[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ARIZ., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 3



ARIZONA:

Arizona Supreme Court rules on self representation law


It may literally be a death-defying act.

But the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Thursday that people convicted of murder 
have the right to represent themselves in the part of the trial where a jury is 
deciding whether they live or die.

The justices rejected the pleas of Aaron Gunches, now finally represented by a 
public defender, that they should overturn the decision by a jury to sentence 
him to death because he acted as his own lawyer in the penalty phase of the 
trial. Justice John Pelander, writing for the unanimous court, while the 
decision was "ill advised," said there is a long-standing constitutional right 
of defendants who are competent to represent themselves.

Stephen Whelihan, a deputy county public advocate, did not dispute that right 
exists for an actual trial. But he argued this is different.

In capital cases there are actually 2 phases, with the 1st to determine guilt 
or innocence.

In the 2nd phase, the jury decides if there are certain "aggravating factors" 
that would make a death sentence more appropriate than life behind bars. These 
include things like committing a crime for financial gain or that the victim 
was a police officer.

In this case, jurors found 2 factors: a prior conviction of a serious offense 
and that the murder was committed in an especially cruel and heinous manner.

Jurors also are supposed to consider whether there are "mitigating factors" to 
spare someone's life, like lack of a prior criminal record and things in the 
person's history that might explain his or her conduct like prior abuse or 
mental or physical illness.

Gunches, representing himself, presented none of that to the jury.

Now, on appeal for the 2002 shooting death of Ted Price in the desert near 
Mesa, Gunches' attorneys said that constitutional right of self-representation 
should be limited to the guilt-or-innocence part of the trial.

"The independent societal interest in the fair administration of justice has 
been found to outweigh even the right of the accused to counsel of his choice 
enshrined in the Sixth Amendment," Whelihan argued.

The high court disagreed.

(source: The Daily Courier)






CALIFORNIA:

Trial To Begin For Hemet Man Accused Of Killing Wife, Daughter, Raping 
Ex-Girlfriend ---- The defendant allegedly confessed he wanted to get rid of 
his "baggage."


Trial proceedings are slated to get underway Tuesday for a convicted felon 
accused of killing his wife and 5-year-old daughter, as well as raping and 
stabbing his ex-girlfriend, in Hemet.

Johnny Lopez, 36, could face the death penalty if convicted in the November 
2013 slayings of 36-year-old Joanna Angel Barrientos Lopez and his daughter, 
Mia.

Lopez is charged with 2 counts of murder, along with 1 count each of attempted 
murder, forcible rape, burglary and being a felon in possession of a firearm, 
with a special circumstance allegation of taking multiple lives in the same 
crime.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge John Monterosso is expected to hear 
pretrial motions next week and outline a trial schedule. Jury selection may 
take several weeks because it's a capital murder case.

Lopez is being held without bail at the Southwest Detention Center in Murrieta.

He was arrested on Nov. 9, 2013, shortly after the alleged attacks at 2 
separate locations in the unincorporated east end of Hemet.

According to court documents, the defendant confessed to sheriff's detectives 
that he had carried out the killings to get rid of his "baggage" -- an apparent 
reference to the victims.

Investigators allege that on the night of Nov. 9, Lopez fatally shot his 
daughter, whom he'd sired in a prior relationship, then turned the gun on his 
wife, who walked into the room after hearing the gunfire.

Both victims were shot twice in the head with a 9mm pistol, according to 
investigators. They were later discovered in the living room of Lopez's 
single-story house at 26174 Girard Street.

After the shootings, the defendant drove to his ex-girlfriend's home at 41060 
Sunset Lane, less than a mile away, and allegedly forced his way inside via a 
window. Carrying an ax and knife that he'd allegedly stolen from a nearby 
property, he subdued the 30-year-old victim, whose identity was not released, 
and sexually assaulted her, prosecutors allege.

"According to his confession, he used the knife to slit her throat," Deputy 
District Attorney Burke Strunsky told City News Service in 2014.

When Lopez walked out of the house with blood on his hands, a neighbor called 
911, and a sheriff's deputy arrived moments later.

"The deputy sees Lopez standing in front of a house across the street and 
approaches him, and the defendant takes off," Strunsky said.

The lawman deployed pepper spray to stop Lopez, who put up a fight, culminating 
in the deputy striking him with his baton, at which point the convicted felon 
surrendered, according to investigators.

The ex-girlfriend underwent surgery and ultimately recovered.

Lopez has prior felony convictions for illegal possession of controlled 
substances and recklessly discharging a firearm.

(source: patch.com)






USA:

Fell defense seeks release of co-defendant files


The defense team for Donald Fell is asking the court to order a law firm to 
release files generated in connection with Fell's co-defendant, Robert Lee.

Fell and Lee were accused of kidnapping and killing North Clarendon resident 
Terry King in November 2000. Lee died in prison the following year.

In 2005 Fell was convicted of the murder and later sentenced to death. However 
the ruling was overturned due to juror misconduct. A retrial is scheduled for 
early next year.

According to a motion filed in U.S. District Court this week, the legal 
documents could contain evidence admissible in the guilt and penalty phase of 
the trial. Last October, Lee's father signed a waiver authorizing the release 
of the file and other records.

At the time of his detention, Lee was represented by Vermont attorneys John 
Pacht and Bradley Stetler. Pacht, formerly a partner with the firm Hoff Curtis 
in Burlington, was appointed to Vermont Superior Court in January.

Robert Katims, an attorney at Hoff Curtis, said the files are still at the 
firm. "We wouldn't turn them over absent a court order that said we need to," 
Katims said. "Attorney-client privilege is pretty sacrosanct and something we 
take very seriously."

Stetler, a criminal defense attorney with Stetler, Allen & Kampmann, said when 
he and Pacht were co-counsel they each maintained their own files. He declined 
to comment further.

In its motion the defense argues that the file could undermine the government's 
contention that Fell was the ringleader. The 2 were childhood friends, and in 
an earlier motion the government argued, "Mr. Fell was the dominant and 
manipulative leader; and Mr. Lee was the obedient, conditioned, follower."

However, the defense says this characterization may not hold up.

"The file could contain evidence that would not only contradict the 
government's theory that Mr. Fell manipulated his submissive and compliant 
friend Mr. Lee, but could also show that Mr. Lee was actually the major or sole 
participant in the crimes, or that it was actually Mr. Lee who manipulated Mr. 
Fell into committing the crimes," the motion says.

Attorney-client privilege, while not protected under the Constitution, has 
generally been upheld by the courts. However in some cases the court has ruled 
that the privilege is not absolute.

The Second Circuit has recognized that in criminal cases exceptional 
circumstances can overcome the attorney-client privilege. In a 2001 case the 
court ruled that attorney-client privilege would not be upheld if the exclusion 
of evidence would "render the trial fundamentally unfair."

Fell's lawyers argue that the circumstances of this case are exceptional. Fell 
could be facing the death penalty. His co-defendant has been dead for 15 years. 
And the government is seeking to admit Lee's statements in the penalty phase of 
the case.

According to the motion, "The government is attempting to use a dead 
co-defendant's hearsay statements to secure Mr. Fell's conviction and execution 
and there is substantial reason to believe that the co-defendant's statements 
to his legal defense team would contradict the statements being relied upon by 
the government."

In addition, Fell's attorneys argue that the "exceptional nature of death 
penalty cases" warrants the release of the files.

In July U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford, who will preside over the 
retrial next year, held 2 weeks of hearings on the constitutionality of the 
death penalty. He has not yet issued a decision.

(source: vtdigger.com)

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

Judge mulls allowing bloody shirts as evidence in Gary Sampson death penalty 
trial


They are pieces of evidence the jurors didn't get to see, the bloody, shredded 
shirts that Jonathan Rizzo and Philip McCloskey were wearing at the time they 
were stabbed to death in July 2001.

13 years ago, US District Judge Mark L. Wolf refused to show them to jurors in 
the death-penalty trial of Gary Lee Sampson, finding they were so graphic they 
would pose a "risk of unfair prejudice" toward the death-penalty. Sampson, who 
had admitted to the murders, was sentenced to death anyway, but the jury's 
verdict was overturned on appeal.

Now, in advance of Sampson's new death-penalty trial in September, US District 
Judge Leo T. Sorokin said Friday he wants to see the shirts himself, 
reconsidering prosecutors' arguments that the shirts speak to the "heinous, 
cruel, and depraved" nature of his crime, making him deserving of death.

Sorokin gave lawyers for Sampson a September 12 deadline to respond, and 
ordered the government to make the shirts available for his inspection. The 
shirts were cut from the bodies of Sampson's victims, and preserved in 
plexiglass.

"The victims' shirts ''' are unquestionably relevant to Sampson's intent, as 
well as the heinous, cruel, and depraved nature of the murders," prosecutors 
argued in court records Thursday.

Sampson, now 56, had admitted to the carjacking and killing of Rizzo, 19, and 
McCloskey, 69, during a violent spree in July 2001. He also killed Robert "Eli" 
Whitney, 58, that same week in New Hampshire.

A jury agreed after a 2003 trial to sentence him to death, but Wolf vacated 
that decision after finding that one of the jurors had lied during a screening 
process.

The question of admitting the shirts as evidence was one of the loudest 
arguments in the original trial. Wolf initially planned to show them to jurors, 
agreeing they speak to the heinous nature of the crime - 1 of the factors 
prosecutors want to prove in seeking the death penalty, and which requires 
evidence of torture or physical abuse - but he later reversed that decision, 
saying instead that it could be overly prejudice.

"An honest balancing of the competing factors at this point should operate to 
exclude the shirts," the judge said, quoting Shakespeare's "The Tragedy of 
Julius Caesar" to raise concerns that the shirt would "incite revenge."

Wolf also questioned whether jurors would be influenced by the reactions of 
Sampson's victims in the courtroom, and whether the shirts would become 
"powerful and immediate symbols of the victims and the brutality of their 
murders."

"I do find that the danger of unfair prejudice in terms of overwhelming 
emotions and rational response in the context of all the other evidence and the 
way the case has evolved outweighs the probative value," the judge said.

The families of Sampson's victims had long criticized Wolf's handling of the 
2003 trial, and point to his refusal to admit the shirts as evidence, and his 
concerns over how the families would respond, as one of their key disputes.

"We thought this was very important evidence in our case," Michael Rizzo, the 
father of Jonathan Rizzo, said in an interview Friday, adding that he was glad 
that the question is at least being reconsidered.

Prosecutors argued that other court decisions have upheld the admissibility of 
blood-stained clothing as evidence since the Sampson trial, and that such 
evidence is routinely introduced in local murder trials.

The prosecutors also noted that the clothing of 2 of the victims of the Boston 
Marathon bombing - Krystle Campbell and Martin Richard - was introduced in the 
death-penalty trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

"The vicious, brutal nature of a defendant's conduct is not itself sufficient 
to justify a complete exclusion of evidence tending to show the defendant 
engaged in those acts," prosecutors argued.

(source: Boston Globe)