August 11 OKLAHOMA----impending execution Inmate files late appeal Attorneys for Kenneth Eugene Turrentine, 52, asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to block his execution. The court did not immediately respond to the filing. Turrentine faces execution today for shooting his estranged girlfriend and leaving her to die with her children in their Tulsa home. Turrentine originally was convicted of killing 4 people in the June 4, 1994, shooting spree that claimed Anita Richardson's life. However, a federal appeals court in 2004 threw out his convictions and death sentences in the slayings of Richardson's son Martise, 13, and her daughter Tina Pennington, 22. Turrentine received a no-parole life term for killing his sister Avon Stevenson, 47, in Tulsa on the same day. Prosecutors said Turrentine believed that Richardson was seeing other men and that his sister was helping her deceive him. However, Turrentine, who turned himself in immediately after the murders, couldn't answer the Pardon and Parole Board's questions last week about his motive. "I've been struggling with that for years," he said, adding he had been drinking and had taken antidepressants at the time. The board denied clemency despite tearful pleas from Turrentine's family members, who said the murders were out of character for him. (source: The Oklahoman) FLORIDA: Meyer spared death penalty----Victim's children say life is enough Perhaps the most powerful arguments for sparing David Jeffrey Meyer from a death sentence came Wednesday - from his victim's adult children. Meyer was convicted last week of 1st-degree murder for killing Fred Parker, 66, in a public men's room in the Market Square shopping center March 8, 2004. Parker was stabbed 11 times. At a sentencing hearing, Jennifer LaVia, Parker's oldest daughter, gave an impassioned speech against the death penalty to Circuit Judge Kathleen Dekker, who sentenced Meyer to life without parole. LaVia argued that a life sentence would end the family's pain. With a death sentence, however, the family would relive their sorrow and horror with each step of the appeals process over the years. "There's been enough killing ... even though what he did was unspeakably cruel," LaVia said. "We just want it to be over." There was virtually no chance Dekker would have sentenced Meyer to death anyway. The jury had recommended life and Dekker was bound to give their opinion "great weight" under law. Moreover, the judge already told the lawyers she saw no reason not to follow the recommendation. Rick Parker, Fred Parker's son, looked at Dekker but addressed Meyer in his remarks. After his father's death, "I tried to hate you ... yet it would not come," he said. All he feels now for Meyer is pity, Parker said, adding that Meyer should be thankful the jury gave him a 2nd chance. "I forgive you ... not for you but for me," he added, because he didn't want to carry the weight of Meyer's crime "like so many chains." "That is a weight I refuse to bear," Parker said. Parker's widow, Edna, said her husband was not a confrontational or aggressive man. Meyer's lawyers had argued self-defense at trial, suggesting Parker had accosted Meyer in the restroom. "Now I just want him to rest in peace," she said, struggling against tears. Parker was killed outside Tally's Grille, a restaurant in the Market Square shopping center. He had stopped to use a restroom in a hallway adjacent to the eatery, where he ran into Meyer. He later walked in, collapsed and died on the restaurant's floor. Meyer was caught when a Tallahassee police officer spotted him on an upper walkway of the North Monroe Street Motel 6 three days after the killing. When Dekker asked him if he wanted to make a statement, Meyer declined. He sat quietly through the hearing, slumped in his chair and wearing a blue jailhouse uniform. Meyer, 48, now goes to Palm Beach County to face another murder charge in the stabbing death of his West Palm Beach roommate, Dwight Scott. In Tallahassee, he had been driving a white pickup belonging to Scott, who was found dead the week before Parker's slaying. After the hearing, defense investigator Betty Fuentes and LaVia hugged, whispered in each other's ears and smiled weakly. (source: Tallahassee Democrat) ******************************************* LAW & DISORDER: Not-guilty plea for man accused in killing, police standoff at beach The lawyer for a man police said prompted a lengthy standoff in Jacksonville Beach after being accused of fatally shooting his estranged girlfriend's niece entered not-guilty pleas on his behalf to 11 felony counts Wednesday. Paul Rentas-Rivera, 29, didn't speak during a brief court appearance. He is charged with killing 13-year-old Brianna Ganas in her aunt's car as they prepared to drive away from his apartment last month. Rentas-Rivera also is charged with 2 counts of attempted murder, 2 counts of kidnapping, 3 counts of child abuse, and 1 count each of aggravated stalking, burglary and resisting arrest. He is jailed without bail. Some of the charges relate to the shooting of his former girlfriend, Aja McKenna, and injuries to children in her van. Others involve a Jacksonville Beach couple Rentas-Rivera is charged with holding hostage in their apartment after McKenna sped away. Assistant State Attorney Mac Heavener said prosecutors will present Rentas-Rivera's case to a grand jury next week in pursuit of a first-degree murder indictment, which would open the door to a possible death sentence. (source: The Florida Times-Union) USA: Ross Autopsy Stirs Execution Debate----Results Cited To Counter Talk Of Pre-Death Pain Results of the autopsy done on serial killer Michael Ross are contributing to an international debate on whether the condemned experience severe pain during the lethal injection process. The results are being cited by several prominent doctors to refute a highly publicized article that appeared in The Lancet, the British medical journal, in April - the month before Ross became the 1st convict executed in New England in 45 years. The article asserts that the level of anesthesia in many of the executed inmates studied by the authors appears to have been inadequate to prevent them from suffering severe pain as the caustic and lethal potassium chloride coursed through their veins before stopping their hearts. Critics of the article, written by Dr. Leonidas G. Koniaris of the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine and 3 others, say it does not account for postmortem redistribution of the anesthetic - thiopental. The redistribution, the critics say, accounts for the lower levels of thiopental on which Koniaris based his conclusions that the levels of anesthetic were inadequate. The Ross autopsy results document this redistribution, bolstering the critics' assertions. Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, Connecticut's chief medical examiner, was aware of the controversial Lancet article before performing the Ross autopsy. As a result, he took the additional step of drawing a sample of Ross's blood 20 minutes after he was pronounced dead at 2:25 a.m. May 13. Carver took a subsequent sample during the autopsy, which began about 7 hours later, at 9:40 a.m. The 1st sample showed a concentration of 29.6 milligrams per liter of thiopental; the second sample showed a concentration of 9.4 milligrams per liter. The 1st sample was drawn from Ross' right femoral artery, and the second from his heart, which can account for some of the discrepancy. But Dr. Mark Heath, a New York anesthesiologist and one of the numerous doctors who have signed letters to The Lancet challenging the Koniaris article, said it clearly substantiates the postmortem redistribution of the thiopental. Carver said Wednesday that the Ross autopsy results amount to "just one data point on the debate." "One case doesn't solve an issue," Carver said. "But one case can point up the need to address the question in a systematic way. This needs to be addressed in a systematic fashion." Dr. Jonathan Groner, a pediatric surgeon from Ohio and a leading critic of physician involvement in the execution process, is among the critics of The Lancet article. He said he interviewed a number of forensic toxicologists before adopting the view that thiopental in a corpse leaves the blood and is absorbed by the fat, causing blood samples taken hours after death to be an unreliable marker of the levels of thiopental in the body at the time of death. Groner described the Ross autopsy results as "a powerful refutation" of the Koniaris study. Koniaris, a cancer surgeon, Wednesday said he "absolutely" stands behind the article and its findings, but is aware of the controversy it has generated. "There's a whole slew of letters coming out [in The Lancet] on the whole topic in a few weeks," Koniaris said. "They all want their minute under the sun." The Lancet article focused on the toxicology reports of 49 inmates executed in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. "Postmortem concentrations of thiopental in the blood were lower than that required for surgery in 43 of 49 executed inmates (88 %); 21 (43 %) inmates had concentrations consistent with awareness," the article states. Although the article acknowledged that determining the depth of anesthesia at the time of death based on postmortem concentrations of thiopental is "admittedly problematic," it also states flatly that "thiopental concentrations did not fall with increased time between execution and blood sample collection." Dr. Ashraf Mozayani, a forensic toxicologist with the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office in Texas, said the level of thiopental "drops quite a bit" after death. Even in the living, Mozayani said, thiopental levels decline rapidly after administration of the drug. She cited one study in which a patient was administered 400 milligrams of thiopental intravenously. After two minutes the concentration in the blood was measured at 28 milligrams, but dropped to 3 milligrams concentration 19 minutes after the anesthetic was injected. Mozayani said the declining concentration of thiopental cited in the Ross autopsy report "make sense." Of The Lancet article, she said, "I don't think they have the whole story - the postmortem redistribution and all the other things they have to consider for postmortem testing." Heath and Koniaris agreed that the amount of thiopental in Ross' blood, based on the sample drawn 20 minutes after death, was sufficient to ensure that he was properly sedated. Heath, an avid opponent of lethal injection, noted that there is no way of knowing whether the drugs were administered in the proper order, and that Ross would have suffered if the potassium chloride mistakenly was injected first. "That's the ultimate dilemma for capital punishment," Groner said of lethal injection. "The people best trained to do it [anesthesiologists] are forbidden from doing it." Most states use emergency medical technicians to carry out executions. Connecticut state regulations require that the execution team be trained to the satisfaction of a physician overseeing that training. Correction officials to date have refused to identify the physician involved in the Ross execution. The Ross autopsy report indicates that several punctures were necessary to insert one of the intravenous lines, and that there was a bruise about 1 inches in diameter on Ross' right forearm. Carver concludes that the cause of death was "multiple drug toxicity" and lists the manner of death as "homicide." Following the autopsy, Ross' body was released to his family and cremated. (source: Hartford Courant) **************************** All Aboard for the Death Penalty Express----Republicans aim to kill federal criminal appeals law If a contingent of congressional Republicans have their way, federal law governing all criminal appeals will be gutted - opening up an express lane to the Texas death chamber and making it inevitable that an innocent person will be executed. The proposed legislation, the Streamlined Procedures Act of 2005 (HR 3035 and S 1088), would eliminate federal court jurisdiction over the vast majority of habeas corpus appeals - through which defendants challenge the constitutionality of their convictions, a process that is at the heart of the growing number of exonerations nationwide - leaving state courts of appeal as the final arbiters of justice. In Texas, the proposed legislation would leave decisions of life or death in the hands of the Court of Criminal Appeals - a court whose death penalty rulings have come under attack not only by reformers and advocates but also by the U.S. Supreme Court. If the draconian legislation becomes law, "it would end federal habeas corpus in Texas," says Jim Marcus, executive director of the nonprofit Texas Defender Service. At issue are congressional limits on criminal appeals to the federal courts - where, for example, questions of ineffective counsel and claims of prosecutorial misconduct are adjudicated, and, more often than not, lay the groundwork for claims of innocence, new evidence testing, or the granting of a new trial. The rules governing the process were last modified nearly a decade ago with the passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 - a notoriously complex scheme of statutory hoops through which inmates and their attorneys must jump in order to have their cases heard in federal court. The complexity of the process - which can toss a case back and forth between federal and state courts - is often lengthy, a circumstance that, ostensibly, prompted Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, to introduce the SPA in the Senate this spring. "Many federal habeas corpus cases require 10, 15, or even 20 years to complete," he told colleagues on May 19. "These delays burden the courts and deny justice to defendants with meritorious claims. They are also deeply unfair to victims of serious, violent crime." Although the AEDPA (passed by a Republican-controlled Congress) itself curtailed federal judicial oversight in order to speed the process along, its restrictions are apparently not enough for Kyl, his co-sponsors (first among them Texas Sen. John Cornyn), and his House colleague Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif. (author of companion bill HR 3035), who have seemingly decided the remedy to this sort of delayed justice is to eliminate the judicial process altogether. Under the SPA, the only criminal cases that would earn any federal habeas review are those in which a defendant can show three things: one, that there are "new facts" in the case that were never brought to light through the "due diligence" of attorneys; 2, that those facts establish the defendant's innocence by "clear and convincing evidence"; and, three, that "but for a constitutional violation, the defendant wouldn't have been convicted," Marcus says. "You should really think of it as 3 bells that all have to be rung." The problem, say Marcus and others, is it is nearly impossible to ring all 3 bells without first successfully ringing an underlying chord - such as a claim that the reason the new information was unidentified was the result of a prosecutor hiding evidence from the defense (as was the case with Texas death row inmate Delma Banks, whose case was ultimately remanded to state district court), or because the defendant's attorney was ineffective. Under the SPA, those claims would need vetting in state court - in Texas that means the CCA, a court whose record on such issues is abominable. It was the CCA that infamously opined in Calvin Burdine's death case that Burdine's lawyer sleeping intermittently through his trial did not necessarily mean his counsel was ineffective. (During a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting late last month, Cornyn told members that he believes the law "provides for a lawyer who is awake and fully functioning," and said the fact that Burdine's case was reversed shows "that the system can and does work." But if those kinds of claims aren't raised during state appeals or in a direct appeal to federal courts, Cornyn argues, a defendant should not be able to raise a claim for the first time, years later, during federal habeas appeals.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'We Don't Really Care' Neither Marcus nor fellow TDS attorney Greg Wiercioch can recall a single case won on the basis of "actual innocence" during a habeas appeal that was not predicated upon one of those apparently lesser claims. "If the state system is shoddy," says Wiercioch, under the SPA "you're never going to get an opportunity in federal court to get better counsel, or to investigate what may be a claim of actual innocence. Unless you can meet the really high standard ... they're screwed." The legislation's message, say the TDS attorneys, "is that if [the defendant is not 100%] innocent, we don't really care," Wiercioch said. Even defendants who have been exonerated by DNA would likely not get a federal review. Take the case of an inmate convicted before the advent of modern DNA technology. Although the defendant may be able to pass through the SPA's first 2 hurdles - new evidence, clear and convincing evidence of innocence - any attorney would be hard-pressed to find a constitutional claim that hinges on the right to access modern technology. As such, the defendant would likely be barred from proving "actual innocence" in court. According to Cornyn, all the hype over the possibility of denying justice to criminal defendants is, apparently, just hysteria. "What we are talking about here is not denying people access to reasonable review of their case, but we're talking about abuse of the habeas process in federal court," he told the committee on July 28. The "fact is" that habeas review "has become rife with gamesmanship" and is used to delay the imposition of a fair sentence. "In my state, from the time ... the most hardened criminals are convicted of the most heinous crimes ... their case is reviewed by not only a jury of 12 of their peers but up to 23 different judges ... perhaps even more." Just because a number of people have reviewed the case, however, doesn't mean it has been justly resolved, points out SPA opponent John Whitehead, president of the conservative civil liberties organization the Rutherford Institute. "State court judges - who are often elected - are susceptible to pressures that life-tenure federal judges may find less compelling," he wrote in a July 27 memo to the committee. The SPA is "radical legislation" that would "likely result in the execution of citizens who have been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death." Whitehead isn't the only conservative critic of the legislation. The ranks of opposition are swollen with critics of all political stripes - including former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Georgia, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, former FBI director William Sessions, and the American Bar Association. This widespread criticism has apparently halted the SPA's progress. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., chair of the judiciary committee, recently tabled the measure until some time next month. If it passes, the measure will likely be challenged in court - at least in part on questions of whether Congress actually has the power to encroach on the jurisdiction of the judicial branch. "It is a constitutional issue, taking so much power away from the courts," Wiercioch says. (source: Austin Chronicle) ******************************** Roberts and death penalty For many years now, the U.S. Supreme Court has been used as the political playground of activists who could never get their causes approved by a popular vote of the people or through the legislative process. In 1973, activists got their way when the court struck down popular legal restrictions on abortion in most states. In 1996 in the Romer v. Evans ruling, the court overturned a provision of the Colorado constitution approved by voters in the state that denied special group rights on the basis of sexual proclivities. Later, in 2003, in the Lawrence v. Texas ruling, the court struck down laws against sodomy across the United States. What's the next big activist cause for this activist court? I'll tell you. It will be the death penalty. Remember where you read it first. There are already rumblings within the court. Over the weekend, Justice John Paul Stevens, 85, let the world know he thinks it's time for the high priests in black robes to rule from on high about capital punishment. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has made similar noises in the past. And now we find out that Judge John Roberts, nominated to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, not only did pro bono legal work to support the homosexual activists in the Romer case, he also provided some 25 hours of free legal time on behalf John Ferguson, a Florida death-row inmate who killed 8 people. Ferguson, 56, was a triggerman in the murders of 8 people in two separate, apparently drug-related shootings. His accomplices, Beauford J. White and Marvin Francois, have already been executed, but Ferguson's appeals have continued based on claims he is mentally ill. The White House explains Roberts took the Romer case and the Ferguson case because his firm asked him to do so. Let me ask you: Would you work on behalf of the most historic legal attack on Judeo-Christian sexual moral values if your company asked you to do so? Would you trust to a lifetime Supreme Court appointment a man who did so eagerly? Would you help craft legal arguments to protect the life of a convicted mass murderer because your company asked you to do so? Would you trust to a lifetime Supreme Court appointment a man who did so without hesitation? I wouldn't. I don't. And I suspect most Americans feel the same way - even those at significantly lower pay grades than Judge Roberts and with a lot more to lose by a taking principled, moral position. We don't know much about where Roberts stands on the key issues facing America. He's a blank slate - much like David Souter and Anthony Kennedy were. He has been careful not to write or say much publicly that would give the American people a clue about his worldview. He's the stealth Supreme Court nominee George W. Bush was apparently seeking. Conservative activists threw their confirmation support to him early and don't want to look foolish changing their minds now that the facts are beginning to raise doubts. Liberal activists continue to raise questions, as they always will about any Republican presidential appointment. But, I am predicting they will fall in line now they smell another Souter or Kennedy within their grasp. What we desperately need on the court are several more Antonin Scalias or Clarence Thomases. That's what George W. Bush promised those who supported him in 2000 and 2004. What he has delivered instead is a nominee who will get overwhelming support by the U.S. Senate. Not one Republican will stand in his way and most, if not all, Democrats will soon jump on the bandwagon. And the political activists who misuse the courts to force their agenda down the throats of the American people and at the expense of the Constitution will be the big winners once again. (Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND and a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. He is also the founder of WND Books. In addition to his daily column in WND, he writes a nationally syndicated weekly column available to U.S. newspapers through Creators Syndicate.) (source: Between the Lines column, WorldNetDaily) ALABAMA: In Fayette, tears for the victims and the killer Jurors wept Wednesday as relatives of dispatcher Leslie "Ace" Mealer and Fayette police Officers Arnold Strickland and James Crump tearfully described how their murders at the hands of Devin Moore had impacted their lives. The jury found Moore guilty of capital murder in the June 2003 shootings after about an hour of deliberation Tuesday evening. The jury now has to decide whether it will recommend to Judge James Moore that the convicted murderer face the death penalty. In the opening statement of the penalty phase of the trial, District Attorney Chris McCool told jurors that he knew they wished they didn't have to be there. He said it was Devin Moore's fault that they had to be in the courtroom. "Three good men, blown away, for no other reason than that the defendant didn't want to go to jail," McCool said. Defense attorney Jim Standridge told jurors that he respected their decision to find Devin Moore guilty but didn't apologize for defending Moore. "You've already decided that Devin Moore will spend the rest of his life in an 8-by-10 cell," Standridge said. "Now all you have got to decide is if you want to kill him. Is it enough for him to spend the rest of his life in jail, or do you need to kill him, too?" McCool let victims' family members tell jurors about the pain they experienced after the murders. Standridge tried to use testimony from Moore's family members to make jurors understand how child abuse played a part in Moore's psychological makeup. Crump's father, Willie Crump, described James Crump as the "ideal son." As he cried in the courtroom, Crump said he remembered the last time James Crump brought his mother flowers. Willie Crump and his wife took a picture of the flower that Crump brought her on Mother's Day 2003, less than a month before he died. "She didn't want to ever let anything happen to it," he sobbed. He also recounted that morning a few weeks later when they learned of their son's death. "I couldn't stop her from screaming," Willie Crump said of his wife. "She was screaming his name over and over. I thought I was going to lose her." Crump's wrenching testimony had jurors and spectators in tears. Equally emotional was the testimony of Blake Strickland, son of Fayette Police officer Arnold Strickland. He described how he and his father drew closer when Blake was in his late 20s. He said his father visited every week to see Blake's daughter, Arnold Strickland's granddaughter. On one visit he brought the girl a teddy bear, sent from Germany. "She sleeps with it every night," Blake Strickland said through tears. Crump's ex-wife, Martha Crump, said Crump drove to Hamilton from Fayette to see his son, Julian, play in t-ball games. She said their relationship remained amicable despite their divorce and that Crump was a good and attentive father who was there for both her and her son. After news of Crump's death, she said Julian's schoolwork suffered, and he was obviously feeling the effects emotionally. "He would not go in his room to sleep by himself," Martha Crump said. "He wouldn't sleep until I got home because he was afraid something would happen to me." June Mealer, "Ace" Mealer's stepmother, told the court that Mealer's father died in March. She said he was never the same after his son was killed. "He started going down," June Mealer said. "He got real depressed. He would cry. That was his only son." Moore's family members gave repeated examples of neglect and abuse. Standridge told jurors that Moore lived in 21 different homes growing up. Both his mother and father had children by multiple partners. The most emotional defense testimony came from Moore's sister, Kelly Moore, who struggled before breaking down into tears as Standridge questioned her about abuse in the Moore household. She said she once stayed out past curfew when she was 17 years old and her father made her drop her pants in front of the whole family and he whipped her. She said her father, Kenneth Moore, sometimes beat her mother "to a pulp." She cried as she explained that she loved her brother and that all of the children were close. She said Moore would panic anytime his father called on him to do something. On cross-examination, McCool asked her if she could visit her brother in jail and she said yes. "And you'll be able to do that as long as you're both alive?" he asked, implying that the victims' families no longer have that privilege. "Yes," she said. Brandon Smith, who came to live with Kenneth Moore along with his mother for more than a year, said Devin Moore endured an average of four beatings a week. Smith said Kenneth Moore frequently screamed obscenities at Devin Moore and made him strip naked for beatings. Moore's father also told him he was "crazy in the head" and possessed by the devil. Hester Whittaker, Devin Moore's uncle said he knew there were problems in Kenneth Moore's household. Moore confided in him like he was a big brother, he said. "He'd call and say, 'I can't take it any longer,'" Whittaker said. "I'd say, 'You haven't got much longer. Just hold on.'" James Reed, who had two children with Moore's mother, Gloria Thompson, described her alcoholism and drug addiction. Reed said his and Thompson's 1st daughter tested positive for cocaine and syphilis when she was born. Their 2nd daughter tested positive for cocaine. Thompson frequently left her children with her schizophrenic mother. After the jury was dismissed, Moore ruled that the defense could present some mental health, school and department of human resources records prosecutors objected to. Jurors will continue to hear testimony at 9 a.m. (source: The Tuscaloosa News) INDIANA: Daniels should reopen debate on capital punishment The Indiana Coalition Against the Death Penalty holds vigils outside the prison gates on the eve of an execution. Our vigils are not just about the person being executed. Death penalty protesters also use the occasion of the execution to bring again to the public the question: "Is this the best way to protect our citizens?" Executions do not prevent future murders. It costs about three times as much to execute someone as to keep them in prison for life. We think that executions violate the Indiana Constitution which states, "The penal code shall be founded on the principles of reformation, and not of vindictive justice." We call on Gov. Mitch Daniels to reopen the capital punishment question. Dare to ask, "Does capital punishment keep Hoosiers safer? If not, why should Indiana keep this practice which has been abandoned by all the other democratic societies in the world?" Marti Pizzini, Michigan City (source: Letter to the Editor, NorthWest Indiana Times)
