[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.H., N.C., FLA., ALA., LA.

[Rick Halperin]

February 20




TEXAS----death sentence overturned

Supreme Court reverses death sentence for Texas inmate



The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that a man on death row in Texas is 
intellectually disabled and therefore cannot receive the death penalty.

The justices ruled 6-3 in favor of Bobby James Moore, who was convicted in 1980 
for murdering a store clerk in Houston.

Moore was sentenced to death, but his lawyers argued it is a violation of the 
Eighth Amendment to proceed with the execution of an inmate who is 
intellectually disabled.

A trial court found in 2014 that Moore was ineligible for the death penalty due 
to his intellectual disability, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals twice 
rejected that decision and upheld his death sentence.

The Supreme Court first ruled in Moore’s case in 2017 and tossed out the first 
ruling from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after finding the lower court 
used the wrong standard when deciding he could be executed. The justices sent 
the case back to the lower court to adopt the leading contemporary clinical 
standards for assessing intellectual disability.

But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals again concluded that Moore was not 
intellectually disabled, and the Supreme Court on Tuesday again disagreed with 
that latest ruling.

“We consequently agree with Moore and the prosecutor that, on the basis of the 
trial court record, Moore has shown he is a person with intellectual 
disability,” the court said in an unsigned opinion.

Chief Justice John Roberts concurred in finding Moore is intellectually 
disabled. However, Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch 
dissented.

(source: Washington Examiner)

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

Texas bill would exempt those with severe mental illness from death 
penalty----If the bill passes, each exemption would occur on a case-by-case 
basis.

A new bill filed Tuesday would exempt people suffering from severe mental 
illness from the death penalty.

Representative Toni Rose from Dallas said the death penalty is to punish the 
criminal for the act, but severe mental illness can keep the person from 
understanding that their actions are morally wrong.

"Only after the State of Texas has paid for a death penalty trial, the 
incarceration of the defendant on death row, and years of appeals do we 
determine mental competence," said Representative Rose. "Under this bill, Texas 
will determine competency first, saving taxpayers an estimated $2.5 million per 
case."

If passed, the exemption would happen on a case-by-case basis. Those convicted 
would still be held accountable for their actions and face life without parole.

According to Rep. Rose's office, The National Alliance on Mental Health, Texas 
Institute for Excellence in Mental Health, National Association of Social 
Workers, Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, and the Hogg Foundation for 
Mental Health have all issued wide support of the bill, which advanced further 
in the Texas Legislature than any severe mental illness bill in the country 
last biennium.

(source: KVUE news)








NEW HAMPSHIRE:

Lawmakers again consider death penalty repeal



New Hampshire lawmakers are once again considering a bill to repeal the death 
penalty, less than 6 months after failing to override Republican Gov. Chris 
Sununu's veto of an identical measure.

The state hasn't executed anyone since 1939, and the repeal bill would not 
apply retroactively to Michael Addison, who killed Manchester Police Officer 
Michael Briggs in 2006 and is the state's only death row inmate. But supporters 
of capital punishment argue that courts will see it differently.

"If you repeal the death penalty, I want you to understand that Michael 
Addison's sentence will be commuted to life without parole, which would not be 
just and would send the wrong message to criminals when it comes to killing 
police officers in the state of New Hampshire," former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte 
told the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee on Tuesday.

Ayotte, a former attorney general, was the lead prosecutor in the Addison case. 
She reminded lawmakers that the shooting happened after a crime spree that 
would have already been enough to put Addison in prison for life.

"What are we saying if you're a career criminal who's been on a crime spree and 
are already facing a life sentence and there's no death penalty, no other 
punishment to impose? Why not, in that circumstance, unfortunately, kill the 
police officer? Because that's what happened that night. That is why the jury 
imposed the death penalty," she said.

"There should be a penalty for what happened to Officer Michael Briggs," she 
said. "Our law enforcement officers deserve this protection and they deserve 
this deterrent."

The president of the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police also spoke 
against the repeal bill, but nearly all the other speakers favored repeal, 
including 2 other former attorneys general, a retired judge, and a man who 
spent nearly a decade on death row in Maryland before DNA evidence cleared him 
of the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl. Several relatives of murder 
victims also testified, including Andrea LeBlanc, of Barrington, who lost her 
husband in the 2nd plane to hit the World Trade Center on 9/11.

"State sponsored killing is an act of violence," she said. "I refuse to give 
permission to the government to kill in my name."

New Hampshire's death penalty applies in only seven scenarios: the killing of 
an on-duty law enforcement officer or judge, murder for hire, murder during a 
rape, certain drug offenses or home invasion and murder by someone already 
serving a life sentence without parole. Lawmakers have considered bills to 
repeal it every session for the last two decades. Former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, a 
Democrat, vetoed a similar bill in 2000. In September, the Senate fell 2 votes 
short of the 16 needed to override Sununu's veto, but after the November 
election, it appears to have a veto-proof majority in favor of repeal.

It's less clear what will happen in the 400-member House, but at least one 
former capital punishment supporter has changed his mind since the last vote. 
Rep. David Welch, has supported the death penalty for 34 years as a lawmaker 
and former chairman of the Criminal Justice committee. But his wife's death 2 
years ago changed that, he said.

"My grief has been really hard to deal with," he said, pausing to steady his 
voice. "I always supported the death penalty because of police officers... but 
everyone who goes into prison and jail has a family. Regardless of what crimes 
they committed, they still have a family. When that person is executed by the 
state, it just goes against my grain to have the state put that family into 
grief."

(source: The Laconia Daily Sun)

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

Lawmakers hear emotional testimony on death penalty repeal



Kelly Ayotte’s view of the death penalty is informed by the brutal and 
senseless murder of a Manchester police officer in the line of duty.

Phil McLaughlin’s perspective on capital punishment evolved after he nearly 
prosecuted an innocent man for a capital crime.

The two former attorneys general offered opposing views on capital punishment 
as both testified at the State House on the latest effort to repeal the death 
penalty in the Granite State.

Ayotte, who served as the state’s chief law enforcement officer from 2004 to 
2009, urged lawmakers to keep the death penalty on the books, while McLaughlin, 
who served from 1997-2002, said his experience as a prosecutor convinced him to 
endorse the repeal measure, HB 455.

New Hampshire currently has 1 person on death row — Michael Addison, who in 
2008 was found guilty of murdering Manchester Police Officer Michael Briggs, 
and sentenced to death in a case prosecuted by Ayotte.

She warned that revocation of the state’s capital punishment statute will mean 
Addison escapes the death penalty, even though supporters of repeal say it will 
only be applied moving forward.

Ayotte described Addison as a career criminal with nothing left to lose when he 
shot Officer Briggs as the officer was responding to a domestic violence 
complaint.

“I ask you not to repeal the death penalty because that is an appropriate 
penalty for what happened to Officer Briggs,” she said. “Our law enforcement 
officers deserve this protection; they deserve this deterrent.”

She pointed out no one has been executed in New Hampshire since 1939. “It’s a 
narrow statute and we have been very judicious in administering it.”

Different experience

McLaughlin cited his own experience as driving his point of view, as he 
described the circumstances surrounding the investigation into the 1997 rape 
and murder of 6-year-old Elizabeth Knapp in Contoocook.

Authorities at first arrested and charged the mother’s boyfriend, Richard 
Buchanan, who was later exonerated by DNA evidence that sent another man to 
jail for life.

“One senior senator, a Republican conservative, insisted on the death penalty 
for Richard Buchanan,” said McLaughlin. “Except that the evidence suggested he 
did not commit the murder. For years, I kept a photo of Elizabeth Knapp on my 
desk to remind me that I was in the position of Attorney General who was 
absolutely certain about something, but was dead wrong.”

Many of those who testified at Tuesday’s public hearing were familiar faces in 
what has become an annual ritual at the State House.

State Rep. Jeanine Notter, R-Merrimack, recounted in gruesome detail the murder 
of Kim Cates and the viscous assault on her daughter in a 2009 Mont Vernon home 
invasion, and asked, “How is life in prison justice for a heinous crime such as 
this.”

Notter sponsored the last bill to expand the state’s capital punishment 
statute, a 2011 measure that added murders committed during a home invasion.

Some from law enforcement also testified in opposition to the repeal, but most 
of those speaking had come in support of the bill, including surviving family 
members of murder victims.

‘No benefit’

Anne Lyczak, whose husband was killed in a drive-by shooting in Portsmouth in 
1994, said the death penalty would “serve absolutely no benefit to me or my 
family.”

“We are bound by the ethical principle: do not kill,” she said. “We must build 
a society where killing by anyone cannot be tolerated, and that includes the 
government.”

State Rep. David Welch, R-Kingston, choked back tears as he told of how his 
wife’s death 2 years ago changed his view of capital punishment.

“The grief has been really hard to deal with,” he said. “I always supported the 
death penalty because of police officers, and I supported it 100 %. But 
everyone who goes into prison has a family. Regardless of what crimes they 
committed, they still have a family, and it just goes against my grain to have 
the state put that family into grief mode.”

Lawmakers have filed death penalty repeal bills almost every other year for the 
past decade. A Death Penalty Study Commission in 2010 voted by a narrow 
majority to retain but not expand the death penalty.

In 2014, the House voted to repeal, but the Senate deadlocked 12-12. In 2016, 
the repeal bill originated in the Senate, and lost there in another 12-12 vote. 
In 2018, a death penalty repeal bill passed both House and Senate, but was 
vetoed by Gov. Chris Sununu.

This year could be different, with 16 senators already on record as opposed to 
the death penalty. The prospects for a veto override in the House are less 
certain, but stronger than ever given the Democratic majority.

HB 455 would replace the sentence of death with life in prison without parole.

Tuesday’s hearing was the main event in a legislative full-court press by death 
penalty opponents. The committee hearing was followed by a 3 p.m. reception in 
Executive Council Chambers with former death row prisoners who were later 
exonerated. A legislative luncheon on Wednesday is scheduled just after the 
committee vote.

(source: unionleader.com)

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

The bipartisan case for death penalty repeal



In these divisive times, there is an issue that Granite State Democrats and 
Republicans agree on: The time is now to repeal the death penalty. Abolishing 
this archaic practice is not a partisan issue – it is a personal one. The death 
penalty defies New Hampshire values. In our “Live free or die” state, it is 
time to state loudly that New Hampshire can live without the death penalty.

As a New Hampshire representative and senator, we have heard from a wide 
variety of stakeholders about repealing the death penalty, including countless 
hours of testimony and floor debates in both the Senate and House of 
Representatives. Both of us have come to oppose the death penalty only in the 
past few years, in large part in response to the compelling testimony from 
Granite Staters. Speaking for ourselves, here is why we are working together to 
make 2019 the year of repeal in New Hampshire.

The death penalty is discriminatory: Research shows that the decision between 
life and death turns too often not on the crime committed but on race, 
geography and the quality of counsel. In court, the quality of counsel is one 
of the most decisive factors, meaning those who cannot afford a high-quality 
lawyer are more likely to be sentenced to death. We cannot support a system 
wherein being poor could cost a person their life.

The death penalty is unjustly carried out: This has been demonstrated time and 
again by an array of botched executions across the country. Lethal injection 
and the electric chair – the two most used methods of execution in the United 
States – have both resulted in the torture of executed individuals. This unjust 
and inhumane treatment extends to those charged with carrying out executions, 
who have reported experiencing PTSD as a result.

The government makes mistakes: The criminal justice system is not infallible. 
As a society, we tolerate certain mistakes because we cannot function without 
government and a justice system. With the death penalty, the reverse is true. 
As a civilized society, we cannot allow a system where a mistake could mean 
that we wrongfully sentence a person to death and/or execute an innocent 
person. In New Hampshire, we are particularly mindful of the limitations of 
government, and believe the government should not be in the business of 
executing its citizens.

So far, 168 people have been exonerated from death row across the United 
States, and the number is growing. It is naïve to believe that innocent people 
have not been wrongfully executed in this country. The only way to guarantee we 
do not make the ultimate mistake in New Hampshire and take an innocent life is 
to repeal the death penalty.

We have listened to those who argue that the death penalty is a deterrent, but 
the facts do not support their argument. States with the death penalty have 
higher crime rates than states without it, and there is no research that finds 
the death penalty to be an effective deterrent. Capital crimes are crimes of 
passion, often carried out under the influence of alcohol or drugs – meaning 
one does not stop to weigh the potential consequences.

It is also worth noting that the death penalty is exorbitantly expensive. New 
Hampshire’s one current death penalty case has cost over $2 million so far, and 
that number is climbing as the appeals process continues. Sentencing someone to 
death is significantly more expensive than incarcerating someone for their 
natural life. We would much prefer that taxpayers’ money go toward supporting 
our law enforcement, providing services to crime victims and to advancing 
public safety rather than to the legal costs of a few death penalty cases.

Lastly, but most importantly, the death penalty fails to achieve the one thing 
that family members of murder victims want: their loved one back. As someone 
who has lost members of their own family to murder, one of us speaks from 
experience in saying that the death penalty does not bring closure. Instead, 
the death penalty keeps reminding family of their loved one’s murder as the 
appeal process is dragged out for years.

If we let murderers turn us into murderers, we give them too much power. They 
succeed in bringing us to their way of thinking and acting, and we become what 
we say we abhor. New Hampshire is the only remaining state in New England to 
retain this archaic practice. This is the year that we prove New Hampshire can 
live without the death penalty.

(Sen. John Reagan, a Republican, represents District 17 in the N.H. Senate. 
Rep. Laura Pantelakos, a Democrat, represents Rockingham District 25 in the 
N.H. House.)

(source: Commentary, Concord Monitor)

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

New Hampshire Again Considers Death Penalty Repeal



New Hampshire lawmakers are once again considering a bill to repeal the death 
penalty, less than 6 months after failing to override Gov. Chris Sununu's veto 
of an identical measure.

The state hasn't executed anyone since 1939, and the repeal bill would not 
apply retroactively to Michael Addison, who killed Manchester Police Officer 
Michael Briggs in 2006 and is the state's only death row inmate. But supporters 
of capital punishment argue that courts may see it differently.

2 former attorneys general testified at a public hearing Tuesday. Kelly Ayotte, 
who went on to serve as U.S. senator, was the lead prosecutor in the Addison 
case and spoke against the bill. Former Attorney General Philip McLaughlin 
spoke against it, describing the wrongful arrest in the 1997 murder of a 
Hopkinton girl.

(source: Associated Press)








NORTH CAROLINA:

Criminal justice experts say US death penalty is broken and cannot be fixed



A group of former prosecutors, judges, and law enforcement officials are asking 
the North Carolina Supreme Court to find the death penalty unconstitutional. In 
a friend-of-the-court brief, the group argues the death penalty is now used so 
rarely that it serves no purpose and should be considered “cruel or unusual” 
under the state constitution.

The brief was filed late on Friday 15 February 2019 by the Promise of Justice 
Initiative, with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment 
Project, Henderson Hill, and the 8th Amendment Project as counsel.

The brief comes as other state supreme courts — including Washington and 
Delaware — have recently declared their states’ death penalty laws 
unconstitutional. The North Carolina brief was signed by 12 people, including 
former Superior Court Judge Leon Stanback, former District Attorney Rob 
Corbett, and former Wake County Chief Homicide Detective Steve Hale.

“The time has come to consider whether the system of capital punishment that 
currently operates in North Carolina violates the evolving standards of 
decency,” the group wrote. They noted that supreme courts and judges across the 
country “have recognised that the penalty is corrupted by arbitrariness, 
plagued by error and discrimination, and unsupported by evidence that it deters 
[crime].”

The group filed their brief in the case of Rayford Burke, a North Carolina 
death row prisoner who is challenging his death sentence under the state’s 
Racial Justice Act (RJA). Burke is asking the court to allow him to present 
evidence that prosecutors illegally excluded African-Americans from his jury, 
leading Burke to be sentenced by an all-white jury at a trial where prosecutors 
referred to Burke as a “big black bull.”

“We believe the court needs to take a broad perspective on the RJA litigation 
and troubling practices that have developed around the exclusion of jurors 
based on race to acknowledge that racial bias is one of many systemic and 
irreparable problems with our state’s death penalty”, said Rob Corbett, former 
assistant district attorney in Mecklenburg County. “Given the national and 
state trends away from the death penalty, it is hard to argue that it fulfills 
an indispensable role in our criminal justice system. As a former prosecutor, I 
am confident that it does not deter crime, make our state safer, or our justice 
system more effective. At this stage, the most reasonable action is to abolish 
its use in North Carolina.”

The brief points to statistics showing North Carolina has largely abandoned the 
death penalty. No one has been executed since 2006, and in the past 7 years, 
the state has averaged less than 1 new death sentence per year. It also cites 
studies showing that the death penalty does not deter murder, that it is 
imposed arbitrarily, and that a significant number of people sentenced to death 
are innocent. Lastly, they argue that the death penalty is part of a “sordid 
history” of lynching and racial terror.

(source: ekklesia.co.uk)

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

NC group asks state Supreme Court to find death penalty unconstitutional, 
calling it 'cruel or unusual'



A former Superior Court judge is among those asking the North Carolina Supreme 
Court to find the death penalty unconstitutional because its rare use means it 
serves no purpose.

In a friend-of-the-court brief , the group also argues that the death penalty 
is "cruel or unusual" under the state constitution. The Promise of Justice 
Initiative filed the brief Friday.

The American Civil Liberties Union said in a news release that former Superior 
Court Judge Leon Stanback signed the brief, as did former District Attorney Rob 
Corbett and former Wake County Chief Homicide Detective Steve Hale.

The group filed its brief in the case of Rayford Burke, a North Carolina death 
row prisoner who's challenging his sentence under the state's Racial Justice 
Act. Legislators repealed the act in 2013.

(source: Associated Press)








FLORIDA:

Death row inmate Enoch Hall’s appeal rejected by U.S. Supreme Court



The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to take up an appeal by death row 
inmate Enoch Hall who in 2008 killed a prison guard at Tomoka Correctional 
Institution near Daytona Beach.

Justices, as is common, did not explain their reasons for declining to hear the 
appeal by Hall. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

Hall, now 50, was convicted of murdering corrections officer Donna Fitzgerald. 
At the time of the murder, Hall worked as a welder in a Prison Rehabilitative 
Industries and Diversified Enterprises, or PRIDE, program at Tomoka 
Correctional. Fitzgerald was found stabbed to death in a PRIDE facility, and 
Hall admitted he killed her, according to court documents.

Hall appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court last year after the Florida Supreme 
Court rejected his arguments. The appeal was rooted in a 2016 U.S. Supreme 
Court ruling that found Florida’s death-penalty sentencing system was 
unconstitutional because it gave too much authority to judges, instead of 
juries.

A subsequent Florida Supreme Court ruling said juries must unanimously agree on 
critical findings before judges can impose death sentences and must unanimously 
recommend the death penalty. Hall’s attorneys pointed to an alleged error in 
how the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in a case known as Hurst v. Florida, 
was carried out.

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

Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty For Florida Man Who Killed His Father, Mother 
and Brother



Prosecutors announced they intend to seek the death penalty for 29-year-old 
Grant Tiernan Amato after he is accused of killing his father, mother and older 
brother.

The case qualified for capital punishment after the Seminole County Grand Jury 
indicted Amato for the 1st Degree Premeditated Murders of his father Chad 
Amato, 59; mother, Margaret Ann Amato, 61; and brother Cody Amato, 31.

The decision by prosecutors to seek the death penalty came after careful 
consideration of the evidence that proves Amato acted in a “cold, calculated 
and premeditated manner, without any pretense of moral or legal justification.”

A second aggravating factor is listed as a prior conviction for a felony 
offense that involved the threat or use of violence toward the victim(s).

The decision by prosecutors to seek the death penalty came after careful 
consideration of the evidence that proves Amato acted in a “cold, calculated 
and premeditated manner, without any pretense of moral or legal justification.”

A conviction for any of the murders charged in this case, qualifies as a prior 
conviction and can be used as an aggravating factor in a subsequent death 
penalty sentencing phase, according to the State Attorney’s Office.

The deaths occurred on Jan. 25 inside the Amato’s family home on Sultan Circle 
in Seminole County, where Amato allegedly gunned down his family in what police 
say was an “execution style” shooting.

In the arrest warrant, it alleges Grant Amato killed his parents and brother 
after getting into a fight with his family over an online relationship with a 
Bulgarian call girl.

Investigators say Grant Amato sent more than $200,000 of his family’s money to 
the ‘cam girl’.

The warrant says Grant Amato’s family tried to get help for the 29-year-old and 
sent him to a Fort Lauderdale rehab facility on a voluntary basis for internet 
and sex addiction in December and early January.

When Grant Amato returned home in January, the parents asked him not to contact 
the woman, according to the warrant.

The arrest warrant says Grant Amato told investigators that his family had been 
blaming him for “ruining their lives” after he stole from them and disobeyed 
their rules, so he “might as well be blamed for this, too.”

According to a report from the Washington Post, Amato lifted around $150,000 
from his parents, Chad and Margaret. His brother Cody lost $60,000; when that 
was gone, Amato allegedly stole his brother’s guns and sold them. Amato even 
allegedly took out a $65,000 loan on the house.

(source: spacecoastdaily.com)

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

Florida man convicted in murder of trooper wants off death row because of 
dementia diagnosis----Daniel Burns Jr., 73, was convicted in 1988 for the 
1st-degree murder of an FHP trooper and trafficking in cocaine.



In 1988, Daniel Burns Jr. was convicted of st-degree murder of a Florida 
Highway Patrol trooper.

He was sentenced to death for the 1987 fatal shooting of Trooper Jeffrey Young 
and was given 30 years for trafficking in cocaine.

Now 73, Burns has been on death row for more than 30 years.

His attorneys are asking for his death sentence to be revoked because of a 2018 
evaluation by a doctor who says Burns suffers from dementia.

His attorneys will argue at a court hearing this afternoon for a PET scan and 
an MRI of Burns' brain "to complete a diagnosis related to his deteriorating 
mental and physical condition."

This isn't the first time Burns has asked to have his sentence vacated. Between 
1988 and 1994, there were multiple motions filed for him to be resentenced to 
life in prison, including one saying the death penalty is racist.

In 2004, the state of Florida sent the case back to the circuit court for 180 
days to determine Burns' mental capacity. In 2005, the court determined Burns 
did not have mental disabilities.

Then in 2007, 2009 and 2017, Burns filed successive Motions to Vacate Judgement 
of Sentence because of newly-discovered evidence and a change in Florida law. 
All 3 orders were denied.

The doctor who evaluated Burns in 2018 recommends a PET scan and MRI to 
complete a diagnosis.

Burns was evaluated by another doctor in 2014, who said he suffers from 
dementia with declining cognitive ability. This doctor also recommended the 
scans.

Burns' attorneys argue that failure to allow him to have these scans violates 
Burns' rights under the 5th, 8th and 14th amendments.

Prosecutors say the request to vacate the death sentence because of mental 
capacity is premature because the governor has not yet signed a warrant for 
Burns' execution. The state also says a PET scan and MRI are not relevant for 
consideration on Burns' sanity.

Prosecutors are also requesting reports and raw data from doctors' evaluations.

A hearing is expected to be held at 3 p.m. today in Bradenton.

(source: WTSP news)

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

Death row inmate should have leniency due to dementia diagnosis, his attorneys 
say



Can a convicted killer escape death row because he can’t remember his crime? 
That’s a question a Manatee County judge will have to consider.

Daniel Burns has been on death row in Florida for more than 20 years. Now, his 
attorneys say the 73-year-old has dementia and can’t remember the crime he 
committed, or why he’s being punished.

His lawyers are petitioning to have MRI and PET scans performed in order to 
determine the extent of deterioration in his brain. They’ve also included the 
testimony of 2 psychiatrists who said -- based on cognitive testing -- that 
Burns is suffering from dementia and declining cognitive ability. Under those 
circumstances, his attorneys argue, execution would be considered cruel and 
unusual punishment, and a violation of his fifth amendment rights.

The case dates back more than 30 years to the summer of 1987.

Trooper Jeffrey Young, a member of the narcotics squad with the Florida Highway 
Patrol, pulled Burns over in Manatee County and found drugs in his car. When he 
tried to arrest the man things went awry. Burns was able to get Young’s service 
handgun away from him and then turned it on the officer.

Young, a 28-year-old husband and father, ended up on his knees, begging for his 
life. Burns then shot him in the face.

Burns was sentenced to death for the slaying, but, since then, his attorneys 
have fought to try to get his death sentence overturned. Time and again, Burns’ 
appeals have been denied, but he hasn’t exhausted all appeals.

A similar case is currently being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court. 
According to the Associated Press, justices in October seemed willing to extend 
protection from capital punishment to prisoners with dementia.

(source: Fox News)








ALABAMA:

Man convicted killing Auburn student in 2008 seeking appeal of death sentence



A hearing to overturn a death sentence was held Tuesday for a man convicted of 
killing an Auburn University student.

In 2010,Courtney Lockhart was convicted of capital murder in the 2008 death of 
Lauren Burk.

A jury recommended life without parole, but Judge Jacob Walker used judicial 
override to sentence Lockhart to death.

Alabama judges are no longer allowed to override jury suggested sentencing with 
the death sentence.

Burk’s father said he hopes the judge does not change his original sentencing.

“We maintain our desire for the death penalty,” said Jim Burk, father of Lauren 
Burk. “Lauren did get the death penalty without a hearing, and we will do 
anything it takes to continue this process. Even if it goes to the Supreme 
Court, the Burk family will never give up.”

The prosecution and defense both rested their cases, but defense attorney, 
Aaron Katz, said a final decision won’t come until at least August.

(source: WTVM news)

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

Alabama Is Going to Execute Rocky Myers. He Might Be Innocent.----The case of 
an intellectually disabled prisoner on death row is a window into the many 
flaws in the death penalty in America.



On the night of October 4, 1991, Mamie Dutton was asleep in a bedroom at her 
cousin’s house in Decatur, Alabama. The cousin, Ludie Mae Tucker, lived a few 
blocks west of the city’s shopping district, in a run-down neighborhood that 
struggled with crime and had been dubbed “crack town” by locals. Around 
midnight, the doorbell rang.

When Dutton peered out of her room, she could see Ludie Mae talking through the 
window blinds with a man on the porch. He was agitated, and said he’d been in a 
car crash and needed to use the telephone to call his family. “I’m bleeding to 
death,” he pleaded. Ludie Mae offered to dial the number for him. Dutton could 
hear that he’d come inside the house. “[He] was just a jabbering and his voice 
was a quivering,” Dutton said later in a statement. She heard Ludie Mae say 
that her husband was in the other room—a strange comment, given that she wasn’t 
married.

Suddenly, Ludie Mae cried out. Dutton was too scared to leave the room. “I just 
froze. I couldn’t move,” Dutton later told police. “I knowed he was doing 
something to her.

The man then ran into Dutton’s darkened room and stabbed her in the side before 
running out of the house. She didn’t manage to get a clear look at him—except 
to see that he was wearing a “light looking shirt.” When Dutton came out of her 
room, holding the wound on her side, Ludie Mae was lying on the couch bleeding 
with the phone in her hand. She’d been stabbed 4 times, including once in the 
left side of her chest, but she’d managed to dial 911 and was on the phone with 
Decatur police.

An officer who’d been patrolling the neighborhood arrived on the scene minutes 
after Ludie Mae’s call. Ludie Mae was near-hysterical, but conscious enough to 
describe her attacker to the officers who arrived moments later as a black 
male, stocky and short, with a “light colored shirt that looked like it had 
blood on it.” An ambulance rushed her to the hospital, but it was too late. The 
stab wound to her chest had pierced her heart, and not long after arrival, she 
was pronounced dead.

More than 2 years later, a man named Robin “Rocky” Myers was convicted of Ludie 
Mae Tucker’s murder. At the time of Ludie Mae’s death, Rocky was living across 
the street from her with his wife and children on 1 side of a converted duplex. 
Today, he’s 1 of 175 prisoners on death row in Alabama, in the same prison 
where Dominique Ray was recently executed.

According to his lawyers, the state may be preparing to kill an innocent man. 
Convicted on the basis of scant evidence by a nearly all-white jury in a trial 
that lasted only a week, Rocky has intellectual disability, scoring at or below 
the crucial 75-point threshold for a formal diagnosis in four out of five IQ 
tests. His death sentence was imposed by a judge who overrode the jury’s 
recommendation for life without parole through a procedural option that is no 
longer legal. And because of egregious conduct by an attorney working on his 
case, Rocky lost his chance for a post-conviction appeal—which meant that he 
was unable to present new evidence in federal court, including testimony 
revealing that police interfered with a key witness.

To Kacey Keeton, a federal defender who picked up Rocky’s appeal in 2007, the 
case is a checklist for everything that’s wrong with the death penalty in 
America. “I think there was an elderly white lady that was dead in Decatur, 
Alabama, and the prosecution was telling [the jury], ‘Hey, we have this black 
guy who did it,’” she said. “And I think that’s it.”

Rocky wasn’t the first suspect to come under the spotlight during the 
investigation. After Ludie Mae’s murder, detectives searched her house for 
forensic evidence. They lifted a number of fingerprints, including one partial 
palm print, and determined that a VCR—a valuable consumer good in 1991—was 
missing. Then the day after the murder, a local man handed over to the Decatur 
police department a VCR matching the description of the one stolen from Ludie 
Mae’s house. He said he’d found it at his sister’s house, which was just a few 
blocks up the road from Ludie Mae’s.

The house wasn’t an average family home. His sister was running the property as 
a “shot house,” where people could buy whiskey and beer, and a local drug 
dealer named Leon “Butch” Madden sold crack cocaine from the porch. Butch’s 
operation was no secret to law enforcement, with one witness in the case later 
saying that he had a “well-known relationship with the Decatur police.” There 
were rumors that he’d been given a de facto license to sell drugs in exchange 
for information and other favors.

“I think there was an elderly white lady that was dead in Decatur, Alabama, and 
the prosecution was telling the jury, ‘Hey, we have this black guy who did it. 
And I think that’s it.”—attorney Kacey Keeton

When police called Butch in, he complied, along with one of his lieutenants, 
Willie “Roadrunner” Raybon. After questioning, the two men signed statements 
saying that a regular customer of the shot house, Anthony “Cool Breeze” 
Ballentine, had traded the VCR for crack on the night of Ludie Mae’s murder. 
Butch’s statement described Cool Breeze as showing up with the VCR, “sweating 
and shaking, acting paranoid as hell.”

Cool Breeze was well-known in the neighborhood. Although he was a heavy crack 
user, his family was respected, with deep roots in Decatur. Soon police got 
another tip that pointed toward his involvement in the murder. A woman who 
lived in the neighborhood called in and said she’d seen him run into an alley 
near Ludie Mae’s house on the night of the murder, wearing a white shirt 
stained with blood. Armed with the statements, detectives put out a warrant for 
Cool Breeze’s arrest, picking him up at the aluminum plant where he worked.

With Cool Breeze in custody, the governor’s office issued a reward for further 
information about the murder to see if they could strengthen their case. A few 
weeks later, a local man who’d known Cool Breeze for nearly 30 years came 
forward to claim it, saying that he’d seen someone else cross the road near 
Ludie Mae’s house with a VCR tucked under his arm on the night of the murder. 
He’d been tracked down by an investigator working for Cool Breeze’s defense 
team, who found him working at the same country club where Cool Breeze’s father 
served as head waiter. He offered detectives an affidavit saying that the man 
he’d seen cross the road was short and stocky, certainly not Cool Breeze, who 
was nearly 6-foot tall.

Detectives called Butch and Roadrunner back into the station for another 
interview, where both men recanted their earlier statements. Roadrunner claimed 
he’d implicated Cool Breeze because he was angry over an argument they’d had 
the night of the murder, and Butch said he’d backed up Roadrunner’s statement 
because “I just figured that’s what everybody wanted to hear.” They said the 
story they’d originally told was still mostly true: A man had come to the shot 
house asking for crack on credit the night of Ludie Mae’s murder, returning 
later with a VCR to trade.

But there was one major change. Instead of Cool Breeze, they now fingered Rocky 
Myers as the man who’d come to the shot house with the VCR.

Rocky Myers grew up in New Jersey, one of 10 children in what relatives 
describe as a “hard life.” His father was an alcoholic, and his mother battled 
depression after having her first child at 14. From early on it was apparent 
that Rocky had a hard time keeping up with other kids his age, and at 11 he was 
diagnosed with intellectual disability (termed “mental retardation” at the 
time). “Rocky was a misunderstood, gentle person,” remembered a neighbor. “He 
didn’t excel like his brothers did.” He struggled at school, never learning how 
to read above a third-grade level, and at 16 years old he couldn’t tell time.

Rocky eventually married and had four children, moving to the west side of 
Decatur, a small port city just south of the Tennessee border where his wife’s 
family lived. His children remember him as a loving father who, despite his 
struggles with drug abuse, never left their lives or abused them. “He was there 
for us. We never had to beg for anything to eat. I mean we didn’t have 
everything in the world but we had him and my Moms. I mean, we had us,” said 
Deon Myers, his nd-youngest son. “I just don’t have any memory of him being any 
type of violent person.”

Rocky and his family eventually settled into a home across the street from 
Ludie Mae. He did odd jobs, scraping together cash from friends and family 
while his wife worked as a cook at a nearby restaurant. At the time of Ludie 
Mae’s murder Rocky was a regular user of crack, and while he’d been arrested 
for theft, he’d never been charged with a crime involving violence. When he had 
the money, he’d walk up a narrow alley that ran three blocks up from his home 
to Butch’s shot house and buy $10 or $20 worth of crack.

After Butch and Roadrunner changed their statements, homicide detectives turned 
their focus toward Rocky, who was on probation for receiving stolen property. 
Detectives called him for a urine test, which he failed—a violation of his 
probation. Rocky was sent to jail, where he was interrogated. The interrogation 
wasn’t filmed or recorded, but the two detectives gave an account of it during 
Rocky’s trial. According to Detective Sergeant Dwight Hale, Rocky admitted to 
using crack but denied knowing anything about the murder and said he’d never 
met Roadrunner or Butch before. But then Hale asked Rocky if he knew a man 
named Marzell Ewing. Rocky said he did.

Marzell was an associate of Butch’s who, in his own words, “sold drugs, watched 
houses, and did basically anything he needed at the time.” He and Rocky knew 
each other well from around the neighborhood. So when Hale said that Marzell 
had made a statement saying that he’d seen Rocky give a VCR to Butch the night 
Ludie Mae was killed, Rocky hung his head. In the following hours, he admitted 
knowing Butch and Roadrunner and said that he had indeed traded a VCR for crack 
at the shot house on the night of Ludie Mae’s murder.

But Rocky denied that he’d been at Ludie Mae’s house that night; he claimed 
he’d found the VCR stashed in the alley that runs between his house and the 
shot house. When detectives pressed him on the timing of his story about 
finding the VCR and taking it to Butch, he faltered—first, it was 40 minutes 
before police arrived at Ludie Mae’s house, then 10 minutes, and finally, he 
said he couldn’t remember clearly. When Hale told him that he was facing the 
electric chair, he started crying and asked to speak with his mother.

Keeton, Rocky’s current attorney, says that his inability to provide a clear 
time line during the interrogation has everything to do with his intellectual 
disability, which she’s observed in more than a decade of working with him on 
his case. For years when she’d visit him in prison, for example, she found it 
strange that he would refuse her offer to eat while they talked about his 
case—until she realized that he didn’t know how to operate a vending machine.

“He was under extreme stress and anxiety and not understanding a lot of the 
communication,” she said. “Asking him a month-plus out, ‘What were you doing on 
October 4?’—there’s no way he can provide a good memory. So you have someone 
who’s intellectually disabled fumbling it, and sounding like somebody fumbling 
it.”

But for the detectives, Rocky’s admission that he’d initially lied, along with 
his erratic account of the time line and the statements they had from Butch, 
Roadrunner, and Marzell saying that they saw Rocky with the VCR, was all they 
needed. Cool Breeze was released, and Rocky was charged with the capital murder 
of Ludie Mae Tucker.

Rocky’s trial began 2 years later. The prosecutor told the jury a 
straightforward story: Rocky’s drug addiction had overwhelmed his judgment, and 
after Butch refused to give him crack on credit he broke into Ludie Mae’s house 
and killed her for her VCR. But there were parts of the prosecution’s story 
that didn’t add up.

To start, multiple witnesses described Rocky’s attire the night they saw him at 
the shot house as black or dark brown rather than the light-colored shirt that 
Ludie Mae and her cousin said their assailant was wearing. And Roadrunner 
testified that Cool Breeze had also been at the shot house on multiple 
occasions that night, at one point “sweating real hard” and wearing a white 
sweatshirt with blood on it. Rocky had terrible eczema—even the detectives who 
interrogated him noted his flaky, scaly skin—yet despite the prosecution’s 
contention that he’d been in a violent struggle with Ludie Mae, no skin flakes 
were found at the scene. None of the prints that investigators found at the 
crime scene matched Rocky’s.

Roadrunner also testified that the alley leading to the shot house was a 
well-known stash spot, saying that he himself had frequently found and hidden 
stolen goods and drugs there. Police arrived at Ludie Mae’s house just minutes 
after her frantic 911 call, making it plausible that the assailant had stashed 
the VCR in the nearby alley once he heard sirens approaching the area. In fact, 
there was no evidence at all that Rocky had been at the scene of the crime 
aside from his possession of a VCR.

“They had all these people, witnesses coming up, and they would have a given 
name and a nickname, and then a street nickname,” said Mae Puckett, a juror who 
served on the case. “But with every nickname came a different version of the 
story.”

Finally, Rocky took the stand. He testified that on the afternoon of Ludie 
Mae’s murder he’d bought crack from Butch and smoked it back at his house. He’d 
planned to go to a club with his in-laws but when he arrived at their house, 
they’d already left. On his way back home he said he spotted the VCR hidden 
under a bush in the alley, took it to the shot house that night, and traded it 
to Butch for a $20 rock of crack. But he was adamant in stating that he had 
nothing to do with Ludie Mae’s murder.

Rocky’s testimony raised critical questions. Why would Ludie Mae have believed 
that her neighbor needed to use her phone to call his family after a car crash, 
and why didn’t she identify him to police as her attacker before she died? 
Years later, Mamie Dutton, her cousin, told a lawyer working on Rocky’s appeal 
that she and Ludie Mae had seen Rocky across the street earlier that day, and 
Ludie Mae had mentioned that she knew him from the times he’d knocked on her 
door to ask for ice. And Rocky surely knew that Ludie Mae lived alone—yet on 
the night of the murder, Dutton said she’d heard her cousin tell her attacker 
that her husband was in the other room.

Puckett, the juror, noticed these holes in the prosecutors’ case. “It was the 
state’s place to prove that Rocky Myers was in the home and committed that 
crime. In my mind it never happened,” she said. “I kept waiting for that word 
that was going to tell me what happened and there was never one. There was 
never that ‘aha’ moment.”

“It was the state’s place to prove that Rocky Myers was in the home and 
committed that crime. In my mind it never happened”—juror Mae Puckett

But Puckett says the deck felt stacked against Rocky from the beginning. During 
jury selection, one juror said that if a suspect made it through a grand jury 
he was “automatically guilty.” And she remembers that another juror kept 
referring to the VCR as “rabbit tracks” that proved his guilt. A decade after 
the trial, when Keeton took over Rocky’s appeal she and Sara Romano—an 
investigator assigned to the case—interviewed another juror who openly used a 
vicious racial slur to refer to Rocky and called him a “thug.”

Puckett recalls that at least 3 other jurors didn’t believe there was enough 
evidence to convict Rocky. But as hard as they tried, Puckett and the others 
who shared her uncertainty couldn’t get the rest to budge. 11 of the 12 jurors 
were white, and most were set on voting guilty.

According to Puckett, the group of unconvinced jurors feared that if they 
didn’t find a compromise, the outcome of the trial would be a hung jury. In 
that case, Rocky would be retried in front of a new jury that could have even 
fewer sympathetic members, and increasing the chances that he would be 
sentenced to death. So they reached an agreement: They would vote for a guilty 
verdict along with the rest in exchange for a recommendation of life without 
parole. “We were dealing with ourselves trying to come up with a way to save 
his life,” Puckett said. “That’s what it boiled down to.”

Rocky was thus convicted of capital murder, and by a margin of 9-3 the jury 
provided their agreed-upon recommendation of life without parole to the judge. 
The verdict came as a stunning blow to Rocky, who’d been convinced that the 
trial would end with his acquittal. “I was very surprised,” he said in a phone 
interview. “I thought I was going to go back to New Jersey.”

A few months later, Puckett was at her home outside of Decatur when she got a 
call from one of the other jurors. The judge who’d presided over the case had 
exercised his option of “judicial override,” discarding the jury’s 
recommendation of life without parole and sentencing Rocky to die instead. From 
the bench, he said the jury had been too “emotional” in choosing not to 
recommend the death penalty on its own and described Rocky as a “threat to 
society.”

“I never thought for a moment that he did it,” said Puckett, her voice 
cracking. “We struggled over [our decision] for good reason. And if we were 
emotional, it was valid. How could someone do that without emotion? Would you 
want someone like that on a jury?”

Since 1976, when the US Supreme Court ruled in Gregg v. Georgia that capital 
punishment was constitutional, only 3 states have ever allowed the practice of 
“judicial override” in death-penalty cases: Florida, Delaware, and Alabama. In 
2016, the US Supreme Court ruled that Florida’s judicial-override statute was 
unconstitutional. That same year, Delaware’s Supreme Court banned the practice 
in that state.

Alabama’s use of judicial override was the most notorious. Before the practice 
was banned by the state legislature in 2017, an Alabama-based legal-advocacy 
organization called the Equal Justice Initiative calculated that 20 % of 
inmates on death row in Alabama had their sentences imposed through judicial 
override. 3/4 of such cases involved a white victim, though only 35 % of 
homicide victims in the state are white.

In Alabama, state judges are elected by popular vote, and they often emphasize 
their “tough-on-crime” record while campaigning. According to another Equal 
Justice Initiative study, the use of judicial overrides to dole out death 
sentences in Alabama often spiked during election years. In 2013 the Supreme 
Court declined to hear a challenge to Alabama’s judicial-override statute, but 
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that judges in the state “appear to 
have succumbed to electoral pressures.” In Rocky’s case, the judge who imposed 
his sentence was facing reelection the next year.

An Alabama-based legal advocacy organization calculated that 20 percent of 
inmates on death row in Alabama had their sentences imposed through judicial 
override.

Although the practice is now no longer permitted in Alabama, the law passed by 
the Legislature wasn’t retroactive—which means that anyone put on death row by 
judicial override stayed there despite the Legislature’s tacit acknowledgement 
that the practice was unjust.

After his conviction Rocky was transferred to Holman Correctional Facility, 
where Alabama carries out its death sentences. His trial lawyers filed an 
appeal, which was unsuccessful. Once the appeal of a death-row inmate’s initial 
conviction is denied, there is a lengthy, byzantine post-conviction process 
that can last for decades. The habeas corpus process offers inmates the chance 
to present new evidence in their cases and dispute the underlying rationale 
that led to their conviction. This is the stage in the death-penalty process 
where many sentences have been overturned on the basis of poor representation 
by counsel at trial, procedural errors, the recanting of witness testimonies, 
or new evidence of misconduct by prosecution, police, or juries.

In 1998, a young Tennessee-based lawyer named Earle J. Schwarz agreed to 
represent Rocky in his post-conviction appeals. Until 2017 Alabama did not 
automatically provide counsel to death-row inmates during this stage of their 
appeal, so the American Bar Association and other legal-advocacy groups sought 
out lawyers like Schwarz to work pro bono on death-penalty appeals in the 
state.

Schwarz worked on Rocky’s case for over five years, as it made its way through 
the state appeals process. In 2003, he received notice that Rocky’s petition 
for a post-conviction appeal had been denied by the state. The next step was to 
prepare to file a federal habeas petition. “Federal habeas corpus review is a 
critical stage in a death-penalty case, because it allows death row prisoners 
to bring federal constitutional claims that were heard in state court but were 
not successful,” said Anna Arceneaux, senior staff attorney with the ACLU 
Capital Punishment Project. (Disclosure: The author is a staff reporter at the 
ACLU.) “And federal court—where judges are appointed and not elected—is a very 
different atmosphere for a prisoner.”

But by then, Schwarz had begun working at a new law firm, and inexplicably, he 
didn’t tell Rocky that his state appeal had been denied. This was a devastating 
moment, though Rocky wouldn’t know it for another year. “Mr. Schwarz decided 
that he could no longer represent Rocky, but unfortunately he just sat in a 
room and said that quietly to himself,” said Keeton. “He didn’t tell Rocky, he 
didn’t call the courts and let them know, he didn’t tell the prosecutors, he 
just quit doing anything.” (In an e-mail, Schwarz said that when he joined the 
new firm, he lost a 4-person team working on Rocky’s case. “I should have 
returned the file to the Equal Justice Initiative at that time; I did not; 
that’s on me,” he wrote.)

A year later, Rocky received a letter from the state attorney general’s office 
saying that he’d missed the deadline to file any further habeas corpus 
petitions and notifying him that Alabama would be moving to set an execution 
date. Rocky, who could only read at a 3rd-grade level, had to ask another 
prisoner to read the letter aloud to him.

In a recent interview, Rocky said when he realized what the letter meant, “It 
scared the hell out of me. I mean literally, I didn’t know what to do. I was 
shaking and I couldn’t breathe. A couple of guys calmed me down and told me 
what to do.”

The prisoner who’d read the letter to Rocky was represented by the Equal 
Justice Initiative, and he reached out to the organization to ask for help. 
Frantically, attorneys working there called the Capital Habeas Unit of the 
Federal Defender Office for the Middle District of Alabama, asking if defenders 
assigned to the unit could take up Rocky’s case. They filed a habeas petition, 
but it was too late. The state of Alabama argued that Schwarz’s failings were 
irrelevant, contending that the burden had been on Rocky to stay on top of his 
case. The US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit agreed.

The state of Alabama argued that Schwarz’s failings were irrelevant, contending 
that the burden had been on Rocky to stay on top of his case.

“[They] said, yes, we showed that Schwarz’s failures were a problem, but that 
Rocky even with his intellectual disability had to show some level of diligence 
on his part,” said Keeton. “We had affidavits that showed [habeas corpus] 
language is above college level in terms of reading and understanding, and that 
Rocky reads at approximately a third- or fourth-grade level, so that will never 
make sense to me.”

“A lot of people think that people on death row know the law, they know this or 
that, but I don’t,” said Rocky. “I give all my trust to my attorneys and stuff. 
If I could read the law in the books and learn and study, I would. But I’m not 
able to do that. I’m not a learnable type of person.”

While fighting for a deadline extension in court, lawyers working on Rocky’s 
case heard a shocking story from Marzell Ewing, Rocky’s acquaintance who had 
testified to having seen him trade the VCR in the shot house. Around the time 
homicide detectives shifted their focus away from Cool Breeze, Marzell was 
arrested while driving a stolen car in Decatur. Marzell told the attorneys that 
one detective had offered to make the arrest disappear if he would say that 
he’d seen Rocky bring the VCR to Butch at the shot house.

In a declaration that Marzell signed in late 2004, he said his testimony during 
Rocky’s trial was “not truthful. I did not see who brought the VCR to the shot 
house that night.” He further stated that “Detective Boyd told me that he would 
take the stolen car that I had been driving and leave it by the side of the 
road.” Police reports from the time support his story: 2 suspects were indeed 
arrested in a stolen vehicle matching the one described by Marzell on October 
28, 1991, the same day Boyd’s notes indicate he first interviewed Marzell.

With the door to judicial review shut, the only avenue for relief is 
intervention by Alabama’s Governor Kay Ivey.

The evidence that police in Decatur tampered with at least one witness was a 
bombshell. It didn’t entirely contradict the prosecution’s narrative—Rocky had, 
after all, already admitted to trading the VCR to Butch—but it raised powerful 
questions about the conduct of Decatur police during the investigation. In 
federal court, Marzell’s declaration along with Puckett’s account of the jury’s 
compromise verdict might at a minimum have called his death sentence into 
question, if not the conviction itself. But it still wasn’t enough. A federal 
judge ruled that Marzell’s new statement didn’t override Rocky’s failure to 
meet the habeas corpus deadline; even with the new evidence, the case was 
effectively closed. With the door to judicial review shut, the only remaining 
relief was—and still is—intervention by Alabama’s Governor Kay Ivey.

Schwarz later signed a declaration admitting that he “did not tell Mr. Myers I 
was no longer representing him,” and that he “did not inform Mr. Myers that I 
would not pursue relief on his behalf in federal court.” The Board of 
Professional Responsibility of the Supreme Court of Tennessee issued a public 
censure to him in 2005, saying that he “willfully neglected his representation 
of his client.”

In 2018, Schwarz was elected president of the Memphis Bar Association, which 
states that one of its purposes is to “encourage and assist lawyers in 
maintaining and improving their competence so that they can better serve their 
clients and the public.” Rocky Myers remains on death row.

Rocky lives under near-constant lockdown at Holman, sometimes going days 
without yard time because of staff shortages in the Alabama Department of 
Corrections. In a phone interview in early February, he described a somber 
atmosphere on the prison’s death row, where a friend of his named Dominique Ray 
was scheduled to be executed the week we spoke. “At times like this is when 
everybody’s mostly quiet,” he said. “TV is down real low, you could kinda hear 
a pin drop.” Days later, Ray was executed after the US Supreme Court denied his 
request to have an imam present in the lethal-injection chamber.

“When I’m praying, I tell the Lord I’m terrified,” Rocky said. “I just don’t 
show it because it don’t do any good to other people. But inside in my mind and 
heart and stomach, I’m scared.”

“When I’m praying, I tell the Lord I’m terrified. I just don’t show it because 
it don’t do any good to other people."—Rocky Myers

A former church drummer, Rocky attends services regularly, singing in a choir 
that meets once a week. His children are now grown, with children of their own, 
some of whom he met during a visit for the first time last year. Rocky says 
that being separated from his family has taken a toll: “It’s one of the worst 
things that I’m going through. I have grandkids that are growing up without 
me.”

Rocky’s legal team checks in on him regularly with in-person visits or by 
phone. “Getting him to understand what’s happening in his case at any given 
moment is definitely a challenge,” Keeton said. “We have clients who send us 
written communications, but Rocky can’t write anything to us.”

In 2012, an execution date was set for Rocky, but Keeton managed to add his 
name to litigation challenging Alabama’s lethal injection protocol. That 
litigation was dropped last year after the state agreed to offer asphyxiation 
by nitrogen gas as an execution option. Now, Alabama is working on a protocol 
for the new method, after which Rocky will be given a new execution date.

The only chance for Rocky to avoid execution now is a grant of clemency from 
Governor Kay Ivey. Both he and Keeton know it’s a long shot, and initially he 
told her not to pursue it. “I didn’t want to be over here begging for my life 
and stuff like that,” he said. But Keeton persisted. “The fact that we are 
potentially executing a man who did not have his day in court because an 
attorney screwed up should give everybody pause,” Keeton said.

Rocky says it’s been frustrating to watch other prisoners get breaks in their 
cases and be released while he’s been effectively shut out of court. “There’s a 
lot of people who support the death penalty,” he said, “But to know that there 
are people on death row that is or could be innocent—how can you support that, 
you know?”

[Ashoka MukpoAshoka Mukpo is a journalist and writer who reports on human 
rights and current affairs. He's presently a staff reporter with the American 
Civil Liberties Union in New York.]

(source: thenation.com)








LOUISIANA:

Caddo DA: No decision yet on whether to pursue death penalty for Watkins



The Caddo Parish District Attorney James Stewart says he has not decided 
whether to pursue the death penalty in the case against a man accused of 
kidnapping and killing a Shreveport couple who gave him a ride back in 
November.

Dewayne Willie Watkins, 34, pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Caddo District Court 
to 2 counts of 1st-degree murder in the deaths of 43-year-old Kelly Jose 
32-year-old and Heather Jose. The charges are punishable upon conviction by 
life in prison or the death penalty.

Watkins was indicted on the charges last week by a Caddo Parish Grand Jury.

The Joses were found inside a burned car in Shreveport's Queensborough 
neighborhood on November 8, 2018.

Watkins was later arrested in the 2600 block of Penick Street, two blocks from 
the burned car, after a nearly 6-hour standoff with law-enforcement officers.

In court Tuesday, Watkins was appointed a public defender to represent him.

He is due back in court March 11.

(source: arklatexhomepage.com)