[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.H., PENN., DEL., N.C., FLA.

[Rick Halperin]

February 21


TEXAS----impending execution Death Watch: Flawed Testimony Cited to Challenge 
Death Sentence----Billie Coble challenges 2nd death sentence



Billie Coble, 70, has already evaded death once. In 2007, the U.S. 5th Court of 
Appeals granted him a punishment-phase retrial, but he once again was sentenced 
to death for killing his father-in-law, mother-in-law, and brother-in-law (Waco 
police Sgt. Bobby Vicha) in 1989 – an extreme response to his failing marriage. 
Now, unless the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles approves Coble's clemency 
request or the U.S. Supreme Court grants his not-yet-filed final appeal, Coble 
will face execution on Thursday, Feb. 28.

His death date was set soon after SCOTUS denied his last appeal in October 
2018. Earlier this month, Coble, a Vietnam veteran, filed both an appeal and a 
stay request in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, arguing that his counsel 
"improperly overrode his Sixth Amendment right to determine the objective of 
his defense" and that his death sentence is based on the false testimony of 
state's witness A.P. Merillat – a claim Coble made in prior appeals after the 
2008 retrial, which the CCA dismissed then. On Feb. 14, the state's highest 
criminal court again denied both pleas, claiming Coble failed to show how a 
recent Louisiana case applied to his situation and calling his appeal an "abuse 
of writ."

Coble, who's received several stays during almost 30 years on death row, was 
granted his retrial after the 5CA ruled that the special instructions given to 
the jury during the punishment phase of his original trial were likely to have 
"precluded the jury from giving meaningful consideration and effect to Coble's 
mitigating evidence." Coble's appeals of his 2nd death sentence cited testimony 
from 2 unreliable witnesses – Merillat and Dr. Richard Coons, who testified 
that Coble would be a future danger using the "same unscientific off-the-cuff, 
ad hoc 'junk science'" as during his 1st trial. Coble alleges Merillat has no 
credentials and "essentially a high-school education," and based his 
"'methodology' on a hearsay anecdote of prison violence, presented demonstrably 
false testimony, and harbored extreme bias against the defense." Though Coble 
also kidnapped his estranged wife Karen Vicha after killing her family and 
threatened to rape her before he was caught, he had no prison disciplinary 
record for the 18 years before his retrial – which, the appeal argues, showed 
that he would not be a future danger. Additionally, the 600-page 2013 appeal 
claimed Merillat's "unreliable testimony has led to at least 2 reversals in 
death penalty cases for false testimony," and he has since been "forced to 
remove himself from the prosecutorial expert roster." SCOTUS denied this appeal 
in October.

On Monday, Feb. 18, Coble's lawyer A. Richard Ellis told the Chronicle a final 
appeal will be filed in the Supreme Court later this week. Without a 
last-minute stay, Coble will be the 2nd Texas death row inmate executed in 
2019.

(soruce: Austin Chronicle)

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

After Texas' 2nd Supreme Court loss in a death penalty case, reform bill lands 
key GOP support



The chairs of 2 House committees signed on as joint authors of a bill that 
would set the method of determining if a capital murder defendant is 
intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution.

The 86th Legislature runs from Jan. 8 to May 27. From the state budget to 
health care to education policy — and the politics behind it all — we focus on 
what Texans need to know about the biennial legislative session.

One day after the U.S. Supreme Court once again invalidated a Texas death 
sentence and bashed the state’s highest criminal court for its method of 
determining intellectual disability in death penalty cases, 2 key Republican 
lawmakers have signed on to a Democrat’s bill that would create a uniform 
process.

On Wednesday, state Reps. James White and Jeff Leach became joint authors to 
Rep. Senfronia Thompson’s House Bill 1139, which would establish a pretrial 
procedure to determine if a capital murder defendant is intellectually disabled 
and therefore ineligible for the death penalty. White chairs the House 
Corrections Committee, and Leach leads the House Judiciary and Civil 
Jurisprudence Committee.

“We’ve got to get to work here,” White, from Hillister, told The Texas Tribune 
after adding his name to the bill. “The Supreme Court — not once, but twice — 
stated that what we’re doing is not constitutional.”

In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that executing people with intellectual 
disabilities was unconstitutional, but states were left to come up with their 
own methods of defining the condition. The Texas Legislature hasn’t taken 
action, instead putting the issue on individual courts, which have implemented 
varied methods for deciding the crucial question of whether a person should be 
spared from execution.

Often, prosecutors simply don’t seek the death penalty when there is a credible 
claim of intellectual disability. Other times, juries are told to weigh the 
issue after convicting someone of capital murder — when they’re deciding during 
a trial’s punishment phase between life in prison or death.

As filed, Thompson’s bill, which already had joint authors in Democratic Reps. 
Joe Moody of El Paso and Armando Walle of Houston and matches a bill by state 
Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, would allow a capital murder defendant to request 
a hearing to determine intellectual disability before trial. If a judge 
determined the defendant was intellectually disabled — defined as having a low 
IQ with deficits in practical and social skills since youth — the death penalty 
would be taken off the table and the defendant would receive an automatic life 
sentence without the possibility of parole if convicted.

Advocates and the bipartisan group of lawmakers argue that a legislative change 
is necessary after recent rulings put Texas at odds with the U.S. Supreme 
Court.

For years, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the top criminal court in the 
state, has begged lawmakers to set up a uniform process. But without movement 
from the Capitol, the Texas court established its process of determining 
intellectual disability in late appeals of those set for execution. The test 
relied on decades-old medical standards and a controversial set of questions 
the judges imposed, including how well an inmate could lie.

The Supreme Court ruled the test unconstitutional in 2017 in the case of Bobby 
Moore, a man sentenced to death nearly 40 years ago in a Houston robbery and 
murder. A majority of the justices said the Texas court's questions advanced 
stereotypes. Moore’s case was sent back to Texas, where the Court of Criminal 
Appeals said it would use current medical standards in its decision but again 
ruled Moore was not disabled, despite briefings from the prosecutor in his case 
agreeing Moore had a disability.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court knocked the Court of Criminal Appeals again 
without a hearing, saying the lower court’s decision-making process included 
many of the same flaws as before. This time, the justices said plainly that 
Moore had shown he was intellectually disabled — making him ineligible for 
execution.

Leach, from Plano, said Tuesday’s ruling added fuel to his already-pending 
decision to sign on to Thompson’s bill. Leach has become a rare Republican 
critic of Texas death penalty practices — fighting to stop multiple executions 
and saying he would consider a moratorium on the death penalty. On Wednesday, 
he told the Tribune that the intellectual disability bill as filed may not be 
perfect, but it needs a legislative discussion.

“This is a crucial issue for our state," he said. “And conservatives, 
Republicans, should not be afraid to engage in this discussion on the front 
lines.”

(soruce: The Texas Tribune)

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

Roberts Sides With Liberals in Death Penalty Case



Chief Justice John Roberts joined the 4 liberal justices on the Supreme Court 
in rebuking a lower court for failing to follow their instructions when a case 
involving whether a man sentenced to death was mentally incompetent or not when 
the high court remanded it back for new proceedings.

For the 2nd time in as many weeks, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has sided 
with liberal Supreme Court justices to disagree with how lower courts have 
interpreted Supreme Court precedent.

On Tuesday, Roberts was pointed in saying the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals 
has “misapplied” a 2017 ruling that instructed that court to reconsider its 
analysis of whether death row inmate Bobby James Moore was intellectually 
disabled, and thus ineligible for execution.

“On remand, the court repeated the same errors that this court previously 
condemned,” Roberts wrote, concurring in the majority’s finding Tuesday that 
Moore “is a person with intellectual disability.”…

The Texas court’s review of Moore “did not pass muster under this court’s 
analysis last time,” Roberts wrote in a separate opinion. “It still doesn’t.”

Interestingly, when the case first went up to the Supreme Court, Roberts was in 
the minority in ruling against the defendant. So did he change his mind? No. He 
just believes, as he should, that the decision he disagreed with is the 
controlling precedent and the lower courts are bound to abide by it whether he 
agrees with it or not. That’s a chief justice taking a position that is not 
driven by ideology but by a proper understanding of the role of precedent and 
the job of the lower courts to apply it properly.

(source: patheos.com)








NEW HAMPSHIRE:

Death penalty repeal clears committee in 11-6 vote



The latest attempt to repeal the death penalty in New Hampshire cleared its 1st 
hurdle on Wednesday, as the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee 
voted 11-6 to recommend the bill, HB 455, to the full House.

The issue has never broken along party lines, and the committee vote was no 
exception, as Democrat Andrew O’Hearne of Claremont voted with five 
Republicans, while Republicans David Welch of Kingston and Scott Wallace of 
Danville voted with the Democrats.

Much of the debate echoed the hours of testimony heard in a well-attended 
public hearing on Tuesday, as some representatives on the committee attempted 
to reconcile their position on abortion with their position on the death 
penalty.

“Now I’ve resolved my positions,” said Welch, who chaired Criminal Justice 
under Republican majorities. “I’m consistently pro-life and will not vote for 
the death penalty.”

Republicans Jody McNally, Dennis Green and Dave Testerman all accused the 
Democrats who support abortion rights as being hypocritical in their opposition 
to the death penalty.

“Children being born are innocent. Criminals on death row are not innocent,” 
said Green. “To me they are no different than a rattle snake, and you can never 
change a rattle snake. I have no problem with putting someone to death. Yes, 
they can prove years ago that someone was on death row and found evidence it 
was not him, but today, they can find it much faster.”

Testerman framed the issue in a similar way.

“What bothers me is a lot of people who are for repeal of the death penalty are 
pro-abortion advocates. I don’t understand how they can be pro-abortion and 
vote against the death penalty. For me it’s the same thing. As a father, I 
would want retribution if someone killed one of my children.”

Supporters of the repeal effort cited many of the same arguments heard at 
Tuesday’s public hearing on the bill, which Rep. Linda Harriott-Gathright, 
D-Nashua, described as “pretty profound.”

“This is the only law we have in New Hampshire that is 100 percent about 
retribution,” said Rep. David Meuse, D-Portsmouth.

“It’s about revenge; it’s about the state essentially condoning the murder of 
one individual for the murder of another, and I don’t believe our state or 
federal government should be in the business of murdering its citizens, no 
matter what they’ve done.”

Gov. Chris Sununu said on Wednesday that he plans to veto any repeal measure if 
it lands on his desk, just as he did last year.

“I stand with police and I stand with victims,” he said.

The House vote on the bill could come as early as Feb. 27, after which it will 
move over to the Senate if it passes.

(source: Union Leader)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Another flawed case: Pa’s death penalty is broken and lawmakers need to abolish 
it



Why does Pennsylvania even bother having a death penalty anymore?

There’s another reason to ask that question this week with news that, because 
of prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective counsel, a Philadelphia judge has 
vacated the death sentence of Orlando Maisonet, who was convicted in the murder 
of a pizza shop owner and a reported snitch decades ago, The Philadelphia 
Inquirer reports.

Maisonet, who was once featured on ‘America’s Most Wanted,’ had his conviction 
in the death of pizza shop owner Ignacio Slafman overturned in 2005. And last 
week, after 28 years on death row, Common Pleas Court Judge J. Scott vacated 
the conviction in the death of that snitch, Jorge Figueroa. This means Maisonet 
will either have to be retried or released, the newspaper reported.

And in the wake of the decision, a Boston College law professor says there 
might have to be a review of all the cases handled by the late Roger King, who, 
under the tenure of former District Attorney Lynne Abraham, was famed for 
obtaining more capital convictions than any other prosecutor, the Inquirer also 
reported.

The decision in Maisonet’s case comes just about 2 months after the 
Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated the death sentence of Terrance Williams, of 
Philadelphia, on the grounds that prosecutors had withheld key evidence that 
Williams had been sexually assaulted by his victim, a church deacon named Amos 
Norwood, as a youth.

Williams was re-sentenced to life without parole and continues to appeal his 
1st-degree murder conviction, according to The York Daily Record.

And that decision came after a capital inmate from Schuylkill County named 
Ronald Champney was resentenced last August to 10 to 20 years in prison under 
the terms of plea deal where he pleaded no contest to lesser charges, according 
to the Death Penalty Information Center.

All told, Pennsylvania’s death row population has fallen, largely because of 
reversals and resentencings, by 100 people over the last 16 years, going from 
247 inmates in April 2002 to 142 inmates with these most recent instances.

In all, 170 Pennsylvania death-row prisoners have overturned their convictions 
or death sentences in state or federal post-conviction proceedings and 
Pennsylvania’s state courts have reversed an additional 100 death sentences on 
direct appeal, according to Death Penalty Information Center data. More than 97 
% of the state’s death row inmates have been resentenced to life or less or 
acquitted, according to the DPIC data.

At the same time, however, prosecutors across Pennsylvania have continued to 
pursue the death penalty and the state Corrections Department has continued to 
sign execution warrants for convicted inmates, most recently for a York County 
man, who has a scheduled execution date of March 8, The York Dispatch reported.

Both the sentences and warrants, however, are symbolic and effectively 
meaningless. Pennsylvania has executed just 3 people in the last 6 decades. The 
last one came in 1999 with the execution of Philadelphia torture-killer Gary 
Heidnik at Rockview State Prison in Centre County.

In 2015, shortly after taking office, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf imposed a 
moratorium on executions that remains in place 4 years later.

Last year, a death penalty study panel, authorized under a 2011 state Senate 
resolution, released its long-awaited report on the state of capital punishment 
in Pennsylvania.

It reinforced what most already know: That the death penalty is unnecessarily 
expensive, unevenly applied, and unfairly influenced by such factors as 
geography.

The sprawling and deeply troubling 280-page document also noted, according to 
The Philadelphia Inquirer “the high number of people with intellectual 
disability and mental illness on death row — populations that are 
constitutionally protected from capital punishment. And it found the punishment 
had been unevenly applied, affected by factors like the race of the victim and 
the county where the crime occurred.”

The report’s authors concluded that “neither judicial economy nor fairness is 
served when the more than 97 5 of cases in which death sentences are converted 
to life sentences or less leave death row only after post-conviction review.”

So, again, why – apart from the optics of appearing tough on crime – does 
Pennsylvania even have a death penalty on its books?

30 of 50 states currently have a death penalty statute on the books. Most of 
Pennsylvania’s neighboring states, with the exception of Ohio, have abolished 
the death penalty.

With the new “Clean Slate” law and other reforms over the last few years, 
Pennsylvania has emerged as a national model for criminal justice reform That 
push has united both progressives, who make the traditional social justice 
arguments about needlessly punitive sentences, and fiscal conservatives, such 
as Americans for Prosperity, who have come at it from the economic side of the 
ledger. There is a similar push waiting to be made on capital punishment.

Yet in the face of mounting evidence that Pennsylvania’s death penalty is 
irretrievably broken, state lawmakers, who fix or repeal ineffective laws all 
the time, have remained content to let the machinery of death rumble 
pointlessly and ineffectively on its way.

If they’re really serious about criminal justice reform, this year should be 
the year that Pennsylvania lawmakers give society’s ultimate sanction the 
serious rethink it deserves.

Even better, they should just repeal it, and get it over with.

(source: John Micek, Capital-Star)








DELAWARE:

Judge holds hearing in case overturning death penalty



A murder suspect whose case led to Delaware's death penalty being overturned by 
the state Supreme Court is facing sentencing after pleading guilty to 
manslaughter.

29-year-old Benjamin Rauf of Westerlo, New York, was to be sentenced Thursday 
after pleading guilty earlier this month to manslaughter and possession of a 
firearm during the commission of a felony. He faces between 5 and 50 years in 
prison.

Rauf was charged in the 2015 drug-related killing of Shazim Uppal of Hockessin, 
a fellow Temple University law school graduate.

Prosecutors had planned to seek the death penalty against Rauf. A judge put the 
case on hold and sought a state Supreme Court opinion on Delaware's death 
penalty after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling regarding Florida's death penalty 
statute, which was similar to Delaware's.

(source: Associated Press)








NORTH CAROLINA:

Jury finds man guilty of Raleigh double murder, setting up potential death 
penalty



A jury found Seaga Gillard guilty of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder Wednesday, 
setting up a decision on whether he will be executed for the killings.

The Wake Forest man had been charged in the 2016 slaying of April Holland and 
Dwayne Garvey at the former America’s Best Value Inn near Crabtree Valley Mall. 
The punishment phase of the trial is expected to begin next week.

North Carolina has not executed an inmate since 2006, and no death sentence has 
been imposed statewide for more than 2 years.

Evidence against Gillard, 31, spooled out over a week’s testimony, much of 
which centered on hotel surveillance video.

Jurors watched two men, who prosecutors identified as Gillard and co-defendant 
Brandon Hill, in the hallway outside room 202, where Holland had advertised her 
services as a prostitute. It was also where her lover Garvey banged on the door 
after the two men arrived, obviously agitated.

Police witnesses said the video clip showed Gillard firing 7 shots at Garvey 
outside the door, matching the number of shell casings found on the floor. 
Shortly after, a detective pointed out to jurors, Gillard appeared from inside 
room 202 and raised his arm twice with the gun recoil. Holland was discovered 
with 2 bullet wounds to the chest and head, along with 2 shell casings, an 
unwrapped condom and $140 cash found in the room.

2 other women testified they were sexually assaulted by Gillard and Hill on 
separate occasions, and a police detective said the woman were both working as 
prostitutes who advertised online.

Images from the hotel video were circulated through the media, which led to 
identifications for Gillard and an associate named “B.” Police later 
interviewed Kara Lambe, who told them she was working as a prostitute when a 
man who called himself Carlos picked her up at home in Randolph County and 
drove her to Wake Forest.

Lambe said Gillard forced her into prostitution in a Raleigh hotel and 
collected the money, though jurors did not hear this due to a legal order that 
limited her testimony. But they did hear her testify that she learned Carlos’ 
real name, Gillard, when she saw his ID on a table, and that he carried a gun 
he called “Lemon Squeeze.” Lambe said Gillard put the gun to her mouth, ordered 
her to show her teeth and threatened that her blood would be all over the 
walls.

Gillard’s attorneys did not present any evidence in the guilt-or-innocence 
phase of the trial. Much of the case’s attention has centered on whether 
Gillard will receive the death penalty sought by prosecutors, an increasing 
rarity statewide.

(source: newsobserver.com)








FLORIDA:

Florida man faces execution for killing 2 women in 2015



A Florida man faces the death penalty for fatally stabbing 2 women.

The Ledger reports that a Polk County jury unanimously recommended execution 
Monday for 39-year-old Michael Gordon. A judge will make the final decision.

Gordon was convicted of 1st-degree murder last week.

Authorities say Gordon, Terrell Williams, Devonere McCune and Jovan Lamb robbed 
an Auburndale pawn shop in January 2015. McCune was arrested after a shootout 
with police.

Responding deputies went to a nearby home and found the bodies of 72-year-old 
Patricia Moran and her 51-year-old daughter Deborah Royal. Authorities say 
Williams, Gordon and Lamb were arrested after trying to flee in the victims' 
car.

Williams was convicted of felony murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Lamb and McCune are awaiting trial.

(source: Associated Press)