[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----MO., NEB., KAN., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

March 18



MISSOURI:

Missouri executes Cecil Clayton, state's oldest death-row inmate --- Inmate had 
appealed on grounds that he was diagnosed as severely mentally impaired



The state of Missouri executed its oldest death row inmate on Tuesday - a man 
who was mentally impaired from a work accident that removed a large portion of 
his brain - after his final appeals failed at the US supreme court.

The execution of Cecil Clayton, 74, was delayed for several hours, while the 
supreme court weighed appeals from Clayton's defense attorneys.

Lawyers acting for Clayton, 74, had called on the nation's highest court to 
intervene and stay the execution. In a petition to the nine justices, they 
argued that it would be unconstitutional to execute the prisoner because under 
a series of rulings in recent years the supreme court has banned judicial 
killings of insane and intellectually disabled people.

Clayton lost about a fifth of his frontal lobe in 1972 when a splinter from a 
log he was working on in a sawmill in Purdy, Missouri, dislodged and slammed 
into his skull. The damage has had a long-term impact on his character and 
behavior, with a succession of medical experts chronicling problems ranging 
from uncontrolled rage to hallucinations and depression.

The frontal lobe has an important function in controlling impulse and emotion.

In 1996 Clayton murdered a police officer, Christopher Castetter, who was 
called to a house where Clayton had broken in. There was no dispute about his 
guilt, though there was intense debate about whether he should have been 
protected from the gurney.

Elizabeth Unger Carlyle, attorney for Cecil Clayton, said of the supreme court 
decision:

Cecil Clayton had - literally - a hole in his head. Executing him without a 
hearing to determine his competency violated the constitution, Missouri law and 
basic human dignity.

Mr Clayton was not a 'criminal before the sawmill accident that lodged part of 
his skull into his brain and required 20% of his frontal lobe to be removed. He 
was happily married, raising a family and working hard at his logging business.

Medical experts who examined 74-year-old Mr. Clayton said he couldn't care for 
himself, tried but couldn't follow simple instructions, and was intellectually 
disabled with an IQ of 71. He suffered from severe mental illness and dementia 
related to his age and multiple brain injuries. The world will not be a safer 
place because Mr Clayton has been executed.

In 2002 the US supreme court ruled in Atkins v Virginia that it was 
unconstitutional to put to death an intellectually disabled person (previously 
known as mental retardation) under the 8th amendment prohibition of cruel and 
unusual punishment. Last year that protection was strengthened in Hall v 
Florida which obligated states to consider several indicators of intellectual 
disability, not just an IQ cut-off score.

(source: The Guardian)

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

The execution of Cecil Clayton and the biology of blame



In 1974, 2 months after having a portion of his brain removed due to an 
accident at the sawmill where worked, Cecil Clayton checked himself into a 
mental hospital, frightened by his suddenly uncontrollable temper.

Previously, Clayton had been an intelligent, guitar-playing family man, 
relatives said. He abstained from alcohol, worked part time as a pastor and 
paid weekly visits to a local nursing home.

But after the accident, which necessitated the removal of 20 % of his frontal 
lobe, everything changed.

"He broke up with his wife, began drinking alcohol and became impatient, unable 
to work and more prone to violent outbursts," Clayton's brother Marvin 
testified at trial.

In 1979, he visited William Clary, a doctor who examined him for extreme 
anxiety, depression and paranoia.

"I can't get a hold of myself, I'm all tore up," Clayton told the doctor, 
according to court filings from his attorneys.

Clayton's spiraling mental state and increasingly violent behavior came to a 
head in 1996, when he shot and killed Christopher Castetter, a sheriff's deputy 
responding to a domestic disturbance between Clayton and his girlfriend. 
Clayton was eventually convicted of murder, and executed via lethal injection 
in Bonne Terre, Mo., Tuesday night.

His death brought to an end to nearly 2 decades of litigation during which it 
seemed that Clayton's brain, rather than the man himself, was on trial.

"The effects of his 1972 accident left him blameless for the 1996 murder," read 
a petition filed by his defense, asking for a stay of execution from the U.S. 
Supreme Court. It was accompanied by an image of his brain scan, which shows a 
sizeable chunk of his brain missing from the right-hand side.

Clayton's attorney, Elizabeth Unger Carlyle, reiterated the defense???s stance 
in a statement released shortly after he was executed: "Mr. Clayton was not a 
'criminal' before the sawmill accident that lodged part of his skull into his 
brain and required 20 % of his frontal lobe to be removed," she said.

In other words, Cecil Clayton wasn't responsible for the shooting of a police 
officer - not fully. Instead, attorneys claimed the root of the killing was in 
that missing piece of his frontal lobe.

That argument - that a person's brain anatomy ought to change the way we assign 
guilt - has become an increasingly common one, according to Duke law professor 
Nita Farahany.

"The more we understand about neuroscience we see that even subtle 
abnormalities can affect human behavior," she said in a phone interview. 
"People are using neuroscience to argue, 'It's not my bad character, it's my 
bad brain,'" she said.

Farhany is a member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical 
Issues and an expert in the growing field of neurolaw, which examines how brain 
science is and ought to used in the legal system. She monitors cases where 
neuroscientific data has been brought as evidence and found a marked upswing in 
the past few years.

But as MRI scans and electroencephalogram recordings of brain activity are 
brought out of the examination room and into the courtroom, the focus of a 
trial shifts from assigning guilt to assessing mental and moral blame.

"As we develop better technologies for probing the brain, we detect more 
problems, and link them more easily to aberrant behavior," neuroscientist David 
Eagleman wrote in an essay for the Atlantic. "... When a criminal stands in 
front of the jury's bench today, the legal system wants to know whether he is 
blameworthy. Was it his fault, or his biology's fault?"

Neuroscience has revealed that humans have a lot less control over their 
actions than they like to think, Eagleman said. Brain injuries - particularly 
ones to the frontal lobe, like Clayton's - can radically reduce the ability to 
make decisions and check impulses.

And though it didn't work for Clayton, that understanding has helped others 
avoid the death penalty in recent cases. In 2013, prison escapee and convicted 
murder John McCluskey was sentenced to life without parole rather than the 
death penalty after his defense presented MRI evidence showing significant 
abnormalities in his frontal lobe. The headline in Wired read "Did brain scans 
just save a convicted murderer from the death penalty?" 2 years earlier, a 
juror at the trial of a Florida man who stabbed his wife and step-daughter said 
brain scans convinced him not to vote for the death penalty.

"It turned my decision all the way around," juror John Howard told the Miami 
Herald.

Though there aren't enough of these cases for a large enough sample size for 
serious study, research has shown that scientific evidence about a hypothetical 
defendant's brain function is likely to limit a sentence's severity. A 2012 
study in Science found that, on average, judges subtracted a year from an 
imaginary convict's sentence after being told he was genetically predisposed to 
violence.

"Those who read about the biological mechanism subtracted a year, as if to say, 
'This guy is really dangerous and scary, and we should treat him as such, but 
the biological evidence suggests that we can't hold him as responsible for the 
behavior," James Tabey, a co-author of the study, told the New York Times.

Even though neuroscientific evidence has been shown to be increasingly 
compelling in recent years, Farahany isn't surprised that it wasn't helpful in 
Clayton's case. The more than 20-year gap between Clayton's accident and his 
crime weaken the argument that he was unable to control his behavior. And 
though Clayton's brain was clearly abnormal, there is not enough research to 
definitively say the missing part of his frontal lobe caused him to commit 
murder.

"That piece is missing literally and figuratively," she said. " ... Once 
neuroscience gets to the point of causal explanations, in retrospect we might 
look back at it and say, 'Here's why he did what he did.'"

It's an exciting - but also worrying - possibility for neurolaw researchers. On 
one hand, neuroscience may help judges figure out when treatment rather than 
imprisonment is the more helpful option for someone who, for biological 
reasons, can't control his or her behavior.

On the other hand, neuroscience has increasingly shown that none of us can 
really control our behavior.

"Saying, 'My brain made me do it' can be problematic because our brains make us 
do everything," Farahany said. "Your preferences, your desires, your will power 
- a lot of that you have no control over."

Eagleman, in his essay, agrees.

"The choices we make are inseparably yoked to our neural circuitry, and 
therefore we have no meaningful way to tease the 2 apart," he wrote. "The more 
we learn, the more the seemingly simple concept of blameworthiness becomes 
complicated, and the more the foundations of our legal system are strained."

Then the inclusion of MRI and EEG scans as trial evidence is not just a 
scientific or legal question, Eagleman and Farahany believe, but a 
philosophical one. In a justice system predicated on the idea that people act 
with free will, what does it mean to recognize that so much of behavior is 
biological rather than rational?

"Criminal law is going to have to grapple much more seriously with why people 
do what they do," Farahany said.

(source: Washington Post)








NEBRASKA:

Death penalty costly in dollars and for victims' families



It is very difficult and emotional to discuss the policies that are involved in 
matters relating to taking a person's life, whether they are addressing 
abortion or the death penalty.

It is a lawmaker's duty to act with a great deal of thought and deliberation 
when coming to a decision on this topic. This is why I want to share with you 
where I stand on the death penalty and how I arrived at my position on this 
issue.

Over the past few years, I have spoken with family, friends, clergy of various 
Christian denominations, constituents and people who have been affected by the 
death penalty. As a result of this process, I have come to the decision that I 
am against the death penalty. I have always been pro-life when it comes to the 
unborn and I believe that the State of Nebraska and its laws should be 
reflective of a pro-life culture. Though the people on death row are criminals, 
it should not be in the state's interest to end their lives, just as it should 
not be in the state's interest to end the life of an unborn child.

Something that I found startling while researching this topic is the cost 
associated with the death penalty. Since 1976, when capital punishment was 
reinstated in the United States, Nebraska has spent an estimated $100 million 
on death penalty cases and has executed 3 people. This cost is so high because 
prosecution in death sentence cases costs $3 million, nearly 3 times as much as 
the cost of $1.1 million in prosecution for life without parole cases.

As a fiscal conservative, I see this as your tax dollars being wasted. Not only 
is the death penalty expensive to the tax payers, it also yields no tangible 
result because our state has been unable to acquire the drugs necessary to 
perform an execution. This is why we have not carried out an execution in 
almost 2 decades.

The death penalty is also unfair to the ones who are most traumatized by the 
murder, the victim???s family. On average, a death row inmate appeals their 
case 7.76 times. This forces the families to relive the case over and over, a 
process that takes decades and often ends without resolution. On the other 
hand, a life without parole sentence is only appealed an average of 1.64 times, 
giving the family a final sentencing outcome.

For these reasons, I have signed onto LB268, a bill that seeks to change the 
death penalty to life without parole.

I want to invite you to 2 town halls I will be having in the District on March 
27. I will be having a coffee in Seward at the Civic Center located at 616 
Bradford St., in the West Fire Place room that starts at 7:30 a.m. Later that 
day I will be having a lunch in York at Chance R located at 124 W 5th St., 
starting at noon. I look forward to talking with you about issues that are 
being discussed in the Unicameral.

As always, I am honored by the faith that you, the voters of District 24, have 
placed in me. My door is open and I have made it a goal to be accessible to the 
constituents of our district. You may continue to follow me on Facebook at 
Kolterman For Legislature and on Twitter at @KoltermanforLegislature. My office 
in the State Capitol is Room 1115, which I share with my colleague Senator Bob 
Hilkemann from Omaha. Stop by anytime. My e-mail address is 
mkolterman at leg.ne.gov and the office phone number is 402-471-2756. Kenny 
Zoeller, my legislative aide, and Katie Quintero, my administrative aide, are 
always available to assist you with your needs. If I am not immediately 
available, please do not hesitate to work with them to address your concerns, 
thoughts, and needs.

(source: Sen. Mark Kolterman, York News-Times)








KANSAS:

Advocates seek repeal of capital punishment



Conservative Republican political figures and the president of a Benedictine 
College pro-life student group delved Tuesday into ramifications of Kansas law 
authorizing convicted killers to be sentenced to death.

During a gathering on the 1st floor of the Capitol rotunda, voices of Bill 
Sutton, Anthony Brown and Laura Peredo were added to the complex, protracted 
debate about the stalled House bill repealing capital punishment in Kansas.

These advocates also set the stage for Ray Krone and Ron Keine, who are 
intimately aware of life-or-death struggle occurring in states that embrace the 
ultimate penalty. They are among 150 people wrongfully convicted of murder, 
sentenced to die and later released from death row in the United States.

"9 days from my execution, a police officer 4 states away was walking down the 
street," said Keine, who was convicted of murdering a University of New Mexico 
student in 1974. "He said he experienced a religious epiphany. He walked into 
the nearest church and he confessed to the crime I was on death row for."

Krone, who works with Keine at the death-row survivor organization Witness to 
Innocence, spent 10 years in prison, including 2 years on death row, after 
being found guilty of killing a Phoenix bartender in 1991. He was freed when 
DNA evidence proved he wasn't responsible for the woman's death.

The U.S. Air Force veteran had been working for the U.S. Postal Service when 
arrested. Seven months later, he was on trial for murder.

"I had nothing to worry about, of course, because I was innocent," Krone said. 
"I was convicted by that jury. I was sentenced to death because I declined to 
show remorse. How do you show remorse for something you didn't do?"

His admonition: "If they can do it to me, they can do it to anyone. Let your 
voices be heard."

The 1st-person accounts were delivered at the invitation of the Kansas 
Coalition Against the Death Penalty, which is working to generate support for 
abolition of capital punishment. The pending legislation would replace the 
death penalty with life in prison without possibility of parole. It would not 
apply retroactively.

In February, the coalition brought Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, Mennonite and 
Episcopal church leaders to the Capitol to make the case state-sanctioned 
executions conflicted with God???s message of redemption and reconciliation.

They also argued the death penalty didn't serve as a deterrent to crime and 
that prosecution of capital cases cost an estimated $395,000 each as opposed to 
$98,000 for a noncapital case.

The death penalty was reinstated in Kansas in 1994, but the state hasn't 
executed anyone since 1965.

Sutton, a Republican state representative from Gardner, picked up on these 
topics in remarks Tuesday.

"I try to make sure every dollar spent by the Kansas taxpayer gets a return on 
that investment," Sutton said. "There are millions of dollars - millions of 
dollars - spent on death penalty trials and the appeals process. We don't have 
anything to show for it. There's exactly zero utility for the tax dollars 
spent."

Brown, a former Republican House member from Eudora, said his service in the 
Legislature was tied to core principles that included a perspective on abortion 
that life started at conception. He believes state lawmakers need to respect 
all life created by God.

"All life has the same value. Anything that interrupts that continuum of life 
is inherently wrong," he said.

Peredo said many campus pro-life groups focused exclusively on abortion, but 
Ravens Respect Life at Benedictine College was committed to repeal of capital 
punishment and acknowledgment life extended from conception to death.

Gov. Sam Brownback, an anti-abortion Republican who would hold the veto pen if 
the House and Senate passed a repeal bill, didn't participate in the rally.

He did say in an interview prior to the event that anti-abortion activists had 
increasingly been drawn into the capital punishment conversation.

"You hear it connected," Brownback said. "You hear it said more frequently 
now."

(source: Capital Journal)








CALIFORNIA----new death sentence

Iftekhar Murtaza Gets Death for Attack on Indian American Family



Iftekhar Murtaza, convicted of killing the father and sister of his 
ex-girlfriend in a fiery attack on the Indian American family's Southern 
California home, has been sentenced to death, reports AP.

The OrangeCounty district attorney's office said 30-year-old Iftekhar Murtaza 
was sentenced March 3 in Santa Ana.

He was convicted for the murders of 56-year-old Jay Dhanak and his 20-year-old 
daughter Karishma in 2007.

Prosecutors say he killed the pair in a plot to reunite with his 
then-18-year-old ex-girlfriend Shayona Dhanak after she ended their 
relationship citing her Hindu family's opposition to her dating a Muslim.

Authorities say Murtaza and a friend burned the family's Anaheim Hills home and 
kidnapped and killed Dhanak's father and sister, leaving their bodies in a 
park.

A jury recommended Murtaza receive the death penalty.

According to an earlier report in India-West, Murtaza was convicted in 2013 of 
the murders of the father and sister of his ex-girlfriend, and the attempted 
murder of her mother, in what prosecutors say was an ill-conceived attempt to 
reunite the couple.

"We're very pleased with the verdicts," said prosecutor Howard Gundy at the 
time.

Dhanak's mother Leela was stabbed and left for dead after the home was torched, 
but she survived.

2 of Murtaza's friends were convicted in the killings, and 1 of them was 
sentenced to life in prison.

(source: indiawest.com)

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

Robert Durst charged with 1st degree murder, may face death penalty



Robert Durst, the son of New York City real estate tycoon Seymour Durst, has 
been charged with 1st degree murder of Susan Berman, and may even face death 
penalty.

Durst first made news back in 1980's, when his wife, Kathie, disappeared, and 
again in the early 2000s when he was the subject of a multi-state manhunt but 
was released of murder, TMZ.com reported.

Now, the L.A. County D.A. has charged Durst with 1st degree murder with special 
circumstances, as Berman, who had been a close friend of accused, was about to 
talk to NY investigators about the disappearance of his wife in 2000, but was 
found murdered in her house.

HBO had released a documentary on the subject titled 'The Jinx,' which 
described Berman as a confidant of Durst and his mouthpiece, and the producers 
of the documentary are said to have helped authorities nab Durst.

Prosecutors will decide later whether or not to seek the death penalty.

(source: Business-Standard)

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

Appeal seeks to overturn death sentence for child killer Duncan----Lawyers for 
Joseph Edward Duncan III, convicted of killing 10-year-old Anthony Martinez of 
Beaumont in 1997, work to overturn death sentences in 2005 murder of Idaho boy.



The future of a condemned child-killer whom a now-retired Riverside County 
judge described as the most evil person he's ever met is now in the hands of 
the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Lawyers for Joseph Edward Duncan III, sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for 
the 1997 murder of 10-year-old Anthony Martinez of Beaumont, are trying to 
overturn a U.S. District Court judge's 2013 ruling that Duncan was mentally 
competent when he waived his right to appeal 3 death sentences imposed in Idaho 
for the 2005 kidnapping, rape and murder of a 9-year-old boy.

Judges Susan Graber, Raymond Fisher and Milan Smith heard from them and Idaho 
federal prosecutors Tuesday in San Francisco; they could issue their ruling at 
any time. Duncan, 52, did not attend the hearing; he remains on death row in 
Terre Haute, Indiana.

It could be the last major court procedure before federal authorities set an 
execution date: if the 9th Circuit sides with U.S. District Judge Edward 
Lodge's ruling, Duncan is out of options.

That's welcome news in Riverside County, where a jury ruled nearly 6 years ago 
that Duncan was mentally competent. Veteran Superior Court Judge David B. 
Downing, who retired in 2013, sentenced him to 2 terms of life in prison after 
prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty because he'd already been 
condemned in the Idaho case.

"The problem with the death penalty in California is it takes 30 years to carry 
out," Downing told The Press-Enterprise on Tuesday. "The federal death penalty 
is much faster."

While Duncan's case here has long been resolved, Riverside officials still are 
involved in Idaho proceedings as witnesses. Many testified during a 7-week 
hearing in Boise 2 years ago, and Anthony's brother and mother testified during 
the 2008 capital trial.

Duncan, who is among 62 people on federal death row, served as his own lawyer 
during that trial, though famed anti-death penalty lawyer Judy Clarke, now 
representing accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, sat by to assist 
at his request.

But Duncan has since embraced legal representation: The Riverside County Public 
Defender's Office brokered his 2011 plea deal, and his lawyer during the 
retroactive mental competency hearing in Boise was Michael Burt, a noted 
anti-death penalty lawyer past whose clients include Lyle Menendez and Night 
Stalker Richard Ramirez.

He's now represented by Joseph Schlesinger, chief of the death penalty appeals 
unit in the Federal Public Defender's Office in the Eastern District of 
California.

Schlesinger told the 9th Circuit panel Tuesday that Lodge's 2013 ruling focused 
on Duncan's comptency in planning the crimes, interacting with jail guards and 
others instead of his state of mind when he waived his right to appeal. 
Schlesinger also has requested the 9th Circuit to allow Duncan to appeal even 
if they agree he was mentally competent, saying he was "clearly a disturbed 
individual" whose waiver was "very peculiar."

"We don't have somebody who's clearly ready to accept their punishment," 
Schlesinger said. "We don't have somebody who wants to die, which makes this 
different from practically every other waiver in a death penalty case this 
court has ever had."

But Idaho U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson noted that Duncan made a point of formally 
waiving his appeal instead of just not filing an appeal, and he told an FBI 
agent he did so because he knew his lawyers might file one without his 
permission.

"The record is very clear that in November of 2008, this defendant did not wish 
to appeal," Olson said.

Both attorneys spoke for just 20 minutes; judges also have detailed briefings 
from both sides to consider.

Anthony's murder had gone unsolved until Duncan confessed after he was arrested 
at a Denny's in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in July 2005, with 8-year-old Shasta 
Groene, 6 weeks after he kidnapped the girl and her brother Dylan. He had 
killed their mother, her boyfriend and her 13-year-old son.

Dylan's remains were found at a remote campsite in the Lolo National Forest in 
Montana. Duncan told investigators he had an "epiphany" that stopped him from 
killing Shasta; that statement has been a focus of the mental competency 
proceedings.

Though he has never been charged, Duncan also has confessed to killing two 
girls in Seattle in 1996, just after he was released from prison after raping a 
boy at gunpoint when he was 17. He was facing child molestation charges in 
Minnesota when he abandoned his apartment in Fargo, N.D, in May 2005, where he 
studied computer science at North Dakota State University, after completing a 
spreadsheet weighing out the consequences and benefits of embarking on a 
murderous rampage.

Downing said the Idaho murders were the worst he's ever heard of, and he heard 
of many during his years on the bench.

"He clearly is the evilist of the evil," Downing said. "If anybody deserves the 
death penalty, it's Duncan."

(source: Press-Enterprise)








USA:

Poland wants US to rule out death penalty for Gitmo detainees



Poland wants the United States to rule out the death penalty for 2 men who were 
tortured by the CIA in its territory before being transferred to Guantanamo 
Bay, according to a government letter released Tuesday.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has condemned Poland for hosting 
secret CIA prisons, saying it knowingly abetted the unlawful imprisonment and 
torture of Guantanamo-bound detainees Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian, and Saudi 
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in 2002-2003.

"Given the decision in al-Nashiri vs Poland, the government has decided to ask 
the United States for diplomatic assurances in favour of the plaintiff," the 
Polish foreign ministry said in a letter addressed to the Warsaw-based Helsinki 
Foundation for Human Rights.

"The government is also taking action to fulfil the obligations imposed (by the 
ECHR) on Polish officials in the two cases", the ministry added in the letter 
made public by the foundation.

The ECHR warned in its ruling that al-Nashiri could be sentenced to death in 
the US and asked Poland to find a way to eliminate the risk of the penalty, 
which is banned in Europe except for Belarus.

The trial of 49-year-old al-Nashiri, who allegedly led Al-Qaeda operations in 
the Gulf, could begin in September in the United States.

A Council of Europe committee warned that al-Nashiri and Zubaydah -- 43 and 
allegedly Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man -- risk appearing before a military 
commission that could use evidence obtained under torture.

Poland's former president Aleksander Kwasniewski acknowledged in December that 
the EU member hosted a secret CIA prison.

(source: Agence France-Presse)

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

Death-penalty expert joins defense for Benghazi attack suspect Abu Khattala



Attorneys for Libyan terrorism suspect Ahmed Abu Khattala asked a federal court 
Tuesday for more time to review evidence after adding a death-penalty expert to 
the team.

U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper of the District agreed to postpone a 
scheduled Wednesday hearing to May 19, as both sides requested, to continue 
preparing for the trial of the suspected ringleader of the September 2012 
attacks against U.S. outposts in Benghazi, Libya.

Cooper's order continues a series of expected delays in the closely watched 
case, which presents federal prosecutors in the District with the rare but 
sought-after challenge of handling one of the country's most important 
terrorism trials and presents defense attorneys with the unusual prospect of a 
death-penalty case in the nation's capital.

Abu Khattala was indicted in June for the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks that killed 
U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and 3 other Americans. U.S. Special 
Forces captured him in June during a raid in Libya.

Abu Khattala pleaded not guilty in the fall to charges eligible for the death 
penalty, including murder, conspiracy and destroying a U.S. facility. The U.S. 
government has called Abu Khattala the commander of the Ubaydah Bin Jarrah 
militia, which sought to establish Islamic law in Libya.

Prosecutors have turned over more than 17,000 pages of material, most of it 
classified, but expect to produce thousands more within the next week, 
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael C. DiLorenzo wrote in a joint motion with 
Assistant Federal Public Defender Michelle Peterson.

Meanwhile, Khattala's public defender team has added three attorneys since 
January who have had to obtain security clearances: Eric Leslie Lewis and 
Jeffrey D. Robinson of the Lewis Baach law firm, and New York-based 
death-penalty expert Richard Jasper.

Federal law requires that capital defendants be appointed at least one 
experienced death-penalty lawyer. Since Congress reinstated the federal death 
penalty in 1988, only a handful of eligible cases have gone to trial in the 
District, and no D.C. jury has imposed a death sentence.

As a result, federal defenders reached out to Jasper, who has represented 30 
such clients , including 2 federal defendants, mafia boss Vincent Basciano and 
ex-postal worker Ronald Mallay, who was sentenced to life for racketeering and 
murder in the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere.

Lewis's firm specializes in international investigations, with clients 
including Middle Eastern governments and Arabic-speaking Guantanamo detainees. 
Robinson, formerly with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, has a 
background in civil rights, government affairs work and post-conviction capital 
defense.

(source: Washington Post)

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

Columbine Shooting Survivor Is Potential Juror in Trial of Aurora Theater 
Shooter James Holmes



When Juror #737 received his summons to report to jury duty in Colorado, he was 
overwhelmed with painful memories.

Now in his early 30s, the juror had been a student at Columbine High School 
when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris opened fire in 1999, killing 13 of his 
classmates and injuring 20 more. Among the victims: his prom date.

The man was even more horrified when he was assigned to the jury pool of James 
Holmes, who is charged with the Aurora theater shooting that left 12 people 
dead and injured least 70 others.

'My knee jerk reaction was, 'I can't do this,' he said in court on Monday, 
according to CBS News.

The juror says he had given the matter "tons of thought" and determined that he 
could be a more capable juror because he had experienced a mass shooting.

The juror said that it took "a decade of therapy to get over the shooting," but 
that he would be able to be fair and impartial.

The judge agreed, qualifying Juror #737 to move on to the final stage of jury 
selection.

Holmes, who pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, faces the death penalty 
in the shooting.

A final jury will be chosen in April.

(source: The Denver Post)