June 15 ARKANSAS: Arkansas death row inmate says he killed a 4th person An inmate sentenced to death for a killing committed during a 1999 escape has written a letter to a newspaper confessing to another killing. The slaying to which Kenneth D. Williams confessed would make him responsible for the deaths of four people, including a Springfield, Mo., man killed after Williams escaped in 1999. Williams, 26, says in a 5 1/2-page letter to the Pine Bluff Commercial newspaper that he shot and killed Jerrell Jenkins, 36, of Pine Bluff on Dec. 13, 1998, the same day that he fatally shot Dominique Hurd, a cheerleader at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Police had listed Jenkins' death as unsolved. "I take full responsibility for my actions and whatever consequences my peers see fit," Williams wrote. Williams said he was a born-again Christian and wanted to confess his sins. He was convicted of kidnapping and killing Hurd and of kidnapping and assaulting her date. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He escaped on Oct. 3, 1999, while serving that sentence at the Cummins Unit of the state prison system in Lincoln County, Ark. After 57-year-old farmer Cecil Boren was slain at his home near the prison, Williams fled to Missouri in Boren's truck. He was captured near Urbana after an accident that killed Culligan delivery driver Michael Greenwood, 24, of Springfield, Mo. Williams was convicted for Boren's slaying and sentenced to death. He has appealed that verdict. "For a long time I was in denial of the things I had done," Williams wrote. "I couldn't believe it myself. How can someone go five years in denial of something that they obviously did. I have killed or caused the death of four people in my life." The Commercial provided a copy of Williams' letter to police detectives. Police Lt. Terry Hopson and Sgt. Danny Belvedresi met with Williams on Tuesday at the prison system's Varner Supermax Unit near the Cummins unit. Hopson said the inmate declined to make a formal statement in the death of Jenkins, saying only that "the letter to the newspaper spoke for itself." "I wish we would have more people write letters confessing to some of our unsolved homicides," Hopson said, indicating he believed that Williams killed Jenkins. "The bottom line is, I don't think we will have to go looking for a suspect in the Jenkins killing." Hopson said he would discuss with prosecutors whether Williams would be charged in Jenkins' death. Larry A. Sullivan, editor of The Commercial, said it was gratifying that the newspaper "can help solve a homicide, and it appears that may be the case in this instance." Jenkins, whose body was found in a ditch by a youngster walking to school, had been shot to death. Williams claimed in his letter that he killed Jenkins with 2 shots from a .357-caliber handgun. (source: Associated Press) OKLAHOMA: New trial ordered for death row inmate in 1982 killing A new trial is ordered today for a death row inmate convicted of killing an 18 year old woman in 1982. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals today reversed the conviction and sentence of Curtis Edward McCarty of Moore. McCarty has been convicted twice and sentenced to death 3 times in the case. His conviction was based largely on the testimony of fired Oklahoma City police chemist Joyce Gilchrist. Oklahoma County District Court Judge Twyla Mason Gray had found Gilchrist either lost or destroyed critical evidence in the case. A police chemist for 21 years, Gilchrist was fired in 2001 following investigations of her forensic work. (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: Moratorium sought on death penalty -- Assembly Dems say innocent person may be executed In Sacramento, a group of Assembly Democrats announced on Tuesday a coming effort to place a moratorium on capital punishment, declaring California is at grave risk of taking the life of an innocent person, unless the state pauses to scrutinize possible flaws in the justice system. Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood (Los Angeles County), said he would introduce a bill next year to halt executions until January 2009 -- about a year after a report is due from an expert panel established by the state Senate to scrutinize how capital punishment is applied. Citing a number of overturned convictions, several of them death-penalty cases, Koretz said California stands "at grave risk of executing an innocent person" unless it first examines a range of issues associated with the death penalty. The debate over capital punishment has in recent years been infused with accusations of uneven implementation and has been stoked by DNA evidence testing, which has exonerated several convicts in various types of cases. "We can't take the risk that we're going to get it wrong again and send an innocent person to their death," Koretz said. "Time is of the essence." Koretz was joined by Assembly co-authors Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, who called the death penalty "quite infected with racism," and Mark Leno, D- San Francisco, chair of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, who called it an ineffective "lethal lottery" riddled with "significant racial bias." Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, D-Compton (Los Angeles County), also attended. The legislators' bid comes amid a climate of continuing scrutiny of states' implementation of capital punishment. In 2000, Illinois Gov. George Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions after several men on Death Row were ultimately found to be not guilty; he commuted sentences 3 years later. Also, on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the issue of racially biased jury selection in a case that experts say will probably also invite a review of some death penalty appeals in California. Koretz's announcement comes before the Senate-appointed 14-member panel to review the death penalty has met or secured funding to do so, according to members interviewed Tuesday. Even the scope of the panel has yet to be fully determined, said John Moulds, a retired federal magistrate who heads the group. "That's one of the reasons for sitting down and having an organizational meeting" that has yet to occur, he said. The Senate resolution that created the commission stipulated that it be funded by outside sources. Moulds said he was not involved in fund-raising for the commission and declined to release his own estimate of how much money the group needs to operate. But "if we don't see some money, it will be easy to issue a final report very quickly," he quipped. San Mateo County District Attorney Jim Fox, a member of the commission, said he expected a meeting to be held in July or August. But Fox -- whose office prosecuted Donald Beardsley, the last person to receive the death penalty in California -- said he does not believe a moratorium on executions is needed while his group works. "I don't think people could claim that California is on a fast track in its application or administration of the death penalty," Fox said. "The cases should be looked at individually." Victims rights advocates were displeased to learn of Koretz's forthcoming bill. "If you have a death penalty, you should use it," said Marcella Leach, president of Justice for Homicide Victims. "Get rid of it or start executing people, because it means nothing." Typically, new bills are not introduced near the beginning of summer -- a time dominated by budget negotiations -- let alone one that is not expected to move through the legislative hearing process until 2006. But Koretz spokeswoman Teresa Stark said the assemblyman "wanted the lead time to get the bill out there and get people talking about it." She and others said they did not know where the funding for the commission would come from. But Koretz said he did not feel it would impact the committee's work. "I don't think it's going to skew the results," he said. (source: San Francisco Chronicle) VIRGINIA: Jurors reject death penalty in gang killing A jury yesterday spared the lives of 2 members of the MS-13 street gang who murdered a fellow gang member for cooperating with police, sentencing the pair to life in prison and rejecting prosecutors' call for death sentences. The jury in its third day of deliberations told U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee that it could not reach unanimous verdicts on the fates of Oscar Antonio Grande, 22, and Ismael Juarez Cisneros, 26. The jury's failure to reach a unanimous verdict means that both will receive life in prison when they are formally sentenced in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. Grande and Cisneros were convicted for the July 2003 murder of Brenda Paz, 17, who was four months pregnant when she died. Her body was found on the banks of the Shenandoah River; she had been lured to rural Shenandoah County on the pretext of a fishing trip. Miss Paz was slain one night after gang members met in a Fairfax hotel room and voted to kill her for snitching on gang members to police. Miss Paz had been enrolled in the federal witness protection program but left the program just weeks before she was killed. Trial testimony indicated that Miss Paz never truly severed her ties with the gang while in witness protection, where she was poorly supervised. She called on her old gang members to visit her as she was moved by her handlers from Pennsylvania to Missouri to Minnesota. The 2-month trial provided a glimpse of the inner workings of MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, a gang with roots in El Salvador that has committed a series of crimes throughout Northern Virginia in recent years, including killings and machete attacks. Dozens of gang members testified at trial, describing a nomadic existence in which large numbers would crowd into motel rooms with money from panhandling and petty crimes, moving on when they were evicted. Nearly all those who testified said they came to view the gang as their true family. Defense attorneys for Cisneros and Grande argued that their clients were especially susceptible to the gang lifestyle because of the abuse each suffered as a child. Jurors seemingly gave weight to the defense's arguments. On verdict forms, 11 of the 12 jurors said the fact that Grande had come to view MS-13 "as a family to whom he owed the same degree of loyalty as ... a traditional family" was a mitigating factor, arguing in favor of a life sentence rather than death. All 12 jurors agreed that Cisneros "obtained a sense of acceptance and belonging from his involvement in MS-13." Nina Ginsberg, one of Cisneros' attorneys, said it would have been difficult for jurors to ignore the horrific abuse he endured while growing up in Mexico City, where his father beat him and his siblings on an almost daily basis, once throwing Cisneros' 4-month-old sister against a wall and putting her in a hospital for 4 months. Cisneros also suffered sexual abuse at the hands of older cousins. "The way he grew up shouldn't have happened to a dog," Miss Ginsberg said. Prosecutors had argued that the murder of a federal witness was a strike at the very heart of the criminal justice system, deserving of the ultimate punishment. They also argued that Cisneros and Grande were particularly cruel in their killing of Miss Paz. The 2 abused Miss Paz's trust in them to lure her to her death. Grande had an intimate relationship with Miss Paz and slept with her the night before her death, and Cisneros also had been friends with her. Cisneros had suggested the gang wait until Miss Paz gave birth to her child before killing her, but he still agreed to participate in her murder when the gang decided not to wait. U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty said in a statement, "While we believe the death penalty was appropriate punishment, we are confident that justice has been well-served in this case. These murderers will spend the rest of their lives behind bars, and gang members now know the murder of witnesses will be severely punished." Prosecutors charged 2 others in Miss Paz's death, but last month the jury acquitted on all charges Oscar Garcia-Orellana, 32, and Denis Rivera, 22, whom prosecutors said had masterminded Miss Paz's killing from his jail cell. Miss Paz was to have testified against Rivera in a different murder case; Rivera was convicted in that case and sentenced to life in prison. Shortly after Garcia-Orellana was acquitted, prosecutors charged him with illegal possession of ammunition as an illegal alien, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. His attorney says the government is engaging in vindictive prosecution. ************************ Man pleads guilty to killing father, stepmother with baseball bat In Richmond, a man pleaded guilty Tuesday to bludgeoning his father and stepmother to death with a baseball bat and fleeing to Florida last year. Adam Russell Baumann, 22, pleaded guilty to capital murder, 1st-degree murder and 2 counts of stealing credit cards. He faces the death penalty or life in prison without parole at his sentencing Oct. 5. Russell said he was high on crack cocaine and alcohol on June 4, 2004, when he beat his father, Russell Baumann, 61, and stepmother, Diana, 58, stole his father's credit cards and fled in his father's Lincoln Continental. Diana Baumann's daughter, Kim Heggie, said her mother had tried to help Baumann with his drug problem. Baumann told police he beat and stabbed his stepmother because she had withheld his driver's license to keep him from buying alcohol. "My mother didn't deserve to die over two ATM cards and a license," Heggie told WTVR-TV in Richmond. Baumann was arrested June 11, 2004, after he jumped from the top of his speeding car during a high-speed police chase in Jacksonville, Fla. (source for both: Associated Press)
