[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.C., FLA., OHIO, CALIF., ORE.

[Rick Halperin]

August 19




NORTH CAROLINA:

6 death row prisoners in North Carolina to get their day in court



In 2002, Quintel Augustine went on trial accused of murdering a Fayetteville 
police officer — a notorious case that forced prosecutors to pick a jury in 
Brunswick County, 90 miles away.

Augustine was 25 but had already served two terms in prison.

The officer, Roy Gene Turner Jr., was a 5-year veteran of the Fayetteville 
force, who left behind a fiancee and a 6-month-old child.

But another distinction has kept this case in disputeever since: Augustine was 
black, and the officer, like every member of the jury that handed down the 
death penalty, was white.

Court filings argue that Cumberland County prosecutors improperly used race as 
a primary factor in choosing Augustine's jurors. In one case, a potential juror 
was described in handwritten notes as a "black wino," and then rejected. Notes 
for a white juror, who was accepted, read "drinks--country boy--OK."

Next week, the N.C., Supreme Court will consider whether Augustine and 3 others 
on death row should have their sentences reduced to life in prison.

This reprieve had already been granted to all 4 of them under the state's 
Racial Justice Act, which let prisoners seek relief when they could show racial 
prejudice in jury selection. But their death sentences were restored when the 
legislature repealed the law in 2013.

2 more death row defendants will argue that their cases were tainted by the 
same racial bias the courts have already found with the other four defendants, 
and they are requesting a hearing to present that evidence.

Their advocates argue the Supreme Court has the chance to restore a tool 
created to root out widespread prejudice in the legal system dating back more 
than a century.

Death row debate

In 2009, when the Racial Justice Act was passed, the minority population in 
North Carolina had reached 34 percent, according to the nonprofit Center for 
Death Penalty Litigation. But of the 142 prisoners on death row, nearly 1/2 
were convicted by juries with no minority representation.

A 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Batson v. Kentucky, forbid prosecutors from 
rejecting jurors on the basis of race alone. But researchers at Michigan State 
University found in a 2012 study of North Carolina death-penalty trials that 
black jurors were 2.5 times more likely to be struck.

Critics of the law called it so broad that it created a loophole for any 
defendant given capital punishment. When he signed its repeal in 2013, Gov. Pat 
McCrory said, “Nearly every person on death row, regardless of race, has 
appealed their death sentence under the Racial Justice Act,” according to the 
Associated Press.

But its defenders at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation cite “a mountain” 
of evidence that already shows decades of bias, and overturning the law serves 
as a means for ignoring it.

“Whether you look at it from a legal perspective or a common-sense perspective, 
it doesn’t make much sense to say we’re going to create this mechanism to see 
if there’s racial bias, we’re going to find all this evidence and then we’re 
going to repeal the law,” said David Weiss, attorney with the center.

Only four people had sentences reduced under the act before its repeal: Tilmon 
Golphin, Christina Walters, Marcus Robinson and Augustine — all of them 
convicted of murder in Cumberland County. The other two seeking the same 
chance: Andrew Ramseur and Rayford Burke, both from Iredell County.

Their attorneys come from the center, the ACLU, the NAACP, the state appellate 
defender’s office and private practice. N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein’s 
office will handle the case for the state. A spokeswoman for Stein’s office 
declined to comment on active litigation.

Black jurors rejected

In Ramseur’s case, a black 21-year-old defendant got the death sentence from an 
all-white jury. All of the qualified black jurors were rejected, his attorney 
Daniel Shatz wrote in a 2016 brief.

During his 2010 trial in Statesville, four rows of courtroom seats were 
cordoned off with crime-scene tape, forcing his family to sit in the back, 
Shatz wrote. Racially charged comments appeared on a local newspaper website, 
including “He should be hanging from the nearest traffic light as a warning to 
the rest.” The court declined to change the trial location or allow a Racial 
Justice Act review.

Walters, one of the few women on the state’s death row, was sentenced to death 
in 2000 for her part in a series of gang-related murders in Fayetteville. 
During her trial, prosecutors rejected 10 out of 14 qualified black jurors and 
4 of 27 whites, wrote center attorney Shelagh Kenney in her brief.

One black woman was struck, Kenney wrote, because her brother had been 
convicted on an unrelated gun charge. The woman told prosecutors that she and 
her brother were not close and his criminal record would not affect her jury 
service. At the same time, a non-black juror was chosen despite having a 
brother jailed on a murder charge and writing him regular letters.

In Robinson’s case, the prosecutor asked a potential black juror if he had 
graduated from high school or had trouble reading — questions not asked of any 
others, wrote ACLU attorney Cassandra Stubbs in a 2018 brief. Half the black 
jurors were rejected compared to 14 % from other groups.

Robinson was the first to be granted relief under the act.

“Never before has any legislature enacted a statute designed to remedy 
suspected systemic racial bias in capital sentencing,” Stubbs wrote, “only to 
repeal such a statute when the racial bias was found.”

(source: newsobserver.com)








FLORIDA:

Condemned to death, Tampa cop killer returns to court seeking new 
trial----Dontae Morris is on death row for the 2010 shootings of Officers David 
Curtis and Jeffrey Kocab.



Almost a decade ago, 2 Tampa police officers were murdered.

A city grieved. A legion of cops hunted a killer and demanded justice. A jury 
would later see video of the officers shot in the head as they attempted to 
arrest a man during a traffic stop. The same panel decided the killer should be 
executed.

This month, a crack opened on the past and death row inmate Dontae Morris 
returned to the Hillsborough County Jail just before noon on Aug. 1. He brought 
with him hopes of a new trial in the slaying of Officers David Curtis and 
Jeffrey Kocab.

Lawyers for Morris are set to present evidence in a Tampa courtroom this week 
as they try to persuade a judge that his 1st trial was not a fair one.

They say a key witness against Morris lied, that the jury was tainted by video 
images of the aftermath of the shootings, and that the trial attorneys failed 
to present evidence concerning Morris’ mental state.

The effort is a long shot. The state’s highest court has previously upheld 
Morris’s convictions and death sentences. But the hearing will feature some new 
arguments and testimony that might look like a trial.

In addition to the officer killings, Morris was convicted in the separate 
murders a few weeks earlier of Rodney Jones and Derek Anderson.

He received a life sentence for killing Jones, and a third death sentence in 
Anderson’s murder. The sentence in the Anderson case was later overturned 
because the jury was not unanimous in its recommendation for capital 
punishment. Prosecutors have not said whether they will seek a new death 
sentence in the case.

Morris, now 33, was the subject of the largest manhunt in Tampa history in the 
four days that followed the June 29, 2010, slayings of Officers Curtis and 
Kocab.

At 2:13 a.m. that day, Curtis stopped a red Toyota Camry that had no license 
tag. The car pulled over on the southbound side of 50th Street, just north of 
Interstate 4. The driver was Cortnee Brantley. In the passenger seat was 
Morris.

The dashboard camera in Curtis’ patrol car captured the officer’s brief 
conversation with the pair. When asked his name, the passenger could be heard 
saying, “Morris … Dontae … D-O-N-T-A-E … M-O-R-R-I-S.”

Curtis scribbled down the name and Morris’ birth date on a notepad, and 
returned to his car. When he ran the name through a police database, he 
discovered Morris had an active warrant for writing bad checks.

He called for backup. Kocab arrived. The 2 officers walked to the car’s 
passenger side. Curtis told Morris he had a warrant and asked him to step out. 
Morris rose, as though he was going to comply. But he quickly drew a gun and 
shot both officers.

He then ran off. Brantley sped away.

The officers lay dying before passersby saw them a few minutes later and dialed 
911. Both men were declared dead at Tampa General Hospital.

A confidential informer later brought Morris to a South Tampa law office, where 
he was delivered to police in exchange for $90,000 in reward money.

Key to the state’s case was the testimony of Ashley Price, a 1-time girlfriend 
of Morris who testified that Morris spoke with her in the hours after the 
shootings and confessed to killing both officers.

But lawyers for the office of the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, a state 
agency that represents death row inmates, say they have 2 witnesses who can 
testify that Price lied. They argue that she was pressured to cooperate with 
police and prosecutors to secure a conviction.

The lawyers have also challenged the decision to let jurors see portions of 
dashboard camera video in which panicked officers try to revive their 
colleagues. And they question Morris’ death sentences, arguing that his trial 
lawyers failed to adequately probe his background and upbringing.

What’s more, the new appeal rehashes findings from psychological experts that 
were presented to a judge but not the jury. These experts found that Morris has 
a below-average IQ and “borderline intellectual functioning."

New evidence includes the results of brain scans Morris underwent while on 
death row. The exams revealed signs that he may have suffered a brain injury, 
according to his appellate attorneys.

“The flaws in the system which sentenced Mr. Morris to death are many,” they 
wrote in a court paper. “These errors cannot be harmless. The results of the 
trial and sentencing are not reliable.”

(soruce: tampabay.com)

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

Man accused of ambushing, killing 2 Kissimmee officers heads to trial Monday



The man accused of killing 2 Kissimmee police officers will head to trial 
Monday.

If Everett Miller is convicted, state prosecutors will seek the death penalty.

It's been 2 years since the Kissimmee Police Department suffered its most 
painful loss in the history of the department.

The area near Cypress Street was turned into a solemn crime scene 2 years ago 
where officers tried to help Sgt. Sam Howard and officer Matthew Baxter and 
track down the person who ambushed and fatally shot them.

Cellphone video later posted on Snapchat shows Baxter minutes earlier with 
Miller and Baxter calling Howard for backup.

Gunfire is heard erupting minutes after Howard arrived to disperse Miller and 
several others along the street.

Miller was later captured at a neighborhood bar and charged with 2 counts of 
1st-degree murder.

During Miller's trial, an array of mental health experts will testify about his 
state of mind in the days leading up to the night the 2 Kissimmee officers were 
killed.

The most recent judge's order last week denied Miller's request to wear his 
Marine Corps uniform at trial.

(source: WESH news)








OHIO:

DeWine Rejects Idea Of Using Fentanyl In Executions



Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is dismissing a legislator's proposal to use fentanyl 
to execute death row inmates as the state struggles to find a lethal injection 
protocol that will be approved by the courts.

DeWine says fentanyl, which has led to thousands of fatal overdoses in Ohio, 
isn't an option and likely would not pass "constitutional muster." Republican 
State Representative Scott Wiggam is seeking co-sponsors for a bill to use 
fentanyl seized by law enforcement agencies for executions. The State of 
Nebraska used fentanyl obtained from a pharmacy to execute a prisoner last 
year. DeWine canceled the execution of convicted killer Warren Henness in 
January after a federal judge expressed concerns about Ohio's lethal injection 
protocol.

(source: Associated Press)








CALIFORNIA:

‘Boy Next Door Killer’ convicted of murdering Los Altos native



A jury has found an aspiring actor who prosecutors called “The Boy Next Door 
Killer” guilty of fatally stabbing two Los Angeles-area women, including a Los 
Altos High School graduate who was killed the night she was planning to meet 
actor Ashton Kutcher for drinks.

The jury on Thursday (Aug. 15) in Los Angeles also found Michael Gargiulo 
guilty of the attempted murder of a woman who fought back and sent him fleeing, 
leading to his arrest in all 3 cases and a 4th for which he’s awaiting trial in 
Illinois.

Gargiulo, 43, was convicted in the murder of 22-year-old Ashley Ellerin in her 
Hollywood home in 2001 on a night when she was about to meet Kutcher, who 
testified at the trial. Her father was in court for the verdict.

Ellerin grew up in Los Altos and attended Santa Rita Elementary School, Egan 
Junior High School and Los Altos High. After graduating in 1996, she was 
accepted into the UCLA Fine Arts program.

At the time of her death, Ellerin was a student at the Fashion Institute of 
Design and Merchandising.

Gargiulo also was convicted of the 2005 murder of 32-year old Maria Bruno in 
her El Monte home, and the 2008 attempted murder of Michelle Murphy in a 
stabbing attack in her Santa Monica apartment.

Jurors who deliberated for 3 days also found Gargiulo guilty of several 
special-circumstance allegations, including lying in wait and multiple murders, 
which make him eligible for the death penalty or life in prison with no 
possibility of parole.

A final phase of the trial is set to start Tuesday, when jurors will determine 
whether Gargiulo was sane at the time of the killings.

Gargiulo sat in court in a lavender dress shirt and slacks with eight sheriff’s 
deputies standing behind him. He showed no reaction when the verdict was read.

A native of the Chicago area who moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s, 
Gargiulo had acting aspirations and worked as an air conditioning repairman and 
Hollywood nightclub bouncer at the time of the attacks.

Little physical evidence

With little physical evidence tying him to the scenes of two killings, 
prosecutors urged jurors to look at the cases connectively, citing uncannily 
similar patterns in home-invasion attacks that were all in places near his 
residence at the time.

While some media outlets referred to him as “The Hollywood Ripper,” prosecutors 
dubbed him “The Boy Next Door Killer.”

Allowed to cite evidence from the Illinois case, they said all four attacks 
were the work of a skilled serial killer who studied the lives, homes and 
habits of victims that he stabbed quickly, powerfully and repeatedly with a 
knife that he knew how to use, and studied ways to cover his tracks.

“Those similarities point to one man, one killer: Michael Gargiulo,” Deputy 
District Attorney Garrett Dameron said during closing arguments.

The defense relied heavily on the lack of forensic or eyewitness evidence 
putting Gargiulo at the scenes of the killings. A shoe-covering bootie with 
Bruno’s blood and Gargiulo’s DNA was found near her apartment in a complex 
where they both lived.

“It’s incomprehensible to me that you can make a case against someone when you 
can’t even prove where they were,” defense attorney Dale Rubin said during 
closing arguments.

Gargiulo’s attorneys suggested that both women were killed by the last men who 
saw them alive: Bruno by her estranged husband, Ellerin by her apartment 
manager, with whom she’d had a sexual relationship.

Gargiulo’s attorney Daniel Nardoni suggested the apartment manager was driven 
to a jealous rage because of Ellerin’s upcoming date with Kutcher.

Kutcher’s testimony

Kutcher, who in 2001 was a rising star of “That ’70s Show,” testified early in 
the trial that he and Ellerin were just getting to know each other and had made 
plans to go out together for drinks. He said he arrived at her Hollywood home 
very late and assumed she had gone out without him when he got no answer at the 
door. “I remember the next day, after I heard about what happened, I went to 
the detectives and said, ‘My fingerprints are on the door,’” Kutcher testified. 
“I was freaking out.”

The first and most important witness in the case was Murphy, a fitness buff who 
fought off the much larger Gargiulo in 2008 and caused him to cut himself, 
leaving a trail of blood as he fled. That evidence against him was so 
overwhelming that defense attorneys conceded it was him though they argued his 
mental state was such that he did not know what he was doing.

In the prosecution’s closing argument, Dameron praised Murphy, whose resistance 
against Gargiulo led to his arrest.

“Michelle Murphy, because of her strength and courage, allowed investigators to 
work backwards,” Dameron said. “This case begins and ends with Michelle 
Murphy.”

(source: padailypost.com)








OREGON:

Fix ‘retroactive’ death-penalty bill in special session



Senate Bill 1013 was the Oregon Legislature’s attempt to get as close as 
possible to abolishing the death penalty without going to voters. By 
significantly narrowing the definition of aggravated murder — the only crime 
that carries the possibility of capital punishment — lawmakers could largely 
shut down the pipeline of people to death row.

It was both a clever strategy and a pessimistic one. Legislators leveraged 
their statutory authority to take away the death penalty as an option long 
before a case ever got to a jury. But it also reflected their suspicion that, 
if asked, Oregon voters would reject a call to amend the constitution and 
abolish capital punishment.

However, as reports by The Oregonian/OregonLive’s Noelle Crombie show, SB 1013 
was an even bigger legislative sleight of hand. The law doesn’t just guarantee 
fewer death-penalty cases in the future; it rewrites the possible outcomes for 
existing death-penalty cases for crimes committed decades ago.

Although the bill’s champions, Rep. Jennifer Williamson and Sen. Floyd 
Prozanski, repeatedly assured colleagues and the public that the bill was not 
retroactive, they failed to explain how selective their definition of 
“retroactive” was. Even prosecutors and top attorneys at the Oregon Department 
of Justice, which handles death penalty appeals for the state, didn’t 
understand until recently the potential impact of the new legislation on an 
unknown number of pending aggravated-murder cases. The lack of transparency and 
outright misdirection that has tainted the legislative process should offend 
Oregonians regardless of their position on the death penalty.

While Williamson denies that there’s any problem with the legislation, 
Prozanski, to his credit, concedes the new law needs additional work to limit 
the reach of SB 1013. Without Williamson’s support, he has asked Gov. Kate 
Brown to convene a special session before the law goes in effect on Sept. 29. 
The governor should acknowledge the legislation’s fatal lack of transparency, 
recognize the public interest in having an informed debate incorporating all 
the implications of this bill and grant Prozanski’s request.

>From the start, Williamson and Prozanski repeatedly assured colleagues, 
prosecutors and the public that the new definition of aggravated murder created 
in SB 1013 would not be “retroactive.” Under SB 1013, the charge of aggravated 
murder can only be filed against defendants accused of killing 2 or more people 
in a terrorism act; killing a child younger than 14 intentionally and with 
premeditation, killing another person while incarcerated for a previous murder; 
or killing a law enforcement, correctional or probation officer. The law 
designated other crimes previously included in the aggravated murder category 
as 1st-degree murder.

Unfortunately, we’re all learning now that the legislators’ use of 
“retroactive” is far different from the way a layperson — and even top justice 
attorneys — understand the word. While many would assume that the new 
definition of aggravated murder would apply only to crimes occurring on or 
after SB 1013’s Sept. 29 effective date, the reality is that the legislation 
imposes the new definition on proceedings for which the expected sentencing 
date occurs on or after Sept. 29. So under SB 1013, any death-penalty defendant 
who wins a new trial or a new sentencing on appeal would have their charges 
re-evaluated under the narrower definition of aggravated murder.

This only came to light after a recent Washington County decision in the case 
of accused killer Martin Allen Johnson. Johnson, originally convicted and 
sentenced to death for the 1998 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl, won the 
right to a new trial after an appeals court found in 2017 that his first trial 
was compromised by ineffective counsel. But with the passage of SB 1013, his 
attorneys successfully argued that the girl’s killing no longer met the 
standards for aggravated murder. With the lesser charge of first-degree murder, 
Johnson won’t face the possibility of the death penalty. The state’s solicitor 
general then recognized the broad implications of the law, alerting prosecutors 
earlier this month in an email, which reporter Crombie obtained.

It seems strange that justice officials, including the solicitor general, would 
not be aware that the law would so dramatically change the nature of the death 
penalty appeals that his team handles. But as Aaron Knott, DOJ’s legislative 
director noted to The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board, the clear message 
from Williamson and Prozanski was that the law would not be retroactive. Knott, 
who spoke with the editorial board before Williamson clarified her views, had 
assumed there was a drafting error in the law that failed to incorporate the 
legislators’ intent.

Williamson made other misleading comments that raise questions about the 
integrity of the process surrounding this bill. She specifically told The 
Oregonian/OregonLive’s Aimee Green in early July that SB 1013 would not affect 
the resentencings of defendants granted reversals through appeals. She noted 
that legislators had specifically passed another bill, Senate Bill 1005, to 
prevent that for death-row defendants, including Angela McAnulty, who killed 
her 15-year-old daughter, and Billy Lee Oatney, who raped and murdered a 
34-year-old woman, both of whom are awaiting resentencing.

Williamson told Green that lawmakers “wanted their intent to be clear so they 
added the language, on the advice of legislative lawyers,” the story states.

In a call with The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board last week, Williamson 
offered shifting explanations for why she made those statements. First, she 
ascribed it to a mistake on her part and then suggested she had misstated the 
bill number that SB 1005 was fixing. (SB 1005 primarily resolves a 
retroactivity problem in SB 1008, a juvenile-justice reform bill). She also 
theorized that she might have thought McAnulty and Oatney’s crimes would still 
be considered aggravated murder under the new definition. They are not.

In any event, her position now is clear. She does not support Prozanski’s 
efforts to limit the law so that those facing resentencing — as opposed to 
those whose convictions are overturned — fall under pre-SB 1013 definitions.

This law and its potential impacts have created a mess. Legislation, 
particularly bills on such life-and-death issues with broad impact, should not 
turn on the semantic games that legislators play. Victims’ families, who 
already endure a long appeals process for death penalty defendants, don’t 
deserve to be collateral damage in the Legislature’s attempted end-run around 
the death penalty.

There is a strong case to be made that the death penalty is inhumane, 
ineffective and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Elected leaders and criminal 
justice reform advocates could easily show Oregonians all that the state would 
gain if they would vote to amend the constitution and abolish capital 
punishment.

But that’s the key element. It should be up to voters to get rid of the death 
penalty, not legislators. If lawmakers and the governor want to preserve that 
chance, they should recognize how such questionable maneuvers as those in 
passage of SB 1013 put their goal at risk. There are six weeks before the law 
takes effect. They should use them well to come clean with Oregonians.

(source: Editorial, The Oregonian)