Feb. 7 TEXAS----death row inmate commits suicide A death row inmate was found hanging in his cell last week. Christopher Wade Britton, 30, was found dead Friday, Texas prison officials said Monday. Guards found Britton about 17 minutes after a security check, shortly after noon Friday. They cut him down, placed him on a gurney and attempted CPR, but could not revive him. Prison officials said the state Office of Inspector General is looking into the death. Britton was convicted of fatally shooting a Hemphill County sheriff's deputy who was trying to serve an arrest warrant in June 2001. He arrived on death row in August 2002. (source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram) NORTH CAROLINA----new death sentence Man Gets Death Sentence In Deputy Shooting A man who pleaded guilty to murder in the death of a Randolph County sheriff's deputy was sentenced to death on Monday. Alexander Polke pleaded guilty last week to 1st-degree murder in the 2003 shooting death of Deputy Toney Clayton Summey, of Trinity. Summey was shot 3 times with his own gun as he and a 2nd deputy attempted to serve misdemeanor warrants on Polke at his mobile home. The 2nd deputy was shot in the arm. Jurors were selected last week for the punishment phase of the case after Polke elected to plead guilty and bypass his trial. The sentence came down at about 3:30 p.m. Monday. (source: WXII News) OHIO: Attorney general wants federal court to review overturned death sentence Ohio's top legal officer wants all 12 active judges of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review a 3-judge panel's ruling that overturned the death sentence of a man convicted of killing a 2-year-old girl in an apartment fire. Attorney General Jim Petro filed the motion Monday asking for the full court to review the panel's Jan. 25 ruling, which directed a lower court to order Ohio to retry or release Kenneth Richey. Richey, 40, who holds dual U.S.-British citizenship, has maintained that he did not start the fire that killed Cynthia Collins in the northwest Ohio town of Columbus Grove. Prosecutors said Richey started the fire hoping to kill a former girlfriend, who lived in the apartment below the one where the blaze started. The 3-judge appeals court panel, in a 2-1 ruling, said Richey had incompetent representation at his trial, that information vital to his defense was overlooked, and that Richey was convicted under the wrong statute. The panel's mandate to the lower court which would order the state to schedule a new trial within 90 days or release Richey was expected to be issued this week, attorney Kenneth Parsigian said. In his motion, Petro asked for an additional 14 days for the state to prepare arguments for review. Parsigian has urged the state to release Richey rather than try him again. The 6th Circuit is not obliged to grant the state's request for a full court review. (source: Associated Press) USA: >From death row to TV 'Makeover' Ray Krone's crooked front teeth helped land him on Arizona's death row after a police dentist wrongly linked him to unusually shaped bite marks on a murder victim. Now, with the help of reality television, Krone is hiding the evidence against him. Krone, once described in Phoenix newspapers as the "snaggletooth killer," was exonerated in 2002 after DNA tests matched another man to the murder of a Phoenix barmaid. He has had his 5 front teeth replaced courtesy of ABC's Extreme Makeover. For kicks, the program's doctors threw in some corrective eye surgery, a chin tuck, hair transplants and a laser-driven repaving of decades-old acne scars. The new and revised Krone is set to be unveiled on an episode Thursday at 8 p.m. It was filmed last month in Dover, Pa., Krone's hometown, after he had spent 2 months having surgery in Los Angeles. The program's producers won't say, but Krone's lawyer, Christopher Plourd, estimated that the bill for all his repairs topped $200,000. "I know inside it's still me and nothing has changed," says Krone, 48. "But I look in the mirror and say, 'Wow, I look 15 years younger. I'm really starting to grow on myself.'" In Krone's case, it's fitting that the odometer be rolled back. The former postman spent 10 years in Arizona prisons, including 3 on death row, for a murder in 1989 for which he was wrongly convicted. Krone was retried after an appeal, then convicted again and given a life sentence, in part based on testimony that his jagged front teeth matched a bite mark on the victim's body. Since his exoneration, Krone has been writing and lecturing against the death penalty and working odd jobs. He says that he would like to settle down but that dating has proven difficult because of his long absence from society and "frankly, my teeth." "It works on my self-confidence, especially since I can't forget that they had something to do with what happened to me," Krone says. "It's like, 'So what do you do?' And I'm like, 'Well, I've been working on getting exonerated from a murder I didn't do.'" Extreme Makeover, which began in 2003, generally lavishes its gifts on frowzy women and nerdy guys. The program was drawn to Krone, executive producer Lou Gorfain says, because he is "articulate" and his story draws attention to injustices in trials and sentencing. "Who's more deserving of a makeover?" Gorfain asks. "We want to give him back some of the time he lost in prison." ************************* To Prejean, death penalty system is guilty as sin During the summers of the 5 years it took Sister Helen Prejean to write The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions (Random House, $25.95), she sought refuge in a place called Prayer Lodge on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana. The 65-year-old nun gave herself the playful nickname Prairie Dog Woman. "I had to be in my burrow," she says, referring to her writing quarters, a 3-bedroom, one-bath apartment with a spectacular view of ponderosa pines and the Rosebud Mountain range. "She could rent a house overlooking the beach in Oregon, but it's the world that's here," says Sister Marya Grathwohl, one of the Sisters of St. Francis nuns who runs Prayer Lodge for Cheyenne and Crowe Native American women. "There is a deeper awareness of the depth of the universe. That's what this is about." As Prejean observes in her book: "Writing is like praying, because you stop all other activities, descend into silence, and listen patiently to the depths of your soul, waiting for the true words to come. When they do, you thank God because you know the words are a gift, and you write them down as honestly and as cleanly as you can." The Death of Innocents is about the death penalty and justice, a subject she also visited in Dead Man Walking, her 1st book, which was published in 1993. 2 years later, it became the basis for a major film with the same title. Susan Sarandon, who played Prejean in the movie, won an Oscar. Prejean, a nun with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille in New Orleans, joined the convent at 18 and taught English and religion for 11 years, 4 in the classroom and 7 in adult education. It was in the 1980s that she began working with prisoners on death row. Her job now, she says, is to "get people reflecting. ... It's about discourse." Originally, she planned to title her new book "Impossible Burden" because, she says, when it comes to the death penalty, "who has the wisdom to say who should live and who should die?" Prejean is, at heart, still a teacher. In Innocents, she says she wants to bring readers to a place where they can emotionally experience the executions of two men: Dobie Gillis Williams in Louisiana and Joseph O'Dell in Virginia, both of whom she believes were innocent. She then wants to bring readers to the logic of the death penalty itself, to study the arguments. The judicial system, she writes, is filled with flaws, citing the "astonishing admissions of errors by state and federal courts forced to free 117 people from death row since 1973." She points out the disparity in meting out the death penalty in the 38 states where it is allowed especially in the South. Race, she says, is one factor: "Overwhelmingly, when people are selected for the death penalty, it is because they killed a white person." Another factor, she says, is politics: Winning the death penalty is a way to further a legal career. Poverty, too, plays a role. Prejean, in her work in the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans, recalls an axiom from there: "Capital punishment means 'Them without the capital get the punishment.'" "The Supreme Court can tinker with the death penalty guidelines all it wants," she writes, "but patterns of implementation clearly show that who is killed and who is spared is determined largely by local culture - 'our way of doing things' - and not by law." (source for both: USA Today) VIRGINIA: Jury Selection Continues in Death-Penalty Case Jury selection in the federal death-penalty trial of a man who killed two James Madison University students in 1996 will likely last through today, according to court officials. The trial of Brent K. Simmons, 31, in U.S. District Court in Abingdon is scheduled to last 3 weeks once a jury is seated. Jury selection began Monday. Simmons pleaded guilty seven years ago in state court to killing his former girlfriend and her boyfriend. He could be released from prison in 10 years. Federal authorities decided to pursue a death-penalty case against Simmons last year after a diver swimming in a lake near Simmons' hometown of Carlisle, Pa., found a gun like the one used in the double homicide. A federal grand jury indicted Simmons in March on 2 counts of using a firearm in the commission of murder and on an interstate stalking count. The charges were brought under the federal Violence Against Women Act, which means Simmons could face the death penalty if convicted. (source: Richmond Times-Dispatch) KENTUCKY----new death sentence Noble Receives 2 Death Sentences Sitting in a wheelchair in Jefferson Circuit Court, his left arm wrapped in a bandage after he tried to cut his wrist this morning, Sherman Noble received 2 death sentences in the 1987 deaths of 3 men. Noble initially refused to come to his sentencing this morning or talk to his attorney, Ramon McGee, prompting Noble and McGee to request that sentencing be delayed so Noble could be mentally evaluated. But Jefferson Circuit Judge Stephen Ryan refused, saying Noble has claimed he was mentally fit since he was arrested and charged with the murders of three men during one week in 1987. "He was competent up until today," Ryan said from the bench. "Now his day of reckoning has arrived, and he's claiming to be incompetent. I think he's faking it." Ryan followed a Jefferson County jury's sentencing recommendation from December that recommended Noble be be executed for the murders of Charles Thompson and Lorenzo Harris. The jury also recommended he receive a life sentence for the murder of Walker Ison.The 3 men were beaten to death in separate incidents during in March 1987. Noble was declared incompetent to stand trial in 1988 and has spent much of the time since in a mental hospital. In 1997, however, he was found competent. (source: Courier-Journal) ********************* Sherman Noble receives death penalty in 2 murders, life in prison for another A Louisville man received the death penalty Monday in connection with 3 1987 murders. 51-year old Sherman Noble was convicted in December after years of trial delays. Sherman Noble's trial was delayed for nearly 18-years because of questions about his sanity. When Noble went on trial in December, he was considered mentally competent and even insisted on serving as his own attorney. During this trial, Sherman Noble was alert and insistent he did not murder 3 West Louisville men in March of 1987. A very different Sherman Noble appeared for sentencing. He entered the courtroom in a wheelchair after cutting a wrist and refusing to talk to his co-attorney. Judge Stephen Ruan turned down a request to delay sentencing say Noble was "faking" to put off his day of reckoning. Sherman Noble's brother stormed out of the courtroom to protest the Judge's comments. But Judge Ryan went on to give Noble death penalties for 2 murders and a life sentence for a third. When he tried to question his legal representaion, Judge Ruan told Noble he cannot file a complaint against himself. The issue of whether Noble should have been allowed to serve as his own attorney is sure to be a key to his appeals. Sherman Noble will soon be transferred to the state prison system. But he will return to Jefferson County in July. That is when he will face trial for a 4th murder- the death of a west end man in July of 1985. (source: Fox41 News) KANSAS: Death penalty moves to full Senate The Senate Judiciary Committee didn't give any recommendations on the bills. One would abolish the death penalty, the other would fix a constitutional flaw. In December, the Kansas Supreme Court struck down the death penalty law. Members of Brad Heyka's family were at the hearing, but didn't speak before the committee. Heyka, and 3 others were killed by Jonathan and Reginald Carr in 2000. (source: KWCH News)
