[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----US MIL., USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 18



US MILITARY:

Soldier's DNA matches semen from 1985 victim, expert testifies


Timothy B. Hennis was acquitted in 1989 of killing Kathryn Eastburn and 2
of her young daughters. A military court is looking into the case.

At Ft. Bragg, N.C., a government analyst testified Thursday that semen
recovered from a woman who was killed with 2 of her young daughters
matched the DNA of a soldier acquitted of the decades-old crime.

Jennifer Lehn, a forensic analyst for the North Carolina State Bureau of
Investigation, told a military court that there was virtually no chance
someone other than Master Sgt. Timothy B. Hennis matched the semen sample.

She described the odds as 1 in 12.1 thousand trillion among white men, and
even more remote odds for other races. There are 6.5 billion people in the
world, she noted.

Hennis, 49, was recalled into the Army in October so he could be charged
with the triple slaying in a military court. Double-jeopardy rules prevent
the state from retrying him in a crime for which he has been acquitted.

Hennis was convicted of the 1985 slayings and spent 2 1/2 years on death
row before winning a second trial. After he was acquitted in 1989, he
became a symbol of wrongful conviction, and his fight to prove his
innocence was portrayed in a book and movie. The crime evidence was not
tested for DNA until last year.

The 6-foot, 4-inch soldier, heavier now than in his previous trials, and
in need of reading glasses, appeared relaxed and confident during the
hearing. He left the defense table during recesses to chat with his wife
and mother-in-law, who sat in the front row of a courtroom filled mostly
with reporters.

Lehn testified that most of the DNA in the semen sample "came from one
person . Timothy Hennis," and the rest was that of the victim, Kathryn
Eastburn, 31, who was raped. Eastburn and her daughters Erin, 3, and Kara,
5, were stabbed and left with their throats slashed at their brick
ranch-style home near the base.

Former Air Force Capt. Gary Eastburn, the husband and father of the
victims, was out of town training at the time.

Hennis met Kathryn Eastburn two days before the slayings when he went to
her house to adopt the family's dog. After the killings, he reported to
the sheriff's office with his wife and baby girl in response to a
television bulletin saying that authorities wanted to speak to the man who
was involved in the dog adoption.

Hennis told police he never saw Eastburn again after the first meeting.

The court hearing, called an Article 32 investigation, is similar to a
preliminary hearing in a civilian courtroom. The investigating officer,
who is like a judge, is Col. William Lee Deneke, a reservist who works as
a federal prosecutor in Tennessee. He can recommend that a court-martial
should proceed, or that the charges should be dismissed or modified. The
final decision rests with Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, commanding general
of the 18th Airborne Corps. It could be weeks before a decision.

If tried and convicted in military court, Hennis again could face the
death penalty.

During cross-examination, defense lawyer Frank Spinner sought to show that
authorities had been lax in storing the evidence over the decades. He also
focused on what he said were flaws in the testing. He elicited testimony
that Lehn had failed to determine whether she was in fact testing a semen
sample, even though the sheriff's office had asked that she verify the
substance as well as run its DNA profile.

Lehn said the swab she tested, one of two that had been stored in a
cardboard box, had been identified as semen in 1985, and she did not want
to waste part of it reconfirming that it was semen.

Cumberland County Sheriff's Sgt. Larry J. Trotter said there were neither
inventories of what was in the cardboard boxes of evidence nor logs
showing who had handled it. Trotter, who said he had decided to test the
evidence as part of a cold-case investigation, told the court that when he
went to inspect the boxes, he found that some bags had been "torn open"
through "wear and tear." He said the "compromised" evidence included
bedding, and he repackaged it.

Asked whether he had photographed or videotaped the evidence before he
repackaged it, Trotter said: "No, sir. That's a technique I have learned
since."

The defense called one witness, a former county crime technician, who
testified that the evidence was inventoried when it was first collected
and that one of the custodians of the evidence was later prosecuted for
stealing hundreds of guns from evidence lockers.

The defense also sought to show that sheriff's investigators never doubted
Hennis' guilt and were stunned by his acquittal.

Former Cumberland County Sheriff's Det. Robert Bittle testified that a
composite drawing of a man seen leaving the Eastburn home the morning
after the killings matched Hennis so closely that Bittle stopped in his
tracks when he first encountered Hennis a few days later. Bittle now works
as an investigator for the district attorney in Cumberland County.

Bittle, who investigated the Eastburn slayings, testified that he was
"extremely disappointed" and felt "empty" after Hennis was acquitted. When
Spinner asked Bittle why he did not focus on other suspects, Bittle put
his hands together and pointed at Hennis, clad in Army fatigues at the
defense table.

"Always, all the evidence pointed to Tim Hennis," Bittle said firmly in
his Southern drawl. "It didn't go in any other direction. It all pointed
to Tim Hennis."

When Bittle left the stand, he glared at Hennis, and the defendant
appeared to look directly at the investigator.

Military prosecutors refused to discuss the case. Spinner spoke briefly to
reporters after the hearing, saying he'd challenge the military's
authority to try Hennis if the case proceeded.

"We firmly and completely stand behind [Hennis'] innocence, and we will
defend him with every resource we have available," said Spinner, a
prominent civilian lawyer with experience in defending clients in military
settings.

Spinner suggested that the defense would show the government could not
"connect the evidence tested to the crime." Asked whether the defense
would hire an expert to retest the crime samples, Spinner said he would
seek "funding for all kinds of experts."

(source: Los Angeles Times)

USA:

New Report Shows Money, Negative Ads Spreading to State Judicial Elections


Records for campaign spending fell, attack ads blared on until Election
Day, and special interest groups demanded candidates state their views on
a whole range of contentious issues.

Sounds like politics as usual, doesn't it? Except these elections weren't
for president, Congress or governor -- they were to fill the bench of top
state courts. A new report says that a rising swell of money, outside
groups and negative campaigns is adding pressure to the yearslong debate
about the best way to elect judges.

A handful of states are weighing whether to publicly finance judicial
elections, arguing that judges should be removed from the influence of
money. New Mexico last month became the second state to approve public
financing for such campaigns, after North Carolina changed to public
financing in 2004.

In Michigan, Supreme Court Justices Michael Cavanagh and Maura Corrigan
faced little opposition in their 2006 re-election bids but still raised
close to $1 million, and Corrigan benefited from another $700,000 worth of
TV ads paid for by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.

Rich Robinson of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, a nonprofit
government watchdog group, said Michigan Supreme Court campaigns have been
influenced by anonymously funded TV ads. Spending on campaign ads that do
not explicitly recommend a candidate does not have to be reported.

Wisconsin chose a new Supreme Court justice last month in an acrimonious
campaign that cost an estimated $6 million, nearly four times the 1999
record. The election was seen as a contest to decide the ideological
balance on the court, with one candidate considered a liberal and the
other a conservative. The conservative, Judge Annette Ziegler, won.

In Washington state last year, business groups lined up against a
coalition of trial lawyers, unions and Indian tribal leaders in election
struggles over three Supreme Court seats. Money from outside groups
brought in $2.7 million.

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day urged states to rethink
partisan election of judges.

"In too many states, judicial elections are becoming political prizefights
where partisans and special interests seek to install judges who will
answer to them instead of the law and the constitution," she told the
group Justice at Stake Campaign, a Washington-based coalition seeking
changes to protect judges' independence.

The new report, released by Justice at Stake on Thursday, tracked the
changes in recent years and found:

-- Television ads soared, with campaign commercials in 10 of the 11 states
with contested supreme court seats last year. In 2000, only 4 states had
ads out of 18 states with contested supreme court races.

-- Spending on TV ads rose to more than $1.6 million in states with
contested races, up from $1.5 million in 2004.

-- Sitting and would-be judges personally attacked their opponents much
more often, reversing earlier trends. Candidates sponsored 60 percent of
attack ads last year, up from 10 percent of attack ads in 2004.

"If courts are going to stay impartial, we can't have judges moonlighting
as backslapping politicians," said Bert Brandenberg, the campaign's
executive director. "It's clear now after 4 straight election cycles that
it's only getting worse. The system is heading for breakdown."

Business groups are taking a much bigger role in judicial campaigns and
say that their participation is necessary to have an open debate.

"What was happening in the courts was the result of the impact of trial
lawyers being pretty cozy with the trial court benches in a lot of these
states," said Lisa A. Rickard, president of the Institute for Legal
Reform, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "Our mandate is to
try and change the lawsuit-happy culture in the United States."

The group's activities and spending stretches from public education to
legislative lobbying and judicial elections, she said.

Rickard would not say how much the institute has spent on elections. "As
long as there are elections," she said, "it's important that people are
educated about the issues."

The increasingly partisan and expensive judicial campaigns are spurring a
debate in the states over how best to choose judges. Besides New Mexico's
new law, other places where a switch to public financing or merit
selection of judges is a front-burner topic include Illinois,
Pennsylvania, Washington state and Wisconsin.

Currently, 23 states, including Michigan, let voters pick the judges to
their top appellate courts, while in 27 states the judges are appointed,
usually by the governor or the legislature, according to the National
Center for State Courts.

The debate over how to choose judges is not new, and actually dates back
to the early days of the republic, when state legislatures or governors
usually chose, said Seth Anderson, executive director of the American
Judicature Society's Hunter Citizens Center for Judicial Selection.

But the combativeness of recent elections is new, he said.

"It creates the impression -- even if it's not the reality -- it creates
the impression that justice is for sale," said Anderson, whose center
supports the campaign's push for judicial independence.

(source: Law.com)