[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----FLA., ALA., OHIO, KY., COLO., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 4



FLORIDA:

3rd death sentence for Dontae Morris


A Hillsborough judge on Friday handed down a 3rd death penalty sentence for 
convicted cop killer Dontae Morris, who could face yet another murder trial in 
the coming year.

Morris, 30, who is currently on death row for the murders of 2 Tampa police 
officers in 2010, was convicted earlier this year of fatally shooting Derek 
Anderson. In July, a jury voted 10-2 to recommend a sentence of death and on 
Friday, Circuit Judge William Fuente agreed.

Upon hearing the sentence, Anderson's mother, Wanda Gilchrist, burst into 
tears.

"This is such a relief," she said as the courtroom emptied and Morris was led 
back to a holding cell.

More than 5 years have elapsed since Gilchrist found her 20-year-old son 
bleeding outside her front door on May 18, 2010. His attacker had shot him once 
in the back as he was carrying his laundry to his mother's East Tampa 
apartment.

Prosecutors said that Morris killed Anderson after learning that he had been 
selling marijuana in an area that Morris considered to be his territory.

"I knew they had a lot of evidence, so I was being very, very patient," she 
said of the prosecution. "And finally it came to a close and I'm happy about 
it."

Anderson was murdered 42 days before Morris shot and killed Tampa Police 
Officers David Curtis and Jeffrey Kocab, a crime that was captured on video and 
turned him into one of the Tampa Bay area's most notorious murderers. Before 
voting to recommend the death penalty, jurors in the Anderson case viewed the 
dashboard camera video from Curtis' patrol cruiser, which recorded the moment 
Morris pointed a gun in the officers' faces, killing them both.

Charged with 4 murders, Morris has been convicted of 3 and is awaiting trial 
for the June 8, 2010, killing of Harold Wright. Prosecutors have not said 
whether they intend to seek the death penalty.

Of the 4 cases, the Wright case is the "weakest," said attorney Byron Hileman, 
who has represented Morris in each case.

There is none of the video evidence or eye witness testimony that prosecutors 
have been able to rely on in previous cases, Hileman said.

"It can't say the case is not prosecutable," he said, "but it's not as strong 
as this one was."

Efforts by Morris' attorneys to overturn his death penalty sentences have so 
far been unsuccessful. But a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to take 
up a case involving Florida's unusual capital sentencing scheme may be their 
best hope.

The federal case, Hurst v. Florida, concerns a man who was sentenced to death 
in 2012 by a jury vote of 7-5. Unlike in every other state, Florida juries are 
not required to render a unanimous verdict in capital cases. The ultimate 
decision rests with the judge, who can accept the jury's recommendation or 
reject it.

Lawyers for Timothy Hurst have argued this system presents serious 
constitutional problems. If they are successful, the case could pave the way 
for judges to reconsider other non-unanimous jury verdicts, such as that in 
Morris' most recent murder trial.

(soruce: Tampa Bay Times)






ALABAMA:

Faith can help restore racial justice, says lawyer who frees death row inmates, 
marks lynching sites


Bryan Stevenson, attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in 
Montgomery, has led a high-profile campaign to help overturn convictions of the 
wrongly accused, such as his client Anthony Ray Hinton.

Hinton was exonerated of a murder charge and released from prison April 3 after 
30 years on death row.

"There are still lots of innocent people in prison," Stevenson said in an 
interview with AL.com. "It's hard to know. One would be too many and I think 
it's a lot more than that."

Stevenson, who has helped free 115 men from death row, campaigns for prison 
reform to curb mass incarceration, excessive punishment and abuses such as 
guards assaulting women inmates at Tutwiler Prison.

"We're still very concerned about the high number of innocent people in our 
prisons," Stevenson said. "We still have a harsh, extreme punishment 
structure."

He's currently on a campaign to put historical markers on the sites of 
lynchings, including one that happened in Brighton in 1908. "We haven't done as 
much as we could about our history of racial injustice," he said.

Speaking at church

Stevenson is the author of the highly acclaimed book, "Just Mercy: A Story of 
Justice and Redemption," published last year and named one of the 10 best 
non-fiction books of the year by Time magazine.

Stevenson will discuss racial justice and other issues on Sunday night, Dec. 6, 
at Highlands United Methodist Church at Five Points South in Birmingham. He'll 
speak at 6:30 p.m.

"I'm interested in talking about things I think we can all do to improve social 
justice and protect people in our society who are vulnerable and at risk," 
Stevenson said.

"We have to spend time getting closer to the problems," he said. "We have a 
habit of avoiding issues that are problems, neighborhoods that are struggling, 
school systems where there are big problems. Our instinct is to stay as far 
away from those problems as possible. We try to problem-solve from too great a 
distance."

Obstacles to prison reform

Alabama's prison system is plagued with problems including overcrowding and 
corruption that have led to threats of a takeover by the U.S. Department of 
Justice.

"The politics of fear and anger have produced some bad policies with regard to 
social justice," Stevenson said.

"Hope is the enemy of injustice," he said. "We've got to protect our hope and 
be thinking hopefully about what we can be doing. You can't create justice by 
doing only what's comfortable and convenient."

The biggest obstacle to prison reform is not the constraints of the state 
budget, he said.

"I don't think the biggest problem is money," Stevenson said. "I think there 
are different policies we can make. If we stop putting people in prison for 
simple possession of drugs, I think we can reduce the prison population by 
several thousand people who are not a threat."

He feels wardens could identify thousands of non-violent prisoners would be no 
threat to society.

"That's a policy issue; that's not a money issue," he said. "We can save 
millions by reducing the prison population. Leadership is part of the 
challenge. We need skilled, committed leaders."

Stevenson has filed a lawsuit against the St. Clair Correctional Facility for 
what he says is mistreatment of inmates.

"I hope people of faith will not abandon their faith when it comes to social 
justice."

"All we want is what they should want - safe prisons where people don't get 
stabbed," Stevenson said.

"At Tutwiler, we want a prison where corrupt guards aren't assaulting inmates. 
We want better leadership and a commitment to running the prison in a more 
humane way."

Possession of 2.2 pounds of marijuana is a Class A felony in Alabama - "the 
same as murder, terrorism or rape," Stevenson said. In other states where 
marijuana is illegal it would take 100 pounds of possession to reach the level 
of a felony, he said. There's no reason to overcrowd prisons with drug 
offenders, he said.

"No one can credibly make that argument," he said.

Remembering lynchings, history of race injustice

Stevenson said he plans to unveil a historical marker Dec. 12 in Brighton on 
the site of the 1908 lynching of William Miller, a black union leader in the 
coal mines who was put in jail and blamed for a dynamite explosion set by 
whites trying to thwart unionization.

"The way to disrupt unionization was to target black leaders of coal miners," 
he said. "People were offended at black people organizing for better wages."

The jailing of Miller capitalized on racism to turn sentiment against 
unionization, he said.

"A mob went to the jail and lynched him there," Stevenson said.

In conjunction with the unveiling of the marker, high school scholarships will 
be awarded for students writing essays about Alabama's racial history.

"We hope at the end of that there's a desire to recognize this history," 
Stevenson said.

Should death penalty should be abolished?

"I think the death penalty should be abolished," Stevenson said. "I don't think 
we have a system that reliably and fairly prosecutes people."

"We spend a lot of time trying to execute people that would better spent on 
improving administration, reducing crime and creating a functioning system of 
justice that is not unfairly biased against people of color and where only the 
guilty are convicted."

Role of faith in reform

A former church musician, Stevenson comes from a religious background and he 
believes faith can inspire change.

"I do think people of faith have a really critical role to play," said 
Stevenson, who grew up playing piano and organ in an African Methodist 
Episcopal Church in Delaware. "We've been silent a bit too long on some of 
these important issues. I hope people of faith will not abandon their faith 
when it comes to social justice. Many of us believe redemption is critical. We 
believe in grace, mercy and recovery, but our policies are often contemptuous 
of grace, mercy and recovery."

(source: al.com)






OHIO:

Ohio Supreme Court's death penalty reversal makes sense


The Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned the death sentence of Rayshawn 
Johnson in a 4-3 ruling that found a murderer's troubled upbringing, among 
other mitigating factors, should carry more weight at sentencing than a lower 
court had held.

Ohio Supreme Court cites dysfunctional childhood in reversing death sentence

The court found factors in Rayshawn Johnson's childhood and upbringing were so 
bad that when viewed together they were strong enough to warrant setting aside 
the death sentence. He was "doomed from the start due to his upbringing," 
Justice Paul Pfeifer wrote.

Johnson, who beat his Cincinnati neighbor to death with a baseball bat in 1997, 
had been on death row for 14 years.

In a 2nd mitigation hearing ordered for Johnson (the 1st also resulted in a 
death sentence), Johnson's mother acknowledged putting her son in a closet as a 
baby and sometimes spiking his bottles and applesauce with alcohol, 
prescription drugs and heroin.

Siding with the majority in reversing Johnson's death sentence was Chief 
Justice Maureen O'Connor, who in 2006, in the case of Troy Tenace, had opposed 
the court's then-precedent-setting ruling that a dysfunctional childhood could 
outweigh death-penalty aggravating circumstances.

In the Tenace case, O'Connor, who was not yet chief justice, noted that the 
court had reversed death sentences twice previously -- one based on the mental 
illness of the defendant and the other on provocation by the victims.

In the Johnson case, O'Connor did not file a separate opinion, so it's not 
clear what lay behind her apparent change of heart.

Still, it's reasonable to think that the views of the court are evolving when 
it comes to the death penalty. That's a good thing.

As this page has said before, the death penalty is immoral, unfair and a drain 
on the taxpayer. It should be abolished.

(source: Editorial, cleveland.com----Editorials express the view of the 
editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer -- the senior leadership 
and editorial-writing staff. As is traditional, editorials are unsigned and 
intended to be seen as the voice of the news organization)






KENTUCKY:

Man indicted for murder of 1-year-old in Louisville


A Louisville man has been indicted for murder in connection with the death of a 
1-year-old back in September.

Yesterday a Jefferson County grand jury indicted 31-year-old Bradley Hanlon on 
the murder of 1-year-old Hannah Jane Fowler.

The indictment states that, "on or about the 25th day of September 2015, in 
Jefferson County, Kentucky, the above named defendant, BRADLEY H. HANLON, 
committed the offense of Murder by intentionally or under circumstances 
manifesting extreme indifference to human life wantonly caused the death of 
H.F."

The charge is a capital offense, meaning that Hanlon, if convicted, could face 
a punishment ranging from 20 years in prison to the death penalty.

(source: WDRB news)






COLORADO:

The Death Penalty and Robert Dear


I wrote last weekend of some thoughts likely running through District Attorney 
Dan May's mind as he contemplates seeking capital punishment against alleged 
Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Lewis Dear. Here are some more.

3 black men who committed their murders before age 21 are the only current 
occupants of Colorado's death row. This defendant Dear is an older Caucasian. 
His victims were from a variety of races.

Death penalty defenders argue the capital punishment system is racist and based 
on the race of the perpetrator and/or his victims. Those arguments are 
contradicted here. If you don't seek capital punishment against an older white 
guy shooting people of color, how can you do so against a younger person of 
color?

Not only will Dear's desire to end abortion likely be litigated as part of his 
defense to the murder charges, it may be utilized at any death penalty 
sentencing phase. Colorado's death penalty law sets forth a statutory 
mitigating factor as follows:

The good faith, although mistaken, belief by the defendant that circumstances 
existed which constituted a moral justification for the defendant's conduct;

As opposed to a pro-choice jurisdiction such as Denver or Pueblo or Boulder, 
would an El Paso County juror be more receptive to this defense argument? That 
may mitigate against an attempt at a change of venue. Plenty of Colorado 
Springs conservatives may agree with State Representative JoAnn Windholz who 
believes Planned Parenthood incited the violence. Or they may have voted for 
State Representative Gordon Klingenschmitt who accuses Planned Parenthood of a 
Holocaust.

Other statutory mitigating factors that might play out in a Dear death penalty 
case that should be considered include include:

The age of the defendant at the time of the crime; or

The defendant's capacity to appreciate wrongfulness of the defendant???s 
conduct or to conform the defendant???s conduct to the requirements of law was 
significantly impaired, but not so impaired as to constitute a defense to 
prosecution; or

The defendant was under unusual and substantial duress, although not such 
duress as to constitute a defense to prosecution; or

The defendant could not reasonably have foreseen that the defendant???s conduct 
in the course of the commission of the offense for which the defendant was 
convicted would cause, or would create a grave risk of causing, death to 
another person; or

The emotional state of the defendant at the time the crime was committed; or

The absence of any significant prior conviction; or

The extent of the defendant's cooperation with law enforcement officers or 
agencies and with the office of the prosecuting district attorney; or

The influence of drugs or alcohol

Robert Dear surrendered to law enforcement but not till he had shot several of 
its members. That surrender was premeditated and demonstrated Dear's desire to 
live. This defendant could have pointed his weapon at peace officers and been 
shot to death instantaneously, but he chose life.

At least capital punishment remains in the arsenal of the El Paso County 
prosecutor. There are more progressive jurisdictions in Colorado (also with 
Planned Parenthood facilities) where prosecutors have declared rigid opposition 
to capital punishment.

Dan May has some time to think about all this and it could be that a plea 
bargain will happen sooner rather than later. Charges will be filed by December 
9 and a preliminary hearing to determine probable cause will be set. After that 
preliminary hearing is when the defendant will be asked to enter a plea and if 
that plea is not guilty, Dan May will have 9 weeks to announce whether capital 
punishment will be sought.

The Office of the State Public Defender has entered its appearance and will do 
everything it can to save Dear even if he is despicable. Smart money says Dear 
will die in prison, but not via execution by the state of Colorado.

(source: Craig Silverman is a partner in the downtown Denver law firm of 
Silverman & Olivas, specializing in personal injury law, criminal matters, and 
problem solving. He served for 16 years at the Denver District Attorney's 
Office where he was a Chief Deputy District Attorney. Craig has appeared 
hundreds of times on local and national media on number of wide-ranging topics 
and stories including the JonBenet Ramsey case, Columbine, the Oklahoma City 
Bombing trials, the Kobe Bryant case, and the Aurora movie theater 
massacre----The Complete Colorado)






CALIFORNIA:

S.C. Upholds Death Penalty in Shooting Deaths


The California Supreme Court upheld the death sentence yesterday for a man 
convicted of murdering his mother-in-law and brother-in-law in what prosecutors 
said was an effort to exact revenge after his wife left him and took their 
children.

Micky Ray Cage was sentenced to death by Riverside Superior Court Judge Dennis 
A. McConaghy on Nov. 14, 2003 for the shotgun slayings of his estranged wife's 
16-year-old brother, David Burgos, and their 50-year-old mother, Burnilda 
Montanez, called Bruni, in Moreno Valley on Nov. 9, 1998.

Jurors returned a death penalty verdict after finding Cage guilty of 1st degree 
murder with special circumstances of multiple murder and lying in wait.

Witnesses testified that Cage and been terrorizing his wife, Claribel Burgos, 
known as Clari, as well as his daughter and other family members, for years. 
Not long before the murders, Clari Burgos had taken her children and secretly 
traveled to Puerto Rico to stay with extended family members.

There was also testimony that Cage had threatened to injure or kill his 
mother-in-law, who was shot in the shoulder, chest, and face when she opened 
her front door. Her 16-year-old son was shot in the chest at close range in his 
upstairs bedroom.

Defense attorneys argued that the death sentence was an excessive penalty for 
what they claimed was a drug- and alcohol-fueled act of impulsive rage. But 
Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, in her opinion for a unanimous court, said 
the prosecution had proven otherwise.

She wrote:

"The record reflects that defendant lived with Bruni and her family on and off 
since he was a young teenager. To say he consistently abused Bruni's 
hospitality is an understatement. The record is replete with evidence that over 
the course of many years, he subjected his wife Clari, her brothers, and his 
daughter to violent assault and various kinds of mistreatment at Bruni's home, 
as well as elsewhere. He threatened and followed through with retaliation when 
he did not get his way. When Clari finally left him and took their children 
with her, the record reflects that defendant was angry and vengeful. He sought 
to harm Clari's family, including Bruni. On the night of the crimes, the record 
indicates defendant was not very drunk and only a little high....Defendant was 
solely responsible for the brutal killings....He was 30 years old at the time 
and had a prior criminal record. The jury could have reasonably rejected 
defendant's evidence of mental impairments based on the rebuttal evidence that 
defendant had deliberately feigned his mental illness. These circumstances do 
not demonstrate that defendant's death sentence is grossly disproportionate to 
his personal culpability; it does not shock the conscience nor offend 
fundamental notions of human dignity."

The chief justice rejected defense claims of evidentiary error, saying the 
trial judge was correct in allowing prosecutors to present evidence of the 
defendant's past acts of violence toward, and mistreatment of, his wife and 
other family members.

Brushing aside the defense arguments that this was inadmissible evidence of a 
propensity toward violence, and that it was irrelevant, cumulative, and 
inflammatory, Cantil-Sakauye said the judge properly exercised his discretion 
to allow it "principally as evidence of motive, but also to establish identity 
and intent."

The chief justice also said the trial judge did not err in allowing Clari 
Burgos to testify, in the guilt phase, as to how she reacted when she learned 
of the murders and how she reacted when they came to the scene, or in allowing 
her surviving brother to explain what he saw when her arrived at the house 
after the murders.

Rejecting the defense argument that this was "victim impact" testimony, which 
should not have been allowed prior to the guilt phase, the chief justice said 
it helped fill in the timeline and explain the context in which the victims 
were killed. The testimony "overwhelmingly" established that it was Cage who 
committed the murders, she said.

The case is People v. Cage, 15 S.O.S. 5768.

(source: Metropolitan News)