[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., VA., GA., LA., IND.

[Rick Halperin]

June 13



TEXAS:

Former death row inmate Cathy Henderson pleads guilty in baby's death



Once just 2 days away from execution, former baby sitter Cathy Lynn Henderson 
on Friday pleaded guilty to murder in the 1994 death of an infant and was 
sentenced to 25 years in prison, months before her case was to go to trial a 
2nd time.

The 58-year-old woman, who had been charged with the higher offense of capital 
murder in the killing of 3-month-old Brandon Baugh, hobbled into the courtroom 
on crutches with the help of her lawyers. After a litany of appeals based on 
new scientific evidence favorable to her defense, she no longer faced the death 
penalty but could have been punished with up to life in prison if convicted.

(source: American-Statesman)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Wolf, Legislature scrap as issues, rhetoric heat up----State police 
commissioner, death penalty among volatile issues



In the weeks before and after the state budget deadline, the air tends to be 
thick with rhetoric and outrage, real or feigned.

The GOP-controlled Legislature has been batting the governor around like a chew 
toy. The Senate rejected Gov. Tom Wolf's pick for state police commissioner and 
delighted in the Commonwealth Court decision reversing the governor's move to 
fire an agency director. The House rebuked Wolf's death penalty moratorium and 
cried foul over an agency letter warning about the funding ramifications of a 
late budget.

Wolf's office hasn't ceded any ground. The governor has stood by his chosen 
acting police commissioner. His administration quickly filed an appeal to the 
court ruling that reinstated longtime Senate GOP aide Erik Arneson as director 
of the Office of Open Records. Wolf's death penalty moratorium, issued due to 
concerns that the capital punishment system is flawed and costly, remains in 
place (though the state Supreme Court is taking up a lawsuit challenging it). 
And the governor claims to have had no knowledge of a Department of Labor and 
Industry letter to the Pennsylvania Association for the Blind.

(source: York Daily Record)

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

Pennsylvania does not have the drugs to perform lethal injections; Corrections 
Secretary says



If the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections was ordered to execute a prisoner 
by lethal injection tomorrow, it would not have the drugs to do it.

Corrections Secretary John Wetzel told the Pennlive/Patriot-News Editorial 
Board Friday that that state does not currently have the drugs needed to 
perform lethal injections.

And if he needed to get them, Wetzel said there's no easy way to acquire them.

Some states -- including Texas and Nebraska -- have been criticized for how 
they obtained their drugs and where they purchased them. If the state needed to 
purchase the drugs, Wetzel said it would be an open process.

"We would get it legally, ethically and appropriately," Wetzel said.

Pennsylvania uses a 3 drug cocktail to perform lethal injections. The 1st part 
-- a fast acting barbiturate -- is very difficult to obtain, Wetzel said.

Finding difficulty in obtaining these drugs is nothing new, Wetzel said. In 
2014, the state was unable to get the necessary drugs in 2014 to execute 
Michael Hubert, who was convicted of kidnaping, raping and killing a 
16-year-old girl.

As a result, former Gov. Tom Corbett had to issue a reprieve.

In February, Gov. Tom Wolf declared a moratorium on the death penalty in 
Pennsylvania, halting the process for 186 prisoners who've received a death 
sentence.

Earlier this week, the Pa. House Judiciary Committee overwhelmingly approved a 
resolution that is intended to send a message to Wolf that it strongly 
disapproves of the reprieves he has granted that delayed the execution of 2 
convicted murderers.

(source: pennlive.com)








VIRGINIA:

Impact of Jesse Matthew Fairfax case on Hannah Graham murder trial



An unexpected plea by Jesse Matthew on Wednesday in a 2005 sexual assault trial 
will most likely impact his pending murder trial in the death of University of 
Virginia student Hannah Graham. What is unclear is what role the result might 
play.

After the prosecution rested its case Wednesday, Matthew entered Alford pleas 
for the 3 charges against him.

With an Alford plea, Matthew doesn't admit his guilt, but does admit there is 
enough evidence in the case against him to be convicted.

Charlottesville attorney David Heilberg, who is not involved with either case, 
said a reason for the pleas could be "the faint hope of a sentence less than 
life without parole." Matthew will be sentenced in October.

If Matthew receives a long prison sentence in Fairfax County, the defense team 
could use the sentence as a reason for the prosecution to take the death 
penalty off the table in the Graham murder.

"It may take some of the pressure or heat off Albemarle prosecutors to really 
go after a death sentence," Heilberg said.

With an Alford plea, Matthew cannot challenge the conviction or sentence in the 
Fairfax County case. Also, Virginia doesn't have parole, which means Matthew 
will serve the entire sentence.

Felony convictions could make the job of keeping Matthew off death row even 
harder for his defense team in the Graham case.

Heilberg said if Matthew chooses to testify in his own defense during the 
trial, the fact that he has 3 felony convictions could become known to the 
jury. The jurors would then decide if that should affect his credibility. 
Details about the Fairfax attack wouldn't come out until sentencing, if 
prosecutors push for a death sentence.

"They can almost re-present the Fairfax case to justify the death penalty," 
Heilberg said.

It is unknown if Matthew's defense would urge him to take Alford pleas if the 
Hannah Graham murder case goes to trial, but if he does, he would most likely 
be sentenced to life without parole.

(source: WTOP news)








GEORGIA:

Georgia Inmate Accuses State Of Purposefully Withholding Lethal Injection Test 
Results



A Georgia inmate alleged in court filings Thursday that the state purposefully 
withheld evidence on what went wrong with the controversial execution drugs 
that were supposed to be used in her aborted execution, because the results 
contradicted the state's narrative that the drugs were ruined by a simple 
storage mistake.

Inmate Kelly Gissendaner was scheduled to be put to death in March, but her 
execution was called off prior to the lethal injection after the state found 
particles floating in the syringe. She has sued Georgia, arguing that the state 
put her in "a state of immense fear and anxiety for 13 hours while dithering 
over whether to proceed with her execution."

Georgia has pushed to have the suit dismissed and maintains that the likeliest 
cause of the drug's problems were because of the coldness in which it was 
stored.

However, in supporting that assessment, the state initially withheld test 
results that undermined that argument. State officials originally refused to 
turn over the results to a BuzzFeed News open records request, but later filed 
them in the court, saying they had changed their mind "after reflection."

"The simplest explanation is that [the state] withheld this information because 
it undercut their preferred explanation...," Gissendaner's attorney, Gerald 
"Bo" King wrote in a filing late Thursday. King added that BuzzFeed News forced 
Georgia's hand by publishing that the state was withholding the results.

The Georgia Department of Corrections declined to comment.

State officials performed the test by taking another batch of the drugs and 
storing one version in a cold environment and one at room temperature. If the 
"cold" drug had particles floating in it, but the other one did not, then that 
would support the Department of Corrections' narrative that it was caused by 
temperature.

But at the end of the experiment, both of the drugs were clear.

"Based upon his review of [the state]'s cold-storage testing, however, Dr. 
[Michael] Jay believes that temperature was not a factor in the precipitation 
of their lethal injection drugs," King wrote. "Instead, the fact that the new 
batch of drugs did not precipitate strongly suggests that the drugs obtained 
for Ms. Gissendaner's execution on March 2 were compounded improperly."

The state's own expert, Dr. Jason Zastre, has testified that temperature was 
the likeliest cause of the drug problems, but added that it could also be 
because of deficiencies in how it was mixed.

Georgia, like several other death penalty states, does not used drugs made from 
an FDA-approved manufacturer. Instead, the state relies on a pharmacist to mix 
the drug in secret. Critics say the secrecy prohibits meaningful oversight into 
the qualifications and regulatory history of the people making the drugs.

When the state turned over the experiment's results, Attorney General Sam 
Olens' Office argued that it didn't disprove their argument because "storing 
pentobarbital at temperatures that are too cold does not always cause 
precipitation."

The state would undoubtedly prefer the drug's problems being caused by 
temperature. If that were the case, then this could be prevented from happening 
in the future by Corrections purchasing a new fridge.

But if that isn't what went wrong - and if there are more serious problems with 
how the drug is mixed by a secret pharmacist, as Gissendaner alleges - then it 
will be much harder for the state to fix.

Gissendaner was sentenced to death in 1998 for plotting the death of her 
husband, Douglas Gissendaner, with her boyfriend. The judge has not yet weighed 
in on if Gissendaner can be executed.

(source: buzzfeed.com)



LOUISIANA:

Gentilly triple homicide lawyers: 'The First 48' producers hid footage



The producers of a cable TV crime series that followed New Orleans police 
during its investigation of a Gentilly triple homicide could be in hot water 
with a judge, who said Friday (June 12) she will consider holding someone in 
contempt if she finds they lied about deleted footage.

Shawn Peterson, 43, could face a death sentence if convicted as charged of 
killing his ex-girlfriend and 2 of her children. He appeared last year on an 
episode of A&E's "The First 48," which followed the investigation and his 
arrest.

His attorneys, Christopher Murell and Anna Vancleaver, last year subpoenaed the 
show's producers in seeking footage, including video that did not air on TV. At 
least 1 representative of the show responded in a sworn affidavit that unaired 
scenes were deleted.

Now, the attorneys say they found scenes posted at the show's website that did 
not appear on TV. In papers filed in court last week, the attorneys assert the 
show's representatives made "affirmative misrepresentations" to the court, and 
they want somebody held accountable.

Criminal District Court Judge Laurie White, who did not appear surprised, gave 
defense attorneys the green light to pursue their argument.

"File a motion for contempt and let's bring New York in," White said of the 
show producers. "I knew that was going to happen."

"The First 48" is produced by Kirkstall Road Enterprises, in New York, which is 
listed on Peterson's previous subpoenas for footage. No one answered a phone at 
the company Friday afternoon.

Assistant District Attorney Jason Napoli, who is prosecuting Peterson, said in 
court he had not spoken with the show's producers.

Peterson is charged with 3 counts of 1st-degree murder in the Sept. 11, 2013, 
deaths of Christine George, 39, their son Leonard George, 18, and her daughter 
Trisa George, 20.

Christine George, an NOPD dispatcher, and her children were shot to death 
execution-style in the garage of her home in the 4400 block of Jeanne Marie 
Place. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, a punishment Peterson's 
defense team is seeking to prevent.

How are we going to rule a big executive down from New York to this little old 
court?" - Judge Laurie White

"The First 48," which documents the initial stages of criminal investigations 
across the United States, followed NOPD Detective Darrell Doucette as he and 
his team investigated the homicides and arrested Peterson.

Murell said Friday the show had aired only scenes that cast his client as 
guilty. The attorneys have gone so far as to ask White to order the city and 
NOPD bar the show from airing on TV.

When the defense attorneys sought video that could cast Peterson in a positive 
light, a lawyer for the company said last year that other scenes had been 
deleted, Murell said. It remains to be seen if any show representative would be 
ordered down to New Orleans. White said she would not want to hold the 
producers' local lawyer in contempt, and she acknowledged her district court's 
limited reach.

"How are we going to rule a big executive down from New York to this little old 
court?" she asked Murell.

The attorney asked for a week. "We'll figure it out," Murell said.

(source: Times-Picayune)



INDIANA:

>From Death Row at 16 to Suicide at 45: The Life and Death of Paula Cooper



Just before8 p.m. this past Memorial Day, 45-year-old Paula Cooper decided she 
wanted to go shopping for a new outfit. "She wanted to go to Rainbow," her 
friend Ormeshia Linton recalled, referring to the chain that sells youthful 
clothes and accessories. "I said, 'Rainbow's closed, baby. It's Memorial Day. 
The furthest we're gonna get is Walmart.'" So that's where they went.

Ormeshia was worried about her friend. The 2 had been close since they met at 
an Indiana prison in 1995. Paula had been there for almost a decade when 
Ormeshia arrived at Rockville Correctional Facility facing 30 years on drug 
charges, and she immediately set about taking care of the new girl, offering to 
do her hair. Ormeshia was surprised. On the outside, Paula Cooper was known 
only for her crime, an infamous murder she had committed at 15. But at 
Rockville, for all her notoriety, she had a reputation for kindness. She used 
to put together small packs of noodles and other food items for women who 
didn't have money to spend at the commissary. When Ormeshia and Paula were 
eventually released, in 2010 and 2013, respectively, it was Paula who would 
need help navigating the world around her. By then, she was 43 years old, and 
had been in prison her whole adult life.

Before they ended up at Walmart that Monday night, Ormeshia had received a 
phone call from Paula. "I knew something was wrong with her," Ormeshia said. 
She invited her to come by during her lunch break at work. "Of course she got 
lost." Paula still didn't know her way around Indianapolis. She relied on her 
GPS for everything - and she was a terrible driver. From her window, Ormeshia 
could see Paula struggling to find the address. When she finally arrived and 
they sat down at a table, Paula began to sob uncontrollably. "It was like she 
was a child ... like she was defeated and depleted," Ormeshia said. "And she 
said, 'Friend, I can't do it no more.'" She kept touching her hand to her 
chest, saying, "It's on the inside." Ormeshia didn't want to pry - Paula was a 
private person - and she figured there was trouble with Paula's fiance. She 
invited Paula to stay with her for a few days, in a spare room of her new 
house. Later, at Walmart, Paula seemed in better spirits. She bought a new 
outfit: gray khaki pants; a gray, black and white top; and black Dr. Scholl's 
sandals. She even bought new underwear - satin panties lined with lace. Back at 
the house, Paula asked Ormeshia for some paper and envelopes, then spent some 
time out on the patio, smoking cigarettes and writing.

It was not until early the next morning, May 26, when Ormeshia awoke to find 
Paula gone, the tags to her new clothes on the bed, that the pieces would start 
to fall into place. Ormeshia's husband went down to the kitchen and "I hear him 
yelling my name. 'Meshia! Meshia!'" She went downstairs "and he hands me three 
envelopes and a letter for myself. And I read the 1st part of my letter and I 
dropped it. And I said, 'Let's go.'"

Ormeshia didn't know where, exactly. But the letters made Paula's intentions 
clear. "She said she wanted to go to where no eyes could see and hear the birds 
chirp for one last time and see the sun come up," she said. Later that day, 
after an unsuccessful search for her friend, Ormeshia spoke to a police officer 
over the phone. She learned that Paula had been found under a tree on the north 
side of the city, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot to her head.

News of Paula Cooper's suicide spread quickly in Indiana, where her 2013 
release had been a big event. She was once famous for being the youngest death 
row prisoner in the country: a girl condemned at 16 to the electric chair for 
the brutal stabbing death of a 77-year-old Bible school teacher named Ruth 
Pelke. Three other teenage girls took part in the 1985 crime - they came away 
with $10 and the elderly woman's car - but Paula was described as the 
ringleader by her co-defendants. Only she was sent to death row.

Her sentence was controversial. It had only been 10 years since Gregg v. 
Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that restarted executions following a 
4-year moratorium - imposed partly over concerns that the death penalty was 
racially biased. It was hard to imagine a white child receiving such a harsh 
punishment, and many believed it was racially motivated. Others felt Paula was 
far too young to be sentenced to die. But in 1986, Indiana law said that 
defendants as young as 10 years old could be tried as adults, and thus face the 
death penalty. Soon thereafter, the Supreme Court struck down death sentences 
for kids who committed their crimes before age 16. But it would take almost 30 
years for the Court to ban the death penalty for juveniles altogether, in 2005. 
The Paula Cooper case became an international cause celebre. Amnesty 
International campaigned for her, 2 million petitions poured into the Indiana 
Supreme Court, and Pope John Paul II sent an emissary from the Vatican, asking 
that her life be spared. But one of Paula's earliest and most unlikely 
supporters was an Indiana steelworker named Bill Pelke - Ruth Pelke's grandson. 
A young devout Christian and Vietnam veteran, Bill had seen his father 
scrubbing the blood from the walls and carpet in his grandmother's house. Yet 
he soon came to believe that his Nana would not have wanted to see this young 
girl executed. He was particularly haunted by the memory of Paula Cooper's own 
grandfather on the day she was sentenced to die. As he would later recount in a 
2003 memoir, neither Paula's mother or father attended the 1986 hearing, but 
her grandfather had been escorted out of the courtroom, wailing, "They are 
going to kill my baby!" Pelke later went to visit him and the 2 looked at photo 
albums of Paula and her sister, Rhonda. The girls had grown up amid harrowing 
abuse and neglect. They were beaten with electrical cords and had witnessed 
their father beat and rape their mother, Gloria. Once, Gloria told the girls 
they were going to see Jesus, then turned on the car in the garage until they 
passed out from carbon monoxide. Yet all 3 survived.

The more Bill learned about Paula, the more he was certain his grandmother 
would have forgiven her. He tried to visit her in prison, but was denied 
permission - it was against policy to allow convicted murderers to see members 
of their victim's family. So Bill and Paula wrote letters. Their correspondence 
would last years. When 19-year-old Paula's death sentence was commuted to 60 
years in July 1989, Bill's first words were, "Praise the Lord!" And by the time 
she was released on good behavior, on June 17, 2013, neither was the same 
person they had been in 1985. Paula was a grown women who had earned her GED, 
multiple degrees, and the support of prisoners and activists alike. Bill, now 
in his 60s, had founded Journey of Hope: From Violence to Healing, one of the 
most influential anti-death penalty groups in the country, led by victims of 
crime. He had also gained permission to see Paula, visiting her 14 times.

Nobody thought Paula's reentry would be easy. "My main concern is seeing her 
get settled and find a job," Bill told USA Today on the eve of her release, 
declining further comment. He worried that press attention would make a 
challenging adjustment that much harder. Indeed, the day she left prison, 
cameras waited in the parking lot, so Paula was escorted out back, then taken 
to an undisclosed location. There were reports of death threats. "People were 
really ugly about it," her longtime attorney, Monica Foster, recalled.

Traditionally, a person leaving prison in Indiana has been provided with bus 
fare and a check for $75. Paula had more support by comparison - the archbishop 
of Indianapolis helped her find a place to live - yet she was completely 
overwhelmed. She had never been an adult in the world - let alone in 2013. 3 
days after leaving prison, Paula called her friend Melissa Marble, nicknamed 
Precious, who lived in Marion, Indiana. "She was like, Precious, you need to 
get here," Melissa recalled. Melissa ended up moving to Indianapolis to help 
her friend. "We were close and I wanted to be there for Paula," she said.

Melissa told the story in her living room in Indianapolis. It was the 1st 
Saturday in June, less than two weeks after Paula???s suicide. She had a box of 
tissues on the couch next to her, and Ormeshia Linton sat in a chair to her 
left. The 2 women had never met in person, yet they finished each other's 
sentences as they remembered their friend. Melissa had met Paula in 1993 while 
imprisoned on drug charges. She admired her smile, her empathy toward prisoners 
who were shunned by others because of their crimes. One woman had come to 
Rockville after killing her baby, and "people said a lot of negative things to 
her all the time," Melissa said, admitting, "I did, too." But Paula "made an 
effort to make sure that this girl felt comfortable being there."

As Paula began to get her life in order, Melissa saw her less frequently. Paula 
had never had a job outside of prison, but she was skilled in the kitchen. She 
was soon hired at Five Guys by a manager who prioritized offering employment to 
former felons. Before long, Paula was a manager herself. Later, she became a 
legal assistant at the Indiana Federal Community Defenders, where she worked 
alongside Monica Foster, the lawyer who had defended her since she was a 
teenager. The 2 began speaking to college classes. "She was nervous about 
public speaking," Foster told me over the phone. But she wanted to give back to 
the community, particularly by talking to young people. "She felt like she 
could say things to them that other adults could not say."

Foster did not hide her anguish over Paula's death. "It's just completely 
heartbreaking," she said. The office is not the same without her. Paula was 
relentlessly cheerful - "We had no idea that she was struggling as she was." In 
a tribute on the group's website, Foster wrote: "We are uncertain why but 
deeply sad that Paula reached a place that was so dark that she could not call 
out for help. We would have been there."

In many ways, Paula was lucky compared to others who leave prison after so much 
time. She had meaningful work, dedicated advocates, her sister Rhonda (her 
"rock") and at least a few close relationships. But her sunny disposition 
concealed a lot of pain. "I think Paula did a lot of pretending," Melissa said. 
"She was very good at making you think she was okay." Beneath the surface was 
unaddressed trauma dating back decades, from her abusive childhood to alleged 
sexual assaults by multiple guards on death row. (The rumor at the time, Bill 
Pelke wrote in his book, was that Paula was trying to get pregnant so that she 
would be spared from execution.) When Monica Foster first met Paula as a young 
attorney, "nobody had bothered to tell her that she wasn't going to be taken 
out of her cell and executed on a whim." The teenager thought she could be 
taken to the electric chair at any moment. "She was really scared."

The torment didn't end after her death sentence was commuted. On 1 occasion, 
after getting in a fight with a guard, Paula spent 3 years in solitary 
confinement or "lock" - 23 hours a day in a cell the size of a bathroom. The 
punishment was unusually long, lasting from 1995 to 1998. "I've done time in 
lock myself," Melissa said. Even after a short time in solitary, "you are not 
the same when you come down."

Everyone I spoke to said that the one thing Paula needed most - as much as 
housing or a job - was psychological help. "I've come to believe that anybody 
who goes in at that age and for that amount of time needs mental heath 
treatment," Foster told me. "Whether they think they need it or not."

"The mental part, I think, is a big reason why we're sitting here," Melissa 
said. "The abuse at home with the parents, the abuse in prison, a long time in 
lock ... She carried all of that. Including her crime." Her crime was a big 
part of it. To most of the world, no matter what else she did, it had defined 
her since she was 15. Bill Pelke might have forgiven her - even launched a 
movement based on forgiveness. But friends say Paula did not feel worthy of 
this. She had never forgiven herself.

2 weeks after Paula died, Bill Pelke traveled from Alaska, where he lives, back 
home to Indiana, for a private memorial service. The small gathering will take 
place this weekend, in the backyard garden at the home of at Monica Foster, 
where Paula had wished to get married. Bill will speak - on Facebook, he asked 
for prayers. After all these years, he never got a chance to see Paula after 
she got out. She had been told not to have contact with her victim's family. 
The system continued to segregate their experiences into fixed, irreconcilable 
categories.

Yet Paula's legacy was to bridge this separation, to humanize those we call 
monsters. "There would be no Journey of Hope without Paula Cooper," Bill said 
firmly. "It's just amazing how many lives she touched."

Monica Foster counts among them the clients who reached Paula on the phone in 
her office, day in and day out. She was the 1st point of contact for people 
seeking help, some in their darkest hours. Paula "was able to make them feel 
that they had dignity. She got who they were."

(source: firstlook.org)