Jan. 18 CALIFORNIA: Neither Schwarzenegger nor high court spare condemned killer Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday turned back a plea for mercy for a man convicted of murdering 2 women in 1981 over a drug deal, clearing the way for California's 1st execution in nearly 3 years. Donald Beardslee, 61, is scheduled to die by injection Wednesday at 1 minute past midnight. "The state and federal courts have affirmed his conviction and death sentence, and nothing in his petition or the record of his case convinces me that he did not understand the gravity of his actions or that these heinous murders were wrong," Schwarzenegger said in his written denial. Beardslee's lawyers claimed he suffered from brain maladies when he killed Stacey Benjamin, 19, and Patty Geddling, 23, to avenge a soured $185 drug deal. His 3 appeals before the Supreme Court included claims that the lethal injection he is due to receive at San Quentin State Prison constitutes cruel-and-unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment, and that jurors were unfairly influenced when they rendered the death verdict. The court denied his appeals without comment. Defense lawyer Steven Lubliner said killing Beardslee is wrong. "It accomplishes nothing," he said. "It demeans everyone." Prosecutors have said Beardslee, a machinist who was on parole for murdering a Missouri woman, was not a passive, unwitting dupe when he committed the murders, as his lawyers claimed. They claimed Beardslee helped with the murder plot and sent his roommate to get duct tape to bind the victims before they even arrived at his apartment. "We are not dealing here with a man who is so generally affected by his impairment that he cannot tell the difference between right and wrong," Schwarzenegger said. The governor also brushed aside a claim that Beardslee should be spared because he is the only 2 of the 3 people convicted in the murders who received a death sentence. The governor noted that Beardslee was the only one on parole at the time for another murder. Beardslee served 7 years in Missouri for murdering Laura Griffin, whom he met at a St. Louis bar and killed the same evening. The last execution in California came on January 29, 2002, when Stephen Wayne Anderson was put to death for shooting an 81-year-old woman in 1980. He was convicted of breaking into the woman's home, shooting her in the face and then fixing himself a dish of noodles in her kitchen. California has had 10 executions since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1977. More than 600 men are on the state's death row. A year ago, 2 1/2 months after he took office, Schwarzenegger denied clemency to Kevin Cooper, convicted in the hacking deaths of 4 people in 1983. Cooper later won a stay of execution from a federal appeals court. (source: Associated Press) CONNECTICUT----impending execution Flurry of legal action seeks to halt execution Connecticut's public defenders and an attorney for serial killer Michael Ross' father went back to court Tuesday, continuing what they say will be a flurry of legal activity in an attempt to stop next week's execution. Connecticut's Divison of Public Defenders filed a motion with the state Supreme Court asking for a stay of the Jan. 26 lethal injection. The public defenders and Jon Schoenhorn, an attorney for Dan Ross, also filed "writs of error," asking the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision that barred them from filing post-conviction appeals in state court. Meanwhile, attorneys for the Missionary Society of Connecticut were in Hartford Superior Court asking for standing to argue in a lawsuit that Connecticut's Board of Pardons and Parole should be forced to hold a hearing to consider commuting Ross' death sentence to life in prison. Judge Robert E. Beach Jr. is expected to rule on that request Wednesday. Later this week, a federal civil rights lawsuit will likely be filed on Dan Ross' behalf, Schoenhorn said. That lawsuit would argue that the rights of Ross' father will be violated his son is executed before the U.S. Supreme Court has a chance to rule if Connecticut's death penalty is constitutional. "I'll be quite frank about this, all this flurry of activity is going to continue," Schoenhorn said. "Any possible avenue to put the brakes on this rush to execute will be explored. And we'll keep doing it until Wednesday at 1:30 in the morning." Ross is scheduled to die shortly after 2 a.m. at Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers. The date was set in October after Ross fired his public defenders and retained attorney T.R. Paulding to help him expedite the execution and forgo any further appeals. Paulding said he anticipated there would be attempts to stop the execution, but did not anticipate just how many there would be. "I don't know how it will turn out," he said Tuesday. "At least so far, every court has ruled that Michael Ross is competent and that nobody else has standing to bring appeals." 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 request for a stay of execution asks for more time to allow the Division of Public Defender Services to file a federal appeal of last week's state Supreme Court ruling. That ruling barred public defenders from intervening in the case to argue that Ross is mentally incompetent, said Gerard Smyth, the state's chief public defender. The high court found that there was no "meaningful evidence" to support that assertion. No date had been set to hear that motion. Schoenhorn filed his "writ of error" seeking to argue on Dan Ross' behalf that nobody in Connecticut should be executed until the state completes its study to determine if Connecticut's death penalty is racially, ethnically or geographically discriminatory. "That should get that issue before the Supreme Court," Smyth said. "It's an issue at least 2 members of the court expressed concern about in last week's ruling." Friday's high court decision was unanimous, but Justice Flemming L. Norcott Jr. and Judge Anne C. Dranginis issued concurring opinions in which they argued the execution should not go forward. "My concern is that to permit an execution to proceed without the benefit of the completion of that study and a ruling thereon amounts to an informal and premature judicial imprimatur on the fairness of the death penalty process," Norcott wrote. Also Tuesday, more than 30 death penalty opponents wearing red stickers that read "Don't kill in my name" attempted to lobby state lawmakers at the Capitol. "I don't want Connecticut to act like Texas," said the Rev. John Hay of the United Church of Christ in New Haven. "We as a state have gotten a black eye because of the corruption in our government and this is clearly a step backward." Death penalty opponents hope to repeal the statute before Ross' execution, but acknowledged Tuesday that it doesn't look very promising. "I think with a week left, you're not going to see much in the legislature," said Kim Harrison, a lobbyist for United Church of Christ. "It's clear we don't have the bodies in the legislature to change Jodi Rell's mind." Last week, a spokesman for the Republican governor said Rell was standing by her Dec. 7 decision to not grant Ross a reprieve and give the legislature time to debate Connecticut's death penalty statute. Since Rell's decision, a new Quinnipiac Poll has shown that 70 % of Connecticut voters support Ross' execution. 59 % of Connecticut voters said last week that they support the death penalty. Yet, when given the choice between the imposing a death sentence and life in prison without the possibility of parole, 49 % said they preferred the prison sentence. House Speaker James Amann, D-Milford, said a continuing poll of House Democrats shows an overwhelming percentage oppose debating the death penalty before Ross' scheduled execution. "I've been in this game long enough to know how the numbers are breaking. It's pretty overwhelming," Amann said. "People want to have the debate, but they want to go through the process." Amy Harris, a member of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty and an organizer of Tuesday's lobbying effort, said she still hopes Rell will change her mind. "She reads the paper and she sees the news and she sees a lot of activity against the death penalty," Harris said. (source: Associated Press) IDAHO: Judge Agrees With Jury's Death Sentence Decision For Erick Virgil Hall Saying a threshold had been crossed, a judge sentenced Erick Virgil Hall to death for the murder of flight attendant Lynn Henneman. By so doing, Judge Thomas Neville agreed with the earlier recommendation of a jury that Hall die for his crime. This was the 1st Idaho jury, as required by law, entrusted to recommend a death sentence. Hall, who refused his right to talk, seemed indifferent during the sentencing. "The court finds that this is that unusual case where a threshold has been crossed," said Judge Neville. "And where the death penalty is morally just and appropriate under the law in accordance with the jury's determination." Hall was also sentenced to 2 life terms for the kidnap and rape of Henneman. He will be back in court this Spring, charged with the murder of Cheryl Ann Hanlon. (soure: KBCI TV News) PENNSYLVANIA: Supreme Court weighs fate of Pennsylvania death row inmate The Supreme Court appeared split Tuesday over a Pennsylvania death row inmate's fate, as justices considered whether Ronald Rompilla's jury was given poor instructions, and whether his lawyers did a poor job defending him. For Rompilla, 56, who beat, stabbed and burned an Allentown man to death in 1988, the high court's decision could mean the difference between a new hearing and a date with the executioner. For the justices, the case is one in a long line examining how the death penalty is meted out in this country. The court has significantly transformed capital punishment in recent years, outlawing executions of the mentally retarded and hiking up standards for defense lawyers. But during Tuesday's arguments, at least one justice who has supported prior changes, Justice Anthony Kennedy, seemed skeptical of Rompilla's case. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a swing vote in death penalty cases, sat mostly quiet. Billy Nolas, the federal public defender handling Rompilla's case, told the justices that his client was wronged when jurors in his case were not told that he could never be paroled from a life sentence for the crimes. He also said Rompilla's lawyers failed him when they declined to look into his school and mental health records for evidence that could have convinced the jury to spare his life. But Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General Amy Zapp said Rompilla's lawyers did a lot of research on their client's background and made a strategic choice not to do more, thinking that there was nothing in his past that would help his case. The federal government is backing the state on that position. Zapp also said the jury did not have to be told about the optional punishment of life without parole because prosecutors never explicitly argued that Rompilla should be executed to prevent him from killing again. "The words in this case did not tell the jury to take future dangerousness into account," Zapp told the justices. Prosecutors have to contend that a defendant is likely to kill again, she said, to trigger a requirement that a jury be told that life without parole is an option. In some ways, Rompilla's case makes clear how focused the high court's death penalty review has become. The justices have already made clear in 1994 and 2002 that jurors need to be informed about life without parole even when prosecutors only hint that a defendant could be dangerous in the future. And a 2003 ruling in Wiggins v. Smith said defense attorneys must conduct a "thorough investigation" of a client's background to find "all reasonably available mitigating evidence." The questions in Rompilla's case are whether the 1994 and 2002 rulings apply to the specific and peculiar circumstances of his case, and whether his lawyers, who did investigate his background but missed critical information, met the standards set by the 2003 ruling. Tuesday, it was clear that Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens - all leaders of the court's death penalty reform efforts - were leaning in Rompilla's favor. Souter pressed Zapp on her insistence that prosecutors were not really arguing that Rompilla would be a future danger when they listed his prior crimes and harped on the brutality of the 1988 murder. "This was a specific argument that says, he has done this twice, it's recidivism and he's getting better at it," Souter said. "It's not a general argument that he's a bad person." Breyer said it seemed incredible that Rompilla's lawyers didn't find out about the abuse he suffered as a child, because there was reference to it in documents they could have obtained from prosecutors, but didn't. "The document says, 'Ronald comes from the notorious Rompilla family,' and then it goes on to say why they were so notorious," Breyer said. "They didn't view that document, so they didn't know." Justices Kennedy and O'Connor, who both supported the toughening of standards in the earlier court cases, expressed concerns Tuesday that by overturning Rompilla's death sentence they would be broadening those protections too much. Kennedy wondered aloud whether it was reasonable to hold Rompilla's lawyers responsible for something they might have discovered through "serendipity" by rummaging through documents. O'Connor said the justices had a "really tough road" to travel to find that anything done in the case was "unreasonable," as federal law requires before the court overturns a death sentence. Without either Kennedy or O'Connor, Rompilla's appeal will fail. The justices' skepticism was echoed in the arguments of Traci Lovitt, assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General, who said Rompilla's lawyers had conducted a reasonable investigation, then made a "strategic choice" not to go further. She said his lawyers hired mental health experts who looked into his history, and his family insisted there was no history of abuse. "There's a misconception that counsel did nothing here," Lovitt said. "That's wrong. They did." (source: Knight-Ridder Tribune)
