[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, CONN., PENN., DEL., GA., LA.

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 18



TEXAS----impending execution

Texas Set To Execute Man Who Says His Lawyers Have "Abandoned" Him----Raphael 
Holiday is set to be executed Wednesday for burning 3 children to death in 
2000. Holiday has asked the Supreme Court to stop his execution, claiming his 
court-appointed lawyers have refused to help him.


A Texas man is slated to be executed Wednesday for burning 3 children to death 
- including his 18-month-old daughter - despite his claims that his 
court-appointed attorneys have "abandoned" him.

In March 2000, Raphael Holiday moved out of the house he shared with Tami Lynn 
Wilkerson and their 18-month-old daughter, Justice, along with Wilkerson's 2 
other daughters - Jasmine DuPaul, 5, and Tierra Lynch, 7. Wilkerson had filed 
charges against Holiday and sought a protective order against him after she 
learned he had sexually assaulted Tierra, according to court documents.

On Sept. 5, Holiday returned with a gun and threatened to "burn the house down 
with everyone it it." He then ordered everyone to sit on the couch and made 
Wilkerson's mother, Beverly Mitchell, pour gasoline all over the house, court 
records show.

Mitchell said she saw Holiday "bend down," after which the fire started. All 3 
children died in the fire, while Holiday stood outside and watched, court 
documents stated.

Holiday has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution on the grounds 
that his 2 court-appointed attorney abandoned him when he wanted to pursue 
avenues of legal appeal that had not yet been exhausted.

His appeal, filed by a pro-bono lawyer, claims that Holiday's 2 lawyers, 
appointed under the Criminal Justice Act (CJA), announced that they were 
through with the case "and then actively blocked Mr. Holiday's efforts to 
substitute" them, despite having instructed him to look for other death penalty 
lawyers.

Holiday says his execution should be stopped for new counsel to be appointed. 
He also claims that after the 2 lawyers, James "Wes" Volberding and Seth 
Kretzer, refused to file petitions seeking clemency - on the "cynical 
assumption that clemency has no chance" - they eventually "hrew together" a 
"sham clemency application" in 48 hours without Holiday's knowledge.

"We decided that it was inappropriate to file [a petition for clemency] and 
give false hope to a poor man on death row expecting clemency that we knew was 
never going to come," Volberding told The Dallas News.

Kretzer said in a court letter that they also recognized the "political 
realities" of Texas.

Last week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a motion to replace the 
2 attorneys.

Holiday's most recent appeal states that "irreparable harm" will occur if he is 
executed without him having a "meaningful opportunity to seek clemency and 
develop unexhausted constitutional claims."

The state responded by saying Holiday's appointed counsel have "sworn their 
commitment" to represent him and that he had failed to propose alternative 
counsel to take their place.

After the Supreme Court denied a petition to review the case in June, 
Volberding and Kretzer informed Holiday in a letter that they would not file 
additional appeals or seek clemency from the governor, Dallas News reported.

They also opposed a motion filed by an appellate lawyer who helped Holiday by 
asking the court to assign him new attorneys and threatened her with sanctions.

Holiday could become the 13th person to be executed by Texas this year.

(source: buzzfeed.com)

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

Area man set to be executed for arson-related deaths


A 36-year-old man convicted of killing 3 children by setting fire to their 
rural Madison County home 15 years ago is set to be executed today.

Raphael Holiday's execution warrant becomes valid at 6 p.m. If there are no 
ongoing appeals at that time, officials will go ahead with the execution by 
lethal injection.

The United States Supreme Court denied a petition in June by Holiday's lawyers 
to review the case, after which his lawyers decided they would not take any 
further appeals, saying it would only give the inmate "false hope."

Gretchen Sween, a lawyer in Austin, agreed to try to find new attorneys for 
Holiday, saying he had the right to "conflict-free counsel willing to pursue 
all relief available to him."

That request was denied by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth 
Circuit, so Sween appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court didn't immediately make a ruling. Sween couldn't be reached 
for comment.

A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said Holiday will 
begin his day in Livingston -- where death row inmates are housed -- with 
extended visits with family and friends.

He will be transported to Huntsville at an undisclosed time, then checked in 
and given a new uniform.

Prison officials will take the Grimes County native to a small holding cell 
just outside the execution chamber, where he'll be able to make more phone 
calls to friends and family.

He gets his last meal at 4 p.m. -- whatever the rest of the inmates are having 
-- and the execution will be carried out two hours later, unless there's a 
pending appeal.

He will be the 13th prisoner executed this year in Texas, which carries out the 
death penalty more than any other state, and 26th convicted killer executed 
nationally this year.

Holiday was convicted in June 2002 of killing 3 young sisters, including his 
own 18-month old daughter.

He was found guilty of 3 counts of capital murder in the deaths of Tierra 
Lynch, 7, Jasmine DuPaul, 5, and 18-month-old Justice Holiday.

Prosecutors said Holiday forced the victims' grandmother at gunpoint to douse 
the living room in the cabin on Lou Bee Lane in gasoline while the girls were 
sitting on the couch, then he lit the living room on fire.

After it ignited, he sped away in the grandmother's car, hit a police car that 
had arrived outside the cabin and then led officers on a chase that ended 2 
counties away when he wrecked.

"I was at the house, the house blew up," he told an Associated Press reporter 
recently from a visiting cage outside Texas' death row. "I don't know how the 
fire started."

Defense attorneys said the fire was started by the pilot light on the stove.

Investigators said they found the remains of the children huddled together on 
what was believed to be a couch.

Holiday had a record of violent behavior toward the children. The children's 
mother had been granted a protective order 6 months before the fire -- writing 
that Holiday had sexually assaulted the 7-year-old.

Prosecutors at Holiday's 2002 trial said he sought revenge because he was 
getting ready to stand trial for sexually assaulting the girl.

"I loved my kids," he recently told the AP. "I never would do harm to any of 
them."

Prison officials said the girls' mother, Tammy Wilkerson, planned to witness 
Holiday's execution. She declined to speak with The Associated Press.

According to a 2002 Eagle story, Wilkerson addressed Holiday after he was 
sentenced to death.

"You may have destroyed my life, but not my memories," Wilkerson told Holiday 
through tears. "You can't take those away from me."

Holiday said from prison that he was outside when the fire broke out.

"I was panicking," he said, explaining why he sped off in a stolen car. "I 
think it was crazy for someone to say I spoke of harming my kids. That doesn't 
make sense."

(source: The Eagle)

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

Why Texas county known for death sentences has given none in 2015 ---- As the 
state prepares to execute its 13th person this year on Wednesday, the case of 
Harris County, where 124 offenders have been executed, reflects shift among 
juries and prosecutors in opting for life sentences instead of death penalty


Yosselyn Alfaro was celebrating her 21st birthday at a friend's apartment when 
the bullet went through her brain. 2 17-year-olds, Daniel Munoz and Veronica 
Hernandez, also died after shots to the head.

2 others were injured. One held his mutilated jaw in place so he could tell the 
authorities who did it: Jonathan Sanchez.

The 27-year-old had a string of previous arrests. Prosecutors alleged that at 
the time of the murders 2 years ago, he was a gang member on a drug binge who 
sent threatening text messages to a man who lived at the Peppermill Place 
complex in north-west Houston. Then he turned up, talked his way in and started 
shooting.

In the county that metes out more completed death sentences than any other in 
the US, in the state that executes more people than anywhere else in the 
nation, it seemed obvious that prosecutors would seek the death penalty for 
such a horrific crime and almost inevitable that they would get it.

Yet, as the Houston Chronicle reported, the jury that convicted Sanchez of 
capital murder last week opted to spare him from a lethal injection. He was 
sentenced to life without parole. It was an outcome at odds with Texas's 
well-earned reputation.

On Wednesday, Raphael Holiday is set to become the 531st Texas inmate executed 
since 1976, and the 13th this year, for starting a house fire that killed 3 
young girls, including his 1-year-old daughter.

Some 124 offenders have been executed after convictions in Harris County, which 
includes Houston. If Harris were a state it would be second in total 
executions, behind Texas and 12 deaths ahead of Oklahoma.

Yet no one has been sentenced to death in Harris County this year. Across Texas 
there have been only 3 death sentences in 2015, and the 1st came as late as 
October. The previous low in a calendar year was 8.

"We now have more cases this year where jurors rejected the death penalty than 
where they imposed it," said Kristin Houle, executive director of the Texas 
Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

"I think it's the culmination of several things," said Tim Cole, a former 
district attorney in Texas who tried death penalty cases. Cole believes that 
the rising number of DNA-based exonerations has made jurors more cautious and 
sceptical, that the introduction of a life without parole option for capital 
cases in 2005 has had a major effect, and prosecutors are seeking death less 
often.

"I think that it is reflective of the change in attitude," Cole said of 
Sanchez???s life sentence. "About 2 or 3 years ago, I began to detect a 
difference." While polls show a majority of Texans are still in favour of the 
death penalty, Cole suggested that many would be more circumspect if they found 
themselves on a jury. He pointed to the case of Gabriel Armandariz, who was 
sentenced to life imprisonment in March for strangling his 2 young sons near 
Fort Worth, though prosecutors had sought death.

"Does killing Gabriel make you feel better? Does it make the small town where 
it happened say, 'Yeah, we killed that sorry SOB?' What good is more death?" 
his attorney asked the jury during closing arguments.

While Texas prosecutors will not shirk from asking for death sentences for the 
most egregious murders, Cole said, their risk-v-reward calculations have 
evolved.

"If you seek death and you don't get it, you've just spent months and perhaps 
millions on a case you could have [quickly] pled to a life sentence," he said. 
And with capital punishment no longer a core issue for voters, elected 
officials worry less about seeming soft on crime if they choose to seek life 
without parole instead.

"Texas continues to execute more people than any other state, but in many 
respects the number of executions in the state is misleading. It reflects death 
sentences that were imposed many years ago," said Robert Dunham, executive 
director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

"In fact there has been a substantial reduction in new death sentences in 
Texas, a reduction that suggests the death penalty is in decline there as well 
as elsewhere in the country."

Texas has also improved the quality of its legal representation for indigent 
defendants, Dunham said - though court documents indicate that Holiday tried to 
replace his attorneys after they said that last-ditch attempts to halt his 
death would be futile.

Holiday and the Georgia inmate Marcus Johnson, scheduled to die on Thursday, 
are likely to be the last 2 executions in 2015. That would leave the nation 
with 27 executions this year: the fewest since 1991, down from 35 last year and 
the modern-era high of 98 in 1999, according to the Death Penalty Information 
Center.

It will be the 7th successive year that the number of executions has declined 
or remained level.

6 states have carried out executions this year, compared with 13 in 2011. The 
number of stays of execution has grown, reflecting legal challenges and 
dwindling drug supplies that have seen states including Texas resort to 
desperate and dubious measures.

"While Texas has ultimately been able to obtain the drugs to execute people, it 
is feeling the pinch from the pharmaceutical boycott," Dunham said.

(source: The Guardian)

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

Exonerated After 18 Years in Prison, Black Man Fights for Reform


Anthony Graves was convicted in 1994 in Texas of murdering a woman, her 
daughter and her 4 grandchildren. Later proven to be innocent, Graves spent 
many years in prison, including 12 years on death row waiting to be executed 
for a crime he did not commit.

"You took 18 years of my life," he said, referring to the Texas criminal 
justice system. "You tried to murder me and I want to stay in your face every 
day to remind you that we need to do better."

Graves has used some of the $1.5 million he was awarded by the state of Texas 
for his wrongful imprisonment to further the cause of reforming the criminal 
justice system.

There have been 1,700 people exonerated in the United States since 1989, 
according to the registry kept by Michigan State University Law School.

The Innocence Project, a non-profit group that helps investigate cases in which 
wrongful conviction is suspected, cites 333 cases since 1989 in which DNA tests 
resulted in exoneration. The racial breakdown from that figure was 206 African 
Americans, 101 Caucasians, 24 Latinos and 2 Asian Americans.

The former Texas death row inmate says many of the problems in the criminal 
justice system across the United States affect people of all races, especially 
if they are poor. Graves, who is black, spent more than 18 years in the Texas 
prison system.

The 49-year-old said inequality is the biggest problem. Poor people, regardless 
of color, cannot afford the best defense attorneys, he noted, and often are 
pressured by police and prosecutors to take a plea bargain for a lower sentence 
rather than face many years in prison.

While this practice reduces the need for full jury trials and is seen by 
prosecutors as more efficient, it also can result in innocent people with 
inadequate representation and little knowledge of the legal system pleading 
guilty to crimes they did not commit.

Graves wants citizens to use their power in the democratic system to seek 
criminal justice reform.

"We can do it; we have the power to do it," he said.

Graves travels the country using his own personal story to illustrate what he 
calls the "injustice of the justice system."

"I use my story to educate people," said Graves, "but more importantly, keep it 
on people's minds about the injustice that is going on in our criminal justice 
system."

The court in Burleson County, Texas convicted Graves in 1994. 6 years later, 
the chief witness against him recanted his testimony. Graves was still in 
prison, though, when law professor David Dow brought the case to Nicole 
Casarez, an attorney and professor of journalism at the University of St. 
Thomas.

"He [Dow] came into class one day and said, 'Who wants to work on a case that 
is a death row case, and it has a lot of investigation and a short time fuse," 
said Casarez. "And my students and I put up our hands and volunteered and it 
turned out to be Anthony's case."

In 2010, the work done by Casarez, her students and others paid off with the 
release of Graves from prison and a declaration of his innocence. In June, the 
State Bar of Texas disbarred the district attorney who prosecuted Graves after 
its investigation of the case uncovered misconduct.

The problems Graves sees are the same ones cited by many criminal justice 
experts and law enforcement leaders - including disparities in sentencing 
between blacks and whites, the imprisonment of people with mental illness or 
drug addictions, an increase in the number of infractions that can result in 
someone being jailed and mandatory minimum sentences for some crimes.

Both Graves and Casarez are encouraged by the interest in criminal justice 
system reform on college campuses and by what appears now to be largely a 
bipartisan effort. The 2 major political parties agree on little else these 
days.

"I think stories like Anthony's make a big impression on students and it 
inspires them to go out and vote and try to make a difference," said Casarez.

For his part, Graves expresses little bitterness about his lost years, saying 
he is more concerned with the future than the past. Although he came close to 
be executed for a crime he did not commit, he has not made the death penalty 
the main focus of his call for reforms.

He and Casarez also spoke of problems with the alternative sentence of life in 
prison, which excludes any legal representation after it is imposed. They say 
it also is possible that some innocent people are serving life sentences and 
have no access to attorneys who could help them appeal their convictions.

Now Graves is applying his singular perspective to help law enforcement get it 
right when it comes to forensic evidence. He was appointed in June to the board 
of the Houston Forensic Science Center.

(source: Voice of America)


CONNECTICUT:

It's Up to Court, Not Prosecutors, To Say What Death Penalty Law Is


I am staging an intervention. On Nov. 10, the state asked the Supreme Court to 
stay the resentencing of Cheshire home invasion killer Steven Hayes until the 
court decides "what impact, if any, the final judgment in Santiago [declaring 
the death penalty unconstitutional] has on pending death penalty appeals." The 
request comes hard on the heels of the state's unsuccessful attempts to alter 
or delay Santiago itself, which included the unusual (moving for a stay of the 
judgment after the denial of a motion for reconsideration) and the audacious 
(moving to strike Justice Andrew McDonald's entire concurrence).

Enough is enough. The state's state of denial about Santiago threatens to 
unravel a key thread in the tapestry of justice: public acceptance of the 
legitimacy of final judgments.

Although we now take as a given "the province and duty of the judicial 
department to say what the law is," an independent judiciary is a radical and 
recent invention. Less than 2 centuries before Marbury v. Madison, Sir Edward 
Coke lost his place as England's Lord Chief Justice because he dared tell King 
James I that, despite a claim of royal prerogative, "he would do that should be 
fit for a judge to do." We were in Coke's day as humans have been for nearly 
all of history: A government of men, not laws.

Like every judge before Coke and since, moral authority alone supported his 
defiance. Legislatures hold the purse strings and governors have the muscle; 
courts depend on the collective belief of those they judge that obedience is 
the better part of valor. Such a shared belief is, as Lady Bracknell said of 
ignorance, "a delicate, exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone." Or, as 
President Andrew Jackson put it in response to Worcester v. Georgia, a case 
that gave Native Americans sovereignty over their lands: "John Marshall had 
made his decision, now let him enforce it."

The specter of "now let him enforce it" looms over our legal landscape. During 
the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus 
and one of his commanders defied an order from Chief Justice Roger Taney to 
release a suspected Confederate saboteur. National conflagration aside, we 
decide in court what other countries decide on the battlefield - but not 
without strain. The U.S. Supreme Court strove mightily to ensure a unanimous 
decision in Brown v. Board of Education, lest a dissent encourage Southern 
disobedience, and Chief Justice Earl Warren added the phrase "all deliberate 
speed" to the opinion for the same reason. Even when unanimity breaks down and 
the stakes are incredibly high - as in Bush v. Gore - we still accept the 
judiciary's right to "say what the law is."

However, judicial authority is a quixotic beast; like Bing Bong, Riley's 
imaginary friend in the movie "Inside Out," its existence flows from our belief 
that it exists. Courts have the power to pronounce judgments only so long as we 
accept that they do. The moment that our acceptance ceases, cracks appear in 
the foundation.

This brings us to the state's denialist response to Santiago: Leaving aside its 
scathing motion to strike the concurring opinion, the state titled its motion 
for reconsideration, a standard filing in an important, 4-3 case, a "motion for 
argument," a bit of snark that left no doubt of the state's view of the 
judgment. Though the state Supreme Court denied the state's motions, it then 
ordered supplemental briefing in another, already-argued death penalty appeal, 
State v. Peeler, "addressing the issues raised in the state's motion [for 
supplemental briefing and argument] including the effect of the final judgment 
in Santiago II." Stare decisis being what it is, one might think that "the 
effect" of Santiago would be clear as a bell: The death penalty is 
unconstitutional for Russell Peeler, too. However, the order gave the state the 
chance to brief issues that, in the view of the three Santiago dissenters, at 
least, it had not had in Santiago.

The state then sought a stay in Santiago, ostensibly to avoid a legal train 
wreck should Peeler reach a different conclusion about the death penalty's 
constitutionality than did Santiago. With the ink barely dry on the denial of 
the state's motion for reconsideration, one would think that an impossibility, 
but here's the rub: 1 of the 4 members of the Santiago majority, Justice 
Flemming Norcott Jr., is no longer on the court; and his replacement, Justice 
Richard Robinson, has never sat on a death penalty case.

The court's 6-1 denial of the motion for a stay in Santiago suggests that the 
state will not undo a judgment so recently done, but the motion itself is the 
problem. I have litigated against, and have enormous respect for, the 
prosecutors in the Santiago, Peeler and Hayes cases: They are smart, ethical 
and passionate attorneys, truly, as the rules of ethics demand, "ministers of 
justice." And so, I offer this conclusion, as a respectful colleague: The 
state's stubborn refusal to go gentle into that good night has the potential to 
undermine public acceptance of judicial authority. The next losing litigant may 
try similar tactics, or may simply defy the judgment altogether, or worse, and 
down that slippery slope lurks the grim specter of "now let him enforce it."

(source: Daniel Krisch is a partner at Halloran & Sage in Hartford, where he 
focuses on appellate and civil litigation----ctlawtribune.com)






PENNSYLVANIA:

Alleged killer of Corrections Officer Eric Williams attempts to avoid death 
penalty


The defense for a New Mexican Mafia member facing trial in the 2013 stabbing 
death of a corrections officer from Nanticoke has asked a judge to strike the 
prosecution's intent to seek the death penalty, citing a maturing society's 
"evolving standards of decency."

In a nearly 400-page motion filed Oct. 6 in U.S. District Court, the defense 
for Jessie Con-Ui argues against imposing the federal death penalty for several 
reasons, claiming among them the punishment is "carried out in an arbitrary and 
capricious manner that is akin to being struck by lighting."

In a response filed Monday seeking the motion's denial by U.S. District Judge 
A. Richard Caputo, prosecutors claim the defendant's arguments are in stark 
contrast to long-standing legal principles and overwhelming authority to the 
contrary.

Appealing to the court's sense of decency is merely an attempt to have it rule 
in contradiction to prevailing law, which it cannot do, wrote Assistant U.S. 
Attorney Francis P. Sempa.

Con-Ui, 37, faces the death penalty in the Feb. 25, 2013 murder of Corrections 
Officer Eric J. Williams, 34, at U.S. Penitentiary Canaan in Wayne County. In 
their response, prosecutors argue Williams' murder was carried out in an 
"especially cruel, heinous or depraved manner."

Despite the defendant's complaint that insufficient evidence has been provided 
in the prosecution's allegations, prosecutors argue clear video evidence from 
prison surveillance cameras show Con-Ui ambush and kick Williams down a flight 
of stairs before pinning him down and stabbing him over 200 times with multiple 
shanks.

After being escorted from his cell after the attack, Con-Ui allegedly said, 
"Hey, man, I am sorry but I had to do what I had to do. I am sick of all your 
people's disrespect," according to an FBI report filed earlier this year. 
Con-Ui was also reportedly upset that Williams had previously ordered a search 
of Con-Ui's cell, according to court documents.

Prosecutors argue Con-Ui's propensity for violence justifies the death penalty.

Con-Ui was at Canaan serving an 11-year prison sentence stemming from a 2003 
guilty plea for his role in a drug ring run by the New Mexican Mafia. Following 
that sentence, he was set to begin serving a life sentence after pleading 
guilty in 2008 to 1st-degree murder.

Court documents claim Con-Ui agreed to or participated in several separate, 
uncharged incidents while incarcerated between 1999 and 2010, including 
stabbing another inmate with a homemade knife and assaulting a fellow inmate 
with a food tray.

While out of jail in 2013, Con-Ui agreed to participate in the murder of a law 
enforcement officer but was arrested in Arizona before the murder could be 
carried out.

Con-Ui is currently an inmate at a supermaxium facility in Florence, Colorado 
known as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," according to the Bureau of Prisons 
website.

His trial is scheduled to begin in July, 2016.

(source: Times Leader)






DELAWARE:

Panel weighs in on death penalty, criminal justice reform in Delaware


With a new legislative session around the corner, some groups are coming 
together for another push to end capital punishment in Delaware.

Experts on race, the Delaware legal system and civil rights weighed in on 
racial bias within the criminal justice system.

Delaware Supreme Court Chief Justice Leo Strine said it's a deeply rooted issue 
that won't be fixed overnight.

"I do believe that our pervasive history of institutional racism has created 
huge structural problems in our society that we have far from remediated yet 
and we have a lot of time to go, to get the job done," he said.

The experts discussed the cycle of poverty among communities suffering from 
high rates of black men in prison.

Keynote Speaker Tamika Mallory said the Black Lives Matter movement is about 
finding justice for those communities.

"We want to matter in the same way you matter," she said.

The panel discussion was hosted by local civil rights groups who are generating 
support for death penalty repeal legislation in Delaware. The panel urged 
communities to continue the conversation about race and criminal justice 
reform.

(source: WDEL news)


GEORGIA:

5 Things Wrong With Georgia's Death Penalty ---- On the eve of the next 
execution, a look at the state's history of bad lawyering and faulty evidence.


Since December 2014, Georgia has executed a man whose drunk lawyer bungled the 
case, a man with intellectual disabilities, a veteran with post-traumatic 
stress disorder, and a woman who planned but did not actually commit murder.

On Thursday, the state will put to death a man who was not conclusively 
identified by DNA from the crime scene.

These cases are no outliers; they are emblematic of a particularly harsh time 
in our state's history when death sentences were handed out frequently despite 
substantive and procedural flaws. And they encapsulate what's wrong with 
capital punishment in Georgia.

Here, a closer look at those flaws.

Offering ineffective assistance of counsel

Georgia's statewide public defender office opened in 2005, and in the past 10 
years, there has been a sharp decline in death sentences. Before 2005, however, 
the right to counsel was a crapshoot for capital defendants. Robert Wayne 
Holsey was convicted and sentenced to death in 1997 for armed robbery of a 
convenience store and the murder of a Baldwin County Sheriff's Deputy Will 
Robinson. Andy Prince was appointed to represent him. Prince chose not to 
present a defense based on Holsey's intellectual disability; he retained a 
psychologist but never presented evidence of any tests or opinions about 
Holsey's condition. Tests later confirmed that Holsey had an IQ of 70, a 
borderline intellectual disability diagnosis. If Prince had shown jurors that 
Holsey was intellectually disabled, his execution might have been barred under 
the Supreme Court's mandate in Atkins v. Virginia.

Prince drank a quart of vodka each night during Holsey's trial (he eventually 
was sentenced to prison and disbarred for his conduct in another case). He 
brought in an inexperienced attorney to assist him on the eve of the penalty 
phase and told her to handle mitigation issues. Prince was paid $3,500 by the 
state to hire a mitigation specialist but didn't do so. If he had, the jury 
might have learned that Holsey was beaten as a child for wetting the bed until 
he was 13 years old. A state court judge later found that Holsey had received 
ineffective assistance of counsel and ordered a new sentencing hearing. But the 
Georgia Supreme Court reversed that judge's ruling and reinstated Holsey's 
death sentence. Robert Wayne Holsey was executed December 9, 2014.

Executing veterans with mental illness

Andrew Brannan was a decorated Vietnam veteran who was convicted and sentenced 
to death for the 1998 murder of Laurens County Deputy Sheriff Kyle Dinkheller 
during a traffic stop. In Vietnam, Brannan saw many die, including 2 commanding 
officers, and had survivor's guilt during the following decades. His service 
records praise Brannan for outstanding conduct in a combat environment. Brannan 
had no criminal history and had been declared "100 % disabled" by the Veterans 
Administration due to PTSD in 1990 and bipolar disorder in 1996. Brannan had 
been living in a shack in the woods without water or electricity.

The traffic stop escalated wildly into a gunfight between Brannan and Deputy 
Dinkheller after Brannan became erratic and pulled a rifle from his car. The 
episode was recorded on the dashboard camera of the patrol vehicle. Deputy 
Dinkheller died at the scene. The jury never heard the details of Brannan's 
military service or heard from his VA psychiatrist about Brennan's PTSD - or 
that he had not taken his medication for several days before the crime. Andrew 
Brannan was executed on January 13, 2015.

Applying an impossibly high standard of proof for intellectual disability

Georgia made history in 1988 when it became the first state to ban the 
execution of people with intellectual disability (formerly known as mental 
retardation). But today, Georgia is the only state to require a defendant to 
prove his intellectual disability "beyond a reasonable doubt," a standard that 
has, predictably, proven nearly impossible to overcome. In 2002 when the 
Supreme Court decided in Atkins that it was unconstitutional to execute people 
with intellectual disability, Georgia maintained its high standard of proof 
while other states applied the lower, "preponderance of the evidence" standard.

Warren Hill was convicted and sentenced to death in 1991 for killing a fellow 
prisoner. The State's doctors quickly declared that Hill was not "mentally 
retarded," clearing the way for his execution. A decade later, however, they 
came forward and admitted they had been wrong; that Hill was intellectually 
disabled beyond a reasonable doubt. But procedural barriers prevented Hill's 
new diagnosis from ever being considered in Georgia's courts or federal courts. 
Warren Hill was executed on January 27, 2015.

Arbitrarily applying the death penalty

Kelly Gissendaner was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of her 
husband, Douglas Gissendaner, in 1997. While Gissendaner was legally culpable 
for murder, she was not the person who killed her husband; she was not even 
present at the crime scene. Her boyfriend agreed to carry out the planned 
killing, and now is serving a life sentence. He is eligible for parole in 7 
years, because he made a deal with prosecutors. Gissendaner's death sentence 
was the 1st since the reinstatement of the death penalty in Georgia in 1976 in 
which a person who did not commit the murder was sentenced to death.

While incarcerated, Gissendaner was a model prisoner, helping fellow inmates 
who were contemplating suicide. Her case for parole garnered support from Pope 
Francis and Former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher, who has 
recently opposed the death penalty. The Board of Pardons and Paroles heard a 
renewed request for clemency and pleas from her children to spare her life. Her 
request was denied. Kelly Gissendaner was executed on September 30, 2015.

Scheduling executions despite inconclusive DNA evidence

Marcus Ray Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of 
Angela Sizemore in 1994. Johnson's conviction rests on dubious eyewitness 
testimony and inconclusive physical evidence. The blood on the ground at the 
site where she was murdered was never tested, for example, and none of 
Johnson's DNA was found inside or near the car where her body was found.

Johnson was first scheduled to be executed in 2011 but he was granted a stay 
after police belatedly turned over new biological evidence from the murder 
scene. That evidence was tested but was not conclusively linked to Johnson. At 
that hearing, a forensic pathologist also testified that the pocket knife, 
which prosecutors claimed was the murder weapon, did not test positive for 
blood and did not match the victim's wounds. Johnson's new trial motion was 
nevertheless denied. A request for clemency has been made to the Board of 
Pardons and Paroles, who will hear his case on November 18. His execution is 
scheduled for November 19, 2015.

(source: themarshallproject.org)






LOUISIANA:

Abbeville man receives 2nd indictment on 1st-degree murder


An Abbeville man already jailed on a 1st-degree murder charge faces a 2nd count 
after a grand jury indicted him in a 2nd killing.

A Vermilion Parish grand jury on Monday handed down a 1st-degree murder 
indictment against Derrick "Deebo" Mitchell, 24, in the Dec. 7, 2012, shooting 
death of Kyle Trahan, the 15th Judicial District Attorney's Office said.

The killing happened days before the Dec. 20, 2012, shooting death of Darrell 
Broussard Jr., in which Mitchell was indicted earlier this year.

Mitchell was apprehended in California in September some 6 months after he was 
mistakenly released from a Tensas Parish prison. He's since been held at the 
Vermilion Parish jail without bond and could face the death penalty if 
convicted in either case.

(source: The Advocate)