August 14 TEXAS: Convicted murderer appeals 1996 ruling Sentenced to death for the brutal sex-related slayings of a 68-year-old grandmother and her 4-year-old blind granddaughter, Jose Noe Martinez found himself back in a Hidalgo County courtroom Friday for an appeals hearing. Martinez, now 28, appeared in an orange jumpsuit used by the Hidalgo County Jail inmates and leg shackles in Judge Noe Gonzalez's 370 th state District Court. Gonzalez will make a ruling by the 1st week of September as to whether Martinez received effective counsel during his trial. Alex Calhoun, his current attorney, said Martinez's attorneys didn't present evidence to a jury during his November 1996 trial that his mother might have sexually abused him. Martinez was 18 in February 1995 when he broke into the home of Esperanza Palomo, located across the street from where he was staying with his own grandmother in the small community of Madero in western Hidalgo County. Martinez stabbed the grandmother multiple times and then sexually assaulted her, according to Monitor archives. On the night of the double homicide, Palomo was babysitting her visiting granddaughter Amanda, who was asleep in a nearby room. Martinez also stabbed Amanda several times, including once in the neck, and ejaculated on her. He had been under the influence of Rohypnol, according to Monitor archives. Rohypnol, which is commonly known as a "Roche" pill or a date-rape drug when combined with alcohol, is a central nervous system depressant, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. A friend who saw Martinez later that night testified during the 1996 trial that Martinez confessed to the killings, according to Monitor archives. "He kept saying 'I killed her,'" said Robert Dennis Galvan, a friend and relative of Martinez's. After receiving his death sentence, Martinez turned to family members of the victims and said, "It's not over yet," according to a profile of Martinez kept on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Death Row Web site. Palomo family members who sat through the entirety of the seven-hour hearings on Friday expressed frustration with the focus on Martinez's rights. "All of a sudden, there's concern about his life," said Pete Luna, son of Esperanza Palomo. "It's hard on us. It's hard for both families." Amanda's mother, Patty Palomo, said her daughter would be 14 years old today. "Every day, we try to get to the next day," Palomo said. "They were just special people in our lives that we always have in our hearts." No motive for the killings has been presented, Luna said. While on the stand during the 1996 trial, Martinez's mother, Alma Mancias Martinez, began crying and asked her son, "Why did you do it?" That same question remains with family of the victims, Luna said. "We just want to know why," he said. "The question has never been answered." Martinez's hearing Friday was part of his state habeas corpus appeals, the second of the 3 stages of appeals that death row convicts are entitled to, according to a guidebook on the death penalty put out by the Texas Attorney General. Martinez's direct appeals, which address any errors made during the trial, have already been exhausted. Gonzalez will make a ruling by the 1st week of September as to whether Martinez received effective counsel during his trial. If Gonzalez finds that he did receive adequate legal counsel, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will review the case. If the criminal appeals court denies Martinez's claims, an execution date can be set by Gonzalez. Martinez still has a venue of federal appeals open to him. Ricardo Flores, now the Hidalgo County judge for child welfare cases, and Fela Olivarez were Martinez's defense attorneys during his original trial. Olivarez, who served as an assistant to Flores, had never handled a capital murder case before and had only had her law license for 2 years at the time she was appointed. In court Friday, Flores said he never interviewed any of Martinez's teachers or counselors for the trial. He also said he was unaware that Martinez had been sexually abused, although Flores suspected because of the nature of the crime. "I had nothing, nobody saying 'Hey, this (sexual abuse) happened,' " Flores said. A person on Texas' death row has an average of 10.43 years before execution, accoring to TDCJ. It costs the state $61.58 per day to keep an inmate on death row, states TDCJ statistics. At the end of the hearing, Gonzalez told sheriff's department deputies to return Martinez to death row. Martinez has been at the Hidalgo County Jail for the past two weeks in order to attend Friday's hearing. "Ship him back to death row where he belongs," Gonzalez said. (source: The Monitor) ************************** Slayings in a small town---The deaths shake a community where the last homicide occurred 15 years ago When Anita Hulsey Bryant and her husband, Henry Lee Bryant III, moved to Dublin 2 1/2 years ago, she found her dream job. Through her hobby of collecting Dr Pepper-related items, Anita Bryant had become an authority on the subject. "She is a Dr Pepper expert, and that's critically important to the mission of the Dr Pepper Museum," museum Director Karen Wright said this week. "She was research-oriented; she loved to dig into the history of any little piece." Wednesday night, the bodies of Anita and Henry Bryant were found near Wilson, Okla., 2 days after they were reported missing. "We would have felt a terrible loss to lose Anita or Henry, but to lose them both in that manner, we are all stunned; there is no reality to that," Wright said. "We are all just going through the motions." Wright was the first person to call police Monday morning to say that Anita Bryant had not shown up for work, Police Chief Lannie Lee said. Officers who investigated found a large amount of blood in the garage of their home, Lee said. The case was turned over to the Texas Rangers, the investigative arm of the state Department of Public Safety. On Tuesday, Henry Bryant's brother, Edward Wayne Bryant, 51, was arrested in the Houston area, and Richard David Mack, 40, was arrested in Edna. Both are in the Erath County Jail. Mack's bail is $750,000; Edward Wayne Bryant's is $1 million. Authorities are preparing capital murder cases against them, Lee said. The Bryants may have been beaten to death, he said. The motive appears to be a dispute between the brothers over an inheritance of money derived from the sale of commercial property in Pearland, where the Bryants lived before moving to Dublin, Lee said. Dublin, a city of not quite 3,900 people, hasn't needed homicide detectives since its last slaying, in 1989. That's why the Rangers were called: None of the city's eight officers had the training to deal with a double homicide and the search for the bodies, Lee said. Lee said the city's crime rate is "real low" -- 6 to 8 sexual assaults and 20 to 30 aggravated assaults most years. 5 or 6 cars are stolen annually, he said. Dublin sits 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth. It's a quiet town running on peanut and dairy farms and the core business of tourism to the Dr Pepper plant, Lee said. The plant, which opened in 1891, is the only bottler that still makes Dr Pepper using cane sugar instead of corn syrup. Along with passing tourists, devotees trek to Dublin to buy quantities of the soft drink, which is not widely distributed. Many residents thought nothing of leaving vehicles unlocked and garages open overnight, Lee said. "By Monday night, residents were quite concerned," he said."There was concern that this might be a random thing. That led to a lot of people closing their garages and locking their cars." But later in the week, the arrests and the possibility that the motive might have been a family squabble over money had eased fears, residents said. At the Buckboard Restaurant, just northeast of downtown on U.S. 377, Rella Nelson met with friends Thursday evening for a regular session of chat and coffee. "It will affect the town for a couple of weeks," Nelson, 58, said. "But then they found out it wasn't a random killing. I think it will go back to the way it was." Ed Larner, also 58, said, "It didn't really bother me either way. I knew it was a family member. It wasn't random." Nelson, who grew up in Dublin, said the slayings highlighted one change in the town: when she was a child, she knew everybody. "It kind of bothered me that they lived here and I didn't know them," she said. "The majority of people I did when I was little; I don't know 50 % of them now." However, Wright said, the small-town culture has been a saving grace in a difficult time. "What's amazing is the people who have come to us to see what we need," she said. "This town rallies around somebody in need." (source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram) GEORGIA: Errant jurors face the judge----Final 6 no-shows explain themselves to Judge Louisa Abbot Errant juror No. 270 thought this Friday the 13th would turn out as badly as the superstitious often suspect. "Sweet Jesus," said Ruby L. Dechristofaro before the start of Friday morning's 9:15 hearing before Superior Court Judge Louisa Abbot. "It's not going to be a good day. It's raining and I should be in bed." Judge Abbot called Dechristofaro, 24, and five others to her 2nd-floor courtroom to hear their reasons for failing to show up for jury duty in a death penalty case four months ago. All faced a charge of willful contempt of court punishable by jail time, a fine or both. "Was it that big of a trial?" Dechristofaro said. Only the most important kind, actually. Joseph Williams' life was at stake. Accused of killing a fellow inmate at the Chatham County jail, Williams exercised his right to be judged by his peers. His trial was to begin April 5 but at the last minute that morning Williams decided to plead guilty, focus on the sentencing phase and garner sympathy from jurors in order to save his life. But the 12 men and women didn't extend him any mercy - even after hearing of his troubled childhood. They meted out the ultimate punishment. Of 300 jurors summoned, about half showed up. Ninety of them obtained valid exemptions. After Williams' trial was over, Judge Abbot ordered the 53 no-shows to a Friday, June 4 hearing. Only 31 went to that hearing. The judge enlisted the Sheriff's Office to locate and serve the people who missed the first hearing but deputies could find only six of them. Judge Abbot excused those that deputies couldn't find under the assumption that they no longer lived in the county. Judge Abbot wants people to realize the seriousness of jury service. "We depend on the citizens of this county," Abbot said. "It may seem onerous, but so many people have come to me afterwards feeling good about serving." Chatham County Superior Court Jury Manager Patricia H. Morelli said she routinely counts on no-shows. "That's why we have to call in so many jurors," she said. Morelli and her counterparts across the state rely primarily on voter registration records. A recent state law allows them to use driver's license data, but the motor vehicles department does not include race and gender in their database. Jury pools in Georgia must reflect the community. A project by Georgia Supreme Court Justice Hugh P. Thompson to develop a driver license database that tracks the needed information statewide is underway. Until then, when Morelli comes up short on voters, she must send qualifying questionnaires to those she culls from the motor vehicles database. State law requires voters to notify their supervisors of elections when they change addresses. But clearly many do not, Morelli said. Judge Abbot saw that problem Friday. Only two of the six absentee jurors received Judge Abbot's maximum sentence for missing jury duty: a $250 fine and a 10-day jail sentence. She suspended the jail time on the condition that Shavondra E. Hopper and Sarah M. Nelson answer their next calls to jury duty. Forgetting and oversleeping are not acceptable reasons to Judge Abbot. Abbot allowed Dechristofaro and the three others to go free because they testified that they'd moved and hadn't received the notices. Dechristofaro's registration information was so outdated it even had her former name, Hawks, on it. Dechristofaro, the 1st called to give an explanation, didn't have as bad a day as she'd worried. She rushed out of Abbot's courtroom as soon as the judge pronounced the contempt charge dismissed - but not before Morelli took down her new address. (source: Savannah Morning News) USA: On Law: Nothing like a good murder case Pity the poor Supreme Court correspondent. Reporting from the heights, he or she writes stories about decisions that will affect all of us, our children and our grandchildren for the rest of the 21st century. But the stories that grab the headlines, and keep them for months, belong to the lurid and the tragic. Want proof? Last term a majority of the justices decided for the 1st time in our country's history, in Hiibel vs. Sixth Judicial District, that states can require any citizen to give his or her name to police when asked and that the otherwise innocent citizen can be hauled away in handcuffs for refusing to do so. In a series of cases involving terror suspects held in detention, majorities ruled that the Bush administration could not keep prisoners beyond the reach of the courts, something the president said was essential to the war against terror. A majority of the justices also ruled in a series of combined cases led by McConnell vs. the FEC that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act's core provisions banning the use of "soft" unregulated money are constitutional, as ineffective as that law has proved in practice. In other terms, the Supreme Court has told us that leading prayers at high school football games is unconstitutional, while government providing school vouchers to parents who want to use them for the religious education of their children is not. In the landmark Lawrence vs. Texas, a majority of the justices struck down the Lone Star State's ban against sodomy in an opinion that more or less told government it had no business trying to regulate the sex lives of 2 consenting adults, gay or straight. All of these decisions had their brief moment in the media sun. But not one received 1/10 of the newspaper ink or broadcast airtime given to the Laci Peterson murder case. Laci's body and that of her unborn son were found in San Francisco Bay in April 2003 after the pretty, young pregnant wife disappeared on Christmas Eve 2002. Her image in snapshots has haunted us ever since, as has the bovine, handsome face of her husband Scott, now on trial for her murder. The national media, and presumably the public, are so obsessed with the case that one resembling it also has received massive attention. In Utah, Lori Hacking disappeared July 19, and thousands of volunteers searched for her. Her picture and a home videotape of the attractive young woman tugged at our collective heart. It probably came as no surprise to anyone when her husband Mark, after checking himself into a mental institution, allegedly confessed to killing her and throwing her body in a dumpster. It turns out that Mark had been lying to his wife and extended family about graduating from college and being accepted into medical school in North Carolina. When Lori found out she became upset, and then he became upset and then -- well, naturally he had to kill her. He probably thought he had no other choice. Haven't these people ever heard of marriage counseling? It doesn't always have to be the murder of a pretty, young wife to draw hordes of media to a criminal case in this country. Celebrity also plays its part. Look at the firestorm of attention the media is paying to the Kobe Bryant sexual-assault case. It helps that Bryant, of course, is a star basketball player with the Los Angeles Lakers. It also helps -- though we tend not to admit this to ourselves -- that the accused is a young black man and the alleged victim is an even younger white woman. Speaking of celebrities, we're due for another round of media frenzy any day as the child-molestation case against Michael Jackson proceeds in California. Neverland will never be the same. And Martha, dear Martha Stewart? We're leaving her alone for the moment, but watch what happens when she goes behind bars after being convicted of lying to authorities about a securities fraud she was never charged with in the first place. The paparazzi will be thick in the bushes, trying to snap a shot of Martha in a tasteful prison jumpsuit. So what does it all mean? Despite the massive attention these cases get, do they really have anything to tell us? I suppose they are somewhat illuminating to the human condition and the degradation that even the most successful of us can achieve if we try really hard. I know the public's interest in them is intense, and it's been that way since the earliest days of the Republic. These cases are just modern versions of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case, which received more press than the rise of Hitler. But I find them tiresome -- a fact that my wife chooses to ignore as she regales me each morning with all the lurid details, especially in the Peterson and Hacking cases, as they are revealed with breathless enthusiasm by the national media. I suppose my wife finds my explanations of Supreme Court decisions just as oppressive. However, there is one tangible effect of the Peterson and Hacking cases. Surely, they reinforce the universal instinct of police to immediately suspect the husband when a wife disappears, no matter how peaceful a fellow he is. This weighs on my mind, so much so that I only half-jokingly added the following to my bedtime prayers: "O Lord, please let nothing happen to my wife. If something has to happen to one of us, some act of violence, please let it happen to me. But if, in Your infinite wisdom, You decide that my wife is the one who must suffer -- Please, O Lord, make sure that my alibi is airtight. Amen." (source: UPI - Mike Kirkland is UPI's senior legal affairs correspondent. He has covered the Supreme Court and other parts of the legal community since 1993.)
