Jan. 25 CALIFORNIA: Jury Selection Set in Fresno Murders Attorneys say they could spend as much as a month screening potential jurors in trial of a man charged with the shooting deaths of 9 of his children. About 2,200 potential jurors have been summoned to appear in Fresno County Superior Court for the start of jury selection in the trial of Marcus Wesson, a domineering patriarch who allegedly controlled his family with religious teachings, incest and threats of mass suicide. Hundreds of prospective panelists are expected to answer the request Tuesday. "I'll be looking for jurors who will refuse to lower the burden of proof in the face of enormous publicity and community sentiment," Wesson's public defender, Pete Jones, said last week. Wesson, 57, was the only one to emerge alive March 12, 2004, from the back bedroom of the modest 1-story house at the end of a tense, hours-long standoff. Police discovered nine bodies in a bloody tangle and 10 white coffins stacked against the living room walls. Each victim had been shot once in the eye -- the youngest a 1-year-old toddler, the oldest a 25-year-old woman whose child was among the dead. No gunpowder residue was found on Wesson's hands. Wesson faces 9 murder charges, and more than a dozen counts of sexual abuse. No gunpowder residue was found on his hands. He could be put to death if convicted. Prosecutors won't discuss their trial strategy, but their witnesses include several experts on mind control, indicating they may try to show Wesson ordered one of his children to commit the murders. Wesson's attorney has argued that the oldest victim -- Wesson's daughter, Sebhrenah -- pulled the trigger, killing her siblings and her child before committing suicide. "Sebhrenah fell on the gun after shooting herself," Jones said during the preliminary hearing. Prosecutor Lisa Gamoian has not spoken to the media about the case, and was not available for comment before trial. But she has said in court that Wesson is culpable. "It was only Mr. Wesson who exited the bedroom," Gamoian said. (source: Associated Press) ************************* Court upholds killer's death sentence----The court said that Clarence Ray Allen's viciousness, not his attorney's ineffectiveness, was what mattered A federal appeals court Monday upheld the death sentence of a leader of a Fresno crime ring who ordered killings from Folsom State Prison where he was serving time for murder. The decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set the stage that California might execute 2 condemned inmates in a single year. Last week, a Redwood City man convicted of murdering two Northern California women in 1981 was executed at San Quentin State Prison, the first execution in nearly 3 years and the 11th since California restored the death penalty in 1978. The 9th Circuit ruled Monday that Clarence Ray Allen, now 75, could be put to death for ordering the 1980 deaths of three people he feared could implicate him in an earlier murder, despite the poor performance of his lawyer. The San Francisco-based appeals court concluded that the performance of Allen's trial attorney when jurors decided life or death "fell below an objective standard of reasonableness." The court, however, said that Allen's viciousness, not his attorney's ineffectiveness, was what mattered. The appeals court said it was inconsequential that Allen's attorney did little to prepare for the trial's penalty phase and failed "sufficiently to investigate and adequately present" evidence to sway jurors to render a judgment of life without parole. Allen's appellate lawyer, Michael Satris, was not immediately available for comment. A 3-judge panel of the court ruled the same way in Allen's case in March, and on Monday the court announced that no judge in the circuit voted to rehear the case with 11 judges, setting the stage for a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was "not reasonably probable that even one juror would have held out for a life sentence over death," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote. She added that Allen was convicted of conspiring from jail to try and murder seven people, "all to retaliate for their prior testimony against him and to prevent future damaging testimony." Wardlaw added that, "If the death penalty is to serve any purpose at all, it is to prevent the very sort of murderous conduct for which Allen was convicted." The man convicted of carrying out Allen's murder orders, Billy Ray Hamilton, is also on death row. Hamilton, a convicted murderer paroled from Folsom in 1980, was sentenced to death for killing 3 employees of a Fresno market that Allen's former security business had burglarized. Prosecutors said Hamilton, now 55, was following Allen's orders when he killed Bryon Schletewitz, Douglas Scott White and Josephine Rocha. There are 639 prisoners on California's death row, the nation's largest. Executions in California are rare, in part because of the volume of cases clogging the courts, and the lack of lawyers willing to handle their appeals. Another condemned inmate, Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the founder of the Crips street gang, has also been cleared by a 3-judge panel of the 9th Circuit, and has been waiting since September, 2002, to hear from the court whether it would rehear the case with 11 judges. The case decided Monday is Allen v. Woodford, 01-99011. (source: Monterey Herald) ************************* Time to examine death penalty process The exectuion of a convicted murderer at San Quentin last week couldn't compete with the flurry of media attention paid to the presidential inauguration and, to a slightly lesser extent, the appearance before a Senate confirmation committee of Condi (as she apparently will now be referred to by the cognoscenti) Rice. Naturally the inauguration was rightly the big story of the week, and the political jousting between Rice and Sen. Barbara Boxer made for good sound bites on the evening television news. Nevertheless, the execution of Donald Beardslee brought back into focus a major problem - a problem that most Californians would rather sweep under the rug. The problem isn't capital punishment per se - the voters of California have made their desires on this subject long known - but the time a condemned prisoner has to spend in confinement on death row. While we had no sympathy for Beardslee, we do have a problem with prisoners spending year after year, stretching into decade after decade, on death row. The 2 next potential candidates who may face execution have each spent about a quarter of a century on death row. Probably most Californians - except their victims' families - have completely forgotten the crimes they committed. And that, by any definition, borders on "cruel and unusual" punishment. No, we're not bleeding hearts for the "poor" convicts. This isn't an editorial for or against capital punishment. However, if the state of California decides that death is the proper sentence for a heinous crime, then the punishment should be carried out in a reasonable time. If not, any pretense that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime should be forgotten. Today there are 640 convicts on San Quentin's death row (not counting soon-to-arrive Scott Peterson) and at California's rate of conducting executions, that number will only continue to grow. Chances are that many prisoners will die of old age before they are executed. They will certainly outlive many of the family members of their victims. And we haven't even mentioned the costs involved, which seems almost too pragmatic when discussing life and death. Now we don't want to see California turned into another Texas, but we can't continue to warehouse convicted murderers for decades in isolated cells on a decaying death row. Some middle ground must be found between a rush to execution and affording all convicts their rights of appeal. There must be a better path toward justice. (source: Editorial, Paradise Post) OHIO: Newspaper: Questions loom over death row inmate's conviction A man sent to death row 20 years ago for killing a village postmistress may have been convicted largely because of lies he told authorities, according to an investigation by The Plain Dealer. In a months-long review, the newspaper examined thousands of pages of court and investigative documents in the case of John Spirko, who likely faces execution later this year for the murder of Betty Jane Mottinger, 48. Mottinger disappeared Aug. 9, 1982, from the post office in Elgin, a town of 96 located 18 miles from the Indiana line. Her body was found a month later in a soybean field 50 miles away, wrapped in a paint-splattered curtain. She had been stabbed more than a dozen times. Spirko contacted police in October 1982, offering to trade information about her death in exchange for help on unrelated assault charges he was facing in Lucas County. He was sentenced to death in 1984, convicted of aggravated murder, kidnapping and assault. Investigators found no physical evidence linking Spirko to the crime. They based the case on Spirko's statements and the testimony of an eyewitness. The Plain Dealer reported that there are many inconsistencies between what Spirko told investigators and the facts of the case: - Spirko told Postal Inspector Paul Hartman that Mottinger's hands were bound behind her back with duct tape when she was killed. But her hands were not bound when her body was found. - Twice he told investigators that Mottinger had been stabbed in the back. Investigators found no evidence of wounds to her back. - Spirko said he saw items stolen from the post office during the abduction but knew nothing about $700 worth of stamps that were taken. Spirko told Hartman at least twice that he never saw any stamps among the stolen items. - Spirko told Hartman that Mottinger was wearing a gold watch and a gold necklace when she was killed and that he had seen both in the bag of loot. But in their testimony, Mottinger's family and a co-worker did not recall her wearing either. Spirko said he kept feeding Hartman new versions of the story of Mottinger's murder because "he wouldn't settle for nothin' else. I would tell him one story and ... the next day, he would come back for another story. And the more I told the more deeper I got into it, you know." Hartman, who retired in 2000 after nearly 3 decades in law enforcement, said he remains certain that Spirko deserves to die for killing Mottinger. "It is my belief that he did it," Hartman told the newspaper. "If and when they execute him, I will have no qualms. No qualms." Spirko says he's innocent, but acknowledges that he lived a life of crime that leaves him virtually without credibility. "I'm convictable," the 58-year-old said. The key witness in the case was Elgin resident Opal Seibert, who testified she saw Spirko's former cellmate, Delaney Gibson Jr., outside the post office the morning Mottinger disappeared. Spirko's attorney Thomas Hill argues that Gibson was vacationing in Asheville, N.C., as late as 6 p.m. the night before Mottinger's murder. Asheville is about 500 miles from Elgin, or about an 8-hour drive. Hill said authorities had photographs of Gibson with a full beard on Aug. 7 and Aug. 8; the man Seibert saw was clean shaven. Spirko and his lawyers first saw the Gibson vacation photos in 1997, after years of litigation, the newspaper reported. It's unclear whether the Van Wert County prosecutor at the time, Stephen Keister, ever saw them. Keister, who left office in 1988, declined to discuss any aspect of the Spirko case, citing the passage of time. "My memory is fading. And a lot of things have been over the dam," he said. Gibson was never prosecuted in the Mottinger case. In May, the same day a federal appeals court denied Spirko's next-to-last appeal, Van Wert County authorities dismissed the kidnapping and aggravated murder charges against Gibson. Spirko's attorneys filed what is likely to be his final appeal last week, arguing that prosecutors withheld key evidence and presented a false case. Attorneys for the state of Ohio have 30 days to respond. At least 116 inmates condemned to die by U.S. courts have been exonerated based on new evidence since capital punishment was reinstated in the mid-1970s, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. No execution date has been set. Gov. Bob Taft could recommend clemency for Spirko before the sentence is carried out. Although insisting he was innocent, Spirko asked the jury to recommend the death penalty. "From what I have heard, a lady that went to work, bothered no one, had a family, a husband that loved her, she was cruelly taken away, brutally murdered. She didn't get no appeal. ... But she deserved justice, and if that means me, then that's the way it should be. I'm convicted, I should die. It's simple; simple arithmetic." (source: Associated Press) MISSISSIPPI: U.S. Supreme Court dismisses Mississippi death row appeal The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a Mississippi death row appeal Monday, saying they erred in agreeing to hear the case. The justices, in an unsigned opinion, said they were wrong to have taken up the case of Marlon Howell. Howell wanted a new trial because he claimed Mississippi juries should be able to convict defendants in capital cases of the lesser crimes of murder or manslaughter. The Supreme Court had heard the case in November. On Thursday, the court said Howell "did not, however, raise this claim in the Supreme Court of Mississippi, which unsurprisingly did not address it." As a result, the high court said it had mistakenly agreed to hear the appeal. Attorneys for Howell have argued the Union County man deserved a new trial because his trial jury was not allowed to consider convicting him of a lesser crime rather than capital murder, while carries a maximum penalty of death. Capital murder in Mississippi is defined as murder committed along with the commission of another crime; in Howell's case, robbery. Murder carries a maximum life sentence. Manslaughter is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Howell was convicted in 2001 of capital murder and sentenced to death for killing David Pernell during a robbery. Pernell, a retired postman who delivered the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, was killed after he was flagged down on a city street in New Albany. Two other men charged in the case pleaded guilty to lesser charges and are serving prison terms. Howell was accused of being the gunman. Howell had contended he was in Corinth when the incident occurred. Howell contended the U.S. Constitution - in death penalty cases - provides for lesser offense instructions to juries. He had relied on the Supreme Court's 1980 decision in an Alabama case to support his appeal. The Supreme Court said Monday it had asked the attorneys whether the issue was raised in the Mississippi courts. The Supreme Court said because the answer was no, there was nothing for them to consider. The justices said they would not rule on something not considered in the state courts. Mississippi prosecutors had said Howell was claiming for the first time that the judge's refusal violated federal law. They said rules require defendants to present any federal any federal claims for consideration in state court before raising them in federal court. (source: Associated Press) TENNESSEE: U.S. Supreme Court reinstates death sentence for Tennessee inmate Tennessee won a bid at the U-S Supreme Court today to reinstate the death sentence of a man convicted of bludgeoning to death an elderly couple in Memphis in 1980. The Sixth U-S Circuit Court of Appeals had twice set aside Gary Bradford Cone's death sentence. In 2002, the Supreme Court disagreed with the appeals court that Cone's attorney during the trial was ineffective. The Sixth Circuit reconsidered the case last year and sided with Cone again, on grounds that instructions to the jury were unconstitutionally vague. Justices today set aside that decision as well in an unsigned opinion. Cone was convicted of killing Shipley and Cleopatra Todd, ages 93 and 79 respectively, following a 2-day crime spree that included a 112,000 dollar jewelry store robbery, the wounding of a policeman and 1 other person and the theft of a car. Cone claimed drugs and the stress of his wartime Vietnam experiences led to the crime. (source: Associated Press)
