[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., VA., N.C., S.C., LA.

[Rick Halperin]

May 3



PENNSYLVANIA:

Attention turns to obscure state committee studying death penalty



The committee hasn't met since 2012 and is running at least 2 years behind 
schedule. Its 27 members haven't been publicly announced, but critics already 
charge they have leaped to conclusions.

The state Senate's Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment has until recently 
been little noticed, just the latest group to study flaws in Pennsylvania's 
death penalty, under which scores of inmates have seen their sentences reversed 
and no one has been executed against their will since John F. Kennedy was 
president.

Once obscure, the all-volunteer committee is now prominent, elevated in the 
debate by Gov. Tom Wolf's moratorium on executions. Wolf announced the 
moratorium in February when he called the death penalty "error prone, expensive 
and anything but infallible." He said he will issue a reprieve to any prisoner 
facing the death chamber until the committee's report is released and acted 
upon.

That means the panel could wield enormous power in determining the future of 
capital punishment in Pennsylvania, which houses the nation's 5th largest death 
row. And while previous investigations have suggested fixes to the process to 
make it fairer, some death penalty backers are bracing - and some opponents are 
hoping - for this committee to call for the law's outright repeal.

"That would not surprise me," said Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico, 
a committee member who supports the death penalty. "That is probably where this 
would end up."

"I suspect that they will support the abolition of the death penalty," said 
Carol Lavery, Pennsylvania's former victims advocate and another committee 
member.

The committee, approved by the Senate in 2011, is looking into 17 different 
aspects of capital punishment, including its cost, its impact on public safety, 
its potential for racial or economic bias, and whether there are sufficient 
safeguards against the innocent being executed.

Glenn Pasewicz, executive director of the Joint State Government Commission, 
the agency spearheading the effort, does not anticipate the report will be "the 
seminal document that starts rolling forward with repeal."

Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, a Montgomery County Republican who proposed the study, 
echoed that, saying the committee has not been asked to weigh in on the larger 
question of whether the death penalty should be sustained. That's an issue, he 
maintained, for lawmakers and public opinion to decide.

Greenleaf is the co-chairman of a 4-member Senate task force that is overseeing 
the panel's work. But his Democratic counterpart, state Sen. Daylin Leach of 
Montgomery County, said that if the committee concludes the death penalty is 
too flawed to be justified, he expects it will voice that recommendation.

"I don't think it does anyone any good to spend all this time and this effort 
on the data without giving anyone an opinion on what the data means," said 
Leach, a staunch critic of capital punishment.

Since Wolf announced the moratorium, conservative lawmakers and other death 
penalty supporters have bristled over the committee's makeup, charging it is 
weighed against their views.

According to a list provided by the Joint Commission, the panel includes 
judges, defense attorneys, prosecutors, clergy members, college professors, a 
relative of a murder victim, victims advocates, officials from the ACLU and 2 
other nonprofits, and police and corrections representatives.

"There's very few prosecutors or individuals who favor the death penalty on the 
committee as a whole," Marsico said, "so I don't expect a glowing review of the 
death penalty because of the makeup of it."

Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli, a vocal death penalty 
supporter who is not on the panel, charged that further studies are unnecessary 
and are driven by opponents who want to poke holes in the law.

Morganelli said the best review that death sentences receive is through the 
courts, when a jury individually examines the facts of each case and appellate 
judges then scrutinize whether the decisions were justified.

"These studies are a bunch of nonsense in my opinion," said Morganelli, a 
Democrat. "They are motivated by a desire to end the death penalty. They don't 
want to improve the death penalty."

Greenleaf and Leach disputed that criticism, saying that no one should oppose 
efforts to better understand how the system is functioning.

"Anyone who is for or against [capital punishment] should not be afraid of 
facts," Greenleaf said. A fact "doesn't lie. Whatever it is, it is."

Said Leach: "At the end of the day, the death penalty is another government 
program, so let's evaluate it like any other government program."

The report was originally due in December 2013. But selecting the panel's 27 
participants took six months alone, and work has proven time-consuming, given 
the need for data collectors to go from county courthouse to county courthouse 
gathering statistics about homicide cases, when the death penalty is sought and 
when it is imposed, Pasewicz said.

The hope is for the report to be completed by the end of the year, though it 
could stretch into 2016, Pasewicz said.

So far, the committee has met twice as a whole, in May and August 2012, 
according to the Joint Commission. The panel's subcommittees have held two 
meetings and 15 teleconferences, the most recent in April 2014.

For the report, the Joint Commission - a research wing of the Legislature - has 
been assisted by a state commission on fairness in the courts and by 
researchers from Penn State University.

The study has no individual budget and no dedicated staff members, with the 
Joint Commission's 11 employees also juggling other state initiatives, Pasewicz 
said. Though the Senate resolution authorized the panel to conduct public 
hearings, it has no plans to do so, since the Joint Commission is not set up to 
hold them and lacks the power to subpoena witnesses or take testimony under 
oath, he said.

Pasewicz said he anticipates hearings will be held in the Legislature after the 
recommendations are released.

Given the contentious topic, Pasewicz said he doesn't expect unanimity from the 
panel. But, he said, everyone on the committee will be heard, pro or con.

"It is a controversial issue. We want to make sure we have as many people at 
the meetings, at the conference calls, as we can," Pasewicz said. "We've been 
unusually sensitive to make sure that people were available and had a fair 
opportunity to participate."

That's the hope of Lavery, the former victims advocate. She said that while she 
believes the committee is weighed against the death penalty, she expects it 
will still offer detailed information that can be used on each side of the 
debate.

"The facts that will come out will be both in support and against," Lavery 
said.

Matthew Mangino, another committee member, called the study a "fresh look" and 
said the panel has yet to reach its conclusions.

"As in any aspect of the criminal justice system, there is always room for 
improvement in the process," said Mangino, a former Lawrence County district 
attorney who has written a book about the death penalty. "Can we improve the 
process, or should the process be halted? I think that those are legitimate 
questions for any task force that is examining the criminal justice system."

1 of the 4 senators on the task force overseeing the committee is Lisa Boscola, 
D-Northampton. Several attempts to seek comment from her were unsuccessful.

'Riddled with flaws'

Pennsylvania has 185 prisoners on death row, but it rarely performs an 
execution. Just three men have been put to death in the modern era of capital 
punishment, and all were volunteers who abandoned legal challenges to their 
sentences. The last was Philadelphia "house of horrors" murderer Gary Heidnik, 
who was lethally injected in 1999.

The reasons for the logjam are the subject of heated discussion. Capital 
punishment supporters blame an arduous appeals process, activist judges and 
what they characterize as overzealous tactics by anti-death-penalty lawyers.

Former Chief Justice Ronald Castille, who retired at the end of last year, has 
been the most prominent voice. In a 2011 opinion, he accused federal public 
defenders of "obstructionist tactics" that try to sabotage Pennsylvania's law 
through abusive filings that clog the courts.

Whether opponents "like it or not," two-thirds of the states have the death 
penalty, Castille wrote. "The difference of death does not mean that any and 
all tactics in pursuit of the defeat of a capital judgment are legitimate."

Opponents of capital punishment cite the high number of death sentences that 
are reversed at appeal, typically due to mistakes by the defendants' attorneys 
at trial. They also highlight death-row exonerations across the country, 
including 6 in Pennsylvania. In recent years, economic arguments about the cost 
of the death penalty also have been increasingly trumpeted.

Marc Bookman, a Philadelphia attorney who is active in the anti-death penalty 
movement, said that any honest study of capital punishment in the state will 
show that it is fatally flawed.

"I don't have any idea what the committee proposals are going to be, but I do 
know the facts, which are that we have 252 reversals and no involuntary 
executions since 1962," said Bookman, executive director of the Atlantic Center 
for Capital Representation, which advises defense teams in death penalty cases.

His deputy, Dana Cook, is a member of the panel.

"It is my opinion that the death penalty has shown itself to be unworkable over 
a 30-year period," Bookman said. "So if the committee reaches a conclusion that 
the death penalty has been unworkable over 30 years, then I think they'll take 
the next step and say that the death penalty should be repealed."

In just over a decade, two studies have been completed. The first, in 2003 by a 
state Supreme Court committee studying bias in the justice system, cited 
concerns that race played a major role in death sentences in at least some 
counties, among other critiques. The second, in 2007 by an American Bar 
Association team, warned the system was so flawed it risked the prospect that 
an innocent person could be executed.

Neither effort called for a repeal of the law, as was done in studies in New 
Jersey and Maryland, bordering states that have abolished capital punishment in 
recent years.

Jeff Sheridan, a spokesman for Wolf, said he would not speculate on whether the 
governor would support a repeal if the committee recommended one. Wolf wants to 
see what comes out of the panel, Sheridan said.

"He does not know what will be in the committee's final product," Sheridan 
said. "What he does know is the system is riddled with flaws, is extremely 
costly and has been wrong too many times."

Whether a repeal could gain traction in Pennsylvania's political climate is an 
open question.

Chris Borick, a Muhlenberg College pollster and political scientist, doubts one 
would go far given Republican domination of both chambers.

As a whole, the public is relatively divided over the death penalty, especially 
when it is pitted against life in prison without parole, the state's other 
punishment for first-degree murder, Borick said. But among GOP voters, capital 
punishment remains popular, and Republican lawmakers in safely conservative 
districts are unlikely to buck that support, he said.

Borick predicts the committee will stop short of recommending the law's 
abolition, instead focusing on potential fixes to the system that could peel 
away reluctant Republicans - especially, he said, if they are framed as 
protecting the innocent while shoring up capital punishment for the guilty.

"No committee wants to put something up, especially something that comes out of 
a governor's initiative, that is dead on arrival," Borick said.

Kathleen Lucas, executive director of Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the 
Death Penalty, also doubts the committee will come out in favor of repeal. But 
that's not because of political considerations, she said, but because she 
believes the panel hasn't been directly asked to answer that question.

Lucas is convinced that, one day, the law will be abolished in Pennsylvania 
regardless.

"It's a question of whether it happens in the next 5 years, or the next 10, or 
the next 20," Lucas said.

In the meantime, Wolf's moratorium is being fought out in the courts.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams sued Wolf in February over a 
reprieve the governor issued for Terrance Williams, a 2-time murderer who was 
scheduled to be executed for the 1984 robbing and fatal tire-iron beating of 
another man.

Seth Williams called Wolf's move a "lawless act" that illegally subverted the 
state's death-penalty law. Lawyers for Wolf countered that the governor's power 
of reprieve is expressly granted in the state constitution.

In a rare move, the state Supreme Court agreed in March to take up the dispute, 
though a hearing has yet to be scheduled.

(source: Morning Call)

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

Death penalty trial to start Monday



More than 3 years after Karissa Kunco's body was discovered in the woods in Mt. 
Pleasant Township, her alleged killer, Jordan Clemons, will go to trial Monday.

Clemons, 26, formerly of Canonsburg, is accused of killing 21-year-old 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. The pair 
dated.

The prosecution is seeking the death penalty.

Jury selection was completed over 3 1/2 days in March. Attorneys narrowed 151 
potential jurors down to the 16-member panel - 12 jurors and 4 alternates.

Defense attorney Brian Gorman declined to say if Clemons will testify during 
the trial. In the past, Gorman argued 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.

Assistant District Attorney Chad Schneider plans to call more than 20 
witnesses, including Kunco's father. On Tuesday, Washington County Common Pleas 
Judge Gary Gilman ruled the prosecution can use Kunco's PFA and statements she 
made to medical staff at St. Clair Hospital in Mt. Lebanon following an alleged 
Dec. 18, 2011, assault by Clemons. The evidence, according to court documents, 
will be used for the purpose of showing ill will, motive or malice, and assist 
in painting a picture of the former couple's relationship.

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

Clemons remains in Washington County jail without bond.

(source: Observer-Reporter)

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

Slain trooper's parents say they forgive suspected ambusher



The parents of a slain Pennsylvania State Police trooper said Sunday they have 
forgiven his alleged killer and are relying on their deep faith to get them 
through the loss.

Appearing at a church in the same Pocono Mountains region where Eric Frein 
spent 48 days on the run, Bryon and Darla Dickson said forgiveness has helped 
them move on and avoid becoming bitter.

"It doesn't do you any good to hate somebody for whatever they have done to 
you, because all it does is eat you up. And in the end, what does it do for 
you? Absolutely nothing," said Bryon Dickson.

Frein, 31, is charged in the Sept. 12 ambush that killed Cpl. Bryon Dickson II 
and critically injured Trooper Alex Douglass.

The alleged gunman, an anti-government survivalist, led police on a tense, 
6-week manhunt through the northeastern Pennsylvania woods before U.S. marshals 
caught him outside an abandoned airplane hangar, about 30 miles from the 
barracks where authorities say he opened fire during a late-night shift change.

Frein has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

After the service, Darla Dickson told The Associated Press she would accept 
whatever punishment is ultimately meted out to Frein if he is convicted, either 
the death penalty or life in prison.

"Justice lays behind us at the grave, where my son's body is buried," she said. 
"And Eric Frein is chained to that place of justice. He has to be held 
accountable for what he has done."

Addressing the congregation, Darla Dickson recalled the moment that every 
parent of a police officer or soldier dreads: the knock on the door. It came 
around 2:30 a.m., more than three hours after the ambush, when a trooper and 
chaplain brought word that her son had been killed in the line of duty.

"What I experienced was just a disbelief beyond degree," she said from the 
stage of Community Church in Tobyhanna, about 10 miles from the home of Frein's 
parents, where the search was centered. "It was very surreal. I just could not 
even wrap my mind around it."

She acknowledged that it hasn't been easy to forgive Frein, who authorities 
said did not know her son or Douglass.

"There were days when we had to get up, and it was difficult to set one foot in 
front of the other and face the world," she said.

But the Dicksons said their Christian faith has brought them great comfort - 
and teaches them that just as God has forgiven them, they are to forgive 
others.

"Not keeping a record of wrongdoing gives you hope for tomorrow, a sense of 
love that displaces all evil in the world," Darla Dickson said.

Their appearance came as the church celebrated "Blue Sunday," paying tribute to 
law enforcement. The pastor, David Crosby Jr., brought several state police 
troopers and local police chiefs on stage to cheers and applause from the 
congregation of hundreds.

Crosby prayed for the safety and protection of law enforcement, as well as for 
"healing and restoration" in Baltimore, where rioting followed the death of a 
black man in police custody. Six police officers were charged Friday in Freddie 
Gray's death.

Darla Dickson told the AP she doesn't think about Frein. Instead, she focuses 
on her son, a 38-year-old Marine veteran who left behind a wife and 2 young 
sons.

"I miss my son. I grieve for him," she said. "But it's not the kind of grief 
that the rest of the world carries. I have that hope that I will see him 
again."

(source: Associated Press)








VIRGINIA:

Pace of Death Sentences, Executions Slows in Virginia



A prosecutor's decision not to seek a death penalty for the man accused of 
abducting and killing a University of Virginia student is emblematic of capital 
punishment's decline across the country and in the state that once operated one 
of the busiest execution chambers in the nation.

Virginia has sent only 6 people to death row in the last 9 years after sending 
40 over the previous 8 years, according to statistics compiled by the Death 
Penalty Information Center. As a result, the state only has 8 inmates awaiting 
execution - down from a high of 57 in 1995 - and unless something changes, 
Jesse Matthew Jr. won't be joining them.

Matthew is charged with 1st-degree murder in the death of 18-year-old Hannah 
Graham. He also is charged with abduction with intent to defile, which is the 
first of 15 offenses listed in state law that can elevate a murder count to 
capital murder. Albemarle County's chief prosecutor has declined to say 
specifically why Matthew, who is due in court for a hearing on pretrial matters 
Tuesday, was not charged with capital murder.

Matthew's case, perhaps the most high-profile murder case in Virginia since the 
2002 Washington-area sniper shootings that left 10 dead, is playing out as the 
death penalty is on the wane. Virginia has slipped from 2nd to 3rd nationally - 
behind Texas and Oklahoma - with 110 executions since the U.S. Supreme Court 
reinstated capital punishment in 1976. No executions are currently scheduled.

Legal experts say there are many reasons for the deceleration of the death 
penalty in Virginia, but perhaps the biggest is the establishment in 2004 of 
four regional capital defender offices staffed by attorneys and investigators 
who devote all their time to death penalty cases.

"In the past, an awful lot of people who ended up on death row had abysmal 
representation," said Steve Northup, a lawyer and former executive director of 
Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "Prosecutors were able to 
take advantage. Now prosecutors know capital defendants are going to be well 
represented."

It's no coincidence, experts suggest, that the sharp downturn in death 
sentences began the year the capital defender offices opened. The year before, 
Virginia sent 6 people to death row. No more than 2 death sentences have been 
imposed in any year since.

A recent study by University of Virginia law professor John G. Douglass 
concluded that the number of capital murder charges has declined, but not as 
rapidly as the number of death sentences. Virginia prosecutors obtained an 
average of 34 capital murder indictments a year between 1995 and 1999, but only 
22 per year from 2008 through 2013. The percentage of those cases going to 
trial fell from 38 % in the late '90s to 19 %, suggesting more cases are being 
resolved by plea negotiations resulting in punishment less than death.

"Virginia prosecutors have not abandoned the death penalty," Douglass wrote. 
"Instead, increasingly, they bargain with it."

Douglass agrees with others who cite establishment of the state-funded capital 
defender's offices, which operate on a budget of $3.5 million a year, as one of 
the reasons Virginia's death row has been steadily shrinking.

"A capable and vigorous defense no doubt accounts - at least in part - for the 
increased willingness of prosecutors to resolve capital cases short of death," 
Douglass wrote.

Doug Ramseur, the central region's capital defender, said one of the reasons 
more cases are being plea bargained "may be recognition that juries are giving 
out the death sentence less." That's due in part to a growing acceptance of 
life without parole as a reasonable alternative to death, Ramseur and other 
experts said.

"When a jury is assured a truly dangerous individual will never be released 
from prison, they feel more comfortable turning down a death penalty," said 
Michael Stone, who succeeded Northup as head of the state's leading 
anti-capital punishment organization.

The case of Washington-area sniper Lee Boyd Malvo is one high-profile example, 
Stone said. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, but the jury sentenced Malvo 
to life without parole. Stone said Malvo almost certainly would have been 
sentenced to death if life without parole had not been an option.

Experts also say public opinion about the death penalty is shifting, partly 
because more than 150 people sentenced to die have been exonerated.

"That has shaken the confidence of jurors and the public so they are willing to 
convict people but not sentence them to death as much," said Richard Dieter, 
executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based 
advocacy gropu that opposes capital punishment.

Dieter noted in a recent report that national Gallup polls show support for the 
death penalty has tumbled from 80 % in 1994 to 63 %. Meantime, death sentences 
nationally have declined from a peak of 315 in 1996 to 72 last year. Even 
Texas, by far the execution leader with 524 since 1976, has seen death 
sentences dwindle to fewer than a dozen a year after peaking at 43 in 1994.

The trend has not escaped the notice of New York Law School professor Robert 
Blecker, one of the nation's most outspoken capital punishment supporters.

"I'd like to think it has to do with prosecutors becoming more discriminating 
and not going for death on every death-eligible crime, only going for it for 
the worst of the worst of the worst," Blecker said.

The wishes of the victim's family and the huge amount of time and money 
required to pursue a death penalty are other factors to consider, Dinwiddie 
County Commonwealth's Attorney Ann Cabell Baskervill said, although neither 
concern is dispositive. Baskervill is seeking the death penalty for Russell E. 
Brown II, who is charged in the shooting death of Virginia State Trooper Junius 
A. Walker. The trial is set for next year.

"If you think you're not going to be successful, it's foolish to seek it," 
Baskervill said of the death penalty. "As a steward of resources and what 
society wants, that comes into play. It's an awful lot to drag the community 
through, especially when it could go the other way."

(source: Associated Press)








NORTH CAROLINA:

NC bill to restart executions pushes an unjust penalty



Last week, Indonesia's government descended into barbarism by executing 8 
prisoners for drug offenses.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court debated whether botched executions violated 
the Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

Last week, Nebraska's Republican-dominated legislature moved to abolish that 
state's death penalty.

And last week, of all weeks, the North Carolina House voted to clear the way 
for the resumption of state-sponsored killing.

Legal challenges have locked North Carolina's execution process for nearly a 
decade. During the unofficial moratorium, evidence of the brutality and errors 
surrounding executions has become overwhelming. But that didn???t stop House 
Republicans from pushing through a bill that would eliminate what has become a 
major obstacle to carrying out the death penalty here - the lack of doctors the 
law requires to attend executions.

Getting past doctors

In 2007, the N.C. Medical Board decided that doctors who participate in 
executions violate the ethics of their profession. By a vote of 84-33, the 
House passed a bill Wednesday that sidesteps the need for doctors by expanding 
the list of medical personnel who can monitor executions to include physician 
assistants, nurse practitioners, registered nurses and emergency medical 
technicians. A doctor would still need to be nearby to certify the death.

Since coming under Republican control in 2011, this legislature has made going 
backward its preferred direction on issues of taxation, voting rights, 
environmental regulation, education funding, gun laws and women's health. But 
its effort to restart executions is especially retrogressive with an added 
element of macabre.

The death penalty is unnecessary, unjust and irreversible. Its use now is only 
an act of vengeance against a few prisoners who happened to be convicted in 
death penalty states and whose lawyers failed to negotiate the many legal 
options that could have spared them. Prosecutors say the death penalty is a 
useful tool for negotiating with suspects, but an absolute penalty cannot be 
both fairly applied and negotiable.

The death penalty is fast becoming an anachronism, the act itself fading into 
the past along with its discarded instruments, the noose, the firing squad, the 
gas chamber and the electric chair. 32 states still have death penalty 
statutes, but only a few have carried out regular executions since the Supreme 
Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Of the 1,407 executions since then, 
the great majority - 1,114 - were in the South - and more than 1/2 of those - 
636 - were carried out in Texas and Oklahoma, according to the Death Penalty 
Information Center. North Carolina executed 43 prisoners during the period, but 
none since 2006. The state has 149 prisoners on death row.

The erratic application of the death penalty makes it unfair and its unfairness 
is dangerously compounded by its finality. Wrongly convicted people could be 
executed and likely have been. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty, 
the emergence of new evidence has led to the exoneration of 152 death row 
inmates, 7 of them in North Carolina. The most recent exoneration came last 
September with the release of Henry Lee McCollum after almost 31 years on death 
row.

McCollum said as he left prison, "You've still got innocent people on North 
Carolina death row.

That call for help wasn't heard in the state House on Wednesday. Instead, Leo 
Daughtry, a Smithfield Republican and sponsor of the bill, said North Carolina 
should get back to executing death row inmates because the law allows it. "If 
we do have (the death penalty), we need to enforce the law," he said.

Drop an unjust law

A push impose a penalty so flawed and so serious should be based on more than 
"because we can." Laws are not enforced for their own sake. They are enforced 
because they serve justice or the public good. When a law fails to do that, it 
should be repealed or struck down. That is what should happen in North Carolina 
and has happened since 2007 in Illinois, New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, 
Connecticut and Maryland.

Furthermore, Daughtry???s bill does not enforce the law. It changes the law so 
that North Carolina can more readily resume executions. The state Senate should 
reject this bill and, if necessary, Gov. Pat McCrory should veto it. Lives, 
perhaps even innocent lives, will depend on it. (source: Editorial, News & 
Observer)








SOUTH CAROLINA:

Death penalty a 'barbaric practice'



I have some concerns about Frank Wooten's April 25 column.

We should realize that there is no humane way to kill a human being. An 
execution not only brutalizes the person being executed and the people doing 
the killing, it brutalizes the society sponsoring it.

I was particularly disturbed by Mr. Wooten's suggestion to use the killing of a 
human being as a fund raiser. If it was meant as a joke it was in poor taste, 
and if it was a serious suggestion it would be a deeply disturbing road for 
society to head down.

Instead of bracing ourselves for more ridicule, perhaps we should consider 
joining the majority of civilized governments and the increasing number of 
states abandoning the barbaric practice of societies killing their citizens.

Ron Kaz

South Carolinians Abolishing the Death Penalty

Flint Street

Charleston

(source: Letter to the Editor, Post and Courier)








LOUISIANA:

Community has tragic loss



Our community's tragic loss of Ouachita Council on Aging's Shirley Cagle is one 
that will be felt for a long time.

For more than 3 decades Cagle, sister of Rep. Frank Hoffmann, served countless 
seniors in her capacity as assistant director and a leader and innovator in the 
nutrition program.

"Shirley was a wonderful lady. She cared about helping other people. She was up 
in age but she still worked and wanted to do things for other people. This is 
extremely sad and we will miss her but we know she is in a great place," 
Hoffmann said.

Cagle, 85, was murdered last week in her home during an apparent robbery.

Robert Nelson, 26, of Monroe, the man accused in the crime, has been indicted 
with 1st-degree murder. The case against Nelson will be deliberated by a jury 
of his peers.

Because of the serious and heinous nature of this crime - a woman beaten and 
cut in her home over a television set, with a fire started in an attempt to 
cover it up - we appreciate the 4th District Attorney's Office seeking the 
strongest penalty possible.

Assistant 4th District Attorney Neal Johnson said the DA's office hasn't 
decided whether the prosecution will pursue the death penalty. A 1st-degree 
murder conviction without the death penalty carries a life sentence.

Nelson, who has other pending felony charges, was arrested by Monroe police 
when they responded to a burglary complaint at Fort Miro apartments on Oliver 
Road.

Police said while they were questioning Nelson about the burglary, he confessed 
to killing Cagle at her Isabelle Street home, which is near Oliver Road.

Sadly, we're sure Cagle would have tried to help anyone, including the person 
who had took her life.

We appreciate the words of Janet Durden, president of United Way of Northeast 
Louisiana, who worked alongside Cagle for the majority of her career.

"Shirley enjoyed every single day. She loved life and she loved people and she 
gave of herself to every person she met," Durden said. "She has been the rock 
at the Council on Aging for 30 plus years. She will be missed more than words 
can describe."

(source: The editorials in this column represent the opinions of The 
News-Star's editorial board, composed of General Manager and Executive Editor 
Kathy Spurlock, Business and Politics Reporter Greg Hilburn and Education 
Reporter Barbara Leader.)

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

Baton Rouge judge rules jury can hear testimony of previous abuse in trial of 
father accused in boy's beating death



When Xzayvion Riley's father stands trial in the June 2012 beating death of the 
8-year-old Baton Rouge boy, a jury will be allowed to hear about the broken leg 
he suffered in his father's presence 4 months earlier and about repeated 
punches his father is accused of delivering to him outside a day care center 2 
months before he died, a judge ruled Friday.

But 2 other alleged incidents of abuse, 1 dating as far back as 2008, when 
Xzayvion was 4, will be off-limits at Michael Robertson's 1st-degree murder 
trial, state District Judge Don Johnson decided.

Robertson's attorneys, who pledged to appeal parts of Johnson's ruling, said in 
a statement the abuse claims against Robertson "are either entirely false or 
take accidental injuries out of context."

Prosecutor Will Morris said the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney's 
Office has mixed feelings about the judge's decision and is considering an 
appeal.

"We're generally happy with it," Morris said.

Robertson, 49, and Xzayvion's mother, Lavaughn Riley, 35, are each charged with 
1st-degree murder in his June 12, 2012, death.

Robertson was Lavaughn Riley's boyfriend at the time. They will be tried 
separately. No trial dates are set. Prosecutors have yet to say if they will 
seek the death penalty against either Robertson or Riley.

The East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office classified Xzayvion's death as a 
homicide, finding he died of "overwhelming infection" caused by a ruptured 
bowel from blunt-force trauma to his abdomen. An autopsy documented 60 external 
signs of recent and old trauma, including abrasions, bruises and a human bite 
mark.

Robertson has denied any involvement in his son's injuries, sheriff's officials 
have said.

Prosecutors claim Robertson injured Xzayvion's mouth with a belt in November 
2008; choked him and shoved his head into a toilet in August 2010; broke his 
leg in February 2012; and repeatedly punched him outside Pierson's Brilliant 
Minds Learning Center in April 2012.

Morris has referred to the alleged incidents as an escalating pattern of abuse 
leading up to Xzayvion's death.

Brilliant Minds Learning Center owner Evelyn Pierson testified last summer at a 
pretrial hearing that she saw Robertson punching Xzayvion in the parking lot of 
her facility in April 2012 but did not report what she witnessed.

Riley also testified last year that she heard her son's leg pop in February 
2012 while he tried to get away from Robertson during what she called 
horseplay. But Xzayvion's oldest sister testified her brother and Robertson 
weren't playing around when her brother tried to crawl under a bed to escape 
from Robertson.

Johnson ruled the alleged fall 2008 incident inadmissible at trial, as well as 
Xzayvion's statements in 2010 that his father choked him and put his head in a 
toilet. But the judge said prosecutors can use as evidence Riley's statements 
that she held her son down in 2010 while Robertson hit him with an open hand on 
the stomach.

Xzayvion's oldest sister told deputies that Robertson beat her brother with his 
fist the day before he died, an affidavit of probable cause states. Morris said 
prosecutors are not barred from using that evidence.

After the alleged 2010 incident, a safety plan was put in place by the state 
Department of Children and Family Services to limit Robertson's involvement 
with his son, Morris has said. The plan was in place until April 2011.

(source: The Advocate)