Jan. 16 INDIANA: Death Penalty----The Issue: Capital punishment cases drag on and on. Our View: This system fails by just about any measure. With an execution date nearing for well-known death row inmate Donald Ray Wallace, it's easy to think we're drawing to the close of an unusually long-lived case. But the 25-year-old Wallace case isn't much different from others in Indiana, reinforcing the belief that the death penalty serves only vengeance while agonizingly prolonging murder cases. One need not look far to find other examples. Just this past week there were new developments in the case of Keith B. Canaan, who stabbed to death Lori Bullock on Evansville's East Side more than 19 years ago. Canaan is already off death row - where he spent 16 years - after a ruling that his lawyers didn't properly advise him during the penalty phase of his trial. A federal appeals court last week upheld that ruling, making it unlikely his death penalty will be reinstated. Wallace, convicted for the brutal slayings of Patrick and Teresa Gilligan and their 2 young children, recently became the dean of Indiana's death row only because the death sentence of Michael Daniels was commuted by outgoing Gov. Joe Kernan. Wallace has plenty of long-tenured company, however. 10 current inmates have spent more than 15 years on death row. Other inmates would have been there as long had their death sentences not been overturned for various reasons. Kernan said he commuted Daniels' sentence to life in prison because of the convict's mental illness and doubts whether Daniels was the triggerman in the slaying of an Indianapolis minister in 1978. The minister's son, Tim Streett, supported Kernan's decision and said he does not believe the death penalty serves as a deterrent. Many of the best criminal justice minds agree. Furthermore, the death penalty is expensive, unevenly administered and needlessly prolongs the heartbreak of families of both victims and offenders. We don't have much sympathy for Wallace, Canaan or other brutal murderers. But good sense tells us that life without parole is a better - and cheaper - option for Indiana than a death penalty that doesn't deter crime. (source: Editorial, Courier-Press) ************************ Something's broken within our 'machinery of death' Gov. Joe Kernan, just before he left office, commuted the death sentence of Michael W. Daniels to life in prison without parole, urging Hoosiers to take a hard look at whether sentencing in capital cases is fair. Daniels was convicted in the 1978 murder of local minister Allan Streett. There is no doubt that the inmate was involved in the crime, but there are questions about whether Daniels, whose 2 accomplices served time but were released long ago, actually pulled the trigger. Daniels' IQ is considered just above the level to be considered mentally retarded. Kernan noted that evidence that supported Daniels was never introduced during the trial. In July, Kernan had granted a reprieve to death row inmate Darnell Williams after DNA evidence was found to be inconclusive. The death penalty has been used in America for 400 years, but a growing number of proponents are beginning to question whether it is administered fairly. In 2003, 267 inmates were removed from Death Row, the largest number since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Illinois accounted for 60 % of them. Before he left office, Gov. George Ryan commuted death sentences of 167 inmates to life in prison and pardoned four others. He was prompted by the fact that 13 other Illinois death row inmates had been released after evidence of their innocence was re-examined. Improved DNA technology and vigorous re-investigations led to uncovering mistakes in the cases. Due to growing unease that innocent people were being executed, the American Bar Association passed a resolution in 1997 calling for a national moratorium on the death penalty. Its members had reason to be concerned. Three years later, Professor James Liebman of Columbia University Law School examined every death penalty appeal from 1973 through 1995 and found that of the thousands of cases that had completed the appeals process, a disturbing 68 percent contained errors so serious that the guilt or sentencing trials had to be held again. Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun and outspoken advocate against the death penalty, saw this first hand. An eyewitness at the executions of two men whom she believes were innocent, Prejean details their cases in a new book, "The Death of Innocents." In it we meet Dobie Gillis Williams, put to death in Louisiana in 1999, and Joseph Roger O'Dell, executed in 1997, their families, advocates and executioners. "Why is it that southern states are . . . the most fervent practitioners of government killing, accounting for over 80 % of U.S. executions?" she asks. "When I first started visiting the condemned in 1982," Prejean writes, "I presumed the guilt of everyone on death row. . . . Now, after working intimately with so many of the condemned and their attorneys, I know a lot better how the criminal justice system operates and how innocent people can end up on death row. Now I know that 95 % of the justice an accused person can expect to get in the criminal justice system must happen at trial. Because once the 'raw stuff' of forensic evidence, eyewitness accounts, police reports, expert witnesses and alibis is presented and decided upon by a jury, chances are no court will ever allow it to be looked at again." She continues, "With so much in the balance as you go to trial, you better have a skilled, energetic lawyer who thoroughly knows the law and how to conduct an exhaustive investigation and is aggressive enough to get hold of the original police report with its fresh, uncensored reporting of facts and eyewitness accounts." Williams, black and indigent, was found guilty by an all-white jury of killing a white woman in a small Louisiana town in 1985. He had an IQ of 65, well below the 70 that indicates mental retardation. Later investigation showed that interpretation of the forensic evidence presented by the prosecution during trial was in error or contrived. That didn't stop his death by lethal injection. O'Dell, a Caucasian, was convicted of murder and rape of a Virginia woman. At trial, forensic evidence was found to be "consistent" with the prosecutor's charges. After a court-appointed attorney undermined his case, O'Dell decided to represent himself. A jailhouse snitch, a surprise witness, testified against him. A Virginia Supreme Court appeal was denied because of a minor technical error. Although the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his case, three justices issued a rare statement of concern: "There are serious questions as to whether O'Dell committed the crime or was capable of representing himself . . . " A subsequent DNA test on blood proved "inconclusive." Later, the court refused to do a DNA test on the semen found on the victim. Certainly, many death row inmates are guilty, but unlike Scott Peterson (convicted of murdering his pregnant wife in California), they often lack financial resources to hire skilled attorneys, are minorities, have low IQs or suffer from mental illnesses. In the case of multiple defendants in a capital case, sometimes only one is sentenced to death after accomplices testify against him. And execution is final. There's no going back to rectify a wrong conviction. Prejean notes this startling fact: Since reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, for every eight people executed, one wrongfully convicted person has been released from death row. "It seems that our 'machinery of death' can't achieve accuracy, much less master the finer points of constitutional protection." ** Death Penalty numbers 38 states, including Indiana, and the federal justice system have death penalty statutes. The number of people sentenced to death reached a 30-year low in 2003, totaling 144 inmates in 25 states. That's less than half the average of 297 sentenced between 1994 and 2000. >From 1977 through 2003, 885 inmates were executed by 32 states and the federal government. At the end of 2003, 3,374 prisoners were under sentence of death in the U.S. California topped the list (629), followed by Texas (453) and Florida (364). Of the total nationally, 56 % were white, 42 % black and 2 % were of other races; 47 women were on death row in 2003. There are 35 prisoners on Indiana's death row. A U.S. Supreme Court case this term will decide whether those who killed at age 16 or 17 can be given the death penalty; 19 states, not including Indiana, allow juvenile executions. (source: U.S. Justice Department Bureau of Justice Statistics and Star Library) (source: Jane Lichtenberg is Focus editor, Indianapolis Star) CONNECTICUT: Some Heinous Killers Given Life Sentences Although death penalty opponents predict that Michael Ross' execution would "open the floodgates" and smooth the way for many more, he is one of only seven men under a death sentence in Connecticut. The gates may open, but no tidal wave will ensue. Proponents of the death penalty argue that the small number of convicts on Connecticut's death row proves that the state's death penalty scheme is stringent, with built-in safeguards that spare all but the most cruel and depraved killers. Ross has said he wants no part of litigation that will begin sometime later this year. At the direction of the state Supreme Court, that litigation will consolidate the claims of any death row inmate who claims that Connecticut's death penalty laws are applied unfairly - marked by racial bias and disparities rooted in where the crime is committed. In 1987 Ross became the 1st convicted killer sentenced to death in the state since the U.S. Supreme Court permitted executions to resume in 1976. His first death sentences were reversed by the state Supreme Court in 1994. He was again sentenced to death by a jury in 2000 - for brutally and sadistically kidnapping and strangling 4 young women, including 2 14-year-olds. He admitted to raping 3 of them. In all, he has killed 8 women and savagely attacked several others. On Jan. 26 he may well become the 1st convict executed in New England in nearly 45 years. "Despite the fact that others have joined him on death row, there have been many defendants who escaped the death penalty," attorney Michael Fitzpatrick, acting as a special public defender, wrote in Ross' appeal brief. Fitzpatrick was arguing that Ross' death sentence was unfair and disproportionate when compared with sentences of other killers in Connecticut who were spared death. The state Supreme Court last year disagreed, capping the last of Ross' mandatory appeals. Fitzpatrick cited a number of capital cases in this state in recent decades that ended in sentences of life in prison, not death. He argued that "in even the most atrocious sex assault/murders, the defendants have consistently received life sentences." Among the cases Fitzpatrick included in his 142-page brief: Steven Wood of East Haven, the 1st capital felon to reach a penalty phase hearing in 1984 - 8 years after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of death penalty laws with appropriate safeguards in place. Wood in 1982 ambushed his ex-wife, Rosa, and a friend, George Troie, at her real estate office on Farmington Avenue in West Hartford, handcuffed them together facing one another and led them at gunpoint to his waiting van. When they attempted to run, he gunned them down, firing nine bullets into Troie and 13 into Rosa, stopping to reload. He then drove to his former West Hartford home, where he raped and killed his 15-year-old stepdaughter and shot his mother-in-law to death. A jury concluded that Steven Wood was insane when he killed Rosa Wood, and he was spared a death sentence. He received multiple life sentences. Jerry Daniels went to the Norwich home of Christine Whipple at about 1 a.m. on Oct. 22, 1984, looking for another woman he thought would be there. He refused to leave when Whipple, 20, asked him to, and a struggle ensued. Daniels took a knife and stabbed her several times in the chest after she had fled into her bedroom. Whipple's 3-year-old daughter, sleeping in the same room, woke up and began screaming, "Mommy. Mommy." With the mother still alive, Daniels slit the child's throat, nearly decapitating her. Daniels then raped Whipple and stabbed her to death. The jury deadlocked 6-6 on whether Daniels' abuse-riddled childhood should be considered a mitigating factor worthy of mercy. He was sentenced to 130 years in prison. Derek Roseboro lived in Derby, only a few doors away from Mary Ferrara, 72, and her legally blind and mildly retarded son, Joseph. On the day in August 1989 that Roseboro decided to burglarize the Ferrara home a 3rd person was there - Mary's 8-year-old granddaughter, Nina - who was staying with her grandmother for part of the weekend. Roseboro stabbed them more than 60 times, with the little girl apparently the last to be killed. She ran through her grandmother's blood, and her footprints led to where she had tried to hide behind a bed. A 3-judge panel spared Roseboro a sentence of death in 1990, while at the same time pronouncing Connecticut's death penalty laws "virtually unworkable" and "almost impossible to impose if the court strictly construes the law." The judges said evidence that the college-educated Roseboro had led and could continue to lead a productive life in prison amounted to a mitigating factor. Jason Day on March 17, 1990, shot to death 4 people with whom he shared a Bridgeport apartment, including a 5-year-old boy, after his girlfriend threatened to leave him. The girlfriend, Lisa Gibson, 24, was among the victims. Also killed were her brother, Raymond Gibson; his girlfriend, Theresa Hamilton; and her 5-year-old son, George Green. Day also pistol-whipped George's 2-year-old brother. Each victim was shot in the head. George Green was forced to kneel in front of a couch before he was killed, execution-style. The boys' mother, Hamilton, was found in a shed behind the house, shot twice in the head. Paint chips on her face were evidence Day also had hit her with a snow shovel. The trial judge granted a motion to impose a life sentence at the conclusion of a 3-day penalty hearing, saying there was no evidence the victims died in an especially cruel, heinous or depraved manner, under the strict definitions set by law and case law. Kevin King broke into the New Britain apartment where 15-year-old Patricia Urbanski was baby-sitting her 3-year-old sister, Justyna, while their mother was at work. The break-in occurred at about 4 a.m. Dec. 21, 1992. Before leaving for work, Gryzna Urbanski had checked to be sure all the windows and doors of their low-income apartment were locked, including those in the basement. But King pulled the metal frame off a basement window, crawled in and proceeded to the 2nd floor. King taped Patty's wrists and mouth with duct tape, raped her, then stabbed her in the face, chest and neck and strangled her. Neighbors heard Patty's piercing screams and called police, who found Patty gasping for breath and bleeding profusely. She later died at the hospital. Police found Justyna, who had witnessed the attack, crying uncontrollably in her bedroom. The jury determined that King committed the murder in an especially cruel, heinous and depraved manner, but also found a mitigating factor. Jurors had heard testimony that King was abandoned by his mother, abused by relatives and suffered from a "compulsive sexual disorder." He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Geoffrey Ferguson of North Carolina rented a car in April 1995 and drove more than 1,900 miles roundtrip to settle a rent dispute with tenants of a 3-family home he owned in Redding. Ferguson killed 2 of his tenants and 2 friends who were visiting by shooting each in the back of the head, then set the house on fire to destroy the evidence. The house was demolished. A third tenant briefly survived the blaze, but died en route to the hospital. All five men who died were in their 20s. Prosecutors, who had said all along they would seek the death penalty for Ferguson, changed their minds at the 11th hour without explaining why. Ferguson was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Adrian Peeler gave a woman a handful of crack cocaine to persuade Karen Clarke to open the door of the Bridgeport home she shared with her 8-year-old son, Leroy "B.J." Brown, late in the afternoon of Jan. 7, 1999. The woman, Josephine Lee, said she then stood back as Peeler rushed into the home and listened as the boy repeatedly screamed, "Mommy. Mommy. Mommy." Peeler shot the boy on a stairway, wounding him, then raced past him to kill Clarke in a 2nd-floor bedroom. On his way back down the stairs, Peeler shot B.J. in the head. The murders were not random. Adrian's brother, Russell Peeler, was about to go on trial for murder, and B.J. was a key witness who could link Russell Peeler to an earlier drive-by shooting in which the same gun had been used. The jury acquitted Adrian Peeler of capital felony and murder, and convicted him of murder conspiracy. He is serving a 20-year sentence. (source: Hartford Courant) ************************* Church Petitions To Fight Death Penalty Barbara Souder believes that all life is sacred, so she found it easy to agree when church leaders at Our Lady of Lourdes Church asked her to oversee a petition drive Saturday evening to abolish the death penalty. Souder and her husband, Bill, are Gales Ferry residents who have worshipped at the Route 12 parish for 20 years. She said they both oppose capital punishment and were willing to man a table in the church's lobby to get the signatures of other people with the same belief. "As Christians, we have to follow Christ's teachings," said Barbara Souder. "Turn the other cheek. You might not love what they do, but you love them, the person." The Rev. Joseph De Costa, the pastor, said he was on vacation in December when a letter arrived from the Most Rev. Henry J. Mansell, archbishop of the Hartford diocese. Mansell sent a letter concerning the church's teaching on the death penalty to all Catholic churches Dec. 8, and asked that it be read at all Masses during the weekend of Jan. 8-9. He asked that a copy of a petition opposing the death penalty be posted in the entrance to each church that same weekend and asked that each congregation host a petition drive this weekend to collect signatures. De Costa said a copy of the letter was printed in the church bulletin and that he would make an announcement at every service this weekend. De Costa said the death penalty is not really a punishment - it's retribution. "That makes the state just as guilty as the murderer," said the pastor. "If someone kills someone, how can you justify someone else killing them? It's the same crime. Killing is killing." De Costa said Friday that feelings on the death penalty within the congregation are mixed. Although several people bypassed the table in the lobby after the 4 p.m. service Saturday, many stopped to sign their names. By 5:20 p.m., 24 people of the almost 100 attending the Mass had signed, declaring their opposition to the death penalty. Bill Souder said that most of the church's members attend the 10:30 a.m. Mass on Sunday. Volunteers will man a table for that service and for another Mass 2 hours earlier. The petitions will be returned to the Connecticut Catholic Conference, the public policy office for the state's Roman Catholic bishops. The conference is collaborating with the Connecticut Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, which developed the petition that will be presented to this session of the General Assembly. The debate on the death penalty is heating up as the state prepares for its 1st execution in more than 40 years. Serial killer Michael Ross is slated to die by lethal injection in the early morning hours of Jan. 26 for killing 4 eastern Connecticut women and girls, three of whom were raped. In his letter, Mansell stressed that the church's intention is not to defend Ross, but rather to assert the belief that all life should be preserved. Opposition to the death penalty is a moral tenet of the Catholic church. In his letter, Mansell referred to a statement by Pope John Paul II, who said that execution is necessary only when it would be otherwise impossible to protect society from a dangerous criminal. Because society has a penal system that is steadily improving, capital punishment should not be an option, said the pope. "The death penalty offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life only by taking life," wrote Mansell. Ron and Ruth Boucher, a Catholic and Baptist, respectively, said Saturday at Our Lady of Lourdes that they don't believe in killing of any kind, including abortion. Ron Boucher said whether the death penalty is right is not a question of religion or politics, but one of conscience. Deacon David Reynolds, the legislative liaison for the Connecticut Catholic Conference, said in a phone interview Friday that the organization has submitted letters to newspapers and religious publications. The group's role is to advocate at the state level for various policies that could affect the church, he said. The church is taking the stand that life is sacred from conception to natural death, he said. Reynolds said capital punishment "violates the dignity of human life." Mansell's letter says that the death penalty is applied unfairly and more often to the young, poor and minorities. Joseph McCutcheon, the 1st person to sign the petition Saturday evening, agreed. McCutcheon said there have been too many cases where people sentenced to death were later exonerated. "1 person put to death that was unjustly convicted is 1 too many," he said. Calvin Ackley and his wife, Lauren, signed the petition, while their children, Lindsey, 10, and Calvin III, 13, looked on. Calvin Ackley said he used to be in favor of capital punishment, but recently changed his mind. "The more I learned about God and religion, the more I was against it," he said. Lauren Ackley said her position on the death penalty is not a political issue, but rather one steeped in faith. "It's what I believe in my heart," she said. "God gives life. He should be the only one to take it away." (source: The Day) ********************* ACLU claims execution process in Connecticut is flawed The people who would administer the drugs used to put serial killer Michael Ross to death next week are under scrutiny. An anesthesiologist hired by the American Civil Liberties Union says Ross could regain consciousness and experience excruciating pain if a sedative isn't given properly. Ethics rules prohibit doctors from assisting in executions. Doctor Michael Heath of Columbia University says the dose of thiopental the state plans to use is so low that there is not much margin for error in administering it. The federal government uses twice as much sedative as Connecticut does. The ACLU used Heath's opinion in its unsuccessful attempt to argue in federal court that Connecticut's protocols for lethal injection amount to torture or cruel and unusual punishment. State officials are refusing to say who will administer the drugs for Ross' scheduled execution on January 26th, citing safety concerns. State protocols say only that executioners be trained by a state licensed and practicing doctor. The Correction Department says state execution procedures have been reviewed and upheld by the state Supreme Court. (source: Associated Press) PENNSYLVANIA: Killer's fate rests with Supreme Court----After 16 years on Pennsylvania's death row, an inmate is approaching the end of the appeals process. 17 years ago this month, Jim Scanlon's body was found lying in a pool of blood inside his Allentown tavern, the Cozy Corner Cafe. He had been beaten, stabbed at least 16 times, and set on fire. Ronald Rompilla, a local parolee with a rape conviction who had been at the bar the night before, was convicted later in 1988 and sentenced to death. Rompilla, 56, has spent 16 years on Pennsylvania's death row, but he is nearing the end of the appeals process. His case will be heard Tuesday by the U.S. Supreme Court, and if he loses, he could become the 1st prisoner involuntarily executed in Pennsylvania in nearly 50 years. "The importance of the Supreme Court case to Mr. Rompilla cannot be overstated," said chief federal defender Maureen K. Rowley. "It will decide his fate - life or death." Tim Scanlon, the murder victim's son, said it's about time. The seemingly endless delays have made a mockery of the system, he said. "It would bring closure to me, knowing he's dead," Scanlon, 48, said of Rompilla. Unlike states that move more swiftly to carry out executions, convicted murderers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey often seem more at risk of dying of natural causes than by lethal injection. While Texas - with a shorter appeals process - has executed 337 prisoners since 1982, the last execution in New Jersey was in 1963. Pennsylvania, which has the 4th-largest death row in the nation, has executed just 3 inmates since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978 - and all 3 voluntarily gave up the right to further appeals. Legal experts see signs of a shift in thinking about the death penalty, in part because DNA testing has exonerated many death-row prisoners, including one in Pennsylvania. Still, there are nearly 3,500 inmates awaiting execution across the nation. Rompilla's case is unusual because it has reached the top of the U.S. legal system. The nation's high court agrees to hear only about 80 cases each year, though it has recently been devoting more scrutiny to capital-punishment cases. Rompilla is one of 232 prisoners on Pennsylvania's death row, and his journey through the appeals process is just one example of how capital cases are handled in the state. Death row inmates routinely spend years and even decades awaiting the outcome of these appeals. One inmate, Leslie Beasley, a twice-convicted murderer from Philadelphia, has been on death row since 1981. But dozens of other prisoners have won reprieves because of serious legal defects in how their trials were handled. One inmate, Nicholas Yarris, was released last year from death row after DNA tests showed he did not rape and kill a woman in Delaware County. He had spent 22 years on death row. Rompilla's lawyers contend that a judge's refusal to tell the jury that Rompilla would not be paroled from a life sentence, along with the failure of Rompilla's trial lawyers to look for court and school records that would have provided more information to persuade the jury to vote for life, violated Rompilla's constitutional rights. Early on, investigators focused on Rompilla. Police found Rompilla's fingerprint on a knife believed to be used in the killing. Blood on his sneaker matched Scanlon's blood type, and Scanlon's wallet was found in the bushes a few yards from the motel room where Rompilla had spent the night. Tim Scanlon is the one who found his father's body the morning of Jan. 14, 1988. He said he attended Rompilla's trial, and most of the appeals proceedings, using vacation and personal days. But 5 years should be enough time for appeals, he said, not 16. "It's too long." Scanlon said he supports the concept of a reasonable appeal. No one wants to see an innocent man executed, but Scanlon said he does not believe that would be the case with Rompilla. Rompilla, who had contended during his trial that someone else killed Scanlon, began his appeal soon after his November 1988 conviction. He first turned to the judge who presided over his trial, and then went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In 1995, the state Supreme Court ruled against him. Rompilla then started a secondary appeal, contending that his trial lawyers were ineffective. He lost that appeal in Lehigh County court, and the state high court ruled against him again in 1998. In 1999, Rompilla took his appeal into the federal system, asserting that his trial lawyers were constitutionally defective in failing to even get school and court records that would have shown more mitigating evidence for the jury to consider. His lawyers contend that the jury never got to hear that Rompilla was abused and neglected as a child and has mental deficiencies. They say that alcohol fueled his earlier crimes, and that he was raised in the basement of a tenement house in a dysfunctional family. In 2000, U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter concluded that Rompilla's trial lawyers should have conducted a more meaningful search for that kind of evidence, and said Rompilla should be given a new penalty hearing, or sentenced to life. State prosecutors then appealed to the Third Circuit. There, in January 2004, a divided federal appeals court reversed Buckwalter. The court concluded in a 2-1 decision that Rompilla received an adequate defense. Third Circuit Judge Samuel A. Alito said Rompilla was arguing that his lawyers were derelict in failing to "take all the steps that might have been pursued by the most resourceful defense attorneys with bountiful investigative support." Alito said "we may hope for the day when every criminal defendant receives that level of representation," but that's more than the Constitution requires. The appeals court also concluded that the trial judge was not required to tell the jury that Rompilla would never have been eligible for parole. Rompilla's appellate lawyers turned to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to overturn the Third Circuit's decision. The nation's highest court is now poised to consider these 2 issues: Whether Rompilla's trial lawyers were ineffective for failing to look for records that would have contained more compelling mitigating evidence. Whether the jury should have been told that in Pennsylvania, a life prison sentence means that Rompilla would never have been eligible for parole. Pennsylvania is the only state that does not provide such an instruction to juries in all cases. Rompilla's jury asked the trial judge during its deliberations whether Rompilla would get out of prison. But the trial judge told jurors that he was not permitted to answer that question. In her dissent, Third Circuit Judge Dolores K. Sloviter said the jury had a right to know that Rompilla would never have been paroled. "Truth in advertising is now the byword of this generation," she wrote. "Truth in instructing the jury as to the effect of the sentence in a capital case is at least as important." In Allentown, Jim Scanlon's bar was sold long ago. His son said he worries that his father has been forgotten over the years, overshadowed by efforts to spare a killer's life. "At times," he said, "there's just no justice." What the Supreme Court Will Consider Ronald Rompilla's appeal of his death sentence to the Supreme Court focuses on 2 points: - Whether the jury should have been told that in Pennsylvania, a life prison sentence means that Rompilla would never have been eligible for parole. - Whether his trial lawyers were ineffective for failing to look for records that would have contained more compelling mitigating evidence in the penalty phase. (source: Philadelphia Inquirer) LOUISIANA: La. Prison Journalist Freed After 44 Yrs. An award-winning black journalist convicted of murder 3 times by all-white juries in the 1961 death of a bank teller was set free after a racially-mixed jury found him guilty of manslaughter. Wilbert Rideau, a confessed killer who gained fame for exposes of harsh Louisiana prison life, won his release Saturday after 44 years in state prisons. A manslaughter conviction allows his release for time already served. Seven whites and 5 blacks deliberated for nearly 6 hours before reaching an unanimous decision. Rideau, 62, showed little emotion as the verdict was announced late Saturday night. His only comment in court was "Yes, sir," when the judge asked whether he wanted, in effect, to be released immediately. He left the Calcasieu Correctional Center with his lawyers, making only a few passing comments to reporters. A news conference was planned for Sunday. "I'm still trying to assess it," Rideau said. "It's unreal. It's all so new." A small but jubilant crowd of supporters cheered Saturday's decision, shouting, "All right, Wilbert!" and "Thank you, Lord!" The case has haunted this lakeside city near the Texas line for decades. Rideau's advocates have contended that his years in prison have rehabilitated him. Rideau was 19 at the time of Julia Ferguson's death. He never denied killing his victim, who was white. His lawyers contended he panicked after a botched bank robbery and stabbed her impulsively amid Louisiana's 1960s-era climate of racial hostility. Rideau, who escaped death row in the 1970s when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed then-existing death penalty laws, has had three previous convictions for Ferguson's death. The convictions were overturned on appeal. 2 governors turned him down for pardons, under strong pressure from citizens here, despite repeated board recommendations that he be released. In 2000, a federal appeals court said his original 1961 indictment was flawed because blacks were excluded from the grand jury. In his 4th trial, Rideau's defense sought a manslaughter verdict. Prosecutors wanted the jury to find him guilty of murder to ensure Rideau would end his days in jail, barring a pardon. Shortly before the jury was handed the case, Rideau's attorney Julian Murray suggested that racism had distorted the crime, keeping local passions inflamed. "You have to understand that time, and then it comes together," Murray said. "You think they would hesitate to exaggerate the facts of the case, to get the result they wanted?" Ferguson's stabbing on a lonely rural road on February 16, 1961 was "a terrible act, a criminal act, one for which he deserves great punishment, but not one for which he deserves to be locked up for the rest of his life," Murray said. "He did a terrible thing, but it wasn't murder." Prosecutors derided Rideau's contention that he acted in confusion. The crime was deliberate and coldly executed. "I thought the most interesting part of his entire story was, 'I didn't murder her, I killed her,'" Calcasieu Parish District Attorney Rick Bryant said in his closing argument. "The passage of time has made him older and hopefully wiser, but it certainly has not made him less guilty," Bryant told the jury Saturday. "Time and age do not give you innocence." Rideau was a nearly illiterate janitor when he held up the bank in 1961. He became a self-educated writer in prison and helped transform The Angolite into a nationally acclaimed magazine dealing with the criminal justice system. He also co-directed "The Farm," a prison documentary that was nominated for an Oscar in 1999, and wrote and narrated an award-winning National Public Radio documentary. (source: Associated Press) COLORADO: State inmates on hunger strike in Caon City More than 100 inmates at Colorado's top-security prison began a hunger strike Saturday, protesting rules limiting family visits and hampering movement to less-secure prisons, officials say. Colorado State Penitentiary inmates also say they are given severe penalties for minor violations. Colorado's 3 death row inmates as well as the prison system's biggest disciplinary scofflaws are held at the Caon City prison, where all prisoners are kept in single-occupancy cells in 23-hour lockdown. About 2 dozen inmates put up signs saying "hunger strike" in their cell windows Saturday, said Alison Morgan, Department of Corrections spokeswoman. Prison inmates follow a 6-level privilege system in which they can gradually earn more frequent and lengthier visits from family members. They eventually can earn their way to a less-secure prison, Morgan said. The DOC will not change its rules because of the hunger strike and instigators of the strike will be investigated for inciting a disturbance, Morgan said. In the 11 years since the high- security prison with 756 beds opened, violence has decreased throughout the prison system, she said. The average stay of offenders at the facility is 30 months. Morgan said the prison is the only nationally accredited high-security prison in the nation. A panel must decide to send DOC inmates to the prison based on violent behavior and inciting disturbances. Because of a shortage of high-security beds, the state has a disincentive to keeping inmates at the prison longer than necessary, Morgan said. The state needs about 500 more high-security beds to meet the need, Morgan said. (source: Denver Post)
