Jan. 11 OHIO: Attorney Wants New Trial for Death Row Inmate The attorney for a man convicted of killing a Toledo teenager wants his client to get a new trial. Grady Brinkley is on death row for murdering 18-year-old Shantae Smith in January, 2000. Attorney Jeff Gamso believes Brinkley was not treated fairly at his trial or during his sentencing. Gamso will argue before the Ohio Supreme Court that Brinkley should be taken off death row and that he should get a second trial. A jury found Brinkley guilty of killing Smith. Her throat was slashed inside a Collingwood Avenue apartment. Brinkley was also convicted of robbing the City Diner in Toledo. Gamso says it was unfair that Brinkley was tried for both the robbery and the murder at the same time. It will likely be several months before the justices make a decision in the case. (source: WTOL-TV News) LOUISIANA: Rideau's 4th murder trial opens----44-year-old case again before jury The story of how Wilbert Rideau robbed a bank and killed a clerk has been told and retold so many times in Lake Charles that it practically has become an unassailable piece of the town's history. According to testimony from three previous trials, Rideau robbed a bank of $14,000 in 1961, drove three bank employees to a remote bayou and ordered them to stand side-by-side before shooting them. One employee, Julia Ferguson, who already was wounded badly, begged for her life before Rideau stabbed her in the heart and slit her throat. But that version of history is wrong, Rideau defense attorney George Kendall of New York said in his opening statements of Rideau's fourth trial in the case. As arguments and testimony began in Lake Charles on Monday morning, Kendall vowed to expose several key elements of the popular account as myth, perpetuated through the decades by sub-par defense lawyers, grandstanding prosecutors and a white population bent on seeing Rideau die in prison. Rideau, 63, a once-illiterate dropout who turned himself into an award-winning prison journalist, has been heavily involved in his defense strategy. His case has been closely followed by the national media. Rideau has no plans to deny killing Ferguson and wounding 2 other bank employees, which he has always admitted. Rather, his defense team said it will show that the crime was more heat-of-passion manslaughter than cold-hearted murder. "You will see these are not the acts of a well-conceived plan to eliminate witnesses, but the impulsive acts of a nervous and confused man," said Kendall, Rideau's lead counsel, in opening statements to the jury. Differing versions In his sneak preview of how the defense will try to debunk some of the critical accusations, Kendall said the defense would present evidence that casts doubt on whether Rideau planned to take hostages, whether Ferguson said anything -- much less a plea to be spared -- and even whether Rideau was responsible for the wound to Ferguson's throat. "Efforts were made to make this case look worse than it was," Kendall said. Calcasieu Parish District Attorney Rick Bryant, who is trying the case along with 2 assistants, offered the jury a different road map in his opening summation. "He (Rideau) took them 10 miles east of Lake Charles. . . . He lined them up and shot them," Bryant told the 12 jurors. Bryant said Jay Hickman, manager of the bank branch, stumbled into the darkness and submerged himself in a bayou. He said Dora McCain, a teller, played dead. Zeroing in on perhaps the most inflammatory accusation against Rideau, Bryant said he would show how "Julia Ferguson, who was already shot, begged -- begged -- for her life." Rideau then stabbed Ferguson "7 inches through the heart" and cut her throat, Bryant said. Racially charged case That's the account upon which Rideau was convicted in 1961, 1964 and 1970, with all-male, all-white juries sentencing him to death each time. The first two convictions were quickly overturned on appeal. Two years after the third trial, Rideau was removed from death row, but the conviction stood for 30 years. It was overturned in December 2000 on the grounds that black people had been excluded from the grand jury, leading to this trial, which is promising to be as surreal as it has been divisive. In State District Judge David Ritchie's courtroom, with few exceptions, the 3 rows of wooden benches behind the defense table Monday were filled with black spectators; the benches behind the prosecutors, white spectators. Rideau is black, the victims white. For decades, much of the area's black community has championed a commutation of Rideau's sentence. Four times, the state Pardon Board agreed, but Govs. Edwin Edwards and Buddy Roemer refused to touch the highly publicized case. There are equally strong sentiments in much of Lake Charles' white community, however, that Rideau already received leniency when he was spared the death penalty. Rideau was charged under the capital murder statute that existed in Louisiana in 1961, a charge under which the death penalty was later ruled unconstitutional. Bryant maintains that Rideau committed murder and should be convicted of murder, even if it is 44 years after the fact. Poring over the past The legal and logistical difficulties in trying such an old case became apparent from the start Monday. There were several heated arguments about what should be presented to the jury, because many witnesses are dead and much of the evidence is missing. Prosecutors exhibited aerial photographs dating to the early 1950s. The bizarre nature of the trial was made clear when a local radio announcer was brought in to read the 1970 testimony of Hickman, who died in 1988. With Bryant reading the questions of the original prosecutors, FM radio personality Gary Shannon read Hickman's answers. According to Hickman's account, Rideau promised to release the employees without harm if they obeyed him, at one point saying, "Your life is hanging on a string. It all depends on your cooperation." In Hickman's account, Rideau was methodical about standing the employees side-by-side on the bayou, ordering them "to line up more" because Ferguson had ducked behind the other 2. With no live witness to cross-examine, defense attorneys successfully argued to admit pieces of testimony from previous trials. In their transcript-vs.-transcript attack of Hickman's credibility, they showed that Hickman testified he was shot in the right arm in 1964, only to change his wound to his left arm in 1970. The opening day of the trial drew reporters from several out-of-town newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Newsweek and The Christian Science Monitor. Some of the celebrity attraction of the trial was dimmed, however, when it was announced that former O.J. Simpson attorney Johnnie Cochran, who joined Rideau's defense team 2 years ago, was too ill to attend. Shannon is expected to return to the witness stand today, when he is expected to read the testimony of at least 8 other witnesses who are deceased or incapacitated. (source: Times-Picayune) TENNESSEE: High court to hear death penalty case----Shelbyville woman was found murdered in 1985 The death penalty case of a Marietta, Ga., man convicted in the brutal stabbing death of a Shelbyville woman in 1985 will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this spring. Brenda Blanton Lane, an MTSU honors graduate and former reporter for the Shelbyville Times-Gazette, was abducted from the Big Springs Shopping Center in Shelbyville on New Year's Day 1985 and driven to Coffee County where she was killed. Lane, 28, was found fully clothed near J.D. Neil Road about 3 miles from the Mount Vernon community near Normandy Lake Jan. 3, 1985. The Shelbyville woman had been stabbed four times in the back and run over by her own car. The state of Tennessee appealed a 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decision reopening the case to the U.S. Supreme Count. The appeals court decision called for the district court to hold an evidentiary hearing in the case, but the state believes the case should not have been reopened just before the execution date. Appeals court justices said proof that Thompson suffered from schizophrenia was available but was not included in his original trial. Thompson's execution was stayed for 180 days to permit the district court to look into the case. The state claimed that the court of appeals exceeded its authority. The Tennessee Attorney General's Office refused comment on the case. Dana Hansen Chavis, of Federal Defenders Services of Eastern Tennessee, who represents Thompson, did not return a message left by The Daily News Journal Monday. Lane's sister, Barbara Brown, of Unionville, said the lengthy case has been "extremely devastating" to her family. "We would like to see something done," she said. "It has been 20 years. It seems ridiculous it would take 20 years to see a verdict carried out." Dealing with the unresolved case has been especially tough since she is one of Lane's only remaining relatives, Brown said, adding that her father, Sammie Blanton, is currently ill. "I was the only sibling, so it has been very tough," she said. In 2004, Thompson's request for a competency hearing to determine if he was mentally competent enough to be executed was denied by the 14th Judicial District in Tennessee. Thompson was convicted of 1st-degree murder by Coffee County jurors Aug. 17, 1985 when he was 23. He was sentenced to the death penalty Aug. 22, 1985 and was scheduled to die the next January. His companion, Joanne McNamara, then 15, also was charged in the crime. Thompson's latest execution date had been set for Aug. 19, 2004. He is currently confined at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Lane was the niece of former Shelbyville Police Jesse Blanton, and her father, Sammie Blanton, is a well-known farmer in the Unionville area. She was employed at United Methodist Publishing House in Nashville at the time of her death. (source: The Daily News Journal) NEW YORK: Death Penalty Support for the death penalty was credited with electing Ed Koch mayor of New York City in 1977 and George Pataki governor in 1994, each in races with Mario Cuomo, a lifelong opponent of capital punishment. Pataki brought the death penalty back to New York State in 1995 and while there have six convictions under it since then, there have been no executions. Last June, the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, declared the law unconstitutional. Pataki continues to support the death penalty, touting it in his State of the State address January 5 among the reasons crime has gone down dramatically during his tenure. But the political landscape may have changed around him. Opponents of the death penalty, who see it as a major civil rights issue, have reason to feel encouraged that it will not be reinstated in New York. Yes, State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the almost certain Democratic nominee for governor next year, has said he is in favor of capital punishment for "premeditated acts of terrorism." But he told Joyce Purnick of the New York Times, "I would be surprised if its an issue that is paramount in the public debate." Yes, the New York State Senate has passed a new death penalty bill that is supposed to address the concerns of the high court. But opponents call the Senate bill itself, which was passed without hearings, constitutionally flawed. The court struck down the 1995 law in June because it said that if a jury could not agree unanimously on giving a defendant either death or life without parole, the convicted person would get 25 years to life with parole. The court felt that this coerced the jury to be unanimous for a more severe penalty. Under the new Senate bill, if a jury deadlocks on a sentence, the defendant automatically gets life without parole. Whether or not the senate bill could pass constitutional muster, the Democratic-controlled New York State Assembly seems to be opposed to it, and may not bring it to the floor for a vote. At its first hearing on the issue in December, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau spoke out strongly against it: "The death penalty exacts a terrible price in dollars, lives and human decency. Rather than tamping down the flames of violence, it fuels them." Additional hearings are planned for January 21st at 10 AM at the Bar Association of the City of New York at 42 W. 44th Street and January 25th in Albany. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a supporter of the death penalty in the past, has given no indication of when or if he will take up the State Senates bill to reinstate it. The death penalty will play a more nuanced role in the mayors race this year, with incumbent Republican Mike Bloomberg opposed to it and his Democratic rivals split on the issue. Former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, the only Democrat who leads Bloomberg in recent polls, opposed the death penalty until 1997 when he came out in favor of it for cop killers. When he ran again in 2001, he supported a moratorium on the death penalty, a position that many have embraced in the wake of DNA evidence exonerating scores of death row inmates. U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner of Brooklyn is a death penalty supporter who also now supports a moratorium. The rest of the Democratic field--City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, and Councilmember Charles Barron--oppose the death penalty. With crime--especially murders--down, it is possible that this issue will play much less of a role in the mayoral election than it has in the past, though Ferrer may be attacked by some of his opponents for his evolution on it. The New York City Council passed a resolution in 2002 by a 38-13 vote calling on the state to halt all executions "until the application of capital punishment in New York is investigated and issues of fairness, justice, equality, due process and cost are addressed." All of this encourages death penalty opponents in the state. New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, founded in 1990, is a coalition that has grown to encompass more than 300 supporting groups , ranging from the New York Bar Association to the New York State Council of Churches. "Too frequently," said Dennis Kaczynski, the coalition's executive director, the death penalty"is imposed not on people who commit the worst crimes, but who have the worst attorneys, limited resources, and the wrong skin color. You could call it a negative lottery where on the names of the poor are ever entered." Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said, "There is clear evidence that it does not deter crime and that whether or not someone faces it depends more on race, geography, and politics than the gravity of the events or the misdeeds of the perpetrator." But she added, "even if our society could insure that capital punishment could be administered with unfailing accuracy, fairness, and justice, we would still be opposed to it because it is immoral for a society to kill people." Lieberman noted that has proven cheaper to incarcerate convicted murderers for life than for the government to go through the process of trying to execute them. New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty estimates that, even though nobody has been executed, the state spent more than $175 million on that process since reinstating capital punishment. (source: Gotham Gazette) ********************* On Justice, in Politics and on Stage In politics, as in show business, you reach for golden oldies when you are not brimming with fresh ideas. Gov. George E. Pataki understands that. So when he delivered his State of the State address to the Legislature last week, he trotted out a few crime-fighting proposals. Forget the surveys showing that this topic has slipped pretty far down the list of immediate concerns for most voters. Crime is for Mr. Pataki what "Badlands" is for Bruce Springsteen or "Some of These Days" used to be for Sophie Tucker: an inescapable part of the repertoire. The governor missed an opportunity, though. He could have given this old standby an interesting twist. You saw how Republicans thrashed the Democrats in 2004, tarring them as the embodiment of morally suspect Hollywood values. Mr. Pataki might have brought that theme directly to New York. He could have denounced Broadway values. We are talking about theater that is soft on serious crime. Look at what Broadway offers. One of the longest running shows is "Chicago," which makes light of 2 publicity-hungry female murderers. A recent acclaimed play was "Frozen," which sought understanding for a serial killer of little girls. Now, a red-hot ticket is "Twelve Angry Men" at the American Airlines Theater, a faithful rendering of a Reginald Rose television and film drama from 5 decades ago. In it, a lone juror votes for acquittal against all odds. By the end, he persuades his 11 colleagues to exonerate a young man who, from the evidence, would seem to be guilty of having stabbed his father to death. Golly, governor. Talk about the triumph of a bleeding heart! This is the first Broadway staging of "Twelve Angry Men." Maybe it reflects the times. When the city's streets were awash in blood - 2,245 murders in 1990 alone - the public might not have warmed to a play about New York jurors freeing a probable killer against their own initial (and arguably better) judgment. With crime way down, we seem to have softened. At Sunday's matinee performance, the sold-out audience leapt to its feet in ovation. Set in 1954, the play is unapologetically dated. Capital punishment, Mr. Pataki and others in Albany may be thrilled to hear, is in effect. All the jurors are men. And every one of them is white. Nowadays, you would be hard-pressed to find a group like that in this city except perhaps when leaders of the firefighters' union gather. Our holdout hero, Juror No. 8, says at the start of deliberations that he is voting "not guilty" because he wants to talk. "It's not easy," he says whiningly, "to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it." Who ever said it was? At this point, he does not offer a reasonable doubt, certainly not a doubt that comes with a reason. He just wants to talk. Fine. He talks. Gradually, he wins over other jurors, some of them guided more by their resentments and mutual antagonisms than by the facts. For example, the evidence shows that the teenager accused of killing his father in their apartment had bought an unusual knife. He lost it, he says. Yet somehow, a virtually identical weapon landed in the father's chest. Are we to believe that someone else went to the apartment and just happened to stab the old man with a similar knife? "It's possible," Juror No. 8 insists. Sure. And maybe Ashlee Simpson will develop some talent this week. Bit by bit, the jurors find reasons to question the reliability of key witnesses, like a woman who said she had seen the son stab the father from her window and an old man who said he had seen the teenager flee moments later. The defendant's alibi is that he was at the movies. What film? He could not remember when questioned by the police. What theater? He couldn't remember that, either. Well, Juror No. 8 says, that's possible, too; the poor lad was in shock. By the play's end, the deck is so stacked that the few diehards still voting guilty are the most bigoted or the angriest or the iciest of the group. Eventually, though, they all cave. The last to fall is Juror No. 3, who until then had been fairly clear-eyed about how the evidence was being interpreted. "Everything that's come out in this room has been twisted and turned here," he says. He may have been right. If Governor Pataki is at all concerned about Broadway values, he ought to see this play for himself. On second thought, maybe he shouldn't. It might upset him too much. (source: The New York Times)
