[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, WASH., VA., FLA.

[Rick Halperin]

June 20



TEXAS:

Death penalty defendant complains of Statesman coverage


Got a letter from Milton Dwayne Gobert this week. He's the Travis County
capital murder defendant facing the death penalty whose case will be heard
soon by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Gobert, 35, didn't like the Statesman coverage (read it here) of the
announcement by the state's highest court that it granted discretionary
review in the case.

"When you write about me, write the whole truth and not half truth and
implied guilt toward me," wrote Gobert in opening his 4-page letter.

Gobert has been locked up in the Travis County jail since 2003, when he
was arrested and charged with stabbing his ex-girlfriend's friend,
30-year-old Mel Cotton, in North Austin. Gobert was also accused of
stabbing Cottons then 5-year-old son, who survived.

His case has been held up on appeals centered around whether a confession
prosecutors say he gave to Austin police should be allowed at trial.

State District Judge Bob Perkins, the trial judge, ruled it should not be
allowed because Austin homicide detectives continued to question him after
Gobert invoked his right to an attorney. The 3rd Court of Appeals agreed
with Perkins, and then reversed course and ruled Goberts statement was
lawfully obtained.

Most of Gobert's letter quoted from 3rd Court Justice Jan Pattersons
dissenting opinion in the case.

"Police deceived me of why I was there to be questioned and there (sic)
manner of questioning," Gobert wrote. "Your facts were wrong, and implying
guilt on me through innuendo were (sic) wrong; so if you want to print
something print the truth."

(source: Austin American-Statesman)






WASHINGTON (state):

County's $2 million secret ---- Where did money go in murder trial?
Newspaper files suit in search of answers


Months after 2 men were convicted and sentenced for murder, Yakima County
officials are refusing to release records of how defense attorneys in the
case spent $2 million in taxpayer dollars.

County officials have turned down a public records request by the Yakima
Herald-Republic on the grounds that billing records are sealed by a
Superior Court judge and the courts are not governed by the Washington
State Public Records Act.

The bills were submitted to Yakima County by several attorneys defending
two men convicted of killing a father and his 3-year-old daughter in their
Yakima apartment in 2005.

The Herald-Republic, which has chronicled the unprecedented cost of the
case as it unfolded over the course of three years and has worked for
months to gain access to the billing records, will file suit today against
Yakima County.

Herald-Republic Editor and Vice President Sarah Jenkins said Thursday the
records quest is more than a simple exercise in open government and that
the unusual procedural history of the case, along with the huge billings
by defense attorneys and the fact that those same billings remain
off-limits, has long-term implications on public policy.

"This isn't about the

Herald-Republic's right to this information -- it's about the people's
right to know how $2 million of their money was spent," she said.

The newspaper is suing only as a last resort, she said, noting the
Herald-Republic has incurred more than $10,000 in legal fees in the case
so far during a time when slumping revenues are causing significant
concern in much of newspaper industry.

"We have tried every tack short of a lawsuit to break through this
unfathomable system," she said. "Part of the frustration has been that we
never get a yes or no on our request for documents. It's always, 'We'll
have to ask somebody else.'"

Yakima County Prosecutor Ron Zirkle said he supports the newspaper's
attempt to gain access to the billing records but also does not want to
run afoul of the court.

He said his deputies will file a motion, supplementary to the newspaper's
lawsuit, asking the court for direction. "My job is to follow the law," he
said, "only I don't know what the law is."

The dispute centers on the billings submitted by court-appointed attorneys
for Jose "Junior" Sanchez and Mario "Gato" Mendez, who were accused and
convicted in the shooting deaths of 21-year-old Ricky Causor and his
3-year-old daughter, Mya, during a drug rip-off in Yakima in February
2005.

By the time the trial was over earlier this year, two sets of lawyers for
Sanchez, who was a candidate for the death penalty, had racked up nearly
$1.5 million in defense spending. The team defending Mendez, who was not
considered for the death penalty, spent just over $561,000.

But the dispute also exposes shortcomings in the statutory framework of
potential death penalty cases in Washington and fears by some that defense
attorneys are deliberately trying to bankrupt counties as a way of scaring
off prosecutors.

Prosecutor Zirkle made a controversial call early on when he gave
Sanchez's defense team of Jackie Walsh and Steve Witchley a year to
prepare a report on their client called a mitigation packet. Walsh and
Witchley, both from Seattle, were on a short list of lawyers in Washington
qualified to handle such cases.

The mitigation packet is an informal practice in Washington based on case
law that requires prosecutors to consider circumstances in a defendant's
background that might mitigate the decision to seek the death penalty.

It is not required by law, but prosecutors, mindful that roughly half of
the state's death penalty cases have been overturned by the courts over
the past 20 years, have adopted the practice as a hedge against such
appeals.

By law, prosecutors contemplating the death penalty have 30 days to file
notice. They can extend the deadline, however, with permission from the
defense.

Despite being given a year to prepare, Walsh and Witchley missed the first
deadline, then broke several more before they were tossed off the case by
Superior Court Judge James Hutton for misconduct related to their handling
of a witness in the case.

The state Attorney General's office recently confirmed it is investigating
the witness-tampering allegations against Walsh and Witchley. A spokesman
for the Attorney General's office would not, however, discuss the case in
detail, and the extent of the inquiry remains unclear.

By the time they were taken off the case, they'd had racked up roughly $1
million in pretrial costs. Not until October 2006 -- more than a year and
a half after the first 30-day deadline passed -- was the mitigation packet
ready. The packet, however, was made moot by Zirkle's decision not to seek
the death penalty on other grounds.

In an interview last December, Zirkle said he rejected the death penalty
against Sanchez because he feared weak evidence in the case wouldn't
survive scrutiny on appeal.

After a delay of nearly 21/2 years, Sanchez finally went on trial last
November. He was convicted of aggravated first-degree murder by a jury and
was sentenced to life in prison without parole, the only other possible
sentence than the death penalty for aggravated murder.

Mendez pleaded guilty to 1st-degree murder before Sanchez went on trial
and testified Sanchez was the shooter. In March he was sentenced to 30
years in prison.

A central figure in the case has been Superior Court Judge James Lust, who
ordered the records sealed after he was appointed to oversee requests for
defense spending. In that role, Lust came to be known as "the budget
judge."

Brendan Monahan, the Herald-Republic's attorney, said having a judge sign
off on all the financial paperwork in the case was a setup peculiar to
Yakima County that blurred the judiciary's role.

"The fact that the person who approved the payments was wearing a robe is
an interesting wrinkle," he said, "but it doesn't change the fundamental
nature of the administrative action." That makes the records
administrative in nature and thus subject to the state's open record laws,
he said.

The state Legislature last year amended the Public Records Act to make it
clear that legal fees paid for by taxpayers are public records, and an
appeal ruling last month in a Thurston County case applied the new rule
retroactively, Monahan said.

"We don't have any objection to the redaction of protected work product,
we simply want to know where the money went," he said.

(source: Yakima Herald-Republic)






VIRGINIA----impending execution

Attorneys file stay of execution for Virginia killer


Attorneys for a man scheduled for execution Wednesday for nearly
decapitating a store owner during a robbery are asking the governor and
the U.S. Supreme Court to spare his life.

Attorneys for 30-year-old Robert Stacy Yarbrough asked the high court to
step in Friday. They already had petitioned Governor Timothy Kaine for
clemency.

They argue the jury should have heard about Yarbroughs difficult
upbringing by a mother addicted to drugs and alcohol before sentencing him
to death. They also claim his public defender should have challenged DNA
evidence used to convict him and that the prosecutor unfairly struck black
potential jurors.

Yarbrough would become the 100th person executed in Virginia since capital
punishment was reinstated 3 decades ago.

(source: Associated Press)

FLORIDA----impending execution

Schwab's Attorneys File For Stay Of Execution----Lawyers Said Injection
Would Cause 'Substantial Risk Of Serious Harm'


The man who would be 1st to die when Florida resumes prisoner executions
has filed new court motions to try to avoid his date with death.

Mark Dean Schwab's execution is set for July 1.

Schwab tortured and murdered an 11-year old Cocoa boy in 1991.

(source: WESH News)