Nov. 19
TEXAS----2 new execution dates set
Steven Staley has received an execution date for February 23, 2006, and
Kevin Kincy has received an execution date for March 29, 2006; both dates
should be considered extremely serious.
(source: TDCJ and Rick Halperin)
**************************
Did Texas execute an innocent man?
Texas executed its 5th teenage offender at 22 minutes after midnight on
Aug. 24, 1993, after his last request for bubble gum had been refused and
his final claim of innocence had been forever silenced.
Ruben Cantu, 17 at the time of his crime, had no previous convictions, but
a San Antonio prosecutor had branded him a violent thief, gang member and
murderer who ruthlessly shot one victim nine times with a rifle before
emptying at least nine more rounds into the only eyewitness - a man who
barely survived to testify.
Four days after a Bexar County jury delivered its verdict, Cantu wrote
this letter to the residents of San Antonio: "My name is Ruben M. Cantu
and I am only 18 years old. I got to the 9th grade and I have been framed
in a capital murder case."
A dozen years after his execution, a Houston Chronicle investigation
suggests that Cantu, a former special-ed student who grew up in a tough
neighborhood on the south side of San Antonio, was likely telling the
truth.
Cantu's long-silent co-defendant, David Garza, just 15 when the two boys
allegedly committed a murder-robbery together, has signed a sworn
affidavit saying he allowed his friend to be falsely accused, though Cantu
wasn't with him the night of the killing.
And the lone eyewitness, the man who survived the shooting, has recanted.
He told the Chronicle he's sure that the person who shot him was not
Cantu, but he felt pressured by police to identify the boy as the killer.
Juan Moreno, an illegal immigrant at the time of the shooting, said his
damning in-court identification was based on his fear of authorities and
police interest in Cantu.
Cantu "was innocent. It was a case of an innocent person being killed,"
Moreno said.
These men, whose lives are united by nothing more than a single act of
violence on Nov. 8, 1984, both claim that Texas executed the wrong man.
Both believe they could have saved Cantu if they had had the courage to
tell the truth before he died at 26.
Second thoughts
Presented with these statements, as well as information from hundreds of
pages of court and police documents gathered by the Chronicle that cast
doubt on the case, key players in Cantu's death "including the judge,
prosecutor, head juror and defense attorney - now acknowledge that his
conviction seems to have been built on omissions and lies.
"We did the best we could with the information we had, but with a little
extra work, a little extra effort, maybe we'd have gotten the right
information," said Miriam Ward, forewoman of the jury that convicted
Cantu. "The bottom line is, an innocent person was put to death for it. We
all have our finger in that."
Sam D. Millsap Jr., the former Bexar County district attorney who made the
decision to charge Cantu with capital murder, says he never should have
sought the death penalty in a case based on the testimony of an eyewitness
who identified Cantu only after police officers showed him Cantu's photo
three separate times.
"It's so questionable. There are so many places where it could break
down," said Millsap, now in private practice. "We have a system that
permits people to be convicted based on evidence that could be wrong
because it's mistaken or because it's corrupt."
No physical evidence
The Chronicle found other problems with Cantu's case as well. Police
reports have unexplained omissions and irregularities. Witnesses who could
have provided an alibi for Cantu that night were never interviewed. And no
physical evidence - not even a fingerprint or a bullet - tied Cantu to the
crime.
Worse, some think Cantu's arrest was instigated by police officers because
Cantu shot and wounded an off-duty officer during an unrelated bar fight.
That case against Cantu was dropped in part because officers overreacted
and apparently tainted the evidence, according to records and interviews.
During eight years on death row, Cantu repeatedly insisted he was innocent
of murder. In 1987, he wrote to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, saying:
"I was tried and convicted on bogus evidence."
But on the day he finally was strapped to a gurney and readied for a
lethal injection, Cantu said nothing as his attorney watched him die
through a special one-way viewing window.
Outside the prison gates, his mother, Aurelia Cantu, held a candle in a
small crowd of protesters: "He's resting now, he's free. But he should not
have been here in the 1st place."
That night, in another Texas prison, his old friend and convicted
accomplice, Garza, listened to news reports of the execution on a radio in
his cell and wept for things left unsaid.
"Part of me died when he died," Garza said in an interview with the
Chronicle. "You've got a 17-year-old who went to his grave for something
he did not do. Texas murdered an innocent person."
That same day, at his small home on a street near the railroad tracks in
east San Antonio, the surviving eyewitness got a phone call telling him
that the man he had accused would soon die. But Moreno, a still-scarred
robbery victim who barely survived the 1984 attack, felt no relief. Just
unsettling guilt.
After the Chronicle showed her new statements about the Cantu case, jury
forewoman Ward, who still lives in the suburbs of San Antonio, said she
also is disturbed by her part in his fate: "When the pieces come together
in the wrong way, disaster happens. That's not the way our legal system is
supposed to work. Ruben Cantu deserved better."
Tough part of town
Almost painfully quiet, Cantu grew up as an eager-to-please kid who often
watched TV until well after midnight and sucked his thumb far longer than
other children.
His mother had married a man 24 years her senior when she was only 13.
Ruben was the 4th of 5 children born to Aurelia and Fidencio "Fred" Cantu.
Aurelia raised her boys and a daughter mostly alone while her husband
worked long hours as a maintenance man at Market Square, a popular tourist
attraction. By the time Ruben turned 14, his mother left her husband and
moved 30 miles away to Floresville, a sleepy, mostly Mexican-American town
of 5,000 near her parents' rancho.
His mother asked Ruben to come along, but he chose to stay with his father
in his tiny trailer park on Briggs Street in the ragged southern fringe of
the city, a place where drug dealers, smugglers, fences and thieves lived
and worked in houses pock-marked with bullet holes.
But while his father worked, often long hours into the night, Cantu was
skipping school and learning different lessons on the street.
Bad reputation
Cantu's south San Antonio neighborhood was controlled by the so-called
Grey Eagles, the tough kids who roamed it and relentlessly guarded its
boundaries. Though small for his age and slow in school, Cantu became one
of the leaders. He began sampling the drugs readily available through
neighborhood dealers and stole cars for joy rides.
By the time he turned 15, he was recruited into an auto-theft ring.
Sometimes he disappeared for days, driving hot cars and pickups to the
border and coming back with $2,000 or $3,000 in cash. Surrounded by
grinding poverty, Cantu could spend all he wanted on video games, movies
and drugs.
He learned quickly to avoid the San Antonio police, a force that in some
of its darkest days in the 1980s was plagued by scandals related to
drug-dealing officers and vigilantes who took justice into their own
hands.
Cantu grew up believing that no police officer could be trusted. Already a
quiet child, he quickly mastered the neighborhood code of silence: You
never ratted on anyone - no matter the cost to yourself. Cantu practiced
this art to an extreme. His silence, even in a neighborhood known for its
secrets, remains a local legend.
Neighborhood officers knew and disliked Cantu, and they had arrested his
older brothers on drug and theft charges. But they had never successfully
pinned a crime on Cantu.
It was against this backdrop of mutual suspicion that Cantu soon emerged
as a leading suspect after a violent murder and robbery occurred on Briggs
Street on Nov. 8, 1984.
That night, Juan Moreno, a skinny, hard-working teenager fresh from a
Mexican rancho in Zacatecas, was camping out in a house almost directly
across the street from Cantu's trailer.
Moreno and his friend, Pedro Gomez, had eaten dinner and gone to sleep
inside the virtually empty brick house they were helping to build for
Moreno's brother and his wife. They were guarding it because burglars
recently had stolen a water heater.
Inside the shell of a house, there was a pair of mattresses on the floor
in the front room. The only water was stored in empty beer cans. The only
light came from the bare 75-watt bulb of a single lamp powered by an
extension cord connected to a neighbor's outlet. Both men, Moreno, 19, and
Gomez, 25, worked construction and were paid in cash. That night, they
slept in their clothes with wallets containing a total of about $1,000.
Suddenly, both awoke to the lone light being switched on by a pair of
Latino teenagers; the older of the two carried a .22-caliber rifle. They
demanded money, and Gomez, the father of three little girls back in
Mexico, handed over his wallet with $600 inside. Then he turned over the
mattress, and reached toward a .38-caliber revolver hidden in rags.
The older teen opened fire, shooting nine times at Gomez, who fell
facedown on the floor. Then the teen turned his weapon on Moreno and fired
again and again. When Moreno blacked out, the pair fled. Though near
death, Moreno managed to stumble outside for help.
At 11:58 p.m., a police officer found Moreno bleeding on the seat of a
pickup in front of the house. His wallet and his money were untouched. But
Moreno could barely speak. The description he gave of his attackers fit
almost all of the male teens in the neighborhood: two Mexican-Americans
who he thought lived nearby.
Meeting with Moreno
Homicide Detective James Herring, an officer with 15 years on the force,
had only that vague description to work with when he was assigned the
Gomez case. And Herring, who knew no Spanish, needed others to help him
speak with Moreno, a Mexican national who had been in the United States
less than a year.
Herring first attempted to speak to Moreno at Wilford Hall Hospital on
Lackland Air Force Base the day after the murder. But Moreno remained in
critical condition on a breathing machine - unable to talk and unable to
write because of massive internal injuries. Eventually, he lost a lung, a
kidney and part of his stomach.
In another visit six days after the murder, Moreno "could barely talk,"
Herring wrote in his report. But Moreno gave Herring a few more details on
his attackers: two Latin-American males, one 13 or 14 and the other 19. He
said he had seen the younger teen around the neighborhood. It wasn't much.
Then a neighborhood beat officer passed along a rumor from the halls of
South San Antonio High School, where Cantu was in ninth grade. A shop
teacher reported that three kids had been involved in the robbery and
murder of Gomez and that students were saying Cantu had done the killing.
Based on that information, Herring and a Spanish-speaking detective
returned to Moreno on Dec. 16, 1984. This time, Herring showed Moreno
photographs of five Hispanic men, including Cantu.
Moreno, who still trembled from his injuries and showed emotion that the
officers interpreted as fear, did not identify Cantu as his attacker.
Police records show that Herring made no more reports on the case. Near
the end of the year, he received a promotion and transferred out of
homicide.
The Gomez murder case appeared closed.
That all changed on March 1, 1985.
After midnight, Cantu was shooting 35-cent pool games at the Scabaroo
Lounge, a fluorescent-lit local hangout about a mile from his father's
home.
An off-duty police officer who was a stranger to Cantu was playing at
another table with a cousin. Officer Joe De La Luz wore two guns under his
civilian clothes, according to records.
Cantu also was armed. Both had been drinking, based on court testimony and
interviews.
De La Luz later claimed under oath that Cantu shot him four times in a
completely unprovoked attack. "I remember a person standing in front of me
firing an unknown caliber weapon at me," De La Luz said.
Cantu claimed they argued over the pool game and he fired only after De La
Luz showed him a gun in his waistband and threatened him. Cantu never
denied to his friends and his family that he shot De La Luz, though he
told them he learned only afterward that De La Luz was a policeman.
Yet Cantu never was convicted of shooting the officer, despite a bar full
of witnesses and his own admissions. "There was an overreaction, and some
of the evidence may have been tainted. It could not be prosecuted," said
former homicide Sgt. Bill Ewell, who oversaw the investigation. Defense
attorneys claimed that police illegally searched Cantu's home the night of
the shooting.
But Ewell was a friend of De La Luz, the injured officer, and said the
attack prompted him to reopen the unsolved Briggs Street murder case in
which the only surviving eyewitness had previously failed to identify
Cantu.
Cantu "shot an officer who worked with me," Ewell told the Chronicle. "It
was difficult to get (the witness) to make the identification. We weren't
able to get him for the police shooting, but we were able to get him for
the murder."
Identified on third try
For 2 months, Moreno, recovering at his brother's home, had received no
visits or calls from San Antonio police.
But on March 2, 1985, Ewell sent a seasoned bilingual homicide detective
to show Cantu's photo to Moreno for the 2nd time. In the kitchen of his
brother's house, Moreno still did not identify Cantu, though at some point
he learned that Cantu had shot a police officer.
Santos "Sam" Balleza, the now-retired detective who interviewed Moreno
that day, told the Chronicle he doubted that Moreno could have made a
reliable identification: It had been dark, he had been afraid for his
life, and he had previously declined to identify the same suspect. "It was
real tricky to show the same person a photo array more than once," he
said. "It would look like you were pressuring them."
But the next day, Ewell consulted with De La Luz and then sent out a
different bilingual detective to show Cantu's photo to Moreno for the
third time. This time, the detective, Edward Quintanilla, brought Moreno,
an illegal immigrant, back to the police station and again showed him
Cantu's photo along with four other mug shots. The officer's report
indicates that this time Moreno picked out Cantu, then signed and dated
the back of the photo.
But the photo submitted into evidence at trial was not dated on the back,
according to a trial transcript. Nor does Moreno recall that anyone
translated for him a statement in English that identifies Cantu as his
attacker and bears his signature.
Quintanilla, the detective who questioned Moreno on March 3 and obtained
the identification, could not be reached for comment. A San Antonio police
spokesman said department policy does not allow officers to discuss old
closed cases. Balleza, who worked with Quintanilla in homicide, called the
longtime officer a straight shooter. Both he and Quintanilla later
testified that they thought Moreno had been afraid to identify Cantu.
At the time, Ewell was a seasoned senior officer who had recently been
promoted to lead the homicide division. Ewell, who is now retired from the
department, told the Chronicle, "I'm confident the right people were
prosecuted."
Moreno said he felt compelled to do what the officers wanted, even though
he knew it was wrong.
"The police were sure it was (Cantu) because he had hurt a police
officer," Moreno said in a recent interview. "They told me they were
certain it was him, and that's why I testified. ... That was bad to blame
someone that was not there."
Bruce Baxter, the prosecutor who handled Gomez's murder case, said he
could believe that Moreno lied under the circumstances.
However, Baxter, now an attorney in Washington state, said he privately
interviewed Moreno before the trial in 1985 to try to determine whether he
had made the ID just to please police. At the time, Baxter said he
believed Moreno was sincere.
Baxter's entire case depended on it because there were no confessions, no
murder weapon and no fingerprints for him to use against Cantu. Garza, the
15-year-old arrested as Cantu's accomplice, had refused to implicate Cantu
even to help himself. What Baxter had was a one-witness case against a
teenager.
But Baxter also knew, just as the defense attorneys feared, that the word
of Moreno, then a 19-year-old who had been badly injured, could sway a
jury.
In both a pretrial hearing and during the trial, Moreno testified over and
over that Cantu had shot him and killed his friend.
"Do you see in the courtroom the man who poked you with the rifle and woke
you up?"
"Yes."
"And where is that person?"
"That is Ruben Cantu."
"Who shot you?"
"Ruben."
His emotional testimony in Spanish about how he watched his friend get
killed and nearly died himself was the key evidence presented against
Cantu during the guilt phase of the July 1985 trial.
Defense attorney Andrew Carruthers, an experienced lawyer though he had
never before handled a death case, tried to discredit the identification
without attacking Moreno, who was a sympathetic witness.
"I'm not saying Juan Moreno is lying; I'm saying that he did not get a
good look at who shot him. He didn't get a good look at them, and the
police tried to substitute their opinion for his," argued Carruthers, now
a Bexar County magistrate.
But it was Moreno's damning words that resonated with jurors. They found
Cantu guilty.
Then in the punishment phase of the trial, prosecutors presented another
star witness - De La Luz, the officer shot by Cantu three months after the
Gomez murder. Without that bar shooting, prosecutors would have been left
to try to argue for death based on street rumors about Cantu's gang
activities and a pending marijuana-possession charge.
But De La Luz testified that Cantu had shot him without provocation. It
was all that the jurors really needed to convince them that Cantu, though
still a teenager, was so dangerous that he should be put to death.
Cantu's attorneys did not want him to testify, and so Cantu, as had been
his custom nearly all of his life, sat silently before his accusers. He
wept only after prosecutors asked the jury to sentence him to die.
Days later, he wrote the letter that he addressed to the "Citizens of San
Antonio."
"I have been framed in a capital murder case. I was framed because I shot
an off-duty police officer named Joe De La Luz."
For years, defense attorneys who handled Cantu's appeals attacked the
reliability of Moreno's identification, insisting that police
inappropriately influenced him.
On the first round of appeals, even the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
ruled that the identification process was improperly suggestive, though
the court upheld the in-trial identification and did not overturn Cantu's
conviction. "In the abstract the process of showing Juan several arrays on
different occasions, all containing the appellant's photograph is a
suggestive procedure. Such procedure tends to highlight a particular
defendant since the witness sees the same face repeatedly. Such
reoccurrence of one particular face might suggest to the witness that the
police think the defendant is the culprit," a February 1987 opinion read.
But none of the defense attorneys who represented Cantu during his appeals
ever attempted to find Moreno, who they assumed had returned to Mexico.
Moreno had moved on -but only to another neighborhood in San Antonio.
In two decades, his life has morphed from that of a traumatized newly
arrived Mexican teenager into that of an independent Texas contractor,
husband and father of a teenager of his own. Moreno now insists a Hispanic
teen with very curly hair shot him. Police never showed him a photo of
that man, he said. Moreno said police never threatened him but influenced
him in subtle ways.
In his heart, though, he always knew what he was doing was "bad," he said.
His wife, Anabel, who met and married him years after the attack, said
that when she asked about his scars, he always told her that the wrong man
had been sent to death row.
Moreno did not know Cantu or his family before the time of the murder
trial in 1985. In the years after the attack, Moreno said, he has had no
contact with them or anyone connected with the case. He said he thinks
that someone from Cantu's family tried to telephone him around the time of
the 1993 execution, but he was not at home.
Moreno says he has nothing to gain by talking about the attack. The horror
of the night that he watched his friend Gomez die facedown in a pool of
blood has not left him. He still feels pain from his own injuries. Despite
that, he said, he is no longer afraid to speak because he wants people to
know the truth about Cantu.
"I'm sure it wasn't him," Moreno said. "It was a case where the wrong
person was executed."
*******************
Wounded officer's words key in sentencing ---- Teen's attorneys tried to
discredit the lawman using his work records
Before they faced off in a pool hall in 1985, former San Antonio police
officer Joe De La Luz and neighborhood tough Ruben Cantu had never met.
But each would forever leave his mark on the other.
Cantu was never prosecuted for shooting De La Luz, who had been off duty
and in civilian clothes that night.
But the incident would renew police interest in Cantu as a key suspect in
the unsolved murder of Pedro Gomez months earlier. And later, De La Luz
served as the star witness who helped put Cantu on death row.
In an interview with the Houston Chronicle 20 years later, De La Luz said
the best thing about the experience is "that I'm alive and he's dead."
In sworn testimony in 1985, De La Luz admitted he had drunk at least five
beers and was carrying two guns under his civilian clothes on the night
they met. He said the shooting was unprovoked and that he never threatened
Cantu - as Cantu alleged.
During the punishment phase of Cantu's trial, defense attorneys argued
that Cantu had fired in self-defense. They tried unsuccessfully to
discredit De La Luz by producing records showing the officer had a dozen
previous misconduct complaints and had been disciplined for drinking and
violent behavior.
City of San Antonio paperwork obtained by the Chronicle shows De La Luz
was suspended 5 times, the 1st time for skipping work as a two-year
officer in 1971. He was nearly fired in 1973 after he hit a prisoner
without justification, though his punishment was reduced to a suspension
through appeal. In 1974, De La Luz was suspended again for getting
involved in a brawl at an illegal gambling operation at the McMullen Drive
Inn.
In 1981, he cursed at and threatened a bank guard after he and his
girlfriend, both of whom had been drinking, were asked to remove their
empty beer cans and illegally parked car from the bank parking lot next to
the Zero Lounge, according to records. A hearing officer found that De La
Luz was "guilty of having been involved personally in a disturbance of his
own making ... to the discredit of (De La Luz) and the police force."
His last decade with the department saw a 4th suspension for resisting
arrest and cursing at officers who had responded to a call for assistance
at a San Antonio woman's home.
Personnel records also show 3 commendations in his 33-year career - one in
1989 for work on a robbery case and 2 in 1997 for aggravated sexual
assault and burglary cases. "De La Luz has a very good work attitude,
shows initiative and has a very good knowledge of the job," one notice of
merit said.
Although he retired as a police officer in 2003, De La Luz continues to
work as a civilian crime-scene investigator for the department.
In an interview with the Chronicle, De La Luz said he remembers every
detail about the night of the shooting - but tells a different story than
he did in sworn testimony in 1985.
At the trial, De La Luz said he got off work, drank one beer at another
bar and then had four more at the Scabaroo, where he had run into a
distant cousin and played pool. But he told the Chronicle he went to the
Scabaroo on unofficial business - not to drink.
"I wasn't drinking. I had to work the next morning," he said.
De La Luz claimed he went to the bar specifically to find Cantu and help
officers with the murder case, though he would not explain how finding
Cantu at a bar would help.
De La Luz still insists there was no conversation between the two. He said
he thinks Cantu recognized him as a police officer and shot him for that.
But by getting shot, De La Luz said, he helped crack the case.
"We were trying to make the capital murder case, and it was made."
(source for both: Houston Chronicle)
NORTH CAROLINA----impending execution
Execution should proceed, judge says
In a hushed Rockingham County courtroom, a Superior Court judge Friday
denied a stay of execution for Kenneth Lee Boyd of Eden, who was convicted
in the 1988 slayings of his estranged wife and her father.
Judge W. Osmond Smith III said Boyd's scheduled Dec. 2 execution should
proceed.
He said Boyd's attorney failed to prove the jury was tainted in his 1994
trial for the slayings of Julie Curry Boyd and Thomas Dillard Curry.
Boyd's attorney said he will ask the N.C. Supreme Court to stop the
execution.
Dressed in a cornflower blue shirt, dark pants and sneakers, Boyd, 57, sat
handcuffed and shackled as his attorney, Tom Maher, of Chapel Hill argued
on his behalf. Maher cited cases supporting his contention that Boyd
should get a hearing on the accusations about the jury being tainted.
With the family of Boyd's victims on one side of the courtroom and his son
seated on the other, Maher argued that jurors in the 1994 trial had
learned they were watching a retrial of the case. Boyd had been convicted
of the murders in 1988, but a new trial was ordered after a technical
mistake by the judge during jury selection. Maher also argued that one
juror in 1994 knew one of the witnesses.
Boyd was sentenced to death in both trials.
In Friday's hearing, the judge said Boyd, who has been on death row for 17
years, had ample time to raise these objections and that they were not
sufficient to change the outcome of the retrial.
"We fundamentally disagree with the judge," said Maher, who plans to raise
the same objections to the state Supreme Court early next week.
During a break in the hearing, Kenneth "Tink" Smith, 36, Boyd's son from
an earlier marriage, passed photos of his children up to Maher to give to
Boyd. Smith sat in the courtroom with his wife as she scribbled a letter
asking Gov. Mike Easley to grant Boyd clemency.
Easley has granted clemency only twice since taking office in 2001, but he
has not spared the life of any death row inmate since January 2002. The
state put Elias Hanna Syriani to death early Friday morning and executed
Steven Van McHone earlier this month.
Boyd gunned down Julie Boyd, 36, and Thomas Curry, 57, in March 1988 in
front of the couple's children. He shot Curry twice, then chased his
estranged wife through her father's home, shooting her 5 times. After
phoning police, he pumped four more shots into her.
A Vietnam War veteran with no other criminal record, Boyd has said he
regrets what he did and should pay for those crimes, but not with his
life.
At his trial, he contended that he suffered from blackouts and
post-traumatic stress disorder and was depressed over the breakup of the
couple's stormy 13-year marriage.
Craig Curry, Julie Boyd's brother, said Boyd had "tormented" his sister.
"I forgive him, but I won't erase his actions," he said. "He needs to pay
for what he has done."
The families appeared cordial and supportive with one another. None has
plans to be at Central Prison in Raleigh if the execution is carried out,
they said.
Marie Curry, Julie Boyd's mother, said all four of Boyd's children remain
close.
But while she said she could live with life imprisonment for Boyd, she
said she wanted the appeals to be over.
"Kenneth Boyd needs to pay for what he has done to this family," she said.
(source: The News & Record)
********************
Judge rules death penalty for Planten if guilty
A judge ruled that Drew Planten will face the death penalty if convicted
of killing Stephanie Bennett, 23.
Planten was not in the courtroom when Judge Donald Stephens decided he
will face capital murder charges.
Neither was Bennett's family and prosecutors aren't saying if they are in
favor of the decision.
Assistant District Attorney Susan Spurlin said, "I don't think it's fair
to answer that. Have I talked to them? Yes."
Having the death penalty option is a small victory for prosecutors who
believe this murder was so bad, Planten deserves to be put to death.
In court, Spurlin described how Bennett's body was found nude with her
hands and feet tied.
She was strangled and raped, leaving evidence linking Planten to her
murder.
"When that DNA was compared with semen found on Bennett, it was found to
be a positive match," Spurlin stated.
DNA isn't the only evidence against Planten.
During a search of his apartment, investigators found things belonging to
Bennett.
Spurlin said, "Found laundry basket and other items belong to her as
well." Police in Michigan are also interested in what else was found in
Planten's home.
Spurlin said a bullet casing in Planten's apartment matched an old murder
case in Lansing.
"Weapon recovered from his apartment and found that projectile used to
kill (Rebecca) Huisman was a positive match from that weapon," she
explained.
Spurlin said we should know in 2 weeks if Planten will also be charged
with the murder of Rebecca Huisman.
If he is, prosecutors believe he will go to trial in Michigan first.
We tried to speak to Planten's defense attorney but he would not comment
on the case.
Both sides have until February 16th to finish gathering evidence.
(source: News 14 Carolina)
**********************
N.C. told to refine handling, storing of crime evidence
The accrediting agency for crime laboratories says that North Carolina
should improve the way that evidence is stored and handled in the state's
courthouses to prevent the potential for contamination.
The American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors-Laboratory
Accreditation Board, or ASCLD-LAB, made its findings after investigating
the work of the State Bureau of Investigation's crime laboratory in the
case of George Goode. Goode, a death-row inmate, has challenged the DNA
evidence in his case.
ASCLD-LAB cleared the SBI's crime laboratory of any errors or wrongdoing
in Goode's case. But the accrediting agency said that the case points to
the potential for contamination of evidence because of the way that
bloodstained clothing and other evidence was stored outside the
laboratory.
"There was no chain of custody documents, no documented procedures for the
handling or storage of biohazardous materials and no accountability for
the condition of the evidence after the trials and before it was returned
to the laboratory," the report says in part.
"Proper precautions should be taken to prevent cross-contamination,
contamination by attorneys, court personnel and jurors," the report says.
The Winston-Salem Journal examined Goode's case earlier this year as part
its "Crime and Science" series, which looked at flawed forensics and the
misapplication of science in criminal cases.
The accrediting agency's focus on the storage of evidence comes just as
other organizations are calling for improvements in the science used in
criminal cases.
In North Carolina, the Chief Justice's Commission on Actual Innocence is
considering the creation of regional storage areas to better protect
evidence. The commission, which includes Robin Pendergraft, the SBI
director, and other law-enforcement officials, is also looking at making
the crime lab an independent state agency that is separate from the SBI.
"The primary objective of the commission," said Chris Mumma, the
commission's executive director, "is to increase public confidence in the
justice system, and you can't have public confidence if we don't preserve
evidence in such a way that allows the justice system to take full
advantage of the advances of science."
ASCLD-LAB reported its findings in the Goode case to the SBI on Nov. 4,
but did not make its report public. The SBI released the report this week
at the Journal's request. Two other complaints filed last summer with
ASCLD-LAB about the way in which the SBI handled DNA evidence are pending.
"We have not moved very far on the additional complaints," said Ralph
Keaton, the executive director of ASCLD-LAB. "We are in the process of
arranging to look into those at this time."
In a prepared statement, Pend-ergraft said that the findings in Goode's
case confirmed court rulings, which say that the crime lab took
appropriate steps to rule out contamination.
Goode was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the 1993 stabbing
of a Johnston County couple. His brother, Chris Goode, and another man,
Eugene DeCastro, were also convicted in the deaths.
The SBI found no blood on Goode's clothing in 1992. But last year, in
response to his appeals, the lab tested the clothing again and found DNA
that matched DNA from the victims, Leon and Margaret Batten.
The discrepancy between the lab work in 1992 and the recent DNA findings
is at the heart of Goode's challenge over the science in his case.
For most of the last 13 years, the evidence in the case has been stored in
the Johnston County Courthouse in the same large canvas bin with the
Battens' bloodstained clothing and a bloody tailgate from their truck, as
well as clothes worn by the three defendants.
The evidence has been handled by lawyers in all 3 cases and repackaged
numerous times. No one can now say for certain whether the victims' bloody
clothing or the tailgate ever came in contact with Goode's clothing.
Goode's attorney, Diane Savage, argued that the DNA testing last year is
not valid because it's possible - even likely - that the DNA found on her
client's clothing came from the other evidence stored in the bin. She said
that she plans to file more appeals in the case, based in part on
affidavits from two DNA experts who dispute the SBI's work in the case.
Janine Arvizu, a laboratory auditor from New Mexico, said she can't
understand how ASCLD-LAB could back the SBI yet find fault with the way
that the evidence was stored.
"That evidence has been irreparably corrupted. It cannot be used," she
said. "If the accrediting agency doesn't take this thing more seriously, I
don't know why we would expect the laboratories to take it more
seriously."
Savage said she obtained copies of e-mails between the investigator for
ASCLD-LAB and SBI officials that suggest bias in ASCLD-LAB's review.
In an excerpt of an e-mail that Savage provided to the Journal, the
investigator, Allison Eastman, wrote to the SBI: "My main concern is that
Attorney Savage does not walk away thinking we did not do a thorough job
verifying everything and addressing her concerns."
Savage said that the e-mail makes her question ASCLD-LAB's intentions.
"It's certainly not an unbiased look at the case," she said.
ASCLD-LAB officials declined to comment on the e-mail. Eastman did not
reply to a message left at her office with the New York State Police.
(source: Winston-Salem Journal)
