July 18 OKLAHOMA----impending execution Pennington Execution Set For Tuesday A Comanche County killer is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening for the 1991 shooting death of a Lawton convenience store clerk. Michael L. Pennington, 37, was convicted in 1993 of the murder of clerk Bradley Thomas Grooms, 20, during a robbery attempt. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Pennington's final appeal of his conviction in May. His execution date was set in June, and there is no request for clemency pending before Gov. Brad Henry. "As far as we know there is nothing standing in the way" of the scheduled execution, said Charlie Price, a spokesman for Attorney General Drew Edmondson. Pennington, who has changed his name to Sharieff Sallahdin, has filed a request with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals for an emergency stay of execution. His attorney, Fred Staggs of Oklahoma City, said on Monday that he was waiting to assist with any last-minute request, but Pennington had not asked for his help. Previously, Pennington has argued in court that the murder was a psychotic consequence of his steroid use. He has said in appeals of the death sentence that the anabolic steroids, taken to enhance his weight lifting and body building regimen, altered his normal behavior and transformed him from a disciplined soldier into a fleeing killer. Pennington, who was stationed at the time at nearby Fort Sill, shot Grooms once in the back with a sawed-off, 12-gauge shotgun. After killing Grooms, Pennington fired several times into a cash register and throughout the store. Despite killing Grooms and using all his ammunition, Pennington left the store empty-handed. Police tracked Pennington to his wife's house in Akron, Ohio, where he was arrested. After Pennington, the next execution in Oklahoma is scheduled for Aug. 11. Kenneth Eugene Turrentine, 52, is scheduled to die that day for a Tulsa County killing spree. Turrentine was convicted of the June 4, 1994, slayings of his sister, Avon Stevenson, his girlfriend, Anita Louise Richardson, and Richardson's children, Tina L. Pennington, 22, and Martise D. Richardson, 13. Turrentine shot Stevenson at her home and Richardson and her children at their residence, both in northeast Tulsa. Turrentine suspected that Richardson, 39, was having an affair, and that Stevenson, 48, knew about it, authorities said. (source: Associated Press) USA: Limiting Endless Death Penalty Delays Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on a bill I introduced to reduce the backlog of federal court appeals in major criminal cases and help bring closure to the victims of violent crime. Entitled the Streamlined Procedures Act, it is an update of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), which was passed in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. The AEDPA was designed to limit endless death penalty appeals in state convictions, imposing a limit for all appeals relating to the right to writ of habeas corpus in capital cases, and reducing the length of the appeals process by limiting the role of federal courts. (Habeas corpus is the legal procedure by which persons accused of crimes seek to be released from custody - it is frequently used by death row inmates.) When the AEDPA was enacted, then-President Clinton remarked that "it should not take eight or nine years and three trips to the Supreme Court to finalize whether a person in fact was properly convicted or not." Ten years later, unfortunately, things have gotten worse, not better. The backlog of "habeas" claims has actually increased, and so has the workload of prosecutors, which is why Kent Cattani, chief counsel for the capitol litigation section of the Arizona Attorney General's office, appeared before the committee to testify in strong support of my bill. Federal court appeals continue to drag on endlessly. According to the Administrative Office of the Courts, in fiscal year 1994, there were 13,359 federal habeas petitions pending before the U.S. District Courts. By fiscal year 2003 - the last year for which data are available - that number had risen to 23,218. Similarly, in FY94, 3,799 habeas petitions were pending before the U.S. Courts of Appeals. By 2003, the backlog had nearly doubled, to 7,025. These numbers represent much more than just a burden on the judicial system. Every one of these cases has a human cost as well, often a heartbreaking one. Last month, Carol Fornoff of Tempe testified before the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime about the impact on her family of delays in reviewing the case of the man who was convicted in 1985, based on voluminous evidence, of raping and murdering her 13-year-old daughter Christy. The Arizona Supreme Court upheld the case in a lengthy opinion in 1988. The killer then filed a federal habeas petition in 1992, and the federal district court spent 7 years reviewing the case. After more appeals and remands, it remains in federal habeas review today, two decades later. Mrs. Fornoff's testimony made a powerful case for why these types of delays are intolerable. Among other things, she noted that by this fall the case will have been in the federal appellate courts for longer than Christy was alive. The Fornoff family has a right to know within a reasonable timeframe if the murderer was properly convicted, if his conviction might be thrown out, if they might have to endure another trial, or worse, if there is a possibility that the killer might one day be released. I have long made a priority of victims' rights, and, along with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), co-sponsored the Justice for All Act, which President Bush signed into law last fall. At the same time, I recognize that it is critical to allow prisoners who are truly innocent - as opposed to simply protesting some procedural technicality - the opportunity to prove it at every point in the process. For this reason, at every point, the Streamlined Procedures Act allows actual innocence claims to move forward unimpeded. We all want to make sure that no innocent person is executed. But there's also a need for closure for victims and their families, which can only be accomplished by reducing the backlog of habeas petitions. It has often been said that justice delayed is justice denied. That's every bit as true for crime victims as it is for criminal defendants. Senator Kyl serves on the Senate Finance and Judiciary committees and chairs the Senate Republican Policy Committee. (source: The Phoenix News) CALIFORNIA: Death Row juror alleged to have secret vendetta ---- Motives of gay rights activist questioned 14 years after trial Clifford Bolden is the only convicted murderer from San Francisco on California's death row. Now, through a set of odd circumstances, he has a chance at life. That chance rests on trying to destroy the credibility of an 81-year-old juror, who 14 years ago wanted and still wants nothing more than to see Bolden die for the killing of a gay man. The juror in question, Jose Sarria, was an unlikely choice to sit in judgment in such a volatile case. Sarria was a pioneer in the local gay rights movement and is believed to be the first openly gay candidate to have run for public office in the United States. For years he performed as a female impersonator in San Francisco as the "Widow Norton," after the fictional wife of the 19th century San Francisco character Emperor Norton. Sarria sat on the panel that in 1991 recommended that Bolden be sentenced to death for the 1986 robbery and stabbing of Henry Michael Pedersen, a model and escort Bolden met at the Pendulum, a Castro neighborhood bar. Pedersen had apparently taken Bolden home after a night of heavy drinking. Since his sentencing, Bolden, 49, has made several legal arguments to the state Supreme Court in two separate challenges. As is common in capital cases, the high court rejected most of them. Court review ordered Then, earlier this year, the court ordered a lower court to explore Sarria's role on the jury. Bolden's appeals team maintains that Sarria told a fellow juror that he had ties to both the defendant and the victim, but never disclosed them in court. The defense also contends that Sarria refused to deliberate with other jurors, in an apparent effort to avenge the victim and make "a point about being gay." "Jose Sarria pushed his fellow jurors for a verdict of death with a display of immovable will and inside information," Jeanne Keevan-Lynch, Bolden's appeal attorney, argued to the state high court. The state attorney general's office says the defense claims about Sarria are groundless and that the hearing on his conduct -- which has yet to be scheduled -- will put the matter to rest. "These are disputed facts that require resolution," said Ron Matthias, supervising deputy attorney general. "We think the court has done the right thing here." Appeal to Kamala Harris Bolden's defense is also appealing to the political sensibilities of San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, who like her predecessor, Terence Hallinan, opposes capital punishment and refuses to seek the death penalty. It's been more than 10 years since a San Francisco jury was asked to sentence a defendant to death, and Bolden is the only one of the 644 condemned inmates in California whose crime was committed in the city. For his part, Sarria says he's tired of the legal maneuvering. "He has been sitting on Death Row all this time -- it's unbelievable," Sarria said in a phone interview from his home in Cathedral City near San Diego. "Our justice system needs to be overhauled." The crime Pedersen, 46, an unemployed accountant, was found stabbed to death in the bathtub of his Twin Peaks apartment Sept. 9, 1986. His blood alcohol was measured at 0.36 percent, well over the legal definition of drunkenness. Authorities think Bolden stabbed him in the back, then carved an "L"-shaped wound on his chest after he died. Bolden's fingerprints were lifted from a glass and bottle in the apartment and his palm print was found on a bathtub wall. Police found some of Pedersen's property at Bolden's apartment, including an identification bracelet, a camera, a camera case and binoculars. Bolden had been paroled from San Quentin State Prison earlier in 1986 after serving about 7 years for 2 manslaughter convictions, 1 from San Francisco and 1 from San Jose. When Bolden went to trial in 1990, Sarria was impaneled as an alternate juror. He became one of the 12 voting members during the penalty phase after another panelist was excused. Sarria would seem to have been less than an ideal juror from the defense's perspective. In addition to his career as a female impersonator, he became the first openly gay political candidate in the nation in 1961 when he ran for the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco. Defense attorneys lodged no objections to Sarria at the time, but Bolden's appellate lawyers came to focus on him as they fought to save their client from the death chamber. Another juror talks The defense argued to the state Supreme Court that Sarria had confided to another juror, who has since died, that he knew Pedersen and had helped him get a job at the old Emporium Capwell department store. In a sworn statement in 1996, juror Charlia Verna Sessions said Sarria had talked with her regularly when they rode the bus home from court. One time, she said, Sarria told her that the victim "was a good man." In the recent interview, Sarria acknowledged that he did ride the bus for 10 months with Sessions and talked with her. But he denied that he had known Pedersen or had helped him find a job. "He was a bar person. I was not a bar person," Sarria said. "I did not know him. Where they got that notion, I don't know." The defense also has argued that Sarria had ties to the defendant, Bolden, that he never disclosed during the trial. Sessions said in her declaration that Sarria had told her that he knew the man with whom Bolden was having an affair at the time of the killing. Sarria had helped the man, Andre Montgomery, get a job as an impersonator at the North Beach club Finocchio's, where Sarria performed as the Widow Norton. After the sentencing, Sarria told a defense investigator that Montgomery had walked into the club one day and announced he had a new "romance of the year" -- who turned out to be Bolden. Witnesses testified that Montgomery and Bolden had been walking together when police arrested Bolden, and authorities said the two had been sharing an apartment. "I have the transcripts of the trial. I know how often Montgomery's name came up," said Bolden's attorney, Keevan-Lynch. Montgomery was ill with HIV at the time of the trial and died soon after. Keevan-Lynch contends that Sarria did not tell the court that he knew Montgomery for a reason. "No reasonable explanation, other than desire to avoid removal (from the jury), is apparent," she argued to the state Supreme Court. Sarria said in the interview that he had known Montgomery, but that he hadn't learned that Montgomery and Bolden were lovers until after the trial. "Andre kept Mr. Bolden a secret," he said. The defense has also used jurors' statements to suggest that Sarria refused to deliberate during the sentencing phase because he had an agenda. In her declaration, Sessions recalled wondering whether Sarria was fit to serve on the jury. "He was determined to decide the case so as to make some sort of a point about being gay," she said. Another juror, Thomas Shepherd, said in a 1998 sworn declaration that Sarria had announced he stood for death soon after deliberations started and would not change his mind. "The room was silent for several moments afterwards," Shepherd said. "I recalled the judge telling us that we were supposed to deliberate and not take a stand right away. I thought this juror should be removed, but I did not say anything." Sarria's demeanor "said we were going to be stuck in this situation until we bent to his will," Shepherd said. Eventually, jurors who favored sparing Bolden's life changed their votes to death. "I voted accordingly, seeing no hope of getting out without doing what Mr. Sarria wanted, or behaving as he did,'' Shepherd said. Sarria's response Sarria denies he made up his mind ahead of time. "I listened to everything," he said. "My mind was made up when we considered all the evidence." When the time came, Sarria said, he was a strong advocate for sentencing Bolden to death and sometimes grew frustrated with other jurors. One woman suggested that Bolden might be rehabilitated, he said. "When she said that, I nearly put my hand through the table," Sarria said. "I had to convince her that he had all the chances in the world, he wasn't going to be rehabilitated." Keevan-Lynch has written a letter to District Attorney Harris, asking her to review the record and, rather than defend the case, petition the high court to modify Bolden's sentence to life without parole. Chief Assistant District Attorney Russ Giuntini said the office is limited to carrying out what the state Supreme Court has asked it to do. "We couldn't go in and say, 'We don't want the death penalty on this,'" Giuntini said. "The hearings are very specifically directed. We couldn't parade into court and say, 'We don't want the death penalty,' even if we wanted to. Our hands are tied." Keevan-Lynch insists that Harris "has a choice. I think she has the option, and I have told her this. Kamala Harris is saying she doesn't have a choice, but what is she basing that on?" Matthias, the deputy attorney general, said he doesn't see how Harris could do what Keevan-Lynch is asking. "The case is final," he said. "What is she talking about?" (source: San Francisco Chronicle)
