[Deathpenalty] death penalty news---IND., TENN., MO., KAN., ARIZ., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 17



INDIANA:

Prosecutor to seek death penalty against man accused of killing woman



A judge ruled to make Joseph Oberhansley eligible for the death penalty Tuesday 
night.

"I'm relieved in a way, in other ways I'm not sure of the death penalty," 
Connie Sneed, the victim's friend, said. "I think it's too good and too easy 
for him."

The Clark County prosecutor sought the death penalty against Oberhansley after 
he confessed to killing his ex-girlfriend in Jeffersonville.

Steve Stewart felt it was an obvious decision to make it a capital case, 
saying, "The death sentence is based on 2 aggravating factors. First, that he 
committed intentional murder during the course of the burglary. And the second 
is that he dismembered the victim, Tammy Blanton."

Oberhansley, 33, told police he stabbed Blanton before mutilating her body and 
removing some of her organs.

"It's horrible. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about her," 
Sneed said. "Not a day that goes by that I don't want to text her and say 
hello."

The capital case means new defense attorneys have been brought on to defend 
Oberhansley. One of those attorneys, Mike McDaniel, admits that Oberhansley is 
a challenge.

"He's a toughie right now. He doesn't have any reason to trust his lawyers. 
You've got to earn that, so we'll do that," McDaniel said.

McDaniel said that Oberhansley may be insane and may believe he didn't kill 
Blanton.

As he walked into the courtroom Tuesday, Oberhansley told reporters all charges 
against him are false.

As the judge read the allegations against him, Oberhansley interrupted, saying, 
"Yeah, right, and pigs fly too."

Oberhansley asked the judge for permission to speak and said all the 
allegations against him are wrong.

"If anyone has been robbed, it's me. I'm sitting in here," he said.

Oberhansley was previously convicted of manslaughter in the shooting death of 
his then-girlfriend in suburban Salt Lake City. During that incident 
Oberhansley also shot his mother and then shot himself in the head.

"He's got a bullet floating around in his brain. It may be screwing up some of 
his thought patterns," said McDaniel.

Oberhansley's mother was at court Tuesday in support of her son.

She held a cross and repeatedly pointed it at prosecutors and anyone who said 
anything negative about her son.

Blanton's mother was also in court. She did not want to go on camera, but said 
she is in favor of prosecutors seeking the death penalty.

Blanton's neighbor Edna Hall was also in favor of the judge's decision.

"I was hoping it's what would happen," Hall said. "He should be killed, the 
same as he did to her."

Sneed said the death penalty won't bring back the life Oberhansley took.

He's due back in court in February.

(source: WLKY news)








TENNESSEE:

Judge sets pretrial hearing dates for pair accused in quadruple murder



A Cumberland County judge has set motions hearing dates in the quadruple 
homicide on Renegade Mountain.

Jacob Allen Bennett, 27, of Crab Orchard, Tenn., is charged with 4 counts of 
premeditated murder, 4 counts of felony murder and 2 counts of attempted 
aggravated robbery. His alleged accomplice and girlfriend, Brittany Moser, 26, 
of Dayton, Tenn., is charged with 4 counts of felony murder and 2 counts of 
attempted aggravated robbery.

The state is seeking the death penalty against Bennett, who is being held at 
the Morgan County Regional Correctional Facility. Moser is being held in lieu 
of $1 million bond at the Cumberland County Jail.

According to the Cumberland County Circuit Court Clerk's Office, while Bennett 
and Moser are being tried separately, Judge David Patterson set pretrial 
hearings on March 6 and on May 21 for both of them. The judge previously set a 
trial date for July 7.

Bennett is accused of shooting 3 teenagers and a young mother to death on a 
secluded gravel road on Renegade Mountain, a resort community near Crab Orchard 
in September of 2013. Prosecutors said the shooting occurred during a drug deal 
involving 1/4-pound of marijuana, which was found inside the small car with the 
4 victims.

Authorities said the shooting occurred either late on Sept. 11 or early on 
Sept. 12.

Killed were Danielle Rikki Jacobsen, 22, her nephew Domonic Davis, 17, John 
Lajeunesse, 16, and Steven Presley, 17, all of Cumberland County, officials 
said.

(source: Knoxville News Sentinel)








MISSOURI----new execution date

Execution date set for man who fatally stabbed former Post-Dispatch reporter



The Missouri Supreme Court on Wednesday set an execution date for Marcellus 
Williams, the man who fatally stabbed former Post-Dispatch reporter Lisha Gayle 
at her home in University City in 1998.

Marcellus Williams, 45, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the state 
prison in Bonne Terre on Jan. 28.

Williams' execution would be the 1st in 2015, following a record year in which 
Missouri carried out 10 executions.

Williams killed Gayle, 42, at her home in the gated Ames Place neighborhood of 
University City on Aug. 11, 1998. Williams was burglarizing the home when 
Gayle, who had been taking a shower, surprised him. He stabbed her repeatedly 
while she fought for her life.

After a jury convicted Williams at a trial in 2001, St. Louis County Circuit 
Judge Emmett M. O'Brien sentenced Williams to death. The judge also ordered 
Williams to serve consecutive terms of life in prison for robbery, 30 years for 
burglary and 30 years each for 2 weapons violations.

Before sentencing, Williams told the judge he lacked jurisdiction - that only 
God had that authority.

Gayle was a Post-Dispatch reporter from 1981-92. She left the paper to do 
volunteer social work with children and the poor.

(source: St. Louis Today)








KANSAS:

No death penalty in Topeka child's murder



A man convicted of raping and killing an 8-year-old Topeka girl before stuffing 
her body in a clothes dryer will not face the death penalty, after a jury could 
not decide unanimously to impose such a sentence.

Under Kansas law, the decision announced Tuesday by a Shawnee County jury means 
Billy Frank Davis Jr., 31, will be sentenced to life with no chance of parole 
for the death of Ahliyah Nachelle Irvin. Davis was convicted last week of 10 
counts, including capital murder, and will be formally sentenced Feb. 13.

Prosecutors said Ahliyah was taken from an apartment on March 13, 2012, and 
raped and killed before her body was found hours later in a blood-stained 
basement of a nearby apartment.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reported (http://bit.ly/1AiDFy7 ) that the girl's 
aunt said her family was content that Davis would spend the rest of his life in 
prison rather than be executed.

"That's our justice," said Sherry Mason. "I'm OK with that."

District Attorney Chad Taylor said he was "a little bit disappointed" with the 
jury's decision.

"What's important is the bravery exhibited by Ahliyah Irvin's family," Taylor 
said. They will have, "to some degree, closure."

Kim Shannon, Davis' mother, and defense attorney Mark Manna declined to 
comment, the Capital-Journal reported.

Davis' attorney argued Monday during closing arguments that Davis had mental 
health issues and was under the influence of drugs and alcohol when he 
kidnapped the girl and, therefore, could not have formed the intent to kill 
her.

Prosecutors responded that the child's death was vicious. They showed jurors 30 
photographs of her battered body and blood throughout the crime scene.

"Look at that, and you'll know what to do," chief deputy district attorney 
Jacqie Spradling said.

(source: Associated Press)








ARIZONA:

Appeals court : Jodi Arias' testimony in death penalty hearing should be open



Jodi Arias wanted to testify secretly at her death penalty hearing because she 
had been getting hate mail and death threats, her lawyers said.

Jodi Arias's testimony at her death penalty hearing should be available to the 
public and news media, an Arizona appeals court said Tuesday.

A 3-judge panel found that threatening mail the convicted killer has received, 
including death threats, did not justify allowing her to take the stand in 
secret. When Arias testified in late October, Judge Sherry Stephens did not 
even identify her as the witness on the stand.

"While we do not discount the volume or nature of Arias' mail or the fact that 
some people may wish he ill, her concern does not, as a matter of law, amount 
to an extremely serious substantive evil warranting closing the trial to the 
public and press," Judge Maurice Portley of the Court of Appeals said.

Arias was convicted last year of killing her former boyfriend, Travis 
Alexander, in his apartment in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa in 2008. Jurors were 
unable to agree on whether she should receive the death penalty, so the judge 
declared a mistrial for the penalty phase and scheduled a new trial on the 
issue.

The appellate opinion revealed that Arias did not feel she would be "able to 
fully communicate what she wants to say, communicate her remorse and go through 
all the mitigating factors and get them out there in front of the jury with the 
public here."

The trial resumed Monday after a week's hiatus. The judge suspended the trial 
after defense lawyers said some of their witnesses were afraid to testify 
openly.

(source: United Press International)

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

Is Jodi Arias the new Debra Milke? Yes. And no.



Yes.

And no.

Here is where they differ: We know for sure that Arias killed her boyfriend, 
Travis Alexander. Milke is different. Many people believe she had nothing to do 
with the murder of her 4-year-old son, Christopher, back in the 1980s. I am not 
one of those people. I'm not convinced that the 2 thugs who actually carried 
out the murder would have done such a thing on their own.

Still, there were problems with Milke's prosecution, and there appear to be 
problems with Arias' prosecution.

In Milke's case, the lead detective testified that Milke told him, in a 
closed-door interview that was not taped or witnessed by anyone, that she had a 
part in the murder. She denies this.

And Milke's defense team did not know that the detective had a reputation for 
less-than-professional behavior.

Milke, now 49, spent 23 years on death row based on that tainted conviction. 
Her conviction was finally tossed on appeal and she can't be retried for the 
crime.

The courts said, essentially, that playing by the rules matters.

Now, Arias' attorneys are trying to make the case that prosecutors in her trial 
also did not play by the rules. They've said that the state did not provide 
them with evidence that would have favored Arias and they are asking the judge 
hearing the sentencing trial in her case to take the death penalty off the 
table.

As reported in an Arizona Republicarticle by Megan Cassidy and Michael Kiefer, 
the defense attorneys wrote in a motion, "The correlation between the 
misconduct in the Milke case and the misconduct that has infested (Arias') own 
case should be highly instructive to this court as the patterns of State 
conduct are eerily similar..."

Up until this point the thing that Arias and Milke shared was the sensational 
nature of their trials. Each of them became a national and even international 
obsession, although Milke's trial took place at a time before the Internet or 
24-hour cable networks.

The real problem with the Arias prosecution is that it never should have been a 
death penalty case. It was murder, yes, but not a death penalty case. By now 
she should have been quietly sitting in a prison cell, serving a life sentence, 
without a lot of media hoopla.

That would have served justice and saved taxpayers millions of dollars.

And the only person in the world with any reason to complain would have been 
Nancy Grace.

(source: EJ Montini, The Arizona Republic)

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

Jodi Arias Sentencing Retrial Resumes After Weeklong Break



Testimony has resumed in the sentencing retrial of convicted murderer Jodi 
Arias after a weeklong break.

The defense put a domestic violence expert, psychologist Robert Geffner, on the 
stand Monday in a Phoenix courtroom.

Testimony was put on hold Dec. 8 after Arias' defense told the judge that 
several witnesses refused to testify in public.

Arias was convicted of killing former boyfriend Travis Alexander at his 
suburban Phoenix home in 2008.

She was convicted of 1st-degree murder in May 2013, but jurors deadlocked on 
her punishment. Prosecutors are asking a new jury to impose the death sentence.

A pending defense motion asks the judge to take the death penalty off the table 
on grounds that police detectives deleted pornography files from Alexander's 
computer. The prosecution denies police did that.

(source: Associated Press)








USA:

Court makes law instead of interpreting Constitution



The 5 most powerful men in America are sitting on the Supreme Court: Chief 
Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy.

They have more power than presidents and Congress because the justices make 
law. Chief Justice Roberts says: "We're not Republicans or Democrats. We simply 
call constitutional balls and strikes." Both views are untrue.

The Retrograde Five are highly political and highly partisan despite their 
judicial robes. Their "fine minds" are pro-corporation and pro-business, 
anti-people and anti-humane values.

As Roxie Bacon pointed out in the Arizona Attorney magazine review of a book by 
professor Erwin Chemerinsky:

"With the exception of the Warren Court, the Supreme Court has consistently 
protected the interests of the wealthy and the powerful even when pitted 
against such core values as freedom of speech, racial equality, due process and 
voting rights.

"For most of its history the court failed to perform its one major duty: 
protecting those who cannot wield sufficient voting power to curtail government 
abuses against them. Chemerinsky makes his case brilliantly."

The book is "The Case Against the Supreme Court." (Chemerinsky teaches First 
Amendment law at U.C. Irvine in California.)

Recently the Supreme Court announced it would hear a right-wing challenge to 
the Affordable Care Act. If the court strikes it down, as is likely, millions 
of people will lose health coverage under Obamacare.

Thom Hartmann in a Truthout op-ed rightly declares that the Roberts Court is 
turning "America into a constitutional monarchy." 2 cases are illustrative, 
Citizens United and Shelby County v. Holder.

In Citizens United the court ruled that corporations are people and can spend 
unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns. The Reactionary Quintet 
ruled that under the First Amendment corporations have free speech protection.

In Holder, the Roberts Court ignored decades of legal precedent to eviscerate 
the Voting Rights Act. All this suggests that Roberts should be impeached. As 
William Greider points out in an article in The Nation:

"The GOP majority in control of the court has been legislating on its own, 
following an agenda aligned with its conservative party. They empowered 'dark 
money' in politics. They assigned spiritual values to soulless corporations. 
They blatantly usurp the decision-making that belongs to Congress and the 
president."

Yes, he should be impeached but won't be. The soon-to-be controlling GOP Senate 
precludes it.

Death penalty obsolete

The death penalty is clearly a violation of the Eighth Amendment bar to "cruel 
and unusual punishment." But the Constitution means nothing in the state of 
Texas, the murder capital of the world.

Texas planned to execute Scott Panetti on Dec. 3 although he is criminally 
insane. However, the 5th circuit appeals court in New Orleans issued a stay. 
Panetti, convicted of murdering his in-laws with a hunting rifle in 1995, has a 
30-year record of severe mental illness.

Representing himself, Panetti turned his trial into a tragicomedy. He wore a 
cowboy suit. He wanted to subpoena Jesus Christ. He was suffering such 
delusions that he said Satan was directing his trial and execution.

Panetti was discharged from the Navy at 18. 18 months later he was diagnosed 
with "early schizophrenia." After that he was hospitalized several times for 
psychotic episodes.

The Supreme Court in 1986 declared that executing the insane serve no purpose 
and is "savage and inhumane." It certainly is. But the savagery and inhumanity 
will continue until the distant day when a wiser Supreme Court rules the death 
penalty unconstitutional.

(source: Jake Highton is an emeritus journalism professor at the University of 
Nevada, Reno----Daily Sparks Tribune)

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

United Nations vote on death penalty moratorium puts US in awkward spot----The 
General Assembly has passed 4 resolutions on an execution moratorium, with the 
US increasingly isolated for use



The United Nations General Assembly is expected on Thursday to vote once again 
on a draft resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty, with the 
United States likely to become even more isolated in its support for capital 
punishment.

The resolution was first adopted by the General Assembly in 2007; this is the 
5th time member states will vote. On Nov. 21, 114 of the 193 U.N. member states 
voted "yes" on the draft resolution at a session of the Third Committee, which 
is responsible for social, humanitarian and cultural issues. 36 countries 
opposed the resolution.

The U.S. has repeatedly lodged "no" votes alongside countries with troubling 
human rights records - including China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the top 4 
executing countries in 2013. The United States ranked 5th.

The draft resolution calls on states to suspend executions, with a view to 
abolition, and asks that countries restrict their use of capital punishment, 
share information about the sentencing and executions they carry out and 
respect international standards to protect people facing execution.

The resolution, which is nonbinding, "is a very powerful symbolic gesture for 
the United Nations General Assembly," said Chiara Sangiorgio, a death penalty 
expert at New York-based NGO Amnesty International.

The United States insists that the decision to use the death penalty must lie 
with each nation and that the use of the death penalty is not prohibited under 
international law. The U.S. voted in support of an amendment put forward by 
Saudi Arabia during the meeting of the Third Committee on Nov. 21 to add a 
clause to the resolution recognizing the sovereign rights of individual 
countries; the amendment was rejected, 55 to 85.

The Chinese delegation raised similar concerns, saying, "Every country has the 
right to abolish or maintain the death penalty according to its domestic 
situation and the will of its own peoples." The exact number of people executed 
in China in 2013 is unknown but is estimated to be in the thousands.

The United States is unique among Western countries for its retention of the 
death penalty. The last execution in Western Europe took place in France in 
1977. Abolition of the death penalty is a prerequisite for membership in the 
European Union, comprising 28 member states. The United Kingdom abolished the 
death penalty in 1969, Denmark in 1978, and France in 1981.

Yet abolition movements in the United States have been underway for more than a 
century. Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1846 for all crimes except 
treason, Wisconsin in 1853, and Maine in 1887, followed by 15 more states. 
Maryland is the most recent addition to the list, abolishing the death penalty 
in May 2013, although 4 people remain on death row. While 32 states still 
permit the death penalty, only 7 states are responsible for the 35 executions 
that have taken place in 2014, including 2 last week; Texas and Missouri 
accounted for more than 1/2 of all executions. There are 3,035 people on death 
row in the United States.

Nationwide, the number of executions carried out annually is falling, and 
support for the death penalty has declined, from a high of 80 % in 1994 to 63 % 
in Gallup's most recent poll. A 2011 survey found that support for the death 
penalty is largely rooted in the idea of an eye for an eye, that the punishment 
should fit the crime. Only 6 % of supporters said that they believe the death 
penalty had a deterrent effect on crime.

"The constitutionality of the death penalty is sustained by the idea that 
there's a national consensus in favor of capital punishment as a sentence," 
says Christina Swarns, litigation director at the NAACP Legal Defense and 
Educational Fund. "In reality, while there are multiple states with the death 
penalty, only a handful use it, in terms of capital charging and sentencing, 
and an even smaller number actually execute."

Recent botched executions and a growing number of DNA exonerations - 321 people 
have been exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence since 1989, with 20 of them 
serving time on death row - may have prompted a shift in public opinion. Swarns 
said she has noticed changing attitudes in the courts. "Poll numbers aside, if 
you look at jury behavior, they are far more likely to reject the death 
sentence than in years past, [and] prosecutors are far more reluctant to seek 
capital prosecutions, partly because of cost but partly because people are far 
more cautious and concerned about condemning an innocent person."

The U.S. said in explaining the Nov. 21 vote, that while the country withholds 
support for the resolution, it is committed to the country's international 
obligations and "strongly urge[s] other countries that employ the death penalty 
to do so only in full compliance with international law."

But United Nations officials have repeatedly voiced concerns this year about 
the way the death penalty is applied in the United States.

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for 
Human Rights, said the April 9 execution of Mexican national Ramiro 
Hernandez-Llanas "once again places the U.S. in breach of international law, as 
Mr. Hernandez was not granted consular access pursuant to Article 36 of the 
Vienna Convention on Consular Relations."

On Jan. 22 this year, Texas executed Mexican national Edgar Tamayo, against a 
ruling of the International Court of Justice.

"The attitude of the United States is rather retrograde, in a way," said 
Sangiorgio. "They refuse to acknowledge that the way they have been carrying 
out the death penalty is against international law and standards."

The U.S. Mission to the U.N. did not respond to requests for comment.

In May the U.N. called for an immediate moratorium on the United States' use of 
the death penalty after the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma.

And in December the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and 
arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, urged the U.S. not to go ahead with the 
execution of Scott Panetti, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, saying 
"it is a violation of death penalty safeguards to impose capital punishment on 
individuals suffering from psychosocial disabilities. Implementing the death 
penalty under these conditions may amount to an arbitrary execution."

A federal appeals court granted Panetti a stay of execution. Robert Holsey and 
Paul Goodwin, executed last week, did not get reprieves.

Andrew Prince, the lead lawyer for Holsey, admitted to drinking up to a quart 
of vodka every night during the trial. During the trial, Prince was involved in 
a lawsuit. He was later disbarred for stealing $100,000 of client funds.

Stephen Bright, the president of and senior counsel for the Southern Center for 
Human Rights and a lecturer at Yale Law School, said a case like Holsey's calls 
into question whether defendants have access to a fair trial "before a 
competent, independent and impartial tribunal," as the United States says in 
its explanation of vote.

"It's just wishful thinking. It's not the reality," Bright said. "It's an 
absolute disgrace to think that somebody represented by that lawyer was 
sentenced to death. And then instead of correcting that, the state would go 
ahead and carry out the execution."

(source: Al Jazeera)

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

Man facing death penalty due in court for 1st time in decade



A man who was sentenced to death for carjacking and killing 2 Massachusetts men 
is expected to appear in court for the 1st time in more than a decade.

Gary Lee Sampson pleaded guilty to killing 19-year-old Jonathan Rizzo and 
69-year-old Philip McCloskey during a crime spree in 2001. A jury recommended 
the death penalty, but that sentence was later overturned by a judge.

Sampson faces a sentencing re-trial in February. A new jury will be asked to 
decide if he should receive the death penalty or spend the rest of his life in 
prison.

Sampson will be brought to federal court Wednesday so the judge can question 
him about his decision to waive his right to be in court for pre-trial 
hearings.

Sampson has been held at a federal prison in Indiana.

(source: Associated Press)