[Deathpenalty] death penalty news---N.C., FLA., WYO., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 6




NORTH CAROLINA:

Trial begins in prison murders



The trial of 1 of 4 inmates charged with 4 counts of 1st-degree murder in the 
October 2017 slaying deaths of 4 prison employees is scheduled to start Monday 
in Dare County Superior Court.

Mikel Brady will go on trial for causing the deaths at Pasquotank Correctional 
Institute of Correction Enterprises Manager Veronica “Ronnie” Darden, 50; 
corrections officers Justin Smith, 35, and Wendy Shannon, 49; and maintenance 
mechanic Geoffrey Howe, 31.

District Attorney Andrew Womble is seeking the death penalty against Brady and 
the 3 other inmates charged in the prison workers’ deaths: Wisezah Buckman, 
Seth Frazier and Jonathan Monk.

Prosecutors allege Brady and the 3 other inmates viciously assaulted the 4 
prison workers on Oct. 12, 2017 during their failed attempt to escape from PCI. 
Darden and Smith died from their injuries the day of the attack; Shannon and 
Howe died later from their injuries.

Womble said Friday that the death penalty will remain on the table even if 
Brady chooses to enter a guilty plea.

“I can’t stop them from coming in and pleading guilty to first-degree murder,” 
Womble said. “But that is not going to stop me from trying to impose the death 
penalty.”

The question of the penalty will go to the jury and “only the jury can decide 
that,” Womble said.

Although the trial is not being held in Pasquotank County, it is still taking 
place within the 1st Judicial District. Brady’s attorneys, who requested a 
change of venue, had asked that the trial be held outside of the 1st Judicial 
District.

Resident Superior Court Judge Jerry R. Tillett will preside over the trial.

Buckman will be the next of the inmate defendants to be tried after Brady. 
Womble said Friday that Buckman’s trial is scheduled for March.

At the time of the murders, Brady was serving a prison sentence for the 
attempted 1st-degree murder of a state trooper in Durham County.

Buckman was serving a sentence for 2nd-degree murder in Mecklenburg County. 
Monk was in prison serving a sentence for attempted 1st-degree murder in 
Cumberland County. Frazier was serving a sentence for 1st-degree burglary in 
Onslow County.

(source: dailyadvance.com)








FLORIDA:

Polk County's tie to the women of death row



In July, a Polk County jury unanimously agreed that Cheyanne Jessie should be 
executed for brutally killing her 6-year-old daughter, Meredith.

Should Circuit Judge Jalal Harb follow that recommendation, 29-year-old Jessie 
would become the first woman to be condemned to death for a Polk County murder, 
but she wouldn't be the 1st Polk County woman on Florida's death row.

That would be Virginia Larzelere.

Those who grew up with her in Lake Wales might not have recognized the name 
emblazoned across headlines nearly 30 years ago. To them, she was Gail Antley — 
one of William "PeeWee" Antley's 4 daughters and a 1970 graduate of Lake Wales 
High School.

But that was then.

Since 1993, she's been inmate #842556, the moniker assigned to her after a 
Volusia County jury found her guilty of masterminding the execution-style 
killing of her husband, Norman, 39, who was gunned down in the hallway of his 
Edgewater dental practice in March 1991. Prosecutors argued she wanted to cash 
in on his $2.1 million in life insurance. To this day, Larzelere maintains 
she's innocent.

Larzelere, now 66, spent 15 years on death row before the Florida Supreme Court 
overturned her death sentence in 2008 on grounds that her lawyer, the late Jack 
Wilkins of Bartow, failed to adequately prepare her case during her trial's 
sentencing phase. The state's high court sent the case back to Volusia County, 
and lawyers there agreed to a life sentence without presenting any testimony.

But those 15 years, spent in part in #2201, Quad 2, T Dorm at Lowell 
Correctional Institution near Ocala, remain burned in her memory.

"During my death row stay at Lowell, the entire compound was locked down 
anytime that I exited the cell," she said in a recent email to The Ledger, "and 
I was accompanied by six of the largest and meanest staff available. There were 
days without communication from anyone.

"The following people will peer into the cell window once a week: the warden, 
the chaplain, the colonel," she wrote. "A mental health specialist would come 
once a week to ask if you are suicidal or homicidal, and then tells you to do 
the best you can."

Larzelere said she's survived by immersing herself in her education, receiving 
her college degree in education and working with other women — 183 to date — 
who've received their high school equivalency diplomas.

"The sterling record I have is because I choose to live life in a manner that 
allows me to atone for all the years of my greedy, narcissistic, promiscuous 
ways," she wrote.

Through gain time and good behavior, she's scheduled for release in August 
2034. She'll be 81 and have served half her life behind bars.

At her trial in 1992, prosecutors accused her of soliciting her 18-year-old 
son, Jason, to don black clothing and a ski mask and kill his stepfather for 
$200,000. The gunman fired through a closed door in the dental office, spraying 
buckshot through the wood and into the dentist's chest. He died while being 
airlifted to the hospital.

The break in the case came in May 1991, two months after the shooting, when an 
18-year-old acquaintance of the Larzeleres called police with the location of 
the gun. He told them he'd encased it in concrete, at Virginia Larzelere's 
request, and dumped it in a creek about an hour north of Daytona, and that's 
where authorities found it, according to published reports.

Prosecutors gave him immunity in exchange for his testimony. In the meantime, 
investigators were discovering details about a troubled marriage and Virginia 
Larzelere's promiscuous past, including the suspicious circumstances of her 
first husband's death.

Larzelere was convicted in August 1992. 7 months later, a different jury 
acquitted her son on murder charges. 2 months after that, Larzelere was 
sentenced to die.

Like Larzelere, most of the women who once faced execution now are serving life 
sentences, according to state records.

Since 1926, judges across the state have sentenced 17 women to death. Juries 
found them guilty of killing their husbands, teir employers, people they were 
trying to scam and officers trying to arrest them.

2 of them were executed in 1998 and 2002 — Judy Buenoano, 54, known as the 
Black Widow, for poisoning her husband, and serial killer Aileen Wuornos, 46, 
for killing a Clearwater businessman who had picked her up along Interstate 75. 
Buenoaono's execution in 1998 marked the first time a woman had died in the 
state's electric chair. So far, it's been the last. Wuornos died by lethal 
injection.

3 condemned women remain there still, representing less than 1% of the 341 
inmates on death row as of Sept. 26. Among the rest, 5 were released decades 
ago, 2 died in prison and 5 are serving life sentences, prison records show.

Cheyanne Jessie of Lakeland would be the first on death row for killing her own 
child, if that's to be her fate. During her three-week trial in July, 
prosecutors alleged that she killed her daughter and her father because she saw 
them as impediments to her burgeoning relationship with Matthew Cody Munroe. 
She perceived that her father, Mark Weekly, was critical of Munroe, according 
to testimony, and Munroe had little patience with the bickering between 
Meredith and her mother.

According to trial testimony, Jessie shot each of them in the head, stuffed 
their bodies into separate plastic storage bins and hid them in a shed behind a 
neighbor's house along Drane Field Road, where her father lived.

Their bodies were found 2 weeks later, in early August 2015, after friends of 
her father told Jessie to report him missing or they would. She eventually 
confessed to killing them and hiding their bodies, according to trial 
testimony. Authorities found a multicolored blanket, pink stuffed dolphin and a 
bag containing 10 pennies with Meredith, who was wearing a pink dress and pink 
and black shirt.

Jurors deliberated over 2 days before convicting Jessie of 1st-degree murder 
and tampering with evidence. The same jurors recommended life for her father's 
murder, but death for Meredith's.

"The vote was actually 10 for life and two for death on Mark," juror Carol-Lee 
Gosline said after the trial. "We took into account that Mark had defensive 
wounds and, according to Cheyanne, they had an argument about Cheyanne wanting 
to give Meredith away — to him, to adoption — and he told her she was 'just 
like her mother.' He pushed her buttons with such a hateful remark, considering 
how abusive her mother was and how she had let others abuse her mentally, 
physically and sexually.

"But Meredith was asleep — innocent and peaceful," Gosline said, "in her pretty 
pink dress, and was stabbed in her neck 4 times and shot."

She said all the jurors questioned how Jessie could have carried out the 
killings by herself. No one else has been charged in connection with the 
murders.

For juror Tami Babb, the decision to recommend the death penalty for Meredith's 
murder came more easily than she expected.

"That little girl was so helpless and couldn't defend herself," she said. "I 
was always against the death penalty, but I'd never been in this position 
before. In this case, it fit the crime. I'm confident we made the right 
decision."

Jessie will be back in court Oct. 10, when lawyers for both sides will present 
additional testimony regarding sentencing for Meredith's murder. While Harb, 
the judge, must give great weight to the jury's recommendation, the final 
decision on sentencing lies with him.

(source: Associated Press)








WYOMING:

Wyoming Campaign to End the Death Penalty in 2020 to host film screening



Wyoming Campaign to End the Death Penalty in 2020 will host a film presentation 
of “Lindy Lou, Juror Number 2” at 6 p.m. Nov. 7 in the Cottonwood Room of the 
Laramie County Library, 2200 Pioneer Ave.

The film by Florent Vassault follows conservative Mississippi grandmother Lindy 
Lou, who, for 20 years, has lived with a feeling of moral unease. Committed to 
fulfilling a civic duty, she served with 11 other people on a jury that handed 
down the death penalty to a man convicted of a double homicide. An overwhelming 
sense of regret compels her to track down her fellow jurors and ask them to 
share their thoughts on capital punishment.

Refreshments will be served during the free film screening.

(source: Wyoming Tribune Eagle)








USA:

Suspects In Arkansas Pawn Shop Slaying Face Federal Charges



2 suspects in the fatal shooting of an Arkansas pawn shop owner have been 
indicted on federal murder and conspiracy charges.

An indictment handed down Wednesday charges 22-year-old Daryl Strickland of 
Pine Bluff and 22-year-old Rodney Henry of Camden in the November shooting 
death of 34-year-old Brandon McHan during an attempted robbery. Investigators 
have said McHan was killed and a clerk was wounded

during an exchange of gunfire in the pawnshop in Pine Bluff.

The indictment does not list attorneys who could speak on behalf of the 2 men, 
who could face the death penalty if convicted.

Court documents say Strickland and Henry were arrested in December when 
detectives investigating another robbery found a shell casing in the home where 
they lived that matched a shell casing found in the pawnshop

(source: Associated Press)