[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.J., CALIF., IOWA, VA.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 26


TEXAS:

Austin man pleads guilty to 2 murders to avoid death penalty----Under
deal, he'll likely spend the rest of his life in prison, district
attorney's office says.


In a deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty, Edward Lee Scott of
Austin admitted Tuesday to fatally stabbing his ex-girlfriend's son and
her 12-year-old granddaughter in 2004.

For pleading guilty to each of two counts of capital murder, Scott was
given a life sentence, said Buddy Meyer, the trial chief in the Travis
County district attorney's office.

Under Texas law, Scott will be eligible for parole after serving 30 years
of the 1st sentence. The second sentence would begin only after he is
granted parole, almost guaranteeing he'll spend the remainder of his life
in prison.

Prosecutors had informed Scott that they intended to seek the death
penalty against him at trial, Meyer said.

Scott, 52, has previous convictions for burglary and theft. Court records
show he lived on Poquito Street in East Austin, near Kealing Middle
School.

On June 11, 2004, Scott went to Shirlee Medlock's house on Tanney Street
in East Austin while Medlock, Scott's ex-girlfriend, was taking an
early-morning walk, according to a police affidavit.

When Medlock returned, she found her 25-year-old son Maurice Johnson, who
suffered from cerebral palsy, laying in a pool of blood and Scott with a
butcher knife, the affidavit said.

Police later found Medlock's granddaughter, Kreanna Johnson, dead in a
back bedroom. Kreanna was a 6th-grader at Lamar Middle School.

Scott demanded money from Medlock and forced her into her rented SUV and
they drove away, the affidavit said. Medlock escaped the SUV a few blocks
away, at the corner of 12th Street and Springdale Road, and called police,
according to the affidavit.

About two hours later, officers with the Taylor Police Department arrested
Scott at the home of a relative. His clothes were stained with blood, the
affidavit said.

(source: Austin American-Statesman)

**********************

Packed dockets spur cry for help----County's lead attorneys want the
go-ahead to hire more staff


A shortage of prosecutors and other legal staff is hampering the county's
efforts to keep up with a growing number of criminal and child abuse
cases, the county's two top lawyers said Monday.

District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal and County Attorney Mike Stafford will
ask Commissioners Court today to authorize hiring 49 prosecutors, 3 civil
lawyers and additional clerical staff to assist the new attorneys.

"The main issue is that we need help," said Rosenthal, who described the
situation as urgent enough for him to appeal directly to the court. "We
are fast and efficient, but the problem is that we don't have the time to
look more deeply into cases to make sure the right decisions are made."

Commissioners Court will hear the requests for additional lawyers at its
mid-year budget review meeting, when it also will discuss budget proposals
from other county departments.

Rosenthal and Stafford, who oversees the county's civil lawyers, said
their caseloads have been steadily rising for at least 6 years. Additional
cases due solely to the arrival of Hurricane Katrina evacuees did not
prompt their requests, but Stafford said child protection cases involving
evacuees had created a greater need for more lawyers.

Cost is unclear

Stafford's child protective division represents county or state agencies
that seek custody of abused children or seek a court order ending a
parents' parental rights.

The influx of evacuees "has definitely caused our caseloads to go up, and
we are still getting new cases involving Katrina evacuees," he said.

Rosenthal declined to say whether he was seeking more prosecutors in
response to a rise in some crimes in the year since since Katrina evacuees
arrived from the New Orleans.

He did not say how much it would cost to hire 49 prosecutors, who would be
brought on over 2 years.

The minimum salary for a prosecutor is $51,468, and the maximum is
$115,000, said Dick Raycraft, the county's management services and budget
director. That means annual salaries, minus benefits, for 49 prosecutors
could cost between $2.5 million and $5.6 million.

Rosenthal said the caseloads for his attorneys are large and growing, with
prosecutors coming in early and staying well into the night. Turnover has
risen in the office in part because prosecutors don't earn overtime for
working long hours, he said.

The district attorney's office, he said, has 238 prosecutors, well below
the number per capita in the nation's other populous counties.

"To be even with Dallas County, per capita, we would have to add 110 new
prosecutors" Rosenthal said. "Now, I'm not asking for that many, but we
need to do something."

The district attorney's office in Maricopa County, the Arizona
jurisdiction that includes Phoenix, has 343 prosecutors for a population
only slightly smaller than Harris County's 3.7 million, according to
Rosenthal's statistics.

Most would handle felonies

Harris County has 6.4 prosecutors for every 100,000 residents, Rosenthal
said. He said Dallas county has 9.4 and Bexar and Tarrant counties each
have 9.6.

He expects 34 of the new prosecutors would be assigned to felony work, 15
to misdemeanors.

Stafford is looking to add three lawyers and five administrative
assistants to the child protective division - already the biggest within
the county attorney's office. It has 19 of the county attorney's 90
lawyers.

That division's caseload has gone up 50 % since 2000, he said.

(source: Houston Chronicle)






NEW JERSEY:

Judge defends speaking out----Supreme Court hears arguments in Mathesius
hearing


Do you lose your right to free speech when you take an oath and don the
black robes of a judge? Or is a judge who speaks his mind "on a soapbox
with your robes on?"

Those questions were at the heart of arguments heard by the state Supreme
Court yesterday during a disciplinary hearing for Superior Court Judge
Bill Mathesius.

Mathesius, 66, faces allegations that he violated the canons of judi cial
conduct for remarks to jurors, a letter and comments to other judges, and
a controversial opinion he wrote in 2002 upholding the conviction of death
row inmate Ambrose Harris. Harris was sen tenced to death for the 1992
killing of Kristin Huggins, 22, a Bucks County, Pa., artist who was
kidnapped from a parking lot in Tren ton.

The Advisory Committee for Ju dicial Conduct has recommended that
Mathesius, who has been on the bench since 2002, be suspended for 6
months, 3 without pay, from his $141,000-a-year job.

Before an audience of lawyers, other judges and supporters, Mathesius
portrayed himself as the tar get of a judicial establishment stung by his
harsh words about criminal justice issues. He said a "skein, a piece of
thread" ran through all the incidents: "My overreaction to injustice."

Such remarks brought sharp responses from Justice Barry T. Albin, who
handled most of the questioning during the proceeding.

"You realize you're not a jury," Albin said at one point. "You're not both
judge and jury... The common thread was overreaction."

The case against Mathesius, a former Mercer County prosecutor and
Republican county executive known for his outspoken nature, has offered a
rare glimpse inside the world of judicial etiquette. Mathesius sought to
have 2 of the high court's seven justices barred from hearing his case;
the court denied his request but Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz recused
herself independently.

Mathesius yesterday acknowledged some missteps, noting he apologized to
jurors in a criminal case for disagreeing with their ver dict to acquit a
Trenton man. He said he spoke to the jurors only to let them "understand a
little more about the process."

"What the hell were you thinking?" some jurors testified that Mathesius
demanded. He denied saying that.

Mathesius admitted that speaking to the jury was wrong, but said that on
the civil side, where he sits now, he is able to control that im pulse.

Mathesius then defended his controversial Harris opinion, calling it the
"genesis of my being here."

In that opinion, Mathesius pointed out the high cost of death penalty
appeals, noting that it seems "even more unwise to perpetuate the myth"
that the death penalty can "provide any of the in tended purpose of
punishment or general deterrence, much less be actually meted out."

When retired Justice Daniel O'Hern, who was on the ACJC panel that first
heard the complaints against Mathesius, asked him how he had "the temerity
to make these comments, I said, 'If I didn't, who would?'" Mathesius said
yesterday.

During the Harris hearings, Harris' lawyer told him it didn't matter how
the judge ruled in the postconviction relief appeal, be cause he would
continue to appeal to the state Supreme Court and the federal courts,
Mathesius told the justices.

"I was aghast," Mathesius said, about an appeals system that consumes
millions of tax dollars with no one actually executed since 1963. "I felt
someone should say something."

"You're remarks were not slips of the tongue," Albin said. "It was a
written opinion. It was not relevant to the case. It was you, on a soap
box with your robes on. You don't get the opportunity to make political
statements...You were asking the Legislature to repeal the death penalty.
What gives you the right?"

Albin read part of Mathesius' opinion: "One might hope, instead, that this
state and its citizens would, if no more than as a consummately practical
deduction, simply resolve to set aside the comfortable pieties of the
argument, eliminate the death element of the game and determine to
maintain criminals of the defendant's ilk in a secure place without
possibility of parole."

"Perhaps it was a failure of language, certainly wretched excess,"
Mathesius conceded.

But to the extent that he is punished for the Harris opinion, Mathesius
said, "It does impose a very substantial chilling effect on the 400 or so
other judges (in the state)."

"You want us to sanction other judges writing on irrelevant topics?" Albin
asked.

Mathesius said that he did.

For his part, Mathesius' attor ney, Arnold Lakind, discussed other cases
where judges have faced punishment including the re cent censure of
Superior Judge Rosemarie Williams for driving while intoxicated. Williams,
now serving in Middlesex County, had previously been suspended for three
months for public alterca tions with her boyfriend.

Another judge, Randolph Subryan of Passaic County, who was accused of
kissing a law clerk against her will, was suspended in July for 2 months,
Lakind said, arguing the behavior of both Williams and Subryan was more
egregious than Mathesius' actions.

Lakind also said a letter that Mathesius sent to Judge Jane Grall, an
appeals judge who overturned one of his cases, was protected by the First
Amendment and that the missive was personal rather than professional.

Albin asked Lakind whether a letter from a lawyer to a judge say ing, "You
don't know the law, you're not very smart," would be protected as free
speech. Lakind said it would. Albin then read from the code of judicial
conduct and characterized the letter as "insult ing, undignified and
scurrilous."

But Patrick Monahan, who laid out the case against Mathesius for the ACJC,
was also questioned, especially as to the panel's recommendation for a
6-month suspen sion. "Isn't there a principle of progressive discipline
that should be applied?" asked Justice James R. Zazzali, who is due to
become chief justice next month when Poritz retires.

Monahan agreed but noted that Mathesius had twice been privately
reprimanded by the ACJC on various issues.

"When does it stop? When does it sink in?" Zazzali remarked.

The justices will rule on the case later.

(source: The Times of Trenton)






CALIFORNIA:

Calif. guards bungled Williams execution: official


A Californian official admitted on Tuesday that state prison guards had
bungled the recent controversial execution of former gang leader Stanley
Williams, but denied that lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual
punishment.

Dane Gillette, California's senior assistant attorney general, spoke at
the start of a four-day federal court hearing into whether lethal
injection, the procedure used for executions in 37 U.S. states, causes
undue suffering.

Gillette cited the December 2005 failure to connect a back-up intravenous
line to the left arm of Williams, a condemned killer and former Crips gang
leader from Los Angeles who garnered global publicity after writing
anti-gang books.

"Williams was a lesson well-learned that will not happen again," Gillette
told Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose.

Guards typically attach 2 intravenous lines to condemned inmates, one as a
back-up to assure the continuous flow of chemicals that anesthetize,
paralyze and then kill. Witnesses saw the San Quentin staff struggle to
insert the IV into Williams but officials at the time did not concede any
problems had occurred.

"That's the only instance that we know of," Gillette told Reuters during a
court break. "That was the redundant arm ... (the IV) did not work."

In court Gillette said California's mix of drugs to render unconscious and
then kill condemned inmates led to a "quick, painless death."

Lawyers for condemned California killer Michael Morales presented
witnesses who had seen what they described as painful executions as well
as medical experts to support its contention that that lethal injection is
unconstitutional.

The California case is one of several nationwide in which courts are
reviewing lethal injection. Last week Florida executed a murderer who had
earlier won a last-minute U.S. Supreme Court reprieve for further
consideration of lethal injection. Federal courts in Arkansas, Delaware
and Ohio have also postponed executions for such reviews.

PAIN SO SEVERE?

"This case is not about the morality or the effectiveness or the
desirability of the death penalty -- that's a matter for the legislature,"
Fogel said at the start of the day. "The issue is California's
implementation of lethal injection."

"The question is whether the degree of pain is so severe it raises
questions under the Eighth Amendment" (against cruel and unusual
punishment).

Morales, who has confessed to the 1983 torture, rape and murder of a
17-year-old girl, was spared execution in February after San Quentin
prison officials could not comply with the judge's order that 2
anesthesiologists be present.

On Tuesday, Judge Fogel, who earlier this year made an unusual visit to
San Quentin's execution chamber, said his options in the case were to
approve or deny California's lethal penalty procedure or propose
conditions to the process.

California has 655 people on its condemned inmate list, some of them there
since the late 1970s. Their numbers are growing so steadily on death row
at San Quentin north of San Francisco that penal officials are planning an
expansion of the 154-year-old prison.

(source: Reuters)


*********************

A Slow and Very Painful Death----Witness to an Execution


Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel is conducting hearings in San Jose this week to
examine California's lethal injection procedure. The intended outcome of
these hearings is to determine whether condemned prisoners in this State
are being properly anesthetized so that they do not experience
excruciating pain during executions. Execution protocols that provoke
extraordinary pain violate the U.S. Constitution's provision against cruel
and unusual punishment of prisoners.

This challenge was brought before the court by lawyers for condemned
prisoner Michael Morales. Morales was scheduled to be killed in February
2006 but was saved when State officials were unable to meet new conditions
set by Judge Fogel involving medical professionals' participation in the
execution process. The judge wanted to ensure that prisoners stay asleep
as they are being poisoned, given that the investigation of recent
executions shows Stanley Tookie Williams, killed by the State on December
13, 2005, likely died a slow and very painful death.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger considers such an effort on the part of
Judge Fogel as no more than the federal court having "interjected itself
into the details of the state's execution process."

While I appreciate Judge Fogel's willingness to consider such challenges
to California's killing process, I already know the truth of what prison
officials did to Stanley Tookie Williams on December 13th. I know how he
suffered because I saw Stan die in San Quentin State Prison's death
chamber and it was the most horrific experience of my life-and no doubt
the most horrible for Stan.

It began as I awaited the killing of Stan, when prison guards told me that
"the whole thing"-the execution of my friend-would only take a few
minutes.

It took a total of 35 minutes, during which Stan was tortured virtually
every second before he stopped breathing.

Stan's so-called quick and painless death was first botched when it took
25 minutes and many needle "probes" into Stan's arm to find a viable vein
for the insertion of a lethal cocktail of three different drugs.

Stan's death process was botched again when Stan most certainly awakened
after being put to sleep by the first drug. I say that because I saw
Stan's body writhe in pain and desperation-though he wasn't supposed to be
able to move at all after the second drug, pancuronium bromide, a
paralyzing agent, was administered. That drug did prevent him from crying
out, opening his eyes and flailing his arms so that we, the witnesses to
his death, would not be made uncomfortable by the discomfort of a dying
man in terrible pain.

But during the "humane" execution, as advertised by the State, Stan's
stomach heaved so mightily that it distorted itself, as he apparently
awakened to the terror of slowly suffocating to death from lungs that
could no longer move and to agonizing pain caused by a third drug that
induces a heart attack.

I walked into the death chamber praying to God to save Stan. I prayed that
the phone would ring, that the execution would be stopped. But as I
watched Stan suffer, as I watched his 250-pound body contort so that his
rib cage looked as if it belonged to someone dying of starvation, I begin
to pray that God would take Stan right away by speeding up his death, to
stop him from being tortured by the State of California.

President George W. Bush recently stated that "the United States does not
torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values." But what
happened to Stanley Tookie Williams on December 13, 2005, was, in fact,
torture and does reflect our true values.

An execution is the planned murder of another human being. The 35-minute
scenario of torture that occurred during Stan's "civil" ritual of death
was just an extra dose of inhumanity. If prevailing public sentiment
supports-or is even indifferent to-the torture-murder of any one of us,
then we are allowing ourselves to be dominated by vengeance, not justice;
by cruelty, not compassion; by barbarism, not morality.

I was a witness to an execution. I saw close-up the "details of the state
execution process," as minimized by Governor Schwarzenegger's comment. But
those mere "details," from the Governor's point of view, are now my
forever nightmare.

Judge Fogel's hearings will provide Californians with an opportunity to
look at facts that reveal the gap between our idealized values and our
reality: people are being periodically tortured to death at San Quentin.
What are we going to do about that?

(source: CounterPunch - Barbara Becnel was Stanley Tookie Williams'
advocate, co-author and editor)





IOWA:

Death penalty likely to be sought in murder case


Prosecutors likely will seek the death penalty for the spouse of a former
Burlington woman who is charged with killing their 1stborn child,
according to a spokesman for the DuPage County, Ill., State's Attorney's
office.

A final decision will be announced next month.

"The death penalty is still very much on the table," spokesman Paul Darrah
said. "(Neil) Lofquist is set to appear Oct. 23 and that is when we will
let the court know which way we are leaning."

Lofquist of Clarendon Hills, Ill., is charged with 1stdegree murder and 2
counts of predatory criminal sexual assault in the death of his 8yearold
daughter, Lauren. Lofquist has pleaded not guilty.

Police allege that about 8 p.m. March 26 Lofquist entered his daughter's
bedroom where he sexually assaulted and then strangled her.

He then took his daughter to a bathroom where he allegedly submerged her
head in a toilet while stabbing her in the neck with a knife.

The girls' body was discovered by a neighbor a short time later.

Lofquist allegedly told police he killed his daughter because voices in
his head claimed his daughter was evil. The former Sunday school teacher
will use insanity as a defense despite the fact he lacks a history of
mental illness.

Lisa (Willson) Lofquist, a 1985 graduate of Burlington High School, was
home at the time of the murder, but was unaware it had occurred.

(source: The Hawk Eye)






VIRGINIA:

Death row inmate to ask for stay of execution


A man slated for execution Friday on charges he robbed, raped and killed
an 88-year-old James City County woman, will seek a stay of execution.

His attorneys say Jerry Terrell Jackson will probably make his request
today.

Jackson was convicted of climbing into Ruth Wilma Phillips' apartment in
August 2001 through an open bathroom window. Police say he robbed her,
sexually assaulted her and smothered her with a pillow.

Police linked Jackson to the crime 4 months later after his fingerprints
matched a thumbprint on a scrap of paper in the dead woman's wallet.

The Virginia Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in 2004.

But now his attorney says Jackson is ready to begin the federal appeals
process.

A spokesman for the Virginia Attorney General's office says the state will
not oppose the request.

(source: The Associated Press)