July 15 MISSOURI: Missouri did not execute innocent man, report says Missouri did not execute an innocent man when Larry Griffin was put to death in 1995, the St. Louis circuit attorney said in a report today. Larry Griffin was "fairly and rightly" convicted in the 1980 killing of 19-year-old Quintin Moss, Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce said. Her office reopened the case in 2005 after the NAACP raised questions about Griffin's guilt. "We wanted to see if justice had been done in this case," Joyce said. "We took all of the allegations in the (NAACP) report and we meticulously investigated every one of them." After more than 1,000 hours of investigation and interviews with more than 80 people, "my team and I are confident the right person was convicted by a jury of his peers for the murder of Quintin Moss," Joyce said. Griffin had maintained his innocence to the end. A day before his execution in 1995, an Associated Press reporter asked the 40-year-old condemned man if he committed the crime. "I did not!" he responded. "If I'm going to be punished for something, it ought to be for something I did. University of Michigan law school professor Samuel Gross, who wrote a 2005 report on the case for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, called the finding disappointing. He said an independent body should review such cases not the same office that handled the original prosecution. "Am I surprised that they reached these conclusions given the evidence they had? Yes, definitely," Gross said. Joyce said the information presented in the NAACP Legal Defense Fund report, while compelling, was not new and had previously been reviewed by the attorney general and state and federal appeals court judges. The investigation has been closely watched, especially by death penalty opponents. Although none of the 1,100 people executed in the United States since 1977 have been proven innocent, capital punishment foes argue that the risk of a grave and irreversible mistake by the criminal justice system is too high to allow the death penalty. Colleen Cunningham of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty said the fact that questions were raised about the case is proof that the state needs to re-examine the use of executions. Moss, a drug dealer and alleged hit man, was killed in a drive-by shooting. Authorities said Moss had been accused of killing Griffins older brother 6 months earlier, and a witness identified Griffin as the passenger in the 1968 Chevy Impala who fired the fatal 13 shots. But that witness, Robert Fitzgerald, said in a 1993 federal court hearing that he was coerced him into fingering Griffin when police showed him a picture of Griffin and said, "We happen to know who did it." Gross' report also questioned Fitzgerald's reliability, noting his long criminal history. Fitzgerald died in 2004. The NAACP report also noted that the 1st police officer on the scene, Michael Ruggeri, had changed his story. Fitzgerald's account was given credence at Griffin's trial by Ruggeri, who said at the time that he saw Fitzgerald at the crime scene. In comments to investigators for the NAACP report, Ruggeri said he did not see Fitzgerald there. But Ruggeri told Joyce's investigators that he had become confused by questioning of a private investigator for the NAACP report. Joyce said that investigators used "suggestive and highly irregular methodology." "He states unequivocally to us that he stands by his testimony of 25 years ago," Joyce said. Gordon Ankney, now a lawyer in private practice, prosecuted Griffin for the circuit attorneys office in 1981. "It comforts me," he said of Joyce's findings. ********************************* Death penalty opponents seeking case of man's execution Death penalty opponents had pegged their hopes on a Missouri case as clear evidence that an innocent person was executed. Such a case, they hoped, would finally turn public and political sentiment against executions. But St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce announced Thursday that the right man, Larry Griffin, had been executed in the 1980 drive-by killing of Quintin Moss. Joyce had reinvestigated the case after a 2005 report by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund raised questions about Larry Griffin's guilt. Her decision leaves opponents still seeking the ultimate case. "They are looking so desperately for that case," Joshua Marquis, a board member for the National District Attorneys Association, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I'm not so arrogant to believe there won't be a day when it will come. It's very unlikely, but not impossible." A clear case of the execution of an innocent person in the recent past would refute U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's declaration last year that there has not been "a single case not one in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit." University of Michigan law school professor Samuel R. Gross, who led the fund investigation in the Griffin case, thinks wrongful executions already have been proved. "I think there are cases where it's clear-cut," he said, citing both Griffin's case and a case in Bexar County, Texas. But prosecutors and other death penalty supporters do not want to admit that innocents have been executed, he said. The Death Penalty Information Center says 124 people have been exonerated from death row. "Many of these exonerations came frighteningly close to their execution date," said Colleen Cunningham, of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty. "Errors clearly abound in death penalty cases." A poll this year shows that most Americans 87 % believe that an innocent person already has been executed. But only 55 % said it had affected their opinion about the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. "Some people still think executing an innocent person is collateral damage," said David Elliot, of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Elliot said he thinks the death penalty will be abolished only when the public decides it's not worth the trouble. (source for both: Associated Press) *********************** Death penalty urged for killer A jury fixed the punishment Friday at death by lethal injection for Vincent McFadden in the fatal street shooting of Todd Franklin in Pine Lawn 5 years ago. The jury in St. Louis County Circuit Court deliberated more than 4 hours before returning its verdict in the court of Judge John Ross, who set punishment for Aug. 24. The capital murder trial was McFadden's 3rd. In March 2005, another jury recommended the death penalty for Franklin's murder on July 3, 2002. Last year a jury convicted McFadden of the murder of Leslie Addison, a sister of his girlfriend, and sentenced to death. That murder, also in Pine Lawn, was in May 2003. Both convictions and death sentences were set aside by the Missouri Supreme Court on the grounds of racial bias in jury selection, and new trials were ordered. 3 black jurors were on the sequestered 12-member panel that convicted McFadden of 1st-degree murder on Wednesday for Franklin's death. The jury heard from a bevy of witnesses Thursday and Friday in the punishment phase of the trial before deciding on the death penalty. AdvertisementIn closing arguments Friday, defense attorney Karen Kraft emphasized the testimony of Wanda Draper, a Texas-based expert on childhood and human development. Draper said McFadden had never had a chance to bond with his parents. They were not around when McFadden was a child and that affected "the roots of his morality." "Dad was never there, never, and neither was mom," Kraft said. "He had people who cared about him, but it wasn't enough." Citing prosecutor Keith Larners arguments about human life being sacred, Kraft told the eight men and 4 women: "You do not have to participate in the death of another human being. You can choose life." Larner countered that grandparents, aunts and uncles had helped a mother who worked two jobs to raise McFadden, now 27, and 2 sisters. McFadden was never abused or mistreated as a child, Larner said, and juvenile court officers had provided the teenage McFadden with numerous chances to turn his life around. The victims weren't given any chance, Larner said. "There was no one to plea for mercy for Todd and Leslie," Larner said of the victims. "It would have made no difference. On those days, there was one juror, and he was the foreman. If one person in the courtroom believes in the death penalty, it is that man." Larner was allowed to bring evidence about the murder of Leslie Addison into the punishment phase of the trial to show aggravating circumstances. Addison, 18, was shot 4 times 2 blocks from the street where Franklin, 19, had been gunned down. Eva Addison testified she was hiding in bushes when she saw her sister beg for her life and McFadden shoot her sister in the head and again when she was down on the ground. Eva Addison is the mother of a child, now 6, with McFadden. McFadden also has been convicted of shooting into a car in Pine Lawn on April 4, 2002, and wounding a gang rival. He is serving a 30-year sentence in that case. "Animals kill for food," Larner told the jury and then pointed at the defendant. "He kills for pleasure." (source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch) SOUTH CAROLINA: Judge delays death penalty trial----Office scrambles to tell potential jurors The death penalty trial for a Little River man charged with shooting his estranged wife in her Baytree condominium last year has been delayed. Louis Winkler, 47, was scheduled to stand trial this week in the March 2006 shooting death of Rebekah Grainger, but Circuit Court Judge James Lockemy agreed late Friday to delay the trial, Deputy Solicitor Fran Humphries said. Humphries would not specify what delayed the case. "We are under an order from the judge not to discuss it," he said. The 15th Circuit Solicitor's office hopes to try the case in October. The delay sent the Horry County Clerk of Court's office scrambling to cancel 22 hotel rooms and alert 190 potential jurors who were scheduled to appear at the courthouse on Monday, Clerk of Court Melanie Huggins said. "I felt so bad, because my staff has worked so hard to get them in here," Huggins said. "Then they had to try to find them and tell them not to come." The delay could be costly for the clerk of court's office, because any jurors that go to the courthouse on Monday must be paid mileage (20.5 cents per mile) and one day's wage ($15.00), Huggins said. That money comes out of the office's budget set by Horry County Council. The delay means Winkler will remain jailed at J. Reuben Long Detention Center a little longer. He had been in custody since evading arrest for 2 weeks last March, prompting a national manhunt that ended when he was found hiding in a wooded area near a local golf course. At the time of Grainger's death Winkler was on home detention, charged with kidnapping and raping Grainger in October 2005. He was allowed to leave home for 2 hours a day - between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. She was killed about 5:30 p.m. (source: The Sun News) OHIO/USA: 2 women wait on federal death row----Only 2 % of all death sentences in the United States since 1973 have been given to women. The federal government hasn't executed a woman since Bonnie Heady was sent to the gas chamber in 1953 for participating in the kidnapping and murder of a 6-year-old boy. And just 6 months before Heady's execution, Ethel Rosenberg, accused of selling secrets to the Soviets, was the 1st female executed on federal death row. Since then only 2 other women have been sentenced to death and are awaiting execution. This week, jurors will decide if Donna Moonda will join that group or spend the rest of her life in prison. Moonda, 48, of Mercer County, Pa., was convicted earlier this month in the murder-for-hire of her wealthy physician husband, Dr. Gulam Moonda. Donna Moonda's lover and triggerman, Damian Bradford, was sentenced last week to 171/2 years in federal prison. Bradford received a lighter sentence after agreeing to cooperate with federal prosecutors. He testified at Moonda's trial that the widow initially urged him to kill the doctor as he was leaving a mosque in Youngstown. She later came up with a plan to shoot her 69-year-old husband on the side of the Ohio Turnpike on May 13, 2005, during a family outing to Toledo. Prosecutors say Donna Moonda was after her husband's millions and promised to share them with her 26-year-old boyfriend. An expert's view Victor Streib, an expert on women on death row and a professor at the Ohio Northern University Law School in Ada, Ohio, said it is rare to have a woman sentenced to death. Only 2 % of all death sentences have been given to women nationwide since 1973, according to Streib. And then, actual execution is rare with only 568 documented executions of women in this country since 1632. Streib said it's hard to predict whether a jury will decide to put Moonda to death. "I can't say her case is particularly heinous. She has killed a high-profile victim, though," he said. It is unusual that the man involved in the crime, Bradford, is not also up for the death penalty, Streib said. The male partners of the 2 women now on federal death row were also sentenced to death: Angela Johnson has been on death row since 2004 for the murder of 2 girls, ages 10 and 6, in Iowa in 1993. Her boyfriend, Dustin Honken, a drug dealer, was sentenced to death for killing the children's mother and 2 other people. Both are awaiting execution. A West Virginia jury recommended this past May that Valerie Friend be executed for her shooting another woman to protect a drug ring. Prosecutors contend that George Lecco, who also received the death penalty, arranged the shooting and that Friend pulled the trigger. Women on death row Nationally, there are just over 50 women on death row in various states compared with more than 3,000 men, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. The nonprofit agency does not take a stand on the death penalty but advocates for fairness. Richard Deiter, executive director, said in many cases women are granted clemency just because their cases become widely known because of their gender. Deiter said in most cases, the death penalty is reserved for only the most heinous crimes torture, rape, child murders and fewer women commit those types of crimes. Streib said there have also been cases where judges and juries have put more value on a woman's life part of some Christian conservative belief sparing her from the death penalty. Though only 2 women are on death row federally, Ohio juries have sentenced 8 women to die since the 1970s including Donna Roberts, a Trumbull County woman accused of arranging the 2001 shooting death of her husband. The Ohio Supreme Court, however, vacated her sentence and ordered Trumbull County Common Pleas Court to begin the resentencing process last August. She will be resentenced this Aug. 15. (source: The Vindicator)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----MO., S.C., OHIO
Rick Halperin Sun, 15 Jul 2007 11:43:31 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
