[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----CONN., PENN., N.C., LA., IND.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 29


CONNECTICUT:

Connecticut Supreme Court rejects ex-death row inmate's appeal


The Connecticut Supreme Court has rejected a former death row inmate's appeal 
of 1 of his murder convictions.

Justices ruled 7-0 Monday that a lower court didn't violate Russell Peeler 
Jr.'s rights when it refused to order the state to pay for a lawyer of his 
choice for his 2013 retrial in the 1997 killing of Rudolph Snead Jr. in 
Bridgeport, after the Supreme Court overturned his conviction.

He was convicted at retrial after the state hired another lawyer and sentenced 
to 105 years in prison.

Peeler also was convicted in the 1999 killings of an 8-year-old witness in the 
Snead case and the boy's mother. He was sentenced to death.

The state Supreme Court abolished capital punishment last year - a decision it 
is reconsidering in Peeler's appeal of the death penalty.

(source: Associated Press)






PENNSYLVANIA:

Supreme Court justices troubled by judge's actions in death penalty case


U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared troubled on Monday by a judge's failure to 
step aside in a death penalty case he had previously worked on as a prosecutor 
involving a convicted murderer who killed a man who had sexually abused him as 
a minor.

The 8 justices heard oral arguments in the Pennsylvania capital punishment case 
in an appeal brought by Terrance Williams, who was convicted of the 1984 
bludgeoning murder of a 56-year-old man in Philadelphia in a crime committed 
when he was 18 years old.

Lawyers for Williams argued that former Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ronald 
Castille should have recused himself from hearing Williams' appeal as a member 
of the state Supreme Court because he had served as the local district attorney 
at the time of the conviction.

Although a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court signaled concern that Castille 
participated in the case, it was unclear exactly how the justices would rule. 
Some justices indicated it would be difficult to set rules that would determine 
exactly what level of involvement in a prior case should require a judge to 
recuse himself.

The case focuses on a December 2014 Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that 
upheld Williams' conviction and sentence. Castille had denied a recusal motion 
filed by Williams and was in the majority in the unanimous decision.

The normally 9-member Supreme Court is shorthanded following the Feb. 13 death 
of Justice Antonin Scalia.

(source: Reuters)






NORTH CAROLINA:

Wake jury returns verdict of 1st-degree murder in case of man accused of 
killing Shaw student 20 years ago


Twenty years after Shaw University student Lacoy McQueen went missing, her 
boyfriend at the time has been convicted of murdering the 20-year-old, pregnant 
woman.

A jury on Monday found Edwin Christopher Lawing guilty of 1st-degree murder 
after several hours of deliberation.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys stitched together evidence and testimony from 
last week as they persuaded jurors on Monday of their closing arguments in the 
murder trial of Lawing, 41.

Prosecutors contended Lawing, an N.C. State University in May 1996 when McQueen 
went missing, strangled his pregnant girlfriend, then dumped her body in a 
remote wooded area off U.S. 1, not far from Kittrell, a small Vance County 
crossroads town.

McQueen's fragmented remains were found in 1997 by a hunter. Some of her 
clothing was in the area, as were her socks with bones from her feet still in 
them.

Defense attorneys contended that police set their sights early on Lawing as 
their main suspect and pursued him for 2 decades.

Lawing was arrested in 1997, but prosecutors dropped the charges before he went 
to trial, citing a lack of evidence to proceed. Lawing, who settled in Concord, 
was arrested again in 2014 and charged with 1st-degree murder after 
investigators took a new look at old evidence.

The defense team pointed a finger at men in a blue car, building on a narrative 
that Lawing provided to investigators 20 years ago after McQueen went missing.

2 McQueen, a Shaw student who dreamed of becoming a doctor, had been 
romantically involved with Lawing in 1996.

Lawing, according to testimony from a former roommate, "was popular with the 
ladies" while a student at NC State.

Initially, when questioned about McQueen???s disappearance, Lawing told 
investigators he had not seen his girlfriend on the May day she went missing. 
He later said he had been in Pullen Park that day with her and they argued. 
Lawing told the investigator that McQueen got into a blue car with 2 men after 
their discussion - one was in the driver's seat and another in the back seat.

Prosecutors highlighted that Lawing could give few details beyond his scant 
description, unable to tell investigators from which direction the car came and 
what the men inside looked like, other than that he said they were black.

Public defender Celia Visser argued that prosecutors had not proven their case. 
She contended that the piece of physical evidence that prosecutors said linked 
Lawing to McQueen's death - a rock fragment found in his shoe similar to stones 
at the site where her body was found - were tiny "pebbles" that were not like 
fingerprints.

Visser argued that tests linking the rock to the crime scene was "junk science" 
in a case where she contends the lead detective "stalked" Lawing "like a 
bloodhound."

Wake County Assistant District Attorney Patrick Latour countered that Lawing 
was stalked because he was the man who should be convicted.

Latour told the jury before they began their deliberations at 12:30 p.m. that 
he did not have to prove how McQueen died or where she died for them to reach a 
verdict of 1st-degree murder.

He argued that McQueen's blood was found in Lawing's dorm room. He mentioned 
that Lawing's roommate that summer recalled coming home that evening and seeing 
a woman he could not identify in the room.

Lawing asked his roommate to give him and the woman a couple of hours alone, 
and the roommate grabbed his wallet and left the 2 inside the dorm.

Latour pointed out that McQueen had told her roommates at Shaw that she had 
opted against terminating her pregnancy and planned to tell Lawing that in 
person on the day she went missing.

Latour argued that McQueen likely was lured into Lawing's dorm room that day 
and killed while there. He acknowledged not knowing how, if that were the case, 
the defendant got the body out of the building and into a car outside that he 
had borrowed from a woman he knew.

But he pointed out that Lawing was familiar with Kittrell and its remoteness. 
Lawing, according to testimony, had traveled through there with a former 
girlfriend on several occasions before his involvement with McQueen.

"Kittrell, North Carolina, is not something that just pops into your head," 
Latour said.

Latour argued that Lawing killed McQueen because he was not looking forward to 
becoming a father. The prosecutor contended that Lawing did not want a child to 
interfere with his social lifestyle.

"This is a crime of greed, a crime of selfishness," Latour said.

The jury will weigh charges of 1st-degree murder, which includes malice, 
premeditation and intent, or 2nd-degree murder.

(source: newsobserver.com)






LOUISIANA:

The public defender meltdown in Louisiana


Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the country, no longer 
provides public defenders to all its people accused of crimes; within months 
over 1/2 its public defender offices are expected to become insolvent.

"It's a nightmare," according to James Dixon, the chief Louisiana Public 
Defender. "You have people in jail that don???t have lawyers. It's that basic." 
In Louisiana, public defenders are appointed to represent nearly 250,000 people 
each year. Dixon has been warning of a constitutional crisis for years due to 
inadequate funding. His office has recently been sued in a federal class action 
by the ACLU.

The state public defender indicated that 24 of the 42 local public defender 
offices will become insolvent and restrict services in the next few months. 
Many already have broken down. Public defenders in 13 of Louisiana's 42 
judicial districts are already restricting services.

For example, the Lafayette Parish public defender has laid off 35 of its 52 
attorneys, and imposed salary cuts of 20 % on those who remain. The 
constitutional guarantee of speedy trial is gone and death penalty cases are 
grinding to a halt. The remaining public defenders face caseloads of 1,000 
felonies a year, a rate more than 5 times as high as recent Texas legislature 
mandated caseload study which concluded that public defenders should represent 
no more than 175 felonies a year.

New Orleans public defenders have been refusing to represent the most serious 
cases since January.

Their budget has been cut from $9.5 million to $6 million in the past 4 years.

That office, which represents 85 % of those charged in criminal court, has 
already laid off lawyers, and cannot replaced the many lawyers who have 
resigned because of a hiring freeze. The office handles 10,000 misdemeanors and 
8,000 felonies a year.

One public defender wrote in the Washington Post that brand new lawyers have to 
handle cases with life sentences, carry double the number of cases that the 
American Bar Association recommends, do not have the time to even see their 
clients and are forced to plead people out to felony convictions on the day 
they meet them.

Louisiana funds 2/3 of its public defender system with fines and fees from 
people convicted of traffic offenses and crimes.

Budgets for public defenders are small to begin with. In New Orleans, the 
budget of the public defender is less than half that of the prosecutor. The 
state spends somewhere around $3.5 billion on police, prosecutors, courts and 
jails, versus less than 2 % of that on public defenders.

Cardozo Law Professor Ellen Yaroshefsky told a New Orleans court that the New 
Orleans public defender's office was being run in an unethical manner. "I'm 
very troubled by the situation this public defender's office is in," 
Yaroshefsky testified. "To call this a 'justice system' is really a misnomer. 
... I believe this entire office is operating as a conflict of interest. The 
lawyers here are compromising some clients in other to represent others. They 
make a decision to triage, and triage is a conflict of interest. This is a 
problem now that is a judicial problem, and I believe needs to be dealt with on 
that level."

Meanwhile, Louisiana is facing a huge overall budget deficit of nearly $1 
billion this year and double that next year due to fiscal problems left by 
departing Governor Bobby Jindal.

(source: Louisiana Weekly)






INDIANA:

SCOTUS rejects Evansville SWAT raid, death penalty appeals


A 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against the city of Evansville for a 
bungled SWAT raid will stand, as will the death sentence of a Gary man 
convicted in the 2007 shooting deaths of his wife and 2 stepchildren. The U.S. 
Supreme Court declined to hear those appeals Monday.

Justices denied certiorari in Billy Bolin, et al. v. Louise Milan, 15-566, and 
in Kevin C. Isom v. Indiana, 15-533, after conferencing on the petitions Feb. 
19.

Louise Milan sued Billy Bolin, the Evansville chief of police, the city and 
others after a SWAT team sent a phalanx of armored, flash-bang tossing officers 
smashing through her open, glass front door, after which no arrests were made. 
Officers were looking for the source of Internet police threats, but the 7th 
Circuit ruled in a scathing August opinion that Evansville was not shielded 
from an excessive force lawsuit, calling the lack of investigation and evidence 
before the raid of Milan's home "a failure of responsible police practice." 
After the raid on Milan's home, a suspect a few doors down was asked to come to 
the police station the next day, where he was arrested.

Evansville's petition asked justices to review whether the 7th Circuit erred in 
denying qualified immunity to police by finding use of flash-bang grenades 
unreasonable. The city argued police were executing a warrant "to prevent a 
potential mass murder," and that the use of flash-bangs "was necessary for 
their safety."

In the other Indiana case, Kevin Isom sought appeal on the question of whether 
in imposing the death penalty, a unanimous jury must find beyond a reasonable 
doubt that aggravating factors outweigh mitigating factors. Isom's death 
penalty was imposed after he was convicted of killing at close range his wife, 
Cassandra, stepdaughter Ci'Andria Cole, 13, and stepson Michael Moore, 16.

The Indiana Supreme Court affirmed Isom's death sentence in 2015. The court 
found the nature of the crimes made the death penalty handed down by a Lake 
County jury appropriate. Isom is 1 of 13 people on Indiana's death row at 
Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. The last execution in Indiana was in 
2009.

(source: The Indiana Lawyer)