May 6 TEXAS: AT THE COURTHOUSE----A move to strike jury system; Lawyer is asking fellow attorneys to join in pressuring judges to make panels more fair A local defense lawyer says criminal court trials in Harris County are unconstitutional because juries don't reflect a fair cross-section of the Houston area. And attorney Clint Harmon is urging others to make the same claim on the record. Harmon has been standing outside the county Criminal Justice Center this week, handing out hundreds of fill-in-the-blank motions arguing that trials here are unfair because fewer than 20 % of residents who are summoned show up for jury duty. "This would freeze up the system," said Harmon, who thinks the motions - if defense attorneys file them - could put new pressure on judges to seek reform of the way juries are summoned and paid. Harmon, a graduate of St. Mary's Law School in San Antonio who practices civil and criminal law, has been working for months to find ways to improve local jury representation. State legislators last week discussed raising Texas juror pay from $6 a day - a rate in place for 51 years and the lowest in the nation. In March, a Houston Chronicle study found that residents of mostly white, upper-income neighborhoods are up to seven times more likely to show up for jury duty than those in low-income, predominantly minority neighborhoods. Last year, the Houston-based law firm Vinson & Elkins launched a project challenging a handful of criminal convictions statewide, maintaining that Hispanics and low-income residents are consistently under-represented on Texas juries. Harmon said he has passed out several hundred blank motions, but some defense attorneys doubt their effectiveness. "No court has ever held that you have a right to a jury that looks like you," said attorney Brian Wice. Although better turnout for jury duty would improve the criminal justice system, the legal challenges probably will have little impact, said state District Judge Mark Kent Ellis. "It has no merit whatsoever," said Ellis. "The system we have in Harris County has been litigated every way to Sunday. The way we do it is constitutional." (source: Houston Chronicle) **************************** LEWIS GETS APPROVAL TO PROCEED WITH APPEAL Ricky Lynn Lewis, a Tyler man on death row for a 1990 capital murder, has been granted authorization to appeal his capital punishment sentence in federal court if a state appeals court rejects his mental retardation claims. Judge Cynthia Stevens Kent of the 114th state District Court ruled that evidence presented during a December hearing proved that Lewis was not mentally retarded. The 42-year-old is appealing the decision. If the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals sides with Judge Kent, finding that Lewis is not mentally retarded and therefore should be executed, Lewis will then have the authority to file an appeal with the same claims in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. U.S. District Judge David Folsom, presiding in Texarkana, granted the defendant's motion on April 21. Filing the federal court application for writ of habeas corpus before the Texas appeals court rules on the matter is an unorthodox procedure but is necessary because of the 1-year statute of limitations, court documents state. Lewis is represented by Michael Charlton of Alvin in the possible federal appeal. The defendant was convicted and twice sentenced to die for the Sept. 17, 1990, shooting death of George Newman during a burglary. He was also found guilty of sexually assaulting the victim's common-law wife, Connie Hilton. Defense attorneys tried to prove during the writ of habeas corpus hearing in state court that Lewis was mentally retarded and thus was wrongly sentenced to death. Mental retardation experts hired by the state testified that he has learning disabilities but is not retarded; doctors hired by the defense disagreed. In a mental retardation claim, the defense has the burden of proof because the state has already proven its case in the guilt/innocence phase. If the judge ruled that Lewis was retarded, his sentence would have automatically been commuted to life in prison. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited the execution of mentally retarded people. Judge Kent found that the evidence showed Lewis was a "prime suspect in the string of cat burglaries committed in the area, which indicates that the murder was committed, not by an excited amateur, but by an experienced burglar fully cognizant that eventually such a confrontation would occur and such a result was likely." She concluded that Lewis entered the home to burglarize it but was interrupted by the victims. He shot Newman and sexually assaulted, bit and hit Ms. Hilton, threatening to kill her. He also killed the couple's dog. The defendant's late mother's testimony during trial indicated he was a "bright" child who began having problems when the family moved in with his father, who beat him and whom he later shot to protect his mother when he was 10, she said. (source: Tyler Morning Telegraph) OHIO: Race, geography can decide death penalty cases Lawmakers writing a new capital punishment law 2 decades ago wanted a fair system for prosecuting the worst of the worst: killers whose crimes were so terrible there would be no question they deserved to die. That didn't happen. Ohio's death penalty has been inconsistently applied since it was enacted in 1981, according to a 1st-ever analysis by The Associated Press. Race, the extensive use of plea bargains and even where a crime has been committed all play a role in who is sentenced to death. In its research, the AP analyzed 1,936 indictments reported to the Ohio Supreme Court by counties with capital cases from October 1981 through 2002. Among the findings: - Offenders facing a death penalty charge for killing a white person were twice as likely to go to death row than if they had killed a black victim. Death sentences were handed down in 18 percent of cases where the victims were white, compared with 8.5 percent of cases where victims were black. - Nearly 1/2 of the 1,936 capital punishment cases ended with a plea bargain. That includes 131 cases in which the crime involved 2 or more victims. 25 people had killed at least 3 victims. - In Cuyahoga County, a Democratic stronghold, just 8 percent of offenders charged with a capital crime received a death sentence. In conservative Hamilton County, 43 percent of capital offenders ended up on death row. State Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer, who co-sponsored the death penalty law in 1981 when he was a member of Ohio's Legislature, said the findings are disturbing. Pfeifer, a Republican, is among many who have long called for a study of how the state's law is working. He said the analysis reaffirms early concerns that race would come into play. "That has to be very disconcerting and alarming to all of us," he said. Sandra Craig's son, Jeffrey, and a friend were beaten to death in the summer of 1995 over drugs. Both men were black, and the men who killed them were black and white. Craig is incensed prosecutors offered her son's killers a plea bargain that resulted in sentences of 20 years to life in prison. "It was just another black person dead. They could just do this and move on to the next thing," said Craig of Columbus. The race of Jeffrey Craig and his friend, Keith Johnson, played no role, said Franklin County assistant prosecutor Doug Stead. "If I believe the person committed this crime, my 1st responsibility is to take him off the streets," Stead said. "And if I have any doubt at all about my ability to do that, that might encourage me to take a plea." There has always been a race element to the death penalty in Ohio, said David Doughten, a veteran Cleveland defense lawyer who has handled dozens of capital cases. "I'm not saying judges or prosecutors or anybody is overtly racist _ I don't think they are - but you see it happen," Doughten said. "You see it in deals. You see it in negotiations. You see it in how things are reviewed." Ohio and other states rewrote their death penalty laws after a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling essentially declared laws in 40 states unconstitutional. Other studies of various state laws enacted since 1972 have found the same type of discrepancies identified by The Associated Press review, including a higher percentage of death sentences for those who kill whites. In January 2003, a study commissioned by Maryland found race played a major role in how the death penalty was applied. Ray Paternoster, a University of Maryland criminologist who conducted the study, said killers whose victims were white fared the worst. "More likely to have death sought. More likely have their case advance to the penalty phase. More likely to have death imposed," he said. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in 1987 that Georgia's death penalty was constitutional despite figures indicating that killers of whites are far more likely to be sentenced to death. Justice Lewis F. Powell said numerous variables, including the gender and race of lawyers and judges, also could play a role. "Apparent disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system," Powell wrote. Ohio prosecutors say community standards also affect the outcome of a case as well as the prosecutor's willingness to deal. "Our criminal justice system doesn't always mete out justice and fairness in neat little packages - sometimes it's a little rough," said Wayne County Prosecutor Martin Frantz. "It's not something you can compute with calculus or with any kind of certainty as to who belongs and who doesn't on death row." Frantz oversaw the case of Robert Buell, who was executed in 2002 for sexually assaulting and strangling 11-year-old Krista Lee Harrison two decades earlier. Also in 2002, he handled the rape, murder and dismemberment case of 14-year-old Kristen Jackson, which ended with a plea agreement. Kristen's parents asked Frantz to accept a plea bargain with killer Joel Yockey, saying they could not have endured a trial and years of appeals. "If the death penalty could be imposed by the victim's family, it'd be a whole different story, but that's not the way it works," said Kristen's father, Mark. "I challenge anyone to go through the same scenario and come up with a better decision than we did." Former Senate President Richard Finan, who sponsored Ohio's death penalty law, said too many murderers are cutting deals. "If you commit the capital crime, you meet the specifications of the death penalty, then they ought to follow through with the death penalty," Finan said. In Hamilton County, which had the highest number of death sentences at 55, prosecutor Joe Deters said he did not accept plea bargains once he decided to seek the death penalty as prosecutor in the 1990s. He would not consider the wishes of victims' families. "There's a lot of lazy lawyers out there. You're not here to take pleas. You're here to try cases," said Deters, a former Republican state treasurer re-elected to the prosecutor's job last year. "The failure of other prosecutors to apply the death penalty statute in Ohio, because they're doing things I didn't do, doesn't mean people convicted in Hamilton County should go free," he said. Issues surrounding the fairness of Ohio's system arose in 2002, when Vinton County Judge Jeffrey Simmons ruled that paying for the death penalty defense of a man accused of murdering a Kenyon College student would deplete the $2.7 million general fund of the small southern Ohio county. The judge said the county's financial worries about his defense could create an unacceptable risk to Gregory McKnight's right to due process. Prosecutors and the state objected. Simmons reversed his decision, and the state helped prosecute McKnight for killing Emily Murray. A jury sentenced McKnight to death. The state and a criminal justice grant made up about half of the county's roughly $100,000 costs. The state's top defense attorney says the variation in how capital cases are treated is unacceptable. "To say, 'Well, we get close but maybe it isn't perfect,' suggests that we should not risk taking lives on that kind of standard," said Ohio State Public Defender David Bodiker. Prosecutors say differences in community standards also will result in different approaches to how the death penalty is applied. "So based on where you are in the state of Ohio you're going to get fair on crime, tough on crime, consistent on crime," said Jim Canepa, the state's chief deputy attorney general of criminal justice. In 2001, a jury in Mahoning County deadlocked 11-1 against the death penalty for Anthony Anderson, who was convicted of shooting Lashawnda Aziz, 23, who was 6 months pregnant, and her 4-year-old son DeShun Moreland. A 3-year-old daughter, Brea, was shot but survived to testify. "That case still haunts me. It haunts me to this day," said Mahoning County assistant prosecutor Jay Macejko. "I use it as an example of injustice, because there are people on death row who've done far less than Anthony Anderson." Separate investigations by the Chicago Tribune and Northwestern University journalism students in 1999 into the fairness of Illinois' system found some death penalty cases were flawed by faulty evidence and incompetent lawyers. The findings led former Gov. George Ryan to halt executions and set up a commission to study problems with the system. Ryan ultimately commuted the sentences of all 167 death row inmates two years ago, calling the state's death penalty system arbitrary, capricious and immoral. Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Ohio last year called for the state to undertake a comprehensive study of the state's capital punishment system. The House approved such legislation, but it quickly died in the Senate. On the Net: Attorney General: http://www.ag.state.oh.us/index.asp State Public Defender: http://opd.ohio.gov/index.htm (source: Associated Press) FLORIDA: Suspect In Florida Girl's Killing Could Face Death Penalty---David Onstott Pleads Not Guilty To Sarah Lunde's Murder A convicted sex offender charged in the slaying of young Florida girl has pleaded not guilty. The partially clothed body of Sarah Lunde was found last month after a week-long search. The 13-year-old had returned home from a church trip when she went missing. Friday, an attorney for the suspect in the case, David Onstott, entered a not-guilty plea to charges of 1st-degree murder and attempted sexual battery. Authorities said the suspect confessed to strangling the girl after the two got into an argument. They said he'd visited the girl's house looking for her mother, whom he had once dated. Meanwhile, prosecutors filed court papers saying they will seek the death penalty if Onstott is convicted of 1st-degree murder. (source WSOC-TV News)
