[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----NEB., CALIF., WASH.

[Rick Halperin]

June 28



NEBRASKA:

Death penalty costs debated, but the burden is heavy



During debates in the legislative session on the repeal of the death penalty, 
supporters and opponents both drew on the costs to make their arguments.

Senators who wanted repeal -- such as Sen. Matt Williams of Gothenburg -- said 
it costs double, maybe triple, to try a death penalty case, sentence the 
convicted, and then slog through sometimes decades of appeals.

Those who wanted the death penalty to remain a sentencing option -- such as 
Sen. David Schnoor of Scribner -- said it doesn't cost a lot of money, and it's 
cheaper than keeping someone in prison for life.

So who's right?

Conservative politicians who more recently find themselves opposed to the death 
penalty say they are convinced it is "wasteful and inefficient," and the cost 
"alarming."

But you won't find those costs as line items in any budget, say Conservatives 
Concerned about the Death Penalty, a network of political and social 
conservatives. Those costs are buried in a "thicket of legal proceedings and 
hours spent by judges, clerks, prosecutors and other law enforcement agencies."

Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said his office has never had a budget 
in which funds were specifically identified for capital cases. Defending death 
sentences has been just one of many responsibilities of the Nebraska Department 
of Justice.

It's 1 % of the annual criminal appeals cases, with only one or two attorneys 
with responsibility for monitoring capital cases, Peterson said.

But Jim Mowbray, chief counsel of the state???s Commission on Public Advocacy, 
created in 1995 to represent indigent defendants charged with 1st-degree 
murder, said when the death penalty is involved, it basically requires twice 
the amount of time and attention from an attorney in his agency.

In effect, he said, there are two trials, the guilt-innocence phase, and then a 
sentencing phase, which takes as long to prepare for and carry out as the 
guilt-innocence phase. Both the defendant's attorney and the Attorney General's 
Office spend more time on these cases than a nondeath penalty case.

Finding mitigating evidence can also require a great deal of travel, both in 
and outside the United States, he said.

"So there's no question it costs more," Mowbray said.

The appeals process will go on for many years, and federal costs will add to 
the total.

Mowbray used the example of death row inmate Michael Ryan, who before his death 
from natural causes had an issue pending before the Nebraska and United States 
supreme courts almost 30 years after his crime was committed. That, despite the 
seeming lack of doubt about Ryan's guilt and the heinousness of his crime.

Capital cases have a high cost to counties.

Mowbray's Public Advocacy Commission was appointed to Ryan's case in 2012. All 
the costs of the initial trial and appeals before that time were paid by 
Richardson County or the federal government, he said.

Richardson County officials had to declare a financial crisis because the 1985 
Michael Ryan/Rulo cult capital murder trial had stripped the county of its 
$750,000 in cash reserves from inheritance tax collections. Then it had to 
spend about $1 million for infrastructure damages from 2 years of flooding. 
Another capital murder trial that followed, of John Lotter in the triple 
homicides near Humboldt, sent the county into debt and struggling to meet 
payrolls.

In total, Richardson County spent $1.35 million on the Ryan and Lotter trials, 
including appeals, according to Richardson County Treasurer Austin Duerfeldt. 
The Public Advocacy Commission had 34 different filings in the Ryan case for 
actions in state and federal courts, Mowbray said.

"And that costs money," he said.

Death penalty advocates argue that attorneys at the commission are on a yearly 
salary. And experts and travel to interview witnesses are built into the 
commission's budget.

Where taxpayers see an added impact, Mowbray said, is when there are multiple 
defendants -- such as the four in the 2002 Norfolk bank robbery killings -- and 
private lawyers must be added to the costs.

There are other costs, such as judicial time, he said. And death penalty cases 
can cause a backlog on civil cases, especially in federal court.

"So for people who favor the death penalty to say it doesn't cost any more than 
life in prison, it's just not true," Mowbray said. "That's fiction and we all 
know it."

To get to the costs, Sen. Brenda Council in 2010 tried -- and failed on a 22-22 
vote -- to pass a bill (LB1105) that would have authorized a $50,000 death 
penalty study by the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Opponents questioned whether such a study could gather accurate information. 
They discredited past criminal justice studies, and said they doubted that 
knowing the costs would change anyone's mind about whether the state should 
have a death penalty.

But more than 15 states have now done the cost studies.

All concluded the death penalty systems in their states were far more expensive 
than a system in which the maximum sentence is life in prison, said Richard 
Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, testifying 
in 2013 before the Legislature's Judiciary Committee. The costs reflect the 
reality that most capital prosecutions never result in a death sentence, and 
most death sentences do not lead to an execution, he said.

A 2014 study by the Kansas Judicial Council's Death Penalty Advisory Committee 
reviewed 34 capital-eligible cases filed between 2004 and 2011.

The study found that costs for the Kansas Board of Indigents' Defense Services 
for nine cases in which the death penalty was sought were $3.56 million, or 
$395,762 per case. 6 cases for which the death penalty was not sought were 
$593,781, or $98,963 per case.

District court costs for the nine death penalty cases were $72,530 per case, 
and $21,554 per case for 5 non-death penalty cases.

In the Kansas Supreme Court, justices assigned to write death penalty case 
opinions spent 20 times more hours on those appeals than non-death penalty 
cases. Justices who did not write opinions spent 5 times more hours on death 
penalty cases.

The study also showed that prisoners in segregated housing, as those sentenced 
to death are, cost $49,380 per inmate compared to $24,690 annually to house an 
inmate in the general population.

In 2010, the Commission to the Study the Death Penalty in New Hampshire found 
"a significant difference in the cost of prosecution and incarceration of a 
1st-degree murder case where the penalty is life without parole as compared 
with the cost of a death penalty case from prosecution to execution."

The increased cost, it concluded, was essential to "guarantee a vigorous 
defense, a thorough investigation and prosecution of the case, and careful 
adjudication of the case."

In 2008 it cost that state more than $5.3 million to prosecute and defend 2 
death penalty cases, one of which ended in a sentence of death and 1 a sentence 
of life. The cost included defense in only 1 case, because 1 of the defendants 
paid for his own defense.

The chairman of the New Hampshire study commission concluded the expense was 
significantly higher in the 2 cases than if they were not capital cases, 
including the cost of life-time imprisonment.

Between 1973 and 2007, Nebraska taxpayers paid for 103 cases in which the 
prosecution sought the death penalty. 31 of those cases led to a death 
sentence, more than 1/2 of those were reversed, and 3 have ended in an 
execution, none since 1997.

(source: Lincoln Journal Star)








CALIFORNIA:

Family of murdered LAPD officer in limbo as killer languishes on death row



For 3 decades, Sandy Verna Jackson has longed for the day her husband's killers 
would be executed.

Raynard Cummings and Kenneth Gay were convicted of 1st-degree murder for 
fatally shooting Los Angeles police motorcycle Officer Paul Verna 6 times 
during a traffic stop in Lake View Terrace in June 1983. The parolees, who 
authorities said were trying to avoid arrest for a series of violent robberies 
in the San Fernando Valley, were sentenced to death in 1985. Gay's death 
verdict was overturned for a 2nd time in 2008.

Verna's parents - now in their 90s - will probably never see resolution of his 
killers' cases, Jackson notes.

"How would you feel if your only son was murdered without provocation while 
doing his job to protect the citizens of Los Angeles and those scumbags were 
still alive 32 years later?" asked Jackson, who has remarried and lives in the 
Santa Clarita Valley. "It's hard for others to imagine, but that has been our 
life since Paul's was taken from all of us, and it doesn't end."

Jackson represents thousands of family members of homicide victims waiting to 
see justice meted out for the state's 751 condemned inmates, who are eight 
times more likely to die of causes other than execution. California's failure 
to execute inmates hurts families, costs taxpayers hundreds of thousands of 
dollars, bogs down the court system and arguably harms the inmates as well. A 
main reason for the delay in conducting executions is that appeals in capital 
cases often take 2 decades before a decision is made. Executions have also been 
on hold in the state since 2006 over lethal injection issues and, despite a 
recent development, are not expected to resume in the near future. Last year a 
federal judge ruled the state's death penalty system was unconstitutional, 
which if upheld could ultimately commute all death sentences to life in prison.

The death penalty sets up an expectation that these prisoners will be executed 
at some point - and that will be justice - but in California and many other 
states "that's just a false promise," said Richard Dieter, senior program 
director of Death Penalty Information Center, a national nonprofit that 
provides analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment.

"We all believe that it's going to be taken care of' when these cases go to 
court, Jackson said. "As we say, 'justice will be served.' We don't realize 
that it isn't."

In California, more than 900 people have been sentenced to death since the 
death penalty was reinstated in 1978, but only 13 have been executed. In 
contrast, 101 condemned inmates have died by other means: 67 of natural causes, 
24 by suicide, seven from incidents such as drug overdoses or homicide, and 
three deaths that have yet to be classified, according to the California 
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Condemned inmates are kept mostly in isolation, have limited amounts of 
exercise and are not eligible for typical prison programs since it's assumed 
they will be executed, Dieter said. Yet in California, they most often end up 
serving a life sentence.

"We usually ask juries or judges to pick one or the other but not both," he 
said. "It's an extra punishment."

40 % of inmates currently on the nation's largest death row have spent at least 
20 years there, while the average time spent is more than 17 years, according 
to CDCR data. About 20 % are at least 60 years old.

While the death penalty has been on hold in California for nearly a decade, 
taxpayers continue to pay well over $100 million a year to maintain a system 
experts on both sides of the debate call broken, costly and in dire need of 
change.

Rising toll

The estimated cost of California's death penalty totaled more than $4 billion 
between 1978 and 2011, including $1 billion for more secure incarceration and 
nearly $2 billion for pre-trial and trial costs, according to a 2011 study 
co-authored by Paula Mitchell, an adjunct professor at Loyola Law School of Los 
Angeles, and the late Senior 9th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon.

They also found the state spends $184 million more on condemned prisoners each 
year due to added costs of capital trials, enhanced security on death row and 
legal representation. Californians are expected to spend an additional $5 
billion to $7 billion over the cost of a life-without-parole system by 2050, 
the authors said in 2012.

Using more conservative projections, the California Commission on the Fair 
Administration of Justice estimated the annual costs of the death penalty 
system in 2008 to be about $137 million versus $11.5 million for a system of 
lifetime incarceration.

The failure of leaders to respond with meaningful reforms or abolition has 
resulted in "the perpetration of a multibillion-dollar fraud on California 
taxpayers," the 2011 study stated.

Meanwhile, the number of the state's condemned inmates swells each year. Gov. 
Jerry Brown's request for $3.2 million from state lawmakers to convert 97 
general population cells at San Quentin State Prison into those for death row 
inmates was approved as part of the state budget signed by Brown on Wednesday.

36 new inmates were received on death row in 2013 and 2014 while 12 prisoners 
died of natural causes or suicide, according to state data.

Lethal injection hurdle

A settlement agreement this month opens the door for executions to possibly 
resume in California.

Since 2006, state and federal courts have prevented the state from using its 
three-drug lethal injection procedure. Largely at issue are which drugs are 
used in executions and how. The state has been developing regulations for a 
single-drug method but has yet to propose one, an effort corrections officials 
say has been complicated by drug availability.

Victims' families sued the state in November to force it to adopt a new 
single-drug procedure so executions could potentially resume, and the state has 
agreed to submit draft regulations for review and approval within 120 days of a 
Supreme Court decision on Oklahoma's lethal injection process, which is 
expected within days.

The settlement offers "a ray of hope" that a valid 1-drug protocol will be 
established and used to carry out executions, said Kent Scheidegger of the 
pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which represented the 
families in the lawsuit. But Matt Cherry of Death Penalty Focus, which opposes 
capital punishment, called it an "exercise in futility" since past attempts to 
create a legally sound protocol have failed and other states have been unable 
to find needed drugs.

A new lethal injection process must first be devised according to state law 
and, if challenged as expected, approved by the courts before executions can 
resume, Dieter said.

At the same time, the constitutionality of California's death penalty system is 
also being challenged. U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney ruled last year 
that the delays and arbitrariness in executions amounted to cruel and unusual 
punishment. The case has gone to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and if upheld 
could mean that some or all of the state's death row inmates would have their 
sentences reduced to life without parole. Oral argument is set for Aug. 31 in 
Pasadena.

California voters narrowly rejected a 2012 ballot measure that would have done 
away with the state's death penalty system and converted the sentences of more 
than 700 inmates to life without parole.

"When people discuss how it works in practice, including how innocent people 
are sentenced to death, including the disparities in sentencing based on race 
and income and class, and also when people realize the death penalty costs so 
much more than life in prison, then I think you start to see the public move 
against the death penalty," Cherry said.

Others argue for keeping the death penalty but reforming the system.

"People who committed the very worst murders, the people who kidnapped, raped 
and tortured children, are getting off with less than they deserve," 
Scheidegger said. "They are dragging out their cases so long to effectively 
commute them to life in prison and that's not justice."

Dysfunctional system

Meanwhile, the cases of Cummings and Gay are still in a maze of litigation. 
Cummings, 58, last year appealed a federal court's decision to deny his 
petition challenging his jury conviction and sentence.

Gay, 57, had his death sentence reversed for a second time in 2008 due to 
instructional error. A judge will make recommendations to the California 
Supreme Court regarding the competency of Gay's original defense attorney as 
early as August. If the court finds the attorney was legally ineffective and 
that affected the outcome of the case, a new trial would be ordered to 
determine his guilt or innocence "like we're starting all over," said L.A. 
County Deputy District Attorney John Colello.

Otherwise, Gay's conviction would stand and prosecutors would decide whether to 
seek the death penalty for him again. Both men have denied guilt.

Dysfunction exists at every stage of the state's capital punishment process, 
said Loyola's Mitchell.

Since there aren't enough attorneys trained or who want to work on capital 
appeals, condemned inmates can wait up to 5 or 6 years before direct appeals 
are even started. Because only seven justices serve on the California Supreme 
Court and appeals are hundreds of pages, it now takes roughly 20 years from the 
time a notice of appeal is filed until the court decides to affirm or reverse a 
conviction, she said. State and federal habeas corpus petitions often take 15 
years after that.

"It takes a tremendous amount of time for the attorneys, court staff and 
justices working on these appeals to consider and meaningfully address every 
single argument raised," Mitchell said. "Meanwhile, decades are going by and 
inmates keep coming onto death row."

'A travesty' of justice

Bryce Verna, who was 9 when his father was killed, has few memories of him. 
There's the time he killed a rattlesnake in their Thousand Oaks cul-de-sac and 
when his father, an avid Angels baseball fan, played catch with him at the 
Little League fields.

But that hasn't stopped Verna from modeling his life after him. Besides 
becoming a motor officer for LAPD's Valley Traffic Division like his father, he 
was a Boy Scout and served in the U.S. Air Force, just like his Eagle Scout 
dad.

His brother, Ryan, who was 4 at the time of the murder, also followed in his 
father's footsteps and today is an LAPD detective in the Valley.

"These guys have gotten to live for 30-plus years whereas my dad hasn't seen my 
brother and myself grow up, seen his grandkids and carry on his life," Verna 
said.

Meanwhile, Cummings and Gay are aging at San Quentin.

"This is a travesty of the justice system," said Verna, who has a tattoo of his 
father's police badge on his right leg beneath his uniform. "The justice system 
that my dad swore to uphold failed him."

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

Convicted killers of women in L.A. County more likely to get death penalty



Chivalry and traditional roles between men and women influence jurors when 
deciding whether to issue a death sentence, according to a researcher who 
studies capital murder.

Steven Shatz, a University of San Francisco law professor, studied 1,000 
California murder cases where the defendant was eligible for the death penalty 
and found that killers of women were 7 times more likely to be sentenced to 
death than those who killed men. The data rang true when Shatz examined 404 
similar cases in Los Angeles County between 2003 and 2005.

"It's pretty hard to get a jury to vote for death. It's the most awesome act a 
jury can be asked to do," Shatz said. "To get them to do it, you really have to 
evoke sympathy with the victim, and it's far easier to do that for a woman 
victim."

Shatz and his co-author Naomi Shatz, an attorney at the New York American Civil 
Liberties Union, argue in a research paper "Chivalry is Not Dead: Murder, 
Gender and the Death Penalty," that traditional notions of gender and chivalry 
- as a code of conduct practiced in the middle ages by knights and royalty - 
are part of the reason why women are sentenced to death and executed at lower 
rates and why killers of women are more likely to get the death penalty.

Their research mirrors an analysis of data by the Los Angeles News Group that 
found that nearly half of 57 inmates on California's death row convicted of 
murdering at least 93 victims under special circumstances in Los Angeles County 
between Jan. 1, 2000, and Dec. 31, 2010, had killed females. The 38 females who 
were killed ranged in age from 1 to 79.

Former L.A. County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, who was in the county???s 
head prosecutor from 1992 to 2000, said the gender of the victim did not 
consciously influence his evaluation to bring capital murder charges against a 
defendant. But on an instinctive level, he said he could understand the 
underlying premise of the Shatz analysis.

"I think people in our society view women as being a little more vulnerable, or 
even a lot more vulnerable than men and so, if you're taking advantage of 
someone who is more vulnerable, than you're going to pay a higher price," said 
Garcetti, who now advocates against the death penalty.

Steve Cooley, who served as L.A. County district attorney from 2000 to 2012, 
said he doesn't think there is any evidence to support the conclusion that 
female victims stir greater sympathy from jurors. He said some death row 
inmates who killed women have committed serial murders that often involved 
sexual assault, which falls under special circumstances that make the defendant 
eligible for the death penalty.

"Juries just follow the law, and the law says you can get the death penalty for 
committing a homicide during the course of a sexual assault and you can get the 
death penalty when you have multiple victims," Cooley said.

Steven Shatz agrees in part with Cooley's assessment.

Jurors are more likely to sentence defendants who have raped and then murdered 
their victim to the death penalty and victims in those cases are nearly always 
women.

Rape-murders account for about 1/2 of the disparity involved in sentencing 
killers of women to death, Shatz said, but a disparity still exists.

At least 5 of the 38 females whose killers were sentenced to death row in Los 
Angeles County in the 11-year period of the data gathered and analyzed by the 
newspaper group, were raped or sexually assaulted. At least one death row 
inmate committed serial rape during that time period. More than 1/2 of the 
killers sentenced to death killed multiple people - men and women and children.

This news organization's analysis also found that women are less likely to be 
homicide victims - 14 % of 11,244 victims - and yet, about 1/2 of the murderers 
sentenced to death killed women.

Of the 751 people on death row in California, 21 are women. The last female 
executed in California was in 1962. She was put to death for killing a woman.

Elizabeth Ann Duncan was put to death for her pregnant daughter-in-law's 
murder. Duncan hired 2 men to kill Olga Kupczyk, who in 1958, was 
pistol-whipped, choked and dumped in a shallow grave. Duncan was executed on 
Aug. 8, 1962.

"Presumably jurors felt that female victims, except in the case of domestic 
violence, were more innocent and less to blame for the violence committed 
against them," the Shatzes wrote in their research paper. "These factors fit 
with chivalric stereotypes about women's helplessness and need for male 
protection and help explain why California, like medieval society, punishes 
less severely male on male violence or male on female violence within the home 
(which may be seen as the male's prerogative or for which the female victim may 
be seen as partly to blame) than stranger (usually male) violence toward the 
innocent and helpless female.

Women often do not have a criminal history, gang ties and are often viewed in 
society as the caretakers of children, said Samuel Gross, a University of 
Michigan law professor who studied racial inequality and the death penalty. 
Those factors contribute to why women are more sympathetic victims, he said.

"On juries, and probably in the population in general, it's believed that 
killing a man is not as bad as killing a woman - it's not as depraved," Shatz 
said.

CALIFORNIA DEATH ROW INMATES

A breakdown of California's death row inmates by gender, length of time on 
death row, race and age range

Prisoners on California's Death Row

Males: 730

Females: 21

Total: 751

Length of Time

0-9 years: 190 prisoners (25%)

10-19 years: 264 prisoners (35.15%)

20-29 years: 225 prisoners (29.96%)

30-plus years: 72 prisoners (9.59)

Total: 751 prisoners

Average time on Death Row: 17.34 years

Top death sentence counties

Los Angeles: 233 sentences

Riverside: 88 sentences

Orange: 65 sentences

Alameda: 42 sentences

San Bernardino: 40 sentences

San Diego: 40 sentences

Data base includes at least 10 sentences that have been reversed and are 
awaiting retrial.

[source: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (as of June 
23)]

DEATH ROW INMATES

Death Row inmates by state as well as numbers of exeuctions since 1976. Data as 
of April 1.

Alabama: 201

Arizona: 124

Arkansas: 35

California: 746

Colorado: 3

Delaware: 17

Florida: 401

Georgia: 85

Idaho: 11

Indiana: 14

Kansas: 10

Kentucky: 34

Louisiana: 85

Mississippi: 48

Missouri: 33

Montana: 2

Nevada: 78

New Hampshire: 1

North Carolina: 157

Ohio: 145

Oklahoma: 48

Oregon: 36

Pennsylvania: 184

South Carolina: 44

South Dakota: 3

Tennessee: 73

Texas: 271

Utah: 9

Virginia: 8

Washington: 9

Wyoming: 1

U.S. Military: 6

U.S. Govt.: 61

Number of executions since 1976 (top 10)

1. Texas: 527

2. Oklahoma: 112

3. Virginia: 110

4. Florida: 90

5. Missouri: 84

6. Georgia: 57

7. Alabama: 56

8. Ohio: 53

9. North Carolina: 43

10. South Carolina: 43

[source: Death Penalty Information Center (data as of April 1, 2015)]

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

Santiago Martinez Jr.: Death row inmate murdered 2 Long Beach women



Santiago Martinez Jr. has been sitting on death row at San Quentin State Prison 
since Dec. 7, 2009.

With the state's slow-churning appeals process, he may outlive the 67-year-old 
mother of one of his victims, who says the sooner Martinez dies, the better.

"I think it's a real shame for families that have to go through years of 
waiting for something to happen," said Loraine Wilkerson, the mother of 1 of 
the 2 women Martinez murdered last decade. "Whether it's an appeal or an 
execution, I think it's really hard on the family."

Martinez stabbed each of his victims multiple times.

The body of 28-year-old Long Beach resident Christina Grace Wilkerson was found 
by a transient March 22, 2003, just after 9:25 p.m. inside an abandoned red 
Honda in the 1200 block of Werner Avenue, near Orange Avenue and Anaheim 
Street.

Wilkerson had last spoken by phone to relatives a few days before her body was 
discovered.

Martinez, who was a 21-year-old reputed East Side Longos gang member, and on 
parole after serving time in state prison for sexually assaulting a disabled 
person, stabbed Wilkerson, whom he had known for about 6 weeks, in the face, 
neck and body, then shot her with a .22 rifle.

Prosecutors said Martinez murdered Wilkerson in a jealous rage. He was 
convicted in February 2005 and sentenced to more than 50 years to life in 
prison.

An analysis of data by the Los Angeles News Group found 57 inmates on 
California's death row were convicted of murdering at least 93 victims under 
special circumstances, including sexual assault and murder of a victim or 
serial killings in Los Angeles County between Jan. 1, 2000, and Dec. 31, 2010. 
The analysis of homicide victims showed that 38 females who were killed ranged 
in age from 1 to 79.

Loraine Wilkerson said her daughter loved animals and was a compassionate and 
giving person, one who designed Halloween costumes and donated them to a local 
women's shelter. She had earned an associate's degree in fashion design and 
wanted to further her education.

"People loved her," Wilkerson said. "At her service, it was really just word of 
mouth. I had my son call a couple of friends. There were probably close to 150 
people there. She had a lot of friends."

Years later, Martinez was condemned to death for a murder he committed less 
than 2 weeks after he took Wilkerson's life.

After a previous jury was deadlocked on the penalty, new jurors in Long Beach 
Superior Court took about 30 minutes Oct. 29, 2009, to unanimously vote for the 
death penalty after Martinez was found guilty of murdering his girlfriend, Myra 
Orozco, 24, of Long Beach, when she refused to help him dispose of Wilkerson's 
body.

Martinez stabbed and slashed Orozco about 30 times in the face, neck and body, 
dumped her body from the car they were sitting in, and ran her over March 30, 
2003. A bicyclist spotted Orozco's body in an alley in the 2400 block of San 
Francisco Avenue around 3:50 p.m. that day.

Myra Orozco's mother, Yolanda Villa, was in attendance when the jury condemned 
Martinez, as was Loraine Wilkerson, the mother of Christina Wilkerson. Martinez 
smiled at the mothers of the victims as he was led out of the courtroom.

Long Beach Superior Court Judge Joan Comparet-Cassani on Nov. 24, 2009, ordered 
death by lethal injection for Martinez.

Loraine Wilkerson said she's heard how relatives of murder victims can forgive. 
That's not her, she said. Still, she says she is happy in her retirement, 
volunteering in her community and enjoying the companionship of friends.

"If the time comes and they are going to execute him, and I'm still alive, I 
will be there with a smile, as everybody's protesting outside San Quentin," 
Wilkerson said of those who oppose the death penalty.

(source for all: Los Angeles Daily News)

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

Harbor Gateway mother refuses to dwell on execution for daughter's killer



Charlene Lovett doesn't dwell on Jonathan Fajardo.

She knows he's behind bars on California's death row, and can't hurt anybody 
else. She doesn't concern herself with his appeals, the court process and 
whether Fajardo's execution date will come anytime soon.

"I think about my daughter," Lovett said in an interview. "I know her murderer 
is in prison. I know he has a death sentence. I don't think about when are they 
going to do it, am I still going to be alive. I don't waste my time thinking 
that way."

Fajardo, now 27 years old, was sentenced to death in 2011 for killing Lovett's 
14-year-old daughter, Cheryl Green, in Harbor Gateway and murdering a fellow 
gang member he mistakenly believed snitched to the police on him days later.

"I forgave this young man very quickly," Lovett said. "I knew in order for me 
to continue on with my life, I had to forgive him. He had already taken my 
younger daughter from me. I would not allow him to take my life from me."

Lovett, who also has a son and daughter, was against the death penalty before 
Dec. 15, 2006. Lovett said she did not believe it was right for the state to 
convict someone of murder and then "turn around and murder the person."

"I thought it was hypocritical," she said.

Lovett's daughter Cheryl died that afternoon as she stood with friends after 
school at the corner of 206th Street and Harvard Boulevard. The girl who loved 
video games, "Lizzie McGuire" and wanted to go to college to become an 
obstetrician was gunned down when Fajardo opened fire on them.

Cheryl, who was black, became a victim of a turf battle between Latino and 
black gangs in the Los Angeles strip area. The area north of 206th Street 
between Western and Normandie avenues was Latino territory; south of 206th was 
black.

Her death prompted outrage. Police soon decimated the Latino gang in the area, 
204th Street, with raids and arrests. Politicians, community leaders and clergy 
called for unity among the races, marching for peace across the dividing line. 
By 2009, the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Bay opened the Cheryl Green Community 
Center in a brand-new facility for all children to use together.

An analysis of data by the Los Angeles News Group found 57 inmates on 
California's death row were convicted of murdering at least 93 victims under 
special circumstances, including sexual assault and murder of a victim or 
serial killings in Los Angeles County between Jan. 1, 2000, and Dec. 31, 2010. 
The analysis of homicide victims showed that 38 females who were killed, 
including Cheryl, ranged in age from 1 to 79.

Police arrested Fajardo, a 204th Street gang member, and Ernesto Alcarez, who 
served as his lookout, for the shooting. Fajardo and 3 other gang members also 
were charged with killing Christopher Ash, whose body was found dumped on a 
Carson street. Fajardo stabbed Ash 62 times, incorrectly suspecting that Ash 
provided information about him to detectives.

Almost immediately after Fajardo's arrest, prosecutors told Lovett they would 
seek the death penalty against him. Unlike some families that sometimes push 
prosecutors to seek capital punishment against killers, Lovett never concerned 
herself with the decision.

"The most-high revealed to me what was going to take place before it actually 
happened," Lovett said. "I knew that he was going to die. I didn't know how."

Sitting through Fajardo's trial wasn't easy for Lovett. Fajardo, she said, 
appeared to detach himself from the witness testimony against him, not seeming 
to care.

After jurors recommended the death penalty, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge 
David Wesley imposed the sentence on April 22, 2011.

"For him to actually be put to death, it might not happen," Lovett said. "I 
might be gone myself. He is much younger than I am. I can look at it as just a 
lifetime sentence without him ever getting out. ... There's a lot of what-ifs. 
I'd rather not even waste my time thinking about it."

Should the day arrive, Lovett said she will travel to San Quentin State Prison, 
but not to watch Fajardo die. She said she wants to visit the death chamber to 
see if he showed any remorse. She wants to see if he will talk, to hear him say 
he knew it was wrong to take a life.

After that, Lovett will walk out, not wanting to watch him take his last 
breaths.

But even if that day never comes, she will be at peace.

"All I know is he is never getting out," she said. "I am cool with that."

(source: Los Angeles Daily Breeze)

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

Uncle of murdered San Fernando Valley girl sees no solution in death penalty



Desarie Saravia was a tough little girl who could carry a gallon of milk at the 
age of 2 and fall out of a bunk bed with hardly a whimper.

But at 5, she died after being sexually assaulted and brutally beaten in 2004 
by her mother's boyfriend in a women's restroom at Hasley Canyon Park in 
Castaic. Antonio Rodriguez, who was convicted of numerous charges, including 
murder, torture and assault on a child causing death, was sentenced to death in 
2010 in what a judge called the worst case of torture he had seen in his 
37-year career.

But the thought of Rodriguez, now 34, being executed is little solace to 
Desarie's uncle, Ryan Saravia.

"Your 1st instincts are, 'Man, what would I do to him if I saw him? I want him 
to go through what I went through.' But what makes the pain easier for me to 
deal with is letting go," said Saravia, 34, of North Hollywood. "I don't feel 
like him losing his life is going to make me feel better. You can say I've 
forgiven him."

Coping with his niece's murder was the worst experience he could ever go 
through, Saravia said. And yet the husband and father of 2 girls said he would 
not be able to function had he not forgiven Rodriguez in his heart.

An analysis of data by the Los Angeles News Group found 57 inmates on 
California's death row were convicted of murdering at least 93 victims under 
special circumstances, including sexual assault and murder of a victim or 
serial killings in Los Angeles County between Jan. 1, 2000, and Dec. 31, 2010. 
The analysis of homicide victims showed that 38 females who were killed, 
including Desarie, ranged in age from 1 to 79.

Saravia's sister Debby, who is Desarie's mother, is serving a 28-year prison 
sentence after she pleaded no contest to charges including child abuse of 
Desarie and attempted murder of her son. She was also charged but not convicted 
of Desarie's murder though she was not at the park at the time of the deadly 
assault. While they lived with Rodriguez in various locations around the San 
Fernando Valley, the little girl and her older brother were starved, whipped, 
beaten and burned with cigarettes, prosecutors said.

While Debby had a rough youth, including abuse and a gang affiliation, she 
accepts responsibility for her actions and has apologized to family members, 
Saravia said. He hopes that one day Rodriguez, who held his middle finger up in 
front of his face during his sentencing, will one day show remorse and "redeem 
himself to a certain extent."

Despite the pain, Saravia doesn't feel the death penalty is a solution.

"I didn't see it as a win-win for me because whatever choice the judge or jury 
decided, it wasn't going to bring her back."

(source: Press-Teleglram)








WASHINGTON:

Victim's family asks governor to reconsider death penalty ban



The family of Lori Hamm, the Longview native allegedly killed by convicted 
killer John Wayne Thomson in 2006, wants Washington's governor to reconsider 
his ban on death penalty executions.

In a letter sent to Gov. Jay Inslee in May, Jerry Hamm, Lori Hamm's father, 
reminded the governor that he took "an oath to support and defend Washington's 
constitution and laws," including Washington's law allowing death penalty 
sentences.

Instead of issuing the ban, Jerry Hamm suggested the governor use the same 
legislative process any citizen would have to use to change the law.

"Lori's death was painful and her death impacted all of Cowlitz County," Jerry 
Hamm wrote. "Your decision was not fair to my daughter and heartbreaking to 
myself, my wife and our family."

Thomson is likely remain on death row in California for several years. He was 
sentenced to death after being convicted in April 2014 in the death of 
55-year-old businessman Charles Ray Hedlund in late July or early August 2006. 
Hedlund was killed after he stopped alongside the road to help a stranded 
Thomson.

San Bernardino County spokesman Christopher Lee said Thomson's execution has 
yet to be scheduled and won't be for some time.

"In California, all death penalty cases have an automatic appeal to the 
California Supreme Court," Lee said on Friday.

Thomson is accused of killing Hamm, 36, on July 16, 2006, near Castle Rock, 
about a month before Hedlund???s death. He's also accused of killing Spokane's 
James Ehrgott, 73, only weeks before Hamm's death.

Even without California's appeal process, Thomson's execution still wouldn't 
happen quickly. California has had a moratorium on executions since 2006 when a 
federal judge ruled that state's death penalty system as unconstitutional.

Former county prosecutor Sue Baur had planned to bring Thomson back to 
Washington to stand trial for Hamm???s death. Lee said that decision will now 
be up to current Cowlitz County Prosecutor Ryan Jurvakainen.

When asked if his office was actively working towards returning Thomson to 
Cowlitz County, Jurvakainen said he hopes to be able to "provide some 
substantive information" in the next few weeks.

"Until then, I will not make any comment," Jurvakainen said by email on Monday.

Although Thomson, 55, does not face the death penalty in Cowlitz County, the 
1st-degree murder charge could be amended to qualify him for capital 
punishment. Thomson is charged with aggravated murder in Spokane, which would 
include the possibility of the death penalty if he were convicted there.

"Now it is time for Mr. Thomson to pay for his crime spree in both Cowlitz and 
Spokane counties," Jerry Hamm wrote. "You have made that impossible."

Jerry Hamm also asked the governor to provide the research he used to make his 
decision on the moratorium, as well as copies of the material given to the 
media. Lastly, he asked the governor to reconsider his decision.

"State of Washington voters voted for the death penalty for these terrible 
crimes and my daughter and Cowlitz County deserves it," Jerry Hamm said.

A call to the governor's office last week was not returned.

(source: The Daily News)