[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, CONN., N.C., GA., LA., OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 3



TEXAS:

Suspect in Kaufman County slayings allegedly plotted 2 other deaths


A former Kaufman County justice of the peace accused of murdering the Kaufman 
County district attorney, his wife and an assistant prosecutor last year was 
also plotting to kill 2 others - including the current district attorney - 
according to court documents filed Tuesday.

Eric Lyle Williams, 47, is charged with capital murder in connection with the 
January 2013 fatal shooting of Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney Mark 
Hasse, 57, near the courthouse. Authorities say 2 months later Williams gunned 
down District Attorney Mike McLelland, 63, and his wife, Cynthia, 65, in their 
home. Williams' wife, Kim, also has been charged with capital murder in the 
deaths.

The latest court documents contend that Eric Williams conspired to kill Kaufman 
County District Attorney Erleigh Norville Wiley, who was appointed in April 
2013. Eric Williams also conspired to kill former state District Judge Glen 
Ashworth, the documents allege.

Wiley and Ashworth could not be reached for comment.

The documents do not explain why prosecutors believe Williams wanted to kill 
Wiley and Ashworth. Wylie was a criminal court judge in Kaufman County before 
being appointed district attorney by Gov. Rick Perry. Williams was Ashworth's 
court coordinator for a time. The documents indicate Williams plotted to kill 
Ashworth as far back as 2005.

Williams was initially arrested April 13, 2013, on a charge of making a 
terroristic threat after authorities said he emailed county officials 
threatening another attack. At the time, officials did not reveal who was 
threatened. He was later charged with capital murder in the slayings of the 
McLellands and Hasse.

One of the documents filed Tuesday by special prosecutors Bill Wirskye and Toby 
Shook seems to indicate that they are likely to prosecute Williams at his 
December trial only in the slayings of Mike and Cynthia McLelland. Prosecutors 
are seeking the death penalty. Also on Tuesday, the defense filed a motion 
seeking to delay the trial.

But Wirskye and Shook want state District Judge Mike Snipes to allow them to 
tell jurors, who will decide Williams' guilt or innocence, about the Hasse 
killing and about a 2012 theft case in Kaufman involving Williams that they 
believe ties him to both slain men. They say that proving their case involves 
showing Eric Williams was acting out a "revenge plan" against the 2 
prosecutors. According to Wirskye, Williams had no motive to kill Cynthia 
McLelland except that she was at home with her husband.

Eric Williams' attorney Matthew Seymour declined to comment about the filings.

Only in rare circumstances are jurors told about a defendant's prior 
convictions or "bad acts" before the punishment phase of a trial. Prosecutors 
are expected to argue at a Sept. 12 hearing before Snipes that this should be 
one of the exceptions.

"The murder of a prosecutor is a rare event. When that prosecutor is murdered 
outside the courthouse, there is no shortage of suspects - including the likely 
list of defendants from the same murdered prosecutor's past docket," Wirskye 
wrote in the filing. "When another prosecutor from the same office and his wife 
are then murdered only 2 months later, it is an unprecedented occurrence. ... 
The list of common defendants, consists of only one defendant - Eric Williams. 
Hasse and Mike McLelland tried only one case together - the hotly contested 
Eric Williams burglary case."

During that trial, McLelland and Hasse portrayed Williams as a thief and a man 
with a violent streak. McLelland told the judge that Williams was "bereft of 
honor." McLelland and Hasse pushed for prison time, but Williams got probation.

More allegations

The new court documents also allege:

--Eric Williams sent a message to Crime Stoppers confessing to killing Mark 
Hasse and the McLellands.

--Eric Williams rented a storage unit a month before Hasse was fatally shot. 
The unit was used to store getaway cars connected to both slayings. Eric 
Williams' home computer was also used to conduct Internet searches on Hasse and 
Mike McLelland.

--On the day of the McLelland slayings, Eric Williams dumped a phone, a mask 
and 2 revolvers in Lake Tawakoni. The mask and 1 of the guns were used in 
Hasse's slaying, according to the court documents.

--DNA evidence from earplugs found in the getaway car used in the Hasse slaying 
was linked to Eric Williams.

--Cellphone records show both Eric and Kim Williams were near the area during 
the McLellands and Hasse slayings. --Kim Williams, who filed for divorce after 
their arrests and who has been cooperating with the investigation, is expected 
to testify for the state.

(source: Dallas Morning News)






CONNECTICUT:

The Rev. Al Sharpton speaks against death penalty at Yale


Among mostly Yale University undergraduate students, the Rev. Al Sharpton spoke 
Tuesday on how he is against the death penalty, explaining execution does not 
resolve problems.

Speaking Tuesday evening at Woolsey Hall, Sharpton, head of the National Action 
Network, said the death penalty doesn???t resolve any justice, and suggested 
life in jail as a possible solution. The event was held by the Yale Political 
Union.

Students in the audience questioned Sharpton's thoughts about the death 
penalty, suggesting death is an acceptable punishment to those who receive it.

"Once you execute them, you can't repair the damage (that) is done," Sharpton 
said to one student, suggesting an alternative should be life in prison. 
"Execution is the end of the story."

Sharpton also mentioned sentencing someone to life in prison could give a 
person the chance to be exonerated if they have been wrongfully accused of a 
crime.

"He's very relevant for the political climate," said student Adrian Lo, speaker 
of the Yale Political Union. "We want undergraduates to debate about political 
questions."

Sharpton has been on the forefront of several marches including the death of 
18-year-old Michael Brown, who was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, 
Missouri, in August and in Staten Island, New York, where he led a march after 
the death of Eric Garner, who was killed by New York police officers.

In addition to public activism, Sharpton holds multiple jobs, including as a 
radio host and MSNBC personality.

(source: New Haven Register)






NORTH CAROLINA:

DNA frees 2 innocent NC men 30 years after wrongful conviction


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DNA evidence frees 2 innocent N.C. men 30 years after wrongful conviction

One of the exonerees is North Carolina's longest serving death row inmate

On Tuesday, 2 men, including North Carolina's longest serving death row inmate, 
were exonerated and released from prison after serving 30 years for a rape and 
murder they did not commit.

New DNA evidence, which proved their innocence, prompted a Robeson County judge 
to dismiss all charges against Henry Lee McCollum, who was living under a death 
sentence, and his half-brother, Leon Brown, who was serving a life sentence for 
the rape. Both are severely intellectually disabled and were teenagers - 
McCollum 19 years old, Brown just 15 - at the time of their arrests in 1983.

McCollum and Brown were released after a hearing Tuesday morning in Robeson 
County Superior Court, in which the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry 
Commission, an independent state agency, detailed the results of its 
investigation, including DNA testing of items found at the crime scene. The 
Commission found that none of the items could be traced to McCollum or Brown. 
Instead, critical DNA evidence matched another individual named Roscoe Artis, a 
convicted rapist and murderer who lived less than 100 yards from where the 
victim???s body was found.

Lawyers for the 2 men said the new testing leaves no doubt about their clients' 
innocence.

"It's terrifying that our justice system allowed 2 intellectually disabled 
children to go to prison for a crime they had nothing to do with, and then to 
suffer there for 30 years," said Ken Rose, a senior staff attorney at the 
Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, who has represented McCollum for 
20 years. "Henry watched dozens of people be hauled away for execution. He 
would become so distraught he had to be put in isolation. It???s impossible to 
put into words what these men have been through and how much they have lost." 
Robeson County District Attorney Johnson Britt agreed that McCollum and Brown 
are innocent of all charges, and consented to their unconditional release. No 
further charges will be brought against them. Judge Douglas Sasser signed an 
order acknowledging the men's innocence.

The men's attorneys said they appreciated Britt's efforts to correct wrongs 
that occurred under the previous prosecutions. "We are most grateful to Johnson 
Britt, who has shown a strong desire to find the truth and to make sure that 
these 2 innocent men don't spend any more time in prison," said James Payne, a 
Wilmington attorney who represents Leon Brown.

McCollum and Brown were sentenced to death in 1984 for the murder of Sabrina 
Buie, an 11-year-old girl who was brutally raped and suffocated in the Robeson 
County town of Red Springs. Her body was left in a field, along with beer cans 
and cigarette butts. Investigators believe the girl was lured by her killer to 
drink beer, then attacked and killed.

Brown's sentence was later reduced to life in prison and his charge reduced to 
rape, but McCollum has remained on death row through decades of appeals. Each 
had pursued many other legal avenues for relief until the Commission took up 
Brown's case in 2010. The Commission ordered new testing and uncovered evidence 
that the men???s attorneys had not been able to obtain, all of which points to 
McCollum and Brown's innocence.

The DNA match with Roscoe Artis was especially significant because, less than a 
month after Sabrina Buie's killing, Artis raped and killed an 18-year-old girl, 
Joann Brockman, in shockingly similar circumstances. Both crimes happened in 
Red Springs, a town of only 4,000 people. Both victims were sexually assaulted, 
asphyxiated, and left in fields wearing only a bra. Artis was sentenced to 
death for Brockman's murder, but his sentence was later reduced to life in 
prison. Despite the similarities between the 2 crimes - and the fact that 
police suspected Artis of yet another similar rape and murder in Gastonia - 
police failed to investigate Artis as a suspect in Buie's murder. Artis also 
had a long criminal record including more than a 1/2 dozen incidents of 
attempted rape and assaults on women. "This case is a tragedy which has 
profoundly affected not only the lives of the people involved, but which 
profoundly affects our system of justice in North Carolina," said Ann Kirby, 
another attorney for Leon Brown. "This case highlights in a most dramatic 
manner the importance of finding the truth. Today truth has prevailed, but it 
comes thirty years too late for Sabrina Buie and her family, and for Leon, 
Henry, and their families. Their sadness, grief, and loss will remain with them 
forever."

The only evidence that tied McCollum and Brown to the crime were false 
confessions that law enforcement obtained from the disabled teens, who even as 
adults have the intellectual ability of children. McCollum at first told police 
he knew nothing about the murder, but at 2 a.m. on Sept. 29, 1983, after 5 
hours of intense interrogation, he signed a confession written by police. Soon 
after, his younger brother, Brown, also confessed.

North Carolina law now requires homicide interrogations to be recorded or 
videotaped, but at the time, no such laws were in place. There are no 
recordings of the confessions, which contain details that are factually 
impossible.

McCollum and Brown were originally prosecuted jointly by Robeson County 
District Attorney Joe Freeman Britt, who earned the nickname "World's Deadliest 
DA" for winning nearly 50 death sentences during his 12 years as chief 
prosecutor. At that time, there were also no laws preventing children and 
people with intellectual disabilities from being sentenced to death.

In 1991, courts granted the brothers separate new trials, saying the trial 
judge gave improper instructions to the jury. At Brown's new trial, the judge 
acknowledged that there was little evidence of murder, dismissing it.???The 
jury, however, convicted Brown of rape, and he received a life sentence. 
McCollum was again convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

In the years since their false confessions, McCollum and Brown have maintained 
their innocence.

"In these old cases, tried under very different laws from what we have today, 
it is so difficult to root out the truth," Rose said. "It's even harder when 
the defendants are intellectually disabled or mentally ill, as so many on death 
row are. We were so lucky that the Innocence Inquiry Commission agreed to take 
this case. We can only be thankful that our client wasn't executed before we 
had the chance to prove his innocence."

(source: dupontcirclecommunications.com)

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

Statement of Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty 
Information Center, on the Exoneration of Henry McCollum and Leon Brown


"The conviction and sentencing to death of 2 black teenagers with intellectual 
disabilities (mental retardation), based almost entirely on shaky confessions 
obtained under extreme duress, sounds like a case from another era. But these 
men - Henry McCollum and Leon Brown - were freed in North Carolina today. It 
would be naive to assume there are no more such cases among the thousands of 
inmates who remain on death row, or that similar mistakes weren't made among 
the nearly 1,400 people who have been executed.

"McCollum and Brown lost 30 years of their lives due to this injustice. If they 
had been executed as planned, the price would have been infinitely higher. 
Taking the death penalty off the table would at least guarantee that innocent 
people will not be executed."

-- Richard Dieter, Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center, 
September 2, 2014

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)

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

Scalia Once Pushed Death Penalty For Now-Exonerated Inmate Henry Lee McCollum


A North Carolina death row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence on Tuesday was 
once held up by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as an example of someone 
who deserved to die. M

When the court declined to review an unrelated death row case out of Texas in 
1994, Justice Harry A. Blackmun issued a dissenting opinion arguing that 
capital punishment is cruel and unusual, and therefore unconstitutional.

Scalia answered back with an opinion of his own:

"For example, the case of an 11-year-old girl raped by 4 men and then killed by 
stuffing her panties down her throat," Scalia wrote in Callins v. Collins. "How 
enviable a quiet death by lethal injection compared with that!"

He was referring to Henry Lee McCollum, who at the time had already been on 
death row for 12 years. McCollum's conviction was overturned on Tuesday when 
DNA evidence implicated another man in the case.

McCollum had been on death row for almost 30 years.

Superior Court Judge Douglass Sasser also overturned the conviction against 
McCollum's half-brother, Leon Brown, who has been serving a life sentence in 
connection with the case.

Blackmun later responded to Scalia, writing of the flaws in the case as well as 
McCollum's mental capacity.

"That our system of capital punishment would single out Buddy McCollum to die 
for this brutal crime only confirms my conclusion that the death penalty 
experiment has failed," he wrote. "Our system of capital punishment simply does 
not accurately and consistently determine which defendants most 'deserve' to 
die."

Scalia has been a frequent and vocal supporter of the death penalty and even 
once suggested that an innocent man had never been put to death, at least in 
recent years.

"It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a single 
case - not one - in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he 
did not commit," Scalia wrote in the 2006 Kansas v. Marsh case. "If such an 
event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the 
innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby."

(source: Huffington Post)

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

DNA clears North Carolina inmates after 30 years in prison; Half-brothers 
released after newly discovered evidence clears men in 1983 rape and murder of 
11-year-old Sabrina Buie


North Carolina's longest-serving death row inmate and his half-brother serving 
a life sentence have been exonerated and released from prison after spending 
more than 30 years behind bars for a rape and murder they did not commit.

Robeson County superior court acted with lightning speed to free the two men, 
Leon Brown and Henry McCollum, who were 15 and 19 at the time of their arrest 
in 1983. It was testimony to the overwhelming strength of the evidence that was 
presented to the court that judge Douglas Sasser cleared them of the murder of 
11-year-old Sabrina Buie on the 1st day of a hearing to consider new DNA 
evidence in the case.

The evidence absolved McCollum and Brown, now 46 and 50, of any link to 
biological material collected at the crime scene. It also found a positive 
match with a known sex offender from the same small town who was living just 
feet away from the field in which Buie's body was found.

McCollum was held on death row throughout his 3 decades in prison as an 
innocent man. His lawyer, Ken Rose of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation 
in Durham, who has fought the case for the past 20 years, pointed out that both 
his client and Brown are diagnosed as having intellectual disabilities.

"It's terrifying that our justice system allowed 2 intellectually disabled 
children to go to prison for a crime they had nothing to do with, and then to 
suffer there for 30 years. Henry watched dozens of people be hauled away for 
execution. He would become so distraught he had to be put in isolation. It's 
impossible to put into words what these men have been through and how much they 
have lost."

Co-counsel for Brown, Ann Kirby, said: "This case is a tragedy which has 
profoundly affected not only the lives of the people involved, but which 
profoundly affects our system of justice in North Carolina. This case 
highlights in a most dramatic manner the importance of finding the truth. Today 
truth has prevailed, but it comes 30 years too late for Sabrina Buie and her 
family, and for Leon, Henry, and their families. Their sadness, grief, and loss 
will remain with them forever."

The dramatic release of the 2 prisoners now puts the spotlight on the police 
department in Red Springs, a small town in the south of the state of just 3,000 
people. In court documents filed by lawyers for McCollum and Brown the police 
department is accused of having framed false confessions for the duo which they 
made the arrested teenagers sign after hours of interrogations.

The town's police force is also accused of having hidden boxes of crucial 
evidence in its office from the time of the boys' trial in 1984 right up to 
last month. The existence of the evidence, gathered at the crime scene, was 
never disclosed either to the boys' defence teams or to the district attorney 
prosecuting the case.

The current district attorney for Robeson County, Johnson Britt, agreed on 
Tuesday that the two men are innocent and consented to their unconditional 
release. No further charges will be brought against them.

(source: The Guardian)






GEORGIA:

Georgia Inmate Seeks Ruling on Determining Intellectual Disablity to Avoid 
Execution; In May of this year, the United States Supreme Court tossed the 
death sentence of Freddie Lee Hall who has an IQ of 71.


Attorneys for Georgia death row inmate Warren Lee Hill, Jr. hope an earlier 
ruling by the United States Supreme Court on another case will help spare 
Hill's life.

That ruling centers on proving intellectual disability and what's acceptable in 
preventing a death sentence.

WABE's Rose Scott reports attorneys for Hill have filed a new petition based on 
the SCOTUS ruling.

In May of this year, the United States Supreme Court tossed the death sentence 
of Freddie Lee Hall who has an IQ of 71.

His lawyers challenged the Florida law that required an IQ of 70 or below to 
avoid the death penalty.

The high court ruled that fixed line was unconstitutional.

In Georgia, it's different.

What the state calls "mentally retarded" must be proven beyond a reasonable 
doubt and the individual's IQ holds little weight.

Warren Lee Hill, Jr. has an IQ of 70 and has been assessed to be intellectually 
disabled by 3 state doctors.

Hill's attorney Brian Kammer says he hopes the state will consider the Supreme 
Court's ruling.

"What this new decision out of the U.S. Supreme court says is, you can't just 
enact procedures willy nilly that may in fact cause people with an intellectual 
disability to be executed more often than not."

Kammer has been on Hill's legal team since 1996.

Along with others, they have filed numerous motions and petitions to stop 
Hill's execution.

It's been years of back and forth in court proceedings and once Hill was just 
30 minutes away from being executed.

WABE legal analyst Page Pate and criminal defense attorney says this latest 
petition is the best written of the bunch.

"It reads very well. The arguments are laid out in a logical and understandable 
manner."

However, Pate adds it???s unlikely a superior court judge would overturn the 
state's beyond a reasonable doubt standard, but believes a decision could come 
from another court.

That would force Hill???s attorneys to petition the Georgia Supreme Court.

Warren Lee Hill was already serving a life sentence for killing his girlfriend 
when in 1991 he was sentenced to death for killing fellow inmate Joseph 
Handspike.

(source: WABE news)

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

Request for public records in clemency case denied


Dawson County's request for the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to 
declassify information regarding its decision to grant clemency to a man 
convicted of a 1991 slaying has been denied.

The board's director of legal services, La'Quandra Smith, wrote in Aug. 18 
letter that "after thorough and careful consideration of the request, the board 
has decided not to declassify those materials."

There were no additional comments or explanation.

The Dawson County commission last month voted to demand answers after the state 
board's ruling eliminated the death sentence for Tommy Lee Waldrip, who was set 
to be executed on July 10 for his part in the murder of Keith Lloyd Evans, who 
worked at a Forsyth County food store.

In a rare decision, the 5-member board commuted the sentence within 2 hours of 
hearing testimony from the Evans family and prosecutors wishing to see the 
death penalty sentence carried out, as well as Waldrip's relatives and lawyers 
requesting that his life be spared.

The decision means Waldrip will spend the rest of his days behind bars.

The county commission called for full disclosure of the classified 
documentation.

According to Commission Chairman Mike Berg, the county spent an estimated 
$750,000 to prosecute the case against Waldrip and his 2 co-defendants.

In separate trials, Howard Livingston and John Mark Waldrip, son of the elder 
Waldrip, were sentenced to life in prison for their parts in the slaying.

County Attorney Joey Homans said local leaders are considering an appeal to 
Gov. Nathan Deal and Attorney General Sam Olens to have the material made 
public.

The Georgia Sheriffs' Association has also asked that the private documents be 
made available to the public.

In a letter dated July 29, President Wiley Griffin wrote "the premeditated 
murder of Keith Evans ... has devastated his family, the Dawson County 
community and many others throughout the state for over 23 years. Families 
across the state deserve no less than our full attention to their need for 
relevant information affecting their lives."

Dawson County Sheriff Billy Carlisle was working as a patrol deputy, about 3 
years into what has become a more than 26-year law enforcement career, when 
Evans' murder rocked the then tight-knit community of about 10,000.

He was devastated when he learned clemency had been granted for Tommy Lee 
Waldrip.

"It doesn't give much credit to our justice system. A jury found him guilty, a 
judge sentenced him to death, the Supreme Court ruled against him and they took 
it upon themselves to change his sentence. It makes no sense to me. It's very 
disappointing," he said.

Evans was set to testify against John Mark Waldrip and his brother-in-law, 
Livingston, in the trial for a 1989 armed robbery of the grocery store where he 
worked.

The trial was scheduled to start 2 days after he was reported missing.

In October 1994, a jury found Tommy Lee Waldrip guilty of malice murder, 2 
counts of felony murder, kidnapping with bodily injury and aggravated battery.

Waldrip also was convicted of 5 counts of aggravated assault, theft by taking 
motor vehicle, arson in the 2nd degree, intimidating a witness and concealing a 
death. In addition, he was found guilty of possession of a firearm by a 
convicted felon and 2 counts of possession of a firearm in the commission of a 
felony.

He was sentenced to death.

The Evans family questions if all the measures taken to find justice for her 
brother has "been in vain."

"The board seemed to be concerned that Tommy was only one of the three murders 
to receive the death penalty," said Evan's sister, Angela DeCoursey. "If this 
is perhaps the reasons they denied the execution, and since the board has 
ultimate authority, why would they not have issued John Waldrip and Howard 
Livingston a death sentence?

"After all, the 3 were equally guilty in the premeditated murder of my 
brother."

(source: Forsyth News)






LOUISIANA:

Agency handling area death penalty defense services could close by the end of 
the year


Kenneth Willis' attorneys says they don't have the staff or money to take his 
case to trial as scheduled Oct. 13, and foresee a similar fate for all the 
area's publicly-funded capital murder defense cases.

Willis is accused of 1st degree murder for the 2007 death of his infant son, 
Zamian. In June, his attorneys Jason Waltman and Elton Richey filed motions to 
withdraw from his case citing funding issues for their organization Capital 
Assistance Project of Louisiana, or CAPOLA.

The group would be unfunded July 1 unless they worked out a new contract with 
the Louisiana Public Defender's Board.

Although they had a verbal agreement and averted an immediate shutdown, the 
financial troubles persist. CAPOLA hasn't received any money since the start of 
the fiscal year and could now close before the end of 2014.

At least 1 Caddo prosecutors isn't buying the story and says it could be a 
tactic to abolish death row practices from a corner of the state using it most.

"To suggest that these lawyers aren't adequate because they had to bad 
outcomes, if that's all you look at, why don't you look at the whole body of 
work over forty years, and see what the outcomes are," Caddo assistant district 
attorney Dale Cox said.

The Louisiana State Public Defender Board ordered a review of CAPOLA services 
in late 2013 after jurors returned the death penalty in back-to-back Caddo 
cases: Marcus Reed in October and Rodricus Crawford in November. During the 
review period, jurors handed the same fate for cab driver Brian Horn in DeSoto 
Parish.

After the review, the board decertified one attorney, reportedly put CAPOLA 
director Richard Goorley on provisional certification, and declined to continue 
the contract July 1 with a plan to work towards renewal.

Facing a funding crisis and running only on cash reserves, CAPOLA's since 
slashed office space and lost staff in search of a more stable paycheck.

Goorley says some of the agency's employees, primarily younger professionals, 
"read the writing on the wall." Six people have left CAPOLA since Jan. 1, 
including 2 attorneys.

ADA Cox says he's practiced law long enough to know when an attorney is doing a 
good job and blames the CAPOLA losses on the facts rather than performance.

"If your position's that the CAPOLA group has had such poor outcomes that they 
don't deserve renewal of their contract, they why not decertify all their 
lawyers?" Cox asked.

Since it's founding in 2002, CAPOLA's handled 87 capital cases. The agency had 
only had one death penalty returned - and upheld after appeal - in the years 
before 2013. Last year alone, they had three.

Cox says a record of 4 death penalty returns over 87 cases suggests to him that 
the state board seeks to manipulate the system, at least slowing down the legal 
process if not effectively banning the death penalty by getting rid of all the 
lawyers qualified to try those cases.

LPDB Capital Case Coordinator Jean Faria denies board members have an 
abolitionist agenda.

"We have always anticipated when we dealt with CAPOLA... we would grant the 
funding," Faria said in Caddo court Aug. 27.

Goorley seconded Faria's sentiment saying, "I feel the concerns they had were 
legitimate concerns. I just have serious problems with the way they handled 
those concerns."

The state board has 2 independent parties assessing CAPOLA and expects a 
recommendation sometime next week.

If CAPOLA can't reach a funding agreement, there are a couple of options.

First, Goorley could cut staff down even further, but that would likely require 
taking primary attorney Elton Richey off of Willis's case and the payroll 
entirely. Next, Goorley said he would ask the court to cover their costs.

If neither of those methods work and CAPOLA closes, the State Board would add 
local cases to the state-wide wait list, which already has 4 cases in the queue 
for representation, including State v Reginald Williams.

When a Caddo grand jury upgraded Williams' charges from 2nd to 1st degree 
murder Aug. 20, it was wait listed because CAPOLA can't take new cases while 
unfunded.

(source: KTBS news)






OHIO:

Ohio Supreme Court upholds death sentence for killer who shot woman at 
Cleveland laundry mart


The Ohio Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence of a man condemned to die 
for shooting a woman at a Cleveland laundry mat.

The court's 6-1 ruling came in the case of Jeremiah Jackson, convicted of 
killing Tracy Pickryl in 2009 at the end of a crime spree in Cleveland, 
Sandusky and Lorain.

The court's decision Tuesday rejected defense arguments that the judge showed 
bias against Jackson by holding an unsolicited hearing to determine if Jackson 
had a mental disability.

Justice Terrence O'Donnell, writing for the majority, said the judge wanted to 
ensure that Jackson, who an expert determined is not mentally disabled, 
received a fair trial.

Dissenting justice William O'Neill said the hearing shouldn't have been held 
after Jackson's attorneys chose not to raise the issue.

(source: Associated Press)