[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., N.C., FLA. ALA., MISS.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 24



PENNSYLVANIA:

State High Court Upholds Death Penalty For 'Greensburg 6' Ringleader


The state Supreme Court has upheld the 1st-degree murder conviction and death 
penalty imposed on a man in the torture death of a mentally disabled woman in 
western Pennsylvania.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that the commonwealth's highest court 
said Wednesday that there was enough evidence for the Westmoreland County jury 
to convict 30-year-old Ricky Smyrnes and to sentence him to death.

Smyrnes was 1 of 6 people charged in the February 2010 death of 30-year-old 
Jennifer Daugherty in a dingy Greensburg apartment. He argued that evidence was 
improperly allowed and jurors didn't correctly weigh penalty phase evidence.

In 2013, it took a jury just under 4 hours to condemn Smyrnes to death. 
Investigators called him the ringleader of the so-called "Greensburg 6."

The state Supreme Court last fall overturned the death sentence imposed on 
27-year-old Melvin Knight, saying jurors should have been told that he had no 
criminal record.

(soruce: KDKA news)






NORTH CAROLINA:

Defense says Wake County man who murdered in-laws, shot wife 
'snapped'----Closing arguments made in Wake County double murder


Closing arguments wrapped up Thursday in the trial of a Wake County man who 
murdered his in-laws and shot his estranged wife in the face and chest, nearly 
killing her. The jury will resume deliberations on Friday morning at 9:30 a.m.

Lawyers for Nathan Holden don't dispute that he did it. They're trying to keep 
him off death row.

Holden is charged with 1st-degree murder in the fatal shootings of 57-year-old 
Angelia Smith Taylor and 66-year-old Sylvester Taylor near Wendell in April 
2014.

He also shot his estranged wife LaTonya Allen as the couple's 3 children were 
huddled in a nearby closet listening.

In his closing, prosecutor Jason Waller outlined the couple's troubled history, 
including multiple episodes of domestic violence by Holden before the 
shootings, and how Allen had filed for a restraining order and was working 
towards getting a divorce. He said Holden refused to accept that the marriage 
was about to end.

"It's about hate. It's about selfishness. It's about hating someone that took 
something from you," said Waller.

But Holden's defense argued he should be convicted of second-degree murder, 
saying the attack was not premeditated.

"He didn't want it, didn't plan for it to happen," offered defense attorney 
Elizabeth Hambourger. "Nate did snap."

The couple separated back in December 2013.

The doctor who operated on Allen's chest wound called her survival miraculous 
during testimony earlier in the trial.

In court Friday, a social worker said that when she interviewed Holden two days 
after the murders he told her that "they got what they deserved."

Social worker Larna Haddix told jurors Holden blamed Allen for the crime.

"'All this was her fault. If she just would have answered the phone,'" Haddix 
explained. "That he continuously tried to call her all day. He called her and 
called her and she wouldn't answer the phone. And if she would have answered 
the phone none of this would have happened."

She then inquired about why he would take it out on his in-laws.

"I asked him why he would do that, you know, they were very nice people," 
Haddix said, to which Holden reportedly replied, "'What's done is done. They 
got what they deserved.'"

(source: WTVD news)






FLORIDA:

Sievers in court after judge rules he can't hand-pick death penalty lawyer


Mark Sievers, who is accused of orchestrating the 2015 killing of his wife, 
Teresa, made a brief appearance in Lee County Circuit Court in Fort Myers on 
Thursday after a judge ruled Wednesday that Sievers' lawyers could not 
hand-pick a public, death-qualified attorney to help represent their client.

After the state attorney's office announced in June that prosecutors would be 
seeking the death penalty against Sievers, his private defense attorneys, 
Michael Mummert and Antonio Faga, filed a motion in late December asking Lee 
Circuit Judge Bruce Kyle to appoint Gregory J. Messore, a death-qualified 
criminal trial attorney, as Sievers' co-counsel.

Mummert and Faga argued in their Dec. 29 motion that although Sievers was being 
represented by private lawyers, his case "is an exceptional circumstance where 
court-appointed counsel is necessary and constitutionally required."

The motion asked Kyle to appoint Messore to Sievers' case, "not merely because 
Mr. Sievers is unable to bear the costs of retaining two lawyers, but because 
the Defendant's Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel 
mandates Mr. Messore's appointment." Sievers had paid Mummert and Faga at the 
onset of his case but has run out of money since his February 2016 arrest, his 
lawyers argued last year.

But Kyle, who in November had declared Sievers "indigent," or unable to pay for 
certain expenses associated with the trial, issued an order Wednesday that if 
Sievers wished to be considered for an appointed co-counsel, he would have to 
be willing to accept "appointed counsel as provided for by statute."

"Defendant has no entitlement to appointed counsel of his choice," Kyle wrote.

During Thursday's status hearing, where Sievers appeared in court for less than 
5 minutes, Kyle reiterated Wednesday's order.

"The statutes are in place," Kyle said. "If he wants a death-certified 
appointed lawyer, he needs to go through the same process as everybody else 
does."

In Wednesday's order, Kyle outlined the process: First, a public defender is 
appointed. If the public defender has a conflict, then regional counsel is 
appointed. If regional counsel has a conflict, then a private counsel from the 
registry of attorneys who have entered into a contract with the Judicial 
Administrative Commission, a taxpayer-funded organization that provides 
administrative services on behalf of judicial-related entities, is appointed.

Mummert said he asked Kyle to appoint Messore because his team works well with 
him.

"We filed our motion because this was someone with whom we have a good working 
relationship," Mummert said after Thursday's hearing. "We're going to be faced 
with the unknown now, and there's always a bit of trepidation when you don't 
know who it is that we're working with."

Jimmy Ray Rodgers, who is 1 of 2 Missouri men accused of carrying out the 
killing of Sievers' wife, appeared before Kyle moments before Sievers to 
schedule his next case management hearing during a similarly brief appearance.

Sievers, 48, was arrested about 6 months after the arrests of his childhood 
friend Curtis Wayne Wright, 48, and Rodgers, 26, were announced. In May 2016, a 
Lee County grand jury indicted Sievers and Rodgers on first-degree murder 
charges in the June 2015 killing of Teresa Sievers. Mark Sievers and Rodgers 
have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Wright pleaded guilty to a 2nd-degree murder charge and agreed to cooperate 
with prosecutors in exchange for a 25-year prison sentence.

Investigators believe Mark Sievers coordinated with Wright to kill Teresa 
Sievers at the couple's home in Bonita Springs. The indictments say Wright then 
enlisted the help of Rodgers to commit the crime.

Teresa Sievers, a well-known doctor in Southwest Florida, was found bludgeoned 
to death at her home the day after she returned from a family trip to New York. 
Her husband and the couple's 2 daughters were in Connecticut at the time she 
was killed.

Mark Sievers and Rodgers are scheduled to appear again in court for a case 
management hearing May 4.

(source: Naples News)

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

Aramis Ayala pledges change in how circuit considers death penalty cases


In a debate Thursday between Orlando's top prosecutor and public defender, new 
State Attorney Aramis Ayala said she is looking at rethinking how the 9th 
Judicial Circuit considers death penalty cases, while Public Defender Bob 
Wesley urged her not to change policies.

Ayala, elected on a judicial reform platform last fall as the top prosecutor 
for the Orange and Osceola counties' 9th Circuit, told the Tiger Bay Club of 
Central Florida that she intends to have her office review policies dictating 
when to pursue death penalty prosecutions, and when to not.

"I think it is something that has to be addressed. I admit that our system is 
broken and we need to have something in place, a process by which we determine 
whether or not to proceed," Ayala said.

Wesley, whose office clearly opposes death penalty prosecutions, responded by 
defending the recent past practices of the 9th Judicial Circuit State 
Attorney's Office He essentially argued that the system there has not been 
broken, that he prefers it to what's going on in other parts of the state, and 
that he's very concerned if Ayala intends to change things.

"We've had a very, very rational approach to the death penalty in our community 
for many years," said Wesley.

"It has not been sought randomly or capriciously here," Wesley continued. 
"There's room for good dialogue. But if the prosecutor tries to ratchet it up 
and said she is seeking death, she just spent a half million dollars of your 
money for our preparation. And by doing it as a negotiation ploy, to not pull 
off it the day before a trial is worrisome. We have not had that culture here.

Ayala takes over from State Attorney Jeff Ashton, a fellow Democrat who also 
ran on a reform platform when he was elected in 2012. The death penalty cases 
that Wesley's office is dealing with, and has dealt with for most of the past 4 
years, came from Ashton's policies.

'The cases I have with death penalties right now, are guys that are 50 or 
older, that have prior homicides," Wesley told Tiger Bay. "That might be the 
kind of case that might be, in most any jurisdiction, targeted. And we're not 
giving up on any of them, and we're working them up. But we don't have 23 year 
olds that had a bad argument with someone else."

Ayala did not get a chance to follow up, and when asked later to clarify her 
statements about a broken system and her expectations for reform, she declined 
to elaborate for now.

The issue offered what was perhaps the strongest difference between Ayala and 
Wesley, also a Democrat, though the 2 dug into their natural confrontational 
positions on a few other points ranging from domestic violence prosecutions to 
hit-and-run prosecutions.

Still, the death penalty case may have raised confusing assumptions, based on 
who Ayala is, and the judicial reform pledges she had made during her 2016 
campaign and to which she renewed pledges Thursday.

Ayala is the 1st African American state attorney in Florida's history. She has 
expressed sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement and concern for judicial 
reform involving minority communities, saying that she cannot un-see, 
un-unexperience or unlearn all that she has seen, experienced and learned as a 
black woman.

Yet much of criticism of the death penalty has surrounded its typical 
disproportionate application to black and other minority suspects. It's 
possible the reform Ayala is considering would amount to reining in its use 
even more, but she did not say.

During the meeting, she said said that when her office develops new guidelines, 
she will go public with full disclosure.

"That is something not to be taken lightly. I don't take it lightly," she said. 
"And I will present what our office comes up with when the time permits."

(source: floridapolitics.com)






ALABAMA:

Senate votes to end judicial override in capital cases


The Alabama Senate Thursday overwhelmingly voted to end the practice of 
allowing judges to overrule jury sentences in death penalty cases.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Dick Brewbaker, R-Montgomery, passed the chamber 30 
to 1. It now moves to the House of Representatives.

The wide margin of approval came as something of a surprise for a bill that 
needed a tie-breaking vote to get out of committee on Feb. 8. Brewbaker said 
after the vote that senators "got educated" about what the bill does.

"It wasn't an anti-death penalty vote," he said. "It was cleaning up a 
procedure detrimental to the jury system and that calls in to question the 
integrity of jurisprudence in Alabama."

Alabama is the last state where judges can override sentences imposed by 
juries. Critics say that the practice puts pressure on judges to impose stiff 
sentences based on election considerations. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia 
Sotomayor in 2013, writing in dissent in an appeal of Mario Dion Woodward's 
death sentence for the 2006 murder of Montgomery police officer Keith Houts, 
said override "casts a cloud of illegitimacy" on sentencing decisions.

Barry Matson, the director of the Office of Prosecution Services, suggested at 
a hearing on a similar House bill last week that judges might be able to make 
necessary decisions about the death penalty that jurors find difficult. Sen. 
Trip Pittman, R-Montrose, who voted against the bill, managed to put an 
amendment on Thursday that states the bill is not retroactive.

"I have confidence in all cases that (judges) will use discretion when they 
consider arguments and evidence that support the death penalty," he said.

Brewbaker, however, said he heard no support from judges for judicial override.

"I did not have a single judge, not one who talked to me formally or 
informally, tell me they need to keep judicial override," he said. "They were 
very frank that people use it to pressure them in election years."

Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, who has previously sponsored legislation to end 
judicial override, agreed.

"I have had many judges come to me privately and say 'We don't need this,'" 
Sanders said during a brief debate on the bill. "I have never had one judge 
come to me and say 'Yes, we need this. Let's keep this."

The Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative says that 101 judicial overrides 
in Alabama from 1978 to 2016 changed a defendant's sentence from life in prison 
to death. 11 changed the sentence from death to life. Brewbaker cited 
statistics at the Feb. 8 committee meeting that 12 of 23 overrides conducted 
between 2005 and 2015 came in election years.

The senator said Thursday he did not believe judges were "consciously allowing 
politics" to influence sentencing decisions, but that override "taints the 
process."

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida's use of judicial override in Hurst 
v. Florida, a 2016 decision that left Alabama the only state to continue the 
practice. Alabama's practice was different from Florida's scheme, but Brewbaker 
told the Advertiser in January he expected the the nation's highest court to 
eventually strike down Alabama's use of it.

Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, is sponsoring a House version of the bill 
that not only gets rid of judicial override but would also require sentences of 
death to have the unanimous support of a jury, up from the 10 jurors currently 
required. The House Judiciary Committee approved the bill last week. House 
Speaker Mac McCutcheon, R-Monrovia, said Thursday the juror issue would be a 
point of discussion.

"I think there will be some debate over it, but there's some positive comments 
coming in the House membership about that bill," he said. "I think there's a 
possibility that we could pass it."

Brewbaker called judicial override a "moral issue," saying that a crime of 
violence against an individual was also a crime against the community.

"That's why we have the trial in the community; that's why we draw the members 
from the community and they decide guilt, innocence and punishment," he said. 
"Judicial override flies in the face of all of that."

(source: Montgomery Advertiser)






MISSISSIPPI:

Firing squad removed as execution option in Mississippi bill


A Mississippi Senate panel has removed the firing squad as a proposed execution 
option in case courts block the state from obtaining lethal injection drugs.

Lethal injection is Mississippi's only execution method. The state faces 
lawsuits claiming the drugs it plans to use would violate constitutional 
prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment.

The House voted Feb. 8 for a bill that would list firing squad, electrocution 
and gas chamber as additional methods.

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary A Committee erased the firing squad from 
House Bill 638 .

Mississippi hasn't been able to acquire the execution drugs it once used, and 
its last execution was in 2012.

The Death Penalty Information Center says of the 33 states with the death 
penalty, only Oklahoma and Utah have firing squad as an option.

(source: Associated Press)