[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, DEL., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 28



TEXAS:

Court documents: Zoe Hastings was stabbed, found dead outside of minivan


An 18-year-old woman killed 2 weeks ago on her way to church was stabbed and 
left for dead near a creek, police say.

Police had previously declined to say the way Zoe Hastings was slain. But new 
details emerged in court documents in the case obtained Tuesday by The Dallas 
Morning News.

Detectives obtained a search warrant for Antonio Lamar Cochran's northeast 
Dallas apartment. Cochran, 34, was arrested and accused of abducting and 
killing Hastings on Oct. 11. He is charged with capital murder and could face 
the death penalty. Authorities say his DNA was found at the crime scene.

Police returned from Cochran's apartment with a piece of carpet, a rug, several 
pocket knives, a container of clothes, tennis shoes, a cellphone and a blanket 
and pillows, according to court documents. Investigators also said they 
recovered a pill bottle and photos from Cochran's car.

Hastings was on her way to church Sunday evening when she stopped at a pharmacy 
to return Redbox movies. There, Cochran got out his car and approached 
Hastings, police said. One affidavit says witnesses saw the 2 arguing.

Cochran then allegedly forced his way into Hastings' minivan, getting in the 
driver's seat and pushing her over to the passenger's side.

Hastings was reported missing when she didn't show up to church. The next 
morning, she was found dead outside of the minivan in a creek near the 11700 
block of Dixfield Drive. Police said she was stabbed and had suffered "obvious 
homicidal violence," but do not give any more detail about the way she died.

That day, detectives turned their attention to people Hastings may have known. 
They requested Hastings' online social media information, posts and messages 
from Facebook and Tinder.

But Hastings and Cochran did not know each other and police went on a two-week 
hunt for information that might lead to the accused killer. Authorities 
credited efforts by friends and complete strangers to Hastings for their 
efforts to find a suspect.

A police official also called Cochran "a sexual predator." Cochran has not been 
charged with a sex crime in connection with Hastings' slaying, but was 
acquitted of a rape charge earlier this year in Texarkana. Cochran moved to 
Dallas after that.

Cochran's public defender attorney in that Bowie County case said Monday that 
problems with the 17-year-old accuser's testimony there gave the jury doubts.

Meanwhile, Dallas County First Assistant District Attorney Messina Madson said 
in an email Tuesday that no decision has been made whether to pursue the death 
penalty against Cochran.

Family spokeswoman Shonn Brown said Monday that Hastings' parents will support 
whatever sentence the evidence calls for, but added that they are focused 
currently on their 4 other children.

(source: Dallas Morning News)






DELAWARE:

Thursday town hall meeting on racial justice planned


The Complexities of Color Coalition, the NAACP Delaware State Conference, the 
Delaware Repeal Project, and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice will 
host their 2nd of 4 town hall meetings to address racial inequities in 
Delaware's criminal justice system on Thursday.

The meeting will take place at Whatcoat United Methodist Church in Dover at 7 
p.m.

"We believe the system is broke," said Dr. Donald Morton, Executive Director of 
the Complexities of Color Coalition.

"We have some structural issues and we just want to educate people on the 
racial disparities in the criminal-justice system."

One of the main issues that will be discussed at the meeting will be the death 
penalty repeal.

In May, The House Judiciary Committee voted 6-5 not to release the bill to the 
House floor.

"There are real issues in our state about fairness in the administration of 
justice, especially as it relates to blacks not getting a fair trial in the 
courts and the death penalty," said Richard Smith, NAACP Delaware State 
Conference president.

"Our leaders continue to neglect the basic needs of the black community and we 
will hold them accountable unless there's a change."

The meetings will be held in each of the counties, as the 1st meeting was held 
in Sussex County in September.

Daniel Walker, committee organizer for the Delaware Repeal Project for Kent and 
Sussex County, said he was pleased with the turnout.

"It was very engaging," Mr. Walker said. "About 70 people came out. It was 
great, as we hope to increase that number during the next meeting and just 
continue to educate people." Dr. Morton said each county is different, but the 
problems remain the same.

"Each country brings its own temperament," Dr. Morton said. "We have different 
panel members, so we expect for the conversation to be slightly different. It 
just happens that way at times."

The next meeting will be held on Nov. 17 in Wilmington. The final meeting will 
be an online discussion in December.

Dr. Morton said the organizations hope to use the information from the meetings 
to tackle some of the issues moving forward.

"The sessions starts back up in January," Dr. Morton said. "These meetings are 
only the beginning. We want to apply pressure in hopes that changes will be 
made.

But Dr. Morton said it's important to continue to raise awareness of racial 
issues in Delaware.

"Some people have issues and this gives them a chance to speak on it," Dr. 
Morton said. "They get a chance to speak on the death penalty repeal and other 
issues that may affect them."

Mr. Walker agreed.

"Delaware isn't immune to the racial issues that are happening in the United 
States," Mr. Walker said.

"We have dealt with some of the same problems as well, so it's important that 
we hear from people to get their thoughts on the issues."

(source: delawalrestatenews.net)






CALIFORNIA:

Defense Setbacks Could Mean Immediate Trial in Los Al Death Penalty 
Case----Rulings Tuesday could mean that an actor accused of the 2010 murder 
dismemberment of a man in a Los Alamitos theater could start Friday.


An accused double murderer was dealt several legal setbacks today from a state 
appeals court and an Orange County Superior Court judge, potentially clearing 
the way for his death-penalty trial to begin soon.

Daniel Patrick Wozniak's attorneys still have motions pending to have the death 
penalty removed as a possible sentence based on claims of outrageous 
governmental misconduct, and to have an evidentiary hearing held to explore 
allegations about the use of jailhouse informants.

Today, Superior Court Judge John Conley denied another attempt to have the 
Orange County District Attorney's Office removed from the case. He also denied 
a motion to delay the trial, which is scheduled to begin Friday.

Conley also denied a motion from Wozniak's attorneys requesting evidence from 
cases involving the use of jailhouse informants dating back to the 1980s.

Meanwhile, the Fourth District Court of Appeal denied the legal team's attempt 
to get a new judge to preside over Wozniak's case and to make Conley and 
another jurist testify in a hearing on the governmental misconduct claims.

On July 29, Conley denied a motion to recuse the District Attorney's Office, 
and, referring to the latest attempt, Conley said, "We're going over the same 
issues."

Conley said Wozniak's attorneys failed to show that the District Attorney's 
Office has a conflict and that the conflict would prohibit the defendant from 
getting a fair trial.

"The law is clear that recusal is not a remedy for legal errors," Conley said. 
"And it's not a punishment for past prosecutorial misconduct."

Conley noted that prosecutors do not intend to use jailhouse informant Fernando 
Perez as a witness or use any of the statements Wozniak made as evidence. The 
judge, as he has earlier, said an interview Wozniak gave to the MSNBC program 
"Lockup" was not damaging to his case and included mostly "exculpatory" 
statements, pushing aside the defense's allegations that the defendant's 
jailers manipulated the interview to make him look bad.

Wozniak's attorney, Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, will continue on 
Thursday pushing Conley to hold an evidentiary hearing into allegations of 
misconduct on the part of the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Sanders 
prevailed in a similar hearing in his defense of Scott Dekraai, the worst mass 
killer in the county's history, that led to a judge booting the Orange County 
District Attorney's Office from the case, a ruling that is under appeal.

In Wozniak's case, Sanders alleges that his client's rights were violated when 
Perez spoke to Wozniak in jail. After a defendant has an attorney it is illegal 
for the government to have an informant question the inmate, Sanders said.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy has said he did not direct deputies 
to have Perez speak with Wozniak and would not use anything the defendant said 
anyway because it was duplicative of Wozniak's alleged confession. Murphy has 
argued that Costa Mesa police were the lead law enforcement agency on the case, 
not the sheriff, and that his office cannot, therefore, be accused of 
outrageous governmental misconduct.

Sanders has argued there is evidence of corruption in the use of informants 
going back to the 1980s, which is why he wants Conley, who was then a 
prosecutor, to testify as a witness. Sanders also wants Orange County District 
Attorney Tony Rackauckas and Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens to testify 
in the evidentiary hearing.

If Conley denies the evidentiary hearing, Wozniak's trial could possibly begin 
Friday with attorneys working on various motions. Jury selection will take 
longer than usual because it is a death penalty case, so opening statements 
likely would not occur until at least mid-November.

Wozniak is accused of shooting Samuel Herr after luring him to the Los Alamitos 
Joint Forces military base in May 2010.

Prosecutors allege he then used the victim's cell phone to trick another 
friend, Juri Kibuishi, into going to Herr's Costa Mesa apartment. There the 
defendant shot her and then made it look as if Herr killed her during a sexual 
assault, authorities allege.

Wozniak then allegedly returned to the base to dismember Herr's body, according 
to authorities.

He allegedly committed the crimes to steal from the victims to pay for his 
wedding and honeymoon, prosecutors said.

(source: patch.com)

**********

Death Penalty----9th Circuit panel vacates death row inmate's conviction 
because of biased jury selection


An appellate court has tossed aside a 29-year-old guilty verdict and death 
sentence against an African-American inmate due to racial bias.

The Sacramento Bee reported on Monday that a divided 3-judge panel of the 9th 
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has upheld a lower court ruling 
vacating Steven Edward Crittenden's 1989 conviction and death sentence for 
stabbing a couple to death in their own home.

The appellate court sided with U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller, who had 
tossed out the verdict and sentence 2 years ago after finding that the 
prosecutor in the original case had been substantially motivated by race when 
he struck the only African-American from the jury pool. The prosecutor, for his 
part, has claimed that he struck the prospective juror because of her 
opposition to the death penalty.

"The Supreme Court has eloquently explained a jury selected without regard to 
race is a critical constitutional right," Judge Raymond Fisher wrote (PDF) for 
the majority.

Judge M. Margaret McKeown dissented from the majority. "In view of the record 
of what actually happened, the trial judge's findings and the ultimate 
composition of the jury, our retrospective parsing simply cannot elevate 
ambiguous, speculative foundation to proof that the prosecutor was motivated in 
substantial part by racism," she wrote.

Crittenden, now 48 years old, had been convicted of murdering 67-year-old 
William Chiapella and his wife, 66-year-old Kathleen, in their home on the 
evening of January 13, 1987. The Chiapellas had previously hired Crittenden, a 
student athlete at California State University, to do some work around the 
house. According to the Bee, Crittenden was accused of binding, gagging and 
stabbing both Chiapellas. Crittenden was convicted and sentenced to death in 
1989.

According to the Bee, Mueller had ordered that the Butte County District 
Attorney had to retry Crittenden within 60 days, or release him. Mueller, 
however, had stayed her order while the state???s appeals were pending. 
According to the Bee, the state may now appeal for a rehearing en banc or file 
a petition with the Supreme Court. When asked if his office was ready to retry 
Crittenden, Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsay said: "We've been 
preparing for that eventuality."

(source: ABA Journal)

***********

California edging back towards executions with lethal injection plan----Prison 
officials draw up single-drug protocol but death penalty has not been carried 
out since 2006 and public support is in decline


California prison officials have filed proposed new guidelines for lethal 
injection, a step towards resuming executions in a state that has not carried 
one out since 2006.

The most populous US state - where public support for the death penalty has 
been slipping for years - stopped executing prisoners after Clarence Ray Allen 
was put to death nearly 10 years ago for 3 murders in Fresno.

The state put executions on hold partly because of legal issues, including a 
lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of the 3-drug mixture used for lethal 
injections.

But politicians in California also have not wanted to force the issue in a 
state where many top officeholders, including the attorney general, oppose the 
death penalty. A slim majority of voters, about 56%, support it, the lowest 
number in years according to a Field Poll in 2014.

This year the state said it would not appeal a court order halting executions 
until a single-drug protocol could be developed.

On Tuesday the proposed method, details of which were not released, were filed 
with the state Office of Administrative Law for review, said Jeffrey Callison, 
spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. They 
would become public next week, Callison said.

The California governor, Jerry Brown, did not immediately respond to a request 
for comment from Reuters about whether he would push to begin conducting 
executions again.

The proposed new protocol would be open to input from the public starting next 
week and it could take up to a year for the rules to be finalized, said Terry 
Thornton, a spokeswoman for the corrections department.

Since Allen's execution in January of 2006, California juries have sentenced 
181 people to death, according to statistics provided by the corrections 
department.

But California did not rush to execute prisoners even before legal questions 
arose about the 3-drug mixture, which has led to botched executions in Oklahoma 
and other states.

Since 1978, when the death penalty was reinstated, California has executed 13 
people. 69 inmates have died of natural causes while on death row and 24 have 
killed themselves. Still awaiting execution are 747 prisoners.

(source: The Guardian)