[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----MO., WYO., NEV., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

May 17




MISSOURI:

Death penalty sought in Miller County murder case



Miller County Prosecutor Ronnie Winfrey has announced his intention to seek the 
death penalty against a Chicago man allegedly involved in drug transactions 
with a man from the state of California prior to killing him in Miller County 
last year.

Winfrey filed his notice Wednesday during a hearing regarding the case of 
Joseph McKenna, 26, who is charged with 1mcccccccccst-degree murder, armed 
criminal action and tampering with a witness in connection with the death of 
Tyler Worthington, 34, of North San Juan, California.

No new court date has been scheduled for McKenna's case.

Investigators believe McKenna and Tyler Kroll, 25, also of Chicago, were 
involved in Worthington's death. Kroll is charged with 1st-degree murder and is 
scheduled to appear in court next month.

McKenna and Kroll allegedly traveled with Worthington and, on June 4, 2018, 
were traveling to Miller County for delivery of controlled substances, 
according to a Miller County Sheriff's Department probable cause statement.

Authorities alleged McKenna made earlier statements about intending to kill 
Worthington because of Worthington's demands that McKenna pay him for prior 
deliveries of controlled substances. They believe he conspired with Kroll to 
lure Worthington out of California and come with them to Missouri to complete a 
delivery and killed him by shooting him in the head.

(source: News Tribune)








WYOMING:

State to seek death penalty in Lovell murder case



The Big Horn County Attorney’s Office will be pursuing the death penalty in a 
homicide case involving a man from Lovell.

In a recent filing with the court, County Attorney Marcia Bean conveyed to the 
court that her office would pursue the death penalty in the case involving 
Donald Joe Crouse. Crouse is charged with the 1st-degree murder of Carol Jean 
Barnes on Jan. 4, 2018.

The last execution carried out in Wyoming was Mark Hopkinson in 1992. Wyoming’s 
last death row inmate, Dale Eaton, had his sentence overturned by a federal 
judge in 2014.

There is a current motion from Crouse’s current attorney, Timothy Blatt, to 
reschedule the trial set for June 3. His reasons include that Crouse is seeking 
another mental examination and the need for another public defender that has 
experience with death penalty cases. Crouse waived his right to a speedy trial.

(source: Gillette News Record)








NEVADA:

Jury in Reno Reorders Execution of Nevada Death Row Inmate----A Nevada jury has 
reordered the execution of a 3-time murderer who has been on death row for 34 
years.



A jury has reordered the execution of a three-time murderer who has been on 
death row in Nevada for 34 years for killings in 3 states.

Jurors in Reno deliberated about three hours after a weeklong resentencing 
hearing before rejecting a bid by 67-year-old Tracy Petrocelli's lawyers to let 
him serve life without parole.

"The appropriate penalty for Mr. Petrocelli is that he die in prison. Why is 
that not enough?" public defender Jay Slocum asked during closing arguments.

Petrocelli stood from his wheelchair but showed no reaction to the unanimous 
verdict in support of his execution.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld Petrocelli's 
murder conviction 2 years ago in the fatal shooting of Reno car dealership 
owner James Wilson in 1982.

But the court ordered a new sentencing hearing, ruling that Petrocelli should 
have had his lawyer present and been read his Miranda rights when a 
psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution at that trial interviewed him in 
jail.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Luke Prengaman told jurors that Petrocelli may 
be older now, but he's the same evil man who fatally shot three people in the 
head.

Petrocelli also was convicted of killing his 18-year-old girlfriend, Melanie 
Barker, in Seattle in the months before Wilson was slain, and 30-year-old 
Dennis Gibson, whose body was found near Barstow, California, in 1981.

"Is he less responsible for killing Mr. Wilson because time has passed?" 
Prengaman asked. "He deserved the death penalty when he committed that third 
murder, and he deserves it today."

Petrocelli has filed multiple appeals since he was sent to death row in 1985. 
Nevada has not executed anyone since 2006.

His case produced a precedent-setting Nevada Supreme Court standard regarding 
the admissibility of evidence of past bad acts when a defendant faces charges 
for a new crime.

Pre-trial "Petrocelli hearings" are now common in Nevada for judges to 
determine if a jury will be allowed to hear such evidence under special 
circumstances.

Petrocelli's link to the courtroom standard had no direct bearing on his 
resentencing.

His lawyers characterized him as a changed man in failing health who has a 
history of good behavior during his 37 years at the Ely State Prison near the 
Utah line.

"People are capable of change, and Tracy is such a person," public defender 
Jaclyn Millsap told the jury. "Do not sentence him to die."

Petrocelli told jurors on Wednesday that he took responsibility for the 
killings and the "horrible sorrow I've caused everyone."

"For 37 years, I have cried, not for me, but for my victims and their 
families," Petrocelli said. "I have felt the pain of my actions for 13,555 days 
and will continue to do so until my last breath."

Prengaman dismissed Petrocelli as a "con man," not a repentant man.

The prosecutor said Petrocelli's pain was "not for the victims in this case," 
but "for himself. He wishes he wasn't in prison."

(source: Associated Press)








CALIFORNIA:

Attorney who once had sex with a client’s daughters is removed from capital 
murder case

A criminal defense attorney who once had sexual relationships with 2 daughters 
of a client was removed Thursday from a death penalty case in Bakersfield after 
civil rights attorneys intervened, arguing that he was unqualified.

Gary Turnbull was relieved at the request of the defendant, Juan Pablo Vega, in 
a closed-door proceeding. Vega is accused in the fatal shootings of two men at 
a bar south of Bakersfield.

“It’s too bad,” Turnbull said outside the courtroom after the hearing. “I hope 
he gets good representation.”

An American Civil Liberties Union attorney said Turnbull’s removal was a 
“positive development” in the 4-year-old case.

“This continues to show the need for a closer look at the way the death penalty 
system is broken in California,” said Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s 
Capital Punishment Project. “There are so few mechanisms for oversight over, 
really, this abysmal quality of lawyering.”

The wrangling over who would represent Vega began soon after Turnbull 
reactivated his law license in October following a nearly 2-decade hiatus. 
About a month later, he was appointed to defend Vega, who is charged with 
1st-degree murder in the shooting deaths of Jorge Zavala and Federico Zuniga 
Moreno.

Kern County prosecutors allege that Vega walked into a nightclub in Arvin in 
June 2015 and shot three people, killing two and wounding the other. His 
girlfriend, they said, had called him and said the people were bothering her 
and to come take care of it. Vega has pleaded not guilty.

Soon after Turnbull’s appointment, the ACLU stepped in to try to remove him 
from the case, arguing that his ethical transgressions and years out of 
practice made him unfit to take it on.

Decades ago, while representing a woman accused of killing her husband, 
Turnbull, now 74, had secret sexual relationships with two of her three 
daughters, eventually having a child with one.

Twice he was suspended from practicing law — in 1995 for not paying child 
support and again in 2004 for not paying bar dues.

In an interview with The Times last month, Turnbull dismissed the arguments as 
“sour grapes.”

“They’re saying from a relationship I had 35 years ago that I’m unfit. Yeah, 
well, that’s history and the bar didn’t find it was unethical, immoral, illegal 
or any conflict,” Turnbull said. “According to court rules, I’m totally 
qualified.”

Turnbull said he inactivated his license because he fell ill with cancer, moved 
to Canada and didn’t think he’d practice again. He reactivated his license, he 
said, because he was bored.

In a November declaration requesting to represent the man in the current 
capital case, Turnbull indicated he had handled more than 100 criminal jury 
trials and completed 300 hours of death penalty seminars throughout his career.

When Turnbull was relieved Thursday, he said Vega had stopped speaking with 
him.

“He refuses to communicate with me because he wants [Keith] Rutman,” Turnbull 
said, referring to the attorney who was handling the case previously. “His 
family wants Rutman, but Rutman is unqualified.”

A handful of attorneys were in and out of Vega’s case before a judge appointed 
Rutman, a San Diego lawyer, to represent Vega in October 2017 because the 
Indigent Defense Program was unable to find a qualified attorney within the 
county.

The Indigent Defense Program, run by the Kern County Bar Assn., contracts with 
Kern County to represent defendants when the public defender’s office has a 
conflict or otherwise cannot.

In this case, the public defender’s office represented Vega’s girlfriend, 
Lourdes Olvera, who was accused of instigating the shooting. After her murder 
trial resulted in a hung jury, she pleaded guilty to attempting to dissuade a 
witness and 2 counts of soliciting a murder in a deal brokered with 
prosecutors.

Stubbs said the ACLU was undecided about whether it would intervene in 
Turnbull’s other cases, saying she hoped the Indigent Defense Program, “on its 
own initiative, will decide to do something about that.”

Turnbull told The Times last month that he was handling 2 other capital cases.

The Indigent Defense Program’s director, Henry Marquez, said Thursday he didn’t 
know whether Turnbull would remain on the program’s list of attorneys and 
declined to comment further.

(source: Los Angeles Times)

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

Dudley Seeks Death Penalty for “Golden State Killer”----Santa Barbara DA Makes 
Push Despite Governor’s Order



On March 12, Joyce Dudley got a heads-up call from Gavin Newsom’s office that 
the governor was about to declare a moratorium on death row executions in 
California.

Less than a month later, in the case of accused serial murderer and rapist 
Joseph James DeAngelo, however, Santa Barbara’s district attorney joined other 
prosecutors in announcing they would seek the death sentence for the alleged 
“Golden State Killer.”

As fallout reverberates from Newsom’s surprise, controversial move, Dudley’s 
action illustrates the complex legal, political, and social crosscurrents and 
consequences of Newsom’s assertion of solitary executive authority over an 
issue that has been fiercely debated for decades across the state.

“I have every right to keep prosecuting cases that are death-penalty eligible,” 
the district attorney told the Independent. “This doesn’t change my life.”

A SENTENCE RARELY SOUGHT: The DeAngelo case is only the second in which Dudley 
has sought the death penalty since her first election in 2010; the other is the 
prosecution of Pierre Haobsh, accused of murdering Goleta acupuncturist Dr. 
Henry Han, his wife, and his daughter in 2016. Haobsh is scheduled for trial 
next year.

She said the horror and time span of DeAngelo’s alleged crimes, which include 
four murders in Goleta amid a statewide spree in the 1970s and ’80s that is 
believed to have included more than a dozen slayings and at least 50 rapes and 
100 residential burglaries, convinced her it was the right thing to do.

“Given the duration [and] the extent of the cruelty, viciousness, and 
callousness of his body of work, I’m very comfortable that this case merits 
it,” Dudley said.

On April 10, Santa Barbara County Chief Deputy District Attorney Kelly Scott 
appeared in court in Sacramento, where the far-flung Golden State Killer cases 
are being consolidated, and joined prosecutors from 3 other counties to 
announce they would seek the death penalty.

Since then, several of Dudley’s conservative colleagues have bitterly attacked 
Newsom over his March 13 order granting reprieves to all 737 inmates on death 
row.

“The district attorneys of the state of California took an oath to uphold and 
follow the law,” Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy 
District Attorneys in Los Angeles, who is seeking a death sentence for a serial 
killer in that county, told the New York Times. “I think the governor probably 
did too, but he doesn’t care.”

Todd Spitzer is the DA in Orange County, 1 of the 3 jurisdictions that Dudley 
joined in pursuing the execution of the Golden State Killer. Spitzer recently 
appeared at a press conference with families of murder victims to announce a 
“victims of murder justice tour” around California in an effort to pressure 
Newsom to rescind his order.

“Governor Newsom took a knife and stabbed it into the heart of all these crime 
victims standing here today, and thousands of crime victims who received a 
lawful death sentence in the state of California by a jury,” Spitzer told 
reporters.

JOYCE’S TAKE: Dudley, who joined the DA’s office in 1990 and prosecuted violent 
felonies for many years, said it “breaks my heart” to see families emotionally 
afflicted by Newsom’s executive order.

“They feel revictimized,” she said, like “the rug is [being] pulled out from 
under them.”

Unlike Spitzer and others, Dudley is equable about Newsom’s action and believes 
the governor, a fellow Democrat, has every right to declare a moratorium—as she 
still has the right to seek the death penalty and voters have the right to 
affirm in the future the support for the law they upheld in 2 recent statewide 
elections.

“I am not a dogmatic person—every branch has its own responsibility,” she said.

“The voters had a clear decision to make, and we still have the death penalty. 
But the governor gets to decide whether he’ll sign those [death] warrants,” 
Dudley added. “I have a different role, and I’ll do what I think is in the best 
interests of the people of Santa Barbara County.”

(source: Santa Barbara Independent)