August 29 TEXAS: Fire destroys Tecula home 2 people were injured when the home of Evelyn Cook was gutted by a Thursday morning fire, and investigators are still unsure as to how it began. Smoke from the 2-story brick home, located about a mile from Hwy. 135 on F.M. 2064, could be seen for miles before firemen from Jacksonville, North Cherokee County Volunteer, Troup, Earle's Chapel Volunteer and New Summerfield Volunteer fire departments were able to contain the blaze. Evelyn Cook was life-flighted to Trinity Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler, and later transported to a Dallas hospital for burns sustained in the fire. Also in the house was her son, Kerry Max Cook, his wife, Sandra, and their young son. Mr. Cook was visiting his mother from out of town and also working on his autobiography - a book about his conviction for the 1977 murder of Linda Jo Edwards and subsequent release after 3 mistrials. Mr. Cook said the manuscript was lost in the fire. Family members inside the home when the fire began around 8 a.m. did not know what started the blaze. County Fire Marshall Jack White, who is investigating the cause of the fire, said Mr. Cook was trapped upstairs and jumped from the garage roof to escape the fire. Mr. Cook was taken to East Texas Medical Center-Jacksonville for injures sustained during his fall. White was unable to confirm neighbors' reports that Evelyn Cook had oxygen tanks in the home and that they caused small explosions after the fire began. He did not know what started the fire. "We're actually just trying to piece all those things together," White said. "Right now, I don't have the foggiest clue. It's too hot to get in and move through the dwelling in order to find the area of origin. We'll have to wait until things cool down, so it will be a little bit before we can know." White was also unsure what kind of insurance the family had on the home. Neighbors and friends came to show support for the family and offer cool drinks to the family and the firemen, who worked for about an hour to control the fire. (source: Jacksonville Daily Progress) ********************** Victims' mother reacts to death sentence In Edinburg, the mother of 2 victims says she wants to see all of the suspects put to death. A Valley mother was relieved to learn another suspect pegged in the Edinburg Massacre will join two other convicted killers on death row. Juan Navarro Ramirez and Humberto "Gallo" Garza were already convicted in the massacre; Rodolfo "Kreeper" Medrano was convicted and sentenced to death last week. Graciela Delgado still has a lot of unanswered questions about the night her sons, Juan Jr., and Juan Delgado III. There were 2 calls made from his cell phone, Graciela said in Spanish. If it wasn't him, who called me? she asked. Where is his cell phone? Why can't police find the gun that killed my son? But Graciela said she does find some peace knowing the killers will pay for what they did, she said. "I wanted him (Medrano) to get the death penalty," Graciela said, "what he did is unforgivable." "With God's help," she said, "I will be in that courtroom until every single one of them gets the death penalty." Next in line to face trial is 28-year-old Jeffrey "Dragon" Juarez. (source: KRGV News) *************************** Many crime labs won't meet state's accreditation rules----Smaller police departments say no one will collect, test their evidence Many police departments will be left waiting in line for other agencies to analyze evidence so it can be admitted at trial since state records show only one-third of the state's unaccredited crime labs will meet the accreditation standard by Thursday's deadline. They face a 2003 law that requires labs to achieve standards required for accreditation by Thursday. Without accreditation, the labs are banned from introducing evidence for criminal trials. That means large police departments will have to forgo some analysis. Officials at smaller departments say they will have no one to collect and test their crime scene evidence and one private lab in business for decades plans to close. "We still don't know how devastating the impact is going to be, but it is going to be huge," Mansfield Police Chief Steve Noonkester said. "It is going to hurt every small city in the state." Eighteen labs, 13 operated by the Texas Department of Public Safety, already were accredited. Those labs will now have to analyze the evidence from departments that aren't accredited while trying to deal with a DPS backlog of 1,100 DNA cases, said spokeswoman Tela Mange. Each approved lab has received accreditation in at least 1 of 7 areas. But more than 28 remain unaccredited in all areas. DPS' Austin lab is the only one in the state accredited in all 7: controlled substances, toxicology, biology/DNA, firearms, questioned documents, trace evidence and fingerprints. Noonkester used a private lab, Forensic Consultant Services in Fort Worth, to investigate major crimes in Mansfield, a North Texas city of about 32,000. However, the lab will shut its doors Thursday because lab owner Max Courtney, who has worked as a forensic analyst for more than 3 decades, couldn't afford the costs involved with accreditation. Accreditation can cost up to $50,000 for the application and inspection. It can take up to a year to prepare and submit the application and another five months for an inspection. Then it can take up to another year to correct any deficiencies. "Accreditation is not necessarily the end-all answer to everything, but at least there are some standards that labs have to adhere to," Rep. Kevin Bailey, D-Houston, said of the legislation he sponsored. The standards were needed, Bailey said. The legislation was prompted by problems at the Houston police crime lab, which closed its DNA section in 2002. An investigation revealed serious deficiencies, including a lack of training for analysts, insufficient documentation by workers and possible contamination of DNA samples. (source: Houston Chronicle) MARYLAND: Sniper Ends Protest in Md. Jail, Eats Again John Allen Muhammad, the convicted sniper who had refused to eat after arriving at the Montgomery County jail a week ago, began taking meals over the weekend, his attorney said last night. Muhammad, 44, who was transferred to Maryland from a Virginia prison, ate 2 meals Saturday, said public defender Paul DeWolfe, who is representing him. On Thursday, a judge granted the county the right to force-feed Muhammad if medically needed. In explaining Muhammad's reason for ending his hunger strike, DeWolfe said, "We are working on issues he is concerned about." Corrections officials have said in court papers that Muhammad objected to the food at the county jail and to limits on his access to legal documents. It was not clear last night whether any progress had been made in resolving the complaints. "All I can tell you is that we have been working on it," DeWolfe said. Montgomery's corrections director, Arthur Wallenstein, said he could not discuss issues of health or feeding that would infringe on inmates' privacy. The menu for Muhammad's first meals could not be learned. In addition to its regular fare, Wallenstein said, the jail serves special vegan diets for vegetarians. People complying with religious restrictions and those with medical needs also get special food, Wallenstein said. According to last week's court filing, a jail official said Muhammad had requested a vegan diet but had insisted that he determine when he got certain foods. Muhammad has been sentenced to death in Prince William County. He and fellow defendant Lee Boyd Malvo face murder charges in 6 2002 killings in Montgomery. Malvo, 20, was sentenced to life in prison in a Fairfax County case. (source: Washington Post) USA: 8 years in a Louisiana jail, but he never went to trial When he was charged with murder in 1996, James Thomas, an impoverished day laborer in Baton Rouge, became like many other criminal defendants: With no money to hire a lawyer, he had to rely on the government to provide him with one. He then spent the next 8 years in jail, waiting for his case to go to trial. It never did. Last spring, a Louisiana state appeals court ruled that prosecutors had waited too long to try him, and it threw the charge out. By then, Thomas was 34, his alibi witness for the night of the murder had died of kidney disease, and his case had become a symbol of the increasing problems within the nation's public defender system. "I can't think of any reason why he would have so completely fallen off their radar screen except to suggest (public defenders) were so busy and so understaffed and underfunded, they allowed his case to slip," says Chris Alexander, Thomas' new private lawyer. Alexander got the charge dismissed after Thomas' mother scraped together $500 to hire him. More than 40 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that every person charged with a crime is entitled to legal representation - provided by the government, if necessary - the promise is an empty one for many low-income defendants. Tens of thousands of poor people go to jail every year without ever talking to a lawyer, the National Legal Aid & Defender Association in Washington, D.C., found in a nationwide survey this spring of indigent legal services. The survey found that such programs across the nation are short on lawyers, investigators and other staff, and that they frequently fail to investigate the charges against the client, hire necessary experts and make appropriate motions in court. One of the worst examples the association found was the case of another Louisiana man, Johnny Lee Bell. He was convicted of 2nd-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole last year after meeting with a public defender for what Bell says was just 11 minutes before trial. He has appealed his conviction on the basis of ineffective counsel, says his new private lawyer, James Beane. "There's a real disconnect in this country between what people perceive is the state of indigent defense and what it is," says David Carroll, the group's research director. "I attribute that to shows like Law & Order, where the defendant says, 'I want a lawyer,' and all of a sudden Legal Aid appears in the cell. That's what people think." The American Bar Association examined legal services for the poor in 22 states this year and came to a similar conclusion. Bill Whitehurst, an Austin lawyer who led the effort, says the ABA study reveals a system "mired in crisis," in which inadequacies in funding, excessive caseloads carried by lawyers and a lack of legal experience have become routine. It's unclear how many people are wrongly behind bars because of problems in public defender programs, Whitehurst says, but it's clear that there are some. "Not only is it inadequate, it's a tragedy," Whitehurst says of the public defender system. "The worst thing that can happen is for an innocent person to go to jail. What we are finding is that we have been doing this with some regularity. You can't turn on the TV now without Larry King talking about some guy who was convicted and was absolutely innocent." Wide discrepancies in funding Poor people charged with crimes that could result in jail time have been entitled to lawyers since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963. A Florida man, Clarence Gideon, could not afford to hire a lawyer and represented himself on charges stemming from a pool hall burglary that netted a few dollars. He served five years. From prison, Gideon hand-wrote a petition asking the Supreme Court to review his case. When the court overturned the conviction, Gideon was provided with a new lawyer. The lawyer found an alibi witness, and Gideon was acquitted. Today, legal services usually are provided to poor people in one of two ways: by salaried lawyers working in taxpayer-funded public defender's offices or by private attorneys assigned and paid by a court. The justices left it to state and local governments to decide how legal services should be funded. Since the 1963 ruling, governments have wrangled over how to pay for public defenders in the face of budget demands. For the most part, states that have found ways to cover all or most of counties' expenses in public defender programs - rather than force the counties to foot the bill - have had fewer problems with public defenders, Carroll says. Among the 24 states that fully fund local defender programs, Oregon, Minnesota, Colorado and Massachusetts are widely recognized for their programs' quality. The other states rely on a combination of county and state money, and there are wide discrepancies in funding. Jeff Lawson, chief public defender in Minnehaha County, S.D. - whose office gets less than 50% of its funds from the state - echoed many of his peers when he told the ABA that tight budgets require choices between "whether roads are going to be graveled or defendants are going to be defended." Even in the states that win praise for indigent legal services, funding can be a struggle, Carroll says. Colorado saves money by requiring indigent defendants charged with misdemeanors to first meet with a prosecutor to see whether a plea bargain can be arranged, says David Kaplan, who heads Colorado's public defender agency. Massachusetts narrowly averted a crisis this summer when the Legislature approved a $30 million package to raise the pay for court-appointed lawyers. More than 400 lawyers in the Boston area had stopped taking indigent cases to protest hourly pay rates that hadn't been raised in two decades. By the time lawmakers voted to raise the rates - to $100 an hour for murder cases, $60 an hour for lesser charges - judges were warning that more than 600 defendants could be released from jail if they did not get lawyers soon. "The public doesn't like our clients for the most part, and I don't blame them," says Tom Workman, president of the Massachusetts Association of Court Appointed Attorneys. During the debate, he appeared on a radio call-in show where the host blasted the legislative package as too expensive. "He said poor people eat crummy food, they live in crummy houses and drive crummy cars, so why shouldn't they have crummy lawyers?" Workman says. "The guy is a knucklehead. But at least he was willing to say out loud what many people think." The Supreme Court has cast the issue of inadequate representation by lawyers - particularly public defenders in death-penalty cases - as an increasing threat to the fairness of the justice system. 3 times since 2000, the justices - all of whom accept the death penalty - have cited inadequate work by defense lawyers and reversed death sentences. The reversals signaled rising concern on the court that the death penalty is not being applied fairly because some defendants have bad lawyers - as well as a fear that someone might wrongly be executed. A national phenomenon Across the USA, examples of an overburdened, underfunded public defender system abound: - In Virginia, caps on fees paid to court-appointed lawyers are the lowest in the nation, Carroll says. Fees on a felony that carries a sentence of 20 years or less are capped at $428, while defenders whose clients face felonies with a sentence of more than 20 years can be paid no more than $1,186. - In Wisconsin, more than 11,000 poor people annually go to court without representation because anyone who makes more than $3,000 a year is considered able to afford a lawyer, says Ellen Berz, head of the Madison public defender's office. - Nevada caps defenders' fees in death-penalty cases at $12,000, and it is the only state that does not allow the payment limits to be waived in such cases, Carroll says. - In Mississippi, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta sued the city of Gulfport last month. They accused the city of operating a "modern day debtor's prison" by jailing poor people who are unable to pay their fines and denying them the right to lawyers. - In Louisiana, the Lake Charles public defender's office was sued by 9 defendants who say they have waited years to go on trial. "If you've been sitting in jail for 2 years waiting to go to trial, you've lost your job, your housing, you're horribly in debt," says Melia Brink, a lawyer at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Washington. Litigation has prompted improvements in several states. In Georgia, five lawsuits triggered an overhaul of indigent legal services by state lawmakers last year that led to the opening of 44 new public defender offices across the state. In Louisiana, the Legislature gave a state indigent defense panel more power to require that counties report caseloads, employees and salaries so the state can calculate the true cost of improvements. In Virginia, an indigent defense commission was set up to oversee training and other issues. But the caps on legal fees are still in place. Steve Benjamin, a defense lawyer and a commission member, says the caps are so low that they force court-appointed lawyers to choose between mounting a cursory defense or working for free. "Not only will you not be paid for each hour that you work after hitting the cap, you also are using your own money to run your (law) office," he says. Back in Baton Rouge, James Thomas is now free. But this fall, state prosecutors plan to ask Louisiana's 1st Circuit Court of Appeal to reinstate the charge. The state attorney general's office won't comment because the case is pending. Thomas was charged with three other men, including his brother, Percy Dyer, in the slaying of Dennis "Doc" Scruggs, 19, of Baton Rouge. None of the men has been tried, and 3 have been released from jail. Because it started as a death-penalty case, each defendant was entitled under law to two lawyers. It took three years to find eight public defenders qualified to handle the case. The charges were reduced to 2nd-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. Jamie Fontenot worked on Thomas' case for several years as a salaried, $29,000-a-year public defender, and as a court-appointed attorney when she went into private practice. She withdrew from the case when the state didn't pay her $5,000 fee for her work as a private attorney, as the court had ordered. While in the public defender's office, she also juggled 70 to 80 other felony cases at the same time, she says. "Part of the trouble was scheduling court dates with 8 lawyers' calendars," she says. "Someone would say, 'What about December?' and someone would say, 'I've got a trial.' 'OK, what about January? What about February?'" "The record shows very long lapses of time when there's no movement on the case at all," Alexander says. "That is inexcusable. Somebody's responsible for that. This is 9 years now of a man's life lost by no fault of his own." (source: USA Today) MISSISSIPPI: Death penalty sought against man accused of raping, killing girl, 5 A man charged with the 1994 sexual assault and death of his then- girlfriend's 5-year-old daughter will become Hinds County's 1st death penalty case in nearly 10 years. The attorney for Eric Moffett, however, said the district attorney's office reneged on a Dec. 16, 2004, statement not to seek the death penalty. Hinds County Circuit Judge Swan Yerger denied a defense attempt to force District Attorney Faye Peterson's office to honor the statement. He ruled whether to seek the death penalty is up to Peterson's office. ** Death penalty cases Since Jackson firefighter Kenneth Tornes' death sentence in 1998 for shooting deaths at Central Fire Station in 1996, Hinds County prosecutors have sought the death penalty in 2 other cases: In March 2000, Bryan Joseph Kolberg, initially sentenced to death in 1990 for the 1988 slaying of his then-girlfriend's 22-month-old child, was retried. The state Supreme Court ordered a new trial in December 1997, citing reversible errors in the 1st trial. The jury was unable to agree on a sentence in the 2nd trial. Kolberg received life in prison. A Hancock County Circuit Court jury found Willie "Fire Truck" Martin guilty in January 2000 of capital murder but couldn't reach a unanimous agreement on the death penalty. Martin received life in prison without parole. The case was moved from Hinds County because of pretrial publicity. Martin was 1 of 3 people police said carried out the Nov. 6, 1994, kidnapping, torture and shooting death of Steve Steverson, 44, of Jackson. The Tornes, Kohlberg and Martin cases were prosecuted under former District Attorney Ed Peters. ** "They have elected to go forward on it, and we will go forward and defend him," defense attorney Dan Duggan said. "I believe he is innocent." Peterson, district attorney since May 2001, said she is seeking the death penalty in Moffett's case because "it seems fitting, considering the crime." Peterson's office said in court papers that it decided to seek the death penalty after new evidence became available, including DNA results that revealed the presence of semen in the victim. A pathologist said the child, Felicia Griffin, was brutally raped. An autopsy showed the child could have died from strangulation, blows to the head or blood loss from the tearing in her genital area. Moffett's capital murder trial is set for Feb. 6 and he is being held without bond at the Hinds County Detention Center at Raymond. The last death sentence handed down in Hinds County was to former Jackson firefighter Kenneth Tornes, who killed his estranged wife and 4 Jackson Fire Department officials in 1996. He pleaded guilty on March 19, 1998, and asked for the death penalty. A jury sentenced him to die for two of those murders. Tornes, 36, died from a blood clot in his lungs in 2000 while on death row. Peterson has said the evidence of guilt must be overwhelming to seek the death penalty because of the expense and time involved. She said a prosecutor almost has to make it his sole case. Peterson's predecessor, long-time District Attorney Ed Peters, had questioned the ability to get a death sentence in a predominately black district like Hinds County. Peters said black jurors are less likely to vote for the death penalty. Peterson said black jurors will vote for the death penalty if the circumstances warrant it, especially if a child is involved. Felicia died at the home her mother shared with Moffett on Lynda Street. Moffett reported to police he found Felicia on the bed bleeding after he came home from a bar. Her sisters, about 4 and 7 at the time, also were home, according to police reports. Moffett originally was charged with capital murder in 1994, jailed for several months and then released because prosecutors took too long to forward the case to a grand jury. The district attorney's office lacked forensic evidence at the time to tie Moffett to the crime. The grand jury later reviewed the case but did not return an indictment. The child's mother, Pennie Griffin, couldn't be reached for comment. Griffin immediately accused Moffett and told police she had suspected he sexually abused her children before. She said she had taken all 3 of her children to the University of Mississippi Medical Center for exams for sexual abuse, according to police reports. A doctor examined the girls but found no signs of trauma, bruising or tearing. Felicia told an uncle in the summer of 1994 that she had been touched between her legs by Moffett, but Griffin didn't file charges. The Department of Human Services, which is responsible for investigating allegations of abuse and neglect, said it never received a report of the allegations. The district attorney's office reopened the case in 2002 after new evidence was presented through the Mississippi Children's Advocacy Center, a treatment facility for sexually and physically abused children. Mississippi Children's Advocacy Center officials said some children interviewed had knowledge of the case. The Advocacy Center, citing confidentiality laws, said it couldn't identify the children interviewed or discuss specifics. (source: Clarion-Ledger)
