August 19 TEXAS: Jurors see assault weapons in Edinburg massacre trial Jurors on Thursday viewed several high-powered assault weapons connected to the January 2003 murders of 6 men in north Edinburg. Rodolfo "Kreeper" Medrano, 26, stands trial on capital murder charges he bought and kept those weapons for lower-ranking Tri-City Bomber gang members who used them in the 6-person homicide. Police found the victims shot several times within and outside two small homes at 2915 E. Monte Cristo Road. Forensic scientist Alex Madrigal, who works at the McAllen crime lab, testified he accompanied investigators from several law enforcement agencies to different locations in the Rio Grande Valley including Weslaco, Brownsville and Elsa on Jan. 24, 2003, the same day Medrano and several men were arrested. In Elsa, they found a weapon case in the trunk of a car which contained ammunition clips, a bag of bullets, 5 SKS assault weapons, 12-gauge shotgun, a broken 45-caliber semi automatic weapon and a rifle. Madrigal testified he inspected the weapons under a high-powered microscope and found small blood stains on an SKS firearm. A DNA test revealed the blood came from Juan Delgado Jr., one of the victims in the Monte Cristo murders. The DNA analyzed did not match Medrano but he did not test for fingerprints, Madrigal said under cross-examination from Medranos defense attorney Hector Villarreal. Although Hidalgo County prosecutors acknowledge Medrano was not at the scene when the murders occurred, he is being tried under the law of parties, which allows a person to face punishment if he or she conspires with others to commit a criminal act that ends in murder. Medrano has told police he was at home with his wife on the night of the murders and learned of the slayings on the news the next day. He is the 3rd of 13 men charged in the slayings to stand trial. 2 are already on death row - Juan Navarro Ramirez and Humberto "Gallo" Garza. A 3rd codefendant in the Monte Cristo murders is also on death row for a separate multi-homicide also tied to the Tri-City Bombers - Robert Gene "Bones" Garza - who was convicted in the 2002 murders of 4 women in Donna. Medrano is also indicted in the Donna murders. The 7 remaining co-defendants are awaiting separate trials in Hidalgo County Jail, and 2 others have not been arrested. Investigators from the Texas Department of Public Safety assisted Edinburg Police collect and analyze evidence collected at the scene. At the time the McAllen crime lab was closed due to an internal audit that found deficiencies, Madrigal testified. He also said he helped investigators collect evidence such as a black-knit hat, shoe prints and blood smears. Madrigal sent the items to Austin for analysis. Medranos capital murder trial began Monday in 332nd state District Judge Mario Ramirezs court. Testimony will continue today. (source: The Monitor) OHIO: Spirkos attorneys ask for clemency Attorneys for a convicted killer who still maintains his innocence have filed an application for clemency from Ohio Gov. Bob Taft. John G. Spirko is on death row for the murder of Elgin Postmistress Betty Jane Mottinger on Aug. 9, 1982. He came under suspicion after authorities learned he knew far more about the crime than had been made public, but his attorneys believe Spirko learned that information from the authorities, not from having committed it. "He's innocent. His conviction was based on a fundamentally unfair trial," said Alvin Dunn, one of Spirko's attorneys through Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a Washington, D.C., law firm. "He was convicted on a case that the state has admitted wasn't true." "These cases are very difficult. There's been a conviction, and the state is trying to preserve it," Dunn said. The hearing with Taft will take place Tuesday, Dunn said. The application, which is several inches thick, details the reasons why Spirkos attorneys believe he is innocent. (source: Lima News) ************************ Man deserves death penalty, state tells Parole Board In a hefty filing with the Ohio Parole Board, the state argued Thursday that death-row inmate John Spirko is guilty of murdering a rural postmaster in 1982 and has never produced any evidence to undermine his conviction or show that he should not be executed next month. The 80-page filing reviews what the state considers overwhelming evidence against Spirko - including his many statements about the abduction and murder of Elgin, Ohio, postmaster Betty Jane Mottinger, his purported knowledge of details only the killer could know and testimony from 2 former cellmates that Spirko had confessed to the killing. Lawyers for Van Wert County and Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro argue that Spirko's appeals have been heard repeatedly by state and federal courts during the last 20 years - and all have rejected his claims. Spirko has a clemency hearing before the parole board on Tuesday. His lawyers have asked for a reprieve from his Sept. 20 execution date while a federal judge considers questions about the credibility of the lead investigator in the case and arguments that the state used fraud to prevail in an earlier appeal. Spirko's lawyers have argued that the investigator lied in his many statements and that it's not clear that Spirko actually supplied details only the killer would know. They also assert in court documents that Spirko's former cellmates later recanted their testimony. (source: Cleveland Plain Dealer) ************************** State urges parole board to reject pardon plea The state yesterday urged the Ohio Parole Board to reject John Spirko's application for a full pardon, arguing that the inmate's own words place the knife that killed an Elgin postmistress in his hands in 1982. In their filing before the board, the offices of Van Wert County Prosecutor Charles Kennedy and Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro quote a letter that had been written by Spirko to his then-girlfriend on Jan. 13, 1983, describing his interview with a postal investigator. "Paul [Hartman] known that I knew something about this case, there are some things that I told him that only the person's who did this [expletive] know, there is no if and ands about that, he knows I know..." Spirko wrote. In anticipation of an Aug. 23 clemency hearing, Spirko's lawyers have asked Gov. Bob Taft to grant him a full pardon, arguing that he's innocent of the Aug. 9, 1982, kidnapping and murder of postmistress Betty Jane Mottinger. Absent that, it asks for a delay in the scheduled Sept. 20 execution and appointment of a special investigator to look into the case. The state's filing opposing clemency argues that Spirko, while trying to secure a deal for himself and for his girlfriend in an unrelated matter, described Mrs. Mottinger's purse, the approximate number of times that she had been stabbed, and the missing stone from her pinky ring. "[Appeals] courts have all noted that Spirko's guilt was established beyond a reasonable doubt by his description to investigators of details concerning the crime that only the murderer, or someone who was present when the murder was committed, would know," the filing reads. "The courts time and again have noted Spirko's failure to offer a credible, innocent explanation for his guilty knowledge," it adds. Spirko has claimed he read some of the details in newspapers and that some were introduced by Mr. Hartman during jailhouse interviews. They maintain that no physical evidence ties Spirko to the crime beyond an ever-changing story pointing in different directions. "Lying is not a capital offense," they wrote. Spirko has also maintained prosecutors knowingly presented a false theory of the crime to Spirko's jury by arguing he conspired with former Kentucky prison cellmate Delaney Gibson to rob the Elgin post office when they had reason to believe Gibson was in North Carolina at the time. "The Gibson evidence does not prove that Gibson could not have been in Elgin, Ohio, on the morning that the crime was committed," reads the state's filing. "More relevant to Spirko's [constitutional] claim, however, is the fact the Gibson evidence not only does not eliminate Spirko as the perpetrator, it eliminates his best defense. "If Gibson was not a participant in the murder, then he was not, as Spirko told the investigators and claimed at trial, the source of all of Spirko's detailed knowledge of the crime," the filing adds. "And if Spirko did not learn the details of the crime from Gibson, from whence did all of that detail come?" (source: Toledo Blade) FLORIDA: Grand jury indicts 13 in slayings A Duval County grand jury indicted 13 people Thursday on 1st-degree murder charges in 7 homicides, opening the door for prosecutors to consider seeking the death penalty. Seven of the defendants are juveniles and won't face the death penalty, including a 14-year-old girl charged with fatally stabbing her foster brother last month. State Attorney Harry Shorstein said he hasn't formally decided whether to seek death sentences against any of the adult defendants. He has 45 days to notify the court of his intentions once the suspects are arraigned. "Some of the cases seem to be heinous enough to merit consideration for the death penalty," Shorstein said. Shorstein said they include Paul Christian Rentas-Rivera, charged with killing 13-year-old Brianna Ganas, his estranged girlfriend's niece, as they tried to flee from him in Jacksonville Beach, and 4 people charged with kidnapping 63-year-old James and Carol Sumner from their Southside home and burying them alive last month in Georgia. Bruce Nixon, 18, is in the Duval County jail and scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 7, but his 3 co-defendants -- Alan Wade, 18; Michael Jackson, 23; and Tiffany Cole, 23 -- are in custody in South Carolina, where extradition warrants have been sent. Rentas-Rivera, 29, is scheduled for arraignment Sept. 1 and faces additional counts of kidnapping, stalking, child abuse, attempted murder, burglary and resisting arrest in the July incident at the beach. In 14-year-old Latosha Marks' case, Shorstein said he sought adult charges because the juvenile justice system wouldn't be able to keep her confined long enough to deal with her long-standing mental and emotional problems. "More time was needed to deal with some of the problems from her background, most of which are mental," Shorstein said. "The help she needs will take a lot of time." Marks is charged with killing DeShawn Hutchinson, 15, who shared a foster home with her in a Southside public housing complex. Reggie Griffin, 13, is charged in juvenile court with holding Hutchinson down and hiding the body and weapon. The grand jury also indicted: - Keith Monford, Michael Workman and Aaron Wright, all 16, in the July kidnapping, robbery and shooting of Mary White, 54, of Arlington. - Samuel Jones, 14, and Corey Odol and Todd Thornton, both 15, in the July death of Chad Sullivan, 30, whose body was found in his burning Westside home. - Canard Herndon, 30, in the home invasion killing last year of Dwyer Bland, 34. (source: The Florida Times-Union) ************************ Mordenti gets life in prison Mordenti, who previously had served 14 years on death row before winning a new trial, must serve 25 years before he's eligible for parole. Michael Mordenti was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for the murder of Thelma Royston. Mordenti, who previously had served 14 years on death row before winning a new trial, must serve 25 years before he's eligible for parole. Mordenti, who maintained his innocence when he spoke at the sentencing hearing, went through 3 trials for the 1989 murder-for-hire case. His conviction in the 1st trial was overturned, and the 2nd ended in a mistrial earlier this year. A 3rd jury convicted him again on Monday, but prosecutors had previously agreed not to seek the death penalty this time. (source: St. Petersburg Times) PENNSYLVANIA: Luzerne County Courts----DAs office took files, says clerk Robert Reilly said he had a procedure to clear files, but the office ignored his plan. "In the future, I will not allow the District Attorneys Office to take the files."----Robert Reilly Clerk of Courts In Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County Clerk of Courts Robert Reilly hoped a Wednesday hearing would give him insight to better handle the abundance of sealed files accumulated in his office safe. It only left him with another question, though. Reilly is now pondering how he can clear the massive number of sealed files belonging to the District Attorneys Office after a prosecutor and detective removed and opened sealed files from Reillys office against Reillys will. "There are some common sense things here that didn't happen," he said. "I didn't know they were going to open them. "In the future, I will not allow the District Attorneys Office to take the files." Reilly thought he had a successful plan to clear out the stale files: let members of the District Attorney's Office review a list of the files, indicate which ones could be unsealed and obtain a court order allowing Reilly to unseal them. But that's not what happened. Instead, the confidential files in an ongoing death penalty case were removed from Reilly's office and ripped open by members of the District Attorney's Office. Reilly said the slip-up would have been avoided had members of the prosecutor's office properly followed Reillys plan. That way, they would have seen the Hugo Selenski files on the list and realize they were not theirs. Selenski is a suspect in 2 homicides. Also, Reilly said, he never authorized prosecutors to remove any files from the office, and even after they did, he figured they would at least examine the files first to see if they were accompanied by a sealing order before opening them. Reilly said he has followed the same procedure with the state Office of Attorney General with success. He will continue the practice with that office. "That's the same procedure I thought the DA's office was going to do," Reilly said. "But they came to me and said they wanted the files." Reilly said he was "totally surprised" with how much blame prosecutors pointed at him in the incident. District Attorney's Office employees on Wednesday testified Reilly had come to them for help in relieving the overcrowded safe. They tried to help, they said, but Reilly should have never allowed the orders sealed by a judge to be stacked with prosecutors' sealed warrants. They also said Reilly should have been following a law that requires him to open sealed warrants after the 60-day sealing period expires. Carol Crane, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney's Office, said none of the office's representatives pointed blame at Reilly at Wednesdays hearing. "We merely explained what happened," Crane said Thursday, rehashing how "inadvertently things were given to us which we thought were search warrants." But once the prosecutors realized the Selenski orders were not their search warrants, they did the right thing by telling the judge and Selenskis attorney about the error. "We would not have been in court (Wednesday) had we not done the right thing," she said, noting the prosecutors could have quietly resealed the orders and given them back to Reilly. It is yet unclear what ramifications the unsealing could have. The assistant district attorney, Jair Novajosky, and the detective, Gary Capitano, who is also an arresting officer in the Selenski case, said they did not see the contents of the confidential orders. Now Reilly is considering having anyone bringing a sealed file to his office write clearly on the file to indicate whether it is a search warrant. He is also considering having sealed warrants secured in a white envelope and "everything else" in a brown envelope. Reilly also vowed to start opening all sealed warrants after the sealing period expires without contacting the sealing agency. He will also contact the county commissioners in an effort to obtain a larger safe to hold more files. But he needs to find room for the safe, also, he said. Crane said her bosses agree with Reilly that the root of the entire problems stems from a lack of space inside their respective courthouse offices. (source: Times Leader)
