[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.C., ALA., IND., ORE., WASH., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 16



NORTH CAROLINA:

Death penalty sought for NC man accused of killing wife and stepdaughter


Prosecutors announced Monday they would seek the death penalty for a Sanford 
man accused of killing his wife and stepdaughter.

Billy Jo Mclean is accused of killing Calandra Mclean and Tashonna Cameron, 13, 
in July.

On July 13, Sanford firefighters responded to an apartment complex in response 
to a strong gas odor.

When firefighters arrived, they found smoke coming from an apartment nearby and 
found Mclean and Cameron inside the apartment at 916 Clark Circle.

Authorities said Billy Jo Mclean took his 17-year-old stepson to Texas 
following the killings.

Billy Jo Mclean was found at the Royal Inn located at in Wildorado, Texas, 
shortly after midnight July 17.

At a court appearance in Lee County on Monday, prosecutors announced they are 
seeking the death penalty for Billy Jo Mclean.

Billy Jo Mclean is charged with 2 counts of 1st-degree murder in connection 
with the case.

Billy Jo Mclean's next scheduled court appearance in in March.

(source: WNCN news)






ALABAMA:

Tuscaloosa man found guilty of capital murder in uncle's death


Alexius Foster, the Tuscaloosa man accused of stabbing his uncle to death in 
2013 and killing a former friend about a month later has been found guilty of 
capital murder in both of their deaths.

Foster was charged with capital murder in the death of his uncle George Foster, 
57, who was fatally stabbed at his home in June 2013. Investigators said 
robbery was a motive in the crime.

A month later, Foster's former friend Antonio Williams' body was discovered in 
a shallow grave. Foster is also charged with capital murder in Williams' death.

Investigators believe Williams was killed because Alexius Foster thought he was 
talking to police about George Foster's murder.

The district attorney will seek the death penalty against Foster. The 
sentencing phase of the trial begins Wednesday, Nov. 18 at 9:30 a.m.

When asked about his response to the jury's decision, Alexius Foster replied, 
"Hallelujah, God is good, hallelujah" on Monday morning.

Circuit Judge John England declared a mistrial earlier this year after homicide 
investigators arrested another man in connection with both murders during 
Foster's trial.

Foster is being tried separately from Shaddrell Mathews, the other suspect 
charged in connection with the murders.

(source: WSFA news)






INDIANA:

Suspected serial killer Darren Vann wants to represent himself


A man the state is seeking the death penalty against wants to represent 
himself, according to online court records.

Lake Criminal Judge Diane Boswell scheduled a hearing for Wednesday after 
Darren Vann wrote to the court indicating he wanted to represent himself, 
according to online court records.

Vann, 44, of Gary, faces murder charges in the strangling deaths of Afrika 
Hardy, 19, and Anith Jones, 35, of Merrillville.

He allegedly confessed to killing 5 other women whose bodies were found last 
fall in abandoned buildings in Gary. Vann has not been charged in those 
homicides as of this week.

The Lake County prosecutor's office is seeking the death penalty in the case. 
Vann is scheduled to stand trial Jan. 25.

The request from Vann comes a month after one of his public defenders, Teresa 
Hollandsworth, withdrew from the case. He is now represented by public 
defenders Gojko Kasich, Matthew Fech and Mark Bates.

The correspondence to the court from Vann was not available Monday, because the 
file was not in the clerk's office.

Vann is accused of killing Hardy after meeting her through an online escort 
service, according to court records. Hardy was found strangled to death Oct. 
17, 2014 in a bathtub at a Motel 6 in Hammond.

After Vann was questioned by police in Hardy's homicide, he allegedly confessed 
to killing Jones along with 5 other women, police said.

Jones was found Oct. 18, 2014, in an abandoned building in the 400 block of 
East 43rd Street in Gary. Vann told detectives a mutual friend offered him 
money and drugs to make Jones disappear before an upcoming court hearing, 
according to the affidavit.

The other women are Teaira Batey, Tanya Gatlin, Sonya Billingsley, Tracy L. 
Martin and Kristine Williams.

(source: nwitimes.com)






OREGON:

Oregon serial killer sentenced to death after prosecutors sought death penalty 
for 4th time


A jury on Monday sentenced one of Oregon's most prolific serial killers to 
death for the 4th time, an ultimately symbolic decision in a state that has not 
executed anyone in nearly 20 years.

Dayton Leroy Rogers, who killed 8 women in the 1980s, had previously been 
sentenced to death 3 times for his crimes, and each time the penalty was 
overturned on legal grounds. The jury's new verdict comes despite a moratorium 
on executions imposed by the past 2 governors.

Rogers apologized in court Friday. He told jurors the word "sorry" was 
inadequate, but he was sorry for taking "8 precious lives."

Rogers, a 62-year-old former lawn-mower repairman, was dubbed the Molalla 
Forest Killer because the bodies were discovered in a forest in the small town 
of Molalla.

Prosecutors said Rogers drove to Portland to solicit prostitutes, plied them 
with alcohol, and took them to remote locations where he tied them up and 
tortured them.

Defence attorney Richard Wolf has said Rogers would waive his right to an 
appeal if he got a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

During Rogers' most recent sentencing trial in Clackamas County Circuit Court, 
Wolf said sending Rogers to prison for life would give a resolution to victims' 
families and avoid the costs of further legal proceedings.

If Rogers is sentenced to death, various appeals could take up another 30 
years, cost about $3 million and continue to drag families into court, Wolf 
said.

The attorney also argued that Rogers' traumatic childhood - including sexual 
and physical abuse - and the brain damage he suffered should be considered as 
mitigating evidence.

But prosecutor Bryan Brock said Rogers should get the death penalty because his 
acts were heinous and deliberate. He said Rogers carefully planned his attacks 
and was driven by sexual gratification from inflicting pain.

Rogers was convicted of 6 killings in 1989, and each of 3 juries has sentenced 
him to death. Rogers also was tied to the slaying of a woman identified in 2013 
and sentenced to life in prison for the stabbing death of a woman outside a 
Portland restaurant in 1987.

The state Supreme Court struck down Rogers' death sentences in 1992, 2000 and 
2012. The 1st time was to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that 
invalidated Oregon's death penalty law.

(source: Associated Press)






WASHINGTON:

Grays Harbor County Prosecutor comments on state death penalty referendum


Following an announcement on Friday that state prosecutors plan to send a death 
penalty referendum to voters next year, Grays Harbor County Prosecutor Katie 
Svoboda issued a press release to KXRO about the decision.

"The prosecuting attorneys of Washington State overwhelmingly believe that the 
people of the state should vote on the question of whether the state should 
retain the death penalty as an option in cases of aggravated murder. As the 
elected officials entrusted with the fair administration of capital punishment 
in our state, we call upon the Governor and the Legislature to place a 
referendum on the ballot next year seeking guidance from the voters about this 
significant public policy issue."

According to the release, it was 40 years ago, in 1975, that the people of the 
state approved Initiative 316, which created the death penalty in our state. 
The previous death penalty setup had been found unconstitutional by the US 
Supreme Court in the Fuhrman v. Georgia case in 1972. The language of the 
initiative was amended by the Legislature in 1981.

For the past 34 years Washington prosecutors have pursued capital punishment in 
the most heinous murders committed in our state. During that time, prosecutors 
sought the death penalty in 90 of 268 cases where it was a possible sentence 
according to Svoboda. Jurors returned unanimous verdicts of the death penalty 
in 32 of those 90 cases.

The 32 death sentences that have been imposed under the current statute have 
resulted in the execution of 5 men, 3 of whom were "volunteers" who instructed 
their attorneys to not pursue appeals of their convictions. 9 men currently 
reside on death row, awaiting more appellate process. 18 men who were sentenced 
to the death penalty had their sentences reversed by appellate courts and their 
cases were ultimately resolved without the death penalty.

Svoboda's release said that most of the people in the state of Washington today 
did not participate in the election 40 years ago that established our state as 
1 of 31 U.S. states with the death penalty, and it is time to take it back to 
the voters.

(source: KXRO)






USA:

US set to execute fewest number of people in 24 years ---- The death penalty 
has faced increased opposition from both the left and right


Executions in the US are set to hit a 24 year low - the combination of 
increased opposition to the death penalty and a struggle to obtain the lethal 
chemicals used to carry them out.

The last 2 scheduled executions of the year are set to be carried out later 
this week, with Texas due to put convicted murderer Raphael Holiday to death on 
Wednesday and Georgia fixed to execute convicted murderer Marcus Johnson on 
Thursday.

Reuters said that if those 1 executions go ahead, there will have been 27 
executions in the United States in 2015. That would be the lowest number since 
1991.

The death penalty, which remains legal in 31 states, has been hit by the left 
and right in 2015, the news agency said. Court battles and a scramble to secure 
execution drugs after a sales ban a few years ago imposed by makers, mostly in 
Europe, have left about 8 states, most notably Texas, Florida and Missouri, as 
those that conduct executions. In 1999, 20 states put people to death.

Last year nationwide, there were 73 new death sentences, and that number is set 
to drop by at least 1/3 this year, according to the Death Penalty Information 
Centre.

Oklahoma, one of the most active death penalty states, has put a halt on 
executions after mistakes in protocols that led to a flawed execution in 2014 
and the delivery of the wrong drug to the death chamber this year. In 
September, officiacls in South Carolina revealed they intended to seek the 
death penalty for Dylann Roof, the man charged with six nine counts of murder 
over the shooting of nine church members.

In some states, such as Nebraska, conservatives have spoken out over the high 
cost of executions, with some studies suggesting that when appeals and 
investigations are taken into account, the cost of putting someone to death can 
be at least double those of housing an inmate for life and are usually far 
higher. Data cited by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsgroup that focuses 
on criminal justice, has suggested the costs can sometimes be twice as high.

Texas and Virginia have instituted changes in the way death penalty cases are 
taken through courts that have led to decreased prosecutions.

Death penalty advocate Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law School, said 
money should not be a factor.

"The death penalty should not be a utilitarian issue in terms of weighing the 
costs against the benefits, but rather an issue simply of justice, of who 
deserves it," he said.

(source: The Independent)

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

Forensic Pseudoscience----The Unheralded Crisis of Criminal Justice


This past April, the FBI made an admission that was nothing short of 
catastrophic for the field of forensic science. In an unprecedented display of 
repentance, the Bureau announced that, for years, the hair analysis testimony 
it had used to investigate criminal suspects was severely and hopelessly 
flawed.

The Innocence Project's M. Chris Fabricant and legal scholar Tucker Carrington 
classify the kind of hair analysis the FBI performs as "magic," and it is not 
hard to see why. By the Bureau's own account, its hair analysis investigations 
were unscientific, and the evidence presented at trial unreliable. In more than 
95 % of cases, analysts overstated their conclusions in a way that favored 
prosecutors. The false testimony occurred in hundreds of trials, including 32 
death penalty cases. Not only that, but the FBI also acknowledged it had 
"trained hundreds of state hair examiners in annual 2-week training courses," 
implying that countless state convictions had also been procured using 
consistently defective techniques.

But questions of forensic science's reliability go well beyond hair analysis, 
and the FBI's blunders aren't the only reason to wonder how often fantasy 
passes for science in courtrooms. Recent years have seen a wave of scandal, 
particularly in drug testing laboratories. In 2013 a Massachusetts drug lab 
technician pled guilty to falsifying tests affecting up to 40,000 convictions. 
Before that, at least 9 other states had produced lab scandals. The crime lab 
in Detroit was so riddled with malpractice that in 2008 the city shut it down. 
During a 2014 trial in Delaware, a state trooper on the witness stand opened an 
evidence envelope from the drug lab supposedly containing 64 blue OxyContin 
pills, only to find 13 pink blood-pressure pills. That embarrassing mishap led 
to a full investigation of the lab, which found evidence completely unsecured 
and subject to frequent tampering.

There have also been scores of individual cases in which forensic science 
failures have led to wrongful convictions, the deficiencies usually unearthed 
by the Innocence Project and similar organizations. In North Carolina, Greg 
Taylor was incarcerated for nearly 17 years thanks to an analyst who testified 
that the blood of a murder victim was in the bed of his truck. But later 
investigation failed to confirm that the substance was blood, or even of human 
origin. Forensics experts have used "jean pattern" analysis to testify that 
only a certain brand of blue jeans could leave their distinctive mark on a 
truck, as occurred in the trial of New Yorker Steven Barnes, who spent twenty 
years in prison for a rape and murder he didn???t commit.

Some wrongful convictions can never be righted - for example, that of Cameron 
Todd Willingham, who was convicted by a Texas court of intentionally setting 
the fire that killed his 2 young daughters. After the state executed 
Willingham, an investigative team at the Texas Commission on Forensic Science 
concluded that the arson science used to convict him was worthless, and 
independent fire experts condemned the investigation as a travesty. But those 
findings came too late to do Willingham any good.

The mounting horror stories, and the extent of corruption and dysfunction, have 
created a moment of crisis in forensic science. But the real question is not 
just how serious the problems are, but whether it is even possible to fix them. 
There are reasons to suspect that the trouble with forensics is built into its 
foundation - that, indeed, forensics can never attain reliable scientific 
status.

----

Some of the basic problems of forensic science are hinted at in the term 
itself. The word forensics refers to the Roman forum; forensics is the "science 
of the forum," oriented toward gathering evidence for legal proceedings. This 
makes forensics unusual among the sciences, since it serves a particular 
institutional objective: the prosecution of criminals. Forensic science works 
when prosecutions are successful and fails when they are not.

That purpose naturally gives rise to a tension between science's aspiration to 
neutral, open-ended inquiry on the one side and the exigencies of prosecution 
on the other. Likewise, while true understanding is predicated on doubt and 
revision, the forum must reach a definitive result. The scientist's 
tentativeness is at odds with a judicial process built on up-or-down verdicts, 
a point the Supreme Court has emphasized in order to justify allowing judges 
wide deference as the gatekeepers of evidence.

It shouldn't be controversial to point out that forensic science is not really 
a science to begin with, not in the sense of disciplines such as biology and 
physics. Forensic science covers whatever techniques produce physical evidence 
for use in law. These may be derived from various actual scientific 
disciplines, including medicine, chemistry, psychology, and others, but they 
are linked less by their inherent similarity than by their usefulness during 
investigation and prosecution. Law enforcement agencies themselves have 
invented a number of the techniques, including blood-spatter and bite-mark 
analysis.

Law is a poor vehicle for the interpretation of scientific results.

Much forensic knowledge has thus developed by means unlike that of ordinary 
scientific research. Comparatively few major universities offer programs in 
forensic science; joint training in forensic sciences and policing is common. 
Forensic laboratories themselves are a disparate patchwork of public and 
private entities, with varying degrees of affiliation with police and 
prosecutors. The accountability of some subfields such as "forensic podiatry" 
(the study of footprints, gait, and other foot-related evidence) can be 
dubious, with judges taking the place of accreditation boards. In such a 
decentralized system, it can be difficult to keep track not only of whether 
forensic investigation is working well but also of how it even works in the 
first place.

The close association between forensics and law enforcement is particularly 
controversial. According to Frederic Whitehurst, a chemist and former FBI 
investigator, forensic scientists can "run into a sledgehammer" when they 
contradict prosecutors' theories. "What we seem to know in the world of science 
is that there are some real problems in the world of forensic science," 
Whitehurst told a reporter from the journal Nature. "We'd rather work on 
something cleaner." It is easy to see why a chemist might consider forensics 
"unclean"; criminal investigations regularly flout scientific safeguards 
against bias. Analysts often know the identity of the suspect, potentially 
biasing results in favor of police's suspicions. Even more concerning, some 
crime labs are paid not by the case but by the conviction, creating a strong 
incentive to produce incriminating evidence.

Whitehurst's comments echoed a major report in 2009 by the National Academy of 
Sciences (NAS), which painted a damning portrait of forensic practices. "Many 
forensic tests - such as those used to infer the source of tool marks or bite 
marks - have never been exposed to stringent scientific scrutiny," the report 
concluded.

One serious problem with those tests is that they allow for high levels of 
subjectivity. The NAS authors wrote that fingerprint analysis, for example, is 
"deliberately" left to human interpretation, so that "the outcome of a friction 
ridge analysis is not necessarily repeatable from examiner to examiner." I saw 
this up close while working at the public defender's office in New Orleans. 
Explaining his procedure for determining a match, a fingerprint examiner said 
in court that he would look at one, look at the other, and see if they match. 
When asked how he knew the 2 prints definitely matched, the examiner merely 
repeated himself. That very logic leads the FBI to claim fingerprint matches 
are "100 % accurate." Of course they are, if the question of a match is settled 
entirely by the examiner's opinion. Without any external standard against which 
to check the results, the examiner can never be wrong.

The NAS faulted a number of methods for this kind of shortcoming. Tool-mark and 
firearm analysis, for example, suffer the same weaknesses as fingerprint 
evidence, in that they depend strongly on unverified individual judgment. The 
report ultimately reached the forceful determination:

With the exception of nuclear DNA analysis . . . no forensic method has been 
rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree 
of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific 
individual or source.

That sentence should give any honest forensic examiner some sleepless nights.

But what about DNA? The report affirms that DNA maintains its place of 
integrity, the pinnacle of sound forensic science. It is not hard to see why 
DNA has long been the gold standard, deployed to convict and to exonerate the 
unfortunate defendants victimized by faultier methods of identification. DNA 
also has the advantage of producing falsifiable results; one can actually prove 
an interpretation incorrect, in contrast to the somewhat postmodern, 
eye-of-the-beholder sciences such as tool-mark and fingerprint analysis.

Yet forensic science involves both knowledge and practice, and while the 
science behind DNA is far from the prosecutorial voodoo of jeans and bite 
marks, its analysis must be conducted within a similar institutional framework. 
Analysts themselves can be fallible and inept; the risk of corruption and 
incompetence is no less pronounced simply because the biology has been 
peer-reviewed.

Such risk isn't merely theoretical. While Florida exoneree Chad Heins had DNA 
to thank for the overturning of his conviction, DNA was also responsible for 
the conviction itself, with an analyst giving faulty testimony about DNA found 
at the site where Heins's sister-in-law was murdered. Josiah Sutton was 
wrongfully convicted after a Houston analyst identified DNA found on a rape 
victim as an "exact match" for Sutton, even though 1 in 16 black men shared the 
DNA profile in question. Earlier this year in San Francisco, thousands of 
convictions were thrown into doubt after a DNA technician and her supervisor 
were found to have failed a proficiency exam. In preparing evidence for a 
trial, the 2 had also covered up missing data and lied about the completeness 
of a genetic profile, despite having been disciplined internally for previous 
faulty DNA analyses.

DNA failures can border on the absurd, such as an incident in which German 
police tracked down a suspect whose DNA was mysteriously showing up every time 
they swabbed a crime scene, from murders to petty thefts. But instead of 
nabbing a criminal mastermind, investigators had stumbled on a woman who worked 
at a cotton swab factory that supplied the police. That case may seem comical, 
but a 2012 error in New York surely doesn't. In July of that year, police 
announced that DNA taken off a chain used by Occupy Wall Street protesters to 
open a subway gate matched that found at the scene of an unsolved 2004 murder. 
The announcement was instantly followed by blaring news headlines about killer 
Occupiers. But officials later recanted, explaining that the match was a result 
of contamination by a lab technician who had touched both the chain and a piece 
of evidence from the 2004 crime. Yet the newspapers had already linked the 
words "Occupy" and "murder." The episode demonstrates how the consensus 
surrounding DNA's infallibility could plausibly enable government curtailment 
of dissent. Given the NYPD's none-too-friendly disposition toward the 
Occupiers, one might wonder what motivated it to run DNA tests on evidence from 
protest sites in the first place.

The high degree of confidence placed in DNA is especially worrying because 
successful DNA analysis requires human institutional processes to function 
smoothly and without mistakes. The four authors of Truth Machine: The 
Contentious History of DNA Fingerprinting (2008) describe how DNA actually 
comes to be used in criminal proceedings: as "an extended, indefinitely 
complicated series of fallible practices through which evidence is collected, 
transported, analyzed, and quantified." There are endless ways in which 
analysts can bungle their task. Furthermore, in the courtroom itself, DNA 
evidence must be contextualized and given significance. Even with 
well-conducted testing, poor explanation to a jury can enable a situation in 
which, as the geneticist Charalambos Kyriacou says, "Human error and 
misinterpretation could render the results meaningless." A cautious approach is 
therefore valuable, even where DNA is concerned.

----

It would be unreasonable to expect any human endeavor to be completely without 
error, and one might wonder just how systemic the problems of forensic science 
truly are. The claim of crisis is far from universally shared. Forensic 
scientist John Collins calls this "a fabricated narrative constructed by 
frustrated defense attorneys, grant-seeking academics, and justice reform 
activists who've gone largely unchallenged." Those who defend current practices 
say that the scandals are exceptions, that the vast majority of forensic 
scientists are diligent practitioners whose findings stand up under scrutiny. 
For every person exonerated, hundreds of convictions remain untouched.

But this defense actually points to one of the key problems with evaluating 
forensic science. The measures of its success are institutional: we see the 
failures of forensics when judges overturn verdicts or when labs contradict 
themselves. There is a circularity in the innocence cases, where the courts' 
ability to evaluate forensic science is necessary to correct problems caused by 
the courts??? inability to evaluate forensic science. At no point, even with 
rigorous judicial review, does the scientific method come into play. The 
problem is therefore not that forensic science is wrong, but that it is hard to 
know when it is right.

Breaking the cycle of uncertainty has therefore been a key part of reform 
proposals. The NAS report recommended numerous steps to introduce objectivity 
and accountability, including the adoption of consistent standards in every 
subfield and the creation of a unified federal oversight entity. One can hear 
in the lengthy recommendations of the NAS committee members pleas for the 
introduction of basic quality control.

But so far changes have been sluggish. In fact, in some labs quality may be 
declining as state budget cuts have reduced resources available for forensics. 
In Congress, the Forensic Science and Standards Act, which would massively 
overhaul the field and introduce unprecedented scrutiny and coordination, has 
repeatedly stalled. Last year, in keeping with the NAS's recommendations, the 
Department of Justice and the National Institute of Standards and Technology 
finally put together a forensic science commission to oversee the field and set 
protocols. But the commission is still in its infancy, and its effects remain 
to be seen.

The Supreme Court attempted to elucidate some standards in Daubert v. Merrell 
Dow Pharmaceuticals (1993) and 2 subsequent cases, which govern the 
admissibility of scientific evidence. The court ruled that evidence must be 
generally accepted in the field and open to empirical testing. But even as the 
Court ostensibly limited testimony to that which is sound and reliable, it 
undercut the ruling's effectiveness by offering lower courts a high level of 
flexibility in their decision-making. Ironically, that hands-off approach may 
have helped to create the very nightmare that the Daubert court feared, in 
which "befuddled juries are confounded by absurd and irrational 
pseudoscientific assertions."

Nobody can state with certainty the degree of pseudoscience that clogs the 
American courts. But even if forensic science largely faces a "bad apples" 
problem, it may still be in bad shape. As legal scholar and forensic science 
specialist Daniel Medwed notes, "An absence of careful oversight can allow 
rogue scientists to flourish." Even if there is no reason to doubt forensic 
podiatry itself, there might still be good reason to doubt forensic 
podiatrists. The localized, disparate, and unmonitored nature of so much 
forensic practice makes for massive nationwide inconsistency.

In fact, so long as forensic science remains forensic - i.e., conducted to meet 
the demands of the forum rather than those of the scientific method - it is 
hard to see how it can warrant confidence. For countless reasons, law is a poor 
vehicle for the interpreting of scientific results. That people's lives must 
depend on the interpretive decisions of judges and juries is in some respects 
unsettling to begin with. The chaotic state of forensic science - in theory and 
practice - and the possibility that unsupported flimflam is passing itself off 
as fact make the everyday criminal justice process even more alarming.

Thus even as we try various fixes, rooting out bad apples and introducing 
oversight, a systemic and elementary problem remains: a science of the forum 
can never be science at all.

(source: The Boston Review)

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

Feds indict 8 Salinas gang members


A 73-count superseding indictment was unsealed today charging nine defendants 
with racketeering, murder, attempted murder, armed bank robbery, robbery 
affecting interstate commerce, and the use of firearms, Acting US Attorney 
Brian J. Stretch announced in a press release. The arrests followed an 
investigation referred to as "Operation Daybreak," so named for the early 
morning attacks that characterized the alleged criminal activity in this case.

8 of the defendants- Daniel Chavez, 33, AKA Youngster; Victor Skates, 26, AKA 
Demon; Eduardo Lebron, 36, AKA Warlord; Eder Torres, 29, AKA Flaco; Julian 
Ruiz, 26, AKA JJ; Antonio Cruz, 28; Terrell Golden, 24, AKA G; and Anthony Lek, 
28, are alleged to be Salinas-based Norteno gang members. A 9th defendant, 
Robert Loera, 35, is alleged to be an associate of the gang. According to the 
indictment, all 9 defendants conspired to commit murder and other violent 
crimes as part of a criminal RICO enterprise tied to their Norteno gang 
activity. The superseding indictment alleges that, over a 2-year time period, 
the defendants committed 12 murders, 7 attempted murders, and 7 bank robberies.

With respect to the murders and attempted murders, the indictment alleges that 
the defendants hunted for rival gang members and other enemies, and shot and 
killed them and others suspected of being rival gang members. One of the 
homicides charged in the indictment occurred on the campus of Alisal High 
School in Salinas.

"We greatly appreciate the tireless efforts of the Salinas Police Department in 
reducing violent crime in the Salinas Valley," said Stretch. "Operation 
Daybreak has been a critical part of exposing crime in the area. While there 
remains more work to be done, today's indictment is the result of collective 
leadership of the Salinas Police Department and the FBI."

"This years-long investigation involved thousands of investigative hours by 
Salinas police detectives with the assistance of the FBI," said police Chief 
Kelly J. McMillin. "This case demonstrates what we have known for many years; 
that very few individuals drive the majority of violence in Salinas. It should 
also serve to remind us all that the role of prevention and intervention 
efforts cannot be overlooked and in fact must be strengthened further to ensure 
other young men never think it's okay to shoot another. The Salinas Police 
Department would like to thank the people of the Office of the United States 
Attorney, Northern District of California, for their incredible dedication to 
bringing these individuals to justice."

As alleged in the indictment, the armed bank robberies occurred in Salinas, 
Watsonville, and San Jose. In addition, there was an armed robbery of a Zales 
jewelry store in Gilroy.

All 9 defendants have been charged with the crimes set forth in the 1st 4 
counts of the indictment:

-- Racketeering conspiracy, in violation of 18 U.S.C. # 1962(d);

-- conspiracy to commit murder and assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of 
racketeering, in violation of 18 U.S.C. # 1959;

-- use of firearms in furtherance of crimes of violence, in violation of 18 
U.S.C. # 924(c); and

-- robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery affecting interstate commerce, in 
violation of 18 U.S.C. # 1951(a).

In addition, the following defendants have been charged with the following 
counts and additional crimes under the indictment:

An indictment merely alleges that crimes have been committed, and all 
defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. 
The maximum penalty each defendant faces upon conviction is life imprisonment. 
Chavez, Skates, Golden, Cruz, Torres, and Lebron are charged with 
death-eligible offenses. The decision whether to seek the death penalty against 
any or all of these defendants is pending. Additionally, periods of supervised 
release, fines, forfeitures, and special assessments also could be imposed. 
However, any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after 
consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute 
governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. # 3553.

The defendants are in law enforcement custody in various jurisdictions, 
including in the custody of the US Marshals Service. Defendants are scheduled 
to appear before the Honorable Lucy Koh, US District Judge, at 9:30 
a.m.Wednesday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Meyer is prosecuting the case with the 
assistance of Nina Burney and Susan Kreider. The prosecution is the result of 
an investigation by the Salinas Police Department.

(source: Salinas Californian)