June 22 CALIFORNIA: Death penalty phase of Marcus Wesson's trial begins The jurors who found Marcus Wesson guilty of killing 9 of his children and sexually abusing several of his daughters and nieces now have to decide whether he should die for his crimes or be sentenced to life in prison. Attorneys working on the case would not comment on what would happen when the penalty phase was set to begin Wednesday, but legal experts who have been observing the case expected this part of the trial to be short. "The biggest factor here is what happened in the guilt phase - and the jury was presented with some gruesome facts," said Fresno attorney Ernest Kinney, who has been following the case closely. The jurors took two weeks to find Wesson guilty of killing nine of his children after months of hearing details about the bizarre life he led. Witnesses described the Wesson family as a closed clan that lived completely under Wesson's control. The patriarch preached to them regularly, weaving his belief in polygamy and incest with a strict interpretation of the Bible. The murders happened in March 2004 in a back bedroom of the Wesson home after an hours-long standoff with the police. 2 of Wesson's nieces had returned to the house where they had grown up. The women wanted Wesson to return to them the children they had with him, whom they had been forced to leave behind when they fled the house. When Wesson did not cooperate, they called the police. A standoff ensued, with police trying to talk Wesson into giving himself up. When the defendant finally walked out of the home, there was blood on his clothes. The officers entered the room to find the victims, most of them children, entwined in a bloody pile - a sight so disturbing it left veteran police officers distraught. Jurors also convicted Wesson on all 14 counts of raping and molesting his daughters and nieces. Some of the victims were children he had with his own children. The defense was presented with a very difficult task, said Kinney, and there might not be much they can say at this point to make jurors warm up to Wesson. The defendant was "a scary man, who always scared the jurors," Kinney said. Wesson never cut his long dreadlocks, which hang down past his hips, and sometimes interrupted testimony, once to tell the judge the prosecutor was being disrespectful. "He didn't go along with the program," Kinney said. "He always wanted to be in control." (source: Associated Press) ************************* 23 Arrested in Raids on Gang in California In Burbank, several hundred police officers carried out extensive predawn raids against a gang on Tuesday, resulting in the arrest of 23 people on charges of conspiracy, drug trafficking and murder. The raids, the culmination of an 18-month investigation into the activities of the Vineland Boys, a gang founded in the late 1980's in the San Fernando Valley, involved about 1,300 federal and local police officers and 9 helicopters, making it one of the largest law enforcement efforts in the Los Angeles area in years, officials said. The raids, which were based on 43 search warrants, began at 3:30 a.m. "We have effectively crippled the gang and put it out of business," said Debra Wong Yang, the United States attorney for the Central District of California. She spoke to reporters on the steps of the Burbank Police Department, flanked by law enforcement officials. They stood near weapons seized by the police and photos of two officers who the authorities say were killed by gang members. "Today the good guys won; today the bad guys lost," said Chief William J. Bratton of the Los Angeles Police Department. "Big time." The raids, part of an investigation called Silent Night, were conducted by the Los Angeles Police Department, the Burbank Police Department, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and several other agencies. Some of the buildings the officers raided were so heavily fortified that Ms. Yang described them as armed compounds. Most of those arrested were named in a 56-count federal indictment charging them with violations of federal money-laundering, drug and weapons laws. Ms. Yang said prosecutors had also charged the gang members with conspiracy, using the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act. "RICO traditionally was used back on the East Coast to go after the old Mafia crime families," Ms. Yang said. To succeed in making such a case, she said, prosecutors must show that the gang was operating in an organized and systematic way, that a robbery was not, for example, carried out by two people on the spur of the moment. Ms. Yang and other law enforcement officials at the news conference said the state, local and federal agencies would continue to cooperate in pursuing other criminal gangs in the future. The early-morning raids resulted in 36 arrests; 13 of those arrested were not included in the indictment. The raids also resulted in the seizure of 41 firearms, $30,000 in cash and 12 pounds of marijuana, the police said. Seven of those arrested have been linked to four murders and could face the death penalty if convicted, Ms. Yang said. Seven of the people named in the indictment remain at large. Law enforcement agencies began focusing on the Vineland Boys in late 2003, after a member was suspected of shooting and killing a Burbank police officer. The member escaped and was captured later; the slain officer, Matthew Pavelka, was the 1st officer killed in the line of duty in the Burbank Police Department. "It was driven very much by that," Thomas Hoefel, chief of the Burbank Police Department, told reporters. Killing a police officer, Chief Hoefel said, was "the ultimate affront to society." Ms. Yang described the Vineland Boys as a sophisticated, well-organized enterprise with ties to other gangs; it agreed to pay "taxes" on its drug trafficking to the Mexican Mafia, another criminal gang, she said. The Vineland Boys were involved in drug trafficking in places as far apart as Indiana and Hawaii, Ms. Yang said, adding that gang members had also committed several violent crimes, including the killing of a 16-year-old girl. The police said that over the course of the 18-month investigation, before the raids, they had arrested 231 people, impounded 25 cars, and seized 75 firearms, more than $1 million and over 300 pounds of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin. (source: New York Times) DELAWARE: Capano challenges death penalty----convicted murderer questions power of judge to impose maximum sentence Convicted killer Thomas Capano hopes to avoid execution by persuading the Delaware Supreme Court that the state's death-penalty law is unconstitutional. In a 72-page brief made public Tuesday, Capano's lawyer argues that the Superior Court judge in the 1998 trial could not impose a death sentence because only 11 of 12 jurors agreed an aggravating circumstance was involved in the 1996 killing of Anne Marie Fahey. Defense attorney Joseph Bernstein said the jurors should have unanimously agreed the murder was premeditated and the result of substantial planning during the sentencing hearing that followed Capano's conviction for 1st-degree murder. "It's like saying you could be found guilty by a 11-1 vote," Bernstein said. Prosecutors accused Capano of shooting Fahey and dumping her body in the Atlantic Ocean because she was breaking off an affair with him. At the time of the murder, Fahey was Gov. Tom Carper's scheduling secretary. Capano is part of a well-known family involved in the land development business and once worked as state prosecutor. The ninth anniversary of Fahey's murder is next week, said Fahey's brother, Robert Fahey. Although he is not a lawyer, he said, Capano's arguments sound familiar. "My first thought is desperate people do desperate things," he said. "When you are a step or two away from ... the death chamber, you'll try anything to avoid it." Bernstein filed the brief as part of Capano's appeal of a March decision by the state Superior Court, which rejected a request to set aside the former political insider's death sentence. Prosecutor Ferris Wharton said the legal arguments made to the state's highest court are mostly the same points the lower court already has rejected. "It's not new stuff," Wharton said. "It's stuff that has been argued in Superior Court, and now it's being argued in Supreme Court." Bernstein agreed the arguments are mostly the same. He said, however, that the Delaware Supreme Court should weigh a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2002 that could affect Capano's case. In Ring v. Arizona, the nation's highest court ruled that allowing a judge alone to decide whether a defendant is eligible for the death penalty is unconstitutional. Bernstein contends that means juries in Delaware must unanimously agree on recommending the death penalty, even though Delaware law leaves the final decision up to the trial judge. Superior Court Judge T. Henley Graves ruled in March that Ring does not require all jurors to agree in the sentencing phase. Tom Reed, professor of law at Widener University School of Law, said Capano might have a point to argue, however, because Delaware clarified its death-penalty law after the Ring ruling. The law now specifies a unanimous jury finding on aggravating circumstances is required. The law was less specific when Capano was sentenced, he said. (source: The News Journal) IOWA----female gets federal death sentence Jury calls for Johnson's death----Ex-boyfriend Honken also awaits execution in 5 murders Angela Johnson deserves to die because she helped her then-boyfriend kill 5 people in 1993 to protect their lucrative methamphetamine ring, a federal jury decided Tuesday. Johnson, a 41-year-old mother of 2 with no criminal record before she helped abduct and shoot 3 adults and 2 children, could become the first woman executed by the U.S. government since 1953. Johnson joins her boyfriend, Dustin Honken, as the first people ordered to die by an Iowa jury since 1963. Neither has been formally sentenced. 10 charges, 10 convictions The jury on May 24 found Angela Johnson guilty of 5 counts of conspiracy to commit murder as part of a drug conspiracy and 5 counts of committing murder while engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise. Relatives of the Klemme woman sobbed silently in the courtroom Tuesday as Judge Mark Bennett read the verdicts. Relatives of the victims, who have waited 12 years since the murders, sat 2 benches away. They wept for a different reason. "We are very happy," said Brenda DeGeus, whose brother was Johnson's final victim. "This woman deserves death." Unless a judge rejects the jury's recommendation, Johnson will be the 39th federal prisoner on death row and the 51st female death-row prisoner in the country, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. What Iowans think 2/3 of respondents in an April Des Moines Register Iowa Poll said they want to bring back the death penalty, which was repealed in 1965. John Duncan, whose granddaughters Honken shot in the head in July 1993, said Tuesday that he would "probably sleep better tonight than I've ever slept through this whole ordeal." Johnson's daughter, Alyssa Johnson, declined to comment, "other than I love my mother." Angela Johnson was convicted earlier this month for her role in the slayings. The bodies of informants Terry DeGeus and Greg Nicholson; Nicholson's girlfriend, Lori Duncan; and Duncan's daughters, Kandi, 10, and Amber, 6, were found in shallow graves near Mason City in 2000. Women on death row 49 women have been executed in the U.S. since 1900. Since 1998: FEB.1998: Karla Faye Tucker, Texas, injection MARCH 1998: Judy Buenoano, Florida, electrocution FEB. 2000: Betty Lou Beets, Texas, injection MAY 2000: Christina Riggs, Arkansas, injection JAN. 2001: Wanda Jean Allen, Oklahoma, injection MAY 2001: Marilyn Plantz, Oklahoma, injection DEC. 2001: Lois Nadean Smith, Oklahoma, injection MAY 2002: Lynda Lyon Block, Alabama, electrocution OCT. 2002: Aileen Wuornos, Florida, injection Prosecutors said Johnson posed as a cosmetics saleswoman to get inside Duncan's home on July 25, 1993. Duncan, Nicholson and the children were taken at gunpoint to the field where their bodies were later found. They had been tortured and shot, each at least once in the back of the head at close range. Johnson lured DeGeus, a former boyfriend, to his death a month later, prosecutors said. Assistant U.S. Attorney C.J. Williams said in closing arguments Monday that Johnson was Honken's willing partner in the murders. "Somebody involved in the murder of children deserves the death penalty," he told jurors. Johnson's chief attorney, Alfred Willett, called Tuesday's verdict the "biggest professional disappointment" of his 21-year legal career. "We respect the jury's decision," Willett said. "Obviously, we disagree with it." Defense attorney Patrick Berrigan had argued Monday that Honken manipulated Johnson, and that prosecutors lacked evidence to show she was with him when the victims were slain. Berrigan also recounted testimony about Johnson's upbringing, which was influenced by an unstable mother whose religious practices included exorcism. Berrigan asked jurors to choose "mercy over vengeance." Death penalty in the U.S. STATES: Most states, including Iowa, either have no death penalty or rarely use it. 29 states either carried out 3 or fewer executions in the past 30 years or instituted a moratorium. The last person executed at an Iowa prison was Victor Feguer in 1963. FEDERAL: There are 40 federal prisoners on death row in the United States, including Dustin Honken and Angela Johnson. Espionage, treason and drug trafficking are among federal crimes that can draw the death penalty. They chose death on 8 of the 10 counts. Verdict forms filled out during deliberations show jurors felt sympathy for Johnson's ties to her daughters but gave little credence to pleas for mercy based on her childhood. Forms show that none of the jurors agreed with statements that Johnson's participation was "relatively minor" compared with Honken's role in the crimes. Iowa is one of 12 states without the death penalty, but Honken and Johnson were convicted on federal charges related to the multistate drug investigation. The federal government has put to death 37 people since 1927. 2 have been women: - Ethel Rosenberg, 37, was electrocuted along with her husband in New York for espionage in 1953. - Bonnie Brown, 41, died in the gas chamber for murder, also in 1953. Federal authorities described Angela Johnson as a ruthlessly ambitious woman who slept her way to the top of Honken's meth business and was an active participant in his plan to save it from a 1993 drug probe. Prosecutors acknowledged that it was Honken who pulled the trigger in all 5 shootings. But "simply being the shooter doesn't mean you're more culpable," prosecutor C.J. Williams said Tuesday. Jurors in Honken's trial last fall convicted him of all five killings but delivered death verdicts on four of 10 possible counts - those related to the dead children. Honken has asked for a new trial. Jurors for Johnson recommended the death penalty on every count she faced except those related to Nicholson, a drug dealer-turned-informant who was the initial target of Honken and Johnson's effort to quell the investigation. Duncan, a 31-year-old U.S. Navy veteran, and her daughters were bound, gagged and shot after Honken forced Nicholson to make a videotape that exonerated Honken of the drug charges. DeGeus, who sold drugs for Honken, was shot 4 months later after Johnson lured him to a meeting with Honken. "We've just got one more hurdle, and that's when they sentence her," said Ed DeGeus, Terry's father. "Then it'll all be over." Williams said he hopes circumstances will never require him to try another death case. "But let this be a caution," he said. "The death penalty is an option in Iowa, and if necessary, we will pursue it again." (source: Des Moines Register) LOUISIANA: Accused killer to present insanity claim Prosecutors dropped their objection Tuesday to a defense request to launch an insanity defense for Shedran Williams, a Baton Rouge man accused of killing a veteran police officer last year. With that obstacle gone, Williams changed his plea Tuesday from not guilty to not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutor Brent Stockstill said after court that the change in plea allows Williams' attorneys to present a defense that he was insane on the day in May 2004 he is accused of killing Baton Rouge Police Lt. Vickie Wax at a now-closed Perkins Road Wal-Mart. "If that's their only defense, we're ready to proceed to trial as soon as possible," Stockstill said. "A review of everything we have shows he had no history of mental illness. "I don't think they have proof," Stockstill said. Stockstill said dropping their objection to the insanity defense eliminates the need for a pretrial hearing on whether Williams was insane at the time he committed the crime. Williams was indicted on a count of 1st-degree murder last year and Stockstill has put the defense on notice that he is seeking the death penalty. According to police, Wax was trying to detain Williams at the Wal-Mart because Williams was suspected of shoplifting a disposable camera. A scuffle began and Williams ended up with Wax's service revolver. Police claim Williams used that revolver to shoot and kill Wax and to wound two men, a store security guard and a customer. Williams' trial was scheduled to begin July 11, but problems with obtaining records from East Baton Rouge Parish schools and drug treatment agencies caused a delay in the start of the trial to Oct. 10. "Obviously we're going to need more time because of the records compliance" problem, state District Judge Mike Erwin said. "It seems to be bogging down for some reason." School system attorney Domoine Rutledge says in a letter to Erwin that Williams' school records will be made available. The drug treatment agencies did not provide records. The Chemical Dependency Unit of Baton Rouge claims in a letter that defense attorneys did not affix a required affidavit when it requested Williams' records. Baton Rouge Detox only provided the court with a letter that gives the day Williams entered the facility and the day he left. The other facility, Red River Treatment Center of Alexandria, says in a letter that the records requested are more than 6 years old and have been destroyed. Defense attorney Billy Hecker said after court that he thinks the agencies' responses were a "slap in the face" to Erwin as well as to himself. Hecker said he will take the necessary steps to make sure the psychiatrist he has hired has all the records needed to determine whether Williams has a mental defect. "I don't know if he is insane or if he was insane at the time," Hecker said. "The only person who can tell me that is a competent psychiatrist, and he needs the records." Hecker also said he is still trying to find out about his client's stay at Red River. The defense attorney said he will subpoena someone at that facility to testify about the records being destroyed and will try to find all of the psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers who worked at that center in the early 1990s, for the time Williams was a patient. "We have a duty to do that," Hecker said. The next hearing is scheduled July 13. The haggling over the records and the resulting delays have added to the frustration of Bonnie Salassi, Wax's sister. In court, Salassi sat alone and scribbled down the new trial and hearing dates in a small notebook. After court, Salassi expressed her frustration, saying the defense is using delay tactics to put off the inevitable. "I don't believe he was insane at the time he done it," Salassi said. "He knew what he was doing. "I just hope one day he burns in hell," she said. Salassi said it's difficult to watch the legal process and the delays. She said she copes by dealing with her emotions "one day at a time. "You have to sit and wait and it's very hard," she said. (source: The Advocate)
