May 7 VERMONT: Vermont gets death penalty trial; first in 40 years - Latest: Vermont, a famously liberal New England state that abolished capital punishment decades ago, is about to see its 1st death penalty trial in more than 40 years -- a case brought not by Vermont authorities but by federal prosecutors. And some are wondering why the U.S. Justice Department is making a federal case out of the whole thing. - Background: Donald Fell, 24, is charged with carjacking 53-year-old Teresca King in Vermont in 2000 and beating her to death nearly 200 miles away in New York as she prayed by the side of the road. The trial is set to begin July 5. Jury selection began this week in Burlington. - History: No one has been executed in Vermont since 2 killers went to the electric chair in 1954. The last time anyone was sentenced to death in the state was 1957. (The sentence was later commuted.) The last time anyone even stood trial on capital charges in Vermont was in 1962. Vermont's death penalty law was invalidated in 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down capital punishment. And it was finally taken off the books in 1987. - The case: From the outset, federal prosecutors took charge of the case against Fell and Robert Lee, his accomplice who hanged himself in prison in 2001, charging them with carrying out a carjacking that ends in a death. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected a plea bargain that would have spared their lives. Vermont Acting U.S. Attorney David Kirby said the federal government had jurisdiction because the crime extended across state lines. And he added: "No other jurisdiction was particularly interested or wanted to prosecute the case." (source: Associated Press) ILLINOIS: Jury finds Chicago man eligible for death penalty Cook County jurors have rejected an attempt to have convicted murderer Joseph Bannister spared from a possible death penalty. The jurors deliberated for about 2 1/2 hours yesterday before deciding that the 38-year-old Chicago man was eligible for execution. Some time next week, they will begin deliberating on whether to sentence him to death, or to a prison term. Bannister has been convicted of the September 2000 murder of Henrietta Banks and the attempted murder of her sister, Sharon Banks, who was the mother of one of his children. Prosecutors say Bannister became enraged when Sharon Banks would not let him see his daughter, so he stormed into her Northwest Side apartment and opened fire on the 2 women as 6 children watched. He reportedly stopped firing only after hearing his daughter ask, "Daddy, are you going to kill all of us?" (source: Associated Press) CONNECTICUT: Little Progress On Death Penalty Bias Claims--State Supreme Courrt ordered hearings on issue 2 years ago A 2-year-old order by the state Supreme Court for hearings to determine if Connecticut's death penalty is biased stands unfulfilled less than a week before New England's 1st scheduled execution in 45 years. The court appointed former Chief Justice Robert J. Callahan in 2003 to arrange hearings on claims that that there is racial and geographic discrimination in the use of the death penalty. However, no hearings have been scheduled and a new judge has been ordered to assist after Callahan, 74, asked to be relieved because of health issues. Superior Court Judge George Levine said he's acquainting himself with the cases. "I don't even know the size of the universe yet," he said. Serial killer Michael Ross, 45, is scheduled to die by injection Friday morning. He was convicted of killing and raping 4 women in the early 1980s and has confessed to eight murders in Connecticut and New York. Ross hasn't claimed the death penalty is biased and has fought to expedite his execution by forgoing his appeals. But death penalty opponents and at least 2 state Supreme Court justices say the claims are relevant to Ross' case. Should the courts "conclude that our entire death penalty system is fundamentally flawed as discriminatory on the basis of race after the defendant has been executed, our Judicial Branch as a bastion of civil rights might suffer irreparable harm," Justice Flemming Norcott Jr. wrote in a January dissent of a decision that found Ross competent to "volunteer" for execution. Antonio Ponvert III, an attorney for Ross' father, Dan, said if the appeals had been heard earlier, the sentences of everyone on death row may have been commuted to life in prison. "I really don't understand how anybody, the court, the state's attorney's office the AG's office, anybody can be contemplating killing Michael Ross at a time when the constitutionality of the entire death penalty scheme in Connecticut is under review," he said. Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano said the claims are irrelevant to Ross. "Most importantly, Mr. Ross has decided that he doesn't want any part of it," Morano said. Death-row inmates have claimed in appeals that capital punishment is sought disproportionally in Connecticut when there is a white victim. They also have alleged the statute is not applied consistently across the state. 6 of the 10 people sentenced to death since 1980 are from the Waterbury area. Bias allegations are part of the post-conviction appeals of 4 death row inmates, and one inmate whose death sentence was overturned. Waterbury State's Attorney John Connelly called the bias claims a delaying tactic. He said public defenders have conducted an exhaustive study of bias in capital cases, but have not released the results of that study. "If the study shows what they claim it would show, we would have seen this study years ago. The reason we haven't heard about the conclusions is because it did not show what they wanted it to show," he said. Chief Public Defender Gerard Smyth was on vacation this week and could not be reached for comment. Patrick Culligan, head of the public defender's capital appeals unit, declined to comment. The bias claim has been before the high court since the death-penalty appeal of Cedric Cobb, a black man sentenced to die for raping and killing a 23-year-old white woman in 1989. He alleged that while 40 % of Connecticut homicides involve a black victim, only 15 % of capital cases involve a black victim. In December 2002, the high court asked Callahan to review his bias claims, and in June 2003 asked him to consolidate the discrimination claims of all death-row inmates and arrange hearings. Levine, who was appointed on April 18, said he has no timetable for holding the hearings. Callahan was also asked to remain on the case. "I want to move along as quickly as possible," Levine said. "The length of time will be determined by how much time it would take to conduct a study, if one hasn't been done, and how much time that will take." Attorney James Nugent, who represents death-row inmate Daniel Webb, one of those claiming the death penalty is biased, said he has heard nothing about the status of that post-conviction appeal in 2 years. "It's very interesting that all this is happening now," he said. "The (Ross) execution was originally set for January and there had been no discussion about what's going on." (source: The Day) ********************** As execution day nears, protests build Protesters are once again gearing up to make their disapproval of the execution of serial killer Michael Ross known, with demonstrations beginning Sunday and continuing throughout the week. Ross, a sexual sadist who killed 8 women in the early 1980s, is scheduled to die by lethal injection early May 13. Robert Nave, state death penalty abolition coordinator for Amnesty International, said that while many people may think that something will happen once again to block the execution, he doesnt share that belief. "A lot of people think it will be stopped," Nave said. "People seem complacent, but I dont think the Supreme Court appeal will be successful." Shortly before Ross previously scheduled execution in January, Ross attorney, T.R. Paulding, put a halt to it in response to being chastised by U.S. District Judge Robert Chatigny, who accused him of ignoring new information about Ross competence. A new, adversarial, competency hearing was held in April in New London Superior Court. Judge Patrick Clifford again found Ross competent to decide to forgo further appeals. An appeal of Cliffords decision is currently pending with the state Supreme Court. Nave stressed that the protesters are not marching for Ross personally. "It is not about him," Nave said. "It is about poor public policy, the death penalty. We are honoring victims by not murdering in their names." Nave, who is also the executive director of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, said the organization is planning a peaceful demonstration. On Sunday at 2:01 p.m., there will be a kickoff of the "Dissent with Dignity" vigil on the campus of Trinity College in Hartford. The Trinity site is symbolic, according to Nave, as it is known as "Gallows Hill," the site of executions hundreds of years ago. Protesters will begin walking around 3 p.m. and plan to arrive in Windsor by evening, about six miles away. On Monday, they will walk in the early afternoon to Windsor Locks, and on Tuesday, from Windsor Locks to Enfield. On Wednesday, theyll walk to Somers Congregational Church. On Thursday, protesters will leave the church and walk about 5 miles to the execution site, where they plan to stay until the execution is carried out, now scheduled for Friday morning at 2:01 a.m. at Osborn Correctional Institution. A "For Whom the Bell Tolls Campaign" is being organized for faith communities around the state. They are being asked to toll their bells for five minutes on Thursdayat 6:01 p.m., 8 hours before the scheduled execution. For up to date information on planned demonstrations, visit www.dontkillinmynamect.org When Ross was previously scheduled to be executed in January, most of the demonstrators who gathered were against the death penalty. Nave estimated this crowd at about 300. Only 2 people were in the pro-death penalty camp, a Somers couple. At the time, the couple was quoted in the Register as saying that Ross earned his penalty and deserved to die. Edward Ramsey, a spokesman for the state Department of Correction, said the plan, once again, is to have separate staging areas for both sides the night of the execution. The 2 areas are a couple hundred yards apart, Ramsey said. Temperatures were in the single digits that January night when the execution was put on hold. Given the warmer May temperatures, officials expect more demonstrators on both sides. (source: The Bristol Press) OHIO: Death Penalty Cases Not All The Same The death penalty has been inconsistently applied in Ohio since it was enacted in 1981, according to a first-ever analysis by The Associated Press. Race, the extensive use of plea bargains and where a crime has been committed all play a role in who is sentenced to death. The AP analyzed almost 2,000 indictments reported to the Ohio Supreme Court by counties with capital cases from October of 1981 through 2002. The numbers showed that offenders facing a death penalty charge for killing a white person were twice as likely to go to death row than if the victim were black. Also, nearly 1/2 of the capital punishment cases ended with a plea bargain, including 131 cases in which there were at least 2 victims. Finally, the research showed conservative areas of the state were far more likely to favor a death sentence than more liberal areas. (source: Ohio News Network) *************** The Associated Press began its project by reviewing 2,543 capital indictments... The Associated Press began its project by reviewing 2,543 capital indictments reported by counties to the Ohio Supreme Court from October 1981, when the law reinstating the state's death penalty took effect, through 2002. The indictments were paired with an Ohio prisons database to determine the outcome of each case. In cases where charges were dismissed or offenders were never arrested, the AP reviewed local court documents. Next, the AP confirmed whether the cases contained actual death penalty charges. That research removed 607 cases, most of them charges wrongly reported to the state Supreme Court. Of those, about 100 were cases involving offenders 17 or younger who cannot face a death sentence under Ohio law. According to the AP review, 12 counties did not file death penalty charges in aggravated murder cases: Adams, Carroll, Darke, Defiance, Hardin, Harrison, Holmes, Meigs, Morgan, Morrow, Paulding and Wyandot. Ohio AP staff then reviewed thousands of court documents and newspaper accounts, and interviewed dozens of victims' family members, defense attorneys and prosecutors beginning in January 2003. The following news organizations also assisted with research: the Akron Beacon Journal, Ashland Times-Gazette, The (Ashtabula) Star Beacon, The (Bowling Green) Sentinel-Tribune, The (Canton) Repository, The (Celina) Daily Standard, Chillicothe Gazette, The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Columbus Dispatch, Coschocton Tribune, Dayton Daily News, The Delaware Gazette, WJER-AM in Dover, The (Findlay) Courier, Kenton Times, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, The Lima News, Mansfield News Journal, The Marietta Times, Marysville Journal-Tribune, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, Portsmouth Daily Times, Sandusky Register, Springfield News-Sun, The (Tiffin) Advertiser-Tribune, The (Youngstown) Vindicator, Wapakoneta Daily News, Warren Tribune Chronicle, The (Willoughby) News-Herald, The (Wooster) Daily Record and the Zanesville Times Recorder. (source: Associated Press) ***************************** Capital cases put squeeze on smaller counties Prosecutors in smaller counties and defense attorneys and county officials throughout the state say Ohio's death penalty is squeezing their budgets, and the states bleak economic situation is only making it worse. A southeast Ohio judge made headlines in 2002 when he threw out the death penalty specifications against Gregory McKnight, a 25-year-old man charged with killing a Kenyon College student and hiding her body in his trailer. The judge said the county's financial worries in providing the defense for McKnight could create an unacceptable risk to his right to due process. The judge reversed himself 2 weeks later, and McKnight was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. The trial brought all other court cases - even divorces - to a halt for 3 weeks, said Vinton County Prosecutor Timothy Gleeson. I'm a 1-man office and there's just one judge. We had this trial for 3 weeks and it basically shut down the court system," Gleeson said. Meanwhile, prosecutors in large counties such as Hamilton and Cuyahoga have more than 100 attorneys on staff and often handle several capital cases at once. Several prosecutors in small and medium-sized counties acknowledge that capital crimes can squeeze their budgets, but they add that financial concerns would not stop them from seeking the death penalty. "You do what you have to do," Delaware County Prosecutor David Yost said about the monthlong trial and sentencing in May 2003 of Gerald Hand, who was convicted of killing his wife and a longtime friend. 6 months after the trial ended, Yost's team of 10 lawyers was working its way through a backlog of 527 felony indictments. "I had half my resources tied up for a quarter of a year," he said. State law requires all death penalty defendants to have at least 2 lawyers who are certified by the Ohio Supreme Court to try capital cases. The majority of defendants have court-appointed counsel, Ohio Public Defender David Bodiker said. The counties pay the lawyers but the state reimburses them for part of the cost. Originally, the cost was split. State reimbursements have steadily fallen to a current rate of 31 %, a trend that has elicited screams from county commissioners, Bodiker said. Each county sets a cap for the amount it will pay defense attorneys. Those caps range from $3,000 per capital case in Coshocton County to $75,000 in Montgomery and Wyandot counties. Cuyahoga and Mahoning counties have a $25,000 maximum; Hamilton County pays up to $40,000 per case; and Franklin County reimburses up to $50,000, according to the state public defender's office. Even the maximum reimbursement is a fraction of what most attorneys bill their clients in private practice. Columbus lawyer Terry Sherman has defended more than 20 capital cases, including Gerald Hand. "I bill at $275 an hour. I get $60 or $90 an hour from the state, depending on the case," Sherman said. He said he takes the cases because the high-stakes nature of a death penalty trial means that everyone in the courtroom is at their best. "When it comes to capital murder, it's the highest form of criminal litigation," he said. "There's a certain purity about it." However, Sherman said, he will take only one capital case a year because of the financial and emotional toll. Prosecutors in smaller counties also may request help from the Attorney General's Capital Crimes Section, a group of lawyers who primarily represent the state in death penalty appeals but also can help with trials. In 2004, Capital Crimes lawyers worked on 41 cases in 26 counties, said Heather Gosselin, deputy attorney general. About 5 % of the section's budget is used to assist in county trials, Gosselin said. The Capital Crimes Section's budget increased nearly 60 % from $765,234 in 1996 to about $1.2 million in 2005. John Leutz, senior policy analyst for the County Commissioners' Association of Ohio, said state reimbursements are at an all-time low and would fall even more under Gov. Bob Taft's proposed budget. The budget includes a cut of $1.2 million from the overall indigent defense fund of $30 million, Leutz said. "Why should the state General Assembly subsidize the prosecution through funding to the attorney general's office and, basically, for the defense of the individual, put them at the mercy of the county?" he said. "In essence, you have the state paying for the prosecution and the county paying the cost of the defense. That's probably not appropriate." One reason capital cases can be so expensive is that lawyers must essentially prepare for 2 trials at once - the guilt phase and the sentencing phase. "In one sense, you're defending your client so he's acquitted, but if he's not, you have to be ready for mitigation," Terry Sherman said. Defense attorneys often use a mitigation specialist, who may have a background in psychology or social work. They comb through every aspect of a defendant's life to find things that might help persuade a jury not to recommend the death penalty. "The goal of most mitigation is to show this guy didn't fall out of the sky evil. Something happened along the way to make this person the way he is," Sherman said. "They're going to get birth records, family files, juvenile court files, social service, school, work or military records. Everything we can find on this person, good, bad or indifferent." The fact-finding can go back even before the defendant was born, Sherman said. "I was representing a 19-year-old who killed three people," he said. "His mother was taking a drug that affected the fetus. From day one, he had medical and psychological issues. That's what turned the case and the jury spared his life." (source: Associated Press) ************************* Death penalty is applied unevenly for Ohioans 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 applied inconsistently 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 was committed all play a role in who is sentenced to death. 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 % of cases where the victims were white, compared with 8.5 % 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 % of offenders charged with a capital crime received a death sentence. In conservative Hamilton County, 43 % 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 affirms 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 one of his friends 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 that 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 Assistant Franklin County 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 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, 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 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 that as prosecutor in the 1990s, he did not accept plea bargains once he decided to seek the death penalty. 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 who left office to run again for prosecutor 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, formerly of Shaker Heights. A jury sentenced McKnight to death. The state and a criminal justice grant made up about 1/2 of the county's roughly $100,000 expense. 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. 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. (source: Cleveland Plain Dealer)
