Sept. 15 VIRGINIA: Death row inmate talks Justin Michael Wolfe, a 24-year-old dressed in a blue prison jumpsuit, sat in an interview room Monday afternoon talking about football. Later that evening, his favorites, the Washington Redskins, would take on their despised rivals, the Dallas Cowboys. "I pull for the Redskins, but just about everybody else down here is a Cowboys fan," he said. For Wolfe, "down here" is Virginia's death row facility in Waverly, where he has lived since being convicted of capital murder. The young Fairfax County man was sentenced to death in 2002, following a high-profile murder trial that exposed a virulent Northern Virginia drug ring run by middle-class suburban kids. Wolfe, a former drug dealer, is sentenced to die for hiring Owen Merton Barber IV to kill Wolfe's marijuana supplier, 21-year-old Danny Petrole Jr. In an interview with the Potomac News, Wolfe maintained his innocence and said he's facing execution for a combination of reasons: his involvement with high-dollar drug trafficking, the actions of an incompetent attorney and the testimony of a former friend who turned on him to escape the death sentence. Meanwhile, a new set of attorneys is working on his federal appeal, and his mother is frantically searching for any information that could help her son. The case On March 5, 2001, 21-year-old Daniel Robert Petrole Jr. pulled up to his town house in Bristow. He was returning from a meeting where he had given Wolfe between 10 and 15 pounds of high-grade marijuana, called "chronic." The arrangement, as usual, was that Wolfe would sell the drugs to other dealers, then finish paying Petrole when he had the money. When Petrole parked in front of his home, Owen Barber -- a longtime friend of Wolfe's -- pulled up nearby and got out of his car, holding a 9 mm handgun in gloved hands. He fired 10 rounds into Petrole's Honda Civic. As Petrole was dying, Barber got back into his car and sped away. At a nearby intersection, he tossed away the handgun that would eventually link him to the killing. Following a trail that started with the gun, authorities arrested Barber a month later as he come off the beach in San Diego. As part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, Barber agreed to testify truthfully about what had happened. In return, he would avoid the death penalty. According to Barber, Wolfe had offered him $10,000 in cash, plus 4 1/2 pounds of marijuana and an additional $3,000 in forgiven debt if Barber would kill Petrole. Based in part on Barber's testimony -- as well as that of several others who moved in the same circles as Petrole, Wolfe and Barber --Wolfe was convicted of capital murder-for-hire and sentenced to death. On death row Wolfe lives at Virginia's death row facility at Sussex I State Prison in Waverly, separated from society by bars, guards, thick walls, locked doors, 10-foot high fences with razor wire on top and a sniper tower. In the morning, he eats breakfast in his cell, then goes back to sleep. In the afternoon, he gets an hour or 2 outside, isolated in what he described as an "outdoor cage." In the evenings, he gets dinner in his cell. The rest of the time, Wolfe -- who is the youngest inmate on death row in Virginia, according to Jack Payden-Travers of the Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty -- says he fills up the hours with magazines, newspapers and TV. "There's not a whole lot of activity," he said. On the drugs His prison existence is a far cry from the lifestyle Wolfe enjoyed before he was arrested. Though he denies hiring Barber to kill his drug supplier, Wolfe said he deserves to be in jail for his drug activity. "I know that if I hadn't been involved in selling marijuana, I wouldn't be here," Wolfe said. During his trial, he testified that he had probably sold 100 pounds of marijuana before his arrest at age 20. Wolfe said his drug activity started when he began smoking pot in junior high school and escalated as he got older. "You realize, 'Well if I buy more and sell it, I smoke for free,' " Wolfe said. "You buy more and more and realize that there's a way to make money off this." And there was a lot of money to be made. The scope of the drug ring unearthed after Petrole's death shocked the area. At a meeting just before the shooting, Wolfe gave Petrole a down payment of $19,000 for 8 pounds of marijuana, and owed him $14,600 for the rest, Wolfe testified in 2001. This was a fairly routine transaction between the two; Wolfe would often partially pay Petrole for large amounts of marijuana and pay off the rest later. According to an "owe sheet" found after Petrole's death, Wolfe owed his supplier $66,325. When police searched Petrole's home after the shooting, they found about 2,000 tablets of Ecstasy, 50 pounds of marijuana and about $120,000 in cash -- one of the largest drug busts ever in the area. Despite those staggering numbers, Wolfe said the scope of the drug network was blown out of proportion during his trial and in the media. "It was mostly just us selling to friends," he said. "There was no violence in it." Though he now admits his involvement in the drug trade, Wolfe pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to distribute marijuana during his 2001 murder trial. Wolfe says he regrets that plea, and -- like many elements of his trial -- lays it at the feet of then-attorney John H. Partridge. On his former lawyer After his arrest, Wolfe opted not to use a court-appointed attorney, and instead retained Partridge to represent him. "Sometimes I beat myself up for switching lawyers," he said. "I should have researched it." Wolfe said he and Partridge had never talked about how he should plea to the drug charges, but had instead concentrated only on the murder trial. When asked in court for his plea on charges that he conspired to distribute more than five pounds of marijuana, Wolfe said he looked at his lawyer for direction. Partridge wrote "not guilty" on a legal pad and pushed it at him, Wolfe said. "I was like 'Why am I saying not guilty?' " Wolfe said. "I thought I had to or something. It was the wrong decision." In 2003, Partridge was disbarred after clients complained of errors he made in other cases. According to the Virginia State Bar Disciplinary Board's Web site, Partridge lost his law license for a laundry list of infractions, including that he failed to communicate with clients, didn't perform the services for which he'd been retained and didn't return fees paid for work he never did. "He was disbarred for some of the same things he did to me," Wolfe said. Wolfe said Partridge assured him before the trial that he wouldn't be found guilty of murder-for-hire. "I just believed him," Wolfe said. "I never believed for one minute that I'd be convicted or sitting here (on death row)." On the trial During Wolfe's trial, several others backed up Barber's testimony that Wolfe hired him to kill Petrole. Robert Holmes Martin Jr., a high-school friend of both men, testified "it was obvious" that Wolfe had hired Barber to kill Petrole. Martin testified that he'd gone to a bar with Barber after the shooting, where the two men conferred secretly. Martin also testified that he later approached Wolfe and asked for marijuana at a discounted price, saying, "I know what happened." Wolfe obliged without complaint, Martin said during the trial. Barber's girlfriend, Jennifer Pasquariello, said in court that Wolfe gave her money to take to Barber in San Diego, with the promise of more to come. When police searched Barber's San Diego hotel room, they found an unsent letter from Pasquariello to a friend of Wolfe's, asking for money from "J.W." During the trial, prosecutors also produced cell phone records that showed Wolfe and Barber had exchanged many phone calls the night of the murder, including just before and just after the shooting. Still, Wolfe said he was set up, and that those who testified against him did so to save themselves from other charges. "I can see why Barber would make this up. He was in a kill or be killed situation, and he got what he wanted," Wolfe said. "It was 'lie about Justin and I could get out of this.'" Because of the deal he reached with prosecutors, Barber was charged with first-degree murder instead of capital murder, and sentenced to 38 years. He's scheduled to be released from prison in 2034, according to a Virginia Department of Correction's Web site. The appeal This summer, Wolfe was assigned his first execution date: July 27. Wolfe says he knew it was a "false date," but said media coverage of the execution date shook up some of his friends and extended family. "My mom was getting sympathy cards from people," he said. The purpose of setting the July execution date, according to Wolfe and his lawyers, was to force him to start his last set of appeals in federal court. "Virginia gives you a quick date to push you into court," Wolfe said. On July 22, one day before he would've been scheduled to leave for the execution facility in Greenville, Wolfe got a stay of execution and a new team of lawyers. Those attorneys are working on a new appeal to be filed in federal court this fall. "I feel pretty good about my appeal," Wolfe said. "I think I'm going to be alright." His lawyers have until Nov. 3 to file the 75-page petition in federal court in Norfolk. Washington, D.C.-based attorney James Griffin, part of Wolfe's new defense team, said the petition will show three things: that Wolfe didn't get adequate representation from Partridge, his original attorney; that the state didn't provide all the information it was required to in the trial; and that the jury considered "things that they shouldn't have," Griffin said. The goal is a new trial, not immediate exoneration, Griffin said. Wolfe's appeals to Virginia courts have been exhausted, with the state Supreme Court upholding his death sentence, so his federal appeals may be his last before he is executed. Hoping to help her son, Wolfe's mother has renewed her efforts to gather information on his case. Terri Steinberg thinks some of Justin's former associates have information that could exonerate him, but are afraid to come forward because they were -- or are -- involved in the drug culture. Her son agrees. "I think there are a few people out there who could have testified at my trial," Wolfe said. "I think they saw what was being done to me, and thought about what could happen to them if they came forward." His mother Her son's trial has turned Terri Steinberg into an activist of sorts. She has set up a hotline, hoping someone will call with information about the case that didn't surface during the trial. So far, the hotline hasn't yielded a lot of results, Steinberg said. "It hasn't really been out there for people to see," she said. Though she's looked into newspaper advertising, Steinberg said the only place the number can be found right now is on a Web site she set up for Justin, www.JusticeForJustinNow.com. The goal, Steinberg said, is to gather information from people who know about the shooting but are afraid to come forward, because they're involved in criminal activity. "One concern I have for these kids that have tried to protect themselves through not telling the truth or making deals, is that they will have to live with the decisions they've made," Steinberg said. In addition to her work for Justin's case, Steinberg is taking a trip to Texas in October, where she plans to make anti-death penalty presentations at schools, churches and universities with a group called Journey of Hope. "I never thought about the death penalty until it landed in my back yard," Steinberg said. "Now that I've walked through those doors, I realize what a horrible place it is, not just for my son, but for everyone. I'll continue to fight the death penalty for as long as I can." Journey of Hope puts the family members of murder victims and death row inmates together with former death row inmates who have been exonerated, Steinberg said. "There are murder victims' family members who go through this process thinking they'll feel peace once the revenge of the death penalty is carried out," Steinberg said. "What I've learned from meeting with these people is that you don't feel better in revenge. You feel better in forgiveness." However, in a letter written to the Potomac News shortly after Wolfe's trial, Petrole's father took a different position, saying he was not a proponent of the death penalty, but that he felt it had a "place within the law of a civil society for the most egregious crimes." "I don't 'wish' the death penalty on Justin Wolfe (that is, nobody wants someone to die) but - people have to be held accountable for their actions and if that is what the jury returns, I respect their decision," Daniel R. Petrole wrote. On family and justice "Killing me doesn't punish me, it punishes my family," Wolfe said from prison. He said the disappointment of having appeals rejected and the strain of death row has been tough on his family. His mom agrees. "I worry about how my kids face the community," Steinberg said. Wolfe has 5 siblings, his mom said, ranging in age from 22 to 8. "The 8-year-old realizes her brother is in jail for saying yes to drugs," Steinberg said. "We have in no way let her know he faces the death penalty. That's nothing you can explain to an 8-year-old child." Despite his capital conviction and failed appeals, and all the testimony and evidence used to prove his guilt in court, Wolfe said he is still confident he'll be let go. "After all I've been through, I think I should be allowed to go home," he said. "They've told me they're going to kill me. This has been a nightmare." (source: Potomac News) *************************** City lawyer's case lands in national media Chris Collins is your classic denizen of Richmond's Fan District, an area as famed for its eclectic characters as it is for its fan-shaped layout. Just looking at him, he could be a judge (which he has been) or one of those guys on the street hitting you up for cigarette money. Friday afternoon, he was wearing shorts and flip-flops, which fit the record heat but didn't quite mesh with the fact that he was on the scene of a high-profile arrest, representing a man who has been questioned in a nationally watched missing-person case. A TV reporter assured Collins he would be shown just from the chest up during his interview, but the scene-setting footage on the 6 o'clock news showed the seasoned criminal-defense attorney looking decidedly beachy. "There I am in my flip-flops," Collins noted Friday night with his sonorous, cigarette-lacquered voice. "I've already got calls from my friends - 'Your flip-flops are showing.'" Here he is, 58 years old, with 89 capital-murder cases under his belt, a highly respected criminal-defense attorney who has defended some of the worst human flesh this state has ever produced, including the sexual predator whose crimes inspired Patricia Corn well's first best-seller. But it's only now that Christopher J. Collins is getting the most intense media exposure of his storied 26-year career - for an unpaid gig representing a 38-year-old Fan photographer police have labeled a "person of interest" in this month's missing-woman hypefest. Cable TV, network TV, The Washington Post - everyone wants to talk to him about his client, a bipolar amateur photographer and computer geek named Ben Fawley, who may not have had anything to do with the disappearance of Taylor Behl nearly three weeks ago. "The National Enquirer called today," Collins said with a sigh as he sat on the curb across Hancock Street from his client's apartment, which was being searched again by investigators. He raised his hands like a conductor, palms out, and slowly spread them. "I can see the headlines now: 'Alien Photographer Abducts VCU Student.'" The whole thing has steamrolled since the day he was walking out of court and "this frantic kid came up to me, saying the media and the police were all over him: 'Would you help me?'" Collins recalled Fawley saying. He has never seen anything like it. "The South Side Strangler is the only one who comes close," Collins said, referring to serial murderer and rapist Timothy Spencer, who terrorized the area in 1987. Collins said the current "media-driven frenzy" surrounding the Behl disappearance is just a matter of timing. The previous missing-woman case, Natalee Holloway, an Alabama teenager who disappeared on the Caribbean island of Aruba, was running out of steam when Hurricane Katrina arrived to dominate the news, he said. The Behl case came during a little post-Katrina lull. "If television wasn't involved in it, it would be just like any other" case, Collins said. "Lots of people are missing here every year." Since the case reached escape velocity, some of Richmond's character has gotten widespread exposure. National TV has shown the Village Caf, a longtime mainstay of Richmond's counterculture, along with our downtown university and some of the interesting sights and sounds of the Fan. This is very much a Fan story. Behl's dorm is on West Main Street across from Monroe Park. Her car was found on North Mulberry Street in the Fan. She and her friends hung out in Fan clubs and restaurants. A big hunk of her college, Virginia Commonwealth University, is in the Fan. There's no other place like it. "I like the charm and the life in the Fan - the street theater," said Collins, who lives with his wife and their rescued dog on Grove Avenue in the lower Fan. Where else would a guy like Collins live? This Milwaukee native wound up being a Navy corpsman during Vietnam, although he's quick to point out he spent most of the war in prime berths in Okinawa and Hawaii, with just a couple of quick jaunts in-country. After the war, he had hoped to enter med school and become a doctor but was told, at 28, he was too old. So he went to law school at the College of William and Mary and then hung out his shingle in Richmond after his wife was transferred here. His 1st capital-murder case involved a medical student who had been shot and killed. At the time, defense lawyer Craig Cooley, now widely recognized as one of the region's finest attorneys, had asked Collins to help him on the case. "I greatly admire his skills," Cooley said yesterday. "He is, in my opinion, the consummate trial attorney. He has the best courtroom instincts of any attorney I've ever worked with." For the past several years, Collins and Cooley have team-taught a capital-murder-litigation class at the University of Richmond's T.C. Williams School of Law. >From time to time, Collins has also served as a substitute judge in the area. The blunt-speaking lawyer has been at this kind of thing for a while. "Too damn long, some might say," he said. When police officials called his latest client a "person of interest," Collins said he considered that phrase a pussyfooter's way of saying "suspect." He's a say-what-you-mean-and-mean-what-you-say kind of guy who doesn't lose any sleep over the killers he has helped escape punishment. "It would bother me more if somebody I knew was innocent got convicted." Part of the formidable Collins lore is the 1999 capital-murder trial of Melvin "Bug" Smith, who was accused of killing 4 men. During his closing arguments, Collins realized he was having a heart attack. He asked co-counsel Michael Herring (currently a contender to become Richmond commonwealth's attorney) to dial 911 and then resumed his comments to the jury. "I edited a little bit . . . but I finished," Collins recalled. He wound up being taken out of the building on a gurney. Cooley remembers visiting him at the hospital that night. That episode shows Collins' character and total commitment to his profession, Cooley said. "He's as passionate as anyone I know." (source: Richmond Times-Dispatch) MISSOURI: A matter of life, death and social standing Michael Lenza sounds like a reluctant opponent of the death penalty. "I wish I could say the death penalty is fair, the worst people get it; if its a crime of passion, we're not executing them; we're not executing children; were not executing somebody that's mentally retarded or has severe mental disabilities," he said. "But we can't say that. We just can't." Lenza has the facts and figures to back up what he says. The Bluffton University sociologist spent 6? years analyzing 19 years of capital murder cases in Missouri. He concluded that when it comes to sentencing in death penalty cases, "almost everything matters except the crime." What matters most, his findings suggest, is the relative value society places on the defendant and on the victim. Lenzas presentation Friday was based his doctoral dissertation, a study of the death penalty in Missouri from 1978 to 1996. He examined 9,857 homicides which resulted in 152 death sentences. He found that defendants were more likely to be sentenced to death if they were young, poor, black or had a previous criminal record. He found a black defendant who killed a white victim was 3 times as likely to receive the death penalty as a white defendant with a black victim. Lenza's findings track with numerous other studies. A California study published last week suggested the race of the victim could be the most telling factor: A death sentence was most likely when the victim was white, far less so when the victim was black or Hispanic. "When the jurors decide guilt or innocence, they're looking at the case. Then the trial stops. Then they have a new (sentencing) trial, and it's about the social relationships and the social standing of the defendant," Lenza said. "Now more than any time in American history, we're seeing evidence that it's not the offense, it's the social standing of the defendant that determines whos getting executed. Which is a complete turnaround of due process." Based on his research, Lenza says he can predict the outcome of Missouri death penalty cases with 80 % accuracy, without knowing anything about the circumstances of the crime. Lenza believes American attitudes toward capital punishment are significantly shaped by our countrys racial history. He said that since the death penalty was reinstituted in the 1970s, former slave states have accounted for 89 % of all executions, 94 % of executions of mentally retarded defendants, and 100 % of executions for crimes committed by juveniles. With regard to the death penalty and the justice system generally, Lenza said, "We've never had that really open discussion about slavery and about the impact on our institutions here. We've dealt with personal racism to some degree, but not institutional racism." Lenza received his Ph.D. just last May. Already his research has had an impact. Findings from his study were cited in Roper v. Simmons, the case in which the U.S. Supreme Court last year barred capital punishment for crimes committed before age 18. Now he would like to look more closely at how the mental capacity of the defendant affects application of the death penalty. Bluffton students may get involved in that research. "My suspicion is that there's a very strong correlation, that someone who is mentally ill or has a low IQ would be much more likely to be executed," he said. Like most scholars, Lenza is skeptical of the death penaltys deterrent effect. In Missouri, he said, homicides often spike after an execution - perhaps because the execution serves to validate violence as a means of solving problems. Overall, Lenza doubts that capital punishment can ever be applied fairly and objectively. "The majority of nations in the world have gotten rid of the death penalty because it always appears that it's used disproportionately against minorities and the poor," he said. "People of power, people of wealth are almost never executed." (source: Lima News) MARYLAND: Judge Grants Delay in Md. Sniper Trial A judge has granted a delay for the trial of John Allen Muhammad in the 6 Maryland deaths linked to the 2002 Washington-area sniper spree. Defendants are usually entitled to a trial within 180 days of arrest in Maryland or within 120 days of transfer to the state, but attorneys can ask for delays in complicated cases. Muhammad, already sentenced to die for a sniper shooting in Manassas, Va., is to go to trial in Maryland on May 1. Over the defendant's objections, Montgomery County Judge John W. Debelius III on Friday granted the delay requested by Muhammad's attorneys, citing "the very complicated logistics involved in the trial of this case and the length of trial." Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, who is already serving a life sentence for another shooting in Virginia, are charged with six counts of first-degree murder in the October 2002 deaths in Montgomery County. Maryland prosecutors say the trials are insurance in case the Virginia convictions are overturned. Malvo's trial is set for Oct. 10. The 2 men are accused of killing 10 people and wounding 3 in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. They also have been linked to shootings in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Washington state. (source: Associated Press) NEW YORK: Death penalty on the books, off the agenda William Easton is packing up boxes, stuffing them full of a decade of paperwork from death penalty cases. The state's first deputy capital defender will fill hundreds of boxes to be mothballed before his Rochester office closes at the end of October. The state has slashed staffing and funding for its Capital Defender Office, which provides assistance and defense in death penalty cases. On the 10th anniversary of the state's death penalty law, the system constructed to support it is being dismantled. Gov. George Pataki swept into the Governor's Mansion a decade ago on a win fueled by his push to bring back New York's death penalty. In September 1995, as he signed the law with the pens of 2 murdered police officers, he said capital punishment would bring sorely needed safety and justice back to New York. "Our state has traveled a long and arduous road to arrive at this point in history," he said. "That long road is now over. Justice will be served." But as Pataki prepares to leave office, the law that helped put him there is in a messy limbo. No one has been executed since 1963, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. The reinstatement of the death penalty one of the governor's greatest victories will likely be little more than a footnote in his legacy. Still on the books A June 2004 state Court of Appeals decision found a flaw in the law, which made the death penalty unusable, but the decision did not wipe capital punishment off the books. The court left it to the Legislature to fix the law. The state Senate voted to remedy the flaw in March, but the Assembly didn't have the votes to get the fix out of committee. Enough questions remain about the law's future that vestiges of it are being kept alive. There is still a death row, with two people on it, at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. John Taylor, convicted in the deaths of five people in the Queens Wendy's massacre in 2000, and Robert Shulman, who killed and dismembered three prostitutes in Suffolk in the 1990s, spend their days and nights locked in 7- by 9-foot cells. Those cells, and the 10 others on death row that are empty, open into a second cell where there is a shower stall and an area to receive visitors. The only time inmates leave is for an hour of daily exercise. There is still a death house, too. It is a penthouse on top of Building 2 at the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County. It is empty, without even the gurney that would be needed for an execution by lethal U.S. injection - 1st a drug to anesthetize the condemned, then another to immobilize, and a final drip to stop the heart. Prosecutors are still asking for death sentences; there are three death-penalty cases at the trial level in Brooklyn and one on Staten Island. Five more cases are pending Downstate, where prosecutors have said they want to reserve their right to seek the death penalty should the Legislature fix it or the high court change its status through one of two pending appeals. Defense system crumbles But as prosecutors stand their ground and the governor continues to tout the death penalty's benefits, the system created to ensure a proper defense under a law where mistakes cannot be reversed is being allowed to crumble. The Capital Defender Office, established at the law's inception, has been cut from 69 employees to 11, and more cuts are expected, Chief Capital Defender Kevin Doyle said. His budget, too, has been cut - from $12 million to a little more than $3 million. Doyle would be happy to close his office completely if it was clear that the death penalty was gone. But it's not, and he worries about what could happen if the law is fixed. The office he built up over 10 years has shrunk to almost nothing. "If it was a clear decision, the vast majority of us would be happy, on a personal level, to throw a party, turn out the lights and move on with our lives," Doyle said. "But it's a little bit more complicated." Easton, of the Rochester office that's closing, said that if the death penalty is revived, the cuts will make it hard for defendants to obtain proper counsel. Sean Byrne, Easton's prosecutorial counterpart, agrees that the door has not closed on the death penalty. The executive director of the New York Prosecutors Training Institute said an appeal in Taylor's case could still have a major impact on when and how the death penalty can be used in New York. Until then, his office, a private, nonprofit organization funded through state and federal money, has shifted its focus. Attorneys are still working to defeat Taylor's appeal, but they also are training prosecutors in other areas, including domestic violence and sexual assault. Support for the death penalty and death sentences has decreased nationally over the past five years, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. The number of executions fell from 98 in 1999 to 59 in 2004. The number of death sentences dropped from 282 to 130 in the same period. He said it's unlikely the death penalty will come back to New York. "The Legislature could change its mind; the court could even change its mind," Dieter said. But he doesn't think either will. Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, who chairs the committee that decided not to move the death penalty fix out for a vote this year, said Dieter is right. Lentol said the sentiments of the public and the Legislature have changed since he and others voted to reinstate the death penalty 10 years ago. Then, they saw the death penalty as a solution for a rising crime rate. Now crime is down and there is the option of life without parole, something created in New York when the death penalty was instituted. But Lentol doesn't think the death penalty's disarray will be more than a blip when it comes to the governor's legacy. "Under his watch the crime rate, the murder rate went down," he said. "The death penalty is not significant enough to dismantle his legacy." (source: The Post-Standard) OHIO----impending execution//volunteer Inmate is 4th man to drop death-penalty appeals Herman Dale Ashworth has always believed in capital punishment, and his 8 years on death row haven't changed his opinion. Ashworth says he beat Daniel Baker to death and robbed him of $40 while out drinking in 1996 and deserves to be executed. The 32-year-old high school dropout gave up the right to appeal his death sentence and is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday. "The Baker family deserves to have their justice," Ashworth told a psychologist who evaluated him to determine if he was competent to volunteer for execution. "What's it going to hurt to have them have their day of justice? A needle isn't all that bad and I'm going to go to sleep." Ashworth is the fourth condemned prisoner to drop his appeals since Ohio resumed executions in 1999 with another volunteer, Wilford Berry. The state has put 16 men to death, including seven last year, since then. Nationally, 116 people have volunteered for executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center. That's about 12 percent of the total over that period. Except for a brief time earlier in the case, Ashworth has refused to put on a defense or to let attorneys do it for him. He pleaded guilty in 1997 to aggravated murder and aggravated robbery. In May, he dropped his lawyers because they were trying to keep him alive, and no other appeals were planned. Gov. Bob Taft denied clemency Friday, following the recommendation of the Ohio Parole Board, which held a hearing even though Ashworth didn't ask for one. The clemency process is in state law. "I appreciate that he has accepted responsibility for his actions," said police Detective Sgt. Scott Snow. "I think that's unique." Baker, a 40-year-old engineer, was beaten so badly a deputy coroner testified that his injuries were consistent with a high-speed traffic accident or plane crash. Ashworth met him at the Wagon Wheel bar in Newark, a central Ohio city of about 46,000 people, on Sept. 10, 1996. The two, who had never met before, had a few drinks and then went to another bar. They were on their way back to the Wagon Wheel around 9 p.m. when Ashworth lured Baker into an alley and beat him with his fists and a 6-foot board and kicked him, according to Licking County Common Pleas Court documents and Ashworth's interview with police. He then took about $40 from Baker and went back to the bar. Ashworth's girlfriend at the time, Tanna Brett, testified that he told her that night about the beating and took her to the alley, where she saw Baker lying on the ground, still alive. After the couple went to another bar, Ashworth said he had to go back to finish off Baker so he couldn't be identified, she said. Brett said she thought she persuaded Ashworth to leave Baker alone. However, when she went looking for him later she heard a metal sound coming from the alley and found Baker in a different position near a metal loading dock door. A couple walking their dog found the body around 3:45 a.m., about 30 minutes before Ashworth made an anonymous 911 call to tell authorities about the beating. Ashworth became a suspect after authorities traced the call to a phone near where he was staying and Brett and a cousin he had confessed to reported him to police. Ashworth told police that Baker, a divorced father of a then-12-year-old girl, came onto him and he freaked out. "You had the impulsiveness of the original attack and then he went back," Snow said. "That's not impulsive." Police found three credit cards belonging to Baker in the jeans Ashworth was wearing and blood matching Baker's blood type on his clothes. Although Ashworth pleaded guilty, state law requires a 3-judge panel hear testimony to decide whether the state has established the crime is serious enough to warrant the death penalty. The panel accepted Ashworth's plea and sentenced him to die. Ashworth had worked several places since he was a teenager, including a saw mill, drilling company and an egg farm. His former lawyer Carol Wright, now a standby attorney, was frustrated by his refusal to allow his attorneys to present witnesses. "The picture that has been presented in court, in a clemency hearing and in any newspaper report is very one-sided and very limited so the state is killing someone that they know one narrow slice about," Wright said, declining to elaborate. Baker's family and Ashworth declined requests for interviews. Tangee Overly, Baker's cousin, said at the clemency hearing that her family agrees with the sentence. Ashworth was staying with a cousin, Ron Sillin, at the time of the slaying. Sillin said they haven't spoken for a long time. "He was outgoing," he said. "If anybody needed anything done or if he could help somebody out, he would do it. He would do what he could for people." ON THE NET Death Penalty Information Center: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/ Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction: http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ (source: Associated Press) ******************************** Condemned killer's mother regrets giving him up -- Fla. woman never got response after writing Ashworth in prison A brutal killing in a downtown alley in September of 1996 irrevocably changed the lives of people living half a country away. Family members of Dale Ashworth still struggle to understand why he killed a man that night and, now, they fret over his execution, scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday. Ashworth, 32, has been actively lobbying for his death since admitting to robbing and killing Daniel Baker, 40, of Newark. But his birth mother, Betty Briggs, of Palm Bay, Fla., "can't handle what they are going to do to my baby." Briggs, in an e-mail, wrote that she opposes the death penalty and will not attend her son's execution, believing he doesn't want her there. Briggs gave her son up for adoption to her older brother, James, and his wife, Anna Mae Ashworth, of DeQuincy, La., less than a month after Dale's birth. "That was my biggest mistake in my life and I have regretted all of Dale's life," she said. "I was married to Dale's dad. It just got real bad ... so I got out of that relationship. Dale was born sick, and I could not take care of him by myself. ... "It was real hard, but I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, and now I know it was not a good thing at all." Briggs and her two daughters have written many letters to her son on death row, but he has never answered any of them. "I hate myself so much, I can hardly look in the mirror," Briggs wrote. "He knows I'm his biological mother, but he does not know how much I love him. I love him just as much as I do my other kids. And I'm afraid he has not forgiven me." Briggs said the pending execution is tearing her family apart and is making her sick. "I am so sorry Dale feels the way he does about me," she wrote, "but God knows I have tried and tried to change the way he feels about me. But I guess I failed that, too." Dale's adoptive mother, the former Anna Mae Ashworth, divorced James Ashworth when Dale was 3 years old. She's now separated from her second husband, Bill Dalton, of DeQuincy, La. Bill Dalton said he doesn't see the Ashworth family very often and is unsure how they are dealing with Dale's upcoming execution. "I don't know what is going to happen," he said. "I'm just down here dealing with the chaos." Dalton married Dale's mother in October of 1982, he said, and separated from her seven months ago. He has filed for divorce, he said. Dale lived with the Daltons before going out on his own. "I never had a minute's problem out of him as long as he still lived with us," Dalton said. He remembers Dale as "a hard worker, when he was working." According to Dalton, Anna Mae and James plan to visit Dale in prison in Lucasville this week. He said he does not know if they will witness Dale's execution by lethal injection Tuesday. Attempts to contact the Ashworths were unsuccessful. Lethal injection Lethal injection is the only legal method of execution in Ohio. It involves a series of 3 injections: The 1st renders the inmate unconscious, the 2nd stops the respiratory system and the 3rd stops the heart. The procedure -- which costs $106.03 -- takes about 8 to 10 minutes. (Source: Ohio Correction Institution Inspection Committee) Witnesses 3 people will witness Tuesday's execution of Dale Ashworth representing the victim, Daniel Baker, and the state. They are: Samuel Overly, relative Robert Becker, Licking County prosecutor Heather Gosselin, Ohio assistant attorney general (Source: Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction) (source: Advocate Reporter) **************************** Parole Board warned to comply on prisoner hearings A judge has threatened to hold state parole officials in contempt for ignoring orders requiring them to prove they are holding hearings for hundreds of prisoners. In a recent opinion, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge David Cain said parole officials appear to be "deliberately distorting" rulings that he and an appeals court issued in the past year. He ordered them to immediately prove they are complying with the orders, which require the board to give new parole hearings to inmates whom the board placed in "offense categories" that don't correspond to their convictions. The new categories in effect resentenced the inmates by requiring them to serve more time than the minimum sentence imposed in court. Cain registered his disgust with the state's legal arguments by citing a passage from Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice": "His reasons are as 2 grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff. You shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search." Charles Clovis, an assistant Ohio public defender, said he is "utterly convinced" that state lawyers are in contempt of court. "They have literally rewritten the court's order in a manner that denies hundreds - and likely thousands - of inmates a parole hearing to which they're entitled," he said. Greg Trout, chief legal counsel for the Parole Board, disputed the charge. He said the board is "starting to comply" with Cain's Aug. 31, 2004, order. "We believe we are providing meaningful consideration to the inmates who appear at the Parole Board, and we have every intention of continuing to do so," he said. Trout declined to say how many hearings the board has held, why the board has not provided Clovis with evidence of those hearings or how many hearings Cain's order requires. However, a Parole Board spokeswoman said later that the board has held hearings for 377 inmates as a result of Cain's order. Eleven have been paroled, she said. Thousands of so-called "old-law" inmates are at the mercy of the Parole Board, which can use factors such as institutional behavior to decide how much time they will serve. In contrast, prisoners convicted after Ohio's 1996 truth-in-sentencing law was passed receive flat sentences for all but the most serious crimes. That means they leave prison when their sentences expire, regardless of how they act in prison. Prisoners and their advocates have bitterly criticized this inequity. Cain and other judges also have accused the board of usurping their authority, a violation of the Constitution's separation-of-powers doctrine. Ohio's creation of 2 classes of inmates has aggravated tensions between old-law inmates and the younger "flat-timers." The younger inmates often prey on their older counterparts, aware that they are afraid to retaliate. Jenny Warwick, a former prison system teacher, cites these tensions in the death of her husband, Larry, at the London Correctional Institution on Aug. 24. Larry Warwick, 38, was serving 15 to 90 years for kidnapping, rape and felonious assault. He died after being sucker-punched by a 28-year-old inmate who was serving three years for robbery. Warwick told his wife the younger prisoner was harassing him but he was trying to avoid confrontation because the Parole Board automatically adds 2 months to an old-law inmate's sentence when he breaks the rules. The State Highway Patrol is investigating Warwick's death. "It's double-jeopardy," Jenny Warwick said. "Not only are they sentenced by the court, they're sentenced again by the Parole Board." (source: Cleveland Plain Dealer) NORTH CAROLINA: Play delves into debate on death penalty----'Exonerated' deals with 6 actual cases EXONERATED What: Theatre-on-a-Stick's production of The Exonerated. When: 2 p.m. today, 8 p.m. Thursday to Saturday, and 3 p.m. Sunday. Where: Today's performance is at the Brown Penn Recreation Center, 735 Third St. in Hickory. Other performances are at the Belk Centrum on the campus of Lenoir-Rhyne College, 625 Seventh Ave. in Hickory. Cost: $10 for adults, $5 for seniors and students. For more information: Call (828) 466-0920. HICKORY Kerry Max Cook spent 22 years on death row for a murder that he didn't commit. Cook was arrested in the 1977 rape and murder of a 21-year-old woman in Tyler, Texas. Prosecutors built a case against him based on a bungled investigation. He was finally exonerated in 1999. You can hear Cook's story and others at Theatre-on-a-Stick's production of The Exonerated. The award-winning play opened Friday at Brown Penn Recreation Center in Ridgeview. The play, written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, tells the true stories of 6 people who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to die. They spent between 2 and 22 years on death row before being cleared. All of the dialogue comes from court records and interviews with the play's subjects. The Exonerated puts a human face on the debate about capital punishment, said Ray Mills, who directed the play. "It's a very personal issue," Mills said. "It's a religious issue. It cuts to the core." Duane Muhammad, a cast member, is the vice president of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, which is based in North Carolina. He said he hopes that the play will educate audiences on inequities in the justice system. "I think this play brings light to some issues we need to examine," Muhammad said. "We need to try to ensure that these kinds of things don't happen." Several performances will be followed by open discussions. (source: Winston-Salem Journal)
