May 11 ILLINOIS: Illinois father confessed killings, prosecutors say The man accused of stabbing to death his 8-year-old daughter and her best friend hunted his child down in a park in a fit of rage because she was supposed to be grounded for stealing money, prosecutors said Wednesday. A judge denied bail for 34-year-old ex-convict Jerry Hobbs after prosecutors said he admitted in videotaped and written statements to beating and stabbing his daughter Laura Hobbs and 9-year-old Krystal Tobias on Mother's Day. He claimed the older girl pulled a knife on him, but prosecutors said they doubt that. The girls were found dead Monday in a park in Zion, the day after they never came back from a bike ride. They had more than 30 stab wounds between them, and Laura was stabbed in each eye, prosecutors said. "You can see through the injuries to these 2 individuals the rage that was exhibited. This was a slaughter of 2 little girls," prosecutor Jeff Pavletic said. Hobbs, who had been released from a Texas prison last month, said he thought Laura had stolen money from her mother, prosecutors said. She was supposed to be grounded on Mother's Day, but her mother let her go out and play, so Hobbs went out to find her and bring her home, Pavletic said. "Mr. Hobbs believed that her mother was too lax in her supervision of Laura," the prosecutor said. But when Hobbs found the girls, Laura refused to go home, and he beat and stabbed the girls with a small kitchen knife, prosecutors said. Hobbs then allegedly dragged them into the woods and left them side-by-side. Hobbs told investigators that Krystal pulled the knife to defend her friend, and he wrested it away. But prosecutors said they doubt the little girl was carrying a blade. "It was a brutal beating, repeated punching of the two little girls and then repeated stabs. It's pretty horrible," State's Attorney Michael Waller said. Hobbs stared at the courtroom floor as Pavletic described the case against him. Public Defender David Brodsky said he had not seen details of the case and could not comment yet, but he said he would assign two capital defenders to represent Hobbs. Hobbs has a long criminal history dating to 1990 in Texas, including arrests for assault and resisting arrest. Just last month, he was released from a Texas prison after serving time for an assault in 2001. He had argued with Laura's mother, Sheila Hollabaugh, then grabbed a chain saw and chased neighbors until someone hit him in the back with a shovel, according to prosecutor Rick Mahler in Texas. No one was injured. Hobbs was sentenced to 10 years' probation but failed to appear for required meetings and was thrown in prison in 2003. He and Hollabaugh, who never married, had 3 children together. They were reunited after his release and were living with Hollabaugh's parents in Zion, a town of about 22,000 along Lake Michigan north of Chicago. Outside the home where Jerry Hobbs and Sheila Hollabaugh had lived with their children, a man who identified himself as a family spokesman Wednesday read a brief statement and said they would have no other comment. "The entire family wants to express their deepest sympathy for the Tobias family," Jeremy Harter said. "They wanted to thank the Zion community for all their support throughout this trying time." Down the street, outside Krystal Tobias' home, there was makeshift memorials of flowers and teddy bears on a path leading up to house. (source: Associated Press) FLORIDA: Death Unites 2 Foes in Supreme Court Appeal -- Liberal, conservative icons join forces in high court capital punishment case Nearly 39 years ago, a wealthy Florida citrus grower named Charles Von Maxcy was stabbed and shot to death, gangland style, at his home in Sebring. The bizarre story of the murder, and of Florida's on-and-off campaign to find and convict the killer, is now before the Supreme Court, which will review the case at its Thursday conference and decide whether to put it on its docket. It comes to the Court in the form of an appeal by William Kelley, who has been on Florida's death row for 20 years for killing Von Maxcy. His lawyers say that Kelley may well be innocent. But the narrative of Kelley's appeal, which reads like a crime thriller, complete with love triangles and alleged misconduct by prosecutors and defense lawyers alike, is not the only thing about the case of Kelley v. Crosby that is likely to catch the justices' eyes. Among the lawyers arrayed on Kelley's side, and against Florida, are Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe and former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr -- political opposites, to say the least. Tribe, who filed Kelley's petition with the Court, says he has worked on the case for free and mostly behind the scenes for a dozen years. It is the first capital case he has brought to the Supreme Court, among the scores of high court cases he has handled, and Tribe says he had to overcome his usual reluctance to take on death row cases. "I couldn't not take Billy Kelley's case," says Tribe. "What I never imagined is that it would all now hinge on one conference of the Supreme Court." ILLICIT LOVE AFFAIR As the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put it in its 138-page ruling last year rejecting Kelley's appeal, "This sordid tale begins with an illicit love affair between John Sweet, a real estate broker with shadowy ties to Boston's criminal underworld, and Irene Maxcy, who was married to Charles Von Maxcy." According to briefs in the case, the two conspired to get rid of the husband so they could live together on Maxcy's large estate. Through connections he had in Boston, Sweet arranged for hit men to kill Von Maxcy for a fee of $20,000. After the murder, Sweet threatened the widow and demanded money, which led her to tell police about the murder-for-hire scheme. Sweet was indicted for the murder, and after one mistrial he was convicted at a second trial. But, as the appeals ruling relates, a problem arose: On appeal, Sweet alleged that the lead police investigator in the case, Roma Trulock, was having an affair with Irene Maxcy, so he had reason to tilt the evidence against Sweet. Irene Maxcy acknowledged the affair, the conviction was reversed, and Sweet was set free. But Sweet got into trouble again in Massachusetts, finding himself investigated in connection with narcotics, arson and bribery allegations. "With authorities closing in on him, Sweet went to them first," the district court ruling states. He offered to name Von Maxcy's actual killers; two were dead, but the third, Sweet said, was William Kelley. The day after he gave police the information about Kelley, Sweet was given immunity from prosecution for his Massachusetts activities. Seventeen years after the murder, Kelley was arrested and indicted for his alleged role in it. After firing his first lawyers, Kelley then brought in famed civil liberties lawyer William Kunstler, now deceased. Kunstler hired assistants, including one disbarred attorney, and put on no evidence at either Sweet's 1st or 2nd trial, apparently believing that the state's case was so weak that no rebuttal was needed. Kelley's 1st trial resulted in a hung jury, but he was found guilty at the 2nd trial. Sweet's immunity deal was revealed at Kelley's trial, and in her brief to the Supreme Court, Senior Assistant Florida Attorney General Carol Dittmar acknowledges that at trial Sweet admitted that "he had lied, many times, repeatedly" at the earlier proceedings. But in his closing statement to jurors, prosecutor Hardy Pickard assured jurors that granting Sweet immunity "had nothing to do with the Maxcy case. He didn't have to give them Kelley to get immunity." In later stages of Kelley's mostly unsuccessful post-conviction appeals, new lawyers for Kelley invoked Florida's open records laws and obtained documents undermining some of the state's evidence and revealing a more direct tie between Sweet's immunity deal and the Von Maxcy case. "The timing was no coincidence," says an amicus curiae brief filed on Kelley's behalf by retired judges, as well as the Florida Innocence Initiative and the Center on Wrongful Convictions. "Sweet's immunity in Massachusetts was directly related to his cooperation with Florida officials." Starr, now of counsel at Kirkland & Ellis, participated in the amicus brief. Counsel of record on the brief was Amy Howe of D.C.'s Goldstein & Howe. Based on that new evidence, Kelley's lawyers asserted a so-called Brady violation -- a violation of the 1963 Court precedent Brady v. Maryland, which bars prosecutors from withholding exculpatory evidence from defendants at trial. Kelley's appeal asserted that the newly available evidence, if prosecutors had made it available before the trial, would have impeached the credibility of Sweet, the prosecution's most important witness. Kelley's 1st federal post-conviction appeal languished for eight years, but finally in 2002, after holding hearings in Massachusetts and Florida, U.S. District Judge Norman Roettger ruled in Kelley's favor based on the Brady claim and on an allegation of ineffective assistance of counsel. Underlining the unusual nature of the case, Roettger wrote, "The undersigned judge is not a foe of capital punishment and has granted only three (petitions for habeas relief) in 30-plus years on the district court bench." But the 11th Circuit was unimpressed. In a lengthy July 2004 ruling written by Judge Gerald Tjoflat, the appeals court reversed Roettger. The appeals panel determined that Sweet's credibility had already been impeached at trial even without the documents that emerged later. As a result, the new documents constituted "at best, cumulative evidence" that would not have added significantly to impeaching Sweet's already sullied credibility, and would not have changed the outcome of the trial. Tjoflat concluded that withholding the evidence in the first place did not taint the trial and did not violate Brady v. Maryland. In his appeal to the high court, Tribe says the 11th Circuit's approach of rejecting a Brady claim because a witness's credibility was already somewhat impeached, weakens Brady and undermines public confidence in trials. Noting that the 1st, 2nd, 5th and 7th circuits have adopted a similar approach to Brady claims, while the 9th and D.C. circuits have rejected it, Tribe argues that the split should be resolved by the Supreme Court. Florida's Dittmar counters that none of the courts that have ruled on this issue have laid down bright-line rules, and "there is no conflict among the circuit courts." She also says in her brief that the jury "already knew all necessary information" when it found Kelley guilty. Tribe argues that the 11th Circuit and the other circuits that agree with it "have become desensitized to the way in which withholding even a single item of exonerating evidence might well tip the scales against the accused when the state is already only barely carrying its burden." The amicus brief notes that the withholding of evidence has been a major factor in many of the nation's recent death penalty reversals, and adds that the 11th Circuit ruling "gives prosecutors a perverse incentive to withhold the very evidence that would be most likely to make a difference in a close case -- evidence that may result in a jury's discrediting a key witness's testimony entirely and therefore acquitting the defendant." (source: Legal Times) ************************* State summarizes murder case against Weston man in teacher's death Maxwell McCord killed his wife then staged an improbable cover-up, Assistant State Attorney Deborah Zimet argued Tuesday as the Weston father's capital murder trial neared an end. McCord, accused of murdering 31-year-old Marie Noguera, faces execution if convicted. Jurors are expected to receive instructions from Circuit Judge Peter Weinstein this afternoon, then begin deliberations. Wednesday will mark the 38th day of trial. Opening arguments began March 9. As the state sees it, McCord was a sex addict and a desperate spendthrift who saw killing his wife as a way to cash in on her $350,000 life insurance policy and escape a loveless marriage. Defense attorney Jeanne Baker railed against the state's summation of their case. During the beginning of rebuttal, set to continue this morning, she called the prosecution's case ''a legal outrage" based on "spinning hypotheticals'' and ``a slow march of unreasonable assumptions." Baker argues that shoddy police work and a rush to judgment has left Noguera's real killer at large. On Aug. 2, 2001, high school Spanish teacher Noguera was found strangled in an upstairs study in their gated neighborhood. On the night of her death, McCord told police the family had dinner at home then drove together to the mall around 8 p.m. He said Noguera returned to her car because she had forgotten her purse. When she didn't return, McCord said he took a cab home, found her body and called police. On Tuesday, Zimet reminded jurors that a Hungarian prostitute had testified that McCord had described his wife in vulgar and demeaning terms and spoke of an end to their marriage a couple of weeks before she was murdered. In perhaps the most poignant portion of her closing, Zimet recalled for jurors how McCord, after returning to their home, "discovers" Noguera's dead body. "Her doesn't try to embrace her, remove the ligature, he doesn't even call 911 from the nearby bedroom," Zimet said. ``He doesn't even provide comfort in death." She said it defies common sense that a stranger would abduct Noguera from the mall, risk taking her home, murder her and then leave -- without stealing anything. Moreover, Zimet said, physical evidence suggests that Noguera was already dead when McCord and their 3-year-old daughter left the gated compound for the mall. (source: Miami Herald) OHIO: Coroner: Inmate used belt to hang himself A death row inmate used a nylon belt that he tied around the frame of his bunk bed to hang himself, authorities said on Tuesday. Martin Koliser, 32, was found dead Saturday morning at Mansfield Correctional Institution, a half-hour after guards last checked on him. Richland County Deputy Coroner Dr. Debra Celec said his death was caused by asphyxiation. Koliser first cut himself on both arms with a disposable razor issued by the prison, Celec said. He then suspended himself from the bunk bed with the belt around his neck. Guards found Koliser with his knees touching the floor, Celec said. The State Highway Patrol, which is investigating the case, has not yet determined where the belt came from, Sgt. Stephanie Norman said. Prisoners, including those on death row, are issued belts to keep their pants up, said Andrea Dean, a spokeswoman with the state Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Koliser, of Boardman, was not on suicide watch, nor was he being treated for mental illness, prison officials have said. The prison has come under scrutiny this year. In February, 2 inmates tried unsuccessfully to escape from death row. Several administrators were reprimanded and 2 officials were demoted and received pay cuts after the attempted escape, in which inmates hid a homemade ladder under a pile of snow in an outdoor recreation cage. Investigators in the Koliser case have not indicated that guards made any mistake in their supervision. Death row inmates live in individual cells and are checked every 30 minutes. Koliser had been on death row since November 2003 for killing Youngstown patrolman Michael Hartzell, 26, in April 2003 as the officer investigated a shooting. Koliser also was convicted of shooting Donel Rowe, 23, of Youngstown, outside a tavern less than 2 hours before he gunned down Hartzell in his cruiser. His death was Ohio's 2nd prison suicide this year. An inmate at the Warren Correctional Institution near Lebanon hanged himself in February. Ohio had a record 11 inmate suicides in 2004. (source: Associated Press) TENNESSEE: Local Woman To Meet Her Daughter's Killer May Martinez remembers everything about that day. She was rushing to go get groceries and the phone rang. "I said I can't talk to you right now. I'll call you back." Those few seconds on the phone are the ones Martinez replays in her head over and over. It was the last time she talked to her daughter, Colleen Slemmer. 2 days later, May's phone rang again. "I received the phone call on Saturday around 11:15 a.m. He said, 'We think your daughter might have been killed. Can you identify some marks she has on her body?'" We've told you the story of Colleen Slemmer before -- a 19-year-old from Orange Park who never saw her 20th birthday. This time, the networks are listening. May is sharing her daughter's life and brutal death with Turner Studios. The crew, out of Atlanta, is doing a documentary on Colleen and her killer. "I still can't put my mind around this story. I said to May, to me it exceeds brutality. It exceeds violence," says Dianna O'Neill, the producer working on the story for Turner. Colleen's story began on January 12, 1995. She was a student at Job Corps in Knoxville, Tennessee. That's where she met Christa Pike. "Friday the 13th, they said they were going to have a human sacrifice and Colleen was it. They basically cut her over 300 times of the alphabet and carved a pentagram on her chest," says Martinez. Slemmer was found in the woods the next day. Christa Pike was arrested. Ten months after Colleen's death and at Pike's trial, Tennessee prosecutors pulled Colleen's mom off to the side. "He said I need to tell you something before you go into that courtroom. We have your daughter's skull there. You have not buried her all the way." For 10 years, May has been waiting to put daughter to rest. While Pike is on death row, her case is in the appeals court, and the skull is still considered evidence. "I want to help May somehow bring Colleen home. I've never felt so personally attached to a story because you can see the payoff. You can do something or show this tape to someone who can see May fighting for some piece of her heart returned to her. They have to respond," says O'Neill. In doing the documentary, O'Neill had a chance to talk with the killer. "My expectation in that is you would have an offender who would be sobbing and teary -- `I'm so sorry, I want to live' -- and she had a difficult time with remorse. I asked her about what she had done and she said she feels for the pain, she knows she took someone's daughter, sister, (that) she took a life -- but her face was passive." Colleen's mom did not know Pike had talked and was visibly upset when we sat down with her after the interview. "I had to relive it, plus, I'm very hurt right now. Somebody else saw the same thing I saw--no remorse," says May. She admits over the last ten years she has learned to hide her pain. "I'm not strong. I hide it. I'm not strong at all." The biggest test of strength is not reliving the memories for the camera. Instead, it will be in a few weeks, when May will see her daughter's killer face to face for the 1st time. May says she just wants to ask for one thing. "My daughter's skull. I plan on going to the prison. I want to look at her in the face just see what she has to say. I want her to see Colleen in me." Turner plans to run its documentary in the fall. The network is also working on a deal with Court TV to run a documentary about Christa Pike and Colleen Slemmer later this year. 2 others were arrested in Colleen's death. One is serving a life sentence. The other received probation. (source: First Coast News)
