[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----VA., OKLA., LA., ARK.

[Rick Halperin]

June 24



VIRGINIA:

Irwin believed in forgiveness, found strength----A graphic artist and
administrator at Radford University, Kitty Irwin became known for opposing
capital punishment after her daughter was killed.


Kitty Irwin, who became widely known several years ago for her efforts to
spare the life of her teenage daughter's killer, died at her Radford home
Wednesday.

Irwin, 56, suffered from breast cancer that had spread to her bones and
throughout her body. She was diagnosed with the disease just days after
burying her daughter, Tara Rose Munsey, in 2000.

Last month, Irwin remarried Bill Munsey, Tara's father.

Their daughter was 16 when she disappeared from her job at the Fairlawn
Taco Bell in January 2000. Her body was found weeks later in Parrott in a
ravine. She had been shot four times.

In March 2001, a Pulaski County jury convicted Jeffrey Allen Thomas, who
had dated the mother of Tara's boyfriend, of capital murder, attempted
rape and a firearms charge.

Irwin begged the jury to spare Thomas' life, asking that they instead
recommend he spend his life in prison.

"The loss of Tara has been terrible, but we don't wish to see another
person die," she told the judge. "We don't wish to see Jeff die."

When the jury recommended that Thomas be sentenced to death, Irwin went to
Richmond and Boston to speak out against capital punishment.

The Virginia Supreme Court later overturned Thomas' conviction and granted
him a 2nd trial. Thomas accepted a plea agreement and is serving the rest
of his life in prison.

"She forgave him and she holds no ill will toward him. That tells you what
kind of person she was," Irwin's friend Debbie Zaroba said Wednesday.

It was Zaroba's son who was dating Tara when she was killed. The families
more recently became connected in yet another way -- Zaroba's aunt served
as Irwin's caretaker.

"She's just been a very good comforter, even when she was the one who
needed to be comforted," said Zaroba, who now lives in Florida.

After Tara's death, Irwin reconnected with Bill Munsey, the man she had
divorced in 1987.

"We've kind of been together all the time since then," Bill Munsey said
Thursday. "We finally figured out how much we were in love with each
other."

The couple remarried May 13. They have a 21-year-old son, D.D. Munsey.

In her professional life, Irwin was a respected graphic designer at
Radford University, where she served most recently as the public relations
department's director of creative services.

She also taught art classes, and she was instrumental in starting the
school's annual Highlanders Festival.

"Kitty was a great friend to us," said Debbie Brown, associate vice
president for university relations, "but she was one of the greatest
artists and graphic designers I've ever met."

Brown said that under Irwin's direction, the department won regional and
national graphic design awards.

But it wasn't until she took a stand against the death penalty that Irwin
became well-known.

Some thought she was crazy and sent her hate mail when she begged for
Thomas' life to be spared, said the Rev. Kris Kramer of Grace Episcopal
Church, where Irwin served on the vestry.

Others called the church to say they thought she was an amazing woman.

Irwin's vocal opposition to capital punishment led her to speak at a
conference with Sister Helen Prejean, author of "Dead Man Walking," the
book that was made into a motion picture starring Susan Sarandon and Sean
Penn.

Kramer called Irwin "one of the bravest women I have ever had the pleasure
of knowing."

Kramer said Thomas never said exactly what happened during Tara's last
hours, and the uncertainty was hard on Irwin.

Kramer promised Irwin he would let Thomas know when she died, and she
wanted the minister to tell Thomas that "she now knows the truth" about
her daughter's fate. She also wanted Thomas to know she still forgave him,
Kramer said.

"She really passionately thought the 'turn the other cheek' Scripture
mattered," Kramer said. "My life will be forever changed by being able to
know Kitty."

(source: Roanoke Times)

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

Former Intelligence Officer Gets Life in Ex-Wife's Death


As he was about to be sentenced to life in prison yesterday in the
kidnapping and slaying of his ex-wife, Jay E. Lentz turned and faced the
prosecutors who had pursued the case for more than 5 years -- through
Lentz's conviction, the reversal of that conviction, a 2nd trial and a
bitter dispute about tainted evidence.

The former naval intelligence officer called them "the persecuting
attorneys." In a rambling 40-minute monologue, Lentz quoted from the
Bible, compared government lawyers to the devil and labeled members of the
prosecution team "the liar, the witch and the weasel."

He reserved special ire for Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven D. Mellin, who
sat in the 2nd row, chatting with the family of Lentz's former wife,
Doris. She disappeared in 1996, and her body has not been found. In March,
a federal jury in Alexandria convicted Lentz in her slaying, earning him
yesterday's mandatory life term.

A federal judge accused Mellin of planting evidence during Lentz's 1st
trial in 2003. An appellate court later threw out the finding about
Mellin, but it was clear yesterday that the unusual venom between
defendant and prosecutor had not abated.

Lentz stared at Mellin, called him "Mellin-head" and described him as "the
liar . . . who planted the banned evidence." Mellin stared back
impassively. Lentz -- wearing a ragged white T-shirt and striped prison
pants, his eyes rimmed red -- alternately cried while describing his
difficult childhood, asked people to pray for Doris Lentz's family and
shook his fists when condemning what he called the corruption in the legal
system.

He also asserted his innocence, implying at one moment that Doris Lentz
had simply fled but admitting at others that she had been killed. "It's
sad that Doris Faye Lentz has been missing for 10 years now. I hope she
will be found soon, and Jay Lentz can go home," said Lentz, who later said
that prosecutors "have a murder, but you don't have a body, you don't have
a motive. You don't have me anywhere."

Mellin declined to respond to Lentz's accusations.

U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg said he is "extremely proud of the
prosecutors in this case and the professional way in which they conducted
themselves. They should hold their heads high because a very bad man is
going to spend the rest of his life in jail."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Haynes said at the hearing that Lentz "is
a man who with a horrific degree of calculation 1st killed his wife and
then tried to kill witnesses. For 10 years now, the family of Doris Lentz
has suffered from their loss, and for 10 years Jay Lentz has deprived them
of even the smallest comfort of knowing where the body is."

Judge T. S. Ellis III then pronounced the life sentence, saying he
rejected "categorically any accusations of corruption by the prosecution."

"It is an appropriate sentence in view of the horrific nature of this
crime," Ellis said.

Defense attorneys said they will appeal. "We'll just keep battling like
we've battled the government for five years," said one of the attorneys,
Frank Salvato.

The case of U.S. v. Jay Lentz has indeed coursed through the legal system
since he was arrested in 2001. The government said Lentz had lured Doris
Lentz from her Arlington County home in April 1996 to his house in Fort
Washington. He used the pretense of picking up their daughter, Julia, then
4, who actually was in Indiana visiting his parents. Then, prosecutors
said, Jay Lentz killed Doris Lentz and disposed of the body. He later
joined Julia in Indiana.

A federal jury in July 2003 convicted Lentz of kidnapping resulting in
Doris Lentz's death but declined to sentence him to death. That verdict
was thrown out by U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, who said
prosecutors had failed to prove that a kidnapping had taken place as
defined by federal law.

3 jurors then came forward and said they had viewed evidence they weren't
supposed to see -- two of Doris Lentz's day planners, which had
mysteriously shown up in the jury room. Lee had ruled much of the material
in them inadmissible. The planners contained material that included Doris
Lentz's notes about threatening phone calls Jay Lentz allegedly had made
to her.

The case then took an even more extraordinary turn: Lee accused Mellin, at
the time the lead prosecutor, of deliberately planting the day planners in
the jury room. The battle reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th
Circuit in Richmond, which in September 2004 threw out Lee's finding about
Mellin, saying the judge made "a rather broad leap" without evidence.

The appeals court reinstated Lentz's conviction but ordered a new trial
because jurors had seen the disputed materials. The court took the unusual
step of removing Lee from the case, and Mellin was not on the prosecution
team for the retrial.

The retrial included yet another twist: Prosecutors presented a taped
jailhouse phone conversation between Lentz and Salvato in which Lentz said
a "hit guy" was on his way to the jail because he needed witnesses to
disappear. Salvato immediately warned Lentz that such a statement would
destroy him at his retrial.

When he was convicted a 2nd time, Lentz erupted in court: "No, no!
Reconsider!" he screamed at the jury.

(source: The Washington Post)






OKLAHOMA:

Gore Sentenced by Judge after Hung Jury


Glen Gore, the man convicted of raping and killing Debra Carter back in
1982, was sentenced to life without parole Friday morning.

The jurors deliberated for more than 10 and a half hours, before Judge
Thomas Landrith dismissed them and sentenced Gore himself.

Prosecutors asked for the death penalty, but the jury was deadlocked
11-to-1 on whether to sentence Gore to death.

This is Gore's 2nd conviction in the case. His 1st conviction and death
sentence were overturned.

(source: KTEN News)






LOUISIANA:

The New Orleans Killings


When the FBI released its latest annual crime report that showed violent
crime on the upswing in many big cities, a bevy of law enforcement, state
and federal officials, and criminologists hoped and prayed that the report
was just an aberrant blip on the crime chart. There was good reason to
hope that. Murder rates have plunged in big cities during the past decade,
and there was every expectation that things would stay that way.

The recent slaughter of 5 teens in New Orleans and a desperate plea from
Mayor Ray Nagin to send in the National Guard to help patrol the streets
shattered that hope. While the murder rate in big cities is still lower
than it was a decade ago, the terrifying reality is that in New Orleans
and other big cities, the victims and their killers are almost always
young black males. In the quarter century of homicide record keeping from
1976 to 2002 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks are 6 times more
likely to be murdered than whites, and 7 times more likely to kill than
whites. They are far more likely to be gunned down over gang or drug
disputes. New Orleans police speculate that that was the reason the 5
teens were killed.

President Bush recognized that big city violence was a crisis problem. In
his State of the Union Address in 2005 he pledged to shell out $150
million to youth education and violence prevention programs. It was well
intentioned, but it was still a far cry from what was needed to stem the
gunplay on urban streets. And as has been the case with other Bush's
initiatives, unveiled with much public fanfare, the attack on urban
violence has fizzled out due to lack of money, lack of political will to
push it through. But even if the money and will were there, that would not
get at the cause of why so many young blacks kill each other.

More police, prosecutors, three strikes, and mandatory sentencing laws,
the death penalty, and the nearly one million blacks behind bars, have
been done little to curb this carnage. Despite the pet theories of
liberals and conservatives, blacks aren't killing each other because they
are violent or crime prone by nature, or solely because they are poor and
oppressed. Or even because they are acting out the obscene and lewd
violence they see and hear on TV, films, and in gangster rap lyrics on the
streets. The violence results from a combustible blend of cultural and
racial baggage many blacks carry.

In the past crimes committed by blacks against other blacks were often
ignored or lightly punished. The implicit message was that black lives
were expendable. It would be no surprise if the killer or killers of the
New Orleans teens had long violent laced rap sheets, but still roamed the
streets. Many studies have confirmed that the punishment blacks receive
when the victim is white is far more severe than if the victim is black.
This perceived devaluation of black lives by racism has encouraged
disrespect for the law and has forced many blacks to internalize anger and
displace aggression onto other blacks, especially those that are perceived
as weak, and defenseless.

Far too many young black males have become especially adept at acting out
their frustrations at white society's denial of their "manhood" by
adopting an exaggerated "tough guy" role. They swagger, boast, curse,
fight and commit violent self-destructive acts. When many black males
indulge their murderous impulses on other black males, they are often
taking out their pent-up frustrations on those whom they perceive as
helpless and hapless.

This is a twisted, and warped response to racism and deprivation, blocked
opportunities, powerlessness and alienation.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics noted that the other powerful ingredient
in the deadly mix of black-on-black violence is the gang and drug plague.
The resurgence of the drug trade in recent years and the flood of felons
from prisons have made black gangs even bigger and more dangerous. Drug
trafficking not only provided illicit profits but also made gun play even
more widespread. Gang members used their arsenals to fend off attacks,
protect their profits from hostile predators, and to settle scores with
rivals. Broken homes, miserably failing inner city public schools, and a
chronic unemployment rate among young blacks that's double and triple that
of white males in urban areas haven't helped matters.

Other than Comedian Bill Cosby and some outraged, and terrified local
black leaders, mainstream civil rights leaders haven't said or done much
about the black murder carnage. The sight of the National Guard on New
Orleans streets may be a temporary comfort to residents and city officials
but it's only that temporary comfort. An impassioned Mayor Nagin put it
best, local residents and community groups must put their foot down and
say enough is enough, and take back their streets. That's still the best
way to stop the violence.

(source: Chicago Defender - Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist for
BlackNews.com, an author and political analyst)






ARKANSAS:

Convicted Arkansas killer recommended for clemency


Convicted killer Kenneth Slocum's life-without-parole sentence should be
commuted to 60 years, the state Parole Board recommended Thursday in a
unanimous vote.

The board noted that 70 people - including a nephew of the murder victim -
showed up to support Slocum, who the board said denied having killed the
man he was convicted of slaying, but was remorseful.

Slocum, 34, was convicted of capital murder in the 1993 death of Willie
Simpkins and sentenced to life without parole. The state appeals court and
Arkansas Supreme Court have both denied Slocum's request for a new trial.
But he was able to get the board recommendation on his argument to
"correct an injustice."

"I was arrested on Nov. 15, 1993, and charged with this murder," Slocum
wrote in his clemency application. "To this day, I don't have any
knowledge of what caused Mr. Simpkins' death."

Rhonda Sharp, a spokeswoman for the Department of Community Correction,
said more than 70 people showed up to an inmate hearing in support of
Slocum's clemency.

The parole board noted that "the inmate is very remorseful (and) denies
involvement in his crime," Sharp said. "The board also noted that the
victim's nephew spoke in favor of the inmate's clemency."

Prosecutors alleged that Slocum killed Simpkins because Simpkins was going
to be a witness in the trial of Slocum's brother, Marcus, who was accused
of murder. But Kenneth Slocum, who represented himself and submitted court
transcripts with his handwritten notations, said that Simpkins had told a
detective that he couldn't identify Marcus Slocum.

Kenneth Slocum argued that this meant he had no motive to kill Simpkins.
He also argued that now retired Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge David
Bogard displayed prejudice against him in pre-trial hearings when
attorneys were discussing whether the death penalty would be waived.

"That's up to the prosecutor," Bogard said, according to a court
transcript submitted to the parole board by Slocum. "If they want to send
him to the chair, electrocute him or inject him, whatever they want to do
to kill him, that's their business."

A witness, Vernon Scott, said Slocum gave him $40 worth of crack cocaine
in return for luring Simpkins to the Little Rock residence where he was
later kidnapped and killed. Simpkins' nude body was found in a grain
elevator Oct. 4, 1993.

Slocum has exhausted his appeals; the state appeals court and Arkansas
Supreme Court have upheld his capital murder conviction. However, in a
later appeal, a lower court ruled that Slocum had ineffective counsel at
his original trial, but the state Supreme Court overturned that decision.

The parole board's recommendation is now open to public comment for the
next 30 days. After that, Slocum's file will be sent to Gov. Mike
Huckabee, who will decide whether to grant the clemency request.

"Most people seem to view the board's recommendation as binding," Sharp
said. "That is the governor's final decision. Parole is not a right. It's
a privilege."

(source : Associated Press)