[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, ARIZ., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 24




OHIO:

Ohio Governor's Lethal Injection Comments Allowed in Lawsuit



A federal magistrate judge is allowing comments about the death penalty made by 
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to become part of a long-running lawsuit challenging 
Ohio's lethal injection process.

Lawyers for death row inmates asked for the inclusion of "numerous statements" 
by the Republican governor that he would not authorize executions using the 
state's current 3-drug method.

The lawyers argued the statements weren't barred by rules preventing the use of 
hearsay and that they were relevant since DeWine has said executions won't go 
forward for now.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Merz in Dayton on Monday ruled in favor of 
allowing DeWine's comments into the court case.

Executions have been on hold in Ohio while the prisons system looks for new 
supplies of lethal drugs.

(source: Associated Press)

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

The Parole Board's Clemency Process Is Changing



The changes the Parole Board is making when considering clemency for death row 
inmates will begin in January.

The Ohio Parole Board will get more information on the background of inmates. 
The inmate’s application for mercy, reports of child abuse, mental health and 
substance abuse history will all be given to parole board members early. Senior 
Federal Public Defender David Stebbins says they were getting just the inmate’s 
case record, disciplinary history and rehabilitation efforts on the day of the 
clemency hearing.

“This permits the board to have all of the positive reasons for clemency before 
them before they interview the client," Stebbins says.

Gov. Mike DeWine said he wanted changes after criticism that the board wasn’t 
transparent. Former State Sen Shirley Smith, who used to sit on the board, said 
the board lacked integrity and decency in the way it handled death penalty 
cases.

(source: statenews.org)








ARIZONA:

Death Row Inmates Challenge Post-Conviction Rules



Death row inmates are ill-served by the way states approve attorneys for 
post-conviction defense teams, 11 Arizona prisoners and the state’s Office of 
the Federal Public Defender claimed Monday in suing the Department of Justice.

At issue are federal rules governing how states provide death row inmates with 
adequate representation. The rules allow a quick process with little oversight, 
which gives inmates curtailed timelines for filings, no voice in rulemaking, 
and leaves them at the mercy of states, which can simply write a letter saying 
the process is fine, according to the 37-page complaint.

Once the Justice Department approves the states’ processes, the timeline for 
habeas corpus proceedings is shortened and judicial review of state judgments 
is curtailed, according to the complaint, which challenges the rules as 
substantively and procedurally deficient.

Considering the states’ process certifications as “orders,” not rules, shortens 
the length of time allowed to file some petitions; states do not have to 
adequately explain their process for certifying attorneys; the rulemaking 
process does not require meaningful public input; and the rules allow improper 
communication between state and federal officials, lead plaintiff Steve Boggs 
says.

Not requiring states to fully explain how they decide attorneys are qualified 
unfairly puts the burden on defendants to show that the process is inadequate, 
rather than requiring the states to show it was not — a clear violation of the 
intent of Congress, the complaint states.

“A state applying for certification must bear the burden of demonstrating that 
it meets the statute’s requirements, as Congress clearly intended, but the 
regulations improperly leave it to the public to demonstrate that the state 
does not,” the plaintiffs say.

For example, the Arizona attorney general submitted only a 3-page letter 
stating the process there is adequate, despite numerous public comments 
decrying the process, including from the plaintiffs, going unaddressed, the 
lawsuit says.

It takes specific aim at the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 
1996, Clinton-era legislation:

“At bottom, the Attorney General is free under the regulations to arbitrarily 
disregard relevant comments without explanation, thus depriving the public of 
its right to understand the basis for agency action affecting important legal 
rights and further frustrating a reviewing court’s ability to evaluate the 
Attorney General’s decisions,” the complaint states.

In short, the rules allow the U.S. attorney general far too much discretion, 
the plaintiffs say.

“The regulations create a procedurally and substantively inadequate procedure 
by which the Attorney General may certify the adequacy of a state’s mechanism 
for appointing counsel with little public input and few constraints on his 
discretion,” they say.

The Arizona federal defender’s office represents 77 indigent death-row 
prisoners in federal habeas or related proceedings, including 51 prisoners 
sentenced to death, according to the lawsuit.

The rules stem from a 2005 USA Patriot Act reauthorization that gave the U.S. 
attorney general the authority to determine whether states have adequate 
mechanisms to appoint and fund attorneys for indigent death-row inmates. Since 
then, with little public input and no required response to comments, the rules 
have been updated twice, the lawsuit says.

In 2007-08 and again from 2011-13, numerous interested parties, including the 
federal defenders office in Arizona, offered comments to the Justice 
Department, but the rules do not require Justice to respond, the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs are represented by Darren Teshima and other attorneys with 
Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe of San Francisco and the Office of the Federal 
Public Defender for the District of Arizona.

They ask the court to set aside the states’ certification processes and require 
them to address the deficiencies cited in the complaint.

(source: Courthouse News)








USA:

GOP Primary Challenger Bill Weld Accuses Trump of Treason, Raises Prospect of 
Death Penalty



Republican presidential primary challenger Bill Weld said Monday that President 
Trump committed treason by urging the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe 
Biden for corruption, and suggested that the president should receive the death 
penalty.

“Obviously canceling primaries undermines Democratic institutions and 
Democratic elections. But thats far from the deepest crime that the president 
has committed here,” Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, told MSNBC’s 
Joe Scarborough.

“He’s now acknowledged that in a single phone call, right after he suspended 
250 million dollars of military aid to Ukraine, he called up the president of 
Ukraine and pressed him eight times to investigate Joe Biden, who the president 
thinks is going to be running against him,” Weld continued. “Talk about 
pressuring a foreign country to interfere with and control a U.S. election. It 
couldn’t be clearer, and that’s not just undermining democratic institutions. 
That is treason. It’s treason and pure and simple and the penalty for treason 
under the U.S. code is death.”

President Trump urged Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate 
Biden and his son, Hunter, on 8 separate occasions during a July phone call, 
the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

Trump reportedly asked Zelensky to probe whether Biden used his influence as 
vice president to quash an investigation into a Ukrainian energy company, 
Burisma Holdings, which had recently hired Biden’s son, Hunter, to serve on its 
board of directors.

The call came ahead of the release of a $250 military aid package to the 
Ukraine, prompting speculation that Trump leveraged the offer of aid to coerce 
the opening of an investigation.

Biden did threaten withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine in 2014 unless a top government 
prosecutor, who was then investigating Burisma, was fired. But Biden maintains 
that his actions were unrelated to his son’s businesses and instead reflected 
the Obama administration’s opposition to that prosecutor.

(source: National Review)

************************ Feds: Tartaglione strangled one of his victims with 
zip tie----The former Briarcliff Manor cop accused in a quadruple homicide 
strangled the first victim with a zip tie, federal prosecutors allege in new 
court documents.



It was the 1st time prosecutors have publicly detailed how they suspect 
Nicholas Tartaglione killed Martin Luna at an Orange County bar on April 11, 
2016.

Previously they had alleged that Tartaglione lured Luna to the Likquid Lounge 
in Chester because he suspected Luna of stealing money from him in a drug deal. 
The unsuspecting Luna brought along a nephew, Miguel Luna; his niece's 
boyfriend, Urbano Santiago; and a family friend, Hector Gutierrez.

When the men arrived, all 4 were restrained by Tartaglione and unnamed 
co-conspirators. "(Tartaglione) then hit (Martin) Luna repeatedly and 
eventually put a plastic zip tie around Luna’s neck and pulled it tight, 
choking Luna, and ultimately killing him," Assistant U.S. Attorneys Maurene 
Comey and Jason Swergold said in the court papers.

Other victims shot

Tartaglione then allegedly transported the body to property he was renting in 
Otisville. His co-conspirators then brought Miguel Luna, Santiago and Gutierrez 
— still tied up — to the property, where each of them was shot in the head. 
Their bodies were buried on the property, and not discovered until Dec. 20, a 
day after Tartaglione's arrest.

Also for the 1st time publicly, prosecutors allege that Tartaglione shot 1 of 
the 3 men, although which one was not specified.

While autopsies revealed the fatal head wounds suffered by Miguel Luna, 
Santiago and Gutierrez, the Orange County medical examiner could not identify a 
cause of death for Martin Luna, indicating only that he was killed by 
"homicidal violence of undetermined etiology."

Tartaglione's lawyer, Bruce Barket, had no immediate comment on the 
prosecution's allegations.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Tartaglione, who is charged 
with conspiracy to sell cocaine, and kidnapping and murder in furtherance of 
the drug conspiracy. A trial date has not been set.

Tartaglione's statements at issue

The new revelations were made in a document opposing the defense motions to 
suppress Tartaglione's statements to state police investigators and cell tower 
data for phones belonging to Tartaglione and others linked to the case.

The defense relied on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that turning a 
victim's cell phone into a tracking device violates a defendant's 4th Amendment 
right against unreasonable searches.

But prosecutors had obtained a judge's permission for the tower records in the 
spring of 2016. That was based on existing law that allowed them to circumvent 
a search warrant for the cell records if they had "reasonable suspicion".

On Dec. 19, 2016, state police investigators working with the FBI pulled 
Tartaglione's wife over as she left the couple's home in Crawford. They used a 
ruse of investigating a road rage incident so that she would contact 
Tartaglione and he would come talk to them.

His lawyers claim that once they surrounded his car when he pulled up, he was 
in custody so should have been read his Miranda warnings against 
self-incrimination immediately. Prosecutors counter that Tartaglione was not 
surrounded and willingly spoke with the investigators — and accompanied them to 
the barracks — so was not in custody.

If U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas determines the initial questioning was 
custodial, they wrote, he should allow statements Tartaglione made 
spontaneously. One was when the ex-cop told the investigators it wasn't a road 
rage incident they wanted to ask him about, it was the missing Mexicans.

Tartaglione, who ran a farm for rescue horses and dogs, told investigators that 
Martin Luna was among the Mexican day laborers he had employed. He said he knew 
Martin Luna was involved in drug trafficking, because a car Tartaglione had 
sold him had a cut out tire commonly used to secrete money and drugs. He 
claimed Luna never came up with the money for the car so he took it back.

Tartaglione detailed how he had told a Chester detective that he knew the 
Mexicans, and had heard that the families believed two of them had left the 
country. Tartaglione had gone to headquarters to drop off a resume for 
part-time police work.

He expressed concern about the investigators making it publicly known that he 
knew the Mexicans, and that he employed illegal immigrants.

They told him they had no intention of doing so. Within an hour, he was 
arrested and on his way to federal court in White Plains.

Prosecutors insist there was no further questioning of Tartaglione once he had 
asked for a lawyer but that at some point on the trip Tartaglione, unprompted, 
blurted out "(expletive) Mexicans."

(source: The Journal News)