[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., FLA., MISS., LA., OHIO, NEB., ORE.

[Rick Halperin]

July 13




PENNSYLVANIA:

DA to seek death penalty in boy’s murder----Mark Edward Mason, 8, was fatally 
stabbed in front of 3 other boys inside a house on High Street in New Castle, 
police say.



Lawrence County’s district attorney said he intends to pursue the death penalty 
against Keith L. Burley Jr., who is accused in the stabbing death of an 
8-year-old boy Monday in Union Township.

Burley was arrested Tuesday morning in Youngstown following the fatal stabbing 
of Mark Edward Mason. The homicide took place in the presence of 3 other boys 
who were inside the house on High Street where the attack occurred. The other 
boys witnessed the stabbing but escaped.

“I can’t get into specific details,” Josh Lamancusa said Wednesday. “But I can 
share that this little boy died a hero, saving his brother and the other 
children in the house.”

Lawrence County Deputy Coroner Rich Johnson, who attended the autopsy at 
Heritage Valley Health System in Beaver County, determined that Mark Mason died 
of multiple stab wounds to the neck, and that the manner of death was homicide.

Johnson would not say how many times the child was stabbed, only that the 
information would be released at later court proceedings once Burley is brought 
to Lawrence County to face the charges.

An angry Lamancusa said that he has contacted the governor’s office, demanding 
to know why Burley was released from state prison a couple of months ago after 
serving only the minimum sentence for a previous homicide conviction, when he 
also has a trail of convictions of other violent crimes, some involving guns.

Burley also has a conviction for having stabbed an inmate in the neck in the 
Lawrence County jail in 2002.

Burley had been released on parole from the March 19,1999, robbery shooting 
death of 36-year-old Randall Stewart in the Halco Drive area.

According to a 1999 police report provided by New Castle police Chief Bobby 
Salem, Burley initially faced 90 different charges in the Stewart shooting, 
including homicide and robbery, but he entered a guilty plea to one count each 
of third-degree murder and having a gun without a license. He was sentenced to 
20 to 40 years in a state correctional institution as a result.

“The (state) parole board released a guy who is a repeat violent and dangerous 
offender,” Lamancusa said. “That is ridiculous. I can’t imagine what the parole 
board was considering when they released him at the minimum. I find it hard to 
believe anyone could have looked at his past record and determined that he’s 
not a threat or danger to the community.

State troopers lead Keith Burley to an unmarked state police cruiser Thursday 
after a hearing before District Judge Jennifer Nicholson in Lawrence County. 
Burley is accused in the stabbing murder of 8-year-old Mark Edward Mason. 
Lawrence County District Attorney Josh Lamancusa has announced his intention to 
seek the death penalty against Burley.

“Now we have the confirmation of the depth of his depravity, sadly.”

“I will be pursuing the death penalty,” Lamancusa said concerning the Monday 
stabbing. “It’s a horrific case.

To do so, he will have to sign a notice of aggravated circumstances and file it 
in the courts. The notice will set forth the reasons, including the aggravated 
circumstances, to justify it.

“I think Burley meets several of the requirements,” Lamancusa said.

Burley remains in the Mahoning County jail, awaiting an extradition hearing 
that is scheduled for Thursday.

According to a criminal complaint and reports from authorities, Burley had 
gotten into an argument that turned physical with his alleged girlfriend in the 
parking lot of the New Castle Fire Department on Monday night. He allegedly 
assaulted and injured the woman, and she was taken to the hospital for 
treatment.

In the course of their argument, he is accused of getting into her vehicle 
where her 2 sons — Mark Mason and his 7-year-old brother — were waiting and 
driving off with them to the house at 60 High St., which was the home of 
another acquaintance.

2 other boys, ages 15 and 8, were upstairs playing video games when they heard 
someone entering downstairs, the complaint states, about half an hour after the 
dispute at the fire station. The boys went downstairs to see who was there and 
Burley was there with the 2 boys and was holding a gun, according to the 
account they gave the state police.

He directed the 2 boys to go and find the magazine for the weapon. When they 
came out of a bedroom, the older one described how he saw Burley stabbing Mark 
Mason. They ran out of the house to get help and call 911, according to the 
paperwork. No one else was home at the time.

(source: sharonherald.com)








FLORIDA:

State intends to seek death penalty against Michael Hunt



The man accused of shooting three people and killing another could face the 
death penalty.

The State of Florida announced it intends to seek the death penalty in the case 
against Michael Hunt if Hunt is convicted. Hunt has been charged with 1st 
degree murder.

In April, Alexandra "Lexie" Peck, 19, and 3 other people were shot at a home on 
Allen Avenue in Panama City. Peck died from her injuries. A month later Panama 
City Police announced Hunt was facing charges in connection with the shooting.

Police say Hunt was originally a person of interest in the case and was wanted 
on human trafficking charges. Hunt turned himself in shortly after the 
shooting. His lawyer told us Hunt was innocent and planned to plead not guilty 
to any charges.

Panama City Police say the crime scene was held for more than a week while 
their investigators and investigators with Panama City Beach Police documented 
the scene and collected evidence.

Hunt is charged with two counts of failure to register as a sex offender, armed 
burglary of an occupied dwelling, three counts of attempted felony murder, and 
1st-degree murder.

(source: WJHG news)

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

Florida Capital Sentencing Juries Return Four Life Verdicts in 2 Weeks



In the span of 2 weeks, juries in 4 unrelated cases in which Florida 
prosecutors had sought the death penalty have instead returned life sentences. 
The cases—which were considered probable death verdicts if judges were 
permitted to impose sentence—illustrate the impact of the changes in Florida 
law in 2016 and 2017 banning judicial death sentences based on non-unanimous 
jury recommendations for death. Between June 27, 2019 and July 11, 2019, jurors 
in the cases of Jose Martinez, Karari Ritchie, Christopher Vasata, and Scott 
Nelson did not unanimously agree on a recommended sentence. As a result, all 
cases ended in life sentences.

Between 2010 and 2015, the three states that permitted judges to impose death 
sentences based on non-unanimous jury sentencing recommendations — Florida, 
Alabama, and Delaware — accounted for more than 1/4 of all the death sentences 
imposed in the United States. More than 3/4 of the death sentences imposed in 
those states involved non-unanimous jury sentencing recommendations. However, 
in 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s judicial sentencing 
procedures and later that year, the Florida and Delaware Supreme Courts 
declared that death sentences based on non-unanimous jury sentencing votes were 
unconstitutional. The Florida legislature subsequently amended its capital 
sentencing procedures to require a unanimous jury recommendation for death 
before the trial judge may impose a death sentence and new death sentences 
imposed in the state have since dropped from an average of 16.7 per year in the 
1st half of the 2010s to an average of 4.3 per year in 2016 through 2018.

The 4 cases show that juries do not automatically impose death even in highly 
aggravated cases. Jose Martinez was a drug-cartel hitman who confessed to 
killing more than three dozen people over the course of 30 years. Already 
sentenced to life imprisonment in California, Ocala, Florida prosecutors asked 
the jury if the death penalty was not appropriate for Martinez, then “when is 
it appropriate?” Martinez’s lawyers presented mitigating evidence of his 
violently dysfunctional background, including that he was a child of incest 
resulting from his mother being raped by her uncle, evidence from trauma 
experts about the effects of his upbringing, evidence of brain damage he 
sustained from a head injury, and testimony from 20 out-of-state family members 
describing how he took beatings to protect them and attempted to provide for 
them when others in the family would not. On June 27, his jury voted for life.

Also on June 27, Christopher Vasata was sentenced to life in Palm Beach County 
for a 2017 Super Bowl Sunday triple murder, after jurors did not unanimously 
agree on his sentence. Prosecutors had argued for death because, it said, 
Vasata’s “intent to kill was so strong and so thought out.” “This wasn’t a 
robbery gone bad,” the prosecutor said. “This wasn’t, ‘I panicked and 
accidentally hit the trigger, I didn’t mean to kill him.’ This was a planned 
hit.”

On June 28, Broward County jurors spared the life of Karari Ritchie, whom they 
had convicted of robbing and stabbing 86 times a Taco Bell manager who had 
served Ritchie and his brother drinks before the restaurant officially opened. 
Although the jury found the murder of Tikkitress Johnson—whom prosecutors 
stressed was a wife and mother, was “especially heinous, atrocious and cruel”— 
it took less than 2 hours to sentence him to life after hearing mitigating 
evidence of the chronic child abuse and neglect he experienced in a household 
in which his mother told him she wished she had aborted him. “We believe his 
life has value,” Ritchie’s lawyer told the jury. “Mercy is not earned. It is 
given.”

And on July 11, Scott Nelson—who told the jury he was “a homicidal maniac” who 
wanted to be sentenced to death—received a life sentence after an Orange County 
jury did not reach a unanimous verdict. Defense lawyers presented mitigating 
evidence of the chronic trauma he experienced in an abusive childhood and the 
severe cognitive deficits its produced, the extreme conditions to which he was 
subjected during 25 years in federal prison, and his resulting mental illness. 
One juror was removed from the jury after some other jurors reported he had 
said he had seen no evidence in the case justifying a death sentence. 3 jurors 
later reported that a single remaining juror had voted for life.

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)








MISSISSIPPI:

Mooreville man wants to appeal 2005 capital murder conviction



A Mooreville man who had his death sentence vacated last year hopes a special 
judge will allow him to appeal his 14-year-old capital murder conviction.

William Matthew Wilson, now 38, pleaded guilty to capital murder in the death 
of his girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter and was sentenced to death in May 2007 
by Circuit Court Judge Thomas Gardner.

In December 2017, special appointed judge Larry Roberts granted Wilson's 
petition for post-conviction relief and threw out the death sentence, citing 
ineffective counsel. The guilty plea and conviction stand.

While the normal time limit to appeal expired long ago, Wilson hopes Roberts 
will grant him special permission to appeal the conviction. A hearing is 
scheduled Monday on Wilson's out of time appeal.

If he is allowed to appeal the plea and conviction, it would delay the plans of 
District Attorney John Weddle to have a new sentencing hearing to pursue the 
death penalty. Without a new sentencing hearing, Wilson would be sentenced by 
default to life without parole.

"We have it on our schedule to have him resentenced," Weddle said. "We wouldn't 
have to try the case again, since he pleaded. But we would have to collect a 
lot of information and present it to a jury before they could make a decision.

"If he is allowed to appeal the conviction, that will delay everything."

Wilson admitted to authorities that Malorie Conlee, 2, would not stop crying on 
the night of April 28, 2005. He punched the child in the head with his fist 3 
times. Even though the child was unresponsive and "didn't look right," Wilson 
did not seek medical attention for the child for more than 8 hours.

The guilty plea and death sentence were upheld by the state supreme court on 
direct appeal in 2009.

In his PCR petition in circuit court, Wilson argued that his 2 public defenders 
rarely talked with him about his case. In his ruling, the judge said the 
attorneys also failed to prepare for the penalty phase and had no experts to 
testify as to mitigating factors to keep Wilson from being sentenced to death.

"Most telling, however, is the trial counsel's failure to have researched the 
sentencing history of Judge Gardner in similar situations where a jury had been 
waived in the penalty phase of a capital case," Roberts wrote.

Gardner presided over 2 similar cases and sentenced both to death. One of 
Wilson's attorneys was on the legal team of one of the previous cases but never 
explained Gardner's history to Wilson.

(source: Daily Journal)








LOUISIANA:

Judge Clayton Davis denies mistrial motion in Kevin Daigle trial



Judge Clayton Davis denied 2 defense motions Friday in the capital murder trial 
of Kevin Daigle.

One was to bar moving the trial to Lake Charles and another for a mistrial.

The defense argued that if the Lafayette jurors are moved to Lake Charles they 
will be worried about their families and the bad weather and therefore would be 
distracted from their duties and maybe even hold it against the defense.

However, Judge Davis said to grant the motion would be to sell jurors short.

Davis said he expects jurors to do their job and that there’s no legitimate 
reason to doubt that they will. The judge said they need to finish what they 
started.

Also Davis added they could be criticized even more for staying and waiting for 
the storm to pass.

At 12:30 p.m. the jury will hear from defense expert and neuroscientist, 
Jeffrey Lewine of the Mind Research Network. He will likely testify about 
so-called mitigating factors the defense will use to try to persuade jurors not 
to vote for execution.

All the defense needs is one juror to vote against the death penalty and Daigle 
will get a life sentence as it takes a unanimous vote to impose the death 
penalty.

The trial continues in Lafayette today but will be held in Lake Charles 
tomorrow, due to Tropical Storm Barry.

Daigle was convicted of 1st-degree murder Tuesday and the trial is now in the 
penalty phase and near the end.

(source: KALB news)








OHIO:

Convicted serial killer has September trial date in Stark County for additional 
victims



A man convicted of murdering a North Royalton mom and her 2 daughters will have 
a trial in Stark County this September for the murders of a Lake Township 
couple.

In December of 2018, George Brinkman was sentenced to death in Cuyahoga County 
after being convicted of murdering Suzanne Taylor, 45, and her two daughters, 
Taylor Pifer, 21, and Kylie Pifer, 18.

Brinkman killed them inside their North Royalton home on June 10, 2017.

North Royalton police said Suzanne was stabbed and had her throat slit in front 
of her daughters.

Taylor was smothered with a pillow and Kylie was strangled with a phone cord.

Brinkman had known Suzanne since elementary school.

Brinkman is also charged with murdering Rogell Eugene John, 71, and his wife 
Roberta Ray John, 64.

They were found dead inside their Lake Township, Stark County home on June 12, 
2017.

Cuyahoga County prosecutors said after the murders in North Royalton, Brinkman 
drove to Stark County and killed Rogell and Roberta.

Their son found the bodies the next day.

Brinkman was indicted on the charges of aggravated murder, aggravated burglary, 
aggravated robbery and tampering with evidence in connection with the murders 
of the husband and wife.

His trial is now scheduled to begin on Sept. 30 in front of Stark County Common 
Pleas Court Judge Chryssa Hartnett.

He faces the death penalty if convicted.

(source: WOIO news)



NEBRASKA:

Questions about Nebraska execution drugs may go unanswered



Nebraska's corrections director won't have to testify before lawmakers about 
the state's lethal injection protocol or how prison officials obtained the 
drugs used in an execution last year.

The Nebraska Supreme Court sided Friday with the state corrections department, 
which sought to block a subpoena from the Legislature's Judiciary Committee 
that would have required corrections director Scott Frakes to answer questions 
about his department's lethal injection practices.

The Judiciary Committee ordered Frakes to appear at a public hearing last year, 
months before Nebraska executed its first inmate by lethal injection. Committee 
members issued the subpoena in response to a complaint from state Sen. Ernie 
Chambers, a death penalty opponent who wanted to question Frakes under oath.

The court declared the issue moot because the committee's membership has since 
changed.

(source: Associated Press)








OREGON:

New law would limit Oregon’s death penalty to rare cases: Accused MAX train 
killer Jeremy Christian and others would face life in prison



A bill is headed to the governor’s desk that would drastically curtail cases in 
which a convicted murderer could be sentenced to death in Oregon.

Much confusion surrounds Senate Bill 1013 and the effect it would have on 
defendants accused of heinous crimes. Because of last-minute wording tacked 
onto the legislation before lawmakers approved it late last month, many 
Oregonians -- including some in the legal community -- aren’t aware of who will 
be eligible for the death penalty under the new law.

Ineligible defendants include Jeremy Christian, who is accused of fatally 
stabbing 2 strangers with a knife to their necks on a Portland MAX train and is 
scheduled to go to trial in January. Multnomah County prosecutors haven’t said 
whether they’ll push for a death sentence, but the new law would take that 
option off the table.

Also in Multnomah County, Homer Lee Jackson would become ineligible for the 
death penalty under the new law. Jackson is accused of the prostitution-related 
serial killings of four African-American women in the 1980s and 1990s in 
Portland after sexually assaulting them, strangling them and dumping their 
bodies. Police arrested Jackson in 2015 for the cold-case killings, and he is 
scheduled to go to trial next January.

But the subject of much debate in the legal community is whether Senate Bill 
1013 would apply to crimes that were committed in the past, but for which 
defendants haven’t yet been sentenced.

That has left up in the air the future of defendants such as Angela McAnulty, a 
Eugene woman who became Oregon’s only female death row inmate when she was 
sentenced for the torture-starvation death of her 15-year-old daughter. A judge 
last month issued a draft opinion reversing McAnulty’s 2011 conviction and 
sentence, and granting her a new trial.

Also up in the air is the fate of Billy Lee Oatney, a death-row inmate who won 
a reversal in 2015 and is headed into a new trial in Washington County next 
January under charges that he killed a 34-year-old woman who had hired him to 
make her wedding jewelry in 1996. Susi Larsen’s funeral was held on what would 
have been her wedding day.

Senate Bill 1013 clearly states that it applies to past cases in which 
defendants haven’t yet been sentenced. That will bolster defense attorneys’ 
arguments that the death penalty doesn’t apply to McAnulty and Oatney, if 
they’re convicted again.

But Jennifer Williamson, D-Portland, told The Oregonian/OregonLive Friday that 
an unrelated bill, Senate Bill 1005, states that Senate Bill 1013 doesn’t apply 
to defendants who’ve previously been sentenced but have been granted reversals. 
Williamson said that includes McAnulty and Oatney. Williamson said lawmakers 
wanted their intent to be clear so they added the language, on the advice of 
legislative lawyers, after Senate Bill 1013 has already passed both houses but 
Senate Bill 1005 had not yet passed.

During a legislative hearing in April, Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, told 
fellow lawmakers that the new legislation is intended to restrict the use of 
death sentences to “very, very rare cases.”

“It’s a good way to move away from what’s a very expensive model, one that 
essentially ... puts people on death row and then has nothing else happening to 
them except spending a lot of money on appeals,” Greenlick said.

Aliza Kaplan, a Lewis & Clark College law school professor and director of the 
Criminal Justice Reform Clinic, said 2/3 of people sentenced to death in the 
past 35 years had won reversals. The appeals system, which can last decades for 
each defendant and can result in multiple retrials, consumes millions of 
dollars of taxpayer money each year.

“These reversals are costing a ridiculous amount of money, and are a serious 
indication of how broken our system is,” Kaplan said.

The bill’s backers note that only two inmates have been executed since 
Oregonians re-instated capital punishment in 1984 -- and both volunteered to be 
killed in the 1990s by giving up on the appeals process. 30 people are on death 
row today, but executions have been put on hold since then-Gov. John Kitzhaber 
instituted a moratorium in 2011. Gov. Kate Brown extended it during her tenure.

The bill narrows the definition of aggravated murder, which is the only crime 
in Oregon that can draw a death sentence. In order to be convicted of that 
crime, a defendant must have killed 2 or more people as an act of organized 
terrorism; killed a child younger than 14; killed another person while locked 
up in jail or prison for a previous murder; or killed a police, correctional or 
probation officer.

No longer will defendants be eligible for death under a list of other 
circumstances, including: killing 2 or more people at once; hiring someone else 
to murder for them; killing in the act of torturing or maiming a victim; or 
killing a victim in order to cover up another crime. Those who kill under those 
circumstances could be prosecuted under the new crime of 1st-degree murder, 
which for an adult could result in a sentence of life in prison with no 
possibility of release.

An analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive found that of the 30 inmates on death 
row today -- if tried based on the new criteria in Senate Bill 1013 -- as many 
as eight would be eligible for the death penalty. That includes Bruce and 
Joshua Turnidge, the father and son convicted of killing two police officers in 
the 2008 bombing of a Woodburn bank and several inmates who murdered children 
ages 2 to 13.

Lawmakers don’t have the power to outright repeal capital punishment. That 
would require voter approval.

Josh Marquis, who retired after 25 years as Clatsop County District Attorney in 
December, has closely followed the death penalty. He described the bill as a 
“craven attempt” to effectively abolish the death penalty.

“The honest thing to have done would have been to refer this back to the 
voters,” Marquis said. He thinks that hasn’t happened because death penalty 
opponents know it would fail.

The bill, if signed, won’t be retroactive: It won’t convert the sentences of 
Oregon’s current death row inmates.

The governor hasn't said if she'll sign the bill. But her spokeswoman Kate 
Kondayen said Brown "has been quite public about her opposition to the death 
penalty and plans to continue the moratorium."

(source: oregonlive.com)

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

The most powerful argument for the death penalty: Steve Duin



Angela McAnulty is the only woman on Oregon’s death row. She’s also the most 
powerful argument for it. She killed her 15-year-old daughter with such 
methodical depravity that even the most experienced jurists are shaken by the 
crime.

Steven Krasik, one of her overmatched defense attorneys, said the aggravated 
murder of Jeanette Maples is the “most indefensible case” he ever tried.

McAnulty abused and starved Jeanette for years, and “tortured her for months 
before her death,” the Oregon Supreme Court argued in rejecting McAnulty’s 
appeal of her death sentence:

Her “pattern of conduct leading up to Jeanette’s death showed the targeting and 
isolation of a vulnerable victim over an extensive period of time, coupled with 
numerous acts of brutal violence.”

And when J. Burdette Pratt, a senior circuit court judge, reviewed the case for 
post-conviction relief, he was confounded that McAnulty’s defense team believed 
a jury might consider her guilty plea an expression of remorse.

“The fact that that the course of (McAnulty’s) behavior leading up to her 
daughter’s death lasted months if not years, that she removed Jeanette from 
school to avoid detection, refused to get medical care for Jeanette,” and 
dodged responsibility after her arrest, Pratt writes, “would counteract any 
argument that she was remorseful.”

Unfortunately, that is not all Pratt writes. The Malheur County judge motors 
along until he arrives at a ruling that vacates McAnulty’s guilty plea, 
conviction and death sentence.

The death penalty is where I part company with so many progressives, especially 
the legislators who voted last month to redefine capital punishment in Oregon.

Aggravated murder, the only crime punishable by death, is now limited to 
terrorist acts that kill two or more people, and the murders of police officers 
or children under the age of 14.

Jeanette Maples was 15, and all of 50 pounds, when emergency responders in 
Eugene pulled her lifeless body from the family bathtub in 2009.

In McAnulty’s case, the death penalty is not tinged by racial bias. Her jury 
was unanimous in concluding, beyond any reasonable doubt, that she would hurt 
someone else if given the chance.

When the Supreme Court affirmed that conviction and sentence, Justice Richard 
Baldwin found but a single error by investigators, prosecutors and the trial 
court, and deemed it harmless.

Because Governors John Kitzhaber and Kate Brown have maintained a moratorium on 
the death penalty since 2011, that ruling did not move McAnulty an inch closer 
to her just reward.

It simply pushed the appeals process into post-conviction relief, where 
McAnulty and her new Portland defense team argued she was not adequately 
represented by Krasik and Kenneth Hadley.

Pratt reviewed 18 claims and sub-claims about the trial work of Krasik and 
Hadley, and dismissed 15 of them in a draft ruling obtained by Aimee Green of 
The Oregonian/OregonLive.

But Pratt agreed that McAnulty’s attorneys “failed to exercise reasonable 
professional skill and judgment” in advising her to plead guilty to aggravated 
murder without any concessions on sentencing from prosecutors.

“The gruesome and emotional nature of the evidence” weighed against that 
strategy, Pratt writes, because the details of Jeanette’s torture and 
starvation were presented in the penalty-phase rather than the guilt-phase of 
the trial.

Jurors didn’t “have time to process the gruesome details and pictures and allow 
time for the shock to diminish before making a sentencing decision,” Pratt 
argues.

Jeanette Maples died almost 10 years ago. Has the shock diminished for anyone 
who knows about the pliers or the exposed femur or the blood on the walls?

Pratt also ruled that McAnulty’s lawyers failed in the penalty phase of the 
trial by not presenting enough mental health experts to convince at least one 
juror that McAnulty’s endless sadism was a result of trauma in her own life and 
“that she was not simply evil.”

Was Krasik disappointed or embarrassed by Pratt’s conclusions? Not at all. He 
welcomed the criticism, he told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an email. “I 
support any court decision that undoes Angela’s misguided, horribly 
disproportionate, death sentence.”

Jeanette Maples’ death sentence? I guess that’s just blood under the bridge.

(source: Steve Duin, The Oregonian)