Oct. 11 TEXAS: Walker's father pleads for mercy Joe Walker, Sarah Anne Walker's father, has made it clear he doesn't want Kosoul Chanthakoummane, the 27-year-old man convicted of murdering his daughter, put to death. And he wants a chance to discuss the matter with Chanthakoummane's jury during the punishment phase of the trial, which starts today. Walker said in January that he hoped a jury wouldn't sentence him to death, and that he spoke with the Collin County district attorney's office about his feelings on the issue. "I don't believe that another death would do any good," he said in January. He also said Chanthakoummane's attorney, Steven Miears, asked First Assistant District Attorney Greg Davis if Collin County District Attorney John Roach would consider a plea deal that would keep his client out of the lethal injection chair and in prison for life without the possibility of parole, according to an e-mail written by Davis to Mr. Walker. "So I wrote him back, and saidI would be for allowing him to plead out for life without parole, and I would be happy to discuss it," Walker said back in January. Roach turned down the offer 3 days after Miears made his proposal, before Walker could discuss it with the district attorney's office. Davis said in a statement that the district attorney's respects Mr. Walker's beliefs, but is implored to "consider the needs of the entire community in every case that comes before us n and those needs led us to pursue the death penalty in this case." "I had told them I was against it when I talked to Greg," Walker said on Wednesday following the reading of Chanthakoummane's verdict. "Now I think I mentioned tomorrow I'm going to e-mail them to make a statement to the jury, a victim impact statement." He said he can understand how someone else might not want the same fate for their daughter's killer if they were in his shoes. "That may be hard to believe, but it's the truth," Walker said. "Even at the funeral, before I knew who it was, I suggested everybody pray for the perpetrator every day, whoever did it, and I forgave him. Our Lord Jesus says to forgive, and our Lord Jesus says in divine mercy, you have to show someone mercy if you expect some mercy, and I very strongly believe that." He said he continues to pray for Chanthakoummane and his family. "I also pray for the Divine Mercy Chaplet for Kosoul every day and his family," he said. "I never miss it. I wrote him a letter that told him completely without any animosity whatsoever, that I forgive Kosoul. I didn't give it to him today because I wanted to wait for the verdict, but I'm going to give it to his attorney, one for him and his mother." He also knows first-hand the suffering his family is experiencing as they await Chanthakoummane's fate. "My daughter Jackie [Mull] is very upset and crying," Mr. Walker said. "My whole family was here to support me. My hero, Dr. William McCormick (Sarah's godfather), was here, and he was very helpful because he shielded my family from all the pain and suffering." Mull said in a statement on Wednesday that she hopes Chanthakoummane is executed. But Walker also said if the jury decides to sentence Chanthakoummane to death, he will continue to fight for his life as appeals are filed on his behalf. "I will do everything possible as long I live to prevent that," Mr. Walker said. "As you probably know in many death penalty cases, the average is about 12 or 13 years before it [the execution] ever comes about. I will do everything possible to prevent that." (source: Plano Courier Star) *************************** Search begins for jury in Renteria sentencing Jury selection began Wednesday in the sentencing hearing of David Renteria, whose death sentence in the 2001 abduction and slaying of 5-year-old Alexandra Flores was vacated last year by an appellate court. Renteria was sentenced to death in 2003 after being convicted by a state district court jury of capital murder. Last year, the Court of Criminal Appeals upheld Renteria's capital-murder conviction, but said he was entitled to a new sentencing hearing because the appellate court believed prosecutors introduced testimony from an expert who left the jury with the false impression that Renteria did not express remorse for the slaying, court documents show. Renteria's sentencing hearing is set for Jan. 29 in the 41st District Court. Prosecutors have said they will once again seek the death penalty. Jury selection is expected to take more than a month. (source: El Paso Times) ARKANSAS----stay of impending execution Execution Delayed For Death-Row Inmate Federal judges granted a stay Thursday to an Arkansas death-row inmate scheduled to die next week by lethal injection, a method the U.S. Supreme Court will examine in a coming case. A split panel of 3 judges from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis granted the stay to death-row inmate Jack Harold Jones Junior. Jones appealed the court last month, arguing his scheduled October 16 execution should be delayed as the Supreme Court hears the case of 2 Kentucky inmates over lethal injection. A filing by state assistant attorney general Joseph Cordi Junior argued Jones should be put to death, saying the inmate "did nothing" legally for the years to stop his coming execution. The 43-year-old recently acknowledged to the state Parole Board that he did "own" the 1995 rape and slaying of Bald Knob bookkeeper Mary Phillips and an attack on her 11-year-old daughter. (source: KTHV) ARIZONA----stay of impending execution Execution on hold pending court decision In Phoenix, the Arizona Supreme Court has put the execution of a convicted killer on hold until the U.S. Supreme Court decides a Kentucky case on the legality of lethal injection. Lawyers for Jeffrey Landrigan had asked the state high court for an execution stay after the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the Kentucky case. The state court last month set a Nov. 1 execution date for Landrigan, who killed a Phoenix man in 1989. The Arizona court order grants an indefinite stay of the execution order. (source: Associated Press) MISSISSIPPI----new execution date Miss. Supreme Court sets execution date for Berry In Jackson, the Mississippi Supreme Court on Thursday set an Oct. 30 execution date for Earl Wesley Berry. Berry had argued to the court that it shouldn't be setting execution dates for condemned inmates until a decision is reached on whether death by lethal injection is cruel punishment. In an order signed by Presiding Justice Bill Waller Jr., the Mississippi court said nothing prevents the court from setting the execution date. Waller said any decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on the legality of lethal injections would effect future death sentence cases not existing ones such as Berry's. Berry was convicted and sentenced to death by a Chickasaw County jury for the 1987 killing of Mary Bounds. Bounds was beaten to death after leaving her weekly church choir practice, and her body was found just off a Chickasaw County road near Houston, Miss. Berry admitted to the killing, and the confession was used against him at trial. The U.S. Supreme Court case involves 2 Kentucky death row inmates' claim that lethal injection as practiced in Kentucky violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Every state that uses lethal injections - including Mississippi - employs the same 3 drugs, but there are differences among the states in the way the drugs are administered, training of executioners who administer them and dosages, legal experts have said. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case early next year. The attorney general's office had said the Mississippi court had "upheld the use of lethal injection as a constitutional method of execution." Berry's attorneys have said they will file a post-conviction petition to attack his execution by lethal injection with claims similar to those in the Kentucky case. Berry, who has been on death row since 1988, lost an appeal last week when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case. The attorney general petitioned the Mississippi court to set an execution date. The Mississippi court also rejected Berry's claim that at his trial his attorney should have challenged lethal injections as unconstitutional. Waller said the Mississippi court has determined that the state's lethal injection procedure is not cruel and unusual punishment. "There is no reason to believe that this court would have determined any differently had Berry's counsel raised the issue at trial. Failure to raise the issue at Berry's trial does not amount to deficient conduct by Berry's trial counsel," Waller wrote. Berry can now ask the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the execution. Only Presiding Justice Oliver Diaz Jr. voted against setting an execution date, while six other judges joined Waller in rejecting Berry's claims. Justice James E. Graves Jr. did not participate in the decision. Mississippi's last execution was Oct. 18, 2006, when Bobby Glen Wilcher was put to death for the brutal killings of 2 women in Scott County in 1982. (source: Associated Press) ************************** 3 women on Miss. death row; none close to execution The U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 after a decade-long hiatus. Since then, 11 women have been executed in the United States. None was from Mississippi. "Death sentences and actual executions for female offenders are rare in comparison to such events for male offenders. In fact, women are more likely to be dropped out of the system the further the capital punishment system progresses," the Death Penalty Information Center says in a new report. The report says that as of June 30, there were 49 women on death rows across the country. Three women currently are among the 67 prisoners on death row in Mississippi. 40 women have been executed in the U.S. in the past 100 years. Mississippi has not executed a woman since Mildred Johnson, 23, was put to death May 19, 1944, by electric chair, for beating her landlady to death. Since 1900, only 2 other women have been executed in this state: - Pattie Perdue was executed by hanging on Jan. 13, 1922. No details of her crime were available. - Mary Holmes, 35, was executed by hanging on April 29, 1937. She had been convicted of beating her employer to death. Nationally, women account for about 10 percent of murder arrests but for only about 2.1 percent of people sentenced to die and 1.4 percent of people currently on death row, according to a study by Ohio Northern University law professor Victor L. Streib. Streib said defense lawyers go to great lengths to make sure jurors will be sympathetic. "Attorneys generally will try to package the female client in the image of being very feminine, in the old-fashioned, traditional way, as a mother or a grandmother," Streib said. "And the prosecutor has to dehumanize the defendant before they will sentence them to death." For 6 years, Michelle Byrom was the only woman on Mississippi's death row. She was convicted in the 1999 murder of her husband, and is in a cell at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County, the only maximum security prison in the state for women. She has been joined at CMCF by 2 other women sentenced to death: - Kristi Fulgham, 31, sentenced to death in 2006 for murdering her husband, Joseph "Joey" Fulgham. - Lisa Jo Chamberlin, 35, sentenced to death in 2006 for the deaths of Linda Heintzelman and Heintzelman's boyfriend, Vernon Hulett. Fulgham and Chamberlin are just beginning their appeals. In November 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Byrom. She was seeking a hearing on her claims that she had evidence that could win her a new trial. Byrom was convicted in 2000 of killing her husband of 20 years and recruiting her son in the plot. In a rare move at her 2000 trial, Byrom asked Circuit Judge Thomas Gardner, instead of the jury, to decide whether she should serve life in prison or be put to death. Gardner sentenced her to death. Byrom, 50, has more appeals moving through the federal courts, says Assistant Attorney General Marvin White Jr. The courts already have rejected Byrom's claims that she killed her husband after years of abuse and that her attorney failed to provide her an adequate defense. In a 2003 series of letters to The Associated Press, Byrom said she never leaves her cell and prison officials and other inmates verbally abuse her. "A person once said that prison is a mind game. They will try to break you down to feel like you aren't even human," she wrote. "I sit here day to day, praying for the day when they come to me and say, 'Michelle Byrom, pack. It's time you went home.'" (source: Sun-Herald) FLORIDA: Murder Charges Filed In Miami Boat Murders In Miami, federal prosecutors accused 2 men Wednesday of killing the captain and 3 crew members of a charter fishing boat they allegedly attempted to hijack at sea. Prosecutors filed criminal complaints against Kirby Logan Archer, 35, and 19-year-old Guillermo Zarabozo, both of whom were rescued from the ocean and are already in custody. They could get the death penalty or life in prison if convicted. The charges stem from the disappearance of the 4 people after Archer and Zarabozo last month chartered the "Joe Cool" fishing boat, purportedly for a pleasure trip to Bimini, Bahamas. Attorneys for Archer and Zarabozo did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment. A hearing is scheduled Thursday in federal court for both men. The men were found floating in the boat's life raft with no sign of the captain and crew. Zarabozo initially claimed that an unknown group of pirates had attacked them at sea and fatally shot the crew one by one. Their bodies have never been found despite a massive Coast Guard search, but investigators did recover 4 bullet shell casings, blood and other evidence from the boat. According to investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, evidence found from the processing of weapons and bullet casings, led to the murder charges, reported CBS station WFOR-TV in Miami. The boat started out on course for Bimini on Sept. 22 but then turned sharply south and was found abandoned and out of fuel north of Cuba, officials have said. Investigators say the 2 might have been attempting to reach Cuba and had paid $4,000 in cash to make the trip to Bimini. Zarabozo is now being held on charges of lying to a federal agent for claiming he had never been aboard the "Joe Cool." Archer is in custody as a fugitive from Arkansas charged with stealing more than $92,000 from a Wal-Mart where he had been a manager. The 4 crew are the boat's captain, Jake Branam, 27; his wife Kelley Branam, 30; his half brother Scott Gamble, 30; and Samuel Kairy, 27. All are from Miami Beach. (source: CBS News) MISSOURI----female may face death sentence Testimony: Trail of digital clues led authorities to woman accused of slicing baby from womb An exchange of messages on an Internet chat site about rat terriers helped investigators track down a woman accused of slicing a baby from the womb of a pregnant woman who sold puppies, FBI agents testified Wednesday. Prosecutors allege Lisa Montgomery, 39, faked being pregnant for about 9 months when she drove to Bobbie Jo Stinnett's home and strangled the 23-year-old dog breeder on Dec. 16, 2004. Montgomery has pleaded not guilty, and her lawyers are pursuing an insanity defense. The day before Stinnett was slain, someone identifying herself as Darlene Fischer had posted a message to the victim seeking to buy one of her puppies. Stinnett replied, saying she had e-mailed directions inviting the woman to her Skidmore home. When Stinnett's death was reported in the news, a North Carolina dog breeder reviewing the message board traffic called the FBI with the e-mail address Fischer had used in the exchange, agent Kurt Lipanovich testified. Lipanovich said the address, fischer4kids at hotmail.com, immediately struck him as strange. "The first thing I thought was, 'Hunting for kids,'" he said.< The computer code, called an IP address, was tracked to a dial-up connection in a Melvern, Kan., home, where Stinnett's baby was found in Lisa Montgomery's arms, Lipanovich testified. A search of Montgomery's car uncovered a bloody knife, towel, latex glove, rope and part of what appeared to be the baby's umbilical cord, FBI special agent Andrew Alvey testified. One crime scene analyst testified that hair found tangled in the rope belonged to Stinnett and blood found on the knife belonged to Stinnett and her baby. A search of Montgomery's computer showed she had researched Caesarean sections and obtaining birth certificates for babies born at home. She had bought birthing supplies from one of the sites, FBI agent Adam Krob testified. Montgomery is on trial in federal court on a charge of kidnapping resulting in death. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty if Montgomery is convicted. Besides convicting or acquitting her, jurors have the option of finding her not guilty by reason of insanity. If Montgomery is found not guilty by reason of insanity, she would undergo a mental evaluation and a judge would decide if she will be released or committed to a mental institution. Earlier Wednesday, Patsy Hughes testified she had told authorities about an uneasy feeling she had about Montgomery after learning about Stinnett's death. Hughes testified that Montgomery had sent her an e-mail on Dec. 13, 2004, saying one of the twins she was expecting had died but that she planned to give birth to the other baby that week. Hughes, of Ozark, Ala., said Montgomery's 14-year-old daughter, Kayla Boman, was staying at her home to learn about dog breeding when Stinnett was killed. One of Boman's siblings called and said the baby had arrived and the family was going to pick up Montgomery at a fast-food restaurant in Topeka, Kan., near the birthing center where she claimed she had delivered. (source: Associated Press)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, ARK., ARIZ., MISS., FLA., MO.
Rick Halperin Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:49:24 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
