May 2 CONNECTICUT: Conn. Killer's Execution Delayed Again The Connecticut Supreme Court on Monday postponed the lethal injection of a serial killer who wants to expedite his death, again delaying what would be New England's 1st scheduled execution in 45 years. The 2-day postponement, until May 13, gives attorneys the full 20 days required by law to appeal a judge's April ruling that found Michael Ross competent to accept his sentence. The postponement also will allow the court more time to decide if an attorney appointed to represent Ross may continue to seek to block the execution. Ross, 45, has admitted killing and raping 8 young women in Connecticut and New York in the early 1980s. He was ruled competent to forgo his appeals, but his attorney is appealing that ruling. Ross fought off attempts by public defenders, death penalty opponents and his own family to stop his execution last year and came within hours of death in January. The competency hearing came after a federal judge chastised another attorney for helping Ross hasten his execution. (source: Associated Press) ***************** Connecticut's Wrong Decision----State can't justiry killings by government as a just punishment. The state of Connecticut, in its zeal regarding serial killer Michael Ross, is about to adopt capital punishment in practice rather than merely in theory. This is a mistake made possible because of the horrid crimes of Mr. Ross, and not because state residents, in calmer times, liked the idea of capital punishment as a public policy. To the contrary, Connecticut has wisely avoided actually carrying out capital punishment for decades, even after the statutes made capital punishment possible. Despite yet another appeal filed later in the week, the execution of Mr. Ross moved another step towards reality Tuesday when the state Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by the Missionary Society of Connecticut. The society had claimed that the execution should not take place until the state Board of Pardons and Paroles established specific rules for commutation hearings for convicted people about to be put to death. Special counsel Thomas Groark Jr. filed the other appeal to halt Mr. Ross's execution on Thursday. The General Assembly has affirmed the death penalty and now the case is inching towards an inexorable conclusion. The despicable nature of Mr. Ross's crimes and the attendant legal battles that have ensued over many years have created a bizarre atmosphere, one in which even the defendant changed his mind about living or dying. In such circumstances, it's easy, and tempting to say, go ahead, take his life, particularly when the defendant himself says he wants to die. Yet a civil society cannot condemn murder as a horrible criminal act and then adopt capital punishment as a means of punishment. The use of state-sanctioned killing has nothing to do with the notion of proper punishment. It has everything to do with the quality of behavior that a just society must embrace. Statesanctioned murder is not rational. Who among us would not have the reaction, if a murder victim was a daughter in the Ross case, not to want to put Mr. Ross to death? Who among us has not thought that it was unfortunate that a father or a brother did not catch Mr. Ross in the act of his violence and pummel him to submission or even death? But these are visceral reactions to crimes that torment families. As a collective society, a state operating under the rule of laws, we must do better. Connecticut should not say as a society that killing Mr. Ross will make victims' families or society whole. That is a rationalization. The state should not use capital punishment as the accepted policy of a public body. What are lawmakers thinking when they justify state-sanctioned killing as a response to Mr. Ross's violence? If Connecticut kills Michael Ross, or anyone else, it will not have made a brave new statement about what the state thinks of such killers. We all know what decent people think about any killer. Nor will the state have made the suffering of the victims' families more bearable. If Connecticut had wanted to do so, it would have adopted life in prison without parole as a means to avoid the years and years of appeals that revisit the horror of Mr. Ross's crimes on his victims' families. Rather, in adopting capital punishment and intending to put it to practice, Connecticut has diminished itself. It has detracted from its own, collective morality. Killing is never justified, most especially Connecticut's wrong decision State can't justify killings by government as a just punishment. (source: The Day) NEVADA: Man a step closer to being executed----Jury finds quadruple murderer eligible for death penalty A man convicted of tying up and killing 4 young men is eligible for the death penalty, a jury determined Thursday. The same 12 jurors will now decide whether the state should execute Donte Johnson, who was previously convicted of the 1998 murders of Tracey Gorringer, 20-year-old Peter Talamantez and Matthew Mowen and Jeffrey Biddle, both 19. Some of the victims' family members have been privately complaining that the judge presiding over the case, District Judge Lee Gates, appears to be favoring the defense with the way that he has structured the penalty phase and in the way he has been handling the case. Prior to the jury's announcement Thursday, the tension in the courtroom had mounted as everyone had to wait about 90 minutes for Gates' arrival. Gates offered no reason for his tardiness to those who packed the courtroom. Later in the day he said, "Nothing was wrong it's just the wheels of justice move slowly." For victim Matt Mowen's father, David, Gates failure to address why he was so late to court was inexcusable, but not unusual. "I've been in and out of that court so many times and I can't remember it ever starting on time," David Mowen said. "I actually come 30 to 40 minutes after when the judge says a hearing will start and still I have plenty of time. "To have the taxpayers' money and time wasted just sitting around with no explanation is inexcusable. And we wonder why the courts are overwhelmed." Gates' late arrival and was not the only thing that had people in the gallery talking. Gates also asked Chief Deputy District Attorney Robert Daskas to have the brother of victim Tracey Gorringer removed from court. Daskas asked Gorringer to leave the courtroom, and he did. A day earlier Nick Gorringer had fallen from his seat to the floor and cried after a photo of his brother bound in duct-tape with a bullet hole in the back of his head was shown on a television screen in court. Also after the jury found Johnson was eligible for the death penalty clerk, the judge took the unusual step of unilaterally polling the jury. Under normal courtroom procedure a judge only polls a jury if the defense attorneys and the prosecutors request it. Upon hearing the jury's determination that Johnson would face the possibility of a death sentence, David Mowen said he was relieved. "All of the family members are ecstatic," David Mowen said. "We all kind of expected it, but it's certainly a huge relief. Now the jury will all be able to hear the whole story about Donte Johnson." Johnson previously had been sentenced to death by a 3-judge panel. But now his fate is being reconsidered as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said only juries can levy the death penalty in such cases. In the current proceeding, Gates split the penalty phase, the jurors had to first weigh the "aggravators" in the case against the mitigating evidence presented. During the 1st phase of the penalty hearing the jurors were only told the details of Johnson's quadruple homicide and information about Johnson's background growing up in South Central Los Angeles. The jury will now get to hear about Johnson's extensive criminal history and will hear testimony from family members of the victims and Johnson as they choose between death, life in prison with the possibility of parole, life without the possibility of parole and a set term of 40 to 100 years in prison for Johnson. Gates, however, has placed a limit of two family member speakers on each of the four victims in the case and has said he would impose a time limit on how long they can talk. The judge made no such restriction on the number of Johnson's family members who spoke during the 1st phase of the hearing. Daskas had told the jury during opening arguments of the 2nd phase of the penalty hearing on Thursday afternoon that the 4 murders Johnson committed on Aug. 14, 1998 was not "just one bad night for Donte Johnson" but the end in what had been a life of crime. Daskas said Johnson's criminal history began when he was 14 and arrested for robbery. After serving seven months in a juvenile rehabilitation camp he was placed on probation, but violated his probation by being caught with a handgun at school. The prosecutor said Johnson was then arrested for stealing a car before moving forward to a more "sophisticated crime" in June 1993 when he was 16-years-old. Daskas said Johnson took part in planning and executing an armed bank robbery in which he and 2 others invaded a bank in Marina Del Rey, Calif., and forced innocent people down on the ground before he stole money from the bank. Daskas said Johnson served 26 months in a California Youth Authority confinement camp before being placed on parole. Johnson, however, failed to follow the conditions of parole and when a warrant for his arrest was put out he decided to flee to Las Vegas. The prosecutor said in 1998 Johnson was selling crack in Las Vegas and proceeded to shoot one of his buyers in the face and back. Johnson would ultimately enter an Alford plea to battery with use of a deadly weapon for the shooting of Derrick Simpson, which left Simpson a quadriplegic, and was also the cause of his death a few years later. 3 months after shooting Simpson, Johnson's "criminal career culminated with the quadruple homicide," Daskas said. Daskas said being incarcerated didn't make Johnson any less of a threat as he helped another inmate throw a convicted sex offender off a 2nd floor balcony and also punched another inmate in the face. "Nobody is safe from Donte Johnson," Daskas said. "Regardless of race, gender, socio-economic status, inmate or innocent bystander if Donte Johnson is alive others are in danger." Special Public Defender Alzora Jackson said Johnson was forced into a life of crime because at an early age he joined a street gang to save the rest of his family from being harassed by the gang. Jackson said "criminals are not born, but made" as described how Johnson was essentially made a slave by the gang and ordered to commit crimes or suffer beatings and threatened with death. She said that when violence is the only thing a child knows "it becomes no big deal." Jackson said the gang life Johnson was thrown into, coupled with the fact his parents were drug addicts and he was forced to live in a foster home before placed in the custody of his grandmother along with 11 other children, added up to a "nightmare life." "The evidence will show there is nothing to be gained by killing my client," Jackson said. "The evidence will show Donte Johnson has value and can speak to others in South Central about what not to do." As she urged the jury to "stop the killing" by rejecting the death penalty, Jackson said Johnson was her friend and she was "proud to represent" him. The 2nd phase of Johnson's penalty hearing is scheduled to begin this morning. (source: Las Vegas Sun, April 29) KANSAS: Cheever death penalty deadline set A 23-year-old man charged in connection with the death of Greenwood County's sheriff in January of this year was back in U.S. District Court Thursday. A scheduling conference for Scott Cheever of Virgil was held before U.S. District Judge Monti Belot. Cheever is among six people who have been charged in connection with the Jan. 19 shooting death of Matt Samuels. Jim Cross, public affairs officer for the U.S. Attorney's Office, said a scheduling conference takes place before a judge and involves attorneys for both the defense and prosecution. Cross said attorneys and a judge will discuss how a case is going to be scheduled, what legal procedures will occur when and the deadlines which will be applied for the various matters which need t be taken up. On March 9 a federal grand jury returned indictments against a total of 6 people in connection with the Samuels case. The 6 were originally charged in Greenwood County District Court. Samuels, 42, who had been sworn into his 2nd 4-year term of office on Jan. 10, died 9 days later in a shooting which occurred in the small community of Hilltop, about 6 miles northwest of Virgil in northeast Greenwood County. He and two deputies were attempting to serve warrants on an individual at a rural residence in Hilltop. Cheever faces the possibility of the federal death penalty in connection with the charges which have been filed against him. It will ultimately be up to the U.S. Attorney General to decide if the federal death penalty should be sought. Cheever has been charged with 1 count each of murder while using a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime; murder of a witness to prevent the witness from communicating to law enforcement authorities that the defendant was committing a drug trafficking crime; conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine; attempting to manufacture methamphetamine; and establishing an operation to manufacture methamphetamine. He has also been charged with 2 counts each of using and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime and with illegally possessing a firearm after a conviction on a felony charge. At Thursday's hearing, Cross said, Belot said he wanted to know by June 30 whether federal prosecutors will be seeking the death penalty for Cheever. At this point, he said, prosecutors are waiting for the capital crimes unit of the U.S. Department of Justice to complete its process before determining whether the federal death penalty will be sought. Perhaps within the next week or so, Cross said, what is known as a superceding indictment is expected to be filed against Cheever. While superceding indictments are not particularly unusual, he said, they also usually make only minor changes in the charges and "for the most part" do not result in the introduction of "anything real significant" about the criminal matters involved in a case. "As a general rule," he said, "we don't see that many" superceding indictments "which make many changes in the case." (source: The El Dorado Times) PUERTO RICO: P.R. Jury Opts Against Death Penalty A federal jury decided against the death penalty for two men convicted of murdering a security guard in Puerto Rico, instead sentencing them Monday to life in prison. A 12-member jury decided that Hernando Medina Villegas, 24, and Lorenzo Catalan Roman, 25, will face life imprisonment for shooting and killing a security guard while robbing an armored truck on March 27, 2002. If the jury had decided for the death penalty, it would have been the 1st time in nearly 80 years that someone charged in Puerto Rico would have faced execution. Death penalty opponents outside the courtroom erupted in applause after learning of the verdict. In March, the same jury convicted Medina and Catalan of killing Gilberto Rodriguez Cabrera, 31. Medina's defense team has argued that his troubled childhood was a mitigating factor that merited sparing his life. Meanwhile, Catalan's attorneys argued that his helpfulness to his family, church and community were mitigating factors. (source: Associated Press)
