[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----MO., ARIZ., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 30



MISSOURI----new execution date (on Human Rights Day)

Execution set for St. Louis County man who killed woman with hammer


The Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday morning set a December execution date 
for Paul Goodwin, who sexually assaulted and fatally beat a former neighbor in 
north St. Louis County in 1998.

Goodwin, 47, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Dec. 10.

He was convicted of killing Joan Crotts, 63. He sexually assaulted her, then 
threw her down a flight of stairs and beat her with a hammer.

Goodwin had previously lived next door to Crotts and had confrontations with 
her. He was subsequently evicted, and prosecutors suggested revenge as his 
motive for murdering her 18 months later. Goodwin's fingerprints were at the 
scene. He confessed. And the victim's blood was on his clothes.

His attorney put on an insanity defense, with a psychologist testifying that 
Goodwin suffered from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. But a 
prosecution psychiatrist said Goodwin knew what he was doing and was not 
mentally ill. A 3rd mental health expert testified in the punishment phase that 
Goodwin's mental state was impaired when he killed Crotts.

His attorney also argued Goodwin had an intelligence level near the range of 
mentally retarded.

The Missouri Supreme Court upheld the death sentence in 2006, saying he was 
intelligent enough to die for his crime.

Crotts had lived alone in a home next to a boarding house in St. Louis County. 
Goodwin moved into the boarding house in the summer of 1996, and he often would 
harass Crotts with vulgar insults and threw chicken bones and beer cans into 
her yard, according to a court summary of the case. When he was kicked out of 
the boardinghouse, he blamed her. The murder happened about 18 months later.

On March 1, 1998, Crotts was attacked at her home in the 2700 block of 
Lyndhurst Avenue in north St. Louis County.

Goodwin, of the 3000 block of Lambdin Lane, entered her home through a back 
door. Authorities at trial said he hid in her basement in the night and 
attacked her the next morning in the kitchen. He tried to force her to perform 
oral sex and tried to rape her, authorities said. He shoved Crotts down the 
basement stairs.

The fall broke several of Crotts' bones and caused severe head trauma. Goodwin 
then followed her downstairs, found a hammer and hit her several times. He then 
left her lying at the bottom of the stairs. Family members found her that 
afternoon. From her hospital bed, she told police what had happened to her. She 
died later in surgery.

The state of Missouri has already executed 8 men this year.

Earlier this week, the state was scheduled to carry out the year's 9th 
execution, but it was put on hold indefinitely as the U.S. Supreme Court 
decides whether to review the case. The convict in that case is Mark 
Christeson, 35, who killed Susan Brouk, her 12-year-old daughter and her 
9-year-old son in Maries County in 1998. Their bodies were found in a pond near 
their rural Vichy home.

Christeson still could be executed if the justices decide not to hear his 
appeal. His appeal claims that his attorneys were ineffective and missed a 
deadline by almost four months for a 2005 appeal with a federal court.

On Tuesday, just hours before Christeson was to be executed, the U.S. Supreme 
Court issued a stay of execution. The stay remains in place until the court 
decides whether another review is needed.

Before the stay in the Christeson case, the state of Missouri already had 
another execution lined up.

A Jackson County man, Leon Taylor, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on 
Nov. 19. Because Christeson's execution was put on hold, Taylor could then 
become the 9th person to be executed in Missouri this year. Taylor, 56, was 
convicted in the 1994 killing of Robert Newton, a gas station attendant in 
Independence.

(source: St. Louis Today)






ARIZONA:

Jodi Arias Trial Update News 2014: Jurors Presented With Sex Tape in Death 
Penalty Trial


During the 5th day of the Jodi Arias sentencing retrial, Arias' defense team 
presented the jury with sexually explicit evidence of the convicted boyfriend 
killer's sex life with the victim, Travis Alexander, before he was murdered.

Arias, 34, was convicted of the 1st-degree murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis 
Alexander in May 2013. According to medical examiners, Arias stabbed him 27 
times, primarily in the back, torso and heart in his Phoenix home in 2008. She 
also slit Alexander's throat from ear to ear, nearly decapitating him, and shot 
him in the face before she dragged his bloodied corpse to the shower. However, 
the jurors failed to reach a unanimous decision on her sentencing. As a result, 
the retrial will determine whether she should be sentenced to death, life in 
prison or life with a chance of release after serving 25 years.

On Tuesday, Arias' defense attorneys presented the jury with graphic testimony 
that included pornographic photos that they took of one another, explicit text 
messages and racy phone conversations. At one point, the defense played a 40 
minute phone sex conversation that the lovers shared recorded on Arias' phone, 
reports USA Today. During the kinky recording, Alexander talked about raping 
her and tying her to a tree and they both made moaning sounds as if they were 
having an orgasm.

"The highlight of today was the sex tape between Travis Alexander and Jodi 
Arias. It's very X-rated," said courtroom blogger Jen Wood to Phoenix TV 
Station KTVK.

"The jury did a really good job of sitting there, pretty stone-faced, either 
looking down or looking straight ahead while they had to listen to a very 
salacious conversation," added Wood.

According to Wood, Arias' defense attorney likely played the tape in hopes of 
countering the prosecution's claim that Alexander was afraid of Arias.

"I think his goal was to show that Travis was very sexual, that he was very 
into it," she said.

The defense attorneys will begin to present evidence to the jury when the trial 
resumes Thursday in effort to persuade them to sentence her to life in prison, 
rather than capital punishment.

(source: Latin Post)

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

Arizona Death Penalty Still in Limbo After Botched Execution


After it took 2 hours and 15 doses of lethal-injection drugs for the state to 
execute convicted murderer Joseph Wood in July, the state's death penalty 
procedure is still in limbo.

A lawsuit in federal court, filed by both current death-row prisoners and a 
legal group representing media organizations, challenges various aspects of the 
state's lethal-injection protocol. At a status conference today, Judge Neil 
Wake suggested there may be no way right now for the state to execute anyone.

As Wake put it, "There seems to be a great deal of uncertainty, to put it in a 
great understatement."

When the state executed Wood in July, it was using a new combination of drugs, 
due to a shortage of the usual lethal drugs.

Federal public defender Dale Baich, who represented Wood, has referred to the 
execution as "an experiment that failed."

Reporters who witnessed the execution described Wood gasping for air hundreds 
of times, although Arizona Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan says 
Wood was unconscious the entire time and never in pain.

However, as Wood failed to die, his attorneys attempted to get a judge to halt 
the execution. Wood's condition continued to deteriorate as attorneys were on 
the phone with the federal judge, and Wood eventually died before the judge 
made his ruling to let the execution continue.

It wasn't revealed to Baich until later that it had taken 15 doses to kill 
Wood, and Baich insists that his reading of the execution protocol says that 
only one additional dose is permitted.

Governor Jan Brewer ordered an independent investigation into the execution, 
and an assistant Arizona attorney general said today that the report is due in 
mid-November.

The lethal injection policy could change based on that report, but the 
assistant AG conceded that no executions will be scheduled until the 
investigative process is complete.

Although the state has more of the drugs used to kill Wood, Wake found it hard 
to believe that the state would attempt that type of execution again.

Thus, Wake suggested the state doesn't have a way to execute anyone, even if it 
wanted to.

Wake voiced reservations about this lawsuit moving forward, but attorneys for 
the various plaintiffs in the case explained they all have something at stake 
here, even though there's no imminent execution. The First Amendment Coalition 
of Arizona, representing media organizations, is seeking the release of 
information related to the state's executions, while the prisoners want a 
court-ordered ban on Arizona using its current lethal-injection protocol, among 
other things.

"Arizona's improvised and unprecedented 2-hour execution of Joseph Wood has 
laid bare fundamental flaws in Arizona's attempts to implement its lethal 
injection statute," the complaint states (See the full complaint embedded 
below.) "Without significant changes, ordered and supervised by this Court, 
Defendants will continue to abuse its discretion and violate the Constitution, 
with a substantial risk of imposing more experiments in human execution with 
similarly ghastly results, and of doing so without outside public knowledge or 
meaningful media scrutiny."

(source: Phoenix New Times)






USA:

US Supreme Court late night rulings on death row fates


In an 11th-hour reprieve, the US Supreme Court put a murderer's execution on 
hold this week, a rare moment when a defense was able to slow, if only 
temporarily, the inexorable wheels of justice.

Hundreds of miles from the grim cell blocks of America's death row prisons, the 
lofty halls of the Washington court conceal a small but efficient bureaucracy 
of execution.

The court's 9 justices are regularly called upon to make last-ditch life or 
death decisions, supported by a discreet body of clerks in touch with cases 
ongoing in states around the country. Danny Bickell is the court's "emergency 
application clerk" - informally known as the "death clerk" - and handles all 
Supreme Court business relating to individual executions.

He operates confidentially and does not give interviews but is known to keep 
tabs on capital cases and to remain in constant touch with defense teams 
representing death row inmates.

If a last minute appeal is lodged, it is Bickell who is charged with knowing 
exactly where the 9 justices are at any given time, so that, if necessary, they 
can order a stay in execution.

This is what happened late Tuesday, when lawyers for Mark Christeson, due to be 
executed at midnight for the murder of a mother and her 2 children, got in 
touch.

2 hours before the condemned man was to breathe his last, the judges ordered 
his execution be postponed, pending a ruling on whether he had received an 
appropriate defense.

Death penalty lawyer Rob Owen, a professor of law at Northwestern University, 
told AFP that defense teams do not try to surprise Bickell or the Court on the 
eve of an execution.

"His role is to have a complete picture of what`s happening, to find out what 
litigation is going on in the lower courts," he said.

"When it arrives at their door step, I want them to already know," he said.Each 
of the nine Supreme Court judges has a geographic zone, and his or her office 
examines any last minute death penalty appeal that originates in a state from 
this "circuit."

"For each execution, one of the clerks in the relevant circuit was in charge of 
coordinating the execution," said Jay Wexler, who served as a clerk to Justice 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg from 1998 to 1999.

The clerks would deal with huge case files, often at home late at night, then 
call the relevant judge on a secure line. The judge could then decide whether 
to mobilize the court.

"I would say 99.9 % of the time the circuit justice is going to refer the 
application to the full court, and all 9 justices are going to act," Bickell 
told lawyers in 2012, according to the New York Times.

William Jay, who clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia on the circuit that 
includes Texas, the state with the most executions, said the justices usually 
act quickly and as a body.

"Often the inmate is in the execution chamber, and someone is waiting for a 
phone call, usually the death clerk to the lawyer of the state," he said.

"The state has the power to proceed if it hasn`t been ordered to stop," he 
explained, adding that in only very few cases do the judges order a stay of 
execution."You knew when the execution was scheduled," said Wexler, and as it 
got closer, "you knew they would increase the frequency of litigations."

Jay said these last minute applications could backfire on a defendant: "After 
three denied petitions, the State might understandably assume it is a tactic to 
delay."

But defense lawyer Owen said: "I will plead guilty to the charge that I do 
everything to save my client's life, that's my duty.

"Some people think that's tactical, but if you're filing at the last minute, 
you are gambling, you have almost no chance to win.

"It is not to our advantage to surprise the Supreme Court at the eve of an 
execution."According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit 
watchdog, the court might approve three applications for stays each year, out 
of around a thousand presented.

A very serious complaint, such as of police corruption, defense incompetence or 
doubts about the legality of the cocktail of drugs in a lethal injection, can 
delay an execution - but not often.

"It's a very lonely, very long and difficult night," admitted Wexler.

Some judges are more likely to grant a stay than others. Liberal justice Elena 
Kagan always calls for a delay, while Scalia has done so in only 4 % of cases, 
according to Bickell in the Times.

5 of 9 judges must vote for a stay for it to pass.

"Most of the time it's bad news," said defense attorney Brian Kammer, whose 
client Troy Davis was executed on September 21, 2011 in Georgia.

"Giving my clients that news is very difficult, heartbreaking."

(source: Zee News)