July 8 TEXAS: Woman's execution scheduled for Dec. 1--Longtime inmate nearing end of years of appeals After 16 years on death row for shooting her husband and 2 young children in a scheme to collect a large insurance payment, 39-year-old Frances Elaine Newton sat stoically in a Houston courtroom Wednesday as a judge set her execution date for Dec. 1. Newton smiled at friends and family members in the courtroom and remained composed as state District Judge Jim Wallace read and signed her death warrant. If the lethal injection is carried out, Newton will be only the third woman executed in Texas in recent history. The other 2, including a Houston ax murderer, were put to death after capital punishment resumed in Texas in 1982. More than a dozen observers turned out for Newton's brief court appearance, including Newton's mother, two sisters and several other men and women from a prison ministry who have visited Newton on death row for several years. "I know she's innocent. We're a praying family, and we're going to keep on praying," said Newton's mother, Iva Nelms, 63, outside the courtroom Wednesday. Newton has exhausted nearly all of her avenues for appeal. State and federal appeals courts have repeatedly rejected claims that her constitutional rights were violated because her court-appointed lawyer at her 1988 trial, Ron Mock, was incompetent. Mock said just days before the trial that he had not filed any motions, spoken with any witnesses or submitted a list of possible witnesses to subpoena. Testifying in her trial, Newton blamed the murders on a drug dealer known only as Charlie, to whom she said her husband owed money. In April 1987, Harris County sheriff's deputies found the bodies of Adrian Newton, 23, and the couple's children, Alton, 7, and Farrah Elaine, 21 months, in the family's northwest Harris County apartment. Authorities said Frances Newton committed the murders with a gun from her boyfriend's home, then hid it in an abandoned house. Police recovered a pistol that experts said was the murder weapon, and prosecutors offered tests revealing gun residue on the clothes Newton wore the day of the murders. Also, witnesses said Newton had forged her husband's signature on $100,000 worth of insurance policies. Newton was convicted of capital murder in October 1988. Outside the courtroom Wednesday morning, Newton's supporters remained hopeful that the real killer will come forward before the execution. "It would be wonderful if somebody would just walk up and say, 'I know what happened,'" Nelms said. "I really hope God touches somebody's heart and makes them step forward. It's happened before." Newton's current attorney, Yolanda Jarmon, asked Wallace to postpone setting an execution date until later this year, after the U.S. Supreme Court has a chance to review her final petition. Jarmon declined to comment after the court hearing. Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson said the courts have thoroughly reviewed Newton's case. A recent federal appeals court ruling made a last-minute hearing by the nation's highest court unlikely, Wilson said. Aileen Jones, a Houston resident and volunteer who has visited Newton regularly on death row, said she was disappointed to see Newton reach the final stages of her case. "Now that we're in the 11th hour, it has become a perfunctory, procedural thing," Jones said after seeing Newton in court. In the days before the trial, Newton and her family were unhappy with Mock's representation and decided to hire a private attorney, David Eisen. As the trial was set to begin, Newton asked state District Judge Charles Hearn to postpone the trial so her new attorneys could prepare. When the judge refused, Eisen withdrew and the trial began with Mock as the lead defense attorney. A federal appeals court ruled in May that Newton failed to show how she was harmed by the decision not to delay the trial. "This is a real travesty, as far as I'm concerned." said Eisen, who was at the courthouse Wednesday morning. "She should have received some sort of appellate relief." While 321 men have been put to death in Texas since capital punishment resumed in 1982, only 2 women have been executed. Karla Faye Tucker was put to death in 1998 for killing a Houston couple with a pickax, and Betty Lou Beets was executed in 2000 for murdering her husband outside Dallas. Before them, the last woman put to death in Texas was Chipita Rodriguez. She was hanged in 1863 for the ax murder of a horse trader. (source: Houston Chronicle) ***************** Texas death row inmate to be interviewed by convict's lawyers Lawyers for a man convicted of two murders in West Virginia will be allowed to take statements from a Texas death-row inmate who has confessed to the crimes, a judge ruled. Kanawha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey Walker decided Wednesday to let Dana December Smith's attorneys question Tommy Lynn Sells and 2 Texas Rangers who first investigated Sells' confession. Smith, who participated in the hearing via video conferencing from Mount Olive Correctional Complex, was convicted of killing Margaret McClain, 63, and her daughter, Pamela Castoneda, 36, in Campbells Creek in September 1991. The women were found stabbed to death. DNA evidence linked Smith to the crime scene. Smith has always proclaimed his innocence, but the state Supreme Court denied his appeal and he is serving a life sentence without mercy. Sells, a former carnival worker and drifter, described to Rangers in 2000 how he committed the murders and how he hitchhiked out of the area. Maxine Biller, McClain's sister and Castoneda's aunt, said Sells is trying to take credit for the killings because he has no hope of getting out of prison. "The family is just reliving a nightmare," she said. "I feel Dana Smith has given him (Sells) all this information." Sells is believed to be responsible for more than a dozen murders nationwide. He is to be put to death in Texas for killing a 13-year-old girl. No execution date has been set. Assistant Kanawha County prosecutor Mary Beth Kershner argued Sells and Smith had spent several months together at Mount Olive while Sells served a prison term for a late 1990s crime in West Virginia. "Tommy Sells has nothing to lose," she said. "He's waiting for the needle in Texas." Along with West Virginia, authorities have said they believe Sells is responsible for murders in Arizona, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma and Tennessee. (source: Associated Press) CONNECTICUT: Jury Spares Perez The Death Penalty--Convict To Serve Life For Contract Killing In New Haven, a federal jury spared Wilfredo Perez the death penalty Wednesday, deciding he should instead serve life in prison without the possibility of parole for hiring hitmen to kill a competing drug dealer. Perez, 37, will be formally sentenced Sept. 16 for his role in the 1996 murder of Teddy Casiano, who was gunned down while his car idled at a red light at Newfield and New Britain avenues in Hartford. Perez paid several men a total of $6,000 to execute Perez, a former close friend from whom he had become estranged over drug turf and debts. After weighing aggravating and mitigating factors for about 6 hours over 2 days, the jury decided Perez should be spared, in part because he will continue to positively mentor his son and because he exhibited great respect in the courtroom. Minutes before the jury of 9 women and 3 men decided his fate, Perez and his defense team of Richard Reeve and Michael Sheehan group-hugged. Perez, wearing a white shirt and tie, did not outwardly display emotion when U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton read the jury's decision. Sheehan was relieved his client was spared the death penalty but lashed out at U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft for placing Perez's life in jeopardy. "I'm very pleased for Mr. Perez, his family and for this country," Sheehan said of the jury's decision. "I am totally ashamed of the attorney general of the United States. The man has no moral integrity. It is nonexistent. I'm so thankful for the jury system." Perez faced the federal death penalty as a result of an effort by Ashcroft to push for more death-penalty prosecutions in Connecticut and other Northeastern states. Jessie Marquez Gates said the jury rightfully ruled that Perez would be a positive influence during his lifetime incarceration. Last week she testified that Perez and his brother had an important positive influence on her son while they were jailed together at the Otisville Federal Prison in New York. "I am so relieved," Gates said. "Here's a guy, you talk about redemption, look what he did for my son." U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor stressed that although Perez was spared the death penalty he faces four life sentences, which will serve as a deterrent to others. "We respect the decision of the jury," O'Connor said. "This is a tough case." O'Connor said the government didn't dispute testimony that Perez has been a model prisoner. The defense team convinced jurors with "compelling" evidence that indicated Perez had a positive effect on other inmates and on his son, O'Connor said. The judge thanked the jurors for their hard work. The process of weighing whether Perez should be spared the death sentence will leave a lifelong effect on each juror, she said. The federal death penalty hearing deciding Perez's fate was the first in recent history. According to research by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research on executions dating back to 1608, the federal government has never put a Connecticut convict to death. Currently, there are 31 convicts on federal death row, none from Connecticut. (source: Hartford Courant) MICHIGAN: Death penalty proposal fails to get on November ballot An initiative to place the death penalty issue before Michigan voters failed to collect enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, organizers said. The proposal would have changed the state constitution to allow the death penalty in cases where a law enforcement or corrections officer has been killed. But petition supporters could not get the required 317,757 valid signatures needed before a Monday deadline for the Nov. 2 ballot. "We're not even close," said James Bowens, one of the backers of the petition. "That's why we didn't turn anything in." Bowens championed the death penalty proposal since his son, Detroit police officer Matthew Bowens was killed Feb. 16 during a traffic stop. Matthew's partner, Jennifer Fettig was also killed in the incident. Eric Marshall, 23, is charged with the shooting deaths. He is awaiting trial and faces mandatory life in prison if convicted. Other recent efforts to end Michigan's 158-year ban on the death penalty have also failed. State Rep. Larry Julian, R-Lennon, earlier this year introduced a resolution that would have placed the death penalty issue before voters, but it fell short of the required 2/3 majority. Backers of the death penalty proposal are now weighing their options for putting the issue on the 2006 ballot, Bowens said. "I think the support's out there," James Tignanelli, president of the Police Officers Association of Michigan told The Detroit News for a story published Thursday. "It just got going a little late this time." (source: Detroit Free Press)
