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

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 6


CALIFORNIA:

Hit man in 'Yom Kippur murders' dies of natural causes on death row


A San Quentin State Prison inmate convicted in the murder-for-hire deaths of a 
Brentwood couple in 1985, dubbed the "Yom Kippur murders," died Wednesday of 
natural causes, authorities said.

Steven Homick, 74, died at a nearby hospital, according to California 
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The former Los Angeles police officer was sentenced to death in 1995 for the 
murders of Gerald and Vera Woodman. They were gunned down Sept. 25, 1985, while 
parking their Mercedes after a dinner marking the end of Yom Kippur.

Authorities said Gerald Woodman opened the door to his car and was fatally shot 
by Homick, armed with a .38-caliber pistol. Woodman, 67, was struck twice, and 
Vera Woodman, 63, 3 times.

Authorities determined that Homick and his brother Robert Homick, a Westside 
attorney, were hired by the couple's sons as hit men.

They were both convicted of 1st-degree murder, but Robert Homick was sentenced 
to life in prison.

1 of the couple's sons, Neil Woodman, was sentenced to 25 years to life for his 
role. A 2nd son, Stewart, was convicted of 1st-degree murder and given a life 
sentence. He escaped a possible death sentence by agreeing to testify against 
Neil.

The case also gained notoriety as the "ninja murders" because a witness 
confused a black-hooded sweatshirt worn by one of the assailants with the garb 
worn by ninjas.

At the time of the slayings, the Woodman family was in a bitter business 
dispute.

Prosecutors said the Woodman brothers expected to collect $506,000 from their 
mother's insurance policy. They said Neil and Stewart Woodman needed the money 
to prop up a failing Chatsworth-based plastic company their father had founded.

Since 1978 when California reinstated the death penalty, 65 condemned inmates 
have died from natural causes, 23 committed suicide and 13 have been executed. 
1 was executed in Missouri and 6 have died from other causes, the state 
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.

There are 749 people on California's death row.

(source: Los Angeles Times)






USA:

Court will cast wide net for bombing trial's jury


In a matter of weeks, the federal court in Boston will be looking for people 
over 18 to perform a civil service for about 5 months, with compensation of 
about $40 a day. If you are 70 or older you can refuse, and active duty 
soldiers, police officers, or firefighters won???t be asked to serve, either.

But if you can speak and read English, you could be enlisted, and unless you 
have an extreme hardship - such as a young child to care for, or a terminally 
ill relative - you have few chances of being excused.

Those who make the final list will become part of one of the most significant 
trials the country has seen in recent times, one that will become part of the 
history of the Boston Marathon bombings and their aftermath.

Jury selection in the case of accused Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is 
slated to begin in January, and US District Court Judge George A. O'Toole Jr. 
plans to begin by calling at least 1,000 people to the court for what could be 
a long, complex process to impanel a jury of 12, with 6 alternates.

Most people from Eastern Massachusetts could qualify, as long as they assure 
lawyers and the judge that they are capable of handing out the death penalty, 
if the punishment is warranted.

"The unique part about this case is you need what's called a death-qualified 
jury," said Robert Sheketoff, a prominent Boston lawyer. "You have to find 
people who are willing to impose the death penalty."

Tsarnaev and admitted serial killer Gary Lee Sampson, who goes before a jury in 
February, both face the possibility of the death penalty. That is a rarity in 
Massachusetts, where there is no death penalty for state crimes.

A Boston Globe poll in July found that 62 % of respondents supported US 
Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to seek the death penalty for Tsarnaev, 
while 29 % opposed.

O'Toole in September rejected a defense request to relocate the trial, ensuring 
that a local jury will be seated at the courthouse in South Boston, only a few 
miles from the Boston Marathon finish line. That raises the possibility that 
potential jurors could also have a personal connection to the bombings because 
they were at the Marathon that day, know someone who was, or know someone 
involved in the extraordinary manhunt afterward.

"I bet you everybody you know is only three degrees of separation from someone 
who was there," said David Hoose, a Northhampton-based attorney who specializes 
in death penalty cases. "If people are honest, and I think most people are, I 
think it's going to be very difficult to get most people to say, 'I'm not going 
to be influenced by the emotional reaction of what was going on.'"

With the trial slated to begin Jan. 5, legal analysts outlined for the Globe 
the possibilities of being picked and what the lawyers will be looking for in 
jurors.

"No one wants a juror improperly seated," said Sheketoff, who defended Sampson 
in a death penalty trial a decade ago.

Sampson's 1st jury sentenced him to death, but the decision was overturned in 
2011 after lawyers learned that one of the jurors had lied during the 
impanelment process.

O'Toole said at a recent court hearing that he will summon at least 1,000 
potential jurors to court during the 1st full week in January for Tsarnaev's 
trial, and he will call more if needed. The summons will be sent at least 6 
weeks in advance, meaning they could arrive within weeks.

James McAlear, the jury administrator for the federal court system in 
Massachusetts, said the recipients of a summons would include anyone over 18 
who has lived in the same judicial district for at least a year. Jurors will 
come from the Eastern Division of the District of Massachusetts, meaning they 
would live in the counties of Essex, Middlesex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Bristol, 
Plymouth, and Barnstable, as well as Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, 
Chappaquiddick Island, and the Elizabeth Islands.

The names of potential jurors will be picked at random from a list of potential 
jurors provided by the Massachusetts jury commissioner. That list will include 
the names of 35,000 qualified jurors from the Eastern Division, and each county 
within the division shall be represented in proportion to the number of 
potential jurors from that county.

Potential jurors could ask to be dismissed if they are over 70 or have served 
at least 5 days of state jury service or any federal jury service within the 
last three years. Anyone who has been convicted in a state or federal court of 
a crime punishable by a year or more in prison could also be dismissed.

And anyone with a demonstrable hardship, such as a young child to care for or a 
sick relative, could ask to be excluded. But the court is reluctant to grant a 
hardship for economic reasons, so it encourages employers to continue to pay 
jurors while they are out of work.

Jurors would be paid $40 a day for their service, but federal court officials 
tell employers, "Paying the difference between your employee's salary and the 
juror attendance fee is strongly encouraged, if possible."

Anyone who refuses to comply with a court summons can be fined $1,000 and/or 
imprisoned for up to three days and/or required to perform community service.

Hoose said if he were on the Tsarnaev case, he would look to dismiss any 
potential jurors who seemed too willing to serve, however.

"I just think they'd have an ulterior motive," he said.

While the judge will use a lengthy questionnaire to screen jurors' backgrounds, 
he and lawyers on each side will then interview each potential juror who has 
not been excluded, a process that could take weeks.

"I think you're going to find that the bulk of the questions focus on the death 
penalty," said Hoose, who represented Kristen Gilbert, the Veterans Affairs 
nurse who was convicted in 2001 of killing her patients in the 1st federal 
capital punishment case in Massachusetts in modern history.

A jury spared her of the death penalty, however, and Hoose said Tsarnaev's 
lawyers will want to impanel similar jurors - those who say they can choose the 
death penalty if warranted, but who can also agree on a sentence of life in 
prison.

"All you need is one juror who will hold [out] for life," Hoose said. "You're 
looking for jurors who will have the courage to vote for life in an unpopular 
case."

(source: Boston Globe)






US MILITARY:

Alleged USS Cole mastermind seeks to avoid death penalty


The defense team for a Saudi man accused of organizing the attack on the USS 
Cole asked a Guantanamo Bay judge Wednesday to stop him from facing capital 
punishment.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri faces the death penalty if convicted of charges 
stemming the Cole suicide bombing, and from the attack on the MV Limburg French 
oil tanker.

17 sailors died on the Cole in 2000 in Yemen; a Bulgarian sailor was killed in 
the 2002 Limburg attack.

Al-Nashiri's lawyers have provisionally had the Limburg charges withdrawn, 
though the United States is appealing that ruling.

In their motion to withdraw the death penalty in the Cole charges, the lawyers 
said "there is no military necessity served by executing the accused," adding 
that he is "far from the original theater of war in which he was captured" in 
2002.

"There's no deterrence in executing Mr Nashiri," said military defense lawyer 
Major Allison Danels, adding that such an action would only inflame tensions 
and would likely play into the hands of Islamic State jihadists.

"It would do nothing but enrage the terrorists and give them reasons for their 
brutalities," she said at a preliminary hearing at the US naval prison camp in 
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Al-Nashiri was initially held for several years in secret CIA prisons.

"Even if Mr Nashiri is acquitted, he can be detained indefinitely by the US, 
he's no danger for public security," Danels added.

Military judge Colonel Vance Spath will decide on the motion later, but he 
acknowledged how long the case is taking to play out.

"This case needs to move forward, because it's (been) here for a long time," he 
said, noting that the US government was still appealing the dismissal of the 
Limburg charges.

Spath dismissed those charges this summer because he said the US military had 
not shown it had jurisdiction pertaining to the attack on a French vessel.

The judge declined to give a date for al-Nashiri's trial, though it was 
initially supposed to open in February 2015.

(source: Agence France-Presse)