[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., FLA., TENN., KY., ARK.

[Rick Halperin]

June 9



TEXAS----impending execution

Houston serial killer Danny Bible's lawyers say he is too sick to execute, 
predict botched procedure



Lawyers for Houston-area serial killer Danny Bible filed a civil rights suit 
Friday alleging the aging death row inmate is in such poor health that any 
attempts to execute him will end in a gruesome, botched procedure.

The so-called "ice pick killer" has Parkinson's, bad veins and a slew of other 
medical conditions that raise the possibility of a prolonged and painful lethal 
injection process his lawyers argue could violate the 8th Amendment's ban on 
cruel and unusual punishment.

The 66-year-old is scheduled to die on June 27.

"Texas will almost certainly join Alabama and Ohio and add itself to the 
unconscionable list of botched executions in America," his attorney Jeremy 
Schepers told the Chronicle.

"Mr. Bible is an elderly, frail man who has been confined to a wheelchair for 
the last 15 years and his health is rapidly deteriorating," he continued. 
"Recent medical evaluations confirm that his veins are inaccessible and 
unsuitable for placing an IV. Any attempts to carry out the execution will 
amount to torture, cause excruciating pain, and violate his constitutional 
rights."

Bible's bid for reprieve comes months after a high-profile botch that forced 
officials in Alabama to call off the execution of Doyle Hamm, a 61-year-old 
death row prisoner with lymphoma. In February, a lethal injection team there 
spent hours poking the condemned killer's arms, legs and groin to find a usable 
vein before ultimately giving up as the midnight deadline approached.

Previously, Ohio saw similarly botched procedures in the attempted execution of 
Romell Broom in 2009 and Alva Campbell in 2017. Schepers writes that Bible is 
in worse health than Hamm, Campbell or Broom.

The Texas lethal injection preparation - a part of the process media and 
witnesses are not permitted to observe - involves inserting 2 IV lines, while 
the prisoner is strapped to a gurney.

But lying down causes Bible shortness of breath, and his lawyers argue that he 
would "likely be choking and gasping for air" during attempts to hook up IVs 
that may be "futile" anyway.

Bible's legal claim, which lays out a "galaxy of medical issues" in detail over 
the course of 90 pages, names Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials 
and "anonymous execution team members" among its numerous defendants.

This isn't the 1st time a Texas death row prisoner has fought his sentence by 
questioning the lethal injection process. Thomas "Bart" Whitaker - a Fort Bend 
man eventually spared by Gov. Greg Abbott - was 1 of 3 inmates behind a 
years-long suit alleging the drugs Texas uses could cause undue suffering.

And earlier this year, hours before his February execution, John Battaglia 
unsuccessfully tried winning a stay by raising concerns about 2 allegedly 
botched executions his lawyers said were caused by too-old drugs.

Both of those cases focused on the possibility that the drugs themselves would 
cause suffering, a claim that could more generally apply to any death row 
prisoner. Bible's argument focuses more narrowly on the possibility that he, 
specifically, is unfit to execute.

"To my knowledge this is the first suit of its kind in Texas," said lethal 
injection expert and death penalty lawyer Maurie Levin, who worked on the 
Whitaker and Battaglia cases.

In Bible's case, his lawyers suggest that an alternative method - firing squad 
or nitrogen gas - would decrease the risk of suffering.

Bible was initially sent to death row in 2003, more than 2 decades after the 
crime that landed him there.

A former drifter, Bible's lengthy string of violence dates back to at least 
1979. That May, a passerby found the bloodied, half-naked body of Inez Deaton 
along the slope of a Houston bayou. She'd been stabbed 11 times with an ice 
pick before her killer posed her corpse by the water.

For nearly 2 decades, Deaton's slaying went unsolved - but Bible's violent 
streak continued.

In the years that followed, Bible terrorized women in the Midwest, once setting 
his girlfriend's car on fire because he didn't like her haircut. After he 
returned to Texas and settled west of Fort Worth, he murdered his sister-in-law 
Tracy Powers and her infant son Justin. Then, he killed Powers' roommate, Pam 
Hudgins, and left her body hanging from a roadside fence.

Following those killings, he fled to Montana, where he kidnapped a woman and 
raped an 11-year-old girl, according to court records.

Eventually, he was caught and in 1984 he pleaded guilty to Hudgins' murder. He 
was sentenced to 25 years for the killing and 20 years for a Harris County 
robbery. He was released on parole 8 years later, under a since-repealed 
mandatory supervision law.

While still on parole, he raped and molested multiple young relatives, 
including a 5-year-old. Then in 1998, he raped Tera Robinson in a Louisiana 
motel room before stuffing her into a duffel bag when he became enraged that he 
couldn't maintain an erection.

The woman broke free and called for help.

Bible was eventually caught in Florida, and freely admitted to his crimes under 
questioning.

Weeks after he was sentenced, Bible narrowly escaped death during a 
head-on-collision on the way to death row. The officer behind the wheel of the 
prison transport vehicle, 40-year-old John Bennett, died in the wreck, while 
Bible ended up in a wheelchair.

In past appeals, Bible's attorneys have used his deteriorating medical 
condition to argue against his execution, saying he can't be a danger in his 
current state.

Texas has already executed 6 men this year, including another Houston serial 
killer, Anthony Shore. Aside from Bible's, there are 7 other death dates on the 
calendar in Texas.

(source: Houston Chronicle)

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

Racist Jurors, Extreme Mental Illness - a Federal Court Is Rethinking the Case 
of Texas Death Row Inmate Andre Thomas



With all the bluster from Pennsylvania Avenue about executing drug dealers and 
school shooters and MS-13 members, you may not have noticed that the death 
penalty has been in a long and steady decline. Executions and death sentences 
in the United States have dropped more than 75 percent from their highs of 2 
decades ago, and there is no evidence to suggest these trends will reverse 
themselves. Still, there is a steady drip-drip-drip of state-sanctioned 
killing, almost entirely in a handful of Southern states, and many participants 
in the criminal justice system, including several members of the Supreme Court, 
appear to be wondering when it will all end.

Some cases seem tailor-made to hurry the discussion along, and Texas' 
long-grinding case against Andre Thomas is 1 of them. Thomas' trial and 
appeals, which I covered in detail for Mother Jones in 2013, paint a harrowing 
portrait of mental illness, systemic racism, and an unfathomable crime: Thomas 
had killed his estranged wife, his 4-year-old son, and her 13-month-old 
daughter, which was shocking enough, but the nature of the crime itself would 
have been a massive red flag for any mental health professional.

For one thing, Andre had cut out the children???s hearts and returned home with 
the organs in his pockets. For another, he was careful to use 3 different 
knives so that the blood from each body would not cross-contaminate, thereby 
ensuring that the demons inside each of them would die. He then stabbed himself 
in the chest, but he did not die as he had hoped.

Thomas' family tree was replete with domestic violence, parental neglect, 
substance abuse, and enough genetic markers to predict the schizophrenia that 
plagued him. But as bizarre as the crime was, and as detailed his troubled 
past, his behavior afterward stood out even among cases involving extreme 
mental illness.

Andre refused the anti-psychotic medication the jail doctors prescribed him, 
but at least he had the Bible, and when he wasn't acting belligerently or 
gesticulating wildly or ranting about evil he would read from it. One can only 
wonder what he thought when he turned to Matthew 5:29 - particularly in light 
of his obsession with the eye on the pyramid. "If your right eye causes you to 
sin," the passage reads, "gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you 
to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell."

And that is precisely what Andre did. Sitting in his cell, reading the Bible, 
he gouged out his right eye with his fingers.

After 3 years on death row, Thomas began to act as he had before committing his 
crimes. He stopped talking and eating, began to feel suicidal, and refused his 
meds. And then, a few weeks before Christmas 2008, he ripped out his remaining 
eye - and ate it.

As he explained some days later, he didn't want the government to read his 
thoughts, so he ate the eye because he was certain they would figure out some 
way to put it back in.

Thomas has been blind for close to a decade now, and Texas continues to push 
for his execution. But last week, during oral arguments on his case before the 
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, federal judges hinted they were troubled by 
more than just Thomas' psychoses.

While mental illness pervades every aspect of the case, there was something 
more sinister at play during Thomas' trial for capital murder. Thomas is black, 
and he had killed his estranged wife, who was white. This fact prompted the 
inclusion of an item on the jury questionnaire about interracial marriage, and 
4 potential jurors indicated they were "opposed" or "strongly opposed" to such 
pairings. 3 of those jurors were seated, and the 4th was chosen as an 
alternate. Thomas' court-appointed defense lawyers neither asked 2 of the 3 
seated jurors a single follow-up question about race to try to disqualify them, 
nor did they use a peremptory strike to have either of them removed.

Those same defense attorneys who had failed to keep Thomas off death row proved 
even less helpful during his appeals. They gave prosecutors and Thomas' new 
lawyers contradictory statements regarding their own conduct at trial, and they 
used virtually identical language to explain their failure to probe deeper into 
the jurors' antipathy toward mixed marriages: We "questioned them to the extent 
necessary for us to request a strike for cause or make a decision to use a 
strike against them."

One of the lawyers went even further, accusing Thomas' appellate attorneys of 
race-baiting and claiming that "the prosecutors and jurors are being accused of 
racial prejudice without any basis in the record." It seems that the jurors' 
sworn comments regarding interracial marriage - "I don't believe God intended 
for this," "We should stay with our bloodline," and "[It is] harmful for the 
children involved because they don't have a specific race to belong to" - did 
not meet their threshold for racial bias.

Thomas' appeals were roundly rejected by Texas state courts, so he moved on to 
the federal district court in eastern Texas. There, without explanation, his 
case was passed from one judge to another to a 3rd, until it finally came to 
rest where it had begun, with Judge Michael H. Schneider, a 2004 appointee of 
President George W. Bush.

Schneider made short shrift of the mental health and racial bias claims 
presented by Thomas' appellate attorneys. Relying on procedural rules ushered 
in after the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994, he 
followed the state courts' lead by attributing credibility to the statements 
Thomas' original lawyers had given to the prosecution after his trial, while 
ignoring the contradictory statements those lawyers had provided 6 months 
earlier to the lawyers representing Thomas in his appeals.

1 prosecutor asked the all-white jury whether they were willing to risk Thomas 
"asking your daughter out, or your granddaughter out?"

Schneider ruled that the failure of Thomas' original defense lawyers to press 
some jurors on perceived racial biases "was simply a matter of trial strategy." 
But that would have been a curious strategy in light of the lead prosecutor's 
closing argument for execution, which he concluded by asking the all-white jury 
whether they were willing to risk Thomas "asking your daughter out, or your 
granddaughter out?"

As for Thomas' competence to stand trial after gouging his eye out and being 
committed to the state mental hospital, Schneider sided with the Texas courts 
in crediting B. Thomas Gray, a clinical psychologist who noted that Thomas had 
been diagnosed as "malingering" and that he "may engage in gestures or 
behaviors, including possibly those involving self-harm, in a bid to appear 
more seriously mentally ill than he is." (Schneider's opinion made no mention 
of whether the doctor may have changed his diagnosis after Thomas removed his 
second eyeball.)

The ruling left no doubt about Schneider???s views: He denied every issue 
raised by the defense and declared that no "reasonable jurists" could even 
debate the merits of Thomas' claims. His 77-page opinion was published on 
September 19, 2016 - Schneider retired from the federal bench 12 days later.

But the legal winds seem to be shifting in Thomas' favor. Last year, the 
Supreme Court handed down 2 important decisions about discrimination in a 
criminal law context. Although neither relates directly to Thomas' fate, both 
cases showed the court is finally taking a clear-eyed look at the racial 
elephant in the courtroom.

In Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the high court reversed a sexual assault 
conviction wherein a juror had condemned the defendant during deliberations 
"because he's Mexican and Mexican men take whatever they want???9 times out of 
10 Mexican men were guilty of being aggressive toward women and young girls." 
Unlike the Thomas jurors, who had expressed racial animosity and were not 
questioned about it by his defense lawyers, the biased juror in Pena-Rodriguez 
did not reveal his prejudice during jury selection.

"Our law punishes people for what they do, not who they are."

The 2nd Supreme Court decision, Buck v. Davis, involved Duane Buck, a Texas 
death row inmate whose own lawyer put a psychologist on the stand to testify 
about his client???s likelihood of committing criminal acts of violence that 
would constitute a continuing threat to society. This expert witness concluded 
that Buck probably would not engage in further violent conduct, but that 
because he was black, there was an elevated probability he would.

Chief Justice John Roberts, recognizing that Buck may have been sentenced to 
death in part because of his race, wrote this was "a disturbing departure from 
a basic premise of our criminal justice system: Our law punishes people for 
what they do, not who they are. Dispensing punishment on the basis of an 
immutable characteristic flatly contravenes this guiding principle." This was a 
harsh reversal of the Fifth Circuit's opinion, which held that Buck had "not 
made out even a minimal showing??? that his case was exceptional.

Like Schneider in the Thomas case, the Fifth Circuit in Buck had determined 
that no reasonable jurist could argue that Buck's claim of racial bias had 
merit. Thomas' next appellate stop was that very same Fifth Circuit. Had they 
learned anything from Buck v. Davis? Last week???s oral arguments provided an 
inkling.

In his book The Supreme Court, the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote 
about an 1824 case, Gibbons v. Ogden, that involved 5 days of oral argument 
before the court. Appeals courts these days rarely allow more than an hour, and 
so it was in the Thomas case. Still, the racial bias of the jurors was of 
significant interest to the 3-judge panel. When 1 of the judges asked about the 
claim by 1 of Thomas' trial lawyers that he had avoided questioning those 
jurors further for fear of creating animosity, Thomas' appellate attorney was 
prepared:

He does say that in his 2nd affidavit, which of course is diametrically 
contrary to the first affidavit he submitted, in which he said, "There was no 
intentional strategy, I simply just didn't ask." What we know here is that 
these questions were posed to the jurors...in the first place precisely because 
the interracial dynamics of the facts in this case were so palpable that it was 
recognized that this was an important question that needed to be asked. So it's 
not a reasonable strategy to then say, "Well, I don't want to inject race into 
the discussion." Race was already injected into the discussion, and these 
jurors gave extremely troubling responses.

When it was the assistant attorney general's turn to argue, a serious error in 
the state's brief was exposed. The prosecution had erroneously claimed all the 
jurors at issue were questioned further about their views on interracial 
marriage:

Judge Stephen Higginson: On page 36 of your brief, you say trial counsel 
extensively questioned all 4 [jurors] regarding whether Thomas and [the 
victim's] race would impact their ability to remain impartial. You said all 
four indicated it would not. You didn't give a record [citation]. Is it your 
position that, when I look at the transcript, that trial counsel questioned 
[the 2 jurors in question] as to whether or not their race would impact the 
ability to remain impartial?

Prosecutor: At this point, I have to admit that that was a mistake.

Judge: It's a pretty significant mistake.

Prosecutor: It is, Your Honor.

Not surprisingly, Thomas' severe mental illness came up prominently. When the 
state attempted to portray the killings as "revenge and obsession," Higginson 
was not having it. "It seems like the state admits, and certainly the defense 
insists, that the defendant was psychotic," he said. "You're saying that this 
was a revenge killing...[and that] does seem to be missing the greater point, 
that even you acknowledge, that this is a matter of a person who was psychotic 
at the time." "As a little boy he was suffering the effects of this organic 
mental illness. He needed help. He never got it."

Thomas' attorney ended her presentation by explaining that the trial lawyers 
had failed to provide an accurate portrayal of her profoundly disturbed client: 
"What [the jury] should have seen, and what would have gravely affected their 
evaluation of whether he deserved to die, was that as a little boy he was 
suffering the effects of this organic mental illness. He needed help. He never 
got it."

Higginson concluded the hearing with an understatement. "It's an important set 
of questions for us to resolve," he said. Then, only 2 days later, the Fifth 
Circuit panel issued an order acknowledging what was painfully obvious to 
anyone who was in the courtroom last week: That "reasonable jurists could 
disagree" on the race and mental illness aspects of the case. The judges then 
asked both sides to brief them further on those issues.

The order amounts to a rare glimmer of hope for Thomas, who is entering his 
14th year on death row. While justice purports to be blind, would a reasonable 
jurist believe it to be served by executing a severely mentally ill man who 
blinded himself?

(source: Mother Jones)








NORTH CAROLINA:

Man's mental condition, past cited in capital resentencing



A survivor from El Salvador's civil war must be resentenced because North 
Carolina jurors who decided he should die for his wife's killing weren't told 
to consider evidence relating his conduct to his mental condition, the state 
Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The justices vacated the death sentence but let stand the 2014 1st-degree 
murder and 1st-degree kidnapping convictions of Juan Carlos Rodriguez of 
Winston-Salem for the 2010 death of his wife, Maria. Her decapitated body was 
discovered 3 weeks after she was last seen alive.

The majority in the 5-2 decision determined that Superior Court Judge Stuart 
Albright failed during Rodriguez's sentencing hearing to direct jurors to 
examine that Rodriguez's mental limitations and past struggles impaired his 
ability to fully comprehend his conduct.

Associate Justice Sam Ervin IV, writing the majority opinion, pointed to 
evidence showing Rodriguez was malnourished and in extreme poverty amid 
constant violence as a child in war-torn El Salvador in the late 1970s and 
'80s. He suffered a mental disorder, according to expert witnesses and had a 
low IQ and mild intellectual disability.

Jurors had to make a binding recommendation to the judge to sentence Rodriguez 
to death or to life in prison without parole. Ervin wrote there's uncertainty 
whether the judge adding this information to the list of mitigating and 
aggravating circumstances would have changed a juror's mind.

Evidence of Rodriguez's "mental limitations and disturbed and overwrought 
thinking supports a rational inference that defendant's ability to fully 
comprehend the wrongfulness of his conduct and to conform his conduct to the 
requirements of the law was adversely affected" when the murder occurred, Ervin 
wrote.

In the dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Mark Martin wrote there was no 
evidence linking Rodriguez's "purported intellectual impairment, mental 
disorders, and marital strife to his homicidal conduct."

"The majority also ignores the evidence showing that defendant's actions were 
carefully premeditated and that he took many steps to conceal his identity as 
the perpetrator," which would have prevented jurors from finding the mitigating 
circumstance occurred, Martin wrote.

The couple had been estranged at the time of Maria Rodriguez's death. She had 
entered a domestic violence shelter a month before, writing that her husband 
had threatened to kill her. She was last seen alive at the couple's former 
apartment by her children, who told investigators she had been bloodied by 
their father. He tossed her body over his shoulder, put her in the vehicle and 
said he was taking her to the hospital, according to evidence. Her skull was 
recovered 2 1/2 years after her decapitated body was found, 20 miles away.

Rodriguez's IQ was estimated several times at below 70, a threshold for 
significantly impaired intellectual functioning. But accused killers in North 
Carolina also must show significant inability to adapt to daily life and that 
their mental disabilities were evident before adulthood.

Rodriguez has been on North Carolina's death row while awaiting the appeal. 
While more than 140 people await execution, the state hasn't carried out 
capital punishment in more than a decade as various legal challenges have 
blocked it. Changes in state law have also dramatically lowered the number of 
murder cases in which local prosecutors seek the death penalty.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Death penalty upheld for man convicted of killing Shaniya Davis



The man convicted of killing 5-year-old Shaniya Davis will receive the death 
penalty after his appeal to have his conviction overturned was denied.

Mario McNeill was convicted and sentenced to death for killing the 5-year-old 
in 2009.

McNeill wanted the court to overturn his conviction because he says his 
attorneys should not have told police where to find the little girl's body.

While his attorney Andrew DeSimone said McNeill would have been better off 
without a lawyer.

"Mr. McNeill would have been better off without any lawyers because if this 
condition of anonymity was not going to be honored if he was not going to get 
any promise of a benefit or protection from use of this evidence against him, 
he could have done this himself," said DeSimone.

The jury decided McNeill received a fair trial.

(source: ABC News)

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

State seeks death penalty in Y.G. Wells killing



A Winston-Salem man could be sentenced to death if found guilty of killing a 
Statesville father of 3 earlier this year, a Superior Court judge ruled Friday.

Judge Jesse Caldwell ruled that it would be appropriate for prosecutors to seek 
the death penalty in their case against 35-year-old Enrico Dewaine Heggins.

Heggins "knowingly created the possibility of death for more than one person," 
Caldwell said during a hearing. "(The) state is lawfully entitled to seek the 
death penalty."

Freeman Jacobi "Y.G." Wells, 30, was shot and killed Jan. 6 while inside his 
Hickory Avenue home. Prosecutors say he was struck in the head by a bullet.

Mikko Red Arrow, Iredell County assistant district attorney, said the bullet 
was forensically linked to a mini Draco "shortened assault rifle" that Heggins 
had when he was arrested by the Davie County Sheriff's Office in March on 
unrelated drug charges.

Red Arrow said Heggins arrived at Wells' Statesville home in the early morning 
hours of Jan.6 and opened fire, sending a round of a round of bullets into the 
house.

Heggins is charged with 1st-degree murder, possession of a firearm by a felon 
and discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling.

Antwon Deon Taylor and Kasey Allen Randol also are charged with murder in the 
case. Both are scheduled to appear in Iredell County Superior Court June 27.

Heggins' attorney, Patricia Riddick, was not immediately available for comment.

Toni Watts, Wells' mother, said the death penalty would be a fitting 
punishment.

"They didn't have a right to take my son's life away," Watts said. "I can't 
talk to my son; I look at my grandkids' faces and all I see is hurt. I'm glad 
they are going after him with the death penalty. They should go after every one 
of them."

Watts' husband, Patrick Eugene Watts, was shot and killed in 2002. Her mother, 
Henrietta Griffith, died a few days after she buried her son. Watts said she is 
"hurting," but the dedication law enforcement is giving to her son's case gives 
her hope.

"I'm thankful because I'm never going to give up," Watts said. "I'm not 
stopping until everyone involved is held accountable for what they've done."

(source: statesville.com)








FLORIDA:

Florida prosecutor allows local input on death penalty for Woodbury



Local input is being accepted by the Florida prosecutor, who is currently 
seeking the death penalty for Michael Woodbury, the former Mainer who shot and 
killed three people in Conway in 2007 and recently pleaded guilty to murdering 
a fellow inmate in a Florida prison.

Woodbury has been serving a life sentence without parole in Florida since 2009.

According to a report in the Okeechobee News, Woodbury, 42, formerly of 
Windham, Maine, pleaded guilty May 21 to first-degree premeditated murder in 
the beating death with a padlock of fellow inmate Antoneeze Haynes on Sept. 22 
at Okeechobee Correctional Institution.

The plea, according to Okeechobee News reporter Matteo Tullio, came on the 3rd 
day of Woodbury's trial, which began May 17.

Ashley K. Albright, assistant state attorney for Florida's 19th Judicial 
Circuit, told the Sun last week that people can contact him by email to add 
their input.

"We have already reached out to the family members of the triple homicide and 
tried to contact them and get input from them but certainly anyone who would 
like to can send me an email," said Albright adding some of the Conway victims' 
family members plan to attend the sentencing hearing tentatively scheduled for 
July 23. "Because they are not direct victims of this case, they will not be 
able to testify in the penalty phase in front of the jury. However, we can 
still present evidence of those crimes to the jury for them to consider."

The proceedings take place at Okeechobee County Courthouse with St. Lucie 
County Circuit Court Judge Sherwood Bauer presiding.

The sentencing phase is open to the public.

Longtime Conway residents will remember July 2, 2007, as the day when Woodbury, 
then 31 and from Windham, Maine, walked into the Army Barracks at 347 White 
Mountain Highway and shot store manager James Walker, 34, and two customers 
from Massachusetts, William Jones, 25, and Gary Jones, 23.

Walker and William Jones died at the scene, and Gary Jones died later at Maine 
Medical Center. The 2 Joneses were not related but were close friends who had 
been camping in Maine. The two campers walked in on Woodbury and apparently 
tried to halt his bid to steal gas money for the stolen cars in which he had 
been living.

The day after the shootings, Woodbury gave himself up to a Fryeburg, Maine, 
patrol officer in a forested stretch of railbed in that town.

He later pleaded guilty to those killings.

"We will present actual evidence of all of the prior crimes that he committed 
to the jury to consider in determining whether or not to impose the death 
penalty," said Albright.

To impose the the death penalty, the jury of 12 has to agree unanimously. Then 
it goes to a judge.

"If the jury voted to impose the death penalty, the judge could still impose 
life instead of death; if the jury voted to impose life, the judge would have 
to give life," said Albright who explained that Florida executes inmates by 
lethal injection.

Then there's an automatic appeal to the state's Supreme Court. Albright said it 
would take years to have Woodbury executed.

During his trial, Woodbury claimed Haynes tried to rape him, according to the 
Okeechobee News report.

"This case is first and foremost, from my perspective, about how my cellmate, 
Haynes, attempted to rape and sexually assault me while asleep in my bed in the 
middle of the night," Tullio quoted Woodbury as testifying.

(source: The Conway Daily Sun)








TENNESSEE:

Possibility of death penalty with new charges against Joe Clyde's parents



New charges have been filed against the parents of Joe Clyde and now there is 
the possibility of the death penalty in the case.

Joseph Ray Daniels and Krystal Daniels were both video arraigned in Dickson 
County court on Friday.

Joseph Ray is now facing premeditated first-degree murder, child abuse, 
tampering with evidence, criminal responsibility and false report charges, 
while Krystal is charged with failing to prevent aggravated child abuse and 
neglect, false report and accessory after the fact. Both Daniels pleaded not 
guilty to all charges.

A Special Grand Jury returned the indictments Thursday afternoon.

The district attorney said in court that the death penalty could be sought in 
the case, depending on if Joe Clyde's body is found.

A search for Joe Clyde's remains is slated for Saturday and Sunday.

Earlier this week, FOX 17 News learned Joe Clyde's blanket was found. According 
to sources close to the investigation, Joseph Ray said it was the blanket Joe 
received the previous Christmas.

It's the 1st piece of concrete evidence in the case, as of the hearing Monday, 
it appeared to be largely based on Joseph Ray's confession and Krystal's 
statement.

Joseph Daniels confessed to beating his son to death and hiding his body in a 
remote area back in the beginning of April. The Tennessee Bureau of 
Investigation said they have a video recording of Joseph Daniels' confession 
during a hearing.

Per the confession, Joe Clyde's 8-year-old brother went into his parents' 
bedroom to tell them baby Joe had peed on the floor. Joseph told TBI Joe Clyde 
started laughing, "so I beat him."

Joe Clyde apparently ran outside near the road before Joseph retrieved his son 
and beat him again. Since the confession, Daniels has sent several locations 
for Joe's body to Dickson County officers, with no success.

According to Krystal's statement to police, Krystal heard a "loud, painful" 
scream that suddenly just stopped -- and it was silence. She came out of her 
room, saw Joe Clyde on the ground, not moving, with Joseph standing over him 
with his fist clenched. She never got close enough to check on him and went 
back to bed.

The state argued Krystal "walked hand in hand" with her husband, spreading lies 
about Joe Clyde's disappearance.

(source: Fox News)








KENTUCKY:

1 sentenced, another facing death penalty in 2016 murder of Russellville mother



In 2016, Lexus Bell was shot and killed during an armed robbery at her home. 
Almost 2 years later, 4 people are facing charges in her murder.

On Thursday, Reba Kirk was sentenced to 20 years in prison after she admitted 
to orchestrating the robbery that resulted in Bell's death.

The court heard from Lexus Bell's aunt as well as her step-father during the 
sentencing hearing.

Circuit Judge Tyler Gill said Kirk had demonstrated "gangster mentality" amid 
discussion that dug deep into Kirk's past, growing up with less-than-reputable 
guardian figures.

On Friday, the man alleged to have pulled the trigger, Demetrius Roberson, 
appeared in court alongside Tayveon Bibb, who was indicted on murder charges in 
May.

Acting prosecutor Justin Crocker filed a motion earlier this year in which he 
explained he will now go after the death penalty for Roberson.

Roberson, who has been declared indigent by the court, is being represented by 
the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy.

His attorney, Michael Bufkin, was asked about being prepared for trial, and 
said as of today, he didn't foresee any obstacles preventing them from being 
ready.

"We will do everything in our power to be able to try this case on the date 
that the court has given, but we can't anticipate what might happen between now 
and then," said Bufkin.

Russellville Police are still investigating the case, and say even almost 2 
years later, there could still be more arrests to come.

"My situation is just having patience, and hopefully the people that didn't 
come forth will come forth," said Detective Kenneth Edmonds. "It's just a 
waiting game."

The trial for both Demetrius Roberson and Tayveon Bibb is scheduled for March 
2019.

The 4th person facing charges, Jordan Lunsford, has pleaded guilty to his 
charges for the role he played in the shooting.

(source: WBKO news)








ARKANSAS:

Arkansas judge seen at anti-execution rally faces sanction



A judicial disciplinary panel charged an Arkansas judge on Friday with ethics 
violations for lying down on a cot during an anti-death penalty demonstration 
the same day he blocked the state from using an execution drug, a move that 
could result in his suspension or removal from office.

A 3-member panel of the Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission 
filed the formal charges against Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen, 
who was photographed on a cot outside the governor's mansion last year wearing 
an anti-death penalty button and surrounded by people holding signs opposing 
executions. Earlier that day, Griffen blocked the state from using a lethal 
injection drug over claims the company had been misled by the state.

Though the image appeared to mimic a condemned inmate awaiting lethal 
injection, Griffen, who is also a Baptist pastor, has said he was portraying 
Jesus and participating in a prayer vigil. The panel cited his participation in 
the demonstration, as well as comments he had made online and on social media 
against the death penalty.

"Judge Griffen holds a right to free speech, but once Judge Griffen asserted 
his free speech in unequivocal opposition to the death penalty, he had an 
obligation to disqualify himself in every case effecting the death penalty," 
the panel said in its statement of allegations.

Days after the demonstration last year, the state Supreme Court removed Griffen 
from the drug case and prohibited him from handling any execution-related 
cases. Griffen in April re-enacted his demonstration outside the governor's 
mansion during a vigil to mark the 1-year anniversary of the 4 executions 
Arkansas carried out last year.

Griffen has 30 days to respond to the charges and will have a hearing before 
the full, nine-member commission. The commission can recommend the state 
Supreme Court suspend or remove Griffen if it finds he violated judicial rules 
of conduct. The panel could also issue a public admonishment, reprimand or 
censure the judge.

An attorney for Griffen criticized the panel's decision to charge Griffen.

"We are disappointed by today's announcement, but not surprised," Mike Laux, an 
attorney for Griffen, said in an email. "We question the thoroughness of the 
investigation, as well as the impartiality of the ad hoc JDDC panel assembled 
to review the matter. We will elaborate on this on Monday."

Griffen has claimed the disqualification violated his constitutional rights. 
The state's 7 Supreme Court justices are appealing a federal judge's ruling 
that allows Griffen's lawsuit against them over the disqualification to 
proceed.

(source: Associated Press)