[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., DEL., S.C., GA., FLA., ALA.

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 5



PENNSYLVANIA:

In Frein case, Louise Luck will look at the man behind the monster----Goshen 
mitigation specialist is assigned to the defense team of trooper ambush suspect


As a girl, Louise Luck of Goshen strongly identified with the "Peanuts" 
character Lucy, who gave psychological advice to her young friends. They'd 
confide in her, and she enjoyed helping them. It was perhaps only natural that 
Luck went on to pursue a career in psychology.

Now she's part of the defense team that will peer into the psyche of Eric 
Matthew Frein, the man accused of killing a Pennsylvania state trooper outside 
the Blooming Grove, Pa., barracks on Sept. 12 and wounding a 2nd.

"The court wants to know the person they are sentencing, and wants to be able 
to give that particular person an appropriate sentence," said Luck, who is a 
mitigation specialist. "You cannot really appropriately sentence unless you 
know who your client is."

She said she cannot comment on any aspect of the Frein case. Frein will appear 
at a preliminary hearing before District Justice Shannon Muir Tuesday morning 
at the Pike County courthouse in Milford.

A mitigation specialist must be assigned to the defense team of any person 
facing capital charges. The team also includes 2 attorneys and an investigator. 
Luck describes her role as the "social historian of the team," documenting the 
tragedies in her clients' lives. She is retained by the attorneys in these 
cases, and not directly by the defendants.

She works to get clients a life sentence instead of the death penalty after 
they've been convicted for 1st-degree murder. The Pike County District 
Attorney, Ray Tonkin, said he is seeking the death penalty in the Frein case.

Luck helps the courts determine the factors that might mitigate the defendant's 
crime, whether it be trauma in their past, or perhaps their capacity for 
kindness despite an horrific upbringing. She testifies at the penalty phase, 
and encourages witnesses to turn the prosecutors' monster image back into 
individualized, humanized beings. She has on appeal saved the lives of many 
convicts sentenced to death.

She is quick to say that her investigation of a defendant's social, mental, 
physical, family and psychological history is by no means used to justify what 
the defendant does, but only to explain the frailties and difficulties in his 
or her life. Sexual abuse, physical abuse, alcohol and substance abuse are 
often passed down through the generations, she said.

Stopping the cycle of violence Luck says she's very sympathetic to the victims' 
families in these crimes. This comes from personal experience. A close 
childhood friend of hers, Elaine Norton, was bludgeoned to death in her 5th 
month of pregnancy. At first, she wanted the killer to get the death penalty. 
But then she changed her mind, believing that a lifetime spent reflecting on 
his crime would be worse than death.

Luck said anger and multi-generational trauma are usually found in the 
histories of people who commit the most horrendous crimes. She said she has 
stepped into some very strange and frightening situations when learning about 
her clients.

Teachers and coaches who bond with kids at risk are the most effective agents 
in turning things around. A gesture as simple as giving a child a smile can 
work wonders for someone in need of positive recognition, she said.

Famous cases

Over the past 17 years, Luck has been involved in some 300 death penalty cases, 
and in numerous states. Her interest in mitigation began after working with 
Steve Lundgren, the former district attorney in Sullivan County, on a serious 
sex case. Her client had a severe, traumatic brain injury. Luck has since 
worked with attorneys in numerous states across the country.

She is well-known in her field through her work on many high-profile cases 
involving heinous crimes, with the Frein case just one in a long list. Some of 
her biggest include the famous Craigslist murder, in which newlyweds Miranda 
and Elytte Barbour were convicted of murdering a man they'd lured with an ad in 
2013. Luck also worked on the case of Baruch Lanner, who was convicted in 2002 
of sexually abusing girls who attended the religious school where he had been 
principal.

Luck's offices in Manhattan and Orange County also help people correct their 
behavior, with monitoring and counseling for drugs and alcohol.

>From probation to mitigation

Luck's interest in the criminal mind began before she graduated from SUNY New 
Paltz. At the suggestion of a friend, she took the probation officer test 
without even knowing at the time what the job entailed.

While working on her masters degree at Marist College, Luck became a probation 
officer, making sure her clients got therapy and the programs they needed. She 
also prepared pre-sentencing investigations, mandatory for any offender facing 
a year or more in prison after pleading guilty. She reviewed school records, 
employment histories, drug and alcohol use, mental health problems, and family 
histories. She then worked as a state corrections counselor, addressing inmate 
needs, making suggestions regarding security levels, and classifying inmates 
according to their flight risk, the level of violence in their sentence, prior 
violence, and other factors.

>From there she became an institutional parole officer, looking into the 
progress of inmates, and recommending training programs, anger management, and 
alcohol or drug programs. She made recommendations about whether inmates should 
be released.

After her marriage, her husband, Dr. Bernard Luck, made it possible for her to 
have her own practice, where she could help a smaller number of clients and 
address their needs on a more personal level. She calls her business Court 
Consultation Services. She is one of only a handful of sentencing advocate and 
capital mitigational specialists in New York State, and among only 200 or 300 
in the entire country.

In her non-capital cases, her primary concern is addressing the difficulties 
that lead clients to offend.

"If you can identify and work at correcting these issues, you will be able to 
address future reciticism and community safety," she said. "It's a moral 
obligation to our community at large."

(source: The Chronicle)






DELAWARE:

Delaware jury votes 12-0 Otis Phillips should die


A Superior Court jury on Thursday voted unanimously in favor of the death 
penalty for Otis Phillips after 2 1/2 hours of deliberation.

Phillips, 38, along with co-defendant Jeffrey Phillips, was convicted late last 
month of the 1st-degree murder of Herman Curry and the manslaughter of 
16-year-old Alexander Kamara Jr. in a daylight shootout at Eden Park during a 
soccer tournament.

Curry, 47, had been the organizer of the tournament and Kamara was a player on 
one of the teams.

The panel unanimously ruled that prosecutors had proven two statutory 
aggravators in the case against Otis Phillips, qualifying him for the death 
penalty. The jury ruled 2 or more people were killed as a result of Otis 
Phillips' actions and the murder was premeditated and the result of substantial 
planning.

Oddly, the jury did not find that a 3rd aggravator - that the murder was 
committed for the purpose of preventing a witness, Curry, from testifying in a 
criminal proceeding - as prosecutors argued.

This same jury last month found Otis Phillips was guilty of the 2nd-degree 
murder of Christopher Palmer in 2008 and prosecutors had argued that on July 8, 
2012 Phillips "executed" Curry in order to prevent him from testifying about 
the Palmer case.

But the jury only needed to unanimously find that there was one statutory 
aggravator in order to move on to the question of whether the aggravating 
factors in the case outweighed the mitigating factors and on that question the 
vote was 12-0.

Otis Phillips, who was dressed in black slacks and a white, untucked button 
down shirt was wringing his folded hands as he sat at the defense table, before 
the jury came in. But when Superior Court Judge Calvin L. Scott Jr. read the 
jury vote, Phillips did not react. He instead stared blankly in the direction 
of the jury and did not appear to speak with his attorneys before he was lead 
out of the courtroom.

The jury vote is only a recommendation and it is up to the judge to impose the 
death penalty. But when there is a clear vote, like this one, judges almost 
always follow the jury recommendation.

Scott did not immediately set a sentencing date.

Earlier, in closing arguments, Deputy Attorney General John Downs argued that 
for years Otis Phillips did whatever he wanted to do whenever he wanted to do 
it and was rarely held accountable.

He walked away from shootings and robberies, grabbed and fondled women he saw 
on the dance floor, and lied his way out of jail, Downs said. "And if anyone 
got in his way, he would be eliminated and that is what happened to Herman 
Curry," Downs told the jury, asking them to finally hold Otis Phillips 
responsible.

In this case, Downs said, "the law allows the death penalty and justice demands 
it."

Phillips' attorney Michael Heyden, meanwhile, described his client as a man who 
was given few breaks in life. He was 1 of 8 brothers born in one of the poorest 
countries in the world, Guyana, and was repeatedly abandoned by his parents 
throughout his childhood.

Phillips was first left at age 7 by his parents when they moved to the United 
States without him. Then after being reunited with them a year and a half 
later, he was left again at age 14 when his mother died and his father promptly 
married another woman and moved, leaving Phillips and his brothers in Brooklyn, 
New York.

And, Heyden said, Phillips was abandoned a third time when his father came back 
and told his son they were going on a vacation to Guyana. Once there, the 
father took Phillips' immigration papers and left him and one of his brothers 
with strangers. According to testimony, Phillips only found out he wasn't going 
back with his father in a brief phone call from his Dad from the airport.

Heyden told the jury that if they voted for death, they would be engaging in 
the same revenge and retaliation that prosecutors charged Phillips engaged in 
at Eden Park. "You are not a gang, you are a jury. You should show mercy," he 
said, adding imposing the death penalty on Phillips will only bring more tears.

Heyden showed pictures of Phillips with his young daughter and pictures the 
daughter drew in crayon to her father, professing her love. "If you kill Otis 
Phillips, you are hurting that young girl," he said.

Downs, however, recalled the tears of Herman Curry's family and the sorrow 
expressed at the penalty hearing by Herman Curry's employer. And Downs also 
recalled the loss to the autistic children Herman Curry taught and mentored in 
his job.

Downs acknowledged Phillips had a difficult and traumatic childhood, but he 
said around 2002 Phillips had overcome his upbringing to get married, to have a 
child, buy a house and to land a solid $20-an-hour union construction job.

But, Downs said, Phillips walked away from all that a few years later, leaving 
his wife, child and job behind for a thug life with a street gang.

"There was a pattern of violence in his life. Instead of his job, instead of 
his house, instead of his family, he chose to be the muscle for the Sure 
Shots," he said, putting up a picture of Phillips as he was being taken into 
custody after the shooting at Eden Park. "That is Otis Phillips."

"The bad outweighed the good."

Afterward, both prosecutors and attorneys representing Otis Phillips declined 
to comment.

The jury, judge and prosecutors will be back in court on Monday for the penalty 
phase hearing against co-defendant, Jeffrey Phillips, who also faces a possible 
death sentence for his role in the slayings at Eden Park.

Despite having the same last name, Jeffrey and Otis are not related.

While Otis Phillips shot and killed Curry, according to testimony, and Jeffrey 
Phillips shot and killed Karma, Jeffrey Phillips was also convicted of the 
1st-degree murder of Curry under accomplice liability.

(source: The News Journal)

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

Death Penalty Recommended in Soccer Shootings


A Delaware jury has voted unanimously to recommend the death penalty for 1 of 2 
gang members convicted of murder in a 2012 soccer tournament shooting in 
Wilmington that left three people dead.

The New Castle County jury delivered its recommendation regarding 38-year Otis 
Phillips on Thursday afternoon. The final sentencing decision will be made by 
the judge.

The same jury will hear arguments starting Monday on whether to recommend the 
death penalty for 23-year-old Jeffrey Phillips.

The 2 defendants, who are not related, were convicted of murder in the death of 
tournament organizer Herman Curry, and manslaughter in the death of 16-year-old 
player Alexander Kamara.

Authorities say an accomplice who was driving the getaway car for the 2 killers 
died after being hit by return gunfire from tournament spectators.

(source: Associated Press)






SOUTH CAROLINA:

Death penalty sought for dad in shooting of Hartsville toddler


Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty against a father charged with 
murder in the shooting death of a 21-month-old girl in Hartsville.

Local media outlets report that in court papers filed Thursday, prosecutors 
said the case was eligible for the death penalty because Timothy Sanders killed 
the toddler for money or something else of value and on behalf of another 
person.

Also charged with murder in the case is the toddler's mother, April Dixon. 
Investigators say Madison Dolford was shot in the chest in December 2013.

The shooting happened in the front yard while the mother of the child, Dixon, 
was with the little girl, Coroner Todd Hardee said. The girl's mother called 
911 at 6:12 pm, Hardee said.

April Dixon, age 24, and Timothy O'Neil Sanders, age 41, both live at the 
address where the shooting happened.

Coroner Todd Hardee said authorities initially believed that the shooting 
incident stemmed from an alleged altercation about a week earlier between some 
adults.

Authorities have released few details about the case.

(source: WBTW news)






GEORGIA----impending execution

Alcoholic lawyer who was under criminal investigation gave poor capital 
defense, petition alleges


Appellate lawyers for a Georgia death-row inmate are arguing that his life 
should be spared because his trial lawyer, who drank up to a quart of vodka 
every night during the trial, did not present mitigating evidence or conduct a 
proper investigation.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has scheduled a special clemency 
meeting on Monday to consider information in the case of Robert Wayne Holsey, 
who is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday for the murder of a 
deputy sheriff. The clemency petition seeks a stay of execution to allow for a 
full hearing on the request to commute Holsey's sentence to life in prison. 
WABE and the Associated Press have stories; a press release by the parole board 
is here.

Lawyers with the Georgia Resource Center filed a clemency petition this week 
that says Holsey's trial lawyer Andy Prince did not present evidence that 
Holsey had been abused as a child, and told the court that intellectual 
disability was not a factor, though records indicate Holsey was intellectually 
disabled.

During the trial, Prince was drinking heavily and was under investigation for 
stealing from a client. He was later disbarred and sentenced to 3 years in 
prison. Prince, who is now deceased, testified at a civil proceeding for Holsey 
in 2006, saying that he "shouldn't have been representing anybody in any case," 
reports the AP.

The clemency petition alleges that Prince "drank away the money the court gave 
him to hire a mitigation specialist to investigate and develop a penalty phase 
defense, and spent each night of Mr. Holsey's trial swilling up to a quart of 
vodka in his hotel room while worrying about how to avoid detection and 
prosecution for embezzling over $100,000 of another client's money. He relied 
on his inexperienced trial counsel to develop the penalty phase defense, but 
never bothered to tell her and provided her no guidance about how to do so.

"As a result, the jury never heard the compelling story of Mr. Holsey's 
terrifically brutalized childhood in a home neighbors referred to as the 
'torture chamber.'"

The lawyers have also asked the Georgia Supreme Court for a stay of execution 
to determine whether Georgia uses the wrong standard to determine whether an 
inmate's intellectual disability exempts him from execution.

A federal appeals court upheld Holsey's conviction in 2012 in a 2-1 decision, 
and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in June 2013. Holsey's 
appellate lawyers are Marcia Widder and Brian Kammer.

(source: ABA Journal)






FLORIDA:

Jacksonville public defender seeks removal from 2nd death-penalty 
case----Victim was 65-year-old neighbor


Convicted murderer Randall Deviney looks into the courtroom gallery as he is 
taken from the courtroom on June 11, 2010, after being fingerprinted prior to 
his sentencing for the murder of his neighbor.

For the second time in a month, Circuit Judge Mallory Cooper must decide 
whether the office of Public Defender Matt Shirk has a conflict that requires 
removing its defense team from a death-penalty case.

The Public Defender's Office has been defending Randall Deviney, whose second 
murder trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 5, for over 5 years. Deviney, 23, is 
accused of slitting the throat of 65-year-old Dolores Futrell in August 2008 
with a fish filleting knife in her Westside home on Bennington Drive.

The Public Defender's Office is asking Cooper to be removed from the case 
citing a conflict of interest. The motion by Assistant Public Defender Senovia 
Portis says the conflict involves another client her office is representing but 
does not spell out the conflict.

Public defender spokesman Matt Bisbee said the office could not comment because 
of attorney-client privilege issues.

If Cooper removes the public defender, Deviney's trial will be delayed while 
new lawyers take over his case.

Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda, who is prosecuting Deviney, said 
his office will oppose the motion. A hearing on the issue is scheduled for 8:30 
a.m. Friday.

Deviney was convicted of the crime in 2010, and Cooper sentenced him to death 
after a jury recommended he be executed by a 10-2 vote.

That conviction was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court in February 2013. 
Justices ruled that police should have stopped questioning Deviney after he 
repeatedly told them he was done speaking.

Police ignored those comments and kept questioning him, and Deviney eventually 
confessed to killing Futrell. That videotaped confession was shown to jurors at 
trial.

Under the law an interrogation must stop if a suspect invokes his right to 
remain silent, the Florida Supreme Court said in its unanimous ruling, citing 
the U.S. Supreme Court's Miranda ruling.

Deviney was Futrell's neighbor. She often paid him to do odd jobs around her 
house because she suffered from multiple sclerosis. Deviney told police he went 
to her house that night but got upset because Futrell brought up questions 
about his childhood and he "lost it."

Cooper ruled earlier this week that the public defender could not withdraw from 
the death-penalty case of Donald James Smith. Smith, 58, is accused of raping 
and killing 8-year-old Cherish Perrywinkle.

The Public Defender's Office also said it has a conflict in that case and is 
now taking Cooper's ruling to the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee.

The 2 death-penalty cases are currently scheduled to run back-to-back in 
January, with Deviney's trial starting Jan. 5 and Smith's Jan. 20.

(source: jacksonville.com)






ALABAMA:

Trial date set for man in 2007 slayings of 2 Bessemer bank tellers, wounding of 
2 others


The federal trial of a man, who faces a possible death sentence if convicted in 
the 2007 slayings of 2 Bessemer bank tellers and the wounding of 2 others 
during a robbery, will begin this spring, a federal judge ruled this week.

U.S. District Court Judge David Proctor set the trial of William Merriweather 
Jr. to begin April 20. The judge in October had ruled - for a 2nd time in 
nearly 2 years - that Merriweather Jr. was competent to stand trial.

The trial is expected to take up to 2 months with jury selection taking about 2 
weeks. On April 17 an 18- to 20-person jury with be selected with 12 jurors and 
6 to 8 alternates.

Proctor this week ordered that on or before March 2 both the prosecutors and 
defense attorneys are to submit to the court the final joint proposed juror 
questionnaire and a proposed narrative summary for the court to use during jury 
selection.

In orders this week Judge Proctor also set a list of other deadlines, 
including:

- On or before March 16 both sides are to submit to the court joint proposed 
jury instructions as to both the guilt and penalty phases of the trial.

- On or before March 30 the defendant is to submit to the judge requested 
instructions as to both the guilt and penalty phases of trial which may reveal 
any unique theories of the case.

- On March 9 a hearing on all unresolved pretrial motions will be held.

- On or before March 13 the U.S. Attorney's Office is to file its trial brief 
alerting the court to any legal or evidentiary matters it anticipates will 
arise at trial. The defense has to file its trial brief on or before March 20 
alerting the court to any legal or evidentiary matters he anticipates will 
arise at trial.

Merriweather is charged in the May 14, 2007 bank robbery and deaths of Eva 
Lovelady Hudson and Sheila McWaine Prevo, and with the wounding of Anita Siler 
Gordon, Latoya Shaniece Freeman, all tellers at a Wachovia Bank branch in 
Bessemer.

Merriweather's attorneys have argued for years that Merriweather is 
schizophrenic and is incompetent to stand trial. Proctor first ruled 
Merriweather competent in early 2013 - based on a 2011 hearing. The judge set a 
trial, but then delayed it as Merriweather's attorneys argued that previously 
undisclosed nurses notes from his mental evaluation at a federal prison plus a 
doctors' new concerns deserved new look at competency.

Proctor held another competency hearing this summer and in October issued a 
124-page ruling, again declaring Merriweather competent for trial.

(Merriweather ruling)

The more than 7-year wait for a trial has frustrated and angered the victims 
who survived and the families of the 2 tellers who died.

Merriweather, wearing a green baseball-style cap, white shirt, tie, and slacks 
and shoes partially wrapped in electrical tape, walked into the Wachovia Bank 
branch on Ninth Avenue in Bessemer.

Minutes later, Merriweather walked out of the bank with $11,255 cash and the 
bank manager in tow as a hostage after having killed and wounded the tellers. 
Merriweather didn't make it out of the parking lot after being wounded by a 
sheriff's deputy.

(source: al.com)