[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, DEL., FLA., MO., OKLA.

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 15



TEXAS----new death sentence

Cop Killer Gonzales Sentenced to Death


More than 4 years after he murdered Bexar County Sheriff's Sergeant Kenneth 
Vann as the lawman sat in his patrol car at a red light in Southeast San 
Antonio, Mark Anthony Gonzales, 45, was formally sentenced to death today by 
State District Judge Mary Roman.

Gonzales scanned the crowd in the courtroom this morning as he was brought in, 
chained at his wrists and ankles and wearing a red jail jumpsuit.

A series of mandatory appeals will now kick in, and after those are completed, 
Judge Roman will set an execution date.

Vann fired 46 shots from a high powered rifle at Vann's patrol car after 
Gonzales pulled up next to him at the red light. More than 2 dozen of the shots 
hit Vann, who was pronounced dead at the scene.

Gonzales says drinking and taking prescription drugs led to a condition called 
automatism, in which he was essentially operating on auto pilot and didn't 
remember his actions. But testimony indicated that shortly after the shooting, 
Gonzales told a friend, "I just killed a cop, don't tell anybody."

Gonzales underwent a special psychiatric evaluation after he was convicted and 
a jury recommended a death penalty, to make sure he is mentally capable of 
being executed under U.S. Supreme Court guidelines. The test determined that he 
is competent.

It is likely to be several years before Gonzales gets an execution date. He 
will be transferred to death row at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston to await 
that decision.

(source: woai.com)

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

Texas court denies condemned murderer Paul Devoe's appeal


Paul Gilbert Devoe, 50, sits on death row after a Travis County jury in 2009 
found him guilty of killing two teenage girls in Jonestown in 2007.

He was then sentenced to death.

And after the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected his motion to appeal the 
conviction and subsequent penalty, it looks as if that???s where he will 
remain.

Texas highest criminal court handed down the decision Jan. 13.

Devoe was convicted of killing Haylie Faulkner, 15, and Danielle Hensley, 17, 
at a Jonestown residence. He was also accused of killing ex-girlfriend Paula 
Griffith and her boyfriend, Jay Feltner, at that same residence in August 2007. 
The murderous road started in Marble Falls, where on Aug. 24, 2007, Devoe 
entered O'Neill's Sports Tavern and pulled a gun on a woman. But the gun didn't 
fire.

When a bartender, 41-year-old Michael Allred, tried to intervene, Devoe turned 
the gun on the man and fired. Allred died.

Prosecutors believe Devoe then traveled to Jonestown, where he killed 4 people 
at the residence. After that, Devoe fled north out of Texas before being 
arrested in Central Islip, New York, on Aug. 27.

During the investigation, authorities traced the car Devoe was found in 
possession of in New York back to a Greencastle, Pennsylvania, residence. Upon 
investigating the home, authorities found the body of 81-year-old Betty Jane 
Dehart, reportedly with a gunshot wound to the head.

On Oct. 9, 2009, a Travis County jury recommended the death sentence after 
finding Devoe guilty of murdering the 2 teenaged girls. The district judge then 
sentenced the man to death.

According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Devoe is currently being 
held on death row at the Jester IV unit in Richmond. No date has been set for 
his execution at this time.

(source: dailytrib.com)






DELAWARE:

Former death row inmate heads back to prison


Jermaine Wright, a former death row inmate who was freed last year, is turning 
himself in Friday morning as a crowd of emotional well-wishers gathered to say 
goodbye.

A group marched from Wright's home in Eastside down Market Street, before 
stopping outside the office of his attorney, Eugene Maurer.

Wright is expected to turn himself in at State Police Troop 2 in Bear this 
morning.

The move follows a Delaware Supreme Court ruling this week that his videotaped 
confession can be used by prosecutors at his retrial.

In a unanimous court opinion released Tuesday, the state's top 5 justices 
overturned a lower court's decision to toss the videotaped confession in which 
Jermaine Wright admits to the 1991 murder of Phillip Seifert, a disabled liquor 
store clerk.

The confession was the linchpin of the state's death penalty case against 
Wright more than 2 decades ago - and would have made it nearly impossible to 
prosecute Wright at a retrial had the court not allowed the tape to be played.

Wright was one of Delaware's longest serving inmates on death row before he was 
freed last year.

He was accused of shooting Seifert, 66, 3 times - once in the neck and twice in 
the head - during a robbery of the former Hi-Way Inn on Governor Printz 
Boulevard on Jan. 14, 1991.

There were no eyewitnesses and no physical evidence from the murder, but an 
anonymous tip led police to Wright. Police did not have probable cause to 
charge him so they arrested him as a suspect in 2 unrelated shootings.

While being interviewed by police at the Wilmington Police headquarters, he 
confessed on camera to the Hi-Way Inn murder.

The state then used the videotaped confession to convince a jury to convict 
Wright and sentence him to death in 1992. Since then, his case wound its way 
through the lengthy appeals process that is often standard in death penalty 
cases.

His break came in 2014 when the Supreme Court overturned his conviction and 
ordered a retrial on the grounds that prosecutors withheld evidence in 1991 
about a 2nd robbery that occurred at Brandywine Village Liquors, a store about 
a mile and a half away from the Hi-Way Inn.

In anticipation of the retrial, Wright's attorneys filed a motion to suppress 
the videotaped confession, saying Wright was highly susceptible to suggestion 
and was not properly read his Miranda rights when he confessed at age 18.

(source: The News Journal)






FLORIDA----impending execution

Despite U.S. Supreme Court ruling, state of Florida insists next execution go 
on


2 days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida's method of death 
penalty sentencing, the state said Thursday that the next execution should go 
on as planned.

Cary Michael Lambrix, 55, is set to die Feb. 11 for murdering two people in 
Glades County in 1983. He has been on death row for 31 years. Lambrix's 
taxpayer-funded lawyers asked the Florida Supreme Court for an indefinite stay 
of execution, citing the Tuesday decision in the case of Pensacola killer 
Timothy Hurst, in which justices said juries, not judges, should make every 
fact-finding decision that leads to a death sentence.

"This Court should grant an immediate and indefinite stay of execution and 
schedule full briefing so that the implications of the Hurst decision may be 
conducted in a reasonable manner and not under the circumstances of an active 
death warrant," wrote Lambrix's lawyers, Neal Dupree, William Hennis III and 
Jessica Houston, with the state's Capital Collateral Regional unit in Fort 
Lauderdale.

In response, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that Lambrix should die as 
scheduled because he has used "dilatory" tactics to delay his date with the 
executioner, including seven post-conviction motions, and that the Hurst ruling 
should not apply retroactively to his case.

"It is time for Lambrix's sentence for these brutal murders to be carried out," 
Bondi's petition said. "The equities in this case tilt decidedly against 
Lambrix in favor of the state and the victims' family members."

Bondi told the Times/Herald she was unsure of the death penalty's future in 
Florida. "I wish I knew the answer," Bondi said after a speech to the Florida 
Chamber of Commerce. "The way the opinion was written, it didn't give us an 
instruction manual on how to handle these cases."

Bondi's death penalty expert, Assistant Attorney General Carolyn Snurkowski, 
and prosecutors across the state are trying to decide how the Hurst decision 
should be interpreted and whether it applies retroactively to earlier cases - 
in which case the death penalty in Florida would come to a halt.

"No one can come to a consensus of what to do next," Bondi said, but what's 
certain is that the Legislature will have to pass legislation quickly to 
reflect the high court's opinion.

Lambrix escaped from a work-release program in 1982 while serving a 2-year 
sentence for violating probation. The governor's office said he and girlfriend 
Frances Smith met the victims at a bar and invited them to their trailer, where 
Lambrix beat Clarence Moore Jr. to death with a tire iron and strangled Aleisha 
Bryant. Lambrix stole Bryant's gold chain, buried them in a shallow grave and 
stole Moore's car.

Gov. Rick Scott signed Lambrix's death warrant on Nov. 30. Scott has signed 
more death warrants than any governor since Florida reinstituted the death 
penalty in 1976.

(source: Tampa Bay Times)






MISSOURI:

Missouri Conservatives Urge Legislature to Repeal Death Penalty


For the first time in decades, a Missouri Senate committee is set to consider a 
Republican bill to repeal the death penalty in Missouri. A recently-formed 
group of conservative grassroots leaders applauded Sen. Paul Wieland (R - 
Imperial), the bill sponsor, for his fiscal responsibility and commitment to 
protecting innocent life from conception to natural death.

"Sen. Wieland is the true pro-life leader in the Jefferson City," said Daniel 
Blassi, the President of Students for Life at Southeast Missouri State 
University and member of Missouri Conservatives Concerned about the Death 
Penalty. "We may aim to execute only the guilty, but in practice the death 
penalty puts too many innocent lives at risk."

Since last year's near-execution of Kimber Edwards, a death row inmate whose 
sentence was commuted after the State's key witness recanted his testimony, a 
growing number of conservatives have begun questioning whether the government 
can effectively carry out capital punishment. In October, the National 
Association of Evangelicals approved a resolution to change its 1973 resolution 
which favored the death penalty. Though the NAE's new standing policy does not 
completely reverse their prior position, it does acknowledges the growing 
number of evangelicals who oppose the death penalty and increasing concerns 
with its application.

The conservative case is straightforward: the death penalty is at odds with the 
core conservative values of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and 
value for life. "Heinous criminals deserve swift justice, but it's difficult to 
justify a government program that siphons millions of dollars from Missouri 
taxpayers despite the lack of evidence that it deters crime," said Jake Buxton, 
Chair of the Truman State University College Republicans. "Our State can't 
afford the death penalty as it stands."

"In my mind, it is impossible to be an advocate for liberty and the death 
penalty at the same time," said Anthony Vibbard, President Emeritus of the 
University of Missouri Federalist Society. "Young conservatives across Missouri 
are joining together on this and I firmly believe that decades from now, our 
children will be appalled that we once condoned murder as punishment."

The Senate hearing will be held Tuesday, January 19, ???at 3 p.m. in Senate 
Committee Room 1 of the State Capitol.

Please contact: Josh Schisler, Executive Director for Missouri Conservatives 
Concerned About the Death Penalty (a project of MADP)

(source: MADP)






OKLAHOMA:

Death penalty an option in Kirk case


Capital punishment will be one of three available sentences if 2 men accused of 
killing longtime Keys-area rancher Charley Kirk are found guilty by a jury.

District 27 prosecutors on Thursday filed "bills of particulars" in the cases 
against Paul Dean Newberry and Cheyenne Mason Watts, who are charged with 
1st-degree murder in the death of 88-year-old Kirk.

First Assistant District Attorney Jack Thorp said the filings "put the 
defendants on notice" that prosecutors intend to offer the death penalty as a 
sentencing option.

According to death penalty records from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections 
dating back to 1915, there have been no previous Cherokee County cases that 
resulted in an execution, though capital punishment has been presented as a 
possible sentence in at least one prior case, which ended in a plea deal.

A local jury has also handed down a death sentence in a Muskogee County case 
that was tried in Cherokee County.

Thorp said Thursday's filings mark the first time the office of District 
Attorney Brian Kuester, who represents Cherokee, Adair, Sequoyah and Wagoner 
counties, has considered capital punishment as a sentence.

Watts and Newberry are accused of breaking into Kirk's Keys-area home last 
summer to burglarize the rancher. According to investigators, Kirk awoke and 
confronted the men before he was shot several times.

"A lot of thought has gone into this. The death penalty is a very decisive 
issue," Thorp said Thursday. "Death penalty cases are expensive. They take a 
lot of time; courts review them stringently."

Inmates sentenced to die have spent an average of 4,529 days - nearly 12-1/2 
years - on Oklahoma's death row since capital punishment was reinstated in 
1990, according to statistics from the DOC.

Thorp said Newberry and Watts could also face life, or life without parole, if 
found guilty.

Kirk's family was told the death penalty will be an available sentence, but 
Thorp declined to say whether they support capital punishment in this case.

According to the filings, Kirk's death was "heinous, atrocious, and cruel."

"On or about July 26-27, 2015, Paul Dean Newberry and his accomplice, Cheyenne 
Mason Watts, did attack an aged and decrepit man named Charley Kirk by 
assaulting him physically, causing injuries, and by shooting Charley Kirk 
multiple times, at different parts of his body, causing blunt force trauma, a 
broken arm [ a serious physical injury, and gunshot wounds to vital parts of 
his body, causing Charley Kirk to consciously suffer pain, before he did 
languish and die as a result," one of the filings reads.

Prosecutors also say Newberry, 24, has demonstrated himself to be a "threat to 
society," and that he could continue to be a threat in the future. In the bill 
of particulars, prosecutors point to previous felony cases filed against 
Newberry, along with specific allegations made during the probe of Kirk's death 
- including the accusation that Newberry and Watts robbed Kirk and tried to 
burn his home.

They also point to Newberry's escape from the Muskogee County/City Detention 
Facility in mid-December, and his subsequent theft of a vehicle that he 
allegedly used to flee Oklahoma.

Newberry was captured by federal authorities in Texas and returned to Oklahoma 
a few days after his escape. He is now being held in Sequoyah County.

Newberry and Watts, 22, both appeared before District Judge Darrell Shepherd 
Thursday. Cherokee County sheriff's investigators ushered Newberry into court 
first at the request of District 27 prosecutors, who had filed a writ to have 
Newberry brought to court. Thorp told Shepherd he had Newberry brought to the 
county "in an abundance of caution," with the possibility of an arraignment 
looming.

Newberry's court-appointed attorney, Peter Astor, spoke with Shepherd via phone 
and agreed to have Newberry's formal arraignment Jan. 21 at 1 p.m.

Once Newberry was escorted out of the courthouse, Watts appeared with Angela 
Jones, his court-appointed attorney. Jones explained that a new attorney has 
been chosen for Watts as a result of the death penalty's introduction as an 
optional sentence. She asked that the new attorney be given about 3 months to 
review evidence.

"There is a lot of evidence in this case," Jones said.

Shepherd scheduled Watts to be back in district court April 7 at 1:30 p.m.

Watts told Shepherd he understood the requested delay and didn't object to it.

He also told Shepherd that Jones had explained the bill of particulars and that 
prosecutors may seek the death penalty.

(source: Tahlequah Daily Press)