[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----KY., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 4



KENTUCKY:

E’town man charged in fatal crash set for court appearance


A Radcliff teen, who authorities say was an accomplice in the September 2016 
slaying of a U.S. Army veteran inside his townhouse, won’t be sentenced Tuesday 
in Hardin Circuit Court as scheduled.

Eloysia James-Venerable, who was 16 when she and Aaron Pearson reportedly 
entered the home of Norman Hall, now is expected to be sentenced to serve 20 to 
50 years or life in prison, with parole eligibility after 20 years, following 
Pearson’s January trial.

Hall, 71, was found Sept. 9, 2016, by Radcliff police who were asked to perform 
a welfare check. Officers found him beaten to death.

James-Venerable, 18, accepted a plea deal earlier this year. The agreement 
hinges on her testimony against Pearson, 25, of Radcliff. Should 
James-Venerable not provide honest testimony, the Commonwealth could withdraw 
the offer and she will be sentenced to life without parole.

Pearson is scheduled for trial Jan. 14. The Hardin County Commonwealth 
Attorney’s Office is seeking the death penalty in the case.

Once Pearson’s trial concludes, James-Venerable is expected to be sentenced, 
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Chris McCray said.

Authorities believe Pearson and James-Venerable went to Hall’s Pin Oak Court 
home to rob him and when Hall, who needed oxygen to go about his daily life, 
confronted the pair, he was killed. A widower, Hall died from multiple blows to 
his head and face and from being stabbed in the neck, officials said.

Authorities believe Pearson killed Hall and James-Venerable was an “eyewitness" 
to the homicide, McCray said after a March hearing in the case.

“She was present at the robbery of Mr. Hall,” McCray said. “She was an 
eyewitness. There will be evidence that Mr. Pearson committed the murder.”

McCrary said “the murder occurred as part of the robbery.”

James-Venerable originally was charged with complicity to commit murder; 
1st-degree burglary; 1st-degree receiving stolen property — firearm; and 
tampering with physical evidence. As part of the plea deal, the tampering with 
physical evidence and receiving stolen property charges were dismissed and the 
burglary charge was amended to 1st-degree robbery.

James-Venerable has been in the Hardin County Detention Center since Sept. 25, 
2017. She previously was held at a juvenile facility.

Pearson has been lodged in the Hardin County Detention Center since Sept. 13, 
2016. He is being held on a $1 million cash bond.

(source: The News-Enterprise)






CALIFORNIA:

California Prosecutor Refuses To Allow DNA Test That Could Exonerate Inmate


A California man imprisoned for a 2-month crime spree he says he didn’t commit 
has served 40 years behind bars, even though the prosecution has evidence that 
he says supports his innocence.

Kenneth Moore was 20 years old in 1980, when he was convicted of more than 50 
felonies, including the slayings of a mother and daughter, 8 rapes and scores 
of other crimes in a case the prosecutor called “downright gruesome.” An 
all-white jury sentenced the young black man to life without the possibility of 
parole.

His appeals long since exhausted, Moore, now 60, has been in his case tested.

Even though DNA testing has helped to since 1989, the Alameda County district 
attorney’s office has aggressively opposed all of Moore’s requests.

“It’s frustrating,” Moore told HuffPost. “We’ve put all of our hopes on this. I 
know for a fact it will exonerate me. Only a damn fool would want DNA testing 
of something he knew that he did, because that would remove all doubt forever.”

The district attorney’s office would not comment on the case aside from 
pointing to, which Deputy District Attorney Teresa Drenick said “spell out the 
reasons” for their opposition.

According to the documents, District Attorney Nancy O’Malley has fought Moore 
“at the highest levels” to prevent testing of a torn dress and underwear in a 
key case that was used to connect Moore to other crimes. The documents indicate 
that O’Malley does not consider the clothing to be “newly discovered evidence,” 
and that she believes DNA testing, if it had been available at the time, would 
not have swayed the jury.

Moore has a prior criminal record for auto thefts, and admits that he did steal 
a truck connected to the case. He says he wasn’t involved in any of the other 
crimes of which he’s been convicted.

“Stealing cars, trucks, boats ― anything with an engine ― that was my hustle,” 
Moore said. “It was quick and easy, and I had a list of people lined up who 
wanted to buy them. Sadly, that’s what started all this.”

Moore’s case concerns a violent crime spree in Northern California that 
captured national headlines in the late ’70s and early ’80s. (The graphic 
details of that spree are described below, and may be disturbing to some 
readers.) He and his brother David, then 25, were both accused of involvement, 
along with 28-year-old Charles Reese.

Moore was convicted of taking part in several rapes, including one in which an 
elderly woman was violently sodomized with a double-barreled shotgun. According 
to the Oakland Tribune, Deputy District Attorney James Anderson once described 
the case as “the most vicious I’ve ever handled.”

The criminal case consisted of the following incidents:

On Aug. 30, 1978, Kenneth Moore, then 19, turned himself in to police after 
learning there was a warrant for his arrest accusing him of being involved in 
an auto theft and a home invasion robbery.

“I knew the worst thing that could happen is I’d spend a few more months in 
county jail for the auto theft, so it was no big deal,” Moore said.

Moore said he had been living with his parents and would sometimes spend nights 
at an Oakland apartment his brother shared with Reese. When police searched the 
apartment where the men were staying, they found credit cards and other items 
belonging to various victims, including the ones in a June 25, 1978, rape and 
robbery case. In the bushes outside the men’s apartment, police found a Smith & 
Wesson handgun. Authorities said ballistics tests matched the weapon to a 
bullet recovered from Laura Muhlenbruch’s body. Muhlenbruch, 21, and her 
mother, Eileen Rogers, had been robbed and killed in an Oakland parking garage 
on Aug. 18.

The Moore brothers were arrested. Kenneth Moore says they weren’t behind bars 
long before prosecutors approached him and offered a plea deal in exchange for 
cooperating and giving up the whereabouts of Reese, whom authorities had been 
unable to locate.

“They told me I could be out in less than 25 years,” Moore said. “I’m from the 
street ― the hood. What do I do, turn on my brother? I can’t do that.”

One of the most damning pieces of evidence against Moore was his fingerprint, 
which was found in a stolen truck parked outside the scene of an Aug. 21, 1978, 
robbery. His brother’s fingerprints were also found inside the vehicle. Moore 
says he stole the truck earlier that month from a Los Altos Chevrolet 
dealership.

“I’d got arrested in November 1976 for auto theft in Hayward,” Moore said. “I 
needed help, and my brother got me an attorney. I served something like 6
months. When I was released, I went back to stealing, and when I got that
Chevy truck, I gave it to [my brother] to clear our debt.”

The brothers’ trial began on Feb. 4, 1980. According to The Associated Press, 
it took Alameda County Superior Court Judge Stanley Gold 2 hours to read all 
132 counts they faced, including 2 murders, 8 rapes, 25 armed robberies, 
multiple burglaries, false imprisonment, sodomy and oral copulation. More than 
$50,000 in valuables was stolen during the crime spree, police said.

The 132 counts amounted to the longest list of crimes in a single criminal case 
in the history of Alameda County, the AP reported at the time.

Anderson relied heavily on linking the crimes in his opening statements, 
pointing out “the amazing similarities of the offenses” and arguing that the 
June 25 rape and robbery set the pattern for all the crimes that followed. What 
Anderson didn’t know was that Moore had an ace up his sleeve. During opening 
arguments, he revealed to his defense attorney for the 1st time that he was 
locked up for auto theft on that June 25.

“The prosecutor’s theory was broken,” Moore said. “They recessed outside the 
jury, dismissed that case, and then, the district attorney changed his theory. 
He told the jury that under the , if he can prove I stole the pickup, that’s 
all they really needed ― that if I did one crime, I’m guilty of all of them. 
I’d already conceded I stole the truck, so that put me in a very unusual 
situation.”

Despite the many victims involved, the criminal case lacked conclusive 
eyewitness identifications of Moore, even though the perpetrators did not 
conceal their faces.

A man who was assaulted at a San Jose motel on Aug. 11, 1978, testified that he 
could not positively identify Moore as 1 of the 2 assailants. His wife, who was 
raped by both assailants, was also unable to positively identify Moore. Their 
son, who was also at the scene and was 7 years old at the time of the assault, 
identified Isaac Pullum as one of the assailants. Pullum, an associate of David 
Moore, was never charged as one of the perpetrators.

Another victim did identify Moore as one of her attackers. During an earlier 
proceeding, however, she’d seemed less certain, and said Moore “appeared to be 
one of the assailants.”

The only time Moore was positively identified during the trial was by a man 
who’d been robbed at gunpoint alongside his wife on Aug. 5, 1978, in Hayward, 
California. Witnesses from several incidents identified Moore’s brother and 
Reese.

What neither of the Moore brothers knew at the time was that on Aug. 30, 1978 ― 
the day Kenneth Moore was arrested ― authorities had hidden a listening device 
in a jail cell the 2 men shared. Anderson told the jury the brothers made 
several incriminating statements while discussing the various charges they both 
faced.

Kenneth Moore claims the were taken out of context. He says he did not discuss 
his own involvement but made references to the case against his brother and his 
alleged associates.

“It’s not like I wasn’t unaware of his lifestyle,” Moore told HuffPost of his 
brother. “I’d be lying if I said I was totally in the dark.”

During closing statements, Anderson again pointed to similarities in the cases. 
“Can any one of you truthfully believe that the same threats were not offered, 
not given, and not made to Laura Muhlenbruch and her mom, Eileen Rogers?”

David Moore’s defense attorney threw in the towel during closing arguments, 
suggesting a diminished capacity defense. He alleged that David was incapable 
of a deliberate or premeditated crime because he had consumed two beers and 
smoked marijuana before the killings of Muhlenbruch and Rogers. Kenneth Moore’s 
defense attorney said his client was innocent and blamed the crimes on Reese 
and David Moore.

On March 24, 1980, 6 weeks after the trial began, the 7-man, 5-woman
jury found Kenneth Moore guilty of 58 felonies, including 1st-degree murder 
with special circumstances. Under special circumstances are felonies committed 
during the act of 1st-degree murder, including murder of a police officer, 
murder for financial gain and murder during a rape, arson or robbery.

David Moore was convicted of 74 felonies. The AP reported that the brothers 
“yawned and smiled at each other” when the verdicts were read.

Kenneth denies he smiled in court.

“I was paralyzed,” he said of his reaction to the verdict. “I was stunned, 
defeated [and] demoralized. I felt worse for my parents than I did for myself. 
You’re in this surreal kind of position. It was like an out-of-body experience 
when I heard that. Here I was at that age facing the death penalty. I was 
certain that the system would work for me. I was naive. It crushed me.”

The same jury decided the brothers’ fate. Kenneth Moore was given a life 
sentence, while his brother was sentenced to die in the gas chamber.

“If David Lee Moore can’t be executed, then nobody in California should be 
executed for anything,” Anderson said before the hearing, according to the 
Oakland Tribune. “The facts are so hideous, it’s the strongest death penalty 
case anyone has ever seen.”

In the end, though, David Moore didn’t make it to the gas chamber. On the 
morning of Nov. 29, 1980, the 28-year-old was found dead of an apparent suicide 
in his cell at San Quentin State Prison.

Charles Reese has for the past 40 years. A 1980 FBI wanted poster said that 
Reese “has been armed with a shotgun in the past and should be considered armed 
and extremely dangerous.”

“It surprises me to this day that he’s eluded capture,” Moore said. “We are 
about the same height and, back then, about the same build and complexion. I 
believe some of the victims misidentified me for him.”

DNA evidence was not available or admissible in criminal cases in the 1980s. In 
January 2001, a that allowed inmates to obtain post-conviction DNA testing.

Moore made to in his case. Each request was, with the courts finding that he 
failed to establish that his verdict or sentence would have been more favorable 
had DNA testing been available.

A nonprofit legal clinic at Santa Clara University came to Moore’s aid. In 
December 2012, they collected from the victim in the Aug. 11, 1978, sexual 
assault case.

Testing ultimately indicated the presence of DNA belonging to 2 males and a 
female, according to court documents. When samples collected from Moore, the 
victim of the attack and her husband were compared with the rape kit, none of 
them matched, suggesting the possibility that the wrong rape kit had been 
tested. The lab issued a report saying that it couldn’t account for the 
location of the correct kit.

In February 2015, the Innocence Project requesting that the dress and underwear 
worn by the victim in the Aug. 11 case be tested for DNA. The petition alleged 
that the items, which Moore says he’d been told were lost or destroyed, were 
located during “an investigation” and found to be in the possession of the 
prosecutor’s office. An examination of the items revealed the presence of 
biological materials, according to the petition.

The petition further alleged that if DNA testing cleared Moore, it would cast 
further doubt on his involvement in the other crimes and could yield the 
identity of the actual perpetrator.

The district attorney’s office formally opposed the testing in March 2015, 
arguing that the items did not constitute new evidence and had continuously 
been available since the trial. In April 2016, Superior Court Judge Larry 
Goodman denied the petition.

Moore has exhausted all legal options. As a result, he has no standing to ask a 
court again to order the testing of these items of evidence.

“It’s hard having chased it this many years, knowing it would show it wasn’t me 
that committed those crimes,” he said.

The district attorney’s office still has the power to permit the DNA testing. 
To date, it has been unwilling to do so.

“We fought this at taxpayers’ expense from 2001 to 2015,” Moore said. “We’ve 
wasted so many tax dollars on court proceedings that it would’ve been cheaper 
to test the evidence. It’s absurd, but they don’t want to be proven wrong in a 
case like this.”

“They don’t want to face that they convicted the wrong person,” he said. 
“They’d rather dig their heels in.”

(source: Herdon Gazette)