[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TENN., NEV., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 3



TENNESSEE:

Her Father Was Executed for Murder. She Still Wants to Know if He Did 
It.----Sedley Alley went to his death based on scant physical evidence and a 
confession he said had been coerced. His daughter hopes DNA testing will 
provide answers.



April Alley had last spoken with her father when she was a girl of 10, so there 
was plenty of catching up to do when they met about 15 years later, in the 
noisy visiting area of a prison in Nashville.

She told him about her life as an adult: college, marriage, a home near 
Louisville.

Her father, Sedley Alley, talked about being a convicted murderer on death row, 
and the haze of his ragged years as an alcoholic and drug addict.

Near the end of their meeting, she posed the question that had shadowed her 
since childhood. Was he really a killer who had raped and impaled a young 
Marine?

“I asked him, ‘Did you do that? If you did or not, you’re still my dad and I 
love you,’” Ms. Alley recalled.

His reply was the same opaque answer he gave psychiatrists after his arrest in 
1985, and continued to give to anyone who asked, right until his execution in 
2006. He did not know.

“He said, ‘If I did do it, I deserve what I get,’” Ms. Alley said. “‘But I 
don’t remember doing it.’”

On Tuesday, Ms. Alley, 43, asked a judge in Memphis to grant her what the 
courts had refused her father during his lifetime: DNA testing of evidence from 
the murder. She realizes the results might cement her father’s guilt, giving 
her an answer that he could not — or would not — provide.

“I don’t want it to be like that — that he actually did it,” Ms. Alley said. 
“But it would almost make it easier. Because the thought of all of that 
happening for no reason doesn’t sit well with me at all.”

Mr. Alley went to his death based on scant physical evidence and a confession 
that he claimed he had been forced to give.

5 years after he died, the Tennessee Supreme Court said that denying his 
request for DNA testing had been a mistake.

Ms. Alley has become executor of his estate and “now stands in the shoes of her 
father, seeking the truth,” her petition for testing says. It is not yet clear 
when the court will rule on her request. If the testing goes forward and 
unambiguously points to someone other than Mr. Alley as the killer, it could 
become the first time DNA has exonerated a person put to death in the United 
States.

The kind of post-mortem inquiry she seeks is “incredibly rare,” said Brandon L. 
Garrett, a professor of law at Duke University.

“The prisoner is deceased, the case is closed and the evidence is destroyed,” 
Professor Garrett said.

Sometimes, though, evidence is preserved. Ever since the Alley trial in 1987, 
the Shelby County clerk has kept exhibits that include the victim’s underwear, 
a pair of red briefs apparently worn by the attacker and a 31-inch tree branch.

Mr. Alley’s DNA was harvested while he was alive and is still in storage, 
according to Kelley J. Henry, a federal public defender who represented him in 
his last years.

For nearly 2 decades after Mr. Alley’s arrest, no one disputed in court that he 
was the killer; his original lawyers argued that he was not guilty by reason of 
insanity. In 2003, new lawyers said a fresh investigation raised serious doubts 
about his guilt that only DNA tests could resolve.

Prosecutors said that the request was a stalling maneuver, and that even if 
someone else’s DNA were found, it would not clear Mr. Alley. They prevailed.

The murder occurred one night in July 1985. Lance Cpl. Suzanne Collins, 19, 
left the barracks at Naval Air Station Millington, just outside Memphis, to 
take her daily 10-mile run. She had just finished 9 months of avionics 
training.

Around 11 p.m., 2 fellow Marines running the other way crossed paths with her. 
Moments later, they dodged a station wagon swerving along the road, in the same 
direction that Corporal Collins had been running.

Lance Corporal Suzanne Collins was murdered in July 1985. She was 19.

After it passed, they heard a woman hollering, “Don’t touch me! Leave me 
alone!” They ran toward the shouts and saw a car, which they believed was the 
same station wagon, stopped on the side of the road. It sped off. A second car 
came their way and they tried to wave it down, but the driver did not stop. 
They ran to the gatehouse. A guard sounded an alarm for a possible abduction.

About an hour later, just after midnight, Mr. Alley was stopped near the base 
driving a rattling 1972 station wagon. A Navy investigator noted that he had no 
visible injuries.

Mr. Alley, then 29, was not in the service — he had been discharged some years 
earlier for drug and alcohol abuse — but his wife was in the Navy. After she 
was questioned, the investigators concluded that the jogging Marines had heard 
the Alleys squabbling, not an abduction.

At that point, no one knew Corporal Collins was missing. The alert for the 
station wagon was canceled. The Alleys were sent home for the night. A patrol 
kept an eye on their house.

The next morning, Corporal Collins’s body was found in a park.

She had been struck 100 blows and strangled. The attacker had stripped a tree 
branch of twigs, sharpened the tip, then drove it through her body.

Mr. Alley, who had no criminal record, was promptly arrested. Over a period of 
hours, he denied knowing anything about the woman and asked for a lawyer.

But then, investigators said, before consulting anyone, he proceeded to 
volunteer that he had sideswiped Corporal Collins while driving drunk, 
accidentally stabbed her in the head with a screwdriver — both details untrue, 
the medical examiner testified — and staged the crime scene.

Mr. Alley would later claim the investigators had turned on the tape recorder 
only when he said what they wanted to hear, not during the browbeating that led 
up to his statement. The authorities said they had merely asked him what 
happened.

They also said he showed them where Corporal Collins’s body had been found, but 
a transcript of a recording of the car ride does not indicate that he gave any 
directions.

Mr. Alley’s lawyers were unable to get information from him about the crime, so 
he was turned over to psychiatrists. One wrote that he “did not seem overtly 
delusional, except in his assessment of the police tactics and his belief that 
they would have beaten him if he had not confessed to the crime, said they 
could have gotten away with it because they were the police.”

The physical evidence in the case, analyzed with the primitive tools available 
in 1985, was suggestive but far from conclusive. On the driver’s door of the 
station wagon, authorities reported finding Type O blood, the same as the 
victim’s and Mr. Alley’s. Paper napkins from Danver’s, a regional restaurant 
chain, were on the floor of his car as well as near the body, the investigators 
said. Also in the car was proof that he had been in the vicinity of the crime: 
an air conditioner pump that had been installed earlier in the day at a house 
near where Corporal Collins had been running. Plainly, Mr. Alley had stolen it.

However, no traces of Corporal Collins — no fingerprints, hair or blood — were 
found inside his car or, for that matter, on Mr. Alley. No physical evidence 
showed he had been in a prolonged struggle with a 19-year-old Marine in 
excellent condition.

April Alley spoke to a reporter last month in Louisville, where she works in 
human resources for a hospital. As a teenager, she said, she was turned against 
her father by a hostile relative.

In her 20s, she reconnected with him at Riverbend Maximum Security prison. He 
was frank about his drug and alcohol use, she said, and told her that he had 
confessed under threat. She became inclined to believe him.

In 2003, an investigator, April Higuera, turned up an undisclosed handwritten 
note by the medical examiner estimating that Corporal Collins died after Mr. 
Alley had been sent home and kept under police watch.

Ms. Higuera also located a romantic partner of Corporal Collins who drove a 
station wagon and was about the same height, 5-foot-8, as a man seen near the 
abduction. Mr. Alley was eight inches taller.

Citing these discoveries, Ms. Henry, the lawyer, said: “We tried every way 
possible to get back into court and to get DNA.”

Across the country, views on post-conviction DNA testing have changed as more 
wrongful convictions have come to light. All 50 states now give prisoners some 
access to DNA testing, though the hurdles vary.

The district attorney for Shelby County, Amy Weirich, did not reply to requests 
for comment. She took office after the execution of Mr. Alley.

If the evidence is tested, the results could be compared to a national registry 
of DNA collected from offenders and unsolved crimes, and to genetic genealogy 
databases, said Barry C. Scheck, a founder of the Innocence Project.

The case was reopened by the organization after Mr. Scheck received a tip that 
a man charged last year with murder and rapes in Missouri had also been 
stationed at Millington base for some of the time Corporal Collins was there. 
(Military records show that the man had been sent to a base in California 
before the murder.)

As Mr. Alley’s execution approached, he tried to forbid April and his son, 
David, from attending. They insisted, and just after 1:30 a.m. on June 28, 
2006, took seats at the front of the witness room.

Blinds were still shut on the viewing window, but audio was already being piped 
in. They heard him coming.

“Chains clanking,” Ms. Alley said.

When the blinds opened, Mr. Alley lay on a steel gurney. An intravenous line 
ran from a wall into his right arm. He turned to his daughter and son. They 
stood and pressed their hands to the glass.

Someone yelled that they were blocking the view.

(source: New York Times)








NEVADA:

Nevada Assembly speaker was sued over death penalty ban's demise — he's not 
worried----Top lawmakers respond to anti-death penalty suit, much more at RGJ 
Pints and Politics



The top Democrat in the Nevada Assembly doesn’t sound worried about a new 
lawsuit that accuses him of improperly interfering to kill bills that would 
have abolished the death penalty.

Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson, D-Las Vegas, made headlines Tuesday after an 
accused murderer asked a judge to declare capital punishment unconstitutional 
in Nevada.

The suit filed last week on behalf of 27-year-old defendant Alonso Perez argues 
that because Frierson and state Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro are 
deputy Clark County district attorneys, they made sure the death penalty repeal 
bills didn’t get a hearing.

Frierson, who worked as a public defender before becoming a prosecutor, was 
quick to dismiss that theory while speaking at the Reno Gazette Journal’s 
monthly Pints and Politics event.

“The lawyer in me knows better than to comment on somebody’s pending case,” 
Frierson told a Reno audience at Craft Wine and Beer. “That being said, we have 
a citizen’s Legislature. We all come from different perspectives and different 
backgrounds and we all are expected to shake our day job and do what we believe 
is best for our citizens.

“Those pieces of legislation in the Senate and Assembly were treated no 
different than any other.”

Assembly Minority Leader Jim Wheeler, the other guest at Tuesday’s event, 
sounded similarly skeptical of the suit.

“This doesn’t seem like a sound legal theory to me and I’m not even a lawyer,” 
Wheeler said.

(source: Reno Gazette Journal)








CALIFORNIA:

Jury begins hearing case against man charged with killing a woman in Hollywood 
and another in El Monte



A prosecutor told jurors Thursday that evidence will show that three women, 
including a fashion design student who was set to go to a Grammy Awards party 
with actor Ashton Kutcher the night she was slain, were murdered by a 
“boy-next-door killer” who lived near each of them and plotted to attack them 
with a knife in their homes.

Deputy District Attorney Daniel Akemon told the downtown Los Angeles jury in 
his opening statement that Michael Thomas Gargiulo, 43, was able to escape 
detection for nearly 15 years before accidentally cutting himself with a knife 
and leaving a “blood trail” during an April 2008 attack in Santa Monica in 
which the 26-year-old victim survived.

Gargiulo could face the death penalty if convicted of the Feb. 22, 2001, 
slaying of Ashley Ellerin in a Hollywood bungalow and the Dec. 1, 2005, killing 
of Maria Bruno in an El Monte apartment. He is also charged with trying to kill 
Murphy and trying to escape from jail.

The prosecutor told jurors that they would also hear evidence about a third 
killing — the Aug. 14, 1993, slaying of Tricia Pacaccio, an 18-year-old 
Illinois woman who was repeatedly stabbed on her front door step after 
returning home from a night out with friends. But he noted that the panel will 
not be asked to determine whether Gargiulo is guilty of Pacaccio’s killing, 
telling jurors that it will be used to show motive and intent.

“The methodical and systematic slaughter of women by Michael Gargiulo — the 
boy-next-door killer — that’s what this case is about,” Akemon told the panel, 
saying that the defendant’s favorite hobby was plotting to attack women with a 
knife around their homes. “They all lived near Gargiulo. He had targeted them 
for murder and he ultimately attacked all of them with a knife.”

Gargiulo subsequently bragged to two friends about Pacaccio’s killing, telling 
one, “I actually left (her) on the step for dead,” and informing another that 
he had stabbed a girl, according to the prosecutor. The defendant’s DNA was 
found on the fingernails of the high school graduate, who had been set to start 
at Purdue University.

After Pacaccio’s killing in Illinois, Gargiulo moved to Hollywood, where 
Ellerin’s friends noticed that he showed up uninvited and that he seemed to be 
“fixated” on her at one party, Akemon told jurors. She was stabbed 47 times in 
the hallway outside her bathroom in an attack in which she was nearly 
decapitated, the prosecutor said.

Kutcher — who had spoken to the 22-year-old woman on the phone a little over 
two hours earlier — arrived at her house that night and left after looking 
through a window and seeing what he believed were wine stains on the floor, 
Akemon said. The young woman’s roommate discovered her dead the next morning.

Gargiulo subsequently moved to El Monte and lived in the same apartment complex 
where Bruno was “mutilated” as she slept, the deputy district attorney said. He 
alleged that Gargiulo stabbed and slashed the 32-year-old woman multiple times, 
cut off her breasts, tried to remove her breast implants and placed one of her 
breasts in her mouth. A blue surgical bootie that was found outside the woman’s 
front door contained drops of her blood along with Gargiulo’s DNA around the 
elastic band, Akemon said.

The defendant’s “killing spree” ended after the April 28, 2008, attack on 
Murphy, who fought back after being confronted while she was asleep, the 
prosecutor said. Gargiulo ran from the woman’s residence, bleeding profusely 
and yelling, “I’m sorry!” according to Akemon.

Gargiulo was arrested in June 2008 by Santa Monica police in connection with 
the attack on Murphy, and was subsequently charged with the killings of Ellerin 
and Bruno.

The murder charges include the special circumstance allegations of multiple 
murders and murder by means of lying in wait, along with allegations that he 
used a knife in the commission of the crimes.

Authorities in Illinois charged him in 2011 with Pacaccio’s slaying. Gargiulo — 
who has a 1997 felony conviction for burglary in Cook County, Illinois — lived 
one block away from the high school graduate at the time of the slaying and was 
good friends with 1 of her 2 younger brothers, according to an arrest warrant 
filed in Cook County.

(source: Los Angeles Daily News)

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

Death penalty upheld for Porterville rapist, murderer, district attorney 
announces



The California Supreme Court upheld the decision to keep a 54-year-old man's 
death penalty in place after 2 1997 1st-degree murders.

Juan Sanchez was found guilty of killing Ermanda Reyes and Lorena Martinez, 
mother and daughter, in the early morning of August 4, 2017.

Sanchez entered the Porterville home of Reyes and her 17-year-old daughter, 
Martinez. Sanchez proceeded to sexually assault the teen, then shot and killed 
them both.

In an attempt to appeal his death sentence, he argued that Reyes' surviving 
son, who identified Sanchez as the murderer, was too young to testify. However, 
the California Supreme Court upheld Ermanda's youngest son was legally 
admissible regardless of his age since he was able to distinguish between the 
truth and a lie and remembered that he told officers the truth on the morning 
his mother and sister were murdered.

“There is a reason why Californians support the death penalty, and that reason 
is Juan Sanchez,” said Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward.

(source: yourcentralvalley.com)








USA:

It’s Time to End the Death Penalty Nationwide----No more excuses. We're the 
only Western nation that still executes prisoners and it's time for it to stop.



Momentum is building among the states to put an end to one of our country’s 
most barbaric law enforcement practices—the death penalty. While this progress 
is a welcome step in the right direction, it’s no replacement for long overdue 
action at the national level.

Earlier this month, the New Hampshire State Senate passed a bill to end the 
death penalty in the Granite State. Governor Chris Sununu has indicated that 
he’ll veto the legislation, but there are enough votes to override him. If that 
happens, New Hampshire will become the 21st state (along with the District of 
Columbia) to ban the death penalty outright. In addition, four states have put 
a moratorium on the death penalty, including California, which did so earlier 
this year, ending all current death sentences though the practice hasn’t been 
outlawed for future administrations.

In addition to this traction at the state level, many 2020 Democratic 
presidential candidates are voicing their support for ending the death penalty. 
Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, Senator Bernie Sanders, Mayor Pete 
Buttigieg, Congressman Beto O’Rourke and Senator Cory Booker have all called 
for the abolition or suspension of the death penalty at the national level. 
Senators Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand have applauded California’s 
moratorium, and former Washington governor Jay Inslee played an instrumental 
role in ending his state’s capital punishment program.

With so many states curtailing the death penalty and candidates for the 
nation’s highest office calling for an end to the practice, it seems 
unfathomable that the U.S. would actually be increasing its overall 
executions—but that is exactly what’s happened. Despite global capital 
punishment numbers falling by 31 percent in 2018, the U.S. had 25 executions, 
which continues an upward trend since 2016. That means the U.S. killed more 
prisoners than nations such as Iran, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, and Pakistan.

Many conservatives argue that the death penalty is a strong deterrent against 
severe crimes, such as murder, but the experts disagree. In fact, 88 % of 
criminologists believe that capital punishment “does not add any significant 
deterrent effect above that of long-term imprisonment.”

Additionally, proponents argue that the death penalty is reserved for those who 
clearly committed heinous crimes. While that may be true in theory, in practice 
this simply isn’t the case.

Since 1973, 165 Americans on death row have been found innocent of the crimes 
they were accused of committing and either pardoned, exonerated, or had their 
charges dropped. In 2018, innocent Americans spent a record 1,600 years in 
prison due to wrongful incarceration, bringing the grand total of years lost 
since 1989 to more than 21,290. And while there is no way of knowing exactly 
how many innocent Americans have been executed, the Death Penalty Information 
Center points to more than a dozen individuals who have been put to death 
despite likely being innocent. Additionally, governments in various states have 
issued posthumous pardons for prisoners who were wrongly executed, many of whom 
were individuals of color or with developmental disabilities.

Sadly, it’s not surprising that America has fallen behind much of the world on 
the death penalty, as President Trump has long been a proponent. After all, the 
president said he was “not thrilled” when California announced its moratorium 
on capital punishment. He also said he’d be “most excited” to use the death 
penalty on drug dealers and praised Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s 
violent drug war, which has led to more than 12,000 deaths and was dubbed a 
“human rights calamity” by Amnesty International.

Countries around the world have been abandoning capital punishment at a 
staggering rate since the 1990s. America is one of only 20 nations on earth, 
and the only one in the West, that still permits the death penalty.

Even one wrongful death at the hands of the government is a clear moral 
failure. It’s long past time that the United States catch up with the rest of 
the world and end the barbaric, inhumane practice that is the death penalty.

(source: Dan King is a senior contributor at Young Voices, where he covers 
civil liberties and criminal justice reform----The American Conservative)

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

Richard Branson and 20 global business leaders sign pledge on LGBT+ 
rights----Brunei sparked outcry in April when it rolled out laws penalising 
sodomy, adultery and rape with the death penalty



British billionaire Richard Branson urged fellow business leaders on Thursday 
to use their clout and put pressure on countries such as Brunei that persecute 
citizens for their sexuality.

Brunei's decision to impose the death penalty for sex between gay peoplehad 
spurred the call for action, Branson wrote in a blog posted on Virgin.com. He 
was joined by 20 other top executives, who put their names to a wider 
initiative in support of LGBT+ rights.

"Why take action now? The answer is simple. I feel that every opportunity to 
stand up for what we believe in is a good opportunity to shift the conversation 
on a global scale," said Branson, who made his fortune from a conglomerate of 
enterprises bearing the Virgin name.

Paul Polman and John Fallon, CEOs of consumer goods company Unilever and 
education group Pearson respectively, were among 21 signatories of an 
initiative supported by Open For Business, a coalition of global firms 
promoting LGBT+ inclusion.

"It is time for all of us, as business leaders and as human beings, to stand up 
to ensure that people are free from the fear of abuse for who they love," the 
21 signatories wrote.

"This is our responsibility to our employees, to our customers and to 
communities all over the world."

More than 70 countries worldwide, including Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, enforce 
anti-LGBT+ laws.

Brunei, a small Southeast Asian country of about 400,000 people, sparked outcry 
in April when it rolled out laws penalising sodomy, adultery and rape with the 
death penalty.

Celebrities, from actor George Clooney to singer Elton John, have galvanised 
support, with protesters boycotting the Dorchester Collection of hotels, owned 
by the Brunei Investment Agency.

A growing list of banks, including Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Citi and 
Nomura, have banned staff from using the hotels.

STA Travel and London's transport network have also begun to cut ties with 
businesses owned by the sultanate.

In a letter to the UN, Brunei has defended the imposition of strict sharia 
laws, which it began introducing in 2014, as more for "prevention than to 
punish".

Matt Cameron, managing director of investment industry organisation LGBT Great, 
called for a boycott of countries that enacted anti-gay and anti-transgender 
laws.

"The financial services sector is a massive part of the global economy and 
carries a lot of clout," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"I do think there's a responsibility and an accountability for the industry to 
step up and use its force."

However, Daniel Winterfeldt, a partner in law firm Reed Smith's global capital 
markets practice, stressed the value of talking to governments, whatever their 
views.

"Engagement is incredibly important. If you build up a barrier, things can 
actually get worse," Winterfeldt said.

"When [business leaders] attend high-level meetings with governments, it is 
important that on their lists of concerns are equality issues."

(source: businesslive.co.za)