[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, CONN., PENN., N.C., FLA.

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 19



TEXAS----impending execution//foreign national

Texas Prepares for Execution of Nicaraguan Bernardo Tercero on August 26, 2015


Bernardo Aban Tercero is scheduled to be executed at 6 pm CDT, on Wednesday, 
August 26, 2015, at the Walls Unit of the Huntsville State Penitentiary in 
Huntsville, Texas. 37-year-old Bernardo is convicted of the murder of 
38-year-old high school teacher Robert Keith Berger on March 31, 1997, in 
Houston, Texas. Bernardo has spent the last 15 years of his life on Texas' 
death row.

Bernardo was born in Chinadega, Nicaragua. He dropped out of school following 
the 7th grade and came to the United States at the age of 17. Bernardo had 
previously been convicted on 2 counts of theft in the United States. Prior to 
his arrest, he worked as an auto mechanic and laborer.

On March 31, 1997, 2 men, Bernardo Tercero and Jorge Becencil Gonzales, forced 
their way through the back door of a dry cleaning establishment. Gonzales held 
the employees at gunpoint while Tercero went to the front of the store and 
demanded money.

Robert Berger, who was there with his 3 year old daughter, approached Tercero. 
The 2 became physical and Robert was shot. He died from his injuries. Tercero 
and Gonzales fled. Tercero went to Florida, while Gonzales left the country. 
Tercero eventually fled to Nicaragua, where he is alleged to have been involved 
in a series of violent crimes, including robberies, shootings, and a 
kidnapping. Tercero was extradited to the United States upon request.

Bernardo Tercero has 2 conflicting birth certificates. The one (not used for 
this article) alleges that he was under 18 at the time of crime, making him 
ineligible for the death penalty. Bernardo alleges that this is his correct 
birth certificate. This discrepancy has been the focus of many appeals, non of 
which have been successful. His attorney is also asking for a stay of execution 
to allow further litigation.

Please pray for peace and healing for the family of Robert Berger. Please pray 
for strength for the family of Bernardo. Please pray that if Bernardo is 
innocent or ineligible for the death penalty, that evidence will be presented 
prior to his execution. Please pray that Bernardo will come to find peace 
through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, if he has not already found 
one.

(source: theforgivenessfoundation.org)

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

Texas prosecutor made secret deals in more than 1 death penalty case, report 
says


A now-retired Texas prosecutor struck secret deals to secure key testimony in 
more than 1 death penalty case, according to a new report.

After uncovering evidence last summer that Navarro County prosecutor John 
Jackson arranged such a deal in 1 death penalty case, The Marshall Project, a 
news nonprofit focused on criminal justice issues, reported Tuesday that 
Jackson did the same in another, earlier case. In both instances, the report 
says, defense attorneys were not told about the deals and those testifying 
reported feeling pressured into doing so and guided in what to share.

The new story alleges that Jackson bolstered a 1986 case against Ernest Baldree 
- who was charged with murdering a husband and wife during a robbery - with 
testimony from Kyle Barnett, who was an inmate with Baldree.

But Barnett says he never wanted to testify against Baldree: "The prosecutors 
there had me in a position where it would be real hard on me if I refused," he 
said, according to the report. Barnett said Baldree admitted to the murders, 
but was also remorseful, saying he was high on speed and didn't know what he 
was doing - a fact, he says, prosecutors were uninterested in hearing.

"The scenario that Barnett described strongly echoes allegations later made in 
the far more famous case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 
for the arson murder of his three young daughters," Maurice Possley and Maurice 
Chammah write.

Jackson had, for more than 20 years, denied making a deal in that case, too, 
but a story by Possley republished by The Washington Post last summer cast 
doubt on his denial.

The former inmate who provided testimony against Willingham in that case, 
Johnny E. Webb, told Possley that he had been coerced and his testimony that 
Willingham confessed was a lie. Jackson at the time called the allegation a 
"complete fabrication."

Jackson has also alleged that he and Barnett have never had contact. But 
Barnett says Jackson and his prosecution team told him that they needed his 
testimony.

"They told me that, if I would testify, they would allow me to the Cenikor Drug 
Rehabilitation program in Fort Worth for violating my probation," Barnett 
explained in an affidavit, according to the new report. "They said if I didn't 
testify, I'd be going back to the prison for a long time."

(source: Washington Post)

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

Junk Science Revisited----Forensic commision right to scrutinize bite analysis


The Texas Forensic Science Commission deserves credit for opeing another front 
in the battle to keep junk science out of the courtroom. The initiative came in 
last week's commission vote to investigate the widely discredited discipline of 
bite-mark analysis, as used in criminal trials.

The term 'junk science' has become a familiar one to lawmakers and 
criminal-justice reformers in Austin. In recent years, it's become clear that 
procesution experts advancing outmoded theories and pseudoscience - from shoddy 
arson forensics to use of dog-sniffing lineups - have helped put people behind 
bars in Texas.

The use of bite-mark analysis is rarely used, but it's been linked to at least 
2 wrongful convictions in Texas. Previous investigations of bite-mark anlysis 
suggest it boils down to dressed-up guesswork masquerading as expertise.

The forensic commision's inquiry into bite-mark testimony has parallels to how 
the agency began its sweeping look at the state of arson investigations in 
Texas. That effort concluded that Texas had allowed its standard to slip. It 
grew out of a complaint to the commission about forensic work against the 
executed Cameron Todd Willingham, convicted arson-murder in the deaths of his 3 
daughters in Corsicana.

The Willingham complaint was brought by the Innocence Project of New York. Last 
month, the same group filed a complaint on behalf of a Dallas man, Steven Mark 
Chaney, sentenced to life in prison in 1987 in the throat-slashing murders of a 
couple who were peddling cocaine in East Dallas. Dental analysis was key. Based 
on expert testimony, prosecutors told jurors that "there was only a 
1-in-a-million chance" that Chaney wasn't the source of bite marks on 1 of the 
victims, according to the Innocence Project.

The past 28 years have heaped tons of doubt on that statement. It would be a 
laughable claim, except that a potentially innocent man has spent 28 years 
behind bars as a result.

A 2009 study of the nation's forensic work by the National Academy of Sciences 
said that bite analysis is one discipline that grew out of lab tests but has 
"never been exposed to stringent scientific scrutiny."

Kudos to the Texas Forensic Science Commission for its willingness to apply 
that scrutiny.

For 2 sessions in a row, Texas lawmakers have enacted laws aimed at rooting out 
junk science from criminal courtrooms. New laws have made it possible for 
people to challenge their convictions if they could prove junk science or 
outmoded theories were used to secure a guilty verdict. Lawmakers also have 
wideened the spectrum of forensic disciplines that the commission has authority 
over. The commission had already begun an inquiry into microscopic hair 
analysis, another discipline whose claims have been under attack.

The push to insist on facts, as opposed to guesswork, from prosecution 
witnesses is a righteous one. Hocus-pocus has no place in Texas courtooms.

(source: Editorial, Dallas Morning News)






CONNECTICUT:

Death-penalty deception


In 2012, the Democratic majority in the legislature abolished Connecticut's 
death penalty while leaving the penalty operative for the 11 convicted 
murderers on death row, thus demolishing all their moral arguments against 
capital punishment. If the death penalty is cruel, unusual and morally 
indefensible, would it not be doubly inappropriate for death-row inmates?

Only those who were committed to a scheme of deception supposed the 
partial-abolition bill would remain law after the Connecticut's Supreme Court 
reviewed a case challenging the justice of the throwaway legislation that would 
permit the state to execute 11 men in the absence of a law prescribing a 
penalty that had been abolished.

Everyone pretended otherwise - and this pretense was entirely political. Gov. 
Dannel P. Malloy and the Democratic legislators favoring abolition knew the 
bill could not pass if the 11 death-row inmates had not been exempted. Two mass 
murderers, Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, only recently had been 
convicted and sentenced to death for having committed a particularly heinous 
murder in Cheshire. The 2 recent parolees had invaded a home in Cheshire, 
pummeled homeowner Dr. William A. Petit Jr. with a baseball bat, tied 2 of his 
young daughters to their beds, forced his wife to draw money from a bank, raped 
the wife and 1 of the daughters, and then set fire to the house, murdering all 
inside but the doctor, who managed to escape and alert police. Theirs was just 
the sort of crime that merited a death penalty.

After abolition, another heinous crime occurred in Newtown. A heavily armed 
man, Adam Lanza, entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered 20 children 
and 7 staff members. Lanza committed suicide. Had he been taken alive, 
Connecticut could not have executed him because the legislature already had 
abolished capital punishment in all future criminal cases.

The state Supreme Court now has come to the rescue, relieving abolitionist 
Democrats of their awful political burden. Serving on the court is a justice 
newly appointed by Malloy who ought to have recused himself from any decision 
concerning the death penalty. Co-chair of the Judiciary Committee along with 
then-Sen. Michael Lawlor, Supreme Court Justice Andrew McDonald led the fight 
in the legislature to repeal the death penalty. Lawlor, later appointed by 
Malloy as his penology guru, has produced a program that assigns 
get-out-of-jail-early credits to rapists and arsonists. Malloy and Lawlor are 
former repentant prosecutors. Before assuming his position on Connecticut 
highly politicized Supreme Court, Mr. McDonald was a lawyer in a legislature 
overweighted with lawyers. Lawlor and McDonald were responsible for striking 
down a "3-strikes-and-you're-out" bill supported by then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

After the Supreme Court's abolition decision was rendered, Malloy, retreating 
to a default position in which he publicly wiped every tear from every eye, 
gave a slap on the back to compassion - and himself.

"Today is a somber day where our focus should not be on the 11 men sitting on 
death row, but with their victims and those surviving families members," Malloy 
said. "My thoughts and prayers are with them during what must be a difficult 
day."

A difficult day - just a day, after which Mr. Malloy may shelve his concern. 
One supposes the families of the victims murdered by the death-row 11 will have 
little time for Malloy's politically obligatory bosh and his dollop of 
compassion. One supposes they would rather have a death penalty than Mr. 
Malloy's prayers ??? not for themselves, of course, but for future victims 
subject to heinous acts of murderous intent.

(source: Commentary; Don Pesci is a writer----Repubican American)

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

Lindsey Graham: It's An Outrage Cheshire Killers Won't Be Put To Death


Lindsey Graham, the Republican presidential candidate and U.S. senator South 
Carolina, said the thought that Cheshire home invasion killers Steven Hayes and 
Joshua Komisarjevsky will be spared the death penalty "makes me want to throw 
up."

Graham's comments came Monday on a radio show hosted by Michael Medved, 
according to a report by Buzzfeed. The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Thursday 
that the death penalty is unconstitutional, meaning the 11 men on death row, 
including Hayes and Komisarjevsky, convicted in the 2007 murders of a mother 
and her 2 daughters, will be spared execution.

"It makes me want to throw up when I hear that putting these 2 guys to death 
for what they did to that family is somehow outside the standards of decency," 
Graham said.

"If this doesn't cry out for the death penalty, nothing ever would. And I don't 
think you're an indecent society when you take 2 men who broke into a family's 
home, tortured 2 young girls, raped them, burned them alive. I don't think that 
makes us indecent that they would be administered the death penalty."

In a statement Thursday Dr. William Petit, the lone survivor of the attack that 
killed his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 
11, said he too disagreed with the court's opinion.

"The dissenting justices clearly state how the 4 members of the majority have 
disregarded keystones of our governmental structure such as the separation of 
powers and the role of judicial precedent to reach the decision they hand down 
today," he said.

A Fox News poll of registered voters last week showed fewer than 1 % of 
respondents picking Graham as their choice for the Republican nominee.

(source: Hartford Courant)






PENNSYLVANIA:

Jury begins deliberating in Philly Valentine's Day killings


A Philadelphia jury returns Wednesday for a 2nd day of deliberations in the 
murder trial of Shaun Warrick, accused of killing his ex-girlfriend and her 
cousin on Valentine's Day 2011.

The Common Pleas Court jury of 6 women and 6 men spent about 3 1/2 hours 
reviewing evidence Tuesday after a morning of closing arguments by lawyers and 
instructions in the law from Judge Glenn B. Bronson.

The jury twice returned to court, once with a question about the operation of a 
semiautomatic pistol and once to request police photos of the victims, the 
Frankford house in which the cousins were killed, and a floor plan of the 
house's 2nd floor.

Warrick, 32, of Logan, is charged with killing Tiffany Barnhill, 19, and her 
22-year-old cousin Marcedes Ivery, whose bodies - each shot multiple times - 
were found in upstairs bedrooms at Ivery's house in the 5400 block of Rutland 
Street.

Warrick was allegedly angry because Barnhill had broken off their relationship 
and Ivery was interfering with his efforts to talk to her; Barnhill did not own 
a cellphone and Ivery was refusing Warrick's calls to her cellphone and 
landline.

Trial witnesses testified that shortly after 3:30 p.m., Warrick, accompanied by 
2 women, arrived at Ivery's house. While the women waited outside, witnesses 
said Warrick kicked in the front door and entered. Gunfire was heard and 
Warrick then ran out of the house, tucking something into his pants, and fled 
with the 2 women.

The jury must decide whether Warrick is guilty and, if so, the degree of 
murder: 1st-degree, a premeditated, malicious killing; 2nd-degree, a killing 
carried out while committing another crime, in this case burglary; or 
3rd-degree murder, a malicious crime in which the death occurs through reckless 
or negligent conduct.

If the jurors find Warrick guilty of 1st-degree murder, Assistant District 
Attorney Thomas Lipscomb has said he will ask them to sentence him to death.

That decision will come after a penalty hearing where Lipscomb will present 
evidence of "aggravating factors" - a double slaying, for example - that he 
will argue merits the death penalty.

Defense attorney Jack McMahon will present evidence of "mitigating factors - 
such as a deprived childhood, or mental or emotional problems - supporting a 
default sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole.

In his closing argument, McMahon told the jurors there were too many holes in 
the chain of circumstantial evidence for them to find Warrick guilty beyond a 
reasonable doubt.

McMahon urged the jury to analyze the evidence and not be swayed by emotion: 
"The was a sad crime, a tragic crime, a horrible crime. It shouldn't have 
happened, but it did. But that's not the question here."

McMahon argued that there is no physical evidence linking Warrick to the 
killings: no gun recovered, no witnesses who saw Warrick with a gun or saw him 
shoot Barnhill and Ivery, and no fingerprints.

McMahon suggested that the real killer was an unidentified male, whose voice 
was overheard on a cellphone call made by Warrick to Ivery while he and the two 
women drove to Rutland Street.

The defense lawyer also attacked the credibility of the women who accompanied 
Warrick to the house, accusing them of blaming him so they would not be charged 
as accomplices to the double slaying.

Lipscomb, however, argued that the circumstantial evidence, corroborated by 
Warrick's accomplices and testimony from a woman who said she watched Warrick 
break into Ivery's house, proved Warrick was the killer.

"Have you guys ever heard what's become my new favorite expression?" Lipscomb 
began his closing. "If you hear hoofbeats, it's a horse and not a zebra. 
Sometimes the simplest explanation is the most likely and it's borne out by the 
evidence."

(source: philly.com)






NORTH CAROLINA:

Judge reviews attorney's file in capital case


Testimony was stalled Tuesday as the presiding judge reviewed the file of Leigh 
Williams' attorney after the co-defendant to Carl Kennedy waived her 
attorney-client privileges.

Williams' attorney, Lori Hamilton, has come under scrutiny by Kennedy's 
attorneys for text messages sent between her and Davidson County assistant 
district attorney Alan Martin. Hamilton denies that there ever was a "secret 
plea deal" between her and the Davidson County District Attorney's Office.

Her client, Williams, has testified against Kennedy, who was Willams' boyfriend 
at the time of the 3 November 2011 deaths of Sharon F. Rushing, 61, Angela Dawn 
Soles, 43, and Gary Lynn Seward, 52, all of 101 Rotary Lane in Thomasville. 
David Manning, 45, Williams, 43, and Kennedy, 45, are facing the death penalty, 
but Kennedy's case is being tried 1st.

Williams - the state's 5th witness - took to the witness stand Thursday and her 
testimony has continued since. She has yet to be cross-examined, and her 
attorney, Hamilton also is on the murder trial's witness list.

"They are questioning my ethics," Hamilton said in courtroom remarks while 
addressing Superior Court Judge Christopher Bragg."

Hamilton admitted to the judge that she was the author of text messages to 
Martin. She acknowledged that she offer an "acceptable resolution" to the DA's 
office "short of trial." Hamilton said her "overriding goal" has been to 
protect her client, but the context of her text messages have been mistaken by 
Kennedy's defense attorneys.

Shortly before sending texts to Martin, Hamilton left a meeting with an 
attorney who also was representing Williams, she said Tuesday. Hamilton 
explained the fellow attorney's health had declined, and she was shocked to see 
him "so very weak." She was worried about her co-counselor being able to 
proceed for Williams, so she sent the texts to Martin about a possible plea 
arrangement for her client.

Hamilton sent texts to Martin. According to courtroom remarks, the assistant 
district attorney replied back to Hamilton saying not to take his silence as a 
response to her text messages.

Williams, who has testified she was the getaway driver for Kennedy and Manning, 
told Bragg she was waiving her rights for him to look through her file compiled 
by Hamilton. Hamilton thinks the defense attorneys want her file to be reviewed 
because they are trying to figure out if there was a secret deal between her 
and the state.

Williams has testified that she has not been given any promises by prosecutors 
in return for her testimony.

Meanwhile, Bragg is expected to release his findings of facts Wednesday morning 
after reviewing Hamilton's file.

(source: The Dispatch)






FLORIDA:

'Quasi-venue change' granted for Powers murder trial


A former Northwest Florida Reception Center inmate indicted for the 
premeditated murder of his cellmate has been granted what Fourteenth Judicial 
Circuit Judge Christopher Patterson calls a "quasi change of venue."

Defense attorneys for Clinton L Powers requested the change but stated their 
client wanted to be tried before a panel of WashingtonCounty jurors.

"I have no problem where you put the trial as long as I have a WashingtonCounty 
jury," Powers told Judge Patterson in a pre-trial conference held Monday.

Patterson pointed out all trials which require heightened security such as 
murders are currently being relocated due to WashingtonCounty currently not 
having a courthouse.

"If I change venue, then (the trial) becomes (the responsibility of ) the 
county to which the venue goes," explained Patterson. "Generally, a change of 
venue is requested because of (things such as) pretrial publicity, but Mr. 
Powers isn't from WashingtonCounty; he's only here by virtue of a condition out 
of JacksonCounty."

Judge Patterson ultimately agreed to allow the trial to be heard in BayCounty, 
under the supervision of the Bay County Clerk of Court and with Bay County 
Sheriff's Office conducting security but instructed the Washington County 
Clerk's Office to summon WashingtonCounty jurors for the case.

"I'll grant the motion giving a quasi change of venue," he said.

The state is seeking the death penalty for Powers, who was previously being 
held in the Santa Rosa Correction Institute after his indictment for the 2011 
murder of fellow NWFRC inmate David Hults.

According to records filed by the Florida Department of Corrections Office of 
the Inspector General, Powers admitted to killing Hults, telling officers he 
"just got tired" of his cellmate.

Powers stated he lured Hults into going along with what he claimed was a plan 
to get both inmates transferred to another facility. That plan involved Powers 
"pretending" to hurt Hults.

According to a filed affidavit, Powers tied Hults' hands by his sides with a 
"stripped" bed sheet and then used the other end of the sheet to choke Hults.

In his recorded account, Powers stated Hults said, "You're choking me", to 
which Powers replied "I know; you're supposed to be dead."

Powers went on to tell officers that Hults began "jerking and spitting blood 
out of his mouth."

"The more he went into spitting blood, the more I went to pulling the sheet," 
Powers statement reads. "I was literally trying to chop his head off with the 
sheet. That's how much hatred I had for this individual. Did he provoke me to 
do this? No. He did not provoke me to do this. This is something that I chose 
to do. It's something I ... guess you could say I wanted to do."

Powers told a WashingtonCounty court last year that he didn't believe he was 
receiving adequate service by his attorney, requesting that he be allowed to 
represent himself on the case but later rescinded that motion after a hearing 
was held on the matter.

Power's convictions and prison history also include a 5-year sentence for 
sexual battery, an 18 month sentence for escape, and a life sentence for a 1996 
1st Degree murder conviction in Jackson County.

At the time of his death, Hults was serving life sentences for both 1st-degree 
murder and robbery with a deadly weapon. His past convictions also included 
grand theft and fraudulent use of personal identification.

(source: chipleypaper.com)