[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, VA., GA., FLA., MO.

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 25



TEXAS----impending execution

Texas Appeals Court Refuses To Block Thursday Execution


Texas' highest criminal court has refused to stop this week's execution of a 
43-year-old man convicted of a suburban Dallas sandwich shop robbery where 2 
employees were fatally shot.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals late Tuesday rejected appeals from 
attorneys for Terry Edwards.

He's set for lethal injection Thursday evening in Huntsville for the 2002 death 
of 26-year-old Mickell Goodwin. The manager of the Subway restaurant in Balch 
Springs, 34-year-old Tommy Walker, also was killed.

Edwards weeks earlier was fired from the shop.

His attorneys insist among several claims that a cousin, not Edwards, did the 
shootings, that Dallas County prosecutors improperly excluded blacks from his 
jury and that he had poor legal help at his trial and during previous appeals.

Edwards still has appeals in the federal courts.

(source: Associated Press)

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

DA asks appeals court to reconsider ruling in Waco death penalty case


McLennan County prosecutors are asking the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to 
reconsider its decision to overturn the conviction and death sentence of a man 
found guilty in a deadly double shooting.

Albert Leslie Love, Jr., was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death 
for the murders of 2 men in 2013 at an apartment complex on Spring Street in 
Waco.

In a Dec. 7, 2016 decision, the appeals court ruled that prosecutors should 
have secured a search warrant instead of a court order to obtain text messages 
used against Love during the trial.

Prosecutors maintain that authorities followed the established practice in 
seeking a court order requiring Love's cellphone carrier to provide the texts 
as well as calls.

"At the time the evidence is obtained there has been no violation of any law. 
It is only an after-the-fact determination that then works to retroactively 
view law enforcement's action to be a violation of the law. The review of the 
actions of law enforcement should be at the time of the action, not in 
hindsight," prosecutors wrote in their motion for a rehearing.

Love and Rickey Cummings were both sent to death row for the March 28, 2011 
ambush-style killings of Keenan Hubert, 20, and Tyus Sneed, 17, who died in a 
hail of bullets as they sat in a car in the parking lot of Lakewood Villas 
Apartments on Spring Street in east Waco.

Testimony in their trials indicated the 2 were killed in retaliation for the 
April 8, 2010 death of Emuel Bowers III, who was shot and killed while sitting 
in his car at a Waco park.

(source: KWTX news)

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

For Elderly Inmates, There's More Than 1 Way to Die on Death Row


Public radio stations from across the state collaborated on this series looking 
at the death penalty in Texas - its history, how it's changed, whom it affects 
and its future. From Texas Standard:

Death row inmates often spend decades between the day they're sentenced and the 
day they're executed. That can be due to many factors - from lengthy appeals to 
the state being unable to get the drugs it needs to carry out executions.

In the meantime, inmates age. Some are dying of natural causes. Such was the 
case last April when 2 inmates passed away - one right after the other.

Texas faces many challenges treating inmates' health on a limited budget. To 
understand, we must look at inmates' overall living conditions. Conditions 
differ between the more than 230 men and the 6 women on death row in Texas.

In a way, the lives of the women on death row are exceptional. They wake up in 
their cells, head out to a job, and then socialize or exercise until sundown 
when they're locked up again.

But the men's day-to-day is very different.

Jason Clark is a spokesperson with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice 
(TDCJ).

He says to understand why men's lives on death row are different, we need to 
backtrack.

"In 1998 Martin Gurule escaped from death row," Clark says.

Gurule drowned in a nearby creek, after escaping the compound where he was 
imprisoned.

Since his escape, things dramatically changed for men on death row. Today, 
they're held in de facto isolation - in tiny cells roughly the size of an 
office cubicle - 23 hours a day. Every day, they get 1 hour outdoors, in a 
cage, with little freedom of movement. Male death row inmates are also 
forbidden from receiving human touch.

Carl Buntion is 72 years old. He has been on death row since 1991.

"I don't get to talk to very many people," he says.

In 1990 Buntion killed Jim Irby, a Houston police officer. Buntion was 
convicted a year later and has been on death row ever since. At 72, he is 
Texas's oldest man on death row.

He is what TDCJ considers geriatric - inmates older than 55. And for these 
people, this living arrangement can have very real implications on their 
health.

"I have all the old man ailments," Buntion says. "I have vertigo, I have 
extremely high blood pressure - they call it Hypertension. I have Hepatitis C. 
Now there's a cure for that but they won't get the medicine for it, I guess 
because I'm on death row. I'm expendable."

Buntion's health issues are unique but his situation is not - 20 % of death 
row's inmates are geriatric.

"Getting to see a real medical doctor is as rare as finding gold on death 
row,??? Buntion says.

Buntion says he's been in pain for a while

"They think I have prostate cancer," he says.

To confirm the diagnosis, he needs to be admitted into a hospital for a biopsy. 
TDCJ partners with the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston - more 
than 2 hours from where Buntion???s held.

In order to get there, TDCJ rules require he travels handcuffed, with his hands 
behind his back.

"But I've got this wrist problem," Buntion says.

Years ago, he broke his hand and arm. TDCJ rules prohibit inmates using slings 
- because they have metal parts. Without a sling, Buntion's bones healed in an 
awkward way. His doctors have exempted him from being handcuffed behind his 
back. But no back cuffs means no ride to the hospital.

"My lawyer is trying to negotiate to get them to let me wear two handcuffs so I 
can get a biopsy - but so far they haven't had any luck," Buntion says.

The TDCJ wouldn't confirm his story, citing privacy laws.

But if his story is true, the health of elderly death row inmates like Buntion 
is not so much determined by the state's ability to provide healthcare, but 
rather by rules the system isn't willing to budge on - whether an inmate is 
geriatric or not.

Every male death row inmate - young or old - is detained, housed and 
transported under the same conditions. Without exception.

Jason Clark knows health problems worsen as inmates get older.

"The biggest driver, typically, for a person and their medical needs or 
services," he says, "is going to be that person's age."

Clark says offenders receive medical care regardless of custody level but 
Buntion's case suggest the rules will not be bent for death row inmates - even 
if, as attorneys and advocates say, it's a matter of life and death.

Wallis Nader is an attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project, a legal aid 
organization that's been very active in the defense of prisoner's rights. She 
says for years, she's been pushing to loosen the housing rules that prevent 
inmates from exercising. She believes those rules exacerbate conditions like 
hypertension - a condition so widespread that half of death row inmates suffer 
from it. But that's just for starters.

"I have heard from inmates who - for example - had to use a wheelchair - and 
because they [TDCJ] didn't have an accessible van they weren't taken to the 
hospital and obviously that's inadequate," Nader says.

Everyone on death row is set to die, so it's a logical question to ask, why 
worry about the health of someone who is already condemned? Nader says because 
this is bigger than death row.

"If you're not sympathetic at all, it goes back to the Constitution and the 
fact that we are protected from cruel and unusual punishment," she says. 
"Failure to provide adequate medical care is considered an extension of that."

In Nader's view, the right to obtain medical care is not about extending the 
life of the condemned, but respecting the rule of law. It's a position the TCDJ 
rejects, pointing to the provisions the state already makes for the care of 
inmates, irrespective of the fact that, for administrative reasons, the oldest 
and most frail on death row often can't access that care.

Buntion's case, like those of other geriatric inmates awaiting execution, 
underscores the prospect of something too ironic to ignore, and perhaps too 
unpleasant to acknowledge: that for those who live just long enough, there's 
more than 1 way to die on death row.

(source: KUT news)






VIRGINIA:

Judge denies motion to strike death penalty, finds Welch breached immunity 
agreement


Prosecutors may seek the death penalty in the upcoming 1st-degree murder trial 
of Lloyd Lee Welch Jr., accused in the abduction and killings of 2 young girls 
in 1975, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Circuit Judge James Updike Jr. also found Welch breached an immunity agreement 
with Maryland prosecutors signed in 2013 by changing his story several times 
with cold-case investigators.

Welch faces an April jury trial, charged with killing Sheila and Katherine 
Lyon, 2 sisters who vanished during a trip to a Wheaton, Maryland, shopping 
mall.

Investigators claim after killing the sisters, he disposed of their bodies in 
Bedford County. The remains have never been found.

Welch's defense team has argued for months in court papers that while Virginia 
statute has a death penalty, that was not the case at the time of the alleged 
offenses in 1975, and the law cannot be applied retroactively against Welch.

A 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Furman v. Georgia, and a later Virginia 
Supreme Court ruling, Huggins v. Commonwealth, made the Virginia death penalty 
statute unconstitutional at the time of the alleged offenses, his lawyers said.

Lawmakers revised the statute to comply with the courts, but the new law was 
not effective until October 1975, after the alleged crimes, they said.

Even though the state now has capital punishment, that cannot be applied to 
Welch's case, defense lawyer Aaron Houchens said. "There was no death penalty 
at the time," he said in court Tuesday.

Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Timothy Griffin said the Huggins case merely 
prevented use of the death penalty in Virginia when, for example, juries acted 
capriciously - and did not act "as a sledgehammer to demolish" capital 
punishment.

Updike said the underlying 1st-degree murder statute to which the varying 
sentencing laws had been attached over the years, the same one used to indict 
Welch, has not changed since 1962, when it was last revised.

All of the statutory changes to how the death penalty could be used since then 
have been procedural, and case law has held such changes may be applied 
retroactively, he said.

Prosecutors also scored a win Tuesday when Updike ruled Welch had materially 
breached an Oct. 16, 2013, immunity letter with the state's attorney for 
Montgomery County, Maryland, by repeatedly telling new and different stories 
over nearly 2 years.

His defense team sought to use the letter, which said his statements could not 
be used against him in a criminal proceeding, to exclude them at trial. His 
lawyers said prosecutors actually had broken the agreement by introducing the 
statements during the grand jury proceeding that led to Welch's indictment.

Commonwealth's Attorney Wes Nance said Tuesday in court Welch's various stories 
to investigators meant he breached a condition of the deal of "being truthful, 
candid and complete."

At different times, Welch told investigators he had only seen the girls taken 
from the mall parking lot; that he had seen them with 1 or more of his 
relatives; and had seen them sexually assaulted in a basement, in different, 
often conflicting accounts told to authorities and some aired in recordings in 
the courtroom Tuesday.

The judge noted Welch at one point on the recordings admitted not being 
truthful. Updike said the changing accounts invalidated his immunity deal.

(source: The News & Advance)






GEORGIA:

The death penalty is Georgia's past, not its future


The state of Georgia has been executing individuals at unusually high rates and 
even outpaced Texas this past year. While Gov. Nathan Deal has recently been 
lauded as a criminal-justice reformer, the pace of executions has unfortunately 
hastened under his watch. 9 people were put to death in 2016 and five in 2015.

At first glance, this may seem to suggest a death penalty resurgence in 
Georgia, but that's far from the case. Solely focusing on these executions 
paints an incomplete picture of Georgia's capital-punishment system. The truth 
is Georgia's death penalty is dwindling so quickly that in a few years, it may 
exist in name only.

While Georgia led the nation in executions last year, these represent the 
conclusion of death sentences often delivered decades ago, but much has changed 
since then, including a steep decline in death sentences. They've waned so much 
that if the current rates continue, Georgia may clear out its death row before 
another individual is sentenced to death. It's been nearly 3 years since a jury 
has condemned a person to die in the Peach State. Our death penalty is dying, 
and many conservatives welcome its end.

Georgia's death penalty usage has brought capital punishment's many 
shortcomings to light, which has led to an increasing number of conservatives 
opposing the death penalty. Nationally, over 155 individuals have been wrongly 
convicted and sentenced to death, and this has happened 6 times in Georgia. 
This is prompting many pro-life conservatives, like myself, to ask, can we 
support such a system that risks innocent life? For me, the answer is an 
emphatic no.

Many are also rightly denouncing the death penalty as being fiscally 
irresponsible. Numerous studies have shown that it costs millions of dollars 
more than life without the chance of release, and it's even led to tax 
increases right here in Georgia. In the 1990s, Lincoln County raised taxes 
multiple times to bankroll a capital trial. Eventually, the county 
commissioners tired of the rising costs and refused to fund the remainder of 
the proceedings. This didn't sit well with the presiding judge who threw the 
commission in jail until the members awkwardly agreed to approve the 
appropriations.

Capital punishment is more than just a hazard to innocent life and an 
incredibly costly program. It is quite simply a public-policy failure. There's 
no evidence suggesting that it protects society, and it often even harms those 
who deserve justice the most - murder victims' families. Because of the 
uncertain, complex, and protracted legal process, many of them have insisted 
that it does more harm than good. It forces them to regularly relive the most 
painful moments of their lives in a legal process often without any clear end 
in sight, which can prevent the healing process.

Georgia's death penalty has been a disastrous, dysfunctional experiment. 
Capital punishment is supposed to be reserved for the worst-of-the-worst, but 
that's not how it operates in the Peach State. Since 2015, Georgia has executed 
a born-again Christian who counseled her fellow inmates, a veteran with PTSD, a 
man with a very low IQ, and someone who had been convicted nearly 37 years 
before. While they were involved in terrible crimes, these individuals don't 
represent the most heinous offenders, and their executions served no 
penological purpose or societal benefit.

Georgia has quite clearly demonstrated that it shouldn't be trusted with the 
death penalty. It also seems that the state can't even be expected to purchase 
legal execution drugs. In 2011, the federal government seized the Peach State's 
drug stash because it was suspected of illegally acquiring the chemicals - an 
act that would land any average citizen in prison.

Despite all of these problems, trends in Georgia show that capital punishment 
appears to be in an irreversible decline, which is a positive development for 
many conservatives. In fact, the Georgia Conservatives Concerned about the 
Death Penalty recently launched in order to educate Georgians on capital 
punishment's failures as well as advocate for its repeal. This is just the 
latest sign that the death penalty will remain part of Georgia's past, not its 
future.

(source: Opinion; Marc Hyden of Cobb County is the national advocacy 
coordinator of Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty, a Project of 
EJUSA. He previously worked for the National Rifle Association in 
Florida.----The Newnan Times-Herald)






FLORIDA:

Death penalty still on table for accused wife killer


A St Johns County man accused of murdering his estranged wife and her friend in 
2015 could still face the death penalty after a judge again denied a motion to 
block the death penalty in his case.

James Colley, Jr. is charged with shooting and killing Amanda Colley and Lindy 
Dobbins -- minutes after he left a courthouse after pleading no contest to 
violating a domestic violence injunction his wife had against him.

Colley's attorneys asked twice that the death penalty be taken off the table, 
contending that recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, and changes made by 
the Florida Legislature, exclude any application of the death penalty in 
Colley's case.

But both motions have been denied by the judge.

Colley's case, like many others in Florida, has ground to a halt, as the courts 
wait for the Legislature to rewrite the death penalty law to require a 
unanimous jury recommendation.

There is no trial date set for Colley.

(source: news4jax.xom)

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

Proposal could resolve key death penalty issue


Lawmakers are inching toward getting Florida's death penalty back on the books 
after a series of court rulings left the state without a way to condemn to 
death defendants convicted of capital crimes.

House Judiciary Chairman Chris Sprowls on Tuesday filed a measure that would 
require unanimous jury recommendations for death sentences to be imposed, in 
response to a Florida Supreme Court ruling in October.

Lawmakers are attempting for the 2nd time in a year to resolve infirmities in 
Florida's capital sentencing laws.

Last January, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state's death-penalty 
sentencing system as unconstitutional because it gave too much power to judges, 
instead of juries. The ruling, in a case known as Hurst v. Florida, effectively 
left the state without a death-penalty sentencing process.

Florida lawmakers hurriedly rewrote the statute last year, requiring jurors to 
unanimously find that at least 1 aggravating factor exists before a defendant 
can be eligible for a death sentence and requiring at least 10 jurors to 
recommend death for the sentence to be imposed.

The 10-2 recommendation was considered a compromise between House and Senate 
leaders. The Senate wanted unanimous jury recommendations, while the House 
backed a proposal pushed by prosecutors that would have required at least 9 
jurors to recommend death.

At the time, Florida required simple majorities of juries to recommend death 
for the sentences to be imposed, making it 1 of only 3 states - along with 
Delaware and Alabama - that did not require unanimous jury recommendations. 
Delaware has since abolished the death penalty.

Defense attorneys repeatedly warned Florida lawmakers that the "evolving 
standards of decency" - a term of art used by the courts to analyze death 
penalty laws - increased the risk that anything other than unanimity would be 
doomed.

As they predicted, the Florida Supreme Court in October struck down part of the 
state's new law, finding that it was unconstitutional because it did not 
require unanimous jury recommendations for death sentences.

Sprowls, a former prosecutor, said Tuesday his proposal (HB 527) is aimed at 
resolving the issue of unanimity.

"What we've done is take a minimalist approach that ensures the 
constitutionality of the death penalty in accordance with the opinion and most 
importantly it ensures that we have a working death penalty statute in the 
state," Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, said.

Sprowls' bill mirrors a proposal filed by Senate Criminal Justice Chairman 
Randolph Bracy, D-Orlando. That bill (SB 280), filed nearly 3 weeks ago, has 
not yet been slated for a hearing.

Sen. Rob Bradley, who played a key role in passage of last year's death-penalty 
bill and is also a former prosecutor, said he expects the Legislature to 
quickly approve a measure to restore the death penalty.

"The Senate supported unanimous verdicts in the last session, and we ultimately 
compromised on 10-2 with our friends in the House. It's not a surprise that the 
Florida Supreme Court did what they did," Bradley, R-Fleming Island, said. 
"It's time to move forward in an expeditious manner to conform our death 
penalty statutory laws to the clear direction that has been offered by the 
Florida Supreme Court."

The state and federal court rulings have resulted in a flood of litigation 
filed on behalf of some of the nearly 400 inmates on death row, as well as 
challenges to capital cases already underway.

"I expect that lawyers will continue to fight issues regarding the death 
penalty in Florida, but this legislation will knock out a significant portion 
of that litigation at the trial level in the future," said Pete Mills, an 
assistant public defender in the 10th Judicial Circuit who also serves as 
chairman of the Florida Public Defenders Association Death Penalty Steering 
Committee. "Regarding unanimity, this goes a long way toward taking Florida out 
of its outlier status among the other states who continue to have a death 
penalty."

Neither the House nor Senate measures address another issue raised by the 
Florida Supreme Court: whether juries must unanimously decide that the 
aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating circumstances in the defendant's 
case.

Bradley did not say whether the Senate planned to include that component in its 
bill, but said he anticipates the proposal will "have some modifications" 
before it is finalized.

"We want to err on the side of caution because we want this to be the final 
statement on this matter. We don't need to be revisiting this issue year after 
year," he said.

(source: St. Augustine Record)






MISSOURI----stay of impending execution denied

Convicted triple killer Mark Christeson's execution set for January 31


A convicted triple killer from central Missouri is scheduled to be executed 
next Tuesday in Bonne Terre.

37-year-old Mark Christeson has been convicted of 3 counts of 1st degree murder 
and is under 3 death sentences.

Christeson and his cousin, Jessie Carter, were convicted of killing Susan 
Brouk, 36, and her 2 children near Vichy in mid-Missouri's Maries County in 
January 1998.

The children were Adrian, 12, and Kyle, who was 9.

Authorities say Ms. Brouk was raped and her throat was cut. She was thrown into 
a pond and drowned.

Kyle Brouk was stabbed and held under water, to drown. Adrian died from 
suffocation, and her body was also dumped in the pond.

Christeson and Carter were both captured in the state of California in February 
1998.

Carter later testified against Christeson. Carter, 36, is serving a life 
sentence at the maximum-security prison in Bonne Terre, without the possibility 
of parole.

Christeson is currently incarcerated at the Potosi Correctional Center in 
Mineral Point. The Missouri Department of Corrections will have to transport 
him to Bonne Terre, where executions take place.

The Missouri Supreme Court scheduled the January 31 execution back on October 
12.

Christeson's attorneys are trying to block the execution. He's scheduled to die 
by lethal injection.

(source: missourinet.com)

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

Stay denied for Missouri inmate facing Jan. 31 execution


A federal judge in Kansas City has denied a Missouri inmate's stay of his 
upcoming execution.

Mark Christeson, 37, is scheduled to be put to death on Jan. 31 for the 1999 
killings of a woman and her 2 children near Rolla.

Last week, a federal appeals court ordered the judge to hold a hearing on 
Christeson's claim that he was abandoned by his former attorneys when they 
missed the deadline to file an appeal on his behalf.

The hearing was held last Friday in front of District Judge Dean Whipple in 
U.S. District Court in Kansas City.

Based on testimony at the hearing, Whipple found that Christeson's lawyers had 
worked diligently on his behalf and their miscalculation of the appeal deadline 
did not constitute abandonment.

(source: kansascity.com)