Nov. 1 Killer faces possible death penalty for 3rd time A convicted double-murderer twice sentenced to death is facing a 3rd penalty phase trial, this time with no lawyer. Deputy District Attorney Matt Kemmy characterized Robert Langley Jr. as an intelligent and cunning liar who became a criminal at age 10 and went on to rob, assault, rape and murder. The sentencing trial is for the murder of Anne L. Gray, for which he was convicted in 1989. Langley killed Gray, Kemmy said, by forcing her to tuck her knees against her chest so that the tiny woman's form was like a ball. He tied and taped her into that position so she couldn't breath, but he didn't tape her eyes shut, Kemmy said. "She can't breath, but he can watch her die, and she can watch him kill her," Kemmy said. "It is a terrifying, horrifying experience, and it takes a long time." The murder cases against Langley have been in and out of court since the late 1980s. Gray disappeared from her Salem apartment in December 1987. Her body was found buried in the Salem backyard of Langley's aunt in April 1988. The body of Larry Rockenbrant, whom Langley also was convicted of killing, was found in April 1988 in what was to have been a cactus garden on the grounds of the Oregon State Hospital, where Langley was serving a sentence. Langley was convicted of aggravated murder in separate trials in 1989 and sentenced to death in each case. The Oregon Supreme Court overturned both sentences. In retrials, Langley was sentenced to life in the Rockenbrant case and to death a second time in the Gray case in 1992. The Oregon Supreme Court overturned that death sentence in December 2000, sending it back to the trial court. The court overturned the sentence in the Gray case because the jury was not allowed to hear mitigating evidence. The court reversed the conviction and sentence in the Rockenbrant case because judges found that evidence from the Gray murder should not have been admitted. Langley, who is representing himself, has refused to cooperate. On Monday he wore a prison jumpsuit instead of the shirt and slacks most defendants wear. He offered no opening statements in his defense. Kemmy recited something he said Langley had written long before killing Gray and Rockenbrant. "After I commit a crime, I feel like I am somebody. I feel good about myself," Kemmy recited. Kemmy said Langley raped a prison cellmate, hit a robbery victim twice in the head with a hammer and hit Rockenbrant so hard with a baseball bat that he shattered his skull. (source: Associated Press) INDIANA: Teens' killer to avoid death penalty Georgianna Gilkison's heart raced when her grandson's killer walked into the courtroom in Crown Point, Ind., on Monday. "I thought, 'Is he going to change his mind?'" she said of David Maust, who pleaded guilty to murdering three teenagers and burying their bodies in the basement of his Hammond home in 2003. The lingering questions surrounding the strangulation of Gilkison's grandson, 13-year-old Michael Dennis, had troubled her husband, John, until he died in January 2005. "My husband would always tell me he wanted to be with my grandson in heaven because he wanted to find out what actually happened to him," Georgianna Gilkison said. "When he passed away, I said, 'Now he knows.' This justice is for my husband." Bodies entombed In a deal to avoid a possible death sentence, Maust admitted luring the teenagers to his home by promising them beer and marijuana. He showed no emotion before Judge Clarence Murray. Maust, 51, had strangled Michael Dennis and Nicholas James, 19, and he bludgeoned James Raganyi, 16. Their bodies were found entombed in fresh concrete in his home. The former Oak Park resident is to be sentenced Dec. 16 to 3 consecutive life terms with no chance of parole. He has asked to serve his sentence in solitary confinement. Gilkison and other relatives of Maust's victims have been outraged that he was free and living in Hammond, given his deadly history. In 1974, he was an Army private in Germany when he fatally stabbed 13-year-old Jimmy McClister. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served 3 years behind bars. In 1981, he was a railroad worker in Chicago when he lured 15-year-old Donald Jones into his car. Maust drove to a quarry near Elgin where he fatally stabbed the boy. Maust spent more than 10 years in custody awaiting trial in Jones' murder. For much of that time, he was in mental health facilities. Diary reveals many crimes In 1994, Maust pleaded guilty to Jones' murder and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. He was released in 1999 with no place to live. And he was denied placement at a halfway house. After living in homeless shelters and a cheap motel, he moved to Oak Park in 2000 and to Hammond in 2003. In a diary obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, Maust confessed to the killings in Germany and Elgin -- as well as many other assaults and sex crimes. Jeffrey Maust told the Sun-Times in 2003 that his older brother David once tried to drown him while they floated on a raft at the Humboldt Park lagoon in Chicago. "What I have done in my life is bad things to good people," David Maust wrote in 1983 in his 87-page diary. On Monday, Lake County, Ind., prosecutor Bernard Carter blamed the Illinois justice system for turning Maust loose in 1999 -- and ignoring a letter Maust sent to state correctional officials in which he asked to be paroled back to prison for the rest of his life because of his violent past. "Had it not been what Illinois did then, we would not be facing these cases now," Carter said. Out after 5 years Gilkison said she remains angry at the state for setting Maust free. "They sentenced him to 35 years and he got out in five years on good behavior," she said. "Too bad he wound up taking three other kids' lives." The killings prompted Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to seek a change in the state's laws governing the Sex Offender Registry. The law had required child killers sentenced only after 1996 to register with the state and report when they moved, said Cara Smith, policy director for Madigan. "The Maust situation revealed a loophole," she said, because Maust was sentenced in 1994. "We had people like him serving sentences for killing children who were not required to register." Now the law requires anyone serving a prison term for a child killing to register once they are released, Smith said. In court Monday, victims' families cried and hugged, said Patty Hernandez, the victim advocate in Lake County, Ind. "There were a lot of tears, but happy tears, I think," she said. "They're finally getting some closure." Raganyi's mother, Lynn Smith, said she attended almost all of Maust's hearings and will be there in December. She and other victims' families will be able to speak to the judge before the sentencing. Maust's defense team has submitted a sentencing memo that portrays him as abandoned by his mother and father and institutionalized at Chicago State Hospital at age 9. 'I can't forgive him' The report said he would stand at a window "waiting for visits from his mother, which grew increasingly infrequent over time. The staff noted, 'It is pitiful to see the ways in which he is always trying to reassure himself, excusing mother to staff and explaining, 'She is ill;' 'Her back is bothering her.'" His mother, Eva Maust, could not be reached for comment. Smith said she does not care what Maust has to say at his sentencing. "The damage is done. He can't bring him back by saying anything now anyway. I can't forgive him for taking my son's life. It's just too hard. They say time heals, but it's been 2 years and I still have a hard time trying to believe it happened." Gilkison said if her grandson were alive, he would have gone trick-or-treating Monday in her neighborhood in south suburban Steger. "It is a sad Halloween for us. And it is a happy Halloween for us." (source: Chicago Sun-Times) ********************* 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)
