[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., MISS., OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 17



TEXAS:

Court Suspends Death Row Inmate's Lawyer Over Late Filing



On Wednesday, the judges of Texas' highest criminal court told a defense 
attorney named David Dow he would not be able to practice in front of them for 
the next year. The Court of Criminal Appeals decided that Dow had filed a 
motion to stop the execution of his client, Miguel Angel Paredes, too late, and 
that since he'd done the same thing in a different case in 2010, he will now be 
suspended.

Neither the court nor Dow, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center 
and one of the best known death penalty defense attorneys in the country, will 
comment publicly. But this move is the latest evidence of an ongoing feud in 
Texas between lawyers who appeal on behalf of inmates facing executions, Dow 
chief among them, and the judges who rule on their claims. On the surface, the 
fights have been about deadlines, but, as criminal justice blogger Scott Henson 
described Dow's relationship with the judges back in 2009, "Basically these 
folks just don't like each other on a level that transcends any given issue."

Miguel Paredes was executed last October for a triple murder of gang rivals, 
committed in 2000. The summer before the execution, he wrote a letter to Dow 
asking for help, and Dow volunteered - without being appointed to the case - to 
investigate Paredes' claims. It took a while owing to Dow's busy schedule, but 
he found that Paredes' original lawyer had called no witnesses at the trial and 
that Paredes was allowed to waive an early appeal while on anti-psychotic 
medications.

Dow filed an appeal and a call for a stay 7 days before the execution. The 
court said he should have filed it the day before. The court has explicitly 
said the deadline is 7 days before an execution, but in practice, attorneys 
know that they must have it in eight days before.

It wasn't the first time Dow had clashed with the court over deadlines. One 
evening in October 2007, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review 
Kentucky's lethal injection protocol, Dow and his colleagues raced to write a 
new appeal for their client Michael Richard. As they worked to argue how the 
Kentucky case mirrored their own, they later said, their computers broke down, 
and they asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to wait 20 minutes after its 5 
p.m. deadline so they could deliver the appeal by hand.

"We close at 5," was the response by the court's head judge, Sharon Keller. 
Those 4 words became a rallying point for the death penalty's opponents and 
made her a villain ("Sharon Killer") in newspaper editorials across the 
country. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers sent a complaint 
about her actions to the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct.

The commission's report on the matter called Keller's conduct "not exemplary of 
a public service," but cast firm doubt on Dow's computer breakdown story and 
took him to task for "making inaccurate statements in the press" about how soon 
the appeal was actually ready, which "spun out of control" into a "public 
groundswell of opposition against Judge Keller."

In June 2011, Keller's court issued a new rule about filing deadlines. A 
pleading would be "deemed untimely" if it was filed "fewer than 7 days before 
the scheduled execution date." The rule goes on to say that a "request for a 
stay of execution filed at 8 a.m. on a Wednesday morning when the execution is 
scheduled for the following Wednesday at 6 p.m. is untimely."

Dow filed a motion to stay Paredes' execution at 12:37 p.m. on Oct. 21. The 
execution was set for Oct. 28 at 6 p.m. It was more than 7 days in advance, but 
violated the rule's example. Pull out a calendar if you find this all a bit 
confusing.

At a hearing last month, Dow went before the court to defend his late filing. 
The court found that he and his partner "failed to show good cause for the 
untimely filings."

In Dow's corner are defense attorneys who think the narrow and peculiar 
application of deadline rules allows the judges to avoid what went wrong at the 
original trial. The judges were "focusing very narrowly on 15 hours of time 
rather than the case as presented," said Kathryn Kase, director of the Texas 
Defender Service and a former colleague of Dow???s. "It's somewhat like saying, 
'You were working too late in the emergency room,' while not focusing on the 
grievous injuries the patient has."

As for the trial defense lawyer, who called no witnesses even as his client 
faced a death sentence, the judges had no complaints.

(source: Texas Tribune)

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

Capital murder trial costs county



Information from the county auditor's office indicates that so far, the Gabriel 
Armandariz double homicide case has cost Young County about $427,334 and will 
likely cost taxpayers much more than that by the time the trial concludes.

The Jeremy Thornburg murder case that concluded last October cost Young County 
$42,897, but a side-by-side comparison between the two cases would not be fair 
since Armandariz' is a capital murder trial and the prosecution is seeking the 
death penalty.

At the Young County Commissioners Court meeting Monday, Jan. 12, officials, 
including County Auditor Cheryl Roberts, County Judge John Bullock and several 
commissioners, discussed the ongoing cost accrual of the nearly 4 year case 
that's received national attention since April 2011, when Amandariz' 2 young 
children, Luke, 6 months, and Gatlin, 2, were found dead under their residence 
on the 300 block of Third Street in Graham.

Armandariz has since stood accused of murdering both children, and 1 of his 
attorneys pleaded not guilty on his behalf at the Tim Curry Criminal Justice 
Center in Fort Worth Wednesday, Jan. 14.

"This began April or May of 2011, and to date, not to shock anybody, but it's 
already cost close to half a million I believe," Bullock said Monday, though he 
also qualified Tuesday he cannot speculate on what it will cost by the time the 
trial concludes. "It's supposed to take them 4 to 6 weeks to pick a jury."

County officials say that the bulk of the cost comes from expenses related to 
the defense counsel, including hotel, travel and hourly rates.

A breakdown of the rising cost of capital murder trials from The Marshall 
Project, a publication devoted to journalism about the American criminal 
justice system, lists 6 major factors for their astronomical price tags: cost 
of attorneys, cost of expert witnesses, trial unpredictability, mitigation, 
jury selection and housing.

"Armandariz is now in Tarrant County's custody," Roberts told the court Monday. 
"We'll have some out-of-county housing (costs) there."

A December 2014 Marshall Project article titled, "The Price of Death," lists 
several Texas counties that have recently sought death penalties, including 
Jasper County, which shelled out $730,640.55 to sentence 2 white supremacists 
to death in 2000; and Levi County, which in 2008 ended up paying $885,382.33 to 
seek the death penalty for Levi King, a man who murdered a pregnant woman and 2 
others.

After that trial, Levi County "was forced to raise taxes and suspend 
employees," the article states, and then summarizes why capital case costs have 
risen dramatically in the last few decades.

"Increasing legal protections for defendants has translated into more and more 
hours of preparatory work by both sides. Fees for court-appointed attorneys and 
expert witnesses have climbed. Where once psychiatrists considered an IQ test 
and a quick interview sufficient to establish the mental state of a defendant, 
now it is routine to obtain an entire mental-health history.

(source: The Graham Leader)

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

Kaufman DA's killer has brain damage, lawyer says



Testing has found signs of brain damage in Eric Williams, who was sentenced to 
death in connection with the murder of the Kaufman County district attorney and 
2 others, his attorney says.

KTVT-TV (Channel 11) and the Terrell Tribune reported Friday that Williams' 
lawyer is seeking a new trial because of the findings.

A judge had agreed to medical tests to determine whether Williams, a former 
justice of the peace, had been driven to violence because of neurological 
damage that might have resulted from diabetes.

Williams was charged with capital murder in the fatal January 2013 shooting of 
prosecutor Mark Hasse. He was also charged in the March slayings of District 
Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, at their home near Forney.

Williams was found guilty last month of killing Cynthia McLelland and has been 
sentenced to death.

His wife, Kim, pleaded guilty to 1st-degree murder in Hasse's death and was 
sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Williams' lawyer, John Wright, said tests conducted this month at the 
University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston found signs of injury to 
Williams' brain, the Terrell Tribune reported.

A member of the prosecution team told KTVT that the motion had been expected 
and shouldn't pose a problem in Williams' conviction.

(source: Dallas Morning News)








PENNSYLVANIA:

DA to seek death penalty in death of man found in burned car



A Pennsylvania district attorney is seeking the death penalty against a man 
charged with fatally shooting a man whose body was found in the trunk of burned 
car.

The defense attorney for 18-year-old Jonta Bishop, of Hagerstown, maintains 
Bishop shot 36-year-old James Deneen Jr. in self-defense. The Hyndman man was 
shot on September 25 before his body was stuffed into the car, which was then 
set on fire in Londonderry Township in south-central Pennsylvania.

But Bedford County District Attorney contends Bishop's self-defense claims are 
refused by the fact that Deneen was shot in the back of the head.

3 other people are accused of helping Bishop dispose of the body.

A judge delayed Bishop's formal arraignment Thursday after Higgins announced 
he'd seek the death penalty. That's because a death penalty-qualified attorney 
must now represent Bishop.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Patriot-News, liberals disrespect victims by opposing death penalty: PennLive 
letters



As a best selling author is fond of saying, "liberalism is a mental disorder," 
and after seeing the ultra liberal Patriot-News Editorial Board's argument to 
abolish the death penalty, I must conclude that the author is correct.

Does justice not cry out for the ultimate penalty for the killers of the York 
school teacher who was brutally tortured and murdered, and the young woman you 
featured in Sunday's edition who was the victim of premeditated murder for her 
vehicle? You have the unmitigated gall to bring cost savings into the 
discussion.

If the victim were a relative of the members of the Patriot-News Editorial 
Board or Tom Wolf, I predict the hypocrisy of liberals would be on display for 
all to see.

MICHAEL A. CATARINO, Monroe Twp.

(source: Letter to the Editor, pennlive.com)








GEORGIA----impending execution

Death-row inmate Warren Hill scheduled to die on January 27



Death-row inmate Warren Lee Hill will once again face the execution chamber 
despite continuous attempts to spare his life for much of the last 3 decades.

Earlier this afternoon, a Lee County judge ordered the Georgia Department of 
Corrections to execute Hill, who has an IQ of 70, sometime between Jan. 27 and 
Feb. 3. Hill was initially found guilty in 1986 for murdering his 
then-girlfriend Myra Wright. He landed on death row 4 years later after being 
convicted of killing inmate Joseph Handspike, who was asleep in his prison 
cell, with a nail-studded 2-by-6 board.

Hill's lawyers haven't contested his guilt. But they have filed continuous 
legal appeals over the years in hopes of sparing his life. Across the nation, 
an IQ of 70 or below is typically considered to be the standard for proving 
intellectual disability. But Georgia, which has the nation's toughest burden of 
proof when it comes to determining someone's mental capacity, hasn't ruled in 
Hill's favor.

Yet Hill has managed to stay alive through multiple stays of execution. The 
most recent stay came from a Fulton County judge during a legal challenge over 
the Georgia's controversial lethal injection secrecy law. The state ultimately 
won that courtroom fight. But it bought Hill enough time to potentially benefit 
from the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision, Hall v. Florida, last May that 
increased protections for death row inmates trying to avoid execution due to 
intellectual disability.

Back in October, Towaliga Judicial Circuit Judge Thomas Wilson tossed out a 
Hill's legal request to claim intellectual disability, a designation that would 
make him immune from execution, following the Hall v. Florida ruling. But 
Wilson urged the Georgia Supreme Court to review the case in light of the 
decision made by the nation's highest court. Hill's attorney, Brian Kammer, 
then filed a request for an appeal with the Georgia Supreme Court.

At that October hearing, Kammer says, the state's lawyers assured Wilson that 
the Georgia Supreme Court would take a serious look at the issue. That 
assurance led Wilson to dismiss Hill's request, Kammer says.

"What's really galling about this execution warrant is they're...seeking out an 
execution order before the Georgia Supreme Court reviews the case," Kammer 
tells CL.

Kammer today responded by filing another motion for a stay of execution with 
the Georgia Supreme Court. The motion is currently pending. Georgia Supreme 
Court spokeswoman Jane Hansen tells CL a ruling is expected "any day" on 
Kammer's initial request for an appeal. But she did not comment regarding a 
potential decision for the stay of execution.

Hill's latest execution order comes at a time when state officials have 
recently accelerated its execution rate. If killed, Hill would be the 3rd 
death-row inmate in the last 2 months to be killed in Georgia. The recent 
uptick comes on the heels of a year when the lowest number of executions 
occurred in 20 years. In 2014, corrections officials executed 35 people in 7 
states, in part due to high-profile botched executions in Arizona, Ohio, and 
Oklahoma.

"It's extremely troubling that as the rest of the country dramatically slows 
down the pace of executions, here in Georgia we seem to be moving faster," 
Southern Center for Human Rights Executive Director Sara Totonchi tells CL. 
"...Sometimes I think when we see the end of something coming, we tend to hold 
on even tighter. The death penalty has been a part of our culture and politics 
in Georgia. As the nation moves away from it, we seem to be steeped in this 
draconian tradition."

According to Totonochi, Georgia officials are currently killing death-row 
inmates faster that any other point in the last decade. She says that's likely 
happened given that, for the first time in years, state officials can hold 
executions without major legal challenges obstructing the process.

"I'm sure the state sees the writing on the wall that the death penalty is on 
its way out," she says.

Lauren Kane, spokeswoman for Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens, says in a 
statement that Hill "has concluded his direct appeal proceedings and his state 
and federal habeas corpus proceedings." The statement also says that his 
execution date is set for Jan. 27 - the very 1st day of the 7-day execution 
window.

(source: Creative Loafing Atlanta)








FLORIDA----new execution date

Execution scheduled for man convicted of killing ex-wife, daughter, and in-laws



An execution date has been set for a man found guilty of murdering his ex-wife, 
5-year-old daughter, mother-in-law and sister-in-law in a Conway-area home 30 
years ago.

Jerry Correll, 59, is scheduled for execution on Feb. 26 at 6 p.m., according 
to a death warrant signed by Gov. Rick Scott.

Correll was found guilty of fatally stabbing his ex-wife, Susan Correll; their 
5-year-old daughter, Tuesday Correll; and his ex-wife's mother and sister, Mary 
Lou Hines and Marybeth Jones.

He was sentenced to death in 1986.

Correll's execution has been scheduled before. In January of 1990, Gov. Bob 
Martinez signed his death warrant, saying Correll was to die in an electric 
chair in March of that year.

But 4 days before the scheduled execution, a U.S. District Court judge in Tampa 
granted Correll a stay after he and his lawyers claimed the defense during his 
trial was inadequate.

Correll exhausted his appeals in February of 2014, when the U.S. Supreme Court 
declined to review the case, court records show.

Florida's most recent execution came Thursday with the death of Johnny Shane 
Kormondy, 42, who was given a lethal injection. Kormondy was found guilty of 
breaking into a banker's home in 1993, murdering him and raping his wife.

Kormondy was the 21st inmate executed under Scott. Scott and former Gov. Jeb 
Bush are now tied for having the highest number of executions since the death 
penalty was reinstated in Florida in 1979, according to the Associated Press.

(source: Orlando Sentinel)








MISSISSIPPI:

Former death row inmate ruled mentally disabled



A former death row inmate who came within an hour of being executed in 1997 has 
been permanently removed from death row by a judge who ruled he is mentally 
disabled.

Willie Russell was sentenced to die for the July 18, 1989, stabbing death of 
correctional officer Argentra Cotton at Unit 24-B. Russell had previously been 
convicted of robbery, kidnapping and escape. He abducted a guard at the 
University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson when he was there for 
medical treatment in March 1987 and led police on a high-speed chase into rural 
Hinds County.

Russell came within less than an hour of execution on Jan. 21, 1997, before the 
5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay due to his claim of mental 
retardation.

There have been numerous court rulings in Russell's case. The case was sent on 
appeal back to the circuit court of Sunflower County to rule on Russell's 
mental retardation claim.

Circuit Judge Betty Sanders recently ruled that Russell was mentally retarded, 
therefore permanently removing him from death row. The Constitution prohibits 
the execution of mentally retarded individuals.

Russell will remain in prison, just not facing the death penalty.

(source: Clarion-Lledger)








OHIO:

2 arrested in Clark County shooting death



2 teenagers have been arrested in connection with the shooting death and 
robbery of a Clark County gun collector who had hundreds of firearms at his 
home. Robert V. Winbush, 18, of Fairborn, has been charged with aggravated 
murder, aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary. He pleaded not guilty 
Friday in Clark County Municipal Court. Judge Thomas Trempe set his bond at $1 
million.

Raymond Zimmerman, 17, address at large, has been charged with a delinquent act 
of murder and is in the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center. Zimmerman is 
the nephew of shooting victim William Henson and briefly lived with him, 
according to a sheriff's report.

"He had the knowledge and information of where the victim lived and how to gain 
access," Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly said.

The Clark County Prosecutor's Office filed a motion Friday seeking to have 
Zimmerman face charges as an adult. Juvenile Court Judge Joseph Monnin said 
Friday that it will likely be 2 to 3 weeks before he rules on the motion.

This news outlet typically doesn't name juveniles but has in this case due to 
the severity of the accusations and request to charge Zimmerman as an adult.

Winbush could face the death penalty. Clark County Prosecutor Andrew Wilson 
said his office will decide whether to pursue the death penalty closer to when 
he presents the case to a grand jury.

Deputies began the investigation Wednesday morning when they got a call from 
the victim's sister that she had found Henson, 59, dead in his home at 10799 
Haddix Road. The house was in disarray and several guns were missing.

Investigators spoke to witnesses who said Winbush and Zimmerman told them about 
the shooting, a sheriff's report stated.

After 36 hours of combing through and cataloging evidence, the Clark County 
Sheriff's Office worked with multiple agencies to execute search warrants at 3 
residences in Fairborn. During those searches, deputies said they found 38 guns 
and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

The suspects had allegedly sold some of the firearms already, Kelly said, and 
were trying to sell others online.

The teens also reportedly had traded some guns for drugs, Maj. Russell Garman 
said.

"The combination of guns and ammunition on the streets where they are going to 
be traded for drugs or cash, they could have wreaked havoc on southwest Ohio," 
Kelly said.

Henson had served in the military and was a good man, his cousin Jeremy Jarvis 
said.

He was private and wouldn't let just anyone into his home, Jarvis said, so it 
didn't surprise him to learn a relative has been accused in the death.

"Bill had a small social circle so he didn't associate with too many people," 
Jarvis said.

Franklin Collins lived a few doors down from Henson and said he was disturbed 
by the news of his death.

"I hated it," Collins said. "I liked Bill as a neighbor."

He said he was relieved to hear that it was an acquaintance and not a random 
burglar.

"I'm just relieved that it wasn't people coming from other places and doing it, 
but it's sad Bill had to go that way," Collins said.

(source: Dayton Daily News)