Sept. 7 UTAH: Utah Supreme Court Hears Appeal by Death-row Inmate The Utah Supreme Court has taken under advisement death-row inmate Doug Lovell's appeal seeking to withdraw his 1993 guilty plea to aggravated murder. At his sentencing hearing, Lovell said he killed Joyce Yost of South Ogden in 1985 to keep her from testifying that he had raped her. Lovell had been convicted of the 1985 rape based on Yost's preliminary hearing testimony. It wasn't until 7 years later that evidence emerged to also charge him with the murder. In a plea bargain, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty in return for Lovell revealing where he buried Yost. Lovell led a search but the victim's remains were not found. The Weber County Attorney's Office asked for Lovell's execution, which was ordered by 2nd District Judge Stanton Taylor. Attorney Lynn Donaldson on Sept. 1 asked the Utah high court to revisit 2nd District Judge Michael Lyon's refusal to hear the motion to rescind the plea bargain. Lyon cited jurisdictional and other statutory impediments. "It's a procedural mess," said Tom Brunker, the assistant Utah attorney general who coordinates the office's handling of death-penalty appeals. "There is no question of actual guilt," he said. "But if he wins, we would go to trial even though he has made a sworn admission from the stand. ... He essentially wants to start the case all over again." In April 1999, the Utah Supreme Court unanimously rejected Lovell's 1st appeal, which claimed his trial attorney, John Caine, brokered a flawed plea negotiation and Judge Taylor made mistakes during the proceedings against Lovell. (source: Associated Press) NEW JERSEY: 47 N.J. death sentences overturned Since New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982, 52 defendants have been given a total of 63 death sentences, according to Vance Hagins, assistant chief of the Criminal Practice Division of the state Administrative Office of the Courts. That includes multiple death sentences for some defendants, as well as new death sentences in cases of some defendants who had their original death sentences overturned, Hagins said. A total of 47 death sentences have been overturned since capital punishment was reinstated, Hagins said. That includes the death sentence of Robert O. Marshall, overturned by U.S. District Judge Joseph E. Irenas on April 8. Until then, Marshall had been on New Jersey's death row longer than any other inmate, including Marko Bey, 39, who was sentenced to death on Dec. 15, 1983, more than 3 years before Marshall was sentenced to die. Bey, convicted of the murders in Monmouth County of Cheryl Alston and Carol D. Peniston, had been removed from death row for a time when his death sentences were reversed. He subsequently was returned to death row after being resentenced to die in the Peniston case. Bey and 11 others remain on death row. Of them, John Martini, 74, convicted of killing a Bergen County businessman, is closest to exhausting his appeals, according to the state Attorney General's Office. No one has been executed in New Jersey since the death penalty was reinstated. (source: Asbury Park Press) MISSOURI: To face death penalty, suspect has to cooperate A judge, prosecutor and defense attorney are awaiting word from Fulton State Hospital to find out if Mitchell Osburn, a paroled killer who faces new murder charges, has voluntarily taken psychotropic drugs - that is, mind-altering drugs that could make him fit for trial. In an order faxed last week, St. Louis County Circuit Judge Mark D. Seigel told Dr. Bruce Harry, a forensic psychiatrist at the mental health hospital in Fulton, Mo., to begin the treatment in an attempt to return Osburn to mental competency - as long as the drugs are medically appropriate and Osburn is willing to take them. Osburn has been awaiting trial on three counts of first-degree murder. The charges could bring the death penalty. He is accused of stabbing three strangers at a picnic pavilion of the Lions Club in Valley Park on March 8, 2002. The victims were 3 employees of the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District: Joseph E. Bisso, 43, of High Ridge; Robert E. Whitson, 45, of Bourbon, Mo.; and Steven Weiss, 46, of north St. Louis County. Seigel's order instructs the Department of Mental Health to inform him, prosecutor Dean Waldemer and defense attorney Ellen Blau when Osburn ingests the 1st dose of psychotropic medication. Or, Seigel wants to know if Osburn refuses medication. Asked by phone Friday if Osburn had agreed to the medication, Harry told a reporter: "I can't comment on that. I'm sorry - federal law" (which prevents a doctor from revealing information about a patient without consent). Earlier last week, Seigel issued and then withdrew an order that would have compelled Osburn "to participate in a full medical work-up prior to the administration of medication." Osburn was diagnosed in September 2002 and February 2003 by two experts as suffering from schizophrenia. Both said he was incompetent to proceed to trial. A defendant is incompetent if he is unable to understand what is going on, or is unable to assist in his own defense. In a third opinion, Dr. Jerome Peters, a forensic psychiatrist, recommended forced drugging. Peters said Osburn's failure to cooperate prevented Peters from making a specific diagnosis other than a psychotic disorder. In his testimony in June, Peters left open the possibility that Osburn was faking his illness or had been suffering from a drug-induced illness at the time of the killings. In seeking forced drugging, Waldemer, the prosecutor, argued that Osburn is a danger now to other inmates and the staff at Fulton. In court documents, Waldemer detailed a list of fights by the defendant at the state hospital. In March 2003, "the defendant offered his Koran to a peer, the peer did not want to look at it, and the defendant began punching him in the face," Waldemer wrote. "The defendant then fought with the staff when they came to intervene." Waldemer also listed 3 fights in June of 2003, an episode in October 2003 in which Osburn threw a chair at another patient, and an incident in February in which Osburn fought with the staff and was placed in restraints after he tried to run off. The prosecutor also cited Osburn's prior conviction for the murder of a salesman in Columbia, Mo. Osburn was paroled in 1997 after spending 19 years in prison for that crime. If threat to others is not the proper criteria, Waldemer said, then the judge should consider competence to stand trial. "These violent crimes strike at the heart of society, and the integrity of the justice system compels that these charges be adjudicated." In June, Blau, the defense lawyer, had argued that it wasn't in her client's best interests to be deemed competent. If Osburn is found competent, then it is likely he would get the death penalty after convictions for the three murders, she said. But Seigel concluded that the potential outcome of a trial was speculative and irrelevant. In a new tack, Blau and co-counsels Cynthia Dryden and Cathy Kelly argued: If the medication works, then it would mask, cloud and diminish the symptoms of mental illness and the state could then argue that Osburn was faking a mental illness, or that the illness at the time of the fatal stabbings was not that serious, or that it had been drug-induced. "Contrary to the assertions of Dr. Peters," the defense lawyers alleged, "it is not medically, legally or ethically appropriate to force treat a pre-trial detainee whose life depends on the ability to establish that he has a serious psychotic mental illness." The legal arguements over drugs for Osburn angers Jenny Whitson, Robert Whitson's widow. She has had difficulty, she said in an interview Friday, paying for medical insurance for her children on a part-time salary. She said she was paying more than $400 a month for her own coverage under her late husband's plan and she can't get insurance on her own. One of the reasons she can't get reasonably priced insurance, she said, is that she has had to take anti-depressant drugs since her husband's killing. (source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch) IDAHO: Jury selection begins under new death penalty law In Boise, attorneys begin the process this week of selecting the 1st Idaho jury to decide not only guilt in a murder case but whether the alleged murderer should be executed. More than 150 prospective jurors will be interviewed this week for the panel that will consider the charges against 27-year-old Azad Abdullah. He's accused of suffocating his 37-year-old wife in October 2002 and then setting the family home on fire to cover up the slaying. 4 children who were in the home escaped unharmed. The trial will operate under a 2003 law turning the decision on death sentences over to the jury. The law was changed after the U-S Supreme Court found Idaho's system of leaving the decision to judges unconstitutional. (source: Associated Press) PENNSYLVANIA: Brothers facing specter of death penalty in Howe case VENANGO COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY MARIE VEON LAST SOUGHT THE DEATH PENALTY IN 1998. Shauna Howe died at the hands of three Oil City men, authorities allege. As a result of her murder in October 1992, there's a possibility two of the suspects, if convicted, could be put to death. James Eric O'Brien, 32, and his older brother, Timothy Michael O'Brien, 37, have each been charged with first-degree murder and second-degree murder. They have also been charged with kidnapping to facilitate a felony, kidnapping to inflict injury or terror, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a victim less than 16 years old, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse by forcible compulsion, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse by threat of forcible compulsion, rape by forcible compulsion and rape by threat of forcible compulsion - all of which are felonies. Murder of the first-degree, defined as an "intentional killing," is punishable by death or life imprisonment. Because of a gag order, those involved in the case cannot comment on whether Venango County District Attorney Marie Veon will be seeking the death penalty for the O'Brien brothers. Veon last sought the death penalty in 1998 for Nicholas Bowen, who admitted to sexually assaulting and murdering a 4-year-old girl from Oil City on Oct. 29, 1997. Bowen, 24, escaped the death penalty by pleading guilty to first-degree murder and is currently serving a life sentence at the state prison at Retreat. If Veon chooses to seek the death penalty for one or both of the brothers, "notice shall be filed at or before the time of arraignment, unless the attorney for the Commonwealth becomes aware of the existence of an aggravating circumstance after arraignment or the time for filing is extended by the court for cause shown" under the Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure. The O'Briens and co-defendant Eldred Walker have previously waived arraignment, according to the arraignment list for this Wednesday. Walker, 45, has been charged with 2nd-degree murder, punishable by life imprisonment, and two counts of kidnapping. The three men are being held at the Venango County jail in lieu of $250,000 bond as they await trial. The death penalty in Venango County The last time someone was executed following a Venango County murder was in January 1924, when Lawrence Roberts was sent to the electric chair for shooting his father-in-law in August 1923. After he was convicted of 1st-degree murder by a local jury, he was taken by train to the state prison at Rockview, where he was put to death, published reports indicate. Since 1990, Pennsylvania has used lethal injection as a method of capital punishment. Before that, the electric chair was used to execute inmates from 1915 to 1962. Before 1915, inmates sentenced to death throughout the state were hanged. In 1834, Pennsylvania became the first state to conduct private executions in county jails rather than public hangings, the Department of Corrections indicated. 1 of 2 Venango County men to meet the gallows following a murder conviction was Michael Holka, 20, on Aug. 18, 1908, at the old county jail. Holka, an Austrian immigrant, was convicted by a Venango County jury of shooting a Franklin policeman four times, according to historical reports. Reports published by the Venango County Historical Society in "Venango County 2000, The Changing Scene" indicate that 60 people attended Holka's execution, including two priests. The 1st recorded local hanging, according to historical reports, was in 1868 when Thomas McCarty was executed for murdering a fellow railroad worker. Currently in Pennsylvania, 220 men and 5 women are on death row, according to the Department of Corrections. In 2002, Robert Rega of Punxsutawney was sentenced to death in Jefferson County for the murder of Gateway Lodge night watchman Christopher Lauth. Rega, 37, is currently being held at state prison at Greene with over 170 others awaiting death sentences. Presently, nine people are serving life sentences from Venango County, the Department of Corrections said. (source: The Derrick and NewsHerald)
