[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., ALA., ILL., USA, US MIL.

[Rick Halperin]

February 11




TEXAS:

Texas Gives Billie (Billy) Coble Execution Date of February 28, 2019



Billie (Billy) Wayne Coble is scheduled to be executed at 6 pm CST, on 
Thursday, February 28, 2019, at the Walls Unit of the Huntsville State 
Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. Seventy-year-old Billie is convicted of the 
murder of Waco Police Sgt. Bobby Vicha and his parents Robert and Zelda Vicha, 
on August 29, 1989, in Axtell, Texas. Billie has spent the last 29 years on 
Texas’ death row.

Billie was born in Texas. He graduated from high school and had 2 years of 
higher education. Billie worked as an electrician prior to his arrest.

In July 1988, Billie Coble married his 3rd wife, Karen Vicha. They lived across 
from Karen’s parents, Robert and Zelda Vicah, and down the road from Karen’s 
brother, Waco Police Sgt. Bobby Vicha. After 1 year marriage, Karen told Coble 
to move out and that she wanted a divorce. Coble attempted to persuade her 
numerous times to change her mind, including randomly calling her and showing 
up at her work place.

In 1 attempt to persuade Karen not to divorce him, Coble hid in the trunk of 
her car while she was out with a friend. When she began to drive home, he came 
through the back seat, held a knife to her ribs and told her to drive to a 
field. After she stopped the car, he told her that if he couldn’t have her, no 
one could. He pulled out a roll of black electrical tape, however Karen kept 
talking, eventually convincing him that she would reconsider the divorce. When 
Karen got home, she talked to her brother, who encouraged her to report the 
kidnapping.

Coble was arrested for kidnapping, and released on bail. Meanwhile, Karen had 
been given a German shepherd dog by her brother for protection. Coble commented 
on the dog to Karen and a few days later, the dog was lying dead in front of 
her house. 9 days after the kidnapping, Coble went to Karen’s house. As each of 
Karen’s 4 children came home from school, including his 2-year-old son, Coble 
handcuffed the children, tied up their feet, and taped their mouths. Coble cut 
the telephone lines and left the house.

Coble went to Karen’s parent’s house, where he killed Robert, Zelda, and Bobby. 
He then returned to Karen’s house and waited for her to arrive home. According 
to one of the children, after returning Coble told the children that he wished 
he “had blown you away like I intended to.” When Karen arrived home, Coble 
informed her that he had killed her parents and brother. When she did not 
believe him, he showed her the items he had taken from them. Coble forced Karen 
to put on handcuffs and took her, saying he was going to torture her for a few 
weeks.

Coble forced Karen into the car and then began driving. Karen attempted to 
escape by freeing a hand from the handcuffs and grabbing the steering wheel and 
forcing the car into a ditch. Karen grabbed a gun and attempted to escape by 
shooting Coble, however the gun did not fire. Karen and Coble fought for the 
gun, with Coble eventually pistol whipping Karen. When a passerby noticed what 
was happening, Coble drove the car out of the ditch. Coble drove to a field, 
where they stayed until dark.

Leaving the field, the passed a patrol car, who began following them. Coble saw 
the car, grabbed a knife and began stabbing Karen. Coble then stated that he 
did not want to die in prison and drove into a parked car. Karen and Coble were 
both injured in the crash and both survived their injuries.

Coble was convicted and sentenced to death in July 1990. In 2007, the 5th US 
Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Coble’s sentence, granting him a new 
sentencing trial. A new jury also sentenced him to death.

Please pray for peace and healing for the family of Robert, Zelda, and Bobby 
Vicha. Please pray for Karen Vicha and her children. Please pray for the 
strength for the family of Bobbie Coble. Pleas pray that if Bobbie is innocent, 
lacks the competency to be executed, or should not be executed for any other 
reason, that evidence will be provided prior to his execution. Please pray that 
Bobbie may come to find peace through a personal relationship with Jesus 
Christ, if he has not already.

(source: the forgivenessfoundation.org)








NORTH CAROLINA:

Survey finds most NC voters oppose death penalty



The poll says voters favor life sentences and restitution payments.

A new poll released by the North Carolina Center for Death Penalty Litigation 
says 51 % of North Carolina’s voters say the state should replace the death 
penalty with sentences of life in prison without parole.

If this statistic holds, it will be a significant change in public opinion of 
the death penalty in North Carolina. For example, in 2015 a survey by High 
Point University said 72 % favored capital punishment.

The new survey, of 501 voters from Jan. 30 to Feb. 1 by Public Policy Polling, 
comes 12 years after an unofficial moratorium on executions began in North 
Carolina. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 %.

Executions scheduled for early 2007 in North Carolina were halted by litigation 
challenging the method and legality of North Carolina’s lethal injection 
process. Since then, executions have been further delayed by litigation over 
North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act, a short-lived law that allowed death row 
inmates to seek commutations to sentences of life without parole if they could 
persuade a judge that racism tainted their trials.

North Carolina has not executed anyone since August 2006, although some inmates 
have been added to death row in that time. And in that time, five inmates have 
come off death row because they were found to have been wrongly convicted, the 
center said in a news release.

A poll’s results can hinge on how its questions are phrased and presented.

The 2015 High Point University poll asked respondents, “Thinking in general 
about your views of the death penalty, are there any crimes for which you 
believe people should receive the death penalty?”

And 72 % said “yes.”

The new Public Policy Polling survey posed the question this way: “Do you think 
North Carolina should definitely, probably, probably not or definitely not 
replace the death penalty with a sentence of life in prison without parole?”

A total of 51 % said the death penalty definitely or probably should be 
replaced with sentences of life without parole. That compares with 44 % who 
said the death penalty should stay, and 6 % who were not sure.

The new survey had additional questions, most presented before that one, that 
had the respondents think in detail and with nuance about the death penalty. It 
asked whether they thought innocent people had been wrongly executed, whether 
race is a factor in who gets the death sentence, and whether murderers should 
be required to work to pay restitution instead of being executed.

If the new survey had instead asked simply asked at the beginning, “Should 
North Carolina have the death penalty?” the results may have been different.

Here are some of the survey’s other findings:

• 70 % thought it somewhat to very likely that an innocent person has been 
executed in North Carolina.

• 57 % thought racial bias affects whether someone receives a death sentence.

• 72 % opted against the death sentence for 1st-degree murder if instead the 
killer were to be sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence or a life sentence. In 
some of the answers, the respondents wanted the killer to work and pay 
restitution. Only 25 % of those who answered this question called for the death 
penalty.

(source: Fayetteville Observer)








ALABAMA:

Bishops blast Alabama for denying inmate his imam at execution



In the wake of the Supreme Court and the state of Alabama denying a Muslim 
inmate’s request to have an imam present at his execution, Catholic leaders 
have decried the move as “disturbing” and an affront to religious liberty.

Domineque Ray, a death row inmate in Alabama, had requested to have his imam 
present at the time of his death on Feb. 7. However, the Alabama prison 
maintained that it was a security risk to allow an individual that was not an 
employee of the prison to be present.

The standard practice of the state is to allow a Christian chaplain inside the 
execution chamber at the time of the execution.

Last Wednesday, a Federal Appeals court granted a stay in the execution, but on 
Thursday by a vote of 5-4 the Supreme Court allowed it to go forward.

Ray had been sentenced to death in 1995 for the rape and murder of a 
15-year-old girl, Tiffany Harville. Following the Supreme Court’s decision, Ray 
was executed on Thursday evening, while his imam, Yusef Maisonet, was required 
to watch from another room via a glass panel.

In response, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a 
statement expressing a two-fold disapproval of both the death penalty and the 
decision to deny Ray proper spiritual care.

“The execution of Domineque Ray deeply troubles us. The death penalty itself is 
an affront to human dignity, and the Church has long called for its abolition 
in the United States and around the world. Mr. Ray bore the further indignity 
of being refused spiritual care in his last moments of life, in violation of 
the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Alabama law,” they wrote.

The statement was issued on Friday by Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, 
chairman of the USCCB Committee for Religious Liberty, and Bishop Frank Dewane 
of Venice, Florida, chairman of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human 
Development.

“This unjust treatment is disturbing to people of all faiths, whether Muslim, 
Christian, Jewish, or otherwise. People deserve to be accompanied in death by 
someone who shares their faith.”

“It is especially important that we respect this right for religious 
minorities,” the bishops said. “As Pope Francis said during his recent trip to 
the United Arab Emirates, ‘What we are called to do as believers is to commit 
ourselves to the equal dignity of all.’ Let us make this commitment today.”

Religious liberty was one of the primary themes during Francis’s February 3-5 
trip to the United Arab Emirates.

The Court’s decision was also condemned by a range of Catholic legal scholars 
and activists, who took to social media to express their outrage.

Professor Robert George, a constitutional law scholar at Princeton University, 
wrote on Twitter: “What Alabama did in not allowing a condemned man to have a 
clergyman of his own faith with him when he was executed was wrong. It did not 
need to happen and should not have.”

Professor Francis Beckwith who teaches courses on religion and jurisprudence 
issued a similar statement on Twitter.

“This is a moral outrage. Shame on Alabama for egregiously violating this man’s 
religious conscience,” he wrote.

On Friday, the Catholic Mobilizing Network Against the Death Penalty said, “As 
people of faith, we are deeply saddened by the fact that Alabama would not 
allow Domineque, a devout Muslim, to have an imam present for his execution…To 
bar a condemned man’s spiritual adviser from his execution chamber is to strip 
his very last shred of human dignity away from him. Alabama did nothing to 
uphold a culture of life last night.”

Sister Helen Prejean, one of the nation’s most prominent anti-death penalty 
activists, called the execution “wrong in so many ways.”

Ray’s execution comes at a time when the use of the death penalty is on the 
decline in the United States.

In 2018, there were fewer than 30 executions and 50 death penalty sentences, 
marking a historic low.

In August 2018, Francis updated the Catechism of the Catholic Church and 
declared that the death penalty is “inadmissible.”

“The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability 
and dignity of the person,” reads the Catechism now, with the addition that the 
Church “works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”

(source: cruxnow.com)








ILLINOIS:

Fact-check: Preckwinkle misrepresents Mendoza’s death penalty stand



A few months ago we gave a Mostly False rating to a claim by Chicago mayoral 
candidate Susana Mendoza that, as a member of the Illinois House in 2011, she 
had cast the deciding vote to abolish the state’s death penalty. Mendoza, now 
the state comptroller, did vote to end executions, but records and news reports 
from those days made it clear that the fate of the measure didn’t turn on her 
support.

Now, mayoral rival Toni Preckwinkle is out with a new ad that revisits 
Mendoza’s death penalty stand. It uses selective and deceptive video editing of 
a House floor speech by Mendoza just prior to that Jan. 6, 2011 vote to make it 
wrongly appear Mendoza was an enthusiastic supporter of capital punishment.

The ad from Preckwinkle, the Cook County Board president, includes a grainy 
clip in which Mendoza acknowledges a decade earlier having pushed in the House 
for an expansion of the death penalty. Mendoza is also heard declaring 
execution methods had become “too compassionate” and that she “could administer 
the death penalty myself and sleep like a baby at night.”

PolitiFact is an exclusive partnership between Chicago Sun-Times and BGA to 
fact-check politicians

But there was a lot more to Mendoza’s remarks that the Preckwinkle campaign 
chose to leave on the cutting room floor. And those deletions tell a very 
different story.

Selective editing

Transcripts of the House debate from the day Mendoza spoke make clear that her 
point was to describe an evolution in her thinking.

She opened her remarks by explaining how the day marked “the end of a long and 
difficult journey” for her on the issue, and then talked about her earlier push 
to expand the death penalty. That is where Preckwinkle’s ad picks up.

In the ad, Mendoza’s line about how she could administer the death penalty 
“‘…and sleep like a baby at night…’” is emphasized with text. What both the 
edited footage and those ellipses leave out is that she was referring only to 
cases where she knew “without a doubt” that a convicted criminal was “a cop 
killer or a serial murderer.”

The ad also cuts off Mendoza’s remarks before she reaches her main point — that 
too many people on Death Row in Illinois had later been found innocent.

“This debate for me is no longer about whether or not guilty killers deserve to 
die for their crimes, they do deserve to die,” Mendoza said, according to the 
debate transcript, just as she does in the ad. But she then went on to describe 
how the state’s track record of sentencing people to death row who were later 
exonerated and freed had changed her mind.

“I have come to realize that in order to ensure that justice is served in the 
form of death to an evil cancer in our society we must accept the possibility 
of executing an innocent person. I’m not OK with that and none of us should be 
OK with that,” she said.

Preckwinkle’s ad not only omits that but also leaves the impression that 
Mendoza was arguing to keep the death penalty in place. It does that by 
juxtaposing the selectively edited portions of her remarks with an old citation 
from a story by FactCheck.org that references the state’s woeful record of 
wrongful convictions.

The problem of course is that Mendoza, in the remarks the Preckwinkle ad chose 
to omit, specifically refers to wrongful convictions as the reason she had 
changed her mind about the death penalty.

When we reached out to Preckwinkle’s campaign to ask why it considered the ad 
an accurate representation of Mendoza’s record, spokeswoman Monica Trevino 
responded with an email highlighting a House vote by Mendoza in 2001 for a 
death penalty expansion, which she sponsored.

“Mendoza, despite her vote in 2011, gave testimony at that same time saying she 
still believed in the death penalty, and that she could administer the death 
penalty herself and sleep like a baby at night,” Trevino added. “The ad was 
reflective of her extreme values on this issue.”

Our ruling

With highly selective editing, Preckwinkle’s ad uses video clips from a speech 
Mendoza gave on the Illinois House floor in 2011 in which she declares 
opposition to the death penalty to leave the impression she remained an 
enthusiastic supporter of it.

While it is true that a decade earlier Mendoza backed an expansion of the death 
penalty, the speech from which the clips are taken made an entirely different 
point. She had changed her mind and wanted to end capital punishment in 
Illinois because the state had sentenced too many people to death row that 
later had been found innocent. Indeed, Mendoza then voted for a measure that 
abolished the death penalty.

None of that footage or context was used in the ad, which grossly misrepresents 
Mendoza’s position. We rate it Pants on Fire!<

(source: The Better Government Association runs PolitiFact Illinois, the local 
arm of the nationally renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking enterprise 
that rates the truthfulness of statements made by governmental leaders and 
politicians. BGA’s fact-checking service has teamed up weekly with the 
Sun-Times, in print and online----Chicago Sun-Times)








USA:

Eisenhower denies the Rosenbergs clemency, Feb. 11, 1953



On June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for conspiracy to 
commit espionage under the U.S. Espionage Act of 1917. Members of the Communist 
Party, the Rosenbergs had been convicted of passing secret information in 1945 
about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Their case remains a cause célèbre, 
with assertions that their prosecution and conviction reflected Cold War 
hysteria and did not warrant the death penalty.

One of the first decisions facing newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 
a Republican and World War II military leader, was whether to grant executive 
clemency to the Rosenbergs, sparing them from being put to death.

On this day in 1953, Eisenhower declined to do so, stating: “The nature of the 
crime for which they have been found guilty and sentenced far exceeds that of 
the taking of the life of another citizen; it involves the deliberate betrayal 
of the entire nation and could very well result in the death of many, many 
thousands of innocent citizens. By their act these 2 individuals have in fact 
betrayed the cause of freedom for which free men are fighting and dying at this 
very hour [in Korea].”

Eisenhower continued: “We are a nation under law and our affairs are governed 
by the just exercise of these laws. The courts have provided every opportunity 
for the submission of evidence bearing on this case. In the time-honored 
tradition of American justice, [a] freely selected jury of their 
fellow-citizens considered the evidence in this case and rendered its judgment.

“All rights of appeal were exercised, and the conviction of the trial court was 
upheld after full judicial review, including that of the highest court in the 
land. I have made a careful examination into this case and am satisfied that 
the 2 individuals have been accorded their full measure of justice.

“There has been neither new evidence nor have there been mitigating 
circumstances which would justify altering this decision and I have determined 
that it is my duty in the interest of the people of the United States, not to 
set aside the verdict of their representatives.”

At about 8 p.m., Julius Rosenberg, 37, was executed at Sing Sing Prison in 
Ossining, N.Y. A few minutes after his body was removed from the execution 
chamber, Ethel Rosenberg. 35, was strapped to the same electric chair. She was 
pronounced dead at 8:16 p.m. Both Rosenbergs refused to admit any wrongdoing 
and proclaimed their innocence up to the time of their deaths. Their sons, 
Michael and Robert, survived them.

In 2014, 5 historians wrote that newly available Soviet documents show that 
Ethel Rosenberg hid money and espionage paraphernalia for Julius, served as an 
intermediary for communications with his Soviet intelligence contacts, relayed 
her personal evaluation of individuals whom Julius considered recruiting, and 
was present at meetings with his traitorous sources.

[source: “This Day in Presidential History,” by Paul Brandus (2018)]

(source: politico.com)








US MILITARY:

Army Major Mathew Golsteyn defends himself in first interview since being 
charged in suspected Taliban bomb maker's death----Major Golsteyn's 1st TV 
interview since being charged in the death of a suspected Taliban bomb maker



Army Major Mathew Golsteyn, a decorated former Green Beret who has been charged 
in the death of a suspected Taliban bomber, defended his actions on Sunday 
ahead of an Article 32 hearing next month.

During an interview on "Fox & Friends," Golsteyn said he is facing a minimum of 
life in prison or the death penalty if he is found guilty of premeditated 
murder — a charge he disputed vigorously.

"Over these years, what the U.S. Army seems to be intent on doing is 
characterizing an ambush as murder. Those routine combat actions are now being 
characterized as murder," Golsteyn told "Fox & Friends."

Golsteyn said the Army has kept him from his legal counsel and his family by 
restricting him to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

"We’re seeing just how malicious and vindictive the Army is being," his wife, 
Julie, said in the "Fox & Friends" interview. "They’re trying to separate us as 
a family, keep Matt from his legal counsel, even going so far as to break us 
financially."

The Army provided the following statement to Fox News on Sunday:

"On December 18, 2018, it was decided that Maj. Mathew Golsteyn will proceed to 
an Article 32 Preliminary Hearing, scheduled to start on Thursday, March 14, 
2019, on Fort Bragg, N.C. The primary purpose of the hearing is to determine 
whether there is enough probable cause that Maj. Golsteyn violated Article 118 
of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Premediated Murder. Since 
recalled to active duty, Maj. Golsteyn has been afforded the respect his rank 
commands and privileges as any Soldier assigned to United States Army Special 
Operations Command. To protect Maj. Golsteyn's rights and maintain integrity of 
the legal process, it would be inappropriate to comment further on the case 
prior to the outcome of the Article 32 hearing."

TALIBAN ATTACK ON MILITARY BASE KILLS AT LEAST 65, AFGHAN OFFICIALS SAY

Maj. Golsteyn's wife defends her husband

Golsteyn, who faced years of on-and-off investigations after an incident that 
is said to have taken place during his 2010 deployment, was initially cleared 
by a military tribunal two years ago. However, the investigation into his 
actions was re-opened after he spoke with Fox News' Bret Baier.

As Fox News previously reported, Golsteyn was deployed to Afghanistan with the 
3rd Special Forces Group in 2010. Two Marines in his unit during that time were 
killed by hidden, booby-trapped explosives.

Golsteyn and his men later found a suspected Taliban bomb maker nearby — though 
he was not on a list of targets U.S. forces were cleared to kill, Fox News 
previously reported. After he was detained, Golsteyn said the man refused to 
talk to investigators.

AFGHANISTAN PEACE TALKS IN DOUBT AFTER TALIBAN'S ABRUPT WALKOUT

Under the rules of engagement, Golsteyn was ordered to release him, but he was 
worried that if he did so, the suspect would have targeted Afghans who were 
helping American soldiers.

“There's limits on how long you can hold guys,” he told Fox News' Bret Baier in 
2016. “You realize quickly that you make things worse. It is an inevitable 
outcome that people who are cooperating with coalition forces, when identified, 
will suffer some terrible torture or be killed.”

Golsteyn told Fox News he killed the suspected bomb maker.

The case in December prompted a tweet from President Trump, who wrote that 
Golsteyn "could face the death penalty from our own government after he 
admitted to killing a Terrorist bomb maker while overseas."

Golsteyn on Sunday said that Trump's tweet gave his son a "sense of relief" 
because "someone was paying attention and cared about his dad."

"They’re not looking for the truth. They’re not seeking justice. This is wrong 
what they are doing to him. Matt served his country and loves his country," 
Julie Golsteyn said. "It’s heartbreaking for me, as his wife, to watch him be 
dragged down by his own command."

(source: Fox News)