[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., N.C., FLA., ALA., MISS., LA.

[Rick Halperin]

March 16



TEXAS----stay of impending execution

Texas court halts officers' killer's execution



An East Texas man set for execution this week for a shootout 8 years ago that 
left 2 sheriff's officers dead has won a reprieve from the state's highest 
criminal appeals court.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals late Monday stopped the scheduled execution 
of 55-year-old Randall Wayne Mays.

Mays was set for lethal injection Wednesday evening in Huntsville for the fatal 
shootings at his home in Henderson County, about 55 miles southeast of Dallas.

The court agreed with Mays' lawyers that additional review is needed to 
determine if Mays is mentally competent for execution.

His punishment would have depleted the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's 
supply of pentobarbital used for lethal injections and now difficult to obtain 
for capital punishment.

At least 4 Texas executions are scheduled for April.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----4

Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----522

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

5------------Apr. 9--------------------Kent Sprouse---------523

6------------Apr. 15-------------------Manual Garza---------524

7-----------Apr. 23-------------------Richard Vasquez------525

8-----------Apr. 28-------------------Robert Pruett--------526

9-----------May 12--------------------Derrick Charles------527

10-----------June 18-------------------Gregory Russeau------528

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Jurors selected in death penalty case



After 3 1/2 days of jury selection for the Jordan Clemons homicide trial, 
attorneys have chosen 5 people for the 16-member panel.

Jury selection began Wednesday with Washington County Judge Gary Gilman posing 
group questions to 151 potential jurors. On Thursday, potential jurors were 
placed into groups of 20 to be interviewed individually. Assistant District 
Attorney Chad Schneider said each potential juror is being asked a series of 85 
questions that will touch on varying qualifications for the case. Additionally, 
potential jurors were required to fill out a questionnaire that posed questions 
about the death penalty, among other things.

The prosecution is seeking the death penalty. 12 people will serve as jurors, 
with 4 others to be chosen as alternates.

Clemons, 26, formerly of Canonsburg, is accused of killing his ex-girlfriend, 
21-year-old Karissa Kunco of Pittsburgh, in January 2012 and dumping her body 
in a wooded area of Mt. Pleasant Township. Kunco was last seen alive Jan. 11, 
2012. State police allege that after killing her, Clemons dragged her naked 
body into the woods along Sabo Road and covered it with leaves, brush and a 
tree stump. Kunco, whose throat was cut, had a protection-from-abuse order 
against Clemons.

Defense attorney Brian Gorman has declined to say if Clemons would testify 
during the trial, which is expected to start May 4. Gorman intends to argue 
that head injuries Clemons suffered while playing football and in several 
vehicle accidents, plus years of drug abuse, diminished his mental capacity. 
Any brain injury Clemons experienced could have been a factor in his ability to 
form criminal intent, Gorman said in court documents.

Schneider plans to call roughly 20 witnesses, including Kunco's parents.

Clemons also faces charges from a home invasion in Canonsburg Jan. 8, 2012, and 
is charged with flight to avoid apprehension in connection with an alleged 
assault of Kunco in December 2011.

Clemons remains in Washington County Jail without bond.

Jury selection is slated to continue for the rest of the week.

(source: Observer-Reporter)








NORTH CAROLINA:

New Hanover DA awaits death-penalty decision in Lingo Street arson case



After announcing last week that the state will seek the death penalty against 
the suspect in a deadly Carolina Beach arson fire, the fate of another accused 
arsonist charged with murder in Wilmington is hanging in the balance.

"The (death penalty) panel has not yet met to determine whether we are going to 
proceed capitally," New Hanover County District Attorney Ben David said Monday. 
"Once the case is indicted, we will meet and know within 45 days if it will be 
on pace for capital murder."

Harry Levert Davis, 24, is being held without bail in the New Hanover County 
jail on 2 counts of 1st-degree murder, 3 counts of attempted 1st-degree murder 
and 1 count of 1st-degree arson. He stands accused of killing 2 people by 
setting fire to 1901 Lingo St.

Makayla Pickett, 14, born blind and autistic, woke her family, but died in the 
blaze. Her great-aunt and guardian, Pamela Pickett, 51, collapsed and died 
outside the home after helping 3 others escape.

In a newly obtained affidavit in support of a search warrant for Davis' phone, 
a Wilmington Police Department investigator states Makayla's cousin Shatara 
Pickett "had a falling out" and fought two days before the fire with a female 
neighbor. On the evening before the fire, Davis, who was friends with the 
neighbor, called Shatara repeatedly and tried to arrange for the women to fight 
again, according to the affidavit. About 4 a.m. on the morning of the fire 
Shatara was at another location when Davis showed up, and he was "advised to 
leave," the affidavit states.

At 5 a.m., a friend who Shatara was with received a phone call from Davis 
saying Shatara's house was on fire, according to the court document.

According to the Wilmington Fire Department the Lingo Street fire was reported 
at 4:30 a.m. A fire was set at both the front and back doors of the small 
bungalow.

Investigators believe an accelerant was used in the blaze.

The Lingo Street fire came just 17 days after 2 women were killed in an arson 
fire in Carolina Beach. On March 10, David announced his office intends to seek 
the death penalty against arson suspect Marshall Hudson Doran, 22. Doran is 
charged with setting the 3 fires Dec. 6, 1 of which was deadly.

(source: Wilmington Star News)








FLORIDA:

Unanimous death sentences bill clears 1st Florida Senate committee



A Senate panel has approved a change in Florida's death sentencing process that 
supporters say, if passed by the full Legislature, would bring the state in 
line with the rest of the country in its executions.

The bill (S.B. 664) would require a unanimous vote by jurors to request the 
death penalty.

Right now, all it takes is a majority of a jury - a 7-5 vote - to recommend the 
death penalty. According to legislative staff analysis, between 2000 and 2012, 
just 20 % of death sentences have been issued by unanimous jury votes.

"In Florida, the only time a jury is not required to be unanimous is when 
jurors are considering a death sentence," said Sen. Thad Altman, R-Melbourne, 
the bill's sponsor. "This bill brings Florida in line with the vast majority of 
death penalty states."

After explaining the agony of coming to an opinion on a question of this 
magnitude, members of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee approved the bill 
by a 5-0 vote.

"There's someone who died unnecessarily, often horribly, and they have a family 
who survived, who demands and deserves justice," said Sen. Rob Bradley, 
R-Fleming Island. "Even though it's agonizing, I think it's time. I think it's 
time that Florida no longer be an outlier on this issue."

During the hearing, Sen. Greg Evers, R-Crestview, the committee's chair 
expressed concern that people like Ted Bundy would not have been executed. 
Bundy's execution was not ordered with a unanimous vote after he was convicted 
of killing dozens of young women and girls in the 1970s.

But Matthew Willard of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said 
a change in the process wouldn???t change how guilt is determined and that the 
increased standard for executions might not change the number of death 
sentences that are given.

Bill Cervone of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association said it's helpful 
for judges, who have the final say in ordering a death sentence, to know what 
the vote of the jury was.

(source: Bradenton Herald)








ALABAMA:

Bringing back electric chair would be unwise



Leave Yellow Mama where it belongs - in deep storage at the Holman Correction 
Facility in Atmore.

That's the only sane response to an effort to reinstate use of Alabama's 
infamous electric chair, nicknamed for its garish color.

The electric chair bill, which passed the state House of Representatives last 
week, purports to offer a practical alternative to death by lethal injection, 
should that method remain unavailable.

Lethal injection executions are now stalled in Alabama and elsewhere by legal 
challenges and because pharmaceutical companies increasingly refuse to supply 
states with the ingredients needed for fatal drug cocktails.

Botched executions of death row prisoners in several states show why lethal 
injection is rightly under review by the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds it 
may constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

In a number of cases, injections using different drug combinations have led to 
long, atrocious death scenes, including that of an Arizona inmate in 2014 who 
took almost 2 hours to die.

The solution to the stay on one questionable capital-punishment method, 
however, isn't to revive the even more barbaric electric chair option.

Yellow Mama was retired in 2002 precisely because of legal challenges over 
gruesome cruelty including inmates roasting alive while strapped in.

Bill sponsor Rep. Lynn Greer, R-Rogersville, says electrocutions will save 
Alabama money if a dearth of lethal injection drugs means inmates sit longer on 
death row.

He's wrong. Death penalty appeals will only become more costly for taxpayers if 
the electric chair is brought back and opponents who believe it is inhumane 
inevitably challenge its constitutionality.

But the Alabama Senate should refuse to take up reinstatement of the electric 
chair for a more fundamental reason:

The rank role unfairness and bigotry play in application of the death penalty, 
particularly in Southern states.

Study after study reveals that black defendants get the death penalty far more 
often than white defendants, for similar crimes. Black defendants convicted of 
killing white victims are put on death row in higher proportions than white 
defendants who killed black victims.

Add to that the horrifying number of death-row prisoners who've been 
exonerated, victims of shoddy legal defense or misconduct by prosecutors more 
interested in winning convictions than the truth.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 150 innocent death- row 
inmates have been exonerated since 1973, including 5 from Alabama.

Yellow Mama, ugly artifact of a morally indefensible death penalty system, 
shouldn't be returned to service.

Instead, Alabama lawmakers should follow the lead of Nebraska, where 
legislation to ban execution in favor of life sentences without chance of 
parole has received bipartisan support.

(source: al.com)








MISSISSIPPI:

Mississippi fights order to identify execution drug supplier



Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is asking a Hinds County judge to keep 
secret the identity of Mississippi's execution drug supplier while the state 
appeals an order to release the name.

Earlier this month, Hinds County Chancery Judge Denise Owens ruled that the 
state's public records law required release of the information, sought by death 
penalty opponents at the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center.

In papers filed last week, Hood's office said the state prison system should be 
able to keep concealing the name, because if it's forced to release the 
information, there's no point in appealing.

The justice center argues the state has little hope of winning on appeal, and 
that rights are being violated by the state's defiance of its public records 
law.

Owens has yet to rule.

Alabama lawmakers are also trying to shield the identities of companies who 
provide the state with execution drugs, but even without it, the Alabama 
Department of Corrections releases little information about the process of 
putting a person the death.

The prison system declined to release the suppliers of execution drugs, as well 
as other information about the process of execution. The Associated Press 
requested information about drug purchases and the execution protocol, 
including the procedures to make sure an inmate is unconscious.

The prison system cited ongoing litigation over the death penalty. In a letter 
dated Feb. 19, the department said it "generally considers execution related 
documents, including the purchase of execution drugs, confidential and exempt 
from public disclosure under Alabama law.

"However, because of pending litigation, we will not release any execution 
information," the letter said. The department did not cite any statutes for the 
exemption.

However, a lawyer for an inmate challenging the state's execution method said 
the state could release the information.

"The state is free to do what it wants with this information, and it chooses to 
continue to shroud Alabama's lethal injection procedures in secrecy," said 
lawyer Suhana Han, who represents death row inmate Tommy Arthur.

The Alabama House of Representatives on March 11 added the secrecy language to 
a bill that would allow the state to use the electric chair if the prison 
system was unable to find the needed drugs for an execution. Currently, the 
state puts inmates to death by lethal injection unless the inmate requests the 
electric chair. No one has done so.

The bill's sponsor, Republican Rep. Lynn Greer of Rogersville, said Alabama and 
other death penalty states are having trouble obtaining the drugs because 
pharmacies fear lawsuits and backlash from death penalty opponents.

European manufacturers have stopped selling the drugs to death penalty states, 
leaving some states unable to carry out death sentences or turning to drug 
combinations or compounding pharmacies for the drugs.

The bill would prohibit the disclosure of the "name, address, qualifications, 
and other identifying information of any person or entity that manufactures, 
compounds, prescribes, dispenses, supplies, or administers the drugs or 
supplies utilized in an execution." The names would be off limits to the 
courts, except in death penalty challenge or injury cases, in which they would 
be put under seal.

The proposal now goes to the Alabama Senate. Opposed lawmakers said the state 
had no compelling reason to keep the information secret.

The House approved a similar bill last year, but the measure did not get a vote 
in the Alabama Senate.

The last execution in Alabama occurred July 25, when Andrew Lackey was put to 
death. It was the state's first execution since October 2011. State officials 
acknowledged last year that Alabama had exhausted its supply of execution 
drugs. The state in September announced the adoption of a new drug combination. 
Arthur was to be the 1st inmate put to death with the new combination, but his 
execution was stayed.

(source: Associated Press)








LOUISIANA:

Durst heir faces murder charge after documentary broadcast



Robert Durst couldn't explain away similarities between his handwriting and a 
letter he said "only the killer could have written" that alerted police to his 
friend's shooting 15 years ago.

Confronted with new evidence by the makers of a documentary about his links to 
3 killings, the troubled millionaire blinked, burped oddly, pulled his ear and 
briefly put his head in his hands before denying he was the killer.

Then he stepped away from the tense interview and went to the bathroom, still 
wearing the live microphone that recorded what he said next.

"There it is. You're caught!" Durst whispered before the sound of running water 
is heard. "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."

That moment didn't just make for a captivating finale to a 6-part documentary 
on the eccentric life of an heir to a New York real estate fortune.

It also may have given police and prosecutors more evidence in the long-cold 
case of a mobster's daughter. Susan Berman was felled by a bullet to the back 
of her head as investigators prepared to find out what she knew about the 
disappearance of Durst's wife in 1982.

Los Angeles prosecutors filed a 1st-degree murder charge Monday that alleges 
Durst lay in wait with a gun and killed a witness - special circumstances that 
could carry a death sentence if prosecutors decide later to pursue it.

Durst, 71, who was arrested at a New Orleans hotel on the eve of Sunday's final 
episode, agreed Monday to face trial for the murder of Berman, who had vouched 
for him in public after his wife vanished.

Attorney Dick DeGuerin said outside court that Durst didn't kill Berman, and is 
"ready to end all the rumor and speculation and have a trial."

The makers of "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst" said Durst 
rejected his lawyer's advice to stay quiet before granting two lengthy 
interviews. They also said he knew he was being recorded throughout, and that 
they shared any evidence they gathered with authorities long before 
broadcasting the film on HBO.

Legal experts said the bathroom tape could become key evidence.

"Any statement that the defendant makes that they want to use against him, they 
can use against him," said Andrea Roth, a law professor at the University of 
California, Berkeley. "Even if it's sketchy, and only in context appears to 
make him look guilty."

Kerry Lawrence, a defense attorney in Westchester County, New York, said 
Durst's lawyers will have to try to explain away his comments, perhaps 
dismissing them as a joke.

"Prosecutors would argue it was a candid moment of self-reflection, and he I 
assume will argue that he knew he was still being recorded, and this was either 
said in jest or he was being facetious or sarcastic or was being provocative," 
Lawrence said. "I don't think it's quite the smoking gun."

The bathroom recording was not part of the evidence presented to prosecutors 
before charges were filed because detectives were still trying to determine if 
the recording was tampered with in any way, a law enforcement official with 
knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly because the 
investigation was ongoing and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the 
handwriting analysis was the key new evidence in the long investigation.

The documentary showed filmmaker Andrew Jarecki confronting Durst with a copy 
of an anonymous letter that alerted Beverly Hills police to look for a 
"cadaver" at Berman's address.

Durst offered that whoever sent it was "taking a big risk. You're sending a 
letter to police that only the killer could have written."

Then, in the final episode, Jarecki revealed another envelope, which Durst 
acknowledged mailing to Berman, that has similar writing in block letters and 
also misspelled the address as "Beverley."

"I wrote this one but I did not write the cadaver one," Durst said. But when 
shown an enlargement of both copies, Durst couldn't distinguish them.

Former Westchester County prosecutor Jeanine Pirro seemed stunned when the 
filmmakers showed her Durst's previously unknown letter to Berman, saying "the 
jig is up."

She believes it was her reopening of the cold case into Kathleen Durst's 1982 
disappearance that provoked the killing of Berman, who had been Durst's 
confidante.

Now, she said, his own words can convict him.

"It was a spontaneous statement, a classical exception to the hearsay rule," 
Pirro told Fox's "Good Day New York." ''I don't hear it as a muttering. I hear 
it as a clear, unequivocal 'I killed them.' That means he killed his wife, he 
killed Susan Berman and he killed Morris Black."

Durst - still worth millions despite his estrangement from his family, whose 
New York real estate empire is worth about $4 billion - has maintained his 
innocence in 3 killings in as many states.

He was acquitted by a Texas jury in the 2001 dismemberment killing of his 
elderly neighbor, whose body parts were found floating in Galveston Bay. 
Lawyers said Durst - who fled Texas and was brought back to trial after being 
caught shoplifting in Pennsylvania - killed Morris Black in self-defense.

Durst, however, acknowledged using a paring knife, 2 saws and an ax to 
dismember the body, and that may result in a delay of his transfer to Los 
Angeles, because he was arrested with a revolver on Saturday. That's illegal 
for felons, and Durst did prison time after pleading guilty to evidence 
tampering and jumping bail.

Louisiana authorities filed weapons charges late Monday charging Durst as a 
convicted felon in possession of a firearm and with having a small amount of 
marijuana.

When Durst approached the filmmakers and agreed to go on camera, he was still 
suspected in the killing of Berman, whose father was a Las Vegas mobster 
associated with Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky, and the disappearance of his 
wife, who was declared dead long after she vanished in New York in 1982.

Durst's longtime Houston lawyer Chip Lewis called Jarecki "duplicitous" for not 
making it clear to Durst that he would be sharing footage with police.

"It's all about Hollywood now," Lewis said.

But Jarecki said Durst signed a contract clearly giving the filmmakers the 
right to use what they gathered however they wished.

Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Kirk Albanese said the timing of the arrest had 
nothing to do with the production and that police were concerned Durst might 
flee the country.

"We do police work based on the facts and evidence," Albanese told the AP on 
Monday. "I know there's lots of speculation about that. It had nothing to do 
with the show."

By Monday, the filmmakers - likely witnesses at a trial - said they would make 
no more comments.

(source: Associated Press)