Jan. 5 OREGON: State puts death penalty into play Charges against the principal suspect in the alleged thrill killing of a rural Sheridan man were elevated to aggravated murder Tuesday afternoon. That puts the death penalty into play, but District Attorney Brad Barry said it's too early to say whether the prosecution will actively pursue that option. In addition, two murder counts were added to the array of charges facing his female companion and alleged accomplice, without an allegation of aggravating circumstances. The counts, alleging different theories of the crime, each carry a mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison upon conviction. Gerard Andrew Smith, 20, and Lynley Janett Rayburn, 26 - who lived near the victim but did not know him - were in court so that charges brought by detectives at the time of arrest could be superseded by indictments handed up by a grand jury following a fuller investigation. Smith was indicted on 2 counts of aggravated murder, 1 count of murder without aggravation, 1 count each of robbery, burglary, theft and auto theft, and 1 count each of conspiring to commit those crimes. That adds to 11 counts, all carrying felony status. In addition to 2 counts of murder, Rayburn was indicted on the same robbery, burglary, theft, auto theft and conspiracy charges as her younger boyfriend. She is facing 10 felony counts in the case. Smith is accused of tying up 54-year-old Dale Crittendon Rost III at gunpoint, shooting up a fix of methamphetamine and shooting Rost at point-blank range with a .22 caliber rifle. Rayburn is accused of being present, willingly participating in related criminal acts and making no effort to protest or intervene. Detectives say the suspects simply stumbled upon the victim, whom they did not know, while out walking. They allege Smith shot Rost simply for the thrill he got out of seeing what it felt like to "play God," robbing him almost as an afterthought. After shooting Rost to death, the 2 allegedly tossed the murder weapon into his car and drove from ATM to ATM in it using the victim's credit cards to obtain cash. Smith is next scheduled to appear in court Jan. 23. Rayburn is next scheduled to appear Jan. 17. Both are being represented by experienced criminal defense lawyers. (source: News-Register) INDIANA: Death Row Inmate's Request for Pen Pals Alarms Victim's Family A Shelby County couple says they expect it will be 10 years before they see their daughter's killer put to death. This week they heard attorneys argue another round before the Indiana Supreme Court. Michael Dean Overstreet is on death row for abducting, raping and murdering Kelly Eckart, an 18-year-old Franklin College student, in 1997. The Indiana Department of Correction says prisoners do not have Internet access, but when we Googled Overstreet's name, we discovered a page that appears to be an attempt by Overstreet to lock in a pen pal. It reads, "I am looking for someone to correspond with that is interested in forming a friendship." "If someone is weird enough to want to write to him let 'em have at it," said Connie Sutton, Kelly Eckarts mother. Sutton and her husband have been in and out of court inching toward an execution date. "I think often about him being in there and that's where he belongs but I wish the process would hurry up and be done," said Sutton. In jail, offenders are "under no circumstances allowed access to any outside communications networks - including the internet," according to an Indiana DOC executive directive dated October 2, 2000. A DOC spokesperson speculated someone on the outside set up Overstreet's page. I-Team 8 discovered the page is linked to an organization called Lamp of Hope. That group's web site has lists by state of hundreds of prisoners on death row looking for pen pals. "When I first saw it, I did a lot of research and was amazed to find out what kind of following people on death row actually have," said Dale Sutton. The Suttons say to counter what is negative on the internet they've come up with their own website, N.O.V.E.L. justice.com. Not only is there a tribute to their daughter on it, there's also information that they hope will be helpful to other crime victims. By Indiana code, the Department of Correction is restricted from reading letters addressed to prisoners unless they're deemed dangerous or believed to be tied to a crime, so there's no way for us to know what kind of response, if any, Overstreet is getting. That doesn't make a difference to Connie Sutton. "He might have changed, but I still haven't forgiven him," she said. According to their site, the Lamp of Hope project was set up by death row prisoners in Texas. The organization's site says persons under 18 should not seek correspondence with the prisoners. I-Team 8 emailed the executive director listed and never heard back. (source: WISH TV News) CALIFORNIA: Death-row inmate to address supporters----Kenneth Clair seeks new trial in 1984 killing. Kenneth Clair, condemned to die for the 1984 murder of Santa Ana baby sitter Linda Faye Rodgers, is planning to address 100 supporters on Saturday by telephone from death row at San Quentin. The event is sponsored by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and is to be held at 2 p.m. in the Bethel AME Church at 7900 Western Ave. in Los Angeles. This is the same church where (Stanley) Tookie Williams had his funeral," said Placentia private investigator C.J. Ford. Clair lost an appeal in U.S. District Court in July but has since been appointed a new attorney. Clair maintains he is innocent and that evidence uncovered last year by Ford will prove he had nothing to do with the killing. (source: Orange County Register) USA: Science versus the Death Penalty Last December was a special month for U.S. executions. North Carolina gave a lethal injection to Kenneth Boyd, making him the 1,000th person to be executed since the 1976 Supreme Court decision to allow the reinstatement of the death penalty. Soon thereafter, on December 13, California put to death Crip gang founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams. The U.S. remains the only developed Western nation to permit executions despite serious flaws in the system. No need for any pacificist proclivity or liberal leaning to see that--just look at the science. First, there's DNA evidence. Although it cannot prove guilt beyond all doubt--who can forget O.J. Simpson?--it can definitively prove innocence. The first DNA exoneration occurred in 1989, and since then many on death row have been set free because of it--the Death Penalty Information Center counts 122 exonerations since 1973. It showed that too many convictions resulted from sloppy or overzealous police work and prosecution, or incompetent defense attorneys. It helped convince then Republican governor George Ryan of Illinois in 2003 to declare the death penalty "arbitrary and capricious" and to commute the sentences of all 157 inmates on the state's death row. But DNA isn't the only contribution from science to this issue. Thanks to psychology studies, we know that the human brain can, with rather disturbing ease, create false memories. (See, for instance, a news story on the topic in the December 2005 issue of Scientific American Mind, or the feature article "Creating False Memories," by Eiizabeth Loftus in the September 1997 Scientific American.) We know that witness testimony can be unreliable, even when it comes from upstanding citizens and not just from co-defendants or jailhouse snitches who have been promised sweet deals. We know that some personality types are more likely to yield to the pressures to confess--and that these people do so just to please their interrogators or to avoid harsh treatment. Most states are now recognizing the weaknesses of the death penalty. The number of capital sentences have dropped from a peak in the early to mid-1990s of a bit more than 300 per year to about 100 in 2005, according to data compiled in the December 17 issue of the Economist. Still, the U.S. public strongly supports capital punishment. In Gallup polls asking, "Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?", two-thirds of Americans have responded "yes" for the past half decade. The approval is actually down from the mid 1990s, when about 80 percent were in favor of it. (That many death-row convicts are not exactly law-abiding do-gooders and have checkered criminal histories no doubt makes it hard for the average American to feel much sympathy.) I wonder, though, if Americans would be so predisposed to capital punishment if the question included the rate of "by-catch"--those innocent but are on death row nonetheless. Just how many innocent people have been executed is not known; courts generally don't consider such cases after execution, and overworked and underpaid defense attorneys turn their attention to the living. But we can estimate. The error execution rate has to be at least 1 in 1,000--the "1,000" being Kenneth Boyd and the "1" being Ruben Cantu, who the Houston Chronicle seems to prove that he died for a crime he did not commit. The Death Penalty Information Center lists another eight people as "executed but possibly innocent." That pushes it to about 1 in 100. Estimates for the number of people on death row who have been exonerated range from 25-30 from a prosecutor's estimates to 73 from a University of Michigan study. The maximum possible error rate, depending on very loose assumptions, then surges up to 1 in 30 to 1 in 12. These rates are undoubtedly too high, but they help to establish an upper bound. So the poll question should be couched as: Would you be in favor of the death penalty if one innocent person were executed for every 10 guilty ones? How about 1 in 100? 1 in 1,000? Factor in the alternative to the death penalty--life with no chance of parole--and I'd bet that public support for capital punishment would dwindle. Science has shown that our death penalty system is deeply flawed. Now the U.S. public needs to see those flaws. (source: Scientific American)
