FRANCES NEWTON: 1965-2005
in Peace at last.
Into Paradise May the Angels Lead You.......

By Gloria Rubac
Houston

There are times when I am truly angered, embarrassed, sickened and left feeling numb by the actions of my country. The execution of Frances Newton brings all of these and many more emotions that stun me to the very core of my being.

Published Sep 15, 2005 1:47 AM
Sept. 14-The State of Texas has carried out the horrific execution of Frances Newton, totally ignoring the national and international campaign to save her life. Responsibility for this modern-day lynching also rests with the Supreme Court, which turned down her appeal for a new trial.



Frances Newton
Sept. 13—A state founded on land stolen from the people of Mexico, and one that condoned the enslavement of African people, is hours from committing another racist crime: the legal lynching of Frances Newton.

Despite having an infamously incompetent attorney appointed to “defend” her, and despite having the discredited Houston Police Crime Lab analyze the evidence in the case, and despite an admission on camera by Harris County Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson that another gun had been found at the crime scene—something denied by the DA and the cops for 18 years—Frances Elaine Newton may become the first Black woman legally executed in Texas since an enslaved African woman named Lucy was hung in Galveston in 1853.

Ever since Newton found her husband and two children murdered in their home on April 7, 1987, she has ada mantly proclaimed her innocence.

Newton’s attorney was Ron Mock, who became notorious for not putting up any defense at all. When Mock was Shaka Sankofa’s attorney, he actually slept during part of the trial, making it easier for the state to execute this young African American on June 22, 2000.

Today, U.S. Congressperson Shelia Jackson Lee (D-Texas) held a media conference here asking Texas Gov. Rick Perry to stop Newton’s execution.

Even the Austin American Statesman, the daily paper in the Texas capital, today editorialized, “We’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: Race, ethnicity, income and geography are all factors in the imposition of death sentences. As long as Texas has a death penalty, capital defendants should have access to competent legal counsel. Newton didn’t get that. For that reason, she should be spared.”

In the week leading up to Newton’s scheduled execution, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark joined Michael Greco, president of the American Bar Associ ation; entertainer and activist Dick Gregory; and Amnesty International in asking that Newton be given a stay and a review of new evidence.

On Sept. 12, the Committee to Free Frances Newton joined with anti-war activists outside the Houston Astro dome to participate in the National Day of Outrage about the Katrina tragedy.

Hundreds of people from New Orleans passed by. Many stopped to read fliers and some joined in the protest.

Two young people who had lost everything in the hurricane, Thea Elder and Nicholas Miller, leaf leted and spoke on the microphone for three hours.

The Committee to Free Frances Newton, along with the National Black United Front, Houston Chap ter; the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense; the Uni versity of Houston NAACP; KPFT-Pacifica Radio in Houston; and many other organizations and individuals have worked around the clock for months to stop this execution.

Many new activists have been drawn into supporting Newton.

In the final hours, there are plans for civil disobedience at the governor’s office in Austin and a protest in Huntsville outside of the death house. There will be protests in every major Texas city if the execution is carried out.

How Do You Sleep at Night?

Frances Newton and the Prospects for a New Abolitionism
By JUSTIN E.H. SMITH

As I write this, Frances Newton is waiting to be executed in a prison south of Huntsville, Texas, having seen her most recent request for clemency denied by the Supreme Court. If the sentence is carried out, she will be the third woman executed in the state since the Civil War, and the first black woman. By the time anyone has a chance to read this, any call I might make for letters to the relevant power-holders may very well be too late. If she is still alive, by all means, write to them. Overload their inboxes. Call them potential murderers. But if she is dead, perhaps her death might serve as an occasion for those of us who find the death penalty abhorrent and disgraceful to take stock of how miserably we are losing this battle, and to contemplate the efficacy of our strategy.

As the New York Times reports, the bodies of Newton's husband and children were discovered on April 7, 1987. Her husband had been shot in the head, the two children in the chest, all with a .25-caliber pistol. The police believe they have conclusive evidence that the murder weapon can be traced back to Newton. On top of this, there is plenty of damning circumstantial evidence. Three weeks before the slayings, Newton took out $50,000 life insurance policies on herself, her husband and her daughter. As the Times reports, she named herself as beneficiary and said she signed her husband's name to prevent him from discovering she had set aside money to pay for the premiums.

So much for the details. What is Newton's position? "I know I did not murder my kids and my family," she told The Associated Press in a death row interview. "It's frustrating ... nobody's had to answer for that." Is she telling the truth? I have no idea. What is certain, though, is that any further discussion of the veracity of her claim to innocence will be of no use to her after her death.

Nature has seen to it that no legal case shall be held open indefinitely. Many a Nazi has managed to die of old age before justice caught up with him. John Demjanjuk was too old and feeble to really be susceptible to any effective punishment when it was discovered he had lied on his citizenship application about his stint as a camp guard. Short of the limits imposed by cruel time, the punisher of all, it seems reasonable that justice should proceed as does science: every verdict shall be subject to revision on the basis of disconfirming evidence. Capital punishment is not only morally objectionable, but, in a justice system that pretends to link punishment to proof of guilt, is epistemologically sketchy as well.

Exactly a month ago, the only woman ever to be executed in Georgia was granted an official pardon, sixty years after her death. One would think that this could have served as a lesson to the executioners down the road in Huntsville. There is something about post-mortem pardons that is very nearly as shameful as the punishment the pardonners acknowledge to have been wrongly meted out, at least for those of us who believe that the only real goods are those that come to one between the horizons of birth and death. And such belated reckoning can't but raise the question: if the state can wrongly kill someone, and then get away with a meek 'sorry', why can't the murderer do so as well?

But what if she is guilty? Many on death row of course are. We abolitionists, however, must never lose sight of the abhorrence of the death penalty as such, not of a death penalty that occasionally misfires and wrongfully executes the innocent, as may or may not be the case of Frances Newton. For the problem is not just that the system, when it executes innocents, tends to cull these innocents from a certain social class, but also that in the application of the penalty to true killers, those from this same class are given priority treatment.

Abolitionism is in a delicate spot, since pragmatically it seems best to work on a case-by-case basis, and the most promising cases are the ones where guilt is in question. And all the better if the death row inmate is mentally handicapped. Let us proceed pragmatically, but never lose sight of our principled opposition to execution tout court. Let us also not neglect the cases of confessed murderers. For here, too, the state is moving outside of its domain of competence in deciding when and how, and at whose hands, the murderer will die. The state uses tax revenue to pay the salaries of people who are charged with the task of soberly and methodically strapping down human beings, physically in the prime of life, injecting poison into them, and depriving them of this life. This is wrong in a way that is fundamentally different from the wrongness of the murders that precipitate executions. It is a moral stain on all of us.

As an addendum to this article, I note that, as far as Frances Newton is concerned, it is indeed too little too late. She was executed last night. I would love to hear from anyone in Texas who can honestly say they feel any better, or will sleep any easier, now that this woman has been discarded.

Justin Smith is a professor of philosophy and writer living in Montreal. He can be reached at: justismi@alcor.concordia.ca

The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege

By Robert Jensen
Sep 14, 2005, 20:55

Editor's Note: This essay is excerpted from The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege, forthcoming from City Lights, September 2005.

The United States is a white country. By that I don't just mean that the majority of its citizens are white, though they are (for now but not forever). What makes the United States white is not the fact that most Americans are white but the assumption -- especially by people with power -- that American equals white. Those people don't say it outright. It comes out in subtle ways. Or, sometimes, in ways not so subtle.

Here's an example: I'm in line at a store, unavoidably eavesdropping on two white men in front of me, as one tells the other about a construction job he was on. He says: "There was this guy and three Mexicans standing next to the truck." From other things he said, it was clear that "this guy" was Anglo, white, American. It also was clear from the conversation that this man had not spoken to the "three Mexicans" and had no way of knowing whether they were Mexicans or U.S. citizens of Mexican heritage.

It didn't matter. The "guy" was the default setting for American: Anglo, white. The "three Mexicans" were not Anglo, not white, and therefore not American. It wasn't "four guys standing by a truck." It was "a guy and three Mexicans." The race and/or ethnicity of the four men were irrelevant to the story he was telling. But the storyteller had to mark it. It was important that "the guy" not be confused with "the three Mexicans."

Here's another example, from the Rose Garden. At a 2004 news conference outside the White House, President George W. Bush explained that he believed democracy would come to Iraq over time:


"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."

It appears the president intended the phrase "people whose skin color may not be the same as ours" to mean people who are not from the United States. That skin color he refers to that is "ours," he makes it clear, is white. Those people not from the United States are "a different color than white." So, white is the skin color of the United States. That means those whose skin is not white but are citizens of the United States are ...? What are they? Are they members in good standing in the nation, even if "their skin color may not be the same as ours"?

This is not simply making fun of a president who sometimes mangles the English language. This time he didn't misspeak, and there's nothing funny about it. He did seem to get confused when he moved from talking about skin color to religion (does he think there are no white Muslims?), but it seems clear that he intended to say that brown people -- Iraqis, Arabs, Muslims, people from the Middle East, whatever the category in his mind -- can govern themselves, even though they don't look like us. And "us" is clearly white. In making this magnanimous proclamation of faith in the capacities of people in other parts of the world, in proclaiming his belief in their ability to govern themselves, he made one thing clear: The United States is white. Or, more specifically, being a real "American" is being white. So, what do we do with citizens of the United States who aren't white?

That's the question for which this country has never quite found an answer: What do white "Americans" do with those who share the country but aren't white? What do we do with peoples we once tried to exterminate? People we once enslaved? People we imported for labor and used like animals to build railroads? People we still systematically exploit as low-wage labor? All those people -- indigenous, African, Asian, Latino -- can obtain the legal rights of citizenship. That's a significant political achievement in some respects, and that popular movements that forced the powerful to give people those rights give us the most inspiring stories in U.S. history.

The degree to which many white people in one generation dramatically shifted their worldview to see people they once considered to be subhuman as political equals is not trivial, no matter how deep the problems of white supremacy we still live with.In many comparable societies, problems of racism are as ugly, if not uglier, than in the United States. If you doubt that, ask a Turk what it is like to live in Germany, an Algerian what it's like to live in France, a black person what it's like to live in Japan. We can acknowledge the gains made in the United States -- always understanding those gains came because non-white people, with some white allies, forced society to change -- while still acknowledging the severity of the problem that remains.

But it doesn't answer the question: What do white "Americans" do with those who share the country but aren't white?

We can pretend that we have reached "the end of racism" and continue to ignore the question. But that's just plain stupid. We can acknowledge that racism still exists and celebrate diversity, but avoid the political, economic, and social consequences of white supremacy. But, frankly, that's just as stupid. The fact is that most of the white population of the United States has never really known what to do with those who aren't white. Let me suggest a different approach.

Let's go back to the question that W.E.B. Du Bois said he knew was on the minds of white people. In the opening of his 1903 classic, The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois wrote that the real question whites wanted to ask him, but were afraid to, was: "How does it feel to be a problem?" Du Bois was identifying a burden that blacks carried -- being seen by the dominant society not as people but as a problem people, as a people who posed a problem for the rest of society. Du Bois was right to identify "the color line" as the problem of the 20th century. Now, in the 21st century, it is time for whites to self-consciously reverse the direction of that question at heart of color. It's time for white people to fully acknowledge that in the racial arena, we are the problem. We have to ask ourselves: How does it feel to be the problem?

The simple answer: Not very good.

That is the new White People's Burden, to understand that we are the problem, come to terms with what that really means, and act based on that understanding. Our burden is to do something that doesn't seem to come natural to people in positions of unearned power and privilege: Look in the mirror honestly and concede that we live in an unjust society and have no right to some of what we have. We should not affirm ourselves. We should negate our whiteness. Strip ourselves of the illusion that we are special because we are white. Steel ourselves so that we can walk in the world fully conscious and try to see what is usually invisible to us white people. We should learn to ask ourselves, "How does it feel to be the problem?"

Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

http://www.alternet.org/story/24745/

SUPREME COURT CONFIRMATION HEARINGS - DP/INNOCENCE DISCUSSION - TRANSCRIPT

Thanks to Scott Taylor for sending this:

Here's an excerpt from this morning's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Exchange is between Roberts and Sen. Leahy...

LEAHY: And usually, far more than the Congress or anybody else, it's been the media that's exposed when this has been overdone, when mistakes or violations are done. And I would hope that you would be committed to protecting just as much as possible access, rather than the other way around. Let me go to an issue we discussed yesterday -- or others did--the issue of capital punishment.

We've held in this committee a number of hearings that show some real flaws in the administration of capital punishment: you know, sleeping lawyers, drunk lawyers, lawyers who didn't bother even to investigate or didn't have the funds to do it.

More than 100 death- row inmates have been exonerated; some, though, who have spent years on death row under the most horrible conditions for a crime they never committed.

I think Senator Durbin mentioned a situation out in Illinois where a Republican governor had to, and did -- courageously I felt -- extend clemency to a whole lot of people who had been on death row.

Some say -- and I think you have even said this -- when they're exonerated, it shows the system works.

Well, let me tell you about the system in that case. One of the people is Anthony Porter: spent 16 years on death row. He was within two days of being executed.

The system didn't work on behalf of the government doing. A bunch of kids from Northwestern University, who had taken as an elective course a course on journalism, and the teacher said, Why don't you look into a couple of these? and these kids went out and did it.

The kids dug up the information that was there available to the police, available to the prosecutor, available to the defense. Nobody dug up.


They found it, and within two days of his execution, the state's attorney dropped the case. They got somebody else to confess.

You said two years ago -- and I remember being at that hearing -- you said that, on the startling number of innocent men sentenced to death who are later exonerated, you responded somehow showed the system worked in exonerating them.

I worry about that statement, I really do.

It bothered me. You know, I voted for you for the circuit court, and there was a split vote in our party. But that one really bothered me, that statement. I found it almost mechanical, and I'll tell you why.

When we have people say innocent people who have been freed after years on death row shows the system was working, it doesn't. I think Sandra Day O'Connor said two years ago, If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed. If that's the case, the system is not working.

In Herrera, we've discussed that. The court grappled with it and didn't ultimately decide: Does the Constitution permit the execution of a person who is innocent?

And as principal deputy solicitor general, you co-authored the amicus brief for the U.S. in the Herrera case. You say the claim of actual innocence does not state a ground for federal habeas.

Actually, you said, quote, Does the Constitution require the prisoner have the right to seek judicial review of a claim of newly discovered evidence instead of being required to seek relief in the clemency process?

In our view, the Constitution does not guarantee the prisoner such a right.

So let me ask you this, without going to the facts of Herrera: Is it your current personal view the death row inmate who can prove his innocence has no constitutional right to do so before a court before he's executed?

ROBERTS: Well, Senator, this is the basis of the disagreement in Herrera.
Herrera is not a case about actual innocence. It's a question of whether you are entitled to bring a new claim.

LEAHY: Well, listen to my question. To the death row inmate who can prove he is innocent, do they have no constitutional right to do so in a court of law before they are executed?

ROBERTS: Well, prove his innocence, the issue arises before you get to the question of proof. And the question is: Do you allow someone who has raised several claims over the years to suddenly say at the last minute that somebody who just died was the person who committed the murder?

And does that mean you start the trial all over again simply on the basis of that last-minute claim or do you require more of a showing at that stage? That's what Herrera was about.

Now I don't think, of course, that anybody who is innocent should suffer as a result of a false conviction. If they have been falsely convicted and they are innocent, they shouldn't be in prison, let alone executed. But the issue...

LEAHY: Does the Constitution permit the execution of an innocent person?

ROBERTS: I would think not. But the question is never: Do you allow the execution of an innocent person? The question is: Do you allow particular claimants to raise different claims, fourth or fifth or sixth time to say at the last minute that somebody who just died was actually the person who committed the murder and let's have a new trial?
Or do you take into account the proceedings that have already gone on?

LEAHY: I'm looking for broad principles here. You said -- let me read it again -- does the Constitution require that a prisoner have the right to seek judicial review of a claim of newly discovered evidence instead of being required to seek relief in the clemency process?

In our view, the Constitution does not guarantee the prisoner such a right.

Is that your view today?

ROBERTS: Well, that's what the court held in Herrera?

LEAHY: I know. Is that your view today?

ROBERTS: Well, I'm not in the position to comment on the correctness or incorrectness of particular court decisions. That's the court's precedent in Herrera. It agreed with the administration position, which was not that innocent people should be subject to imprisonment or execution.

LEAHY: That's a position you took. The Supreme Court's going to revisit this issue in House v. Bell. Because you stated a position on that, does that require you to recuse yourself in the House v. Bell?

ROBERTS: No, because the position was stated in a brief filed on behalf of the administration. And we've talked yesterday about the established principle that lawyers do not subscribe as a personal matter to the views they present on behalf of clients.

LEAHY: Well, in this case, the client's the United States. I mean, you're stating the position, sort of the -- what do they call it? The 10th justice?

ROBERTS: Well, I was the deputy solicitor general on the brief. I didn't argue the case. The solicitor general was the counsel of record in the case. But the position presented in the brief as an advocate is not necessarily the position of every lawyer on the brief.

LEAHY: I think you were more than just a lawyer on the brief. You were one of the most sought after jobs, picked because of your position. I was very impressed when I talked with you about your use of Latin, for example, and French.

And I'm always impressed with somebody with that facility. There is a Latin phrase. And this is not a (inaudible). I'll translate it: (SPEAKING IN LATIN). He who acts through another acts for himself. And that's not the case in Herrera?

ROBERTS: He who acts for another acts for himself? Well, it's the client acting through the lawyer and it's the client who is acting for themselves...

LEAHY: You are the client in this case when you are -- the solicitor general is the client, in effect.

ROBERTS: No, Senator, I disagree with that. The solicitor general represents the interest of the United States and those positions represent that client's position. And in the Herrera case, again, it was the solicitor general who was responsible for the position that was advanced.

I'm not suggesting in any way that I disagree with it or agree with it.

I'm just saying that it is a basic principle in our system that lawyers represent clients and you do not ascribe the position of the client to the lawyer.

It's a position that goes back to John Adams and the Revolution.

LEAHY: Let me ask you this, then. Let me ask you something that couldn't be
ascribed to a justice of the Supreme Court. It's something that both the chairman and I have talked a lot about.

And that goes into some of the mechanics. And if you will let me take a moment, you understand these but, for the audience, the so- called rule of four: It takes only four justices to grant cert, but it takes five to grant a stay of execution.

Usually the courtesy is that, if you get four, a fifth one will sign on. That has not always been followed of late. Of course, we are dealing with the life or death issue. Senator Specter called it bizarre and unacceptable and sent in legislation to change it.

How do you feel if you were chief, if you had four other justices now voting for a stay of execution? Do you feel, as chief, you should do the courtesy of the rule of five and kick in the fifth one?

ROBERTS: It's an issue that I'm familiar with. I do know it arose. And I thought the common practice -- the current practice -- was that, if there are four votes to grant cert, that the court would grant the stay even though that does require the fifth vote, so that you don't have a situation..

LEAHY: It usually occurred -- yes, but that's because one more says, OK we've got four. We will put somebody else's name on here.

ROBERTS: Right.

LEAHY: But that hasn't been followed all the time recently. It usually was. And that's why both Senator Specter and I have raised concern.

Do you feel the earlier practice of once you have four...

(CROSSTALK)

ROBERTS: I think that practice makes a lot of sense. I don't want to commit to pursue a particular practice in an area that I'll obviously have to look at in the future. But it obviously makes great sense that, if you have four to grant and that's the rule, that you will consider an issue if there are four to grant; you don't want to moot the case by not staying the sentence.

LEAHY: Right. And I appreciate that, because I know we find a lot of cases where they are perfectly willing to grant cert on monetary damages, but here it's kind of get it right. It doesn't make much difference with an appeal after the execution. You wrote a memo regarding -- in fact, in '83, to the White House lawyer -- you wrote a memo regarding proposals by then Chief Justice Warren Burger to reduce the Supreme Court's case load.

In that memo you volunteered the following: If the justices truly think they're overlooked, the cure lies close at hand. For example, giving coherence to Fourth Amendment jurisprudence by adopting the good faith standard and advocating the role of fourth or fifth guesser in death-penalty cases would eliminate about a half dozen argued cases from the court's docket each term.

Are you saying that judges are just too busy to pay attention to death cases?

ROBERTS: No, Senator.

LEAHY: What are you saying. How do you feel today? That was '83. How do you feel now, 22 years later?

ROBERTS: Well, in '83, of course, they were hearing about 150 case as year. They hear about half that now. Again, I don't want to prejudge questions or even be presumptuous to look down the road, but it seems to me that there's the capability there to hear more cases today, not fewer.

And I'm sure there are reasons for the reduction in the case load that I'm not familiar with that I might become more familiar with, but they handled twice as many cases 20 years ago than they do today, and I think the capability to address more issues is there in the court.

LEAHY: My time is up, but I think you'll find both the chairman and ranking
member of this committee believe they could handle more.

Thank you, Judge.

ROBERTS: Thank you, Senator.

SPECTER: Thank you, Senator Leahy.

The Bible and the Death Penalty: An Interview with Dale S. Recinella

Dale S. Recinella left his law firm to become a lay Catholic chaplain to condemned prisoners in the Bible Belt. When he realized good Christians were supporting the death penalty because they thought it was in the Bible, he began to research the issue. The results were surprising.

By William Bole

For Dale S. Recinella, death row is a family affair. Since walking away from a high-powered law firm in the late 1990s, the former attorney has been going cell to cell as a volunteer, lay Catholic chaplain to condemned prisoners in Florida. His wife, Susan, a clinical psychologist, ministers to families of prisoners awaiting execution, while their five children have corresponded with those inmates and visited others. The Recinellas also serve as a "Christian mentoring family" to a convicted killer in jail for life. They comfort the families of murder victims as well.

Living deep in the Bible Belt, near Florida's border with Georgia, Recinella decided to undertake what he describes as a journey of research into the supposed biblical underpinnings of capital punishment. The result is his book, The Biblical Truth About America's Death Penalty (Northeastern University Press, 2004). He spoke with me about his journeys into the death chambers, and why neither the Bible nor the Church offers moral support for the death penalty as carried out in the United States.

WILLIAM BOLE: Did you always have strong feelings against the death penalty?

DALE S. RECINELLA: No. In fact, if you had come to me in 1985 when I was a partner in a major law firm, I would have told you that I support the death penalty. And the depth of my analysis was, "It says 'eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth' in the Bible." I really didn't think much about it.

Since 1976, 87 percent of executions in the United States have taken place in the Bible Belt.

I was strongly pro-life. I'd been actively involved in working against abortion since I was a college student but had never considered the death penalty a life issue. The teaching of the Church and my personal involvement in prison ministry, which started in 1990 [and extended nearly full-time to death row in 1998], gradually caused me to question my position. And I came to accept the Church's leading that this is a life issue. So long as we can protect innocent life in society without executing people, we need to do everything we can to offer them a humane incarceration and the chance to repent and come back to God.

In a column for Florida Catholic, you told of a death-penalty opponent who accused you of being part of the "machinery of death," because you work inside death row and have witnessed executions. How do you plead? Is that something you wrestle with?

What happens is that if a [condemned] man has asked me to be his spiritual adviser, I meet with him regularly during the weeks leading up to his execution, and then serve as his witness for his execution. Most of the other witnesses are state witnesses and lawyers. His family is not allowed to be there. And my wife stays with his family, after they have to leave the prison grounds six hours before the execution. The question I've had to wrestle with is: Do I somehow support the execution by my presence there? And sometimes activists have challenged me on this.

I came to peace with it after prayer, spiritual counseling, and Scripture study, after looking at our Blessed Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and others who loved him and were present at his Crucifixion. I asked myself, "By being there, were they supporting what was being done?" And the answer of course is absolutely not. They were there for him.

People hadn’t heard of any reason why they shouldn’t support the death penalty.
They were there so that when he looked down from the cross, he saw his mother and some people who loved and cared for him. That is exactly the reason why I'm at the execution. I'm there so that when the man on the gurney looks through the glass, there's at least one face that is there for him, not in support of the crime, but in support of the fact that he is a child a God, and that he is loved and that his humanness remains. And that is how I came to peace with my involvement in the process.

Otherwise, is it safe to say that where you live is not exactly a bastion of Catholic anti-death-penalty activism?

We live in a small town [Macclenny, Florida] of 3900 people, very good people, salt of the earth people, almost all Christian. But our neighbors had never met a Catholic before. And when we moved here, our two youngest children were still living at home, and their friends in school had never met a Catholic before. So the one thing we had to say to ourselves right away is that we really need to behave ourselves, because however we act, this is the way people will think Catholics act. But the other thing we found out is that the people here had not heard of any reason why they should not support the death penalty. Most of the evangelical and Pentecostal denominations support the death penalty and do so with short quotes from Scripture.

As I became more involved in trying to understand support for the death penalty in America, I found out that since 1976, 87 percent of executions in the United States have taken place in the Bible Belt. The backbone of support is a religious support by good people who believe that in order to be good Christians, they have to support the death penalty because it's in the Bible. This prompted me to start a whole journey of religious research into the actual death penalty under the Bible, back when it was the law of the land, in the Torah, in the Old Testament, and to construct a comparison between what's in the Bible and what we're actually doing.

Neither the Bible nor the Church offers moral support for the death penalty.
For example, in Exodus (23:7), there's a command: Thou shalt not execute the innocent. This is already stated in some other places, but right there, very specifically, it's clear: absolute certainty—not beyond a reasonable doubt, not clear and overwhelming evidence—absolute certainty was the minimum threshold requirement for the biblical death penalty.

In America, if one talks about requiring absolute certainty as a condition to the death penalty, the response is, "We couldn't possibly afford that. It would be too expensive to have absolute certainty." But if we can't afford absolute certainty, then we certainly can't afford the death penalty if we're people of biblical faith.

That's part of your pitch to Bible Belt Protestants. What do you say to Catholics?

Well, thankfully with the leadership of the Pope and our bishops, it's much easier to explain to Catholics. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is very clear that while continuing to uphold the right to resort to the death penalty by governments, it's not appropriate for governments to resort to that right, unless there's absolutely no other means available to protect innocent life in society. And in modern First World societies like our own, modern prison systems make it absolutely clear that we can keep people from killing again without having to execute them.

Still, many say they don't shed a tear when murderers are executed, because they're guilty as hell. What do you say?

I say, ‘Come with me’ and distribute communion… the people you're going to meet are overwhelmingly human.

I say, "Come with me."

File an application to come with me and distribute communion. Not because the people you're going to meet are mostly innocent, but because the people you're going to meet are overwhelmingly human. And what happens when we strip away the monstrosity image and start dealing with people with names and faces is that we realize these are human beings, that these are people just like ourselves who have made mistakes, perhaps much worse mistakes, and that there is a humanness to them that needs to be respected.

I would say come with me and meet the people you think may be suitable for execution, not because the crimes weren't horrible, but because by standing there and praying with somebody, you enter into their humanity. You see that they too are children of God, and God is working in their lives. I think it changes the way we look at people who fill these cells.

LAST REQUEST - OHIO DR PRISONER HOPES TO SEE DYING FATHER

LAST REQUEST - OHIO DR PRISONER HOPES TO SEE DYING FATHER

Jason Robb is on Ohio's death row, but housed in the Supermax prison at Youngstown instead of with most of the OH DR population at Mansfield.

If you have read Staughton Lynn's book about the Lucasville uprising, you will know about this case, and you will know that Jason Robb is quite likely innocent of the murder for which he is awaiting execution. But that it irrelevant to the matter at hand:

Jason's dad is dying of kidney failure, with a life expectancy of about a month.

Jason's parents live in California, and they do not have much money. Jason's supporters are looking for a donation of funds or frequent flyer miles with which to bring both of Jason's parents from California to Ohio for a last visit. Hospitality upon their arrival in Ohio has already been arranged - all we need to do is get them to Ohio.

And quickly.

If you can help, please CALL ME at 800-973-6548 or e-mail

Thanks.

--abe
Abraham J. Bonowitz
Director, CUADP


YES FRIENDS!
There is an Alternative to the Death Penalty

Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
(CUADP) works to end the death penalty in the United
States through aggressive campaigns of public education
and the promotion of tactical grassroots activism.

Visit or call 800-973-6548
PMB 335, 2603 NW 13th St (AKA Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hwy)
Gainesville, FL 32609

In memory of Frances Newton

From CEDP National Office:

In memory of Frances Newton, we should remember the last words spoken by Shaka Sankofa who, like Frances, was executed by the state of Texas despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence.

“This is nothing more than pure and simple murder. This is what is happening tonight in America. Nothing more than state sanctioned murders, state sanctioned lynching, right here in America, and right here tonight. This is what is happening my brothers. Nothing less. They know I'm innocent. They've got the facts to prove it. They know I'm innocent. But they cannot acknowledge my innocence, because to do so would be to publicly admit their guilt. This is something these racist people will never do. We must remember brothers, this is what we're faced with. You must take this endeavor forward. You must stay strong. You must continue to hold your heads up, and to be there. And I love you, too, my brother. All of you who are standing with me in solidarity. We will prevail. We will keep marching. Keep marching Black people, Black power. Keep marching Black people, Black power. Keep marching Black people. Keep marching Black people. They are killing me tonight. They are murdering me tonight.”

Newton executed for 1987 slayings
Associated Press

HUNTSVILLE — Frances Newton was executed today for the fatal shootings of her husband and two children 18 years ago, becoming the third woman, and first black woman, to be put to death in the state since executions resumed in 1982.

Strapped to the death chamber gurney and with her parents among the people watching, she declined to make a final statement, quietly saying "no" and shaking her head when the warden asked if she would like to speak.

Newton briefly turned her head to make eye contact with her family as the drugs began flowing. She appeared to attempt to mouth something to her relatives, but the drugs took affect. She coughed once and gasped as her eyes closed and her mouth remained slightly open. Eight minutes later at 6:17 p.m. CDT, she was pronounced dead.

One of her sisters stood flat against a wall at the rear of the death house, her arms raised against the wall and her head buried in her arms, refusing to watch. Her parents held hands and her mother brushed away a tear before they walked to the back of the chamber to console their other daughter.

About three dozen demonstrators chanted outside but the crowd paled in comparison to the group of hundreds that assembled in 1998 to protest the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, who was the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War.

Girl: Feud led to Deltona killings

A teen friend of Troy Victorino's suggests a man who wasn't at the house the night of the slayings enraged the suspect.
Kristen Reed Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted September 14, 2005

The woman investigators have said was the main focus of the attackers in the Deltona massacre might not have been the primary target.

It might have been her boyfriend and another man -- a friend who wasn't at the Telford Lane home the night six people and a dog were beaten to death with aluminum baseball bats but, according to a witness, may have inadvertently set off the chain of events that led to one of the worst mass killings in Central Florida.

In a newly released interview with investigators, a then-16-year-old girl who called herself a close friend of accused ringleader Troy Victorino described a feud between Victorino and a man named Abigael Vazquez that escalated in the week before the Aug. 6, 2004, slayings.

She accused Vazquez, 19, of persuading victim Francisco "Flaco" Ayo Roman to take the video-game systems and clothing Victorino, 28, had left behind in the home where he was squatting, according to the investigative reports. She said as a result, Victorino became enraged at Vazquez and Roman.

"He was so mad," the girl said of Victorino. She said he told her, "They took everything. I have nothing. They left me with empty suitcases and my court papers."

Neither the girl nor her parents could be reached for comment by the Orlando Sentinel.

Her account echoes the statement of another witness who was recruited for the attack but backed out. Brandon Graham, who said he initially agreed to help Victorino carry out the killings because he was afraid for his own life, told investigators that the week before the killings Victorino shot at a carload of people, including Vazquez and Roman. Victorino told Graham that the people in the car had robbed him, a report shows.

Investigators have said that Victorino was so angry about the missing items he recruited three friends to beat the six people staying at the Telford Lane home and that 22-year-old Erin Belanger, Roman's girlfriend, was the main target. Her body was the most badly beaten.

The items -- two Xbox video-game systems, a Game Cube, clothing and personal documents -- were left in Belanger's grandmother's house, where Victorino and others had been staying. When Belanger discovered the squatters, she called deputies, who said she could keep or throw out what was left behind.

"I told her to do whatever she wanted with it," Erin's father, Bill Belanger, said. He said his daughter and some friends went to the house to get rid of some of the stuff. Erin Belanger never told him the names of who went. "She shouldn't be murdered because of it."

The 16-year-old girl told investigators she and Victorino spotted people, including Vazquez, wearing Victorino's clothes.

She also said that Victorino had decided to handle the issue legally. "What I understood was that Troy called the police on them twice and the police didn't do anything," the girl said.

Volusia County sheriff's spokesman Gary Davidson said they have no record of the incident being reported.

"I've got to believe if it was reported to us we would have tried to take the appropriate action and at least document the incident," he said. Davidson said deputies did document stolen lawn equipment Victorino reported July 3, 2004.

And other investigative records indicate Victorino had plans to retaliate against the people he thought were responsible for taking his belongings.

Victorino and 19-year-olds Jerone Hunter, Michael Salas and Robert Anthony Cannon are charged with 14 felonies and face the death penalty if convicted in the attack.

The girl's statement included other details that family members of the victims cast doubt on. She said Victorino had an amicable conversation with Belanger about getting his things back and the two went to her grandmother's house the Sunday before she was killed but discovered the items were gone.

Bill Belanger said his daughter did tell Victorino he could get his stuff back, but she was too afraid of him to ever go to the house with him.

Vazquez's mother said Tuesday that she had never heard of the accusation against her son before.

"This is not true," Madeline Rivera said. "I don't know why she's saying bad things about Abigael."

Vazquez told investigators the day his friends' bodies were discovered that he and Victorino had a conflict. "I know that he wanted me," he said. "Troy thinks me and Flaco and Erin went into the house and stole all his clothes and stuff."

Vazquez also said Victorino's friends had been threatening his life, according to his statement. Weeks before the killings, Vazquez and his family also filed a complaint accusing Victorino of beating him up.

Vazquez has since been convicted of felony aggravated battery for hitting a friend over the head with a brick. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Kristen Reed can be reached at kreed@orlandosentinel.com or 386-851-7924.

Death penalty an option

BERNALILLO - Zacharia Craig offered no reaction to a judge's refusal to remove the death penalty from consideration if a jury finds him guilty of killing a State Police officer four years ago.

That flat effect is a symptom of the mental illness a psychologist says Craig, 23, is afflicted with and likely suffered to an even greater degree Aug. 1, 2001, when authorities say he mowed down State Police Officer Lloyd Aragon.

Craig's attorney, Jeff Buckels, had argued that his client's illness should preclude him from facing the death penalty, because it should be treated no differently than mental retardation.

State District Judge Louis P. McDonald denied the motion.

Federal and state constitutional amendments prohibit the execution of the mentally retarded, but the rules do not apply to the mentally ill.

After the judge's ruling, Buckels told the court he planned to file a motion asking the courts to find that Craig is mentally retarded as legally defined.

That appears to be in opposition to Buckels' own expert witness, Dr. Eric Westfried, who Monday testified that while Craig might be in no better shape than a mildly mentally retarded person, he was not mentally retarded in the classical sense, because he scored well in other cognitive areas.

Craig is expected to be tried Jan. 23 on a first-degree murder charge at the Sandoval County Judicial Complex in Bernalillo.

His case has languished for four years because three times a judge has ruled that he is incompetent to stand trial.

In June 2004, McDonald ruled Craig had been treated to competency, and District Attorney Lemuel Martinez renewed his vow to seek the death penalty in the case.

Craig has remained hospitalized at the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute, the state psychiatric hospital in Las Vegas, N.M., since he was first ruled incompetent in May 2002.

Psychologists have testified that Craig suffered from severe Grave's disease, a thyroid condition with symptoms that include psychosis, poor judgment, agitation and distractibility. The disease has since been treated with medication.

On Monday, Westfried, a psychologist, told the court that Craig also has a moderate to severe disorder of the brain's right hemisphere. Symptoms include a problem with visual and spacing functions, an almost autistic inability to recognize negative emotions in others or appreciate consequences, poor social skills and inability to form intimate relations.

Craig, he said, also has an IQ of 72, considered borderline to mild mental retardation.

Craig was 19 when authorities say he shoplifted cold medication from a Grants Wal-Mart and led officers on a wild, 45-mile chase east on I-40 in a stolen pickup.

Officers at the scene have testified that Craig aimed the truck straight for Aragon, 37, who was standing in the median after placing stop sticks across the road.

Aragon, of Grants, died instantly.

Mental illness vs. mental retardation is an especially timely issue in light of last month's shooting deaths of five people, including two Albuquerque police officers, all on Aug. 18. Attorneys for the accused, John Hyde, say he has a long history of schizophrenia and is not competent to stand trial.

Hyde, 48, is undergoing a 90-day competency evaluation at the Las Vegas psychiatric facility.

Nevada high court urged to overturn death sentence

By BRENDAN RILEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - The state Supreme Court was urged Tuesday to overturn the death sentence ordered for Alfonso "Slinky" Blake, an aspiring R&B artist convicted of killing two women and shooting a third in the southern Nevada desert.

Robert Miller, deputy Clark County public defender, told the high court that the trial judge in Blake's case erred in letting jurors hear remarks about prior bad acts that hurt his temporary insanity defense.

An expert witness for the defense testified that Blake suffered a brief psychotic disorder and then the prosecutor sought to undermine the testimony by bringing up several previous violent incidents in which Blake had been involved years earlier, Miller said.

Chief Justice Nancy Becker questioned whether it would be wrong to allow references to such incidents as long as there was a "reasonable basis" to mention them.

Miller said there's a requirement for what's known as a "Petrocelli hearing" outside the presence of jurors, in which prosecutors must get a go-ahead from a judge to present details about a defendant that they want the jury to know about.

Deputy Clark County District Attorney Robert Daskas, the trial prosecutor, countered that there was no need for such a hearing in Blake's case. He added evidence of Blake's guilt was overwhelming.

Daskas said Blake wanted the three women to work as topless dancers and give him part of their earnings, and when they refused he deliberately marched them into the desert and shot each of them twice. Nothing in the execution-style shootings suggested he was temporarily insane, the prosecutor added.

Blake was sentenced to die after being convicted of two counts of first-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon and one count of attempted murder for the March 5, 2003, shootings. The murder victims were Sophear Choy, 19, and Priscilla Van Dine, 23. Choy's older sister, Kim, also was shot but survived.

The high court will issue a ruling on Blake's appeal at a later date.

March honors executed woman

September 13, 2005

Randolph County- As their feet hit the pavement, members and supporters of the Prison and Jail Project are focused on fighting injustice. It's a road they say is long and hard, but can be victorious.

"This year we're lifting up the Lena Baker tragedy, as we come into Cuthbert over the next few days we'll be talking about her life, tragic execution death, and it's just coincidental that she received this posthumous pardon in advance of the Freedomwalk," says director John Cole Vodicka.

So participants say this year's walk is more of a celebration for Baker, a woman they say was wrongfully convicted and executed for murder.

"For us it was about a seven year effort to kind of lift her story up and out of the grave literally, and to let folks know that this woman was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die, and executed wrongfully," says Vodicka.

Walk organizers say Lena Baker's pardon represents a shift in the legal system and they hope her case will bring new life to others like it.

"Our work is ongoing. If we had to measure our work by the victories, or the number of people we're able to get out of jail, or into a alternative setting, we'd be miserably failing in many people's eyes. But you have to be patient. You have to persevere."

They must persevere because even the demonstrators admit the journey for justice is a long one.

A one-women play entitled "Who Will Sing for Lena?" will be performed Tuesday night at 7:30 at Randolph-Clay High School. It's based on the life, trial, and execution of Lena Baker.

You can also see the play Wednesday night at 7:30 at the Civil Rights Movement Museum in Albany.

Feedback: news@walb.com

Court to hear pivotal death penalty appeal

States' rights, power of president, world law at issue in Mexican's case
8:46 PM CDT on Tuesday, September 13, 2005
By ALLEN PUSEY / The Dallas Morning News


WASHINGTON – The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is expected to hear arguments Wednesday that will place the court between the rock of a controversial death penalty case and the hard place of international law.

And to increase the stakes, the space in between involves presidential power.

The case involves the 1994 conviction in Houston of Jose Ernesto Medellin for his part in the rape and murder of two teen girls.

Although he has lived in the U.S. since he was a small child, Mr. Medellin was born in Mexico. He is arguing that his conviction is tainted by the state's failure to inform the Mexican consul of the charges against him, as required by international treaty.

The state argues that Mr. Medellin never asserted the treaty obligation until a jury had placed him on Texas' death row. It argues that Mr. Medellin is asserting a constitutional right that is unavailable to U.S. citizens.

The case, which has been rejected once by the Texas court, has profound importance in Mexico, where there is no civilian death penalty. Mexico has long complained that its citizens should not be subjected to the death penalty in the U.S.

But the case is also being followed closely by those in the U.S. concerned by an unusual assertion of presidential power and by those who decry the growing influence of international law on U.S. cases.

The Vienna Convention of Consular Relations, approved by the U.S. in 1969, requires that governments inform the appropriate embassy when they have arrested foreigners for serious crimes if the suspects request that they do so. But many suspects are not told that they can ask for such a step.

Last year, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, ruled that the U.S. was obligated to review all 51 complaints by Mexican citizens facing execution in Texas and several other states that the Mexican government had not been informed of their arrest.

Armed with that ruling, Mr. Medellin appealed his death sentence to the U.S. Supreme Court. But in February, shortly before the case was to be heard, the Bush administration ordered the states to conduct the case-by-case review requested by the International Court.

In June, the high court returned Mr. Medellin's case to the lower courts. Now back before the state's highest criminal court, the issues in the Medellin case have become more complicated.

In a "friend of the court" brief, the Bush administration asked the court to consider the president's order as binding, reflecting his power to administer the nation's treaty obligations.

But Alabama, Montana, Nevada and New Mexico – all of whom have Mexican citizens facing execution – asked the Texas court to, in effect, reject the presidential order without ignoring it. Viewing it as an affront to the state court systems, they have asked the Texas judges to consider the White House action only a "request."

The states said the White House document, referred to as a presidential memorandum, is "clearly a request to the state courts rather than an order of any kind."

"It is unlikely, to put it mildly, that President Bush intended his two-sentence memorandum to invite a judicial inquiry into such basic questions of constitutional structure," they wrote to the court.

Tom Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who practices frequently before the U.S. Supreme Court, said that with so many interests at stake, the justices will follow the case closely.

"The Supreme Court is very focused on it. The world is focused on it," he said. "It's a major case that will determine whether the U.S. is going to bend a little to world opinion or chart its own course."

E-mail apusey@dallasnews.com

Newton executed for 1987 slayings

Frances Newton has been on death row since she was convicted of killing her husband and two children in 1987.

Associated Press file
Frances Newton has been on death row since she was convicted of killing her husband and two children in 1987.

HUNTSVILLE — Frances Newton was executed today for the fatal shootings of her husband and two children 18 years ago, becoming the third woman, and first black woman, to be put to death in the state since executions resumed in 1982.


Strapped to the death chamber gurney and with her parents among the people watching, she declined to make a final statement, quietly saying "no" and shaking her head when the warden asked if she would like to speak.

Newton briefly turned her head to make eye contact with her family as the drugs began flowing. She appeared to attempt to mouth something to her relatives, but the drugs took affect. She coughed once and gasped as her eyes closed and her mouth remained slightly open. Eight minutes later at 6:17 p.m. CDT, she was pronounced dead.

One of her sisters stood flat against a wall at the rear of the death house, her arms raised against the wall and her head buried in her arms, refusing to watch. Her parents held hands and her mother brushed away a tear before they walked to the back of the chamber to console their other daughter.

About three dozen demonstrators chanted outside but the crowd paled in comparison to the group of hundreds that assembled in 1998 to protest the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, who was the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War.

Ferger trial graphic, says state attorney

After years of delays, jury selection started Monday. Citing pretrial publicity, the defense asks the judge to move the trial to Pinellas County.
By JAMAL THALJI, Times Staff Writer
Published September 13, 2005


DADE CITY - Potential jurors in the trial of Gary Steven Cannon were warned right away Monday about what they will face if chosen to decide his guilt or innocence.

"This is a charge of first-degree murder," prosecutor Bruce Bartlett said. "It involves the death of a 9-year-old girl. The evidence will be graphic.

"It will not be a nice thing."

Sharra Ferger was found half-naked, stabbed dozens of times, sexually assaulted, with a brutal bite mark on her left shoulder.

Her body was discovered Oct. 3, 1997, face down in a field near her Blanton home, authorities say, hours after she was lured out into the dark by someone familiar to her.

Four years later, two were indicted in connection with the killing: Cannon, 25, a family acquaintance, and Gary Elishi Cochran, Sharra's 39-year-old uncle. Eight years later, after countless legal delays, Cannon is the first to be tried in her slaying.

Lawyers for Cannon, facing a life sentence if convicted, would not say whether they planned to put their client on the witness stand.

"That remains to be seen," attorney Bjorn Brunvand said after court Monday. "I can't tell you one way or the other at this stage.

During the trial's first phase, jury selection, Cannon's lawyers stressed their client's constitutional protection from self-incrimination to prospective jurors.

"The defense does not have to present any witnesses," attorney Danny Hernandez told them, "and the defendant doesn't have to testify."

Jurors are barred from knowledge of Cannon's adult and juvenile crimes - unless he testifies. Then the state is free to bring up his felony convictions - but not the charges, or details of the crimes.

Which is why his defense team was especially concerned about pretrial publicity surrounding one of Pasco's most high-profile murder cases. Stories in the St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune printed Sunday and Monday discussed the allegations and evidence against Cannon, his substance abuse problem and criminal record.

That led to a defense motion to move the trial to Pinellas County. "My concern is that it would be very difficult to find a fair and impartial jury in Pasco County," Brunvand said.

A handful of potential jurors had read articles and seen televised news reports about the case. A few more remembered when Sharra's body was found in 1997. But Circuit Judge Lynn Tepper said it was too early to move the trial: "You do realize I can't consider that request until we can't pick a jury."

A jury wasn't picked Monday. Selection will continue today.

Cannon sat silently throughout the proceedings, his hair closely cropped, dressed in a tan dress shirt, slacks and sweater. To stay warm in the frigid courtroom he pulled the sweater sleeves over his hands. He spent most of the day making eye contact with his mother, Edna Jenkins.

Jury selection provided a few light moments. Even Cannon chuckled from time to time. Like when one woman said she'd already tried one case, and hoped to avoid more jury duty.

"I thought I could sneak away with it when I turned 70," she said. "But you caught up with me."

Mostly, though, it was a somber affair as some grappled with the nature of the allegations.

One juror said five of her relatives had been sexually abused.

"So being fair and impartial would be an issue for you?" the judge asked.

"It is an issue," the juror said.

Another juror said her daughter had been raped and the attacker convicted. Still another juror said the March kidnapping and killing of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in Citrus County gave her a "flashback" to the Ferger case.

The judge prodded her to reveal more. The juror said a childhood friend had been raped and killed.

"It was years ago," the juror said. "I try to bury it."

One juror was so emotional she couldn't tell her story in public. In a private bench conference, the judge gave her a tissue, then excused her from the courtroom.

At day's end, the judge did grant one defense request: to get Cannon out of the county jail's psychiatric ward where he was being kept away from other inmates during trial. His lawyers said it was too noisy for him to sleep.

Instead, he'll switch places with another inmate: Cochran, his alleged accomplice.

"Mr. Cochran won't be getting a good night's sleep," the judge said. "Mr. Cannon will."

Gov. Bush sparks review of Cohen case

Steve Esdale is determined to prove that his father, Murray Cohen, was killed by his wife, Maria Cohen.

FDLE will take another look at Sarasota man's death
By MATTHEW DOIG
matthew.doig@heraldtribune.com

SARASOTA COUNTY -- The Florida Department of Law Enforcement plans to renew its inquiry into whether a Sarasota man who appeared to die of heart failure in 2003 actually was murdered.

Gov. Jeb Bush personally sparked the review by asking a staff attorney to "re-inquire into the circumstances surrounding" Murray Cohen's death, according to an Aug. 30 letter from Bush's office to Cohen's son, Steve Esdale.

The governor's request followed an Aug. 24 Herald-Tribune story that raised new questions about whether Cohen was already dead when his wife called 911.

The story cited a forensic audio expert who said he can hear a man ask for an ambulance in the background of the taped call between Maria Cohen and the 911 operator.

Murray Cohen was supposed to be the only man in the room at the time of the 911 call, and Maria Cohen told the 911 operator that her husband was "totally gone" before the male voice is heard on the tape.

While state officials confirmed Monday that they will review the case, they downplayed the significance of the governor's request.

A governor's spokesman called Bush's request routine, and an FDLE official stopped short of calling the new inquiry an investigation.

"The use of the term 'review' is better," FDLE spokesman Larry Long said.

Even so, the request for a review is a stronger response than Esdale got from Bush a year ago.

In July 2004, Bush's deputy general counsel told Esdale that a separate FDLE investigation into his father's death "is not warranted at this time."

For nearly three years, Esdale has sought to prove that Maria Cohen murdered his father for his million-dollar estate. His relentless efforts have forced local, state and federal investigators to examine his father's death repeatedly.

Each investigation found no evidence that Cohen died of anything other than natural causes.

But a Herald-Tribune investigation found a number of inconsistencies that lent credence to some of Esdale's claims -- including that his father's voice could be heard asking for help on the 911 tape.

Esdale said he would withhold judgment until after he sees the results of the review.

"If this is a legitimate investigation, then it's good news," Esdale said. "I'm not looking to bash anybody, I just want justice and closure."

Lt. Chuck Lesaltato, a spokesman for the Sarasota Sheriff's Office, said Sheriff Bill Balkwill also called FDLE after the r the Herald-Tribune story was published and asked them to look at the case again with his office.

"We'll be working with FDLE, and also our guys will be looking at it too," Lesaltato said.

Maria Cohen could not be reached for comment.

Paul Ginsberg, the forensic audio expert hired by the Herald-Tribune to analyze the 911 call, said Monday he had not been contacted by investigators about his analysis.

Long said one of the agency's "seasoned homicide investigators" had been assigned to review any new information regarding Cohen's death. But the agent had just returned from helping with hurricane relief in Mississippi and had yet to begin working on the Cohen 911 call, Long said.

Russell Schweiss, a spokesman for Bush, said it's not unusual for Bush to ask FDLE to reexamine a closed case.

Schweiss pointed to the case of Johnnie Mae Chappell, a black woman who was murdered in Jacksonville in 1964. In April, Bush asked FDLE to see "whether enough evidence exists today to support the filing of criminal charges" against three men who were indicted but not charged in Chappell's death.

Gun at center of death row appeal

Woman's execution scheduled for Wednesday in slaying of family
08:31 PM CDT on Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Associated Press


HUNTSVILLE, Texas – The gun inside 7-year-old Alton Newton's blue knapsack was the focus of the last-ditch legal battle lawyers were fighting in hopes of keeping the slain boy's mother out of the Texas death chamber Wednesday.

Frances Newton Frances Newton, 40, faced lethal injection for the fatal shooting 18 years ago of her son, her 21-month-old daughter, Farrah, and her husband, Adrian, 23, at their Houston apartment.

She would be the 13th prisoner executed this year in the nation's most active capital punishment state but only the third woman in Texas – and the first black woman – since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982. Nationally, she'd be the 11th woman executed since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume after a decade-long hiatus.

Ms. Newton, who denies involvement in the killings, spent Tuesday visiting with relatives at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Mountain View Unit outside Gatesville in Central Texas, where the state's 11 condemned women are held. It's about 140 miles northwest of Huntsville, where she would be taken for the lethal injection scheduled for after 6 p.m. today.

Her attorneys waited for word from the U.S. Supreme Court, where they filed an appeal Monday after Texas courts, lower federal courts and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected their arguments that she was innocent.

Claims her attorneys have made are that evidence used at her trial was improperly destroyed, that the gun linked to the slayings was not the only weapon recovered by police and that she has not been a problem inmate.

Ms. Newton, accompanied by a cousin, found the bodies the evening of April 7, 1987. Her husband had been shot in the head, the two children in the chest.

Ms. Newton acknowledges hiding a .25-caliber handgun in the bag at an abandoned house where it was recovered by police. Ballistics tests showed it was the gun used in the slayings, but her attorneys argued it wasn't the weapon Ms. Newton left there, that police recovered a second weapon and the guns were switched.

Myths about the death penalty.....From a Newspaper in India

Kimmo Suominen finds that abolition is the only standard by which capital punishment can be judged to be fair.

Combat Law, Volume 2, Issue 2 -

Myth No. 1: Death Penalty results in reduced rates of homicides, murders and serious crimes in a society.

This is the most common myth which works in favour of imposition of death penalty. Typically, people believe that if there were possibility to be sentenced to death, the prospective offenders would think twice before committing a crime and could even totally give up their criminal intentions. This is what is believed to be the "deterrent effect" of the death penalty and many people believe that deterrent effect of death penalty is a very effective way to prevent murders and similar criminal behavior.

However, in reality, innumerable studies from all over the world have revealed totally different results. In fact, many studies even show the opposite effect, that existence of the death penalty as a punishment is brutalizing society and making it more violent. It is of course impossible to prove with absolute certainty for example how many murders have been prevented or how many people more have been killed because of the death penalty, and further, there are several factors according to criminologist researches, which can affect to criminal activity and criminal behavior and deterrent effect of punishment is only one of these factors. There are, however, several studies showing that there hasn't been any remarkable change, for example, in murder rates, after abolishing death penalty and also several studies go on to prove that threat of death penalty does not have preventive affect for people committing serious offences. What is remarkable is that some studies have even shown results that effect of the death penalty is just the opposite: existence of the death penalty is correlated with increased homicides!

After looking at the available statistics and selecting some very similar countries where factors relevant to causing or preventing criminality are quite similar, and then selecting from amongst those the countries with and without the death penalty, it is possible to make some careful conclusion as to how effective death penalty is in preventing serious offences. For example the western (post) industrial countries (USA, EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Monaco and Liechtenstein) have all abolished the death penalty, except USA, and still, for example, murder rates are much higher in USA than in any of these other, similar, countries.

Of course it is possible to make statements that if the death penalty would not exist even more murders would happen in USA, but it is difficult to find support for this statement from the studies. There has been no remarkable increase in murder rates in those US states which have abolished death penalty. In fact, the survey released in September 2000 by New York Times found that during the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with death penalty has been 48 percent to 101 percent higher than in states without death penalty. Also, the FBI data show that 10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average (source: Amnesty USA).

Also, for example, in Canada, after the abolition of the death penalty in 1976, Canada's homicide rate has declined. In 2000, there were 542 homicides in Canada - 16 fewer than in 1998, and 159 fewer than in 1975 (one year prior to the abolition of capital punishment). ( Source: Correctional Service Canada. derived from Logan R. Crime Statistics in Canada, 2000, Juristat, Vol. 21 No. 8, Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, 2001, p. 6; and Tremblay, S. Crime Statistics in Canada, 1998, Juristat, Vol. 19 No. 9, Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, 1999, p. 6.)

Some people also believe that the reason USA has such high crime rates is because of the reason that it is easier to get guns or firearms in the USA than in other western countries. That may, of course, be part of the reason, but it still doesn't explain everything: First of all, it is not a big problem to get a gun in Europe either, and secondly guns do not shoot the people themselves: you need a person to get a gun and to fire it.. Then, one may ask, what are the reasons that the deterrent effect is not working? This is mostly because people are not thinking about the consequences and punishment when they are committing serious crimes. Most of the homicides are committed under the influence of drugs or alcohol or in a state of mind, which lowers person's discretion and capability to think clearly, like rage, anger, fear or panic.

Some of the homicides are also committed by children or mentally ill persons who do not understand perfectly what they are doing. There are other types of serious offences, for example murder or homicide, which are done deliberately after carefully planning by clear thinking offender. However, even in these cases the deterrent effect does not work very effectively as either these offenders do not believe that they could get caught or they don't care about the sentence they will get if they get caught. Infact, sometimes if a person knows that the death penalty is waiting for him, nothing will hold him anymore and he could go on to commit more homicides!

Myth No. 2: Innocent people are not convicted in death penalty trials.

It is also often believed that proceedings in the death penalty trials are so meticulously carried out that there is not an iota of scope for error and in practice it is impossible to send an innocent man to death. However, there is no such a thing as 'foolproof' trial as long as human beings are working in the courtrooms, investigating the questions of guilty, testifying, calculating the evidences, or even passing judgments! There is always a possibility of making mistakes and those mistakes have happened several times even during the last few years! Convictions of the people because of wrong or faulty grounds are not fiction. For example, according to some studies, only in the USA, around 100 people been released from a death row because they have afterwards found innocent. It is also common that after getting more proofs, accused are found to be not guilty for the same crime for which they were convicted and it is possible that murder changes to manslaughter, and that one could invite death penalty while other does not. If an innocent person has been sentenced to prison, it is, at least in theory, possible to compensate the wrong judgment passed on that person by releasing him and compensating his lost with money. However, once a person is sentenced to death, then it is final, there is no chance to compensate him even theoretically!

Myth No. 3: It is cheaper to sentence a person to death than keep him a lifetime in prison.

First of all, it is impossible to fix any price on a human life. This by itself is sufficient to explode the third myth! But, even at the other, practical level, it is established that the actual cost of one death penalty case is usually much higher than the cost incurred on an individual serving life imprisonment. This is because of higher pre-trial costs and costs incurred during the court process. In the death penalty cases, states need to guarantee all the possible requirements of the fair trial, much more investigation, much more time, more defence lawyers to protect accused, more prosecutor and more bureaucracy. This means, both, higher investigative costs and higher extra costs during the trial. Also, many times death penalty is ultimately changed to life imprisonment and this means also extra costs after the more costly trial.

Of course, all this depends on the death penalty system of the country. If, in a country it is possible to award death penalty after "normal" trial, i.e., without extra investigations or other extra protections for the accused, the costs of investigations and trial go down, but a system which does not take care of the necessary requirements for the fair trial and procedural fairness especially in death penalty cases, is a system that has failed badly. Also, in any case, in such circumstances, the possibility of faulty sentences is bound to rise, which goes against the myth no. 2.

Myth No. 4: In death penalty cases, the probability of being sentenced to die is the same for everyone.

In theory, equality before the law is guaranteed in constitutions and in international conventions all over the world, which is great if it would work well. However, several studies have found that in death penalty cases, the likelihood to be convicted is much higher for the poor, less educated, ethnic minorities and religious minorities, as compared to the privileged individuals who have been accused of similar offences. Some studies have found that from 80 to 90 percent of the death row inmates are from minority groups and as many as 95 percent are classified as poor. Also, death penalty may be used for political reasons as well. Infact, there are so many possibilities of this kind that only when it is abolished from the law can a person be sure that the death penalty will not be used against him for the wrong reasons!

States' rights, power of president, world law at issue in Mexican's case

Court to hear pivotal death penalty appeal

08:46 PM CDT on Tuesday, September 13, 2005
By ALLEN PUSEY / The Dallas Morning News


WASHINGTON – The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is expected to hear arguments Wednesday that will place the court between the rock of a controversial death penalty case and the hard place of international law.

And to increase the stakes, the space in between involves presidential power.

The case involves the 1994 conviction in Houston of Jose Ernesto Medellin for his part in the rape and murder of two teen girls.

Although he has lived in the U.S. since he was a small child, Mr. Medellin was born in Mexico. He is arguing that his conviction is tainted by the state's failure to inform the Mexican consul of the charges against him, as required by international treaty.

The state argues that Mr. Medellin never asserted the treaty obligation until a jury had placed him on Texas' death row. It argues that Mr. Medellin is asserting a constitutional right that is unavailable to U.S. citizens.

The case, which has been rejected once by the Texas court, has profound importance in Mexico, where there is no civilian death penalty. Mexico has long complained that its citizens should not be subjected to the death penalty in the U.S.

But the case is also being followed closely by those in the U.S. concerned by an unusual assertion of presidential power and by those who decry the growing influence of international law on U.S. cases.

The Vienna Convention of Consular Relations, approved by the U.S. in 1969, requires that governments inform the appropriate embassy when they have arrested foreigners for serious crimes if the suspects request that they do so. But many suspects are not told that they can ask for such a step.

Last year, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, ruled that the U.S. was obligated to review all 51 complaints by Mexican citizens facing execution in Texas and several other states that the Mexican government had not been informed of their arrest.

Armed with that ruling, Mr. Medellin appealed his death sentence to the U.S. Supreme Court. But in February, shortly before the case was to be heard, the Bush administration ordered the states to conduct the case-by-case review requested by the International Court.

In June, the high court returned Mr. Medellin's case to the lower courts. Now back before the state's highest criminal court, the issues in the Medellin case have become more complicated.

In a "friend of the court" brief, the Bush administration asked the court to consider the president's order as binding, reflecting his power to administer the nation's treaty obligations.

But Alabama, Montana, Nevada and New Mexico – all of whom have Mexican citizens facing execution – asked the Texas court to, in effect, reject the presidential order without ignoring it. Viewing it as an affront to the state court systems, they have asked the Texas judges to consider the White House action only a "request."

The states said the White House document, referred to as a presidential memorandum, is "clearly a request to the state courts rather than an order of any kind."

"It is unlikely, to put it mildly, that President Bush intended his two-sentence memorandum to invite a judicial inquiry into such basic questions of constitutional structure," they wrote to the court.

Tom Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who practices frequently before the U.S. Supreme Court, said that with so many interests at stake, the justices will follow the case closely.

"The Supreme Court is very focused on it. The world is focused on it," he said. "It's a major case that will determine whether the U.S. is going to bend a little to world opinion or chart its own course."

E-mail apusey@dallasnews.com

Killer of 3 in 1998 Thanksgiving robbery gets life in prison

In West Palm Beach, a man whose death sentence was vacated by the state Supreme Court has been sentenced to life in prison, 5 years after he pleaded guilty to the slayings of three people during a Thanksgiving Day robbery.

Thomas Thibault was sentenced Monday after prosecutors agreed to not seek the death penalty again.

"He told the truth from the beginning and gave these families some sense of truth about what took place with their children and loved ones," Assistant State Attorney Terri Skiles said.

Defense attorney James Eisenberg said, "This was justice, true justice." Thibault, 30, was condemned in September 2001 for the murders of Bryan Harrison, 21, Charlotte Kenyon, 26, and Daniel Ketchum, 27.

Thibault, then a house painter, executed the 3 victims after holding them hostage during a 1998 robbery.

Thibault declined a plea offer to get a life sentence in return for his testimony against another man charged in the crime, but later pleaded guilty without a guaranteed sentence.

The Florida Supreme Court overturned the death sentence in 2003, citing a 1974 ruling that a convicted killer who faces the death sentence can waive the right to a jury sentencing but the record of the case must show that the defendant opted to be sentenced by the judge alone. If the record is silent, the death sentence will not be upheld on appeal.

(source: Associated Press)

Revisiting the Spirko case

Death row inmate John Spirko will not face his scheduled execution later this month. His time on death row has been extended by at least 56 days.

Last week, Gov. Bob Taft ordered a new clemency hearing for Spirko after the Ohio Parole Board took the unprecedented step of asking for a chance to reconsider his case.

Given the significant doubts surrounding Spirko's capital conviction, one can only wonder why Taft didn't simply commute the death sentence to life without the possibility of parole. At least one outside legal expert calls the Spirko case the "weakest" death penalty conviction he's ever seen.

As this page has said before, Spirko is not a sympathetic character. His long
criminal record - which includes murder - has caused him to spend virtually his entire adult life in prison. But he may well have not committed the murder for which he received the death penalty. The evidence against him is flimsy.

That is why the parole board's decision to reconsider the case is both moral and just. Killing criminals is not a solution to America's crime problem. And the willful killing of criminals whose convictions are overshadowed by reasonable doubts is simply immoral.

If the state built its case against Spirko on lies, as some evidence suggests, the parole authority must carefully search for the truth. In the meantime, if Taft harbors doubts about this case, he should be prepared to use his power to grant clemency and reduce Spirko's sentence.

(source: Editorial, Plain Dealer)

Appeal lost, Spirko attempts again to beat execution order

John Spirko, facing execution on Nov. 15 for kidnapping and murdering a Van Wert County postmaster, turned again to a Cincinnati-based appeals court for help yesterday.

Spirko, 59, filed an appeal with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking it to overturn last week's decision refusing to open a new round of appeals by U.S. District Court Judge James Carr in Toledo. Spirko's lawyers argued that prosecutors had perpetrated a fraud on the court by withholding information when the court originally upheld his conviction and death sentence in 2000.

Gov. Bob Taft delayed Spirko's execution last week at the request of the Ohio Parole Board to give it time to hold another clemency hearing after the board learned the attorney general's office had apparently misstated facts of the case during the 1st hearing on Aug. 23.

The board voted 6-3 to recommend that Mr. Taft not grant Spirko either a full pardon or a delay of execution for the 1982 stabbing of Betty Jane "Janie" Mottinger following a robbery of the post office in the tiny village of Elgin. The new clemency hearing will be held Oct. 12.

The 6th Circuit has previously upheld Spirko's conviction. In his latest appeal before Judge Carr, Spirko's attorneys argued that the state failed to inform the court in 2000 that it had presented a theory of the crime to the jury at Spirko's 1984 trial that it had reason to believe was wrong.

The jury convicted Spirko of acting with former cellmate Delaney Gibson to kill Mrs. Mottinger, but Gibson was never tried, and the county prosecutor quietly dropped the indictment late last year even though Gibson was paroled from a Kentucky prison on an unrelated murder conviction.

(source: Toledo Blade)

China exports skin from death row?

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING AND UNBELIEVABLY DISTURBING

RASHMI ROSHAN LALL

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2005 11:30:58 PM ]

LONDON: Exactly one week after Europe's political and corporate heavyweights schmoozed with 'the inscrutable Chinaman', as part of the EU-China summit, Western capitals and human rights campaigners have recoiled with horror at news reports alleging a Chinese cosmetics company is harvesting skin from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in the UK and Europe.

Agents for the Chinese company, reportedly based in northern China, have been boasting to an undercover British journalist that skin taken from hundreds of executed Chinese prisoners was used to develop collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments.

The ghoulish revelation, quickly dubbed "cannibal cosmecuticles" by appalled human rights activists has stunned Western medics.

The anti-ageing treatments, which allegedly cannibalise the skin of thousands of benighted Chinese, feed a multi-million-pound British and European obsession to be magically unlined and unchanged by the passage of time.

American consumers have also received Chinese collagen beauty products.

Injections of collagen, a major structural protein found in skin, bone and tendons, are used in cosmetic surgery to plump up lips to highlight pouting beauty and to iron out wrinkles.

Collagen injections are the UK's second-most popular cosmetic operation with nearly 150,000 being administered each year.

Human rights campaigners told TOI on Tuesday the newest revelation merely recalled an earlier abomination, when Amnesty International told a US Senate hearing in May 1995 that nearly 90 per cent of transplanted kidneys in China come from executed prisoners.

The skin harvests appear to be part and parcel of received practice in China, they said.

A leading European anti-death penalty campaigning group added that at least 5,000 of the roughly 5,500 known executions worldwide in 2004 took place in China.

Campaigners said "the ghoulish, cringe-making practice of harvesting the skin of death-row victims appears to be of a piece with China's disregard for human rights – and the West's determination to disregard it" just because it Beijing was good for business.

British and American plastic surgeons said on Tuesday that skin harvested from Chinese convicts could have a profound "infective risk".

The undercover investigation, claimed as a news triumph by a newly-relaunched The Guardian newspaper, has sparked revulsion across Britain and Europe.

The claims that the Chinese see the practice as "traditional" and that they believe there to be nothing unethical about harvesting the skin of condemned convicts has caused further revulsion.

Doctors said that if true, the Chinese collagen industry appeared to be making hay while the sun shines, namely the ongoing regulation-free period when the European Union is still formulating the rules to control and govern cosmetic treatments such as collagen injections and implants.

European regulations are not expected for several years.

According to most-recent statistics, gathered just over a decade ago, 77 per cent of all executions that took place in the world occurred in China.

The country routinely executes some 62 people a day.

The Chinese company is believed to be selling Western countries the age-defying beauty products at five per cent less than available anywhere in Britain, Europe or America.

The products, which are marketed and exported to the West from Hong Kong, are produced by the company after the basic material – skin and other tissues – are received from disparate, so-called bio-tech companies based in Heilongjiang in northern China.

The unnamed agent added, in a nod to earlier, gruesome reports of a brisk Chinese trade in executed prisoners' organs, that "The government (in Beijing) has put pressure on all the medical facilities to keep this type of work in low profile".

The revelation comes seven years after Chinese political dissident, Harry Wu, told the world from his American refuge that a massive, unethical and hugely lucrative worldwide trade in human body parts was run from China with the knowledge of the government.

Mr Wu's allegation came after two Chinese men were arrested in New York for allegedly trying to sell human kidneys, corneas and lungs that had been taken from executed Chinese prisoners.

State seeks death penalty for Chapman

By Joan D. LaGuardia
jlaguardia@news-press.com
Published by news-press.com on September 12, 2005

State Attorney Steve Russell will seek the death penalty against Jeremy Chapman, who is accused of killing Annamarie Cruz Randazzo, 17, and John Hardin, 66, both of Cape Coral.

Russell filed notices to seek the death penalty in both pending first degree murder cases.

Chapman, 23, was indicted by the Lee County Grand Jury Aug. 23 and is charged with first -degree murder in both cases.

Chapman is also charged with kidnapping, sexual battery and arson in connection with the murder of Randazzo.

The Cape Coral teenager was reported missing by her family on July 22. Her charred body was found two weeks later in Lehigh Acres.

Joshua Henninger, 17, of Cape Coral, is also charged in the Randazzo case. He is not eligible for the death penalty because of a United States Supreme Court ruling that prevents a state from sentencing a person under 18 to death. If convicted, Henninger faces life in prison.

Hardin’s body was found in his Cape Coral home on Aug. 6 .

Trial dates in both cases against Chapman have been tentatively set for Dec. 5, 2005.

'Genocide' priest faces death penalty

AP
September 13, 2005

KIGALI, Rwanda: A Belgian missionary has been charged with inciting and helping plan the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which more than half a million people were killed.

A Rwandan gacaca, or community court, initially heard the charges but referred the case of Guy Theunis, 60, to a conventional court after classifying him as a category-one genocide suspect - reserved for alleged leaders of the 100-day slaughter.

Father Theunis now faces a possible death penalty.

The Missionaries of Africa priest insisted that information supplied to back the charges was false.

Father Theunis, who worked as the editor of Rwandan magazine Le Dialogue, denied allegations that he incited the genocide by reproducing articles from the Kangura, a newspaper that promoted the killing of members of the Tutsi ethnic minority.









A UN tribunal has convicted the editor of that newspaper, Hassan Ngeze, and sentenced him to life in prison.

"I am astonished to hear all these allegations levelled against me. I sometimes wrote articles to press for human rights. I never republished articles from Kangura, but just translated as part of a press review," Father Theunis told the court in Rwanda's national language, Kinyarwanda.

Father Theunis worked in Rwanda from 1970 to 1994, when Tutsis and political moderates from the Hutu majority were slaughtered in a 100-day genocide orchestrated by the extremist Hutu government of the day.

The missionary, who has been living in South Africa since 1994, was arrested on September 6 while travelling through Rwanda's capital, Kigali, from neighbouring Congo.

Some genocide survivors were harsh in their accusations against Father Theunis, who was clad in the pink shirt and shorts worn by prisoners in Rwanda.

"Instead of preaching the gospel, the missionary was preaching divisions" between Tutsis and Hutus, witness Jean Damascene Bizimana told the court.

"I personally met with the missionary and he told me that if the Tutsis don't stop the war (that raged before the genocide was unleashed), many more of them are likely to die."

Father Theunis was the first foreigner to appear before the community courts, which were set up to investigate and try more than 760,000 people suspected of involvement in the 1994 genocide. People accused of leading the genocide are tried in the conventional justice system, where they face stiffer penalties. Lesser charges would call for a trial at a gacaca court.

Does she deserve to die? Well, her trial lawyer doesn't know

EDITORIAL BOARD - Austin American Statesman
Monday, September 12, 2005

Maybe Frances Newton shot her husband and two children to death in 1987. Maybe she didn't. The public cannot be certain of her guilt, but she's going to die for the crime anyway.

Newton was denied a basic requirement for a fair trial — a competent lawyer. Her attorney at trial was the notorious Ron Mock, whose shoddy work in capital murder trials is well known in legal circles.

He has been repeatedly disciplined by the State Bar of Texas, and has since been disqualified from handling capital cases. No less than 16 people whom Mock represented were sent to death row. Mock apparently did no investigation of Newton's claims of innocence. When asked by a trial judge, he could not name a single witness he had interviewed on Newton's behalf.

How many times must this scene be repeated before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state Board of Pardons and Parole or the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes in death sentences won on defense incompetence?

A competent lawyer should be provided for defendants facing the death penalty. The rule of thumb in Texas seems to be that only those who can afford a competent lawyer are entitled to one. Newton couldn't afford a good lawyer, so the state appointed Mock to represent her.

She is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday despite plenty of doubt her new lawyers have raised regarding the triple murder for which she was convicted. Tom and Virginia Louis, the parents of the man Newton was convicted of killing, have their doubts.

"We are the parents of Adrian Newton and the grandparents of Alton and Farrah Newton . . . We were willing to testify on Frances' behalf, but Frances' defense lawyer never approached us," they said in a letter to the Board of Pardons and Parole asking for leniency.

Indigent defendants must rely on the state system. The state's court- appointed lawyer system has improved significantly in the past five years because of legislation aimed at weeding out incompetent lawyers and recruiting better lawyers for people who can't afford to hire their own. The 2001 Texas Fair Defense Act does set minimum requirements for attorneys representing capital murder defendants.
(The emphasis is on "minimum.")

But those who were convicted before 2001 were under a system that declared any lawyer with a pulse and law license competent. That included lawyers who slept during trial or were doped up as they prepared for trial. It included lawyers who did little or no investigation.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refuses to hear any new evidence or facts in Newton's case — and many others like it — because those facts were raised after court deadlines expired.

And that's the rub. The state appeals court is not deciding Newton's case based on the merits of new facts or legal issues. It has rejected her appeal because she missed a deadline.

We've said it before, but it's worth repeating: Race, ethnicity, income and geography are all factors in the imposition of death sentences.

As long as Texas has a death penalty, capital defendants should have access to competent legal counsel. Newton didn't get that. For that reason, she should be spared.

Two death row cases back before Miss. Supreme Court

JACK ELLIOTT JR.
Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. - Two Mississippi death row inmates, including the only woman in the group, are back before the state Supreme Court this term seeking new trials.

The appeals of Michelle Byrom and Justin Underwood are among dozens the Supreme Court will decide based on written briefs submitted by attorneys.

Michelle Byrom is back before the court on a post-conviction petition. Inmates use the petitions to claim they have discovered new evidence that would justify a new trial.

The state Supreme Court upheld Byrom's conviction and death sentence in 2003. A Tishomingo County judge turned down her post-conviction petition last year.

Byrom was convicted in 2000 of killing her husband of 20 years and recruiting her son in the plot.

Edward Byrom Sr., an electrician, was shot to death June 4, 1999, with a World War II weapon that had belonged to his father.

In a rare move at her 2000 trial, Michelle Byrom asked Circuit Judge Thomas Gardner, instead of the jury, to decide whether she should serve life in prison or be put to death. Gardner sentenced her to death.

Prosecutors said Byrom killed her husband for money. Defense attorneys argued she had been physically abused as a child and by her husband.

Edward Byrom Jr. testified against his mother during the trial as part of a plea bargain arrangement. He later pleaded guilty to several charges in the murder-for-hire scheme, including conspiracy to commit murder. Gardner sentenced him to 50 years in prison with 20 years suspended.

In another case, Underwood was among dozens of death row inmates ordered in 1999 to be given court-appointed attorneys to handle post-conviction claims. The Supreme Court had upheld Underwood's death sentence in 1998.

Underwood was convicted in the killing of a Flora woman in 1994. The body of Virginia Ann Harris was found near a lake in Madison County.

Underwood was arrested in March on an unrelated burglary charge but confessed to killing the woman, according to court records. In a statement to law officers, Underwood also claimed that Harris had begged to be killed. He said he drove the woman to the lake, where he shot her.

Underwood had previously argued that he was mental incompetent and had not voluntarily confessed to the crime.

Other cases before the Supreme Court include:

_ Mississippi Export Railroad Co.'s appeal of a George County judge's ruling that it must reopen a crossing to the property of nursery business owner Mac Rouse.

Rouse, owner of Deep South Nursery in Agricola, sued in 2003, claiming his property had been landlocked since April 2003 when the crossing off Mississippi 613 was closed. He claimed he lost more than $100,000 in land and plants.

Mississippi Export is one of eight short line railroads in Mississippi. The Moss Point-based railway operates a 42-mile line from the Evanston community to Pascagoula. It connects the Canadian National Railroad to the CSX Transportation line.

Mississippi Export closed at least 15 crossings along Mississippi 613. Company officials said the crossings were closed in the interest of public safety.

_ Kimble Peter Smith's appeal of his 50-year sentence for molesting two girls.

Smith was convicted in 2003 in Pike County on charges of sexual battery and touching and handling a child for lustful purposes, also known as fondling.

He was arrested for a 2001 incident involving girls who were 11 and 15 years old at the time. He was sentenced to 30 years for sexual battery and 20 for fondling, to be served consecutively.

Smith was arrested after one of the girls told school officials about the incident.

Wheels of justice drive appeals court from New Orleans to Houston

Jim Greer, Houston Business Journal

Houston is bringing some order to the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which is relocating from New Orleans to the Bayou City in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The New Orleans building that had housed the Fifth Circuit courthouse and offices has shut down amid the Louisiana city's massive flooding and widespread loss of electricity.

Operations of the key court are expected to reopen in Houston to a broad range of matters on or about Sept. 14. The longtime federal courthouse building on 515 Rusk in downtown Houston will for an unspecified time provide the new home for the Fifth Circuit.

Already operating from the federal court building on Rusk, the displaced appeals court early this week was tending to a select number of cases. But, according to a statement from the Fifth Circuit, these have been limited to "true emergency matters," such as deportation cases with "imminent and confirmed deportation dates" or "death penalty cases with execution dates."

Baton Rouge, La., also came up as a possible site for relocation. Just off interstate 10, west of New Orleans, Baton Rouge has suddenly become Louisiana's most populated city.

The Bob Casey Federal Courthouse in downtown Houston, however, fit the space needs of the Fifth Circuit.

"Our courthouse has the capacity to handle the (appeals court's) personnel here all in one building," says Randy Sorrels, a local attorney who is president of the Houston Bar Association.

So an already big litigation market just got bigger.

All deadlines to file documents with the Fifth Circuit were extended on the heels of Katrina. Deadlines from Aug. 24 through Sept. 30 were pushed back until at least Oct. 3. The deadlines may be extended even more.

Combined with the relaxed filing schedule, the scaling back in Fifth Circuit availability from late August through mid-September sets the stage for a full docket of cases.

"The Fifth Circuit is going to see a bottleneck," Sorrels predicts.

He points out that the court will "have a lot of work when things get up and moving."

Case in point: Bill Boyce, a partner at Fulbright & Jaworski LLP in Houston, says he has a number of cases pending in the Fifth Circuit, including some in the briefing stage and others "waiting for decisions."

Some of the judges who do the deciding have long kept offices, or chambers, in Houston and have traveled between Houston and New Orleans as needed.

The Houston chambers of Carolyn Dineen King, chief judge of the Fifth Circuit, in early September was fielding death penalty matters and other legal emergencies. The chambers gained logistical importance with Katrina's closing of the John Minor Wisdom Courthouse, until recently the Fifth Circuit's home base in New Orleans.

At the court's newly adopted address, the wheels of justice for the Fifth Circuit will continue to take the form of some familiar delivery trucks.

"Their Federal Express deliveries every day would put a medium-sized corporation to shame, or even a large corporation," says Sorrels, a partner at Houston's Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Sorrels, Matthews & Friend.

Courts of appeals such as the Fifth Circuit are the most powerful courts this side of the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite their rank, some Fifth Circuit judges personally couldn't circumvent the wrath of Katrina.

"Three of the judges lost their homes," says Sorrels.

PERSPECTIVE: Few expect execution delay to echo beyond one case

ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Gov. Bob Taft's decision to delay an execution, while a victory for death penalty opponents, isn't seen as signaling a change in the state's approach to capital punishment.

Taft last week postponed for two months the Sept. 20 execution of John Spirko, who was convicted of killing a village postmistress in 1982, over questions of whether prosecutors presented inaccurate information at his clemency hearing.

At best, "maybe there's sort of a warning here that, 'Make sure what we say in these hearings is accurate,'" said Victor Streib, an Ohio Northern University law professor and capital punishment expert.

For the most part, say Streib and both proponents and opponents of capital punishment, the factors behind Taft's decision are too closely related to Spirko's case to have broader impact.

Such delays in executions aren't uncommon in Ohio and other states. Last-minute court rulings have regularly pushed executions back a few hours or weeks or years.

What was significant in Spirko's case was the delay came through Taft, the only individual under Ohio law able to halt - permanently or otherwise - an execution.

As he always does in death penalty cases, Taft, a Republican, followed the lead of the Ohio Parole Board, which asked for the delay.

Ohio has put 16 men to death since resuming executions in 1999. In a 17th case, the parole board recommended setting aside the sentence of Jerome Campbell of Cincinnati over concerns about evidence presented to jurors.

Spirko's delay could reduce the state's credibility in future clemency hearings, said Douglas Berman, an Ohio State University criminal law professor.

"It will not only lead the parole board and maybe even the governor to be suspicious of the evidence they get from the attorney general, but will provide lots of fodder for defense attorneys to say over and over again, 'Well, I know the prosecutors say that, but they said that kind of stuff before and they were not playing above board,'" Berman said.

But State Public Defender David Bodiker, who makes his living trying to stop executions, doubts Taft's decision will echo beyond Spirko.

"In this instance they were really correcting an obvious problem that occurred during the clemency hearing, and I don't think it kind of spells a different attitude," he said.

The delay occurred after The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported that Timothy Prichard, director of the attorney general's capital crimes office, made false statements and mischaracterized evidence regarding what Spirko knew about the murder of Betty Jane Mottinger, 48, and his whereabouts on the day of the killing.

On Aug. 23, Prichard told the parole board that a description of Mottinger's purse had to have come from Spirko because investigators didn't know what the missing purse looked like. But according to the case record, Mottinger's husband earlier gave an investigator a very similar description of the purse.

Attorney General Jim Petro stands by Prichard's presentation but said any capital case deserves the closest possible review, including in this case another clemency hearing, said spokeswoman Kim Norris.

Taft, 63, nearing the end of his second four-year term, views clemency as a chance to plead for mercy and present new facts, a spokesman said. Taft does not predict any lasting impact from his temporary Spirko reprieve.

"The governor reviews each case personally to ensure that justice has been served," said spokesman Mark Rickel. "He takes many factors into consideration, including the parole board's recommendations, before making a final decision."

Rigterink Guilty of Murders

He could get the death penalty for the 2003 slayings near Winter Haven.

By Jason Geary
The Ledger

BARTOW -- As jurors took their seats, the crowd inside the small courtroom Friday seemed to hold its breath.

Some struggled to hold back tears and sobs. Others sniffled quietly and held each other tight.

Standing up straight, Thomas Rigterink, 33, listened as the jury found him guilty in the brutal stabbing deaths of Allison Sousa and Jeremy Jarvis on Sept. 24, 2003.

The jury spent more than nine hours deliberating over two days before convicting Rigterink on two counts of first-degree murder.

The trial moves into the penalty phase Wednesday, when the same jury will listen to testimony and arguments about whether Rigterink should be executed or sentenced to life in prison.

Before being taken to a holding cell, Rigterink nodded at his parents, James and Nancy, sitting in the courtroom's front row.

The family and friends of Sousa and Jarvis fought hard to control their emotions. Circuit Judge J. Dale Durrance had previously warned everyone inside his packed courtroom that he wouldn't tolerate any outbursts.

Once outside, they let their feelings loose, hugging each other and crying openly.

"It's so hard to sit in there and control your emotions," said Lee Sweeney, Jarvis' mother. "You're dying inside," she said.

Sweeney said she traveled from Akron, Ohio, to sit through the trial, which she described as "torture" for every family involved.

Sweeney said her 24-year-old son was an easygoing and bright young man who was always wellbehaved.

Alice Diggett, Allison Sousa's mother, and other members of her family wore decorative butterfly pins throughout the trial to silently honor her 23-year-old daughter's memory.

Diggett has described Sousa as an outgoing person who wouldn't think twice about helping someone in trouble. She enjoyed writing poetry, cooking and taking care of her son, who is now 4.

Before his arrest, Rigterink -the adopted son of two Polk Community College professors -had once worked for a prestigious Miami Beach modeling agency. He was one semester away from a biology degree at Warner Southern College.

But prosecutors say Rigterink's life took a turn for the worse shortly before the killings. He was fired from his job and separated from his wife, who worked two jobs to bring in extra income. He also had a drug habit.

Prosecutors say Rigterink planned to rob Jarvis of drugs at the warehouse unit where Jarvis lived at County Road 542 and Jimmy Lee Road, near Winter Haven.

Investigators would later recover about five pounds of marijuana from Jarvis' home.

Shortly after 3 p.m. on the day of the killings, prosecutors said Rigterink attacked Jarvis with a knife at least 10 inches long, but Jarvis escaped to the nearby offices where Sousa worked as a secretary.

As Sousa attempted to call for help, Rigterink burst inside the office and continued his attack.

Jarvis was stabbed 22 times, and Sousa was stabbed six times. Jarvis and Sousa bled to death.

During the trial, a key piece of evidence was a roughly 40minute videotaped statement of Rigterink speaking to detectives on Oct. 16, 2003, the day of his arrest.

On the videotape, Rigterink talks about having "snap shot" memories of the knife attack.

He offers to draw a diagram of where events took place. He demonstrates for detectives his struggle with Jarvis -- even holding an imaginary knife and raising his hand over his head.

Rigterink said on the tape that he kept up a relatively normal life and had no problems sleeping after the killings.

"After the fact . . ., honest to God, I didn't feel bad," Rigterink said.

Defense lawyer Byron Hileman said the case consisted mostly of circumstantial evidence with the exception of this videotaped statement.

Rigterink took the witness stand and claimed he was pressured by detectives to confess. He testified that he arrived shortly after the killings and saw the culprits -- violent drug dealers -who threatened to harm his loved ones if he told anyone.

Throughout his more than nine hours on the witness stand, Rigterink repeatedly denied killing anyone.

Sousa's 33-year-old husband, Tim, said Rigterink deserves the death penalty, and his testimony only proves that he is a liar.

Sweeney said she has thought about what Rigterink's punishment should be since her son's death.

"I've left it in God's hands," she said.

Jason Geary can be reached at 863-533-9079.

Katrina brings new dimension to Sister Helen Prejean's mission to

The plight of poor blacks who could not escape Hurricane Katrina offers a twist on the popular "Left Behind" series about the people who remain on Earth after the Rapture.

It also gives a new dimension to Sister Helen Prejean's mission to eliminate the death penalty.

Herself one of hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the disaster, she is going forward with her fall speaking schedule - cobbled back together after the original records in New Orleans were destroyed by flooding - with fresh ways to illustrate her points.

She plans to draw comparisons, for example, between evacuation plans that made no provision for people who did not have cars and a criminal justice system that hands down the ultimate punishment overwhelmingly to low-income minorities.

"We must stop relying on violence and incarceration and attend to the social fabric," Prejean said. "If people have decent housing, jobs and schools, the family stays together and they're not going to turn to crime."

The 66-year-old Louisiana native may have been talking on a borrowed cell phone - calls to her own still wouldn't go through as she traveled between speaking engagements in Florida last week - but her message came through loud and clear.

The same was true in 1993 when Prejean published "Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States," which became an international bestseller and the basis for an Academy Award-winning film starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon.

The Catholic nun plans to bring her message to Decatur on Tuesday.

"I know other people are handling the hurricane victims, and I need to stay on mission," she said. "The American people are not any more vengeful than other people, but they just don't know what's going on with the death penalty and they don't reflect on it very deeply.

"It's my job to take them there."

Prejean did that in "Dead Man Walking" by writing about her role as spiritual advisor to two convicted murderers who died in the electric chair. She said the execution of the first, Elmo Patrick Sonnier, on April 5, 1984, changed the course of her life.

"I walked out of that chamber in the middle of the night, and I threw up," she recalls. "I had never before watched someone killed in front of my eyes."

Her new book, "The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions," traces her journey counseling two death row inmates until they died by lethal injection - two men she believes were innocent.

Her stop in Decatur is sponsored by Macon County Citizens Opposing Capital Punishment and the Millikin University chapter of Amnesty International.

When not traveling, Prejean has been staying with her sister in Baton Rouge since evacuating New Orleans two days before Katrina struck Aug. 29.

When not helping people find shelter and schools, she has been making final revisions for the paperback version of "Innocents," due out in January.

"This catastrophe has felt biblical, like the way it feels before an execution when you focus only on the moment at hand," she said.

It also has profound lessons to teach, Prejean said, in light of statistics showing that states without the death penalty have lower crime rates.

"We were told the levees would protect us from flooding, but they broke," she said. "In the same way we believe the death penalty will protect us from crime, but it's all an illusion."

'Moratorium' on executions raises evacuee nun's spirits

Sister Prejean says Louisiana judges will be unable to review death penalty cases
By BOB ARNDORFER
Gainesville Sun
HURRICANE KATRINA

GAINESVILLE, FLA. - Hurricane Katrina forced Sister Helen Prejean and about 60 other nuns to flee their New Orleans Mother House last week and relocate indefinitely to Baton Rouge.

But the catastrophe had an effect on something else to which the woman known as "the Death-Penalty Nun" has devoted her life.

"Katrina put a moratorium on the death penalty in Louisiana for at least three years," Prejean, 66, said before a talk Wednesday night at Holy Faith Catholic Church in Gainesville.

She said court buildings in New Orleans were so badly damaged that judges, among other things, won't be reviewing death penalty cases anytime soon. Prejean has been working more than 20 years to abolish the death penalty in the United States.

That effort was given a boost by her 1993 book, Dead Man Walking , and director Tim Robbins' 1996 movie that earned Susan Sarandon an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of Prejean. The book explores Prejean's spiritual journey from being pen pals with a death row inmate to accompanying him to his execution and how that experience crystallized her belief that the death penalty goes against true Christian teachings.

She talked about that journey — from a privileged upbringing in Baton Rouge to spiritual adviser to death row inmates — before about 200 people at Holy Faith. Her Gainesville visit was the first stop on a nationwide tour to promote her second book on the death penalty, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions , which details her experience with two executed men who she said clearly were innocent.

After her hourlong talk, she signed copies of both books — and accepted donations to the rebuilding of the convent in New Orleans.

Prejean (pronounced PRAY-zheen) emphasized that her mission is as much to the families of victims as it is to their killers.

Governors find leeway in granting clemency

Daniels, Kernan cited solid reasons for mercy
By Lesley Stedman Weidenbener
lstedman@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

INDIANAPOLIS -- For nearly five decades, no Indiana governor chose to spare the life of anyone on death row.

The state executed a dozen inmates during that period, which included a brief span when the U.S. Supreme Court put a moratorium on capital punishment.

But in the past 13 months, two governors have spared three men from death.

One inmate had an IQ just above the threshold of mental retardation and one's guilt was questioned by some because of evidence that never reached a court.

The third -- Arthur Baird, whose death sentence was commuted by Gov. Mitch Daniels late last month -- has been determined by doctors to be mentally ill and delusional. Life without parole wasn't an option at the time of his trial.

A decade ago, decisions to commute death sentences might have seemed politically difficult, if not impossible, according to many legal experts.

But today, governors seem to have more latitude to spare the lives of some condemned killers and execute others without incurring the wrath of voters, large numbers of whom still support capital punishment.

"People are more willing to consider the possibility of errors" or other circumstances that might warrant commuting a death sentence, said Marla Sandys, an associate professor of criminal justice at Indiana University.

"Governors are now able to explain those better. They can say that under most circumstances, they support the death penalty, but in this situation they are making an exception."

According to political and legal experts, several factors have led to the change:

Errors in death-penalty cases have been uncovered across the country, including some in which a defendant was found to be innocent and others in which courts determined that inmates did not have adequate legal representation.

Emerging research about mental illness and mental retardation has led to more debate about executions, even among some who support the penalty.

Dropping crime rates have made Americans feel safer, which has led to a decline in the intensity of some people's feelings about the penalty.

"It used to be simple: The more you executed, the more the public loved it," said Phoebe Ellsworth, who has studied public opinion and the death penalty as a professor of law and psychology at the University of Michigan.

"Now the public knows about wrongful executions, and they want a leader who is tough but not bloodthirsty. You don't want to look as though you're executing people casually."

According to Gallup polls, support for the death penalty reached its peak in 1994, when 80 percent of Americans favored it for people convicted of murder. Over the next decade -- as evidence of some wrongful convictions emerged -- support dropped to 71 percent.

"Part of the passion that drove people to favor the death penalty was this fear that crime was completely out of control and people getting away with murder," Ellsworth said. "Some of the juice has drained away from that" as the crime rate has fallen.

But a poll released in May showed support back up to 74 percent, its highest point in 10 years.

Clark County Prosecutor Steve Stewart, a proponent of the death penalty in some cases, said media saturation about anti-death-penalty efforts and cases with wrongful convictions have led to changes in public perception of executions.

Stewart said he doesn't believe the public supports governors when they commute death sentences that have been imposed by juries and upheld by higher courts. "They swallow it because of the way it's publicized," he said.

Daniels and former Gov. Joe Kernan said politics did not play a part in their decisions to commute the sentences of condemned prisoners.

Kernan spared the life of Darnell Williams, who had killed a Gary couple, while he was running against Daniels. He said Williams was borderline mentally retarded, and the man with whom he committed the crime had not been sentenced to death.

Kernan said he had many advisers who told him that it would hurt his campaign if he granted Williams clemency.

But the Democrat said the decision "was going to be on the basis of what I thought was right."

"I don't think in retrospect that it had much of a political impact one way or the other," Kernan said.

In the last week of his term, after he'd lost the election, Kernan commuted the sentence of Michael Daniels, who also has a low IQ. Kernan said evidence that cast doubt on Michael Daniels' guilt never was presented in court, and he called for a review of the state's death-penalty system.

Since Gov. Mitch Daniels took office in January, four men have been executed and only Baird has been spared.

"I'm just going to look at these case by case," Gov. Daniels said.

A top Daniels adviser, Mark Lubbers, said that although support for the death penalty has remained strong, it is a much more reasoned support than 20 years ago, opening the door to more rational reviews of clemency requests.

"In the last decade, there's been a lot more public dialogue about the efficacy and morality of the death penalty," Lubbers said. "And that has made it easier for governors, when appropriate, to decide to commute a sentence."

Still, clemency is rarely granted, and in most states, far more death-row inmates are executed than spared.

In the past five years, governors have granted clemency 187 times, but the majority of them came in 2003, when then-Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted the death sentences of 167 inmates, citing a flawed judicial system, and pardoned four more inmates.

The remaining 20 have come from 10 states, including Kentucky, where former Gov. Paul Patton commuted Kevin Stanford's death sentence to life in prison because he was only 17 when he raped, sodomized, kidnapped and shot 20-year-old Louisville gas-station attendant Baerbel Poore.

Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot execute defendants whose crimes were committed when they were juveniles. The court also has carved out an exception for people who are mentally retarded.

In many ways, society is putting restrictions on the death penalty, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "But we are not going to get rid of the possibility of executing people," he said.

The number of people sentenced to death annually has dropped by 50 percent since 1999, Dieter said, and the number of individuals on death row has declined.

Also, polls show that when given a choice, about 40 percent of Americans would choose life in prison without parole rather than the death penalty for criminals.

"No one wants to see an innocent person executed, whichever side of the political aisle you're on," Dieter said.

The issues remain difficult, though. Stewart said that most people believe defendants who are mentally ill probably shouldn't be executed. But the definition of mental illness is so broad that it would encompass too many people, he said.

"I haven't met a murderer yet who wasn't mentally ill in some respect," said Stewart, a 20-year veteran of prosecutions.

Dieter said that psychiatrists might be forced to come up with a more narrow category of mental illness that would make the death penalty appropriate for a person who fits that definition, and then state legislatures and the courts would decide how or whether that definition should be applied.

None of the 38 states that have the death penalty prohibit it for people who are mentally ill.

Those are just the kinds of debates that enable governors to be more open to clemency, Ellsworth said.

"It used to be that your death-penalty attitude as a public official is something that identified you politically," she said. "You could not get elected to one of the highest offices if you openly opposed the death penalty.

"Now that's less true. It's an attitude like other attitudes. It doesn't define your whole political approach anymore."

Minors commit murder

Minors commit murder

In this era of sophisticated brain research, should they be charged and tried as adults?

BY KAY HARVEY
Pioneer Press

James Lundquist remembers when he first realized the horror of taking another person's life.

It happened when he turned 22 — a year older than the woman he fatally shot through the window of a moving car in St. Paul.

Scott Tomlinson fondly wears his sister's initials tattooed on his right arm. A coroner ruled she died of strangulation after the two wrestled over a TV remote control in their West St. Paul home.

The men share two things in common with Jason McLaughlin, who gunned down fellow students inside his Cold Spring, Minn., school. They, too, were juveniles when charged with murder. And both were charged as adults in Minnesota courts.

A judge last month gave McLaughlin a life sentence and a consecutive 12-year-prison term for killing two schoolmates at Rocori High School when he was 15. He will be at least 55 when eligible for release.

His case captured the public eye at a time when adolescent brain research suggests minors should be less accountable for their crimes than adults. The findings colored a U.S. Supreme Court decision this year to rule the death penalty for minors unconstitutional.

"One of the factors was the teen brain is not a mature brain," says David Walsh, founder of the Minneapolis-based Institute on Media and the Family and author of the research-based book "Why Do They Act That Way?" (2004).

Recent studies at the National Institute of Mental Health have reversed a long-held theory the adolescent brain is fully developed by age 14. Neuro-imaging techniques show the brain's prefrontal cortex, which regulates impulse control and reasoning, may not completely mature until age 20 or older.

"There is some research showing an adolescent brain is less apt or able than adults to think ahead, plan and anticipate consequences of their actions," explains Laurence Steinberg, who heads an ongoing national study fueled by the brain studies. "The extension of this could be that kids are less likely to plan anything, including crimes."

As awareness of the brain research has spread, David Walsh often fields questions from academia, law enforcement and the general public.

"The question they ask is, 'Should this cause us to rethink how we handle juveniles in the corrections system?' "

STILL KIDS

The juvenile justice system is under escalating attack, says Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice.

On one side, observers contend the system isn't tough enough on juvenile offenders. On the other, critics say it ignores children's individual needs and fails to fulfill a promise to rehabilitate.

"This is the first study ever to look at these kids as kids and not just little criminals," he says of the research network. "Our goal is to examine what the appropriate response is to serious juvenile offending."

The research is focused on what happens to minors entering the juvenile justice system, their competency to defend themselves in court and what it takes to rehabilitate young offenders.

The teen brain's immaturity amounts to a double-whammy for youths with undiagnosed or untreated mental illnesses who become dangerous, says Dr. E. Torrey Fuller, president of the Arlington, Va.-based national nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center.

Many states, including Minnesota and Wisconsin, have passed laws making it easier to try minors as adults. That shift in the mid-1990s reflects a growing effort to get tough on crime.

But MacArthur Foundation statistics now indicate that trying juveniles as adults may not ultimately keep our streets and neighborhoods any safer.

While minors tried as adults end up in adult prisons, offenders are much more likely to get rehabilitative services in juvenile programs, says Kathleen Heide, a University of South Florida criminologist. She cites success rates as high as 85 percent with in-depth treatment addressing underlying causes of violence.

In her 1998 book, "Young Killers: The Challenge of Juvenile Homicide," Heide attributes heightened teen-age crime to a violence-saturated culture and growing access to alcohol, drugs and guns. She also zeroes in on child abuse and neglect, lack of positive role models and growing poverty.

"(There is) a feeling among youths for these reasons and their own personality makeup that they have little or nothing left to lose," she says.

SANE AND RESPONSIBLE

In Minnesota, a 1995 law dictates that 16- and 17-year-olds charged with serious violent crimes are automatically tried as adults. For 14- and 15-year-olds, a judicial waiver hearing is required. In Wisconsin, children as young as 10 can be tried as adults.

Some advocates for change, such as University of Minnesota law professor Barry Feld, are pushing for shorter sentences for juveniles than for adults convicted of similar crimes.

Another camp is eager to change laws that make a mental-illness defense virtually impossible in many states. Jails and prisons have become the first line of psychiatric treatment for offenders in this country, experts say. Quality of treatment varies widely, says Torrey of the Treatment Advocacy Center.

The way laws are written isn't the only factor, he says. Jurors and judges often play a role. "There's an attitude in some cases of, 'This teen looks dangerous. Locking him up is the answer whether he's mentally ill or not.' "

The brain findings have spurred Rep. Mindy Greiling, DFL-Roseville, to introduce legislative bills this year and last to replace a strict mental-illness defense that is law in Minnesota and 24 other states.

The controversial M'Naghten rule poses a two-pronged question: Did the defendant know what he was doing? And did he know it was wrong? If answers to both of those questions appear to be yes, a defendant is considered sane and responsible for his or her crime.

The 162-year-old test of sanity has frustrated many defense attorneys. One is Daniel Eller, who argued in court last month that Jason McLaughlin suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and didn't know right from wrong. A judge rejected his mental-illness defense, concluding McLaughlin knew he was committing a moral wrong.

Another is Terry Walters, the defense attorney for David Brom, who was 16 in 1988 when he axed his parents and two younger siblings to death in their Rochester home. Despite hearing testimony citing multiple personalities and hallucinations of being a werewolf, a jury determined Brom, too, understood what he was doing was wrong.

"Under Minnesota's rigid law, where everything is black or white, you're either completely M'Naghten insane or you're competent," Walters told a reporter after the trial.

At age 33, Brom is still serving the first of three life sentences at Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater, where he works building squirrel houses and has no chance of parole until at least age 70. He has tutored other inmates and worked on a prison newspaper.

JUVENILE JUSTICE

Any push for defendants' rights is a tough sell in the current tough-on-crime era, Greiling says.

Along with tougher sentencing for many youths, rehabilitation programs and educational opportunities in adult prisons have dwindled. "We're not into rehabilitation. We're into punishment," she says. "What most people forget is that most prison inmates will get out some day."

Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom is among vocal proponents of a tough-on-crime agenda. He defends the M'Naghten rule for its clarity and supports trying 14- to 17-year-olds who commit serious violent crimes as adults in the interest of public safety.

The flip side, he says, is the release from prison last month of 21-year-old Mitchell Johnson, a Minnesota native tried and convicted in an Arkansas juvenile court at age 13 of helping to shoot five people in a schoolyard rampage.

"Is that adequate?" Backstrom asks. "I think not."

Greiling says she'll continue pushing to replace the M'Naghten rule and to improve rehabilitation and educational opportunities in Minnesota prisons.

But is there an outcry to change the juvenile justice system in Minnesota?

"No, not at all," she says. "But there is the Jason McLaughlin case. And that brings interest to the issue."

Kay Harvey can be reached at kharvey@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5468.

MINORS AND CRIME

200,000 — number of minors across the country tried and sentenced each year as adults

336 — number of inmates in Minnesota prisons tried and sentenced as adults for crimes committed before age 18

41 — number of states where minors can be sentenced to life without parole

Truth or consequences

Zero tolerance for prosecutors who shortcut justice

Prosecutors like Ken Honeycutt and Scott Brewer do justice no favors when they hold winning in higher regard than pursuing justice. The N.C. State Bar has accused the two ex-prosecutors of misconduct, saying they lied to the court and withheld evidence in a case that put a man on death row for seven years.

In the past, the state bar has given only wrist slaps to prosecutors who commit such wrongs. This time, it must send a strong message: When those sworn to uphold the law step outside the lines, they face consequences.

Mr. Honeycutt has said he did nothing wrong when, as district attorney for the 20th Judicial District, he prosecuted Jonathan Hoffman for murder in 1996. Mr. Brewer, his assistant and now a District Court judge in Rockingham, has said nothing.

Yet the bar investigation's finding is unequivocal: The two deliberately failed to tell the court a deal was cut with a key witness in exchange for his testimony. That violates the rules of evidence.

The bar's opinion is also clear: Not telling helped the prosecutors win -- and helped put Mr. Hoffman on death row.

Some prosecutors have the mindset that it's more important to win a murder case than to arrive at the truth. But justice doesn't mean winning at any cost. The criminal justice system must protect the public from murderers, yes. But it must also make sure law enforcement finds, charges, tries and convicts the right person.

Mr. Hoffman's case is not the first time an N.C. prosecutor's zeal upended justice. Two years ago, death row inmate Alan Gell was acquitted in a retrial after sitting on death row for a murder he did not commit. In his first trial, prosecutors withheld key evidence showing Mr. Gell could not have committed the murder. Yet the State Bar gave them only a reprimand -- the lightest punishment possible.

The state wastes millions of dollars in precious court resources when it convicts an innocent man, and it costs millions more to undo the wrong. Meanwhile, the real criminal walks the streets.

Alan Gell and Jonathan Hoffman could have died -- because prosecutors who convicted them withheld key information from the defense. If that doesn't scare you, it should. The state bar should take a strong stand.

Educator teaching inmates new perspective

Prisoners learn about their actions on victims

Amy Sowder
@PensacolaNewsJournal.com

University of West Florida professor Cheryl Swanson has the most captive audience when she teaches.

That's because the classroom is not on campus but at the W.C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., a lifetime home for many inmates.

Holman is a maximum-security prison where death sentences are carried out by lethal injection.

In other words, this prison is no white-collar, cushy rehabilitation center.

The lessons began in June, when Swanson, an associate professor of criminal justice, walked out of her colorful office decorated with paintings by local artists and art-deco lamps to the whitewashed walls and donated pews of the Restorative Justice Honor Dorm at Holman.

"They can either vegetate or do something positive with their lives. They have to learn how to work together as a community because prison is their home," Swanson said.

Throughout the summer and into this fall semester, Swanson has used the restorative justice approach to teach victimology to small groups of prisoners. The approach teaches prisoners to empathize with and understand the impact of their actions on their victims and victims' families.

She had the inmates pick three victims they identified within the book "Transcending Reflections of Crime" by Howard Zehr, in which victims or victims' family members describe their pain and their path to transcend it.

The inmates wrote three letters: In the first one, they wrote apologies; in the second, they had to put themselves in their victims' place and write to themselves. And the final letter required the offenders to write out what they did, what they were thinking at the time and the effects of their actions.

The program can curb the domino effect of criminal behavior through family generations, Swanson said.

There also are fewer discipline reports than in the general prison population because the 177 Honor Dorm inmates learn how to handle conflict without violence, Swanson said.

UWF student Kimberly Jane Hudson, 24, visited the prison with Swanson last summer through a directive study of restorative justice.

"It's an eye-opener because I think you need to know how every area of society functions in a community, so you know why people do what they do," Hudson said.

One prisoner told Swanson that once he entered the honor dorm, he felt like he had dropped a 100-pound weight because he wasn't watching his back all the time.

Swanson felt the difference, too.

"When I walk through the prison yard by the regular prisoners, they have that edge, look and attitude you see in prison movies," Swanson said. "But in the honor dorm, it's much more relaxed, what we'd see in the free world."

The program teaches accountability to the inmates, prison chaplain Chris Summers said.

"This relational approach points to the harms of one's crime and calls for a response of general remorse," Summers said. "Studies have shown this remorse to be a key to victims' closure and offender accountability."

UWF student Neslihan Suhi, 21, is specializing in criminal justice and plans to visit the prison with Swanson this month.

Suhi wants to be a law enforcement officer.

"Restorative justice concentrates on making things right between the victim and offender," Suhi said. "It gives the victim the opportunity to be a part of the whole process, instead of being set to the side like our current system tends to do."

George Ryan's final campaign Facing his corruption trial, ex-governor tries to shape his legacy

By Steve Mills
Tribune staff reporter
Published September 10, 2005, 11:45 AM CDT


George Ryan waits on a sidewalk downtown, wife Lura Lynn beside him, both of them looking for their van and a ride home.

Behind him is the DePaul University law school, where, to great praise and applause, he has just told the improbable story of how he—a small-town pharmacist by training, a politician by trade—came to reckon with the death penalty.

Just down the street is the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse building, where, come Sept. 19, he will go on trial on federal corruption charges.

Passersby stare. Some stop and wish him well. A woman asks, "Didn't you used to be Governor George Ryan?" drawing a laugh from the former governor. Then a man approaches. "Didn't you get busted?"

Blinking behind large eyeglasses on this mild day, Ryan briefly stammers and says, no, he has not been arrested. He glances down Jackson Street, searching for the van and looking more than a little like someone eager for an escape.

Ryan gathers himself, then looks the man in the eyes and offers a slight clarification: He was indicted, that is true, but his trial has not yet started.

"Well, if you didn't do it, I hope you beat it," the man says. "If you did, well ..." He then disappears into the thick pedestrian traffic.

This is George Ryan's world: heady afternoons and evenings in which he is greeted as a hero for his historic actions to stop the death penalty, mornings when he wakes to the frightening prospect that, at age 71, he may go to prison.

Ryan passes this time not like a man under siege, but almost as if federal prosecutors never obtained the massive federal indictment that accuses him of selling his office to cronies for cash and favors for him and his family.

Instead, Ryan presses ahead with what he calls his "mission," speaking publicly against the death penalty.

On that issue, Ryan has been in demand since he left office in January 2003, speaking at colleges and law schools across the nation, to activist groups and other organizations, from the American Civil Liberties Union in Peoria to a Rotary Club in Dallas.

On those stages, Ryan finds himself embraced by people who do not care or do not know about the indictment or the scandal that tarnished his tenure as governor.

In Austin, Texas, people ask for his autograph. In Champaign, they marvel at how he did what no other politician would do. And in Mobile, Ala., they tell him that only God could have sent him.

"You've just got to go on," Ryan says during one of a series of interviews during the last seven months, conducted as he traveled to and from the speaking engagements and at his longtime home in Kankakee.

Without a doubt, what happens at the trial will color the legacy of a politician who rose through the ranks over the course of three decades to become governor of the state of Illinois. It may not, however, answer the fundamental questions that continue to trail him.

Is George Ryan a hero of the anti-death penalty movement, an elected official who, by simply following his conscience and emptying Illinois' Death Row, helped change the debate on one of this country's more contentious issues?

Or is he a corrupt politician who adopted capital punishment as an issue to steer attention away from a growing scandal and save his own skin?

Or is he both?

Embracing a new routine

Ryan is in his element: standing at the podium, bathed in the lights of a hotel ballroom. The scene is Austin, the annual conference of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Ryan is the keynote speaker.

The speech Ryan gives now is little different from the one he has given for the last 2 ? years, since the day he stood in Northwestern University law school's ornate Lincoln Hall and commuted the sentences of the 167 inmates then on Death Row to life in prison without parole.

As he often does, Ryan jumbles a few of the facts. As he always does, he mispronounces the last name of Andrew Kokoraleis, who was convicted of the 1982 mutilation and murder of an Elmhurst woman and whose death sentence was the only one Ryan allowed carried out as governor.

These days, however, he gives a more forceful, more articulate defense of his actions and a better explanation of his views on the death penalty.

He describes how, as a state legislator in 1977, he voted to reinstate the death penalty, though he gave the issue little thought. Then, he simply accepted that some convicted murderers—the worst of the worst, he calls them—should be executed.

But, he says, as he learned more about how the death penalty is applied, he came to question it. So in 2000, citing the exoneration of 13 Illinois Death Row inmates, Ryan declared a moratorium on executions.

Then, three years later, frustrated that the General Assembly did not act on a slate of proposals to reform the state's death penalty system, Ryan pardoned four Death Row prisoners and granted commutations to the rest.

Now, he says, he wants to abolish capital punishment altogether. He tells audiences he has "come full circle for a guy who used to be a strong believer to a guy who doesn't see any reason to have it."

Ryan finishes to a rousing standing ovation. Afterward, people surround him in front of the stage, get his autograph and ask to have their picture taken with him. He obliges every request.

Emptying Death Row made Ryan a hero of capital punishment opponents all over the world. Offers to speak about the death penalty began to come in.

But leaving the governor's office also left Ryan adrift. His power was gone. The comforts of office were gone. Instead of traveling with his state police security detail and aides, Ryan now travels mostly alone, which he says he does not mind though friends and others say he dislikes it.

He pulls his own suitcase through airports. He sits at small tables in airport restaurants and eats by himself. He waits alone for his flights.

Other travelers recognize his florid face and corrugated brow, his great mass of shoulders, the dusting of snowy white hair, always neatly combed. And the voice—the baritone. When Ryan speaks, any uncertainty other travelers have of who he is immediately disappears.

They approach him, say hello, pump his hand up and down. For a moment, Ryan is on the campaign trail again. One morning, a man with his young son riding on his shoulders introduced himself to Ryan, and Ryan chatted him up, asking where he was going. Ryan tugged gently at the boy's feet.

Not everyone considers him benignly. Some travelers shake their heads when they see him or, out of earshot, mutter, "His next flight will be on the prison plane" or "Hey, how about getting me a free job."

He knows people say things like that. He does not much care.

"The people who say I'm going to be on the next prison plane," he says, "well, they haven't got the balls to come up to me and say it."

The indictment has changed everything for Ryan, including the company he keeps. Now, he counts radicals, activists and students among his friends. He even agreed to be honorary chairman for an international anti-death penalty group, Hands Off Cain, "a radical, left-wing group I probably shouldn't be involved with," he says.

The Northwestern University law school's Center on Wrongful Convictions offered Ryan the warmest embrace, essentially becoming his staff after he left office and needed to sort through speaking requests. Lawrence Marshall, who had grown close to Ryan as the center's legal director, offered to help him.

Marshall, now a Stanford University law school professor, says he set aside an hour to talk with Ryan. "He said, 'Why do you want to talk about it? I trust you. Just decide which ones are best,'" Marshall says. "He decided that I was an OK guy who he could trust."

Marshall never considered turning his back on the embattled Ryan.

"Look. This guy had stuck his neck out and sacrificed a lot," Marshall says. "The last thing we're going to do is leave him high and dry."

But some friends and former aides, feeling betrayed by the scandal that helped persuade Ryan not to seek re-election, abandoned him.

"Some friends we used to have, we don't hear from them so much anymore," Ryan says. "But you know, I'm not governor anymore, and I don't have anything to give anyone. People call when they want something."

Says Joe Hannon, who headed the state's trade office when Ryan was governor and remains one of his closest friends: "There's an awkwardness. It's a little like going to the hospital to see someone who you know isn't going home."

But in Ryan's new world this awkwardness seldom intrudes, in part because it is not allowed to. Through all of the travel, all of the speeches, all of the awards, the federal indictment is almost never spoken of. It is as if it were a family secret.

At the DePaul law school, professor Andrea Lyon—who invited Ryan and whose client Madison Hobley was one of the Death Row prisoners Ryan pardoned—asked her students not to bring up the indictment.

Lyon, who has since joined Ryan's defense team, did not want to embarrass him.

In Champaign, at the screening of a documentary that focuses on Ryan and the commutations, he was again protected from difficult questions.

As the movie ended, Ryan walked to the front of the theater to a huge ovation. He was prepared to answer questions from the audience. The event's organizer, Rachael Dietkus, issued the audience a stern warning, saying that she would cut off any questioner who went "off topic."

No one did.

Where it all started

It is a Sunday morning. Ryan, just returned from Austin, is speeding south across the state he governed for four years.

At the wheel is Champ Witoski, a retired tool and die maker, a bullet of a man whose mother was so fond of the Hollywood singing cowboy Gene Autry that she named her son after his movie horse, Champion.

Witoski often drives Ryan to his speaking engagements. Ryan sits in the back of his 1991 Ford custom van, in one of the captain's chairs. Witoski calls him "sir."

From his seat—the faux-wood paneling giving the van the look of an office, a syrupy sun flooding in—landmarks and highway signs trigger a stream of memories.

At Kankakee, he asks Witoski to pull off the road for a short tour. Here, he points proudly, is a children's water park named for Ryan and his wife. There is an ice rink under construction, a product of Ryan's $12 billion Illinois FIRST public works program. Here is the George H. Ryan Activities Center at the Kankakee Community College.

In all, Ryan estimates, he delivered more than $150 million in roads, bridges, schools, jails, firetrucks and other projects to Kankakee and the surrounding communities throughout his career.

"I feel pretty good about the 30 years I was in government," he says, ticking off a list of other projects. "We got a lot of things done."

The son of a pharmacist, Ryan was a child when his mother and father came to Illinois from Iowa, first to the South Side of Chicago, then to Kankakee, where the Walgreen's drug store chain transferred his father.

Ryan became a pharmacist, too, helping to run what eventually became the family's chain of four drug stores around Kankakee.

Ryan got his start in politics on the Kankakee County Board. He had helped his brother Tom win election as mayor of Kankakee, and when a spot on the County Board opened, Republican Party officials approached him.

"It was a chance to serve in government without leaving home," Ryan recalled. "It was a chance to get involved."

After six years on the board, the last as chairman, Ryan won a seat in the General Assembly. In time, he became the Republican leader, then speaker of the House, the post in which he began to develop his reputation as a deal-maker who could work across party lines.

He then moved into statewide offices. He served two terms as in the largely ceremonial post of lieutenant governor under Gov. James Thompson, then two terms in the job-heavy secretary of state's office.

Ryan reached the governor's office without any guiding political philosophy, a moderate Republican who governed viscerally, by instinct. He felt free to change his mind and often did, something that he prided himself on but that aides sometimes found frustrating. He could be swayed by an emotional appeal, by the last person who had his ear.

He was a hands-off manager with little interest in the fine details, a governor who preferred bold moves to the tinkering that occupies some chief executives. And he enjoyed the business of politics, especially the job of governor.

"I didn't want to go to bed at night. I couldn't wait to get up in the morning," he says.

Even before his actions on the death penalty, Ryan found ways to anger and alienate his party, especially its more conservative wing.

He opposed abortion, yet supported the use of Medicaid funds for abortions for poor women whose health was in jeopardy. He was a hunter and generally opposed gun control, but favored several gun-control packages. In spite of the U.S. travel restrictions, he visited Cuba twice and met with its leader Fidel Castro.

On no issue, however, did Ryan alienate the Republican faithful more than on the issue of capital punishment.

For most of his political career, Ryan gave it little thought. Then, in a matter of six weeks in 1999, Ryan watched one Death Row inmate go free after university journalism students and a private investigator proved that he was not guilty, and he had to decide if another should be put to death.

Scott Fawell, Ryan's former chief of staff, remembers that Ryan agonized over Kokoraleis' execution, even though there was little doubt as to his guilt.

Now in federal prison for his role in the corruption scandal, Fawell is set to testify against Ryan in exchange for leniency for his girlfriend, who also was swept up in the federal investigation. Fawell, contacted by the Tribune, provided written responses to questions about Ryan, who once treated him as a son.

As Kokoraleis' execution date drew near, Fawell wrote, Ryan "kept saying 'I can't put someone to death' and I kept arguing, 'You're not, the legal system has determined his fate. You just have to get out of the way."

After much thought, Ryan allowed Kokoraleis to be put to death.

"I have no doubt that while he let that one execution be carried out that he knew that was it," Fawell wrote.

Less than a year later, Ryan declared a moratorium on executions and appointed a commission to study the state's death penalty system and to make recommendations for reform. The panel returned with 85 proposals.

After the legislature did not enact his reforms, Ryan faced leaving the governor's office with a death penalty system that was, in his words, "broken."

In his final days as governor, Ryan announced the pardons and the blanket commutation. They were his last significant acts as Illinois' governor.

'Absolutely not guilty'

It was Dec. 23, 2003, and Ryan was sitting in a conference room in his lawyers' downtown offices, surrounded by attorneys, his wife, his friends. His big hands were clasped together. The mood was dark.

"There were two things that I never thought would happen," he told his closest friends that day. "That I'd be governor, and then this."

Days earlier, U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald had announced Ryan's indictment, saying that "what we're alleging in the indictment is that basically the State of Illinois was for sale, for [Ryan's] friends and family at times."

In response, Ryan defiantly told the judge that he was "absolutely not guilty."

Ryan will not discuss specifics of the allegations against him, but he does offer a blanket denial: "I've got nothing to be ashamed of for all the years I spent in government. Those are allegations, and we'll prove they're wrong."

Ryan's indictment was a product of the Operation Safe Road investigation, which has netted six dozen convictions. Launched as an investigation of truck drivers paying bribes to Ryan's secretary of state's office to get licenses, it soon was expanded to encompass broader political corruption.

Federal prosecutors claim that the corruption defined Ryan's tenure as secretary of state and governor and that he took money and favors for himself and for his family in exchange for steering lucrative state contracts to his friends and cronies. He also is charged with lying to federal agents.

Ryan is scheduled to go to trial with Lawrence Warner, a longtime friend and a member of Ryan's so-called "kitchen cabinet" of his closest advisers, in front of U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer. Prosecutors allege that Warner provided cash, loans, gifts and services to Ryan family members totaling $167,000.

Warner also has pleaded not guilty.

Ryan's harshest critics draw a line from the financial corruption to the deaths of six children in a highway crash involving a trucker who paid a bribe to get his license—the event that sparked the investigation and ultimately led to Ryan's indictment.

"His office was a cesspool of corruption," says Joe Power, the attorney who represented the parents of the children killed in the highway crash and who pushed hard for Ryan to be held accountable. "When there's the death of six innocent children, you can understand why public sentiment would call for accountability."

Ryan's supporters suggest Warner and others took advantage of Ryan's good nature and hands-off management style, of a governor who never read the full text of a bill and rarely studied details.

These friends of Ryan's, aides say, had such a run of the office that it sometimes was difficult to get work done.

"If I'd had my druthers I'd have kicked them all out," says Robert Newtson, Ryan's former chief of staff. "These are people who knew George's management style, how he was as a person. I think that they simply took advantage of it."

"Did he do things that were violations of the law? Probably," says former Budget Bureau Director Stephen Schnorf, adding that federal prosecutors twice have interviewed him in their investigation. "Did he do them knowingly, intentionally? I can't imagine that."

Power says Ryan had to know about the wrongdoing in his office.

"Either he was aware of everything going on in the office ... or he's the village idiot," he says. "I will leave that up to others to be judge of."

Prosecutors have suggested Ryan's death penalty actions were corrupt as well, taken only after Ryan knew federal agents were investigating him and intended to deflect attention away from the scandal.

They say, too, that Ryan is trying to use his death penalty actions to construct an image of someone who never would have taken part in corruption.

They point to a Web site, the Friends of George Ryan Fund at http://www.georgeryanfund.com, that extols Ryan's accomplishments on capital punishment and solicits contributions.

Those close to Ryan's decisions on the death penalty say the federal investigation was never a factor. They say Ryan acted, as he did on other issues, because he believed that it was right.

"There was no upside at all for us in that issue," Newtson says. "The people we needed on other issues all were mad at us. And all of the death penalty people, well, they'd never be with us on other issues."

Even Scott Fawell, the prosecutors' star witness, contradicts the government's suggestion that Ryan used the death penalty to deflect attention away from the investigation or to curry support with potential jurors.

He wrote, "The death penalty issue was a moral decision he made. Period."

Either way, Pallmeyer ruled recently that Ryan's lawyers cannot tell jurors about his actions on the death penalty as part of his defense.

Finding order, purpose

"If I didn't have that issue," Ryan says, "I'd just be retired."

He is sitting in the family room of his Kankakee home, talking about the death penalty, trying to explain how it fills his days, informs his life.

He is clad in what passes for casual for a man who has worn a suit nearly every day for the last 30 years: gray slacks, a dress shirt, a blue blazer. A portrait done when he was speaker of the Illinois House gazes down at him from over the mantle.

When he's not on the road, life revolves around the modest brick home he has lived in for 40 years, near the Kankakee River and just a block from the house in which he was raised, where his sister still lives.

He runs to the grocery store for his wife. He visits relatives and friends, an increasing number of whom are becoming ill or even dying, he says.

He has been sorting through years of clutter in the basement and the attic, a history of his campaigns, elections and political offices.

He drives a few blocks for donuts, then comes home and climbs the back steps into the kitchen, joking to his wife that maybe he saved two glazed for her.

Last weekend, they drove to Niagara Falls.

If the trial weighs on his mind, it does not show. Although friends say Ryan is fearful of being convicted and sent to prison—and of losing his pension—he speaks of the trial with supreme confidence, as if it is merely a nuisance to be dispatched with as quickly as possible.

When he leaves home it usually is because he is speaking on the death penalty. The issue—reading the latest articles and books, talking with advocates, proselytizing—has given his life a sense of order, purpose. Recently, he has been speaking Sundays at area churches.

For Ryan there are the crowds that support him, crowds that he hopes to win over and crowds he has no chance of winning, although he appears to relish the chance to try.

One warm and humid morning late in the spring, Ryan strides into a private club on the outskirts of Dallas for a local Rotary meeting. The Dallas skyline is in the distance.

Unlike the majority of Ryan's other audiences, this one is almost exclusively male and almost all white. It is well-to-do, mostly Dallas-area business people. They also are ardent death penalty supporters.

This is the first time Ryan has encountered a crowd that is not on his side from the start and likely will not be converted easily.

As the club members push away their breakfast plates and turn their chairs to listen to Ryan, they appear respectful but skeptical.

Because Ryan does not tailor his speech for each new audience, there sometimes are odd moments. When he asks whether anyone in the suit-and-tie crowd knows anyone on Death Row, the crowd appears puzzled.

Then, after talking about how racism has infected the system, he asks the crowd, "How would you like to sit before an all-white jury?"

Again, puzzled.

Then he heads into the body of his speech and, as he always does, he gains a head of steam. He tells his story, from the man who pushed the green button as a legislator to reinstate the death penalty in Illinois, to the man who ended it.

"Who the hell am I," he says, "to say that a man should die?"

At the end, Ryan agrees to take questions. One man asks about abortion, seeming to confuse Ryan briefly. Ryan gives the question a brusque dismissal. "I'm here," he says, "for the death penalty."

When Ryan dodges a question, someone from the back of the room says, "You're not answering the question, governor." No one on the lecture circuit has said something like that before. But when a member tries to come to Ryan's rescue, Ryan shrugs it off and asks for more questions.

"Come on," Ryan says. "Bring them on."

When no one raises a hand, he gives the audience a satisfied look.

"Any more?" Ryan asks, almost baiting the audience. "No? You guys are easy."

GOVERNOR TAFT STATEMENT ON JOHN SPIRKO REHEARING

Governor Taft today issued the following statement regarding the Ohio Parole Board rehearing John Spirko clemency case.

"Based on the Ohio Parole Boards request, I have issued a warrant of reprieve for inmate John Spirko, delaying his execution date to November 15, 2005. "I support the Parole Boards decision to accept the proposal from both the Attorney General and counsel for inmate Spirko to rehear Mr. Spirkos case and reconsider its recommendation."

Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction

NEWS RELEASE -- MEDIA ADVISORY -- September 8, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date Scheduled for Clemency Hearing

The Ohio Parole Board will conduct the clemency hearing for death row inmate John Spirko, #171433, on October 12, 2005, at 10:00 a.m. The hearing will take place at the Adult Parole Authority Office located at 1030 Alum Creek Drive, Columbus, Ohio.

Any media wishing to attend should arrive at the site no later than 9:45 a.m. If you plan to attend the clemency hearing, please contact the DRC Public Information Office no later than noon on Friday, September 30, 2005. For more information, please contact the DRC Public Information Office at (614) 752-1150.

Without Evidence: Executing Frances Newton

Another Texas death row case marked by official carelessness, negligence, and intransigence
BY JORDAN SMITH

Unless the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry act to stop it, on Sept. 14 Frances Newton will become only the third woman executed by the state of Texas since 1982, and the first black woman executed since the Civil War.

Unique in that historical sense, in other ways the Frances Newton case is painfully unexceptional. For there is no incontrovertible evidence against Newton, and the paltry evidence that does exist has been completely compromised. Moreover, her story is one more in a long line of Texas death row cases in which the prosecutions were sloppy or dishonest, the defenses incompetent or negligent, and the constitutional guarantee of a fair trial was honored only in name.

As Harris Co. prosecutors tell the story, the now 40-year-old Newton is a cold-blooded killer who murdered her husband and two young children inside the family's apartment outside Houston on April 7, 1987, by shooting each of them, execution-style, in order to collect life insurance. Newton had the opportunity, they argued during her 1988 trial, and a motive – a troubled relationship with her husband, Adrian, and the promise of $100,000 in insurance money from policies she'd recently taken out on his life and on the life of their 21-month-old daughter Farrah. And she had the means, they say: a .25-caliber Raven Arms pistol she had allegedly stolen from a boyfriend's house.

To the state, it is a simple, open-and-shut case, which requires no further review. "Her case has been reviewed by every possible court," Harris Co. Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson told the Los Angeles Times in November. "She killed her two children and her husband. There is very, very strong evidence of that."

Yet despite Wilson's insistence, Newton's case isn't simple at all – and such "evidence" as there is, is far from strong. "The State's theory is simple, and it is superficially compelling," attorney David Dow, head of the Texas Innocence Network at the University of Houston Law Center, argued in Newton's clemency petition, currently pending before the Board of Pardons and Paroles. "As we will see, however, appearances can be misleading."

From the beginning, Frances Newton has maintained her innocence. She has also offered a plausible alternative theory of the crime – a theory that neither police, prosecutors, nor Newton's own trial attorney, the infamous and now suspended Ronald Mock, have ever investigated. Newton and her defenders contend that Adrian, Farrah, and 7-year-old Alton were likely murdered by someone connected to a drug dealer to whom Adrian owed $1,500. The alternative theory has much to say for it – among other things, it explains the lack of physical evidence connecting Newton to the bloody murders.

Lingering questions about the physical evidence against Newton prompted the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend, and Gov. Rick Perry to grant, a 120-day reprieve for Newton on Dec. 1, 2004 – the day she was last scheduled for execution. Although Perry said he saw no "evidence of innocence" – legally, an oxymoron – he granted the four-month stay to allow for retesting of evidence contested by Newton's defense, including nitrite residue on the hem of her skirt and gun ballistics evidence.

But testing on the skirt proved impossible, because the 1987 tests had destroyed the nitrite particles, and Harris Co. court officials had stored the skirt by sealing it inside a bag together with items of the victims' bloody clothing – thereby rendering it worthless as evidence. The second round of ballistics testing, on the other hand, supposedly confirmed a match between the gun prosecutors say Newton used and the bullets that killed her family. However, that match may be fundamentally undermined – because there is no certain connection between the gun and Newton. According to Dow, it appears that police actually recovered at least two, and perhaps three, .25-caliber Raven Arms pistols during their investigation of the murders – conflicting evidence that neither the police nor the prosecutors ever revealed to Newton's defense. Dow argues that it is virtually impossible to know whether prosecutors have been truthful in claiming that the gun that Newton admits to hiding on April 7, 1987, was the murder weapon. "How many firearms were recovered and investigated in this case and who owned them?" Dow asks in a supplemental petition filed with the BPP on Aug. 25. "How many records have been withheld from Newton's attorneys throughout this case?"

In short, there is now even more doubt about Newton's guilt than there was when she was granted the stay – distressing Newton's many defenders, among them Adrian's parents, two former prison officials, and at least one of the jurors who heard Newton's case. "We never wanted to see Frances get executed," Adrian's parents Tom and Virginia Louis wrote to the BPP on Aug. 25. "When the trial occurred, nobody from the [DA's] Office ever asked ... our opinion. We were willing to testify on Frances' behalf, but Frances' defense lawyer never approached us," they continued. "We do not wish to suffer the loss of another family member."

A Bloody Crime
In the months before the murders, Frances and Adrian Newton were having marital problems. They were each involved in extramarital relationships, and Adrian was using drugs. In an Aug. 30 Gatesville prison interview, Newton told me that in addition to smoking marijuana, Adrian had developed a cocaine habit. "He had told me he was using cocaine, but I'd never seen that, but I saw the effects of it," she recalled. "He was home later, he was irritable, less responsible."

But she and Adrian had been together since she was a girl, and she was determined to work things out. That was on her mind on the afternoon of April 7, 1987, when she and Adrian sat down and talked. "We had decided that we were going to get through this together," she said. Adrian insisted that he wasn't using anymore, so when they were done talking and Adrian went into the living room "to watch TV ... I decided to be nosy and see if he was being honest," she recalled. Quietly, she opened the cabinet where he kept his stash.

Execution opponents march at the Governor's Mansion.
photo by John Anderson

"That's when I found the gun," she said. Newton said she immediately recalled a conversation she'd heard earlier that day, between Adrian and his brother, Sterling, who'd been staying with the family. "I couldn't hear real close, but it sounded like they'd been in some trouble," she said. "I thought I'd better take [the gun] out of there because I didn't want it to be in the house ... I didn't want him to get into any trouble." She removed the gun, placed it in a duffel bag and took it with her when she left the apartment around 6pm to run some errands, she says.

Newton says it was the last time she saw her family alive.

At 7pm, after a couple of errands, Newton arrived at her cousin Sondra Nelms' house, where the two chatted and decided to return to Newton's apartment. As Newton backed out of the drive, she saw the duffel on the back seat and realized she needed to hide it. With Nelms watching, Newton retrieved the bag and walked next door into a burned and abandoned house owned by her parents, and there (as both women later confirmed), she left the bag.

The women arrived at the apartment around 8pm, and didn't immediately realize that anything was wrong. Newton thought Adrian was napping – until she saw the blood. "As Frances walked around the couch and saw his upper torso, she immediately screamed and bolted to the children's bedroom," Nelms said in an affidavit. "Frances began to frantically scream uncontrollably. I could not calm her down enough to elicit the apartment's address."

Newton says she was shocked and dazed, but gave police as much information as possible – including the fact that she'd just removed a gun from the house. She told police about Adrian's drug habit, and that he owed some money to a dealer – which Adrian's brother, Terrence, corroborated, telling police he knew where the dealer lived. Police never pursued the lead. "To your knowledge, was the alleged drug dealer ever interviewed by anyone in connection with this case?" Newton's attorney asked Sheriff's Officer Frank Pratt at trial. "No," Pratt replied.

A bullet remained lodged in Adrian's head, meaning that the blood and brain matter would have blown back onto the gun and shooter – confirmed by a trail of blood found in the hallway. Police found no trace of residual nitrites (gunshot residue) on Newton's hands, nor on the long sleeves of the sweater she was wearing. They collected the clothing she'd worn that day. There was no blood, nor any trace of blood, on any of the items.

Which Gun?
The next day, April 8, according to trial records, police supposedly confirmed that the gun they had retrieved from Newton's duffel bag in the abandoned building – at her direction – matched the murder bullets. Yet Newton was not arrested until more than two weeks later. Newton says that Harris Co. Sheriff's Sgt. J.J. Freeze told her that police had actually recovered two guns; in a sworn affidavit, Newton's father Bee Henry Nelms says Freeze told him the same thing and added that Newton would "eventually be released." Nonetheless, Newton was arrested two weeks later – after she filed a claim on Adrian and Farrah's life insurance policies – and charged with the capital murder of her 21-month-old daughter.

The state's primary evidence against her was elementary: Newton had filed for insurance benefits, and the Department of Public Safety forensic technicians had detected nitrite traces near the hem of Newton's long skirt – although they couldn't say with certainty that the nitrites were not her father's garden fertilizer transferred earlier that day from the hands of her toddler daughter. For physical evidence, the state relied primarily on the supposed ballistics match to the gun Newton had hidden.

Yet in court Freeze was somewhat vague: "I believe we talked about two pistols," he testified. "I know of one for sure, and there was mention of a second one that Ms. Newton had purchased earlier."

There are serious questions about the prosecutors' timeline, which would have required Newton somehow to murder her family, clean herself of any and all blood traces and gunshot residue, and drive to her cousin's house – all in less than 30 minutes. And since her 1988 conviction, the question of a second gun has haunted Newton's case. The ballistics evidence was increasingly suspect in any case because of the recent history of the Houston PD crime lab, which has been repeatedly charged with incompetent, shoddy work, resulting in a number of exonerations and the wholesale discrediting of the lab, which remains under investigation. The lab's clouded reputation was one factor that prompted Gov. Perry to accept the BPP's recommendation to grant Newton a reprieve last winter.

Although subsequent testing supposedly confirmed the ballistics match, the search for the second gun continued. And in June, Dow argued in Newton's clemency petition, the truth finally began to leak out, and from the most unlikely place: the Harris Co. District Attorney's Office. During a brief videotaped interview with a Dutch reporter, Assistant DA Roe Wilson inadvertently confirmed the existence of a second gun. "Police recovered a gun from the apartment that belonged to the husband," Wilson acknowledged. "[It] had not been fired, it had not been involved in the offense, " she continued. "It was simply a gun [Adrian] had there; so there is no second-gun theory."


Frances Newton at Gatesville Prison, August 2005
photo by Jordan Smith

Wilson and her boss, DA Chuck Rosenthal, quickly retracted her admission. Wilson told the Houston Chronicle that she'd simply "misspoken," and Rosenthal accused Dow of fabricating the idea of a second gun "out of whole cloth." "I'm very clear," Rosenthal told The New York Times. "One gun was recovered in the case." On Aug. 24, the Court of Criminal Appeals agreed, dismissing Newton's most recent appeal. "The evidence in this case was more than sufficient to establish [Newton's] guilt," Judge Cathy Cochran wrote. "The various details that [Newton] suggests her trial counsel should have investigated in greater detail do not detract ... from the single crucial piece of evidence that concerns her: she disposed of the murder weapon immediately after the killing."

Dow and his University of Houston law students persisted, and late last month may have succeeded. In August, Harris Co. investigators provided testimony that police may have recovered at least two identical .25-caliber Raven Arms pistols. In separate affidavits, two police investigators recall tracing firearms recovered in connection with the murders. Officer Frank Pratt told one of Dow's students that he was assigned a gun found in the abandoned house, which he traced to a purchase by Newton's boyfriend's cousin at a local Montgomery Ward. He also discovered, he told student Frances Zeon, that the purchaser had also bought a "second, identical gun"; but he didn't follow up on the second gun, because "he felt there was no need to do so." Pratt said he'd written up a report on the gun – a report Newton's attorneys have never seen.

However, Newton's attorneys do have a police report written by Detective M. Parinello, who reported he had traced yet another firearm recovered in connection with the case to a purchase from Rebel Distributors in Humble, Texas, which he said also ended up with Newton's boyfriend. "The question arises: what recovered firearm was ... Pratt investigating?" asks the clemency petition. "Counsel does not have access to the Harris Co. Sheriff's Department's records in this case. A request made directly to that institution for all records in connection to its investigation of this offense was rejected."

From all this conflicting yet incomplete gun evidence, it seems reasonable to surmise that there is no way to know which gun was in fact the murder weapon, or which gun was delivered for ballistics tests in 1987 or this year. Since the prosecution relied so heavily on a weapon that Newton herself had delivered to them, the new evidence discovered by her attorneys completely undermines her conviction.

At press time, Harris Co. Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. John Martin was not able to reach Parinello or Pratt for comment but said that a captain who worked the Newton case had said there was only one gun recovered during the investigation. Harris Co. DA Chuck Rosenthal reiterated that, "as far as I know" there was only one gun recovered in the case. However, he said that even if investigators had recovered multiple firearms, and even if each were the same brand and caliber, the fact remains that the weapon investigators recovered from the abandoned house, which was immediately "tagged" and "tested," matched the bullets recovered from the victims. "Let's say, for conjecture's sake, that you ran down 50 or 100 guns, all associated with the case," he said. "The fact [is] that only one fired the bullets and that we know where that gun came from."

Criminal Defense
As in many Texas capital cases, a large part of the problem with Newton's appeals is that her court-appointed trial attorney, Ron Mock, never actually investigated her case. If he had, perhaps he would've followed up the drug dealer lead or Freeze's reported comments about a second gun. Newton and her parents implored the trial judge to allow her to change attorneys, and Mock admitted to the judge that he hadn't talked to any prosecution witnesses, nor had he subpoenaed any defense witness. The judge granted the motion to remove Mock but he declined a continuance, leaving Newton little choice but to go to trial with Mock. "It was stunning," she told me. "[Mock gets on the stand and] says, 'I don't know anything,' and for the judge to just dismiss it ... it was stunning." (Mock has since been brought before the State Bar's disciplinary board at least five times on various charges of professional misconduct, for which he has been fined and sometimes suspended; he is currently suspended from practicing law until late 2007.)

The Harris Co. prosecutors' defense of the conviction has also worn thin, especially given Roe Wilson's supposed "misstatement" about the second gun. To Newton's mother, Jewel Nelms, Wilson's admission is no mistake. "I've known all the time that there was a second gun," she told Houston's KPFT radio last month. "So I want to say again, to Roe Wilson, I thank you ... very much for letting us know, indeed, that there's somebody down there that knows about the second gun and was willing to talk about it – even though I know it wasn't her intention to do it."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newton's clemency petition is still pending before the Board of Pardons and Paroles. On Monday, Sept. 6, her attorneys filed a petition with the state district court in Houston and the Court of Criminal Appeals, claiming that the state's failure to disclose evidence of a second gun violated her right to due process. At press time, Gov. Perry's office had received more than 4,000 letters, faxes, e-mails, and postcards regarding Newton's impending execution – most imploring Perry to commute her death sentence to life in prison. Letters about Newton's bid should be addressed to: The Honorable Rick Perry, Office of the Governor, PO Box 12428, Austin, 78711-2428; and to Chairwoman Rissie Owens, Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Executive Clemency Unit, PO Box 13401, Austin, 78711.

Ohio Governor Grants Death Row Reprieve

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 8, 2005; 8:37 PM

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Gov. Bob Taft delayed the execution Thursday of a convicted killer over questions about whether prosecutors presented inaccurate information at a clemency hearing.

Taft ordered the execution of John Spirko delayed until Nov. 15 to allow for a second hearing, which had been requested by the parole board.

Spirko, 59, was convicted of killing a postal worker but says he didn't do it.

"This is the right thing to do," Spirko attorney Alvin Dunn said. "I am hopeful that the parole board will take a very careful look at all the facts and all the evidence and view everything with an open mind."

The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported that Timothy Prichard, director of the attorney general's capital crimes office, made false statements last month and mischaracterized evidence regarding what Spirko knew about the 1982 murder of Betty Jane Mottinger, 48, and his whereabouts on the day of the killing.

Attorney General Jim Petro defended Prichard's presentation.

Spirko's execution had appeared imminent. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge James Carr turned down his request for a new trial and a delay.

Spirko was charged after approaching authorities and offering to trade information about the Mottinger case to help his girlfriend, who was facing charges in an unrelated case. He told investigators details of the 1982 slaying, including what clothes and jewelry Mottinger was wearing that day.

But Spirko's lawyers counter that he thought he was telling authorities what they wanted to hear. They say what he knew came from newspapers and lengthy conversations he had with investigators.

Ohio has executed 16 men since resuming executions in 1999, including seven last year, second in the nation only to Texas. Two other executions are scheduled this year.

FIFTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS MOVES TO HOUSTON

The New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears East Texas federal cases, began to preside over cases at its "emergency command post" in Houston on Wednesday.

While the court remains closed for new matters since it was displaced by Hurricane Katrina, some oral argument panels have rescheduled certain cases to be heard in Houston at the district court, according to the appeals court's Web site, www.ca5.uscourts.gov.

The court is asking attorneys and litigants not to send any filings or documents to New Orleans, and indicates that filing deadlines have been extended.

Emergency matters, such as death penalty cases with execution dates, or deportation matters with imminent and confirmed deportation dates, may be filed by fax at (713) 250-5050, or mailed or delivered to the chambers of Chief Judge Carolyn Dineen King at 515 Rusk St., Room 11020, Houston, 77002.

The court anticipates opening the clerk's office for a broader range of matters around Sept. 14 at the Houston location, the Web site states. The Fifth Circuit court decides appeals from the federal courts in Tyler and throughout the Eastern District of Texas.

©Tyler Morning Telegraph 2005

New program aims to provide better representation for the indigent

Four years ago, when the state legislature passed the Texas Fair Defense Act (Senate Bill 7), Houston Senator Rodney Ellis made the observation that "poor defendants get a poor defense" in Texas. It was an assessment that even many tough-on-crime Republicans found difficult to dispute.

As part of Bexar County's ongoing effort to improve the quality of representation for indigent defendants, the Commissioners Court recently approved the creation of a county Appellate Public Defender's Office. Supporters say it brings coherence to an appellate public-defense system plagued by personal favoritism and haphazard representation.

"Senate Bill 7 brought about some really good changes, where you were only appointed to cases for which you were qualified," says Angela Moore, chief appellate public defender for Bexar County. "But then what we saw was that an abundance of appeals were going to the same one or two people that the judges liked for some reason, or whatever, and some defendants were falling through the cracks. Cost-effectiveness was an issue, but my big concern was that due process be provided for these defendants."

A fiscal 2002 review by the Bexar County Auditor found that of 116 cases paid by the auditor, 45 went to two attorneys. Because judges would appoint these favored attorneys without regard to their workload, some defendants would have to wait while their overloaded attorneys asked for time extensions. It was one of the problems the Commissioners Court attempted to solve by creating the county's appellate-defense program.

The Texas Fair Defense Act emerged in response to a study by the Spangenberg Group that harshly critiqued the manner in which Texas handled indigent criminal cases. Moore says Bexar County's success in implementing the reforms of the TFDA caused the Spangerberg Group, in a 2002 follow-up study, to rate the county second in the state in indigent defense.

By providing an office whose sole responsibility is appellate defense, county commissioners hoped to eliminate the need for judges to slog through attorneys' vouchers, which they previously had to do on a case-by-case basis, and to create a system of responsible representation for indigent defendants.

"This program is here to provide one cohesive unit that's accountable: accountable to the judges in that we have to show when things were filed, and accountable to the taxpayers in that the Commissioners Court has some oversight of our budget," Moore says.

According to Moore, Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed strongly opposes the new program. "She wanted it to be squashed at the commissioners court level," Moore says. "I don't know what her rationale is, because we can show that this type of system - which is the national trend - will not only provide better representation for the defendant, but will be more cost-effective for the county as well."

Reed did not respond to interview requests from the Current.

The Appellate Public Defender's Office received 80 percent of its funding from a grant of more than $300,000 by a task force on indigent defense, with the remaining 20 percent funded by the county. Moore hopes that by the end of the program's fourth year, it will be so efficient that it will be able to continue without the grant.

Certainly, the office's three attorneys (with a fourth to be hired in the near future) have experienced little idle time thus far. Only two weeks after opening its doors, the office is handling six appellate cases, including one involving the death penalty and another with a sentence of life imprisonment. •

By Gilbert Garcia

More instances of prosecutorial misconduct reinforce case for death sentence moratorium

The General Assembly adjourned for the year without passing a moratorium on the death penalty to give the state of North Carolina time to examine its practices and procedures and to determine whether it administers the ultimate punishment fairly and only in cases where guilt is incontrovertible.

Meanwhile, evidence continues to mount that people have been sent to death row in North Carolina following trials that were a travesty of justice.

The N.C. State Bar recently charged two former prosecutors with misconduct in the 1996 Union County trial of Jonathan Hoffman, who was sentenced to death after being convicted of killing the owner of a discount jewelry store in 1995.

Hoffman was granted a new trial in 2004 after his lawyers accused prosecutors of withholding information, using false evidence at trial and altering documents before submitting them to a judge for review.

One of Hoffman's prosecutors admitted during a hearing that information about a deal with the primary witness against Hoffman was withheld from his attorneys, but he denied the other allegations.

The N.C. Bar apparently found the evidence strong enough to charge former Union County District Attorney Kenneth Honeycutt and his assistant, Scott Brewer, who is now a district court judge based in Rockingham, with committing 23 violations of the rules that govern trial lawyers, including lying to the trial judge, jury and defense lawyers and knowingly using false evidence at Hoffman's trial.

If they are found guilty of the misconduct allegations in a hearing before the bar, they could be punished by anything from a written reprimand to the loss of their law licenses.

Hoffman spent seven years on death row. He was the sixth North Carolina inmate to receive a new trial because of prosecutorial misconduct.

The state Senate passed a moratorium bill two years ago, but it failed in the House. This year the House couldn't even pass a watered down version that would have conducted a study without implementing a moratorium.

There are those in the General Assembly who oppose a moratorium because they think it is only a prelude to a complete ban on the death penalty. It is undoubtedly true that many of those who support a moratorium hope to eventually eliminate the death penalty entirely. But the decision about whether we resume executions following a moratorium is one for another day.

The kind of prosecutorial behavior with which Honeycutt and Brewer are charged so completely undermines the public's confidence in the court system that a moratorium and thorough study of how justice is carried out in death penalty cases is essential.

Otherwise, none of North Carolina's citizens can be confident that the state is not, for all practical purposes, killing innocent people in their name.

Ohio Death Row Move to Supermax

Dear Death Row Prisoner or Witness,

This is to thank you for your letters, your documents, your testimony, and your good wishes, and to give you some idea of where matters stand at this point. And thank you to the prisoner who pointed out to me that in my last form letter there was a typo: Central Office was expected to complete reviewing the mental health assessments by September 30 this year, not next!

Judge Gwin ordered that the hearing on the preliminary injunction be merged with the hearing on the permanent injunction. The hearing began on August 31 and was completed on September 2; post-hearing briefs are due on September 9; and responses are due on September 16. Judge Gwin is expected to issue an order some time in September so that the State will know what it can or can't do, but he probably will not write the opinion until later.

We thought our case was presented about as well as possible. There are always particular points that could have been made that did not get into the record, but we don't think the decision would turn on any of those points. The witnesses did a fine job assisted by copies of kites, complaints, and other documents provided by many of you.

We are up against the interests of the State in saving money and in the "effective and efficient" operation of its prisons. According to the court, the central issue is whether they can change the conditions of confinement at OSP so that it would not be an atypical and significant hardship for Death Row prisoners to be housed there.

Defendants admit that for men in DR-6, OSP might provide less by way of privileges, but they assert that at OSP there will be room for more men to have "extended privileges" and that it will be better at OSP for Death Row as a whole. We think we demonstrated that until the transfer was announced, for many years Death Row prisoners had much more out-of-cell time, and much more outdoor recreation, than required by AR 5120-9-12 or the post orders.

Furthermore, the relationship between prisoners and staff is much more relaxed at ManCI than at OSP. At ManCI, there are very few behavior problems on Death Row and there have been very few incidents of use of force on Death Row in recent years. At OSP there have been several recent incidents of interracial violence, use of force, and suicide attempts. Correctional officers for Death Row at OSP would be
recruited from existing staff, of whom 153 of 242 have never worked at any other
ODRC prison.

Terry Collins repeatedly asserted that every prisoner at OSP is to have the opportunity for five hours of outdoor recreation per week. But Death Row prisoners would use the same outdoor recreation facilities as Level 4 and Level 5 prisoners. For the last three months, no one on Level 5 or 4B has been permitted to have recreation with any other prisoner, making it impossible to schedule everyone for outdoor rec five times a week. With OSP less than half full, prisoners on Level 4A are getting only two or three hours a week of outdoor recreation.

We also established that when Death Row was at SOCF, and during all the years at ManCI, Death Row prisoners have had confidential contact visits with attorneys in separate rooms with a table and chairs and the door closed.

At OSP, attorney visits would be in booths with a plexiglass screen, a thin slot through which to pass documents, where it is difficult to hear and is not confidential.

We had a witness from the Office of the Public Defender saying it would be impossible for her to do her job, asking a prisoner about sensitive information concerning his past. None of the substitute arrangements, such as a program booth in the barber shop, would provide valid conditions for psychological testing, etc.

Death Row prisoners at ManCI can call their attorneys and the attorneys can call back on a secure line in a private conference room. OSP has no such arrangements.

Prisoners on Death Row at ManCI can get legal materials within hours of sending a kite. At OSP legal materials are supposed to be delivered within five working days of receipt of the kite, but are often delivered much later.

Judge Gwin made it clear that he thinks access to legal assistance is our best argument and the State's weakest argument. There were hours of testimony by experts on mental health and on security, but the judge did not comment on them. Nor did he comment on the evidence concerning the arrangements for semi-contact visits that were cancelled at ManCI, or the proposed arrangements for semi-contact visits at OSP.

We will ask the judge to do what the two mental health experts recommended, to limit
the prosecution's access to the mental health assessments.

You will probably hear before we can let you know what the court decides! Thanks again to all of you who have participated in this phase of the litigation.

Sincerely,

Alice and Staughton Lynd

Crusade vs. executions, book bring nun to area

Sister Helen Prejean, author of "Dead Man Walking" and "The Death of Innocents," is shown at Holy Faith Catholic Church on NW 43rd Street.

"The beauty of being Catholic is that we can be pro-life across the board." hurricane Katrina forced Sister Helen Prejean and about 60 other nuns to flee their New Orleans Mother House last week and relocate indefinitely to Baton Rouge.

But the catastrophe had an effect on something else to which the woman who has come to be known as "the Death-Penalty Nun" has devoted her life.

"Katrina put a moratorium on the death penalty in Louisiana for at least 3 years," Prejean, 66, said before her talk Wednesday night at Holy Faith Catholic Church in Gainesville.

She said court buildings in New Orleans were so badly damaged that judges, among other things, won't be reviewing death-penalty cases anytime soon.

In effect, Katrina partly did in a day what Prejean has been working more than 20 years to accomplish - abolish the death penalty in the United States.

That effort was given a boost by her 1993 book, "Dead Man Walking," and director Tim Robbins' 1996 movie based on it that earned Susan Sarandon an Academy Award for best-actress for her portrayal of Prejean. The book explores Prejean's spiritual journey that took her from being pen pals with a death row inmate to accompanying him to his execution, and how that experience crystallized her belief that the death penalty goes against true Christian teachings.

She talked about that journey - from a privileged upbringing in Baton Rouge to spiritual adviser to death row inmates - before about 200 people at Holy Faith.

Her Gainesville visit was the first stop on a nationwide tour to promote her second book on the death penalty, "The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions," which details her experience with two executed men whom she said clearly were innocent.

After her hourlong talk, she signed copies of both books - and accepted donations to the rebuilding of the convent in New Orleans.

Prejean emphasized that her mission is as much to the families of victims as it is to their killers.

"My new book is dedicated to Murder Victim Families for Human Rights," she said. "I wrote 'Dead Man Walking' as a journey to both sides - the victims' families and the condemned."

But she said to say taking the life of the person who killed your child or other loved one will help you heal, or give you justice, is "dishonest." Executing a human being, she said, "is the exact opposite of baptism."

The death penalty, she said, is "legalized vengeance" and a policy that is "morally bankrupt" and unequally applied.

"Why is it the district attorney of New Orleans seldom seeks the death penalty when it's black people who are killed?" she said.

Prejean said that in the Catholic Church, the death penalty has been an issue "in development." Historically the church's pro-life stance had been centered around the issues of abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide, she said. The death penalty wasn't afforded the same level of importance in the pro-life debate, she said.

In 1997, Pope John Paul II - following letters from Prejean - initiated a change in the Catholic catechism to state that the death penalty is equally as important as other life issues.

"It's all about waking up, about reflecting more deeply," Prejean said. "The beauty of being Catholic is that we can be pro-life across the board.

The death penalty is one of the arenas of development in the church - to see dignity in all life, even someone who has killed innocent people."

She said Catholic bishops are just now beginning to move the death penalty issue from the back burner to the front. "Or at least to the middle burner," Prejean said.

She said her mission is to help create a dialogue about the death penalty, to get people to start thinking more deeply about it. She has been helped in that effort, she said, by the movie "Dead Man Walking" and an opera that also was based on the book.

Now Robbins has written a "Dead Man Walking" play specifically for universities and colleges, which Prejean said are free to produce on their campuses in order to broaden awareness of the death penalty issue to young people.

"The death penalty is an issue where we have to do more awakening," she said.

(source: Gainesville Sun)

Hearing held in Milton murder case

By James Shappell, Staff writer

MILTON -- An omnibus hearing for Fredil Omar Rodriguez-Fuentes, the 23-year-old awaiting trial for the murder of 20-year-old Carly Snyder in June in Milton, was scheduled to take place at 10:45 a.m. today in the Northumberland County Courthouse.

The purpose of the hearing is to hear arguments to suppress incriminating comments given by Rodriguez-Fuentes, to hear an appeal for a change of venue and to argue District Judge William Kear of Milton held over the case to trial without sufficient evidence to do so. The hearing is scheduled to take place in front of Northumberland County President Judge Robert Sacavage.

Police allege Rodriguez-Fuentes stabbed Snyder 37 times during an attack around 12:30 a.m. June 10 at Snyder's rental on Upper Market Street, Milton.

According to police, Rodriguez-Fuentes broke down during an interview, saying "I stabbed her, I stabbed her." Watsontown Police Chief Dennis Derr, during a preliminary hearing, said that was followed by Rodriguez-Fuentes putting his head on the table and sobbing.

Northumberland County District Attorney Anthony Rosini has said he will seek the death penalty should Rodriguez-Fuentes be convicted of first degree murder in the case. Rodriguez-Fuentes is also being charged with two counts of felony aggravated assault and one count of felony criminal trespass.

Additionally, Rodriguez-Fuentes has been identified as an illegal alien originally from Honduras. According to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency, he entered the country near Brownsville, Texas, where he was apprehended by the U.S. border patrol Feb. 29, 2000. He was later transported to Philadelphia to await a deportation hearing for which he never showed up. If he should ever be released from prison, ICE has said he would be deported.

James Shappell: 570-742-9671

james@standard-journal.com

Man Accused Of Killing Wife, Son Back In Court

Defense Attorney Wants Taped Statement Kept Out Of Trial

LOUISVILLE -- A man accused of killing his wife and their son returned to court Thursday.

For the first time, the statement he gave to police right after he was arrested was played for the court, WLKY NewsChannel 32's Julia Harding reported.

Just after Christmas 2003, Betty Jean Windsor and 8-year-old Corey Windsor were found dead in their Louisville apartment. It didn't take long for investigators to suspect Shawn Windsor, but it took until July 2004 before they found him hiding out in North Carolina.

Once Windsor was arrested, his recorded statement to police suggested he was unaware of -- and unaffected by -- the deaths of his family members:

Officer: "Do you know your estranged wife, Betty Jean, and son Corey were murdered?"
Windsor: "I had no idea."
Officer: "You don't know they're dead?"
Windsor: "No."

In court Thursday, Windsor's defense attorney told the judge that he doesn't want that tape allowed in court during the trial, Harding reported. The prosecution, of course, is arguing to let jurors hear it. Both sides have 30 days to submit their briefs before the judge will make a decision.

Prosecutor Carol Cobb said Thursday that the push by Windsor's attorney is not surprising.

"Anytime a defendant gives incriminating statements, they'll seek to have it oppressed," she said.

Windsor's trial is slated to begin in July. He could get the death penalty if convicted.

Please follow WLKY NewsChannel 32 and TheLouisvilleChannel.com for updates to this story as they become available.

Friedman tours West Texas

By Harry T. Darby / PUBLISHER

Writer, musician, and now politician Richard "Kinky" Friedman barnstormed the Big Bend region over the Labor Day holiday drumming up support of his 2006 Gubernatorial campaign.

"Today, Texans have no choice for their leadership except paper or plastic," said Friedman on his decision to run for office. "Texas was founded by independent, courageous, honorable citizens. The last great independent elected governor of Texas was Sam Houston, over 150 ago. Texas needs a strong independent voice if it is ever to regain its greatness."

Friedman, who insists that his campaign is neither a joke nor publicity stunt, made several scheduled appearances around the area and several more unscheduled short stump speeches wherever ever a crowd would gather.

On the campus of Sul Ross State University Friedman relayed to a crowd of mostly students that he didn't have the answer to everything but was smart enough to find the people who do. "Teachers are my heroes, along with police, soldiers, firefighters and cowboys. Each of us remembers a teacher who made an impact and changed our lives for the better. I intend to identify these special people and seek their advice in creating a vibrant, responsive and forward-looking education system for Texas."

The Texas correctional system was also a major campaign plank during the visit. "I'm not anti-death penalty, I'm just anti-killing the wrong person. Two thousand years ago an innocent man named Jesus Christ was executed; my question is, what have we learned in 2,000 years?"

Although Friedman was a popular draw in the area he is still a long way from the governor's mansion.

He will need to collect just over 45,000 signatures of registered voters starting from the end of the Republican and Democratic primaries through May 8. Those voting in either primary will have their signature invalidated for the petition. For more information on Friedman and his campaign log on to www.kinkyfriedman.com.

Suspect in Couple's Murder to Face Death Penalty

JACKSONVILLE, FL (AP) -- Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty against a man charged with kidnapping a Jacksonville couple and burying them alive in Georgia.

Bruce Nixon Junior is being held without bond on charges of murder, kidnapping and robbery. Three persons arrested in South Carolina on financial fraud also face murder charges in the case.
Prosecutors say they will also file a similar notice of intent to seek the death penalty against Tiffany Cole, Michael J. Jackson and
Allen Wade once they are returned to Jacksonville.

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office says the official cause of the deaths of Carol and James Sumner was mechanical asphyxiation. Asphyxia means the body can't receive enough oxygen and the mechanical component means there was pressure applied to the chest.

Their bodies were found in shallow graves.

Jury Recommends Death Penalty In Father-Son Murders
POSTED: 9:07 am EDT September 8, 2005
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A jury has recommended two death sentences for a man convicted in the 2004 shooting deaths of a Jacksonville man and his 13-year-old son.

Thomas Bevel After two hours of deliberations, the jury unanimously recommended that Thomas Bevel, 24, be executed for killing Mayport Middle School student Phillip Sims. The jury voted 8-4 to recommend the death penalty for murdering the boy's father, Garrick Stringfield.

The victims were fatally shot with an AK-47 assault rifle at Stringfield's home in February 2004. Bevel had been a boarder in Stringfield's home.

A hearing about the jury's recommendations is set for Oct. 6. A sentencing date has not been scheduled.

If Bevel gets the death penalty, it would be the first death sentence handed down in Duval County since 2003.