[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----FLA., GA., ALA., OHIO, IND., KY.

[Rick Halperin]

May 27



FLORIDA:

Attorneys appeal convicted murderer's death sentence



David Beasher Snelgrove, sentenced to death in 2002 by an 8-4 jury vote after 
he was convicted in the 2000 beating and stabbing deaths of his elderly Palm 
Coast neighbors, Glyn and Vivian Fowler, has appealed his death sentence 
multiple times.

He was back in court in Flagler County Tuesday, May 26, as his defense team 
attempted to convince Circuit Judge David Walsh to throw out his conviction and 
his death sentence and grant him a new trial and penalty phase.

Snelgrove, wearing the green and white jumpsuit of an inmate on death row, was 
largely expressionless throughout the hearing.

The victims' children, Randy Fowler and Pamela Fowler Norko, traveled from 
their homes in California for the hearing.

Norko, who dabbed at her eyes with a tissue throughout the proceedings, said 
the repeated appeals - which have included 2 before the Florida Supreme Court - 
have been hard on the siblings.

"We went through the 1st trial back in 2002, then there was another hearing for 
the penalty phase, and we've been though 2 appeals in Tallahassee, and now 
this," she said.

Her brother was also frustrated with the lengthy process.

"All they're doing is pulling at straws trying to save him, after he murdered 2 
wonderful people," he said.

Norko said she is hoping Walsh, who will rule in the future after reviewing the 
case documents which must be submitted in the coming 30 days, will find for the 
prosecution.

"We will fight to the end," she said.

She noted that her parents had been friendly with Snelgrove, who lived across 
the street from her parents. They'd loaned him money in the past.

But Snelgrove, then 27, broke into their home one night to steal money or 
jewelry to pawn to support a cocaine addiction.

"All he had to do was ask my dad, and my dad would have done anything for him, 
for anybody," Norko said.

But when the couple awoke and interrupted Snelgrove's burglary, he killed them, 
beating 84-year-old Glyn Fowler so brutally that he died of blunt force trauma 
to the head, according to Florida Supreme Court records. Vivian Fowler, 79, 
died of a stab wound to the heart, and both had "multiple fractures and stab 
wounds spread throughout their bodies," according to the document.

Snelgrove pawned the couple's jewelry and used their bloodstained cash to buy 
cocaine.

Detectives arrested him after a bloodhound tracked a scent trail to Snelgrove's 
house, where "police recovered a knife in the woods next to the Snelgrove home 
with blood matching Snelgrove's DNA," according to the Florida Supreme Court 
document. There were blood droplets containing Snelgrove's DNA throughout the 
Fowler home.

The Florida Supreme Court overturned Snelgrove's sentence in 2005, then 
reversed itself in 2009, again sentencing Snelgrove to death. A subsequent 
hearing in 2013 also upheld the sentence. Most states with the death penalty 
require a unanimous jury recommendation to implement it.

In the hearing Tuesday, Snelgrove's defense team, led by Tampa-based attorney 
Richard Kiley and attorney Ali Shakoor, made two claims of ineffective counsel 
during the trial: that Snelgrove's counsel failed to address a possible mental 
disability that could have prevented him from being sentenced to death, and 
that Snelgrove???s defense team failed to object to improper comments by the 
prosecution.

Snelgrove's lead counsel at the time of his trial, James Valerino, testified 
Tuesday that an initial IQ test administered to Snelgrove in jail showed an IQ 
of 77 - too high for Snelgrove to be considered what was, at the time, referred 
to as "mentally retarded." The current term is "mentally disabled."

A subsequent test found a score of 70, Valerino said. A score of 70 was, at the 
time, the very highest someone could have if they were to be considered 
mentally disabled.

Valerino said in the hearing Tuesday that he had requested a continuance from 
the judge at the time in order to pursue the possibility that Snelgrove was 
mentally retarded, but the motion was denied.

A forensic psychologist, Gregory Prichard, evaluated Snelgrove for the 
prosecution, judging him at the time to functioning at a "borderline" range of 
mental functioning that was not so low as to be considered mentally disabled. 
He'd evaluated Snelgrove's IQ as 75.

In court Tuesday responding to questions from the prosecution, Prichard noted 
that Snelgrove hadn't been classed as intellectually disabled as a child. He'd 
instead been listed as emotionally disabled.

"When they're saying it's emotional, they're essentially ruling out that it has 
anything to do with intellectual condition," Prichard said.

And, he said, Snelgrove's written communications from prison didn't seem like 
that of someone with an intellectual disability, and people didn't react to him 
as someone who was mentally disabled.

"In my mind, everything was consistently pointing that Mr. Snelgrove was 
functioning in a borderline intellectual range, not in a disabled range," 
Prichard said.

Kiley asked Prichard if he had any way of knowing if other inmates had helped 
Snelgrove write the communications that Prichard had reviewed.

He did not.

Snelgrove's current defense team also found a former employee of Snelgrove's 
Miami-Dade county high school - Christine Mack - who had worked with Snelgrove 
when he was a child.

Valerino hadn't done that, and Shakoor argued that he should have, and that his 
failure to do so constituted ineffective counsel and grounds for a retrial.

But Valerino, who came to court Tuesday with a trolley loaded almost 5 feet 
high with file boxes full of case documents, said from the witness stand that 
he'd found no school documents listing Snelgrove as intellectually disabled.

Shakoor asked Valerino if he'd traveled to Miami or sent a special investigator 
there to look for a witness who could testify to Snelgrove's intelligence.

After the continuance he'd requested was denied, Valerino replied, "We did not 
have time to find a witness when we were in the middle of the penalty phase."

Shakoor argued that Valerino could have sent a special investigator to Miami to 
look for witnesses who'd provide mitigating information, and that fact that he 
hadn't - and that he had not objected to statements made by prosecutor and 
former State Attorney John Tanner in openeing and closing arguments, when 
Tanner told the jury that Vivian Fowler hadn't run away the night of her murder 
because she'd been with her husband too long to flee, and that she must have 
known what was coming - constituted ineffective counsel.

"These were objectionable matters," Shakoor said of Tanner's statements. "The 
first 2 statements ... were an example of Mr. Tanner inflaming the jury by 
getting in the mind of the victim."

The defense team questioned Mack Tuesday through a video link to the courtroom.

She testified that she'd seen Snelgrove regularly, though not frequently, when 
she was an ESE program specialist at Miami Central Senior High School, which he 
attended.

"Mr. Snelgrove, I remember, was a tall skinny young man," she said. "He was 
pleasant, he was not a disruptive student. He did have a tendency to be 
truant."

Shakoor noted that many of Snelgrove's school records - such as possible IQ 
tests that might establish mental disability before the age of 18, a potential 
mitigating factor in his case - had been destroyed by the Miami-Dade County 
School District by the time of his trial.

He asked Tanner if it was possible for students who'd been classed as 
emotionally disabled for ESE classes to also have an intellectual disability.

It was possible, Mack said, though common. When Snelgrove was in high school, 
she said, it wasn't possible for students to double up on ESE programs. On 
occasion there were other conditions, but the students were placed based on 
what was the best setting for them at that time," she said.

But Snelgrove wasn't able to take regular courses, and was instead on an 
alternate diploma course, available only to students whose reading level in 
high school was below the 4th grade level.

"He could not be mainstreamed into the regular academic classes," she said.

Mack said in response to Shakoor's questions that she would have been willing 
to testify at previous hearings.

"As a lay witness, Ms. Mack's testimony could have been very beneficial for Mr. 
Snelgrove," Shakoor said. "Mr. Snelgrove's lay witnesses were mostly family 
members or close friends. ... But as a juror, they're going to see somebody 
testifying for a family member, they???re not going to take it ... with 
possibly the same level of scrutiny as they would with somebody who was a 
non-relative, who's an education professional. ... Trial counsel, he had no 
reason for not finding Ms. Mack."

Kiley said Mack's testimony satisfied the need for evidence that Snelgrove had 
an intellectual disability before the age of 18, despite the destruction of 
some of his school records before the trial.

"The only records that could save this man's life have been destroyed," Kiley 
said. "This man was never going to graduate from high school like a normal 
person; he was reading at a 4th grade level when he was in the 9th grade. ... 
Evidence of onset under the age of 18 had now been satisfied."

Attorney Scott Browne, arguing the case for the State Attorney General's 
Office, said that wasn't the case.

"Did you see the number of boxes in here, your honor?" he said to Walsh. "Did 
that seem like an attorney who took his job lightly in this case? These defense 
attorneys left no stone unturned. ...Was (Mack's) testimony inconsistent with 
anything understood at the time? The answer is no."

And the comments by Tanner during the trial also weren't grounds for scrapping 
it and starting over, he said.

"Mr. Snelgrove received a death sentence not because of any brief comment by 
Mr. Tanner - he did it because he committed 2 heinous and atrocious, cruel 
murders," he said. "Nothing that has occurred in this courtroom should 
undermine the confidence in the death sentence that Mr. Snelgrove received for 
committing 2 murders in this case."

(source: palmcoastobserver.com)








GEORGIA:

U.S. Supreme Court to hear Ga. death penalty case



The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a death penalty case in which Floyd 
County prosecutors struck all prospective jurors who were African American in a 
capital case against a black man.

The justices voted Tuesday to hear the arguments in the next term, which starts 
in October.

Timothy Foster was sentenced to die in 1987 for the murder of a 79-year-old 
woman, Queen Madge White.

Rome police found White Aug.28, 1986, on the bedroom floor in her home, where 
she lived alone, after her frightened sister reported it appeared someone had 
broken into White's house. A blanket covered White up to her chin and her face 
was coated with talcum powder. White had a broken jaw and a gash on the top of 
her head. She had been sexually molested with a salad-dressing bottle before 
she was strangled.

Foster was arrested for White's murder a month later after police, responding 
to a report that he had threatened his live-in companion. The found items 
reported missing from White's house. He eventually confessed, according to 
court records.

Lawyers from the Southern Center for Human Rights, who are representing Foster, 
say prosecutor's notes show a racial bias in jury selection. According to the 
appeal, the name of prospective black jurors were highlighted and the word 
"black" was circled in the race question on the questionnaires given to each 
prospective jurors. The notes identified them as "B#1," "B#2," and "B#3."

The notes also show that the prosecution's investigator ranked black 
prospective jurors in case they had to seat an African American. There were 4 
prospective jurors in the pool of 42 people qualified to hear a death penalty 
case; prosecutors struck all 4.

Attorneys for the state successfully argued before the Georgia Supreme Court 
that prosecutors had legitimate, race-neutral reasons for striking the 4 
African Americans and they did not rely on the investigator's notes. Those same 
arguments have been raised with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Foster went to trial the year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was 
unconstitutional to exclude jurors based on their race.

(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)








ALABAMA:

Man charged with capital murder in 3-year-old son's 2013 death denied bond



A Huntsville man charged with capital murder in his 3-year-old son's 2013 death 
was denied bond in a hearing held in Madison County last week.

Maurice Antionne Cartwright, 35, is accused of choking and hitting his son, 
Jeremyah Shoulders, and causing bleeding on the boy's brain. The boy was taken 
to Huntsville Hospital by a relative on April 30, 2013, and died of his 
injuries 2 days later.

Assistant Madison County District Attorney Tim Gann told AL.com Tuesday that 
the office is still deciding whether to seek the death penalty for Cartwright.

Cartwright was initially charged with aggravated child abuse, but the charges 
were amended after Jeremyah died.

Huntsville Police Investigator Chad Smith testified at Cartwright's July 2013 
preliminary hearing that Jeremyah had marks on his head and neck when he was 
admitted to the hospital. The boy's mother said she had not seen marks on her 
son before he went for a visit with his father.

A pathologist found that the child had suffered multiple blows to the head and 
nose.

"She said injuries couldn't be from a fall and couldn't be from being shaken," 
Smith testified of the findings. "He was hit with something and it was more 
than one time."

Cartwright reportedly told investigators that Jeremyah was taking a nap and 
when he went to wake the child up, he couldn't. He said that he put the boy on 
the floorboard behind the seat of his Ford Ranger and took him to meet his 
aunt, who then drove the child to Huntsville Hospital.

Smith said at the hearing that Cartwright has 1 other son 2 years older than 
Jeremyah. The suspect told investigators that he would never hurt his children.

(source: al.com)








OHIO:

25 years later, Atwater murder case, conviction still generate controversy



More than 25 years after an elderly Atwater couple were found shot to death in 
their home following what appeared to be a botched robbery, controversy 
continues to surround the conviction of a man sitting on Ohio's death row for 
the crime.

Tyrone L. Noling, now 43, has been on death row since 1996, when he was 
convicted of aggravated murder in the deaths of Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig, 
both 81 years old, who were found shot to death in their home in the 6500 block 
of Moff Road on April 7, 1990.

The Portage County Coroner's Office estimated the Hartigs had been dead for 2 
days before their bodies were found. Both had been shot multiple times with a 
.25-caliber handgun.

Noling, then 18, was a suspect in several prior home invasion robberies in 
nearby Stark County in the week prior to the murders. He reportedly was armed 
and pointed weapons at the victims in those incidents, but did not shoot 
anyone.

The state Public Defender's Office and Ohio Innocence Project at the University 
of Cincinnati College of Law have been arguing in Noling's defense for several 
years.

Portage County Prosecutor Victor Vigluicci said Noling's attorneys have put up 
"an endless string" of delay tactics and "red herrings" in their client's 
defense over the years. "We have vowed to continue to fight for the imposition 
of the death penalty in this case, and we'll do that as long as it takes," he 
said.

Noling was indicted for the Hartigs' murder in 1992, while he was serving a 
prison sentence at the Southern Correctional Institution for burglary. His 
initial trial date in 1993 was postponed and he was not convicted until 3 years 
later. He has filed repeated appeals and seen several execution dates come and 
go.

Numerous factors appear to aid Noling's defense.

Noling's 3 alleged accomplices, Joey Dalesandro, Gary St. Clair and Butch 
Wolcott, were identified as suspects by the Portage County Sheriff's Office 
early on in the case. Called to testify against Noling, they have all since 
recanted their statements that Noling shot the Hartigs, or got on the witness 
stand and denied that he did so.

St. Clair, now 46, continues to serve a sentence of 20 years to life in prison 
for aggravated murder in the Hartig case. He testified for the prosecution at 
Noling's 1996 trial, and dropped a bombshell: Neither he, nor Noling, were at 
the Hartigs on the day of their murder. Noling was convicted despite that 
testimony.

Dalesandro was convicted of related charges, served 11 years in prison and was 
released in 2003. Wolcott, who was 15 at the time of the murders, received 
immunity for his testimony.

Both have told other media outlets they were fed a story by investigators and 
coerced into repeating it in court.

Noling has long sought DNA testing on a cigarette butt found near the Hartig 
residence. Earlier testing excluded Noling and his co-defendants as sources of 
DNA on the cigarette butt.

In 2013, the Ohio Supreme Court recommended new testing on the cigarette. 
Portage County Common Pleas Judge John Enlow ordered the cigarette butt 
re-tested for DNA following a December 2013 court hearing, but it did not 
return any hits in the state DNA database, according to Vigluicci and court 
records.

Noling's attorneys sought DNA testing on other items, including shell casings 
and some of the victims' property, in the hopes it might point to different 
suspects. No testimony was ever given that Noling was in the Hartigs' bedroom, 
but jewelry boxes from there were seized as evidence by investigators.

Part of the state's argument against further scientific testing is that the 
Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation "determined those items were so 
contaminated, back in 1990 when this crime occurred, when the case was 
investigated" that there is little chance any DNA from a suspect would remain 
on them, Vigluicci said.

DNA testing was "practically unknown" in 1990, and "the protocols for handling 
evidence were not the ones we have now," he said. "Sterile gloves were not 
used, items were placed in the same (evidence) bag. They are not able to be 
tested for DNA because of that, were contaminated by officers holding them, and 
writing on them."

Noling's attorneys countered that they wished to have a private lab test the 
items for DNA, because the Ohio BCI did not have all the necessary equipment to 
do so, according to court records.

Vigluicci said former Portage County Common Pleas Judge John Enlow denied 
Noling's application for further DNA testing last year. Noling's attorneys 
appealed the ruling to the 11th District Court of Appeals in Warren as well as 
the Ohio Supreme Court.

He said he expects the Supreme Court "will probably end up taking a look at" 
the appeal, as appeals in death penalty cases go directly to the high court, he 
said.

In addition, the murder weapon has never been recovered. A handgun of the same 
caliber seized from Noling, one he stole during a previous robbery in Alliance, 
turned out not to have been used to shoot the Hartigs.

A phone message seeking comment on the case was left for Noling's public 
defender.

A witness, Nathan Chesley, came forward for a second time several years ago 
claiming his foster brother, Daniel E. Wilson, admitted to him that he 
committed the Hartig murders.

Wilson, a 20-year-old Rootstown High School graduate, was living in nearby 
Edinburg at the time, and allegedly threatened to harm Chesley if he told 
anyone what Wilson allegedly said one night while intoxicated.

Chesley reported the statement to Southeast school officials, who called the 
Portage County Sheriff's Office. However, it is not clear if the tip was ever 
followed up.

Convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 1984 death of an 81-year-old 
Elyria man during an attempted robbery, Wilson later was convicted of 
aggravated murder for locking Carol Lutz, 24, alive in her car trunk, then 
setting it on fire after she drove him home from a bar in Lorain County on May 
4, 1991. Wilson was executed by lethal injection in June 2009.

Another potential suspect was Bearnhardt Hartig's insurance agent, Lewis 
Lehman. Hartig allegedly told his doctor he was angry Lehman had defaulted on a 
$10,000 personal loan the couple gave him, and was planning to confront him.

Lehman, who at one point had owned a .25-caliber handgun but claimed he had 
sold it to an "unknown individual," died in 1998, according to a September 2003 
article on Noling's case in Cleveland Scene magazine.

(source: The Alliance Review)

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

Death penalty should not apply to the seriously mentally ill: editorial



Legislation introduced by Ohio State Sens. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, 
and Sandra Williams, a Cleveland Democrat, would prohibit the state from 
executing murderers determined to have been seriously mentally ill when they 
committed their crimes.

Under Senate Bill 162, someone who was "significantly impaired" by such 
illnesses as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and as a result unable to 
understand what he or she was doing or to obey the law, could not be put to 
death.

That would be the case even for defendants deemed competent to stand trial and 
those ruled unable to pursue a defense of not guilty by reason of insanity.

Those already convicted and on death row would have one year to appeal their 
sentences after the law went into effect.

The proposal, which was among 50 recommendations made last year by an Ohio 
Supreme Court task force on the death penalty, deserves serious consideration.

Mental illness is not something people choose, and if it is found to have 
contributed to their actions -- no matter how heinous they may have been -- it 
would be unconscionably callous to make them pay the ultimate penalty.

Other sentences can meet the state's burden of protecting the public from 
further harm, up to and including a sentence of life in prison without parole.

To pursue the death penalty, a prosecutor would have to prove that a defendant 
claiming a serious mental illness was not suffering from it when the crime was 
committed, or that the illness did not contribute to the crime.

A disorder brought on "primarily by repeated criminal conduct or attributable 
solely to the acute effects of voluntary use of alcohol or any other drug of 
abuse" would not make a defendant ineligible for the death penalty.

It's the position of the editorial board that the death penalty should be 
abolished altogether for several reasons, including its inconsistent 
application, the financial cost to the taxpayer, the potential for cruel and 
unusual punishment in carrying out the execution, and a belief that it is 
morally wrong to take a life in such a fashion.

But as long as the death penalty remains on Ohio's books, the provisions of SB 
162 would be a step toward guaranteeing that justice is served more fairly and 
humanely.

(source: Editorial; Editorials express the view of the editorial board of The 
Plain Dealer and Northeast Ohio Media Group)

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

'Victory' of death penalty for wife's killer gone, man says



There was no doubt in Joe Byrne's mind that David Brewer should be put to death 
for killing Byrne's wife.

"There simply was no alternative to death for David Brewer," Byrne said minutes 
after Brewer's execution on April 29, 2003.

Today, 12 years later, Byrne says the thrill of "victory" he felt that day is 
long gone, replaced by ambiguity about capital punishment.

"I felt like I'd won something," he said of witnessing the death of his former 
fraternity buddy. "But the death penalty is not all it's cracked up to be."

Byrne, who now lives in New Jersey, returned to Ohio to speak at a "Voices of 
Experience" anti-death penalty event on Tuesday in Cincinnati, along with 
former Ohio prisons Director Terry Collins, exonerated death row inmate Derrick 
Jamison and retired Montgomery County Appeals Court Judge James A. Brogan.

Byrne said in a Tuesday interview with The Dispatch that he still believes in 
capital punishment, but the "justice system is a mess," and not enough is done 
for crime victim survivors.

"I was very disappointed afterward," he said of witnessing Brewer's execution. 
"I did not feel like I thought I would. I continued to feel very angry. I had 
let the death-penalty process consume me."

Byrne watched from a nearby witness room on April 29, 2003, when Brewer was 
executed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville for 
murdering Sherry Renee Byrne. Court records show that on March 21, 1985, Brewer 
abducted the 21-year-old wife of Byrne, sexually assaulted her, threw her in 
the trunk of his car and drove around southwestern Ohio for 8 hours before 
strangling, hanging and stabbing her to death on a rural Greene County road.

The morning of the execution, Byrne sat with his late wife's family members and 
then-Greene County Prosecutor Bill Schenck in a waiting room at the prison. 
Byrne had headphones on, listening to Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road on a 
portable CD player. It was his slain wife's favorite song.

Later, he angrily watched as Brewer died, never having apologized for taking 
the life of a young wife.

"Where's the remorse?" Byrne said quietly from his seat behind a large window, 
a few feet from Brewer.

2 days after the execution, Byrne remembered being back home in New Jersey 
watching his son from his second marriage at a Special Olympics event.

"I felt so sad. I couldn't stop crying," he said. "I didn't understand, because 
I thought I had got everything I wanted" with Brewer's execution.

Since then, Byrne has come to grips with the sadness and anger, acknowledging 
that the feelings will never go away.

"In theory, I believe in the death penalty, but not the way it's operating in 
Ohio," he said. "I would not want other victims to go through what I went 
through."

House Bill 663, legislation approved last fall to permit the state to secretly 
buy drugs for executions, also contained a provision to create a joint 
House-Senate 6-member committee to "study the manner in which families of 
homicide victims in this state can best be supported by government programs, 
social service entities, and charitable organizations." The House just named 
its 3 members, but no Senate appointments have been made.

(source: Columbus Dispatch)








INDIANA:

Paula Cooper, once youngest Indiana death row inmate, found dead

----

May 15, 1985: The body of Ruth Pelke, a 78-year-old Bible teacher, is 
discovered in her Gary home by a stepson. Pelke had been stabbed 33 times, and 
her home had been ransacked.

May 16, 1985: Paula Cooper, then 15, and 3 other teenage Gary girls are 
arrested and charged with slaying Pelke. Cooper, Karen Corder, 16; April 
Beverly, 15, and Denise Thomas, 14, are said to have gone to Pelke's home under 
the pretense of seeking information about her summer Bible classes. The girls 
also took $10 from Pelke and fled the scene in her car. Lake County Prosecutor 
Jack Crawford says he will seek the death penalty in the case.

April 21, 1986: Cooper pleads guilty to the murder of Pelke. Authorities say 
Cooper orchestrated the crime and stabbed Pelke 33 times.

July 11, 1986: Lake County Court Judge James Kimbrough sentences Paula Cooper 
to death, making her the youngest person in Indiana history to receive the 
death sentence. No execution date is set because death penalty cases are 
automatically appealed.

Feb. 21, 1987: William Touchette, a lawyer for Cooper, says he has written to 
Pope John Paul II, asking him to write a letter to Gov. Robert D. Orr in an 
effort to have Cooper's sentence commuted.

May 9, 1987: Ruth Pelke's grandson, William R. Pelke, says he has forgiven 
Paula Cooper. He writes to Gov. Robert D.Orr, asking him to reduce the 
sentence, and begins a crusade to spare Cooper from execution.

June 20, 1987: The Rev. Vito Bracone, an Italian priest who organized a massive 
petition drive in support of Paula Cooper, meets with her and says he will ask 
the governor to spare her life.

March 2, 1989: The Indiana Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the Paula 
Cooper case. Amnesty International had filed a friend-of-the-court brief in 
support of Cooper. July 13, 1989: The Indiana Supreme Court rules Cooper cannot 
be executed and orders her sentence reduced to 60 years in prison.

On May 11, 2001, 17 female prisoners including Paula Cooper line up in the 
hallway with bars on the windows at the Indiana Women's Prison as they prepare 
to be graduated from college.

May 11, 2001: Paula Cooper receives a bachelor's degree in humanities from 
Martin University.

On June 17, 2013, Cooper was released from the Rockville Correctional Institute 
after earning credits for an early release.

----------

A woman who was once the youngest Indiana Death Row inmate was found dead 
Tuesday morning in Indianapolis, police said.

The campaign to save the life of Paula Cooper, who at 16 became the youngest 
death row inmate in Indiana, attracted international attention after she 
pleaded guilty to murder in 1986.

Her successful appeal eventually led to her June 2013 release after serving 27 
years in prison.

But on Tuesday, Cooper's story came to a somber end in Indianapolis. Police say 
she was found dead, apparently by her own hand.

Cooper, 45, died just after 7:15 a.m. from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to 
the head in the 9500 block of Angola Court, according to Indianapolis 
Metropolitan Police. Her death is still under investigation, and the Marion 
County coroner's office says it expects to conduct an autopsy Wednesday.

"It's an unusual ending to a tragic case," said Indianapolis attorney Jack 
Crawford, who was the Lake County prosecutor when Cooper was charged. "I've 
been involved in a lot of cases in my life, and nothing compared to this case."

Cooper became infamous in 1985 when at 15 she was charged with murder in the 
stabbing of 78-year-old Ruth Pelke during a robbery. Law enforcement identified 
Cooper as the ringleader in the slaying. She and three friends went to Pelke's 
Gary home armed with a 12-inch butcher knife.

An investigation showed Pelke allowed the teens into her home after they said 
they were interested in Bible study lessons. But the scene turned grisly when 
they knocked Pelke to the ground and Cooper climbed on top of her.

"Paula Cooper got on top of her and kept saying to her, and this is her own 
admission, 'Where's the money, bitch?'" Crawford told The Indianapolis Star 
during a 2013 interview. He said Cooper began slicing Pelke with the butcher 
knife. The woman's last words were the Lord's Prayer.

The other teens involved were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on robbery or 
murder charges: 25, 35 and 60 years. But when Cooper was sentenced, the judge 
invoked capital punishment.

The decision led to an immediate shift in public outrage. Cooper was among only 
a handful of women in Indiana to receive the death penalty, and she was the 
youngest in the state's history. At the time of her sentencing, she was also 
the youngest death row inmate in the United States.

The 30th anniversary of the murder was just 2 weeks ago.

Bill Pelke, a grandson of the slain Bible teacher, told The Star on Tuesday 
that he forgave Cooper, who said she had been abused as a child. He said he 
visited her in prison 14 times. They exchanged emails almost weekly the last 2 
years of her incarceration.

In one of their last messages, Cooper told Pelke her time in prison was about 
up and she was scared. She had spent most of her life incarcerated. She had 
never written a check or paid a bill.

There was so much, Pelke said, that she didn't know how to do.

He offered to help. But the 2 talked only once after she was released.

Pelke said he was devastated to hear of Cooper's death.

"We had wanted to do things together around restorative justice and the death 
penalty," he said. She wanted to be an example for other young people who have 
been abused.

"She wanted to tell them, 'Look, this is how I responded to the hate and anger, 
and look at all the trouble I got into,'" he said. "She wanted to give them 
alternatives so they didn't end up like her."

Cooper's pursuit of an appeal made her world renowned. According to the Indiana 
Historical Society, the Indiana Supreme Court received 2 million signatures in 
support of her appeal. Pope John Paul II sent an emissary to Crawford's office 
and wrote an appeal to then-Gov. Robert Orr. The United Nations received a 
million signatures in support of overturning Cooper's death penalty.

2 years after Cooper's sentencing, the U.S. Supreme Court, which was already 
considering the issue of imposing death sentences on teens, ruled it was 
unconstitutional to execute anyone who was younger than 16 at the time the 
person committed a crime. Indiana lawmakers later raised the minimum age from 
10 to 16 in 1989 and again to 18 in 2002.

"A lot of things have changed," Crawford said. "It was a truly unique case."

The Indiana Supreme Court commuted Cooper's death sentence and sent her to 
prison for 60 years. She served 27 years of that sentence until her 2013 
release.

Kevin Relphorde, who served as Cooper's public defender, said Tuesday he was 
stunned by the news. He said he hadn't spoken to Cooper in years and had lost 
track of her.

"Paula was a good person," he said. "She was very misunderstood. She went 
through a lot at the hands of her father, with physical abuse, and I think that 
led to the situation with Mrs. Pelke."

Her time at the Rockville Correctional Facility began with troubles. In 1995, 
she was sentenced to three years of solitary confinement for assaulting a 
prison guard.

"I was very bitter and angry, so I was in a lot of trouble. I hated it. But I 
learned to adapt eventually," she said in a 2004 interview with The Star.

Cooper soon began pursuing educational opportunities, first earning her GED, 
then a vocational degree, and in 2001 a bachelor's degree. Beginning in 2011, 
she worked as a tutor.

"She couldn't deal with the outside world," speculated Warren W. Lewis, a 
retired dean and professor at Martin University who taught Cooper at the 
Indiana Women's Prison.

"I knew her well, and I loved her," Lewis said Tuesday. "She was practically a 
child, and she shouldn't have been treated like an adult."

Lewis said he taught Cooper and other female inmates a college-level 
Introduction to Philosophy class. He had not had any contact with her for 
several years.

"My goal," he said, "was to work up to a level of trust to ask, 'Why are you in 
this prison?'"

When he reached that point with Cooper, Lewis said, the young prisoner told him 
no one had ever asked her that question.

"I really don't know why I did that" was the best she could offer in regard to 
her role in the killing.

Like a lot of prisoners, Cooper had difficulty connecting the cause and effect 
of crime -- "there's a disconnect," Lewis said.

Lewis said he took her death as a personal failure.

"My question," he said, "is what happened to her once she got out?"

It's unclear how Cooper was spending her time since she was released. Rhonda 
Labroi, her sister, declined to comment about Cooper's death Tuesday.

"It's just amazing that after all those years of incarceration that she would 
be released and then something like this would happen," said Relphorde, who 
added that Cooper was remorseful about the killing. "She was willing to pay her 
debt to society."

(source: Indianapolis Star)








KENTUCKY:

Ricky Kelly to face death penalty



One of Louisville's most notorious accused killers will face the death penalty.

Ricky Kelly is charged with capital murder in connection to the Aug. 2005 
shooting death of Lajuante "B.B." Jackson.

The Commonwealth announced 2 new prosecutors will present the case, which is 
set to go to trial on April 15, 2016.

Prosecutors believe Jackson's death is a murder for hire case.

Kelly originally faced 8 counts of murder at the state level after 
investigators claimed he killed several people during a 10 year period from 
1996 to 2006, including victims Gail Duncan Deron Cole, and John Sanders all in 
1996; Charles Lewis and Blair Kidwell in 1998; Craig Jones and Jackson in 2005; 
and Warren King in 2006.

On March 25, 2011 those charges were dismissed in Jefferson Circuit Court so 
Kelly could be tried for Jackson's murder in a federal court. However, on Aug. 
11, 2014 federal prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss their case against Kelly 
and sent his case back to state court.

(source: WAVE news)