[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., VA., N.C., GA., FLA., ALA., MISS.

[Rick Halperin]

July 8



TEXAS:

US appeals court to review case of Argentine on death row in Texas


A federal court has agreed to review the appeal of an Argentine who is on death 
row in Texas for a 1995 killing.

The Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals said last week it will examine whether 
Victor Saldano, 44, was competent to stand trial and whether his lawyers were 
deficient for not requesting a competency hearing before he was resentenced to 
death years after the initial trial.

Saldano, who was in the US illegally, was sentenced to death for the killing of 
46-year-old Paul King, who was abducted from a Plano supermarket, robbed and 
shot.

His case has drawn the attention of Pope Francis, who has met at least twice 
with the inmate's mother. The Catholic Church opposes capital punishment.

Saldano was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to die in 1996, but a 
judge later threw out the original sentence because a psychologist improperly 
testified that Saldano's "Hispanic background" made him likely to be a future 
danger, which Texas juries factor into death penalty decisions. The trial's 
punishment phase was repeated in 2004 and Saldano was again sentenced to die.

In its decision to consider the case, the appeals court wrote that "ample 
evidence supports an inference of incompetency" and pointed to "numerous 
instances" of Saldano's incoherent and strange behaviour around the time the 
punishment phase was repeated. Physicians offered various explanations for 
Saldana's behaviour, including his isolation on death row and that he was 
faking his condition to get drugs.

Lower courts have ruled that the trial court had no obligation to hold a 
competency hearing.

The appeals court record showed both the trial judge and Saldano's lawyers had 
concerns about his mental state, but the court's record includes no results of 
any examinations of Saldano. Defence attorneys never requested a competency 
hearing and the judge indicated he "had no reason to believe Saldano was 
legally incompetent," the Fifth Circuit wrote.

Defence lawyers, meanwhile, made a strategic decision at the resentencing phase 
to not introduce evidence of Saldano's mental condition. Instead, they stressed 
that Saldana didn't have a prior criminal record, that he was under the 
influence of drugs and alcohol, and that it was a companion, Jorge Chavez, who 
came up with the idea to commit the crime.

Chavez is serving a life prison term.

The appeals court has given Saldano's attorneys 30 days to present written 
arguments. State attorneys then will have 15 days to respond.

(source: Buenos Aires Herald)






PENNSYLVANIA:

Death penalty sought in Mount Wolf woman's homicide


An 18-year old Bronx man who attended Northeastern High School is facing the 
death penalty for allegedly murdering Ahshantianna Johnson outside her Mount 
Wolf home.

Edia Antonio Lawrence, who goes by "Richie," was in York County Court Friday 
morning for his formal court arraignment on charges of 1st-degree murder, 
conspiracy to commit that offense, 2nd-degree murder, robbery, burglary, theft, 
simple assault and receiving stolen property.

Chief deputy prosecutor David Maisch said the York County District Attorney's 
Office is citing 2 aggravating factors to argue for the death penalty.

First, he said, Johnson was killed during the course of another felony - 
specifically, robbery. The 2nd is that the slaying occurred as part of a 
drug-delivery operation, Maisch said.

Lawrence's alleged accomplices in the homicide remain at large, the prosecutor 
confirmed.

'A little surprised': Philadelphia-based defense attorney Jack McMahon said he 
intends to defend the case vigorously.

"We were a little surprised they're seeking the death penalty. He's only an 
18-year-old young man," he said.

McMahon noted that the only identification of Lawrence being involved is a 
voice identification.

"I think that's a bit suspect," he said. "We think the defendant did not do 
this."

McMahon said it's a sad case.

"But just because it's sad doesn't mean he's guilty," the attorney said.

Prosecutors consulted with Johnson's family and Northeastern Regional Police 
before deciding to seek the death penalty, according to Maisch, who said 
Johnson's family supports the decision.

Lawrence's 1st pretrial conference is scheduled for Oct. 16.

The background: 3 armed, masked men, allegedly including Lawrence, fatally beat 
the 19-year-old Johnson at her Second Street home because Lawrence believed 
she'd stolen his drug money and vowed to "take care of it," according to 
charging documents.

About 2:15 a.m. March 25, the trio barged into the home Johnson shared with her 
mother, Noemi Capo, and started stealing property, documents state.

One of the men threatened Capo with a metal baseball bat and a knife, demanding 
she call her daughter and have her come home, police said.

E Capo eventually reached Johnson by phone and told her she needed to come home 
because there was a family emergency, documents state.

While awaiting Johnson's return home, Lawrence instructed 1 of his accomplices 
to move Lawrence's car - a 2011 BMW 328x1 - from where it was parked behind the 
home, explaining that Johnson would recognize his car, charging documents 
allege.

He also allegedly instructed 1 of the accomplices to get the duct tape from his 
car, documents state. While threatening Capo, Lawrence spoke about killing her 
sons, charging documents allege.

'Beady' eyes: Capo later told investigators she recognized "Richie's" voice and 
"beady eyes," documents state. Capo, who didn't know Lawrence's real name, told 
investigators that Johnson had been dating "Richie," whom she knew from 
Northeastern High School, police said.

Capo escaped from the trio while they were distracted; she ran to a neighbor's 
house and called 911, police said.

That's the same time Johnson returned home and was fatally attacked in her 
yard, according to police.

Northeastern Regional Detective Brian O'Melko tracked down witnesses who told 
him Lawrence was selling drugs to other drug dealers and that Johnson had 
collected money from at least 2 of those dealers on Lawrence's behalf, 
documents allege.

'Took care' of it? But Lawrence believed Johnson was skimming money from him 
and told a witness "he would take care of it," according to charging documents. 
After the attack, Lawrence told the same witness he "took care of" the problem, 
police allege.

Johnson and Lawrence had broken up a few months before she was killed, but she 
apparently was still working for him, Northeastern Regional Police Chief Bryan 
Rizzo said.

Whether Johnson was stealing from Lawrence or not doesn't make her death less 
of a tragedy, according to the chief.

"She was just trying to make her way through the world," Rizzo said. 
"Unfortunately, she got hooked up with the wrong person ... and paid for it 
with her life. It's a tragedy to have such a young life full of promise get 
mixed up with the wrong crowd."

Captured in NYC: Lawrence was arrested in New York City on a warrant filed by 
Northern York County Regional Police, who allege he tried to shoot a man when a 
drug deal went bad.

Lawrence, of Torrey Avenue in the Bronx, remains in York County Prison without 
bail. Police said that, for a time, he lived on Matthews Drive in Conewago 
Township with his aunt.

Northeastern Regional Police are asking for the public's help in identifying 
and arresting the other masked men who attacked and killed Johnson.

Anyone with any information about the case is asked to call them at (717) 
266-6195, ext. 105. Tipsters can remain anonymous, police said.

(source: York Dispatch)






VIRGINIA:

Defense allowed to hire experts for second suspect in Wood case


A judge on Friday allowed lawyers for one of the men facing capital murder 
charges in the death of Lynchburg teenager Raymond Wood to hire two experts to 
help the defense team.

Lisandro Posada-Vazquez, 24, faces the possibility of the death penalty in the 
murder case of Wood, 17, whose body was found in March on Roaring Run Road in 
Goode.

The attorneys got authorization from Bedford Circuit Court to hire a mental 
health expert at $350 per hour to aid in the defense, as well as a mitigation 
expert to prepare social history reports on the defendant at $115 per hour.

Information gathered by the experts may be used by the defense if 
Posada-Vazquez is convicted to make arguments against capital punishment.

Circuit Judge James Updike Jr. also agreed to move Posada-Vazquez from custody 
in the Lynchburg Adult Detention Center to the Western Virginia Regional Jail 
in Salem, which is closer to his defense lawyers.

The pre-trial motions by his defense team were similar to several recently 
filed by lawyers for a co-defendant, Jose Coreas-Ventura, 20, who also faces a 
capital murder charge.

Along with the capital murder defendants, Victor Rodas, 19, is accused of 
1st-degree murder. All 3 are charged with several other felonies in the case.

Defense attorneys for Posada-Vazquez also sought to have an interpreter solely 
for their client as opposed to sharing the same one as his co-defendant 
Coreas-Ventura, and the judge agreed.

Prosecutors for the most part did not object to the cluster of defense motions, 
though Commonwealth's Attorney Wes Nance noted regional jail officials "are 
concerned about cost" in the inmate's transfer to the Salem jail.

2 remaining issues before the trial of Posada-Vazquez are the parameters for 
evidence discovery and the actual trial date. A mutually agreed-upon motion on 
discovery rules is expected in the next week.

A trial date could be set during a Nov. 7 docket call in Circuit Court.

(source: newsadvance.com)

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

Pathologist says Ricky Gray's autopsy suggests problems with Virginia's 
execution procedure


Lawyers for William C. Morva unsuccessfully sought to delay his execution 
Thursday night following the reported concerns from an expert about Ricky 
Gray's execution by injection in January.

An article published in The Guardian on Wednesday cited a review of Gray's 
autopsy report by Dr. Mark Edgar, associate director of bone and soft tissue 
pathology at the Emory University School of Medicine. Edgar concluded that 
something appears to have gone wrong under Virginia's 3-drug method.

Edgar said a frothy liquid found in Gray's upper airways indicated that he 
suffered an acute pulmonary edema and that blood found on his lips indicated 
that blood entered Gray's lungs while he was still breathing. The Guardian 
reported that Edgar could not be certain about the cause of the edema, but said 
it would be similar to drowning.

Reached Friday, Edgar told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "I cannot know how the 
executioners intended or expected the drugs to work. If they expected them to 
cause rapid and uncomplicated death ... without the possibility of a lingering 
sense of panic and terror, then they did not get what they expected.

"The anatomic changes described in Ricky Gray's lungs are more often seen in 
the aftermath of a sarin gas attack than in a routine hospital autopsy. This is 
of concern especially given the fact that midazolam is not an anesthetic, but a 
sedative often used for medical procedures requiring conscious sedation and the 
issue that the compounded drugs used in this case may have lacked potency or 
been impure," he said.

Gray's family obtained the official post-execution autopsy, reported The 
Guardian. Virginia's medical examiner's office conducts autopsies of executed 
inmates.

"This way of dying is intolerable. You can't control your breathing - it is 
terrible," Edgar said, according to The Guardian. "When it is this severe you 
can experience panic and terror, and if the individual was in any way aware of 
what was happening to them it would be unbearable."

Because of the unavailability of manufactured drugs for executions, Virginia 
uses compounded midazolam and compounded potassium chloride - made by an 
undisclosed Virginia pharmacy or pharmacies - as the 1st and 3rd drugs in 
executions. According to lawyers for Gray and Morva, Virginia is the only state 
to use a combination of 2 compounded chemicals in lethal injections.

State law bars the disclosure of the pharmacies making the drugs.

The 1st drug is intended to render the inmate unconscious, the 2nd to stop 
breathing and the 3rd to stop the heart.

Rob Lee, one of Morva's lawyers, said McAuliffe was asked for a temporary 
reprieve at 5 p.m. Thursday, less than t3 hours after the governor turned down 
Morva's bid for clemency.

"The reprieve was requested after new information came to light raising 
concerns that Virginia's lethal injection protocol did not act as intended, and 
therefore had resulted in a lingering and tortuous death," said Lee in a 
prepared statement.

He added, "We believed a reprieve was appropriate to allow time for further 
investigation to ensure that the Commonwealth carries out future executions - 
including Mr. Morva's - in a manner that avoids unnecessary pain and 
suffering."

A McAuliffe spokeman confirmed Friday that the governor denied the request for 
a temporary reprieve.

"Earlier in the day he had stated his intention to allow the execution to 
proceed without his intervention. That statement was based on his review of the 
case as well as his confidence in the protocol the Department of Corrections 
used to carry out this sentence," said Brian Coy, the spokesman.

The Department of Corrections and other state officials have said they are 
confident in the purity and efficacy of the periodically-tested chemicals used 
in executions.

Morva's 9 p.m. execution Thursday, according to the Department of Corrections, 
was carried out without complications and he was pronounced dead at 9:15 p.m.

After the midazolam was administered Thursday, Morva made a loud noise which 
sounded similar to a hiccup and there were several sharp contractions of his 
abdomen.

The department said Gray's execution in January was complicated by difficulties 
in placing IV lines. The procedure, which usually takes a few minutes, took 
more than half an hour.

Morva was executed for killing 2 people during an escape in Montgomery County 
in 2006. Gray, who murdered 7 people in 7 days in Richmond in 2006, was 
executed for the capital murders of 2 young sisters.

(source: Richmond Times-Dispatch)

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

William Morva killed 2 men. His execution shows no death penalty case is easy.


Last night, Virginia executed William Morva for the 2006 murders of a sheriff's 
deputy and a hospital security guard. Morva killed his victims while serving 
time in a county jail for attempted armed robbery. He had premeditated his 
escape.

Few people wrote about the case in the weeks leading up to Morva's execution. I 
suspect that's because as death penalty cases go, this one at first blush seems 
pretty sound. There's no doubt that Morva killed 2 men. And there's little 
doubt that he is a potential threat to public safety.

But there is no such thing as a routine execution. A criminal-justice system 
built and run by flawed human beings will always be flawed. Because an 
execution is the ultimate punishment, and because it's irreversible, every 
state killing presents some profound moral quandaries. This one is no 
different.

Mental illness Morva suffered from severe mental illness. In his statement 
denying Morva clemency, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) pointed out that 
while the three mental health professionals who evaluated Morva at trial found 
signs of mental illness, all 3 found that "he did not suffer from any condition 
that would have prevented him from committing these acts consciously and fully 
understanding their consequences." But as Liliana Segura reported for the 
Intercept, it appears that those evaluations were based on incomplete reviews 
of Morva's history. (Disclosure: Segura is my wife.) In interviews with Morva's 
friends and family, along with reviews of letters he has written over the 
years, Segura paints a portrait of a man who was spiraling into delusional 
behavior well before he committed his crimes.

According to friends who new him well, Morva began acting strangely in his late 
teens. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, for example, Morva told friends 
that he was on a special team of people tasked with saving the world. There's 
evidence that Morva was abused, at least psychologically. His father apparently 
made him wear dresses to school to "toughen" him up. A man who described 
himself as Morva's best friend told Segura that when they were roommates, Morva 
would spend hours in the bathroom, a strange ritual that eventually caused the 
friend to ask Morva to move out. Morva said all the time in the bathroom was 
necessary to his digestive issues. He began a bizarre diet of pine cones, raw 
meat, and cheese. His 1st arrest came after he was found on the floor, 
pants-less, in a Virginia Tech campus bathroom.

When his father died, Morva showed up at the funeral barefoot. The Post's Ann 
Marimow reported Friday, Morva often "went barefoot in winter, sometimes slept 
in the woods and told people he had special powers and was in training to fight 
in the wild on behalf of Native Americans." This was all before Morva had 
committed any serious crime. Which is to say this was not feigned behavior 
aimed at escaping the death penalty. Yet the jurors who sentenced Morva to die 
heard almost none of it.

Morva's arrest for attempted armed robbery came in 2005, when he and another 
man tried to rob a convenience store, apparently due to Morva's delusional 
belief that his mother was destitute after his father's death. The effort was 
laughably inept. The men gave up on the heist when they couldn't get the door 
open. Morva didn't steal a single item and didn't point his gun at anyone. 
Morva was then kept in a crowded county jail for more than a year. His mental 
illness went diagnosed and untreated. As 1 of Morva's friends told Segura, "We 
were like, 'Look, Will is not mentally stable . . . If you guys throw him in 
the middle of this institution, it's like a time bomb." And it was. After a 
year in jail, Morva attempted escape, which resulted in the 2 murders for which 
he was executed.

Since then, other mental health professionals have told Morva's attorneys and 
the courts that he suffered from severe delusional disorder and that his 
illness played a direct role in his crimes. Morva believed that if he stayed in 
jail, he would eventually die. That particular delusion turned out to be 
prophetic.

The U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the execution of "mentally retarded" 
people, but has been much less clear about those with mentally illness. Morva's 
case seems particularly tragic, because his time in a crowded jail almost 
certainly exacerbated his untreated illness, and it likely contributed to the 
desperation that motivated his crimes.

Politics

Back in 1992, another southern, Democratic governor with national political 
ambitions signed off on the execution of a mentally ill man. Ricky Ray Rector 
had effectively lobotomized himself during a suicide attempt. His mental state 
was such that during his last meal, he refused to eat a slice of pecan pie, 
telling corrections officials he was "saving it for later."

The parallels between Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe are striking, not least 
because the 2 are longtime friends, and McAuliffe has raised millions of 
dollars for both Bill and Hillary Clinton. (Morva's execution also comes just 
as former Clinton strategist Mark Penn co-wrote a widely disparaged op-ed in 
the New York Times praising Clinton's law-and-order credentials and urging 
Democrats to take a tougher position on crime.)

There are some key differences. Clinton was an outspoken death-penalty 
supporter, and he made a point to leave his presidential campaign to oversee 
Rector's execution, a shameless display of political grandstanding. McAuliffe 
hasn't yet decided to run for president, and he claims to be opposed to capital 
punishment.

But the fact that McAuliffe didn't exploit Morva's death the way Clinton 
exploited Rector's doesn't make Morva any less dead, and it doesn't make 
McAuliffe's decision any less political. In Virginia, there are no clemency 
boards or panels in death penalty cases. The decision to commute a death 
sentence is solely the governor's, which of course makes it makes that decision 
inescapably political.

If you're morally opposed to the death penalty, it's hard to see how you could 
look at Morva's deterioration - and the state's role in abetting that 
deterioration - and determine that this is the sort of cold-blooded killer for 
whom the death penalty was designed. Morva's prosecutor has dismissed the more 
thorough evaluations of his mental condition as little more than the opinions 
of doctors hired by a desperate defense team. But Morva's trial jury never 
heard the stories of Morva's decline that his friends and family described to 
both Segura and Morva's new legal team. At the very least, it would seem that 
his jury was asked to sentence him without being given a complete picture of 
what had happened to him. One would think an opponent of the death penalty such 
as McAuliffe would be troubled by this.

And yet Morva killed a security guard and a police officer. In a political 
climate where law enforcement groups and conservative law-and-order types 
continue to push a "war on cops" narrative, granting clemency to Morva would 
have taken some real political courage - courage McAuliffe apparently lacks.

The decision to execute ought to be insulated from politics as much as it 
possibly can be. The Virginia system virtually guarantee that politics will 
drive the governor's actions.

Midazolam

Virginia is 1 of 3 states that executes the condemned with a 3-drug cocktail 
that includes the drug midazolam, a sedative in the benzodiazepine family of 
drugs that was never intended to be used in executions. Defenders of the 
cocktail say midazolam renders the inmate unconscious and blocks him or her 
from feeling pain as the 2 other drugs are administered to stop the heart and 
to stop breathing. The problem is that there's no way of knowing if midazolam 
actually blocks the pain of those procedures or simply renders the inmate 
paralyzed and unable to show signs of suffering. Critics say the drug is a 
sedative, not an anesthetic. (The FDA does not approve use of the drug as 
anesthetic.) A series of horrific botched executions, most notably Clayton 
Lockett in Oklahoma, provided growing evidence that the critics were right.

In 2015, the Supreme Court gave its okay to the drug in the Richard Glossip 
case out of Oklahoma. In the majority opinion, Samuel Alito wrote that the 
Eighth Amendment does not require a pain-free death, and that it was up to a 
prisoner to demonstrate that a method of execution would cause excessive pain. 
(The majority also concluded that Glossip didn't succeed in doing so.) 
Perversely, Alito also ruled that it is up to the prisoners themselves to 
suggest less painful methods of execution.

As Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent, Alito's opinion also relied on 
the opinions of an expert witness for the state of Oklahoma whose only 
citations to back up his argument that midazolam sufficiently anesthetized the 
condemned was a fact sheet from the drug's manufacturer and a printout from the 
website drugs.com - and even those didn't really back up his claims. It would 
also later be revealed that the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office made false 
claims about the drug's suppliers in its briefs to the court. (The Oklahoma AG 
at the time was Scott Pruitt, now the head of the Environmental Protection 
Agency.)

To insist that the use of midazolam is "humane" despite not knowing whether the 
drug truly anesthetizes the condemned or merely renders them unable to indicate 
that they're being tortured to death is a good indication that for death 
penalty supporters, "humaneness" is not about the experience of the people we 
execute but the experience of those who witness and participate in executions. 
The methods of execution that would cause the least amount of pain and 
suffering for the condemned - such as decapitation or firing squad - are 
dismissed as barbaric because they actually look like executions, and that can 
be traumatic for witnesses and executioners. Instead, nearly all states employ 
a method that could easily be mistaken for a medical procedure. It sanitizes 
the event for the living. Never mind that it may well subject the executed to 
unimaginable pain.

Transparency

Many death penalty states have responded to criticism of the lethal injection 
and how it's administered by making the entire process less transparent. 
Virginia, along with several other states, has passed laws or enacted policies 
shielding the suppliers of execution drugs from open records laws. These states 
have argued that such laws are necessary to protect suppliers from possibly 
violent retaliation from death penalty opponents. FBI documents obtained by 
BuzzFeed last year show that there's little evidence for those claims.

But isn't just about the drug suppliers. After Virginia delayed the execution 
of Ricky Gray this year, apparently due to difficulty inserting an IV, the 
state changed its execution protocols. A curtain now prevents witnesses and 
media from seeing the inmate until he is fully strapped to the gurney and the 
IVs are in place. The window in the witness room is also closest to the 
inmate's feet, making it more difficult to see his face.

Victims' Rights

Death penalty supporters often argue that all of this focus on the suffering of 
the condemned distracts from the suffering of the victims and their families. 
But state officials often only want to hear from victims' families when it 
supports the cause of capital punishment. In Morva's case, for example, the 
daughter of 1 of his victims is an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, and 
pleaded with McAuliffe to spare Morva's life.

Of course, prosecutors bring cases on behalf of the community, not on behalf of 
victims (though you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise). Yet while 
politicians and prosecutors are eager to give victims' families the spotlight 
when they're demanding death, when they advocate mercy they're often denied a 
platform. Back in 2014, a Colorado prosecutor sought to block the parents of a 
murdered man from testifying in the killer's sentencing phase because they 
planned to plead with the jury to spare the defendant's life. Just this month, 
the mother of a murder victim wrote a column for a Florida newspaper about her 
frustration in trying to persuade the prosecutor to avoid the death penalty, 
not just to show mercy for the killer, but also to spare her unnecessary grief.

I didn't want the death penalty back in 2006 when the murder occurred. I knew 
what lay ahead for my family if a death sentence was handed down. No one 
listened to me, though. The prosecutor stubbornly pushed forward with the death 
penalty. All the pain and uncertainty I predicted with the death penalty sadly 
has come true.

Still, no one is listening to me. If he wanted, the State Attorney for Brevard 
County, Phil Archer, could decide to accept a life without parole sentence, and 
this 11-year nightmare for my family would be over. So far, though, he is 
determined to seek the death penalty, despite my and other family members' 
wishes to the contrary. I also hear Florida's Gov. Rick Scott praising the 
death penalty, calling it "justice" for murder victims' families. I have called 
his office to share my story, but he ignores surviving family members like 
myself opposed to the death penalty.

In the end, if you just happened to gaze at the broad strokes in the Morva 
case, you could be forgiven for not paying it further attention. After all, 
this was about a man who killed a guard and a deputy while trying to escape his 
incarceration for an attempted armed robbery. But when you're handing down the 
punishment of state-sanctioned killing, there are very few easy cases. If 
there's 1 thing we can say for certain about the death penalty, it???s that 
it's reserved for the most culpable, the most brutal, and against whom there is 
the most incriminating evidence - the worst of the worst, and the slam dunk 
cases. More typically, it's administered to those who didn't accept a plea to 
implicate the more culpable parties, those who weren't provided with an 
adequate defense, those who happen to live in a jurisdiction with an aggressive 
DA, or those who, like William Morva, suffered from an untreated mental 
illness.

Some cases are harder than others. But there are just too many problems, 
contradictions and injustices endemic to the death penalty for there to ever be 
any easy ones.

(source: Opinion; Radley Balko, Washington Post)






NORTH CAROLINA:

2nd teen charged in fatal Raleigh McDonald's shooting could face death penalty


A 2nd teen charged in a fatal 4th of July shooting at a Raleigh McDonald's was 
denied bond during his 1st court appearance Friday and told he could face the 
death penalty if convicted.

Curtis Hart Rainey, 18, was arrested Thursday afternoon on Gorman Street in 
Raleigh and charged with murder in the death of Raheem Khary Lawrence 
McAllister.

McAllister was shot at about 10:45 p.m. Tuesday at a McDonald's near the 
downtown Raleigh fireworks show. Authorities said it was unclear if any of the 
people involved attended the event.

McAllister was taken to WakeMed, where he died as a result of his injuries.

On Friday, a judge gave Rainey a court-appointed attorney and told him the 
death penalty is an option if he is convicted because of his age.

Kenneth Edward Watts, 16, was charged Wednesday with murder, assault with a 
deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury and assault with a 
deadly weapon in connection with the shooting.

Watts, during his 1st court appearance Thursday afternoon, was denied bond.

Raleigh police have not said if more arrests are expected in the case.

(source: WRAL news)






GEORGIA:

Alleged Bloods gang member makes court appearance in Tatemville slaying


An alleged Savannah gang member on Friday appeared in court as prosecutors 
continue to restart their death penalty cases against 4 men in the alleged gang 
revenge slaying of Dominique Powell in Tatemville.

Artez Strain, 22, appeared before Chatham County Superior Court Judge John E. 
Morse Jr. as Assistant District Attorney Matt Breedon restated the state's 
intention to seek the death penalty.

Arraignment for Strain is scheduled for Aug. 11.

He is charged in an indictment for murder and violations of the Street Gang and 
Terrorism Prevention Act as an alleged member of the nationally affiliated 
Bloods gang. He is charged in connection to the shooting death of Powell, 24, 
who was killed Sept. 12, 2016 - 5 days after defending himself during an armed 
robbery.

A second co-defendant, Tyriek Walker, pleaded not guilty during an arraignment 
Thursday.

Alleged mastermind Arthur Newton and alleged triggerman Timothy Coleman Jr. are 
scheduled for arraignments in the case next month.

Chatham County District Attorney Meg Heap is seeking the death penalty for all 
4 - her 1st such effort as prosecutor.

Because the death penalty is involved, Morse must handle each trial as well as 
all pre-trial matters separately.

All 4 were re-indicted on June 7 in what Heap described as a "cosmetic" cleanup 
of the original Nov. 16 indictment. But the new indictment is forcing Morse to 
begin pretrial matters anew.

And because the state is seeking the death penalty, attorneys from the Georgia 
Capital Defender's office are handling the defense under the state's Unified 
Appeal Procedure for death penalty cases.

It is unclear in what order the defendants will eventually be tried.

Savannah-Chatham police responded on Sept. 12, 2016, in the 900 block of Garey 
Avenue in Tatemville, where they found Powell suffering from a fatal gunshot 
wound outside a residence.

Powell was the victim of an armed robbery on Sept. 7 in the neighborhood. 
During the robbery, Powell exchanged gunfire with would-be robbers Antwan 
Drayton and Newton, police said. Investigators concluded that Powell shot 
Drayton and Newton in self-defense during the robbery.

After being arrested, Newton ordered the death of Powell, police said. Strain, 
Coleman and Walker carried out those orders and participated in Powell's death, 
police said.

According to the indictments, Coleman caused Powell's death by shooting him on 
Sept. 12.

(sourceL Savannah Morning News)






FLORIDA:

Legal battle to move quickly as execution looms


With Gov. Rick Scott setting an Aug. 24 execution date for death row inmate 
Mark James Asay, the Florida Supreme Court on Friday directed that all legal 
proceedings in the case should be "expedited."

Scott on Monday scheduled the execution of Asay, who was convicted in 1988 of 
the murders of Robert Lee Booker and Robert McDowell in downtown Jacksonville.

The execution would be the 1st in Florida since a January 2016 U.S. Supreme 
Court ruling that said the state's death-penalty sentencing system was 
unconstitutional.

That ruling touched off a series of other court rulings and legislative 
actions, effectively putting the death penalty on hold.

Asay's lawyers are likely to make a series of legal attempts to prevent the 
execution.

In a document issued Friday, the Supreme Court set a timeline that included a 
July 28 deadline for finishing circuit-court proceedings and deadlines of Aug. 
2, Aug. 3 and Aug. 7 for filing briefs at the Supreme Court.

The document said oral arguments at the Supreme Court would be scheduled later, 
if necessary.

(source: news4jax.com)

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Hess: We will 'absolutely' seek death penalty for Kight???s killer


Of a 12-member jury in 2007, 11 believed the murder was justification for the 
death penalty for Robert Bailey.

Citing the lone juror who voted against the death penalty for the man who 
killed Panama City Beach Police Sgt. Kevin Kight, the Florida Supreme Court on 
Thursday sent Robert Bailey's case back to circuit court for a new sentencing.

Glenn Hess, state attorney for the 14th Judicial Circuit, said he "absolutely" 
will seek the death penalty for Bailey through a 2nd penalty phase rather than 
settle for a life sentence.

Until Wednesday, Bailey, 34, had been sentenced to die for fatally shooting 
Kight twice during a routine traffic stop in 2005 over an expired license. 
According to the arrest affidavit, Bailey - a gang member with a history of 
both crime and mental illness - told a passenger in the car, "I'm not going 
back to prison, even if I have to pop this cop."

Of a 12-member jury, 11 believed the murder was justification for the death 
penalty.

The one no vote had nothing to do with the facts of the case, juror Russell 
Gillingham recalled Thursday. The juror who voted no, he said, had a family 
member who had been convicted for murder "but he never believed his relative 
did it, so he didn't want to go through with the death penalty."

It was that one "no" vote that led the Supreme Court to vacate the decision 
Thursday, the latest in a string of Florida death penalty cases to have its 
sentence tossed after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the state's 
process for imposing the death penalty was unconstitutional.

"In this case, due to the jury's nonunanimous vote of 11-1 to recommend a 
sentence of death, this court cannot conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that 
the jury unanimously found that the aggravating factors were sufficient to 
impose a sentence of death or that the aggravation outweighed the mitigation," 
the decision reads.

The decision was a disappointment to Kight's family.

"We are deeply saddened by the ruling by the Florida Supreme Court to grant a 
new sentencing hearing for Kevin's killer," according to a statement sent by 
Ken McVay on behalf of Kight's former wife, Christina Kight-McVay; son, 
Brandon; and the Kight family. "However, we are confident that the State 
Attorney's Office and the judicial system will see that justice is served in 
this case. Please keep all of our family in your prayers in this difficult 
time."

As the court continues to overturn death penalty sentences - the court decision 
cited several other vacated decisions in 11-1 cases as precedent - many are 
protesting that a unanimous decision is too high of a threshold. Hess had 
advocated for a 10-2 decision to be the threshold when he submitted an 
amendment to the state last year, noting not even serial killer Ted Bundy was 
unanimously sentence.

Gillingham, hearing the decision to move forward with the death penalty had 
been vacated, agreed.

"I understand that you have to have a majority, but that 1 person can have that 
much power - that's the part I have a problem with," said Gillingham, who 
argued in favor of the death penalty during deliberations. "There was no 
question he did it. ... Bailey gets to get up and smell the coffee and eat the 
eggs every day; the person he murdered will never get to do that again. ... How 
is that just?"

Kight is remembered at the Sgt. Kevin Kight Memorial Bike Parade, a semi-annual 
event held during each of the Thunder Beach bike rallies. His friends have 
described him as a "rare guy" who would help anyone.

A date for Bailey's resentencing has not been set.

(source: Panama City News Herald)






ALABAMA:

Court Orders New Sentencing Order for Death Row Inmate


The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals has directed a judge to redo the 
sentencing order for a man sentenced to die for killing his ex-girlfriend in 
2011.

Appellate judges on Friday ruled that Cedric Jerome Floyd should get a new 
sentencing order. The court ruled that the judge who sentenced Floyd to the 
death penalty failed to adequately explain the finding, as required by law, 
that the crime was particularly heinous and warranted a death sentence.

Floyd was convicted of killing Tina Jones in 2011. The jury in the case 
recommended a death sentence by an 11-1 vote.

The appellate court upheld the conviction. The decision did not remove the 
prospect of a death sentence, but said the judge needed to better explain the 
decision.

(source: Associated Pres)






MISSISSIPI:

Mississippi may execute two inmates in 2017----Drug used to perform lethal 
injections draws controversy


It's been 5 years since Mississippi executed a death row inmate. In an 
exclusive interview with 16 WAPT News, Attorney General Jim Hood said he's 
expecting 2 executions in 2017.

The state executed 6 death row inmates in 2012 by way of lethal injection.

"Then the anti-death penalty folks decided they would attack the drug 
manufacturers and go after the people who supply the drugs," Hood said.

Hood has been defending the state of Mississippi against lawsuits from death 
row inmates since the last execution 5 years ago. 2 condemned inmates, Richard 
Jordan and Ricky Chase, filed state and federal lawsuits. Charles Crawford 
filed a similar lawsuit in Hinds County.

"These prisoners were sentenced to death. They were not sentenced to be 
tortured to death," said attorney Jim Craig, co-director of the Roderick and 
Solange MacArthur Justice Center in New Orleans.

Craig, who represents Jordan, Chase and Crawford, said that Mississippi's 
execution method constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

"And that involves when there is a substantial risk of severe pain that can be 
avoided b using other methods of execution," Craig said.

There is a 3-step protocol to execute death row inmates at the state prison at 
Parchman. The 1st drug is an anesthetic which puts the prisoner to sleep. The 
2nd drug paralyzes the inmate. The 3rd drug is potassium chloride, which stops 
the heart. Hood said the legal battle surrounds the 1st drug, the anesthetic. 
For years, the state used sodium pentothal, but after lawsuits, drug 
manufacturers stopped making it.

"We checked with every other state. No other state could get it," Hood said. 
"We've written letters to the drug manufacturers. They sent us a letter back 
basically waving at us and they didn't use all their fingers."

Mississippi adopted a new drug, midazolam, as the 1st injection in the 3-step 
protocol, which Hood said is approved by the U.S. Supreme Court. But Craig said 
midazolam is not strong enough to keep a prisoner unconscious. Because of that, 
he claimed that the 2nd drug can shock them back into a form of consciousness.

"You're, in fact, being suffocated to death. If you happen to survive that, 
then the 3rd drug, which is potassium chloride, if injected while the prisoner 
is conscious in any extent, will cause extensive chemical burning," Craig said.

Craig said Mississippi should be using pentobarbital as the 1st, or only, drug 
in the lethal injection series. He said it causes a barbiturate overdose that 
puts the prisoner to sleep and stops the heart. But Hood said the U.S. Supreme 
Court has already cleared the way for Mississippi executions to resume.

"In a couple of weeks, we hope to get this motion filed to get the federal 
court case dismissed, and also at the same time, file a motion with the 
Mississippi Supreme Court to set an execution date, hopefully sometime this 
fall," Hood said.

"I do beg to differ with him," Craig said. "I don't think the courts will allow 
execution dates to be set in 2 weeks, or even anytime this year."

"I anticipate a couple of executions between now and the end of the year" Hood 
said.

Hood said the 2 inmates up for execution are Richard Jordan and Thomas Loden. 
Jordan is 1 of the inmates suing Mississippi, and is the longest-serving inmate 
on death row, with 39 years.

Craig said the legal battle over lethal injections in Mississippi is far from 
over.

"This is not about whether or not the prisoners will be executed. It's not 
about whether they have done the crimes they're charged with. It's about 
whether we as people, we in Mississippi and we in America are going to torture 
people to death," said Craig.

(source: WAPT news)