death penalty news August 11, 2004
NEW YORK: Pataki Introduces Bill to Restore Death Penalty Gov. George E. Pataki introduced a bill this week to fix a provision of the state's capital punishment law that was recently invalidated by New York's highest court. But even the governor's aides said it stood little chance of passing. The governor's bill, introduced in the State Senate late on Monday, would overhaul a central part of the law that the Court of Appeals said was flawed and violated the State Constitution. The June 24 ruling effectively suspended the death penalty in the state. Specifically, the court found that the statute improperly required judges to tell jurors in capital cases that if they deadlocked and failed to reach a verdict during the penalty phase of a trial, the judge would impose a sentence that would leave the defendant eligible for parole after 20 to 25 years. The bill to fix the flaw proposed two changes. First, juries would be given a third option, imposing a sentence of life in prison with parole when sentencing convicted murderers. Previously, they could only dole out sentences of either capital punishment or life in prison without parole. Second, if a jury deadlocked, a sentence of life without parole would be imposed, and juries would be told of that provision before sentencing. The proposal would apply both to pending cases and to crimes committed prior to the effective date of any change in the law, a legislative analyst said. Viewed politically, the governor's release of the bill seemed to put the Democratic Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, in a bit of a spot before the fall elections, raising the issue of whether he would help push through the measure or let stand a sense of satisfaction among some Democrats that there is now a de facto moratorium on imposing the death penalty. Even before the details of the bill could be digested, however, an aide to the governor was saying that the legislation was effectively dead, because of a perceived lack of interest in the Assembly. But a spokeswoman for Mr. Silver said the governor's bill was still being studied and the matter was still the subject of negotiation. "There were broad conversations on a variety of different options,'' Eileen Larrabee, the spokeswoman, said Tuesday. After the court ruled, the governor, Mr. Silver and Joseph L. Bruno, the Republican State Senate majority leader, all pledged to correct the flaw in the death penalty law. Nevertheless, Democrats in the Assembly held a meeting in which many members expressed serious misgivings about reviving the law, enacted in 1995 after Mr. Pataki pushed for it in his successful election campaign against Mario M. Cuomo, an ardent opponent of capital punishment. Still, with support from Republican Assembly members, many lawmakers said a fix to the death penalty law could still pass in the Assembly, and Mr. Silver weeks ago had said it would be helpful for him to see a proposal. John E. McArdle, a spokesman for Mr. Bruno, said the bill the governor sent up was identical to the latest proposal put forth by the Assembly, a contention that Ms. Larrabee disputed. For his part, Mr. Bruno said he would like to fix the death penalty law this week. (source: New York Times) ============================ TEXAS: Acuna jury sequestered until sentence decided Robert Aaron Acuna's mother implored a Harris County jury Tuesday to spare her son's life, while the adult son of James and Joyce Carroll asked the same jury for justice for his slain parents. Acuna, 18, of Baytown, was convicted Friday for the Nov. 12 shooting deaths of the elderly couple in their Country Club Estates home. Following closing arguments in the penalty phase of the capital murder trial, jurors spent more than five hours deliberating before District Judge Mike Anderson sequestered them for the night in a downtown hotel. Jurors will resume deliberations at 9 a.m. today. Acuna, who was 17 when he killed his elderly neighbors, faces the death penalty or life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 40 years. Barbara Acuna, the defendant's mother, called her middle son a "wonderful child" and denied that he was involved in the Carrolls' deaths during her testimony. She was the last witness to testify during the defense's case in the penalty phase. Under questioning by lead defense attorney Bob Loper, she described Acuna as a shy and caring son who loved spending time at home and with other relatives. Acuna said that on Nov. 13, the night the Carrolls' bodies were discovered by their daughter, Acuna made the decision not to consent to a police search of her son's pickup truck, which the family found abandoned in the neighborhood the night before. She said the decision was made after consulting with Candy Elizondo, the attorney representing Acuna in an aggravated robbery charge in which the teenager was accused of accosting a 75-year-old man in the parking lot of San Jacinto Mall on Aug. 7, 2003. Acuna said that she and the other members of the extended family would continue to support her son regardless of the sentence imposed. "Robert has a very kind and gentle soul," she said. "The world will not be a better place if he were to be executed. It will not be a safer place." "I would just beg for your mercy," she told the seven-woman, five-man jury. In rebuttal testimony, Tim Carroll, the only son of James, 76, and Joyce, 74, said that his parents "never lived in a place where they weren't friendly with their neighbors." He said that if Acuna had asked the Carrolls for anything, they would have gladly obliged. He said his father, a retired oil services safety engineer, liked to teach younger men responsibility and might have had the teenager perform some job for money. Robert Acuna was arrested in a Dallas-area motel Nov. 17 with the Carrolls' car, credit cards, jewelry and other possessions. Asked by Assistant District Attorney Renee Magee what his favorite memories of his parents were, Carroll mentioned his Sunday after-church visits to their home after they moved to Baytown from Louisiana, two years before they died. Seeing him walk to the house in a suit, he said, his mother would exclaim, "Well, here's the preacher." After chatting with his mom about family, he would then spend time with his father in the garage, where the two would discuss sports and other "guy stuff." Magee asked Carroll if he was asking the jury for justice. "Yes, I am," he said. In closing arguments, Assistant District Attorney Vic Wisner went over the two special issues the jurors must consider in the penalty phase. In the first, they must decide whether Acuna would commit future acts of violence that would make him a continuing threat to society. If they answer is yes, they must then decide whether there are sufficient mitigating factors in his character and background that would make a life sentence, rather than capital punishment, appropriate. Addressing the first question, Wisner said that Acuna's alleged attack of Sidney Bodine at San Jacinto Mall was not an aggravated robbery but was, in fact, a kidnapping attempt that might have led to murder. "Clearly he had some evil, evil plan for Mr. Bodine," Wisner said. Later, Wisner said, when Acuna decided he didn't want to appear in court on the robbery charge, he decided, "I want to kill a couple of people." Wisner said Acuna's relatively privileged upbringing in a loving family and the lack of any history of abuse argued against there being any sufficiently mitigating factors that should spare him from execution. "The death penalty, a painless lethal injection, would be a pleasant Sunday stroll compared to what he did to the Carrolls," he said. Laine Lindsey, Acuna's second defense attorney, argued that if the jury imposes a sentence of life imprisonment, his client would not be eligible for parole until 2044. Referring to testimony from a former Texas Department of Criminal Justice official who testified for the defense about conditions in the prison system, Lindsay said, "Forty years really is a life sentence in Texas." "I'm asking you to not take a life," Lindsey said to the jurors. He told the jurors that if they imposed a life sentence, Acuna "will never breathe again a breath of free air. I think that's fair." Loper expanded on that argument, telling jurors that once they had found him guilty, "Robert Acuna is going to die in captivity. All you are going to decide is if that's sooner or later." Describing the Carrolls' murders as a "vicious crime," Loper said the circumstances that led up to them "are not going to repeat themselves." Placing his hand on his client's shoulder, Loper said, "Don't judge a person's entire life by a moment in time." "Robert Acuna will die in prison. That's justice. That's justice for all," he said. In the prosecution's final statement, Magee asked the jurors to consider the "mental gymnastics" Acuna performed in planning and carrying out the killings and his subsequent flight to Dallas. Noting that testimony revealed no history of drug or alcohol abuse by Acuna, Magee said, "He's in his right mind. He got all the property, all the benefit. It's making sense to him." Magee said that Acuna's reserved demeanor masked a man given to unpredictable explosions of violence. "He's the scariest kind of person. He has evil in his hearts, folks," she said. (source: The Baytown Sun)
