May 10 TEXAS: Judges seek court administrator Seeking more time to hand out justice, Tarrant County criminal judges want the county to hire a court administrator to take over the expanding list of administrative duties that draw them away from their courtrooms. The proposal has put the judges at odds with District Clerk Tom Wilder, who says the new position would be a waste of taxpayer money and an infringement on his office's duties. Under a proposal by judges to a county personnel committee last week, the court administrator would be paid about $70,000 a year, be responsible for at least 10 employees and try to help control the jail population, monitor drug and mental-health services and serve as a liaison to the sheriff and county commissioners. State District Judge Scott Wisch said Texas' other large, urban counties have had court administrators for years. He said he needs to spend more time in the courtroom moving cases. "Due to the number of courts and caseloads, and the number of administrative duties, I think it is time," Wisch said. In a rare public break with the judges, however, Wilder said: "It is wasteful and a duplication of effort and not in the best interest of the taxpayer. There are so many other things we could be spending our money on besides adding personnel." The judges would also have the administrator assist with budgets, seek grants and supervise the handling of death-penalty cases. The administrator would also oversee the controversial pretrial-release program "as needed," according to the proposal. The program helps first-time offenders and poor criminal defendants get out of jail while awaiting trial by allowing them to pay a reduced bond to the county instead of using a bail-bond agent. The county administrator's office now runs the program, although judges decide who is eligible for early release. Commissioner J.D. Johnson said he is concerned that judges may use the administrator's post to take over pretrial release, which has been criticized for costing taxpayers unnecessarily and allowing the release of defendants charged with serious crimes. "Commissioners took it away 10 to 15 years ago because [judges] were not managing it well," Johnson said. "I think we have more knowledge about what is going on in pretrial release now than we would if judges run it." State District Judge Sharen Wilson said judges may eventually take over the program again. "The problem with pretrial release is that it is judicially driven and we make decisions about who is on it, but the management goes back to Commissioners Court," Wilson said. "I don't know that that makes sense." Court administrators in other urban Texas counties have a variety of responsibilities, officials said. In Bexar County, administrator Melissa Fischer supervises 21 employees, including all nonjudicial staff such as court reporters and interpreters. Fischer, a lawyer, is also the judges' general counsel. "It is really constructive, so the judges don't have to spend so much of their time doing administrative stuff," Fischer said. Commissioner Glen Whitley said he generally supports hiring a court administrator. "No one has the time to step back and look at the overall process to make it work more efficiently," Whitley said. "We're too deep in the forest." Wilder, who said that for five years he has opposed hiring an administrator, said the county has a reputation for efficiency and should not copy other counties' bureaucratic structures. He said his office can be a liaison among the judges, the Commissioners Court and others. "Pure political motivation is driving some of this," he said. Wisch disagreed, saying the judges should ultimately be responsible. "Wilder is a wonderful district clerk, but he needs to remember that his job is to be the district clerk and not to be a district judge," Wisch said. (source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram) ILLINOIS: Jury weighs death penalty for podiatrist who murdered a federal witness A defense attorney pleaded for the life of a Chicago podiatrist Tuesday, telling jurors that his client was suffering from depression, drug abuse and a degenerative brain disorder when he shot and killed a disabled woman at point blank range. "He was a desperate man doing a desperate act, not a ruthless, calculating killer," defense attorney John Beal said as the murder trial of Dr. Ronald Mikos went into its penalty phase. Mikos, 56, was convicted Thursday of the December 2002 murder of federal witness Joyce Brannon, and prosecutors say that anything less than the death penalty would be insufficient. Brannon, 54, a nurse who had difficulty walking, died only days before she was to appear before a grand jury investigating more than $1 million in bogus Medicare claims Mikos had submitted. Prosecutors contended that Mikos went to her apartment in the basement of a North Side church, stood in front of her chair and fired six slugs into her head and neck to ensure her silence. Her grand jury subpoena was found lying near her body. Prosecutors portray it as a cold-blooded, premeditated murder by a killer so remorseless that the next day he was on the phone preparing to resume committing large-scale Medicare fraud. Beal, however, traced for jurors how Mikos underwent a mysterious transformation from successful husband and doctor to a mentally disturbed victim of alcohol, drugs and depression. Beal said Mikos' marriage dissolved after the podiatrist had an affair with a nurse. After that, he began to drink and abuse prescription drugs, the attorney said. Bizarre behavior began, Beal said. He called to the stand retired dentist Lawrence M. Gregory who testified that Mikos relatives told him Mikos came into the church at his father's funeral with unusually loud footsteps and wearing a black, floor-length coat and a black cape. Mikos then walked up to the altar, interrupted the priest in the middle of his homily and finally took a seat in a chair ordinarily reserved for acolytes, said Gregory, who acknowledged that he wasn't on hand for the funeral. Hearsay testimony is allowed at death penalty hearings. Beal said Mikos eventually lost his family, house, girlfriend and even his dog. "'My self-confidence and self-esteem have zeroed out,''' Beal quoted Mikos as saying. "Is this a ruthless, calculating killer or is this a man whose life is out of control?" Capital punishment is unusual in federal cases. Attorneys say they know of only one other instance in which the death penalty has been imposed in the history of Chicago's Everett M. Dirksen Federal Courthouse. Darryl "Pops'' Johnson, a Gangster Disciples street gang leader, is awaiting execution for ordering two murders in the 1990s. If only one juror balks at sending Mikos to the execution chamber, his life will be spared and he will be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison without hope of release. The importance that federal prosecutors place on the case was underscored by the presence of both U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Gary Shapiro at the back of the court as the penalty phase got under way. "For the final shot, he placed the barrel of the gun behind her head, against her ear, and fired a bullet into her brain,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney John C. Kocoras told the jury. He said Brannon tried to get out of her chair as Mikos approached her but couldn't due to her disability. "Joyce couldn't face him, Joyce couldn't run and she most certainly couldn't fight," Kocoras said. "Joyce never had a chance." Looking directly at Mikos, he said: "As he sits before you today, he has absolutely no remorse for what he did to Joyce Brannon." As their first witnesses, prosecutors called Brannon's sister, Janet Bunch, and 91-year-old mother, Selma Theodora Brannon, both of Plano, Texas. Bunch was in tears as she recalled how she telephoned to deliver the news of her sister's murder on her mother's birthday. "How can you call it a happy birthday when the birthday is the day I had to tell her that Joyce was murdered?" Bunch asked the jury. (source: Associated Press) INDIANA: Prosecutor Seeks Death Penalty In Triple Murder In Jeffesonville, prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing his pregnant wife and their 11-month-old son and stuffing their bodies into a household storage container. Clark County Prosecutor Steve Stewart said he would file court documents seeking the death penalty against 27-year-old Zachariah Melcher. "It has been said that the death penalty should be reserved for the worst of the worst, Stewart said in a written statement Monday. "That's what this is." Melcher faces 3 counts of murder in the April 16 deaths of his 11-month-old son, Jaiden, his wife, Christian Melcher, 23, and the unborn child with whom she was 8 months pregnant. Indiana law permits the filing of a murder charge in cases where the fetus is considered capable of surviving outside the womb. Stewart said he was seeking Zachariah Melcher's execution because of aggravating circumstances including Jaiden's age and the fact that Christian Melcher was pregnant. He also was on probation for a burglary conviction. Investigators said Melcher confessed during a police interview to strangling his wife and suffocating his son by placing a plastic bag over the boy's head. Autopsies confirmed that each had died of asphyxiation. Police officers found the bodies in a 36-inch by 20-inch plastic container in their apartment April 22 in the city just north of Louisville, Ky., after receiving a report that the 2 were missing. Melcher waived his right to an attorney during an initial hearing and told police he wanted to be put to death. Even if Melcher wishes to be put to death, Stewart said the judge would likely require psychological testing before accepting a guilty plea. Melcher's brother, Jason Melcher, has said he would support the death penalty. (source: Associated Press) USA: Full Review Is Necessary Proponents of the law that required federal court review of the Terri Schiavo case said that all possible protections should be available when a human life is at stake. Said Senator Mel Martinez, R-Fla., "We will simply be allowing the federal judge to give one last review, one last look in a case that has so many questions, that has so many anxieties, and that will provide us the kind of assurance before the ultimate fate of this woman is decided to know that we did all we could do and that every last measure of review was given her, just like it would have been given to a death row inmate convicted and sentenced to die." However, death row inmates are not given "every last measure of [federal] review." In 1996, Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), which severely restricts federal court power to review constitutional claims by inmates sentenced to death by state courts. Federal review, Congress said, would constitute disrespect for state court decisions, even when the claim involves the federal, not state, Constitution. Opposing views on state courts In the Schiavo case, apparently, the theory was just the opposite. Congress created a particular form of review just for her case, without apparent concern about disrespect for state courts. Despite numerous state court hearings, the law required the federal courts to evaluate her case anew, without deferring to any state court rulings. In a death row inmate's case, a federal court must defer to the state courts and may overrule them only rarely-when it finds a state court judgment was not only wrong, but unreasonably wrong. This is a dramatic restriction on federal courts' ability to protect an inmate's federal constitutional rights. There is substantial risk of error in these cases. A Columbia University study found that, before AEDPA, federal courts identified serious constitutional violations in an astounding 2/3 of cases in which state courts had upheld death sentences. Recently, more than 250 prisoners, including more than 100 who had been condemned to death, have been exonerated. Some of the death row inmates, who had come within hours of being executed, were freed not because the courts protected them, but because journalists, law and journalism students, and others unconnected with the judicial system discovered evidence of their innocence. A person condemned to death faces other obstacles to federal court review that the Schiavo law specifically rejected when it stated that it does not matter whether "a claim has previously been raised, considered, or decided in State court proceedings." In capital cases, the law prevents federal courts from considering any issue not raised and decided in state court, no matter how important the claim or why it was not presented. The most common reason is the deficient quality of lawyers appointed to defend poor people accused of capital crimes. They have been represented by lawyers who were intoxicated, slept during trial and, no matter how well meaning, lacked the knowledge, skills and resources to defend a capital case. If a lawyer fails to raise an issue in the state courts, a federal court is prevented from ruling on it, no matter how valid it may be. Every day, people are paying with their lives because of these restrictions. For example, Gary Graham, a Texas death row inmate, presented evidence that prosecutors had suppressed evidence of his innocence. The Texas courts refused to hear the issue on technical procedural grounds, and the federal courts were unable to intervene. President Bush said of the Schiavo case, "it is wisest to always err on the side of life," but then-Governor Bush allowed Graham's execution even though no court had determined the merits of his constitutional issue. The Constitution Project's bipartisan, blue-ribbon death penalty committee, which includes capital punishment supporters and opponents, urges eliminating obstacles to meaningful judicial review in capital cases and overhauling the appointment system for capital defense lawyers. In 1997, the American Bar Association, also neutral on capital punishment, responded to AEDPA's passage and deficient defense lawyering by calling for a nationwide moratorium on its use. Full federal court review The Schiavo law supporters appeared to agree that in life-or-death cases, there should be no obstacles to full federal court review. Senator Rick Santorum, R-Pa., compared the Schiavo bill to "a horrific death penalty case in California," and urged his colleagues "to understand that [as in that case,] there is a proper role for Federal courts to look to make sure that due process was followed." The founders gave federal judges lifetime tenure to protect them from political pressures, so they could decide cases in good faith and according to the law, no matter what public opinion demanded. The exonerations of people in prison and on death row have taught Americans a hard lesson-that our criminal justice system is fallible, and that a state court may convict the wrong person. This is especially true in capital cases, which engender great passions and place enormous pressures on judges and juries to convict and impose a death sentence. Congress should pass legislation providing for the same full federal court review of life and death decisions in capital cases that it provided for a single person in the Schiavo law. --------------- (source: National Law Journal; Stephen B. Bright is the H. Lee Sarokin Director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, and teaches at Yale Law School. Virginia E. Sloan, a member of the Center's board of directors, is the president of the Constitution Project and was a lawyer with the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee from 1980 to 1995) ***************************************** The New Asylums There are nearly half a million mentally ill people serving time in America's prisons and jails. As sheriffs and prison wardens become the unexpected and ill-equipped gatekeepers of this burgeoning population, they raise a troubling new concern: are jails and prisons America's new asylums? With exclusive and unprecedented access to prison therapy sessions, mental health treatment meetings, crisis wards, and prison disciplinary tribunals, FRONTLINE goes deep inside Ohio's state prison system to present a searing exploration of the complex and growing topic of mental health behind bars and a moving portrait of the individuals at the center of this issue. Fewer than 55,000 Americans currently receive treatment in psychiatric hospitals. Meanwhile, almost ten times that numbernearly 500,000--mentally ill men and women are serving time in U.S. jails and prisons. As sheriffs and prison wardens become the unexpected and often ill-equipped caretakers of this burgeoning population, they raise a troubling new concern: have America's jails and prisons become its new asylums? "We are the gatekeepers of a lot of persons who are mentally ill, and that's not something we relish....We don't like the idea that we're being charged with fixing a lot of the woes of our communities," says Reginald Wilkinson, director of the Ohio Department of Corrections. "In addition to being the director of the Department of Corrections, I became a de facto director of a major mental health system." In "The New Asylums," airing Tuesday, May 10, at 9 P.M. on PBS (check local listings), FRONTLINE goes deep inside Ohio's state prison system to explore the complex and growing issue of mentally ill prisoners. With unprecedented access to prison therapy sessions, mental health treatment meetings, crisis wards, and prison disciplinary tribunals, the film provides a poignant and disturbing portrait of the new reality for the mentally ill. "It was surprising to see how much treatment was going on inside Ohio's prisons," say FRONTLINE producers Miri Navasky and Karen O'Connor. "And while the prison system is doing a commendable job, you are still left with the feeling that prison is not the answer to this very large social problem." As the rising number of mentally ill inmates shows no sign of abating, those working inside the nation's prisons are struggling with a system designed for security, not treatment. Corrections officers now have the responsibility of not only securing inmates, but also working with mental health staff to identify and manage disturbed prisoners. "Providing effective psychiatric care in a maximum security prison is extraordinarily difficult," says prison psychiatrist Gary Beven. "If you have untreated manic depression or bipolar disorder, untreated schizophrenia, somebody might be hallucinating and extremely paranoid. If you don't identify the fact that [a] person has schizophrenia, if you don't provide them with the proper medication, if you don't place them in an environment that allows them to function at an adequate level, then it's just a matter of time, perhaps, [that] something aggressive might occur." And because these inmates have difficulty following prison rules, a disproportionate number are placed in solitary confinement. "People who are just so un-socialized and so psychologically fragile to begin with are deprived of any kind of social support, any kind of psychological stimulus. And they just, they just fall apart," says Fred Cohen, a prison litigation specialist. Inmate Carl McEachron, sent to prison for stealing a bicycle in 1988, has spent much of his time in prison in isolation, unable to cope with the strict prison environment and racking up an extensive list of violations. His mental illness was left undiagnosed and untreated until recently. "He was the type of individual who was very difficult to work with," says Beven of McEachron. "[He's] been very aggressive towards staff, including, I believe, by spitting on staff members and throwing body waste. And so there wasn't a lot of empathy for him....The tendency would be for somebody like that to just [say], 'Let's lock him away...let's just not have anything to do with him.'" "Being placed in a solitary situation is like being placed in a prison's prison," McEachron tells FRONTLINE. "And that's worse than simply being taken from society and placed in prison." Eventually, a majority of mentally ill inmates are released back into the community, generally with a limited amount of medication, little preparation, and sometimes no family or support structure. "We release people with 2 weeks' worth of medication. Yet it appears that it's taking 3 months for people to actually get an appointment in the community to continue their services...and if they don't have the energy and/or the insight to do that, they're going to fall through the cracks and end up back in some kind of criminal activity," warns Deborah Nixon-Hughes, mental health bureau chief, Ohio Department of Corrections. Within six days of being paroled in 2000, inmate Sigmon Clark, a paranoid schizophrenic, was rearrested for robbery. "Six days with $75 in my pocket. Fare the best way you can, man. We done took twelve years out of your life, and you're mentally ill...do what you can for yourself," Clark tells FRONTLINE. Some feel change will be difficult to implement. "Many of those persons who would have been in state hospitals are now in state prisons," Wilkinson says. "I've actually had a judge mention to me before that, 'Hey, we hate to do this, but we know the person will get treated if we send this person to prison.'" "The New Asylums" is a FRONTLINE co-production with Mead Street Films. The film is produced, written, and directed by Miri Navasky and Karen O'Connor. FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. (source: PBS)
