[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., N.C., GA., OKLA.

[Rick Halperin]

July 25



PENNSYLVANIA:

Handyman charged with murder of recent Drexel graduate


Philadelphia police have released the name of the man they say sexually 
assaulted, beat and strangled a recent Drexel University graduate inside her 
West Philadelphia apartment.

56-year-old James Harris of West Philadelphia is now facing murder, rape, 
robbery, burglary and related charges.

Police say fingerprints and DNA evidence connected Harris to the crime.

The body of 27-year-old Jasmine Wright was found last Thursday in the rear 
bedroom of her third floor apartment in the 200 block of South 50th Street.

Harris had been held for days on burglary charges. Police say he is a career 
criminal who had been hired to do maintenance work in her West Philadelphia 
building.

\ Police say Harris has a long and violent history, including the murder of his 
father and the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl.

A week prior to the murder, Harris had been banned from the building after 
being evicted from his own apartment, just three doors away from where Wright 
had been living.

Police say Harris had kept his keys and was seen entering the building 30 
minutes prior to when Wright arrived home, and then broke into her apartment.

With this information, police initially arrested Harris on burglary and 
criminal trespass charges.

Police say they later learned that when Wright arrived home she was on her cell 
phone talking to her mother, and it was then that Harris attacked her. Wright's 
mother told police she heard a struggle before the phone went dead.

Investigators believe Wright was beaten and strangled next to the bed, but she 
was placed on the bed after the attack.

Harris then allegedly tried to clean the crime scene using bleach.

Wright graduated just four weeks ago from Drexel with a Masters in 
Environmental and Occupational health.

Police believe she had been dead for 24 hours when her body was discovered by 
the property manager.

Her father, who lives in the Bronx, had asked the manager to check on her 
because he hadn't heard from her.

As for a motive in the crime, police say that remains unclear.

Philadelphia Police Captain James Clark described Harris' violent past by 
saying, "He's 56 years of age, he has 31 priors. Back in '82 he was arrested 
for killing his own father. He's been arrested several times for sexual 
assault, several robberies, several burglaries. I mean, he's a monster. We're 
very happy to get him off of the streets."

Why Harris was out on the streets in the first place befuddles police.

"It's a hard pill for us to swallow, so hopefully now we got it right. 
Hopefully he'll spend the rest of his life in jail like he should have been a 
long time ago," said Capt. Clark.

Capt. Clark couldn't say enough about the people who worked so hard on this 
case.

"Homicide Detectives Burke and Joyce worked around the clock. Give kudos to the 
crime scene unit and the chem lab - they worked on their days off to expedite 
the DNA," he said.

Capt. Clark says he hopes this time that Harris gets the death penalty upon 
conviction, but that's something the Philadelphia District Attorney will have 
to consider later down the road.

(source: WPVI news)

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

Suspect in Easton Good Samaritan murder could claim insanity, mental impairment


When Jeffrey S. Knoble Jr. allegedly confessed to his mother to killing another 
man in Easton, he assured her that "they were safe now" before showing her a 
cellphone video of the body, police said.

2 months later, when Knoble heard the evidence against him during a preliminary 
hearing in May, the 25-year-old Riegelsville man had several outbursts in 
court, proclaiming his innocence and refusing to sign legal paperwork at the 
proceeding's conclusion.

Last month, Northampton County prosecutors formally notified Knoble that he 
could face the death penalty if found guilty of murdering 32-year-old Andrew 
"Beep" White in a downtown Easton hotel room. Again, Knoble lashed out in 
court, railing against the media and a justice system that he called corrupt.

Is Knoble mentally ill? That's a question that his public defenders are 
exploring.

In a legal filing Friday, defense attorneys Robert Eyer and Matthew Goodrich 
said they may offer a mental-health defense at trial, including the possibility 
that their client was insane or operating under diminished capacity. Knoble is 
being evaluated by a forensic psychologist, Dr. Frank Dattilio of Salisbury 
Township, who will be preparing an expert report, the filing said.

Mental health defenses can involve the claim that a defendant is not guilty by 
reason of insanity, though that is rare and an extremely high legal hurdle. But 
mental health can also be used to argue a defendant is guilty of a lesser 
degree of homicide, and lacked the specific intent to kill that is required for 
first-degree murder - the conviction that prosecutors intend to seek with 
Knoble.

Knoble is accused of shooting White, of Easton, in the back of the head early 
March 11 at the Quality Inn on South Third Street, then recording a video of 
the dead man's body. Authorities have called White a "good Samaritan," saying 
he had tried to help Knoble, renting a room for him because he had no place to 
stay.

Knoble's mother, Lori Knoble, has testified that her son played the cellphone 
video for her during a car ride later that morning after she picked him up on a 
West Ward street. The video recorded Knoble speaking, then panned to the feet 
of what turned out to be a corpse, she said.

On Friday, First Deputy District Attorney Terence Houck said he believes that 
Knoble has no mental problems that diminish his culpability.

"As far as his outbursts in court, he's just a baby," Houck said. "He doesn't 
want to follow the advice of his lawyers, I guess."

Houck said Knoble is "100 percent fine" and "completely sane," with his actions 
"premeditated, deliberate and well thought out."

Eyer, Knoble's lead lawyer, did not return a phone call Friday.

JJudge Emil Giordano has said he wants Knoble to be tried in December. The 
mental-health notice was part of a package of pretrial filings by the defense.

Knoble is also seeking to have his statements to police suppressed, and his 
trial heard by an out-of-county jury due to the publicity his case has 
received. The filings also ask Giordano to take the death penalty off the 
table, arguing that prosecutors' claims that Knoble robbed White and illegally 
possessed a firearm don't hold up.

Knoble was arrested the day of the shooting, after his mother called police. 
But Knoble was initially charged only with terroristic threats, based on Lori 
Knoble's report that he had repeatedly threatened to shoot and kill police 
officers, according to court records.

When Lori Knoble spoke to police, authorities had no reports of a shooting 
death in the Easton area. White's body wasn't discovered until that evening, 
after a friend of his contacted police with concerns that she had not seen or 
heard from him, police said.

Houck wants the homicide and terroristic threats cases to be tried together, 
saying that they are "inextricably intertwined." On Friday, the defense said it 
opposes the request as unfair to their client.

"The sole accomplishment in joining the two dockets for trial would be to offer 
irrelevant and inflammatory evidence which would tend to characterize the 
defendant in a prejudicial and negative light," Eyer and Goodrich wrote.

(source: Morning Call)






NORTH CAROLINA:

Senate bill could clear way for state executions to resume


Opponents of the death penalty and the sponsor of a bill changing North 
Carolina's execution laws on Thursday debated how much transparency the public 
needs into the process.

The state Senate could vote as soon as next week on legislation clarifying 
executions are exempt from state requirements for the public rule-making 
process. That would allow officials to find new drugs for lethal injection more 
quickly and with less public review. The bill also eases restrictions on the 
types of drugs used and prohibits disclosing where they are manufactured.

When asked by a Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee whether his 
bill decreased transparency, Rep. Leo Daughtry, R-Johnston, said he agreed it 
did. But he argued that a certain level of secrecy was required to protect drug 
manufacturers.

"If you tell them where the drug comes from, there will be 300 people outside 
the building," Daughtry said.

Daughtry and staffers for the Judiciary Committee said the state Department of 
Public Safety voluntarily publishes details about the execution process. 
However, they said, a limited supply of the drugs used in lethal injections 
could cause the state to quickly seek alternatives.

That prompted Sen. Angela Bryant, D-Nash, to condemn the bill for limiting 
public debate about the execution process. Bryant tried unsuccessfully to adopt 
an amendment that would make state executions subject to the public rule-making 
process, which they are not now.

Oklahoma and other states have faced inquiries into their lethal injection 
protocol after several botched executions.

"Obviously, we are trying to short-circuit opposition to what is a 
controversial act," Bryant said.

The Restoring Proper Justice Act would also amend the state's death penalty law 
by allowing certain medical professionals other than a physician to be present 
for the execution. A physician would still be required on premises to certify 
death.

After voting down amendments proposed by Bryant, the committee voted in favor 
of the bill. The House passed a version of the bill in April, but if it passes 
the Senate, the House must then concur because of a minor technical correction.

The American Civil Liberties Union opposes the legislation, and other death 
penalty opponents spoke against it at the Judicial Committee hearing, as did a 
representative for the North Carolina Press Association.

According to the DPS website, North Carolina executes prisoners using a 5 gram 
dose of pentobarbital.

The last time North Carolina carried out an execution was in August 2006. The 
state has 148 people on death row.

(source: Associated Press)






GEORGIA:

Death Penalty or Life? Convicted Ga. Cop Killer Sentenced----Jamie Hood was 
found guilty earlier this week of killing Officer Buddy Christian and resident 
Omari Wray, and wounding Officer Tony Howard.


Convicted cop killer Jamie Hood will not have to face the death penalty for 
murdering an Athens, Ga., police officer in 2011, a Clarke County jury decided 
Friday.

The jury, which took two hours to reach a decision, decided Hood should be 
sentenced to life without parole, according multiple media outlets.

Hood, who never denied killing Officer Elmer "Buddy" Christian nor wounding 
Officer Tony Howard on March 22, 2011, acted as his own lawyer during the 
month-long trial, believed to be the first time a defendant in Georgia has 
represented himself in a death penalty case, according to the Atlanta 
Journal-Constitution.

He argued that the shootings were self-defense because his younger brother had 
been killed by police nearly 15 years ago.

On Monday, Hood was convicted on 36 of the 70 charges he faced, including 
murdering Kenneth Omari Wray in December, 2010, in a separate incident, WXIA-TV 
reported.

(source: patch.com)






OKLAHOMA:

New Court Filing Challenges Legality Of Death Penalty


"It's a long shot, but the Breyer dissent was inviting people to challenge the 
death penalty. They just accepted the invitation."

Someone has taken up Justice Stephen Breyer's invitation to challenge the 
constitutionality of the death penalty.

Breyer suggested in a dissenting opinion last month that the death penalty 
"very likely violates the Eight Amendment," and called for the U.S. Supreme 
Court to address "that very basic question."

The plaintiffs who lost Glossip v. Gross, the case pertaining to Breyer's 
dissent, on Friday filed a petition for the high court to re-hear their case.

The plaintiffs, all inmates on Oklahoma's death row, challenged the use of 
midazolam, the controversial drug used in several botched lethal injections. 
When the Supreme Court ruled against them, new execution dates were set almost 
immediately.

Richard Glossip, the lead plaintiff in the case, is now scheduled to be the 
first executed, on Sept. 16.

The plaintiff's attorneys are now arguing in their petition for a more basic 
reason to eliminate the death penalty: Glossip is innocent.

"That's what I wanted them to do them the first time," Glossip told The 
Huffington Post by phone Friday of his attorney's argument. "We're fighting. 
That's all that matters."

The petition argues that the plaintiffs "exemplify important reasons why the 
death penalty is unconstitutional."

Glossip, who has been on death row for 18 years, has always maintained his 
innocence. Despite having no criminal past and no forensic evidence to condemn 
him, he was convicted solely on the testimony of a convicted murderer who cut a 
deal to save himself.

In the case of plaintiffs John Grant and Benjamin Cole, attorneys argue that 
arbitrariness, delay and dehumanization are other factors that make the death 
penalty unconstitutional -- all issues Breyer noted in his dissent as well.

Grant, for instance, was represented by an attorney who the petition says was 
"self-medicating for untreated bipolar disorder" and quickly married and then 
divorced her co-counsel in Grant's case, all during his trial. The attorney was 
later suspended from practice and ultimately resigned from the bar.

"It would be appropriate for the Court to use this case to address the 
constitutionality of the death penalty because the outcome will turn not on 
facts specific to any single litigant, but on circumstances common to the 
administration of the death penalty," the petition reads.

Breyer wrote in his dissent that the "circumstances and the evidence of the 
death penalty's application have changed radically" since the court upheld the 
constitutionality of the death penalty nearly 40 years ago.

The unusually fiery oral arguments in ?Glossip v. Gross ?were only a warmup to 
the scathing dissenting opinions the liberal justices would eventually pen -- 
opinions Justice Antonin Scalia dismissed as "gobbledy-gook."

"It's a long shot, but the Breyer dissent was inviting people to challenge the 
death penalty," Kathleen Lord, one of Glossip's attorneys not involved in the 
latest Supreme Court filing, told The Huffington Post Friday. "They just 
accepted the invitation."

(source: Kim Bellware, Hufufington Post)

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

Prisoners who lost lethal injection case seek rehearing on death penalty


The death-row prisoners who lost their Supreme Court case over lethal injection 
methods last month will ask the justices Friday to rehear the case as a test of 
the death penalty's overall constitutionality.

Their petition follows the court's 5-4 ruling on June 29, the last day of the 
term, that Oklahoma can use the sedative midazolam as part of a 3-drug protocol 
despite evidence that it may not render prisoners incapable of feeling pain.

That decision included an unexpected dissent from Justices Stephen Breyer and 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg questioning whether the death penalty is no longer 
constitutional. The 2 liberal justices cited death-row exonerations, arbitrary 
racial and geographic application, decades-long delays between sentencing and 
executions and a decline in the use of capital punishment by courts and states.

Supreme Court refuses to ban controversial method of execution

"It would be appropriate for the court to use this case to address the 
constitutionality of the death penalty because the outcome will turn not on 
facts specific to any single litigant, but on circumstances common to the 
administration of the death penalty," attorneys for death-row inmates Richard 
Glossip, John Grant and Benjamin Cole said.

A similar effort was mounted 2 weeks ago by Missouri prisoner David Zink, but 
the Supreme Court refused to delay his execution, and he was put to death July 
14.

A more likely candidate for the Supreme Court to consider whether the death 
penalty is constitutional will come before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 
9th Circuit in late August. In that case, a federal district judge already has 
declared California's death penalty unconstitutional because of long delays and 
inadequate funding.

Last month's Supreme Court case concerned the specific drug used by Oklahoma 
and some other states to sedate prisoners before lethal drugs are administered. 
While Florida has used midazolam with apparent success, 3 botched executions in 
Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma resulted in condemned prisoners exhibiting "cruel 
and unusual" pain -- something the 8th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits.

The high court's 5-member conservative majority ruled that states may continue 
to uses midazolam because the defendants could not suggest an alternative -- a 
burden that the court's 4 liberal members criticized.

But the ruling was overshadowed by the lengthy dissent, written by Breyer, that 
catalogued a long list of problems surrounding the death penalty since the 
court reinstated it in 1976 and invited a broader challenge.

"As Justice Breyer's opinion explains, the 'circumstances and the evidence of 
the death penalty's application have changed radically' since this court upheld 
the constitutionality of the death penalty nearly 40 years ago," the new 
petition for rehearing says. "The 3 petitioners here are well suited to present 
the full briefing for which Justices Breyer and Ginsburg called, on issues such 
as the unreliability, arbitrariness, delay, and decline in the application of 
capital punishment, which render such punishment unconstitutional under the 8th 
and 14th Amendments."

(source: USA Today)