[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, DEL., CALIF., VA., ARK.

[Rick Halperin]

April 7



TEXAS:

Suspects facing 3 counts of murder


Accused of killing the elderly New Caney couple they befriended, Terry Don
Wilkerson and Colette Angela Richnow each face 3 counts of capital murder.

But the Montgomery County District Attorney's office has yet to decide
whether it will seek the death penalty against the duo.

Wilkerson, 36, and Richnow, 36, were arrested in southwest Houston on Jan.
25, 2 days after they allegedly killed William E. Lewis, 83, and Louise
Lewis, 75, with shotgun blasts to the head. Sheriff's deputies found
Wilkerson and Richnow in a hotel with property and a van stolen from the
Lewis' home.

A grand jury handed down the indictments against Wilkerson and Richnow
last week. Because burglary is regarded be the motive behind the murders,
the district attorney's office was able to obtain 3 counts of capital
murder for each defendant.

Richnow and Wilkerson each were indicted for murdering more than one
person during the "same criminal transaction." The Texas Penal Code allows
the district attorney's office to seek additional capital murder
indictments if a person is killed during a burglary. Because the
burglaries were conducted against two individuals, each of those capital
murder charges could be presented separately to the grand jury, said
prosecutor Jim Prewitt of the county's Felony Intake division.

"Because a burglary was committed, the indictments can be sought
separately. That is why each one (Wilkerson and Richnow) has been indicted
a total of 3 times," he said. "The indictments encompass all of the
allegations."

A jury will have the option to convict on the count involving the multiple
murders or they could convict each of the defendants on the 2 counts of
capital murder that involves burglary.

"It might sound a little complicated, but we wanted to cover all the
charges," Prewitt said.

Wilkerson and Richnow were also indicted for unauthorized use of a motor
vehicle.

The trial is scheduled for the 410th state District Court of Judge K.
Michael Mayes at a yet-to-be determined date. The decision on whether to
seek the death penalty will be left up to District Attorney Michael
McDougal and Assistant DA Sylvia Yarborough, the attorney assigned to the
case, Prewitt said. McDougal and Yarborough were out of town this week,
attending a seminar.

"They will get together and make a decision on what direction they will
take," Prewitt said.

Wilkerson and Richnow are being held in the Montgomery County Jail.
According to the grand jury indictment, Wilkerson, who lives in New Caney,
was convicted on 6 felony counts since 1986 in Montgomery County, Houston
and Fort Worth. According to jail personnel, Wilkerson is being held on a
"blue warrant," as a parole violator. He was scheduled to be on parole
until April 2010.

Department of Public Safety records show that Richnow, who was acquainted
with the Lewises prior to the shootings, was convicted for possession of
less than 1 gram of a controlled substance in November 2005.

(source: The Courier)

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

'I KILLED HER'


Jose Luis Cantu slept in a brown, 4-door 1989 Oldsmobile some nights.

On other nights, he used money he made from his job in Kansas to pay for a
motel room.

But on Tuesday, the night before Mexican police arrested the 19-year-old -
who is suspected of killing and stashing his 16-year-old girlfriend, Nelly
Casas, in her Pharr back yard last month - he slept at his childhood home
in Reynosa.

He took a shower and made himself some tacos when he woke up Wednesday
afternoon, said his 34-year-old sister, Rosalinda Cantu. Then, around 5
p.m., he changed into a white T-shirt, white sneakers and blue jeans.

And "left, in a very quiet way, without telling me anything," Rosalinda
said.

But, police say, a fully loaded .32-caliber Colt revolver with a plastic
brown handle was neatly tucked into Cantus waistband. Just as he had
wandered the streets of Reynosa for almost 3 weeks, the teen spent that
evening aimlessly walking around Reynosas Lopez Portillo colonia.

Then at about 7 or 8 p.m., Reynosa police said, he and another man
attempted to rob a pawn shop. They failed, according to the police
incident report filed Thursday, triggering an alarm.

By 9 p.m., police in a nearby neighborhood had found Cantu - the man
listed on the Web site of Foxs Americas Most Wanted just 2 weeks earlier.

He bolted when he saw them, trying to draw the revolver, Mexican
authorities say.

Within minutes, he was confessing to a crime far more severe than Reynosa
police expected:

"I killed her," Cantu told police. He killed Nelly Casas, police say he
said.

Early the next morning, on Thursday, he confessed to the same crime during
an interview with The Monitor from the entrance to the Reynosa jails cell
block, where he was held on charges related to the pawnshop robbery. He
wore the same clothes he had left his sisters home in.

Suicide was on his mind now. He said he had been grappling with the
thoughts all night in jail.

Everything about him betrayed the portrait of the confident boyfriend in
pictures with Nelly. With his shoulders hunched, he uttered one-sentence
answers, reconstructing his last 3 weeks on the run.

NELLY'S LAST DAY

Nelly called Cantu over to her house at about 1 p.m. Friday, March 17, he
said. He didnt know why she wasnt in class at PSJA High School, where she
was a junior. Wearing blue jeans and a pink shirt, she walked with him to
the shed behind her house to tell him something.

"She was cheating on me," Cantu says Nelly told her. "I just went mad; I
went crazy and lost control."

He grabbed the nearest thing in the shed - a metal wire - and strangled
her, he said.

Cantu walked out, locked the shed and drove off. No stops, he said -
straight to Reynosa, where he was born.

Nellys body lay locked in the shed for 2 days, until Sunday, March 19,
when police were anonymously tipped at 4 p.m. to her location. Police
asked her father for the key to their backyard shed, which was 10 yards
from the familys back door.

And they issued an arrest warrant for Cantu that night, as friends and
family began to get a better idea about the volatile relationship she and
Cantu shared, thanks to her diary and friends' accounts.

"The diary said that she knew he was going to come bother her the next
day" said Nelly's mother, also named Nelly. The next day was the Friday
she was killed.

Cantu claims there was never any violence in their relationship until that
fatal day.

"Like, regular fights, I would just raise my voice," never hitting her, he
said, though Nelly's friends contradicted that at her funeral.

He said he didn't call police with the anonymous tip either.

By the time the warrant had been issued, Cantu had been in Mexico for two
days. He had made it as far south as El Mante, a community in the southern
end of Tamaulipas.

He had no clue an international manhunt had already been launched for him
- including alerts to agencies throughout the state and as far as Kansas,
where he had worked before, and into Mexico.

By the time his name and picture had been posted on Americas Most Wanted,
Cantu was returning north to Reynosa.

He showed up at his sister's house in the city's southeastern section,
where they grew up with their mother. He told her he was having some
problems, but gave no details, she said. And she didnt ask.

Even when she noticed he had a gun.

"He lived in Texas, I assumed everyone had a gun," she said outside their
home Thursday.

"He told me that he was having some sort of problems, but I didn't ask any
more," she said, explaining she doesn't have a phone and hadn't seen the
news reports naming her brother as a suspect in Nelly's murder.

"One imagines that he might have fought with his friends, but never that
he had killed someone."

ALONE IN A MEXICAN JAIL

According to the police report of the night that landed him in a Reynosa
jail Wednesday, the owner of the pawn shop identified Cantu as the man who
shoved a gun in his face.

Cantu denied he had anything to do with the robbery attempt.

"I just gave up when I saw the police," Cantu said.

Back at the cinder block Mexican jail, its blue bars and white walls
serving as a stark backdrop, Cantu looked thin and sallow.

When asked how Mexican authorities had been treating him, he said they had
physically hurt him.

Mindful of the 2 jail guards nearby, he lowered his voice to a whisper
even though he was speaking English and refused to detail the alleged
abuse.

To his right, on a painted white wall, was a list of the rights for every
Mexican prisoner.

No. 1 was the right to a phone call, something Cantu said he had not asked
for or been offered.

"I just want to talk to my older brother, Frank, or my mother," he said.

He had run for nearly 3 weeks, even armed himself, only to be caught in
uncertainty.

It is not clear whether Pharr police would charge Cantu - a dual citizen
of Mexico and the United States - with capital murder, or whether its
maximum punishment of death would hamper Mexicos willingness to return him
to the United States.

Pharr Police Chief Ruben Villescas said late Wednesday that his department
would meet with federal officials, including U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, to discuss how Cantus dual citizenship affects the
extradition process. But his assistant chief, to whom Villescas had
referred all phone calls, refused to comment on the case Thursday.

Mexican police, aware he was wanted in the United States, moved him to
federal custody later Thursday. If federal authorities in Mexico decide to
prosecute him on gun and robbery charges, he'll have to first stand trial
there and possibly go to a Mexican prison if convicted.

That'll slow down the murder case here Hidalgo County, said local District
Attorney Rene Guerra, who would not comment on any possible charges
because his office is not yet involved. Pharr police have yet to close
their case.

"I hope the Mexican police will drop their gun charges, knowing he is much
more important to us," Guerra said. "If not, we would have to start the
laborious process of contacting the FBI and State Department."

Wasting away in a Mexican jail is not what Cantu wants.

"Yes sir," Id rather stand trial in the United States than Mexico, he
said.

"I ask for everyone's forgiveness. I loved her a lot."

(source: The Monitor)

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

Jurors want death for teacher's killer


A jury that heard graphic testimony this week of incest by convicted
killer Ronnie Joe Neal sentenced him to death late Thursday after
rejecting his claim that he suffers mental retardation.

Family members and friends of the victim, Alamo Heights teacher Diane
Tilly, held each other close and quietly cried as the judge read the
verdict aloud in the courtroom.

"Justice was served in this case," said Steven Tilly, the teacher's
30-year-old son, who sat in the front row for most of the trial. "We got
what we wanted."

Sticking to a decision to sit out the penalty phase of the trial, Neal,
35, wasn't in the courtroom.

The same jury convicted him of capital murder last month.

Neal's mother and sister hung their heads and swiftly left the courthouse
without a word after the jury announced he would pay for the crime with
his life.

It took jurors about 4 hours to make their decision.

The ruling ended a widely publicized case known as much for the brutality
of the crime as for the disturbing story behind the relationship between
the 2 killers.

Neal's 16-year-old daughter, Pearl Cruz, gave birth to her father's son in
July, the culmination of a sexually abusive relationship that lasted two
years.

Cruz gave jurors a vivid picture of how she and her father held the
teacher captive for four hours while they looted her house and Neal raped
her.

She said they drove her to a dark field in Schertz where Neal forced her
to the ground and shot her as she pleaded for her life.

Tilly was the lead teacher at Robbins Academy and a well-known advocate
for teenagers at risk of dropping out when she disappeared in November
2004, setting off a 2-week search.

After closing arguments in which defense attorneys urged mercy and
prosecutors invoked a responsibility "to look at the facts," jurors late
in the afternoon withdrew to a closed room to weigh a death sentence vs.
life in prison.

Neal was the 1st person in Bexar County to ask a jury to declare him
mentally retarded since the U.S. Supreme Court banned executions of such
people in 2002.

Since then, a handful of murderers elsewhere in Texas have made the same
claim. None has been successful.

Locally, Neal's case thrust the attorneys, judge and jury into unknown
territory.

Because the court's ruling left it to states to decide how to handle
claims of retardation, and because Texas has yet to set clear guidelines,
it left state District Judge Sid Harle to answer murky questions on his
own.

Should the judge or jury make the call on whether the defendant is
retarded? And what definition of retardation should guide that decision?

Defense attorneys asked Harle to decide Neal's mental capacity, but in
what he called "an abundance of caution," the judge chose not only to make
his own ruling, but also to allow jurors a chance to decide.

"Essentially, (the defense) gets two bites at the apple," Harle said.
"We're just trying to cover all the bases."

Before jurors arrived at the courthouse Thursday, Harle announced he had
found Neal not to be suffering from retardation, citing aspects of the
crime that required "forethought, planning, organization and demonstrated
purpose."

Neal used a condom as he raped Tilly and later doused her with hydrogen
peroxide to destroy his DNA.

He selected his murder weapon with as much care, opting to use Tilly's
.357-caliber pistol instead of his own because it would leave no casings
on the ground.

If the judge had sided with Neal, Neal would have received an automatic
life sentence.

Instead, the case ultimately turned on the opinions of the 10 women and
two men in the jury.

Neal's lead attorney, Joel Perez, hoped to persuade jurors with three IQ
tests that showed Neal twice scored within the range of retardation. A
psychiatrist reviewed Neal's school and prison records and told jurors he
had no doubt about Neal's low mental capacity.

Perez also asked jurors to consider as a mitigating factor Neal's early
childhood years spent in a house with no running water and picking cotton
in rural Texas fields.

But Assistant District Attorney Catherine Babbitt emphasized Neal, who had
been caught plotting at least 2 escapes, would pose a threat even if
allowed to live.

"Do the hard thing, but do the right thing," Babbitt said.

Toward the end of her argument, Babbitt brought jurors back to the
beginning of the case, to a note that Neal wrote to Tilly as a way to gain
her trust.

Neal sent Tilly the note just days before the murder.

The note read:

"You can know what's in a person's heart by what they say and what they
do."

(source: San Antonio Express-News)






DELAWARE:

Year later, shooting spree case coming to Del.----First State will
prosecute suspect held in 2005 Laurel-to-Salisbury rampage


Maryland prosecutors have dropped all charges against a man accused of
killing 2 people during a shooting spree that began in Laurel and ended in
Salisbury a year ago today, allowing Delaware to try Norman under its
tougher laws.

Otherwise, a loophole in Maryland's law could allow Allison Lamont Norman,
23, to spend an indefinite amount of time in a Maryland psychiatric
facility and deny Delaware the chance to take the case to trial, said
Maryland state attorney Davis Ruark.

Delaware deputy attorney general Jim Adkins said Norman, who has waived
his extradition rights, could be returned to Delaware as early as today to
face multiple charges, including 1st-degree murder.

"We consider this a capital case, so there should be no bond," Adkins
said.

"If they don't want him, we'll just have to show him some First State
justice," said Delaware House Speaker Terry Spence, R-Stratford.

Sen. Robert L. Venables, D-Laurel, said he would be attending an
anniversary memorial service for the victim in Laurel, 24-year-old Jamell
Weston, today.

"I am very disappointed in Maryland," Venables said. "I would have thought
Maryland would have wanted to handle this because he killed people there,
too. I guess we'll just have to bring him back and have the trial here."

Norman is accused of shooting 6 people -- killing Weston and DaVondale
Peters, 28, of Salisbury -- during a morning shooting spree that spanned
Sussex and Wicomico, Md., counties. He was arrested in Salisbury later
that day by Wicomico County sheriff's deputies, but not until after he ran
out of bullets.

The suspect's lawyers entered Maryland's version of an insanity plea on
his behalf late last year, claiming he was not criminally responsible for
the crimes he committed there.

2 of 3 subsequent psychiatric evaluations in that state deemed Norman not
criminally responsible -- or insane -- because of mental issues coupled
with drug abuse.

If Norman were to be found guilty but not criminally responsible in
Maryland, he could remain indefinitely at a state psychiatric facility,
with Delaware unable to try him. Or doctors could rule that Norman was no
longer a threat to himself or others and release him -- something Ruark
said could happen after even a short stay in the hospital. Norman then
would have been returned to Delaware for trial.

"Both results are unacceptable," Ruark said.

The odds that Delaware would apply the death penalty or, in the
alternative, sentence Norman to life without parole are greater than they
would be in Maryland, he said.

So after weeks of consultation in his office and with the Delaware
Attorney General's Office, Ruark said it was best to try the case first in
Delaware.

Indicted in Del. on 11 charges

Delaware Attorney General Carl C. Danberg said he could not speak for
Maryland authorities as to why they decided to drop the charges in
Maryland.

"They haven't spoken with me directly," he said. "But we do consider it a
capital case in Delaware."

A Sussex County grand jury indicted Norman in June on 1 charge of
1st-degree murder as well as 10 other charges, including 2 counts of
attempted murder, 3 counts of possessing a firearm during a felony and 3
counts of wearing body armor in a felony.

Ruark said Thursday he had spoken to all the shooting victims -- including
Carla Green, who was shot and paralyzed in Salisbury -- and Peters' widow.
They agreed allowing Delaware to try Norman first was the best choice, he
said.

Case may spur change in Md.

With the charges dropped, Norman waived extradition in a hearing Thursday.
Ruark said his office was open to the possibility of indicting Norman
again.

Ruark also vowed to lobby Maryland lawmakers to change the state's
criminal sanity laws, so a situation such as this does not happen again.

"One state, 7 miles north of where I sit now, has the law to address the
exact situation that I now face," he said. "Maryland, however, does not."

(source: The News Journal)






CALIFORNIA:

Conference rounds up death penalty opponents


As part of "The Faces of Wrongful Conviction" conference to be held at
UCLA this weekend, several exonerated individuals who have collectively
spent more than 356 years combined in prison are scheduled to tell their
stories Saturday in front of an audience of students, political leaders,
legal experts and other advocates for abolishing capital punishment,

The conference, hosted by the UCLA School of Law, plans to examine the
causes and consequences of wrongful conviction and discuss the application
of the death penalty in California.

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice will also
hold one of its meetings during the conference.

The 22-person commission was created by the California Senate in 2004 to
investigate problems in the criminal justice system and make
recommendations to the state Legislature by the end of 2007.

"We believe there is a need to streamline and narrow the cases that are
eligible for the death penalty," said state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los
Angeles.

"That's why we created the commission - to come up with some
recommendations to reform the application of the law in California."

Besides becoming the largest gathering of California's exonerated
individuals, the conference also aims to bring together a number of
important figures in the movement for abolishing the death penalty.

"This is a historic conference," said David Elliot, communications
director for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, "because
nowhere in the United States and not in the modern history of the
anti-death-penalty movement have so many experts come together under one
roof to discuss the innocence issue."

Key speakers at the event include Romero, Barry Scheck, co-director of the
Innocence Project, 2 eminent death-penalty lawyers, Stephen Bright and
Bryan Stevenson, and judge Kenneth Starr.

"I think it is an opportunity for people working on these issues in
different arenas to gather together and make connections and thereby
perhaps embark on a strategic effort," said Cathy Mayorkas, executive
director of public interest law and policy at UCLA.

Mayorkas said that the diversity of the participants lends itself to a
large variety of goals, methods and perspectives relating to the main
issues of wrongful conviction and the death penalty.

Topics to be discussed at the conference include the impact of race and
geography on the probability of wrongful conviction and sentencing, as
well as improved technologies - such as DNA testing - used to determine
innocence.

In the U.S., 123 people have been exonerated and released from death row
since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center Web site.
The average time spent in prison by people wrongfully sentenced to death
is nine years.

"The problem is when it comes to the death penalty, there is no instant
replay; there's not do-overs. You can't un-execute someone," Elliot said.

Elliot said there is growing momentum for the movement nationwide, citing
New Jersey's passage of a moratorium on the death penalty.

With 649 inmates, California currently holds about 20 % of all death row
inmates in the country.

"California has by far the largest death-row population in the United
States," Elliot said. "And yet California has a particular hesitation when
it comes to the death penalty. The state is really starting to think about
the issue."

Only 13 people have been executed in California since the death penalty
was reinstated in 1977.

"People are starting to realize that the criminal justice system isn't
always getting it right," Elliot said.

A moratorium is being considered by California legislators, but Elliot
said it is not expected to pass.

(source: UCLA Daily Bruin)






VIRGINIA:

Moussaoui Jury Hears of Impact and Grief


Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, was the first of several
people who described on Thursday the horrors and lasting grief caused by
the Sept. 11 attacks, as part of the government's effort to execute
Zacarias Moussaoui.

Mr. Giuliani entered the courtroom, striding less than three feet from Mr.
Moussaoui, and sat in the witness box alongside a four-foot-high scale
model of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the 2001 attacks.
For more than 2 hours, Mr. Giuliani described that day, alternating
between his minute-by-minute personal thoughts and his assessment of the
damage and disruption caused by the terrorist attacks..

Mr. Giuliani did not glance at Mr. Moussaoui, sitting about 12 feet away.
But Mr. Moussaoui paid close attention to his testimony. And when
prosecutors began their questioning of Mr. Giuliani with film clips of the
trade center's collapse, Mr. Moussaoui, who usually strives to seem
disinterested in court, smiled broadly.

During a morning break in the trial, with the judge and jury out of the
courtroom, Mr. Moussaoui shouted, "Burn in the U.S.A."

In the first phase of the sentencing trial, the jury found that Mr.
Moussaoui, a 37-year-old member of Al Qaeda, was responsible for at least
some of the nearly 3,000 deaths on Sept. 11. In the 2nd phase required
under the Federal Death Penalty Act, the jurors are supposed to consider
testimony about the impact of the crime in order to decide whether Mr.
Moussaoui should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison.

Describing Sept. 11, as he has before, Mr. Giuliani told of seeing 2
people jump to their deaths while holding hands. "That image comes back to
me every day," he said.

Although Mr. Giuliani was clearly the star witness as the Justice
Department began making its case, those who followed him on the witness
stand brought far greater emotional ammunition to the argument for Mr.
Moussaoui's execution. In quick succession, prosecutors presented 5
survivors, each of whom delivered personal tales of pathos and pain.

Robert A. Spencer, the chief prosecutor, warned in his opening statement
that "it will be painful and emotional to hear, but it will be necessary."

The testimony of the 5 brought tears to the eyes of many in the courtroom
and at least 1 juror. Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, who has been punctilious
about remaining neutral, shook her head in sadness when Mike Low of
Arkansas related how he was first told that his daughter Sara, an American
Airlines flight attendant, was not on one of the planes that crashed into
the trade center. Later he found out that airline officials had erred by
mistakenly looking for his daughter's name on the passenger manifest and
not that of the crew.

Mr. Low said "in a way my life stopped" on Sept. 11. He also said that his
wife had retreated completely from life, no longer talking to friends, and
that his other daughter slept only a few hours at night, always with the
television on.

The jury also heard the testimony of James Smith, a 21-year-veteran of the
New York City police who described losing his wife, Moira, a fellow police
officer who was helping evacuate the south tower of the trade center when
it collapsed.

They had met in a cop bar, Mr. Smith said, when she took his Yankees cap
off and threw it away. "She was a Mets fan," he explained in the only
light moment of his testimony.

Jurors also watched the beefy police officer struggle to maintain his
composure as he described how his 6-year-old daughter, Tricia, pined for
her mother.

When the prosecutor David Raskin asked Mr. Smith if he was from Brooklyn
like his wife, Judge Brinkema interjected lightheartedly to break the
mood, "Can't you tell from the accent?"

In fact, all five witnesses had accents and demonstrated the wide impact
of the attacks. Two were from Brooklyn, Mr. Low was from the South and the
others were a man from India and a Vietnamese refugee.

Anthony Sanseviro, a former Brooklyn firefighter, testified about losing
Daniel Suhr, his best friend, role model and mentor. He described how
"Danny" relinquished the driver's seat that day to protect a younger
colleague and to help in the rescue. He died after being struck by a
falling body. By this time, Mr. Moussaoui had ceased offering any
demonstrative reaction.

Tu Ho Nguyen told the jury that she and her husband, who was killed at the
Pentagon, married on July 4, because as Vietnamese immigrants they were so
grateful to the United States for a new opportunity.

The most dramatic testimony came from Chandrasekar Salashidr, who told how
his sister, an Indian-trained dentist, had initially resisted an arranged
marriage with an Indian software engineer living in Los Angeles.

After his sister's husband died aboard one of the hijacked planes on Sept.
11, Mr. Salashidr said he came from India to comfort her but then had to
leave briefly to extend his visa. While he was gone, he continued, she
hanged herself at her Los Angeles home, leaving him a letter, saying:
"Dear Brother, I'm extremely sorry for what I've done" but explaining that
she could no longer go on living without the man she had come to love
deeply.

Defense lawyers, for the most part, asked only a few respectful questions
of the witnesses in cross-examination.

In this phase of the sentencing trial, the jury is required to weigh
aggravating factors like those offered in Thursday's testimony, against
mitigating factors like Mr. Moussaoui's mental instability, which the
defense will present when its turn comes, probably next week. If the
aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors, the jury will then
decide whether to order Mr. Moussaoui's execution. If it does so
unanimously, Judge Brinkema is obliged to impose that sentence.

In his opening statement to the jury, Gerald T. Zerkin, a court-appointed
defense lawyer, acknowledged the awful nature of the crime to which Mr.
Moussaoui has pleaded guilty. But he asked the jurors to at least "open
yourselves to the possibility of a sentence other than death."

Mr. Zerkin portrayed his client as a pathetic figure, a Qaeda hanger-on
sliding in and out of mental illness and easily influenced by radical
Islamic propagandists. Mr. Zerkin said his client was so unbalanced that
he once said President Bush would order his release and that he believed
that his own lawyers were conspiring to kill him.

(source: New York Times)



ARKANSAS:

Attorney: West Memphis Three Deserve New Trial


It was in a section of trees in West Memphis where police say they found
the bodies of 3 8-year-old boys back in 1993. Investigators found the
boys, hog-tied and beaten to death in a drainage ditch. One of the boy's
genitals had been mutilated.

Police eventually decided Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason
Baldwin were to blame. In court, they were convicted of the murders.

Their attorney Daniel Stidham says, "This is a horrible case of
injustice."

Thursday night in Conway, Stidham said West Memphis police built a case
around the false confession of Misskelly.

Stidham contends Misskelly had the I.Q. of a 5-year-old and was told by
police what to say though hours of interrogations. "It's not really
difficult to get someone mentally handicapped to confess to something they
didn't do," says Stidham.

Police called the murders a satanic ritualistic homicide. Stidham says
Misskelly, who was labeled a Satan worshiper, didn't even know who Satan
was. Stidham is calling for a new trial for his clients.

He says, "We now know there's no such thing as a satanic ritualistic
homicide, we now know that false confessions do happen. Back in 1993, no
one understood that."

Mara Leveritt is a former reporter and wrote a book, "Devil's Knot" about
the case. Based on what she's seen, she agrees the 3 are innocent.

She says, "At the very least, the problems with these trials have got to
be honestly looked at and honestly addressed. And I think it's important
for the people of Arkansas to demand that."

Stidham says in the past 13 years, more evidence has surfaced and
witnesses have retracted their statements. He believed his clients will be
free if jurors can hear the case again.

Stidham says he also believes West Memphis police mishandled the crime
scene and never found any forensic evidence. He also believes a serial
killer murdered the boys.

Damien Echols is on death row awaiting execution. Jessie Misskelley and
Jason Baldwin are both serving life sentences.

(source: KTHV News)