Jan. 31 MISSOURI----impending execution Judge weighs Michael A. Taylors fate----Deadline set on ruling for execution The Wednesday execution for a man convicted of killing a Kansas City teenager in 1989 could be back on track after an appellate court ruling Sunday. A federal judge previously stayed the execution of Michael A. Taylor until the judge could hold a hearing Feb. 21. But a 3-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed that stay and ordered an immediate hearing to take up Taylors contention that the method of lethal injection used in Missouri is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. The Court of Appeals instructed that the case be re-assigned to another federal judge, who must hold a hearing and issue a ruling by noon Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. in Kansas City began hearing testimony by telephone Monday. Additional testimony is expected today. The appeals courts order also stayed Taylors execution until 11:59 p.m. Friday, but that stay could be vacated before then, depending on how Gaitan rules and how quickly any appeals can be handled. The Missouri Department of Corrections proceeded Monday as if the execution could still be carried out at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, but persons who applied to witness the execution were notified of the stay Monday and told to contact prison officials on Tuesday to check the status. Taylor, who turned 39 on Monday, was one of two men who pleaded guilty to the kidnapping, rape and murder of 15-year-old Ann Harrison, which occurred on March 22, 1989. She was abducted while waiting for the school bus in front of her Kansas City home. An execution date has not been set for co-defendant Roderick Nunley. The legal challenge filed on Taylors behalf by St. Louis lawyer John William Simon maintains that the combination of lethal chemicals used in Missouri creates a risk of undue suffering and is not necessary to bring on death. The issue has been raised by inmates in other states, and the U.S. Supreme Court last week stayed a Florida execution because the inmate was not allowed a hearing on his argument. But a few days later, the court rejected a stay for an inmate in Indiana who had been granted a hearing on the issue and lost. He was then executed. Taylor is the 1st Missouri death row inmate whose execution date has been set this year. Executions take place at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, south of St. Louis. (source: Kansas City Star) VIRGINIA: Bill banning juvenile death penalty passes Senate In Richomnd, the Virginia Senate passed a bill today banning the death penalty for juveniles. The bill, sponsored by Democrat Patricia Ticer of Alexandria, conforms Virginia law to last year's U-S Supreme Court decision that made it unconstitutional to execute anyone under the age of 18. The ruling put an end to juvenile executions in Virginia and 18 other states. The bill passed the Senate 34-to-3. Norfolk Senator Nick Rerras, 1 of 3 Republicans who voted against the bill, argued that executing juveniles is appropriate in cases of extreme violence. He called the death penalty a deterrent to crime, and said he thinks the Supreme Court went too far in the ruling ... quote ... "to the point of legislating from the bench." The bill now moves to the House of Delegates for consideration. (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: Governor: Heed judge's request Death sentence should be commuted Judge Charles R. McGrath, a retired judge of the Ventura County Superior Court, presided over the 1983 trial of Michael Morales, 46, who is scheduled to be executed at San Quentin State Prison on Feb. 21. Judge McGrath wrote to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday, recommending he grant Mr. Morales clemency. Who better for Gov. Schwarzenegger to listen to than the very judge who condemned Mr. Morales to death? If the truth were known at the time of sentencing, the death penalty would not have been applied, the judge said. Judge McGrath's letter, printed in its entirety below, makes the best arguments for why Mr. Morales's death sentence should be commuted to life without the possibility of parole. Re: Morales v. Brown M&S file No. 60430 Dear Governor Schwarzenegger: I was appointed to the bench in Ventura County by then Governor Ronald Reagan in 1974. In 1983, I performed the most solemn duty a judge is asked to undertake: As the trial judge in the capital murder prosecution against Michael Morales (I also was the trial judge for the subsequent capital prosecution against his co-defendant and cousin Ricky Ortega), I independently reviewed the evidence, determined that it supported the jury's penalty phase verdict, and on that basis, sentenced Mr. Morales to be executed in San Quentin Prison. I now write to recommend that you grant Mr. Morales clemency, so that he is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. My decision to uphold the jury's death verdict was based on the apparent strength of the prosecution evidence against Mr. Morales, the cornerstone of which was the testimony of Bruce Samuelson, a jailhouse informant. I found Mr. Samuelson to be credible and believable. I said so on the record. Mr. Samuelson testified that he obtained a confession from Mr. Morales admitting to murder and rape. The Supreme Court has long recognized that a confession is probably the most probative and damaging evidence that can be admitted against a criminal defendant. See, e.g., Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 296 (1991). In this case, Mr. Samuelson's testimony describing the confession was the only evidence to support the single special circumstance - lying in wait - that made Mr. Morales eligible for the death penalty, as well as the rape conviction. Mr. Samuelson was also the source of the prosecution's aggravating evidence. Mr. Samuelson testified that almost two years after Mr. Morales was arrested, he made obscene, derogatory references to the victim, Terri Winchell, and callously boasted of the assault upon her. Such testimony effectively demonstrated a heartless lack of remorse by Mr. Morales, and completely undermined his attorney's presentation of penalty phase testimony that Mr. Morales immediately felt deep remorse for his involvement in the incident. Mr. Samuelson also described how Mr. Morales had solicited him to murder trial witnesses Pat Flores and Raquel Cardenas, thus demonstrating that Mr. Morales presented a serious and continuing danger to society even while confined in prison. I believe that Mr. Samuelson's testimony was instrumental in convincing the jury, as it did me, that death was the only appropriate punishment in this case. New information has emerged to show evidence upon which I relied in sentencing Mr. Morales to death - Mr. Samuelson's testimony - is false. Significantly, the revelations were brought to light by the California Attorney General's subsequent investigation into Mr. Samuelson's account of the circumstances surrounding Mr. Morales' confession. When the Attorney General asked Mr. Samuelson to explain how he induced Mr. Morales to speak freely between jail cells in a crowded cellblock widely known to hold informants, Mr. Samuelson answered that he conversed with Mr. Morales in Spanish. In response to Mr. Samuelson's claim, Mr. Morales' attorneys have verified under oath from numerous sources that, apparently unbeknownst to Mr. Samuelson, Mr. Morales does not speak Spanish. The Attorney General has never contested any of these facts. (See, e.g., The Attorney General's most recent filing in response to Mr. Morales' petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court.) Mr. Samuelson's testimony was indispensable to proving the lying-in-wait special circumstances finding upon which Mr. Morales' eligibility for a death sentence now rests, and proved critical in tipping the balance of aggravating and mitigating circumstances in favor of a death sentence. The jury was explicitly instructed to consider Mr. Samuelson's testimony in choosing the appropriate sentence and that Mr. Samuelson's testimony alone could be used to outweigh all mitigating evidence and compel a death sentence. I am not aware of any state or federal court having conducted an evidentiary inquiry into the truthfulness of Mr. Samuelson's testimony. I know that I have not been asked to testify regarding the significance of the information that has been disclosed since I was led to believe that Mr. Morales actually made the incriminating statements attributed to him by Mr. Samuelson. If I had been asked to do so, I could and would have testified truthfully that impeachment of Mr. Samuelson's testimony with evidence of his untruthfulness in describing the circumstances of the purported confession would have rendered his testimony, and the prosecution's case, insufficient to support the death sentence. Accordingly, I would have set the death sentence aside. The statutory requirement that trial judges review death verdicts is intended to enhance the fairness, uniformity and reliability of penalty determinations in capital cases. The conscientious discharge of this weighty obligation protects the integrity of the judicial system, public confidence in the administration of the state's power to impose death, and the rights of defendants to individualized sentencing decisions. If in the course of performing my judicial duty, I had been permitted to consider evidence of Mr. Samuelson's falsehoods that was belatedly discovered by the Attorney General, and Mr. Morales' attorneys, I would not have let the death sentence stand; and the awesome decision whether to spare his life would not be before you at this time. Under such circumstances, executing Mr. Morales would frustrate the design of our sentencing laws, and would constitute a grievous and freakish injustice. I respectfully recommend that you grant clemency to Mr. Morales. Respectfully yours, Charles R. McGrath -- Retired Judge of the Superior Court, Ventura (source: Ventura County Star) NORTH CAROLINA: Man who served on death row for 26 years dies of heart attack A 61-year-old Virginia man on North Carolina's death row for 26 years ago has died of a heart attack. The Department of Correction says Norris Carlton Taylor died Saturday at Central Prison in Raleigh. He was on North Carolina's death row longer than any other inmate. Spokesman Keith Acree says staff saw him clutch his chest and fall while he was sweeping the floor in a cell block. Acree says Taylor was taken to the prison's hospital and staff tried to revive him. Taylor, who's from Hampton, Virginia, was sentenced to death for the murder of Mildred Murchison, whom Taylor shot while taking her car in Fayetteville. The shooting occurred after Taylor escaped from the Johnston County Jail, where he had been held for the killing of a model who died in 1978. While he was on the run, Taylor kidnapped 3 women, and raped 2 of them, and kidnapped 2 men, fatally shooting one of them. He also confessed to a 1975 murder in Virginia. (source: Associated Press)
