[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., OHIO, KAN., NEB., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 14



TEXAS:

Holberg capital case still causing headaches


Randall County Criminal District Attorney James Farren has had it up to here 
with capital criminal cases.

He points to a particular case that has given him fits to the point that he has 
declared that only under certain circumstances - for as long as he is district 
attorney in Randall County - will he from now on seek the death penalty for 
those being tried for capital crimes.

The time and expense are too costly for the "taxpayers of this county and I do 
not want to subject them to this kind of thing any longer," Farren said.

Farren estimated the cost "conservatively to be at least $400,000," although he 
added that "it's difficult to calculate the entire cost precisely." He said the 
county and the state have accrued what he called "soft costs."

Brittany Holberg has been housed in a death row cell for 18 years awaiting her 
date with the executioner. Her trial, sentencing and their aftermath have 
driven Farren past the point of exhaustion, the DA said.

On Nov. 13, 1996, Holberg murdered A.B. Towery Sr. in his Amarillo apartment. 
She was 24 years of age at the time. A trial jury convicted her of capital 
murder on March 26, 1998. The crime she was convicted of committing involved a 
murder in the commission of a robbery, which qualified it as a death penalty 
case.

Holberg was convicted of stabbing Towery 58 times with a paring knife, a 
butcher knife and 2 forks; she beat Towery repeatedly with a cast-iron skillet, 
a steam iron and a hammer. She then, according to trial testimony, shoved a 
lamp base several inches down Towery's throat.

Holberg's defense counsel had claimed she acted in self-defense against Towery, 
who was 81 years of age.

The jury that convicted her of the crime then sentenced her to death by lethal 
injection.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals - the state's highest criminal appellate 
court - upheld the death sentence on Nov. 29, 2000.

That's not nearly the end of it, according to Farren, who became district 
attorney in January 1995. "Holberg has exhausted her state writs and this has 
now gone to the federal system," according to Farren.

The cost to the state has been enormous, Farren said, so much so that he has 
decided to forgo seeking the death penalty in future capital cases presented in 
Randall County.

"Don't misunderstand me," Farren said with emphasis. "I favor capital 
punishment." But in the future, he said, he intends to seek a death sentence 
only under certain circumstances. What would those circumstances involve? "A 
guy walks into a day care center and kills the children," Farren answered, "or 
if someone kills a police officer or a firefighter in the line of duty."

Farren also believes that eventually the U.S. Supreme Court "likely will decide 
society has evolved to the point that it's no longer appropriate" to administer 
the death penalty. "I don't agree with that," he said, but he thinks that's 
what lies in the future. Farren didn't offer a prediction on when that would 
occur, other than to offer a guess that it might occur "within the next 10 to 
25 years."

Farren added that contrary to what many believe, incarcerating a criminal for 
the rest of his or her life costs less than sentencing someone to death. It's 
the seemingly endless appeals process involving those convicted of capital 
crimes that runs up the tab, Farren said.

Holberg's conviction occurred 18 years ago. Farren predicts that at minimum, 
Holberg will be on death row for another 5 years. "That'll be 22 to 23 years 
since her conviction, maybe longer," he said.

Although her state appeals have been exhausted, Holberg still can seek help 
from the federal system. Farren said it's a lengthy and arduous process.

What are left now are writs to be filed. They will go through the U.S. District 
Court in Amarillo, where District Judge Mary Lou Robinson has presided since 
1980. If that court rejects Holberg's request for relief, it goes to the Fifth 
U.S. Circuit Court. If it fails there, then it's on to the U.S. Supreme Court, 
Farren said.

After that, if the nation's highest court rejects an appeal, the case 
conceivably heads back to the U.S. District Court. Farren said at that point, 
the case could come to a halt if the district judge refuses to hear it again. 
"If the Supreme Court says 'no,'" Farren said, "that's when the district judge 
can feel safe in stopping this process."

Farren also predicted that "by the time she (Holberg) gets a death date, I'll 
likely be retired, Mary Lou Robinson may be gone from the bench. Judge (David) 
Gleason, who tried the case initially, has been long retired."

Farren, who served as a police officer before obtaining his law degree from 
Texas Tech University in the early 1980s, said the appeal process is 
"complicated by design. Opponents of capital punishment want to make it so 
expensive and so impractical." He said anti-death penalty advocates "don't have 
the (political) support to end capital punishment, so they seek to make the 
system even more complicated."

The criminal justice system, he said, will have to settle on sentences of "life 
without parole," Farren said. "And, yes, there will be those who attack that on 
the basis of a lack of finality or consistency. That will be their fundamental 
argument."

The Holberg case also resulted in Farren and his office being recused from 
further involvement after Holberg's defense team - which now comprises lawyers 
from a large firm based in San Francisco - of "coercing witnesses and hiding 
evidence."

The case then took a strange turn when the DA's office asked the state to 
appoint a special prosecutor, Farren said. The state appointed Warren Clark, an 
Amarillo lawyer, who Farren described as an "excellent appellate lawyer." Clark 
then left his private practice - and went to work as one of Farren's deputy 
district attorneys.

It was then that the Texas Attorney General's Office took over as the state's 
legal representatives in the Holberg case, Farren said.

"It's been an endless process. Back and forth," Farren said, adding that none 
of the accusations regarding alleged misconduct by Farren's office has held up. 
"The court has ruled that there's no evidence to support this," he said.

Meanwhile, Holberg, who's now 42, sits on death row, awaiting her fate.

Adding to what he described as the bizarre nature of the case, Holberg has been 
named on a list created on the Internet as "1 of the 10 most attractive eeath 
row inmates in the United States," Farren said. "Someone with a lot of time on 
his hands came up with this macabre contest idea," Farren said.

"It's all symptomatic," Farren said, "of the strangeness of this case."

(source: newschannel10.com)






FLORIDA----female to face death penalty

Prosecutors: FSU student accused of double murder will face death penalty


Hillsborough prosecutors said Tuesday they will seek the death penalty against 
a 21-year-old college student accused of killing her mother and step-father 
earlier this year.

Nicole G. Nachtman, a sophomore at Florida State University, was arrested in 
August and faces 2 counts of 1st-degree murder in the deaths of the couple, 
both of whom were fatally shot at their house in Carrollwood.

According to law enforcement, neighbors called 911 on Aug. 20 after hearing 
gunshots. Investigators with the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office arrived at the 
couple's home on Fennsbury Drive to find Nachtman's mother, Myriam Dienes, 56, 
lying dead in the next-door neighbor's driveway. A captain in the Naval 
Reserve, Dienes had returned home from service that night when she was shot 
once in the neck and twice in her upper body.

Inside the house, investigators found the decaying body of her 67-year-old 
husband, Robert Dienes, who had been shot once in the neck.

Piecing together details from neighbors, who reported seeing Nachtman peering 
out of the house's windows the night of her mother's murder, investigators 
contacted her, only to be told that she was away at college and had been for 
several days.

But Nachtman's university ID badge showed she had not swiped into any buildings 
on campus for seven days. It look little digging before more holes began to 
appear in her story.

A witness, a man who investigators have declined to name, reportedly told 
deputies that Nachtman confided in him that she heard "screaming voices in her 
head" telling her to kill her mother and step-father. She had also seen "signs 
on campus" that "her dreams were about to come true," the man said.

Officials said Nachtman killed her step-father first, then lay in wait for her 
mother's return. Apparently struck by doubt, she attempted to climb out of a 
bedroom window when her mother spotted her and asked her why she wasn't at 
school. In response, Nachtman pulled out a gun and shot her, then fled north to 
Tallahassee, deputies said.

Arrested on Aug. 24, she appeared before a Hillsborough judge a month later and 
pleaded not guilty to the charges.

In many respects, she is an unlikely candidate for the death penalty. At 
21-years-old, and with no prior criminal record, she could command the sympathy 
of jurors, who are often reluctant to condemn female defendants to death. If 
she is sentenced to death, she would be the youngest woman - among a group that 
currently numbers only 5 - on Florida's death row.

Attorneys familiar with death penalty cases said they found the state 
attorney's decision surprising, particularly in light of Nachtman's age and the 
possibility that she suffers from mental illness.

"When I saw her briefly in court, she came across as such a docile type of 
person, someone sympathetic who you wouldn't imagine would commit such a 
crime," said Tampa defense attorney Bryant Camareno. "There's got be something 
pretty aggravating about the method by which she designed this and planned this 
that we just don't know about."

In recent weeks, Nachtman's defense team has filed several motions to limit the 
public's access to information about her case. A hearing has been scheduled for 
next month to determine whether elements of the investigation into the murders 
should remain confidential.

(source: Tampa Bay Times)






OHIO:

Ex-Ohio death row inmate chooses life without parole


A former Ohio death row inmate has been sentenced to life without parole after 
rejecting the possibility of a lesser punishment.

Hamilton County Court Judge Megan Shanahan handed down the sentence against 
Rayshawn Johnson on Monday for beating a Cincinnati woman to death during a 
1997 robbery.

The Ohio Supreme Court overturned Johnson's death sentence earlier this year 
based on his troubled upbringing and subsequent remorse.

The 37-year-old Johnson originally was sentenced to death in 1998. He had a new 
hearing after a federal judge said he'd received poor legal assistance, and he 
was again sentenced to death in 2011.

Johnson's attorney, Will Welsh, says Johnson chose not to seek a lesser 
sentence. He says his client asked for life without parole to bring closure to 
the family of his victim, Shanon Marks.

(source: Associated Press)






KANSAS:

Kansas Supreme Court hears Gary Kleypas' death-penalty appeal


Gary Kleypas, now 60, was convicted of killing Pittsburg State University 
student Carrie Williams, 20, in 1996. He was sentenced to death, but the Kansas 
Supreme Court overturned the sentence in 2001. A 2nd jury sentenced him to 
death again in 2008.

A man convicted of raping and murdering a college student nearly 2 decades ago 
should get a new sentence because the jury was prejudiced after the victim's 
father attacked him, and because he had a mental illness, the man's attorney 
argued Monday.

Gary Kleypas, now 60, was convicted of killing Pittsburg State University 
student Carrie Williams, 20, in 1996. He was sentenced to death, but the Kansas 
Supreme Court overturned the sentence in 2001. A 2nd jury sentenced him to 
death again in 2008.

Meryl Carber-Allmond, who represented Kleypas, said the process suffered from 
multiple flaws, perhaps most seriously that the trial judge didn't declare a 
mistrial when Williams' father attacked Kleypas in front of jurors. The strong 
emotions surrounding the attack prejudiced jurors to the point that they 
couldn't give Kleypas a fair trial, she said.

"I don't think there's anything we can do to wipe that from their minds," she 
said. "The clear message from Mr. Williams to Mr. Kleypas is, 'I want this guy 
dead.' He wouldn't have been able to offer that opinion on the stand."

Deputy Soliciter General Kristafer Ailslieger, who represented the state, said 
higher courts typically respect the trial judge's discretion, because he or she 
is in the best position to observe the effect of any irregularities on jurors. 
When the judge polled the jurors, they said they could set aside the incident 
and not hold it against either the prosecution or the defense, he said.

"(The judge's) decision was not an abuse of discretion," he said. "He's in a 
much better position than any of us are" to assess the effect on jurors.

Carber-Allmond also argued Kleypas shouldn't be eligible for the death penalty 
because of a severe mental illness that impaired his ability to reason and to 
regulate his conduct. The state doesn't execute people younger than 18 or with 
developmental disabilities, and it should treat mental illnesses the same way, 
instead of leaving it up to the jury to decide if the illness is a mitigating 
factor, she said. She didn't specify Kleypas' diagnosis.

"He's guilty, but we're arguing that for reasons inherent to his personality, 
inherent to his mental makeup, he's less culpable," she said.

The U.S. Supreme Court already has ruled that people who have a mental illness 
so severe that they don't understand their punishment or why it is being 
applied aren't eligible for the death penalty, Ailslieger said. The point at 
which a mental illness isn't so severe that a person can't understand the 
punishment but it still reduces the person's culpability is ambiguous, he said, 
so courts should take a case-by-case approach instead of creating a broad 
category.

"A person who is a psychopath or sociopath is not as sane as the rest of us, 
but they know what they did," he said.

Carber-Allmond also argued state law required the trial court to attempt to 
assemble the original jury for the resentencing in 2008. The law only requires 
the same jury during the original trial, Ailslieger said, and bringing them 
together again probably wouldn't benefit Kleypas because they had sentenced him 
to death before.

The 2 sides also disagreed on whether the prosecution improperly told jurors 
that the defendant didn't deserve mercy or where mercy could fit in among 
mitigating circumstances.

Carber-Allmond also argued law enforcement erred in collecting evidence against 
Kleypas. That argument isn't relevant, because the court previously upheld the 
conviction, and only the sentence is in dispute, Aislieger said.

The justices took the arguments and briefs under advisement, but didn't state 
when they would issue a ruling.

(source: Topeka Capitasl-Journal)






NEBRASKA:

Learn legalities of state's death penalty


Gov. Pete Ricketts could need the help of Nebraska lawmakers to craft a new 
death penalty protocol using chemicals not currently listed in Nebraska's 
3-drug system, but how will senators who decided to repeal capital punishment 
last spring react if asked to OK a new protocol?

The new protocol may be necessary because the state does not possess the drugs 
it needs. Domestic drug makers won't supply them for executions, and the 
Federal Drug Administration says that importing them from foreign suppliers is 
illegal.

If it's impossible to mix the 3-drug cocktail Nebraska state law prescribes, 
then the governor may seek a new protocol, perhaps similar to what's used in 
Oklahoma, which recently spent $100,000 to redo its execution system from top 
to bottom after a botched lethal injection in 2014 caused the condemned man to 
suffer 43 minutes before he finally died.

8 months later, another of Oklahoma's condemned prisoners said, "My body's on 
fire," when the lethal drugs reached his body.

In both of these cases, the men who were executed committed especially heinous 
crimes, so horrible that many Nebraskans would agree they got what they 
deserved. However, the roadblock to execution by lethal injection isn't a 
matter of making the punishment fit the crime. Rather, it's a nagging legal 
question whether executing people with chemicals is cruel and unusual.

It's the same question that prompted Nebraskans to move from the electric chair 
after the state's last execution in 1997, and it's the same question that 
prompts legal experts to question capital punishment by lethal injection.

After Oklahoma executed the man who said, "My body's on fire," Supreme Court 
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in an 8-page opinion that she wished her fellow 
justices had agreed to stay the execution. She pointed to many issues raised in 
the lethal injection.

"The questions before us," Sotomayor wrote, "are especially important now, 
given states' increasing reliance on new and scientifically untested methods of 
execution."

Last week, Ricketts announced he has suspended attempts to obtain lethal drugs 
until Nebraskans vote in November whether to reinstate the death penalty. 
Ricketts' move was sensible and necessary, and perhaps it will allow Nebraskans 
time to explore the scientific and legal issues surrounding this controversial 
issue.

Nebraska officials already spent $54,400 on lethal chemicals they cannot get. 
Must they spend another $100,000, like Oklahoma, to devise a better protocol, 
or is lethal injection just another form of cruel and unusual punishment, like 
the electric chair, hanging, firing squad, etc. ... ?

(source: Opinion, Kearney Hub)






CALIFORNIA----new death sentence

Jury Recommends Death Penalty For Killer Of 4, Including Castaic Man


A jury recommended the death penalty for a 34-year-old man convicted of 
murdering 4 people outside a Northridge boarding home in December 2012, 
including 1 man from Castaic.

Ka Pasasouk was found guilty of 4 counts of 1st-degree murder by the same jury 
on Nov. 19, 2015, which deliberated a little more than a day before reaching a 
verdict in the penalty phase.

Pasasouk will return to Department 106 on Feb. 5, 2016 for sentencing before 
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler.

Deputy District Attorney Dan Akemon with the Major Crimes Division prosecuted 
the case.

Pasasouk was convicted for fatally shooting 4 individuals.

1 of the victims was 49-year-old Teofilo "JoJo" Navales of Ridge Top Lane in 
Castaic. Navales left behind a wife and 3 daughters.

Also killed were Robert Calabia, 34, of Los Angeles; Amanda Ghossein, 24, of 
Monterey Park; and Jennifer Kim, 26, of Montebello.

The murders occurred outside the home in the 17400 block of Devonshire Street.

Pasasouk also was convicted of 1 count of attempted murder, 5 counts of assault 
with a semiautomatic firearm and possession of a firearm by a felon.

Jurors also found true the special circumstance of multiple murders.

The prosecutor told jurors earlier that Pasasouk began the killing spree as a 
robbery and then he continued the fatal assaults to silence witnesses.

The case was investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department's 
Robbery-Homicide Division.

(source: KHTS news)