[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., PENN., S.C., FLA., MISS.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 6



TEXAS----impending execution

Voices from Solitary: 18 Days to Live----Clemency Sought for Solitary Watch 
Contributor Thomas Whitaker, Scheduled to Be Executed on February 22nd



Thomas Bartlett Whitaker is a tremendously gifted writer. His work has been 
published on Solitary Watch (here and here), and was selected for inclusion in 
our anthology Hell Is a Very Small Place. It has taken top prizes in the PEN 
Prison Writing Awards for both fiction and essay. And some 150 pieces of his 
writing, including 22 chapters of a novel, have appeared on Minutes Before Six, 
the website he started with the help of volunteers on the outside. Originally 
intended as a forum for his own work, it has since expanded to include over 100 
other incarcerated contributors, and comprises the single best online 
collection of current prison writing in the world.

The name of the site, Minutes Before Six, refers to the time at which 
executions are carried out in the state of Texas. After more than a decade in 
solitary confinement on death row, Thomas Whitaker is scheduled to be executed 
at 6 pm on February 22nd. His death warrant has been signed, his appeals are 
exhausted, and the Supreme Court has declined to review his case. His last 
remaining hope lies with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which has the 
power to recommend that the governor commute his death sentence to life without 
parole.

The clemency petition filed on Thomas Whitaker's behalf is remarkable in that 
its central appeal for mercy comes from the primary victim of his crime. His 
father, Kent Whitaker, survived the murder-for-hire ordered by Thomas, in which 
Thomas's mother and his younger brother were killed. Kent Whitaker has forgiven 
Thomas, visits him in prison, and is begging the state of Texas to spare the 
life of his only remaining family member. If his pleas are ignored, it will 
give lie to the claim that the death penalty is meant to provide justice to 
victims' families, rather than just satisfy a thirst for blood by politicians 
and the public.

All executions are travesties. But for us, this one is personal. Thomas 
Whitaker is a Solitary Watch contributor. We have corresponded with him, 
receiving the letters he neatly types alone in his cell, each one a gem. We, 
like thousands of others, know him only through his writing. But we see in that 
writing more than just brilliance, erudition, and style. We see wisdom, 
compassion, and humanity. We see a man who is much more than his worst act, and 
still has much more to give to the world.

If you agree, please consider writing a letter in support of the Clemency 
Petition of Thomas Whitaker, and sending it to: Texas Board of Pardons and 
Paroles, Clemency Section, 8610 Shoal Creek Boulevard, Austin, TX 78757.

To provide advice on what to say in your letter - as well as more evidence of 
why this life should be saved - we are publishing here an excerpt from a recent 
post on Minutes Before Six, written by another fine writer, Steven Bartholemew. 
Incarcerated in the state of Washington, Bartholemew last month wrote this 
appeal for a friend he has never met. Time is short; please heed his call. -- 
Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

...Thomas has been fighting his case for over a decade, seeking post-conviction 
relief throughout the entire court system. The appellate process is not unlike 
a demented elevator with no doors to open. You ascend slowly, glacially, from 
level to level, trundling yourself upward with each denial and appeal, only to 
find yourself back in the basement. With each ascension you feel the tug of 
gravity, which you might mistake for hope. Sometimes your gut tells you just 
before the floor drops; other times it catches you off balance. Thomas's case 
was recently rejected by the second highest court in the land, the US Court of 
Appeals, Fifth Circuit. Let me state this clearly: we are at the point where 
clemency is Thomas's only hope of not being killed in the next few months. The 
Governor has already signed the Death Warrant setting Thomas Whitaker's 
execution date for February 22nd. In the State of Texas, a clemency process was 
instituted decades ago as an ostensible safety valve for an overburdened 
criminal justice system.

This is Thomas's sole remaining chance to avoid death. The clemency process 
differs from trials and appeals in several important ways. In clemency 
proceedings, there is no retrying of the evidence, no arguing over 
technicalities. Rather, the matters presented are those on which the courts 
have not already ruled. In Thomas's case, the petition being considered is 
simple and straightforward: to commute his sentence from death to life.

In Texas, a death row prisoner's petition for clemency is considered by the 
Board of Pardons and Paroles. As a rule, members do not meet in person to 
deliberate. Instead, they each render separately a decision based on their own 
individual criteria - their personal touchstones for deciding the fate of a 
human being which they need not disclose, so they do not. By relying on 
subjective and secret standards, such an opaque process presents an obvious 
barrier to success: any strategy is guesswork, no more and no less. In the 
words of U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, regarding the arbitrariness of the 
Board's practices, "A flip of the coin would be more merciful than these 
votes." Now you know what Thomas is up against.

The petition is either granted or denied by a majority vote of the Board, which 
then informs the governor's irrevocable decision either to sign off on 
commutation or allow the execution to proceed. Make no mistake, petitioning for 
clemency is a long shot. The statistical probability of being granted clemency 
in Texas is not high. However, Thomas's execution becomes a certainty if we do 
not try.

Thomas's attorney is presently composing a petition that outlines the reasons 
the Board ought to commute his death sentence. He will not be making a legal 
argument but rather presenting Thomas as a living human entity to the Board 
Members, drawing on his personal life and accomplishments to humanize him 
instead of citing evidence and conclusions of law to try to acquit him. The 
Board Members will not recommend his petition unless they find a preponderance 
of clear and cogent reasons to spare his life. They may define their threshold 
of persuasion in amorphous terms, such as "exceptional circumstances", which 
means literally whatever they choose to recognize it as. Clemency hearings are 
outside the procedural methodology of the courtroom. Rules of admissibility do 
not apply, and no one really knows what sways the Board because there is no 
clemency precedent from which one could make inductions.

Members of the general public may submit written information for the Board's 
consideration. Here is where we come in, you and I. It's one thing for Board 
members to have in front of them clerical evidence of Thomas's accomplishments 
- copies of his degree, literary awards, and so forth. It's another matter 
entirely for them to read firsthand accounts of Thomas's effect on free-world 
citizens. Mind you, no one is asking that Thomas Whitaker be released but 
rather that he simply be allowed to continue breathing.

The District Attorney will be the 1 and only advocate for the death of Thomas. 
Throughout his case, the State - and no one else - has maintained that justice 
can only be served by the loss of more life.

The Clemency Board will also consider public sentiment. The Board's only way to 
gauge the wishes and attitudes of the community is through letters of support 
written by anyone whose life Thomas has impacted - people like you, for 
example, whose knowledge and perception of prison have been vastly enriched by 
this man. They need to hear from folks like yourself: intelligent, free people 
who have lived vicariously through Thomas's stories, literate citizens who have 
trusted him for a decade as a patient and honest guide through the experience 
of death row. You, dear readers, are his community. You may be thinking that 
you wouldn't know what to say. However, I can assure you that how you express 
yourself means less than the fact that you are willing to write at all.

To that end, I would present a few suggestions as possible starting points. One 
of the things I always ask of free people after we've conversed for a time is 
whether their preconceptions about prison have changed. I can't imagine anyone 
reading the works of Thomas and not fundamentally altering his or her notions 
of what prison and prisoners are made of, how death row feels, or what the 
purpose of the death penalty even is - and what that means. Some of you have 
felt compelled to become involved with social justice after reading his work. 
Some of you have found here a much-needed comprehension of what your own 
incarcerated loved ones have endured in silence. Others have become able to 
view us not as the bogeyman in the cage but rather as human beings who are 
willing to unpack our own flaws and mistakes, our authentic selves, for you. 
Some of you have come here as surviving victims, intending to face down the 
surrogate objects of your fear or loathing, and have instead walked away with 
the clarity and closure born of understanding. Some of you have been 
entertained and educated by stories you could not possibly find anywhere else. 
These things are worth mentioning to the Board. It would be impossible to 
quantify the value of the work Thomas has tirelessly offered you, holding the 
fiercest light to the most obscured microcosm of human infliction and 
deprivation. But a support letter would go a long way towards representing what 
the experience of [Thomas's writing] has meant to you.

After nearly 15 years in prison, my faith in humanity isn't what it once was. 
But I believe wholeheartedly that you would be willing to take 10 minutes out 
of your cluttered day to write a letter that will increase the likelihood of 
Thomas's life being spared.

I have to believe that you, of all people, realize the import and worth of this 
particular life - the effect his writing has had on your understandings of this 
world and the human condition in general, his potential for a long and 
productive literary future. I refuse to entertain the notion of an apathetic 
reader or one too preoccupied to respond - not here, and for mercy's sake, not 
now. Our window of time is too small to admit complacency, procrastination, or 
inaction.

I imagine that you, our readers, are aligned with the rest of the civilized 
world outside America in believing the idea of judicial killing is morally 
bankrupt. I have faith in your moral compass, so I will not preach, dear choir.

Our sensibilities about the ethical status of the death penalty arise from the 
same aversion to physical violence en masse we feel when considering war. Our 
state governments have executed 1,448 men and women since the resurrection of 
the death penalty in 1977 - a grim doctrine, one carrying the stench of 
fossilized worldviews derived from pre-civilized mythos. Such barbarism under 
color of law suffuses most of us with societal shame ... But we are no more 
capable of properly thinking about the legally orchestrated killing of 1,448 
human beings than we are able to say what it feels like to witness 3,000 people 
being crushed and burned alive. We all watched that happen on 9/11, but unless 
we personally knew someone in one of the World Trade Center towers, what we 
felt was an abstract sort of dread, something akin to disbelief. To acknowledge 
this emotional shortcoming is merely to recognize the limits of what the human 
mind can construct from sensory input ...The pitiful truth is that we might be 
incapable of feeling what we must in order to change our own world.

But we are able to meaningfully think about what it means for the State of 
Texas to snuff out the life of one man: a vibrant person whom we've come to 
know and esteem highly through his words. Thomas has invited his fellow 
prisoners onto his site so that we, through our writing, might stand alongside 
him. He has invited you and me, his fellow human beings, into his inner world 
so that we might try to think alongside him. I have to believe that we, his 
community, are capable of feeling what we must in order to change the outcome 
of the one hearing that could allow Thomas to keep on living, breathing, and 
writing for us. I can only believe that we are capable of mustering what it 
takes to extricate ourselves from our daily frittering long enough to act. It 
isn't too often we are faced with the opportunity to help avert the death of 
someone who matters to us with our actions. This is our chance to do so.

When I contemplate the reality of Thomas's sentence, how the State of Texas 
will decide the exact time of his last heartbeat, I feel no small amount of 
compassion for him as a fellow human being. I feel sadness at the thought of 
the senseless loss of such a prominent intellect, someone I have grown fond of, 
and a familiar voice who often says things the way I wish I would have. I feel 
outrage that the most prosperous and diverse nation on the planet could still 
be so shamefully backward. I have to admit some selfish interest in this, as 
well. If there is one thing we all know about Thomas Whitaker, it's that he has 
more to accomplish, more to teach us, and much more to say. I, for one, really 
want to know what that is. Don't you?

Please send letters in support of the Clemency Petition of Thomas Whitaker to: 
Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Clemency Section, 8610 Shoal Creek 
Boulevard, Austin, TX 78757.

(source: solitarywatch.com)








NEW YORK:

Rough Justice----Martin McDonagh's 'Hangmen' Is the Best New Play in New York 
City



Martin McDonagh, nominated for 2 Oscars for '3 Billboards,' serves up more 
violence and dark humor in his brilliant play 'Hangmen,' set in 1960s England.

What a coup for the Atlantic Theater Company to currently house the best new 
play in New York by a playwright and director nominated for 2 Oscars.

The mystery is why Martin McDonagh's brilliant, electrifyingly satisfying 
Hangmen isn't on Broadway right from the get-go; caution perhaps - it will 
likely follow the path of its London trajectory where it began its 5-star, 
rave-reviewed life at the Royal Court Theatre in 2015 before transferring to 
the West End.

Hangmen is already a sell-out success, which is hardly surprising given the 
buzz around McDonagh generally, but especially given his Oscar nominations for 
Best Picture and Original Screenplay for 3 Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 
- nominations that have proved controversial, given the film's portrayal of 
race and racism.

In its opening scene - a heady mixture of brutality and dark humor that 
McDonagh writes so well, and which is the hallmark of this play - Hangmen, 
directed by Matthew Dunster, first takes the audience to Britain in 1963, and 
to a dank jail cell where a prisoner called James Hennessy (Gilles Geary) is 
pleading for his life as the hangman's noose swings in preparation.

The hangman is Harry Wade (Mark Addy), a large and bluff Northerner, whom 
Hennessy immediately mocks: They could have at least sent Pierrepoint, he says, 
referring to Albert Pierrepoint, Britain's most pre-eminent executioner.

Harry is in Pierrepoint's shadow, and later - at the worst possible moment - 
Pierrepoint, played by Maxwell Caulfield (of Dynasty/Miles Colby fame) appears 
to take issue with Albert talking up his own executioner skills. Both men are 
competitive about the numbers of people they have killed, and their own 
professionalism. Their sniping sounds funny until you consider the business of 
death they are trading barbs about. Fans of McDonagh will know that in the 
mining of absurdity and extremity lies the exposure of truth.

The play flashes forward 2 years later to 1965. The walls of the jail cell fold 
away to reveal one of the best evocations of a British pub I have ever seen on 
TV and stage. You can feel the fug of cigarettes and the smell of spilled 
bitter in Anna Fleischle's excellent set (that even incorporates a cafe with 
rain-soaked windows that Fleischle accommodates in the eaves of the pub).

This pub in Oldham, Lancashire, belongs to Harry and his wife Alice (Sally 
Rogers). With capital punishment now abolished, the pub is both Harry's refuge 
and kingdom. He and Alice struggle to understand their daughter Shirley (Gaby 
French). Shirley's inner turmoil is dismissed as "mooning," and their parental 
ignorance dovetails, potentially tragically, with the appearance of the 
menacing Mooney (Johnny Flynn), whose name mirrors the "mooning" Shirley's 
parents struggle to identify.

Mooney is a hint of the swinging '60s in this claustrophobic pub. He is the 
opposite to the other 1960s, the stultifying universe of tradition and rules 
Harry embodies. Mooney has a shag haircut, a sneering malevolence, a peacock's 
strut, and a constant stream of insinuating, ever-so-slightly menacing 
chit-chat.

Flynn as Mooney is terrifying, hilarious, and mesmerizing. Who is he? What is 
he? Where has he come from? He reminded me of Sloane in Joe Orton's 
Entertaining Mr. Sloane: an easy smile, a leering thorn in the side of 
authority and conventional decency, and possibly concealing a weapon in his 
pocket.

McDonagh's command of language and pace is as mischievous as it is virtuosic; 
like Orton, he plays on words, subverts meanings, and knows how repetition and 
wordplay can work in glorious absurdity, as when these bluff men's men - or so 
they would like us to think - find themselves saying "cock" over and over 
again.

This is a play about men, and its significant flaw is that it does not know 
what to do with its female characters. Alice is little more than an archetypal 
Northern landlady, with big hair, an outward brassiness, and a scarred heart of 
gold. Shirley is a little more calibrated; she is not simply the doe-eyed 
ingenue, but has an intelligence and guile we see only flashes of. 
Schematically, the play ensures her absence and Alice's comparative silence.

The counterargument is that Hangmen is merely being true to its time and 
setting, which would also explain the play's glancing sexism and racism. They 
are just there, present, not celebrated. His wife and daughter know their 
places as Harry's adjuncts. He is unfamiliar to them, and mother and daughter 
cling to each other.

Just like the real, retired Pierrepoint had, Harry has a pub, and this pub has 
a comic gallery of drinking regulars, one of whom is probably a serious 
alcoholic and another who mishears things and has to have them explained - a 
familiar comedy trope, and here another outlet for more wonderful McDonagh 
timing.

But propping up one other corner of the bar is a dour, inscrutable police 
inspector Fry (David Lansbury). He knows who the real Harry is; a far from 
affable timebomb, who misses the glory of all his kills - the war criminals, 
the domestic criminals, and the wrongly accused whose miscarriages of justice, 
and whose deaths he oversaw, he doesn't allow to weigh on his mind.

Harry's assistant Syd (Reece Shearsmith, excellently obsequious) at first seems 
a comic sidekick, but he too has a plan to exact some long-considered revenge 
on his former boss.

He would do well to take care. If you're unsure over who Mooney is and what he 
is capable of, you are just as unsure over Harry, as played by the brilliant 
Addy whose warmth can turn to fury in a split second. His job gave him 
everything of the identity he wanted to project to the world - authority, 
leavened by others' fear.

When his own worst fears over the fate of his daughter appear to be confirmed, 
he can see only one recourse to reassert himself. The meticulous stage-craft of 
the ensuing, graphic violence, choreographed by J. David Brimmer, is so smooth 
that it is, in the spirit of the play, both very funny and very dark.

No spoilers here, but in his twists and turns of the plot, McDonagh warps and 
deconstructs not only the violence that men do, but also the violence they 
would like one another to believe that they are capable of. Hangmen is about 
fantasies of violence and real violence, legalized murder and criminal murder, 
and the ever-diminishing returns of male one-upmanship and desire to control.

In Hangmen we are finally left with men left behind by time; two hangmen who, 
once literal executioners of responsibility and authority, now need to escape 
the same for their own continued liberty.

One of their sins is obvious, it's right in front of us. Something else, the 
charged, problematic specter of capital punishment, is suspended in the smoky 
fug of the pub. These men have absolutely no idea what to do and now no power 
to protect themselves with. It is both quietly devastating and revealingly 
absurd.

Hangmen is at the Atlantic Theater Company (Linda Gross Theater), 336 West 20th 
Street, New York City, until March 25.

(source: The Daily Beast)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Jury selection begins for 2015 police officer slaying trial



Jury selection has begun for the trial of a man charged in the 2015 shooting 
death of a police officer in Westmoreland County.

Ray Shetler Jr., 33, is charged in that county in the death of 54-year-old St. 
Clair Township officer Lloyd Reed Jr.

Officer Reed was killed in an exchange of gunfire after responding to a 
November 2015 domestic disturbance call. Prosecutors have said they will seek 
the death penalty if the New Florence resident is convicted of 1st-degree 
murder.

District Attorney John Peck says jurors will be taken to the shooting scene to 
acquaint them with the property and with places where the suspected murder 
weapon and clothes were found.

Defense attorney Mark Daffner has suggested that Mr. Shetler was defending 
himself and didn't realize that Reed was a police officer.

Police have said that Mr. Shetler gunned down Officer Reed on Nov. 28, 2015, 
after Mr. Shetler's girlfriend, Kristin Luther, called 911 to report a domestic 
incident.

"He says, 'expletive the police,' to her ... and he left the house and went 
outside," state police spokesman, Trooper Stephen Limani, said in 2015.

But Mr. Shetler told investigators he didn't know the man approaching him that 
night with a gun drawn was a police officer, according to a criminal complaint.

After the men exchanged quick gunfire, Officer Reed died, and Mr. Shetler led 
police on a 6-hour manhunt before he was caught in nearby Indiana County and 
charged with homicide.

Officer Reed, 54, of Hollsopple, Somerset County, was in uniform and wearing a 
bulletproof vest when he responded in a marked cruiser around 9:15 p.m. to a 
the New Florence home Mr. Shetler shared with Ms. Luther, police said.

State police said Ms. Luther told an emergency dispatcher in a 911 call that 
Mr. Shetler wounded her, causing her nose to bleed, and threatened to kill her 
and himself.

Ms. Luther said her boyfriend had his .270-caliber hunting rifle with him when 
he left the Ligonier Street home.

"There was a lot of information that was given to Officer Reed prior to his 
arrival, and those things that he's hearing are a police officer's worst 
nightmare ... you have a female - maybe outside of a child - in distress and 
having a person with a long rifle," Trooper Limani said. "Every one of us knows 
that that vest we wear every single day isn't going to stop a long rifle 
round."

>From inside the home, Ms. Luther told police she heard someone yelling, "Ray, 
put the gun down, put the gun down.' Mr. Shetler yelled back, she told police, 
and stepped toward Officer Reed, rifle in hand.

They were 20 to 30 feet apart when Officer Reed, a 25-year veteran of the 
force, shot his .40-caliber pistol 6 times and Mr. Shetler fired three rounds, 
Trooper Limani said.

It's unclear who fired 1st, the trooper said, but Mr. Shetler aggressively 
approached the officer and did not put down his gun on command.

The officer fell to the ground when he was hit, Ms. Luther told police.

He was able to send a distress call over the scanner alerting authorities that 
he'd been shot, the trooper said, and Ms. Luther, a Ligonier officer and a 
passerby tried to help him.

Part of the rifle round went through the officer's bulletproof vest, across his 
chest and lodged in his right arm, Trooper Limani said. He was not wearing a 
body camera.

Seward Officer Justin Dickert, who also arrived in uniform and a marked 
cruiser, told investigators he heard Officer Reed???s commands before the 
gunfire. The Seward officer, identified by Trooper Limani, fired once at Mr. 
Shetler as he took off running.

Mr. Shetler had been shot in the front of his right shoulder. He told police he 
ran after the shooting and swam across the Conemaugh River, where he lost his 
rifle, which was later recovered.

He was later picked up on nearby Power Plant Road, where they found Mr. Shetler 
walking, and was taken into custody without incident.

Officer Reed served for about 2 decades in Seven Springs, according to St. 
Clair Capt. Donald Hess. Capt. Hess said Officer Reed also worked in 
Hooversville and Seward boroughs. For about 5 years, he worked part-time for 
St. Clair, which assists in neighboring New Florence.

(source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)








SOUTH CAROLINA:

Upstate lawmaker to reintroduce bill to allow firing squad executions in SC



South Carolina Rep. Josh Putnam (R, Piedmont) said he plans to reintroduce a 
bill to add firing squads to the execution methods in South Carolina.

Putnam first introduced the bill in 2015 but the legislation didn't pass. He 
said the new bill would be almost identical to the prior one but he feels it's 
important for creating dialogue about death penalty options in the state since 
lethal injections cannot be carried out at this time.

"We can't carry out death penalties in the state and we need a solution," 
Putnam said.

Putnam said the inability to execute inmates is causing issues for solicitors 
dealing with victims' families. Many families want solicitors to push for the 
death penalty, but the state does not currently have the ability to execute 
them, Putnam said.

"Many people don't understand the problems this is causing," Putnam said.

The lawmaker said other solutions, such as bringing back the electric chair, 
are being considered, but Putnam argues that the firing squad may be the most 
viable solution going forward.

"There is a lot of data that shows firing squad is the most effective and most 
humane way of putting someone to rest," he said.

Putnam said Tuesday that he plans to reintroduce the bill in the state house 
within the next few days.

(source: foxcarolina.com)








FLORIDA----impending execution

Condemned killer seeks to block execution



With a scheduled execution little more than 2 weeks away, attorneys for death 
row inmate Eric Scott Branch appealed to the Florida Supreme Court on Monday 
after an Escambia County circuit judge refused a request for a stay.

Branch, now 46, was sentenced to death in the 1993 sexual assault and murder of 
University of West Florida student Susan Morris.

Gov. Rick Scott last month scheduled Branch's execution for Feb. 22. In seeking 
the stay in circuit court, Branch's attorneys argued, in part, that Branch was 
21 at the time of the murder and that brain development continues into the 
mid-20s.

They argued people in their early 20s are "cognitively comparable to juveniles 
under the age of 18," Judge Edward P. Nickinson III wrote Thursday in an order 
denying the motion for a stay.

The argument was based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that barred the death 
penalty for people under age 18 because it would violate an Eighth Amendment 
ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

But Nickinson wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling had established a 
"bright line" of age 18.

"This Court must construe the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment 
in conformity with decisions of the United States Supreme Court," Nickinson 
wrote.

Branch's attorneys last week also asked the Florida Supreme Court for a stay of 
execution while he appeals another issue to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Florida Supreme Court had not ruled on that request as of Monday afternoon.

Trial begins for man accused of murdering 16-year-old



Alexandria Chery was in her bed with a big blanket the last time her mother, 
Rosalie Joseph, saw her alive, Joseph testified Monday.

Joseph was the 1st witness in the murder trial of Sanel Saint-Simon, Joseph's 
partner of 11 years, who raised Alexandria and is now accused of brutally 
killing her. Saint-Simon faces the death penalty if convicted.

Alexandria was 16 - on summer vacation from Olympia High School between 10th 
and 11th grades - when she went missing July 28, 2014.

That morning, Joseph said she woke up at 6 a.m., brushed her teeth and drove 
Saint-Simon to his 7 a.m. shift at a Boston Market.

Joseph drove back home and started getting ready for work. She woke her 
daughter because she wanted Alexandria to come with her to work and help clean 
hotel rooms so she could finish faster, she said. But Alexandria wasn't feeling 
well.

"She said, 'Mom, I have a headache, I can't go,'" Joseph said through a Haitian 
Creole interpreter Monday. Joseph said she has lived in the U.S. since 1992 and 
speaks English but feels more comfortable speaking Creole.

Joseph left her daughter some medicine and went to work, she said.

About 9:30 a.m., she got a call from Saint-Simon asking if Alexandria was with 
her, Joseph said. She told him the teenager was home sick. Security camera 
footage showed him leaving work at about that time, though he later told Joseph 
and Orange County deputies he was at work all day.

Joseph tried calling her daughter all day to see if she was feeling better, she 
said Monday. Alexandria never answered. She also couldn't reach Saint-Simon.

Joseph's sister, who worked at the hotel with her, told her everything was 
probably OK, Joseph said Monday.

"She said, 'Rosalie, you're keeping too strict of a watch on her. She's just 
sleeping, let her sleep,'" Joseph said, wiping her eyes with a tissue on the 
witness stand.

By the time she came to pick him up from work about 5 p.m., Saint-Simon was at 
a Publix across the street from the Boston Market.

When he got into the car, she noticed an injury on his hand. He said he got 
hurt opening a box at work, Joseph said. She didn't ask him any more questions.

"I was already mad at him because I couldn't get ahold of him all day," she 
said.

As soon as they got home, Joseph went into Alexandria's room to check on her. 
She found the room in disarray - sheets stripped off the bed, dresser drawers 
pulled out with all the clothes missing and an empty closet, she said. 
Alexandria was nowhere to be seen.

"It looked like someone had moved and left the house," she said.

She screamed. Saint-Simon came to Alexandria's room, looked at Joseph, looked 
at the room and left the apartment, she testified.

Alexandria's body was found four days later, in what Assistant State Attorney 
Ryan Williams called a "shadowy, insect-filled grave" on the Osceola-Polk 
county line.

"The defendant took steps to ensure his carefully laid plan was carried out," 
Williams said in his opening statement.

Defense attorney Peter Schmer asked the 18 jurors, chosen over 2 weeks of jury 
selection, to pay close attention to the evidence in the case.

"There are holes in the state's case that create reasonable doubt. This is not 
such an open-and-shut-case as that state would have you believe," he said.

Testimony will continue Tuesday. The trial is expected to last about a week. If 
jurors convict Saint-Simon of 1st-degree murder, they will return in April to 
decide whether he should be sentenced to death or life in prison.

(source: OPrland Sentinel)

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

An odd rationale for Supreme Court death penalty reviews



Decisions have been coming out of the Florida Supreme Court so quickly the past 
two weeks, they???re starting to read like form letters. Life-or-death form 
letters.

Since Jan. 22, the court has rejected more than 70 requests from death row 
inmates to have their sentences reviewed by a jury. Mind you, these aren't just 
random prayers from desperate prisoners.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 2 years ago that Florida's longtime method of 
handing down punishments in capital cases was unconstitutional. So, naturally, 
condemned inmates were suddenly eager to have their sentences reviewed and, 
possibly, changed to life in prison.

And the Florida Supreme Court supports that. Up to a point.

And that point is June 24, 2002.

The court has basically drawn a line on a calendar when it comes to whether 
prisoners get a chance to argue that their constitutional rights were 
infringed.

"It???s not honest. It's not proper," said Stephen Harper, director of the 
Florida Center for Capital Representation. "There are a number of people who 
will not get relief even though they have very strong cases."

Here's the basic issue:

Florida used to have juries vote on whether to recommend a death sentence, and 
then allowed a judge to make the final decision. When faced with a similar 
situation in a case in Arizona in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that 
judges should not be making that call.

It took 14 years, and another U.S. Supreme Court decision, for Florida to 
figure that out. The Legislature has since passed a law requiring a unanimous 
jury verdict for a death sentence. Where it gets tricky is the retroactive 
issue.

The Florida Supreme Court has essentially said the state screwed up by not 
paying attention to the Arizona case, and thus any death row cases from 2002-16 
should be subject to review.

That makes sense. The sentences, after all, were unconstitutional.

But so were the cases prior to 2002, right?

"The Florida Supreme Court's decision to make the rule retroactive to some 
people but not others, finds absolutely no support in anything that I'm aware 
of anywhere in the country," former Stetson law professor and current U.S. 
Court of Appeals Judge Michael Allen told a Florida legislative committee last 
year. "It really is like being pregnant. You either are pregnant, or you're 
not. There is no middle.

"A constitutional rule is either retroactive to people, or it's not. Because 
the result of this is truly strange."

You want strange? Consider this scenario: 2 juries recommend death. One by a 
7-5 vote in May 2002. Another by an 11-1 vote in July 2002. The defendant from 
May is out of luck. The defendant in July could be re-sentenced.

If you were suspicious, you might even wonder if the decision had anything to 
do with the practical matter of re-doing hundreds of sentences. The state 
already will have to review about 150 cases post-2002, and would have about 200 
more if pre-2002 cases were considered.

A bill (SB 870) is scheduled to be heard in a Senate judiciary committee this 
morning that would expand the number of retroactive cases, but it's hard to 
imagine the Legislature going down that road.

Meanwhile, the Florida Supreme Court has its own version of fair play.

(source: John Romano, Tampa Bay Times)

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

Man convicted of murder makes 1st resentencing court appearance



The Florida Supreme Court overturned Renaldo McGirth's death sentence after 
rulings that such sentences made final after June 24, 2002, must come from 
unanimous jury decisions. In McGirth's 2008 trial, the jury voted 11-1 for 
death.

A Marion County man convicted of murder and attempted murder made his 1st 
appearance in local court Monday to begin his resentencing process.

Renaldo Devon McGirth, 29, wearing an orange jumpsuit with a white long-sleeve 
undershirt, sat at the defense table while attorneys and 5th Circuit Judge 
Jonathan Ohlman discussed the next steps in his resentencing. The Florida 
Supreme Court overturned McGirth???s death sentence more than a year ago after 
sweeping rulings that death sentences made final after June 24, 2002, must come 
from unanimous jury decisions. In McGirth's 2008 trial, the jury voted 11-1 for 
death.

Ohlman told McGirth he would work on appointing a new attorney to represent the 
defendant in future proceedings. All parties decided to meet again in March 
with the new defense attorney, but did not set an exact date. McGirth waived 
his appearance at that court date, saying he wished to return to the Department 
of Corrections.

State Attorney Brad King is the prosecutor in this case.

McGirth murdered Diana Miller and shot her husband James Miller, both of The 
Villages, while robbing them at their home in 2006. McGirth shot Diana Miller 
once in the chest and once in the back of the head. He also shot James Miller 
in the back of the head, but the man survived and was able to crawl out a 
bedroom window to get help.

The search for McGirth and his co-defendants ended in a high-speed car chase. 
McGirth also stole $259.

Death penalty cases have two trial phases: guilt and penalty. In the guilt 
phase, a jury of 12 people decides whether the defendant is guilty of the 
1st-degree murder charges. If they convict the defendant, the same jury will 
sit for the penalty phase and decide whether the defendant is sentenced to 
death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

McGirth's conviction still stands, but he must have a new penalty phase to 
decide whether he will remain on death row or receive a reduced sentence of 
life.

He is 1 of 4 Marion County death row inmates that have been granted 
resentencings over the past year, one of whom had the sentence reduced to life.

(source: The Ocala Star Banner)








MISSISSIPPI:

Teen pleads guilty in death of boy found in stolen car



A Mississippi teen is pleading guilty to reduced charges in the killing of a 
6-year-old boy who authorities say was inside a car stolen from a supermarket 
parking lot.

D'Allen Washington, 18, pleaded guilty Monday to accessory after the fact to 
the kidnapping of Kingston Frazier, and to an unrelated robbery charge.

Warren Martin, Washington's lawyer, says Washington has agreed to testify 
against others in the case. Madison County District Attorney Michael Guest 
tells local media that Washington's testimony should help prosecutors seek the 
death penalty against Byron McBride, who authorities say shot and killed 
Frazier.

Martin says Washington will be sentenced March 26. He says prosecutors 
recommend he spend 15 years in prison.

A 3rd teen, Dwan Wakefield, faces juvenile charges that could be upgraded to 
adult charges.

(source: Associated Press)