May 13 NEBRASKA: Death Sentence Reinstated ---- Bataillon ruling overturned A federal appeals court on Friday reinstated the death sentence of Charles Jess Palmer for a 1979 murder in Grand Island. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a 2003 ruling by U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon of Omaha that vacated Palmer's death sentence. Bataillon ruled that Palmer's murder conviction was valid, but he vacated Palmer's death sentence, citing a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision in an Arizona case that said juries, not judges, must decide whether a murder merits the death penalty. While the Supreme Court left unclear whether its ruling should apply retroactively to inmates awaiting execution, Bataillon ruled that it did. The high court later said its ruling in the Arizona case was not retroactive. Palmer was convicted of killing Grand Island coin dealer Eugene "Zimmy" Zimmerman. (source: WOWT News) FLORIDA----new death sentence Blake Gets Death Sentence For Murder In Bartow, a convicted murderer has become the 1st person in 5 years to be sentenced to death row for a Polk County killing. Circuit Judge Roger Alcott today condemned Harold Blake for killing a Winter Haven convenience store owner in an attempted robbery. Alcott followed the recommendation of a jury that voted for the death penalty after convicting Blake in the Aug. 12, 2002 slaying of Maheshkumar Patel. Blake, a 25-year-old Lakeland resident, is serving a life sentence for his role in a fatal shooting that took place a few days before Patel was killed. Alcott, a former prosecutor, cited such aggravating circumstances as his participation in the other murder. A member of the victim's family who attended today's sentencing declined comment. Authorities say Blake shot through a glass door and killed Patel, 37, who owned and operated Del's Go Shop on Coleman Road. Patel saw Blake and another robber approaching his store and locked the door. Blake was convicted of 1st- degree murder and attempted murder; the jury's recommendation for death was unanimous. Alcott noted that after he fired on Patel, Blake ran away without trying to call for help for the shop owner. Blake is serving a life sentence for shooting and killing Kelvin Young, 35, who was killed in Lakeland Aug. 1, 2002. The death sentence will be automatically appealed. (source: Tampa Bay Online) TENNESSEE----new execution date Execution Delayed for Man Who Murdered Children The state Supreme Court agreed to delay the execution of a Shelbyville man convicted of murdering 4 young children. 42 year old Daryl Keith Holton was scheduled to be executed June 3rd, but the court delayed his execution until June 8th, 2005 pending the outcome of his federal appeals. Holton said he was severely depressed when he lined up his 3 young sons and his ex-wife's daughter and shot them with a rifle in November 1997. Holton told the children that they were going Christmas shopping when he picked them up from their mother shortly before killing them. (source: Newschannel 15) INDIANA: Baer Faces Death Penalty Hearing Next Week Next Thursday, a jury transported from Huntington to Anderson will decide whether Fredrick Baer should be put to death. Even if the convicted killer of a mother and daughter is sentenced to death, he still faces a half-dozen more trials. Ffredrick Michael Baer says the verdicts against him were fair. Thursday night, a jury found him guilty of the brutal murders of 26-year-old Corey Clark of Lapel and her 4-year-old daughter Jenna. John Clark, husband and father of the victims, cried in the courtroom. He declined comment until after Baer's sentencing next week. "I think if you ask the family what will help them get through with their lives, a death sentence is going to put them in the position to move on. Now that's what they believe. That's what were going to try to achieve for them," said Rodney Cummings, Madison County prosecutor. Baer's attorney will argue next week for the same jury to sentence Baer to life in prison without parole. The chance of saving his life would have been better if the jury had found Baer guilty but mentally ill. "The death penalty has been given to a guilty but mentally ill defendant, but nobody's been executed," said Dave Puckett, Madison County deputy prosecutor. If Baer is sentenced to death, his legal problems are far from over. He faces multiple rape, burglary and escape charges in Hamilton and Marion Counties. The prosecutors in both counties plan to move forward. "He has victimized 2 people here in Marion County and while we are happy for the verdict there, that doesn't address justice that should be sought here for the 2 victims in Marion County. So yes, we will be going forward," said Barb Crawford, Marion County prosecutors office. If Baer is convicted of the Hamilton and Marion County crimes, he faces several hundred more years in prison. Thats important if Baer is sentenced to death, say prosecutors, because death sentences can be over turned. The death penalty hearing for Baer will be held next Thursday in Anderson. (source: WISH-TV News) USA: One Catholic voice on death penalty takes on another For years, the 2 most prominent voices among U.S. Catholics on the subject of the death penalty have been those of a nun who is a former schoolteacher and a Georgetown- and Harvard-educated Supreme Court justice. Sister Helen Prejean, author of 2 books that draw on her experiences as a spiritual adviser to men on death row, and Justice Antonin Scalia, the fourth most senior member of the Supreme Court, have come to represent the extremes of Catholic thought about capital punishment. In her newest book, the nun takes on the jurist over their theological and constitutional differences on the issue. With a movie, an opera and a stage play all recounting the story she told in a best-selling book, "Dead Man Walking," Sister Prejean, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille, has become the most recognizable figure working to abolish the death penalty in the United States. Scalia, meanwhile, anchors the diminishing segment of the court that consistently votes to uphold the constitutionality of the death penalty. His disagreement with the court majority was vehement as those justices recently overturned death sentences for mentally retarded people and juveniles convicted of murder. He was particularly critical of an amicus, or friend-of-the-court, brief filed by the U.S. bishops and other religious groups in Atkins vs. Virginia, the case about a retarded defendant sentenced to death. Scalia ridiculed the brief as the "court's most feeble effort to fabricate 'national consensus'" against capital punishment. In public appearances Scalia not only has defended the death penalty as constitutionally solid, but he has argued that the church doctrine approving of capital punishment dating to St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century and St. Augustine in the 4th century still prevails. He has said that more recent teachings of Pope John Paul II are not obligatory because they were not spoken ex cathedra, Latin for from the chair, meaning the pope intended them to be accepted as infallible teachings of the church. Three years ago, the abolitionist nun and the strict constitutionalist ran into each other in the New Orleans airport. She recounts the story in her new book, "The Death of Innocents," as well as in speeches on her recent book tour. Although they had never met, Sister Prejean told Catholic News Service she knew Scalia was aware of her work because the justice and her brother, Louie, are hunting buddies. That's why he was in New Orleans; he'd just been duck hunting with Louie Prejean. Sister Prejean was returning home from Washington, where she had given a speech at Georgetown University. 2 weeks earlier, Scalia gave his own speech there. He said that because no pope had spoken ex cathedra in denouncing the death penalty, he, as a Catholic, had no reason not to approve of it, even to consider it a duty of the state, in keeping with what Aquinas and Augustine taught. He had made similar comments during a death penalty symposium at the University of Chicago days earlier. With that fresh on her mind, Sister Prejean walked up to Scalia in the airport and introduced herself. After some small talk about what a fine man her brother is and how poor the duck hunting had been, she said in the book, she got to the point: "I'm writing a book about two innocent men I've accompanied to execution, and I know what you said at Georgetown and in Chicago, and I want you to know that I'm taking you on in this book." "He responds in a friendly way, jabbing his hand in the air: 'And I'll be coming right back at you,'" she said. In a 50-page chapter of "The Death of Innocents," Sister Prejean makes good on her word to Scalia. The 1st 1/2 of the book focuses on the cases of two executed men she believes were innocent. It details their legal cases and efforts to overturn their convictions. In the second half of the book, she talks about the legal environment for capital punishment, describes the evolution of Catholic teaching on the death penalty and rebuts Scalia's interpretations of the Constitution and of church doctrine. At Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church in Potomac, Md., Sister Prejean said May 4 she was shocked by Scalia's theology, saying it seems to be based in the idea that God is a god of wrath. Her book cites Scalia's comments at the Chicago forum in 2002, in which he says secularist societies are losing the notion that governments act with God's favor, including when they mete out capital punishment. The Scalia quote also says that "the more Christian a country is, the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral," and that efforts to abolish the death penalty have the least support in "the churchgoing United States ... (because) for the believing Christian, death is no big deal." Sister Prejean writes in response: "Forgive me, but I'm flabbergasted at the arrogance of a man who says 'death is no big deal,' when it's not his child who's being put to death, or his father or his wife, or himself." At the Maryland church, she said she had no illusion that her arguments would sway the justice's thinking. Nor does she expect to hear from him directly about her lengthy written debate with his speeches and legal opinions, she said. Midway through her chapter about Scalia she summarizes the different directions from which they approach life. He sees the death penalty from his bench in a marble courtroom, while she sits in visitor stalls on death row. She still gets shouted down periodically by people in the audience, while in his courtroom, "Everyone stands ... everyone listens." "When Scalia sends people to their deaths, he never sees their faces," she wrote. "But I see their faces as they turn to me when they are being killed." "Scalia quotes the Bible to justify government's 'divine authority' to kill 'evildoers,'" she said, "and I summon the words and example of Jesus, who transformed the mandate of 'an eye for an eye' by urging forgiveness, even of enemies." (source: Catholic News Service) OHIO: New deadline set for death row Scot Richey's case Kenny Richey, the Scot who has been under a death sentence in America for 18 years, must be freed or retried by 25 August, it emerged last night. Richey, 40, originally from Edinburgh, won an appeal earlier this year against his conviction of the murder of Cynthia Collins, the 2-year-old daughter of a friend in an arson attack in 1986. Richey, who has spent the last 18 years on death row in an Ohio prison, has now been told the state will have to decide what to do within a 90-day time period starting from 25 May. Karen Torley, Richeys fianc, said last night that she now hoped he would be free and able to return to Scotland on 25 August. She said: "Weve just heard that the 90-day clock effectively starts on May 25th from which point if there is no retrial Kenny will be freed. The state tried to overturn the successful appeal as well as this 90-day countdown but they have failed on both counts. "We are all hoping that this will be the beginning of the end of this long ordeal but the process is complicated." (source: The Scotsman)
