June 22 TENNESSEE---impending execution stayed Death Row inmate receives stay from federal court A Tennessee death row inmate scheduled for execution in August has gotten a reprieve. A federal court in Chattanooga granted the stay Tuesday for Gregory Thompson, 42. That will give Judge Curtis Collier time for consider his request for a hearing on his competency to be executed. Thompson's public defender says Thompson is incompetent and mentally ill. The state's attorney general's office declined to comment on the case. Thompson was convicted in 1985 of abducting Brenda Blanton Lane from a Wal-Mart parking lot in Shelbyville and killing her with a rusty butcher knife. (source: Associated Press) NEW YORK: The most optimistic man in Sing Sing--Warden Lawes believed respect could reform criminals "To Err Is Human," the warden believed - so strongly he had the motto lettered into Sing Sing's wooden floor. Any man can commit a crime, argued Lewis Lawes, who ran New York's most important prison from the end of one world war to the beginning of another, but men and laws change: King Solomon was a polygamist, King David an adulterer, George Washington a bootlegger, and Thomas Jefferson a slavetrader. A man can keep all Ten Commandments but commit a hundred crimes, or violate 6 but commit no crime at all. "What does that prove?" asked Warden Lawes, the subject of this sympathetic biography by New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal. As a young reformatory guard in his hometown of Elmira, N.Y., Lawes had decided the answer: There's hope for all of us. He arrived at Sing Sing on New Year's Day 1919, the prison's seventh warden in 4 years. As Blumenthal recounts in his "Miracle at Sing Sing," from Lawes's 1st speech to the inmates, standing with "his boys" on the floor of the dining hall, he made clear that he planned to treat them like men if they paid him the respect of acting that way. With rare exception, they did. At Lawes's request, Charles Chapin, a brilliant New York editor and wife-killer, headed Sing Sing's newspaper and made a rose garden of the prison yard. The warden hired a cutthroat to shave him each morning. Other felons served as cooks in his family's kitchen, servants to his wife, and nannies to his 3 young daughters. In 1929, when New York prisons at Clinton and Auburn erupted in riots, Sing Sing remained calm. When, in 1937, Lawes threw open the prison gates to allow inmates to join his wife's funeral procession, all 1,000 men returned of their own accord. He arrived at Sing Sing a supporter of capital punishment, but quickly became one of its best-informed and most outspoken critics. In articles and books he denounced the practice; in speeches and radio addresses he showed an astonishing command of national statistics, illustrating its futility. "As if," he argued, "one crime of such nature, done by a single man, acting individually, can be expiated by a similar crime done by all men, acting collectively." Lawes's activism drew the admiration and friendship of such Jazz Age luminaries as screen star Charlie Chaplin, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, reporter Nellie Bly, Scopes Trial master orator Clarence Darrow, and baseball legend Babe Ruth. By the time he retired, Lawes, too, had become a big name. "The boss" had graced the cover of Time magazine, published 6 books, launched his own magazine, helped write a Broadway play, narrated 2 weekly true-crime radio shows, and worked on 6 movies. Still, Blumenthal shows that Lawes's tenure as warden was not without incident. The progressive theories of penology that Lawes employed had many foes - some of them, over the years, his bosses. Editorial writers made much of Lawes "coddling prisoners" when he argued that better food and physical, imaginative, and emotional outlets like organized sports, evening movies, and pets would help make more trustworthy citizens of his boys. Critics also seized on Lawes's hunger for publicity and his infatuation with the silver screen: He was a warden, they complained, not a show pony. Some of those critics felt vindicated when, in 1941, on the eve of Lawes's retirement, 3 inmates broke out of the prison hospital and escaped the grounds, killing a guard and a police officer. That the most violent outbreak in Sing Sing's history should happen on his watch devastated Lawes. As Blumenthal recounts, "Treat a man like a dog and you will make a dog of him," had long been the warden's motto, but the escape raised the question, "What if you treated a man like a man ... and he made a dog of you?" Though Blumenthal easily dismantles the arguments of Lawes's critics, he never adequately responds to the warden's own doubt. Still, in "Miracle at Sing Sing," Blumenthal deftly brings Lawes alive in anecdotes of extraordinary emotive detail. The author writes that he didn't footnote the book to avoid cluttering it, but close readers of minor characters' nearly century-old thoughts and dialogue may find themselves wishing he had. The warden was a giant in his field, but the book's greatest impression is that of the individual lives he changed. As his second wife found when they went to out dinner, chefs and cab drivers often refused to let Lawes pay his bills, saying: "It's on me, boss. I'm one of the boys." Miracle at Sing Sing By Ralph Blumenthal St. Martin's Press 303 pp., $25.95 (source: The Christian Science Monitor - Mary Wiltenburg is on the Monitor staff) VIRGINIA: October trial date set for sniper Muhammad In Fairfax, a judge on Tuesday set a tentative date of October 4 for convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad's 2nd trial, turning aside defense objections that it was too early to take such action. Muhammad is on death row after being convicted last year in one of the 10 killings in the shooting spree that terrorized residents in Maryland, Virginia and Washington in October 2002. He made his first appearance in Fairfax County Circuit Court, where he is charged in another of the deaths, the October 14, 2002, slaying of FBI analyst Linda Franklin. Circuit Judge Jonathan Thacher set the October trial date, although that may change. Muhammad's lawyers, Peter Greenspun and Jonathan Shapiro, argued that it was improper to move forward because Muhammad was not notified of the charges in a timely manner. Muhammad was indicted in Franklin's death in November 2002 but was not formally notified of the charges until last month. Thacher made no formal ruling on the notification claim and set a July 29 date to argue pretrial motions. Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. said after the hearing that the state followed proper procedures in notifying Muhammad of the indictment. But Greenspun said he expects to subpoena U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and local prosecutors to explore the details of Muhammad's indictment in the Franklin killing. He did not elaborate. Muhammad arrived in Fairfax on Monday night from the Sussex I prison in Waverly. He sat without expression and did not speak during the 30-minute hearing. Muhammad was convicted last November in another Virginia county for the October 9, 2002, murder of Dean Harold Meyers near Manassas. Defense lawyers are appealing the conviction. Muhammad's accomplice in the sniper killings, 19-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for Franklin's slaying. The two trials cost Virginia taxpayers about $3 million. Horan said it is worth it to try Muhammad a second time because of the seriousness of the crime and the potential for the death sentence to be overturned on appeal. Prince William Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert, who obtained the death penalty against Muhammad in the Meyers killing, would most likely be next in line to prosecute Malvo. He has said he wants to wait for the outcome of a U.S. Supreme Court case on the execution of juveniles before deciding whether to proceed. Malvo was 17 at the time of the 2002 spree. (source: Associated Press) ALABAMA: Lawyers try to prevent execution of agent's killer A trio of Washington, D.C., lawyers spent several days trying to persuade Shelby County Circuit Judge D. Al Crowson that a man the judge sent to Alabama's death row had ineffective court-appointed representation in his capital murder trial 10 years ago. Eugene Milton Clemons II, 32, was convicted in 1994 for capital murder of DEA Agent G. Douglas Althouse during a carjacking. Althouse had been sitting in the passenger seat of a black Camaro May 28, 1992, waiting for the driver to come out of a convenience store on U. S. 280, when the shooting occurred. Pelham lawyer Mickey Johnson and the late Rodger Bass represented Clemons in the 1994 trial with no cooperation from their client or his family. Handcuffed, chained and in leg irons, Clemons sat peacefully beside his lawyers throughout testimony last week as experts in neuropsychology and brain scans described him as mentally retarded and brain damaged. Lawyers Anne Stukes, Marc Michael and Daniel Grove are representing Clemons as part of the American Bar Association's Death Penalty Representation. They presented results of tests administered to Clemons that they said were available in 1994 but not used. Dr. Charles Golden, a neuropsychologist from Fort Lauderdale, said frontal lobe damage prevents Clemons from anticipating the possible consequences of his actions. Clemons scored 77 on an IQ test in elementary school and was labeled mildly retarded, according to school records. The mental retardation issue is part of an effort to save Clemons from execution. A 2000 U.S Supreme Court case, Atkins vs. Virginia, held that executions of mentally retarded defendants are cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. "When I saw Atkins, I thought it applied to Eugene," said Johnson, who was critical of his own work on Clemons' defense. Assistant Attorneys General Clay Crenshaw and Henry M. Johnson presented experts who cast doubt on the quality of the brain scans performed on Clemons and who defined his mental capacity as in the low-normal range. Although Crowson's deadline to rule is Aug. 17, he may seek an extension because preparation of the transcript will take about 30 days. (source: Birmingham News) FLORIDA: Former death row inmate heads back to prison A man who spent 16 years on Florida's death row is headed back to prison, this time for 2 years. Rudolph Holton pleaded guilty yesterday in Tampa to aggravated battery. It's for beating his wife with a golf club. Circuit Judge Anthony Black responded with a 2-year prison term. Holton was freed from death row early last year. He had been sent there for the 1986 beating death of a teenage girl at a Tampa crack house. But 2 of the key witnesses against him later admitted they had lied at his trial. Holton got married last August. He was arrested for beating his wife last December, and has been behind bars ever since. (source: Associated Press)
