[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ALA., USA

[Rick Halperin]

April 16



ALABAMA:

Death penalty trial date moved for man charged with strangling 91-year-old 
neighbor



The death penalty trial for a Huntsville man charged with killing his 
91-year-old neighbor has been pushed back from May to November.

John Clayton Owens, 31, is charged with capital murder in the strangulation 
death of Doris Richardson at her home on Bide-A-Wee Drive, near Five Points in 
Huntsville. Owens lived part-time with his uncle, next door to Richardson, and 
sometimes mowed her grass. Richardson's body was found in her bedroom on Aug. 
26, 2011.

The trial date has been continued more than once. Last year, the defense had 
expressed concern about being prepared for trial. The defense attorneys said 
they needed more time to review DNA test results and the November trial date 
was pushed back to May 18, 2015.

The case was being heard by Madison County Circuit Judge Billy Bell, but Bell 
retired this year. The case is now before Bell's successor Circuit Judge Alison 
Austin.

Defense attorneys Brian Clark and Ron Smith and Madison County Assistant 
District Attorney Bill Starnes and Assistant DA Thomas Glover met with the 
judge this afternoon for a status conference. The new trial date was set during 
that meeting.

Prosecutors said last year they would seek the death penalty for Owens.

Huntsville Police Department investigator Charlie Gray testified in Owens' 2011 
preliminary hearing that Richardson's house showed signs of disarray with 
drawers pulled out, contents dumped on the floor, an open safe and several open 
closet doors. Police had earlier reported about $1,200 worth of items had been 
stolen from the home.

The day after Richardson's death was discovered Gray said he was contacted by 
Owens' uncle. Gray said several jewelry boxes and a coin box were found in the 
uncle's yard. A search of Owens' room yielded more jewelry boxes and a slip of 
paper with a combination that turned out to match the safe's. After that 
discovery Gray issued a police alert for Owens.

He was soon picked up, Gray testified. Owens admitted burglarizing the house, 
Gray said, but he claimed to have done so several days before the murder and 
denied killing Richardson.

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

Former Alabama death row inmate cuts deal, will be free within hours



A former death row inmate Alabama who won a new trial 3 years ago will be free 
within hours, becoming the 2nd condemned Alabama prisoner ordered freed this 
month.

William Ziegler, 39, had been awaiting execution since his conviction in 2001 
for the slaying of Russell Allen Baker near the defendant's home at the time in 
Mobile County. His regular appeals exhausted, he won a rarely successful 
post-appeal challenge made directly to the trial judge.

Prosecutors had been preparing to retry the case and as recently as November 
indicated they would again seek the death penalty. On Thursday, Ziegler 
accepted a plea bargain and that will allow him to walk free. He pleaded guilty 
to aiding and abetting murder, and Mobile County Circuit Judge Sarah Stewart 
sentenced him to the 15 years and 50 days he has been incarcerated.

His attorneys said he will leave Mobile County Metro Jail as soon as 
authorities process him, which should take an hour or 2.

"I know that you recognize God's grace," the judge told Ziegler, urging him to 
resist the temptation to be bitter. "I want you to appreciate that gift. You 
need to be very careful with your gift. ... The world is a very different place 
than it was 15 years ago when you went to jail."

Stewart was not on the bench during Ziegler's 2001 trial, but she documented a 
litany of errors and abuses in an extraordinary 218-page ruling in 2012 and 
indicated that there was serious doubt about whether the defendant committed 
the murder.

The judge cited three main deficiencies:

--That Ziegler received substandard performance from his lawyers.

--That the state withheld evidence about a witness who later recanted her 
testimony.

--That a juror, when questioned about his views on the death penalty, lied 
during jury selection.

Thursday marks the second time this month that Alabama has released a prisoner 
who had been facing execution. Anthony Ray Hinton got his freedom April 3 after 
nearly 30 years on Alabama's death row. Prosecutors in that case dismissed 
charges in the 1985 deaths of 2 fast-food workers after new testing on the 
defendant's gun could not prove that it fired the bullets use in the slayings.

Ziegler was not yet 25 when Baker's body was found in a wooded patch off of 
Leroy Stevens Road in Mobile County. Authorities discovered that the victim and 
Ziegler had quarreled at a party and centered on him as the prime suspect.

He was convicted along with 3 accomplices.

On Thursday, Ziegler acknowledged that his conduct helped lead to the Baker's 
death.

Relatives of both Ziegler and Baker came away from the hearing disappointed.

O'Della Wilson, the defendant's mother, said she is happy that will go free but 
angry that he had to pleaded guilty to any crime.

"My son was put in a position again," she said outside the courtroom. "He had 
no choice but to go ahead and plead to a murder he did not commit. ... Judge 
Stewart's the only one who has given us any justice."

Meanwhile, Baker's family made clear it does not accept the outcome.

"He's a menace to our society. He will be back," said Beth Johansen, the 
victim's aunt. "This is not justice for our nephew."

(source for both: al.com)








USA:


Death Penalty Poll 2015: Support At Record Low, New Survey Shows



A majority of people in the U.S. believe murderers should be put to death, but 
support for the death penalty is lower than it has been in nearly two 
generations, according to a nationwide survey released Thursday by the Pew 
Research Center. The poll found that 56 % of Americans favor the death penalty 
for people convicted of murder, a decrease of 6 % points since Pew's last 
survey, in 2011. 38 % of Americans oppose the death penalty, according to the 
latest survey.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, support for the death penalty frequently topped 
70 %, according to Pew. In 1996, 78 % favored it, while 18 % % were opposed. 
The shift in opinion comes as jurors in Massachusetts are set to begin next 
week the penalty phase of convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. 
Tsarnaev, 21, was found guilty on all 30 federal criminal charges, including 
using weapons of mass destruction, in the 2013 attack that killed 3 people and 
wounded at least 170. Nearly 1/2 of 1,084 respondents in a nationwide public 
opinion poll conducted after Tsarnaev's April 8 conviction said he should die.

Pew's survey, conducted among 1,500 adults from March 25 to 29, found that much 
of the decrease in death penalty support has been among Democrats. Currently, 
40 % of Democrats favor the death penalty, while 56 % oppose it. In 1996, 
Democrats favored capital punishment by a wide margin, 71-25. Republican 
support for the death penalty also decreased, Pew said, although the decline 
wasn't as steep. 77 % of GOP voters favor the death penalty, compared with 87 % 
who favored it in 1996.

Other key findings in Pew's latest survey include a concern among 71 % of 
Americans that the death penalty risks an innocent person being put to death. 
About 1/2 of Americans say that minorities are more likely than whites to be 
sentenced to death for similar crimes, while 41 % think that whites and 
minorities are equally likely to face death for heinous crimes.

(source: International Business Times)

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

Person who killed federal witness in Saginaw could face death penalty



A Saginaw woman who disappeared in 2014 after being served a subpoena to 
testify in a federal drug case and whose body was likely discovered this week 
has opened a homicide investigation.

It could lead to charges that carry the death penalty if someone is found 
guilty of Yvonne Howard's fatal shooting and it's linked to the federal case, 
according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

"If an investigation reveals that Ms. Howard was murdered because she was 
believed to be a federal witness, that murder is itself a new federal offense 
carrying a potential of life imprisonment or even the death penalty," said Gina 
M. Balaya, public information officer for the U.S. Attorney's Office Eastern 
District of Michigan.

Police in Saginaw have not confirmed the identity of the remains as those of 
Howard's. But family members say they believe it to be her, in part because the 
remains were discovered Tuesday, April 14, in a field just house lengths away 
from her former home.

An autopsy revealed the person had been shot in the head with a high-caliber 
gun, according to Saginaw police.

Howard went missing in May 2014, shortly after being served the federal 
subpeona to testify in a case.

According to her daughter, Dominique Howard, who said she confirmed the 
identity of her mother after detectives visited her home on Wednesday, she lost 
communication with her mother on May 26. Her mother told her she was to testify 
in a drug case in federal court the next day and that she was worried that it 
would "get her killed."

"She called me very hysterically and told me that she did not want any parts of 
it," Dominique Howard said.

Balaya said the U.S. Attorney's Office can't comment specifically on the case, 
but said they offer services to protect witnesses.

"We understand that witnesses may be at risk when called to testify," Balaya 
said. "We provide services such as the witness protection program, temporary 
relocation and assistance with permanent relocation."

They would not say if Howard was offered any of those options because it's 
related to the case.

According to Saginaw Police Detective Sgt. Reggie Williams, a missing person 
report and supplemental reports were made by the daughter on May 30, June 1 and 
July 22.

Police are asking anyone with information to contact the anonymous 
CrimeStoppers tipline at 1-800-422-JAIL.

An investigation into the homicide is ongoing with assistance from the Michigan 
State Police.

(source: mlive.com)

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

How courts use neuroscience



In 2009, officials in Lorain County, Ohio, sued a single mother for permanent 
custody of her 10- and 11-year-old children, claiming that the mother neglected 
the children and her boyfriends sexually abused them. Although social workers 
had provided the mother with parenting classes, she was incapable of doing a 
better job, the county maintained. Among the evidence officials provided: the 
fact that when she was 14, the mother had been in a car accident that left her 
mentally impaired and with a reported IQ of 70.*

The Lorain family case is just one of more than 1,500 United States judicial 
opinions given between 2007 and 2012 that cite brain science in some way. As 
brain-measuring technologies have improved, neuroscience arguments have 
increasingly made their way into the U.S. judicial system, as a few observers 
have noted. A new report, published last week by the U.S. Presidential 
Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, tallies up specific numbers 
about how and when neuroscience shows up in court cases. Here are some 
highlights:

- Between 2007 and 2012, the number of judicial opinions citing neuroscience 
doubled.

- Among the cases that invoked neuroscience, about 40 percent were for capital 
murder.

- In the majority of cases, lawyers tried to use brain scans and other evidence 
to argue for lesser punishments. For example, they could use evidence of brain 
damage to argue a defendant wasn't able to control or plan what he did.

- In 2012, 5 % of murder trials and 25 % of death penalty trials invoked 
neuroscience to argue for less severe punishments.

- Neuroscience doesn't always have to help defendants, however. Prosecutors can 
use neuroscience evidence to argue that somebody is naturally aggressive or 
dangerous and needs more restrictive punishment. Indeed, neuroscience worked 
against the Lorain County mother who had wanted to keep her children.

- Neuroscience can even work against lawyers. In the past, courts have found 
attorneys to be ineffective as counsel when they failed to "investigate a 
reasonable likelihood of a brain abnormality" for clients facing the death 
sentence.

The rise in neuroscience in courts warrants some caution. The science for many 
claims - such as the ability to predict whether someone will commit a crime 
again in the future, or to objectively measure pain - is still uncertain. At 
the same time, scientific-looking evidence holds strong sway over judges and 
juries, studies show. So it's important to avoid hype, and to make sure judges 
are trained in neuroscience. The good news is that a few organizations already 
run neuroscience seminars for lawyers and judges, like the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science and the MacArthur Foundation.

While most news stories - understandably - highlight the dangers of misapplied 
neuroscience, brain research has done a lot of good for courts, too. Emerging 
science on how long it takes for teens' brains to mature has played a huge role 
in making it so that courts now can't sentence children under 18 to the death 
penalty, or to life in prison without parole. Brain-scanning studies have also 
helped reveal the implicit biases that everybody has, and often lead to people 
of color getting harsher punishments than white people for the same crimes. 
Bringing those biases to light with science is the first step to mitigating 
them.

(source: Pacific Standard)

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

Young people are leading a huge plunge in support for the death penalty



Americans' support for the death penalty is at its lowest point in 40 years, 
according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center.

The leading cause of the plunge in support, age-wise: Millennials, barely a 
majority of whom now say they favor the death penalty as a form of capital 
punishment for criminals convicted of murder.

According to the survey, just 51 % of 18- to 29-year-olds say they support the 
death penalty, while 43 % are now opposed. That's a 15-point swing from just 4 
years ago, when the split was 59-36 in favor.

Overall, 56 % of respondents in the poll favor the death penalty as a form of 
capital punishment, according to the poll. The percentage of people who favor 
the death penalty is down 6 points from 2011.

More remarkable is the shift from 20 years ago. In 1995, 78 % of Americans said 
they supported the death penalty, while just 18 % were opposed. Here's a chart 
from Pew that shows how the gulf has narrowed considerably since then:

White Americans and Republicans are the most likely demographics to support the 
death penalty. By a 63-33 margin, whites favor the death penalty, though that 
support is down 5 points over the past 4 years. Respondents who identify as 
Republicans, however, are virtually unchanged from 4 years ago - 77 % favor it 
and 17 % are opposed.

There has been a continued shift downward among minority populations and those 
who identify as Democrats. Here???s a quick breakdown:

--Democrats oppose for the 1st time by a 40-56 margin, a huge 22-point swing 
from 2011;

--African-Americans oppose by a 34-57 margin, a 14-point swing;

--Latinos oppose by a 45-47 margin, a 12-point swing.

The death penalty is now at the center of 2 notorious cases working their way 
through the court system - 1 involving Colorado movie-theater shooter James 
Holmes and the other involving convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar 
Tsarnaev. Holmes" trial is set to begin later this month, while Tsarnaev's 
sentencing trial will take place next week.

A CBS News poll showed that 60 % of Americans favored the death penalty as 
punishment for Tsarnaev. Some prominent national figures, including Boston 
Cardinal Sean O'Malley and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have said 
Tsarnaev's life should be spared.

"My heart goes out to the families here, but I don't support the death 
penalty," Warren said on CBS last week. "I think that he should spend his life 
in jail - no possibility of parole, he should die in prison. But that's how I 
see it. It will be up to the jury."

"The alternative to the death penalty is not as if you turn this guy free," she 
added. "The point is that he stays in prison, he dies in prison, he's put away. 
He's not a danger to anyone else and [he's] not a part of an ongoing story - 
he's not someone who tries to then or is able to keep sucking up a lot of 
energy and a lot of attention."

(source: Fusion.net)