[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----LA., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

May 27



LOUISIANA:

Death penalty banned in 3rd trial


In Lake Charles, a man facing a trial for killing a 6-year-old boy in the
southwestern Louisiana community of Iowa will not face the death penalty
if convicted.

The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled recently that Ricky Joseph Langley
cannot be tried for capital murder, since he had been previously convicted
of 2nd-degree murder, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison
without parole.

The victim's mother, Lorelei Guillory, has said she doesn't want Langley
sentenced to death.

Langley was renting a residence from a family when Jeremy Guillory knocked
on his door on Feb. 7, 1992, looking for the family's children. The boy
was killed after he accepted Langley's invitation to wait inside,
prosecutors said.

During a pretrial hearing in 2002, Lorelei Guillory pleaded asked to let
Langley plead guilty to killing her son and serve life in prison. The
death penalty is legalized murder, and not something her son would want,
she said, calling him a "very forgiving child."

The high court's 6-1 ruling last week overturned a state appeal court
decision that Langley, who was charged with 1st-degree murder but
convicted of 2nd-degree murder at his second trial in 2003, could be
prosecuted a third time on the capital charge.

The decision reinstated state District Judge Wilford Carter's ruling that
jurors who heard the second trial had effectively acquitted him of capital
murder. Prosecutors said they could seek the death penalty again because
that verdict had been nullified.

Langley's attorneys argued that another 1st-degree murder prosecution
would be double jeopardy, and exposing him to a death sentence again would
punish him for successfully appealing his first conviction.

The Supreme Court had overturned the second conviction and sentence in
2004 because state District Judge Al Gray left the courtroom during parts
of jury selection and closing arguments. Because he had been gone, he
mistakenly shortened the amount of time allotted to a defense attorney,
the court ruled.

Langley's 1st trial, in 1994, brought a death sentence. However, the
Supreme Court overturned it in 2002, finding the method of selecting grand
jury foremen in Calcasieu Parish in 1992 was racially discriminatory.

(source: Associated Press)

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

No death penalty for Langley


Ricky Joseph Langley cannot face a death sentence if he is convicted in a
third trial on charges he killed a 6-year-old Iowa boy in 1992, the state
Supreme Court said Friday.

He can be retried only on the charge of 2nd-degree murder, the offense he
was found guilty of at the conclusion of his 2nd trial, the court said.
2nd-degree murder carries a penalty of life in prison without parole.

The verdict in Langley's 3nd trial was thrown out by the 3rd Circuit Court
of Appeal, which said trial Judge Al Gray's behavior of absenting himself
from some of the proceedings deprived Langley of a fair trial.

Friday's Supreme Court decision reinstates a ruling handed down earlier by
14th Judicial District Court Judge Wilford Carter and overturns the
findings of the 3rd Circuit, which said Langley could be reprosecuted for
1st-degree murder and again face a death penalty.

Neither District Attorney John DeRosier nor chief felony prosecutor
Cynthia Killingsworth was available for comment Friday. Chief appellate
prosecutor Carla Sigler said the state will probably appeal to the U.S.
Supreme Court.

Prosecutors argued that since Langley's 2nd trial was declared void, they
could retry him on the original count of 1st-degree murder and seek a
death sentence. The appeals court agreed, saying Langley's 2nd trial was
declared "an absolute nullity" and that the district attorney could
"exercise any of the prosecutorial options available."

Defense attorneys Clive Stafford-Smith, Christine Lehmann and Phyllis Mann
said reprosecution of Langley on 1st-degree murder exposed him to double
jeopardy. And they claimed that to expose Langley to a death sentence by
prosecuting him again on 1st-degree murder amounted to punishing him for
successfully appealing his 2nd conviction.

The Supreme Court, with only 1 justice dissenting, agreed with those
arguments.

"Under these circumstances, and by operation of long-standing double
jeopardy law, we hold that the unanimous verdict of guilty of 2nd-degree
murder returned by Langley's jury in (his 2nd trial) implicitly acquitted
him of 1st-degree murder," the high court said.

Additionally the court found "the structure of the defendant's trial was
not destroyed by the trial judge's error in absenting himself during
portions of the trial.

"Even though the trial error requires a reversal of Langley's conviction
and sentence, the verdict rendered by the jury was a legal verdict."

The high court concluded the verdict must be considered in applying a
state law that says "when a person is found guilty of a lesser degree of
the offense charged, the verdict or judgment of the court is an acquittal
of all greater offenses charged in the indictment and the defendant cannot
thereafter be tried for those offenses on a new trial."

Justice Jeanette Theriot Knoll cast the only dissenting vote, finding that
Langley would neither be placed in double jeopardy nor have his appellate
rights violated by reprosecution on the 1st-degree murder charge.

In February 1992, Jeremy Guillory was considered missing from his Iowa
home. His body was found 3 days later in a closet in a room Langley, a
convicted sex offender, rented in a house next door to the boy's mother.
The boy had been strangled and had a dirty sock stuffed down his throat.
Police believe he was molested.

Langley's 2st conviction and death sentence were overturned because of a
problem in the grand jury's makeup. In the retrial, jurors convicted
Langley of 2nd-degree murder. The 2nd conviction was thrown out on appeal,
but the wording of the ruling left open the possibility that Langley could
face a death sentence in a 3rd trial.

The defense asked that the state be banned from prosecuting Langley on a
charge of capital murder. That ban was granted Friday and will stand
unless overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

(source: American Press)






CALIFORNIA:

Attorneys await Cooper ruling----Court weighing death penalty for 1983
Chino Hills hatchet murders


It's been nearly 5 months, and there's still no ruling from the federal
appeals court on whether death row inmate Kevin Cooper should be executed
for the murders of four people in Chino Hills.

Cooper, convicted of the murders in 1985, claims he was framed for the
crimes. A 3-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is
weighing those claims.

The judges heard oral arguments on Jan. 9 and have been nearly silent on
the case since.

Attorneys said they have no idea when a ruling might come.

"The 9th Circuit can rule whenever it wants," said David Kravets,
spokesman for the California Attorney General's Office. "There's no
deadline."

Cooper is on death row at San Quentin State Prison for the 1983 murders of
Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their daughter, Jessica, and a neighbor boy,
Christopher Hughes.

All four were slain with a hatchet and knife inside the Ryen home in a
late-night attack.

The Ryens' 9-year-old son, Joshua, survived, despite suffering a slashed
throat.

The slaughter took place just days after Cooper escaped from the nearby
California Institution for Men in Chino. He admitted to hiding out in a
house next to the Ryen home, but has always denied committing the murders.

He was nearly executed in 2004, but a full panel of judges from the 9th
Circuit spared him and ordered further examination of his case.

After more than two years of subsequent hearings that ended with a federal
judge again affirming Cooper's guilt, the case was again appealed to the
9th Circuit, and that's where it's been ever since.

Attorneys from both sides said last week they didn't believe the 5-month
wait signaled the court was struggling with a decision or leaning toward
one side over the other.

Such decisions take time, they said, and the wait illustrates why inmates
often remain on death row for decades before exhausting their appeals.

"I don't read anything into the time passage and do not think it is
unusual," said David Alexander, one of several lawyers defending Cooper.

John Kochis, the San Bernardino County prosecutor who helped convict
Cooper, said two decades of legal wrangling has produced such a vast
volume of documents that the judges could spend months sifting through
them without scratching the surface.

"These people have a tremendous workload," Kochis said.

The 9th Circuit is the largest of the 13 federal circuits. It hears cases
from California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Nevada,
Alaska, Hawaii, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

This is the 2nd time a 3-judge panel of the 9th Circuit has considered
appeals from Cooper.

The 1st time, the panel deliberated nearly 11 months before affirming
Cooper's conviction in 2000.

2 of the 3 judges involved in that appeal are also deciding the current
appeal.

(source: Inland Bulletin)