Jan. 9 TEXAS: Death penalty sought for officer shooting suspect State prosecutors said they would announce Monday afternoon they plan to seek the death penalty for the man accused of killing a Dallas police officer in November. Juan Lizcano, 29, was charged in the fatal shooting of Officer Brian Jackson during a Nov. 13 gunfight in Old East Dallas. Officer Jackson was shot under the arm after he responded with other officers to complaints from Mr. Lizcano's ex-girlfriend that he had threatened her repeatedly. Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Toby Shook said prosecutors made their decision partly due to information uncovered during an investigation into the murder. "The state is determined to seek the death penalty in the capital murder trial of Officer Jackson based on specific facts in the case and the violent nature of the defendant," Mr. Shook said. (source: Dallas Morning News) **************** Yates: Not guilty by reason of insanity----Retrial set for March 20 Andrea Yates pleaded innocent by reason of insanity in the drowning deaths of her children Monday as she made her 1st court appearance since her 2002 capital murder convictions were overturned. State District Judge Belinda Hill set a March 20 trial date. Yates, 41, will remain in the custody of the Harris County Sheriff's Department until she is retried for the deaths of 3 of her 5 children. Her attorney, George Parnham, had asked that Yates be sent to Rusk State Hospital until the new trial. During her original trial, jurors rejected Yates' insanity defense and found her guilty for the 2001 deaths of three of the children drowned in the family bathtub: 7-year-old Noah, 5-year-old John and the youngest, 6-month-old Mary. Evidence was presented about the drownings of the other 2 children -- Paul, 3, and Luke, 2 -- but Yates was not charged in their deaths. Yates was sentenced to life in prison. Her convictions were overturned last January by a state appeals court because of testimony by the state's expert witness, forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz. He testified that, shortly before Yates killed her 5 children, television's "Law and Order" series broadcast an episode about a woman with postpartum depression who drowned her children. No such episode ever existed. (source: Associated Press) TENNESSEE----stay of impending execution Federal judge grants stay of execution to Tennessee inmate A federal judge has granted a stay of execution for convicted killer Gregory Thompson as his case is appealed. Thompson had been scheduled for execution on February 7th. He was convicted of killing Brenda Blanton Lane, a 28-year-old former newspaper reporter, with a rusty knife after abducting her from a Shelbyville Wal-Mart parking lot in 1985. Thompson's lawyers claim he is mentally incompetent and therefore should not be executed. (source: WBIR News) ************** High court considers when to allow claims of innocence The U.S. Supreme Court this week will take a fresh look through the eyes of a condemned Tennessee man at a decade-old gate that stands between an inmate's claim of innocence and federal court relief. The question for the nation's most powerful court: Is the gate too high for an innocent person seeking to escape execution or too low to silence the guilty who would cry wolf? The court will examine the issue using the case of Paul Gregory House, on Tennessee's death row for the July 1985 murder of 29-year-old Carolyn Muncey in Union County. House is hoping to convince the Supreme Court that proof, discovered years later, of his innocence is strong enough to merit federal court relief despite the fact that he has largely exhausted his appeals. His case has drawn national media attention and an ally in the renowned Innocence Project Inc., a nonprofit legal clinic founded by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld that has used DNA testing to exonerate more than 150 convicts. The Innocence Project is not directly involved in the House case. Instead, the group has filed what's known as a "friend of the court" brief, arguing that the outcome in the House case has far-reaching implications for convicts nationwide. What sets House's case apart from those successfully handled by the Innocence Project is that DNA testing conducted more than a decade after House was convicted does not clear him of Muncey's murder. Instead, it undermines - or, as his attorneys argue, annihilates - the motive for his alleged crime. Prosecutors had argued that House lured Muncey from her home to rape her and then killed her after she tried to fend him off. They pointed to semen stains on her underwear and nightgown as proof. But Assistant Federal Defenders Steve Kissinger and Dana Hansen later discovered through DNA testing that the semen came not from House but Muncey's own husband. By then, however, House had run out of appeals. A decade ago, the U.S. Supreme Court erected in a then-landmark case a "gateway" that would allow a convict claiming innocence but with no appeals left to get a shot at a federal court review. House, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a narrow opinion divided along political lines, had failed to muster enough proof of innocence to pass through that gateway. Kissinger contends that the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, got it wrong, setting the bar too high. Tennessee Attorney General Paul Summers counters that if the 6th Circuit erred, it was in setting the bar too low. Innocence Project attorney David Goldberg argues that the bar itself needs re-examining in the wake of the widespread acceptability of DNA testing and its use to exonerate the condemned, some of whom were hours away from death. "The time has come for this court to squarely address its significance," Goldberg wrote in his brief to the Supreme Court in House's case. Goldberg is urging the court to set a new standard, one that recognizes that forensics used before DNA testing was available too often got it wrong. That was certainly true in House's case. At House's trial, an FBI serologist linked the semen stains to House using the principles of secretion and blood-typing. Those principles were widely accepted at the time but have been all but abandoned in the wake of the pinpoint accuracy of DNA testing. House's case for innocence does not rest on the semen stains alone. Kissinger has attacked the other key piece of forensic evidence against House - Muncey's blood on his jeans. Kissinger has offered testimony from a forensic expert that the blood came not from Muncey's body at the time of the murder but from vials of blood drawn from her body at the time of the autopsy. He also has produced witnesses who claim Muncey's husband, who has admitted being an abusive alcoholic at the time of the slaying, confessed to the killing. Summers, in his brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of Union County prosecutor Paul Phillips, calls House's case for innocence smoke and mirrors. He concedes what the DNA results show about the semen but contends that does nothing more than show House failed to carry out a sexual assault. He labels as flat-out wrong Kissinger's claims that the blood on House's jeans was either accidentally spilled there or intentionally planted. Phillips himself has disputed the allegation that Muncey's husband was her killer, arguing that Hubert "Little Hube" Muncey was investigated and cleared. Hubert Muncey has repeatedly denied killing his wife. Wednesday's arguments before the Supreme Court in the House case will mark the first death penalty issue handled by the court since Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a Bush-appointee, took the reins. (source: Scripps Howard News Service) USA: No justice for the exonerated You're walking down the street, minding your own business. Suddenly, a stranger points to you and says, "He did it." Police officers frisk you, knock you around a bit, handcuff you, and throw you in jail. They tell you that an eyewitness has identified you as the perpetrator of a rape. Or maybe a murder. You're innocent, so you look forward to the opportunity to clear your name in a court of law. But you can't afford a top-notch defense attorney, so the court assigns an overworked novice public defender. He drops the ball. You're found guilty and spend several years in one of the most horrible settings on this planet. If you're lucky, maybe DNA or other evidence will eventually surface to prove your innocence. And maybe the court will agree to admit that evidence and give you a new trial. And maybe your conviction will be overturned, and you'll be exonerated. But there's a good chance that this is where your luck will end. The nightmare of your wrongful conviction is far from over. As compensation for the years behind bars for a crime you didn't commit, the state might give you $10 and a bus ticket. And that $10 might well be all you own. Studies show that more than 90 % of those exonerated have lost all of their assets, including savings, cars and homes, while in prison. Newly free, you try to rebuild your life. But prospective employers often do a background check, and learn of that conviction on your record. The state does not automatically expunge the records of those exonerated, and expungement is an expensive undertaking that isn't always successful. So you get work where you can, most likely in a low-paying job like taxi-driving or janitorial work. Sound far-fetched? Think it could never happen to you? Guess again. I recently met two men who learned these things the hard way right here in Pennsylvania. And they are just the tip of the iceberg. IN THIS country, more than 200 wrongfully convicted individuals have been exonerated after conclusively proving their innocence. Some were on death row, and lucky to have had the chance to prove their innocence before their execution dates. The system must change. The state must not continue to punish the innocent after their names have been cleared. For starters, all states should implement 3 measures: Expungement: A criminal conviction must not mar the permanent record of an innocent person. The criminal record should be automatically cleared when a conviction is overturned. Any records of these cases should be sealed, and should not be available to potential employers, credit agencies, or other parties who might do a background check. Compensation: Currently, only 17 jurisdictions provide those exonerated with financial compensation. When they do, it is often woefully inadequate. While no amount of money could ever make up for the lost years and suffering of the wrongfully convicted, states should provide those freed with adequate funds to build a new life. Social services: Most states do not have social programs in place for those exonerated, as they do for parolees. If you're innocent, there's less help for you on the outside than there would be if you were actually guilty! Returning to life on the outside is hard. You often require assistance with housing, finding employment, and obtaining medical, dental and psychological care. These services should be provided by the state, since the state's own misjudgments were responsible for creating the need. It's the least we can do. Until these changes take place, our criminal justice can't be called just. (source: Philadelphia Daily News) OHIO----stay of impending execution Taft delays Spirko execution for 3rd time Gov. Bob Taft today delayed for the 3rd time the execution of man who says he's innocent of a 1982 murder. The delay is to allow more time for DNA testing. Attorney General Jim Petro last week asked Taft to delay John Spirko's execution, set for Jan. 19, by 6 months to allow for the testing requested by Spirko's lawyers. Taft's reprieve sets the new date for July 19. Spirko, 59, was convicted of killing Betty Jane Mottinger, the postmistress in Elgin in northwest Ohio. She was abducted and repeatedly stabbed, then wrapped in a tarp and dumped in a field. Her body was found 3 weeks later. Petro says his office needs time to test hairs found on duct tape wrapped around the tarp that contained Mottinger's body. He says his office also will need time to find other potential suspects -- including some whose names came up earlier in the case -- if the hairs are found to come from someone other than Spirko or Mottinger. Some of the previous suspects live out of state and Ohio may need court orders to demand tests. In November, Taft granted Spirko a 60-day reprieve at the request of Petro, who said he needed that long to test several items that Spirko's attorneys want reviewed. In September, Taft delayed Spirko's scheduled Sept. 20 execution to look into whether prosecutors presented inaccurate information at his clemency hearing in August. (source: Associated Press) MICHIGAN: Group Works for Wrongly Convicted Prisoners A new show on WZZM13 deals with getting innocent people out of jail. It's a concept not so foreign in Muskegon, where an organization called "Innocent!" does the same work. There are no solid statistics on innocent people in jail. If the government knew who was innocent, those people wouldn't be there. But it happens and one local man started his own non-profit to try and make sure the innocent are redeemed. Doug Tjapkes runs the organization from his one cubicle office in Muskegon. "It's just tedious time consuming work," Tjapkes says. He began when Maurice Carter, a man convicted of shooting a police officer in West Michigan, elicited his help. Tjapkes fought for years, raising public awareness, lobbying legislators and holding rallies for Carter's release. About a year ago his sentence was commuted, although Carter died just months later of hepatitis he contracted in prison. A devastating ending for Tjapkes, but one with lessons learned. "Now we know what did and didn't work, what can and cannot work," he says. Tjapkes says Carter's case made him realize his calling - to help those wrongly convicted. He runs 2 web sites: aboutinnocent.org and prisonet.com; answers countless calls from prisoners and their families; and, has just finished a book. He says in a country with such a good legal system, innocent people should not be going to jail. "We should not have this type of thing, compound that with the death penalty and it is not acceptable." Tjapkes is not a lawyer, just an ex-journalist with instincts and resources. He says he does not judge people's guilt, but helps connect them to legal resources and then publicizes the cases if they have legitimacy. He also visits a lot of prisoners, in fact he became an ordained minister so he can legally see more than one person per trip, something not allowed for a normal citizen. And he advocates for changes to the system, like more DNA testing, better procedures for police lineups and interrogations and more accountability for court appointed lawyers. "We're hoping that these kinds of things help people realize the system is good but not perfect," Tjapkes says. Innocent! is currently handling about 15 to 20 cases in various states. Doug Tjapkes says he expects 2 of those inmates to be released from prison sometime this year. (source: WZZM 13 News) MISSOURI: Prison official stabbed by death-row inmate A high-ranking official at the Potosi Correctional Center was hospitalized after being stabbed by a convicted murderer who is on Missouri's death row, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections said Monday. Names of the victim and the suspect were not released, but spokeswoman Wanda Seeney said the victim is a unit manager, the No. 3 person at the maximum-security prison about 70 miles southwest of St. Louis. He was stabbed several times. The condition of the prison official was not released. He was hospitalized in St. Louis. The stabbing happened Sunday night. Seeney said the circumstances surrounding the incident were not immediately clear. Also uncertain was what weapon the inmate used to commit the crime. The suspect is awaiting the death penalty following a conviction out of Jackson County for first-degree murder, rape, kidnapping and armed criminal action. Since the stabbing, he has been placed in a segregated confinement unit at the prison. The inmate apparently acted alone, Seeney said. Still, since the attack, prison officials are limiting activities, and a lockdown may be instituted, she said. (source: Associated Press)
