[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., OHIO, TENN., IND. WYO., ARIZ., WASH.

[Rick Halperin]

August 18



TEXAS----impending execution

Texas death row inmate maintains innocence as latest execution date looms



"On December 8, 1998, Swearingen kidnapped and strangled a 19-year-old white 
female."

This short statement is what you'll find under Larry Swearingen's death row 
record for his summary of the incident. However, he's arguing that the details 
of his case, and the murder of Melissa Trotter, are much more complex.

Larry Swearingen met Melissa Trotter, a 19-year-old Montgomery College student, 
on December 6, 1998, where they had a conversation and exchanged numbers. They 
planned on meeting up the next day, but Swearingen grew irritated when she 
didn't arrive, according to co-workers.

They were spotted together on December 8 at the college library at 1:30 p.m., 
and were seen leaving together at 2:00 p.m. Melissa's car remained parked at 
the school. This was the last time she was seen alive.

At 2:05 p.m., Swearingen returned a page and said he would have to call back 
later because he was at lunch with a friend.

Swearingen returned to his trailer and left again sometime before 3:30 p.m., 
then returned again to the trailer sometime before 5:30 p.m., asked his 
landlord some questions, then left again to pick up his wife, Terry Swearingen, 
from his mother's house.

On December 11, Swearingen was arrested pursuant to unrelated outstanding 
warrants.

On January 2, 1999, Melissa's body was found in Sam Houston National Forest 
with a ligature made from pantyhose still tied around her neck. The police had 
searched the area three times before her body was found by hunters. Swearingen 
knew the area well.

Based on the state of decomposition, it was estimated that her body had been in 
the woods for around 25 days, supporting the possible date of her death to be 
December 8.

A supposed match to the other half of the pantyhose was found at the Swearingen 
home, along with a pack of Malboro Lights and a lighter resembling one 
belonging to Melissa. Neither Larry nor his wife smoked.

Fibers were found on Melissa's body matching Swearingen's jacket, car seat, and 
carpet at his house. There were also hair strands in his car that looked to be 
pulled from Melissa's head, showing definitively that she had been in 
Swearingen's car at some point before her death.

Further incriminating evidence includes a letter that was written by Larry and 
sent to his mother with the help of another inmate and a Spanish-English 
dictionary from a woman named "Robin", claiming to know who Melissa's real 
killer was. The letter gave insight into investigators' suspicions that 
Melissa's death resulted from violence sparked by sexual rejection.

These are the undeniable facts of the case. Swearingen, however, clings to DNA 
evidence and forensic science to maintain his innocence. He has been assigned 
several execution dates, pushing back his death based on many of what he and 
his attorneys perceive to be discrepancies.

They cite discrepancies in witness testimonies as well as cell phone records to 
place Swearingen at different locations at key dates and times in the case, 
according to his website.

The main focus of the defense, however, has been on the state of Melissa's 
remains and DNA testing and evidence.

Statements from two other medical examiners have reevaluated Melissa's autopsy 
report and estimated that based on lack of insect and bacteria colonies and 
general state of her body and tissues upon discovery, the remains could have 
only been in the forest for just under a week at most, even with the 
near-freezing low winter temperatures. A statement such as this implies that 
Swearingen is innocent since he was in jail three days after Melissa went 
missing, and much longer before her estimated death according to this analysis.

One examiner allows for the exception of post-mortem refrigeration before her 
body was deposited at the location, but says the absence of certain signs of 
this on the body, this is not likely.

Additionally, Swearingen's attorneys have claimed that none of the DNA evidence 
has definitively placed Larry at the scene of Melissa's body. Their appeals 
have consisted of requests for DNA testing on Melissa's fingernail scrapings, 
the ligature used for strangulation as well as the alleged other half found at 
Larry's home, cigarette butts found near her body not offered at trial, various 
items of her clothing, the rape kit, and hairs and hairbrush collected from the 
scene.

After several appeals and a debacle involving another inmate rumored to be 
taking the fall for Melissa's murder, DNA samples were finally tested, with no 
conclusive evidence. Authorities were hesitant to test due to the "mountain of 
evidence" already stacked against Swearingen.

Due to this process, DNA testing laws have changed in death penalty cases. 
Previously, if it was unknown if there was biological evidence, it didn't need 
to be tested, even if invisible to the naked eye. Now, courts can grant testing 
of key evidence that has “a reasonable likelihood of containing biological 
material”—such as skin, saliva or sweat. Swearingen's attorneys have used this 
avenue of possibility for repeated appeals.

As of 2019, DNA testing on evidence has made no major changes to the case. DNA 
on the cigarette butts found near Melissa's body only led back to the hunters 
that found her.

Swearingen's case has attracted attention from many non-profit organizations 
willing to back up his claims, including the Innocence Project and The 
Innocence Network. Additionally, judges have given dissenting opinions.

There is no new DNA evidence left to test and no pending appeals. Swearingen's 
execution is set for August 21, 2019, with no current sign of more delays. 
After 2 long decades without their daughter, the Trotter family is ready to end 
this chapter and obtain justice for lost Melissa.

(source: Fox News)

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

Commissioner Koch: Why Dallas County should stop pursuing the death penalty



In my opinion the death penalty is constitutional. It is also my opinion that 
there exists overwhelming evidence that the death penalty is often dispensed in 
an unjust fashion. My opinion matters only because I am one of five members of 
a body that funds Dallas County's efforts to bring about the death of an 
individual who has committed capital murder. Ultimately, it is solely the 
discretion of the district attorney to seek the death penalty in any case.

It's no secret that Dallas County is experiencing an increase in crime rates, 
which many of us, including me, view to be a serious crisis. Financially, 
seeking the death penalty is very expensive and only getting costlier. If the 
millions of dollars spent trying and appealing death penalty cases are 
redirected to law enforcement efforts right now, we have the ability to curtail 
a frightening trend in crime and hopefully save lives. I think that is a better 
use of funds, but that reallocation can only be set in motion if District 
Attorney John Creuzot agrees to that direction. I offered the suggestion that 
saved funds be used to stop human trafficking, but sadly there are so many 
problems spiraling out of control that any number of enforcement uses would be 
an improvement.

But more importantly, there is thorough and unbiased evidence that African 
Americans and Hispanics receive the death penalty at significantly higher rates 
than Caucasians. That should to give everyone pause. This analysis is focused 
only on those found guilty of murder, i.e., if you have 10 white murderers and 
10 black murderers, two white murderers will get the death penalty while six 
black murderers will get the death penalty. Further study has revealed that the 
more an individual looks stereotypically African, the greater likelihood he 
will receive the death penalty within a comparison of other African Americans. 
These are nationwide phenomena and the trend holds true even for juries that 
are majority-minority.

So why should we care? They are all murderers, right? The answer is simple and 
ancient: "To do harm is to do yourself harm. To do an injustice is to do 
yourself an injustice — it degrades you. And you can also commit injustice by 
doing nothing" (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations ).

The reason I have asked for a two-year moratorium is that I believe we can 
study this issue and find juror screening techniques to identify implicit bias. 
We can fix this, and we should at least try to fix it. While I believe that the 
death penalty is constitutional under the Eighth Amendment (regarding cruel and 
unusual punishment), I do believe it is ripe for a challenge under the Fifth 
Amendment (regarding due process) because of the disproportionate effect on 
minorities.

The U.S. Supreme Court has traditionally analyzed the penalty phase of death 
penalty cases based on the specifics of each individual case presented, but 
that style of analysis could be coming to an end. Statistical analysis is 
continually creeping into other bodies of case law and could seriously 
undermine death penalty jurisprudence. It could end the practice entirely. I 
would rather be ready for those expensive challenges in the future by having 
robust findings on what we are doing to make the process fair. We must hold up 
findings that indicate that we have implemented screening in Dallas County to 
avoid implicit bias and ultimately, injustice.

If we are going to be in the business of tax-funded, deliberate ending of life, 
we should be satisfied that we are doing it in the most cautious and thoughtful 
manner. The murderer is the most odious of offenders, but we must be sure he or 
she receives justice regardless of the evil. As a society, we would do 
ourselves a great credit by treating the most morally repugnant in a just 
manner. Otherwise, we degrade ourselves.

(source: Commentnary; J.J. Koch is a Dallas County Commissioner. He wrote this 
column for The Dallas Morning News)








FLORIDA----impending executuion

Serial killer of gay men set for Thursday execution



Gary Ray Bowles started his eight-month murderous binge in Daytona Beach by 
killing John Hardy Roberts on March 14, 1994, inside the victim’s beachside 
home and now he is set to be the 99th death row inmate executed in Florida in 
modern times.

The killing spree began in Daytona Beach.

Eventually, in 1994, 6 men were savagely beaten and choked. One was bludgeoned 
with a discarded toilet.

Each man fought for his life, but lost.

In every case, the victims had something crammed down their throats — a towel, 
wads of toilet paper, a fistful of dirt.

On Thursday, their killer, Gary Ray Bowles, is scheduled to be executed by 
lethal injection.

Executions mark the end of some of society’s most heinous killings, but they 
also elicit objections to the practice of state-sponsored death. Holding the 
opposing view may become more difficult when it is argued on the behalf of an 
unrepentant serial murderer like Bowles, but there is still no end to the 
debate about the death penalty’s value.

Bowles, 57, started his 8-month homicidal binge by killing John Hardy Roberts, 
59, on March 14, 1994, inside the victim’s beachside home in Daytona Beach. He 
was arrested a few days after killing his sixth victim, Walter Hinton, 42, in 
Jacksonville on Nov. 20, 1994.

Bowles committed 3 murders in Florida — in Daytona Beach, Jacksonville and 
Hilliard. He killed 2 other men in Georgia — 1 in Savannah and the other in 
Atlanta. He also murdered a man in Wheaton, Maryland.

He would say to the world during a television interview years later how 
remarkably easy it was to kill someone. Yet every killing he carried out was a 
bloodbath.

“Each of the murders was brutal,” said Bernie de la Rionda, a long-time 
Jacksonville-area homicide prosecutor who sought and attained a conviction and 
death sentence for Bowles.

De la Riona said in every case the victims fought vigorously while suffering 
from “unexplainable pain” at the hands of their killer.

“It was not an instant death,” he said. “It (wasn’t) like somebody getting shot 
and dying from that gunshot. ... It was a life-and-death struggle.”

De la Rionda, 62, has tried close to 100 homicide cases during his career, with 
roughly a third of them resulting in death sentences. He attended his 1st 
execution in August 2017, when Mark Asay was put to death. Barring any 
last-minute reprieves, Thursday will be his 2nd.

Few of de la Rionda’s successful prosecutions involved anyone who compared to 
Bowles’ notoriety. The elusive serial murderer, dubbed the “I-95 Killer” during 
a months-long manhunt, was profiled on TV’s “America’s Most Wanted” five times 
and was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

Bowles did not answer a News-Journal request last week for an interview.

Learning to hustle

Gary Ray Bowles was born Jan. 25, 1962, in Clifton Forge, Virginia, but he 
wasn’t raised there. His father died from black lung disease 6 months before he 
was born.

While a child, he moved from place to place as his mother married again and 
again. At least two of Bowles’ stepfathers physically and mentally abused him, 
according to court testimony.

He told an interviewer in 2013 that he fought back against the last stepfather 
who beat him, but it didn’t end well. His mother came to the defense of her 
husband and not her son. Overflowing with resentment, Bowles left home at 14.

With only a middle school education, Bowles discovered a way to earn money. 
Starting in his teen years, he prostituted himself to gay men.

Tom Youngman, a retired homicide and crime scene investigator with the Daytona 
Beach Police Department, was one of a battery of investigators who interviewed 
Bowles following his arrest. He asked Bowles why he chose gay men as his murder 
victims.

“He said they only perform an act on him and he never did (to) them,” Youngman 
said last week. “I said, ‘Well, that’s homosexuality,’ and he says, ‘No.’

“Then what are you if you’re not a homosexual?” Youngman asked Bowles.

“I’m a hustler,” Bowles replied.

Bowles drifted around the country while a teen. He lived in Illinois, 
Louisiana, Missouri and Florida. His 1st arrest, a marijuana charge, came at 
17.

In 1982, at age 20, Bowles was sentenced to eight years in prison in 
Hillsborough County for sexual battery with a weapon. The victim was tortured 
and her wounds were severe.

John Best, a retired Savannah police homicide detective, said he uncovered a 
lot of heinous details about Bowles’ criminal life. The 1982 sexual battery in 
Tampa, he said, was the work of a sadist.

Best provided to The News-Journal a copy of the Florida Department of 
Corrections Probation Post-Investigation Report related to Bowles’ case in 
which a Tampa police detective stated, “I have never ever seen a case this bad. 
I have seen better pictures of victims in a morgue.”

Bowles served less than 3 years following his sexual battery conviction and 
wound up in Volusia County, where he was arrested on robbery and grand theft 
charges and sentenced to five more years behind bars. He served less than half 
of his sentence before being paroled again in December 1993.

He gravitated to the bar scene in Daytona Beach. He knew that’s where he could 
find victims to hustle.

During his time there, he fell for an older woman and lived with her in an 
apartment on Fairview Avenue. She left him, according to news reports, after 
she learned how he made money with gay men. Bowles later told police she also 
had an abortion of his child without telling him.

That, he told authorities, was what led him to hate homosexuals. He blamed them 
for killing his unborn child.

Before he and the woman broke up, Bowles had met 59-year-old John Hardy Roberts 
at a beachside bar, the Barn Door on Main Street. Roberts was a single gay man 
who lived near the Boardwalk.

Shortly after his girlfriend left him, Bowles moved in with Roberts.

Bowles kept pining for his lost girlfriend after he moved in to Roberts’ home. 
Roberts didn’t like that. He told his new companion he had to make a choice.

The killing starts

Roberts, a native of Tennessee, lived at 504 Vermont Ave.

A friend of his came over to his house on March 15, 1994. No one had seen or 
heard from Roberts in more than 24 hours.

Every door and window was locked, so the friend broke a rear kitchen door and 
entered. He found his friend lying on the living room floor. He was bloodied 
and had a towel stuffed in his mouth.

Daytona Beach police were called to the home. A stream of blood had run from 
Roberts’ head to a nearby bedroom.

There was a marble-top table overturned. Shards of glass were spread across the 
room. Food had been flung onto the floor. A broken lamp lay on the couch where 
it appeared Roberts had been sitting before he was attacked.

“He probably snuck up on him,” Youngman said. “When I talked to (Bowles), 
that’s what he said. He picked the lamp up, came up behind him and then hit him 
and then he struggled.”

The struggle was ferocious. One of Roberts’ fingertips was nearly torn off.

The stream of blood that flowed out of Roberts’ body indicated he didn’t die 
quickly. One only bleeds out that much while the heart is still pumping, 
Youngman said.

Roberts was beaten and choked by his killer. Detectives later said Bowles 
killed Roberts after the latter gave him an ultimatum — choose me or your 
ex-girlfriend.

Police spoke to a neighbor who had come home from work around 4 p.m. the day 
after Roberts was murdered. She reported seeing a man in his 30s “casually 
standing” in front of Roberts’ house. He was sipping from a mug and behaving as 
though nothing was wrong. When she walked back outside a few moments later, the 
man was gone. Police were called hours later and found the body.

A couple days after the news broke about Roberts murder, The News-Journal 
published Bowles’ name. Police said at the time that Bowles was not a suspect. 
They needed information from him.

Behind the scenes, investigators had their suspicions.

“We certainly wanted to talk to him,” said Alison Sylvester, a former Daytona 
Beach police detective who was the lead investigator in the case.

She said a piece of paper was found underneath the flipped table. It was from 
Probation and Probation Services and it had Bowles’ name and case number on it.

“That nice calling card that he left with his name on it, that was helpful,” 
Sylvester said last week.

A camera from an ATM also captured an image of a smiling Bowles attempting to 
use Roberts’ bank card. He failed to extract any cash from the machine, but did 
make use of Roberts’ credit cards and car. He headed north and bought gas and 
food at various convenience stores before dumping the car near Nashville, 
Tennessee. That’s where police lost track of him.

He showed up weeks later in Washington D.C.

Killing spree

Bowles’ next murder victim was found in Maryland. David Jarman of Wheaton was 
found strangled in his home on April 14, 1994.

Witnesses said they saw Jarman with Bowles in a bar in DuPont Circle, a 
historic district of Washington D.C. patronized by gay men. The pair left 
together and Jarman was never seen alive again.

Authorities said a sex toy had been crammed down Jarman’s throat.

The victim’s driver’s license, credit cards and vehicle were stolen. Bowles 
used one of Jarman’s credit cards to book a motel room in Baltimore, according 
to a story the Washington Post published after the killing.

Again, Bowles remained one step ahead of law enforcement.

In some respects, Bowles was sloppy, Youngman said. There is no other way to 
explain how he could leave behind such an obvious clue as a parole and 
probation document at a crime scene and then try to get cash with a stolen ATM 
card a mile or so away from the victim’s home. On the other hand, he was an 
experienced drifter. Bowles knew how to remain on the lam.

Bowles headed south again and settled — at least for a few days — in Savannah.

There, he killed 72-year-old Milton Bradley.

A World War II veteran, Bradley suffered a shrapnel wound during the war and 
later underwent a lobotomy. He was slow, but his pension and his family 
sustained him financially and locals looked out for him. He was regularly seen 
around town.

Bowles hung out with Bradley at a tavern on Lincoln Avenue. The two left 
together and Bowles drove him to an abandoned utility shed on a golf course and 
killed him.

“It was a violent crime scene,” said retired detective John Best, who had just 
started investigating homicides for Savannah police. “It was overkill.”

The men in Savannah’s gay community were very willing witnesses. Bowles had 
come on to some of them and they came away “creeped out,” Best said. They had 
seen him with Bradley.

A palm print was recovered at the scene. An old toilet was used to bludgeon 
Bradley. The lid and the tank were broken and there were cuts on his body, Best 
said.

Dirt and leaves had been jammed into Bradley’s mouth. His windpipe was clogged. 
His pockets had been turned inside out.

Eight days later, Bowles murdered Alverson Carter Jr., 47, of Atlanta. Carter 
was fatally stabbed.

Six days after that, he murdered Albert Alcie Morris, 37, in Hilliard, a town 
in Nassau County about 30 minutes northwest of Jacksonville.

Morris’ body was discovered inside his home by his parents.

The scenario was strikingly similar to what had happened 2 months earlier in 
Daytona Beach. Morris and Bowles, according to law enforcement, were seen 
together at a Jacksonville gay bar. Morris invited Bowles to stay at his home 
for a few days.

Morris, also like Roberts, fought back against his attacker. Bowles used a 
marble dish to beat Morris and also shot him in the chest. A towel was stuffed 
into his mouth.

Bowles found something in Morris’ home that helped him prolong his fugitive 
status. He discovered a driver’s license, Social Security card and birth 
certificate belonging to a Timothy Whitfield. Morris’ relationship to Whitfield 
is unclear, but Bowles used the Whitfield alias during the next 4 months.

Bowles was jailed at least twice during that time for minor infractions, but 
law enforcement unsuspectingly booked him under the fake name. Bowles 
eventually spent five days in jail for an offense committed by the real Timothy 
Whitfield, but Bowles didn’t want to blow his cover, so he quietly served the 
time. Police never figured out Whitfield’s real identity, even though by this 
time, Bowles had been featured on a prime-time network crime show and had been 
profiled in Newsweek and USA Today.

On Nov. 19, 1994, Bowles was put on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.

One day later, he murdered 42-year-old Walter Hinton, a Jacksonville floral 
designer who, like Roberts and Morris, invited Bowles to stay with him.

Bowles was arrested at a day labor office the morning of Nov. 22 on suspicion 
of killing Hinton. When he saw the authorities show up, he tried hiding in the 
bathroom.

He was brought in for questioning. It took hours, but the suspect known as 
Timothy Whitfield eventually broke down and admitted everything to Jacksonville 
Sheriff’s Office detectives.

“Look, I’m tired of this,” he told investigators. “Do you really want to know 
who I am? I’m Gary Ray Bowles.”

Afterward, he confessed to killing 6 men and stealing from them. He said he 
wanted the killings to stop

“I’m either getting 6 life sentences or the electric chair,” he reportedly said 
during his interview.

Death sentence

The Sheriff’s Office called authorities in Maryland, Florida and Atlanta to 
tell them the news. Best drove down from Savannah and Youngman drove up from 
Daytona Beach. They were among the out-of-town detectives who showed up to have 
their face-to-face time with the killer they had been seeking for months.

“He blamed his childhood. He blamed his alcohol abuse,” Best said, recalling 
Bowles’ answers to his questions.

“He just had a lot of pent-up anger,” he continued. “Sure, his childhood played 
a role, but he was an opportunist. Once he robbed and killed his 1st victim, it 
became easy for him after that.”

In May 1996, Bowles stunned prosecutors when he pleaded guilty to killing 
Hinton. They still decided to pursue the death penalty, based on the facts of 
the case. Hinton’s head was bashed with a 40-pound concrete block and he had 
been suffocated with toilet paper and a wash cloth, according to court 
testimony.

?(Mr. Hinton) put up a heck of a fight for his life,” de la Rionda told jurors 
during Bowles’ sentencing hearing, according to a story in The Florida 
Times-Union. “His skull was fractured, but his brain was still intact. He 
attempted to live, in a valiant effort.”

Jurors recommended death in a 10-2 vote in July 1996. The judge sentenced him 
to death later that summer. The following year, Bowles pleaded guilty to 
murdering Morris and Roberts and received consecutive life sentences for those 
crimes. Authorities in Georgia and Maryland declined to prosecute him.

In August 1998, the Florida Supreme Court overturned Bowles’ death sentence, 
saying de la Rionda was wrong to introduce Bowles’ hatred of homosexuals as 
evidence.

The following May, jurors heard evidence again on whether to recommend life or 
death. They were unanimous the second time. Bowles was transported back to 
death row in September 1999, where he has remained for 20 years living in a 
6-by-9-foot cell.

State executions aren’t as popular

Public opinion for the death penalty has changed significantly since the 
mid-1990s, when support for it reached its apex, according to the Death Penalty 
Information Center in Washington, D.C., a group that doesn’t advocate for or 
against the death penalty, but aims to publicize all of the system’s flaws.

Since then, support has fallen about 25 percentage points, said Robert Dunham, 
the center’s executive director.

“There is rising opposition to the death penalty,” Dunham said. “People who 
support it in theory can’t support it the way it is being practiced.”

Following a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2016, death sentences were halted 
for a time in Florida on the basis that the state’s death penalty statute 
violated the Sixth Amendment. The Florida Legislature subsequently made changes 
to the law. In order for death sentences to be carried out, jurors must now be 
unanimous in favor of death.

Additionally, circuit judges previously had the power to overturn a jury’s life 
recommendation and sentence a 1st-degree murder defendant to death. That no 
longer is the case.

The state required all post-2002 death penalty cases that did not have 
unanimous juries be reviewed by the state attorneys in their respective 
judicial circuits. Several of Florida’s killers are still awaiting new 
sentencing hearings for murders they committed more than a decade ago.

But Bowles was sentenced in 1999 and the jury was unanimous, so his case never 
came under review.

“Virtually everybody (on death row) in Florida was unconstitutionally sentenced 
to death,” Dunham said, referring to those who received death sentences prior 
to 2002. “The executions that happened were for those who were sentenced under 
an unconstitutional process.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was sworn into office in January, has signed two death 
warrants. Bowles was the second. It was signed June 11. He will become the 99th 
inmate executed in Florida since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death 
penalty in 1976.

Florida used the electric chair to execute condemned killers until 2000, when 
the Florida Legislature passed a law that allowed for lethal injection as an 
alternative method.

When an inmate is executed, the executioner, who is paid $150 and remains 
anonymous, administers 200 mg of etomidate, an anesthetic agent and 20 ml of a 
saline solution. Afterward, after it is determined the inmate is unconscious, 
he or she is given 1,000 mg of rocuronium bromide, a powerful muscle relaxant, 
and an additional 20 ml of a saline solution. After that, a fatal dose of 
potassium acetate is injected, which stops the inmate’s heart.

Florida’s first execution was in 1979. It has averaged more than two executions 
per year since then — some of whom have been serial killers. Serial killers 
included Ted Bundy, Aileen Wuornos, David Alan Gore, Danny Rolling, Oscar Ray 
Bolin and Bobby Joe Long, who was the most recent death row inmate to be 
executed. He was put to death on May 23.

Florida’s long list of notorious killers has likely contributed to its 
residents’ general support of capital punishment.

“I think the majority of Floridians still support the death penalty, although a 
growing number have serious concerns about it,” Dunham said.

Dunham’s organization does not take a position on capital punishment, but it 
does point out that states have shown an “overall inability” to administer the 
death penalty fairly and non-arbitrarily, he said.

Even still, he admitted that Bowles could never be “the poster child for 
abolition” of the death penalty.

No one directly involved in the Bowles investigation who spoke to The 
News-Journal has any second thoughts about executing Bowles.

“I think it’s a just sentence,” said Best, who pointed out that Bowles’ violent 
streak goes as far back as 1982, when he raped a woman in Tampa. “I don’t think 
he’s going to be missed. Even though he’s in a prison cell, he can wake up 
every day. His murder victims can’t do that anymore.”

Youngman said he thinks a death sentence is the only appropriate punishment for 
Bowles. To him, the only inappropriate part has been the extended wait.

“He killed 6 people,” he said. “You can prove it, without a doubt. So why not? 
It’s time.”

Last Tuesday, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously rejected Bowles’ latest 
appeal, in which Bowles’ attorneys claimed he was intellectually disabled and 
should be spared from execution.

23 years ago, Bowles’ trial attorneys pointed to his troubled childhood and the 
abuse he suffered in an effort to convince jurors not to recommend death. The 
jurors weren’t swayed, and neither was Norma Cole, Hinton’s mother, who spoke 
to The Florida Times-Union after the original jury in the case recommended 
death.

“I’m sorry the abuse affected him in the way it did,” she said. “I’m sorry 
anyone has difficulty like that in life. But I haven’t had such an easy life, 
either.”

Cole was Hinton’s last living close relative. She died in January.

(source: gainesville.com)








OHIO:

Church protests resuming of death penalty



Members and friends of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent recently held 
a vigil outside the church to protest the death penalty. The vigil was 
organized as a response to the recent decision by the U.S. attorney general to 
resume use of the federal death penalty after a 2-decade hiatus. Church and 
community activists call for an end to both the federal and state death 
penalties as cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of human rights.

Andrew Rome, the Social Justice Coordinator for the Unitarian Universalist 
Church of Kent, said, “Our church affirms the inherent worth and dignity of 
every person, including those convicted of crimes. We stand together with 
people of every faith demanding moral action to end the death penalty.” Rome 
explains, “It is fundamentally wrong to execute people and call it justice. 
America disproportionately executes people of color and the poor, another 
symptom of white supremacy. Despite extensive appeals that make the death 
penalty cost more than life imprisonment, we know that we have mistakenly 
executed people innocent of the crimes for which they were charged. By 
comparing states with and without the death penalty, we know that this 
punishment does not serve as a deterrent to crime. There is no just reason to 
continue the death penalty.”

There are currently 61 inmates on federal death row and 138 inmates on Ohio 
death row.

(source: record-courier.com)








TENNESSEE:

“One By One, They’re Dying”: Activists Protest Tennessee’s th Execution in a 
Year



On the Saturday before Tennessee killed Stephen Michael West, the 5th man to be 
executed in the state’s death chamber since August 2018, some 20 people 
gathered in a parking lot just down the road from Riverbend Maximum Security 
Institution in Nashville. It was not yet 7 a.m., and the air was already thick 
with humidity. People wore hats and comfortable shoes and passed around 
sunscreen.

“We’re marching to offer the governor a holy moment,” Dan Mann said after 
everyone had formed a circle. One of a dedicated group of religious visitors to 
Riverbend’s Unit 2, which houses the condemned, Mann spoke about the last time 
he saw Don Johnson, who was executed in May. Johnson became an ordained elder 
with the Seventh Day Adventist Church while on death row. As his execution date 
approached and his lawyers sought clemency, Johnson’s stepdaughter shared the 
story of how she forgave him for killing her mother. Advocates described his 
positive impact at Riverbend. But no one was able to convince Tennessee Gov. 
Bill Lee to spare Johnson’s life.

Visitation to Unit 2 is held every Monday night. During the last visit before 
he was taken to “death watch,” Johnson had led a prayer that still moves Mann 
to tears. “He prayed for us, individually and collectively,” he recalled. “He 
prayed for the governor. And he prayed that we would find peace in the 
following days.” Following Johnson’s execution, 32 of the 55 men remaining on 
Tennessee’s death row had signed a letter to the governor, asking if he would 
come to Riverbend to pray with them. Lee, after all, had campaigned as a prison 
reformer and a devout Christian before assuming office this year. But he never 
responded to the letter.

With another man set to die on August 15, Mann and others formed an “ad-hoc 
group of friends of current and former Tennessee death row inmates” to step up 
the pressure on Lee to respond. They announced a march to take place August 10, 
starting at Riverbend and ending in front of the state Capitol downtown. A pair 
of banners would make the procession visible from afar. One quoted Jesus from 
his Sermon on the Mount — “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive 
mercy” — with the hashtag #March4Mercy. The other, courtesy of Ohio-based Death 
Penalty Action, had been held outside death chambers across the country. It 
read, “We remember the victims … BUT NOT WITH MORE KILLING.”

Around 7:30 a.m. Mann distributed badges bearing the names of the 32 men who 
signed the letter to Lee. The marchers clipped them to their clothes. The one 
reading “Stephen West” would be passed around throughout the march, author and 
activist Shane Claiborne explained, so that everyone could hold him in their 
thoughts. The group walked from the parking lot to Cockrill Bend Boulevard and 
stopped at the entrance of Riverbend. They then set off east toward downtown 
Nashville.

“There weren’t any executions for a while, and they really weren’t putting 
people on death row,” Riggs said. And now, “one by one, they’re dying.”

The route was nearly nine miles long. A blue minivan followed along, carrying a 
cooler full of water bottles, ready to pick up anyone who might succumb to the 
August heat. The group ranged from teenagers to senior citizens, walking slowly 
and stopping for breaks. Some drivers honked in support; one man offered a 
donation.

As the group arrived on the campus of Tennessee State University, Pastor Kevin 
Riggs of the Franklin Community Church in Williamson County, where the governor 
is from, talked about a cross he wears every day, made for him by a condemned 
man in his 70s. “It’s got a little bit of weight to it, so I can feel it,” he 
said. “It reminds me to pray for the prisoners.”

Riggs echoed what others have said about the current atmosphere on death row. 
“There’s a somberness,” he said, a feeling that “I could be next.” Until last 
summer, Tennessee had not carried out an execution in nearly a decade — and, as 
in other states, new death sentences have dropped year after year.

“Since there weren’t any executions for a while, and they really weren’t 
putting people on death row, you’ve got this core group of inmates who, that’s 
been their family for 20-plus years,” Riggs said. And now, “one by one, they’re 
dying.”

It’s been just over a year since the death of Billy Ray Irick marked the return 
of executions to Tennessee. At a time when many states are turning away from 
capital punishment, Tennessee’s sudden killing spree has left many people 
feeling shell-shocked and drained. “It’s turned into something none of us here 
have ever seen before,” said Jeannie Alexander, the former prison chaplain at 
Riverbend.

Tennessee was never considered one of the country’s leading death penalty 
states — certainly not compared to many of its Southern neighbors. After the 
state’s death penalty law was revised in the 1970s, heralding the so-called 
modern death penalty era, executions did not resume until 2000. Six people were 
put to death over nine years. Now Tennessee has carried out 5 executions since 
last summer.

2 of those men opted to die in the electric chair — and West would become the 
third. Their decision was rooted in well-founded fears that, although 
electrocution is grisly, Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol may be worse. 
Attorneys with the Office of the Federal Public Defender tried unsuccessfully 
last summer to challenge the three-drug formula using midazolam; experts warned 
the method would make the condemned feel like they were drowning and being 
burned alive. Witness accounts of the subsequent executions by lethal injection 
described a number of red flags. One anesthesiologist concluded that Irick had 
been tortured to death.

For Tennesseans paying attention, the five executions have offered a crash 
course, not only on execution methods, but in the profiles of those who end up 
on death row.

The return to the electric chair is particularly horrifying to David Raybin, a 
high-profile defense attorney who once worked in the Tennessee Attorney 
General’s Office. Raybin was fresh out of law school in 1976 when he was asked 
to write Tennessee’s revised death penalty law, based on a model “we perceived 
to be state-of-the-art” at the time, as he told me last year. Decades later, 
after leaving the AG’s office and becoming a defense lawyer, Raybin watched a 
client die in the electric chair, a punishment he called “barbaric in the 
extreme.” Although he does not oppose the death penalty in theory, he has 
vocally criticized the way his law has been used in practice.

For Tennesseans paying attention, the five executions have offered a crash 
course, not only on execution methods, but in the profiles of those who end up 
on death row. Court filings and clemency petitions disclose lives marked by 
trauma, abuse, and especially untreated mental illness. Nashville Scene 
reporter Steven Hale, who has led the coverage of Tennessee’s executions — and 
served as a witness for 3 — pointed out that West, like three of the others 
executed since August, had a history of mental illness. In fact, he was “born 
in a mental health institution, the one his mother had been placed in after she 
attempted suicide while pregnant with him.”

The public’s knee-jerk response to such stories is often dismissive: Plenty of 
people experience trauma without going on to kill or victimize others. Amid 
fears of violent crime, abolitionists can have an especially difficult time 
getting their message heard. The #March4Mercy was organized just as local news 
stations were consumed by a prison escape on August 7 that left a veteran 
Tennessee Department of Correction employee dead. The escaped man had not yet 
been apprehended when the march was underway, and billboards showed his face 
over the highways. By the time he was caught on August 11, the death penalty 
was already on the table.

It was around 10:20 a.m. when the march reached Jefferson Street Missionary 
Baptist Church on Nashville’s historically black North Side. Riggs, the 
Williamson County pastor, was talking about a man on death row whose large 
African American family organizes reunions every summer. They share photos with 
him, which he then shares with visitors. “But he tells the story as if he was 
there,” Riggs said. “He’ll say, ‘Then we did this,’ and ‘This is what we had 
for supper,’ and ‘Then my aunt so-and-so, she told this funny story.’” If you 
ask the men at Unit 2 what most concerns them right now, Riggs said, each of 
them says they are worried about how this moment is affecting their families.

At the Jefferson Street church, marchers rested in the pews. Some prayed. 
Others just basked in the air conditioning. As the group prepared to set off 
again, Napoleon Harris, a pastor at a different church, changed into a T-shirt 
that read “Stop Executions.” Harris had called on the governor to intervene in 
the case of Don Johnson. But he’d also recently angrily decried Lee’s decision 
to continue the state’s tradition of commemorating the birthday of slave trader 
and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose bust still sits in the 
rotunda at the state Capitol.

With the past 5 executions all involving white men, the death penalty’s racial 
bias has gone relatively unmentioned in Tennessee. But this is starting to 
change. Among those with execution dates scheduled in 2020 is Abu Ali 
Abdur’Rahman, sent to death row by a prosecutor with a reputation for racism. A 
Metro Nashville Criminal Court judge will soon consider a claim that the 
prosecutor used “racist stereotyping” to strike black jurors at the trial. And 
a major study in the Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy recently found that 
black people are disproportionately represented on the state’s death row. The 
trend has become more pronounced as new death sentences have dwindled. Of the 9 
trials over a recent 10-year period that ended in a death sentence, the authors 
found, all but one of the defendants sent to death row were black.

It was approaching noon when the state Capitol finally came into view. Sweaty 
and tired but upbeat, the group carried the banners up the steep green lawn. 
They then turned toward Nashville’s Legislative Plaza, gathering under a row of 
magnolia trees. There were speakers, a song by a local musician, and an 
invitation for passersby to join the vigil, which would last until Monday 
morning. A table was set up with postcards addressed to the governor. On one 
side of the cards was an image of the 32 signatures from the men on death row; 
on the other, an area for people to write messages of their own.

Standing before the banners in a T-shirt featuring an image of Johnny Cash at 
Folsom Prison and the words “Freedom Now,” Alexander, the former Riverbend 
chaplain, held the mic in one hand and pointed toward the Department of 
Correction building with the other. “There are people who work at the Tennessee 
Department of Correction who are being paid to murder people that we know,” she 
said. “The death certificate says ‘homicide.’ So let’s call it what it is.”

On Sunday afternoon, an East Tennessee man named Adam Braseel stopped by the 
vigil. Recently released after almost 12 years in prison, he recalled his time 
at Riverbend, where the execution chamber is right next door to the visitation 
area. Braseel was sentenced to life in 2007 for killing a police officer. He 
swore he was innocent — and his conviction was overturned in 2015. He spent 10 
months as a free man back home, only to return to prison after the order was 
reversed by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals. Finally, Braseel was 
offered an Alford plea — a way to plead guilty and win his freedom while still 
asserting his innocence. He was released on August 2.

While Braseel never faced execution, his case was a sobering reminder of the 
risks of condemning the innocent to die. 2 people have been exonerated from 
Tennessee’s death row in the past 10 years. Others, like Ndume Olatushani, who 
spent almost 27 years in prison — 19 on death row — have settled for plea 
agreements to win their freedom after being wrongfully convicted. Earlier this 
year, the Innocence Project held a press conference in Nashville calling on the 
state to conduct post-conviction DNA testing in the case of Sedley Alley, 
executed in 2006. Alley insisted upon his innocence. “The DNA evidence should 
have been tested before my father was executed,” his daughter said. “It’s too 
late for my father, but it’s not too late to find the truth.”

The next few days played out like a film watched too many times.

One of Tennessee’s previous executions was carried out while Braseel was at 
Riverbend, in 2009. While he did not see the man being led to the death 
chamber, he had read accounts from people who watched condemned men make their 
final walk. “I remember vividly just trying to imagine, putting myself in their 
shoes,” he said. For its constant presence, Braseel said, the death chamber 
went mostly undiscussed at the prison.

By Monday morning, some upsetting news had reached the vigil. The Department of 
Correction had canceled visitation at Riverbend that night. No reason was 
given. For Mann, his wife Bethany, and the others who go every week, the 
Mondays before an execution are sacred — an opportunity to say goodbyes and 
honor any final requests. “It’s really important to us,” he said. “And it’s 
really important to the guys. They pour out of the woodwork to just have a 
connection.”

Shortly after 9 a.m., the group crossed the street from the plaza to the 
Capitol, to deliver the letters they had collected over the previous days. They 
went through the metal detectors and up to the governor’s office, where an aide 
said he would ensure that the materials would be placed on Lee’s desk. Shane 
Claiborne played a song on his phone he had played in the same spot before 
Johnson’s execution: a recording of Abu Ali Abdur’Rahman singing “Amazing 
Grace.”

The next few days played out like a film watched too many times. On Tuesday 
morning, the Department of Correction announced that West had been moved to 
“death watch” shortly after midnight. At 4:15 p.m. that same day, the governor 
released a statement saying he would not intervene. On Wednesday, the 
Department of Correction announced that West had selected his last meal: a 
Philly cheesesteak and fries.

On Thursday evening, at the usual time, a procession of cars drove back toward 
Riverbend, rolling west along Cockrill Bend Boulevard, the same road the 
marchers had traveled on foot less than a week before. The protesters parked in 
the designated area, showed their IDs at a checkpoint, and gathered in the 
field where they had stood four times in the previous year. At 7:12 p.m. — the 
moment at which the protocol dictated that West would have a shroud placed over 
his head before being electrocuted — they recited the Lord’s Prayer.

West’s time of death was 7:27 p.m. In a message later that night, Claiborne 
urged people to join the movement. “We cannot simply sit back and watch Gov. 
Lee execute, as he continues to profess his Christian faith,” he wrote. The 
next execution is scheduled for December 5; a 2nd march is being planned. “We 
are just getting started.”

(source: theintercept.com)

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

Hero Down: Tennessee DOC Administrator Debra Johnson Brutally 
Murdered----Tennessee DOC Correctional Administrator Debra Johnson served her 
department for 38 years.



Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) Correctional Administrator Debra 
Johnson was murdered in line of duty by an inmate on Aug. 7.

The 64-year-old administrator’s accused killer, convicted felon Curtis Ray 
Watson, was a prison trustee, which allowed him to have special privileges due 
to his “good behavior,” The Washington Post reported.

Watson turned 44 years old on Aug. 7, and was released from his cell at 7 a.m. 
to go mow lawns around the prison facility as part of his work detail.

At approximately 11 a.m., prison officials noticed that a tractor and Watson 
were both nowhere to be found, according to The Washington Post.

Watson had last been seen driving a golf cart outside Administrator Johnson’s 
home, which was located on the prison grounds.

The 38-year TDOC veteran never showed up for work that morning.

When prison officials went to check on the administrator, they discovered that 
she had been strangled to death with a cord, and that her attacker had sexually 
assaulted her, The Washington Post reported.

Hours later, investigators found the abandoned tractor approximately 2 miles 
from the prison facility.

Watson’s prison identification card was also recovered in the same area, 
prompting a massive 5-day search for the escaped inmate.

On Sunday, Watson was apprehended in a soybean field in Henning, approximately 
11 miles away from the state prison, The Washington Post reported.

He has been charged with aggravated sexual battery, first-degree murder, 
escape, and especially aggravated burglary.

Prosecutors are also considering pursuing the death penalty, according to The 
Washington Post.

Watson was convicted of especially aggravated kidnapping in 2013, and was 
serving a 15-year sentence at the time of his escape, the Tennessee Bureau of 
Investigation (TBI) said in a press release.

He also has a prior conviction for aggravated child abuse. That sentence 
expired in 2011.

Administrator Johnson joined TDOC as a correctional officer in January of 1981, 
the TBI said.

She led a “distinguished career” during the nearly four decades that followed, 
TDOC Commissioner Tony Parker said in the press release.

According to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, Administrator Johnson went on to 
serve as a sergeant, deputy warden, and warden before she took on the position 
overseeing the West Region of Tennessee’s Correctional administration.

She leaves behind her mother, daughter, sons, and many other friends and family 
members, the governor said.

Administrator Johnson’s son, Mychal Austin, said that his mother was a firm 
believer in second chances, and that she was also deeply religious, The 
Washington Post reported.

“The inmates would call her ‘first lady’ on the compound,” Austin said. “People 
would start to straighten up because she was so fair and delivered every 
promise she made to them. She did turn the prison around.”

During her 38 years with the TDOC, Administrator Johnson also received numerous 
letters of commendation from commissioners, colleagues, supervisors, and 
elected officials, according to a fundraising campaign established in her 
honor.

“Ms. Johnson was an experienced and knowledgeable corrections professional who 
was positive and supportive of everyone she encountered,” the page read. “Her 
fellow employees looked to her as a mentor and role model and nominated her 
numerous times for recognition of her outstanding contributions to the 
department.”

Administrator Johnson’s daughter, Dr. Shernaye Johnson, said that her mother 
“embodied the spirit of excellence,” WTVF reported.

"She was a public servant, she was loving, she was an awesome mom and not just 
to us, but everyone that she contacted,” Shernaye said. “She was that mother 
spirit.”

The family said they are devastated over the loss of their matriarch.

"He tore our family apart, it hurts and it's traumatic, it's gut-wrenching and 
it's the saddest day of our lives,” her son, Stanley Johnson, told WTVF. “He 
tore our family apart with this one.”

Despite their grief, the family said they know Administrator Johnson wouldn’t 
want them to live with anger and bitterness.

"We as a family, and my mother, we are a family of forgiveness,” Austin 
explained. “Our mother would want to forgive him, so we've really just been 
concentrated on each other."

Administrator Johnson was be laid to rest on Friday, according to WTVF.

(source: defensemaven.io)




INDIANA:

Indiana DOC doesn’t have the drugs to kill death row inmates



The Indiana Department of Correction has confirmed the state doesn’t have the 
necessary drugs to execute any of the 8 men who are on death row.

Indiana is 1 of 29 states that allows capital punishment. But it’s been nearly 
a decade since the state’s last execution, and no new inmates have been added 
to Indiana’s death row since 2013.

Meanwhile, the 8 men who are now on death row are sitting in state prison, 
waiting to be executed.

“I think it’s cruel and unusual punishment to have someone waiting that long 
for their execution,” said veteran Indianapolis defense attorney Eric Koselke. 
“I can’t imagine living under the threat of death for so long.”

Koselke has been involved in about 30 death penalty cases. None of his clients 
have been executed.

Eric Holmes is the longest-serving death row inmate in Indiana. He was 
sentenced in 1993 for killing 2 people during a robbery, The Journal Gazette 
reported.

The correction department changed the cocktail for lethal injection in 2014 
when its supply of lethal injection drugs expired. Indiana, other states and 
the federal government have struggled to obtain the drugs needed because many 
pharmaceutical manufacturers don’t want to be associated with executions.

The lack of medication didn’t become a problem for the state until 2016 because 
appeals were in process.

“We are waiting for the green light from DOC,” Attorney General Curtis Hill 
said. “Inadequate supply chain has been a problem for 2 years.”

But even before the drug supply was a challenge, capital punishment was waning 
in Indiana. In 1993, lawmakers started to allow life in prison without parole 
as a sentence in capital cases, Huntington County Prosecutor Amy Richison said.

Richison added economics also plays a role in deciding whether to seek the 
death penalty because the cost of prosecution and defense falls on counties.

(source: The Republic)








WYOMING:

Time to repeal death penalty in Cowboy State



There’s an interesting political trend in the U.S. in recent years that has 
seen conservatives pushing for repealing the death penalty at the state level. 
It even saw some success in Wyoming in 2019, with a bipartisan bill making its 
way through the House and a Senate committee before dying in that chamber’s 
Committee of the Whole. Hopefully the same legislation comes back in 2020 and 
finds its way to Gov. Mark Gordon’s desk for his signature.

It’s still true that if you asked Republicans and Democrats that conservatives 
are more likely to support the death penalty. The 2016 Republican Party 
platform decries federal overreach in criminal justice and declares the death 
penalty’s consitutionality as “firmly settled” while the Democrats call for its 
abolition. Federal executions are scheduled in coming months for the 1st time 
in 16 years while the president of the United States makes statements that drug 
dealers should be executed. These plans and that rhetoric are certainly the 
wrong direction for our country to go.

Favorability for the death penalty has declined overall, according to a Gallup 
poll. It found a high point of 80% of respondants favored the death penalty in 
September 1994 decline to 56% in October 2018, the lowest point since Richard 
Nixon was president. Those opposed came to the same 47-year high at 41% in 
2018.

The number of Republican lawmakers to sponsor death penalty repeal bills has 
increased noticeably since 2012, according to Conservatives Concerned About the 
Death Penalty. GOP lawmakers in 2016 sponsored such legislative measures at a 
rate 10 times higher than in 2000, and more than 67% of the Republicans 
sponsoring death penalty repeals were in red states, according to CCADP.

In Wyoming, it makes sense to repeal the death penalty for a variety of 
reasons.

We haven’t executed anyone in Wyoming since 1992 (the one prior to that was in 
1976) yet it costs the state around $1 million each year to hold onto the death 
penalty, the Casper Star Tribune reported in February. The Department of 
Corrections told the Casper newspaper that the average death row inmate stays 
on death row for 17 years costing the state 30 % more than a general population 
inmate. The Legislative Service Office found this year that the State Public 
Defender estimates it will cost approximately $750,000 to staff and process 
capital case requirements and activities for fiscal year 2020.

This expense comes with no real deterrent to crime, according to decades of 
research reviewed by the National Research Council. The CCADP cited research 
that found almost 90% of criminologists believe the death penalty is not a 
deterrent, while police chiefs in 2009 ranked the death penalty as last among 
ways to reduce violent crime. One might argue it can be an effective tool in 
negotiating plea agreements with guilty offenders, but we think it just as 
likely that innocent people would take a plea to avoid execution.

One of the best reasons to not execute people is the risk of killing an 
innocent person. Sen. Brian Boner, R-Douglas, pointed out that since 1973, 
about 164 inmates who have been on death row have been exonerated, the Wyoming 
Tribune Eagle reported from the floor debate before the bill was defeated. How 
would we reconcile executing an innocent person in Wyoming? Our guess is that 
we’d be devastated, and it is not worth the risk.

There are arguments to be made about fairness in applicability of death 
sentences and how carrying out executions has failed to help victims’ families. 
For the sake of brevity, however, we’ll just acknowledge those too are issues.

The arguments put forth in the Wyoming Legislature in 2019 in favor of the 
death penalty failed to be convincing in any way.

(source: Editorial, Laramie Boomerang)






Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne, famously made the incomprehensible and 
nonsensical argument that were it not for the death penalty, Jesus Christ would 
not have died on the cross, providing redemption for humanity. That’s 
inapplicable to our situation today in Wyoming and it’s a real head-scratcher 
as to what the senator was even thinking. Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne, 
argued the death penalty remains a strong deterrent for crime, according to the 
Wyoming Tribune Eagle, though we already refuted that failed position. Bouchard 
also talked about the push by some to end the death penalty as a way to grow 
the prison population to benefit themselves financially. The cost of providing 
care for prisoners is substantial, he said, and he spoke about the potential 
for having to pay for sex changes for inmates. Again, where is Bouchard getting 
his information? Did we mention we’ve executed two people in Wyoming in 43 
years and that the cost of capital cases is higher? And it is unlikely that 
repealing the death penalty is a straight path to the state paying for sex 
changes. That’s way off the map of sound reasoning. So we are using a huge 
amount of resources that could go elsewhere to keep a system in place that we 
almost never use and research shows doesn’t have the intended effects. It’s 
time, Wyoming, to move past this archaic practice. As such, Albany County 
voters should call on their legislators to pass this measure should it come 
again in 2020. Each one of our local Democrats — Senate Minority Leader Chris 
Rothfuss, House Minority Leader Cathy Connolly and Rep. Charles Pelkey — 
co-sponsored the 2019 bill, so it’s safe to assume they will be on the right 
side in the future. Local Republican Bill Haley also voted in favor when the 
bill passed the House on third reading. Laramie Republican Rep. Dan Furphy, 
however, voted against its passage. Sen. Glenn Moniz, another Laramie 
Republican, voted against the measure when it failed 12-18 in his chamber. It 
should be clear to Albany County lawmakers that those “no” votes need to move 
to “yes.” You can find contact information for legislators at www.wyoleg.gov 
and in most day’s print edition of the Boomerang on page A4.

ARIZONA:

Trial delayed for a man accused of killing 4 in Casa Grande



The trial date for 1 of 2 men accused of killing 4 people in Casa Grande in 
2017 is being pushed back.

Rodney Ortiz had been scheduled to go on trial Jan. 22. But defense and 
prosecution attorneys didn't think they'd be ready by then and asked Monday for 
a vacated trial date.

According to the Casa Grande Dispatch, a new trial date for Ortiz likely will 
be determined after a Sept. 30 status hearing.

Ortiz and Alec Perez are accused of killing two men and two women at a housing 
complex in October 2017.

Prosecutors say they're seeking the death penalty for Ortiz and Perez and both 
men will be tried separately.

Ortiz was 22 years old at the time of the quadruple murder while Perez was 31.

(source: Associated Press)








WASHINGTON:

Clallam prosecutor: Homicide cases over-taxing office----Nichols seeks funding 
for 2 positions to handle increase in work



Clallam County commissioners are considering whether they should tap into the 
county’s reserve to handle the significant hike in legal work caused by the 
recent increase in homicides.

Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols told the commissioners Monday that he needs 
to hire a 2nd victim witness coordinator — a position he’s been wanting to add 
for some time — and an additional deputy prosecuting attorney in order to 
handle the increased case load.

Nichols said staff, who are salaried, work “as long and as hard as is necessary 
to get the job done,” but that only works for so long.

“The candle has been burning at both ends for about 6 months,” Nichols said. 
“I’m not here because I want to be, but because it’s necessary to keep the 
office intact.”

Nichols said that according to the Death Penalty Project, a county the size of 
Clallam County will statistically have 2 to 3 murders per year, but this year 
has been highly unusual.

“Right now we have nine citizens who are dead with 6 defendants and murder 
trials processing,” he said. “We are well above statistically where we should 
be.”

Dennis Bauer, Kallie Ann Letellier and Ryan Warren Ward are all charged with 3 
counts of aggravated 1st-degree murder in the Dec. 26 shooting deaths of Darrel 
Iverson, Jordan Iverson and Tiffany May.

Matthew Timothy Wetherington is charged with 4 counts of aggravated 1st-degree 
murder in the deaths of Valerie Kambeitz and her 3 children, Lilly Kambeitz, 
Emma Kambeitz and Jayden Kambeitz, whose remains were found following a fire at 
the Welcome Inn RV Park in Port Angeles on July 6.

John R. Sutton is charged with vehicular homicide in the May 29 death of Lou M. 
Galgano.

Nobody has been arrested in the Jan. 2 death of Valerie Claplanhoo.

Shay C. Darrow, who is charged with the Jan. 12, 2017, murder of his father, 
Clint Darrow, is still awaiting trial.

“These are time-consuming prosecuting efforts,” Nichols said. “We have had to 
delegate away from other cases.”

Nichols said his office had been able to handle the prosecution of Bauer, 
Letellier and Ward, but the increased workload caused by the case against 
Wetherington has pushed the office over the edge.

“In the aftermath of that, it has become clear to me we have exhausted our 
ability in-house to draw on resources in the felony division or other 
divisions,” he said. “We’re just at a point in time due to unforeseeable 
circumstances tragic in nature that … we’re starting to fall behind.”

Nichols said that while he is asking for the additional positions, the county 
should also expect higher-than normal costs in other areas, including from the 
courts, preparing for trial and in public defense.

He said cases involving homicide take more than a year to resolve, sometimes 2 
or more years. They often require using experts from out of state.

“I would recommend you look at what’s happening from a cost consideration now,” 
he said. “As long as these continue to cycle through the system, there will be 
unforeseen costs asked of the county.”

Nichols said if caseloads drop in the coming years, he would likely leave a 
deputy prosecuting attorney position empty after someone leaves, but he would 
likely keep the victim witness coordinator.

Commissioner Bill Peach said the commissioners should fund the 2 positions “as 
soon as possible.”

“We have a reserve dedicated for needed service,” Peach said. “On cash flow, 
I’d say there isn’t any question. We can provide the resources that are 
necessary.”

Commissioner Mark Ozias said county officials should work together to present a 
timeline and more details so that it can move forward.

(source: Peninsula Daily News)