[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----LA., OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

September 3



LOUISIANA:

Louisiana Supreme Court set to hear CarQuest double-murder death penalty appeal


Lee Turner Jr. began working for CarQuest Auto Parts in Baton Rouge just 11 
days before the then-21-year-old fatally shot two employees, both husbands and 
fathers, during a Sunday afternoon robbery in 2011.

Turner visited the company's Airline Highway location twice on March 27, 2011, 
the day of the slayings, introducing himself to manager Edward "Eddie" Gurtner 
III that morning and returning just before the 3 p.m. closing.

Gurtner, 43, of Denham Springs, was shot 12 times — including several times in 
the back — as he tried to run from Turner.

Randy Chaney, 55, of Greenwell Springs, who was the assistant manager of the 
company's Staring Lane location, was helping out at the Airline Highway store, 
near Siegen Lane, that ill-fated day when he was shot once in the back of the 
head by Turner.

An East Baton Rouge Parish jury convicted Turner on two counts of first-degree 
murder in May 2015 and recommended he receive the death penalty. State District 
Judge Richard Anderson, who presided over the trial, imposed that sentence 
several months later.

5 years have passed since an East Baton Rouge Parish jury reached a death 
verdict for a convicted killer, but on Friday, after less than tw…

On Tuesday, the Louisiana Supreme Court will hear arguments from Turner's 
appellate lawyers and the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney's Office.

Turner, now 28 and formerly of New Orleans, is urging the high court to reverse 
his conviction and death sentence and either order a new trial or a new 
sentencing hearing. The East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney's Office is 
asking the justices to affirm the jury's verdicts.

Turner's attorneys complain in his Supreme Court appeal about, among other 
things, the jury selection process; his 11-hour interrogation by East Baton 
Rouge Parish sheriff's detectives during which he eventually confessed; graphic 
crime scene photos shown to the jury; a frantic 911 call made by Gurtner's wife 
and played during the guilt and penalty phases of the trial; and a search 
warrant that led to the discovery of bank bags and CarQuest deposit slips in a 
garbage can outside the Ritterman Avenue home where he was staying with an 
uncle.

Capital Appeals Project lawyers Caroline Tillman, Christopher Murell and 
Shanita Farris, as well as New Orleans lawyer Timothy Yazbeck, contend Turner 
did not receive a fair trial.

Assistant District Attorney Allison Rutzen vigorously disputes that contention.

"The trial court went to great lengths to ensure that each phase of defendant's 
trial ... was conducted in a professional, systematic, and productive manner," 
she wrote in a Supreme Court filing.

Rutzen added that Turner's trial attorneys, Margaret Lagattuta and Scott 
Collier, "diligently represented him every step of the way, sparing no expense 
to present their client's case to the jury in the most favorable light 
possible."

The 10 women and 2 men who unanimously found Lee Turner Jr. guilty of 
1st-degree murder after 90 minutes of deliberations Monday will retu…

One of Turner's more explosive Supreme Court claims — one made previously in a 
motion for a new trial that Anderson denied — is that prosecutors 
systematically excluded blacks from the jury, which consisted of 9 white 
jurors, 2 black jurors and 1 Hispanic juror.

First Assistant District Attorney Tracey Barbera, who prosecuted Turner, has 
described as offensive and unfounded the accusation that she discriminated 
against potential jurors on the basis of their race.

Turner's appellate lawyers maintain the state removed black prospective jurors 
"vastly disproportionately" than potential white jurors.

"The State's point that two African Americans actually served on Mr. Turner's 
jury ... does little to mitigate the State's discriminatory pattern, 
particularly given that one of those jurors was seated after the State had 
exhausted all of its strikes," the lawyers allege in a Supreme Court filing.

Rutzen counters that Anderson thoroughly considered Turner's objections to the 
state's challenges lodged at prospective minority jurors.

"Defendant fails to prove that the trial court clearly erred in concluding that 
no prima facie case of purposeful discrimination was present or in finding that 
each of the state's reasons was race-neutral," she wrote.

Turner confessed the day after the killings after initially denying any 
involvement. He said he shot Chaney first, then Gurtner after forcing him to 
open the store safe. Gurtner died with the store's keys, including a key to the 
safe, in his hand.

Turner also told detectives he drove past the store with his pregnant 
girlfriend as investigators scoured the scene the evening of the murders.

Elizabeth Gurtner and one of her sons discovered Eddie Gurtner's body in the 
store warehouse after he failed to answer his cellphone or the store's phone 
that Sunday afternoon.

Turner complains about Elizabeth Gurtner's emotional 911 call because it was 
played twice for the jury.

Turner's attorneys acknowledge the state was entitled to the moral weight of 
its evidence, but they allege the recording was played a 2nd time "for the 
purpose of inflaming the jury and undermining the impact of Mr. Turner's 
mitigating evidence."

Rutzen argues the 911 call was played again to counter testimony about "adverse 
developmental factors" that had occurred in Turner's life, including the 1998 
murder of one of his uncles while the man was working as a security officer.

"Defense counsel knew of the evidence here. They knew that the 911 call had 
forever memorialized young Jamie Gurtner's and his mother's traumatic 
experience of finding their murdered relative at the crime scene. But the 
defense still chose to emphasize the 'traumatic effect' the death of 
defendant's uncle — which he did not witness — had on his life," Rutzen states.

Eddie Gurtner was not scheduled to work the day he was killed but went in to 
catch up on restocking and to hang a mirror in the store's bathroom. His widow 
testified that the last photo she has of her husband is a cellphone selfie he 
took at the store after installing the mirror.

(source: The New Orleans Advocate)




OHIO:

Long-serving Ohio prisons director, Gary Mohr, steps down


The state’s long-serving prisons director is “disheartened” that he couldn’t 
reduce Ohio’s inmate population further, he said as he announced his departure 
from the agency last week.

Gary Mohr was director of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction for 
almost all of Gov. John Kasich’s 2 terms. He oversaw more than 12,000 employees 
and close to 50,000 inmates.

Mohr made attempts to reduce the prison population one of his top priorities, 
with some success. The overall prison population was 49,534 last month, 
compared with 50,670 in January 2011, the month Kasich appointed Mohr.

Mohr spearheaded efforts by Kasich and lawmakers to reduce the number of 
first-time, nonviolent offenders behind bars. But those efforts collided with 
pushback from some prosecutors and judges, and with the impact of the state’s 
opioid crisis, which has swamped the criminal justice system in the past 
decade.

“I’m extraordinarily disheartened that that number’s not more,” Mohr said in an 
interview.

Mohr got a firsthand look at the opioid problem on Wednesday, two days before 
stepping down, after exposure to a mix of contraband heroin and fentanyl 
sickened almost 30 staff members at Ross Correctional Institution.

During his tenure, Mohr also oversaw 15 executions at the death house at the 
Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. He also launched efforts to 
boost the way Ohio prepares inmates for release.

Mohr weathered several negative situations, including the 2013 prison suicide 
of notorious Cleveland women abductor Ariel Castro; the brief 2014 escape of 
school shooter T.J. Lane, who killed 3 high school students in 2012; and the 
2017 killing of an inmate in a transport van by another prisoner, 3-time killer 
Casey Pigge.

The union that represents prison guards regularly criticized Mohr and the 
agency, saying not enough was being done to protect guards and reduce violence.

Mohr started with the Ohio prisons agency as a teacher’s aide in 1974. Over the 
years he’s worked as a warden, held several administrative posts, led the 
state’s youth prisons system and consulted with the private prison industry.

Among initiatives he oversaw were boosting mental health and addictions 
services for inmates and creating “reintegration units” that replicate work 
requirements in the outside world,

He talked Aug. 28 about the highs and lows of his eight years as director.

On prison population reduction

“I’m a big believer that drug traffickers and violent offenders ought to be in 
prison and we ought to keep people safe, and drug traffickers are violent 
offenders, in my opinion. But I think that we continue to incarcerate too many 
people that wake up in the morning that are addicted — these god-awful drugs — 
and don’t want to be, but end up consuming drugs and they are a large part of 
the intake in our prison system.”

On capital punishment

Mohr called each execution “the toughest day I spend as director.” Unlike his 
two predecessors, who came out against capital punishment in retirement, Mohr 
has no plans to take a similar position. “Regardless of how I feel about the 
executions, I respect the people that are delivering and performing the 
executions and I need to just give them the support they need to ensure that 
these events, as long as the Legislature continues to keep the law, are 
humane.”

On boosting opportunities for inmate rehabilitation

“If nothing else, instead of setting on their bunks for most of the day, to get 
up and to have a schedule and do something productive. If we don’t do that in 
prison, then how can we expect someone all of a sudden after spending 2v or 3 
years or longer in prison just to go out and say, ‘OK, now we’re going to 
change our regimen.’ It’s ridiculous.”

What’s next

In retirement, Mohr, 65, of Chillicothe, plans to consult with North Carolina’s 
prisons department for a couple weeks a month and spend time with his 
s6grandchildren.

“Even though I was a warden for about 12 of my years, when it comes 
particularly to my 2 little granddaughters, 1 and 4, I’m no disciplinarian,” he 
said.

(source: Associated Press)