Dec. 26 TEXAS: Mother awaits justice as trial nears for accused Patricia Townsend's anguish over her daughter's disappearance nearly 5 years ago is measured in hugs missed, grandchildren denied and justice delayed. Hopeful uncertainty about why Bridget Townsend vanished on Jan. 15, 2001, turned to chronic heartache after her remains were found 21 months later. "The hard part was not knowing where she was," Patricia Townsend, 58, recalled of the vibrant 18-year-old she calls "my baby." "Every time the phone would ring, I'd think, 'It's her,'" she said at her home. "Every time someone knocked on my door, I'd think it was her." Investigators had no leads about Bridget Townsend's fate until Ramiro F. Gonzales, whom she'd known since middle school, told police in October 2002 that he'd slain her. Gonzales, then 19, led police to Townsend's skeleton just days after he had been sentenced to life in prison for the kidnapping and sexual assault of another Bandera woman, who had escaped and helped police find him. In an interview Oct. 9, 2002, with the San Antonio Express-News, Gonzales claimed he'd intended only to burglarize the trailer of Townsend's boyfriend but, while high on cocaine, he kidnapped and shot her after finding her there. "I did do it. I regret it," he said from jail. "I wasn't in a right state of mind." Earlier this month, visiting District Judge Antonio Cantu denied defense motions to suppress incriminating statements previously made by Gonzales for his trial on 3 counts of capital murder, slated to begin Feb. 1 in Hondo. The case is being tried in Medina County because Townsend's remains were found on a ranch there. It's being prosecuted with help from lawyers at the attorney general's office, who plan to seek the death penalty for the defendant whose scrapes with the law date to middle school. If Gonzales is convicted, his attorneys hope jurors will spare his life on hearing of his troubled upbringing. Abandoned at birth and raised primarily by a grandmother, Gonzales was sexually abused by a male relative as a child and corrupted with alcohol and drugs by age 12, Emmett Harris, a court-appointed defense attorney, said last week. "When I look at this case, I see a little boy about 2 years old on his hands and knees drinking out of a drainage ditch like an animal, and there's nobody there to tell him otherwise," Harris said. "I'd like to save his life, and the state of Texas wants to kill him. If they succeed, that will not resurrect Bridget Townsend." Early entries on Gonzales' rap sheet include a 1996 criminal mischief complaint and, in 1997, being a minor in possession of alcohol and public intoxication, court records show. Beside the 2001 kidnapping and sexual assault that he admitted to a year later, Gonzales' adult transgressions include convictions for theft, burglary and forgery, records show. Gonzales told mental health officials he was "obsessed" with dead bodies, the records show. As a youth, the records state, Gonzales "on numerous occasions shot animals and then watched their bodies decay over time." They also state that he repeatedly went to the ranch where Townsend's body was dumped to look at it after her death. That sort of graphic testimony is upsetting to Patricia Townsend, who repeatedly left a recent pretrial hearing after being consumed with tears. "It's a nightmare. I've been crying all day because of what was said at the hearing," she later said while secluded in her darkened home, comforted by a dog and cat. "How would you feel if your daughter was picked up piece by piece?" Until recently, Patricia Townsend refused to accept that the bones belonged to the youngest of the three kids she raised alone. She came to terms with that grim reality after a visit a few weeks ago to the spot where Bridget was found, joined by a woman whom Gonzales kidnapped at knifepoint and then raped on the same remote rural ranch after Bridget's death. Both Patricia Townsend and Gonzales' past victim are eager for the trial to start, calling a conviction and death sentence key to their emotional recoveries. "For 3 years I've just taken every day as it comes," said Townsend, a waitress. "I haven't been working. I'm just waiting here for them to turn off my electricity. My family's been helping and some organizations, but it's just hard to get a grip on reality." She takes some solace in her sister Clara Kunkler's assurances that Bridget is at peace. "She was one of the sweetest, kindest and most gentle children you'd ever know," said Kunkler, 75. "Any time she saw an elderly person she'd say hello. She never could pass a newborn baby or a child without saying hello. She was always giving people gifts." (source: San Antonio-Express-News) ********* COURTHOUSE SECURITY TIGHTENED AFTER SHOOTING Efforts were made to beef up courthouse security in 2005 following the Feb. 24 shooting outside the Smith County Courthouse. But not everyone is satisfied the facility is safe enough yet. Progress made on the issue in 2005 included a new federal law that officials call an important tool in protecting judges and the public. "The courthouse shooting illustrated just how dangerous family law has become," says state District Judge Carole Clark. "In my court, we see angry people daily and the level of anger is ever escalating." It was a conflict stemming from a family law case that led to the shooting by David Arroyo Sr., she notes. Within weeks, Congressman Louie Gohmert, a Tyler Republican who served as a judge in the Smith County Courthouse, was introducing legislation to help protect against such assaults. State District Judge Cynthia Kent went to Washington in April to testify before the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on crime, terrorism and homeland security. "Threats and attacks against any courtroom personnel harm our judicial branch," Judge Kent told the members of Congress. "The protection of judges, prosecutors, jurors, witnesses and courtroom personnel is an important issue in America. When judges and courthouses are threatened, then our very judicial system is at risk." Gohmert's bill would increase penalties for crimes against judges, witnesses, jurors, attorneys and others involved in the criminal justice system. It passed in the House in November, and is pending in the Senate. BUILDING SECURITY Still, the bill doesn't address physical flaws in courthouse security. It provides for punishment, not direct protection. That protection comes from the security measures implemented by Smith County Sheriff J.B. Smith. "I have said all along our sheriff does a great job of protecting the men and women who work in the courthouse and the citizens who have to enter it to conduct their business," says County Judge Becky Dempsey. I'll remind that the shooting took place outside of the courthouse. There is nothing the sheriff could have done to prevent that." Still, things can be done to make a facility more secure. One set of plans was presented in July by architect Steve Fitzpatrick, based on some recommendations by the U.S. Marshals Service. For an additional $2.6 million, he said, the ongoing renovation of the Smith County Courthouse could be made more secure. Those recommendations quickly became a point of contention between Smith County commissioners and the Council of District Judges and the Council of Court-At-Law Judges. The judges asked in October that commissioners halt renovations until those recommendations - or at least some security measures - could be addressed. Commissioners voted to continue with the renovations, saying they simply didn't have the $2.6 million for the upgrades. But Commissioner JoAnn Hampton looked for ways to compromise. "If we can find a cost-effective way to make it secure, we should," she said. "And I think we should add some courtrooms to our jail project so that when we have high-profile or capital trials there, they can be secure." WEIGHING OPTIONS In November, commissioners and judges met to see if their differences could be worked out. It was an executive session - closed to the public - but both groups emerged saying the meeting was constructive. "I thought the meeting was extremely productive," said Commissioner David Stein. "We focused on solutions, both long-term and short-term." One solution, implemented by Sheriff Smith, was to close off the east entrance of the courthouse. At first, the entrance was open for county employees who had a pass card, but the flaws in that system soon emerged. People are just too polite, Smith said. "We're going to have to tighten up security," he said in late October. "The employees coming through are being too lax. They're not doing it intentionally, but when you start letting friends in, then friends let friends in, security can be breached." The door is now closed to all (though an alarm is on it, and it can still be used as a fire exit). Officials can't comment on many security measures, they note. But Smith pledges to continue working to make the courthouse safer. (source: Tyler Morning Telegraph) *************** We must fix injustices Thank you to columnists Alberta Phillips (Dec. 14, "His name is Ruben M. Cantu, he was framed, and we killed him") and Leonard Pitts (Dec. 4, "Did Texas kill an innocent in our name?") for keeping the possible wrongful execution of Ruben Cantu front and center. When the system is so broken, all of us, regardless of our views on the death penalty, should demand change. While we go about our business these holidays, the victims of the 1984 crime, now possibly also including Cantu, have no such option. All of us deserve better from our justice system. MARY CLOSMANN KAHLE -- Austin (source: Letter to the Editor, Austin American-Statesman) NEW JERSEY: Regarding "Do executions deter murderers? Yes, but... " (Other Views, Dec. 15): My wife and I have always been adamantly opposed to the death penalty. We believe state-sanctioned taking of life is a cruel, barbaric and biased way of administering justice. In no way does it act as a deterrent since it is, for the most part, imposed on persons who have neither the financial or mental capacity to have themselves defended to the maximum ability of quality attorneys. If the state truly believes in ending the killing and murdering cycle, it must lead by example and say the murdering stops here - we will no longer kill our citizens, we have developed beyond that mentality as a mature and advanced civilization. The beliefs of my wife and me in this matter were put to the most severe of tests on March 1, 2004, when my wife's daughter and only child and my stepdaughter of 16 years, Morgan Kelly Cameron, was brutally and senselessly murdered as she lay sleeping in her bed in her home in Cliffside Park. Our lives have been terribly changed since this impossible event took place and yet we still hold to our beliefs in regard to capital punishment. A horrible incident of domestic violence took our daughter from us. The justice we seek for the person who did this to her is lifetime incarceration, not another murder. Michael Massoni----Hackensack, Dec. 20 ** A letter in "Use death penalty, don't lose it" (Your Views, Dec. 19) expresses a very limited interpretation of the brutalization effect of capital punishment. The writer looks at only one field (law) and tacitly assumes that the brutalization effect should be evaluated only by crimes committed following an execution. This narrow approach conveniently ignores the vast and overwhelmingly negative psychological impact. For almost a half-century, psychologists have carefully studied the negative social impact of depictions of violence. Causing people to commit copycat crimes is not one of the social effects. What has been documented repeatedly is that violence increases fear, shapes attitudes and behaviors related to aggression and, more relevant here, causes desensitization to violence by others. Capital punishment teaches that there is nothing wrong with taking human life as long as it is legal and popular and advances the careers of politicians and prosecutors. People might note changing attitudes about aggression and increasing desensitization to violence. Roger N. Johnson--Mahwah, Dec. 20 (The writer is a professor of psychology at Ramapo College of New Jersey) (source: Letters to the Editor, Bergen Record) CALIFORNIA: Monday Morning: Higher execution rate is predicted California's capital punishment debate - ignited by the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams - will likely intensify as the state prepares to carry out death sentences at a pace unseen in more than a generation.Williams, the quadruple murderer and co-founder of the Crips whose tale of redemption failed to spare his life this month, was the 12th inmate executed in California since voters reinstated capital punishment nearly three decades ago. Next year alone, 4 inmates could enter the execution chamber, including the state's oldest death row resident, 75-year-old Clarence Ray Allen, according to the state attorney general's office. Next month, Allen is scheduled to die by lethal injection for masterminding a 1980 triple homicide in Fresno. He has been on death row at San Quentin State Prison for 23 years. Also facing likely executions in 2006, according to the attorney general's office: *Michael Angelo Morales, who arrived on death row in 1983 for the rape and murder of a teenage girl in Lodi. A judge is set Tuesday to schedule an execution date that could be in February or March. * Mitchell Carlton Sims, who was convicted 20 years ago of murdering a Los Angeles-area pizza deliveryman. Sims will soon file a petition in the U.S. Supreme Court. * Stevie Lamar Fields, convicted in 1979 of the kidnap, rape and murder of a University of Southern California student librarian. A federal appeals court ruled against him this month, but that court may not be done with the case. 27 years after Californians voted to reinstate capital punishment, large numbers of death-row inmates are approaching the end of the decades-long appeals process. Since the practice resumed in 1992, only 3 times has the state executed more than one inmate in a single year. The era of multiple executions will likely test the moral and political pulse of Californians, whose support of the death penalty is strong but is showing signs of waning. Dane Gillette, capital case coordinator for the state attorney general's office, said he expects to see more executions beginning next year. "2 to 3 years from now, it's possible to have a considerable number of cases," he said. With more than 640 inmates sentenced to execution, California has the largest death row in the nation. About 120 inmates' appeals are pending in federal district court. Californians have overwhelmingly embraced the idea of justice through capital punishment for the state's most violent criminals. More than 70 % of voters approved reinstatement of the death penalty in 1978. And last year, 68 % of California voters voiced their support of the death penalty, according to the nonpartisan Field Poll. That number, though significant, was actually down from the 83 % of Californians who supported capital punishment in 1986. Another survey, by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, found that 57 % of residents polled last year believed in the death penalty. But support dropped to 38 percent when life without parole was offered as an alternative sentence for a 1st-degree murderer. The 2004 polling numbers also show that more than a third of voters do not agree that the death penalty has been imposed fairly or free of error. Among the doubters is Donald H. Heller, the Sacramento attorney and former federal prosecutor who drafted the state's 1978 death penalty initiative. Heller, now a defense attorney, said he has grown disturbed over the years at how the law has been applied. He says the proposition he wrote has been enforced in a way he believes is unfair and discriminates against the poor and people of color. At least 6 California inmates sentenced to death were later acquitted of their murder charges or had charges overturned and not reinstated, according to San Francisco-based Death Penalty Focus, a grass-roots group seeking to abolish capital punishment. The introduction of DNA evidence and accounts of innocent inmates on death row - including the death sentence commutations in Illinois by then-Gov. George Ryan 2 years ago - have inevitably influenced attitudes in California, Heller said. The practical application of the death penalty has also been fraught with problems. Heller said he initially thought inmates' appeals would take about 10 years - not more than 20. He didn't realize that it would take the courts so long just to appoint an attorney for an appeal. The appeals process is bogged down at every stage, starting with transcribing and correcting trial records that can exceed 100,000 pages. Appeals don't begin to move until the California Supreme Court appoints defense lawyers. But with willing and qualified defenders in short supply, that takes about three years on average, and new lawyers usually must be appointed as cases progress from one phase to the next. Once a defendant is sentenced to death, an automatic appeal process begins in the California Supreme Court. In addition to the appeal, a condemned inmate also has three years to file a new case with the same court, making claims based on new evidence and asserted constitutional violations before or during the trial. If the state Supreme Court denies all relief, as it almost always does, both cases move to the federal system. The appeal goes to the U.S. Supreme Court with a request for review. The constitutional case, known as "habeas corpus," goes to federal district court, then the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, before making its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. New cases may be filed as investigators continue to dig for new evidence. Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Gold River, is backing new legislation to limit federal review of inmate appeals. He said "interminable delays" in the appeals process have allowed cases to pile up over the years, delaying justice for victims' families and the courts that imposed the sentences. The bill has encountered unexpected resistance, however, from the chief justices of the 50 states, who have voted unanimously to oppose it. "We are concerned with speed and efficiency, but we're also concerned with fairness," said California Chief Justice Ronald George, a former death penalty prosecutor who has done much to expedite death penalty cases in the state court system. George also warned that the speedup bill could backfire. Congress passed a similar bill in 1996, but questions of interpretation led to additional court proceedings, slowing many cases while expediting others. Tricia Pendergrass of Galt has been waiting close to a quarter of a century for the execution of the man who killed her brother. She plans to be at San Quentin on Jan. 17 to see Allen for the last time. "It's not that I have this terrible hatred of him, but ... I've had this numbness that has stayed with me all of these years," she said. "I want him off the face of this earth." Allen was convicted in 1982 for orchestrating from prison the shotgun murders of Pendergrass' brother, Bryon Schletewitz, 27, and 2 teenage co-workers at the Schletewitz family's grocery store in Fresno. At the time, Allen was serving a life sentence for an earlier murder of a witness who linked him to a burglary at the same store. Pendergrass said her parents were adamant about seeing the death sentence carried out. But in 2000, Pendergrass' mother, Fran, died from complications of a stroke. Earlier this year, Ray Schletewitz, the father, was killed in a car accident. "I am the only one left," she said. "I want to see that justice is served." (source: Sacramento Bee) ARKANSAS: JUSTICE PUTS LIFE ON PAPER Retired Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Lawrence E. Dawson developed a life-long opposition to the death penalty when he lost his 1st case after graduating from law school. He agreed to defend a poor white Lonoke County sharecropper who had confessed to killing his wife by beating her to death with a hammer and murdering their two children. "I tried to get him a life sentence instead of the death sentence," Dawson, 82, said in an interview. The jury gave the man, Harvey Rorie of near Coy in Lonoke County, the death sentence. He was executed in Arkansas electric chair in July 1949, Dawson said. At his last meal, Rorie "ordered enough to feed everybody on death row," the judge said. "I never handled another criminal case," Dawson said. "I was just turned off. It turned me against capital punishment." Dawson, who served in the Arkansas Legislature as state representative in 1953, said he considered introducing legislation dealing with the death penalty, but didnt. Although the judge changed his views on the death penalty later because of the vicious nature of some people who have been charged with capital offenses in recent years, he said he remains opposed to the death sentence in many instances. "I still would not send somebody to the death penalty if it was a crime of passion," Dawson said. He said Harvey Lorie was charged with a crime of passion. Dawson said he intends to use his favorite movie, "To Kill a Mockingbird," to illustrate a point in a book he is writing. The 1962 film of a novel by Harper Lee depicts small town Southern life in Alabama and a lawyer named Atticus Finch played by Gregory Peck. Finch defended a black man falsely accused of raping a Southern white woman in the Depression-era South. Dawson said that just as Atticus Finch represented a black man wrongly convicted and murdered by a lynch mob, he represented a sharecropper wrongly sentenced to death and executed in the electric chair. "I just developed a mind-set of being against the death penalty," Dawson added. Dawson was recently given permission by the state Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee to use a photo of himself wearing a court robe on the jacket cover of a book he is writing entitled "50 Years as a Judge and Counting." Dawson, who retired Dec. 31, 1998, still hears cases as a special judge. In 1998, chancery courts were abolished and judges in those courts became circuit judges, he said. "This book will be about before I became a judge," he said, noting that the 2nd part of the book will be of primary interest to lawyers, "where I recite interesting cases over which I presided." Dawson recalled that he had a woman "drop dead in my courtroom" and another man involved in a trial go home, lay down a wedding dress and put a gun in his mouth and commit suicide. Dawson said he has never presided over a jury trial. "I've sworn in every mayor (of Pine Bluff) except this recent one," he said, referring to Mayor Carl Redus Jr. "Daddy wanted me to be a doctor," Dawson said. "I grew up in a small town in Ouachita County," Dawson said, recalling that his father presided over cases as a justice of the peace at Buena Vista. "He held court right in the back end of his store," he said, recalling one trial over the ownership of a cow. Dawson graduated from the law school at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and opened a law office in Pine Bluff. (source: Pine Bluff Commercial) COLORADO: Prison Examines State's History With Death Penalty Even with her eyes shut, Betty B. Gibson can tell if she's anywhere near the old gas chamber. "The odor is still there. I can smell it: cyanide balls and sulfuric acid," said the 80-year-old Gibson, who as a warden's niece grew up here watching condemned men shuffle up the hill to the chamber where they would meet their end. Few others who visit the out-of-service gas chamber these days would detect the same scents she does. But most of the 15,000 people who visit the Museum of Colorado Prisons every year are drawn to the execution device. "Most people are fascinated by the gas chamber more than anything else," museum director Pat Kant said. That doesn't stop museum officials from wanting to add other exhibits and find a way to organize and showcase some of the artifacts and documents gathering dust in the basement of the former women's prison. "There are a lot of things wed like to do if we had the money," said Kant, who wants to buy new carpets, hire a curator, do more advertising, and replace cracked floors and a leaky roof. But most of those things probably won't happen soon. In November, museum supporters backed a sales-tax increase in CaInon City that would have generated about $200,000 annually to be divided among the museum, the Dinosaur Depot and the Royal Gorge Regional Museum and History Center. Voters resoundingly rejected the measure, leaving Kant with her wish list and the same old revenue streams: admission fees, donations and fundraisers. "We'll just continue and hope we can survive," she said. Part of the problem, she said, is that the stream of visitors to the museum has slowed, a refrain heard at other area tourist attractions. About 15,000 people visit every year compared with 18,000 to 20,000 a decade ago. Many are curiosity seekers, some are former inmates, Kant said. The mint-green building on North First Street, just east of the imposing Colorado Territorial Prison on U.S. 50, opened in 1935 as a women's prison, under the direction of Gibson's uncle, Roy Best. "I grew up right there at the prison," said Gibson, who was raised by Best. She now lives in California but occasionally visits. She grew close to one inmate, a woman named Pearl who was convicted of killing her stepdaughter. "Id go over frequently and visit with her," Gibson said. The gas chamber, she recalls, was in a yellow building on a hill near the Territorial prison. As a child, she said, she'd hide and peek at the death-row inmates as they made their final walk up that hill. "I used to watch these poor men walk that last mile," she said. Those were the days Gibson knew she should avoid her uncle. "He was always very upset the whole time," she said. "You stayed away from him." In addition to the gas chamber in which eight men were executed, the museum displays the artifacts of the death penalty through the state's history, such as the last hangman's noose used in Colorado, in 1933. Each of the old cells contains a separate exhibit, such as one on notorious prisoners like convicted killer Alferd Packer, suspected of cannibalizing his travel companions. Another commemorates the 1929 riot that left seven guards dead. Another features Gibson's uncle, whose 20-year stint as warden ended when he was accused of comingling funds and mistreating inmates. He was about to return to work after a 2-year suspension when he died of a heart attack. On display is the "old gray mare," a whipping post "one of the things that got Roy Best in trouble," Kant said. Like the gas chamber, the old prison still emanates the odors of long ago, at least to her nose, Gibson said. "I don't know if its the laundry soap," Gibson said. "But I can walk in there and it gets me." The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays through Sundays during the winter. (source: Associated Press)
