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

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 7



FLORIDA----new death sentence

Death Sentence For Man Convicted In Plantation Professor's Murder


1 of 2 men convicted in the stabbing death of a Nova Southeastern University 
professor was sentenced to death in a Fort Lauderdale courtroom Friday morning.

More than 2 years ago, a jury recommended a death sentence for Randy Tundidor 
Sr. for the 2010 murder of Joseph Morrissey of Plantation. Morrissey taught at 
NSU and was also Tundidor???s landlord.

In handing down the sentence, Broward Circuit Judge Cynthia Imperato said the 
murder of Morrissey was cruel and cold blooded.

Morrissey's wife Linday "Kay" said she's still angry but does feel somewhat at 
peace justice has finally been served.

"I feel like I can finally say to my husband 'rest in peace' because this was a 
long journey," said Morrissey.

Morrisey and her now 10-year old son were in the courtroom when the sentence 
was announced. She said her son wanted to be there.

"That's what Patrick actually said 'Mommy he's going to be gone away, right 
mommy' and I said 'yeah, you will not have to see him again."

Morrisey said she was bothered by Tundidor's nonchalance when the sentence was 
read.

"He really thinks he's going to be home for Christmas. I don't, I mean, the 
arrogant part is what really gets me, it's like he's not even facing, he's not 
even apologetic. He doesn't even look at us, he so arrogant, and bothers me so 
much," said Morrissey.

Tundidor Sr.'s son, Randy Jr., who pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of 
second-degree murder to avoid the death penalty, testified against his father. 
He admitted to breaking into Morrissey's home; holding Morrissey and his wife 
Kay at gun point; binding their hands and feet with plastic zip ties; rummaging 
their house for valuables; and forcing them to drive to an ATM to withdraw 
cash.

The jury believed the prosecutor's case that Tundidor Sr. was outside the house 
communicating with a walkie-talkie then came into the house.

The younger Tundidor testified his dad tried to shoot Morrissey but the gun 
jammed. That's when he used a hunting knife to stab him repeatedly before 
setting the house on fire.

Kay Morrisey was able to escape with the couple's son.

Tundidor Jr. later recanted and said he committed the murder.

On May 8th, 2012 a jury found Tundidor Sr. guilty on 10 felony charges 
including 1st-degree murder, 2 counts of attempted murder, kidnapping, armed 
robbery and arson.

Tundidor Sr.'s attorney plans to appeal. He said their best chance for a 
reversal is if they can get Tundidor Jr. to testify that he committed the 
murder.

"Clearly Randy Jr. did it and I think it's reprehensible that the state gave 
him a deal and that my client, Randy Sr., is going to death row to be given a 
lethal injection in the years to come ," said Tundidor Sr.'s defense attorney 
Richard Rosenbaum.

Tundidor Jr. is serving a 40-year prison sentence.

(source: CBS news)

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

Stay of execution filed for Banks


The Florida Supreme Court denied the stay of execution on Monday. Banks remains 
scheduled to die Thursday, November 13.

A stay of execution has been filed for Chadwick Banks, 43, of Quincy.

A death warrant was signed by Governor Rick Scott on September 22 of this year 
and the execution was set for November 13, 2014, at 6 P.M. at Florida State 
Prison.

Banks entered a Nolo Contendere to 2 counts of 1st degree murder and 1 count of 
sexual battery on a child under 12 by a defendant 16 years of age or older on 
April 29th, 1994.

He was sentenced to death in 1994.

The incident happened September 24, 1992, when according to the death warrant, 
Banks murdered Cassandra Banks and Melody Cooper.

Banks' death penalty warrant has been challenged before.

In August of 1997, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and in 
March of 2003 the Florida Supreme Court denied Bank's motion for 
post-conviction relief and denied his state petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus 
(that the court ordering the detention or imprisonment made a legal or factual 
error).

In July of 2005 Banks filed a Writ of Habeas Corpus in the United States 
District Court which was dismissed.

There were a number of other post-conviction petitions filed, which were 
denied.

Attorney Terri Lynn Backus of Tampa filed the latest motion.

Backus stated in a Tallahassee Democrat report that she had taken over the case 
from attorney Gary Printy who had failed to obtain his client's public records 
and uncover details of mental illness and child abuse and missed the deadline 
to file a federal appeal.

(source: Havana Herald)






ALABAMA:

Death or life without parole? Jurors to decide DeBlase's fate


Friday, November 7, jurors could decide the fate of a man convicted of killing 
his children.


John DeBlase was found guilty of 3 counts of capital murder for killing his 
4-year-old daughter Natalie and 3-year-old son Chase. DeBlase could be 
sentenced to life without parole or face the death penalty.

During Friday's testimony, a doctor testified DeBlase has a personality 
disorder. The doctor was the 55th witness in the capital murder case. The 
prosecution and defense will make closing arguments before the jury recommends 
a sentence for DeBlase.

(source: WALA news)






CALIFORNIA:

Death penalty sought in family's slaying


Prosecutors will seek the death penalty for their only suspect in the slaying 
of the Joseph McStay family.

Charles Merritt, 57, of Victorville is a former business associate of McStay. 
Merritt is accused of killing McStay, his wife and their 2 children at their 
home in 2010 and burying their bodies in the desert near Victorville.

San Bernardino County DA Mike Ramos says it's a horrific crime.

"This is a cold and callous murder of an entire family. There is no reason and 
no motive especially for killing the young children."

McStay and Merritt were business partners in a San Clemente-based company 
specializing in interior water displays.

(source: Inland News Today)






USA----book review

The Catholic Church and Capital Punishment


Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition, Second Edition by E. 
Christian Brugger

This 2nd edition of E. Christian Brugger's classic work Capital Punishment and 
Roman Catholic Moral Tradition traces the doctrinal path the Church has taken 
over the centuries to its present position as the world's largest and most 
outspoken opponent of capital punishment.

Brugger argues that by beginning a conversation on the death penalty, the 
pontificate of John Paul II marked a watershed in Catholic doctrine. That 
conversation is not over the question of practical support for the death 
penalty; on that level, the Catholic Church is abolitionist. Rather, the 
conversation concerns the implications of the "legitimate defense" paradigm for 
Catholic teaching. Brugger suggests that John Paul personally doubted the per 
se legitimacy of capital punishment, and so set up an analysis in which the 
justification for retributive killing drops out. As the Successor of Peter, he 
knew that to teach that capital punishment as intentional killing was 
intrinsically evil was beyond what the Church ever taught. Instead, John Paul 
II laid down a theoretical foundation in which the assessment of an act of 
capital punishment was essentially that of an act of private self-defense writ 
large for the community.

However, if the death penalty is and can only be rightly assessed as a form of 
self-defense, what are the implications for the Church's traditional 
retribution-based model of lethal punishment? How does this square with what 
the Church has historically taught? Brugger believes that the implications of 
Pope John Paul II's novel move have yet to be seriously analyzed.

New to this edition is Brugger's examination of Pope Benedict XVI's 
contribution to Catholic thinking on the death penalty. He argues that Benedict 
maintained the doctrinal status quo of his predecessor's teaching on capital 
punishment as self-defense, with detectable points of reluctance to draw 
attention to non-traditional implications of that teaching.

E. Christian Brugger is the J. Francis Cardinal Stafford Professor of Moral 
Theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary.

Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition, Second Edition

E. Christian Brugger

Publication Date: September 25, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-268-02241-9 / Paperback $29.00 / 320 pages

ISBN: 978-0-268-07597-2 / Adobe PDF e-book Perpetual Ownership $29.00 / 30-day 
Ownership $7.00

To order: 
http://undpress.nd.edu/books/P03149?keywords=Capital+Punishment#description

Contact: Emily McKnight; emcknigh at nd.edu

(source: Religion News)

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

U.S. death penalty is broken, judge says


The death penalty may not discourage criminals from committing murder is very 
expensive, said William A. Fletcher, a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for 
the 9th Circuit, on Nov. 4 at Cornell Law School.

"It has now been almost 40 years since the court's decision in Gregg v. 
Georgia," said Fletcher about the case that struck down mandatory executions 
for certain types of murders. Despite this, the U.S. remains the "only 
industrialized Western country that still has the death penalty."

Fletcher said many European nations abolished capital punishment "even in the 
face of poll numbers ... that favored the death penalty," leaving only the 
United States, Japan and China among industrialized nations to retain the death 
penalty.

Among the issues that shaped his beliefs on the death penalty, Fletcher said, 
is cost: "The death penalty is extremely expensive. It costs more to execute a 
person than to keep him in prison for life." Citing a recent study, Fletcher 
said, "from 1978 to 2011, California spent $4 billion more in cases imposing 
the death penalty than it would have spent if, in those same cases, it had 
merely imposed life in prison without the possibility of parole."

He also took issue with the "extremely slow" application of the death penalty. 
In some states, he said, "many more death row prisoners die from natural causes 
or from suicide than from execution," and a death sentence amounts to life in 
prison without parole.

Further, Fletcher said, "numerous studies [show that we] do not know whether 
the death penalty actually deters homicide." Different studies have come to 
differing conclusions, but the bottom line, Fletcher said, is that we still "do 
not know if there is a deterrent effect" to the death penalty.

Additionally, Fletcher argued, "certain methods of execution are or may be 
unconstitutional." He said the electric chair, "once thought more humane than 
hanging, has now be held unconstitutional" and "there is currently a moratorium 
in California because of concerns about lethal injection."

Fletcher also voiced his concern about "non-instrumental arguments both for and 
against the death penalty." Recognizing that "for some people, some arguments 
count more or less than others," he discussed both sides of the argument's 
reasoning. "Opponents of the death penalty emphasize the sanctity of human life 
and argue on that basis against state-sanctioned killing," he said. Proponents 
"also emphasize the sanctity of human life and argue that certain killers, the 
worst of the worst, having violated the sanctity of human life, have forfeited 
any claim to their own."

Drawing on his experience, Fletcher then turned to a number of cases involving 
errors in the application of the death penalty. These cases involved alleged 
police mistreatment and planting of evidence, malpractice on the part of 
attorneys, corporate influence over judges' behavior and clemency pleas 
effectively becoming "a useless exercise."

On "the ladder from the police to the prosecutors to the courts to the 
governors, at every rung we have seen the problems that I have described." Such 
problems "don't occur in every case, but they occur in enough cases that we 
have a serious problem."

Fletcher said his hope is that, if not in his lifetime, then soon after, 
"perhaps we, as a country, will eventually have seen enough."

(source: The Cornell Chroniclce)

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

Heller presentation indicts the death penalty


The 30th Anniversary Joshua A. Guberman Lecture took place on Monday, Nov. 3, 
in the Glynn Amphitheater of the Heller School of Social Policy and Managment. 
About 75 people were in attendance, including undergraduate and graduate 
Brandeis University students, faculty members, and Millie Guberman, founder of 
the Guberman Lecture and retired Brandeis Professor Sal Touster.

The lecture was initially created to honor Joshua A. Guberman, a classmate of 
Touster, in 1984. As Touster, now 90 years old, described, Guberman was a man 
who valued justice in society, "studying society and the important moral and 
ethical issues."

After a half-hour reception, the lecture began with an introduction by 
Professor Richard Gaskins, director of the Legal Studies program at Brandeis. 
He briefly discussed the "common ground that exists between the law ... and the 
great broad approach to social policy and social welfare."

Then he introduced Touster and William J. Leahy, JD, the Guberman lecturer. 
Upon arriving on the stage, Touster said, "One of the things I've learned in 
the 8, 8 years I've been going on is that any time you are called upon to 
speak, make it short and return promptly to your seat."

On a more serious note, Touster concluded, "With that, I leave this 
extraordinarily difficult, thought provoking and powerful theme that we are to 
hear tonight with a message that I wish...we might meet here again at the 
Guberman Lecture on another theme which will be always present to solve 
problems. Without it, the Heller School will not exist, because we have problem 
solvers here."

After both Gaskins and Touster finished their introductions, Leahy began his 
lecture. Leahy, director of New York State Office of Indigent Legal Services, 
has focused a majority of his career on criminal justice and actively works to 
end the death penalty and improve the representation of low-income citizens in 
New York.

He began his lecture by introducing facts about the death penalty today. He 
noted that although the death penalty is still legal in 32 states, "5 states 
have conducted over 65% of executions, a mere t3 states have killed a majority, 
53%, and a single state has executed 518 people, more than 37% of the total."

Leahy then made the claim that America is divided into 3 camps regarding the 
death penalty, "10 states that to widely, varying degrees, actively kill, 18 
states that prohibit executions entirely and about 22 states whose ambivalence 
is in accord with widely mixed public sentiment."

In addition to discussing the death penalty, Leahy covered the casualties that 
often come along with targeted drone strikes. He concluded his speech by 
connecting the strikes and the death penalty. He said, "I see a world in which 
violence is becoming more acceptable ... respect for every person is being 
eroded." To get rid of the death penalty would be to decrease violence in 
society.

Following the lecture, the audience asked questions. One student asked if there 
would ever be an acceptable reason to kill a terrorist, Leahy responded that if 
he could prevent Bin Laden from sending out 20 suicide bombers with a drone, he 
would do it. Another student asked him if he considered "life-sentence without 
parole" equivalent to a death sentence, and he responded that in no way is a 
death sentence the same as a life-sentence without parole.

The lecture ended after about 45 minutes of questions. Brittany Wolfe '18, a 
1st-year in Introduction to Law, stated, "Professor Leahy provided an 
interesting perspective on capital punishment and helped me to not only develop 
a better understanding of the implications of the death penalty and use of 
drones, but of their heightened presence in our society." She continued to say, 
"it was truly admirable to listen to such a profound speaker with both 
experience in the courtroom and in the classroom."

(source: The Brandeis Hoot)