March 26 USA---book review Review: Death penalty case is far from closed---Hot topic is argued from all sides in gripping novel To succeed, a legal-political thriller must deliver its plot with authenticity, backed by research sufficient to persuade even the most sophisticated reader that the story could actually happen. In his newest book Conviction, which probes every nook and cranny in the ever-raging controversy surrounding capital punishment, Richard North Patterson succeeds. 2 months away from execution, mentally challenged Rennell Price has lived on death row for 15 years. He was convicted of joining his brother Dayton in murdering a 9-year-old, although he has consistently said since his arrest, "I didn't do that little girl." A neighbor testified she saw the two men force the victim into their house, and accomplice Eddie Fleet, who helped the Price brothers dispose of the body in the Pacific Ocean, plea-bargained his way to freedom with his account of what happened that night. The defendants' grandmother delivers her life savings and more (after mortgaging her house) to retain attorney Yancey James so he will represent both Prices. The slick lawyer makes his living preying on the elderly relatives of criminals, mishandling cases and consuming mass quantities of Jack Daniels and cocaine. His inept representation of Rennell and Dayton at trial produces the expected guilty verdict, followed by the half-hearted and unsuccessful pro bono appellate efforts of lawyers at a large downtown firm. Entering his final 60 days of prison existence, Rennell finds himself in the hands of Terri Paget, a lawyer-crusader whose professional and personal obsession is to "throw sand into the machinery of death," and now takes on one more case to prevent the consummation of capital punishment. Mr. Patterson leaves no legal or political stone unturned in his examination of both sides of the death penalty issue. Along the way, he delivers vivid settings and dialogues from the crime, investigation, trial and appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and execution. The quality and thoroughness of each event's description in this tight jurisprudential timeline is so flawless that Conviction should become required reading for every American law student. As Conviction shows, critical questions often have no clear answers. At what level of mental incapacity should our courts change the rules for a criminal defendant's trial? What amount of attorney malpractice should entitle a Death Row felon to a new trial? But the ultimate question in Conviction is: Should the main goal of post-conviction litigation be achieving finality or preventing the potential execution of innocent people? Those who have followed Mr. Patterson's career over the course of his 12 previous novels will not be surprised by the heavyweight writer's knockout punch. Unlike many of his fellow best-selling authors, he is not under contract to produce a book every year. To compile and grasp all information necessary for a balanced, dramatic presentation of our era's major legal-political issues, including Senate confirmation of federal judges, abortion, gun control and now the death penalty, takes time, lots of time. Mr. Patterson's work is worth the wait. With each successive book, including Conviction, Mr. Patterson redefines the term tour de force. Talmage Boston is a lawyer in Dallas and past chairman of the litigation section for the State Bar of Texas. Conviction -- Richard North Patterson ($25.95, Random House) (source: Dallas Morning News) ********************** Bishops right on death penalty Fittingly, the nation's Roman Catholic bishops picked Holy Week to embark on a campaign to end the death penalty in the United States. Good Friday, after all, marks the execution of Jesus Christ. The worldwide trend is unmistakable. Executions are increasingly falling from favor - even in the U.S., the only industrially advanced nation that still puts people to death. That trend emboldened the bishops to start their drive. Now, the trick is to build unstoppable momentum against the barbaric practice of condemning convicted defendants to die. "We cannot teach killing is wrong by killing," Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, D.C., noted in a news conference last week. "We cannot defend life by taking life." How true. The death penalty only adds to the vortex of violence in which America is trapped. The discovery that many innocent people were stewing on death row has weakened the strong support for the irreversible sentence in the U.S. - a development that has particular resonance during Holy Week. In campaigning against the death penalty, the bishops are being consistently "pro-life." We disagree with their anti-abortion stance; we support a woman's right to choose to end or to continue a pregnancy. But we admire the bishops' consistency. Many who don the "pro-life" label are really only "pro-some-life," as evidenced by their support of the death penalty. Catholic theology has it that the death penalty is OK when there are no other options to protect the community, as in primitive days, which lacked prisons. But, clearly, modern society boasts other options, most particularly life in prison without the possibility of parole. Society must outgrow the death penalty for all manner of reasons: The chances are a portion of the executed are innocent. The penalty is carried out capriciously. It's no more a deterrent than is life in prison. And it makes a killer of the state. According to a John Zogby poll, most American Catholics used to back the death penalty. Today, however, Catholics are evenly split on the issue. And the more often Catholics attend Mass, the more likely they are to oppose the death penalty. Thanks to the sermons they hear? The trend among the flock is already in the right direction. With a push from the shepherds, abolition of the death penalty can finally come into view. (source: Editorial, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) NEVADA: State high court wont reconsider its death penalty ruling The Nevada Supreme Court refused Friday to reconsider its landmark December ruling that limits the way prosecutors seek the death penalty - a decision that could open the door for some of the states death row inmates to seek a new sentence. In its decision on an appeal of a death sentence for Robert McConnell, the court upheld his conviction and penalty, but ruled that "a felony may not be used both to establish 1st-degree murder and to aggravate the murder to capital status." McConnells lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Cheryl Bond, praised the ruling. "I think they reached the right decision," Bond said. "Mr. McConnell is still going to be executed, but Im pleased by the ruling." In her appeal to the Supreme Court, Bond had argued that the practice of charging a person with 1st-degree murder for a killing that occurs while another felony is being committed, such as a robbery or rape, and then using that same charge to seek a death sentence, is unconstitutional. Deputy District Attorney Terry McCarthy, who handles such appeals, asked the high court to reconsider that decision. He was joined by the Clark County District Attorneys Office in challenging the ruling, arguing that prosecutors have been using this system for 20 years. Clark County Deputy District Attorney Steve Owens had said the impacts of the ruling "could be huge," and said would give many of Nevadas death row inmates "new grounds for a challenge." But the justices said Friday "that the state fail(ed) to demonstrate that this court overlooked or misapprehended any material points of law or fact, so we deny the petition." The court defended its ruling, stating that one of Nevada's 14 aggravators in death penalty cases in unconstitutional. Under state law, people can be charged with 1st-degree murder if they killed someone with premeditation and deliberation. They also can face that charge if they commit a felony and someone dies, such as in a robbery that goes bad. This is felony murder and premeditation must not be proved. In arguing for a death sentence in such cases, prosecutors must prove to a jury at least one of a list of 14 aggravators such as a police officer was killed or the slaying involved mutilation. Among the list of aggravators is one stating that the murder occurred while the person was committing a robbery, 1st-degree arson, burglary, home invasion or kidnapping, according to state statutes. In its ruling, the justices said that prosecutors can no longer use this aggravator when a person is charged with felony murder for killing someone while committing a crime because it duplicates the felony murder charge and fails to narrow the punishment. The court also said Friday that its ruling was consistent with recent shifts in the way capital punishment is used in this country. "The U.S. Supreme Court itself has in recent years re-examined its own precedent and redirected the national debate over the death penalty, placing this field of jurisprudence in transition in many respects." (source: Reno Gazette-Journal) CALIFORNIA: Protesters call for end to death penalty In Riverside, about 25 people gathered for an anti-death penalty rally Friday at a downtown Riverside mall, taking advantage of the observances of Jesus Christ's crucifixion to suggest modern-day executions also sometimes put innocent people to death. "You can't kill the guilty without killing the innocent," said Carolyn Boyle, 44, of Riverside, one of the event organizers. "It is not possible. It just can't be done." Sponsored by Inland Empire chapters of the groups Death Penalty Focus and California People of Faith Working Against the Death Penalty, the rally carried a provocative theme: "There's a long history to executing the innocent ... Would Arnold Execute Jesus?" During the rally, organizers circulated a petition that calls on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare a moratorium on executions of criminals until at least Dec. 31, 2007. That's when a state-ordered exhaustive study of California's criminal justice system and its use of the death penalty is expected to be completed by the newly formed California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. The event was one of several Good Friday anti-death penalty rallies around the state, Boyle said. And she said several more like it will come in months ahead to the outdoor mall next to Riverside's historic Mission Inn. Boyle, the Inland Empire coordinator for the 2 groups, vowed to continue holding rallies and circulating petitions until Schwarzenegger calls "time out" on executions. On Friday, about 25 people stood in a half circle while speakers took turns citing the problems with the death penalty. In between speeches, recorded folk music played on a boombox. A woman in back held up a large banner that read, "Peace," in white letters, against a striped rainbow background of lavender, blue, aqua, green, yellow, orange and red. Toward the front, a balding man with a ponytail and thick footlong beard wore a T-shirt that proclaimed: "An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation." Speakers included Boyle, a Catholic priest, a Riverside poet who penned a 26-line poem for the occasion, and a victim of a violent crime. Phill Courtney, 51, of Riverside, a writer and schoolteacher, said he was stabbed five times in the back 12 years ago by a man who eventually was sentenced to death for the murder of another person. But Courtney said he stuck to his conviction that executions have no place in a society that claims to value life. "We can't show that killing is wrong by killing," Courtney said. Then he turned to the subject of the massacre at a Minnesota high school a few days ago that left 10 dead. Courtney suggested that widespread use of the death penalty in this country didn't help matters. "A 16-year-old Minnesota boy decided to solve his problems by taking life," Courtney said. "And he's in a culture that says you solve your problems by killing people. I reject that value." Besides setting the wrong example, Boyle said there is too much risk of executing the wrong person. She cited a study that concluded governments in the United States executed 23 people last century who had very strong cases for their innocence. And Boyle said executions tend not to be administered fairly. According to the California Department of Corrections, 40 % of the state's death row inmates are white, while the rest are minorities. More than one-third are black. That ratio is several times larger than blacks' share of California's population. The groups answered their own provocative question with this prepared statement: "Historically, the death penalty has been applied disproportionately to minorities and poor people. Currently, 42 % of all death row inmates in the United States are African-American. Since Jesus was an ethnic minority ---- Judean ---- and poor, there is a very high probability that he would be executed in California today!" (source: The Californian) NORTH CAROLINA: Jurors' views on death penalty, abortion are key in murder trial--Defendant accused of killing pregnant girlfriend Attorneys in the capital-murder trial of a man accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend selected 9 jurors this week in 3 days of intense and sometimes personal questioning on such subjects as abortion and the death penalty. Those issues were particularly critical to prosecution and defense in a case where jury selection is all-important. Ricky Royster, 25, is charged with 1st-degree murder in the death of his girlfriend, Roselyn Dethrow. Prosecutors said that Royster suffocated Dethrow, who was 5 months pregnant, in his home. He then cut her throat and several other areas of her body, and left it in a park to make her death appear to be a random attack, prosecutors said. This week, potential jurors were called from the benches in Forsyth Superior Court to seats in the jury box. They sat for questioning before the defendant, judge, court reporter, four attorneys, a courtroom clerk, 3 sheriff's deputies, other potential jurors, and members of the victim's and defendant's families. Royster's attorneys wanted to know about jurors' opinions on abortion. On Monday, defense attorney Mark Rabil told Judge Ron Spivey that Dethrow's pregnancy is "the most significant issue in the case." He asked to question individual jurors, outside the presence of the rest of the jury pool, about abortion, domestic violence, expert psychological testimony and capital punishment. The opinions of potential jurors on those subjects could stem from their personal experience or religious beliefs, which they might find difficult to discuss in front of others, Rabil said. He also told Spivey that jurors' opinions about abortion in particular could shape their view of the case because prosecutors plan to present evidence about an allegation that Royster forced Dethrow to have an abortion the year before her death, and that he tried to get her to have another abortion when she became pregnant again. Rabil said that jurors who are opposed to abortion may believe that the fetus that Dethrow was carrying should be considered a second victim in the crime. That was the case in the recent Scott Peterson murder case in California, which drew national attention. Under North Carolina law, a fetus is not considered a separate victim in the killing of a pregnant woman. But Spivey denied the motion, and the questioning went on before all. A woman, who was later dismissed by defense attorneys, volunteered that she and her husband had been trying to have a baby. Had she lost any children? Rabil asked. Such an experience could be relevant to the way she would view the case, he later said. No, she replied. Among the other sensitive questions posed to potential jurors by an apologetic Rabil: "Have you ever had an experience with yourself or someone close to you who's been to court for a (domestic violence) protective order?" "Have you or anyone close to you used a psychologist, psychiatrist or therapist?" Pete Clary, Forsyth County's chief public defender, said that choosing a jury is the most important task for attorneys in a case where a defendant could face the death penalty. Clary said that lawyers don't like having to ask jurors sensitive questions. But that concern has to take a back seat to making sure that jurors don't have a personal experience or an opinion that hampers their ability to be fair in the case. "This is the most serious case you have, so we've got to invade some privacy here," Clary said. Defense attorney David Freedman, who has tried at least 15 capital cases, said he explains to jurors that there are no right or wrong answers. He prefaces his questions, he said, with the caution that he's not trying to pry or offend. And, he said, he tries to use a soft tone in his questioning. "It's not what you ask, it's how you ask it," Freedman said. During jury selection, Rabil asked each potential juror whether he or or she had "formed any opinion about the abortion issue." "I think it's a sin," one woman said, after a string of "pro-choice" responses from other potential jurors. Would that have an effect on her decision-making in the case? "No," she said, struggling to clarify her position. "I think it's an individual's right, but I personally think it's a sin." She was dismissed by the defense. Assistant District Attorney David Hall repeatedly asked jurors about their views on capital punishment and its place in the justice system, as well as their personal ability to impose a death sentence. He looked jurors in the eyes, asking them to answer the questions as best as they could: "Do you believe you have the courage ... to recommend the sentence of death?" "Would you be able to write the verdict 'death' with your hand and be able provide it to Judge Spivey in court?" Members of the jury pool often struggled with their answers. An older woman seemed close to tears as Spivey further queried her about whether she would be able to vote for the death penalty. "I'm just having a real hard time with this," she said quietly. She was dismissed by prosecutors. Spivey so far has excused 18 potential jurors for cause - legal reasons that prevent them from judging the case impartially. Eighteen more people were excused on pre-emptory challenges, for which lawyers need not provide any reason - 10 by prosecutors and 8 by Royster's attorneys. Under state law, attorneys for each side are allowed 14 pre-emptory challenges when picking the jury for a capital case. The attorneys will be allowed 4 challenges when picking the 4 alternate jurors. Jury selection will continue Monday. (source: Winston-Salem Journal) VIRGINIA: Court: Death row inmate's representation satisfactory A federal appeals court in Richmond has rejected a death row inmate's claim that he is entitled to a new sentencing hearing because his attorney failed to investigate whether he is mentally retarded. Darick Demorris Walker claimed that his constitutional right to effective legal representation was violated. The appeal panel today ruled 2-to-1 that the lawyer's performance was not constitutionally deficient. Walker was sentenced to death for fatally shooting 2 men after breaking into their Richmond homes in 1996 and 1997, respectively. In his appeal, Walker said his lawyer should have done more after learning 3 days before trial that his school records suggested possible retardation. (source: Associated Press) ALABAMA: Execution date pending A man convicted of killing an Opelika policeman in 1993 may soon have an execution date. Attorney General Troy King filed a motion March 17 asking the Alabama Supreme Court to set an execution date for George Sibley, 72. Sibley and his common-law wife, Linda Lyon, were convicted of capital murder in the slaying of Sgt. Roger Motley after they gunned him down in a shopping center. In a press release, King said, "We cannot, and I will not, allow attacks on law enforcement to go unpunished." In the motion, King summarized the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals March 21, 1997, opinion regarding the case. The courts said Rogers was responding to a call placed by a concerned citizen who heard a child calling for help in Sibley and Lyons car. When Rogers approached the car, the Court said he was shot by Sibley and Lyon. Both were allegedly fleeing from Florida to avoid sentencing on assault charges. The Court said "the prosecutions case was virtually impenetrable." The prosecution had 12 eyewitnesses and a statement from Sibley admitting he shot Rogers, although in court, Sibley argued he shot Rogers in self-defense. Sibley and Lyon were convicted on May 20, 1993, and a Lee County Circuit Court unanimously recommended the death sentence. Lyon was executed May 10, 2002. In Kings motion, he said Sibley did not exercise his right to the appeals process, and the state set a Nov. 7, 2002, execution date. 6 days before his execution, Sibley sought a stay of execution for the courts to hear his appeal. Sibley was given an extension until Jan. 21, 2005, to ask the Supreme Court to hear his appeal, which it had not as of March 17, 2005. "Mr. Sibley has earned his death sentence, and victims, law enforcement and justice demand that his punishment be delivered," King said in a press release. Opelika Chief of Police Thomas Mangham agrees with Kings recommendation. "We want the courts to go ahead and set an execution date," Mangham said. "The execution will bring closure, and we can start the healing process." Mangham said Rogers was a family man and was committed to teaching the young men on the police force the proper way of doing things. "He was just a good person to be around," he said. "His death was a tragic loss to the community and the department." As of Tuesday, the attorney generals office had no new developments in the proceedings. (source: The Auburn Plainsman)
