Feb. 2 TEXAS: Andrea Yates is Released From jail----She is heading to a state mental hospital on bond-----AMOUNT SET: At $200,000; prosecutors sought $1 million Andrea Pia Yates was released from jail on a bond this morning and headed to a state mental hospital where she is to remain until the start of her 2nd capital murder trial in the drownings of her children. Yates left the jail shortly after 8 a.m. wearing jeans and a striped shirt and carrying a brown bag with her other belongings. Harris County prosecutors had expressed concern that Yates may be able to leave the hospital without supervision, but her attorney George Parnham assured state District Judge Belinda Hill on Wednesday that he will alert her so Yates can be jailed if she tries to leave. This morning, Parnham asked the crowd of media to not ask Yates or her escorts any questions. She will be driven Rusk State Hospital, a secure mental health facility in East Texas by a retired Houston Poolice Department detective and his daughter. The trip is expected to last around 3 1/2 hours with Parnham also driving to the facility in his own car. Yates, 41, is charged with capital murder in the deaths of 3 of her children. She admitted drowning them, and their 2 siblings, in the bathtub at the family's Clear Lake-area home in June 2001 and was convicted of capital murder in 2002. An appeals court overturned the conviction last year, however, and she is scheduled for retrial March 20 if a plea agreement is not worked out. Yates has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Wednesday, Hill granted bail with the assurance that Yates would voluntarily commit herself to Rusk, until her trial begins. She then will be moved to the Harris County Jail psychiatric unit, where she was moved last month for court appearances related to her trial. Yates has been held at Skyview, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice psychiatric unit near the Rusk hospital, since her conviction. Hill told Yates that she could not order her to commit herself to Rusk, but was granting bail on the stipulation that she would. Parnham had asked for $50,000 bail, but said he was happy with Hill's decision and will try to raise the money from people and groups concerned with mental-health issues. Prosecutors had requested $1 million bail, expressing fear that since she is being allowed to commit herself, Yates will be able to leave the hospital, located about 3 1/2 hours from Houston. They say the heinous nature of the killings indicates that she is a danger to society. "This is a case about 5 dead children," Assistant District Attorney Kaylynn Williford said after Hill's decision. But Parnham told Hill that Rusk officials have given assurances that if Yates attempts to leave, they will hold her and contact Parnham. He said he then would ask that bail be revoked and Yates be returned to the Harris County Jail. Yates' relatives said the Rusk hospital will offer the mental-health care she needs. "She would like to be there instead" of jail, said her mother, Karin Kennedy, who attended the hearing. Russell Yates, Yates' ex-husband and the children's father, also attended the hearing and said he was happy that bail was granted. "What we wanted for Andrea all along, you know, is for her to be in a mental hospital," he said after the hearing. "I'm all in favor of her being given a bond so she can at least be in a hospital awhile before trial." Wearing gold-colored, wire-rim glasses and dressed in an orange County Jail jumpsuit, Yates quietly sat at the defense table Wednesday and chatted with Parnham's wife, Mary, a paralegal. Her long, dark hair was in a braid. Yates smiled at her mother, who was seated in the courtroom gallery, but didn't appear to look at her ex-husband. Kennedy said she visited her daughter last weekend at the County Jail. She said Yates understood the importance of the hearing, but doesn't talk much about the case. "She never complains," Kennedy said. Parnham said Yates is on a "heavy dose" of anti-psychotic and anti-depressive medication. Yates was not allowed bail before her 1st trial, as prosecutors sought the death penalty. Because she received a life sentence, the death penalty is not an option in the upcoming trial and she can be granted bail. The 1st Texas Court of Appeals ruled in January 2005 that Judge Hill erred in the 1st trial when she refused to declare a mistrial because of mistaken testimony from the state's expert witness, psychiatrist Park Dietz. The Court of Criminal Appeals let the 1st Court's decision stand in November. Dietz testified that an episode of the Law & Order TV series depicted a mother who was prosecuted for drowning her children but was found not guilty by reason of insanity. A consultant to the series, Dietz said the episode aired shortly before Yates killed her children. Prosecutors told jurors that Yates watched the program regularly. After Yates was convicted, but before jurors decided her sentence, it was discovered that no such episode was produced. Dietz said he had made an honest mistake. The appeals court ruled the error may have swayed jurors. Yates called Houston police June 20, 2001, shortly after her husband left for work, and told them she had drowned her children. Police found John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and Mary, 6 months, on a bed and covered with a sheet. They found Noah, 7, in the tub. Defense attorneys argued that Yates was insane. Psychiatrists determined that Yates, who twice tried to commit suicide in 1999 after giving birth to her 4th child, suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression. She said Satan made her drown her children. (source: Houston Chronicle) FLORIDA: Man indicted killings of Fort Myers couple In Fort Myers, a man was indicted by a grand jury on 2 counts of 1st-degree murder and one count of armed burglary Wednesday in the killing of a couple at their home, authorities said. Fred Dewitt Cooper Jr., 27, is accused of fatally shooting Steven Andrews, whom he suspected was having an affair with his girlfriend, and then beating and suffocating Andrews' wife, Michelle, the indictment said. Both were 28 years-old. Sheriff's deputies who responded to the Dec. 27 incident found the couple's 2-year-old son connected to the 911 operator. The boy was not harmed during the killings and is now living with family members. Cooper could face life in prison without parole or death. State Attorney Steve Russell will decide whether to seek the death penalty. Cooper is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday before Circuit Judge Lynn Gerald Jr. Cooper's attorney Kenneth Garber did not immediately return a telephone message left after hours at his office. Steven Andrews was killed by a gunshot wound, while his wife died of traumatic asphyxia and blunt force head trauma, the indictment said. Records indicate that Cooper was twice arrested for theft and twice convicted of felony burglary in Martin County. After getting out of prison in Aug. 1999 Cooper had a baby girl with Kellie Ballew in 2000. The couple moved to Florida from Minnesota in 2004. Steven Andrews was working a landscape architect in Bonita Springs, and Michelle was a nutritionist in Fort Myers. ****************** U.S. Supreme Court considering Florida death cases A narrow legal issue described by one law expert as "a tempest in a teapot" resulted in stays of execution by the U.S. Supreme Court for two Florida killers facing death by lethal injection. The high court agreed last week to consider whether Clarence Hill is entitled to a hearing based on a civil rights claim that Florida's method of lethal injection is likely to cause pain, violating the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment. He fatally shot a Pensacola police officer in 1982. Arthur Rutherford, using the same arguments as Hill, received a 2-paragraph stay from the high court Tuesday evening, just prior to his execution at Florida State Prison near Starke for the 1985 slaying of a Milton woman. Professor Eric M. Freedman, a death penalty expert at Hofstra University Law School in New York, said the Supreme Court will be deciding whether Hill and Rutherford can challenge the lethal injection method as a civil rights action, not whether the punishment itself is legal. "It does not involve any actual challenge to how those executions are done, merely the form in which claims must be presented," said Freedman, who characterized the issue as "a tempest in a teapot." Lake City attorney, D. Todd Doss, who has represented Hill since 2003, said using a civil rights claim to stop executions is getting attention in legal circles. "It's a pretty hot issue around the country," he said, adding that the country's several federal appellate circuits are viewing the issue differently, which means the Supreme Court will likely have to reconcile the decisions. "I think we need to resolve the split," Doss said. Doss said the best scenario for Hill would be for the Supreme Court to remand the case back to the U.S. District Court in Tallahassee for a trial on the merits of the chemicals and the procedure used in Florida executions. The worst scenario would be for the high court to deny Hill's appeal, which would allow Gov. Jeb Bush to set a new execution date. The Supreme Court could also decide that Hill's attorneys waited too long to bring the argument and deny his appeal. That was one of the arguments presented by the state in challenging both the Hill and Rutherford appeals, said Carolyn Snurkowski, a death appeals attorney for Attorney General Charlie Crist. Freedman predicted it could be 3 years before the Supreme Court has a chance to rule on the constitutionality of lethal injection. No such case have worked their way through the court system. "It is likely to be several years before the Supreme Court makes any definitive rulings on what forms of lethal injection are and are not allowable," Freedman said. Bush, a death penalty supporter, said Wednesday that the most recent Supreme Court action makes it highly unlikely that he will sign any more death warrants until the cases are resolved. Attempts by Hill and Rutherford to challenge the constitutionality of Florida's lethal injection laws were rebuffed in state and federal courts as their attorneys fought to save their lives. They pointed to a study published last year in The Lancet medical journal, which indicated the three-drug cocktail used by Florida and other states resulted in painful executions. "I don't think that we, as a society, want to torture people," Doss said. The high court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case in April and render a decision before July 1. Florida has carried out 16 executions by lethal injection, after using the electric chair for 240 executions. (source for both: Associated Press) USA: US death penalty debate locked in political stalemate When Illinois halted executions six years ago, death penalty opponents thought they glimpsed a way to abolish capital punishment across the United States. But since then none of the 38 U.S. states that have the death penalty have abolished it, and none of the 12 states that do not have it have enacted the punishment, reflecting political paralysis over the issue, experts say. The paralysis stems from the complications wrought by dozens of exonerations of Death Row inmates, flaws found in the justice system and increasing scorn from countries that brand executions as barbaric. "A lot of states seem comfortable with a stalemate on the death penalty," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "Executions are rare in most states but they're not ready to get rid of them." The fear of executing an innocent person haunts some who control the death penalty machinery and led former Illinois Gov. George Ryan to declare a moratorium on executions and then, in 2003, to clear the state's Death Row of its 167 condemned inmates. Ryan, a conservative Republican now on trial on unrelated corruption charges, became an unlikely international celebrity for commuting the sentences in what he called an act of conscience. The justice system was broken, he said, noting Illinois had exonerated more men on death row -- 13 at the time and 5 more since -- than it had executed since it resumed executions in 1990. EXONERATIONS Ryan's successor, Democrat Rod Blagojevich, signed into law a raft of measures designed to prevent errors, such as requiring pretrial scrutiny of "snitch" testimony by other inmates and videotaping of police interrogations. A committee was given until 2009 to determine whether the reforms were working, providing Blagojevich, a death penalty supporter, breathing space to maintain the moratorium. The state's death row now has 7 inmates. Since the death penalty's so-called modern era began in 1977 with Utah multiple murderer Gary Gilmore's execution by firing squad, none of the more than 1,000 inmates executed has later been proven innocent. But several of the highly publicized exonerations, most through DNA evidence, have exposed misconduct by prosecutors or police, ineptitude by defense lawyers, mistaken or lying witnesses, or racial and other biases that critics say plague the system. Perhaps coincidentally, a year before Illinois' moratorium was declared, U.S. executions peaked in 1999 at 98. There were 60 last year and five as of the end of January this year, and the Death Penalty Information Center lists 28 tentatively scheduled executions in the next few months. Polls show nearly two-thirds of Americans support the death penalty, a slimmer majority than in the mid-1990s but larger than in the 1960s. When life in prison without possibility of parole is offered as an alternative along with the death penalty, about half support each form of punishment. With all but one death penalty state, New Mexico, offering life without parole as an option, juries are meting out fewer death sentences. The number of death sentences dropped to 124 in 2004 from 300 in 1998. Still, given continued public support for the death penalty it would seem to be an attractive political issue. Yet it is rarely referred to in stump speeches and it was hardly raised during the 2004 presidential campaign. "The issue has multiple sides to it, so it's not so easy to pummel your opponent with it," Dieter said. "(Politicians) don't want to be seen abolishing the death penalty permanently but don't want to be seen as cavalier about it, either." The death penalty, like the abortion issue, carries religious overtones and sparks sharp divisions. For example Roman Catholic bishops have voiced strong opposition to the death penalty while the Southern Baptists support it. MURKY ISSUE Other states' moves reveal the political murkiness of the issue. New Jersey last month enacted a 1-year moratorium on executions to study its system. California rejected a moratorium but is studying the makeup of its bulging death row. Massachusetts' lawmakers handily voted down a proposal to bring back capital punishment. Legislators in New York and Kansas put off fixing flaws in their death penalty laws identified in court rulings that effectively suspended all executions. New Hampshire is considering simultaneous proposals to expand and to abolish the death penalty. In Texas, executions are practically routine. Iowa is one of a dozen U.S. states without the death penalty and a lone Republican legislator has been stymied in his drive to enact one for sexual predators who murder. "We have a glaring weakness in this state in terms of deterring this type of sexual offense," state Sen. Larry McKibben said, who displayed the photograph of one young victim on an easel on the senate floor. "It would my sincere hope that we would implement the death penalty but never use it." Rob Warden of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions in Illinois, which has teamed with the Innocence Project to win many exonerations, scoffs at the notion that executions deter crime and says implementing the death penalty costs at least 3 times as much per inmate as imprisoning murderers for life. "Ultimately, we're going to abolish the death penalty. It's not rational to be spending all this money for no reason," Warden said. "South Africa abolished it 10 years ago. It doesn't exist in Europe. It's not consistent with 21st Century morality." (source: Reuters) ********************** Justice Alito 1 of 6 Upholding Execution Stay----In his 1st vote on the Supreme Court, he splits with conservative colleagues Roberts, Scalia and Thomas. New Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. split with the court's conservatives Wednesday night, refusing to let Missouri execute a death row inmate contesting lethal injection. Alito, handling his 1st case, sided with inmate Michael A. Taylor, who had won a stay from an appeals court earlier in the evening. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas supported lifting the stay, but Alito joined the remaining five members in turning down Missouri's last-minute request to allow a midnight execution. Earlier in the day, Alito was sworn in for a second time in a ceremony at the White House, where he was lauded by President Bush as a man of "steady demeanor, careful judgment and complete integrity." Alito was given his assignment Wednesday for handling emergency appeals: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. As a result, Missouri filed with Alito its request for the high court to void a stay and allow Taylor's execution. The court's split vote Wednesday night ended a frenzied day of filings. Missouri twice asked the justices to intervene and permit the execution, while Taylor's lawyers filed two more appeals seeking delays. Reporters and witnesses had gathered at the state prison awaiting word from the high court on whether to go ahead with the execution. An appeals court will now review Taylor's claim that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment, a claim also used by 2 Florida death row inmates who won stays from the Supreme Court in the last week. The court has agreed to use one of the cases to clarify how inmates may bring last-minute challenges to the way they will be put to death. Alito succeeded Sandra Day O'Connor, who had often been the swing vote in capital punishment cases. He was expected to side with prosecutors more often than O'Connor did, although as an appeals court judge his record in death penalty cases was mixed. Scalia and Thomas have consistently sided with states in death penalty cases and have been especially critical of long delays in carrying out executions. Taylor was convicted of killing 15-year-old Ann Harrison, who was waiting for a school bus when he and an accomplice kidnapped her in 1989. Taylor pleaded guilty and said he was high on crack cocaine at the time. Taylor's legal team had pursued two challenges - claiming that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment and that his constitutional rights were violated by a system they said was tilted against black defendants. The court, acting without Alito, rejected Taylor's race-based appeal. Taylor is black and his victim was white. He filed the appeal Tuesday, the day Alito was confirmed by the Senate. (source: Associated Press) GEORGIA: Ballard to seek death penalty in shooting Fayette County authorities will seek the death penalty in the July shooting death of an acquaintance. Charles Williams Sangster, 46, has already been indicted for murder in the July 6 death of an acquaintance, Robert Groninger, 43. County District Attorney Scott Ballard said Groninger was shot multiple times with an assault rifle at Advanced Tire and Auto on Ga. 92. Sheriff's officials said the two men had been arguing for the better part of a week leading up to the shooting. With filing of the death penalty notice, Sangster's March trial date will be pushed back. (source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution) CALIFORNIA: Testimony in unique death-penalty case ends Testimony ended Wednesday in the 1st-of-its kind hearing in the state for Horace Edwards Kelly, who is fighting death sentences from Riverside and San Bernardino counties by claiming he is mentally retarded, making his execution unconstitutional. Riverside Superior Court Judge W. Charles Morgan set March 6 for attorneys to file briefs in the case, and March 20 to hear final arguments. He made no indication when he might decide the matter. Kelly, 46, is the 1st petitioner in California to have a hearing on a death-penalty constitutional challenge based on a claim of being mentally retarded. The state Supreme Court set standards for such hearings in another case last year. Kelly was sentenced to death in Riverside County in 1986 for the Thanksgiving 1984 slaying of an 11-year-old boy. He was condemned in 1988 in San Bernardino County for the separate slayings of 2 women, also killed in November 1984. Testimony began Jan. 23 before Morgan and included several psychology experts, along with teachers, relatives, police and others who encountered Kelly during his youth and early adulthood and through the time of the murders. (source: The Press-Enterprise) *************** No decision made on death penalty in slayings No decision has been made about whether the Solano County District Attorney's Office will seek the death penalty against an Oakland man facing murder charges in the slayings of two young Solano County women. Appearing briefly Tuesday morning before Superior Court Judge Mike Nail, Chief Deputy District Attorney George Williamson said the DA's Office was still evaluating a possible death penalty and examining defense mitigation arguments in the case of 42-year-old defendant Kevin Sterling Jones. Nail subsequently set 8:30 a.m. Feb. 15 for further arraignment in the case. According to the District Attorney's Office, the charges against Jones stem from the 1999 slaying of 22-year-old Jamie Williams of Fairfield and the 2000 killing of 16-year-old Sharonda Parker, a Vallejo High School student. Williams' body was discovered in Alameda County, while Parker's body was found in Napa County. Forensic pathologists who examined the victims said both appeared to have been strangled to death. Although Jones initially pleaded not guilty to all charges, he surprised the court in December by offering to plead guilty to both murders and accept life imprisonment without possibility of parole. The plea offer from Jones' co-counsel, Chief Deputy Public Defender Michael Ogul, came moments before Jones' preliminary hearing was to begin and was rejected by Williamson. (source: Vallejo TImes) ******************* Executed mens' medical charts part of lethal injection lawsuit A federal judge on Wednesday ordered California to turn over limited medical records of the past three men it executed as part of a lawsuit by a condemned prisoner trying to bolster claims lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. Michael Morales is scheduled to be executed Feb. 21 for raping and murdering a 17-year-old Lodi girl. Morales faces an uphill battle as the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected allegations lethal injection violates the Eighth Amendment. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose ordered authorities to turn over heart-monitoring data taken during the executions of Donald Beardslee, Stanley Tookie Williams and Clarence Allen, the last 3 men injected at San Quentin State Prison. Attorneys for Morales allege a mistake in the sedation process might mean an inmate appears unconscious, but internally is succumbing to excruciating pain once the paralyzing and the death drug are administered. The judge also ordered California to hand over the protocol on whether an execution procedure takes into account an inmate's age, weight and health. Documents on how officials determine what is a usable vein, and an accounting of all drugs given a day before an injection, were also ordered to be turned over in 48 hours. Morales, 46, of Stockton, raped and brutally beat a 17-year-old Lodi girl 25 years ago. Terri Winchell was found beaten and stabbed in a secluded vineyard. He was tried in Ventura County because of extensive pretrial publicity in San Joaquin County. Fogel set a Feb. 9 hearing. The case is Morales v. Hickman, 06-219. (source: Associated Press)
