Nov. 1 INDIANA: Death penalty sought for mother In Lafayette, a prosecutor said today he would seek the death penalty against a Lafayette woman who is charged with fatally beating her 4-year-old stepdaughter, who police said had spent the night bound and gagged in her bed. Tippecanoe County Prosecutor Jerry Bean said he decided to seek the execution of Michelle Gauvin after reviewing evidence in the case. "We look at everything and make a determination," he said. Gauvin, 33, is charged with murder in the March death of Aiyana Gauvin. Her husband, Christian Gauvin, 34, is charged with felony neglect. If Gauvin is found guilty and receives the death penalty, she would be the 5th woman in Indiana to be sentenced to die since 1973. No women have ever been executed in the state. A message seeking comment was left at the office of Thomas O'Brien, Michelle Gauvin's defense lawyer. Police said Aiyana Gauvin died from head trauma after a suspected 6 months of abuse. Bean said the last time prosecutors sought the death penalty in Tippecanoe County was in the late 1980s. The child had bruises all over her face and body when officer found her in the home south of Lafayette, investigators said. An autopsy showed she died from blunt force injuries. Authorities said Michelle Gauvin told officers she had bound the girl's wrists with a plastic tie and placed duct tape over the girl's mouth before putting her to bed the night before she was found dead. Relatives said they reported the suspected abuse to child welfare workers a month before her death. (source: Associated Press) FLORIDA: Potential jurors asked about death penalty Attorneys in the Joseph P. Smith murder trial got their 1st opportunity to question potential jurors this morning, focusing on feelings about the death penalty. So far, most of the jurors have said that if the trial gets to a penalty phase, they would not have a problem considering both aggravating and mitigating evidence to determine whether Smith would deserve the death penalty. The questioning will continue this afternoon. Smiths attorney, Assistant Public Defender Adam Tebrugge, stressed to jurors that questioning about the death penalty is "putting the cart in front of the horse," since Smiths guilt has not yet been determined. Smith is accused of abducting, raping and murdering 11-year-old Carlie Brucia in Feb. 2004. The state is seeking the death penalty at the trial, which starts Monday. (source: Sarasota Herald Tribune) KANSAS: Kline looks to death penalty ruling Like other conservatives, Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline on Monday quickly threw his support behind President Bush's new U.S. Supreme Court nominee, calling Samuel Alito Jr. a "clearly qualified jurist." In the same written statement, Kline left little doubt he was hoping an Alito-included high court could reinstate the state's death penalty. The Kansas Supreme Court struck down the law in 2003. Kline appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hold arguments in the case next month. "The confusion and uncertainty injected in Kansas criminal law by recent Kansas Supreme Court decisions can be remedied by a United States Supreme Court decision deriving from the December 7th argument in the Marsh case," Kline said. "I urge the Senate to affirm this clearly qualified jurist." Rebecca Woodman, a Kansas defense attorney who will be arguing against Kline in the death penalty case, said she didn't know what to make of the attorney general's statement. "I guess he means if Alito is confirmed, he'll be on his side," said Woodman, who represents convicted killer Michael L. Marsh II. A Kline spokesman said he didn't know whether Alito would side with the state in the death penalty case, which was the 1st of several rulings that put the Kansas Supreme Court in the conservatives' doghouse. "Don't know. Couldn't tell you," said Whitney Watson, Kline's director of communications, who wouldn't elaborate on Kline's statement. In the death penalty case, the high court was criticized for departing from an earlier decision and striking down the state's death penalty statute. It put in doubt the future of six convicted killers who had been sentenced to die. In a previous decision, the court corrected the law without wiping it out. The Kansas Supreme Court also has been criticized for ordering lawmakers to add hundreds of millions of dollars to public schools and for altering a law that allowed harsher penalties for illegal gay sex than for illegal straight sex. Conservative critics have said the court has ventured too far into the legislative process. They have proposed limiting the authority of Kansas' high court and changing how justices are selected. Woodman represents Marsh, who was sentenced to die for the 1996 killing of a 21-year-old Wichita woman. The woman had been stabbed and shot and her 19-month-old daughter had been left to die in a fire. The Kansas Supreme Court, however, overturned Marsh's death sentence, saying it violated the federal restriction against cruel and unusual punishment. The court took issue with the statute's provision that in cases where the evidence for and against imposing the penalty is about equal, jurors must side with prosecutors and choose death instead of life in prison. Woodman said she doubted the new U.S. Supreme Court justice would be seated on the court by the time the death penalty case is argued. President Bush has said he wants Alito confirmed by the end of the year, replacing retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. O'Connor, meanwhile, will continue serving on the court until her replacement is named. She has been a swing vote on controversial issues over the years. (source: The Topeka Capital-Journal)
