June 29 TEXAS: Texas delays Hoosier's execution The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has blocked the execution of an Indiana man who was scheduled to die Thursday for a double slaying in the Dallas area more than 15 years ago. Charles Dean Hood, 35, would have been the 10th Texas prisoner put to death this year. The appeals court delayed the punishment after lawyers argued jurors who determined Hood should be executed did not get proper instructions that would have allowed them to consider mitigating factors such as Hood's difficult family life and childhood injuries and illnesses that left him brain-damaged. The court order Monday came after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected another appeal that sought additional DNA testing on evidence used against him at his trial. The state court ruling sends the case back to the trial court in Collin County. Hood came to Texas in 1989 to work in construction and wound up as a bouncer at a topless club in Plano, a Dallas suburb. When he lost his job at the club, one of the bar's patrons, Dallas computer company operator Ronald Williamson, let him stay at his Plano home and paid him to do odd jobs. One of the dancers at the bar, Tracie Lynn Wallace, also was living there. Williamson, 46, and Wallace, 26, were found shot to death in the house Nov. 1, 1989. Hood, 20 at the time of the slayings, was arrested in his native Vincennes, Ind., driving Williamson's $70,000 Cadillac. He said he had Williamson's permission to use the car and has insisted he was not responsible for their deaths. "I've done a lot of stupid stuff in my life," Hood said in a recent interview. "But I have never killed nobody." At least 5 other Texas inmates have execution dates over the next 4 months. (source: Associated Press) NORTH CAROLINA: Deonstrations mark Day of Action Against Torture DEMONSTRATIONS IN RALEIGH MARK INTERNATIONAL DAY TO STOP TORTURE Activists from a coalition of groups advocating for human rights, the abolition of the death penalty, and the ending of U.S. torture in prisons gathered to demonstrate today in observance of the "United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture," which was June 26. With growing public criticism surrounding the abuse and torture in U.S. operated prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq, and at Guantanamo Bay, a group of North Carolinians met at Raleigh's Central Prison on Monday afternoon to make the connection between the torture of prisoners in military prisons overseas and the executions taking place on death rows in the United States. "The U.S. practice of torturing and abusing prisoners in places such as Guantanamo and Abu Grahib goes against international standards of human rights and human decency. Likewise, people are beginning to see that here in the US, our practice of injecting prisoners with lethal drugs or electrocuting them to death also constitutes torture and is a grave human rights abuse in the world's eyes," said Scott Langley, Amnesty International's Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator in North Carolina. At the prison, activists held signs that read "Stop Torture" and "Stop the Executions" for motorists driving on Western Boulevard to see. With the Monday rush hour passing by, the message was seen by many who regularly pass by the prison which houses 172 men on death row in addition to the states execution facilities. Earlier in day during Monday morning rush hour traffic, motorists traveling west down Western Boulevard past Central Prison were greeted by an electronic road sign reading "End Torture Now." Apparently, to start off the Raleigh day of action against torture, someone had hacked the city road construction system and changed the words that once said Pullen Road Closed - Use Morrill Drive. The change stayed for several hours before public officials took notice and changed the sign back to its original message. This day of demonstrations and actions in Raleigh come the day after the international community recognized June 26 as a day to end torture. Organizations such as Amnesty International and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee have been organizing nationwide STOP TORTURE campaigns to draw attention to the torture being carried out by governments throughout the world, and in particular, what the United States has been involved in over the last several years. Another group, North Carolinians against Torture, will be holding a public event as part of this years campaign to stop torture. As part of the event, to be held over the weekend of August 26 and 27, Jennifer Harbury (author, U.S. Attorney, and human rights activist) will be discussing her campaign to bring citizen indictments against Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Tenat for their involvement in government torture policies. She will take these indictments to Washington D.C. the weekend of Sept 24-26 where she will have a mock trial of these three. Additionally, weekly demonstrations against the death penalty will continue through the summer every Monday from 5:00 to 6:00 pm outside of Central Prison on Western Boulevard (organized by the Raleigh Catholic Worker) For more information: Amnesty International: http://www.amnestyusa.org/stoptorture Unitarian Universalist Service Committee: http://www.uusc.org/programs/STOP Raleigh Catholic Worker Community: http://www.langleycreations.com/catholicworker North Carolinians Against Torture: Jane Hunt (contact) 919-851-6676 or jhun...@nc.rr.com (source: North Carolina Independent Media Center; photos available at: http://www.chapelhill.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/15631.php) USA: High Court to Consider Death Penalty Case The Supreme Court said Tuesday it would decide when people should get a fresh chance to prove their innocence, agreeing to hear a Tennessee death row inmate's appeal based on DNA evidence that wasn't available when he was convicted of killing a young mother. The outcome could determine when prisoners can use this modern scientific technique to get a new trial, an issue especially important for people convicted years before the advent of sophisticated genetic technology. More than 150 people have been exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence. Justices will clarify the standards for winning new trials in the 20-year-old case of Paul House, a convicted sex offender who was accused of raping and beating to death a neighbor, Carolyn Muncey. He was convicted of Muncey's murder, but later DNA tests, which were not widely available at the time, revealed that semen on Muncey's underwear and nightgown came from her husband. House lost an appeal at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, on an 8-7 vote, and asked the high court to review his case. "This will be the 1st time the Supreme Court considers the impact of DNA evidence on the constitutional right to a fair trial,'' said Nina Morrison, an attorney with the Innocence Project in New York, a legal clinic that handles DNA cases. ``The justice system has been revolutionized by scientific evidence since the time Paul House was tried." Morrison said that her project is handling about 100 cases involving prisoners who want a chance to prove their innocence with DNA. Most were convicted in the 1980s and early 1990s. Jennifer Smith, an associate deputy attorney general in Tennessee, argued that there is not enough evidence to reopen the House case. She said that House could instead seek clemency from Tennessee's governor. Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a pro-death penalty group, said the Supreme Court should not lower the standard for inmates who want new trials. "It would be misused by courts that are hostile to the death penalty," he said. The Supreme Court usually handles several death penalty cases a year. Already, justices are hearing arguments this fall in a case that asks if someone convicted of murder can offer evidence at sentencing that casts doubt about culpability. The court was particularly active on death penalty issues during the session that ended Monday, making it unlawful to execute juveniles, scolding prosecutors for stacking a jury on racial lines and ruling it was unconstitutional to force defendants to appear before juries in chains during a trial's penalty phase. The House case sharply divided the appeals court last October. "I am convinced that we are faced with a real-life murder mystery, an authentic 'who-done-it' where the wrong man may be executed. Was Carolyn Muncey killed by her down-the-road neighbor Paul House, or by her husband Hubert Muncey?" Judge Ronald Lee Gilman wrote. The decision against House cited evidence including witnesses who saw House near a creek bank where the body was found, and testimony that he had scratches and bruises. "Although the evidence against appellant was circumstantial, it was quite strong," Judge Alan E. Norris wrote in the majority opinion. House had recently moved to the rural hill country of East Tennessee from Utah, where he served time for sexual assault, when Carolyn Muncey went missing in July 1985. House's lawyers say the investigation should have focused on Hubert Muncey, a well-known member of the community known as Little Hube. He had abused his wife and confessed to friends that he killed her, justices were told by House's public defender, Stephen Michael Kissinger. Kissinger argued that in light of recent exonerations of death row inmates and other prisoners, the court should revisit a 1993 ruling that suggested death row prisoners with claims of innocence should seek executive clemency, not count on extra rounds of federal appeals. That ruling was written by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. The case is House v. Bell, 04-8990. On the Net: Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/ ************************* Court May Revise Rule On Death Row Appeals The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will reconsider the rules for permitting appeals by death row inmates who claim they have been wrongly convicted, in the case of a death row inmate who says DNA evidence proves he did not commit the crime of which he was found guilty in 1985. The death penalty case, House v. Bell , No. 04-8990, brings the court face to face with an issue that has shadowed the administration of capital punishment in recent years: the possibility that an innocent person could be executed. Paul G. House is seeking release from Tennessee's death row because of what his appeal petition to the court calls "powerful new evidence of innocence." He says that DNA tests show that the semen found on murder victim Carolyn Muncey's clothes belonged to her husband, Hubert Muncey, and not to House, as a jury in Union County, Tenn., found 20 years ago. The issue before the Supreme Court, however, is not whether House is guilty, but how strong his case for innocence must be to win a new hearing in federal court. The court has never quite said it is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person. Instead, in a 1993 case, Herrera v. Collins , the court, in a 5 to 4 opinion written by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, said that Leonel Torres Herrera had no right to reopen his case 10 years after conviction, based solely on a claim of new proof of innocence. Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy joined that opinion with the proviso that they saw little doubt of Herrera's guilt. In 1995, however, the court ruled 6 to 3 in the case of Schlup v. Delo that a convicted murderer who had other constitutional claims in addition to an actual innocence claim could get a new hearing even after exhausting all otherwise permitted opportunities, if he could show new evidence that makes it probable "no reasonable juror would have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." O'Connor and Kennedy joined that ruling, which was written by Justice John Paul Stevens. Last year, the full 14-judge U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit voted 8 to 6 that House's evidence did not meet this standard. Citing the 6th Circuit majority opinion, Tennessee said in its Supreme Court brief that the evidence presented by House, "far from demonstrating his actual innocence, was countered and undermined in virtually every respect by opposing evidence presented by the State" during his federal appeal. (source: Washington Post)
