[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----KY., ARIZ., CALIF., USA, US MIL.

[Rick Halperin]

June 2



KENTUCKY:

Competency of man accused in 6-year-old's stabbing death questioned


The family of a central Kentucky boy who was killed during a home invasion was 
back in court Wednesday to face his accused killer.

Ronald Exantus, 32, is accused of killing 6-year-old Logan Tipton in December 
2015.

His competency to stand trial was addressed Wednesday in court.

The Indianapolis man was arrested after police said he broke into a home in 
Versailles and stabbed Logan to death while he sleeping.

Exantus said he had a psychotic break and doesn't remember stabbing the 
6-year-old.

"Ronald Exantus murdered our beloved boy randomly in cold blood and for his own 
disgusting reasons. We do not believe he is insane and we will be waiting 
patiently for the evidence to prove this in his inevitable trial," Logan's 
mother, Heather Tipton, said.

The judge will review the state's psychiatric evaluation in August to determine 
whether he understands the charges against him and is able to help his 
attorneys defend him.

Exantus' attorney said that after his psychotic break, it took doctors months 
to snap him out of psychosis.

"That's a tired defense," Heather Tipton said.

Tipton's family filled 2 rows in the courthouse, wearing the young football 
player's number.

His father said that if he could, he would take his son's place.

"I miss everything about my son. Everything," Dean Tipton said.

The family said that if anything good has come out of Logan's death, it has 
been the generosity of the community.

They said a donation of more than $110,000 allowed them to move into a new home 
with their 4 children.

If Exantus is found competent to stand trial, attorneys said it could be at 
least another year before the death penalty case goes to trial.

(source: WLKY news)






ARIZONA:

U.S. Supreme Court rules against Maricopa County judge in death penalty case


Jurors deciding whether to sentence someone to death are entitled to be told 
that in Arizona the only alternative is life behind bars, the U.S. Supreme 
Court ruled Tuesday.

6 U.S. Supreme Court justices said it was a mistake for a Maricopa County 
Superior Court judge to block the defense attorney for Shawn Patrick Lynch from 
telling jurors that if they did not sentenced him to death he would be 
sentenced to life behind bars with no possibility of parole. Denied that 
information, the jurors sentenced Lynch to death.

The court issued an unsigned opinion.

The ruling is important, not only in this case but other murder trials. In 
essence, the high court is saying that jurors, told someone would never get out 
- and never pose a risk to anyone else - might decide not to impose the death 
penalty.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, whose office prosecuted the case, had 
no comment.

Justice Clarence Thomas, in his dissent, acknowledged that Arizona had 
abolished parole as an option in these kinds of cases.

But he pointed out that, at least technically speaking, there was a 
possibility, albeit remote, that Lynch could be released: He could get a 
recommendation after 25 years from the Board of Executive Clemency, with the 
governor having the final word. And Thomas dismissed as "nonsense" requiring a 
trial judge to tell a jury that Lynch is ineligible for early release, at least 
at this point.

Thomas also said requiring Lynch to be resentenced, this time with jurors 
having new information, ignores that is was the "sheer depravity" of the crime 
that resulted in the death penalty rather than any specific fear by jurors that 
Lynch would get out in the future.

According to court records, Lynch and Michael Sehwani met James Panzarella in 
March 2001 at a Scottsdale bar. All 3 went to Panzarella's residence early the 
next morning.

The victim's credit cards were used during the next 2 days.

Panzarella was eventually found in his home tied to a chair with his throat 
slit.

Police also found credit card receipts from purchases made that morning at a 
supermarket and convenience store.

Lynch and Sehwani were arrested later that day. Sehwani had Panzarella's credit 
cards and checks in his wallet. And in the truck and motel room he and Lynch 
were using they found the keys to Panzarella's car, a pistol belonging to the 
victim and a sweater with Panzarella's blood on it,

Blood on Lynch's shoes matched the victim's DNA.

During sentencing, prosecutors argued that jurors should consider Lynch's 
future dangerousness when determining proper punishment. But the trial judge 
refused to let defense counsel tell the jury that under Arizona law, the only 
alternative sentence was life without parole.

The majority, in Tuesday's ruling, conceded that there was a chance Lynch could 
be released after 25 years. But the justices said that was not enough of a 
possibility to let jurors think if they did not sentenced Lynch to death that 
he might be released.

Sehwani separately pleaded guilty to 1st degree murder and theft and was 
sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of any form of early release.

The majority in its opinion also brushed aside arguments by prosecutors that a 
future legislature could alter the laws and once again make parole an option, 
as it was in Arizona prior to 1994. The justices said that would effectively 
undermine the whole precedent the high court set decades ago when they first 
concluded that jurors need to know what are - and are not - the options for a 
judge in deciding whether to impose the death penalty.

(source: azcapitoltimes.com)






CALIFORNIA:

Oakland: Jury deliberates in Darnell Williams death penalty trial


A jury began deliberations Wednesday to determine a sentence for convicted 
murderer Darnell Williams, in Alameda County's 1st death penalty trial in 4 
years. Williams, 25, shot and killed 8-year-old Alaysha Carradine the night of 
July 17, 2013 in East Oakland while she was at a sleepover at a friend's house. 
Several weeks later, Williams chased Anthony Medearis, 22, down in Berkeley 
after a dice game, shooting him in the back.

A jury will now have to decide whether to recommend the death penalty or life 
in prison without parole. After instructions from the Judge Wednesday morning, 
they began deliberations.

It's the 1st time Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley has 
recommended a death penalty prosecution for trial since she took office in 
2011. The last time an Alameda County jury considered the death penalty was in 
2012, for convicted triple-murderer David Mills, a case from O'Malley's 
predecessor Tom Orloff.

"Under the right circumstances, a jury gives the death penalty sentence. This 
is that case," prosecutor John Brouhard said Tuesday.

In his closing statements Tuesday, Brouhard asked the jury to show no mercy to 
the killer. He said the last sensations the 2 victims had were "fear and 
terror" as they died horrific deaths.

"It's a terrible thing to murder an 8-year-old child, words can't describe it," 
he said.

The 12-person jury of 7 women and 5 men -- the same jury who convicted Williams 
of both murders -- must consider both the aggravating and mitigating factors in 
this case to reach an unanimous decision on what sentence to recommend. The 
aggravating circumstances for example, can include a defendant's criminal 
history and violent past, that could increase his culpability to show that he's 
deserving of the death penalty. Some factors can be connected to the 
defendant's developmental years, for example growing up with a mental illness 
or in extreme poverty.

In Williams' case, the defense presented evidence that he suffered from a 
troubled childhood, growing up with both parents in and out of jail or prison. 
He suffered from anti-social personality disorder, or commonly known as a 
"psychopath," who thinks of consequences but then disregards them and acts 
impulsively, according to a psychiatrist who testified at the trial last week.

Brouhard presented evidence to the aggravating factors, regarding Williams' 
criminal history and "his commitment to violence." He had a prior felony 
conviction for assault with a gun in 2009 for shooting a man in Berkeley. 
Williams also attacked a man while in prison for that felony in 2011, and tried 
to rob and jump a man in jail July 2014. Exactly one year after Alaysha's 
murder, July 17, 2014, while in jail for these crimes, correctional officers 
found him with a shank underneath his mattress -- a metal weapon he sharpened 
to a point on one side, Brouhard said.

"He will continue with the violence until he can't anymore," he said.

(source: eastbaytimes.com)






USA:

Only 2 Justices Want To Tackle Whether The Death Penalty Should End----Stephen 
Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are virtually alone in this effort.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned away an appeal from a Louisiana death row 
inmate that posed a question that has long vexed the justices: Is the death 
penalty cruel and unusual punishment?

A majority of the court's members didn't say why they didn't want to answer the 
question, but presumably some of them thought the court already answered it 40 
years ago, when it reaffirmed the constitutionality of capital punishment after 
a brief moratorium.

It could also be that other justices, fearing a split ruling, simply want to 
wait it out until Merrick Garland or someone else fills the vacancy created by 
the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, a staunch proponent of the franchise. 
Garland himself has said he views the legality of the death penalty as settled 
law.

Whatever the court's behind-the-scenes rationale, it won't hear the case of 
LaMondre Tucker, who was convicted of murdering his pregnant girlfriend when he 
was only 18 and later sentenced to death.

The heinousness of Tucker's crime didn't stop Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg from saying they would have given his case a cold, hard look.

The pair, but particularly Breyer, has been on a crusade to get the Supreme 
Court to reconsider its assumptions about the death penalty as a constitutional 
form of punishment - in a day and age when it appears to be on life support.

Breyer pointed out that Tucker, who was barely an adult and had an IQ of 74 at 
the time of the crime, may have only received the ultimate punishment because 
of where he lived: Caddo Parish, a Louisiana county that is responsible for 
nearly half of the death sentences doled out in the state.

"Given these facts, Tucker may well have received the death penalty not because 
of the comparative egregiousness of his crime, but because of an arbitrary 
feature of his case, namely, geography," Breyer wrote, in a dissent joined by 
Ginsburg.

That's one of the assumptions about the imposition of the death penalty that 
Breyer attacked in his own dissent in Glossip v. Gross, an explosive case that 
upheld Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol last summer.

Since then, Breyer has been beating the drum that he'd like to hear a case 
about "the need to reconsider the validity of capital punishment under the 
Eighth Amendment" including factors such as the excessive delays to mete it 
out, the countless cases of innocent people sentenced to death, or its plain 
arbitrariness.

"One could reasonably believe that if Tucker had committed the same crime but 
been tried and sentenced just across the Red River in, say, Bossier Parish, he 
would not now be on death row," Breyer wrote on Tuesday.

Breyer and Ginsburg probably won't get to hear the case they want any time 
soon, but that won't stop America from letting the death penalty die a natural 
death: Louisiana, where Tucker is on death row, won't see a new execution until 
at least 2018. The drugs needed to carry out lethal injections are drying up.

(source: Cristian Farias, Legal Affairs Reporter, The Huffington Post)






US MILITARY:

Soldier sentenced to die for 2003 murders pins hopes on Supreme Court


California native Hasan K. Akbar joined fellow convicted killer Dwight J. 
Loving on the military's death row 11 years and several legal curves ago.

Now, aided by some prominent allies, Akbar wants the Supreme Court to reverse 
his death sentence by revisiting its own decades-old decision in a case brought 
by Loving. It's a capital punishment challenge that gives justices a rare 
opportunity to march into matters of military law.

It's also a challenge that illuminates the hard, close quarters of the 
military's Leavenworth, Kansas-based death row, where Akbar and Loving account 
for 1/3 of the doomed inmate population.

Akbar's appeal, moreover, reaches the Supreme Court just as Justice Stephen 
Breyer is making clear his own readiness to revisit the underlying question of 
whether capital punishment is constitutionally permissible.

"Not only is (Akbar) offering a substantial constitutional challenge to a death 
sentence, but his challenge, if affirmed, would invalidate the entire scheme by 
which the military justice system currently imposes capital punishment," 
attorneys for the National Institute of Military Justice wrote in a brief filed 
in support of Akbar's case.

In 1996, when the Supreme Court decided Loving's case, Akbar was studying 
engineering at the University of California, Davis. The Los Angeles native, 
born Mark Fidel Kools, had struggled through college but was within a year of 
completing the academically rigorous double-degree program.

Akbar's father had served time in prison, as had Loving's father, whom a 
defense lawyer described as "an alcoholic, with a rap sheet 4 pages long." 
Akbar's father, though, converted to Islam while incarcerated and Akbar 
excelled in high school, while Loving dropped out.

Convicted of murdering 2 men while stationed in 1988 at Fort Hood in Texas, 
Loving began appeals that, against the odds, reached the Supreme Court in 1996. 
Few soldiers get that far. In the last 5 terms, the high court has decided 385 
cases. None came via the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, the summit 
of the military justice system.

In what amounted to a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court upheld Loving's death 
sentence. The justices reasoned that the president, as commander in chief, 
could set the aggravating factors that might justify a death sentence.

Akbar's case, some think, gives the court a strong reason to revisit the issue.

"If the court was ever going to pay any attention to the military justice 
system, this would seem to be a compelling case in which to do so," Stephen 
Vladeck, a professor at American University's Washington College of Law who 
co-wrote a brief supporting Akbar, said Wednesday.

Several factors were subsequently considered in Akbar's sentencing, after he 
was convicted of killing 2 soldiers and wounding 14 in a March 23, 2003, attack 
at a U.S. Army staging base in Kuwait.

"This case involved many aggravating circumstances, including (Akbar's) murder 
of 2 military officers, his use of grenades, the extensive injuries to some 
officers and the impact of the attack on the unit as it prepared for battle," 
the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces concluded last year.

But in the 20 years since the Supreme Court rejected Loving's challenge to his 
sentence, some law has also changed. The question pushed by Akbar's attorneys 
and allies is whether this change undermines the 1996 Loving decision and 
thereby earns Akbar another chance.

"I want to apologize for the attack that occurred. I felt that my life was in 
jeopardy, and I had no other options. I also want to ask you to forgive me." 
Court-martial statement by Hasan K. Akbar

In particular, the Supreme Court, in a landmark 2000 decision called Apprendi 
v. New Jersey, concluded that facts that enhance a punishment must be submitted 
to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. A follow-up 2002 decision added 
that this standard applied to aggravating factors used in imposing the death 
penalty.

"This revolution in the court's understanding of aggravating factors has swept 
away Loving's foundations," Akbar's attorneys wrote in their Supreme Court 
petition, adding that "the fundamental nature" of aggravating factors has 
changed.

Citing these Supreme Court cases, the defense attorneys argue that Congress 
must determine the elements that make for a military capital offense, because 
it is Congress that's responsible for writing the law that the president 
executes.

Potentially boosting the odds that the Supreme Court will take Akbar's case, 
the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the National Institute of 
Military Justice, and the Air Force and Navy-Marine Corps appellate defense 
divisions all filed briefs on his behalf.

The government's response, which is due next Wednesday, will rely at least in 
part on the military court's 3-2 decision rejecting Akbar's challenge and 
concluding that any legal error was "harmless."

"We will continue to adhere to the holding in Loving unless the Supreme Court 
decides at some point in the future that there is a basis to overrule that 
precedent," Judge Kevin A. Ohlson wrote.

(source: mcclatchydc.com)