March 23
TEXAS:
State appealing to lift reprieve blocking execution
Lawyers from the Texas attorney general's office planned to ask a federal
appeals court on Wednesday to lift a judge's order blocking the execution
of a convicted killer scheduled for later in the day.
U.S. District Judge Terry Means late Tuesday ruled Steven Kenneth Staley
should not receive lethal injection until questions about his mental
competency were fully reviewed in court.
"I understand about wanting to get it done, but it seems to me we ought to
do it the right way," Staley's lawyer, Jack Strickland, said. "I think now
that he's been granted a stay, that's the reasonable thing to do and all
of us ought to go be lawyers instead of posturing about in the courts.
Let's put on evidence and let the chips fall where they will."
After Means' ruling, state attorneys filed notice they plan to appeal to
the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to reinstate the
punishment, which had been scheduled for after 6 p.m. CST Wednesday.
Strickland said he will take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if the
appeals court overturns the reprieve.
Staley was convicted of the October 1989 slaying of Bob Read, manager at a
Fort Worth Steak and Ale restaurant. With his nearly three dozen employees
and customers being held at gunpoint by a trio of robbers, Read
volunteered to accompany the gunmen if they would spare everyone else.
Staley, 42, was an escapee from a halfway house in his native Denver when
he and 2 other people were arrested after a police pursuit around Fort
Worth ended their 4-state crime spree. Officers summoned to the restaurant
gave chase after Read was led away at gunpoint and was forced into a car
the robbers hijacked.
As they fled, police heard several shots.
"I remember this one cop testifying how he ran up to the car, hoping,
hoping, hoping to find the man in there alive," said Terri Moore, a former
Tarrant County assistant district attorney and one of the prosecutors at
Staley's capital murder trial. "But there he was. A big old gunshot wound
to the head."
Staley was examined last week by psychiatrists who determined he was aware
of his punishment and why he was being put to death. Those are the
criteria the U.S. Supreme Court established in 1986 as the standards for
allowing execution of people whose competency is at issue. When the state
courts refused to stop the punishment, Strickland went to federal court.
Moore described the former laborer and 11th-grade dropout as "an odd
person, but I didn't see anything that made him incompetent."
Witnesses said Staley and accomplice Tracey Duke ended their late evening
meal by pulling semiautomatic weapons from the purse of Duke's girlfriend,
Brenda Rayburn.
They herded customers and employees to the back of the restaurant, then
forced Read to open cash registers and the safe, witnesses said, before
stuffing money into a briefcase.
In the confusion, an assistant manager slipped out and call police, who
surrounded the place.
The robbers panicked and decided to use the group as hostages for a
getaway. Read, married and the father of 3, urged them: "Don't take my
customers," Moore recounted. "Take me."
Read struggled as he was being forced into the back seat of the car and
police moved in. Evidence would show Staley shot Read, then Staley and
Duke fired on the officers. The ensuing chase covered about 20 miles and
ended with the gunmen trying to flee on foot.
Staley gave a written statement implicating himself in the fatal shooting,
was convicted and given a death sentence.
Evidence showed Duke, a probation violator from California, also shot
Read. Duke, 38, is serving 3 life sentences in Texas and has a 30-year
sentence in Colorado for murder and armed robbery. Rayburn, now also 38,
took 30 years in a plea bargain.
Investigators tied the trio to a series of robberies, assaults and at
least one other murder during a spree across Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma
after Staley escaped from the Denver halfway house.
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA:
Murderer put back on death row----Supreme Court says jury likely weighed
religious conversion
The Supreme Court decided 5-3 Tuesday to restore a death sentence for a
murderer in Orange County, Calif., who became a devout Christian after
entering prison.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 6-5
ruling, had reversed William Payton's death sentence because jurors might
have thought they could not consider his behind-bars conversion to
Christianity. A prosecutor had argued that only the crime counts, not what
happens after the convict goes to prison.
The Supreme Court disagreed with the appeals court and said the jury
almost surely weighed Payton's religious conversion but decided he
deserved to die anyway.
Tuesday's decision is another example of the recurring dispute between the
liberal-leaning 9th Circuit and the more conservative Supreme Court.
In 1996, Congress changed the law to say federal judges should defer to
reasonable decisions of the state courts in death penalty cases. In 1980,
Payton raped and stabbed to death Pamela Montgomery at a boarding house in
Garden Grove, Calif. He also repeatedly stabbed 2 other persons who
survived to testify against him.
9th Circuit reversed again
A jury convicted him and sentenced him to die, and the California courts
upheld the sentence. But the 9th Circuit said that in imposing the death
sentence, the jury probably had not weighed all the mitigating evidence in
the case--especially his conversion to Christianity--because of the
prosecutor's comments.
Writing for the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the decisions of the
California courts were reasonable, and the jury may well have seen
Payton's religious conversion as "altogether insignificant in light of the
brutality of the crimes."
Justices David Souter, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg
dissented, saying reasonable jurors would have thought they could not
consider his religious conversation as grounds for leniency. Chief Justice
William Rehnquist took no part in the ruling.
(source: Chicago Tribune)
MARYLAND:
Convicted killer Evans seeks delay of execution
Lawyers for a death row inmate scheduled to be executed next month filed
an unopposed motion with Maryland's highest court yesterday, asking the
judges to delay the convicted killer's execution to give him a chance to
argue that his sentence should be overturned based on a University of
Maryland death penalty study.
Although the judges won't rule on the request before court resumes March
31, the lack of opposition on the part of state prosecutors makes it
highly unlikely that Vernon L. Evans Jr. will be executed as scheduled,
during the five-day period that begins April 18.
Saying the Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear in June an appeal from
death row inmate Wesley E. Baker based on the same death penalty study,
lawyers for Evans wrote in their motion, "It is inconceivable that one man
on death row should be allowed to die while another man is litigating an
identical issue before this Court."
The attorneys also wrote that the senior counsel for capital litigation in
the attorney general's office did not oppose the request to stay Evans'
execution but asked that his appeal hearing be set at the same time as
Baker's in June.
Evans and drug kingpin Anthony Grandison were convicted and sentenced to
death for the April 1983 killing of David Scott Piechowicz and Susan
Kennedy at the Warren House Motor Hotel in Pikesville.
Baker was convicted in 1992 of fatally shooting a teacher's aide in front
of her grandchildren in the parking lot of a Catonsville shopping center.
Both Evans and Baker -- as well as two other death row inmates -- asked
the courts to overturn their sentences based on a January 2003 study in
which professor Raymond Paternoster documented racial and geographic
disparities in the application of the death penalty in Maryland.
Paternoster found that black defendants who killed whites statistically
were most likely to be charged with capital murder and sentenced to death
in Maryland. He also found that the likelihood of prosecutors seeking
capital murder charges in Baltimore County is, for instance, 13 times
greater than in Baltimore.
Evans and Baker are black. The victims in their cases, all of whom were
white, were killed in Baltimore County.
(source: Baltimore Sun)
FLORIDA:
Man Accused in Lunsford Murder Denied Bail
The man accused of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing 9-year-old
Jessica Marie Lunsford was denied bail Tuesday on murder and other
charges, beginning a legal process that the girl's father wants to see end
with a death sentence.
John Evander Couey, 46, a convicted sex offender who sheriff's officers
say confessed to taking Jessica from her home and killing her, had his 1st
court appearance on charges of capital murder, battery, kidnapping and
sexual battery on a child under the age of 12.
"This is an infamous case here," Citrus County Judge Mark Yerman told
Couey during the brief hearing. "The acts you are accused of and the
crimes you confessed to are really beyond words."
The shackled defendant, looking tired and downtrodden, answered a few
questions, telling the judge he needed an attorney and had no assets.
Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy said he will urge prosecutors to seek the
death penalty.
"I just want him to die," Jessica's father, Mark Lunsford, said Monday
night on CNN's "Larry King Live."
Couey was arrested last week in Georgia and brought back to Florida and
booked Sunday on charges of violating probation and failing to register
his change of address as required as a sex offender. The additional
charges were filed Monday.
Jessica, a 3rd grader, was last seen the night of Feb. 23 when she went to
bed after attending church. Her body was found early Saturday behind a
house about 150 yards from her home, more than 3 weeks after she
disappeared from her bedroom.
Medical examiners said she was sexually assaulted and died of
asphyxiation. Detectives might never know how long Jessica was held before
she was killed since Couey was under the influence of drugs, officials
said.
Lunsford said he felt guilty that he was not at home that night. "We have
to save our children from people like this," Lunsford said. "It's time to
change some of our laws."
Lunsford said he will campaign to get stricter penalties and laws
regarding registering sex offenders.
"They should be tagged, they should be branded," Lunsford said of sex
offenders.
Gov. Jeb Bush said earlier that he was wary about such proposals. "We
should be cautious about doing something that would expand the net so wide
as to not accomplish the desired effect and get into a problem," Bush
said.
(source: Associated Press)
************************
Is man on death row Dad? Test could bring closure
After not knowing the truth for nearly 23 years, Tonya Cartagena wants to
meet her father.
But if her dad is who she thinks he is, the two may not have too much time
to get to know each other -- or to prove they are father and daughter.
Cartagena strongly believes her dad is Sonny Ray Jeffries, a Florida
death-row inmate who is trying to give up his appeals and have the
governor decide his fate.
In 1999, Jeffries was sentenced to death for stomping to death an Orlando
landlady during a 1993 robbery. But Jeffries' violent past and his current
desire to end his time on death row have not deterred Cartagena from
attempting to reach a convicted killer she has good reason to believe is
her dad.
"I really need to know if he is my father," said Cartagena, who recently
moved to Florida from New Jersey. "If he is, I just want to see him and
talk to him one time. That's all I want, just to know him. I don't care
what he did."
She also wants to be sure by having a DNA test prove his paternity.
Knowing the truth would offer "closure," said Cartagena, who has 3 young
children herself.
Cartagena shares Jeffries' facial features and his fair skin color. Family
members, including her mom, have indicated Jeffries is probably her
father.
The day Cartagena moved to Central Florida, she said she read an article
in the Orlando Sentinel discussing Jeffries' intentions to stop fighting
his death sentence and be executed.
"When I looked at the picture, I said: 'Oh, my God. That's him,'" she
said.
Cartagena had suspected the man she grew up with and always thought was
her biological father might not be. Family members hinted that she looked
nothing like the man, Peter Landini.
Last summer, DNA testing proved Landini was not her father. Then, after
hearing Jeffries might be her biological father, Cartagena said she tried
unsuccessfully to contact him on death row.
Cartagena's mother, Janet Landini, a medical-records technician in New
Jersey, said she honestly long thought her current husband, Peter, was
Cartagena's father.
Now Janet Landini said it is possible that Jeffries -- whom she dated
briefly during the early 1980s -- is Cartagena's father. She recalls
Jeffries being a nice guy until he threatened her father with a baseball
bat.
"He threatened to kill my father when I went with him," Janet Landini
said.>{>> Janet Landini said she stopped dating Jeffries when he moved to
another part of New Jersey. Despite Jeffries' history, Janet Landini is
encouraging her daughter.
"I'm happy for her. I'm happy that she's trying to find out," she said.
"She probably is Sonny's."
The question now is whether Jeffries, who has a history of erratic
behavior in court, will agree to meet with the 22-year-old woman and
provide a DNA sample.
Defense attorney Daphney Gaylord said Jeffries just learned Cartagena
might be his child.
"He had no indication that he had a daughter out there," Gaylord said. "He
has said he is willing to discuss the paternity issue with her."
Gaylord said she hasn't discussed whether the emergence of Cartagena and 3
potential grandchildren might change Jeffries' mind about speeding up his
case.
On April 8, Jeffries is expected back in court in Orlando before Orange
Circuit Judge Bob Wattles. At that point, the judge will resume a hearing
to help decide whether Jeffries is competent to make the decision to turn
down his appeals and face a likely death warrant from the governor.
Gaylord, who argues that Jeffries suffers from mental illness, could not
say Tuesday whether the inmate would agree to a paternity test.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has Jeffries' DNA profile in its
database. But FDLE spokesman Phil Kiracofe said that material is available
only to law enforcement for a criminal investigation.
That means if Jeffries doesn't agree to provide a DNA sample, Cartagena
may be forced to seek a court order demanding he provide a sample.
Wattles could not immediately answer the DNA test question, but he said
Cartagena is welcome to attend Jeffries' next court date.
"If she wishes to speak to Mr. Jeffries and can give me a valid reason why
she wants to do that, I probably would allow her to speak to Mr. Jeffries
in open court," Wattles said.
Wattles sentenced Jeffries to death for killing Wilma Martin. Jeffries and
another man robbed and killed Martin, 68, in her Orlando home in August
1993.
Today Cartagena wonders if Jeffries would have gotten into trouble if he
had known he had a child. And she hopes that with the knowledge he
possibly has a child and grandchildren, Jeffries might reconsider and not
be in such a rush to drop his lawyer and be executed.
"If I meet him for the first time and, you know, he says, 'I still want to
die,' well I can't change his mind," Cartagena said. "No matter what
happens, he's my father. He's got grandkids that he's never even seen."
(source: Orlando Sentinel)
