[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ALA., MISS., CONN., ARIZ., ILL.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 17




ALABAMA:

Jason Sharp Sentenced to Die in Morris Murder


Thursday marked the beginning of the end of a nightmare for a Valley
family.

A jury convicted Jason Sharp in the rape and murder of a Valley nurse,
then handed down the death penalty.

Thursday, it was Judge Laura Jo Hamilton's turn.

"Its over, totally over," says Lynn Morris, Tracy Morris' mother.

Tracy Morris was raped and stabbed to death 7 years ago.

Her family's nightmare has been in courtroom one of the Madison County
Courthouse for three weeks.

"It's bad enough that our baby was murdered but having to wait 7 1/2 years
is just cruel. It's not fair," says Morris.

Just 2 weeks before, jurors in the Jason Sharp trial decided that the
murder and rape of Tracy Morris was heinous, atrocious and cruel,
recommending the death penalty.

Thursday, Judge Laura Joe Hamilton made her decision known.

"The jury felt like he deserved it. We've always felt like he deserved it
and thankfully the judge agreed," says Prosecutor Rob Broussard.

A decision that took less than an hour sentenced Jason Sharp to death.

Judge Hamilton reaffirmed in her own words that the crime was wicked,
outrageously evil and vile.

All the while Sharp, clad in orange, sat with his head down. He never once
made eye contact with a family he ripped apart.

"I tried to help that boy. I tried to help him and what did it get me? My
baby's dead that's what it got me. He killed my baby," says Morris.

While it's a disappointing day for defense attorneys, they say it's not
over.

"We weren't totally surprised obviously we were disappointed but that's
not what we wanted for sure, his process is just beginning," says defense
attorney Allen Mann.

(source: WAFF 48 News)






MISSISSIPPI:

U.S. High Court to Decide Whether to Hear Mississippi Death Penalty Appeal


Joe Rigby and other members of the family of Katie Belle Moore are ready
for the quarter of a century saga of Bobby Glen Wilcher to end.

Wilcher came within minutes of being executed on July 11. A reprieve came
from the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court meets Monday to determine
if there is something in Wilcher's case worth its further consideration.
An announcement could come as early as Oct. 2, when the court's new term
begins.

"It's been a disappointment to us from the way it's been put off from time
to time," said Rigby, the circuit clerk of Scott County who was county
coroner when Moore, his aunt, and Velma Odell Noblin were killed in 1982.

"We are ready for it to come to an end," Rigby said. "The emotional
letdown ... we had come that close and it was put off again. I don't think
you can get used to it."

Wilcher, now 43, was sentenced to death for the slayings. After meeting
them at a Forest bar, Wilcher persuaded the women to drive him home and
diverted them down a deserted road.

Their blood-soaked bodies were found sprawled along the muddy banks of the
dirt road. Each woman had been stabbed and slashed more than 20 times,
according to authorities.

Wilcher's case has gone through two trials, two re-sentencing hearings and
countless appeals.

Supreme Court watchers have said the Wilcher case contains elements in
which the justices have shown an interest - whether to execute the
mentally ill and when to cut off a condemned inmate's appeals.

"The Supreme Court has shown a good deal of interest lately in the issue
of the capacity of death row inmates to make the decision that they wish
to be executed," said Jackson attorney Cliff Johnson, who represents
Wilcher.

"I think their granting a stay in this case is a further indication that
the Supreme Court recognizes the need for clearer rules and guidance for
courts addressing those issue," Johnson said.

In June, Wilcher told a federal judge he wanted to drop his appeals. A
July 11 execution date was set. Wilcher himself then filed an appeal with
the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, saying he had changed his mind. The
5th Circuit declined to stop the execution.

Attorney General Jim Hood has contended that Wilcher knew what he wanted
to do and his wishes should be honored.

If the Supreme Court decides against hearing Wilcher's case, Hood has said
he will go back to the Mississippi Supreme Court for a new execution date.
Johnson said if that happens, he will resume filing appeals for Wilcher.

Johnson said he hopes to get to argue before the Supreme Court that "Bobby
should have been examined by professionals who could determine his
competency to waive his appeals."

"I am also every eager to argue to the court that it's never too late for
someone to change his mind regard whether or not he wishes to be executed.

The 5th Circuit ruled that 4 days prior to execution was too late for
Bobby to decide to pursue his appeals.

"I believe that will be of particular interest to the Supreme Court,"
Johnson said.

(source: Associated Press)






CONNECTICUT:

Shays Works Both Sides of Politics


It's hard not to notice U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays these days. At any
time, he might be on national TV news and talk shows, expounding on
anything from his support for the war in Iraq to his disgust with the Bush
administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

Can this be the Republican the voters of the 4th Congressional District
elected to represent them 19 years ago?

The same person who as a young man was a conscientious objector to serving
in the Vietnam War and 40 years later has evolved into a strong supporter
for the U.S. war in Iraq? The same man known for trying to clean up
decaying inner-city housing? Who fought for gun control? Who lobbied for a
national service program? To some, Shays, who turns 61 next month, is a
powerful asset to the district in Washington, someone who has paid his
dues while gaining national political stature - and influence. To others,
he has betrayed his independent roots, becoming the ultimate Beltway
insider, out of touch with the everyday concerns of constituents. But no
matter how his supporters or critics label him, there is no question the
Bridgeport resident has expanded his range of concerns since he joined
Congress in 1987.

A conscientious objector to military service during the Vietnam War, Shays
said he agonized over, but ultimately voted to approve, the U.S.-led
Desert Storm assault against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991.

A candidate who ran for Congress determined to "put our financial house in
order" amid rising federal budget deficits, Shays has endorsed higher
military spending.

And perhaps most conspicuously, Shays has become an authority on terrorism
who also is a staunch defender of the current U.S. war in Iraq, though he
recently called for setting a pullout timetable for American forces.

Now, as he seeks an 11th term this year, Shays is under more scrutiny than
ever, but not just because of his higher profile.

The spotlight is on the 4th District because Democrats have what experts
consider a solid chance to capture the seat, which has been in GOP hands
since 1969, as part of their effort to regain control of the House of
Representatives they lost in 1994. The Democrats need to take back 15
seats nationally to claim a majority in the 435-member body.

Largely because of waning public support for the war, Democrats - with
former Westport First Selectwoman Diane Farrell as their standard-bearer -
think they can win the seat Nov. 7.

Shays has supported the Bush administration drive to topple Saddam Hussein
even before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

After his first trip to Iraq shortly after the U.S.-led forces quickly
overthrew Saddam's regime, Shays predicted that decades henceforth "the
operation will be studied with a great amount of awe."

Even so, he acknowledged the effort would be marred if stability could not
be established in Iraq.

As his first campaign against Farrell heated up a year and a half later in
2004, Shays returned from his sixth trip to Iraq and said conditions there
were "headed in the right direction."

Then, last month, after his 14th trip to Iraq, Shays asked the Bush
administration to set a timetable for Iraqis to assume "the bulk of the
heavy lifting" from the 135,000 U.S. troops deployed.

It prompted charges that Shays is trying to shift gears away from his
support for the war because of its unpopularity in the state - a factor
widely cited in last month's Democratic primary defeat of U.S. Sen. Joe
Lieberman at the hands of anti-war newcomer Ned Lamont.

Shays, however, described his call for a pullout as a means to motivate
Iraqis to create a united and peaceful democratic state.

"If I saw action - a real strong political will to take on the militias, I
wouldn't have set deadlines," he said, a few days after his revised stance
hit the news. "But they are not moving, they are treading water and we
can't do that while our men and women are dying in Iraq."

Still, Farrell said Shays' motivation was "purely political" designed to
attract voters.

"He's thrown out the word 'timetable' because he feels it will afford him
some appeasement from voters who are so frustrated by his position," she
said.

Farrell also said she thinks the Republican victory that put Shays in the
majority brought out a more conservative side of him that has grown
stronger.

"I think [former Republican House Speaker] Newt Gingrich awakened the more
conservative side of Chris," said Farrell, who came within 4 percentage
points of unseating Shays in their first matchup.

And she suggested that spending so much time in Washington has put him out
of touch with his district.

Farrell's campaign likes to note that Congressional Quarterly shows Shays
voting with the current president 82 % in 2002. Though Shays' agreement
with Bush fell to 56.2 % last year, it's still higher than the 32 % rate
at which he supported President Reagan's initiatives in 1987. During the
Clinton years, his rate of agreement with the president ranged from 44 to
57 %.

Meanwhile, the Shays campaign staff likes to point to ratings from
political handicappers like the National Journal that place Shays closer
to the middle of the political spectrum - much where he has been
throughout a political career that began as a state representative from
Stamford in 1974.

Over that period, Shays has continued to advocate a woman's right to
choose, although he refuses to defend late-term abortions, and favors gun
control. He remains an ardent environmentalist, in contrast to others in
his party.

And throughout his career, he's retained a reputation for integrity and
been provoked to criticize the ethics of other officials, ranging from
now-jailed former Bridgeport Mayor Joseph P. Ganim to indicted former
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas.

But even Shays acknowledged that his perspectives are different from those
he had at age 20 or so.

"I have seen a lot in those 40 years that have shaped my life," he said in
an interview last week.

As an idealistic and somewhat pacifistic young man, the newlywed Shays and
his high school sweetheart and wife Betsi were volunteers with the Peace
Corps in Fiji.

But Shays - who grew up as a Christian Scientist but said last week that
he no longer adheres strictly to its practices - said his political
journey has prompted him to reconsider many of the positions he held in
his youth.

Recalling his days as a young state legislator, Shays remembered the
anguish suffered by the family of Sandy Hoyt, a Stamford teenager brutally
murdered, but whose killer received a "ridiculously short" sentence in his
eyes. The Hoyts, he said, could not believe they could not address the
court to plead for a longer sentence.

He said it was a sobering experience that not only pushed him to fight for
victims' rights but also softened his opposition to the death penalty to
the point where he would no longer vote against a bill simply because the
measure permitted execution.

He said becoming a parent - his daughter, Jeramy, a 27-year-old student in
environmental law in a combined program at Vermont Law School and Yale
University - was also a key development in his emotional maturity.

"I constantly learn new things that shape how I think and act," he
reflected. Sometimes, he said, information builds up over time, and at
other times "you get slapped by events."

Shays' confronted his aversion to war after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990.
During the runup to the debate on whether to authorize United States'
intervention, he was confronted by calls from the parents of his state
House successor, Christopher Burnham, a Marine reservist who would be
called up, not to support the authorization. But Shays said Burnham
himself lobbied the congressman to vote for it, as he eventually did.

After his initial stint on the House Budget Committee ended in the late
1990s, Shays sought a new role. With the 1983 attacks on U.S. Marines in
Beirut and the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 as
backdrops, Shays said he sought a legislative role that would allow him to
examine terrorism, feeling that it was underexplored. Shays said that in
his role as head of the National Security Subcommittee of the Government
Reform Committee, he was growing increasingly alarmed about the threat of
terrorism before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But those events, Shays said, became a defining moment for him.

"It's what I call growing up," he said of the ways he has changed over the
last 5 years.

But Farrell hopes to win over voters on the issue of Iraq, as polls have
shown shrinking public support.

"Iraq is, in fact, never going to result in greater safety for our
citizens at home," she said.

Despite Shays' stance on Iraq, Sacred Heart University politics Professor
Gary L. Rose said the congressman remains a classic so-called "Rockefeller
Republican," somewhat conservative on fiscal issues - he supported the
Bush tax cuts - and more liberal on social issues.

"He's a very specific type of congressman, which is in the tradition of a
Connecticut Republican," Rose said. While Republicans of a similar stripe
may be rare throughout the rest of the nation, he said they remain a force
in the Northeast, epitomized by figures such as former New Jersey Gov.
Christine Todd Whitman to Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins in Maine.

Shays' moderate positions on social issues and "Americans first,
Republicans second" attitude keep constituents like Bill Meyer of
Westport, a 77-year-old retired marketing executive who met Shays as a
1987 candidate and is now a close friend, resolutely in the incumbent's
corner.

"He has a way of listening to people and taking their concerns seriously,"
said Meyer, who also spearheaded a Republican effort for Farrell's
re-election as the town's 1st selectwoman in 2001.

Meyer said he'd be just as protective of Farrell if Shays - who has never
lived in Westport - had sought to challenge her for her post.

Those who work with Shays say his recent high national profile doesn't
mean he's neglected issues important to his district and state.

Charles Tisdale, the executive director for Action for Bridgeport
Community Development, said Shays has a long history of concern for the
poor.

"He was always concerned about people who didn't have means to support
themselves," said Tisdale, who said he's been a friend of Shays' for 20
years.

Over the years, he said, the congressman has fought to save funds for
anti-poverty agencies, such as ABCD, and in recent weeks helped deliver an
additional $455,000 for job-training programs.

Shays has also worked closely with business-development interests in the
4th District.

Joseph McGee, a vice president of the Business Council of Fairfield
County, said Shays actively promotes efforts to assure the economic
vitality of his district's coastal cities on issues ranging from workforce
development to technology to transportation. "We see him as very engaged
in the key issues in the district," said McGee.

Chief of staff to Shays' Republican predecessor, the late Stewart B.
McKinney, McGee said that some of Shays' current stances reflect the
nation's altered interests.

"All congressmen were focused on domestic issues until there was an Iraq,"
he said.

Tisdale said Shays' career is typical for someone who's accumulated
congressional seniority.

"The more seniority you have, the more responsibility you have," he said.

But he said the current hot campaign between Shays and Farrell is
representative of the democracy that makes this nation special.

"It's great that people look at the candidates," he said. "That's what
makes us strong."

(source: Connecticut Post)






ARIZONA:

Death Penalty Out in Loop 101 Crash


Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas announced on Friday that he
withdrew his office's notice of intent to seek the death penalty in a
vehicular homicide case stemming from an April 2005 crash on Loop 101 in
Scottsdale.

Thomas submitted his notice to county Superior Court on Friday, following
the counsel of his office's Capital Review Committee, which cited as a
factor recent information that Scottsdale police officers failed to adhere
to department pursuit policies.

David Szymanski, 23, of Fountain Hills was traveling the wrong way on Loop
101 when he led police on a chase before his Chevrolet crashed into a Ford
Escort driven by 23-year-old Matthew Lewis of Scottsdale.

The crash resulted in the death of passenger Cody Brett Morrison, 22, of
Scottsdale, and injured Lewis and passenger Nicholas Rosin, 23.

Thomas said in a news release that the factors in his decision to withdraw
his death penalty recommendation included an admission by the Scottsdale
Police Department that the officers had violated departmental policy when
engaging Szymanski in pursuit.

The county attorney also cited Szymanski's acquittal on aggravated assault
charges and the unavailability of witnesses to prove prior offenses.

Morrison's parents, Mark and Denise Morrison of Scottsdale, received a $1
million settlement from Scottsdale, and Lewis and Rosin each received a
$500,000 settlement from the city, according to information from the city.

Although the death penalty recommendation is withdrawn, Szymanski still
faces one count of first-degree murder, 3 counts of aggravated driving
while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, one count of criminal
damage and 1 count of disorderly conduct, according to William FitzGerald,
spokesman for the county attorney's office.

Szymanski is to appear in Superior Court for a status conference in the
case Jan. 10.

In July 2005, a Scottsdale Police Department review board found the
officers who chased Szymanski violated the department's pursuit policy,
which states, in part, that pursuits only are permissible if the suspect
has committed a violent or dangerous felony or if "an immediate or
articulable threat to human life exists."

Mark and Denise Morrison said Friday they heard about the county
attorney's office withdrawing its intent for the death penalty for
Szymanski, but they didn't want to comment about the case at this time.

(source: East Valley Tribune)






ILLINOIS:

Whatever His Motivation Ryan Had it Right on the Death Penalty


The many critics of ex-Ilinois Gov. George Ryan must see a delicious irony
in the fact that Ryan, who commuted the death sentences of the more than
160 prisoners on his state's death row, has now been sentenced to prison
for convictions of racketeering conspiracy and fraud.

But beyond the easy jokes to be made about that turn of events, there are
bigger questions. Did Ryan commute those sentences right before he left
office in 2003 because he really believed, as he said, that his state's
capital-punishment system was broken? Or did he take the unprecedented act
of commuting the sentences, in most cases to sentences of life without
parole, to try to make himself look good as his own legal troubles
mounted?

Americans like their heroes to be all good and their villains all bad. But
that's rarely the way it is. The way it is is Richard Nixon opening up
American relations with China, then getting mired in Watergate. The way it
is is George Wallace, the Alabama governor from all those years ago,
scapegoating blacks for years, then apologizing for his actions and
winning the votes of many blacks.

And the way it is is George Ryan, a Republican who once supported the
death penalty, turning against it - and winning a nomination for a Nobel
Peace Prize along the way. His change in attitude wasn't an about-face, as
his critics suggest. Ryan had twice vetoed bills that would have added new
eligibility factors to his state's death penalty, and in 2000 he declared
a moratorium on the punishment and appointed a commission to explore its
administration. Finally, about to leave office and with the Illinois
legislature having failed to act on reform, Ryan commuted the sentences.

Several of the cases were especially heinous. But Ryan apparently saw that
if the system was broken for 1 death-row prisoner, it was broken for all.
"Frustrated by the impossibility of picking and choosing among cases on
any principled basis, Governor Ryan has said he ultimately decided against
'playing God,' " Scot Turow writes in his nonfiction book, Ultimate
Punishment. Turow, the lawyer and novelist, served on the governor's
commission on the death penalty.

The death penalty in Illinois is broken, just as it is here and in the
rest of the nation. It's administered arbitrarily, and there are far too
many serious mistakes made by cops, prosecutors and defense lawyers. In
Illinois alone, work by reporters and college students helped lead to
several death-row prisoners being exonerated by the time Ryan commuted the
sentences for all those others.

But taking on the death penalty is hardly a popular thing, especially for
a Republican who could have used the support of more of his
pro-death-penalty, Republican friends as he was tried. He was sentenced
earlier this month.

Ryan could have used all the help he could get, because his trial showed
that he wasn't much of a white knight in many areas, even in the
scandal-ridden world of Illinois politics. As he was sentenced the other
day, Ryan apologized for a scheme "in which prosecutors say he put
taxpayers' money toward campaign work, lied to federal agents, and handed
out contracts and leases to his friends in exchange for gifts, including
island vacations, for himself and his family," The New York Times
reported.

"People of this state expected better," Ryan said in court. "I let them
down. For that, I apologize."

He's a sad, sick old man whose "booming baritone" will now echo hollowly
against prison walls, at least for whatever he serves of the 61/2 years he
got in prison.

And the big question will linger, that of whether he commuted all those
death sentences because he really felt it was the right thing to do, or
because he felt like it would make him look good in court, or because he
thought it would at least give him some sort of a legacy. Perhaps it was a
little of each. The only ones who know for sure are Ryan and his God.

But this much is known: More than 160 ex-death row inmates in Illinois are
sure glad Ryan acted, whatever his motivation was.

And one of those prisoners may even be innocent.

(source: Winston-Salem Journal)