March 10 TEXAS: Lubbock Death Row Inmate Gets Second Chance at Life A Lubbock man who has been on death row for 6 years returned to a Lubbock courtroom Thursday. Joe Franco Garza, Jr. appealed his 2000 death sentence which was recently reversed by a federal judge. Garza claims he was a troubled teen and that his legal team at the time did not do a good enough job using that evidence in his defense. Garza's capital murder conviction is not at issue.What he is challenging is his death sentence. Prosecutors were busy selecting a jury pool of 125 people. In 11 days, a jury will be carefully selected because death is being considered in this case. The entire process could take up to four weeks. Garza was found guilty for the 1998 strangling death of 71-year-old Silbiano Rangel. Garza also stole Rangel's truck, and then forged checks in his account. Rangel's body was found in a field in the 7300 block of King Avenue. Garza was arrested less than a month later for the murder. Garza will be spending the next several weeks away from death row and inside a cell at the Lubbock County jail. District Attorney Matt Powell, who also was the lead prosecutor 6 years ago, says he will seek the death penalty again. Powell says Garza can either get life or death in this case. (source: KCBD News) ****************** Renewed Patriot Act could limit federal appeals for death row inmates---Provision allows U.S. attorney general, not federal appeals courts, to decide if states qualify for 'fast-track' review of death penalty cases. For the 406 inmates on Texas' death row, the Patriot Act's wiretapping provision isn't the most worrisome thing in the bill. It's a change to federal habeas corpus procedure that could make it easier for Texas to execute them. Under the new Patriot Act that President Bush signed into law Thursday, all states can now ask the U.S. attorney general to decide whether they qualify for a "fast-track" review. Getting fast track is based on whether a state's court-appointed defense attorneys meet a minimum competency standard. If a state qualifies, its prisoners have less time to file federal habeas petitions, and the federal judges reviewing state prisoner appeals are more limited in what they can consider. State inmates file federal habeas corpus appeals - the ability to question, post-conviction, whether their state representation, trial or sentence violated their constitutional rights - as a last resort to fight their sentence. The federal circuit courts previously decided whether a state qualifies for fast track, but to date, no state has met the standards. In 1996, Texas was denied fast track because the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the state failed to meet competency standards. Under the new Patriot Act, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would decide if Texas is qualified. If he did, the ruling would apply retroactively to prisoners currently on death row. Critics said that without a circuit court review, safeguards fall to the wayside and prisoners get fast tracked to execution. "My worry is this: It's the fox guarding the henhouse," said David Elliot, a spokesman for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "Objective, impartial parties should be making these decisions. Not a pro-death penalty U.S. attorney general." The change also concerns some Texas lawyers who have seen first-hand some of the defenses indigent defendants receive. They worry that the attorney general will qualify the state, when death row defense is still riddled with problems. "We did not qualify in 1996, and the system has not changed at all since then," said Jim Marcus, an attorney with the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit law firm that represents indigent death row inmates. "So the only thing that would be changing is the decision-maker." Critics of habeas corpus appeals contend that many ofthem are frivolous and clog the system. Supporters say it's the only way that inmates who might have been cheated by poor state representation can get a federal judge to look at their case. Federal habeas review has served as a needed last resort for past Texas inmates. Delma Banks Jr. was 20 minutes away from execution in 2003 when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened and later ruled he had been denied the right to a fair trial. Anthony Graves, who is on death row for the 1992 killings of a family in Somerville, was granted a new trial last week by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In their opinion, the appeals court found that "the defense's approach could have been much different and probably highly effective" had Graves' appointed attorney presented evidence that another inmate had confessed to the crime. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, supports the expedited review and is a co-sponsor of more expansive habeas reform legislation. "We've substantially reformed the habeas counsel provisions in Texas . . . and I think that is in a response to some of the concerns that have been raised in the past about the competency of those counsel," Cornyn said. "But to my knowledge we're still in pretty good shape down there." Texas would have to apply to the U.S. attorney general's office to be considered for the fast-track "opt in." It's not clear whether the state would apply. "For now we're going to withhold comment, until we can evaluate it further," said Tom Kelley, a spokesman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said department attorneys familiar with the program were not available to talk about the change. Last year, the Texas Legislature defeated a measure by Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin, that expanded how attorneys could qualify as competent counsel for death row inmates. Critics saw the legislation as an attempt to ready the state for fast-track review. Keel is in a runoff now for a seat on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which decides all direct appeals in capital murder cases and the inmate's state habeas claim. Keel said his bill was written not to opt in to a fast-track system, but to raise the standards of counsel on capital cases. He said the bill sought to widen the pool of available court-appointed defense attorneys by counting experience as a prosecutor and was blocked only because the small pool of attorneys currently representing indigent death row inmates were protecting their jobs. Texas has executed 359 inmates since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976. 4 men have been executed this year, and 15 have execution dates set in the next 4 months. Tony Ford is scheduled to be executed Tuesday. Whether or not new standards for court-appointed attorneys are passed in Texas, shifting the power from the courts to the attorney general to decide whether inmates had competent counsel is wrong, Marcus said. "From what we've seen in Texas, it is so important that the door be open to meaningful federal habeas review," Marcus said. "We're not talking about technicalities, but people whose sentence was seriously flawed, who now may lose the ability to appeal." (source: Austin American-Statesman) FLORIDA: Jury votes for death penalty in double murder In Sanford, a jury today handed back 3 recommendations for the death penalty in the sentencing phase of Clemente Javier "Shorty" Aguirre, who was convicted on 2 murder charges for a fatal knife attack on 2 women in their mobile home 2 years ago. Jurors last week convicted Aguirre, 25, in the slayings of wheelchair-bound Carol Bareis, 68, and her daughter, Cheryl A. Williams, 47, who lived near Longwood. The jury deliberated less than 45 minutes and came back with a 7-5 vote recommending the death penalty in the death of Williams, and a 9-3 vote recommending the death penalty for the death of Bareis. Circuit Judge O.H. Eaton Jr. will sentence Aguirre on May 2. (source: Orlando Sentinel) MISSISSIPPI: Miss. high court orders competency hearing for death row inmate The Mississippi Supreme Court has ordered a competency hearing for a death row inmate who claims he cannot continue with further appeals because of a chronic mental illness. Derrick Walker was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2001 killing of a Tupelo man. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction in 2005. Walker's post-conviction claim is pending with the state Supreme Court. Inmates use post-conviction petitions to contend they have found some new evidence that could result in a new trial. Walker asked the Supreme Court to postpone those proceedings because he "suffers from severe and chronic mental illness" and resume them once he regains his competence. In the alternative, Walker asked for a competency hearing. Justice Mike Randolph, in a 7-1 order made public Thursday, directed the Lee County Circuit Court to conduct a hearing into Walker's competency to pursue a post-conviction claim. In a 2002 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court declared executing the mentally retarded to be unconstitutional. The nation's high court left it up to states to determine whether inmates are retarded. Since that time, Mississippi death row inmates found to be mentally retarded have been re-sentenced to life in prison without parole. In its March 2005 decision that upheld Walker's conviction, the state Supreme Court noted that Walker had undergone at least 3 psychiatric examinations before his trial. The results of 2 of the examination were not included in the decision. One examination performed at the Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield found that Walker was not "under the influence of any extreme mental or emotional disturbance" during the commission of the crimes, according to the court record. During a pretrial hearing, Walker's lawyers told the circuit judge that Walker had refused to cooperate with them. They claimed Walker wanted to fire counsel and asked the trial court to release him so he could get his "own bought lawyer," according to the court record. The trial judge approved funds for additional psychiatric testing, which was done. The Supreme Court opinion did not include the results of the testing. Walker also did not raise the issue of mental incompetence in the appeal of his conviction, according to court documents. Walker was convicted in Lee County in 2003 for the stabbing death of former Tupelo personnel director Charles Richardson. Police said Richardson's body was found by firefighters answering a report of smoke coming from his house on July 17, 2001. Authorities said Richardson had been repeatedly stabbed and slashed. Walker was arrested in Arkansas. He was driving Richardson's car, authorities said. Walker did not deny the crime. However, Walker argued he never intended to steal the man's car and without such intent, robbery could not be used to support a conviction of capital murder. The Mississippi high court said Walker's argument failed because he confessed to investigators that he planned to kill Richardson, take his car and go to Chicago. (source: Associated Press) ************ An open letter to the state of Mississippi. I stand with you, my fellow Mississippians, in your latest attempt to outlaw abortion. Abortion is a crime. It's a sin. It's murder and, as such, should be punished with a sentence of death. But women are not alone in the slaughter of the innocent. Men are also guilty of a crime just as great: masturbation. Some say that the loss of one spermatozoan here or there is the loss of but half a life; still, it is a life "half lost," a prenascent individual half-murdered. And so I propose a stiff sentence: life imprisonment, without the hope of parole -- or even the comfort of solitary confinement -- for any such hardened criminal whose turgid mind leads him to commit this disgusting, lethal, and entirely antisocial act. No holds barred. I realize the math here is a sticky subject, because, in fact, millions of microscopic half-lives are contained in every expulsion of the male seed -- so, at first, I had thought the penalty for males should be, say, 500 to a million or so times more severe than that deserved by women who resort to abortion. Ultimately, however, the arithmetic was just too daunting and too complicated and might, in a trial, hamper the efforts of the prosecution. Thus, I decided to proceed as I have. History tells us the world has suffered more from the effects of male masturbation than it has through the carnage of abortion. Indeed, Nebuchadnezzar, Caligula, Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon, Hitler -- and possibly some of our presidents, congressmen, and senators, from time to time -- have been upstanding examples of the intellectual waste and moral devastation that result from the terrible habit of male masturbation. Studies conducted by the Center for the Understanding of Our National Tragedy have shown that 98.5 percent of all males under the age of 110 indulge in this primitive behavior -- a practice that has reared its ugly head even at the highest levels of the corporate world. (How many times have people been told they could not talk with a CEO because the executive was "in a meeting"?) We are faced with a huge and growing problem that needs to be taken in hand immediately before it overcomes us as a Christian nation. From the statistics cited above, we know that 1.5 percent of the male population has not become a slave to the Sin of Onan. But statistics, like so many things, can be manipulated. For instance, among this 1.5 percent, how many use -- or have used -- condoms? That's just as horrible, perhaps more so, than male masturbation: the idea that any decent citizen -- male or otherwise -- could consign multitudes of tiny half-lives to the torture of a slow death in a rubbery tomb tossed to the side of a lonely road. As a civilized society -- and particularly as males -- we owe it to ourselves to get a grip on the problem before it becomes too big to handle. Statistics provided by the Coalition of Concerned Kick-boxers, a respected organization of internationally recognized athletic supporters, reveal that, though the incidence of sexually transmitted disease is lower in areas where the incidence of male masturbation is highest, that benefit alone is not a reason to exempt males from responsibility for at least half "the crime" now being committed by women through abortion. And so, I call on Governor Haley Barbour -- who, more than anyone else, has his hand on the pulse of this throbbing issue -- to, please, before he makes that final stroke with his pen, consider, in the name of all that is fair and just, writing into law the criminalization of male masturbation as a vital part of this important, timely anti-abortion bill soon to be presented to him for his signature -- before the opposition can blow it all out of proportion. Sincerely, John Pritchard Sr. (source: The Memphis Flyer) CALIFORNIA: Calif. Supreme Court Justices Question Former Prosecutor's Motives John "Jack" Quatman is either a man who had "an ax to grind" or a guy who never got to tell his side of the story when the chips were stacked against him. That's what the California Supreme Court heard Wednesday when the former prosecutor was once again the focus of discussion during oral arguments over allegations that Jews were customarily kicked off capital case juries in Alameda County, Calif. A couple of justices openly questioned Quatman's veracity and motives for making such allegations long after leaving the Alameda County district attorney's office, while others didn't seem ready to dismiss all of his claims outright. In particular, there seemed to be some concern about the possibility of there being a grain of truth in the allegation that former Alameda County Superior Court Judge Stanley Golde told prosecutors -- even if informally -- to keep Jews off death penalty cases. "At what point does the conduct get to misconduct?" Justice Joyce Kennard asked. Oral arguments in the case had been eagerly anticipated since April, when Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Kevin Murphy -- acting as a referee in an evidentiary hearing -- ridiculed Quatman's allegations while dubbing him a "dishonest and unethical" man. He accused Quatman, now in private practice in Whitefish, Mont., of fabricating lies to embarrass Alameda County DA Tom Orloff, who took Quatman off capital cases in 1993, 5 years before he left the office. San Francisco Deputy Attorney General Geoffrey Lauter pounded on that theme Wednesday, arguing that Quatman made false allegations because he's still angry about his demotion 13 years later. "He could no longer be a capital prosecutor," Lauter argued. "His transfer to the consumer protection unit gave him such an ax to grind." Earlier, Chief Justice Ronald George had raised questions about Quatman's character by asking Gary Sowards, an attorney at San Francisco's Habeas Corpus Resource Center, how much deference the court should give to the referee's damning report. "Basically, you are faced with the obstacle that Mr. Quatman's claims were found not credible," George said. "Isn't that," he asked later, "a major obstacle to you?" Justice Marvin Baxter piled on by pointing out that the referee's report contained "substantial evidence" from Quatman's co-workers in Alameda County and Montana that he couldn't be believed. Sowards obtained Quatman's declaration in the hope of winning a new trial for Fred Freeman, who's on death row for murdering a man during a 1987 robbery of a Berkeley bar. Quatman prosecuted that case and reportedly excused 2 men and 1 woman from the jury for being Jewish. On Wednesday, Sowards argued vehemently that Quatman got a bum rap during last year's evidentiary hearing. He claimed Murphy refused to admit evidence or testimony that would have supported Quatman's allegations or shown he was a respected attorney. "None of that got in," he said. Sowards said he couldn't imagine any ill-willed motive that could be "rationally related" to Quatman's comments about the DA's office or Golde, "whom he dearly loved." George jumped in to say one possibility is that his allegations could "call into question or impugn" several of Orloff's convictions. Justice Paul Boland, a justice on Los Angeles' 2nd District Court of Appeal sitting pro tem in place of Justice Carol Corrigan, joined in by noting that even a reversal in this one case could be embarrassing. Corrigan, a former Alameda County prosecutor who was a witness at the underlying evidentiary hearing, recused herself. Kennard alluded to reports that said Golde may have actually told attorneys at times during off-the-cuff comments outside of trial that it could be wise in some instances to exclude people, including Jews, blacks and Asians, from certain criminal cases. She asked whether that could be misconduct. "It does get close," Lauter responded. "But it's not a judge talking ex parte about kicking someone off the jury." Baxter then asked parenthetically whether a judge taking part on an "educational panel" could advise lawyers of all stripes to exclude minority jurors from death penalty juries and then 6 months later take on a capital case himself. "Can that be swept under the rug?" he asked. "It seems that judge has gone on the record as a biased judge." Lauter said that "would be something to be explored," but quickly pointed out that Murphy ruled that hadn't happened in this case. In rebuttal, Sowards said the scenario laid out by Baxter would constitute clear misconduct. "That is discrimination," he said, "and it's urging discrimination." Lauter also fielded several questions about whether it matters that there is no evidence in the record that the three excused jurors in question in Freeman's case were actually Jewish or not. He said it mattered greatly because Quatman could be discriminating only if he knew he was excusing Jews. That didn't happen in this case, he said, because Quatman hadn't inquired about religion: As it turned out, one of the jurors wasn't Jewish at all, another was Catholic and the last one's religion wasn't known. Lauter argued that all 3 were released for valid reasons: One was a member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, known for its work with the poor; another was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the death penalty; and the last said she could vote to execute someone only if they were as heinous as Charles Manson. "They were excused," Lauter argued, "because they made poor capital jurors, in Mr. Quatman's mind." Justice Judith Haller, of San Diego's 4th District, sat pro tem in place of Justice Ming Chin. It wasn't clear why Chin -- who recently had surgery and is hearing cases by tape -- didn't sit on the Freeman case, but it's probably because he was a prosecutor in Alameda County from 1970 to 1972. The case is In re Freeman, S122590. (source: The Recorder) WISCONSIN: Voters may get say on death penalty -- If Assembly follows Senate lead, issue goes on ballot Wisconsin voters would be asked in September whether the state should bring back the death penalty after a 153-year hiatus under a measure approved by the state Senate 20-13 on Tuesday. The referendum results would be advisory, but Senate President Alan Lasee, R-Rockland, said he hoped they would spur the state Legislature to join 38 states that have the death penalty. Voters would be asked whether Wisconsin should have capital punishment in "vicious" 1st-degree murder cases in which killers are convicted using DNA evidence. The Assembly needs to approve the resolution before the referendum can appear on the ballot. Gov. Jim Doyle does not have to sign off on the resolution. "I think it's important for the people to speak out and for legislators to pay attention," said Lasee. The referendum would be held at the same time Republicans choose their candidate for governor. Democrats said Lasee was trying to skew the results by picking an election when conservatives would dominate the electorate. Democrats also have a contested primary in the attorney general's race slated for the Sept. 12 primary. Sen. Jeffrey Plale, D-South Milwaukee, said the measure was a knee-jerk reaction to the graphic details released by prosecutors last week in the murder of 25-year-old Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc County. "We have a calling to rise above that intense need for revenge," he said. (source: Associated Press)
