[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., GA., FLA., OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

August 24



TEXAS----new execution date

Judge Sets Execution Date For 'Texas 7' Inmate Patrick Murphy



A Dallas County judge has set the new execution date for 'Texas 7' inmate 
Patrick Murphy.

The judge set the new date for November 13th.

Murphy was minutes away from execution in March when the U.S. Supreme Court 
temporarily halted things because the Texas Department of Criminal Justice 
wouldn't allow a Buddhist chaplain in the execution chamber.

Jeremy Desel with TDCJ says they fixed the problem by banning all spiritual 
leaders from the execution chamber.

Murphy and Randy Halprin are the last of the seven gang members who broke out 
of a south Texas prison and killed Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins in 
December 2000 at an Oshman's sporting goods store.

(source: KRLD radio news)

***********

Time Of Death And The Execution Of Larry Swearingen



On Wednesday, August 21, The State of Texas prepared to execute Larry 
Swearingen. He was convicted of the abduction, rape and murder of Melissa 
Trotter a 19-year0-old college student in Montgomery County.

In Huntsville, Texas outside of the Walls Unit prison, which houses the 
execution chamber, a group of protestors gathered as the time ticks down to 6 
p.m., the assigned hour of Swearingen death.

They are here for every execution. These 30 or so demonstrators are opposed to 
the death penalty on moral grounds and are holding signs condemning the 
practice and are working to have the death penalty abolished.

Swearingen was convicted in 2000 and since then he’s been given six execution 
dates. Five of them the courts stepped in and issued stays allowing him to 
continues his appeals and keep trying to prove to the legal system that he is 
actually innocent. More appeals have been filed trying to once again get the 
courts intervene. At this hour it was up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Then word came at about 5:50 p.m. the Supreme Court rejected the appeal. The 
execution would proceed.

Inside the Walls Unit the process of executing Swearingen moved forward. At 
6:21 he was take from the holding cell and taken to the death chamber, strapped 
on to the gurney and IV’s were put into each arm.

Simultaneously the witnesses, Melissa Trotter’s family and the media were 
brought into the prison from the visitor’s center across the street with the 
protestors’ bullhorn echoing off the red brick walls.

Strapped to the death chamber's gurney with an IV in each arm Swearingen said 
his last words, "Lord, forgive them. They don't know what they are doing."

The lethal injection drug solution was administered at 6:24.

At 6:47 p.m., 48-year-old Larry Swearingen was pronounced dead. He had spent 
the last 20 years of his life behind bars for a murder that he insisted he did 
not commit.

(source: tpr.org)

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

Love capital murder retrial delayed until fall 2020



Albert Leslie Love Jr. will have to wait his turn behind 2 other defendants 
facing the death penalty before the McLennan County justice system can get 
around to his capital murder retrial.

Love has been back in the McLennan County Jail since May 2017, five months 
after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his capital murder 
conviction and death sentence in the March 2011 shooting deaths of Keenan 
Hubert, 20, and Tyus Sneed, 17, at the former Lakewood Villas apartment 
complex, 1601 Spring St.

Judge Ralph Strother of Waco's 19th State District Court conducted a status 
conference in Love's case Friday afternoon, meeting with his attorneys, Ariel 
Payan and James R. Young, and prosecutors to try to get a working schedule on 
when Love can be retried.

Payan told Strother on Friday that Love rejected the state's most recent plea 
offer for life in prison with the possibility for parole, and the court set 
another hearing date in the case for Oct. 25.

However, with the capital murder trials of Keith Antoine Spratt and Christopher 
Paul Weiss set before Love's, it could be the fall of 2020 before Love's 
retrial starts, officials said.

"Y'all are going to work me to death before I go," a bemused Strother said. 
Strother will leave office at the end of December 2020 because of age 
restrictions for district judges.

Love, 32, spent time on death row after a trial in Williamson County. Strother 
moved the case to Georgetown because Love’s co-defendant, Rickey Donnell 
Cummings, was tried first in Waco. Cummings has been on death row since 2012.

Prosecutor Christi Hunting Horse and Payan offered conflicting legal opinions 
Friday when the judge asked where Love's retrial will be held. The judge asked 
both sides to brief the venue issue. Hunting Horse said the state is convinced 
the trial can be held in Waco, while Payan said the venue was moved to 
Williamson County and he thinks it remains there until officially moved again.

The Court of Criminal Appeals awarded Love a new trial after ruling 6-3 that 
his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when Waco police seized the contents 
of his text messages without a search warrant and prosecutors used the messages 
at his trial.

Rickey Cummings’ younger brother, D’Arvis Cummings, was sentenced to 20 years 
in prison in September 2014. He pleaded guilty to murder as a party to the 
ambush slayings.

Deontrae Majors and Marion Bible, who were in the front seat of the car Hubert 
and Sneed were in when they were killed, were wounded in the attack but managed 
to escape.

Testimony from both trials showed Cummings and Love wanted to kill Hubert out 
of revenge because they thought he killed their best friend, Emuel “Man Man” 
Bowers III, at East Waco Park the year before.

Spratt, 30, is charged with shooting and killing Joshua Ladale Pittman in 
December 2015. Spratt’s co-defendant, Tyler Sherrod Clay, was sentenced to life 
in prison with no parole after his capital murder conviction in December. 
Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty against Clay.

Trial testimony showed Clay hired Spratt to kill Pittman out of revenge because 
Pittman reportedly robbed Clay after a dice game. A four-time felon testified 
at Clay’s trial that Clay first asked him to kill Pittman, but the man was 
arrested and could not complete the task.

The man testified that Spratt, who later was jailed with him, told him that 
Clay paid him $15,000 to kill Pittman, and that Clay still owed Spratt $5,000 
for the hit job.

Jury selection in Spratt's capital trial is set to start Jan. 21, with 
testimony scheduled to start March 16, 2020.

Weiss, 27, of Temple, is charged in the November 2017 shooting deaths of his 
1-year-old daughter, Azariah, and the child’s mother, Valarie Martinez, 24.

Both victims were shot in the head at Tradinghouse Creek Reservoir. Martinez’s 
body was found outside her car at McLennan Park 3, off Willbanks Drive. Her 
daughter was found shot in the head in a car seat inside the car, officials 
said.

Jury selection is set in his case to start May 18, with testimony set for June 
22. In death-penalty cases, potential jurors are questioned individually, a 
painstaking process that can take up to a month.

(source: Waco Tribune)








NORTH CAROLINA:

Will North Carolina's Supreme Court Allow Racism to Remain a Persistent Factor 
in its Death Penalty?



In 2009, North Carolina passed the Racial Justice Act (RJA), which allowed 
defendants to strike the death penalty from their cases if they could show that 
racial discrimination was a factor in their prosecution. The law came as a 
response to a series of exonerations of Black people who were falsely convicted 
of crimes they did not commit by all-white or nearly all-white juries. The 
legislature took a bold step to address was what suspected to be deeply 
troubling evidence of racism infecting the death penalty—but no one knew for 
sure what evidence uncovered by the RJA would find.

In 2010, people on death row began filing RJA claims. Four had hearings, and 
the evidence uncovered was indeed stark, troubling, and clearly pointed to the 
systemic ways that racism infects capital cases in North Carolina. The four 
petitioners had death sentences reversed and were resentenced to life without 
parole (LWOP).

But in 2013, the law was repealed by the same new legislature that targeted 
Black voters with “surgical precision” in gerrymandering, and the four 
petitioners were all sent back to death row without new trials. Two additional 
petitioners—who had uncovered evidence through the RJA but not yet had 
hearings—were also subsequently denied their day in court.

On August 26th and 27th, we, along with five other legal teams and the NAACP 
Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., will go before the North Carolina 
Supreme Court to fight for the rights of the six petitioners to have their 
evidence recognized and their death sentences overturned. The Attorney General 
for North Carolina will ask the Court to do 1 of 2 things: Sweep clear and 
obvious evidence of racism under the rug and pretend it does not exist or shold 
that, in 2019, it is fine to use trials infected with racism as the vehicle to 
execute Black men.

In its quest to disregard the troubling evidence of racial bias, the State will 
ask the North Carolina Supreme Court to overturn constitutional law, dating 
back to the Civil War, protecting the right to have a legally filed defense 
heard in court, regardless of whether those defenses are later repealed. North 
Carolina established this legal principle in a case that dismissed prosecution 
for multiple murders committed during the Civil War, based on a law granting 
immunity for such acts, even though the law was later repealed. That precedent 
has stood in North Carolina law for almost 150 years.

Hypocrisy often produces irony, and that is true here: A legal principle was 
established to protect confederate soldiers for the massacres of civilian 
children and men. Now, the North Carolina Supreme Court is being asked to 
ignore this principle in a case challenging discrimination against Black jurors 
at the life and death trials of persons of color. We can learn a lot by 
studying who the law is selectively applied to benefit.

Allegations made in the 6 complaints and evidence produced in the hearings 
included a prosecutor calling a defendant “a big black bull;” a suggestion 
during jury selection that a Black defendant should have been lynched; the use 
of crime scene tape to section off the area behind the defense table, with the 
defendant’s family forced to sit in the back of the courtroom, while the white 
family of the victim sat in front behind the prosecutor; derogatory and 
demeaning interrogation of Black jurors, including questions about whether a 
juror had trouble reading and whether he had gone “straight through” school, 
implying he may have repeated grades.

One prosecutor wrote in his notes that a Black juror with a criminal history 
was a “thug” while a white juror who trafficked in drugs was “a fine guy;” a 
Black juror was described as a “blk wino” while a white juror with a DUI 
conviction was a “country boy – ok.”

There is evidence prosecutors were trained on how to give pre-planned responses 
to Batson objections regardless of the evidence. At least one of the 
prosecutors in the RJA cases persistently relied on this training to respond to 
Batson objections to her decisions about removing Black jurors. One had the 
audacity to read from a list of excuses and struck a Black juror for age, 
despite the fact that she had let a white juror with the same birthday remain 
immediately prior. When the judge noticed and asked her about it, she ran down 
to the next reasons on her cheat sheet.

The data corroborate all of this anecdotal evidence and prove that racial bias 
in North Carolina’s death penalty is systematic—not the work of a few isolated 
bad actors. The state’s own statistical expert conceded that the patterns of 
exclusion of Black jurors in the cases suggested racial discrimination. A 
Michigan State University study conducted in connection with the RJA examined 
the decisions of prosecutors across the state involving over 7,000 jurors, in 
173 capital trials, over 20 years. The study found that—across all time periods 
and geographic areas—race played an “overwhelming” role in jury selection in 
the state. A subsequent study, conducted by former prosecutors from Wake Forest 
Law, found the same patterns. All of this evidence is clear, shameful, and 
undeniable.

The State has continually argued that all of the evidence of blatant racism in 
all six cases should be ignored or that it just does not matter. Those 
positions are especially shameful in light of North Carolina’s legacy of racial 
terror and lynching. EJI calculated 123 lynchings in North Carolina between 
1877 and 1950. This legacy of executions should be a stark reminder of the role 
race has played in who is executed in North Carolina.

Sweeping this under a rug won’t work: There is no rug big enough to hide the 
stench of this evidence. More than a century of North Carolina law says you get 
your day in court even if the law is repealed; 73 years of lynchings and 
evidence of overwhleming racial bias in the death penalty say enough is enough. 
If North Carolinians are to have any faith in their legal system, the Court 
must intervene and set this right. Our democracy depends on it.

(source: aclu.org)

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

Addressing Racial Bias In North Carolina’s Judicial System



A University of Michigan study of North Carolina death penalty trials from 2012 
showed that prosecutors on average struck black jurors at 2.5 times the rate of 
white jurors. Even though the U.S. Supreme Court forbid prosecutors from using 
the basis of race alone to reject jurors, racial bias is alive and well in 
North Carolina’s justice system.

Host Frank Stasio speaks with Democratic State Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr. about 
racial bias in North Carolina’s justice system.

Democratic State Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr., who represents Durham, sponsored the 
Racial Justice Act that was passed into law in 2009. The Racial Justice Act 
sought to address racial bias in capital cases in the state, for those on death 
row at the time, and for cases in the future. A superior court judge converted 
the sentences of four death row inmates to life in prison without parole. But 
the Racial Justice Act was repealed in 2013, and those 4 inmates were put back 
on death row.

Now the North Carolina Supreme Court is reconsidering the decision to revert 
those sentences — and considering 2 other capital cases where racial bias may 
have played a role. Host Frank Stasio talks to Sen. McKissick about the history 
of the Racial Justice Act and what he thinks needs to change to address 
prejudice in the state’s judicial system.

(source: WUNC news)








GEORGIA:

Tiffany Moss accepts representation in death penalty appeal----Hearing on 
motion for new trial set for Nov. 15



Tiffany Moss, the woman who was sentenced to death in April for starving her 
10-year-old stepdaughter to death then disposing of the girl's body in a trash 
can, has accepted legal representation in her death penalty appeal.

Josh Moore, the appellate director for the Office of the Capital Defender, a 
division of the Georgia Public Defender Council, and Thea Delage, a staff 
attorney there, sat on either side of Moss at a Friday morning hearing before 
Gwinnett County Superior Court Chief Judge George Hutchinson, who presided over 
the April trial.

The hearing was held to set a date for another hearing on Moore and Delage's 
motion for a new trial. Hutchinson set the date of that hearing for Nov. 15.

Moss' representation on Friday comes as a surprise, given she refused counsel 
throughout her five-day trial. While she had 2 "standby" attorneys present 
during the court proceedings — the two unsuccessfully argued for months prior 
for the court to deny Moss' request to represent herself — Moss repeatedly told 
Hutchinson she would serve as her own defense.

Through the trial, Moss did not present any defense, however, and made no 
attempt to cross-examine any witnesses. She then sat quietly as Hutchinson read 
the guilty verdict, and a day later, her death sentence.

Moss' sentence was the first in five years in the state of Georgia; the last 
time a jury imposed death was in March 2014 to Adrian Hargrove, an Augusta man 
who committed a triple murder.

While Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter and Chief Assistant 
District Attorney Lisa Jones applauded the jury's verdict and sentence at the 
time, Moss' "standby counsel," Brad Gardner and Emily Gilbert, who were 
assigned to Moss from the State Office of the Capital Defender after the court 
granted her the right to represent herself in the capital trial, were visibly 
upset with the results.

"I think this ridiculous spectacle speaks for itself," Gilbert said after the 
court adjourned. "(We'll appeal); it'll be another whole team, plus us. There 
will probably be lawyers all over the country that want to help us with this."

Gilbert was not wrong in her prediction; Moore and Delage hope to convince 
Hutchinson in November to grant a new trial.

That hearing will be held at 9 a.m.

(source: Gwinnett Daily Post)








FLORIDA:

Tarik Minor: Eyewitness to the execution of Gary Ray Bowles----Florida puts 
serial killer to death for slaying Jax Beach man in 1994

I honestly didn't know what to expect when I agreed to be a media witness at 
the execution of Gary Ray Bowles on Thursday at the Florida State Prison.

Bowles was convicted of 3 murders in Florida and received the death penalty for 
killing Jacksonville Beach resident Walter Hinton in November 1994. After his 
arrest, he confessed to killing 6 gay men in 3 different states.

4:50 p.m. 3 other members of the media and I were driven into the prison in an 
old, white van for the execution scheduled for promptly at 6 o'clock.

On the way into the prison, I was overwhelmed by the size of the facility, the 
many electric and barbwire fences, the guards with long guns in the towers 
above and all the layers of security necessary to get into a place no one wants 
to be.

After completing a series of security checks, the three print journalists and 
myself were only allowed to bring in our ID and a few dollars cash for a 
vending machine. While we waited, we learned that the murder victim's family 
members would not be attending the execution because most of them are deceased 
and those still alive did not choose to witness the execution.

Only state prosecutors and detectives who worked on the case and the 
journalists would be in the death chamber to witness Bowles' execution.

The 3 other reporters and I waiting in the prison's visitor area were told at 
5:50 p.m. that U.S. Supreme Court justices were reviewing an appeal from 
Bowles' attorneys that argued he was intellectually disabled and therefore 
unfit for execution. 10:15 p.m. Without a cellphone or any access to 
technology, we blindly waited for 5½ hours until we got word that the execution 
would take place.

It was pretty surreal at this point. I began to realize I was nervous about 
what I was about to see.

We were led through the large hallways at the Florida State Prison, which 
houses more than 2,200 inmates. It was like a maze of cell doors opening and 
closing as we followed jail officials to what seemed like the rear of the 
facility.

Florida death chamberWe were led to another old, white van that would take us 
to the execution room. Inside, there were four rows of seats. In the front row 
-- 5 feet from a glass window through which we would watch Bowles' last minutes 
of life -- state attorneys were already seated along with law enforcement 
officials. I counted 19 men and 8 women.

I was seated four rows back and I could see the reflection of the faces of 
those witnesses on the front row.

10:25 p.m. I have to admit I wasn't really prepared for what was next. Although 
the execution process had been explained to me many times, nothing can prepare 
you for seeing another person die.

The next few minutes felt like an hour as everyone in the room looked straight 
ahead. No one said a word. No one looked at each other, and there were no 
greetings or hellos. I noticed former Duval County prosecutor Bernie de la 
Rionda, who obtained the conviction and death sentence against Bowles, on the 
front row. I had just interviewed de la Rionda two days prior, but again, there 
were no conversations or greetings. Just silence. Everyone realizing the 
gravity of the moment.

10:35 p.m. A curtain behind the glass partition went up to reveal Bowles lying 
on a gurney with his feet closest to the glass window and the witnesses. His 
body was covered with a white sheet. He never looked at us watching through the 
glass.

There were 3 people in the execution chamber with Bowles: a chaplain and two 
assistants with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

10:43 p.m. One of the men in the room picks up a phone and has a brief 
conversation with Gov. Ron DeSantis' office in Tallahassee. The 2 talked for 
roughly 3 minutes before the man motioned that he had clearance to begin the 
execution.

10:44 p.m. Bowles was asked if he would like to make a statement. Bowles 
replied, "I'm not going to make a statement, I've already written one out, and 
people can read it if they want to."

After he spoke, the execution process began with the 1st of 3 injections into 
Bowles body.

The first consisted of a sedative, the second was to stop Bowles' heart and the 
third to stop Bowles from breathing.

As the first injection is administered into the IV connected to Bowles' arm, it 
appears Gary Bowles was praying. I could see his mouth was moving but it's 
impossible to read his lips and know what he was saying or murmuring under his 
breath.

10:46 p.m. Bowles begins to take exaggerated deep breathes. I see his chest 
moving up and down and it's clear his heart is still beating in the final 
minutes of his life. One minute later Bowles' mouth stops moving altogether but 
his chest continues to rise and fall dramatically.

10:48 p.m. There is still movement in Bowles' upper torso and chest. He appears 
to still be alive and then suddenly, some slight movement in his neck and then 
his body seemingly goes limp. There was no movement in his body for the next 
several minutes.

10:57 p.m. A medical examiner enters from behind a curtain in the execution 
chamber to check Bowles' vital signs. The medical examiner opens Bowles' 
eyelids with his hands and proceeds to shine a light in his pupils to check for 
signs of life.

The medical examiner checks Bowles pulse and heart rate to ensure that the 
lethal injection worked.

10:58 p.m. The FDLE official announces to the witnesses, "The Florida death 
sentence against Gary Ray Bowles has been carried out."

Gary Ray Bowles is dead.

Silence consumes the room until the curtain falls and those witnesses closest 
to the execution leave the room and are whisked away on a waiting bus. A few 
moments later we all were led out of the execution room.

I've been in the news business since 1998 and I've covered many arrests, 
trials, verdicts, sentences and even the death penalty phase of the process. It 
was not until very late Thursday night that I saw for myself the full circle of 
the judicial process in the state of Florida, from start to finish.

(source: Tarik Minor, WJXT news)






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

2nd phase of jury selection underway for man accused of killing 2 Kissimmee 
police officers



Potential jurors for the trial of a man accused of killing 2 Kissimmee police 
officers are being questioned on their thoughts about the death penalty Friday.

Everett Miller, a Marine veteran, is facing the death penalty if he is 
convicted on murder charges for the deaths of Officer Matthew Baxter and Sgt. 
Sam Howard. Prosecutors say Miller shot both men after he confronted them about 
questioning two other people about open beer cans.

The jury pool has been narrowed from 204 to 55 this week. The remaining 55 were 
being questioned about their stance on the death penalty Friday.

In the first group of 10 potential jurors Friday, 2 of them said they had 
feelings about the death penalty. One told the judge that for religious reasons 
he could never vote for the death penalty under any circumstances.

If they find 12 jurors and 4 alternates from this group of jurors, they plan to 
do opening statements Tuesday. If a full jury isn't seated before then, the 
judge has ordered another 76 jurors to come in for questioning Tuesday and 
Wednesday to try to find enough people

(source: WFTV news)








OHIO:

Support For Death Penalty Wavering In Ohio



In this week's episode of Snollygoster, Ohio's politics podcast from WOSU, 
hosts Mike Thompson and Steve Brown talk about if capital pubishment will be 
able to continue in the state.

Andrew Welsh Huggins, a reporter with the Associated Press in Columbus and 
author of the book No Winners Here Tonight: Race, Politics, and Geography in 
One of the Country's Busiest Death Penalty States, joins the show.

Ohio was once known as the "Texas of the North" when it came to executing 
condemned inmates. Since 2000, Ohio executed 55 prisoners. Fifty-two of those 
came between 2001 and 2014. Since then, just 3 inmates have been executed.

Support for capital punishment in Ohio seems to be wavering. House Speaker 
Larry Householder is among those questioning whether we should still be 
executing inmates citing the expense and ongoing problems.

The state has been struggling to find lethal injection drugs because 
pharmaceutical companies don’t want drugs designed for other purposes to be 
used to kill people.

Additionally, earlier this year a federal judge said Ohio’s lethal injection 
protocol amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, and Gov, Mike DeWine said 
executions will not resume any time soon since the state can’t seem to find an 
execution method that passes constitutional muster.

(source: WOSU news)