of the case as an 
indication of the AG's commitment to the death penalty.

As District Attorney of San Francisco, the AG had declined to seek the death 
penalty against a cop killer, stating that her opposition was a principle that 
she considered "non-negotiable." At that time, her "was partly based on its 
being applied disproportionately to members of minority groups, something she 
learned about growing up in Berkeley." 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/12/us/killing-of-officer-stirs-death-penalty-debate.html)

As AG, she declined defense of Proposition 8, the gay marriage initiative. The 
defense of the death penalty in Jones, then, was no less than a matter of 
"putting professional responsibility over personal politics." 
(http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-death-penalty-kamala-harris-appeal-20140824-story.html) 
Based on this, the Jones case brought up the possibility that the AG would not 
defend the death penalty based on her personal scruples.

The basic facts of the Jones case are undisputed. Jones was convicted of 
1st-degree murder and rape accomplished with use of a knife. He had been 
released on parole after a conviction for rape and burglary 10 months before 
the murder. After Jones was sentenced to death in April 1995, his sentence was 
affirmed on March 17, 2003 by the California Supreme Court. (People v. Jones, 
29 Cal. 4th 1229 (2003))

After certiorari was denied by the United States Supreme Court, the judgment 
became final on October 21, 2003. (Jones v. California, 540 U.S. 952 (2003)) In 
total, Jones spent about 8 years litigating his direct appeal before the 
California Supreme Court "- considerably less time than the 12 to 14 years 
spent by most individuals on California's death row."

By October 21, 2002, Jones's counsel filed his 1st state habeas petition. On 
March 11, 2009 the California Supreme Court denied Jones's petition. During 
this interval, Jones filed a 2nd and 3rd habeas corpus petition.

On March 27, 2009, Jones filed his ex parte application for appointed counsel. 
The elapsed time from conviction to entry into the District Court was 14 years.

On July 16, 2014, the Jones decision overturning the California death penalty 
was issued. The time to decision was 5 years.

The District Court estimated that a decision on Jones' pending habeas petition 
could take until the end of the year. Review at the Ninth Circuit will take 
another 2.2 years. This approximates 3 more years.

Accounting then for the time spent seeking en banc review from the Circuit and 
certiorari from the United States Supreme Court, and assuming relief is denied 
at every level, the federal stay on Mr. Jones's execution could be lifted, and 
he could be ready for execution within 3 or 4 years, an elapsed time of 25-26 
years, with a total of 11 or 12 years within Federal jurisdiction. (The 
District Court stated that Jones would be in federal litigation for "about 23 
years," a figure which seems to wrongly reduce Jones' time within federal 
jurisdiction by 2-3 years.)

Assuming 26 years is the correct number, Jones will have spent 14 years, about 
53.8% of his total litigation time, under state jurisdiction and 12 years, or 
46.2% of his time, within federal jurisdiction.

Thus, the District Court deserves 46.2% of the blame for the delay in Jones' 
estimated execution as this is the portion of Jones' litigation time 
attributable to the federal courts. The decision is directed solely to state 
court delay. The District Court concluded that the delay between conviction and 
execution depends "upon a factor largely outside an inmate's control, and 
wholly divorced from the pen[a]logical purposes the [s]tate sought to achieve 
by sentencing him to death in the first instance . . . "The delays in how 
quickly the inmate proceeds show the "state's dysfunctional post-conviction 
review process."

The District Court concluded that the death penalty is being inflicted by the 
state "arbitrarily. Indeed, it smacks of little more than a lottery system." 
(Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972) [Brennan, J., concurring])

The District Court took aggregate figures concerning death row inmates and 
expanded its conclusion. "By comparison, of the 380 inmates . . . who are 
currently on death row, 285 have been there longer than Jones . . . [B]ecause 
of the inordinate delays inherent in California's system, many of the rest will 
never be executed. They will instead live out their lives on death row."

There is no doubt that the District Court condemns only state processes: "The 
Eighth Amendment simply cannot be read to proscribe a state from randomly 
selecting which few members of its criminal population it will sentence to 
death, but to allow that same state to randomly select which trivial few of 
those condemned it will actually execute."

The placing of blame is underlined by the District Court's failure to address 
any federal responsibility for the delay or to issue relief against the federal 
courts. However, if "[a]rbitrariness in execution is still arbitrary, 
regardless of when in the process the arbitrariness arises," it must surely 
apply to the 46.2% of the total delay and dysfunction.

Of course, there might be quibbles about the time involved in either system. 
For instance, the docket shows that Jones filed his petition in 2009, but the 
District Court seems to start the debut of his time within the federal system 
as March 10, 2010, when counsel filed his petition for Jones. This is a year 
which should be charged to the federal system. And of course, if the federal 
time totals 12 years, then using the District Court's figure of 23 years yields 
a percentage of 52%, a result implying more delay to the federal system than 
the state system.

The allocation of blame for the system's "dysfunction" made by the District 
Court seems to lack systemic analysis. Unless the entire system of 
post-conviction review, state and federal, is critiqued, the laying of blame on 
the state procedures alone cannot be comprehensive. If there is blame, the 
federal courts are subject to the same criticisms as the state courts.

In practical terms, Jones is in no danger of being executed. There has been no 
California execution since 2006 and the utilization of lethal injection as the 
means of execution probably implies there will be no more for the foreseeable 
future.

(http://images.law.com/sites/jamesching/2014/07/27/viewpoint-death-penalty-excoriated-in-kozinskis-modest-proposal/#ixzz3KmSBeI3a) 
Opponents of the death penalty took the position that any voiding of the death 
penalty on any basis was beneficial. (See 
http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202663590948/Justices-Unlikely-to-Smile-on-AntiDeath-Penalty-Ruling?cmp=share_email; 
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21608773-judge-strikes-blow-against-capital-punishment-cruel-and-unusual) 
Indeed, it is difficult to fault any inmate for preferring life in prison to 
death.

This is the backdrop for the AG brief. The brief was filed by the AG, assisted 
by her Solicitor General, a Deputy Solicitor General, the Chief Assistant 
Attorney General, a Senior Assistant Attorney General, a Supervising Deputy 
Attorney General, and a Deputy Attorney General. The brief undoubtedly 
represents the considered opinions of the AG on the subject.

The brief largely concerns itself with the technical issue of the District 
Court's independent consideration and ruling on an issue which Jones never 
raised initially. These arguments are familiar to the death penalty specialist, 
fathomable to a criminal law specialist, and somewhat opaque to the average 
reader. I therefore have addressed these issues in summary fashion. In 
addition, I have not summarized the lesser arguments about federal-state 
comity, the anti-retroactivity doctrine, and the enunciation of new substantive 
rules on habeas corpus because they are both technical and relatively weak.

A basic premise of Federal habeas corpus jurisdiction is that the Antiterrorism 
and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 bars federal habeas relief for any 
claim adjudicated on the merits in state court, except where the state court's 
decision was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly 
established Federal law. (28 U.S.C. # 2254(d)(1)) The AG argues that the 
Supreme Court has never held that execution after a long tenure on death row is 
cruel and unusual punishment and therefore the California Supreme Court's 
ruling here was not contrary to clearly established federal law. (Allen v. 
Ornoski, 435 F.3d 946, 959 (9th Cir. 2006)) Procedurally, then, the district 
court could not find for Jones because the delay in the appellate process has 
ever been presented to the state courts.

In addition, because the claim has never been presented to the state courts, 
the District Court could not rule on it because it has not been exhausted, a 
prerequisite to any claim advanced by a state prisoner in a federal habeas 
petition. (28 U.S.C. section 2254(b)(1)(A); Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 515 
(1982)) The District Court had incorrectly excused Jones' lack of exhaustion 
under 28 U.S.C. section 2254(b)(1)(B)(ii), as Jones did not present a situation 
where state process was "ineffective to protect [Jones'] rights . . . ." 
Nothing showed that resort to state courts was "futile" or that the claim that 
system-wide dysfunction made executions arbitrary or eliminated their 
penological purpose had already been presented to the state courts and they 
have failed to resolve it despite inordinate delay.

However, some attention must be paid to the AG's argument on the substance of 
the Jones decision. First, "Post-conviction review is designed to avoid 
arbitrariness and error in capital cases. Requiring it to proceed in some 
lockstep fashion, rather than based on the unique circumstances of each case, 
could itself raise arbitrariness concerns. Nor does the fact that a rational 
review process takes time make a constitutionally significant difference in the 
deterrent or retributive effects of a death sentence when it is ultimately 
carried out."

California's system for post-conviction review in capital cases is lengthy 
because it is designed to avoid arbitrary results.

"In light of the profound importance of ensuring that the ultimate criminal 
sanction is imposed only on individuals who have been convicted and sentenced 
in full accordance with the law, California provides capital defendants with 
substantial opportunities to challenge their convictions and sentences, and 
resources for doing so, and the California Supreme Court carefully reviews 
every capital case. Indeed, a significant number of capital defendants obtain 
some form of relief. This process is necessarily time[-]intensive, and the 
length of the process varies as a result of the nature of each case and choices 
made by each defendant."

This argument presented an occasion for eloquence.

"That California's post-conviction review process is lengthy does not mean that 
the process serves no purpose. That the length of time involved varies across 
individual cases does not mean that this variance is arbitrary. No two cases 
are the same."

There are factors which cause delay, "including the factual and legal 
complexity of the case; the number and nature of the claims presented by the 
defendant on direct appeal and state habeas; the number of extensions requested 
and received by the parties; the availability of qualified counsel; whether the 
defendant exercises his right to obtain new counsel on state habeas; [and] 
intervening factual and legal developments . . . . "

That these factors cause delay is the cost of "affording capital defendants a 
fair chance to frame and present challenges to their convictions and sentences, 
and then ensuring careful review of every legal challenge to a capital 
defendant's conviction or sentence."

As stated in In re Reno, 55 Cal.4th 428 (2012), the purpose of post-conviction 
review is to ensure that the capital defendant "has had ample opportunity to 
raise all meritorious claims, the adversarial process has operated correctly, 
and both this court and society can be confident that, before a person is put 
to death, the judgment that he or she is guilty of the crimes and deserves the 
ultimate punishment is valid and supportable."

In the end, there is no doubt that the AG's brief is thorough and competent and 
even admirable in its tone of quiet advocacy, especially in its defense of the 
post-conviction process. It is perfectly consistent with the law and the 
professional duty to represent a client to the best of an attorney's abilities. 
The reader of this brief must ultimately agree wiIth the sentiment expressed by 
the Los Angeles Times:

"Capital punishment is a moral and legal abomination, and its demise cannot 
come too quickly for this state or the rest of the nation. But it should not 
end because California's top lawyer refused to defend it." 
(http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-death-penalty-kamala-harris-appeal-20140824-story.html) 
No one will ever say that this California law did not have an adequate defense 
from its elected chief law enforcement officer.

(source: law.com)

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

DA to seek death penalty for accused taqueria shooter


Monterey County prosecutors are seeking death for a 22-year-old man accused of 
killing 3 and wounding 4 others in an August 2013 shooting outside a Williams 
Road taqueria.

But Giovanni Pacheco's allegedly low IQ of 59 could make him ineligible for the 
sentence, said Monique Hill, his attorney.

On Tuesday, Hill said she had yet to make a presentation before a panel of 
Monterey County District Attorney's Office managers. When she does, she said 
part of her argument will likely be Pacheco's severely low IQ.

After the panel, the DA's Office will decide definitively whether it will seek 
death for Pacheco, she said. A date for that hearing hasn't yet been 
determined, she said.

"This morning, Mr. (Rolando) Mazariegos, (a prosecutor), drew a line in the 
sand and said they had chosen to seek the death penalty on Mr. Pacheco," she 
said. "And I said it was illegal."

Should the panel go forward with the death penalty case, Pacheco will be 
eligible for a number of funding streams to assist in his defense, Hill said.

DA's Office representatives confirmed they planned to seek the death penalty 
but declined to comment further.

In May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Florida's IQ cutoff was too rigid to spare 
mentally incapacitated individuals the death penalty. In the Florida case, the 
cutoff was 70.

Hill has yet to provide court documentation proving Pacheco's low IQ, but said 
she had him tested prior to his preliminary hearing in May. Should the case 
proceed to trial, experts may testify regarding the 22-year-old's IQ, she said.

"But that's a long way down the road," she said.

Pacheco is accused of a triple homicide Aug. 5, 2013, outside Taco's Choice on 
the 600 block of Williams Road. The shooting resulted in the deaths of Victor 
Ortiz Andrade, 22; Alejando Lorenzo Hernandez, 25; and Edgar Garcia Salinas, 
28. 4 people - 3 men and a woman - also sustained injuries in the shooting.

During his preliminary hearing in May, witnesses said the early morning 
incident was precipitated by an argument over a cigarette. The argument 
escalated into a shoving match before Pacheco pulled out a gun and squeezed off 
several shots into the air. He then leveled it into the crowd and fired 
multiple times, witnesses said.

Prosecutors used video surveillance to punctuate the witnesses' statements 
during Pacheco's preliminary hearing.

Ultimately, Monterey County Superior Court Judge Pamela Butler opted to hold 
Pacheco on three counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder.

He's currently being held at the Monterey County Jail without bail.

(source: The Californian)

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

Willacy County DA seeks death penalty in Border Patrol agent murder


Willacy County District Attorney Bernard Ammerman is seeking the death penalty 
against 2 men accused in the death of an off-duty Border Patrol agent.

A state district judge has issued a gag order in the case but court records 
confirmed that Ammerman has filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty 
against Gustavo Tijerina and Ismael Hernandez.

Willacy County Sheriff's Department deputies arrested both Tijerina and 
Hernandez back in August.

The 2 men are accused in a botched robbery that ended with the death of 
off-duty Border Patrol agent Javier Vega, Jr.

Vega was fatally shot while defending his family while they were being robbed 
by Tijerina and Hernandez at a remote fishing spot near the rural community of 
Santa Monica.

No trial date has been set but both Tijerina and Hernandez remain in custody.

(source: Valleycentral.com)






USA:

The Eugenics of the Death Penalty


Texas will probably execute a severally mentally ill man tonight.

Scott Panetti has a history of severe mental illness that first manifested when 
he was 20. In 1992, he shaved his head and murdered his ex-wife's parents. He 
was amazingly allowed to represent himself at his murder trial. Pro-Se 
Defendants are usually known for interesting courtroom antics but Panetti's 
trial techniques go beyond the usual. He attempted to subpoena John F. Kennedy, 
Jesus Christ, and 200 other people.

The Texas Board of Pardons voted 7-0 against clemency. It is just not the usual 
suspects who are arguing that Panetti deserves clemency because of his mental 
illness. There are a large number of conservative heavy weights who believe 
that executing Panetti's execution would "only serve to undermine the public's 
faith in a fair and moral justice system."

At this point, I need to be cynical about whether Panetti's execution or 
anything else could undermine the public's faith "in a fair and moral justice 
system." I wonder how many people actually know about the Panetti case or 
whether the story is just being followed by news junkies. I've mentioned this 
before but I think political and news junkies vastly overestimate how much time 
non-political types spend following the news, thinking about politics, and 
trying to develop a coherent ideology. How can the public be outraged or 
dispirited if they simply don't know?

I also wonder if people really care about the fact that Panetti is seriously 
mentally ill. The United States has a problem with treating the mentally ill. 
We have a seemingly large number of mentally ill people and no desire to do 
anything about getting them treatment. San Francisco launched a series of 
lawsuits against neighbor states because their solution to mentally ill 
homeless people was a one-way bus ticket to San Francisco. A few years ago New 
York City had some instances where people would be pushed to their deaths on 
subway tracks. Subway Pushers tend to be homeless and mentally ill. If you live 
in San Francisco long enough, you generally know someone who was randomly 
attacked by a mentally ill person. I once got off a bus to have a mentally ill 
person run up behind me and scream very loudly in my ear on Market Street. I'm 
just lucky she didn't decide to bite it off. A friend of a friend was the 
victim of a biting attack by a mentally ill person while doing laundry at a 
laundromat.

In an ideal world, we would recognize how important it is to spend money on 
mental health. We do not live in an ideal world and there would likely still be 
people who were victim of crimes because of mental illness but we should be 
able to determine that people like Panetti are too mentally ill to be given 
capital punishment.

Most States like Texas use a shockingly low standard to determine whether a 
person is mentally ill or not. They simply determine whether the defendant 
generally knows that murder or some other crime is wrong. If the defendant 
answers that they understand murder is wrong, he or she is deemed competent to 
stand trial. This is generally called the M'Naughten rule. There was a brief 
moment in the 20th century when some courts switched to the more liberal Durham 
rule. The Durham rule held that a defendant could not be held "criminally 
responsible if his unlawful act was the product of a mental disease or defect." 
Durham was controversial when it came out and was eventually overturned in 
1972. I have to wonder what Texas or death penalty supporters gain from 
executing Scott Panetti. This is not a case that divides on easily partisan 
lines as noted above. I also have to wonder what we gain from following the 
very strict M'Naughten rule instead of the more liberal Durham rule. The only 
conclusion I can think of is that there is a barely hidden eugenics aspect to 
being strict when mentally ill people commit crimes. A section of the 
population thinks that it is a waste of resources to spend money treating and 
housing the severely and possibly incurably mentally ill. The best solution is 
to get rid of them quickly or to remove them from sight. Send the mentally ill 
to another state, send them to prison for life, send them to their deaths. It 
is people asking to be absolved of responsibility.

(source: Saul DeGraw, Ordinary-Gentlemen.com)

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

On life and death, justices show more divisions


The Supreme Court - the last stop for condemned prisoners such as Scott 
Panetti, a Texan who is mentally ill - appears increasingly wary of the death 
penalty.

In May, the justices blocked the execution of a Missouri murderer because his 
medical condition made it likely that he would suffer from a controversial 
lethal injection.

Later that month, the court ruled 5-4 that Florida must apply a margin of error 
to IQ tests, thereby making it harder for states to execute those with 
borderline intellectual disabilities.

In September, a tipping point on lethal injections was nearly reached when 4 of 
the 9 justices sought to halt a Missouri prisoner's execution because of the 
state's use of a drug that had resulted in botched executions elsewhere.

And in October, the court stopped the execution of yet another Missouri man 
over concerns that his lawyers were ineffective and had missed a deadline for 
an appeal. The justices are deciding whether to hear that case in full.

Now, on top of drug protocols, developmental disabilities and attorneys' 
mistakes, the court must decide in Panetti's case whether mental illness should 
be another reason to keep prisoners alive.

"There's frustration on the part of at least some of the justices about the 
death penalty, and what to do about it," says Richard Dieter, executive 
director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

At least 3 justices - Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito - 
consistently vote against blocking state executions. Chief Justice John Roberts 
and Justice Anthony Kennedy usually line up with them.

The court's 4 liberals - Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor 
and Elena Kagan - have shown the most hesitation or opposition. Ginsburg said 
in September that capital punishment cases have been the "most troubling" of 
her 21-year career on the court.

Kennedy joined the liberals in May, writing the court's opinion in Hall v. 
Florida that struck down overly rigid IQ test requirements. "Intellectual 
disability is a condition, not a number," Kennedy wrote.

While the court has yet to hear a case on the ethics of lethal injections, it 
has moved toward the liberals' position in recent years on issues of mental 
capacity.

In Atkins v. Virginia (2002), the court ruled 6-3 that executing people with 
intellectual disabilities violated their Eighth Amendment rights against cruel 
and unusual punishment. This year's ruling in Freddie Lee Hall's case 
fine-tuned that decision.

In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the court ruled 5-4 that juveniles who were under 
age 18 when they committed their crimes are not eligible for the death penalty. 
It since has limited the use of life without parole for juvenile offenders as 
well.

The court's precedent on mental illness dates back to 1986, when it ruled in 
Ford v. Wainwright that prisoners must be deemed mentally competent before 
being executed. Determining competency was left up to the states, however.

"It's difficult to define mental illness, whereas it's easier to define mental 
retardation and quantify it," Dieter says. "Mental illness is one area where 
they could really open up a whole new exemption."

(soure: USA Today)

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

Death penalty challenge to be heard in '01 murders


A judge is set to begin hearing motions challenging the constitutionality of 
the federal death penalty in the case of a man who confessed to carjacking and 
killing 2 men in Massachusetts and killing a 3rd man in New Hampshire during a 
weeklong crime spree.

Gary Lee Sampson was sentenced to death, but U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf 
overturned that after finding that a juror's lies about her background deprived 
Sampson of his right to an impartial jury.

Sampson's sentencing re-trial is set to begin in February.

Wolf has scheduled a hearing Wednesday on defense motions seeking to bar the 
death penalty, including one that argues it is unconstitutional to force the 
death penalty on citizens of a state that has rejected it.

Massachusetts abolished the state death penalty in 1984. Sampson is being 
prosecuted under the federal death penalty.

The defense also has filed a motion asking to preclude death as a punishment 
because the system for imposing death sentences has an unacceptable rate of 
error.

Sampson pleaded guilty in the 2001 killings of Jonathan Rizzo, a college 
student from Kingston, and Philip McCloskey, a retiree from Taunton. He 
confessed to carjacking the men, then stabbing them to death after assuring 
each of them that he only planned to steal their cars. He was convicted 
separately in state court in New Hampshire in the killing of Robert "Eli" 
Whitney.

(source: Boston Herald)

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

Death penalty challenge to be heard in '01 murders


A judge is set to begin hearing motions challenging the constitutionality of 
the federal death penalty in the case of a man who confessed to carjacking and 
killing 2 men in Massachusetts and killing a third man in New Hampshire during 
a weeklong crime spree.

Gary Lee Sampson was sentenced to death, but U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf 
overturned that after finding that a juror's lies about her background deprived 
Sampson of his right to an impartial jury.

Sampson's sentencing re-trial is set to begin in February.

Wolf has scheduled a hearing Wednesday on defense motions seeking to bar the 
death penalty, including one that argues it is unconstitutional to force the 
death penalty on citizens of a state that has rejected it.

Massachusetts abolished the state death penalty in 1984. Sampson is being 
prosecuted under the federal death penalty.

The defense also has filed a motion asking to preclude death as a punishment 
because the system for imposing death sentences has an unacceptable rate of 
error.

Sampson pleaded guilty in the 2001 killings of Jonathan Rizzo, a college 
student from Kingston, and Philip McCloskey, a retiree from Taunton. He 
confessed to carjacking the men, then stabbing them to death after assuring 
each of them that he only planned to steal their cars. He was convicted 
separately in state court in New Hampshire in the killing of Robert "Eli" 
Whitney.

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

Boston Marathon bombing suspect asks to move trial


Lawyers for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Monday made a 
2nd bid to move his trial outside Massachusetts, arguing that "emotionally 
charged" media coverage and the widespread impact of the attacks have made it 
impossible for him to get a fair trial in the state.

U.S. District Judge George O'Toole Jr. rejected Tsarnaev's 1st request in 
September to move the trial, ruling that Tsarnaev's lawyers had failed to show 
that extensive pretrial media coverage of the bombings had prejudiced the jury 
pool to the point that an impartial jury could not be chosen in Boston.

But Tsarnaev's lawyers are making another push to move the trial. In a court 
filing Monday, they argued that continuing pretrial publicity and media leaks 
have led to the "inescapable conclusion" that "great local prejudice" will 
prevent a fair trial by an impartial jury. Three people were killed and more 
than 260 were injured when 2 bombs exploded near the marathon finish line on 
April 15, 2013.

Tsarnaev's defense team focused on the broad impact of the bombings on marathon 
runners, spectators, victims and their friends and families, doctors and nurses 
who treated the injured, and children who were traumatized by the attacks.

"The nature and scope of victimization here, coupled with the pretrial 
publicity compel a change of venue," Tsarnaev's lawyers wrote in their change 
of venue motion.

The defense asked the judge to hold a hearing on their request and to determine 
where the trial should be held. Tsarnaev's lawyers previously said the trial 
should be moved to Washington, D.C.

A spokeswoman for federal prosecutors declined to comment and said they will 
file a written response in court.

Jury selection in Tsarnaev's trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 5. He faces the 
possibility of the death penalty if convicted.

Prosecutors say Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, planted and detonated 
2 pressure-cooker bombs. Tamerlan died following a firefight with police 
several days after the bombings. Dzhokhar was captured later that day, wounded 
and hiding in a boat parked in a backyard in Watertown, a Boston suburb.

Tsarnaev's lawyers say pretrial coverage of the case has increased since they 
made their first request to move trial, in part because of coverage of the 
convictions of three of Tsarnaev's friends who were accused of removing 
evidence from his dorm room or lying to authorities investigating the bombing.

Motions to move trials are rarely granted. But Tsarnaev's lawyers said the 
pretrial media coverage in the marathon bombing case is similar to the coverage 
in the case of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, whose trial was moved to 
Denver.

"Here, as in McVeigh, 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. As in McVeigh, a change of venue is required to 
provide Mr. Tsarnaev with a fair trial by an impartial jury," Tsarnaev's 
lawyers wrote.

(source for both: Associated Press)