Jan. 20 FLORIDA: Prosecutors again seeking death penalty in Osceola County murder In Kissimmee, prosecutors again will seek the death penalty for a man convicted of a 1995 murder in Osceola County, the state attorney's office said. The state Supreme Court last week threw out the death sentence given to Jermaine LeBron, 30, for the murder of Larry Neal Oliver, 22. The Supreme Court did not overturn LeBron's 1st-degree murder conviction, meaning the minimum he faces at resentencing is life in prison without parole. Oliver, a waiter, was found with a shotgun wound to the back of the head, and prosecutors argued LeBron killed Oliver for his customized pickup truck. The Supreme Court had vacated LeBron's 1st death sentence in 2001 and ordered a new penalty hearing because the trial judge overruled the jury's verdict that LeBron had not fired the fatal shot but was guilty of felony murder. The next year, a 2nd jury recommended that LeBron be sentenced to death and the trial judge agreed. But in its Jan. 13 opinion, the state's high court said the judge had erred by allowing the jury to hear details of a robbery conviction. The court ordered that a new penalty hearing be held. The Orange-Osceola State Attorney's Office said Wednesday it will seek a death sentence for LeBron during the new penalty phase. (source: Associated Press) ****************** Defense attorney: Patten believed Satan communicated with him The devil made him do it. The voices in his head kept Rodrigus Patten agitated and confused. He was eager to make a deal with whom he called "the Boss Man" and "the people from below." Patten would be powerful and rich. And he could leave jail and be free. Or so the voices told him. Instead, Patten, 24, could face the death penalty or life imprisonment if he's convicted of strangling to death Dr. David Hoyer, 57, a Bonita Springs psychiatrist, inside the Collier County jail on Jan. 3, 2001. Patten's defense angle highlighted the opening statements of his capital murder trial in Collier County Circuit Court on Wednesday. The freshly picked jury of 6 men and 6 women listened as Deputy Public Defender Mike Orlando described how Patten's schizo-affective disorder caused him to hear voices he thought belonged to Satan. Patten sat wordlessly and emotionless at the defense table as Orlando described a mental illness that began when Patten was an adolescent. It was the groundwork for Patten's insanity defense, arguing he was suffering from a mental illness and unable to distinguish right from wrong or appreciate the consequences of his actions when he killed Hoyer. Patten, of 5367 Hemingway Circle, Golden Gate, had received little treatment for his disorder, even after his family noticed his odd behavior. Instead, Patten walked the streets for years undiagnosed and unmedicated, Orlando told jurors. "You will learn a symptom of the medical illness is a preoccupation with religion and the devil. They believe the devil is communicating with them," Orlando said. Patten was arrested and put in jail in October 2000 on carjacking and kidnapping charges. He received little treatment for his schizophrenia, as jail officials didn't buy into his mental illness. Patten repeatedly begged for more medication but was refused, Orlando said. "So what happened? The delusions in his mind made him believe he had to sell his soul to the devil. If he did, he'd receive power and wealth. He'd be able to leave jail," Orlando said. His former attorney believed Patten to be mentally incompetent for trial. Hoyer, a David Lawrence Center physician, entered the jail to evaluate him. They were in the room, alone, for 20 minutes. Patten was unbounded and unguarded. Hoyer finished the interview. Patten had never met Hoyer. He had no anger or ill will toward him, Orlando said. He hadn't even known about the evaluation beforehand. "As they were talking, the delusions became more and more intense, the devil telling him this is the man, this is the one who has to be sacrificed. Kill him, kill this man," Orlando told jurors. As Hoyer prepared to leave, Patten grabbed him around the neck and strangled him, then walked away. He told jail officials, "Something is wrong with that man," according to testimony from law enforcement officers who opened the state's case Wednesday. They told jurors Patten was calm but appeared in shock after Hoyer's collapse. But Patten later wrote a note to a detective. "I hope those people are happy now," referring to the demons he heard in his head, Orlando said. "They're not of God. They're un-God." Patten was known to recite Bible passages in reverse and make comments about how he was guilty of killing Hoyer, "a bad seed" who would never reform. He was definitely weird, but he also appeared manipulative and modified his behavior depending on who was in the room, several deputies testified. It also won't help his defense that jurors know Patten repeatedly indicated Hoyer had collapsed on his own during the interview. It was only several days later that he fessed up to the slaying. A person who doesn't know right from wrong has no motivation to try to cover his tracks, Assistant State Attorney Rich Montecalvo told jurors. The case may come down to which expert is most believable. A psychiatrist who will testify for the prosecution will argue Patten was legally sane and understood what he did was wrong, Montecalvo said in his opening statement. Orlando said he has his own experts who will say Patten was insane. If he's found not guilty by reason of insanity, Patten won't walk out of the courthouse afterward. He'll be confined to a maximum-security mental hospital, and it would require a psychiatrist's signature and a court order for his release. The trial continues in Courtroom 2A today, with the end of the state's case and beginning of the defense's case in the afternoon. (source: Naples Daily News) OREGON: Death penalty uncertain in sheriff's killing -- The Clark County defendant's lawyer is granted more time to compose arguments A man accused of killing a Clark County sheriff's sergeant won't know until March whether he will face the death penalty. Thomas Phelan, attorney for Robin T. Schreiber, asked for an extension to prepare information on why the death penalty should not apply to his client. "I simply have not had enough time to prepare a mitigation package," Phelan told Superior Court Judge Barbara Johnson on Wednesday. Clark County prosecutor Art Curtis planned to make a decision Jan. 31 whether to pursue the death penalty against Schreiber. Schreiber, 44, is charged with aggravated 1st-degree murder after hitting Sgt. Brad Crawford's patrol car with his pickup July 30 as he fled police. With several officers from the sheriff's department in the audience along with Schreiber's family, Curtis agreed to the postponement, but he fought Phelan's request to reschedule an April 4 trial date. "April is almost nine months from the date of the incident," Curtis said during the hearing at the Clark County Courthouse. "The state is concerned about delay for the sake of delay. After a period of months, witness recollections get worse, not better." Johnson sided with Curtis and left the trial date intact, saying she would like to keep the trial within 12 months of the incident. Crawford had responded to reports of a disturbance at Schreiber's Orchards home and was blocking traffic in his patrol car when he was struck by the pickup. (source: The Oregonian) LOUISIANA: An unintended boost for the death penalty Wilbert Rideau, a convicted killer, was spared the electric chair thanks to a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating capital punishment as it was applied then. That outcome gratified opponents of the death penalty, a group that includes me. But this week, Rideau walked out of a Louisiana prison, an outcome that ought to disturb opponents of the death penalty. His release will strengthen support for capital punishment by demonstrating that the alternative can't be trusted. The alternative, of course, is life imprisonment without parole. Most critics of capital punishment understand that permanent confinement serves to punish the killer, prevent him from taking other lives and deter others from killing. A lot of Americans who support the death penalty would actually be content with something else: Though 73 % say they favor it for murder, the figure drops to just 53 % if the alternative penalty is life without the chance of parole. So why does capital punishment remain popular? One big reason is that many Americans don't believe life without parole really means life without parole. They fear that some way or another, by hook or by crook, some vicious killers will be allowed to walk the streets as free men. Rideau stands as proof that they're right. Rideau, who has gained considerable recognition as a prison journalist, doesn't deny that he's a killer. In 1961, he robbed a bank in Lake Charles, La., kidnapped three employees and made 1 of them drive the group to a remote spot. There, he shot all of them. 2 of them survived. The third, Julia Ferguson, he stabbed to death with a hunting knife. Rideau was convicted of her murder and sentenced to die. But the courts overturned three convictions, though never on grounds of innocence. And finally, in a fourth trial that took place 44 years later, a jury found him guilty only of manslaughter. Since he had already served more than the maximum term for that crime, he was released. >From the news coverage, you'd think he had been exonerated. The headline in the New York Times said, "Freed after 44 years, a prison journalist looks back and ahead." In USA Today, it was "La. prison journalist freed after 44 years." Notice: Not "killer freed," but "prison journalist freed." No one wanted to get all hung up on the fact that Rideau deliberately snuffed out one life and tried to end two more. Everyone was too busy feeling good about the new freedom of "the most rehabilitated prisoner in America," as he has been called. Rideau, who is black, was undoubtedly treated badly by the white-controlled criminal justice of the old segregationist Louisiana. But it wasn't Jim Crow who thrust a knife into the heart of Julia Ferguson. Forcing a retrial put the prosecution in an almost impossible position. "It's very difficult to try a case that's 44 years old," said Calcasieu Parish District Atty. Rick Bryant. "We had 13 witnesses who were unavailable, including the two eyewitnesses, and we had to present them by reading transcripts." One of the 2 people he tried to kill died in 1988, and the other was too sick to attend. Rideau and his supporters blamed his conviction on the racism that once pervaded the South--as if that were an explanation for robbing and killing innocent people. "This jury," Rideau said afterward, "reached back and pulled a judgment out of the racial clutches I was long in." A local pastor objected to the very idea of holding him responsible for his actions. "It's a judicial lynching," said Rev. J.L. Franklin. "You spend millions on a 40-year-old case. It's ludicrous." Not to the family of the dead woman, I suspect. The implication is that after a while, we should all be willing to forgive a man for deliberately killing someone who had done him no harm. At this point, apparently, Wilbert Rideau's life is more important than Julia Ferguson's. That's the sort of attitude that drives supporters of the death penalty--and some of us opponents--up the wall. It fosters support for state-sponsored executions by suggesting that we, as a society, lack the resolve to make life sentences actually last for life. But anyone who truly believes in abolishing the death penalty has to put an equal priority on making sure that the killers spared execution will be locked up for good. The disadvantage of the death penalty is that when you inflict the punishment on an innocent person, you can't undo it. But it has an advantage: You also can't undo it when you get a guilty one. (source: Column, Steve Chapmen, Chicago Tribune) CONNECTICUT----impending execution Society's Ross Appeal Denied A Superior Court judge Wednesday dismissed a legal challenge by a religious society seeking to stay the execution of serial killer Michael Ross and challenge the lack of written policies and regulations governing commutation of a death sentence. Judge Robert Beach Jr. ruled in Hartford that the Missionary Society of Connecticut does not have standing to challenge the refusal earlier this month by the Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant the society a commutation hearing in Ross' case. Beach emphasized - as have judges and state Supreme Court justices in a half dozen other lawsuits seeking to halt Wednesday's execution - that Ross has said he wants no part of legal efforts that would undermine his intention to be executed. Ross is represented by attorney T. R. Paulding, who told Beach during a hearing Tuesday that Ross has not wavered. Ross signed an affidavit dated Jan. 9 specifically addressing the Missionary Society's efforts, stating, "I do not want the Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles to conduct any type of hearing to consider a potential commutation of the death sentence emanating from my convictions." Attorney James Wade, representing the Missionary Society, argued that it is representing the interests of Connecticut's citizens as a whole by trying to insure that proper procedures are in place and death sentences are thoroughly reviewed before being carried out. The Missionary Society - a division of the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ - asked the board for a commutation hearing on Ross' death sentence in a letter dated Jan. 3. Board of Pardons and Paroles Chairman Gregory R. Everett denied the request, saying the board will consider applications for clemency only from the condemned killer or his lawyer. Beach on Wednesday granted the board's motion to dismiss the society's legal challenge. Wade has said he will appeal Beach's ruling first in state Supreme Court, and subsequently to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. The state Supreme Court last week denied an appeal by Ross' former public defenders, who have sought to intervene on his behalf by claiming he is mentally incompetent to make the decisions he has. In that ruling, the state's highest court noted that Ross is ably represented by Paulding and was deemed competent by Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford in New London on Dec. 28. The Supreme Court ruled that the public defenders - who represented Ross for 17 of the 20 years he has been in state custody- had presented no "meaningful evidence" that Ross is mentally incompetent to forgo further appeals and volunteer to be executed. Clifford and U.S. District Court Judge Christopher F. Droney - ruling in a separate challenge to the lethal injection process filed by Ross' father, Dan - concluded that Ross fully understands the legal options still open to him and has made a knowing, intelligent and voluntary decision not to pursue them. Wade took the creative position that the Missionary Society should be granted standing comparable to a "special attorney general" litigating a concern of public interest. Though such a role exists in Connecticut statutes, Beach noted it has arisen solely in the context of attorneys' fees. "When a party has standing to prosecute a case of important public interest in court, but the vindication of such interest may result in little or no monetary recovery ... statutes may provide for attorneys' fees for the prevailing party," Beach wrote, in his six-page decision. "The notion of a private attorney general has not been used, to my knowledge, to confer standing, but rather to make it worthwhile for one with standing to pursue the action." Beach also noted, "Ross has the ability, of course, to stay the execution at any time." The Missionary Society, Beach said, has not demonstrated "a specific personal and legal interest in the controversy, as distinguished from a general interest that is shared by the community as a whole." The group also failed to show how it was harmed directly by the board's refusal to grant it a commutation hearing in Ross' case. ************************** State To Provide Execution Papers The State Department of Correction agreed Wednesday to conduct a thorough search of all documents and computer records related to the scheduled execution of serial murderer Michael Ross, in response to two Freedom of Information Act requests from The Courant. In an affidavit filed at a Freedom of Information Commission hearing Wednesday, Correction Commissioner Theresa C. Lantz said her department would provide all the documents it plans to release by Jan. 24, and all computer records and e-mails related to the Ross execution by Jan. 31. However, state officials indicated they still would withhold any documents or computer records that could disclose the identity of anyone involved in the execution. To date, department officials have said that disclosing any details about the training and qualifications of those individuals could compromise their safety and security. The Courant has continued to petition the Freedom of Information Commission to direct the state to release these "exempted" records to obtain as complete a record on the Ross execution as possible. The state's right to withhold this exempted material will be addressed when hearings before the Freedom of Information Commission resume in early February. Courant Staff Writer Diane Struzzi filed the freedom of information requests for the public records in December and in early January. Last week, the state released financial information showing that Connecticut has spent more than $33,000 for drugs, medical supplies and mobile offices for the execution, purchases that began last fall. The names of all individuals involved with ordering supplies were blacked out. Travel expenses related to training ran to more than $12,000, the largest single budget item so far, but dates and destinations were not disclosed, nor were the names or number of people who traveled. The agreement stipulating the document and computer search of state records was negotiated by Courant lawyer William S. Fish Jr. and Assistant Attorney General Henri Alexandre, who represents Lantz. "We are pleased that the state took the steps it did for providing these documents that The Courant requested," Fish said. "But the state still thinks that anything or anyone that would lead to identifying those involved in the execution is exempted or redacted material. We'll continue to pursue obtaining these records." The state has made it clear that it will continue to withhold information on the preparation and training of the execution team. At a press conference scheduled for 3 p.m. Tuesday - 11 hours prior to the scheduled execution at 2:01 a.m. Wednesday - the Department of Correction plans to provide details about Ross' last day and last meal. "But anything we say beyond that will be based on our previously expressed safety and security concerns," said Brian Garnett, the Department of Correction's director of external affairs. "We're going to stay with that for now." Ross, a convicted serial killer, has waived his right to further appeals, and his execution would be the 1st in New England since 1960. Advocates of execution by lethal injection describe it as the most painless and humane way to put a criminal to death. But opponents have raised objections based on the belief that improperly prepared or injected drugs could cause searing pain that would not be evident to execution witnesses because one of the drugs paralyzes the prisoner and prevents any visible reaction. (source for both: Hartford Courant) ****************** Inmates On Death Row Along with Michael Ross, there are 8 men on death row in Connecticut, but only 5 have officially been sentenced to death. All are in various stages of appealing their convictions or death sentences. Inmates Todd Rizzo and Ivo Colon were sentenced to death, but the state Supreme Court overturned those convictions and ordered new hearings. Those hearings could again give them death sentences or life in prison. A 3rd man, Eduardo Santiago, is awaiting a death sentence from a judge because a jury has already determined he should be executed for his crimes. The men on death row are: - Robert Breton Sr., age 58 In 1987, Breton entered his ex-wife's Waterbury apartment while she slept and slashed her with a knife. JoAnn Breton scrambled to get free and began screaming. He then fatally stabbed her in the neck. Their son, Robert Jr., ran into his mother's bedroom and tried to help her. After his father began to attack him, the boy tried to escape down the stairs. His father chased him and stabbed him to death. Breton was given the death penalty in 1989. That sentence was later reversed but then reinstated in January 1998. - Sedrick Cobb, age 42 Cobb was sentenced to death in 1991 for the rape and murder of 23-year-old Julia Ashe, whom he kidnapped from a Waterbury department store parking lot 2 years before. In the parking lot, Cobb had flattened a tire on her car and then offered to change it for her. When he asked her for a ride, she assented. At knifepoint, Cobb took her to a secluded road and raped her. He bound her hands and pushed her off an embankment, where she fell 23 feet into shallow, icy waters. When Ashe tried to crawl up the embankment, Cobb pushed her down. Her frozen body was found on Christmas Day. - Daniel Webb, age 42 Webb kidnapped, attempted to rape and murdered 37-year-old Diane Gellenbeck in 1989. He abducted her in a downtown Hartford parking garage, where she was en route to a business meeting. Webb drove Gellenbeck to Keney Park, tried to rape her and then shot her 5 times when she broke free and tried to run. Webb fired the last shot point-blank into her face. He was sentenced to death in 1991. - Richard Reynolds, age 36 Reynolds, a New York City drug dealer, shot and killed Waterbury police Officer Walter T. Williams in 1992. Williams had stopped Reynolds and had begun to search him when Reynolds pulled a gun from his pocket and shot the officer once in the back of the head. Reynolds was sentenced to death in 1995. - Robert Courchesne, age 56 Courchesne was sentenced to death in 2003 for the 1998 stabbing death of Demetris Rodgers, who was 8 months pregnant, in Waterbury. Doctors were able to deliver the infant girl, but she died 42 days later. Courchesne told police that he lost control when Rodgers demanded that he repay her for crack that she supplied to him. - Todd Rizzo, age 26 Rizzo was sentenced to death in 1999. The state Supreme Court, however, overturned the death sentence and ordered a redetermination of a penalty for his capital felony conviction. Rizzo said he killed 13-year-old Stanley Edwards of Waterbury with a 3-pound sledgehammer in 1997 because he wanted to see what killing someone felt like. - Ivo Colon,age 24 Colon was sentenced to death in 2000 for the beating death of his girlfriend's daughter, Kerianan Tellado, in Waterbury. But the state Supreme Court recently overturned the sentence. The prosecution has indicated it will pursue a second death-penalty hearing. Colon bashed Tellado's head against a bathroom wall. - Eduardo Santiago, age 25 Santiago was sentenced to death in 2004 for the murder-for-hire of Joseph Niwinski in West Hartford in 2000. Niwinski was shot in the head at point-blank range. For committing the murder, Santiago was promised a broken-down snowmobile as payment. Although a jury recommended a death sentence, a judge has yet to sentence him. (source: The Day) ******************** Death Penalty Repeal Linked To Abortion Letters To The Editor: Many interesting letters have appeared in the paper the past few weeks for and against the execution of a serial killer responsible for stealing the lives of 8 young women. The letter titled "Death penalty sure to make us all less," published Jan. 16, oddly does not mention abortion, which ought to also make us all less for allowing such a procedure to occur on demand. Abortion is the taking of the most innocent of all, the unborn. "Thou shall not kill" seems unanswered, or do we interpret the Bible to satisfy an individual's philosophical persuasion? Parishioners Ruth and Ron Boucher at Our Lady of Lourdes Church were pictured in The Day on Jan. 16 and were shown signing the petition that the Roman Catholic Church put before Connecticut parishes to abolish the death penalty and stop the Jan. 26 execution of a serial killer. No doubt the Bouchers genuinely feel that their signatures are justified. If one of the victims were their granddaughter, would they then sign? Retribution, revenge or any other number of terms fails to define the execution of a cold-blooded killer, except one - simply, justice. None of the victims were throwaway children to their parents, nor in the eyes of God. We as a society consider the unborn as throwaways. God does not. The anticipated debate this legislative session can only be truthful if abortion becomes connected to the death penalty. God likely would view us all in a more favorable light. Raymond Roode----Canterbury (source: Letter to the Editor, The Day)
