Feb. 25 WEST VIRGINIA----bill to re-instate the death penalty Death Penalty Bill Returns----Previous versions of the legislation have never made it to the House floor for a vote. State lawmakers have introduced a bill that would bring the death penalty back to West Virginia. The bill, introduced Wednesday, seeks to make death by lethal injection a penalty for 1st-degree murder. Delegate Ron Thompson, D-Raleigh County, said he supports reinstating the death penalty for harsh crimes, including the murder of children and drug-related incidents. Thompson said the courts must ensure that no innocent people would be put to death. Delegate John Overington, R-Berkeley County and the bill's primary sponsor, said that wouldn't happen if DNA evidence were used in all capital murder cases. But Delegate Jon Amores, D-Kanawha County, said the death penalty is "disproportionately applied to the poor and people of color." The bill is on hold in the House Judiciary Committee. Past versions haven't made it for debate on the House floor. There has been no death penalty in West Virginia since 1965. (source: Associated Press) OHIO: Former FBI chief supports killer's plea----Spirko seeking to overturn death sentence John Spirko, in his attempt to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his conviction and death sentence for murdering an Elgin, Ohio, postmaster, has found an ally in former FBI Director William Sessions. Mr. Sessions joined two former federal judges and a prosecutor yesterday in accusing Van Wert County's former prosecutor of arguing a theory before Spirko's jury 22 years ago that the prosecutor had to know was at least partly suspect. Mr. Sessions, who was FBI director under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, is also a former federal judge. "When the ultimate penalty is at issue, justice demands scrupulous conduct from prosecutors," reads the group's brief urging the high court to hear Spirko's appeal. "It is not enough for a prosecutor to weigh all of the evidence, determine that a defendant is guilty, and pursue such a verdict vigorously if he holds back information unfavorable to his desired outcome," it reads. Mr. Sessions declined an interview. He is now a member of the Washington-based Constitution Project's Death Penalty Initiative, which has sought a number of reforms in the capital punishment process. The group has not advocated abolition of the death penalty, and Mr. Sessions personally supports capital punishment, according to the Constitution Project's Pedro Ribiero. A 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel voted 2-1 vote last year to uphold Spirko's conviction and sentence for the 1982 kidnapping and murder of Betty Jane Mottinger, 48-year-old postmaster in the small town of Elgin, 90 miles southwest of Toledo. She had been stabbed about 15 times in the chest and stomach. The majority found that photographs kept more than a decade by the prosecution, which suggested Spirko's alleged co-conspirator was probably 500 miles away in North Carolina at the time of the crime, were insufficient to overturn the conviction. "If [Delaney] Gibson was not a participant in the murder, then he was not, as Spirko told the investigators and claimed at trial, the source of all of Spirko's detailed knowledge of the crime," wrote Judge Alice M. Batchelder for the majority. "And if Spirko did not learn the details of this crime from Gibson, from whence did all of that detail come?" But dissenting Judge Ronald Lee Gilman wrote that he was not convinced of Spirko's guilt. He said many details about the crime had been published in local newspapers. Spirko, now 58, was born in Toledo. Paroled on a Kentucky murder conviction, he had returned to Swanton to live with his sister in 1982. Jailed on an unrelated assault charge, he contacted investigators claiming to have evidence in the unsolved murder of Ms. Mottinger months earlier. In return, he wanted leniency for himself and his girlfriend for a botched prison escape. Prosecutors ultimately discarded most of Spirko's stories as fabrications. But fragments of those tales, details investigators argued could only be known to the killer, were later used to convict him. The prosecution's theory was that Gibson, who had fled Ohio, was the chief perpetrator. Eyewitnesses placed both him and Spirko in Elgin the morning that Ms. Mottinger disappeared. But further investigation led the prosecution to confirm that Gibson was in North Carolina the day before and after the murder and that photographs showed him with a full beard. An eyewitness, now dead, had identified an old photograph of a clean-shaven Gibson as the stranger she saw that day. The prosecution informed the defense of the alibi claim and noted there were "purported" pictures supporting that claim. The defense argues that the use of the word "purported" was misleading because the prosecution already had the photos in hand. "The prosecutors provided sufficient evidence to put Spirko on notice," reads the opposing brief filed yesterday by Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro. "He failed to seek additional evidence [probably because that evidence would have done him no good on his theory of the case]." Gibson has since been paroled in Kentucky on a separate murder conviction. He was never tried in Ohio, and, on the day the 6th Circuit upheld Spirko's conviction last year, the prosecution dismissed its 22-year-old murder indictment against Gibson. (source: Toledo Blade, Feb. 24) KENTUCKY: Death penalty cost study sought----OFFICIAL GUESSES PRICE OF LAST 2 EXECUTIONS AT $50 MILLION EACH Since Kentucky reinstated capital punishment in 1976, 2 men have been executed, 36 people are now on Death Row and numerous others once under death sentences have had their convictions or sentences overturned. Ernie Lewis, director of the Department of Public Advocacy and charged with providing legal defense for the condemned, guesses it has cost taxpayers perhaps $50 million for each of the state's 2 executions. Death sentences have been overturned more than half the time, he added. "We're not doing it very well," Lewis said. Evidence about Kentucky and the death penalty so far is anecdotal at best. But a Louisville legislator has tucked a provision into the House budget bill passed Friday that would require the General Assembly to examine the cost of the death penalty since it was reinstated. Included under the directive inserted by Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville, would be prosecution, defense, judicial and correctional costs. The estimate would cover all cases in which the death sentence could have been imposed as well as those where it was imposed. "The goal, from my point of view is to confirm it's cheaper to put them in prison without parole for life than it is for the death penalty," Wayne said in an interview this week. Kentucky's only 2 executions since the death penalty was reinstated took place in 1997, when Harold McQueen was electrocuted, and in 1999, when Eddie Lee Harper was given a lethal injection. Both methods are currently under court attack by as cruel and unusual punishment. 2 inmates have been on death row for 25 years and the latest death sentence was in 2004. There is 1 female under a death sentence. A spokeswoman said the Corrections Department has never calculated the costs of housing a death row inmate or any inmate with a life sentence. (source: Associated Press) FLORIDA: Court orders new sentencing in 1992 Panama City murder The state Supreme Court ordered a new penalty hearing for a death row inmate Thursday because his lawyer didn't tell jurors his client was mentally ill when he killed a nurse trying to help him. Roderick Orme, now 43, was convicted of murdering, robbing and raping Lisa Redd in March 1992 in a Panama City motel. Redd was badly beaten but her death was caused by strangulation. Orme was a former drug rehab center patient and the motel was a few blocks from the center where he had been treated the year before. Orme told police he told Redd he was having a "bad high" after freebasing cocaine. In Thursday's unsigned opinion, Florida's high court upheld Orme's conviction but vacated his death sentence, agreeing he deserved a new sentencing hearing because of his trial attorney's failure to investigate and present evidence that Orme had bipolar disorder. "Such evidence existed, and had it been presented, there is a reasonable probability that the result of the penalty phase proceedings would have been different," the 6-1 ruling read. Chief Justice Barbara Pariente and Justices Harry Lee Anstead, R. Fred Lewis, Peggy Quince, Raoul Cantero and Kenneth Bell concurred. Justice Charles Wells dissented. (source: Associated Press) *********************** Lawyer: I have new Duckett evidence----She says the information is from the testimony of a witnesss boyfriend and has asked for a retrial. A lawyer for James Duckett, a former Mascotte police officer convicted of the 1987 rape and murder of a young girl, told a judge Thursday she has new evidence to support another trial for her client. That evidence is based on testimony from the former boyfriend of a witness in the original trial. The boyfriend says the witness, Gwen Gurley, told him she lied about seeing 11-year-old Teresa McAbee in Duckett's patrol car the night the child died. Duckett, currently on death row, was returned to Lake County for the hearing but did not testify. During the 1988 trial, Gurley, who was 16 at the time, told a judge she saw Duckett talking to Teresa in his police car and then saw Teresa get out and walk toward home. Moments later, Gurley said, he circled back and she watched "a small person" get inside and she saw Duckett, now 47, drive away. In a deposition a year later, Gurley said she made up the story. Then, during a court hearing for Duckett in 1997, Gurley refused to answer any questions about what she did or did not see. She told the Orlando Sentinel in 2003 that she was afraid of being charged with perjury if she admitted lying in court. She has made no statements in court since that 1997 hearing. On Thursday, however, the father of two of Gurley's children testified that she had confessed to him that she lied during the trial. Roscoe Higginbotham, 35, currently held in the Lake County Jail on charges of violating probation, said Gurley was in the hospital in 1989 because of complications with her pregnancy when she was visited by 2 men -- presumably law-enforcement officers. He said she did not want to talk to them and insisted that they leave. "She told me they had to do with the Duckett trial," Higginbotham testified. "She felt like she had been brainwashed. She said they had taken her from the jail to the crime scene, back and forth. She said she was more or less made to lie" about seeing the girl in the car. Gurley has said she went along with whatever detectives and prosecutors told her to say because she was pregnant, in jail and facing a long prison sentence. The detectives and prosecutors have denied urging her to testify untruthfully. Higginbotham said he kept quiet about what Gurley told him until 2003, when he met Eric Lee Simmons, who was in the Lake County Jail facing a first-degree murder charge. He said they were talking about death-row inmates and that Simmons mentioned the Duckett case, which had been written about recently in the newspaper. "I told him it [Gurley] was my ex-girlfriend, and I told him what she told me," Higginbotham said. Simmons subsequently was convicted and sent to death row, where he was placed in a cell next to Duckett's. When he learned Duckett's identity, Simmons related the story from Higginbotham. Simmons also testified Thursday. "He told me Gwen had lied on Duckett," Simmons, 30, said of Higginbotham. Lawyers for the state objected to the statements from Higginbotham and Simmons, saying they were hearsay and inadmissible. If Gurley was the one who admitted lying, she should be the one taking the stand, not the 2 men, said Senior Assistant Attorney General Ken Nunnelly. Duckett's lawyer, Beth Wells, said Gurley still fears the perjury charge. "If the state is saying it will grant her immunity, we'll get on the next plane to get her to testify," Wells said, adding later that Gurley now lives in Indiana. Otherwise, she said, bringing Gurley in, only to have her refuse again to testify, would be a waste of time and money. Nunnelly would not say whether he plans to grant Gurley immunity, but he said it would not matter either way. He and Assistant State Attorney Rock Hooker pointed out that former Circuit Judge Jerry Lockett concluded that "Gwen Gurley's recantation is inconsistent, incredible, and unreliable in its entirety, and does not constitute a sufficient basis for the defendant to have a new trial," court documents show. Lockett, who presided at Duckett's trial, said that Duckett's conviction was based on more than just Gurley's testimony. Other evidence included tire tracks, fingerprints and a pubic hair. Lockett said that even if Gurley had not testified, Duckett would have been convicted anyway. Still, Duckett's lawyer said a new trial for her client is inevitable. Gurley's statement is not the only part of the state's case to come into question over the years. For example, the tire tracks at the crime scene were "consistent" with the tires on Duckett's patrol car but no specific match was ever made. Teresa's fingerprints were found on the hood of Duckett's patrol car, but they were positioned as if she sat on the hood and scooted backward. The defense has argued that Teresa could have jumped on the hood when Duckett wasn't looking. In addition, the FBI agent who linked a strand of Duckett's pubic hair to the one found in Teresa's panties was discredited when federal investigators said he had testified falsely in other cases and had exaggerated evidence. "I'm confident we're going to get a new trial," Wells said. The Florida Supreme Court sent the case back to Lake County for the hearing and asked that a transcript be sent back for consideration as part of Duckett's request for a new trial. Duckett's friends and family members are confident, too. "We don't give up," said Duckett's sister, Sheila Nink, 57, of Lakeland. "He's coming home one day." (source: Orlando Sentinel)
