[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., DEL., OHIO, USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 12



PENNSYLVANIA:

Man guilty of 1st-degree murder in Baldwin woman;s death



A jury took just 75 minutes to convict a Pennsylvania man of 1st-degree murder 
in the stabbing death of his estranged girlfriend more than 3 years ago.

Now the Washington County jury will hear additional evidence and arguments 
before deciding whether 26-year-old Jordan Clemons, of Pittsburgh, deserves the 
death penalty or life in prison.

"The court is entering the penalty phase. They'll look at aggravating and 
mitigating circumstances, and the jury will look at that," said Washington 
County District Attorney Gene Vittone.

The defense argued Clemons was irrational and guilty only of 3rd-degree murder, 
a malicious killing without premeditation that carries up to 40 years in 
prison.

But the jury agreed with prosecutors who argued that Clemons slashed 
21-year-old Karissa Kunco's throat 4 times, deep enough to hit her spine, 
making it 1st-degree murder.

Kunco's body was found in a wooded area of Mount Pleasant Township in January 
2012 a day after Kunco's family reported her missing.

(source: WPXI news)

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

Family urges death penalty against Mt. Washington man convicted of killing 
ex-girlfriend



Paul Kunco on Tuesday asked a Washington County jury if it's truly necessary 
for him to explain the impact his daughter's murder has had on his life.

"Probably not," he said from the witness stand at the Washington County 
Courthouse.

Jurors found Jordan Clemons, 26, of Mt. Washington, guilty Monday of killing 
his ex-girlfriend, Karissa Kunco, 21, in 2012.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Kunco's family testified in the 
morning about losing their daughter, who was found naked with her throat 
slashed in a wooded area off Sabo Road in Mt. Pleasant.

Clemons' lawyers are expected to present arguments Tuesday afternoon and 
Wednesday to try to persuade jurors to spare their client's life.

On the witness stand, Paul Kunco shared memories of his daughter, including her 
love of playing basketball and helping him with his fantasy football drafts. He 
told jurors of the time she got mad at him for drafting Tom Brady of the New 
England Patriots as his quarterback and then about how happy she was when he 
used his league winnings to buy her new shoes.

"I haven't done another fantasy football draft since I lost my daughter. I 
can't," he said.

He said his 2 daughters grew up following a tradition of calling him after 
midnight on New Year's Eve. His older daughter, Kayla, would call first, 
followed by Karissa.

"This past New Year's Eve, I sat there with a cell phone and Kayla called," he 
said. "Then I just sat there with a sick feeling knowing that I'm not getting 
another phone call. I'm not getting a text message, but I still held it hoping, 
saying 'maybe,'" he said.

Kathy Kunco, Karissa's mother, told jurors that life has been a struggle since 
her daughter's death.

"I am living every parent's worst nightmare," she said.

"I relive the visions of what she went through every night. I wonder what were 
her last words. What were her last thoughts," she said through sobs. "Her body 
was dragged into the woods as if she were a rag doll. 3 1/2 years later, I feel 
as if I am living a horror story. I'm still waiting for someone to wake me up."

She said she constantly checks her cell phone, hoping to receive a text message 
from her daughter that says, "It's OK mom, I'm coming home."

Clemons' defense team is expected to call a number of witnesses to the stand to 
tell jurors that Clemons does not deserve the death penalty because he suffered 
brain injuries as a high school football player, was abused as a child and has 
dealt with drug and alcohol addiction.

"We cannot change anything that has happened, and we cannot detract from the 
family's loss," Assistant Public Defender Charles Carpinelli told jurors. "But 
you have to remember that the death penalty is something we reserve for the 
worst of the worst."

(source: triblive.com)








DELAWARE:

Tight vote expected in death penalty repeal hearing



A 2-year long effort to end Delaware's death penalty could come down to 1 vote.

The legislation heads before a key House committee Wednesday where lawmakers 
failed to release a similar measure 2 years ago. Several legislators on the 
committee, as well as activists, say they expect a tight vote on the measure 
this time.

"I don't think much has changed since we heard the bill last time around and I 
think it is likely going to be met with the same result," said Rep. Trey 
Paradee, D-Dover, who sits on the committee and is opposed to repealing the 
death penalty.

But supporters of the repeal effort, buoyed by Gov. Jack Markell's public 
support for the legislation last week, say they're hopeful that this is the 
year the bill will get out of the House Judiciary Committee, but know that they 
need 1 person on the 11-member committee to reconsider their position.

"Now is the time for Delaware to be on the right side of history," said Kristin 
Froehlich, president of Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty. "We can 
be at the tail end and wait for other states to lead the way, or we can be a 
leader in this fight."

The legislation faces an uphill battle in committee, where the chair, Rep. John 
"Larry" Mitchell, D-Elsmere, is a former law enforcement officer opposed to the 
measure.

"I have always been for not repealing the death sentence," Mitchell said. "It 
is a tool, something that has been in place and not had issues in Delaware in 
the past."

Another member of the committee Rep. Steve Smyk, R-Milton, is a retired 
Delaware state trooper. There are several other Republicans on the committee, 
including Rep. Jeff Spiegelman, R-Clayton, who were opposed to the matter in 
2013.

Spiegelman said he's opposed to repealing the death penalty now, more than 
ever. The vote will be a very tight one, he added.

"I'm a (new) father," he said. "There is a sense that wasn't there 2 years ago. 
What if something terrible happened to my son? What would I consider just at 
that point?"

But the measure does have allies in a bloc of several Wilmington and New Castle 
lawmakers.

Rep. Gerald Brady, D-Wilmington West, said Tuesday that he's confident the bill 
will make it through the committee and on the House floor. But it will be 
close, he added.

"The reason that it is going to be such a close vote is because of geographics 
and professions," he said.

The debate over the death penalty has been a polarizing, divisive and emotional 
one. Supporters say the practice is outdated, fraught with error and applied 
arbitrarily and disproportionately. It???s an expensive measure that doesn't 
make residents any safer, they say. Recent cases in Delaware and across the 
nation have shown that there are inadequacies in the justice system that 
present a real risk that innocent people are put to death, they add.

Opponents to repealing the death penalty say capital punishment acts as a 
deterrent to violent crime and is a tool prosecutors can use for the most 
heinous of perpetrators. They argue that many of the statistics cited by 
supporters have no real grounding in Delaware and that the vast majority of 
people living in the state oppose the death penalty.

Fred Calhoun, president of the Delaware Fraternal Order of Police, said the 
system is not broken in Delaware. Repealing the death penalty will not reduce 
crime, or save money, he added. It will only stand to put correctional officers 
in jeopardy, he said.

"If you have life in prison, what else do you have to lose," he said. "It puts 
all of the corrections officers in danger."

Delaware has 15 inmates currently on death row. The legislation exempts them 
from any repeal. The last time Delaware executed someone was in April 2012 when 
28-year-old Shannon Johnson was killed by lethal injection, Johnson was 
convicted in the 2006 shooting death of Cameron Hamlin, 26, an aspiring 
musician.

The death penalty hearing begins at 11 a.m. Wednesday morning.

(source: The News Journal)








OHIO:

UC's Ohio Innocence Project and Exonerees Honored at Award Ceremony by Death 
Penalty Advocacy Group----Ohio Innocence Project Director Mark Godsey, OIP 
attorney Brian Howe and several exonerees received a "Special Recognition" 
award from the Death Penalty Focus advocacy group on May 7 in Beverly Hills, 
Calif.



The University of Cincinnati College of Law's professor Mark Godsey, Ohio 
Innocence Project (OIP) attorney Brian Howe and three exonerees were recognized 
with the Rose Elizabeth Bird Commitment to Justice Award at the 24th annual 
Death Penalty Focus Awards dinner, held in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Death Penalty Focus, founded in 1988, is an organization committed to the 
abolition of the death penalty through public education, grassroots organizing 
and political advocacy, media outreach, and domestic and international 
coalition building. The award recognizes individuals whose actions and stories 
bring to light the flaws in the US judicial system.

Wrote Mike Farrell, the organization's president, in an email about the award, 
"Your efforts which resulted in the exoneration of these men for a crime they 
did not commit are an incredible accomplishment. It is cases like these which 
further illustrate the importance of our work to end the death penalty." 
Farrell, an actor and activist, is well-known for his role as Captain B.J. 
Hunnicutt from the hit TV show "M.A.S.H."

Event attendees included: Ed Asner, known for his Emmy Award-winning role as 
Lou Grant during the '70s and early '80s on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and 
spin-off "Lou Grant" and as Ed Wuncler on "The Boondocks," among many other 
film and TV roles; actress Amy Brenneman, known for her role in the TV series 
"Judging Amy," Violet Turner in "Private Practice" and Laurie Garvey in HBO's 
"The Leftovers"; Larry Flynt Jr., publisher and president of Larry Flynt 
Publications; and many others.

OIP Award Recipients

Attorneys Terry Gilbert, Mark Godsey, Brian Howe; Exonerees Wiley Bridgeman, 
Ricky Jackson, Kwame Ajamu; Attorney David Mills

Godsey and Howe were recognized for their representation of Ricky Jackson. The 
OIP's investigation also ultimately freed Jackson's co-defendants, Wiley 
Bridgeman and Kwame (Bridgeman) Ajamu, who - along with Jackson - were honored 
for their courage and commitment. The men together served over 100 years in 
prison for a crime they did not commit; many of those years were spent on death 
row. Jackson has the tragic distinction of setting the record for the 
longest-serving person to be exonerated in U.S. history. They were exonerated 
in November 2014 after a key prosecution witness, Eddie Vernon, recanted his 
story that he saw the men shoot and kill Cleveland businessman Harold Franks in 
1975.

In addition to the OIP team and exonerees, several other individuals and 
organizations were recognized for their work at the event. Awardees included 
Dale Baich, an assistant federal public defender, who defended Joseph Wood, a 
man whose botched 2-hour execution in Arizona last year was deemed by many to 
violate the Eighth Amendment; Rabbi Leonard Beerman, a founder of the DPF and 
lifelong opponent of capital punishment; and the program "Death Row Stories," 
an 8-part CNN series exploring cases that pose hard questions about capital 
punishment and the justice system.

About the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Institute for Justice/Ohio Innocence 
Project

Harnessing the energy and intellect of law students as its driving force, the 
OIP seeks to identify and assist inmates in Ohio prisons who are actually 
innocent of the crimes they were convicted of committing. Innocence Projects 
across the country have freed more than hundreds of wrongfully convicted 
inmates to date. The Ohio Innocence Project to date has helped 23 individuals 
obtain their long-sought freedom.

Read more about Ricky Jackson's story: http://www.law.uc.edu/oip/ricky-jackson

Learn more about the Ohio Innocence Project: http://www.law.uc.edu/oip

(source: uc.edu)








USA:

Capital punishment's loyal officer



It was a zinger worthy of a Presidential debate (and almost certainly just as 
planned). Justice Samuel Alito, confronted Federal Public Defender Robin Conrad 
in the midst of her oral argument on April 29 in Glossip v. Gross, a case 
challenging Oklahoma's lethal injection execution procedure.

Yes. I mean, let's be honest about what's going on here. Executions could be 
carried out painlessly. There are many jurisdictions - there are jurisdictions 
in this country, there are jurisdictions abroad that allow assisted suicide, 
and I assume that those are carried out with little, if any, pain. Oklahoma and 
other States could carry out executions painlessly. Now, this Court has held 
that the death penalty is constitutional. It's controversial as a 
constitutional matter. It certainly is controversial as a policy matter. Those 
who oppose the death penalty are free to try to persuade legislatures to 
abolish the death penalty. Some of those efforts have been successful. They're 
free to ask this Court to overrule the death penalty. But until that occurs, is 
it appropriate for the judiciary to countenance what amounts to a guerilla war 
against the death penalty which consists of efforts to make it impossible for 
the States to obtain drugs that could be used to carry out capital punishment 
with little, if any, pain?

The diatribe won the lion's share of media attention on the case and much of it 
seemingly approving. The stunning nature of his attack on our adversary system 
has gone little remarked. Indeed Justice Alito seemed to be refreshingly candid 
(Chris Christie style): "let's be honest about what's going on here."

He appealed to his media audiences common sense that executions could be 
carried out painlessly (although four of his colleagues doubted that the last 
time SCOTUS reviewed lethal injections in Baze v. Rees). He acknowledged that 
abolitionists have been making significant political progress lately winning 
legislative abolitions, with "red" Nebraska only the latest state legislature 
to express a desire to rid the law of capital punishment. He invited direct 
challenge to the constitutionality of the death penalty: an invitation that 
might have seemed totally empty a few years ago but now seems to have 
increasing constitutional force (see Jones v. Chappell finding the California 
death penalty unconstitutional on grounds of being arbitrary and capricious).

But behind this this seemingly candid and refreshing acknowledgment was a 
remarkable attack upon a lawyer doing exactly what lawyers are supposed to do: 
zealously advocating for her clients. Justice Alito (echoed by Justice Scalia) 
cast Federal Public Defender Conrad and her colleagues as duplicitous, pleading 
the terrible risk of pain facing their clients while working behind the backs 
of the courts and states to deny states access to chemicals that could 
painlessly cause death and thus subverting the honorable workings of justice.

Absolutely no evidence is presented or even suggested for this conspiracy. In 
fact, it is a mirror image of reality. The problems American states are 
confronting in finding drugs to make lethal injections look kind and gentle lie 
in a growing global movement against capital punishment, in which America is 
increasingly seen as part of an anti human rights "axis" along with Iran, 
China, and Saudi Arabia.

Federal public defenders (and indeed many other Americans) may well sympathize 
with this global movement but they are hardly relevant to that movement. As 
Justice Alito must surely know, the European Union - our major trading partner 
and political military ally and the site of many of the world's leading 
pharmaceutical producers - are legally bound to oppose the death penalty where 
ever it exists. Federal public defenders are even more irrelevant to the 
completely understandable fact that many businesses will need no additional 
reason other than publicity to choose to disassociate their products from the 
deliberate killing of human beings.

The real guerilla war is being waged by death states that continue to pursue 
executions even as crime remains at historic lows and public opinion turns 
against this archaic ritual. Many of these states are making a farce of the 
Court's own decades-long effort to forge a more legal and more humane death 
penalty - by using all means, legal or otherwise, to acquire execution drugs - 
and obstructing prisoners and their advocates from discovering even the most 
basic scientific facts about how the state proposes to take their lives.

Meanwhile the death penalty majority on the Supreme Court has fought its own 
battle to prevent continued judicial oversight of state executions. Indeed, the 
first named petitioner in the case in which Justice Alito delivered his appeal 
for honesty was executed earlier this year even as the issue he raised was 
scheduled for Supreme Court argument.

Justice Alito is correct that the times are changing rapidly for the death 
penalty. In retrospect, the rejuvenation of capital punishment in the 1970s 
after a couple of decades of declining public support may have had more to do 
with the high violent crime rates and toxic racial politics of that era - 
conditions that have changed in many respects - than any core American 
commitment to capital punishment.

Serious challenges to the constitutionality of the death penalty may soon find 
themselves before the SCOTUS. One can only hope that Justice Alito will bring a 
less closed mind to those arguments than he did to the ones Federal Defender 
Robin Konrad (and Justice Sotomayor) presented him in Glossip.

It is our common law tradition that judges are to consider the fate of 
litigants one at a time, and answer the compelling legal questions that their 
treatment poses. Yet in his exchanges with Ms. Konrad, Justice Alito showed an 
injudicious interest in capital punishment as an institution. In his 
willingness to defend the death penalty (and his even odder insistence that if 
it is to end, it must receive the presumably more honorable dispatch of a 
direct constitutional assault) Justice Alito seems to be more committed to that 
institution than to our Constitution.

Justice Alito's passion for the death penalty recalled for me the curious 
character of the "Officer" who conducts a "Traveler" to witness the execution 
of a condemned prisoner in Franz Kafka's haunting story The Penal Colony. The 
story, set in a little described "penal colony," involves an execution ritual 
in which the condemned are placed into a complex machine known as the "harrow" 
that effectively kills them by slowly inscribing the name of their crime into 
their body with metal needles as they are rotated within the harrow. The harrow 
requires constant tinkering, which the Officer enthusiastically supplies. The 
Officer acknowledges to the increasingly uneasy Traveller that the colony's 
commitment to this strange ritual is in fact waning fast, but he remains so 
loyal to it that he abandons all restraint - and ultimately even self 
preservation - in attempting to obtain for it at least one last victim.

Like the penal colony's harrow, our execution machinery needs constant 
tinkering, both technical and legal. Some Justices, Harry Blackmun and John 
Paul Stevens, once supporters of the death penalty, eventually renounced 
"tinkering with the machinery of death" and denounced the penalty as 
irreconcilable with commitment to the rule of law.

More Justices soon must make clear that their decades long servitude to this 
institution must come to an end. But perhaps the last will be Justice Alito, 
who - like Kafka's Officer - seems increasingly willing to depart from his role 
in order defend the machinery of death against law itself.

(source: Jonathan Simon, professor of law, Univ. Calif., Berkeley----The 
Berkeley Blog)

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

Problems with FBI hair analysis latest example of the perils of old-fashioned 
forensic science



Kirk Odom was convicted of a 1981 rape and robbery after a woman identified him 
as her attacker and an FBI specialist testified that hair on her nightgown was 
consistent with hair on Odom's head.

But DNA testing some 30 years later affirmed what Odom long had maintained: The 
hair wasn't his; neither was the semen left on a pillowcase and robe. A felony 
conviction that imprisoned him for decades was overturned in 2012 by a judge 
who declared it a "grave miscarriage of justice."

"I was hoping that I was going to go home that day," Odom, recalling his trial 
in Washington, D.C., said in an interview. Instead, "they sentenced me to 20 to 
66 years in prison."

His experience is but one example of flawed forensic science from the pre-DNA 
era, a simmering problem that now appears far more widespread than initially 
thought. The Innocence Project, which works to exonerate the wrongly accused, 
has identified 74 overturned convictions in which faulty hair evidence was a 
factor. Now, a new disclosure by the FBI that experts gave erroneous testimony 
on hair analysis in more than 250 trials before 2000 suggests that number could 
rise dramatically.

Defense lawyers say the latest revelations - on top of established concerns 
about bite mark identification and arson science - confirm fears about the 
shortcomings of old-fashioned forensic techniques and could affect thousands of 
cases. Advancing technologies have put such techniques under more scrutiny, 
including from judges, and highlighted the limits of once-established 
practices.

"There are forces converging at the moment that are finally bringing some 
recognition to the failings of many venerable techniques," said Chris 
Fabricant, director of strategic litigation at the Innocence Project.

A 2013 Associated Press investigation concluded that at least 24 men convicted 
or charged with murder or rape based on bite mark evidence - the practice of 
matching teeth to a flesh wound - were exonerated since 2000. Some high-profile 
criminal cases involving arson science have come under renewed scrutiny amid 
debunked fire investigations. Last year, a Pennsylvania judge threw out the 
conviction of a Korean immigrant who had spent 24 years in prison for his 
daughter's death.

When subjective speculation is injected into a trial under the guise of 
science, "then a real perversion of justice is what happens," Fabricant said.

Microscopic hair analysis, which involves comparing hair specimens through a 
microscope, has for decades been an established FBI practice and passed along 
at seminars to hundreds of state-level examiners. But critics say the technique 
lacks objective standards, with limitations that led experts to too often 
overstate the likelihood of a match with a particular hair found at a 
particular scene. Though this kind of analysis can be used to exclude a person 
as a potential source of a hair sample, critics say there's no way to 
conclusively know how common or rare the specimen is because no national 
database of hair specimens exists.

A 2009 report from the National Academy of Sciences described as "highly 
unreliable" testimony purporting to identify a particular defendant through 
hair analysis. The FBI has acknowledged its scientific limitations and uses the 
practice now in conjunction with more scientifically reliable DNA testing.

The Justice Department in 2012 embarked on a review of more than 2,000 criminal 
cases following high-profile exonerations in which microscopic hair analysis 
was used.

The government provided an astonishing update last month when it revealed that 
of the 268 trials reviewed as of mid-March, investigators found erroneous 
statements from FBI experts in nearly all of the cases - including in 
death-penalty prosecutions. The review is limited to cases dating before 2000 
in which FBI examiners provided evidence. But the number of affected cases 
would almost certainly be much higher if the review took into account cases 
involving FBI-trained state examiners.

Still, no one knows how many defendants have been wrongly convicted because the 
existence of flawed testimony - often just 1 element of a prosecution - does 
not establish innocence.

"What it does mean is that those cases need to be looked at very closely to see 
what role hair played in the case," said Norman Reimer, executive director of 
the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Advocates say they are working to ensure that individuals potentially affected 
have opportunities to challenge their convictions. They've also encouraged 
states to do their own audits because most of the prosecutions were local 
cases. The Justice Department has said it will waive procedural objections, 
including statute-of-limitations claims, in federal cases.

Odom, 52, always maintained his innocence, saying he did not know the woman and 
was not at her apartment when the assault occurred. But the hair evidence and 
eyewitness identification proved persuasive, and Odom spent more than 20 years 
in prison before being released on parole in 2003.

The big break came when the public defender's office in Washington reopened 
Odom's case following the earlier exoneration of another local man because of 
faulty hair evidence.

DNA testing on evidence pulled from storage showed that the hair on the woman's 
garment could not have come from Odom. The conviction was thrown out - a relief 
for a man who had been a registered sex offender and whose travel had been 
hampered.

When the call came that he'd been cleared, Odom was on a nighttime plumbing 
job, "and I just yelled out in happiness. It was a very joyful moment."

(source: Star tribune)

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

Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev's youngest victim at centre of death 
penalty debate----8-year-old victim's father described gut-wrenching decision 
to leave him at the scene



U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday rejected a claim by the Boston Marathon bomber's 
lawyers that they had not proven that the death of the attack's youngest victim 
took a heavy enough toll on his family to influence a jury to sentence bomber 
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death.

The prosecution's statement, in a filing in U.S. District Court in Boston, 
comes a day before the two sides are to give their closing arguments. After 
those arguments, the same jury that found the 21-year-old ethnic Chechen guilty 
of killing three people in the April 15, 2013, attack begin deliberations on 
whether to sentence to Tsarnaev to death by lethal injection or to life in 
prison without possibility of release.

On Monday, defense attorneys had argued that prosecutors had not shown evidence 
to back up the claim that the death of 8-year-old Martin Richard was one of the 
"aggravating factors" that the jury could take into account in making its 
decision on Tsarnaev's fate.

Boston Marathon Bombing

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is said to have expressed genuine sorrow for the victims of 
the Boston Marathon bombing, according to death penalty opponent Sister Helen 
Prejean. His lawyers have rested their case to save him from execution.

Richard's father, William, during the 1st phase of the trial described being 
thrown through the air by the twin pressure cooker bombs, seeing his 3 
children's injuries and making the gut-wrenching decision to leave badly 
wounded Martin at the scene with his wife, who was also injured, so that he 
could save the life of his youngest daughter, Jane.

None of the Martin family was called to testify in the trial's sentencing phase 
after they asked federal prosecutors in a statement published on the front page 
of the Boston Globe newspaper to drop their quest for the death penalty.

Martin family did not testify

Instead they heard from a doctor who described the enormous injuries Martin 
Richard had sustained.

"The injuries to Martin covered his entire body and were described as 
extraordinarily painful," prosecutors wrote in a court filing on Tuesday. "This 
evidence comports with the type of "victim impact" evidence which is clearly 
admissible."

BOSTON-BOMBINGS-TRIAL

In making their sentencing decision, the jury is expected to weigh the 
"aggravating" factors of Tsarnaev's crime, including the young age of some of 
his victims and the large number of people injured, against "mitigating" 
factors put forth by the defense, which contends Tsarnaev played a secondary 
role in an attack planned and driven by his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan.

Tamerlan died 4 days after the bombing following a gunfight with police that 
ended when Dzohkhar ran him over with a stolen car.

(source: CNC news)