Sept. 23 ALABAMA----execution Peoples put to death for Pell City murders In Atmore, John W. Peoples Jr. flashed a broad grin and gave a thumbs up to his brother before he was executed Thursday for killing a Pell City family of 3 and driving off in their vintage sports car in 1983. Peoples, 48, of Talladega, died at 6:27 p.m. CST. He was convicted in December 1983 in the killing of Pell City businessman Paul G. Franklin and his wife, Judy Choron Franklin, both 34, and their 10-year-old son, Paul. Officials at Holman Prison near Atmore conducted the execution by lethal injection after the U.S. Supreme Court denied Peoples' request for a delay and Gov. Bob Riley turned down his bid for clemency. Peoples did not look at or offer an apology to relatives of the Franklins, instead thanking his own family for their support. "I hope I've handled everything since I've been here with dignity," he said in his final statement as he faced his brother, Gerry Peoples. The Franklins' relatives said they were relieved that Peoples was executed, but were surprised at his apparent lack of remorse. "Seemed a lot easier on him the way he died versus the way they died," said Bill Choron, Judy Choron Franklin's brother. Peoples ate very little in the days before the execution and did not make the traditional request for a last meal, prisons spokesman Brian Corbett said. Peoples spent Thursday morning visiting with several relatives, including his mother, 2 daughters and son. He left $186.19 to his brother. In the final days leading up to his execution, Peoples argued that he had a right to die by electrocution, as his original death sentence stipulated, instead of lethal injection, a method Alabama adopted beginning July 1, 2002. He contended there never was a public court proceeding changing the sentence. The state, in its response to the Supreme Court, said Peoples missed the 2002 deadline to request the electric chair. "He has offered absolutely no justification for the delay," said Assistant Attorney General Beth Hughes in her rebuttal filed Wednesday. State's attorneys also said his sentence - death - was not changed and that his claim was without merit. The Franklin boy and his mother were beaten to death with a rifle, but the father's body was too decomposed by the time he was found for investigators to determine the cause of death. Prosecutors say Peoples killed the 3 because he wanted their 1968 red Corvette, and he was arrested after attempting to sell the car shortly after the killings. Peoples had argued that because he led investigators to the bodies, his attorney should have taken steps to get him a sentence less than the death penalty. Evidence showed that Judy Franklin wrote Peoples' name on the top of a clothes hamper with an eyebrow pencil before she and her son were abducted. Peoples' cousin, Timothy Gooden, also testified in a plea deal which got him a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Gooden, who initially testified that he was with Peoples the night of the killings, later claimed investigators pressured him into testifying falsely against Peoples. Gooden was re-indicted for capital murder and, after pleading guilty, sentenced to life without parole. Last week, relatives of Gooden presented prison Commissioner Donal Campbell with a letter from Peoples in which he insists Gooden was never with him the night of the murders. Peoples' letter, while apparently not asserting his own innocence, says in part that District Attorney Robert Rumsey knew Gooden was not there but still made a deal with Gooden to testify against Peoples. Relatives of the Franklins had said they did not care if Peoples died by electrocution or lethal injection. Peoples becomes the 4th condemned inmate to be put to death this year, the 10th since the state switched to lethal injection, and the 34th since Alabama resumed capital punishment in 1983. Peoples becomes the 39th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 983rd overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977. (sources: Associated Press and Rick Halperin) ******************** Condemned inmates executed in Alabama, and date of death, since the state restored its capital punishment law in the mid-1970s: John Louis Evans III, April 22, 1983 Arthur L. Jones, March 20, 1986 Wayne Eugene Ritter, Aug. 28, 1987 Michael Lindsey, May 26, 1989 Horace Dunkins, July 14, 1989 Herbert Richardson, Aug. 18, 1989 Arthur J. Julius, Nov. 17, 1989 Wallace Norrell Thomas, July 13, 1990 Larry G. Heath, March 20, 1992 Cornelius Singleton, Nov. 20, 1992 Willie Clisby, April 28, 1995 Varnall Weeks, May 12, 1995 Edward Horsley, Feb. 16, 1996 Billy Wayne Waldrop, Jan. 10, 1997 Walter Hill, May 2, 1997 Henry Francis Hays, June 6, 1997 Steven Allen Thompson, May 8, 1998 Brian Keith Baldwin, June 18, 1999 Victor Kennedy, Aug. 6, 1999 David Ray Duren, Jan. 7, 2000 Freddie Lee Wright, March 3, 2000 Robert Lee Tarver Jr., April 14, 2000 Pernell Ford, June 2, 2000 Lynda Lyon Block, May 10, 2002 Anthony Keith Johnson, Dec. 12, 2002 Michael Eugene Thompson, March 13, 2003 Gary L. Brown, April 24, 2003 Tommy J. Fortenberry, Aug. 7, 2003 James B. Hubbard, Aug. 5, 2004 David Kevin Hocker, Sept. 30, 2004 Mario Centobie, April 28, 2005 Jerry Paul Henderson, June 2, 2005 George Sibley Jr. Aug. 4, 2005 John W. Peoples Jr. Sept. 22, 2005 (source: Alabama Department of Corrections) (source: The Tuscaloosa News) TEXAS: Hurricane Rita Sends Texas Legal Community Packing As meteorologists and the rest of Texas guesses where Hurricane Rita and its monster winds will land, the courts and legal community in Corpus Christi, Galveston and Houston have evacuated and headed north. Across South Texas, federal, state and county courts have closed. Law offices have shut down. Even federal prisoners have been packed up and sent to points north. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which temporarily relocated to Houston late last month after Hurricane Katrina forced the judges out of New Orleans, announced on its Web site on Wednesday that it would be closed Thursday and today because of Hurricane Rita. The 5th Circuit still plans to hold arguments in Austin and Plano the week of Sept. 26. Eugenio Diaz, the assistant chief deputy of the U.S. Marshals Service in the Southern District of Texas, says his staff has worked around the clock since Wednesday, moving some 200 federal detainees from a Corpus Christi facility to detention centers managed by private contractors in Del Rio and San Antonio. "We're not even considering the expense of this operation," says Diaz. "We'd rather have it done in advance even if the hurricane doesn't have an effect. We don't want to be sorry afterward." Diaz says the Southern District's marshals service has temporarily moved its command center from Houston to McAllen. The marshals service office is not, however, moving the more than 800 detainees housed in the Federal Detention Center in Houston, Diaz says. He notes that the Houston facility was designed to withstand a hurricane and therefore the staff and detainees have not been evacuated. Eddie Leandro, the deputy clerk in the McAllen division of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, says the Galveston division has been closed since noon Wednesday. Leandro says the Corpus Christi division closed Thursday morning. At the Houston division of the Southern District, Leandro says, a skeleton crew remains, but he expected the division to close on Sept. 22. All federal court cases scheduled for the later part of this week have been rescheduled in those divisions, Leandro says. At state and county courthouses, operations have also ceased. The Web site for Houston's 1st Court of Appeals says the court closed at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, and will "remain closed until 8 a.m. on Monday Sept. 26, 2005. ... Any deadline in any civil or criminal appeal or original proceeding that falls on Sept. 21, 22, 23 or 26 ... is suspended and extended to the greater of (1) Tuesday Sept. 27, 2005, or (2) 3 business days." Houston's 14th Court of Appeals also closed Wednesday and will "remain closed until after the passage of Hurricane Rita. No 'late filing' services will be available in the interim. However, filing deadlines will be extended to permit timely filing after the court reopens. In the event of an emergency, please contact the next nearest court of appeals," its Web site reads. At the Galveston County Courthouse, a prerecorded message says all county operations have stopped. For those planning on serving their sentences in the county jail this weekend, the prerecorded message warns: "Do not show up. You'll serve it later." Many clients attempting to reach their attorneys in Galveston or Corpus Christi will hear prerecorded messages announcing the offices are closed. Many of the recordings -- such as the one at Corpus Christi's Bargas & Rodriguez -- optimistically suggest that everything will be back to normal soon. "We're closed until Monday. Thank you. And please be careful," the voice on Bargas & Rodriguez's message says. The Watts Law Firm evacuated its Corpus Christi and Houston offices. But it did not let the disruptions stop the firm's lawyers' preparations for trials that start Monday. Michael M. Guerra, a member of the Watts Law Firm's Edinburg office, says despite the hurricane evacuation, 3 trial teams previously located in the firm's Houston and Corpus Christi offices continue to prepare for "very complicated products liability cases." The trials in those cases are scheduled to start Monday in state courts in Edinburg, Brownsville and San Antonio, Guerra says. Starting Wednesday, Guerra says, the firm began relocating staff members and trial files from the Corpus and Houston offices to the Edinburg and San Antonio offices. "We didn't lose much work time," Guerra says. But some 80 boxes of files were transferred to the Edinburg and San Antonio offices, as well as some 30 lawyers and support staff. Guerra says the firm also hired temporary clerical and paralegal help in San Antonio and Edinburg to assist the trial teams. Mikal Watts, the firm's founder, earlier this week issued direct deposits of paychecks ahead of schedule so everyone would have cash on hand for the evacuations, Guerra says. As reports came in late Thursday that Hurricane Rita might move in the direction of Beaumont, Karl Rupp, an associate with the Dallas office of Provost Umphrey, breathed a little easier, knowing the firm had closed its Beaumont office Wednesday. The closing has caused inconveniences, even for Provost's Dallas lawyers, Rupp says, adding that the firm took down its servers in Beaumont to protect them. As of press time, Rupp had not been able to contact his colleagues from Beaumont, not even the firm's founder, noted plaintiffs attorney Walter Umphrey. "They must all be on the road," Rupp says. As Texas lawyers evacuated the Gulf Coast area, Dallas Bar Association staff members tried to contact their counterparts in Houston on Thursday to offer help, but they had trouble getting through by telephone, says DBA executive director Cathy Maher. She says the DBA knows of some 250 empty offices in the Dallas area that are available for lawyers fleeing from Hurricane Rita. Roughly 70 firms originally donated the offices for lawyers displaced by Hurricane Katrina, but the space has gone unoccupied, Maher says. State Bar of Texas spokeswoman Kelley Jones King says, "Thankfully, we already have our hot line for hurricane evacuees up and running." The State Bar's Legal Disaster Hot Line -- (800) 504-7030 -- has been offering Katrina evacuees a pathway to pro bono advice on storm-related matters, such as disagreements with landlords. King says the State Bar will simply change the message on the hot line and make it available to Rita evacuees as well. As of press time, most of the State Bar's board members were in Amarillo for a meeting. Notes King, "We are all trying to figure out how we are going to get out of here." (source: Texas Lawyer) ************************** The execution of Francis Newton this week was a travesty of justice. Her defense attorney was subsequently disbarred. He would sleep in trials. He interviewed no witnesses in Francis defense. the total evidence was circumstancial, residue on her clothing that was said to be evidence of gunpowder when it is also residue from fertilizer. The system of having the hearing judge appoint the defense attorney should be ended before the next capital trial. Until it is ended there should be a moratorium on executions. Texas has the highest per capita rate of executions in the country. Harris County, TX where Francis Newton was tried, has the highest per capita rate of execution in the world. The rate is even higher than in totalitarian countries. Is that the mark of a democratic republic, of a people who are lovers of liberty and justice for all? I think that those goals of our people should move us to reform this Texas justice system with due haste. Gary Petz (source: Letter to the Editor, Tyler Morning Telegraph) ************************ Potter sheriff not surprised by jail noncompliance issues Inspectors from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards performed their annual inspection of the Potter County Detention Center and noted some noncompliance issues. But the issues were not surprising, nor were they enough to put the sheriff's department in a panic mode, Sheriff Mike Shumate, said Thursday. "What happens is their inspector writes up his report and takes it back to Austin and then we receive a formal notice of noncompliance," Shumate said. "Then we have 30 days to submit a compliance plan. We knew we were going to be in noncompliance on a couple of things. We weren't surprised." Dennis Cisneros from TCJS did a walk-through and found violations involving overcrowding in both male and female cells, the report said. "Our biggest problem is the state has no room," Shumate said. "It goes in cycles. The state jails fill up, then the county jails back up. There's nowhere to put them. The state builds more prisons and the county jails thin out." The report cited a shortage of officers to inmates. The state calls for one officer for every 48 inmates. "There are not enough correctional officers on shifts to perform required functions," the report said. "The easiest way to remember it is three (officers) per 100 (inmates)," Shumate said. "If you've got 97 inmates then you need three officers. Do the math. Not all of the inmates are the same. We do a breakdown and assign officers where they're needed the most. Nonviolent offenders are different from violent offenders and might not need as much supervision." Hygiene problems are mentioned in the report, specifically that mattresses are not clean, safe and serviceable. Mattresses are issued with tears and rips that do not allow for proper disinfecting before reissue, the report said. "We cleaned the jail top to bottom before the inspectors got here," Shumate said. "Then the inmates tore all the shower curtains down. Dirty mattresses are no surprise." It all boils down to the degree of violation and the options available to fix it. "Whether it's new construction, deferred sentencing, we just have to wait and see what the commissioners recommend after we receive official notice from the state," Shumate said. "I do know there are 48 other jails throughout the state that are not in compliance. They're dealing with the same issues we are. We're not the only ones out of compliance." Officials at the offices of TCJS said their inspectors were still in the field and had not yet submitted their reports. Therefore, they wouldn't be able to comment until they see the preliminary reports concerning violations in Potter County. (source: The Amarillo Globe-News) KENTUCKY: Condemned inmate granted hearing on IQ -- Murderer Skaggs' IQ again at issue The debate over the mental capacity of David Leroy Skaggs and whether he should be put to death for killing an elderly Barren County couple during a 1981 robbery at their home is headed back to court. The Kentucky Supreme Court decided yesterday that there are enough questions about whether Skaggs is mentally retarded to warrant another hearing in Barren Circuit Court. A state law prohibits the execution of anyone with an IQ of 70 or below, and various tests over the years have put Skaggs' IQ at 64 to 73. Skaggs, 55, has been sentenced to death twice for killing Herman and Mae Matthews on May 6, 1981. His initial death sentence was overturned by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals because of trial testimony by a psychiatrist, Elya Bresler, who turned out to be a fraud. Bresler was called to testify during the trial by the defense, which was trying to make the case that Skaggs was insane. After the jury convicted Skaggs, Bresler was called back by defense lawyers during the penalty phase of the trial. Federal appeals judges said that Bresler was not a psychiatrist and had lied about his qualifications. The appellate court also said Bresler's testimony was rambling and "incoherent to the point of being comical." The judges upheld Skaggs' murder conviction in 1981, but threw out his death sentence. (source: Courier-Journal) CONNECTICUT: 2nd Circuit Sentencings Are Nation's Most Lenient -- Circuit also tops in post-'Booker' guideline departures Federal judges within the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals are apparently relishing their newfound ability to more easily depart from the rigidity of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. Since the U.S. Supreme Court rulings in U.S. v. Booker and U.S. v. Fanfan rendered the sentencing guidelines merely advisory last January, less than half (48.8 percent) of all the sentences handed down in the 2nd Circuit have fallen within guideline ranges, according to the latest data provided by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The 2nd Circuit encompasses Connecticut, Vermont and the Southern District of New York. The information is current up through Aug. 3. That percentage of within-range sentencings is the lowest of any of the federal system's 12 circuits -- and a sharp decrease from the 2nd Circuit's previous results. In the 2003 fiscal year, its sentencing judges adhered to guideline ranges in nearly two out of every three sentences (63 %). Sentencing judges from the 2nd Circuit are now imposing sentences below guideline recommendations in 1 of every 4 cases, according to the commission's data. That's up from 1 out of every 5 or 6 cases in the preceding 3 years. The 25 % of the judge-initiated, below-range sentences is the highest rate of all the circuits and well above the national average of 13 %. As for adhering to the guideline ranges post-Booker, the 5th Circuit has the highest rate at 71.5 percent. The national average is 61.7 %. ONGOING DEBATE The president of the Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, Bridgeport, Conn., solo Michael A. Fitzpatrick, said the lower number of within-range sentences reflected in the commission's statistics is not surprising. "Over the last several years, I have often heard federal judges say from the bench that they would have imposed a lower sentence but for the guidelines," he said. "Our departure rate is one of the highest in the country," said U.S. Attorney Kevin J. O'Connor. "The departure figure was higher than we would have liked it to be both pre- and post-Booker. We've always felt we'd like to see that percentage decrease." Sentencing Commission figures show that federal prosecutors in the 2nd Circuit have agreed to departures in 24.5 % of post-Booker sentencings. Most government-sponsored departures are for defendants who provided substantial assistance to the government; however, the figure also includes statutorily authorized departures for other reasons. The government-sponsored departure rate of 24.5 % is up slightly from the pre-Booker rate of 20.3 % in the 2003 fiscal year. Federal prosecutors in the 9th Circuit -- which has a comparable within-guidelines range of 49 %, but a judge-initiated departure rate of only 12.2 % post-Booker -- sponsored departures in 38.4 % of sentences. The variation in sentences among the circuits was a debate that went on before Booker, O'Connor noted, when the guidelines were in place to ensure uniformity in sentencing. "It's easy to make generalizations about departure rates, but you need to look at all the factors that go into sentencing on a case-by-case basis, so that you're not comparing apples and oranges," O'Connor said. Still, many Connecticut federal defense attorneys say they have changed their sentencing arguments as a result of Booker. Assistant Federal Public Defender Paul F. Thomas said he stresses to the court that a below-range sentence no longer needs to fit within the confines of statutorily defined parameters. Thomas described one sentencing he had since Booker in which the new advisory status of the guidelines made a stark difference. It was a theft/fraud case, and his client faced a guidelines sentence of 21 to 27 months in prison. "None of the circumstances rose individually to the level of supporting a departure, but the judge thought 2 years was too much," he said. "In a pre-Booker world, the court would have sentenced my client to a sentence at the low end of the range." The judge in this post-Booker case, however, handed down a sentence of just a year and a day, he noted. Although Thomas observed that Booker "adds another significant layer to our arguments for a lesser sentence," any bid for a sentencing departure still be "compelling and well founded," he said. Fairfield, Conn., attorney Auden Grogins echoed Thomas's assessment. "I still, of course, use guidelines departures in my sentencing arguments, but other mitigating factors definitely play a part now, too. Courts now have a fuller picture," she said. (source: The Connecticut Law Tribune)
