Jan. 23 MARYLAND: Evans' lawyers file death appeals----Execution is set for February in killings With little more than 2 weeks left before their client could be executed, lawyers for death row inmate Vernon Lee Evans Jr. filed a flurry of legal challenges this week in state and federal courts. They challenged Maryland's lethal injection procedures in Baltimore Circuit Court and U.S. District Court, and have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court's decision on the process used by Maryland jurors and judges at capital sentencing hearings. They also filed a request this month with Maryland's highest court for a stay of execution. Evans, 56, was convicted in the April 1983 contract killings of 2 Pikesville motel clerks. The precise date and time of executions in Maryland are not announced, in accordance with state law. Instead, the death warrant signed Jan. 9 by a Baltimore County judge scheduled Evans' execution for the 5-day period that begins Feb. 6. Lawyers for Evans -- along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil Liberties Union and Maryland Citizens Against State Executions -- filed a civil lawsuit in Baltimore Friday challenging Maryland's lethal injection procedure. The execution protocols were never made available for public comment, as required by state law, the lawsuit says. Evans' defense team also filed a federal lawsuit Thursday, challenging the execution procedures based on the U.S. constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. And they filed a petition Friday with the Supreme Court, asking the justices to hear an appeal that argues that judges or juries at sentencing should weigh mitigating factors, such as a defendant's troubled childhood, against aggravating factors, such as another felony committed along with a murder, by the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" before sentencing a convicted killer to death. Maryland law sets the standard of proof for such decisions at "by a preponderance of the evidence" -- a lower legal threshold. The lawyers also have an appeal -- filed in August in Baltimore County Circuit Court -- pending before the Maryland Court of Appeals, asking that Evans' death sentence be overturned on the grounds that lawyers representing him at his 1992 sentencing hearing did not investigate his background or present such evidence to jurors. Evans was paid $9,000 by drug kingpin Anthony Grandison to kill 2 witnesses scheduled to testify against him in a federal drug case. David Scott Piechowicz and Susan Kennedy were fatally shot at the Warren House Motor Hotel in Pikesville. (source: The Baltimore Sun) INDIANA: Condemned man wants to be released or be killed A man condemned to die Friday for killing a Howard County couple 25 years ago said Friday he is innocent and wants Gov. Mitch Daniels to commute his sentence to time served. Marvin Bieghler, 58, told the Indiana Parole Board that if the governor won't give him his freedom, he wants to die. "If I can't get out, then let's get at it," he said. "I'm not in here begging for my life. I'm not going to do life without parole for something I didn't do." Bieghler, an admitted drug dealer, contends he was convicted in the 1981 deaths of Tommy Miller, 20, and his pregnant wife, Kimberly Jane Miller, 19, on the testimony of others who cut deals to avoid prison sentences. "I'd just like the governor or whoever to look at the transcript. I've got proof I didn't do this. I have witnesses who said somebody else did this. Well, what am I doing here? I can't get the courts to listen." Bieghler said there was no physical evidence against him and evidence that would have exonerated him was ignored during his trial. Bieghler devoted much of his two-hour testimony on his claim of innocense, even though Parole Board Chairman Raymond Rizzo told him at the start the purpose of the hearing was not to retry the case. "Rather, it is to re-examine the sentence and to place that sentence in context of the time that has passed since this decision and other information deemed relevant to its being carried out," Rizzo said. Bieghler told the board he had a good childhood, although his mother frequently beat him. He also said people he knows said he was a changed man when he returned home from Vietnam, which is where he 1st started using marijuana. He said he had a good job earning $35 an hour for a time after returning home, but he lost his job when the economy soured. That's when he began dealing drugs. He said he met someone through his brother in Florida who sold him large quantities of drugs to sell in Kokomo. Bieghler said he didn't deal the marijuana himself, but supplied it to someone who did. He denied a prosecutor's allegations that he killed Miller because he had snitched on him. Bieghler said he was never arrested, so he had no motive to kill Miller. He said the person he sold the marijuana to was arrested, but he knew Miller had not turned him in. He also denied the prosecutor's assertions that he killed Miller over an $800 drug debt. Bieghler said Miller didn't owe him any money. The Millers were found dead Dec. 11, 1981, in their mobile home near Russiaville, about 10 miles west of Kokomo. Bieghler said the prosecutor offered him 40 years in prison while the jury was out deliberating if he would agree to tell authorities who was supplying him with marijuana. Bieghler said he wouldn't do that because he feared for the lives of his family members. "I said two things are going to happen: I'm not pleading guilty to something I didn't do and I ain't snitching on any people in Florida," Bieghler said. The hearing is scheduled to continue Monday in Indianapolis, and the board is expected to make its recommendation later that day. Daniels commuted the death sentence of Arthur Baird II to life without parole last August. Baird's lawyers primarily argued that he was mentally ill, but the state Parole Board voted 3-1 to recommend that the execution be carried out. The Parole Board has recommended clemency in a capital case just once since the death penalty was reinstated in Indiana in 1977. In 2004, then-Gov. Joe Kernan commuted the death sentence for Darnell Williams to life in prison without the possibility of parole after the board voted unanimously to recommend clemency, saying too many unresolved questions remained. **************** Convicted killer wrote suicide note, gave away belongings A man convicted of murdering 3 teens wrote his intentions in a suicide note and gave away a Bible and photographs days before hanging himself in his jail cell, authorities said. On Friday morning, David Maust died at a Crown Point hospital, 1 day after jail staff found him hanging from a twisted bedsheet. "David wanted to die on his own terms and if he didn't get the death penalty, which is strangely what he really wanted, he was going to do it this way," said Maust's defense attorney Thomas Vanes. "This was his second choice." Vanes said Maust wrote him a 2-page letter that arrived Friday. Maust gave away his personal items Tuesday afternoon, Vanes said. Lake County jail guards found Maust, 51, around 4 a.m. Thursday, about 10 minutes after they told him that he was going to transferred to a state prison later that day, authorities said. Vanes said his transfer from jail to prison may have sparked Maust's suicide, but didn't think his client was behaving unusually. "We talked a little bit about what life would be like in the prison and he gave me no indication he was terrified of it," he said. "I'm sure there's some connection between his transfer and his suicide, but what that exact connection was I can't say." Maust was serving three consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole for murdering 3 teens and burying their bodies in a basement. He also served time for killing teens in Illinois and Germany. "David Maust was tragically created and imprinted by familial and societal factors and had become a dangerous monster," Lake County Prosecutor Bernard A. Carter said in a statement. "He had to be stopped. He realized this and evidently decided to end what those factors had created." Lake County Sheriff's Cpl. Mike Higgins said an officer had been stationed inside Maust's room at St. Anthony Medical Center's intensive care unit when he died shortly after 8:30 a.m. EST. "The coroner's office is taking charge for the remains, and if the family makes contact, he'll be released to them," he said. "If we don't hear from them, he'll go to a pauper's grave. It's over." Guards at the northwest Indiana jail found the suicide note in which Maust admitted to 5 killings for which he had been convicted and apologized the victims' families. "Maybe with my death the families and the people can go on with their lives and not waste energy wondering why I was still alive," Maust wrote in the note, which was released by the prosecutor. Maust pleaded guilty last fall to killing the three teens whose bodies were found beneath freshly poured concrete in the basement of a Hammond house where Maust rented a 2nd-floor apartment. He agreed to the plea in exchange for the state withdrawing all death penalty requests in the slayings of Michael Dennis, 13, James Raganyi, 16, and Nicholas James, 19, all of Hammond. He had also served time in an Illinois prison for the 1981 murder of a 15-year-old boy before being released in 1999, and he was convicted of manslaughter while serving in the U.S. Army for the killing of a teenager in Germany. Maust, who has said he acted alone, has been held in the jail since police arrested him in December 2003. (source for both: Associated Press) ARIZONA: Man who murdered 5 given 5 life terms 3 years after Kemp Horton murdered 5 people, including his wife and her 3-year-old, family and friends of the victims are still left with the why. Horton, of Mesa, was sentenced Friday to 4 consecutive life terms as part of a plea agreement that removed any possibility of the death penalty. 6 friends and relatives of the victims spoke before the sentencing. Their comments varied from forgiveness to name-calling, but they all wanted to know why. But when Judge David Talamante of Maricopa County Superior Court gave Horton a chance to address the court, they learned nothing. "I don't know why this happened," Horton, 46, said almost inaudibly. Dressed in jail stripes, he still had the wild hair and beard he had when arrested. He mumbled and then said again, "I still don't know why this happened." After the hearing, Michael Ford, whose mother was one of the victims, said he was frustrated. "I truly believe he's going to a place where people who murder women and children will get hard justice," Ford said. Horton, who had worked as a handyman, was arrested Dec. 10, 2002, after Maricopa County sheriff's deputies found that he was the only one alive in his home in the 800 block of North 97th Street, in a county island between Mesa and Apache Junction. Dead inside were his wife, Tammi Meininger, 42; her son Austin Potter, who had cerebral palsy; Mark Potter, 40, her brother; Terri Borden, 45, her sister; and Joyce Levi, 65, Meininger's mother. Horton and Meininger's problems started years before when they battled over custody of their daughter. After he was arrested, Horton told sheriff's deputies that Potter was the shooter and that he wrestled the gun away from Potter and killed him. But evidence at the scene did not corroborate that, and Horton has never offered another version. And that's what still haunts those who were in court Friday. "There's so many unanswered questions that I would hope would come out in trial or somewhere," said Ford, who has struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of losing all of his "natural family." Also at the sentencing were two of Meininger's five remaining children, including Taressa King, 18, who said, "My main thing in coming out here today was to let him know how I feel directly to his face." In the courtroom, King broke down in tears several times while reading prepared comments in which she said she "forgives Kemp but will never forget." On what would have been his wife's 48th birthday, Paul Borden of Aztec, N.M., said he still struggles with what "triggered this savage attack." Borden said he had asked Terri not to visit her sister because he feared Horton. He remembers the day of the murders and a phone call from Terri where she relayed to him that there was some trouble in the house between Meininger and Horton. "I still remember it vividly," Borden said. "She told me, 'Kemp's in the bedroom right now,' and I said, "What happens if he comes out?" An hour later, he said, his wife was dead. Inside the courtroom, Borden didn't mince words when he expressed what he hopes will be Horton's fate. "This animal will live his own destiny, and then he'll go into the flames of hell, and may God take his own time on the punishment." (source: Arizona Republic, Jan. 21) NORTH CAROLINA: Panel says it can't punish ex-lawyers----Prosecutors accused of lying to get conviction; N.C. bar can appeal For the second time, a panel charged with disciplining N.C. lawyers cited a procedural flaw in dismissing misconduct allegations against 2 former Union County prosecutors accused of wrongdoing in a death penalty case. On Friday the three-member panel said a rule that would allow it to revive the charges -- which the N.C. State Bar says are felonies -- wasn't official because it wasn't written properly into state court records. Defense attorneys immediately criticized the decision, saying it was a sign lawyers could not regulate their colleagues. The discipline panel members worried during the hearing that the public would be left with that belief. "Believe me, I've gnashed my teeth over this and understand the impression" it might leave with the public, said Charlotte lawyer Lane Williamson, who chaired the disciplinary panel. But he said the laws that govern the panel forced the ruling: "I don't like it, but I think we're stuck." Now the bar will have to decide whether to try to get the N.C. Court of Appeals to overturn the panel's decision. State or local prosecutors also could charge former Union District Attorney Ken Honeycutt and former assistant Scott Brewer with a crime. "This is what appeals are made for," said Michael Howell, a former defense attorney in the death penalty case. "It certainly doesn't instill any confidence in the judicial system." In August the bar accused Honeycutt, now an attorney in private practice, and Brewer, who's now a District Court judge, of lying to win a 1996 murder case against Jonathan Hoffman. Hoffman served 7 years on death row before he won a new trial in 2004. Such charges against lawyers force a hearing in the bar's independent disciplinary committee. The panel can take a lawyer's license, but either Union County's current district attorney, Michael Parker, or the state Attorney General's Office would have to pursue criminal charges. Twice, the panel decided to bypass arguments of whether the lawyers lied. Normally, the bar requires grievances to be filed within 6 years of an alleged offense or one year after an offense is discovered. The panel ruled 2 weeks ago that lawyers didn't file their grievance against Honeycutt and Brewer in time. The bar and N.C. Supreme Court in the early 1990s approved an exception to that time limit when a case involves potential felonies. So bar lawyers argued in a memo last week that the actions of Honeycutt and Brewer amount to obstruction of justice and subornation of perjury (pushing another person to lie under oath) -- felonies that would fall under the exception. But a clerk didn't record the change in the Supreme Court's minutes. The panel decided Friday that if it's not recorded, it's not the rule. "Talk about 'saved by a technicality,'" said Gretchen Engel, a lawyer with the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham. "They don't have the stomachs, it seems, to take seriously the misconduct of prosecutors." Leaders of the N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers voted to create a "strike force" Friday that could intervene in cases with allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. The academy did not say whether members would get involved in the Brewer and Honeycutt case. Brewer's lawyer, Jim Maxwell of Durham, said his client didn't break any rules in trying Hoffman. But he argued that the detailed requirements of the law are designed to protect everyone. "It's not a technicality," Maxwell said. If authorities don't adhere to the letter of the law in punishing some people, he added, "What's left to protect you?" (source: Charlotte Observer)
