[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----VA., N.C., FLA., ALA., TENN., S.DAK., USA

[Rick Halperin]

October 3



VIRGINIA:

Jury will decide if man who killed wife, officer, will get the death penalty or 
prison----Army veteran killed wife, police officer, shot and injured 2 other 
officers

A jury that found a Woodbridge man guilty of murdering his wife, a Prince 
William County police officer, and shooting, and seriously injuring 2 other 
officers, heard arguments for, and against, his execution Monday.

Jurors found Army Staff Sgt. Ronald Hamilton guilty of 17 different charges. 
But for the next week and a half, they will focus on just 2 of them both 
capital murder charges.

Hamilton is facing 2 capital murder charges; killing 2 people within a 3 year 
span, and killing a law enforcement officer. Hamilton shot and killed his wife 
Crystal and Officer Ashley Guindon.

Hamilton was also convicted of shooting, and seriously injuring 2 other Prince 
William County Police Officers.

The shootings occurred at the Hamilton family home in Woodbridge, in February 
of 2016. It was the Hamilton's son's 11th birthday. The boy was home during the 
murders.

The prosecution argued that "vileness," was shown through the excessive nature 
of the murders. they openly inquired "if a man could do this to his wife, to 
the police, in front of his son, in his own neighborhood... what else could he 
do?"

The defense outlined Hamilton's military service. His 2 deployments to Iraq 
with the 101st Airborne Division, and his inability to connect with his 
civilian colleagues after he took a job at the Pentagon.

They said that in the midst of marital problems, he thought he could lose it 
all and snapped, leading to a horrifying "11 minutes," with tragic 
consequences.

The prosecution argued that this crime spanned far beyond "11 minutes." 
Hamilton had long been abusive towards his wife, and had multiple encounters 
with law enforcement.

(source: localdvm.com)








NORTH CAROLINA:

North Carolina Bar Files Ethics Complaint Against Lawyer Accused of Fleecing 
Intellectually Disabled Death-Row Exonerees



Florida lawyer Patrick Megaro is facing an official complaint by the North 
Carolina State Bar for allegedly defrauding death-row exonerees Henry McCollum 
and Leon Brown, and taking 1/3 of the compensation granted to the 2 men.

Half-brothers McCollum and Brown were exonerated in 2014 after spending 30 
years in prison, some on death row, for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old 
girl.

Both men are intellectually disabled, a factor that made them more vulnerable 
to wrongful conviction, and, the Bar complaint says, vulnerable to exploitation 
by Megaro. After McCollum and Brown were exonerated and formally pardoned by 
Governor Pat McCrory, they sought compensation from North Carolina for their 
wrongful convictions and incarceration.

Megaro became McCollum's and Brown's lawyer in March 2015, after 2 women who 
claimed to be advocating on behalf of the brothers persuaded them to fire the 
lawyers who had been representing them in their compensation action and to hire 
Megaro's firm instead. The brothers received compensation awards of $750,000, 
but Megaro - who the complaint says did virtually no work on their exonerations 
or compensation cases - took $250,000 in fees from each man.

Within 7 months, McCollum was out of money and taking out high-interest loans 
that Megaro arranged and approved. Megaro also negotiated a proposed settlement 
of the brothers' wrongful prosecution lawsuit in which he was to receive 
$400,000 of a $1 million payment.

The complaint alleges that Megaro committed 16 ethical violations, including 
lying to judges, double-billing his clients, and engaging in fraud by signing 
for loans with a 42% interest rate.

It also alleges that he violated his duty to act competently when he failed to 
determine the police department's insurance policy limits before agreeing to 
settle the brothers' wrongful prosecution case. McCollum expressed his 
disappointment with Megaro, saying, "He took money that he should have never 
took. I could have that money right now."

According to the Marshall Project, "Wednesday's complaint begins a legal 
process similar to a civil lawsuit that will likely culminate in a public trial 
of the charges, with 3 members of the state's Disciplinary Hearing Commission 
sitting as judge and jury."

Megaro - whose law partner derided the disciplinary action as "a political 
prosecution" - could face disbarment if he is found guilty.

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)








FLORIDA:

Colley calls 2015 double murder 'accident' at final hearing



In his last opportunity to speak to a judge before he is sentenced for killing 
2 women, James Terry Colley Jr. apologized to those impacted by his crimes.

"This was a horrible, terrible accident and I wish it was different," Colley 
said toward the end of a morning hearing at the St. Johns County courthouse. 
"But it's not, and I am sorry for all parties involved."

Colley, who is now 38, is facing the death penalty after being convicted in 
July of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder for shooting and killing his estranged 
wife, Amanda Colley, and her friend, Lindy Dobbins, during a 2015 rampage in 
the MuraBella home the Colleys once shared.

He was also convicted of 2 counts of attempted 1st-degree murder, 2 counts of 
burglary and a single count of aggravated stalking after injunction.

The same jurors who convicted him returned the following week and, after a 
3-day penalty phase, agreed that he should be put to death for the murders.

Colley was in court Tuesday for what is called a Spencer hearing, which was the 
last opportunity for his attorneys, Garry Wood and Terry Shoemaker, to offer 
mitigating factors to the court in the hope of avoiding the death sentence.

They called 1 witness.

Director Sam Williams, who oversees corrections for the St. Johns County 
Sheriff's Office, testified that Colley had only a handful of minor 
disciplinary infractions during his time being held in the jail.

Assistant state attorneys Jennifer Dunton and Mark Johnson offered no 
additional witnesses or information during the brief hearing.

Before Maltz imposes sentences, both sides will argue their respective 
positions in sentencing memorandums that Maltz has asked them to have to him by 
Oct. 12.

He scheduled sentencing for Nov. 30.

During his July trial, prosecutors showed that Colley, having grown enraged by 
a relationship that Amanda Colley was in with another man, drove to the 
MuraBella home and opened fire on the 4 people inside.

Amanda Colley's boyfriend, Lamar Douberly, managed to escape the rampage, as 
did another friend. But as dramatic 911-call recordings showed, Colley chased 
his 2 victims deeper into the home and shot killed them as they screamed and 
begged him to stop.

The calls were used again the next week in the penalty phase of the trial when 
Dunton and Johnson sought to prove aggravating factors that would justify a 
sentence of death.

Those included, among others, that the killings were "especially heinous, 
atrocious and cruel" and that they were committed in "a cold, calculated and 
premeditated manner without pretense of moral or legal justification."

Colley's defense team, Garry Wood and Terry Shoemaker, sought to mitigate those 
aggravators by introducing testimony that Colley was not in his right mind at 
the time of the shootings because he had been up drinking and using cocaine the 
night before and was also taking a variety of prescription drugs including 
painkillers, antidepressants and the sleeping aid Ambien.

(source: St. Augustine Record)








ALABAMA:

Supreme Court appears sympathetic to death row prisoner who cannot remember his 
crime



The Supreme Court confronted a difficult question Tuesday: What to do with a 
murderer on death row whose dementia is so severe he can't remember his crime?

While it seemed possible the court would side with Vernon Madison, whose 
physical and mental deterioration over 33 years in solitary confinement has 
left him blind, incontinent and with significant memory loss, the absence of 
its ninth justice loomed over the case.

Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, who retired in July, wrote the high court's 
2007 decision barring capital punishment for people who cannot understand their 
punishments and its 2005 decision barring executions of children, both decided 
by 5-4 majorities. He played a key role in its 6-3 decision in 2002 that barred 
executing people with intellectual disabilities.

Without him - and with Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to succeed him hanging by a 
thread in the Senate this week - the court risks deadlocking 4-4 on cases like 
Madison's, which frequently pit liberal against conservative justices.

The justices last year reversed a federal appeals court ruling that had struck 
down Madison's death sentence for killing a police officer. The lower court 
said that because Madison had suffered strokes in prison and could not remember 
the crime, he could not make sense of his punishment.

At that time, the Supreme Court ruled there is a difference between condemned 
inmates who cannot recall their crimes and those who cannot "rationally 
comprehend the concepts of crime and punishment." They said under federal law, 
Madison's lawyers had not proved he was incapable of understanding that.

But 3 of the court's more liberal justices - Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen 
Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor - said then that the court had never ruled on the 
question of memory loss and should hear such a case in the future.

When renowned prisoners' rights attorney Bryan Stevenson presented Madison's 
case Tuesday, it appeared that at least Chief Justice John Roberts might join 
his liberal colleagues in ruling Madison incompetent enough to be spared lethal 
injection in Alabama.

Madison no longer remembers shooting and killing Julius Schulte in 1985. But 
Stevenson conceded that a mere claim of memory loss is not enough to save 
Madison's life. In this case, he said, the strokes have left Madison with 
vascular dementia, rendering him "frail, bewildered, vulnerable" and unable to 
"tell you the season of the year."

"We recognize that it's too easy for any offender to say, 'I don't remember,'" 
Stevenson said.

Trial courts in Alabama had ruled Madison eligible for the death penalty 
because he was not judged to be insane or psychotic. But as the years passed, 
he suffered more strokes that caused brain deterioration and cognitive 
deficits.

Even so, Alabama Deputy Attorney General Thomas Govan said the state still 
deserves to win "retribution for a heinous crime," calling Madison's claim 
"unprecedented."

Breyer, the court's leading opponent of the death penalty, said Madison's many 
medical impairments may not be unusual, given that death row prisoners are 
older on average than in the past and have been awaiting execution for 20, 30, 
even 40 years.

"This will become a more common problem," Breyer predicted, adding that a 
narrow ruling in Madison's favor might prevent an avalanche of similar cases.

(source: USA Today)








TENNESSEE----impending execution

Tenn. Supreme Court to hear lethal injection arguments



With an inmate set to be executed next week, Tennessee's Supreme Court is 
hearing arguments Wednesday about the constitutionality of its lethal injection 
method.

The lawsuit by more than 2 dozen inmates claims the state's 3-drug method of 
execution causes severe pain and suffering. Attorneys for the inmates want the 
court to consider the affidavit of an expert witness who claims the August 
execution of Billy Ray Irick was "torturous."

Attorneys for the state oppose the introduction of the new evidence. They're 
asking the high court to uphold a lower court's July finding that its method of 
execution is legal.

Edmund Zagorski is scheduled to be executed on Oct. 11. He was sentenced in 
1984 in the slayings of 2 men during a drug deal.

(source: Associated Press)








SOUTH DAKOTA:

Rhines' latest challenge to death sentence rejected----Rhines was convicted in 
1993 of killing a clerk at a Rapid City donut shop



A federal appeals court recently denied a South Dakota death-row prisoner's 
latest attempt to win relief in his conviction for murdering Donnivan Schaeffer 
during a 1992 burglary of a Rapid City donut shop.

Charles Russell Rhines, 62, who has a history of appealing his conviction 
during the quarter-century he has been in the state prison, was seeking a 
habeas corpus hearing in federal court, a sort of last-step, general appeal 
that his imprisonment is unjust for several reasons.

His latest appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was submitted in 
January 2018 with a 3-judge panel's opinion filed Aug. 3.

His appeal included another challenge to the use of his confession to police 
that he had bound and stabbed, laughingly, 22-year-old Schaeffer, a part-time 
employee who found Rhimes burglarizing the donut shop on March 8, 1992 in Rapid 
City.

Rhines had been fired a few days previously and had kept a key to the shop. He 
admitted torturing Schaeffer, leaving him to die after a final stab wound into 
his skull while Schaeffer pleaded for his life.

Rhines had a criminal record, including wiring a grain elevator with dynamite 
in an attempt to blow it up, had been dishonorably discharged from the military 
where he learned to use explosives, and tortured animals, according to 
childhood acquaintances.

He was convicted by a jury in state court in Rapid City in 1993, and lost 
appeals to the state Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996 and 2002, 
said state Attorney General Marty Jackley on Tuesday in a news release.

Rhines filed for habeas corpus relief, a general challenge to the case against 
him, in state circuit court, which denied it and in 2013 the state Supreme 
Court upheld that denial, Jackley said. Rhines filed in federal court for 
habeas corpus relief in 2000 and a federal district judge denied that petition 
in February 2016, Jackley said.

Rhines' case received national attention after his court-appointed 
death-penalty expert attorneys discovered in 2016 that the 1993 jury had sent 
the judge a note asking for details about what life in prison would be like for 
Rhines as they pondered whether to give him life or death. Some jury notes 
indicated that jurors considered that for Rhines, life in prison might be too 
enjoyable because he was gay, as one Miami newspaper columnist put it in 
criticizing this death sentence.

It's clear from the court documents that jurors in Rapid City, asking about if 
Rhines would have the chance to impress and make friends with young male 
inmates, and have access to TV and radio, and free time, that they had concerns 
that a life sentence wouldn't be punishment enough.

The judge in that case declined to answer the question and directed jurors 
simply to read the jury instructions about the 2 sentence options. The federal 
circuit court of appeals in its recent opinion said that judge "did not err," 
in declining to describe at length what life in prison might entail.

In its ruling, the 8th Circuit panel of 3 judges gave a terse summary of its 
rejection of Rhines' appeal: lower courts' rulings that police Miranda warnings 
to Rhines were "adequate was an objectively reasonable application of Miranda;" 
and he did not clearly have ineffective lawyering at his trial.

Court patience perhaps has worn thin, based on the federal appeals judges' 
ruling, which includes this: "a habeas petitioner granted a limited stay (of 
execution) to exhaust state post-conviction remedies who returns to federal 
court and requests another stay to exhaust additional claims is deliberately 
engaging in dilatory tactics and intentional delay . . ."

Rhines remains on death row in the state prison in Sioux Falls, where he is 
described as a white male, 6 feet, 2 inches tall, 195 pounds.

Rhines has 90 days to file an appeal of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal's 
ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would have to agree to even hear it, 
which is typically a remote possibility.

(source: Capital Journal)








USA:

Who Is Not Competent To Be Put To Death?



A death row inmate convicted of a 1985 murder of a police officer has spent the 
last thirty-plus years awaiting his execution. Due to a reported series of 
strokes contributing to a vascular dementia and a litany of physical and mental 
challenges, his lawyers maintain he has no memory of the brutal event. All 
told, facilitating the death penalty in this case begs the question: Would such 
an action violate the Eighth Amendment guaranteeing no cruel and unusual 
punishment be inflicted?

And, that is why his competency is being questioned at the highest level. The 
U.S. Supreme Court is now involved in determining the legality of following 
through with such an irreversible measure when the subject is supposedly this 
impaired.

Is it ethical to execute someone who knew why they were sentenced for their 
crime at the time of their conviction, but now with protracted wait times, 
aging and development of degenerative neurological disease can no longer 
understand the situation? While many argue the stress of the prolonged period 
between sentencing and execution in itself violates the standard set by the 
Eighth Amendment, the question remains if dementia and other medical conditions 
that impact cognition should be disqualifying?

The particulars of this case involve disparate expert clinical status 
assessments and many legal challenges. But, the crux of the bigger picture is 
very significant to consider as this is and likely will be one of a number of 
situations that become ethically fuzzy. The tide tends to be shifting on the 
death penalty as an acceptable option for punishment and cultural tendencies 
are softening. Especially when botched executions are making the media rounds 
as of late, pharmaceutical companies are withholding use of their drugs for 
this non-therapeutic purpose, exonerations are occurring due to advancements in 
DNA testing of the wrongfully accused; it stands to reason with time we are not 
drawing more distinct lines, but rather more questions from ever increasing 
ambiguity.

Is it more or less cruel to push the boundaries of how long an inmate has to 
live with the knowledge and anxiety that he will be put to death than to be 
given the sentence in the first place? Is it more or less cruel to know at the 
time of an execution that you are being executed? Is it more or less cruel to 
be unaware of the reason why you are being executed? Cruel and unusual 
punishment runs both ways.

For the person who is no longer competent secondary to the development of a 
medical malady, is our society accepting of carrying out the death penalty 
under these circumstances?

(source: Dr. Jamie Wells, acsh.org)