[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----FLA., GA., USA

[Rick Halperin]

April 11



GEORGIA----impending execution

Georgia prepares to execute Kenneth Fults despite 'racist, unfair' trial


An American man is due to be put to death on Tuesday evening in Georgia despite 
serious concerns over his sentencing and Amnesty International saying his trial 
was unfair and racist.

Kenneth Fults, 48, who is black, admitted murdering his 19-year-old white 
neighbour Cathy Bounds. He killed her in 1996 at the end of a week-long rampage 
which begun with the intention of killing his ex-girlfriend's new lover, and 
saw him stage a series of robberies before breaking into Bounds' trailer to 
commit a burglary. But, finding her unexpectedly at home, he bound her with 
electrical tape and shot her 5 times.

He pleaded guilty and was sent to trial to be sentenced.

"Once he pled guilty, I knew I would vote for the death penalty because that's 
what the n----- deserved" ---- Statement from juror Thomas Buffington

But Amnesty argue that he should never have been handed the death penalty, 
because his overworked court-appointed lawyer failed to do his job - repeatedly 
falling asleep in the courtroom - and because 1 of the jurors admitted after 
the trial that he wanted "that n-----" to be put to death, regardless of 
whether he committed the crime.

Fults' lawyers obtained a signed statement from juror Thomas Buffington in 
which Buffington, who is now dead, explained his reasoning for handing Fults 
the death penalty. "I don't know if he ever killed anybody, but that n----- got 
just what should have happened," he said. "Once he pled guilty, I knew I would 
vote for the death penalty because that's what the n----- deserved."

Another juror said following the trial that they were not told by Johnny 
Mostiler, the lawyer, about the extent of Fults's mental problems. He has the 
reading age of a 9 year old, and his IQ puts him in the bottom 3 % of the 
population.

"I don't believe he had a fair trial," the juror said, according to Amnesty. 
"Mr Fults's current lawyers have told me about how Mr Fults was neglected and 
abandoned as a child and that he is mentally retarded. Mostiler didn't bring 
this up at trial and he should have, so that we would have known more about Mr 
Fults before we talked about whether to give him the death penalty."

International law bans use of the death penalty on people with mental or 
intellectual disabilities.

Only the State Board of Pardons and Paroles can grant clemency, and petitions 
have been set up calling for the board to review the decision.

And the scheduled execution comes at a time of increasing international 
interest in America's legal system, thanks partly to television dramas such as 
the re-telling of the OJ Simpson case, Netflix's Making a Murderer, and the 
wildly popular justice podcast Serial.

If he is put to death, Fults will be the 4th person Georgia has executed by 
lethal injection this year. A 5th man, Daniel Anthony Lucas, was scheduled last 
week to be put to death on April 27 for killing a Jones County father and his 2 
children, 1 by 1, in 1998.

The only other time Georgia has executed as many as 5 people in a year was last 
year, and in 1987.

(source: The Independent)






FLORIDA:

Jury to decide if Kirkman receives death penalty in 2006 murder


A jury will decide Monday if the mastermind behind the death of a former beauty 
queen should be sentenced to death.

The jury found Vahtiece Kirkman guilty on Friday in the 2006 murder of Darice 
Knowles.

Prosecutors said they plan to show the jury the cruelty of the crime as they 
seek the death penalty for Kirkman. They said they might have been kinder if 
Kirkman shot Knowles, but instead she was bound, gagged and buried alive 
beneath cement.

Jurors will hear testimony about some of Kirkman's previous felony convictions, 
including the 2006 murder of Willie Parker, which prosecutors believe Knowles' 
knowledge of was the motive behind her death. Kirkman is already serving a life 
sentence for Parker's death.

"Life in prison is not enough," Assistant State Attorney Greg Konieczka said.

(source: WFTV news)

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

Life or death?: Twice-convicted killer to learn fate this week


Prosecutors today will argue that a 37-year-old Cocoa man plotted in cold blood 
to kidnap, beat and then bury a a Bahamian student alive after fearing she was 
talking with police about his connections to another slaying.

A 12-member jury found Vahtiece Kirkman guilty of 1st-degree premeditated 
murder and kidnapping 22-year-old Darice Knowles, a former beauty contestant 
visiting friends in Cocoa. Now the sentencing phase of the 2-week long death 
penalty trial - featuring several witnesses, Cocoa investigators and others 
discussing the motive, the impact on Knowles' family and the pain suffered in 
the last moments of the victim's life - begins today at the Moore Justice 
Center.

Today's sentencing is not the 1st time Kirkman has faced the death penalty in a 
murder conviction. In the latest trial, at least 1 witness had to be forced to 
testify after failing to turn up while Kirkman, whose arm was in a cast from an 
unknown injury, complained about the delays in the case and even his own 
defense counsel.

While the same jury in this case unanimously rendered a guilty verdict in the 
case on Friday, a new Florida law allows only ten members of the same panel to 
recommend a death sentence. The judge will then review the jury's 
recommendation and sentence Kirkman to either life or death.

Last week, prosecutors showed jurors photographs of a gruesome crime scene, 
detailing the last moments of life for Knowles as she was smothered with a mix 
of concrete and dirt in a deeply wooded area of State Road 524 in Cocoa. The 
remains of the woman were found in 2010 - nearly 4 years after she was reported 
missing by her family - and linked through genetic testing to Knowles.

Cocoa Police Chief Mike Cantaloupe, whose agency investigated the case, issued 
a statement about the verdict on Friday afternoon.

"At least a dozen agencies assisted us in this investigation. We are very 
pleased with the outcome of the trial," he said, referring to efforts that 
extended several weeks to comb through the wooded area using volunteers and 
specialized equipment to find Knowles' fragile remains encased in concrete.

"This case affected all of us at the Cocoa Police Department and the many 
partner agencies that handled the investigation. For the family, it will never 
come close to healing the hurt of losing their loved one in such a violent 
manner, but it is the start of closure that may bring them peace," the chief 
said in the statement, adding that the Knowles family remain in his prayers.

The testimony in the penalty phase is expected to take several days.

(source: Florida Today)






USA:

Race and the death penalty in US spotlight


Advocates for 2 African Americans on death row for murder are seeking a 
reprieve for both men on the grounds their trials were tainted by racial bias, 
taking their campaigns all the way to the US Supreme Court.

Amnesty International is waging a last-ditch effort to secure a stay for 
Kenneth Fults, 47, who is due to be executed by lethal injection on Tuesday in 
the southeastern state of Georgia for the murder of a white woman 20 years ago.

Fults was sentenced to death after pleading guilty to shooting Cathy Bounds 5 
times in the back of the head.

But 8 years later, an investigator working with his lawyers spoke to a juror in 
the case, Thomas Buffington, aged 79 at the time, who used a racial slur when 
referring to Fults.

"Once he pled guilty, I knew I would vote for the death penalty because that's 
what that nigger deserved," Buffington, who has since died, told the lawyer 
under oath.

Georgia's State Board for Pardons and Paroles was to rule Monday on an appeal 
for clemency filed by Fults' lawyers in which they highlight allegations of 
racial bias but also characterize him as intellectually impaired and the 
product of a violent, neglectful childhood.

Should that fail, his last resort would be an intervention by the Supreme 
Court, which rejected a previous appeal by his lawyers' last year. His lawyers 
have asked the court to take up the case again.

The Fults case has drawn relatively little media attention in the United States 
-- partly because the allegations of bias surfaced long after the trial.

But on April 22 the Supreme Court rules on whether to take up a much 
higher-profile case -- that of Duane Buck -- which involves similar allegations 
of racial bias in the trial process.

Buck was sentenced to die in Texas in 1997 for shooting dead his ex-girlfriend 
and a friend, in front of her children.

His attorneys do not dispute his conviction for the double murder, but they 
argue that racial considerations entered into his sentencing, infringing his 
rights under the US Constitution which guarantees the right to an impartial 
jury.

- 'Profound impact' -

During the 1997 hearing, psychologist Walter Quijano testified that blacks pose 
a greater risk of "future dangerousness" than whites.

Under Texas law, a person can be sentenced to death only if shown to pose a 
danger to society and the prosecutor cited this testimony in asking for capital 
punishment.

"This was a case that did not have an enormous amount of evidence speaking to 
the question of future dangerousness," said Christina Swarns, litigation 
director at the legal defense fund of the National Association for the 
Advancement of Colored People.

"Mr Buck did not have prior convictions for violence, so having this expert in 
the field saying that because of his race he was going to be dangerous in the 
future, it clearly had a very profound impact on the jury."

The Supreme Court has intervened once before in Buck's case, granting a stay 
hours before his scheduled execution in September 2011.

At the time, several of the justices qualified as "bizarre and objectionable" 
the testimony of the psychologist, but the court stopped short of agreeing to 
review the case.

- Procedural error -

The Court's decision this month whether or not to take up the now-emblematic 
case comes as the vacancy left by the death of 1 of its 9 justices, Antonin 
Scalia, has created a likelihood of split 4-4 rulings.

Both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have now published editorials 
calling for Buck to be granted a new trial.

"A man was sentenced to death at least in part because of his race -- a 
violation of his constitutional rights," wrote the Los Angeles Times in urging 
the Supreme Court to grant him a hearing.

Both papers highlighted the fact that other men sentenced to die in cases 
involving testimony by the same psychologist were granted fresh hearings. But 
Buck's death sentence still stands because of a procedural error by his 
lawyers.

Advocates for Buck also cite strong evidence of prejudice in Harris County, 
Texas, where he was sentenced and which accounts for 9 % of all capital penalty 
sentences meted out in the United States.

Studies have shown Harris County prosecutors were 3 times more likely to seek 
the death penalty against African Americans than against white defendants 
between 1992 and 1999. Juries in the county were also more than twice as likely 
to impose capital punishment on African Americans.

Kate Black, a member of Burk's defense team, invokes his good conduct during 18 
years in jail as a further argument in his favor:

"If Mr Buck is given a new, fair sentencing hearing the jury will see that he 
has not posed any future danger and has in fact been a model prisoner," she 
told AFP.

(source: Daily Mail)