Dec. 12
NEW JERSEY:
The Jerseyan known as Serial No.39342 -- The memory of last murderer
executed in Trenton lingers in the mind of his public attorney
On the day after Christmas in 1960, Ralph Hudson walked into Starns, a
popular Atlantic City restaurant, and in an alcoholic rage stabbed his
estranged wife Myrtle to death with a kitchen knife as she sat with 3
other waitresses.
For his crime, Hudson, 43, died in the electric chair at Trenton State
Prison on Jan. 22, 1963. He is buried beneath a tombstone bearing only his
serial number -- 39342 -- in a tiny and forlorn state prison cemetery in
Hamilton.
Now, with acting Gov. Richard Codey calling for a moratorium on New
Jersey's death penalty and proposing a study commission to determine if it
is fair and worth the expense, Hudson lingers as the answer to a morbid
trivia question: Who was the last person executed by New Jersey?
Hudson also lingers in the mind of 76-year-old Roy Baylinson.
Baylinson, who still practices law in Atlantic City, was 5 years out of
law school when an Atlantic County judge ordered him to defend Hudson. He
said he thinks of Hudson every time the death penalty comes up.
"She had left him and it was something he could not forgive," Baylinson
said, recalling the murder. "He was an itinerant dishwasher. He did not
amount to much. He was a drunk."
The judge who picked Baylinson as Hudson's defense council offered a
$1,500 fee. Baylinson held out for $2,500. He got what he asked for but
had to pay an investigator part of the money as legal proceedings and
appeals ran for 2 years.
Hudson was a thin man, 138 pounds on a 5-foot-10 frame. He stabbed Myrtle
10 times.
"He went on a drinking binge for three or four days. The investigator
(retraced his steps) from bar to bar," Baylinson said. "Our defense was
that he was so drunk he did not know what he was doing, but the jury was
not buying that."
Hudson wanted to be executed rather than spend his life behind bars,
Baylinson said.
"Ralph was offered life right up until the jury came in, but he did not
want to spend his life in jail," Baylinson said. "The jury looked at him
as an animal. If he was not going to be caged for the rest of his life, he
could not be let out into society again. They decided he had to die."
"Ralph got on the stand and said, 'Yeah, I did it,' because he wanted the
death penalty," Baylinson added. "There was no remorse, no sorrow. He
said, 'Nobody can do that to a Hudson,' referring to his wife leaving
him."
Baylinson said Hudson was "perfectly content on death row. He sent me a
Christmas card from prison. He thanked me for everything I had done for
him."
At 9:58 on a Tuesday night, Hudson was led into the pale green death
chamber and seated in the heavy wooden electric chair. A last-minute
clemency appeal by Baylinson to Gov. Richard J. Hughes failed. Hudson
trembled only slightly as two guards fastened black leather straps around
his waist, legs and arms, and placed a black leather mask over his face. A
steel cap with electrodes was placed over his head.
Earlier, Hudson had received a last meal of roast prime ribs of beef,
french fries and peas. He polished it off with ice cream and coffee and a
cigar, which he shared with the nine other prisoners on death row. He
spent much of the day talking with the prison's Methodist chaplain.
"He was very quiet during the past few days," a prison official told The
Star-Ledger that day. "His attitude seemed to be 'Let's get it over
with.'"
Outside, in bitter 12-degree weather, death penalty protesters picketed
with placards that read: "2 wrongs don't make a right," and "Officials, be
men! Refuse to kill."
>From 1907, when the state took over all executions in New Jersey, to 1954,
156 killers -- all men -- were put to death. But from 1956 to 1963, only 4
were executed.
Nationally, the death penalty was coming under criticism and its
constitutionality was being challenged in federal and state courts. In New
Jersey, the Legislature had debated the issue since 1959, and two bills,
one that would create a committee to study the death penalty, the other to
limit capital punishment to anyone convicted of killing a public official
or public safety officer, were under consideration.
Inside the prison, an audience of 50 journalists and witnesses, including
Baylinson, crowded the death chamber, some no more than 6 feet from the
electric chair. Among them was Assemblyman John W. Davis (D-Salem), who
favored the death penalty and was there to show critics his mind would not
be changed by watching an execution.
At 10:04 p.m., an anonymous executioner in a gray suit repeatedly turned a
wheel behind the chair that sent 8 jolts of 2,200-volt direct current
through Hudson's body. Then, 3 physicians examined the body and announced,
"This man is dead."
The reporters scrambled. There was still time to get the story in the next
day's editions. "N.J. executes wife-murderer," The Star-Ledger proclaimed.
"Wife Killer Pays Debt In Chair," The Trenton Evening Times declared.
In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated all death penalty statutes.
New Jersey enacted a new death penalty law in 1982 to conform with the
high court's new guidelines, but because of the lengthy appeal process it
established, no execution has taken place. There are 11 men on death row.
And even without a new study commission, executions are on hold as the
state revises its rules on lethal injection.
The electric chair that claimed Hudson is now a museum piece, on display
at the State Police Museum in Ewing. As for Baylinson, after defending
Hudson, he quit practicing criminal law and has handled only civil cases.
"I had enough of that, it is too emotional," he said. "You have got to be
a certain kind of person to see a client go off to the execution chamber."
(source: The Star-Ledger)
USA:
In civilized society, execution necessary
Sister Helen Prejean, author of "Dead Man Walking," is faithfully
continuing her campaign to stamp out the death penalty ("'Dead Man' nun
praises stay," Dec. 2).
In a recent lecture at Travis Park United Methodist Church, she argued the
death penalty is intolerable in a civilized society. With attendant
statistics supporting her righteous indignation, it appealed to the
sensitive, kindhearted benevolence that ideally typifies the human spirit.
Roger Barnes, sociology professor at the University of the Incarnate Word
and organizer of the Prejean lecture, is a vociferous and staunch defender
of Prejean's crusade, and he peppered his comments about her and the death
penalty with appropriate subjectivity.
However, sorely missing from their impassioned rationalizations is the
cold, hard, unavoidable realization that human nature is not ideal and we
live in a compromised society wherein the dictates of our moral conscience
very often conflict with the pragmatic necessities of life.
In a truly civilized society, the death penalty is a necessary component
to the general physical and mental health and well-being of the populace.
This fact is lost amid the arguments that the death penalty is unfairly
applied, fails to act as a deterrent and doesn't save money.
The war on crime does not allow for the exception of the death penalty
despite the fact that collateral damage will result in a small percentage
of innocent deaths.
Man's nature dictates that for certain reprehensible acts the proper
punishment is death. In a civilized society the mass conscience demands
that certain individuals, convicted beyond a reasonable doubt of the
crimes for which they have been charged, should pay the ultimate penalty.
It is not only a matter of seeking to deter similar actions by others or
to satisfy a personal desire for retribution, but to punish the offender
as an individual.
It is absolutely immaterial to each particular case how many death
penalties were administered before or how many will come after. If that
person has been convicted beyond a reasonable doubt, when that person is
put to death it serves as punishment for that person alone.
Should the crime of murder be mitigated by the preponderance of murder at
large? Is the act any less unconscionable because so many others are doing
it? Should we be shocked, dismayed and offended that the rate of
executions is going up?
No. We should be offended that the rate of crime deserving of the death
penalty is going up exponentially. There is no mitigation of certain acts
against humanity; consequently, it is not inhumane to remove from society
those elements that constitute a cancer upon our world.
Our cemeteries are full of the innocent, those to whom no quarter was
given and who did not deserve to die horribly, cruelly and unusually at
the hand of monsters without a conscience.
Death penalty opponents forget about the cold, dark graves of the victims
of murderers and serial killers when they rhapsodize about the value of
life and of redemption for the wicked. In their zeal to save a life for
the sake of saving it, they neglect the application of justice for those
who truly deserved to live but whose life was cut short by the people they
are fighting for.
For people like Prejean and Barnes, championing their cause and seeking to
impose their moral sensibilities on the rest of society becomes an end in
itself.
Instead of expending their energy and resources on programs that help
eliminate the conditions that give rise to criminal behavior, they become
wrapped up in the lofty idealistic realm of defending the intrinsic value
of the human spirit and sanctity of life. The inherent value of life
conveyed to us at birth, for them, remains a constant that no one can or
should take it upon themselves to violate.
Aha. Therein lies the rub. Try teaching that to the murderer, the rapist,
the child molester. A criminal does not stop to ponder the ramifications
of his act, nor does he carefully debate with his contemporaries the
justification for his crime. His only concern is to do it and not get
caught. A murderer has no compunction about taking that which is sacred
and dear. He does not recognize life as intrinsically valuable.
Therefore, a criminal forfeits his right to life the minute he trespasses
upon the right of civilized society to live free from fear or harm.
Consequently, for people who are convicted of a crime deserving of death,
as dictated by society, their punishment should be meted out accordingly.
That is why the focus should be on the victims.
We are all diminished each time a child is beaten, battered and killed. We
are each victimized each time an innocent, law-abiding citizen is raped,
tortured and savagely murdered. Society as a whole is a victim each time a
reprehensible act is committed by those without conscience or remorse.
That is why we must continue to defend the rights of the innocent and to
punish the guilty.
(source: Op-Ed, Omar Aldrete of San Antonio is a sales consultant in the
telecom industry; San Antonio Express-News)
***********************
Celebrities on trial, beware: Public out for blood
In the current post-election lull and pre-Christmas consumption frenzy, a
large segment of news coverage has returned -- gratefully -- to frivolity,
and the Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson, and Robert Blake legal
proceedings have been claiming more air time, and California courthouses
have replaced Fallujah and campaign appearances as video hot spots.
The Scott Peterson case is a Christmas story of sorts, since the jury
decided he killed his pregnant wife the day before the night before,
dumping her body on his infamous December 24 fishing trip in San Francisco
bay.
Common sense and direct evidence didn't convict O.J. Simpson in his
criminal trial for killing his wife, but common sense, along with
circumstantial evidence, did convict Peterson. But Peterson wasn't a
revered star athlete, with deep pockets, only a spoiled upper-middle class
young man with an easy smile and sociopath tendencies.
Peterson is out of the mold of Robert Chambers, the preppie murderer.
Chambers turned up in the newspapers recently because of a drug charge,
walking hand in hand with his lawyer, Brian O'Dwyer, son of the legendary
attorney Paul O'Dwyer, the brother of the fabled former New York City
mayor, William O'Dwyer. The young woman Chambers killed wasn't pregnant
and Chambers was let loose 15 years later, not a likely eventuality for
Peterson.
There was a parallel case in Utah of Mark Hacking, but Hacking, who killed
his pregnant wife, was not a photogenic suave junior philanderer like
Peterson, but a self-confessed loser who put his wife's body in a
dumpster. Crime stories that run endlessly on television need better story
lines and visuals than that.
Michael Jackson supplies arresting visuals, though his alleged crimes are
not as thoroughly saleable as wife killing. Pederasty lacks the universal
appeal marriage has and fewer people have a stake in its aberrations and
outcomes. But the spectacle of Jackson's life, along with his musical
talent, secures him and his possible misdeeds lavish attention. Given the
physical mess Jackson has made of himself, an equally self-destructive
impulse can easily be surmised to be behind the crimes he is charged with.
Robert Blake is another haunting case, though one that his claim to fame
-- his acting career -- makes poignant. Blake came to notice in the first
and best film of Truman Capote's book, In Cold Blood, a story of a Kansas
farm family slaughtered by two robbers. The flamboyant Capote himself has
returned from the grave to fresh notoriety through the recent posthumous
publication of a volume of his letters and his collected stories.
Blake played one of the two killers who are the subject of Capote's
influential book: It was the most modern example of coupling high art and
low crime in order to make a desirable package that the whole culture
would want to unwrap.
Blake's portrayal of the killer Perry Smith was as sympathetic as Capote
meant it to be, given that Capote developed a Michael-Jackson-like creepy
attachment to the young killer, the actual trigger man, one tinged with
intimations of physical longing.
At the film's end, Blake and the other killer are hung, though the film
portrays more attention to the execution of the Blake character. In 1967,
the movie (directed by Richard Brooks) was considered a plea against the
death penalty.
But the death penalty is back in a big way. Robert Blake, if convicted,
may avoid being hanged like his first and most memorable starring role,
but he would likely spend the rest of his days behind bars.
But Blake is a star, however now faded, and that may sway any jury, along
with the other baroque aspects of his case. The wife that died was no
pregnant angel, such as Laci Peterson has been depicted.
Usually, in the past, wartime has been good for criminals. When troops are
dying abroad, there seems to be less thirst to kill them here at home. The
Vietnam war, seemingly, did play a role in the death penalty's brief
nationwide suspension. This time around, though, the public seems to like
its retribution served both generally and personally. Abroad, insurgents
pay. Here at home, wife killers -- not all, mind you -- can be at least be
threatened to pay with their lives.
(source: Chicago Sun-Times)
CALIFORNIA:
Jurors in other death penalty trials empathize with Peterson panel
As they return to a Redwood City, Calif., courthouse Monday morning to
decide whether Scott Peterson should live or die, jurors find themselves
in a lonely, unpredictable and sobering process that has repeated itself
hundreds of times across California.
Those who've served as jurors in local death penalty trials say to choose
between life and death is to join a unique fraternity. And they say it is
pure folly to guess what is going on inside the Peterson jury room, where
the panel is heading into a 3rd day of deliberating whether Peterson
should be executed for killing his wife, Laci, and their unborn son.
"I don't know how you can predict - you don't know the dynamic of the
interaction between those people," said Brian Bianco, a San Jose
accountant who was jury foreman in the 1996 trial of Richard Allen Davis,
sentenced to die for the kidnap and murder of Polly Klaas.
"I can empathize with the jury about how tough a decision they have,"
Bianco added. "It's one thing to say, `They should execute this guy, they
should give him the death penalty.' But when you are the one making that
vote, it's a whole different ballgame. It's a lot tougher."
The Peterson jury is returning from a weekend of pondering Peterson's fate
individually, sequestered in a local hotel after breaking off
deliberations Friday afternoon. The 6-man, 6-woman jury convicted the
32-year-old fertilizer salesman Nov. 12 of the Christmas 2002 murder of
his pregnant wife and unborn son.
After convicting Peterson of murder and the special circumstances that
make him eligible for the death penalty, the jurors have a choice - to
recommend execution or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, juries have
sometimes taken just hours to decide the penalty; other times they've
taken weeks. In many instances, they've deadlocked - the last San Mateo
County jury to consider the death penalty deadlocked after 10 days of
deliberation earlier this year in the case of Seti Scanlan, convicted of
murdering a Burlingame bank manager. And Scanlan had begged the jury to
sentence him to die.
Former jurors say the decision is wrenching, whether deliberations are
long or short. Portor Goltz, the foreman in the 1994 trial of an East Palo
Alto woman sent to death row, said his jury was for the most part
unanimous from the start when they deliberated the death penalty for
Celeste Carrington, but "you don't forget making that decision."
The jury deliberated just a few hours before recommending death for
Carrington, who shot 2 people in the head during 1992 robberies. She
confessed to the killings.
"It's difficult to articulate how difficult a decision that is," said
Goltz, a San Mateo government lawyer who works near all the Peterson trial
hoopla. "I don't think one can get how difficult and important and grave
it is until you've been there and have to make it."
In Davis' trial, jurors were dealing with a defendant who was a career
criminal, eventually becoming such a poster boy for crime in California
that his murder inspired the state's 3-strikes-and-you're-out law. There
was never any doubt of his guilt in Klaas' murder. Yet jurors struggled
for days before deciding on the death penalty, casting several votes
before getting a unanimous verdict.
"It would be easy to give somebody life in prison without the possibility
of parole," Bianco said. "But even a guy as unlikable as he had been, I'd
like to think I couldn't vote to execute somebody without giving it a lot
of thought. In Peterson, I think it's even tougher for them than it was
for us."
Bianco and Goltz both said a weekend spent mulling the issue could help
jurors reach a verdict. But they added that the weight of the decision
will keep the jury focused on making sure they follow the law, and that
they'll be able to ignore the media trucks and spectators assembling each
day outside the courthouse.
"I was prepared to stay several weeks if we had to," said Bianco, who
deliberated with a crush of media outside Santa Clara County's Hall of
Justice. "This is a decision we all have to live with the rest of our
life."
(source: San Jose Mercury-News)
*******************
Few can know jurors' stress
It's easy to speculate about what it must be like in the room where 12
people are deciding whether Scott Peterson will live or die.
Trial observers have watched the jurors for six months now, trying to
figure out whether their faces betray their thoughts.
But few can understand the stress the jurors are under, said people who
have been involved in other death-penalty cases. And that is why it's
important that these jurors take their time.
They have to live with their decisions, and choosing death is something
that could haunt jurors for years to come no matter how overwhelming the
evidence, said Renee Oran, a 73-year-old Orange County resident. Oran
served as an alternate on the jury that convicted mass murder and sexual
predator Charles Ng in 1999.
"Quite a few us, including alternates, ended up in counseling for a long,
long time," Oran said. "The stress you'll feel, even as an alternate, is
something that will never go away. I had nightmares, and I didn't even do
the voting."
Likewise, Paula Canny, a Burlingame defense attorney who is a legal
analyst during the Peterson trial, said it makes for many sleepless
nights.
"Every time I've tried a death penalty case, I've ended up in therapy,"
said Canny, who said she's handled five such cases, none getting to the
penalty phase.
If sentenced to death, 10 to 20 years would lapse before the appeals
process is exhausted and Peterson would be executed. Still, decisions to
execute - and the executions themselves - are sobering experiences that
change witnesses forever.
After Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's execution, one woman who
watched told The Washington Post she would be "unable to put the event
behind her."
And Bud Welsh, the father of a woman killed in the blast, told the paper,
"How can watching someone being strapped down with needles in him bring
any peace or make anyone feel good?"
Even the most steadfast death penalty proponents can be swayed to opt for
life without the possibility of parole if the defendant displays any sense
of humanity, accepts responsibility for the crime or shows remorse,
experts claim.
For five months, jurors watched Scott Peterson show little emotion as the
circumstantial evidence mounted - not in the form of the one big boulder
of crushing guilt, but more like a growing pile of pea gravel that buried
him.
They watched him look away from the graphic autopsy photos of the wife and
unborn baby prosecutors say he killed. He seldom changed expression
throughout the trial, even when statements were made or evidence was
introduced that should have brought a look of incredulity or indignation
of an innocent man.
Then they saw him wipe an occasional tear away during the penalty phase
testimony, as friends and family members spoke on his behalf.
He presented an enigma to those jurors who might genuinely believe there
is good in everyone, but couldn't get a read on him.
Their decision was made tougher, said attorney Daniel Horowitz, by the
parade of defense witnesses during the penalty phase who did little to
define Peterson's humanity.
"I defended a man who sodomized a minister's wife and cut her throat in
the church rectory and left her baby out in the freezing cold," Horowitz
said. "He had three little girls. I walked up to the witness stand with
his 5-year-old daughter and asked her if she loved her daddy."
After the jury recommended life in prison without the possibility of
parole, one of the jurors hugged the killer, Horowitz said.
"Defense is all about love," Horowitz said. "It's not about whether
(Peterson) was a generous golfer who picked up little children. Scott
never connected with this jury."
But that doesn't mean the jurors didn't connect with Peterson's mother,
Jackie, a frail woman who carries an oxygen tank because of a lung ailment
and whose own father was murdered.
It doesn't mean that they didn't connect with his sister or brother.
"This part of the case isn't about Scott," attorney Canny said. "It's
about everyone else - the families on both sides."
And now, as they huddle in that room, we speculate why it already has
taken them longer to determine whether Peterson should live or die than it
did to convict him.
Is there one holdout juror who refuses to vote for death? Is there one or
more jurors who want nothing less?
This jury probably went through some contentious deliberations during the
guilt phase, with one being thrown off and another begging to be
dismissed. Has that acrimony resurfaced? Or maybe this task is so
monumental that jurors are merely doing exactly what they should, which is
making sure that they can live with it if they send him to die.
(source: Modesto Bee)
TENNESSEE:
'60 Minutes' reports on '85 Union murder
Tonight's 60 Minutes newsmagazine on CBS is expected to feature a report
about the 1985 murder case of a Union County, Tenn., woman.
Her husband, Hubert Muncey Jr., grants his 1st interview and denies
accusations of killing his wife, Carolyn, according to a press release.
2 women who say they had heard Hubert Muncey admit to murdering his wife
will also speak to a reporter. Muncey denies admitting to the crime,
though admits to hitting his wife occasionally, the press release says.
Paul Gregory House was convicted and sentenced to death in the murder of
Carolyn Muncey, a charge he denies. He remains on death row at the state's
Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in west Nashville.
In light of new DNA evidence, 6 of the 15 judges on the U.S. 6th Circuit
Court of Appeals recently said House is not guilty of killing Muncey and
should be released or at least given a new trial.
The program is scheduled to air at 6 p.m. on NewsChannel 5.
(source: The Tennessean)
