[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ALA., IND., MO., OKLA., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 11




ALABAMA:

Family of Lauren Burk hopeful death sentence will stay for convicted 
killer----Lockhart convicted of killing 18 year old Lauren Burk



A vicious murder of an Auburn University student more than 10 years ago is 
resurfacing today.

Lauren Burk was kidnapped in a dorm parking lot after a man pointed at gun at 
her. She was later killed by that man, Courtney Lockhart.

Attorneys for Lockhart say they want the death penalty lifted from their 
client.

While Lauren Burk’s parents are hoping a judge will not overturn Lockhart's 
sentence.

“Lauren doesn’t leave my mind any of the days since we’ve lost her. I miss her 
every minute of the day." said Jim Burk, Lauren’s father.

The father of once Auburn University student and Georgia native Lauren Burk. 
Lauren was kidnapped and murdered back on March 4th, 2008 by Courtney Lockhart.

A jury found Lockhart guilty of capital murder and sentenced the 23 year old 
Iraq war veteran to life in prison without parole.

However, at Lockhart’s sentencing Judge Jacob Walker used his judicial override 
to overturn the jury’s recommendation and sentenced Lockhart to the death 
penalty.

“It came as a surprise. He went through several appeals and I think he 
exhausted all of those appeals," Burk told News Leader 9's Parker Branton.

Burk says he then got word from the Attorney General’s office that Lockhart is 
using Rule 32 to claim his defense team was not adequate when the trial took 
place years ago.

Boston, Massachusetts based attorney Aaron Katz is representing Lockhart and 
said in a statement:

Lauren’s family is hoping justice is served and their beloved daughter will 
forever be remembered.

“It just doesn’t seem right that he’s still around and my daughter isn’t," said 
Burk.

The hearing will happen on December 17th. Attorney say it could last more than 
1 day.

(source: WTVM news)








INDIANA:

Jim McNew dies; he is remembered as a dedicated defense attorney



James McNew had a deep passion for both his clients and the law, colleagues 
closest to him say. The longtime Greenfield attorney died Friday at age 69 
after a battle with cancer.

McNew joined the Greenfield law firm Allen Wellman McNew Harvey LLP in 1989 and 
became partner a few years later. He came from Lake County, where he had been a 
successful chief deputy prosecutor for most of the 1980s, said Kevin Harvey, 
partner with the firm. McNew focused mainly on criminal defense cases and 
represented clients in Hancock County’s Drug Court for several years.

“We’re deeply saddened by his passing,” Harvey said. “He meant a lot to us as 
an attorney and as a person.”

McNew came to Greenfield through his friendship with Dawn Wellman, the current 
managing partner for Allen Wellman McNew Harvey. Wellman had also practiced law 
in Lake County. The firm at the time needed to bolster its criminal defense 
practice, Harvey recalled.

In the mid-1980s, McNew prosecuted a defendant in the murder of 78-year-old 
Ruth Pelke in Lake County. Paula Cooper, the defendant, was sentenced to Death 
Row at the age of 16, the youngest person to receive the death penalty in the 
state. The case drew international attention — including from Pope John Paul II 
— and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death sentence in 1988, ruling it 
was unconstitutional to execute anyone younger than 16 at the time of the 
crime. Indiana later raised its death penalty age to 18.

In McNew’s nearly 30 years as an attorney in Hancock County, Harvey said he 
will best be remembered as a “strong mentor” for young criminal defense 
attorneys and his commitment to defending his clients well.

Earlier this year, the Hancock County Bar Association honored McNew with the 
James L. Brand Trial Advocate Award.

Hancock County Circuit Judge Scott Sirk said McNew was an “outstanding defense 
attorney.” Sirk said he tried a case against McNew many years ago — and lost.

“He ‘out-lawyered’ me,” Sirk said.

More recently, Sirk presided over drug court cases McNew worked in circuit 
court. McNew defended all drug court clients in the county for several years, 
Sirk said.

“He was a top-notch lawyer, and he cared about the law,” Sirk said. “That was 
his life’s work.”

Hancock County Prosecutor Brent Eaton also worked closely with McNew on drug 
court cases and said it was apparent McNew had compassion for his clients and 
wanted them to achieve sobriety.

While Eaton and McNew served on opposite sides of the courtroom, as prosecutor 
and defense attorney, Eaton said he admired McNew’s dedication to the criminal 
justice system and drive for fairness in trials.

“His passion for that was always genuine and sincere and came through,” Eaton 
said.

More than 10 years ago, after Eaton left the prosecutor’s office for a period 
of time, he stopped by Starbucks for coffee. When he was about to pay, the 
employee at the drive-thru window told him another customer had paid for his 
drink. It was McNew.

“Obviously Jim, and I had tangled in court before and over different things at 
different times,” he said, “but that meant a lot to me.”

McNew worked “behind the scenes” as an attorney, Eaton said. He once 
volunteered as a “bad guy” during a police training exercise, Eaton said, and 
McNew would also serve as judge pro tem when a judge was absent. Eaton said 
McNew was a favorite substitute judge among county prosecutors.

“It’s a large loss not only for the legal profession, but the greater Hancock 
County community. I know we’ll miss him,” Eaton said. “He had his hand on the 
pulse of the justice system.”

(source: greenfieldreporter.com)

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

Prosecutor likely to seek death penalty in 2004 slayings



Madison County Prosecutor Rodney Cummings expects to seek the death penalty 
sentence of Fredrick Baer, convicted in the 2004 slaying of a woman and her 
daughter near Lapel.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday decided not to hear the appeal filed by 
Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill to reinstate the death penalty for Baer.

Earlier this year the death penalty sentence was overturned by the U.S. Seventh 
Circuit Court of Appeals.

“It will eventually come back to Madison County,” Cummings said of the Baer 
case. “We have to redo the penalty phase of the trial.

“I can’t think of any reason I won’t ask for the death penalty,” he said.

Cummings said he was not surprised by the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to 
hear the state's appeal.

“Four justices have to agree to hear a case,” he said. “There is only a small 
percentage of cases that get to be heard by the Supreme Court.”

After being convicted of murder, attempted rape and theft, Baer was sentenced 
to death. His convictions and sentence were twice affirmed by the Indiana 
Supreme Court, and a federal district court denied Baer’s request for habeas 
corpus, Hill stated in a September press release.

Several years later, Hill said, a 3-judge panel from the U.S. Seventh Circuit 
Court of Appeals ruled that Baer was entitled to habeas relief in the form of a 
new penalty phase of his trial – effectively sending the case back to Madison 
Circuit Court for a redo of sentencing.

In a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, Hill’s office wrote the Seventh 
Circuit Court of Appeals did not come close to making the showing that all 
“fairminded jurists” would agree that the jury instructions misled jurors into 
ignoring mitigating evidence would have resulted in a different conclusion.

The brief continued during the sentencing phase Baer called 1 witness a 
forensic psychologist who described Baer’s history of drug abuse.

The instructions twice informed the jurors they could consider any evidence in 
mitigation, including voluntary intoxication at the time the crimes were 
committed.

CRIMINAL ACT

On the afternoon of Feb, 24, 2004, Baer was working at a construction site in 
Anderson. He said he was suffering withdrawal from methamphetamine. Anxiety 
hammered in his head. Sweat seeped from his skin despite the February chill.

He drove to Lapel and parked near two homes. He approached one house and 
knocked on the door. A woman answered but cautiously kept Baer from looking 
inside. He asked to use her phone.

“She brought me the phone, but I was trying to get in," he recalled. "So I 
dialed something and gave her the phone back."

Down the road, he spotted a woman moving boxes outside. It was Cory Clark, wife 
of John Clark and mother of Jenna and Morgan. Her husband was in Florida 
looking for a job, and her older daughter Morgan was at school.

When Cory Clark went to get the telephone, Baer followed her inside and 
murdered the mother and daughter.

He was eventually arrested on Feb. 27 after police were tipped off when 
residents near the Clark home told police a man had knocked on their doors, 
asking for directions to Layton Road.

Residents told police the man was driving a small gray-blue hatchback, which 
had a handicap tag in it. One of the residents noted the car's license plate 
number.

Police tracked the car to an Indianapolis construction worker who was working 
in Anderson. Workers at the construction site said the car belonged to Baer.

During a 2013 interview with The Herald Bulletin on death row, Baer said he 
thinks about the case every day and that he deserves to die.

(source: The Goshen News)








MISSOURI:

Inside the Supreme Court’s latest case on cruelty and the death penalty



For much of the hour, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh had been quietly shifting his 
weight in his seat, resting cheek against palm and looking down at the lawyers 
as they argued. Finally, he spoke, asking D. John Sauer, the state solicitor of 
Missouri, “Are you saying that even if the method creates gruesome and brutal 
pain you can still do it because there’s no alternative?"

The question sat there for a second. In the press area, located at the side of 
the courtroom gallery, twenty-some pairs of eyes ping-ponged between the 
justice and the solicitor. Mr. Sauer said, “Any petitioner who is claiming that 
it would create gruesome and brutal pain must...offer an alternative method 
that significantly reduces the pain."

“So,” repeated Justice Kavanaugh, “you’re saying that even if the method 
imposes gruesome, brutal pain, you can still go forward?"

“Well, I would say again that that petitioner has to, if they want to—"

“Is that a yes?"

“Yes, it is, your honor."

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito rocked to and fro in their 
high-backed chairs.

Bucklew v. Precythe, argued before the Supreme Court on Nov. 6, is about pain 
and cruelty. Russell E. Bucklew has been on death row since 1998, when a 
Missouri court convicted him of murder, kidnapping, burglary, forcible rape and 
armed criminal conduct. At issue 20 years later is whether an injection of 
pentobarbital, the chemical agent used to execute prisoners in the state of 
Missouri, would result in an unduly painful death for Mr. Bucklew, who suffers 
from a rare medical condition called cavernous hemangioma. He says the 
injection would cause him to choke on his own blood and has proposed an 
alternative, nitrogen hypoxia (a lethal gas).

Justice Kavanaugh: “You’re saying that even if the method imposes gruesome, 
brutal pain, you can still go forward?"

But Mr. Sauer argued there was no indication that nitrogen hypoxia would bring 
about a less painful death. And anyway, he said, “to eliminate the risk of pain 
completely is impossible."

This is one of the first death penalty cases to come before the Supreme Court 
since Anthony Kennedy retired, and since Pope Francis revised the Catechism of 
the Catholic Church in August to say that capital punishment is “inadmissible” 
under all circumstances. The case parallels a number of recent challenges to 
the death penalty, like Madison v. Alabama, argued in October before the 
Supreme Court, which asks if a man with dementia—who cannot remember the murder 
for which he was convicted—should be executed.

Bucklew v. Precythe is an “as applied” challenge (the decision, to be handed 
down by next June, will apply only to this “individual with a unique 
circumstance,” as Justice Sonia Sotomayor remarked), and it carries a strange 
poignancy. Mr. Bucklew is resigned to his fate, said his attorney, Robert 
Hochman. He just wants a say in how he goes out.

The cruel and unusual standard

In 1958, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote of the Eighth Amendment, which 
prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment,” that it “must draw its meaning from 
the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing 
society.” Other past justices, like Antonin Scalia, have vociferously 
disagreed. In their view, alterations to, or abolition of, the death penalty 
should depend “on persuading our fellow citizens and not 5 justices of the 
Supreme Court,” as Richard Garnett, a professor of law at the University of 
Notre Dame, wrote in America in 2015.

As it exists now, the death penalty is informed by decades of winding precedent 
and bound up with contested interpretations of “cruelty”—a slippery term. Since 
the 1780s, and particularly since the turn of the present century, “evolving 
standards” have eliminated capital punishment for juveniles, people with 
intellectual disabilities and crimes other than murder, even the rape of 
minors. In 2015, Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested in a 
dissenting opinion that capital punishment itself is unconstitutional.

Certain methods of execution have fallen out of favor. In the late 19th 
century, the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the electric 
chair. Throughout the 20th century, a number of high-profile cases ended in 
electrocution, including those of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (convicted of 
conspiracy to commit espionage) and Bruno Richard Hauptmann (convicted of 
kidnapping Charles Lindbergh Jr.). But several failed electrocutions turned 
public opinion against the method.

Throughout the 20th century, a number of high-profile cases ended in 
electrocution, including those of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Until this decade, lethal injection had been widely regarded within the justice 
system as a “humane” way to end a life, though some, like Deborah Denno, a 
professor of law at Fordham University in New York, have always been skeptical 
of that characterization.

“The 1st lethal-injection execution was in 1982, and that was botched,” says 
Ms. Denno, who adds, “we’re just looking at this with much more criticism and 
scrutiny than we did before.”

Ms. Denno says that problems with executions are simply better known these 
days. Not only do some executions fail, others take hours to carry out. Where 
these instances were once covered only by local newspapers, their details are 
now shared by millions online.

The search for a humane method

Back at the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer tried out some hypotheticals 
with Mr. Sauer.

“X has a rare medical condition that makes the method of execution to him feel 
exactly like being burned at the stake. O.K.? The Constitution would rule that 
out, wouldn’t it?”

“The Constitution would rule out burning at the stake,” said Mr. Sauer, 
“absolutely, Your Honor.”

“He has a medical condition of some kind. It makes it exactly the same…. It 
feels exactly the same."

“I would have to know more about the hypothetical."

“Well, that’s it. I’m making it up as I go along."

The courtroom thrummed with laughter.

“Of course, these hypotheticals about being burned at the stake aren’t really 
implemented in the real world,” Mr. Sauer said. “What’s implemented in the real 
world is a situation where capital petitioners have every incentive to engage 
in interminable litigation, interminable litigation, multiple challenges.”

To which Justice Sonia Sotomayor replied, “That may well be, but the reality is 
that there are alternatives. Many of them have not been implemented because 
people don’t want to see them: the firing squad, electrocution. There’s a whole 
lot of things that people don’t want to accept the reality of, but they’re 
there."

Justice Sotomayor: “There’s a whole lot of things that people don’t want to 
accept the reality of, but they’re there."

A shortage of lethal-injection drugs (many pharmaceutical companies refuse to 
sell drugs to correctional systems for use in executions), combined with those 
high-visibility execution failures, has prodded some states, and death row 
inmates themselves, to seek older methods. “We already have seen in Tennessee 
now that there have been two requests for electrocution from inmates,” says Ms. 
Denno. “An inmate was electrocuted just about a week ago, and another inmate 
has requested electrocution over lethal injection."

Also in Tennessee, there is a movement to bring back firing squads. Utah 
reintroduced death by firing squad in 2015, after an 11-year suspension. 
Justice Sotomayor has indicated that she believes it is a less painful 
alternative to lethal injection.

But like cruelty, pain is a slippery term, subject to interpretation and 
disagreement. In the plurality opinion for the 2008 case Baze v. Rees, Chief 
Justice John G. Roberts wrote that “an execution method may result in pain, 
either by accident or as an inescapable consequence of death, [but that] does 
not establish the sort of ‘objectively intolerable risk of harm’ that qualifies 
as cruel and unusual."

He also wrote that “capital punishment is constitutional. It necessarily 
follows that there must be a means of carrying it out.” (He said much the same 
thing last month: “If the death penalty is constitutional, as it now is, there 
must be a way to administer it.”) He added that throughout its history, the 
court has rejected challenges to the constitutionality of methods of execution. 
“Our society has nonetheless steadily moved to more humane methods of carrying 
out capital punishment,” he wrote.

This year, public support for the death penalty crept back up to 54 %, 
according to the Pew Research Center, after hitting a 4-decade low of 49 % in 
2016. In the mid-’90s, that number hovered near 80 %.

The public tends to be “pretty horrified by a botched execution,” says Ms. 
Denno. “Not everybody, of course—some people love them, and they think they’re 
a good deterrent and all that.”

Victims' families say the death penalty inhibits their healing.

As long as there is a death penalty, there will be public officials yearning to 
wield it. In March 1998, when Mr. Bucklew was on trial in Missouri, Morley 
Swingle, the Cape Girardeau County prosecutor, extolled the death penalty in 
his closing statement: “It’s the old idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for 
a tooth. And as you use your collective experience and knowledge and wisdom, 
you might think back to American history class in high school. And the 
Hatfields and McCoys from 1882, where a Hatfield killed a McCoy and McCoy 
killed a Hatfield and this went on...until finally the government stepped in 
and successfully prosecuted people and stopped it from happening.”

He said the government had a duty to seek justice for the victim’s family. “And 
that’s why retribution in this case calls for the death penalty for this 
premeditated, deliberated, cold-blooded killing.”

At the end of the hour on Nov. 6, Mr. Bucklew’s attorney emphasized again that 
he was familiar with the court’s prior rulings and knew that the death penalty 
was constitutional. “And so there has to be a way to carry it out. This claim 
about this individual person doesn’t call that into question at all.”

“Thank you, counsel,” said Chief Justice Roberts, indicating the end of the 
time allotted for argument. “The case is submitted.”

(source: americanmagazine.org)








OKLAHOMA:

Could Half of Oklahoma End Up Under Native American Jurisdiction?



One night in August 1999, Patrick Dwayne Murphy, a member of the Muscogee 
(Creek) Nation (MCN), stabbed and mutilated a fellow tribe member on a lonely 
stretch of road on the MCN reservation in Oklahoma, leaving him to die. Murphy 
was tried in a state court and sentenced to death in 2000.

Since then, he has filed a series of appeals on grounds that because he 
committed the crime on an Indian reservation and the victim was also Native 
American, the state had no right to try him; by law, the federal government has 
jurisdiction over murders committed by Native Americans on lands in “Indian 
Country”—that is, lands inside federally-recognized reservation borders, 
dependent Indian communities or lands historically allotted to tribe members 
which their heirs still hold.

Eventually, the case landed in a federal appeals court, where after a review of 
historic documents and legal precedent, judges in August 2017 overturned 
Murphy’s conviction.

This meant that Murphy was eligible for a new trial in federal court, with the 
tribal court sharing jurisdiction. And in federal court, he would likely escape 
execution: Federal law gives tribes authority to decide whether the death 
penalty should be imposed for crimes committed under their jurisdiction. MCN, 
as have all but one tribe in the U.S., rejected the death penalty.

Sticking point

But that wasn’t the end of the case. As it turns out, there is far more at 
stake than whether a Murphy lives or dies.

The MCN reservation spans nearly two million hectares and 11 Oklahoma counties 
with a combined population of about 950,000. Recognizing MCN’s criminal 
jurisdiction meant that all this land was legally “Indian Country.” And that, 
in turn, meant that MCN had civil and criminal jurisdiction over nearly half 
the state of Oklahoma.

Oklahoma has taken the case to the Supreme Court, arguing that MCN, established 
by an 1866 treaty, stopped existing in 1907 when Congress created the state.

“If not corrected, the decision ... could result in the largest abrogation of 
state sovereignty by a federal court in American history,” Oklahoma attorney 
general Mike Hunter warned in his petition to justices.

There is, however, a problem with Oklahoma’s argument: The law says only 
Congress has the power to diminish or disestablish reservations and it must do 
so in clear and “unequivocal” language. And as it turns out, as the federal 
court found, Congress never officially disestablished the MCN reservation.

Now it’s up to the Supreme Court to decide.

Economic, legal implications

In oral arguments before justices November 27, Oklahoma’s attorneys outlined 
“seismic” results if the federal ruling stands: Tribe members would be exempt 
from paying state taxes and could impose taxes on non-Native business owners, 
who also could be subject to MCN’s land-use and environmental laws.

Oklahoma also worries that hundreds of jailed Native Americans would have to be 
retried in federal courts, tying up the state’s legal system.

Oklahoma is one of the nation’s biggest oil and gas producers, and the industry 
is especially nervous about the case. The Oklahoma Independent Petroleum 
Association (OIPA) filed a friend of the court briefing, explaining those 
concerns.

“The economic impact of transforming regulation in Oklahoma would be severe, 
especially in the oil and natural gas industry,” said OIPA vice president Cody 
Bannister in an emailed statement. “An oil or natural gas producer operating in 
what was previously open land would now be faced with a tribe’s claim that 
those wells lie in tribal lands and any rights the producer holds to the land 
or production of the oil and natural gas are invalid.”

Considering consequences

But Robert Miller, professor at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor 
College of Law and a member of the Eastern Shawnee tribe in Oklahoma, says 
these concerns are overblown.

“The struggle between governments is over money and power, and power means 
jurisdiction,” he said. “Oklahoma can still control its non-Native citizens. It 
just doesn’t want to lose environmental control or civil and criminal 
jurisdiction over the Indians.”

During oral arguments, justices questioned the state’s attorneys about their 
concerns and what the ramifications of allowing the previous decision to stand.

“Yes, there will be turmoil,” said Miller. But he believes the Supreme Court 
should not consider real life consequences.

“The Court is supposed to decide the case based only on the law,” he said, 
citing the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court 
decision which ended racial segregation in public schools. That verdict set off 
waves of riots, violence and even murders in the U.S. South—and resistance that 
went on for years.

“Should the Supreme Court, then, knowing what would happen, not have rendered 
that ruling?” Miller asked.

But, as lawyers have noted, justices frequently do consider the effects of 
their judgements, especially in cases like this one, where existing laws are 
fuzzy.

(source: voanews.com)








CALIFORNIA:

Laci Peterson’s father, Dennis Rocha, died Sunday at age 72.----‘Now they will 
be together again.’



People far and wide who were captivated by her murder remember Rocha in an 
emotional state when his 27-year-old pregnant daughter went missing at 
Christmastime 2002, weeping and pleading for her safe return. The remains of 
mother and child washed ashore in San Francisco Bay nearly four months later, 
and her husband, Scott Peterson, was convicted of double murder in 2004.

“Laci loved her dad, and now they will be together again,” said her mother, 
Sharon Rocha, in an email Monday. She continues to go by that name even though 
they divorced four decades ago, when Laci was 2.

Her “other” father, Ron Grantski — Sharon Rocha’s longtime companion, who 
helped raise Laci — also died this year at age 71. Dennis Rocha remained on 
good terms with them and privately praised Grantski at his graveside service in 
April.

Dennis Robert Rocha had moved with his family when he was very young from 
Gilroy to Escalon, where he lived 70 years. He was a member of the US Marine 
Corps Reserves and operated a dairy for several decades before retiring, said 
his oldest child, Brent Rocha, in a telephone interview Monday. His father had 
a passion for team roping and calf roping and participated in annual Mule Days 
celebrations in Bishop back in the day, Brent said.

“He was a good dad and a hard worker,” his daughter, Amy Woodard, — Laci’s 
half-sister — said Monday.

Growing up, Brent and Laci lived with their mother and Grantski in Modesto and 
spent many weekends at their father’s ranch in Escalon.

Hard-core observers of the Peterson case may recall that Laci’s family was 
appalled when Scott traded in her 1996 forest green Land Rover as part of a 
purchase of a used pickup 6 weeks after she disappeared. Dennis Rocha bought it 
from Roberts Auto Sales on Modesto’s McHenry Avenue for $1 only days later. 
“(Scott) would keep the car if he knew she was coming home,” Mr. Rocha told The 
Modesto Bee at the time.

Mr. Rocha assumed a lower profile during Scott Peterson’s blockbuster trial, 
which was moved to Redwood City to escape pervasive publicity here. Always 
wearing cowboy boots, Mr. Rocha attended when he was able. He cried when 
graphic photos of his loved ones’ remains were displayed for jurors, and drew a 
warning from the judge when using salty language toward the defendant in the 
penalty phase, just before Scott Peterson received a death-penalty sentence.

“He was a very kind a loving-type person,” Brent Rocha said of his father. “He 
was always very affectionate and loving toward us.”

He is survived by his children, Brent and Amy, and six grandchildren between 
them, as well as a sister, Robin Rocha, and stepson Nathan Hazard.

(source: Modesto Bee)