March 7 TEXAS----impending execution Execution set for Tuesday in complex Dallas murder case A man convicted of strangling and shooting the wife of a suburban Dallas physician is set to die, closing a chapter in one of the area's most complex and prolonged murder cases. Former auto insurance appraiser George Anderson Hopper faced lethal injection Tuesday for the 1983 slaying of Rozanne Gailiunas, 33, who was choked with pantyhose and shot twice in the head. The mortally wounded woman - raped, tissue stuffed down her throat, tied to a 4-poster bed - was found in her Richardson bedroom by her then 4-year-old son. She died 2 days later. Hopper, 49, who evidence showed received some $1,500 for the killing, would be the 4th Texas inmate executed this year if his appeals fail. Defense attorneys argued Hopper's confession was obtained improperly because detectives continued questioning him after he asked to be returned to his jail cell to think about what he wanted to do. "Any reasonable interpretation of the English language clearly indicated that (Hopper) invoked his constitutional protections," Roy Greenwood said in his petition pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Hopper's initial trial lawyer also offered little help, the appeal contends. Hopper is the last link in a complicated chain that prosecutors said was initiated by Dallas socialite Joy Aylor. She wanted Gailiunas dead because Gailiunas was dating Aylor's estranged husband, testimony showed. Gailiunas and her husband, Peter Gailiunas Jr., were separated, as were Aylor and her husband, Larry Aylor, a Dallas home builder. Rozanne Gailiunas planned to marry Larry Aylor, according to testimony. "Unfortunately, there's not anything that's ever going to undo or be able to repair the heartache and grief that this act has caused so many of us," said Dr. Gailiunas, who has remarried and practices in Dallas. "But nevertheless, to the extent this will at least start that healing process, we'd like to get it over with." Joy Aylor fled to Canada with $200,000 and her new lover, a Dallas attorney, on the eve of her 1990 murder trial. After the lawyer was arrested in remote western Canada on a drug charge, Joy Aylor disappeared to France. For two years she assumed a false identity as Elizabeth Sharp, living in a villa outside Nice. She was located after her lover's a rental car was involved in a minor traffic accident. Joy Aylor was imprisoned for 2 years while prosecutors negotiated with the French government. After she was returned to Texas, she was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1994. Under terms of the extradition, prosecutors agreed to not pursue the death sentence, which is illegal in France. Hopper, who has been on death row since 1992, and Aylor, imprisoned near Gatesville, declined recent interview requests. Others related to the case also are in prison. Buster Matthews was sentenced to life for trying to kill Joy Aylor's husband in a separate 1986 sniper attack financed by Joy Aylor. Bill Garland, a former pest control contractor, pleaded guilty in 1995 to accepting money from Joy Aylor to arrange that unsuccessful murder attempt. Garland also pleaded guilty and received 30 years in prison for using money from her to hire Hopper. Brian Lee Kreafle, a former auto mechanic, was sentenced to 30 years after pleading guilty to soliciting capital murder and admitting to transferring instructions and money to Hopper. Authorities said Joy Aylor contacted Garland about arranging the slaying. Garland hired Kreafle, who hired Hopper. It was Carole Garland, his wife and Joy Aylor's sister, who tipped police about the plot and helped detectives by recording conversations implicating Joy Aylor. When Hopper initially was questioned, he fled police during an interview under the guise of needing a drink of water. He was picked up six months later, amid a nationwide manhunt. "Most crimes happen in a few moments of time," recalled Kevin Chapman, the lead prosecutor in the trials of Hopper and Aylor. "This one the crime, the coverup - spanned 5 years. I had a notebook with 60 pages of dates, just dates of events, a ton of bank records, phone records, file cabinets full of stuff." Chapman, now in private business in Austin, said it was remarkable the principles all had jobs and came from good families with solid backgrounds. Joy Aylor, who worked as a decorator, had wealth and social standing. He said Hopper, married and the father of two daughters, was likable and charismatic. "I viewed it as a thrill killing," Chapman said. "He stripped her, tried to have sex with her, for $1,500. It was a power thrill deal. "It should have been a lot different. He should have been a productive member of society." ******************************* Man convicted of capital murder in girl's death A man accused of killing his estranged wife, 4-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter was convicted Monday of capital murder. A Grayson County jury took just 35 minutes to find Andre Lee Thomas guilty in the death of the girl. The jury began deliberating Thomas' punishment Monday afternoon. Thomas was accused of stabbing 20-year-old Laura Christine Thomas, Andre Lee Boren and Leyha Marie Hughes in the woman's Sherman apartment in March 2004. The victims' hearts were cut out, and two of them were found at Andre Thomas' house. Thomas walked into the Sherman Police Department afterward and said he had killed his wife. He underwent surgery for his stab wounds and was jailed after he was released from the hospital. While confined in the county jail last year, Thomas ripped his right eye out of its socket. (source for both: Associated Press) ******************** ----execution date changed---- The Texas Department of Criminal Justice reports that Alexander Martinez, who was scheduled to be executed in Huntsville this Thursday, has received a new execution date for June. The date should (still) be considered serious. (sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin) INDIANA: Officials to seek death penalty in slaying--Jeffrey Voss is accused of abducting and strangling 12-year-old girl on Christmas Eve. Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi is seeking the death penalty against a man accused of killing a 12-year-old girl on Christmas Eve. New forensic tests determined that Jeffrey Voss, 39, sexually assaulted Christina Tedder, Brizzi said. "A person who would steal the innocence of a 12-year-old is deplorable," Brizzi said, describing Voss as "among the worst of the worst." In January, Voss was charged with murder, three counts of criminal confinement and obstruction of justice. Brizzi said he intends to file an additional charge of child molesting. Voss was on probation for an April 1990 armed robbery at a Cloverdale restaurant when, Marion County sheriff's deputies say, he strangled Christina about 8:30 p.m. at a home in the 10500 block of Folsom Drive. At the home, police found what they believe is Christina's hair in a trash can and in snow near the garage. Police found Christina's clothing where Voss told them he tossed it -- in a trash bin outside of Wal-Mart at 30th Street and Mitthoefer Road. (source: Indianapolis Star) FLORIDA: Death penalty sought in strangulation death In Bradenton, prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against a 35-year-old man accused of strangling woman to death in her east Manatee home. In a Feb. 24 letter filed at the Manatee County courthouse, Assistant State Attorney Art Brown notified Assistant Public Defender James Slater that he will seek the death penalty against Darrell W. Mitchell. Authorities say Mitchell strangled Susan Tharp, 48, to death in her Briarwood home last July. Deputies found Tharp's body stuffed under a water bed after friends and family became concerned about her whereabouts. A trial date has been set for March 14, according to court records. (source: Bradenton Herald) GEORGIA: Lena Baker remembered The only woman ever to be executed by electrocution in Georgia is remembered this weekend. Lena Baker was convicted of shooting Ernest B. Knight, a mill owner she was hired to care for. While Baker claimed it was self defense, the jury of 12 white men found her guilty. Saturday, about 30 death penalty opponents gathered at Baker's grave outside Cuthbert to remember her death. Baker's family has formally requested a pardon for Baker, but posthumous pardons are rare in Georgia, and the request is still being considered. (source : WALB-TV) USA: A phony 'consensus' on youthful killers Now that the Supreme Court has rendered its decision in Roper v. Simmons, the debate over capital punishment for murder committed by juveniles is closed. In the 20 states whose laws didn't previously rule out the death penalty for juvenile killers, the laws will be changed. Around the country, 72 convicted capital murderers who were not yet 18 when they committed their crimes are being removed from death row. When the Supreme Court speaks, the legal system falls in step. The United States has not reached anything like a settled view on this subject, but that no longer matters. Five justices have declared that the Eighth Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" forbids the execution of murderers who were juveniles when they killed. And that, under our system, is that. A good thing? Not when it comes to an issue on which public opinion is as fluid as capital punishment. The Roper majority purported to ground its ruling in the nation's "evolving standards of decency," which it says have led to a "national consensus" against the execution of juvenile murderers. Even if there were such a consensus -- and there clearly is not -- there is no reason to believe that it is chiseled in granite. But by deciding that public opinion has moved decisively on this question, then grafting that decision onto the Constitution, the court has stripped lawmakers of the right to someday change their minds. Yet when has legislative support for capital punishment ever been static? As Justice Antonin Scalia notes in his dissent, it "has surged and ebbed throughout our nation's history." In the years after World War II, for example, there was a dramatic fall-off in executions, as many states went through a phase of abolishing or restricting capital punishment. For several years beginning in 1968, in fact, executions came to a halt. By the logic of the Roper majority, the Supreme Court could have declared back then that "evolving standards" had reached a "national consensus" in favor of eliminating the death penalty once and for all. In hindsight, we know that any such declaration would have been ludicrous -- within a few years, support for the death penalty had soared. "But had this court then declared the existence of such a consensus, and outlawed capital punishment," wrote Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in a 1988 opinion quoted by Scalia last week, "legislatures would very likely not have been able to revive it. The mistaken premise of the decision would have been frozen into constitutional law." Of course, standards of decency do evolve. There are punishments, once common, that a true national consensus now firmly rejects -- public flogging, debtor's prison, the stocks. But the court's evidence for a consensus against the death penalty for those who murdered before their 18th birthday is pitifully thin. In recent years, it notes, executions of juvenile murderers have been few and far between, and five states that used to allow it no longer do. That's a "national consensus"? Executions of any murderers are few and far between -- of the more than 15,000 homicides committed each year, no more than a few dozen result in a death sentence. And if 5 states recently raised their death penalty age to 18, 4 other states, as the dissent points out, recently set theirs at 16. The bottom line hasn't changed: Fewer than half of the states that permit capital punishment restrict it to killers who were 18 or older. It is hard not to conclude that five justices ruled capital punishment of juvenile murderers unconstitutional simply because they personally oppose it. Their arguments are the familiar ones: Juveniles tend to be more immature and irresponsible than adults, they are more susceptible to bad influences, their character is less well formed. All obviously true -- as a rule. But just as obviously true is that there are exceptions to the rule. The average 17-year-old criminal may be less culpable than the average adult criminal, but who would deny that some 17-year-olds can act with depravity and ruthlessness far beyond their years? The 17-year-old in Roper v. Simmons, for example, who bragged in advance that he could commit murder and ''get away with it" because of his age. He and his accomplice broke in on Shirley Crook in the middle of the night, hog-tied her with duct tape and electrical wire, then threw her off a bridge, still conscious, to a terrifying death in the river below. Youthful savages like Simmons may be rare, but they exist. Nothing in the Bill of Rights requires us to pretend otherwise. In almost every state, 16- and 17-year-olds can be treated as adults when it comes to noncapital crimes -- up to and including homicide. Whether capital murder should be an exception is certainly a debatable issue. It should never have been a constitutional one. (source: Jeff Jacoby, Column, Boston Globe) *********************** If the death penalty is in place, everyone should get to play The United States Supreme Court recently decreed that the execution of persons under the age of eighteen is unconstitutional, a decision that directly affects New Hampshire. We are one of 19 states in the nation that condone the death penalty (even though it hasnt been invoked here since 1976). The courts decision to give a bye to youthful killers is a slap in the face to states rights as defined in the tenth amendment, and a reflection of the growing tendency of lady justice to peek out from behind her blindfold. The Supreme Court has superseded New Hampshire voters wishes through this shameful decision. It has said that 5 robed ninnies know better than you and I what is good for this state and for the citizens of 18 other states that have made plain their views on capital punishment. The death penalty makes theoretical sense to me from a deterrence point of view, though as it is currently applied, the practicality of that argument is rendered moot. Given the lengthy requisite appeals process and the overall unlikeliness of a one way ticket across the River Jordan, no would-be assassin stops to consider state-sponsored fatal retribution as he is squeezing the trigger. The vengeance factor resonates with me as well, but again, given the massive prophylactic between murder and execution, fifteen years of appeals drains execution of much of its relish. Shakespeare has suggested that vengeance is a dish best served cold, a quaint notion aptly put, but for your average citizen suffering the loss of a loved one at the hand of a murderer, theres no time like the present. I think that if the death penalty is in place, everyone should get to play. The young, the old, the retarded, the infirm. In addition, it should be a horrifying death, and not this candy-ass lethal injection that is currently Americas preferred means of dispatch into the everafter. If the death penalty is a deterrent, that component of its logic should be maximized both in the swiftness and brutality of its application. I have previously endorsed revival of the electric chair and the guillotine, though I would ideally prefer putting a pillow case over the condemneds head and letting a bunch of Irish and Italian kids from Bostons north end finish him off with chains and baseball bats, but that is not the primary thrust of this essay. Allowing the Supreme Court to micromanage states rights as it has is an affront to the Constitution, the upholding of which is the Supreme Courts sole function. It has shirked this duty, and done so at least in part due to international public opinion. The majority opinion acknowledged that "the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty" had some influence on the courts decision. Since when does the United States allow France, Germany, Senegal, the friggin Netherlands and other nations to influence US domestic policy? If an individual has the imagination to conceive a murder and the will to carry it out, he is in the big leagues and should be afforded all of the arrows in the penal codes quiver. This terrible decision to take execution off the table by virtue of adolescence is an elitist insult. Anyone who doesnt like the way New Hampshire runs its court system is free to move to Vermont. For most Granite staters, its less than 200 miles away. The Supreme Courts ruling erases the death sentences imposed on 70 defendants currently on death row who were juveniles at the time of their crimes. As far as my own reality goes, the ruling doesnt matter a bit. The Columbine copycat who murders my niece or nephew will not enjoy the bogus protection recently afforded him by the five robed ninnies. He will instead eat a slug delivered via an AK-47 with a scope from the courthouse roof, that is if I dont get him with a Kimber assault revolver during the perp walk. Citizens less inclined to take care of such matters in-house are the ones who stand to suffer from this abominable decision. I view the societal option of executing teenagers the way the NRA views firearms: its better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. (source: Seacoast Online) *********************** More Death-Penalty Revisions Needed The U.S. Supreme Court made the death penalty stronger last week. It trimmed some of its fat, so to speak. That leaves more prominent muscle. Death-penalty opponents celebrated the 5-4 ruling outlawing the death penalty for offenders younger than 18, a barbarism permitted in 19 states, but hardly anywhere else in the world. These abolitionists were fully entitled to celebrate, considering that this was a victory for humanity and compassion and reason. But they were wrong to assert, as some did, that this is another step in the steady erosion and inevitable demise of the death penalty in America. Quite to the contrary, the Supreme Court seems to be systematically destroying the politically unpopular applications of the death penalty, thus leaving only the popular ones. That would mean that while executions might become less numerous, theyd also become less troubling to the American people. That would give us a death penalty that would be anything but weaker. It would be entrenched. 2 years ago, the high court ruled that mentally retarded people may not be executed. That satisfied a voting public that surely thought mentally retarded people were spared already. Now, the court has removed another source of squeamishness, meaning the executions of children who surely cannot be held as responsible for their actions as adults. Combine those developments with the universal availability of DNA evidence and continued scientific advancement, and this is what you get: A death penalty well on its way to being applied only against a certifiably competent and responsible adult whose guilt is an empirical and absolute certainty. The only grounds for opposing that would be to oppose the death penalty altogether, which at least 3/4 of the American public does not. If, indeed, thats where were headed, then the Supreme Court needs to trim 2 more layers of fat: - It needs to overturn the conviction of a Tennessee man named Paul Gregory House, whose guilt in a rape-murder from 1985 has been seriously called into question by new evidence showing the relevant DNA to be that of the victims hard-drinking husband. To do so, the high court would need to rule, in effect, that it must reserve the right to correct simple bad judgment by an appeals court. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati voted 8-7, purely along partisan lines, with Republican nominees in the majority, to uphold Houses conviction and permit no new trial despite the new evidence. - It needs to take a case allowing it to say that death row inmates who become certifiably psychotic cannot be executed. The currently operative case is a 6-5 ruling by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis in an Arkansas case. The appeals court said, by that narrowest majority, that it is perfectly appropriate for a state to ply a medically certified mentally ill inmate with anti-psychotic medicine to mute his symptoms and make him appear sufficiently competent to meet the legal requirement that he understand why hes being put to death. Medicate in order to kill, in other words. The Supreme Court declined to accept the appeal, and the inmate, Charles Singleton, was put to death in January 2004. Unless the Supreme Court speaks on those 2 points, we will continue to have a death penalty that lends itself occasionally to error, meanness and, as a result, public squeamishness. Beyond that, there will always remain one underlying injustice in the American death penalty: its varying and unequal application from state to state and from judicial district to judicial district. Two guys commit the same brutal crime. One gets the death penalty because his prosecutor and jury are tough. The other gets life in prison. The Supreme Court has essentially condoned that inequality, saying only that the death penalty is not unconstitutionally cruel and unusual and that it is a function of the states. States are forever different. Their own subdivisions are forever different. (source: Opinion, John Brummett is a columnist and reporter for Stephens media groups Arkansas news bureau in Little Rock)
