[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ARK., NEB., N.MEX., CALIF., ORE., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 1



ARKANSAS:

Zombie test-kill cited at Arkansas murder trial ---- Prosecutor: 90-year-old's 
slaying fit a fixation; defense says confession coerced


Richard Jordan Tarver knew he could survive a zombie apocalypse if only he knew 
what it felt like to kill someone, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Grant DeProw 
said Thursday in his opening statement of Tarver's capital-murder trial in 
Craighead County Circuit Court.

Tarver, 31, of Bay is accused of forcing Lavinda Counce, 90, from her Bay home 
and into the trunk of her car July 3, 2015. Police say he drove her to a 
cornfield east of the Craighead County town, forced her to walk into the rows 
of corn and then shot her in the back of the head with a .38-caliber handgun.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Tarver in a trial that 
attorneys say could last 3 weeks.

Tarver "binge-watched" the zombie television program The Walking Dead the night 
of July 2, 2015, before going to sleep, DeProw said.

"He wanted to feel what it felt like to kill someone, but even Tarver doesn't 
believe in zombies," DeProw said. "Who is the next-best thing? A 90-year-old 
woman who lived alone."

DeProw said Tarver walked the 100 yards between his house and Counce's house on 
the July morning, and knocked on her door. When she answered, Tarver pushed her 
inside. He took her to the cornfield, shot her and then drove her car to 
Jonesboro where he left it in the parking lot of NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital 
on U.S. 49, DeProw said.

Authorities found Counce's body July 12. Tarver was arrested 5 days later.

Randall Miller, a Jonesboro attorney representing Tarver, said his client was 
planning a birthday party for his daughter and was with his wife and friends at 
the time of Counce's death and could not have committed the slaying.

Miller said a confession by Tarver to investigators was given under duress and 
fear that authorities would arrest his wife and take away his daughter.

"Mr. Tarver blanked out," Miller said in his opening statement Thursday. "He 
was so scared he would have told them anything."

Much of testimony presented Thursday centered on a large cloth bag found in 
Counce's Lunsford Avenue home by family members after they reported Counce 
missing.

Patsy Scott, Counce's daughter, said when her mother didn't answer her 
telephone call the evening of July 3, she and her husband drove to Counce's 
home. They found Counce's car missing, and inside the house they discovered 
unmade beds. Counce was meticulous in making beds before leaving her home, 
Scott said.

The daughter also found a black bag on a chair in the living room. She thought 
her mother won the bag in a contest, but when she opened it she saw items that 
scared her. The bag contained a hammer, a hatchet, rope and a club wrapped in 
plastic tape.

"I can't describe the panic I had not knowing where she was," Scott testified. 
"I picked [the bag] up, then dropped it and started praying."

DeProw said investigators found a washcloth inside the bag that contained DNA 
from Tarver.

Miller said DNA found on the tools were from an unknown source -- possibly a 
female -- but no other DNA found in the bag matched Tarver's.

Tarver became a suspect after investigators questioned a friend of his who 
lived near NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital, Prosecuting Attorney Scott Ellington 
said.

The friend, Cory Phillips, told police Tarver walked to his home about 1 p.m. 
the day Counce disappeared and said he had been dropped off at the hospital to 
visit a friend and needed a ride home, Ellington said. The time coincided with 
the time on a hospital parking lot security video that showed someone leaving 
Counce's car and walking toward U.S. 49, Ellington said.

When police went to Tarver's home July 17, Tarver confessed.

Asked if he knew why police were at his home, Tarver replied, "I know," DeProw 
said in his opening statement.

Tarver then told investigators about his obsession with zombies and told them 
the gun used in the slaying was in his attic, DeProw said. Detectives found a 
.38-caliber handgun.

"He said he had no remorse, guilt or anxiety," DeProw said of Tarver. "It meant 
nothing at all to him."

Miller later said Tarver thought police were questioning him about a problem he 
had with a police officer.

He said police did not match the ballistics of the weapon to the one used to 
kill Counce. However, Craighead County Coroner Toby Emerson testified Thursday 
that investigators did not find the .38-caliber bullet that killed Counce and 
officials could not compare ballistics of it to the handgun.

Testimony will resume at 9 a.m. today.

Circuit Judge Cindy Thyer said she has reserved 3 weeks for the trial.

(source: arkansasonline.com)






NEBRASKA:

Nebraska Catholic church affirms position on death penalty


Tom Venzor, executive director of the Nebraska Catholic Conference, left, and 
Sister Jeanne O'Rourke, of Mercy High School in Omaha speak about why Nebraska 
should not have a death penalty.

Priest, nuns and Catholic leaders joined Tom Venzor, executive director of the 
Nebraska Catholic Conference (NCC), Thursday at a press conference to affirm 
the church's position on the death penalty.

The Catholic Church and Nebraska Bishops oppose the death penalty because they 
say it is not necessary to protect society. The press conference was the kick 
off of the church's advocacy to its 375,000 Catholics in more than 350 Nebraska 
parishes encouraging Catholics to be informed about the death penalty and be 
involved in the political process.

"We urge Catholics and all people of good will to vote to retain the repeal of 
the death penalty on Referendum Measure 426," Venzor said.

Nebraskans will vote on Nov. 8 whether to retain the law prohibiting the death 
penalty in Nebraska or to reinstate the possible use of the death penalty in 
the sentencing phase of trials. The message the NCC is sharing is one of mercy.

"I stand here today, urging everyone to recognize that what human life God 
creates, we must not destroy; that even if one feels that someone is deserving 
of death, we as a people are above dealing them death," said father Doug 
Dietrich, pastor at Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Lincoln.

Dietrich said Nebraska does not need the death penalty.

"We have other means available to ensure our safety, means which also offer the 
convict the chance of rehabilitation and conversion," he said. "Along with my 
brother priests throughout Nebraska, we are taking a principled pro-life stance 
and proclaiming we do not need the death penalty in Nebraska."

Venzor said Nebraska's bishops are "deeply disturbed" that 156 people have been 
taken off death row since 1976, many as a result of DNA evidence proving their 
innocence.

"Even here in Nebraska, the death penalty can sometimes be misused, as we have 
witnessed with the 'Beatrice 6' who were initially threatened with the death 
penalty and have since been released from prison on account of DNA evidence," 
Venzor said.

Bishops are also concerned that racial minorities and the poor are 
disproportionately sentenced to death, which can occur as the result of racial 
bias or inadequate defense, Venzor said.

"This raises serious concerns about the just use of the death penalty," he 
said. "Ultimately, the bishops are deeply bothered by a justice system in which 
the innocent might be executed."

Venzor said families of victims also suffer from the "seemingly endless appeals 
process" associated with the death penalty.

"The pain experienced by these families is real and agonizing as the torturous 
experience of their loved ones' brutal death is relived," he said.

The church is also concerned that the death penalty is used as vengeance and 
not justice, and that it is too costly for Nebraska taxpayers.

"These are critical tax dollars that can be used to more adequately support our 
prisons and corrections staff, provide assistance to families of victims, or 
promote other justice efforts," Venzor said. "Even if the exact cost may be 
disputed, whether the cost is millions or mere cents, there can be no real 
price placed on the value of human life."

Sister Jeanne O'Rourke, spiritual adviser at Omaha's Mercy High School, said 
the Catholic Church, the popes, Nebraska bishops, the NCC and religious men and 
women have all concluded the death penalty is not necessary.

"Even in Nebraska, the death penalty risks executing innocent lives," she said. 
"1 innocent person executed is too many."

Dietrich encouraged Nebraskans to consider how they will vote. He said we must 
decide if we are a state that, "reserves the right to execute our fellow 
citizens, even when, because of human weakness and sinfulness, we cannot be 100 
% guaranteed of their guilt or of their capacity to be culpable of their 
crimes, or are we a state that will announce that we stand against the taking 
of human life, by ourselves following our own precept, and refusing to be the 
ones who bring about the death of another."

O'Rourke said the death penalty isn't merciful because it views a person as not 
deserving God's gift of life.

"The death penalty isn't merciful because when the state kills in our name, we 
have blood on our hands," she said. "As Pope Francis has professed, we are a 
Church of mercy. The death penalty in Nebraska is incompatible with mercy."

(source: Scottsbluff Star Herald)

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

Midland to host death penalty program


Juan Melendez spent 17 years on Florida's death row for a crime he didn't 
commit. On Tuesday, Midland University's Luther College of Arts and Sciences 
invites students and the public to hear his story.

Melendez, the subject of an internationally acclaimed documentary, will speak 
at 7 p.m. in Room 304 of the Anderson Complex.

The event is designed to provide information as Nebraska sets to vote in 
November on whether to reinstate the death penalty. Nebraska's Legislature 
voted in 2015 to replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole. 
A petition drive placed the issue on the Nov. 8 ballot.

(source: Freemont Tribune)






NEW MEXICO:

House panel OK's death penalty reinstatement, other crime bills


A bill to reinstate the death penalty that is sought by Gov. Susana Martinez 
squeaked through the House Judiciary Committee on a 7-6 vote late Friday, with 
Republicans voting in favor and Democrats opposed.

The same committee also approved 2 other crime bills, voting 12-1 to expand an 
existing child abuse law, and 8-4 to broaden the "3 strikes" law that subjects 
those convicted of three violent felonies to mandatory life sentences.

But with the Senate already having adjourned the special session - and senators 
headed home - after approving a package of budget fixes, work on the crime 
measures could be an empty effort.

Democrats had opposed the governor's putting crime bills on the agenda for the 
short special session.

Critics said the death penalty bill was a flawed, ill-conceived piece of 
legislation whose sole purpose was political: fodder for the GOP in the 
legislative campaigns ahead of the Nov. 8 general election.

"The committee should be ashamed to do this," House Minority Leader Brian 
Egolf, D-Santa Fe, told fellow members of the House Judiciary Committee who 
were meeting close to midnight with only a handful of onlookers.

The death penalty bill was headed next to the House Appropriations Committee, 
while the other crime bills were scheduled to be considered by the full House, 
which was to meet later today.

The death penalty legislation would reinstate capital punishment for killers of 
police officers, correctional officers and children under 18.

The proponents of House Bill 7 pointed out that 5 police officers in New Mexico 
have been killed in 18 months, and impassioned family members of victims 
pleaded with lawmakers to endorse the legislation.

"There are just certain crimes that are inexcusable, and there has to be a 
deterrent," said Bernalillo County Sheriff's Deputy Michelle Carlino-Webster, 
widow of slain Albuquerque police officer Daniel Webster.

"These people are brazen. They don't care if you have a badge ... and we're a 
target for them," she told the committee.

New Mexico abolished the death penalty in 2009 after more than a decade of 
discussion, and the bill's opponents said it was irresponsible to revisit the 
issue in a brief legislative session with little public input.

Ruth Hoffman, speaking for the New Mexico Conference of Churches, said the 
national trend "is to end this immoral, unnecessary and ineffective practice," 
citing a number of people wrongly sentenced to death who have been exonerated.

And opponents said the bill was unconstitutionally flawed.

A recent horrific crime in which 10-year-old Victoria Martens of Albuquerque 
was drugged, raped and killed was also part of the backdrop for the crime 
discussions.

"I understand the rage and frustration and the political desire to get this 
done now," said Rep. Antonio "Moe" Maestas, D-Albuquerque, a member of the 
House Judiciary Committee.

But, he added, "We are in a constitutional budget crisis??? that could 
potentially hurt the state's credit rating, and he said that's what lawmakers 
should be dealing with.

Under current law, intentional abuse of a child under the age of 12 that 
results in the child's death is a 1st-degree felony punishable by life in 
prison. House Bill 6 would expand that to also cover children 12 to 18.

"We're essentially saying that under current law a 12-year-old's life is not as 
important as an 11-year-old's," said Rep. Sarah Maestas Barnes, R-Albuquerque, 
a sponsor of the bill.

Critics said the proposal was too broad in its scope and would not deter or 
prevent crimes against children.

House Bill 5 expands the "3 strikes" law that subjects those convicted of 3 
violent felonies to mandatory life sentences.

Critics say the 22-year-old law is so narrowly written it has never been used, 
and the legislation significantly enlarges the list of crimes that could make 
an offender eligible.

(source: Albuquerque Journal)






CALIFORNIA----new death sentence

Prisoner Gets Death Penalty for 2012 Halloween Night Murder ---- A prisoner who 
orchestrated the Beverly Grove Halloween night 2012 murder was sentenced to 
death for killing a witness and lying in wait.


A prisoner who arranged the 2012 murder of a witness against him in a robbery 
case was sentenced to death today. Michael Thomas, 50, was convicted of murder 
Sept. 8 for the killing of 42-year-old Erik Poltorak.

Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry upheld the jury's recommendation of the 
death penalty on Friday.

Judge Perry denied a motion for a new trial and an automatic motion for a 
reduced sentence. In addition to convicting Thomas of murder last week, jurors 
found true special circumstances allegations of killing a witness and lying in 
wait.

The victim, Poltorak, had been burglarized on Aug. 13, 2011. He was a witness 
who planned to testify against Thomas in that invasion robbery case.

The 3 who Thomas coerced into murdering Poltorak are also serving time in 
prison. They include gunman Allen Williams, 23 years old with no prior criminal 
record at the time of the crime. Thomas's niece, Jessicha Thomas, was 20 years 
old at the time and also had no criminal record, and Yvonne Keith, 49-years-old 
at the time of the murder, who also pressured the other 2 into committing the 
murder.

Williams is serving a life sentence without the chance of parole. Jessicha 
Thomas testified against her uncle, Michael Thomas, in exchange for a leniency 
agreement for 2nd-degree murder. Yvonne Keith is also serving a life sentence 
without the possibility of parole.

On Oct. 31, 2012, Poltorak was shot to death on his doorstep in Beverly Grove.

At the beginning of the trial's penalty phase, Thomas asked his attorneys not 
to defend him against the death penalty.

"I don't care for anyone to know about my life ... to go into detail about my 
upbringing, my family," Thomas, who spent time in juvenile detention, told 
Judge Robert J. Perry. Thomas asked that he be excused from court during the 
penalty phase, and Perry allowed him to be taken back to jail over the 
objection of prosecutors.

During his opening statement of the penalty phase, Deputy District Attorney 
Bobby Zoumberakis played a 911 call in which a co-worker who arrived at 
Poltorak's house and found him shot in the face and back of the head sounded 
hysterical and was hyperventilating.

She tied the murder to Poltorak's pending court appearance, telling the 911 
dispatcher, "I'm sure he did it, he did it," of the man charged in the robbery 
case, without citing Thomas by name.

Poltorak "left behind a 15-year-old daughter who suffered from autism," 
Zoumberakis said, telling the 6-man, 6-woman jury they would hear evidence of 
the impact of the crime on her life.

"She was 9 years old when he was killed ... she can't talk about it to this 
day," Zoumberakis said.

Zoumberakis said Thomas manipulated his 3 co-defendants to carry out Poltorak's 
killing and had a long history of criminal and violent acts, including threats 
to Culver City police officers, a stabbing and using a shank in jail.

"This is the type of conduct and this is the type of (individual) that warrants 
it," Zoumberakis told the jury, asking them to recommend the death penalty 
rather than life in prison without the possibility of parole. A decision which 
both the jury and judge upheld.

(source: patch.com)






OREGON:

Costs prompt lifting of some Clatsop County court security


Visitors to the Clatsop County courthouse can once again enter the building 
without being screened after some security measures were lifted due to costs.

Tougher security procedures were instituted last week in time for the county's 
1st death penalty trial in more than a decade, The Daily Astorian reported 
(https://is.gd/mfmf2g ).

But the Sheriff's Office and other officials balked at the extra cost and 
resources needed to screen everyone entering the court.

Sheriff Tom Bergin said his deputies are already overworked due to patrol duty 
and covering shifts at the jail, and his office does not have the personnel for 
shifts at the courthouse.

"It all boils down to money, and we don't have the resources or the manpower," 
Bergin said.

A metal detector has been set up outside the courtroom where Randy Lee Roden is 
being tried in the killing of 2-year-old Evangelina Wing, who died of blunt 
force trauma in December 2014. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

County Manager Cameron Moore said the county is in ongoing talks to find a 
permanent solution to secure the courthouse after Roden's trial.

Moore estimates it could cost $300,000 a year to fully secure the courthouse. 
He also said it is unclear how much officials want to inconvenience people 
trying to enter the courthouse.

"This is the public's building. We don't want to make it too difficult," Moore 
said. "It's finding the balance between appropriate access and appropriate 
security."

(source: Brown County Democrat)






USA:

These states will vote on repealing or reinstating the death penalty on Nov. 8


20 states and the District of Columbia have no death penalty. On Nov. 8, 3 more 
states will vote on whether to keep capital punishment alive in their state.

California, Nebraska and Oklahoma all have measures on the ballot this year, 
according to Ballotpedia.

Death penalty vote in California

California has 2 questions on the ballot. A vote for Proposition 62 would 
repeal the death penalty altogether. Proposition 66, if it passes, would keep 
the death penalty in place, but speed up the appeals process and require death 
row inmates to work in prison and pay restitution to their victims' families.

Death penalty vote in Oklahoma

Oklahoma voters will decide on State Question 776. An affirmative vote on State 
Question 766 would add to the state constitution and note that the death 
penalty is "not cruel or unusual punishment."

Death penalty vote in Nebraska

Nebraska has already banned the death penalty, but this year, Referendum 426 
will ask voters if they want to retain the ban, or repeal it to allow the death 
penalty.

Capital punishment and the presidential race

Where do the presidential candidates stand?

Hillary Clinton doesn't mention the death penalty on her campaign website.

But she has been on the record on the subject. During a Democratic primary 
debate co-moderated by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Clinton said she favors a federal 
death penalty, according to an NBC News transcript.

MADDOW: Do you still support capital punishment, even if you do so reluctantly?

CLINTON: Yes, I do. And, you know, what I hope the Supreme Court will do is 
make it absolutely clear that any state that continues capital punishment 
either must meet the highest standards of evidentiary proof of effective 
assistance of counsel or they cannot continue it because that, to me, is the 
real dividing line.

I have much more confidence in the federal system, and I do reserve it for 
particularly heinous crimes in the federal system, like terrorism. I have 
strong feelings about that. I thought it was appropriate after a very thorough 
trial that Timothy McVeigh received the death penalty for blowing up the 
Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Donald Trump also doesn't lay out his position on the death penalty on his 
campaign website. But he has said that he wants a mandatory death penalty for 
people who kill police officers.

"One of the first things I'd do in terms of executive orders, if I win, will be 
to sign a strong, strong statement that will go out to the country, out to the 
world, that anybody killing a policeman, a policewoman, a police officer, 
anybody killing a police officer: Death penalty is going to happen, okay?" he 
said in December in New Hampshire, according to the Washington Post.

(source: mic.com)

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

Former prosecutors say spree killer Gary Sampson's death penalty trial was 
solid


Gary Lee Sampson took 3 lives in less than a week. Now, the convicted spree 
killer from Abington is trying to save his own.

Jury selection began Wednesday for the retrial of the 2003 penalty phase of 
Sampson's murder trial when the jury recommended and the judge agreed to a 
death sentence.

But prosecutors who handled the original trial say the case against Sampson is 
as solid as it was 12 years ago.

"I believed back then that the jury got it right, and I hope that the jury will 
get it right again," said Michael Sullivan, who investigated 2 of Sampson's 
murders in the summer of 2001 as the Plymouth County district attorney and 
later pushed for the death penalty as the U.S. district attorney for Boston.

The jury, which attorneys will continue putting together next week, will be 
charged with weighing some 238 mitigating factors raised by Sampson defense 
attorneys against the 14 aggravating factors argued by prosecutors and reach a 
unanimous decision about whether Sampson, now 57, deserves to die for murdering 
19-year-old Jonathan Rizzo of Kingston and 69-year-old Philip McCloskey in his 
week-long rampage. The trial for a 3rd victim was held in New Hampshire.

Prosecutors have said they plan to call at least 71 witnesses, including 
several members of the Rizzo and McCloskey families.

Members of both families did not respond to requests for comment this week.

History of substance abuse and crime

Sampson was born on Sept. 29, 1959, to an Abington firefighter who married 
Sampson's mother when she was 18. He did poorly in school, started drinking and 
smoking marijuana when he was 12 and was arrested when he was 20 for robbing a 
72-year-old man at knifepoint and stealing his car.

More than 2 decades later, after years spent wandering from state to state and 
occasionally robbing banks, Sampson returned to Abington and set up camp near 
his childhood home in woods where he used to play. His defense attorneys say he 
was looking for his estranged family; town officials suggested he had returned 
to seek revenge against an Abington police officer who arrested him as a 
teenager.

Then on July 24, 2001, a retired pipefitter named Philip McCloskey was driving 
through Weymouth when he saw Sampson hitchhiking and agreed to give him a ride. 
Once inside the car, Sampson pulled a knife on the 69-year-old McCloskey and 
forced him to drive to Marshfield, where he killed him in woods off Route 3A.

3 days later, on the Plymouth waterfront, Sampson forced his way into a car 
driven by 19-year-old Jonathon Rizzo, a college student from Kingston, and made 
him drive to Abington, where he tied Rizzo to a tree and sliced open his 
throat. The next day he drove to New Hampshire, broke into a cabin on Lake 
Winnipesaukee and strangled Robert Whitney, the 58-year-old caretaker, to 
death.

3 days later, after another carjacking, Sampson called Vermont State Police and 
surrendered. Prosecutors said he admitted to the 3 murders immediately.

The jurors now being empaneled in U.S. District Court in Boston will not be 
deciding whether Sampson is guilty of the murders, just whether he should die 
for them. Sampson pleaded guilty to the charges in 2003; it was only his death 
sentence that was thrown out years later after it was discovered that one of 
the sentencing jurors had lied repeatedly under oath about her background.

In addition to a new jury, Sampson has a new defense team that will face off 
against new prosecutors in a penalty phase that will be overseen by a a new 
judge, U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin. Some witnesses who testified 
in the first trial have since died - including McCloskey's ex-wife, Ann - and 
others who were too young to testify the 1st time are now old enough to take 
the stand.

New evidence of violent behavior

But the only new evidence that jurors are likely to hear will come from guards 
and prison staff at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, where 
Sampson has been housed for the last decade. Prosecutors plan to use the 
employees' testimony about Sampson's conduct, which they say includes violence 
against guards and death threats made toward prison staff and other inmates, as 
evidence that Sampson will continue to pose a threat toward others if he is not 
put to death.

"That's going to hurt him a lot," said attorney George Vien, who was part of 
the prosecution team that won a death sentence for Sampson in 2003.

Vien, now a private attorney with Donnelly, Conroy & Gelhaar in Boston, remains 
confident that the aggravating factors in the murders and the evidence behind 
them are still strong enough 12 years later to convince another jury that the 
death penalty is warranted for Sampson. Those factors include the "heinous, 
cruel and depraved" way he is accused of killing Rizzo and McCloskey; the 
planning that went into Rizzo's carjacking and murder; the 3rd murder in New 
Hampshire for which Sampson is serving a separate life sentence; the danger he 
poses to prison staff; and how the murders of Rizzo and McCloskey have affected 
their families and friends.

"The relevant facts remain the same," Vein said. "He committed horrendous 
crimes against completely innocent, wonderful people and there's nothing 
redeeming about him."

Sampson's attorneys, however, plan to argue that there is. Among the 238 
mitigating factors that they plan to present is what they describe as a history 
of mental illness and brain damage, a troubled relationship with his father, 
early exposure to drugs and alcohol as a child and frequent beatings at the 
hands of his brother and his peers. They say he is also in poor health, with 
hypertension, hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver, and likely won't live long 
enough to be put to death.

But perhaps the most important mitigating factor is the fact that on July 23, 
2001 - the day before he killed Rizzo - Sampson called the FBI and asked them 
to pick him up before he got into more trouble. The FBI later admitted that the 
employee who answered the call had accidentally dropped it and never recorded 
it or reported it to anyone else.

Sullivan, the former U.S. attorney, said the new prosecution team could also 
benefit from the fact that Mark Wolf, the federal judge who oversaw Sampson's 
1st trial and later threw out his death sentence, is no longer on the case. 
Sullivan said that like many of the family members of Sampson's victims, he 
felt that Wolf had a bias against the death penalty that was reflected in some 
of his rulings.

Now a private attorney living in Abington, Sullivan said he still thinks about 
the case all the time, particularly when he drives past the Abington Ale House 
near where Rizzo's body was found, or his alma mater, BC High, where Rizzo and 
Sullivan's own children attended school. He said he knows that the prolonged 
Sampson trial has been painful for the Rizzo and McCloskey families, but he 
sticks by his decision a decade and a half ago to pursue the death penalty, 
which both families advocated for, instead of settling for a life sentence.

"I thought it was the right decision 15 years ago and I still believe today it 
was the right decision," he said. "People from the community should decide Gary 
Lee Sampson's ultimate fate - either life or death."

(source: The Enterprise)