[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, DEL., GA., FLA., ALA., TENN., ARK., USA

[Rick Halperin]

June 13



TEXAS:

Patrick Murphy: the story of the ‘Texas 7’ murderer on death row featured in 
the ITV documentary Countdown to Execution----The convicted murderer is still 
waiting for his execution date



Patrick Murphy – 1 member of the Texas 7 – has been waiting on death row for 
years, and will eventually be executed by lethal injection.

Murphy is the subject of death row: Countdown to Execution, a new ITV 
documentary presented by Susanna Reid who visited and interviewed Murphy as he 
sits and waits for his fate.

Reid will interview inmates who are due to be executed by lethal injection, and 
will also speak to lawyers and the residents of Huntsville, Texas, to find out 
what it’s like to live with America’s most active death chamber on their 
doorstep.

But who is Patrick Murphy and what exactly did he do to be sentenced to death?

On 13 December 2000, Patrick Murphy became notorious when he and 6 other 
prisoners broke out of the John B. Connally maximum-security prison in Texas, 
United States, and they became known as the Texas 7.

They were Donald Newbury, Randy Ethan Halprin, Larry James Harper, Joseph C. 
Garcia, Michael Anthony Rodriguez and George Rivas, who was the ringleader.

At the time of the breakout, Murphy had been serving a 50-year sentence for 
aggravated sexual assault.

He and his fellow inmates overpowered and restrained nine maintenance 
supervisors, four correctional officers, and three inmates. They then stole a 
white prison truck in which to escape in before dumping it in a Wal-Mart car 
park and fleeing to San Antonio.

To get money, they robbed a branch of Radio Shack before checking into a motel 
and robbing a sporting goods store in the nearby town on Christmas Eve.

They bound and gagged all the staff and stole 44 guns, ammunition and $70,000 
in cash. Murphy acted as lookout and getaway driver and heard that someone had 
called the police through his scanner.

Irving police officer Aubrey Wright Hawkins responded to the call but when he 
arrived he was ambushed, shot 11 times and run over as the gang escaped. He 
later died in hospital.

A $100,000 reward was offered to capture the gang, which rose to $500,000. 
Thanks to an episode of America’s Most Wanted, 6 of the gang were apprehended 
while the 7th man, Larry Harper, killed himself before he could be arrested.

Why is Murphy now on Death Row?

As it was unclear who shot and killed Officer Hawkins, all 6 surviving men were 
charged, convicted and sentenced to death for his murder under the Law of 
Parties.

This allows for a person to be held criminally responsible for another’s 
actions if that person acts with “the intent to promote or assist the 
commission of the offence and solicits, encourages, directs aids, or attempts 
to aid the other person to commit the offence”. It also states that if, “in the 
attempt to carry out a conspiracy to commit one felony, another felony is 
committed by one of the conspirators, all conspirator are guilty of the felony 
actually committed”.

Garcia, Newbury, Rivas and Rodriguez have all been executed while Halprin and 
Murphy are still incarcerated on death row.

When is Murphy due to be executed?

Murphy was originally scheduled for execution on 28 March 2019, but the Supreme 
Court granted him a last minute reprieve because his constitutional right to 
freedom of religion had been violated when his Buddhist spiritual adviser was 
refused entry into the death chamber.

(source: inews.co.uk)








DELAWARE:

Speak Out: Death penalty debate



Readers reacted to a recent letter by Kristin Froehlich headlined “No to death 
penalty reinstatement.”

• It’s not a deterrent cause we don’t use it! We give the criminal 25 years of 
appeals! While locked up, they get 3 meals, a bed, TV, internet, iPads and free 
schooling! Let’s turn prison back into prison! It’s not supposed to be a 
state-funded hotel stay! — Dean Grabowski

• As I said in my letter, “Wilmington was called Murdertown USA and law 
enforcement officers were killed in Delaware while the death penalty was 
active.” — Kristin Froehlich

• I’m not sure why it’s supposed to be a deterrent. It’s a punishment. People 
kill other people and they aren’t deterred by whatever might happen to them. 
People steal and aren’t deterred by the chance of losing their freedom. People 
are going to do whatever they want. A society only stays in balance by 
punishing those who choose to not follow the basic rules of society. A 
5-year-old needs correcting when he does something he’s not supposed to do. A 
25-year-old who shoots a store clerk doesn’t need correcting. — Christopher 
Foxwell

• Society is too soft on criminals. If you murder someone or commit a horrible 
crime, there should be real consequences like the death penalty. Problem has 
been they don’t get sentenced and then the sentence carried out. Why all the 
years on death row? Why pay to support murderers who are worthless to society 
or child rapists? — Freda Barrett

• The possibility of being put to death does not deter many, if anyone, from 
taking the life of another. Those who commit premeditated murder do not plan on 
being caught. Those who kill during the commission of another crime did not 
plan on taking a life or being caught. — John McCarthy

• Kristen, I can only imagine the trauma you’ve endured and you have my 
sympathies. However, I can never understand the logic you use. Our most recent 
justification here in Delaware is in the DCC slaughter of a guard. Society, 
rather than victims’ families should be the issue. The false narrative that 
lifelong incarceration is less expensive than execution is ludicrous. You nor 
anyone else can prove a negative. The threat of being put to death instead of 
living a natural life in prison simply has to be a deterrent. This is 
especially true today when, by law, the most heinous killer must be given the 
possibility of parole. Society owes a debt to victims who have had their 
“parole” on life extinguished. As I’m sympathetic to you, I can’t imagine the 
bitterness and unfairness of seeing a victim’s killer die of old age in prison 
or walking the streets after parole. — George Roof

• Kristin Froehlich I agree with you in part. DOC should have implemented more 
of the recommendations. However, the public fails to realize something — as law 
enforcement officers, what laws are changed on the outside affects what we do 
on the inside. There were a few inmates that were kept in maximum security for 
a reason. They would do harm to staff or other inmates if put out in general 
population. Steven Floyd would have been alive today. Because of the laws that 
changed, we had to rehouse these inmates out of max. They waited and watched 
and planned. — Guy Fowler

(source: Delaware State News)








GEORGIA----impending execution

Clemency hearing set for man facing execution in Georgia



Georgia's parole board has set a hearing to consider whether to grant clemency 
to a man who is scheduled to be executed later this month in the killing of an 
off-duty prison guard more than 2 decades ago.

Marion Wilson Jr. is scheduled to die on June 20 at the state prison in 
Jackson. Wilson and Robert Earl Butts Jr. were convicted of murder and 
sentenced to death in the March 1996 slaying of Donovan Corey Parks.

Butts was executed last year.

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles has scheduled a closed-door clemency 
hearing for the 42-year-old Wilson on June 19.

The parole board is the only authority in Georgia that can commute a death 
sentence.

Wilson would be the 2nd prisoner put to death by Georgia this year.

(source: Associated Press)








FLORIDA:

Hitman faces possible death penalty in Marion County double murder



Self-described drug cartel hitman Jose Manuel Martinez is accused fatally 
shooting Javier Huerta, 20, and Gustavo Olivares, 28, in November 2006.

A hitman for a Mexican drug cartel, who has confessed to more than 30 killings 
and already is serving 10 life sentences, is on trial for 2 murders in Marion 
County with the prospect this time of a death sentence.

After 2 days of jury selection and more than 110 prospective jurors, 6 men and 
8 women were selected to hear the case, beginning Wednesday morning, in Circuit 
Anthony Tatti’s Ocala courtroom.

Jose Manuel Martinez is accused fatally shooting Javier Huerta, 20, and Gustavo 
Olivares, 28, in November 2006. The bodies of the 2 men, residents of Pierson 
in Volusia County, were found in an abandoned Nissan pickup truck along State 
Road 19 just north of State Road 40 in the Ocala National Forest.

Martinez, 66, had contacted Huerta and Olivares to collect a debt Huerta, a 
drug dealer, owed for cocaine, and the meeting led to their deaths, authorities 
say. Martinez was first connected to the murders after a cigarette butt from 
the pickup tested positive for his DNA.

(source: ocala.com)

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

State seeks death penalty in 2 murder cases in Collier County



Local prosecutors are making it official. They've let the court know they're 
seeking the death penalty in 2 separate homicide cases.

The State Attorney's Office 20th Judicial Circuit says they'll push for the 
execution of 39-year-old Brandon Jensen, who was indicted last month.

He's accused of beating and shooting someone to death in an RV parked behind 
the Carillon Place shopping center on February 14, 2019. A witness in the RV 
says he heard shots being fired in the RV before the suspect fled and was later 
found in a nearby retention pond.

And prosecutors say they'll also seek the death penalty against Thomas Evans. 
He's accused of stabbing a 78-year-old woman to death in her Chesapeake Avenue 
home. Authorities say it happened as he was committing a robbery on January 1st 
of this year.

(source: Fox News)








ALABAMA:

Non-unanimous death sentences stain Alabama’s justice system



No matter how you feel about the death penalty, all Alabamians should be 
troubled by at least 1 aspect of Christopher Price’s execution last month. The 
state killed Price even though the 12 jurors who convicted him didn’t all agree 
that he deserved to die for his crime.

Two jurors who heard all the evidence at Price’s trial believed the appropriate 
punishment was life without parole. But because Alabama permits juries to 
impose the death penalty without a unanimous vote in favor of it, that wasn’t 
enough to spare his life. A 10-2 jury vote for execution was enough to sentence 
Price to death.

Alabama is the only state that allows judges to impose a death sentence based 
on a non-unanimous jury sentencing verdict. This practice is a travesty of 
justice, and it needs to stop.

The death penalty is becoming increasingly rare in the United States, with more 
and more states abandoning capital punishment entirely. Twenty-one states have 
outlawed the death penalty, and many others that still allow it haven’t 
executed anyone in decades. New Hampshire abolished the practice on the same 
day Alabama killed Price.

But even among states that still allow capital punishment, Alabama’s structure 
is outdated. And Alabama is the only state that doesn’t provide any 
post-conviction legal assistance for indigent inmates on death row.

In 2017, with the specter of federal court intervention looming, Alabama 
finally became the last state to forbid judicial override. This practice 
allowed judges to sentence defendants to death despite a jury recommendation of 
life without parole. Even so, the judicial override ban was not retroactive. 
More than 30 people sent to our state’s death row as a result of this practice 
are still there.

The Eighth Amendment prohibits both cruel and unusual punishments. And 
Alabama’s non-unanimous death sentences are yet another cruel, unusual relic 
that should be cast aside.

Almost every other state with the death penalty has decided that when jurors 
disagree whether a person convicted of a capital crime deserves capital 
punishment, the sentence should be life imprisonment. The threshold is high 
because the stakes are so high: Putting someone to death is irreversible. It’s 
a weighty moral decision that cannot be made lightly.

But errors are all too frequent. Nationwide, 1 person on death row has been 
exonerated for every 10 executions conducted since 1976. No one would use a 
doctor who accidentally killed 1 out of every 10 patients. And no legislator 
should refuse to add legal safeguards to a system that carries so much risk of 
wrongful executions.

People shouldn’t be put to death when the entire jury of their peers can’t 
agree on a death sentence. Ask yourself if you are comfortable with the state 
ending someone’s life even when jurors who heard all the evidence have decided 
death isn’t justice.

Alabama’s criminal justice system is riddled with injustices, and many of the 
needed reforms are complicated. But ending non-unanimous death sentences would 
be a simple, reasonable step toward bringing sentencing practices up to modern 
standards. Alabama should take that step forward.

(source: Dev Wakeley is a policy analyst at Alabama Arise, a nonprofit, 
nonpartisan coalition of congregations, organizations and individuals promoting 
public policies to improve the lives of low-income Alabamians----al.com)



TENNESSEE:

Tennessee Cop Turned Pastor Urges Execution of Gays----Grayson Fritts, a Knox 
County, Tenn., sheriff's detective, called LGBTQ people "filthy" and "freaks," 
and said the Bible calls for their execution.



A sermon in which a minister who is also a sheriff’s detective called for the 
execution of LGBTQ people has led to an investigation by authorities in Knox 
County, Tenn.

Grayson Fritts gave the sermon June 2 at All Scripture Baptist Church in 
Knoxville, where he is pastor, local TV station WVLT reports.

“The Bible says the powers that be are ordained of God, and God has instilled 
the power of civil government to send the police in 2019 out to these LGBT 
freaks and arrest them,” he said in the sermon, which was posted to Facebook. 
“Have a trial for them, and if they are convicted, then they are to be put to 
death ... do you understand that? It’s a capital crime to be carried out by our 
government.”

“All the Pride parades, man, hey, call the riot teams, we got a bunch of ’em, 
get the paddy wagon out here, we got a bunch of ’em going to jail, we got a 
bunch of them we’re gonna get convicted because they’ve got their Pride junk on 
and they’re professing what they are, they’re a filthy animal,” he continued.

He was basing his sermon, titled “Sodomite Reprobates,” on the King James 
Version of the Bible’s book of Leviticus, which says in chapter 20, verse 13, 
“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have 
committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall 
be upon them.”

A few days before delivering the sermon, which came on the first Sunday of 
LGBTQ Pride Month, Fritts, a 20-year county employee, requested early 
retirement from the Knox County Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff Tom Spangler told 
local media Wednesday that Fritts is on paid sick leave until the effective 
date of his retirement, which is July 19.

“I want to be very clear that it is my responsibility to ensure equal 
protection to all citizens of Knox County, Tenn., under the law, my oath, and 
the United States Constitution without discrimination or hesitation,” Spangler 
added. “Rest assured that I have and will continue to do so.”

Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen said her office is looking 
into the matter. “As district attorney, I have dedicated my career to the 
belief that justice is blind and that all people are entitled to equal 
protection of the law,” she told the Knoxville News Sentinel. “I always have 
and always will prosecute fairly and justly, based upon the law and the 
evidence, without prejudice, bias, or discrimination of any kind.”

The news about Fritts’s sermon, first reported today, alarmed LGBTQ rights 
advocates. It is “particularly reprehensible when people use religion and their 
position in law enforcement to attack our community,” Chris Sanders, executive 
director of the Tennessee Equality Project, told the paper.

“This is why we celebrate Pride,” added Sterling Field, Tennessee Equality 
Project chairman for Knox, Blount, and Anderson counties, in an interview with 
the News Sentinel. “We’ve had police brutality in the past. Pride started with 
the Stonewall uprising 50 years ago as a group of folks trying to assert that 
they deserve to be alive and deserve to have dignity and respect.” Local Pride 
officials said there hadn’t been issues with the sheriff’s department, although 
they rely mainly on city police for security.

The All Scripture Baptist Church includes its belief in the death penalty for 
homosexuality in a doctrinal statement on its home page. It also says the 
church considers the King James Version of the Bible to be “the perfect, 
preserved word of God, without error.” This translation of the Bible was 
commissioned in the 17th century by King James I of England, believed by many 
historians to have been a gay man.

In his Wednesday night sermon at the church, attended by a WVLT reporter, 
Fritts defended the June 2 message and said he never intended for citizens to 
execute gay people, but that is instead the job of the government. He said 
other churches are “weak and spineless” for not endorsing this penalty and 
added, “Just as much as God loves, God hates.” He concluded, “Put homos to 
death.”

Shortly before the Wednesday service began, someone left a note outside the 
church, accompanied by a Pride flag, according to WVLT. It read, “Dear Pastor 
Fritts, I don’t know what happened to you, but I am so sorry. Love, Thy 
Neighbor.”

(source: advocate.com)








ARKANSAS:

Report: Ethics complaint against anti-death penalty pastor/judge dismissed



The Arkansas state Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission has dismissed 
an ethics charge against a judge who also is a Baptist pastor for participating 
in an anti-death penalty demonstration on Good Friday 2017.

The Arkansas Times reported June 12 that the commission dismissed the charge 
pending Judge Wendell Griffen because it failed to prosecute the case within an 
18-month statute of limitation.

The commission canceled a hearing scheduled this week to determine whether 
Griffen, pastor of New Millennium Baptist Church in Little Rock, violated 
judicial ethics by lying motionless on a cot at a prayer vigil in advance of 
planned executions “in solidarity with Jesus, the leader of our religion who 
was put to death by crucifixion by the Roman Empire.”

The latest delay resulted from a schedule conflict preventing the commission’s 
special counsel from appearing during hours of her full-time job.

Griffen, barred from hearing death penalty cases after issuing a court order in 
a dispute about ownership of a drug used in the lethal injection protocol, has 
long maintained the inquiry was politically motivated.

He claimed being a judge does not deprive him of the civil rights of free 
speech and religious exercise guaranteed to all citizens, and his personal 
religious views about capital punishment have no bearing on his ability to rule 
impartially on a matter of law.

(source: Baptist News)








USA:

The Death Penalty Is An Option In Murder Case Of Chinese Scholar YingYing Zhang 
Now That It’s A Federal Case



The death penalty is on the table for kidnapping, rape and murder of University 
of Illinois student YingYing Zhang. Illinois abolished death sentences in 2011, 
but the federal government took this case.

The federal government can take over a state murder case if there’s a legal 
reason granting it jurisdiction, but experts say there might also be political 
reasons to do so.

Video played at Brendt Christensen’s murder trial shows Zhang getting into his 
black car before she disappeared. Both that video and his black Saturn are key 
in taking the case from a state to federal court.

“There has to be something moved in interstate commerce,” said Chicago Kent 
College of Law Dean Harold Krent.

That’s where the car comes in. Federal prosecutors stated that Saturn was a 
means of interstate commerce, made outside Illinois and used in the kidnapping 
and murder, which gave them jurisdiction. Then they made it a death penalty 
case, the 1st tried since former Governor Pat Quinn abolished capital 
punishment 9 years ago.

“President Trump has been more aggressive than his predecessors, certainly than 
president Obama, in picking out cases for possible application of a death 
penalty,” said Krent. “So this is a growing trend.”

But why this case?

Krent said the reasons could be many, especially considering the international 
coverage of Zhang’s murder and the thousands of Chinese students at U.S. 
universities.

“I think this is a way the Trump administration could take the concerns of the 
Chinese government and the Chinese people much more seriously, by raising the 
sort of level and attention otherwise given to a state murder case,” Krent 
said.

Krent said if sentenced to death Christensen could be executed in Illinois.

There is a federal maximum security prison in Thomson, Illinois. There is also 
one in Terre Haute, Indiana. That’s where the last person from an Illinois case 
still sits on federal death row.

His name is Ronald Mikos, and he was convicted of murder in 2005.

(source: cbslocal.com)

******

‘Classic con man, second-rate killer’ dies in prison decades after avoiding 
death penalty



“He was a classical con man, second rate killer and an awful human being.”

That is how former Assistant U.S. Attorney Frederick E. Martin Wednesday 
described David Paul Hammer who died Friday at the federal prison in Terre 
Haute, Ind.

Hammer, 60, who had health issues, was serving a life sentence for the 1996 
strangulation death of his cellmate at Allenwood Federal Penitentiary and more 
than 1,200 years for scores of crimes he committed in his native Oklahoma.

Martin prosecuted the case that took more twists and turns than a roller 
coaster after Hammer stopped his 1998 trial in U.S. Middle District Court and 
pleaded guilty to 1st-degree murder in the April 16, 1996, death of his 
cellmate, Andrew Marti.

Hammer “loved the attention his change in strategies brought,” the retired 
prosecutor said. The case attracted national attention.

The jury recomended the death penalty, and the late Senior Judge Malcolm Muir 
followed that recommendation.

In 2004, Hammer was within days of receiving a lethal injection when he won a 
stay of execution.

Muir vacated the death sentence in 2006 and ordered a new penalty phase because 
he found prosecutors had withheld evidence that would have bolstered Hammer’s 
claim he and Marti were having consensual bondage sex.

U.S. Eastern District Judge Joel H. Slomsky, assigned the case after Muir died, 
resentenced Hammer in 2014 to life in prison, citing Hammer’s extended family 
history of dysfunction, abuse and mental illness, remorsefulness and 
self-improvement.

The multiple personalities issue raised by the defense, led by the late 
Williamsport attorney Ronald C. Travis, was the biggest challenge in 
prosecuting the case, Martin said.

When Marti was killed, Hammer was serving time for a 1984 Oklahoma case in 
which a man was carjacked at gunpoint, taken to a motel, then to a deserted 
area and forced to disrobe.

The man was shot 3 times but survived because the bullets contained birdshot.

Hammer wrote several books in prison including “Secrets Worth Dying For,” based 
on information he claimed was told to him by Oklahoma City federal building 
bomber Timothy McVeigh, before McVeigh was executed.

Hammer’s criminal history dated back to 1976 when he contracted to bring Santa 
Claus to a mall by helicopter, collected the money and fled.

2 years later he took a hostage in a hospital emergency room while escaping 
from an armed robbery. He received a 20-year sentence in that case.

His record included 3 prison escapes, participating in a prison riot and 
admitting but then recanting a claim he arranged for the drug-related slaying 
of a Tennessee man.

In 1988 he took out an ad urging the assassination of presidential candidate 
Jesse Jackson. A year later made threats to blow up the Oklahoma State Capitol 
and against the judge who sentenced him to 1,200 years in the carjacking case.

Hammer was moved into the federal prison system in 1993.

(source: pennlive.com)