Jan. 28 CALIFORNIA: Suicide by State Execution?----Killing Killers Who Want to Die You really know the state killers have lost it when they call for the death penalty for someone who was just trying to kill himself in the 1st place. That's what prosecutors are doing in the case of Juan Manuel Alvarez, the 25-year-old Californian who apparently parked his SUV on the tracks of a Los Angeles commuter train line in order to commit suicide. Alvarez, according to news reports, lost his nerve and left the vehicle as the train approached, and escaped injury, but the resulting crash, which derailed the train, ended up killing 11 riders and injuring many others. Death penalty aficionados, including L.A. County's vote-hungry District Attorney, see killing Alvarez as the logical punishment for his horrible misdeed. Under the Old Testament eye-for-an-eye logic of state killers in this great Christian Nation, it's kill and be killed. But what exactly is the punishment when you kill someone who was trying to do that to himself anyway? If anything, after causing so much suffering and pain and loss of life, Alvarez probably wants to die more than he did before the tragedy. In any event, he certainly wanted to die badly enough to try to do himself in. All the state will accomplish by injecting him with their deadly cocktail of toxins at the end of a high-profile legal process and millions of dollars in legal costs will be helping him to do what he didn't have the courage to do himself. Hurray for the death penalty! In fact, many of the 4000 or so people currently on death row are there because they wanted, after a fashion, to die. For all the right-wing blather about how without a death penalty, some killers will eventually return to society to kill again, it is arguable that more people have been slain and will be slain because the death penalty tempts weak-willed people to kill as a way of ensuring that they themselves will be punished with death. Leaving aside whether it is even right to punish-particularly to punish with death-- someone who is so whacked out that he tries to kill himself by parking in front of a moving train, what point is there in killing him for doing it? What he really needs is psychiatric help. Naturally, someone who commits such a crime, causing even if unintentionally, the deaths of nearly a dozen innocent people, needs to be punished in some fitting way. And society needs to be protected from a person capable of such an outrage. That's what prison confinement should be for. But killing him, while certainly protecting society from any future idiocies by Mr. Alvarez, may well encourage more such kamakazi acts by other disturbed individuals like him. Far better to lock Mr. Alvarez away for a long time, so that others of a similar mind may ponder the idea of spending years behind bars, without so much as a rope to hang themselves with. That's unlikely to satisfy the bloodlust of the death penalty crowd, but it sure makes a lot more sense all things considered. Post-script: The nasty truth is that most prosecutors, while craven, are not stupid. Like Philadelphia's D.A. Lynn Abraham, who nearly always opts for the death penalty in murder cases, they know that by asking for death at the outset of a case, even when they know they haven't got a chance of getting a death sentence, they get a much more pro-prosecution jury because they can screen off all those who express qualms about voting for death. And if that's true, then the corrollary is also true: people on death row were put there by the least reliable and most biased trials possible--exactly the opposite of what should be happening. But that's another story for another column. To read more about it go to: The Death Penalty's Other Victims (Salon magazine, Jan. 2, 2001) (source: Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal; CounterPunch) ALABAMA: Appeals court approves death sentence in Houston County case A state appeals court upheld a death sentence Friday for James Earl Walker, who was convicted of killing an elderly Houston County woman during a burglary. In a 5-0 decision, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals said the death sentence was appropriate for the Jan. 5, 2000, shooting death of 87-year-old Bessie Lee Thweatt and the burglary of her home. In October, the criminal appeals court upheld Walker's capital murder conviction, but told the trial judge to write a new sentencing order better explaining why he approved the jury's recommendation of a death sentence. The appeals court approved that new sentencing order Friday. The appellate judges said the death sentence "was neither disproportionate nor excessive." (source: Associated Press) ****************** Jones Convicted of Murder A jury has recommended the death penalty for a man convicted of killing his parents. The guilty verdict for 29 year-old Timothy Jason Jones came down yesterday afternoon in a Birmingham courtroom. Jones was accused of the January 2004 double murder of his parents, Dr. Tim and Nancy Jones of Monroeville. A judge will formally sentence Jones on March 10th. (source: WSFA TV News) ILLINOIS: Suspect under suicide watch After formally charging Larry D. Bright with one of eight murders he is suspected of, the man who will prosecute Bright acknowledged the limitations of the judicial system. "What they (victims' families) really want is what we can't give them -- to turn the clock back to one minute before it happened," Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons said Thursday after Bright's 1st court appearance. Bright, 38, of Peoria, was arraigned Thursday in Peoria County Circuit Court for the murder of Linda K. Neal, 40, 1 of 8 Peoria women who have been found dead or reported missing since July 2003. Bright is being held without bond in the Tazewell County Jail awaiting a Feb. 24 preliminary hearing. Tazewell County State's Attorney Stuart Umholtz said Thursday that "special precautions ... which might be described as a suicide watch" were being taken. Following Bright's arraignment Thursday, Lyons said he expects Bright to be indicted prior to the Feb. 24 hearing for all the murders for which there is sufficient evidence against him. "I would anticipate we would indict (him) for all at the same time," he said. Police say Bright, a native of Tremont, has confessed to killing 8 women, dumping 4 bodies in rural areas and incinerating 4 others in a pit behind his Peoria home. Bright tried to plead guilty Thursday to the one slaying with which he has been charged, but Judge Albert Purham rejected the attempted plea and appointed the public defender's office to represent him. Lyons told the judge that Bright had confessed to killing 8 women and had told police where they could find the remains of 4 missing women. "Some people confess to things they simply did not do. We want to corroborate those things the defendant tells us," Lyons said after court. Bright told investigators he burned each of the missing bodies for over a day and a half, then discarded the remains in various locations, Lyons said. Authorities were searching for those remains Thursday. Umholtz said Thursday that Bright likely confessed to the murders because he knew evidence against him had mounted to the point where murder charges were "inevitable." Asked if Bright would be eligible for the death penalty, Lyons said that would not be likely based on the Neal murder alone, since it did not meet the criteria of Illinois law for a death sentence. However, those criteria would be met if he is charged with more than 1 death, Lyons said. Neighbors Tim and Betty Whitehurst said Bright and his mother and had moved into the neighborhood about a year and a half ago. "I couldn't even sleep last night," Betty Whitehurst said Wednesday. "I laid out there on the couch and with every noise I cringed. 'What are they doing? What are they finding?"' Umholtz said the places where bodies or remains had been found were "areas he (Bright) was very familiar with," near places where he had once lived or had partied as a young man. He said the search for more remains was continuing, but authorities do not expect to find additional victims. Bright has been jailed since mid-December on separate charges of drug possession and aggravated unlawful restraint. Attorney Joe Borsberry, who had represented Bright in that case, said Wednesday that Bright had "adamantly denied" any link to the deaths and had consented to a DNA sample. That sample was matched to DNA from Neal, 40, who was found strangled Sept. 25, Lyons said. The 2 counts of murder filed against Bright were both related to Neal's death. Neal was 1 of 6 women whose bodies have been found since 2001 and whose deaths were thought to be linked to 1 killer. All 6 had what authorities described as "questionable lifestyles," such as prostitution or drug use, and all were found strangled, asphyxiated or dead of drug overdoses along rural roads. Lyons said at least 4 of the victims had no trace of drugs in their bodies at the time of their deaths. 4 other bodies have never been found. Authorities say Bright has denied involvement in 2 other deaths in 2001 and 2003 which were originally attributed to the same killer. (source: Daily Times) OHIO: Richey wants new trial more than death row release A man whose death sentence was overturned this week by a federal appeals court said he'd rather face a new trial than be released without having his day in court. A 3-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that Kenneth Richey received incompetent legal counsel at his 1986 trial where he was convicted of killing a 2-year-old girl in an apartment fire. The judges directed a lower court to order Ohio to retry or release Richey, whose case has been followed closely in Great Britain. He lived there before coming to the United States. "I'm begging for a new trial," Richey told The Lima News in a telephone interview on Thursday. "There's no doubt in my mind I'll be able to prove my innocence." Richey, 40, has maintained that he did not start the fire that killed Cynthia Collins in the northwest Ohio town of Columbus Grove. Lawyers with the Ohio attorney general's office were reviewing the ruling to determine whether to appeal. State attorneys could ask the full circuit court or the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case. Richey said he wants to prove his innocence and expose flaws in the U.S. justice system. "They've done me wrong and it's time for them to answer," he said. (source: Associated Press) ************** Psychiatrist Opinions Differ In Highway Shootings Case A psychiatrist hired by the prosecution concluded that the a man accused of terrorizing central Ohio in a series of highway shootings knows the difference between right and wrong despite having paranoid schizophrenia. That differs with a finding by a psychiatrist hired by the attorneys for Charles McCoy Junior that McCoy does not always know right from wrong. That led to his insanity defense. Psychiatrist Opinions Differ In Highway Shootings CaseMcCoy has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity to 24 counts, including aggravated murder. The 24-year-old McCoy is charged in 12 shootings in late 2003 and early last year. One of the shootings resulted in the death of a Washington Court House woman. McCoy is scheduled to go on trial in April. However, Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien says he's open to the possibility of a plea agreement. A plea bargain would likely involve McCoy agreeing to plead guilty in exchange for the possibility of the death penalty being dropped. His sentence would then vary from a set number of years behind bars to life in prison. (source: WCPO News)
