Jan. 6 TENNESSEE: State Supreme Court rejects setting execution date for Alley The state Supreme Court refused today to set a new execution date for convicted Memphis killer Sedley Alley. The court noted that debate on federal rules governing executions are still under way in federal court and Alley has said he intends to file a new attempt to save his life. Therefore, the court said, the state's request for a new execution date was rejected until the legal debates are settled. Alley was convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering a young female Marine near Memphis in 1985. (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: Execution challenge renewed In documents filed Wednesday, defense lawyers again asked a federal appeals court to block the scheduled Jan. 19 execution of Donald Beardslee, and prosecutors opposed the defense move. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to announce soon whether it will stand by last week's decision, made by three of its judges, to permit California's 11th execution in modern times. Reconsideration by an 11-judge circuit panel would be the likely alternative. Beardslee, 61, was sentenced to die for the murder of Patty Geddling in 1981 in a dispute over a drug deal. He also was sentenced to life without parole for the related murder of Stacy Benjamin. The three-judge circuit panel said errors were made in Beardslee's sentencing trial 21 years ago. But the panel concluded that the mistakes - the San Mateo County trial judge's instructions to the jury to consider one invalid multiple-murder conviction and two invalid witness-killing convictions - didn't influence jurors to choose the death penalty. The new defense petition argues that last week's ruling failed to comply with 9th Circuit and Supreme Court procedures for evaluating such errors. In this case, says the petition, the mistakes "occurred in a close penalty trial" - one in which the jury initially voted 10-2 in favor of life without the possibility of parole and deliberated for 23 hours before reaching its final verdict. In a formal response, the California attorney general's office says the 3-judge panel properly applied all the right legal precedents. It says the defense is simply repeating arguments that already have been fully considered and rejected. However the 9th Circuit rules in this round, the losing side is expected to go to the Supreme Court. The defense also has a clemency petition pending before the governor. Also, other lawyers representing Beardslee will go before a federal district judge in San Jose today to argue that execution by lethal injection, California's current method, would violate Beardslee's rights. (source: Sacramento Bee) ************************ Condemned killer moves closer to death Condemned killer Donald Beardslee moved closer to death late Thursday when a federal appeals court dismissed one of his 2 remaining legal challenges. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which last week rejected Beardslee's latest legal challenge with a three-judge panel, announced Thursday that it would not rehear his claim that jurors unfairly rendered a death verdict after he was convicted of murdering 2 women in 1981. Beardslee's attorneys will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the San Francisco-based appellate court's latest decision. The Supreme Court and others have already rejected a host of other legal challenges, including claims that Beardslee's lawyer was ineffective and reading magazines during trial. The Redwood City man's only other remaining claim is that the lethal injection prison officials are planning to give him Jan. 19 is cruel and unusual. A federal judge heard that case Thursday and is expected to rule Friday, but has already rejected such a challenge by another condemned man who has other legal challenges pending. Beardslee, now 61, was convicted in San Mateo County of killing Paula Geddling and Stacey Benjamin to get even for a soured drug deal. The crime spree began when Frank Rutherford, who is serving a life sentence in connection to the murders, shot Geddling in the shoulder once she got to Beardslee's apartment in Redwood City, where the defendants lured the 2 women to seek revenge for being stiffed out of drugs. Beardslee and Rutherford took the wounded Geddling to a roadside along Highway 1 in San Mateo County, where she was shot several times. Benjamin was strangled and her throat slit the same day in a secluded area in Marin County. The jury convicted Beardslee of delivering the fatal blows to both victims, and he confessed to the crimes. Lawyers for the condemned man said jurors wrongly considered charges that the murders were done to prevent the women from testifying about Geddling being shot in the shoulder. The California Supreme Court in 1991, while upholding the death verdict, ruled that the murders were not to kill witnesses but were part of a crime spree. Beardslee, in a highly nuanced challenge, maintained that jurors based their decision for death, in part, on the belief that the killings were done to prevent the women's testimony. The appeals court, however, said the jury would have returned a death verdict regardless of Beardslee's motive. The condemned man is also asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to commute his sentence to life without parole, maintaining that he was an unwitting dupe to Rutherford's rage. A clemency hearing before the Board of Prison Terms is scheduled Jan. 14. Beardslee, if executed this month, would become the 11th condemned inmate to be executed since California reinstated capital punishment in 1978. California has the largest and most clogged death row, housing 641 inmates. The case is Beardslee v. Brown, 01-99007. (source: San Francisco Chronicle) ****************************** Madera County prosecutors to seek death penalty child murder case Madera County prosecutors will be seeking the death penalty for a 22-year-old man charged in the murder of a nine-year-old Oakhurst boy. Derek Keldon Smith is accused of murdering Kristopher Turner last May. A witness told authorities he saw the two walking together near the Fresno River. Later that day, investigators found the child's mutilated body in a concrete culvert. Keldon's preliminary hearing is scheduled for January 18th, but prosecutors say it could be delayed by the filing of the notice to seek the death penalty. (source: Associated Press) GEORGIA----new death sentence Judge orders death of killer in Fulton case A southwest Atlanta man who murdered a 12-year-old and the boy's great-grand-parents was given the death penalty Thursday. De'Kelvin Martin had hoped to receive life in prison without parole when he requested that Fulton Superior Court Judge Gail Tusan, instead of a jury, decide his fate. But Tusan, whom prosecutors had earlier accused of planning to hand down a life sentence, decided in a little less than an hour that Martin should die by lethal injection. The judge said "the killing of 2 elderly persons and a child cannot be excused or mitigated by the community or this court." She gave Martin 3 death sentences, plus 102 years in prison on related charges. "It was the most difficult decision this court has ever made," Tusan said. Fulton District Attorney Paul Howard had accused the judge of planning to sentence Martin to life based on statements Tusan made leading up to the trial. The judge had said a death penalty trial could cost taxpayers "hundreds of thousands of dollars" and could take years to resolve. Tusan has said Howard took her comments out of context. "I want to thank Judge Tusan for having the courage to examine the facts of a case that cried out for the ultimate penalty," Howard told reporters. "I think the judge, after hearing the facts, changed her mind." This is the 2nd time a Fulton County defendant was given a death sentence since Howard took office in 1996. But Martin's attorney, Tom West, expressed outrage at the sentence in an e-mail to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Judge Tusan had promised us an lLWOP [one life (term) without parole] sentence if we had a bench trial, and she sentenced the client to death today! This will not stand." As his murder trial was about to begin this week, Martin pleaded guilty to felony murder, murder, aggravated sodomy and robbery in the bloody October 2002 stabbing deaths of Savion Wright and his great-grandparents, Travis Ivery, 83, and his wife, Ila, 77. West had argued that Martin is mentally ill and was abusing crack cocaine and beer when he flew into a rage at the southwest Atlanta home of his girlfriend, Tymika Wright, 34. Martin, who lived in the home, stabbed and sexually assaulted Wright before fatally turning the knife on her child and grandparents. After the sentence was announced Thursday, Wright said she didn't expect the death penalty. "I don't want anybody to die, and I wasn't expecting this," Wright told reporters. "Spiritually, I don't believe in a life for a life." But Savion's father, Jimmie Wright, said the sentence was "just." But he said he regretted that Martin, if executed, would leave behind a son of his own. During closing arguments about the sentence, prosecutor Ron Boyter told the judge, "This crime is pure evil - absolute evil." Boyter urged Tusan: "Don't let evil triumph, your honor. Do justice." But West, Martin's attorney, said his client was not evil. West had filed a motion to change Martin's guilty plea to guilty but mentally ill, hoping to avoid the death penalty. But Tusan denied that motion. West, who has defended several death penalty cases, said his client was suffering from a "psychotic event" due to drug use when he committed the killings. "This was not the Kelvin Martin in his right mind," West said. Before announcing the sentence, Tusan asked Martin if he had anything to say. The defendant turned to Wright, her family and her friends. "I'm sorry for any pain I caused y'all," Martin said in a soft voice, "and I hope you'll find it in your heart to forgive me." (source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
