August 16
TEXAS:
3rd Edinburg massacre trial begins
Hidalgo County prosecutors on Monday began Rodolfo Medranos capital murder
trial by portraying a high-ranking Tri-City Bomber who provided his
underlings with military assault weapons to do his dirty work.
Meanwhile, Medranos defense lawyers Hector Villarreal and Oscar Rene
Flores continued to accuse prosecutors of withholding evidence and denied
Medranos connection with the murders of six men in north Edinburg on Jan.
5, 2003.
Known by law enforcement as "Creeper," Medrano, 26, is one of 13 accused
in the slayings and the third man to stand trial for the slayings, which
have put 2 other gang members - Juan Raul Navarro Ramirez and Humberto
Garza - on death row. Judge Mario Ramirez is presiding over the trial in
his state District 332nd courtroom. If found guilty, jurors will sentence
Medrano to life in prison or death row.
Medrano is being tried under the law of parties, where a person who
conspires with others to commit a criminal act that ends in murder can
face the same punishment as the murderer.
Before swearing in the jury, the judge acted on Villarreals request and
ordered prosecutors to provide the defense with the criminal records and
photos of the slain men shown during jury selection. He also told
prosecutors to turn over law enforcement reports that Villarreal said had
not been made available to the defense.
The judge said he would take under advisement Villarreals request to
videotape proceedings and to provide him with a daily copy of the court
reporters records. Prosecutors said the cameras could intimidate jurors.
Last week, Villarreal subpoenaed his political adversary, District
Attorney Rene Guerra, and several prosecutors, claiming they were
tampering with witnesses and hiding evidence.
The judge quashed the subpoenas, but told Villarreal he could re-issue
them if needed.
In her opening statements, Assistant District Attorney Judith Cantu told
jurors that the men found shot several times at 2915 E. Monte Cristo were
"murdered" by Tri-City Bombers gang members who followed a military chain
of command. Medrano ranked as a sergeant, acting as the gangs treasurer
and "armorer," stocking and maintaining the gangs arsenal.
"He provided this gang their weapons. We are talking about high-powered
military assault weapons, the type of weapons used in combat," Cantu said.
The day before the shooting occurred, fellow gang members asked Medrano to
participate in stealing a large amount of marijuana, but "he didnt do
those sort of things," Cantu said. "He drove those weapons to another gang
members house. He went out with his family and let the mules do the dirty
work."
Cantu told the jury that the gang members used the weapons Medrano
provided to slay the men, shooting each several times.
"The defendent put this high-powered military assault weapons into the
hands of his fellow gang members and anticipated life would be taken," she
said.
Villarreal opted not to make an opening statement. Outside the jurys
presence, he snubbed Assistant District Attorney Cregg Thompsons request
to have Medrano - who was wearing a leg brace but not handcuffs - moved
away from him for "security reasons."
Defendants commonly sit in the middle of their defense attorneys, but
Medrano sat in between Flores and Thompson.
Villarreal said he needed to sit next to his co-counsel Flores and moving
Medrano would require Villarreal to face his back to the jury; which he
said was "very impolite."
A sheriffs deputy sat on the bench immediately behind Medrano.
Prosecutors called their 1st witness, Edinburg Police officer William Wade
Walls, who responded 1st to the crime scene. He described discovering a
body outside in the grass, and finding 4 men inside the smaller of the 2
homes on the property.
Walls told jurors Rose Gutierrez, the mother of 2 of the victims, emerged
from the larger home crying. The men shot her son, Jerry Eugene Hidalgo,
in the next room, but left Gutierrez tied to a hospital bed.
Walls said he responded to the scene and then secured access to the
property, but was not responsible for the slayings investigation.
Under cross-examination from Villarreal, Walls said he had no evidence
linking Medrano to the crime.
(source: The Monitor)
**********************
Michael Bromwich told Houston's city council Monday that more money is
needed to finish cleaning up the crime lab.
On Monday, Houston city council was told that it will take an additional
million and a half dollars to finish the next phase of the HPD crime lab
cleanup. The money is needed to finish retesting evidence from some death
row cases, but police officials say paying for the tests could mean fewer
officers on the streets.
When the city of Houston hired a special master to dig into the ongoing
problems at the HPD crime labs, neither the city or hired gun Michael
Bromwich had any idea how expensive a proposition it would become.
"We need more money to do all the work that everyone expects us to do,
which includes reviewing 2, 799 cases that the lab has worked on over a
period of time from 1987 to 2004," he said.
In front of a city council committee Monday, Bromwich said his firm needs
$2.6 million to complete the second phase of the crime lab investigation.
The 1st phase already costs more than $1 million. That's hundreds of
thousands of dollars over budget.
And while it did reveal two crime lab employees might have falsified
results, it didn't answer one major question.
"I was hopeful that he would have been able to give us specific insight as
to whether or not we had innocent people sitting on death row right now,"
said Houston City Councilman Adrian Garcia.
Bromwich says the phase 2 study would provide answers, but the Houston
Police Department says it might have to cut a police cadet contract or
cancel a civilian jail contract to pay for it.
"This is not a scare tactic," said HPD Executive Assistant Chief Martha
Montalvo. "We were allocated a certain amount of money. We did not
anticipate the cost of what's occurring to be as high as it is."
Despite ongoing questions as to how the city will pay for phase 2, one
councilmember we spoke with says she doesn't believe a police cadet class
will need to be sacrificed.
"It's just obscene that we would be talking about the budget, in my
estimation," said Houston City Councilmember Ada Edwards. "We're talking
about peoples' lives. And we're talking 3 million dollars? C'mon. We spend
that much on Super Bowl games and parties."
Just how will the city of Houston pay for phase two, which many
councilmembers believe is needed? They're going to look into a proposed
solution that they can vote on in the next couple of weeks.
The HPD crime lab was officially certified this past May, but the DNA
section is not included in that recognition. Police Chief Harold Hurtt has
said earning the national accreditation is an important step in regaining
the community's trust. The lab is certified in most areas, except for DNA
testing. Chief Hurtt says his department and crime lab employees have made
many improvements over the past year to help the lab earn its
accreditation.
(source: ABC13 Eyewitness News)
*************************
No action on docket in Banks' bid for new trial
There is no docketed action in Delma Banks Jr.'s bid to overturn his
25-year-old conviction for the murder of Wayne Whitehead, court records
show.
Banks is on Texas' Death Row for the April 1980 killing of Whitehead, of
Texarkana, Texas. He was convicted by Bowie County jurors of capital
murder and sentenced to die by lethal injection.
Banks' appeals were drydocked for almost 20 years in the Texas appellate
courts before he finally got a break in federal district court Texarkana,
Texas. At that point, his lawyers, Clifton "Scrappy" Holmes and George
Kendall were able to provide the legal framework to get his death sentence
reversed and a new sentencing trial.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed the arguments of the Texas
Attorney General's office who argued the sentence was fair.
About 10 minutes before Banks was to die, the U.S. Supreme Court
intervened and ordered a stay. Later, after both sides argued the case to
the highest judges in the land, the U.S. Supreme Court in March of 2004
overturned the 5th Circuit but also strongly suggested that Banks'
conviction also be reconsidered.
U.S. District Judge David Folsom, on September 2004, officially received
the case back to the Texarkana docket from the 5th Circuit.
Banks and his lawyers filed a brief on Dec. 13, 2004 and the state
prosecutors filed their reply on March 1, 2005.
The only other action in the case came on June 9 when case records were
transferred from Tyler to Texarkana.
Holmes says there is nothing that either side can do in the case until a
hearing is ordered or until any ancillary issues are resolved in the 5th
Circuit. But Holmes says he does not believe the case will be dormant in
Folsom's court.
(source: Texarkana Gazette)
********************************
Court administrator proposal stirs up debate
Tarrant County officials are deeply divided over a consultant's
preliminary recommendations to hire a criminal court administrator and to
have the judiciary manage the pretrial release program instead of
commissioners.
The National Center for State Courts said a criminal court administrator
could monitor jail populations and attend to day-to-day operations,
leaving the county's criminal court judges more time to serve on the
bench.
The administrator, under the guidance of the judiciary, also could help
oversee pretrial release -- an agency that helps 1st-time offenders and
poor criminal defendants get out of jail faster, according the draft
report.
Pretrial release is now under the control of the commissioners court.
Tarrant County commissioners tentatively approved the court
administrator's position Monday during a budget workshop session, but said
they want to review the job description and the idea of moving pretrial
release back to the judiciary.
Judges praised the national center's findings, saying the recommendations
made in the report coincide with suggestions they've recently made to
county officials on how to streamline the local criminal justice system.
"I think [the recommendations] are necessary for the efficient
administration of justice," said Criminal District Court Judge Daryl
Coffey, who has long advocated a more centralized court management system.
Critics say the group's preliminary report is faulty and advocates
creating additional, costly bureaucracy. They point out that when judges
ran pretrial release more than a decade ago, "the wheels had fallen off
the thing."
District Clerk Tom Wilder openly opposes hiring a court administrator,
calling it wasteful, and fears that possible expansion of the pretrial
release agency will lead to an even greater loss of money.
The state Office of Court Administration reports show that Tarrant County
has the best clearance rate, and the lowest case backlog index, when
compared to Texas' other large counties, all of them with administrators,
Wilder said.
Disagreeing with the judges, Wilder has said his office can pick up some
of the duties of the proposed administrator.
Wilder also chastised the criminal judges -- all of them fellow members of
the Republican Party -- for wanting to waste taxpayers' money.
"Republicans are not supposed to be building bureaucracies," he said.
State District Judge Scott Wisch defended hiring an administrator given
their growing case loads and administrative duties. He also said Wilder
needs to remember that he does not speak for the judges.
"That's his bureaucracy versus ours," Wisch said. "This is a separation of
powers issue. They have more on their plate then they can deal with now."
Consistency, stability
The county commissioned the $32,000 study in June to find ways to improve
criminal court efficiency and relieve jail overcrowding. Consultants
talked to prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and bail bond agents.
In recent months the county's criminal court judges have taken a number of
steps to move cases more quickly, including the adoption of a case
management system that categorizes cases based on the seriousness of the
crime.
In February, using a state grant, the county also hired a part-time
magistrate and 4 financial advisers to evaluate the indigence claims of
poor criminal defendants requesting a court-appointed attorney.
The national center's report recommended hiring the magistrate full time
and having the county absorb the cost of the advisers once the grant
expires.
It also suggested a countywide, centralized magistrate system be developed
to establish a controlled and consistent process for determining probable
cause, setting bail and advising defendants of their rights.
But the report supports a court administrator, an idea that's been
recommended on several other occasions and that 15 of the 19 county and
district court judges endorsed during the consultants visit to town.
In May, judges proposed hiring a court administrator to monitor attorney
appointments, drug and mental-health services while also serving as a
liaison to the sheriff and commissioners.
The report said the other five large counties in Texas have at least one
court administrator who serves at the pleasure of the judges and keeps
monthly statistics, handles budget matters and works on obtaining grants.
"This position would bring a level of consistency and stability to the
criminal court system in Tarrant County that has not previously been
achievable," the report states.
Shifting control of pretrial release back to the judiciary is the report's
other major, and controversial, finding.
Pretrial release was created in 1979 with the express purpose of
expeditiously releasing low-flight risk defendants from custody, thereby
reducing pretrial detention costs and jail overcrowding.
Under the program, defendants charged with minor crimes such as
shoplifting and writing bad checks can get out jail by putting down $20,
or 3 % of their bond, whichever is larger, instead of paying a bail bond
agent.
In the past three years, about 3,000 defendants a year have avoided
spending a night in jail. About 9,400 bonds, or about 16 % of the total,
were written through the program.
Giving it back to the judiciary may be more responsive to the county's
needs in terms of jail populations and public safety. They also said a new
court administrator could help oversee the agency.
Initially, the agency was overseen by the judges. But in 1992, after
complaints that employees weren't coming to work and weren't helping with
jail overcrowding, County Administrator G.K. Maenius said the
commissioners took control.
"It was not only not run successfully, the wheels had fallen off the
thing," Maenius said.
Political hot potato
Wilder has written a lengthy rebuttal to their draft report, finding fault
with several their characterizations, including how well the pretrial
release program ran when the judges initially ran it.
The report fails to recognize that the county collects about $2 million a
year from bail-bond agents whose clients don't appear in court, he said.
With pretrial release, the county gets nothing, Wilder added.
"I have great difficulty in believing that pretrial release should be the
first option given its costs to the taxpayer," he said.
Commissioner J.D. Johnson was the only commissioner Monday to vote against
tentatively creating the $85,000-a-year job. Commissioners supporting the
motion said they wanted to review the job description.
"I feel that is a post that we really don't need," Johnson said. "I don't
think pretrial release will go with that post."
Commissioner Glen Whitley, who generally supports hiring an administrator,
said he wants whoever is hired to report to the judges and commissioners.
"I feel that this is an appropriate position," Whitley said. "And my guess
is that over time, this administrator will do things that cross all lines
and help all of the courts."
Commissioners did not talk about shifting control of pretrial release.
(source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
**************************************
3rd Time Is the Charm for State Judges Seeking Pay Raise
The Texas Legislature, which twice dashed judges' hopes for pay raises
earlier this year, gave members of the judiciary something to smile about
last week.
With no debate, the Senate passed H.B. 11 by a vote of 22 to 6 late on
Aug. 9 and sent it to Gov. Rick Perry for signing. The House approved the
bill in July.
"It's a grand day," says Linda Thomas, chief justice of the 5th Court of
Appeals in Dallas, who worked for passage of the pay raise.
"I think that this is a tremendous step forward in demonstrating that the
Legislature wants to be able to recruit and retain qualified judges,"
Thomas says. "This is going to help many judges decide that they can
afford to stay in the judiciary."
Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson is one of the judges
who says he'll serve as long as he can afford to stay on the bench. Many
judges have borrowed from their savings to continue serving, as their cost
of living has risen, but their judicial salaries haven't, Jefferson says.
"There is no dispute that judges need a pay raise," says state Sen. Robert
Duncan, Senate sponsor of the pay raise bill.
Duncan, R-Lubbock, Texas, a partner in Crenshaw, Dupree & Milam, says it
has been seven years since judges received an increase in their salaries.
Perry vetoed a 3 percent pay raise for judges in 2001.
Perry had not signed the bill by presstime on Aug. 11, but Duncan says the
governor's staff assured him that Perry would sign it. The governor opened
the second special session to the judicial compensation issue when he
called the session on July 21.
But Perry spokesman Robert Black says the governor is "keeping his options
open" with regard to signing the bill.
Jefferson notes that Texas has ranked 40th in the nation in terms of
judicial pay. "There are billions of dollars in disputes that come through
the courts every year and extremely important issues that affect people's
lives, like school finance," he says.
Duncan says the state wants the best legal minds in judicial positions but
hasn't been paying for that expertise.
"When graduating law students make more than the best legal minds in the
state, something's wrong," he says. "The last time I checked, people don't
want the lowest-paid surgeon to operate on their hearts, and I don't think
they want the lowest-paid lawyers making decisions about school finance
and the death penalty."
Jefferson says much of the credit for passing the pay raise should go to
Thomas, who helped mount a unified campaign made up of lawyers and judges
who urged lawmakers to increase the salaries.
"Judge Thomas was phenomenal," Jefferson says. "She was tireless, and I
think the credit for this pay raise goes to her."
The pay raise could be an early holiday present for judges. H.B. 11's
effective date is Dec. 1.
COURT FEES
Under the bill, judicial pay would increase from:
- $101,000 to $125,000 for state district judges;
- $107,000 to $137,500 for Court of Appeals justices; and
- $113,000 to $150,000 for justices on the state Supreme Court and Court
of Criminal Appeals.
Funding for the raises will come from a $37-per-case increase in the
filing fee in the civil courts and a $4 fee to be imposed on persons
convicted of criminal offenses.
Judges lost their pay raise amidst legislative wrangling over indigent
defense issues, shortly before the regular session ended on May 30.
Controversy arose over an amendment that state Sen. Rodney Ellis,
D-Houston, put on the pay raise bill during the Senate debate.
The amendment would have increased the fee for criminal convictions to $7,
with the additional revenue going for indigent defense. Ellis threatened
to filibuster a separate bill on standards for court-appointed lawyers for
indigent defendants, after a House-Senate conference committee removed
Ellis'amendment from the pay raise bill.
State Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin, sponsor of the indigent defense bill,
sealed the fate of the pay raise bill when he threatened to raise a
constitutional point of order against it.
In the 1st special session earlier this summer, Ellis again amended the
judges'salary bill to provide additional funding for indigent defense. The
bill stalled when legislators were unable to reach agreement on school
finance issues.
"Sen. Ellis was a statesman about it and agreed not to run with [the
amendment] this time," Duncan says.
"I didn't want to kill the bill, and I'm not sure I would have had the
votes to put [the amendment] on," Ellis says.
Ellis was one of the six senators who voted against H.B. 11. He says his
was a protest vote to make a point that the Legislature should fund
judicial pay raises out of the state's general revenue, not increases in
court fees.
"I don't think we ought to fund judicial pay raises with court fees,"
Ellis says.
Others who voted "no" on the bill were state Sens. Kip Averitt,
R-McGregor; Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin; Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler; Kyle
Janek, R-Houston; and Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso.
Barrientos, Eltife and Shapleigh say they support judicial pay raises but
voted against H.B. 11 because it also boosts state legislators'retirement
benefits, which are tied to state district judges' salaries.
Eltife and Shapleigh, a principal in the Shapleigh Law Firm, say
legislators should not increase their pensions when they have been unable
to pass a pay raise for teachers. Barrientos says his vote should prevent
legislative pensions from becoming a campaign issue that can be used
against him.
Casey Haney, spokesman for Janek, says the pension increase also caused
Janek to cast a "no" vote. "He couldn't see voting himself a pension
increase," Haney says.
Averitt did not return a telephone call seeking comment before presstime.
Duncan originally proposed de-linking the pensions from judicial salaries
when he filed the pay raise bill in the regular session. At that time, he
proposed to link the pensions to the governor's salary but removed the
provision after lawmakers gave the governor a pay raise. Further efforts
to de-link the pensions proved futile, Duncan says.
Notes Duncan, "There was no consensus about what we'd link [the pensions]
to."
(source: Texas Lawyer)
USA:
UC sociologist traces the evolution of the execution, USA
Past and present, the witness to the execution continues to have a
profound impact on the method of the execution, its procedure and its
publicity, according to a University of Cincinnati researcher. At the
100th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in
Philadelphia, Annulla Linders, UC assistant professor of sociology,
presents her paper, "The Return of the Spectacle? The Modern Execution
Event in the United States." Linders' presentation takes place at 2:30
p.m. Monday, Aug. 15, at the ASA meeting in Philadelphia.
Early findings from Linders' study suggest that the more recent practice
of involving the victim's family in witnessing the execution has once
again resulted in personalizing capital punishment, contradicting efforts
in the 19th century to bar executions from becoming a public spectacle.
"Viewed as a mirror held up to the execution, the audience is a
constitutive element of the execution and, in this sense, not only carries
the potential to grant (or deny) legitimacy to the execution event, but
also provides capital punishment with a set of cultural meanings that
reaches far beyond any particular execution," Linders writes.
Linders defines four general areas of audience influence that have led to
contemporary conflicts in capital punishment:
Pain and technology - The courthouse hangings have evolved into a humane
and painless form of execution, sparing the audience emotional turmoil and
avoiding embarrassment for the state. Outrage over electric chair and gas
chamber executions has made lethal injection the most common form of
execution today.
Procedures and professionals - Linders reports that the emotional demands
of execution witnesses who are family members of the victims are
challenging the precision and efficiency sought by prison officials and
secured by the involvement of disinterested professionals in such a way
that the success of the execution can no longer be measured exclusively in
terms of efficiency.
Publicity and public access - Public viewing of executions came to an end
in the 19th century, but the publicity issue is back again with the debate
over televised executions. Linder says the issue has arisen repeatedly
over the last few decades, and most recently in the case of Timothy
McVeigh, who was executed for the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal
building. Public access to executions is a persistent topic for both sides
of the death penalty issue.
Witness and psychological closure - Inviting the family of the victims to
witness executions is a new practice that emerged in the 1990s. Linders
finds that the call for emotional closure is adding additional pressure on
the execution not only to be swift and efficient, but also to satisfy the
psychological demands of the long-suffering families of the victims.
Early results of the study suggest 3 larger cultural connections are
linked to personalizing present executions, including pressure from the
victim's rights movement, associating the death of the perpetrator with
the worth of the victim and modern society's intolerance of premature and
unnatural deaths.
Dawn [email protected]
University of Cincinnati
http://www.uc.edu/news
(source: Medical News Today)
MISSISSIPPI:
Miss. Court Justice Faces Indictment
The state Supreme Court justice acquitted of bribery last week is charged
in a newly unsealed indictment with federal tax evasion, his attorney said
Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate unsealed the tax evasion indictment
on Monday against Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr.,
defense attorney Robert McDuff confirmed to The Associated Press.
The indictment was handed up March 22. It had been sealed in the lead-up
to the bribery trial after Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Burkhalter said
it would have "undue and potentially prejudicial impact" on the jury.
Diaz and two former trial judges had been accused of taking bribes from
prominent attorney Paul Minor, and all four men were tried together. Diaz
was acquitted of all counts Friday. Jurors were deadlocked on some of the
counts against his co-defendants, but none of the was convicted of any
counts.
The tax evasion indictment accuses Diaz and his former wife, Jennifer, of
filing misleading tax returns. The indictment says in 1999, the couple
underreported their income by more than $25,000, and in the following two
years they failed to pay more than $42,000 in taxes on income they
disguised as "loan repayments."
The indictment does not say whether that income was related to the alleged
bribes, and Burkhalter did not immediately return calls for comment.
"This has gone from prosecution to persecution," McDuff said in a
statement.
Jennifer Diaz had also been a defendant in the bribery trial but pleaded
guilty to a single tax count and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. She
was listed as a government witness, but did not take the stand during the
3-month trial.
Because of Diaz's acquittal, Brant Brantley, executive director of the
Commission on Judicial Performance, had said Monday that he expected a
special tribunal to consider a recommendation to reinstate Diaz to the
high court.
Brantley made that statement before learning of the unsealing of the
indictment. He said Tuesday he could not speculate "what action, if any,
the commission might take in light of this new development."
After the verdict was returned last week, Diaz had told reporters outside
the Jackson courthouse that he was "looking forward to get back to work."
A tribunal - 7 judges selected by the secretary of state - had suspended
Diaz with pay on Dec. 16, 2003, not long after the bribery indictment was
handed up. Diaz and the other judges were accused of accepting cash, loans
and gifts from Minor in exchange for favorable rulings in Minor's cases.
Diaz was appointed to the high court by Gov. Ronnie Musgrove in 2000 to
fill a vacancy. The next year, Diaz was elected to an 8-year term. Diaz
had previously served 5 years on the state Court of Appeals and 6 years in
the state House of Representatives.
(source: Associated Press)
