[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, MD., VA., OHIO, MO.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 4



TEXAS----impending execution

Donald Newbury of infamous 'Texas 7' gang faces execution Wednesday ---- Gang 
escaped prison in 2000 and killed a Dallas police officer before their 
apprehension a month later. Newbury will be the 3rd member put to death



Already a 3-time felon with a violent history, the convicted robber Donald 
Newbury was serving a 99-year prison term when he joined 6 fellow convicts in 
Texas's biggest prison break ever in 2000.

Now Newbury is set for execution Wednesday for the shooting death of a suburban 
Dallas police officer during a sporting-goods store robbery the escaped 
fugitives carried out while at large.

Newbury, 52, would be the 3rd Texas prisoner put to death this year, and also 
the 3rd of the notorious "Texas 7" gang executed for the slaying of 29-year-old 
Irving officer Aubrey Hawkins.

The US Supreme Court had an appeal Tuesday from Newbury's attorney, William 
Harris, who told the justices Newbury has had neither a "meaningful 
opportunity" nor sufficient court-approved money to develop a claim that his 
trial lawyers were deficient for not showing jurors significant psychological 
evidence of his abusive childhood.

The Texas attorney general's office, in opposing the appeal, said Newbury has 
been given court reviews and court-authorized money and "has not pointed to any 
facts" that would prove he's innocent.

Newbury was spared from lethal injection 3 years ago by a Supreme Court 
reprieve.

Evidence showed the gang led by George Rivas, who was serving 17 life-in-prison 
terms, overpowered workers on 13 December 2000 at the Connally Unit of the 
Texas Department of Criminal Justice, about 60 miles south of San Antonio.

11 days later, on Christmas Eve, and after robberies as far away as Houston, 
Hawkins was shot 11 times and run over with a stolen SUV when he interrupted 
the gang???s holdup of a sporting goods store. The fugitives got away with 
$70,000, 44 firearms, ammunition and winter clothing. They also took jewelry 
and wallets from store employees who were closing up for the evening.

They were hunted down a month later in Colorado where 1 of them, Larry Harper, 
killed himself rather than surrender.

According to court records, 12 loaded firearms were found in the Holiday Inn 
room in Colorado Springs where Newbury was arrested with escapee Joseph Garcia.

Newbury contended he didn't shoot to kill Hawkins and pointed his gun far above 
the officer's head.

Prison records show Newbury has had dozens of disciplinary cases since arriving 
on death row in 2002. Most were defined as major, such as assaulting 
corrections officers, possessing weapons and contraband and creating 
disturbances. At least 1 was a riot case.

"He really likes coming across as the bad outlaw," said Toby Shook, the former 
Dallas County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Newbury.

In a 2003 interview with The Associated Press, Newbury said he would still 
escape if he could do it all over again.

"I had 99 years," he said, referring to his original sentence. "What did I have 
to lose?"

Gang leader Rivas, 41, was put to death 3 years ago. George Rodriguez, 45, was 
executed in 2008 after ordering all his appeals dropped.

3 remain on death row: Garcia, 43, Patrick Murphy Jr, 53, and Randy Halprin, 
37.

(source: The Guardian)

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

Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----2

Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----520

Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #

3------------Feb. 4--------------------Donald Newbury-------521

4------------Feb. 10-------------------Les Bower, Jr.-------522

5------------Mar. 5--------------------Rodney Reed----------523

6------------Mar. 11-------------------Manuel Vasquez-------524

7------------Mar. 18-------------------Randall Mays---------525

8------------Apr. 9--------------------Kent Sprouse---------526

9------------Apr. 15-------------------Manual Garza---------527

10-----------Apr. 23-------------------Richard Vasquez------528

11-----------Apr. 28-------------------Robert Pruett--------529

12-----------May 12--------------------Derrick Charles------530

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)








MARYLAND:

Former Maryland death row inmate spurns O'Malley's commutation, wants less than 
life in prison



A Maryland inmate whose death sentence was commuted to life in prison is hoping 
to argue for less time behind bars.

On Jan. 20, former Gov. Martin O'Malley commuted the death sentences of four 
inmates who had been sentenced before the state banned capital punishment in 
2013. Among them was Jody Lee Miles, convicted in the 1997 robbery and murder 
of Edward Atkinson in Wicomico County.

Miles' attorneys say their client won't accept the commutation. The Daily Times 
reports (http://delmarvane.ws/16uiyAc ) that Miles' attorneys are asking the 
Court of Special Appeals to find his new life sentence illegal so they can 
argue for less prison time for him at a new sentencing.

A spokesman for Maryland's attorney general's office says O'Malley had the 
authority to commute the death sentences.

(source: Associated Press)






VIRGINIA:

The Capital Punishment Cover-Up----Virginia wants to hide "all information 
relating to the execution process."



A series of botched executions in Ohio, Oklahoma, and Arizona last year raised 
serious new questions about how death penalty drugs are administered. They have 
drawn fresh scrutiny from the Supreme Court itself, which agreed last month to 
assess whether a lethal injection cocktail used in Oklahoma violates the Eighth 
Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A month ago Ohio announced that 
officials would stop using one of the drugs in the current protocol, midazolam, 
after a botched execution involving untested drugs last year. And on Friday, 
Ohio Gov. John Kasich announced that the state would postpone all 7 scheduled 
2015 executions, partly because of questions surrounding the controversial drug 
cocktail Ohio had been using.

Yet just prior to announcing this temporary moratorium, Ohio lawmakers 
attempted to improve the reputation of its capital punishment system with 
bizarre new laws passed in a lame-duck session. The controversial rules 
increased secrecy by shielding the identities of drugmakers and suppliers for 
lethal injections, and they immunized error by providing anonymity for anyone 
who participates in the process as well as the state execution team. The 
effect, as the Washington Post editorialized, was "to impose a gag order on 
potentially adverse reports that could inform the public debate over capital 
punishment."

But while Ohio officials eventually came to realize that the problems with 
their lethal injection protocol couldn't be wholly fixed by shrouding 
executions in ever more secrecy, Virginia lawmakers have arrived at the 
opposite conclusion. Last week they proposed legislation that would make it 
easier to obtain lethal injection drugs and that would also create an almost 
impermeable layer of secrecy around the execution process. The new law would 
make it significantly harder for the press and the public to know what was 
happening in the execution chamber. This is, of course, the same Virginia 
Legislature that flirted last year with reinstating the electric chair if 
lethal injection drug supplies dried up. (That effort failed.) The effect of 
this new proposed legislation would be less scrutiny of a process that the rest 
of the nation, including the highest court in the land, views with ever more 
skepticism.

Amid the recent rash of high-profile screw-ups in executions, new cover-up 
measures have been passed in more than a dozen states, allowing departments of 
corrections to increasingly refuse to disclose where their execution drugs come 
from, how and if they were tested, and whether corrections officers are 
qualified to administer them correctly. In response to these clampdowns on 
information about how tax dollars are being spent and how prisoners are being 
executed in their citizens' name, lawsuits have been filed by capital defense 
attorneys, civil liberties groups, and news organizations in Oklahoma, Ohio, 
Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Arizona.

This increased scrutiny into the machinery of death bears out reasons for 
public concern. As the Daily Beast recently noted, court pleadings in an 
Oklahoma suit reveal that Mike Oakley, the former general counsel for that 
state's Department of Corrections, has said that his research on the drug 
midazolam included "WikiLeaks or whatever it is." Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 
dissenting from the court's decision to allow Oklahoma to execute yet another 
capital defendant, noted in January that the state's expert witness defended 
the use of midazolam but "cited no studies" and "instead appeared to rely 
primarily on the web site www.drugs.com."

Do marauding death penalty opponents race around America, roughing up 
pharmacists and corrections officials? Still, in the jubilant spirit of "if you 
can't fix it, hide it," Virginia is considering the proposed legislation, 
sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax, and called 
Senate Bill 1393. At one level, by loosening the rules on pharmacies that 
compound drugs, it will make it easier for the commonwealth to obtain the 
lethal-injection drugs that have been ever-more difficult to procure after U.S. 
suppliers stopped making them and European companies refused to allow them to 
be used in executions. But the bill goes far beyond that, by protecting from 
public view "all information relating to the execution process" and elsewhere 
ensuring that "information relating to the identity of ... compounding drugs 
for use in executions and all documents related to the execution process are 
confidential, exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, and not subject to 
discovery or introduction as evidence in a civil proceeding except for good 
cause shown."

What makes the bill extraordinary isn't just the exceptionally broad language 
that hides from public scrutiny "all information relating to the execution 
process" but also the notion that it cannot be used in any civil litigation. 
Amazingly, the Democratic administration of Gov. Terry McAuliffe supports the 
new secrecy measure, citing "security" concerns. While members of the 
subcommittee that debated the legislation last week claimed they would amend it 
to require that the state disclose what drug or drug combination were being 
used to kill people, the broad secrecy language hiding "all information" is 
pretty clear on its face. At the hearing last week, Saslaw argued that the 
object of the proposed bill was to protect the safety of those who administer 
capital punishment, saying: "There ain't a state in America that gives you the 
name of the guy who sticks the needle in any more than you got the names of the 
folks who pulled the switch when we had the electric chair."

Corinna Barrett Lain, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, 
argued against the secrecy language at last week's hearing. She says the 
proposed measure is "the most broad secrecy statute in the country because it 
says 'all information about the execution process,' which by its plain text 
would include even a botched execution itself." In an email she notes that 
Saslaw's analysis about the guy who pulls the switch on the electric chair 
should not extend to the drugs used in an execution: "The identity of the 
executioner is not a constitutional matter. The contents of the syringe are," 
she writes.

In her testimony Lain pointed out how absurd it is to hide government actions 
and accountability precisely when the state must be held to account: "It 
strikes me as the essence of bad government to enshroud the government in 
secrecy in its most powerful moment - when it exercises its sovereign right to 
take the life of one of its citizens." She added that this bill ensures that 
"there are no questions asked about where the drugs came from, what the drugs 
are, what their potency is, whether they have been contaminated, whether they 
are expired, indeed whether they were obtained legally."

I have long been curious about the argument that marauding death penalty 
opponents race around America, roughing up the pharmacists and corrections 
officials who participate in their state capital punishment apparatus, thus 
warranting increased secrecy. So I checked with Frank Knaack, the director of 
public policy and communications with the ACLU of Virginia. He says he knows of 
no such incidents, noting that the commonwealth's Department of Corrections has 
made all of its information available on the drugs used and the procedures 
followed for 10 years and "there is no evidence of a problem, or reason to 
believe that Virginia taxpayers can't be trusted with this information."

Knaack also points out that Virginia, where there are 8 people on death row and 
where there is still a supply of lethal injection drugs, assumes another 
problem that simply doesn't exist: that there will be a massive shortage of 
lethal injection drugs and a huge increase in capital defendants. The fact that 
the commonwealth executes relatively few people, combined with the lack of 
evidence that we must hide the identity of everyone involved in an execution, 
certainly suggests that the new law isn't so much protecting the machinery of 
capital punishment as it is drawing a curtain around the death chamber for the 
sake of secrecy itself. That all information surrounding an execution is 
exempted not just from FOIA scrutiny, but also largely from use in civil suits, 
sounds like it has more to do with a panicky cover-up than with prison 
security.

There could be an unintended benefit to the legislation for opponents of 
capital punishment. Lain, a former prosecutor, notes that the paradox of the 
current solution to a nonexistent problem guarantees that those eight death 
penalty cases will be tied up for years, as lawyers battle it out with the 
state over matters of transparency: "This bill ensures that executions will be 
hung up in litigation for as long as lawyers can drag it out. And while the 
U.S. Supreme Court doesn't seem to care much about the death penalty, it does 
care about process, and it's the cover-up that's going to get these states into 
trouble."

Say what you want about the death penalty, but few Americans - and presumably 
even fewer jurists - affirmatively want to see it administered sloppily, 
violently, by way of untested combinations of drugs procured from ambiguous 
sources. As nationwide support for the death penalty continues to drop, those 
who believe in capital punishment will need to come up with better arguments 
than "nothing to see here, folks." Any good mobster can tell you that it's not 
the crime that will get you in the end; it's the cover-up. And the states that 
are trying mightily to cover up what happens in their death chambers are mostly 
just doing a good job of signaling that whatever they are doing in there bears 
closer watching.

(source: Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate)



OHIO:

Family of Ohio inmate who gasped, snorted during execution drops civil rights 
lawsuit



The family of an Ohio inmate whose troubling execution more than a year ago led 
to an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment in the state is dropping 
their civil rights lawsuit.

The adult children of executed inmate Dennis McGuire, who snorted and gasped 
when put to death with a never-tried 2-drug combo, asked a federal judge Monday 
to dismiss the lawsuit filed against the state and an Illinois drugmaker.

The lawsuit said McGuire suffered "needless pain and suffering" during his 
January 2014 execution using a sedative, midazolam, and a painkiller, 
hydropmorphone. A nearly 2-hour execution in Arizona in July deepened concerns 
about the same 2-drug method.

The state prisons agency announced last month it was dropping the method in 
favor of alternative anesthetics which it currently doesn't have. That decision 
satisfied the goals of McGuire's family, eliminating the need to pursue the 
lawsuit, said attorney Jon Paul Rion.

"They wanted to be assured that nobody else would be subjected to the same 
drugs that their father was, subjected to in the way that he died," he said. 
"By bringing the suffering to light, the state of Ohio has clearly changed 
their protocol."

The state Attorney General's office, which represented the prisons agency, 
declined comment. The drugmaker, Lake Forest, Illinois-based Hospira Inc., did 
not return a message seeking comment.

McGuire was executed for the 1989 rape and stabbing death of Joy Stewart, 22, a 
recently married pregnant woman in western Ohio.

On April 28, the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction concluded there 
was no evidence that McGuire "experienced any pain, distress or anxiety."

The 2-drug method was Ohio's second choice under its former execution rules, 
but it was unable to obtain supplies of its 1st choice, compounded 
pentobarbital, a drug used successfully by Missouri and Texas in several recent 
executions.

Last year, Gov. John Kasich signed a bill into law shielding the names of 
companies that provide Ohio with lethal drugs, a move aimed at persuading 
compounding pharmacies to provide pentobarbital.

Executions after McGuire were put on hold by court rulings. Last week, the 
state said it was pushing all executions into next year.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Jury selection begins in death penalty case



Jury selection began in a death penalty trial Tuesday for a man accused of 
killing 2 people in 2009 and setting a fire to cover it up.

Hager Church, 30, is charged with 2 counts of aggravated murder and 1 count of 
aggravated arson in the June 14, 2009, house fire that killed Massie "Tina" 
Flint, 45, and her boyfriend, Rex Hall, 54. The fire was at a house at 262 S. 
Pine St.

The court called 147 people to show as potential jurors. It was a long day for 
many as Judge Jeffrey Reed of Allen County Common Pleas Court spent a lot of 
time explaining courtroom procedure and trying to determine whether anyone had 
a conflict of interest, such as knowing an employee of the court.

The potential jurors were told about the charges against Church and the state's 
allegations. Each charge was explained in detail and Reed said it was the 
prosecution's burden to prove Church guilty with evidence such as testimony and 
exhibits.

Before jury selection began, several other potential jurors were excluded. 
Church's lead attorney, Greg Meyers, said a sheriff's detective told him he 
helped his wife fill out a juror questionnaire in a way to get out of jury 
duty. The matter ended with no further discussion and Reed dismissed the woman, 
who was not present.

Jury selection is scheduled for Friday. Potential jurors will return for 
individual questioning where they can be questioned about many aspects of their 
lives including whether they believe in the death penalty.

Church is serving a life sentence with no chance for parole for a separate case 
in 2010. He was convicted of beating a woman to death inside her home for a few 
dollars and costume jewelry.

(source: limaohio.com)








MISSOURI:

Court upholds Hosier murder conviction, death sentence



David R. Hosier will remain a prisoner on Missouri's death row at the Potosi 
Correctional Center.

4 months to the day after hearing arguments in the case, the state Supreme 
Court on Tuesday upheld Hosier's conviction and death sentence for the Sept. 
28, 2009, murder of Angela Gilpin, 45, as she was leaving her West High Street 
apartment about 3:15 a.m., heading for her job as day manager of a Wardsville 
convenience store.

Her estranged husband, Rodney Gilpin, 61, was killed at the same time, but the 
2013 Cole County trial only involved the charge in Angela's death.

A jury imported from St. Charles County spent about an hour deciding to convict 
Hosier of the killing and then - after the separate penalty phase evidence was 
presented - spent about 3 hours determining the death sentence was the 
appropriate punishment.

Because Presiding Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce imposed the death sentence, the 
appeal to the 7-judge Supreme Court was an automatic Missouri law requirement.

But Hosier's attorney, Assistant Public Defender Craig A. Johnston, told the 
court during the Oct. 3 oral argument that most of the evidence used to convict 
Hosier was obtained improperly and shouldn't have been allowed during the 
trial.

Hosier was arrested in Oklahoma several hours after the murders occurred.

Jefferson City police initially issued an alert to law officers in several 
surrounding states to look out for Hosier and his car, because he had "been 
identified as the primary suspect in the homicide investigation."

However, Johnston argued Oklahoma officials had been notified because AT&T 
officials had reported tracking his cell phone in the Sooner state.

Police had obtained a warrant asking AT&T to "ping" the cell phone, a 
technology which tracks a specific phone's location by the towers it connects 
with whenever making or receiving a call.

Johnston argued Jefferson City's police had no authority to get that 
information from AT&T, so notifying Oklahoma of Hosier's location and those 
officers' efforts to stop and arrest him all were violations of Hosier's Fourth 
Amendment protection against illegal searches and seizures under the U.S. 
Constitution.

As part of her 25-page ruling for the unanimous court, Chief Justice Mary R. 
Russell wrote Hosier's failure to stop as soon as the Oklahoma trooper turned 
on his warning lights led to a "moderate speed chase" during which Hosier 
"violated numerous traffic laws and provided Oklahoma authorities with probable 
cause to stop him for those violations. Because Defendant was not seized until 
he yielded to police by stopping his car, and because there was probable cause 
to stop him for the traffic violations, the stop in Oklahoma did not violate 
the Fourth Amendment."

Russell also wrote: "The bulletproof vest, knife, gun and pistol holder police 
officers found on Defendant's person and in plain view in his car, in addition 
to the information they learned from JCPD, gave them probable cause to obtain 
and execute a search warrant independent of the ping order."

Johnston also had argued police didn't have "sufficient probable cause" to get 
a search warrant for Hosier's apartment in the 1100 block of West Main Street.

However, Russell wrote, the police detective's sworn affidavit included several 
pieces of information a court could accept for issuing a warrant.

She cited the affidavit's 4 sources for reports of Hosier threatening, stalking 
or harassing Angela Gilpin, providing probable cause.

During the Cole County trial, Prosecutor Mark Richardson had argued Hosier 
killed the Gilpins because he was angry that Angela was ending their 
relationship and working with Rodney to reconcile their 21-year marriage.

Although Hosier has not been tried or convicted of Rodney's murder, his death 
was an "aggravating circumstance" Richardson used to argue for a death sentence 
in Angela's murder - and the Supreme Court upheld that.

"The government showed that Defendant had been previously convicted for assault 
and battery in 1993 (in Indiana) when he handcuffed another girlfriend and beat 
her until she passed out," Russell wrote. "Additionally, Victim's murder was 
committed while Defendant was engaged in the murder of Husband."

Neither Richardson nor Johnston responded to a request to comment on the high 
court's ruling.

(source: News Tribune)

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

Court upholds death penalty in Jefferson City murder conviction



The Missouri Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty sentence for a man 
convicted of a 2009 Jefferson City murder.

David Hosier was sentenced to death in 2013 for killing Angela Gilpin.

Hosier appealed his sentence in October, saying there was a violation of the 
4th amendment after he claimed police tracked his cell phone without a probable 
cause.

Hosier is also suspected of killing Gilpin's husband, Rodney, in their 
Jefferson City apartment, but only went to trial for Angela's death.

Prosecutors said Hosier and Angela Gilpin had an affair, but she was trying to 
reconcile with her husband. They believe that is what led Hosier to murder 
Angela and allegedly kill Rodney.

(source: KMIZ news)