[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, CONN., PENN., DEL., VA., FLA., ALA.

[Rick Halperin]

May 10


TEXAS----impending execution

Appeals court refuses to stop execution set for next week



A federal appeals court has refused to stop next week's scheduled execution of 
a Houston man condemned for the slayings of his girlfriend, her mother and 
grandfather 13 years ago.

Derrick Dewayne Charles, 32, is set for lethal injection Tuesday.

Charles' lawyers argued to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that he is 
mentally incompetent for execution and they need more time and money from the 
courts to pursue their case. State attorneys argue there's no evidence Charles 
is incompetent and that the issue was addressed and rejected in earlier rounds 
of appeals.

An appeal related to the competency claim already is at the U.S. Supreme Court, 
which has ruled inmates facing execution must be aware their punishment is 
about to take place and understand why.

In its ruling late Friday, the 5th Circuit said even assuming Charles has some 
form of mental illness, no evidence in his appeal "shows that he does not know 
about his execution or that he does not rationally understand the reason for 
it."

Charles was 19 and on parole in July 2002 when he was arrested a day after the 
bodies of 15-year-old Myiesha Bennett; her 44-year-old mother, Brenda; and 
77-year-old grandfather, Obie, were discovered at their Houston home. Police 
found Charles at a Houston motel where Brenda Bennett's car was found.

Relatives said she wasn't happy about her daughter's relationship with Charles, 
who had a lengthy juvenile record and was on parole from a 3-year prison 
sentence for burglary.

He confessed to the slayings and at his May 2003 trial pleaded guilty to 
capital murder charges. A Harris County jury decided he should be put to death.

According to court documents, Charles said he smoked marijuana soaked in 
embalming fluid before the slayings, then hallucinated while committing the 
killings.

The execution would be the 7th this year in Texas, the nation's busiest death 
penalty state.

(source: Associated Press)








CONNECTICUT:

10 years after execution of Michael Ross, state's death penalty in limbo



Shortly after 2 a.m. on May 13, 2005, serial killer Michael Ross was executed 
by lethal injection.

Ross had spent 18 years on death row, convicted of killing 4 teenage girls in 
1983 and 1984. About a year before his execution, he changed from fighting 
against it to fighting for it.

The change in his position cut short what threatened to be endless appeals, and 
Ross became the 1st person executed in Connecticut in 45 years.

In the decade since then, no one else on the state's death row has come close 
to sharing his fate, and, 3 years ago, the state abolished the death penalty 
for murders committed after April 25, 2012. That's the date on which Gov. 
Dannel P. Malloy signed a ban on capital punishment passed by the state 
Legislature.

Griswold Selectman Steven Mikutel, a longtime former state legislator who 
retired in 2014, voted against the repeal.

"The legislators gave the murderers life, and that wasn't justice," he said. 
"Life imprisonment without parole is not a moral substitute for the death 
penalty."

When legislators repealed the death penalty, however, they left the men already 
on death row there. For many of them, that decision came mainly as a result of 
a horrific 2007 home invasion in Cheshire in which a mother and her 2 daughters 
were killed by a pair of paroled burglars, Steven Hayes and Joshua 
Komisarjevsky.

The crime outraged the state, and both men were sentenced to death after 2 
sensational trials. In fact, in 2011, then-state Sen. Edith Prague, D-Columbia, 
told CT News Junkie: "They should bypass the trial and take that 2nd animal 
(Komisarjevsky) and hang him by his penis from a tree out in the middle of Main 
Street."

A year later, Prague voted in favor of the capital punishment repeal for new 
murderers.

Now 11 convicted killers, including Hayes and Komisarjevsky, still face the 
possibility of sharing Ross' fate.

"It's fundamentally unfair to prospectively abolish the death penalty," said 
David McGuire, legislative and policy director of the American Civil Liberties 
Union of Connecticut. "It's irrational and unfair to pick an arbitrary date."

In other states, such as Maryland, that abolished the death penalty 
prospectively, governors commuted the death sentences of people on their death 
rows, McGuire said. But Connecticut is 1 of only 3 states in which the governor 
lacks that power.

"That leaves us in a unique situation," McGuire said.

A state Supreme Court case may offer clarity.

Eduard Santiago of Torrington was convicted of the 2000 slaying of Joseph 
Niwinski. Santiago appealed his death sentence, and in June 2012, the state 
Supreme Court overturned it, saying the trial judge had not let in significant 
mitigating evidence. After a new trial, Santiago received a 45-year sentence 
instead.

The high court also agreed to hear a 2nd argument in Santiago's case claiming 
that because of the Legislature's repeal, the death penalty should not apply to 
anyone.

"By repealing the death penalty prospectively, the General Assembly has, in 
effect, sacrificed Santiago to end the death penalty for everyone," the ACLU of 
Connecticut said in a friend-of-the-court brief in the case. "The Constitution 
does not permit legislatures to make 'sacrificial lambs' of its citizenry."

Oral arguments were made in April 2013. The Supreme Court has not issued an 
opinion in the 2 years since then.

Judicial branch spokeswoman Rhonda Stearley-Hebert said last week she did not 
know when the court will issue its ruling.

"We're waiting for Santiago," said Michael Courtney, chief of the capital 
defense unit at the Chief Public Defender's Office. "If that were decided in 
our favor, that would end the death penalty."

All 11 men on death row are involved in some pending appeal, Courtney said.

"There's never any end to it. It just goes on and on and on," said Michael 
Lawlor, state undersecretary for criminal justice planning and policy. Families 
of victims, he said, face years of anxiety while litigation continues.

Lawlor said that as a practical matter unless one of the men on death row 
fights to be executed as Ross did, execution is "extremely unlikely."

In fact, the state does not have the ability to execute anyone. The use of the 
three drugs that were administered to execute Ross has been challenged in 
court, and in 2011 the state put executions on hold until the challenges are 
settled.

If the death penalty is ended, murderers would be sentenced instead to life in 
prison without the possibility of release.

Courtney said that while inmates sentenced to life in prison can and do appeal 
their sentences, "It wouldn't be the same as someone sentenced to death. The 
appeals don't stop."

"Connecticut legislators did not reform the statute and make it a workable 
law," Mikutel said. "They did their best to make it unworkable and allow 
cold-blooded killers to have endless appeals. ... In my opinion, they walked 
away from justice."

McGuire and other death penalty opponents say minorities and poor people 
receive death sentences more often, death sentences don't deter future murders 
and innocent people can be wrongly convicted.

Mikutel believes those arguments don't apply.

"We never did execute people in Connecticut willy-nilly," he said. "There were 
so many safeguards in place that if there was any doubt at all, the death 
penalty wouldn't be applied."

In any case, Ross fit none of the categories that death penalty foes use to 
raise doubts about whether someone deserves execution. He was an insurance 
salesman who worked in Norwich, lived in Jewett City and a graduate of 
prestigious Cornell University.

There was no question of his guilt. He admitted kidnapping, strangling and, in 
most cases, raping eight women and girls between 1981 and 1984. His victims 
ranged in age from 14 to 25.

"I do believe justice was served in the Michael Ross case," Mikutel said. 
"Michael Ross decided for himself that he deserved to be executed."

"There are some cases in which the public rightfully expects the maximum 
penalty authorized by law to be imposed," Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane, 
who prosecuted Ross, said. "This was certainly one of them."

Ross' murders terrorized Eastern Connecticut for more than 2 years, Kane said.

Mikutel, whose district was the site of 3 of Ross' murders and who spoke to a 
number of the family members of Ross' victims, said his execution did not bring 
them peace.

"I still have memories of those victims," Mikutel said. "Those families have 
never had closure. ... Those families' lives were destroyed."

"The best thing we can say is this chapter is closed, and the families can go 
on with their lives," Kane said at the time of Ross' execution.

"They felt justice was served when Michael Ross was executed," Mikutel said. "I 
want that clearly stated."

(source: Norwich Bulletin)

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

More work ahead in New Britain serial killer investigation



Watching detectives dig in the woods recently behind a Hartford Road plaza 
where the remains of 3 women were left by a presumed serial killer, Chief 
State's Attorney Kevin Kane admitted his mind was on the business at hand.

"No matter what label you put on them, each case is a separate case that has to 
be investigated," Kane said. "They have to look at each case individually. The 
fact that there is more than one means each case will have to be prosecuted. 
They have to be ready to do that separately."

Kane is no stranger to prosecuting serial killers. He was assigned the task of 
retrying Michael Ross, believed to be the state's most notorious and prolific 
serial killer, in the penalty phase of his convictions.

Ross killed 6 women in the southeastern portion of the state at separate times, 
leaving a swath of bodies and fear during his reign in the early 1980s. He 
spent nearly 2 decades on death row before he requested that the state carry 
out his punishment. He was executed in 2005.

As a regional task force investigating the New Britain serial murders prepares 
to announce soon the findings of its 2-week excavation, a suspect, if 
convicted, could face the death penalty for killing Joyvaline Martinez, Diane 
Cusack and Mary Jane Menard. The women are believed to have been murdered in 
2003, so their killer, if found, could face the death penalty. The state in 
2013 repealed the death penalty, but it was in force when the 3 women were 
murdered.

The state Supreme Court is deliberating a case on the very issue of whether the 
change in the law only applies to the inmates currently on death row or if it 
can be used against anyone who committed a capital felony prior to the repeal.

Kane was at the Hartford Road site to watch New Britain police, with help from 
the FBI, dig up several acres behind a strip shopping center. They have not yet 
said what they found.

Kane said Connecticut has had more than its share of designated "serial 
killers," dating back to the 1950s.

Besides Ross, for instance, there was Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky, who killed 
several people during a series of robberies in the 1950s in different towns, 
including New Britain, Kane said. And then there was Pedro Miranda, who was 
taken into custody at his New Britain home in December 2008, allegedly for 
killing 3 young women in the late 1980s, including 1 who was a relative by 
marriage.

New Britain Police Chief James Wardwell said his department sought the help of 
the FBI in developing a behavioral profile for the suspect in the New Britain 
serial killer case after the remains of the three women were found in 2007.

The FBI thought a young woman found dead in 1995 near a dumpster in the same 
plaza was not connected to the 3 women who all disappeared in the summer or 
fall of 2003. The agency turned out to be right. That woman's father was 
arrested last year and is not a suspect in the serial killings.

Police have yet to say if they have a suspect. They're expected to release more 
details about the additional remains found at the site during the 2-week search 
in the next few days. They have not commented on whether the remains belong to 
the three women or someone else.

Kane said ultimately, the task force and New Britain State's Attorney Brian 
Preleski will have to prove not only who buried the remains at the location, 
but if that person also killed the 3 women.

"You can prove who buried those bodies, but you also have to prove what and who 
caused their deaths," Kane said. "This investigation still has a lot of work to 
do."

(source: The Bristol Press)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Execution anniversary spotlights Wolf action



20 years ago this month, Pennsylvania marked the 1st state execution of a 
convicted murderer after a hiatus that had lasted 1/3 of a century.

Keith Zettlemoyer, 39, of Snyder County, became the 1st person to die by lethal 
injection in Pennsylvania on May 2, 1995, and he became the 1st to be executed 
in this state since 1962. Zettlemoyer had been sentenced to death for shooting 
and killing Sunbury radio newsman Charles DeVetsco in 1980, a friend of his and 
prospective witness against him in a burglary trial. Pennsylvania had enacted a 
law reinstating the death penalty in 1978, followed by a law in 1990 changing 
the method of execution from the electric chair to lethal injection. 
Zettlemoyer had appealed his conviction for years. But after Gov. Tom Ridge 
signed a death warrant shortly after taking office that January, the death row 
inmate changed his mind.

Zettlemoyer told a federal judge at a hearing in U.S. District Court in 
Scranton that he didn't want to fight the sentence anymore.

"I'm in the position I wish to be," he said, according to a Harrisburg 
Patriot-News report about that hearing. "In a few days' time, I'll die a 
peaceful, quiet death that will be satisfying to me."

Even so, his execution was delayed for several minutes on that final night due 
to the possibility of a last-minute stay from the U.S. Supreme Court.

In his last statement, Zettlemoyer said, "I ask that the people of Pennsylvania 
and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania please accept my 14 years of imprisonment 
and my execution now as all of my debts to society paid in full."

On the night of Zettlemoyer's execution, death penalty protesters held vigils 
outside the State Correctional Institution at Rockview in Centre County and 
near the governor's residence in Harrisburg.

Several of the official witnesses to the execution said they wondered why it 
took so long to execute Zettlemoyer.

Ridge issued a statement shortly after the execution saying, "Nearly 15 years 
ago, Keith Zettlemoyer brutally murdered his friend Charles DeVetsco. May Keith 
Zettlemoyer's soul rest in peace. May the soul of Charles DeVetsco now rest in 
peace"

Pennsylvania executed 2 more death row inmates after Zettlemoyer. In both 
cases, the condemned men had given up on their appeals. No executions have 
taken place in Pennsylvania since 1999.

The memory of Zettlemoyer's crime and execution has faded as Pennsylvania once 
again debates capital punishment. Gov. Tom Wolf issued a moratorium on use of 
the death penalty shortly after he took office in January. He said he wants to 
hear the recommendations of a legislative panel studying capital punishment. 
District attorneys are challenging the legality of the moratorium in the state 
Supreme Court.

(source: Citizens Voice)








DELAWARE:

House panel should allow vote on death penalty bill



Growing up, I frequently heard how the defining feature of our democracy is the 
principle that each of us, or those who represent us, have a vote.

Whether you were for or against, at the end of the day we all had our voices 
heard.

On Wednesday, the state of Delaware has a committee meeting that will put this 
principle to the test.

At 11 a.m., the House Judiciary Committee will hear testimony on Senate Bill 
40, a bill to replace the death penalty with life in prison without the 
possibility of parole. The meeting will assuredly have vigorous debate on all 
sides.

I do not hope to convince anyone of the need to support or oppose the bill, but 
rather to voice the necessity to uphold the principle each of us grew up with.

We all deserve a vote, even if we disagree.

The purpose of our General Assembly's committees is to decide which bills 
"merit" discussion among the full body.

In effect, our committee members are the prime stewards of our democracy. They 
select which pieces of legislation deserve a vote and which ones do not.

Judging by the articles and letters I have read in the news concerning SB 40, 
it is clear that this bill has generated significant discussion in every 
district across the state, and that it meets the criteria for legislation 
deserving a vote.

Out of 41 Delaware Representatives, our House Judiciary Committee has 11 
sitting members who, by serving on this committee, also represent all of us in 
Delaware.

The 11 Representatives can choose to "favorably" or "unfavorably" vote a bill 
out of committee, showing their opinion on a bill while at the same time 
allowing the bill to receive a full debate on the House floor.

Alternatively, the committee members can choose to leave the bill in committee 
and prevent a full vote.

These Representatives have the challenging obligation to represent their values 
and constituents, while also acting as a committee member to the citizens of 
Delaware to decide which pieces of legislation are allowed to move on through 
the legislative process.

I believe the diverse response, both for and against, over the last few years 
from people throughout every county and from leaders of our faith communities, 
demonstrates the clear need for all of Delaware to have their voices heard.

Something as important as SB 40 should be discussed and reviewed by all those 
we chose to elect.

In a time when our Congress appears to be reaching record-levels of 
dysfunction, Delaware has been a breath of fresh air. It seems we uphold a 
higher level of the democratic process, which is why some individuals on the 
House Judiciary Committee will have a tough decision. Those members of the 
committee who disagree with SB 40 will have to decide: In Delaware, do we let 
our own decisions override the process, or do we let a vote happen even if we 
disagree?

I believe the time has come for members of the committee to allow this bill 
out, even unfavorably.

When the day comes and the bill reaches the floor, all of Delaware will respect 
your decision to vote either way.

On Wednesday, as Representatives for all of Delaware's citizens, it is time to 
allow this bill to be considered among the whole House of Representatives.

(source: Commentnary; Drew Serres is the Organizer for Delaware Americans for 
Democratic Action (Delaware ADA)----The News Journal)

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

No mistake about it, murderers should die



Our political and judicial leaders have squandered $200,000 on a study of the 
obvious how to reduce the murder rate. Now they are pushing to end the death 
penalty.

The Why? The War on Poverty threw the poor man out of the house. In the 
generations since poor men have not had to support their children and have 
rejected the education offered to them. High paying jobs for the functionally 
illiterate have gone to China and Mexico. Drug dealing gangs have replaced the 
father.

Why Wilmington? Delaware politicians and the judiciary have flushed the 10,000 
year old evolving concept that criminal law was to protect the innocent from 
the harmful. Protective law has been replaced by nonsense like Restorative 
Justice, patting a thug on the head and saying be a good boy. Magistrates let 
felons caught with guns and drugs out with little or no bail to return to crime 
within hours. Prosecutors drop gun charges for a meaningless pleas to minor 
crimes resulting in little time served. Judges give little time served to 
prevent overcrowded prisons. Several years ago a study showed 160 shooters or 
victims' in their early 20s averaged 20 convictions each but none were in 
prison. Does Delaware's judicial system work to protect the innocents?

Our Chief Justice showed his bias in his Martin Luther King Day speech 
referring to ratios of race between population and in prison as if it meant 
something. Is there a single person in a Delaware jail due to race rather than 
their crime? Giving that kind of a speech he should drop his $1,500 robe and 
$70,000 office renewal to don white grease paint and a big cherry nose for the 
clown that he made himself.

The How? Put felons away for long times or execution. The arguments against the 
death penalty have become ridicules. It is too expensive? The drugs cost less 
than $500. The expense is 25 years of legal games having nothing to do with 
guilt or innocence. The Public Defender whines about the cost of death defense 
and the chance of killing the innocent. No one wants to kill innocents. There 
are those for whom the guilt for horrid crimes is not in doubt. Execute the 
guilty this year and use their defense money for those where there is doubt.

Execution is not a deterrent? Absolutely true. Lawyers making that argument are 
the ones causing the delays. The next person executed will have been convicted 
before the next person sentenced to die was born. It doesn't have to be this 
way. In the 1950s, Charles Starkweather was executed less than a year after 
conviction. The "In Cold Blood" murders in less than 6 years.

In a speech several years ago the public defender showed himself remembering 
when he got a thug a reprieve from execution. The PD said he cursed the judge 
for the sentence and condemned the jury for their decision. He never expressed 
the slightest condemnation for the crime and no remorse for the victim or 
family. That speech showed he didn't give a damn how many innocent people are 
killed. They don't live in his neighborhood. He's just doing a job.

Life without parole is a joke. A governor can commute any time he wants. Our 
governor commuted a death sentence for a supposed reformed thug. Later, we 
learn that the he was suing the State to get pornography. Some reform. In 
Florida and California overcrowded prison cases have released lifers.

Prison provides tax paid 3 meals a day, free medical care, even sex change 
operations. If the thug is a gang banger, his gang will protect him and provide 
illegal drugs.

In August 1969 a gang killed 7 people. Their death penalties were commuted. 
Advocates for Susan Atkins called for her release knowing she slaughtered 
Sharon Tate and unborn son while the actress pleaded for her baby. Tex Watson 
fathered 4 children while in prison even though he obliterated Abagail Folger's 
head so violently that it bent a pistol barrel. The illegals immigrants who 
killed the Del State students are living in New Jersey in far better conditions 
than if they had been extradited.

There are people who are so violent and crimes so horrible that execution just 
and proper. There is one more very good reason for keeping the death penalty. 
What more can the law do to a lifer who kills a guard or escapes and kills 
innocents?

(source: Opinion; Vaughn E. Whisker is a Wilmington resident----The News 
Journal)

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

End the death penalty



Put an end to the death penalty

Many murders are the result of emotional outbursts ending in deadly force. And, 
for many, support for the death penalty is also an emotional outburst that 
demands equal restitution justified by a need for closure, or driven by false 
hopes of creating a safer world. Both actions feed the same parking meter. 
Whether the taking of life is deemed a criminal act or the execution of a trial 
verdict, emotionally charged responses devalue human life.

A society that values the life of a loved one and devalues the life of a person 
who takes the life of a loved one is a society that loves situationally. If the 
taking of life is heinous when involving a loved one, why is it not also 
heinous when involving the life of the offender?

Executing a person who took the life of another only perpetuates a slippery 
slope. It becomes easy to rationalize the taking of human life when an offender 
is cast as inhuman and demonized. In so doing, we become the same on some level 
and lose our own humanity. Who will end the cycle? Needed is the humanitarian 
view - persons who rise above the emotional undercurrent and say "Stop the 
taking of life." Persons who model grace and forgiveness. Persons who refuse to 
become what the offender has become - a taker of life.

This does not mean the offender is free to go. It does not mean the debt to 
society is waived. It means the penalty for taking life will not be "take more 
life."

I have experienced the tragic loss of a family member. His life was taken with 
undeniable cruelty. Yet, I support death penalty repeal. I choose to break free 
of the emotional undercurrent. I will not be swept further away from the shore 
of the humanitarian perspective. I will not feed the same parking meter. I 
affirm that "All life is sacred."

Dennis L. Marshall

Pastor of Chippey AUM Church

Hockessin

(source: Letter to the Editor, The News Journal)








VIRGINIA:

Virginia bishops on the death penalty: We're having the wrong debate



As discussions surrounding a "more humane" death penalty in the United States 
continue, the 2 Catholic bishops of Virginia have released a statement asking 
the faithful to take a stance against the use of capital punishment in today's 
society.

"By ending the use of the death penalty we would take 1 important step - among 
significant others we must take - to abandon the culture of death and embrace 
the culture of life," Bishops Paul S. Loverde of Arlington and Francis X. 
DiLorenzo of Richmond said in a May 6 statement released by the Virginia 
Catholic Conference.

Their statement comes after the Supreme Court recently heard arguments in a 
case challenging Oklahoma's use of drugs for lethal injection as a violation of 
the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Several states have also been discussing means of execution for death row 
inmates. Last year, the Virginia General Assembly considered legislation that 
would have allowed pharmacies to create drugs used for lethal injections 
without disclosure to the public. Another measure proposed that if lethal drugs 
were not available, death row inmates would be executed by electrocution 
instead.

To these issues, the bishops responded, "We should no longer debate which 
inmates we execute or how we execute them. Instead, we should debate this: If 
all human lives are sacred and if a civilized society such as ours can seek 
redress and protect itself by means other than taking a human life, why are we 
continuing to execute people?"

They went on to reference Pope Francis' March letter to Federico Mayor, 
president of the International Commission against the Death Penalty, in which 
the Pope strongly spoke out against capital punishment, saying that ???there is 
no humane way of killing another person."

"Let us not choose whether to use lethal drugs, electric chairs, gas chambers, 
or firing squads. Let us take the more courageous step and choose life instead, 
even when it seems 'unlovable,'" the bishops wrote in response to Pope Francis' 
comments.

The belief "that the poor and vulnerable have the first claim on our 
consciences," the bishops said, is seen "in our opposition to abortion and 
euthanasia, and in our responsibility to welcome immigrants and refugees."

"But our faith also challenges us to declare sacred even the least lovable 
among us, those convicted of committing brutal crimes which have brought them 
the ultimate penalty, the penalty of death."

The Virginia bishops quoted a 2005 U.S. Bishops' statement on the matter saying 
that, "No matter how heinous the crime, if society can protect itself without 
ending a human life, it should do so."

Bishops Loverde and DiLorenzo acknowledged that this teaching "challenges many 
people, including ourselves," especially in light of the violent crimes for 
which those on death row have been sentenced.

However, they emphasized, "The death penalty does not provide true healing for 
those who mourn, nor does it embody the Gospel of Life, which each of us is 
called to affirm even in the most difficult circumstances."

(source: Catholic News Agency)








FLORIDA:

Ruling Could Affect Fla. Death Row Sentencing



Robert "Bam" McCloud has been on death row for nearly 3 years since a circuit 
judge ordered he should be executed for his part in a brutal, home-invasion 
robbery in which t2 witnesses were killed execution style.

The death sentence came 6 months after a jury recommended by a vote of 8-4 that 
McCloud should receive the death penalty.

The process of sentencing McCloud and other death penalty defendants in the 
state, which has the second-highest number of people on death row in the 
country, will be in question later this year when the U.S. Supreme Court 
considers whether the state's sentencing guidelines are constitutional.

"It has the potential to have a major impact in Florida," said Rex Dimmig, 
public defender for the 10th Judicial Circuit of Florida. "If the Supreme Court 
determines it (sentencing guidelines) is unconstitutional then they will decide 
if it should be retroactive."

The case before the court - Hurst, Timothy v. Florida - is about a man who was 
sentenced to death for killing a co-worker at a Popeye's restaurant in 
Pensacola in 1998. Hurst robbed the store and stabbed a woman numerous times 
with a box cutter.

The jury voted 7-5 to recommend Hurst should be executed. That recommendation 
then went to a judge who sentenced Hurst to death.

The Florida Supreme Court upheld the conviction in 2014.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and now arguments are set for 
the fall. Final briefs on the case are expected to be submitted in July.

A decision on the case should be made in spring 2016.

The Florida Supreme Court has voiced support for a unanimous vote during the 
sentencing phase of the death penalty and urged lawmakers to change the law.

Defense attorney Byron Hileman has tried about 30 death penalty cases in Polk 
County.

Hileman echoed Dimmig's comments.

"The entire structure of the death penalty in this state could be ruled 
unconstitutional," Hileman said. "We'd have to start all over again."

ARIZONA CASE

In a 2002 case, Ring v. Arizona, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a jury must 
find any aggravating factors necessary to sentence a defendant, not a judge, 
said Bruce Jacob, a professor at Stetson University College of Law.

In Florida, the jury is selected for a penalty phase to decide the question of 
whether a defendant should receive life imprisonment or the death penalty. 
Prosecutors argue specific statutory requirements, called aggravating 
circumstances, for a death sentence.

The jury makes a recommendation to a judge, who is required to give the jury's 
recommendation "great weight," according to Florida law.

The Supreme Court justices could retroactively open all previous non-unanimous 
cases since the Ring decision if they rule in favor of Hurst.

Since 2002, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the Ring case, seven Polk 
juries have recommended the death penalty. Tavares Wright waived a jury 
recommendation.

The jury returned with unanimous verdicts in the cases of Harold Blake, Mark 
Poole and Leon Davis.

In 2010, a jury recommended in an 8-4 vote that Gary Glisson should die. The 
State Attorney's Office agreed to waive the death penalty in the Glisson case 
to avoid a defense request for a new trial.

Currently, 15 people from Polk County are on death row.

State Attorney Jerry Hill said if the Supreme Court overturns the guidelines 
retroactive from 2002, he will seriously consider having new penalty phase 
trials for each case. "The fact that you have to prove aggravators, and you 
have to have a significant majority voting for death, there are a number of 
checks and balances in place," Hill said.

"It's a shame to have a review."

Hurst's lawyers have argued that juries in the state should be unanimous before 
an inmate is sentenced.

"Because it is so utterly irreversible, the citizens should speak with a single 
clear voice that death is the only appropriate punishment for the crime this 
defendant has committed," Assistant Public Defender David Davis wrote in a 2013 
petition to the state Supreme Court. "That clarity comes only with a unanimous 
vote, and not the 7-5 one in this case."

FLORIDA LEGISLATURE

Many of the 32 states that still use the death penalty changed sentencing 
guidelines to require a unanimous verdict after the Ring decision.

Florida did not.

For years since, Dimmig said, he's traveled to Tallahassee to lobby legislators 
to change the sentencing guidelines.

He went to Tallahassee again this year, but a bill didn't make it out of any 
committees.

Florida is the only state in the country that allows a jury to have seven votes 
for a recommendation of death. There are 394 death row inmates in Florida.

(source: The Ledger)

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

Defense lawyer seeks to move death penalty murder trial out of Jacksonville



A Jacksonville man facing a potential death sentence is asking that his murder 
trial be moved out of Jacksonville because of the media attention the case 
generated.

Lawyers for Randall Deviney say their client cannot get a fair trial in 
Jacksonville because of the attention the case generated from The Florida 
Times-Union and multiple television stations. Deviney, 25, is accused of 
slitting the throat of 65-year-old Delores Futrell.

The case has been covered since 2008, when Deviney was arrested. Deviney was 
previously convicted of Futrell's murder and sentenced to death by Circuit 
Judge Mallory Cooper, but that conviction and death sentence were thrown out by 
the Florida Supreme Court.

Justices ruled that police should have stopped questioning Deviney after he 
repeatedly told them he was done speaking.

Police ignored those comments and kept questioning him, and Deviney eventually 
confessed to killing Futrell.

That videotaped confession was shown to jurors at trial.

In his motion for a change of venue, defense attorney Jim Hernandez argued that 
the new jury is not supposed to know about Deviney's previous murder conviction 
or the fact that he confessed to the crime. But the conviction and confession 
have been repeatedly reported by Jacksonville media.

"Psychological data concerning the effects of pretrial publicity on juror 
verdicts strongly suggest that potential jurors exposed to negative pretrial 
publicity are significantly more likely to judge a defendant guilty compared to 
jurors exposed to less or no negative pretrial publicity," Hernandez said in 
his motion to move the trial. "Because of this, defendant fears that he cannot 
and will not receive a fair trial by state and federal constitutional standards 
based upon the massive adverse pre-trial publicity this case has, and continues 
to generate."

Hernandez is also asking Cooper to sequester jurors during the case. If the 
judge grants that motion, the jury would likely stay in a hotel during the 
trial and would not be allowed to read any newspapers or watch any television 
that might expose them to related news reports.

"Even if an untainted jury is able to be selected from Duval County, it would 
be highly unlikely, and almost impossible, that the jury selected would avoid 
prejudicial contact with other residents unfamiliar with this case," Hernandez 
said in his motion.

Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda said his office will oppose moving 
the case out of Jacksonville and sequestering the jury.

"We've had cases, with quite frankly more pretrial publicity, where we were 
able to select a jury in Jacksonville without sequestering them," de la Rionda 
said.

The fact that jurors might have heard about the case doesn't automatically 
disqualify them, as long as they can keep an open mind and promise to base 
their decision only on what is introduced in court, he said.

It has been 16 years since a trial was moved out of Jacksonville. The last one 
was in 1999, when the murder trial of Joshua Phillips was moved to Bartow in 
Polk County. Phillips was convicted of killing 8-year-old Maddie Clifton and 
sentenced to life in prison.

Attorneys representing Michael Dunn, accused of murdering 17-year-old Jordan 
Davis, asked to move his trial out of Jacksonville last year. But Circuit Judge 
Russell Healey said he would try to pick a jury in Jacksonville first, that 
jury was seated and Dunn was eventually convicted and sentenced to life.

Pretrial publicity could still be a factor in Dunn's appeal, which is now 
pending before the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee.

Hernandez conceded that Dunn's case generated more attention than Deviney's 
has, but he said this case is different.

"Dunn got a lot of publicity, but he hadn't been convicted of the crime 
already," Hernandez said.

Deviney's trial is scheduled to begin in July, although that could change. 
Cooper will likely hold a hearing sometime in the next month to determine 
whether the trial will be moved or the jury will be sequestered.

(source: Florida Times-Union)








ALABAMA:

Ala Grandma to Get Life or Death in Girl's Running Death



A judge must decide whether to sentence an Alabama woman to life or execution 
by lethal injection for the killing of her 9-year-old granddaughter, who 
prosecutors say died after being forced to run for hours for telling a lie.

Etowah County Circuit Judge Billy Ogletree scheduled a sentencing hearing for 
Monday afternoon for Joyce Hardin Garrard, 50.

Jurors who convicted Garrard of capital murder in March recommended a sentence 
of life without parole in the February 2012 death of Savannah Hardin. Garrard 
was convicted of killing her granddaughter by making her run for hours as 
punishment for a lie about candy.

Prosecutors sought the death penalty but said they were satisfied with the 
jury's suggestion of life after the trial.

But the jury's recommendation came on a 7-5 vote, and Ogletree could still 
sentence the woman to death by lethal injection under Alabama law.

A study by the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative found that Alabama 
judges in capital cases have overridden jury recommendations more than 100 
times since 1976, and 92 percent of those decisions overruled life 
recommendations to impose death.

Neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys responded to interview requests 
before Garrard's sentencing.

Deputy District Attorney Marcus Reid had asked jurors to recommend the death 
penalty following the conviction.

"This case is the only case I know of where the perpetrator forced the victim 
to participate in her own death," he told jurors. "Joyce Garrard forced 
Savannah Hardin to help kill herself."

But the defense and relatives pleaded for life, and Garrard told jurors she 
didn't mean to harm the girl. Garrard testified that she was actually helping 
Savannah, who wanted to do better in foot races at school.

"(Savannah) asked me to coach her. Instead of coming in second in her running 
class at school she wanted to come in first," said Garrard.

Testimony showed that the child collapsed and vomited outside her rural home 
following an afternoon of running and carrying sticks, and she died several 
days later in a hospital after doctors removed her from life support.

(source: Associated Press)

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

How Anthony Ray Hinton survived 30 years on death row



Anthony Ray Hinton was 1 of 10, born to a hard-praying woman. Rich in mouths to 
feed, but not much more, Beulah Hinton didn't doubt that this boy among her 
many would find his way.

She pointed him to the heavens, he said, instructing him to believe always. 
"God can do everything but fail," she'd say.

And so, in the sterile, pent-up misery that is Alabama's death row, he'd 
believe.

Mark 11:24 was his favorite: "Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye 
desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."

On April 3, Anthony Ray Hinton walked free, prosecutors dropping the charges - 
the U.S. Supreme Court had ordered a retrial - that he'd killed 2 men in a 
Birmingham area fast food managers in 1985. The bullets didn't match up beyond 
a doubt, the state said.

Hinton, who'd awaited execution for 30 long years, was 58.

The heavens being a long way off now, he expects to visit Beulah's grave today, 
Mothers Day. She died in 2002. He's bringing flowers.

"I breathe fresh air now," he said. "I feel good about myself now."

He is graying, but forgiving.

'Truth would come out'

When he left Alabama death row, only 8 fellow inmates - of nearly 200 - 
remained who had been there longer than Hinton.

"You have nothing to do but read your Bible," Hinton said. "I knew if I prayed 
that the truth would come out. If it didn't then it is my understanding of the 
Scripture it would make God a lie."

His faith was so strong, he said, that he left his TV, deodorant, the book 
"Life of Pi", and a pair of tennis shoes to other death row inmates when he 
transferred to the Jefferson County jail to await his retrial.

"I knew I wasn't coming back," he said.

Hinton had been convicted of capital murder in the shooting deaths of Thomas 
Vason and John Davidson. But, in an turn of events that must have seemed 
providential, new lab testing couldn't pin the killing bullets to the gun found 
at the home that Hinson that shared with his mother.

Hinton described his prosecution and incarceration as a state-sanctioned 
"kidnapping." He said that prosecutors could have known the truth with bullet 
testing back in the '90s.

If prosecutors had retested the gun when they were first asked in the late 
1990s, they would have saved taxpayers 16 years of expenses keeping him on 
death row, Hinton said.

"I knew all along that it was going to come back in my favor because I never 
killed anyone. I never used a gun in my life."

Ultimately, the order granting Hinton a new trial came down to the fact that 
the ballistics expert hired by his defense for his 1986 trial wasn't qualified 
and was blind in one eye. His attorney wasn't aware of new state rules at the 
time that would have allowed the hiring of a better expert.

Still, he said, forgiveness is a "no-brainer." A higher court will decide 
what's right and just.

"The same God that freed me will be the same God who will judge those that 
kidnapped me and had every intention of killing me," Hinton said.

Hinton stands 6 foot, 2 inches tall. He weighs nearly 240 pounds. His home on 
Death Row at Holman prison was a small white concrete cell with a toilet. 
Guards' eyes were always close by.

"Death row is the same everyday - breakfast at 3 a.m., lunch at 10 a.m., dinner 
at 3 p.m.," Hinton said.

When they were lucky, death row inmates got an hour a day on the exercise yard, 
weather conditions or guard availability permitting.

"You want to make every minute of that count," he said.

For him and the other condemned, the yard brought a chance to talk without 
walls in the way.

The other hours, Hinton said, he passed reading and watching TV. He's a fan of 
Auburn football, the Knicks, Yankees and the Oakland Raiders. Death row has no 
cable TV, he said, so he listened to Auburn's 2010 National Championship game 
on the radio. Sometimes the inmates would bet something like a soda, or require 
a certain number of pushups, on which team would win, Hinton said.

There are more Alabama football fans than Auburn ones on death row, Hinton 
said. "Most people will jump on a winner," he said.

He said he woke up each day trying to find something to laugh about.

It would get up in your nostrils," Anthony Ray Hinton on the smell of burned 
flesh after a death row execution.

"I don't believe that man was built to be put in a 5-by-7 for 30 years and have 
his sanity when he comes out if he doesn't find something to escape," Hinton 
said.

But there are only 3 escapes from death row: loosed by the law, hauled out on a 
gurney, or traveling in the mind's eye.

"I went to Paris, I went to France, I went to England, I went to Ireland. In my 
mind I can go wherever I wanted to go," Hinton said. He said, "I left death row 
every day."

He said, "What the next man did, I couldn't tell you. It was harder for me 
because I was there for something I know I didn't do."

Times of sadness

In Hinton's time on death row, Alabama executed 53 inmates.

"I had been next to guys for 10 or 15 years. It's like losing a member of your 
family," Hinton said.

"They take a person that they done fed, clothed, provided just the basic 
medical care for and then they turn around and kill them. It's just like a 
slaughterhouse.

"So what do you say to a person who is going to their death? Normally we would 
just say, 'Hang in there, keep your hope up', because there is hope until the 
very last second."

Back before lethal injection, when the state did its killing at midnight in the 
electric chair, he'd see vans ferrying families and witnesses to the death 
chamber. He and the other inmates would clang on the bars, wishing for the 
doomed man to hear them when the final minutes arrived.

"The next morning we could most definitely tell the execution took place 
because you could smell his flesh burned. .. It would get up in your nostrils," 
Hinton said.

Hinton never was given an execution date, although he believes that it would be 
closing in now, perhaps in 2 or 3 years, had not the U.S. Supreme Court 
overturned his conviction.

He said that he never thought about a last meal. His faith, he said wouldn't 
allow him to go in that direction.

Hinton knows that there are inmates on death row deserving punishment. But not 
strapped, at the last, to a hot chair or poked with a pitiless needle. "They'll 
tell you they didn't actually do the killing - firing the gun - but they was 
there," Hinton said.

Hinton was the 152nd U.S. death row inmate to be freed or exonerated since 
1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

He gives credit to the Equal Justice Initiative, led by Bryan Stevenson.

"If you don't have faith, somehow find faith in God and pray he send EJI to 
your rescue," Hinton said. "I know now the state plays a mean game, a dirty 
game. So you need someone who can stand up for those things."

EJI is a private non-profit group that provides legal representation to poor 
defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the 
legal system. The group was founded by its executive director Bryan Stevenson.

On the outside

One of the biggest adjustments that Hinton said he has had to make is "just 
being free" and being able to go outside at night.

He's living now with a childhood friend, Lester Bailey. Last week, Hinton 
received a driver's license. He said he made a 93 on the test. "Now maybe 
somebody will let me drive their car," he said.

All the new faces, and new freedoms, are difficult to process, he said, after 
decades of confinement. "You find yourself staring at people thinking that they 
may be staring at you," Hinton said.

New technologies are also a shock.

Still, he said, "Everybody who has recognized me has been very supportive or 
sympathetic. I've even had people apologize to me for what the system did to 
me."

On his first grocery list were pork chops, collard greens, cornbread, macaroni 
and cheese, potato salad and red velvet cake.

He said his legal team will decide the issue of pursing compensation from the 
state.

His biggest disappointment, Hinton said, was that no judge or prosecutor turned 
up at his release to declare that he'd been wronged. Justice system leaders had 
swarmed the cameras when he was tried and convicted, he said.

"What I would like people to know that I was innocent," he said. "I was 
innocent 30 years ago just as I was innocent 30 years later."

Hinton said for now he wants to adapt into society and be independent. "I think 
I would make someone a great employee."

(source: al.com)