Feb. 20 CALIFORNIA----impending execution Appeals court rejects bid to block execution----Killer-rapist set to die Tuesday Last-minute efforts to spare Michael Morales, the convicted rapist and killer of a Lodi girl 25 years ago, from execution early tomorrow are nearing an end. Yesterday, a federal appeals court dismissed petitions seeking to block the lethal injection. Barring a reprieve by the U.S. Supreme Court, where the case is to be appealed, Morales is to become the 14th prisoner California has executed since voters reinstated capital punishment in 1978. It would be the 3rd execution at San Quentin State Prison since Dec. 13, when Crips co-founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams was executed by lethal injection. Now the 46-year-old Morales, who has apologized and contended he is a changed man, is scheduled to be executed at 12:01 a.m. tomorrow. If he is, he will be the 2nd man to die by lethal injection in California this year and the 1st Latino executed in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. "There's no denying that the taking of innocent life is a awful, awful thing," Morales neatly wrote by hand in a clemency request letter submitted to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office in late January. "And even though I've been found guilty of such a crime, and have become an object of hatred to many, I don't feel my soul to be that of a monster or evil man some have suggested. That's not who I am." Schwarzenegger rejected clemency Friday. Several appeals and attempts by his lawyers to get his sentence reduced to life in prison without the possibility of parole have also failed. Morales, who was 21 at the time of the slaying, conspired with his cousin, Ricky Ortega, to kill Terri Lynn Winchell, a 17-year-old who was dating a man previously involved in a homosexual relationship with Ortega. Winchell was unaware her boyfriend had been involved with Ortega. According to court documents, Ortega wanted Winchell dead because he was jealous of her relationship and was upset that she had called him gay, and Morales agreed to participate in the slaying because of family ties. On Jan. 8, 1981, Ortega drove Winchell to Morales' apartment and the three drove to a remote area near Lodi. There, Morales attacked Winchell from behind, tying a belt around her neck to strangle her, records show. Winchell struggled and the belt broke. Morales then repeatedly hit her on the head with a hammer. Witnesses testified Morales then dragged her across a road and into a vineyard where he raped her before stabbing her 4 times. Prosecutors contend the killing is more heinous than those committed by Williams and Clarence Ray Allen, the last 2 inmates executed in California. "In those cases, the victims were shot. They died without being tortured," said Chuck Schultz, the supervising deputy district attorney of San Joaquin County in a phone interview. "Terri, she was kidnapped and strangled and beat on the head. She was dragged across the road. While she was unconscious, she was raped and probably beat some more. He then went back and stabbed her four times. It's one of the most brutal crimes, and the jury found she suffered extreme torture." In his defense, Morales' attorneys said the execution should not be allowed to go forward because "to do so would send to death at the hands of the State a deeply repentant, sorrowful Christian, who has accepted full responsibility for a terrible crime that will haunt him forever." David A. Senior, Morales' attorney, and former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, who represented Morales in the clemency petition process, argued it's unfair their client was sentenced to death while Ortega was sentenced to life in prison for his participation in the crime. "The undeniable fact is this: Michael's manipulative crime partner who instigated the events of a generation ago will continue to live out his life in prison," the defense wrote in its Jan. 27 petition for clemency. (source: San Diego Union-Tribune) ************* Is your anesthesiologist an executioner? Jonathan I. Groner MD Unless the United States Supreme Court intervenes, at 12:01 am on February 21, Michael Morales will be strapped to a gurney and intravenous lines will be started in each arm. Then, after his death warrant is read, a fatal 3-drug cocktail will begin flowing into Mr. Morales" veins. Watching over the execution will be 2 board certified California anesthesiologists, whose stated duty will be to "take all medicall appropriate steps necessary to ensure that Morales is and remains unconscious" until he suffers a cardiac arrest and dies. Like all physicians, anesthesiologists are professionals dedicating to preserving life. However, anesthesiology is a unique medical specialty because when a patient is anesthetized for an operation, his or her life is literally in the anesthesiologist's hands. It is the anesthesiologist that controls the patient's breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, and other vital functions required to maintain life. The anesthesiologists who will attend the Morales execution have the opposite goal: to monitor breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure for the purpose of extinguishing life. Furthermore, they intend to conceal their identities, thus that they cannot be held accountable for their actions. If you needed an operation, would you want one of these 2 anesthesiologists to be in your operating room? Would you trust your life to a doctor who helped kill someone? The execution of Michael Morales is not only shameful for the anesthesiologists who participate, but it will taint all anesthesiologists and, indeed, all physicians. For the sake of all of California's patients, the "executioner-anesthesiologists" should either identify themselves or change their minds and refuse to participate in Mr. Morales' execution. Dr. Groner is the author of: 1. Lethal injection: a stain on the face of medicine. Bmj. 2002;325(7371):1026-1028. 2. Lethal Injection and the Medicalization of Capital Punishment in the United States. Health and Human Rights: An International Journal. 2002;6(1):64-79. 3. Lethal Injection: The Medical Charade. Ethics and Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics. 2004;20(1):25-30. (source: ***************** Morales' lawyers petition court for further appeal review An attorney for condemned inmate Michael Morales said he has petitioned the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for an expanded hearing to review an appeal of Morales' death sentence. The court today denied Morales' two appeals, which he filed Friday when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to grant him clemency. Morales was sentenced to death for murdering Terri Winchell, 17, of Lodi, in 1981 by trying to strangle her and then beating her with a hammer and stabbing her. He was also convicted of raping her. While he does not deny his guilt, Morales, through his appeals, challenged California's lethal injection procedure and claimed that a key prosecution witness lied at his 1983 trial. In the lethal injection case, Morales appealed a ruling in which a federal judge in San Jose said the execution can proceed so long as the state provides a trained anesthesiologist to make sure that Morales is unconscious after the 1st of 3 chemicals is injected. Morales' brief argued that, even with that safeguard, he would be at risk of pain, which would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. A three-judge panel wrote in a ruling today that "the district court's orders adequately address Morales' concerns. The orders provide specifically that an anesthesiologist will 'independently verify, through direct observation and examination..., in a manner comparable to that normally used in medical settings where a combination of sedative and paralytic medications is administered, that [Morales] in fact is unconscious before either pancuronium bromide or potassium chloride is injected.'" John Grele, the lawyer working on Morales' lethal injection appeal, said today that he has filed a petition to have that ruling reviewed by an expanded court of 15 appellate judges. "We think the case has serious meritorious issues that the full court needs to review. The court cannot adopt last-minute 'quick fixes' to resolve glaring deficiencies in California's lethal injection procedures," Grele said today. Grele said the court order to have an anesthesiologist on hand did not necessarily guarantee that Morales would not suffer. Specifically, Grele objected to language in today's ruling that states, "we construe the order as clearly contemplating that they have the authority to take 'all medically appropriate steps...' to immediately place or return Morales into an unconscious state or to otherwise alleviate the painful effects [of the lethal drugs]." The 3 judges, Grele said, "are construing and attempting to interpret vague language, without ordering the state to comply." The court has not yet issued an official response, accepting or denying Grele's petition. Spokesman Nathan Barankin was not immediately available for comment. Morales' other appeal, claiming that witness Bruce Samuelson lied when he testified that Morales had confessed to him while they were both in jail, was denied because the basic thrust of the argument had been heard and denied previously, according to the court. Morales claimed that Samuelson's false testimony was the basis for a lying-in-wait enhancement that caused him to be sentenced to death. The court, however, wrote that "Morales' application does not rest on 'a new rule of constitutional law' that requires relief, so [it] is not applicable." Lawyers for the attorney general had previously claimed that Samuelson's testimony was not instrumental to Morales' receiving a death sentence because it was corroborated by other testimony and Morales' own confession. There is no word yet from Morales' attorney David Senior whether he will petition for an expanded hearing to review that appeal. After petitioning for the expanded appellate court hearing, Morales' next and final option is to take his case to the U.S. Supreme court. He may have grounds to do this because his objection to the execution method is being treated as a civil rights issue. Amnesty International, Death Penalty Focus and the American Civil Liberties Union issued a joint statement Friday calling the modified death penalty procedure "disturbing," because "for the 1st time in the history of this country, a medical doctor will be inside the execution chamber and another will be outside, assisting the execution." Morales' upcoming execution has garnered nation-wide attention. Pepperdine University School of Law Dean Kenneth Star, the former independent counsel whose investigation led to the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton, worked on Morales' clemency plea. He has said he joined the clemency team because he believes Morales is remorseful and was sentenced to death on the basis of false testimony. (source: Bay City News) ******************** Headlines aside, state bar does discipline bad lawyers Your Feb. 12 news article "State bar ignores errant lawyers," regarding the discipline of errant lawyers, asserts that California prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys are rarely held to account by the state bar for conduct that violates defendants' rights. According to your article, this conclusion is based upon the Mercury News' review of 1,464 discipline summaries published in the California Bar Journal between 2001 and 2005. The state bar does not categorize or maintain its disciplinary records by type of practice. Therefore, it is difficult to assess the completeness or accuracy of your statistics that, admittedly, are based entirely upon brief factual summaries prepared by writers for the California Bar Journal. However, at least since I became the state bar's chief trial counsel in April, there have been numerous disciplinary proceedings against California prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys. For example: - Effective Feb. 3, Deputy District Attorney Leo Barone Jr. of Butte County was suspended from practice for one year as a result of his intentional suppression from the defense of potentially exculpatory evidence in a criminal prosecution. - Similarly, effective Sept. 22, Deputy District Attorney James Michael Fitzpatrick of San Diego County was placed on probation for 2 years, with a stayed 2-year suspension, as a result of his failure to disclose potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense. - Effective July 15, Madera County District Attorney Ernest Licalsi was publicly reproved for threatening criminal prosecution against an unlicensed and uninsured, non-English-speaking driver of a car that collided with one driven by Licalsi's son. - The state bar court is also currently hearing a disciplinary proceeding against Deputy District Attorney Brooke P. Halsey Jr. of Sonoma County, who is alleged to have intentionally suppressed potentially exculpatory evidence from the defense in a murder prosecution. The state bar has also taken significant disciplinary action against criminal defense attorneys. For instance: - By decision filed Feb. 3, state bar court Hearing Judge Pat McElroy recommended that criminal defense attorney Frank George Prantil be disbarred for, among other things, his failure to competently represent a criminal defendant in a habeas corpus petition. - Additionally, by decision filed Nov. 8, state bar court Hearing Judge JoAnn Remke imposed a public reproof upon a criminal appellate attorney who failed to file his opening brief in a timely manner in the Supreme Court in a death penalty appeal. That case is currently on appeal to the State Bar Court Review Department. The fairness and competence of public prosecutors and criminal defense counsel are crucial to the fundamental fairness and proper administration of our criminal justice system. For this reason, both the courts and individual practitioners are required to report to the state bar the reversal of any judgment based in whole or in part on the misconduct, incompetent representation or willful misrepresentation of an attorney. Contrary to the view expressed by the Mercury News, the state bar takes complaints against public prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys very seriously. While the state bar must prove misconduct in these proceedings by a clear and convincing evidentiary standard, we have vigorously pursued these investigations and proceedings where warranted by the evidence. We will continue to do so. (source: Opinion, San Jose Mercury News -- SCOTT J. DREXEL is the chief trial counsel for the State Bar of California) ******************* A witness within prison walls Joe Hare won't deny it: He misses death row. Not today's version, packed with more than 600 inmates praying for a legal reprieve or exoneration or just waiting decades to reach the end of a long road. The death row Hare remembers -- the one he oversaw -- was more of a cul-de-sac. "I used to keep it at seven," he said of the condemned population. "We always had the executions. We used to have double-headers sometimes, 2 chairs in there. We put in two at a time." A purr of nostalgia rises from his throat as he conjures memories of his 27 years as a guard and counselor at San Quentin State Prison, of the inmates he came to know and the flowering garden behind the prison walls.> Now 82, the Concord resident is publishing a book about his prison career, his memories of riots and rogues and a Christian faith forged amid some of California's most notorious criminals. There was Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted killer of Sen. Robert Kennedy. Hare made Sirhan his clerk and gave him a "living Bible," which summarized Biblical stories. Sirhan would shuffle down the cell rows, a broom in one hand, the book in the other, stopping to read passages to inmates. "He was like my missionary on the tier," said Hare. "I couldn't have anybody else with him or they'd kill him. Not because they didn't like him. Just because he was Sirhan. He killed a Kennedy." After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972, Hare pushed in vain for Sirhan to be released and returned to Jordan. Even after he retired in 1976 to run a construction business, he urged parole for Sirhan. It was different with Charles Manson, the crazed cult leader convicted of orchestrating mass murder in 1969. "I remember asking dad what (Manson) was like," said Hare's daughter, Carol Mahoney. "He said it was the only time he felt the devil had walked into his office and sat down." Hare carries a strong faith in the cleansing power of confession, and often would urge inmates to 'fess up. In his book, "Changed at San Quentin -- for Better or Worse," he chronicles his mixed results. He can't count the number of convicts he helped put to death as part of the execution team in an era when the number of yearly gassings sometimes reached double digits. In their last hours, some would unburden themselves on Hare, who came to be known as "Papa Joe" on the tiers. "I had people cop out to me for as many as 15 killings, in the death cell, the night before they went to the gas," said Hare, who wears his gray hair slicked back, and a hearing aid. "I felt joyous about my position with a man 8 hours before he was dying. I'd always say, 'I'll make you a promise: If you can talk honestly about your feelings, you're going to be able to walk into that chamber without anybody carrying you.'" Hare offers an unusual slant on a death penalty debate galvanized in recent years by questions of fairness and wrong convictions, and more recently by a surge of executions at San Quentin. Michael Morales' scheduled execution would be the fourth in California over 13 months, the most in the modern death penalty era. All 4 sat on death row for more than 2 decades. To Hare, it's a cruel symptom of a justice system run amok, overfilling death row with men who grope for legal technicalities at the expense of personal redemption. In his time, lengthy constitutional appeals -- on grounds of racial bias, inadequate defense, the execution process itself -- were rare on death row. The condemned often would die in the gas chamber within 2 years. "I usually had the position of putting a man into the chair and strapping him in, and the last farewell to them. I used to have the habit of saying, 'Good luck,'" he said. "Then I changed my feelings, and I would say, 'Bless you.' I'd usually put my hand on his shoulder before I walked out the door and closed the crank." Not that he relished it. Hare calls the death penalty a "horrible thing." But worse, he said, are today's sentences of life without possibility of parole, and decades-long death row appeals. "Life without possibility of parole, that is the worst thing you can do to a human being," he said. Back then, many prisoners received "indeterminate" sentences, such as 10 to 20 years. Counselors such as Hare would help decide if an inmate was fit for release. Inmates, Hare said, had more reason to acknowledge their crimes and better themselves through therapy and work programs. "There's no cure in time. Unless a guy really has remorse and regrets (about) what he does, he's really a dangerous person," Hare said. Supporters of strict sentencing argue that such rehab programs have proven ineffective in slowing recidivism. Hare acknowledges that times were different when he started as a guard making $243 a month in 1949, just as then-Gov. Earl Warren, later the chief justice of the Supreme Court, undertook a series of prison reforms focused on rehabilitation. Hare would bring his daughters to the prison for ice cream sundaes. Inmates would repair their shoes and make their school binders. On family days for prison staff members, inmates would provide the entertainment. "We had fun," said his wife, Pat. "Aw, yeah," said Hare. In a job that broke some men within a year, Hare said his faith grew over his 13 years as a counselor. After work, he would talk about his day over dinner. It was, in a way, his own cleansing. "He unburdened everything at the dinner table. When we would ask him questions and if they found a dead body or something like that, it would have been stuffed in a can or behind things, he would tell us," said Mahoney. "It was such a normal thing to us. We just knew this was dad, and knew these were bad men who didn't have anything to lose." (source: Contra Costa Times) ****************** Perspectives on ultimate penalty----A woman whose murder conviction was overturned, survivors of slaying victims speak out. Michael Morales' execution is scheduled for 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, 25 years after he stabbed, bludgeoned and raped 17-year-old Terri Lynn Winchell of Stockton and left the high school senior's battered body in a secluded vineyard near Lodi. After being denied clemency by the governor on Friday, he has one option remaining to avoid execution: a long-shot appeal to the federal courts. It's frustrating, says Morales' attorney David Senior, who is seeking to get him life in prison without parole. That's the sentence given to Morales' cousin, Ricky Ortega, a co-defendant in Winchell's murder. Senior says his client got the harsher sentence because of jailhouse informant testimony that Morales had bragged about the crime and planned to have witnesses killed - testimony that's now in dispute. The way California courts apply the death penalty "seems random in many respects," Senior added. "The lines are blurry. I can't fathom a homicide in any circumstances that isn't absolutely horrible for the victim's family, for the friends and family of the defendant and for the community at large." Murder is horrible, agrees Barbara Christian, Winchell's mother. But what's worse is the legal wrangling that she says keeps justice from being carried out. "It's like somebody is sticking a knife in your heart and instead of it being pulled out, it stays in there and turns and turns and turns," she said Wednesday. Sitting outside Applebee's restaurant in Elk Grove and flanked by 2 protective family friends she calls "nieces," Christian added that it's her daughter - a gifted singer who played the piano and accordion - who deserves justice, not her killer. Morales personally wrote to the governor to request clemency. "Even though I've been found guilty of such a crime, and have become an object of hatred to many, I don't feel my soul to be that of a monster or evil man as some have suggested," Morales wrote. "But after considering my case, perhaps there might be a clear basis for striving to seek a merciful course within the bounds of justice, or even for justice sake," he added. "That's my hope." The hope of Christian and her nieces is for the execution to be over. She plans to stay home Monday night, watch a movie, and later, the 11 o'clock news. Her 3rd-youngest son, Brad, had urged her to witness the execution to help bring closure, she said. But Christian can't. She'll wait for a phone call from Jeanine Velasquez, a victims-rights advocate who will be at San Quentin with her 4 sons, to let her know when Morales is finally dead. "I've never wanted to see what he looked like because his is the last face Terri ever saw when he was killing her," she said. "I think about her 24/7 and I know at the same time, he's over there living and breathing. When I realize he's no longer living and breathing, when he's gone to meet God, I'll be able to relax and rest." CONVICTION OVERTURNED To Gloria Killian of Pasadena, closure by execution is a misguided sentiment. She's spent many years thinking about capital punishment, on both sides of the prison bars. Killian, 59, is a former law student who spent 16 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted in the 1981 slaying of a Sacramento coin dealer. "A trial is supposed to be a search for truth, a search for justice. In California, however, it's about winning and losing," she said. "And once you are convicted, nobody believes you. ... I'm sure if you sat through my trial, you'd have been absolutely sure I was guilty." Killian believes the main reason she was spared a death sentence was because of a technicality in federal case law. It certainly wasn't from the lack of her prosecutor's resolve, she added. She was arrested in 1981 after police received an anonymous tip that a law student named "Gloria" was involved in the robbery and murder of the coin dealer. Killian surmises the caller was linked to the man she worked for as a private investigator, who also owned the coin shop the slain dealer worked in. The charges were dropped after a preliminary hearing, and later, two other people were convicted in the case trigger man Stephen DeSantis, who was sent to death row, and his cousin Gary Masse, who is serving a life term. But on the day Masse was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole,he contacted the prosecutor about a deal. He accused Killian of being the mastermind behind the crime. She was re-arrested in 1983 and put on trial in 1986. "It was absolutely surrealistic," she said. It was her word against Masse's. "There were times you feel as if your brain is leaving your body or maybe your soul. You're hearing about things that didn't happen, but you can't contradict it, you can't contravene. "I used to walk 15 blocks home from the court every day because it gave me a chance to readjust to the real world, to sort of decompress and to try and frantically think of a way to disprove this," she said. But she never could. She was sentenced to 32 years to life at the California Institution for Women near Corona. Halfway through her sentence, a federal court set her free after finding Masse had lied to get a lighter sentence and that prosecutors had taken advantage of that perjury. What happened to her is not unique, she said. As executive director of the Action Committee for Women in Prison in Los Angeles, she's come across at least 2 women she believes to be innocent of the crimes they are sentenced to die for - Maureen McDermott and Socorro Caro. Even one mistaken execution is simply not acceptable, she said. "If it gives you comfort to know the person who committed the crime against your loved one is executed, imagine how absolutely horrified you'd be to find out the wrong person was executed." She believes not only that capital punishment does not provide closure, but that it fails miserably as a deterrent. In her years in prison, Killian says, she never heard women talking about the death penalty or even the "three strikes" law as something that would give them pause. Their crimes are about drugs, or men, or desperation, Killian explained. Killian came to Sacramento a month ago to try to persuade lawmakers to impose a ban on executions while a state commission completes its review of the death penalty. The measure died in the Assembly last month, although its authors may try to revive it. "We seem to feel that violence is the answer to everything," Killian said. "I intend absolutely no disrespect to the victims and their families. I can understand why they are enraged. But what is it about our society that has created the idea that you can find comfort in the death of another human being?" Ready to volunteer What Jack Fleischli remembers about the execution of Thomas Thompson - who bound, raped and fatally stabbed his baby sister in a Laguna Beach apartment in 1981 - was that it seemed too easy. In the death chamber, "he's already strapped in,he's ... sedated to the point where he hardly knows what's going on, similar to someone going in for an operation," said Fleischli, his voice betraying a quarter-century of anger and pain. "He was calm, looked up, looked over to where his people were sitting, received the injection and then he was gone." His 20-year-old sister Ginger's last moments were far less antiseptic, the Sherman Oaks lawyer and actor recalled, with her broken body wrapped in a sleeping bag and pink blanket and dumped in a shallow grave near Irvine. "I would have carried out the death sentence myself if they'd asked for volunteers," he said. "I would have gone in there. If they had said, 'Listen, we are going to leave you and Tom Thompson alone in a room together, I would have said, 'Let's do that instead.'" Watching Thompson die at San Quentin in July 1998 "was the next best thing." The last time he saw Ginger was a couple of weeks before her murder. He lived in Yorba Linda, she worked on Balboa Islandand they met at Alicia Park in Mission Viejo for a picnic lunch of sodas and sandwiches. It was there she revealed her plans to go to beauty college and learn to do hair and makeup. "I thought that was a great idea," said Fleischli, 11 years her senior and the man she most looked up to. She would simply call him "Brother." He was the one who taught her to drive in his VW bug. She was the one who persuaded him to help a friend with a traffic case. That friend, David Leitch, would later be linked to her killing. The first time Fleischli met Leitch, he didn't trust him. "I told her I don't have a good feeling about this guy, there's something wrong with him," he said. "I said: 'You need to stay away from this guy.'" But Ginger was far more trusting, her brother said. "She believed she could change people and she never gave up that belief, even though it caused her to continue to associate with people she was afraid of." It haunts Fleischli to this day. He questions whether he should have gone to law school closer to home to spend more time with her in her teenage years. His voice cracks as he describes learning she'd been killed by Thompson and that Thompson's roommate, Leitch, helped dispose of her body. But whatever doubts he might have on how to have prevented her murder, he's firm about what happened to the men who killed her. "The fact is that society as a whole has a legitimate interest in retribution," said Fleischli, a former public defender who has always supported capital punishment. "Not just what would be just punishment, but retribution in the sense of 'this is our response to your doing this.' "The kind of crime my sister was the victim of, in which she was brutally raped and then murdered because she was a witness to that ... justified the death penalty," he added. That such justice is as slow as it is in California is difficult on the survivors, Fleischli admitted. "I had faith justice would prevail and essentially it did. But many people run out of patience. They stop believing it will happen, they become disillusioned, they start questioning whether we have a system that works at all." Every year Fleischli drives to San Luis Obispo to testify at Leitch's parole hearing, to try to make sure he doesn't get out. It helps to have closed the book on Thompson, he added. "There is no doubt in my mind that before she died she told him: 'My brother is going to come after you,' and in a way, I did," Fleischli said. (source: The Orange County Register) *****************************8 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Love triangle gone vicious ----Terri Lynn Winchell had no inkling her beau's jealous boyfriend would exact a horrible revenge Terri Lynn Winchell left home on the last night of her life in January 1981 to help a boy she knew hated her. That's just the way she was, friends and family said. Good-hearted. A devout believer in turning the other cheek, in giving people a 2nd chance. But this was a chance she should not have given. By the end of the evening, the 17-year-old church choir singer and high school beauty lay raped, hammered and stabbed to death, her corpse sprawled between 2 rows of grapevines. She had no inkling of it, but she had been caught in the middle of a love triangle gone hideously bad. Her boyfriend, unbeknownst to her, had been involved in a gay relationship with another man -- whose jealousy drove him to recruit a street thug who would take Winchell out of the picture. 25 years later, that early-'80s thug, Michael Morales, is due to be executed at San Quentin State Prison for a crime that capped years of running with gang-bangers and snorting, gulping or smoking every mind-twisting substance he could get his hands on. He would be the 14th person to be put to death in California since executions resumed in 1992 after a 25-year halt. Morales is 46 now, and by his supporters' accounts he has transformed himself into the sort of mild-mannered, devout Christian that his victim Winchell was. In his family's eyes, he is a gentle artist, a remorseful, very loving and caring man who deserves a last-minute reprieve to avoid his appointment with the lethal injection chamber at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, and should instead live out his years in prison without parole. Not in the eyes of Winchell's family. No amount of apologies or personal transformation can make up for what Morales, then 21, did to Winchell, they say. "It's been so long, but ever since I was a kid, I told myself I'd be front row to see him die -- and now it's time for that to happen," said Winchell's brother, 34-year-old Brian Chalk. "You lock somebody up for that long, sure they're going to change. But that doesn't change what happened. Or the loss." Chalk stood in the living room of his tidy south Sacramento suburban home and fell silent. He gazed at a walnut table along one wall, bristling with family photos -- pictures of get-togethers, weddings, children born to his 3 brothers, all things that happened after the death of his only sister. Winchell's portrait stood in the center, a pretty girl frozen forever in adolescence, her early-'80s-style black hair falling below her shoulders to frame a confident smile. Chalk's eyes moistened as they settled on it. "I don't want to sound vengeful or angry," he said. "But enough is enough." "Wholesome." "Peppy." "Classy." "Someone who was going places in life." That's how classmates at Lodi's Tokay High School described Winchell after she was killed halfway through her senior year. And the memories are fresh today, even after nearly 3 decades. "She wasn't just beautiful, she had this beautiful alto voice," said Jodie Bluhm, who sang in the Tokay A Cappella Choir with Winchell. "Everybody liked her. She would sit down at the piano and start to sing, and everybody stopped what they were doing just to listen." Winchell was a straight-A student, excelled at tennis and swimming, and sang everywhere she could -- in churches all over the Stockton-Lodi area, at school, at parties. "Bridge Over Troubled Water" was one of her signature tunes; cassettes preserved by the family reveal a gentle, crystalline vocal talent. She had just become lead singer of a rock band called Hit and taken a part-time job at an El Torito restaurant to raise money for college. Her mother, Barbara Christian, had retired in 1980 as a dispatcher for the Stockton Police Department, and with her newfound time she laughed and shopped with her only daughter like a fellow schoolgirl. "Terri had everything going for her," Chalk said. "She was my mom's best friend. Every girl wanted to be her, and if they were boys they wanted to be near her." One of those boys was a 19-year-old baseball player at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton. He was a churchgoer and a good student, like Winchell, and after she met him on a church-choir gig they began dating. But something seemed a bit off. "We had a funny feeling about him, even though he was a good ol' American-looking guy and seemed nice to Terri," Chalk said. "It seemed like he always had his head down, never looked us in the eyes. Like he had something to hide." It turned out he did. While dating Winchell, the boyfriend was carrying on a secret affair with 19-year-old Ricky Ortega, whom he had met when the two were at Lincoln High School in Stockton. Ortega hung out with Winchell and her boyfriend as part of their group of pals, but his jealousy soured so deeply he began needling her all the time, making it clear he disliked her. It didn't help that Winchell kidded Ortega that he seemed gay -- never knowing how close to the truth she was. The boyfriend was becoming terrified of Ortega as well, he said in an interview last week with The Chronicle. He begged the paper not to name him, saying he is now happily married with children who have no idea what happened all those years ago. "Ricky threatened me, and he threatened to kill my mother if I didn't do it with him," he said. "He broke my windows out at 1 a.m. once, he was so mad. I just didn't know what to do." The stress of the forced relationship, he said, was in direct opposition to his romance with Winchell. "She was so talented, so full of life and energy," he said. "She was my refuge away from the craziness." But where some saw beauty and talent, Ortega saw only rivalry. By late 1980, he'd had enough. He began scheming on how to get rid of his romantic competition, according to court testimony, but felt he couldn't do it himself. So he called the toughest guy he knew: his cousin Morales, a member of the Little Unity Latino gang. Morales, prosecutors say, told Ortega he'd be happy to help administer some payback. Morales, like Winchell, grew up in Lodi in a big churchgoing family, one of 6 children. He was a quiet, gentle boy who delivered newspapers at 12, court recollections of friends show. However, as he became a teenager, he began clashing with his father for drinking beer and wearing gang fashions of the time -- Pendleton shirts buttoned at the throat and baggy pants. At 15 the relationship imploded, and Morales was thrown out of the house. He dropped out of high school and bounced through a group home before hitting the streets of Stockton. There he took up with the gang and began abusing alcohol and every drug he could find, from amphetamines and cocaine to the powerful psychotic PCP. Along the way, he fathered 3 children and supported himself by committing petty crimes. "The fact is that in my youth I did lose myself for a few years," Morales wrote recently in his petition to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for clemency, the words so neatly inscribed they look as if they were from a printer. He called it "a dark period in my life" and described himself in those days as "a person of loose conduct and poor attitude." Then, right around New Year's 1981, came the request from Ortega. According to court testimony, Morales began plotting ways to kill Winchell, practicing how to strangle someone by wrapping a belt around a female roommate's neck and cranking it tight. Once he had the technique down, he waited for the call to action. It came on a Thursday, Jan. 8, 1981. Ortega, pretending to want to ease tensions with Winchell, called her house around 5:30 p.m. as she was heading out the door to buy food for her mother, who was ill. He told her he wanted her help buying a gift at a local shopping center. Eager to mend fences, Winchell agreed to go, relatives testified. Ortega picked her up around 6 p.m. In the back seat was Morales, with a claw hammer, a belt and a 7-inch kitchen knife hidden and ready. He was already stoned and agitated from guzzling cheap Thunderbird wine and smoking a PCP-laced cigarette. As night fell and the Central Valley tule fog formed, Ortega drove his car out of Lodi along lonely Peltier Road. According to court records, they were a few miles out of town when Morales suddenly cinched his belt around Winchell's neck and began strangling her. She fought back fiercely. The belt broke, so he pulled out the hammer and began bashing her head. <>P> "She screamed for Ortega to help and attempted to fight off the attack, ripping her own hair out of her scalp in the struggle," according to a state attorney general's account. Ortega ignored her pleas and as Morales told him to keep driving he smashed her 23 times in the head, crushing the base of her neck and bloodying her arms and hands as she tried to ward off the blows. By the time Ortega pulled over at the corner of Bender and Peltier roads, 7 miles outside Lodi, Winchell was unconscious and slumped against the passenger door. According to investigators, Morales hopped out of the car, and saying it was a shame to waste "a good piece of ass," he told Ortega to leave the two of them, drive away and come back in 15 minutes. Morales dragged the still-unconscious Winchell face-down across the road into a vineyard. There, in the chilly darkness, he stripped her of everything but her sweater and bra, which he pulled up to her neck. Then he flipped her onto her back and raped her in the dirt. Just before he headed back to the road, he plunged his knife four times into her chest to make sure she was dead. Ortega picked Morales up and drove him home to Stockton. Then, investigators said, they celebrated separately: Ortega picked up Winchell's boyfriend and had sex with him in the car, and Morales got drunk on beer and wine he bought with $11 from Winchell's purse. It didn't take long for authorities to figure out what had happened. Winchell's mother called police when her daughter didn't come back and told officers the last person the girl had talked to on the phone before leaving was Ortega. Investigators found him at home the next day, he quickly confessed, and when they burst into Morales' Stockton apartment they found all they needed. The broken belt, stained with Winchell's blood, was under a mattress, and the blood-splattered floor mats from Ortega's car lay in the trash. The bloody hammer was in the refrigerator vegetable crisper, and even Winchell's purse and credit card were still in the house. At the police station, a deputy district attorney asked Morales if he'd like to discuss the crime. "Morales just smiled," according to a prosecution report. "He stretched his arms into the air and yawned, and told the deputy district attorney that he had been up 'partying' all night and was tired." 2 years later, Morales was found guilty of murder with the special circumstances of lying in wait, or planning the killing in advance, and murder by torture. He was sent to death row. Ortega received a life sentence without possibility of parole. He and Morales refused requests for interviews. Winchell's boyfriend left town soon after the murder. "I felt so badly, like her family hated me after that. I left and started a new life," he said. "I just couldn't talk to Terri's folks again." Asked what he planned to do on the night of the execution, he let a long pause hang over the phone. "I just want to disappear," he whispered. "It's just devastating to have this come up all over again." Since his sentencing in 1983, Morales has radically changed his life, family and friends say. He kicked drugs and booze and devoted himself so rigorously to his religion that 15 years ago, members and deacons of his Stockton church began regular pilgrimages to San Quentin to study the Bible with him. He was baptized several years ago in prison. He has received "A" grades in English and math classes while on Death Row, and his meticulous drawings of wilderness scenes and portrait subjects are popular sellers in the prison art store. "Like many people, Mike has been through difficult times with his family, but his relationship with them now is strong, and he has a valuable role among them," Helen Keeler, a friend Morales has appointed as his spokeswoman on personal matters, wrote in an e-mail from her home in England. "They love him dearly. Terri's murder was committed by a man rendered unrecognizable to his family and friends through drug use. ... They feel this crime was not committed by the man they know and love." Morales' mother, Josie Morales, wrote in his clemency petition -- denied by the governor on Friday -- that as he mellowed behind bars, "he has grown into a very loving and caring son, brother and father." For his part, Morales admits what he did and says he is sorry. But he's still contesting the death sentence, saying the "lying in wait" charge that landed him on Death Row was corroborated chiefly by a jailhouse informant who lied when he testified that Morales had confessed to him in Spanish. Morales doesn't speak Spanish, his defense attorneys say. Prosecutors and Winchell's family say the objections are baseless -- at least 2 other people also corroborated the "lying in wait" charge, they say -- and add that fighting the sentence undermines Morales' claims of remorse. "I mean, look at the way Morales refers to killing my sister in his clemency letter to the governor," Winchell's brother Chalk said angrily, waving a copy of the 3-page missive. "He doesn't ever say he killed Terri -- he says, 'I've been found guilty.' That doesn't sound like he's really owning up to it." As the hours tick down to execution night, Chalk and his family have begun reliving the horror of 25 years ago all over again. Chalk's wife, Jessica, said she only recently saw him cry for the first time in their 13-year relationship. He and his brothers have all signed up to watch the execution, and they get more nervous and angry with every passing day, Chalk said. Winchell's mother, now in her 70s, speaks out as little as possible and canceled her plan to witness Morales' death. For now, she is letting a poem she wrote for her daughter do her talking: "You were such a rainbow full of sunshine, love and joy, your presence filled my life and made it sweet ... But there's a veil between us, and I cannot get across, and your name, unanswered, comes again to me; And I am left, amidst my tears in silence and alone, with nothing left, but pain and memory!" "God only knows if this guy being put to death will make my mom, or any of us, really feel better about what happened, get that 'closure' thing people talk about," Chalk said. "But at least one thing will be for sure, and for that I know I will get some comfort. "He'll be gone. And that part, at least, will be over forever." (source: San Francisco Chronicle) SOUTH CAROLINA: Execution gives state a dubious distinction Shortly before 7 a.m. on June 16, 1944, correctional officials in Columbia began strapping a young black male into the states electric chair. George J. Stinney Jr., age 14 years and 7 months, was 30 minutes away from execution, convicted of murder. Who was this juvenile facing death at such an age? How did Stinney get to this point in the South Carolina criminal justice system, and was he given a fair trial? George Stinney Jr. was born to George and Amie Stinney in Sumter County in 1930. The county was occupied at that time by mostly black sharecroppers like the Stinneys, who barely made a living tilling the dusty soil. In 1942, the father found employment at the Alcolu lumber mill 15 miles east and moved his family there. Like most other blacks in the area, the Stinneys made enough money to survive and lived in company shacks. Several white families also worked for the lumber mill, and generally blacks and whites co-existed without significant racial turmoil. On March 24, 1944, 2 young white girls reportedly walked by the Stinney house looking for flowers. The girls disappeared. Blacks and whites searched but had no success. The next day, one searcher found the 2 girls dead, their bodies dumped into a water-filled ditch. Law enforcement officials immediately began a search. An elderly black man suggested George Stinney Jr. might be the killer, and 2 officers arrested him. He gave two statements concerning the deaths of the girls. In one, he said that he showed the girls where they could find some flowers, but one fell into the ditch and the second attacked him. In self-defense, he hit both with a railroad spike. In his second statement, Stinney said that he asked the older girl, age 11, for sex, but she rebuffed his advances. He then killed both and threw their bodies into the ditch. Stinney was questioned without the presence of either an attorney or his parents. Exactly 1 month later, amid simmering racial hostilities, more than 1,500 whites attended the trial. Stinney had 2 white attorneys, both court-appointed. One was a politician seeking office in the fall. Damaging evidence against Stinney included his signed confession, an autopsy report and 6 witnesses. The all-white, all-male jury deliberated only 20 minutes before returning a verdict of guilty without mercy: Stinney, at the age of 14, was given the death penalty. Between April and June, more than 50 letters and telegrams poured into Gov. Olin D. Johnstons office, most written by whites protesting the death sentence given to Stinney. The state NAACP sent a telegram but received no response. Most letters and telegrams questioned the wisdom of executing Stinney, given the flimsy defense he received and his lack of black attorneys to represent him though several were licensed to practice law in the state. Many cited Stinneys chronological age of 14 but a mental age closer to 10. Both Gov. Johnston and the head of the Parole Board visited Stinney. Neither made recommendations to commute his sentence. His fate was sealed. Family members and others offered alibis and suggested that someone else was responsible for the murders. Stinneys brother reiterated that he and the accused were together on the afternoon of the attack. His sister pointed to a white man walking around the lumber mill houses during the period asking for sex. Some suggested law enforcement beat Stinney and forced a confession. Indeed, there were scars on his body before execution. In a letter to his parents, Stinney denied killing the girls. Officials struggled to fasten the large leather straps around Stinney. They were intended for a much larger man, not a frail boy of 5-feet-1 and 95 pounds. Since there were no restrictions on who could attend an execution, more than 50 people crammed into the room. At 7:30 a.m., the state electrician pulled a main switch, which sent 3,000 volts through his slender body. A second switch sent 1,200 more volts rushing into Stinney. The force of the electricity caused the oversized hood to fall from his face; a single tear dropped from his eyes and fell into his lap. 3 minutes and 45 seconds later, he was dead. A white sheet was quickly placed over him, and his body removed. Officials had a 2nd execution scheduled that morning: another young black male, this one 21 years of age, for allegedly assaulting a white man. At the age of 14, George J. Stinney became the youngest person executed in the United States during the 20th century, another dubious distinction for the state. (source: C0lumn, The State - Dr. Jackie R. Booker is an associate professor of history at Claflin University in Orangeburg. He is providing a series of columns for Black History Month) DELAWARE/FLORIDA: Florida case holds parallels to Capano's -- N.J. man convicted of killing business rival No body, no weapon, no direct witness to the crime, and the victim was buried at sea. The investigation began as a missing persons case and ended with the arrest of a millionaire, accused of killing his victim in his own home. The trial, spiced up by tales of kinky sex, attracted national press attention and ended in a conviction. The defendant claimed at trial that his mistress was the murderer. Tom Capano? No. Alan Mackerley, a New Jersey school bus contractor who was convicted of murdering his business rival, Frank Black, in Florida in February 1996 -- months before Capano murdered his girlfriend Anne Marie Fahey. Nearly everyone involved in both cases had never heard of the other -- in part because they took place almost simultaneously. And nearly everyone had the same reaction when told of the parallels between the 2 cases: eerie. Capano, 56, a politically connected millionaire lawyer, killed Fahey, the scheduling secretary to then-Gov. Tom Carper, by shooting her at his home in June 1996 because she was about to break off their affair. Capano then took her body out on his brother's boat and dumped it in the Atlantic Ocean off New Jersey. Later, Capano was convicted on the testimony of his brother, Gerard. Capano's initial sentence of death was overturned by the Delaware Supreme Court. Earlier this month, prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty a 2nd time and Capano will be formally sentenced to life in prison on March 2. Mackerley, 62, a self-made millionaire businessman, killed Black, his archrival, by luring him to his home in Florida and shooting him because Black was threatening to ruin his bus business. Mackerley then took Black's body out on his boat, Jersey Girl, and dumped him in the Atlantic Ocean off Florida. Later, Mackerley was convicted on the testimony of his best friend, William Anderson. Mackerley's initial conviction later was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court. After two retrials, the state Supreme Court last year affirmed his second conviction and upheld his sentence of life in prison. Capano's trial was spiced up by testimony about his many lovers and how he arranged a threesome with a mistress he would later claim killed Fahey. Mackerley's trial was spiced up by testimony about his many lovers -- including a 10-year affair with Anderson's wife -- and how he slept with the roommate of a mistress he would later claim killed Black. Both men also were accused, while in jail, of attempting to hire hit men to kill key witnesses against them. But in both cases those charges were later withdrawn by prosecutors. Prosecutors in both cases said the motivation was the same -- a thirst for power and control over others. And when that failed, Mackerley and Capano both turned to murder. "Uncanny," said U.S. Attorney Colm F. Connolly, who prosecuted Capano. "I guess evil minds think alike." "I wonder if they were friends," said Kathleen Fahey-Hosey, Anne Marie's sister. "It is amazing," said Mackerley's attorney, Paul Morris. "Weird," said Capano's attorney, Joseph Bernstein. Connolly said he did not know of any link between the men. Lee Ramunno, Capano's brother-in-law, said he had never heard of Mackerley. Morris said he'd never heard of Capano. Valerie Hans, a professor at Cornell Law School who was teaching at the University of Delaware when Capano went to trial, said the 2 cases "couldn't be closer." She said it is rare enough to see a single murder trial and conviction without a body but "very, very unusual ... eerie" to have 2 murder cases in the same time frame with no body, a conviction and so many other details in common. Grew up together The story of Alan Mackerley and Frank Black dated back decades to Sussex County, N.J., where the 2 grew up together. Years later, Mackerley got into the bus business and set up Byram Bus Lines, a rival to the company Frank Black operated. While Black was known as a skilled mechanic who knew how to run a bus, Mackerley was known as a skilled businessman who knew how to run a bus company. The two were fierce competitors, but in 1996, Black was looking to get out of the business and sell his company to a large national firm. It was a sale that would threaten Mackerley's business because Black refused to sell to Mackerley. As part of that effort, Black also underbid a number of bus contracts to build up his business, taking them away from Mackerley and creating another threat to Byram Bus. In February 1996, Black started to get phone calls from a woman who claimed to represent a South American interest looking to purchase a fleet of vans modified to be school buses. She also appeared to be offering Black much more than a lucrative contract, inviting the divorced man to Florida to consummate the business deal and telling him he'd recognize her at the airport because she'd be "blonde ... all legs, and the hottest thing you see when you get off the plane." Black boarded a Kiwi Airlines flight in Newark, N.J., bound for Florida on Feb. 24, 1996, and disappeared. Mackerley was one of the first suspects police considered because of his well-known rivalry with Black and because he'd made threatening remarks about Black weeks before the disappearance. Mackerley denied any involvement but phone records showing calls from his home to Black kept police suspicious. Police later determined Mackerley's lover, Lisa Costello, was the one who'd called Black with a fake name to make the bogus business offer. At trial, prosecutors said Costello took Black to Mackerley's house because Mackerley apparently wanted Black to know he was behind everything. Mackerley later told Anderson, his friend for years, that he got Black in a headlock, put a gun to his head and fired. Mackerley said he then wrapped up Black's body, his belongings and the murder weapon in plastic and loaded him onto his boat. Sank body When Mackerley threw Black's body overboard, just outside U.S. territorial waters, it floated. Anderson said Mackerley told him he pulled it back and stabbed at it, cutting through the plastic, until it finally sank. When he returned home, Mackerley launched into a renovation of the hallway where he killed Black. Several days later, however, he became paranoid about the body resurfacing. So he contacted Anderson, a pilot, to fly him over the ocean. Anderson testified he asked Mackerley why, and Mackerley responded, "Frank Black is missing." "I said, 'Oh, Alan, you didn't kill Frank did you? He said, Yeah, I did,'" Anderson said at trial. Anderson never flew Mackerley over the ocean, telling Mackerley it would look suspicious to authorities watching on radar if they kept flying back and forth over the territorial line. Just about the same time, Capano was laying the groundwork for murder, according to prosecutors -- buying a cooler he would use as a coffin and lying to his brother Gerard that someone was blackmailing him. In March 1996, Black's family and the police made a public appeal and offered a reward of $20,000 for information about Black's whereabouts or his disappearance. In May 1996, investigators approached Anderson, who refused to cooperate. In June, Costello, who by then had been linked to Black by phone records, also refused to talk despite an offer of immunity, and was jailed for refusing to abide by a court order. She would remain in jail for more than 20 months. Immediate suspect At the end of the month, on June 27, 1996, Tom Capano took Anne Marie Fahey out to dinner in Philadelphia. It was the last time she was seen in public. Capano was one of the first suspects police considered because he was the last person seen with her. Capano denied any involvement in her disappearance, but diary entries by Fahey mentioning Capano kept police suspicious. At trial, prosecutors said when the pair returned to Capano's Wilmington home that night, Capano shot Fahey. He then stuffed her body into the cooler for transport. In the morning, he enlisted Gerard to help him dispose of the body, telling him the victim was the blackmailer. They drove to New Jersey and loaded the cooler onto Gerard's boat to dump it 60 miles offshore. But when the pair threw the cooler overboard, it floated. They then shot the cooler, but it still didn't sink. So they hauled it back and Tom Capano tied the body to an anchor to sink it. When Capano returned home, he launched into a remodeling of the living room where he killed Fahey. In early July, Fahey's family and police made a public appeal and offered a reward of $10,000 for information about Fahey's whereabouts or her disappearance. A month later, on Aug. 5, 1996, prosecutor Colm Connolly sent Capano's attorneys a letter notifying them that Capano was under investig ation. In Florida, on August 29, 1996, investigators offered Anderson immunity and convinced him to testify and to wear a recording device when talking to Mackerley. When Mackerley returned to his Florida home that night after talking to Anderson, he was arrested in Black's murder. On Nov. 8, 1997, Gerard Capano, facing criminal charges of his own, confessed that he helped Capano dump Fahey's body. Several days later, as Gerard Capano was testifying before a grand jury, Tom Capano was arrested on his way to the airport and charged with Fahey's murder. A little more than two months later, in January 1998, Mackerley stood trial in Florida for Black's murder. The jury convicted him of murder and kidnapping after just 4 hours of deliberation. Mackerley was eligible for the death penalty, but after a weeklong penalty hearing, the panel split 6-6, meaning a recommendation of life in prison. At the conclusion of the trial, Costello was released on contempt charges but was immediately arrested and charged with Black's murder, which kept her in jail. Blamed mistress Capano's trial in Delaware started eight months later on Oct. 6, 1998. His attorneys stunned many when they alleged that Capano's mistress, Deborah MacIntyre, was the true killer and that Capano was only covering up to protect her when he dumped Fahey's body at sea. Capano took the stand in his own defense and claimed MacIntyre shot Fahey by accident when she found the two together. A jury, however, did not believe him and convicted Capano, later recommending he be put to death by a 10-2 vote. Both Mackerley and Capano appealed. Mackerley's conviction for both kidnapping and murder were overturned by the Florida Supreme Court in 2001. A 2nd trial in October 2002 was moved to a different county. There, Mackerley took the stand in his own defense and blamed the murder on Costello, adding that he had been covering up to protect her. Mackerley claimed Costello told him that she brought Black to Mackerley's house that night and when Black discovered the home was Mackerley's, he became enraged and Costello killed him with a barbell defending herself. Costello by this time had reached a plea deal with prosecutors and agreed to testify but prosecutors did not call her, fearing what she might say under oath. This time, the case ended in a mistrial with the jury deadlocked 11-1, favoring conviction. Prosecutors quickly moved to try Mackerley a third time in February 2003, with proceedings transferred to yet another county. Costello again was not called to the stand, but the jury returned a unanimous conviction and in May 2003, Mackerley was again sentenced to life in prison. The Florida Supreme Court rejected Mackerley's appeal of that conviction in April 2005. Mackerley attorney Morris, however, said he believes Mackerley still has appeals left at the state court level. Capano, meanwhile, has essentially exhausted his state-level appeals and last month filed an appeal in federal court. And one final parallel -- prosecutors in both cases moved on to higher office shortly after winning convictions against their millionaire defendants. Connolly was named U.S attorney for Delaware in 2001 by President George W. Bush. In Florida, Assistant State Attorney Robert Belanger was named a state circuit judge in 2004 by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Hans said this one similarity between the 2 cases comes as no surprise. Successful prosecutions in high-profile cases are a well-established career path to higher office, she said. The rest of it, "that is really strange." ** THE CAPANO FILE 1996 JUNE 27: Anne Marie Fahey, 30-year-old scheduling secretary for then-Gov. Tom Carper, dines with attorney Tom Capano at a Philadelphia restaurant. It is the last time Fahey is seen in public. 1997 NOV. 8: Capano's brother Gerard Capano tells prosecutors he helped his brother dump a body off Stone Harbor, N.J., on June 28. 1996 NOV. 12: Tom Capano is arraigned on a state murder charge. 1998 DEC. 16: In testimony that lasts nearly two weeks, Capano describes his various affairs and claims his longtime mistress Deborah A. MacIntyre accidentally shot Fahey in a jealous rage. 1999 JAN. 17: Capano convicted of Fahey's murder. JAN. 28: Jury votes 11-1 that the death penalty applies to the case, and 10-2 to recommend that Capano be executed. 2001 AUGUST: Delaware Supreme Court upholds conviction and death sentence, rejecting 16 challenges. 2005 MARCH: State Supreme Court rejects Capano's ineffective defense appeal. 2006 JAN. 10: The Delaware Supreme Court overturns Capano's death sentence. JAN. 30: Capano files a petition for a new trial in U.S. District Court in Wilmington. FEB. 6: Delaware Attorney General Carl C. Danberg decides not to pursue a second penalty hearing. THE MACKERLEY FILE 1996 FEB. 24: Frank L. Black, 58, boards a Kiwi Airlines flight to Florida to meet a Mia Giordano to conclude a business deal to sell 60 small school buses. Police later find "Mia Giordano" does not exist. MAY: Investigators approach William Anderson, a friend of Alan Mackerley, a business rival of Black's. JUNE: Lisa Costello, who police believe posed as Mia Giordano, refuses to speak to investigators. She is jailed for failing to follow a court order. AUG. 29: Anderson agrees to cooperate, tells police Mackerley called him several days after Black's disappearance and confessed to murdering Black and dumping his body at sea. Mackerley is arrested by Florida officials and charged with Black's murder. 1998 FEB. 4: Mackerley is convicted of Black's kidnapping and murder. FEB. 10: The jury splits 6-6 on the question of the death penalty. MARCH 23: Mackerley sentenced to life in prison. 2001 FEB. 1: The Florida Supreme Court overturns Mackerley's murder conviction. 2002 OCT. 21: Retrial begins. NOV. 4: Mackerley testifies that his mistress Lisa Costello killed Black with a barbell. NOV. 10: The jury deadlocks 11-1, resulting in a mistrial. 2003 FEB. 28: 3rd trial begins. MARCH 15: Mackerley convicted of Black's murder. MAY 16: Mackerley is sentenced to life in prison. 2005 APRIL: Florida Supreme Court upholds conviction. (source: News Journal)
