June 29 TEXAS: Killing may lead to death penalty Authorities in Texas plan to seek capital murder charges against a Portland man and four other people in connection with the stabbing death of a 21-year-old Biddeford man. Edward Bachelder, 21, of Portland is being held in the Wharton County Jail, about an hour southwest of Houston, on $1 million bond. In late May, Bachelder told Portland police that he witnessed the February slaying of James Junkins, a friend and traveling companion. Bachelder's statement led police to 4 other suspects, all of whom are now in custody. Wharton County District Attorney Josh McCown said Tuesday that he believes evidence will show Junkins was murdered during a robbery. "I'm not prepared to say robbery was the motive. It was a factor," McCown said. When a murder occurs in Texas in the course of a robbery, suspects can be charged with capital murder, McCown said. Once a grand jury indicts a suspect on a charge of capital murder, prosecutors have the option of seeking the death penalty. But if Bachelder is convicted, his decision to turn himself in, which provided the key break in the case, will be a factor in determining punishment, McCown said. "There may be different sentences for different individuals, depending on the role they played and their cooperation," he said. McCown hopes to take the case to a grand jury in August or September. Wharton County Lt. Daniel Marek said 5 people, including Bachelder, were traveling with Junkins in a Chevrolet Blazer in mid-February, at the time the slaying occurred. The victim's body was found face-down in a roadside ditch a little over a mile from the interstate highway that runs from Houston to the Mexican border. In addition to Bachelder, 4 people have been charged with murder, authorities said. They are: Sean Flanders, 22, of Lakeland, Fla. He is being held without bond on separate charges in a Florida prison but has waived extradition to Texas, McCown said. David Theriot, 26, of Lexington, Ky. He is being held without bond in Kentucky and has also waived extradition to Wharton County. Athena Gandy, 22, of Lakeland, Fla., who is being held in the Wharton County Jail. Tasha Kersey, 21, also of Lakeland. Both she and Gandy have already been extradited from Florida to Texas and are being held on $500,000 bond. The homicide investigation's progress has provided some degree of comfort to Junkins' mother, Karan Normand of Biddeford. During an interview last week, Normand tried to piece together what happened to her son. Before Junkins left Maine, he was living in Portland with his girlfriend, his mother said. She spoke to her son on Jan. 7 and talked about getting together for his birthday on Jan. 15. Normand called her son again 8 days later. But Junkins, who had bipolar disorder and often acted impulsively, never called back. At some point he and his girlfriend had broken up, Junkins' mother said, and he met Bachelder. While still in Maine, Junkins and Bachelder heard about the opportunity to make some money doing construction work in Florida, Normand said. They traveled to Florida, where they apparently met at least some of the other people charged in Junkins' death. Normand was worried about her son's disappearance and considered filing a missing-person report. But she said he had previously gone missing for months at a time. "I wondered where he was. I worried about him. But I didn't really hit the panic button until he didn't call me on Mother's Day, and he hasn't missed a Mother's Day since he was 14," Normand said. She had mixed emotions about Bachelder's actions. She is angry, of course, about his alleged involvement in her son's death, but also grateful that he went to police. Without that decision, police might never have made any arrests, though the district attorney said authorities did recover fingerprints and DNA from the scene. Normand, who described her son as a "good kid" with a "heart of gold," is trying to raise enough money to have his body returned to Maine for a burial. (source: Portland (Maine) Press Herald) INDIANA: Executing Corcoran won't help anything I am opposed to the death penalty for someone as seriously mentally ill as Joe Corcoran, scheduled to be executed on July 21. As an attorney, I have followed the Corcoran case since its inception. Bishop John DArcy, the Associated Churches, the Peace and Justice Commission and other religious leaders have come out against the death sentence in Corcoran's case, because he suffers from an extreme case of paranoid schizophrenia. I visited the site of the murder and heard from Corcoran's neighbors. Their stories led me to question whether the man's paranoid schizophrenia rendered him incompetent to stand trial. Although there was expert testimony to support this conclusion, the judge ruled otherwise. Corcoran's neighbors knew of his mental illness. They had looked through the windows of the Corcoran's kitchen and had seen automatic weapons on his kitchen table (he had a valid permit). They said that he answered the door with a gun in his hand and had 5 padlocks on his bedroom door. Children were not allowed to play near his house. Corcoran's family, however, did not realize how serious a problem Corcoran had. When he was found not guilty of murdering his parents when he was 16, Steuben County prosecutors knew of his psychiatric diagnosis. If the prosecutor's office had relayed the psychiatric experts evalution to his new guardian, his 21-year-old sister, she said she would have immediately sought help for him. She was unaware of his mental illness until Corcoran was 21 in 1997, after he killed her fiance, their brother and others. The Allen County prosecutor offered a plea deal of life instead of death, but Corcoran refused to accept it unless his vocal cords were removed because he was afraid he was talking in his sleep. But the judge ordered his execution instead. There is no benefit in Corcoran's execution. The citizens of this state benefit from a just and moral application of its laws, not from the states cruelly executing its mentally ill citizens. JANET E. MITCHELL Fort Wayne ******************************** Value of executions justice overrides cost In The Journal Gazette's editorial, Costly executions (June 22), I found some costly mistakes. The newspaper found that it costs, on average, $119,000 more for a death sentence, from trial to execution, than for a life-without-parole case, from trial to natural death. The editorial did not include an important cost benefit of the death penalty, which is its ability to force plea bargains to a lesser sentence, which saves the state the cost of trials and appeals. That single benefit likely makes up most of the difference. The newspapers analysis said it takes 16 years from sentencing to execution. There is no reason for that to take longer than 9 years, on average, realizing an additional $200,000 savings per death penalty case. Executed murderers never harm and murder again, but living ones do. Not executing such criminals puts more innocent people at risk. The newspaper wrongly discounted the deterrent effect of the death penalty. Seven recent studies have found there is a deterrent effect. Three to 28 innocent lives are saved per execution, according to the studies. In fact, prospects for a negative outcome deter some people. It is not at all surprising that the most severe sanction deters some. Economists estimate the monetary value of the lives saved is $5 million per life. Let's not forget the real value that the jury assigns to the death penalty when they find it appropriate: justice. DUDLEY SHARP Houston, Texas (source: Letter to the Editor, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette) TENNESSEE: High court to review death row case -- Tennessee inmate wants DNA evidence considered The United States Supreme Court yesterday agreed to hear the appeal of Tennessee death row inmate Paul Gregory House - a decision that some believe could have wide implications for condemned defendants who say that DNA evidence will exonerate them. "This is an incredibly significant case for the court to take up at this time," said Nina Morrison, an attorney with the New Yorkbased Innocence Project. "It will be the first time the court has ever taken up the issue of DNA evidence of innocence and its constitutional implications." Morrison said her hope is that the nation's highest court will make it clear that prosecutors and the lower courts have an obligation to take seriously DNA evidence that could prove an accused innocent. The Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization that works to free inmates with the use of DNA evidence, filed a brief in support of House. House, 43, was convicted in the 1985 death of Carolyn Muncey. Prosecutors argued that he had lured the woman out of her home in the Luttrell community of upper East Tennessee, sexually assaulted her and killed her. But later, DNA tests showed that semen on Muncey's nightclothes came not from House, but from the victim's husband, Hubert Muncey. The DNA technology was available at the time of the trial. The death row inmate's lawyer says that takes away the prosecution's motive, which was rape, for the crime. District Attorney General Paul Phillips, who was and still is the top prosecutor in Union County, Tenn., says the DNA results aren't significant given the other facts of the case. "It's really not unusual for a lady's nightgown to have a semen stain on it from her husband, and we never argued as a part of the case that was particularly significant," he said. "What was significant was that her blood was found on his jeans, which were hidden in the bottom of a clothes hamper in his girlfriend's mobile home, where he was living," he said. But the blood evidence has been called into question by a state medical examiner. Assistant State Chief Medical Examiner Cleland Black testified at an evidentiary hearing before the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals that the blood came from four test-tube samples collected during Muncey's autopsy. There was "strong evidence that the sample in the vials of blood were mishandled or possibly even tampered with and intentionally spilled on the jeans" before the garments were collected by Union County officials and sent to the FBI crime lab, 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Gilbert S. Merritt concluded. House's attorney, assistant community federal public defender Stephen Kissinger, also points out that witnesses who did not testify at the trial have come forward to say that the woman's husband confessed to killing her after a night of drinking. Prosecutors questioned the reliability of the witnesses, arguing that rumors may have gotten started because the husband, who had been out drinking on the night of her death, told people that he felt responsible for the death. The prosecutor also pointed out that House was a convicted sex offender from Utah who had previously raped two women by luring them away from their homes. The federal appeals court denied House's request for a new trial in an 8-7 decision. 6 of the judges concluded that the man was innocent. A 7th judge felt a new trial was warranted. "The evidence is really overwhelming," said Kissinger, who said that in his roughly 20 years as a lawyer, he had never seen or read of a case where there were so many factors that pointed to someone's innocence. (source: The Tennessean) USA: Justices to Review Rules for Death Case Appeals The Supreme Court on Tuesday accepted an appeal from a Tennessee death row inmate who contends that DNA evidence proves his innocence of the murder for which he was convicted and sentenced to death 20 years ago. The case will provide the court's first occasion, in the years since exonerations based on DNA have become widespread, to reconsider the standards for reopening death penalty cases to present claims of innocence. Those standards, developed by the court in a series of cases in the early 1990's, are nearly impossible to meet. The court's action on Tuesday came a day after the formal conclusion of the 2004-2005 term. The justices granted review in three new cases to be argued in the next term, which begins Oct. 3, while turning down several cases that might have given them an opportunity to elaborate on their two decisions on Monday about government displays of the Ten Commandments. The justices were not actually on the bench, and there was no word of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's possible retirement plans. The Tennessee inmate, Paul Gregory House, came within one vote of persuading a federal appeals court to reopen his case last October when the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, denied his petition for a writ of habeas corpus by a vote of 8 to 7. Of the 7 dissenters, six concluded that he had proved his innocence, while the remaining judge said Mr. House was entitled, at least, to a new trial. His Supreme Court appeal, filed by the federal defender's office in Knoxville, Tenn., is supported by a brief filed by the Innocence Project, a legal clinic in New York that has been a leader in the effort to use DNA evidence to challenge findings of guilt. Its brief said that the project's methods had proved the innocence of 155 people, in part by using DNA to refute seemingly airtight scientific evidence that the prosecution used to persuade the jury. In Mr. House's case, the prosecution had claimed to the jury, based on blood typing, that semen stains found on the clothing of the murder victim were his. But DNA testing 15 years later showed that the stain was not Mr. House's semen but that of the victim's husband. Since the prosecution's theory of the case was that Mr. House, a previously convicted sex offender, had murdered the victim after raping her, the new evidence shows that he was wrongly convicted, his lawyers maintain. In addition, the prosecution presented the evidence of rape as the "aggravating factor" for the jury to consider in deciding whether to sentence Mr. House to death. Judge Gilbert S. Merritt, one of the dissenting judges on the Sixth Circuit, said in his opinion that "without any evidence of rape, the state has lost its motive, its theory of the case and the aggravating circumstance on which the state and the jury relied for its death verdict." The majority, however, concluded that the fact that Mr. House did not rape the victim, a neighbor named Carolyn Muncey, did not prove that he did not murder her, and that the case against him remained strong. "We therefore conclude that he has fallen short of showing, as he must, that it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted him in light of the new evidence," the majority said in an opinion by Judge Alan E. Norris. All 8 of the judges in the majority were appointed by Republican presidents, while all seven of the dissenting judges were appointed by Democrats. Mr. House's Supreme Court appeal, House v. Bell, No. 04-8990, argues that the split on the appeals court mirrors general confusion among the federal appeals courts over how to evaluate similar claims of innocence on the basis of newly discovered evidence. The Supreme Court's precedents set a high procedural threshold for presenting claims in federal court that were never made during the course of state court appeals. Under a 1995 decision, Schlup v. Delo, inmates seeking federal court review in such a circumstance must pass through a procedural "gateway" by establishing that the federal court's failure to hear the case would be a "fundamental miscarriage of justice." Such an exception to the usual procedural barriers should be "rare" and confined to an "extraordinary case," the court said. Mr. House's lawyers argue that the justices should clarify that in deciding whether this standard has been met, and that a court should look at the evidence from the perspective of the jury and ask whether a juror, confronted with the new evidence, would have reasonable doubt about the verdict even if the new evidence did not completely dismantle the prosecution's case. The Innocence Project's brief argues that objective scientific proof like DNA evidence should be given extra weight, especially when it refutes a "false fact" the prosecution has previously presented to jurors. (source: New York Times) KENTUCKY: 'No new tax' justice isn't any better than 'no new tax' politics The mail just brought the latest issue of the "Greenebaum Law Letter" -- an informational brochure published by Greenebaum, Doll & McDonald to update clients and friends on developments in the legal system and at the law firm. This issue reports on House Bill 272, the tax "modernization" that Gov. Ernie Fletcher considers a signature accomplishment. Law Letter says HB 272 enacts a "massive overhaul of Kentucky's income tax system." It cuts taxes for business and takes a lot of poor folks off the tax rolls. But one thing it wasn't designed to do: raise new revenue in the short term. Dr. Fletcher could hardly contain his enthusiasm for his own handiwork. He called bipartisan passage of HB 272 "truly historic, unprecedented and astounding." He said, as he signed the bill, "This is a promise made, and a promise kept." What he didn't mention is that his "reform" ignored the one thing that tax experts have said any major overhaul of the Kentucky system should include: provisions to ensure that the growing part of the state's economy, the service sector, would be tapped. Even though it was obvious that major infusions of cash would be required to deal with predictable dilemmas such as a Medicaid shortfall, a loss of momentum in education and a long list of underfunded programs, Fletcher was proud, not embarrassed, that his version of tax reform wasn't expected to raise any net new cash. There is nothing "unexpected" about the $250 million Medicaid shortage that the Fletcher team long ago predicted was coming. And it was a federal bill Fletcher himself helped push to passage, in breathlessly close congressional votes, that now makes matters worse. He voted to put a drug benefit in the Medicare program, with the down-the-line result that Kentucky will lose about $300 million when some 100,000 Medicaid recipients have their costs shifted to the Medicare prescription drug program. States must help fund the Medicare service out of their Medicaid funding. Medicaid is just one reason that, despite improving revenues in Frankfort and other state capitals, Kentucky government has a painful dollar dilemma. You can run from the consequences of "no new tax" politics, but you can't hide. Here's just one example: Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out yet another death-row inmate's sentence, warning states that shoddy defense work isn't acceptable. The immediate result will be one new penalty trial. But, in a larger sense, the decision sends a message to every state that defense attorneys will have to dig more deeply and energetically into cases in which a death penalty is possible. The impact will be felt across the country. A claim of ineffective legal representation is by far the most common defense thrown up by convicts facing execution. Last December, after extensive hearings, an American Bar Association committee warned that "thousands of persons are processed through America's courts each year either with no lawyer at all or with a lawyer who does not have the time, resources or, in some cases, the inclination to provide effective representation." That makes a mockery of the legal system in which we Americans take so much pride. Kentucky Public Advocate Ernie Lewis is confident that this state's system of indigent defense is in "much better shape" than that found by the ABA committee in many parts of the United States. Kentucky's program is funded and administered on a statewide basis. It enjoys appropriate independence, through what Lewis believes is an "experienced and effective oversight commission." Public defenders' salaries are comparable with those of their prosecutorial counterparts. And they have resources with which to finance the services of experts and investigators. They also have one of the best training programs in the country. On the other hand, Kentucky spends only $7.31 per capita for defense of indigents, while the nationwide average is $10. The state prosecutorial system was funded at $72 million in Fiscal 2004, while the public defender system got only $32.5 million -- far below the national ratio. Most disturbing, in the last fiscal year Kentucky's trial-level public defenders opened an average of 489 new cases each -- 186 percent of national standards. They had fewer than four hours to spend on each one. And there's a shortage of support staff at both trial and post-trial level. That's not good enough. It's just one example of why "no new tax" politics shouldn't be good enough for Kentucky voters. (source: Courier-Journal) IDAHO: LEAVITT DEATH SENTENCE UPHELD The Idaho Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence of Richard Albert Leavitt. The 46-year-old man was sentenced to death in 1985 for the murder of Danette Jean Elg in Blackfoot. He stabbed the 31-year-old 15 times before mutilating her corpse. Elg's body wasn't found for several days. Leavitt argued that his death sentence should be reversed, because it was imposed by a judge instead of a jury. But in a ruling this month, the Idaho Supreme Court rejected the argument, saying he had already brought up the matter on previous appeals without success. (source: NBC News)
