Nov. 15 KENTUCKY: High court won't hear Bowling's appeal on IQ The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday declined to consider an appeal from Kentucky death row inmate Thomas Clyde Bowling that he is too mentally retarded to be executed. The high court had ruled in June 2002 that states cannot execute the mentally retarded. Kentucky law prohibits execution of someone with an IQ of 70 or less. Bowling has been tested several times and scored in the low 70s, and his attorneys hoped the justices would take his case to clarify the issue of capital punishment for the retarded. Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court rejected Bowling's claim that he was mentally retarded and unfit for execution. Bowling's lawyers appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Bowling was to be executed in November 2004, but execution was delayed while he pursued appeals. Bowling and inmate Ralph Baze also have challenged the state's method of lethal injection, a case that will be reviewed by the Kentucky Supreme Court. Bowling also has other appeals in federal and state court. Vicki Glass, a spokesperson for Attorney General Greg Stumbo, said the office will review the court's decision and make a decision on whether to ask Gov. Ernie Fletcher to set an execution date in coming days. Lawyers for Bowling could not be reached for comment yesterday. Fletcher has already denied Bowling's request for clemency, but lawyers for Bowling could resubmit his clemency's request. Bowling was sentenced to death for the 1990 slayings of Lexington residents Eddie and Tina Earley, owners of the Earley Bird Cleaners. No one has been executed in Kentucky since 1999. (source: Herald-Leader) UTAH: Killer blames lawyer for death sentence Purportedly surprised that a judge sentenced him to die for kidnapping and killing a woman to keep her from testifying against him in a rape case, Douglas Lovell tried 12 years ago to withdraw his guilty plea to capital murder. Never dealt with at the time, the issue is now being heard by a 2nd District Judge Michael Lyon at the request of the Utah Supreme Court. Lovell, 47, was on the witness stand Monday telling his version of events - including that defense attorney John Caine had essentially promised him that then-2nd District Judge Stanton Taylor would never impose the death penalty. Lovell's plea agreement clearly stated he faced the possibility of the death penalty, but Lovell said Caine was "adamant" that Taylor would sentence him instead to life without parole. Caine is slated to testify today. As part of an earlier plea negotiation, prosecutors had agreed not to pursue the death penalty if Lovell led police to where, in August 1985, he had strangled Yost and buried her body. Yost's body was never found, although police searched extensively in the area where Lovell took them - a hilltop stand of trees along the road to the Snow Basin ski resort. South Ogden Detective Terry Carpenter testified he never believed Yost's body was there, in part because Lovell's ex-wife claimed Lovell told her the body was a dozen miles east of there, near Causey Reservoir. Soon after, Lovell was in court signing a plea agreement, waiving his right to a jury for sentencing and telling Judge Stanton he wanted to spare the victim's family and his own from the trauma of a trial. "I've pretty much wanted to do exactly this for a long time," he told the judge at the time. But Lovell said Monday that he had serious reservations about letting the judge rather than a jury decide his fate. He said he went ahead with the plan based on Caine's advice. In April 1985, Lovell followed Yost home from a Clearfield private club and assaulted, kidnapped and raped her at her South Ogden home and his Clearfield residence. Yost testified against Lovell at a June 1985 preliminary hearing, but she disappeared two months later. Lovell was convicted later that year of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault based, in part, on Yost's prior court testimony, which was read to the jury. Yost's fate remained a mystery until 1991, when Rhonda Buttars divorced Lovell and Carpenter persuaded her to divulge what she knew of the case. Carpenter also persuaded Buttars to obtain a confession from Lovell by wearing a recording device to the Utah State Prison. (source: Salt Lake Tribune) MISSISSIPPI: Inmate may face execution----U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal of 77-year-old convict on death row----What's next Attorney David W. Clark, who didn't represent Nixon during his trial, has said he will file an emergency appeal Wednesday in the state Supreme Court seeking to avoid Nixon's execution. Mississippi is seeking to execute by Dec. 14 a 77-year-old inmate on death row for 2 decades after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear his appeal. The nation's highest court may have been John B. Nixon Sr.'s last hope to avoid lethal injection. "After receiving the decision, the state attorney general's office filed a motion with the state Supreme Court to reset Mr. Nixon's execution on or before Dec. 14," attorney general spokesman Jacob Ray said late Monday. However, attorney David W. Clark, who didn't represent Nixon during his trial, said he will file an emergency appeal Wednesday in the state Supreme Court seeking to avoid Nixon's execution. "The state made an admission they should have never used as an aggravating factor for the death penalty a plea Mr. Nixon made," Clark said. The last executions in Mississippi: Jessie Derrell Williams, 51, the last person executed in the state, was put to death Nov. 11, 2002, by lethal injection for the 1983 rape and mutilation murder of 18-year-old Karon Ann Pierce. Tracey Alan Hansen, 39, on July 17, 2002, became the first person in Mississippi put to death by lethal injection. Hansen, convicted of killing state trooper David Bruce Ladner in 1987, was the state's first execution since 1989. The trial judge allowed prosecutors to use Nixon's guilty plea to rape in 1958 in Texas to support seeking the death penalty. Retired Rankin County Sheriff J.B. Torrence, who was sheriff when Nixon killed 45-year-old Virginia Tucker in a murder-for-hire scheme, said Nixon deserves the death penalty. "He's the type person you don't want back in society," Torrence said. A federal judge and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier had denied Nixon's arguments that his then attorneys didn't do a good job and that his Rankin County jury shouldn't have been told about the previous rape conviction. The 5th Circuit said the evidence against Nixon was so overwhelming the introduction of the rape conviction was a minor issue for consideration by the jury. But Clark said it is a relevant issue for the state Supreme Court to address. Nixon, a former Utica auto repairman, was convicted of capital murder in the Jan. 2, 1985, murder-for-hire of Tucker in her Brandon home. Tucker's ex-husband, Elester Joseph Ponthieux of Raymond, is serving a life sentence for hiring Nixon to kill her. Virginia Tucker's husband, Thomas, was wounded and identified Nixon as the attacker. 2 of Nixon's sons and a friend also were convicted in the killing. Nixon agreed to kill the Tuckers for money and rejected their attempts to pay him to leave them alone. (source: Jackson Clarion-Ledger) NEW JERSEY: N.J. plans to ask high court to allow Marshall's execution The 1984 murder case that captivated Ocean County residents and television audiences could make its way to the nation's highest court. The state Attorney General's Office is planning to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of a recent lower-court decision in the Robert O. Marshall case, Rachel Sacharow, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's Division of Criminal Justice, said Monday. The decision by a three-judge panel of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals said New Jersey cannot execute former Toms River insurance salesman Robert O. Marshall for the contract-killing of his 42-year-old wife, Maria P. Marshall, unless it first convinces a 2nd jury that death is the appropriate punishment for the crime. The Attorney General's Office last week filed a motion to put off implementation of that decision pending the outcome of the potential appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sacharow said. The office has not yet filed papers asking the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals' decision, but it plans to, Sacharow said. Marshall, now 65, a former member of the Toms River country-club set, had been on death row longer than any other inmate since New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982. But on April 8, 2004, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph E. Irenas in Camden overturned Marshall's death sentence. The Attorney General's Office appealed Irenas' decision, and federal Judges Marjorie O. Rendell, Jane R. Roth and Edward R. Becker of the 3rd Circuit issued a decision Nov. 2 agreeing with Irenas that Marshall's trial attorney, Glenn Zeitz, deprived him of an adequate defense during the death-penalty phase of his trial by not calling any witnesses to ask the jury to spare Marshall's life. The panel of federal judges ruled that New Jersey must retry the penalty phase within 120 days or stipulate to a life prison term for Marshall. The motion filed by the Attorney General's Office last week puts that 120-day period on hold. With a life prison term instead of the death penalty, Marshall could be considered for parole in late 2014, after he has served 30 years in prison. A jury in Atlantic County, where Marshall's trial was moved because of pretrial publicity, found Marshall guilty on March 5, 1986, of hiring Louisiana hit men to kill his wife, the mother of the couple's 3 sons, so he could collect $1.4 million in life insurance and continue an extramarital affair. The same day, the jury considered Marshall's punishment and returned a verdict for the death penalty after deliberating for 90 minutes. The contract killing was carried out Sept. 7, 1984, during a faked robbery at a staged breakdown of the couple's car at the Oyster Creek picnic area on the Garden State Parkway in Lacey. The Marshall case was the subject of the Joe McGinniss best-seller, "Blind Faith," and a television miniseries based on the book. (source: Asbury Park Press)
