[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., FLA., LA., USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 31



TEXAS:

Testimony begins Tuesday in Risner trial


Testimony begins Tuesday morning in the capital murder trial of a man accused 
of fatally shooting the Little River-Academy police chief.

David Gene Risner, 59, could face the death penalty if convicted in the slaying 
of Little River-Academy Police Chief Lee Dixon on June 19, 2014.

Judge John Gauntt is presiding over the trial in the 27th District Court. 
Testimony is expected to take two weeks, Bell County District Attorney Henry 
Garza said Friday.

Jury selection took almost a month after starting in early April with a 
prospective juror pool of 209. The numbers were narrowed down through multipage 
questionnaires and attorney interviews.

The jury was seated last week, Garza said.

If Risner is convicted of the capital murder of a peace officer, the Bell 
County District Attorney's office will ask for the death penalty.

Defending Risner will be Russell Hunt Jr., a Georgetown attorney.

Dixon was killed when he went to Risner's home in the 100 block of South 
Allison Drive because of a report of a man with a gun.

At first Dixon said he didn't need assistance, but he soon came back on the 
radio asking for help. Immediately after that the Bell County switchboard lit 
up with calls reporting a shooting.

Dixon was found dead on the front porch of Risner's home. He was shot twice 
with a shotgun, according to an autopsy report. He died of a shotgun wound to 
his head.

Risner called 911 and said he shot a police officer at his home, according to 
an arrest affidavit.

Bell County Precinct 3 Constable Thomas Prado arrived at the scene and arrested 
Risner.

Dixon had been police chief in Little River-Academy from 2004 to 2005 before 
going to the Milam County Sheriff's Office as a deputy. He had been back in 
Little River-Academy as police chief for just a month.

Risner was in law enforcement for almost 19 years, with more than 17 of those 
years spent as a police officer, his personnel records from the Texas 
Commission on Law Enforcement showed.

Holds were put on Risner's peace officer and jailer licenses on May 15, 2012, 
by the commission, even though he didn't have an active or valid license then.

Risner had a previous history of trouble with the law, including with the 
Temple Police Department, Van Zandt County and the Bell County Sheriff's 
Department. That history included failure to identify and resisting arrest, 
deadly conduct-discharge of a firearm that was changed to deadly conduct and 
then pleaded down to disorderly conduct, failure to identify as a fugitive and 
2 counts of resisting arrest.

(source: Temple Daily Telegram)






NORTH CAROLINA:

Supreme Court ruling backs racial justice in NC


Those who work for the Center for Death Penalty Litigation are idealistic, 
perhaps, and certainly righteous, but they now have focused on a U.S. Supreme 
Court ruling that could have serious implications in capital cases in North 
Carolina. The ruling came in Washington in Foster v. Chatman, wherein the court 
ruled 7-1 that prosecutors in a Georgia case violated the U.S. Constitution by 
intentionally excluding African-Americans from the jury in a capital case. The 
court ruled also that Georgia courts were wrong in refusing to consider 
evidence of that discrimination.

The exclusions were blatant: Prosecutors struck all potential black jurors, and 
one's notes showed he marked the names of potential black jurors with a "B" and 
also ranked the African-Americans in order of preference in case one had to be 
chosen.

Said Ken Rose, senior attorney at the center, "Today, the court sent a message 
that we must stop making excuses and start enforcing the law against 
discrimination in jury selection. The privilege and obligation to serve on a 
jury, regardless of race, is fundamental to our democracy. Yet 
African-Americans in North Carolina are routinely denied the right to 
participate in the most important decision our criminal justice system ever 
makes."

The General Assembly, then controlled by a Democratic majority, in 2009 passed 
the Racial Justice Act to address racial bias in jury selection, among other 
issues. Death row inmates could present evidence in the form of statistical 
proof that African-Americans were systematically excluded from juries. If they 
proved bias, their sentences could be commuted to life without parole.

The center, in its response to the high court ruling, cited several examples of 
North Carolina cases in which prosecutors tried to exclude black juror 
candidates. And a study showed black juror candidates were removed from 
consideration by prosecutors at twice the rate of white jurors. In addition, 
the center reports, some prosecutors attended a training session from the N.C. 
Conference of District Attorneys that focused in part on "race neutral" excuses 
if they had to explain excluding black juror candidates.

This Georgia case, with the decision written by conservative Chief Justice John 
Roberts, should shame North Carolina lawmakers into restoring the Racial 
Justice Act.

(source: Editorial Board, The News & Observer)






FLORIDA:

Dubose appeal at standstill due to ethics allegations of defense 
attorney----He's charged in death of 8-year-old DreShawn Davis


It has been 31 months since the Florida Supreme Court heard oral arguments in 
an appeal of one of the most high-profile murder cases in recent Jacksonville 
history.

But a ruling on whether Rasheem Dubose will get off death row for the murder of 
8-year-old DreShawna Davis appears unlikely to occur anytime soon.

The appeal has become bogged down over charges of unethical behavior made 
against attorney Richard Kuritz, who defended Dubose at trial on appeal. The 
judge who sentenced Dubose to death, Lawrence Haddock, has cited Kuritz with 
unethical behavior, and The Florida Bar has filed a formal complaint against 
the Jacksonville lawyer that could lead to him being punished.

Lawyers for Kuritz have said he did nothing wrong, but Dubose's appeal appears 
to be in a holding pattern while the ethics complaint goes through the system.

The complaint focuses on how Kuritz dealt with a juror who later told him she 
had been bullied into convicting Dubose. Haddock asked the Bar to investigate 
Kuritz in 2014 after the Florida Supreme Court sent the case back to 
Jacksonville and instructed him to look into the allegations of juror 
misconduct.

Haddock, who declined to comment for this story, found there was no misconduct 
and accused Kuritz of hiding that he simultaneously represented Dubose and the 
juror, Tomi Chavez, for 2 traffic tickets and in a civil personal injury 
lawsuit while he was handling Dubose's appeal. The appeal hinged on Chavez's 
account that juror misconduct occurred. Kuritz has said in court filings that 
he did his legal work for Chavez after she was a juror in the case.

Chavez said other jurors, in a racist manner, made fun of the way Dubose spoke, 
researched the case on their cellphones while they deliberated and debated 
whether a teardrop tattoo on his face was a gang symbol or a sign that he'd 
killed someone.

In a 2014 email to the Times-Union, Chavez said jurors were already familiar 
with the case before the trial began.

"The other jurors had knowledge of this because they watched the news and lived 
in Jax," Chavez said, while saying she now lives in Hawaii.

Supreme Court justices expressed incredulity at the allegations when Kuritz 
went before them and argued that Dubose's 2010 conviction and death sentence 
should be thrown out because of juror misconduct.

Kuritz told justices Chavez contacted Assistant Public Defender Fred Gazaleh 
after the jury found Dubose guilty but before returning for a penalty phase. 
She then contacted private attorney Mitch Stone with the same concerns and 
asked to speak to the judge before the penalty phase began, but was turned away 
by a bailiff.

Kuritz said he didn't find out about the juror's concerns until after the jury 
had recommended Dubose had been sentenced to death by an 8-4 vote.

"I've never seen anything like this," said Chief Justice Jorge Labarga. "I'm 
concerned that it took this much effort on behalf of a juror to bring something 
to the attention of the trial judge."

Rather than ruling on the appeal, justices sent the case back to Haddock.

Haddock ruled in the spring of 2014 that Chavez's allegations of misconduct 
were not credible and blasted Kuritz for taking them to the Florida Supreme 
Court on appeal without ever revealing she was his client in unrelated cases.

Kuritz knew it was a conflict of interest, Haddock said.

The Florida Bar investigated the situation for over a year before filing a 
formal complaint against Kuritz in January 2016. That complaint says Kuritz was 
wrong to speak to Chavez without first informing Haddock and prosecutors about 
what he was doing. It also accuses Kuritz of writing an affadavit for Chavez to 
sign and then saying another lawyer wrote it.

Attorney Matthew Kachergus, who is representing Kuritz, has argued in motions 
that Kuritz only spoke to Chavez after she contacted him.

Kachergus declined to comment for this story, but in court filings he said the 
Bar complaint should be dismissed.

Circuit Judge Elizabeth Blackburn, who is based in DeLand, has been appointed 
as the "referee" in the case who will hear the complaint against Kuritz and 
rule on whether he committed any ethical violations and recommend a punishment 
if she decides Kuritz did something wrong.

Kuritz could face a reprimand, a suspension from practicing law or disbarment, 
although disbarments are rare and usually only occur after a lawyer has been 
found to have made multiple ethics violations.

The Florida Supreme Court will make the final decision but usually gives ample 
consideration to the referee's recommendation. The Supreme Court appears to be 
waiting for the Bar complaint to conclude before ruling on Dubose's appeal.

Justices usually rule on death-penalty appeals within a year of oral arguments. 
Dubose sent a letter to the Supreme Court in March 2016 asking what was going 
on with his case.

"It's been about 2 years on my direct appeal now with no answer from the 
Supreme Court yet," Dubose said in his letter. "... I'm just sitting here in 
the blind not knowing anything what's going on sir."

The clerk of court wrote Dubose back at the Union Correctional Institution in 
Raiford telling him his case was still pending and if he had any other 
questions he should contact Kuritz.

DreShawna, who died in 2006 protecting her cousins from a hail of bullets into 
her home, became the face of Jacksonville's state-leading homicide rate and 
galvanized city leaders to do something about it.

The Jacksonville Journey anti-crime initiative was launched soon after 
DreShawna's death and is credited with helping lower the homicide rate.

(source: Florida Times-Union)






LOUISIANA:

High Court Rejects La. Inmate's Death Penalty Challenge


The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a Louisiana inmate's appeal that his 
death sentence was unconstitutional.

The appeal from death row inmate Lamondre Tucker was the latest to challenge 
capital punishment as unconstitutional after Justice Stephen Breyer issued a 
dissent last year calling for a re-evaluation of the death penalty.

Breyer had criticized the process as arbitrary, prone to mistakes and 
time-consuming. He dissented again Tuesday, noting that Tucker was sentenced to 
death in Caddo Parish, which imposes half the death sentences in the state even 
though it has only 5 % of the state's population and just 5 % of its homicides.

"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 said.

He again urged the court to decide whether the death penalty is cruel and 
unusual punishment banned by the Constitution. Breyer's dissent was joined by 
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld Tucker's conviction for killing his pregnant 
girlfriend after she told him she believed he was her baby's father.

Jurors sentenced then 18-year-old Tucker to death after convicting him of 
killing Tavia Sills in September 2009.

(source: Associated Press)






USA:

How big of a difference does an all-white jury make? A leading expert explains.


The 1st thing you need to know about Patrick Bayer is that he's an economist, a 
social scientist and part of a discipline that relies heavily on all sorts of 
data about human behavior and financial matters. That's part of the reason 
economics is sometimes called the dismal science.

Bayer began his career studying urban economics. So for him, that work also 
often included examining residential segregation, school choice and 
competition, social interactions and the effects of different neighborhoods on 
people's lives. Today, Bayer is also a professor of economics at Duke 
University, where his most recent research has gone deep on the effects of 
discrimination in mortgage lending and housing markets.

It's serious, academic stuff, not included in publications on your local 
newsstand. And it is important stuff. For instance, this year Bayer co-authored 
a journal article called, "The Vulnerability of Minority Homeowners in the 
Housing Boom and Bust," published in the American Economic Journal. He's also 
been published in several other peer-reviewed journals with economic in the 
title.

Bayer is a guy who knows his stuff. And back in 2012, he co-wrote a study that 
did get a lot of attention in newspapers across the country because it was the 
1st of its kind - ever. He decided to take a look at what effect, if any, 
all-white juries had on actual trials over a 10-year-period. The study Bayer 
and his research partners, Shamena Anwar and Randi Hjalmarsson, published, "The 
Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials" arrived at an answer: a lot.

With the Supreme Court's Monday decision to make way for a new trial in a case 
involving a black man on death row for killing an elderly white woman, heard by 
an all-white Georgia jury which prosecutors intentionally formed, The Fix 
thought a deeper look at the phenomenon of all-white juries might be in order. 
How does this happen even in diverse areas of modern America? What does this do 
to justice and trial decisions? Bayer helped us sort this out. It's really 
worth a read. Be sure you take a look at Bayer's final answer, which puts the 
"dismal" in dismal science.

What follows is a Q&A conducted via email, edited only for clarity and length.

THE FIX: How would you describe your study's major findings?

BAYER: Let me first provide a little background on the study and the context in 
which it was conducted.

Our analysis was designed to examine the impact of the racial composition of 
juries on conviction rates for white and black defendants. The study was based 
on data from Lake and Sarasota counties in Florida [between 2000 and 2010], 
where we were able to acquire information on the characteristics of not only 
the seated jury but also the pool of potential jurors. In order to identify 
causal effects (rather than just correlation), our analysis examines how trial 
outcomes change as the result of random variation in the pool of potential 
jurors called for jury duty for each trial.

The population of Lake and Sarasota counties in Florida is approximately 4 to 5 
% black [Editor's note: these figures have grown since the period Bayer 
studied], non-capital trials are decided by 6-person juries, and the typical 
jury pool has 25-30 members. As a result, 36 % of jury pools in our study had 
no black members and so, by construction [when a jury has been formed], there 
are no black jurors. The other 64 % of jury pools included a small number of 
black members, resulting in black jurors being seated in some (but certainly 
not all) of these trials.

The results of our study indicated that racial composition of the jury has a 
large effect on conviction rates. In cases with no black members of the jury 
pool, black defendants were convicted 81 % of the time, while white defendants 
were convicted 66 % of the time. When the jury pool included at least 1 black 
person, the conviction rates were instead nearly identical: 71 % for black 
defendants, 73 % for whites. This large shift in conviction rates occurred even 
though jury selection still led to all-white juries in most of the cases in 
which there were black members of the jury pool.

Our study was the first to establish a strong causal link between the racial 
composition of real-world juries and conviction rates for both white and black 
defendants. In addition to what the results say about the effect of juror race, 
they also imply that there is a great deal of arbitrariness in trial outcomes - 
randomness in who happens to be called for jury duty for a given trial has a 
substantial effect on the outcome. The extent of this arbitrariness and the 
large role that race plays in decision-making raises serious questions about 
the basic fairness of jury trials as they are currently conducted in these 
jurisdictions.

THE FIX: It's sometimes valuable to establish the basic facts. What's wrong 
with seating an all-white jury? Does that fundamentally hamper equal justice? 
And how do prosecutors even accomplish this?

BAYER: In the United States, jury systems are generally designed to be 
representative of the eligible local population. There are two broad issues 
related to jury selection and composition that affect the fundamental fairness 
of jury trials in this kind of system.

The 1st is related to the system of peremptory challenges, which allow 
attorneys on each side to strike a number of potential jurors during pretrial 
jury selection without cause or justification. [This] results in juries that 
are unrepresentative of the local population. While the Supreme Court has 
prohibited the use of race as a rationale for using peremptory challenges, 
numerous studies have shown that black members of the jury pool are 
systematically more likely to be excluded from juries in many contexts. It is 
generally not especially difficult for attorneys to provide a non-race related 
explanation (if needed) to justify the use of a peremptory challenge, even if 
the juror's race is at least part of the basis for the attorney's decision.

A second and broader issue is whether juries that are representative of the 
local population can impartially decide cases when the defendant (or victim) is 
a minority member of the local population. In our study, for example, the vast 
majority of juries have no blacks members not because the attorneys are seating 
white jurors disproportionately - in fact, white and black jurors are seated at 
roughly the same rate - but because the local population is only 4-5 % black.

In both instances, the lack of inclusion of minority members of a local 
population on juries raises concerns about whether such juries can actually 
reach unbiased decisions. Concerns are heightened by results like the ones from 
our study, which imply that the racial composition of juries does, in fact, 
play a large role in trial outcomes.

THE FIX: Among your findings, was there anything that truly surprised you?

BAYER: The direction of the findings was consistent with our hypothesis: That 
defendants of each race are less likely to be convicted when the jury has more 
members of the same race. The magnitude of the findings, however, was really 
striking, implying that even a small degree of inclusion of black jurors makes 
a large difference for conviction rates.

Keep in mind that we are using random variation in who is called for jury duty, 
so the cases that face an all-white jury pool are statistically identical (i.e. 
have the same objective quality of evidence) to the cases that face a jury pool 
with a small number of black members.

THE FIX: Could you explain what it is about all-white juries, or what is it 
about the dynamics of an all-white jury considering the fate of a black 
defendant that contributes to these outcomes? Or can you not jump to those 
conclusions?

BAYER: Unfortunately, our study provides little direct insight into the 
dynamics of jury decision-making. Our findings demonstrate that (randomly) 
changing the composition of the jury has a large impact on conviction rates but 
does not tell us exactly why or how this happens.

We also need to be careful about drawing any conclusions about what conviction 
rates for white and black defendants should be in these counties, as we have no 
direct measures of the quality of the evidence in the cases that are brought to 
trial against defendants of each race. If prosecutors bring a similar set of 
cases to trial for white and black defendants, impartial conviction rates 
should be identical. But if, for example, prosecutors bring weaker cases to 
trial against black defendants knowing that they will face all-white juries the 
majority of the time, impartial conviction rates should be lower for black 
versus white defendants. Unfortunately, our study does not provide a definitive 
answer on this.

THE FIX: What's known about the way that all-white juries decide when a white 
defendant is accused of killing or somehow harming a black victim (the police 
officer's acquittal in Baltimore brings this to mind)? Or, the impact of an 
all-black jury considering a case that involves a white victim and black 
defendant?

BAYER: Unfortunately, we know very little about the effect of the racial 
composition of juries on trial outcomes. Our study was conducted in a setting 
in which blacks constitute a small proportion of the local population, which 
means that the variation is primarily between all-white juries and those with 
the inclusion of a very small number of black jurors. I am not aware of any 
study of the impact of all-black juries using real world data.

THE FIX: Your study focused on a decade of non-death penalty cases in Florida 
between 2000 and 2010. That's a substantial stretch of time. But, some readers 
will wonder, how applicable are your findings to the rest of the country?

BAYER: We certainly need a lot more research on this topic in jurisdictions 
throughout the country. A broader set of studies would provide more evidence on 
whether our results generally hold in similar circumstances or whether they are 
special to these jurisdictions in Florida. Additional research could also 
provide evidence on whether certain rules and procedures for jury trials lead 
to the greater diversity of seated juries and/or less arbitrary trial outcomes.

The setting that we studied is an important one in the sense that one might be 
most concerned about the basic inclusion of minority members of a population on 
juries in settings in which the minority group constitutes a small proportion 
of the local population and, therefore, can more readily be systematically 
excluded from juries. In more racially diverse jurisdictions, on the other 
hand, the use of peremptory challenges by attorneys on each side is more likely 
to cancel or balance out, resulting in more racially diverse juries. [Editor's 
note: Most Americans live in communities that score high on the racial 
segregation index - meaning all but a very small share of most Americans' 
neighbors are the same race.]

It is also worth pointing out that it is generally very difficult for 
researchers to access data on jury composition and trial outcomes. So, a wider 
set of studies will really only be possible if courts throughout the country 
show a greater interest in transparency and in conducting rigorous studies of 
the efficacy of the trials conducted in their jurisdiction.

THE FIX: What could be done in individual courtrooms, or in the process of 
building jury pools to assure greater jury diversity?

BAYER: There are a number of potential policy remedies that courts could use to 
address issues related to jury diversity.

First, to ensure that juries more accurately reflect the diversity of the local 
population, the number of peremptory challenges provided to each side could be 
limited and the use of such challenges could be given greater scrutiny to 
ensure that they are used in a way that is consistent with Batson v. Kentucky, 
the Supreme Court case that prohibits race as a basis for peremptory 
challenges.

In addition, while it is very difficult to establish whether race is a 
consideration in the use of a peremptory challenge on a case-by-case basis, 
statistical analysis of attorney behavior over a large set of cases could be 
used to scrutinize, for example, whether prosecutors systematically strike 
black potential jurors in cases with black defendants. The privilege of using 
peremptory challenges in a jurisdiction could be tied to the continued 
demonstration that such challenges are used in a race-neutral way.

Second, in settings in which minority groups constitute a small fraction of the 
local population, jurisdictions could design the jury summons process to 
increase the likelihood of including members of the minority group on juries. 
While I am not aware of any jurisdiction in the country that currently does 
this, such a step could be justified as a requirement for basic fairness in 
jurisdictions where statistical analysis demonstrates that the racial 
composition of juries has a substantial impact on trial outcomes.

The American court system currently has very few protections to assure that 
race is not used in the selection of juries. To successfully argue that jury 
selection was racially biased, defendants typically need to provide a smoking 
gun, such as the prosecutor notes that indicated selection was race-based the 
Foster v. Chapman case that was decided by the Supreme Court this week. It is 
extremely rare for any court in the United States to do any systematic analysis 
of jury selection and trial outcomes to ensure the essential fairness and 
efficacy of jury trials.

(source: Janell Ross, Washington Post)