[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ILL., MO., WASH., ALA.

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 16



ILLINOIS:

Defense plans to appeal decisions : Judge dismissed holdout juror


A controversy surrounding an anti-death penalty juror could overturn the
guilty verdict and death sentence imposed on quadruple killer Brian Nelson
of Momence, according to his lawyers.

Defense attorney Alexander Beck hopes the Illinois Supreme Court "will see
it our way."

"We're obviously going to address the issue of the juror being excused,"
defense lawyer George Lenard said.

An anti-death penalty juror who allegedly refused to deliberate on the
issue was dismissed Friday by Circuit Judge Gerald Kinney after the
holdout juror and the jury forewoman were interviewed in open court at the
Will County Courthouse. The judge substituted an alternate juror and
instructed the jury to begin deliberations anew and not to simply impose
the will of the majority. The revamped jury deliberated for approximately
one hour and 40 minutes before deciding death was the appropriate sentence
for the 24-year-old Momence man.

The jury controversy apparently had been simmering among the jurors during
the course of the trial and subsequent death penalty proceedings. But it
exploded in court Thursday afternoon via a series of notes to the judge
and interviews with jurors. The brouhaha continued when court reconvened
Friday.

Jurors claimed that one holdout juror said he would not impose a death
sentence, and that he was morally opposed to capital punishment.

Jury members are supposed to base their decisions on the evidence
presented in court and are supposed to keep their mind open to all penalty
options.

The jurors locked in the Nelson deadlock refused to sign either the
verdict that would condemn Nelson to death or the verdict that would give
him life in prison.

"It's quite an unusual situation," Kinney said from the bench Friday.

Jurors in capital punishment cases can deliberate three times. First to
decide guilt or innocence, then to determine if the convicted person is
eligible for death, and then finally to decide if the person receives the
death penalty or life in prison.

On Thursday, the jury endured more than 10 hours of contentious
deliberations before Kinney sent them home for the night. Kinney first
interviewed the holdout and another juror.

Further in-court interviews on Friday showed the jurors had discussed the
case among themselves before deliberations even started in the guilt or
innocence phase.

"That's a bigger problem that we initially thought we had," defense
attorney Steven Haney said in court Friday.

"The guilty verdict is itself now tainted," Haney told the judge.

The judge refused Haney's request Friday to have the entire jury
discharged and Nelson's guilty verdict vacated.

The odd scenario of jurors refusing to sign either the death penalty
verdict or the life in prison verdict is apparently new legal ground.

"There's an area where there's never been any case law," Beck said after
Nelson was sentenced to death.

"It's a whole brand new issue," Beck said.

Assistant Attorney General Vincenzo Chimera believes the judge made the
right decision in dismissing the juror who allegedly refused to
deliberate. And Chimera applauds the jury members for bringing that juror
to the attention of the judge and lawyers. "Had they not brought it to our
attention, a grave injustice would have been done," Chimera stated.

On Oct. 3, the jury found Nelson guilty on all counts of 1st-degree
murder, aggravated arson and home invasion. Nelson murdered his former
girlfriend and 3 other people at a Custer Park farmhouse on May 31, 2002.

"I think the boy did his best," Jan Nelson, the convicted man's mother,
said of the dismissed juror. But she expected the newly installed juror
would be pressured into going along with the rest of the panel.

Shirley Bookwalter of Braceville, the sister of murder victim Jean
Bookwalter, believes the judge should have dismissed the juror when the
controversy first came to light Thursday.

Beatrice Bookwalter, a Braceville woman and mother of slain Jean
Bookwalter, also agrees with seating an alternate juror on the panel. "I
think that other man had his mind made up ahead of time," she said.

(source: Kankakee Daily Journal)






MISSOURI:

Independence couple to face death penalty in Jackson County


An Independence couple already facing the death penalty in a videotaped
sex killing in Clay County will face a 2nd death-penalty trial in another
woman's death, Jackson County Prosecutor Mike Sanders said Monday.

Richard D. Davis and Dena D. Riley have been charged in Jackson County
with murder, rape, kidnap and sexual assault in the May death of Marsha
Spicer, 41, in their Independence apartment. Davis and Riley also face the
death penalty in Clay County in the April 9 suffocation of Michelle Ricci,
36.

Authorities have said they found videotapes in Davis' and Riley's
apartment showing the couple committing brutal sex acts on the 2 women.
Riley and Davis remain jailed in Jackson County.

Ricci's death came to light after Davis and Riley were captured May 25 in
southwest Missouri and brought back to the Kansas City area to be charged
in Spicer's death. Both defendants led investigators to Ricci's remains.

According to court documents filed in Clay County, Davis and Riley told
investigators they decided Ricci had to be killed to prevent her from
reporting the April 8 sexual attack.

The site where Ricci died is about 20 miles west of the spot in rural
Lafayette County where a fisherman found Spicer's body May 17, triggering
the investigation that led to charges in both women's deaths.

Riley and Davis also have been indicted in Kansas on a federal charge of
kidnapping a 5-year-old southeast Kansas girl related to Davis after
fleeing the Kansas City area.

The girl was with the couple when they were captured May 25 in southwest
Missouri. Court documents said the child had injuries consistent with
sexual abuse.

(source: Associated Press)






WASHINGTON:

Report: State seldom aids counties with costly murder cases


The state rarely helps counties shoulder the high costs of handling
aggravated murder cases, despite a law aimed at easing the financial
burden such expensive prosecutions place on counties.

An analysis of reimbursement requests made under the 1999 Extraordinary
Criminal Justice Costs Act revealed that the Legislature denied 3 out of 4
counties that asked for help in 2003, 2004 and 2005, the Yakima
Herald-Republic reported Sunday.

Only one county has received any help in the past two years. Grant County
got $54,000 last year, when it asked for more than $282,000, and received
$70,000 in 2004, the newspaper said.

"The system is not working the way it's supposed to," said Yakima County
Prosecutor Ron Zirkle.

An aggravated murder case in Yakima County has already cost taxpayers over
$1.1 million. 2 men, Jose "Junior" Sanchez and Mario "Gato" Mendez, have
been accused of killing 21-year-old Ricky Causor and his 3-year-old
daughter Mya during a drug rip-off in February 2005.

Yakima County asked for more than $280,000 last year, and nearly $367,000
the year before that. It got nothing. King, Skagit and Snohomish counties
have also been snubbed.

The costs associated with aggravated murder cases can be astronomical,
especially when prosecutors seek the death penalty. Defendants are usually
poor, forcing counties to foot their legal bills.

Under the 1999 law, the Legislature acknowledged the need to reimburse
counties for "unexpected" and "unplanned" costs associated with aggravated
murder cases.

Legislative notes state that such cases "created a major burden on county
revenues. Some counties spend 70 percent or more of their budgets on
criminal justice, and the substantial costs of aggravated murder cases
force counties to cut back in other service areas."

The law did not, however, set up a budget or dedicate a pot of money to be
replenished each year. Instead, counties have to submit reimbursement
requests on a case-by-case basis to the Office of Public Defense, which
reviews the requests against a loose set of guidelines.

The No. 1 consideration is the proportionate impact a case has on a
county's criminal justice budget. Other criteria include efficient use of
resources, the extraordinary nature of the costs and a county's ability to
accommodate and anticipate the costs.

The petitions are then turned over to the chairs of the House
Appropriations Committee and the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

Over the past 6 years, the Legislature has steadily restricted
reimbursements, from a high of $975,000 split among seven counties in 2000
to just $54,000 in 2005.

Zirkle has until the end of the month to decide whether to seek the death
penalty in the 2005 double killing. After numerous delays, Sanchez's
lawyers recently submitted a report, hoping to spare their client's life.

It cost nearly $900,000. No one knows exactly what expenses that money
covered. Records have been sealed to prevent prosecutors from gaining
strategic insight into the defense's case.

Recent economic forecasts predict the state will have a $400 million
budget surplus next year, but Zirkle said he's not holding his breath.

"I'm hoping the Legislature will do the right thing," he said, "but I'm
not planning on it."

Rep. Jim Clements, R-Selah, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, said
he did not know Yakima County got nothing after asking for help two years
in a row.

Clements, whose son, Troy, is a Yakima County deputy prosecutor, surmised
that the Office of Public Defense is "filtering" most of the requests for
reimbursement. "I think there's a bottleneck there that needs to be looked
at," he said.

Joanne Moore, director of the Office of Public Defense, said her agency
submits all the petitions to the committees that control the Legislature's
purse strings.

She said reimbursement requests are prioritized in consultation with the
Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys and the Washington
Association of Police Chiefs and Sheriffs.

"We don't advise to pay or not to pay a certain county," she said. "We do
not give a recommendation."

Pam Loginsky, a staff member of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys,
conceded that reimbursements have not kept pace with requests in recent
years. She attributed the problem to budget shortfalls.

Loginsky also said defense attorneys and death penalty opponents worry
that hefty reimbursements could encourage more prosecutors to seek the
death penalty.

There are nine inmates on death row in Washington, which has not had an
execution since 2001.

Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court rejected arguments that a deal
sparing the life of Gary Ridgway, who pleaded guilty to four dozen murders
in the Green River serial killings case, made the death penalty in other
cases unfair.

(sources: Associated Press, Yakima Herald-Republic)






ALABAMA:

Judge declares man unfit for execution


A Gadsden, a federal judge has ruled that convicted triple murderer Glenn
Holladay meets the criteria for mental retardation and should be exempt
from Alabama's death penalty.

Senior U.S. Judge Robert Propst in a ruling Thursday stated he does not
agree with an earlier ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge Harwell Davis.

Davis ruled in August that Holladay is not mentally retarded -- an issue
that has delayed Holladay's execution at least twice.Holladay, 57, has
been on death row for 17 years, convicted in the 1986 shooting deaths of
Rebecca Ledbetter Holladay; her boyfriend, David Robinson; and Larry
Thomas Jr., a 16-year-old neighbor and friend of Rebecca Holladay's son.

Propst, who held a hearing Aug. 17, said Alabama case law suggests that
the IQ for someone who is mentally retarded is 70 or below.

The report shows that Holladay has an average IQ score of 64, taken from
10 tests.

(source: Montgomery Advertiser)