[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OKLA., KAN., ARIZ., USA

[Rick Halperin]

April 9




OKLAHOMA:

The Fallin Drug mix up Myth in Richard Glossip's case


I will tell you - anyone who believes that Richard Glossip's execution was 
halted because of a drug mix up - is, well, mis-informed - and after reading 
this, if they still believe this myth - they are stone cold nuts. Oklahoma 
governor Fallin and her cohort AG, when faced with a real political disaster 
did what all good politicians do - put it in committee for further study!

I have been quite occupied with other cases, but the other day, I was on a 
train ride through Donner Pass in the high Sierras of Californian, sharing 
stories with a young attorney from London. An interesting fellow, half Indian 
and a Lawyer or Barrister as they call themselves, who had some extra time for 
curiosity at the end of rather extraordinary trip to the States. He was part of 
a unique learning exchange where the supreme court clerks went to London and 
the equivalent of such came here. After observing and interrelating on how the 
courts work here, the two groups exchanged notes on the justice system in 
America verses the UK. Essentially my new friend Kabir now knew the ins and 
outs of the Supreme Courts clerks workings and for my advantage had the unique 
position of being able to talk about it as an outsider - to me.

So we sat in the upper deck of the observation car riding through the winding 
steep upper rail passages cut from solid steep rock off the side of the 
mountain - talking about justice and crime.

I told him what I did, calling myself an operative and case "consultant" - 
"when they would properly listen that is," I said. And told him about producing 
a horror film in the Tennessee mountains to extract information from witnesses 
to solve a case. Kabir was a smart man, he got it immediately. We talked about 
the devious tricks in the television show "House of Cards" - which conveniently 
has an American and a British version; arguing on who was more conniving, the 
Brits or the yanks.

This opportunity though, had brought me the perfect person to talk about 
another case. the Richard Glossip case, an "almost" execution in which, as a 
desperate measure. I had slipped information to the clerks of the Tenth Circuit 
at literally the last minute, hoping vital new evidence discovered would be 
pushed up up through the network, up to the judges and over to the Governors 
office. All through a network I believed existed from reasoning and logic, 
though I had no physical proof until now.

"Oh yes, the clerks know all the cases back and forth, if there is something 
important to know, they will be listening and they have the judges ear. 
Depending on what it is of course. Whether it's rubbish or not." said my friend 
as we marveled a the great high lake under the snow capped mountain.

And after all, the Clerks are the best and brightest of the attorneys - they 
work at the court for a few years then go on to high positions themselves.

I told my new friend how I phrased things: "I am a film maker, and in the 
course of my research discovered discovered certain unusual arrest records of a 
one Cliff Everhart, a grave witness against Glossip, and I wondered why these 
had never surfaced and why he had testified as an officer after being charged 
with these most serious and pertinent charges" I could see him laugh at this as 
he understood - he was a bright fellow.

"Hold on" I said "You agree, charges of falsifying documents obviously don't 
speak well to a witnesses credibility." I was glad to see he had to agree with 
this.

"My story is true though" I said, "I got into this whole thing with the idea to 
make films and do intend to finish them, in the meantime I seemed to get sucked 
into the next case after case. And more research to transmit of course."

Just the concept of being the filmmaker, there becomes a viewpoint of examining 
the situation at a broader level, inquiring how it effects the public view of 
the judicial system - something I believe most judges do care about deeply. And 
reveals the most important legal issues above all. The public trust.

Kabir stayed with my flow, though he was taking pictures. So I continued.<>P> 
See Kabir, the story line is this I told them: if you kill Glossip, it's going 
to be one hell of a great film. As the film maker, I would have a mountain of 
questions as to why one of the States star witnesses was testifying as an 
officer after he himself was being charged by Oklahoma with crimes that the 
jury never learned of. "Why hide them," I would say. Just visualize Everhart, 
the imposter cop, in his blue uniform of taking the stand to frame Glossip for 
the lurid underbelly Motel crime of murder and profit while all the while you 
know he had just been in jail. Did they bring his uniform to the jail to put on 
to go testify. See, the film maker helps one visualize the reality underneath 
the situation, the worst as scenario for the political fallout that could ensue 
a wrongful execution.

One can envision all of this in 2 words - "officer" and "impersonating" - 
though I never did say Everhart was a police officer, it helps to understand 
the real truth that any judge would immediately get. Whether he was uniformed 
or not, changed nothing. Everhart was very much impersonating an officer - 
either that or the State of Oklahoma kept in their employment those charged 
with falsifying documents and neglected the duties of an officer and cruelty to 
animals to boot!

That he had not been convicted is transparent to the film maker who shows that 
the prosecutor had been delaying his court case until after Everhart could 
testify in Glossip's case; rigging the court in their favor once again doesn't 
make anything look better for them, just worse. And what Everhart did was bad 
enough that they went after on of their own - even though he testified for the 
prosecution, he was then convicted of his crimes. None of this could give any 
confidence that his testimony was anything but coerced and biased. Let alone 
finally revealing the true character of the man who was actually at the murder 
scene and intertwined in the murdered mans life.

Everhart was everywhere.

Everhart was officially employed at the public defenders office as a defense 
investigator. The Oklahoma Indigent Defense System. OIDS - Of Oklahoma City's 
District Attorney Bob Macy's 22 plus men he put to death - at least they had 
them some OIDS.

The reason I decided to get involved and dug up the goods on Everhart is a 
story itself. By chance, I finally met a layer I felt sorry for besides Atticus 
Finch of yo Kill a mocking bird. His name is Wayne, Wayne Fournerat and Wayne 
had the misfortune of being Richard Glossip's defense attorney in the wrong 
place at the wrong time. And knowing what he knew because he knew Richard's 
brother Bobby, a client, he made the mistake for fighting for his clients 
innocence - innocent of masterminding the murder of motel owner BVT, a crime 
that was confessed to by a man named Justin Sneed - a man Richard allowed to 
stay at the Motel in his capacity as motel manager. In all of this, Wayne took 
on the most powerful and corrupt prosecutors office known in US history - the 
office of Bob Macy. When people talk about true and undeniable corruption , 
this is who they cite. Even the prosecutors in marginal positions would speak 
his name in awe. Cowboy Bob.

I met Wayne when Richards Execution was set to take place in 2 weeks - the 
clock was tick so it was exciting and challenging.

I was surprised though, when this all was happening, when Glossip was set to be 
executed, that neither the news or Glossip attorneys seemed to care much about 
Everhart. Wayne did, but everyone seemed focused on hating Justin Sneed, who 
fingered Glossip for the crime - accomplice testimony. However you need 
corroborating evidence to convict someone, not just some guy trying to make a 
deal pinning the crime on someone. And Everhart was that corroborating 
evidence. The officer and authority who told the jury that the owner was not 
happy with how Glossip ran the Motel and thought he was skimming. He told the 
jury that BVT had made an appointment to meet him at the motel and together 
they would confront Richard for stealing - but unfortunately Glossip told Sneed 
to kill BVT before they could do so. Well, that is one way to explain why 
Everhart just happened to be there when BVT wound up dead.

Reading the initial interrogation of Glossip, he says point blank that he 
thought Cliff had it out for him. Yet in the 10 or more years no one seemed to 
check up on his background, what Everhart was really up to, and there is plenty 
- with the 5 or so lawyers working the case you had to scratch your head as to 
why this never surfaced - regardless though of any attorney, if the film maker 
knows that you have convicted by the testimony of someone pretending to still 
be an officer of the court, you are going to get hammered. And for a politician 
that can be a career death.

That now being Governor Fallin and Attorney General Prater.

So now after this new script was floating around, Fallin can't acknowledge the 
Everhart deal, this would be bad too, she needed an excuse to stop the film - 
they are not dumb people - just blame it on a mix up - something that needs to 
be \"put into committee." Studied. Has the news become so gullible as to fall 
for this crap - so sad.

You know the expression, put it into committee, means bury it. Perhaps, but the 
film is yet to be made.

It was funny I even got a communication form someone that we should all be 
quiet while it was in committee. Oh yea who have no clue.

Once the AG knew I had the arrest records, they I am sure went looking at them, 
and they knew I had the proof of certain 24k that was in the murdered mans 
trunk that Macy's regime had put the lid on in court - information leaked 
moment before the execution like any good Brady violation. - what could a whole 
bung of money in the trunk of car have to to with a murder? The Macy court 
disallowed it - which drove Wayne nuts.

Ironically it was a few months after the execution was to take place that an 
associate of mine found the proof of the exploding briefcase that Richard 
Glossip's brother had confiscated from him by narcotics officer Tim Brown and 
Everhart was said to be there. Though the case never made it to the evidence 
log. At this stop Bobby Glossip gave his address as room 102 at the Best Budget 
Inn, the very room that BVT would be discovered murdered in and by the same 
officer who made the stop. Funny how neither Brown nor Everhart seemed to be 
looking for Bobby during this time, considering that this would be his 
residence - room 102. So where was he?

To Richard Glossip though, Everhart's job was probably more obscured - and no 
one was quite sure what he did around the Motel, some kind of security.

But Everhart was a player - a few years back, up in Binger Oklahoma, it was 
discovered that somehow or another, Evehart had managed to become the Police 
chief. This while still employed as a full time OIDS investigator in nearby 
Oklahoma City. It wasn't long though before he got run out of Binger after he 
set up road blocks, stopping random cars - which some say he used as a meet and 
great to attempt to pick up women - one report having him using ticketing 
leverage over the women to get his way.

(Pretty good movie material if Glossip were executed.)

The story the news was told was their was a rule change at OIDS and officers 
were no longer able to moonlight - this story however I am quite sure came from 
the fact the news got wind of the road blocks and gave a call over to the OIDS 
and they needed an answer so this what it.

Because Cliff Everhart was just the type of man who would come in handy for 
Macy's regime - and their would be no doubt that he was in control of both the 
prosecutions office and the public defenders office - well just look what 
happened to Wayne.

By the time I met Wayne he had lost the case, been disbarred, been put in jail 
and a mental unit and was living in a shack in Tennessee. A word of warning to 
those who fight the system perhaps.

I was on a roll though and was so far removed that it was pretty easy to lob a 
film trailer over Governor Fallin's wall to her hillbilly compound. Plus I had 
a conduit into their fake news agency, the frontier. A mysteriously funded 
investigative reporting team And though my contact was pretty helpful in 
getting me some documents as I wasn't getting them from Oklahoma, they were 
expensive plus they would have to mail them to me - so I would get the 
documents after Richard had been iced, a good shot for the film, she still I 
could tell had to tow the part line and there was a drug mix up - though she 
sent me a document that showed they had all the drugs they needed on hand. And 
the story was fake. Interesting.

It's not morbidity, just common sense. Politicians have great deal of fear, 
they fear what is going to blow up in their face, much more than a fight they 
are in. If they can't see it they can't control it, something left to their own 
imagination becomes a nightmare.

The picture was laid out perfect - an officer taking the stand only to be 
revealed as an imposter.

Any good hillbilly knows that a film maker can make a story like this stick. I 
don't have to prove it in court just in the imagination of the voters. And with 
a character like Everhart, a trusted servant and operative of the Macy regime, 
something like this and the Fallins might have to put back on their overalls, 
jump in the daughters trailer and high tail it back to the corn liquor Shack on 
the hill to regroup. Not a chance they would take.

(source: dksale.net)






KANSAS:

Prosecutor to seek death penalty in triple Wichita killing


A southern Kansas prosecutor says he'll seek the death penalty against a man 
accused of killing his girlfriend and 2 of her relatives in 2014.

The Wichita Eagle reports Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett 
announced during Vinh Van Nguyen's arraignment Friday that he'll ask jurors to 
consider execution as punishment if Nguyen is convicted.

Nguyen is charged in the slayings of 45-year-old Tuyet Huynh, her 20-year-old 
daughter, Trinh Pham, and 21-year-old Sean Pham.

An attorney for 42-year-old Nguyen waived his client's right to have the 
charges read aloud in court, and a plea of not guilty was entered on Nguyen's 
behalf.

Nguyen has been found mentally competent to stand trial.

Nguyen immigrated to the U.S. less than 10 years ago.

He's jailed on $2 million bond.

(source: Associated Press)






ARIZONA:

Detective's actions earn a new hearing for Arizona death row inmate


A federal appeals court ordered a lower court to consider whether an Arizona 
death row inmate's trial for the 1990 sex assault and murder of an 8-year-old 
girl may have been tainted by the actions of a detective.

A 3-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected all of 
Michael Gallegos' claims that he was poorly represented by his attorney at his 
trial and at sentencing in the death of Kendall Wishon.

But the divided panel said a federal district judge should consider whether 
Gallegos can raise a new argument in state court that Armando Saldate, a 
Phoenix police detective, failed to advise him of his rights before he 
confessed to Wishon's murder.

Gallegos said in court documents that Saldate "had a history of both lying in 
judicial proceedings and ignoring defendants' constitutional rights," facts 
that prosecutors knew but failed to tell the defense.

Prosecutors did not respond to requests to comment on the decision. But an 
attorney for Gallegos welcomed the court's order, which was handed down 
Thursday.

"We look forward to the opportunity to present to the state court for its 
consideration," said Dale Baich, a lawyer in Federal Public Defender's Office 
representing Gallegos.

The case began in March 1990 when Gallegos, a Flagstaff native, and George 
Smallwood went to visit family living in Phoenix - Gallegos' brother and 
Smallwood's mother, who were living together with Smallwood's younger 
half-sister, Kendall.

After a night of drinking while working on a car with Gallegos' brother, 
Michael Gallegos suggested to Smallwood that they "fondle" Kendall. She was 8, 
while Gallegos and Smallwood were both high school seniors at the time.

Smallwood agreed and they sneaked into Kendall's room. But after she began to 
wake, they covered her mouth and nose and she eventually stopped moving. 
Thinking she was dead Smallwood suggested they "finish her off," according to 
court documents. Though Smallwood was unsuccessful, Gallegos had intercourse 
with her corpse, the opinion said.

The 2 carried her body outside and left it under the tree where it was found 
the next day, no more than 250 feet from the house. Suspicion turned to 
Gallegos and Smallwood after police realized that there were no signs of forced 
entry to the house.

After his arrest, Gallegos initially denied the crime but eventually confessed 
and implicated Smallwood, who denied any involvement.

Both were charged. But charges against Smallwood were dismissed after DNA 
testing linked Gallegos to the body, but found that Smallwood "could not be 
included as a contributor to the evidence."

Gallegos was convicted in May 1991 in Maricopa County with murder and sexual 
conduct with a minor.

In his latest appeal, he claimed that his trial attorney, Greg Clark, did a 
poor job representing him, that he treated Gallegos harshly on the stand when 
he testified in his own defense and that he failed to adequately prepare to 
challenge the state's medical expert.

But the court rejected all those claims, noting that Clark had the "exceedingly 
difficult task" of crafting a defense in the face of "compelling physical 
evidence" that his client had committed a heinous crime.

Clark told jurors at the outset that though his client was "absolutely 
responsible" for the crimes, he was still a "scared teenager" who "never 
intended to kill Kendall," often referring to Gallegos as a "man-child."

A 2nd line of defense was the technical argument that Kendal was not alive at 
the time of the sexual assault and therefore no longer a "person" - a defense 
that Judge Marsha Berzon wrote in the circuit court opinion was "convoluted, 
inherently repulsive, and unsympathetic."

Still, she wrote, that "novel, if disturbing" defense against felony murder may 
have been Clark's best option. It was not an argument "certain to lose," Berzon 
wrote, upholding the lower court's decision to reject Gallegos' claim of 
ineffective assistance of counsel.

"It would not have been unreasonable for the state court to hold that any 
deficiencies committed by Clark during the guilt phase did not prejudice 
Gallegos at the penalty stage," she wrote.

(source: Cronkite News)






USA:

Fell: Government asks court to strike witnesses


The government alleges accused killer Donald Fell missed an April 1 witness 
list filing deadline in Vermont federal court.

"The government strongly objects to Mr. Fell's attempt to avoid his obligation. 
The court ordered Mr. Fell to provide a final list of witnesses by April 1," 
wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney William Darrow in a motion filed Thursday. "Mr. 
Fell's claim that he has unilaterally decided merely to identify potential 
witnesses and that he is still in the process of attempting to finalize a list 
of expert witnesses is unacceptable."

Fell was charged in the November 2000 kidnap and killing of Terry King, 53, of 
North Clarendon. In 2005, he was convicted and in 2006, sentenced to death. But 
claims of juror misconduct won Fell a new trial and another chance to state his 
case.

His new trial, scheduled to begin in 2017, began pretrial hearings last June.

After Fell challenged the constitutionality of the death penalty for a second 
time, Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford granted him a 10-day evidentiary hearing this 
summer to determine if the death penalty stands in his 2nd trial.

In preparation for this summer's hearing, Crawford set witness list deadlines 
at a Feb. 26 hearing. But as of late last week, Fell said his witness list was 
not yet complete.

On Thursday, Darrow said Fell's fluid witness list did not follow the rules 
Crawford set in February, and he is asking the court to bar Fell from adding 
new witnesses and to strike 11 of Fell's 18 witnesses from the list.

"At the Feb. 26 hearing, the court made clear that the July 2016 evidentiary 
hearing would focus upon and be generally limited to the federal death penalty 
act," Darrow wrote. "The government moves the court to generally exclude 
testimony about any studies or opinions that are not tied to the FDPA."

Darrow said these witnesses should be excluded because their work does not 
focus on the Federal Death Penalty Act, some witnesses' research focuses on 
state laws, Fell's summary of what the witnesses will testify to is inadequate, 
and some witnesses' work focuses on exoneration and innocence, which are not 
related to the purpose of the July hearing.

Regarding the death penalty, Fell argues that the punishment constitutes cruel 
and unusual punishment.

"The federal death penalty, in and of itself, constitutes a legally prohibited 
cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by both the Fifth and Eighth 
Amendments," Fell's attorney Michael Burt wrote in the motion to exclude the 
death penalty. "There is about a 4 %, or a 1 in 25 rate, at which capital 
defendants are found guilty of crimes that they did not commit."

A similar challenge was issued during Fell's 1st pretrial hearings and in 
September 2002 Chief Judge William K. Sessions III granted Fell's motion to 
declare the federal death penalty unconstitutional. But the U.S. Court of 
Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned his ruling.

Citing the death penalty's unreliability and arbitrariness as reasons for its 
unconstitutionality, Fell's attorneys detail evidence of these claims in a 
443-page document to the court.

"The 2014 National Academy of Science study demonstrates beyond reasonable 
dispute ... what was unknown just 10 years ago now has gained widespread 
acceptance in the legal and scientific communities," Burt wrote.

On June 29, 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was 
unconstitutional because its application was arbitrary, and at that time, the 
court overturned 600 death sentences. But in 1976, the court approved its 
reinstatement.

Since that time, several states have abolished the death penalty and Vermont is 
one of those states.

But because Fell's case is in federal court, the death penalty applies even 
though Vermont does not have the death penalty.

The July evidentiary hearing is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. July 11 and run 
through July 22 in Rutland federal court.

(source: Rutland Herald)

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

Judge grants new lawyers in North Dakota death penalty case


A federal judge says a new legal team he approved for a man who killed a 
University of North Dakota student in Minnesota is needed to cut down on 
expenses for the defendant's appeal of his death sentence.

Lawyers for Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. asked for the change in his legal 
representation because of staffing changes in the federal system and the 
Minnesota federal public defender's office. Among the changes, Katherine 
Menendez, the lead counsel for the case who was based in Minneapolis, is now a 
federal magistrate judge.

The 63-year-old Rodriguez, of Crookston, Minn., was convicted of kidnapping and 
killing Dru Sjodin, of Pequot Lakes, Minn. Authorities have said Rodriguez, a 
convicted sex offender, kidnapped the 21-year-old UND student from a shopping 
mall in Grand Forks in 2003 and then raped, beat and stabbed her in Crookston. 
It was the state's 1st federal death penalty case.

Rodriguez, who sits on death row in Terre Haute, Ind., filed what is considered 
his final appeal more than 5 years ago and his legal team then included 
prominent death penalty attorneys Joseph Margulies and Michael Wiseman. Federal 
prosecutors argued against the switch in lawyers, calling it a "disguised delay 
tactic" that could set back the case for more than a year.

U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson said in an order filed late Thursday that 
the Minnesota federal public defender's office doesn't have enough money to pay 
the attorneys on Rodriguez's former legal team, who were charging by the hour. 
The case will now be handled by the Federal Community Defender Office in 
Pennsylvania.

"Allowing the withdrawal and appointing the requested substitute counsel is in 
the interest of justice," Erickson wrote.

Neil Fulton, head of the federal public defender's office for the Dakotas, said 
the FCDO has an "exceptional" unit that does appeals like the one filed by 
Rodriguez.

"Zero concern about adequate resources going forward," Fulton said. "Mr. 
Rodriguez remains in excellent, if different, hands."

The case, tried by then-U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, who is now the state's 
lieutenant governor, resulted in tougher laws for sex offenders on the state 
and federal levels.

(source: Associated Press)