March 25
NEW JERSEY: Day of Innocence 'life-changing' The Brandeis Institute for Investigative Journalism, spearheaded by Florence Graves and Pamela Cytrynbaum (JOUR), hosted an entire afternoon of speakers and films in what was described as "A Day of Innocence." Over the course of the day, the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-nominated Sister Helen Prejean, author of the book Dead Man Walking, and real-life exonerated prisoner Dennis Maher spoke to stunned audiences in the Womens Studies Research Center and the Spingold Theatre about the perils of the criminal justice system and the death penalty, as well as the ever-present threat of wrongful conviction. "It was life-changing," said Marcie McPhee, the Assistant Director of Ethics. "I've been at Brandeis since 1988 - This was the tops" The event went half an hour into dinner time and they wouldnt leave. [It was] powerful stuff." Maher, who was wrongfully imprisoned in a Massachusetts prison for 19 years on 3 rape charges, spoke softly after the end of the Jessica Sanders documentary After Innocence. He spoke to a packed audience about his life, both before and after his incarceration. "There are things in prisons that need to be changed," Maher said. "And we need people on the outside to fight to make that change." Maher proceeded to tell his story of the mistaken eyewitnesses, sleeping defense lawyers, and misled jury that led to his wrongful conviction. In 1983, Maher, despite being a sergeant in the United States Army, was charged with 2 Lowell rapes, based solely on the description of the assailant wearing "a red, hooded sweatshirt." Despite a seemingly successful courtroom hearing where a victim identified another man as her assailant, Maher was charged with the crimes, and sentenced to 20 - 30 years in prison. After Maher's picture ran on the news, a 3rd victim accused him of rape, extending Maher's sentence to life in prison. "I hold nothing against them," said Maher, of his accusers. "They have horrors of their own to deal with." Maher added that when the judge asked him if he had any final statements, he replied, "Your Honor, if you call this justice, I think you and the whole judicial system are a crock of shit." Maher was released less than 3 years ago after a grueling struggle by the New England Innocence Project to obtain DNA evidence, which finally ended when a law school student coaxed someone at the police station to find the semen samples during his lunch break. "I want to know, but I dont want to know," said Maher, stating that this act of kindness could have been the end of this person's career. "My name has not been cleared - the [Attorney General's] office doesn't know how to do it because it's never been done before," said Maher. Since his exoneration and release in 2003, Maher has tried to make up for nearly 20 years of lost time - he has since gotten married, begun working as a diesel mechanic on trash trucks at Waste Management, and recently had 2 children: Joshua, 14 months old, and Aliza - named after the lawyer who worked ceaselessly on Mahers case - 6 weeks old. "Life is good," Maher said. "I don't worry about the small things in life anymore" I lost 19 years of my life. I don't need to waste any more time." Later that evening, in Spingold, Prejean, spoke to a house of more than 450 people about the social inequities behind the death penalty. "Capital punishment is those who don't have the capital, get the punishment," Prejean said. "The little Katrinas - there's more than one way to drown," the New Orleans native added. "Poverty drowns." Prejean, 66, also talked about her progression from working with schoolchildren at the St. Thomas housing project in New Orleans to being a spiritual advisor to both death row inmates and the families of victims. "I had never written to anyone whose address was death row," Prejean recalled. "I didn't know it was going to chance my whole blooming life!" Prejean stated that ignorance was what has kept the death penalty in our criminal justice system. "We're removed from them, we don't see it - and we have other people to do our killing for us." Prejean berated figures like Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for the growing religious fundamentalism in politics, calling it the basis of perpetuating the inequities in the legal system - such as finding inebriated or intoxicated lawyers "adequate council" and keeping the death penalty operational. "Boy, we need to look at our Constitution, and see what's happening" - We have 2 major problems that we need to address: we have fundamentalists in the approach to religion, and the Constitution that is driving the politics of this country," Prejean said. "Politics drives the death penalty" [but] we need to be a society that heals, not just a place that throws people behind bars and punishes." Following on the theme of the day - wrongful conviction - Prejean railed on the inherent fallibility of the death penalty. "If we're going to be judge and jury, dont you think we better have an absolute system of finding out the truth?" Prejean told a brief story about the family of a victim who felt pressured to push for the death penalty, as though not pushing for lethal injection would be "disrespectful" to their murdered child. "The death penalty taints everybody it touches," Prejean said to an awestruck audience. "Trust me, I'm a nun." "We can't be neutral" - we got to catch on fire," said Prejean to the crowd, who soon thereafter drowned her out with applause. "We got to do something!" (source: Brandeis Hoot (Brandeis University) VIRGINIA: Unwelcome Attention From Moussaoui Trial The sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui was supposed to have been the government's best opportunity to hold someone accountable for the deaths on Sept. 11, 2001. But after federal prosecutors finished laying out their case this week, even those who strongly supported an aggressive prosecution may wonder whether the trial has shed as much light on Mr. Moussaoui's culpability as it has on the missteps and mistakes by law enforcement agencies. The testimony of two prosecution witnesses, in particular, has brought renewed and unwelcome attention to how the Federal Bureau of Investigation dealt with early warning signs. Mr. Moussaoui is the sole person to go to trial in an American courtroom for the attacks, making him a proxy for the 19 hijackers who were killed carrying out the attacks and the chief planners who are being held in secret C.I.A. prisons overseas. Mr. Moussaoui in jail on Sept. 11, but prosecutors have argued that he deserves to be executed because he lied to investigators about what he knew of Al Qaeda plans to fly planes into buildings when he was arrested three weeks earlier on immigration violations. On Monday, defense lawyers are expected to offer a set of extraordinary trial exhibits, statements about Mr. Moussaoui by a handful of senior Qaeda officials gathered somewhere in the secret overseas detention centers that the C.I.A. maintains. The jury will be read the statements from detainees including Khalid Shaik Mohammed, the mastermind of Sept. 11, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, its paymaster. Officials expect the 2 to describe Mr. Moussaoui as an unreliable fringe figure in Al Qaeda. The government presentation, which ended on Thursday, did not go smoothly. First, the prosecution nearly collapsed after the disclosure that a transportation lawyer working with the prosecutors had improperly coached aviation witnesses. Although that occurred out of the jury's view, other problems surfaced when the prosecutors presented two witnesses supposed to bolster their case that Mr. Moussaoui's lies made him responsible for nearly 3,000 deaths. The two witnesses testified that if he had told the truth on Aug. 16, 2001, the bureau could have moved swiftly to foil the plot. The first witness, Harry Samit, an F.B.I. agent in Minnesota who questioned Mr. Moussaoui at his arrest, firmly asserted that had he been given the truth "we would have several new leads to investigate," and the plot might have been thwarted. Instead, he said, Mr. Moussaoui's answers sent investigators on "wild goose chases." Under cross-examination by Edward B. MacMahon Jr., a court-appointed lawyer for Mr. Moussaoui, Mr. Samit acknowledged that after the attacks he had written strongly worded reports saying his superiors had improperly blocked his efforts to investigate Mr. Moussaoui. He added that he was convinced that Mr. Moussaoui was a terrorist involved in an imminent hijacking plot. That senior bureau officials dragged their feet on investigating Mr. Moussaoui by seeking search warrants from a special intelligence court or a more routine criminal search warrant was not new. But it had never been presented so vividly as a reluctant Mr. Samit was obliged to do under cross-examination. He offered a devastating comment from a supervisor who said pressing too hard to obtain a warrant for Mr. Moussaoui would hurt his career. Mr. Samit also wrote that his superiors did not act because they were guilty of "criminal negligence" and they were gambling that Mr. Moussaoui had little to offer. The lost wager, Mr. Samit said, was paid in many lives. Mr. Samit was followed to the witness stand by Michael Rolince, a retired F.B.I. counterterrorism supervisor who similarly recited a list of actions that the bureau could have taken if Mr. Moussaoui had told them about Qaeda plans to take over planes with knives and fly into buildings. But when Mr. MacMahon began reading from a document detailing many suspicions about Mr. Moussaoui's intentions, Mr. Rolince interrupted, "Can I ask what document that's coming from?" Mr. MacMahon obliged, noting that it was an urgent memorandum written by Mr. Samit on Aug. 18, 2001, hoping to attract the attention of headquarters. Mr. Rolince had inadvertently underlined that the agent's suspicions had never risen to his attention. One problem for the bureau is that the backbone of the prosecution case, that the bureau could have disrupted the plot had Mr. Moussaoui admitted all he knew, represents a substantial revision of conventional wisdom at the law enforcement agency. For years, agents have expressed the view that Mr. Moussaoui knew little about what his Qaeda superiors wanted of him and had said that it was highly speculative whether more information would have deterred the attacks. A number of bureau officials have contended that even if the bureau had more clues about the hijackers, they might have been able only to put them under surveillance because they had not committed any crime. Sally Regenhard of the Bronx, whose son, a probationary firefighter, was killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center, said she was upset by the reminders of the failure of law enforcement authorities to heed many leads before the attacks. "It's dismaying, but there it is," said Ms. Regenhard, who has been one of the dozens of family members of Sept. 11 victims who have visited the Virginia courtroom to observe the trial. "There were discrete warnings known to the government. People don't realize this." The most pivotal moment may occur next week, however, when Mr. Moussaoui is expected to take the stand. Under the federal death penalty law, the jurors have to consider first whether he is responsible for any of the Sept. 11 deaths before they consider several factors in deciding whether to order his execution. The jury would have to be unanimous in deciding he bore responsibility for the trial to go to the next phase. In addition to the evidence, the jurors may respond viscerally and decide that Mr. Moussaoui is an odious figure undeserving of sympathy. They have heard some of his outbursts in pretrial proceedings in which he proclaimed in their presence his membership in Al Qaeda. He has said that he was indeed training to fly a plane into a building but that he was not involved in the Sept. 11 plot and should not be executed for it. His testimony will give the jurors another opportunity to take his measure. (source: The New York Times) ****************** Moussaoui's fate a matter of 'What if?'----U.S. insists truth could have thwarted 9/11 plot Whether Zacarias Moussaoui lives or dies boils down to one question: "What if?" Prosecutors laid out their case this week: Had Moussaoui told the truth when he was questioned 25 days before the attacks of September 11, 2001, FBI agents might have tracked down the terrorists before they were able to execute their plan. Moussaoui has admitted being an al Qaeda agent but denied that he was to have taken part in the September 11 plot. He was arrested on immigration charges in August 2001. The government is seeking the death penalty against him. For 3 hours this week, jurors saw a dazzling interactive display showing how the FBI quickly figured out the connections between the terrorist pilots of the 4 hijacked passenger jets, and at least 7 of their "muscle" hijackers who attacked the flight crews. It was a tour de force of investigative skill -- tracing records of telephone calls between the U.S.-based operatives and their overseas paymasters, tracking those numbers to addresses where the hijackers lived, obtaining bank and shopping records of the men, and discovering what flight schools they attended to train for their mission. But however rapid the detective work was, it all unfolded after the fact -- with the help of all 11,000 FBI agents. Could the same web of al Qaeda terrorism in America have been unraveled in the days between Moussaoui's arrest and the attacks? The premise of the testimony and presentation by Aaron Zebley, the last government witness, was that if Moussaoui had admitted to being a would-be hijacker, FBI agents might have tracked down the terrorists who were then days away from buying their plane tickets. U.S.: Lies protected 9/11 plot Instead, Moussaoui told a series of lies, which prosecutors contend protected the plot. His lies, they claim, make Moussaoui liable for at least one of the 2,793 deaths that occurred when jets slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. The defense counterweight to this theory has been to show the FBI's bureaucratic blocking of the Moussaoui leads, such as they were, and the government's slowness to act on information in its possession about two leading hijackers who lived openly in the United States for 18 months before the attacks. "The FBI has to have a confession before anybody listens?" asked Moussaoui defense attorney Edward MacMahon while cross-examining Zebley. "Everyone would have been listening," a slightly rattled Zebley said, had Moussaoui admitted why he was rushing to complete a Boeing 747 jet simulator training, why he was buying knives with short blades and who was sending him money. If only Moussaoui allowed the arresting agents to look at his belongings, they would have found Western Union receipts for $14,000 in wire transfers from Germany and the name and phone number of the sender handwritten in Moussaoui's notebook. That information, Zebley said, would have been "something you could run with." Moussaoui's money transfers would have led the FBI to a key coordinator of the plot -- Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni who tried and failed four times to acquire a visa to come to the United States. He sent Moussaoui the cash and facilitated the activities of 3 hijacker-pilots who once shared an apartment with him in Hamburg. Using telephone records, Zebley showed how Binalshibh called an an Qaeda operative in United Arab Emirates to get the money for Moussaoui, and how that UAE number opened the door to the hijackers, who had also called that number repeatedly in the summer of 2001. The phone calls revealed home addresses, flight schools and communications among the conspirators. "Was that information available to the FBI in August 2001?" prosecutor Robert Spencer asked Zebley. "It could have been," Zebley said. Building one layer of information onto another led to 11 of 19 hijackers. Agent: No 20th hijacker Under cross examination, Zebley conceded Moussaoui never called that UAE telephone number or any of the 19 hijackers. "I don't think there's any such thing as a 20th hijacker," he said. Carrie Lemack, whose mother, Judy LaRoque, was aboard the American Airlines jet that crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, has been watching via closed circuit broadcast available to families in Boston, Massachusetts, where two of the four hijacked planes originated. "The 'what coulds' go a lot further than Moussaoui," Lemack says. "What could the government have done if they talked to Moussaoui more? If they had someone try to talk to him in Arabic?" she says. Lemack, who attended many hearings of the 9/11 Commission, says many inside government did not act on the dire warnings about al Qaeda by former White House counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke and former CIA Director George Tenet. "If Lee Harvey Oswald told someone he was going to shoot JFK, they could have saved him, too. I thought it was the government's job to investigate, not make terrorists do it for them If we're just waiting for the terrorists to tell us where they're going to strike next, we're never going to stop them," Lemack said. (9/11 families feel let down) Zebley's summary came a day after a senior Transportation Security Administration official said stricter security could have been put in place at airports before September 11, had officials known of a conspiracy to hijack airliners using small knives. Moussaoui eager to testify Robert Cammaroto said he could have issued a security directive banning short knives, and mandating the airlines, which oversaw gate check-ins in those days, to do physical searches of passengers whose luggage was selected for additional screening. "We could have done it in a couple of hours," he said. The FAA knew that Muslim fundamentalists plotted to use airplanes as weapons, he said, but the threat was perceived to be overseas. The fear that Moussaoui was a potential hijacker was first expressed by Harry Samit, the FBI agent who arrested him outside Minneapolis. The day after Moussaoui stopped talking, Samit began sending e-mail to FBI superiors about Moussaoui. He would send 70 in all, many in frustration as FBI headquarters deemed insufficient his requests for warrants to search Moussaoui's belongings. The missed opportunities, independent of Moussaoui, to locate the hijackers is the theme of Moussaoui's defense. One of the possible defense witnesses when the trial resumes Monday may be the defendant. Moussaoui, who rarely speaks to his attorneys, has said he intends to testify. "I will testify whether you want it or not," he declared Thursday as he left court. (source: CNN) ********************* New trial sought for man on death row----An appeal to the state's top court doubts the fairness of an '05 trial that found failure to prove the Hampton man was retarded. Daryl Atkins, the 28-year-old Hampton man whose case led the U.S. Supreme Court to ban executions of the mentally retarded, is once again battling to save his life. At issue is whether Atkins, who is on death row, received a fair trial last August when a York-Poquoson jury determined that his attorneys failed to prove Atkins is mentally retarded. Last month, Norfolk-based Capital Defender Joseph Migliozzi Jr. filed an appeal for Atkins with the state Supreme Court. On Monday, the state attorney general's office responded with its own legal brief, contesting Migliozzi's arguments. At Atkins' trial last August, defense attorneys argued that low intelligence scores, poor academic performance, lack of reasoning ability and social skills proved that Atkins was retarded. Prosecutors successfully countered that Atkins' school records and IQ scores of 59, 74, 67 and 76 - around the border of retardation -showed he was simply a low-functioning person who made bad choices. In a 50-page appellant brief filed in February, Migliozzi argued that Atkins' constitutional rights were violated repeatedly in the nearly 2-week trial - the state's first to determine whether a defendant is mentally retarded. Atkins was originally sentenced to death in 1998 for killing 21-year-old Langley Airman Eric Nesbitt in York County following a robbery. The death sentence was eventually appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and, in 2002, justices ruled that executing a mentally retarded criminal would be cruel and unusual punishment. But because the high court examines only constitutional matters and not factual matters, Virginia courts had to decide whether Atkins is retarded. Migliozzi argues that Atkins' rights were violated during last summer's trial when Circuit Court Judge Prentis Smiley told jurors that Atkins had already been sentenced to death. "Atkins' case was remanded with the explicit instruction that jurors in the proceeding be assigned the sole purpose of making a determination of mental retardation, " the brief states. "Despite the narrow focus required by statute ... the trial court told jurors that Atkins was charged in 1996 and ... he was previously sentenced to the ultimate penalty of death." Migliozzi called the introduction of Atkins' death sentence and prior criminal convictions "prejudicial" and "unnecessary" and a violation of Atkins' rights. But Katherine Baldwin, the state's senior assistant attorney general, disagreed. Baldwin argued in court papers this week that if the York-Poquoson circuit court judge had barred the jury from knowing about Atkins' capital murder conviction and death sentence, jurors might have been misled about their role and felt less responsibility for their decision - violating a previous Supreme Court decision. "As the trial court correctly determined, the jury's accurate knowledge about the case and the ramifications of their verdict would heighten, not lessen, the jury's diligence and reliability of its verdict," she wrote. Baldwin also argued that in the Supreme Court decision, justices expected that the juries asked to determine whether a capital murder defendant is mentally retarded would be the same juries that decide whether the defendant is guilty. Baldwin said the jury last summer wasn't given any information about Atkins' capital murder conviction that other juries wouldn't get in capital cases where mental retardation is raised by defense attorneys. (source: Daily Press) *********** New sentencing ordered for drug kingpin In Richmond, a federal appeals court on Friday ordered a new sentencing hearing for a former Portsmouth drug kingpin sentenced to death for ordering three murders. A 3-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the penalty phase of Richard Thomas Stitt's trial was tainted by his attorney's conflict of interests. Defense attorney Norman Malinski did not ask the court to appoint an expert to testify about Stitt's potential future dangerousness because such a request would have triggered an inquiry into the source of funds used to pay the lawyer's fee, the appeals court said. Prosecutors had maintained during trial that Malinski was being paid with drug money. Malinski instead retained his own less expensive expert whose only knowledge of federal prisons came from watching an HBO television special, the appeals court said. In doing so, the court ruled, Malinski put his own interests ahead of his client's. The decision affirmed a ruling by U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson in Norfolk. Stitt was convicted in 1998 of 3 counts of murder during a continuing criminal enterprise and several drug and firearms offenses. Evidence at his trial showed that he ordered murders and assaults to protect his turf and to silence witnesses while he ran an extensive drug business in Portsmouth's housing projects. (source: Associated Press) US MILITARY: Victim's family: Airforce kept us in the dark 3 seasons passed - leaves fell, winter chilled the air and flowers bloomed - before Kimberly Novak's family knew the cause of her death. Novak, 20, the oldest daughter of Patricia and Donald Bollman, was killed in her Cannon Air Force Base residence around Oct. 28, 2004. But the Air Force did not disclose the violent cause of Novak's death, even to family members, until last summer, soon after they received her autopsy report. Not knowing how Novak died deepened the pain of losing their loved one, her family said in telephone interviews on Wednesday. "We've all been on pins and needles," said her father, a resident of Arkansas. "It was hard," her mother said, "not knowing exactly the cause of her death. I really think (the Air Force) should have come to us sooner." Airman Edward Novak II was charged Tuesday with murder in connection with the death of his wife. She died, more than 16 months ago, as a result of blunt force trauma to the head and neck, according to Air Force officials. The cause of death was not the only information Air Force officials kept from Kimberly Novak's family during the investigation, family members said. For several weeks after, family members said, the Air Force would not tell them if Edward Novak was suspected of causing Kimberly's death. Patricia Bollman said she didn't learn her daughter's husband was a primary suspect until a month after her death. Publicly, Air Force officials would not say if Novak's death was believed to be a homicide until Tuesday, when they announced the murder charge in a press release. Family members said Edward Novak told them Kimberly died when a television fell on her. Donald Bollman said his daughter was found in the bathroom, struck with an object that's still unknown to him. Members of Edward Novak's family did not return telephone calls seeking comment. They have previously declined requests for interviews. Edward Novak is being held in military custody, Cannon officials said, but they declined to say where. Because the death occurred on base, local authorities did not have jurisdiction to investigate Kimberly Novaks death, according to 1st Lt. James Nichols, chief deputy of the Cannon public affairs office. Responding to a reporter's inquiries, Nichols said via e-mail the autopsy report with the cause of death was issued by the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator on June 17. He would not say when the Air Force learned that Novak died a violent death. He said the Air Force will not release the autopsy report, citing efforts to ensure "a fair military justice process." In a series of e-mails responding to questions from Freedom Newspapers of New Mexico, Air Force officials provided little insight into the investigation. Asked why family members were not informed sooner that Kimberly Novak died a violent death, Nichols' e-mailed: "Investigators provided regular updates to the family during the course of the investigation." Nichols would not discuss the timeline of the investigation, or when the Air Force knew the cause of death was violent. "In the interest of ensuring a fair military justice process, it is improper for the Air Force to comment on the stages of the investigation," he wrote. He would not address why Novak was charged more than 16 months after Kimberly Novak died, except to say Air Force officials wanted to be thorough in their investigation. Despite mountains of difficulty obtaining information about Kimberly's death, family members said they try not to harbor ill feelings toward the Air Force. Nonetheless, Kimberly's aunt, Lynda Crozier-Sweet, said she is frustrated with the Air Force handling of the case. "Up where I live in the north, you hear about something like this (murder) happening on the news and within 1 or 2 days someone is being arraigned," said Crozier-Sweet, a former police dispatcher. Why Novak was charged now is not clear. Family members said Air Force officials have told them they had mounds of forensic evidence to sift through, and the labs in the state that could process it were bottlenecked. Air Force officials at Cannon declined to comment on when they received forensic evidence. Her dealings with the military have left Crozier-Sweet angry. "60 % of the time," Crozier-Sweet said, "(Air Force officials) were fair and decent and civil. 40 % of the time, I got treated rather badly by certain individuals who said they didnt have to talk to me, nor did they have the time." But for a family so long denied peace, some has finally arrived with Tuesday's murder charge, Kimberlys mother said. If convicted, Edward Novak could face the death penalty, Cannon officials said. Other possible punishments include confinement for life, a dishonorable discharge, total forfeiture of pay and allowances, or a reduction to the lowest enlisted grade, according to Nichols. The Bollmans said they are still tumbling through stages of grief. "I lost my best friend," said Kimberlys sister, Julie Bollman of Illinois. "Sometimes, I feel like I have no one to talk to." "One of our gems was taken away," said Crozier-Sweet of her niece, who loved the outdoors, would rise early to see the sunrise and was immersed in the joys of being a new mother, "and she didnt have the chance to reach her 21st birthday." The fate of the Novaks' 3-year-old daughter, Rebecca, is still uncertain, family members said. She is in foster care in New Mexico, they said. They are pursuing custody of Rebecca, along with Edward Novaks family. (source: Portales News-Tribune) ALABAMA: Victim's husband grateful AG trying to reinstate death sentence A Montgomery man whose wife was raped and killed by a 17-year-old intruder in their home said he appreciates the attorney general trying to get the killer's death sentence reinstated. But he isn't optimistic the U.S. Supreme Court will reverse its decision against executing juvenile murderers. "I'm not hopeful. I'm just kind of neutral on how things are going to turn out," Andy Mills said. State Attorney General Troy King has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case of Renaldo Adams and to use it to reverse the court's 2005 precedent banning the execution of killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes. That ruling affected 13 teen killers in Alabama, including Adams. "What they've done is a huge injustice to the victims and the victims' families. I feel like the Supreme Court is not in touch with the everyday world and everyday victims," Mills said in an interview Thursday. King said Friday he knows he faces long odds, but after studying the Alabama murder case, he had to try. "If we don't try, there's no chance they are going to reverse," he said. Adams' attorney, Bryan Stevenson, said King's request is without legal support. "It looks purely like a political act so you can say you are doing something about the issue," he said Friday. Mills' wife, Melissa "Missy" Mills, was raped and stabbed to death in her Montgomery home on Aug. 20, 1997. She was 4 months pregnant with her 4th child - a boy. Adams, the Mills' backyard neighbor, was convicted of capital murder and, after the jury recommended a death sentence 10-2, a judge followed the jury's recommendation. Adams was 17 at the time of the killing. For years that didn't matter. But in March 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes shouldn't be executed. The justices noted in part that the United States was out of step with the rest of the world in allowing teen executions. Following that ruling, the Alabama Supreme Court issued an 8-0 decision in December that reversed a lower court ruling upholding Adams' death sentence. The next step would be for a lower court to change his sentence to life in prison without parole. But the attorney general stepped in Wednesday, filling papers with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to review Adams' case and use it to reconsider last year's decision on executing teen killers. King said the court's decision "has been roundly criticized" and only the justices can correct it. King argues that some 16- and 17-year-old are capable of cold-blooded calculation where the death penalty is warranted, and each case should be addressed on an individual basis, rather than having a total ban. "We respectfully submit that Renaldo Adams - rapist, robber, burglar, and murderer of both Melissa Mills and her unborn child - was sufficiently culpable and should be held fully accountable for his actions," King wrote in his legal brief. Adams' attorney said that in other legal questions about age - whether it's buying cigarettes or voting - the minimum age to be considered an adult is 18, and the Supreme Court made it clear that capital murder laws should follow the same path. "The law is settled on this issue," he said. Mills, 41, said King and his staff discussed their plans with him before filing the court papers, and he's grateful they are trying to get the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider. Mills said he's not hopeful because the two new justices who have joined the Supreme Court since the 2005 ruling replaced justices who were on the minority side. Recalling the early morning hours of the murder, Mills said he had fallen asleep on his couch when he awoke to find Adams in his house, wearing a stocking mask and carrying a knife. Mills offered Adams money to leave. While Adams held Missy Mills at knifepoint, Andy Mills went to a bank machine and withdrew the maximum amount of cash - $375. According to trial testimony, that didn't satisfy Adams. Mills went to a grocery store to cash a check, and a clerk notified police. When Mills and police returned to the home, Adams was still inside, but Missy Mills had been raped and fatally stabbed. The Mills' three children, then ages 7,3 and 1, were not injured. Adams turned 17 on July 1, 1980 - nearly 2 months before the slaying. To Mills, there is "absolutely" no question that Adams made adult decisions to rape and kill Missy Mills even though he wasn't 18. "I don't think that would have had any bearing on his maturity level or competency level in committing this crime," he said. (source: Associated Press) ************************* Boys' grim legacy lives on The picture shows 7 white men with long-barrel guns surrounding 9 black men. As a capital defense lawyer, Bryan Stevenson keeps that 1931 photo to remind him that injustices aren't just a thing of the past in Alabama. 75 years ago today, those black men were arrested in northeast Alabama on charges of raping 2 white women on a train ride from Tennessee. They would be convicted by an all-white jury, despite one of their accusers recanting. Eight would be sentenced to die. They became known as the Scottsboro Boys. "The issues that dominated the Scottsboro trials are still alive today," said Stevenson, who heads the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama. "Scottsboro represents the threat created by discriminatory and unjust application of the law. It was a galvanizing moment in both Alabama and American history." Clay Crenshaw, the state's lead capital prosecutor, is Stevenson's adversary in the courtroom. They agree, though, about the Scottsboro trials. Crenshaw said the Scottsboro defendants "were railroaded" by a "court that was serving as a lynch mob." "It's a sorry example of what happened in Alabama," he said. A great injustice The defendants, all younger than 21, were tried about 3 weeks after their arrests and all were convicted, according to the Public Broadcasting System, which did exhaustive research for a 2001 documentary. Only 1 defendant, who was 13 at the time of the trial, was not sentenced to death. Outraged by the sentences and shocked by the speedy trials, progressive organizations raised money for the defendants, who were given new attorneys through the International Labor Defense, an organization with ties to the Communist Party. The Alabama Supreme Court upheld all but one of the convictions. The U.S. Supreme Court, though, ordered new trials on the grounds that the defendants' attorneys failed to provide adequate assistance. In one of the 2nd trials, accuser Ruby Bates denied being raped. She testified that she and Victoria Price were with their boyfriends the night before, which explained physical evidence that they had sexual intercourse. Still, despite a doctor's testimony there was no evidence of rape, the all-white jury convicted the defendant and sentenced him to die. The trial judge in the case, James E. Horton, ordered a new trial based on the doctor's information and suspended trials for the others because of high tensions in the community of Scottsboro. The judge's decision was unpopular, and he was not re-elected. "He never had any regrets about his decision," said Susan Horton Faulkner, the judge's granddaughter. "He knew he had done the right thing. After the doctors had talked to him, it wasn't a big decision for him." The Limestone County Bar Association supported Horton in his re-election bid to no avail, she said, and he spent the rest of his life working the family farm and died in 1973. The retrial Horton ordered was moved from Scottsboro to Decatur, but again ended in conviction and death sentences. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the convictions because of the exclusion of blacks on the jury rolls. In 1936, 1 defendant was convicted afor the 4th time but did not receive a death sentence as the jury's compromise to the foreman, who thought he was innocent. In 1937, 2 others were convicted and given long prison sentences, but defense attorney Samuel Liebowitz was able to cut a deal with the prosecution to drop rape charges against 4 of the defendants. The prosecution also dropped rape charges against 1 more defendant, who was convicted of stabbing a deputy on the way out of court and sentenced to 20 years. Today's perspective Despite the high court's rulings, Stevenson said Alabama still has mountains to climb in providing fair treatment to poor and minority defendants. He pointed to the lack of funding for the state's criminal defense system and the two dozen death penalty cases reversed because prosecutors excluded blacks from juries without good reason. Crenshaw said he thought comparing what happened in the Scottsboro trials to today's criminal justice system is more than a stretch. "If anybody compares our system today with what happened then (he) is just out of touch with reality," he said. He said just because 24 death penalty cases have been reversed doesn't mean prosecutors in Alabama are racist. "It just proves they may have inappropriately struck somebody (from the jury) and couldn't come up with a valid, race-neutral reason," he said. "If the defense counsel struck 15 whites from a jury, I don't think that means they're racist. I think they're trying to pick the best jury for their side." Flawed system It's not surprising all-white juries continued to convict the Scottsboro defendants because white Southerners during that time were conditioned to believe white women who accused blacks of rape, said Dan T. Carter, author of "Scottsboro: A Tragedy in the American South." "There was this notion that you had to set an example to black men that once you're accused, you're dead," he said. The Scottsboro trials served as a springboard for change in the criminal defense system in the South, he said. Blacks began to fight injustice, despite the consequences. "Beginning with Scottsboro, there were a lot of blacks who would say, 'I know it's a long shot, but I'm going to raise hell about it,' " Carter said. He said the system has gotten better, but like Stevenson he said it's still not close to neutral. White victims, he said, are 4 times more likely to have a death sentence rendered against their perpetrator than a black victim. "Certainly, you're not going to see another Scottsboro today," he said. "But it's still apparent the criminal justice system is not neutral." In Alabama, efforts are underway to set up an Indigent Criminal Defense Commission to oversee attorneys who represent the poor. Joe Van Heest, president of the Alabama Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, would like to see the state set caseload limitations for defense attorneys so they can better represent poor defendants. He would like to see stricter qualification standards for attorneys. "You don't want someone right out of law school defending a class A felony," he said. While capital defense attorneys need five years experience, there are no standards for other defense attorneys, he said. Stevenson, who has dedicated his career to representing the poor, agreed. Defense attorneys who represent the poor are under-funded and overworked, he said, and racial bias is still apparent. "There's a lot we still have to learn from Scottsboro," he said. "We need more accountability. The poor people deserve it." *************************** King wants killer's reprieve reversed A Montgomery man whose wife was raped and killed by a 17-year-old intruder in their home said he appreciates the attorney general trying to get the killer's death sentence reinstated. But he isn't optimistic the U.S. Supreme Court will reverse its decision against executing juvenile murderers. "I'm not hopeful. I'm just kind of neutral on how things are going to turn out," Andy Mills said. State Attorney General Troy King has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case of Renaldo Adams and to use it to reverse the court's 2005 precedent banning the execution of killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes. That ruling affected 13 teen killers in Alabama, including Adams. "What they've done is a huge injustice to the victims and the victims' families. I feel like the Supreme Court is not in touch with the everyday world and everyday victims," Mills said. King said Friday he knows he faces long odds, but after studying the Alabama murder case, he had to try. "If we don't try, there's no chance they are going to reverse," he said. Adams' attorney, Bryan Stevenson, said King's request is without legal support. "It looks purely like a political act," he said. Mills' wife, Melissa "Missy" Mills, was raped and stabbed to death in her Montgomery home on Aug. 20, 1997. She was 4 months pregnant with her 4th child -- a boy. Adams, the Mills' backyard neighbor, was convicted of capital murder and, after the jury recommended a death sentence 10-2, a judge followed the jury's recommendation. Adams was 17 at the time of the killing. For years that didn't matter. But in March 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes shouldn't be executed. The justices noted in part that the United States was out of step with the rest of the world in allowing teen executions. Following that ruling, the Alabama Supreme Court issued an 8-0 decision in December that reversed a lower court ruling upholding Adams' death sentence. The next step would be for a lower court to change his sentence to life in prison without parole. But the attorney general stepped in Wednesday, filing papers with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to review Adams' case and use it to reconsider last year's decision on executing teen killers. King said the court's decision "has been roundly criticized" and only the justices can correct it. King argues that some 16- and 17-year-old are capable of cold-blooded calculation where the death penalty is warranted, and each case should be addressed on an individual basis, rather than having a total ban. "We respectfully submit that Renaldo Adams -- rapist, robber, burglar, and murderer of both Melissa Mills and her unborn child -- was sufficiently culpable and should be held fully accountable for his actions," King wrote in his legal brief. Adams' attorney said that in other legal questions about age -- whether it's buying cigarettes or voting -- the minimum age to be considered an adult is 18, and the Supreme Court made it clear that capital murder laws should follow the same path. "The law is settled on this issue," he said. Mills, 41, said King and his staff discussed their plans with him before filing the court papers, and he's grateful they are trying to get the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider. Mills said he's not hopeful because the 2 new justices who have joined the Supreme Court since the 2005 ruling replaced justices who were on the minority side. Recalling the early morning hours of the murder, Mills said he had fallen asleep on his couch when he awoke to find Adams in his house, wearing a stocking mask and carrying a knife. Mills offered Adams money to leave. While Adams held Missy Mills at knifepoint, Andy Mills went to a bank machine and withdrew the maximum amount of cash -- $375. According to trial testimony, that didn't satisfy Adams. Mills went to a grocery store to cash a check, and a clerk notified police. When Mills and police returned to the home, Adams was still inside, but Missy Mills had been raped and fatally stabbed. The Mills' 3 children, then ages 7,3 and 1, were not injured. Adams turned 17 on July 1, 1980 -- nearly 2 months before the slaying. To Mills, there is "absolutely" no question that Adams made adult decisions to rape and kill Missy Mills even though he wasn't 18. "I don't think that would have had any bearing on his maturity level or competency level in committing this crime," he said. (source for both: Associated Press) FLORIDA: Father guilty in infant's death----A jury convicted him of murder after going on a rampage when he was woken early. Anthony "Bubba" Oyibo could face the death penalty after a Jacksonville jury found him guilty Friday of 1st-degree murder in the beating and shaking death of his 4-month-old son, Jacob, an act prosecutors called "conscious, deliberate and vicious." Oyibo, 23, stood stoically next to his court-appointed defense lawyers, David Barksdale and Hank Coxe, as the verdicts on all 6 counts he faced were read -- guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. In addition to murdering little Jacob, he was found guilty of aggravated child abuse, kidnapping, carjacking, burglary and attempted armed robbery. The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for 5 hours after a 6-day trial before returning their verdicts to Circuit Judge Lance Day. They were instructed to return to court April 5 for the penalty phase of the trial when prosecutors Jay Plotkin and Mose Floyd plan to seek the death penalty on the murder conviction. Day instructed all those connected with the case -- jurors, attorneys and the witnesses -- not to speak with anyone about the case because he considers it still open until the conclusion of the penalty phase. The jury did not find Oyibo guilty of premeditated 1st-degree murder, but of first-degree murder during the commission of aggravated child abuse, a felony. While he still could get the death penalty, the defense could use that fact to his advantage in pleading for the jury to spare his life. Oyibo's former girlfriend and Jacob's mother, Kristie Gergely, dabbed tears as the verdicts were read and left the courtroom without comment. Defense lawyers had tried to blame the baby's death on her. Oyibo and Gergely shared a small apartment on the Westside on May 6, 2003, with their son, Jacob, and Gergely's two other children, Deven, 5, and Anayah, 16 months. Oyibo, prosecutors said, became angry that day because the children woke him up, and Gergely had not fixed him anything to eat. Oyibo locked Gergely in the bathroom and returned a few minutes later holding Anayah by her shirt. When he closed the door, she said she heard two loud thumps. Oyibo told Gergely that Anayah was bleeding and it was Deven's fault, but he wouldn't let her tend to Anayah, prosecutors said. Gergely told the jury Oyibo attempted to strangle her with an electrical cord and hit her in the head with a log. She managed to get away and, as she fled the apartment, Oyibo warned her not to put their "business" on the street or he would kill her. Gergely managed to call police, who found Jacob dead on a mattress with whiplash and blunt trauma injuries all over his head and neck. Anayah was in her crib lying in a pool of blood. She was taken to Shands Jacksonville, where she survived. Oyibo fled the apartment with Deven and hid in a boat in the boat yard next door until dark. He stole the boat's flare gun and attempted to steal a customer's truck. When that didn't work, Oyibo used the flare gun to torch the truck and forcibly steal a car from a woman who had come to the boat yard. He drove Deven in the stolen car to some of Oyibo's relatives in Vero Beach, then hid in a vacant house. When police closed in, Oyibo shot himself in the mouth with the flare gun and had to be hospitalized. (source: Florida Times-Union)
