[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----GA., NEB., NEV., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

July 14




GEORGIA----impending execution

Georgia Scheduled To End Nation's 2-Month Death Penalty Hiatus---John Conner is 
scheduled to die Thursday evening for killing his friend. If Georgia executes 
him, it will be the state's 6th execution this year - a record for the state.


Georgia is preparing to execute John Conner on Thursday, ending a 2-month death 
penalty hiatus for the United States. If Conner is put to death, he would be 
the 6th person executed by Georgia this year, putting the state on equal 
footing with Texas.

His lawyers on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his execution - 
likely Conner's last opportunity to stop the scheduled 7 p.m. execution from 
going forward. The state has opposed Conner's request.

Conner was sentenced to death 34 years ago. According to court documents, 
Conner, who was 25 at the time, went to a party with friends, where he drank 
and smoked pot. After returning home, Conner and another man, J.T. White, went 
for a walk with a near-empty bottle of bourbon, searching for more alcohol.

Conner claims that while they were walking, White remarked that he would like 
to have sex with Conner's girlfriend, who they had left behind at the house.

"So I got mad and we got into a fight and fought all the way over to the oak 
tree and I hit him with a quart bottle," Conner said. "I was down there at him 
right there in the ditch where he was at, and he was swinging trying to get up 
or swinging at me to try to hit me one. And there was a stick right there at 
me, and I grabbed it and went to beating him with it."

Conner left White in the ditch, and returned home to tell his girlfriend they 
needed to leave town. Conner returned later to make sure White was dead.

Conner was sentenced to death for killing White, and later pled guilty killing 
another man: Jesse Smyth.

Conner's attorneys asked the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to spare his 
life, pointing to his horrific childhood and violent father.

"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," the clemency application read. 
"Having been raised in almost unimaginable circumstances of poverty and 
violence, Mr. Conner initially fell into the pattern modeled by those in his 
family."

The Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency on Wednesday. Conner's 
attorneys have also argued in court that he is intellectually disabled.

"After his arrest in 1982, he was evaluated at Central State Hospital following 
a jailhouse suicide attempt," they wrote. "The evaluation revealed a suicidal 
man with a 'history of mental illness' exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia, 
autism, 'psychomotor retardation' and severe drug and alcohol dependence."

Attorney General Sam Olens' office responded that "there has been no genuine 
change in the facts or the law since relief was denied in his prior" requests.

On Thursday, the Georgia Supreme Court declined to halt his execution. 2 
justices wrote that they would grant a stay of execution "solely to decide 
whether, under the specific facts and circumstances of this case, his execution 
more than 34 years after being sentenced to death would qualify as cruel and 
unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States 
Constitution."

Conner's attorneys on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his 
execution and to review the Georgia Supreme Court's decision.

If Georgia executes Conner Thursday evening, it will be the most executions in 
a year for the state since the death penalty was reinstated. Georgia, like 
other active death penalty states like Missouri and Texas, uses a single drug 
called pentobarbital. Other states that would like to carry out the death 
penalty have been unsuccessful getting the drug.

(source: buzzfeed.com)






NEBRASKA:

Death penalty sought for man charged in deaths of woman, tot


Prosecutors will seek the death penalty for a man charged in the December 
shooting deaths of a woman and her 2-year-old daughter.

Omaha television station KETV reports (http://bit.ly/2a1QZ87 ) that 24-year-old 
Dontevous Loyd appeared in court Thursday and was formally arraigned on the 
enhanced 1st-degree murder charges. Prosecutors say they also will file witness 
tampering charges against Loyd, saying he threatened a witness from jail.

Police say Destacia Straughn, who had dated Loyd on and off, reported to police 
on Dec. 6 that she was afraid of Loyd, and officers removed him from her 
apartment. Police say later that night, Loyd kicked in Straughn's apartment 
door and began shooting, killing 2-year-old Kenacia Straughn first, then her 
mother. 3 other women visiting were shot and injured.

(source: Associated Press)






NEVADA:

DA to decide whether to seek death penalty against 4 men accused of killing 
Aric Brill


The District Attorney's office will decide within the next few weeks whether to 
seek the death penalty against the 4 men accused of murdering Aric Brill.

All men appeared in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty.

Brill was just 16-years-old when he was shot and killed outside a house party 
back in February 2009.

"Generally the more time it takes to get a case to trial, that's an advantage 
for the defense rather than the prosecutor," said District Attorney, Steve 
Wolfson.

Wolfson knows 7 years is a very long time to wait. Prosecuting four young men 
for a brutal crime that occurred when most of them were still teenagers.

"The same fire in the belly some witnesses had in the beginning but as time 
goes on people's lives move on," said Wolfson.

But Wolfson believes the evidence surrounding the murder of Aric Brill is 
strong.

According to newly released court transcripts, one witness, Edward Kruse 
testified that Nadin Hiko confessed to the murder.

That conversation occurred when the 2 men were housed together at the Clark 
County Detention Center on unrelated charges.

Kruse testified saying, "Hiko told me he shot him in the back of the head". The 
testimony continued with Kruse saying, "At first I didn't believe it and then 
he started giving me details".

Lt. Laz Chavez, who leads the criminal intelligence section, doesn't believe 
the 4 were suspects back in 2009.

"It's a piece of the puzzle. As you know, these kinds of cases are really 
complex," he said. Lt. Chavez added they were getting tips 7 years after the 
murder.

He tells us, in the last few months, the case was turned over to gang 
intelligence detectives, who gave a fresh set of eyes and perspective to the 
case.

"The linchpin of this case was when it was assigned to the gang intelligence 
detectives. They had an intricate amount of knowledge when it comes to these 
parties that were going on back then, to the types of people that were present, 
to the teenagers that were there," said Lt. Chavez. "As things began to develop 
and unravel these last few months, it was pretty clear to us who the suspects 
were in the murder."

He says the detectives interviewed the suspects over the last few months.

"Some of the suspects involved in this crime are providing information. They 
want to help themselves. We'll see where that takes us. That information has 
been given to the District Attorney's office and will be shared with the jury 
when the trial begins," he said.

"I'm just glad to finally get a look at these creeps and let them know we're 
not afraid of them," said father, Donald Brill.

"I don't want to seem hateful here but they murdered a 16-year-old boy. They 
shot him in the back. They continued that behavior robbing other people," said 
mother, Karen Brill Kelly.

As for Wolfson, he wants families waiting for justice in other cold cases to 
know, neither detectives nor prosecutor ever give up.

The Brill case could be the first of many to move forward.

"Right now, there is a new push for DNA testing and there's money made 
available to do a bunch of DNA testing on specimens that weren't otherwise 
examined. And this might result in prosecutions of cases that have been lying 
dormant for years and years and years," said Wolfson.

Police think the 4 suspects, in this case, were part of a gang, committing 
street robberies. Aric Brill was a random victim caught in the wrong place.

(source: KSNV news)






CALIFORNIA:

Critics of California's death penalty launch the campaign to pass Proposition 
62


A group of advocates and exonerated inmates gathered in Los Angeles on Thursday 
to officially launch a campaign in favor of a ballot proposition repealing 
California's death penalty.

"What we have here is a coalition of people from very different walks of life, 
from very different perspectives, who want to let you know why we should be out 
of the business of killing," former "M*A*S*H" actor Mike Farrell, author of the 
initiative, told the audience.

Proposition 62 would replace capital punishment in California for 1st-degree 
murder with life in prison without the possibility of parole. It is 1 of 2 
competing measures on the future of the death penalty that voters will weigh on 
Nov. 8.

Both ballot measures would require current death row inmates to work and pay 
restitution to victims. But the opposing measure, Proposition 66, aims to speed 
up executions through limited and expedited appeals.

Anti-death penalty advocates on Thursday criticized the competing ballot 
measure as misguided and costly. And they called the current death penalty 
process dysfunctional and barbaric.

Ron Briggs, who with his father led the campaign that 38 years ago brought the 
death penalty to California, said they believed then that the law would serve 
as a deterrent, provide swift justice for families and save taxpayers money.

"We couldn't have been more wrong," Briggs said."What we did was we created an 
industry for death in California, costing taxpayers $187 million a year."

Beth Webb, who lost her sister and several friends in a 2011 mass shooting at a 
Seal Beach hair salon, said more violence did not bring peace. "Neither me or 
my mom will find closure in the death of another human being," she said.

(source: Los Angeles Times)