June 15 INDIANA----new execution date Execution date set for Ft. Wayne man The Indiana Supreme Court has set an execution date for a Fort Wayne man convicted of killing four people, including his brother and his sisters fianc, but he still has federal appeals he can pursue. The court ordered Tuesday that Joseph Corcoran be executed on July 21. He was sentenced to death in 1999. Corcoran, 30, waived his right to appeal in 2003 despite urgings from his attorneys and a judge, and refused to sign the paperwork authorizing the next legal step in the appeals process. He said at the time he believed he should be put to death for his crimes. The public defenders appointed to the case sought to have him ruled mentally incompetent so they could continue to appeal, but an Allen Superior Court judge rejected their arguments and the state Supreme Court upheld her decision. In the meantime, Corcoran recanted his decision to waive further appeals and asked the high court to dismiss the involuntary appeal so he could restart the appeals process. The justices denied his request in January. Corcoran then appealed again, arguing that not allowing him to appeal his death sentence was unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. But the justices ruled last month that he had not signed paperwork for his appeal before the required deadline and that he still has other avenues for appeal, including federal courts. Corcoran was convicted in the 1997 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 fianc of Corcorans 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: Associated Press) *********************** Execution order is given for killer of 4----Indiana Supreme Court says mentally ill man who waived state appeal rights is competent. The Indiana Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the execution of Joseph E. Corcoran, 30, a mentally ill man who waived his state appeal rights and then tried to reconsider. Corcoran, formerly of Fort Wayne, committed 4 murders in Northeast Indiana. Corcoran refused to sign a petition for post-conviction relief in time to meet a court deadline. His attorneys asserted he was not legally competent to waive his appeal rights, but the courts ruled otherwise. Corcoran has not pursued his federal appeal rights, but he could be limited in doing so because he cannot raise issues that were not brought up at trial or as part of the direct appeal in state court of his convictions. "He's in a really unusual legal position," said Paula Sites, who monitors death penalty cases for the Indiana Public Defender Council. The Supreme Court last month reiterated that Corcoran, who is on death row in the Indiana State Prison at Michigan City, could not change his mind about dropping his state appeal. Corcoran was sentenced to death in 1999 for killing 4 people, including his brother and his sister's fianc, 2 years earlier. He waived his right to appeal in 2003 over the objections of his attorneys and a judge, and refused to sign the paperwork authorizing the next legal step in the appeals process. At the time, he said he should be put to death. Corcoran later recanted that decision. He was convicted in the shooting deaths of his brother, James Corcoran, 30; Douglas A. Stillwell, 30; Robert Scott Turner, 32; and Timothy G. Bricker, 30. The men were slain with a semiautomatic rifle at the home Joseph Corcoran shared with James Corcoran and his sister, Kelly Peterson, then Kelly Nieto. Turner was her fianc. The defense did not dispute Corcoran's guilt, saying that in his "troubled, paranoid, immature, disturbed mind," he believed the victims had made fun of him. Psychiatric experts have said Corcoran suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and has recurrent delusions that prison guards are torturing him through the use of an ultrasound machine, causing pain and uncontrollable twitching. The experts said Corcoran's initial decision to be executed stemmed from his desire to escape the agony. ************************* 7 charges to be filed in 2 homicides last week Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi today will charge a 22-year-old man in connection with 2 shooting deaths. Terrance Anderson is expected be charged with 2 counts of murder, 2 counts of attempted murder, 2 counts of aggravated battery and carrying a handgun without a license, Deputy Prosecutor Barb Crawford said. Anderson is accused of killing Thomas Edmondson, 21, on Thursday and Tyric Rudolph, 16, on Friday, Crawford said. Crowding at the county jail is partly to blame for the fact that Anderson was on the streets, Brizzi said. Anderson was released from jail despite having skipped at least 5 court appearances and failing twice to comply with terms of his release, Brizzi said. (source for both: Indianapolis Star) USA: Laying Down a Challenge On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court did the right thing in overturning the murder convictions of black defendants in California and Texas after determining that, in both cases, racial discrimination played a role in jury selection. But the court could have done itself, and the judicial system, a service by taking an additional step and embracing Justice Stephen G. Breyer's concurring opinion, in which he called for the abolition of so-called peremptory challenges, which allow lawyers to strike a number of otherwise qualified jurors. Some jurors can be struck "for cause" - bias, say - by a judge. But peremptory challenges, which allow lawyers to remove prospective jurors without stating a reason, turn jury selection into a classic game that is supported by a massive industry of consultants peddling dubious theories (jurors who wear green favor defendants, etc.). Since 1986, however, a serious constitutional principle has been at stake. In that year, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Batson vs. Kentucky that potential jurors could not be excluded on account of their race. If racial discrimination can be inferred from prosecutors' moves to strike jurors, they can be forced to offer race-neutral reasons for their decisions. A defendant can then question the validity of these ostensible reasons, all of which leads to bickering about such issues as a juror's "demeanor." The conceit is that a semblance of objectivity can be imposed on a subjective art. Former Justice Thurgood Marshall was perceptive in pointing out the hopelessness of this endeavor in his concurrence to the Batson decision, in which he also called for the elimination of these challenges. It isn't as if they serve any higher public good. They merely empower trial lawyers and feed the myth of a trial as simply a courtroom showdown between 2 all-powerful attorneys. Weighed against the constitutional rights of prospective jurors and criminal defendants, they are revealed as an antiquated tradition. The 6th Amendment, establishing the right to trial by an impartial jury, says nothing about the right of lawyers to pick their own jurors. In the case out of California, the court's 8-1 ruling held that this state's highest court set too high a burden of proof to trigger a review of whether a peremptory challenge was discriminatory. In the 6-3 ruling on the Texas case of Thomas Miller-El, the court expressed some exasperation at the failure of state courts and the conservative U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to apply the law properly. Miller-El was tried for murder in 1986, the same year Batson was decided. There will be too many more cases like this, unfortunately, until a majority of Supreme Court justices side with Breyer and Marshall and agree to strike down peremptory challenges themselves. (source: Editorial, Los Angeles Times) ********************* Jackson puts Mesereau on map of celebrity lawyers Attorney Thomas Mesereau's sweeping victory in the Michael Jackson child molestation case puts him at the front ranks of America's elite defense lawyers. But for years the white-maned, Harvard-educated attorney fought just as successfully for down-and-out clients he represented for little or no pay in the gritty criminal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, and in death penalty appeals across the deep South. A U.S. Army officer's son with a passion for amateur boxing, Mesereau quit a post as a prosecutor early in his career because he sympathized too much with the people he was putting in jail. He agreed to take on Jackson's defense because he "believed very strongly" that the singer was innocent, his friend and former co-counsel Jennifer Keller said. "He is able to humanize his clients for the jury as he did with Jackson," Keller said. "That's an amazing feat -- to let those jurors see Michael Jackson as a regular person like us." Mesereau's victory in the Jackson case, where the singer was acquitted of all 10 counts, came as no surprise to Los Angeles Judge Lloyd Nash who rated Mesereau "one of the finest lawyers that has ever appeared before me." About 5 years ago Mesereau, began volunteering to represent defendants in Alabama who were accused of murder and was able to persuade several juries to acquit or convict his clients on lesser charges. FEW PAYING CLIENTS The New York-born Mesereau, 55, is a regular at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles where he works twice a month at the church's free legal clinic. A few years ago, he was mostly representing "small-time knuckleheads... every mom whose kid shot somebody would come to him and say, 'We have no money, can you help?,"' said David Houston of the Los Angeles Daily Journal legal trade paper. "He has family money so it's not like he's poor," Houston said. "But he had no paying clients because he keeps taking these people." It was at First AME, where he worked alongside a lawyer who handled the business affairs of actor Robert Blake, that Mesereau took on the case of representing the fading "Baretta" star who was charged with murdering his wife. Mesereau secured Blake's release from pretrial custody before reluctantly quitting the case because of a personal conflict at about the same time as Jackson's original lawyer, Mark Geragos, stepped down. Blake was eventually cleared of murder in March. "He is a softie but has another side. He can be tough as nails, particularly when defending a client," Keller said. In the Jackson case, Mesereau based his strategy on undermining the credibility of the young accuser and his family. He found that the mother of the alleged victim had lied about a welfare claim and won a settlement from a questionable lawsuit against a department store. In closing statements, he memorably described the family as "con artists, actors and liars." Keller said fame had been hard for Mesereau to handle. "He finds it bittersweet on the one hand but I think he always wanted to be recognized for the lawyer he is," she said. (source: Reuters) ILLINOIS: 200 more inmates must give DNA sample under new law More than 200 prison inmates serving life sentences must submit DNA samples to authorities under a law Gov. Blagojevich signed Monday. Police will compare their DNA profiles with a national computer database of DNA profiles from unsolved crimes. Since August 2002, every felon in Illinois has been required to give a DNA sample after sentencing. And every felon in the state prison system must submit a DNA sample before being released from custody. But some of the state's most dangerous felons -- those serving life terms -- have not been required to submit DNA samples because they were sentenced before August 2002 and won't be freed. The new law, sponsored by Sen. Iris Y. Martinez (D-Chicago) and Rep. William Delgado (D-Chicago), will close that loophole, said Abby Ottenhoff, a spokeswoman for the governor. Nearly 94,000 felons have been tested, including all of the state's 6 death row inmates -- who were sentenced after August 2002. State officials need to obtain DNA samples from more than 2,600 inmates who have been paroled but still are considered to be in Corrections Department custody until they complete their paroles, Ottenhoff said. Samples also must be obtained from 3,100 inmates sentenced after August 2002 and who are behind bars in the state prison system, she said. Meanwhile, the state is working to reduce a backlog of DNA evidence obtained from crime scenes. In February, the State Police crime lab counted 158 cases awaiting analysis, down from 1,100 a year before, Ottenhoff said. (source: The Sun-Times) FLORIDA: Homeless Killing In Daytona Beach, a judge ordered 2 15-year-old boys charged in connection with the slaying of a homeless man to stand trial as adults. Warren Messner of Holly Hill and Phi Huynh of Daytona Beach face lesser charges than 3 other teenagers accused of beating 53-year-old Michael Roberts to death May 25. Circuit Judge James R. Clayton ordered the teens to be tried as adults and moved from a juvenile facility to the Volusia County Branch Jail at separate hearings Tuesday. Messner is charged with 2nd-degree murder and conspiracy to commit 1st-degree murder. Huynh is charged with aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery. Jeffery Spurgeon, Justin Stearns and Christopher Scamahorn have been indicted on charges of 1st-degree murder and conspiracy to commit 1st-degree murder. Spurgeon and Stearns, both 18, could face the death penalty if convicted. 14-year-old Scamahorn is too young to face the death penalty but will be tried as an adult. Roberts was kicked and crushed when teens jumped on a log on his chest in woods where the group was known to hang out behind a car wash. His body remained in the woods until Spurgeon's mother called authorities 3 days later to report she had overheard something about a beating. (source: Associated Press)
