[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, ALA., OHIO, TENN., NEV.

[Rick Halperin]

November 15




TEXAS----execution

Mexican citizen executed in Texas for killings of wife, kids


A Mexican citizen on death row in Texas was executed Wednesday night for the 
sledgehammer killings of his wife and 2 children more than 26 years ago.

Roberto Moreno Ramos was condemned for the 1992 deaths of his 42-year-old wife 
Leticia, 7-year-old daughter Abigail, and 3-year-old son Jonathan at their home 
in Progreso, located along the Mexico border.

When asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Ramos thanked the Mexican 
consulate for assisting with appeals in his case and said he was grateful for 
“the humane treatment I got in prison in Texas.”

“I’m getting my gold watch that it took the governor 30 years to forge,” he 
said without elaborating. “Thank you God. Lord, send me a chariot. I’m ready.”

As the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began taking effect, 
the 64-year-old Ramos took a couple of deep breaths, sputtered once and began 
snoring. Within seconds, all movement stopped.

11 minutes later, at 9:36 p.m. CST, Ramos was pronounced dead.

He became the 21st inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the 11th given 
a lethal injection in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. No 
friends or relatives of Ramos or his victims witnessed the execution.

Mexican officials had called for his execution to be stopped, arguing he was 
part of a group of Mexican citizens condemned in the U.S. who were never told 
when first arrested that they could get legal help from the Mexican government.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday night cleared the way for the punishment 
when it denied two appeals seeking to halt the lethal injection. Ramos’ 
attorney on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to stop his execution, arguing 
that Ramos’ constitutional rights were violated as lower courts refused to 
fully review his claims that his trial lawyers failed to present any evidence 
about his mental illness and abusive childhood that could have persuaded jurors 
to spare his life.

3 retired justices who had served on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals filed 
court documents with the Supreme Court on Wednesday in support of stopping the 
execution. The ex-judges alleged the appeals court appointed an incompetent 
appellate attorney who early in the post-conviction process failed to 
investigate Ramos’ case.

Also Wednesday, a federal judge in Austin dismissed Ramos’ request to 
temporarily block the execution. The request had been part of a lawsuit Ramos 
filed against the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals a day earlier. The suit 
alleged the appeals court had not allowed Ramos to present claims he had 
ineffective trial and appellate lawyers.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals 
had previously turned down requests to halt Ramos’ execution.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday declined to recommend either a 
commutation of his sentence or a six-month reprieve.

In court documents, Ramos’ appellate attorney, Danalynn Recer, had argued Ramos 
suffered from bipolar disorder most of his life, including during the time of 
his family’s killings, as well as brain damage that affected his ability to 
control his impulses and regulate his emotions.

Recer said Ramos was also brutally beaten as a child by his father.

Ramos was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico, and grew up in Guadalajara and 
Tijuana before his family moved to the United States in 1970.

“No fact-finder or decision-maker entrusted with Mr. Moreno Ramos’ life has 
ever been provided with evidence of (his) ‘diverse human frailties’ to assist 
them in dispensing the most severe punishment under law,” Recer said.

But the Texas Attorney General’s Office said Ramos’ death sentence was 
appropriate due to his “violent and dangerous nature.”

Authorities said Ramos bludgeoned his family members and then buried them 
underneath his home’s bathroom floor so he could marry the woman he was having 
an extramarital affair with at the time.

In court filings, the attorney general’s office highlighted testimony from 
Ramos’ then-19-year-old son, who told jurors at Ramos’ 1993 trial that his 
father “would continue to commit criminal acts of violence.”

In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, found 
Ramos was part of a group of 52 Mexican citizens awaiting execution in the U.S. 
who weren’t advised of their consular rights under the Vienna Convention when 
first arrested. It recommended they be tried again to determine if consular 
access would have affected their cases. Then-President George W. Bush directed 
states to reopen the cases.

But the Supreme Court in 2008 overruled Bush’s directive, saying only Congress 
can require states to follow the international court’s ruling.

Including Ramos, 6 Mexican citizens have been executed since being named in the 
international court ruling and all the executions were carried out by Texas, 
according to the Mexican government.

Ramos becomes the 11th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas 
and the 556th overall since the state resumed capital punishmen on December 7, 
1982. Ramos becomes the 38th condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas since 
Greg Abbott became Governor in 2015.

Ramos becomes the 21st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA 
and the 1, 486th overall since executions resumed in the nation on January 17, 
1977.

(sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin)<P>

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



Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----38



Executions in Texas:  Dec. 7, 1982----present-----556

Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #


39---------Dec. 4-----------------Joseph Garcia-----------557

40---------Dec. 11----------------Alvin Braziel, Jr.------558

41---------Jan. 15----------------Blaine Milam------------559

42---------Jan. 30----------------Robert Jennings---------560

43---------Feb. 28----------------Billy Wayne Coble-------561

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)



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

Dallas County DA's office says testing is being done on items in Darlie Routier 
case


For people who say Darlie Routier was unjustly sentenced to death row for her 
son's murder, their argument often comes back to DNA.


Routier, 48, was convicted of fatally stabbing her 5-year-old son Damon in June 
1996. Her 6-year-old son, Devon, was also slain, but she has not been tried in 
his death.

Routier said she could not remember much of what happened that night and 
claimed a stranger came into her Rowlett house and attacked her and her sons. 
Investigators have said evidence at the house was inconsistent with her 
account, and police suggested Routier may have inflicted her own neck wounds.

For Darlie Routier's mother, Darlie Kee, and others, the hope for a successful 
appeal may hinge on the results of DNA testing that was granted a decade ago.

The Dallas County district attorney's office said that "multiple items of 
evidence" have been tested this year after court orders from November and 
December 2017, and that DNA testing is ongoing.

"When testing is completed, the court will schedule a hearing to review the 
results," the district attorney's office said.

Stephen Cooper, an attorney for Routier, said 10 to 12 items are being tested, 
but he did not specify what they were.

Statutes have changed since the original request for the DNA testing was filed 
a decade ago, which has allowed the defense to test additional items, he said.

"Frankly, the DA's office has been cooperative in allowing ... [the defense] to 
expand to anything that might be possible," Cooper said.

The defense asked that testing be done at a private facility, but the state has 
insisted the process go through the Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab 
in Garland.

DPS referred questions about the testing to the district attorney's office.

"We've got more reason to look at additional items that were not tested before, 
so we're just working through that list we've had for several years," Cooper 
said. "It's not really new; we're just now getting to it. We've taken 
bite-sized chunks out of our request at a time with the really chaotic crime 
scene, focusing on things that should be tested and what order they should be 
tested. It's been a long process but necessary."

In November 2008, U.S. District Judge Royal Furgeson granted additional testing 
of items including a bloody sock found a few houses down, a knife that is 
thought to be the murder weapon and the fibers from another knife found in a 
butcher block in the Routier home. Furgeson also gave permission to have 4 
fingerprints submitted to the FBI to check for matches.

Furgeson wrote in the order that even if another person's DNA were found on the 
sock, that would not necessarily prove the intruder argument.

A 3rd person doesn't answer who might have killed the boys, but "could prove 
helpful in determining whether their murders were the products of a conspiracy, 
rather than the wanton act of an individual suffering from severe postpartum 
depression, as suggested" during the trial, the court document stated.

It's unclear whether testing or federal database checks were done on the bloody 
fingerprint that was found on a table near the body of one of the boys.

"If ... [the fingerprint is] not reasonable doubt, I don't know what is," Kee 
said. "That's enough to make you pause and say, 'Well, whose fingerprint is 
it?'"

In letters sent to the court and entered into Routier's case file, people have 
pleaded with Dallas County Judge Gracie Lewis to run tests of the fingerprint 
in the hope that it may point to the person they think is the real killer.

Earlier this year, The Last Defense, a seven-part documentary series aired on 
ABC, drew new attention to Routier's case and examined what led to her 
conviction.

In early October, a group of people following the case organized a 3-day rally 
outside the Dallas County courthouse to sustain public interest and ask why 
testing has not been completed.

Routier was convicted in February 1997 in Kerrville after a change of venue. 
Kee, who has staunchly maintained her daughter's innocence, thinks that if the 
trial had been conducted in Dallas County, the outcome would have been 
different.

Kee said she thinks her daughter's fate was sealed when the jury was shown 
video of Routier spraying Silly String at her son's grave during a birthday 
party for Devon shortly after his death.

Prosecutors said Routier's behavior showed a lack of grief and remorse. The 
defense said it was the family's way of trying to cope with sorrow.

Kee said prosecutors never proved her daughter guilty.

"They never could explain the sock, and they never could explain her wounds," 
she said.

In June, Kee intends to hold a "convoy of justice" at the graveyard where the 
boys are buried, on what would have been Devon's 30th birthday.

"I'm just very tired of it after 22 years," Kee said. Routier's "family and 
friends, we've all been going through this for 22 years with no closure at all 
with the threat of ... [death row] hanging over her head."

(source: Dallas Morning News)

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



Ken Paxton’s Strange Quest to Execute an Intellectually Disabled Man
Prosecutors have agreed to spare Bobby Moore’s life due to his intellectual 
disability. Texas’ highest criminal court and top legal official want to kill 
him anyway.


As a teenager, Bobby Moore couldn’t tell time. Before dropping out of school in 
the 9th grade, he was so far behind his peers that teachers told him to draw 
pictures rather than try to keep up with reading and writing assignments. 
According to court filings, Moore repeatedly got sick from eating out of 
neighbors’ garbage cans in his Houston neighborhood, apparently unaware that 
the rotting food kept poisoning him.

For the past year, the Harris County DA’s Office has sided with appellate 
lawyers arguing that Moore, who was convicted in the 1980 murder of a Houston 
convenience store clerk, is too intellectually disabled to execute. Even as the 
death penalty loses momentum in Texas, it’s highly unusual for prosecutors to 
argue that a defendant’s life should be spared. But that hasn’t stopped Texas 
Attorney General Ken Paxton from fighting to have Moore executed.

In an extraordinary move last week, Paxton’s office filed a motion with the 
U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in Moore’s case, arguing to uphold his death 
sentence. Typically, the AG’s office only gets involved with death penalty 
cases if local prosecutors ask for assistance, and Texas law doesn’t authorize 
the office to contravene the decisions of local prosecutors.

In his filing to the Supreme Court, Paxton cautions against moving forward on 
the case “without the benefit of an adversarial presentation.” Since 
prosecutors won’t fight to uphold Moore’s death sentence, Paxton has asked the 
court for permission to “to file a true brief in opposition” to Moore’s claims. 
“The DA, who represents just one of Texas’s 254 counties, does not represent 
the Attorney General’s interest,” he wrote.

Paxton is virtually alone in his support for Moore’s execution. Numerous 
medical groups, legal organizations and prominent conservative lawyers, 
including former Baylor University president and Whitewater investigator Ken 
Starr, have filed amicus briefs urging the court to side with Moore.

Paxton’s office did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday, 
and Moore’s attorneys declined to comment.

Moore’s legal saga speaks to the recalcitrant way Texas, the epicenter of the 
American death penalty, has responded to the Supreme Court’s prohibition on 
executing intellectually disabled offenders. For years, Texas has executed 
inmates whom other death penalty states likely would have spared. That’s 
because the state relied on a legal standard rooted more deeply in stereotypes 
about intellectual disability than in medical consensus.

In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that executing intellectually disabled people 
violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, but it 
didn’t tell states how to determine who should be exempt. Most states turned to 
a combination of intelligence tests and clinical assessments. The Texas Court 
of Criminal Appeals (CCA), the state’s highest criminal court, instead 
established a slippery standard: the “level and degree of mental retardation at 
which a consensus of Texas citizens would agree that a person should be 
exempted from the death penalty.”

In 2004, the CCA made it possible for Texas inmates to meet clinical benchmarks 
for intellectual disability yet still not be disabled enough to avoid the death 
penalty. The ruling established a checklist for courts to weigh, the so-called 
Briseno factors, which went beyond clinical assessment and emphasized outdated 
stereotypes of intellectually disabled people. To illustrate the bar it wished 
to set, the court referenced John Steinbeck’s character Lennie from Of Mice and 
Men as an example of someone everyday Texans would exempt from the death 
penalty.

“What we’re seeing in Texas is not just extraordinarily rare, it’s essentially 
a rogue action, in contradiction of state law, in support of an outlier 
decision that every responsible organization agrees is wrong.”

Thus, Texas continued to put to death inmates who — to use a few real-world 
examples — couldn’t count money, got lost if they wandered a few blocks from 
home, or drooled during class. One study blamed the Briseno factors for the 
“strikingly low” success rate of Texas death row inmates challenging their 
executions on the grounds of intellectual disability.

That’s the legal situation that Moore confronted. In 2014, after a two-day 
evidentiary hearing, a trial court concluded that Moore should be spared the 
ultimate punishment due to his intellectual disability. However, applying the 
Briseno factors, the CCA overturned that ruling and blessed Moore’s execution 
the following year, putting his life in the Supreme Court’s hands.

In a 5-3 ruling, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called Texas’ method for 
determining intellectual disability “an invention of the CCA untied to any 
acknowledged source.” Her majority opinion declared the Briseno factors invalid 
for creating “an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability 
will be executed” and sent Moore’s case back to the CCA for re-evaluation.

Last year, in a filing with the CCA, Harris County DA Kim Ogg took the 
remarkable step of  asking the court to reduce Moore’s sentence to life in 
prison and urged the court to conform to American Psychiatric Association 
standards for determining the intellectual disability of death row inmates. In 
June, the CCA upheld Moore’s death sentence anyway.

That puts the case back in front of the Supreme Court. In a filing with the 
high court last week, the American Bar Association argued that Texas has 
effectively resurrected the much-maligned Briseno factors “under the guise of a 
new standard for intellectual disability.”

Even prominent conservatives disagree with the way Texas has handled Moore’s 
case. In an amicus brief, a group of lawyers including Ken Starr argued that 
the CCA seems unconcerned with the rule of the law. The Texas court’s 
insistence on upholding Moore’s death sentence “reflects a disturbing 
disregard” for Supreme Court authority, the lawyers argued. The high court made 
it clear last year that “Moore is intellectually disabled and constitutionally 
ineligible for the death penalty.”

According to Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information 
Center, it’s rare for a state attorney general to supplant local prosecutors in 
death penalty cases. He says it’s unprecedented for an AG to argue for killing 
a death row inmate whom local prosecutors have already agreed to spare.

“What we’re seeing in Texas is not just extraordinarily rare, it’s essentially 
a rogue action, in contradiction of state law, in support of an outlier 
decision that every responsible organization agrees is wrong,” Dunham said.

(source: Texas Observer)




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

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals grants new trial for death row inmate Albert 
James Turner----The court threw out Turner's conviction because his defense 
attorneys said at trial that he had committed murder, even though Turner wanted 
to maintain his innocence.


The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has taken the rare step of overturning the 
capital murder conviction of a death row inmate, granting Albert James Turner a 
new trial based on issues with his defense attorneys at his trial.

Turner was convicted in 2011 of killing his wife and mother-in-law in Fort Bend 
County shortly after Christmas 2009. His daughter, who was 12 at the time, 
called the police and said she had witnessed the crimes.

At Turner’s trial, he wanted to maintain his innocence. When put on the stand, 
he told jurors “I didn’t kill anyone” and claimed instead that the murders 
resulted from a conspiracy involving a local mayor, according to court 
documents.

But Turner’s defense team, believing they could secure a life sentence as 
opposed to the death penalty if Turner pleaded guilty, told jurors he had 
committed the crime and “still hasn’t accepted what has happened,” according to 
court documents.

In a 7–1 decision Wednesday, the high court ruled that Turner had a 
constitutional right to attorneys who would represent his interests at trial. 
Their reasoning was based heavily on a May 2018 U.S. Supreme Court case, McCoy 
v. Louisiana, that ruled defendants have “the right to insist that counsel 
refrain from admitting guilt, even when counsel’s experience-based view is that 
confessing guilt offers the defendant the best chance to avoid the death 
penalty.”

(source: Texas Tribune)

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


Death penalty is satanic ritual


The death penalty is a Satanic Ritual and should have been abolished long ago. 
Actually killing convicts bring them peace far sooner than if he has to reflect 
on his crime for the rest of his natural like in the confines of a prison cell. 
Life in prison is a far greater punishment than killing them and putting them 
out of their misery.

As a theologian, I am appalled that any person who purports to be a “Christian” 
would promote the death penalty. Personally participating in voting to kill 
should be considered by genuine followers of Jesus to be a mortal sin.

Many innocent humans have been put to death right here in Huntsville, known 
worldwide as “The City of Death”. I was told by “Christians” involved in the 
vandalism and theft of our church’s anti-death penalty sign at 1405 University 
Avenue, that it doesn’t matter if innocent people are executed if they believe 
in Jesus because they will go directly to Heaven which is a good thing. 
Theologically speaking, this religious philosophy is more than bizarre in my 
opinion.

Not only does the United States execute more humans than 190 of the 195 
countries on our planet but Texas executes more humans than any other state. 
More humans are put to death in Huntsville in an average year than in many 
Muslim dictatorships.

Even more insane than killing people in Texas is that it can cost over $2 
million dollars before the prisoner is finally injected after many years of 
appeals when life in prison would save the taxpayers over half that amount.

(source: Letter to the Editor, George Russell, Huntsville Item)




ALABAMA:

A Dothan man previously given the death sentence, resentenced to 99 years


A Dothan man condemned to death for a 2004 murder will now serve a 99-year 
sentence following a new trial.

Lameco Dechawn Turner was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death 
in Jan. 19, 2010. However, the case came back on appeal and a new trial was 
held in August. Tuesday, Turner was given a 99-year prison sentence.

Dothan police investigators charged Turner with capital murder in the April 20, 
2004, death of Prakash Shah, who died after being shot during a robbery of the 
Southeast Mini Mart located at Cottonwood Road and Third Avenue.

During Turner’s previous trial, former Dothan Police Officer Frank Meredith 
stated Turner admitted he pulled the trigger in the fatal shooting, and that 
there was no evidence to show it was an accident.

On appeal, however, Turner argued that his case suffered irreparable damage 
when confessions of his non-testifying accomplices’ were admitted into evidence 
through the testimony of the lead investigator. Turner argued he shot Shah by 
accident. The lead investigator testified that witness accounts indicated that 
Turner shot Shah after Shah grabbed a nearby phone to call police. Turner 
argued on appeal that introduction of the confessions violated Turner’s 
constitutional right to confront the witnesses against him.

The conviction was reversed and remanded back to court for a new trial.

According to lead counsel Aimee Smith, during Turner’s new trial Judge Michael 
Conaway imposed a 110-year prison sentence, which she said was out of the 
jurisdiction of the courts.

“We filed a brief imposing a sentence of 20 years in prison up to 99 years in 
prison, and we are thankful the court corrected the sentencing,” Smith said.

(source: Dothan Eagle)




OHIO:

Experts disagree over Melvin Knight's mental capacity to face death penalty


2 mental health experts on Wednesday gave Westmoreland County jurors different 
opinions as to whether Melvin Knight suffers from an intellectual disability 
that renders him ineligible for the death penalty.

During the 7th day of Knight’s sentencing trial, defense expert Christine Nezu, 
a clinical psychologist from Philadelphia, testified for the defense that 
Knight was not able to function in society and was “profoundly adaptively 
impaired,” both conditions that render him intellectually disabled.

“I believe Melvin has severe deficits and trouble adapting to the real world,” 
Nezu testified.

Bruce Wright, a prosecution-hired psychologist from Pittsburgh, told jurors 
Knight knew right from wrong, could function adequately and is not 
intellectually impaired.

Knight, 29, formerly of Swissvale, is seeking to have his life spared for his 
role in the 2010 torture and slaying of a mentally disabled Mt. Pleasant woman 
in 2010.

Prosecutors want Knight sentenced to death.

Testimony in the trial is expected to conclude Thursday with a final defense 
witness, followed by closing arguments and jury deliberations. Knight on 
Wednesday told Common Pleas Court Judge Rita Hathaway he would not testify.

Prosecutors contend Knight was one of six Greensburg roommates who in February 
2010 held 30-year-old Jennifer Daugherty captive for more than two days. She 
was beaten and tortured before being bound with Christmas lights, fatally 
stabbed, stuffed into a garbage bin and discarded in a snow-covered parking 
lot.

Nezu told jurors she found three mitigating factors why Knight should be spared 
from the death penalty:

     Knight did not have the capacity to appreciate his conduct;
     his emotional and mental ages ranged between 9 and 12; and
     he was susceptible to be dominated by another person.

The defense maintains that Knight was under the influence of co-defendant Ricky 
Smyrnes when he stabbed and participated in the beatings and torture of 
Daugherty during her captivity. Knight pleaded guilty in 2012 to first-degree 
murder and was sentenced to death — a penalty that was later overturned by a 
state appeals court, which ordered a new trial to determine whether he lives or 
dies.

Wright, offering rebuttal testimony for the prosecution, told jurors that since 
Knight’s death sentence was overturned, he started working in his prison’s 
cafeteria, earning 14 cents an hour, routinely visits the facility’s law 
library to research legal cases and attends education classes, including 
recently having signed up to learn heating, ventilation and air conditioning 
repair skills.

Wright said Knight is an avid reader, having recently completed a biography 
about President Donald Trump.

Knight’s intelligence scores on IQ tests range between 77 and 97 indicate he is 
not disabled, although he was diagnosed with depression, psychosis, substance 
abuse, attention deficit disorder and antisocial behavior, Wright testified.

“He had the capacity to appreciate his criminal conduct. He chose not to, but 
he had the capacity,” Wright said.

Knight’s mother, Yolanda Rue, told jurors that her son had dealt with mental 
health issues since he was first diagnosed at age 6. She testified Knight 
enrolled in special education classes and later attended schools better 
equipped to deal with his mental health and learning needs.

Rue said her son was routinely bullied as a child.

“He couldn’t be without supervision because of poor choices he made. He could 
be talked into anything if he thought it was fun,” Rue testified.

She said Knight as a late teen rebelled against her authority and moved away 
from home after he turned 18. She learned through a friend he became homeless 
and later reunited with her son after he briefly came home with his pregnant 
girlfriend, identified as co-defendant Amber Meidinger, a few weeks before 
their arrest for Daugherty’s murder.

Rue testified she would not allow Meidinger to live in her home with Knight and 
offered to find her a shelter for pregnant women until her son was able to find 
a home of his own.

“Amber and Melvin weren’t good with that,” she testified.

(source: triblive.com)


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

Ohio Family Of 4 Charged In ‘Cold-Blooded’ Massacre Of Another Family
--George Wagner III, his wife and their 2 sons have been arrested in the 2016 
slayings of 7 Rhoden family members and a victim’s fiancée.


4 members of a southern Ohio family are in custody as suspects in the 
execution-style slayings of eight people from another family, authorities said.

George “Billy” Wagner III, his wife and their 2 adult sons were taken into 
custody Tuesday in connection with the cold case slayings of seven members of 
the Rhoden family and the fiancée of 1 of the victims. The bodies were found at 
4 separate homes in the rural town of Piketon in April 2016.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said the arrests were made after a grand jury 
indicted the 4 on aggravated murder charges. If convicted, they could be 
sentenced to death.

“We promised the victims’ families that the day would come when this case would 
be solved, and today is that day,” DeWine said in a news release. “The 
indictments allege that these suspects developed a calculated plan to execute 
the victims in the middle of the night and then carefully cover their tracks. 
Their alleged plan was sophisticated, but not sophisticated enough for our team 
of investigators and prosecutors.”

The victims were Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40, his ex-wife Dana Manley Rhoden, 
37, and their 3 children, Hanna May Rhoden, 19, Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16, and 
Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden, 20. Frankie Rhoden’s fiancée, Hannah “Hazel” Gilley, 
20, was also killed, along with the elder Christopher Rhoden’s brother Kenneth 
Rhoden, 44, and cousin Gary Rhoden, 38.

“The Wagners were friends with the Rhodens and had been for years,” DeWine 
said. “They knew the layouts of the Rhodens’ homes, and they knew the victims’ 
routines. It is our belief that the suspects used this knowledge to 
meticulously plan these horrendous, cold-blooded murders.”

At the time of the slayings, Hanna Rhoden and Edward “Jake” Wagner were 
allegedly fighting over the custody of their child.

In addition to murder, the Wagners face numerous other charges, including 
conspiracy and aggravated burglary.

(source: Huffington Post)




TENNESSEE----impending execution

Tennessee says court should reject death row inmate's plea


Attorneys for the state of Tennessee say the courts should reject a plea by 
condemned inmate David Earl Miller to halt his execution.

Miller is scheduled to be executed Dec. 6. He has filed a lawsuit in federal 
court in Nashville arguing that electrocution is unconstitutional and lethal 
injection is even worse. Miller suggests in his suit that the firing squad 
would be a more humane method of execution than either of the methods currently 
practiced in Tennessee.

In a response filed Friday, attorneys for the state say Miller's claims have 
already been decided by the court. They say Miller's execution has been delayed 
twice to allow challenges to Tennessee's lethal injection methods.

The state has given Miller until Nov. 20 to choose between lethal injection and 
the electric chair.

(source: Associated Press)




NEVADA:

36-year Nevada death row inmate gets new hearing

A study by the Crime and Justice Institute says even as the nation is putting 
fewer people in prison, Nevada is putting more behind bars and keeping them 
there longer.


A man convicted of fatally stabbing a pregnant woman 38 times during a home 
burglary in Reno is going to get a new hearing on his death sentence.

The U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals on Tuesday granted the petition of Cary W. 
Williams who maintained his attorney was deficient during the penalty hearing 
before 3 judges in Washoe County.

Williams pleaded to the killing of Katherine Carlson who was alone in her home 
on June 27, 1982. Her husband, a firefighter was gone that night.

The court said Williams, who was 18 at the time, believed the home was empty. 
He had been in several other home burglaries when the residents were away,

Carlson was in the bedroom and heard Williams enter. He took a butcher knife 
and there was a struggle before the victim was stabbed.

Williams then took money, a camera, jewelry and a .22 caliber pistol before 
fleeing. He was captured in Los Angeles while trying to pawn some of the 
jewelry.

In ordering a new penalty hearing, the appeals court said the attorney for 
Williams failed to present "substantial and mitigating evidence" involving his 
abuse and traumatic childhood.

His mother died at an early age and he was shuffled from home to home and 
school to school in a violent section of Los Angeles, according to the appeals 
court.

He has been on death row 36 years.

(source: nevadaappeal.com)