[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., FLA., MISS., OHIO, TENN.

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 6



TEXAS:

Texas inmate Duane Buck argues he received death sentence due to his race


The Supreme Court left little doubt Wednesday that it will side with a black 
Texas prison inmate who argues improper testimony about his race tainted his 
death sentence.

The justices often are divided on death penalty cases, but conservatives and 
liberals alike agreed that inmate Duane Buck is entitled to a new court 
hearing.

The only issue in arguments at the high court appeared to be whether to throw 
out Buck's sentence altogether and order a new punishment hearing. The court 
also could merely instruct lower courts to decide whether the death sentence 
can stand.

Buck has been trying for years to get federal courts to look at his claim that 
his rights were violated when jurors were told by a defense expert witness that 
Buck was more likely to be dangerous in the future because he is black.

In Texas death penalty trials, one of the "special issues" jurors must consider 
when deciding punishment is whether the defendant they've convicted would be a 
future danger.

"What occurred at the penalty phase is indefensible," Justice Samuel Alito said 
in a comment that was widely shared by the 6 other justices who asked questions 
Wednesday. Justice Clarence Thomas asked no questions, as is his custom.

The high court appeal is not a broad challenge to the death penalty in Texas, 
the nation's leader by far in carrying out 537 executions since the Supreme 
Court in 1976 allowed capital punishment to resume. Rather, it shows the 
justices' heightened attention to the process in capital cases, from sentencing 
to execution. This is especially true in older cases, like Buck's, in which the 
quality of defense lawyers is at issue.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused attempts by 
Buck's attorneys to reopen the case, blocking them from moving forward with an 
appeal contending Buck's constitutional right to a competent lawyer was 
violated.

Buck's case was among 6 in 2000 that then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn in 
a news release said needed to be reopened because statements by the expert 
witness, Dr. Walter Quijano, were racially charged. In the other 5 cases, new 
punishment hearings were held and each convict again was sentenced to death. 
Cornyn, a Republican, is now the state's senior U.S. senator.

Buck's lawyers contended the attorney general, by then Cornyn's successor Greg 
Abbott, broke a promise by contesting his case, although the 5th Circuit said 
while that circumstance was "odd and factually unusual," they could find 
nothing in the case record to indicate the state made an error or promised not 
to oppose any move to reopen the case. Abbott now is the state's governor.

Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller defended the appellate ruling Wednesday 
because he said there is ample evidence to support a death sentence.

Buck, now 53, does not dispute that he shot and killed his ex-girlfriend, Debra 
Gardner, 32, about a week after breaking up with her, and another man in 1995. 
He also shot his stepsister, who survived.

Buck at the time was on parole after serving about a year of a 10-year prison 
term for delivery of cocaine. He also had a previous conviction for unlawfully 
carrying a weapon.

Still, no justice appeared to endorse Keller???s argument that the appellate 
ruling should be upheld.

Christina Swarns, Buck's lawyer at the Supreme Court, sought at one point to 
place Buck's case in the broader context of issues of race in the criminal 
justice system, telling the justices that the need to eradicate racial 
prejudice "is as urgent today as at any time in our nation's history."

The debate at the court was mostly over how the justices might rule in Buck's 
favor.

The justices could decide there was a "constitutional violation in this case 
and the court of appeals was wrong to say there wasn't," Chief Justice John 
Roberts said. Such a ruling would result in a new sentencing hearing for Buck.

Justice Elena Kagan said a decision instead could focus on the appeals court's 
approach to inmates who wish to reopen their cases in unusual circumstances, 
which would leave the decision on the death sentence to a lower court. Such a 
ruling might affect other inmates in the 3 states covered by the 5th Circuit - 
Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

Kagan cited figures produced by Buck's lawyers that prisoners in the 5th 
Circuit are far less likely to be allowed to pursue their appeals than 
prisoners in other Southern states.

(source: CBS news)

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

Texas cases put spotlight on death penalty


The U.S. Supreme Court heard several key cases from Texas during its last 
session, and this term it is reviewing 2 with life-or-death consequences.

There's no way to predict whether the Texas cases will bring favorable 
decisions for two condemned prisoners, much less lead to a sweeping 
reevaluation of the death penalty. But experts are confident they will at least 
dramatize the difficulties involved in capital punishment.

"Both of these cases are important and raise critical questions about the way 
the death penalty is administered," said Kristen Clarke, president and 
executive director of the Lawyers??? Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

One case, stemming from the conviction of Duane Buck for the 1995 murder of his 
ex-girlfriend and her friend, "is one of the most important cases on the 
Supreme Court docket this year," she said.

That case, Buck v. Davis, which the court heard on Wednesday, raises questions 
about ineffective counsel and racial bias. The other case, Moore v. Texas, 
involves the issue of courts use outdated standards to decide if someone is too 
intellectually disabled to receive a death sentence.

David Dow, a University of Houston Law Center professor and attorney who has 
represented dozens of death row inmates, said "arbitrariness" in death penalty 
cases has previously raised the eyebrows of some justices.

Neither of these cases gets at that "in a straightforward way," he said, making 
it unlikely that the court will issue an historic ruling on the death penalty.

"I would be extremely surprised if the court uses either one to issue some 
broad pronouncement," he said.

Though ruled unconstitutionally cruel in 1972, the death penalty was reinstated 
by the court 4 years later. States have since executed more than 1,400 people, 
and more than 1 in 3 of those have died in Texas.

In a dissent to an Oklahoma lethal injection case last year, Justice Stephen 
Breyer wrote that there is "a serious problem of reliability" with the death 
penalty and that "the imposition and implementation of the death penalty seems 
capricious, random, indeed, arbitrary." Justice Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg 
signed onto the dissent.

"I believe it highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth 
Amendment," Breyer wrote. "At the very least, the court should call for full 
briefing on the basic question."

Randy Schaffer, a Houston criminal defense attorney, said there has been "no 
movement" by the court to undertake such a a review since then.

But Breyer's unease is widely shared. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows 
just 49 % of Americans support the death penalty for those convicted of murder, 
while 42 % oppose it.

Support for the death penalty has dropped 7 % since March 2015 and is at its 
lowest mark in 4 decades, according to the pollsters.

Buck's case, however, is as complicated as the poll numbers are 
straightforward.

After Buck shot his ex-girlfriend and her friend, killing both of them, a jury 
could not sentence him to death unless it concluded unanimously, by law, that 
he presented a future danger.

Buck received a death sentence after his attorney called a psychiatrist who 
testified that because he is black, he was a greater risk of future danger.

That was a crucial mistake, according to the Texas Defender Service, which is 
now representing Buck.

He is asking the Supreme Court to "consider his claim that his trial counsel 
was constitutionally ineffective for knowingly introducing the 
race-as-dangerousness testimony," the Defender Service said in a statement. 
"Mr. Buck is ultimately seeking a new, fair, color-blind sentencing hearing."

While the racial test got the court's attention, Dow said the court ultimate 
will decide a technical issue - whether Buck should be allowed to appeal. Moore 
was sentenced to death in 1980 after killing a clerk in a robbery. His case 
turns on intellectual disability and whether Texas uses outdated standards to 
determine whether someone is eligible to be executed.

Schaffer said the Supreme Court took up both Texas cases on narrow grounds, 
meaning that a big decision on the death penalty isn't likely.

Moreover, he said, "In the end, you do not have 5 votes up there to can the 
death penalty."

Complicating matters is a vacancy on the court created by Justice Antonin 
Scalia's death in February 2016. President Barack Obama's nomination to fill 
the spot, with Appeals Court Justice Merrick Garland, has been stalled in the 
U.S. Senate for more than 200 days.

In the end, Dow said the death penalty's demise is more likely to be gradual. 
"States are just going to quit using the death penalty," he said, because it's 
"just a waste of money."

Kathryn Kase, 1 of 4 attorneys representing Buck, said the justices were "very 
receptive to our arguments" on Wednesday.

And while the constitutionality of the death penalty wasn't before the Court, 
she said the case could influence the national discussion about race.

"It's an opportunity for the court to make a clear and powerful statement that 
the American criminal justice system will not condone racial bias in a death 
penalty case," she said.

(source: Courthouse News)

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

Alexandria Lawyer Saves Innocent Man from Death Row----"It took a team of 
people hundreds of hours to save one life. If we hadn't taken this case, he'd 
be dead."


Alfred Dewayne Brown loves the Alexandria Waterfront. He enjoys visiting the 
shops and restaurants in Old Town and meeting the family of his Alexandrian 
lawyer, Brian Stolarz. Brown is closer with Stolarz than most clients are with 
their attorneys. The 2 are good friends and even have matching tattoos: scales 
of justice. Brown has the number "154" written above his, because Brown is the 
154th inmate on death row to be exonerated. If it weren't for Stolarz, Brown 
would be dead.

Brown joined Stolarz at the Lee Center on Sept. 29 to talk about Stolarz's new 
book, "Grace and Justice on Death Row." Stolarz and Brown spoke about visits to 
death row in Livingston, Texas. In 2003, Brown was accused of murdering 2 
people in Texas, one of them a police officer, in a botched robbery. One of the 
men who'd committed the murder said Brown had pulled the trigger. But Brown 
told the court, and his lawyers, that he was at home the whole time, that he'd 
even called his girlfriend at the time of the murder.

The trial lasted 3 days. Stolarz called it "fast food justice." Brown's 
attorneys pressured him to take a guilty plea deal the state was offering, but 
Brown maintained his innocence. Brown was convicted and sentenced to death.

In 2007, Stolarz was working in his office when a colleague asked if he was 
interested in taking a pro-bono death penalty case. Stolarz travelled to 
Livingston. As soon as he met Brown, he knew the man was innocent.

"It was like meeting me wife or child for the 1st time," said Stolarz. "It was 
like a shot through my body."

Stolarz shared pictures of Brown's cell, narrow enough that standing in the 
center Brown could touch both walls. Brown was in the cell 23 hours each day 
for 10 years. Compared to his cell in the regular jail, Brown said it was like 
going from a dog kennel to a bird cage.

"This place breaks people," said Stolarz. "One guy gouged out his eye and ate 
it. After they took him to the infirmary, he gouged out the other one and ate 
it too."

"I was able to learn how to read," said Brown. "I didn't let the cell get to 
me." "While there, Stolarz said he also saw executions, showing the crowd the 
gurney where the state carries out lethal injections. Stolarz said he promised 
Brown he would never face execution, but wasn't sure at the time if he could 
keep that promise. When he left the jail for the 1st time, Stolarz said he 
threw up in the parking lot when the gravity of what he was about to work on 
hit him. This was the beginning of a decade-long struggle for Stolarz, working 
pro-bono, to prove Brown's innocence.

"The case against Brown was weak from the start. There was no forensic 
evidence, DNA, gunshot residue, or fingerprints that put him at the scene. The 
state's case was built on the testimony of one of the murderers and a witness. 
Stolarz started with the witness, going out to the scene where the witness said 
she'd been and realized there was no way she could have seen Brown clearly from 
that position. Stolarz found and confronted the witness about this, who said 
that she hadn't really seen him but that there was pressure from the District 
Attorney's office.

"The police told her they'd take her kids away unless she testified," said 
Stolarz.

Brown had also had a witness working in his favor, his girlfriend Ericka 
Dockery, who'd said Brown was home the whole day and had called her from home. 
But like the other witness, she was harassed by the District Attorney and even 
jailed for 4 months until she agreed to recant her testimony.

"I interviewed her later and she said she'd had to choose between Dwayne 
[Brown] and her children," said Stolarz.

"Dockery was difficult to find, but she eventually agreed to talk to Stolarz. 
She told Stolarz that Brown had been home at the time of the murders, as she'd 
originally said.

The more he looked into the case, the more Stolarz said he found the signs that 
it had been mishandled by the state. The foreman of the grand jury for the 
police officer shooting case was a police officer, put in place by the judge. 
Brown's lawyer worked at a desk right next to the lawyer representing another 
murder suspect in the case. Brown also has an IQ of 69 and legally someone with 
an IQ below 70 cannot be executed. However, the state turned to Dr. George 
Denkowski who gave Brown 4 extra points on the IQ test because he said Brown 
was stressed at the time. As the investigation continued, Denkowski was 
reprimanded by the state and agreed to stop reviewing death penalty cases. 
Texas also abolished the "pick-a-pal" law that allowed judges to select who 
served on juries.

The overlooked evidence of Brown's innocence kept piling up. Brown had received 
a letter in jail from someone essentially confessing to the murder, who 
included details of the murder that had never been made public.

"Dobbie [Brown], that wasn't nothing but one big set up for you," the letter 
read.

Stolarz also spoke with 1 of the other men accused of murder, who swore an 
affidavit that Brown was not there at the time of the murder.

The final piece of evidence that emerged came out of a retired police officer's 
garage. After years of searching for a document that would prove Brown made a 
call from the phone at home during the murder, a police officer found a record 
buried deep in his garage. The record showed that not only had a phone call 
been made from the house at the time of the murder, but an attached note 
signified that the prosecutors had seen this document and did not share it with 
the defense or submit it as evidence.

Stolarz reached into his pocket and presented the piece of paper.

"We spent 8 years looking for this one piece of paper," said Stolarz. "All that 
work and it was found in a box in a police officer's garage."

Even after the District Attorney agreed to a new trial, it took 17 months 
before the state's Court of Criminal Appeals accepted the motion.

Throughout the struggle to collect enough evidence to prove Brown's innocence, 
Stolarz said there were several moments where he'd get depressed and feel like 
the case was hopeless. It was in those moments, Stolarz said, that Brown would 
give him the reassurance he needed. At first, Brown said it took him 3 years to 
really trust Stolarz, but after he trusted the lawyer Brown said he never once 
lost faith that Stolarz would fulfill his promise to get Brown free.

On June 8, 2015, that promise was fulfilled when the District Attorney's office 
agreed to drop all charges. Now, Brown and Stolarz travel together to talk 
about the experience and advocate for criminal justice reform. On their visit 
to Alexandria, Stolarz said he and Brown went to the waterfront and watched the 
boats on the Potomac.

"It took a team of people hundreds of hours to save 1 life," said Stolarz. "If 
we hadn't taken this case, he'd be dead."

Brown and Stolarz's story resonated with those in attendance at the Lee Center. 
Several spoke to Brown and Stolarz and asked questions. Afterwards, several 
police and sheriff's deputies gathered around the 2 and took pictures with 
them.

"This is a man who was pushed but did not fall," said Hadi Kamara, an 11th 
grader at T.C. Williams High School. "Being here today and listening may create 
some anger and disdain, rightfully so, but that's not why we're here. It's 
about forgiveness.:

"I'm a 26-year veteran of the sheriff's office, I love my job," said Deputy E. 
Todd Stubblefield. "All police are not bad. We have to learn to love and 
forgive. We're in a crisis. We have to learn to work together, whether it's 
Charlotte or Alexandria."

Barbara Swanigan said she has a brother she believes is in a similar situation 
and said listening to Stolarz gave her hope.

"It was like a movie that came to life," said Benjamin Savage. "You have to 
believe in yourself and never give up hope."

Behind Texas and Oklahoma, Virginia is the state with the 3rd most executions. 
Stolarz said many of the legal problems that exist in Texas also exist in 
Virginia.

"We need change in this state too," said Stolarz. "There is inadequate defense 
for people [accused in death penalty cases]."

(source: Alexandria Gazette)






GEORGIA----impending execution

Man Convicted of Killing Cop to Be Executed This Month


A Georgia death row inmate convicted of killing an Atlanta police officer in 
1997 is scheduled to be executed later this month.

Gregory Paul Lawler, 63, is scheduled to be put to death at 7 p.m. on Oct. 19 
at the state prison in Jackson, Attorney General Sam Olens said in statement 
Wednesday. Lawler was convicted of murder in the shooting death of Atlanta 
police Officer John Sowa.

Authorities say Lawler also critically injured Officer Patricia Cocciolone.

Sowa and Cocciolone were trying to bring Lawler's intoxicated girlfriend home 
after he left her in a parking lot following an argument, prosecutors said. The 
officers escorted her up the front walk of the town house and knocked on the 
door.

Lawler opened the door and yelled at the officers to get away from the door. 
Once his girlfriend was inside, he tried to shut the door on them. Sowa put his 
hand up to keep the door from shutting and said they just wanted to make sure 
the girlfriend lived there and that she would be safe.

Lawler had placed an AR-15 rifle next to the door when he saw the officers 
arrive, and he grabbed it and fired at them as they ran away, prosecutors said. 
Lawler fired 15 times and used bullets that can penetrate body armor.

Cocciolone sent a radio distress call and when other officers arrived they 
found Sowa lying hear the sidewalk and Cocciolone on the ground in the front 
yard. Both officers' pistols were still in their holsters.

The responding officers got Lawler's girlfriend out of the apartment and had a 
6-hour standoff with Lawler before a negotiator persuaded him to surrender.

Cocciolone was seriously injured, suffering gunshot wounds to her head, arm, 
pelvis and torso and had to undergo extensive physical therapy. Despite the 
fact that she was still relearning to read and write, she was the prosecution's 
star witness at Lawler's trial in 2000.

If carried out, Lawler's execution would be the 7th in Georgia this year and 
the most in a calendar year in the state since the death penalty was reinstated 
nationwide in 1976. Georgia executed 5 inmates last year and in 1987.

(source: Associated Press)






FLORIDA:

Florida Supreme Court Hears Death Penalty Appeal


The Florida Supreme Court is considering more cases thrown into doubt by a US 
Supreme Court ruling earlier this year.

The Hurst v. Florida ruling invalidating the state's death penalty system 
continues to resonate in Florida's judiciary. Public defender Nada Carey says 
Zachary Wood's conviction under the old procedure merits reconsideration - even 
more so in light of recent actions on an Alabama case.

"On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the death sentence in a case called 
Russell," Carey says. "They granted cert, vacated the death sentence and 
remanded to the Alabama Supreme Court in light of Hurst."

Hurst threw out the old Florida system where the jury issues an advisory 
sentence and the judge makes the final decision. Wood was convicted under that 
scheme, and Alabama still uses a nearly identical system. The high court's 
intervention could signal a more aggressive stance on the death penalty.

But Carey also argues Wood's statements to police make it clear another man, 
Dillon Rafsky, directed Wood throughout the murder.

"He told Mr. Wood to get a shirt, get something to tie his feet," she says of 
Rafsky's instructions to Wood. "[Wood] says at that point he may have punched 
[the victim] - this is in his statement to police - so that Rafsky wouldn't 
think he was going to snitch on him."

"So even in his statement to the police which was right after he got out of the 
hospital there were indications he was scared of this guy."

Committing a crime under substantial domination from another is a mitigating 
circumstance for capital sentencing. If mitigating factors outweigh aggravating 
factors the defendant should be sentenced to life in prison rather than death.

(source: WFSU news)






MISSISSIPPI:

The Murder Trial That Won't Go Away


It was the summer of 1996, another Tuesday morning in July in Winona, Miss. At 
around 9 a.m., Bertha Tardy, the owner of Tardy Furniture Store, called Sam 
Jones and asked him to come in and train 2 new employees. When Jones arrived at 
the store he discovered the bodies of Tardy, Robert Golden, Carmen Rigby and 
Derrick Stewart, all shot in the head. Police found shell casings from 
.38-caliber bullets and a bloody shoeprint at the scene. All 4 victims 
eventually died.

Police interviewed local man Curtis Flowers later that afternoon after they 
placed him at the scene of a burglarized car missing a .38-caliber pistol that 
morning. Flowers consented to a gun residue test as well. Flowers had worked 
briefly at Tardy Furniture at the start of the month before being fired after 
not showing up for a few days. Police interviewed Flowers again 2 days later, 
and he gave a different account of what he did on that Tuesday. Flowers moved 
to Texas that September, but in March 1997, police arrested Flowers, brought 
him back to Mississippi and indicted him on 4 separate counts of capital 
murder.

Witness testimonies in Flowers' 6th trial revealed that $300 to $400 in cash 
was taken from the store during the murders, and witnesses for the state said 
that police found $235 in Flowers' headboard and that Flowers wore a 10 1/2 
size shoe, the same size of the bloody footprint, another state witness said. 
Witnesses also said that the gunshot residue test revealed 1 particle in the 
back of Flowers' right hand. Eye witnesses placed Flowers at both his uncle's 
car missing the .38-caliber pistol and near Tardy Furniture on Tuesday morning. 
1 witness testified that he saw 2 African-American men outside of Tardy 
Furniture that morning. Witnesses for the defense testified that they were 
promised payment or implied they would get reward money for testifying against 
Flowers.

6 trials and 20 years later, Flowers sat in Parchman with an affirmed 
death-penalty conviction from the Mississippi Supreme Court - until the U.S. 
Supreme Court got involved in the case.

Flowers' first 3 trials all ended in convictions and death sentences, but none 
of the convictions stuck. The Mississippi Supreme Court reversed the outcome of 
the first 2 trials due to prosecutorial misconduct, specifically that the 
prosecutor had admitted evidence from other victims in the 1st trial and 
arguing facts not in the evidence in the 2nd trial. It reversed the 3rd trial, 
finding that the prosecutor had racially discriminated in the selection of jury 
members. Then there were 2 subsequent mistrials, in which the juries were more 
racially balanced, but resulted in 2 hung juries, unable to reach a unanimous 
verdict.

In trial number 6, the jury had 11 white jurors, more than the previous 2 
trials, resulting in a conviction and death sentence for Flowers.

Flowers, who is black, appealed his case back up to the Mississippi Supreme 
Court, claiming, in part, that the jury-selection process violated his 
fundamental rights under the Sixth and the 14th amendments. The Mississippi 
Supreme Court disagreed and sentenced him to death by lethal injection in late 
2014.

That court denied Flowers' motion for rehearing at the outset of 2015, so his 
lawyers filed a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court. This summer, 
the high court vacated the State's high court judgment in Flowers' 6th trial 
and remanded the case.

"The case is remanded to the Supreme Court of Mississippi for further 
consideration in light of Foster v. Chatman," the June order from the U.S. 
Supreme Court states.

Of Race and Juries

To understand the history of Flowers' case and the claims of racial 
discrimination in jury selection, it is vital to understand the history of 
landmark cases in the same vein.

When a person goes on trial for capital murder, jury selection is a natural 
part of the process - and a part that can sway the outcome. In 1986, the trial 
of James Kirkland Batson in Kentucky led to new limitations for prosecutors who 
attempted to strike potential jurors.

Both prosecutors and defense attorneys get an equal number of strikes during 
jury selection in death-penalty cases. Often, jurors are removed due to a 
conflict of interest in the case or because they have a predisposed inclination 
to not sentence someone to death on principle.

Removing a potential juror based on race or gender, however, is illegal. The 
Batson case solidified this standard nationally. The prosecutor in Batson's 
case removed all 4 African Americans from the jury pool, and Batson challenged 
the action under the Sixth and 14th Amendments. The U.S. Supreme Court sided 
with Batson and found that while a defendant is not entitled to have a jury 
completely or partially composed of people of his own race, the state is not 
permitted to use its peremptory challenges to automatically exclude potential 
members of the jury because of their race, a case summary from the U.S. Courts 
says.

The Batson case set a new standard: mainly that defendants in a criminal case 
can make an Equal Protection claim if they can show that race was a the reason 
a potential jury member was struck, the state must come forward and give an 
explanation for their exclusion.

If they succeed in proving another non-race-related reason for striking the 
juror, the onus goes back on the defendant. In Timothy Foster's case, his 
lawyers were able to prove their claim with a public-records request.

Foster was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in Georgia, which 
the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed. Foster filed for public records, however, 
which revealed what the U.S. Supreme Court found to be convincing evidence that 
lawyers rejected potential jurors due to their race. "A draft affidavit from an 
investigator comparing black prospective jurors and conclude(ed), 'If it comes 
down to having to pick one of the black jurors, [this one] might be okay," the 
U.S. Supreme Court opinion says.

On June 20, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the Mississippi Supreme 
Court's opinion, which sentenced Flowers for execution, asking the court to 
consider the case in light of the Foster precedent. Alison Steiner, an attorney 
with the Office of the State Public Defender, says the U.S. Supreme Court 
granted review to only a handful of cases - out of dozens. She said the chances 
of getting a petition for writ of certiorari granted in a death-penalty case 
are low.

"Although the opinion is vague, the context suggests that there is something 
about the issue raised in this case (Flowers) that 6 members of the court did 
think (the outcome in) Foster required looking at again," Steiner said.

The Mississippi Supreme Court has set a briefing schedule for Flowers' case for 
this fall and winter. Flowers has filed a separate petition for post-conviction 
relief in the Mississippi Supreme Court as well.

(source: Jackson Free Press)






OHIO:

US Supreme Court rejects appeal from Ohio man on death row


The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand a man's conviction and death sentence for 
the Ohio killing of a youth counselor.

The Springfield News-Sun (http://bit.ly/2d9rVJ5 ) reports the court rejected an 
appeal Monday from 41-year-old Jason Dean, who was convicted in 2006 of killing 
Titus Arnold during a 4-day shooting spree in Springfield.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled 6-1 last year that Dean showed little remorse and 
the circumstances of the slaying during a robbery outweighed any evidence Dean 
presented in his favor.

The state Supreme Court had previously ordered a new trial for Dean even as the 
justices acknowledged substantial evidence of his guilt. That unanimous ruling 
said a Clark County judge was so biased against Dean's attorneys that it 
tainted his trial. Dean was re-tried and sentenced to death.

(source: The Daily Journal)






TENNESSEE:

Death sentence can be arbitrary


Arbitrary administration has been among the factors that persuaded 20 states to 
overturn or abolish the death penalty and convinced governors in 4 others that 
moratoriums were necessary.

The notion that capital punishment is administered in an arbitrary basis has 
for many years fueled the argument that the death penalty is unconstitutional.

Arbitrary administration has been among the factors that persuaded 20 states to 
overturn or abolish the death penalty and convinced governors in 4 others that 
moratoriums were necessary.

Elsewhere, delays in carrying out executions have driven up the cost associated 
with capital punishment, fueling one of the other arguments against it.

The late Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice Adolpho A. Birch, known for his 
unhesitating willingness to rule against capital punishment when necessary, 
gave us one of the more persuasive examples of the arbitrariness problem.

Victim-impact testimony given by relatives during the sentencing phase of 
murder trials "is unsettling because its use encourages the jury to quantify 
the value of the victim's life and urges the finding that murder is more 
reprehensible if the victim is survived by a bereaved family than if the victim 
had not family at all," he said.

This week an article produced by the USA TODAY network provided some hope that 
the arbitrariness argument may progress beyond anecdote and toward a fuller 
understanding of how unfair the death penalty can be.

An analysis by a group of lawyers who examined more than 2,000 1st-degree 
murder cases in Tennessee, where the death sentence was reinstated in 1977, 
showed, for example, that of 2,095 1st-degree murder cases in Tennessee 
identified since 1977, only 193 resulted in death sentences.

And of those 193, 104 - or 54 % - have been reversed, nearly 1/2 because the 
lawyers who represented the defendants at trial were found to have been 
ineffective. Only 0.3 % of those defendants convicted were executed.

The lawyers, compiling evidence for a motion asking Nashville Criminal Court 
Judge Monte Watkins to deem the death penalty unconstitutional, also found that 
only 48 of 95 counties in the state have imposed a death sentence.

Defendants who kill 2 or more victims are 7 times more likely to receive a 
sentence of life in prison or life without parole, they found, even though 
multiple victims are a factor juries can consider in handing out a death 
sentence.

And, perhaps in the most persuasive evidence of arbitrary administration of the 
ultimate punishment for crime, 10 out of 14 capital punishment cases in 
Tennessee over the past 10 years involved African-American defendants.

It would be a tall order, indeed, to eliminate the arbitrariness problem, which 
can batter the emotions of victims' families as it leaves the fate of convicted 
murderers subject to whim.

While some crimes are so heinous that they argue for taking the life of the 
perpetrator, whether that punishment is actually carried out seems little more 
than a roll of the dice.

(source: Editorial, Memphis Commercial Appeal)