Sept. 20 TEXAS: New Details in Summer Baldwin Murder Case -- New Evidence Emerges In Baldwin Murder Case Lubbock police are waiting to hear back from DPS forensic crime lab to see if blood found at a Lubbock hotel room was from Summer Baldwin. The Holiday Inn on Avenue Q is the target for police. They have reason to believe Baldwin was beaten to death inside one of the hotel rooms. Investigators found blood inside a room and sent it off for DNA testing. Those tests will prove if the blood found matches Baldwin. Through a string of evidence, police arrested Rosendo Rodriguez for the death of Baldwin. They were able to track Rodriguez's debit transactions which led them to a Wal-mart on the South Loop. On surveillance video police found Rodriguez purchasing a black suitcase identical to the one found at the landfill with Baldwin's body inside of it. The cameras caught Rodriguez walking out with that suitcase in hand. Police were led to the possible crime scene through his debit card records. The night before Rodriguez used his debit card to pull $22 at an ATM inside the lobby area of the Holiday Inn. Investigators say any day, they will receive those results from the DPS crime lab. Meanwhile, the District Attorney's office awaits final autopsy reports. They may consider Rodriguez eligible for the death penalty, since Baldwin was five weeks pregnant at the time of her death. (source: KCBD News) **************************** Group suing for jail access----Advocacy Inc. wants to check reports of poor mental health care for inmates A watchdog agency asked a federal judge Monday to allow surprise inspections of the crowded Harris County Jail because of concerns that prisoners are not receiving adequate mental health care. After being rebuffed by county officials, Advocacy Inc. filed a lawsuit asking U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison to issue a preliminary injunction giving unhindered access to the jail. Advocacy Inc., authorized by Congress to enforce federal laws ensuring proper care for the disabled in Texas, sought access to the jail in August after receiving 32 complaints of improper mental health care for disabled prisoners in nine months, according to the lawsuit. The county and Sheriff Tommy Thomas are named as defendants. Advocacy officials also are concerned about severe crowding in the jail, said Beth Mitchell, the group's senior attorney. "If there is overcrowding in the jail, the likelihood that staff can provide adequate care diminishes," Mitchell said. "It does seem like people are going without adequate mental health care and it seems like that might be due to overcrowding." The lawsuit cites three prisoners' complaints that they were denied their psychiatric medication. In one case, jail staffers are accused of waiting six weeks to administer medication, even after being ordered to do so by a state district judge. "There probably are a lot more people in jail that can't contact us or don't know how to contact us," Mitchell said. Access agreement The lawsuit alleges that jail officials denied an Advocacy request for access on Aug. 16, telling the group it needed to have an "access agreement" on file. Advocacy sometimes enters into such agreements because they clarify its powers, Mitchell said, but they are not required. Advocacy attorneys say they were referred to the county attorney's office, which requested more information. They provided it and waited 3 weeks, then sent an e-mail, but had not received a response as of Monday, the lawsuit states. Assistant County Attorney John Barnhill said Monday that his office had not received notice of the lawsuit. Jim Faulkner, special assistant to the sheriff, did not return calls seeking comment. According to the lawsuit, Advocacy contacted the office of County Judge Robert Eckels and was told Sept. 8 that medical staffers at the jail believed Advocacy's concerns were valid, but that signed consent forms were needed for Eckels' office to investigate the complaints. "I wasn't going to wait around and allow inmates to be injured or deprived of adequate medical care because we can't get in," Mitchell said. "Hopefully, maybe by doing this, the Harris County sheriff and Harris County (officials) will hear and see that it's clear and unambiguous that we are entitled to the access," she said. The lawsuit states that several federal laws protecting the disabled give Advocacy authority for unhindered and unescorted access to jails and prisons. Mitchell said the lawyers at the federally funded, nonprofit agency are not government or contract employees, and thus are shielded from political influence. Unannounced The Houston Chronicle reported in July that, for the second year in a row, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards had decertified the Harris County Jail - the largest by population in the state. According to a June report by the commission, inmates were packed into cramped quarters, risking disease and violence, with almost 1,300 of the more than 9,000 inmates sleeping on mattresses on the floor while large sections of the jail remained empty because of inadequate staffing. The Houston Chronicle reported in June that county officials took little or no action after being warned almost 2 years ago - in a report commissioned by the county - of a looming explosion in the jail population. 2 veteran jailers, independently of each other, described the jail system as ripe for violence. Speaking to the newspaper on condition of anonymity, they charged that Sheriff's Department officials sometimes hid inmates from state inspectors in "a game of musical inmates." Mitchell said Advocacy, Inc. inspections would be unannounced. "They can't put on a dog and pony show forever," she said. Percentage treated A local mental-health official attributes much of the crowding to a failure to deal with mental-health issues in Texas. "The (local) mental-health system is, de facto, the Harris County Jail," said Betsy Schwartz, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Greater Houston. "And the Harris County Jail obviously doesn't have the mental-health resources to be able to serve that high volume of people." According to Schwartz, a May 2005 study revealed that 24 percent of the county jail population had been treated for mental-health issues in 2004. "And that doesn't begin to show people in the jail who were from other parts of the state that may have been part of other mental-health systems," she said. "It's very much an under-reported number." The average figure for jail populations nationwide is 16 percent, Schwartz said. (source : Houston Chronicle) (in) PENNSYLVANIA: Play examines death penalty----What if you strongly believed in a cause; would you still believe in it if it affected you negatively? Find out in The Executioner. "Brutality begets brutality; God made us better than that. We were made in HIS image. Let us strive to love one another, forgive one another, enjoy the beauty around us and live by The Golden Rule."- Maida C. Odom The Executioner, a play written by Maida C. Odom, a Temple faculty member, is a courtroom drama about a drug-related shooting of a child and elderly man in an inner city neighborhood that ends up in a courtroom. It played on Thursday, Sept.15 and Friday, Sept.16 at the Black Box @ the New Freedom Theatre on Broad and Master streets. The plot centers on an all black cast of eight which included an overzealous prosecutor seeking the death penalty and a defense lawyer set on proving his client's innocence. The defense attorney wants to assure his client's acquittal, while the prosecutor wants to fix what he believes is wrong with the city by sending the accused to the electric chair. The prosecutor, who is seeking the death penalty, commits the same act - murdering a child - during a heated moment in the courtroom. The 1-act play, though fiction, is loosely based on the playwright's courtroom experiences while working at the Philadelphia Inquirer. "I saw a lot of bizarre things happen," Odom said. Odom said that her writing the play also had to do with her "deep concerns with the death penalty." The play confronts social issues such as black-on-black crime and class struggles within the black community, but centers on the death penalty. It was set in a small courtroom where the actors faced the audience throughout the duration of the nearly 70-minute performance. That way, the audience metaphorically served as the jury and was forced to take a moral stance on the issues at hand. Before the play began, Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues" appropriately played in the background to set the ambience of the play. The Executioner succeeded in its attempt to garner a discussion on an issue as controversial as the death penalty. Though consisting of only 7 acts, the play was able to be thorough in its presentation. The actors immersed themselves in their roles, making it hard to believe that they did not possess some of the same qualities of those who they portrayed. Odom said the actors really owned the stage. "It's interesting seeing your work brought to life," Odom said. Nakia Dillard, an actor for 15 years, played the accused drug dealer Willie Sylvester. Dillard 1st played the role in 2003. In this version of the play, Dillard's deliverance of the role of Sylvester was very convincing. "It gives me a chance to come out of myself. ... It kinda gives me a feel of what another person might go through," Dillard said of performing in a role so different from his actual character. Odom, an award-winning journalist, currently serves as internship coordinator for the Journalism department and a lecturer in the School of Communications and Theater. The play was directed by Mel Donaldson, an SCT alum, who also created Black Box @ the New Freedom Theatre and is the curator and host. The Executioner first premiered in 2001 at the Triangle Theater in Northern Liberties. It was last performed in 2003. (source: The Temple News) NEW MEXICO: Man charged in cop's death faces death The prosecution won 3 critical decisions with one more dismissal attempt to be decided next month from a 13th Judicial District Court judge last week in a high-profile vehicle homicide case which began Aug. 1, 2001, with a shoplifting in Grants and ended with the death of a popular police officer. Judge Luis P. McDonald did grant the defense motion in favor of Zacariah Dewitt Craig, now 24, to change the location of the legal proceedings to the Sandoval County seat from the Cibola County seat where state policeman Lloyd Aragon had been a popular city police officer. McDonald favored 13th Judicial District chief attorney Lemuel Martinez by denying defense motions to toss out the death penalty based on freedom of religion and mental illness claims, and to dismiss theft charges. While Martinez asserted to The Independent that he will continue to seek the death penalty, the judge also set Oct. 11 and 12 to hear arguments about whether the circumstances of the case warrant seeking the death penalty for Craig. This is known as an Ogden hearing. Craig was identified as the 19-year-old driver of a 1995 Toyota truck when the fatal incident occurred in the median of Interstate 40 near Mile Post 126. That is the junction with N.M. Route 6 (the Las Lunas cut-off), about 42 miles from the scene of the theft which began the fatal incident. Aragon, a 1982 Grants High School graduate, and New Mexico State Police Officer William Cunningham were headed to Albuquerque around 7 a.m. that morning for a federal court drug case when they heard the all-point bulletin that Grants Police Department Sgt. Mike Trujillo was chasing the fleeing vehicle eastbound on I-40. The sergeant had pursued the vehicle west along Grants' main street. Officers had stopped the white pickup and had the older brother, Aron Craig, then 21, outside for questioning when the younger brother jumped in and took off headed back towards the store. Aragon, 37, and Cunningham, in plain clothes, decided to stop and lay down a stop stick. A stop stick is about three feet long with sharp spikes pointing up through a plastic sleeve and is attached to a cord for officers to pull it into position. They were standing in the middle of the untraveled portion of the divided highway when the truck veered into Aragon, according to then Chief Fred Radosevich. The chief claimed Craig could easily have steered around the stick and didn't have to go into the median. Although the alleged theft occurred around 7 a.m., the chase police reported speeds in excess of 100 mph in a 75 mph zone didn't reach its conclusion until about a half-hour later when Craig crashed into a guardrail after hitting Aragon, who died instantly, and then traveling across the westbound lanes. He still tried to run, but 2 state officers and Trujillo tackled him. State Police Major David Osuna said Craig, who is about 5-ft., 7-in. tall, still tried to resist arrest. The truck also had been stolen in Albuquerque, according to the city dispatcher's computer check. The 2 young men allegedly stole 40 boxes of Actafed, worth more than $600. Ingredients in the over-the-counter drug often are used in the manufacture of methamphetamine. An alert employee at a store at Exit 85 on I-40 wrote down the truck's license plate and employees called the city dispatcher. On Aug. 8, 2001, the judicial district's grand jury for Cibloa County charged Craig, then 19, with 30 different crimes. One charge alone, an open count of capital murder, could bring the death penalty. And it was up to Martinez to decide if he would seek life-in-prison (a 30-year term) or death. Other charges included 20 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, each a 4th-degree felony, and 3 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon on a peace officer, each a 3rd-degree felony. Adding the longest penalties allowed by state law, Craig faced up to 95 years behind bars if convicted on all counts and given the maximum sentences. He also faced up to $150,000 in fines. On Aug. 23, 2001, the Albuquerque brothers were arraigned in Grants, with Judge McDonald taking over from Judge Camille Martinez-Olguin. In November 2002, the defendant was found to be incompetent to stand trial, so the judge sent him to Las Vegas for the rest of his life or until doctors could bring him to the competent state. In May 2003, McDonald ruled that while Craig was still incompetent, there was clear and convincing evidence to convict him of 1st-degree murder. Last June Craig was found to be competent after being treated for thyroid problems as well as his mental state, which had been under treatment for three years at the state mental hospital in Las Vegas. Aragon had been a state officer for eight years and a city cop for seven years. He left a widow, Monica, a son, Lloyd Jr., now 16, and a daughter Adriana, now 9. (source: The Gallup Independent) MISSOURI: Film Students Hope To Reopen Missouri Murder Case Graduate school at the University of Missouri-Columbia was no idle exercise in academic theory for John McHale. His documentary film on death row inmate Joseph Amrine spurred public debate that culminated in Amrine's release after 17 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Doctorate degree in hand, McHale moved on to Illinois State University in Normal, where as an assistant professor of communications he now guides students in their own efforts to dig up cases of the wrongfully accused. Their current effort focuses on Missouri inmate Dale Helmig, convicted in 1996 and sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing his mother 3 years earlier in Osage County. Her body was found in the Osage River tied to a concrete block. "A Matter of Innocence: The Dale Helmig Story" debuted last week in Columbia, and McHale plans to show the film on college campuses across the state in an effort to ultimately win Helmig, 48, a new trial. "This is an opportunity for citizens to amplify their voices," McHale said. "Sometimes it's easy to go along with what government officials say without scrutiny. Questioning your government officials can make a difference." McHale and student filmmakers Kris Racine and Jeff Blackburn, who both graduated from Illinois State in May, say Helmig's initial trial was compromised by a shoddy defense, selective presentation of evidence and an opportunistic special state prosecutor from Boone County, Kenny Hulshof, who used Helmig as an example of his tough-on-crime credentials in the midst of a campaign for Congress. Hulshof, a Republican, won that 1996 election, defeating incumbent Democratic Rep. Harold Volkmer in a reversal of the 1994 election for the same seat. Hulshof, who remains a congressman for Missouri's 9th district, rejected any link between his congressional campaign and the trial. He also denied accusations of jury tampering raised by Helmig's defense attorney, Sean O'Brien. "In my mind, there's no doubt" of Helmig's guilt, Hulshof said Monday. "Do I agree it was a circumstantial case? Yes, I do." Racine, the film's director, is less certain than Hulshof. With the help of law students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and his own alma mater's Innocence Project, he raised several questions about the Helmig investigation and the subsequent trial, including a reliance on a disputed $200 phone bill as the sole motivation for Helmig to kill his 55-year-old mother, Norma. "No person can be 100 % certain. That's between Dale and God," Racine said Monday. "But there's a reasonable doubt." Richard Helmig, Dale's younger brother, attended the film's premiere. Speaking to the audience, he called the prosecution's chosen motive "ridiculous." Richard Helmig also asked why prosecutors were quick to dismiss his father, Ted Helmig, as a suspect even though the elder Helmig had previously assaulted his wife and was involved in a bitter divorce. Police also never asked Richard Helmig to account for his own whereabouts, he said. "I was never asked one question, nothing about what I was doing," he said. "They picked up the suspect and then went around to find the evidence." O'Brien, of the Public Interest Litigation Clinic in Kansas City, noted that Helmig's former defense attorney, Chris Jordan, of Jefferson City, simultaneously represented Ted Helmig in a probate matter, a conflict of interest he called untenable. "In order to effectively represent one client, he had to sell the other one down the river," O'Brien said in the film. The efforts by Racine and Blackburn are not without precedent - particularly in Illinois. A series of investigations by Northwestern University journalism students showed that several men were wrongly sentenced to death in the state. In 2002, Illinois Gov. George Ryan pardoned four men on death row, commuted the sentences of 167 remaining death row inmates to life in prison and declared a temporary moratorium on capital punishment in the state. Ryan, who left office shortly thereafter, is now on trial on 22 unrelated charges of racketeering conspiracy, mail fraud, lying to the FBI and tax fraud. "These types of cases are everywhere," said Racine, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook. "They're all over America, especially in small towns, where people just fall through the cracks." (source: The Associated Press) TENNESSEE: State requests execution date for Thompson Tennessee's newest Supreme Court justice, sworn in Monday, will be among those setting an execution date for a man who killed a Shelbyville woman. That's because a federal court has cleared the path toward execution of the man who murdered a former Shelbyville Times-Gazette reporter. At the time of her death, she was the niece of the police chief here. "I'm glad to hear it," reacted Barbara Brown, sister of slain reporter Brenda Blanton Lane who was stabbed to death by Gregory Thompson in 1985. "I hope [the ruling] puts us closer to the end of this." Gov. Phil Bredesen yesterday announced former Williamson County Circuit Court Judge Cornelia "Connie" Clark, who's been serving as the chief administrative officer of the state courts, is succeeding Justice Frank Drowota. The State Supreme Court will meet in conference to discuss setting of an execution date for Thompson, according to Sue Allison, spokeswoman for the Supreme Court. No set schedule exist for such steps, she said. "They generally act fairly quickly on these matters," Allison said. Tennessee's justices must act now because the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District in Chattanooga on Friday lifted an earlier order preventing Thompson's execution. In response to the federal court decision in Chattanoo ga, Tennessee Attorney General Paul Summers on Monday asked the state Supreme Court to set another execution date. The federal court's ruling Friday was another in a long series of twists in Thompson's case which was even the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in late June when it decided a federal judge was wrong to allow the reopening of Thompson's case. The execution was stopped because the judge found testimony of a witness who said he believed Thompson was schizophrenic. That testimony had not been included in the court record, an important issue to the dissenting Supreme Court justices in Washington. However, Tennessee expended considerable time and resources toward execution in a 20-year-old case and Thompson had received justice, the majority ruled. Others in Shelbyville who have been close to this case have expressed feelings similar to Brown's; the system has worked and it's time for closure in accordance with the trial court's decision. (Shelbyville Times-Gazette)
