July 22 TEXAS: Appeals court affirms man's death sentence The Court of Criminal Appeals has affirmed the death sentence of a 40-year-old Palestine man found guilty of murdering his 2-year-old biological child more than 5 years ago. Robert Leslie Roberson III, 40, of Palestine was sentenced to die by lethal injection by a 12-person Anderson County jury at the conclusion of his February 2003 trial. During the trial's guilt/innocence phase, Roberson had been found guilty of capital murder in connection with the death of 2-year-old Nikki Curtis who died of blunt force head injuries at a Dallas hospital on Feb. 1, 2002. Curtis had been transported to a Palestine hospital the previous day before being transferred to Children's Medical Center in Dallas, with the defendant claiming the toddler suffered her injuries as a result of falling from a bed. Evidence during Roberson's trial, however, showed that Curtis' fatal injuries were consistent with shaken baby or shaken impact syndrome. Testimony during the trial also indicated that the defendant had obtained legal custody of Curtis approximately 3 months before the child's death. In his appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court, Roberson raised 13 points of error, but each was determined to have no merit. The Court recently affirmed Roberson's death sentence. "We are pleased with the Courts decision," Anderson County District Attorney Doug Lowe said. "The defendant may request a reconsideration, but I expect Mr. Roberson's next step will be to proceed with the federal writ process. Our office remains committed to seek justice on behalf of Nikki Curtis." Roberson is currently residing on death row outside of Livingston, but will likely not have an execution date set for several years. "The federal process begins with the filing of a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court," Lowe said. "Ultimately, the case will make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is likely many years will pass before Mr. Roberson faces execution." Prior to being found guilty of murdering his toddler child, Roberson had been sentenced to 10 years in prison during the 1990s for burglary of a habitation. (source: The Palestine Herald) ******************* Counties, defendants benefit from program A state-funded 18-month pilot program expanding the services of the Bexar Appellate Public Defender Office is good news to indigent criminal defendants seeking appeals and the counties where they were convicted. The Bexar County office was created in August 2005 with funding from a state grant. Last May, the office received additional funding to hire another lawyer and a paralegal and expand its services to the 32 counties in the 4th Judicial Region. Thus far, 26 counties have signed up, said Chief Appellate Public Defender Angela Moore. Crime is a booming business across the state, court records indicate. Under the new pilot program, participating counties will refer the criminal appeals of indigent defendants to the Bexar County office, which will handle them free of charge. This will assure that experienced appellate lawyers will represent defendants in rural counties with a limited number of legal professionals. The counties in turn will be saving court-appointed-lawyer fees that come with providing legal counsel for indigent defendants. Legal appeals are not cheap. The tab for an appeal on a regular felony case can easily add up to $4,500. A death penalty capital murder case appeal can cost $16,000 or more. During its first 18 months of operation, the appellate public defender's office handled 400 appeals, significantly more than the 120 cases officials anticipated filing during that time period. If the expanded program is successful, Moore wants to establish a system where the outlying counties help support the office with an annual funding allocation that would be determined by the volume of cases they refer to the office, similar to a legal service insurance. It makes a lot of sense. Court appointed legal fees are always a big budget item for county commissioners. Having a central office handling appeals with well-qualified lawyers who are experts in that field would ensure that the money is being wisely spent and reduce claims of incompetent legal counsel. (source: Editorial, San Antonio Express-News) FLORIDA: THE SERRANO MURDER CASE----What Serrano's trial cost us Nelson Ivan Serrano was recently sentenced to death for the 1997 slayings of 4 people in what is considered Polk County's worst mass murder. Serrano was convicted of killing Frank Dosso, 35; Diane Patisso, 28; and 2 business associates, George Gonsalves, 69; and George Patisso Jr., 26. A financial dispute led Felice Dosso and Gonsalves to fire Serrano as president of a garment-conveyor factory months before the December 1997 killings. Now that Serrano, 68, is out of the local jail and on death row at the Florida State Prison in Starke, some of the public costs associated with his case have been tallied. Here's a look at the Serrano case by the numbers, which are rounded. $1 million plus----Price the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reports its investigation cost. 1,762----days in the Polk County Jail. Serrano was booked into the jail Sept.1, 2002 and booked out June 28, 2007. $69,883----Minimum cost to house Serrano in the jail. Sheriff's Office officials say the actual cost is likely more since Serrano was on suicide watch, which requires more security. $68,000----Estimated cost of the salaries of State Attorney's Office employees who were devoted to the case full time -- 2 lawyers, 1 secretary, 1 investigator and media employee. $36,657----State Attorney's Office reports includes cost of expert and expert travel, court reporter, attorney travel and travel for witnesses. $30,930----Jury-associated costs. $29,926----Court reporter for all hearings $29,857----Real-time court translator $58,596----Public funds used for his defense, which include $10,000----Jury consultant $8,414----Court reporting $975----Crime-scene processing $3,532----Travel $29,530----Investigation $1,800----Mental health $4,000----Polygraph expert $290----Information and evidence $56----Postage (source: Orlando Sentinel) ALABAMA: A Capital Cause Inspired by the passion of his late mentor's dogged representation of a hard-luck prisoner on Alabama's death row, David A. Kochman will fly to Montgomery sometime in the next few weeks for talks with the state Attorney General's Office in the cause of freedom for William Ernest Kuenzel, pro bono client of New York labor lawyer David "Duff" Dretzin until his own death a year ago next week. Mr. Kochman's trip will come on the heels of his significant victory this month in a federal appellate court, the latest move in a battle long waged by Mr. Dretzin to reverse the 1988 conviction of Mr. Kuenzel for the shotgun slaying of a convenience store clerk in Talladega County - described by the Birmingham Post-Herald as "death row country" due to former District Attorney Robert Rumsey's record of sending a dozen criminal defendants to a flame-prone electric chair known as "Yellow Mama." (Alabama changed its primary form of execution to lethal injection in 2002.) Behind the mountain of legal papers in state and federal courts is the story of a respected New York attorney's belief in the innocence of a 7th-grade dropout from rural Alabama, his protg's sink-or-swim education in capital defense, the anomaly of attorneys giving in to emotion and the pro bono support of Anderson, Kill & Olick. In addition to greenlighting its own lawyers - Mr. Kochman, fellow associate David A. Solomon and partners Jeffrey E. Glen and Harry H. Rimm - Anderson Kill provided its resources to the late Mr. Dretzin, who ran a solo practice from rented space at the firm. As a summer associate in 2004, Mr. Kochman began what he called "secretarial work" for Mr. Dretzin in the cause of Billy Kuenzel, as their client became known. Last year on Father's Day, Mr. Dretzin suffered a stroke while driving back to the city with his family from their weekend home in Columbia County. Several days later, he died at age 77. Mr. Dretzin's widow - the actress Joanna Merlin, who portrays Judge Lena Petrovsky on television's "Law & Order/Special Victims Unit" - said his long relationship with Mr. Kuenzel was exceptional. "Duff tried to maintain the professional relationship all through the years," Ms. Merlin said. "But I saw something developing, something extraordinary. Duff and Billy both knew it. It had become a friendship. There was real love between the 2 of them." In 1990, when Mr. Dretzin left a law firm partnership in search of full-time public service work, he came upon the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, which had taken on the appellate case of Mr. Kuenzel. Mr. Kuenzel had been convicted in state court after a brief trial, represented by appointed counsel at the officially capped rate of $1,000, and prosecuted by the legendary Mr. Rumsey - so gifted at oratory that defense lawyers in Talladega County often declined to make closing arguments in order to prevent the district attorney from speaking his turn, according to the Birmingham newspaper, which published a comprehensive series in 2001 about the state's capital cases under such headlines as "Justice at 50 Cents an Hour." Working with Equal Justice - and with funding from private sources as well as the support of Anderson Kill - Mr. Dretzin set about unearthing evidence to disprove the testimony of Mr. Rumsey's sole witness at trial, a roommate of Mr. Kuenzel's who was himself implicated in the attempted robbery of the convenience store at question and served time in prison. "It was clear at a very early stage that Billy was innocent," said Ms. Merlin. "There was no physical evidence. Duff began by going down to Alabama, traveling to trailer camps and all over the state to look up everybody who had any kind of connection to Billy - any possible witnesses." Mr. Dretzin compiled a defense case that included a solid alibi for Mr. Kuenzel at the time of the murder, expert evaluation of a shotgun used by Mr. Kuenzel near the time of the slaying that would eliminate it as the murder weapon, and evidence withheld from defense counsel that points to the prosecution's sole witness as the probable killer. But time after time in federal court encounters, the state insisted that Mr. Kuenzel's habeas petition was time barred. With the blessing of Ms. Merlin and partners at Anderson Kill, Mr. Kochman, 27, lightened his insurance litigation caseload to devote time to the Kuenzel case. "I am 100 % convinced that Billy Kuenzel was screwed," said Mr. Kochman. "It isn't my case; it's Duff's case. I never imagined I'd be working on it without him. It was palpable how much [Mr. Dretzin] cared about Billy and believed in his innocence." Habeas Denial Overturned 9 days ago in the matter of Kuenzel v. Allen, 06-11986, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta found for Mr. Kochman by vacating denial of habeas relief by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama - despite the lower court's having "never discussed or squarely ruled on Kuenzel's claim of actual innocence," according to the appellate decision. The ruling means that Mr. Kuenzel may again ask federal district court to order a new state trial - based on what Messrs. Kochman and Glen described in their argument before the court last October as "a large quantity of new evidence gathered without any court-ordered discovery or funding or expert witnesses that a reasonable juror would find he is more likely than not 'actually innocent' of the crime for which he was convicted." In its response to Mr. Kochman's brief filed to the Eleventh Circuit, the state of Alabama continued to resist a new trial for Mr. Kuenzel. "Kuenzel has failed to demonstrate that the state prevented him from timely pursuing his claim of actual innocence in federal court, or that he could not have timely pursued this claim with due diligence," wrote Assistant Attorney General J. Clayton Crenshaw. "Furthermore . . . Kuenzel has not come close to showing that a reasonable juror would have refused to convict him in the light of the alleged new evidence." The appellate court, however, agreed with Mr. Kochman's claim that discovery would likely uncover motives for false prosecution testimony at Mr. Kuenzel's trial as well as exculpatory evidence in the form of statements withheld by police. Accordingly, Mr. Crenshaw contacted Mr. Kochman this week to say he was open to status discussion. Mr. Crenshaw said in an interview yesterday that the state will not appeal the Court of Appeals ruling. However, it will continue to argue in the District Court that Mr. Kuenzel received a fair trial and is guilty of murder. Help From Others Mr. Solomon, a friend of Mr. Kochman's since undergraduate years at Emory University in Atlanta and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, is set to assist his colleague in dealing with Mr. Crenshaw and others at the Alabama Attorney General's Office. In turn, Messrs. Kochman and Solomon consult with Mr. Glen, as well as Mr. Rimm, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who received the Thurgood Marshall Award from the New York City Bar Association for a successful death penalty appeals case in Alabama. "A prosecutor is charged with doing the right thing, not simply securing a conviction," said Mr. Rimm, who endorsed Mr. Kochman's strategy in negotiating with Alabama authorities to avoid further procedural delay in the Kuenzel case. "An actual innocence claim is the most important claim that a prosecutor must hear." Of Mr. Kochman's labors, Mr. Rimm added, "It's hard and challenging work in your home state, let alone trying to do something hundreds of miles away." Mr. Solomon, 30, a 6th-year associate at Anderson Kill, said of Mr. Kochman's lead work in the Kuenzel case, "Doing an Eleventh Circuit argument where you're up there arguing against the attorney general is something most lawyers wait their entire careers to do. It's priceless experience. Chances are slim of an associate doing an Eleventh Circuit argument on a commercial case, just because there would be so much money involved. But [Mr. Kochman] is doing this work in the context of making an enormous difference - a real, individual, personal difference in somebody's life." Mr. Kochman describes his work as "education by the seat of my pants." With the circuit decision as endorsement, he said conciliation is the best tactic going forward. "I have the luxury of being a young attorney," he said. "I'm going in with my eyes wide open, full of idealism and telling myself that somebody will eventually see [Mr. Kuenzel's conviction] was wrong." He added, "This is an opportunity for justice to work itself out. I'm doing this for myself, and for Billy - and also for Duff. I hope he'd be proud of me." (source: New York Law Journal) OHIO: Moonda case reflects U.S. trend by rejecting death penalty A jury's decision to reject the death penalty and sentence Donna Moonda to life in prison without parole is in line with recommendations made by other juries across the country. Moonda, 48, of Hermitage, was convicted of murder for hire and other crimes in the killing of her husband Gulam Moonda, 69, a Mercer County urologist. "Even if a jury says someone is guilty, they still have lingering doubts about innocence," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "(Jurors) want a higher standard of proof even though the standard of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt. They felt the standard should be higher (in death penalty cases)." The number of death sentences per year has dropped 60 % since 1999 to the lowest level in three decades, and executions are the lowest in 10 years, according to a report released in June by the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit specializing in research on capital punishment in the United States. Juries are less inclined to impose the death sentence due to the long appeals process, which can result in overturned convictions, retrials and exonerations and because many executions aren't carried out, according to a survey of 1,000 adults the Death Penalty Information Center conducted in March. "Jurors are more aware that mistakes do occur and most feel more confident with a decision of guilt by not sentencing death," said Art Patterson, senior vice president of the jury consultant firm Decision Quest in State College. Over the past 35 years, 124 death row inmates have been released following acquittal at retrial, dropped charges or a pardon based on new evidence of innocence, and DNA testing has freed 205 people in the United States, including 15 on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. "Life without parole - that's an attractive option for jurors," Dieter said. "It gives a severe punishment instead of death just in case something comes up 10 years down the road." Bruce Ledewitz, a professor at Duquesne University School of Law, said fewer death sentences could be the result of social factors, such as a drop in murder rates and violent crime, better race relations, and a general liberalization on social issues. A 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring the execution of juveniles for crimes committed while they were under age 18 took 72 youths off death row, Dieter said. The ruling might be a factor in the 40-% decrease in executions since a peak in 1999, he said. A bigger influence, however, was the number of stays imposed over the past year due to the ongoing controversy surrounding lethal injection practices, Dieter said. Pennsylvania hasn't had an execution since 1999, and fewer than 1/2 of the 36 states with the death penalty had executions last year, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center. Jury sentiments have had little influence on prosecutors' willingness to seek the death penalty, said Bernard Siegel, president of the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "Their knowledge of how the public feels should play a role in which cases they seek the death penalty," said Siegel, who has practiced law for more than 40 years. "If they focus on heinous cases, it could slow the process of juries denying the death penalty." (source: Pittburgh Tribune-Review)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, FLA., ALA., OHIO
Rick Halperin Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:30:25 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
