[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., FLA., ALA., N.C., MISS., LA.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 5



PENNSYLVANIA:

Justice urges ban on lawyers in group that handles many Pennsylvania death 
penalty appeals


Pennsylvania's chief justice wants the state Supreme Court to ban lawyers at an 
organization that currently handles many appeals by convicted murderers on the 
state's death row.

Chief Justice Ronald Castille took that position in a rare 97-page 
single-justice opinion issued late Wednesday that resolved a number of issues 
surrounding a decision he wrote 3 years ago.

In both opinions, Castille took aim at the Philadelphia-based Federal Community 
Defender Office, writing that the group has engaged in abusive and unethical 
practices that warrant removing its lawyers from all Pennsylvania cases. "This 
court has a responsibility for the entire Pennsylvania judicial system, to 
ensure the delivery of swift, fair and evenhanded justice in all cases," 
Castille said. "We are not obliged to indulge or countenance a group which 
manipulates and abuses the judicial process in Pennsylvania in the hopes of 
achieving a global political result that it has failed to secure through the 
political process."

Pennsylvania has 181 men and 3 women on death row. It has executed 3 people 
since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s, and all 3 had relinquished 
their appeals. The state's last execution was in 1999.

Chief Federal Defender Leigh Skipper, who heads the Federal Community 
Defender's Office, did not return several phone messages seeking comment.

Castille described in detail the high court's effort to determine the group's 
use of federal grant money to finance post-conviction appeals in state courts. 
The federal money is limited to pursuit of federal habeas corpus claims that 
cannot begin until state appeals are exhausted, but Skipper's organization 
routinely gets involved in county court proceedings.

Castille said that violates federal law and federal court precedent.

"It insinuates itself into the role of de facto statewide defender in capital 
cases, claiming to this court that it is acting solely as a privately funded 
entity which need not answer to any Pennsylvania authority, and then claims, 
when put to the proof, that it is effectively a 'federal officer' and cannot be 
asked for an accounting," the chief justice wrote.

He also said the attorneys can overwhelm courts, causing delay after.

3 years ago, Castille made similar criticisms in the same case, the murder 
conviction of Mark Spotz, who killed four people in the mid-1990s.

A spokeswoman from the Administrative Office of United States Courts, which 
apparently provides much of the defender office's funding, declined to comment 
on Castille's opinion.

The lead prosecutor in the Spotz case said concerns about the group are 
widespread among district attorneys.

"What it boils down to, for us, is that we certainly advocate zealously and 
understand zealous advocates on the other side, but we do it within the rules - 
and it's abundantly clear they don't," said Cumberland County District Attorney 
Dave Freed.

Marc Bookman, director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, who 
also represents death penalty defendants in Pennsylvania, said his group and 
the Federal Community Defender Office both try to give the best possible 
representation for those facing execution.

"3 justices from Justice Castille's own court labeled the Pennsylvania death 
penalty in 'disarray' - given these real problems, the amount of time and 
energy Justice Castille is personally putting into this issue is surprising," 
Bookman said in an emailed response.

Castille, a Republican and former Philadelphia district attorney, must retire 
at the end of this year because he turned 70 in March.

(source: Associated Press)






FLORIDA:

Florida Supreme Court affirms Jacksonville murderer's death penalty; 2 were 
killed within hours; He had receieved leniency for a shooting when he was 14


Billy Jim Sheppard Jr. deserves his death sentence, the Florida Supreme Court 
ruled Thursday.

Sheppard killed 39-year-old Patrick Stafford on a humid summer day in 2008 in 
Jacksonville. Stafford had been sleeping in a car. Sheppard was 21 then. Police 
found 6 shell casings near the body.

Then Sheppard and his partner, 20-year-old Rashard Antwan Evans, hijacked a car 
at gunpoint.

Then Sheppard killed Monquell Wimberly, 16. Police found 6 more shell casings 
near his body.

Wimberly was riding his bicycle before church.

While Sheppard waited for trial in jail, he asked an inmate for a favor: Could 
he kill the only witness? he asked, according to inmate Michael Roberts.

Roberts said Sheppard was part of a Paxon-area gang - PYC. Wimberly was from 
the Westside. He and Sheppard argued a few days before Wimberly's death.

Sheppard shot Stafford because Stafford wouldn't give up the car he was 
sleeping in, Roberts said.

In his appeal to the state Supreme Court, Sheppard argued the prosecution used 
hearsay - Evans' girlfriend testified that Evans told her to send a message to 
Sheppard about a "package," Sheppard told her it referred to a gun.

He also argued that an interrogation video with police made it sound like 
police could prove claims made in the interrogation.

Sheppard said it was wrong for a witness to talk about how she was afraid he 
would come after her.

Sheppard also said the jury was influenced. One juror accused another of 
announcing a guilty verdict to him before the trial ended. She was excused from 
the case, but Sheppard argued she might have shared her verdict with more 
jurors.

Sheppard said he doesn't deserve death. The jury sentenced him to death, he 
said, because he was convicted for shooting someone when he was 14. That, he 
argued, wasn't enough.

Evans meanwhile is serving 20 years for manslaughter.

The Supreme Court disagreed with Sheppard on every claim. He had killed 2 
people within hours, and he'd been violent before. That, the court decided, 
deserved death.

Mark Caliel, who prosecuted the case, called it a particularly wicked case. He 
said he was glad the state Supreme Court upheld the death penalty.

He said if Sheppard hadn't received leniency as a minor - not facing 25 years 
of prison time for shooting someone - then "he would not have been free to 
commit this crime spree."

"It is something to reflect upon, especially when there is a great deal of 
debate out there about what do you do with young juvenile offenders," Caliel 
said. "Perhaps we should not have been so lenient, but it's real easy to say 
that looking through the lens of what did he do after the fact. ... Perhaps not 
every 14-, 15-, 16-year-old is not worthy of rehabilitation."

Sheppard had been prosecuted as an adult and was sentenced to 4 years in 
prison, but he violated probation and was sentenced to another year and a half, 
court records show.

After he came back from prison as a teenager, he lived with his sister, but she 
said prison changed him.

"He was different and would barricade himself in the bedroom and sleep a lot," 
the Supreme Court opinion said. "... He lost his easygoing spirit."

(source: Florida Times-Union)

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

Legal bills disputed in case of executed Broward killer


The Attorney General's Office says lawyers for Broward murderer Robert Henry, 
put to death in March, billed for hundreds of hours of unnecessary work.

When Florida's governor ordered the execution of Broward double murderer Robert 
Henry in February, his two court-appointed defense attorneys filed a flurry of 
appeals in an unsuccessful bid to stave off the death penalty.

Their initial bill to taxpayers for just over 1 month's work: $101,100 - 
including $390 for nearly 4 hours needed to review a court order just 2 
sentences long.

The bill has sparked a rare battle in court, with state lawyers last week 
asking a Broward judge to award significantly less money to defense lawyers 
Kevin Kulik and Melodee Smith for their work on Henry's defense. The lawyers 
billed for hundreds of hours of unnecessary work, according to the Florida 
Attorney General's Office.

"We are concerned that these bills are not properly documented," Assistant 
Attorney General General Jason Vail told the judge in asking that the total 
amount due to them be slashed by 60 %.

Broward Circuit Judge Peter Weinstein, who raised concerns about the bills but 
acknowledged death penalty cases are "different," must now decide how much to 
award the two lawyers. No date has been set for his final ruling.

Kulik, for his part, told the judge at a hearing last week that he has since 
reduced the bill by over $9,000, and the original bill did contain some errors, 
including 3.9 hours billed for reading the 2-sentence order.

"I don't want to be perceived as trying to get some sort of windfall," said 
Kulik, who stressed the $100-an-hour rate is far lower than most lawyers charge 
for similar appeals work.

Florida executed Henry in March for the gruesome 1987 murders of Janet Cox 
Thermidor and Phyllis Harris at a Deerfield Beach clothing factory.

Henry tied up and beat Harris on the head with a hammer, and then battered 
Thermidor. He doused both with a flammable liquid, torched them and fled.

Thermidor survived just long enough to identify Henry as the killer in a taped 
statement to police. He was convicted at trial. Henry was convicted at trial 1 
year later.

After years of unsuccessful appeals, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed Henry's 
death warrant in March.

Kulik, who at the time was representing another accused killer facing the death 
penalty in Broward, was court appointed along with Smith to handle the 
last-ditch appeals.

The lawyer asked the Florida Supreme Court to get off the Henry case, a move 
the justices rejected.

Over the course of 34 days, Kulik and Smith filed over a dozen different 
pleadings in various courts, all of which ultimately were rejected. The thrust 
of their defense: challenging Florida's lethal injection method of execution, 
an issue that has raised controversy across the country.

Kulik says he worked "essentially every day, all day" during that stretch, 
reviewing records, doing legal research and preparing experts.

In an interview, Kulik said the billing errors came because a paralegal, and 
then his co-counsel, prepared the initial paperwork. He said he is "one of the 
few lawyers in town" with the expertise to handle death penalty appeals and he 
normally charges $500 an hour or more.

"I did this because I consider it an important thing for people to have 
representation," Kulik said. "I lost a lot of money on this case."

During last week's hearing, Smith broke down in near tears recalling her 
client's execution. "It's very traumatizing for a lawyer to be involved in this 
process," she said.

In another South Florida case, a Miami-Dade judge last week awarded a total of 
$58,440 to 1 lawyers for their representation of child killer Juan Carlos 
Chavez in the final weeks before he was executed in February. Husband-and-wife 
team Andrea and Robert Norgard billed for nearly 600 hours of work.

In Henry's case, the 2 lawyers billed for over 1,000 hours of work overall. 
Unlike the legal fees requested in Chavez's case - which drew no objections 
from the Attorney General's Office - Henry's bill included work on an 
"evidentiary" hearing in state court aimed at exploring the lethal-injection 
issue.

The Attorney General's Office said Kulik and Smith "overworked the case by 
performing almost 600 hours of unnecessary work," researching legal issues 
outside the scope of the lethal injection appeal.

At one point, Kulik billed 3 separate times - over 19 hours, to the tune of 
$1,900-plus - for reading 173 pages of a trial transcript that dealt with 
questioning of potential jurors, an issue not part of the appeal, according to 
the state.

The lawyers also billed identical hours for meetings, though there was little 
detail about the meetings, the state noted in court documents.

Tallahassee's Justice Administrative Commission, the state agency that handles 
payments to court-appointed lawyers, also raised concerns.

"I don't believe the court can have confidence in the accuracy of Mr. Kulilk's 
billing," JAC lawyer Bradley Bischoff to the judge.

(source: Miami Herald)






ALABAMA:

'Revolving-door thug' again gets death penalty for brutal murder of elderly 
couple


The man who brutally killed his elderly relatives with 50 stabs of a steak 
knife will remain on course for Alabama's death chamber, a judge ruled 
Thursday.

That marked the 2nd time Circuit Judge Michael Youngpeter had sentenced Aubrey 
Lynn Shaw to death for double murder. In July, the state's appellate court 
ordered the judge to reconsider his sentence after invalidating one of the four 
charges of murder a jury convicted Shaw of.

In August 2007, while high on crack cocaine, Shaw killed Bob and Doris Gilbert 
- aged 79 and 83 - in the bedroom of their home on Gilbert Stables farm off 
Argyle Road in St. Elmo. The 2 were Shaw's great uncle and great aunt, and he 
lived on their family farmland.

Angela Parker, a family friend of the Gilberts on hand for Thursday's 
sentencing, said Shaw's shady reputation was well known for years.

"Mr. Bob and Ms. Doris didn't say too much negatively about anybody," Parker 
said. "But he was one of the rare few they did speak negatively about.

"He was just a revolving-door thug."

According to Parker, the Gilberts were wonderful people who enjoyed watersports 
at their fishing camp just over the state line in Escatawpa, Miss. "Mr. Bob" 
owned a ski boat in his 60s and would teach kids to waterski, she said.

"They were the cool people," Parker said.

In March 2011, a jury deliberated for only an hour before convicting Shaw, 39, 
of murdering the Gilberts. Evidence put on during the trial linked a bloody 
sock, shoe print and the murder weapon to him. Plus, he confessed to a neighbor 
and later told a Mobile County Sheriff's deputy that he wanted the death 
penalty for killing the couple, according to trial testimony.

In its July 18 ruling, the Alabama Court of Appeals said that one of the four 
counts of capital murder Shaw was convicted of was redundant. That 4th charge 
was related to burglary - Shaw stole a .357-caliber pistol from the house - and 
unnecessary, the court ruled.

After 6 weeks of consideration, on Thursday Judge Youngpeter's decision was the 
same: Shaw should die for his crimes.

Parker, who said she knew the Gilberts her whole life, described the couple as 
"like grandparents to me." Attending the re-sentencing on behalf of their 
family, she said the years since their slaying has "been difficult for 
everyone, all the friends and family."

"The only positive that can come out of this is that (Shaw) is an organ donor, 
and there's some way they can utilize his organs," Parker said. "Maybe he'll 
donate them to someone worth having life."

(source: al.com)


NORTH CAROLINA:

Rose: I freed an innocent man from death row but I'm furious


Watching an innocent client walk out of prison is every defense lawyer's dream, 
especially for those of us who represent people condemned to die. This week, I 
got to watch my client, Henry McCollum, North Carolina's longest serving death 
row inmate, regain his freedom after 30 years behind bars. New DNA evidence 
turned up by the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission proved that another man, a 
serial rapist and murderer, was the perpetrator in the crime for which Henry 
and his brother, Leon Brown, were sentenced to death in Robeson County in 1984.

Finally proving Henry and Leon's innocence was a great victory, but what I 
cannot forget is that this case is, above all, a tragedy. 2 innocent men - both 
intellectually disabled - spent 3 decades of their lives being, essentially, 
tortured by the state of North Carolina.

For Henry, it began when officers held him in an interrogation room for five 
hours and promised him he could go home if he signed a confession. He was naive 
enough to believe them. Then the 19-year-old spent three decades watching other 
inmates be hauled off to the execution chamber. He became so distraught during 
executions that he had to be put in isolation so he wouldn't hurt himself.

During those years in prison, he was a man convicted of raping and murdering an 
11-year-old living among a population that is notoriously unfriendly to child 
sex offenders. He wasn't able to hug his family, or even hold their hands. He 
saw them only on the infrequent occasions when they were able to travel from 
New Jersey to Raleigh, an eight-hour trip. His mother and the grandmother who 
helped raise him died while he was in prison.

Both Henry and Leon got new trials in 1991. Leon's murder charge was dropped, 
but he was convicted of rape and sentenced to life in prison. Leon was also 
exonerated and freed from prison this week.

Even 30 years of appeals aren't always enough to dig up the truth.

I have been Henry's attorney for 20 of those years, and he and his family 
pleaded with me to prove his innocence. But I couldn't help Henry in a system 
where the deck was stacked against him. He had signed a detailed confession 
before a change in laws to require confessions to be videotaped. I had no way 
to prove that the details in the confession police wrote for Henry - down to 
the brand of cigarettes smoked by the perpetrator - were all provided by law 
enforcement.

I was told that the police file on Henry's case had been lost, so I could tell 
how much evidence police had to ignore to pin this crime on 2 disabled boys 
with no history of violence. Until the Innocence Inquiry Commission unearthed 
that missing file, I didn't know that Roscoe Artis, the man whom DNA showed to 
be the true perpetrator, was a convicted rapist who lived one block from the 
crime scene, or that, at the time of Henry and Leon's arrest, Artis was wanted 
for another, almost identical rape and murder.

I also didn't know until I saw the file that, 3 days before Henry's trial 
began, law enforcement asked the State Bureau of Investigation to test a 
fingerprint found at the crime scene for a match with Artis. This was an 
important request, considering that no physical evidence linked Henry or Leon 
to the crime. Unbelievably, the test was never completed, and the district 
attorney tried Henry and Leon for their lives. Artis' name was never mentioned 
at the trial.

It took the Innocence Inquiry Commission, working for 4 years and spending 
hundreds of thousands of dollars, to finally prove my client's innocence. 
Sadly, only a handful of defendants ever get that kind of attention and 
resources. In many other cases, biological evidence is lost, contaminated or 
never existed to begin with.

Now, with Henry finally free, some people expect me to feel satisfied, or even 
happy. The truth is: I am angry.

I am angry that we live in a world where 2 disabled boys can have their lives 
stolen from them, where cops can lie and intimidate with impunity, where 
innocent people can be condemned to die and where injustice is so difficult to 
bring to light.

As I lie awake at night, mulling over the maddening details of this case, I 
wonder: How many more Henry McCollums are still imprisoned, waiting for help 
that will never come?

(source: Kenneth Rose is senior staff attorney at the Center for Death Penalty 
Litigation, a nonprofit that represents inmates on North Carolina's death row. 
He also trains capital litigators across the state----Newsday)






MISSISSIPPI:

Death row inmate: Prosecutors hid evidence of innocence


Lawyers for death row inmate Jeffrey Havard will now get a chance to present 
evidence that their client has spent more than a decade on death row for a 
crime the state's pathologist doesn't believe took place.

"We are eager to prove that the prosecution withheld important evidence that 
shows Jeffrey's innocence," said his lawyer, Graham Carner of Jackson. "The 
Supreme Court's Order allows us to demonstrate that the objective, scientific 
evidence shows there was never a sexual battery in this case."

Havard's lawyers are hoping to an evidentiary hearing because pathologist Dr. 
Steven Hayne made statements, first to The Clarion-Ledger and then to the 
defense, that he told prosecutors before Havard's 2002 trial he found no 
evidence of sexual abuse of 6-month-old Chloe Britt. The alleged sexual abuse, 
the underlying felony, qualified the case for the death penalty.

"I didn't think there was a sexual assault," Hayne told The Clarion-Ledger. "I 
didn't see any evidence of sexual assault."

But jurors never heard that, and they convicted Havard of capital murder, 
sentencing him to death.

The state has denied hiding anything, maintaining Havard's claims are too late, 
but Justice Josiah Dennis Coleman concluded the death row inmate deserves to be 
heard on the matter.

(source: Clarion-Ledger)






LOUISIANA:

Louisiana Supreme Court Vacates Death Sentence Of Man Who Killed, Dismembered 
World War II Vet; The court ruled that Eric Dale Mickelson was entitled to a 
new trial because of an error during jury selection.posted on Sept. 4, 2014, at 
4:10 p.m.


Louisiana Supreme Court reversed and vacated the conviction and sentence of 
Eric Dale Mickelson who was on death row for murdering and dismembering an 
86-year-old Shreveport resident in 2007.

In a 4-3 ruling on Wednesday, Sept. 3, the court ordered a new trial for 
Mickelson because of the district court judge's failure to excuse a prospective 
juror during jury selection for Mickelson's trial.

In capital cases, jurors must be willing to consider both life and death 
sentences along with mitigating circumstances raised in the case. The attorney 
who wishes to exclude a juror from the panel has to demonstrate the partiality 
of the juror through questioning.

The court said the judge in Mickelson's case did not allow the defense to 
challenge a prospective juror who said he would not consider mitigating 
circumstances before imposing the death penalty.

During jury selection, juror Roy Johnson said that drugs and alcohol (the 
hypothetical mitigating circumstances) were no excuse and that he would 
definitely give the death penalty to someone who had consumed them before 
committing murder. Mickelson was high on cocaine when he killed Charles Martin.

Justice John Weimer wrote in the ruling that "When a prospective juror holding 
such an opinion is not excused for cause, and the defense exhausts its 
peremptory challenges, as occurred here, there is reversible error."

In her dissent Chief Justice Bernette Johnson said she did not find the juror's 
partiality "clear-cut." She said that the jury selection transcripts indicated 
that the juror in question "would consider intoxication as a mitigating 
circumstance, but would not afford that circumstance much weight."

Mickelson was convicted of killing and and dismembering 86-year-old World War 
II vet, Charles Martin Jr, to get money for cocaine.

Law enforcement officials said Mickelson and his accomplice Beverly Susanne 
Arthur broke into the elderly man's house in 2007. Mickelson strangled him to 
death, robbed him, and placed his body in the back seat of his car as he drove 
to buy drugs, police said. Detectives later recovered Martin's body which had 
been dismembered.

Mickelson was convicted and sentenced to death in 2011.

Louisiana has carried out 1 execution since 2005.

(source: Buzzfeed news)