August 24 FLORIDA: Thought her son was safe, mom testifies at murder trial----He and his father were gunned down in the father's North Jacksonville home. Sojourner Sims Parker told her son, Phillip, she loved him and watched him walk into his father's North Jacksonville home for a weekend visit. She remembers feeling a level of comfort when Phillip's father's roommate came to the door. At 13, Phillip wasn't quite old enough to leave alone, not in a strange neighborhood miles from the Atlantic Beach home he shared with his mom and stepdad. Never did Parker imagine that February day last year would be the last time she would see Phillip alive, she testified Tuesday. "If I didn't think he was going to be safe, I wouldn't have left him," Parker told a jury. And she surely didn't believe harm would come from the roommate who answered the door, Thomas Bevel, whom Phillip's dad called his nephew. Phillip Sims would have started his freshman year at Fletcher High School this month. But instead, he and his father, Garrick Stringfield, were gunned down inside Stringfield's Colchester Road home with Stringfield's AK-47. Bevel, known on the streets as Tom-Tom, is charged with 2 counts of 1st-degree murder. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Bevel, 23. He is charged with murdering Stringfield, then turning the rifle on Phillip, who was in another room innocently playing a video game, Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda said. Bevel's lawyer argued that someone else shot the father and son. He said there is no physical evidence linking his client to the crime and no motive, and Stringfield, 32, had plenty of potential enemies after years of selling drugs. "This is a significant case of mistaken identity," attorney Refik Eler said. But de la Rionda told jurors Bevel confessed to police after initially blaming the shootings on two masked gunmen who inexplicably let him go. Bevel also discussed the shootings with his girlfriend after they locked the house and drove away in Stringfield's car. "He talked about shooting a 13-year-old boy and about how he didn't want to leave a witness," de la Rionda said. What Bevel didn't know, de la Rionda said, was that he did leave a witness, Felitta Smith, who was in Stringfield's bedroom when the shooting started. He thought he had killed her, too, the prosecutor said. Smith testified that she and Stringfield were in bed watching television when Bevel knocked on the door. As soon as Stringfield opened it, Bevel opened fire, hitting Stringfield once in the face and Smith repeatedly in the legs, hip and back. "I was screaming when I heard the shots," she testified. "He said ... 'shut up,' so I stopped screaming and just lay there and played dead." Then she heard the house doors being locked, car doors opening and shutting and a car driving away. She said she dialed 911 on Stringfield's cell phone. "I couldn't move. My body was ... burning," she said. "I thought I was going to die." But Eler said she initially told police 2 masked men did the shooting. Only after Bevel's name and picture were in the news did she identify him as the shooter, Eler told the jury. Smith testified she didn't know what she had gotten in the middle of and feared for her and her family's safety if she identified Bevel. Many of her relatives still live in the Eastside neighborhood where she, Stringfield and Bevel all grew up. "I was scared. I didn't want to get involved. I didn't know what was going on," she told jurors. "I just didn't want to have to identify anyone." The trial is expected to last the rest of the week. If jurors find Bevel guilty of first-degree murder on at least one count, they would return after Labor Day to recommend a sentence to Circuit Judge L. Page Haddock. (source: The Times-Union) ************************ Fort Myers grand jury indicts two men in murder of girl, 17 In Fort Myers, a grand jury indicted two men charged with the murder of a 17-year-old honor student and setting her on fire, the state attorney's office said Tuesday. Jeremy Chapman, 23, and Joshua Henninger, 17, of Cape Coral, were charged with 1st-degree murder, kidnapping, sexual battery with a deadly weapon or great force, and arson of a vehicle, said Randall McGruther, chief assistant state attorney. Chapman was also charged with first-degree murder and robbery with a deadly weapon in the death of his roommate, 65-year-old John Hardin, McGruther said. McGruther said prosecutors will be "making a determination whether to seek the death penalty for Chapman in the near future." Henninger will not be eligible for the death penalty because of his age, McGruther said. State Attorney Stephen Russell will be heading the prosecution on both cases. Chapman and Henninger were arrested on Aug. 6 after Annemarie Cruz Randazzo's burned remains were found by campers in a wooded area. Randazzo had stopped at Henninger's home July 21, but got into an argument with the men and one of them struck her, police said. The men tied her up, drove her to an unknown location and killed her, then put her body in an abandoned refrigerator and set it ablaze, police said. Police found Hardin's body in his garage after they said Chapman admitted killing him with a crow bar. Hardin had wanted Chapman to move out of his house and they had been arguing for several days, the Cape Coral police said. Police said Hardin was killed around July 29, more than a week after the teen was murdered. After Hardin's murder, Chapman stole his car and other belongings, police said. The car and some items were found. Chapman told detectives he destroyed other items and the murder weapon by setting them on fire in a construction trash bin, police said. (source: Associated Press) ILLINOIS: Death penalty law calls for defense budget A new law will demand greater fiscal accountability from court-appointed defense lawyers in death penalty cases. Senate Bill 2082, which becomes law on Jan. 1, is meant to more closely monitor the state's Capital Litigation Trust Fund. The taxpayer-funded account was created five years ago in an effort to improve Illinois' troubled death penalty system by ensuring that accused murderers have adequate resources to defend themselves. Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed the measure on Monday. "The governor signed the bill because he wants to makes sure the fund stays viable and isn't abused," said Blagojevich spokeswoman Rebecca Rausch. The new law will require defense attorneys to submit a proposed budget and an itemized accounting of the work they perform in a death penalty case. The judge trying a case must review and approve the case budget, which may be modified. Documents related to the defense's budget in a capital case are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act until after the trial and any subsequent appeal are completed. A March 2004 report in the Springfield State Journal-Register spotlighted the lack of oversight for the Capital Litigation Trust Fund. The report cited as an example Minnesota attorney John Paul Carroll, who billed the trust fund almost $900,000 to defend accused child-killer Cecil Sutherland in a trial in Belleville. The report also noted that the Sutherland case was the most expensive case ever for the Capital Litigation Trust Fund, which has provided about $13.7 million in more than 80 cases. The total bill for the Sutherland case alone exceeded $2 million. (source: Peoria Journal Star) MASSACHUSETTS: Sacco, Vanzetti deaths recalled As it has done every Aug. 23 for the past 15 years, a Western Massachusetts organization opposed to the death penalty remembered yesterday the 1927 executions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a case that remains controversial to this day. The Hampden County Chapter of the Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty and the Catholic Charities Agency co-sponsored a gathering at the Bishop John Marshall Center that featured two speakers: Robert P. Nave, executive director of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, and Easthampton resident Robert Meeropol. Meeropol is the youngest son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for conspiring to give the secret of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Both men voiced opposition to Gov. W. Mitt Romney's attempt to have the death penalty reinstituted using some system that would ensure an innocent person is not put to death. Capital punishment was outlawed in the state in 1984. "It is ludicrous that he could, while pandering for greater office, say he has discovered a perfect penalty," Nave said. "It's ridiculous." Romney has said he is exploring a run for president in 2008. Meeropol, who lives in Easthampton, is executive director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children and author of "An Execution in the Family." More than a half century later, his parents' case is still vigorously debated. Nave, who is vice chairman of Amnesty International's steering committee to abolish capital punishment, spent much of his time before an audience of about 100 people speaking about the Michael Ross case. The 45-year-old Ross, a serial killer who strangled 6 teenage girls and 2 young women in the 1980s, waived his final appeals and died by lethal injection May 13 at Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers, Conn.. It was the 1st time a death sentence had been carried out in New England since 1960. "What we saw was a colossal waste of time and money," said Nave, adding that the case afforded celebrity status to someone "who craved it so much." Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants executed for murder and robbery after a shoe company paymaster and his guard were shot to death in south Braintree in 1920. Defenders of the pair believe the two were condemned because they were immigrants and anarchists. In 1977, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis took the unprecedented step of proclaiming the pair had not received a fair trial. (source: The Republican) IDAHO: Idaho Prosecutor to Seek Death Penalty Prosecutors will seek the death penalty when Joseph Edward Duncan III goes to trial on charges that he bound and killed 3 people in northern Idaho. Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Douglas made the announcement Tuesday after Duncan's arraignment. Not-guilty pleas were entered on Duncan's behalf to charges of murder and kidnapping. Douglas said he would seek the death penalty on all 6 charges against Duncan: 3 counts of first-degree murder and 3 counts of 1st-degree kidnapping. First District Judge Fred Gibler set a trial date of Jan. 17, 2006. Clad in red jail overalls, with scruffy hair and a beard, Duncan did not speak during the 30-minute hearing in the Kootenai County Jail courtroom. When Gibler asked for a plea, Public Defender John Adams said, "We stand silent on that." The judge entered not-guilty pleas to the charges. Duncan, 42, is accused of binding and killing 3 people in a scheme authorities say was designed to enable him to abduct 2 children for sex. Before the hearing, Douglas said he believes Duncan can get a fair trial in Kootenai County, despite three months of intense publicity about the killings and simultaneous abductions of Shasta Groene, 8, and Dylan Groene, 9, from the home. Shasta was rescued early July 2 while eating with Duncan at a Denny's restaurant here. Dylan's body was found a few days later in Montana. Duncan is charged with killing Shasta and Dylan's mother, Brenda Groene, 40; her boyfriend Mark McKenzie, 37; and her 13-year-old son Slade. Authorities contend he watched their home along Interstate 90 for days, then entered the night of May 15-16, tied up the three victims -- the basis for the three kidnapping charges -- and beat them to death with a hammer. Court documents allege he then held Shasta and her brother for weeks at a primitive campsite in Montana where he molested them and eventually killed the little boy. Federal charges are expected later in the crimes against the younger children, since they were taken across a state line. Under federal law, a kidnapping that results in a death is punishable by death. While it is The Associated Press' policy not to identify alleged victims of sexual assault in most cases, the search for Shasta and her brother was so heavily publicized that their names are widely known. Duncan also is being investigated in the killings of a 10-year-old boy in California in 1997 and 3 children -- ages 7, 9 and 11 -- in Washington state in 1996. Duncan was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Washington for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old Tacoma boy in 1980. Authorities said he was paroled in 1994 and moved into a halfway house in Seattle. He was returned to prison in 1997 after testing positive for marijuana use, then was released in 2000. At the time of his July arrest, Duncan was a fugitive charged with molesting a 6-year-old boy in Minnesota. (source: Associated Press) ******************* Idaho prosecutors to seek death for man accused in Groene slayings Prosecutors in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, will seek the death penalty against convicted sex offender Joseph Edward Duncan III for his alleged role in the death of three people in their rural Idaho home. In an e-mail to Courttv.com, Kootenai County prosecuting attorney Bill Douglas said he intended to file capital charges against Duncan after his arraignment Tuesday on three counts of kidnapping and 3 counts of murder for holding Brenda Groene, her 13-year-old son, Slade, and her boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, in their home before brutally bludgeoning them to death. Duncan will likely face separate federal charges for abducting Groene's young children, Shasta and Dylan, and murdering Dylan in Montana. "If this isn't an egregious example of when the death penalty should be applied, I don't know what is," said Norm Early, former Denver district attorney and media spokesman for the National Association of District Attorneys. "If we give this guy a break, then the next guy who just kills 2 people, how can we justify it for him?" Adding to the gravity of the charges, Early said, was Shasta's alleged statement that she and Dylan witnessed their older brother, Slade, stumbling out of the home with a hammer in his head before Duncan pulled him back in. "That's coming from an 8-year-old girl," Early said, speaking on behalf of Douglas. "No one should have to see that." Evidence that Duncan allegedly staked out the home and planned the murders in order to abduct the young children also makes the charges punishable by death. "These were done under the most heinous circumstances," Early said. (source: Court TV)
