Oct. 5 MISSOURI: County to seek death penalty -- Woman: Accused should have been in prison McDonald County Prosecutor Steve Geeding said Tuesday that he will seek the death penalty against a 23-year-old man accused of killing 2 rural Pineville people last week. In the meantime, a woman whose house the accused burned in 2003 contends that the man would have still been in prison last week had state officials listened to her. Killed on Thursday afternoon were Orlie McCool, 70, and Dawn McCool, 47, who lived at 340 Pleasant Ridge Road, in rural Pineville. Orlie McCool, who was found near the front door, was shot once, McDonald County Sheriff Don Schlessman has said. Dawn McCool, who was found in the downstairs living room and kitchen area, had 4 gunshot wounds. Levi King, who grew up in the area of the McCools' home, is facing two counts of first-degree murder, 1st-degree burglary and armed criminal action in connection with the crimes at the McCool home. King is also charged in connection with a burglary and the theft of three weapons at the property of his father. Authorities have said tests confirmed that the weapon used in the shootings was stolen in a burglary of the home of King's father, Scott King. Geeding said he is planning to seek the death penalty under Missouri law citing aggravating circumstances. He declined to discuss the aggravating circumstances. "I don't want to try my case in the media," Geeding said. "It jeopardizes the case." Levi King was arrested Friday night as he tried to re-enter the United States at a bridge between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico. He allegedly was driving Orlie McCool's Dodge Dakota pickup and was in possession of at least one gun belonging to McCool, authorities said. King on July 1, 2003, was sentenced to prison on charges of 2nd-degree burglary, second-degree arson and stealing in connection with a Jan. 8, 2003, break-in and fire at the home of Carol and Johnny Shockley. While King was in prison, he also was convicted of 1st-degree burglary in connection with an incident that took place Dec. 16, 2002, in Greene County. Carol Shockley, 42, said she and her husband are working in Texas, but their primary home is in the Anderson area, and that their neighbors include Scott King and Orlie McCool. "He grew up with our kids," Carol Shockley said of Levi King. "His dad is our neighbor." She said she had known the son since he was 10 or 11. She and her husband were working in Nevada, she said, when they learned that their home had been set on fire. By the time they got home, Levi King had been charged with the crimes. Authorities found 2 stereos, a gun and a fireproof lockbox from their home in King's possession. Carol Shockley said the prospect of King being released from prison frightened her, and she worried that he might burn down her home again. "At the time he went to prison, everything I had been told was that he still blamed me and my husband for him going to prison," she said. "We didn't agree to a plea bargain and for him to just have probation. We went ahead with the state prosecutor, and for that he went to prison." Because of her concern, she said, she tried to keep abreast of King's status. She said she contacted the Department of Corrections in April, and learned that King's parole hearing had been conducted in September 2004 and that he was going to be released in July. "I had a fit," she said. "I called the governor's office. I called the attorney general's office. I called the Department of Corrections, and I even spoke to the gentleman on the parole board (the person who served at Levi King's parole hearing). I talked to them all, and I begged them to consider his release. "They got back with me, and they told me they had made the right decision, and they were going to release him on the 6th of July." Because of her involvement, she said, the Department of Corrections added stipulations to King's release. They included not contacting her or her husband, not going close to their property, and staying away from his father's home. "I just want people to understand if someone had listened to me - the governor's office, the attorney general and Department of Corrections - he would still be in prison," she said. Once the Department of Corrections learned in April about Carol Shockley's concerns as a victim of the former crimes, the agency's representatives were in contact with her and did add stipulations to King's parole, according to department spokesman John Fougere. "His original convictions were not violent crimes by definition," said Fougere. Fougere said state statutes mandate that prosecutors provide victims with information in cases of dangerous felonies, but some counties send such information even in cases in which the crimes are not considered dangerous felonies. King was released from prison on July 6 and was transferred to a halfway house in St. Louis. Authorities said he signed out from the halfway house on a work-release pass on Sept. 23 and did not return. (source: Joplin Globe) CALIFORNIA: Convicted slayer's lawyers to again seek appeal Attorneys for Kevin Cooper said they would file an appeal Monday with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal, the latest in Cooper's 20-year fight to overturn his death penalty for four Chino Hills hatchet-and-knife slayings. Cooper's bid to have his case overturned was denied earlier this year in San Diego federal court by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff. She conducted several hearings, oversaw DNA and other tests on evidence and heard more than 40 witnesses. Those hearings were ordered by a full panel of 9th Circuit justices in a last-minute stay of Cooper's execution in February of 2004. After her ruling, Huff also turned down a bid by Cooper to find any issues still worthy of appeal. That set the stage for returning to the federal appellate court. Cooper was convicted in the 1983 of killings Doug and Peggy Ryen; their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica; and neighbor Christopher Hughes, 11, who was staying overnight at the Ryen home. The boy was a friend of Joshua Ryen, 8, who survived the attack with a slashed throat. Cooper was sentenced to death in 1985. Two days before the Ryens were killed, Cooper had escaped from the nearby California Institution for Men in Chino. Cooper had until the end of the business day Monday to file a motion with the federal appellate court in San Francisco in which he claims there are issues in his case that merit review. Sacramento attorney Norman C. Hile, one of the team of lawyers representing Cooper, said by phone that the motion will largely reflect the one rejected earlier by Huff. That one claimed Cooper's allegations of other possible suspects in the Ryen-Hughes slayings were not fully explored, and that he did not get a "full and fair" hearing on his claims of evidence destruction. Cooper also claimed the results of DNA tests performed on hair and a blood-spotted T-shirt found near the crime scene were flawed and incomplete. Results of the T-shirt tests pointed to Cooper as the killer, Huff concluded. The hair, found clutched in the victims' hands, was theirs and a dog's, tests concluded. Cooper contended it was the hair of other intruders in the Ryen home. The state has 35 court days to respond once the motion is filed. There was no reply Monday to telephone and e-mail messages left for state Deputy Attorney General Holly Wilkens , who handled the hearings before Judge Huff. (source: The Press-Enterprise) *************** Molester Standing Trial 13 Years After 9-Year-Old's Killing----Dean Eric Dunlap is the 1st in San Bernardino County to face a possible death sentence because of evidence uncovered by state's DNA database. More than 13 years after her 9-year-old daughter disappeared, Beatrice Schwartz broke down on the witness stand Tuesday as she testified during the trial of the man accused of kidnapping and killing the girl. "When she went to school, she never came back," Schwartz said in Spanish, sobbing. Schwartz was the 1st witness called in the murder trial of convicted child molester Dean Eric Dunlap, the 1st person in San Bernardino County to face a possible death sentence because of evidence uncovered by the state's DNA database. Schwartz's daughter, Sandra Astorga, was abducted as she walked to Roosevelt Elementary School in San Bernardino in January 1992. Her nude body was found near a Little League field just over a month later. Prosecutor Cheryl Kersey told jurors that the DNA from semen found on Sandra's underwear, T-shirt and shorts matched Dunlap's DNA profile, which had been collected when he was paroled from state prison in 1996. "The odds of [the DNA] not belonging to Dunlap are 1 in 7 billion, and there are not 7 billion people on this earth," Kersey told the jurors during her opening statements. Teresa Snodgrass, Dunlap's attorney, told the jury it had to decide if there was "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that Dunlap committed the crime. DNA from another person also was found at the crime scene, on some men's underwear, she said. "The issue you have to resolve is, what does all this mean?" Snodgrass told the jurors. As Dunlap listened, Kersey told jurors details of the grisly crime scene. 10 days after Sandra's disappearance, some of her clothing and her backpack were discovered in a field near where her body was later found. Kersey said that on Jan. 30, 1992, a hiker near the Little League Western Regional fields in San Bernardino discovered Sandra's decomposing body under a plaid bedspread and a tarp. The girl, whose 2-block trip from a San Bernardino trailer park to school passed a church, discount store and a crossing guard, had been gagged and suffocated. Forensic experts later established that she had been sexually assaulted, Kersey told jurors. Dunlap, 48, wasn't tentatively connected to Sandra's slaying until 1999, when the backlogged California Department of Justice DNA database established that a DNA sample he had provided before leaving state prison in 1996 on a sexual assault conviction matched the semen taken from the crime scene. Getting him to trial has taken so long because the county's courts are badly backed up. When Sandra disappeared, Dunlap was living in Devore between the area where she was abducted and the spot where her body was found, the prosecutor said. Later that year, he was arrested and convicted of misconduct on a child under 14 for grabbing the breasts of his girlfriend's 13-year-old daughter. Kersey told jurors that the woman who lived with Dunlap at the time of the murder will testify that the plaid bedspread that covered Sandra's body was removed from the home she shared with Dunlap. The trial is expected to last 4 weeks. (source: Los Angeles Times) ALABAMA: Jury picked for trial of 2nd man accused in officer slayings Attorneys selected a jury Tuesday for the trial of the 2nd man accused in the slayings of 3 police officers gunned down as they entered a crack house last year. The jury of 5 women and 9 men, which includes 2 alternates and will be sequestered during the trial, was scheduled to hear opening statements and testimony starting Wednesday. Nathaniel Woods, 28, is the 2nd man to be tried for capital murder in the June 17, 2004, shooting deaths of Carlos Owen, Harley Chisholm and Robert Bennett. He also is charged with the attempted murder of Officer Michael Collins. The Birmingham police officers were fatally shot as they entered a rundown apartment with a warrant for Woods' arrest. The confessed triggerman, Kerry Spencer, was sentenced to death last month in the killings. Spencer, who said he sold drugs with Woods, said he opened fire with an assault rifle in self defense. Woods' lawyers said Spencer was solely to blame for the slayings. (source: Associated Press)
