[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., OHIO, TENN., KY.

[Rick Halperin]

April 16




TEXAS:

Lawmaker Says Death Penalty in Jeopardy


If Texas has to tell the public who it's buying lethal execution drugs from, it 
might have to stop putting inmates to death, state Rep. John Smithee told a 
house committee on Wednesday.

"We're going to reach the point ... where we can't conduct any execution, where 
we can't carry out capital punishment in Texas," the Amarillo Republican told 
members of the House Government Transparency and Operation Committee as he 
explained his bill to keep the identities of lethal drug suppliers secret.

The state of Texas' drug cache is already dangerously low, Smithee said, 
largely because the compounding pharmacies that make lethal injection drugs 
fear threats of violence if they are identified. Texas had to start buying its 
supply of made-to-order drugs from compounding pharmacies in 2013 when 
manufacturers began refusing to sell their products for executions.

"Many of these vendors who supply these doses to the state have refused to do 
it any further," Smithee said. "It's just not worth the risk of violence."

In 2013, after the Texas Department of Criminal Justice revealed that The 
Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy provided execution drugs, the company 
immediately stopped after the owner said he was threatened. The following year, 
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott sided with TDCJ officials, concluding that 
the names of compounding pharmacies could be kept secret, even though such 
information had long been public. A Travis County judge last December ruled 
that the state's prison system must make the providers public, adding more fuel 
to the debate.

If Texas wants drugs, the compounding pharmacy community is demanding 
anonymity, Adrienne McFarland, an attorney with the Texas attorney general's 
office, told the committee.

"Unless they have strict protection that they will not continue to provide the 
drugs," she said. "It's becoming increasingly difficult to carry out execution 
which is to say carry out state law."

Smithee's House Bill 3846 would keep the names of providers secret, as well as 
names of the individuals carrying out an execution. (As a policy, the state has 
never released the names of its execution team since the death penalty was 
reinstated in 1982.)

But Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation 
of Texas, told committee members the drug provider names should be made public.

"The citizens in Texas really need the information to scrutinize how this is 
being carried out," she said.

And Stacy Allen, an attorney with Jackson Walker representing the Texas 
Association of Broadcasters, told committee members that if threats to lethal 
drug providers are the problem, they should pass a bill making the threats a 
crime.

"This is the wrong answer," he said.

For the past few years in Texas and nationwide, lawyers for death row inmates 
have fought in court to keep the names of drug providers public.

Until 2011, the names of drug manufacturers who provided execution drugs were 
released to the public in Texas. But that changed once large European drug 
manufacturers stopped selling the drugs to U.S. prisons, and states were forced 
to switch execution formulas and turn to smaller providers of execution 
supplies: compounding pharmacies that can legally mix batches at their 
facilities.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to re-examine lethal injection drugs when it 
takes up an Oklahoma case this spring.

Smithee's bill was left pending in committee just a few hours before Texas 
executed Manuel Garza Jr. for the 2001 fatal shooting of a San Antonio police 
officer during a struggle. Garza is the 6th inmate this year to be executed and 
the 524th since capital punishment was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 
1976.

(source: Texas Tribune)

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

Concerning Murder of Small Child, Court Denies Texas Death Row Appeal


A Tyler man convicted of murdering a 2-year-old back in 2008 lost his death-row 
appeal Wednesday morning.

According to a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals document, the court reviewed 5 
allegations made in Demontrell Lamar Miller's application and recommended his 
appeal be denied without an evidentiary hearing.

Miller, 28, was sentenced to death in November 2009 for the June 2008 murder of 
his then-girlfriend's son, Kelynn.

According to police, Miller beat the toddler to death while he was babysitting. 
He was also caring for his own 5-month-old was son at an apartment complex in 
Tyler.

Miller told police he found the toddler in a swimming pool. However, an autopsy 
revealed the child had bruises and internal bleeding from blunt force trauma to 
the abdomen.

The convict was found guilty and sentenced to the death penalty. No execution 
date has been set at this time and he might still have other avenues of appeal.

(source: Everythinglubbock.com)

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

Arlington minister's killer loses appeal


The state's top criminal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the 2012 conviction 
of Steven Lawayne Nelson, sent to death row for killing a young Arlington 
minister.

Appeals attorneys for Nelson, 28, contended that there were 15 errors at his 
trial in Fort Worth for the slaying in March 2011 of the Rev. Clint Dobson, 28, 
pastor of NorthPointe Baptist Church, and the near fatal beating of Judy 
Elliott, the church secretary.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected all 15 points raised, including 
that evidence wasn???t sufficient to convict him of capital murder and sentence 
him to death, that the jury selection and jury instructions were improper and 
that text message evidence was improperly allowed.

The court also rejected constitutional claims raised against the Texas death 
penalty.

Nelson caused mayhem during his time in the Tarrant County Jail.

Minutes after being sentenced to death for killing Dobson, Nelson flew into a 
screaming fit of rage, breaking a fire sprinkler in his holding cell and 
sending black water flooding into the courtroom.

Earlier during the trial, he broke an electronic shock cuff from around his 
ankle, and jurors were shown a video of him screaming and fighting against 
shackles in jail.

He is the only suspect in the jail hanging death of a mentally ill inmate who 
was placed in Nelson's cell area, and the county paid $350,000 to settle a 
civil rights suit filed by the dead inmate's sister. He was indicted in the 
death but wasn't tried after he was sent to death row.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Man Convicted Of Killing Baylor Graduate Loses Death Row Appeal


The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Wednesday rejected an appeal from death row 
inmate Steven Lawayne Nelson, 28, who was convicted of capital murder in the 
March 2011 slaying of the Rev. Clint Dobson, 28, a 2008 graduate of Baylor's 
Truett Theological Seminary.

Defense attorneys argued that there were 15 errors at Nelson's trial in 2012, 
but the court rejected claims that evidence wasn't sufficient to convict him of 
capital murder and sentence him to death, that the jury selection and jury 
instructions were improper and that text message evidence improperly was 
allowed.

The court also rejected constitutional claims raised against the Texas death 
penalty.

Prosecutors told jurors that Nelson wanted to steal a car on March 3, 2011, so 
he walked to the NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington, killed Dobson and 
beat ministry assistant Judy Elliott, then 67, who was severely injured.

Dobson, a Houston native, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from 
Baylor University in 2004 and graduated from Baylor's Truett Theological 
seminary 4 years later.

He joined the staff of the First Baptist Church Arlington in June of 2008 and 
went on to become the pastor of NorthPointe Baptist Church, which is a 
satellite of First Baptist Arlington.

Church members described Dobson as a dynamic pastor who always had a smile and 
hug for them as they walked into the sanctuary before each service.

(source: KWTX news)

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

Death Watch: Deficient Counsel, But Not Prejudicial----Lawyers' terrible job 
not enough to overturn a death sentence


Richard Vasquez didn't deliver the final blow that killed Miranda Lopez, his 
girlfriend's 4-year-old daughter, whom he was said to have informally adopted, 
but on June 22, 1999, a jury determined that he was responsible for causing her 
to fall off of a bathroom stool and hit her head on the floor, the fatal 
injury.

Vasquez, 18 years old at the time and living with his girlfriend Brenda, 
Miranda, and his and Brenda's daughter, 4-month-old Meagan, at his aunt and 
uncle's house in Corpus Christi, came home the afternoon of March 5, 1998, 
annoyed that he had to babysit the children instead of, as he testified at 
trial, stealing things so that he could sell them for money to buy more heroin, 
and decided to take his anger out on Miranda. He hit her repeatedly on the 
front part of her head, then told her to go outside while he injected heroin 
and lay down to take a nap. When he awoke he called her inside to brush her 
teeth. She went into the bathroom, climbed on the stool, and fell onto the 
floor. Vasquez pulled her up, put toothpaste on her toothbrush, and left the 
room. When he came back, she was facedown in the sink.

Paramedic neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Burke, who performed surgery on Miranda, 
concluded that the girl had suffered severe trauma to the head, and diagnosed 
her as a victim of child abuse. A sexual assault nurse determined that she'd 
also been sexually violated, causing severe injuries. Vasquez was arrested that 
afternoon and charged with capital murder. He was convicted and sentenced to 
death on June 24, 1999.

In writs filed with the state and federal courts, appellate attorneys have 
noted the lack of preparation his three trial lawyers put into the case. They 
did not follow a psychiatrist's suggestion that Vasquez undergo neurological 
testing, did not employ a mitigation specialist (though they had sufficient 
funding to do so), did not discuss possible mitigating evidence with members of 
Vasquez's family, and never met with his biological parents. Trial counsel 
proved "completely unaware" that Vasquez's father introduced him to heroin at 
age 12, and did not know during trial that his mother's heavy drinking during 
pregnancy caused fetal alcohol syndrome.

"Defense counsel ... interviewed the Vasquez family members for mitigation 
purposes in the hallway outside the courtroom," noted a 2006 federal habeas 
petition. "A last-minute interview conducted in such a public setting simply 
could not have been sufficient."

Still, Vasquez's post-conviction efforts have thus far proved unsuccessful. He 
lost both habeas petitions, and was denied an appeal to the U.S. Court of 
Appeals in 2008 and a 2011 petition to the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of 
certiorari. The only event stalling his execution's course came when the 
attorney general's office reset the punishment from Jan. 15 to April 23 when it 
was discovered that former Governor Rick Perry would be out of town. However, 
at press time, Vasquez's attorneys were putting the final touches on yet 
another habeas petition and a motion to stay the execution.

In a blog post dated Feb. 20, 2008, Vasquez made a pitch for a 2nd chance. 
"Being convicted of a Capital crime ... means that these same people believe 
that I am unrehabilitatable," he wrote. "This is actually quite [a] feat 
considering that no one has ever attempted to rehabilitate me.... If no one has 
tried, how do they know that I am beyond help?"

Vasquez will be the 7th Texan executed this year on Gov. Greg Abbott's watch, 
and the 525th to be executed by the state of Texas since it reinstated the 
death penalty in 1976.

(source: Austin Chronicle)






FLORIDA:

Jacksonville jury finds Lance Kirkpatrick guilty of 1st-degree murder


Lance Eugene Kirkpatrick is 1 step closer to death row after a Jacksonville 
jury convicted him of the 1st-degree murder of a firefighters wife Wednesday 
evening.

Kirkpatrick, 33, was convicted of the rape and murder of 38-year-old Kim 
Dorsey. The jury also convicted him of robbing the house where Dorsey and her 
husband, Jacksonville firefighter Derrick Dorsey, lived.

A brutally battered Dorsey was found dead inside her own home in 2012 and 
Kirkpatrick was arrested after his DNA was found inside Dorsey.

Prosecutors argue that Kirkpatrick broke into the house because he wanted to 
steal something from the house to pay off a drug debt and killed Dorsey when 
she saw him. Kirkpatrick used to live with the Dorsey's and knew they hid a key 
under a statue on their front porch.

Kirkpatrick has acknowledged killing Dorsey, but insists it was an accident. 
Defense attorney Charles Fletcher argued that his client was guilty of 
manslaughter, not 1st-degree murder.

Kirkpatrick testified that he was having an affair with Dorsey, and killed her 
after she became enraged at him after they had sex because he had helped her 
husband meet and have sex with other women. Derrick Dorsey had hired 
Kirkpatrick to work at his construction company and allowed him to live in his 
home for a period of time, but Dorsey was no longer living in the house when 
Kim Dorsey was killed.

During closing statements Wednesday afternoon prosecutors ridiculed the idea 
that Kirkpatrick and Dorsey were lovers.

"She never would have found Lance Kirkpatrick appealing, physically or in any 
other way," said Assistant State Attorney Patricia Dobson.

Kirkpatrick lied about having an affair with Dorsey, Dobson said, and he was 
able to tell this "cockamamie" story because Dorsey isn't here to defend 
herself.

Dobson urged jurors to pay attention to the violence committed against Dorsey, 
showing them multiple pictures of the massive cuts and bruises all over her 
body.

"The physical evidence shows he's guilty of 1st-degree murder, not 
manslaughter," Dobson said. "It points to premeditated intent. She knew he was 
killing her, and he knew he was killing her."

And before her throat was cut with a kitchen knife Kirkpatrick repeatedly beat 
her with a pool stick and punched her in the face while he was holding her down 
on the floor in her own bedroom, Dobson said.

Kirkpatrick had no injuries on his face but did have scratches on his side and 
back, and his DNA was found in Dorsey's fingernails.

"That is a woman on her back trying with every ounce of energy to stay alive," 
Dobson said.

Derrick Dorsey acknowledged while testifying that he'd cheated on his wife with 
multiple women, and some of those women were introduced to him by Kirkpatrick. 
But Dobson told jurors the behavior of Derrick Dorsey was irrelevant.

"You don???t have to like Derrick Dorsey. You can even find him despicable," 
Dobson said. "That has nothing to do with this case."

The jury that convicted Kirkpatrick will return on Friday to make a 
recommendation on whether he should go to death row or be sentenced to life 
without the possibility of parole. Under Florida law, those are the only 2 
sentencing options before Circuit Judge Mark Hulsey.

The final decision rests with Hulsey, but judges usually follow juror 
recommendations in death penalty cases.

Hulsey will not sentence Kirkpatrick on Friday. He will just get a 
recommendation from the jury and impose sentence later on.

The Dorsey family declined to comment after Kirkpatrick was convicted. A 
representative for the family said they might have something to say after 
Friday's sentencing hearing.

A relative of Kirkpatrick ran out of the courtroom crying after the verdict was 
announced.

(source: Florida Timse-Union)






OHIO:

Group wants Ohio to reform death penalty, prevent wrongful execution


Ricky Jackson spent nearly 4 decades in prison for a murder he didn't commit.

He and his brother and another man were sentenced to death in the 1975 case, 
based on the testimony of a 12-year-old witness who decades later recanted.

On April 14, all there were at the Statehouse, along with several other men 
exonerated of crimes that put them on Ohio's Death Row, to urge lawmakers to 
prevent others from being wrongly convicted.

The group ultimately wants Ohio and the rest of the country to stop executions.

"I don't want to see it happen again to anybody...," Jackson said. "I can tell 
you from experience [about death row], it's not a place fit for human beings. 
If we did this to canines, the world would be in an uproar, but we do it people 
every day."

The former inmates spoke during a morning press conference organized by Ohioans 
to Stop Executions, which is pushing for enactment of recommendations offered 
by a Supreme Court task force that backers say would help to prevent future 
wrongful convictions.

More than 50 recommendations were released by the task force about a year ago, 
though prosecutors and public defenders on the panel had differing views on the 
final report. Legislation introduced recently in the Ohio Senate includes some 
of the task force's ideas.

Death penalty opponents want the state to stop executions, opting instead for 
life sentences without parole for those convicted of heinous crimes.

"... Mistakes have been made to some men waiting on death row," said Rep. 
Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood), who has sponsored legislation to end the death 
penalty. "There is substantial evidence that the death penalty in Ohio is not 
fair and more often than anyone wants to admit it's not accurate... The 
challenge to those who want to keep the death penalty is this: fix it or end 
it."

Short of ending the death penalty, Ohioans to Stop Executions is urging 
lawmakers to adopt more than dozen reforms outlined by the Supreme Court task 
force. The list includes electronically recording interrogations, certification 
requirements for labs that process crime evidence, the creation of a fund to 
cover the costs of capital litigation, bans on death sentences based solely on 
the testimony of jailhouse informants and requirements that capital sentences 
include DNA, video-taped confessions or other compelling evidence linking 
defendants to murders.

"Nobody wants to convict or execute an innocent person ...," said Kevin Werner, 
executive director of Ohioans to Stop Executions. "Not only is that an 
injustice to that innocent person but it leaves real killers out on the street 
potentially to commit crimes again. So these 13 recommendations directly or 
indirectly will prevent wrongful convictions and wrongful executions, and they 
should be passed into law this year."

Former death row inmates whose convictions were later overturned hoped the 
legislation would serve as starting point for increased public discussions that 
could lead to the end of capital punishment.

"I wasn't wrongly convicted -- I was deliberately framed," said Kevin Warner, 
who was sentenced to death for the murders of his daughter and her boyfriend in 
1984, then exonerated of the crime and released 6 years later. "... There [are] 
many problems with the death penalty, and I don't think anybody can fix all of 
the problems...."

Joe D'Ambrosio spent more than 2 decades behind bars before his exoneration.

"I was never in trouble with the law," he said. "... I'm the most common Joe 
that there can be. If it can happen to me, it can happen to you or your 
children or your grandchildren. The system is broken."

(source: Marc Kovac is the Dix Capital Bureau Chief----Twinsburg Bulletin)

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

Pharmacists association's policy yet another strike against death penalty


A recent decision by the American Pharmacists Association to discourage its 
members from assisting in executions should make states such as Ohio that still 
embrace the death penalty reconsider. It also underscores the error of a recent 
law in Ohio that shields the identity of pharmacists who prepare death-penalty 
drugs, contrary to Ohio's open-records law.

The pharmacists group staked its new position after several states, including 
Ohio, began turning to so-called compounding pharmacies, unregulated by the 
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to supply the necessary lethal-injection 
drugs once provided by manufacturers but now no longer sold by them for such 
purposes.

The pharmacists association now says it considers participation in executions 
"fundamentally contrary" to pharmacists' role as health care providers.

"This new policy aligns APhA with the execution policies of other major health 
care associations including the American Medical Association, the American 
Nurses Association and the American Board of Anesthesiology," association CEO 
Thomas Menighan stated last month.

In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich signed into law last year a measure that allows 
compounding pharmacies supplying lethal-injection drugs to hide their 
identities from the public for up to 20 years.

It also protects medical professionals who assist in providing death-penalty 
drugs, drafting protocols for their use or in carrying out the executions from 
retribution by their licensing boards.

Yet executions are not medical procedures. They are sentences of death that 
should be as transparent as any other function of state government.

Ohio's next scheduled execution isn't until January 2016, a date set earlier 
this year to give the state enough time to procure the necessary 
lethal-injection drugs. An Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction 
spokeswoman declined comment on the pharmacists association's action.

Instead of adopting convoluted and unmerited laws to shield the identity of 
medical professionals who help with executions, Ohio should get rid of the 
death penalty altogether, as this editorial board long has advocated.

For some, a sentence of life without parole would be as punitive as death, and 
it would come without the baggage the death penalty places on society, whether 
it resides in the cost, the fairness -- or, as in the case of pharmacists, 
expecting those whose training and ethics are all about saving human lives, to 
be complicit in taking those lives, no matter how despicably those lives were 
lived.

(source: Editorial, cleveland.com)






TENNESSEE:

24 Years Later, Hamilton County Family Still Waiting for Death Row Justice


Executions in Tennessee are being postponed until lethal injections are aired 
out in the courts.

There are 3 men on death row from Hamilton County, now 1 victim's family is 
speaking out.

In 1991 Traci Crozier died from 3rd degree burns that covered her body, after 
gasoline was thrown into her car and set on fire by her ex-boyfriend Lee Hall.

"I can't call her. Talk to her. Be an aunt. He took everything," said Traci 
Crozier's sister, Staci Wooten.

It is 2 decades later, Traci's family will never stop missing her, and they are 
exhausted from Hall's execution date being changed, again.

"He got the electric chair and they should give him the electric chair," said 
Traci's Uncle Chris Mathis. "Let him see how it feels to burn."

"It shouldn't be 24 years later," said Wooten. "I think he should be 
electrocuted. And now they're going to give him a choice. My sister didn't get 
to choose. He set her on fire and burned her alive. She didn't get a choice."

Hall was sentenced to the electric chair, but then was given the choice to have 
lethal injection.

According to officials with the Federal Public Defenders Office, pharmaceutical 
manufacturers have made a decision to not be involved in lethal injections, so 
the department of corrections must find other ways to get these drugs, one that 
many believe, needs to be aired out in the courts.

While some, believe the death penalty is not the answer, Staci Wooten believes 
Hall should suffer.

"Until you've lived it, been through it. It was your sister, or daughter, or 
friend. Don't judge it," she said. "But, if you have just one doubt that they 
didn't do it. I can understand that. But he admitted to it."

Hall's execution date was set for January of next year, now, Traci's family 
must continue to wait.

(source: newschannel9.com)




KENTUCKY:

Wrongfully accused and on death row


The only woman to ever be exonerated from death row told her story, Wednesday, 
April 8 in the O'Donnell Auditorium to make students more aware of their rights 
and knowledge about the death penalty. The speech was hosted by Young Americans 
for Liberty.

Telling her story wasn't the only thing she was here at Eastern to do. Sabrina 
Butler, innocence speaker, says she wants to "spread her message to the world 
about how the United States has a serious problem with the system."

Butler strives to encourage and educate students and young adults about what 
really happens in prison and how individuals who have been wrongly convicted 
have in a way lost their lives.

In 1989, 17-year-old Sabrina Butler was put on trial for capital murder. Her 
9-month-old son was found dead, and she tried to revive him by giving him CPR. 
She was unsure how to do it, so she went to neighbors, who refused to help her.

By the time she arrived at the hospital, doctors did everything they could to 
try and save her son, but didn't succeed. She went home that night and returned 
to the hospital the next morning to find police officers further investigating 
the case. She was asked to go to the station where she was interrogated for 4 
hours, eventually being accused of child abuse and neglect.

"The cops told me what I did, they didn't let me tell my story," Butler said.

She spent the next year in jail awaiting trial. Butler was sentenced to prison 
March 8, 1990, and was told she would be put to death by lethal injection July 
2, 1990.

"I think I cried for 2 weeks because I didn't know what to expect. I thought 
they were coming to kill me," Butler said when the time for her execution was 
near.

In 1992, Butler's sentence was overturned for misconduct in the autopsy from 
her son's death. The autopsy gave results that her son had both heart and 
kidney problems and that was the cause of death.

Butler was found not guilty Dec. 17, 1995 and removed from death row. She 
remained in civil prison.

"I was unemployed until 2009, because no one wanted to hire someone with a 
criminal record," Butler said.

In 2009, Mississippi passed a law to pay convicts who were wrongfully charged.

Her case was not expunged until April 2014, and it has been discovered by 
officials that the state of Mississippi did not have enough money for a more 
thorough autopsy during the 1st trial. That is the reason why Butler was put on 
death row.

At 17 years old, Butler did not know how to handle this situation. She admits 
that she wasn't educated enough to know how to defend herself in court or about 
dealing with the law. She now travels around the country passing along her 
story and efforts to try to educate and help young adults when dealing with the 
law.

The Kentucky Innocence Project provides quality investigative and legal 
assistance to Kentucky prisoners with provable claims of actual innocence. 
Investigator Jimmer Dudley attended Butler's presentation and told the audience 
how important it is to be aware of the death penalty and how the goal of the 
Kentucky Innocence Project is to release all people who have been wrongfully 
convicted in the state of Kentucky.

Shekinah Lavalle, an Outreach Coordinator of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish 
the Death Penalty, introduced Butler and gave a brief presentation to the 
audience about the death penalty.

"Life in prison without possible parole is a fine punishment and a good enough 
penalty and we won't make any mistakes," Lavalle said.

At Eastern, there is a Young Americans for Liberty group centered on 
encouraging students to take a stand and know their rights when it comes to the 
law. Sebastian Torres, a sophomore history and political science major from 
Florida and president of Young Americans for Liberty at Eastern, showed a video 
before Butler gave her speech, about a young man, Wheldon Angelos, who was 
sentenced to 55 years in prison for selling marijuana. They showed this video 
and handed out brochures with the message asking, "Was justice served?"

"The system needs to be changed to where punishment fits the crime," Butler 
said.

Butler ended her speech by telling the audience that there is nothing that she 
can do now to change what happened to her, but what she can do is help young 
Americans all over in educating them on how to deal with the death penalty and 
the law.

(source: The Eastern Progress)