[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.J., OHIO, COLO., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 12



NEW JERSEY:

Politics of the death penalty ignores research, law and its past


A decade has passed since New Jersey jettisoned its ineffective death penalty, 
enough time for many to forget how pointless and costly it was. That means, of 
course, there's an opportunity for politicians to posture about being tough on 
crime by proposing to bring it back.

A few have seized the opportunity, including Assemblyman Ronald Dancer, 
representing parts of Ocean, Burlington and Monmouth counties.

He and others are trying to maximize the emotional appeal to the public of 
killing killers by limiting execution to the most hated criminals they can 
think of - murderers of children, police and correctional officers; terrorists; 
torturers; and hired killers.

For starters, since "children" would be defined as 17 and younger, an age range 
well within drug-gang membership, the numbers on death row might not be as 
limited as legislators imagine.

The more fundamental problem is that executing criminals on the basis of the 
emotions they evoke is an unacceptably vague standard. If the legislators want 
to try to make a case that some sorts of human lives are more valuable than 
others and that taking them deserves the ultimate public punishment, they're 
welcome to try but will surely fail.

So the desire to punish won't suffice. How about the death penalty as a 
deterrent to certain kinds of crimes society would especially like to prevent?

The problem is there isn't evidence that executing criminals deters others from 
crime.

The National Research Council of the National Academies reviewed more than 3 
decades of research on the matter and reported in 2012 that existing studies 
claiming a deterrent effect on murder rates from the death penalty are 
fundamentally flawed, enough so that they shouldn't be used "to inform 
deliberations requiring judgments about the effect of the death penalty on 
homicide."

That doesn't rule out a deterrent effect, but the burden is on those claiming 
such an effect to provide reliable proof of its existence before putting people 
to death in service to it.

One thing death penalty research has shown is that too often people have been 
executed for crimes they didn't commit. Legislators who think that wouldn't 
happen again if executions resume are kidding themselves.

They almost certainly won't resume. New Jersey already has been through this 
wasteful cycle once.

After a U.S. Supreme Court crackdown on flawed procedures leading to 
executions, the state restored the death penalty in 1982. That resulted in 60 
cases in which capital punishment was the jury verdict - and 57 times that 
verdict was overturned by the courts. Inmates waited on death row for 
executions that never came.

Legislators and citizens who hope to save money by executing criminals instead 
of imprisoning them for life should consider this: The N.J. Death Penalty Study 
Commission in 2007 found the cost of keeping an inmate on death row was $72,000 
a year, while simply keeping them in prison cost $40,000.

When the death penalty was again abolished that year - leaving 1963 as the last 
year New Jersey executed a convict - the death sentences of the eight death row 
inmates were commuted to life in prison.

Surely the state doesn't want to return to that morally unsupportable and 
wasteful legal morass.

(source: Editorial, Press of Atlantic City)






OHIO:

Robert Seman capital murder trial set to begin


The capital murder trial of Robert Seman begins Monday morning in a Mahoning 
county courtroom.

The first order of business will be to select a jury.

The victims in this crime are 10 year old Corrine Gump and her grandparents 
Bill and Judith Schmidt of Youngstown.

Seman faces a total of 16 charges, including aggravated murder, aggravated 
arson and aggravated burglary. He was charged with the triple murder after he 
allegedly set their home on fire back in March of 2015, just hours before 
Corrine was to testify in court that he had raped her.

It could take weeks to seat a jury since 400 people have been summoned as 
potential jurors for this death penalty case.

The defense has asked for a change of venue but Judge Maureen Sweeney will 
first try to seat a jury first before considering a change of venue.

It's anticipated this trial could last 3 to 4 weeks.

(source: WFMJ news)






COLORADO:

Evidence of the need to keep the death penalty


Patty Wetterling is consoled by son Trevor during a news conference after a 
hearing for Danny Heinrich on Tuesday in Minneapolis. Heinrich confessed 
Tuesday to abducting and killing 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling nearly 27 years 
ago.

Re: "Minnesota man confesses to killing of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling in 
1989," Sept. 6 news story.

Despite the Denver Post editorial board's flawed and constant drumbeat to 
eradicate the death penalty, the paper publishes news stories regularly to show 
why that is a bad idea. Latest case in point: the Minnesota man who confessed 
to the 1989 killing of an 11-year-old boy. He only confessed to beat the death 
penalty in exchange for leading authorities to the victim's body and giving the 
family some closure.

As a retired reporter, I have seen this many times. If you take the death 
penalty off the books altogether, these victims' families suffer even more when 
their loved ones are never found. You don't pursue capital punishment in every 
case, you don't always play the plea-bargain game, but you need it as part of 
the law.

Also, as a personal note, I have witnessed a state execution of a murderer by 
lethal injection. The Post has suggested the death penalty is barbaric. I say 
members of a civilized society cannot seek justice by their own hands. The 
state has to do it, so devastated victims' families don't seek punishment 
outside the law. That would be barbaric.

Terry Jessup, Highlands Ranch

(source: Letter to the Editor, Denver Post, Sept. 9)






CALIFORNIA:

Death penalty overturned in notorious Salinas triple homicide case


A man who was convicted in a notorious and shocking triple Salinas homicide 
case is being removed from death row.

Daniel Sanchez Covarrubias has spent the past 2 decades as a condemned inmate 
in San Quentin State Prison. The father of 4's sentence was thrown out by the 
Supreme Court of California this week.

Covarrubias' defense team interpreter, Lisa Sobalvarro, told KSBW, "This 
reversal could not have happened to a nicer person, who killed no one."

The Monterey County Superior Criminal Court was ordered by the state supreme 
court to re-sentence Covarrubias.

The state based its reversal on problems with jury selection, because a juror 
was excused based solely on their personal opinions about capital punishment.

"We reverse the judgment of death because of the erroneous excusal of a 
prospective juror during jury selection, (and) remand the matter for a new 
penalty determination," the court wrote.

On November 16, 1994, a baby girl was shot when men wielding assault rifles 
burst into her family's home on Toro Street in Salinas.

11-month-old Alejandra Morales was shot in the leg, and a bullet narrowly 
missed her torso as it passed through her jacket.

Miraculously, the baby survived.

Her family did not. The baby's mother, Martha Morales, was killed when bullets 
fired at close range blew her face off, according to court documents. The 
baby's uncle, Fernando Martinez, was shot execution-style, in the back of the 
head. Her father, Ramon Morales, was also brutally killed.

Judge Robert Moody, the judge who sentenced Covarrubias in 1998 for 1st-degree 
murder, described the triple homicide as "the ugliest and most vicious of them 
all."

"A mother was shot while holding her baby," Moody said.

The case was investigated by Salinas' current mayor, Joseph Gunter, who was a 
Salinas Police Department detective at the time.

The grisly murders were carried out by multiple gunmen who invaded a house 
while demanding that the residents hand over drugs, cash, and guns.

Investigators identified the gunmen as Covarrubias; his cousins, Antonio 
Sanchez and Joaquin Nunez; and his 16-year-old nephew, Jose Luis Ramirez.

Court documents state that when Sanchez couldn't find the money and drugs he 
was looking for in the Morales family's home, he began shooting, and his 
accomplices also opened fire.

"Out of fear, we all shot. We fired the weapons that we had . . . we shot 
really like crazy," Covarrubias said, according to court documents.

Since his arrest in 1995, Covarrubias has maintained his innocence, saying he 
didn't kill anyone in the house.

Court documents stated, "Covarrubias admitted he was at the Morales house with 
Sanchez, Joaquin Nunez, and Ramirez when the victims were shot, but went there 
only to help Sanchez pick up some things that were left in the house. Weapons 
were brought into the house because Sanchez told them Ramon had threatened to 
kill him."

Teenage Ramirez said he ran out of the house when the shootings began.

Judge Moody agreed that there was "no direct evidence of precisely who shot 
whom."

The accused group of killers fled to Mexico after the triple homicide. They 
were found hiding in Mexicali by bounty hunters in the summer of 1995, and 
extradited back to the U.S.

Ramirez testified against his uncles as part of a plea agreement with the 
Monterey County District Attorney's Office. He was sentenced to serve 11 years 
for burglary.

Before Covarrubias was sentenced to death, his friends and family defended his 
character in court, saying he was good person who volunteered. A forensic 
psychologist testified that Covarrubias was not a psychopath and felt remorse 
for the victims.

Judge Moody stated, "When Daniel Covarrubias arrives on death row in San 
Quentin, he may well be out of the pattern (of other inmates) as far as his 
character is concerned, with considerably more humanity to him than most of the 
others. But the crimes of which he stands convicted will be right up there with 
the ugliest and most vicious of them all."

With Covarrubias removed from death row, there are now 4 inmates convicted in 
Monterey County who remain as condemned: Kristin William Hughes, Ronald Moore, 
Joseph Kekoa Manibusan and Kenneth Bivert.

(source: KSBW news)






USA:

Why Christians, including Tim Kaine, are conflicted about execution


To judge by some studies, American Christians have very confused feelings about 
the death penalty. Last year, Pew Research, a pollster based in Washington, DC, 
published evidence confirming some things you would intuitively expect: white 
evangelicals support the ultimate punishment by a far greater majority (71-25) 
than do Americans in general (56-38) or the religiously unaffiliated (48-45). 
Although their church (at least in the modern era) firmly opposes execution, 
the procedure was supported by most Catholics (53-42) and an even greater 
majority of white Catholics (63-34).

In 2014, a survey by Barna research, a smaller pollster focusing on religious 
trends, found that self-identified Christians were slightly more likely than 
Americans as a whole to believe that the ultimate penalty should be available 
to the government in extreme cases. But younger American Christians, whether 
practising or nominal, seemed much less keen than their parents on execution. 
Only 23% of practising Christians born after 1980 backed the penalty.

And regardless of their own beliefs, Christian respondents seemed convinced 
that the founder of their faith was an opponent of punishing people with death: 
only one in 20 says Jesus of Nazareth would be a supporter of judicial killing. 
All that suggests that there must be a lot of Christians who believe in the 
death penalty themselves but accept that Jesus Christ, who after all suffered 
that penalty himself, would be on the other side of the argument. Perhaps 
that's not so surprising. Some would say it's part of human nature to 
subscribe, at one level, to the loftiest ideals and at the same time, make 
massive compromises with life's harsh realities.

But there can't be many Christians who have experienced so much conflict, not 
just in their views but in their actions, as Tim Kaine. Hillary Clinton's 
running-mate is a devout left-wing Catholic whose formative experiences 
included working for the Jesuits in Honduras. He is both a principled opponent, 
and a practitioner, of the ultimate punishment. As a lawyer, he took on 2 
pro-bono capital punishment cases. In 1 instance he shared his client's final 
moments including a meal and a celebration of Mass. But as governor of 
Virginia, he oversaw 11 executions and in only one case did he grant clemency 
on ground of mental health.

"The hardest thing about being a governor was dealing with the death penalty," 
he told NCR, a Catholic news service. "I hope on Judgment Day that there's both 
understanding and mercy, because it was tough."

Negotiating the issue wasn't just personally difficult for Mr Kaine, it also 
posed some political dilemmas. During his campaign for governor, he was 
subjected to "attack ads" which derided his alleged soft-heartedness over the 
death penalty, describing him as a person who wouldn't even want Hitler to be 
executed. He responded with a formula which remained his stated position as 
governor: whatever his personal feelings about execution, he would respect the 
law of the land and the decisions of its courts, as his oath required him to 
do.

Some would see a similar act of contortion in his liberal position over 
abortion, which has earned him high ratings from pro-choice campaign groups 
like Planned Parenthood. "I've got a personal feeling over abortion, but the 
right role for government is to let women make their own decisions," he has 
said. But it is the question of execution which has affected, perhaps even 
haunted, his own life most.

As far as anyone can judge, there is nothing phony about Mr Kaine's Catholic 
commitment. Having experienced life at the sharp end in Honduras, and having 
lost some friends in that country's mayhem, he is a natural supporter of Pope 
Francis and the pontiff's brand of radical Hispanic Catholicism. He says he was 
moved to tears by the pontiff's address to Congress.

But the would-be vice-president is also a consummate politician, who doubtless 
sensed that being an unconditional foe of the death penalty would have made him 
virtually unelectable in a state like Virginia.

Critics on both left and right may call Mr Kaine a hypocrite or chameleon. But 
perhaps that misses the point. It is not so much the politicians, as the 
voters, who are conflicted. Many want their politicians to be idealists, even 
utopians, and at the same time to deliver the "closure" that comes from 
retribution. Even though support for the death penalty - and the frequency of 
executions - is falling in America (see article), a majority of voters still 
support the practice. For better or worse, politicians feel they have to 
respond accordingly.

(source: The Economist)

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

Killer of 3 in bloody rampage faces 2nd death penalty trial 13 years later


It was 2 days before Christmas in 2003, and the families of Philip McClosky and 
Jonathan Rizzo got a sense of relief for which they had waited years.

That day, a jury in Boston sentenced a 44-year-old drifter named Gary Lee 
Sampson to death for fatally stabbing McClosky and Rizzo during a crime spree 
through New England more than 2 years earlier. Sampson had pleaded guilty in 
their deaths, and confessed separately to killing a former city councilor in 
New Hampshire and attacking another man in Vermont.

Jurors deliberated for 11 hours before sentencing Sampson to death. It was the 
1st time a Massachusetts jury had recommended execution in a federal case.

"I feel like the boulder around my shoulders has been chipped down to a rock," 
Scott McCloskey, the victim's son, said when the verdict came down.

Rizzo's father, Michael Rizzo, said he felt like the family could at last move 
on with their lives.

"We're certainly happy about the verdict," he told The Boston Globe, "but we're 
more happy it's over."

After years of legal wrangling, however, it's not over. A judge threw out the 
sentence against Sampson in 2011 due to juror misconduct. Now, 13 years after 
his 1st sentence, a new jury is set to decide again whether Sampson should be 
put to death or spend the rest of his life in jail.

Sampson's 2nd sentencing trial is slated to begin Wednesday in the same federal 
court where he was originally sentenced.

Prosecutors will again press for the death penalty, saying they plan to 
emphasize Sampson's violent prison record as well as the heinous nature of his 
crimes. Defense attorneys say they'll present a list of more than 200 
mitigating factors to argue against execution, among them Sampson's poor health 
and a history of mental illness.

This time, the proceedings come against a backdrop of declining death sentences 
nationwide. The number of death sentences has fallen nationally from 152 in 
2003, when Sampson was first tried, to just 49 last year, according to the 
Death Penalty Information Center.

"It's difficult to reopen that stuff all over again and have to sit there and 
listen," Michael Rizzo told the Associated Press.

Sampson admitted to killing Philip McClosky and Jonathan Rizzo during a bloody 
rampage through 3 New England states in July 2001.

A native of the Boston suburbs, Sampson had recently returned to Massachusetts 
from North Carolina, where he was wanted in connection with a string of bank 
robberies. Authorities said he encountered McClosky, a 69-year-old retired pipe 
fitter, in Weymouth, Massachusetts, as McClosky was buying flowers for a 
friend. He convinced McClosky to drive him to a nearby town. There, Sampson 
tied McClosky up with a belt and stabbed him 24 times, leaving with his wallet, 
cellphone and keys.

Sampson then hitchhiked to Plymouth, Massachusetts, near Cape Cod, where he 
found Rizzo. The 19-year-old George Washington University student had just 
finished his shift waiting tables at a seafood restaurant when he saw Sampson 
on the side of the road and picked him up, according to the Los Angeles Times. 
Sampson forced Rizzo to drive about 30 minutes up the road to a golf course. He 
led Rizzo into the woods, tied him to a tree, and stabbed him in the neck and 
chest.

>From there, Sampson drove Rizzo's Volkswagen Jetta to New Hampshire and broke 
into a lake house in Meredith, New Hampshire. The house's caretaker, Robert 
Whitney, a 58-year-old former city councilor from Concord, arrived the next day 
and found Sampson inside. Sampson tied Whitney to a chair and strangled him to 
death.

Sampson then fled to Vermont, where he tried to steal a car belonging to 
William Gregory, 39, who managed to escape when Sampson pulled a knife on him. 
The 5-day spree ended shortly after, when Sampson called the police and turned 
himself in.

Sampson confessed to the killings when police took him into custody, but 
initially pleaded not guilty to an indictment in federal court in 
Massachusetts. In September 2003, however, he changed his plea to guilty, 
paving the way for what was then the state's most closely-watched death penalty 
trial.

Media reports and statements from prosecutors painted Sampson as a deranged 
career criminal and lifelong drifter. Even at an early age, Sampson was "a 
troubled kid, the kind of kid you stayed away from," David Majenski, Sampson's 
former neighbor, told the New York Times in 2001.

>From his teenage years onward, Sampson was in and out of jail for various 
offenses, some of them violent. He did stints for theft and robbery, and was 
accused and later acquitted of rape, according to the Cape Cod Times.

One of Sampson's crimes as a younger man foreshadowed the murders. In 1980, he 
was convicted of posing as a hitchhiker and stealing a 72-year-old man's car at 
knife point. While serving a 2-year sentence for that, Sampson briefly escaped 
from jail, using a hacksaw to cut through a gate, the Cape Cod Times reported.

All told, Sampson spent some 16 years in jail, according to The Globe.

By 2001, Sampson had made his way to North Carolina, where authorities said he 
was working as a motel maintenance man and living with "several cross-dressers 
and transvestites," according to the New York Times. Authorities said that 
spring Sampson had been caught on surveillance cameras robbing 5 banks, using 
makeup to change his appearance.

"He had the unusual M.O. of robbing the banks dressed as a woman, with 
elaborate makeup he had learned from the transvestites," Sheriff Gerald Hege of 
Davidson County told the Times.

When interviewed by police, Sampson's friends said he would brag about killing 
people.

"Murder was one of his obsessions," Sheriff Hege said.

A 'vicious predator'

In September 2003, Sampson pleaded guilty to killing McClosky and Rizzo, and 
was convicted separately of murdering Whitney. Massachusetts abolished the 
death penalty in 1984, but prosecutors were allowed to seek execution because 
his case was federal.

Jurors heard 18 days of testimony that December. Prosecutors called Sampson a 
"vicious predator" who singled out McClosky because he was elderly and Rizzo 
because he was young and trusting.

"The defendant conforms his conduct when he wants to," prosecutor Frank Gaziano 
told jurors, according to the Boston Globe. "He attacks on his own terms when 
it's to his advantage."

Defense attorneys said Sampson was mentally ill and urged jurors to send him to 
prison for life.

After 11 hours of deliberations, jurors returned with a unanimous verdict: 
death by lethal injection.

"There was no question, no doubt about it," jury forewoman Mary E. Dever told 
The Globe after delivering the verdict. "I can sleep at night with the decision 
we've made."

In 2011, however, a federal judge overturned Sampson's sentence, finding that 1 
of the jurors had lied about her background. An appeals court upheld the 
decision, leaving prosecutors to seek a new sentencing trial.

In the time since, prosecutors say Sampson has racked up a disciplinary record 
that the state plans to use against him, including assaults on prison officials 
and threats toward other inmates.

Sampson's attorneys contend that the death penalty is excessive because Sampson 
is unlikely to survive the appeal process, which could take a decade or more. 
Sampson, now 56, has high blood pressure and liver disease, they say.

Rizzo's father said he hopes jurors reach the same conclusion they did 13 years 
ago.

"If you do something that qualifies for the death penalty," he said, "then you 
should be prepared to take that consequence."

(source: Washington Post)