[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.H., PENN., S.C., ALA., LA.

[Rick Halperin]

May 11



TEXAS:

East Texas man on death row for child slaying loses appeal



An East Texas man who is on death row for killing his girlfriend's toddler has 
lost a federal appeal, the Associated Press reports.

Blaine Milam, 28, is on death row for the 2008 slaying of 13-month-old Amora 
Carson during an alleged exorcism. The incident occurred at Milam's home in 
Rusk County.

Amora died in December 2008 after she was fatally struck by Milam to rid her of 
demons. Amora was bitten multiple times and beaten with a hammer.

Milam was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

AP reports that Thursday the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his 
argument. His attorneys argued that he had deficient legal help at his trial 
and that the judge gave jurors faulty instruction.

(source: KLLTV news)








NEW HAMPSHIRE:

'Thou shalt not kill'



The May 6 editorial, 'Governor, end the death penalty," is reminiscent of 
Ronald Reagan's famous exhortation: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Thus, 
we should similarly end New Hampshire's pointless, outdated and inhumane law 
that egregiously assumes that its rule is of a higher moral authority than that 
of God Himself. After all, "An eye for an eye" went out with The Old Testament.

I would like to bring to light a few remarks made on this subject by David 
Erikson, which appeared in Monitor on May 2.

Upon standing outside the State House, Erikson and his wife, Karen, recently 
held aloft the marvelous sign, "Why do we kill people who kill people to show 
people that killing is wrong?" Erikson thereafter makes several important 
points:

The incarceration of Michael Addison is a greater penalty than that which would 
be true if he were condemned to death: How would you like to spend 40 years in 
a cage rather than "having your head chopped off in a second."

Also, no matter how long-lasting, it costs far less to house an inmate than to 
exterminate him.

Moreover, the facts show that the death penalty does not deter crime. As is 
said by Erikson, "People shoot out of fear, anger and mental illness. They are 
not thinking about consequences."

All of us are called upon to abide by the sixth commandment: "Thou shalt not 
kill." Now, I do not know about you, but I take my Bible seriously.

TIMOTHY J LANGLAIS

Concord

(source: Letter to the Editor, Concord Monitor)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Death penalty trial in southern York County double-murder



1 man and 1 woman have been found shot dead in a Fawn Township home, according 
to the York County Coroner.

Paul Henry III is standing trial in the York County Court of Common Pleas on 
murder charges and related offenses and, if convicted, potentially faces the 
death penalty.

On Sept. 13, 2016, Henry went into a home in Fawn Township with his wife, 
Veronique, and fatally shot Foday Cheeks, 31, and Danielle Taylor, 26, the 
Pennsylvania State Police said.

4 other people, including 2 boys, were inside. The couple, police said, took 
their cellphones and rummaged through the home looking for drugs.

Cheeks previously told investigators that he'd sold heroin "in the past." He 
was free on bail on drug-dealing charges, according to court records.

Veronique Henry killed herself in York County Prison. She was 32.

(source: York Daily Record)








SOUTH CAROLINA:

How Southern lynching gave birth to South Carolina's death penalty



The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened last month in Montgomery, 
commemorating 4,400 confirmed lynchings in the United States between 1877 and 
1950, and documenting lynching as a form of terrorism used to maintain white 
supremacy in the Jim Crow era.

Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative that built 
the memorial, said its purpose is to encourage Americans to wrestle with that 
legacy and its lingering effects on the criminal-justice system - and all of 
society for that matter. According to Stevenson, "our goal is not to be 
divisive," but to "encourage people to confront the truth of our past with more 
courage."

South Carolinians should heed Stevenson's call. At the center of the memorial 
are 800 weathered, reddish steel monuments - 1 for each county in which a 
lynching took place. South Carolina is well represented with 35 monuments - 
some listing more than a dozen lynching victims.

It is imperative the citizens of this state not only know but face lynching's 
long legacy.

The research that Justice 360 founder John Blume and I conducted found that the 
large majority of those who lost their lives to a lynch mob were black men and 
boys, some in their early teens, accused of rape, attempted rape or lesser 
"offenses" against white women. In fact, prior to 1899, no black person was 
legally executed in South Carolina for rape or attempted sexual assault; every 
single person so accused died at the hands of a lynching party.

Even after 1899, lynchings were common for perceived transgressions against 
"Southern white womanhood," which the public believed deserved instant justice, 
or when the criminal justice system did not deliver the "correct" result. For 
example, after a judge directed a verdict of not guilty in a 1926 Aiken County 
murder case previously overturned by the S.C. Supreme Court, a mob 
"overpowered" the jailer and murdered the 3 defendants.

Lynching also occurred for minor offenses (our research identified one lynching 
of a man accused of stealing a Bible and of an elderly woman who allegedly 
covered it up) or for no crime at all (e.g., blacks not "knowing their place" 
in the social/economic order).

The last S.C. lynching occurred roughly 70 years ago. Willie Earle was arrested 
on circumstantial evidence that he killed a Greenville taxi driver. On Feb. 17, 
1947, a white mob demanded the Pickens County Jail turn Earle over. The members 
of the mob then drove Earle to Greenville, where they stabbed and shot him.

Lynching was replaced with a legal system of capital punishment that continues 
to mete out the death penalty disproportionately to black defendants accused of 
crimes involving white victims.

After many of the men involved confessed their role in the lynching, 31 white 
men were tried for murdering Earle. An all-white jury found the defendants not 
guilty. The courtroom broke out in applause, and the judge, disgusted by the 
verdict and reactions, left the bench without thanking the jury for its 
service.

It is all too easy to say that lynching is a thing of the past, a product of an 
earlier era of our state's history best forgotten. That would be both wrong and 
short-sighted. Lynching was replaced with a legal system of capital punishment 
that continues to mete out the death penalty disproportionately to black 
defendants accused of crimes involving white victims. It became, for all 
practical purposes, lynching's stepchild.

The race of the victim continues to be a major determining factor in who will 
be executed. We have tracked every death penalty case in South Carolina since 
1977 (the "modern era" of the death penalty), and 81 % of all death sentences 
have been imposed on defendants accused of killing a white victim.

The racist roots of capital punishment are alive and well.

South Carolina's current death row is more than 56 % African-American, though 
African-Americans make up less than 30 % of our state's population. We have 
also identified several cases in which black men were convicted and sentenced 
to death by all-white juries (and judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys), 
making the courtroom appear (at least visually) more like a lynch mob than a 
court of law.

The racist roots of capital punishment are alive and well.

George Santayana said "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to 
repeat it." Unless we face and acknowledge the ugly history of racial terror 
embodied by the lynch mob, there is no hope of reducing the pernicious effects 
of race that continue to infect South Carolina's death penalty.

(source: Opinion; Ms. Lindsey Vann is the executive director of Justice 360; 
she represents individuals facing the death penalty----The State)








ALABAMA:

Jury gives former death row inmate life without parole



Throughout a 5-day retrial, a man once sentenced to death for murdering a 
59-year-old woman in her Grand Bay home managed to convince a jury his life 
should be spared.

On Thursday, 25-year-old Derek Tyler Horton was convicted of capital murder for 
his role in the death of Jeanette Romprey, who was found deceased from 2 
gunshot wounds to the head in her burned down home in April 2010.

After 6 years on death row, Horton's original conviction was overturned because 
prosecutors improperly introduced into evidence "prior bad acts" he committed. 
It was 1 of a handful of local cases that have been overturned with assistance 
from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).

Though he strongly encouraged him not to, Judge Michael Youngpeter granted 
Horton's request to act as his own attorney last October. Ultimately, 
court-appointed shadow council Glenn Davidson handled most of the testimony.

At trial, Davidson asked witnesses a few questions at Horton's direction, 
including some about Romprey's activity before she was murdered. None of the 
answers the defense received provided much information, and some of state's 
forensic experts were not cross examined at all.

According to those witnesses for the prosecution, Horton's palmprint was 
detected on the driver's door of a PT Cruiser stolen from Romprey's house the 
night she was murdered. The car was later found, with an empty gas tank, on the 
side of Interstate 65.

Investigators also found "a lot" of Horton's DNA on the steering wheel, which 
they say was likely from sweating, and a toboggan he often wore was found with 
his blood on it nearby. DNA evidence recovered from the weapon used to kill 
Romprey was not sufficient enough to make a match.

One of things highlighted in the state's case was Horton's behavior before and 
after Romprey's murder. Sarah Adams, his girlfriend at the time, said she'd 
planned to stay with Horton that weekend, but he disappeared without warning 
and was gone for 2 days.

Adams said she nor his family heard from him until he called from Evergreen. 
Because he'd not previously had a car, Adams said she was curious how'd gotten 
there. When she asked, Horton allegedly told her he'd just "gotten a car driven 
it until he ran out of gas."

"He said angels carried him the rest of the way [to Evergreen]," Adams added in 
her testimony.

Over the next few days, Adams said Hoton exhibited very strange behavior, 
focusing on God and telling her several times that God wanted him to bring 
judgement on people. She also said he built a fire at his house, which he made 
her stand near for a long time reading the Bible.

According to Adams' testimony, Horton stayed up all night to keep the fire from 
dying, and the next day, a Tuesday, was insistent that she and his mother go to 
church.

"He forced me to pray, but I didn't do it right," Adams said. "I prayed like a 
thought I was supposed to pray. I was being sincere, but to him it wasn't 
sincere. I couldn't get him to understand I was praying ... you can't make me 
be no more sincere than praying."

The next day, police took Horton to the Mobile County Metro Jail, where he made 
several phone calls to Adams that prosecutors also played for the jury this 
week. Most of the conversations centered around Horton asking Adams for the 
money he needed for bond.

When Adams told him that she'd have trouble getting the money together, he got 
angry.

"I don't have anybody to give me $500 when I'm on the run from a f*cking murder 
charge," he said in one of the record phone conversations. "I swear to God, 
everybody who said they gave a f*ck, I'm shooting them and I'm burning their 
f*cking house down."

The jury only spent around 2 hours deliberating before they unanimously 
convicted Horton on 3 capital murder charges.

Afterward, Horton gave the indication that he wasn't much interested in his 
sentence. He said in court that he planned to appeal his second conviction.

Horton also briefly addressed the members of the jury, telling them they'd 
"made a mistake" and "I forgive you." He also asked them to look at his family 
members, many of whom were in the courtroom throughout most of the trial.

The defense argued that Horton had only just turned 18 at the time of the 
murder and was suffering from an extreme mental and emotional disturbance - one 
Davidson told the jury "probably persists to this day based on the way we've 
seen this trial happen."

After about 30 minutes in the jury room, seven jurors recommended sentencing 
Horton to life without the possibility of parole, which beat the 5 who wanted 
to sentence him to death for a 2nd time. Alabama judges are no longer allowed 
to overrule a jury's recommendation to enforce the death penalty, so it's 
likely that sentence will stand.

A formal sentencing hearing for Horton will be held June 28 in Mobile.

After the verdict, retired prosecutor Jo Beth Murphree - who, along with the 
family, was wearing Romprey's favorite color, purple - said they respected the 
jury's decision even though they'd sought a 2nd death sentence for Horton.

"Life without parole means just that," Murphree said. "He will spend the rest 
of his life in prison, and we're very grateful for that."

When asked about their strategy for the retrial, Murphree acknowledged the 
prosecution has been meticulous to make sure they didn't run afoul of anything 
that caused Horton's 1st conviction to be overturned by the Alabama Court of 
Criminal Appeals.

Specifically, the 1st conviction because prosecutors introduced prior crimes 
and allegations against Horton to the jury, which the court said was improper 
because "collateral acts" or "prior bad acts" cannot be used against criminal 
defendants to bolster a case against them.

"Even though I disagreed with some of those grounds, we did not touch any of 
those issues in this case," Murphree added. "Anything they said was a 
reversible error, of course, we weren't going to bring up in this case, and the 
jury convicted nonetheless."

Murphree even took a small shot at the appeals court's 2016 ruling, telling 
reporters she "felt like evidence we presented was more than "minimally 
sufficient," using a phrase Judge J. Elizabeth Kellum wrote about the 1st 
prosecution's evidence in the 2016 reversal.

(source: lagniappemobile.com)








LOUISIANA:

Defense: Suspect in string of killings may have been insane



A Louisiana man charged with killing 3 men and wounding a 4th may have been 
insane at the time of last year's string of shootings, a defense attorney said 
in a court filing this week.

The lawyer, Brent Stockstill, filed a request on Monday for a judge in Baton 
Rouge to order a mental examination for Ryan Sharpe. Stockstill questions 
Sharpe's ability to assist in his defense.

The four shootings happened in a rural area north of Baton Rouge and left 
residents on edge for weeks. A law enforcement official told The Associated 
Press last year that Sharpe wasn't a suspect until he called East Feliciana 
Parish Sheriff Jeff Travis' office on Oct. 11 and identified himself as the 
killer. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because the 
investigation was ongoing.

The victims were middle-age or older white men who were shot at their homes or 
on their property. Sharpe, who owned a plumbing company, also is white.

Stockstill's request for a mental exam for Sharpe cites unspecified 
"circumstances" and the "method and manner" of the killings as well as "the 
nature of statements" that Sharpe made to investigators.

Sharpe's lawyers want a "sanity commission" to determine if he "knew the 
difference between right and wrong" and whether he was "insane or temporarily 
insane by reason of mental defect or condition or due to a foreign substance," 
Stockstill wrote.

East Feliciana Parish District Attorney Samuel D'Aquilla said his office also 
can request mental evaluations for defendants but didn't ask for one in 
Sharpe's case.

"We don't think he needs one," D'Aquilla said in a text message Thursday.

Sharpe is charged with 1st-degree murder in the Oct. 9 shooting of Boy Scouts 
employee Brad DeFranceschi, who was gunned down while trimming weeds in front 
of his house. DeFranceschi lived on Boy Scouts camp property in Clinton, an 
East Feliciana Parish town of 1,600 people about 30 miles (50 kilometers) 
northeast of Baton Rouge.

Sharpe is charged with 2nd-degree murder in the July 8 shooting of 62-year-old 
Tommy Bass, who was killed in the carport of his home. He is charged with 
attempted 1st-degree murder in the Sept. 12 shooting of 47-year-old Buck 
Hornsby, who was wounded while exercising on his property. And he is charged 
with 2nd-degree murder in the Sept. 19 killing of 66-year-old Carroll Breeden, 
who was shot to death while doing yard work in front of his home in East Baton 
Rouge Parish.

East Feliciana Parish prosecutors aren't seeking the death penalty against 
Sharpe, but D'Aquilla has said he still reserves the right to seek the death 
penalty if "something changes for us dramatically" as the case proceeds.

Travis has said Sharpe confessed when investigators questioned him after his 
arrest. Travis also has said detectives found "significant physical evidence" 
linking Sharpe to the shootings.

(source: Associated Press)