[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., GA., FLA., OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

July 13



TEXAS:

Death penalty decision looming for capital murder suspect


One of the men accused of gunning down a San Antonio couple on Good Friday will 
have to wait a few weeks to find out if he'll face the death penalty.

During an arraignment this morning, Gilbert Ruiz pleaded not guilty to capital 
murder charges. The prosecutor was given 30 days to determine if they'll seek 
the death penalty. The other option for the prosecution would be to seek a life 
sentence.

Meanwhile, Ruiz remains in jail on a $1 million bond. Police say he was 
involved in the fatal shooting of Elizabeth Martinez and her husband Eric 
Rodriguez on North Shea Parkway.

A 2nd suspect, Daniel Martinez, is also charged with capital murder. He's is 
also in the Nueces County Jail.

(source: KRIS TV news)






NORTH CAROLINA:

State to seek death penalty in Mount Airy murder case


The state will seek the death penalty against Jordan Ross Lowdermilk, according 
to statements made in Surry County Superior Court on Tuesday.

Lowdermilk, 28, of Dobson, is accused of killing Claudia Smith, an 80-year-old 
Mount Airy woman.

He was charged with 1st-degree murder after Smith was found dead in her 
Franklin Street apartment in May.

The defendant was also charged in connection with other crimes that allegedly 
occurred the night of Smith's death, which include multiple break-ins and 
stabbing an I-77 motorist.

On July 5, a grand jury indicted Lowdermilk with 1st-degree murder, attempted 
1st-degree murder, 2 counts of 1st-degree burglary, felony larceny, assault 
with a deadly weapon with intent to kill or seriously injure, breaking or 
entering a motor vehicle and misdemeanor injury to personal property.

North Carolina rules give prosecutors the discretion to choose if 1st-degree 
murder cases will be tried capitally.

If they choose to do so, notice of their intent to pursue the death penalty 
must be provided to the defendant within 10 days of indictment.

The presiding Superior Court judge must also order the parties to appear within 
45 days for a Rule 24 pretrial conference where the state may announce the 
existence of aggravating factors it believes present.

The district attorney's office filed notice of its intent to seek the death 
penalty and request for Rule 24 hearing on July 11.

In Superior Court on Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Tim Watson informed 
Senior Resident Superior Court Judge A. Moses Massey of the state's intention 
to seek the death penalty against Lowdermilk.

Watson indicated that Lowdermilk's attorney, J.D. Byers, had been served notice 
of the state's intent, and had consented to a Rule 24 conference.

Massey noted for the record the state's intent and ordered the conference 
scheduled for Aug. 30.

Death penalty

According to the N.C. Department of Public Safety website, there have been no 
executions in the state since 2006.

"There is still a de facto moratorium on executions," UNC School of Government 
Professor Jeff Welty said Tuesday in an email.

Until 2015, North Carolina statute required a licensed physician be present at 
executions.

In 2007, the North Carolina Medical Board determined that doctors participating 
in lethal injections violate the code of ethics of their profession.

Following a N.C. Supreme Court ruling, in 2009 the board stopped taking 
disciplinary action against physicians for participating in an execution, 
according to the organization's website.

The N.C. Governor signed the Restoring Proper Justice Act into law in August 
2015, which authorizes "a medical professional other than a physician" to 
monitor a lethal injection at an execution.

One factor possibly contributing to a "de facto moratorium" on executions 
includes litigation about whether the lethal injection process violates the 8th 
Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, Welty said.

"Continued uncertainty about the status of the Racial Justice Act and whether 
its repeal applies retroactively to inmates who filed claims under the Act when 
it still existed," also may play a role.

"To be clear," he said, "there's nothing that prevents a jury from returning a 
death sentence - but right now, such sentences are not being carried out."

Currently, there are 150 inmates on death row in North Carolina, according to 
N.C. DPS information.

As of January 1, 2016, North Carolina had the 6th-highest number of death row 
inmates among states that allow the death penalty, according to information 
available from the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).

North Carolina is tied with 2 other states as the 5th most exonerations at nine 
since 1973, according to DPIC.

1 Surry County inmate, who was convicted on 2 counts of 1st-degree murder in 
1995, is currently on death row, according to N.C. DPS information.

3 Surry County inmates were executed between 1984 and 2006, according to N.C. 
DPS.

(source: The Mount Airy News)






GEORGIA----impending execution

Lawyers describe violent childhood of man set to die Thursday


The jury that decided decades ago that John Wayne Conner should die knew 
nothing of the frightening path he traveled as a child - a path that led him to 
become a killer in his 20s, his lawyers say.

Conner, who has been on death row for 34 years, is scheduled to die by lethal 
injection at 7 p.m. Thursday. If he is put to death, the 60-year-old man will 
be the 6th person Georgia has executed this year, more than any other in year 
since the current death penalty law was adopted 40 years ago.

On Wednesday, Conner's lawyers will meet with the State Board of Pardons and 
Paroles to make a case for commuting his death sentence to life in prison 
without the possibility of parole. Later in the day, the Telfair County 
prosecutor will present his argument for carrying out the execution as 
scheduled.

If the jurors at his trial had known of Conner's horrific childhood, the 
lawyers wrote in a clemency petition filed with the parole board, they might 
have shown mercy when they decided his fate for the 1982 murder of J.T. White.

"A child's sense of normalcy is defined not by the outside world's social 
norms, but rather by his immediate family and home life," the clemency petition 
said. "For young John Wayne Conner, normalcy included extraordinary familial 
violence that frequently involved knives and guns; regular drug and alcohol 
abuse; and brutal physical, sexual and emotional abuse."

Those circumstances, the clemency petition said, led Conner "into the pattern 
modeled by those in his family."

The lawyers wrote that they were not recounting the details of Conner's life to 
excuse the murder of White but as an explanation of how Conner came to be a 
killer.

Conner, then 25, and White, 29, had spent the evening of Jan. 9, 1982, at a 
party, and wanted to keep drinking once they returned to Conner's house in 
Milan. The 2 men walked to a neighbor's house in search of a ride to the liquor 
store, but the neighbor refused. They were walking back to Conner's house when 
the pair got into a fight; White said he wanted to have sex with Conner's 
girlfriend, Beverly Bates. Conner beat White with a quart bottle and an oak 
tree branch. Leaving White in a ditch, Conner went directly home and told Bates 
they needed to leave town. On their way out of town, the couple stopped at the 
ditch so Conner could be sure White was dead.

Bates told investigators Conner walked into the woods and moments later she 
heard a thud. Conner then told him he was sure.

Conner and Bates were arrested the next day.

The attorneys wrote in the petition that Conner's abusive father had taught him 
to be violent, but that information was not presented at trial nor was it 
included in his appeals that followed.

"Imagine a man who evokes fear and repugnance from an entire community," the 
petition said.

The petition said Carroll Conner slit a man's throat after the man brushed 
against the arm of Conner's pregnant wife. They also said that Carroll Conner, 
while serving overseas during World War II, beheaded a man in a movie theater 
for sitting in the seat between him and his brother. The petition said Conner's 
father stabbed his brother and father-in-law, sexually assaulted his daughters 
and cut up his wife "like a jigsaw puzzle."

Conner, called "Shorty" by his family, was routinely beaten and mocked for his 
"limited intellectual functioning," the petition said. And sometimes Conner and 
his siblings slept in the woods to avoid their father, his lawyers wrote, 
citing accounts by some of Conner's brothers and sisters. They were so poor 
that for many of his early years, the family home did not have indoor plumbing.

The petition said Conner dealt with his violent upbringing by using drugs and 
alcohol, and tried to kill himself with an overdose and also by hanging.

Conner's defense attorney failed him as well, the lawyers wrote.

"Mr. Conner was represented at trial by a young appointed attorney, who was 
wholly inexperienced in capital defense and neglected to investigate Mr. 
Conner's mental health, cognitive functioning or violent and traumatic family 
background," according to the petition.

The lawyer put on no defense and did not call witnesses during the sentencing 
phase of the trial.

That information also was not included in appeals until now, the petition said.

The petition notes that prison had made Conner a better man, that he has found 
religion and has taken up painting; they attached a copy of his artwork to the 
petition.

"John Wayne Conner is a testament to the rehabilitative process," his lawyers 
wrote. "Despite being on death row for the last 34 years without hope for 
release, Mr. Conner has transformed himself from a violent young man with 
severe substance abuse problems into a peaceful and productive member of the 
prison community."

(source: myajc.com)






FLORIDA:

Supreme Court Continues Mulling Death Penalty Law


The Florida Supreme Court moved quietly into an annual summer break last week.

In releasing its last regular batch of opinions until Aug. 25, the court left 
unresolved questions about issues such as the constitutionality of the state's 
death-penalty sentencing laws.

Justices have been inundated with arguments in recent months about Florida's 
death-penalty sentencing system.

The arguments are rooted in a January U.S. Supreme Court ruling that 
essentially said the state's system was unconstitutional because it gave too 
much power to judges, instead of juries, in sentencing inmates to death.

The Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott scrambled to approve changes to address the 
U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which came in a case known as Hurst v. Florida.

The new state law requires 10 of 12 jurors to vote for death, before the 
sentence can be imposed.

Senate President Andy Gardiner says his chamber initially wanted the measure to 
require a unanimous jury decision, but the Senate compromised with the House in 
order to pass something.

"You are talking about somebody's life, but the alternative is that you get 
nothing done," Gardiner said. "So, you have to come to some resolution to make 
sure that the House and the Senate are comfortable. That's what we ultimately 
did."

Gardiner says the legislature had to do something in order for the death 
penalty to remain a viable option for prosecutors.

In cases involving numerous death row inmates, the Florida Supreme Court is 
trying to sort out questions such as whether the changes approved by the 
Legislature and Scott meet constitutional tests.

Florida is 1 of only 3 states with the death penalty that does not require jury 
unanimity.

There are currently 384 men and 4 women on death row in Florida.

(source: usf.edu)

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

Florida fights to keep lethal drug records secret----Arizona lawyers seek 
records of Florida's triple-drug lethal injection protocol


Lawyers representing seven Arizona death row inmates want information about the 
drugs used in Florida's lethal-injection procedure, but corrections officials 
are asking a judge to keep the documents secret.

The Arizona lawyers last month filed a subpoena seeking years of records 
related to Florida's triple-drug lethal injection protocol, including the types 
of drugs purchased, the strengths and amounts of the drugs, the expiration 
dates of the drugs and the names of suppliers. The lawyers are seeking similar 
information from other states.

The subpoena, filed in federal court in Arizona, is part of a drawn-out 
challenge to that state's lethal-injection process. Arizona's death penalty has 
been on hold for 2 years following the botched execution of inmate Joseph Wood 
in 2014, who died nearly 2 hours after the lethal-injection procedure was 
started.

On Monday, the Florida Department of Corrections asked a federal judge in 
Tallahassee to quash the subpoena, saying that state information regarding 
death penalty drugs is exempt from public disclosure.

The state agency "is unclear how Florida's lethal injection drugs have anything 
to do with this case out of Arizona, in which plaintiffs are, in part, 
challenging Arizona's use of midazolam for its lethal injections. FDC does not 
have any involvement in Arizona's lethal injection procedures or Arizona's 
procurement of drugs for its lethal injections," Florida Chief Assistant 
Attorney General James Lee Marsh wrote in the 15-page motion.

Midazolam, 1 of the drugs used in Wood's execution, is the 1st of the 3-drug 
lethal cocktail used in Florida.

Florida corrections officials and the state "have very strong public policy 
interests in preventing its confidential execution information from being 
publicly disclosed," Marsh wrote.

"The United States Supreme Court has recognized that there is a guerilla war 
currently occurring against the death penalty in the United States. Anti-death 
penalty groups have been on a crusade against those legally involved with 
executions, harassing and threatening them until they feel pressured to 
withdraw their participation. ... In Florida, the plight has not been any 
different," he also wrote.

Arizona corrections officials told U.S. District Judge Neil Wake they are 
discontinuing the use of midazolam because their supply of the drug expired and 
they can no longer obtain the sedative.

Pfizer, which manufactures midazolam, in March announced that it would not 
distribute the drugs for use in capital punishment. In May, a spokesman for the 
Florida Department of Corrections said the manufacturer's decision would have 
no impact on Florida.

A bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court last year signed off on the use of 
midazolam for executions, ruling that lawyers for Oklahoma prisoners failed to 
prove that the use of the drug "entails a substantial risk of severe pain." The 
Oklahoma prisoners had argued that the drug does not effectively sedate inmates 
during the execution process.

Florida and other states began using midazolam as the 1st step in a 3-drug 
execution cocktail in 2013, after previously using a drug called pentobarbital 
sodium. The states switched because Danish-based manufacturer Lundbeck refused 
to sell pentobarbital sodium directly to corrections agencies for use in 
executions and ordered its distributors to also stop supplying the drug for 
lethal-injection purposes.

Florida's death penalty, meanwhile, has been under scrutiny following a U.S. 
Supreme Court decision earlier this year that found the state's death penalty 
sentencing system gave too much power to judges, and not juries.

The Florida Supreme Court has been grappling with the aftermath of that 
decision, in a case known as Hurst v. Florida, as well as a law hurriedly 
passed this spring to deal with the Hurst ruling. The court indefinitely 
postponed 2 executions following the January 12 Hurst ruling.

(source: news4jax.com)






OHIO:

Evaluation delayed in capital murder case


Judge John M. Durkin granted a request by prosecutors to extend by 20 days an 
evaluation to determine if a man facing the death penalty is competent to stand 
trial.

Ricki Williams, 20, of Lansdowne Boulevard, will be transferred shortly to a 
facility in Columbus for a 20-day stay to conduct the evaluation.

Williams has been charged with eight felonies, including 2 counts of aggravated 
murder and 2 counts of aggravated burglary, in connection with the June 23, 
2014, killing of 16-year old Gina Burger in Austintown.

A competency hearing was scheduled Tuesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas 
Court, but prosecutors asked for the extension because the doctor performing 
the study said he was not able to complete it.

Judge Durkin said he had read the evaluation, dated July 1, and it said an 
opinion could not be rendered on whether Williams is competent. No reason was 
given as to why the evaluation was not completed, although the judge said there 
was some suggestion that Williams was "malingering," but there was no concrete 
evidence to support that he was stalling on purpose.

At issue is if Williams can understand the case against him and if he can 
assist in his own defense. If he is ruled incompetent to stand trial, he will 
be declared incompetent and will be treated for a year to see if his competency 
can be restored.

According to police reports, Gina had gone missing from an apartment in the 
Compass West complex in Austintown and her body was discovered in a landfill in 
Grove City, Pa., a few days later. She died from a stab wound to the chest.

A criminal complaint said Williams admitted to authorities he stabbed Gina and 
put her body in a playpen to transport it to a trash receptacle at the 
apartment complex. If convicted, Williams could face the death penalty.

(source: vindy.com)