April 12
MISSOURI: Glass' death penalty overturned Travis Glass, who in 2002 received a death sentence for the 2001 murder of 13-year-old Steffini Wilkins of Hannibal, has been given a new day in court regarding the death penalty. On March 29, Circuit Judge Gary Oxenhandler overturned Glass' death penalty. The penalty phase of his trial will be reconducted, according to the judge. Glass could be given the same sentence at a later date. Glass, 26, of Palmyra, was found guilty and received the death sentence in November 2002 at Boone County Courthouse in Columbia, where the trial was scheduled on a change of venue from Ralls County. Judge Frank Conley was presiding judge. Glass has remained in custody since his arrest in 2001. Steffini Wilkins' body was found May 25, 2001, near Salt River in Ralls County, after she was taken from her home in Hannibal. She had been strangled with her bra strap. Hannibal police officers testified that Glass had confessed to killing Steffini and described how it happened. Judge Oxenhandler's decision to reconduct the penalty phase of the trial was announced at the Callaway County Courthouse in Fulton. Oxenhandler's statement says: "The court finds that the guilt phase of the movant's (Glass') trial was fair and the movant was not prejudiced by any of his allegations of attorney ineffectiveness that would have resulted in the guilt phase being different. "However, with respect to the penalty phase of the trial, the court finds that the penalty phase was not fair, that movant (Glass) was prejudiced and that movant is entitled to a new penalty phase of his trial." He concluded that Glass' "amended motion is sustained, in part, and movant is granted a new penalty phase of trial." The question remains whether Oxenhandler's March 29 decision will be appealed by the prosecuting attorneys in the case, who are members of the Missouri attorney general's staff. John Fougere, press secretary for the attorney general, said Tuesday the staff is, "reviewing the judge's decision for this case. We have not made a decision as far as what we will do." An appeal may be filed by the attorney general's office, Fougere said, and "we have a time period to do that." Although the judge ruled that Glass will have a new penalty phase of his trial, he ruled differently regarding many allegations that Glass' attorney was ineffective in the guilt phase of the trial. In each of these instances, Judge Oxenhandler said, "the claim is denied." Glass had earlier appealed the death penalty. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld Glass' conviction and death sentence in a unanimous decision announced June 9, 2004. In that appeal Glass had claimed his statements to the police about the night's events when the victim died should have been suppressed from the trial and that prosecutors had failed to present an aggravating factor that would have made him eligible for the death penalty. The Supreme Court's decision stated there was substantial evidence to support the jury's finding that Glass acted with deliberation, an element of 1st-degree murder. Glass was prosecuted by Robert Ahsens III of Jefferson City, assistant attorney general of Missouri, with the assistance of Rodney Rodenbaugh and Joe Brannon of Ralls County Prosecuting Attorney John Briscoe's office. Judge Oxenhandler's decision included lengthy explanations of why he ruled to overturn the death penalty. Among the allegations made by Glass were: - "Counsel were ineffective in failing to investigate and call in penalty phase various friends, teachers and prior professionals who would have testified to movant's background, character and life history" and that their testimony would have indicated Glass' "impaired intellectual functioning." This testimony is "inherently mitigating and critical" to a jury's assessment of whether to impose the death penalty. - Movant's aunt testified that he had meningitis as a child, but she did not know if it had any impact on him later. Council did not have his doctor testify. - "That movant should be granted a new penalty phase trial is all the more evident when considered in the context of teachers who counsel failed to investigate or call - each of whom would have shown movant's impaired intellectual functioning." School records were obtained but were not admitted in the penalty phase. - Counsel did not call teachers to testify, and "there is a reasonable probability the result of penalty phase would have been different if counsel had not failed to investigate and/or call the following teachers and school officials: Donna Brown, Eric Churchwell, Judy Caldwell, Elaine Longacre, Vince Matlick, Joe Brandenburg, and Debbie Higbee Roberts. The judge said Glass was granted a new penalty phase of the trial because of his attorney's failure to investigate and to call these and other teachers. - Glass' mother testified she had left him with her parents shortly after he was born and had "not lots" of contact with him. - Counsel was "further ineffective in failure to investigate and/or call prior probation officers" who had supervised Glass while on probation for stealing. The same charge was made regarding calling several of Glass' classmates whose names had been provided to his attorneys, and several doctors who were learning disability experts. The judge stated that the penalty phase could have been different had the jury heard evidence of Glass' impaired intellectual functioning. - Counsel was ineffective in failing to appeal the issue that the evidence was insufficient to support the aggravating circumstance found by the jury." After listing these and additional allegations, Oxenhandler announced he had granted a new penalty phase of Glass' trial. (source: Hannibal Courier-Post) USA: What Zacarias Moussaoui's fate means to America Anyone who wants to understand the mechanism of civil rights erosion can see the entire process in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui. Mr. Moussaoui, a Moroccan-born Frenchman, is the only person so far to be prosecuted for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Recently a federal district court in Alexandria, Va., decided Mr. Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty because he concealed from investigators his connection to al-Qaida and his prior knowledge of the 9/11 attack. The prosecution argued that Mr. Moussaoui's lies and silence directly led to the death of at least 1 person and therefore met the standard for the death penalty in federal cases. Mr. Moussaoui was in a Minnesota jail on 9/11, having been arrested the month before by federal agents because of the suspicions he aroused in pursuing flight training. And aside from his lies and his silence about the plot to fly airliners into American buildings, he doesn't appear to be actually guilty of anything. He certainly intended to be guilty of something, but intentions alone are not sufficient grounds for prosecution in America, except in a few highly circumscribed cases. Now, even though Mr. Moussaoui is at the center of this argument, this argument isn't about Mr. Moussaoui. His association with al-Qaida and his intention to harm innocent Americans may well be criminal, and by the time the court began to consider his punishment, Mr. Moussaoui's fate was to be either the death penalty or life in prison. The central point here is why he deserves the death penalty. The federal case boils down to two points: that Mr. Moussaoui lied about his plans and associations, and that he didn't tell what he knew about the coming attack. The prosecution in this case argued that had Mr. Moussaoui told the truth, we might have saved some of the 3,000-plus people who died that day. Factually they may be right. (I say "may" because apparently there was more than enough information from other sources to alert the government to the attack, but there is no guarantee that the government would have done anything different that day had Mr. Moussaoui come clean.) But I believe the prosecution was wrong constitutionally. Mr. Moussaoui had every right to keep his mouth shut about the criminal conspiracy of which he was part. It's a basic right of our Constitution extended to anyone we arrest in our jurisdiction. You should not have to be an American citizen to benefit from our constitutional protection against self-incrimination, even for a heinous crime, because as a nation we hold this right to be not just American, but human. But the government's argument states in its essence that if the crime is big enough, evil enough, then one's right against self-incrimination can be suspended. The fact that Mr. Moussaoui lied to investigators may make his conduct criminal, but by itself it hardly merits the death penalty. Even perjury on the witness stand doesn't get you the needle. However, now that we have established that we can put someone to death for (a) asserting his right against self-incrimination and (b) lying to authorities when (c) such assertion and lying causes the death of at least one person, what comes next? Do we put tobacco company executives to death? Automobile manufacturers? Advertisers? Bartenders? This is not a trivial question, and we gain neither comfort nor safety from the fact that Mr. Moussaoui is not an American citizen. Mr. Moussaoui isn't the point; the state is. What the government argued in this case, it can argue in any case in which a link between your silence and someone's demise can be established. But the next time this comes up, the concept of individual rights is further compromised by the existence of Mr. Moussaoui's case as precedent. What the government has accomplished on flimsy ground today becomes solid ground of its own tomorrow. The final link in the chain is how we may be treated in an interrogation. If the state suspects that we know something the revealing of which might save lives, even if it tends to incriminate us, what can it do to extract that information? What, indeed, can't it do? As with most weapons, this one can be used in more than one way. Our triumph at having backed Mr. Moussaoui up to a gurney might give us satisfaction that we are finally getting somewhere with the war on terror. But it actually strips us all of a basic protection we each deserve and can only maintain by defending for each other. >From where I stand, the person who should be the most concerned about the link between silence, lies and innocent deaths is our very own president. (source: Greg Sagan; The Amarillo Globe-News) ILLINOIS: LaGrone jury convenes today to deliberate on death penalty Now that it has convicted Maurice LaGrone Jr. of 1st-degree murder, the jury will convene behind closed doors today to determine if he is eligible for the death penalty. In Illinois, a defendant is eligible to be put to death if he meets at least one of 20 criteria. A murder would qualify for the death penalty if: there were two or more victims; a victim younger than 12 was killed as a result of "exceptionally brutal or heinous behavior indicative of wanton cruelty"; and it was committed "in a cold, calculated and premeditated manner pursuant to a preconceived plan, scheme or design." If he's deemed eligible, jurors then will decide whether to issue the death sentence after a possibly weeklong hearing in which witnesses present testimony for and against the death penalty for LaGrone. -Edith Brady-Lunny (source: Bloomington Herald & Review) NORTH CAROLINA----impending execution Inmate seeks clemency----Brown scheduled to die April 21 A condemned killer scheduled to die next week should be spared because he had poor lawyers, a trial with several errors and a history of mental illness, defense lawyers told Gov. Mike Easley on Tuesday. "The problem is Mr. Brown has a number of clear-cut legal errors that no court has ever reviewed," defense lawyer Don Cowan said after a clemency meeting with the governor on behalf of Willie Brown Jr. "So I'm trying to be realistic by saying if somebody would review these issues, Mr. Brown would get a new trial." Brown, 61, was sentenced to death for the 1983 Martin County slaying of Vallerie Ann Roberson Dixon during a convenience store robbery. He is scheduled to die April 21 at Central Prison in Raleigh. A federal judge has said he will stop the execution unless state officials tell him today how they will ensure the inmate is unconscious as he's being put to death. Cowan said he and co-counsel Laura Loyek did not discuss those matters with Easley. Instead, they argued that trial lawyers did not introduce or even know about Brown's history of paranoia, anti-social behavior or schizophrenia. The problems had been documented in the years following a 1963 juvenile court conviction for Brown, his lawyers said. In addition, Cowan said jurors received improper instructions telling them they had to unanimously agree on any factors that could have allowed Brown to avoid the death penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the instruction was unconstitutional, but Brown's case wasn't included in the appeal, Cowan said. Cowan said the defense provided Easley with 40 cases in which a new trial or new sentencing was ordered because of the same error. Brown is the only death-row inmate in North Carolina facing execution whose jury instructions haven't been reviewed because of the ruling, according to a statement from Amnesty International USA. Several members of Brown's family met with Reuben Young, Easley's legal counsel, to discuss the case. Easley can change the death sentence to life in prison. Typically, the governor makes his clemency ruling after all legal matters have been resolved. U.S. District Court Judge Malcolm Howard issued a ruling Friday threatening to stop the execution in response to a lawsuit contending that inmates may suffer pain if they're not properly sedated. (source: The News & Observer)
