[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.J., FLA., ALA.

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 17




TEXAS:

An appeal of the death penalty by a man convicted of murdering 2 people in 
Texas and accused of murdering a State Line woman during a crime spree nearly a 
decade ago was rejected by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Jan. 13.


The court declined to rule on the merits of Paul G. Devoe's appeal.

Devoe, now 52, killed Betty Dehart of State Line on Aug. 26, 2007. He had fled 
Texas after shooting 5 people to death, and in his cross-country journey to New 
York, stopped off I-81 in southern Pennsylvania. He randomly chose Dehart's 
residence on North Young Road to steal her car, and left behind a stolen 
vehicle. Dehart, 81, was on the porch, so he shot her in her home when she 
screamed. He was captured in New York on Aug. 27 by the New York/New Jersey 
Fugitive Task Force.

Devoe was convicted in the murders of 2 teenage girls and Dehart. He was 
sentenced to death in October 2009.

Franklin County District Attorney Matt Fogal chose not to prosecute, but to let 
Devoe face the Texas criminal justice system.

(source: Echo-Pilot)






NEW JERSEY:

Lesniak honored with Liftetime Achievement Award


Recognizing his lifetime of achievements and commitment to social justice and 
civil rights, Senator Raymond Lesniak was honored with the "Alone We're Good - 
But Together We're Better Liftetime Achievement Award" by the United Youth of 
New Jersey before the premiere of a play about Martin Luther King, Jr.

The award honors Lesniak for "his continued efforts to keeping Dr. Martin 
Luther King Jr.'s dream alive."

It was presented by the United Youth of New Jersey, a non-profit organization 
that aids at-risk youth, during the premiere presentation of a play honoring 
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday at the Union County Performing Arts Center 
in Rahway on Saturday, January 16.

"I am both honored and humbled to be receiving this award," said Lesniak. "The 
fact that it invokes the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. makes it especially 
meaningful. Dr. King embodied the values and aspirations that provide 
motivation and inspiration for anyone who strives for justice, civil rights and 
equality. I don't want awards to outpace my efforts, so I will continue to be 
an advocate for progress."

Lesniak sponsored the repeal of the death penalty and replaced it with life 
without parole, making New Jersey the 1st state in the nation to abolish the 
death penalty in over 30 years. He was in the forefront of the successful 
efforts to achieve marriage equality, and he sponsored legislation to reform 
the criminal justice system, to put the focus on drug treatment, rather than 
incarceration, to expand drug courts and to create recovery high schools.

Lesniak has authored 2 books: "The Road to Abolition: How New Jersey Abolished 
the Death Penalty," and "What's Love Got to Do With It?: The Case for Same Sex 
Marriage," co-authored with Senator Loretta Weinberg.

Lesniak also founded The Road to Justice and Peace, a non-profit organization 
devoted to promoting social justice causes in New Jersey and abroad, and 
NJ4Haiti, a nonprofit humanitarian organization created in the aftermath of the 
devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010.

In 2009, Lesniak became only the 2nd American, in its 20 year history, to win 
the prestigious international human rights award at Le Memorial de Caen, the 
D-Day and Human Rights museum in Normandy, France. Senator Lesniak is founder 
of "Imagine The Possibilities," a charity which helps soup kitchens, senior 
centers, nursing homes and veterans homes.

(source: njtoday.net)






FLORIDA:

Catholic Bishops support Supreme Courth death penalty ruling


Bishops back high court death penalty decision

Editor: I am pleased with the U.S. Supreme Court decision Tuesday, Jan. 12, 
that found Florida violates the Constitution which requires a jury, not a 
judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a death sentence. Florida 
currently requires unanimous verdicts in every case in which juries are 
summoned, with the exception of sentencing someone to death.

The Catholic Bishops of Florida have long identified the need to address 
Florida's flawed death sentencing scheme despite our position that life 
imprisonment without parole is an alternative that keeps society safe and 
renders the death penalty unnecessary.

The U.S. death penalty is mainly driven by a small minority of counties that 
use it aggressively, while the overwhelming majority of counties in the United 
States do not resort to it at all. For the past few years, Florida has led the 
country in the number of death sentences and has the second largest death row 
in the country. Florida has also found more innocent people on its death row 
than any other state.

Duval County, by itself, is one of the top 10 counties in the country for 
sending people to death row. Our 4th Judicial District, including Duval, Clay 
and Nassau Counties, is responsible for more than 28 % of the most recent death 
sentences in Florida.

I hope and pray that the Hurst decision will also bring about a much-needed 
reevaluation of the purpose and futility of Florida's use of capital 
punishment. This should begin where the death penalty is being used the most - 
right here in Northeast Florida.

In addition, I join my brother Bishops of Florida in urging the Florida 
legislature to respond to this decision by passing legislation which requires 
juries, as a collective body and conscience of the community, to be unanimous 
in the finding of aggravating circumstances and in recommending death over life 
imprisonment - a choice, I hope, will be very rare or almost nonexistent.

(source: Letter to the Editor; Bishop Felipe J. Estevez is the spiritual leader 
of the Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine. The diocese encompasses 17 counties 
of Northeast and North Central Florida serving more than 250,000 Catholics in 
61 parishes and mission churches----St. Augustine Record)

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

More death penalty evidence I wish were not true


Some topics of national debate are so dominated by the loudest mouths on both 
extremes that, to me, it seems that almost all the reasonable points are made 
by people in the middle.

Gun control issues come readily to mind.

But not so with the death penalty. Though there are adamant voices for and 
against, and some are emotional and accusatory, I usually hear more from people 
on both sides who make good points and often don't call anyone names while 
doing it.

Maybe that's why I've long been somewhere near the middle.

I'm not against the death penalty. As a moral issue, I think execution is 
sometimes totally justified. Shirking away from carrying it out in such cases 
is not, as I see it, the moral high ground.

But I do give much weight to our history of convicting innocent people. Black 
people especially, and often on weak and sometimes bogus evidence. Today, even 
after lots of reforms, the system still has only a hazy dividing line between 
death penalty cases and those that result in a life sentence.

Yes, I know how expensive the long appeals process is, and that streamlining it 
to save time and money would likely result in more horrific mistakes.

At the same time, some crimes are so terrible that anything less than execution 
seems absurdly lenient. I really don't want those who commit such crimes to 
benefit unjustly from our necessary and proper fear of making a fatal mistake.

So now I'm trying to figure how much to be pushed by a new study that seems to 
be a fair but incomplete report on the roles that gender, race and geography 
play in who is and isn't executed in Florida.

Not to my surprise, the report by Frank Baumgartner, a University of North 
Carolina professor, shows that all 3 factors play a part. Statistically, being 
black no longer makes a murder defendant more likely to be executed, it seems, 
but defendants in cases with a white victim certainly are.

That difference when the victim is white is not a few percentage points. It is 
huge. A white female victim ups the odds even more, and the numbers also seem 
to show that committing murder in some counties in Florida may increase the 
odds even more.

All of that seems like strong evidence of bias and injustice on our justice 
system, and on a scale that ought not be ignored. But Baumgartner's report does 
not conclude with a statement calling for change. It does not lambast Florida's 
courts or laws and call for abolishing the death penalty.

It just shows the numbers.

So I talked to him on Friday. He said he hopes the numbers speak for 
themselves. To him, they clearly say that the system - despite decades of 
reform - is way too broken and unfair to be trusted with a matter like dealing 
out death sentences.

"You have to conclude that the government hasn't been very good at it," 
Baumgartner told me. "That's the point we're trying to make."

But I think we need to know more. The truth isn't made clear enough by those 
numbers. In some ways, it is hidden.

As shown in faulty medical studies that have missed significant causes of bad 
results from prescribed drugs, for instance, some important statistical 
tendencies that don't show up when you look at just a few factors like the race 
and gender of victims.

Most murders involve strong emotions. Usually the killer has some history with 
the victim and is of the same race. Emotional crimes are generally seen as less 
worthy of the death penalty than those committed against blameless strangers.

So how might that impact the numbers? Are whites who are murdered - by white 
and black killers alike - somehow more likely than blacks to be victimized 
during robberies and rapes and as blameless victims?

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it is just that when the victim is white, our system 
often responds more zealously than when the victim is black.

I think that is probably true. And if so, it just isn't fair.

But as I said, Baumgartner didn't look into that.

All in all, his study does look like more evidence that what was once a 
flagrantly race-biased system strongly bent on executing black people is 
improved after decades of reform, yet is still way too influenced by race in a 
different way.

Black people who murder black people may now tend to fare no worse than white 
killers when it comes to death sentences carried out. But unless there is a big 
factor this study ignored, it seems our system makes killing white people a far 
more serious crime than killing black people.

Unless you are a racist who prefers it that way, this certainly looks like an 
argument against the death penalty.

I'm not there yet. Some people deserve execution so much that I still prefer 
fixing the death penalty system to scrapping it. Sorry. As I've said before, 
I've probably just spent too much time with families of murder victims.

(source: Commentary, Tom Lyons, Sarasota Herald Tribune)

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

After U.S. Supreme Court decision, old cases hint at what's next for Florida's 
death penalty system


In the wake of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down the way 
Florida sentences people to death, the 1st glimpse of what comes next may lie 
in the case of a man who is weeks away from an executioner's needle.

Right now, Cary Michael Lambrix, 55, sits inside a death watch cell in Florida 
State Prison, 1 of 2 inmates with active death warrants. He is set to die Feb. 
11.

Lambrix, convicted of a 1983 double murder in Glades County, is 1 of more than 
140 of Florida's 390 death row inmates who have exhausted their appeals.

Theoretically, all it would take is the stroke of the governor's pen to send 
any of those 140 condemned prisoners on a path to the execution chamber.

But Tuesday's decision in the case of Hurst vs. Florida has put Lambrix's 
execution in doubt. His attorneys have asked the state Supreme Court to spare 
his life. At the same time, the state is pushing to have Lambrix executed as 
scheduled. The Florida Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Feb. 2.

Whatever the court decides for Lambrix could set the tone for the rest of the 
390 inmates on death row, including those who have long exhausted their 
appeals.

Will the Hurst decision re-ignite those old cases? Will long-condemned 
prisoners suddenly face the possibility of new trials? Recent legal 
developments provide a few hints.

"Each case will have to be looked at individually," said Marie Louise Samuels 
Parmer, a Tampa lawyer whose focus is death penalty appeals. "But it certainly 
calls into question the validity of many death sentences in Florida."

What happens next in Florida could be similar to what happened in Arizona and 3 
other states in the wake of Ring vs. Arizona in 2002. Like Hurst, that landmark 
Supreme Court ruling dictated that juries, not judges, must make the ultimate 
decisions about the death penalty.

When it came down, many anticipated the Ring decision would overturn hundreds 
of death sentences. But a second decision two years later declared that Ring 
was not retroactive. It applied only to about 30 cases still in their early 
stages of appeals.

But Florida has its own issues relating to retroactivity. A number of state 
Supreme Court cases have grappled with it. At the heart of many of those is a 
rule which says that a change in law has to be "fundamentally significant" to 
be considered retroactively in a capital case.

In 2015, the Florida Supreme Court examined the issue of retroactivity in a 
case spawned from an earlier U.S. Supreme Court ruling, one that barred 
juveniles from serving life sentences. The state court said that decision was 
fundamentally significant, applying it to long-closed cases in Florida.

The pair of decisions helped usher in new sentencing hearings for hundreds of 
Florida prisoners serving life sentences for crimes committed when they were 
younger than 18.

"Florida's retroactivity rule turns on the fundamental significance of the 
decision," said Karen Gottlieb, co-director of the Florida Center for Capital 
Representation at Florida International University. "Hurst, I believe, is 
fundamentally significant."

The machinery of the state's death penalty system began to slow even before the 
Hurst decision. Last year, federal judges in the U.S. District Court for the 
Middle District of Florida in Tampa, bracing for Hurst, halted ongoing appeals 
in several local cases.

Those included the Pasco County case of Samuel Jason Derrick, now 48. He was 
convicted in the 1988 of stabbing a convenience store owner during a robbery. 
During his sentencing in 1991, jurors told a judge they were deadlocked - 6 
votes for death, 6 for life.

A judge explained that a death sentence required a majority. They returned with 
a death recommendation. The vote was 7 to 5.

Derrick's attorney, Harry Brody, has argued that the split vote merited a life 
sentence for his client. Citing that and other issues, he has tried to 
negotiate a deal with prosecutors.

"As of right now, it seems like he should get a new trial," Brody said. "We'll 
ask for as much as we can get."

Other death row cases whose federal appeals are on hold pending Hurst include:

-- Milford Byrd, now 66, who assisted 2 other men in strangling his wife, 
Debra Byrd, in Hillsborough County in 1982. In his case, the jury unanimously 
recommended the death penalty. Litigated for more than 30 years, Byrd's is the 
oldest death row case from the Tampa Bay area.

-- William Deparvine, now 63, who killed Richard and Karla Van Dusen after he 
met the Pinellas County couple to purchase a pickup truck they were selling. A 
jury recommended death by a vote of 8 to 4.

-- Terance Valentine, now 66, who tortured and killed his ex-wife's new 
husband in Tampa in 1988. Convicted twice, his most recent trial saw a jury 
recommend the death penalty by a vote of 10 to 2.

-- Willie Crain, now 69, who kidnapped and killed 7-year-old Amanda Brown in 
1998. A jury's vote for the death penalty was unanimous.

-- Ray Johnston, now 61, who beat and strangled 2 women in Hillsborough County 
in 1997. A jury was unanimous in recommending death in one case; in the other, 
a 2nd jury voted for death 11 to 1.

All those cases appear poised to raise the issue. None of those inmates is on 
the Florida Supreme Court's list of 140 inmates who have exhausted their state 
and federal appeals and are now eligible for a death warrant.

"You sort of had a feeling this was going to happen when the court took a case 
that has a 7 to 5 jury vote," said Charles Rose, a professor at Stetson 
University College of Law.

"I think every single one of them will be appealed, because death is 
different."

(source: Tampa Bay Times)

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

U.S. Supreme Court ruling a setback for Fla. death penalty


The 1st big murder case I covered was a 1990 quadruple homicide south of here, 
in Floral City.

The killer, John Barrett, was found guilty. The state sought the death penalty. 
The defense fought against it.

At the end of the proceedings, just before the jury went back to consider what 
sentence --- life in prison or death by electric chair --- to recommend, 
Barrett's mother staggered to the witness stand. She was so overcome with 
emotion that she could barely remain erect, let alone speak.

"Look at him, please. Please don't take my baby's life," she cried to the jury.

I have been practicing journalism for 27 years. That remains the saddest moment 
I've ever seen.

The jury granted Mrs. Barrett her wish. It recommended a life term.

"John Barrett lives," a colleague told me.

Actually, she spoke too soon.

In Florida, the sentencing judge must give the jury's recommendation "great 
weight." But the judge makes his or her own findings, and is not obliged to 
follow that recommendation.

And, in this case, he didn't. One month later, engaging in what's known as a 
"jury override," the judge sentenced Barrett to death.

(Barrett's conviction was later overturned; he was re-tried, found guilty 
again, and sentenced to life in prison. The Florida Supreme Court said he could 
not face the possibility of a death sentence again.)

The notion that the judge, not the jury, has the final say on sentencing makes 
sense. In other criminal cases the jury has no role in sentencing. The judge 
follows legal guidelines and uses his/her discretion.

But death cases are different. The U.S. Supreme Court has found that systems 
like Florida's, in which the judge makes his/her own findings and decides the 
penalty notwithstanding the jury's recommendation, amount to a violation of the 
Sixth Amendment.

Last week, the high court specifically struck down Florida's system. Cases like 
Barrett's, when the judge imposes death despite the jury recommendation of 
life, are fraught enough. But the Supremes took issue with the judge's role 
even when he/she follows a jury recommendation of death.

Basically, Florida's system requires the judge to make findings independent of 
those made by the jury. And a system like that exposed defendants to a greater 
punishment than what the jury authorized with its guilty verdict.

"The Sixth Amendment protects a defendant's right to an impartial jury. This 
right required Florida to base Timothy Hurst's death sentence on a jury's 
verdict, not a judge's fact finding. Florida's sentencing scheme, which 
required the judge alone to find the existence of an aggravating circumstance, 
is therefore unconstitutional," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the 8-1 
court. (Hurst was the man whose death penalty case was on appeal.)

Florida is 1 of 3 states that does not require a unanimous jury vote for the 
death penalty. A simple majority will do. The Supreme Court case didn't address 
that issue, but Florida lawmakers certainly will now that the Supremes have 
forced them to entirely re-think the state's capital punishment system.

"I think that when we consider how our death penalty system is structured, we 
need to be clear-eyed in making sure that it can withstand not only the current 
legal situation but future legal challenges," state Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming 
Island, told the News Service of Florida. He is a former prosecutor.

Me? I would throw out the death penalty altogether. I oppose it on moral 
grounds.

If that doesn't happen, then I welcome any new court ruling, or new state law, 
that makes imposition of capital punishment more difficult.

(source: Jim Ross, Managing Editor; Ocala StarBanner)






ALABAMA----impending execution

Sisters remember Homewood victim as convicted killer nears execution


23 years after her brutal death, and with her convicted killer just four days 
from his execution, Jo Deann Campbell's 2 sisters remember her as a bubbly 
person who was friends with everyone she met.

"She was a really happy-go-lucky, fun person ... always smiling," said her 
oldest sister, Corinne Campbell.

Jo Deann, a graduate of Leeds High School who also attended Jefferson State 
Community College, was working as a training manager at Chili's on U.S. 280 in 
December 1992. She wanted to travel to other restaurants in the chain around 
the country to train others, said Corinne Campbell, who lives in Vestavia.

Jo Deann, 23 when she died, had also worked the two previous summers as a 
counselor and tennis instructor at a camp on a lake in the Adirondack Mountains 
of upstate New York.

Jo Deann, who loved to travel and the outdoors, would often write camp 
counselors and kids she had met at the camp, her sisters said.

Her sister Fran Romano said she had lived with Jo Deann during part of that 
period and remembers Jo Deann working 2 jobs and not getting back until late at 
night.

"I'd wake up the next day and there would be 5 or 6 letters she had written to 
kids or counselors," said Romano, who resides in Guntersville.

Jo Deann would sometimes suggest that if any of the kids or counselors were 
ever in the Birmingham area, they should stop in and see her.

Her sisters say they don't know if Jo Deann had ever written or extended that 
invitation to Christopher Eugene Brooks, a man she had met and dated her first 
summer at the camp in 1991. Brooks had worked at another camp on the same lake.

But Jo Deann obviously wasn't expecting Brooks to show up at Chili's on Dec. 
30, 1992.

"People at Chili's said she was totally caught off guard," Romano said.

A friend would later testify that, in a phone conversation with Jo Deann that 
same night, Jo Deann mentioned a friend would be sleeping on the living room 
floor of her Homewood apartment.

Brooks, who had moved to Columbus, Ga., also had brought his friend and 
roommate, Robert Patrick Leeper.

"She was pretty trusting, I guess, and she allowed them to stay," Corinne 
Campbell said.

The next day, Dec. 31, 1992, after Jo Deann didn't show up for work, her 
co-workers and family became concerned. Later that day, Jo Deann's parents went 
to her apartment at the Ski Lodge 1 complex with Homewood police.

Jo Deann's body was found under her bed. She had been bludgeoned to death, by 
what was believed to be a barbell, and was naked from the waist down.

Police quickly linked Brooks to the crime through forensic and other evidence, 
according to court records and trial testimony. A bloody fingerprint matching 
Brooks was found on a doorknob in Jo Deann's bedroom, as were 2 other 
fingerprints. A palm print matching Brooks was found on Jo Deann's left ankle. 
And Brooks' thumbprints were found on a note in the apartment.

An expert would later testify DNA found in semen on Jo Deann was a statistical 
match to Brooks, with the odds of finding another person with the same DNA 
being 69,349,000 to 1.

Brooks also was seen driving Jo Deann's 1988 Volkswagen Fox, which was found at 
his apartment complex in Columbus. A package in the car was addressed to 
Brooks.

When he was arrested, Brooks also had Jo Deann's car keys and her Shell Oil 
Company credit card, which he had used, according to court documents. He also 
had cashed her paycheck and one of her personal checks. Several items of Jo 
Deann's also had been pawned at shops around Columbus, according to the court 
records.

Police also testified to finding Jo Deann's answering machine hooked up inside 
Brooks' apartment. Her message wishing "Happy holidays" to callers was still on 
the tape, which had been flipped over to record a message for Brooks' and 
Leeper's incoming calls.

She would go out of her way to make people smile and had a dynamic 
personality." - Sister Corinne Campbell

Death sentence

Brooks was convicted by a jury at his 1993 trial. The jury recommended 11 to 1 
that he be sentenced to death. The judge agreed and sentenced Brooks to die.

Leeper, who also had been charged initially with Jo Deann's murder, was freed 
after pleading guilty to a charge of using Jo Deann's credit card and given a 
sentence of time served. He had denied any knowledge of the murder, no forensic 
evidence linked him to it, and he passed a lie detector test.

Leeper had said Brooks told him Jo Deann had let them borrow her car and her 
credit card.

Brooks denied killing Jo Deann and, after he was sentenced to death, he turned 
toward Jo Deann's family and yelled, "Ain't over yet," as he was led away.

"It was just a smirk," Romano said. "That made me so upset."

Romano said she believed the outburst was aimed at their dad, Joe Campbell.

Jo Deann's murder had devastated their father, Romano said.

"My dad was the kindest, most gentle person I've ever known. ... That broke 
him. That hurt him so bad," she said.

Joe Campbell, who died in 1997, was the 1st inductee in the Alabama Baseball 
Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1999. He was a former professional baseball 
player in the Brooklyn Dodgers farm system and later a scout for the Los 
Angeles Dodgers. He served as a coach in Jefferson County Schools for 27 years.

Scheduled execution

After years of appeals, Brooks is scheduled to be put to death at 6 p.m. 
Thursday by lethal injection at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. It 
would be Alabama's 1st execution since 2013.

As of Friday, Brooks was still awaiting word from the U.S. 11th Circuit Court 
of Appeals on his request for an emergency stay of execution. He argues he 
should be given a chance to have his execution delayed, at least until lawsuits 
by he and other inmates challenging Alabama's new 3-drug lethal injection 
protocol have been decided.

Other last-minute appeals also could occur, including one to Alabama Gov. 
Robert Bentley.

Romano and Corrine Campbell said they and their mother, who lives in Leeds, 
will travel to Atmore, but have not decided whether to witness the execution.

"I've been very nervous about it ... It's not anything any of us are looking 
forward to," Romano said. "We just didn't want Jo Deann's name to be 
forgotten."

The sisters also were reluctant to talk about their views on the death penalty.

"I have gone through torn feelings," Corinne Campbell said. "Nothing is going 
to bring her back. It's very tough."

"My sister had integrity and character, which our parents worked diligently to 
instill in each of us," she continued. "She was the kind of person who easily 
made friends because she was one. She would go out of her way to make people 
smile and had a dynamic personality.

"Jo Deann was generous, kind-hearted, trustworthy, optimistic, and energetic. 
She absolutely lit up a room. ...

"She would tell us (family and friends) to not worry about her because she is 
with the Good Lord and our dad in heaven. Additionally, she would work to make 
us smile in such a grievous situation. Her joyous bubbly personality and lively 
smile is missed incredibly by those who knew her."

(source: al.com)