[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., FLA., MISS., LA., KY., TENN.

[Rick Halperin]

June 21




TEXAS:

Tarrant County man faces death penalty, accused of killing ex-girlfriend and 
her young daughter



Prosecutors will seek the death penalty against a Euless man accused in the 
2018 strangulation of his ex-girlfriend and her 10-year-old daughter in an east 
Fort Worth apartment.

Paige Terrell Lawyer, 39, is charged with capital murder in the killing of 
O’Tishae Womack and her daughter Kamyria Womack on April 6, 2018.

Womack’s twin 4-year-old sons had been in the apartment at the time of the 
slayings, but they were not injured, according to an arrest warrant.

Prosecutors filed their intention to seek a death sentence against Lawyer a few 
weeks ago in Criminal District Court No. 396.

The last case on which local prosecutors sought the death penalty was in 
October 2017 against Miguel Hernandez, who was arrested naked in the bed of his 
pickup truck and charged in the July 27, 2014, slaying of James Bowling. 
Bowling, 56, was strangled after what police said was a violent fight during a 
burglary attempt. A Tarrant County jury found Hernandez guilty, but sentenced 
him to life without parole.

Lawyer was arrested April 8, 2018, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Suspect texted threats to victim

According to the arrest warrant obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 
2018, O’Tishae Womack and her sister had taken a walk in a park together on 
April 5, 2018.

During their walk, the sister told police, Lawyer passed them several times, as 
if checking up on them. He also kept calling and texting O’Tishae Womack.

Among the texts that Womack would receive that day from Lawyer was one that 
said, “BEFORE I LEAVE I WILL KILL YOU.”

Her sister said Womack called later that same day, asking her sister to please 
pick up her children from school because Lawyer was planning to come over to 
get some stuff from the apartment.

The sister told investigators that Womack later came to her house to pick up 
the kids, saying she’d return later that evening because Lawyer was still at 
her apartment.

She never came back, the sister told police, according to the warrant.

Womack’s mother is believed to have been the last one to talk to her.

The mother told investigators she had gotten a call from her daughter about 
10:30 p.m. on April 5, 2018, in which Womack said she was going to come over 
because Lawyer was refusing to leave her apartment.

“This was the last time that anyone can confirm that O’Tishae Womack was 
alive,” according to the warrant.

The bodies of Womack and her daughter were found the next day an an apartment 
in the 200 block of Shady Lane Drive.

Lawyer remained in the Tarrant Jail on Thursday in lieu of $500,000 bail on the 
capital murder charge. He also was being held on 2 Fort Worth assault charges 
and bail was $1 million.

Tarrant County death penalty cases

The last time the death penalty was given by a Tarrant County jury was against 
Amos Wells in 2016.

Wells was convicted on Nov. 3, 2016, of capital murder in the deaths of his 
pregnant girlfriend Chanice Reed, 22; her mother, Annette Reed, 39; and Chanice 
Reed’s 10-year-old brother, Eddie McCuin, on July 1, 2013.

Rodolfo Arellano was selected to face the death penalty for capital murder in a 
case where he abducted his estranged wife in April 2016, tied a 119-pound chunk 
of concrete on her and tossed her off the Lake Worth bridge to drown.

But Arellano pleaded guilty in January and received a sentence of life without 
parole.

There are 8 pending defendants who are facing the death penalty in Tarrant 
County.

(source: star-telegram.com)








GEORGIA----execution

Georgia inmate is the 1,500th person executed in the US since the death penalty 
was reinstated



A Georgia inmate convicted in the killing of man who gave him a ride in 1997 
died by lethal injection Thursday, the state's Department of Corrections said.

Marion Wilson Jr. is the 1,500th person to be executed in the United States 
since the return of the death penalty in 1976, according to the Death Penalty 
Information Center.

His execution was carried at 9:52 p.m. ET at the Georgia Diagnostic and 
Classification Prison in Jackson, Georgia after the US Supreme Court denied a 
stay of execution.

Wilson was sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of Donovan Corey Parks in 
southeast Atlanta. Parks was found dead on a residential street after he gave 
Wilson and another man a ride from a Walmart store. Parks had gone to the store 
to buy cat food and accepted to give them a ride when they approached him in 
the parking lot, authorities said.

Wilson was been convicted in Baldwin County, Georgia of malice murder, felony 
murder, armed robbery, hijacking a motor vehicle, possession of a firearm 
during the commission of a crime and possession of a sawed-off shotgun, 
according to the state's office of the attorney general.

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles met to consider clemency for Wilson on 
Wednesday but ultimately denied his request, officials said.

There are 48 inmates on Georgia's death row.

(source: CNN)

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

After execution, victim’s brother hopes to finally find peace



Christopher Parks came here to watch a man die.

He sat on a pew Thursday night in the small death house at the Georgia 
Diagnostic and Classification Prison. He watched as state workers gave Marion 
Wilson, 42, a fatal dose of pentobarbital. The inmate was on a gurney, IV lines 
releasing the drug into his veins, slowing his breath.

The execution was punishment for the 1996 murder of Parks’ brother. Donovan 
Parks, 24, was an off-duty corrections officer in Milledgeville, studying to 
become an inmate counselor, when a sawed-off shotgun blast to his head ended it 
all.

A flurry of last-minute appeals couldn’t save Wilson.

As death drew near, his 23-year-old daughter, Tykecia, was huddled outside with 
a group of anti-death penalty protesters. She began screaming, “I want my 
daddy, I want my daddy back!” A man picked her up and carried her away as she 
wailed and wailed.

In the death house, Wilson released his final words.

“I ain’t never took a life in my life,” he said, suggesting his co-defendant 
had pulled the trigger, according to the Associated Press.

Wilson’s words, of course, meant basically nothing to Christopher Parks.

Parks, who was 18 in 1996 and now works in cyber security for the U.S. 
government, came here not caring what Wilson had to say. He came here, he said, 
because seeing Wilson dead was the best chance for him and his family to begin 
recovering after 23 years without Donovan.

Death penalty abolitionists often speak of how difficult years of delays are 
for victims’ families. Parks has heard those arguments, as well as arguments 
that the state shouldn’t kill even people who’ve done unspeakable things. 
Opponents also call it wrong to allow killers’ families to suffer because of 
what the killers have done.

But Parks said he figures the opponents haven’t been through the type of 
torment his family has.

His life is worse in so many ways without Donovan — the writer, the artist, the 
kindhearted soul who seemed to mint grace.

Surely, the brother thought, life without Wilson breathing would be better.

The brothers

When Christopher Parks was little, he had nightmares.

He asked his brother if he could sleep in the bed with him. Donovan — 6 years 
older, the gentle type — told Christopher to climb into the twin bed. 
Christopher instantly felt safe, that night and many others, because of 
Donovan.

Donovan helped Christopher believe in the goodness of people.

But Christopher still had nightmares. On March 27, 1996, he woke up from one 
about something happening to Donovan.

Shaken, he walked into the den and found Donovan stretched out on the couch.

“Donovan,” Christopher recalls saying, “I’m so glad to see you because I 
dreamed someone murdered you.”

“I’m fine,” Donovan reassured calmly.

Hours later Donovan really was dead.

The gang, the helper

As Wilson’s attorneys tried to halt the execution, they asked the Board of 
Pardons and Paroles to consider the inmate’s childhood. The lawyers said myriad 
traumas had left Wilson with neurological damage hampering his decision-making 
skills.

His mother Charlene Cox, who declined to comment but asked the parole board for 
mercy, used drugs and drank in the 4 or 5 months before she realized she was 
pregnant, the clemency petition said. She took little Marion around South 
Georgia as she bounced between toxic and abusive boyfriends, who made Marion 
live in filth. The boy often ran away just to find food.

Eventually he roamed the streets and joined the Folk Nation gang. In 1996, he 
had a baby girl, Tykecia.

Weeks later, on March 28, 1996, Donovan Parks went to Walmart to buy cat food 
after Bible study. Wilson was at the store with fellow Folk member Robert 
Butts. Butts knew Parks because they’d worked together at Burger King.

Butts said they needed a ride. Parks said OK.

As Parks drove, Butts pulled a sawed-off shotgun from inside the sleeve of his 
black Colorado Rockies jacket. Someone — Wilson claimed Butts, prosecutors 
claimed Wilson — pulled Parks’ tie and forced him out of the car. As Wilson 
would later tell it, he only thought Butts was going to rob Parks.

Someone — it still isn’t clear who — fired one shot into Parks’ head.

The motive to kill, prosecutors said, was elevated status in the gang.

After the men drove away in the Acura, Parks’ father, Freddie, pulled up. His 
girlfriend’s house happened to be nearby. The pellets in the shot had so badly 
mangled Donovan Parks’ face, the father didn’t recognize the son.

‘I haven’t been the best’

Christopher Parks has been to the death chamber before.

It was in May 2018. He sat with his wife, Crystal, and saw Butts on the gurney, 
IV lines in his veins, eyes closed.

Butts did not apologize. His last words were a mumble: “It burns, man.” It 
looked peaceful to Parks. That made him angry.

“I think about how my brother was snatched from his car by his necktie, and his 
necktie was so tight he probably couldn’t breathe or speak to beg for his life. 
I think about how he was laid down on the cold asphalt and he was murdered — 
for being nice,” Parks said with contempt. “What I saw in that execution was 
humane. It was a man being put to sleep as if he were getting a root canal.”

It bothered Parks that Butts didn’t apologize. But he eventually decided it 
didn’t matter, and it wouldn’t matter if Wilson did. Words, Parks said, can’t 
help.

In the past year, knowledge that Butts is dead hasn’t helped Parks either, but 
he said that’s only because he wanted Wilson dead too.

The murder hurts Parks, a father of four, every day. It has made him less of a 
believer in the goodness of the people. It has made him angrier, sadder and 
more cynical.

He admits: “I haven’t been the best son I could’ve been. I haven’t been the 
best father I could’ve been. I haven’t been the best husband I could’ve been.”

He wants to change.

‘Real justice’

As Parks prepared for Wilson’s execution, he grew angry again.

He thought about how much the government had spent to keep Wilson alive and 
fighting. He thought about seeing his brother in the hospital. His head was 
wrapped in a bandage to hold in his brains, and his face seemed frozen in the 
last expression it held in life: he looked terrified, the brother thought. 
Parks wishes he could go just one day without seeing that image in his mind.

But Parks liked to imagine the execution, one part in particular.

The “real justice,” he said, would come right before Wilson entered the death 
chamber, knowing he would die. It’s a blessing for most people not to know when 
they’ll die, Parks said, but he liked that Wilson would be deprived of that 
blessing because Wilson and Butts took it from his brother.

Once that moment passed for Wilson, the 42-year-old was on the gurney, not 
apologizing, just like Butts. Tykecia Wilson was somewhere hurting, wishing her 
dad didn’t have to go, wondering why the Parks, Butts and Wilson families all 
had to know death like this.

The last breath came at 9:52 p.m.

Parks had decided many years ago that his recovery from his brother’s death 
required the deaths of the men responsible for his brother’s death. Now he had 
his wish.

He left the death house for the last time, hoping to heal.

(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)








FLORIDA:

Guilty on all counts in Jupiter triple murder trial; jurors to weigh death 
penalty



Guilty of 3 counts of 1st-degree murder, and 1 of attempted murder — the 1st 
man to go on trial for the Jupiter Super Bowl Sunday triple murder now faces 
the prospect of the death penalty.

Testimony went on for most of 7 days, but it took jurors just over 2 hours 
Thursday to find Christopher Vasata guilty.

Vasata showed no emotion as the verdicts were read.

Sighs of relief could be heard among family members of the victims. After the 
hearing ended, they shared hugs and tears with each other, and with prosecutors 
and the case’s lead detective.

On the night of Super Bowl Sunday 2 years ago, Vasata and at least 1 other 
masked gunman burst into a backyard, killing Brandi El Salhy, Kelli Doherty and 
Sean Henry.Each died of multiple gunshot wounds. Henry was shot 17 times.

During closing arguments, prosecutors said there was no denying the 
premeditation.

“There’s one purpose, one purpose and one purpose only — to kill, brutally,” 
said prosecutor Jill Richstone, holding the AK-assault-style rifle used in the 
crime. “And guess who’s DNA is on it? Remember she said she swabbed here and 
here, where you’re going to hold it. Chris Vasata."

The defense, in its final presentation to jurors, maintained the State had 
failed to prove Vasata’s intent.

“It is not enough to simply prove that Mr. Vasata was there,” Assistant Public 
Defender Elizabeth Ramsey said. “It is not enough to say his DNA is present.”

Vasata’s legal team had pointed to another triggerman who was never arrested.

“Luke Kutsukos was the shooter, he was there,” Ramsey said. “He is the 
individual that had the greatest motivation for committing this crime.”

The defense referred to Kutsukos as a drug dealer rival of party host Charles 
Vorpagel, who survived the attack, and victim Sean Henry.

Vorpagel testified during the trial he thought one of the gunmen that night was 
Kutsukos, and that he Henry earlier considered killing Kutsukos over an alleged 
theft from a friend.

And the defense contended Vasata, who was also shot in the rear, may have been 
trying to mediate the feud.

Prosecutors dismissed such a notion.

“If you look at all the items here that we know were part of the crime, this is 
not a mediation starter kit, this is a murder starter kit right here” said 
prosecutor Chrichet Mixon, pointing to a table bearing the firearms used in the 
killings.

With the 1st-degree murder conviction, there will now be a 2nd, penalty phase 
of the trial. That’s when the jury will consider imposing the death penalty, 
which prosecutors are seeking.

Each side will present evidence why Vasata should or should not receive death 
as his sentence.

Judge Joseph Marx told the 12 jurors, as well as the 2 alternates, to return 
Wednesday. The penalty phase proceedings are expected to take 2 days.

The 2nd man who’s been charged in the triple murder, Marcus Steward, will be 
tried later. No date has been set.

(source: CBS News)

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

Florida sheriff's deputy accused of soliciting 9-year-old girl----Lawyers want 
to delay new sentencing trial for man convicted of killing girl



Lawyers will ask a judge Thursday for more time to prepare a new sentencing 
trial for a Florida man on death row for kidnapping, raping and killing 
11-year-old Carlie Brucia.

In April 2018, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new hearing for Joseph Smith 
because the jury that recommended the death sentence wasn't unanimous. Death 
sentences in Florida now require a unanimous vote.

Smith, who has been on death row for more than a decade, appealed his 
conviction last year under the state's updated death penalty law.

The 2004 case received national publicity after a Sarasota car wash 
surveillance camera captured images of Smith grabbing Carlie's arm and leading 
her away.

Smith was sentenced to death in 2006.

(source: WTSP news)








MISSISSIPPI:

Supreme Court rules for black death row inmate over prosecutor's racial 
bias----The court sent the case back to Mississippi for further proceedings.



The Supreme Court on Friday reversed the conviction of a Mississippi death row 
inmate who said the state prosecutor repeatedly kicked black people off the 
jury each of the s6 times he was tried for the same murders.

The court sent the case back to the state for further proceedings. Justice 
Brett Kavanaugh authored the 7-2 majority opinion, which was joined by Chief 
Justice John Roberts, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel 
Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The ruling was a victory for Curtis Flowers, who is black. He was tried 6 times 
for the 1996 murder of 4 furniture store employees in Winona, Mississippi, 
where he had recently worked. Of the first 5 trials, one conviction was thrown 
out over questions about evidence and 2 resulted in mistrials.

But in the other 2 trials, state courts found that the prosecutor in the case, 
Doug Evans, wrongly excluded potential jurors on the basis of their race. In 
the case before the Supreme Court involving his 6th and most recent trial, 
Flowers again accused the prosecutor of impermissibly removing blacks from the 
jury.

When a jury is being selected, lawyers for each side are allowed to exclude a 
certain number of jurors for potential bias or other cause. But they are also 
allowed to make peremptory strikes, which require no explanation.

3 decades ago, the Supreme Court said prosecutors cannot use those strikes to 
remove jurors solely because of their race. In rulings since then, the court 
has explained how judges are to evaluate whether race was an improper factor in 
jury selection.

Lawyers for Flowers, who could face a 7th trial, told the justices that Evans 
has a history of pushing blacks off juries. In his opinion Friday, Kavanaugh 
wrote of Flowers' case: "The numbers speak loudly. Over the course of the first 
4 trials, there were 36 black prospective jurors against whom the State could 
have exercised a peremptory strike. The State tried to strike all 36."

A key issue for the justices was how far back courts should go in examining a 
prosecutor's record in deciding whether juror exclusions in a specific case 
were motivated by racial bias. Sheri Lynn Johnson, the lawyer for Flowers, said 
there is no limitation on the history.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented. Thomas asked a few 
questions when the case was argued in March, breaking his 3-year courtroom 
silence. He wanted to know if the defense lawyers used any peremptory 
challenges to exclude potential jurors.

Told that they did, Thomas asked, "And what was the race of the jurors struck 
there?" The answer: only whites.

(source: NBC News)

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

Supreme Court Strikes Down Conviction Of Mississippi Man On Death Row For 22 
Years



The Supreme Court has struck down the conviction of an African American 
death-row inmate who was prosecuted 6 times for the same crime and by the same 
prosecutor, a man with a history of racial bias in jury selection.

Writing for the court's 7-2 majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, "The 
numbers speak loudly. Over the course of the first 4 trials, there were 36 
black prospective jurors against whom the State could have exercised a 
peremptory strike. The State tried to strike all 36."

Curtis Flowers has spent 22 years on death row in Mississippi. In his cases, 
the same prosecutor struck 41 of 42 black jurors.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the court's only black justice, had the minority 
opinion, which was joined in part by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

"The majority's opinion is so manifestly incorrect that I must proceed to the 
merits," Thomas wrote. "Flowers presented no evidence whatsoever of purposeful 
race discrimination by the State in selecting the jury during the trial below."

Thomas added, ""If the Court's opinion today has a redeeming quality, it is 
this: The State is perfectly free to convict Curtis Flowers again. Otherwise, 
the opinion distorts our legal standards, ignores the record, and reflects 
utter disrespect for the careful analysis of the Mississippi courts. Any 
competent prosecutor would have exercised the same strikes as the State did in 
this trial. And although the Court's opinion might boost its self-esteem, it 
also needlessly prolongs the suffering of four victims' families. I 
respectfully dissent."

For decades the Supreme Court has wrestled with the question of racial 
discrimination in jury selection, setting down its most rigorous rules in 1986. 
But policing the way those rules are applied by the lower court has proved 
problematic, and the court has repeatedly struck down convictions by all-white, 
or close to all-white juries.

Flowers' case is anomalous only because of the number of times he was tried by 
the same prosecutor and the prosecutor's repeated misconduct.

Doug Evans, a district attorney in Winona, Miss., prosecuted Flowers, a black 
man who prior to this case had no criminal record, 6 times.

During that time the state Supreme Court t3 times threw out his murder 
conviction for prosecutorial misconduct.

The misconduct was not some technicality. It ranged from misleading the jury 
about evidence that did not exist to striking prospective jurors based on race.

In the 4th and 5th trials the prosecutor ran out of strikes, meaning he had 
used up the limited number of prospective jurors he could eliminate from the 
jury for no reason. As a result, two black jurors were seated, and the juries 
deadlocked.

But in the 6th trial, with 1 black juror, the jury convicted, and the 
Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the conviction, ruling that this time there 
had not been any racial discrimination in jury selection.

Now, it's up to the state of Mississippi whether it will try him again for a 
7th time.

(source: npr.org)








LOUISIANA:

D.A. wants death penalty for man accuse of bludgeoning woman, children with 
hammer



Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick Jr. today announced prosecutors 
will seek the death penalty for Terrance Leonard. A grand jury indicted Leonard 
on 4 counts of 1st degree murder and 1 count of attempted 1st degree murder for 
the March 6 deaths of Kristina Riley, 2 of her children, and her niece. Leonard 
is also accused of attacking another of Riley's children, who survived the 
attack.

"After consulting with my staff and receiving input from the victim's families, 
I have decided that my office will seek the death penalty," said Connick.

Authorities say Leonard admitted attacking the children and niece of Riley, 
with a hammer as they slept. According to authorities, Leonard hid the bodies 
of the 2 children he killed in the initial attack in a closet so as not to 
arouse his girlfriend's suspicion when she returned home early in the morning 
of March 6. Detectives say when Kristina Riley arrived, Leonard attacked and 
killed her.

Sheriff Joe Lopinto described the crime scene that day as shocking and 
gruesome.

"This person should never see the light of day and the first chance that he 
gets to be off of this earth, I'm okay with that," the sheriff said.

(source: radio.com)








KENTUCKY:

Kentucky prosecutor drops death penalty, saying witness lied



A death penalty case has unraveled in Kentucky, where a prosecutor said he 
can't go forward because a key witness can't be truthful at trial.

Hardin County prosecutor Shane Young said no physical evidence shows Aaron 
Pearson was complicit in the murder of 71-year-old Arnold Norman Hall.

Young said testimony from another suspect, Eloysia James-Venerable, was key to 
a conviction. She was given a plea deal limiting her time to at least 20 years 
if she would tell the truth.

But the prosecutor said she's proven untruthful, and he can't pursue capital 
punishment if he's "not 100% certain" about her testimony.

The News-Enterprise reports that Pearson accepted a plea deal of 15 years on 
lesser charges. Young said he'll now pursue a life sentence for his former key 
witness.

(source: Associated Press)








TENNESSEE:

Death penalty possible for Jefferson County man, if convicted in pedestrian 
deaths



The man police say killed random pedestrians by intentionally driving into them 
appeared in court Thursday for the 1st time since the tragedy.

William David Phillips is charged with 3 1st degree murder charges and an 
attempted 1st degree murder charge. 2 murder charges stem from the deaths of 
Sierra Cahoon and her 2-year-old son, Nolan. The 3rd charge was filed once 
investigators learned Cahoon was pregnant.

The attempted murder is for Tillman Gunter, who told police he was hit on East 
Main Street. Gunter was transported to the hospital for his injuries. Another 
victim, an employee inside the building police say Phillips drove into, was 
injured. Charges have not been filed for that victim at this point.

District Attorney General Jimmy Dunn, who serves Tennessee’s 4th judicial 
district, is prepared to take on the case. He couldn’t go into specifics on the 
case, but he did shed some light, broadly, into 1st-degree murder charges.

Because an affidavit shows Phillips claims to hear voices, a legal expert told 
us a defense attorney could argue against 1st-degree murder and push for a 
lower-level charge, including manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, or 
voluntary manslaughter.

For a 1st-degree murder conviction, Dunn will have to prove premeditation and 
intention to a jury. If Phillips were to be convicted, his sentencing options 
would include the death penalty, life in prison without the possibility of 
parole or life in prison.

“My mind is not been made up yet, but we’ll look at all the issues. We look at 
all of the statutes and determine then what we are going to do,” Dunn said. 
“There’s good and bad things about whatever the penalties are. That’s something 
that weighs very heavily on any prosecutor’s mind, as to what is the proper way 
to handle a particular case. It takes a lot of thought, It takes a lot of 
research, and for me, it takes a lot of prayer.”

Phillips’ next court appearance is a bond hearing. It is set for next Tuesday.

(source: WATE news)