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

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 2



TEXAS:

A Matter of Conviction Anthony Graves, Houston Forensic Science Center Board 
Member----Exonerated from death row and working for justice, Anthony Graves 
doesn't have a moment to waste.


Anthony Graves is doing remarkably well for a former resident of death row. 
"I'm a rock star," he says of the way he's treated these days, asking 
rhetorically: "How do they treat a rock star?" Sitting inside the Houston 
Forensic Science Center's soon-to-open new offices, he smiles without the 
slightest hint of irony.

Graves, who was wrongfully incarcerated for 18 years - with 12 on death row - 
faced lethal injection twice before his 2010 exoneration. Today he spends his 
time trying to fix the criminal justice system that put him there. "It's 
broke," he says. "But who better to tell you that than the person who saw it 
fail them from top to bottom?"

And fail it certainly did. The Brenham native was just 26 years old in 1992 
when he was arrested and charged with the grisly murder of a family of 6 in 
Somerville, north of Brenham. Robert Earl Carter, his cousin's husband, had 
told police he and Graves had killed the family together. The day before 
Graves's 1994 trial, Carter tried to recant, telling the Burleson County 
district attorney he'd acted alone. But the DA didn't share that information 
with the defense team, putting Carter on the stand to testify against Graves 
anyway. After a speedy trial, Graves was convicted of capital murder.

Graves remembers being shocked when police brought him in for questioning. "I 
thought it had something to do with a traffic ticket or something," he says, 
"and I didn't have one, so I was really in the dark."

There he would stay, year after year, waiting, languishing in prison - all the 
while steadily maintaining his innocence and keeping the faith that justice 
would prevail. "For 6,640 days, I was always innocent. I never lost hope 
because that never changed," he says. "I had no choice, because the alternative 
was to believe they could kill me for something I didn't do." In 2000, before 
Carter was put to death, he made a statement from the death-chamber gurney, 
again taking sole responsibility for the murders. "Anthony Graves had nothing 
to do with it," he said. Minutes later, he was gone.

In 2002, University of St. Thomas professor Nicole Casarez and a group of 
students discovered the case through the Texas Innocence Network, which 
partners with journalism students at UST and the University of Houston. When 
they visited him, the 1st thing Graves told Casarez and her students was that 
he would not try to prove his innocence to them. "Do the work: you'll find out 
for yourself," he remembers saying.

There was, it turned out, scant evidence linking Graves to the murders. In 
2006, thanks in large part to Casarez's work, his conviction was overturned. 
The wheels of justice began to turn, albeit slowly, as Graves continued to sit 
in jail, awaiting his retrial. Eventually, the state turned to former Harris 
County prosecutor Kelly Siegler. In 2010, a year into her appointment, Siegler 
told reporters Graves had been framed for a murder he did not commit, saying 
that "after looking under every rock we could find, we found not one piece of 
credible evidence that links Anthony Graves to the commission of this capital 
murder."

In October 2010, Graves became the 12th person in Texas to be exonerated after 
a stay on death row, and within eight months he was awarded $1.4 million under 
a state law that compensates victims wrongfully convicted of crimes. After 
receiving the money, he didn't even go on vacation. It didn't make sense, he 
says, "to go out on an island and drink from an umbrella. That's not taking my 
life back."

Instead, Graves would seek justice for others, first as an investigator for 
Texas Defender Services, assisting attorneys with capital murder cases, and 
then on his own as a consultant, communications specialist and advocate for a 
better criminal justice system.

He also sought justice for himself, pursuing punishment for former Burleson 
County DA Charles Sebesta. This June, the Texas State Bar revoked Sebesta's 
license, ruling that he'd withheld critical evidence from Graves and his 
attorneys, including Carter's admission that he'd acted alone.

"No, I disbarred him," Graves says, pointing out that it was he who filed the 
grievance. He says he's forgiven Sebesta but wants to see justice applied to 
the former prosecutor. "I just want to happen to him what would happen to any 
other person who tried to commit murder in our state," he says, calling what 
Sebesta tried to do to him "nothing short of attempted murder."

In June of this year - just weeks after Sebesta was disbarred - Mayor Annise 
Parker tapped Graves to become a board member of the Houston Forensic Science 
Center, the new incarnation of the formerly embattled Houston Crime Lab. 
Casarez, who was appointed to the same board in 2012, is now the chairman. "I 
know her heart," Graves says of Casarez. "She wants to do the right thing. She 
wants to see the system work."

In his new board position, Graves says, he???s most interested in "getting the 
science right," no matter the outcome. "I don't advocate for the defendant; I 
don't advocate for the prosecution," he says. "I advocate for a fair system."

Graves, now 50, believes that telling his story - to the public and to members 
of the criminal justice system - can lead to real reform. He wants to remind 
them ???what getting it wrong can do, how it can destroy lives and families." 
And he feels a responsibility to carry that message. "I had to go through what 
I had to go through," he says, "so I could better teach what people need to be 
taught about our criminal justice system."

Among the reforms he'd like to see are 10-year appointments for district 
attorneys instead of general elections every 4 years. "They have a lot of 
pressure from the public to bring results," he says. "That's on us. It's the 
system we created. We are seeing the criminal justice system become criminal, 
and we need to talk about it."

For Graves, the opportunity to talk about it - after everything he's gone 
through - has been gratifying indeed. "For so long, society called me a 
murderer," he says. "And to turn around, apologize and say, 'We accept you, 
wholeheartedly, but not only that, we're going to treat you like a rock star; 
we're going to get behind your cause' - that's really coming full circle."

(source: Reuters)

***********

Can a Lawyer Oppose a Client's Plea to Live?


Can lawyers stop their own client from challenging his death sentence? 
Apparently, in Texas, they can. A lawyer's most fundamental professional 
obligation is to "zealously" advocate for the client and uphold "justice." 
Lawyers cannot give up working on a case, or put their own interests above 
their client's. And yet that is what 2 Texas lawyers appear to have done to 
death row clients they were appointed to represent.

Raphael Holiday was just executed in Texas. His two court-appointed lawyers 
told him that they would no longer contest his execution. "This marks the end 
of work for your appeals," they said. They then told Holiday they would not 
seek clemency from the governor, despite a federal law requiring them to honor 
the client's desire to do just that. Facing imminent execution, Holiday told 
the court, "They have refused to help me and it is a disheartening conundrum I 
am not fit to comprehend."

Holiday, who lacked money to hire his own lawyer, asked for the court to 
appoint a new one. The lawyers who said they were "not going to file further 
appeals" for him opposed his request, essentially telling the court that their 
client had nothing but frivolous claims left. The court-appointed lawyers 
simply gave up on Holiday's case, even though 1/2 of 2015 Texas executions have 
been stayed or withdrawn, often because lawyers discovered compelling issues as 
the execution date approached. Based on the appointed lawyers' representations, 
the court refused to assign a new lawyer to the case. Stephen Bright, president 
of the Southern Center for Human Rights, commented that it was "unconscionable" 
to prevent Holiday from getting new lawyers and that death penalty lawyers 
representing clients facing imminent executions "have a duty to make every 
legal argument they can."

Things only got worse when a pro bono lawyer agreed to try to help Holiday at 
no charge. When the pro bono lawyer filed an appeal for Holiday, the 
court-appointed lawyers threatened to have her sanctioned if she did not 
withdraw it. Knowing that the pro bono lawyer was looking at the case, the 
court-appointed lawyers who had previously told the client that they had no 
intention of pursuing clemency filed a disjointed, last-minute petition. Then 
these two court-appointed lawyers did the unthinkable: They sided with the 
government and opposed their own client's request to stay his execution.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Holiday a stay on November 18, and he was 
executed. Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a statement underscoring that the 
court-appointed lawyers had abandoned their client. Justice Sotomayor 
emphasized that Congress "did not want condemned men and women to be abandoned 
by their counsel at the last moment" and that "more zealous advocates" should 
have been allowed to intervene.

Now it is happening again. The same duo of court-appointed lawyers jointly 
represent another Texas inmate, Robert Leslie Roberson III. Roberson's trial 
may have violated the Sixth Amendment, but 1 of the court-appointed lawyers 
forfeited that claim by failing to argue it before the state courts. Excusing 
that forfeiture requires a showing that it was the fault of the lawyer, not the 
client. Because excusing the forfeiture requires an attack on the lawyer that 
forfeited it, there is a clear conflict of interest for Roberson's 
court-appointed lawyer: He would be required to attack his own performance. 
Such a situation is not unusual, and the conflicted lawyer usually steps aside 
and allows an unbiased attorney to do the work. Instead, Roberson's 2 
court-appointed lawyers resorted to a familiar tactic. They opposed relief for 
their client and simply misrepresented to the court that the claim had never 
been forfeited at all. They called the claims against them "helicoptered in" by 
outside lawyers who were "dreamy-eyed" and attempting to "force a delay in the 
execution." Roberson's pro bono attorney seeking the change of attorney 
responded, "This is about the inmate having a chance to litigate a claim that 
might save his life."

"Kafkaesque" is the word to describe the execution of Holiday. Next week, the 
Supreme Court should choose to intervene in the Roberson case to prevent a 
similar injustice. In Kafka's The Trial, a businessman told the protagonist 
that nobody could ever expect to hire "the great lawyers" and that "there's 
probably no way of contacting them." In America, the wealthy can hire a Dream 
Team with "great lawyers," while indigent defendants have lawyers thrust on 
them by the court. At the very least, when those court-appointed lawyers do not 
do their jobs, inmates facing execution should be able to get new ones that do 
not subordinate the client's interests to their professional reputations.

Texas has accounted for 1/2 of executions in the U.S. this year. If Texas can 
only keep its execution machine going by forcing on clients lawyers who attack 
and abandon them, then Kafkaesque is the only word to describe the entire Texas 
death penalty regime.

(source: Brandon L. Garrett, Professor of Law, University of 
Virginia----Huffington Post)






CONNECTICUT:

Delightful holiday production has a way with words


The Connecticut Supreme Court is giving the state 2 more chance to argue in 
favor of keeping capital punishment for those already sentenced to die.

A divided high court in August ruled the death penalty violated the state 
constitution and contemporary standards of decency.

The state had already passed a law abolishing capital punishment, except for 
those currently on death row.

The court ruled in the case of Eduardo Santiago that because capital punishment 
is unconstitutional, the ban should apply to everyone.

But on Tuesday, the court scheduled oral arguments for Jan. 7 on the 
constitutional aspects of the death penalty in the case of Russell Peeler. He 
was sentenced to die for ordering the 1999 killings of an 8-year-old boy and 
his mother in Bridgeport.

(source: Associated Press)






PENNSYLVANIA:

Who's on death row in York County cases?


There are several people on death row in York County cases, including a pair of 
brothers who were convicted 3 years apart for the same double murder.

There are nearly 200 people on death row in Pennsylvania. Since 1985, 
Pennsylvania governors have signed hundreds of execution warrants.

3 executions have been carried out -- 2 in 1995 and 1 in 1999-- since a 10-year 
national moratorium on the death penalty ended in 1977.

On Feb. 13, 2015, Gov. Tom Wolf said he was putting a moratorium on the death 
penalty in Pennsylvania for further study.

York County death row inmates: --Paul Gamboa-Taylor was sentenced Jan. 23, 
1992, after pleading guilty to the May 18, 1991, hammer slayings of 4 family 
members: his wife, Valeria L. Gamboa-Taylor; their two children, Paul, 4, and 
Jasmine, 2; and another child, Lance Barshinger, 2. He received a life sentence 
for killing his mother-in-law, Donna M. Barshinger. His case is on appeal to 
the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

--Hubert Lester Michael Jr. sentenced March 20, 1995, after pleading guilty to 
the July 12, 1993, abduction and shooting death of 16-year-old Trista Elizabeth 
Eng in the Dillsburg area. Michael unsuccessfully attempted to withdraw his 
guilty plea. Execution warrants were signed in 1996 by Gov. Tom Ridge and 2004 
by Gov. Ed Rendell. His case is on appeal before the U.S. Third Circuit Court 
of Appeals.

--Mark Newton Spotz was sentenced April 24, 1996, for the Feb. 2, 1995, 
shooting death of Penny Gunnet, 41, of New Salem, his 3rd victim in a 4-day 
crime spree through central and eastern Pennsylvania. Spotz also received death 
sentences for the murders of June Rose Ohlinger of Schuylkill County, and Betty 
Amstutz, 71, of Cumberland County. An execution warrant for the York County 
conviction was signed by Ridge in 2001. He received a stay in the Gunnet murder 
in 2001 and that case is on appeal in York County court.

--John Amos Small was sentenced June 19, 1996, after being convicted of murder 
and attempted rape of 17-year-old Cheryl Smith, whose body was found in West 
Manheim Township in 1981. Execution warrants were signed in 2001 by Ridge and 
in 2009 by Rendell.

--Kevin Brian Dowling was sentenced Dec. 14, 1998, for the Oct. 20, 1997, 
shooting death of Jennifer Lynn Myers inside her art and frame shop just 
outside Spring Grove. An execution warrant was signed in 2007 by Rendell. His 
case is on appeal in York County.

--Milton Montalvo was sentenced Feb. 14, 2000, and Noel Montalvo was sentenced 
April 14, 2003, for the April 19, 1998, stabbing deaths of Miriam Asencio-Cruz 
and Manuel Ramirez Santana inside the Cruz's York apartment. Rendell signed an 
execution warrant for Noel Montalvo in July 2010 and signed one for Milton in 
January 2011. Noel's case is on appeal to the U.S. Middle District Court of 
Pennsylvania.

--Harve Lamar Johnson was sentenced Nov. 16, 2009, for the April 7, 2008, 
beating death of 2-year-old Darisabel Baez, his girlfriend's daughter, in York. 
Johnson's appeal is before the state Supreme Court.

--Kevin Edward Mattison was sentenced Dec. 17, 2010, for the Dec. 9, 2008, 
robbery and shooting of Christian Agosto in York. Mattison had previously been 
convicted of 3rd-degree murder and served prison time in Maryland.

--Hector Morales was sentenced Jan. 21, 2011, for the 2009 shooting death of 
Ronald "Country" Simmons Jr. Police said Morales broke into Simmons' York home 
and shot him 6 times because Simmons was set to testify in a drug case.

--Aric Shayne Woodard was sentenced to death Dec. 18, 2013, for the Nov. 7, 
2011, beating death of 2-year-old Jaques Omari Twinn.

--Timothy Matthew Jacoby was sentenced to death Oct. 9, 2014, for the March 31, 
2010, shooting death of Monica Schmeyer, 55, while he burglarized her West 
Manheim Township home.

--Also of note: Daniel Jacobs was sentenced to death Sept. 18, 1992, for the 
Feb. 10, 1992, stabbing death of his girlfriend, Tammy Lee Mock of York, and 
life in prison for the drowning of their 7-month-old daughter, Holly Danielle 
Jacobs. Federal courts overturned Jacobs' conviction and death penalty for 
Mock's murder in 2005, ruling his jury should have been informed his mental 
deficiencies might not have allowed him to form the specific intent to kill 
Mock. While Jacobs continues to serve a life sentence for Holly's death, he 
will stand for re-trial in 2016 for Mock's murder.

(source: York Daily Record)





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

U.S. Attorney's Office: No plea deal for Con-ui


Drug dealing gang assassin Jessie Con-ui is willing to plead guilty to 
murdering a correctional officer if prosecutors will take the death penalty off 
the table, according to a document filed this week.

Con-ui, 37, faces the death penalty if convicted next July of murdering 
Nanticoke-native correctional officer Eric Williams at U.S. Penitentiary Canaan 
on Feb. 25, 2013.

Prosecutors allege Con-ui, angered over a previous cell search, kicked Williams 
down a flight of stairs before beating and slashing him to death with 2 shanks.

According to prosecutors, Con-ui, who is already serving 25 years to life for a 
2002 murder, was caught on surveillance video during the attack.

In a filing Monday, Con-ui's attorneys write that if prosecutors forgo a 
capital prosecution, he would plead guilty, waive his right to appeal and 
"submit to the strict and harsh conditions of confinement that have been and 
will continue to be imposed by the Bureau of Prisons, in essence lifetime in 
solitary confinement."

Dawn Mayko, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, said prosecutors' 
position is unchanged.

"The government's position remains the same as it was stated initially - the 
government is seeking the death penalty," she said.

Con-ui's attorneys - James A. Swetz, Mark Fleming and David A. Ruhnke - have 
been seeking to have a federal judge declare the death penalty illegal, arguing 
it has been implemented in an ???arbitrary, capricious, irrational and 
invidious manner."

Last month, prosecutors urged U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo to throw 
out the defense motion, arguing it amounts to little more than a "boiler plate" 
assault on a well-established federal law. Con-ui deserves to die, they argue, 
because the crime was committed in an "especially heinous, cruel or depraved 
manner" by a convicted drug trafficker and murderer who has a history of 
violence - including against law enforcement.

The filing Monday countered the prosecution response, arguing the law should be 
challenged because of "our maturing society's evolving sense of decency."

That evolution takes time - and the times are changing, they argue, citing 
remarks by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that he would not be surprised 
if the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 were struck down.

The attorneys note capital appeals take decades, with some inmates on death row 
for more than 20 years, and that the federal government hasn't executed a 
prisoner in 12 years.

There are also talks that President Barack Obama might commute the sentences of 
the 62 prisoners now on federal death row, the filing says.

"If the federal death penalty continues to run its present course there is very 
little likelihood that Mr. Con-ui - even if sentenced to death after a long and 
costly trial - would ever be executed," the attorneys wrote. "It appears quite 
likely that the death penalty will have been struck down long before the 
executioner comes for Mr. Con-ui."

Con-ui's trial is scheduled to begin with jury selection on July 11, 2016.

(source: Wilkes-Barre Citizens Voice)



SOUTH CAROLINA:

Dylann Roof may stand trial 1st in state court, federal prosecutor says


Dylann Roof probably will stand trial in state court 1st as federal prosecutors 
continue to ruminate over whether to seek the death penalty in their civil 
rights case, one of the authorities said Tuesday.

In the state proceeding set for July 11, the 21-year-old Eastover man will face 
execution if convicted of murder counts. He is accused of fatally shooting nine 
parishioners on June 17 at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

But the decision to seek the same punishment in federal court rests with U.S. 
Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Review Committee on Capital Cases, which 
advises her.

During a hearing Tuesday in downtown Charleston, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay 
Richardson said the case is expected to be sent to the committee by the year's 
end. The panel typically makes a recommendation to Lynch within 90 days after 
that, he said.

"Various entities and communities" also give input into whether to make it a 
capital case, Richardson added. With the decision still hanging, he said a 
trial in federal court before the state's proceeding would not be realistic.

"It is not a simple, straightforward case," he said. "We have made significant 
progress ... maybe not as quickly as some of us would like."

The bar meeting in U.S. District Court was a chance for prosecutors and defense 
attorneys to update Judge Richard Gergel on the status of the case.

Roof did not attend. Noting the death penalty issue, the judge delayed the 
trial without setting a specific date.

Gergel pressed Richardson for updates because, he said, it would be wasteful to 
continue funding Roof's defense if the prosecutors opted against execution. The 
judge sought to get answers from 2 representative of Lynch's office who 
attended the hearing, but Richardson fielded questions instead.

Using Richardson's answers, Gergel estimated that the decision would come 
before April. If it doesn't happen by June, Gergel said he would be "very 
unhappy." He suggested February.

The judge also noted a letter in which 9th Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson 
expressed her desire to first try the state's case against Roof.

"There's a real cost factor here," Gergel said. "I think sooner is better than 
later."

Roof's lawyers in both cases have said their client would plead guilty if 
prosecutors didn't pursue his execution.

"We're waiting on the government," David Bruck, one of the attorneys in federal 
court, told the judge Tuesday. "This case could be concluded very quickly. The 
stumbling block is the question of the death penalty."

In many ways, the federal case is more complicated than the state one. Roof is 
charged with 33 federal counts; he was indicted on 13 charges in state court. 
The federal charges include hate crime allegations, but the counts accusing 
Roof of violating the parishioners' right to practice religion are the ones 
that could expose him to the death penalty.

Much evidence of those charges still must be shared between the opposing 
attorneys before the case is tried. Last week, Roof's defense team got 
thousands of pages of documents, Bruck said, and it will take time to go over 
them.

Authorities also were copying "voluminous" hard drives that they confiscated 
while investigating Roof, Richardson said. The task ahead will be 
time-consuming for everyone involved, he said.

"The issues here are, I venture to say, quite complex," he said.

***********

Prison officials deny South Carolina deliberately skirted law on lethal 
injection drugs


South Carolina corrections officials deny intentionally breaking federal law 
when they obtained a lethal injection drug from an overseas supplier several 
years ago, a drug that was never used for an execution and has since been 
turned over to authorities.

In a segment Sunday on the CBS news show "60 Minutes," South Carolina was named 
as 1 of 6 states that "have skirted federal law and turned to black-market 
dealers to get their hands" on drugs to execute death-row inmates.

During former Gov. Mark Sanford's administration, South Carolina purchased 1 of 
3 drugs needed to carry out executions from overseas in November 2010, said 
Department of Corrections spokeswoman Stephanie Givens. But unlike Arizona - 
whose officials claimed the drug would be used on animals - South Carolina was 
up front with its supplier that the drug would be used for executions.

"No, we did not intentionally try to skirt the law because we were so 
forthcoming with our intentions to use the drug," Givens said. "If we were 
trying to be secretive, we wouldn't have done that."

When corrections staff realized in 2011 that they had run afoul of the law, 
they turned the drug in to the Drug Enforcement Administration, Givens said.

Arizona and South Carolina are among more than 2 dozen states struggling to 
find an alternative to the lethal concoction they used previously to carry out 
the death penalty. The Palmetto State's supply of lethal injection drugs 
expired in 2013, and, since then, the state has had no way of executing 
death-row inmates unless they agree to be electrocuted.

Prison officials across the U.S. have turned to compounding pharmacies after 
manufacturers refused to sell drugs to prisons for executions. But pharmacists 
have also become reluctant to expose themselves to possible harassment.

Earlier this year, the American Pharmacists Association also adopted a policy 
discouraging its members from providing drugs for lethal injections, saying 
that runs contrary to the role of pharmacists as health care providers.

In response to the shortage, many states - including South Carolina - have 
pushed for secrecy laws that would shield the identity of the drugs' 
manufacturers, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty 
Information Center, an organization that opposes capital punishment.

Instead of protecting the identity of drug manufacturers, secrecy laws have 
been used by states to prevent the public and the drug manufacturers themselves 
from learning that the states have obtained the drugs for lethal injection 
purposes, Dunham said.

"The states that want to carry out executions have become increasingly 
desperate in trying to obtain the drugs," he said.

South Carolina is still working to find alternative ways to execute prisoners 
as well as trying to find the drugs, Givens said. There are 42 inmates on death 
row, and none are scheduled to be executed for at least 5 years. 2 inmates were 
sentenced to death last year, and the last execution in the state was in 2011.

An Upstate lawmaker introduced a bill earlier this year that would give 
condemned inmates the option to face a firing squad. The bill would also amend 
state law to allow for the execution of death-row inmates by electrocution 
without the inmates' consent if lethal injection drugs aren't available. The 
bill is pending in the upcoming 2016 legislative session.

(source for both: The Post and Courier)






FLORIDA:

Accused killer's lawyers await death penalty answers


It's been nearly 2 1/2 years since 20-year-old Shelby Farah was shot and killed 
during a robbery at the Metro PCS store where she worked.

James Rhodes, 23, is charged with murder in her death, but the pretrial process 
has bogged down.

Rhodes' defense team argued a few dozen motions Tuesday afternoon. Many of them 
were standard, but some involved the death penalty, pending the outcome of an 
appeal filed by a death row inmate.

Hurst vs. Florida calls into question how jurors recommend the death penalty.

Many other states that allow the death penalty require a unanimous 
recommendation from the jurors. But Florida doesn't, and Hurst's appeal 
contends that is unconstitutional.

Pending the outcome of that appeal, Rhodes' defense lawyers asked Judge Tatiana 
Salvador to defer any death penalty motions in Rhodes' case. The defense also 
argued that the ruling on Hurst could affect the instructions jurors must 
pledge to follow to be selected.

Several other motions were denied or deferred Tuesday. Salvador considered 53 
motions in total, 1 of which was thrown out.

Right now, jury selection is set to begin May 2. Rhodes' defense team argued 
Tuesday to have any prospective jurors barred from watching local media.

But Judge Tatiana Salvador said in court that she doesn't believe she can order 
the clerk's office to do anything like that. She asked the defense to clarify 
what the motion was asking.

"How does the court even limit the prospective jurors access to pre-trial media 
coverage?" Salvador asked.

"Well, I don't know if they can limit it, but in the notice where they are 
called for jury duty, there could be something in there -- a warning -- please 
do not watch the news. I mean, not necessarily related to this case, but limit 
your consumption of news," Rhodes' defense attorney responded. "I don't know if 
it would guarantee anything, but obviously this case has gotten a lot of 
exposure. Maybe not as much recently because of other cases, but 1 of our 
concerns is we want to make sure we have a fair trial for Mr. Rhodes."

Salvador asked the defense if vetting prospective jurors during the jury 
selection process would be enough to handle any issues regarding media coverage 
and bias. The attorney agreed it might be, but that it was worth bringing up.

No decision was made Tuesday on the motion.

Darlene Farah, Shelby's mother, said she just wants the trial to be over. She 
shows up at court for every hearing, waiting for justice for her daughter.

"I know I'm her voice. In the courtroom, the state attorney is her voice," 
Darlene Farah said. "But every time he comes out of the jail cell, and he gets 
to see human faces. I want to make sure he sees Shelby's mama's face."

The next motions hearing for Rhodes will be Feb. 16, and that's when the court 
should address the motions that were deferred Tuesday.

(source: news4jax.com)

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

Clash over death penalty in Metro PCS shooting trial


Prosecutors and defense attorneys are butting heads on the death penalty being 
sought against murder defendant James Xavier Rhodes.

Rhodes, 23, is accused of pulling the trigger in an execution style shooting of 
Shelby Farah. The 20 year-old woman was working at the Metro PCS cell phone 
store on Main Street when she was fatally shot in July 2013.

Investigators say Farah handed over money before she was shot in the head.

On Tuesday, more motions were heard on the death penalty, which is being sought 
by the state.

This summer, a judge ruled that Rhodes was not intellectually disabled 
following hearing expert testimony from both sides.

Circuit Judge Tatiana Salvador ruled on some motions Tuesday, deferring 
decisions on others.

A trial date has been set for next May with more preliminary hearings set for 
early next year.

(source: First Coast News)






LOUISIANA:

Death penalty case of convicted cop killer heading back to court


Kevan Brumfield was found guilty of the 1993 killing on Betty Smothers Dunn, a 
Baton Rouge police officer and mother of NFL player Warrick Dunn. After his 
conviction, his defense claimed he was mentally handicapped, protecting him 
from execution.

A state judge ruled Brumfield was not mentally deficient, but a federal judge 
overturned that decision.

Now, the case will be determined by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

(source: KSLA news)

***********

Sunset rampage suspect indicted by grand jury


A grand jury indicted Harrison Riley of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder, 2 counts 
of attempted 1st-degree murder, and aggravated criminal damage.

Riley is charged with shooting a sunset police officer Henry Nelson to death 
and fatally stabbing Shameka Johnson on August 26th in Sunset. He was also 
indicted for allegedly stabbing his wife, Courtney Jolivette-Riley, and Surlay 
Johnson. Another woman was also reportedly stabbed.

Riley later crashed his car into the sunset mini-mart several blocks away and 
barricaded himself in a storage room.

Officers used tear gas to force Riley out of the building, but not before he 
allegedly set a fire in the storage room.

Riley faces the death penalty or life in prison without parole if convicted of 
1st-degree murder.

(sourde: KLFY news)