Dec. 16 FLORIDA: 5 murders, life term; so scrap death penalty If anyone deserved the death penalty, it was Michael Roman. He killed 5 members of a Lake Worth family 2 years ago. The murders were calculated. One victim was a pregnant woman. Even after all this time, he shows no remorse. But the state will not try to execute Michael Roman, a fact that can unite opponents and supporters of the death penalty in the belief that Florida should abolish it. Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer, who supports the death penalty, says that he and the lead prosecutor agreed to let Roman plead guilty for several reasons. It is rare that a defendant takes a plea to 1st-degree murder, 1 of 4 crimes in Florida that are punishable by death. Under the deal, Roman will get life without parole, which Mr. Krischer says will bring "finality." The state saves not only the cost of a trial; the victims' relatives - who supported the deal - do not have to relive the horror. The state will save more by avoiding years of appeals; all credible research shows that incarceration is far cheaper than litigation. Most important, Roman never again will threaten the public. It is a thoroughly practical solution to a very emotional case. Having accepted the deal, however, doesn't the state forfeit the moral standing to execute anyone else? For capital cases, Florida has a set of "aggravating circumstances" - criminal record, heinousness - that argue in favor of a death sentence, and a set of "mitigating circumstances" - mental faculties, age - that argue against it. It's hard to imagine a more heinous act than Roman's. He thought that 2 of the victims had molested his daughters. When he confronted the family members, he said, they laughed. So he shot 4 and stabbed another. Even death-penalty opponents might make an exception. But that, of course, is the problem. It is impossible to craft a law that reserves capital punishment for only a certain class of criminal. Because Florida and the 37 other states where the death penalty is legal won't accept that fact, governments waste untold millions each year on post-conviction appeals over whether the facts of the case support the ultimate punishment. Some of those appeals, however, focus on guilt or innocence. Florida leads the nation in the number of releases from Death Row. As news of these cases has spread, juries have become more wary of the death penalty and more receptive to giving life without parole when it means that, as it does in Florida. Since the state made that change, courts have been handing down fewer death sentences. According to the Department of Justice, the number of death sentences last year was the smallest since 1973, the year after the Supreme Court struck down state capital punishment laws. There is no doubt about Michael Roman's guilt. Mr. Krischer says this case is "unique." But when a pro-death penalty prosecutor who says he doesn't use the punishment as a bargaining chip is satisfied to sign off on a deal that spares the life of a mass murderer, those "unique" circumstances indict every death case in Florida. (source: Editorial, Palm Beach Post INDIANA----re: federal death penalty Federal Judge Sentences Indiana Bank Robber To Death----Convict Tells Court He Was Not Responsibile For Killings The 1st federal death sentence in northern Indiana history was handed down Wednesday. O'Dell Corley, of Michigan City, received the ultimate sentence for his part in a botched bank robbery in Porter, Ind., that killed 2 tellers and left a security guard a quadriplegic. Corley is also known as Naish Ra'id. Despite multiple witnesses who testified against him, Corley contends he was never at the First State Bank of Porter when it was robbed in 2002. During the trial, prosecutors displayed video footage from the robbery that showed a disguised figure firing the fatal shots. Lawyers said that man was Corley, who had covered himself in makeup before trying to rob the bank. Experts said a palm print recovered from the shooting scene matched Corley's hand. Susan Collins, assistant U.S. state's attorney, said the "heinousness of the crime" justified the death sentence. "The crime was on videotape. He went into the bank without hesitation and shot and paralyzed a security guard. Without breaking step, he crossed the bank, crawled over a counter and executed, essentially, the teller," Collins said. "It was an absolutely brutal crime and deserving (of) the death penalty." Corley gave a lengthy statement in court Wednesday, saying he doesn't deserve the lethal injection to which he was sentenced. He said the partial palm print was "a lie." "Most of the things that he stated are things that we agree with. We believe that some of the government's witnesses were less than honest," defense attorney John Theis said. Chandler Simpson, 59, was one of the tellers who died from gunshot wounds he received during the robbery attempt. Corley was convicted in October of killing him and another teller, Kay Peckat. Judge Rudy Lozano followed the jury's recommendation in sentencing Corley to die. 4 other people pleaded guilty last year to charges that they were involved in the robbery attempt. Corley's defense attorneys said they plan to appeal the decision, and expect to obtain a retrial. Both sides said the case could be drug out in court for another 10 years. (source: NBC News) CALIFORNIA: Jury recommends death for killings at meat plant -- Security cameras filmed 'sausage king' shooting 3 inspectors San Leandro's self-proclaimed "sausage king" should be executed for killing three meat inspectors in a rampage at his factory 4 years ago that was caught on his own security cameras, a jury decided Tuesday. Stuart Alexander, 43, did not visibly react when the verdict was read in the Oakland courtroom of Alameda County Superior Court Judge Vernon Nakahara. But relatives of the slain inspectors wept with relief afterward. Alexander's lead attorney, Assistant Public Defender Michael Ogul, said he believed the footage from his client's cameras had persuaded jurors to sentence him to death rather than life in prison. "The bottom line is that watching the actual killings on videotape was the key to the case," Ogul said. In October, the same jury found Alexander guilty of three counts of first- degree murder for fatally shooting U.S. Department of Agriculture Inspectors Jean Hillery, 56, and Tom Quadros, 52, and state Inspector Bill Shaline, 57, at the convicted killer's Santos Linguisa Factory on June 21, 2000. Alexander was also convicted of attempted murder for chasing inspector and firing five shots at him. Willis was not hurt. During a trial that lasted 6 months, jurors had repeatedly watched footage from Alexander's cameras showing him shooting each of the inspectors in the head after they had been felled by gunfire. Prosecutors said he had killed them as they tried to cite him for allegedly selling sausage without government approval. Sheri Lehman, 36, one of Hillery's three daughters, wept as the verdict was read. District Attorney Tom Orloff turned in his seat in the gallery and smiled at Quadros' brother, John, of Fremont. At a news conference, relatives of the slain inspectors thanked the jury and Deputy District Attorney Paul Hora and Assistant U.S. Attorney John "Jack" Laettner, who jointly prosecuted the case for 4 years. They were joined by Orloff, U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan and San Leandro Police Chief Joe Kitchen. "I'm just very thankful," said Lehman, of Vinton, Iowa. "I truly feel that justice was served, that our judicial system worked." But Lehman noted, "Every day is a loss. We just went through Thanksgiving. We're about to go through Christmas. We will go through our 5th holiday without our mom. It's very difficult. It doesn't seem to get any easier with time." Laettner agreed, saying, "It's a tragic situation. In cases like this, no one really ever wins." If Nakahara upholds the death verdict at Alexander's formal sentencing hearing Feb. 15, the case will automatically be appealed to the state Supreme Court. "We're obviously very saddened and disappointed that this jury decided to kill Stuart Alexander for his moment of weakness, which he has always said he wanted to take back," Ogul said. The verdict, which was read at 3:30 p.m., came after a tumultuous week of deliberations. On Monday, a female juror asked to be excused from the panel, saying the other jurors were disrespecting her and were wearing key chains with pigs on them, apparently mocking Alexander. She had wanted to sentence Alexander to life in prison without the possibility of parole. But a male juror told the judge Monday that the holdout juror had made up her mind at the beginning of deliberations in the penalty phase and refused to discuss her reasoning. On Tuesday morning, however, the jury forewoman reported that the panel was not deadlocked and would continue deliberating. The verdict came a day after Scott Peterson was sentenced to death by a San Mateo County jury for killing his wife and unborn child. But Orloff said, "I'm a simpleton. Each case is a case that rises and falls on (its) own merits." ************************ The stuff of crime novels finally has an end ---Cliff-hangers hooked nation for 2 years It was a classic murder mystery -- a whodunit with a torrid plot. There was a beautiful wife, who also happened to be pregnant, and a boyishly handsome husband. They seemed to live the life of Riley -- a lovely house on a tree-lined street, a custom-designed swimming pool and parents who doted on them. His family even liked her, and hers liked him. Then on Christmas Eve 2002, the myth of the perfect couple began to unravel. Laci Peterson was gone, and her husband, Scott, became the police investigator's prime suspect in her disappearance. People kill their spouses every year. But something about this case resonated across the nation. The story line had a compelling narrative and enough cliff-hangers to keep everyone hooked for 2 years -- a secret girlfriend, taped telephone conversations and a web of outrageous lies. Even by Monday, when the last chapter was played out in a Redwood City courtroom and a jury voted to execute Scott Peterson, no one could fully predict the ending. Now, the mystery is solved. Peterson seemed like the guy next door, the guy who would help carry your groceries into the house or change your flat tire. He was the guy who called his dad "chief" and made his mother proud. He just didn't fit the image of a murderer. "He's the all-American boy," said Greg Beratlis, one of the jurors who convicted Peterson and found that the former fertilizer salesman should die for his crimes. "He's your regular thirtysomething neighbor with a nice wife." But Beratlis said he saw through Peterson's clever veneer, into the grand manipulator. "This gentleman had learned how to talk to people," he said. "His attention to detail was amazing." Peterson may have been smooth, but the Modesto police weren't buying his role as the grieving husband for a minute. To them, his story just didn't jibe. After all, they asked, who goes fishing 90 miles from home on Christmas Eve when his wife is eight months pregnant? Besides, every wise fisherman knows the sturgeon aren't biting in December near the Berkeley Marina. Peterson's alibi was fishy, to be sure. But police had more: They had motive. Her name was Amber Frey, a Fresno massage therapist. Long before Steve Cardosi became the jury foreman in the case, back when he watched bits and pieces of the Modesto story unfold on television news, he knew this was the stuff of crime novels. "I remember thinking this guy better not have a girlfriend," Cardosi said, "because even if he had nothing to do with it, things are going to get pretty bad for him." And they did. Unbeknownst to Peterson, while he betrayed the memory of his wife, his lover was betraying him. She, with the help of the Modesto police, was secretly taping their telephone conversations. He didn't say anything to incriminate himself in his wife's disappearance during those conversations, but he told lie after lie. He told Frey he would be away from home during the holidays -- duck hunting in "Kenny-Bunk-Port," Maine. Then, he had a business trip planned in Europe. The whole time he was in Modesto, plotting the murder of his wife and unborn baby, prosecutors said. Laci Peterson's vigil was the final blow for some jurors. While hundreds of well-wishers had come to commemorate Laci Peterson shortly after she vanished, Scott Peterson was on his cell phone telling his girlfriend more lies. He said he was in Paris, watching fireworks over the Eiffel Tower. In reality, he was watching the sun set over the dusty Central Valley. "It showed an absolute lack of sympathy for his wife and child," said Cardosi, adding that it was one of the factors he considered when deciding to vote for the death penalty. "That was the time to come clean," Beratlis said. "Scott Peterson should have told Amber Frey then that his wife was missing and that he had to find her." He didn't. He waited until Frey confronted him with the knowledge of his missing wife before telling her the truth about being married. And he wasn't finished lying. He went on ABC's "Good Morning America" and told Diane Sawyer that he let police know about Frey on the night of his wife's disappearance. Detectives say it is not so. They asked him that very first night if there was another woman, and Peterson said no. They asked him again in the days to come, and still he said no. Peterson told Sawyer his marriage to Laci was "glorious" and he cried -- not just a tear drop or two, but racking, wrenching sobs. "Click, time to cry," Cardosi said. "He just turns it on and off when he wants to. I've seen him do it in the courtroom." But like any suspenseful story, there were always foils in the plot. "Just when I thought I was leaning one way, Scott Peterson's lawyer Mark Geragos would bring me back the other way," Beratlis said. Was it the registered sex offenders living at a nearby homeless shelter that did it? Or was it transients living in the park by the Petersons' home? Had the police botched the case? Did detectives have the wrong man? "Sometimes I didn't know what to think," he said. But it was the bodies washing up less than 2 miles from where Peterson said he had been fishing on the day his wife disappeared that he said always pulled him back toward the prosecutors. "These are some diabolical transients to drive all the way to the Berkeley Marina," Beratlis said. For him, the fact that the bodies washed up on the Richmond shoreline in April 2003 was key. "If they had been found in the desert or in the park near their home, we wouldn't be here today," Beratlis said. Richelle Nice, a mother of four who sat on the six-month jury trial as a juror, said she saw so many universal themes in the case that it touched her deeply. She saw the bond Laci Peterson had with her mother. She felt the pain Jackie Peterson suffered on behalf of her son, Scott. And she cried over the layers of betrayal. "It was a word we used over and over again in the deliberations room," she said of Scott Peterson's deception. "It makes you think and question your own life and relationships." ************************* BEHIND CLOSED DOORS -- 2 jury members were kicked off, the foreman was ousted, and the case was nearly deadlocked. Now jurors in the Scott Peterson case tell the story of their decision to sentence him to death. It was to be their final vote, and few in the room thought they had reached a consensus. The Scott Peterson jury had spent six months together, judged him guilty of 1st- and 2nd-degree murder, but when it came to sentencing him to death or to life in prison without the possibility of parole, there appeared to be one holdout: Juror No. 2, a 55-year-old San Carlos resident named Tom Marino. "I thought it was going to be a hung jury," recalled Steve Cardosi, the jury foreman, during an interview at his home in Half Moon Bay. He also knew the jurors were at the end of their deliberations. They either would have a verdict of death, or they would be deadlocked with no hope of deciding Peterson's sentence. In interviews with The Chronicle, 4 jurors talked in depth about what went on behind closed doors in the jury room. For five months, they had had front-row seats in the country's most watched trial; everyone in the world was allowed to talk about the case -- except them. On Monday, Judge Alfred Delucchi, who presided over the case, allowed them to talk publicly for the first time. In interviews, they shed new light on their 2 rounds of deliberations, why two members were removed from the original jury and why the panel ousted its foreman in midstream. ---- It was Nov. 3, the jury had just heard five months of testimony, and they were ready to begin deciding Peterson's guilt or innocence in the deaths of his wife, Laci, and their unborn son. After listening to jury instructions, the 6 men and 6 women filed out of the courtroom to a deliberation room located behind the courtroom. Lunch had already been delivered. The jurors ate quickly and got down to business. Someone quickly nominated Gregory Jackson, a man with degrees in medicine and law, to serve as foreman. Everyone around the table agreed. As Jackson stood in front of the room's large whiteboard, the others called out topics they wanted to discuss. In time, the entire board was full with areas to explore: Peterson's lies, his phone conversations, locations of the bodies, his secret girlfriend Amber Frey, among dozens of others. They then mapped out a key element of their analysis: a time line of everything they knew about Dec. 24, 2002, the day Peterson said he last saw his wife at their Modesto home before going fishing off the Berkeley Marina. The time line began with the last call Laci Peterson made to her mom at 8: 30 p.m. Dec. 23 and ended the following day at 5:17 p.m., when Peterson called his mother-in-law to tell her Laci was missing. In between, on the chart, the jury noted Peterson's cell phone records, computer usage at his home and warehouse, and the time he purchased a parking pass for the Berkeley Marina. Jurors also mapped the 4 hours on the 24th in which Peterson made not a single call, a break from his habit on most days to make cell phone calls every few minutes. With the time line complete, the jurors decided to hear from Peterson himself. A piece of evidence that the jurors said they could scantly remember from the trial - Peterson's first interview with Modesto police Detective Al Brocchini - was one of the first items they reviewed. A tape of the interview was shown in the third week of the trial. Jurors said that at the time, they hardly understood the importance of much of what Peterson said. But when they reviewed it in the jury room, they saw Peterson lying six hours after he first reported his wife missing. Each time they heard Peterson's explanations, he sounded more and more deceptive. "We were looking for inconsistencies," explained Cardosi. The jurors also listened to a taped conversation between Peterson and his mother-in-law, Sharon Rocha, and replayed a wiretap of Peterson whistling -- as if in relief -- when Rocha tells him in a message that divers searching San Francisco Bay had turned up an anchor and not a body, as media reports speculated it might be. Peterson's lies were so numerous that the jurors began to wonder whether they would really know when he was telling the truth. "Can we believe anything he said throughout this whole case is the truth?'' juror Greg Beratlis said the jurors wondered. ---- But trouble was brewing with Gregory Jackson, the foreman. A scholarly man, Jackson had not forged many friendships on the jury. Many in the group had coffee with others on the panel. But Jackson, a corporate lawyer, spent most lunch hours and breaks by himself, often answering business e-mails on his Blackberry. Still, the jurors felt confident in their choice. Jackson paid rapt attention to witnesses in the courtroom, and his scrupulous note taking -- he filled 19 notebooks -- had impressed many on the panel -- even as they joked about his running out of ink. In selecting him as their foreman, they thought his higher degrees in both law and medicine would surely be an asset in trying to weigh the testimony of medical experts who testified during the trial. By the 2nd day of deliberations, the jurors decided they needed a process, a methodical way to sift through the evidence and testimony. After they spent the first night sequestered in a hotel, Jackson came back to the jury room and laid out a plan. He wanted to comb through a mound of evidence and testimony. Not only did he need detailed notes, Jackson now needed a detailed analysis. "We'll be here for months," one of the jurors complained. The jurors plodded along, brainstorming, mapping, listening, watching and reviewing expert testimony. By the third day, the jurors said they hadn't taken a vote, but it was clear that most, if not all, were leaning toward a conviction. But Jackson was bogging things down. He kept offering his expertise, 1st as a lawyer, then as a doctor. The others just wanted him to be a juror. "He had to write it a certain way, and everything had to be a certain way, '' said Cardosi. "He tended to talk a lot and not remember quite as much. ... It wasn't going well. ... We were being ineffective as a group." At first, the jurors tried to get Jackson to sit down and go through his notes, letting someone else take over as facilitator for the group. "The goal was not to remove him from the jury,'' said Cardosi. "Our goal was to have him sit down and have him go through all of his books." The tension in the room proved to be too much for Jackson. On Monday morning, the 4th day of deliberations, he told the judge he wanted off the jury. "He told us he'd never been through a process that was so argumentative, '' said Beratlis, who conceded that tensions were high, but he expected that because a man's life was at stake. After refusing to remove him, Judge Delucchi called the jury into court and read them an admonition about getting along. But Jackson's move angered at least one juror, Beratlis. "I said, 'I'm disappointed in you -- you are ready to quit. You are not speaking for me. You are the foreman. You are speaking for all of us. Quitting is not an option,'' said Beratlis, who coaches youth sports. Beratlis said he suggested they vote to pick a new foreman. The motion failed by just one vote. Jackson kept his role, but the friction in the room only mounted. The following day, the fifth day of deliberations, there was more upheaval. Juror No. 7, Fran Gorman, was about to get booted. ---- Gorman, who worked as a systems auditor for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., had been troubled by the testimony of a computer forensics expert who testified for the prosecution in August. Peterson had been confronted about his marital status by Frey's best friend on Dec. 6, and prosecutors said he had checked a fishing-oriented Web site on Dec. 8 -- which they said indicated premeditation. The defense, however, argued that Peterson had accessed the site on Dec. 5, which was the date on the information Peterson printed out. The expert never explained the discrepancy. Shortly after the testimony, Gorman had gone online on her home computer and discovered that the fishing Web site wasn't updated every day. Peterson, she determined, could have accessed and printed the fishing information on Dec. 8. Early in the deliberations, Gorman mentioned that she'd gone to the Internet and accessed the site. But before she could even tell the other jurors what she'd found, she felt a tap on her shoulder. A fellow juror was cautioning her not to discuss her findings. A couple of jurors seemed bothered but didn't make it a big deal. But when they appeared close to taking a vote on guilt on day 5 of deliberations, two of the jurors said they didn't think Gorman could be objective or fair because of the research she'd done. A note was sent to the judge, who after interviewing her and other jurors removed her from the panel. In an interview this week, Gorman said she felt the jury was being kept in the dark about inaccurate information. "I don't know why the witness was allowed to give us the impression that Scott had gone on the Web site on the 5th," when that may not have been the case at all. After excusing Gorman, the judge brought the jurors back to court and told them that with the addition of a new juror, alternate Richelle Nice, they would have to start from scratch. But Gorman's departure meant more trouble for Jackson. ---- Gorman had supported Jackson's bid to stay as foreman. Now, with the addition of Nice, the jury was told to start over. After ripping off everything from the walls and wiping the whiteboard clean, the jury voted to elect a new foreman. They settled on the man they called "Cap." At 29, Cardosi was the youngest member of the jury. A paramedic firefighter from Half Moon Bay, he thought the defense team would never choose him as a juror. But in the end, he was the man who would guide the jury through the deliberations. Jackson appeared distraught. The following morning, the sixth day of deliberations, he told his fellow jurors he wanted off and again visited the judge. The judge excused him. "It became emotional for all of us," said Beratlis of the time he called "Jury Survivor." "We thought we'd spent 5 months here, and now we were all going to be told to go home." Jackson was replaced by alternate Dennis Lear. The jurors, who felt they'd come up with a good process, said they had gotten Lear up to speed quickly, rewriting the topics to discuss, mapping out another time line and replaying the Brocchini tape. Lear, a man who had a strange link to the case before it began -- his future son-in-law owns a restaurant once owned by Peterson -- seemed content with what the jurors showed him and had few concerns about the direction they were going. Within hours, they'd all found Peterson guilty of the murders. But they still had to decide if the murders were premeditated. Peterson, they believed, had carefully planned his wife's murder, but several jurors felt he wasn't thinking about the Petersons' unborn baby when he plotted to kill his wife. There were many times Peterson had demonstrated how much he'd liked children, and, Cardosi recalls asking, if he'd really been focused on killing the baby, wouldn't he have stabbed his wife in the stomach? ---- On the 7th day of deliberations, seven hours after Lear was seated on the jury, the group decided to split the verdict, convicting him of first- degree murder in the death of his wife and 2nd-degree murder for his unborn son. Many of the jurors wept. They would be back in the room 4 weeks later to make their fateful decision about Peterson's life. On the first day of penalty phase, they started anew, voting Cardosi as foreman again. This time, he wrote on the whiteboard reasons Peterson should live and reasons he should die. On Friday, the second day of deliberations, the jury had taken a straw poll. Six voted for death and two for life, and four abstained. They rested for the weekend, but two jurors still sought life Monday morning. Then, Cardosi asked to see the autopsy photos and one of a very pregnant Laci Peterson shortly before she died. Cardosi, who favored death, said he needed to see the photographs of Laci and what Peterson had done to her, but he also wanted the others to get one last look at them. Nice, a mother of four boys who was prone to crying during the trial, wept as she looked at the autopsy picture of the baby she dubbed "little man" and whom the jurors had come to know over the course of the trial as Conner. She remembered thinking the haunting photographs were a gruesome reminder of the baby who would never grow up to be "the good kid" his father was said to be. The grisly photos of the decomposing baby were passed from juror to juror. "They looked. I cried," she said. "I got emotional, and I said, 'His daddy did this to him.'" Another straw poll was taken -- the vote now stood at 11-1, with Marino as the lone holdout. Even before he was selected for the jury, Marino, a Roman Catholic, seemed to have been struggling with sentencing a man to die -- he'd told the judge during jury selection that he'd sought guidance from his priest on the issue. On Monday, the 3rd day of deliberations of the penalty phase of the trial, his internal compass seemed to be leaning in favor of life in prison. His fellow jurors asked whether there was anything else he wanted to talk about. Marino, who noted Peterson's lack of a criminal record and his many good deeds, said he'd like to hear their thinking one last time. So one by one, the 11 jurors told Marino why they favored death over life in prison. Marino never tipped his hand, never gave any hint that he'd changed his mind. Still, the jurors decided to take one last vote before signaling the judge. As they had before, the jurors wrote their verdict on a piece of paper and handed them to Cardosi. He read each aloud, and each had just one word: death. Shortly after 11:30 a.m. Monday, they informed the judge they'd reached a verdict. "We had 12 for death," Cardosi said. "I was shocked." ********************** Time is on Peterson's side You can't call a government just or democratic when it heeds the will of its citizens, its courts and its juries only about 2 % of the time. So with all due respect to California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George, he shouldn't be content that, by his own admission, the state's death- row inmates are more likely to die of old age than lethal injection. The jury that recommended a sentence of death for Scott Peterson may discover that they sacrificed months of their lives and endured much personal anguish to produce a verdict and sentence that the criminal-justice system is too likely to ignore. "We don't turn them out like Texas, and I'm glad that we don't," George noted at his annual year-end briefing this week. I agree with George that Texas juries over-apply the death penalty. The panels often choose capital punishment for murders that result more from panic and stupidity than deliberate depravity. But California courts should not under-enforce the death penalty, either. Yet they do. With 641 inmates awaiting execution in California, there should have been more than 11 executions in California since 1992. That's only 2 %. The system is broken. Some argue that the delay is due to the court's high standards in choosing appellate attorneys. Too bad the system has next to no standards when it comes to time and money. The courts now pay a pretty penny for competent appellate attorneys -- though that choice would be worth the money if the courts acted promptly. Instead, delay is the order of the day. Consider that convicted killer Charles Ng has enjoyed a 5-year reprieve because the California courts still haven't appointed an appellate attorney to contest Ng's death sentence. That five-year wait is standard, I learned recently, even though the state has a public defenders' office. Ng, by the way, was found guilty in 1999 for the slaughter of 6 men, 2 babies and three women, whom he tortured. Death penalty opponents love to bring up the high cost of death-penalty appeals as a reason to oppose capital punishment. Meanwhile, they remain silent about the pricey tab for frivolous appeals and costly delays. A 5- year delay equals more than $100,000 in prison costs per inmate. Michael Rushford of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento blames the Legislature for not funding appeals adequately. He says lawmakers cede authority on appeals to forces like the California Appellate Project, an outfit that doesn't want the death penalty to work. I talked to Justice George on Wednesday and he told me that he is not happy with the standard five-year delay, but that he refuses to appoint "warm bodies" to appeal cases because shoddy lawyering only ends up costing everyone. George added that he plans to ask Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to fund three more positions to speed up the process. When he took office, the Governator promised to shake up Sacramento. This would be a good place to start. Making the death penalty work has a law-and- order cachet. It's no nonsense. It would even would help inmates with a righteous appeal, because they wouldn't have to wait years to make their case before an appellate judge. When the San Mateo County jury found Peterson guilty last month, many scolds were happy to dismiss the people who cheered the verdict as an out-of- control lynch mob. I won't defend the crowd's response, which was boorish. Worse, it fed the anti-death penalty crowd's conceit that folks are on their side are civilized and sophisticated, while death penalty supporters are barbaric and uncouth. Count me in with the pitchfork crowd. I didn't cheer the guilty verdict, but I did respond with a sigh of relief. And I know it will be followed by years of waiting for the system to work. I'll be watching death-penalty opponents, who aren't content to persuade voters as to the rightness of their cause. Instead they resort to any means necessary to undermine a punishment supported by voters, upheld by courts and determined by juries of citizens who sacrificed their time and energy. Support for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars (of other people's money) on appeals that you know are downright laughable -- that's sophistication. I bow in admiration. **************************** State's chief justice praises long appeals process -- 'We don't turn them out like Texas,' he says A day after a jury condemned Scott Peterson to death and launched him on an appeal process likely to take years, California's chief justice said the state's death penalty was "in many ways dysfunctional" because of lengthy delays built into the system. But the courts will continue their time-consuming process of finding high- quality appellate lawyers and reviewing death cases thoroughly, because the alternative may be an assembly-line system that pushes prisoners into the death chamber, said Chief Justice Ronald George. "We don't turn them out like Texas, and I'm glad that we don't," George told reporters Tuesday in his annual year-end briefing. The recruitment of lawyers for death penalty appeals, and those lawyers' preparation and presentation of their cases, are lengthy processes because the Constitution requires careful scrutiny of capital cases, George said. "The vice in the system is a reflection of some of its virtues," he said. "It is in many ways dysfunctional. We're doing our best to fine-tune it." George heads the California Supreme Court, which will review the appeal that Peterson's attorneys will file if Superior Court Judge Alfred Delucchi upholds Monday's verdict Feb. 25 and sentences Peterson to death. A San Mateo County jury decided Monday that the 32-year-old Modesto man should be executed for the murders of his wife, Laci, and her fetus 2 years ago. But from experience, it will be at least a decade before the state's high court rules on Peterson's case. If it upholds the death sentence, additional state and federal court appeals could last five to 10 years. California, which has 641 condemned prisoners, has executed 10 since it resumed executions in 1992 after a 25-year halt. Texas, by contrast, has executed 23 inmates this year and 336 since 1982. Unlike virtually all other death penalty defendants, who are represented by court-appointed lawyers, Peterson hired private attorneys at his trial. Assuming he can't afford the staggering costs of an appeal, he, like other death row inmates, will have an appellate lawyer appointed by George's court - - though probably not until late in this decade. Condemned prisoners in California now wait four to 5 years for a lawyer, said court spokeswoman Lynn Holton. The recruitment of qualified lawyers has long been hindered by modest pay, long hours, difficult and sometimes gruesome cases, and the daunting prospect of holding a client's life in one's hands. Death verdicts by juries have dropped about 50 percent nationally since 1999, a recent report found. George said the decline had helped his court reduce the backlog of condemned prisoners without lawyers -- from 170 in 1998 to 118 today, according to court records. The chief justice, who reviews every attorney appointment, said he could probably clear up the backlog overnight if he used the lax standards of some Southern states; instead, California sets minimum levels of skill and experience and conducts background checks. Additional years are consumed in reviewing a trial record that averages 6, 000 pages, researching the case and preparing voluminous briefs that, under legal rules, must raise every available issue. "The leading cause of death on death row is old age," George said. Still, he said, judges must continue to tell jurors in capital cases that they should assume the sentence they choose will be carried out. "They have to be invested with responsibility that what they're doing counts," he said. (source for all: San Francisco Chronicle) ******************** Death is nothing to celebrate Outside the California courtroom where jurors sentenced convicted murderer Scott Peterson on Monday, hundreds of onlookers let out a cheer and high-fived each other when they learned of the recommendation that he be put to death. The disturbing scene conjured images of public square hangings in colonial America, where a giddy, almost celebratory mood hung in the air the way it might at a summer Little League championship. Forget whether one believes Peterson to be innocent or guilty, deserving of death or life in prison. This kind of reaction was an embarrassment. Alas, it was hardly new. In 1990, when Illinois performed its 1st execution since reinstating the death penalty more than a decade earlier, about 2 dozen revelers stood outside Stateville prison drinking and serenading Charles Walker's midnight demise with a rendition of "Na na na na, hey hey hey ... goodbye!" The crowds have only grown since then. In the case of the Peterson trial, their size and exuberance were fueled in part by the disproportionate, lurid interest cable television and tabloid news took in this particular trial involving the murder of his wife, Laci Peterson, and their unborn son. Death sentences may well be an expression of a community's moral outrage toward the crime committed, but high-fiving? Death as sport? There was nothing to celebrate here. Those inside the Redwood City courtroom understood that. The verdict was met with stone silence, according to reports. Not even a gasp. Jurors, too, were somber and hardly delighted in the recommendation despite their conviction it was the right thing to do. In February, a San Mateo Superior Court judge will decide whether to accept or reject the jury's sentence. There were no wins in this case, only tragic losses. (source: Editorial, Chicago Tribune) *********************** MURDER MOST FOUL----The attention-getting crime and punishment of Scott Peterson offer no gratification The murder of Laci Peterson by her husband held the nation's attention, often involuntary, for two years. The case satisfied the need of the tabloid press and television industry to have a story to hype, and might even be considered compelling drama: Laci Peterson was pregnant at the time of her death. Husband Scott Peterson made the bizarre claim that he had gone fishing on Christmas Eve, returning home to find his wife missing. The bodies of Laci Peterson and her fetus washed ashore a few miles from the alleged fishing spot. Yet the Petersons' story differs only in slight detail from other cases all over the country. A man desperate to end his marriage and switch partners acts on the impulse to murder rather than divorce. Recently a coach in a Houston suburb was charged with a similar crime. Jurors said they were repelled by Scott Peterson's cold manner, which showed no emotion. That coldness, according to some jurors, clinched their decision to show Peterson no mercy. A show of remorse might have won Peterson the unenviable penalty of life without parole. However, moralists can argue that the display of an emotionless shell by a man who has forfeited any life worth living is more understandable than the tasteless cheers and applause of courtwatchers when the death sentence was handed down. Many commentators talked of closure, showing their ignorance of California's populous death row. California's system guarantees decades of appeals, ensuring that hundreds of death row inmates have only a slight chance of being executed. Most will expire in prison from natural causes or suicide. Some murderers will be murdered by fellow inmates. Unrelated to the lurid carnival of coverage given the Peterson case, a more significant story was reported Monday. The FBI announced that murders in the United States declined during the 1st 6 months of this year, as did all violent crimes. Crime rates rise and fall in cycles that closely follow population bubbles and the relative number of young males in society. However, a sharp drop in the number of murder victims in the United States is a greater cause for comfort than the abysmal fate, well-earned though it might be, handed Scott Peterson. (source: Editorial, Houston Chronicle, Dec. 15) ************************** Peterson case was only about murder America owes a debt of gratitude to the jury in the Scott Peterson trial, but not for the most obvious reason. Put aside the fact that the jury performed its civic duty to consider all the evidence in this six-month trial and to render a verdict, as arduous as that task may have been. Put aside any personal feelings about the guilty verdict and the death penalty recommendation for Peterson, although most Americans soberly, including myself, agree with it. No, we owe a debt of gratitude to this jury because they were able to discern correctly what this trial was really about, the murder of 2 innocent people, Peterson's wife Laci and their unborn son Connor. They disregarded the paparazzi, the propaganda and the politics. The Peterson jury reminded us that this trial was not about any larger agenda but about the personal tragedy of losing family members to such a heinous crime. The jury's verdict showed that they were able to overlook the soap opera, reality TV nature of this trial of the century and confer a modicum of dignity to the untimely deaths of Laci and Connor Peterson. They listened to 184 witnesses over 23 weeks, disavowing the media circus that defined this celebrity trial minus a celebrity defendant. The jury offered the conclusion that Scott Peterson was just another regular guy, an average American like most of us, who, unlike most, viciously murdered his wife and son, as unfortunately happens too often every day in this country. But here is the one nagging doubt about the verdict in the Peterson trial, that some will exploit his crime and will shamelessly capitalize on the personal tragedy of Laci's family to achieve a political advantage. Indeed, some already have. Yes, Peterson was convicted of 2nd-degree murder in the death of his and Laci's unborn son. But, no, this trial was not about abortion, either in support of reproductive rights of all women or a commentary on bestowing legal status on the unborn. The Scott Peterson trial was not about abortion rights, and not about the morality of abortion; it was about murder. It was not pro-choice or pro-life but against the senseless slayings of a wife and a son. Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, a California-based pro-family organization, issued a statement in response to the jury's recommendation of the death penalty of Peterson. In part, Thomasson said, Conner Peterson showed us all that the unborn child has rights. It's ironic. Why is it wrong for Scott Peterson to murder his pre-born son, but OK for politicians and judges to continue to allow late-term abortions? Concerned Women for America stated in their Dec. 12 report, Conner, who was at least 7 1/2 months gestation, was just as much a victim of murder as his mother. The fact that the jury found Peterson guilty of 2nd-degree rather than 1st-degree murder for his death defies logic. Nonetheless, the sentence of death leaves no doubt about their perception of Conner. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004, also known as Laci and Conner's law, passed by Congress in April and signed into law by President Bush benefited from the pre-trial publicity-drenched atmosphere, including the lobbying efforts of Laci's mother, Sharon Rocha. The legislation granted legal status to unborn children killed during the commission of a federal crime against the mother. But just as anti-abortion groups and religious and social conservatives are using the Peterson trial as a platform for pursuing their own agenda, pro-choice groups are no less morally culpable in arguing the larger implications of this trial. The silence of the pro-choice lobby after the verdict of the jury and its recommendation of the death penalty for Peterson is deafening and equally revealing of their motives. Peterson's 2nd-degree murder conviction for the death of Connor will not affect the reproductive rights of women under Roe v. Wade, as the hysteria this lobby would have us believe. Before the Peterson trial began, Marva Stark, president of the National Organization of Women's Morris County, N.J., chapter, objected to the double-murder charge, saying, "If this is murder, well, then any time a late-term fetus is aborted, they could call it murder." Stark added, Was it (it being the child) born, or was it unborn? If it was unborn, then I can't see charging (Scott Peterson) with a double-murder. And even more from Stark. She said, He (the child, previously known as it'') was wanted and expected and (Laci Peterson) had a name for him, but if he wasn't born, he wasn't born. It kind of sets a precedent. The vice president from NOW's national office influenced Stark to retract her crass statement. For pro- and anti-abortion groups to jump into the fray of the Peterson trial, to point to inconsistencies in the law, and to argue that his 2nd-degree conviction of the unborn was a distinction without a difference, diminishes the personal tragedy of the deaths of Laci and Connor. Sometimes things are just as they seem. Murder by any other name is still murder, and that it is morally wrong. A jury in a criminal case in California reminded us of that truth. (source: Column, Cynthia Hall Clements, Lufkin Daily News)
