[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., FLA., OHIO, ARK.

Fri Jul 6 09:22:31 CDT 2018

July 6

TEXAS:

San Antonio death penalty case ends in mistrial over attorney's health

A lawyer's injury prompted a judge here Thursday to declare a mistrial in what 
would have been the 1st capital murder death case tried in San Antonio since 
2015 when a man got death for killing a Bexar County Sheriff's sergeant.

Brian Flores was 33 and already in jail on 2 other charges when he was arrested 
and charged with capital murder-multiple persons in the deaths of Joshua 
Rodriguez, 18, and Victoria Dennis, 17. The homicides occurred at the Churchill 
Park complex in the 1200 block of Patricia Drive on Sept. 29, 2015.

The teens allegedly were killed over a sex tape that involved Rodriguez and a 
female not identified in an arrest warrant affidavit released at the time. 
Reports indicate Rodriguez was threatened over social media involving a 
photograph of him and another woman. That woman told authorities her boyfriend 
might have asked Flores to intervene.

Prosecutors Jason Goss and Gretchen Flader began jury selection weeks ago with 
Flores' attorneys, Ed Camara and David Woodard. However, Camara recently 
suffered a concussion after he fell and hit his head June 18, which delayed 
proceedings. His doctor, Burton Shaw, said he examined Camara, 77, on Monday 
and that he has post-concussion syndrome, can't walk a straight line, and "is a 
little slower and muted in his responses."

In a hearing Thursday, Goss and Woodard argued before Visiting Judge Susan 
Reed, who is presiding over the case, regarding Camara's competency since the 
injury. Each questioned Shaw on his health and whether he could continue 
seating a jury, which, in a death penalty case, can take up to a month, as 
compared to one day to seat a panel for other cases.

"I think you'd have difficulty making the case that he's competent," Shaw said 
under direct questioning by Goss. "Sometimes (recovery time for concussions) 
can be a matter of weeks, sometimes months. Most people, 3 months."

Shaw did say he felt Camara could do "office work," sit at a desk, and agreed 
with Goss that he likely could continue picking a jury. But Woodard contended 
the doctor had no idea what goes into jury selection.

Goss asserted Flores' attorneys were attempting to drag out the case with 
continuances.

"He wants a continuance that takes us into the next (district attorney) 
administration," Goss told Reed. "Even with this break, we still can seat a 
jury in August. We can finish it (the trial) before September. As the doctor 
testified, this is a bump on the head."

Goss also stressed that the state had subopoenaed more than 100 witnesses, and 
if proceedings halted, they would have to find them all over again.

Woodard countered that the court should grant a mistrial because there's no 
telling when Camara will be ready.

"This is a 77-year-old man with a concussion. We're not talking about a small 
child or a teen," Woodard said.

He also accused the state of rushing to put Flores, now 36, to death, and 
without the attorney requirements for defendants facing execution.

Texas law holds lawyers representing capital murder defendants to a higher 
standard and gives specific experience requirements for 1st- and 2nd-chair 
attorneys.

"We need to take our time," he said. "He (Flores) only has 1 attorney."

Reed acknowledged 4 jurors already had been seated, but said she would order 
them to be released.

"If we want to call it a mistrial, that'll be what it's called. Mr. Camara is 
removed, another (attorney) will be appointed," she said.

Reed was expected to set a hearing for a later date.

Flores' case would have been the 1st death penalty case in Bexar County since 
2015 when a jury sent Mark Anthony Gonzalez to death row for killing Sgt. 
Kenneth Vann. On May 28, 2011, Vann was shot 26 times and nearly decapitated 
while he sat at a stoplight in Southeast Bexar County.

(source: San Antonio Express-News)

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More testimony expected in Houston 'honor killings' as death penalty trial 
resumes

The capital murder trial of a devoutly religious father who is facing the death 
penalty for allegedly orhestrating the "honor killings" of both his son-in-law 
and his daughter's best friend is expected to resume Thursday, after a break 
for the 4th of July holiday.

Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan, 60, a Jordanian immigrant and fervent Muslim, is 
accused of killing his son-in-law, Coty Beavers, 28, and his daughter's best 
friend because she supported his daughter's conversion to Christianity and 
marriage to a Christian.

Prosecutors have said Irsan, who lived in a rural Montgomery County compound 
with his 12 children, planned to kill his daughter, Nesreen, as well. He wanted 
to slay the people she loved first "so she would suffer more," prosecutors 
said.

Opening statements are set to begin Monday in the death penalty trial of a 
Jordanian immigrant accused in a pair of "honor killings" that shocked Houston. 
Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan's prosecution is the 1st death penalty trial this year 
in Harris County and the 1st one since District Attorney Kim Ogg took office in 
January 2017. He was charged with capital murder because his alleged crime 
involved multiple victims - his daughter's best friend, Gelareh Bagherzadeh, an 
Iranian medical student and activist, and his daughter's husband, Coty Beavers, 
28. Both slayings, authorities said, were driven by the anger of Irsan, a 
conservative Muslim, over his daughter Nesreen's decision to marry Beavers, a 
Christian from Houston.

Defense attorneys for Irsan told jurors in opening statements of the trial that 
the killings, which were 11 months apart in 2012, were not connected and Irsan 
was not involved with either.

Prosecutors have called more than a dozen witnesses to testify as the trial 
reaches the end of a 2nd week.

Jurors have seen and heard most of the evidence surrounding the shooting death 
of Nesreen's best friend, Gelareh Bagherzadeh, a politically active Iranian 
medical student and will soon see evidence surrounding Beavers' death. 
Bagherzadeh, a 30-year-old molecular genetics student, was fatally shot in her 
car as she arrived home at her parent's Galleria-area townhome in January 2012.

Police suspected Irsan as they unraveled the mystery but said they did not have 
enough evidence to arrest him. Almost 11 months later, Nesreen's husband Coty 
Beavers, 28, was killed by intruders at the northwest Harris County apartment 
the couple shared.

Earlier this week, jurors heard from Beavers' mother, Shirley McCormick, who 
said Irsan was allegedly stalking his daughter and Beavers while they lived at 
her home in Spring during the months before his death. The family eventually 
obtained a protective order to keep Irsan from contacting them.

"We knew who was responsible, but we didn't know who all had helped him," 
McCormick testified. "I told them it was Ali Irsan, and he also had to be the 
one who killed Gelareh."

By alleging that the 2 shootings were part of the same scheme, prosecutors can 
seek the death penalty under Texas law.

Special prosecutors Jon Stephenson, Marie Primm and Anna Emmons are handling 
the case after Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, citing previous 
involvement in the case by a top aide, recused her office from the prosecution. 
Irsan is being defended by Allen Tanner and Rudy Duarte.

The trial, is expected to last 6 weeks in state District Judge Jan Krocker's 
court. The trial is being held in Houston's federal courthouse downtown because 
the Harris County Criminal Justice Center has not recovered from damage 
sustained in August during Hurricane Harvey.

(source: Houston Chronicle)

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

Petition to spare the life of Christopher Young

https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/savechristopheryoung

(source: Do It Yourself Roots Action)

PENNSYLVANIA:

Fix the death penalty by killing it

A recently released report on the death penalty system in Pennsylvania 
suggested several changes.

Here's a change it didn't suggest, and it's the only change the state's death 
penalty system needs: Kill it.

There are several reasons why we should do that. But only 1 reason stands above 
all others: It's wrong. And by that we mean it's immoral. It's also inhumane, 
costly and an ineffective deterrent. There are a variety of other cogent 
arguments against the death penalty. But those are the biggies.

There's no doubt that the death penalty system is a troubled system. The 
long-awaited report by the Task Force and Advisory Committee on Capital 
Punishment cited several shortcomings, including the need for "an appropriate 
and effective drug" to execute people humanely. That finding seems to suggest 
that the current system is not humane. That alone should be enough to put a 
stop to it.

In fact, an execution hasn't been carried out in almost 2 decades in 
Pennsylvania mostly because of a lengthy appeals process that costs taxpayers 
more than it costs to house an inmate for life.

"The taxpayers of Pennsylvania are spending hundreds of millions of dollars for 
a death penalty system that doesn't work and hasn't resulted in an execution in 
nearly 20 years," notes Kathleen Lucas, executive director of Pennsylvanians 
for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Lucas goes on to point out that the 
report, ordered in 2011 by the state Senate, "validated their concerns" about 
the existing system.

Gov. Wolf said he would wait for the report's findings before revisiting the 
capital punishment moratorium he issued shortly after taking office in 2015. 
What Wolf will consider are a variety of recommendations none of which are 
cheap. And none of which speak to the core issue of right and wrong.

The report does speak to the need for a publicly funded agency to provide 
representation in capital cases, an apparent nod to the criticism that many 
defendants can't afford the sort of representation needed to effectively fight 
a capital case. While the recommendation sounds costly for taxpayers, the 
report theorizes that a state-funded capital defender office would save money 
for counties and lead to fewer reversals on appeal.

The report also recommended the state adopt a version of "guilty but mentally 
ill" for the death penalty, so that severely mentally ill murderers are 
punished that same way that intellectually disabled murderers are. Given that 
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that it is unconstitutional to execute 
defendants with "mental retardation," Pennsylvania seems to have no choice but 
to bring its laws into compliance.

The alternative to the expense and complications of reforming the death penalty 
system is to just get rid of it. Unfortunately, with an election campaign now 
under way, Gov. Wolf likely will not choose to alienate death penalty 
supporters. We get that. But if re-elected, Wolf should kill rather than fix a 
system he has accurately called not only "flawed" but "ineffective, unjust, and 
expensive."

(source: Editorial, Buck County Courier Times)

FLORIDA:

Appeals rejected in 1995 Central Florida murder

The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday rejected an appeal by a death row inmate 
convicted of strangling a woman outside a Winn-Dixie supermarket in October 
1995 in Osceola County.

The appeal was filed by attorneys for Scott Mansfield, now 57, who was 
sentenced to death for the killing of Sara Robles, whose body was found in a 
grassy area next to a Winn-Dixie in Kissimmee, according to a summary of the 
case included in a brief filed by Attorney General Pam Bondi's office.

Robles' breasts and pelvic area had been mutilated, the brief said. Robles and 
Mansfield had been seen together in a bar in the same shopping center as the 
Winn-Dixie before she was killed.

The Supreme Court opinion Thursday said Mansfield's appeal was based, at least 
in part, on a January 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case known as Hurst 
v. Florida and a subsequent Florida Supreme Court decision. The 2016 U.S. 
Supreme Court ruling found Florida's death-penalty sentencing system was 
unconstitutional because it gave too much authority to judges, instead of 
juries.

The subsequent Florida Supreme Court ruling said juries must unanimously agree 
on critical findings before judges can impose death sentences and must 
unanimously recommend the death penalty. But in Mansfield's case, like in many 
other old death-penalty cases, the Florida justices ruled that the new 
sentencing guidelines should not apply retroactively.

That is because Mansfield was sentenced to death before June 2002, which is 
when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling known as Ring v. Arizona that was a 
premise for striking down Florida's death-penalty sentencing system in 2016.

(source: fox35orlando.com)

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

Orange County father spared from death penalty for beating his 5-year-old son 
to death

An Orange County jury decided to spare a man from the death sentence for 
beating his 5-year-old son to death.

Darrell Avant Sr. was convicted last week of killing Darell Avant, Jr. after 
the boy got in trouble at school.

Avant Sr. will spend the rest of his life in prison without parole.

Prosecutors said Avant Sr. abused the trust he had as the boy's father.

One of the big claims the defense made revolves around Avant Sr.'s waiting 30 
minutes after the beating to call 911. During the trial, prosecutors used Avant 
Sr.'s Google searches as evidence. They said he searched, "how to tell if an 
infant is dead," before calling 911.

This week, jurors and the judge heard from family, a teacher and doctors.

A doctor that testified Monday said Avant Sr. may not have been able to 
recognize that his son was dead.

On Tuesday, a neurologist testified Avant Sr. was his mental problems to avoid 
the death penalty. A day earlier, a different doctor blamed Avant Sr.'s 
murderous rage on a brain injury and that his cognitive abilities are not as 
good as they should be.

The child's mother also took the witness stand and said she wished she could go 
back and pick him up from school herself instead of leaving him with a killer.

"He meant the world, he meant the world to me. And no words, no words can 
explain how much he meant to me," said Jessica Phillips.

(source: WFTV news)

OHIO----impending execution

High court denies stay of execution for condemned Ohio killer----Prosecutors 
argued delaying Robert Van Hook's execution this late in the process would 
"constitute an abuse of the justice system"

Ohio's Supreme Court has denied a condemned killer's motion to stay his 
execution.

The court denied death row inmate Robert Van Hook's motion Thursday without 
additional comment. He was sentenced to die for fatally strangling and stabbing 
David Self in Cincinnati in 1985. His execution is set for July 18.

Van Hook had filed a motion seeking the execution delay while he pursues a 
challenge in a lower court to Ohio's adoption of its lethal injection protocol.

Prosecutors argued Van Hook knew of the legal challenge over the lethal 
injection policy as early as 2009, but waited until last month to seek the 
stay. They argued delaying the execution this late in the process would 
"constitute an abuse of the justice system."

A message was left Thursday for his attorney.

(source: Associated Press)

ARKANSAS:

8th Circ. Upholds Arkansas' Right to Bar Judge from Death Penalty Cases

A state judge in Arkansas cannot pursue a civil rights lawsuit against the 
state's highest court after it permanently barred him from hearing 
death-penalty cases, the Eighth Circuit ruled this week.

Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Wendell Griffen, who is African-American, 
sued the Arkansas Supreme Court and all 7 of its members in October 2017, 
claiming that his disqualification from death-penalty cases was race-based and 
in violation of a state religious-freedom law.

The lawsuit was allowed to proceed against each of the justices, but Monday's 
ruling dismissed Griffen's lawsuit altogether for failure "to state plausible 
claims for relief."

The disqualification order "does not prohibit Judge Griffen's free exercise of 
religious," wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Duane Benton for the 3-judge panel. 
"Rather, the order reflects neutral principles applicable to all judges who 
exhibit potential for bias."

Griffen stepped into the death-penalty debate in April when he granted a 
pharmaceutical company's request for a temporary restraining order preventing 
Arkansas from using vecuronium bromide in its executions.

Just hours later, Griffen joined protesters in front of the governor's mansion 
in Little Rock, strapped to a makeshift gurney and sporting an anti-death 
penalty button.

While photos show the judge lying on a cot and appearing to be loosely tied 
down by rope, Griffen says the display was part of a Good Friday prayer vigil 
and "in solidarity with Jesus."

Griffen, who is also a Baptist pastor, was surrounded by demonstrators who 
carried signs opposing the state's plan to execute an unprecedented 8 inmates 
before its supply of midazolam expired at the end of April.

The Arkansas Supreme Court removed Griffen from the case and his order was 
lifted 2 days later. The state proceeded execute 4 men in 8 days before its 
batch of the lethal-injection drug expired.

An attorney for Griffen said he plans to file a petition asking the full Eight 
Circuit to review the case.

Griffen is being investigation for potential judicial misconduct and could face 
punishment by the Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission for 
his actions.

Griffen was elected to the bench in 2010 and re-elected in 2016.

(source: Courthouse News)