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

[Rick Halperin]

April 13



TEXAS:

Houston man on death row dies in prison


A 31-year-old man on death row for killing a Houston convenience store
clerk has died in prison, Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials
said.

Corey James Jennings, 31, was pronounced dead in his cell at the Polunsky
Unit in Livingston about 8:20 p.m. Wednesday night. Officials said he died
of natural causes but would not give any further information citing HIPAA
concerns. He had been admitted to the infirmary Feb. 15.

Jennings was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death by lethal
injection in 2001 for the death of Quy Quang Lam. Jennings beat the
21-year-old clerk with a gun before shooting him to death in the bathroom
of the store in 2000.

According to news reports at the time of the crime, video surveillance
tapes showed a masked man entering the store carrying a gun and demanding
money. Lam emptied the register and handed all the cash over to the man,
who then took him to the bathroom.

Police said about $400 was taken from the store.

At the time of the murder, Jennings lived near the store with his wife and
3-year-old son. On his Web site, Jennings denied committing the crime and
said that he was at home with his son when it occurred. However, his wife
and several friends identified Jennings from video surveillance tapes at
the store.

Jennings did not have a scheduled execution date.

(source: Associated Press)






VIRGINIA:

URGENT ACTION APPEAL


13 April 2006----UA 88/06 Death penalty/legal concern

USA Dexter Lee Vinson (m)

Dexter Lee Vinson is scheduled to be executed on 27 April. He was
sentenced to death in February 1999 for the April 1997 murder of his
former girlfriend, Angela Felton. Ms Felton's mutilated body was
discovered in a deserted house in the city of Portsmouth. She had last
been seen the previous day, with Dexter Vinson.

According to Vinson's current attorneys, there are serious doubts that
Vinson killed her. One supposed eyewitness has since admitted, and the
state has accepted, that the testimony she gave at Vinson's preliminary
hearing, and which was presented by a police investigator to a grand jury
(the body which decides whether a defendant has a case to answer and
should therefore stand trial) was false. She claimed to have seen Dexter
Lee Vinson assaulting Angela Felton at the house where her body was found.
In fact it was her boyfriend's mother who had seen the events at the
house, and the boyfriend had passed this on to her. The boyfriend's
mother, who had actually been an eyewitness, never contacted police
herself about what she had seen and did not identify Vinson as the
perpetrator until 18 months later, at his trial, after agreeing to testify
against him because the state had threatened to prosecute her son and his
girlfriend for giving false statements and committing perjury at the
preliminary hearing.

After the trial, Vinson's appeal attorneys reportedly obtained evidence
that the actual eyewitness told prosecutors the assailant returned to the
crime scene when Vinson was at work, more than 30 miles away, and that she
had seen the assailant drive by her house the day after the crime, at a
time when Vinson was already in police custody. She also reportedly gave
contradictory statements to the prosecution, saying at one point that she
had, and at another that she had not, seen the assailant return to the
scene of the crime. Further evidence reportedly indicates that another
supposed eyewitness, who only identified Vinson as the perpetrator at his
trial, initially told police she was not sure she would be able to
identify the man she had seen.

Before his trial, Dexter Lee Vinson was assessed by a clinical
psychologist who initially found that Dexter exhibited some
characteristics of psychiatric illness and who recommended that he should
receive further interviewing and psychological evaluation. During
post-conviction proceedings, this psychologist provided an affidavit in
which he stated that Vinson's trial counsel had not provided him with
critical information, including previous psychological evaluations,
medical and school records, and information that Vinson had suffered
physical, sexual and emotional abuse during infancy and childhood at the
hands of his father, grandparents, mother and elder brother. This
information had later been supplied to him by appeals attorneys. He
further said this information "could have had an enormous impact on the
clinical picture and thus the diagnosis(es) given to Mr Vinson". In his
affidavit he stated: "Trial counsel's failure to provide critical data
left me with incomplete information and, consequently, potentially invalid
conclusions. This failure erodes confidence in the accuracy,
appropriateness, and competency of the evaluation, and this concern is
confirmed through the significant mental health information discovered by
attorneys who actually investigated the case after trial." He further
stated: "I considered Ms Lomax's (Vinson's trial attorney) preparation,
understanding, presentation, and development of the mental health evidence
in this case to be grossly inadequate. It was most distressing to observe
a decision about a man's life being made on the basis of such inadequate
and incomplete testimony, and with such poor legal presentation. It was
also embarrassing for me to have been placed in a position to have
presented testimony in such a way as to have been completely ineffectual."
Vinson's post-trial attorneys have attempted to secure a re-evaluation of
his mental condition through the courts, but this has never been granted.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Since 1977, when the USA resumed judicial killing, the US Supreme Court
has provided some constitutional protections for mentally impaired people
facing the death penalty. In 1986, in Ford v. Wainwright, the court ruled
that the execution of people who are insane violates the US Constitution's
prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishments". A decision by the Supreme
Court in 2002 (Atkins v. Virginia) prohibited the death penalty for people
with mental retardation, reasoning that mental retardation diminishes
personal culpability, and renders the death penalty difficult to justify
on deterrence and retribution grounds. Virginia's Governor Kaine has
reportedly stated that he is morally opposed to the death penalty.

Today, 122 countries are abolitionist in law or practice, and there are
strict international safeguards applying to those countries which have not
yet abolished the death penalty. For example, the United Nations
Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death
Penalty prohibit the execution of "persons who have become insane". The UN
commission on Human Rights has repeatedly called on those countries which
still retain the death penalty not to use it against anyone suffering from
a mental disorder.

Amnesty International does not seek to excuse the perpetrators of violent
crime. However, it opposes the death penalty in all cases. Amnesty
International believes that there is a profound inconsistency in exempting
people with mental retardation from the death penalty while those with
serious mental illness remain exposed to it. Similarly, exempting juvenile
offenders from the death penalty because of their diminished culpability
is incongruous with executing those suffering from serious mental illness
or impairment other than retardation.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:

- expressing sympathy for the family and friends of Angela Felton,
explaining that you are not seeking to condone the manner of her death or
to minimize the suffering caused;

- expressing concern at information that Dexter Lee Vinson suffers from a
mental disorder which has not been properly evaluated;

- noting international standards which prohibit the execution of people
with mental illness;

- expressing concern at reports that testimony used at Dexter Lee Vinson's
trial was perjured, and that the prosecution was aware of this;

- urging Governor Kaine to grant clemency to Deter Lee Vinson.

APPEALS TO:

Tim Kaine
Governor of Virginia
Office of the Governor
Patrick Henry Building, 3rd Floor
111 East Broad Street
Richmond, Virginia 23219
Fax: 1 804 371 6351
Email:
http://www.governor.virginia.gov/AboutTheGovernor/contactGovernor.cfm

Salutation: Dear Governor


PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Check with the AIUSA Urgent Action office
if sending appeals after 25 May 2006.

Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and
defends human rights.

This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact
information and stop action date (if applicable).

Thank you for your help with this appeal.

Urgent Action Network
Amnesty International USA
PO Box 1270
Nederland CO 80466-1270

Email: uan at aiusa.org
http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/
Phone: 303 258 1170
Fax: 303 258 7881

----------------------------------

END OF URGENT ACTION APPEAL

----------------------------------