Dec. 10 TEXAS: Parnell pleads guilty----Pollok man to serve life sentences on murder, sexual assault charges A Pollok man pleaded guilty to capital murder and aggravated sexual assault charges Friday morning, days before the state's plea offer would have become obsolete. The defense and state expected to seat a jury next week, which would have given Eric Stephen Parnell no choice over his future, said lead defense attorney Stephen Taylor. "He accomplished one thing today. He saved his life," said Taylor, a certified death penalty trial lawyer from Conroe . About 10 a.m. Friday, Parnell admitted to shooting and killing 18-year-old Ana Franklin of Garrison and the raping her cousin, Jennifer Holliday of Lufkin, on May 29, 2005. In a June 2005 interview with The Lufkin Daily News, Holliday said Parnell shot and kidnapped her, later raping and torturing her on a nearby county road. Parnell, 32, has agreed to serve two consecutive life sentences and has waived his right to appeal the case, said Clyde Herrington, Angelina County District Attorney. "Never again will he be a threat to the public," Herrington said. Consecutive life sentences means Parnell will be eligible for parole 40 years from the time he was first jailed. At that time, his 2nd life sentence will begin, with a parole eligibility date of 30 years. As Taylor explained, Parnell cannot be considered for prison release until he is 98 years old. Defense co-counsel Charlie Meyers described Parnell's demeanor as "subdued" as he entered a guilty plea. Parnell did not say why he decided to plead, Taylor said, nor did he offer any statement. Parnell confessed in the midst of jury selection. The state and defense had interviewed 55 members of the 150 jury pool and were expecting to finalize their selection of 12 jurors plus three alternates by the middle of next week, Taylor said. As jury selection wore on, Parnell was "close to making a decision," he said. Taylor said Parnell realized his time to decide was "more and more critical." Prior to his plea Friday morning, Parnell's mother and aunt visited him at jail. "He knew his time to plead was coming to a close sometime soon," Taylor said. "The state was very gracious for keeping their offer open." For capital murder cases where the state is seeking the death penalty, the prosecution has an option not to offer a defendant a plea bargain. Herrington commended the Angelina County Sheriff's Office. "The sheriff's office did a good job on this case. I feel we could have proved the case (to jurors) beyond any doubt, even though the law requires us to prove only beyond a reasonable doubt," he said. Art Bauereiss, an assistant prosecutor in Herrington's office and lead counsel on Parnell's case, was in the process of contacting Franklin's family and Jennifer Holliday and her family to give them the option of reading a victim impact statements to Parnell in open court. The last case to reach a similar point, where the state was seeking the death penalty, was the case of Marco Ramos in July 2002. Ramos pleaded guilty to strangling and stabbing 79-year-old Lorraine Webb at her Lufkin home a day before jury selection was scheduled to begin, according to Herrington and Lufkin Daily News archives. In Angelina County, juries have sentenced 3 people to death, including David Lee Lewis, Willie Mac Modden and Harvey Earvin. Modden died in prison after successfully appealing to be removed from death row; Earvin and Lewis remain on death row. (source: Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel) ****************** A Dead Man's Walk Ends Far from Home----American convict Gregory Summers was executed in Texas and buried in Tuscany Gregory Summers' last request sounded like the far-flung pinings of a romantic poet. Just before he died, the 48-year-old told friends he wanted Tuscany to be his final resting place. Summers' burial plea, though, was not that of a sentimental soul, but of a Texan triple-murder convict on death row. And Tuscany held no special place in his heart. "Anywhere but Texas," was how Summers had put it to Maartje Kok-de Bruijn, an Amsterdam bookstore clerk who led a European campaign to overturn his 1991 conviction based solely on circumstantial evidence for contracting the stabbing death of his parents and uncle. "Greg just didn't want to be buried in the state that was going to kill him," she says. Kok-de Bruijn became Summers' pen pal in 1992, visited his Huntsville prison 30 times and witnessed his Oct. 25 execution by lethal injection. Shortly before his death, Summers accepted a last-minute offer to be buried in Tuscany after attempts to obtain burial rights in the Netherlands, Britain and Tennessee had been unsuccessful. The benefactor was Cascina middle school principal Maria Carmela Carretta, who'd been following the case with a class of 6th-graders after reading about it in a Catholic magazine. In an industrial stretch of flatlands east of Pisa, Cascina is hardly the postcard Italy of undulating olive groves. With an auto-parts store behind the cemetery and the stripped face of a gravel mine in the distance, the burial service last week somehow seemed more Texan than Tuscan. Summers was wearing a pink Wrangler cowboy shirt and black pants inside the closed white coffin now pulled beside the back of the black Mercedes hearse. Before his death, he'd asked that the kids who had gathered petitions on his behalf sign their names on his casket. Clad in shiny parkas, jean jackets and sneakers, they autographed with magic markers in the Italian-flag colors of green and red: Riccardo, Jacopo, Eva, Alessia, all bid goodbye with messages of "Ciao!" and "Con affetto." Pastor Gioele Fuligno, a Baptist minister, led the funeral rites with a fire-and-brimstone sermon that stunned the Catholic crowd. Strangely, though, it all seemed to make sense to the 100 or so townsfolk in attendance. All of it except for that Texas sentence handed down to a man who never stopped insisting he was innocent. "The man inside this coffin died at the hands of a human tribunal he was killed by us!" Fuligno said, gripping a worn red leather Bible. "And yes, I say us, and not the Americans. For we are all involved in this story. We don't love enough in this world. Actually, we don't really love at all." For one 13-year-old here at the funeral of the 22nd person to be executed in Texas this year, the explanation is simpler: the death penalty is "something stupid." In Europe, where capital punishment is virtually extinct, believers and nonbelievers see the practice as the clearest sign of a troubled American ethic perhaps even more than any aggressive Washington foreign policy. In recent polls, more than 60% of West Europeans say they oppose the death penalty, compared to less than one-fourth of Americans. Letter-writing campaigns against the death penalty are constant; Parlia-ment declarations denouncing the punishment frequent. Just down the road in Rome, the Colosseum is regularly illuminated to honor death-penalty victims, and before Summers, Italy had twice allowed men executed in the U.S. to be buried in its soil. Says Caterina Calderoni, a Milan music teacher who'd campaigned on Summers' behalf since 1998: "America is still a young society, and some values that we've developed over centuries have still not matured." Around 4 p.m., as the sky darkened, Summers was lowered into a 2-m-deep grave. Kok-de Bruijn and Calderoni, the 2 who had spent time with the deceased, were the only ones crying. Fuligno then stepped up onto the nearby pile of earth and invited mourners each to toss a handful of dirt onto the coffin, as his fellow Baptists always do. After hesitating, the onlookers began to step forward. And, slowly, the white casket adorned with the teenagers' magic-markered calligraphy disappeared under a layer of soft, brown earth. (source: Time Magazine) PENNSYLVANIA: Mumia Supporters Rally In Philadelphia Several hundred people who support celebrated death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal are demonstrating in Philadelphia today, the 25th anniversary of the death of slain police officer Daniel Faulkner. Some marchers say Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing Faulkner, did not get a fair trial. Others oppose the death penalty, or say it's applied in a racist manner. Karl Swinehart, a 30-year-old graduate student, says he believes Abu-Jamal was targetted because he was an outspoken black radio personality. The demonstration comes a day after widow Maureen Faulkner gathered with prosecutors and other supporters to mark the anniversary. Abu-Jamal was convicted of shooting the 25-year-old Faulkner after the white police officer pulled over Abu-Jamal's brother in 1981. In 2001, a judge overturned the death sentence but not the conviction. Both sides are appealing, with arguments expected early next year. (source: Associated Press) ************** OPEN-&-SHUT CASE THAT WON'T CLOSEStill no resolution for either side of Abu-Jamal debate IT IS A MURDER STORY that - at least based on the forensic evidence - would not seem to make for a particularly compelling script for a crime show like "CSI: Miami" or "Cold Case." A cab driver is identified by several eyewitnesses as the killer of a Philadelphia police officer. The slain cop was shot by a .38-caliber gun like the one owned by the cabbie, and the driver was discovered at the scene of the murder, struck by a bullet fired from the police officer's gun. Case closed? Not when the man convicted of the killing and once condemned to death is Mumia Abu-Jamal, a charismatic and articulate former radio journalist who had ties to the radical Black Panthers and MOVE. And not when the murder took place in the Philadelphia of the early 1980s, a city seething with racial tension and controversy over a police department dogged by allegations of brutality. Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the murder of the police officer, Daniel Faulkner, and with Abu-Jamal serving what is now a life sentence in a western Pennsylvania prison - his death sentence was overturned in 2001 - it is difficult to say what is most remarkable about the case at the quarter-century mark. Is it the fact that Abu-Jamal's conviction remains as controversial today as the day it was handed down at his 1982 trial and maybe more so - thanks in large part to something that barely existed at that time, the Internet? Or is it the global reach of the case, with the facts of Abu-Jamal's trial and imprisonment almost better-known on the wide streets of Paris or Hamburg than on the narrow alleyways of his native Philadelphia? "With the Mumia case, those grass-roots organizations that had been following the case since its beginning - and sustaining some of the conspiracy theories - were able to harness the Internet to spread these theories and advocate action across space and time," noted Michael Smith, a communications professor at La Salle University. "I suspect that there may be another groundswell with the 25th anniversary." Indeed, both sides of the seemingly endless debate over Abu-Jamal's guilt or innocence will seek to use the publicity over the anniversary to rally more support for their respective sides. Opponents of Abu-Jamal's continuing appeal, including the officer's now highly visible widow, Maureen Faulkner, hold a fundraiser today at the Union League to honor District Attorney Lynne Abraham and to raise money for a scholarship fund. Tomorrow, busloads of Abu-Jamal supporters are slated to descend on Philly for a string of protests. No one is more surprised at the staying power of the controversy than the man who went to crime scene on Dec. 9, 1981, as a reporter for the Daily News, Linn Washington, now a journalism professor at Temple University. "Absolutely not," said Washington, when asked if he'd thought people would still be arguing about the case in 2006. Washington over the years has become an advocate for a new trial for Abu-Jamal. He said that as the legend of the case has grown around the world - highlighted by the decision last year of a Paris suburb to name a city street after Abu-Jamal - he's given a lot of thought as to why that happened. "Abu-Jamal is unique in terms of the people on Death Row," Washington said. "He can read and write and he is an articulate guy." More importantly, Washington noted, every generation has its case that comes to define broader issues of race and justice - such as the famed Scottsboro Boys, black men accused of a rape in Alabama in the 1930s - and the Abu-Jamal case has become that case for the late 20th century and now into a new millennium. With the Abu-Jamal case, there are so many intersections with the broader questions about race and justice in Philadelphia that for many, the cold, hard facts have melted into the background. In 1981, the city was not only near the peak of a generation of urban decay and population flight, but it was still feeling the aftershocks of the divisive 1970s and the mayoralty of Frank Rizzo, who was tough on crime but also dogged by allegations of police brutality. Abu-Jamal, now 52, born Wesley Cook, was at the center of that maelstrom. As a youth, he'd been active for a time with the Black Panthers. As a radio journalist with WHYY, he'd covered some of the major race-related stories of the '70s, most notably the running battle between the city authorities and the radical group MOVE. Over time, Abu-Jamal grew close to the MOVE effort. He even sought to have the group's founder, John Africa, defend him in his 1982 murder trial. Most people who have followed the case believe that Abu-Jamal's association with MOVE has cut both ways - helping to publicize his case - especially after the notorious 1985 bombing that killed 11 MOVE members and burned a chunk of West Philadelphia - but perhaps not helping him win new allies here in Philadelphia, where many saw the radical group as a polarizing force. Efforts by surviving MOVE members, such as Ramona Africa, to publicize the Abu-Jamal case eventually began to succeed with a small network of far-left political groups. They include the Partisan Defense Committee, a New York-based group that dates back to the Trotskyite movement of the 1930s, and the Maryland-based Quixote Center, a group with roots in the Catholic "liberation theology" that flourished in Central America during the 1980s. While these groups are not well-known, their involvement and their ability to produce protesters began to have a cumulative effect. At the same time, many activists and some journalists were looking for someone who could personify the plight of America's growing death row population, and this attractive, dreadlocked and articulate former journalist seemed too good to be true. One such journalist was Noelle Hanrahan, a radio reporter based in San Francisco who in 1992 was covering the first execution in California since the death penalty had been reinstated in America in the 1970s. As she prepared her coverage, Hanrahan said this week, "I thought that something was missing - the voices of death row inmates." "I was stunned - I had done hundreds of interviews, and I never had recorded anybody who was so professional," Hanrahan said. Her association with Abu-Jamal led to the Prison Radio Project, an ongoing effort in which Abu-Jamal's recorded "radio essays" continue to receive distribution around the globe. That effort in turn caused National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" to offer the inmate a regular commentary slot - an offer that was withdrawn amid a firestorm of controversy from the Fraternal Order of Police and from conservatives. That controversy was part of a kind of "perfect storm" in the mid-1990s. Abu-Jamal's ongoing criminal appeals gained a high-powered advocate in 1992 with liberal attorney Leonard Weinglass, and the NPR flap brought on board Hollywood celebrities like Ed Asner and Mike Farrell and well-known authors like E.L. Doctorow, who became high-profile Abu-Jamal advocates. For some of those advocates, the facts of Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial were clearly secondary to the broader issues. Asner has said he never read the transcript but told ABC News in 1998 that "I just know that the trial stunk." Michael Smerconish, the Philadelphia attorney-turned-talk-radio-host and Daily News columnist, said that Abu-Jamal's growing group of well-known supporters "cobbled together a series of half-truths" and were able to sell to people outside of the city what sounded like "a convincing story of police brutality in a city known for police brutality." Smerconish became a leader of a conservative backlash, but the irony is that by fighting back, the opponents of a new trial for Abu-Jamal have also helped to keep the story in the public eye. In recent years, advocates for Abu-Jamal have tended to focus more on the issue of whether he received a fair trial than on what happened on the night Faulkner was killed. "It's not an issue of innocence or guilt, but an issue of guilty or not guilty," said Marc Lamont Hill, a Temple University professor of American studies and urban education who frequently writes about the Abu-Jamal case on his blog, "The Barbershop Notebooks." He compared the case, in that regard, to the O.J. Simpson case, saying the questions about the justice system and police conduct are what resonate with many African-Americans. Indeed, the calls for a new trial already have become a hot potato in the 2007 mayoral race because one of the front-runners, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, has backed the call for a new trial, drawing intense criticism from the FOP. Opponents of a new trial say that not only would the passage of time make a fair trial even more difficult, but there's a broader fundamental question. "It makes no sense," said Joseph McGill, who prosecuted the 1982 trial and is now in private practice, saying the judicial system can't grant new trials simply on the basis of popular opinion. He noted that at least 20 judges have reviewed Abu-Jamal's conviction and not one has sought to overturn it. But those judicial rulings seem to have little impact on the public profile of a case that seems to have lost its appeal as a whodunit years ago, but continues to find life in a brand-new century as a political Rorschach test. (source: Philadelphia Daily News, Dec. 8) VIRGINIA: Danville Commonwealth's Attorney disagrees with decision Gov. Timothy Kaine's decision 6 days ago to delay the execution of Percy Walton has raised questions among Danville residents. Jonathan Hackworth, who works at Midtown Market, said Friday the delay is unnecessary based on the previous reports that found Walton to be mentally capable. Danville Commonwealth's Attorney William H. "Bill" Fuller III goes even further in his disagreement with the governor's decision, calling the delay a "questionable procedure that could have adverse effects on the judicial system." "He (Walton) has had all of the hearings that anyone could possibly have and they've all gone against him," Fuller said. Percy Walton, 28, convicted triple killer, was set to be executed 2 days ago by lethal injection. Walton pleaded guilty in 1997 to murdering Jessie and Elizabeth Kendrick and their neighbor, Archie Moore, in 1996. In the 10 years since the murders, Walton's mental capacity and his level of competency have been in question. Twice Kaine now has delayed Walton's execution. The 1st came in June when the governor issued a 6-month delay to allow for an independent evaluation of Walton's mental condition and competence. The latest delay will an additional 18 months, until June 10, 2008, for "continued observation" of Walton's mental state. Walton's attorney, Nash Bilisoly, contends that Walton is not capable of understanding the concept of death and is mentally retarded. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the execution of the insane and the mentally retarded, to be unconstitutional. When talking with area residents on the streets Friday, the majority felt that if Walton is truly mentally retarded, then he should not be executed. Mark Govoni said he is "very conflicted" about the execution of a person who may or may not be "mentally incapacitated." "It's worth a look," he said. But others believe Walton might be exaggerating his mental state in attempts to avoid the death penalty. "I think a whole lot of it is an act," said Johnny Johnson. ******************** Response by Jack Payden-Travers to Danville Commonwealth's Attorney disagrees with decision Governor Kaine's order to stay the execution of Percy Walton was the correct thing for him to do. I personally went to visit Mr. Walton at Sussex I State Prison back in 2003 and found that one could really not communicate with him. Although I am not a mental health professional I worked many years ago during college in several psychiatric hospitals and I think he is mentally incompetent and thus is not eligible for execution under a US Supreme Court ruling that was issued back in 1986. Mr. Walton didn't even know what electrocution meant and yet he had checked it as his "choice of method of execution." It amazes me that no mental evaluation was requested before the original trial and that makes me question the competency of counsel that the state provided for at that time. The fact that the Governor of Virginia is forced to address these issues is another sign that the capital punishment system in Virginia is broken. It would have been cheaper for the state to try Mr. Walton under a first degree murder charge rather than a capital indictment. Life without parole is the cheaper option. Of course the best alternative would have been preventative treatment at the time his mental condition first appeared which was some years before the murders were committed at age 18. But to do that Virginia would have to invest in mental health options and treatment facilities rather than building more prisons. Can we really still believe that execution is the solution to mental illness? This case once again points to the need for a moratorium on executions and a thorough study of Virginia's Capital Punishment system. Jack Payden-Travers, Director, Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (source: Danville Register & Bee) OHIO: Family wants delays to end Family members of murder victim Tami Engstrom are asking for the public's help in putting her killer to death. Engstroms sister, Debi Heiss, flanked by her mother and brother, offered an emotional plea Friday to the community to start a letter writing campaign, asking state leaders to not grant convicted murderer Kenneth Biros clemency or reduce his sentence to life in prison. "We cannot have anymore delays," Heiss of Hubbard Township said. "Our family has been through enough pain and devastation over the past 16 years. This is a case that has Kenneth Biros' own admission of guilt while he testified on the witness stand. "He has been given more humanity and mercy from the state than my sister ever had," she said. A clemency hearing is scheduled for Jan. 4 in Columbus. Biros was sentenced Oct. 29, 1991, to die for killing Engstrom of Hubbard and leaving her dismembered remains in Ohio and Pennsylvania. His execution date is set for Jan. 23. He is being held on death row in Mansfield. "We are urging people to please get their letters or anything they can in before the 4th is possible," Heiss said. Family members met on Friday with officials from the Attorney General's Office, Trumbull County Prosecutor's Office and the Victim Division of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to discuss what is going to and what could happen in the weeks leading up to Biros' execution. Biros has joined as a party in a federal lawsuit that tests the constitutionality of the death penalty by lethal injection. The lawsuit challenging the injection as cruel and unusual punishment was filed in early November in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, and is being heard by Judge Gregory L. Frost. The litigation was filed by Richard Cooey, a death row inmate who was convicted in 1986 of throwing slabs of concrete from an Interstate 76 overpass into the windshield of a car carrying to female students from Akron University. After striking the auto, Cooey went to the highway and raped and murdered both co-eds. Heiss declined to comment on Biros joining the suit. Biros is one of 10 convicted killers from Trumbull County on death row. None have been executed so far. (source: Tribune-Chronicle)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., VA., OHIO
Rick Halperin Sun, 10 Dec 2006 16:33:06 -0600 (Central Standard Time)