[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TENN., KY., ARIZ., ORE., USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 30




TENNESSEE:

Case against man accused of killing 8 in Sumner County bound over to Grand Jury



The man accused of killing 8 people in rural Tennessee was rocking back and 
forth in court as investigators described the grisly murder scenes and 
discovery of multiple bodies, including one victim who was found beheaded.

Michael Cummins is charged in the mass murder in Westmoreland near the end of 
April. A judge has bound over all counts of the case to a Grand Jury. But due 
to the large amount of evidence, the Grand Jury won't hear it until August.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said it's the deadliest homicide event in 
20 years and the death penalty could be an option in the case.

All eight victims died from blunt force head injuries, an arrest affidavit 
stated. The youngest victim was just 12 years old.

TBI identified the victims as:

David Carl Cummins, the father of Michael Cummins

Clara Jane Cummins, the mother of Michael Cummins

Charles Edward Hosale, the uncle of Michael Cummins

Rachel Dawn McGlothlin-Pee, efforts by the TBI to clarify her relationship to 
Cummins remain ongoing

Sapphire McGlothlin-Pee, Rachel’s 12-year-old daughter

Marsha Elizabeth Nuckols, Rachel’s mother

Shirley B. Fehrle, no known relationship to Cummins

Jim Dunn, whose head was found 25 yards from his body

Investigators took to the stand during Cummins' preliminary hearing, describing 
the disturbing murder scenes. One man, Jim Dunn, was found beheaded. An 
investigator did point out that it could have been removed by animal activity, 
maybe even rabbits. Members of the TBI spoke about the initial discovery of 4 
to 5 bodies, only to keep finding more.

Special agents started investigating Cummins and the Westmoreland murders on 
April 27, when authorities found multiple bodies inside a home on Charles Brown 
Road and at a second nearby scene on Luby Brown Road.

A TBI helicopter tracked suspect Cummins to a creek bed about a mile from the 
first scene and SWAT officers descended to the area. For reasons still under 
investigation, TBI said the situation escalated when officers came into contact 
with Cummins and one officer fired at the suspect, striking him. Cummins was 
transported for non-life threatening injuries.

Cummins has a criminal record and history of court-ordered mental illness 
evaluation.

Back in court last August, he was again given probation and this time ordered 
to attend domestic violence classes. It was just the next month that he tried 
to burn down his neighbor's mobile home by stuffing garbage between the 
insulation and the floorboards and setting it on fire.

He was released in January on probation, but at the time of the murders his 
parole officer had been preparing an arrest warrant for probation violations.

Earlier in a separate court room, Cummins was ordered to serve the remainder of 
a 10-year sentence for an assault and arson case from 2017 at a parole 
violation hearing. Cummins tried to light his neighbor's house on fire. That 
neighbor, Pamela Sanabria, says she feels that she would have been killed in 
his alleged rampage if not for having been in Kentucky visiting her daughter.

(source: WZTV news)








KENTUCKY:

Death penalty possible in murder case



4 Elizabethtown men recently arrested on robbery and murder charges could face 
the death penalty, according to Hardin County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney.

Tyler Lee Lawrence, 20, Elijah Dashon Barnett, 22, and Donyale Antoine Jones, 
27, were arrested Saturday, and Temorris Mandrette Davis Jr., 21, was arrested 
Tuesday by Radcliff police. All four are charged with murder in the May 22 
shooting death of Lashard Harrison, 25, of Vine Grove, behind a Radcliff 
apartment complex.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Shane Young said Tuesday the charges are eligible for 
the death penalty. He said the men are expected to have their cases presented 
before a Hardin County grand jury, possibly as soon as Thursday.

According to arrest citations, the men went to Radcliff with the intention of 
robbing Harrison of money they paid him for drugs.

According to arrest citations, the men admitted to setting up a “drug deal for 
a quantity of pills” and during the transaction, the men exchanged cash with 
Harrison for a number of pills.

“As Harrison turned to leave, Barnett and Jones shot Harrison multiple times 
causing his death,” the citation said. With Harrison shot, the men then 
retrieved the cash and fled in Jones’ vehicle, according to the citation.

Lawrence, Barnett and Jones appeared Tuesday morning in Hardin District Court 
where they entered not guilty pleas. They will appear at 9 a.m. June 7 in 
Hardin District Court unless they are indicted by a grand jury. In that case, 
their appearances will be changed to Hardin Circuit Court and a time and day 
will be scheduled.

Morris is scheduled to appear this morning for arraignment in Hardin District 
Court.

Radcliff Police Chief Jeff Cross said no further arrests are expected in the 
case.

All of the men are being held in lieu of $500,000 cash bonds in the Hardin 
County Detention Center.

Harrison, a 2012 graduate of North Hardin High School, was found dead in a 
parking lot behind apartments at 1508 Pin Oak Court in Radcliff and pronounced 
dead at the scene by the Hardin County Coroner’s Office.

All 4 men are charged with murder and 1st-degree robbery. Lawrence also is 
charged with tampering with physical evidence.

If found guilty of murder, the men face 20 to 50 years, or life, in prison, if 
convicted, or death, if a death penalty is sought in the case. 1st-degree 
robbery is a Class B felony punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison, if 
convicted, and tampering with physical evidence is a Class D felony punishable 
by 1 to 5 years in prison, if convicted.

The murder charge is death penalty eligible since there is an aggravating 
factor of robbery leading to the fatal shooting. Harrison was shot multiple 
times, according to the coroner’s office and witness accounts.

Should the Commonwealth seek the death penalty, it would be the 2nd death 
penalty case this year. The death penalty is being sought against Shadrach 
Peeler of Elizabethtown, who is charged with killing 2 people Feb. 21 at two 
different Elizabethtown locations, and shooting 2 others.

Should a death penalty be sought against the men, it would be the 2nd one in 
less than 3 years for homicides at Pin Oak Court apartments.

In September 2016, Norman Hall, 71, was killed inside his apartment. Aaron 
Pearson and Eloysia James-Ven­erable were charged. Pearson will stand trial 
next month, while James-Venerable has accepted a plea deal of 20 to 50 years or 
life in prison, with parole eligibility after 20 years, in exchange for 
truthful testimony at the trial.

(source: The News-Enterprise)








ARIZONA:

A prosecutor’s epiphany on capital punishment



On November 8, 2000, Rick Unklesbay watched as Don Miller was killed.

Unklesbay did not intervene.

“In fact,” as he explains, “I was the person most responsible for his death.”

As a veteran prosecutor in Tucson, Arizona, Unklesbay prosecuted a score of 
capital cases, winning death sentences against 16 defendants—including Miller, 
who indisputably was guilty of the murder of 18-year-old Jennifer Geuder, a 
single mother of a 6-month-old boy.

On the night of June 12, 1992, Geuder went to a movie with Joe Anthony Luna, 
the baby’s father, from whom she was seeking child support—a mere $50 monthly 
to offset the cost of diapers and formula. Geuder’s bullet-riddled body was 
found early the next morning by a jogger on the outskirts of Tucson. Police 
received a tip from a man who said Luna had enlisted him to take part in the 
murder and mentioned that Miller had agreed to participate.

Miller promptly confessed, saying that he and Luna each had shot Geuder with a 
.25-caliber pistol. Both men were charged with capital murder—but Luna, the 
more culpable of the two, pleaded guilty in exchange for a life sentence. 
Miller was tried, sentenced to death, and executed by lethal injection with 
Unklesbay among the witnesses.

One killer dies, while a worse one lives and may someday be released—an outcome 
that, for Unklesbay, exemplifies “the randomness inherent in capital 
punishment”—a grotesque incongruence that, he maintains, “should lead us to rid 
it from our statutes.”

In a just-published book, “Arbitrary Death: A Prosecutor’s Perspective on the 
Death Penalty” (Wheatmark, $12.95), Unklesbay describes the Geuder case and 
nine other capital cases he prosecuted over 35 years after joining the Pima 
County Attorney’s Office in 1981. Of the 16 defendants for whom Unklesbay won 
death sentences, only Miller and 1 other has been executed.

The lesson Unklesbay draws from his experience is that capital punishment is 
“arbitrary and unworkable”—surprising only in that it comes from a prosecutor 
who often pursued and won death penalties.

“Arbitrary Death” is a compelling, fast-moving little book (135 pages) that 
ought to be required reading by every prosecutor, every attorney general, every 
governor, and every legislator in the 30 U.S. states that still have death 
penalties on their books.

(source: injusticewatch.org)








OREGON:

Voters should be heard on death penalty



A bill before the state Legislature that would dramatically curtail the cases 
in which the death penalty could be applied has passed the state Senate and now 
heads for the House.

But in the House, the bill might well run into a major roadblock: Speaker of 
the House Tina Kotek has said in the past she believes such a major revision in 
Oregon capital punishment laws should go before the state's voters. She said 
this week that she would need to read the latest version of the measure, Senate 
Bill 1013, before making a final decision — but it certainly is true that the 
speaker has the power to stop a bill from advancing in the Legislature.

Here's a case where Kotek is right: This is something that the state's citizens 
deserve a chance to consider.

To be fair, Senate Bill 1013 is a well-crafted and clever bit of legislation. 
The bill redefines the crime of aggravated murder (the only crime in Oregon 
statutes that can be punished by death), so that it includes acts of terror 
that kill two or more people. The bill has been revised so that it includes two 
other instances in which a defendant could be sentenced to death: cases in 
which the victim was under the age of 14 or in which a defendant killed another 
inmate while serving time for a murder conviction.

Other offenses that currently qualify as aggravated murder under state law, 
such as killing someone during the course of a rape or robbery, would be 
reclassified as another type of murder, and the maximum punishment for those 
would be life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The proposed legislation also would change 1 of the 4 questions juries must 
decide when considering whether to impose a death sentence. Oregon jurors now 
must determine whether a person guilty of aggravated murder is at risk of being 
a danger in the future. The bill would remove that question, which is fine: 
It's an unfair and unscientific duty to ask jurors to tackle.

The bill passed the Senate on Tuesday on a largely party-line 18-9 vote. Among 
mid-valley legislators, Sen. Sara Gelser, a Democrat, voted in favor of the 
measure; Sen. Fred Girod, a Republican, voted against it.

For a bill that has drawn a measure of attention this session, the floor debate 
in the Senate on Tuesday was remarkably restrained: Only Sen. Floyd Prozanski, 
the influential Eugene Democrat who's led the charge on the bill, spoke.

The main argument opponents have raised against the bill — and the very point 
that Kotek is pondering — is that such a major change to state law on capital 
punishment should be referred to voters.

And that's what the Legislature should do.

The verdict of Oregon voters over the last century on capital punishment has 
been mixed: Capital punishment was outlawed by voters in 1914 and then 
reenacted in 1978. 3 years later, the state Supreme Court ruled that the death 
penalty was unconstitutional, paving the way for a 1984 initiative in which 
voters reaffirmed capital punishment.

Since then, though, the topic has been rarely revisited in Oregon. After 
then-Gov. John Kitzhaber imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in 2011, he 
made a halfhearted effort to goad the Legislature into action, but the proposal 
didn't gain any traction. Gov. Kate Brown has said that she plans to continue 
the moratorium, but hasn't taken much of an active role on the issue.

Oregon hasn't executed a prisoner since May 1997; the state has 32 men and 1 
woman on death row.

It's very possible that the opinions of Oregonians have changed since that 1984 
initiative, as the national debate over the death penalty has taken intriguing 
twists and turns in the 35 years since then. But there's only one way to find 
out for sure. The Legislature should let voters decide.

(source: Editorial, Lebanon Express)








USA:

In death do they part—SCOTUS justices show divisions over capital cases



Some of the court’s most interesting actions this term have occurred not in 
decisions published after briefing and oral arguments, but in orders in death 
penalty cases concerning whether to stay executions.

There has been an ongoing series of exchanges among the justices that reflect 
their deep divisions regarding capital punishment and the more general 
ideological schism in a court that is clearly split between five conservative 
and four liberal justices.

Dunn v. Ray

On Feb. 7, in a 5-4 ruling, the court reversed the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. 
Circuit Court of Appeal’s stay of an execution in Dunn v. Ray. Domineque Ray, a 
Muslim, wanted to have his clergy member, an imam, with him at the time of the 
execution. Although Alabama would allow a Christian clergy member to be present 
at an execution, it refused Ray’s request.

The 11th Circuit concluded that there was a substantial likelihood that the 
prison’s policy violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and stayed 
Ray’s execution so it could consider his claim on its merits.

The court reversed, and in a brief order stated: “Because Ray waited until Jan. 
28, 2019, to seek relief, we grant the state’s application to vacate the stay 
entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.”

Justice Elena Kagan—joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer 
and Sonia Sotomayor—wrote a strong dissent. She explained that the clearest 
command of the Establishment Clause is that the government cannot discriminate 
among religious faiths. Alabama was doing exactly that by allowing a Christian, 
but not a Muslim or Jewish condemned individual to have a clergy member at the 
execution.

Kagan expressly disagreed with the majority that Ray had waited too long to 
file his objection, explaining “there is no reason Ray should have known, prior 
to Jan. 23, that his imam would be granted less access than the Christian 
chaplain to the execution chamber.” She also stressed that the Court of Appeals 
stay of the execution could be overturned only for abuse of discretion and that 
standard was not met.

Murphy v. Collier

About 6 weeks later, on March 28, the court granted a stay of execution to 
Patrick Henry Murphy, a Buddhist who objected to Texas putting him to death 
without a clergy member of his faith being present. In a brief order, the court 
said that “the state may not carry out Murphy’s execution … unless the state 
permits Murphy’s Buddhist spiritual adviser or another Buddhist reverend of the 
state’s choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the 
execution.”

It was stated that Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented, 
though they did not write an opinion at that time. Justice Brett Kavanaugh 
wrote an opinion concurring in the grant of the application for the stay. He 
stressed that the state was engaged in impermissible discrimination based on 
religion: “What the state may not do, in my view, is allow Christian or Muslim 
inmates but not Buddhist inmates to have a religious adviser of their religion 
in the execution room.”

Can this be reconciled with what happened in Dunn v. Ray? In a footnote, 
Kavanaugh simply said: “I conclude that Murphy made his request to the state in 
a sufficiently timely manner, one month before the scheduled execution.” This 
seems to indicate that at least for Kavanaugh there is a new principle of 
timeliness that is being created, though not defined by the court.

Bucklew v. Precythe

A few days later, on April 1, the court, after briefing and oral argument, 
decided Bucklew v. Precythe. Russell Bucklew, who had been sentenced to death, 
argued that the method of lethal injection used by Missouri would cause him 
great pain and suffering because he suffered from a medical condition, 
cavernous hemangioma, which causes vascular tumors to grow in his head, neck 
and throat.

He contended that the protocol for lethal injection could cause these to 
rupture and for him to then suffocate on his own blood.

The court split along ideological lines, 5-4, and ruled against Bucklew. 
Gorsuch wrote for the majority. He said that the test for whether a method of 
execution “is whether the state’s chosen method of execution cruelly superadds 
pain to the death sentence, a prisoner must show a feasible and readily 
implemented alternative method of execution that would significantly reduce a 
substantial risk of severe pain and that the state has refused to adopt without 
a legitimate penological reason.”

The court said that Bucklew failed to meet this burden. The court also 
expressed disdain for late attempts to halt executions and said: “[l]ast-minute 
stays should be the extreme exception.”

Breyer wrote for the 4 dissenters and strongly objected to allowing an 
execution where there was a substantial risk of serious pain. In his dissent, 
he went back to Dunn v. Ray, and in a paragraph about that ruling declared: “It 
might be possible to end delays by limiting constitutional protections for 
prisoners on death row. But to do so would require us to pay too high a 
constitutional price.”

Toward the end of his dissenting opinion, Breyer left little doubt that there 
are four votes on the court to declare the death penalty unconstitutional: “And 
it may be that, as our Nation comes to place ever greater importance upon 
ensuring that we accurately identify, through procedurally fair methods, those 
who may lawfully be put to death, there simply is no constitutional way to 
implement the death penalty.”

Sotomayor wrote a separate dissent objecting to the majority’s discussion of 
“last minute stays” of executions. She said that the majority’s statement 
“could be read to intimate that late-occurring stay requests from capital 
prisoners should be reviewed with an especially jaundiced eye. Were those 
comments to be mistaken for a new governing standard, they would effect a 
radical reinvention of established law and the judicial role.”

All of this prompted a response in a footnote in Gorusch’s majority opinion 
defending the earlier ruling in Dunn v. Ray. Speaking of that case, Gorsuch 
stated: “Yet although he had been on death row since 1999, and the state had 
set a date for his execution on Nov. 6, 2018, he waited until Jan. 23, 
2019—just 15 days before the execution—to ask for clarification. He then 
brought a claim 10 days before the execution and sought an indefinite stay. 
This delay implicated the ‘strong equitable presumption’ that no stay should be 
granted.”

It is obviously unusual for the court in one case to be discussing another from 
a couple of months earlier. But the story doesn’t stop there.

Murphy v. Collier again

On May 13, the court issued additional opinions in Murphy v. Collier. Justice 
Samuel A. Alito wrote an opinion dissenting from the grant of the stay which 
had occurred on March 28. Interestingly, he had not been listed as a dissenter 
when the stay was granted. Alito described the stay as “seriously wrong” and 
spoke of the “strong equitable presumption against the grant of such relief 
when the applicant unreasonably delayed in raising the underlying claims.” 
Alito then went on to discuss Dunn v. Ray and defended the court’s refusal to 
allow a “last minute” stay of execution and said that “Murphy’s stay 
application, like Ray’s, should have been denied.”

This provoked an opinion from Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice John G. 
Roberts Jr., also issued on May 13. Kavanaugh noted that the stay of execution 
in Murphy v. Collier caused Texas to change its policy to allow all being put 
to death by the state to have a clergy of member of their religion present at 
an execution and thus “the Court’s stay facilitated the prompt resolution of a 
significant religious equality problem with the state’s execution protocol.”

Kavanaugh then went on to explain why he saw Dunn v. Ray as different from 
Murphy v. Collier. He said that Dunn v. Ray had not been presented as an “equal 
treatment case” and besides, that it was a petition filed five days before the 
execution while in Murphy v. Collier it was presented 30 days before the 
execution.

Lessons to learn

All of this is unusual: a recent ruling being argued over in other cases, 
justices releasing opinions weeks after the initial ruling, the split among the 
conservative justices. What might be learned from all of this?

The 5 conservative justices are expressing strong hostility to what they 
perceive as “last minute” efforts to stop executions. The liberal justices see 
this as creating new, unjustified barriers to enforcing the Constitution. This 
disagreement is likely to manifest itself repeatedly in death penalty cases.

The deeper division is over capital punishment. There are 4 justices who 
believe that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. But the 
majority clearly sees it as constitutional and wants to lessen judicial 
obstacles to its implementation. And given the stakes, truly life and death, 
the justices on both sides are writing with a passion that is relatively 
unusual for Supreme Court opinions.

(source: Erwin Chemerinsky, ABA Journal)