March 6 OHIO----stay of impending execution is lifted Appeals court says execution should proceed In Cincinnati, a federal appeals court on Sunday lifted a stay of execution for a prisoner who claims an abnormality in his brain may have affected his behavior when he raped and killed a woman in 1987. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the lethal injection of William H. Smith, 47, should proceed as scheduled Tuesday. "The execution is moving forward," said Kim Norris, a spokeswoman for the Ohio attorney general's office. Smith's attorney, Jennifer Kinsley, said an appeal would be filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. Kinsley said she could not reveal details of that appeal. "At this point I guess our options are somewhat limited and we're going to do everything that we can," she said. The federal appeals court overturned a ruling last week by a federal judge who said Smith's execution should be postponed to investigate his medical claim. Kinsley has said that a CT scan revealed an abnormality, or some sort of damage, in a part of Smith's brain that can affect behavior. The scan was performed Dec. 29 at Mansfield General Hospital after Smith complained of feeling ill. Kinsley argued that the stay was necessary to allow time for a more precise magnetic resonance imaging scan. On Feb. 28, U.S. District Judge S. Arthur Spiegel halted the execution. The judge said defense lawyers preparing for Smith's 1988 trial failed to develop evidence to support his claim that he had "organic brain damage" that could have affected his behavior when Mary Bradford, 47, was killed at her Cincinnati apartment. The state's lawyers argued that Spiegel had no basis for granting the stay because the state had notified him hours earlier that an MRI had been done on Smith's brain the prior Friday to investigate Smith's claim. Neither the MRI nor the CT scan performed on Smith in December support his claim that he should be spared execution, the state's lawyers said. The appeals court wrote in Sunday's ruling that the recent tests did not show anything substantially different from what the courts had already seen. Because of that, the court wrote, Spiegel did not have jurisdiction to grant the stay. Smith had been found competent to stand trial in 1988. (source: Associated Press) INDIANA----impending execution Letters describe killer's mind-set----Donald Ray Wallace Jr., who's due to be executed Thursday, says he went into frenzy after family of 4 interrupted a burglary. **** Timeline for killer's final hours Convicted killer Donald Ray Wallace Jr. is scheduled to be executed early Thursday at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. According to a prison spokesman, this is the plan for Wallace's final hours: -8 a.m. (CST) Wednesday: Visitors who have been approved by Wallace are allowed to see him. - 4:30 p.m.: Visiting ends and Wallace is taken to the cell area. He is given a set of clothes and takes a shower. Wallace then goes to a room adjacent to the execution room, and the people he has named as spiritual advisers are allowed in. A phone is available if Wallace wants to make calls. - 10 p.m.: The spiritual advisers leave. - Midnight, the 1st of 3 execution teams enters the area. The 1st team wheels a gurney into an empty room next to the execution room. It retrieves Wallace and straps him onto the gurney. He is handcuffed and shackled in leg irons. The gurney is taken into the execution room and placed against the north wall. Its wheels are locked. Replacing this group is the intravenous team. Catheters are placed in Wallace's arm and a drip of saline solution is begun. A project manager or an assistant reads the execution warrant. Wallace is asked if he has any final statements. Someone picks up a phone. It's a direct line to the prison command center, which is in contact with the governor's office and the courts. The question is asked: Is there a stay of execution? If the answer is no, the "proceed" order is given and the injection team is activated. 3 chemicals are sequentially administered. The 1st is sodium pentothal, which causes a deep sleep. The 2nd is pancuronium bromide, which causes paralysis of the diaphragm, lungs and muscles. The final drug is potassium chloride, which stops the heart. **** Convicted murderer Donald Ray Wallace Jr. faces his death this week saying he's no monster, 25 years after he wiped out an Evansville family in what he called "a frenzied blur." In letters to a sibling of one of his victims, Wallace graphically described how he bound and killed Theresa Gilligan; her husband, Patrick; and their 2 young children. 5-year-old Lisa and 4-year-old Gregory, who just returned from watching a Charlie Brown TV special at their grandparents' house, were shot in the back of their heads. "Neither of the children cried out," Wallace wrote to Diana Harrington, Theresa's sister. Two weeks after the January 1980 murders of the family, Harrington scrubbed blood from the walls of the death house. Now, she awaits the 47-year-old Wallace's execution Thursday at the Indiana State Prison at Michigan City with no sense of vengeance. She doesn't hate Wallace. "I despise what he did," she said. Barring a reprieve from Gov. Mitch Daniels, which seems increasingly unlikely, Wallace will become the 12th person executed in Indiana since the death penalty was restored in 1977. He's been on death row for more than 22 years. Wallace would be the 1st person put to death since Joseph Trueblood was executed in June 2003 for the 1988 murders of a Tippecanoe County woman and her 2 children. As the end nears for Wallace, survivors and authorities look back on his crime and try to understand the killer, who many agree is among the brightest people they've known. "There aren't very many people in the world who I can talk to about Plato's 'Republic' . . . and Pascal's theorem," said Sarah Nagy, Wallace's lawyer. "I can have those types of discussions with Mr. Wallace." Raised by neglectful parents, Wallace was in counseling by age 10. A counselor warned about "serious emotional problems which are expressed in hostile, aggressive behavior." At 13, Wallace was sniffing glue and smoking marijuana. His killing spree was partly happenstance. The Gilligans returned home as Wallace was inside burglarizing the residence. In his correspondence with Harrington, Wallace said at first he had no intention of harming the family, only to restrain them so he could escape. Spotting a vacuum cleaner, he used the cord to bind the victims. But Patrick Gilligan slipped the knot and came after Wallace, the killer wrote. In the struggle for Wallace's pistol, Gilligan was shot in the head. "Then everything else just went to hell," Wallace wrote. "Everyone was shot within 10 seconds after Patrick -- drugs, panic, insanity. . . . It all happened too fast." Wallace, thinking he had missed Theresa with his first shot, fired another bullet into her. He later recalled in a letter that Theresa was brave. "Her thoughts weren't for herself but only to comfort and calm the children." Wallace said that after he shot Patrick Gilligan, Theresa's husband fell to his hands and knees. Out of bullets, Wallace looked around for another weapon to finish him off. "I was already in an insane state of mind, and he moaned as if in great pain," Wallace wrote. "And the sound of it was terrible, and I think the only thought I held in my mind at the time was to stop the terrible accusation in that sound. My eyes seized upon the weights." Using a barbell, he bludgeoned Patrick Gilligan. After the rampage, Wallace felt sick. "I was ill in a way I had never been ill before," he wrote. Wallace's detailing of the crime was sought by Harrington, who said she had been haunted for years by questions. "Was Pat the first one? Was my sister? Did the kids go first? Did my sister have to watch the kids (die)?" In a recent TV interview, Wallace said he deserved to die, regretted the killings and was a changed man from the 22-year-old who committed the murders. "I would like people to know I'm rational," he told WTHR (Channel 13), The Indianapolis Star's news-gathering partner. "I'm not a raving maniac. I'm not hostile, that I'm not whatever you think a murderer is supposed to be." He added, "You live and grow and mature, and for the most part we become better people." Nagy says she believes her client, who refused a request from The Star for an interview, feels real shame and remorse. Still, Wallace has fooled people before, said Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Stan Levco, who as an assistant prosecutor made the case against Wallace. Levco says he's been told Wallace has a near-genius IQ. As the case went to trial, he said, Wallace managed to convince a psychiatrist that Wallace was insane. Despite his intelligence -- Wallace once referred to reading a biblical passage in the original Greek -- Levco says he believes Wallace's crime still warrants the death penalty. Against his lawyer's advice, Wallace has refused to seek clemency from the governor. Daniels recently said that while he has moral reservations about the death penalty, he believes it is appropriate for the most extreme crimes in which guilt is clear. A spokeswoman for the governor said Friday that Daniels has been briefed on the Wallace case. Daniels declined to comment. Wallace, in his letters to Harrington, has said that he relives the tragedy. He called it "six shots that still ring in my ears." To Harrington, who was married in the Gilligans' house 10 days before the murders, the killer's claims that he's a changed man do nothing to ease the pain. "Too little, too late," she said. (source: Indianapolis Star) NORTH CAROLINA: Wrong sentence----Shelby murder merited life in prison, not death For those who strongly believe that the worst kinds of murders fully justify the death penalty, the case of William Powell is more than simply troubling. It is compelling evidence that North Carolina has yet to come to grips with this inequity: Some murderers get life in prison while others are executed for the same kinds of offenses. That's the very definition of an unjust, unfair system of capital punishment. Mr. Powell is no innocent schoolboy caught up in a bureaucratic foulup. He is a former convict, dope addict, robber and the killer of Mary Gladden, a clerk at the Pantry Pride in Shelby in the early morning hours of Halloween Day 1991. But there are some other unsettling facts that Gov. Mike Easley must consider as he reviews Mr. Powell's case prior to his scheduled execution on March 11. Mr. Powell was unarmed when he entered the convenience store. The trial judge concluded there was no evidence of premediation to kill. Mr. Powell had been using cocaine and another drug when he walked behind the counter to steal money for drugs. Mrs. Gladden, the only person in the store, resisted the robbery, hitting Mr. Powell and grabbing his arm. Prosecutors said Mr. Powell used a heavy tool kept behind the counter to strike and kill Mrs. Gladden. He fled, leaving most of the money behind. At the time of Mr. Powell's 1993 trial, prosecutors were required to seek the death penalty in any case where there was an aggravating factor. Pecuniary gain was the lone aggravating factor in the robbery and murder of Mrs. Gladden. He was convicted and sentenced to death. Had the trial been held today, the prosecutor would not have been required to seek the death penalty. In addition, the trial jury would have had the option to sentence Mr. Powell to life in prison without possibility of parole. It's likely that would be the sentence if the trial were held today. Why? Because that's what has happened in other similar cases. Peter Bearman, now a professor at Columbia University, was hired by a lawyer in another N.C death row case to determine what kind of murder cases merit a death peanlty. Prof. Bearman did not find that inmate's death sentence to be out of line with similar cases -- but he did find that Mr. Powell's sentence was disproportionate because most other defendants in similar cases are sentenced to life in prison. There are other troubling facts about this case. A key witness against Mr. Powell had felony charges dropped several months after his conviction, his lawyers say. And Mr. Powell, an honorably discharged Army veteran, by all accounts was a loving father to his autistic son, serving on a parent-teacher organization board at his son's school. Mr. Powell deserves harsh punishment for the death of Mrs. Gladden. But it is difficult to see what service it would be to execute him when other defendants in similar cases get life in prison without the possibility of parole. That's the appropriate sentence. Gov. Easley should reaffirm North Carolina's policy of reserving execution for the worst premeditated murders, and consign Mr. Powell to prison for the rest of his life. (source: Editorial, Charlotte Observer) FLORIDA: State owes the innocent their freedom Wilton Dedge, an innocent man Florida imprisoned for 22 years, was lucky in one respect. Had he been falsely convicted for robbery rather than rape, there would have been no DNA to set him free. Florida politicians are fooling only themselves if they think that the current post-conviction DNA testing law does away with wrongful imprisonment in the Sunshine State. The only circumstance more outrageous than the resistance to compensating Dedge is the Legislature's pervasive indifference to the moral certainty that there are hundreds of equally innocent people still rotting behind Florida bars. Such things are impossible to estimate reliably, but one can guess. From death row alone, 24 people have gone free, most of them clearly exonerated. DNA vindicated another after he died in prison. There are more than 200 people serving lesser sentences for every one on death row. The same kinds of blunders that ensnared Dedge figured frequently in those death row cases. For the minority of cases where DNA evidence exists, the law entitling prisoners to testing expires Oct. 1. That is only part of what's wrong with it. The vast majority of convicts, those who pleaded guilty or no contest, are excluded, even if they did it only to avoid harsher sentences. The state crime lab isn't equipped for some of the more sophisticated recently developed tests, which cost $2,500 privately. The Florida Innocence Initiative, a voluntary agency in Tallahassee, has only $30,000 in the bank to cope with nearly 300 accumulated requests from inmates. A similar project at Nova University has more than 300 cases waiting. What happened to Dedge could happen to anyone. Even you. If you have ever had a deja vu experience, the false certainty that you have seen someone or something before, that's how easy it is to be falsely accused and convicted. Police, prosecutors and jurors rely too heavily on eyewitnesses. There is also a mental process called transference, in which witnesses identify a "suspect" they have seen in some other context. That's what happened to Dedge. The victim first told police she had been slashed and raped by a balding man who stood 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds. Dedge was 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighed 130 pounds and had a full head of hair. But she and her family had casually encountered Dedge and his family before, and on seeing him again at a convenience store she thought he resembled her assailant. She became more certain, and more wrong, as the case developed. Believing her, the Brevard Sheriff's Office and prosecutors relied on junk science and a flagrantly perjurious jailhouse snitch to put Dedge in prison and keep him there. The victim's mistakes were not malicious, but the authorities should have known better. In an example reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education 5 years ago, a rape victim identified a prominent Australian psychologist and memory researcher as her attacker. "Not only was his alibi airtight - he was being interviewed on live television at the time - but she had mistaken him for the rapist because she had seen his face on her television screen during the assault," the article said. In another notorious Florida case, a woman who had been stabbed by a would-be rapist let police coax her into identifying a young man they considered a suspect. The assailant she had described wore dental braces. The innocent man they convicted didn't. The conviction was overturned and the state admitted its mistake, but by then it was too late to charge the actual perpetrator. Florida sorely needs what North Carolina has: a blue-ribbon commission to identify the causes of wrongful convictions and recommend ways to avoid them. Darrell Stephens, the former St. Petersburg police chief who is now chief at Charlotte, is one of the members of the North Carolina Actual Innocence Commission. Among its first recommendations: "double blind" lineup procedures so that the police officer showing suspects or pictures to witnesses doesn't know who the suspect is. Florida has its own model to follow, the gender bias commission that the Supreme Court established with legislative support 18 years ago. Janet Reno, who was sensitive to wrongful convictions as U.S. attorney general, would be a superb person to chair the Florida Actual Innocence Commission. But such things don't happen unless someone in power cares enough to make them happen. Is there anyone who does? (source: Column, Martin Dyckman, St. Petersburg Times)
