June 18 ILLINOIS: Former death row inmate arrested for second time on drug charge One of the death row inmates pardoned last year by former Governor George Ryan is facing drug charges for the 2nd time in 5 months. On Wednesday, a Cook County judge set Leroy Orange's bail at 80,000 dollars. He's charged with possession of a controlled substance. Authorities say the 52-year-old Orange was arrested June Tenth after he was spotted sitting in a car and trying to load a glass pipe with a white, rocklike substance. At the time of his arrest, Orange was free on $20,000 bail on a charge of dealing crack cocaine on Chicago's South Side. Orange was sentenced to death in 1985 for the fatal stabbings of his former girlfriend, her son and 2 others. In pardoning Orange, Ryan said he'd been "wrongfully prosecuted." (source: Associated Press) **************** Sutherland Trial Cost $1.8 Million The just-completed retrial of murderer Cecil Sutherland will cost taxpayers more than $1.8 million, according to the state treasurer's office. After a 6-week trial, Sutherland was found guilty June 11 in the rape and murder of 10-year-old Amy Schultz of Kell, a small community in Jefferson County. An oil field worker discovered the nude body of Schultz on July 2, 1987, lying near an oil lease access road about 5 miles from her home. Sutherland was arrested a short time later. He was convicted in 1989 and sentenced to death, but he was granted a new trial after the Illinois Supreme Court in 2000 ruled his defense counsel was "inadequate." The latest trial was moved to St. Clair County because of publicity. As jurors prepared Monday to deliberate whether Sutherland should be sentenced to death, the 49-year-old former factory worker made the decision for the jury and opted for the death penalty. Records from the treasurer's office show that defense attorney John Paul Carroll billed the state's Capital Litigation Trust Fund for more than $1 million for his defense of Sutherland during the retrial. Also, Michael Fleming, a private investigator for the defense, submitted bills of nearly $500,000. Calls placed to Carroll and Fleming were not returned. Noting the cost and the fact that Sutherland chose the death penalty after his conviction, Jefferson County State's Attorney Gary Duncan called the outcome a "great irony." "Besides the financial costs, there was a tremendous emotional toll on the Schultz family during this second trial; there was a lot of old wounds that were reopened," Duncan said. "This case was tried on good evidence in 1989 and the jury then had ample evidence to find Sutherland guilty, and then again in 2004 with the addition of DNA evidence and other expert testimony the evidence was made even stronger. Based on the evidence, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind of his guilt." The cost to prosecute Sutherland a second time was far below defense costs but still totaled more than $225,000, Duncan said. Those costs, which will also be paid from the litigation fund, included 4 attorneys, a victim- witness coordinator, a full-time clerical worker, part-time clerical workers, interns and state police. "Because the trial was moved to St. Clair County we had to set up an office in Belleville last March," Duncan said. "There's no way to tell how many man hours we have involved in prosecuting this 2nd trial. Thankfully, the litigation fund picks up the tab on this, because it would be very difficult for Jefferson County to pay for this." Carbondale defense attorney Tim Capps has defended in 6 capital murder cases and called the defense costs in the Sutherland trial "mind- boggling." "Anybody can always say that this wasn't my case so I don't know what all went into it, but on the other hand I've done 6 death penalty cases and I've used the capital litigation fund and the most I ever spent on a case, in terms of my fee, was $50,000," Capps said. "If you add up all the death penalty cases I've ever done it wouldn't add up anywhere close to what was charged in this case. And, none of my guys ever went to death row." Nadine Jakubowski, director of the Capital Litigation Trust Fund, said the fund was established in 2000 and is funded by the General Assembly to help counties cope with both prosecution and defense costs in cases involving indigent individuals. The fund received $4.5 million during the past fiscal year, Jakubowski said: $3 million for outside counsel, $500,000 for public defenders and $1 million for state's attorneys. Jakubowski said the fund has guidelines that cap defense attorneys' hourly rates at $135. Jakubowski said all defense fees must be approved by the judge presiding over the case. "A defense attorney submits a claim to me and I in turn process them only after I get a signature from a judge," Jakubowski said. "The prosecution must get their bills signed off on by either the appellate prosecutor or the attorney general. There always has to be a signature, and if I see a signature I assume the judge felt the costs were reasonable." Jakubowski said there have been instances when claims have been denied or questioned, and said there are no top-end limits to what private investigators can charge. "We're just here to administer the funds," she said. "That's all our job is at the treasurer's office; somebody else determines if the costs are reasonable and justified. This fund was implemented to take the pressure off small counties and to make sure everybody gets a fair trial. That's why the money is allocated for both sides." According to statements made by Sutherland's defense attorney, Carroll, to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sutherland's acceptance of the death penalty does not mean the case is finished. Sutherland, by choosing the death sentence, can now receive more money from the litigation fund to finance his defense. Also, Sutherland's case will now go immediately to the state Supreme Court instead of the 5th District Appellate Court in Mount Vernon, Carroll said. "We will continue to try to get him a new trial," Carroll, a former Chicago homicide detective, told the Post-Dispatch. "I got him a new trial before. I don't see why I can't get a new one again, or a straight reversal of his conviction. If they feel the evidence was tainted, they will just find him not guilty and let him walk out the door." DETAILS In a recent retrial, Cecil Sutherland again was found guilty in the 1987 rape and murder of 10-year-old Amy Schultz of Kell. The cost of the trial was more than $1.8 million, paid for by the state's Capital Litigation Trust Fund. After being found guilty, Sutherland said he wanted the death penalty. However, his attorney said the case is not finished. (source: The Southern Illinoisan) CALIFORNIA: Hazlett convicted of murder, death penalty sentencing next Jurors took less than 2 hours Thursday to convict a man in the 25-year-old strangling death of a Rosamond beauty queen. Larry Kusuth Hazlett Jr., 56, was charged with murder after prosecutors said DNA evidence at the crime scene tied him to the killing. Tana Woolley, who was crowned Miss Rosamond in 1976, was found dead in her apartment 2 years later. The 20-year-old's case sat on a shelf for years until an investigator dusted it off in 1999. The 8-woman, 4-man jury began deliberations around 10 a.m. Thursday and returned with a verdict around 11:40 a.m. The murder with special circumstances conviction carries a penalty of death or life in prison. The jury panel will hear more evidence next week before deciding what sentence to recommend for Hazlett. (source: The Bakersfield Californian) ********************* Holdout Jurors Can Put Legal System to the Test Name calling. Fist waving. Yelling. Sound like a bar fight? No just evidence of a jury stuck in dysfunctional deliberations. When one juror disagrees with the other 11, the closed-door discussion can break down into shouting matches and personal attacks on the lone holdout. Holdouts have long been studied by lawyers and law professors, who are keenly aware that just one dissenting juror can lead to a mistrial. Attorneys frequently hire consultants to gauge prospective jurors' personalities in an attempt to predict how they will evaluate cases. Judges watch out for potential jurors who may have personal biases or agendas. After mistrials, consultants question holdout jurors to learn more about them. Courts are also struggling with the issue of holdout jurors. A federal appellate court recently ruled that a judge violated the constitutional rights of a defendant in a South Los Angeles murder case by removing a holdout juror during deliberations. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the defendant was entitled to a new trial, saying the juror was simply doing her job by independently assessing the evidence. Another holdout got even more attention. A New York judge declared a mistrial in April in the grand-larceny case against 2 former Tyco International Ltd. executives, saying that there had been pressure placed on one of the jurors. The holdout juror, Ruth Jordan, reportedly received a threatening letter after her identity was revealed. Although hung juries are uncommon and 11-1 deadlocks rare, lone holdouts often capture the attention of the public and the media. A stand-alone vote is seen by some as a miscarriage of justice and by others as evidence that the justice system is working exactly as it should. Rarely does the lone holdout manage to sway his fellow jurors like Henry Fonda did in the motion picture "Twelve Angry Men." Instead, the 12th juror often cracks from the overwhelming stress and changes sides, sometimes just so the trial will end. "You really have to have chutzpah," said Karen Fleming-Ginn, a jury consultant based in Northern California. "Imagine yourself in a room with 11 angry people. Holding your ground would be difficult." Holdouts who don't give in often frustrate their fellow jurors and leave them feeling as though the system failed. Take the Orange County case of Jeffrey West, charged with child endangerment after accidentally firing a shotgun at his 8-year-old daughter. He was sitting on the edge of the bathtub loading and unloading his shotgun when it accidentally discharged. The girl lost a kidney and part of her arm. After a weeklong trial in October, the jurors deliberated for more than a day before splitting 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal. The holdout juror, who could not be reached, said at the time that he felt pressured by other jurors to change his mind but stuck with the law as he read it and voted his conscience. He said he believed West was guilty for taking a gun into the bathroom while the girl was there. Juror Douglas Moore, who voted to acquit, said the jurors were more evenly split at the start of deliberations. Then they started going through the evidence and the law and more jurors concluded that West's behavior did not rise to the level of a felony crime. When it came down to everyone against the foreman, Moore said he and his fellow jurors took turns trying to convince the 12th juror, yelling at times. The once amicable deliberations quickly turned contentious. They couldn't break the impasse. They wrote a note saying that the lone holdout was uncooperative and irrational, but never submitted it to the judge. They thought they would be overstepping their bounds by doing so. The district attorney's office refiled the case and West is waiting to go to trial a 2nd time. Holdouts, however, see cases from entirely different perspectives. One Michigan holdout said that being the only not-guilty vote in a murder solicitation case was traumatizing. Attorneys selected the 60-year-old psychologist to sit on a panel in the 2002 case against Eric John Keane, an inmate from Ferrysburg, Mich., charged with attempting to hire a hit man to kill his former girlfriend and her young daughter. The case ended in a mistrial with a vote of 11 to 1 for conviction. "This has had a big impact on my life," said the 12th juror, also the foreman, who asked to remain anonymous. "It never went away." The holdout, who is married and has two grown children, said he took his duty seriously. He took notes and listened closely to the evidence and the instructions during the 2-day trial. Though the other jurors were respectful during the 2 days of deliberations, the holdout said he felt tremendous pressure to conform to their opinion. He knew the rest of the panel was anxious and wanted to go home, as did he, but he said he could not in good conscience vote to convict. Prosecutors failed to convince him beyond a reasonable doubt that Keane had the intent to solicit the murders, he said. "I felt a heavy burden to come up with a verdict," he said. "I was willing to convict, but I wasn't going to do that without having my questions answered." It was extremely difficult to disagree with his fellow jurors, he said. But in some ways, the situation got worse when the case ended in a mistrial. The local newspaper named him in a front-page article under the headline, "Holdout juror forces case to be tried again." One of the other jurors wrote to the paper saying that the juror had no common sense. The prosecutor told the press that the juror had wasted taxpayers' money. The prosecutor "was badmouthing not just me, but the whole jury process," said the holdout. "A hung jury was not an easy way out. There is no easy way." Prosecutor Tony Tague said in a recent interview he was surprised by the outcome. He called the evidence in the murder-for-hire case overwhelming. The inmate Keane solicited testified at the trial and prosecutors had Keane's note and a map he had drawn of the house's interior, Tague said. Tague immediately refiled the case and a second jury convicted Keane after minutes of deliberations. Even though jurors are required to decide cases based on the law and not their consciences, emotion, personal experience and occasionally bias play a role in deliberations and can lead to deadlocks. Despite the publicity in high-profile mistrials, hung juries are not common. In a recent study of 372 state trials in 4 U.S. cities, only 7.5% of the juries deadlocked on all counts and 12.8% deadlocked on at least one charge. The study by the National Center for State Courts found that one of the primary reasons for deadlocks was bad interpersonal dynamics among the jurors. In hung juries, it often comes down to one person. Juror Lee Jarvis saw that firsthand when he sat on a high-profile Orange County death penalty case in 2002. The jurors agreed that the defendant, Maurice Steskal, was guilty of murder, but they disagreed on his punishment. Eleven jurors voted for life in prison without parole while one voted for death. Jarvis said he was convinced that Steskal was mentally ill and should not be executed. The 12th juror disagreed. "It was pretty heated," he said. "We tried like crazy to turn him around but it didn't work He had his mind made up." Jarvis said was furious because he felt that justice wasn't served. A 2nd jury returned a verdict of death for Steskal. Lone holdouts are usually self-confident people who don't follow authority or conventions and who aren't afraid to speak their mind, experts said. Attorneys or consultants look for nontraditional jurors based on appearances, professions or prior jury experience. They ask prospective jurors questions such as: If you expressed an opinion, could you change your mind if you were convinced it was wrong? In a group of people that you don't know well, how influential are you? Defense attorneys want jurors who will make up their own minds and won't be bullied. Prosecutors, on the other hand, avoid jurors who seem antagonistic or rebellious. Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Darrell Mavis said he wants jurors who can get along and are going to reach a consensus. Judges say jurors are supposed to make 12 separate decisions, not one mob vote. They cannot kick a juror off just because that person disagrees, but can do so if he refuses to deliberate. "We're always looking for resolution," Los Angeles Judge Tricia Ann Bigelow said. "But it has to be a fair and just resolution. If they [jurors] simply have a different view of the evidence, that is just the nature of the jury system." (source: Los Angeles Times) KENTUCKY: Man Accused of Murder Will Face Death Penalty One of the 2 men accused of murdering a Pike County man will face the death penalty. Patrick Etherton is charged with murdering Charles "Coco" Thompson as he opened his grocery store in November of 2001. William Hopkins is also charged in the murder but is not facing the death penalty. Etherton's attorney filed a motion to remove the death penalty as a punishment, but that motion was denied. A trial for the the 2 men is expected to begin June 28th. (source: WKYT News) OREGON: Death penalty trial The case: Darren Scott Goodrich, 41, is charged with aggravated murder in the death of his 3-month-old daughter Olivian. Goodrich told police he suffocated the baby on May 30, 2003, in their Beaverton apartment because he had trouble dealing with her medical problems and didn't want the family growing close to her. Olivian was born with cytomegalovirus, a brain disorder that caused her to have seizures and breathing problems, and severely delayed her development. Update: Goodrich's trial was scheduled to start July 7, but Washington County Circuit Judge Thomas W. Kohl on Wednesday postponed it until April because the court-appointed defense attorneys asked for more time to prepare. One of the original defense attorneys was taken off the case earlier this year. If found guilty, Goodrich faces the death penalty because of the victim's age. What's next: A hearing to argue the admissibility of evidence and Goodrich's statements to police will be Dec. 7. Goodrich has been held in the Washington County Jail without bail since his arrest July 18. (source: The Oregonian)
