Feb. 9 KANSAS: Legislators have job to do on death penalty When the Kansas Supreme Court identified a fatal flaw with the state's death penalty statute late last year, we expected lawmakers to try to repair it. At the same time, we hoped that they'd reconsider whether -- 11 years, eight killers, multiple legal problems, many millions of dollars and no executions later -- capital punishment is still worth having in this state. Both a fix and the abolition of the death penalty remain on the table now that the Senate Judiciary Committee has sent two bills on the issue to the full Senate. A House committee is considering how to repair the law's technical problem, too. Some also argue that the Legislature should do nothing and let the appeals process play out all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to salvage the death sentences of such notorious killers as Gavin Scott, Jonathan and Reginald Carr and John E. Robinson. Obviously, many who lost loved ones to these murderers will think that justice is denied if their sentences are changed to life in prison. For them, understandably, not acting until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to take the case is the only choice, because it's apparently the only way these men's executions could proceed. No option is perfect at this point in Kansas' death penalty mess, but at least 2 related proposals from Senate leaders should be avoided: - The idea offered by Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, R-Independence, to call a special session later this year if the U.S. Supreme Court does not take the case. Calling the 1st special session in 16 years would be a costly remedy based on a false sense of urgency. If lawmakers decide not to fix the law this year, it can wait until the 2006 legislative session. - The idea promoted by Sen. Phil Journey, R-Haysville, to subject nominees to the Kansas Supreme Court to Senate hearings and confirmation votes. This legislation would instantly politicize the current merit-based system, unnecessarily injecting ideology into the process and inviting ugly tugs-of-war with the governor. It also would deter those lower court judges and accomplished lawyers who deserve to be on the bench from even considering the promotion. Going forward, legislators should stick to the issue of whether or how to fix the state's faulty death penalty this session -- or whether to put this statute out of its misery. (source: Editorial, Wichita Eagle; For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman) ********************* Fix death penalty law One has to wonder why the Kansas Senate should delay action on a bill to fix the death penalty. The State Supreme Court has found fault with the existing death penalty law - under whic7 convicted murderers, including the Carr brothers, were sentenced. The court found it unconstitutional to let juries opt for death, when factors for and against it were evenly balanced. Opponents of the death penalty prefer to let the courts decision stand. But there is a problem here for future juries, victims and accused that should be fixed. If the existing law is unconstitutional, can the death penalty be imposed? Probably not. Attorney General Phill Kline has appealed this case to the U. S. Supreme Court. But his appeal may not be heard, and if it is heard a resolution may take years. Eventually, it would be good if the high court in Washington decided the constitutionality of Kansas death penalty law. In the meantime the question of the laws validity - and, as important, the constitutional question of equal protection under the law - should be settled as best it can be. Why not fix the existing law now, pending the outcome of the appeal? This would deal with future cases, and with the equal protection issue, in case the outcome in Washington is negative. Waiting on the U. S. Supreme Court, with the hope that it might uphold the existing Kansas law, is risky. It would leaves all concerned in limbo. This is a state matter and it should be settled by the state Legislature. (source: Editorial, Winfield Courier) USA: A small step forward for fair capital trials Great idea, unlikely source. President Bush raised more than a few eyebrows by announcing in his State of the Union speech that he would ask Congress to fund special training for defense lawyers in death penalty cases. "People on trial for their lives must have competent lawyers by their side," Bush said. He's absolutely right. But as governor of Texas, Bush consistently brushed aside compelling concerns about incompetent counsel. Bush signed death warrants for 152 prisoners. At least 1/3 were represented at trial or on appeal by attorneys who were later disbarred or otherwise sanctioned. One condemned man unsuccessfully appealed his conviction on the grounds that his court-appointed lawyer slept through most of his 2-day trial. While campaigning for president, Bush told reporters he was "confident" all inmates put to death on his watch had received fair trials and were guilty of capital crimes. His call to boost training for capital-case lawyers is all the more surprising because he's already signed such legislation. The Innocence Protection Act, passed by Congress last fall, proposes $350 million over 5 years to improve legal representation. Bush's proposal this week for $50 million over 3 years is actually a scaling back. But just hearing the president acknowledge the need for good legal work in death penalty cases sounded like a step forward. (source: Opinion, Kansas City Star) NORTH CAROLINA----new death sentence Goss gets death penalty----Jury takes less than 2 hours to decide sentence in 2003 stabbing death Christopher Edward Goss was sentenced to death yesterday for the Sept. 22, 2003, killing of Deborah Sturgill Veler. "May God have mercy on his soul," said Judge Richard Doughton of Ashe Superior Court. "Sheriff, he's in your custody to be transported as soon as possible to the penitentiary in Raleigh." Goss, dressed in a brown suit, walked out without looking back at family members who sobbed on the row behind him. Members of Veler's family were puffy-eyed and tearful after the sentencing. "I'm thankful to the jurors," said Veler's daughter, Denise Courtner, who was crying. "I'm sorry to the Goss family." The jury took about two hours to decide between the death penalty and a sentence of life without parole. Deliberations began at 2:35 p.m. Jurors took a 15-minute break required by the court. The judge announced at 4:37 p.m. that jurors had a decision. Goss, 30, remained seated and looked straight ahead as each of the 8 women and 4 men stood one by one to confirm the verdict. The sound of Goss' family members crying rose in volume as the jurors were polled. Doughton was required to impose the sentence recommended by jurors. To recommend the death penalty, jurors had to decide that other factors didn't outweigh that the murder was committed to avoid or prevent arrest and that it was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel. "The facts in this case speak for themselves," said District Attorney Tom Horner, after the verdict. In closing arguments for the sentencing phase of the trial, Horner held one of the weapons used in the killing, a kitchen knife whose blade was bent at an angle. Horner's voice filled the courtroom as he thrust downward repeatedly with the knife and counted out the wounds that Goss said he inflicted as Veler was facedown on the floor of her living room with her hands bound behind her back. "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9," Horner said. "At least 9 times until he bends the knife with her still being alive." Horner held up another, bigger knife, also with a bent blade. "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8," he said, stabbing the air. "It's still got her hair stuck to it with the blood." Members of Veler's family, seated on the first 2 rows of the courtroom, cried. "Does he have pity on her at that point in time or does he want to keep inflicting torture on her?" Horner said. In his 23-page confession, Goss said that Veler was still alive after the stabbings, and he got a third knife and cut her throat. "Ladies and gentlemen, if that doesn't qualify for heinous, atrocious and cruel, nothing ever will," Horner said. Veler, 48, had taken her 3-year-old grandson to Tweetsie Railroad that day and was caring for him overnight when she was killed. Veler's mother started crying when Assistant District Attorney Graham Green talked about what Veler might have done had she known it was the last day ever with her grandchild. "Maybe they would have held hands a little longer," he said. "Maybe they would have rode the train once more." Several jurors wiped away tears. In his confession, Goss said he killed Veler because she intended to go to the police after he had beaten her because she accused him of raping her daughter. Veler's daughter testified that she never made such an accusation. Prosecutors said they didn't believe many details of Goss' confession, but they believed him when he said, "The reason I got the knife is because I knew I would have to kill her.... If she had agreed not to tell on me I would not have killed her." Defense attorney Scott Fischer said that Goss' crime "makes any human being sick to his stomach," but that life without parole meant that Goss would die in prison. Fischer offered an impassioned plea for Goss' life. "Christopher Goss did an evil, awful thing," he said. "It does not mean he is evil, that there's no good in him at all, that he should be put to sleep like a rabid dog." The defense argued that Goss has a personality disorder that diminished his mental capacity during the crime. Tests showed that he has a low IQ. He had been in and out of group homes and mental-health treatment. Goss was in a psychiatric hospital at age 13, as his parents repeatedly tried to get him help. "Their sweet little boy who came into the world with such promise in a mental hospital when he ought to be going to Boy Scouts and youth basketball," Fischer said. Goss has a young son that he could serve as an example to if he were allowed to live the rest of his life in prison, Fischer said. Veler's mother shook her head "no" as Fischer talked about how Goss showed humanity in checking on Veler's grandson during the murder. Veler's brother shook his head "no" as Fischer talked about how life without parole would better honor the memory of Deborah Veler than would a death sentence for Goss. Fischer quoted Shakespeare and Socrates. He talked about the Birdman of Alcatraz, a 2-time murderer who wrote a book about birds and was the subject of a movie. He talked about how the law allows justice to be tempered with mercy. "Nobody in this courtroom, nobody in this county, nobody in this state knows what he may be able to do, what positive thing may come from him if he's just allowed to live," he said, standing behind Goss. "Are you prepared to say there can be no redemption at all? I beg you not to close that door. How much is there to salvage in this mentally ill young man? Nobody knows for sure." A death penalty is automatically appealed. Goss' father declined comment. (source: Journal Reporter) CONNECTICUT: Crazy To Die----Michael Ross' execution would be another pointless death. Last week, I found myself less than an hour away from witnessing the state of Connecticut execute Michael Ross - a serial killer who raped and murdered 8 women between 1981 and 1984. Although the execution was stayed at the last moment, the experience buttressed my long-held belief that the death penalty just doesn't work: It punishes everyone - the condemned man, the victim's families, peripheral people like me, and society as a whole. There has been nothing gained over this decadeslong fight over whether Ross is evil, ill, or even competent to help the state distinguish between the 2. I am not a true crime freak. I can't watch violent movies, and I had no interest in ever coming face to face with a serial killer. I first became interested in this case in 1994 when the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned Ross' 6 death sentences because evidence about his mental illness had been withheld from the jury. The prosecution's expert psychiatric witness had agreed with the defense that Ross was mentally ill and wrote to the prosecutor indicating that he could not help the state's attorney press for the death penalty. But the jury never saw that letter, and the state's attorney never asked his expert about Ross' mental illness, thus precluding the issue from being raised during cross-examination. Most condemned persons would have shouted for joy when their death sentence was overturned; but Ross offered to die in 1994 because he didn't want the families of his victims to suffer through another trial. The state supreme court's decision coincided with my tenure as editor in chief and publisher of the Connecticut Law Tribune, so when Ross wrote to the paper about his decision to accept death, I wrote back, requesting an interview. Why does a perfectly healthy person want to accept death? I wondered. Was he trying to have the state assist him in a suicide? The only word I can use to describe my first telephone conversations and face-to-face meetings with him is "terror." I was afraid the serial killer would reveal himself to me, but instead my almost-weekly conversations with him have revealed Michael Ross, the human being. According to psychiatrists, Ross' crimes were the result of a "paraphiliac disorder," or sexual sadism. According to Dr. Fred Berlin of Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic, who testified for Ross as an expert witness, "When that powerful sex drive gets attached to the wrong types of persons, such as children, or attached to the wrong types of behaviors like sadistic behaviors, it still craves satisfaction, and it craves it in a way that when satisfied is going to cause great danger." After Ross's 1st trial, Dr. Berlin prescribed Depo-Provera and later Depo-Lupron which, in effect, chemically castrated him. Until he began taking these medications, Ross had been plagued by violent sexual fantasies since college. "It was a double-edged sword," Ross told first told me in 1996. "It freed my mind from obnoxious obsessive thoughts, but I also had to face what I had done." Faced with what he says was horrendous guilt, Ross decided that accepting death was his moral obligation. But the state wouldn't let him waive a new penalty trial and, after 5 more years of legal wrangling, he was again given 6 more death sentences. One of the problems in a capital case in which mental illness is an issue is that those very things that should preclude the death penalty often cause it. Every psychiatrist who evaluated Ross - including the state's own expert witness - looked at the number of bodies and concluded that there was a pattern of murders indicating mental illness. That mental illness is a statutory mitigating factor, meaning the death penalty should not have been an option. Yet for the jury, the sheer number of dead bodies did not make him less culpable, but more so. They turned the mitigating factor into an aggravating factor and voted for death. For the last 20 years, state prosecutors have ignored this in their quest for an execution. And while Ross has remained willing to drop his appeals, the public defenders who had represented him for 17 years were not going to give up so easily. This past December, they raised the issue the issue of whether Ross was competent to drop his appeals and submitted evidence to that effect to the Connecticut Supreme Court - a stack of affidavits, letters, and other information supporting their claim that Ross was incompetent - including a letter he had written to me admitting that he was trying to have the state help him commit suicide. They also accepted an affidavit from an expert on death-row syndrome, a condition that results in hopelessness, depression, and anxiety. But the state supreme court saw nothing in the 150-page proffer to warrant a stay of execution. Eventually, this case ended up in the courtroom of Chief District Court Judge Robert N. Chatigny who stayed the execution on Jan. 24, pending a hearing on Ross' competency. His question to the state: "What's the rush?" Chatigny pointed out that if Ross were found incompetent after the execution, there would be no remedy. But the state did rush - all the way to U.S. Supreme Court, which lifted Ross' stay on Jan. 27. In the meantime, the Jan. 26 date had passed, and the state reset the execution for 2 a.m. on Jan. 29. I was at Osborne Prison starting at 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 28, visiting Ross and waiting for what seemed to be an unstoppable execution - unstoppable, that is, until Judge Chatigny ordered a 3 p.m. conference call with all the lawyers involved in the case. It was clear from the transcript that the judge's message was primarily for T.R. Paulding, Ross' pro bono lawyer, who had been inclined to honor his client's wishes and allow him to die: "You are enabling him. You are not investigating this matter and fulfilling your obligation to the court and if you don't do something, I'm going to have your license," Chatigny threatened. But the judge didn't stop there. He said that, looking at this case in the best possible light for the defendant, Ross "never should have been convicted. Or if convicted, he never should have been sentenced to death because of his sexual sadism, which was found by every single person who looked at him [to be] clearly a mitigating factor." Although new to the case, Chatigny had seen what no other judge had seen - or been brave enough to acknowledge: that the original jury had ignored the evidence of mental illness, evidence that should have saved his life. When Paulding explained his conundrum to his client, Ross told him to "do whatever you have to do." He could not go to his death thinking that he had caused T.R. to lose his livelihood. Yet the execution was not called off immediately. It wasn't until 1 a.m. that we were told that it had been temporarily stayed. For me, with the possibility of reluctantly witnessing this execution looming, it was a nerve-wracking experience. But think of the families of the six victims who were also at the prison, waiting for Ross to pay the ultimate price for their daughters' murders. Unimaginable. Does the death penalty work? While the victims' families believe in the death penalty, they would say the system doesn't work because it has taken so long for Ross to "pay" for their daughters' murders. Michael Ross agrees that the system is broken, both because he does not believe he got a fair trial and because he has seen how the families of his victims have suffered. Had he been allowed to plead guilty and given a life sentence 20 years ago, as he did in Windham County for the murders of 2 of his other victims, he would have faded into the woodwork. Everyone would have moved on, and the state of Connecticut would have saved millions of dollars trying to both kill and defend him at the same time. Michael Ross' case demonstrates the capriciousness of the death-penalty system from state to state, county to county, and jury to jury, when we are asked to judge whether someone is mentally ill. Prosecutors ignore their own expert witnesses. Juries turn the evidence on its head. And judges are more than ready to put their stamp of approval on it all. There has not been an execution in Connecticut for 45 years, perhaps for good reason. What good can there possibly be in one more death? (source: Slate -- Martha Elliott is writing a book about Michael Ross and the death penalty. She is a television producer, writer, and the co-author with Fred Friendly of The Constitution: That Delicate Balance.) ************************ Suspect in Jewelry Store Murders Charged An ex-convict suspected in a string of jewel heists that left 3 people dead in 2 states was charged Tuesday with murder. Christopher DiMeo, 23, is accused of killing a husband and wife during a robbery in Fairfield last Wednesday. His girlfriend, 23-year-old Nicole Pearce, also faces charges of felony murder and conspiracy to commit robbery. The girlfriend has already been charged with murder and burglary in a Dec. 21 heist in Glen Head, N.Y., in which a jeweler was shot to death. Authorities said DiMeo will be charged with murder in that case as well. Both suspects were sent Tuesday to New York from New Jersey, where they were arrested on Friday. Pearce told reporters she was "very sorry" as a police officer escorted her into lockup. Connecticut prosecutor Jonathan Benedict said he plans to talk to authorities in New York on Wednesday to decide which state will try the pair first. DiMeo could face the death penalty in Connecticut. On Sunday, police arrested DiMeo's mother, Maryann Taylor-Casey, 40, on murder and robbery charges in the New York holdup for allegedly helping Pearce case the jewelry store, and for acting as the getaway driver. DiMeo also is a suspect in other jewelry store robberies in New York. (source: Associated Press)
