[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, CALIF., TENN., OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

May 14


TEXAS:

Penry's fate to be weighed a 4th time----He's set to face a jury in June
for sentencing in '79 murder


It seems like a lifetime ago, the horrible event that tore apart the
family of Pamela Carpenter. And if one uses her 22 years as a measuring
stick, it was actually longer than that.

The headlines of that late October day concerned President Carter's
promise of $69 million to starving Cambodians and of growing resistance to
the military draft in South Africa. Threats or perceived threats abounded,
from persistent inflation to rising oil prices to Soviet expansion, but
nowhere was it more prominent than in the cinema, where Ripley battled an
alien, James Bond fought to save the world and all of humanity faced
annihilation from a meteor.

In the small East Texas town of Livingston, there was a much more
immediate threat: a 23-year-old ex-con named Johnny Paul Penry. On Oct.
25, 1979, Penry forced his way into Carpenter's home, where he had
delivered appliances weeks earlier. He had been out of prison only three
months, after serving 2 years of a 5-year sentence for rape. The same
thing was on his mind that day, only this time he took it a brutal step
further, stabbing Carpenter to death with a pair of scissors.

Had anyone been interested in betting on Penry's own fate  given his
crime, background and the state's growing enthusiasm for capital
punishment  few would have wagered that he would have made it much past
his 30th birthday. But this summer will find him, at 51, facing a jury for
the fourth time, as lawyers and the judge wrangle yet again with precisely
how a jury should be instructed to consider evidence about his mental
capacity and the undeniable abuse he was subjected to as a child.

Life or death

Penry's guilt is not at issue. He quickly confessed to the crime. The only
thing to be decided is life or death. The trial is scheduled to begin on
June 4, though both sides expect it to be pushed back at least a month or
2.

To Carpenter's relatives and capital punishment supporters in general,
Penry's case is a classic example of technicalities run amok. The 2005
reversal of his death sentence by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, for
example, hinged on a single word, which as a practical matter likely had
little bearing on the jury's decision.

To death penalty opponents, Penry is a cause clbre. They say he is
mentally retarded and should have had his sentence commuted to life when
the U.S. Supreme Court barred execution of the retarded in 2002. To them,
the fact that 3 juries have heard his mitigating evidence and rejected it
is neither here nor there.

Carpenter's family has all but given up hope of seeing Penry executed.
Over the years, they have come to agree with his defense attorneys who
believe the appeals courts may be trying to send a message with their
continuing reversals on relatively small points of law.

"The powers that be seem to feel he should not be executed, so they keep
turning it over," said Carpenter's niece, Ellen May, who often speaks for
the family. "I just think there's a lot of politics involved in our
justice system. Because of that, our victims have to suffer for it. It's a
travesty."

In the most recent death sentence reversal, the Court of Criminal Appeals
wrote that because of the wording of Judge Elizabeth Coker's instruction
to the jury "there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury believed it
was not permitted to consider mental impairment outside of determining
whether (Penry) is retarded."

Attorney John Wright, who has represented Penry since his first trial,
believes there probably was more to the 5-4 decision than that.

"I don't really think that it was just the intellectual arguments about
the defects in the punishment instructions to the jury," Wright said. "I
don't think by itself that's what produced those reversals. What produced
them is the child abuse and mental retardation evidence. ... These are the
kind of facts that will make a judge turn to his law clerk and say, 'Find
a way to reverse this case.' "

Challenges for the court

Coker's job in charging the jury was made more difficult by the fact that
a decision exempting the mentally retarded from execution came down during
the trial. She denied defense motions to declare Penry mentally retarded
and sentence him to life in prison, then struggled to produce a four-part
instructional charge that gave the jury an opportunity to properly
evaluate and apply evidence of his retardation and physical abuse.

Special Issue No. 4, as it was called, instructed the jurors that mental
retardation is a mitigating factor and that if if they believed he was
mentally retarded, they were to answer yes to No. 4. The result would be a
life sentence. They were told that they could go ahead and consider any
other mitigating evidence or circumstances If they did not believe he was
retarded.

It was the word "other" that caused the Court of Criminal Appeals trouble,
as it might imply jurors could not consider Penry's mental impairment as
diminishing his moral blameworthiness if it fell short of actual
retardation.

This time the burden of crafting a passable jury instruction falls to a
new judge. The defense last week moved to have Coker recused for the
retrial, arguing that her recent election campaign material, in which she
noted that she had "cleared the way for the jury to issue a death
sentence" in the Penry case, demonstrated a bias that made her "not fit to
preside in this or possibly any other case."

Rather than let it become a poisonous issue for the trial, and a point for
another appeal, the administrative judge for the region immediately handed
the trial over to District Judge Fred Edwards in Conroe. The location of
the trial is still to be determined.

"The Texas (capital punishment) statute now works  the Supreme Court has
said that," said Robert Kepple, executive director of the Texas District
and County Attorneys Association. "But we're still left with that group of
cases that fall under the old law, and prosecutors and courts are trying
to get them right. It's a tough hurdle. The problem is the new statute
can't apply to the old cases. You're forced to try to use old laws and
cobble together elements for mitigation."

Lack of guidance

The result can be endless naysaying from appellate courts. Last month, the
U.S. Supreme Court overturned 3 Texas death sentences on grounds similar
to the Penry reversals.

"It gets picked apart pretty cleanly in hindsight," Kepple said. "And you
have trouble getting guidance from the (appeals) courts."

Casual observers might wonder why there has been no negotiated plea in the
Penry case. Polk County District Attorney Lee Hon said the first reason is
the crime itself. Even though small counties such as Polk are reluctant to
undertake such expensive capital trials  in more than three decades it has
sent only one other murderer to death row  original District Attorney Joe
Price thought there was no alternative.

It was not just that the family was known  Carpenter was the sister of the
Washington Redskins place kicker, Mark Moseley  but the act itself was
beyond the pale, something not seen locally save in movies.

"The most obvious reason is we feel it's a death-worthy case, just as much
so now as it was in 1979," said Hon, who prosecuted the last trial after
Price was killed in an automobile accident. "We've got three jury verdicts
to support that proposition."

Just as relevant, though, is another old law, this one concerning prison
sentences. A life sentence for Penry would make him eligible for parole
consideration. May said her family would no longer press for a death
sentence if they could be assured he would never leave prison.

"We would love to have this resolved," she said. "But this is not a
possibility. We have looked at it every way to see if he could stay in
prison the rest of his life. There's not any way he could. So we will keep
fighting. As long as we are fighting and keeping him on death row, even if
he is not executed he's going to stay in prison and not hurt anyone else."

(source: Houston Chronicle)






CALIFORNIA:

Death sentence handed down in child murder----Cordova described as
unsympathetic for 1979 rape, murder of 8-year old


A Contra Costa Superior Court judge on Friday sentenced a former Richmond
man to death for raping and murdering an 8-year-old girl nearly three
decades ago.

Joseph Cordova, 63, leaned on his elbows in a Martinez courtroom and
showed no emotion as the judge condemned him to die for the 1979 killing
of Cannie "Candy" Bullock.

"At no point has Mr. Cordova evinced any remorse for the crime, not only
denying that he perpetrated it in the face of all-but-conclusive DNA
evidence to the contrary, but not even showing any sympathy for what
happened to the child," Judge Peter Spinetta said before ordering Cordova
sent to death row at San Quentin State Prison.

Friday's hearing ended a brutal case that went unsolved for 23 years. A
jury convicted Cordova in January. The next month, the same jury
recommended his execution.

The sentencing hearing was briefer than most. The attorneys spoke few
words. Cordova's family said nothing. As on each day of trial, none of
Cannie's family showed up to watch.

"She was just a sweet little girl," Cannie's baby sitter, Melissa
Martinez, said by phone after the hearing. "I'd take her to the parks. She
was like my own daughter."

Cannie's mother, Linda Baum, went out drinking on the night of Aug. 24,
1979, and left the girl alone. Cannie's body was found early the next
morning. She had been strangled, her body left in the backyard of her
home.

Cordova had visited the house in the past because he slept with Baum.

"There was no evidence of breaking and entering," Spinetta said Friday.
"And it appears the defendant, Mr. Cordova, gained entry by trading on the
child's innocence and trust."

At trial, Cordova's attorneys said Cordova left his sperm in the
bedsheets, which may have transferred to Cannie while she slept in the
same sheets.

Years passed without any suspects in the slaying. In 1996, San Pablo
police opened the grave of one of Cannie's neighbors, William Flores, who
knew Cannie and could not account for his whereabouts the night of the
killing.

Investigators said at the time that his sister believed Flores was the
killer and that he had returned home with blood on his shirt the night of
the killing. But his DNA did not match sexual assault evidence at the
crime scene.

Investigators matched that evidence with Cordova in 2002 through a
national DNA database. They found him in a Colorado prison serving a
sentence for child molestation.

On Friday, Spinetta noted how the killing had affected Cannie's family.
Her father was unable to testify because he still cannot talk about his
daughter's death. Her stepmother made a dress for the girl and left it
hanging in the closet for decades.

Cordova's attorneys, the prosecutor and jurors acknowledged that the aging
killer, who has hepatitis and diabetes, will most likely die before he is
executed.

Defense attorney Mitchell Hauptman told Spinetta on Friday that Cordova
preferred death row, where general population inmates cannot attack him.

"He does not wish to change the verdict," Hauptman told the judge.

Spinetta responded that Cordova's preference did not matter to him. He
said he is sending the defendant there for his crime.

One of Cordova's former wives, Lupe Snasel, said outside the courtroom
that she still believes he is innocent, but feels he can live on death
row.

"He'll be safer," Snasel said. "We can visit him."

Spinetta ordered the sheriff's office to transfer Cordova within 10 days
to San Quentin State Prison, where he will join 664 other inmates on death
row.

The state has executed 14 people since 1978.

As the bailiff escorted Cordova, whose arms are covered with tattoos, from
the courtroom, he spoke over his shoulder to his family.

"See y'all later," he said. "I'll write you."

(source: Mercury-Register)






TENNESSEE:

Pair's prison friendship rooted in faith----Visitor says executions
'absolute waste'----Sherwood MacRae: "We had that camaraderie around the
work of God."


Their meeting was almost an accident.

Sherwood MacRae was at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison offering
spiritual solace to convicted murderer Michael Coleman.

As they had many times before, MacRae and Coleman were talking religion.
Then another inmate interrupted their conversation with a question about
the Bible.

MacRae can't remember the exact question posed to him about 5 years ago.
The inmate who asked it was Philip Workman.

A series of Bible studies - and ultimately a friendship - ensued between
MacRae, a slight, elderly Methodist retiree, and Workman, sentenced to
death for the 1981 murder of a Memphis police officer during the robbery
of a fast-food restaurant.

MacRae kept going to Riverbend for the next 5 years, mainly to talk to
Coleman. But their meetings developed into a three-person conversation
including Workman.

"I think he seriously studied the Bible and the very fact that the last
thing he had to say was 'give my last meal to the homeless' was a good
indication that he really did take it more seriously.

"We had that camaraderie around the word of God," MacRae said.

That camaraderie ended last week, when Workman was executed.

It had been about six months since they spoke. MacRae said he couldn't
bring himself to come to Nashville during Workman's last days. On the
night Workman was executed, MacRae stayed at home and cried.

Sentence is commuted

MacRae said he's visited lots of convicted murders, several of them on
death row, to talk about the gospel.

But the 1st time he walked into death row, it wasn't to talk about God -
it was to visit a friend who had been convicted of killing another man.

"I was scared to death," MacRae recalled. He wondered what kind of monster
this man, whom he'd met while serving in the Air Force, had become.

After that first meeting, he said, he recognized that his friend wasn't a
monster at all. His friend was sentenced to death but, with MacRae's help,
his sentence was commuted. Eventually, his friend got out of prison and
lived crime-free for 6 years before dying in a car accident.

"I saw what I believe is the essence of Christianity: redemption. The guy
paid the price for his stupidity," MacRae said.

He said he saw that redemption in Workman after 4 or 5 meetings. "He had a
faith that was real," MacRae said.

"2 things I really believe in: Christ can change your life. He changed my
life and Phil's life. I know that for a fact. And the 2nd thing is, we are
wasting people (through executions). We wasted Philip Workman's life," he
said.

Visits are cut back

MacRae lived in the Nashville area and visited with Coleman and Workman
for about 5 years until October, when he moved to Cookeville and had to
cut back his trips.

During that time, he said, they rarely spoke about the shooting that
landed Workman on death row. He rarely asks inmates about their crimes.

"I have to stay noninvolved with what got them there. . I wasn't curious
about that," MacRae said.

Workman was convicted of killing Ronald Oliver, a Memphis policeman,
during a shootout after a robbery. Workman and his supporters have
insisted that Oliver was accidentally shot by another officer.

Either way, MacRae believes Workman did deserve a harsh punishment for the
crime but not death.

"That he carried a gun was stupid. You know, we all do stupid things. I
got the idea that this is what troubled Workman more than anything else -
that he got caught doing something stupid," MacRae said.

"Did he have remorse for killing Oliver? I really think he did. I think he
was really concerned about that.

"He violated a law, and the law requires a penalty. He had to pay a price.
I just say if a guy has committed a violent crime, lock him up and throw
away the key. . The death penalty is an absolute waste."

(source: Fairview Observer)






OHIO:

Prison officials discriminate against Muslim prisoners


Following are excerpts from an April 2007 letter. The writer is the
brother of Imam Siddique Abdullah Hasan, one of the Lucasville 5 political
prisoners in Ohio.

At Smith State Prison (SSP) in Georgia, a memorandum was posted
prohibiting group gatherings in the common area (dayroom/dormitory),
wherein Muslim prisoners would no longer be allowed to enjoy making
congregational prayer and are now only allowed to pray in their respective
cells. Prior to this memorandum being issued, Muslim prisoners were able
to pray in congregation with no problems occurring and without any major
complaints from prison officials.

However, on Feb. 15, the wardens at SSP announcedin a private meeting with
me and five other Muslim prisonersthat we were prohibited any further
congregational prayers in the common area within the dorms.

In support of this prohibition prison officials have equated Islamic
Congregational Prayers (ICP) as "group activities," which are subject to
prohibition on the grounds of "institutional safety" and "security." One
has to question the reason for this sudden prohibition when there had been
no problems in the past with Muslims coming together to make
congregational prayer, and where it appears this new prohibition only
seems to be slated toward Muslim prisoners.

For example, as many as four prisoners are allowed to sit together and
interact in various activities, i.e., playing cards, watching TV, or even
to conduct bible study and discuss religious issuesin which some of these
gatherings have exceeded over 40 prisoners at one timeyet prison officials
seem not to have any safety and security concerns from such non-Muslim
gatherings. It seems ironic that men who seek to pray together would be
looked upon as a sudden problem and thus denied the right to pray in
congregation, unless there is a hidden agenda for this denial.

Denying Muslim prisoners from being able to come together for this solemn
act of worship can lead to other problems, i.e., disrupting their cellmate
which can lead to hostility and aggression because theres very limited
space in the cell and when you have two men occupying a cell, it doesnt
leave much room to move around.

Not only that, it creates problems for the non-Muslim (living in the cell)
to be disrupted, for they may be sleeping or working on their legal case,
etc.

What is happening right now are the same kind of things that caused
conditions to break down in other prisons where riots have occurred, for
example, the riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF) in
Lucasville, Ohio.

It was the Warden (Tate) at SOCF who came out with orders to suddenly
FORCE Muslim prisoners to take a TB test that contained "phenol," which is
prohibited to Muslims because it contains alcohol. Alcohol in any form is
prohibited to Muslims. As a result of Warden Tate's orders, it caused the
longest riot in U.S. history to occur on April 13, 1993, where lives were
lost and 5 men wrongfully accused, convicted and now reside on death row.

A grievance was filed on Feb. 20 to address the situation, citing
religious discrimination and the right to exercise religious freedom under
the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Person Act. However, the
response received from prison officials dated March 7 was met with
resistancea refusal to rescind the prohibition.

An appeal was filed and sent to the Warden, who also denied the grievance,
on March 9. At present, the Warden's response is being appealed as of
March 14 seeking relief in this matter.

Understanding the nature of prison officials and their need to deny
prisoners at every turn, we are appealing to youThe Publicto help us in
this matter. You may help us by contacting the following parties: Don
Jarriel, Warden; Dan Dasher, Deputy Warden (in charge of Security) and
Wayne Johnson, Deputy Warden (in charge of Care and Treatment) by phoning:
(912) 654-5033 or (912) 654-5000. [Please ask for the extension of
whomever you wish to speak to.]

With your help, we can, at least, get the attention of these officials
where they will know WE ARE NOT ALONE. To obtain more explicit details
regarding this matter please contact me.

Abdus-Salam Karim

(aka Walter Sanders, Jr. #269802)

Smith State Prison

P.O. Box 726 Glennville, GA 30427

Prisonersolidarity.org

(source: Workers World)