[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.H., MASS., N.C., GA., FLA.

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 23



TEXAS:

Ward death penalty appeal denied



A Commerce man is still facing death by lethal injection, after being convicted 
of capital murder for killing of one of the city's code enforcement officers 
almost 10 years ago.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Thursday rejected the latest appeal 
from Adam Kelly Ward of his 2007 conviction. Ward's attorneys had argued Ward's 
trial counsel was deficient.

The court also denied a writ of habeas corpus filed in Ward's behalf last year.

In the writ, Ward contended his 2007 conviction and death sentence were 
unconstitutional because he received ineffective assistance of trial counsel, 
was not tried by an impartial jury, and is severely mentally ill.

The court reviewed the case and in a 63-page opinion denied the writ in a 
unanimous ruling, also noting Ward failed to make a substantial showing of the 
denial of a constitutional right.

Ward's defense counsel then filed the formal appeal with the court, which was 
the basis of this week's ruling.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, in February 2010 ruling, also denied an 
appeal raised by Ward, who was convicted of capital murder involving the 
shooting death of Michael "Pee Wee" Walker.

Walker was working as a code enforcement officer for the City of Commerce when 
shortly after 10 a.m. on June 13, 2005, he was taking photos of alleged code 
violations at the home where Ward lived on Caddo Street. The 2 engaged in a 
verbal altercation, which ended when Ward shot Walker as many as 9 times with a 
.45 caliber semi-automatic pistol.

In order to have been convicted of capital murder, the prosecution had to show 
Ward knowingly and intentionally either obstructed Walker's ability to do his 
job or retaliated against Walker for doing his job as a public servant, while 
in the course of committing the killing.

(source: Royse City Herald-Banner)








NEW HAMPSHIRE:

Attorneys spar over a killer's life



15 years ago, Houston police officer Tony Blando was handcuffing a man he 
caught driving a stolen Lexus.

One arm of car thief Jeffrey Williams was already in cuffs when he spun around, 
pulled out a handgun and shot Blando fatally in the chest. Williams, 23, had 
shot another person in an earlier robbery.

During his trial, he was described as a loner with an IQ that put him as 
borderline developmentally disabled. He came from an intact, church-going 
family, but his mother said "something up there was not right."

A jury sentenced him to death, and the state of Texas executed him in 
2013.Geographically and culturally, Texas is far apart from Manchester. But 
homicide prosecutors say that Blando's killing is similar enough to the 2006 
murder of Manchester police officer Michael Briggs to show that our state's 1st 
death sentence in nearly a half-century is not out of the ordinary.

6 years ago, Michael Addison was sentenced to death by a Hillsborough County 
jury. The verdict has been upheld on appeal. All that remains - at least for 
the New Hampshire Supreme Court - is to decide whether the death sentence is 
similar - the legal word is proportional - to similar crimes.

So prosecutors and Addison's lawyers have scoured websites and researched cases 
from around the country - including Texas, Indiana, Florida, South Carolina, 
New Jersey, California - all to prove their case.

Where they're not looking, however, is New Hampshire.

It's not like there aren't similar crimes. Consider the 1997 killing of Epsom 
police officer Jeremy Charron. There are a lot of similarities between the 2 
cases.

Charron's killer, Gordon Perry, had a lengthy criminal record, as did Addison. 
Perry and a buddy had robbed a convenience store before killing Charron. 
(Addison and his accomplice had gone on a lengthier crime spree in the days 
leading to Briggs' murder.)

A police manhunt followed both killings. (Perry???s accomplice actually leaned 
out of a car speeding on the highway and shot at police.)

The biggest similarity: Both offered to plead guilty to life in prison to avoid 
the death penalty.

Perry's plea bargain was accepted, and he is serving his sentence in Maine. 
Then Attorney General Kelly Ayotte wouldn't accept Addison's guilty plea, 
forcing him to stand trial.

In her closing argument, Ayotte, who is now a U.S. senator, gave her reasons 
for seeking the death penalty. Addison would face as many as 63 years behind 
bars for a prior robbery spree, so a life-without-parole sentence would mean 
little, she said.

"This cold-blooded murder cannot be an afterthought," she said then. But the 
Supreme Court isn't comparing Perry to Addison. That's because of rules the 
court laid out in making the comparisons between Addison and other 
death-penalty cases.

Any case has to involve the killing of a police officer without premeditation. 
That rules out other New Hampshire capital crimes - mostly murder for hire - 
that didn't involve a police killing or premeditation. Any case has to involve 
a jury verdict. That rules out the Perry plea bargain.

Any comparison had to involve a defendant, like Addison, who was deemed to not 
be a danger if sentenced to prison.

And so, lawyers have researched cases from across the country and read legal 
briefs (it's easier nowadays online.) Attorney General Joseph Foster's team 
found a mere 10 cases they claim fit the Addison mold. Juries issued only 2 
life sentences; the remainder were death sentences.

Addison's team of public defenders came up with 366 cases. 153 received a life 
sentence.

"Both sides are cherry picking," said Albert "Buzz" Scherr, a former public 
defender and a law professor at University of New Hampshire.

It all comes back, he said, to the Supreme Court and its definition of what 
cases can be compared to Addison. To Scherr, it was a question of making the 
task manageable. If researchers had to look at cases involving plea-bargains 
and charging decisions - which are made by prosecutors - it wouldn't be easy.

"Those are all messier criteria to select cases with," he said.

They also eliminate any New Hampshire comparisons. So if Addison is eventually 
executed, that execution will be justified by jury decisions made in places 
like Texas, Georgia and New Jersey.

Phil McLaughlin is the former attorney general who ended up offering Perry the 
plea bargain. At the time, he had no qualms about the death penalty, he said. 
Now McLaughlin, the son of a former Nashua police detective, opposes it.

The Perry case was weaker than the Addison case. McLaughlin said state police 
sat on evidence that was favorable to Perry, and some evidence pointed to 
Perry's accomplice as the killer.

McLaughlin doesn't compare the Addison verdict to the Perry case. He compares 
it to the John Brooks case.

The same year that Addison, a black hoodlum from Boston, was sentenced to 
death, the wealthy Derry businessman avoided a death sentence when a New 
Hampshire jury sentenced him to life in prison.

Brooks planned the murder and paid people to do it, McLaughlin said. Addison 
killed Briggs spontaneously.

"One of them happened to be white. One of them happened to be black. I cannot 
reconcile that," McLaughlin said. "Let's go 20 years out and explain that to my 
grandchildren."

(source: Union Leader)








MASSACHUSETTS:

Revisit the death penalty? Not even now



Massachusetts has a reputation for deep opposition to the death penalty. But as 
the Globe's Milton Valencia has reported, many potential jurors in the federal 
terrorism trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev seem comfortable with the idea of capital 
punishment, when it comes to the accused Boston Marathon bomber.

So can we expect Beacon Hill to revisit capital punishment for state crimes? So 
far, the answer is no, for 2 reasons: The Democratic caucus in the State House 
has become more liberal, and constituents haven't been vocal on the issue.

For a long time, Republican supporters of the death penalty could rely on 
support from a cadre of centrist Democrats. In 1997, a bill to reinstate 
capital punishment was defeated with a tie vote in the House. 8 years later, 
then-Governor Mitt Romney introduced legislation to reinstate the death penalty 
for crimes involving torture, terrorism, multiple murders, or the slaying of a 
police officer - as long as there was "conclusive scientific evidence," such as 
DNA samples, connecting the defendant to the crime. That initiative lost in the 
House by a wider margin, 100 to 53, but still attracted some Democratic 
support.

As more progressives have filled the ranks of State House Democrats, it has 
become harder for a capital punishment measure to make it very far. In 2013, 
Democratic legislator James R. Miceli of Wilmington filed a budget bill 
amendment that would have reinstated the death penalty along the lines Romney 
proposed. It was beaten back without much debate, despite the fact that the 
Marathon bombing had recently occurred. At the time, some lawmakers said they 
didn't want to respond to 1 crime with a "knee-jerk reaction."

That mood seems to remain among the public at large. Some legislators say that, 
despite the Tsarnaev trial, they haven't heard a hue and cry about the death 
penalty from constituents. That says something about how conflicted 
Massachusetts residents can be about the issue. It also says something 
heartening about the Commonwealth's approach to criminal justice: One case, 
however tragic or appalling, doesn't warrant a rewriting of the law.

(source: Opinion, Noah Guiney; Boston Globe)








NORTH CAROLINA:

State judges exonerate Joseph Sledge



8 inmates have now been found innocent after investigations by the North 
Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. The commission, established in 2006, is 
the 1st of its kind in the nation: a state agency with the power to investigate 
claims of innocence. Since 2007, the commission has reviewed more than 1,600 
applications.

The other inmates exonerated and freed by three-judge panels after a commission 
investigation:

-- Greg Taylor, 2010, the f1t prisoner freed through the commission process. 
Taylor had been wrongly convicted of killing Jacquetta Thomas in downtown 
Raleigh in 1993.

-- Kenneth Kagonyera and Robert Wilcoxson, 2011. The two men had been 
convicted of a robbery and murder in Buncombe County in 2001.

-- Willie Grimes, 2012. Grimes was already on parole for a 1987 rape and 
kidnapping conviction in Hickory for which he served 24 years.

-- Henry McCollum and Leon Brown of Robeson County, half brothers, 2014. They 
were cleared of the 1983 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl after serving 
31 years behind bars. After the commission began to investigate, the district 
attorney agreed to have their conviction overturned.

-- Willie Henderson Womble, 2014. The district attorney in the case joined 
efforts to have Womble cleared of a 1976 robbery and murder.

Joseph Sledge is innocent.

Those simple words reverberated through a small county office Friday afternoon, 
a stone's throw from the Columbus County courthouse where Sledge's life was 
derailed in 1978. Sledge has waited more than 13,000 days to hear them.

Sledge has been proclaiming his innocence of the murders of Josephine and 
Ailene Davis since he was initially blamed in 1976. From the start, he has 
asked prosecutors, police and judges to take another look at his case. It took 
nearly four decades for the justice system to correct its mistake.

Sledge spoke briefly during the hearing. "Davis family members, I'm very, very 
sorry for your loss," he said. "I hope you get closure in this matter."

Catherine Brown, granddaughter of Josephine Davis, had appeared before the 
commission in December to argue against Sledge's release. She appeared in court 
on Friday to tell the judges that her family is heartbroken. She asked the 
community for help in finding the actual killer.

Sledge becomes the eighth man exonerated through a unique process established 
in North Carolina in 2006 to freshly examine claims of innocence from prisoners 
with cases long considered hopeless. The Innocence Inquiry Commission examined 
Sledge's case for more than a year, building on an investigation by the 
nonprofit North Carolina Center for Actual Innocence.

The commission voted unanimously in December to send Sledge's case to a 3-judge 
panel for further review.

The hearing on Friday was mostly procedural. Columbus County District Attorney 
Jon David bypassed a hearing on the evidence, deciding instead to join efforts 
to exonerate Sledge. He apologized to Sledge and said he would reopen the case, 
using new DNA evidence to help find the killer.

A 3-judge panel, led by Johnston County Superior Court Judge Tom Lock, heard 
evidence about the DNA testing on hairs collected from the crime scene in 1976. 
The judges heard from the clerk who discovered the hairs in 2012, lying flat in 
an envelope on the highest shelf in the clerk of court's storage room.

The hairs - long thought to be destroyed or lost - were Sledge's salvation. 
They had been collected from the victims' exposed torso or bloody forehead, 
leaving detectives to believe the killer had left them behind. DNA testing in 
late 2012 proved what Sledge had insisted all along: Those hairs did not belong 
to him.

For years, Christine Mumma, Sledge's attorney and director of the Center on 
Actual Innocence, investigated Sledge's case. The commission joined the effort 
1 1/2 years ago.

The 2 entities interviewed dozens of people, testing memories that had faded 
over decades. Commission staff discovered crime scene evidence and 
investigators' notes that local sheriff's deputies had said for years had been 
lost or destroyed. They commission spent $60,000 on forensic testing.

2 of Sledge's siblings came to court today to greet him after decades of 
separation. They plan to take him to his native Georgia, where their mother 
saved some land for Sledge, hoping this day might eventually come.

Friday's exoneration entitles Sledge to compensation from the state, which must 
now pay him $750,000 for the 36 years he spent in prison.

(source: newsobserver.com)








GEORGIA----impending execution

Executing prisoner in Georgia would be a travesty of justice



Warren Lee Hill Jr., a 54-year-old Georgia man, has killed 2 people - his 
girlfriend in 1986, for which he was sentenced to life in prison, and a 
cellmate in 1990, for which he was sentenced to death. After a convoluted legal 
odyssey that has included 5 previous appeals to the Supreme Court and a 
reprieve from a 2013 execution date, the state of Georgia is now planning to 
put him to death by lethal injection Tuesday - an unconstitutional act that 
would once again spotlight the inanity of the nation's capital punishment 
system.

Why is it unconstitutional? Because he is not eligible for the death penalty. 4 
defense experts testified in 2000 that based on his IQ of 70 - the statistical 
threshold for intellectual disability - and his limited adaptive skills, Hill 
is intellectually disabled. The state of Georgia countered with 3 experts who 
worked in a rush; only 8 days passed from their 1st assessment to their 
testimony. 2 of the experts relied heavily on the observations of the third, 
who in 2013 conceded in an affidavit that he had been ill-prepared to assess 
Hill and retracted his conclusion. The other state experts have retracted their 
testimony as well. Now all seven agree that Hill is intellectually disabled.

Under the Supreme Court's 2002 Atkins vs. Virginia decision, executing someone 
who is mentally retarded, to use the jargon of the time, violates the 8th 
Amendment's proscription against cruel and unusual punishment.

Nevertheless, Georgia says it will execute him anyway - and it may be able to 
do so on a technicality. In 2013, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 
that it could not consider a new challenge based on the experts' revised 
affidavits because the court had already rejected a previous appeal over Hill's 
intellectual disability. So in deference to procedural rules, Georgia - and the 
federal court system - may be about to put to death a man who has a 
constitutional right to leniency.

The legal system relies on rules to work, but justice requires common sense. 
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles will consider the case Monday and 
should, on both legal and humanitarian grounds, commute Hill's sentence to life 
in prison without parole (a sentence supported by relatives of his victim). If 
the board doesn't act, the Supreme Court should intervene, as Hill's lawyers 
have asked, and end this travesty.

(source: Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times)

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

Support Clemency for Warren Hill

January 23, 2015Terry Barnard, Chair

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles

Floyd Veterans Memorial Building

Balcony Level, East Tower

2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, S.E.

Atlanta, GA 30334-4909

Dear Chairman Barnard and members of the board,

I am writing to urge you to grant clemency to a man deserving of mercy, Warren 
Hill. The Board of Pardons and Paroles is an essential component of the justice 
system, and as members of the Board, you contribute mercy and grace to a system 
that is often unable to consider either. This Board has the tremendous 
responsibility of evaluating the decisions of the Courts and occasionally 
modifying sentences when they do not serve the public interest or meet evolving 
standards of decency. I come to you now pleading for the life of Warren Hill, a 
55 year old man with intellectual disability (formerly known as "mental 
retardation"). Warren grew up in poverty in Elberton, Georgia with his brothers 
and sisters in a household where they were exposed to chronic domestic violence 
in which Warren's alcoholic-dependent father would viciously assault his 
mother. In turn, Warren's mother took her anger and despair out on Warren, 
beating him regularly. Warren suffered from debilitating seizures throughout 
his childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. Warren has a family history of 
"mental retardation" and borderline intellectual functioning. His jury heard 
almost nothing about these topics at his 1991 capital trial in rural Leesburg, 
Georgia. With only the choices of a life sentence with the chance of parole or 
the death penalty before them, jurors sentenced Warren to death.

Several jurors who sat on Warren's original jury have since stated under oath 
that they would have sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole 
had that been an option at the time of his 1991 trial. And, having subsequently 
learned that ample evidence was available demonstrating that he is 
significantly intellectually limited, including an undisputed IQ of 70 
accompanied by significant adaptive deficits in basic coping skills involving 
things like communication, social skills, functional academics, abstract 
thinking, judgment, and impulse control, among others; the former jurors have 
indicated that life without parole is the most appropriate sentence for someone 
like Warren Hill. Furthermore, there is unanimous agreement by every doctor who 
has examined him that Warren Hill is a person with intellectual disability.

Importantly, a Georgia state court judge, convinced by the evidence, found 
Warren to be "mentally retarded" by a preponderance of the evidence in 2002, 
the same year the United States Supreme Court banned the execution of those 
with intellectual disability because their unique disability places them at 
"special risk of wrongful execution." Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002). 
However, Warren still faces execution solely because Georgia is the only state 
in the country to impose the law's heaviest burden of proof, "beyond a 
reasonable doubt," on defendants seeking to prove that they have an 
intellectual disability and are thus ineligible for execution.

Numerous mental health and disability groups, including the Georgia Council on 
Developmental Disabilities, the Arc of Georgia, Georgia-based All About 
Developmental Disabilities (AADD) and the American Association on Intellectual 
and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD), have expressed their opposition to Mr. 
Hill's execution.

I am deeply concerned that if Georgia puts Warren Hill to death, it will have 
failed to uphold its moral and legal obligation not to execute persons with 
mental retardation 13 years after passage of legislation banning such 
executions. I believe that the public interest would be served by commuting 
Warren Hill's sentence to life without the possibility of parole. The Board's 
discretion to commute Mr. Hill's death sentence is Georgia's last chance to 
prevent an unconscionable execution. The Board has the opportunity to act as 
the "fail safe" in this case where the legal mechanism of our capital 
punishment system made a mistake which it cannot or will not act to correct.

I ask you to please show Warren Hill mercy and grant him clemency.

Sincerely,

(see: 
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ph9PB6lzJif8MClWgXW8Ff2YJDUjxrcNBhq3VT6aSEM/viewform)

(source: google.com)








FLORIDA:

Broward judge sentences Dunkin' Donuts killer to death



James Herard, the convicted killer already serving multiple life sentences for 
his role in a slew of robberies at Dunkin' Donuts stores in Broward and Palm 
Beach counties, was sentenced to death Friday for the Nov. 2008 murder of Eric 
Jean-Pierre in Lauderhill.

Broward Circuit Judge Paul Backman pronounced his sentence after spending 45 
minutes reading from Herard's lengthy list of offenses. He called Herard "the 
sole driving force" in Jean-Pierre's murder, more responsible than the person 
who actually pulled the trigger.

Herard, 25, wearing a red jail jumpsuit, shook his head repeatedly, grinned, 
and reclined in his chair and made faces while Backman read his decision.

"The aggravating factors in this case are overwhelming," Backman said. "The 
defendant's actions ... clearly showed indifference to human life."

The defendant's mother, the only family member to attend the hearing, sobbed 
uncontrollably as he was led from the courtroom.

Herard, 25, was convicted in May of first-degree murder in the death of Kiem 
Huynh, 58, a Dunkin' Donuts customer who was shot in the back as a warning to 
other store patrons during a violent Thanksgiving Day 2008 robbery in Tamarac.

That robbery was the deadliest of four incidents jurors said Herard coordinated 
as a leader of the "Bacc Street Crips" gang. The other robberies were in Delray 
Beach, Sunrise and Plantation.

But the jury that convicted Herard recommended by an 8-4 vote that he be put to 
death for the earlier murder, which was otherwise unrelated to any of the 
robberies.

Herard and fellow gang member Tharod Bell were engaged in what they called a 
"body count contest" on Nov. 14, 2008 when they set their sights on 
Jean-Pierre, a 39-year-old restaurant worker whose only mistake, the judge 
said, was walking home after a long shift and crossing paths with Herard and 
Bell.

In a recorded statement to police, Herard said he goaded Bell into shooting the 
victim with a 20-gauge shotgun. "Tharod would not have done it if I did not 
provoke him," Herard said.

Backman noted that Herard had already tried to kill another fellow gang member 
who had refused to shoot a rival a month before. Bell would have faced Herard's 
murderous wrath if he refused to follow Herard's instruction, Backman said.

"He put the shotgun in Bell's hands," Backman said.

Bell pleaded guilty, and as part of a plea agreement, he is scheduled to be 
sentenced to 50 years in prison Friday afternoon. Bell is already serving 7 
life sentences following his 2012 conviction in the Delray Beach robbery case.

Broward Circuit Judge Paul Backman, aware of the plea deal, was tasked with 
deciding whether to follow the jury's recommendation in sentencing Herard, 
knowing he was not the actual shooter. He did not mention Bell's negotiated 
sentence while issuing his ruling.

Defense lawyer Mitch Polay said he will contest the sentence, arguing the 
actual shooter should not get a more lenient sentence than someone who merely 
encouraged him to commit the crime.

Backman defended his decision, calling Herard a major participant in the murder 
of Jean-Pierre.

Other members of the gang have already been sentenced.

(source: Sun-Sentinel)

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

Man Convicted of Killing Toddler Facing Death Sentence



A Tampa Bay area man convicted of killing his former girlfriend's 2-year-old 
daughter is facing a possible death sentence.

A Pinellas County jury convicted 29-year-old Joel Cruz on Thursday of 
1st-degree murder. The panel will reconvene next week to recommend either life 
in prison or the death penalty. A judge will make the final decision.

Authorities say Ananhie Fernandez was repeatedly beaten while in Cruz's care in 
May 2013. Cruz had put the girl to bed, but when the girl's mother discovered 
the injuries, she had Cruz take them to the hospital, where the girl died.

Cruz had tried to claim the injuries came from a fall, but the medical examiner 
testified the injuries couldn't have been an accident.

(source: nbcmiami.com)