[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----COLO., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 13


COLORADO:

Judge delays trial in Fero's case


Jury selection in the death penalty trial of Dexter Lewis, who is accused of 
stabbing 5 people to death at a Denver bar, has been delayed.

In an order issued on Nov. 24 but made public for the 1st time this week, 
Denver District Court Judge John Madden granted a request from defense 
attorneys to delay the start of the trial. Jury selection will now begin in 
May, and opening arguments are scheduled to start on July 20.

Jury selection was previously scheduled to begin on Jan. 20.

Lewis, 24, faces 16 counts - including 1st-degree murder, arson and robbery - 
in the attack at Fero's Bar and Grill that left 5 people dead in October 2012.

A jury pool of at least 600 people will be assembled for the case. The case 
marks the 1st time since 2001 that Denver prosecutors have pursued the death 
penalty.

In November, Lewis' attorneys told Madden they need additional time to complete 
witnesses interviews. Some of the witnesses will testify about the crime and 
others will speak about child abuse and neglect during Lewis' childhood.

Public defender Christopher Baumann said it would be impossible to complete the 
interviews before Jan. 20.

Lewis' co-defendants, brothers Joseph and Lynell Hill, have accepted plea 
agreements in exchange for their testimony against Lewis. Lynell Hill was 
sentenced to 70 years in prison, and Joseph received life in prison without the 
possibility of parole.

A 4th man connected to the crime, Demarea Harris, was never arrested or charged 
in the case. Harris was a confidential informant for the U.S. Bureau of 
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives at the time of the attack.

In previous rulings, Madden has said he expects the trial, including the 
potential penalty phase, to take 4 to 6 weeks.

(source: Denver Post)






CALIFORNIA:

Death row inmate gets upset, curses judge in Fresno courtroom


A Fresno man who has been on California's death row longer than anyone became 
agitated Friday in Fresno County Superior Court when a judge told him that he 
wanted 2 doctors to examine him.

Douglas Ray Stankewitz, 56, told Judge Arlan Harrell that he dislikes doctors 
and would spit on them if they come to his cell to interview him.

He also accused Harrell of wasting taxpayers money for prolonging his case.

"If you want to see a crazy Indian, I will show you one," said Stankewitz, an 
American Indian known as "Chief."

He uttered an expletive in cussing at the judge before bailiffs removed him.

Stankewitz was given the death penalty for fatally shooting 22-year-old Theresa 
Graybeal in Fresno in February 1978 and then bragging, "Did I drop her or did I 
drop her?"

More than 3 decades later, Stankewitz is no closer to his execution. That's 
because the California Supreme Court tossed out Stankewitz's 1st death sentence 
in 1982.

A year later he was convicted again and sentenced again to death. This time, 
the Ninth Circuit U.S. District Court of Appeals ruled in October 2012 that the 
performance of his attorney "fell below the constitutional standards." Among 
the things his lawyer failed to tell jurors, the appellate court said, was that 
Stankewitz, who grew up in Auberry, was born into a filthy, poverty-stricken 
home that had no electricity or running water. His alcoholic parents also 
frequently starved and beat him and his nine siblings.

Even though Stankewitz contends he is innocent, the Ninth Circuit upheld his 
conviction, but ordered a new trial to determine whether he should get the 
death penalty or life in prison.

Stankewitz showed up to court Friday in a red jail jumpsuit and wearing 
handcuffs and leg irons.

He initially wanted to fire his lawyer, Richard Beshwate, of Fresno, but then 
withdrew his request in favor of motion to act as his own lawyer and represent 
himself in court.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that criminal defendants have a constitutional 
right to refuse counsel and represent themselves in state criminal proceedings. 
But the law says a defendant must be competent "to carry out the basic task of 
presenting a defense without counsel," Harrell told Stankewitz.

To assist Harrell in determining whether Stankewitz was competent, the judge 
ordered psychiartrist Dr. Luis Velosa and psychologist Harold Seymour to 
examine him.

Stankewitz immediately objected.

"Where does it say I have to put on a proper defense?" Stankewitz asked 
Harrell.

"It's my case. I'm the defendant. I have a right to defend myself," he shouted.

But Harrell said Stankewitz was arguing old case law. Since 2008 the Supreme 
Court has ruled that a defendant must able to carry out the basic duties of a 
lawyer without aid from another lawyer, Harrell said.

Stankewitz told the judge that he wouldn't cooperate with "brain dead, retarded 
doctors" who are going to say "this guy is crazy" and describe him as an 
animal.

"Don't subject me to that," Stankewitz implored the judge. "You are putting me 
in a situation that I don't want to be put in."

But Harrell said he must follow the law. The judge then scheduled a hearing on 
Feb. 27 to go over the doctors reports. Before ending court, Harrell told 
Stankewitz that the doctors will write a report even if he doesn???t cooperate 
with them.

Outside court, Beshwate said Stankewitz is frustrated because he has been 
"caged up" on death row for nearly 37 years and wants to prove his innocence. 
Beshwate shrugged off the fact that it was the 5th or 6th time that Stankewitz 
had tried to fire him.

"He has legitimate concerns," Beshwate said. "But how to do you prove them 
without new evidence?"

According to court records, Stankewitz was 19 when he and 4 others from Fresno 
- Billy Brown, 14, Marlin Lewis, 22, Teena Topping, 19, and Christina Menchaca, 
25 - got stranded in Modesto and forced Graybeal into her car and drove off.

In Fresno, they looked for heroin before driving to Vine Avenue and 10th 
Street. There, according to Brown's testimony in Stankewitz's September 1978 
trial, Stankewitz raised a gun and shot Graybeal in the head from about 1 foot 
away.

Charges against Brown were dropped for testifying against Stankewitz. Lewis 
pleaded guilty to 2nd-degree murder. Menchaca and Topping pleaded guilty to 
being accessories.

Beshwate said Friday that Brown later gave a court declaration that said 
Stankewitz didn't shoot Graybeal. He said Lewis also told associates that 
Stankewitz wasn't the shooter.

But both men are dead, Beshwate said.

"I would love to retry this case, but I can't," Beshwate said. That's because 
Stankewitz's new trial will focus only on whether he should remain on death row 
or get sentenced to life in prison without parole, Beshwate said.

"It's a tragedy," Beshwate said. "I don't want to minimize Ms. Graybeal's 
death. She was an innocent victim. But Doug didn't have a great life, either."

(source: Fresno Bee)

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

S.C. Orders Hearing on Bid to Boot Prosecutor From Death Case


The California Supreme Court yesterday ordered an evidentiary hearing on 
whether a deputy district attorney in Ventura County should be disqualified 
from a death penalty case.

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said attorneys for Joshua Graham Packer had 
raised sufficient doubts as to whether Michael Frawley, a top deputy in the 
District Attorney's Office, has become so personally embroiled in the case that 
he must be removed in order for the defendant to get a fair trial. Those doubts 
can only be resolved through an evidentiary hearing, the chief justice wrote 
for a unanimous court.

Packer is charged with 3 counts of 1st-degree murder in the May 2009 deaths of 
Davina Husted, her husband Brock, and the fetus Davina Husted was carrying. The 
killings occurred at the Husteds' house in Faria Beach, where the couple's 
9-year-old son said he saw a man wearing a motorcycle helmet rob his parents, 
and that he later found their bodies.

The victims were stabbed multiple times, and Davina Husted was sexually 
assaulted, police said. Packer was linked to the crimes following his arrest on 
unrelated felony charges more than 6 months later.

Multiple Charges

As a result of that arrest, Packer's DNA was obtained and his profile matched 
to profiles taken from the crime scene. In addition to the murders, he is 
charged with 2 counts of robbery, 1 count of burglary, and 1 count of forcible 
oral copulation, with special circumstances of robbery-murder, burglary-murder, 
murder in the course of forcible oral copulation, and multiple murders.

In moving to disqualify Frawley under Penal Code ???1424, the defense said it 
intends to call the prosecutor's now-adult children - who participated in a 
youth group with the defendant - as witnesses, and that when it notified 
Frawley of that fact, he told his daughter not to cooperate with the defense 
team and sought to intimidate defense counsel with a motion for contempt based 
on untimely discovery.

Disqualification is also required, the defense argued, because Frawley's 
daughter once dated a potential witness in the case, and because Frawley 
"appears to have known" Davina Husted through his former wife, who served on 
the board of a civic group when the murdered woman was its president.

Lower Courts

Superior Court Judge Patricia Murphy ruled that none of the allegations 
amounted to a viable claim that Frawley had a personal embroilment in the case 
that would lead him to treat the defendant unfairly. The Court of Appeal for 
this district agreed.

Cantil-Sakauye said some of the points raised by the defense did not amount to 
grounds for disqualification. The prosecutor cannot be disqualified, she said, 
merely because his former wife - from whom he has been divorced since 1997 - 
may have known the victim, or because his daughter may have had a brief romance 
with a potential witness.

But other allegations by the defense, she said, raise the "more substantial" 
question of whether Frawley "had become so personally involved in the case" 
that he could not treat the defendant fairly.

Affidavits submitted on the #1424 motion, the chief justice reasoned, raise an 
inference that Frawley acted with particular animus toward the defense once it 
brought his children's relationship with an accused murderer into public view. 
While the prosecution's affidavits favored a contrary view, that Frawley was a 
zealous but fair prosecutor who was not treating Packer any differently than he 
would another defendant charged with similar crimes, the trial judge should not 
have resolved that conflict on affidavits alone, Cantil-Sakauye insisted.

"[W]e believe that on the facts of this case the trial court's choice of one 
inference over another was improperly made without hearing testimony, 
evaluating credibility, and resolving factual disputes that were key to 
determining the relative reasonableness of the alternative inferences raised by 
the parties??? affidavits," Cantil-Sakauye concluded.

Conflicts in Evidence

The hearing, the chief justice elaborated, may resolve conflicts in the 
evidence as to how extensively the defendant and the prosecutor's children 
socialized, whether the witness who previously dated Elizabeth Frawley was told 
by a prosecution investigator not to mention her if questioned by the defense, 
and whether the prosecutor had interfered with a defense attempt to subpoena 
his daughter, as well as conflicting statements regarding the defendant's 
character that might have been made at different times by the prosecutor's son.

The case was argued in the Supreme Court by Ventura Chief Deputy Public 
Defender Michael C. McMahon for the defendant and by Deputy Attorney General 
Steven D. Matthews of Los Angeles and Ventura Deputy District Attorney Michelle 
J. Contois for the prosecution.

The California District Attorneys Association filed an amicus brief supporting 
the prosecution.

The case is Packer v. Superior Court (People), 14 S.O.S. 5595.

(source: Metropolitan News Company)






USA:

Scalia on torture morality: 'I don't think it's so clear at all'


Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says torture -- depending on the 
circumstances, like if a nuclear bomb was planted in Los Angeles -- isn't 
necessarily off limits. The justice who's been a mainstay of the high court's 
conservative wing for 28 years condemned the "self-righteousness of European 
liberals" who oppose torture "so easily" Friday in an interview with Swiss 
National Radio.

"I don't think it's so clear at all," Scalia said.

"I think it is very facile for people to say 'Oh, torture is terrible,'" he 
said. "You posit the situation where a person that you know for sure knows the 
location of a nuclear bomb that has been planted in Los Angeles and will kill 
millions of people.

"You think it's an easy question? You think it's clear that you cannot use 
extreme measures to get that information out of that person?"

Scalia also discussed the death penalty, saying he thinks it's "too bad" that a 
campaign in Switzerland to re-institute capital punishment has been thwarted by 
the the country's membership in the Council of Europe, which has made the issue 
a requirement for all participating countries.

"What are human rights is not written up in the sky, and if it were written up 
in the sky, it would not be up to judges, lawyers, just because they've gone to 
law school, to know what human rights ought to be and therefore are," Scalia 
said.

"And therefore each society's perception of what it believes human rights 
should be ought to be up to that society, and I think it's very foolish to 
yield that determinations not only to a foreign body but to a foreign body of 
judges," he said. "I don't know why anyone would want to do that."

And he brushed off questions about whether Supreme Court decisions opening the 
door for outside groups to spend unlimited sums of money on elections have hurt 
the country, saying that "the amount of money that is spent on all elections -- 
state, local and federal -- in the United States, is less than what women spend 
on cosmetics for a year, OK?"

He said the alternative is having Congress impose limits on "who can speak and 
how much who can speak."

"If you think that a fair system of election speech is going to be devised by 
the incumbent senators and congressmen, you are naive," he said. "They will for 
sure, as they have in the past, devise a system that favors the incumbent. If 
that's the choice of evils -- have a system that always favors the incumbent 
or, you know, let people speak as much as they want with as much money as they 
want -- I choose the latter. I don't even regard the latter as an evil."

Scalia said he doesn't agree with the notion that outspending the other side is 
the key to winning elections. He said if people really believe "the masses are 
so ignorant that they are swayed by television ads," then "let's have a king. 
Right? Let's have a king."

(source: CNN)