August 3 TEXAS: Hearing for death row inmate rescheduled A hearing to determine whether death row inmate Milton Mathis is mentally retarded was reset. Mathis, 26, was convicted in 1999 for killing two people in a reputed Fort Bend County drug house in Houston. In the incident, he also shot a 15-year-old girl who survived, but was disabled for life. Mathis' lawyers have filed a range of appeals which have been heard by the federal Fifth Circuit of Appeals in New Orleans and by the Texas higher courts. Attorney Stephen Doggett now seeks to convince 268th District Court Judge Brady Elliott, who presided over Mathis' jury trial, that Mathis was retarded when the shootings occurred and is therefore ineligible to be executed. A 2002 Supreme Court decision outlawed the practice of executions of the mentally retarded. Doggett has said he will present the testimony of his client's relatives, co-workers and other acquaintances to prove Mathis has mental retardation. Prosecutor Fred Felcman, however, denies the claim, and he included in court papers transcripts of the trial testimony of Mathis, who responded to questions involving legal terminology and the use of sophisticated vocabulary. (source: Rosenberg Herald-Coaster) *********************** Lubbock Man Pleads Guilty To 1987 Murder A former death row inmate returns to a Lubbock court for a 1987 murder. Damon Jerome Richardson was found guilty of capital murder in 1988 for killing 3 people in Lubbock. He was sentenced to death. Then 14 years later, a state appeals court overturned the decision because they say the key witness in the case lied. After spending almost 19 years in prison, 15 of those on death row, Richardson on Tuesday reached a plea agreement with special prosecutor Tommy Turner. Richardson pled no contest to 1 count of murder and the judge cleared the case because of the 18 years Richardson already served. It's been a case that lawyers across the country have followed since it began. Richardson was convicted of capital murder and placed on death row in 1988 for killing Napolean Ellison, Vivian Webb and Quinnie Smith. 14 years later, defense attorneys appealed and a state appeals court reversed the decision based on the grounds that the key witness in the case, Anita Hanson, lied. Prosecutors say Hanson was the only one that put Richardson at the scene. There was also a diary that former Lubbock District Attorney Travis Ware never submitted to the defense. Lubbock County quickly re-indicted Richardson in 2002, though with different wording in the case and one less charge. An organized crime conviction that Richardson was sentenced to life for will keep him in prison for the time being, but he could be released on parole soon. However, Turner says he thinks the conviction he got against Richardson will not allow him out on parole, because the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole don't like to release violent offenders. Richardson was last denied parole in June 2003. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice says Richardson's parole is now under review. Retired state district judge Ron Chapman, who presided over Tuesday's case, is the same judge who released the Tulia residents in the case involving Tom Coleman. (source: KLBK News) ALABAMA----impending execution Anti-government extremist asks court to stay execution in Alabama An anti-government extremist convicted of capital murder in the shooting death of an Opelika police officer has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block his execution, which is set for Thursday. George Sibley Jr., 62, who previously has contended the courts don't have any jurisdiction over him, filed the petition Wednesday. His personally written filing says his appeal has never been fully reviewed by the court in Washington, D.C., and it is "crucial in a case such as this." He is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Thursday at Holman prison near Atmore for the killing of Officer Roger Motley in a Wal-Mart parking lot in 1993. Sibley's common-law wife, Lynda Lyon Block, 54, was executed in 2002 for her role in the shooting death of Motley. She was executed after she and Sibley for years had refused to file appeals. They renounced their U.S. citizenship and contended the courts were biased and without jurisdiction. Sibley did pursue an appeal, for a time, months after her execution, and recently the Alabama Supreme Court denied his handwritten plea for the execution to be blocked. He argued that his conviction and sentence were "unconstitutional contrivances." Motley was shot to death as he approached the couple's car after a passer-by said a child in the car had asked for help. Block's 9-year-old son was in the car. Sibley and Block claimed the officer was going for his gun and they shot him in self-defense. Witnesses said Sibley fired first and Block then fired repeatedly at the wounded officer. The 2 were fleeing from Orlando, Fla., to avoid being sentenced on assault convictions in the stabbing of Block's 79-year-old former husband during an argument. Sibley's personal appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was delivered for him by the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery. "The court has made clear that the constitutionality of the death penalty rests in part on the opportunity for its rational review of the process by which it is imposed and full review in this case requires that his execution be stayed," the petition says. (source: The Tuscaloosa News) ***************************** Defense hammers forensic testimony It was a moment every lawyer dreads. Prosecutors had to regroup after a witness failed to properly demonstrate crucial bullet wound paths during testimony in Devin Moore's capital murder trial Tuesday. But later testimony from an Alabama Department of Forensic Science pathologist helped them to recover from what started as a rocky afternoon. Defense Attorney Jim Standridge already was hammering at the validity of testimony from 2 men who assisted Dr. John Glenn's autopsy of Fayette Police officers James Crump and Arnold Strickland and dispatcher Leslie "Ace" Mealer. Moore is accused of gunning down the 3 men in the Fayette Police Station early on the morning of June 7, 2003. Moore could face the death penalty or life imprisonment without parole if convicted. He pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of serious mental defect. His lawyers claim he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and that the condition triggered the shooting. They also say he was programmed to kill by compulsively playing video games. Glenn left the Department of Forensic Sciences in October of 2004 and took medical retirement. His supervisor, John McDuffie told the jury that Glenn's physician said the former pathologist could not testify because of "severe depressive disorder." Forensic Sciences employees are forbidden from contacting Glenn, McDuffie said. Prosecutors called on "death investigator" Charles James and pathology technician Michael Brown, the only remaining eyewitnesses to the autopsy, to testify. Standridge raised objections to their testimony and made the point during cross-examination that they were only testifying to what they read in Glenn's note. While testifying about Crump's head wound, Brown misidentified the bullet's point of entry. Prosecutor Lyn Durham asked if he was sure, but Brown did not correct himself. Fayette County Circuit Judge James Moore called a short recess and asked to see the lawyers in his chambers. He could be heard later in the courtroom speaking sternly to the lawyers. Crump's head wound could be crucial in proving to the jury that Moore acted with deliberate viciousness. Some testimony has indicated that Moore shot the officers after they were already disabled and lying on the floor. All the men had head wounds serious enough to be fatal, a pathologist later testified. After the break, Brown admitted his mistake about the bullet path in Crump's head. He said he had mistakenly referred to notes on Mealer's wounds when he made the error. On cross examination, Standridge asked Brown, who had been a mortuary assistant before working for the Forensic Sciences, if he had attended "undertaker school" at Jefferson State Community College. Brown answered, "Yes." Because Glenn cannot testify, the prosecution called on Department of Forensic Sciences Pathologist Adam Craig to testify. Over Standridge's objections, Judge Moore allowed Craig to present and interpret the report that Glenn prepared. Craig read from Glenn's report and placed wire markers in mannequins, demonstrating the wound tracks described in Glenn's autopsy report. Strickland was shot in the left temple and in the left part of the back. The bullet didn't exit from the head wound, and the bullet from the back wound came out the right side of his chest. Either wound would have been fatal, Craig said. Crump was shot in the top of the head with no exit wound. Another bullet entered on the right side of his chest and neck and lodged in the muscle near his spine. Another bullet went through his back and out his chest. Either the head wound or the back wound would have been fatal, Craig said. Mealer was shot at an angle where the bullet entered near his collarbone and went upward into his brain. Another bullet entered just below that bullet and exited his back. He was also shot through the back and had a wound above and behind his left ear with no exit wound. Any of these could have been fatal, Craig said. He also had wounds in his hand and shoulder and graze wounds on his body and head that might not have been fatal otherwise, Craig said. On cross-examination, Craig agreed that he wasn't present for the autopsy and he was only testifying to what the autopsy report and notes made by Glenn said. In addition to hearing the testimony, jurors viewed autopsy photos and toured the crime scene at the Fayette Police Station. The trial will resume at 9 a.m. today. FLORIDA: Jury may get Meyer case today----State seeks death penalty in slaying of local lawyer With jurors in the trial over Fred Parker's slaying scheduled to get the case today, they will soon have to weigh the crux of the defense: David Jeffrey Meyer, charged in Parker's death, stabbed the 66-year-old semiretired lawyer 11 times in a public men's room last year because he felt threatened by him. Meyer, 48, took the stand Tuesday and told jurors Parker had put his arm against his throat, causing Meyer to panic and stab him in self-defense. "I felt something very bad was going to happen to me," he said. A psychologist called by the defense later testified Meyer suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks, brought on by traumatic episodes in his youth, including watching his pet dog die and his mother have a stroke. Meyer faces 1st-degree murder and armed-robbery charges in the March 8, 2004, death of Parker, a Tallahassee lawyer, civic leader and member of the former Florida Board of Regents. The state is seeking the death penalty. Parker was killed outside Tally's Grille, a restaurant in the Market Square shopping center. He had stopped to use a public restroom in a hallway adjacent to the eatery, where he ran into Meyer, police said. He later walked in, collapsed and died on the restaurant's floor. Assistant Public Defender Ines Suber began the trial by suggesting a self-defense theory, telling jurors Meyer was "justified in his actions," or that he was, at worst, guilty of manslaughter. Suber rested her case at the end of the day. Circuit Judge Kathleen Dekker then told jurors they would hear closing arguments and jury instructions sometime today, asking them to report by 10:30 a.m. She also said they would be sequestered until they reach a verdict. When he was caught, Meyer had been driving a white pickup belonging to Dwight Scott, his West Palm Beach roommate found dead the week before Parker's slaying. Meyer had been wanted for questioning in Scott's death; Scott also had been stabbed several times. That case is on hold until the Tallahassee trial ends. (source: Tallahassee Democrat) USA: Death Penalty Appeals to Be on Senate Panel Docket When Congress returns from its summer recess, among the issues it will have to tackle is whether to change the federal court appeals process for death row prisoners. Challenges are being made about whether such appeals needlessly delay executions at the expense of taxpayers or whether they are a vital last line of defense for possibly wrongly convicted murderers. Some conservative Republicans want to speed up executions of convicted murders by reducing the number of appeals. "You ought not to have an unlimited number of appeals, and it ought to be required to be done within a reasonable period of time, and it ought to go to the question of actual innocence," said Rep. Dan Lungren (search), R-Calif. Congress has tried to limit appeals before. A 1996 law tightened rules for death penalty appeals, but those appeals have nearly doubled since then, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, topping out at 19,000 in 2003 before declining slightly. Consideration of these appeals delays execution. "It's not fair to the victims of crime that these cases should take so long," said Sen. Jon Kyl (search), R-Ariz. Some death row appeals have lasted more than two decades. The average time from conviction to execution, however, is between 11 and 12 years. "I heard some other member of Congress in our committee argue against my efforts in this regard and said, 'What's the problem? These people are sitting on death row. There's no problem, they're not going anywhere.' Well, the problem is is to the family of those who've been killed. Why should they have to suffer?" Lungren asked. Lungren and Kyl have introduced legislation that would allow only 1 federal death penalty appeal per case. Convicted murders in capital cases would retain the full range of state court appeals. Critics like law professor Stephen Saltzburg say federal appeals based on new evidence or scientific review of existing evidence have led to reversals of death sentences. "The advances that we have in terms of DNA have reminded us that a rush to execution means that innocent people may, in fact, be executed," said Saltzburg, a council member on the Criminal Justice and Litigation Sections of the American Bar Association. Critics also argue that the state courts can make mistakes, and federal review is the best safeguard against wrongful execution. "The fact that we take time doesn't mean that our system is broken, it means that our system works according to American values. Speeding up executions and denying people the opportunity to present constitutional claims is hardly, you know, the way in which most people like to think about the Constitution," Saltzburg said. The bill is on a bit of a legislative fast track. The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on it in mid- to late-September. (source: Fox News) ************************* Abortion Right, Death Penalty Wrong? The legitimate attempt to establish justice through law is one hallmark of enlightened civilization. All too often, however, the reasoning used to advance that worthy goal becomes convoluted. According to the ACLU, for example: "The death penalty is the greatest denial of civil liberties." Yet the ACLU also fights for the right of women to kill their babies before they are even born. Thus, those self-styled humanitarian crusaders for justice, who claim they want to protect one human life, also wish to end another unjustly. If you ever studied logic, you should quickly see the fallacy of this argument. What does an unborn baby in the womb have in common with a murderer or a robber, a rapist or a child molester, a kidnapper or a terrorist? The answer is absolutely nothing! That child didn't ask to be conceived and that child didn't ask to be aborted. That child wants to live. But the person on Death Row knew the difference between right and wrong, and yet chose to commit the crime that put him there. Those on the Left are hypocritical in their argument. They want to protect the guilty, while saying it's OK to kill those helpless victims who can't defend themselves. Now, our position on the right is logical: we are fighting to protect the innocent while punishing the guilty killers and other criminals. Wake up, Liberals. Your logic, or lack thereof, is dangerous -- and honestly, it's downright uneducated. Most of the decent, honest folks who support the death penalty are also pro-life, pro-gun and pro-God. They are not mean and brutal people, but they see the death penalty as an unpleasant but necessary component of an effective criminal justice system. These law-abiding Conservatives believe that there are 3 basic reasons why the death penalty is both right and necessary. First, on moral grounds, the death penalty is just because it emphasizes the intrinsic value of all human life, and it punishes the enormity of the crime that wastes it. According to the Bible, God established the death penalty for murder because mankind bears the image of God. But whether one comes from the Judeo-Christian tradition or from one of the world's many pagan cultures, capital punishment has been used universally from time immemorial. That is because all people instinctively understand that the one who would unjustly deprive another of his most precious possession, life itself, has no moral right to keep and enjoy his own life. Second, as a pragmatic consideration, the death penalty does in fact deter some people from committing heinous crimes, simply because they stop to consider the terrible consequences of their actions. True, the fear of capital punishment will not deter everyone. But it will deter some, and who can say how many innocent lives that basic fear factor has saved throughout history? Those hardened criminals who refuse to be deterred will also refuse to be rehabilitated and do not deserve to live. Finally, as a practical economic matter, our society cannot afford to support hardened criminals for life. These violent felons add nothing to our common good and must be locked away to protect the public safety, at a cost in excess of $22,000 apiece per year, on average. By what leap of logic should law-abiding citizens be required to pay for these incorrigible criminals' food, clothing, shelter, and medical care, not to mention the cost of the guards and maximum-security prisons needed to contain them? I believe that capital punishment should be administered humanely, fairly and only for the most serious of crimes. It may be true that the death penalty is gruesome, and by some it may even be considered evil. But if so, it is a necessary evil for the preservation of a stable, civilized society. (source: Nathan Tabor, who is a conservative political activist based in Kernersville, North Carolina. He has his BA in psychology and his MA in public policy. He is a contributing editor at www.theconservativevoice.com.) CALIFORNIA: Wesson arrives at prison Marcus Wesson, who was sentenced to death last week for the slayings of 9 of his children last year in the family's central Fresno home, was transported to San Quentin Prison's death row this morning, Fresno County Sheriff Richard Pierce announced. Pierce said Wesson, who had been in the Fresno County Jail since his arrest on March 12, 2004, the day the killings were discovered, arrived at the prison shortly after 5 a.m. In addition to the death penalty, Wesson, 58, was given a 102-year prison term for 13 sex crimes, including continuous sexual abuse and rape. (source: Fresno Bee) MASSACHUSETTS: AG poised to compensate wrongly convicted 8 months after Massachusetts agreed to compensate wrongly convicted felons, the state is poised to offer its first settlements -- to 2 men who together spent almost a quarter-century in prison for crimes they did not commit. Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly's office said yesterday that it has asked the Romney administration to approve financial settlements with Eric Sarsfield, who served nearly 10 years on a rape conviction, and Eduardo Velazquez, who served almost 14 years on rape and assault convictions. Reilly's office declined to disclose the proposed settlement amounts, saying the sums could still be subject to negotiations. Reilly has said he will not fight claims by 3 other wrongly convicted men -- Stephan Cowans, who served more than 6 years in prison after being convicted of shooting a Boston policeman; Marvin Mitchell, who served more than 7 years on a rape conviction; and Neil Miller, who spent more than 10 years in prison on charges of robbery and rape. Reilly's position would pave the way for similar recommendations. The settlements would be the 1st under a state law that allows the wrongfully convicted to collect up to $500,000 from Massachusetts to compensate for years spent behind bars. Lawyers for some of the nearly 2 dozen convicted felons who have been exonerated in the past 2 decades have accused Reilly of hindering their clients' efforts to claim the money. But Reilly's actions in regard to the 5 men appear to show that the process is moving forward, at least in cases he believes are clear-cut miscarriages of justice. All 5 were cleared at least partly through DNA evidence. "When a person's innocence is clear, we continue to work to move their cases as quickly as possible," said Corey Welford, a spokesman for Reilly. ''At the same time, we have an obligation to protect taxpayer money and to carefully review each case and make sure they meet the standards established by the Legislature." It is uncertain, however, whether the state's offers will be sufficient. The New York lawyer representing Sarsfield and Velazquez, Debi Cornwall, said her clients will accept nothing less than the maximum permitted under the law. "The only circumstances under which these cases will be settled is if they are settled for the full $500,000," Cornwall said. "$500,000 does not begin to compensate these men for what they've lost." Velazquez, who returned to his native Puerto Rico after being freed in August 2001 and now operates a sandwich truck, said in a brief telephone interview yesterday that he would be happy to receive $500,000 but that "there's no money that's going to bring back what they took from me." At least 23 people in Massachusetts have been wrongfully convicted of serious crimes over the past 23 years, according to the nonprofit New England Innocence Project, which uses DNA evidence to free them. Civil liberties groups and advocates for wrongly convicted prisoners have lobbied legislators for years to compensate those who lost years of their lives. Galvanized by several high-profile exonerations, the Legislature passed the law in December. Massachusetts is one of 20 states with such laws. So far, 12 people have filed claims, including eight stemming from convictions handed up in Suffolk County. The rest are from Middlesex, Hampden, and Plymouth counties. 2 claims seeking $500,000 each have been filed in the past few days on behalf of 2 other wrongly convicted felons -- Peter C. Vaughn, who served more than 3 years on robbery charges, and Louis Santos, who spent 3 years in prison for murder and other crimes, said their lawyer, Michael D. Kendall. The statute requires that former prisoners receive gubernatorial pardons acknowledging their innocence or that the courts take action after a conviction that "tend to establish the innocence of the individual." The law also requires that Reilly get the approval of the Executive Office of Administration and Finance for any settlement amount that would exceed $80,000. Stephanie Lovell, Reilly's first assistant attorney general, said that she hopes the office approves them soon and that the state can make offers to Sarsfield and Velazquez in a few months. Harry M. Grossman, counsel to the secretary of the administration, said that he had just seen the Sarsfield file and that it would take time to scrutinize his and other claims. He gave no timetable. Sarsfield, who was released from prison in 1999, said a $500,000 settlement would end an ordeal that began when he was arrested in 1986. "With lost wages and stuff it doesn't add up to what I could have had," said Sarsfield, 42, of Bolton. "But it's something." (source: Boston Globe)
