June 19 GEORGIA----new and impending execution date Execution for 1985 death set June 30 The execution of a man convicted of the killing of a woman in Spalding County is planned for June 30, the Georgia Department of Corrections announced Friday. Robert Karl Hicks, 47, was sentenced to death in January 1986 for the July 13, 1985, kidnapping, rape and murder of Toni Strickland Rivers, 28. Witnesses heard Rivers being attacked, but she bled to death shortly after authorities arrived. Hicks is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson at 7 p.m. (source: Atlanta Journal Constitution) CALIFORNIA: Peterson Kin, Juror Relationship Probed The judge overseeing Scott Peterson's murder trial has subpoenaed a few seconds of televised video footage showing a juror chatting briefly with Laci Peterson's brother as they passed through a courthouse metal detector. The footage in question showed Juror No. 5, an airport screener, saying "could lose today" to Brent Rocha on Thursday. It was unclear what he meant, or whether Rocha responded beyond flashing a brief smile. Court was not in session Friday when Judge Alfred A. Delucchi asked for a copy of the video, and it was not immediately clear whether the court would find the actions inappropriate. The defense and the prosecution declined to comment on the question, which will be dealt with in court on Monday. The same juror has been seen almost daily giving a nod and a slight smile to the defense table as he passes by on the way to the jury box. Earlier this week, he bumped into a podium as he passed by prosecutor Rick Distaso and defense lawyer Mark Geragos. Geragos simply smiled and looked away. The footage was aired on national television and several networks brought in legal experts to speculate on its potential impact. Several said such interaction is not unusual. While Delucchi has instructed jurors daily not talk about the case with anyone outside of the jury room, his admonition does not necessarily cover conversations about other topics. Peterson, 31, is accused of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, on or around Dec. 24, 2002, then dumping her body from his small boat into San Francisco Bay. He told police he went fishing that morning and returned to an empty house. In March, a juror in the Tyco corporate corruption trial in New York made what some interpreted as an "OK" signal to the defense. The judge declared a mistrial after the juror's name was disclosed in the media and she reported receiving threats. (source: Associated Press) MARYLAND: A Shorter Line on Death Row Of the 7 men remaining on Maryland's death row after Thursday night's execution of Steven Oken, all but one have appeals pending in state or federal court. And before the end of the year, prosecutors in Prince George's County could decide to seek a warrant for his death. Not since 33-year-old Lott Glover was hanged for murder more than half a century ago has a Prince George's crime resulted in an execution. But State's Attorney Glenn Ivey said yesterday that with Oken's execution and the apparent resolution of challenges to lethal injection, the case of Heath Burch was under review in his office. "We're trying to move forward," Ivey said. As to the timing of a possible warrant, "I think the next few months is about as specific as I want to get." The Capitol Heights man, now in his mid-30s, was sentenced to die for the slaying of 2 elderly neighbors, Robert and Cleo Davis. Burch had grown up just down the street from the couple. On a March night in 1995 -- intent on burglary and high on crack cocaine, according to his defense -- he broke into their house. When the retired D.C. firefighter confronted him with a gun, Burch stabbed husband and wife dozens of times with a pair of scissors, took several guns and $105 in cash and drove away in their pickup truck. On Monday, Burch's attorneys wrote Ivey for a meeting, "because we're not sure what is going on," attorney William Kanwisher said. Ivey expects to sit down with them soon. He also is trying to be in touch with the victims' family. Whether pushing ahead could result in a 2nd execution this year -- not since 1959 has Maryland put 2 people to death in a single year -- is a different issue. "These things can drag on for a long time, so it's not easy to predict," he said. Maryland Solicitor General Gary Bair agreed. Just look at Oken, he said. 2 death warrants for him were signed and then stayed because of legal points that suddenly seemed applicable from cases elsewhere in the country and because of an execution moratorium imposed in Maryland over concerns of inequities in the capital system. "It always seems that there's something else out there that ends up getting raised and litigated," Bair said. Of the 7 men on death row, 4 are there for crimes committed in Baltimore County, the Maryland jurisdiction that pursues capital punishment most. 5 are black and 2 white, a ratio that death penalty opponents contend illustrates deep problems in the system. Burch's case is far from the oldest. 3 men have been incarcerated since 1984. Each of those 3 men has motions pending in various courts. Anthony Grandison, who was convicted of hiring Vernon Lee Evans to kill federal witnesses prepared to testify against him in a drug trial, is seeking a fresh trial based on newly discovered evidence as well as documents allegedly withheld by prosecutors. Grandison and Evans obtained significantly more time when they won resentencing in 1992, essentially sending their appeals process back to the start. Nevertheless, one of Grandison's attorneys fears that Oken's execution will accelerate the process for every Maryland inmate facing lethal injection. "I believe they'll start moving faster now," Christopher Davis said of local and state officials. "A lot of guys are at the end of the line. You saw how fast things moved with Oken. One minute he's got a stay, and the next minute he doesn't." Although judges rejected Oken's argument that the state's sentencing procedure is contrary to 2 recent Supreme Court rulings, they did not decide its legality under the state constitution. Wesley Baker, who fatally shot a woman in a parking lot robbery in front of her grandchildren, has a hearing on that issue before the Maryland Court of Appeals in September. The date is assurance that he's still a ways from being in Heath Burch's position. But this week shook him and all the others who reside on the row. Maryland had not put anyone to death since 1998. Virginia has executed 45 people in that period. "Steven Oken was someone who was their roommate," noted Baker's attorney, Gary Christopher, who spoke to him by telephone yesterday morning. "What happened . . . was a very sobering event for the men there." (source: Washington Post) ************** Steven Oken's Death Steven Howard Oken went to his death this week in Maryland -- the 1st execution in the state in 6 years, the 1st as well since Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) lifted his processor's moratorium on executions. Mr. Oken was as good a candidate for capital punishment as the criminal justice system typically coughs up. He was a triple murderer who went on a rampage in 1987. There was no question about his guilt. And the issue he was litigating to stave off his execution -- whether the manner in which Maryland carries out lethal injection is too painful -- seems as morbid as it is unimportant. If the state may lawfully strap someone to a gurney and inject him full of poison, after all, the specific cocktail of chemicals it uses seems rather beside the point. Yet Mr. Oken's death and the state's resumption of executions ought to be the occasion for some reflection: What exactly did Maryland accomplish by killing him? Unlike Virginia, where capital punishment is a relatively routine event, Maryland doesn't put many people to death. Mr. Oken is only the 4th since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Even if one believes that the death penalty serves as a deterrent to crime, it is implausible that one invoked so rarely would do so. Nor can the state truly claim that justice -- in some abstract sense -- is aided by its occasional use of the death penalty. For as a University of Maryland study showed last year, the state's death penalty is so unevenly applied that similar crimes simply do not yield comparable punishments. Specifically, prosecutors in Baltimore County are far more likely than those elsewhere to seek death, and murderers whose victims are white are far more likely to face capital charges than those who kill non-whites. The most powerful message the state's death penalty sends is one of randomness: that certain crimes will arbitrarily be singled out for harsher punishment than others. About the only good that Maryland's death penalty clearly yields is a sense of justice in the families of victims and, to a less intense degree, in other citizens. That sense was much on display after Mr. Oken's death, and we don't mean in any sense to belittle the satisfaction that an execution may bring to these families. But it seems to us a satisfaction bought at an unacceptably steep price. For the death penalty is not merely an irreversible penalty, unevenly applied and fraught with grave danger of error. It involves the state in the premeditated killing of an individual long since prevented from doing further harm to society. Even when that individual's guilt is clear, that killing is still wrong -- and the power to carry it out is more power than any state should have. (source: Opinion, Washington Post) *************************************** Md. officials hope to move executions to Allegany facility--Authorities also want to relocate death row inmates to rural prison Steven Howard Oken's execution Thursday may be among the last within the sprawling prison complex on Madison Street, where the state has carried out all of its death sentences for nearly a century. Within 2 years, state officials hope to move death row inmates from the Baltimore facility to a prison near rural Cumberland, where executions will be conducted. "The plan is to eventually make the North Branch [Correctional Institute] what it was always intended to be - our primary maximum security facility," said state public safety and corrections chief Mary Ann Saar. North Branch is being expanded, and Saar said that state officials hope to relocate death row and other inmates from the downtown Supermax facility to the Allegany County facility. The future is unclear for Supermax, which was built in the mid-1980s. It might be converted into a pretrial detention center for inmates who are in custody for a short period of time, Saar said. Supermax is across the street from the building where Oken was executed Thursday night. Saar said that at least 1 more of the 7 Maryland inmates who are on death row is likely to be executed at the Madison Street facility. The inmate whose legal appeals are closest to being exhausted is Wesley Baker, she said. Baker was convicted in Baltimore County on Oct. 30, 1992, of fatally shooting a woman in front of her grandchildren during a robbery. 6 other men are on death row, their cases in various stages of appeal. 3 of them were convicted in 1984, the same year as Oken: Anthony Grandison, Vernon Evans and John Booth-El. The other 3 are: Heath Burch, sentenced in 1985; Jody Miles, sentenced in 1998; and Lawrence Borchardt, sentenced in 2000. Oken was the 84th Maryland inmate to be put to death at the Baltimore prison complex since state law consolidated executions there in 1923. Public executions were common in the 19th century, normally held in the county where the crime occurred, according to a history compiled by Maryland Penitentiary historian Wallace Shugg in an essay on the Department of Public Safety and Correction's Web site. But in 1923, as sentiment was growing against public executions, state law was changed to require that all executions be carried out privately, in the Maryland penitentiary. 76 inmates were hanged there between 1923 and 1955. Since then, 4 people have been put to death in the gas chamber - the last in 1961. 4, including Oken, have been executed by lethal injection. If executions are shifted to the remote Allegany County prison, it is expected to affect the kind of dueling protests that pro- and anti-death penalty advocates stage at the execution scene. Such protests will no longer be spectacles within the shadows of the prison walls in urban Baltimore; it will be in a rural area that requires an hours-long drive for some to reach. "It would make it much more difficult for protestors to make their views known," said Michael Stark, Baltimore-Washington coordinator of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. Stark noted that Maryland has "this bizarre and unique law that doesn't inform the public of the day of the execution" until 3 hours before the execution. But he vowed that the change in location would not stop protestors. (source: Baltimore Sun) VIRGINIA: Death Penalty Deliberations Tore Malvo Jury Apart The jurors who considered the fate of sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo maintained their camaraderie through 6 weeks of trial and the deliberations on whether the teenager was guilty of capital murder. But when it came time to decide whether Malvo should die for his role in the sniper rampage, the goodwill collapsed and the name-calling began, 2 jurors said Friday. A core group of four jurors was convinced that Malvo -- 17 years old when he and John Allen Muhammad shot and killed 10 people in October 2002 -- did not deserve capital punishment, the foreman and another juror said. The glimpse inside the jury room came at a meeting of the Virginia State Bar here, in which the prosecutors and defense attorneys from both sniper trials also appeared. Susan G. Schriever, a nurse from Chesapeake who felt that Malvo deserved to be executed, said: "I couldn't understand how people sat in the same trial and didn't feel the same way. . . . I really felt it let the [victims'] family members down. It really broke my heart." James Wolfcale, pastor of a 5,000-member church in Virginia Beach, also favored the death penalty. He said he was sorry to see the friendships the jurors had built quickly break down, but after arguing with those who were steadfast for a life sentence, "I'm not sure I ever want to see them again." The jurors who opposed a death sentence felt that a lifetime in prison was a sufficiently drastic penalty and that Malvo wouldn't have become a serial killer if not for Muhammad, the two jurors said. Malvo's youth also may have played a factor in the penalty deliberations, Schriever said. Neither Schriever nor Wolfcale entered the trial of Malvo with a certainty they could vote to impose the death penalty. But after seeing the crime-scene photos of the murder victims, watching the wrenching testimony of their survivors and checking Malvo for any sign of remorse, they felt he deserved to die. "I think a lot of us spent a lot of time looking at Mr. Malvo," Schriever said, "looking for some form of emotion. We wanted to find some reason for this. But in the end, there was no reason. He was guilty." Just weeks after a Virginia Beach jury sentenced Muhammad to die for his role as the mastermind in the sniper shootings, a Chesapeake jury imposed a life sentence on Malvo on Dec. 23 for being the shooter in at least 1 killing, the death of Linda Franklin at the Seven Corners Home Depot. Muhammad faces a second trial in Fairfax, for Franklin's death. His 1st court appearance is set for Tuesday. Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. said in December that he thought the holiday season had contributed to the jurors' decision not to impose a death sentence. Both jurors disagreed with that Friday. "I didn't hear anybody else bring that up as a factor," Schriever said. "We were going to get a break for the holidays whether we finished or not." One of Malvo's lawyers, Craig S. Cooley of Richmond, used the occasion to again denounce the availability of the death penalty for 16- and 17-year-olds in the United States. The Supreme Court will revisit the issue this fall, and Cooley noted that 4 justices have called juvenile executions "a shameful act." Cooley added, "Juvenile execution is something that the rest of the world recognizes is beyond the pale." Horan responded that some countries "believe in all sorts of savagery, but they don't execute juveniles. They don't believe in due process. . . . The fact they don't do it in Iran or France doesn't bother me in the least." The longtime Fairfax prosecutor said that lumping all juveniles into one exempt class doesn't account for those who are prodigies, whether in the arts, sports or crime. "I knew he would never testify," Horan said of Malvo, "because he has no remorse. He's different. He's a different juvenile." Horan also noted that Malvo was 18 during the trial, but "he looks 15, and they suited him up to look younger," with preppy sweaters and slacks. Cooley denied that during the trial but admitted it during a recent meeting of Virginia defense lawyers. Friday, he just smiled. Schriever said Malvo did look young, but "as the trial progressed, he just didn't seem to be that young anymore. He did, in fact, seem wise beyond his years. We were able, for the most part, to put that aside." Wolfcale said some jurors believed that a life sentence for Malvo would be "extremely devastating" and worse than a death sentence. Schriever said some felt that Muhammad's influence mitigated Malvo's role, "but it was never one real strong reason." She said she thought that if Malvo were slightly older, some jurors might have been swayed. Wolfcale said that "there were some who would not have voted for death under any circumstance." But he did not know whether the jurors held that view prior to trial, when they were asked whether they could vote for death, or whether Malvo's case landed them there. (source: Washington Post) FLORIDA: Death Row inmate could get sentence reduced The Florida Supreme Court this week refused to take John J. Chamberlain off Death Row, shooting down his appeal on 3 1st-degree murder convictions and the ensuing death sentence. But a "lucky break" for one of Chamberlain's co-defendants and former death row neighbor could prove to be a break for Chamberlain, too. Thomas Thibault, the shooter in a 1998 Thanksgiving Day robbery turned triple homicide in Riviera Beach, also was convicted of 3 counts of 1st-degree murder and sentenced to death. But because the judge in that case failed to ask Thibault a procedural question, the Supreme Court last June reversed the death sentence, and Thibault will be resentenced. One of his attorneys, John Garcia, admitted it was a lucky break. If Thibault gets a life term in prison this time, then Chamberlain, as the alleged organizer of the murders, cannot be put to death, his attorney said. Gregg Lerman said sentences must be proportionate to a defendant's role in a crime. If the shooter gets life in prison, Chamberlain, 26, must get life as well. "He has a lot of hope left, I think," Lerman said. "It's just going to take time." Killed in the shooting were Daniel Ketchum, 27; Charlotte Kenyon, 26; and Bryan Harrison, 21, at 6507 Norton Ave. A 3rd person who participated in the crime, Jason Dascott, is serving 10 years in prison after pleading to 2nd-degree murder for his peripheral role in the robbery. A 4th suspect, Amanda Ingman, has never been charged in the murders. (source: Palm Beach Post)
