[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., OHIO, TENN.

[Rick Halperin]

August 14



TEXAS:

Prosecutors seek death penalty against man accused in murder of Temple friends



Prosecutors will seek the death penalty for a man accused in the brutal murder 
of 2 Temple friends in January, KXAN’s sister station KWKT confirmed Tuesday.

Cedric Marks, 45, faces 2 capital murder charges in the deaths of 28-year-old 
Jenna Scott and 32-year-old Michael Swearingen. The friends disappeared Jan. 4 
and their bodies were found a week later in shallow graves in Oklahoma.

Both victims’ families met with District Attorney Henry Garza on July 10 to 
suggest he seek the death penalty. He filed a notice to the district clerk Aug. 
9 doing just that.

"There is such a thing as righteous anger and we feel that this is a case for 
righteous anger," Deborah Harrison, Michael’s mother, told KWKT.

Marks pleaded "absolutely not guilty" of capital murder in January. He also 
faces tampering with evidence and burglary charges.

Two other people, Maya Maxwell and Ginell McDonough, were also charged in 
connection with the complex case. Maxwell told police she was in the house when 
the pair were murdered, though she didn’t see it herself, according to an 
arrest affidavit. She also told them where to find the bodies.

Officials have not said what penalty will be sought if Maxwell is found guilty.

"We believe she needs to be punished because she did assist in everything and 
we feel like she could have stopped it," Harrison said. "But she did help and 
we would not have recovered the bodies, we would still be wondering where they 
were had she not cooperated."

In February, Marks was being extradited from Michigan where he was arrested to 
Bell County when he escaped custody, prompting a widespread manhunt in Conroe, 
Texas. After he was caught, he spoke out from behind bars to say he had nothing 
to do with the murders.

Marks faces other charges besides the capital murder charges and his bond was 
set at $1.75 million.

(source: KXAN news)








FLORIA----impending execution

Florida Supreme Court Rejects Death Row Appeal, Next Execution Scheduled For 
Aug. 22



The Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected appeals by death row inmate Gary 
Ray Bowles, who is scheduled to be executed next week for the 1994 murder of a 
Jacksonville man who was hit in the head with a concrete block and strangled.

Justices unanimously denied a request by Bowles’ attorneys for a stay of the 
Aug. 22 execution. The attorneys argued in a brief last month that the Supreme 
Court should order a hearing about whether Bowles is intellectually disabled 
and, as a result, should be shielded from execution.

But the Supreme Court said Bowles had failed to make a “timely” intellectual 
disability claim because he did not raise the issue until 2017.

"Bowles waited until October 19, 2017 to raise an intellectual disability claim 
for the first time," the court’s 10-page main opinion said. "Therefore, the 
record conclusively shows that Bowles’ intellectual disability claim is 
untimely under our precedent."

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant in June for Bowles, who would be the 
2nd inmate executed since the Republican governor took office in January. 
Tampa-area serial killer Bobby Joe Long was put to death by lethal injection on 
May 23 at Florida State Prison.

Bowles, now 57, was sentenced to death in the November 1994 murder of Walter 
Hinton, who was found dead in his Jacksonville mobile home. Bowles also is 
serving life sentences for the 1994 murders of John Roberts in Volusia County 
and Albert Morris in Nassau County. In addition, Bowles confessed to murdering 
men in Georgia and Maryland, with evidence suggesting he targeted gay men, 
according to information released in June by the governor’s office.

Tuesday’s Supreme Court opinion gave a brief description of the grisly murder 
of Hinton.

"Bowles confessed and pleaded guilty to the 1994 murder of Walter Hinton, who 
had allowed Bowles to move into his home in exchange for Bowles’ help in moving 
personal items. Specifically, Bowles dropped a concrete block on Hinton’s head 
while Hinton was sleeping, then manually strangled a conscious Hinton, and 
subsequently ‘stuffed toilet paper into Hinton’s throat and placed a rag into 
his mouth,’" the opinion said, partially quoting an earlier court ruling.

In addition to raising the intellectual-disability issue, Bowles’ attorneys 
also contended that Florida’s death penalty violates the constitutional ban on 
cruel and unusual punishment. In a document filed last month, they wrote that 
"capital punishment as administered in Florida, and as applied in this case, is 
contrary to the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a 
maturing society."

But the justices turned down the argument, writing that "because the United 
States Supreme Court has made clear that capital punishment does not constitute 
cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the federal 
constitution, we cannot invalidate Bowles’ death sentence as cruel and 
unusual."

(source: WLRN news)








OHIO:

Ohio lawmaker proposes using seized fentanyl in executions



An Ohio lawmaker has an innovative solution to the state's problem securing 
execution drugs: use fentanyl seized by police instead.

Rep. Scott Wiggam, R-Wooster, is working on legislation to allow Ohio prison 
officials to obtain fentanyl from drug busts. That option is far more humane 
than the electric chair or firing squad – options that states are considering 
as pharmaceutical companies cut off access to execution drugs.

"This is a much less violent way than the electric chair and the latest lethal 
injection (Dennis McGuire's 2014 death) that took 26 minutes," Wiggam told The 
Enquirer. "This is a much more humane way."

Fentanyl is a powerful opioid involved in 3,431 overdose deaths in 2017, 
according to Ohio Department of Health records. Ohio Highway Patrol seized more 
than 108 pounds of fentanyl in 2018, according to state records.

Wiggam sent out an email requesting support for the proposal from fellow 
lawmakers, the Columbus Dispatch first reported.

Gov. Mike DeWine has stalled the state's executions while Ohio's prison system 
seeks an alternative way to execute death row inmates. A federal magistrate 
compared the effects of one of the drugs used, midazolam, to waterboarding.

Abraham Bonowitz, of the national advocacy group Death Penalty Action, said the 
legislature should stop focusing on the execution method and address problems 
with Ohio’s death penalty.

Bonowitz said lawmakers have largely ignored a 2014 report from an Ohio Supreme 
Court task force. The report made 56 recommendations, including requiring a 
videotaped, voluntary confession from a defendant and that evidence in capital 
punishment cases be handled by an accredited lab.

Bonowitz said dangerous offenders can be held accountable without being put to 
death.

"Where this country is going is away from executions, not how we do it,"
Bonowitz said.

The state's last execution was Robert Van Hook on July 18, 2018. Van Hook was 
convicted of killing and disemboweling neighbor David Self in February 1985.

Ohio has scheduled 22 executions through 2022. The next execution is set for 
Nov. 13. Cleveland Jackson was convicted of killing 17-year-old Leneshia 
Williams and 3-year-old Jayla Grant in Lima in 2002.

Wiggam said he wanted to focus the discussion about Ohio's death penalty around 
ways to carry out executions currently required by state law rather than 
abandoning the process because it was too difficult to find drugs.

"This is certainly a workaround," he said. "This is something that we know can 
bring deaths quickly to individuals."

Senate President Larry Obhof has said he's happy to explore other options.

"We are all concerned that if you're going to have capital punishment, you 
should have a process in place that courts are willing to accept and meets 
constitutional muster," he told The Enquirer earlier this year.

No other state has proposed using seized fentanyl to Wiggam's knowledge.

Nebraska was the first state to use fentanyl as part of an execution in August 
2018. The drug was obtained by a license pharmacy in the United States, 
according to a NPR report.

(source: cincinnati.com)








TENNESSEE----impending execution

Stephen Michael West moved to death watch ahead of Thursday's scheduled 
execution



Death row inmate Stephen Michael West has been moved into a cell next to the 
execution chamber, where he is scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday 
night unless Gov. Bill Lee intervenes.

Prison officials announced the move Tuesday, saying West, 56, had been placed 
on death watch. Death watch is the 3-day period before an execution when a 
death row inmate is placed under 24-hour observation and stricter rules.

During death watch, West will get daily visits with the prison chaplain. On 
Wednesday, he will order his last meal.

West is scheduled to die for the 1986 murders of a woman and her 15-year-old 
daughter in their Union County, Tennessee, home.

Wanda Romines, 51, and Sheila Romines, were both stabbed to death, their hands 
bound behind their backs.

Sheila had been stabbed 17 times in the stomach. At trial, a forensic 
pathologist said 14 of those stab wounds were consistent with "torture-type 
cuts."

West also was convicted of raping Sheila before she died.

West’s defense team argued he was present during the killings but that a 
17-year-old co-defendant, who worked with him at a local McDonald’s restaurant 
and attended high school with Sheila, actually committed the crimes.

West’s co-defendant pinned the blame on him. West was convicted in 1987 of 
1st-degree murder, aggravated rape and aggravated kidnapping.

The co-defendant also was convicted and imprisoned, but he was not eligible for 
the death penalty because he was a minor at the time of the crime.

West has had multiple execution dates that were delayed during his 32 years on 
death row.

West’s legal team sent Lee a clemency request that argued severe abuse during 
his childhood doomed his path and should justify mercy.

(source: The Tennessean)

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

Gov. denies clemency for death row inmate Stephen West----West moved to death 
watch ahead of scheduled execution

Governor Lee denies clemency for death row inmate Stephen West, who was moved 
to death watch ahead of Thursday’s scheduled execution.

The governor released the following statement:

“After thorough consideration of Stephen West’s request for clemency and a 
review of the case, the State of Tennessee’s sentence will stand, and I will 
not be intervening.”

The Tennessee Department of Correction said West was moved shortly after 
midnight Tuesday in accordance with death watch protocol – a three-day period 
in which strict guidelines are implemented to maintain security and control.

West was found guilty of the 1986 kidnapping and stabbing deaths of 51-year-old 
Wanda Romines and her 15-year-old daughter, Sheila Romines, and of raping the 
teen.

On Tuesday, West's attorneys petitioned for a stay of execution.

He received a death sentence in 1987.

In a clemency plea, attorneys for Stephen West say his then 17-year-old 
accomplice, Ronnie Martin, actually killed both victims.

West was 23 at the time. Their cases were separated, and while West was 
sentenced to death, Martin pleaded guilty and received a life sentence with the 
possibility of parole in 2030 as a juvenile.

West recently declined to choose the method of his execution. A non-decision 
results in his death by lethal injection.

4 inmates have been executed in Tennessee since August 2018.

(source: WTVF news)






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

Tennessee death row inmate Stephen West moved to death watch ahead of Thursday 
execution-----He will die by lethal injection at the prison in Nashville.



Death row inmate Stephen West's was moved to death watch Tuesday ahead of his 
execution scheduled for Aug. 15, 2019.

He will die by lethal injection at the prison in Nashville.

"In accordance with protocol, inmate Stephen West #115717 was moved to death 
watch this morning shortly after midnight. Death watch is the three-day period 
before an execution when strict guidelines are implemented to maintain the 
security and control of the offender and to maintain safe and orderly 
operations of the prison," the Dept. of Correction said in a press release. 
"During this period, the offender is placed in a cell adjacent to the execution 
chamber where he or she is under 24-hour observation by a team of correctional 
officers."

Because he was sentenced to die by the electric chair in 1987, West had the 
option to choose the electric chair as his execution method rather than lethal 
injection. West declined to choose either method. The state made the decision 
for him.

On the afternoon of March 17, 1986, Jack Romines returned home to find his 
wife, Wanda, and 15-year-old daughter Sheila stabbed to death. The mother and 
daughter were tortured and showed signs of sexual assault.

23-year-old Steve West and 17-year-old Ronnie Martin had been out all night and 
drove to the Romines home. They waited for Jack Romines to leave for work 
before knocking on the door.

In 1987, a jury convicted West of murder and sentenced him to die in the 
electric chair. Martin was scheduled for trial when his codefendant was sent to 
death row. Martin then pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison as a 
17-year-old rather than risk facing the death penalty if tried as an adult.

Since the 1980s, West's execution has been scheduled and postponed repeatedly. 
Now his execution is days away and Campbell says he is prepared for closure.

"Only those individuals who are on the offender’s official visitation list are 
allowed to visit the offender during the death watch period. All visits are 
non-contact until the final day before the execution at which time the warden 
decides if the offender can have a contact visit," the Dept. of Corrections 
said.

(source: WBIR news)

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

Nashville Death Row Prisoner Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman Gets a New Hearing ---- With 
Abdur’Rahman’s execution scheduled for next year, a court will hear his claims 
of discriminatory jury selection



As the state prepares to execute Stephen West on Thursday, a death row prisoner 
from Nashville will be preparing for a new court hearing in his case. The 
matter is urgent: The prisoner, Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman, is scheduled to be 
executed less than a year from now, on April 16, 2020.

With that date looming and the state showing no signs of slowing the recently 
revived death penalty machine, Metro Nashville Criminal Court Judge Monte 
Watkins will hear arguments on Aug. 28 that Abdur’Rahman’s trial was marred by 
a prosecutor’s racial discrimination in jury selection. Abdur’Rahman’s 
attorney, Bradley MacLean, filed a motion to reopen his client’s 
post-conviction appeals in 2016, and Watkins granted him a hearing. But the 
motion lingered without a court date — until now. MacLean will ultimately be 
seeking a new trial. Abdur’Rahman will almost certainly never be released from 
prison - along with the death sentence, the 1987 jury handed down two 
consecutive life sentences for other charges. He was also convicted of 
2nd-degree murder in 1972 for killing a man who’d threatened to rape him while 
they were both in federal prison. But if MacLean is successful, he could keep 
Abdur’Rahman out of the execution chamber.

Abdur’Rahman, a black man, has been on death row for 32 years, since he was 
convicted of killing Patrick Daniels and attacking Norma Jean Norman during a 
robbery. On paper, his life before he arrived on death row looks very similar 
to that of the men with whom he’s shared a prison unit for more than 30 years. 
As a young boy, Abdur’Rahman suffered brutal physical and sexual abuse and was 
made all the more vulnerable by mental illness.

But MacLean says what makes Abdur’Rahman stand out is the utter mess that was 
his original trial.

"Everything that could go wrong in a capital case went wrong in Abu’s case," 
MacLean tells the Scene.

As he put it last year in a clemency petition to then-Gov. Bill Haslam (an 
updated version of which will be submitted to Gov. Bill Lee): "This is the only 
Tennessee case in which the death sentence was upheld even though all reviewing 
judges have found, and the prosecution has not disputed, that defense counsel’s 
performance was constitutionally deficient. In every other case in which judges 
agreed that the defense attorney’s performance was constitutionally deficient, 
the death sentence was vacated. In Abu-Ali’s case, his trial lawyers’ failures 
were extreme."

"This is an extraordinary case in which Abu-Ali’s trial was fundamentally 
unfair and unreliable due to the grossly inadequate legal representation 
provided by his defense attorney combined with the egregious prosecutorial 
misconduct committed by the lead prosecuting attorney," MacLean later adds.

The man who represented Abdur’Rahman in his 1987 trial agrees with MacLean’s 
assessment of his own work. Lionel Barrett says he was carrying an unreasonable 
caseload and admits he never should have taken the case. He told ABA Journal in 
2011 that he did "everything I could have done wrong" and that the burden of 
that failure led him to leave his career as a lawyer.

"Abu-Ali is on death row because of me," Barrett told the publication. "I 
failed him. I have no excuse. This is the only case in my entire career that I 
would do anything to be able to do over again."

Barrett’s inadequate representation will not be the focus of the hearing later 
this month. But MacLean says it’s crucial context for what will be.

"The fact that the lawyer didn’t do his job is a factor because it allowed 
[Assistant District Attorney John Zimmerman] to do all the shit that he did," 
MacLean says.

In his 2016 motion, which will be updated for the new hearing, MacLean argues 
that Zimmerman had discriminatory intent during jury selection when he struck 2 
prospective African American jurors. Pointing to contradictions between the 
prosecution’s stated reasons for striking those jurors and "the truth derived 
from the record and the prosecution’s own notes," MacLean argues that Zimmerman 
was relying on "false, racist stereotyping" of black people. MacLean argues 
that in the case of one prospective black male juror, Zimmerman falsely claimed 
the man "appeared uneducated" and "had a reduced intellect."

Zimmerman’s record since Abdur’Rahman’s trial would appear to back up MacLean’s 
characterization of his conduct back then.

In a November 2015 letter to the Tennessee District Attorneys General 
Conference, Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk highlights and 
disavows comments Zimmerman made at an annual conference. In one instance, Funk 
writes, Zimmerman said "he would strike jurors with a 37215 area code, an 
affluent part of town, if the case involved people from ‘the inner city’ 
because ‘in Nashville, rich people don’t care about what happens in East 
Nashville.’"

Funk goes on: "While the racial implications in the previous comment were 
inferential, his next statements were blatant advice to use race in jury 
selection. Specifically, Mr. Zimmerman described prosecuting a conspiracy case 
with all Hispanic defendants. He stated he wanted an all African-American jury, 
because ‘all Blacks hate Mexicans.’"

More recently, Zimmerman - who is now a prosecutor in Rutherford County - was 
accused in a lawsuit of targeting Egyptian business owners, falsely claiming 
they were selling illegal "marijuana derivatives." All charges related to the 
bogus busts - known as "Operation Candy Crush" - were later dropped.

Another factor that could make all the difference for Abdur’Rahman is who will 
be on the other side of the courtroom later this month. Although for decades 
lawyers from the state attorney general’s office have represented the state in 
proceedings related to Abdur’Rahman’s case, this hearing is in a Nashville 
criminal court. Court documents indicate that Funk’s office will be handling 
the hearing, although they declined to comment on the pending proceeding.

In 5 years as Nashville’s district attorney, Funk has never sought the death 
penalty.

(source: Nashville Scene)