May 31 CONNECTICUT: Serial killer Ross' execution likely years away----7 on death row in Connecticut Robert Breton: Sentenced to death in 1989 for stabbing his wife and 16-year-old son to death in 1987. Sedrick Cobb: Sentenced to death in 1991 for kidnapping, raping and murdering a 23-year-old woman in 1989. Ivo Colon: Sentenced to death in 2000 for killing a young child. Richard Reynolds: Sentenced to death in 1995 for killing a Waterbury police officer in 1992. Todd Rizzo: Sentenced to death in 1999 for killing a 13-year-old boy with a sledgehammer because he wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone. Michael Ross: Sentenced to death in 1987 for raping and murdering 4 women. Daniel Webb: Sentenced to death in 1991 for kidnapping, attempting to rape and murdering a 37-year-old woman. (source: state Office of Legislative Research) Death row cases typically take about a decade. But the case of serial killer Michael Ross is far from typical. Some 17 years after he was first sentenced to die for the rapes and murders of 4 women in New London County, Ross' attorneys pledged to exhaust all available appeals, possibly extending the case into its 3rd decade. "It will take 5 more years," Connecticut Chief Public Defender Gerard Smyth said, referring to the amount of time it would take to make the appeals and get rulings on them. "That would be our intention." The average time on death row for the 71 people executed nationwide in 2002 was 127 months, or more than 10 years, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Justice in November. On May 24, the state Supreme Court upheld Ross' death sentence, rejecting numerous arguments, including that Ross suffered from a mental illness that should have spared him from the death penalty. "It's still not final, but his options are much more limited now that the Supreme Court has ruled," New London County State's Attorney Kevin Kane said. Those options include: File a motion for reconsideration with the state Supreme Court. Smyth acknowledged these appeals are seldom granted. File a petition to certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, or a petition asking to review the state Supreme Court's decision. Smyth said he didn't expect the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case until September. Most of the time these petitions are denied, Kane said. If denied, Ross' attorneys can file a habeas corpus petition with the state Superior Court, claiming a constitutional error in the trial proceedings. Habeas corpus is a writ ordering a person in custody to be brought before a court. The burden of proof falls on those detaining the person to justify the detention. If this is denied, a habeas corpus petition can be filed in federal district court. Each option has strict time limits. The first appeal, or the motion for reconsideration, must be filed in 10 days from Monday's decision. Once all the appeals are exhausted, the last way Ross can avoid execution by lethal injection is if the state Board of Pardons commutes, or changes, the death sentence to life in prison. That would happen simply at the board's discretion. Failing that, an execution date will be set. Ross, a former insurance salesman from Jewett City and a Cornell University graduate, admitted killing 8 women -- 6 of them in Eastern Connecticut and 2 in New York -- in the early 1980s. He is serving life sentences for killing two women in Windham County. His death sentence in 1987 was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1994 after the court found that a judge had excluded part of a psychiatric report. Ross was again sentenced to die by a jury in 2000. The long delay in Ross' case largely comes because he was the 1st person in Connecticut to be sentenced to death after the state reinstated the death penalty in 1973. That meant attorneys on both sides had to grapple with new issues and get clarifications on procedures. All this is wearing on the victims' loved ones, such as Raymond Roode, the stepfather of 14-year-old April Brunais of Griswold. "They should have executed him 15 years ago," he told The Associated Press earlier this week. (source: Norwich Bulletin) MASSACHUSETTS: Let death penalty die Justice took a 30-year journey. But at least Laurence Adams was alive when it arrived. Adams, who was sentenced to die in the electric chair in 1974 for the murder of a Boston subway worker, was freed on May 20 after a judge overturned his conviction based on new evidence that cast doubt on his guilt. Adams escaped execution because Massachusetts had abolished capital punishment soon after he was sentenced. His near-death experience exposes capital punishment's fundamental flaw: the risk of killing an innocent person. Yet that hasn't stopped Massachusetts - of all states - from trying to resurrect executions. A special committee has released a report on how the state legislature might design a death-penalty statute that is "as infallible as humanly possible." The panel should have admitted it can't be done. Something is either infallible or not. Ensuring absolute certainty in an emotionally charged death-penalty case is a lost cause. Even so, the panel was formed last year by Gov. Mitt Romney to suggest how the state, one of 12 without capital punishment, could avoid irreversible mistakes should it re-adopt the death penalty. In its search for infallibility, the panel offers some extraordinary proposals. Among them: that the state raise the standard of guilt for a death sentence from "beyond a reasonable doubt" to "no doubt" of guilt, and that defendants get separate juries for trial and sentencing. The state also would have to supply skilled defense lawyers, corroborate guilt with scientific evidence, conduct an independent review of the evidence and expand the authority of courts to overturn death sentences. Yet another panel would look into claims of error. This amounts to more layers of review, but still no certainty. Scientific evidence can be contaminated, and even good lawyers and judges make mistakes. In fact, 113 death-row prisoners have been exonerated since 1973, reports the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment. Ultimately, Massachusetts' effort will fail. While it would create a system more scrupulous and cautious than any other in the U.S., it still would not be able to ensure infallibility. So don't try. A sentence of life without parole can be carried out sooner and at less cost. It poses no risk of executing the innocent and offers a greater deterrent by promising lifetime punishment. As Laurence Adams well appreciates, the only certain way to avoid wrongful executions is to execute no one in the 1st place. (source: Opinion, USA Today) MARYLAND: Joe Curran and the death penalty For doctrinaire opponents of capital punishment like Amnesty International and Maryland Attorney General Joseph Curran, condemned murderer Steven Oken is a public-relations nightmare. They can't play the race card or the poverty card, because Oken is white and his family well-to-do. And there is no question that he committed the crimes for which he is scheduled to be executed the week of June 13: the 1987 rape-murder of newlywed Dawn Marie Garvin. Still, given the fact that this case has been permitted to linger in the courts since Oken's 1991 conviction and death sentence, there is good reason to be suspect that he will not be executed this month. The facts of Oken's crimes are clear and uncontested: On the evening of Nov. 1, 1987, Oken raped and shot to death newlywed Dawn Marie Garvin in her apartment in White Marsh, Md. Mrs. Garvin, whose husband was stationed at a Navy base in Virginia, had allowed Oken into her apartment after he asked to use the telephone. Then, on Nov. 16, Oken raped and murdered his own sister-in-law, Patricia Hirt. He then drove to Kittery, Maine, where the following day, he raped and murdered a third woman a hotel clerk named Lori Ward. In his recent efforts to escape execution, Oken has had plenty of help. In 2001, the Maryland Court of Appeals halted executions for 8 months on the novel legal theory that a Supreme Court decision overturning a New Jersey hate-crimes law might somehow apply to the Maryland death-penalty statute. The following year, then-Gov. Parris Glendening imposed a moratorium on executions. Shortly after Gov. Robert Ehrlich ended the moratorium last January, the Court of Appeals postponed Oken's execution again. The announcement came less than two weeks after Mr. Curran stood in front of the State House in Annapolis and denounced the death penalty, saying there is too great a possibility that an innocent person could be executed. Now, Oken has filed suit challenging Maryland's use of lethal injection. Mr. Curran's office is charged with responsibility for defending the state's position on appeal. But, given Mr. Curran's opposition to capital punishment, his office cannot credibly represent the people in the Oken case. If Oken evades execution this month, Marylanders need to ask themselves: Does the fact that Mr. Curran opposes the death penalty have any relevance to the fact that triple murderer Steven Oken repeatedly emerges as the court victor? (source: Op-Ed, Washington Times) SOUTH CAROLINA: South Carolina prepares for 1st federal death penalty trial Buried several pages into a brief by federal prosecutors in their case against Chadrick Fulks is a phrase summing up their strategy for South Carolina's 1st federal death penalty trial. Fulks is "a pathological liar," they write. Fulks has already pleaded guilty to kidnapping and carjacking resulting in death along with 6 other counts. A jury of 10 women and 2 men will start determining Tuesday whether he is put to death or spends the rest of his life in prison without parole. Prosecutors said Fulks and his co-defendant, Branden Basham, helped each other escape from a Kentucky jail and elude authorities for about two weeks in November 2002. They say the pair killed 2 women, tied a Kentucky man to a tree and left him for dead and shot at a South Carolina man. Basham also faces a federal death penalty trial in South Carolina later this year. Fulks is fighting for his life in the death of Alice Donovan, who prosecutors said was abducted from a Wal-Mart parking lot in Conway and was taken to North Carolina. The Galivants Ferry woman's body has never been found, but both men have told authorities she was killed. In pretrial hearings, Fulks has looked scared and meek, especially since a hearing where U.S. District Judge Joe Anderson reminded Fulks he would either be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison. Defense lawyers will use that behavior to bolster their case that Fulks has always been a follower and only did what Basham wanted him to do during the crime spree, according to court documents and hearings. Their strategy can be seen in their efforts to have Fulks plead guilty by entering his confession into evidence. In it, he lays all the blame for the killing of Donovan and West Virginia college student Samantha Burns on Basham. Prosecutors will counter with a host of witnesses that will testify about how Fulks was a compulsive liar. When Fulks was in jail in Horry County, before he escaped in Kentucky, he told his cellmate he didn't have money for bail and his 2-year-old daughter was sick and near death in West Virginia, according to a prosecution brief. The inmate's mother felt so sorry for Fulks, she gave him bail money and let him borrow her car. Fulks said he would return it in a week and frequently called to update his daughter's worsening condition before disappearing, prosecutors said. Fulks did not have a sick daughter, prosecutors said. Fulks tried to help authorities find Donovan's body in North Carolina and Burns' body in West Virginia, but searchers came up empty. Prosecutors think Fulks was only pretending to help. In their brief, they point out Fulks said Burns was killed in a wooded area, but told searchers to look for her body in an area with no trees. The defense also was dealt a blow with a recent ruling allowing prosecutors to call three women who they say will testify Fulks beat them during their relationships. Also, the judge will allow testimony about how Fulks tried to escape while getting medical attention in Columbia. Still to be decided is whether Anderson will allow testimony about Fulks allegedly abused his son. Fulks was indicted on an abuse charge the day before he escaped from jail. Prosecutors also want to discuss the death of another of Fulks' sons in 1995. An autopsy indicated the infant had been abused, but a grand jury in West Virginia did not indict him. Prosecutors have listed 145 witnesses, including men who saw Basham and Fulks driving Donovan's BMW on a dirt road near a hunting club in North Carolina shortly before Fulks said she was killed. Also on the list is a man who says the pair tied him to a tree and stole his car and two men who say Fulks imitated an FBI agent and robbed them at gunpoint after their RV broke down on the side of a highway in 2002. Prosecutors said it could take 3 weeks to call all of their witnesses. (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: Death penalty cases on the rise in county Local prosecutors believe they are now handling a record number of capital cases, a phenomenon they attribute largely to scientific advances that have made new cases and cold cases solveable. The San Diego District Attorney's Office is seeking the death penalty against 7 men, and that number could rise to 9 or more by midsummer. One of the defendants is Scott Erskine, who has been convicted of the molestation, torture and murders of 2 South Bay boys strangled in 1993. His fate may be decided within the next week as the retrial in the penalty phase of his case concludes. The others charged with capital crimes are awaiting trial. Many will not be judged until next year. "I think it's just a statistical aberration that we have the number that we have now," said Deputy District Attorney Jeff Dusek who heads the office's cold case homicide unit and is now prosecuting the seventh death penalty case of his more-than-25-year career in the office. Recent advances in DNA technology, he and others say, partly explain the rash of capital proceedings. "With scientific advances, especially DNA, we can now solve cases that couldn't be solved earlier," Dusek said. Erskine's case is one of them. The boys' 1993 slayings went unsolved for years until genetic evidence from the crime scene was reanalyzed through new techniques that tied him to the crimes. Erskine, who was serving a prison term for raping a San Diego woman several months after the boys were killed, was charged in 2001. 2 of the other capital punishment cases also stem from sex crimes committed against children more than a decade ago. Arrests have only recently been made in those cases after advanced DNA testing linked the defendants to the killings. District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, who is charged with making each decision over whether to seek the death penalty, says it's always a tough choice. "Any time you're making a decision about death it has to be given the consideration it deserves and it is a weighty decision," she said. She said she gives defense attorneys the opportunity to convince her to seek the option of life in prison without the possibility of parole. She also always tries to speak with relatives of the victims to see how they feel. "They are very emotional cases," she said. Capital cases are expensive and time-consuming. They often take years to get to trial and can monopolize the time of both prosecution and defense lawyers, who almost always work for the county. The Erskine case alone has cost the District Attorney's Office nearly $200,000 for expert witnesses, psychiatric examinations and related costs. Perhaps the most notorious local death penalty case concluded last year when David Westerfield was sent to death row for the murder of his 7-year-old Sabre Springs neighbor, Danielle van Dam. That case cost the prosecutor's office more than $269,000, not including salary or other staff costs. The county also paid just over $300,000 toward Westerfield's defense costs. The most recent death sentence was given this year to an Alpine landscaper, Michael Flinner, after he was convicted of hiring one of his workers to kill his 18-year-old fiancee in order to collect insurance money. Prosecutor Rick Clabby spent 3 years on the case and more than $33,000 was spent on witnesses and other costs, according to the District Attorney's Office. A survey of nearby counties shows the number of active death penalty cases in San Diego - 7 - is in line with other large Southern California counties. Orange County prosecutors are seeking death against six defendants while the San Bernardino District Attorney's Office is prosecuting 10 cases. In Riverside, 12 capital cases are in the works and in Los Angeles "about 20" death penalty cases are active, a spokeswoman said. The 7 San Diego death defendants are all men who range in age from 24 to 48. 3 are white, 3 are Hispanic and 1 is black. 3 are accused of sexually assaulting and murdering children. 3 others are charged with murder during robberies. One is accused of killing a police officer. They are: Scott Erskine, 41. Erskine was convicted last year of murdering 9-year-old Jonathan Sellers and 13-year-old Charlie Keever, who disappeared while riding their bicycles along a path next to the Otay River on March 27, 1993. The jury deadlocked 11-1 on the question of punishment with the majority favoring execution. A retrial of the penalty phase has been under way for the past 6 weeks before a 2nd jury. Closing arguments are scheduled to begin tomorrow. George Williams, 48. Williams is accused of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and strangling 14-year-old Rickieann "Rickie" Blake, whose body was found dumped off a freeway in Barrio Logan 17 years ago. Prosecutors say Williams kidnapped Rickie from her Chula Vista home in the middle of the night. They also say he is a serial rapist and child molester. He was connected to the case by DNA evidence last year. An August trial date has been scheduled. Daniel Gonzalez Berumen, 24. An illegal immigrant, Berumen is accused of murdering Kimberly Hope, 48, of Jacumba, who was beaten to death during a residential robbery in April 2003. A trial date of Oct. 25 has been scheduled. Adrian Camacho, 28. Camacho is accused of murdering Oceanside Police Officer Tony Zeppetella, 27, during a traffic stop in June 2003. Prosecutors say Zeppetella was pistol-whipped and shot 13 times. Camacho is acting as his own lawyer. A trial date in January has been scheduled. Jeffrey Young, 29. Young is 1 of 2 men charged in the fatal shootings of two Lindbergh Field-area parking lot workers during a robbery in 1999. He is accused of killing Five Star Park Shuttle & Fly Manager Jack Reynolds, 44, of National City, and exit-booth operator Teresa Perez, 31, of San Ysidro. The victims may have been killed because the robbers forgot to bring rope to bind them, according to court testimony. Both victims were shot in the back of the head while lying on their stomachs. Prosecutors say Young was one of the gunmen. A trial date in January has been scheduled. Manuel Bracamontes Jr., 40. Based on reanalyzed DNA evidence, Bracamontes was connected last year to the murder and sexual assault of 9-year-old Laura Arroyo in 1991. Laura was found bludgeoned and stabbed to death a day after she disappeared from her family's Otay Mesa condominium after answering the front door. An October trial date has been scheduled, but as with many of these cases, a postponement is likely. Eric "Stressed Eric" Anderson, 30. Anderson is 1 of 4 men charged with murdering Cajon Speedway promoter Steve Brucker, 51, during a robbery at his home near El Cajon last year. Prosecutors say Anderson was the gunman. A trial date has not been set. In addition to these 7 cases, the district attorney, Dumanis, is expected to decide whether to seek death against several other men within the next few months. Mark Brown, 45. The City Heights man is accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Faye Williams, 40, on Valentine's Day 2003 and another woman, Charmaine Cannon, 37, in 1995. A decision on whether to seek the death penalty is expected soon. Bennette Lee Douglas, 20. The Escondido man is accused of murdering his 18-year-old girlfriend, Jennifer Ross of San Diego, and her friend, Heather Ann Steimer, 18, of Temecula. The bodies of both women were found in Escondido last summer. A decision could be made next month. Marcos Mendiola, 22. Mendiola is accused of carjacking and murdering a newspaper carrier for The San Diego Union-Tribune last year. Prosecutors say Antonio Pagayon was shot once by Mendiola, who had been looking for a car to steal for several hours when he came upon Mendiola delivering papers at a Paradise Hills apartment complex. A decision is possible in July. (source: San Diego Union-Tribune) NORTH CAROLINA: Death penalty sought for 18-year-old In High Point, prosecutors say they plan to seek the death penalty in the case of an 18-year-old charged with the October shooting death of a man during a botched robbery. Guilford County Assistant District Attorney Randy Carroll has filed notice of his intent to have capital punishment considered as a penalty. He is expected to present evidence supporting his choice during a hearing Tuesday. Henri Navatholy Young of 1600 Johnson St., is charged with first-degree murder, 1st-degree burglary and attempted robbery with a dangerous weapon in connection with the death of Pablo Jesus Velasquez-Mayonquin, 41. Police have also charged Tito Tyson Sabb, 17, of 416 New St. and Quenalin Lamorris Baldwin, 20, of 1407 English Road, with 1st-degree murder in connection with the same incident. Carroll said the death penalty will not be sought in those cases. According to police, several men broke into the home of Velasquez-Mayonquin at 1311 Bradshaw St. at about 12:15 a.m. Oct. 12. Velasquez-Mayonquin was asleep when the robbers awoke him. Velasquez-Mayonquin was ultimately shot multiple times, police said. The robbers then fled without stealing anything. Velasquez-Mayonquin was taken to High Point Regional Hospital where he died 8 days later. Police charged the three men in December. In a separate murder case, prosecutors will not seek the death penalty in the October slaying of Johnny Earl Golden, who was shot while sleeping inside a known drug house. Michael Craig Brown, 51, of 1505-A Woodside Drive, is charged with murder. Police believe a gunman shot up the house at 800 Barbee Ave. about 3:40 a.m. Oct. 10 because he was fed up with a family member getting drugs there. Golden, 45, was the only 1 shot. (source: News & Record)
