[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., GA., FLA., ALA., MISS., LA., UTAH, CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

June 21



PENNSYLVANIA:

Which Pennsylvania counties impose the most death sentences?


Nearly 1/2 of death row sentences Pennsylvania since the state reinstituted the 
capital punishment in 1978 are from Philadelphia, though the city has a lower 
death-sentence rate than the state average and some of its immediate suburbs.

Homicide cases in Philadelphia and Chester Counties result in the death penalty 
slightly less often than the state average, while Delaware County has a 
capital-punishment rate well below normal and convicted killers in Bucks and 
Montgomery Counties are far more likely to be sentenced to death than those 
elsewhere in the state.

Those are some of the findings in a recent in-depth Reading Eagle report on the 
death penalty in Pennsylvania.

The newspaper found what it described as "a far-from-even application of the 
death penalty in Pennsylvania," noting a wide disparity in which of the state's 
nearly 25,000 homicides between 1978 and 2014 resulted in death sentences.

During those three and a half decades, 408 people statewide were sentenced to 
death, a rate of 1.6 death sentences for every 100 homicides, the newspaper 
found.

Among the state's counties, the results varied widely: 14 of Pennsylvania's 67 
counties had rates of more than twice the state average. 23 counties did not 
sentence anyone to death.

Philadelphia's raw numbers make the city stand out: The city has sent 186 
people to death row and the 3 district attorneys who obtained the most death 
row sentences are all from Philadelphia (Lynne Abraham, with 85 death 
sentences; Ed Rendell, with 54; and Ronald Castille, with 50), according to the 
newspaper's data analysis.

But Philadelphia also has by far the most homicides in the state, and just 1.4 
% of Philadelphia murder cases resulted in a death sentence, below the state 
average.

Here are the number of death sentences and the capital-punishment rate for 
local counties, according to the Eagle's figures:

Philadelphia: 186 death sentences, death-penalty rate of 1.4 %

Bucks County: 12 death sentences, death-penalty rate of 3.4 %

Chester County: 4 death sentences, death-penalty rate of 1.3 %

Delaware County: 7 death sentences, death-penalty rate of 0.7 %

Montgmery County: 15 death sentences, death-penalty rate of 2.7 %

The highest rate in the state was in Northumberland County, which had 4 
homicides and a death-sentence rate of 7.3 %, the Eagle found. Allegheny 
County, which includes Pittsburgh had the 2nd-most death sentences, at 24, but 
a below-average rate of 0.9 %.

(source: philly.com)






GEORGIA:

Man accused of killing Florida priest attempts to flood cell


A man accused of killing a Florida priest was transferred Monday to a jail in 
Clayton County after trying to flood his cell in Jefferson County.

Steven Murray had been transferred to Jefferson County jail in late May after a 
suicide attempt while housed in the Burke County jail. On Saturday, Murray 
broke a sprinkler head in the cell in his attempt to flood it. He was later 
moved back to Burke County, according to Burke County Sheriff Greg Coursey.

After spending 2 nights in Burke County custody, Clayton County jail - located 
in Jonesboro - agreed Monday to take Murray. Coursey confirmed that he sent a 
request to the Georgia Sheriff's Association asking for another county to 
provide a cell for Murray. Less than 24-hours after making the request, Clayton 
County responded.

Murray, 28, was taken into custody April 13 after the body of the Rev. Rene 
Robert, who had been missing, was found April 18 in a wooded area in the 
northern part of Burke County.

The Burke County grand jury on May 19 indicted Murray, 28, on charges of murder 
and weapon violations in Robert's death. District Attorney Ashley Wright has 
filed notice that she intends to seek the death penalty against Murray.

Investigators believe Murray tricked Robert, who was trying to counsel the 
former Aiken resident, into going to Aiken to visit Murray's children on April 
10. When Murray was denied access to the children, Murray forced Robert into 
the trunk of Robert's Toyota and proceeded to commit a number of burglaries and 
an arson in Aiken, according to earlier reports.

Murray told investigators that he pulled off the side of the road at one point, 
took Robert from the trunk and shot him there. The following week, Murray 
agreed to show law enforcement where he killed Robert, which was off River Road 
in Burke County.

According to the notice of the intention to seek the death penalty, Wright 
listed 4 statutory aggravating circumstances: the slaying was committed while 
Murray was committing kidnapping with bodily injury, Murray killed the priest 
while engaged in aggravated battery, that Murray killed Robert for money or 
something of value, and Robert's slaying was outrageously or wantonly vile, 
horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind, or 
aggravated battery on the victim.

(source: The Augusta Chronicle)






FLORIDA:

Opening Statements Underway In Villegas Murder Trial


Opening statements got underway Monday in the murder trial of a man accused of 
killing Plantation attorney Melissa Britt Lewis then dumping her body in a 
canal.

Tony Villegas was originally ruled incompetent to stand trial and spent 10 
months locked in a mental health facility. That decision was then overturned 
after 2 forensic psychologists found him mentally fit.

Melissa Britt Lewis was a law partner of notorious case convicted Ponzi schemer 
Scott Rothstein, She was also best friends with Villegas' ex-wife, Debra 
Villegas, Rothstein's chief operating officer.

Despite conspiracy theories early on, investigators concluded Lewis was not a 
part of Rothstein's $1.6 billion Ponzi scheme and her death had nothing to do 
with him.

Prosecutors say Villegas killed Lewis in March, 2008 because he blamed her for 
the breakup of his marriage.

The defense may try to plant the suggestion that Rothstein was behind Lewis' 
murder because, as an attorney said in an earlier civil proceedings, "she knew 
too much."

The judge has forbidden the defense from bringing Rothstein into the murder 
trial, but that could change if any witnesses make unsolicited reference to the 
Ponzi schemer.

Defense attorney Bruce Fleischer offered no detail in his opening remarks to 
jurors, saying only that the death of Melissa Lewis was a puzzle.

"There will be pieces of the puzzle, important pieces of the puzzle, that when 
you analyze them, that are missing," Fleischer said.

Assistant State Attorney painted a seemingly overwhelming case against 
Villegas. His DNA was found on her suit jacket in her abandoned SUV. It was 
missing a button that had been torn off. A matching button was found on her 
garage floor. Also on the garage floor was pepper spray residue.

Villegas' roommate testified that when he came home the day of Lewis's 
disappearance, the defendant was washing pepper spray off of his hands and 
arms.

Police could not find the victim's cell phone. They say tracking records show 
it went back and forth between Broward and Miami- Dade on an FEC train line 
after her death. Villegas was a conductor on the train.

Debra Villegas was sentenced to 10-years in after pleading guilty to her role 
in Rothstein's scheme. Rothstein was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Villegas 
won early release for cooperating in the Ponzi investigation.

Debra Villegas is expected to testify against her ex-husband. She will say her 
estranged husband was violent and threatened to "chop her up and feed her to 
alligators" if she went through with the divorce. Villegas faces the death 
penalty if convicted of 1st-degree murder.

(source: CBS news)






ALABAMA:

SCOTUS demands new look at race of jurors of death penalty conviction in 
Alabama


The U.S. Supreme Court says lower courts in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi 
must re-examine 3 death penalty convictions for evidence of racial prejudice in 
jury selection.

The court ruled Monday in the cases of Christopher Floyd of Alabama, Jabari 
Williams of Louisiana and Curtis Giovanni Flowers of Mississippi.

The brief decisions followed the court's May decision to overturn the 
conviction and death sentence of a Georgia man because of evidence that 
prosecutors intentionally excluded black people from the jury.

The May decision broke no new ground in efforts to fight racial discrimination 
in jury selection, but underscored a 30-year-old high court ruling that took 
aim at the exclusion of minorities from juries.

Flowers was convicted after 5 previous trials over the slaying of 4 people in a 
furniture store.

(source: Associated Press)

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

U.S. Supreme Court Reverses Another Alabama Death Penalty Case


For the 4th time in 2 months, the United States Supreme Court today overturned 
an Alabama death penalty case in which EJI challenged the conviction and 
sentence affirmed by state courts. This time, the Court reversed because of 
concerns about racial bias in jury selection.

Christopher Floyd was tried by an all-white jury in Houston County, Alabama, 
where African Americans comprise 27 % of the population. The prosecutor, Doug 
Valeska, has a documented history of racial discrimination in jury selection. 
The prosecution marked African American potential jurors with a "B" on its list 
of jurors to remove, then removed 10 of 11 qualified black prospective jurors.

1 of the black jurors barred from jury service provided answers to all of the 
prosecution's questions during jury selection, but the prosecutor said that she 
did not respond to any questions and so he could not provide a race-neutral 
reason for removing her. EJI argued on appeal that because the prosecutor's 
assertion was not true, relief was required. The state courts nonetheless 
refused to grant relief.

The Supreme Court today granted Mr. Floyd's request for review, reversed the 
state court decision, and ordered the state court to re-examine the case. The 
Court referred to its recent decision in Foster v. Chatman, in which it held 
that Georgia prosecutors illegally barred African Americans from serving on Mr. 
Foster's jury because of their race.

Racial bias has been a longstanding problem in Alabama, where more than 2 dozen 
cases have been reversed after courts found that prosecutors engaged in 
intentional racial discrimination during jury selection. The Equal Justice 
Initiative has long argued that racial bias in jury selection is a serious 
problem in Alabama, particularly in capital trials, where too few prosecutors 
have ended the practice of unfairly excluding African Americans.

(source: Equal Justice Initiative)






MISSISSIPPI:

US Supreme Court orders Curtis Flowers Hearing


The US Supreme Court orders Mississippi to re-examine Curtis Flowers death 
penalty conviction for evidence of racial prejudice in jury selection.

Curtis Flowers has been on death row in the 1996 killing of Winona furniture 
store owner Bertha Tardy and 3 of her employees. The US Supreme Court threw out 
today the Mississippi high court's 2014 decision affirming Flowers conviction 
and death sentence and told the court to look again at Flowers' claim that 
African American jurors were excluded from his last trial in 2010 for racial 
reasons.

The decision didn't throw out Flowers conviction and death sentence but ordered 
the State Supreme Court to re-examine whether African American jurors were 
purposely excluded from serving on Flowers trial which could win Flowers a new 
trial.

(source: Delta News)






LOUISIANA:

U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear 'Angola 5' member David Brown's effort to 
overturn death penalty


The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear the case of David Brown, the 
"Angola 5" member whose death sentence for the killing of a prison guard during 
a 1999 escape attempt was overturned by a state judge, then reinstated in 
February by the Louisiana Supreme Court.

The denial marked a victory for Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul 
Connick's office.

Defense advocates had hoped the case would prompt the high court to scold 
Louisiana over what they describe as a persistent failure to adhere to Brady v. 
Maryland. That landmark 1963 Supreme Court ruling requires prosecutors to turn 
over to the defense all evidence favorable to a defendant, and Brown's 
attorneys argued that his case was strikingly similar to Brady's.

Brown had joined a group of prisoners in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at 
Angola in the escape attempt, but he claimed he wasn't there when Capt. David 
Knapps was killed inside a bathroom.

Brown had helped drag Knapps there and got the victim's blood on his prison 
uniform, but he said he had left before other inmates killed Knapps. He said 
murder wasn't part of the plan.

The state never accused Brown, who at the time was serving a life sentence for 
a different murder, of striking Knapps. But it argued that he was guilty of 
1st-degree murder for joining in a plot with the specific intent to kill, and a 
jury agreed.

At issue in his legal challenge was a statement from another state inmate, 
David Domingue, claiming that another man accused in the murder, Barry Edge, 
confessed that he and fellow inmate Jeffery Clark alone had decided to kill the 
guard. That statement never found its way to Brown's attorneys before his 
conviction and death sentence for the guard's slaying.

Retired Criminal District Court Judge Jerome Winsberg overturned Brown???s 
death sentence, but not his conviction, in 2014, finding that "there is a 
reasonable probability that the jury's verdict would have been different had 
the evidence not been suppressed."

An appeals court reversed Winsberg's ruling, and in February, the Louisiana 
Supreme Court agreed to keep Brown's death sentence in place. The justices 
ruled that Domingue's statement "provides no additional evidence as to who 
actually killed Capt. Knapps" and "simply does not exculpate Brown."

Connick's office argued that Brown jumped the gun in going to the U.S. Supreme 
Court when he can still ask the Louisiana Supreme Court to rehear the case.

Connick's office, which handled the prosecution after a series of recusals by 
other agencies, also argued that Domingue's statement wouldn't have been 
admissible at Brown's trial, and that even if it were, it was "neither 
favorable nor material" to his cause.

Prosecutors described Domingue's statement as "wholly extraneous" to their 
argument for a death sentence for Brown, which they said "focused on the fact 
that a life sentence would be the equivalent of no punishment at all because 
David Brown was already serving a life sentence at the time of the murder."

Brown's case was up for a decision Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court justices 
on whether to hear it. The court does not explain why it declines to hear 
cases.

Brown's attorneys say the fight to spare him a death sentence isn't over. They 
plan to ask the Louisiana Supreme Court to rehear the case and, failing that, 
to try again with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Connick's office declined to comment on the decision, citing a policy of not 
commenting on open cases.

(source: The New Orleans Advocate)






UTAH:

Brandon Smith trial for 2010 murder delayed again


Brandon Perry Smith's long-delayed murder trial has been delayed yet again.

Smith stands accused of the murder of Leeds resident Jerrica Christensen during 
a grisly middle-of-the-night incident that took place at the home of Smith's 
co-defendant, Paul Clifford Ashton, on 600 South in St. George on Dec. 11, 
2010. Ashton was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to life in prison for the 
murder of St. George resident Brandie Sue Dawn Jerden and the attempted murder 
of James Fiske during the same incident.

Smith's trial, anticipated to last 2 weeks and scheduled for the middle of 
October, was rescheduled for the end of January 2017 after Smith's defense 
attorney, Mary Corporan, indicated she had a personal conflict with the October 
trial dates during a motion hearing in Judge G. Michael Westfall's courtroom in 
5th District Court on Monday.

Last February, at the request of the victim's family, the Washington County 
Attorney's Office announced they would no longer be seeking the death penalty 
in order to expedite the legal proceedings and avoid more of the delays that 
come with the prosecution of a capital murder case.

Corporan told the court when the trial dates were scheduled following the 
state's decision against seeking the death penalty, she and co-counsel Gary 
Pendleton had anticipated she would be removed from the case due to the fact it 
was no longer a capital murder trial. However, Corporan has since been informed 
that the state's indigent defense fund will continue to pay for her to 
represent Smith at trial despite the state's decision, and a conflict she had 
with the trail dates would now be an issue.

Westfall, despite voicing concerns over Smith's right and the right of the 
victim's family to a speedy trail, agreed to reschedule.

Westfall set the new trail dates to run from Jan. 30 through Feb. 10, 2017. In 
a statement e-mailed to The Spectrum, Ellen Hensley, Christensen's mother, 
wrote, "Ironically, Jerrica's birthday is Feb. 5 - right in the middle of the 
trial. Bittersweet time for the memory of her last day on earth to fall on the 
memory of her 1st day on earth."

Both the prosecution and the defense then agreed to a series of deadlines 
leading up to the trial. The names of experts expected to testify at trial are 
required to be submitted by Sep. 1, motions relating to the trail will be filed 
prior to Oct. 1, the deadline for lists of rebuttal experts is Oct.15, and the 
deadline for jury instruction and jury questionnaire language submissions as 
well as motions relating to expert witnesses is Nov. 1.

Westfall also heard arguments from both the defense and the prosecution in 
relation to a defense motion regarding the constitutionality of Utah law 
relating to the mitigating circumstances surrounding murder charges during 
Monday's hearing.

Pendleton restated arguments he'd made previously in a memorandum to the court 
about the ways in which a defendant might approach a jury through jury 
instructions regarding any circumstances surrounding the murder that could 
potentially lessen the sentence or reduce the crime from aggravated murder to 
manslaughter. Pendleton said changes in Utah laws made in 2009 regarding 
murders committed under mitigating circumstances like extreme emotional 
distress, with the mistaken belief that the killer was acting in self-defense, 
or mental illness have created a situation in which there is "disparaging 
treatment between people that are similarly situated."

Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap rebutted Pendleton's motion by arguing 
that the 2009 law was intended to relieve the state from the burden of being 
asked to prove a negative, and that there is no disparity in the way different 
defendants are treated because the statute does in fact address different 
scenarios.

Westfall did not rule on Pendletons motion during Monday's hearing, instead 
stating that he would take the motion under advisement and issue a written 
ruling.

(source: The Spectrum)






CALIFORNIA:

Death penalty for Costa Mesa killer?


An Orange County Superior Court judge Monday dealt a setback to a convicted 
Costa Mesa killer, who wanted more time to make the case that he did not get a 
fair trial and should not possibly face the death penalty.

Orange County Superior Court Judge John Conley Monday granted a motion by 
attorneys for Orange County to quash defense subpoenas for more information 
about the use of an informant in the case against Daniel Patrick Wozniak, who 
was found guilty of killing 2 people.

Last month, Conley granted an evidentiary hearing into allegations that 
informant Fernando Perez was improperly used to solicit incriminating evidence 
against Wozniak while the 2 were jailed together.

The evidentiary hearing was triggered by the recent discovery of an internal 
administrative log that detailed how sheriff's investigators handled 
informants. Wozniak's attorney, Scott Sanders, argued that he needed subpoenas 
to further investigate whether his client's Eighth Amendment rights were 
violated by having Perez pump Wozniak for more information about his case, 
which would be illegal since the killer was already represented by a lawyer.

Perez, however, could pass on any statements Wozniak volunteered without any 
prompting.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy argued that Perez's contact with 
Wozniak was irrelevant, and Conley agreed, since Perez never testified in 
Wozniak's trial. Murphy said prosecutors had no interest in using Perez as a 
witness in the trial because Wozniak had confessed and Perez offered nothing 
new.

Sanders focused much of his argument on a deputy who earlier testified in an 
evidentiary hearing related to another convicted killer that he did not have 
much to do with Perez. Sanders argued that the administrative log indicated 
otherwise and that the deputy ordered officials to read all of Wozniak's mail - 
incoming and outgoing - after talking to Perez.

Murphy argued that it is routine for prosecutors to seek a "mail cover" of 
defendants in murder trials to see if they say something incriminating in their 
correspondence. Prosecutors handed over all of the mail to defense attorneys 
shortly before his trial, but that hardly mattered since Wozniak couldn't have 
been surprised by his own correspondence as if it were some other type of 
evidence against him, Murphy argued.

Conley set a sentencing date of Sept. 23. The judge will also consider Sanders' 
motion for a new trial and a motion to have the death penalty set aside on that 
date.

Wozniak was scheduled to be sentenced last month, 6 years after the killings of 
26-year-old Samuel Eliezer Herr and 23-year-old Julie Kibuishi.

Wozniak was deep in debt in May 2010, facing eviction and without money for his 
pending wedding, when he concocted a plan to kill his neighbor, Herr, and throw 
police off the trail by making it look like Herr murdered and raped his female 
friend, Murphy argued at trial.

Wozniak, who grew up in Long Beach, further tried to confound investigators by 
dismembering his 1st victim and dumping the body parts in the El Dorado Nature 
Center in Long Beach, Murphy said.

(source: mynewsla.com)