[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., S.C., FLA., OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 17



TEXAS----new death sentence

Texas ex-justice of the peace sentenced to death for revenge murder



A Texas jury on Wednesday sentenced to death a former justice of the peace 
convicted of murdering a suburban Dallas prosecutor's wife in a revenge plot, 
with the judge saying he acted like some of the most notorious killers in 
recent U.S. history.

The same jury that convicted Eric Williams, 47, on Dec. 4 of murdering Cynthia 
McLelland sentenced him to death after deliberating for less than 4 hours.

Williams has also been charged with murdering District Attorney Mike McLelland, 
who was Cynthia McClelland's husband, and Kaufman County Assistant District 
Attorney Mark Hasse.

Prosecutors said Williams wanted to get back at them for obtaining a theft 
conviction that cost him his job and law license.

After the verdict, Dallas County Judge Mike Snipes told Williams that he was 
never fooled by his lawyer-like demeanor in the courtroom, likening him to 
Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer.

"The people of Kaufman County have been scared for a year. They do not have to 
be scared any more," Snipes said.

Hasse was gunned down outside the Kaufman County Courthouse on Jan. 31, 2013, 
and the McClellands were fatally shot inside their home on March 30, 2013.

Williams' estranged wife, Kim, who is also charged with capital murder and will 
be tried separately, told jurors on Tuesday that Eric Williams began forming a 
mental hit list of people involved in his prosecution.

She added that Cynthia McLelland was not on that list but her husband later 
told her he considered McLelland "collateral damage."

Williams never looked up from the table as the victim's family members told him 
how these murders impacted their lives.

Nathan Foreman, Cynthia's son, said that the loss of his mother is a hole that 
can never be filled.

"I believe it's important not to hate, I work on that daily. But I cannot 
forgive and I cannot forget," he said.

(source: Reuters)

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

The Price of Death----Why capital punishment cases are in steep decline, even 
in Texas.



Just before sunrise on a spring morning last year, Larry Maples shot and killed 
his wife, Heather. He had tracked her to the home of a former boyfriend, a 
ranch hand named Moses Clemente. Maples shot and wounded Clemente. He then 
called 911, handed his Colt .45 revolver over to the sheriff's deputies and 
confessed.

It was a shocking event for Van Zandt County, a largely agricultural swath of 
East Texas with roughly 50,000 residents. The local authorities had never sent 
someone to death row, but Maples - by shooting Clemente along with Heather 
Maples and thereby aggravating the murder - qualified for the death penalty 
under state law. It was up to the young district attorney, Chris Martin, to 
decide whether to seek that punishment.

Martin had been telling reporters he might seek the death penalty, but behind 
closed doors with the victim's family and Clemente, the D.A. said he wasn't 
sure the case was strong enough to convince a jury that Maples should be 
executed.

County officials around the country have had to raise taxes and cut spending to 
pay for death penalty trials.

"He said, 'If we go with the death penalty, Maples will get more attorneys,'" 
Lori Simpson, Heather's sister, recalled. "There will be more witnesses, expert 
testimony, and then he will get an automatic appeal. That could cost millions 
of dollars, and your family doesn't want to go through those appeals, and we 
don't want to spend the money on that if we're not able to get capital 
punishment.'"

Martin's concerns about the public expense of a death-penalty prosecution, 
which Clemente confirmed, were remarkable only for the bluntness with which 
Martin expressed them. While many prosecutors are still reluctant to admit that 
finances play a role in their decisions about the death penalty, some of them - 
especially in small, rural counties - have been increasingly frank in wondering 
whether capital punishment is worth the price to their communities. "You have 
to be very responsible in selecting where you want to spend your money," said 
Stephen Taylor, a prosecutor in Liberty County, Texas. "You never know how long 
a case is going to take."

Some prosecutors are far more blunt, and even hyperbolic, as they lament the 
state of affairs. "I know now that if I file a capital murder case and don't 
seek the death penalty, the expense is much less," said James Farren, the 
district attorney of Randall County in the Texas panhandle. "While I know that 
justice is not for sale, if I bankrupt the county, and we simply don't have any 
money, and the next day someone goes into a day care and guns down five kids, 
what do I say? Sorry?"

Since capital punishment was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976, the cost 
of carrying out a death penalty trial has risen steadily. Increasing legal 
protections for defendants has translated into more and more hours of 
preparatory work by both sides. Fees for court-appointed attorneys and expert 
witnesses have climbed. Where once psychiatrists considered an IQ test and a 
quick interview sufficient to establish the mental state of a defendant, now it 
is routine to obtain an entire mental-health history. Lab tests have become 
more numerous and elaborate. Defense teams now routinely employ mitigation 
experts, who comb through a defendant's life history for evidence that might 
sway a jury toward leniency at the sentencing phase. Capital defendants are 
automatically entitled to appeals, which often last for years. Throughout those 
years, the defendant lives on death row, which tends to cost more due to 
heightened security.

In states such as Texas, Arizona, and Washington, where county governments pay 
for both the prosecution and defense of capital defendants (nearly all of whom 
are indigent) when they go to trial, the pressure on local budgets is 
especially strong. To ease the fiscal burden, some states have formed agencies 
to handle the defense or prosecution of capital cases. Other states reimburse 
counties for the expenses of a trial.

But even with that help, county officials around the country have sometimes had 
to raise taxes and cut spending to pay for death penalty trials. District 
attorneys have taken note. Many remain reluctant to acknowledge how fiscal 
concerns affect their decisions - they don't want to appear to be cheapening 
the lives of murder victims. But a few are surprisingly candid. Their 
statements suggest that money is more than ever part of the explanation for the 
steep decline in death-penalty cases over the past decade. That is particularly 
the case in Texas, where there are few political obstacles to carrying out 
executions.

In the 6 states that have abolished capital punishment over the past decade, 
Republican and Democratic officials have also emphasized the cost of the death 
penalty as a major rationale. Even in states that retain the punishment, cost 
has played a central role in the conversion narratives of conservative 
lawmakers, public officials, and others who question the death penalty as a 
waste of taxpayer dollars.

* * *

The rising cost of capital trials disproportionately affects counties with 
small populations. While the number of death sentences in the United States has 
been dropping steadily since a peak in the mid-1990s, an overwhelming number of 
the cases still being filed come from urban counties. There, the tax bases are 
larger, and the impact of an expensive trial may be more easily absorbed. 
(Harris County, where Houston is located, has been responsible for more 
executions than Georgia and Alabama combined.) Texas counties with fewer than 
300,000 residents sought the death penalty on average 15 times per year from 
1992 to 1996. Between 2002 and 2005, the average was 4.

Prosecutors don't cite statistics when discussing the costs of the death 
penalty; they tell stories. In Texas, they point to Jasper County, near the 
Louisiana border, where, in June 1998, three white supremacists killed a black 
man, James Byrd Jr., by chaining his ankles to the back of their pickup truck 
and dragging his body for more than three miles. The murder made international 
headlines and led to new state and federal hate crime legislation.

But among Texas prosecutors, the case took on another meaning as well. They 
noticed how Jasper County struggled to pay for the trials, in which 2 of the 
men were sentenced to death. Administrators doled out a total of $730,640.55 
for the prosecution, defense, and various court costs. The local tax rate had 
been increasing by less than 5 % per year, but in 1999 and 2000, the 2 years 
the county prepared for the trials, the tax rate increase was bumped to 8 %. 
The county auditor at the time told the Wall Street Journal that the last 
comparable budget shock was a flood in the 1970s, which had "wiped out roads 
and bridges."

The officials who manage local budgets mostly stay out of the district 
attorneys' decisions, but on occasion they have urged district attorneys to 
avoid seeking the death penalty. "It's safe to say they hope they don't ever 
get" a death penalty case, said Lonnie Hunt, an official with the Texas 
Association of Counties and a former judge. "It's like anything else - the 
people in charge of managing the money of the county hope there isn't a 
wildfire or a tornado."

After the Jasper case, county officials from around Texas went to the capitol 
to beg for help, and Texas lawmakers approved a grant program for death penalty 
cases, a mechanism that is also used in Indiana, Ohio, and Washington. States 
have tried to ease the burden on local counties for death penalty cases in 
other ways as well, including trial assistance from attorneys general and the 
creation of statewide public defender offices.

That outside help has only had a limited effect. Since 2002, the Texas 
governor's office has awarded a little more than $2 million to counties 
throughout Texas for capital trials, but stretched out over 12 years and spread 
across 22 counties, the grants have made a small dent. In 2008, Gray County, in 
the Texas panhandle, received $131,009.95 from the state as it sought the death 
penalty against Levi King for the murder of a father, a pregnant mother, and 
their teenage son. Still, the county paid $885,382.33 for the trial, and was 
forced to raise taxes and suspend annual raises for county employees.

In 2005, partly to stem the tide of expensive death penalty cases, Texas became 
the last state in the country to establish a sentence of life without the 
possibility of parole. Now, juries could return a life sentence and know, as 
one prosecutor put it, that defendants "are never, never, never going to come 
out except in a box."

Levi King benefited from this shift. After a day of deliberation, a single 
juror refused to give him a death sentence. He was already serving a life 
sentence for 2 other murders he had committed in Missouri. So, after a 
million-dollar trial, his fate was unchanged.

The King case was another cautionary tale for prosecutors. District attorneys 
"used to be confident about spending the money," explained defense attorney 
David Dow, who runs a death penalty clinic at the University of Houston Law 
Center. "Now, because so often juries bring back a life sentence, it makes the 
downside of spending all that money all the clearer, because if you don't get a 
death sentence you've wasted the money."

* * *

Greg McPhillips, the prosecutor for Mohave County, Arizona, had no doubt that 
James Vandergriff deserved to be sentenced to death. In 2010, Vandergriff was 
charged, along with his girlfriend, with murdering their 5-week-old son, 
Matthew. The autopsy showed broken bones, bruises, and signs the victim had 
been shaken.

"Spend money. That will get everybody's attention."

Murders are rare in Mohave County, a corner of northwestern Arizona where 
200,000 residents are spread over 13,000 square miles of desert. McPhillips, 
who has been county attorney for nearly 2 decades, seldom has more than 1 
pending death penalty case at a time, and each takes roughly 3 years to bring 
to trial. He allowed Vandergriff's girlfriend to plead to a 15-year sentence 
for failing to protect the baby. But for Vandergriff, he felt the case was a 
clear-cut example of the kind of heinous crime that his constituents would 
agree should lead to an execution.

But then McPhillips realized how expensive the trial would become. Shaken baby 
cases are forensically complex. The prosecution and defense end up paying 
doctors with differing opinions to debate the true nature of the baby's death 
in front of a jury. "If you talk to 2 medically respected doctors, they 
disagree on this stuff," McPhillips explained.

McPhillips also knew his county had another death penalty trial already in the 
works, that of a man who had stabbed an 18-year-old girl to death during a 
burglary. In that case, there had been eyewitnesses. Nobody had directly seen 
the death of Vandergriff's baby.

The case also came at a bad financial moment. In the wake of the nationwide 
economic downturn, Mohave County had seen $1.3 million in tax revenue 
unexpectedly diverted to the state.

After a series of hearings, McPhillips filed a motion stating he would not seek 
the death penalty, framing his decision as a matter of public service to 
taxpayers. "The County Attorney's Office wants to do their part in helping the 
County meet its fiscal responsibilities in this time of economic crisis not 
only in our County but across the nation," he wrote.

"I don't want to waste the county's money, as much as it galls me that justice 
is defined by how much money we have," McPhillips said in an interview. He 
allowed Vandergriff to plead guilty for a sentence of 20 years. While the 
sentence may not have been harsh enough for some constituents, McPhillips did 
not face backlash from voters. 4 years later, he does not regret his decision, 
but he is still bitter that money played any role at all. "I have to admit this 
is sort of a sore spot," he said. "I think every prosecutor believes there 
shouldn't be a price on justice, but we've made it have a price, and I think 
that's been a tactic of the defense bar."

Many prosecutors are quick to blame defense lawyers for driving up the cost of 
death penalty cases. Defense attorneys argue back that a robust, expensive 
defense is necessary to ensure that defendants get a fair trial.

But that doesn't mean it isn't also a tactic, designed, in the words of 1 
prosecutor, "to soften us up." Houston lawyer Katherine Scardino is considered 
by her colleagues to be one of the best defense attorneys in the state. (One 
calls her "the Clarence Darrow of death penalty lawyers in Texas.") She is a 
mainstay of training seminars, where she gives other defenders simple 
instructions for what to do when appointed in a death penalty case. "Spend 
money," she says with a bright east Texas twang. "That will get everybody's 
attention."

* * *

In some states, including Washington and California, the district attorneys' 
decision is even more fraught because they have no assurance an execution will 
ever be carried out.

In Canon City, Colorado, this September Jaacob Van Winkle pled guilty and 
accepted a life sentence for murdering his ex-girlfriend and her 2 children, 
ages 5 and 9, and raping her teenage daughter. District Attorney Thom LeDoux 
talked with district attorneys around the state and determined not only that 
the case would cost roughly $2 million over 3 to 5 years, but also that he 
could not be sure the case would actually result in an execution. Earlier this 
year, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper issued a "temporary reprieve" to Nathan 
Dunlap, who was facing execution for the 1993 murder of four people. The 
governor called the overall death penalty system in his state "imperfect and 
inherently inequitable." Unsure whether Hickenlooper would allow any execution 
to take place under his tenure, LeDoux found it difficult to justify spending 
so much money.

At a plea hearing in June, some of the victim's family members disagreed over 
whether the life sentence was a just result. "I feel like if he was 300 miles 
south in Texas, we would be on an escalator to death row, and I think that's 
appropriate," the victim's brother Danny Stotler told reporters outside the 
courtroom after the hearing. "Mr. LeDoux properly thought he should be put to 
death. Unfortunately the system that a liberal government has established has 
made it so hard for the state of Colorado to pursue [a death sentence] that 
they've eliminated the death penalty without eliminating the death penalty."

LeDoux said cost was one of "many factors" he analyzed as he confronted his 
state's political ambivalence. It was the 2nd time his office had considered 
and then declined to seek the death penalty for an aggravated murder. When 
asked - politics aside - whether a murder might come along that is heinous to 
enough to overcome the budget issue, he said, "The 2 we looked at were really 
aggravated, so I guess the answer is no, I don't know what it'd look like."

* * *

Texas does not suffer from political ambivalence, and certain cases are 
considered non-negotiable when it comes to the death penalty, including murders 
of law enforcement officers. The advent of life without parole allowed district 
attorneys in rural counties to save money by giving them a harsh alternative, 
but the remaining death penalty cases were still straining their county 
budgets. In 2007, Nacogdoches County District Attorney Stephanie Stephens wrote 
to her colleagues in the online forum of the Texas District and County 
Attorneys Association, asking for information on how much a death penalty trial 
might cost. "I cannot put my head in the sand and pretend like this isn't going 
to be a significant expense to my county," she wrote.

In counties working with the death-penalty defense office, prosecutors were 
less likely to seek the death penalty.

That year, a group of judges and attorneys from small counties in northwest 
Texas hatched a plan to ease the burden. Counties, they decided, would pay into 
a pool to create a single public defender office for death penalty cases. The 
idea appealed to prosecutors because better defense work would mean that death 
sentences would not be as likely to get reversed on appeal.

7 years later, the Regional Public Defender Office, based in Lubbock, is funded 
with state grants and fees from participating counties, which cover about 2/3 
of the state. Other states have capital defense offices, and Utah has 
experimented with creating an insurance system among counties, but the Texas 
model - in which counties pool their money to run a defender office exclusively 
for death penalty cases - is unique. Some tiny counties that have never had a 
death penalty case pay only $1,000 a year to participate. "Most counties, 
statistically, will not get a capital case," said Jack Stoffregen, the office's 
director and a longtime defense attorney. "It's kind of like a risk pool."

As the office began taking cases, some defense attorneys worried that better 
representation would provide an incentive for prosecutors to seek the death 
penalty more often, since cost would no longer be as much of an impediment.

Those worries proved unfounded. Last year, the Public Policy Research Institute 
at Texas A&M University released a report, which found that in counties working 
with the death-penalty defense office, prosecutors were actually less likely to 
seek the death penalty.

This was because attorneys from the defense office pour most of their funds 
into mitigation investigations, in which specialists find out everything they 
can about a defendant's past so they can present a better explanation for the 
crime to a jury, hoping to sway jurors toward a life sentence. With a history 
of abuse or a traumatic brain injury, defense lawyers are better prepared to 
bargain with prosecutors for a plea deal. "Mitigation specialists are 
specifically responsible for uncovering information and developing a narrative 
about the client capable of convincing a jury that death is not an appropriate 
penalty," the report states. "The same evidence can often persuade a prosecutor 
that a plea agreement is in the best interest of the state."

Part of that "best interest" is the money that will be saved by avoiding the 
death penalty. To date, the Regional Public Defender Office has handled more 
than 70 cases. Only 5 have gone to trial.

There is every reason to believe that even as Texas retains its reputation as 
the state most willing to impose the death penalty, the number of actual death 
sentences will continue to drift downward year by year, remaining only an 
option for urban counties who can pay for it. Many prosecutors begrudgingly see 
this as a victory by the death penalty's opponents over public opinion, which 
still favors the punishment. "We're never going to get the majority of the 
public to give up the death penalty," said Farren, the D.A. in Randall County, 
so defense attorneys will "make it so expensive and such a waste that we'll get 
through the back door what we couldn't get through the front door." On the 
other hand, if capital punishment does eventually disappear, it may be cold 
comfort to those opponents to know that Americans surrendered it not because of 
moral opprobrium, but instead as a matter of simple thrift.

(source: Maurice Chammah is a staff writer for the Marshall 
Project----slate.com)






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

County looks to state for funding in pricey capital murder trial



Willacy County is looking for funds in a capital murder case involving an 
off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent who was killed.

Mexican nationals 30-year-old Gustavo Tijerina and 40-year-old Ismael Hernandez 
have plead not guilty to the shooting death of off-duty U.S. Border Patrol 
Agent Javier Vega, Jr.

Now, Willacy County must not only prosecute them, but they must also pay for 
their defense.

"When this happened the last time (there was a capital murder case), the 
county, just on the defense side, we had to pay almost $500,000 to (the 
defense) attorneys," County Judge John Gonzales said.

Gonzales foresees this case to also exceed the half a million dollar mark for 
the defense.

District Attorney Bernanrd Ammerman is applying for a $200,000 grant from the 
Governor's Office for the trial help alleviate some of that burden on 
tax-payers.

"He's going to have to hire expert witnesses, additional investigators, so 
there's going to be an additional cost to the county for this," Gonzales said

Ammerman could not comment on the issue since State District Judge Migdalia 
Lopez granted a gag order in this case.

Each year Willacy County collects about $4.5 million tax revenue, much of it 
coming from the immigration detention facility and energy windmills.

Right now the general fund sits comfortably at $5.5 million. So why then does 
the county need to request money from the state?

"Well because that's money we need to use for the local community," Gonzales 
said. "You now, it upsets me that we would have to use any of that money to put 
these guys in prison or what have you. That money is for the local community."

Agent Vega and his family were fishing in a remote area, when the 2 suspects 
came-up behind them armed, looking to rob them.

Fire was exchanged killing Vega, Jr., and injuring his father.

Both Tijerina and Hernandez are charged with capital murder and are facing the 
death penalty.

(source: Valleycentral.com)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Convicted killer Terrance Williams sent back to Pa. death row



Convicted killer Terrance Williams is returning to death row.

Williams was a Cheyney University freshman when he and a fellow student lured 
Amos Norwood, 56, to a cemetery. Once there, Williams and a friend tied Norwood 
up with his own clothes, beat him to death with a tire iron and robbed him. 
They spent the money gambling in Atlantic City. The next day Williams returned 
to the scene and set fire to Norwood's corpse.

That was 30 years ago.

Williams, a former star quarterback at Germantown High School, was set to be 
executed on Oct. 3, 2012. But just days before he was to die by lethal 
injection, a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge vacated the sentence and 
excoriated the assistant District Attorney in charge of the case for 
suppressing evidence and gross prosecutorial misconduct.

Judge M. Teresa Sarmina accused A.D.A. Andrea Foulkes of withholding evidence 
of the victim's homosexuality and the extent of the deal she had struck with 
Williams' cooperating accomplice, Marc Draper.

In an opinion issued by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on Monday, Justice J. 
Michael Eakin absolved Foulkes and wrote that Sarmina had attempted to 
circumvent a valid death sentence.

Foulkes, now a federal prosecutor, had been a young prosecutor in 1984 during 
Williams' 1st trial and has remained involved with the case for nearly 3 
decades. After Sarmina's searing condemnation of Foulkes' alleged misdeeds, 
city District Attorney Seth Williams and federal prosecutors vigorously 
defended her.

Reached Tuesday at the U.S. Attorney's office in Philadelphia, Foulkes was 
appreciative and issued a short statement.

"I feel both professionally and personally vindicated by the decision of the 
Pennsylvania Supreme Court."

In halting Williams' execution, Sarmina had claimed that Foulkes withheld 
mitigating evidence, or information that might lead the jury to forego the 
death penalty.

Williams - who killed another man 6 months before his 1st conviction - had 
claimed he did not know about Norwood's homosexuality. But as Justice Eakin 
noted in the opinion, Williams admittedly engaged in homosexual acts with 
Norwood. Williams said Norwood had molested him since he was 15 and had 
suggested the murder was an "enraged killing" in response to the alleged abuse.

In addition, though Williams claimed no involvement with Norwood's murder at 
the trial, "evidence included his plan to extort Norwood by threatening to 
expose him for being a homosexual, and statements in which Draper and 
[Williams] taunted Norwood for 'liking boys' while they were beating him."

Justice Eakins said that Williams had tried to suggest that had he known more 
about Norwood's sexual proclivities, his defense would have learned the actual 
motive for the murder. Eakins didn't buy the argument.

In closing, the Justice slammed Williams for committing perjury at trial, 
testifying he didn't know the victim, had never seen him before, took no part 
in the murder and had no reason to be angry with him.

Pennsylvania has executed 3 people since it revived the death penalty in 1978. 
Gary Heidnick, executed in July 1999, was the last man to be put to death by 
lethal injection in Pennsylvania.

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

Delco D.A.: Ex-officer killed former girlfriend



Hours after resigning from the Colwyn police force, a man fatally shot his 
ex-girlfriend and wounded her 15-year-old daughter at their home in Glenolden 
on Monday night, officials said.

Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan said his office could seek the 
death penalty against Stephen Rozniakowski.

The 9 p.m. shooting occurred just hours after Rozniakowski was served with a 
protection-from-abuse order for Valerie Morrow.

Whelan said Rozniakowski had been "obsessively" stalking Morrow since she ended 
a relationship with him and returned to her husband in the summer.

Rozniakowski had a plan, the prosecutor said.

"It was his intent that day to arm himself with a gun, to arm himself with a 
bulletproof vest, and to execute all 3 family members and take down whoever got 
in his way," Whelan said at a news conference in Media.

Rozniakowski parked a block from the family's house on Glenfield Avenue, then 
sneaked to the front door, according to the prosecutor. He then allegedly 
kicked down the door to the house where Morrow, 40, lived with her husband, 
Tom, and her daughter, then went upstairs and shot mother and daughter.

Valerie Morrow was killed on the spot. Her daughter was wounded in the left arm 
and fled to her bedroom.

Tom Morrow, a part-time police officer in Morton, got his revolver and shot and 
wounded Rozniakowski before jumping out a 2nd-story window to get help, 
believing his wife and stepdaughter were dead, officials said.

The girl then came out of her room, saw Rozniakowski bent over with his gun 
near his head, kicked the gun out of his hand, and ran from the house, Whelan 
said.

The teen and Rozniakowski were treated at Crozer Chester Medical Center. 
Rozniakowski was in critical but stable condition Tuesday afternoon. Tom Morrow 
was treated for a fractured ankle and released Monday night.

During the incident, Rozniakowski used the police radio to call 911 and tell 
the dispatcher what had happened, including that he was the shooter.

He faces charges including murder and attempted murder.

"This is horrifying for law enforcement here in Delaware County," Whelan said.

(source for both: philly.com)








SOUTH CAROLINA:

South Carolina judge tosses conviction of black teen executed in 1944



A South Carolina judge on Wednesday vacated the conviction of a black teenager 
executed in 1944 for the murder of 2 white girls, saying he had not received a 
fair trial.

George Stinney Jr. was, at age 14, the youngest person to be executed in the 
United States in the past century. He was convicted of killing Betty June 
Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 7, and was executed 3 months after their 
deaths.

In her ruling, Judge Carmen Tevis Mullen wrote that she was not overturning the 
case on its merits but on the failure of the court to grant Stinney a fair 
trial.

"From time to time we are called to look back to examine our still-recent 
history and correct injustice where possible," she wrote. "I can think of no 
greater injustice than a violation of one's constitutional rights, which has 
been proven to me in this case by a preponderance of the evidence standard."

The girls disappeared on March 23, 1944, after leaving home in the small mill 
town of Alcolu on their bicycles to look for wildflowers. They were found the 
next morning in a shallow ditch behind a church, their skulls crushed.

Stinney was taken into custody and confessed to the killings within hours of 
the bodies being found, according to Mullen's ruling. His trial, before an 
all-white jury, lasted one day.

(source: Reuters)








FLORIDA:

Triple-slaying suspect indicted on murder counts



A Florida man accused of killing his wife, a neighbor and a pastor who worked 
with his wife has been indicted on 1st-degree murder charges.

A Manatee County grand jury handed down the three counts against 33-year-old 
Andres Avalos Jr. on Tuesday. A grand jury indictment is required for 
prosecutors to seek the death penalty in Florida, but prosecutors haven't said 
whether they'll pursue it in this case.

Authorities say Avalos fatally shot his wife, 33-year-old Amber Avalos, and 
their neighbor, 46-year-old Denise Potter, at the couple's Bradenton home on 
Dec. 4. He then made his way across town to Bayshore Baptist Church, where 
officials say Avalos shot and killed the Rev. James "Tripp" Battle.

Avalos was arrested 2 days later at an area mobile home park. Prosecutors say 
Avalos gave a full confession to investigators after his arrest.

(source: Associated Press)








OHIO:

Ohio House to Consider Lethal Injection Drug Bill



The names of companies that provide Ohio with lethal injection drugs would be 
shielded under a proposal the state House is poised to vote on Wednesday.

Some lawmakers have said the bill is needed to restart executions in the state. 
But prosecutors who want a condemned child killer executed in February say the 
legislation will undoubtedly lead to court challenges, and they're confident 
the procedure won't happen as scheduled.

The bill is among several the House planned to vote on as lawmakers finish work 
for the 2-year legislative session.

The Senate passed the lethal injection drug bill last week. If the House 
approves it, the measure would go to Republican Gov. John Kasich.

Shielding the names of companies that provide lethal injection drugs is 
necessary to obtain supplies of the drugs by protecting drugmakers from 
harassment, according to bill supporters.

Problems finding supplies of lethal drugs have created a de facto moratorium on 
executions in Ohio, which a decade ago was one of the country's busiest death 
penalty states.

Ohio executed just 1 inmate this year: Dennis McGuire, who snorted and gasped 
during much of the 26-minute procedure using a 2-drug combo never tried before. 
Concerns about that execution led to delays of other executions.

Opponents of the lethal injection bill say concerns about harassment are 
overblown and it's naive to think the bill can truly protect companies' names 
from being revealed.

The anonymity for companies - which would last 20 years - was requested by 
lawmakers after prosecutors said executions wouldn't happen in Ohio without 
such protection. It's aimed at compounding pharmacies that mix doses of 
specialty drugs.

Ohio's 1st choice of an execution drug is compounded pentobarbital - used 
frequently in Texas and Missouri - but the state has been unable to obtain it. 
Its 2nd choice - simultaneous doses of midazolam, a sedative, and 
hydromorphone, a painkiller - led to McGuire's prolonged execution and a nearly 
2-hour-long execution in Arizona in July.

In addition, the bill creates a committee to study "the manner and means" of 
how executions are carried out. At issue is whether other methods already ruled 
constitutional - such as the electric chair - should be considered. The state 
abolished electrocution as an option more than a decade ago.

The bill also shields the names of participants in Ohio executions.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Killing transparency ---- By shielding records related to executions, a 
proposed state law undermines open and accountable government



Shielding the manufacturers of execution drugs from public scrutiny - at a time 
of enormous nationwide controversy over how states are conducting executions - 
undermines democracy and makes future problems with Ohio's death-penalty law 
more likely. It's not the sort of measure to rush though a lame-duck session of 
the General Assembly in the final days of a 2-year session.

But that's exactly what's happening. Last week, the state Senate returned the 
death-penalty bill to the House, where it began and which is scheduled to take 
up the measure today. After a concurrence vote, the House would send the bill 
to Gov. John Kasich.

The governor and House members should reject this attempt to solve though 
secrecy the problem of obtaining effective, and comparatively humane, drugs for 
executions.

By excluding from public record - and thus mandatory disclosure - information 
and records about compounding pharmacies that make the state's lethal injection 
drug, the plan violates Ohio's open-records laws. It would keep citizens from 
holding their government accountable as the state seeks to carry out executions 
in a proper and constitutional manner. The law also would make it more 
difficult for courts to monitor executions.

The Senate made the bill slightly less egregious by limiting the 20-year 
secrecy shield to companies that do business with the state in the next 2 
years. The bill would create a study committee that would force lawmakers to 
revisit the issue after that 2-year period. A 6-member legislative committee 
would study the "means and manner" of Ohio's executions, without debating the 
broader question of whether the state should continue to use the death penalty.

Ohio can no longer obtain its lethal-injection drug of choice, the powerful 
sedative pentobarbital, because the drug's European manufacturer refused, on 
moral grounds, to make it available for executions. The Ohio Department of 
Rehabilitation and Correction tried an alternative that combined midazolam, a 
barbiturate, and hydromorphone, a potent painkiller. That resulted in the 
botched execution last January of Dennis McGuire, who took as long as 26 
minutes to die, while he convulsed, choked, gasped, and snorted.

Given the problems that face Ohio and other death-penalty states, voters need 
to know what their governments are doing to find suitable drugs and effective 
protocols. Shielding the identity of drug vendors would prevent taxpayers from 
knowing whether products from the same manufacturer caused problems with 
executions in other states.

Lawmakers hope that providing some anonymity will help persuade skittish 
pharmacies to manufacture the state's lethal-injection drug of choice. That's a 
flawed and fundamentally undemocratic strategy.

There's no evidence that compounding pharmacies face any danger. Protest is the 
stuff of democracy, but current laws adequately protect companies from 
unreasonable harassment.

A federal court has paused executions in Ohio until next February, when Ronald 
Phillips of Summit County is scheduled to die. Ohioans need to know - 
especially in the next 2 years - how the Kasich administration is securing 
lethal-injection drugs. Making the House bill law would leave them in the dark 
on a matter of life and death.

(source: Editorial, Toledo Blade)

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

Court upholds death penalty for man accused of killing ex and 2 children



The Ohio Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for a local man accused of 
killing his ex-girlfriend and 2 children.

A judge sentenced Mark Pickens to die in 2010 after he was found guilty in the 
shootings of 19-year-old Noelle Washington, her baby boy, and a 3-year-old girl 
Washington was babysitting. The 3 were shot to death in an apartment in 
Over-The-Rhine.

The prosecutor said the killings came after Washington filed a rape charge 
against Pickens and he didn't want her to testify.

(source: WKRC news)