[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, IND., ARK., MO., KAN., CALIF., WASH.

[Rick Halperin]

April 23




OHIO:

Cleveland truck driver accused of four killings now faces the death penalty


Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty will seek the death penalty 
against a Cleveland truck driver accused of 3 2015 killings and another in 
1997.

The prosecutor filed a new indictment this week that includes specifications 
that would allow a jury to recommend the death penalty for Robert Rembert, Jr.

Rembert entered a not-guilty plea Friday morning to all 25-charges contained in 
the indictment.

The 45-year-old is accused of strangling 31-year-old Kimberly Hall, of 
Cleveland, and dumping her body June 10 on East 83rd Street near Kinsman Road.

Robert Rembert appeared in court Friday for the 1st time after prosecutors 
dubbed the 45-year-old truck driver a serial killer. He pleaded not guilty to 4 
killings.

Prosecutors later charged him in the deaths of 2 others, his cousin Jerry 
Rembert and a family friend, Morgan Nietzel. Police found her shot to death 
inside Jerry Rembert's 140th Street home, where Robert Rembert was living at 
the time.

Police arrested Robert Rembert the following morning as he left a shower at a 
Medina County truck stop. He was driving his dead cousin's red Saturn VUE, 
police said.

The indictment also accuses Rembert in the 1997 killing of Rena Payne. The FBI 
has assisted county authorities in investigating his case.

Robert Rembert is expected back in court May 3 for a pretrial hearing.

(source: cleveland.com)






INDIANA:

Judge denies motion to separate suspected serial killer's cases


A judge Friday denied the request from a suspected serial killer to separate 2 
murder cases he is scheduled to stand trial for July 25.

Darren D. Vann, 44, faces murder charges in the strangling deaths of Afrika 
Hardy and Anith Jones. The Lake County prosecutor's office is seeking the death 
penalty against him.

During a brief hearing, Cappas denied the defense's motion to separate the 
cases, which would have meant 2 separate jury trials. Vann was not in court 
Friday after he filed a waiver of right to appear in court.

But Friday's hearing did not seem to mark the end of the issue.

Defense attorney Gojko Kasich, who along with Matthew Fech and Mark Bates 
represents Vann, asked Cappas to certify his findings of fact in the decision, 
because the defense intends to file an interlocutory appeal. That means the 
defense will ask a higher court to review the matter.

The defense had argued Vann could be convicted in 1 of the homicides based on 
evidence from the other homicide, because of the complexity of the evidence. 
They also argued that the state's determination of the motives in the homicides 
are distinct.

The Lake County prosecutor's office had argued Hardy was killed when the sex 
they were having became rough, and it was thus a "rage killing," according to 
court records.

Hardy, 19, had arranged to meet Vann at a Hammond motel room after 
communicating via backpage.com, according to court records. Her friends called 
police after they found her strangled to death inside the motel room.

Jones, 35, of Merrillville, had arranged to meet Vann at a vacant Merrillville 
home where Vann allegedly killed her, according to court records. He later left 
her body at an abandoned home in Gary.

In that homicide, the state alleges Vann was offered money and drugs to kill 
Jones.

Prosecutors argued the homicides were part of a single scheme. They also argued 
Vann used the same brown cord to kill both women. However, the defense argued 
there wasn't enough DNA evidence to prove that the women were killed with the 
same cord.

Friday's hearing also focused on the details regarding medical testing Vann 
will have to undergo in two of his pending criminal cases, which are separate 
from the homicides. Depending on the results, the victims in those cases will 
be notified about Vann's medical results.

In one of the cases, Vann is accused of raping and attacking a woman he met on 
Feb. 19, 2014, in Gary after arranging to meet through backpage.com, according 
to court records.

The other case stems from when Vann on Feb. 24 allegedly threw urine and feces 
at a correctional officer in Lake County Jail.

In another separate case, Vann is facing murder charges in the homicides of 
Teaira Batey, Kristine Williams, Tracy L. Martin, Sonya Billingsley and Tanya 
Gatlin. All 5 women were found dead in vacant buildings in Gary in October 
2014. The state is also seeking death sentences for Vann in that case.

His next court hearing in front of Cappas is scheduled for May 20.

(source: nwitimes.com)






ARKANSAS:

Report Details Alleged Confession in Conway Murder


We are learning new details about the murder of a mother in Conway last month.

Capital Murder charges filed Friday contain excerpts from what investigators 
say is the killer's confession.

"It's going to be a tragic look into the life of a woman who had a family and a 
lot to lose," said 20th Judicial District Prosecutor Cody Hiland.

It was March 6th at the Days Inn hotel in Conway where prosecutors say Scotty 
Ray Gardner killed Heather Stubbs, a mother of 3.

"Domestic violence is something that we have seen far too much of, and, 
sometimes, it ends tragically," Hiland said.

The affidavit filed Friday in Faulkner County court spells out what 
investigators say was Gardner's confession.

Inside a room at the hotel, he allegedly told police he "just snapped on her" 
and said he "was not going to let Heather go tell police nothing." According to 
the affidavit, Gardner said he grabbed a nearby cord and "wrapped it around her 
neck."

After killing Stubbs, Gardner allegedly told police he went gambling.

"The issue of parolees getting out and committing a crime is a huge issue for 
the state of Arkansas," Hiland said.

Gardner was on parole after being convicted of attempted 1st degree murder for 
a double shooting in the 90's.

In this case, prosecutors are considering seeking the death penalty.

"Were going to pursue it if it's available," Hiland said. "That decision will 
have to be made after we analyze the facts in the case."

Stubbs filed for an order of protection against Gardner 2 months before her 
murder.

But it was dismissed by a judge after she failed to show up for a hearing.

(source: arkansasmatters.com)






MISSOURI:

Execution payment stipulations removed from Missouri budget proposal


The Missouri budget will still not show exactly how much is spent on 
executions, nor address the reporting to the IRS of money paid to execution 
team members.

An audit found execution team members, who are paid in cash, were???t being 
given tax forms to report that payment. Senate Budget Chairman Kurt Schaefer 
(R-Columbia) said language proposed by the state House would have required that 
tax forms be issued by the Corrections Department to team members, but that was 
stripped out of the final budget proposal.

Schaefer said it could have violated the state's protection of the identities 
of execution team members.

"That's always been a process that's been confidential for obvious reasons," 
said Schaefer. "I understand that you have people that oppose the death penalty 
and that's just a mechanism that they're trying to use to further end that."

Representative Jeremy LaFaver (D-Kansas City) said the state is breaking state 
and federal laws to protect those identities.

"We're violating federal tax law by not issuing 1099s, we're violating the 
state's own laws relating to cash disbursements, we're doing it in secret with 
piles and piles and piles of cash - hundreds of thousands of dollars pouring 
out of our state in envelopes," said LaFaver, who voted against the bill that 
includes the Corrections Department's budget because the final version didn't 
include that language, or a budget line specifically for executions.

Rather than have such a line in the budget, the Department takes the money it 
uses for executions from a larger equipment and expenses fund, making it 
difficult to tell how much is expended on those.

(source: missourinet.com)






KANSAS:

Trial date set in case of twin charged with double slaying


The man accused of killing his identical twin and sister-in-law in their south 
Wichita apartment will be tried before a Sedgwick County jury early next year.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys during a brief hearing Friday afternoon 
agreed to set a Jan. 30 trial date for Luis Alvarado-Meraz, who is charged with 
capital murder in the Jan. 14, 2015, slayings of 24-year-old Manuel 
Alvarado-Meraz and 22-year-old Lucero Rodriguez.

The trial is expected to last 5 weeks, Sedgwick County District Judge Jeffrey 
Goering said during the hearing. That time frame includes jury selection and 
witness testimony and evidence presentation, as well as a sentencing phase.

Alvarado-Meraz, 25, shook his head, then said "no" when asked by the judge 
whether he objected to a Jan. 30 start date for his trial. He was dressed in an 
orange jail jumpsuit, handcuffs and shackles during the hearing and sat beside 
his defense attorneys and a Spanish-speaking interpreter at a table in front of 
the judge's bench.

Members of his family looked on from the courtroom's gallery.

Attorneys on Friday also agreed to meet in court June 30 to handle evidence 
matters leading up to the trial. Goering said the attorneys plan to have a 
panel of potential jurors assembled and ready to complete juror questionnaires 
by Dec. 14.

If Alvarado-Meraz is convicted of capital murder, his trial will be split into 
2 parts because prosecutors plan to seek a death sentence against him.

During the guilt phase of a trial, jurors weigh testimony and evidence and 
render a verdict. During the penalty phase, jurors hear additional testimony 
and recommend a sentence for a defendant.

A capital murder conviction carries 2 possible sentences: life in prison 
without parole eligibility or execution.

Alvarado-Meraz is charged with 2 counts of 1st-degree premeditated murder as an 
alternative to capital murder. A jury can convict him of 1st-degree or capital 
murder, but not both. He pleaded not guilty in the case last July.

Alvarado-Meraz is accused of firing 21 shots at close range from an AK-47 or a 
handgun, killing his twin brother and sister-in-law at the apartment they all 
shared near Pawnee and Broadway. The twins' father found his son and 
daughter-in-law???s bodies after he went to their south Wichita apartment to 
check on them, according to testimony at hearing last summer. Alvarado-Meraz 
was arrested 16 hours later.

Prosecutors think an argument preceded the shootings.

(source: Wichita Eagle)






CALIFORNIA:

In California Death Row's "Adjustment Center," Condemned Men Wait in Solitary 
Confinement


"When we were sentenced to death," wrote Carlos M. Argueta from death row in 
California, "we weren't sentenced to be mistreated, humiliated, discriminated 
against, psychologically tortured and kept in solitary dungeons until the day 
of our executions. Never once did the judge say that was to be part of our 
sentence." He was speaking about life in San Quentin State Prison's Adjustment 
Center, a "prison within a prison" with a name worthy of any fictional 
dystopia.

The Adjustment Center is at the epicenter of California's death row system, 
which The Atlantic recently called "simultaneously the most and least prolific 
wielder of the death penalty." Although the state continually metes out death 
sentences -- there were 749 people awaiting execution last July, nearly twice 
as many as the next highest state -- almost no one is executed. California held 
just 6 executions since the start of the 21st century, and none since 2006. In 
March of this year, The LA Times reported that death row at San Quentin -- home 
to all men on death row in California -- has literally run out of room.

The Adjustment Center, the harshest of the three death row units at San 
Quentin, is severe even compared to other segregation units in the California 
prison system and death row units in most other states. And California's long 
death row delays mean these exceptionally harsh conditions can last for 
decades.

The average time spent on death row in California was 16.1 years in 2013, and 
by the end of 2014, nearly 78 % of the male death row population had been there 
for 10 years or longer. Citing excessive delays, in 2008 the California 
Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice declared the state's death 
penalty system "dysfunctional."

And in a 2014 decision that found the system unconstitutional (the decision was 
overturned on procedural grounds in November), federal judge Cormac J. Carney 
declared that in California, "the death sentence carefully and deliberately 
imposed by the jury has been quietly transformed into one no rational jury or 
legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of 
death."

A class action lawsuit filed in June 2015, Lopez v Brown, offers a rare glimpse 
into the daily lives of the people who live in the Adjustment Center. Its 6 
named plaintiffs -- Bobby Lopez, Marco Topete, John Myles, Richardo Roldan, 
John Gonzales, and Ronaldo Medrano Ayala -- allege their continued detention in 
the Adjustment Center violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and 
unusual punishment and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 
These men have been in the Adjustment Center for periods of time ranging from 3 
to 26 years. Some received just 1 disciplinary write-up that affected their 
classification during that entire period, for participating in a peaceful 
hunger strike.

These men and their fellow Adjustment Center residents spend between 21 and 24 
hours a day -- often for years on end -- inside cells roughly 6 by 9 feet, 
smaller than a standard parking spot. There is no natural light or airflow; 
temperatures in the cells fluctuate from very hot to very cold. Beds consist of 
a thin mattress on a steel or concrete slab. There are no chairs or desks in 
the cells.

According to the complaint, "When writing letters to loved ones, Roldan kneels 
on his shower shoes and uses his bunk as a table. Ayala fashions a seat out of 
the banker's boxes where he keeps his property. Gonzales and Topete sit on a 
blanket on the floor of their cells and write on their beds. For Topete, who 
has chronic back pain, sitting in that position becomes excruciating after 15 
minutes. As a result, he can only write and research in brief increments."

Those living in the Adjustment Center are continually immersed in noise. The 
slamming of security gates and cell doors echo through the unit, exacerbated by 
high ceilings and enclosed steel cells. Residents are constantly shouting, 
banging, or screaming, either in desperate attempts to communicate with one 
another or as a primal response to their unbearable conditions. The racket 
continues around the clock: chronic sleep deprivation is one of many severe 
mental and physical health effects of long-term confinement in the Adjustment 
Center.

Access to healthcare of any kind is extremely limited, and in many 
circumstances nonexistent. When an Adjustment Center resident requests a 
medical appointment, it can take so long to materialize that in a letter to 
Solitary Watch, one resident quipped, "By the time you see a doctor your 24-flu 
has passed or you're about to pass."

Mental health assessments, when they occur at all, are often conducted through 
a cell door within earshot of guards and other residents. As sensitive health 
information can easily be used against them by guards and other prisoners, it 
is impossible for Adjustment Center residents to be honest about their mental 
health, and therefore impossible to receive appropriate treatment.

The same man quoted above commented, "I don't know the extent of my own mental 
damage but I do know more people have died on death row at San Quentin from 
suicide than execution." Indeed, suicide rates on death row are roughly 10 
times greater than in society more broadly, and several times greater than in 
the general prison population.

California is one of the few states that keep people in segregation for alleged 
gang affiliation, divorced from any assessment of their actual behavior within 
prison. As a result, an individual who has never violated a prison rule can end 
up in the Adjustment Center for suspicion of current or former gang 
involvement. There is no process for reviewing alleged affiliation, and 
individuals can be held in the Adjustment Center for years on the flimsiest 
evidence. Some individuals are assumed to have gang allegiances simply because 
of their ethnicity or the region where they grew up.

Technically, Adjustment Center residents are entitled to a review of their 
placement every 90 days, but this rarely results in a transfer to East Block or 
North Segregation, San Quentin's other death row units. With no ability to 
disprove gang affiliations that were never proven in the first place, continued 
detention is almost a certainty.

Other residents were placed in the Adjustment Center for disciplinary 
infractions committed while in one of the other death row units. For these men 
as well, it is very challenging to get transferred out, even after long periods 
of violation-free behavior.

Adjustment Center residents are not allowed to engage in any educational, 
recreational, or vocational programming. They may leave their cells for just 5 
reasons:

--Yard visits, at most three times per week for 3 hours each

--Showers, at most 3 times per week

--Medical visits

--Rare opportunities for visitors, which occur behind a dirty Plexiglas window 
through a poor quality 2-way intercom

--Visits to the law library, which can take several months to secure

Before and after any movement within the unit, men are routinely strip 
searched, often in front of other Adjustment Center residents and guards, even 
if they have not come into contact with anyone else during their time out of 
cell.

While in the yard, residents have access to small open yards or walk-alone 
cages (roughly twice as big as a cell), along with a few handballs and the 
occasional pull-up bar. Although yard time is a rare opportunity for Adjustment 
Center residents to interact with others, prisoners report that any interaction 
may be perceived by the guards as "gang activity" and used to justify keeping 
them in the Adjustment Center -- so some residents choose not to interact.

In a letter to Solitary Watch, one Adjustment Center resident lamented the 
seeming interminability of the status quo: "What is happening today and 
tomorrow in solitary confinement is the same stuff which has taken place 10 and 
15 plus years ago.

"In fact you will be able to find the same prisoners there in continuous 
solitary placement, subjected to the same inhumane conditions."

Adjustment Center residents -- despite extremely restrictive conditions -- 
joined prisoners statewide in peaceful hunger strikes in 2011 and 2013. Not 
only did the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) 
ignore the strikers' reasonable demands -- access to recreation activities, 
increased ability to communicate with their families, meaningful review of 
their detention in the Adjustment Center -- officials considered participation 
in the strike a disciplinary offense and used it to justify keeping 
participants in the Adjustment Center.

In a letter to Solitary Watch, one Adjustment Center resident expressed 
unwillingness to discuss other forms of non-violent activism for the same 
reason: peaceful acts of protest, he said, are "re-interpreted as a threat to 
security" and "written into the local rules to make non-violent acts of 
resistance [into] a 'rule violation.'"

The strikes did, however, succeed in bringing attention to conditions in 
California's prison system and exposing some cracks in its system of long-term 
solitary confinement. Over the past few years, several lawsuits have challenged 
the state's use of solitary confinement on and off death row, including Lopez 
v. Brown.

EmilyRose Johns, working on the Lopez case with the law firm Siegel & Yee, told 
Solitary Watch they are at a very early stage of settlement talks with CDCR. 
She noted that these talks are taking place "in the shadow of Ashker v. Brown," 
a related case that settled with CDCR in September. Although the Ashker 
settlement has no direct effect on Adjustment Center residents, it has 
significant implications for litigation and policy work to reform conditions on 
California's death row.

Ashker was a class action lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights 
(CCR) on behalf of those who have spent a decade or more in solitary 
confinement in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at California's Pelican Bay 
State Prison. Like Lopez, Ashker argued that long term segregation violates the 
Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and that the 
lack of meaningful review of SHU placement violates the right to due process. 
The Adjustment Center is not technically covered by the lawsuit -- it is not 
specifically classified as a SHU -- but the conditions challenged in Ashker are 
extremely similar to those of the Adjustment Center, including the 
non-evidence-based criteria for ascertaining gang affiliation.

The Ashker settlement will transform the "status-based" system for placing 
people in SHUs to a "behavior-based" system. Individuals will only be put in 
the SHU if they have committed verified "SHU-eligible" rule violations, such as 
violence, weapons possession, or escape attempts -- not merely for alleged gang 
affiliation.

The settlement also significantly limits the time individuals may spend in 
solitary confinement. CCR noted that in settling Ashker, "California has 
implicitly recognized the harm to prisoners from very prolonged solitary 
confinement." CCR lawyer Alexis Agathocleous, speaking to Solitary Watch, noted 
that CDCR has "acknowledged that other options are possible" for managing 
behavior in prison, besides long-term segregation. Those working on Lopez will 
look to the Ashker settlement for an understanding of what CDCR may be willing 
to put on the table.

Emily Rose Johns noted, however, that there are obstacles to negotiating a 
settlement for those on death row that Ashker didn't have to grapple with, 
including different regulatory context and an even greater stigma. Settlement 
discussions could continue for months or even years; if discussions break down 
and the case goes to trial, it will almost certainly be years before a judgment 
arrives. Meanwhile, life -- such as it is -- will go on for the men who live in 
the Adjustment Center. With executions apparently stalled indefinitely, the 
severe living conditions of individuals on death row, ostensibly temporary, are 
seemingly more and more permanent.

For the named plaintiffs in Lopez, however, things will be a bit different. As 
a result of the lawsuit, Johns noted, they have all been transferred out of the 
Adjustment Center and into slightly less stringent conditions in East Block. 
Their executions continue to be nowhere in sight.

Solitary Watch, edited by James Ridgeway and Jean Casella, aims to serve as the 
1st centralized source of information on solitary confinement -- an information 
clearinghouse, educational resource and online community. In addition to 
covering events as they are unearthed, it provides a place where people held in 
solitary can publish their stories.

(source: truth-out.org)






WASHINGTON:

Implementation of Death Penalty Doesn't Seem to Make Much Sense


The death penalty remains controversial in some circles, but for me it's the 
process, which makes little sense. In Washington, the longest serving death row 
inmates Mitchell Rupe, who shot 2 tellers point blank during a robbery, was 
determined to be too fat to hang, and Jonathan Lee Gentry, who raped and 
murdered a little girl in Bremerton, remains there after 18 years.

Rupe died in the prison hospital of liver disease, and Gentry remains 
technically there but Gov. Jay Inslee has placed a moratorium on it for now.

(source: Opinion; John McCroskey, The Chronicle)