August 16 TEXAS: Appeal scheduled for Mexican sentenced to death In Edinburg, local prosecutors are attempting to set an execution date for a Mexican citizen convicted of killing his wife and 2 young children while his attorney argues that he deserves a new trial. Roberto Moreno Ramos, a Mexican citizen, was not advised of his rights to speak with a representative of the Mexican consulate before being questioned by police and may have been mentally incompetent to stand trial, said David Sergi, the San Marcos attorney representing Ramos. When Ramos was a child, his father submerged him underwater as punishment which may have caused extensive brain damage, Sergi said. "It appears that he (Ramos) may have some issue related to his competency due to his exposure to some pretty horrific conditions growing up," Sergi said. Meanwhile, prosecutor Ted Hake of the Hidalgo County District Attorney's Office expressed frustration that Judge Rodolfo "Rudy" Delgado of the 93 rd state District Court, scheduled a status hearing on Sept. 29 for the case instead of setting an execution date. "He (Delgado) should have set the date and let the chips fall where they will," Hake said. Ramos has exhausted all his state and federal appeals. Hake also expressed doubt at Ramos being mentally retarded. "He's not somebody that had a borderline IQ," Hake said. Ramos has been on death row since 1993, when a Hidalgo County jury found him responsible for killing his family with a hammer and then burying them underneath a recently tiled bathroom floor in their Progreso home. Two months after burying the bodies of Leticia Ramos, 42, Abigail Ramos, 7, and Jonathan Ramos, 3, Ramos told police he had buried them. After telling his wife's family that she and the children had been killed in a car accident, he married another woman three days after he killed his family and brought her to the Progreso house. She noticed an odd smell emanating from the bathroom, according to police records in the case. After police discovered the 3 bodies, neighbors came forward, indicating they had seen Ramos act abusively toward the children and his wife, according to affadavits taken by police. Ramos' case received worldwide attention in April when the International Court of Justice, the highest court under the United Nations, ruled that the cases of Ramos and 50 other Mexican citizens on death row in the United States needed to be reviewed. In early 2003, Mexico filed a complaint in the court against the United States alleging it violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by not informing Mexican nationals facing the death penalty of their right to access consular assistance. International agreements allow citizens of foreign nations have the right to speak with representatives from their governments if they are suspected in a crime. The Vienna Convention is an important right that many U.S. citizens exercise when traveling internationally, Sergi said. "Those rights affect American citizens that cross the border every day," Sergi said. "If Mexico were to take the same position we have, you'd have a lot of American citizens in jail without access to their consulate." People being questioned in a crime should be made aware of their right to contact a consulate at the time of arrest when Miranda rights are given, Sergi said. Gov. Rick Perry assured Mexican President Vicente Fox in June that he would review Ramos' case, said Kathy Walt, Perry's press secretary. Perry also told Fox that he expects police officers in Texas to inform those suspected of committing crimes of their rights to contact the consulate. "Back when this issue 1st arose, the governor stated at the time that he expects all law enforcement agencies to abide by the law," Walt said. The Hidalgo County Sheriff 's Deparment, which investigated the triple-slaying, is confident with its work, said Capt. Roy Quintanilha. "There's nothing I can address the horror that happened," Quintanilha said. "The crime speaks for itself." (source: The Monitor) *********************** 3 charged in Jason's Deli slaying 3 people have been charged with capital murder in the Aug. 4 shooting death of a manager at a Jason's Deli in northwest Harris County. Marc Garrett, 25, was arrested Friday in San Antonio in connection with the slaying of Ryan Martin, 29, who was found fatally shot about 3 a.m. inside the store in the 10900 block of FM 1060. Garrett was being held without bail Sunday at the Harris County Jail. Arrest warrants also have been issued for Kevin Martin, 25, and Aaron Charles, 23, both from San Antonio. (source: Houston Chronicle) VIRGINIA----impending execution//volunteer Execution Set for Wednesday Night James Bryant Hudson, who has given up all appeals, is set to be executed Wednesday night for the slaying of 3 people in Halifax County 2 years ago. According to the state attorney general's office, Hudson, 57, has not challenged his sentence and has instructed his attorney not to file any appeals on his behalf. He is scheduled to die by injection at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. Last year Hudson pleaded guilty to one count of capital murder for the murders of Walter Stanley Cole, 56, and Thomas Wesley Cole, 64. The 2 victims were brothers. Hudson also pleaded guilty to the 1st-degree murder of Patsy Ayers Cole, 64, wife of Thomas Cole. According to authorities, the Cole brothers were shot with Hudson's 12-gauge shotgun in a driveway that Stanley Cole shared with Hudson, and over which the men had a long-standing dispute. Hudson found Patsy Cole working in her vegetable garden and shot her before driving off and being arrested after a 23-hour manhunt. (source: Richmond Times-Dispatch) ********************* The Achilles heel in DNA testing When Lawrence Napper went on trial in November 2001, accused of the kidnapping and sexual assault of a 6-year-old Houston boy, DNA evidence cemented his conviction. Now, due to an exhaustive probe of the Houston police DNA lab, the results that helped sentence Napper to life in prison are unraveling. According to the retests, the match between Napper and the DNA found on the abused boy is extremely weak. When the DNA was rechecked, there was a possible match at 2 points on the DNA chain, but not at 11 others. The jury was never told that the so-called "match" was statistically insignificant. The tenuousness of the evidence against Napper, which has prompted his attorney to call for a new trial, exposes the little-known Achilles heel of DNA testing. Widely viewed as an almost infallible forensic science tool, DNA evidence is only as good as the individuals who handle and interpret it. Particularly when DNA from more than one person is mixed in the same sample, which is often the case in sex crimes, analysis is an art as well as a science. That fact crystallized in Virginia this summer when 3 nationally respected DNA experts told The Virginian-Pilot editorial page that the Virginia Division of Forensic Science apparently erred in its analysis of DNA evidence in one of the highest profile murder cases in state history. Flawed interpretation appears to have trumped science in analyzing DNA taken from the body of Rebecca Williams, a Culpeper housewife whose murder led to the false conviction of Earl Washington Jr. Washington, who spent 9= years on Virginia's death row, was pardoned in October 2000 on the basis of state lab work. The lab identified convicted rapist Kenneth Tinsley as the source of DNA on a blanket at the crime scene. But, in the now-disputed result, the lab also excluded Tinsley as the source of DNA on Williams' body, leaving the murder unresolved. A scientist hired by Washington's attorneys says that the disputed DNA is Tinsley's. The experts say that the state's different conclusion seems to have been based on an erroneous reading of a contaminated slide. The state's refusal to acknowledge error or allow for a third-party review in the case raises troubling questions about procedures at a lab that has previously enjoyed a stellar national reputation. Two additional Virginia cases join with a growing body of evidence from Texas and other states to suggest that the nation needs a better system of monitoring its DNA labs. "Our internal policing is proving to be inadequate," argued Betty Layne DesPortes, a Richmond attorney who chairs the jurisprudence section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. The case of Reginald Howard, a Richmond man accused of raping his girlfriend's teenage daughter, illustrates the power afforded state forensic scientists in interpreting DNA results. In a Feb. 6, 2003 analysis, a state forensic scientist wrote that the DNA profile obtained from a stain on the victim's underpants was 2 billion times more likely to have originated from a mixture of the victim's and Howard's DNA than from the victim and a random Caucasian. Only in a parenthetical phrase, easily overlooked, did the scientist note that the stunning statistics were arrived at by excluding the results at 8 of 16 points of comparison between Howard's DNA and the stain. That's because Howard didn't fit the profile at the eight discarded points. The report conveyed a certainty about the match that was not justified by the data. Nor was it mentioned that the analysis failed to find the "Y" chromosome indicating the presence of a male sperm cell, which would seem to be necessary for Howard to be guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. Fortunately for Howard, his attorney was sufficiently suspicious to get the report into the hands of a DNA expert, University of California-Irvine criminologist William C. Thompson. His testimony resulted in appointment of an expert witness and ultimately in Howard's exoneration. Also worth contemplating are the DNA results from the state lab in the case of Karl Michael Roush, who was erroneously charged with the 1996 abduction and slaying of Spotsylvania County teenager Sofia Silva. Roush was freed after FBI investigators noticed similarities in the killings of Silva and the later slayings of young sisters Kristin and Kati Lisk. Roush could not have committed these murders because he was in jail at the time. Investigating what went wrong, the FBI laboratory discovered a mistake in the state's forensic analysis of key fiber evidence. The discovery resulted in the resignation of the scientist who performed the work. Less noted at the time was the fact that a DNA test had also linked Roush to the Silva murder, even though it was later proved he was innocent of the crime. In light of Roush's exoneration, that report linking him to Silva's murder deserved independent review to ensure the integrity of the state's scientific conclusions. There's no public record this occurred. That sort of public accountability doesn't happen in the current world of DNA laboratory oversight. Only if a lab concludes that it made a mistake and sets up its own corrective action plan do outside forces, such as the FBI or accrediting agencies, typically take a look. Even then, the results of the review are usually secret. As law enforcement puts more and more emphasis on DNA testing, the nation's DNA labs need a higher standard of oversight. Forensic scientists must not interpret results to fit the prosecution's theory of a crime. And prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges need to stop accepting DNA test results as infallible. Science may be certain, but human interpretation is not. i (source: Editoriall, The Virginian Pilot, Aug. 16) FLORIDA/USA: Appeals court uncool While network TV and cable news shows salivated over the details surrounding Scott Peterson's trial, an important legal decision took place last week in Atlanta. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Florida's death row inmates do not suffer cruel and unusual punishment by living in cells with summer temps hovering at 100 degrees. The suit stated that prisoners stood in toilets, draped themselves with wet towels and slept naked on concrete floors. The appeals court upheld U.S. District Judge Ralph Nimmons' contention this was not unconstitutionally excessive as defined by the Eighth Amendment. The prison had a working ventilation system, and there "are conditions at the prison that sometimes give prisoners a break from the heat," The Associated Press reports. While there have been a few heat-related illnesses, no one has died from the heat - yet. The decision appears to contradict an earlier U.S. District Court ruling, upheld in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals last month. In that case, the court declared that a super-maximum security prison in Wisconsin must cool prisoners' cells between 80 and 84 degrees. Heat indexes had reached 125 degrees in their cells. If a society can be judged on how it treats its prisoners, then we should be ashamed by the 11th Circuit Court ruling. The issue is not one of leniency. Prison should not be easy. But inmates' crimes are not on trial here. It is our inhumane treatment of the prisoners that should at least give us pause to consider who we are and what we believe. (source: Editorial, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette)
