[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., GA., FLA., OHIO, OKLA., USA

[Rick Halperin]

June 28




TEXAS----new death sentence

Nueces County jury sentences man to death in West Texas deputy's 2013 slaying



A Nueces County jury convicted Gary David Green on June 18 of capital murder in 
connection with the death of Upton County deputy Billy "Bubba" Kennedy.

The same jury handed down the death sentence Wednesday afternoon.

In Texas, capital murder is punishable by either life in prison without parole 
or the death penalty.

The trial was moved from West Texas because of a change of venue.

The Associate Press reported that Green was arrested in October 2013 following 
a shootout at a McCamey convenience store. His card was declined at the store 
and he demanded free gas, the Odessa American reported.

The man was approached by Kennedy and another deputy, who ran a check on the 
vehicle's license plate and discovered it was stolen.

More: Trial underway in fatal 2013 shooting of West Texas deputy

Kennedy went to the vehicle's side door and unfastened his gun from its 
holster, according to the newspaper. Green opened his door and fired, it 
states. Both officers reportedly returned fire.

The jury found that Green would be a continuing threat to society and 
determined there were no "mitigating circumstances," such as Green's character 
and background, that warranted life in prison over the death penalty, court 
records show.

(source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times)








NORTH CAROLINA:

US Drops Case Against Man Sentenced to Death 43 Years Ago



U.S. prosecutors have dropped their case against a North Carolina man 43 years 
after he was sentenced to death for a murder he says he did not commit.

Charles Ray Finch, 81, was freed in May after his case was dismissed on the 
grounds that police mishandled the investigation of the 1976 shooting of a 
storekeeper during an attempted robbery.

Prosecutors have since decided a new trial would be impossible since so many of 
the witnesses are either dead or have moved away, the Washington-based Death 
Penalty Information Center (DPIC) said Wednesday.

The African-American defendant had been sentenced to death in North Carolina in 
July 1976 for the grocery store clerk's murder, but the sentence was later 
commuted to life in prison.

In 2002, a group of law students went back to study the case and found a number 
of problems that threw doubts on the conviction, including police manipulation 
of witnesses during a line-up and lying about a ballistics report.

In the line-up, a witness had told the police that the suspect had been wearing 
a coat at the time of the killing. Finch was the only one in the room made to 
wear a coat.

In January an appeals court ruled that if the jury had been aware of such 
manipulations it would not have convicted Finch, and overturned the verdict.

Family reunion

Finch was released from jail in a wheelchair in May and reunited with his 
family.

DPIC said Finch was the 166th person to be exonerated after being wrongfully 
convicted and sentenced to death since 1973, and the 18th to have spent more 
than 25 years behind bars.

"Mr. Finch's exoneration illustrates the continuing failure of the judicial 
system to protect the innocent in death-penalty cases, and particularly 
prisoners of color," said DPIC director Robert Dunham.

(source: voanews.com)








GEORGIA:

Tracing the racist history of the death penalty in Georgia----R.J. Maratea 
argues that lynching declined when white people began to realize that the 
courtroom would work just as well.



Killing with Prejudice: Institutionalized Racism in American Capital 
Punishment----By R. J. Maratea, New York University Press

Of the nearly 1,500 executions in the United States since 1976, over 70 % have 
occurred in the 11 southern states of the former Con­federacy. Sociologist R. 
J. Maratea posits a direct line of racialist social control in these states 
extending from slavery to the modern criminal justice system.

Maratea focuses on the case of War­ren McCleskey, who was executed by Georgia 
in 1991 for killing a white police officer during an armed robbery. McCleskey’s 
crime “hit squarely in the face of expected racial etiquette in the Deep South 
and singled out Warren McCleskey as a black man in need of killing.”

To support this claim, Maratea surveys Georgia’s history, observing that prior 
to the Civil War, Georgia’s criminal statutes expressly subjected black men to 
death for a wider array of crimes than white men. For years after the Civil 
War, mobs of white men lynched black men for violating unwritten racial codes.M

State and local government officials often looked the other way, and the 
federal government’s response to lynching was repeatedly stymied with 
filibusters by southern senators. Nevertheless, Mara­tea argues, incidents of 
lynching declined in the 1920s and 1930s when southerners began to realize that 
“mob violence could be enveloped into the existing justice system and 
effectively accomplished inside the courtroom under the guise of law.”

In 1972, however, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia 
that the Georgia law authorizing the death penalty was unconstitutional, 
effectively installing a nationwide moratorium on all death sentences. The five 
justices in the majority were divided over whether the death penalty was 
unconstitutional in all circumstances or whether adopting procedural safeguards 
could lead to a nondiscriminatory application of it. Just 4 years later, in 
Gregg v. Georgia, a different majority upheld Georgia’s reformed death penalty 
statute and, in doing so, articulated standards that permitted the 
constitutional application of the death penalty. The Gregg ruling required 2 
conditions: 1st, a bifurcated trial, so that the jury that weighs a defendant’s 
guilt or innocence is not the same jury that decides whether a convicted 
defendant should be condemned to death; and second, a list of legislatively 
enacted “aggravating factors” to limit the scope of cases for which death is a 
potential penalty.

This framework was in place when Mc­Cleskey received his death sentence. On 
appeal, McCleskey’s attorneys claimed that his conviction and death sentence 
were the result of racial biases. They pointed to statistical evidence showing 
that prosecutors in Georgia were more likely to seek a death sentence, and 
sentencing juries more likely to grant one, when the victim of a homicide was 
white than when the victim was black. This “race of victim” effect was 
multiplied by a secondary “race of offender” effect, showing that black 
defendants were more likely to be sentenced to death than white defendants.

The Supreme Court rejected Mc­Cleskey’s appeal in a 5–4 decision, holding in 
McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) that statistics showing disproportionate racial impact 
were not sufficient to render application of the death penalty unconstitutional 
in any particular case.

Writing for the majority of the Court, Justice Lewis Powell explained that 
McCleskey’s lawyers would need to point to a particular aspect of his case that 
showed conscious, deliberate bias by state law enforcement officials. By 
requiring this direct evidence, Maratea writes, Powell acknowledged “that some 
racial prejudice in death penalty cases is acceptable.”

Maratea’s analysis of McCleskey, written for an audience familiar with criminal 
law, is structured a bit unevenly. His focus on Georgia minimizes both the 
nationwide application of McCleskey and the national scope of racially unequal 
structures, although he acknowledges both in his conclusion.

Nevertheless, Maratea’s work is particularly valuable in juxtaposing examples 
of Powell’s own jurisprudence. Fourteen years before McCleskey, Powell 
established a doctrine in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green that permitted 
plaintiffs alleging employment discrimination to prove an inference of 
discrimination by pointing to statistics showing a disparate racial treatment, 
even if there was no direct evidence of racism. The Mc­Donnell Douglas doctrine 
was reaffirmed just a year before McCleskey.

One clue to understanding the disconnect between McDonnell Douglas and 
McCleskey appears in Powell’s opinion:

McCleskey’s claim, taken to its logical conclusion, throws into serious 
question the principles that underlie our entire criminal justice system. . . . 
If we accepted McCleskey’s claim that racial bias has impermissibly tainted the 
criminal sentencing decision, we could soon be faced with similar claims as to 
other types of penalty.

The Court was not prepared to open those floodgates.

The lesson of McCleskey is that courts are not the ideal venue in which to 
initiate lasting social change. It is relatively easy for a court to remedy a 
claim that one employer violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s guarantee of equal 
employment rights; a court is much less equipped to dismantle structural 
inequalities in the justice system.

The Supreme Court’s experience with the death penalty is illustrative in this 
respect. Shortly before the Court issued Furman, more people opposed the death 
penalty than supported it. After Furman, support for the death penalty spiked, 
even as violent crime was falling. Scholars, including Maratea, point to Furman 
as the inflection point for this backlash.

In his last statement before his execution, McCleskey pled for the United 
States, “supposedly a civilized society,” to “abolish barbaric acts such as the 
death penalty.” McCleskey’s plea is not ultimately one for the courts; it is 
one for everyone who engages in our country’s civic conversation.

(source: christiancentury.org)

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

Dunwoody family angry after federal judge overthrow’s death sentence of son’s 
murderer



For Steven and Laura Lynn, June is not an easy month.

It’s the month they celebrate their son Louis Nava’s birthday, and reflect on 
his death.

“There’s a sense of sadness in the month of June. In some ways it's not always 
bad, in some ways it's sadness,” said Nava’s stepfather, Steven.

On June 6, 1998, Nava and his best friend Dakari Sloley were leaving Mount 
Vernon Shopping Center in Dunwoody, when Eric Perkinson, his 2 brothers and a 
friend robbed and carjacked the teens at gunpoint.

“They could have let them go at that point,” said Nava’s mother, Laura. “Kicked 
them out of the car, take the car, but they did not.”

Instead, Nava was shoved into the trunk and the boys were driven 40 miles to a 
secluded road in Bartow County.

Perkinson marched a shoeless Nava into the woods and shot him in the head.

Sloley escaped with a gunshot wound that severed the bone in his left arm.

“None of these defendants have ever taken responsibility, shown remorse. 
Nothing in terms of what happened and I have an issue with that,” Laura said.

All 4 men were convicted.

Perkinson was sent to death row until recently, when a judge ruled his attorney 
was incompetent and questioned Perkinson’s mental capacity.

Now Perkinson gets a new trial.

“We're angry and I'm frustrated,” Laura said.

Criminals who are intellectually disabled cannot be put to death in Georgia.

So a jury must determine Perkinson's mental capacity and whether he should be 
re-sentenced to life in prison.

“We'd be fine if it was life without parole but there's no guarantee,” Steven 
said.

Decade of appeals, parole hearings and letters of notifications are reflected 
in the stacks of paperwork collected by the Lynns’.

“We’re doing everything we possibly can because honestly, that’s the only way I 
can live with myself, making sure that justice is served for Louis,” said 
Laura.

Perkinson's attorney Alan Medof had been suspended by the Florida state bar for 
a crack cocaine addiction and admitted to being asleep during parts of the 
trial.

The Georgia Public Defender Council – who will represent Perkinson – declined 
to comment for this story.

Georgia State Law professor Jessica Cino said it’s one of the worst cases of 
ineffective counsel she’s heard.

“If you have a lawyer who is perhaps one of the worst cases I’ve ever heard of 
ineffective assistance of counsel, and then add in also the intellectual 
disability component to it, then this man didn’t have a fair trial,” Cino said.

Cino said while it’s rare for the death penalty to be overturned, the justice 
system must ensure all defendants receive fair trials.

“Because the next person who comes along - let's say they're innocent - and 
there's cases all the time where somebody is on death row for 20 or 30 years 
and they never committed the crime - they also deserve that same measure of 
fairness,” said Cino. “And that's how we're able to unmask those types of 
errors when we look at everything else.”

For the Lynn's - it's a reminder of a wound that’s never healed.

Nava’s classmates built a memorial for him behind Dunwoody high school.

His mother said, he was captain of the wrestling team and loved working with 
kids.

“I always felt like he would be a high school coach, working with kids,” she 
said. “That's what put him in his happy place.”

(source: CBS News)








FLORIDA:

Ideological shift in State Supreme Court could throw curveball into death 
sentence appeals



Florida’s death penalty could soon be thrown in disarray for the second time in 
less than 3 years.

Conservative judges appointed by a new governor have decided to take another 
look at a decision that allows nearly 200 death row inmates to have a new 
sentencing hearing.

In 2016, Florida’s Supreme Court divided death row in 2.

Prisoners sentenced before a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision stayed on death 
row, but most of those sentenced after 2002 got a new chance in court to be 
sentenced to life.

It has upset many in law enforcement.

“The first thing I think about is the victims. I think about their families. 
They have to live every day, and to put them on trial again, over and over, 
they are suffering when they have to go through this,” said Gadsden County 
Sheriff Morris Young.

At the time of the decision, the court's two conservative judges objected 
strenuously.

Now, they are in the majority and are taking another look at the policy.

The case will be 3 years old in December and it's highly unusual for cases that 
fresh to be reversed.

Denying new sentencing hearings has the backing of Attorney General Ashley 
Moody.

“Many times when we think that court decisions are not founded legally, we try 
to present that through follow-up cases and briefs, and that’s what we’ve done 
in this case,” said Moody.

Legal scholar Mark Schlakman says it comes down to fundamental fairness.

“Versus a logical line and judicially manageable standard and the tension 
between the 2,” said Schlakman.

In other words, how many court resources and how much time would be needed to 
hold more than 100 new sentencing hearings?

On the day the 2016 ruling was made, there were 384 death row inmates.

Now there are 43 fewer, and anyone still on death row will be in limbo as new 
appeals are filed.

(source: WCTV news)

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

Volusia's top prosecutor announced today to seek the death penalty against 
Calib J. Scott if he is convicted of slaying his 5-month-old son, Daemon 
Alexander Dean Scott, in Ormond Beach earlier this month.----Death Penalty to 
be Sought Against Dad in Baby's Death



Volusia County's top prosecutor announced Thursday that death penalty will be 
sought against Calib J. Scott if he is convicted in the death of his 
5-month-old son earlier this month.M

R.J. Larizza, the state attorney for Volusia and 3 other counties, said in a 
court filing that the "crime was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel; cold 
calculated and premeditated; the defendant committed the murder while 
committing another felony (Aggravated Child Abuse); and that the defendant 
committed the crime while in a familial custodial role."

He said Assistant State Attorney Tammy Jaques of the State Attorney's Homicide 
Unit will prosecute the case as first chair.

"Due to the fact this is now a death-penalty eligible case, a death-certified 
judge has yet to be assigned nor has an arraignment date been officially set," 
the court filing said.

Scott and his son lived in a trailer of filth in Ormond Beach, police said.

The father called 911 to report his son stopped breathing on June 11.

"My son, he's gone rag doll, basically, and he's barely breathing and his eyes, 
they won't dilate," Scott said, according to a recording of the 911 call.

An Ormond Beach Police report said the baby was rushed to Halifax Health 
Medical Center in Daytona Beach, where he was pronounced dead.

Armed with a search warrant after the death, police returned to Scott's trailer 
at 19 N. Yonge Street, Lot 70.

3 puppies and 2 dogs were found taken from the filthy residence, police said.

"The presence of dog urine and feces was noted throughout the home, along with 
poor hygienic conditions not suitable for a human being," a report said.

(source: mynews13.com)








OHIO:

Ohio death row inmate's sentence reduced to 30 to life

A judge reduced the sentence of an Ohio death row inmate Thursday to 30 years 
to life after his conviction was overturned based on new evidence suggesting 
his infant daughter's death was accidental.

Genesis Hill was convicted in 1991 in Cincinnati of aggravated murder for 
killing his 6-month-old daughter, Domika. Hamilton County prosecutors argued 
the infant was violently shaken.

Though courts had previously upheld Hill's conviction and death sentence, 
recent developments brought the circumstances around the girl's death into 
question.

In February, the 1st District Court of Appeals of Ohio ruled that Hill's 
attorneys had correctly established his right to an evidentiary hearing 
claiming he was innocent.

In April, federal Judge Edmund Sargus overturned Hill's death sentence based on 
evidence that Hill fell off a wall while holding Domika and accidentally 
crushed the infant's skull with his knee. Sargus wrote that Amy Martin, the 
Hamilton County deputy coroner who conducted Domika's autopsy, had made 
"significant revisions to the expert opinion she offered at trial."

In addition, a police report withheld from Hill's attorneys at trial became 
available later questioned the credibility of the prosecution's main witness — 
Domika's mother and Hill's girlfriend. That included allegations the baby bore 
"physical signs" of poor care provided by her mother.

Hamilton County Judge Lisa Allen handed down the new sentence Thursday. Hill is 
eligible for parole but it's unclear when he might leave prison.

Defense attorney William Gallagher called the new sentence a fair resolution. 
Though Hill had had recent court victories, those wouldn't have resolved the 
matter and could have resulted in years of additional legal challenges, 
Gallagher said.

Hill was the 2nd inmate from Hamilton County to leave death row in recent 
months after evidence suggested a killing was in fact an accident.

On June 24, the Ohio Supreme Court agreed to cancel a scheduled October 
execution for death row inmate Angelo Fears, after prosecutors and defense 
attorneys agreed his sentence should be changed to life without parole.

Fears was sentenced to die for the 1997 shooting of a man in Cincinnati's 
Over-the-Rhine neighborhood during a drug robbery. Just as with Hill, while 
numerous courts upheld Fears' death sentence, a new lawyer argued that the 
testing of the gun used in the shooting — a Colt Caliber 25 — showed it was 
prone to firing accidentally and had been subject to a manufacturers' recall 
for a firing pin malfunction.

Defense attorney Robert Linneman argued in a March court filing that the 
shooting was unintentional and therefore not a death penalty case. Linneman 
also argued Fears suffered from intellectual disabilities that should have made 
him ineligible for the death penalty.

The office of Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters agreed earlier this month 
to removing Fears from death row.

"Looking at the big picture, we felt like this was a fair resolution of the 
case," said Julie Wilson, a Deters' spokeswoman. She noted that the family of 
Fears' victim, Antwuan Gilliam, agreed with the change in sentence.

(source: Associated Press)








OKLAHOMA:

Appeals court let stand death penalty in 2001 slaying of OKC ad exec



An appeals court reversed itself Thursday and reinstated the death sentence of 
an Oklahoma City man convicted of murdering his lover's husband.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decided 10-3 against James Dwight Pavatt, 65. 
He is on death row for the 2001 murder of advertising executive Rob Andrew.

The victim's wife, Brenda Andrew, and Pavatt were lovers who met when they were 
Sunday school teachers. She also is on death row.

In a 2-1 decision in 2017, a panel of the appeals court ruled the circumstances 
of the shotgun-slaying did not qualify for the death penalty.

At issue is whether the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel. The 
majority Thursday concluded that issue "is not properly before us," reversing 
the earlier decision.

The decision Thursday paves the way for Pavatt to raise the issue again at the 
Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.

As police became suspicious of Pavatt and Brenda Andrew, they fled to Mexico 
with her children. The couple were arrested at the border when they re-entered 
the United States in 2002.

Jurors concluded that $800,000 of life insurance benefits was a motivation for 
the murder. Brenda Andrew began divorce proceedings a few months before Rob 
Andrew was murdered Nov. 20, 2001, at the Andrews' home.

(source: The Oklahoman)








USA:

Prosecutors: Tsarnaev got fair trial, does not deserve appeal on death 
sentence----Also reject importance of Waltham triple murder evidence



Federal prosecutors said today Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev does 
not deserve a new trial in his appeal, arguing, among other issues, that 
evidence surrounding a 2011 triple murder in Waltham was not relevant to 
whether he deserved a death sentence.

The brief, filed Thursday afternoon in response to Tsarnaev’s appeal, says in a 
heavily-redacted section that evidence surrounding the murder, in which his 
older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a suspect, “had little or no relevance to 
whether Tsarnaev deserved the death penalty.”

Prosecutors say the U.S. District Court appropriately denied Dzhokhar Tsarnaev 
access to the reports and recordings with Tamerlan’s friend, Ibragim Todashev, 
who implicated Tamerlan in the murders in an interview with FBI agents before 
he was shot and killed by one of the agents in 2013.

The 431 page brief, signed by William Glaser, U.S. Department of Justice 
Appellate Section attorney, comes in response to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s 1,126-page 
brief filed in January, and a supplemental brief provided by Tsarnaev’s lawyers 
earlier this month.

The court filing addresses 15 issues raised in the appeal, among them whether 
the U.S. District Court in Boston abused its discretion by denying Tsarnaev’s 
motions for a change of venue, whether testimony about the bombings’ effect on 
surviving victims violated a federal act, and if the death sentence should be 
vacated because he was 19 years old when he committed the crimes.

Prosecutors said it was not an error to apply the death penalty because the 
Supreme Court has held that the death penalty is permissible for those 18 and 
older at the time of their offense.

Also in the brief is a response to the contention that Tsarnaev is entitled to 
a hearing on his claim that a video of him buying a half gallon of milk at a 
Whole Foods in Cambridge after the bombing “was the fruit of his allegedly 
coerced confession.”

Prosecutors argue that the video in the case was harmless because there was 
overwhelming evidence showing Tsarnaev lacked remorse after the bombing.

Tsarnaev, 25, is currently in solitary confinement at the federal Supermax 
prison in Colorado since a jury and federal Magistrate Judge George O’Toole 
sentenced him to death in 2015.

(source: Boston Herald)