May 14 INDIANA: Ind. court: Inmate can't undo death wish A death row inmate who said he wanted to be executed and then changed his mind must abide by his original decision, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled. In a 3-1 decision, the court said Thursday it would set a date for the execution of Joseph E. Corcoran, who was sentenced to death in 1999 for killing four people, including his brother and his sister's fiance. Corcoran waived his right to appeal in 2003 and refused to sign paperwork authorizing the next legal step in the appeals process. He said at the time that he believed he should be put to death for his crimes. Corcoran later recanted his decision and asked the Supreme Court to allow him to restart the appeals process. The justices denied that request in January. Corcoran then appealed again, arguing that not allowing him to appeal his death sentence was unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. But the justices said Thursday that Corcoran had not signed paperwork for his appeal before the required deadline and that he still has other avenues of appeal, including federal court. Justice Robert Rucker dissented, saying that Corcoran should be allowed to appeal because of the unusualness of the case and the finality of the death sentence. Corcoran was convicted in the shooting deaths of his 30-year-old brother, James Corcoran; Douglas A. Stillwell, 30; Robert Scott Turner, 32; and Timothy G. Bricker, 30. Turner was the fiance of Corcoran's sister. Corcoran said he shot the men with a semiautomatic rifle in the living room of the Fort Wayne home he shared with his brother and sister because he overheard them talking about him. (source : Seattle Post-Intelligencer) NEBRASKA: Appeals court reinstates death penalty for Palmer A federal appeals court said Friday that there is no evidence that Nebraska's use of the electric chair as its sole means of execution amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made the comments about the electric chair in response to a broad appeal involving Nebraska death-row inmate Charles Jess Palmer. Friday's opinion also, as expected, reversed a 2003 ruling by U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon of Omaha that vacated Palmer's death sentence. In 2003, 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 U.S. 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, so lawyers involved in the case expected the death sentence to be reinstated. Bataillon stopped short of declaring electrocution unconstitutional in Palmer's case. But he said he had been prepared to rule that the electric chair amounts to cruel and unusual punishment because Nebraska is the only state in the country with electrocution as its sole means of carrying out the death penalty. In Friday's ruling, Judge Roger Wollman wrote that "there is no argument even plausible that there are differences in the level of 'evolving decency' among the different circuits or states of the union, or over the last very few years, that justifies a holding that the practice of electrocution constitutes cruel and unusual punishment." That language was important because the Nebraska Supreme Court is now considering similar arguments in the case of death-row inmate Carey Dean Moore. Such arguments have been made before, but Moore's lawyer, Alan Peterson, argued before the high court earlier this month that the "evolving standard of human decency" has made the time ripe for the court to declare death by electrocution as cruel and unusual. "Nebraska ... now is alone in the United States, actually in the whole world, in still requiring electrocution," he said. "Nebraska is the last holdout for this universally rejected and condemned sole means of capital punishment." No American court has ever ruled that electrocution amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. But as legal challenges were mounted against its use in recent years, others states adopted alternative methods such as lethal injection as a means of execution. Solicitor General J. Kirk Brown argued that nine other states besides Nebraska still have electrocution as an alternative method of execution. "The very practice of electrocution has been upheld by other courts within the past year, and there is no argument even plausible that there are differences in the level of 'evolving decency' among the different circuits or states of the union," he told the high court. Palmer was convicted in the 1979 murder of coin dealer Eugene Zimmerman. Moore was sentenced to death for the 1979 murders of Omaha cab drivers Reuel Eugene Van Ness Jr. and Maynard D. Helegland during 2 robberies. Lawmakers have since changed Nebraska's law to require juries to decide if aggravating factors exist in a murder case to merit the death penalty. A panel of 3 judges then decides if the defendant should be executed. 3 people -- Harold Otey, John Joubert and Robert Williams -- have been put to death in Nebraska since executions were resumed in 1994. (source: Associated Press) MISSOURI----impending execution Missouri bishops speak out against execution [Diocese of Missouri] Missouri's 2 Episcopal bishops have spoken out against the scheduled execution of a man they say is deserving of the state's mercy because of mitigating circumstances in the man's life and what the bishops call "the racism inherent in the death penalty's use" in Missouri. In a Pentecost letter to clergy in their dioceses, Bishop Barry R. Howe of West Missouri and Bishop George Wayne Smith, whose Diocese of Missouri covers the eastern half of the state, asked the clergy to pray that Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt will grant Vernon Brown clemency and halt his execution scheduled for May 18. Brown is on Missouri's death row for 2 separate acts of murder. He was convicted in 1988 of the October 1986 strangulation death of a 9-year-old girl in his home in St. Louis. While imprisoned on that charge, he was convicted in 1991 of the March 1985 strangulation and stabbing death of a 19-year-old St. Louis woman. Court-appointed attorneys for Brown argued that their client had a tumultuous childhood in which he was abandoned by his parents and sent with his siblings to live with his grandparents. His grandfather allegedly physically and sexually abused Brown. Sometime in his youth he suffered a head injury that forced him to drop out of high school and caused headaches and blackouts. The attorneys also argued that Brown was under the influence of the drug PCP, an anesthetic used by veterinarians and commonly abused by addicts. They said the drug caused uncontrollable rage and left their client with no memory of his crimes. Brown has exhausted all legal appeals and a state clemency board recommended against clemency, although the final decision rests with Gov. Blunt. If the state of Missouri proceeds with the May 18 execution, Brown would be the 3rd person since March 16 executed by lethal injection in Missouri. Like Brown, the executed prisoners were African-American, a fact the bishops said cannot be accepted "merely as a matter of coincidence." "We ask you to especially consider the racism inherent in the death penalty's use, a well-known and carefully documented aspect of this criminal sentence," wrote Howe and Smith, who were meeting today with other Midwestern bishops in an informal gathering in Kansas City. The bishops said they have no doubt of Brown's guilt, noting that he confessed to his murders. But they said they do doubt "the quality of justice whenever the death penalty is applied, a doubt exemplified in Brown's story." Throughout the judicial process, wrote the bishops, "we find instance after instance in which the quality of mercy should have been applied for Mr. Brown. The circumstances of his life were lost or deliberately suppressed through the legal process, and mercy never received a consideration. Without mercy, say the prophets, justice is cheated." The bishops asked that the clergy share the letter with their congregations as they see fit. In it, they ask that prayers be said for Brown and the other 56 men and women on Missouri's death row and the 3,455 persons nationally facing execution. They asked for prayers for the prisoners' families, for the victims, and the victims' families. "We can pray for those who have the power to do justice and to grant mercy to these persons, that their hearts might be inclined to justice and mercy," they wrote, adding that those reading the letter make their beliefs on the death penalty known to those around them and those in authority. It was not known today whether the Governor's Office had seen or heard of the bishops' letter. Gov. Blunt is a proponent of the death penalty. As late as April 26, the governor went against the clemency board's recommendation to commute the sentence of Donald Jones, even though the family of his victim pleaded with Blunt to spare Jones' life. Jones died from a lethal injection the next morning. In rejecting clemency, Blunt said "we have the death penalty because we believe as a society, we believe as a state, we believe as a people that some crimes are so horrific that the only appropriate punishment is the death penalty." With one week to go before Brown's execution, Howe and Smith acknowledged it may be too late to affect the outcome, "but we must nonetheless bear witness, lest we passively submit to the powers of death and injustice. Obedience to Christ, raised from the dead, requires us to speak out." Since 1958, the Episcopal Church has been officially opposed to the death penalty. (source: The Episcopal Church News (Robert Brown is communications director for the Diocese of Missouri) NORTH CAROLINA: Marines Urged to Drop Iraq Murder Charges Murder charges against a Marine Corps lieutenant who fatally shot 2 Iraqis during a search for a terrorist hideout should be dropped because key witnesses and evidence failed to back up the accusation, an investigating officer has recommended. Lt. Col. Mark Winn made his recommendation in the case of 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano, 33, in an opinion made public Friday. Pantano, however, did make ''serious errors in tactical judgment," Winn wrote, and still should face nonjudicial punishment for 1 charge -- that he desecrated the bodies by reloading his weapon and repeatedly shooting them. The report, dated Thursday, was posted on a Web site maintained by Pantano's mother. A Camp Lejeune spokesman confirmed that Winn had completed his work but declined to comment further. Pantano is stationed at the Marine base, where his Article 32 hearing concluded April 30. Winn "found that Lt. Pantano's actions were justified and not unlawful," his civilian lawyer Charles Gittins said Friday. "Anytime the Article 32 works to the benefit of the accused, it's a good thing." The attorney said Pantano, a former Wall Street trader who rejoined the Marines after the Sept. 11 attacks, is not speaking publicly until the case is resolved. Military authorities may choose to accept Winn's recommendation, give some form of administrative punishment or go ahead with a court-martial. In his opinion, Winn said the accusation that Pantano shot the detainees last year while they were kneeling with their backs to him was not supported by testimony or evidence. The investigating officer "must have realized that the prosecution had no case. Their case just fell apart," Pantano's mother, Merry Pantano of New York, said Friday. Referring to Winn's recommendation that her son still face the desecration charge, Merry Pantano said it appeared her son was being "reprimanded for so zealously killing the enemy." Prosecutors allege Pantano killed the suspected insurgents in April 2004 because he believed they were launching mortars at his troops. Pantano never denied shooting the men but said he acted in self-defense after the men disobeyed his instructions and made a menacing move toward him. Pantano, according to prosecutors, intended to make an example of the detainees by shooting them 60 times and hanging a sign over their bodies -- "No better friend, no worse enemy," a Marine slogan. "We must never allow ourselves to vacate the moral high ground under the guise of 'sending a message to these Iraqis and others' in order to intimidate," Winn wrote. "As officers in the United States Military, it is our sacred obligation to teach our junior men what is moral and just in war, and what is not." (source: Associated Press) PENNSYLVANIA: DA wants death penalty in slaying of girl Northumberland County prosecutors have filed notice that they will seek the death penalty if Brentt Michael Sherwood is convicted of 1st-degree murder in the slaying of his 4-year-old stepdaughter, Marlee Rose Reed. Mr. Sherwood, 25, was charged earlier this year with an open count of homicide, aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of a child after Marlee's death. The beating at the Northumberland home shared by Mr. Sherwood and Marlees mother, Heather Sherwood, occurred Dec. 7. Marlee died the next day. Police have said the beating that led to the girl's death lasted about 10 minutes and that she died from blunt force trauma to the torso. In court documents explaining why the death penalty would be appropriate in this case, District Attorney Anthony Rosini cited 2 aggravating circumstances: the age of the victim and that torture was allegedly employed during the killing. Marlee's autopsy showed that there were extensive lacerations to the spleen, contusions of the pancreas and liver and brushes to the left eye, 2 bruises to the scalp and 4 rib fractures. The pathologist stated the injuries occurred at various times and the manner of death was homicide. Mr. Sherwood was scheduled to be in court earlier this month for his formal arraignment on the homicide charges, but he waived his right to make that appearance, court officials said. He is next scheduled to appear in court in August for a pre-trial conference. Rosini said that he would like that conference pushed up to July. No date for a trial has been set, he said. In Pennsylvania, after a jury convicts a defendant of 1st-degree murder, a hearing is held in which the jury is then asked to determine if the death penalty is justified. If at least 1 of 10 aggravating circumstances listed in the states death penalty law and none of the 8 mitigating factors are found to be present, the verdict must be death. (source: Sunbury Daily Item)
