[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, MASS., S.C., MISS., IND.

[Rick Halperin]

May 25



TEXAS----impending executions

Charles Flores of Texas Receives Execution Date of June 2, 2016


Charles Don Flores is scheduled to executed at 6 pm CDT, on Thursday, June 2, 
2016, at Walls Unit of the Huntsville State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. 
46-year-old Charles is convicted of the murder of 64-year-old Elizabeth Black 
on January 29, 1998, in Farmers Branch, Texas. Charles has spent the last 17 
years of his life on Texas' death row.

Charles never graduated from high school, dropping out after the 11th grade. 
Charles had a history of drug abuse and sniffing gasoline. Charles also claimed 
that he was abused as a child. Charles had previously been convicted for 
robbery and possession of cocaine. He worked as a laborer prior to his arrest.

During the morning hours of January 29, 1998, Charles Flores, Richard Childs, 
and several others were using methamphetamine and marijuana. Around 3:00 am, 
Flores and Childs left in Childs' Volkswagen and met up with Jackie Roberts. 
The trio went to buy more methamphetamine from Terry Plunk, and acquaintance of 
Jackie.

After purchasing the drug, Flores insisted that they had been shortchanged. 
Jackie told Flores that there was cash hidden at the home of Jackie's husband's 
parents' home and that she would pay for the missing amount of drugs. Jackie's 
husband was Gary Black. Child and Flores took Jackie home, and went to Childs' 
grandmother's house to use the recently purchased drug, before leaving again.

On January 29, 1998, the neighbors of the Black family noticed that the garage 
door had been left partially open, which was unusual. Neighbor Jill Bargainer 
told police that she had seen 2 men exit a Volkswagen, which was corroborated 
by other neighbors. The men were also seen rolling under the partially opened 
garage door. The following day, Jill was able to identify Childs as the driver 
of the vehicle and was able to describe the passenger, whom she later testified 
was Flores.

Inside the home, police found Gary's mother, Elizabeth Black shot to death, 
along with the family dog. Additionally, a potato was found in the sink and 
potato was splattered on the wall, likely an attempt at silencing the gunshot.

The day after the murder, Flores told a friend that he had shot the dog, but 
that Child's shot Elizabeth. 2 days after the murder, Flores and Child disposed 
of the Volkswagen, by lighting it on fire. They then stole another vehicle.

Childs was arrested shortly thereafter, with ammunition matching what was found 
at the crime scene, along with a weapon. Police also discovered a pair of 
gloves, which contained starch grains consistent with those from a potato.

Flores was arrested on April 18, 1998, after being stopped by a police officer 
in Kyle, Texas. Flores gave police a false name and failed field sobriety 
tests. He was arrested, after making several attempts to resist arrest, for 
driving while intoxicated. Police did not discover his connection to 
Elizabeth's murder until after he had been released on bond.

Flores was again arrested on May 1, 1998, after a high-speed chase through a 
residential neighborhood, that ended with a head-on collision. Flores again 
resisted arrested, fleeing and fighting law enforcement officials when they 
attempted to handcuff him.

On July 10, 1998, Flores attempted to escape police custody at a hospital, 
threatening the officer escorting him, attempting to steal his weapon, and 
threatening the hospital staff with pepper spray.

Flores was convicted and sentenced to death on April 2, 1999. Flores insisted 
that he is innocent of the crime. He also says his family and friends were 
threatened with prison time if they testified on his behalf and supported his 
alibi.

Please pray for peace and healing for the family of Elizabeth Black. Please 
pray for strength for the family of Charles Flores. Please pray that if Charles 
is innocent, lacks the competency to be executed, or should not be executed for 
any other reason, that evidence will be presented prior to his execution. 
Please pray that Charles may come to find peace through a personal relationship 
with Jesus Christ, if he has not already.

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

Texas Gives Robert Roberson Execution Date of June 21, 2016


Robert Leslie Roberson III is scheduled to be executed at 6 pm CDT, on Tuesday, 
June 21, 2016, at the Walls Unit of the Huntsville State Penitentiary in 
Huntsville, Texas. 49-year-old Robert is convicted of the murder of his 
2-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis, on January 31, 2002, in Palestine, Texas. 
Robert has spent the last 13 years of his life on Texas' death row.

Robert dropped out of school after the 10th grade. He had previously been 
convicted on more than 1 count of burglary. Robert had previously worked as a 
cook, construction worker, welder, and laborer.

Nikki Curtis was living in Palestine, Texas with her father, Robert Roberson, 
who had won a custody battle. Also living with them was Roberson's girlfriend, 
Teddie Cox, and Teddie's daughter Rachel. During the week of January 31, 2002, 
Teddie had been admitted overnight to the hospital for a hysterectomy, while 
Nikki was babysat by her maternal grandparents.

On January 30, the grandparents called Roberson to pick up Nikki, as one of 
them was sick. According to Teddie, Roberson was upset that he had to retrieve 
his daughter, but did so.

The following morning, Teddie called, saying she had been discharged and needed 
a ride home. Roberson told Teddie that Nikki was not breathing and he would 
need to come to the hospital anyway. Teddie implored Roberson to bring Nikki to 
the hospital immediately.

When Nikki arrived at the hospital, she was not breathing and her skin was 
blue. She was pronounced dead later that day. While hospital staff was 
attempting to save Nikki's life, they also discovered the Nikki had been 
sexually assaulted. When asked what had happened, Roberson stated that Nikki 
had fallen off her bed.

Roberson was convicted and sentenced to death on February 21, 2003.

Please pray for peace and healing for the family of Nikki. Please pray for 
strength for the family of Robert Roberson. Please pray that if Robert is 
innocent, lacks the competency to be executed, or should not be executed for 
any other reason, that evidence will be presented prior to his arrest. Please 
pray that Robert will come to find peace through a personal relationship with 
Jesus Christ, if he has not already.

(source for both: theforgivenessfoundation.org)

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

Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----19

Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----537

Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #

20---------June 2-------------------Charles Flores--------538

21---------June 21------------------Robert Roberson-------539

22---------July 14------------------Perry Williams--------540

23---------August 19----------------Ramiro Gonzales-------541

24---------August 23----------------Robert Pruett---------542

25---------August 31----------------Rolando Ruiz----------543

26---------September 14-------------Robert Jennings-------544

27---------October 19---------------Terry Edwards---------545

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)






MASSACHUSETTS:

Baker reiterates death-penalty support in wake of officer's slaying


Following the killing of an Auburn police officer, and a shootout that resulted 
in a dead suspect and a wounded state police trooper, Gov. Charlie Baker said a 
different approach to criminal justice might be warranted and he believes 
police killers should be executed.

Jorge Zambrano, 35, reportedly died in a shootout after allegedly killing 
Auburn Police Officer Ronald Tarentino Jr., a 1991 Tewksbury High graduate, 
early Sunday morning. He reportedly fired on police who discovered him in a 
neighbor's closet Sunday.

News media have reported on Zambrano's extensive criminal record, and questions 
have arisen in the courts and with the governor. In an interview on Boston 
Herald Radio on Tuesday Baker wondered "why this guy was free in the first 
place?"

"We should make adjustments if we need to, especially with respect to how this 
guy despite his rap sheet and everything else managed to be sort of slapped on 
the wrist and had his last 2 trips to court continued without a finding, which 
is just odd, and led to some horrible consequences," Baker said.

The governor also cautioned that as more information comes out, it can be 
difficult to separate fact from speculation.

Paula Carey, the chief justice of the Trial Court, expressed "deepest 
condolences" to Tarentino's family and said the Trial Court was seeking to 
determine whether the justice system should have taken more action on the man 
who allegedly killed him.

"Jorge Zambrano had both past and pending cases in the court system including 
serving a 7-year state prison sentence," Carey said in a statement. "We are 
carefully examining all of the circumstances regarding Jorge Zambrano's 
criminal history in order to determine whether additional systemic steps should 
have been taken in his case."

Lawmakers, the governor and the chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court are 
backing a comprehensive study of criminal justice in Massachusetts. This 
session lawmakers removed a barrier for drug offenders to go back to driving 
after serving their sentences and imposed stricter penalties on those convicted 
of trafficking in the opiate fentanyl.

Baker said the Auburn police were "shattered" by the killing of their colleague 
and noted that police regularly put themselves in potentially deadly 
circumstances.

The death penalty was outlawed by the Supreme Judicial Court 3 decades ago. 
Baker said he supports imposing capital punishment on murderers who kill 
police.

"I don't know if it would pass but I've always said I would support the death 
penalty for people that shoot and kill a police officer," Baker said. "I don't 
think that's a close call."

Baker supported imposing the death penalty on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston 
Marathon bomber who with his older brother killed MIT Police Officer Sean 
Collier, a Wilmington native, in 2013. Tsarnaev was sentenced to death in 
federal court last spring. His brother died in an exchange with police in 
Watertown.

(source: lowellsun.com)






SOUTH CAROLINA:

Convicted killer Stanko to remain on death row


There will be no post conviction relief for a man sentenced to death for a 
crime spree that raged through Horry and Georgetown counties leaving two people 
dead and a third severely wounded.

Stephen Stanko, 48, who has been living on South Carolina's death row since 
August of 2006, asked for relief for his Horry County crimes saying his 
attorneys didn't defend him adequately in his pretrial hearings and in his 
Horry County trial, and his appeal attorneys were inefficient in their appeal 
of his case.

He also argued that South Carolina's death penalty is unconstitutional.

Circuit Judge Benjamin Culbertson ruled against all of Stanko's claims, leaving 
his Horry County death penalty sentence intact.

Stanko still has a post-conviction relief request pending in Georgetown County.

Stanko was sentenced to death for the 2005 murders of Laura Ling and Henry 
Turner.

A Georgetown County jury found Stanko guilty in 2006 of killing Ling, a former 
librarian, and sentenced him to death. An Horry County jury reached the same 
verdict and sentence in 2009 for Turner's murder.

In the 2015 post-conviction hearing, Stanko's trial attorney Bill Diggs 
testified for 3 hours that he believed his client suffered from a brain defect, 
and that defect led him to commit murder.

Under methodical questioning from Stanko's PCR attorney Emily Paavola, 
executive director of the Death Penalty Resource & Defense Center, Diggs 
testified that Stanko's personality was inconsistent with the murders he was 
later found guilty of committing.

"He didn't seem to be the person who would intentionally do those things," 
Diggs testified.

In his PCR application, Stanko's attorneys argued that Diggs shouldn't have 
been allowed to represent Stanko in Turner's case because he had already 
represented him unsuccessfully in his Georgetown County trial when he was 
convicted of murder, 1st-degree criminal sexual conduct, assault and battery 
with intent to kill, armed robbery and 2 counts of kidnapping. Stanko's 
attorneys claim that Diggs had a conflict of interest because there was already 
a request for post-conviction relief on those charges claiming that Diggs had 
not defended him adequately.

But in his ruling filed in the Horry County Clerk of Court's Office this past 
week, Culbertson pointed out that Stanko was questioned and advised extensively 
regarding Diggs' representation with the PCR application pending, and, despite 
that, Stanko wanted Diggs to continue as his lawyer and he waived any conflict 
of interest that may have existed. The same issue was denied in Stanko's 
appeal, according to Culbertson's ruling.

Stanko's PCR application also claimed that his attorney didn't ask to have the 
trial changed to a different location before jury selection began in Horry 
County where his charges had received huge publicity.

But Culbertson says his criminal trial attorney did raise a motion to change 
the venue before jury selection. However, he said, the State objected to 
hearing the motion prior to jury selection, so Diggs consented to argue the 
motion after striking the jury, but before its members were sworn. Diggs also 
hired an expert, Dr. Tony Albiniak, who testified at the motion hearing that 
potential jurors are often not forthcoming in their responses during pretrial 
questioning.

Diggs argued the motion at the agreed time, but the motion was denied, 
Culbertson noted. The same claim was also denied in Stanko's appeal.

Stanko's attorneys also argued that the S.C. death penalty statute is 
unconstitutional "because [it] does not genuinely narrow the class of offenders 
eligible for a death sentence, ..."

But Culbertson said that issue was also dealt with in Stanko's appeal, and he 
wrote that the constitutionality of the death penalty act "is well settled."

Culbertson wrote that for a post-conviction relief application to be 
successful, the applicant must prove he is entitled to relief and to establish 
ineffective assistance of counsel, he or she must prove that a reasonable 
probability exists that, but for the counsel's errors, the result of the trial 
would have been different.

Culbertson found that different attorneys would not have secured a benefit more 
favorable to Stanko.

The request for PCR also argues that Stanko didn't get a fundamentally fair 
trial because the State presented "false and misleading, inaccurate and 
unreliable" expert testimony through Dr. Kenneth Spicer who compared Stanko's 
brain PET scan to an inappropriate database and testified that the PET scan was 
perfectly normal.

Stanko's defense team provided Dr. Joseph L. Chong-Sang Wu as a rebuttal to 
Spicer's testimony.

Stanko also believes his attorneys erred in the sentencing phase of his trial 
because they told the jury that Stanko's family didn't like him and pointed out 
that they didn't attend the trial; provided expert testimony that Stanko was a 
psychopath; and didn't investigate well enough his life history, background and 
mental health.

However Culbertson said this was a conscious decision by the attorneys who 
believed if they could persuade the jury that Stanko's family was so angry and 
disappointed with him that they felt justified in not coming to the trial that 
it would support his defense that he wasn't able to conform to normal behavior.

"Counsel's argument to the jury that Stanko's family was not in attendance at 
the trial was an intentional trial strategy to curry sympathy for his client," 
Culbertson wrote.

And, he wrote that providing an expert witness to confirm that Stanko is a 
psychopath was intended to shore up his insanity defense and make him appear 
less culpable by showing that he could not control his actions.

Culbertson says Stanko's attorneys did present Stanko's life history, 
background and mental health, most of which was gathered in the Georgetown 
County case.

The PCR hearing

When doctors diagnosed Stanko as a psychopath with a personality disorder, 
Diggs said he decided it was the best way to save Stanko's life, but Russell 
Stetler, a mitigation expert, said the psychopathy defense dehumanizes 
defendants in the eyes of a jury and is successful in only 9 out of every 1,000 
cases because it immediately brings to jurors' minds thoughts of law breaking, 
callousness and a lack of empathy.

It doesn't resonate with jurors or make them want to be merciful, he said.

But, Diggs said, he thought Stanko was okay with the defense and was even happy 
to finally understand why he did the things he did.

He testified that Stanko was a very good student in his younger days and 
provided pictures from his high school prom that proved his popularity. Diggs 
also described him as talented, but things began to change for him between the 
ages of 15 and his mid 20s, he said.

He said Stanko is likeable when he's in 1-on-1 conversations and his problems 
come when he feels threatened.

Dale Davis, who acted as the mitigation expert in Stanko's Georgetown trial, 
turned down an offer to stay on the case in Horry County because she disagreed 
with Digg's plan to stick with the psychopathy defense.

In her mitigation investigation, she learned that Stanko's father was born in 
Cuba and was a strict military parent. She said Stanko graduated 11th in his 
class out of more than 200 students and seemed to be headed "for great things."

She didn't think that Stanko was mentally ill, but said she saw some 
obsessive-compulsive behavior in him.

Vicki Childs, the fact investigator and mitigation expert in the Horry County 
case, said she relied heavily on information collected in the Georgetown trial.

Childs' job was to review police and autopsy reports and to interview possible 
witnesses.

She said Diggs was so excited about a PET scan done by one of the doctors on 
the case that showed brain problems that he was like "a kid in a candy store."

She also said she felt badly for Stanko because there was no one willing to 
come to the trial to support him.

She testified that Stanko told her he was skeptical about the insanity defense, 
but agreed that he was happy to find out that there was some indication in his 
brain to show why he did what he did

Conway attorney Brana Williams, who assisted Diggs with the Horry County trial, 
testified in the 2015 PCR hearing that the defense team did all it could for 
Stanko.

Williams said the evidence against Stanko was overwhelming and that avoiding a 
death sentence was the primary goal in the trial.

"The facts of this case were terrible and as a defense lawyer you do your best 
to look for any type of explanation and, quite frankly, we were very limited. 
We just didn't have a lot to work with," she said.

Williams said the defense tried to show that Stanko had organic problems with 
his brain, and came from a dysfunctional family in hopes that the jury would 
sentence him to life.

"We were trying to show there's a reason he's like that and, in lieu of death, 
he should get a life sentence," she said. "He does have an issue and it's so 
bad his family won't have anything to do with him."

(source: myhorrynews.com)






MISSISSIPPI:

Attorney argues to toss inmate's death sentence


An attorney is asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to toss out the death 
sentence given to a man convicted of killing a family of 4 in 1990.

Attorney Alexander Kassoff argues that Anthony Carr has an intellectual 
disability and should not be put to death.

Jason Davis of the Mississippi Attorney General's Office argues that Carr's 
death sentence should be upheld because experts disagree about his intellectual 
abilities.

In a 2002 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court barred states from executing people 
who are mentally disabled. In 2014, the nation's highest court prohibited 
states from relying only on intelligence test scores to determine whether an 
inmate is eligible for execution.

Mississippi justices heard more than an hour of arguments in the Carr case 
Tuesday. They did not say when they will rule.

(source: Associated Press)



INDIANA:

Attorneys for death row inmate seek more time for appeal


Attorneys for a Gary man sentenced to death for killing his wife and 2 teenage 
stepchildren have asked a magistrate to give him more time to sign a document 
needed for the case to be reviewed.

The attorney asked Lake County Magistrate Natalie Bokota for more time because 
50-year-old Kevin Isom has repeatedly refused to sign the document, The 
(Munster) Times (http://bit.ly/1TuX78X) reports.

The Indiana Supreme Court last year upheld Isom's conviction and sentence. In 
January, Isom's public defense attorneys filed a petition for post-conviction 
relief, arguing that Isom's trial attorneys didn't do a number of things 
including not presenting his social and mental history during the penalty phase 
of the trial.

Bokota took the petition under advisement pending the filing of notarized 
documents. According to court records, Isom has refused to sign a document 
required for the petition to be reviewed, including twice refusing to sign it 
during hearings before Bokota.

Bokota then determined that the time for Isom to file the petition expired in 
January. Earlier this month, she asked the Indiana Supreme Court to vacate the 
previously scheduled Nov. 28 hearing for the petition.

Defense attorneys Joanne Green, Laura Volk and Anne Kaiser filed three motions 
asking Bokota to reconsider Isom's petition, arguing he is not making rational 
decisions. His attorneys argue Isom's behavior is consistent with how he has 
shut down during stressful situations in the past, including during his trial 
when he refused to attend a portion of the proceedings.

The motion argues Isom's mental health issues date back to his time growing up 
in Chicago's public housing projects where he was exposed to trauma that causes 
people to "emotionally withdraw in order to survive."

Bokota has given the attorneys for the state until June 3 to file a response.

Isom was convicted of murder in the 2007 shooting deaths of his 40-year-old 
wife, Cassandra, and 16-year-old Michael Moore and 13-year-old Ci'Andria Cole 
in the family's Gary apartment.

(source: Associated Press)