Dec. 20 TEXAS: Tennessee evidence will not be allowed in new murder trial Soffar defense may present other testimony linking man to 3 slayings at bowling alley A Harris County man facing a new capital murder trial in the slayings of 3 people at a Houston bowling alley will not be allowed to present evidence of similar crimes committed by a condemned killer in Tennessee. Defense attorneys for Max Alexander Soffar, 50, sought to introduce evidence that they say exonerates him from the slayings at the Fair Lanes Windfern bowling center and suggests that Tennessee convict Paul Dennis Reid, 48, actually committed the crime. But state District Judge Mary Lou Keel ruled Monday that jurors in Soffar's new trial will not hear about Reid's violent past. Jury selection is scheduled for Jan. 6. Prosecutors have said they will again seek the death penalty. The ruling was a blow for defense attorneys, who say prosecutors are depending solely on an unsupported, uncorroborated confession from Soffar that does not match evidence from the crime scene or the sole survivor's version of events. They had hoped to show that Reid's crimes in Tennessee bear a "striking resemblance" to the 1980 killings in northwest Houston. Jurors will, however, hear that Reid was in Houston at the time of the attack and resembled a description of the bowling alley gunman. They also will hear testimony that Reid told a friend more than 20 years ago that he once robbed a bowling alley on U.S. 290 and shot 4 people. Soffar's attorneys expressed disappointment that jurors will not hear about Reid's crimes in Tennessee, which, they say, show a pattern similar to that of the Houston slayings. "What the jury won't know is (Reid) then left Houston and committed seven more murders just like this one," said Soffar's attorney, Kathryn Kase of the Texas Defender Service, after Monday's hearing. "The issue is one of giving the jury all the facts and letting them decide if Houston's got the right man," said Kase, who is married to Houston Chronicle editor Jeff Cohen. "In this case, there are very strong indications Mr. Soffar did not commit this crime." In 2 of the Tennessee cases, restaurant employees - like the Houston victims - were shot in the back of their heads after being forced to the floor, defense attorneys said. Reid also ordered one of his victims to give up his wallet before opening fire, just as the bowling alley killer did in 1980. Reid, like the Houston killer, never wore a mask or hid his face, defense attorneys said. Also, the Tennessee businesses were closed when the employees were robbed, just as the victims at the bowling alley were. Prosecutor Lyn McClellan argued that the Houston and Tennessee shootings were not "signature crimes" and have little in common. "They are not even close; not even in the ballpark," McClellan told the judge. Soffar was convicted of killing Arden Alane Felsher and Tommy Lee Temple, both 17, and Stephen Allen Sims, 25; and critically wounding Gregory Garner, then 18, at the bowling alley on July 14, 1980. His conviction was overturned last year when a 3-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that his lawyer had not effectively represented him in his 1981 trial. The panel concluded that Soffar's lawyer at the time, the late Joe Cannon, failed to interview or summon Garner, the only survivor, whose account of the incident differed sharply from Soffar's. Cannon also failed to consult a ballistics expert who could have provided exculpatory testimony, the panel found. (source: Houston Chronicle) *************** Rushing to Execute in Texas The Supreme Court has held that it is unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded, and Marvin Lee Wilson appears to fall into that category. But Mr. Wilson, who is on Texas' death row, may be executed anyway, because his lawyer missed a deadline, and the federal appeals court that rejected his claim last week is blind to the injustice of what is happening. Mr. Wilson's execution should be blocked. Beyond that, his case should cause Congress to stop its reckless campaign to make it even easier than it is now to carry out executions. Mr. Wilson, whose I.Q. was measured at 61, appears to meet the legal standard for mental retardation. The Constitution therefore prohibits him from being put to death. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit does not seem to care. It ruled last week that because his lawyer filed his legal papers late, he has forfeited his right to object. It is easy to see how Mr. Wilson's lawyer made a mistake. The morass of rules that have developed for when death row inmates must file papers in different state and federal courts makes occasional errors inevitable. Whatever the skills of Mr. Wilson's lawyer, the system as a whole is filled with overburdened, unenergetic and incompetent lawyers, as the Texas Defender Service documented in a report entitled "Lethal Indifference." It is the courts' job to ensure that inadequate lawyering does not lead to people who are not eligible for the death penalty, like Mr. Wilson, being executed. But the Fifth Circuit did not even bother to address his most critical claim: that a federal law about how cases are to be handled should not trump the Supreme Court's determination that the Constitution does not permit a whole class of people to be put to death. If a lawyer's slip-up can lead to the execution of someone who is exempt from capital punishment, the American justice system is diminished. Republicans in Congress are pushing for passage of the Streamlined Procedures Act, a bad law that would make it even more likely that mistakes are made in administering capital punishment. Congress should drop that bill and fix the flaws in the current system that allow Mr. Wilson to be headed toward an execution for which he is constitutionally ineligible. (source: Editorial, New York Times) IOWA: Iowa Woman Gets Death Sentence in Killings A woman was sentenced to death Tuesday for helping her former boyfriend kill 5 people, including two children, in an attempt to thwart an investigation of the man's methamphetamine business. Angela Johnson, 41, maintained her innocence and said she was manipulated by Dustin Honken, her ex-boyfriend, who was sentenced to death in October. "I regret I wasn't strong enough," she said. Johnson and Honken are the first people sentenced to death in Iowa in more than 40 years. Iowa does not have the death penalty. Federal prosecutors brought the case against Johnson and Honken. U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett said last week he was bound by law to issue the sentence a jury recommended in June, but was "troubled by the lack of certainty in the record concerning the precise involvement" of Johnson in the crimes. Prosecutors said Honken and Johnson schemed to kill 2 of Honken's former drug dealers, Greg Nicholson and Terry DeGeus, after Honken learned both men had agreed to cooperate with federal agents. Nicholson, Lori Duncan and her daughters, ages 6 and 10, disappeared in 1993; prosecutors said Johnson had posed as a cosmetics saleswoman to gain access to Duncan's home. DeGeus disappeared months later, after telling relatives he was meeting with Johnson. The victims were tortured and shot. Their bodies were found in 2000, after Johnson scrawled a map of the graves and unwittingly gave it to a jailhouse informant, prosecutors said. Defense attorneys said Johnson had no idea of her boyfriend's plans to murder witnesses. (source: Associated Press) USA: DEATH WATCH California prison officials executed Stanley "Tookie" Williams, 51, just after midnight Dec. 13. The ex-leader of the Crips gang was convicted of brutally killing 4 people in 1979. In his years in prison, Williams and his supporters said, he had found redemption and became an antiviolence crusader and author of childrens books. The U.S. Supreme Court denied a request for a last-minute stay. Earlier Dec. 13, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had rejected Williams request for clemency, saying he saw no need to 2nd-guess the many court decisions already rendered in the case. Schwarzenegger also questioned the death row inmates claims of atonement. Williams was the 1,003rd prisoner executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. NCR last reported the names of the people executed in the United States in early May. Since then, 37 more people have been put to death. Vernon Brown, 51, was executed in Missouri May 17. Bryan Wolfe, 44, was executed in Texas May 18. Richard Cartwright, 31, was executed in Texas May 19. Gregory Scott Johnson, 40, was executed in Indiana May 25. Jerry Paul Henderson, 58, was executed in Alabama June 2. Alexander Martinez, 28, was executed in Texas June 7. Robert Dale Conklin, 44, was executed in Georgia July 12. Michael L. Pennington, 37, was executed in Oklahoma July 19. Kevin Conner, 38, was executed in Indiana July 27. David Martinez, 29, was executed in Texas July 28. George Sibley, 62, was executed in Alabama Aug. 4. Gary Sterling, 38, was executed in Texas Aug. 10. Kenneth Eugene Turrentine, 52, was executed in Oklahoma Aug. 11. Robert Alan Shields, 30, was executed in Texas Aug. 23. Timothy Johnston, 44, was executed in Missouri Aug. 31. Frances Newton, 40, was executed in Texas Sept. 14. John W. Peoples Jr., 48, was executed in Alabama Sept. 22. Herman Dale Ashworth, 32, was executed in Ohio Sept. 27. Alan Matheney, 54, was executed in Indiana Sept. 28. Ronald Ray Howard, 32, was executed in Texas Oct. 6. Luis Ramirez, 42, was executed in Texas Oct. 20. William Williams Jr., 48, was executed in Ohio Oct. 25. Marlin Gray, 38, was executed in Missouri Oct. 26. Melvin White, 55, was executed in Texas Nov. 3. Brian Steckel, 36, was executed in Delaware Nov. 4. Arthur Hastings Wise, 51, was executed in South Carolina Nov. 4. Charles Thacker, 38, was executed in Texas Nov. 9. Steven Van McHone, 35, was executed in North Carolina Nov. 11. Robert Rowell, 50, was executed in Texas Nov. 15. Shannon Thomas, 34, was executed in Texas Nov. 16. Elias Hanna Syriani, 67, was executed in North Carolina Nov. 18. Eric Randall Nance, 45, was executed in Arkansas Nov. 28. John R. Hicks, 49, was executed in Ohio Nov. 29. Kenneth Lee Boyd, 57, was executed in North Carolina Dec. 2. Shawn Humphries, 33, was executed in South Carolina Dec. 2. Wesley E. Baker, 47, was executed in Maryland Dec. 5. Stanley Williams, 51, was executed in California Dec. 12. We ask prayers for the victims of the crimes that may have been committed by those listed here, for those executed and for those participating in the execution done in our names. (source: National Catholic Reporter) ********************** The Price of the Death Penalty Clarence Ray Allen is old, sick, and disabled. He suffers from just about every physical ailment imaginable. But Allen is a condemned killer, and he could be executed at California's San Quentin prison on January 17. Septuagenarians are not aberrations on America's death rows. A reporter who interviewed death row prisoner Stanley Tookie Williams shortly before his execution saw more than half a dozen prisoners who looked to be in their 50s and 60s on death row. And those were just the ones in eyeshot of the reporter. There are, undoubtedly, additional gray beards among the more than 600 prisoners on San Quentin's death row. Many of them have been there since the late 1970s and 1980s. Williams was there for a quarter century, and Allen has been there just as long. At last count, there were more than 100 prisoners aged 60 and older on the nation's death rows. They will spend, on average, one decade there before they are executed, die of natural causes, are exonerated, or have their sentences commuted. The condemned languish on San Quentin's death row for 20 years or more. The interminably long stay of Allen and Williams -- and the others on death row - point up yet another Catch 22 problem with the death penalty. People condemned to die are getting older and sicker -- and near death, they tax medical facilities and make a mockery of the execution process. A 74-year-old Alabama inmate had even more ailments than Allen. He needed help to get to the shower and comb his hair, and was so far gone mentally that he had trouble remembering his name. He limped to his execution in August 2004. The old guys stay so long on death row because prosecutors, public officials, the courts, prison wardens and the public -- despite their shout for more and speedier executions -- arm prisoners with a storehouse of mandatory state and federal legal appeals that drag out the process. The idea is not to slip and kill the wrong man. It's a good, public conscience-salving goal, but there's still evidence that some men who have been executed may have been innocent. The painfully slow appeals process, though, is no consolation for the old men that rot on death row -- they're also caught in the legal Catch 22. They don't want to die, and they grab at their every appeal in the desperate hope that a miracle will happen and they'll get their conviction overturned. That may or may not happen, but while they wait, they also age faster, suffering more mental and physical ailments than other prisoners. A 1999 study by the Florida Corrections Commission found that inmates over age 65 spend twice as much time in hospitals, and that their physiological age is 10 years older greater than their actual age. Their physical isolation from other prisoners, poor diet, and the mental torment of not knowing when they will die takes an extra toll. In 1989, the European Court of Human Rights refused to extradite a German national that fled to Britain from a murder charge in Virginia. The Court claimed that the lengthy time between sentencing and execution was psychological torture. The accused was extradited only after state prosecutors promised not to seek the death penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court hasn't helped lessen the agonizing torment of time delays. Twice, the court has flatly rejected appeals from inmates in several states that have spent more than 20 years on death rows. The prisoners claimed that their prolonged stay on death row violated the 8th amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Justice Stephen Breyer, in a mild dissent in one of these cases, acknowledged that the long wait for death prolonged the suffering of inmates. But Justice Clarence Thomas was having none of that; he lambasted Breyer for his dissent, and railed that prisoners have stacks of appeals to protect their rights, but then they complain that it takes too long to execute. If House Republicans have their way, that will change. They're pushing hard for passage of the Streamlined Procedures Act of 2005, which would severely limit the number of federal appeals that delay executions for the condemned. It's a terrible answer to the death penalty morass. Whittling away a prisoner's legal and constitutional protections won't guarantee absolute certainty that the state won't kill the wrong man. Without those time-consuming appeals, the last few years' 100-plus innocent persons who were scheduled for execution, but were later exonerated, would have been long-dead. A "dead man" walking into the death chamber is bad enough; a "dead man" being wheeled into the death chamber is an outrage. (source: AlterNet - Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of 'The Crisis in Black and Black' (Middle Passage Press) COLORADO: Jury's Bible use nixes death penalty A man who kidnapped, raped and murdered a woman in 1994, but whose death sentence was overturned because jurors consulted a Bible, was sentenced Monday to life in prison without parole. Robert Harlan initially was sentenced to death in 1995 for murdering Rhonda Maloney, 25. But Harlan avoided execution after the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a ruling that jurors in the case improperly consulted the Bible during deliberation. "It could be said you may have avoided the death penalty by a technicality," Adams County District Court Judge Scott Crabtree told Harlan. But he said his hands were tied and the sentence he imposed was "mandated" by the judicial system. "I have no discretion here," Crabtree said. (source: Chicago Tribune) MARYLAND: Misunderstandings cloud death penalty findings Before the recent execution of Wesley Baker, some advocates on both sides of the death-penalty question pointed to a comprehensive University of Maryland study to make their cases. This produced some serious misunderstandings and mischaracterizations of the research, and the confusion needs to be cleared up. In 2003, I headed the Maryland research team that studied the fairness of the administration of the death penalty in the state. We concluded that race and geography were factors in the decisions that lead to death row. Put another way, whom you kill and where in Maryland you commit the crime make a difference. We concluded this by sifting data on all 1,311 cases between 1978 and 1999 in which prosecutors could have pursued a death sentence. The question was not just who ended up on death row but who did not and what differentiated these 2 groups. We looked at the 4 key moments in each case in which the prosecutor, judge or jury could decide whether to impose a death sentence - from the 1st filing of charges to final sentencing. We studied the details of each case, more than 100 factors in all. These factors captured the brutality of the crimes - the aggravating or mitigating circumstances that juries ultimately consider at sentencing time. Then we used statistics to account for and control all of these many differences among the cases. After taking all these other factors into account, we found evidence that race mattered. We found even stronger evidence that the particular jurisdiction where the crime occurred mattered. Yet, as the Baker execution approached, some newspapers and advocates described the study as finding just the opposite - that the Maryland death penalty process was race-neutral or that race of the offender made no difference. Some other advocates on the other side of the debate claimed that the study found the process to be racist. All of those descriptions are incorrect. We found that both the race of the victim and, to a lesser extent, the race of the offender, make a difference: Those who killed a white victim in Maryland were between 2 and 3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who killed a non-white. Black offenders who killed white victims were nearly 2 1/2 times more likely to be sentenced to death than white offenders who killed white victims and nearly 3 1/2 times more likely to be sentenced to death than black offenders who killed black victims. We found that these racial differences showed up early in the process, well before the case ever reached a courtroom, in the decisions made by the state's attorneys on whether to seek a death sentence. Further, these patterns held regardless of jurisdiction. We described these as racial "disparities," not "bias" or "discrimination." We found a pattern, but could not say whether racial hatred or bigotry motivated decisions in Maryland's capital sentencing system. Certainly, other explanations are possible, and we think it does no good to hurl unfounded accusations of racial bigotry against state's attorneys, judges or jurors based on our study. Whatever the reason, the data are clear and the relationships strong: the 21-year record of capital homicide prosecutions suggests that race and geography do play a role in prosecutors' decisions to pursue a death sentence in the state of Maryland. There were stark differences in the way counties handled capital cases. This largely reflects the very different philosophies applied by the state's attorneys in these jurisdictions. We found the sharpest differences between Baltimore County and Baltimore City. But there were other significant differences as well: Defendants who killed their victims in Baltimore County were about 23 times more likely to be sentenced to death than those whose victims lived in Baltimore City, nearly 14 times more likely than if they lived in Montgomery County and 8 times more likely than if they lived in Prince George's County. Harford County's state's attorney's office has a rate of seeking the death penalty that is nearly 11 times higher than Baltimore City and 4 times higher than Montgomery County. We consider these findings disturbing. Maryland law spells out a series of aggravating and mitigating factors that alone are supposed to determine whether a convicted murderer gets a death sentence or life in prison. But our study indicated that race and jurisdiction also play a role, affecting cases long before juries ever get to vote - when prosecutors decide whether to pursue a death sentence. Even so, our findings do not lead inexorably to the conclusion that the death penalty must be abolished in Maryland. There are other remedies to these problems. For example, we found that patterns of racial disparity disappeared as the severity or level of aggravation of the case increased. Not all homicides are equally horrific. If the state defined capital murder more narrowly to include only these "worst of the worst" cases, our evidence suggests that the outcomes will be racially neutral. The state might, for example, centralize the procedures used in death-penalty prosecutions, perhaps by creating a special unit in the attorney general's office to review all cases and to ensure that consistent standards are applied. This is the approach used by the federal government, and it might substantially reduce or eliminate glaring geographic disparities in Maryland's system. We had hoped that the study would have stirred intellectually honest discussion in the legislature, the judiciary and in the executive branch of the state. I am disappointed that it has only fueled misunderstanding and polarized both sides of the debate about capital punishment in Maryland. (source: Baltimore Sun; Ray Paternoster is a professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park. He was the senior author of the Maryland Death Penalty Study) ****************** The Value of Black Life in Maryland In the 8 years I served as governor of Maryland, I found the power to decide which condemned prisoners would live and which would die the most awesome and emotionally grueling of all my duties. I faced this decision 4 times. I believed in the death penalty when I became governor and took seriously my constitutional responsibility to uphold Maryland law. I presided over two executions, those of Flint Gregory Hunt and Tyrone Gilliam. Both were black men whose victims were white. I heard from many civil rights leaders who rightly pointed out that this racial combination dominated cases on our state's death row, even though African Americans were and continue to be the victims in nearly 80 % of homicides. So in 1999 I commissioned a study of race and death sentencing from the University of Maryland, believing it my responsibility to ensure that justice was truly blind when applying this ultimate punishment. A few months later I faced yet another execution of a black man with a white victim -- that of Eugene Colvin-el. I was not yet convinced that a moratorium on executions was necessary. But I was also not 100 percent certain of Colvin-el's guilt, so I commuted his death sentence to life without the possibility of parole. The last execution I faced was that of Wesley Baker -- whom Maryland ultimately executed on Dec. 5. His was the fourth case to come before me in which an African American man was condemned to die for the murder of a white Marylander. And as with 2 of the 3 condemned men before him, he had been sentenced to die in Baltimore County. I could not, in good conscience, go forward with another execution of a black man for killing a white person. I stayed Baker's execution in May 2002 and imposed a moratorium on all executions pending the results of the University of Maryland study. Days before I left office in January 2003, the study was released. Examining the records of more than 1,300 death-penalty-eligible cases between 1978 and 1999, criminologist Raymond Paternoster concluded that both geographic and racial disparities existed. Baltimore County was singled out as having a significantly higher rate of death sentences than other jurisdictions in the state. Murderers in Baltimore County were 26 times more likely to be sentenced to death than killers in Baltimore City and 14 times more likely than murderers in Montgomery County. The significant racial disparities are troubling. Cases in which the victim was white were almost twice as likely to result in the death penalty as cases in which the victim was black, and blacks who killed whites were 2 1/2 times more likely to be sentenced to death than whites who killed whites. These results lead to the unfortunate conclusion that we value white life more than black life. Intentional or not -- and I believe it is not -- this is an indefensible and untenable position for the state. Whether one supports or opposes the death penalty in principle, all reasonable people understand that before we exercise the ultimate sanction, we must be confident that the system is, at a minimum, fair and accurate. The University of Maryland study received a great deal of attention and should have been a call to action for state leaders, but no solutions have been implemented. The General Assembly, despite conducting hearings on the issue, never passed legislation to deal with the inequalities highlighted in the study. Gov. Robert Ehrlich, who lifted my moratorium on executions after assuming office despite acknowledging that race "plays a part all the way through the process," named Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele as the new administration's point man on the issue. The lieutenant governor promised to conduct an assessment of our state's death penalty. To date, he has not. Despite being ignored by the current administration, issues raised by the study remain. Maryland still faces serious questions about the impact of race and geography in capital sentencing. I implemented the moratorium to allow for the thorough and fair study of our death penalty system and to allow for action to be taken to prevent racial and geographic discrimination. The study was completed, but the corrective action was not. It is time for our state to honestly and openly consider these findings and to find constructive remedies. To carry out executions under this scenario is simply wrong. The writer was governor of Maryland from 1995 to 2003. (source: Parris Glendening, Washington Post, Dec. 18)
