[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----NEB., IDAHO, NEV., WASH., USA

[Rick Halperin]

June 4




NEBRASKA:

The Public Pulse: Vengeance that can become murder by the state


June 1 Public Pulse writer Bernadette Mollica ("Let's clear out death row") 
made a great case for those of us against the death penalty. When she stated, 
"Let's stop beating around the bush, an eye for an eye," she was right on 
point.

The death penalty is plain and simple vengeance and murder by the state. When 
she writes, "We have a lot of executions to carry out, let's stop beating 
around the bush," she makes the point about how such a rush to carry out the 
death penalty has put many innocent people on death row who later have been 
proven innocent - some, unfortunately, after they were executed by the state.

Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan changed his position on the death penalty when 
law students at Northwestern University proved the innocence of a number of 
people on death row.

No study has ever shown the death penalty to be a deterrent. It works well as a 
deterrent to the person executed. But so does life in prison without parole.

China, Iran, North Korea and Yemen are the company we keep as far as countries 
that still allow the death penalty. That says a lot.

Mike Dohmen, Hickman, Neb.

(source: Letter to the Editor, Omaha World-Herald)






IDAHO:

It is time to reevaluate Idaho's death penalty


No person in Idaho has been sentenced to die since 2004, but this hiatus may 
come to a close as some prosecutors seem poised to pursue new capital cases. 
Given the realities, it seems fitting to once again reevaluate Idaho's current 
death penalty. When examining the effectiveness of capital punishment in Idaho, 
one must objectively measure the system's efficiency in terms of risks, costs, 
and its ability to meet its purported goals.

Idaho has a poor record with the death penalty. 3 people have been executed, 
and one has been released from death row because he was wrongly convicted. 
Based on this error rate, the risks are clearly far too high, especially when 
you consider that we are talking about people's lives, but unfortunately these 
dangers cannot be sufficiently mitigated. Wrongful convictions often stem from 
mistaken eyewitness testimony, reliance on unscientific forensic methods, and 
official misconduct. Due to the human element, wrongful convictions can and do 
still happen.

In addressing the Idaho death penalty's financial cost, a 2014 study found that 
Idaho's capital cases are far more expensive and take much more time to resolve 
than similar non-capital cases. The study measured the death penalty's costs in 
time rather than dollars. Researchers found that capital trials took 20.5 
months to reach a conclusion while non-capital trials took 13.5 months. The 
appeals also require more time too. The State Appellate Public Defenders office 
spent about 44 times more hours on a typical death penalty appeal than on a 
life sentence appeal (almost 8,000 hours per capital defendant compared to 
about 180 hours per non-death penalty defendant).

Time is money. All the extra time spent on death penalty cases means higher 
costs to the state. Data gathered from neighboring states with the death 
penalty help quantify these costs. In Utah, for example, each death penalty 
case costs around $1.6 million more than a life-without-parole case. Washington 
state faces a similar problem according to a Seattle University study that 
found that each death penalty case costs an average of $1 million more than a 
similar case where the death penalty was not sought ($3.07 million versus $2.01 
million). This is taxpayer money not well spent

One of capital punishment's alleged primary goals is to deter future crime, but 
does it actually achieve this goal in reality? In fact, recent studies find 
little evidence that the death penalty is an effective deterrent against crime. 
The murder rate in non-death penalty states has remained consistently lower 
than the rate in states with the death penalty, and the gap has grown since 
1990. Furthermore, a 2008 poll of 500 police chiefs in the United States found 
that police chiefs ranked the death penalty last when asked to name what was 
"most important for reducing violent crime." Again, we see that the death 
penalty falls short of living up to its purpose, but it fails in other ways 
too.

The death penalty is a lengthy process. It is as such because a life is on the 
line. Therefore, mistakes cannot be made. Although necessary for ensuring 
accuracy, this lengthy process only prolongs the grief and suffering felt by 
victim's families. Capital punishment is often seen as a means of attaining 
retribution for the crimes committed against a family's loved one. However, the 
long and stressful process ultimately delays the victim's family's efforts to 
begin healing. Additionally, because the death penalty is pronounced to be 
reserved only for truly 'heinous' crimes, a lesser sentence sends the message 
to victim's families that their loss is not as important as others.

It is evident that the death penalty wastes taxpayer money and falls short of 
meeting its primary goals - deterring crime and helping victims' families. In 
referring to their pledge for fiscal responsibility, the Idaho GOP platform 
states, "Programs which are not cost effective or have outlived their 
usefulness should be terminated". The death penalty in Idaho certainly fits 
that description, and needs to go.

(source: Katherine Dwyer was a recent Charles Koch Institute Communications 
Fellow with Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty, a Project of 
EJUSA. Dwyer has spent much of the past year residing in 
Idaho----magicvalley.com)






NEVADA:

Public defender pens book on experiences representing death row inmates


Defense attorney Michael Lasher answers his phone. There's a convicted killer 
on the line.

David Bollinger is housed on death row inside the Ely State Prison, where he 
has spent 23 years for the murder of an elderly Reno couple. The jury found the 
former temporary worker had kidnapped and killed James and Rose Vertres in 
1992, setting their bodies on fire.

Now Bollinger languishes inside a small solitary cell, awaiting his turn to 
die.

He dials Lasher from a pay phone not 60 feet from his medieval lockup. Dressed 
in his prison blues, he stares straight ahead at a cinder-block wall during a 
rare bit of contact with the outside world.

Lasher is Bollinger's lawyer. At age 50, he's a slight man with boyish, 
oversized glasses and curly red hair. He resembles a young Buddy Holly or Woody 
Allen, a teen still awaiting his growth spurt, but with the emotional scars of 
somebody who's been around.

The veteran capital punishment defense attorney took on Bollinger's case after 
moving to Las Vegas in 2015 as a new member of the federal government's public 
defender's team. He took the call inside his cluttered downtown office, whose 
passageways reek from the decay of case files that line the walls.

These phone meetings are haphazard. Frequent prison lockdowns triggered by 
inmate violence means Lasher can wait for calls that never come. More often, 
Bollinger and Lasher rely on rudimentary "kites" traded through the prison 
communication system.

"Hey, David," he says informally, as though greeting a fellow lawyer, or a 
drinking buddy.

They discuss Bollinger's appeal for a retrial that cites judicial bias based on 
the public defender's alleged conflict of interest. The lawyer says he took a 
rare Sunday off the day before, a break from the relentless grind of the 
appeal. Bollinger is glad.

Lasher knows what he faces. The case contains "bad facts," including that the 
couple's bodies were found in flames inside a dumpster. Still, thanks to his 
research, he sees questions unanswered and issues unresolved.

Bollinger maintains his innocence. Evidence suggests Vertres may have killed 
his ex-wife, who had divorced him while he was in jail for harassing a 
prostitute with a weapon. Vertres had often brought home hookers while his wife 
was at work, the investigation showed. The wife had been beaten by her husband 
and contemplated running away.

Now Lasher seeks a 2nd day in court for his client - as he seeks his own 
salvation.

Insights and infamy

Lasher is turning his legal experiences into literature. He's writing a memoir 
that's largely confessional, exploring how his work with convicted killers has 
triggered his own existential doubts.

The book's title, "They Eat Their Own," is not a reference to the incarcerated 
but to the lawyers who represent them; a legal clan from which Lasher has for 
years desperately sought acceptance. He calls them The Tribe, a deeply flawed 
collection of "do-gooder twits, death penalty abolitionists and street 
fighters," lawyers often wrongly accused of "fighting dirty on behalf of 
murderers."

Lasher's work is a delicate legal and emotional dance. As he fights for 
society's damned and depraved, he confronts his own inadequacies. Despite 25 
years as a lawyer - 17 trying capital cases - the sheer complexity of the 
appeals, public prejudice against convicted killers and his own fear of failure 
conspire against him.

Knowing that hundreds of convicted killers have already been exonerated 
nationwide creates a strange pressure. It makes him question his grit and 
tactics, makes him feel as clumsy as a dirt farmer performing a finely timed 
waltz.

Late at night, nursing a rye Manhattan inside his downtown home, he admits he's 
as emotionally broken as the condemned men he visits - someone who seeks refuge 
in risk-taking and self-loathing, convicted killers and troubled relationships.

As a child, Lasher suffered an overbearing father who undercut his self-esteem. 
He later sought out doomed relationships with damaged women. He's a pain junkie 
whose dogged work ethic disguises his perceived weaknesses. He's a man still 
trying to keep his impulses in check. In some ways, he believes, he too is 
condemned.

Digging deep

Like the denizens of death row, Lasher has made bad choices.

"By the grace of God I didn't end up in their place - as regular folks with a 
raw end in life," he said. "I've had my share of heightened moments of emotion 
where things could have gone very badly. But they didn't. That's why I'm still 
on the outside representing the men who are in there."

Along with his work as an attorney, Lasher has also spent years as an 
investigator, exploring the backgrounds of his death row clients. He has 
traveled the world, seeking insights into their violent behavior, hoping to 
uncover new facts or an unreported witness account that might reduce a death 
penalty to life in prison. He once traveled to South Korea in search of a 
condemned man's hard-to-find birth mother to learn about his difficult 
childhood.

Lasher is unique in this respect; few lawyers do their own digging. Most don't 
want to sit on a stained couch, "worrying about getting fleas," he wrote in his 
manuscript. "They don't want to watch a witness sob for 3 hours and then be hit 
up for 40 bucks."

His work has led him to rifle through fetid garbage cans, "using a stick to paw 
soiled clothing." On a stakeout, he wolfed down Chinese food with his hands. He 
ventured into a biker's bar seeking an elusive witness, a tough guy who 
resembled a "fat overripe tomato" with dirty blond hair, stuffed into a black 
leather jacket.

There have been moments of Fellini-like farce. Once, as Lasher interviewed a 
witness in his home, a caged parrot began chirping in Spanish and English. A 
pair of dwarfs then appeared to poke him in the ribs.

In chapters like "How to find those creeps who don't want to be found" and "The 
death charm offensive: how to push your real feelings down into your gut for a 
good interview," he shows how to scour leads from criminal court files and 
facts found in car registration, bankruptcy, sex-offender and hunting-license 
records. He corners sketchy characters and sometimes elicits answers once he 
finds them.

He tells of getting a "scared pensioner to unchain the door, let you in, and 
talk about things like living in South Central's war zone," about getting "a 
reticent family to reveal painful, embarrassing secret beatings and alcoholism 
and incest," and shows "how to poke around in a rough neighborhood without 
getting jumped."

Lasher observes strangers closely, like a social worker. "Some folks are really 
poor, living in squalid deep woods trailers with pirated electricity or violent 
housing projects with their own subterranean societies. Some live in banal 
suburbs, which bum me out more than a sand-blasted house in the middle of an 
empty block in the high desert."

Lasher trusts no one; not judges, prosecutors, lazy defense lawyers and public 
defenders, witnesses, or even some of his hundreds of clients. As an 
investigator, he pursues not whodunits, but "why-dunits" - crimes involving 
torture, shuddering violence and multiple victims. Innocence, he says, isn't 
the issue in most of his cases.

Still, Lasher believes in redemption. His clients may have done reprehensible 
things, but he does not see them as reprehensible people.

'Putting it out there'

Investigator Dave Presson has known Lasher for 20 years. "I knew he was an 
outcast, so I didn't think anything would surprise me."

Then he read the manuscript.

"He's really putting it out there," he said. "It's vulnerable and it's raw."

A few years ago, Lasher decided to write the tell-all memoir, to take readers 
down a psychological rabbit hole into the realm of capital crime.

There were colorful personalities, including the three female bank robbers who 
complained how their male counterparts got all the glory, and the Mafia money 
collector "whose every sentence is shouted inches from my face, spit obscuring 
my glasses."

He wrote on nights and weekends, producing pages that tracked his evolution 
from a novice Northern California public defender to delving into the psyches 
of killers.

They included a schizophrenic white supremacist who murdered a hairdresser and 
a plastic surgeon, because he thought they promoted false Aryan vanity people 
did not deserve; Richard Allen Davis, who raped and murdered 12-year-old Polly 
Klaas in California, and a drifter who killed a university police officer with 
a hatchet.

Early in his career, Lasher thought he wanted to become an environmental 
attorney. He had graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and 
the Hastings School of Law in San Francisco. One summer, he scored an 
internship in the federal public defender's office, representing drunks, 
brawlers and thieves in Yosemite National Park.

He litigated before the cantankerous Federal Judge Donald Pitts, a bearded, 
long-haired, former smoke jumper with an affinity for bolo ties, colorful vests 
and a 160-pound Rottweiler named Bailiff, who accompanied him to court.

"I was hooked," Lasher said.

For 12 years, he worked for the California Appellate Court Project, defending 
death row inmates housed at the infamous San Quentin prison. He later took a 
Washington desk job for a group seeking adequate resources for condemned 
killers. But he missed the trenches - working 1-on-1 with men facing death. He 
moved to Las Vegas in 2015 to rejoin the fight.

'Win-at-all-cost mentality'

By then, Lasher was well into his book, in which he argued the injustice of 
capital punishment. He wrote of how race plays a role, with blacks being 
executed at a much higher rate than whites, how faulty witnesses and 
prosecutors withholding crucial evidence have unfairly rendered men to their 
deaths.

"Capital punishment brings out people's worst behavior," he said. "Cops, 
prosecutors and judges want convictions ... Justice tends to be greater for 
convicted killers. Prosecutors justify their means, saying, 'If this guy didn't 
do this one, he did others.' It's a win-at-all-costs mentality."

In his writing, Lasher found he couldn't detail his work without also revealing 
himself.

"The book became an exorcism of the things I've witnessed," he said. "It's also 
a way to process some of my own demons - similar to a 12-Step program."

He asked himself hard questions: "Why was I trying to save the condemned?" and 
"Why was I driven to protect mostly nasty broken people?"

As a boy, Lasher had stood up for the underdog. But something happened, twisted 
experiences that turned him into a trauma junkie, who focused on the pain of 
others to avoid his own issues.

He was a timid boy who gently assuaged his nuclear-physicist father's mercurial 
moods, when he threw insults and oil-smeared work rags inside the family's Los 
Angeles home. Lasher was later bullied at school. Maybe his trauma does not 
reach the level of his condemned clients, but it is there nonetheless.

For years, Lasher also sought out distant, damaged women - a cocaine addict, 
narcissist and survivors of sexual assault. He convinced himself that "if I try 
really, really hard, and do the dishes and make money and hang on her every 
flicker of emotion, maybe, just maybe, she will like me."

Strangely, his co-dependency made him a better investigator. He didn't judge 
the people he interviewed, not on the outside anyway.

"The witness kicks his dog? Not a peep from me, even though I'm raging inside," 
he wrote. "... A measure of both my skill and depravity, reviled witnesses 
never know of my disgust and ire, buried as they are under my drive to build a 
client's case, under my personal and occupational need for approval."

The Tribe

He also questioned the hyper-critical death-row defense community he calls The 
Tribe. "They can be mean," he wrote. "Maybe the stress of the work turns us 
against each other. And maybe the work attracts bent people, myself included. 
People who want to save reviled killers, destroyers of society."

But Presson believes that Lasher stands out from his own tribe of death row 
lawyers. "People gravitate to professions and roles that fit their 
personality," he said. "But other members of the tribe just don't have the 
level of consciousness that Lasher does."

Lasher's own flawed past is a passport into the daily terror in which his 
condemned clients grew up; belittled, beaten with an extension cord or a 
skillet.

The stepmother of 1 killer tied him to a bed naked; his father made him eat out 
of a dog bowl as punishment. Lasher once photographed the pole to which his 
client was tied in his basement.

Even the trauma junkie had seen enough.

"Another basement of horror and fear," he wrote. "How many god----- scary 
basements will my career hold?"

In the end, Lasher refrains from judgment - of himself and his community of 
killers, those men he views as flawed, but still human.

He describes 1 client as "large ruddy-cheeked, inarticulate, generous, kind and 
prone to weeping in the visiting cage at San Quentin."

He admits he only knows the current version of the man, not his drug-use years. 
"He was probably a mean jerk then, judging by his crazed mug shot," he wrote. 
"Fixed stare, wild hair, mouth a rictus of anger."

He talks of another killer who has his personal phone number, whom he greets 
with an obligatory hug. Once, Lasher took his grown daughter to visit the 
onetime bank robber, who now resembles a grandfather with his graying beard and 
wire-frame glasses.

The condemned man took time to advise the young woman on choices not to make.

Lasher sees redemption in that.

Trust and thanks

David Bollinger doesn't want to die; not now, not like this - strapped to a 
gurney and force-fed poison. There's little joy in his life as he awaits his 
date.

But there is this: He trusts his lawyer.

He and Lasher discuss the progress on their appeal. "I spent the weekend 
psyching myself up," Bollinger confides. But his emotions are runaway. In 
response to Lasher's optimism, he responds, "We shall see. I'm trying not to 
get overly excited about it."

He thanks the lawyer for his dogged belief they can win. "He's willing to go 
out of his way to investigate the facts of the case," Bollinger said.

20 years ago, Bollinger spent a night in the holding cell next to the Ely 
prison's death chamber. He doesn't want to go back.

He struggles to describe what the experience felt like. "Even the question is 
difficult to contemplate," he says. "I really can't define it in my own mind."

As he talks, Lasher listens, tipped back in his chair - a now less-broken man 
contemplating the plight of broken people.

(source: Las Vegas Review-Journal)






WASHINGTON:

A lawyer for the toughest cases


When dealing with killers, the best piece of advice Roger Hunko ever received 
was upon first meeting them, look for something you like about them.

For Hunko, 70, the venerable Kitsap County defense attorney whose expertise on 
death penalty trials involved him in some of the more notable and heinous 
Washington state cases through the past 3 decades, it was usually easy.

"I look at people and I like them," said Hunko, who is retiring after first 
being licensed in Washington state in 1979. "Although I never expected to know 
as many murderers as I do."

Hunko had been co-counsel on the case of Gabriel Gaeta, charged in the 2014 
rape and murder of 6-year-old Jenise Wright, but he was released at his own 
request earlier this week. Last month the state Supreme Court ruled on another 
of his cases, and he has one more hearing, a sentencing for a drug case.

After that, he has no plans to practice again. In fact, he has no real plans at 
all except to close on the sale of his home and roam the country in a 24-foot 
RV with his wife, Kathleen, and their 2 dogs, Olive and Twinks.

"Just going to go, gypsy life," Hunko said. "I like not having a plan."

For somebody known almost as much for his skill as an attorney as his mellow, 
likable demeanor, it may be the most fitting retirement. After all, Hunko took 
the law school entrance exam on a whim, after a night of drinking tequila and 
playing dice, only to score in the top 9 % in the country.

"I wasn't hung over, I was still drunk," Hunko said.

He estimated that he had been on about 30 aggravated murder cases, and of the 
death penalty cases he took, only 1 client was condemned to die - Robert Lee 
Yates, convicted in 2002 of murdering 2 women in Pierce County and number 5 of 
8 on the state's death row.

Those who worked for him at his firm in Port Orchard, and those who argued 
against him in cases where the stakes couldn't be higher, said Hunko was a 
straight-forward advocate - professional and passionate - but never underhanded 
or abrasive. He lifted weights competently in his younger days and wears loud 
shirts, but he is not known for flamboyance.

"He really practiced from the heart," said Kevin Kelly, now chief deputy 
prosecutor in Kitsap County District Court. In 1996, Kelly was 1 of the 
prosecutors who argued against Hunko in Kitsap County's last death penalty 
trial, the case of Steven R. Morgan.

Tina Robinson, Kitsap County prosecutor, was hired by Hunko in 2006 for her 1st 
job out of law school. She said he taught her to love her job as a defense 
attorney and how to relate to clients as people.

"He will fight till the end for his clients," she said. "He is a great guy with 
a great heart and he is a very good attorney."

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on the 4th of July, Hunko was a twin. His brother, 
Robert, died as an infant. He was raised in New Jersey and served 4 years in 
the Air Force before roaming the country in a Volkswagen bus. He eventually 
made his way to Pocatello, Idaho, where he went to college, majoring in 
history, and he later decided to give law school a shot. He says now that at 
the time, he didn't know what lawyers actually did.

He attributes his success to his time spent working as a bartender, where he 
became a student of human nature, as well as his love of puzzles. In ways, 
working a case is like solving a puzzle, he said.

"Kind of put it together and make it look right," he said, adding later that in 
his early days he languished over preparations, only to change course.

"I found out that I couldn't look at notes and talk to jurors, so I didn't do 
it anymore, I just ad lib it," he said.

His opposition to the death penalty cemented following the execution of Ted 
Bundy by the state of Florida in 1989. Although the death penalty is still on 
the books, Gov. Jay Inslee imposed a moratorium on executions in 2014.

In keeping with his quirky sense of humor, Hunko subscribed to an especially 
lurid tabloid for reading material in his law firm's waiting room. Following 
Bundy's execution, the tabloid published autopsy photos of Bundy. That did it.

"I thought anything that cheapened life that much can't be good for society," 
he said.

He tried death penalty cases all over the state and was the final attorney who 
represented Mitchell Rupe, who became famous for being the condemned man too 
heavy to hang. Rupe was convicted of killing 2 during an Olympia bank robbery. 
A judge found that hanging Rupe - hanging was then the state's only means of 
executions - could result in him being decapitated, which amounted to cruel and 
unusual punishment.

Rupe had been sentenced to die in Thurston County twice before, but after those 
verdicts were overturned Hunko got the case, and in 2000 he was able to 
persuade a single juror to vote no. To receive death a jury must vote 
unanimously, so Rupe received life in prison, where he died 6 years later.

Contrary to the urban legend, Hunko says Rupe's attorneys never encouraged him 
to keep eating as a way of staving off his execution. Hunko noted that 
lawmakers quickly authorized lethal injection, and that Rupe's weight was due 
to a medical condition that made him retain water.

He testified about the matter in front of state Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn.

"I told her, but she didn't believe me, it's more salacious to say he ate his 
way through it," Hunko said.

Hunko keeps a sense of humor about his cases, but he said some of the facts 
would get to him.

"The hardest ones are when children are killed," he said. "Sometimes after 
looking at the pictures I have to wait a few days before I go see my client 
because I'm still angry. But somebody has to do it."

Although he refuses to admit to any plans beyond a trip to Canada, and then 
down to California, he loves food and said he may consider writing a cookbook.

(source: Kitsap Sun)






USA:

Life or death? Con-ui case will likely focus on penalty phase


Chino - as he's known on the streets - is a New Mexican Mafia member, drug 
dealer and convicted gang assassin.

Starting this week, a federal jury will begin considering whether the 
executioner should be executed.

By all accounts, the evidence is substantial that Jessie Con-ui fatally beat 
and slashed Correctional Officer Eric Williams, a 34-year-old Nanticoke native, 
during an ambush attack at U.S. Penitentiary at Canaan on Feb. 25, 2013. The 
bigger question is whether the dozen men and women on the jury can unanimously 
agree if he should die for the crime.

"Did you ever try to get 2 people to agree on something?" said Jarrett 
Ferentino, a Luzerne County homicide prosecutor who is not associated with the 
Con-ui case. "Try getting 12 to agree to take someone's life."

The guilt phase of Con-ui's trial, which is set to begin with opening 
statements Monday, is expected to feature video of the grisly 9-minute attack. 
Prosecutors say Con-ui, 40, can be seen stabbing Williams more than 200 times 
with a pair of shanks - pausing at one point to wash and wrap a cut to his hand 
before sitting and chewing a piece of gum and then returning to his cell.

A blood trail led to Con-ui's cell door, where officers found him in possession 
of a clear, 6-inch plastic shank, according to prosecutors. Con-ui also made 
incriminating statements, indicating he attacked Williams because he was 
angered over a previous cell search, prosecutors say.

He later admitted he "overreacted" to the search, court documents allege.

>From early on, prosecutors have described their case as containing 
"overwhelming" evidence, including the video, eyewitness testimony, DNA 
evidence and Con-ui's own admissions. More recently, Con-ui's own defense team 
has acknowledged there is "overwhelming evidence of guilt" and that "jurors 
will become eyewitnesses to the crime" after viewing the surveillance footage.

Al Flora Jr., a defense attorney and former Luzerne County public defender, 
said it's possible Con-ui's lawyers won't put up much fight during the guilt 
phase, instead concentrating on trying to prevent Con-ui from getting the death 
penalty.

"They don't want to aggravate the jurors, and they don't want to convey an 
impression that they are just presenting frivolous arguments or evidence," 
Flora said. "Their object is to maintain a level of credibility as lawyers 
throughout that case so the jury does not get turned off by them."

If Con-ui is convicted, the trial will enter a penalty phase to determine his 
fate. Many legal experts agree a number of factors will be difficult for the 
defense to overcome.

"I think that the biggest problem for the defense is going to be that he's 
incarcerated, he's isolated, and yet he still found a way to kill somebody, 
allegedly," Wilkes-Barre defense attorney Theron J. Solomon said. "So I think 
that they're going to have a hard time with that with the jury."

A major obstacle the defense will face is getting the jury to see beyond 
Con-ui's past, which prosecutors say includes previous assaults, involvement in 
a murder conspiracy targeting a cop and a conviction for executing a fellow 
gang member in Phoenix in 2002 that landed him a life sentence.

One of the strongest elements working in the prosecution's favor is that Con-ui 
allegedly killed a young law-enforcement officer in the line of duty while 
already serving life in prison, said Peter Paul Olszewski Jr., a former Luzerne 
County district attorney and judge.

"What do you do with somebody like that?" Olszewski said. "The life sentence 
the 1st time around didn't prevent another killing. That's pretty weighty, 
good, substantive, meaty-type evidence."

The defense team likely began looking for ways to overcome Con-ui's past during 
the extensive jury selection process that began April 24, Flora said.

"What you're looking to do is get 1 or 2 jurors who, despite indicating that 
they will impose death if warranted by the law and the evidence, nevertheless, 
when it comes right down to it, they will struggle to do that," Flora said.

Prosecutors also would have been keenly observing potential jurors' demeanors 
as well as their family histories, work records and educational background in 
an effort to weed out "people pleaser" types who are easily swayed and "stealth 
jurors" who give deceptive answers in an effort to land a spot on the jury, 
Ferentino said.

"You want to find someone that can hold fast to their ideals, that can keep an 
open mind when considering the facts of the case and agree that they can follow 
the law," Ferentino said.

Assuming prosecutors get that, they could still have an uphill battle in 
securing the death penalty. Flora said prosecutors have a heavy burden to meet 
because jurors have to unanimously agree on aggravating circumstances. That's 
not the case with mitigating factors.

"You don't have to show that mitigating evidence is in any way tied into the 
actual crime itself," Flora said. "As the Supreme Court says, a human life is 
unique, and the death penalty itself is the most severe form of punishment that 
we have. So in imposing that form of punishment, we have to look at the 
uniqueness of the background and character of each individual defendant before 
we can impose death."

The defense will typically employ a mitigation specialist to look at a 
defendant's family history, upbringing, educational background - anything that 
can help humanize the defendant, he said.

Ferentino, who was on the team that prosecuted notorious Kingston Twp. killer 
Hugo Selenski, said that because the law allows the defense to bring up a wide 
range of information about a defendant's background, attorneys go to great 
lengths to demonstrate mitigating factors that could spare their clients the 
death penalty.

"I've had defense attorneys bring in 2nd-grade teachers to say a child didn't 
have a Halloween costume, just in an effort to speak to one juror," Ferentino 
said. "Some of it is legitimate. Some of it, I think, is to pull on the 
heartstrings of a weak juror."

To counter the deluge of sympathetic testimony jurors are likely to hear about 
Con-ui's past and the harsh conditions he's experienced in prison, prosecutors 
will need to impress upon jurors that Con-ui continues to be a threat to guards 
and inmates despite his previous life sentence, said Olszewski, who 
successfully argued child killer Michael Bardo should die for molesting and 
suffocating his 3-year-old niece.

No Luzerne County jury has imposed a death sentence since the 1993 Bardo 
verdict.

"You stand before the jury and you're asking 12 folks from your community to 
take the life of another member of the community," Olszewski said. "For a 
prosecutor, you have to have 100 % conviction in your case and belief in your 
case. You have to be zealous about your cause and speak with a passion to 
impress the jurors with why this case is so unique and why this defendant 
deserves the ultimate penalty."

Even if the jury agrees with the prosecution, however, Con-ui's fate will be 
far from certain. Last year, Bardo was resentenced to life without parole after 
a split ruling by the state Supreme Court granted him a new sentencing hearing.

"You never know. Even if (death) is given, it's such a maze to navigate through 
the appellate state and federal process," Ferentino said. "The question after a 
jury's imposition of death is, 'Will the death be carried out?' There's no 
doubt this individual, once they're convicted, will die in the hands of the 
state. The question is, will they die at the hands of the state?"

Timeline of events leading up to Con-ui's trial

-- 1995 - Jessie Con-ui enters the Arizona state prison system for a string of 
vehicle thefts and gets acquainted with the New Mexican Mafia.

-- Fall 1999 - Con-ui is alleged to have agreed to stab other inmates at 
Arizona State Prison Complex - Florence.

-- June 2000 - Con-ui is alleged to have assaulted an inmate with a metal food 
tray at Arizona State Prison Complex - Winslow.

-- Sept. 19, 2001 - Con-ui emerges from prison a fully engulfed carnal, or 
brother, of the New Mexican Mafia.

-- Aug. 25, 2002 - Con-ui executes a fellow carnal, Carlos L. Garcia, outside 
an East Phoenix laundry facility for failing to fulfill his obligations within 
the organization.

-- May and June 2003 - Con-ui allegedly conspires in planning a number of 
murders, including that of a law enforcement officer, but police arrest him in 
a drug trafficking operation before the acts are committed.

-- 2005 - Con-ui is sentenced to 11 years in prison for drug trafficking and 
is charged in Garcia's murder.

-- June 2008 - Con-ui pleads guilty to 1st-degree murder and is sentenced to 
25 years to life in prison.

-- October 2009 - Con-ui allegedly threatens to hurt a correctional officer at 
U.S. Penitentiary at Victorville.

-- November 2010 - Con-ui allegedly stabs another inmate with a shank while at 
U.S. Penitentiary at Pollock.

-- Feb. 25, 2013 - Correctional Officer Eric Williams, a 34-year-old Nanticoke 
native, is brutally murdered at U.S. Penitentiary at Canaan in Wayne County. 
Prosecutors say Con-ui charged at Williams, knocked him down a staircase, then 
stabbed him more than 200 times and stomped his head.

-- March 1, 2013 - Hundreds of fellow correctional officers from Canaan and 
across the country gather in Nanticoke to pay their respects to Williams and 
his family. U.S. Sen. Bob Casey announces the federal Bureau of Prisons has 
agreed to expand a pilot program allowing officers to carry pepper spray.

-- March 4, 2013 - A fellow correctional officer from Scranton fatally shoots 
himself in a wooded area. Williams' family responds with a statement saying the 
family "blames nobody for the death of Eric except the assailant who attacked 
him."

-- March 11, 2013 - Con-ui is publicly identified as the suspect in Williams' 
death as a federal judge assigns him a pre-eminent death penalty-certified 
attorney.

-- June 25, 2013 - A federal grand jury indicts Con-ui on murder and 
contraband-possession charges.

-- July 16, 2013 - Con-ui pleads not guilty to the charges.

-- Oct. 2, 2014 - The U.S. Attorney's Office announces prosecutors intend to 
seek the death penalty against Con-ui.

-- Feb. 27, 2015 - The Bureau of Prisons expands the pepper spray pilot 
program to include all staff in high and medium security federal institutions.

-- Nov. 30, 2015 - Con-ui's attorneys say in court filings that he would plead 
guilty if the U.S. Attorney's Office forgoes a capital prosecution. Prosecutors 
counter that they will persist with the capital case, which Williams' family 
supports.

-- March 9, 2016 - President Barack Obama signs the Eric Williams Correctional 
Officer Protection Act, allowing thousands of federal prison workers to be 
armed with pepper spray. The legislation was cosponsored by Casey and his 
Republican colleague Sen. Pat Toomey.

-- Jan. 28, 2016 - U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo rejects defense 
efforts to have the death penalty declared unconstitutional, allowing the 
capital prosecution to move forward.

-- April 24, 2017 - Jury selection begins.

(source: The Citizens' Voice)