Jan. 10
TEXAS:
Students say prosecutor made Graves mistake----Group says evidence never
linked him to the 1992 slayings
Condemned inmate Anthony Graves is waiting to find out whether he will get
a new trial. If he does, students at the Texas Innocence Network who
investigated his case are convinced he will be acquitted.
The college students say they uncovered new evidence, never presented at
trial, that proves Graves was not involved in the Aug. 18, 1992, slayings
of 6 people.
"Rather than pursue justice, however, the state engaged in a pattern of
hiding relevant and exculpatory evidence from Graves' defense counsel in
its desire to win at all costs," a draft report of the group's findings
reads.
The report collects all evidence supporting Graves' innocence claim,
including the new information. The students say the most important of that
is their potential debunking of the motive prosecutors proposed in
persuading jurors to convict Graves 10 years ago.
But whether the new evidence will ever be heard in court depends on U.S.
District Judge Samuel Kent of Galveston, who is reviewing a recommendation
that he deny Graves, 38, a new trial.
U.S. Magistrate Judge John Froeschner concluded in November that Charles
Sebesta, who was the district attorney for Washington and Burleson
counties during Graves' trial, was guilty of prosecutorial misconduct
because he withheld from the defense a statement that Graves was innocent.
But Froeschner also said the statement by Robert Earl Carter, who later
was executed for the slayings, would not have changed the verdict had
jurors been aware of it.
In a rebuttal filed last week, Graves' attorney, Roy Greenwood, said it
was improper for Froeschner to speculate on how the jury might have ruled.
One juror, Jim Hahn of Manvel, told the Chronicle last year that the case
was weak and he regretted voting to convict Graves. He gave the Innocence
Network a sworn statement to that effect.
Knife never found
The conviction was based almost entirely on Carter's testimony. The knife
Graves was accused of using was never found, and no forensic evidence
linked him to the murders.
Carter retracted his trial testimony in a 2000 deposition in which he
accused Sebesta of threatening to prosecute Carter's wife, Theresa
"Cookie" Carter, to force him to testify against Graves. Carter again
professed Graves' innocence in his final statement before his execution on
May 31, 2000.
In making his decision, Kent can consider only the trial record. He cannot
take into account the two-year investigation by journalism students from
the University of St. Thomas in Houston, who are part of the University of
Houston-based Texas Innocence Network.
Sebesta said the students took information out of context.
"What these kids are telling you is not what the record says," he said.
"You've got to look at the totality of the evidence."
Support from inmate
Journalism professor Nicole Casarez, who advises the students, said their
investigation points overwhelmingly toward innocence.
"Nothing we've found says he's guilty," she said.
The Innocence Network warns convicts before taking their cases that if
evidence of guilt is found, it could be used against them.
Graves also has support from former death row inmate Kerry Max Cook, who
eventually was cleared and is portrayed in the play The Exonerated.
In an interview, Cook said that Carter admitted to him while both were on
death row that Graves is innocent.
"I speak for the innocent, but I am very selective," Cook said. "Anthony,
I really believe, is innocent. I'm stunned that an innocent person is this
close to execution."
Graves, who has not been given an execution date, was condemned for the
slaying of Bobbie Davis, 45; her 16-year-old daughter, Nicole; and four
grandchildren ages 4 to 9 in Somerville. They were shot, stabbed and
beaten before the house was set ablaze to conceal the crime.
Casarez has written a 17-page draft of a report that says Carter made an
extraordinary effort to exonerate Graves, professing Graves' innocence to
other death row inmates and a series of attorneys representing him during
his lengthy appeals, as well as writing to Graves' appellate attorneys.
The Innocence Network students said they discovered a letter Carter wrote
from prison dated Jan. 14, 1998, to a woman he called his "second mother."
"I lied on an innocent man to keep my family safe," Carter wrote. "I even
told the D.A. this before I testify (sic) against Graves, but he didn't
want to hear it."
Sebesta denied that Carter had made such a statement in 1994. In 2000,
however, he acknowledged to a television reporter that Carter did make the
statement.
A crucial TV interview
Based partly on allegations stemming from the TV interview, the 5th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case to Froeschner, the magistrate
judge, to determine whether there was prosecutorial misconduct, which
normally is grounds for a new trial.
Sebesta now acknowledges that Carter told him that he alone had committed
the murders.
But, Sebesta added, it was an obvious lie.
"I said, 'Robert, there is no way you could have done it yourself,'"
Sebesta said. "He abandoned that."
The students also said Sebesta never informed the defense that Carter had
said his wife assisted him in the slayings. Sebesta said he would have
prosecuted Carter's wife but lacked evidence.
The Innocence Network report says a polygraph exam and telephone records
that could have supported Graves' defense have never been given to his
attorneys.
A wife's testimony
Moreover, the Innocence Network discovered during an October hearing
before Froeschner that it had a copy of grand jury testimony by Carter's
wife that neither the judge nor Graves' attorneys had. The document showed
that Cookie Carter told the grand jury that her husband had falsely
implicated Graves.
The students also cast doubt on Graves' alleged motive. Prosecutors argued
that Graves killed Bobbie Davis because she had obtained a promotion at
the Brenham State School that his mother wanted.
The school's supervisor told the students, however, that Davis' mother had
not applied for the position and was not jealous of the promotion.
Prosecutors alleged that Graves used a knife given to him by his employer,
Roy Allen Rueter, who had an identical knife. Rueter agreed to testify
after an assistant district attorney told him that "without any doubt,"
Rueter's knife matched the victims' wounds perfectly, the report says.
Rueter told the Chronicle he later learned that expert testimony revealed
that other knives could have made the wounds.
"The way they embellished this back in 1992," he said, "that's the part, I
mean, I just feel violated."
(source: Houston Chronicle)
USA:
The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions (
Random House )
Nun urges death sentence for capital punishment---Review by Rob Mitchell
Sister Helen Prejean is relentless in her opposition to the death penalty.
She's made it her mission to accompany death row inmates to their
executions and wants the "machinery of death" dismantled.
A Roman Catholic nun from Louisiana, Prejean is the author of "Dead Man
Walking," adapted into the 1995 movie starring Susan Sarandon as a nun and
Sean Penn as the death row inmate she visits. In Prejean's new book she
returns to death row - to the executions of 2 possibly innocent men.
With powerful eloquence, she describes each man's journey - from the
gruesome murder and his arrest to his final words prior to execution. She
then delivers a devastating attack on what she sees as our terribly flawed
system of trial and punishment, made all the more repulsive when viewed up
close.
Objecting to the execution of any human being, even those guilty of
horrendous crimes, Prejean argues that the immorality of state killing is
compounded by its egregiously random and arbitrary application. Annually,
only two percent of the 14,000 who are convicted of killing are selected
to die. Most of those are condemned to death because of race, an abysmally
inept lawyer, or because they are in Texas.
More disturbing is a legal system that can't even be relied on to convict
the right people. In the last 30 years, 117 wrongfully convicted people
have been freed from death row. Prejean says that alone should stop the
death penalty in its tracks.
Meet Sister Helen Prejean at two free upcoming events: Wednesday at 7:30
p.m. at Borders Bookstore, 85 Worcester Road (Route 9), Framingham.
508-875-2321. Thursday at 6 p.m. at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St.,
Cambridge. Tickets available from the Harvard Bookstore. 617-661-1515.
(source: Boston Herald)
CONNECTICUT:
Costs of jail vs. death penalty raised in Ross' scheduled execution
Keeping serial killer Michael Ross behind bars has cost about $1 million
or more since his arrest in 1984, according to the Department of
Correction.
In addition, the legal costs to halt the death penalty that is scheduled
to be imposed on Jan. 26 has could run up a tab of about $1 million.
"I think most Connecticut taxpayers would be outraged if they knew," state
Rep. Steven Mikutel, D-Griswold.
State Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven and co-chairman of the General
Assembly's judiciary committee, said keeping Ross locked up for life would
have been less costly than executing him.
"If he had been sentenced to life in prison, that would have been the end
of it," Lawlor said. "It would have been cheaper, uncontroversial and
anonymous."
Since his arrest, Ross has spent time in the Hartford and Bridgeport
Community Correctional centers and the Northern Correctional Institution
that houses death row. Last October, he was transferred to the Osborn
Correctional Institution, the site of the execution chamber.
Brian Garnett, spokesman for the Department of Correction, said the dollar
amount for Ross' jailing is based on the average annual daily inmate costs
at those institutions.
Northern Correctional Institution is the most expensive, costing $180 a
day he said. That's more costly than the $76-a-day average cost to
incarcerate inmates, the Department of Correction says.
Garnett could not estimate the cost of execution because the state has not
imposed the death penalty since 1960.
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.
The Connecticut Civil Liberties Union and Ross' father, Dan, want to
intervene as "next friend" in the case, arguing that Ross is not competent
to make his own decisions. The state Supreme Court has told lawyers to put
their arguments in writing.
In a 2003 report submitted to the General Assembly by a state Commission
on the Death Penalty, the Division of Public Defender Services said the
average cost of defending a death penalty case was $380,000. The agency
also said the cases ranged from $101,870 to a little less than $1.1.
million.
The Division of Public Defender Services says the average cost of
defending a case involving life imprisonment with no possibility of
release was $202,365 with a cost range from $85,540 to $320,580.
(source: Newsday)
*********************
DEATH PENALTY DEBATE
With the final hours and appeals of Michael Ross ticking away and
Connecticut just weeks away from its and New Englands first execution in
over 40 years, residents, city officials and members of the judicial
system are still divided on whether the state has a right to kill a man.
Whether a democrat, republican, Catholic, Jewish, black, white, gay,
straight, male, female or alien, the topic of the death penalty gets
varying views.
Just walking down Main Street, you can get opinions from "let him fry" to
"no one has the right to kill anyone."
"Im for the bible," said Diane, who chose to withhold her last name. "What
he did was wrong, but does making another wrong make it right?"
Ray Coleman, a long time city resident, does.
"I think he should be killed and even he thinks he should be killed. I
believe in the saying an eye for an eye" said Coleman. "If he had killed
my daughter, he wouldnt need the death penalty."
Elaine Eldridge, says even though her religion tells her she is wrong,
someone like Ross deserves to die.
"If 12 people feel you are guilty and there is enough evidence, you should
die," said Eldridge. "I believe in an eye for an eye. I probably shouldnt
because Im Catholic, but thats just what I believe."
When talking to some of the people that end of defending some of the
people that could wind up on death row, cries against the death penalty
are expected.
"I find it deeply disturbing the state is so preoccupied with death," said
Attorney Norman Pattis.
"I feel disgusted by the states blood lust."
However, one defense lawyer actually does see a purpose in the penalty,
but it isnt as a deterrent.
"If you put someone to death there is no other use than as revenge," said
Attorney David Brown.
A former state prosecutor before he became a defense attorney, Brown has
years of experience in the judicial system and says he never once saw a
criminal think about the consequences of his crime.
"In all my years of experience, I never once knew a criminal thinking
about the penalty of his crime. In the law, I know it doesnt work a s a
deterrent," said Brown. "Texas cant seem to fry enough of them and they
have as much crime as any state."
Brown says he personally believes in the death penalty because he knows a
murder doesnt just kill the person but also the people that knew and loved
them.
"If somebody had did that to my daughter, I would be the one pulling the
switch," said Brown.
In politics whether your for or against the death penalty can sometimes
decide your political fate, so stating your position on the topic is never
easy.
Durham First Selectwoman Maryann Boord says no matter how bad a crime
nothing can justify killing another human being even in Michael Rosss
case. And she disagrees with Gov. M. Jodi Rells decision not to use the
powers given to her by the state consititution to postpone the execution.
"I sympathize with the victims and I really appreciate the time and effort
she (Rell)put in speaking with the his and the victims families, but I
dont agree with it," said Boord. "I understand her decision but I just
dont think its right to take another persons life."
However just one town over, First Selectmen Charles Augur says in Rosss
case death is a fitting punishment for the crime.
"I think if it is a justifiable crime then they should die and in Rosss
case it is," said Augur.
"If ever there was a justifiable reason to kill someone, Ross is it."
(source: The Middletown Press)
**********************
Conn. killer prods state to go ahead with his execution
Connecticut is scheduled to carry out its first execution in 45 years
later this month, but only because multiple murderer Michael Ross has
volunteered to die.
Ross, convicted in 1987 of kidnapping and strangling 4 teenage girls and
raping three of them, says in a letter written from death row that he has
dropped his appeals to spare the feelings of his victims' families. Ross,
45, who has admitted killing four other young women in the early 1980s,
also has fired his public defenders and has hired a private attorney to
defend what he calls his right to die.
About the only thing that stands in the way of Ross' execution on Jan. 26
is the Connecticut Supreme Court, which is considering whether his former
lawyers should be allowed to present what they say is evidence that Ross
is not mentally competent.
Ross' case reflects 2 trends in how capital punishment is now playing out
across the USA: While 38 states and the federal government have the death
penalty, many states are increasingly reluctant to use it. And about 1 in
9 convicts who actually are executed are like Ross: They volunteer to die.
"There seem to be fewer (death penalty) cases brought to trial, and jurors
seem to be more reluctant to use it," says Richard Dieter, director of the
Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-capital punishment group in
Washington, D.C. "Even when there is a death sentence, it can seem that
states are in no hurry to carry it out."
A report issued by the center last month found that death sentences in
2004 declined to about 130, a 3-decade low. The 59 executions that took
place were 40% fewer than in 1999.
The report said increased concerns about innocence, fed by exonerations of
death row prisoners, produced the declines. 5 death row prisoners were
exonerated in 2004 after new evidence or legal arguments cast doubt on
their convictions or sentences.
In Connecticut, the Legislature restored the state's death penalty in
1973, but prosecutions were few. No jury imposed a death sentence until
1987, when Ross was found guilty of the 4 murders.
Ross, whose lawyers had argued that he killed because of an uncontrollable
"sexual sadism," appealed and won a new sentencing hearing in 1994. But
Ross agreed to accept the death penalty.
Connecticut courts were reluctant at first to accept Ross' offer, but in
October, an execution date was set.
"There is no need and no purpose served in opening old wounds," Ross wrote
in a 1998 letter. Ross' attorney, T.R. Paulding, told a Connecticut
Supreme Court hearing on Wednesday that that remains his client's
position.
It is not unusual for a death row inmate to abandon appeals and volunteer
for execution as Ross has.
Since 1998, 59 of the 513 persons executed have been volunteers, according
to records compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center. They include
Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Aileen Wuornos, a Florida killer
of six and subject of the 2003 movie Monster.
Dudley Sharp, a pro-death-penalty activist in Houston, says most
volunteers are "simply worn down" by lengthy appeals and "want to get it
over with."
Death penalty opponents, such as Robert Nave of the Connecticut Network to
Abolish the Death Penalty, say long stretches on death row make prisoners
"suicidal."
(source: USA Today)
