August 1 LOUISIANA: Trial to Begin for Suspect in Killings in Louisiana When Geralyn DeSoto was stabbed and beaten to death in her home in January 2002, the case did not generate many headlines. At the time, it had not been linked to the serial killings that were terrorizing south Louisiana residents. But Ms. DeSoto's murder is set to be the 1st for which Derrick T. Lee, who the police say has been linked by DNA evidence to the deaths of seven women, will be tried. The state Supreme Court has refused to delay Mr. Lee's trial, and jury selection is to begin Monday. Mr. Lee denies he killed Ms. DeSoto, 21. "If Derrick Todd Lee's alibi is that he wasn't there, that he was over in Cancun, Mexico, cooling his heels with a couple of buddies, then he ought to bring over his buddies to say 'We were with him cooling his heels,' " the prosecutor, Tony Clayton, said. "The problem is, his DNA was left under the fingernails of my victim." Mr. Lee was arrested in May 2003 after a nearly yearlong search and has been indicted on murder charges in the deaths of Ms. DeSoto, Trineisha Dene Colomb in Lafayette and Charlotte Murray Pace in Baton Rouge. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the deaths of Ms. Colomb and Ms. Pace. Mr. Clayton said he was prosecuting Mr. Lee on a second-degree murder charge in Ms. DeSoto's death because he could not prove an underlying felony, like forced entry or rape, which is required for a first-degree murder charge in Louisiana. Still, he said, second-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence and is easier to prosecute than a death penalty case. Mr. Lee has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. His lawyer, Tommy Thompson, has been seeking delays in the DeSoto case. He has declined to speak to reporters. Mr. Thompson has said in appeals court documents that he received evidence in the case from prosecutors as recently as a few weeks ago, including items taken from the crime scene and DNA test results. He also said he had not been able to find all the witnesses he needed to adequately defend Mr. Lee and, perhaps, suggest that someone else killed Ms. DeSoto. Judge J. Robin Free of State District Court said prosecutors had given Mr. Thompson more evidence than he was entitled to receive and that he had had enough time to prepare. (source: Associated Press) USA: A nation of compassion doesn't execute juveniles There are 4 young people on death row in Arizona who committed violent murders when they were 17 years old. Arizona has not put a teenage murderer to death since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated in the United States. American society has many gray areas. Our many cultures, systems and ideologies overlap in small ways and larger ones. However, there is one area that is completely distinct, and that is the law as it applies to children. Laws prohibit those under 18 from serving in military combat and on juries, voting, entering into contracts, and buying alcohol or cigarettes, precisely because kids are different - they are physically, emotionally and mentally immature. Groundbreaking new science reveals specific evidence of how these differences determine adolescent behavior. Their development is delayed, their minds operate differently, their emotions are more volatile and their brains are anatomically immature. There is a confluence of evidence showing that the regions of the brain that adults use to control and influence behavior are still underdeveloped in adolescents. For example, the pre-frontal cortex, which is one of the last areas to develop and mature in adolescents, is involved in the control of aggression and other impulses, the process of planning for long-range goals, organization of sequential behavior, consideration of alternatives and consequences, the process of abstraction and mental flexibility, and aspects of memory including "working memory." 3 states, Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma, have executed the majority of juvenile offenders, which account for 80 % of all juvenile executions. In fact, Texas alone was responsible for 60 % of juvenile executions. Obviously, the juvenile death penalty is not widely practiced or even popular. Nationwide polls consistently show that 70 % of Americans are opposed to juvenile executions. In 2000, then-Attorney General Janet Napolitano appointed the Arizona Capital Case Commission, comprised primarily of prosecutors, to examine death penalty legislation. The commission recommended that Arizona end the juvenile death penalty. It is notable that the commission had not planned to consider the juvenile death penalty until it became aware of the research regarding adolescent brain development. In a criminal justice system dependent upon determinations of culpability, scientific findings suggesting juveniles as a class are indeed less culpable call for serious consideration. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized the consequence of adolescent development in its 1988 decision to prohibit capital punishment for minors under age 16. 31 states, the federal government, the U.S. military and the District of Columbia prohibit the execution of juvenile offenders. Just this year South Dakota and Wyoming signed bills into law banning the practice, and similar legislation has passed in the New Hampshire Senate and House, and the Florida Senate. This month, we joined the nation's leading American medical, religious and legal institutions, child- and victim-advocate groups and nearly 50 countries, along with prominent individuals including Nobel laureates and former U.S. diplomats, in submitting briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hear arguments this fall in the case to end the juvenile death penalty. The American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry and several additional medical associations filed amicus curiae briefs in support of ending capital punishment for minors, and a cross section of more than 420 prominent pediatricians, child and adolescent psychiatrists and neurologists, including such notable physicians as former Surgeon Generals C. Everett Koop and Julius Richmond, and Doctors T. Berry Brazelton and Alvin Poussaint, along with nine physicians from Arizona, submitted the Health Professionals' Call to Abolish the Juvenile Death Penalty to the Court. Many prominent child welfare groups, including the Children's Defense Fund, Child Welfare League of America, Voices for America's Children and the Children's Action Alliance of Arizona, submitted a brief as well. In their briefs the groups say that the juvenile death penalty violates evolving standards of decency, that it serves no legitimate purpose and is excessive in light of emerging evidence showing the limited capabilities of juveniles, and that the practice is almost universally rejected by the international community. The rest of the world, along with most of the country, has recognized the senselessness of the juvenile death penalty. It is our hope that the rest of our country will join these voices. (source: Arizona Republic (Mark Wellek is past president of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry. Carol Kamin is president of the Children's Action Alliance, Arizona Chapter) ********************** Supreme Court urged to abolish death penalty for under-18-year-olds A broad coalition of concerned parties -including Nobel laureates, scientific leaders, foreign countries and American religious denominations -is urging the Supreme Court to ban the death penalty for offenders under age18 at the time they commit their crimes. Groups and individuals as diverse as former President Jimmy Carter, the Dalai Lama, the American Medical Association and the American Baptist Churches USA filed simultaneous friend-of-the-court briefs in the case of Roper vs. Simmons. The high court's justices agreed earlier this year to hear the case, which deals with the 1993 murder of a Missouri woman. According to court records, Christopher Simmons-who was then 17-and a 15-year-old accomplice broke into 46-year-old Shirley Crook's home near St. Louis. They said they only intended to burglarize the home. However, fearing that Crook would later be able to identify them, Simmons and his accomplice bound her and threw her over a bridge into a river. Crook drowned. In 2003, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned Simmons' death sentence as unconstitutional. The state appealed the decision. The friend-of-the-court briefs argue on several different grounds against executing criminals under 18 at the time they commit their crimes. In a separate 2002 decision, the justices ruled that executing mentally retarded criminals violates an evolving national standard of decency on what qualifies as "cruel and unusual punishment," which the Constitution forbids. The briefs filed July 19 ask the justices to apply similar reasoning to crimes committed by 16- and 17-year-olds. The court already has banned the death penalty for those 15 and younger at the time they commit their offenses. It last visited the issue for older minors in 1989, when it ruled such punishments were constitutional. But the new briefs argue the nation's consensus on the juvenile death penalty has evolved since then. Only seven states have executed juvenile offenders since 1976, when the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment. Of those executions, the vast majority have taken place in Texas. Death sentences imposed on juveniles have become increasingly rare, and 31 states have banned the practice. The United States is 1 of only 5 nations around the world to execute juvenile offenders. The various medical professionals argue in their brief that additional research on the mental, emotional and psychological development of teenagers since 1989 casts doubt on the legitimacy of imposing the death penalty on minors. The religious leaders, in their brief, argued that their denominations' views added to the emerging "broad social and political consensus" against executing juvenile offenders. Allowing the death penalty for juveniles permits "a radical inconsistency in the law to persist because, in virtually every area of law, a person's youthfulness is taken into account unless the state is contemplating the ultimate question of whether to take his or her life," the brief, written by attorneys for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, argued. "This anomaly, in which a blind eye is turned to the immaturity of youth when that immaturity is most relevant and its consequences most severe, cannot be reconciled with our nation's evolving moral sense about what is right and just in contemporary America," the brief continued. Religious groups represented in the brief included the American Baptist Churches, the Alliance of Baptists, the United Methodist Church, the Greek Orthodox Diocese of America and the American Jewish Committee. Other briefs filed in Simmons' favor represented medical and psychiatric professionals, child-advocacy groups, civil-rights groups, attorneys, former U.S. diplomats, families of murder victims, and a group of foreign governments and legal organizations. The justices are expected to hear oral arguments in Roper vs. Simmons this fall. (source: Robert Marus, The Baptist Standard) RHODE ISLAND: Serial killers succeed through a veil of normalcy, experts say They are invisible monsters. Seemingly harmless, they blend into their social milieu with cellophane transparency. They melt into the uneventful rituals of work, family and play, while their dark secrets lay hidden beneath a neighborly, unthreatening veneer. It may seem like they have friends, but the only people who really know them are dead. They kill, and kill again. Serial killers - from Jack the Ripper to the Green River Killer - have been plentiful enough in the history of modern police work for criminologists to sketch a profile. "He's a middle-aged white male who kills not for revenge or money, but for the fun of it," says Dr. Jack Levin, a professor of criminology at Boston's Northeastern University. "He enjoys the physical contact with the victim..e enjoys her suffering and typically uses his hands in an up-close way to commit his crimes." In our minds, it may seem as if the proving ground of the serial killer is always somewhere far away -- a women's dorm in Florida or a Seattle riverbank -- but events of the last 2 weeks have shattered that impression. Now the police are saying Woonsocket has one of its own, Jeffrey S. Mailhot. The Cato Hill Killer. Since his arrest July 16 on unrelated charges, police have been searching the 33-year-old factory worker's 221 Cato St. apartment for evidence tying him to the disappearance of 3 city women known to frequent a seedy strip of bars nearby. The hunt for evidence quickly spread to Central Landfill in Johnston, and after a massive search through tons of household trash, human remains were discovered last week. On Friday, Mailhot, a squat, rugged man with a close-cropped head of reddish-blonde hair, was arraigned on three counts of first-degree murder in the slayings of three city women missing since February 2003. Mailhot, who is being held without bail at the Adult Correctional Institutions, is also charged with two counts of felonious assault for allegedly choking two other women, nearly killing them. PERHAPS THE BEST KNOWN serial killer of all time was Jack the Ripper, who left his mark on the East End of London during the 1880s. In a span of just several months, the elusive, bloodthirsty killer butchered five prostitutes, pilfering body parts as souvenirs. He was never caught, but the savagery of his crimes would spark a cottage industry among armchair detectives and crime novelists who have been speculating about his identity ever since. Albert DeSalvo -- better known as the Boston Strangler -- murdered a dozen women in the Hub from 1962 to 1963, using articles of the victims' clothing as a ligature. He might have never been caught were it not that he allowed his last victim go free, apologizing as he was about to sexually assault her. She later identified DeSalvo from a suspect lineup, and he later confessed. DeSalvo was stabbed to death in prison six years later. For all the stereotypical serial killers, there are those who seem to defy expectations. John Wayne Gacy's and Jeffrey Dahmer's victims were not of the opposite sex, but young men. And serial killers aren't necessarily all men: Eileen Wuarnos turned the paradigm inside-out: a prostitute who killed her johns. Wuarnos, who got the death penalty several years ago,, was portrayed in the 2003 feature film, "Monster." The Son of Sam, the Hillside Strangler, the Green River Killer -- serial killers and their media-christened tags have become the stuff of modern American folklore. Even Rhode Island has spawned its share. As a juvenile, Craig Price, 31, killed four women in two separate episodes in the 1980s. Because he was a minor, the state was allowed to incarcerate him on the murder charges only until he turned 21, but Price remains in jail on unrelated charges of assaulting a prison guard. Thanks to Price, the law was changed allowing minors to be charged and sentenced as adults in Superior Court. Many serial killers have claimed responsibility for murdering dozens of people. Gary Ridgeway, for example, the infamous Green River Killer who stalked prostitutes in the Seattle, Washington, area, in the 1980s, pleaded guilty to murdering 48 women. But Levin says there is no minimum number of deaths required for a murderer to be dubbed a serial killer. Capt. Luke Gallant, the spokesman for the police department, says the thumbnail definition for law enforcement is merely that of "a killer who kills more than once after a cooling-off period." Though the crime of serial killing has existed for generations, the word itself was not coined until the 1980s, by the behavioral science division of the FBI, according to Levin. The agency has since become famous for its criminal profiling of serial killers, a phenomenon popularized in feature movies like "The Silence of the Lambs" and TV programs such as "The Profiler." There are exceptions, but experts say most serial killers -- like Mailhot -- are white men in their 30s who easily blend in with the crowd. The can be average-looking or quite handsome, but they often project a gentle, unthreatening manner that tends to encourage victims to drop their guard. It isn't unusual for them to have a good work record, apparent family ties and little history of involvement with the law -- at least until they are caught. "That's one of the hallmarks of the serial killer," said Dr. Ronald M. Stewart, a forensic psychiatrist from Rhode Island. "They're nice-looking people, pleasant people -- otherwise they wouldn't get many victims." As Police Chief William J. Shea explained last week, such a killer can be an elusive target for law enforcement. "He had an ordinary job," he said, speaking about Mailhot. "He went to work all the time. No criminal record. No moving violations. No parking tickets. He didn't appear as though he was capable of doing it." Although they kill repeatedly without remorse, and their crimes seem irrational to the average person, most serial killers are sane, at least from a legal standpoint, according to Stewart. Typically, they are not psychopaths, like the split-personality depicted in the character of Norman Bates in the crime thriller "Psycho," but "sexual sadists" who derive pleasure from the suffering of their victims. Pathologically speaking, they have more in common with child abusers, wife-beaters and pedophiles than they do with the psychopathic personality. Typically, he said, they are unable to achieve any sense of power or control though acceptable social avenues, so they resort to exploiting human beings to gain a sense of dominance. "The power they crave comes from having total control and dominance over their victims," said Stewart, adding that Mailhot seems to fit the pattern. "He had complete control over these women so he could torture and torment and murder them." According to Levin, most experts believe that there are about 20 serial killers operating in the United States at any one time. They are responsible for a combined death toll of about 200 murders. And about half of all serial killers are never caught. LITTLE IS known about Mailhot. Until he was arrested, he seems to have walked through the stages of his life without a stir. In a way that almost seems like a parable for his invisible existence in the city, Mailhot graduated from Woonsocket High School in 1989, yet his picture doesn't even appear in the school yearbook, which lists him only as "a camera shy senior." Former neighbors on Grandview Avenue, where he lived as a child, say he displayed no inkling of the violence that would come, yet he was a loner who kept his distance from other youths. By the time he was 17, Mailhot's mother, Denise H. Bousquet, was dead. Five years later, his father, Kenneth E. Mailhot, died too. Until a couple of years ago, Mailhot worked at Avery-Dennison, a label--making factory in Framingham, Mass., which phased out its Northeastern operations and moved to Mexico. At the time of his arrest, Mailhot had been working at Proma Technologies at the upscale Forge Park in Franklin, where he reportedly operated a paper-making machine. In his spare time, Mailhot indulged his passions for motorcycling and weightlifting. He worked out at Main Street's Power Shack gym, where he was known as a friendly person, if an unexceptional athlete. No matter how much he worked out, Mailhot's cheeky face and fair complexion gave him a young, almost cherubic look -- despite the tuft of hair sprouting from his chin. Mailhot had lived for seven years at 221 Colonial St., where he was regarded as an ideal tenant -- he kept the apartment immaculate and always paid his rent on time. "An extreme neat-freak," was how the landlord described Mailhot, the sole occupant of the mint-green, 4-family. The home is located in the Cato Hill area, one of the city's oldest neighborhoods. It consists of just two streets of tightly congested homes, many of them tiny bungalows and Greek Revival homes, many of which bear plaques listing them as "historic" residences. In fact, the area was once listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but residents grew tired of the red tape they encountered when planning home improvements, and several years ago they voted themselves off the register. The neighborhood lies at the fringe of the Arnold Street area, a ramshackle collection of bars, tenements and ethnic supermarkets where Mailhot apparently met the women he is accused of attacking. Bartenders, acquaintances and regulars of the Arnold Street strip describe Mailhot as one of the area's commoners, a predictable Saturday-night beer-drinker who seldom got drunk and who flirted with women. He never made trouble. His contact with the police was nil. "Not even a parking ticket," a police officer once remarked. The proprietor of one of the drinking establishments in the area seemed to sum up the impression that Mailhot's left on those he met. He described Mailhot as "Mr. Average." It was in February 2003 that the 1st of Maihot's 3 victims was reported missing. Audrey L. Harris, 33, a slender, African-American woman, was first believed to have been abducted after a party, according to police. But the theory that Harris was an isolated case began to change when Christine C. Dumont, 42, dropped from sight on April 23. Dumont had a reputation for being streetwise and tough, and police saw her as an unlikely candidate for a stranger abduction. Her disappearance shocked the police, who began searching for a common denominator in the two cases. Then, on July 3, a 3rd woman, Stacie K. Goulet, 25, a pregnant mother of two, vanished after a fireworks show in World War II Veterans Memorial State Park. The pivotal break for the police came in the form of an anonymous tip, when a telephone caller advising police to seek out a woman named Jocelin Martel to learn more about the missing women. Martel told a story of a harrowing encounter with Mailhot in his apartment, in which he allegedly choked her "near to death." Then police remembered that another woman, Teese Morris, had told of a similar encounter with Mailhot in February -- although, at the time, she wasn't interested in pressing charges. Police say all five women Mailhot is accused of attacking, including the two choking victims, were prostitutes or drug addicts. With two complaints for felonious assault, police obtained a warrant to arrest Mailhot on July 16, taking him into custody and gaining a warrant to search his home. During interrogation, Mailhot reportedly confessed to murdering and dismembering the missing women. What followed was an intense search for evidence -- in the drains and sewer pipe leading from Mailhot's apartment, at Central Landfill, in Mailhot's motor vehicles. ACCORDING TO Levin, Mailhot's choice of victim also fits the profile of a serial killer. Prostitutes are easy prey -- and not just because they'll get into a car with a stranger, putting themselves at risk. But because "it's easy to dehumanize a prostitute," said Levin. "The guy can think to himself, 'I'm only killing a sex machine," he said. "That's just part of the vulnerability of being a prostitute. It's easy to justify killing marginalized people." Levin, who has written a number of books on serial killers, says there are two basic kinds -- the "organized" attacker, who stalks, plans and kills without regret, and the "disorganized," who acts with more spontaneity, and who is more prone to error and dropping clues. Because he allegedly let two women go free, Mailhot is likely an example of the latter. Levin sees Mailhot's decision to free Teese Morris and Jocelin Martel as a chink in the killer's moral armor, a flaw in the evil perfection of the killer's personality. A more organized serial killer would not have made such a mistake, he says. "Most serial killers killer with moral impunity," said Levin. "They don't feel guilty. He apparently lets his superego, or conscience, get in the way of his killing spree. To let his victim go, you have to guess he's going to get caught sooner rather than later." Based on Mailhot's personality traits, his perception within the community and facts about the deaths of his victims, Levin says "He's a serial killer, but he's not the cream of the crop. I would say he's more of a disorganized serial killer. But he fits the profile, definitely." Stewart goes a step further. He theorizes that the 2 women who survived encounters with Mailhot did so by making some sort of appeal to Maihot's humanity. Something they said, or the mere fact that they struggled "broke the magic spell" of the killer's fatalistic mission, and gave his conscience a chance to take control. "They probably had sense enough to talk to him and not become so depersonalized as an object to him," he said. (source: The Woonsocket Call)
