Feb. 4 SOUTH CAROLINA: 'Abbeville Horror' trial a grim reminder of rebellion----Son 1st in his family to be tried in 2003 shootout over road widening that killed officers The Bixbys weren't from Abbeville, people there are quick to note. Steven Bixby arrived in the mid-'90s from New Hampshire. His parents followed several years later. The Bixbys were notorious in New Hampshire for filing lawsuits involving property and tax disputes, according to newspaper reports. They were fond of the state motto: "Live Free or Die" This quaint town (Abbeville, S.C.) near the Georgia line, billed as both cradle and grave of the Confederacy, is loaded with landmarks to anti-government rebellion. There's Secession Hill on Secession Avenue, where the first mass meeting was held in 1860 to launch South Carolina's me-first break from the Union. There's the antebellum mansion where fleeing Confederate President Jefferson Davis admitted in 1865 that the war was over. And there's the Confederate boutique, just off the square, run by the modern-day secessionist League of the South. But on the edge of town looms a more current and ominous marker to government resistance. The modest house its white siding striped with bullet holes, two crosses planted beneath a magnolia tree stands off Highway 72 like a nightmare vision of this region's don't-tread-on-me spirit. 2 lawmen were killed there on Dec. 8, 2003, during a 14-hour shootout between 200 law enforcement agents and a family that refused to give up about 20 feet of land for a road-widening project. Dubbed by some the Abbeville Horror and likened by one defiant family member to bloody showdowns in Waco and Ruby Ridge, Idaho, the tragedy rocked the town. Now this community of 5,700, tucked in the rolling upstate hills, awaits this week's long-delayed trial of Steven Bixby, 39, whose charges include two counts of murder. His father and mother will be tried separately. Arthur Bixby, 75, faces murder charges. He stood with Steven until a tank crashed through the front porch and a 1,500-round salvo led to their surrender. Steven's mother, Rita Bixby, 74, allegedly used a gun to threaten residents at an apartment complex across town during the standoff. Her charges include accessory to murder before the fact. Jury selection for Steven Bixby's trial begins Monday on the other side of the state, in Chesterfield. The trial, expected to last three weeks, then moves to Abbeville's century-old courthouse, where Sheriff Charles Goodwin said security will be "intensive." Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Defense lawyer Bill Nettles said his client maintains the slain law enforcement agents were trespassing and didn't leave the property when asked. "He and his family have very deep-seated beliefs about the limited role government should be playing in our lives," Nettles said. "Those beliefs colored the way they viewed the events of Dec. 8, 2003. They feel like what they were doing was exercising their constitutionally protected rights." Meanwhile, the house where the horror took place remains boarded up, its cramped interior largely unchanged since the smoke cleared. A shattered mirror hangs opposite a Dale Earnhardt calendar. A pocked refrigerator stands beside a counter lined with cereal boxes. A living-room bookshelf sags with do-it-yourself legal tomes. The TV is cracked, but an album collection Hank Williams, Hank Snow, Ray Price looks intact. Stacked on the floor are boxes and boxes of ammo. That morning the Bixbys warned highway workers assigned to widen the road in front of the house to stay off their property. The state said it had obtained a 1960 easement from a prior owner. (source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution) NEW YORK: A Moment in Court, an Impact Less Fleeting It was a startling gesture: The convicted killer of 2 detectives, sentenced to die by jurors who had found him remorseless, stuck out his tongue. In that fleeting moment the condemned man, Ronell Wilson, 24, may have set a marker on his case for years to come, complicating appeals for a new trial or clemency. His death sentence, delivered in Brooklyn Federal Court on Tuesday for the 2003 murders on Staten Island, drew broad publicity as the 1st execution ordered in a federal case in New York in more than half a century. In the shorthand of tomorrow, Mr. Wilson may well become the killer who stuck out his tongue. "A jury's verdict that someone deserves to die is in some sense conditional," said Robert C. Owen, a law professor at the University of Texas who is handling the appeals of 3 clients on federal death row. "This becomes the thumbnail sketch of this individual as the case goes forward." That sketch could forever color public perceptions, no small matter in an arena where one life is at stake, two have already been lost, the legal ground is constantly shifting and the endgame is a matter of politics and emotion. Similar distinctions have affected other capital proceedings, experts believe, like the case of Robert Alton Harris, the killer of 2 boys in California who is remembered for having paused to eat one victim's hamburger afterward. He was executed in 1992. Now Mr. Wilson's momentary gesture has become the centerpiece of a new contest to define him. Defense lawyers, victims' advocates and opinion columnists have sought to portray the incident in contrasting ways. His defenders say the act, though juvenile, may have been provoked. Others say it shows how callous he is. Some in court that day say they did not have a clear view. As lawyers prepare Mr. Wilson's appeal, interpretations of his behavior are fast settling, not only with the general public but also among the prosecutors, appellate judges and politicians who could one day have a say in his fate. "This kind of perception somehow finds its way in the process, in almost indefinable ways," said Ephraim Savitt, a lawyer for Mr. Wilson. "Human beings, even the most learned judicial people in the world, are affected by the things they see and read and hear." In death penalty cases, in which prosecutors must persuade jurors, appellate judges, governors or presidents to endorse taking lives, any factor can be critical. For one condemned man in California, his courtroom outburst has factored prominently into the appeals process. At his sentencing hearing in 1996, the man, Richard Allen Davis, convicted of kidnapping and killing Polly Klaas, baselessly accused the 12-year-old girl's father of child molestation. In imposing a death sentence, Judge Thomas C. Hastings told Mr. Davis, "You made it very easy today by your conduct." Mr. Davis's appellate lawyer is seeking a new trial, citing publicity surrounding the case and his client's vilification in the press. The lawyer, Phillip H. Cherney, is portraying Mr. Davis's behavior as an inevitable consequence of an unrestrained atmosphere surrounding the trial. "It's not what you would like," Mr. Cherney said. "You would like your client to be respectful and remorseful and humble. Maybe that's an expectation that isn't fair." In the Brooklyn case, Mr. Wilson's appellate lawyers will seek to put the least damaging interpretation on his gesture. Prosecutors could use it to depict a lack of remorse. And for the judges, or perhaps politicians weighing a request for clemency, it could prove difficult to overlook. Indeed, the parties immediately began working to shape perceptions. Defense lawyers characterized Mr. Wilson's act as immature, befitting their portrayal of him at trial as traumatized by a miserable childhood and possibly brain damaged. The president of the Detectives Endowment Association, Michael J. Palladino, said Mr. Wilson had "taunted the families as he exited the courtroom." Both interpretations, poised at opposite ends of the spectrum, are defensible. The courtroom was filled to capacity that day. Relatives of the slain detectives, James V. Nemorin and Rodney J. Andrews, generally filled one side of the gallery, joined by police officers and detectives. Across the aisle, relatives of Mr. Wilson filled the front row. Behind them sat an assortment of death penalty opponents and other observers. The courtroom was quiet as the jury foreman began to give the panel's responses to the questions on the 29-page verdict form. When he answered "yes" to the first question of ordering capital punishment, there were reactions from all parts of the courtroom, even as he continued to read the remaining answers. Someone on the victims' side of the room shouted "yes," and there was brief clapping. The Wilson family huddled together. Someone in the gallery called out, "And the Lord rejoices." When the foreman was done, the jurors filed out. Mr. Wilson's brother yelled obscenities. The defendant's mother, Cheryl Wilson, shouted: "You all murderers now." People hugged and wept and shouted. And Mr. Wilson stuck out his tongue. Was he reacting to the sentence? To the rejoicing or comments from the victims' relatives? Was he trying to insult the widows? Was he trying to rebuke the jury? Were his lips dry? Was he simply overwhelmed? Only Mr. Wilson knows, if anyone knows at all. Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis quickly cleared the courtroom, temporarily forgoing the formality of setting a sentencing date. But the gravity of Mr. Wilson's gesture was readily apparent. Most news accounts, including a front-page article the next day in The New York Times, singled it out for mention ahead of reactions from others, saying that after the verdict was read, Mr. Wilson "rubbed his palms, looked at his mother, then stuck his tongue out at the families of his victims." The city's tabloids highlighted it, and The New York Post published an artist's caricature. As the week wore on, opinion columns and news accounts continued to underscore and interpret the gesture, some describing Mr. Wilson as "remorseless." On Thursday, Newsday quoted Detective Nemorin's sister Giselle saying she was the target of the gesture, after she stared at Mr. Wilson after the verdict and said, "Thank God." At a news conference on Thursday morning, the widows of the slain detectives both said they had not seen the gesture. MaryAnn Andrews, the wife of Detective Andrews, said: "I didn't realize that he stuck his tongue out. My focus was on the family." The other widow, Rose Nemorin, said, "I wasn't looking at him, focused on him," but added, "The glance that I took as the jury read the verdict really told me that he was a cold kid, a coward." The defense lawyer, Mr. Savitt, said his line of sight had been blocked by another lawyer, but he did not dispute that Mr. Wilson had made the gesture. Instead, he characterized Mr. Wilson's behavior as a response to insults directed at the defendant's mother. "His reaction was juvenile and inappropriate, but hardly the stuff Hannibal Lecter movies are made out of," Mr. Savitt said, noting that Mr. Wilson had been criticized during the trial for failing to show any emotion. "He sticks out his tongue like a 7-year-old. It's not the reaction of somebody who's going to take out people at the Bureau of Prisons later." (source: New York Times) NEW JERSEY: When life without parole is worse than death ----Analysis finds more than 100 murderers who might one day go free would face certainty of dying in prison When a state commission recommended last month that New Jersey abolish the death penalty in favor of life imprisonment without parole, some lawmakers called it the latest example of going soft on crime. But a Star-Ledger analysis of trials since August 1982, when capital punishment was reinstated, shows scores of murderers would have been punished more harshly under the life-without-parole bill proposed by the Death Penalty Study Commission. Had it been enacted 25 years ago, the number of executions would have remained unchanged, at zero, while more than 100 murderers who might one day go free would face the certainty of dying in prison. Danny Harris is one of them. He fatally shot an Irvington man in 1991 -- a murder prosecutors said was commissioned by a woman who wanted her sister's abuser killed. At a special sentencing hearing, jurors found Harris had murdered for pay, making him eligible for execution. But they also found 13 reasons to spare his life, ranging from his troubled childhood and learning disabilities through his history of alcohol and drug abuse to the brain damage he suffered in a motorcycle accident. Sentenced to a flat 30 years in prison, Harris will be 61 when he reaches his release date in 2021. Had the commission's proposal been in effect, he would be serving life without parole. So would Thomas Reigle. In 1984, while stealing money to buy drugs, he hit his 63-year-old uncle in the head with a pipe, killing him. Because the murder occurred during a burglary, it exposed him to the death penalty. A jury spared his life because he had emotional problems, no serious criminal record and committed the crime while high on speed. He will become eligible for parole in 2015, at age 53. The commission proposal would change that sentencing procedure in two ways. It would eliminate the threat of execution as well as any opportunity for a jury to exhibit mercy. No longer would jurors decide whether a defendant deserves leniency because of age, prior clean record, charitable works, cooperation with police, mental defect, intoxication, upbringing or manipulation by others. They would look only at the crime. If the jury found it fit any one of a dozen categories of "aggravated" murder, the judge would be required to impose a sentence of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. Public Defender Yvonne Smith Segars served on the commission and supports its recommendation to abolish capital punishment. But she fears its proposed legislation will mean "a huge sweeping of defendants into the life-without-parole category who would never have been subject to the death penalty." Hudson County Prosecutor Edward De Fazio, who represented the 21 county prosecutors on the commission, said, "You're certainly going to end up with more sentences of life without parole than death sentences." He sees no injustice in that. "Somebody who rapes a woman and kills her in the course of that should go away for life without parole, whether it's a 1st offense or not," De Fazio said. Since 1982, when capital punishment was reinstated a decade after it was struck down by the courts, 160 defendants have been convicted of aggravated murder in New Jersey. Only 4 -- all of whose lives were spared -- were sentenced under relatively recent amendments providing for life without parole for a limited number of crimes. 17 died in prison. 7 were freed after their original murder convictions were overturned. Of those, 1 was acquitted at retrial; the other 6 were released after serving their time on reduced charges. 9 are on death row. The other 123 are in prison with a potential parole date. Some, along with the death row 9, have such lengthy mandatory terms that any prospect of parole is largely hypothetical. For others, the hope of getting out of jail is very real. Rafael Slaughter was 22 when he went to a fast-food restaurant, put a gun in the back of an employee taking out trash and ordered him to open the safe. When the teenage employee said he did not know the combination, Slaughter fatally shot him and walked away with no money. He will be eligible for parole in seven years, at age 52. Benjamin Lodato, who as a schoolchild was classified as mentally retarded, was 33 when he went to rake leaves for Cheryl Wilberscheid, a divorced mother of 2 living in Pine Beach. He confronted her with a knife, raped her and stabbed her repeatedly, killing her. Lodato spent 32 months on death row before the state Supreme Court overturned his sentence. He will be eligible for parole in 2012, at age 63. Even Robert Marshall, who spent 2 decades on death row, can hope for freedom. His death sentence -- for paying to have his wife, Maria, murdered in 1984 so he could collect $1.5 million in insurance -- was overturned in federal court last year. He will reach parole eligibility in 2014, at age 75. Marshall's son Christopher has vowed to attend any parole hearings, seeking justice for his mother. Kathleen Garcia, who represented the New Jersey Crime Victims Law Center on the commission, said parole hearings renew the loss felt by families of murder victims. "It's like putting salt in an open wound all the time," she said. In hindsight, she added, enacting a death penalty that allowed parole for those spared was a mistake. "The survivors have been paying for it ever since," Garcia said. Had the commission proposal been enacted in 1982, Marshall, Lodato, Slaughter and the other 120 defendants convicted of aggravated murder all would have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. De Fazio believes it is tougher than a death penalty that exists only in the law books. "In reality, that's the case, as opposed to the theory, where you'd say death is the ultimate punishment. That wasn't the reality in New Jersey," De Fazio said. "As a practical matter, the death penalty in New Jersey was and is a nullity." Lawmakers have already acted to keep murderers who escape a death sentence behind bars longer. In 1996 they instituted life without parole for the murder of a law enforcement officer. The following year they expanded it to cover the rape-murder of a child under 14. (Such harsher punishments cannot be applied retroactively.) Every murderer sentenced to "life" imprisonment since June 29, 2001, must spend 63 years, nine months in prison before becoming eligible for parole -- more than double the old minimum. But in most murder cases, judges still have discretion to impose a prison term as short as 30 years. One exception is if a jury determines the murder was "aggravated." In such cases, a 2000 law mandates life without parole. However, that provision kicks in only when prosecutors seek a death sentence and fail to get it. Segars said the commission's streamlined procedure may make prosecutors more aggressive in seeking life without parole, perhaps to use it as "the new hammer" in plea negotiations. She predicted it will most often be used against the poor and minorities. And if juries can no longer consider a defendant's redeeming qualities when imposing the state's harshest punishment, "at the minimum we would like to see the judge have that discretion," Segars said. Last year, Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union) and Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo (D-Essex) introduced such legislation. Their bills would continue to mandate life without parole for cop-killers and murderous child molesters. For all other aggravated murders, however, the sentencing judge would decide whether to eliminate any chance of parole. Lesniak, however, said he has agreed to toughen his bill to mandate life without parole for every aggravated murder. He said a legislative majority for abolishing capital punishment cannot be taken "for granted" and adopting the commission's stricter approach is "the best way to get that support." Caraballo is considering whether to amend his bill. "I don't like taking all discretion away from judges," Caraballo said. "I've got to look at that carefully. I've got to make sure I don't wind up setting up a barrier to eliminating the death penalty." (source: Star-Ledger) OHIO: Death for the fairer sex Some women have made a less positive impression on history. The Fairer Death: Executing Women in Ohio by Ohio Northern University law professor Victor L. Streib, examines the death penalty in Ohio, how it compares to that in other states, and when it is (and is not) carried out. Ohio imposed the death penalty pre-statehood and hanged one woman for murder in 1844. 3 followed in the 20th-century electric chair. Streib considers 1973 to begin the modern era; since then, 10 women have been sentenced to death and have had their sentences reversed. (The book lists Donna Roberts as being on death row, but in 2006, the Ohio Supreme Court vacated her sentence. Nicole Ann Diar of Lorain remains on death row.) The Fairer Death (198 pages, softcover) is $24.95 from www.ohioswallow.com. (source: Beacon Journal) NORTH CAROLINA: Death penalty issue in unlikely hands The future of the death penalty rests in the hands of some people you would never guess. Steve Troxler grew up on a farm, he still runs a farm, and he never ever thought when he was elected Agriculture Commissioner, he would have to deal with the death penalty. "I think I had no idea that would ever become an issue in the office I'm in, but when the time comes I will exercise my responsibility and weigh in if I have to," Troxler said. On Tuesday, prison officials will ask the nine member Council of State to approve a plan to have doctors at executions, but not participate in the executions. This comes after a court ruling last week halting executions because prison officials did not get approval for that plan. That court ruling comes after a decision by the state medical board forbidding doctors to take part in executions. "The Council of State has a narrow focus and supposed to determine if this is consistent with what the legislature required and that's really all the Council of State does," Gov. Mike Easley explained. Gov. Easley says the case will go back to the judge to decide if that's satisfactory, however the Council of State can pass the issue over to the General Assembly and ask lawmakers to pass a law clarifying the issue. Lawmakers could also leave the issue alone, which would effectively create a moratorium. Meanwhile, Commissioner Troxler normally gets phone calls about the state fair, food safety, or other farming issues, but he's now getting bombarded with calls about the death penalty. Even though the meeting is Tuesday, he says it's not his top priority. "I know the issue is out there," Troxler explained. "I have not been officially notified yet that it will be on the agenda or any proposals out there so until that time comes, that's not something I'm focused on right now." But all eyes will focus on him and the rest of the council when they take up the issue in just a matter of days. If the vote comes down to politics, six of the council of state members are Democrats and three are Republican. (source: News 14, Carolina)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----S. C., N.Y., N. J., OHIO, N.C.
Rick Halperin Mon, 5 Feb 2007 00:50:33 -0600 (Central Standard Time)
