July 28 ILLINOIS: Former Governor Ready For Trial----Ryan Says He Feels Confident He Will Be Exonerated In Kankakee, former Illinois Governor George Ryan is speaking out about his federal indictment on corruption charges. "It's torn at the very fiber of my family, my friends and myself," Ryan said. The former governor told CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine that his 8-year ordeal will end in September when he finally gets his day in court. George and Lura Lyn Ryan are back home now in the Kankakee neighborhood where they've lived all their lives. Now they are facing the fight of their lives. Ryan told CBS 2 News that he will not come to some kind of agreement with prosecutors to avoid putting himself and his family through a trial. "You have to have done something wrong to do that. I have done nothing wrong," Ryan said. "I'm pretty limited to what I can say about the case, but I know that Dan Webb said at the time of the indictment that the federal government can't name one person who gave me a corrupt dollar. And I think that's an important thing for the public to know," he said. Ryans lawyers won't let him answer specific questions about the case or the potential witnesses, who could be close aides and advisers, even his children. "How are you going to be able to handle a trial in which very own children are going to called to testify against you?" Levine asked. "I just want to say we have a very close family. Theyll all be there in spirit and physically," Ryan said. "Our family is very strong and very strong-willed and we are all looking for opportunity for this trial to proceed and conclude." Ryan is proud of his decades of public service, off getting tough on drunk drivers, capital punishment and rebuilding Illinois. Has he faced the fact that he could go to jail? "Look, I am very upbeat," he said. "My wife and I and my family are very upbeat on the outcome of this trial and feel very confident I'll be exonerated." Ryan will spend much of the next two months preparing for the trial. After that, he hopes to continue his campaign to abolish the death penalty -- an effort which has taken him from coast to coast and around the world since he left office. (source: CBS News) PENNSYLVANIA: Man jailed in slaying is cleared by a confession Morris Wells was charged with murder in his former landlord's death. Police say Juan Covington confessed. Prosecutors yesterday formally withdrew murder charges against Morris Wells, who has been jailed nearly 4 months for a crime that investigators now believe was committed by alleged serial killer Juan Covington. Wells, 37, of North Philadelphia, was charged with the March 7 slaying of his former landlord, Odies Bosket, because of eyewitness statements. He is 1 of 2 men jailed in crimes that are now being tied to Covington, 43, of Logan. After Covington was arrested July 14 in the May murder of Center City hospital worker Patricia McDermott, police say he confessed to that killing and 2 others - those of his own cousin in 1998 and Bosket earlier this year. Subsequent ballistics tests on a 9mm pistol Covington had owned since 1992 showed it was the gun that had killed Bosket. "It's very unlikely that he would allow someone else to use his weapon," said Edward McCann, chief of the District Attorney's Homicide Unit, of Covington after yesterday's Municipal Court hearing. "He operates by himself." Covington's alleged confession and the ballistics evidence prompted law enforcement agencies to reinvestigate, and now, McCann said, "we are satisfied that Mr. Wells had nothing to do with this case." Wells remains jailed on unrelated charges of crack cocaine and marijuana distribution and is scheduled to stand trial Aug. 3. Covington has not yet been charged in the Bosket killing. He is being held without bail in the slayings of McDermott and Covington's cousin, the Rev. Thomas Lee Devlin. McCann confirmed yesterday that he had had "very, very short preliminary discussions" with Covington's defense attorney, A. Charles Peruto Jr., regarding possible guilty pleas. Although Peruto declined to discuss possible negotiations yesterday, he has said that his client suffers from extreme mental illness. Bosket, a father of 4, was en route to pick up his daughter from nursery school when he was shot repeatedly in the head and side at the Broad Street Line's Logan station. Soon after, Wells was arrested based on his identification by witnesses - including one who knew him and placed him at the scene. Investigators also believed Wells had a motive to kill - Bosket, Wells' former landlord, had evicted Wells and his girlfriend from an apartment. But Wells' attorney, Assistant Public Defender Fred Goodman, suggested yesterday that police rushed to judgment in this case. He said that his client never matched the description of the shooter and that eyewitness identifications can be extremely unreliable. "When law enforcement has identification evidence and no other evidence, they need to slow down and thoroughly investigate the case before they arrest people," Goodman said. Eyewitnesses' accounts also led to the July 2004 arrest of Clyde A. Johnson, 42, in the attempted murder of a man in Logan earlier that year. The victim, William Bryant, 33, was shot 5 times. Johnson, a social worker, has been jailed ever since. But the recent ballistics tests have showed that the gun that killed Bosket also shot Bryant and another man. Based on that evidence, a defense attorney for Johnson has asked that his client be released on bail. If Covington had not allegedly confessed to killing Bosket, Goodman said, an innocent man would have faced a possible death-penalty murder trial. Johnson's case was also approaching trial. "Mr. Covington has been implicated now in 5 crimes, and in 2 of those crimes, citizens were erroneously identified and arrested - that's a 40 percent error rate, and that's unacceptable," Goodman said. "It stands to reason that there are hundreds of innocent people sitting in jail [from incorrect eyewitness identifications], based on the experience in this case," Goodman said. Wells had been scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Bosket's killing yesterday, but instead Municipal Court Judge Bradley Moss permitted McCann to withdraw the charges. In a trembling voice, Wells' mother, Joyce, said she was excited to have her only son cleared of a murder charge but upset with the way law enforcement has handled the case. "I was angry when they first came out here and said he was the person they were looking for," she said. "I was upset about that because I knew better." Still, she said, she was trying to put that aside as she prepared to see her son again. She was already trying to decide what to serve for his welcome-home dinner. "He said he was leaving it up to me. He said, 'Whatever you fix is all right with me,' " she said. "It will just be a good home-cooked meal for him." (source: Philadelphia Inquirer) ************************** Death warrant signed for man who killed kin in 1993 Gov. Rendell yesterday signed the death warrant for a Schuylkill County man convicted of murdering his grandmother and uncle in 1993. Daniel M. Saranchak, 37, an inmate at Graterford Prison, was scheduled for a lethal injection on Sept. 22. Saranchak, who confessed to shooting his 78-year-old grandmother and 57-year-old uncle as they slept at home in East Norwegian Township, was sentenced to death in 1994. Rendell has signed 40 death warrants since taking office in 2003. The 3 people executed in Pennsylvania since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978 all ended their appeals voluntarily. As of July 1, 216 men and 5 women were on the state's death row, according to the state Department of Corrections. (source: Associated Press) OHIO: U.S. judge refuses to block execution----Lawyers still trying to save life of Spirko A federal judge yesterday refused to halt - at least for now - the scheduled Sept. 20 execution of John Spirko, convicted in the 1982 murder of a small-town postmistress in Van Wert County. Spirko's attorneys have asked U.S. District Judge James G. Carr in Toledo to vacate the prior decision upholding his conviction and death sentence on the grounds that the prosecution perpetrated a fraud on the court in the original appeal. Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro will ask the judge to throw out the claim, arguing Spirko has been unable to prove the prosecution covered up its presentation of a false theory during the trial two decades ago. The prosecution maintained that Betty Jane Mottinger, 48, was kidnapped and later stabbed to death by Spirko and his accomplice, former cellmate Delaney Gibson. An eyewitness, now deceased, identified Gibson as the man she saw outside the post office the morning of Mrs. Mottinger's disappearance. Spirko had since shown on appeal that Gibson was in North Carolina the night before and shortly after the murder and that he had a full beard at the time. The old photo the witness used to identify him in absentia during Spirko's trial showed a clean-shaven Gibson. "Every witness that they chose to depose, [postal inspectors] Tom Strausbaugh and Paul Hartman, all of the evidence alive today, is that Delaney Gibson was likely the 2nd person there," said Tim Prichard, senior deputy attorney general. "The eyewitness testified that she was 100 percent sure when she identified Delaney Gibson," he said. "She's since passed away, but there has been nothing that attacks that identification." Spirko's attorneys hope to persuade Judge Carr to reopen the original appeal upholding the conviction, a decision upheld by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to reconsider it. If successful in convincing Judge Carr to reopen his appeal, Spirko would seek a new trial. Meanwhile, his attorneys will prepare for an Aug. 23 hearing in which they will try to convince the Ohio Parole Board that Gov. Bob Taft should grant Spirko clemency, something he's done just once before in a death-penalty case. On the day the 6th Circuit upheld his conviction last year, the county prosecutor dropped its indictment against Gibson. "It's absurd to claim Delaney Gibson had any involvement," said Spirko attorney Alvin Dunn. "What they're claiming is that the information they had at the time didn't preclude the possibility he was involved. "We believe that, when you look at everything the state knew at the time, the state knew Delaney Gibson wasn't involved in this heinous crime," he said. "If he is granted a new trial, the state will not try at all to argue that Delaney Gibson was involved." Spirko, 59, lived in Swanton with his sister at the time of his arrest, having been recently paroled after serving time in Kentucky for a separate robbery-murder. He maintains he tried to trade false information about the Mottinger crime for leniency for himself on an unrelated assault charge and for his girlfriend, who was charged with helping to plot his failed prison escape. Investigators dismissed as fabrications the stories he told over the course of about 2 1/2 months, but they latched onto his connection with Gibson and details they said could be known only by the killers. "Spirko claimed that he learned all of this information from Delaney Gibson," said Mr. Prichard. "That was his defense under oath and trial and during a press conference immediately after the trial." In a court-ordered deposition taken in June, Mr. Hartman said that, while he believes Spirko and Gibson were involved, he later came to the conclusion others were probably also involved. At the time of the trial, he expressed doubts they could win a conviction against Delaney. "Well, at that time and after that time, I had real serious concerns about any communication between the two, and quite frankly, how does one arrive at a consensus to meet at the post office in Elgin, Ohio? A community of 61 people, not on a main highway," he said. "So it was clear something was missing," he said. "And I never accepted then that we know enough. I further never accepted the fact that we had all the people. We didn't." (source: Toledo Blade) ************************ Death Penalty Sought In Toddler's Rape, Beating Death Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters will be seeking the death penalty for the North College Hill man charged with the rape and beating death of a 18-month-old girl. Matthew Carovillano, 19, was indicted by a grand jury for the rape and aggravated murder of Kaylee Schnurr. Deters told 9News that the case is "overwhelming" and that he would be seeking the death penalty. He also said that the mother, Marigrace Schnurr, would not be charged in the case. (source: WCPO News) ALABAMA: Seek alternatives to capital punishment As the world waddles slowly but ineluctably toward universal abolition, the people of Alabama pace rapidly but preventably toward the scheduled Aug. 4 execution of George Sibley. The people of Alabama appear to much of the globe to be lost. I do not condone violence. In pleading, therefore, for clemency for George Sibley, one pleads both cognizant of and sensitive to the repercussions on his victim and, communally, of a single loss of life. That life -- a life which cannot be reclaimed -- can, however, be honored and can be sanctified independent of additional slaughter. Alternatives to capital punishment exist. George Sibley can be confined and can be contained in a manner simultaneously respectful of aspirations for justice and for safety. The body politic of Alabama should not become complicit in his murder. George Sibley should be allowed to live. KAY BANDELL -- Norwalk, Calif. (source: The Mobile Register) ************************ Moore's confession subject of questions----Testimony continues in murder trial Devin Moore thought he could escape. But "things didn't go as planned," he said, according to a statement given to an Alabama Bureau of Investigation agent. Bill Tubbs, the ABI agent, read from a signed confession in which Moore admitted to killing Fayette Police officers Arnold Strickland and James Crump and dispatcher Leslie "Ace" Mealer. But defense attorney Jim Standridge questioned the confession's authenticity. "Are these Devin Moore's words or your words?" he asked Tubbs. Moore is charged with six counts on three different charges of capital murder in the June 2003 slayings at the Fayette Police Department. If convicted, he could get the death penalty or life in prison without parole. Jurors heard what Tubbs insisted was a statement written down from Moore's words, read back to Moore and signed by Moore. "I started planning in my mind how I was going to escape," Tubbs read from Moore's statement. "But things didn't go as planned." The statement said Moore planned to grab Strickland's gun and then make Strickland handcuff himself to Crump while he made his escape. "But after I got his gun, he started screaming, and I freaked out and started shooting," Tubbs read from the statement. "I don't know how many times I shot him. But I shot until he fell on the floor." The statement Tubbs read said Moore claimed he bought a car in Jasper from a "crackhead" for $500. He drove the car to Fayette and was asleep in the Triangle Grill parking lot. A "white officer" awakened him and ordered him out of the car. He said he was told the car was stolen, and he was handcuffed and taken to the jail where he was fingerprinted and booked. In a statement not included in the confession, Tubbs claimed Moore told him "the white officer" [Strickland] was nasty to him, but the black officer [Crump] was nice. The confession said Strickland told Moore that he would go to jail for 2 to 3 years. "I started freaking out," the confession said. The confession said that when Moore left the room where he shot Strickland, he ran into Crump in the hallway. "He reached for his pistol, and I shot him," Tubbs read from the confession. "I don't know how many times I shot him, but he fell to the floor." The confession said he ran by another office where a "white officer" appeared to be watching a television screen. "I stood away from the office door, and I started shooting at him," the confession said. "I shot him until he fell out of his seat and onto the floor." The confession said Moore ran outside and then realized he had left a tennis shoe that Crump was printing inside. But the door slammed behind him, and he couldn't get back in. He shot the door's bulletproof glass twice, ran out of bullets and couldn't get inside. According to the confession, Moore said he ran around and went back into the building through the fire department. He entered the building two or three times looking for his shoe, the confession said. The last time he went in, he ran into a fireman who asked what was happening. Moore told him there were "officers down" in the police department. "The reason I shot the officers was that I didn't want to go to jail," Tubbs read from the confession. "The reason I didn't shoot the firefighter was he wasn't a danger to me." He and the firefighter went back into the police department, and when the fireman saw the bodies, he ran to get help, the confession said. Moore then said he got Strickland's keys and took his police car. He was headed for Jasper but heard on the radio that police were looking for him to go there. Then he turned around and went in the other direction. He said he later took the lights off of the police car. Tubbs interviewed Moore for 2 hours and 35 minutes. Standridge questioned how Tubbs could spend so much time with Moore and produce only 3 handwritten pages and several short statements not included in the confession. "What other things did you and Devin discuss?" Standridge asked. Tubbs replied that he didn't know. In addition to statements included in the confession, Tubbs said Moore said a few other things. "He also said when the police found him they should have killed him because he deserved to die for what he's done," Tubbs said. According to Tubbs, he said he looked for a shotgun in the squad car, and he didn't want to grow up like his father. Tubbs said Moore told him that his father would punish him by making him do pushups until he could do no more. "He asked me if I know what the smell of death was like," Tubbs said. "He said the smell of death smells really bad. And he smelled the smell of death every time he went into a police station that day." But he said nothing about being motivated to kill by a video game, Tubbs said in response to a question from District Attorney Chris McCool. Standridge aggressively questioned Tubbs about his interview techniques. Tubbs appeared to remain calm. Under questioning, Tubbs said that he hadn't recorded or video taped the confession. He said he had only done so once in his career at a suspect's request. Standridge also questioned why Tubbs had written the statement instead of Moore. Tubbs said it was department policy. Standridge questioned whether Moore would use such stilted language as "exited the building." Tubbs responded that when Moore used slang, he converted it with Moore's permission into standard language. While Standridge focused on what wasn't written down, McCool pointed to what was in the confession. In response to McCool, Tubbs said Moore had said and approved everything in the confession. Investigator Mark Allison testified that Moore showed little or no emotion after his arrest. "He had a blank look on his face," Allison said. "It was like it was business as usual for him." Allison said the only time Moore showed any kind of emotion was when speaking about the military. Allison said Moore asked if what he had done would interfere with his plans to join the military. "As he talked about the military, he would tear up about not being able to go into the military," Allison said. District Attorney Chris McCool asked if Moore ever "teared up or broke down" about killing the 2 police officers and dispatcher. Allison replied that Moore did not. "The only time he showed any emotion was when he talked about his life plans about going into the military?" McCool asked. Allison replied, "Yes." On cross examination, defense attorney Jim Standridge asked Allison if he had earlier testified that Moore seemed like he was in his "own little world." Allison agreed he had testified to that. Allison also testified to witnessing Moore agree to and sign the confession written by Tubbs. Alabama Department of Forensic Science firearms analyst Ed Moran testified that powder residue on the dead men's clothes indicates they were shot at a range of three to five feet. He also analyzed bullets, bullet fragments and shell casing taken from the crime scene. Moran said that he couldn't link the bullets to Arnold Strickland's .40-caliber Glock pistol. The pistol's finely finished barrel had too few imperfections to leave the kind of striations used to link bullets to individual guns. But he could link shell casings found at the scene with Strickland's gun. Investigators recovered Strickland's pistol from his stolen squad car that Moore was in when he was captured. The trial will resume at 9 a.m. (source: The Tuscaloosa News) MASSACHUSETTS: Death penalty does not serve justice One understands the will to punish, the desire for revenge, the impulse to take an eye for an eye in some rough display of justice. But, our laws deny us that right individually because of the very real possibility of error in judgement. It should deny the state that right, too, since the ability to determine guilt or innocence is, finally, imperfect. Gov. Mitt Romney has brought the issue to the forefront with a new bill he believes solves the problem of doubt. In fact, the standard in the bill is raised from "beyond a reasonable doubt" to "beyond doubt." "I honestly don't believe you would ever see a single innocent person face the death penalty under this legislation," Romney said. Some opponents argue that it will cost the state a lot of money to prove "no doubt." Others note that, with death on the table, family members or friends of perpetrators might choose to be quiet rather than testify. Thats what the brother of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski testified. He had turned his brother in, thus ending a multi-year murder spree. Would such acts be jeopardized? And, there is the issue of disparity of economic means that still too often translates to disparity in legal representation. Besides these objections, one cant help but ask the governor and other proponents: Is it an absolute fact that DNA is never compromised? There is really nothing in this world beyond doubt, except death and taxes as they say. But, let the death come naturally, not at the hands of the state acting in our names. (source: Townonline)
