[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 22




PENNSYLVANIA:

Court ruling ups the ante for double murderer facing the death penalty


A midstate man who has been on and off the execution list for the April 1987 
murder of a restaurant manager had his odds of returning to death row increased 
this week by a state court ruling.

A state Superior Court panel decided that a jury which will consider whether 
David Allen Sattazahn should receive the death penalty can hear evidence about 
his conviction for another killing that occurred eight months after manager's 
murder.

That decision overturns a Berks County judge's ruling that barred prosecutors 
from telling the jurors about the later killing.

Sattazahn's case has taken a twisted course since the former Lebanon County man 
was arrested for the April 12, 1987 robbery/murder of 36-year-old Richard 
Boyer, who was shot while leaving his Heidelberg Township restaurant.

Sattazahn was first convicted of 1st-degree murder in 1991 for Boyer's killing. 
The jury deadlocked on whether he should receive the death penalty, so he was 
sentenced to life in prison.

After winning an appeal of that conviction, Sattazahn was retried for the Boyer 
slaying. The 2nd time, he was again convicted of 1st-degree murder and the jury 
ruled that he should be sentenced to death.

That death sentence, imposed in 1999, was upheld by the Superior Court, the 
Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Yet in 2006, Berks County Judge Scott D. Keller ruled that Sattazahn deserved a 
new hearing on whether he should receive the death penalty because his lawyer 
had been ineffective in arguing against execution. Keller let Sattazahn's 
murder conviction stand, but ordered that another jury be selected just to rule 
on the death penalty issue.

Another legal snag cropped up as jury selection on the death penalty issue was 
about to begin in March 2014. The prosecution announced that it planned to tell 
the jurors about Sattazahn's third-degree murder conviction for a slaying that 
occurred in December 1987, more than eight months after Boyer was killed.

Sattazahn's lawyers objected, arguing that the jury should hear only about 
crimes he committed before the Boyer murder. Another county judge, John A. 
Boccabella, agreed to bar prosecutors from mentioning the third-degree murder 
case.

The district attorney's office appealed, and once again Sattazahn's case headed 
for the Superior Court.

In that court's latest opinion, Judge Victor P. Stabile found that Boccabella 
was wrong to bar the DA from telling jurors about the 3rd-degree murder 
conviction, which resulted from Sattazahn's guilty plea for the killing of 
26-year-old Michael Protivak of Schuylkill County.

Interestingly, Stabile based his conclusion in part on a 2000 state Supreme 
Court ruling on one of the unsuccessful appeals Sattazahn's filed after his 2nd 
trial for the Boyer murder. In that decision, the Supreme Court rejected 
Sattazahn's argument that crimes he committed after the Boyer slaying shouldn't 
have been used against him during his 1999 retrial.

"The fact that the offenses occurred after the (Boyer) murder is irrelevant 
under the law," the high court ruled in 2000.

The new decision by Stabile's court ups the ante for Sattazahn because evidence 
of a "significant history" of felony convictions is an aggravating circumstance 
prosecutors can cite in pressing for the death penalty.

(source: Pennlive.com)

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

Pennsylvania to seek death penalty against man accused in killing spree ---- 
Prosecutors say Todd West deserves to be put to death if convicted of 
1st-degree murder in the deaths of 7 people in 2 states


A New Jersey man who is accused of killing 7 people in 2 states over a 7-week 
span this summer could face the death penalty if he is convicted in 
Pennsylvania, prosecutors said.

Todd West, 23, is charged in Pennsylvania with homicide and robbery counts in 
three deaths. Lehigh County prosecutors say he fatally shot a man in Easton and 
a man and a woman in Allentown on 5 July.

Police have also alleged that West also killed his cousin in an apartment 
building in his home town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, on 18 May. He is also 
accused of killing 3 other victims in Elizabeth on 25 June. Authorities have 
agreed to try West in the Pennsylvania cases 1st.

Prosecutors, who have said the victims were chosen at random, said in court 
documents filed last week that West deserved to be put to death if convicted of 
1st-degree murder. West and 2 co-defendants are scheduled to be formally 
arraigned on Tuesday.

If West is convicted of 1st-degree murder, however, he may not face execution. 
In February, Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf placed a hold on executions in a 
state which has executed only 3 prisoners since the reinstatement of the death 
penalty by the US supreme court in 1976.

New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007.

Investigators said West told them he spotted Kory Ketrow, 22, walking down an 
Easton street early on 5 July and directed a co-defendant to pull their SUV 
over, then emptied his 6-shot, .38-caliber revolver at the victim.

A few minutes later, authorities allege, West opened fire on a motorist stopped 
at a red light - striking the vehicle but missing the occupants - and then 
headed to Allentown, less than 20 miles away, firing out of the SUV's window 
during the ride.

Authorities allege that he shot 2 more people minutes after getting to 
Allentown. Police found Francine Ramos, 32, dead of gunshot wounds in the 
driver's seat of a car. Her passenger, Trevor Davante Hall-Gray, 21, was found 
leaning against a nearby parked car, with gunshot wounds. He died a short time 
later.

Authorities said West told them he heard voices in his head and believed the 
devil was speaking to him.

Defense attorney Robert Sletvold, who has said he will seek a mental health 
evaluation of his client, said he was not surprised by the decision to seek 
capital punishment.

"From the beginning, this appeared to be the way the Commonwealth was going to 
take the case," Sletvold told the (Easton) Express-Times.

(source: The Guardian)






CALIFORNIA:

State may vote again next November on death penalty ban


Californians may be asked again to repeal the state's delay-plagued death 
penalty law next November, four years after narrowly retaining the law.

State election officials on Friday cleared a new initiative for circulation 
that would ban executions in California and make life imprisonment without 
parole the mandatory sentence for all capital murderers, including the nearly 
750 condemned inmates on the nation's largest death row.

A similar measure got 48 % of the vote in 2012. The new initiative, like the 
previous one, would require convicted killers to work while in prison and would 
send 60 % of their prison wages to their victims' families.

State finance officials say the repeal would save California up to $150 million 
a year by eliminating Death Row and the cost of litigating lengthy capital 
cases. The new initiative would send the savings to state coffers, unlike the 
2012 m The lead sponsor is Mike Farrell, the former co-star of television's 
"MASH" series, who recently stepped down as executive director of the advocacy 
group Death Penalty Focus to run the campaign. Although the measure has now 
been approved for circulation, Farrell said Friday no decision will be made to 
start gathering signatures until backers have lined up the needed funding.

The initiative will need 365,880 signatures of registered voters within 180 
days to qualify for the ballot. It may wind up competing with an initiative by 
death penalty supporters to speed up executions in California.

The rival measure, which is awaiting state clearance to begin circulation, 
would set strict deadlines for filing death sentence appeals and for rulings by 
the state Supreme Court. It would also seek to expand the pool of lawyers for 
death penalty cases to all attorneys who accept court appointments to represent 
impoverished defendants. Another provision would eliminate a requirement of a 
period of public comment before final state approval of a new single-drug 
execution method, proposed by state officials to replace 3-drug executions in 
settlement of a lawsuit by death penalty supporters.

Executions in California have been on hold since 2006, when a federal judge 
ruled that defects in the state's lethal injection procedures created an 
unacceptable risk of a botched execution, but an appeals court overturned that 
ruling last month.

18 states have abolished the death penalty and voters in Nebraska will decide 
next November whether to uphold their legislature's decision to eliminate 
capital punishment. All the other repeals were by legislative action rather 
than at the ballot box.

(source: San Francisco Chronicle)

**********

Ex-con accused in execution of 3 Pinoys found guilty


After 3 years, a verdict has arrived for the man believed to have shot and 
killed 4 people, including 3 Filipino Americans, at an illegal boarding house 
in Northridge, California.

On Thursday, a jury at a San Fernando court has found Ka Pasasouk guilty of 1st 
degree murder for the shooting deaths of Teofilo Navales, Robert Calabia, 
Amanda Ghossein, and Jennifer Kim.

According to the testimonies, Pasasouk had planned to kill Navales whom he 
imcyhad an altercation with several months before the Dec. 2, 2012 murder. He 
shot and killed the other three in an attempt to hide witnesses.

Because of the nature of the execution style murders, Pasasouk faces a possible 
death sentence.

The penalty phase of the hearing is scheduled for next week.

Local authorities have been blamed for failing to protect the public from 
Pasasouk, who has had a history of violence and drug related cases.

(source: ABS-CBN news)






USA:

Combat experience is factor in death penalty cases, experts say


Over 22 days in October 2002, John Allen Muhammad and an accomplice terrorized 
residents of Washington, D.C., shooting 13 people while they shopped, dined, or 
stopped for gas.

Known as the "D.C. Sniper," Muhammad was an Army veteran who had enlisted in 
the National Guard at age 18, transferred to the regular Army in 1985 and 
served three months as a combat engineer in the Persian Gulf War.

By his ex-wife's account, Muhammad was once the "life of the party," and a good 
soldier. But he returned home from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait a changed man, 
"moody, confused, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder," Mildred 
Muhammad said during a speech on domestic violence at Joint Base Myer-Henderson 
Hall in 2012.

Shortly after Muhammad left the Army in 1995, his life began to unravel. He 
began abusing and threatening his wife, kidnapped his children, and in 2002, 
systematically began killing people across the U.S.

At his trial, Muhammad represented himself. He lost and was sentenced to death. 
In his final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court before he was executed in 2009, 
medical experts said he lacked rational understanding to represent himself, was 
delusional and actually had 3 lesions in his brain.

Now a new report from the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center argues 
that Muhammad's military experience and mental health condition should have 
been considered as part of his defense and he should not have been allowed to 
represent himself.

In a broader context, the report also charges that the veterans on death row in 
more than 35 states face a legal system that poorly understands the trauma of 
war and the significant impacts that combat can have on the human psyche.

Few states keep tabs of the number of veterans on death row, but extrapolation 
of data from several states, including California and Florida, which have the 
highest known numbers, indicate that 275 to 300 of the nation's 3,057 death row 
inmates have served in the military.

Richard Dieter, author of "Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death 
Penalty," said that in death penalty cases involving known veterans, most of 
the vets not only served in the military, but also deployed to combat zones.

"The issue is that they have combat experience, often facing shocking traumatic 
experiences of war and it had an effect on them," Dieter said. "Often, this 
didn't come out in trial and this seems, to me, like mitigating evidence that's 
out of line with receiving the death penalty."

In March, Vietnam veteran Andrew Brannan became the 1st person to be executed 
in the U.S. in 2015.

Brannan, who had been rated 100-percent disabled for PTSD by the Veterans 
Affairs Department, murdered a sheriff's deputy after he was pulled over for 
traveling 98 mph on a country road.

In a flurry of last-minute appeals, Brannan's attorneys argued that at the time 
of his trial, the medical community knew little about the psychiatric impact of 
combat.

"The nation's understanding has evolved so much in the past 14 years," said Tom 
Lundin, one of Brannan's attorneys. "This case violates the Eighth Amendment. 
It is cruel and unusual punishment for a combat veteran suffering from 
documented PTSD and he should not be executed."

Although the death penalty is being acted on with less frequency in the U.S., 
Iraq War veteran Courtney Lockhart may be one of the next to receive the 
punishment. The former Army private kidnapped and killed Auburn University 
freshman Lauren Burk, 18, as she was getting into her car on campus in March 
2008. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court declined to consider his case.

Lockhart spent more than 15 months in Ramadi, Iraq, during a time when 64 
members of his brigade died in combat. A jury sentenced him to life without 
parole, but the judge overruled that and sentenced Lockhart to death.

Dieter said Lockhart's trial attorneys "did little to investigate or portray 
his military background" and says many lawyers don't know how to handle such 
cases.

"They are not trained to explore what may have happened in the war zone, what 
kind of effect having your life threatened may have on your mental stability," 
Dieter said.

He added that while PTSD or combat-related trauma "is no excuse," it is a 
factor that should be considered by the prosecution and the defense.

"There ought to be a check on a case if a veteran is involved," he said. "Not 
that they are different than teachers, firefighters, police officers or others 
who are in public service, but it should be delved into that veterans have 
experiences no one else has had."

The unique needs of veterans who enter the legal system were the primary reason 
that specialized "veterans treatment courts" were developed starting in 2008.

These courts remove veterans from the traditional court system and provide 
support, counseling and treatment by legal professionals familiar with 
veterans' issues.

They handle only cases that can be adjudicated with probation, mental health 
treatment or community service. Still, the system has "raised awareness in 
communities of veterans in the justice system" and called attention to the 
mental health consequences of combat deployments, said Christopher Deutsch, 
communications director with Justice For Vets.

"More than any other time in our history, the public has an understanding for 
how much issues like PTSD affect men and women who have been in combat," 
Deutsch said. "The justice system as a whole is moving toward a place where 
judges want to have as much information as possible about defendants."

But, he added, national data on the number of veterans in the justice system is 
more than 10 years old, and the task of identifying vets and considering their 
unique needs still rests with individual courts.

"The vast majority of veterans return from service and lead exemplary lives and 
are heroes in our community. But we also have to accept that issues like combat 
PTSD can lead to violent behavior," Deustch said.

Michael Rushford, president and CEO of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a 
nonprofit that supports the death penalty, said a veteran's military record 
should be considered by a jury in sentencing, one of many mitigating factors 
that may draw sympathy in sentencing.

But, he added, even in the cases of veterans sentenced to death, "the public 
has a right to have that sentence for the worse murderers. In some cases, we 
think it???s the only appropriate sentence."

Dieter's organization stopped short of calling for an across-the-board 
exemption for veterans facing the death penalty, and said DPIC officials wrote 
"Battle Scars" to call attention to the "forgotten cases, the unexplored 
cases."

"It's hard for a jury to put aside the multiple murders and cold-bloodedness of 
many of these crimes and say it's mental illness," he said. "But I don't think 
that should be off the table."

(source: Military Times)