[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., VA., OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

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)