Jan. 5 PENNSYULVANIA: Prosecutors seek death penalty for man accused in Motel 6 slaying Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for a Norristown man accused of raping and killing a 19-year-old woman at a Montgomery County motel. 22-year-old Patrick McCarthy pleaded innocent yesterday to 1st-degree murder and other offenses. McCarthy is accused of stabbing Anna Nicole Fowler to death on October 5th at the Motel Six in King of Prussia. Fowler's partially clad body was found blindfolded and gagged the next day in a room rented in McCarthy's name. McCarthy was arrested October 20th. (source: Associated Press) TEXAS: Father avoids possible death penalty in daughter's molestation, murder A League City man who admitted he molested his 2-year-old daughter and beat her to death has received consecutive life sentences in the slaying that exposed weaknesses in the state's child welfare system. Frank Padilla pleaded guilty to capital murder and sexual assault of his 2-year old daughter. Frank Javier Padilla's guilty pleas Tuesday in the death of Linda Gloria Padilla avoided a lengthy trial, scheduled next month in 122nd State District Court. He faced the death penalty. Padilla, 46, likely will have to serve 70 years in prison before being released. In August 2003, a state Child Protective Services caseworker was fired for not reporting to a hot line a tip about the toddler, who was sexually assaulted and beaten to death two months later. The unconscious girl was taken to a Nassau Bay hospital by her father, who told health workers she had fallen off a sink. But he later confessed to police that he had beaten her because she wet her pants. His daughter, who never regained consciousness, was transferred to a Houston hospital where she died on Aug. 13, 2003, after being taken off life support. The toddler suffered a broken pelvis, broken ribs, a fractured skull and bruises all over her body, according to an autopsy. As part of the plea agreement on a capital murder charge and 2 counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, Frank Padilla will serve 2 consecutive life sentences but will avoid the death penalty prosecutors had sought. The Mexican national suffered from bipolar disorder and lost control of himself because of a lack of medication, said Houston attorney Don Cantrell, one of the lawyers representing Padilla before District Judge John Ellisor. Padilla must serve 40 years on the life sentence for capital murder before being eligible for parole. At the same time, he will be serving one of the aggravated sexual assault sentences and is eligible for parole after 30 years. His daughter's death raised questions about the state child abuse hot line system. An investigation into the hot line by the Houston Chronicle resulted in additional workers being hired, installation of an upgraded computer system and other efforts to speed the answering of calls to the hot line. (source: Associated Press) NEW MEXICO: Murder trial to begin in Albuquerque for death row inmate A trial is to begin Monday in state district court in Albuquerque for a man accused of killing two men at a downtown Farmington store. Robert Fry of Farmington already is on death row for the 2000 killing of a Shiprock woman and is serving a life prison sentence for the 1998 slaying of a Ganado, Arizona, man. Frys latest trial is on murder charges stemming from the November 1996 killings of 18-yeer-old Matthew Trecker and 25-year-old Joseph Fleming, both of Farmington. Theyd been stabbed several times. (source: Associated Press) CONNECTICUT: Public defenders head to Conn. Supreme Court to block execution The state's highest court was to hear arguments Wednesday about whether public defenders can intervene in Michael Ross' death penalty case over the serial killer's objections. Though the justices rarely rule from the bench, defense attorneys were hoping for a swift decision that could save Ross' life. He is scheduled to die Jan. 26. If the court allows the lawyers to intervene, it could make it harder for future death row inmates to abandon their appeals. The public defenders claim Ross is not mentally competent to make that decision, but a judge ruled that the attorneys have no standing to intervene in Ross' case. The public defenders argue that they should have been given a chance to show that Ross is incompetent before a judge ruled on whether they could intervene. "I do think that if we're going to be given the opportunity to present evidence of incompetence," Chief Public Defender Gerard Smyth said, "it will have to be the Connecticut Supreme Court or from a federal court." Ross, 45, has admitted killing 8 women in Connecticut and New York, and is on death row for the murders of 4 young women in eastern Connecticut in the 1980s. He also raped some of the women. Attorney T.R. Paulding, whom Ross hired to help him end his appeals, said they expected interest groups would try to fight the execution, which would be the first in Connecticut since 1960. If the public defenders fail before the state Supreme Court, Smyth said they will ask a federal court to block the execution. "We will continue to pursue those things we feel we are obliged to pursue for so long as he remains alive," Smyth said. (source: Associated Press) ********************** Unless the people and the lawmakers of Connecticut take action immediately to try to stop a killing, a sad note will be added to Connecticut's history on January 26, 2005. On that day, this state is set to execute Michael Ross, becoming the only New England state to methodically end a life in nearly half a century. Why should anyone care if Michael Ross is executed? He is, admittedly, as some have put it, "a poster boy" for the death penalty, the convicted rapist-killer, by his own count 20 years ago, of eight women. After being sentenced to death in 1987, the sentence was overturned due to the court's failure to allow the jury to consider evidence as to his mental state. According to several documented reports, it was learned he had a psychological disorder that turned him into the monster who raped and killed. Medication he received in prison, according to professionals, eliminated the mental illness that triggered his crimes. At a new penalty phase trial in 2000, he was again sentenced to death. Michael Ross now refuses any new appeals to spare, he says, his victims' parents the pain of reliving in court their daughters' deaths. In his own words, he has said, "I am the worst of the worst" and when I am finally executed, the vast majority of the people of this state will celebrate my death." But this execution is about more than Mr. Ross. It is, in fact, about us, why we give ourselves control over life and death, and why we will allow any state to kill in our name. We urge people who protest official killing to write to Connecticut's Governor Jodi Rell, asking her to postpone the planned execution of Michael Ross: The Honorable M. Jodi Rell Office of the Governor State Capitol 210 Capitol Ave. Hartford, Ct. 06106 e-mail: [email protected]
