June 24 VIRGINIA: Va. Gang Members Facing Possible Death Penalty----4 purported gang members could face death penalty in slaying In Alexandria, 4 purported members of the MS-13 street gang were charged Thursday with killing a pregnant teenager who had joined the gang and later became a federal informant. All 4 could face the death penalty. The indictment says that the 4 conspired to kill Brenda Paz, 17, after she left the Witness Protection Program against the advice of the FBI. Paz's body was found in Shenandoah County in July 2003; she died of multiple stab wounds. Paz, a former MS-13 member, had been helping federal agents in their murder case against her one-time boyfriend, Denis Rivera, 20, of Alexandria. But prosecutors were able to introduce Paz's testimony at trial through her court-appointed guardian and Rivera was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 2001 murder of Joaquim Diaz. Rivera and three others are charged in Paz's death: Oscar Antonio Grande, 21, of Fairfax; Ismael Juarez Cisneros, 25, of Vienna; and Oscar Alexander Garcia-Orellana, 31, of Fairfax. The 5-count indictment charges all four with killing a person aiding a federal investigation, tampering with a witness and retaliating against a witness. All 5 counts could be punished by death. U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty said Thursday that Attorney General John Ashcroft must decide whether to authorize prosecutors to seek the death penalty. While Rivera was in jail awaiting trial for the Diaz murder, he put out word to his fellow gang members that he wanted Paz killed. According to the indictment, Rivera told a fellow gang member that he would "plant her in a park" for snitching on him. After she was killed, he bragged on another call from the jail that those who "rat on 'Conejo' (his gang name) die. They rat and that's it," according to the indictment. The indictment says Rivera and his associates used slang, nicknames and code words to disguise their intent when Rivera made phone calls from the jail, which are recorded. On Thursday McNulty said the FBI was unable to persuade Paz to remain in the witness protection program. She was killed within a month of leaving the program. "Certainly she was aware of the significant threat she faced," McNulty said. McNulty's office is pursuing the death penalty in another gang trial. Cuong Le, identified by authorities as a member of the Oriental Playboys gang, faces murder charges for the slaying of two men outside a Fairfax crab house. The trial was to have started this week but was postponed. Authorities have expressed increasing concern about the region's gang problem. Police chiefs from across northern Virginia attended Thursday's press conference. Herndon Police Chief Toussaint E. Summers Jr., chairman of a regional gang task force, said the charges "let gang members know that there is an all-out effort to fight gangs." Police estimate that the MS-13 gang, which has its roots in El Salvador and is also known as Mara Salvatrucha, has 3,500 members in Fairfax County alone. Last month in Fairfax County, police charged an alleged MS-13 member with the killing of a Herndon High school student. Several purported members of the gang have also been charged in a machete attack that nearly severed the hands of a 16-year-old boy. Attempts to reach Rivera's attorney Thursday were unsuccessful. (source: Associated Press) NEW YORK: N.Y. Court Ruling Appears to Invalidate Death Sentences New York State's highest court today declared a central provision of the state's 9-year-old death penalty law unconstitutional, assuring that there will be no executions in the state for some time and continuing what has been a tortured legal road for the capital punishment law. In a 4-3 decision, the state's Court of Appeals said the legislature improperly required judges to tell jurors in capital cases that if they deadlocked, the judge would impose a sentence that would leave the defendant eligible for parole after serving 20 to 25 years. The decision said that represented improper coercion of jurors to vote for execution. Lawyers said the ruling left little ground for review by any federal court and they said it seemed clear that the state's death row would also be emptied of its four current occupants. The decision would also pose obstacles to prosecutors now seeking the death penalty in 12 cases around the state and, if the legislature fails to amend the law, would bar prosecutors from seeking capital punishment until the provision is repaired. "Under the present statute, the death penalty may not be imposed," the decision said. Critics maintained even during legislative debates about the law in 1995 that the provision coerced jurors to vote for death and the court majority agreed. "The deadlock instruction," the majority said, "gives rise to an unconstitutionally palpable risk that one or more jurors who cannot bear the thought that a defendant may walk the streets again after serving 20 to 25 years will join jurors favoring death in order to avoid the deadlock sentence." The majority decision, written by Judge George Bundy Smith, was made under the state Constitution, with the majority saying the state's guarantee of due process of law was violated by the deadlock provision. In making its decision, the court set aside the death sentence imposed on Stephen S. LaValle, a Suffolk County roofer who was convicted of raping and killing Cynthia Quinn on May 31, 1997, in Yaphank, Suffolk County. Mr. LaValle confessed to police that he raped and killed Ms. Quinn, a 32-year-old track coach and mother, after she happened upon him urinating on the side of a road while she was jogging and called him a bum. Today, the judges ordered that Mr. LaValle be resentenced to life without parole or a sentence of 20 to 25 years in prison with the chance of parole. The majority of the court also ruled that the 9 pending capital prosecutions in which death notices have been served on defendants could continue - but that life without parole has to be the maximum sentence imposed. The death penalty law was re-established in 1995, with Gov. George Pataki pushing for the law in his 1st year as governor. There have been no executions since the law was enacted and none appeared imminent. Nevertheless, the governor and Senator Dale Volker have introduced legislation to eliminate the use of a parole-eligible sentence as a default when juries deadlock in the sentencing phase. Their bills would impose life without parole as the punishment if jurors were deadlocked. At an appearance on Long Island, Governor Pataki said he wanted to study the ruling before responding at length, according to The Associated Press. "It's a disappointing decision," The A.P. quoted him as saying. (source: New York Times) USA: High court declines to overturn death sentences The US Supreme Court has dealt a significant setback to 121 death-row inmates in five states who were hoping the justices would apply a 2002 ruling in a way that would invalidate their death sentences. Instead, by a 5-to-4 vote, the nation's highest court Thursday declined to retroactively apply a new legal precedent concerning capital sentencing hearings. The decision in an Arizona death-penalty case called Schriro v. Summerlin means that the inmates are not automatically entitled to new sentencing hearings. "So many aspects of the death penalty are arbitrary," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, in a statement, "and in this case, the court is saying that constitutional rights can be deprived and you can be executed depending simply on the date you filed your appeal." At issue was a 2002 Supreme Court ruling requiring juries, rather than judges, make the final decision on whether a convicted murderer should receive a death sentence or a long prison term. The court had said that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial extends to the sentencing phase of a capital murder case. Unless a defendant waived that Sixth Amendment right, a death sentence meted out by a judge rather than a jury would violate the Constitution, the high court said. That ruling reversed the death sentence of Arizona inmate Timothy Ring, and it prompted many states to rewrite their capital sentencing procedures to ensure that juries, not judges, make the ultimate sentencing decision in death-penalty cases. But the court left unresolved a deeper question in the 2002 case. If Mr. Ring's sentence had been handed down through procedures that violated a core constitutional principle, what about the 121 other death-row inmates in various states sentenced under similar procedures? Should their sentences be reversed too? Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that the right to a jury trial is fundamental in the US criminal justice system. "But it does not follow that, when a criminal defendant has had a full trial and one round of appeals in which the state faithfully applied the Constitution as we understood it at that time, he may nevertheless continue to litigate his claims indefinitely in hopes that we will one day have a change of heart," he writes. In a dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer says that when judges rather than juries conduct capital sentencing hearings, there is a greater risk of the death penalty being improperly imposed. "I believe that the risk is one that the law need not, and should not tolerate," he says. Since that greater risk applied in past cases, the court should apply its new rule retroactively, Justice Breyer says. The case has immediate implications for 86 death-row inmates in Arizona, 14 in Idaho, 12 in Nevada, 5 in Nebraska, and 4 in Montana. For the inmates themselves, it brings them one step closer to the death chamber. For the states that prosecuted those inmates, it means not having to grapple with the logistics and expense of resentencing a portion of their death-row populations. State officials complain that the judicial sentencing methods invalidated by the high court in 2002 were developed as a direct result of earlier Supreme Court rulings requiring special sentencing procedures in capital cases. These officials said the justices were putting the states in an impossible position of enforcing their murder statutes by repeatedly moving the goal posts in death-penalty cases. The decision comes in the case of Arizona death-row inmate Warren Wesley Summerlin. He was convicted of raping and bludgeoning to death a bill collector, Brenna Bailey, who came to his home in April 1981. Her body was discovered the next day wrapped in a bedsheet in the trunk of her car. Mr. Summerlin's wife identified the bedsheet as having come from the Summerlin home. The jury found Mr. Summerlin guilty of murder, and then under Arizona law, it was up to the trial judge to determine whether special circumstances existed to justify the extraordinary punishment of death. The judge found there were no mitigating circumstances, and two aggravating circumstances. He determined that Summerlin had a prior felony conviction and that he had committed the murder in an especially cruel way. (Ms. Bailey's skull had been crushed.) The judge then concluded that death was an appropriate sentence. (source: Christian Science Monitor)
