[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, MD., FLA., ALA., OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 7



TEXAS:

Withheld evidence and grand jury intimidation: Texas court orders new trial in 
death penalty case


An appeals court ordered a new trial for a Texas man sentenced to death for 
killing a police officer after finding that prosecutors withheld evidence that 
could have bolstered his claims of innocence.

A jury convicted Alfred Dewayne Brown in 2005 in the shooting death 2 years 
earlier of Houston Police Officer Charles Clark during a burglary at a 
check-cashing store.

Brown insisted he was at his girlfriend's apartment the morning of the shooting 
and had made a call from her phone that could prove it, but his attorneys never 
presented evidence to prove his claims ??? and his girlfriend later changed her 
story and testified against him.

A Houston homicide detective found a box of documents last year related to 
Brown's case, including a phone record showing a call made from the 
girlfriend's apartment at the exact time Brown said he made it.

The lead prosecutor in the case, Dan Rizzo, had requested the phone record, and 
the district attorney claimed the document had been misplaced but agreed to a 
new trial - which had to be approved by the court of criminal appeals, although 
the panel waited more than a year to hear the case.

As for the girlfriend, grand jury transcripts show the foreman - a longtime 
Houston police officer named James Koteras - browbeat the woman and threatened 
her with prison or the loss of her jobs if she continued trying to protect 
Brown from prosecution.

Other grand jurors joined in, according to Houston Chronicle columnist Lisa 
Falkenberg, and began asking pointed questions that Ericka Jean Dockery said 
confused her and caused her to doubt her own recall of events.

The grand jurors repeatedly ask Dockery, who worked as a home health aide 
during the day and at Subway in the evening, to think about her 3 children as 
they suggest that Brown might not have actually been at her house.

"Think about your kids, darling," 1 grand juror says.

"Girl, you just made a big mistake," another grand juror says. "I think she was 
with him at the check cashing place."

A veteran criminal defense attorney called the transcripts "unbelievable," 
telling the Chronicle that it was "the single biggest misuse and abuse of the 
grand jury system I have ever seen."

Another grand jury indicted Dockery for perjury after she gave differing 
accounts of the last time she had seen Brown the morning of the murder and for 
denying she had called another one of the suspects, although a phone record 
showed she had.

She was jailed but unable to pay bail and return home to her children - then 
ages 11, 8 and 6 - for 7 weeks until she finally decided to tell the grand jury 
what they wanted to hear.

Dockery told prosecutors that Brown's brother threatened to kill her and her 
children if she implicated her boyfriend, and she provided details about the 
case she had heard from investigators.

She consented to a curfew, drug testing, and electronic monitoring before the 
murder trial and agreed to call a homicide detective once a week to discuss her 
testimony.

Dockery testified that Brown confessed to her that he was present during the 
burglary and murder, saying, "I was there, I was there," although court records 
show that was the 1st time she had ever made the claim.

The grand jury that indicted Brown was overseen by Tricia Pollard, who has 
served on 6 Harris County grand juries and has ties to prosecutors and 
Republican state officials, and included another Houston police officer, Andy 
Geffert.

Harris County District Attorney Devon Andrews, the widow of the district 
attorney who asked for a new trial, has not yet determined whether she will 
retry Brown for the homicide.

(source: rawstory.com)






MARYLAND:

Maryland has no authority to execute its death-row inmates, attorney general 
says


Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said Thursday that the state does 
not have the legal authority to execute the 4 men who remain on death row 
following the legislature's decision last year to abolish capital punishment.

The legislation, championed by Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), did not apply to 
people sentenced to death before its passage. That has left the legal standing 
of the 4 men in limbo.

Gansler (D) said he has concluded that it is a "legal and factual 
impossibility" to execute the prisoners because Maryland no longer has 
regulations in place on how to administer lethal injections. With the death 
penalty no longer on the books, the state cannot develop new regulations on 
carrying out executions, Gansler said. Keeping the men on death row, he argued, 
therefore violates their due-process rights.

The state's position is included in a brief filed Thursday in response to an 
appeal by death-row inmate Jody Lee Miles, who is seeking a new sentence. The 
state is asking an appellate court to resentence Miles - who was convicted in 
the 1997 robbery and murder of a musical-theater director in Wicomico County - 
to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

"Mr. Miles should no longer be a death-row inmate," Gansler said at a news 
conference in his Baltimore office.

Technically, the stance announced Thursday by Gansler applies only to Miles. 
But Gansler said it opens the door to similar legal motions by the other 
death-row inmates.

To date, one other inmate has petitioned O'Malley to commute his sentence, but 
O'Malley has not announced a decision. O'Malley's office declined to comment 
Thursday on the governor's deliberations.

Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg (D-Baltimore), a longtime opponent of the death 
penalty who joined Gansler at the news conference, said he is hopeful that "the 
governor would take action."

Gansler's announcement comes two days after Maryland elected a Republican 
governor who has voiced support for the death penalty in heinous cases. 
Gov.-elect Larry Hogan has said, however, that he does not intend to ask the 
heavily Democratic legislature to reinstate capital punishment. A spokesman for 
Hogan did not return a call for comment Thursday.

Matthew A. Maciarello, the state's attorney for Wicomico County, issued a 
statement urging Gansler to reconsider his position, adding that "one must 
wonder how much politics, rather than the law, had to do with the decision to 
concede to the new sentencing."

Maciarello said legislation could be introduced that would explicitly allow the 
executions of those still on death row.

Gansler said his announcement's timing was driven by the legal process and had 
nothing to do with the gubernatorial election.

The attorney general, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in the Democratic 
primary, had previously advocated for leaving the death penalty on the books. 
He said the state's position is based on the law, not his own views.

Gansler said that 2 former state attorneys general and Sen. Brian E. Frosh 
(D-Montgomery), who was elected Tuesday to succeed him, concur with the 
position he drafted for the state.

He also told reporters that life in prison without the possibility of parole is 
not a lenient sentence.

"People should understand life without parole is a death sentence," Gansler 
said. "You're dying in jail."

(source: Washington Post)




FLORIDA:

Mental state now focus in Covington murder case


The day before he murdered and mutilated the corpses of his girlfriend and her 
2 young children, Edward Covington assured his mother he would never harm the 
woman he loved.

"I couldn't hurt her, I love her," he told his mother. Then he leaned over and 
kissed Lisa Freiberg, the woman he lived with and whose life he would take in 
the next 24 hours.

On the witness stand Thursday, Ann Covington recalled how her son's behavior 
that Saturday in May 2008 struck her as odd. Diagnosed at age 15 with bipolar 
disorder, he lived in constant turmoil, swinging between periods of high energy 
and deep depression. He was repeatedly hospitalized, tried to commit suicide 
multiple times, and was prescribed a regimen of psychotropic drugs, including 
lithium.

On this day, he seemed excited, she said. "I could tell he was starting in that 
manic state."

The next Monday, Covington was found cowering in a closet of a Lutz mobile home 
near the mutilated bodies of Freiberg, 26, and her 2 children, 7-year-old 
Zachary and Heather Savannah, 2. He pleaded guilty last month to 3 counts of 
1st-degree murder and abuse of a human body, as well as animal cruelty for 
killing Duke, the Freibergs' German shepherd.

Prosecutors, who are seeking the death penalty, have argued that Covington, 42, 
was fueled by crack cocaine, alcohol and misplaced rage. The former prison 
guard had lost his job and was spending $200 to $250 a week on crack, yet 
claimed he was unable to afford medications.

"Mr. Covington had hundreds to pay for illicit drugs but none for his 
psychiatric medications," Assistant State Attorney Jay Pruner said.

Over the last 2 days, Covington's attorneys have put their client's history of 
mental illness on full display in an effort to persuade Hillsborough Circuit 
Court Judge William Fuente not to sentence him to death. Dr. Harry Krop, a 
Gainesville psychologist, testified Thursday that Covington also suffers from 
intermittent explosive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, a result of 
his crime.

He has also had accidents that caused multiple head injuries, which could have 
diminished his self-control, Krop said.

As a teenager, Edward Covington was often depressed, his mother said. He was 
hospitalized after he shot himself while playing Russian roulette. The bullet 
grazed the side of his head. Home again, he appeared stable at first, but soon 
began talking about committing suicide. When he refused to open up, Ann 
Covington tried what she called "reverse psychology." That amounted to placing 
an unloaded gun on a coffee table and telling her son to turn it on himself, 
but to do it outside so as not to create a mess.

Her method, if unconventional, appeared to work. Her son began to talk.

In jail after the crime, Covington returned to thoughts of suicide. In 2010, 
his mother wrote him a letter, urging him to keep his plans to himself and to 
send the family a goodbye letter before he did anything.

"Eddie I hope you understand what I am trying to say to you without completely 
spelling it out," she wrote.

(source: Tampa Bay Times)






ALABAMA:

An International coalition of concerned citizens, supported by the PHADP in 
Alabama, started this petition to prevent the State of Alabama to go ahead with 
a senseless bloodbath and asking Daimler A.G. to???issue a clear statement 
against the Death Penalty in Alabama.

https://www.change.org/p/dr-dieter-zetsche-chairman-of-the-board-of-management-of-daimler-a-g-we-respectfully-and-urgently-ask-president-zetsche-to-issue-a-clear-statement-against-the-current-situation-in-alabama-regarding-the-death-penalty

(source: change.org)






OHIO:

Death penalty changes among legislation to be passed in lame duck, Statehouse 
leaders say


State lawmakers will revise Ohio's lethal injection procedure by the end of the 
year, Statehouse leaders said during a legislative preview event here on 
Thursday.

House Speaker William Batchelder and Senate President Keith Faber, both 
Republicans, said concerns about Ohio's 2-drug cocktail need to be addressed 
soon. The two leaders spoke briefly about what they want to accomplish before 
this legislature ends its work in late December and what might be among the 
first issues the next General Assembly will tackle in January.

Batchelder and Faber said bills concerning red light and speed cameras, 
concealed carry training and education will likely be up for votes before the 
end of the year.

Here are a few other issues expected to be debated in the coming months.

Death penalty

Batchelder and Faber both said they plan to pass legislation to address 
concerns with Ohio's lethal injection method. "That is something that we cannot 
leave in abeyance, otherwise we're going to have people who pass away prior to 
execution," Batchelder said.

Batchelder didn't provide details of the legislation, but he later told 
reporters it would involve providing anonymity to "compounding pharmacies" that 
prepare lethal injection drugs and extending immunity to physicians who advise 
the state on executions.

Attorney General Mike DeWine has called for the two reforms, saying Ohio's 
death penalty is at risk without legislative action.

Ohio, along with many other states, has been struggling to settle on an 
execution method, as many pharmacy companies have refused to sell drugs used 
for lethal injection. The state's current 2-drug cocktail is being challenged 
in court by the family of a murderer who took an unexpectedly long 25 minutes 
to die in January.

Batchelder also said the bill will incorporate some of the recommendations of 
the Ohio Supreme Court's death penalty task force, though he declined to 
elaborate.

(source: Cleveland.com)