Feb. 27 TEXAS----new death sentence Barbee sentenced to die Stephen Barbee was sentenced to death this afternoon for killing Lisa Underwood and her 7-year-old son, Jayden. A jury of 7 women and 5 men took more than 3 hours to reach their decision on Barbee, 38. The jury could have sentenced him to life in prison. During closing arguments this morning, prosecutor Kevin Rousseau brought a dramatic end to the capital murder case against Barbee with a gripping description of the murder of a pregnant Underwood and her son. He talked about Barbee's trip to Underwood's north Fort Worth home in the early hours of Feb. 19, 2005, and the fight that left bloodstains all over her living room. When he finished describing how Barbee smothered Underwood by pressing her face into her carpet, he reminded jurors about her 7-year-old son's last moments on earth. "Jayden couldn't run," Rousseau said. "You think of (Barbee) approaching that little boy and slappng him upside the head hard enough to leave a bruise and then holding him down until hes dead, and I dare you to say there is a reason to save his life." In a victim impact statement, Underwood's mother, Sheila Underwood, addressed Barbee: "I want you to know Im 53 years old and I don't have anything left. ... I want you to suffer like I suffer. You put me in hell." Last week, Barbee, 38, was convicted of smothering the two and dumping their bodies in a wooded area in rural Denton County. At about 10:20 a.m. today, a jury began deciding whether he would die for the crime. Police investigators said Barbee thought that Underwood was carrying his child and claimed that she had threatened to break up his marriage. The unborn baby girl was not Barbees child, lab tests later confirmed. Underwoods friends have said that she believed he was the father and wanted only for Barbee, who co-owned two businesses, to have the child covered on his health insurance. During closing arguments Monday, prosecutors Dixie Bersano and Rousseau cast Barbee as a selfish man who was willing to do anything to get what he wanted. They said the disregard he showed for the lives of Lisa Underwood and Jayden prove that he will be a future danger to society, a requirement for the death penalty. Defense attorneys Tim Moore and Bill Ray, however, pleaded with jurors not to use emotion to answer the question of whether Barbee should die. Moore cautioned them against asking why, if Barbee took these two lives, he shouldn't die, too. "It's not a proper question, and I'll tell you why it's not a proper question," Moore said. "That is because its a question the answer of which is based on pure revenge, and you have to be careful, folks, not to let revenge creep into your deliberations. Theres no place for revenge in our law." Moore said Barbee was a law-abiding, productive citizen who changed into an "atrocious human being" for 3 hours on Feb. 19, 2005. He is unlikely to be violent in the future, Moore said. Rousseau, however, said jurors had plenty of reason to consider Barbee dangerous. Testimony from Barbees 1st wife, Theresa, was an example, he said. She testified last week that Stephen Barbee assaulted her 4 times during their marriage. Once, a candle he knocked off a wall hit her in the head and gave her a concussion, she said. "The pattern was there. The warning was there," Rousseau said. "Unfortunately, Lisa Underwood did not have the benefit of that warning. She never had a chance. She never had a chance." ******************** Son on trial in parents' slaying Prosecutors opened their capital murder case against Andrew Wamsley of Mansfield by portraying him as the kind of teen-age son who, rather than going to college and getting a job, thought it would be better to inherit his parents' $1.65 million estate. Wamsley, 21, is accused of organizing a group of friends to kill his parents, Rick and Suzanna Wamsley. They were found shot and stabbed Dec. 11, 2003, in their Mansfield home. "This case is about the ultimate betrayal of trust in the sanctity of one's home," Assistant District Attorney Page Simpson said. Defense attorney Larry Moore said the evidence points to another woman who is cooperating with prosecutors as the killer and that she is lying to lessen her sentence. The jury is expected to hear testimony from Mansfield police this afternoon in state District Judge Everett Youngs court. Wamsley is the 2nd person to face the death penalty in connection with the deaths of Rick and Suzanna Wamsley. In May, Chelsea Lea Richardson of Fort Worth, also 21, became the 1st woman in Tarrant County to receive the death penalty after she was convicted for her role in the killings. At her trial, prosecutors depicted Richardson as a manipulative personality who organized a group of her friends to kill the Wamsleys so her boyfriend would inherit his parents estate. On Monday, prosecutor Simpson told jurors that the friends met several times at a south Arlington restaurant to plan the slayings and tried several times to kill the couple before succeeding. The prosecution's case relies heavily on the testimony of friend Susana Toledano, who in January 2005 pleaded guilty to murder in the couples deaths in exchange for her testimony. (source for both: Fort Worth Star-Telegram) *************************** Mental patients' criminal conduct lies in legal limbo Some residents of a central McAllen condominium complex are scared for their lives because a woman with a history of mental illness is known to carry around a loaded weapon, has threatened to kill police officers and has repeatedly had guns confiscated from her home. Yet as evidenced from police and court documents and numerous interviews, each time law enforcement has committed the 46-year-old woman - whom we will identify only by her 1st name, Jeri, to protect her privacy - to a mental health facility, she has been released as soon as she became stabilized on medication. When she stops taking the medication, the dangerous situations arise again. Because of the way the criminal justice and mental health systems are structured, police and court officials say there is little they can do to stop the revolving door. A case so extreme is rare, said McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez. When addressed medically, most people with mental illnesses live normal lives, he said. However, police by law must intervene and commit people to a mental health facility when they refuse to take their medication and become a threat to themselves or others. "Commitment is a temporary thing and a civil procedure," Rodriguez said. "It's a production process. Stabilize and make room for the rest," he said. Andrea Lerma is a psychiatric clinical specialist at Tropical Texas MHMR, the state's local mental health facility. She evaluates patients police bring in to determine whether they are candidates for commitment to the state's Rio Grande State Center in Harlingen or other private-pay mental health hospitals. A temporary commitment is not a cure-all, she said. "What happens when the individual goes home? She may have told us all the things we want to hear," she said, drawing on her 26 years of experience in dealing with mentally ill patients. You can't force someone to take medication, she said. And that is the problem for McAllen resident Emma Gonzalez and her 14-year-old daughter. Fear In Their Own Homes "I left my house at 5 p.m. When I got out of my house, I saw this lady standing outside of her condo on the sidewalk looking at me with an aggressive look," said Gonzalez, who lives near Jeri, who, since last fall, has had at least 5 complaints lodged against her with McAllen police. The reports state that neighbors either saw Jeri carrying a handgun or that she threatened her neighbors with a handgun. "I saw she was carrying a gun in her right hand," Gonzalez said, remembering the October incident. By the time she noticed the gun, Gonzalez said her front door was already locked. Jeri's front door is about 10 feet from Gonzalezs front door. Gonzalez said she walked slowly to her car, being careful not to turn her back to her. Once in her car, Gonzalez called 9-1-1, then called her daughter and told her to stay inside. The police arrived and barricaded the place. About 30 minutes later, Gonzalez said police told her they had confiscated a loaded weapon. A public document obtained from the McAllen Police Department indicates Jeri had a .40-caliber handgun. It did not specify, though, whether the gun was loaded. Jeri was not arrested. 2 days later, police returned after residents stated Jeri was outside waving around a different handgun. She owns several, Gonzalez and police say. According to a probable cause affidavit, a McAllen police captain went to the condo and talked with Jeris mother, Dorothy, who owns and lives at the condominium. Dorothy did not know where her daughter was and she was worried her daughter was armed. Detectives searched the area and found Jeri on the west side of the complex. As two officers tried to talk to the mentally ill woman, who the police report says claimed to be an FBI agent, she became upset and verbally threatened the captain. "I am going to kill you, mother (expletive)," Jeri told the captain. She then reached into the right front pocket of her pants. The captain instructed her to stop what she was doing, and she complied. Immediately, the officers handcuffed Jeri to take her in for a mental evaluation. As they patted her down, inside her right pants pocket - where she was reaching - they discovered a loaded .38-caliber Rossi revolver. 5 days later, Jeri returned. Gonzalez said she called police again, but they told her they couldn't do anything. They told her the mental health facility was crowded. "Can they do nothing about it until somebody is killed?" she asked. Criminal Intent? The problem with this case and other cases in which police believe mentally ill people have committed criminal acts is that 2 conflicting pieces of law are subject to application, Rodriguez said. There's the Sec. 26 law that says police must commit a person threatening to do harm to themselves or others to a mental health facility so they may be evaluated for treatment. Then there's the criminal code, he said. But if police file criminal charges against a person who is mentally unstable, can they really prove criminal intent? After Jeri's commitment to a mental health facility following the latest incident, Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra recommended that McAllen police file criminal charges against her. "There really are very few people that can take care of her," he said, referring to the woman's elderly mother. Sooner or later, she will stop taking her medication. She will lapse, he said. "Everything is under control," said Jeris mother during a phone interview. Dorothy said her daughter was on medication and she did not care to comment any further. "Shes a problem I can't really solve. It's a revolving door with the state center," Guerra said. "I want a solution." McAllen Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Henley signed 2 arrest warrants in November - one for terroristic threat, a class B misdemeanor, and one for the unlawful carrying of a weapon, a class A misdemeanor. Jeri was arrested in late November and spent time in the Hidalgo County Jail until Dec. 14. The criminal charges were dismissed because she was "mentally incompetent," according to court documents. The dismissal of charges was a mistake, Guerra said. He said he did not put special notes on the case so his staff threw it out based on the womans mental state. The same charges were reinstated Jan. 5. Guerra, however, said he does not feel confident that Jeris case will result in conviction. A person such as this woman - "you cannot hold them criminally liable," he said. They don't have the state of mind - intent - required for criminal action. Case Closed, But No Peace Although Jeris arrest means the case is technically closed for McAllen police, Rodriguez said there is an ongoing investigation into how Jeri keeps getting a hold of guns. There are many directions Jeri's 2 court cases can go, Guerra said - as 1 option, she could be committed to a forensic mental health facility to establish competency to stand trial - but in the meantime, she is still living at home with her mother. Life goes on a bit differently now for the residents living near her in the central McAllen condominium complex. "I don't want anyone to get hurt," said Gonzalez, who said she has considered moving from the condo. "It might be my daughter or myself." Gonzalez put locks on her back door because she rarely uses her front door. She parks her car in a different spot. And she wakes up scared in the middle of the night. "I'm always watching my back," she said. (source: The Monitor) ***************** Andrea Yates rejects 35-year plea deal----March 10 retrial set for mom accused of drowning kids in tub A woman accused of drowning her children has rejected a plea offer that would have sent her to prison for 35 years and is expected to face a retrial in March, her attorney said Monday. Prosecutor Joe Owmby said the state would leave the offer on the table until 10 days before Yates' capital murder retrial, set to begin March 10, for the deaths of three of the five children in 2001. Yates has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity, as she did at her first trial. The plea offer would require her to plead guilty or no contest to murder. "We have rejected that recommendation," Yates' attorney George Parnham said. Yates was convicted of capital murder in 2002, but the conviction was overturned because a forensic psychiatrist gave false testimony. Park Dietz had said an episode of television's "Law & Order" series about a woman with postpartum depression drowning her children had aired shortly before the Yates children died; the episode didn't exist. On Monday, State District Judge Belinda Hill granted the state's request to hire a second expert witness to evaluate Yates. Parnham opposed another evaluation. During the 1st trial, psychiatrists testified that Yates suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression, but expert witnesses disagreed over the severity of her illness and whether it prevented her from knowing right from wrong. A jury rejected Yates' original insanity defense and recommended life in prison for the drowning of three of her five children, ages 7, 5 and 6 months. Evidence was presented about the drowning of 2 others, ages 3 and 2, but Yates was not charged in their deaths. (source: Associated Press) OHIO: Hundreds face new sentences in Ohio----State Supreme Court finds sentencing law unconstitutional Hundreds of defendants will have to be resentenced because judges considered evidence that wasn't presented at trial, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled Monday. The unanimous ruling found parts of Ohio's sentencing law unconstitutional. The law required judges to consider evidence that a defendant had not admitted to at trial, such as criminal record, which often resulted in longer sentences. Most of the cases affected by the ruling are repeat offenders or serious drug offenders, the court said. The ruling follows a 2004 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that threw out similar sentencing guidelines in Washington state on the basis they violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of a jury trial. "Although new sentencing hearings will impose significant time and resource demands on the trial courts ... we must follow the dictates of the United States Supreme Court," Ohio Justice Judith Lanzinger wrote in Monday's ruling. The ruling singles out 6 sentencing guidelines included in the 1996 law, in which the Legislature required strict prison terms and allowed judges little leeway. The remainder of the law is not affected, the court said. (source: Associated Press) NORTH CAROLINA: Salisbury man eligible for death penalty Prosecutors said Monday they will seek the death penalty against Reginald Carlton Weeks Jr., a Salisbury man charged with 1st-degree rape and 1st-degree murder in the death of his stepdaughter. At a hearing in Rowan County Superior Court, District Attorney Bill Kenerly said Weeks was eligible for the death penalty because the murder was committed during the commission of another felony, the 1st-degree rape. Weeks was arrested Aug. 15 and charged with the murder of 18-year-old Brittany Loritts, his stepdaughter. He was released from the Rowan County jail Feb. 2 on $500,000 bond. During Monday's hearing, Superior Court Judge David Lee revoked bond and scheduled an evidence hearing for March 27. Joyce Loritts, Brittany Loritts' grandmother, said she won't feel satisfied until after Weeks is tried. "She was just a sweet person," Joyce Loritts said outside the Rowan County Justice Center. "She was an angel to me." (source: Charlotte Observer) USA: Search Of An Argument For The Death Penalty----The bottom line is that there is no Great Argument for the death penalty. It may or may not save money. That should be irrelevant. Saving money by killing or not killing someone is an amoral argument. It should not have a bearing on the decision. Executing the wrong person is a huge concern and there should never be any doubt. Without 100% certainty of the accused being the killer there should be no question of the death penalty. Execution as a deterrent is unproven, although the recidivism rate is a fact - 0% of people executed commit another crime. Is it justice to execute someone? In my opinion it is not. Why? One definition of justice is the upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law. While most states have a different definition of a capital murder that warrants the death penalty they basically have one common thread. "Aggravated 1st-degree murder," usually when committing another crime. That description makes it sound civilized, almost. Then the death penalty is not truly just. If a person goes on death row and is in fact guilty of the crime, the death penalty is not a fair punishment for their crime. There is something fundamentally wrong with a person that will rape and torture then murder a child. There is something deeply broken in an individual that will kill a person for $5. There is a sad fact about our humanity, it has a very dark and sinister side. Part of our tribe includes the most heinous and vicious of killers. These people have no respect for human life and would discard your life with less thought than to where they throw a cigarette butt. Can these people be helped or changed? I seriously doubt it. I may not be an expert, But I have been a victim of violent crime and I was left for dead. I have been on the receiving end of the criminal that will kill to steal. I was lucky, I survived. I honestly believe that the people that attempted to murder me went on to probably kill someone else. Why? That is part of who they are. It is not a social issue, or environment. It is a hard-wired issue combined with social and environmental factors. I believe that some people, like cars, are lemons. They are broken and can never be repaired. And as long as they are free in the public the potential for them to kill will always exist. So back to the point, Why isn't the death penalty just? Simple, it isnt vicious and murderous in it's application. Sure it is murder because it meets the definition of homicide. But the fact remains that the person is not brutally beaten, tortured or raped by their captors. This may be true of their fellow inmates, but is that really surprising based on their violent nature to begin with? When compared to the treatment of their victims, they are humanely treated, shown respect and given a peaceful death. If the Death Penalty were justice then they would be executed in the same fashion that they murdered their victim(s). If they murdered more than one person, then they would be revived and executed again for every murder they committed. That would be Justice, because that would be fair. Your obvious reaction should be "This guy is just angry and wants revenge for the crimes committed against him." You would have been right several years ago, but you are wrong now. Here I am almost 10 years later. Being angry that long is a huge waste of energy and makes it very difficult to live a happy life. Holding on to anger, to me, is a waste of my life. I know it sounds like eye for an eye, but it isn't. It is fair and just in the sense of they did unto others. It is also fair and just in just plain cold hard mathematics. When you remove the emotion tied to such a calculation: Crime = Punishment. Execution is not justice for what they did. Execution is an easy way out compared to how their victims died. The rape and murder of a child is not equal in punishment to lethal injection. The murder of a wife and mother by gunshot during a robbery is not equal to lethal injection. So the bottom line is that execution is not justice. The punishment does not fit the crime. The next question is: What punishment does fit the crime? What level of suffering can be applied as punishment to these people that we can live with dolling out? How can we do to them, something so horrible, that justice would be served. Then how do we can still live with ourselves? The answer is None. We aren't like these people, we can't do the things they do because we aren't capable of these actions. So we resort to Lethal Injection because it is easier, cleaner and helps with our conscience. It is the form of horrible punishment that some of us can live with. The reason for the death penalty breaks down to one point only. Executed criminals will never commit their crime again. As long as they live there is a possibility that they will kill a guard or another inmate. There is the possibility of escape and more murders of the desperate killer with nothing to lose. Until we can guarantee that they will never kill again for the rest of anyones life then we take an unnecessary risk. What alternatives are there? If we can not execute them then how can we guarantee they will never kill again? Perhaps we should keep them in induced comas till they are so atrophied that they are not a threat to anyone. Wake them up once a week for 30 minutes in the yard then knock them out again. Justice is still not served, but they are too weak to be a threat to anyone. To me the only argument for execution is that if you save one life of a person that contributes to society by executing a known murderer then that is worth it. That is the only argument for the death penalty. Prescott Small----Stafford (source: Fort Bend Now) ********************* Jurors influenced by TV shows demanding prime-time-style evidence Rarely are cops and lawyers as good-looking, efficient and articulate as they appear on television. Most viewers are smart enough to understand that. But somehow, the spectacularly popular CSI shows have managed to smudge the line between small-screen fiction and real-life fact. For the last few years, jurors have been exhibiting something legal experts have identified as the "CSI effect." Loosely defined, it is a jury's increasing demand for scientific evidence of guilt - and it has changed the strategies that lawyers must employ. Across the country, prosecutors must now explain why they don't have photos of a "ferrotraced" palm or the finding from a "Dazor Speckfinder" to nail the perp. "The popularity of these programs has an impact," says Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola University School of Law in Chicago. "There is a blurring of fiction and reality." In the 2 years that Philadelphia lawyer Carina Laguzzi has been a defense attorney, "I don't think there's been one opening statement from the D.A.'s office where they don't stress that this is real life, not a TV show." In some respects, it's an old dilemma for lawyers, who have always felt pressure to live up to the images and expectations evoked by movies and television. "Since 'Perry Mason,' we've been having to compare ourselves," says Jack King, staff attorney for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "CSI is only the latest incarnation." The opportunities for lawyers to fall short have grown dramatically - so to speak - with the proliferation of crime shows. When you can't turn on the television without seeing CSI, SVU or some other acronymed legal/criminal/courtroom drama, you have to wonder, is it aggravated sensory assault? Still, viewers can't get enough; and that can become a problem when they become jurors and expect central casting in the courtroom. "It's obviously a very varied group of individuals who are lawyers," notes Christopher Diviny, chief of the major trials unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. The manifold, unscripted ways that those individuals look and speak and behave, Diviny says, "won't be reflected in the entertainment media." However unfair it may have been for juries to want Jimmy Smits to present the closing argument, lawyers say that there's a critical difference between expecting the verbal eloquence of an "L.A. Law" and the technological razzle-dazzle of a "CSI." "On a show like 'CSI,' they do all these amazing investigative techniques," Levenson says. "But I don't know of a prosecutor's office in the country that has the resources, or the technology." "The CSI effect for us is very real," Diviny says. "It is something we have to account for in the type of evidence we produce and the way we present it." For example, prosecutors often will explain why there are no fingerprints in a case, even when the defense attorney doesn't bring it up, Diviny says, "because there's a good chance that one of the jurors will make it an issue." Laguzzi, who was an assistant district attorney in the city before going into private practice, says she understands the prosecution's predicament. The microscopic bits of hair and blood and carpet fibers that Rumpelstiltskin scriptwriters weave into gold are a lot easier to collect on a set than on the street. But it's insulting, she says, to imply that jurors are too feebleminded to figure that out. "I don't think juries want a big TV production. I think they want to make sure the cops did their job. And I don't think there's anything wrong with holding officers accountable if they didn't." Although "CSI" has been on the air since October 2000, the effect has caught some prosecutors unaware. Los Angeles Assistant District Attorney Shellie Samuels, one of the prosecutors in last year's murder trial of actor Robert Blake, says she underestimated how crime shows influence jurors' thinking. Samuels learned after the trial that about half the jury watched such shows. She believes that may have inflated their ideas about evidence and contributed to Blake's acquittal. "Now, when I voir dire (vet) potential jurors, I ask if anyone feels they have a high expectation and can't separate TV from reality," Samuels says. "Someone would have to be a moron to say, 'I can't.' But all we can do is ask. They see these shows every week and it has an effect. It's naive to think it doesn't." While defense attorneys frequently use the CSI effect to poke holes in cases, they must also deal with its downside - when forensic evidence is produced, it's likely to be accepted as incontrovertible proof of guilt. "DNA evidence is sometimes more persuasive than it ought to be," says Steve Bogira, author of "Courtroom 302," a chronicle of the year he spent reporting in Chicago's Cook County Criminal Courthouse. "The lay public feels that if someone's DNA was found on the scene, then he must have committed the crime, and if it wasn't, he didn't." Technology has been critical, of course, in identifying innocent prisoners on death row. Since 1973, DNA tests have resulted in the release of more than 120 inmates facing capital punishment in 25 states. And public awareness of this trend, says Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, has driven the demand for solid, scientific evidence of guilt. "People want to see that extra level of proof," he said. Dieter concedes that forensic evidence can be misleading, citing published reports about crime labs that either bungle procedures, fabricate results, or fail to perform tests. "The public is relying on DNA as the gold standard, but it may not be right," he says. Emotional biases can also make jurors susceptible to the CSI effect. "The public has ambivalent feelings about the police," Levenson says. "That tends to make people want to look for nonpolice evidence." Other legal experts caution against giving too much weight to the importance of CSI and similar dramas. "It's only one of many factors," says Michele Nethercott, cochair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' forensic committee and a public defender in Baltimore. Nethercott, who says she "hates that show," believes the purported effects of "CSI" have been "somewhat exaggerated." The bottom line is that no matter how seriously jurors take their oath to consider the facts objectively, everyone is influenced by a multitude of factors, regardless of his or her television habits, she says. "You've got jurors who, for reasons having nothing to do with the CSI effect, are reaching verdicts that don't seem based on rational evaluation of the evidence." And that's why an attorney's ability to play the room can be so important. "A good trial lawyer is always an actor," says King of the Criminal Defense Lawyers association. "You really have to believe what you are saying or no one else will." No wonder that, at the association's quarterly meetings, acting courses are regularly offered. And well attended. (source: Knight Ridder) *************** GLOVER HITS OUT AT DEATH PENALTY Hollywood actor DANNY GLOVER has slammed the death penalty as an imperfect form of justice that has sent many wrongly-convicted, innocent people to their deaths. The LETHAL WEAPON star, one of a list of celebrities including SUSAN SARANDON, TIM ROBBINS and ALANIS MORISSETTE to appear in new London play THE EXONERATED, is a staunch opponent of capital punishment. He says, "People believe in it because it taps directly into their fear. In that respect, it holds public opinion hostage. "But it's not perfect and innocent people have died because of it." The Exonerated deals with six people who were wrongly convicted and put on death row, including SUNNY JACOBS, a woman accused of killing a police officer, who was freed after spending 26 years in jail. Jacobs says, "The play has given us all a voice. "Otherwise our experiences would take up 15 minutes on the news and then be forgotten. (source: Contact Music)
