Nov. 19 FLORIDA: Mosley guilty on 2 murder counts----Could get death for killing Lynda Wilkes, her baby A Jacksonville husband and father was convicted Friday of murdering his 1-time girlfriend and the baby she said was his. John Mosley Jr. could receive the death penalty for killing Lynda Wilkes and 10-month-old Jay-Quan Mosley. Their disappearance in April 2004 prompted a massive search that included police sifting through 790 tons of debris at a Valdosta landfill. Wilkes' body was found burned in a field near Waldo, about 50 miles southwest of Jacksonville, but the baby was never found. Mosley, 41, removed his glasses and dabbed his eyes as the Duval County jury entered the courtroom, but he was calm as guilty verdicts on two counts of 1st-degree murder were read. Members of Wilkes' family sobbed and clutched one another. Marquita Wilkes, the 23-year-old daughter of the slain woman, said she hoped her mother's spirit could rest now. She wept and rocked against her boyfriend, Brian Stamper, when the verdicts were returned. "He took my mother away from her kids," she said of Mosley, adding later that she hopes "he gets what he deserves." Circuit Judge Michael Weatherby told the jury to return Nov. 30 for the start of proceedings to decide whether Mosley should be executed or sentenced to life in prison. During a two-week trial, a teenage drug dealer testified that he watched Mosley strangle Wilkes, who had sued to get child support. The teen, Bernard Griffin, said Mosley put the baby, alive and screaming, in a plastic bag. Prosecutors said Mosley left the bodies in his SUV while he went to work, then picked up Griffin that night and drove to the field near Waldo to get rid of Wilkes' remains. They said the baby's body was left in a Dumpster in Ocala and was eventually trucked to the Valdosta landfill. The jury deliberated for about six hours Friday. Early in those discussions, they asked for a court reporter to re-read testimony related to a cell phone call. To tie Mosley to the dumped body, prosecutors had introduced phone company records showing a call from Mosley's cell was routed through a tower in the Ocala area very near the time that Wilkes' body was burned. As bailiffs led Mosley from the courtroom after the verdict, he protested he hadn't been allowed to present some evidence of innocence. "What about all the people that saw Jay-Quan," he insisted, as Wilkes' family and friends groaned. "Bye-bye," a man in the courtroom answered as Mosley was taken away. Defense attorney Richard Kuritz declined to explain Mosley's comments in detail. "There were witnesses we were looking for," Kuritz said. He said Mosley had been hopeful as the day began. "We put up a good fight, I think. There were a lot of holes [in the prosecution's case]," Kuritz said. Assistant State Attorneys Libby Senterfitt and John Guy declined to talk to reporters after the verdict. Senterfitt said it would be inappropriate until after the decision about the death penalty. (source: Florida Times-Union) ******************** Death sentence could give Smith decades to live -- Florida capital cases go through as many as 9 steps, many repeatable, before inmate runs out of options. There was little joy in Susan Schorpen's voice in the moments after her daughter's killer was convicted of murder. Schorpen knows that even if Joseph P. Smith is sentenced to death for raping and killing Carlie Brucia, it could be years before he's executed. "He's got more years in appeals than my daughter had in life," she said Thursday after the verdict was handed down. Well before Smith went on trial, some community members began calling for his swift execution, based on the crimes and the fact that he was caught on video kidnapping Carlie. But the reality is, even if jurors recommend a death sentence, his execution won't come quickly. Death cases move slowly in Florida, going through as many as 9 steps before an inmate runs out of options. And at any one of those steps, the case could be sent back a step, and even go all the way back to a new trial. Some longtime death penalty supporters, including Leon County prosecutor Ray Marky, are disgusted that the system is so slow. Marky, who helped write the state's death penalty statute and prosecuted the very first person executed in Florida, empathized with Schorpen. "She won't get justice in her lifetime," Marky said. "Unless the Legislature moves, we're going to feed that maggot for the next 30 years. I want to know where is the outrage that a court can keep reviewing and reviewing and reviewing?" Marky prosecuted Thomas Knight, who shot and killed a couple while trying to rob a bank in 1974. He was sentenced to death in a Miami-Dade County court less than a year later. Knight is still on death row. His appeals have taken years to wind their way through the system. "It's taken 20 to 30 years to ultimately get a conviction final," Marky said. But experts on Florida's death penalty say Knight's case is now an exception. The system's gotten faster in the last few years, thanks to state lawmakers and shortened time periods for filing petitions. Department of Corrections records show that the average stay on death row is just under 12 years. Death sentences handed out since 1998 will take about 8 years to make it through the appellate process, unless a new trial is granted, said Roger Maas, executive director of The Florida Legislature Commission on Capital Cases. "The public's perception is that all of these cases take 20 years," said Maas, whose group advises the governor, Legislature and Supreme Court on death penalty issues. "That's not happening." Since Florida reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 60 people have been executed. Currently, there are 369 inmates on death row. 5 of them are from Sarasota County. But Marky points out that only three people have been executed since the beginning of 2004, saying some people have moved through the system faster only because they waived some of their appeals. Death penalty cases also cost taxpayers millions. According to Seminole Circuit Judge O.H. Eaton Jr., one professor estimated that the typical cost for a death penalty case is about $1.3 million, while prison costs about $48 a day. Eaton, who teaches Florida judges how to handle death penalty cases, has laid out the nine stages of appeals in his presentation about the process. After a trial, the convicted murderer gets an automatic appeal to the state Supreme Court. The Florida Supreme Court could review the case for 2 years before it's sent to the U.S. Supreme Court, which generally declines to hear death penalty cases on the 1st appeals go-around. Before it's over, the case could land in front of the state or federal Supreme Court several more times. It will certainly be reinvestigated from every standpoint, including the strength of the evidence and the defense attorney's performance. With fast-moving death penalty law and the complexity of these types of trials, a case could get "logjammed" at the federal level or sent back to the trial court at any time. "The process is very deliberate, if you will, because the death penalty is so final," Eaton said. "Judges everywhere want to make sure the cases are done correctly. You don't rush through this stuff. You just don't." So even a "fast track" case like that of serial killer Ted Bundy takes nearly 10 years from sentencing to execution. "That's just about as fast as the system can ever go," Eaton said. Marky, the Leon County prosecutor, said it's up to lawmakers to fix a death penalty system that allows "repetitive post-conviction motions." He wants to limit the number of appeals. "Litigation for 35 years is an outrage," he said. "All we're doing is wasting public funds." Some experts say the system could be tightened, but they're not sure it would do any good. With limited resources, there will still be dozens of people awaiting execution for years. And sentencing a person to death is the most serious punishment in the criminal justice system, the experts say. Everyone involved wants to make sure the cases were fairly handled. "I don't want to speed up the process at the risk of not analyzing and reviewing these cases carefully," Eaton said. (source: Herald Tribune) VIRGINIA: Recounting the death penalty's election role To the editor: The race for Governor of Virginia is over. The critics have had their say. The proponent of the death penalty was soundly defeated. The irony is that the death penalty issue was a political red herring to begin with. There was not, nor was there meant to be, any serious discussion of this most serious issue. It was brought up in a sleazy political environment with the hope of getting an emotional response while the death penalty itself was not effected. It is the law of Virginia and cannot be changed by the governor himself. But the proponent seemed to believe that it was a dividing issue that would serve his immediate interests. As I see it, the way the issue was raised was bad while raising the death penalty issue for serious debate is good. That is the cloud with the silver lining. So now that the issue is out there, why not at least talk about it ? First a confession: For many years I was a proponent of the death penalty. For me it was a simple matter. Someone takes a life -- he or she forfeits his or her life. Seemed fair and simple to me. It also made sure that the murderer would not murder again; it made the streets safer for the rest of us and saved a lot of tax money for jails. And, by God, it was a signal to someone contemplating murder that he better think again. The problem with my position was my false assumptions. I did not know that our elected officials sometimes were dishonest themselves. That prosecutors were sometimes dishonest. That police would plant false evidence. That honest mistakes were made and we killed the wrong people. And above all, I did not know that the death penalty was not a deterrent at all. For example, there are cases where all of the witnesses were murdered with the target to avoid arrest and a possible death sentence. I think we are beyond the election message that the good guy is for death penalty and the guy who finds it morally repugnant is the bad guy. But we still are far from a consensus. But we do have a lot of factual data. We know for sure the death penalty is not a deterrent. We know that the system has unfixable flaws that put innocent people to death. And we know that killing prisoners demeans the sanctity of life. We say that we are delivering justice and sometimes we are. But sometimes we are not and that is intolerable. Some say it too expensive to keep convicted murders in prison for life, but the facts show that it more expensive to navigate the death penalty appeal process. And we cannot short-cut the appeal process because the fact is that over 40 percent of all U.S. death sentences have been reversed on appeal and of those 20 % were due to dishonest police and prosecutors. Take a life -- close a case. In North America, only the U.S. has a death penalty. Canada and Mexico do not. World wide, 76 countries have abolished the death penalty; 30 of them since 1990. In all, 20 other countries have a death penalty on the books but have not used it. Since 1994, 81 % of all executions have been in 3 countries: the U.S., Iran and China. We are not keeping good company. The European Union is now considering abolition of the death penalty for the entire Union. Great Britain has already abolished it. If you go to the Internet you will find enough about the death penalty to sink a battleship. Almost all of it is a plea to stop it. Not for sake of the violent criminal but for the sake of civility and morality. You will find most of the proponents of the death penalty invoking some religious belief or the Bible, while you can find more in the Bible that says don't do it. Of all the reasons given for institutionalized killing, I find the beliefs of convenience most repugnant. Not unlike the people who say God gave me your land and God said it was O.K. to kill you for it. Ring a bell? I believe it is time to put the death penalty in the trash pile with witch trials, slavery, female mutilation and all of the other inhumane garbage we have endured. What are your thoughts? Joseph Corcoran -- Machipongo (source: The Daily Times) ARIZONA: Death penalty for killer of man set afire A Tucson man convicted last week of a gruesome 2003 slaying here was sentenced to death yesterday. Pima County Superior Court Judge Howard Fell ordered Cody James Martinez, 23, be turned over to the state Department of Corrections to be executed by injection for the murder of Francisco Aguilar, 19. Martinez would become the 108th person on death row at the state prison complex in Florence, the 25th from Pima County. All death sentences are automatically appealed to the Arizona Court of Appeals. In pronouncing sentence after the jury voted for the death penalty, Fell ordered Martinez held in the Pima County Jail, pending sentencing Dec. 16 on a kidnapping conviction in the murder case. As Fell pronounced sentence, one spectator softly gasped in the otherwise-quiet courtroom. Martinez, wearing a white shirt and black pants, his black, collar-length hair slicked back, sat motionless at the defense table. After the court was adjourned, Martinezs mother, Mondie Zitman, sobbed in a courthouse hallway but declined comment, though her sister, Bee Cornejo, did talk. "It's devastating," Cornejo said. "I don't think Cody should be on death row. He's been through a lot in life . . . abuse, neglect." Martinez was convicted last week of kidnapping and 1st-degree murder in Aguilars death. His lawyer, Chris Kimminau, had argued Martinezs life should be spared, in part because others arrested in the case got deals for much lighter sentences. Kimminau told jurors that Johnathon Summey-Montao, the man Martinez blames for Aguilars death, was sentenced to life with a possibility of parole after 25 years after pleading guilty to first-degree murder, and two other accomplices, Michael Angel Lopez and Fernando Jude Bedoy, were sentenced to up to 12 years after pleading guilty to kidnapping. Martinez, Summey-Montao, Lopez and Bedoy were using drugs June 12, 2003, when Martinez and Summey-Montao beat Aguilar, tied him up, rolled him into a sheet and put him into the trunk of a car. Martinez and Summey-Montao then burglarized Aguilars house, drove him to Tucson International Airport property near Old Vail Connection and South Access Road. Aguilar was stabbed and shot once in the neck. A mattress was placed on top of his body and set on fire. TIA officers later stopped their vehicle for speeding. (source: Tucson Citizen)
