June 20 TEXAS----execution Carjacker executed for slaying of Houston woman Apologetic convicted killer Lionell Rodriguez was executed this evening for the fatal shooting almost 17 years ago of a Houston woman during a carjacking just 3 weeks after he had been paroled from prison. "You have every right to hate me. You have every right to want to see this. To you and my family, you all don't deserve to see this," Rodriguez told the relatives of Tracy Gee, as he looked directly at them as they watched through a window nearby. He said he did not write them a letter to apologize because he wanted to do it "face-to-face." "It is the right thing to do. None of this should have happened. I've got a good family just like you're a good family," he continued. Rodriguez said he hoped that Gee's family could put aside any bitterness because of what he did. "I'm responsible. I'm responsible," he repeated. "I'm sorry to you all. This should have never happened." He thanked his relatives who watched through another window, adding, "We'll see each other again." He muttered a brief prayer, mouthed them a kiss and closed his eyes as the lethal drugs began to take effect. He was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m., 8 minutes later. The U.S. Supreme Court two months ago refused to review Rodriguez's case, and his lawyers said there were no legal avenues left to try to spare him. "We did our best," attorney Alex Calhoun said. "Unfortunately, the courts didn't quite agree with our estimation of a lot of the facts." Rodriguez was 19 and free after serving less than 5 months of a 7-year prison term for burglary and cocaine possession when he and a cousin decided to prowl Houston to act out fantasies they'd seen in the movies. They failed to hold up a gas station because there were too many people around the place. They shot at a motorist in Fort Bend County. When they pulled up at a stoplight in Houston alongside a car driven by Gee, a 22-year-old who was almost home on her way back from her job at a tennis pro shop, Rodriguez wanted her car because theirs was running low on gas. His cousin, James Gonzales, slid back in the driver's seat to give Rodriguez a clear shot with a .30-caliber M-1 rifle he'd stolen from his stepfather, a Fort Bend County police officer. The bullet shattered the passenger side window of Gee's car and struck her in the head, fatally wounding her. Rodriguez jumped into her car, pushed her body to the pavement and drove over her as he sped away. Gonzales, still driving his own car, soon after tried to flee from an officer who was pulling him over for a broken taillight. Fearing he was being stopped for Gee's shooting, he told officers Rodriguez was the gunman. Police then tracked down Rodriguez near his home in Fort Bend County. When arrested, he was in Gee's car, the inside of it splattered with her remains. "It's one of those things where there's not a whole lot of doubt about what happened and who did it," said Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal, who handled the case as an assistant prosecutor. "We had her brains and bone and blood in his hair and all over his body after he sat in the seat where he shot her." Rodriguez confessed. A Harris County jury convicted him of capital murder and decided he should die. The blood evidence and the confession were insurmountable to his defense, said J.C. Castillo, Rodriguez's trial lawyer. "I'd like to think I tried everything," he said. "But when it comes down to the day being over, it's basically, 'Please spare his life, he's so young and there's room for improvement.' It didn't help." Gonzales received a 40-year prison term. Rodriguez's conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 1993 because of a procedural problem in jury selection. The following year, he was convicted a 2nd time and again sentenced to death. Rodriguez becomes the 16th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 395th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982. Rodriguez becomes the 99th condemned inmate to be put to death after being convicted in Harris County, a jurisdiction which has now had more people executed than any individual US state. Rodriguez also becomes the156th condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas since Rick Perry became Governor in 2001; more people have been executed during Perry's tenure in office than under any other single governor in American history. Rodriguez becomes the 24th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1081st overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. Another inmate, Gilberto Reyes, was to follow Rodriguez to the death chamber Thursday evening. Reyes, 33, was condemned for the 1998 rape-slaying of a former girlfriend, Yvette Barraz. She was abducted, beaten and strangled after leaving her job as a waitress in Muleshoe along the Texas-New Mexico state line. (source: Associated Press & Rick Halperin) ******************* 2 condemned Texas inmates lose at Supreme Court 2 condemned Texas prisoners moved closer to execution Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review their cases. The inmates include one set to die in August for raping and fatally shooting a woman while her 2 children were laying nearby in their Bay City home. Kenneth Parr, 27, is scheduled for lethal injection Aug. 15 for the slaying of Linda Malek, 28. At Parr's trial, Malek's then 10-year-old daughter testified how Parr was one of two men to enter their trailer home, attack her mother and steal a television, VCR and other items. The girl and her half brother, then 8, were not injured. She called a grandparent after the intruders left to report the shooting, the only homicide in Matagorda County in 1998. The high court also refused to review the case of Gregory Wright, condemned for the fatal stabbing of a woman 10 years ago at her home in DeSoto in Dallas County. Wright, 38, does not have an execution date. In another Texas capital murder case, the justices refused the state's request to review a lower court ruling that tossed out the death sentence of Billy Ray Nelson, a Big Spring man convicted of raping and fatally stabbing his neighbor more than 16 years ago. In Parr's case, his half brother, Michael Jiminez, also was convicted of capital murder. He is serving a life prison term. Jiminez was 17 at the time of the slaying. Wright was condemned for the March 1997 slaying of Donna Duncan Vick, 52. Wright, from Knox County, Tenn., was homeless at the time when he and another transient, John Wade Adams, were invited by Vick, a religious widow, into her home where she offered them food and a place to sleep. Dallas County prosecutors presented evidence that showed the men killed her with a knife from her own kitchen and looted her home so they could get money to buy crack cocaine. Adams, a native of Tuscaloosa, Ala., also was convicted of capital murder and is on death row. In the 3rd Texas death row case, the high court rejected the state's request to review a December decision from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that overturned Nelson's death sentence. Lawyers for Nelson, 38, contend the Howard County jury that convicted him in 1991 of the slaying of Charla Wheat, 18, was unable to take into consideration his mental disorder, an abusive childhood that included abandonment by his mother and history of drug and alcohol abuse before they decided he should be sentenced to death. A 2nd woman, who was 5 months pregnant, also was attacked at Wheat's apartment Feb. 23, 1991, and pretended to be dead as her roommate was beaten and stabbed 13 times. The wounded woman called for help after Nelson left and identified him later as their attacker. The New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court voted 9-7 in December to overturn rulings of lower courts that upheld Nelson's death sentence. The Supreme Court refused to review that decision Monday. (source: Associated Press) ********* Houston crime lab woes continue to spark debate Hiring a high-priced expert to review and diagnose a problem only to reject his advice is senseless. Houston and Harris County officials have rejected the recommendation of their crime lab's independent investigator to hire a special monitor to review hundreds of questionable criminal cases. The city has spent $5.3 million over 2 years on the independent investigator and his probe of the crime lab and property room. Last week, independent investigator Michael Bromwich released his final report in which he recommended free DNA testing in 413 questionable serology cases and the appointment of the master to review 180 serology cases with "major issues," the Houston Chronicle reported. Houston Mayor Bill White, Police Chief Harold Hurtt and Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal immediately rejected the hiring of a special master, the newspaper reported. They want to finish the job in-house. That may be the cheaper solution, but it is not the wiser approach. Problems with the in-house operations created the problems in the first place. Giving the review of the remaining cases to existing staff, which already has a full slate of duties, is not the most efficient manner to clean up the mess. Rep. Kevin Bailey, D-Houston, is against local criminal justice officials finishing the probe, claiming they should not be investigating themselves. Bailey told the Chronicle he plans to seek the aid of his colleagues in the Legislature to pressure the city into hiring a monitor. Houston and Harris County officials should take that action without being forced to do so. In his final report, Bromwich, a former U.S. Justice Department official, notes the crime lab has made significant progress in the past 5 years, but there is room for improvement. Harris County has 126 prisoners on death row; that's more than 1/4 of the total population awaiting execution in this state. With the national focus on innocence and the Legislature's repeated failure to appoint an innocence commission, it is important for each county to do its best to ensure the integrity of the criminal justice system in this state. (source: Editorial, San Antonio Express-News) TENNESSEE: Court denies appeal of inmate who says chosen method of death is unconstitutional A federal appeals court has turned down the appeal of a death row inmate who has chosen electrocution over lethal injection but now argues that electrocution is unconstitutional. Gary Bradford Cone was convicted in 1982 of bludgeoning to death an elderly Memphis couple -- Shipley and Cleopatra Todd -- while hiding out in their home on Evergreen near Poplar after robbing a jewelry store. The Sixth U.S. Court of Appeals has twice set aside Cone's death sentence, once ruling that his trial lawyer was ineffective and then again after finding that the jury instructions were unconstitutionally vague. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed both of those decisions and reinstated Cone's death sentence. Cone's attorneys then renewed some arguments and raised additional issues to the Sixth Circuit last November, including alleged withheld evidence, faulty jury instructions and ineffective assistance of his attorney. They also alleged that electrocution violates the Eighth Amendment banning cruel and unusual punishment. Since his crimes were committed before January of 1999, Cone was allowed to choose his method of execution and chose death in the electric chair. If an inmate refuses to choose, the default method of execution is lethal injection. "Since Cone selected a method of execution different from the state's default method, his objections to his chosen method of execution are waived and we do not reach the merits of his claim," the 3-judge appeals court panel said in a 2-1 decision filed today in Cincinnati. "We note that even if Cone's claim could move forward, neither the Supreme Court nor this circuit has concluded that electrocution offends 'the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.'" The panel upheld a previous ruling by U.S. Dist. Court Judge Jon McCalla. No execution date has been set for Cone, now 58, who was a Vietnam veteran and prelaw student from Arkansas. He blamed drug addiction, combat stress and mental illness for his crime spree. (source: Commercial Appeal) NORTH CAROLINA: Changes to executions bill blocked Capital punishment supporters failed during a vote on a bill Monday night to add language that was aimed at resuming executions in the state. House Republican Leader Paul Stam and other Republicans tried to amend a bill that adjusts laws governing the practice of medicine in the state. The amendment would have barred the state medical board from disciplining any doctor for participating in an execution. The state requires a physician be present at executions, but the medical board has threatened to revoke the license of any doctor who participates in an execution. The result has been a halt to the death penalty in the state. "Why not talk about it?" Stam said after Democrats killed his amendment before it could be debated. Legal battles now are under way over lethal injection and a physician's role. House Speaker Joe Hackney, a Chapel Hill Democrat, said there is no point passing legislation until the legal questions are settled. "If we pass something, there will just be litigation about what we pass," Hackney said. "We should hold off trying to fix it until the courts get through with it." (source: Charlotte Observer) *********** Race a factor in bar rulings The rogue prosecutors withheld evidence that could have cleared the defendant. They misled the court and the public, and a man's life is in tatters as a result. Later, they were reprimanded by the N.C. State Bar. Sound familiar? But these prosecutors, David Hoke and Debra Graves, were treated much better by their peers on the bar than disgraced Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong. Whereas Nifong was disbarred Saturday, a panel of the bar in 2004 only reprimanded Hoke and Graves. They kept their law licenses. Yet, in a sense, their recklessness was more dangerous than Nifong's. They railroaded Alan Gell, an innocent man, into a death-penalty conviction. The Duke lacrosse players have a stain on their names that will not go away, it is true. But Gell could have lost his life. That's worse. The things Nifong did to those 3 young men and what these lawyers in the state Attorney Generals Office did to Gell are remarkably similar. Ironically, it was the same state Attorney General's Office that exonerated the Duke players. In both cases, prosecutors kept to themselves evidence that should have been shared with defense lawyers. In the Gell case, he was accused of killing a Bertie County man in his home. But Gell, a petty criminal and drug dealer, was in jail on a stolen truck charge when the murder was committed. 17 people say they saw the victim alive after Gell already was in lockup; prosecutors knew this but kept it to themselves. They also kept to themselves an audio recording of one of the people who accused Gell, a teenage girl involved in the murder, who said she had to "make up a story" for police. Lawyers get off light Gell spent 3 years in jail waiting for his first trial. He spent 9 years total in prison, serving half of that time on death row, before finally being cleared in a 2nd trial in 2004. For the grief they caused, Hoke and Graves received the lightest sentence the bar could give. Meanwhile, Nifong's fellow lawyers are far from done with him. He faces possible civil and criminal prosecution. The difference has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with race, money and Nifong having chosen the wrong people to prosecute. If the Duke boys had been the normal moneyless folks who get ground up by an overzealous district attorney, we'd not only never have heard of them, but they could be in prison at this moment. Even they are conscious of this fact. Reade Seligmann, in a statement released after he and the others were cleared in April, wrote: "If it is possible for law enforcement officials to systematically railroad us with no evidence whatsoever, it is frightening to think what they could do to those who do not have the resources to defend themselves." The wrong target The single biggest factor in Nifong's fall from grace is his target. Not only did he take on the well-heeled Duke community, but he pursued a prosecution of 3 young white men accused by a black woman. Part of the nation's outrage is related to a perception among some that a black person can accuse a white person of just about anything and get away with it. Indeed, the case probably would have remained a local matter if not for the role of race. Choosing the right or wrong target is everything to a public figure. Ask former shock jock Don Imus. He'd still have his job had he not chosen to designate as "hoes" a basketball team full of accomplished black women. None of this is to say that Nifong does not deserve everything he is getting. He does. What he did to those three young men was criminal, whether in the legal sense or not, and he added to his misconduct by making wildly inflammatory statements to the media. But he is not alone in prosecutorial misconduct; he is simply paying a heavier price. His unforgivable sin was that he picked the wrong people to mess with. (source: Fayetteville Observer) USA: For the good of the group Among higher primates, aberrational, violent aggressive behavior is dealt with by elimination of the problem for the good of the group. In other words, putting to death a human who commits acts of aberrational, violent aggressive behavior is biologically appropriate. For certain altruistic, ethical and/or religious reasons, a number of people disagree with the concept of the death penalty. There is nothing intrinsically evil in this; however, there is nothing evil in the concept of the death penalty, either. Considering the death penalty to be "vengeance" is all right, too. A study of primate behavior leads one to the premise that what we call "vengeance," "revenge" or the act of "avenging" is normal behavior for certain of the higher primates. One should be aware that instinct uses knowledge. In other words, putting to death a person who has committed a heinous crime in order to eliminate that person for the safety of the public (society) by such methods as hanging and quartering, burning in oil, the electric chair, the firing squad, fatal injection or other interesting methods is merely instinct using knowledge/learning. No one should have a guilty conscience in promoting the death penalty. And no one should feel bad preferring not to use it. However, civil law must act in the best interests of society, and if aberrational, violent aggressive behavior must be eliminated to protect society, then the death penalty should be used. Tom Bishop Warsaw (source: News Leader) **************** Death as Deterrent Capital punishment clearly increases the risk to criminals of engaging in various crimes, especially murder. But does this increased risk affect criminals behavior? Last week the academic debate erupted in the media with an Associated Press article headlined "Studies: Death Penalty Discourages Crime," but even this recognition downplays the general consensus on the findings. The media is a bit Johnny-come-lately in recognizing all the research that has been done on the death penalty over the last decade, with 9 of the 12 refereed academic studies by economists finding that the death penalty saves lives. Some academics are yet to be convinced and argue that the risk of a criminal being executed for murder is so remote that, "It is hard to believe that fear of execution would be a driving force in a rational criminal's calculus in modern America." Yet, before trying to answer whether this risk to criminals is significant, let's first consider how another group that faces similar dangers reacts to the risk of death. Academics classify being a police officer as an "extremely dangerous" job. In 2005, 55 police officers were murdered on the job, while another 67 were accidentally killed. With nearly 700,000 full-time, sworn law enforcement officers in the United States, the murder rate of police officers comes to 1 in 12,500, a ratio that jumps to 1 in 5,600 when we include accidental deaths. Police officers undertake a variety of measures to reduce the dangers: They wear bullet-proof vests, develop special procedures for approaching stopped cars and in some situations officers wait for backup even when this increases the probability that a suspect will escape. These dangers also create strain on officers marriages, contributing to a divorce rate that is twice that of the general population. Officers undertake all these measures as a natural human reaction to the risk of death -- the riskier an activity, the more a person will usually avoid it or take steps to make it safer. The risk that a violent criminal faces from execution is much greater than the risk of a police officer being killed. In 2005, there were almost 16,700 murders in the United States and 60 executions. That translates to one execution for every 278 murders. In other words, a murderer is 20 times more likely to be executed than a police officer is to be deliberately or accidentally killed on duty. Those who argue that the death penalty has no effect on violent crime assume that the risk of execution in no way deters criminals from committing capital crimes. While criminals, just like police officers, are naturally less adverse to danger than, say, school teachers or accountants, the notion that it is irrational for them to take into account such an enormous additional risk is irrational. But a non-trivial issue is how to define the execution rate. It actually matters a lot. When defined as executions per murder committed, academics find that the death penalty deters murders and saves lives. But those academics who instead define their measure as death penalty executions per person in prison find no relationship. Which is the best measure? Clearly, we should consider the real risk to the potential murderers, and executions per murder seems to be a much more direct measure of that risk. By contrast, executions per prisoner includes all sorts of extraneous crimes in the measure. For example, if fewer criminals were arrested and imprisoned for stealing radios from cars, executions per prisoner inexplicably implies that the risks to committing murder increases. It is not at all surprising that this strange measure implies no real link between the execution rate and murders. There is widespread public debate over the effectiveness of the death penalty. Unfortunately, this has included some misleading reporting in the popular press. Take a widely publicized New York Times study that compared murder rates in 1998 in states with and without the death penalty. The Times concluded that capital punishment was ineffective in reducing crime, noting that "10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average ... while half the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above the national average." This simple comparison really doesn't prove anything. The 12 states without the death penalty have long enjoyed relatively low murder rates due to factors unrelated to capital punishment. When the death penalty was suspended nationwide from 1968 to 1976, the murder rate in these 12 states still was lower than in most other states. What is much more important is that the states that reinstituted the death penalty had about a 38 % larger drop in murder rates by 1998. There were no executions in the United States between 1968 and 1976, a time when murder rates skyrocketed. Various explanations were put forward in the 1970s to explain the jump in violent crime. Some claimed that the Supreme Court's Miranda decision mandating that suspects be read their rights during arrest reduced criminal confessions and otherwise hindered convictions. Other theories blamed softer criminal penalties or lower arrest rates. Back in the 1970s these studies were generally inconclusive, however, due to the poor quality of the data available at the time, especially a lack of crime statistics by state. This research was conducted as violent crime rates were plummeting while executions were rising sharply. Between 1991 and 2000, there were 9,114 fewer murders per year, while the number of executions per year rose by 71. Generally, the studies over the last decade that examined how the murder rates in each state changed as they changed their execution rate found that each execution saved the lives of roughly 15 to 18 potential murder victims. Overall, the rise in executions during the 1990s accounts for about 12 to 14 percent of the overall drop in murders. Of course, there are exceptions to capital punishment deterring murder. One particular kind of crime where the death penalty shows no significant deterrent effect is multiple victim public shootings. This was the conclusion of a study I performed with Bill Landes at the University of Chicago. This exception, however, is easy to explain: The vast majority of these killers either commit suicide or are killed at the scene of the crime. The threat of legal punishment, including the death penalty, doesn't really affect their actions since so many of these criminals expect to die in the course of their crime. Compared to more sophisticated Europeans, Americans long have been portrayed as uneducated yokels for supporting the death penalty. And the Supreme Court has looked to guidance from other countries in justifying limits on the death penalty. But Americans have stuck to their guns, with the majority of Americans in a May 2006 Gallup poll even feeling that the death penalty should be used more frequently. Possibly it is time to concede that everyday Americans might actually know something that some members of the Supreme Court have had a hard time understanding. (source: Fox News; John Lott is the author of the forthcoming book "Freedomnomics" and will soon be a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Maryland)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, TENN., N.C., USA
Rick Halperin Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:39:05 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
