[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----GA., OHIO, ILL., MO., UTAH, MONT., ARIZ., NEV., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

May 7


GEORGIA:

An excerpt from the Muscogee County prosecutors' jury selection notes for 
Johnny Lee Gates's case. Superior Court of Muscogee County, Ga.----Prosecutors 
stacked the deck. 41 years later, that may be enough to free Johnny Gates.



Johnny Lee Gates' journey through the Georgia justice system already is the 
stuff of legal legend and one of the longest-running capital cases in the 
nation's history. A black man convicted by an all-white jury of murdering a 
white woman in Muscogee County in 1977, he was quickly sentenced to death. Now, 
41 years later, defense attorneys and prosecutors are back in court Monday 
fighting over some of the most persuasive evidence yet that Gates' trial was an 
unconstitutionally prejudiced exercise.

Defense attorneys have evidence that prosecutors systematically excluded black 
prospective jurors in his case. In February, after a bitter public records 
battle, a judge ordered state attorneys to turn over the notes Gates' 
prosecutors took during the jury selection. The notes showed precisely the sort 
of racial bias the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 held unconstitutional in another 
Georgia case involving prosecutorial misconduct and a black defendant, a case 
involving one of the prosecutors who also helped send Gates to death row.

The notes show that in Gates' case white prospective jurors were labeled with a 
"W" and black prospective jurors were labeled with an "N." An expert employed 
by the defense swears that the probability that all of the black jurors were 
struck at random is 0.000000000000000000000000000004. That's 29 zeroes. The 
math is debatable, but a finding by the judge that the jury selection was 
transparently racist could mean a new trial for Gates. Why would prosecutors 
worry about a new trial in a case involving a confession they've defended for 
decades? Because the case against Gates was shaky from the start.

On Nov. 30, 1976, three weeks after fellow Georgian Jimmy Carter was elected 
president, Katharina Wright was robbed, raped, and murdered in her apartment in 
Columbus in the middle of a weekday. Her body was found, bound, with a bullet 
wound in her head. One witness promptly told police she saw a white man running 
away from the building around the time of the murder. Another witness, who 
lived just below the apartment where the murder took place, told the cops that 
a black man around 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighing about 170 pounds had come 
around earlier that day saying he was with the gas company and asking whether 
the neighbor wanted his gas turned off.

A white man named Lester Sanders was questioned by the police after he was 
found fondling the victim's body while it lay in its casket at a funeral home. 
The cops later told a grand jury that Sanders began confessing to the Wright 
murder, telling the police details about the crime that only the true killer 
would have known. But Sanders never was charged, and four decades later no one 
has explained why. 2 months after the murder, in January 1977, Gates was 
arrested with 2 others and charged with trying to rob a store. And that's when 
the investigation into the murder of Katharina Wright took a dramatic turn.

An informant told the police that Gates had borrowed a gun, claimed to have 
murdered Wright, and then given the gun back to the informant who then threw 
the weapon into a nearby creek. The gun was later discovered, test-fired, and 
found not to have been used to kill Wright. Nor were any fingerprints other 
than those of the victim and her husband initially found by the cops at the 
crime scene. But it didn't matter because by the time the forensics came back 
the police had a "confession" from Gates - and not just a typed-up one. For the 
1st time in the history of the police department of Columbus, Georgia, the cops 
taped one of its "confessions," taped it at the scene of the crime for added 
effect, and its use at the trial doomed Gates.

Gates' confession was detailed. He signed a typed document that said he had 
identified himself as a gas company employee and went to Wright's apartment 
dressed as a civilian. Katharina said she had called the gas company because 
her heater wasn't working. Why did she let him in? We'll never know. Gates then 
allegedly told her he was robbing her to which she responded that she had no 
money but could give him sex instead. They had consensual sex, according to the 
confession, and then the story has Gates shooting the woman to death after she 
said that she would be able to identify him once he left the apartment.

To emphasize their version of events the police took Gates to Wright's 
apartment to videotape his "re-enactment" of the crime. The tape shown to 
jurors had Gates traipsing around the apartment and, pointedly, touching the 
heater from which fingerprints ultimately would be taken and used against him 
at trial. Gates then, and later, was considered intellectually disabled, and 
profoundly so. School records showed the extent of his deficiencies in adaptive 
reasoning, and his background in special education, a history police and 
prosecutors knew or should have known about in 1977. But it wasn't until 1992 
that post-conviction attorneys first raised that issue on Gates's behalf after 
discovering school records and his post-conviction IQ testing, which showed him 
in the range of "retardation," as it was called then.

The police took that taped and written "confession" and supplemented it with 
the testimony of that downstairs neighbor, the man who swore that Gates was the 
man he had seen the day of the murder. He swore to this in court even though 
Gates was 40 pounds lighter and four inches shorter than the 5-foot-10-inch, 
170-pound man the witness had described. Prosecutors also told jurors that 
Gates' fingerprint had been found at the scene even though the initial police 
search of the apartment had not turned up any foreign prints. Did Gates touch 
something during his police-video performance inside the apartment? Like the 
heater to which he had been directed? Is that how his prints got there?

That was just one of the questions never answered at trial. No surprise, 
really, since the whole trial took fewer than three days to complete. It took 
jurors 95 minutes to convict Gates. It took them 58 more minutes to recommend 
the death sentence against him after a "penalty phase" of a trial that lasted 
less than 2 hours. His attorneys raised a number of issues on appeal, trying 
primarily to get out from under the confession, but they all went nowhere. "We 
have already noted that the verdict of the jury was not imposed under the 
influence of passion, prejudice, or other arbitrary factor," the Georgia Court 
of Appeals pointedly declared in a 1979 ruling that first upheld Gates' 
conviction and sentence.

The story fast-forwards now to 2016. By this time Gates had gotten off the 
state's death row because of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 decision outlawing 
the execution of the intellectually disabled. Faced at last with his school 
records and cognitive testing results Georgia attorneys agreed to revert his 
death sentence to a sentence of life without parole. But it is another Supreme 
Court decision, in 2016, that brings everyone back to court on Monday. In 
Foster v. Chatman, the justices concluded that Douglas Pullen, the same 
prosecutor who had tried Gates, had illegally discriminated against a black 
capital defendant by striking all 4 black prospective jurors from the case. 
Pullen had tried to explain those choices, saying he had a "race-neutral" 
reason for each one, but the court didn't buy it and Timothy Foster was granted 
a new trial.

The Foster decision convinced Gates' current lawyers to renew their claims that 
his trial, too, was infected by racial bias. And why not? The Foster case had 
uncovered a pattern by the 2 prosecutors who handled the Gates case, Pullen and 
William Smith, in which virtually all black prospective jurors were eliminated 
from consideration in capital cases involving black defendants. The record in 
the 5 cases in which Pullen struck black jurors from the pool was 27-for-27. In 
the 4 cases in which Smith made the call he was only able to strike all the 
black potential jurors three times because in the 4th case, after using 10 
strikes to exclude 10 black people, there were still other black prospective 
jurors.

It says something about the changing nature of Georgia justice that there will 
even be a hearing to discuss whether Gates should get a new trial. The 
presiding judge, John Allen, a decorated Vietnam War fighter pilot, knows this 
case well. He presided over Gates' successful attempt to get out from under his 
death sentence 15 years ago. It's hard to imagine the state's appellate courts 
overturning a decision he'd make to give Gates a new trial.

The Gates case is notable as another test of how far the courts are going to go 
to remedy past episodes of racial misconduct by officials in capital cases 
involving black defendants and white victims. A new trial here, over the 
objections of prosecutors, could finally tell us what happened to that white 
suspect, how Gates' prints suddenly turned up at a crime scene where before 
they were absent, and why a robbery suspect would start to fix a gas heater in 
the home of a woman he then shot in the head. Or, it could convince prosecutors 
to abandon altogether the case against Gates.

(source: themarshallproject.org)








OHIO:

Trial date set in quadruple homicide case



A Jan. 31, 2019, trial date was set Friday for Arron L. Lawson, who is charged 
with 4 counts of capital murder, among other charges, according to Lawrence 
County Prosecuting Attorney Brigham Anderson.

Common Pleas Judge Andy Ballard earlier set an August trial date for Lawson, 
23. During a hearing last month, defense counsel asked for a continuance of the 
trial, which carries a possible death penalty.

Kirk A. McVay, an assistant Ohio public defender representing Lawson, asked for 
the continuance last month.

Lawson is charged with killing 4 Pedro, Ohio, area residents last October. The 
charges against him are 4 counts of aggravated murder, rape, kidnapping, 
aggravated burglary, abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence, felonious 
assault, attempted murder, theft of a motor vehicle and failure to comply with 
the order or signal of a police officer.

He is charged with murdering Donald McGuire, 50, his wife, Tammie L. McGuire, 
43, her daughter, Stacey Jackson Holston, 24, and Holston's son, Devin Holston, 
8. Lawson is Tammie McGuire's nephew.

McVay earlier said due to a workload by mitigation experts, he wasn't sure the 
defense would be ready for the Aug. 2 trial. His office, which has 4 lawyers, 
currently is working on 6 capital (possible death penalty) cases.

Mitigation experts or specialists are used by defense counsel to argue against 
the death penalty. McVay said there are a limited number of mitigation experts 
in Ohio.

The trial is being held in phases. The 1st phase will decide guilt or 
innocence. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison or be given 
the death penalty.

Since the trial is expected to take 4 to 5 weeks, Ballard needs to set aside at 
least a month of the court's docket. The judge set aside Jan. 31 to Feb. 28, 
2019, for the aggravated murder trial.

(source: The Herald-Dispatch)








ILLINOIS:

Our View: State should fund Illinois Innocence Project



Imagine freeing 1 innocent person from prison.

Now imagine doing it 11 times, and you will get a sense of what the Illinois 
Innocence Project has accomplished.

Housed at the University of Illinois at Springfield since its founding in 2001, 
UIS undergraduates work with the IIP attorneys and staff, as well as students 
from the state's 3 public law schools to review, evaluate and pursue claims of 
innocence in the courts when the evidence warrants it.

But there is a sense of anguish too, knowing freeing 11 souls has just 
scratched the surface of those wrongfully imprisoned. It's hard to know exactly 
how many people have been wrongfully convicted, but the numbers of those proven 
to have been wrongly convicted give an inkling of how severe the problem is. 
The National Registry of Exonerations says there have been 2,212 nationally, 
with about 220 of them in Illinois. The IIP has had 2,735 requests for help 
since 2001; last year alone saw 355 requests come in.

Adding to that discouragement: Never knowing if the funding will be there to 
continue the project's missions (besides its advocacy and legal work, the IIP 
also focuses on education and reform). The other 2 innocence projects in 
Illinois are at private universities in the Chicago area, and both have 
extensive private funding sources.

A bare-bones budget for IIP is about $750,000. It has survived largely on 
federal funding, but the recent end of one grant has caused the project to 
release a member of its legal staff. Program leaders praise UIS for providing 
funding and assistance, but note the university has had its own struggles 
during the state???s budget woes. It cannot contribute long-term, sustainable 
funding at the level needed for IIP to adequately meet its missions.

It's an untenable way to operate. Senate Bill 3602 aims to fix that by asking 
for a $1.5 million appropriation to the IIP. The hope is it would become an 
annual appropriation.

It might sound like a lot when the state is bleeding money. But look at it this 
way: It costs about $44,000 annually for the state to house 1 inmate. The IIP 
estimates it cost taxpayers about $9.2 million to wrongfully imprison just the 
11 people it has exonerated. If they had served out their full prison terms, it 
would have cost another $16 million.

That $1.5 million isn't looking so bad now.

Beyond the potential financial savings, there are moral obligations lawmakers 
must consider. The state has a poor track record of sending innocent people to 
prison. George Ryan placed a moratorium on executions in Illinois in 2000 after 
learning that since Illinois reinstated the death penalty in 1977, 13 people 
who had been sentenced to die were exonerated - 1 more than the 12 who were 
executed during the same time frame.

Not all of those exonerated were wrongfully convicted of a capital offense. But 
no matter what the circumstances of their imprisonment, these people have had 
their rights and dignity stripped from them due to reasons that range from 
false confessions to perjury to mistaken identification to official misconduct. 
Even if exonerated, they face challenges in resuming their lives, as their time 
in prison negatively affects their relationships with family and friends, will 
likely lead to emotional and psychological issues, and will make securing 
employment tough.

If lawmakers need to justify the cost of giving $1.5 million to the IIP, they 
can look at the savings they will reap by the successful work the project does. 
Or they can follow up on pledges that our public universities need to have 
outstanding, prestigious initiatives in order to attract students. Having the 
only state-university operated innocence project in the country should fit that 
bill.

The well-documented failures in Illinois prove we need watchdogs to be a voice 
for those who deserve justice that has been denied them. Spending $1.5 million 
is a small cost to pay for that moral imperative.

(source: Opinion; The State Journal-Register)








MISSOURI:

Missouri and the Death Penalty----Consider the case of Bucklew v. Precythe

"We all of course, would like to think that we are 'moving down the road toward 
human decency' . . . Within the confines of this judicial proceeding, however, 
we have no way of knowing in which direction that road lies." - William 
Rehnquist, Rummel v. Estelle (1980) Missouri is back. It encounters the death 
penalty repeatedly, and its encounters serve as reminders of what a great 
country we live in. We are willing to endlessly discuss and litigate how best 
to implement the death penalty. One of our greatest attributes is that in 
proper circumstances (and before an execution takes place), the person with the 
greatest interest in the execution procedure is permitted to explain to a court 
why the method selected by the executioner is less desirable than the method 
the participant proposes. The case of Bucklew v. Precythe is a case in point. 
Mr. Bucklew is the plaintiff in that case.

Mr. Buklew engaged in some heinous acts, and following his arrest, was 
convicted of murder, kidnapping, and rape. His trial and conviction and appeals 
were in Missouri, and Missouri is one of the states that continues to use the 
death penalty as a form of punishment. For obvious reasons, Mr. Bucklew had a 
vested interest in understanding how the death penalty and he were going to be 
executed. His interest was particularly keen, because he has a unique medical 
condition that he and his doctors believe would result in his suffering cruel 
and unusual pain and suffering if he were to be executed using Missouri's 
lethal injection protocol. If his claim that the procedure would subject him to 
cruel and unusual punishment because of his medical condition is in fact true, 
his execution would violate the pertinent provisions of the Eighth and 
Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Having lost all 
appeals at the state level, Mr. Bucklew went to the Federal Court of Appeals 
for the Eight Circuit.

In considering Mr. Bucklew's appeal, that court engaged in an extremely careful 
analysis of what Mr. Bucklew must demonstrate in order to compel the state to 
execute him in the manner he has selected, rather than the method selected by 
the state. To succeed in his efforts, the Court said, Mr. Bucklew must: 
"establish that the method [proposed by the state] presents a risk that is sure 
or very likely to cause serious illness and needless suffering, and give rise 
to sufficiently imminent dangers." (The Court does not discuss what kind of 
"serious illness' can befall someone who is being executed, since it would seem 
to those unfamiliar with the process, that if one is dead within a few minutes 
following the beginning of the procedure, "serious illness" would not be a real 
problem. It is also unclear what is meant by "imminent dangers" as used in the 
sentence just quoted.) The Court goes on to say, quoting from an earlier case, 
that in addition to satisfying those criteria, the prospective participant in 
the execution must also show that the proposed consequences of the execution 
procedure are severe in relation to the pain and suffering that is accepted as 
inherent in any method of execution." Further, and again quoting from an 
earlier case, the Court says the challenger must: "identify an alternative that 
is feasible, readily implemented, and in fact significantly reduces a 
substantial risk of severe pain." That seems particularly compassionate, since 
it demonstrates that an execution may become a collaborative effort between the 
person being executed, and the executioner, if the person being executed 
proposes a method permitted under the applicable state law. In addition to 
lethal injection, Missouri permits the imposition of death on someone who has 
received a death sentence, by use of nitrogen gas. Mr. Bucklew asserted that in 
his particular case, with his medical condition, the executioner should kill 
him with nitrogen gas rather than lethal injection. (To avoid any confusion, it 
should be noted that the nitrogen gas (N) used in executions, differs from N20 
known as "laughing gas." A person exposed to N in the execution chamber would 
die from asphyxiation rather than laughing. However, some studies suggest death 
from nitrogen may, in fact, be mildly euphoric.)

Mr. Bucklew's case demonstrates that as in any collaborative effort, there are 
limits. Missouri resisted Mr. Bucklew's efforts to persuade the Court of 
Appeals that he should be executed by nitrogen gas, and the Court of Appeals 
agreed with the state. In affirming the ruling of the trial court that lethal 
injection was appropriate for Mr. Bucklew, the Court said: "the [trial] court 
held that Bucklew failed to provide adequate evidence that his alternative 
method of execution-lethal nitrogen gas- was a 'feasible, readily implemented' 
alternative that would 'in fact significantly reduce a substantial risk of 
severe pain' as compared to lethal injection." It said Bucklew "failed to 
establish that lethal injection, as applied to him, constitutes cruel and 
unusual punishment under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments."

On April 30, 2018, the United States Supreme Court announced that it would 
consider Mr. Bucklew's claims in its upcoming term. The country will join Mr. 
Bucklew in eagerly awaiting the decision that will inform him (and us), of what 
method Missouri may use in executing him.

(soruce: Christopher Brauchli, commondreams.org)








UTAH:

Utah Man Could Face Death Penalty in Killing of Infant Son



A Utah man has been ordered to stand trial in the death of his infant son last 
year.

Authorities say 22-year-old Matthew Daniel Graves is charged with aggravated 
murder and a possible capital offense after he allegedly punched the 
1-month-old boy repeatedly in the head.

The Deseret News reports that prosecutors have a 60-day window to decide 
whether they'll seek the death penalty in the case.

Police responded to a Roy home on a report of an infant not breathing on Sept. 
7.

Doctors determined the baby had significant brain trauma, skull fractures plus 
separated vertebrae in the head and neck.

Police say Graves admitted that he had gotten angry because the infant was 
crying.

They also reported finding drugs in Graves' car and home.

(source: Associated Press)








MONTANA:

'Send him home:' Death row Canadian's father breaks silence weeks before dying



Ronald Smith's father still had a bedroom and a vintage car waiting for the day 
his son might come home to Alberta from the Montana prison where he has been on 
death row for 35 years.

Nelson Smith will never know if the 60-year-old convict who pleaded guilty to 2 
murders will ever sleep in his own bed or take the mint 1948 Chrysler out for a 
spin.

Smith died on April 10 just weeks after breaking a decades-long silence and 
voicing what would be his final wish - to see his son beat the death penalty.

"Hopefully what little bit I do have to say will go along with his someday 
being released. He's spent 35 years of his life in there and it's about long 
enough to sit in a place like that," Smith said in a March 22 interview with 
The Canadian Press in Red Deer, Alta.

"They should pretty well load him on an airplane and send him home."

Ronald Smith has been on death row since 1983 after fatally shooting 2 young 
men while he was high on LSD and alcohol near East Glacier, Mont.

After refusing a plea deal and pleading guilty, his request for the death 
penalty was granted. He had a change of heart and has fought for his life ever 
since. 5 execution dates have been set over the years and each has been 
overturned.

The Canadian government sent a letter to Montana Gov. Steve Bullock in 2016 
asking for clemency.

"All these years I've never, ever told anybody about this situation. Nobody 
knew that I was Ron's dad," Smith said. "Once this goes through, everybody's 
going to know who I am."

Smith, who was 83, sat in a recliner during the interview with his constant 
companion of the last 13 years on his lap. Queenie, a black miniature poodle, 
had been with him since his wife, Deloris, died in 2011.

His health was failing. He required a constant supply of oxygen fed to him 
through a long hose which allowed him to navigate his home.

Initially horrified by his son's actions, he said he eventually made peace with 
him and was hoping that the intervention of the federal government would lead 
to his release.

"There just might be a light at the end of the tunnel you know? It would be 
nice to have him home for Christmas. My breathing is getting so bad. I don't 
know how many more Christmases I'm going to get in. I've even got a room for 
him."

Smith, who worked in the oil industry before he retired, said his son had a 
normal upbringing, but was constantly in trouble.

"He was a big problem and it was tough. His mother looked after Ronald while I 
was chasing the oilpatch. I was all over the place and it was hard for me to 
try and control him.

"He started getting into trouble about the time he was 15 years old and he just 
never flattened out until he wound up there down in the (United) States."

Ronald Smith and Rodney Munro admitted to marching cousins Harvey Mad Man, 23, 
and Thomas Running Rabbit, 20, into the woods by a highway in 1982 and shooting 
them both in the head with a sawed-off .22-calibre shotgun.

They wanted to steal the men's car, but Smith also said at the time that he 
wanted to know what it was like to kill someone.

"I went for a long time and never had anything to do with him," his father 
said. "Then I got to thinking there's all kinds of people out there doing the 
same thing, or a lot worse, and are back out on the streets.

"I certainly wasn't proud of what he had done. It was tough. Really tough."

Munro accepted a plea bargain and was sentenced to 60 years in prison, but he 
was returned to Canada and released in 1998.

Smith said his son has changed.

"He's paid his debt. Do I think Ron's a good man? Oh yeah. He's as good as 
you're going to find. And I'm not just saying that because he's my son."

2 members of Smith's family, including his daughter, testified at his clemency 
hearing in 2012 to support him. Relatives of the 2 victims also gave emotional 
testimony urging that there be no leniency.

"The decisions he made, he has to pay for," Running Rabbit's son said. "He had 
no mercy for my father."

The clemency request has yet to be ruled on.

Ron Smith's longtime lawyer said his client took the news of his father's death 
hard.

"Both parents now have passed away while he's been in prison and not able to 
really say goodbye or attend the funerals," said Greg Jackson. "It's very 
difficult news particularly in the place he's at now."

(source: National Post)



ARIZONA:

Fatal attack on interracial couple in Arizona heads to trial



An interracial couple was walking near a Phoenix park when authorities say a 
shirtless neo-Nazi began angrily yelling a racial slur and harassing the black 
man in the couple over dating a white woman.

Authorities say the men exchanged tense words before Travis Ricci rushed back 
to a home where other white supremacists were partying, grabbed a shotgun and 
returned in a sedan driven by an associate. Ricci leaned out the car and fired 
two buckshot blasts, missing the black man - the intended target - and killing 
his girlfriend, investigators said.

Lawyers are now picking a jury to decide whether Ricci should be convicted of 
murder and sentenced to death in the 2009 attack, which prosecutors say was a 
hate crime. Opening statements are tentatively scheduled for June 6.

The case has offered several unexpected turns.

Ricci, whose defense is expected to include an argument that he's not the man 
he used to be, claims his great-grandfather was a member of the French 
Resistance killed by Nazis during World War II.

Authorities are seeking the death penalty, saying 39-year-old Kelly Ann 
Jaeger's killing was meant to further the interests of the Vinlanders Social 
Club, a neo-Nazi group with a reputation for violence that was later targeted 
in a law enforcement crackdown.

Since prosecutors have called the attack a hate crime, they can seek as many as 
11 additional years in prison - above the maximum penalty - if Ricci is 
convicted of other charges, such as attempted murder, drive-by shooting, 
aggravated assault and assisting a criminal gang.

Ricci pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have raised questions about the 
ability of Jaeger's boyfriend, Jeffery Wellmaker, to identify him as the 
triggerman. They note that nearly 2 years after the attack, Wellmaker was 
jailed in an unrelated case and played chess with Ricci behind bars without 
recognizing him.

Aaron Levi Schmidt, who authorities say was driving the car used in the 
shooting, pleaded guilty to murder in Jaeger's death. He is already serving 11 
years for assisting a criminal gang. It's unclear if he's been sentenced on the 
murder conviction.

Lawyers for Ricci and Schmidt, both now 36, have said their clients weren't 
members of the Vinlanders.

Police reports say Ricci told associates before the attack that he saw black 
men hitting a white woman, though it's unclear if that claim was accurate.

Rebecca Wilder, a spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, which 
is prosecuting Ricci, declined to comment on the case. The Phoenix Police 
Department, which investigated the attack, also declined to comment.

Prosecutors said in court records that Wellmaker, who was unarmed, was 
extremely distraught over the attack and tried to help his girlfriend after she 
was shot. They say Wellmaker didn't provoke the attack and tried unsuccessfully 
to push Jaeger out of the path of the shotgun blast, according to court 
records.

Ricci's attorneys declined to answer questions about the allegations against 
their client.

"He is a very sensitive person who cares about people in general," said 
Jennifer Willmott, one of his lawyers. "He has had a very difficult life."

Bruce Blumberg, another attorney for Ricci, said his client's team has gotten 
records that document the arrest and execution of Ricci's great-grandfather 
during his involvement with the French Resistance. Blumberg said the 
great-grandfather's experience may be brought up during the trial, though it's 
unclear what it will be used to demonstrate.

The attack started brewing after Ricci left his friend's home angry and drunk, 
making his way into the neighborhood where he eventually noticed Jaeger and 
Wellmaker, according to a police report.

Prosecutors say Ricci hurled a racial slur at Wellmaker and yelled, \"What are 
you doing with a white girl?"

He also told Wellmaker he was going to get "something for him," prosecutors 
said.,

Sometime later, Jaeger and Wellmaker were near a pay phone when the sedan 
pulled up. Ricci fired 2 shells, hitting Jaeger in the stomach from about 10 
feet (3 meters) away, prosecutors said.

Ricci's attorneys have noted Wellmaker was unable to identify Ricci in a photo 
lineup after the shooting, and he failed to recognize their client in 2011 when 
the 2 served time in the same Maricopa County jail pod. Court records filed in 
Ricci's case didn't specify the charge on which Wellmaker was jailed, and a 
records check didn't provide a definitive answer to the question.

Ricci ended up telling Wellmaker he was the person accused of killing his 
girlfriend, a judge wrote in a pretrial ruling.

The judge said Wellmaker's identification of the shooter was reliable because 
he would have been able to identify Ricci independent of the jail encounter. 
While working with a police artist after the shooting, Wellmaker described a 
unique tattoo across the attacker's stomach, the judge wrote.

In an unrelated crime months after Jaeger's shooting death, police say Ricci 
stabbed 2 men who tried to stop him from attacking his girlfriend. He is 
serving a 22-year sentence for assault and weapons misconduct convictions.

(source: Associated Press)








NEVADA:

Supreme Court arguments for Nevada death penalty case start May 8



Supreme Court arguments in a controversial Nevada death penalty case are 
scheduled to start Tuesday, May 8 in Carson City.

The execution of murderer Scott Dozier was put on hold in November 2017 after 
the American Civil Liberties Union challenged that the state's lethal cocktail 
could've masked possible suffering.

The Nevada Department of Corrections initially proposed to use a 3-drug 
cocktail which included an opioid, sedative and the paralytic Cisatracurium.

The cocktail has never been used in the United States for an execution, 
prompting concerns over a possible botched execution.

Tuesday morning, Nevada Supreme Court justices will begin to hear oral 
arguments in the death penalty case.

1 of the drugs the state had planned to use in the execution expired earlier 
this year.

Dozier was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2002 murder and 
dismemberment of Jeremiah Miller in Clark County. Dozier has maintained that he 
wants to die, regardless of the drug cocktail used.

(source: KRXI news)