Nov. 8 NORTH CAROLINA: Lawyers: Condemned NC Man Was Too Drunk To Form Intent To Kill Statements about a condemned man's drugged and drunken state should have been disclosed by prosecutors at a 1993 trial and may have resulted in a lighter sentence, defense lawyers said in a court filing Monday. Meanwhile, the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers said for only the second time it was asking that a condemned killer's sentence be commuted from execution to life in prison without parole. The group asked Gov. Mike Easley to act because defense lawyers appointed to represent Steven Van McHone at trial "failed to provide the bare minimum of representation required." McHone, 35, should get a new sentencing hearing that includes statements about how intoxicated he was on June 3, 1990, when he shot and killed his mother and stepfather, defense attorneys Kenneth Rose and Cynthia Adcock wrote in their motion filed in Surry County Superior Court. They don't deny that McHone killed Mildred Adams and Wesley Adams. Instead, they argue that jurors should have heard evidence from a paramedic who said Mildred Adams told her McHone didn't mean to kill her. The attorneys also said that Mildred Adams told McHone's half-brother, Randy Adams, shortly before the shooting that McHone was impaired by drugs and alcohol and was the "worse I've ever seen him." The paramedic's statement about Mildred Adams' dying words that McHone "didn't mean to do it" wasn't made known to defense attorneys until last week, the condemned man's lawyers said in their motion that would postpone the execution. "This newly discovered evidence not only fleshes out the statement taken by law enforcement, it adds additional proof that Steve McHone was severely mentally impaired the night of the shootings," appeals lawyers said. That testimony also wasn't included at trial and could have helped proved that McHone lacked intent to kill his parents. "The Defendant has obtained newly discovered evidence showing that Mr. McHone did not intend to commit the murders for which he is scheduled to be executed on November 11," appeals lawyers said. "This evidence was not previously known and not reasonably available to him." The request for a court to consider new evidence represents the second time lawyers have appealed McHone's death sentence. The state Supreme Court and a federal appeals court have previously upheld his conviction and sentence. McHone is scheduled to die at 2 a.m. Friday at Central Prison in Raleigh. A hearing on the court petition is scheduled for Wednesday morning in Surry County Superior Court, appeals lawyers said. The district attorney's office did not return calls seeking comment about the hearing. A spokeswoman for the state Attorney General's Office said state lawyers were reviewing the petition Monday and had no immediate comment. In his letter to Easley, trial lawyers' president Clifford Britt said McHone's defense lawyer at his 1993 failed to fully investigate his case and failed to present evidence of McHone's extreme intoxication when he pulled the fatal trigger. "The criminal defense bar must voice its outrage when lack of adherence to basic standards for adequate representation appear to have contributed significantly to a finding of guilt and the imposition of the death penalty," Britt wrote. ********************** Family Shunned By Easley As They Seek To Stop Father's Execution Governor Mike Easley is refusing to meet with the children of Elias Syriani, who is scheduled for execution soon for killing their mother. The four children want Easley to spare their father's life. Syriani's children appeared last night on the CNN television show "Larry King Live." They said they're just hoping that people who support their family will ask the governor to consent to a face-to-face meeting. The state plans to put Syriani, 67, to death next week for killing his wife in 1990. Syriani stabbed wife Teresa 28 times with a screwdriver, just after she filed for divorce. Teresa died 26 days later. The case was hailed as a victory against domestic violence when a jury in 1991 sentenced Elias to die. It was the 1st death penalty verdict in Mecklenburg for killing a spouse. (source for both: The Associated Press) ***************** Governor's Hardest Job: Easley holds the power of life or death for 3 inmates who are scheduled to die One of the busiest times in the recent history of North Carolina's death row is scheduled to begin early Friday. That's when, barring a last-minute reprieve, Steven McHone will be executed for the June 1990 killings of his mother and stepfather at their Surry County home. Another inmate, Elias Hanna Syriani of Mecklenburg County, is scheduled for execution a week later, followed Dec. 2 by the execution of a third inmate, Kenneth Lee Boyd of Rockingham County. Only one other time, in 2003, have so many executions been ordered so close together since North Carolina began using the death penalty again in 1984. The schedule is a result of several factors, including state law and the timing of decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court. It also presents challenges to defense attorneys, Gov. Mike Easley and the prison officials who will carry out the executions. "Clearly, it puts a lot of pressure on the system with all the work that's involved," said Rich Rosen, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the week before an execution, much of that pressure is focused on last-minute court motions and on the governor's power to grant clemency. Already seen as a power with political consequences - affecting whether a politician is seen as "tough on crime" - clemency decisions are considered by some lawyers to be even more difficult when several decisions are concentrated in a short timeframe. "If you're a lawyer working on a death-penalty case, probably the worst place you want to be is next in line after a governor grants clemency," Rosen said. "It is difficult for governors to give clemency politically," he said. "Anyone who thinks that's not the case doesn't see all the politics swirling around clemency." Cari Boyce, a spokeswoman for Easley, said that politics never affects whether an inmate gets clemency. "That doesn't in any way affect the governor's decision," she said. "He looks at every decision individually and makes a decision based on the merits of each case, not on the cases that came before." Though the governor usually doesn't decide on clemency until just before a scheduled execution, the process begins about a month earlier. That's when a date is set and the governor's legal counsel begins gathering files on the case. Boyce said that the early review ensures that Easley has enough time to consider clemency petitions, even when he has several at the same time. "He takes every case very seriously and spends a great deal of time on each one," she said. "When there's three in a row, it means he's spending that much more time." Multiple executions in the same month, or even on the same day, were common up through the 1940s. The state executed 5 men Oct. 3, 1947, and then 4 more on Oct. 31. 6 men were put to death in 3 weeks in December 1949. Executions became less common in the 1950s and stopped entirely between October 1961 and March 1984. Since then, the state has executed 36 people. Until 1996, state law required that a superior-court judge set the execution date at a hearing to be held "promptly" after an inmate ran out of appeals in the court system. The law now requires that prison officials set the execution for not less than 30 days and not more than 60 days after they are notified that an inmate's appeals have run out. The laws in other states vary. Some require the governor to set the execution date and others require the prison warden to do so. "There are dangers in making it too inflexible," said Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit research group in Washington that has been critical of how the death penalty is applied. "It does need to be a slow process in order for it to be thorough," Dieter said. "When you have a few in a row, it can play different ways. What if two of three deserve clemency? That could be a doubly hard decision." For the three inmates scheduled to die in the next month, the appeals ran out Oct. 3 when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear all 3 cases. Prison officials were soon notified, and all 3 executions had to be scheduled in the same 30-day window. "You add to that the fact that we have a major holiday and that gave us even fewer options," said Pam Walker, a spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Correction. Central Prison in Raleigh, where the executions take place, adds extra staff for the night of an execution, though Walker declined to provide details for security reasons. "It's just a lot of additional hours and overtime," she said. The only other recent time when Central Prison had so many executions in so short a time period was in 2003, when 7 people were executed. 3 were executed in the 3 weeks from Sept. 12 to Oct. 3. One of those three, Joseph Bates, confessed to and was convicted of murder in the death of a Yadkin County man who had been beaten and shot in the neck. Rosemary Godwin, a lawyer in Raleigh who helped represent Bates, said that the timing of his execution within weeks of two others did not appear to affect his request for clemency. "When we sat down and talked with the governor about it, it was obvious that he had studied our petition thoroughly. He had tagged certain things and was very well-versed on the issues," Godwin said. "It didn't look to me that he had crammed for the session." One of McHone's attorneys, Ken Rose, said he worries how the 2 other scheduled executions will affect his client's clemency request. "3 executions in a 3-week period or a month period is too much for any governor to handle," Rose said. "That's too much pressure." (source: Winston-Salem Journal) VIRGINIA: Supreme Court to Review Fairfax Case The U.S. Supreme Court agreed yesterday to hear the appeal of a convicted murderer from Fairfax County who contends that police never told him he had the right to consult embassy officials from his native Honduras. The case of Mario A. Bustillo, who formerly lived on Backlick Road in Springfield, was one of two cases accepted by the high court yesterday to resolve the question of how to apply the international Vienna Convention to the U.S. justice system. The treaty, signed by the United States in 1969, requires that authorities who arrest a foreign national "shall inform the person concerned without delay of his rights" to speak with someone from his embassy or consulate. The Supreme Court's decision also will affect a pending death penalty case in Fairfax. Attorneys for Dinh Pham, a Vietnam native accused of strangling a Merrifield woman and her 22-month-old daughter in January 2004, have contended that Pham was not advised of his Vienna Convention rights, and the judge in the case is considering eliminating the death penalty in the trial as a sanction for violating the treaty. One of Pham's attorneys said yesterday that he was considering asking that Pham's trial, set for Jan. 9, be postponed until the Supreme Court resolves the issue. Prosecutors said they would oppose a delay. Bustillo was 19 when he was arrested in the Dec. 10, 1997, slaying of James R. Merry. Merry was smoking a cigarette outside the Popeye's restaurant in the Springfield Plaza shopping center when he was struck in the head with a baseball bat. Fairfax police and prosecutors said Bustillo mistakenly believed Merry was a member of a rival gang. Bustillo has maintained his innocence since his arrest. Alexandria lawyer John C. Kiyonaga vigorously pursued Bustillo's appeal for seven years, mainly arguing that Bustillo was innocent. Fairfax prosecutors had three eyewitnesses who identified Bustillo as the killer. But 2 other witnesses said someone else, whom they knew only by his nickname, struck the fatal blow. Bustillo's brief to the Supreme Court, written by Jeffrey A. Lamken, argues that if Bustillo had had access to the Honduran Embassy, Honduran officials would have assisted him in finding the other suspect. "Virginia's failure to observe [Bustillo's] Vienna Convention rights deprived him of evidence that not only raises reasonable doubt about his guilt, but also strongly supports his innocence," Lamken wrote. At trial, Fairfax prosecutors ridiculed the notion of the alternative suspect. But Kiyonaga eventually obtained a videotape of the alternative suspect, Julio Cesar Osorto, confessing to the slaying. Authorities later turned over police reports to Bustillo's appellate attorneys indicating that Osorto had been stopped not far from the crime scene. Virginia courts, however, rejected his appeals. Lamken's brief says that the United States has apologized to Honduras for violating Bustillo's Vienna Convention rights. "I have the proof that I didn't do this," Bustillo told The Washington Post in 2002. "They robbed my freedom. They robbed my dreams." Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. said, "Historically, the Vienna Convention has never been found by the federal courts to be grounds to throw out a confession, or to throw out a case." Horan said the Supreme Court had considered the argument in other Virginia cases, and "so far, they have not found the Vienna Convention creates any substantive rights equal to the rights that exist in the American Constitution." The U.S. justice system recently has begun paying closer attention to the issue, with some prodding from the International Court of Justice. After Mexico filed a complaint with the international court in 2003, contending that the U.S. had violated the Vienna Convention rights of 51 Mexican defendants on death row, the ICJ ordered the U.S. government to review all 51 cases, saying Mexican consular officials could have aided the defendants. After that ruling, the governor of Oklahoma commuted the death sentence of one of the Mexican defendants, acknowledging that his Vienna Convention rights had been violated. Earlier this year, President Bush ordered a review of all remaining cases. As another Mexican case headed to the U.S. Supreme Court from Texas on the same issue, Bush withdrew the United States from the portion of the Vienna Convention that gives the international court final jurisdiction over those who say their rights have been violated. The United States had proposed that portion of the treaty, in part to aid the safety of U.S. citizens held in other countries. Now the court has accepted not only Bustillo's case, but also a case from Oregon. The defendant in that case is Moises Sanchez-Llamas, a Mexican, who was convicted of attempted murder after wounding a police officer in 1999. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and argues that his statements to police should have been suppressed because he was not told of his right to contact the Mexican consulate. (source: Washington Post) NEW JERSEY: EXTRADITION BATTLES -- Death penalty jitters have Wilson resisting Dwayne Wilson, the man accused of murdering his sister and 2 of her children in their Greenville home, is scheduled to have an extradition hearing in New York City tomorrow, court officials said. Most suspects arrested in another state waive their right to an extradition hearing, but Wilson did not, Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said. "There was some concern on the part of Mr. Wilson's court-appointed counsel that the case was a capital case," DeFazio said. "His lawyer said that at this point (Wilson) was not prepared to make the decision to return voluntarily." However, DeFazio said, his office hasn't decided whether to seek the death penalty in this case. Mike Coleman, director of New York County Defendant Services, said his office is in no rush to see Wilson extradited. "We wait for the case to take its course and usually a defendant has 30 days, renewable 2 times, before the (New York) governor has to sign a warrant to release him," Coleman said. But given the seriousness of the charges against Wilson, Coleman said, he will likely be returned to New Jersey far quicker than that. Wilson was arrested Oct. 27 at the Cabrini Medical Center in New York City, where he had checked in - possibly several weeks before - under the name Alejandro Hernandez, DeFazio said. He was admitted to the hospital after apparently cutting his wrists, but "it appeared to be a feigned attempt and he did not cause himself significant physical injuries," DeFazio said. Wilson was under a suicide watch at the hospital, officials said. Cops were tipped off about his whereabouts by a friend Wilson had called from the hospital, DeFazio said. Wilson is charged with stabbing to death his sister, Marcia Wilson, 35, and her daughter, Dartagania and son, DeQuan, both 11, officials said, either late Sept. 19 or early Sept. 20. Wilson also is charged with stabbing his sister's 9-year-old son Paris multiple times. The boy lay unconscious among the bodies of his family members, finally waking up long enough on the morning of Sept. 21 to call police. (source: The Jersey Journal)
