[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., DEL., N.C., ALA., LA., OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 13



TEXAS:

Why the Death Penalty is Dying in Texas


Kathryn Kase, executive director of the Texas Defender Service in Houston, says 
nationwide, there's been a huge drop in death sentences. Texas has had many 
fewer executions this year than in years past. In 1999, the state sent 30 
people to death row.

"The rate of death sentencing is dropping dramatically in Texas," she says. 
"Last year, Texas had only 2 new death sentences. This year we've had 3."

Kase says the reduction makes sense because the system allows for life without 
parole.

"[Life without parole] does keep people in prison for life. And if we're wrong, 
if people are innocent, we can go back and get them," she says, "whereas if 
they're innocent and they've been executed, we really can't resurrect them."

If the availability of lethal injection drugs were a factor, Kase says stays of 
execution would reference that reason. Instead, we're seeing stays for other 
reasons: because questions arose about whether the state convicted the right 
person, because experts gave false testimony, because forensic proof in the 
case - the science - was bad.

"We're understanding that the evidence that used to convict and put people on 
death row was not infallible," she says. "When you have doubt like that, the 
courts should properly put the brakes on things."

Kase says the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) is responding to the larger 
conversation nationwide about the viability of the death penalty. Two opinions 
from CCA judge Elsa Alcala have shown that she thinks the court needs an open 
discussion of the constitutionality of the death penalty.

"Practically any murder in the state of Texas could be capital murder," she 
says, "and if the death penalty is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the 
worst, not every murder should qualify for the death penalty for that to be 
constitutional. She has also observed that the death penalty has been overused 
in the state of Texas against African-Americans relative to their 
representation in the population."

Texas has led the nation in exonerations, Kase says, which could be a factor in 
why the state is rethinking the death penalty.

"Any state that can admit that it's wrong, about putting the wrong people in 
prison," she says, "I think can rethink the death penalty."

(source: KUT news)






PENNSYTLVANIA:

In death-penalty case, prosecutors complain of judge's closed-door meeting with 
defense ---- Told he could face death penalty, Easton homicide defendant has 
outbursts in court


Northampton County prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Jeffrey 
Knoble, the man accused of slaying Andrew "Beep" White of Easton at a downtown 
hotel in March.

Their client facing the death penalty, Jeffrey S. Knoble Jr.'s lawyers were 
able to persuade a judge to allow them to withdraw from his murder case, citing 
a complete breakdown in their relationship with a defendant who has had 
repeated outbursts in court.

But the reasons behind Northampton County Judge Emil Giordano's decision this 
month has sparked a courtroom fight that pits 2 long-held principles of legal 
fairness against each other.

That's because when Chief Public Defender Robert Eyer detailed the reasons he 
could no longer represent Knoble on charges he killed a man inside a downtown 
Easton hotel room, Eyer did so during a closed-door meeting in which 
prosecutors were excluded.

The law frowns upon such ex-parte communications, in which one side speaks with 
a judge without the other side present, fearing that they are on their face 
unfair.

But in holding that discussion with Eyer on Sept. 2, Giordano was seeking to 
protect another ethical precept: attorney-client privilege, which shields the 
confidentiality of communications between lawyers and those they represent.

Eyer claimed he would be violating those ethical duties if he disclosed to 
prosecutors why he needed to withdraw from the case. Over the objection of 
First Deputy District Attorney Terence Houck, Giordano held the closed-door 
meeting as a result, the transcript of which he ordered sealed.

On Monday, that produced a hearing in which District Attorney John Morganelli 
argued prosecutors had the right to know why Knoble's lawyers were relieved, 
saying he fears the defendant is playing games with the court and seeking to 
have his case unnecessarily delayed.

Morganelli went through Knoble's history of disruptiveness in court - including 
repeated attempts to fire his lawyers - and said there is no reason to believe 
Knoble won't continue those tactics with his new attorneys.

"We have to know what's happened to old counsel, so we can know what's going to 
happen with new counsel," Morganelli said.

If not, he said, "we're arguing against a ghost, because we don't even know 
what we're arguing against."

Knoble is charged in the early March 11, 2015, death of 32-year-old Andrew 
"Beep" White, who was shot in the back of the head at the former Quality Inn on 
South Third Street. Authorities call White a good Samaritan who rented a room 
for Knoble that night because he had no place to stay, then was killed for his 
kindness.

In February, Knoble called his public defenders "bums" and "corrupt." A week 
later, he cursed at Giordano, telling him to "Go [expletive] yourself." In May, 
Knoble insisted he is a sovereign man who isn't subject to the reach of the 
justice system.

More recently, Knoble was in court last month for what was expected to be a 
guilty plea in which he would admit murdering White and accept a sentence of 
life without parole. But instead, the 26-year-old Riegelsville man asserted his 
innocence, turned to White's family, stuck out his tongue and repeatedly said, 
"Ha ha, ha ha" to them.

The reasons Eyer gave Giordano for withdrawing from the case were, apparently, 
persuasive. Following the Sept. 2 meeting, Giordano reaffirmed that Knoble 
would be granted new counsel and ordered his trial - scheduled to begin the 
next week - to be delayed until January.

On Monday, a lawyer for Eyer, Philip Lauer, said Giordano got it right the 
first time. Eyer had a ethical requirement not to disclose confidential 
communications with his client, and that must be respected, Lauer said.

"That's the basis on which he made the disclosure to you and I think that has 
to be honored," Lauer told Giordano, who did not issue a ruling, saying he 
wanted to do more research.

Knoble is now represented by Gavin Holihan and Matthew Deschler. Holihan, an 
Allentown attorney, was found outside the county's usual crop of 
court-appointed counsel, considering the paucity of lawyers who are qualified 
to try death-penalty cases.

Holihan will be paid $75 an hour, the county's standard rate, up to $20,000, 
said acting court administrator Jermaine Greene. Any fee beyond that would 
require court approval, Greene said.

Holihan met his client for the first time before Monday's hearing. In court, 
Holihan suggested a compromise in the dispute between prosecutors and Knoble's 
former attorneys.

Holihan said Giordano should take up the prosecutors' request only if, as they 
predict, Knoble and his new defense team clash, a proposal that Morganelli 
suggested would be acceptable to him.

"If their fears come to pass, address them in the future," Holihan said.

(source: The Morning Call)






DELAWARE:

Once on death row, Jermaine Wright is now free


Jermaine Wright, who spent more than 20 years on death row before a Delaware 
court overturned his 1991 conviction, walked out of prison a free man Monday 
after he pleaded no contest to 2nd-degree murder on the eve of his retrial.

Wright, 43, was sentenced to the maximum 20 years and released after Superior 
Court Judge Eric Davis ruled his more than 24 years of incarceration counted as 
time served. He was sentenced to death in 1992 in the killing of 66-year-old 
Phillip Seifert, a clerk at a liquor store and bar outside Wilmington. At the 
time the Supreme Court overturned his sentence, he was the longest-serving 
death row inmate in Delaware.

"After 24 years incarcerated, I would just like to go home," Wright told the 
court Monday. He was expected to head to his mother's home for a barbecue 
celebration upon his release.

Wright's attorney, Herbert Mondros, stressed that Wright has maintained his 
innocence since he was first arrested at 18.

"As Mr. Wright made clear ... this no contest plea is not an admission of 
guilt," Mondros said in a statement. "It is simply a way for Wright to put an 
end to this unjust nightmare and get back to his family."

Wright's case has been the focus of the Delaware legal system for more than 2 
decades. In the latest turn 6 weeks ago, Delaware's Supreme Court found the 
state's death penalty law unconstitutional, meaning Wright couldn't be 
sentenced to death in the retrial of his case.

Monday's plea brought an end to a lengthy back-and-forth between attorneys and 
Wright, and ended the possibility of another long trial.

Superior Court Judge John Parkins Jr. overturned Wright's conviction and death 
sentence in 2012 on the premise that Wright wasn't properly advised of his 
rights during the police interrogation - a nearly 13-hour event in which Wright 
provided a confession while he was high on heroin. He was freed from prison for 
nearly a year until prosecutors refiled charges in January.

"Justice was not served when Mr. Wright was wrongfully convicted and sentenced 
to death, nor was justice served by keeping this young man in solitary 
confinement for over half his life for a crime he did not commit," Mondros 
said. "This case exemplifies all that is wrong with the death penalty. Indeed, 
the arbitrariness of its application is exemplified by the fact that a mere 2 
months ago, the State actively sought Mr. Wright's execution. Today, he is a 
free man."

For Philip Seifert's son, Royce, the sentencing Monday marked the final example 
of a "broken" justice system. In a statement to the court, he explained that 
Wright had already been convicted by a jury and sentenced to death. A 
confession he gave to police, Seifert added, contained details only the killer 
would know.

"It has taken 9,374 days to get to this point," Seifert said, adding that his 
family had persevered over the years in the hope of seeing justice done.

"The final determination will have a hollow sound, for the murderer will go 
free and be returned to the streets of Wilmington," he said.

"Jermaine is not a hero or a celebrity. He is a confessed murderer," added 
Seifert, who told Wright that while he may go free, "you will never be free 
from the truth of what you did."

Seifert's father was shot 3 times - once in the neck and twice in the head - 
during a robbery of the former Hi-Way Inn on Governor Printz Boulevard on Jan. 
14, 1991. The robber took $30 from the cash register.

There were no eyewitnesses and no physical evidence from the murder, but an 
anonymous tip led police to Wright. With no probable cause to charge him with 
the murder, they arrested him as a suspect in 2 unrelated crimes. It was during 
an interview at Wilmington Police headquarters that Wright confessed on camera 
to the Hi-Way Inn murder.

This confession video was key evidence in convicting Jermaine Wright of murder.

The state used the videotape to convince a jury to convict Wright in 1992. In 
the years since, Wright filed many appeals to avoid the death penalty. 2 years 
ago that he was released from prison when Parkins overturned his conviction.

In 2013, the Delaware Supreme Court reversed Parkins' ruling, saying his review 
of Wright's confession, the linchpin of the prosecution's case, was 
procedurally barred. The court also rejected Parkins' determination that there 
was an "actual innocence" exception allowing him to reconsider the issue.

A majority of justices also said Wright was not prejudiced by the withholding 
of evidence about the earlier robbery attempt because it would not have 
bolstered his alibi defense.

Following yet another appeal, however, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously last 
year that Wright was entitled to a new trial because prosecutors repeatedly 
withheld potentially exculpatory evidence suggesting that Seifert may have been 
killed by 2 men who tried to rob another liquor store in the vicinity a short 
time earlier.

Parkins, whom Royce Seifert described Monday as "a liberal judge with his own 
agenda," then ruled that Wright's confession could not be used at his retrial. 
Shortly after, the Supreme Court overturned that ruling and ordered that the 
case be assigned to a different judge. Wright was taken back into custody after 
nearly a year of freedom when prosecutors refiled charges against him in 
January.

"Criminal cases do not get better with age," prosecutor Steve Wood said Monday 
when asked about the plea bargain, adding that memories change and that some of 
the physical evidence in the case has gone missing. He declined to provide 
details.

"Given the state of the evidence and the passage of time, today's resolution 
was appropriate," Wood said.

(source: delawlareonline.com)






NORTH CAROLINA:

Report: 6-year-old Asheville girl died from stab wound


A Leicester father accused of killing his 6-year-old daughter along the Blue 
Ridge Parkway appeared before a Buncombe County judge Monday, though his case 
is expected to move to federal court.

Seth Willis Pickering, 36, is charged with 1st-degree murder in the Friday 
evening death of Lila Pickering, a first-grader who attended Johnston 
Elementary.

A medical examiner said Monday she died from a stab wound to the heart and left 
lung.

In the court hearing, which lasted less than a minute, the judge asked 
Pickering if he understood why he was at the hearing.

He responded, "Yes, your honor," and other than indicating he understood other 
procedural matters, said nothing else.

"If you're convicted, you could get the death penalty or life in prison without 
parole," District Court Judge Edwin Clontz told Pickering.

He had earlier filled out an affidavit of indigency, and based on that 
information, Clontz said an attorney would be assigned to him.

"Based on your affidavit, I will appoint a public defender in this matter," 
Clontz said. "They usually will assign somebody who is a specialist in capital 
cases."

The judge set the next court date for Oct. 3.

However, this week, the state murder charge will likely be dropped as federal 
authorities take control of the case and prosecution.

The child was killed on federal property, the Blue Ridge Parkway, according to 
law officers. She had been stabbed in the heart and left lung, said Dr. John 
Stewart, of the Buncombe County Medical Examiner's Office.

The investigation is being led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, though 
officers with the Buncombe County Sheriff's Department have assisted with the 
case since the child was reported missing, and ultimately brought the state 
murder charge against her father.

Lila was staying in a home in west Buncombe County amid a custody dispute 
between Pickering and his estranged wife, who lives in Florida.

A Buncombe County deputy responded to that home at about 5:45 p.m. Friday after 
learning the girl had been taken by her father.

Deputies were preparing to issue an Amber Alert when a pair of U.S. Park 
Service rangers stopped near Mile Marker 393 of the Blue Ridge Parkway to 
examine an out-of-place vehicle parked in a grassy area, authorities said.

There, they discovered Pickering and his daughter, who was deceased.

(source: Asheville Citizen-Times)






ALABAMA:

The Long Defense of the Alabama Death-Row Prisoner Doyle Lee Hamm


After decades of appeals, the Supreme Court will decide this month whether to 
hear Doyle Lee Hamm's case. It will be his last chance to avoid execution. 
Photograph by Mississippi State Penitentiary via Bernard E. Harcourt On death 
row at the Donaldson Correctional Facility, in Bessemer, Alabama, Doyle Lee 
Hamm is known as "Pops." He is 59 years old and has been at Donaldson since 
1987, when a jury found him guilty of fatally shooting a motel clerk during a 
robbery. The fact that Hamm has managed to elude execution for nearly 3 decades 
can be explained, in large part, by the tenacity of a single person: his 
attorney, Bernard E. Harcourt. The 2 met in 1990, soon after Harcourt began 
working for the lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who at the time had just started an 
organization in Alabama to defend condemned prisoners. Hamm was one of 
Harcourt's first clients.

The 2 men came from opposite worlds. Harcourt was raised on Park Avenue, went 
to Princeton, and had recently graduated from Harvard Law School; his father 
was a partner in a law firm. Hamm grew up in northwest Alabama, the 10th of 12 
children; his father worked as a carpenter and cotton picker, made his own 
moonshine, drank every day, beat his children with a switch, and was a frequent 
resident of the county jail (on charges of public drunkenness). Hamm's sister 
later described their childhood home as "constant hell all the time." She also 
recalled their father telling the children, "If you don't go out and steal, 
then you're not a Hamm."

Growing up, Hamm flunked 1st grade, drank beer and whiskey mixed together, 
graduated to sniffing glue several times a day, quit school in the 9th grade, 
ingested Valium and Percocet and quaaludes, watched his 6 older brothers all go 
to jail, and eventually acquired his own extensive rap sheet, including arrests 
for burglary, assault, and grand larceny. He married and had 1 daughter. (The 
marriage lasted 6 months; his wife cited "habitual drunkenness" as one of the 
grounds for divorce.) In January of 1987, Hamm went on a crime spree that 
included a shooting in Mississippi and ended when he and 2 accomplices were 
arrested following the murder of a motel clerk in Alabama. About 350 dollars 
were missing from the register and the clerk was found on the floor, shot once 
in the temple. Hamm confessed to the murder, and, at 30 years old, he was 
condemned to death by way of Alabama's electric chair, which was painted yellow 
and known by the nickname Yellow Mama.

Ever since meeting Hamm, Harcourt has been trying to save him from this fate. 
In the early 1990s, he hired an investigator named Gaye Nease to research 
Hamm's past and search for "mitigating evidence" that might persuade a judge to 
spare his life. With Nease's help, Harcourt collected hundreds of pages of 
documents, including Hamm's parents' original marriage certificate, from 1938; 
his father's honorable-discharge papers from the Army, from 1946; and medical 
records from Doyle's birth, in 1957. Harcourt also obtained elementary-school 
report cards, test scores showing Hamm reading at a 1st-grade level in 5th 
grade, his mother's food-stamp paperwork, his brothers' rap sheets, divorce 
papers filed by his brothers' wives, Hamm's own divorce papers, and photos of 
his parents and siblings and ancestors.

Through the decades, wherever Harcourt went - to Harvard to get a doctorate in 
political science, to the University of Arizona to teach, to the University of 
Chicago for a tenure job - Hamm's case went with him. This did not mean simply 
dropping one more box into the back of a U-Haul; Harcourt had accumulated some 
20,000 pages, between legal documents and mitigating evidence - enough to fill 
11 bankers boxes. Over the years, he kept in touch with Hamm by phone and 
travelled back to Alabama to work on the case.

Harcourt's hope was not to prove Hamm's innocence but to persuade a judge to 
throw out his death sentence and instead give him life in prison without 
parole. He fought on Hamm's behalf in state court until 1998, when Harcourt 
asked for a hearing to be postponed and a judge assigned Hamm another attorney. 
The new lawyer lost the hearing. Harcourt still considered himself Hamm's 
attorney, however, and immediately filed an appeal on his behalf. This request 
was denied in 2002. Harcourt appealed the decision to the Alabama Supreme Court 
but lost again. He continued his battle in federal district court, filing a 
habeas petition in 2006 to try to get Hamm a new trial. That court denied 
Hamm's request in 2013.

None of these outcomes surprised Harcourt, but he kept at it, appealing the 
case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, where he was turned 
down once again. About 6 months ago, Harcourt exercised his last option: filing 
a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. On September 26th, the Court is set to 
consider whether to hear Hamm's case. The stakes could not be higher: if the 
Supreme Court declines to accept Hamm's case, Harcourt believes that the state 
of Alabama will finally set Hamm's execution date.

Today, the archive of Doyle Lee Hamm's life resides in Harcourt's 6th-floor 
office at Columbia Law School, where he is now a professor. Stacks of manila 
folders fill an entire file drawer, spread across a desk, and occupy the tops 
of 2 lateral file cabinets. News articles about Hamm's crime fill 1 folder, and 
relay a horrific story, but there is another story, too, hidden inside other 
folders - it comes out through interviews with a sibling and a neighbor and 
tells how Hamm's father came home from the Second World War so traumatized that 
he began drinking all the time. There is a report by a psychologist describing 
Hamm as a "severe polydrug abuser for much of his life," who had a "history of 
seizures" and "a significant history of head injuries," and who shows 
"neuropsychological impairment" and probable "brain damage." There is also a 
stack of documents, rising more than a foot high, about an earlier arrest, in 
Tennessee. In 1977, at age 20, Doyle, drunk and high, got into a fight in a bar 
parking lot. Afterward, the police arrested him for allegedly robbing the other 
man. Though he insisted that he had not robbed anyone, his court-appointed 
attorney coached him on how to enter a guilty plea, and he was given a prison 
sentence of 5 years.

14 years later, when Harcourt re-investigated this conviction, the "victim" 
admitted that there had been no robbery, and Hamm's attorney at the time, a man 
named William Travis Gobble, admitted that he had never investigated the 
allegations. "I was just too busy and overworked to give this case the time and 
attention it needed," he said in an affidavit. "My practice at the time was not 
to educate my appointed clients about the judicial system. I assumed that they 
knew what a criminal trial was and what happened at trial. My concern was to 
make sure that my client gave the right answers at the plea hearing to get the 
deal agreed upon." Years later, at the penalty-phase hearing following Hamm's 
trial for capital murder, prosecutors brought up this earlier conviction to try 
to persuade jurors that they should send Hamm to the electric chair.

Another disturbing aspect of Hamm's death-penalty case recently received some 
media attention. In 1999, when a state judge ruled against Hamm, he issued an 
89-page opinion on the case. The trouble was that the opinion appeared to have 
been written by the office of the Alabama Attorney General. (The judge's 
opinion was identical to a document submitted to the court one business day 
earlier by the Attorney General's office. They even shared a title: "Proposed 
Memorandum Opinion" - apparently, the judge had not even removed the word 
"Proposed" before signing it.) "It bothers the heck out of me," a judge on the 
Eleventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals said in court when he and his 
colleagues considered the case. "I don't believe for a second that that judge 
went through 89 pages in a day and then filed that as his own, as if he had 
gone through everything - went through his notes, the transcript, the 
exhibit[s], and the like," he said. "It just can't be done!"

The "proposed memorandum opinion" - and the legality of a federal court later 
deciding to defer to it - is at the center of Harcourt's petition to the 
Supreme Court. "Deferring to the proposed order is basically deferring to the 
state's interpretation of the evidence,??? Harcourt says. In this case, the 
state's attorney general "was serving as prosecutor and judge." (In its 
response to Hamm's petition, the office of the Alabama Attorney General 
admitted that the "judge did not take the word 'Proposed' out of the order," 
but argued that Hamm had failed to prove that the "findings of fact or 
conclusions of law" in the proposed opinion were "erroneous.")

Harcourt has represented Hamm pro bono since leaving Alabama in 1994. "There 
have been times I've just felt overwhelmed by my other responsibilities," he 
says. "I write books - I don't litigate death-penalty cases for a living." 
Harcourt occasionally considered handing over Hamm's case to another lawyer but 
he never did. "I gave him my word early on, when we first met," he said. "I 
told him I'd stick with him." For 26 years, they've kept in regular contact, on 
the phone and by mail, and now that they are preparing to find out if the 
Supreme Court might hear his case, they speak more often.

2 or 3 times a week, Harcourt gets a call from Hamm, from death row in 
Donaldson prison. "Hey, how you doing?" Harcourt greeted him one afternoon this 
past June. "You doing O.K.?"

"Yeah, doing good," Hamm said.

When they speak on the phone, Hamm always sounds the same - low-key, 
uncomplaining. Harcourt mentioned a riot that had taken place at another prison 
in Alabama and asked Hamm if he had heard about it. "I saw it on TV," Hamm 
said, but insisted that all was calm where he was confined. "Everything is 
pretty good." The 2 men talked about what had been been on the menu lately, 
whether Hamm went outside that morning, which man on death row was most 
recently executed.

These days, Hamm has more contact with Harcourt than with any of his relatives; 
the last time he saw a family member, he recalls, was when his younger sister 
came to see him in 1997. 7 of his9 siblings are now dead. (One brother hanged 
himself, 2 brothers had heart attacks, another died in a car wreck.) Aside from 
his attorney, the person Hamm talks to most often is the father of his friend 
Keith Johnson, who was on death row with him for 15 years. Whenever Johnson???s 
father is feeling well enough, he comes back to the prison to visit Hamm. 
Johnson was executed in 2002 for his role in the fatal shooting of a jewelry 
dealer, even though he did not fire the shot that killed the victim.

Hamm estimates that he's lost about 26 friends in his nearly 3 decades on death 
row. Some died of natural causes, but many were executed; 54 people have been 
put to death in Alabama in those years. Yellow Mama, Alabama's electric chair, 
is now in storage (Johnson was the 1st Alabama inmate to die by lethal 
injection). Hamm now has 2 granddaughters, ages 14 and 4, and gray in his hair. 
The other inmates refer to him and 3 others as the O.M.G., which stands for the 
Old-Man Gang. He continues to pass his days in much the same way he has for 
years - playing dominoes, reading the Bible, and walking laps inside the 
prison.

"He did a good job, regardless of what happens," Hamm said of Harcourt. "If I 
hadn't had Bernard, I believe I would have been executed. Yep, I do believe 
that." He pauses. "I believe," he says, "I would've been executed 10 years 
ago." The question of what will happen next - whether Hamm will be allowed to 
die of natural causes in prison, or will be tied down to a table one day and 
injected with deadly doses of drugs - lingers on the edge of every conversation 
he has with his attorney. One afternoon in late August, their phone call ended 
with Harcourt saying, "Take care, Doyle. Talk to you soon." The hope of both 
men is that their calls will always end this way, that there will be never be a 
need to say good-bye.

(source: Jennifer Gonnerman, The New Yorker)






LOUISIANA:

Mental disability ruling in 2010 Beauregard Town slaying coming Oct. 14


A judge said Monday he'll decide Oct. 14 whether a Baton Rouge man is mentally 
disabled and thus ineligible for execution if convicted of first-degree murder 
in the September 2010 shooting death of a 42-year-old single mother during a 
home invasion in Beauregard Town.

Aramis Jackson, 25, also is charged with attempted 1st-degree murder in the 
shooting and wounding of Alexandra Engler's then-9-year-old daughter. Ariana 
Engler survived the attack despite being shot multiple times.

East Baton Rouge Parish prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty if Jackson 
is found guilty of capital murder. He does not have a trial date.

2 psychologists who examined Jackson have split on the issue of whether he is 
intellectually disabled. The U.S. Supreme Court has barred the execution of 
intellectually disabled inmates.

California psychologist Ricardo Weinstein, who was hired by Jackson's lawyers, 
testified in March he believes the accused killer is intellectually disabled 
based on his IQ scores and adaptive functioning. But New Orleans psychologist 
Gina Manguno-Mire, hired by the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney's 
Office, testified at that same hearing that Jackson's IQ does not fall within 
the intellectual disability range. She also said he has been able to function 
in society.

After receiving written post-hearing memorandums Monday from prosecutor Darwin 
Miller and Baton Rouge Capital Conflict Office director David Price, who is 
Jackson's lead lawyer, state District Judge Tony Marabella said he will issue a 
ruling Oct. 14 on the intellectual disability issue.

Weinstein has noted in a report that Jackson attended school up to the 7th 
grade in Baton Rouge and received special-education services. Manguna-Mire has 
indicted in a report that Jackson was arrested for the 1st time at the age of 
11, and had been arrested nine times by the time he was 17.

Witnesses identified Jackson as the man they saw in the area shortly after the 
shooting carrying a gun and a television believed stolen from the Engler home, 
police have said.

A prosecution-hired forensic consultant who specializes in footwear impressions 
testified at a 2013 hearing in the case that a bloody shoe print found in the 
kitchen of the Engler house was left by one of Jackson's shoes.

Print found at scene

District Attorney Hillar Moore III has said the shoe print matches shoes found 
in Jackson's possession, but Moore declined to say if Jackson was wearing the 
shoes when he was arrested.

(source: The Advocate)






OHIO:

Judge rules against change of venue in Seman case, for now


Judge Maureen Sweeney ruled Tuesday against a motion by defense attorneys to 
move the capital murder trial of Robert Seman out of Mahoning County because of 
intense publicity.

The judge did say she may revisit her ruling should there be difficulty in 
choosing jurors in common pleas court, which starts in earnest today. Jurors 
reported for orientation Friday.

Seman, 47, of Green Township, could face the death penalty if convicted of the 
deaths of Corinne Gump, 10, and her grandparents, William and Judith Schmidt, 
after an arson March 30, 2015, at their Powers Way home the day Seman was to go 
on trial on charges of raping the girl.

Seman was free on bond at the time of the fire.

Defense attorneys filed motions weeks ago to have the case moved out of 
Mahoning County because of media coverage, and they supplemented those motions 
over the weekend with incidents they say took place during the jury orientation 
Friday.

During a short hearing Monday, Lynn Maro, one of Seman's attorneys, said that 
several potential jurors Friday were glaring at Seman and some were crying. She 
also said a corrections officer at the county jail who was called for jury duty 
reported to the court in his uniform, and said he knows Seman because he works 
in the area of the jail where Seman is lodged.

Maro said those factors taken together will poison other people in the jury 
pool against Seman.

"They have subtle impacts," Maro said. "All of that impacts every juror in the 
room. Those influences really do taint the jury pool."

Out of 30 jury questionnaires that were taken as a sample of the pool, Maro 
said 50 % of those jurors already had formed an opinion of the case.

Assistant Prosecutor Dawn Cantalamessa said that just because someone has an 
opinion does not mean they cannot be a juror if they can set that aside and 
follow the law. Cantalamessa said she wanted to question the jurors 
individually, saying that Seman is accused of committing his crimes in Mahoning 
County and he should be tried here because of that.

Judge Sweeney said in a ruling shortly after the hearing that the state Supreme 
Court expects a good faith effort to be made to seat a jury before moving a 
trial. She also said all jurors were required to swear an oath before they 
reported to her courtroom that they would follow the law and put any 
preconceived decisions aside.

Seman is eligible for the death penalty if convicted of aggravated murder 
because prosecutors charged he killed the witness to a crime; killed a person 
younger than 13; killed 2 or more people; and killed someone in the commission 
of another felony, which in this case means aggravated arson or aggravated 
burglary. If jurors find Seman is eligible for the death penalty, a 2nd phase 
of the trial, or mitigation phase, will take place at which defense attorneys 
will present evidence to jurors showing them why they should spare Seman's 
life.

(source: Youngnstown Vindicator)

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Death penalty possible in trial for 2013 double murder


We covered the death penalty-eligible case from its beginning in January 2013. 
Jones is the only Montgomery County Common Pleas Court defendant facing 
possible death as a penalty.

Today marks 1,327 days since police say Harvey Lee Jones shot and killed 2 
people while the 10-year-old son of one of the victims hid upstairs.

Jones, 37, could face the death penalty if he's found guilty in the Jan. 24, 
2013 aggravated double murder of Carly Hughley, 32, and Demetrius Beckwith, 29.

Jones' potential 3-week trial is scheduled to begin today in Montgomery County 
Common Pleas Court after years full of motions. If Jones is found guilty, the 
jury would then hear a mitigation phase to determine whether he should be put 
to death.

Defense attorney Dennis Lieberman estimated that jury selection could take most 
of the week and that opening statements might not happen until Friday. 
Lieberman said there are about 180 to 190 prospective jurors in 4 different 
pools to consider the case from early 2013.

"Death penalty cases are very serious; there's no room for being wrong because 
you can't release somebody from prison if they're dead," Lieberman said 
Saturday. "I think the court and system itself wants to make sure that all 
possible motions are filed that need to be filed and that the investigation is 
as thorough as it can possibly be."

Jones pleaded not guilty to 6 counts of aggravated murder, 2 counts of 
aggravated burglary, 2 counts of kidnapping, 2 counts of aggravated robbery, 
and one count of having a weapon under disability. All but 1 charge has an 
added mandatory 3-year firearms specification.

Prosecutors said Jones - a previously convicted sex offender who served a 
decade in prison - shot both people in the presence of Hughley's then 
10-year-old son in a Harrison Twp. apartment.

"The defendant made both of these victims lie on the floor and shot both of 
them multiple times, killing both of them," prosecutor Mat Heck Jr. said during 
a press conference more than 3 years ago. "After the defendant stole a number 
of items from the deceased victims, he fled the residence. The 10-year-old 
child then left the residence and went to a neighbor's and summoned help."

Heck said then that the child plans to testify in court. The now 14-year-old 
boy called 911, identified Jones by name and described the car Jones drove. 
Jones was arrested hours after the alleged crime.

"It's always traumatic when you have to rely and put a child through this type 
of an ordeal, but it's something that this child is able to do and most 
children can do," Heck said in 2013. "He'll be fine and he's doing fine."

Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer said in January 2013 that detectives 
were working to determine Jones' motive but said he and Hughley had a previous 
relationship and he had moved out of the Catalpa Crossing Apartment Complex 
apartment on Turner Road.

(source: WHIO news)