June 30 TEXAS: Mom gets life for her kids' decapitation deaths In Brownsville, a woman pleaded guilty to 3 counts of capital murder today in the decapitation deaths of her 3 young children, getting 3 concurrent life prison sentences instead of the death penalty. Angela Camacho, 25, will be eligible for parole in 40 years. Her attorneys failed to prove she was mentally retarded and therefore ineligible for the death penalty, but the plea agreement spared her. Had she been convicted and sentenced to death, she would have become the 1st Mexican national female on Texas' death row. Camacho and 24-year-old John Allen Rubio, her common-law husband, were accused of strangling and decapitating her 2 daughters, 3-year-old Julissa Quezada and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio, in 2003. The couple allegedly washed themselves afterward and had sex before decapitating their 1-year-old son, John Esthefan Rubio. A relative called police, who found the girls stuffed in a trash bag and the boy on a bed. Rubio and Camacho told police they thought the children were possessed. Camacho answered state District Judge Benjamin Uresti's questions in Spanish as he accepted her guilty plea. "I hope that God will touch your heart and that you ask for forgiveness," Uresti said. "Good luck to you." Alberto Pullen, one of Camacho's attorneys, said she would face deportation if released from prison. He said she wants to stay in the U.S. Rubio was convicted and sentenced to death in 2003 after he requested the death penalty. Rubio has since decided to fight the sentence. In February, he was found competent to choose his attorney for the appeal. According to evidence during Rubio's trial, he had inhaled so much spray paint that he had damaged his brain and might have been psychotic. Camacho's case was tied up for more than 2 years due to issues of her mental health. ********************************* Houston crime lab neglected for years, report says Years of paltry staffing, sloppy supervision, absentee management and shabby conditions left the Houston Police Department's troubled crime lab ripe for the crisis that led to its DNA section shutdown in 2002, according to an independent investigator's report released Thursday. Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general with the U.S. Justice Department, said in the third report of his investigation that the critical DNA section of the lab was in shambles by the time it was closed after an outside audit revealed serious deficiencies, including lack of worker training and possible evidence contamination. In his report Thursday, Bromwich examined root causes of the DNA section's problems. The next phase of his investigation, to begin next month, will involve reviewing thousands of cases analyzed for forensic scientists in all 6 sections of the lab - DNA, firearms, drugs, toxicology, trace evidence and questioned documents. For 2 1/2 years the Police Department and the Harris County District Attorney's office has worked with outside DNA laboratories to review 407 criminal cases involving DNA tests that emerged from the Houston lab. So far, one man, Josiah Sutton, was released from jail based on DNA retesting in his rape case. He was pardoned last year. A 2nd man, George Rodriguez, who was imprisoned for 17 years for kidnapping and rape, was released when a judge said inaccurate evidence may have led to his 1987 conviction and recommended a new trial. Problems in his case surfaced separately from the lab investigation. In addition, two former analysts from the controlled substances section of the lab, Vipul H. Patel and James Price, have been accused in Bromwich's investigation of "drylabbing," or fabricating scientific results. Bromwich said in Thursday's report that 15 years before the lab's DNA section was closed, the Police Department and the city left it to fend for itself and scramble for grants to hire and train people and buy equipment. Analysts alerted former Houston Police Chief Clarence Bradford to lack of supervision in DNA and toxicology sections in 1999, but he said there wasn't money to fill the positions, the report said. Other problems cited in the report include: - Lack of support within the lab for disciplining analysts for serious misconduct, illustrated by the allegations involving Patel and Price. - Ineffective and detached management of Donald Krueger, the head of the crime lab from 1995 through 2003. The report said Kruger told Bromwich's team that he was "genuinely shocked" at the outside audit's findings of problems in 2002. Krueger rarely met with analysts and relied on managers. - Lack of quality control. The lab stopped performing quality control audits in 1997 and the former DNA section head lacked training and education in statistics, a qualification required under FBI standards. - A leaky roof that went unrepaired for 6 years until the crime lab scandal erupted in 2002, allowing water to soak and likely contaminate evidence. Houston defense attorneys told the Houston Chronicle in Thursday's editions that the Harris County District Attorney's Office kept them in the dark for years about allegations of analysts falsifying results. The Police Department has used outside contractors for DNA analysis since 2002 and hopes to resume DNA testing by the end of the year and has worked over the past 3 years to accredit its crime lab. The department gained accreditation of its controlled substances, toxicology, questioned documents, firearms and serology sections through the American Association of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board last month. (source for both: Associated Press) ****************** 1 suspect may face death penalty in activist's slaying 1 of the 2 men arrested in connection with the slaying of civic leader Gary Del Palacio may face the death penalty if he is convicted. District Attorney Jaime Esparza said Wednesday that he was considering seeking the death penalty against Jonathan Ruiz, 21, a Montana Vista resident charged with capital murder in Del Palacio's death. In Texas, capital murder is punishable by death or life in prison. Esparza said he might seek the death penalty because it is a capital murder case and because of "the facts surrounding the case." He declined to comment further. Jesus Soltero Jr., 20, the other Montana Vista resident arrested in connection with Del Palacio's death, is charged with murder. The offense is a 1st-degree felony punishable by up to life in prison. Ruiz and Soltero were arraigned last week, and each pleaded not guilty to the charges. Ruiz's lawyer, Joe Spencer, said the death penalty would not be appropriate in this case. "All the studies have shown that when you are young, that is the time you can be rehabilitated, and certainly given Jonathan's age, he should be given an opportunity for rehabilitation instead of just being institutionalized" if convicted, Spencer said. Del Palacio's body was found March 12 in the desert in the Montana Vista area. An autopsy report indicated he had several injuries, including a defensive wound to the right hand, but died from two fatal stab wounds to the head. Del Palacio was allegedly abducted from the Montana Hideaway, 12905 Montana, and forced to drive his vehicle to the location where he was killed, a sheriff's investigator stated in the arrest affidavit for Ruiz. After Del Palacio was killed, the affidavit stated, his money was allegedly taken and his vehicle was allegedly burned at another location. According to Texas Department of Public Safety records, Ruiz has been in trouble with the law since he was a juvenile. He is a registered sex offender and is also known as Jonathan Rivera. DPS records state that Ruiz was a juvenile when he was convicted of sexually assaulting an 8-year-old boy. As an adult, Ruiz was sentenced to 5 years of probation in September 2002 after pleading guilty to a June 12, 2002, burglary-of-building charge, court records show. In April 2003, Ruiz was sentenced to 180 days in jail followed by 6 months of probation after pleading guilty to possession of marijuana under 2 ounces. About 10 days before Del Palacio's body was found, Ruiz was charged with a Jan. 12 burglary of a vehicle. The offense is a Class A misdemeanor and was assigned to County Criminal Court No. 2. (source: El Paso Times) MISSOURI: Rep. leads second try at ending executions ----Demonstrators at the Columbia courthouse call for a moratorium on the death penalty. Though Missouri reinstated the death penalty in 1989, Rep. Judy Baker, D-Columbia, wants to lead a 2nd effort to end executions in the state. "A moratorium will allow for an impartial review (of the death penalty), which is what we need," she said. Baker is a co-sponsor of bill HB 557, which would place a moratorium on the death penalty in Missouri. The bill would allow for a review of how the death penalty is applied. Baker spoke to nearly 20 people about the bill in front of the Boone County Courthouse Wednesday afternoon. The audience was assembled for a demonstration organized by the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation. Columbia attorney Melinda Pendergraph said anyone in the law business takes it as a given that applying the death penalty is arbitrary. The races of the victim, defendant and jury all play a part in the application of the death penalty, as well as economic biases that lead to poor people getting the death penalty, she said. "I think we have a problem with how the death penalty is applied," Baker said. "Until studied, we must stop applying it." The demonstration was based on an annual event in Washington D.C, said Jeff Stack of the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation. This is the 2nd time the Columbia event was held. The demonstrations commemorate 2 decisions by the U.S. Supreme court - the June 29, 1972, Furman vs. Georgia decision and the July 2, 1976, Gregg vs. Georgia decision. These decisions temporarily abolished the death penalty. Abe Bonowitz, director of Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said this is his 10th year at the 12th annual Washington event. Because the anniversaries of the court rulings are 4 days apart, the group maintains a presence in front of the Supreme Court building for 4 days. Stack said he wants the Missouri legislature to look more closely at how the death penalty is applied in Missouri. "This is a perfect time to be evaluating the death penalty, during these anniversaries," he said. (source: Columbia Missourian) USA: DNA exoneration of felons raises questions Exoneration of convicted felons using genetic information raises questions about the best way to use DNA technology without encroaching on civil liberties, say investigators and professors writing in Wednesday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Exonerations raise questions about how many innocent people have been convicted and are serving long sentences or are on death row, wrote Mark Rothstein, a professor of law and medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Kentucky. But efforts to boost the use of DNA, including data banks to store genetic information and dragnets where all people in a certain area are asked to submit samples, have problems of their own, he wrote. "Critics argue that it is unfair to regard as suspects all men who decline to submit a sample and that the DNA profiles of those who volunteer to submit a sample should not be entered into the state DNA data bank," wrote Rothstein. In England and Wales, a national DNA database has more than 2.75 million samples, wrote Peter Gill, a consultant at the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham, England. DNA is taken from criminals and suspects, "and the law allows authorities to retain the DNA profile even if the suspect is found innocent," Gill wrote. More than 2 million people were incarcerated in the United States at the end of 2003. Only a few have been cleared using DNA technology. Rothstein wrote that it's unclear "whether the benefits to law enforcement of expanding the use of forensic DNA testing are worth the cost in civil liberties." (source: Bloomberg News)
