Jan. 12 TEXAS: Padilla pleads guilty, avoids death penalty A League City man will have to spend at least the next 60 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole. Frank Padilla, 45, pleaded guilty to capital murder in connection with the Aug. 8, 2003 death of his daughter, Linda, 2. Padilla also pleaded guilty to two separate charges of aggravated sexual assault of a child. Padilla received 3 life sentences in exchange for his plea. The pleas came on the day that Padilla's trial was set to begin. The Galveston County District Attorney's Office was seeking the death penalty. "The plea, which would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of the League City Police Department, ensures that this defendant will never walk a free man again and gives certain punishment without any error, appellate or writ issues associated with a trial," said Galveston County Assistant District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk. Padilla will have to serve a mandatory 40 years before becoming eligible for parole for the capital murder, Sistrunk said. However, the life sentences for the sexual assaults have been stacked, meaning he has to serve at least 30 years on the 1st conviction before beginning the mandatory 30 years of the second sexual assault conviction, he said. Linda Padilla died Aug. 13, 2003 at Memorial Hermann Hospital. Padilla had taken the child to St. John Hospital in Nassau Bay on Aug. 8, 2003, police said. The girl was unconscious and not breathing and was resuscitated, police said. Padilla told hospital staff the girl had fallen off the sink, police said. However, the girl's injuries were not consistent with a fall, police said. The girl suffered a skull fracture, black eyes, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, brain swelling and anal and vaginal tearing and bruising, police said. The hospital notified Nassau Bay Police, who, in turn, contacted League City Police when it was determined the incident occurred in Frank Padilla's League City apartment, located in the 1100 block of West Main. League City Police said Padilla confessed to the assaults. Padilla had remained in the Galveston County Jail on $1.5 million bond since his arrest shortly after the incident. Police later learned that a pizza delivery driver called a Children's Protective Services hotline after observing a bruise under the girl's eye on June 8, 2003. CPS, after an investigation, fired the worker he contacted for failing to act upon receiving the call, officials said. The investigation found that the worker listed the call as "informational/referral" instead of abuse and neglect," officials said. A charge of injury to a child by omission for failure to protect her child are still pending against the girl's mother, Magdalena Padilla, Sistrunk said. Sistrunk said that case will be addressed before the end of the year. (source: The Citizen) USA: She keeps the faith for death penalty opponents Sister Helen Prejean swore. On a Sunday afternoon no less. The celebrated death penalty opponent was in the middle of a tirade against Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, whose pro-capital punishment arguments she finds repugnant, and who also happens to be a duck-hunting buddy of her brother Louie. "He's horrible," Prejean said of Scalia via telephone from her hotel room in New York City. "Religion is so badly used and manipulated in this country. People selectively quote the Bible to justify their beliefs." It was then that she let the cuss fly: "I mean, Jesum!" Jesum? If that's as close as the author of "Dead Man Walking" gets to truly swearing, she can be forgiven. After all, she is a nun. Still, her outspoken words and actions tend to contradict the cloistered and demure image of the sisterhood. "People say, 'You're a nun, why aren't you teaching children, working with old people?' " said Prejean (pronounced "pray-John"). "They're comfortable with that kind of work. But the minute you work for social change, people call you 'political.' Yet if you just adopt the status quo, that is also a highly political position to take. " Prejean says she isn't trying to refurbish the images of nuns. "I just do what I do." What she does is this: crisscross the country, delivering on average 140 passionate lectures a year that take on not only Justice Scalia but what Prejean sees as fundamental injustices in the US legal system now painstakingly detailed in her new book, "The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions." Prejean's worldwide reading tour brings her to Borders in Framingham tonight at 7:30 and to Cambridge's Brattle Theatre tomorrow night at 6. "A book releases energy," Prejean said in her Southern-tinged accent that bespeaks of a lifetime spent in Louisiana. "So I'm riding that wave right now." The 65-year-old Roman Catholic said she recently spoke at Texas' Sam Houston State University, whose campus is about 3 miles from the death chamber that accounts for one-third of all US executions. "This is in their backyard," Prejean said by way of suggesting she was not preaching to the converted. "Yet as I talked to [the students], I could see in their faces they were moved. They stood up at the end and applauded, but I knew they weren't standing up for me but because they'd been awakened to something." Prejean's own awakening was slower to come. She joined the New Orleans-based Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille in 1957 and for 25 years lived a fairly sequestered religious life. In 1981 she began counseling death row inmates at Louisiana State Penitentiary, which led her to write the 1993 Pulitzer Prize-nominated "Dead Man Walking," a humanizing portrait of a death row killer. 2 years later, when actor-director Tim Robbins adapted the book into a film starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, Prejean emerged as an "activist nun." Using her newfound celebrity, she hit the lecture circuit, and went on to found the Moratorium Campaign (a group working to end capital punishment) and Survive (which counsels murder victims' families). The recipient of numerous honorary degrees, Prejean has even been the subject of Nobel Peace Prize buzz. "She, more than anyone in America, has placed the issue of the morality of the death penalty on the public agenda," said David R. Dow, founder of the Texas Innocence Network and author of the forthcoming "Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row." "She is warm, committed, smart, and funny -- which is a pretty good combination of values for taking on an unpopular cause." A former death penalty supporter, Dow now opposes capital punishment for the same reasons Prejean outlines in "The Death of Innocents" -- that race, poverty, and incompetence play too large a role in a flawed system that sometimes sends the wrongly convicted to death row. "My daddy was a lawyer," said Prejean. "I used to think we had the best criminal justice system in the world. Now I'm not naive." Her position outside the legal system has its advantages. "A person of the cloth, Sister Helen can assert an unambiguous moral claim more powerfully than a lawyer could ever hope to," said Scott Turow, the legal thriller author and lawyer. His last book, "Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty," recounts his service on the Illinois commission that influenced Illinois Governor George Ryan's 2003 decision to commute the sentences of 167 death row inmates. Prejean's new book focuses on the cases of two men -- Dobie Gillis Williams, a man with an IQ of 65 whose legal defense Prejean argues was woefully inept, and Joseph Roger O'Dell, whose suppressed DNA evidence may have exonerated him. Prejean accompanied both men, who she contends were innocent, to their deaths. "I see myself as the witness," Prejean said. "I'm the storyteller, and my fidelity to [their stories] is the Energizer bunny that keeps me going. The fact that I'm a religious nun, I have a voice, people listen to me. The reader, in a way, will become their 1st fair jury." Her books and talks, she hopes, will improve what she sees as America's failure to reflect on tough moral issues such as capital punishment, the war in Iraq, or torture at Abu Ghraib. "It's all about discourse; it's all about reflection," she said. "The spiritual life is about getting under the surfaces, into the pulse, the life, the love force, the God's force that's under all of us -- like in poetry, to find the meaning of things." (source: Boston Globe) SOUTH CAROLINA: Judge hears appeal in death penalty case Attorneys argued that death row inmate Thomas T. Ivey deserves a new trial in one of his murder convictions because one of his attorneys was friends with one of his victims. Ivey, 30, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2 separate trials in the 1993 killings of an Orangeburg police officer and a Columbia businessman. His attorneys at a post-conviction relief hearing Monday said a defense attorney at Ivey's second trial should have been dismissed because the attorney was personal friends with the victim in Ivey's 1st trial. Orangeburg County Chief Public defender Michael Culler had asked to be removed as an attorney for a woman charged with forgery in connection with the shooting death of Orangeburg police Sgt. Tommy Harrison. Attorney Wayne Floyd said Culler asked to be removed because he was a personal friend of Harrison. Ivey was convicted of killing Harrison. When Ivey later went on trial in the shooting death of Columbia businessman Robert Montgomery, Culler was appointed as one of his attorneys. Floyd, who is representing Ivey in his appeal, argued that Culler's appointment was a conflict of interest and that Culler never mentioned being friends with Harrison to the lead attorney on Ivey's 2nd case. Assistant South Carolina attorney general Donald Zalenka contended there was no conflict because Culler and Harrison were not that close. "They didn't have a relationship in the nature it's being portrayed," he said. Circuit Court Judge Jackson Gregory will make a ruling later in the case. (source: Associated Press) CONNECTICUT----impending execution Poll finds Connecticut voters back death penalty 70 % of Connecticut voters say they support the death penalty for serial killer Michael Ross, who is scheduled to die later this month, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. Fifty-nine percent of state voters say they favor the death penalty in general. But given the choice between the death penalty and life in prison without the possibility of parole, 49 % said they preferred the prison sentence. "Connecticut voters' views on the death penalty are similar to voters nationwide," said poll director Douglas Schwartz. "Support for the death penalty drops dramatically when voters are presented with the alternative of life in prison with no chance of parole." In the case of Ross, who has admitted killing 8 women in Connecticut and New York, 85 % said they believe he should be allowed to forego any further appeals. Ross is scheduled to be executed Jan. 26 at Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers. His would be the 1st execution in New England since 1960. Of those opposed to the death penalty, 58 % cited moral or religious beliefs. The survey of 1,287 Connecticut voters was conducted from Jan. 7 to 11 and has a survey error of margin of about 3 % points. (source: Associated Press) ******************** Many take issue to site planned for Ross execution demonstrators Just 2 weeks until Connecticut's 1st execution in more than 40 years and Connecticut authorities are getting ready for the onset of protests. Demonstrators are expected to show up outside the jail when serial killer Michael Ross is put to death on January 26th. Life in this Enfield neighborhood is fairly routine, even with correctional institutions a mile down the road. Ken Maynard remembers some unusual excitement involving an escaped prisoner. "They called him the peanut butter bandit because he broke into a house at one time and made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich," says Ken Maynard. But the scheduled execution of Michael Ross will overshadow the Peanut Butter Bandit's 15 seconds of fame, especially with hundreds of people expected to protest at this field near Ken's house. "It might be kind of filled up here because Shaker Road is the main line here, it is a state road now and a lot of traffic comes through here, coming back from Somers, so it could be pretty nasty I guess," says Maynard. But it is the field itself that is causing controversy. State police and the Department of Corrections says putting protesters more than a mile away is about both safety and security. In a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, among other groups, claims it restricts 1st Amendment rights. Annette Lamoreaux, CCLU Legal Director, says,"To have people two miles away, it totally denies the people their right to express their beliefs in a form that is meaningful in a political context, and meaningful to them." "Anything less than full access to what is public ground and full constitutional protection is absolutely unacceptable," says Robert Nave, Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty. Constitutional or not, Ken knows that in 2 weeks, possibly his neighborhood will witness a hotly contested piece of Connecticut history. "I don't anticipate too much problems over here, but it seems like there are a lot of protests going on so I guess it is going to be a big issue," says Maynard. The plaintiffs involved in the lawsuit are inviting people who are pro-death penalty because they say this issue about the location of the protest is all about 1st Amendment rights and it involves everyone. News Channel 8 spoke with State Police who say their operational procedure for the day that Ross is executed is set, there are roads that will be closed and there will be an increased police presence, but that they will not impede any of the protesters. (source: WTNH News) ************************** Protesters Sue State Over Ross Execution Rules----Groups Say They Have The Right To Be Closer Anti-death penalty groups planning to protest at the execution of serial killer Michael Ross filed suit Tuesday against state officials, saying a plan to restrict them to a field more than a mile from the execution site is a violation of their constitutional rights. Officials from the departments of correction and public safety, Connecticut State Police and the town of Enfield are planning to "essentially corral demonstrators 2 miles from the site of the execution," said Annette Lamoreaux, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut. The ACLU brought the lawsuit on behalf of several other groups, including Amnesty International and Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, a nonprofit organization opposed to capital punishment, arguing that moving the protesters so far away was a concerted effort to silence their opposition to state executions. "The state-sponsored murder of Michael Ross is going to be sanitized as it is, and we refuse to have our protest sanitized as well," said Robert Nave, executive director of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty. "We are not going to drive that distance and stand in a field and mill around, as if there's nothing as grave as a murder taking place a mile and a half away. "This is not protesting a speeding ticket. This is protesting the extermination of a human being at the hands of a government," he added later. "And anything less than full access to what is public ground and full constitutional protection is absolutely unacceptable." Corrections officials say their plans attempt to balance the rights of protesters at the execution with security concerns. "The Department of Correction has reached out to those who wish to demonstrate in an effort to be as accommodating as is possible within the necessary constraints of safety and security," said Brian Garnett, the department's director of external affairs. While public defenders and family members are working overtime to try to save Ross - who has abandoned his appeals and now says he wants to die - another coalition of concerned citizens is descending on Connecticut to perform what they consider their unfortunate responsibility: bearing witness to an execution. "We understand fully the pain of the funeral parlor and the emptiness of the graveyard," said Renny Cushing, executive director of the New Hampshire-based Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights. "But we've come to the conclusion that a ritual killing by the state does not bring back our loved ones. It only widens the circle of pain and it only replicates the type of actions that brought us to our own misery to begin with." According to the advocacy groups and DOC staff members, any protesters opposing or supporting the execution will be restricted to a soccer field, which corrections officials said is about a mile away from the Osborn Correctional Institution, where Ross is to die by lethal injection at 2:01 a.m. on Jan. 26. News reporters will be restricted to a headquarters at the Carl Robinson building nearby. Nave and others who met with DOC and state police officials said they were told that they were being kept off the public roads adjacent to the prison because of security concerns. They called security concerns ridiculous, noting that they plan a non-violent, candlelight vigil. "It's clear to me that the state doesn't want our expression of opposition to the death penalty to be heard by very many people," said the Rev. Walter Everett of the United Methodist Church in Hartford, who said his son was murdered more than 17 years ago. "These are not people who engage in WTO-in-Seattle-type activities," said Lamoreaux, referring to the riots at the World Trade Organization meeting in 1999. "Many of them have attended numerous executions. They routinely participate in vigils and silent protests. It's really somewhat disingenuous for the DOC to say that people like Rev. Everett are security threats, or Mr. Cushing or Mr. Nave. They're just not." In their suit, a draft of which was provided to reporters, the organizations list 12 other recent executions in other states at which protesters were allowed to stand on or very near the site of the execution. Among those on the list is the 2003 execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who was put to death at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., as protesters stood in a nearby field. "In none of the states that we've surveyed are protesters this far away," said Lori Rifkin, an attorney with the ACLU. (source: The Day) ************************* Tape Of Interview Offers Video Defense Of His Right To Die Serial killer Michael Ross has nightmares about his execution and does not relish the thought of crowds of people outside cheering his death. But he is resolute in his wish to go through with it later this month and adamant that it is his right to do so. "I owe these people. I killed their daughters," Ross said. "If I could stop the pain, I have to do that. This is my right. I don't think there's anything crazy or incompetent about that." Ross' attorney, T.R. Paulding, has said for months that the best argument that his client is competent to make the grave decision to proceed to his execution is made by Ross himself. So when it came time Tuesday to respond to claims by Ross' former public defenders that Ross is incompetent, Paulding gave the state Supreme Court an unusual exhibit: Michael Ross. Paulding submitted videotapes of a nearly four-hour interview of Ross conducted last month by Dr. Michael Norko, the court-appointed psychiatrist who subsequently testified that Ross is well aware of his various legal options. Norko concluded that Ross' decision to forgo further appeals is a well-reasoned one. Ross is scheduled to die by lethal injection Jan. 26. Ross on the tapes is eloquent when talking about his desire to spare the families of his victims more suffering and publicity, meticulous in discussing the details of his case and witty at times - whether mocking certain security arrangements or discussing his need for stronger bifocals. "I'm getting pretty old," quipped Ross, 45, who has spent the last 20 years behind bars. He spoke candidly with Norko about the level of anxiety he has experienced since his execution date was set by Judge Patrick Clifford In Superior Court in New London, and about his anger and frustration that his former lawyers persist in their efforts to halt his execution. "It's not state-assisted suicide and it's not that I'm tired of living on death row, though, like I said, I'm not sad to leave this place," Ross told Norko on the tapes obtained by The Courant. "It's because these people have a right to have an end to this [expletive deleted] horror that's been going on for 20 years. And I've finally got - after 20 years - the opportunity to be able to do that. Does that make me incompetent? In the public defenders' eyes, yes it does. I guess that's what you're going to decide." Throughout the interview Ross is seated inside a cell, talking through the bars to Norko, who is off-camera. The interview is akin to a lengthy conversation, with Ross doing most of the talking. When Ross says, "I guess that's what you're going to decide," he may as well have been addressing the Supreme Court panel that has the power to stay his execution and order a new competency hearing. Ross emphasized to Norko that he had six lengthy visits with his former public defenders between June and August of 2004, when he fired them and officially hired Paulding, who agreed to help him assert his right to "volunteer" to be executed. "They were basically guilt trips," Ross says of those legal sessions. "But I sat patiently through all their arguments, the legal issues I could pursue. ... Now they say I'm not fully apprised of my options. They sure as hell told me all my options." The interview with Norko was conducted Dec. 15, and just before it began Ross learned that Clifford had denied the public defenders' motions to intervene on Ross' behalf and refused to permit them to cross-examine witnesses or otherwise participate in the competency hearing he scheduled for Dec. 28. The public defenders are now challenging that ruling, as well as Clifford's finding that Ross is competent, in the Supreme Court. The high court held a hearing last Wednesday, and set deadlines Monday and Tuesday of this week for briefs and responses. The court ordered the public defenders to submit details about the witnesses they would call and testimony they would elicit in support of their claims that Ross is incompetent. The public defenders responded with more than 150 pages of testimony, correspondence and Ross' writings - some of which the court initially ordered sealed on a motion by Paulding that the submissions included privileged attorney-client communications and other "sensitive" material. The court at 8 p.m. Tuesday released most of those documents, withholding some of the material Paulding referred to. The public defenders propose to call 9 witnesses, including five of Ross' former public defenders, two psychiatrists who have studied the effects of long-term imprisonment in restrictive settings, Michael Ross' father, and Robert Nave, head of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, who visits Ross. It is not clear whether the Supreme Court will hold another hearing or when it might rule. Paulding said be believes the videotapes are the best evidence he can provide the panel of 4 justices and 3 appellate judges. "It shows his humanity, and it certainly shows he is competent," Paulding said of the interview. In a one-page cover sheet, Paulding tells the court that the best source of information on Ross' competency "comes from viewing him and listening to him speak and answer questions." The tapes provide a window into Ross' daily life, from the religious routine he maintains to his writing of farewell letters and his escape into cryptograms and jigsaw puzzles. He said he embraces routine and gets annoyed when that routine is disrupted. He said he is perplexed by the heightened anxiety he has experienced. "As you know, I've been trying to do this [proceed to execution] since 1995. And stupidly, I thought I could just come over here and just kind of chill out till the day, but there is a considerable amount of anxiety involved. I don't really understand it, to be honest." Ross was moved in late October from his cell on death row at Northern Correctional Center to a cell at the neighboring Osborn Correctional Institution, where the death chamber is located. Ross is in the same wing of cells that once was death row, and where he spent 8 years, before Northern was opened. He said he wakes at 4:30 a.m. and reads Scripture and prays for nearly 90 minutes, and is usually in bed by 8 p.m. At Northern he used to take a 2- to 3-hour nap each afternoon. Legal visits and phone calls and daily visits by mental health professionals make that virtually impossible at Osborn, he said. While at Northern, Ross said, he was permitted to walk to the shower unescorted, ran the book cart for other inmates and stocked supplies. He bristles at the added layers of security since his transfer to Osborn, and the requirement that he be watched by 2 guards anytime he leaves his cell. But he tempered his sarcasm with wit. "In order to do this interview, I'm locked in the cell and you're out there," Ross noted. "Why? I'm going to jump on you? I don't think that's going to help my case for competence. "I have a priest come down and we have to meet like this," Ross added. "I've got enough trouble with God; I'm going to jump on a priest?" Ross spoke of his love of old movies and his disdain for the reality shows so prevalent today. He wept while recounting the end of a recent television movie he saw based on Mitch Albom's book, "The Five People You Meet In Heaven." He paused momentarily to wipe his eyes and regain his composure, then quipped to the camera, "The students might as well see the good, the bad and the crazy." Then he added, "It was a very powerful movie." Its underlying themes are forgiveness and redemption. Ross said that while praying very recently, 2 thoughts came to him. "Trust. Trust in God," he said. "And the 2nd is the [biblical] passage where Peter was refusing to let Jesus wash his feet. Jesus said, 'What I do now you don't understand, but you will understand later.' I believe those things. One of my meditations talks about how God can make good out of even the most unmitigated evil act. ... It's true I did some truly evil acts. And hopefully, some good comes out of this." Ross stressed that he's "not a religious fanatic. ... I have strong beliefs and they've helped me over the years and they've helped me to find peace." Asked by Norko whether he has any hopes, Ross replied: "Yeah, that this is going to help them," referring to the families of his eight victims, and particularly the families of the four young women whose kidnap-murders resulted in 2 penalty hearings involving gruesome evidence. He also said he hopes that in 5 years, when another man is facing execution, perhaps the state will rethink its position and abolish the death penalty. "They're not going to do that now. Now it's about killing me." The prospect of execution does not rest easy with him. Ross told Norko about a recurrent nightmare he had the last time he lived at Osborn, when the electric chair was still standing in the death chamber a few cells away. He envisioned himself being strapped in, and then he "would float out over the prison and watch the, um, crowd as they counted down my execution, just like it was New Year's Eve: 10. 9. 8, and the lights would dim and they would all cheer. 30 seconds later the lights would dim and they would all cheer again." (source: Hartford Courant)
