[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.H., N.C., ALA., IND., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

September 7



NEW HAMPSHIRE:

Former law enforcement call for N.H. death penalty repeal in new documentary



During the 5 years Phillip McLaughlin served as New Hampshire's top prosecutor, 
he kept a photo of a 6-year-old rape and murder victim on his desk.

The photo of Elizabeth Knapp of Hopkinton reminded McLaughlin of the time DNA 
evidence exonerated a man he had charged with murder - a man whom McLaughlin 
wholeheartedly believed was responsible for taking the child's life.

"It was there to remind me that I believed something absolutely - and I was 
wrong," he said Thursday during a panel discussion on the death penalty.

Under McLaughlin's lead, the department of justice had charged Richard 
Buchanan, the boyfriend of Knapp's mother, with the crime. But DNA tests 
cleared Buchanan and led officials to James Dale, who is serving 60 to 120 
years in prison after a jury convicted him of rape and 2nd-degree murder 
charges.

If the murder case against Buchanan had gone to trial, he could have been 
sentenced to death.

A decade later, McLaughlin, now retired, says the case showed him the real 
potential for injustice and made him seriously question the wisdom of 
maintaining the state's death penalty. He is now part of a group of former 
police officers, corrections officials, judges and marshals who are taking a 
public stand against the death penalty and calling on lawmakers to repeal it.

On Thursday morning, the group, known as Law Enforcement Against Death 
Sentencing in New Hampshire, and the New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the 
Death Penalty convened at New Hampshire Technical Institute's Concord campus to 
premiere a documentary film featuring law enforcement veterans speaking out 
against capital punishment.

The documentary arrived 1 week before lawmakers, once again, consider the 
future of the death penalty in the state. Next week, the Senate will reconsider 
Senate Bill 593, which would repeal the death penalty. The bill passed the 
Senate 14-10 in March and the House 223-116 in April, but was vetoed by Gov. 
Chris Sununu. The Senate will need a 2/3 majority vote to override the veto and 
send the bill to the House.

Of the 10 former prosecutors, judges, law enforcement officials and others 
interviewed in the documentary, many question the reasons for upholding the 
state's death penalty when, historically, it has not deterred criminals across 
the country from committing heinous acts.

"I'm not asking for leniency, I'm just saying we don't need to kill," said John 
Breckinridge, a former Manchester police officer.

Breckinridge was with officer Michael Briggs in 2008 when he was fatally shot 
by Michael Addison, the only convict on death row in the state. Addison, who is 
black, is also the only defendant New Hampshire has sentenced to death in 8 
decades.

Fairness, deterrence and costs associated with the death penalty are among the 
topics the film explores through the lens of law enforcement. The 25-minute 
film aims to challenge public perceptions that all professionals in the 
criminal justice community are behind the death penalty.

When Sununu vetoed death penalty repeal in June, he did so from his office at 
the State House while flanked by several uniformed officers. The setting for 
the veto concerned law enforcement veterans who said at Thursday's event that 
opposition to the death penalty is real throughout the ranks, but fear of 
speaking out is keeping them quiet.

"When I first got into law enforcement, I was in favor of the death penalty - 
absolutely," said former Marlborough Police Chief Raymond Dodge.

Then, 3 police officers were murdered in 1997, and prosecutors decided not to 
seek the death penalty. In one case, the attorney general agreed to a plea 
bargain after learning a detective had failed to turn over evidence that a 
co-defendant had confessed to a cellmate.

Dodge, who didn't know the details at the time, said Thursday the resolution of 
the case initially angered and baffled him. But after some reflection, he said 
he realized he didn't actually understand the nuances of the death penalty or, 
more simply, when it could be applied.

"I think either the people in law enforcement don't want to come out because 
there's this brotherhood or they're simply ignorant," Dodge said.

Attendees of Thursday's event said they hoped the premiere of the documentary 
would kickstart a week-long social media and calling campaign aimed at reaching 
lawmakers who will cast the deciding votes next week.

The last time lawmakers sent a death penalty repeal bill to the corner office 
was in 2000, when then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen vetoed the measure.

New Hampshire is the only remaining New England state to authorize capital 
punishment by law.

(source: Concord Monitor)








NORTH CAROLINA:

He spent 30 years in prison. How did jurors get it wrong?



One elderly woman sat with us in her living room, wearing a pink nightgown. "I 
should have followed my conscience," she said, her hands shaking. "I hope he 
can forgive me." It's unclear if she's seeking forgiveness from the innocent 
man she sent to death row, or God himself.

She believed the Bible's instruction: "Thou shalt not kill." Yet, as a juror 
decades earlier, she voted for a death sentence for Henry McCollum, an 
intellectually disabled teenager who was accused of raping and murdering an 
11-year-old girl in Robeson County.

The juror put the trial out of her mind until, four years ago this week, 
McCollum was exonerated. New DNA testing proved another man guilty, and 
McCollum blameless. After 30 years on death row, McCollum was free.

At the time, I was relatively new to my job at the Center for Death Penalty 
Litigation, whose lawyers represented McCollum. His story showed me just how 
high the stakes are in this world. North Carolina came close to executing an 
innocent man.

I am still learning from his case. This spring and summer, a co-worker and I 
crisscrossed Robeson and Cumberland counties, finding jurors who unwittingly 
sentenced an innocent man to death. The jurors served at McCollum's original 
trial in 1983, and his retrial in 1991, held in Fayetteville. Both juries voted 
unanimously for death.

We hoped they could shed light on how our system got it so terribly wrong. But 
as I knocked on strangers' doors, I worried they would be defensive or angry. 
Instead, they welcomed us into their homes.

Some seemed relieved to finally talk through the trauma of the trial, though 
none would let us use their names. Many were ashamed of their role, afraid of 
what their neighbors would think. Some feared God's wrath, and wondered if they 
would go to hell for McCollum's wrongful conviction. Some shed tears at the 
mention of his name and said the experience was too painful to revisit. They 
remembered McCollum at the defense table, silent and unresponsive, like a 
confused and broken child.

All were denied the information they needed to reach a fair verdict. They were 
shown gruesome crime photos and McCollum's confession, written by the police. 
Even McCollum's defense attorneys admitted his guilt, believing the jury would 
spare him if he accepted responsibility.

No one told the jury that another, almost identical crime was committed just a 
month after the girl's murder - and that the culprit was not McCollum, but a 
man who lived by the field where her body was found. The jury didn't know 
fingerprints were found at the scene, and that none of them were McCollum's. 
They didn't know the case against McCollum started with a rumor from a teenage 
girl, who later admitted she made it up.

One juror said his biggest regret is that he trusted prosecutors to tell the 
truth. If McCollum was on trial, he believed, he'd probably done it.

Like everyone we talked to, his most vivid memories were the photos. At the 
time, he had a daughter the same age as the victim. When the verdict was 
announced in the courtroom, he looked at her father. The juror had done what 
the prosecutor said was right, and he hoped it would ease another father's 
pain.

"I've been trying to figure out, where did we go wrong?" he said. "I feel like 
we got duped by the system."

I was in the courtroom for McCollum's exoneration 4 years ago. I will never 
forget the sight of him standing in a cage - the court probably calls it a 
holding cell - during a break. He stared silently at the floor, powerless 
against a system that had chained and caged him for his entire adult life.

Now, there is another image that stays with me. A woman sitting in the dim 
light of her living room, hardly strong enough to rise from her chair, 
wondering what those 30 years were like for Henry McCollum. Wondering whether 
God has heard her pleas for forgiveness. (soruce: Opinion; Kristin Collins is 
the associate director of public information at the Center for Death Penalty 
Litigation, a non-profit law firm that represents prisoners on death 
row----newsobserver.com/)








ALABAMA:

Trial dates still unknown for 2 Madison County capital murder cases



2 very violent capital murder cases in Madison County were back before a judge 
Thursday. 2 people charged and 2 trial dates still unknown.

Christopher Henderson was indicted in 2015 for killing his wife and 4 family 
members, including children. He was charged with 19 counts of capital murder.

On Thursday, he was in court to decide on a trial date, however, no date was 
set.

Henderson's attorney said his mental evaluation deems confidency, so he will be 
mentally healthy to go forth with a trial. His attorney wants one thing though, 
for the death penalty to be taken off the table.

However, the state so far has not budged on removing death as the punishment.

Another case that was heard today was for Warren Hardy. Hardy was charged a 
year ago with killing a Huntsville woman, kidnapping 2 people at gunpoint, and 
trying to abduct a 3rd.

According to his attorney, this case is nowhere near ready to go to trial. The 
defense said they expect a trial date to be set no earlier than beginning of 
next year.

On Thursday, the defense tried to motion for intense screening of jurors, to 
ensure none of them are biased.

The judge decided not to rule on any of them.

Both Henderson's and Hardy's cases will be reviewed again within the next 90 
days or so. The review will happen before any potential trial date would begin.

(source: WAFF news)








INDIANA:

Indiana attorney general asks high court to restore death sentence in double 
slaying



Indiana's attorney general's office wants the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a 
man's death sentence in the 2004 slayings of a woman and her 4-year-old 
daughter.

The filing asks the high court to determine if the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of 
Appeals in Chicago violated a death penalty law's review requirements in 
rebuffing the attorney general's request that it review a 3-judge appellate 
court panel's decision that set aside Fredrick Baer's sentence.

The panel ruled in January that 46-year-old Baer had ineffective legal counsel 
during his double-murder trial.

In April, the full appeals court rebuffed Indiana's request for it to review 
the panel's decision.

Baer had been sentenced to death for his convictions in the slayings of 
26-year-old Cory Clark and her daughter, Jenna, in their rural central Indiana 
home.

(source: Associated Press)








CALIFORNIA:

Gov. Brown needs to speed up the review process for death row inmate Kevin 
Cooper



A San Bernardino jury sentenced Kevin Cooper to death 3 decades ago after 
convicting him of murdering 2 adults and 2 children and severely wounding a 3rd 
child. But the jury didn't know that the investigation into those murders was, 
to say the least, problematic.

Subsequent inquiries and analyses persuasively show that investigators may have 
planted a blood sample from Cooper on a T-shirt found near the crime scene; 
that they failed to test - and then lost - a pair of bloody overalls worn by 
another man on the day of the murders; that the prosecution withheld 
exculpatory evidence from Cooper's lawyer; and that the only eyewitness - the 
wounded child - initially told a hospital social worker that the attackers were 
3 or 4 white men. (Cooper is black.) The victims suffered multiple slash and 
stab wounds from a number of weapons, more than one could reasonably expect a 
single perpetrator to inflict. Nevertheless, the child testified at trial that 
the attacker was a single man.

Cooper, though, has had an inordinate amount of trouble getting the courts to 
give him a fair hearing. In one appeal, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals 
rejected Cooper's plea for a new hearing despite a scathing, 100-page dissent 
by Judge William Fletcher that dissects how the police and courts not only 
failed to give Cooper a fair trial, but also apparently conspired to convict 
him. "Kevin Cooper has now been on death row for nearly 1/2 his life," Fletcher 
wrote. "In my opinion, he is probably innocent of the crimes for which the 
state of California is about to execute him."

Cooper has asked Gov. Jerry Brown to order new, more sophisticated DNA tests on 
the shirt and other items, tests that he believes will prove once and for all 
that someone else committed the murders. He also wants the governor to conduct 
an innocence hearing to weigh those test results and, ultimately, to pardon 
him. Brown has asked the San Bernardino County district attorney's office, 
which opposes reopening the case, for a response by Oct. 11 to Cooper's 
allegations before deciding whether to conduct the review.

But time is running out on Brown's term, and chances are increasing that it 
could end before the review process does. If so, the next governor and his 
legal staff would probably have to start over, assuming they chose to address 
Cooper's requests at all. That would unjustly delay yet again the search for 
the truth, and the possible freeing of an innocent man.

Brown should heed Cooper's request and line up a special master for the review 
and ensure that the issues are resolved with all deliberate speed. Justice 
demands it.

(source: Editorial, Los Angeles Times)








USA:

Citing Trump Tweets, Accused N.Y. Attacker Seeks to Avoid Death Penalty



Lawyers for Sayfullo Saipov, the man accused of killing 8 people by driving a 
truck into a New York City bike path in October, on Thursday asked a federal 
judge to bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty, saying President 
Donald Trump's statements on Twitter have made a fair legal process impossible.

In a motion filed in Manhattan federal court, Saipov's lawyers said that 
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who must decide whether to pursue the death 
penalty, cannot be objective because Trump has pressured him to make decisions 
based on "nakedly political considerations" and has called for Saipov to be 
executed.

The lawyers pointed to a Monday tweet in which the president criticized the 
"Jeff Sessions Justice Department" for indicting two Republican congressmen 
"just ahead" of the upcoming congressional elections.

They also cited 2 tweets following Saipov's arrest calling for him to face the 
death penalty.

Together, they said, Trump's tweets make it impossible for Sessions to 
"exercise independent discretion" on the matter.

They asked that if the judge declines to bar the death penalty altogether, an 
independent prosecutor be appointed to make the decision in place of Sessions.

A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, whose office is prosecuting 
Saipov, declined to comment. The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately 
respond to a request for comment.

Saipov, a 30-year-old Uzbek national, was arrested in October immediately after 
police said he plowed a truck down a bike lane on Manhattan's West Side. 
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the deadliest 
assault on New York City since Sept. 11, 2001.

He was charged in an indictment with 8 counts of murder and other crimes 
including attempted murder and providing material support to Islamic State. He 
has pleaded not guilty.

Following the attack, Saipov told investigators he was inspired by watching 
Islamic State videos and began planning the attack a year earlier, according to 
a criminal complaint filed by prosecutors the day after the attack.

Saipov made a public statement at a pre-trial hearing in June, speaking of a 
"war" led by Islamic State to establish sharia, or Islamic law, on earth, and 
dismissing the court's judgment as "not important."

(source: Reuters)

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

Capital punishment and resource scarcity: the work of Professor Keelah E.G. 
Williams



Keelah E.G. Williams, Assistant Professor of Psychology, originally hails from 
Australia but moved to Detroit, Michigan in the second grade. She attended 
Arizona State University for graduate school, where she attained both a Ph.D. 
in Philosophy and a Juris Doctor.

She has always been interested in the intersection of law and psychology. Over 
the summer, she published a paper in Evolution and Human Behavior entitled, 
"Capital and punishment: Resource scarcity increases endorsement of the death 
penalty." It discusses the correlation between resource availability in certain 
areas and how the populace of those areas feel about the death penalty. The 
article was the culmination of four different studies performed over the last 6 
years.

In an interview, Williams noted how a lack of resource availability can 
influence various behaviors among affected populations, including reproductive 
timing and race-based judgments. When resources are scarce - a phenomenon that 
correlates with economic instability and insecurity - people tend to feel less 
confident in their future situation and choose to have children at younger 
ages. Another pattern Williams noted in her research is people's tendency to be 
less inclusive of others when resource scarcity occurs. For example, in a 
situation of resource scarcity, white people are more likely to label an 
ethnically ambiguous person as non-white. As resources become scarcer, Williams 
explains, people tend to be more exclusive so as to avoid having to share few 
resources among many people.

In the 1st study, Williams and her co-authors investigated the relationship 
between a nation's Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) and the 
legality of the death penalty. The IHDI differs from Gross Domestic Product 
(GDP), a similar measure, in that it takes into consideration how resources 
have been distributed throughout a country. Williams and her fellow researchers 
found a positive correlation between resource scarcity within a country and 
legal endorsement of capital punishment, though they did not investigate 
popular opinion regarding the death penalty. The 2nd study took a similar 
approach and explored the relationship between GDP of a state and the legal 
status of capital punishment. Again, researchers found a positive correlation 
between resource scarcity and the legality of the death penalty.

These studies acted as proof of concept for the ideas behind the paper but, 
because they were not experimental in nature, could not support a causative 
link between the phenomena of resource scarcity and a legal death penalty. To 
test their hypotheses, Williams and her co-authors conducted a two further 
studies. In one, the researchers manipulated subjects' perception of resource 
scarcity. Half of the participants were given articles that gave a negative 
outlook on the stability of the economy, while the other half were given 
articles with a more positive outlook on the economy. This study supported 
their hypothesis that those who read the negative article were more likely to 
approve of the death penalty, while those that read the positive article 
disapproved.

In the final study, Williams and her team interrogated the possible driving 
forces behind the experiment's results. They concluded that in resource-rich 
situations, people are more willing to give offenders the chance to 
rehabilitate. When fewer resources are available, people are less willing to 
risk devoting resources to others' rehabilitation and are therefore more likely 
to support the death penalty.

Professor Williams is currently working with a Hamilton student on a new 
project that explores the role that contempt and anger play in people's 
endorsement of policies. Although the difference between the 2 is subtle, 
contempt is defined as the feeling that a given person has nothing more to 
offer you, while anger is defined as disappointment, but that reparations can 
be made after some punishment has been dealt.

(source: Interested readers can find more information about the subject of this 
article in the upcoming episode of the podcast Discussions with DPIC, which 
includes an interview with Professor Williams. It will be available via iTunes 
or deathpenaltyinfo.org within the week----The (Hamilton Univ.) Spectator)

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

6 suspects accused in armored truck guard killing due in court



6 defendants accused of killing an armored truck guard in 2013 will be in 
federal court Thursday morning.

Last week federal prosecutors signaled that they would seek capital punishment 
for 3 of the people accused of killing Hector Trochez 5 years ago.

Trochez was gunned down during a robbery at The Chase Bank on Carrollton and 
Claiborne in broad daylight.

Prosecutors said they want the death penalty for LilBear George, Chukwudi 
Ofomata, and Curtis Johnson Junior.

In total, 6 defendants were indicted last November. Legal experts said the 
death penalty is rare in federal cases.

"Really the importance of the case in terms of the death penalty is that there 
are so few cases around the entire country where the death penalty is actually 
approved," said Harry Rosenberg. "The death penalty act really just started 
again in 1988, and so since there have only been several scores of cases from 
1988 forward and in this 1 case you have 3."

Trochez's family said in a statement last week that they had hoped for the 
death penalty from the beginning.

(source: WVUE)

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

Government Joins Objection to Closed Hearing in Death Penalty Case



Federal prosecutors have filed a formal motion supporting VtDigger's objection 
to the closing of the courtroom to the public during a pretrial hearing last 
week in the death penalty case against accused killer Donald Fell.

Judge Geoffrey Crawford closed a hearing to the public and press last Wednesday 
over concerns that potential "volatile" testimony from a prison informant could 
"taint" the jury selection process, which kicked off on Tuesday and is expected 
to last several weeks.

Fell is facing capital charges in the November 2000 carjacking and beating 
death of Terseca King, 53, of North Clarendon, Vt., according to court records.

VtDigger filed a hand-written motion objecting to the closing of the courtroom 
last week, and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Vermont, which is prosecuting 
Fell, filed a motion in support of the news organization's position.

"In this case, which has played out in the courts and the press for over 17 
years, the government is not convinced that the defense has shown a 
'significant risk of prejudice to the defendant???s right to a fair trial' from 
further coverage of the matter," First Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Doyle 
wrote in the filing. "The current order excludes, among others, family members 
of victims who have steadfastly followed the court proceedings for nearly 2 
decades," Doyle added. "If the Court believes it must evaluate the reliability 
of witnesses prior to their taking the stand about personal interactions with 
the defendant, this sort of unprecedented hearing should be open to the public. 
The government continues to oppose the closure of the courtroom."

Doyle also wrote that the closing of the courtroom is not something that should 
be taken lightly, and only after a "showing of a significant risk of prejudice 
to the defendant's right to a fair trial or danger to persons, property or the 
integrity of significant activities entitled to confidentiality."

He then added, "The defense has presented nothing more than bare assertions to 
support closure at this time."

Fell's attorneys did not submit a filing in support of closing the courtroom 
for the hearing and did not make any arguments in open court. Instead, they 
said they were relying on arguments made earlier during a closed door meeting 
in the judge's chambers prior to the hearing.

It's unclear what, if any, steps beyond the filing of a motion the federal 
government will take in light of the hearing already having taken place behind 
closed doors.

VtDigger is exploring the possibility of seeking the public release of the 
transcripts of the hearing as well as the chamber's meeting.

Vermont does not have the death penalty. However, because King was abducted as 
she arrived to work early one morning at a supermarket bakery in Rutland and 
was killed in New York state, federal prosecutors took jurisdiction. Fell's 
defense has been unsuccessful in multiple attempts to take the death penalty 
off the table as a possible punishment.

Fell's trial in the case is expected to begin in early November.

This will be the 2nd trial for Fell. He previously had been convicted and 
sentenced to death. However, due to juror misconduct that conviction and 
sentence were overturned.

An alleged accomplice of Fell's, Robert Lee, was also charged with capital 
offenses. But, before he could be tried, Lee died in prison.

(source: Valley News)