July 30 OHIO: Spirko gets 7th reprieve from execution----Strickland grants time for more DNA testing John G. Spirko Jr.Convicted killer John G. Spirko Jr. will get another 120-day reprieve from execution, his 7th, to allow more time for DNA testing. Gov. Ted Strickland signed the reprieve for Spirko today, spokesman Keith Dailey said. Spirko, 60, was scheduled to be executed Sept. 18 for the August 1982 kidnapping and murder of Betty Jane Mottinger, 48, postmistress of Elgin, a small town in northwestern Ohio. His original execution date was Sept. 19, 2005. As with the other 6 delays, this one was granted to allow additional DNA testing on a number of items, including clothing, cigarette butts and duct tape found at the post-office crime scene and the farm field where Mottinger's body was found 6 weeks after her abduction. If any DNA is found, it is tested against samples from Spirko and other individuals. As of March of this year, state officials said the testing, which has cost taxpayers in excess of $50,000, has been inconclusive. (source: Columbus Dispatch) TENNESSEE: Christa Pike back in court appealing death sentence Convicted murderer Christa Gail Pike was in court Monday, appealing the sentence that put her on death row. Monday's is the 1st of 3 days of hearings for Pike, who's asking for a new judge in the case. Criminal court Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz has refused to take herself off the case. Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder of a fellow Job Corps student, Colleen Slemmer. In January, a neurologist testified in court that Pike has a damaged brain and suffered sexual and physical abuse in her childhood, as well as abusing drugs. The neurologist said it's like Pike's brakes aren't working because the frontal lobes of her brain aren't put together properly. The final day of the hearings is scheduled for December 10. In 2002, Pike attempted to stop her appeals before changing her mind later. (source: WATE News) CALIFORNIA: Convictions upheld for former Berkeley official The state Supreme Court today upheld the convictions of a former Berkeley city official who was sentenced to death for murdering and decapitating a friend to prevent him from testifying against him in a 1988 beating of a couple. The 6-1 decision said Enrique Zambrano, who had served as a Berkeley waterfront commissioner, had failed to prove that the judge and prosecutor in his trial had committed misconduct and prejudiced the jury. Zambrano was convicted in Alameda County Superior Court of killing Luis Reyna and beating UC Berkeley immunology professor Robert Mishell and his wife, Barbara, whom Zambrano suspected of making harassing telephone calls to his wife about an affair with another woman. Zambrano had told Reyna, who was his friend and fellow Berkeley waterfront commissioner, about the January 1988 beatings. Reyna kept silent at first, but then went to Berkeley police with the story. A jury found that Zambrano made bail and then murdered Reyna in July 1988 to silence him as a witness in the Mishell case, then cut off his head and hands and dumped the body parts in rural Lafayette to give him time to flee to Mexico with his lover, Linda "Celebration" Oberman. In his appeal, Zambrano claimed that a number of discussions and conferences among the attorneys and Superior Court Judge Stanley Golde went unreported, including conversations during jury selection. Among other things, Zambrano cited problems with jury selection, accused Golde of giving the jury faulty instructions and said the prosecutor, Martin Brown, engaged in misconduct during closing arguments in the penalty phase of the trial. In an opinion released today, the state's highest court, led by Justice Marvin Baxter, rejected Zambrano's arguments but agreed that the prosecutor improperly told jurors that the Bible not only makes it man's duty to impose the death penalty but "demands it" to preserve the sanctity of human life. "We recently have suggested or assumed that prosecutorial arguments substantially similar to the one at issue here are improper," Baxter wrote. Still, he added, Zambrano "suffered no prejudice" as a result of Brown's remarks. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Joyce Kennard said Zambrano's death sentence should be reversed because the prosecutor's references to the Bible as an authority for the death penalty "prejudiced defendant, undermining confidence in the fairness of the penalty phase of defendant's capital trial." Kennard also wrote that she believed Golde erred in refusing defense counsel's request to ask prospective jurors "if they would invariably impose the death penalty in a case involving dismemberment of the murder victim's body." Zambrano and Oberman lived as fugitives, 1st in Mexico and then in Palm Springs, until their arrest in September 1989. Oberman pleaded no contest to harboring a criminal and later testified at Zambrano's trial that he admitted murdering Reyna and did not regret it. Zambrano said that Reyna pulled a gun on him and it discharged accidentally as the men struggled. Zambrano, a contractor, admitted using his own tools to saw off Reyna's head and hands, saying he wanted to give himself more time before police caught up with him. Barbara Mishell's injuries were so severe that she has lost the ability to speak. The case is People vs. Enrique Zambrano, S035368. (source: San Francisco Chronicle) ************************ Conspiracy, Lies Reported By The New Yorker Magazine In Execution Of Stanley Tookie Williams----High-Level California State Officials Collaborated in Secret Media Campaign The New Yorker magazine, July 30 issue, features an article, "Dean of Death Row," about former San Quentin State Prison spokesperson Vernell Crittendon and his abuse of institutional power: * The New Yorker shows that Crittendon misrepresented statements to the media about children's book author, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and condemned prisoner Stanley Tookie Williams in the months and days leading up to Williams's controversial execution on December 13, 2005. * The article also reports that Crittendon's untrue allegations about Williams were made with full approval of authorities at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and the California State Attorney General's Office. The article implies that the Office of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger knew about the intended media campaign to turn the public against clemency for Williams. These institutions have a legal responsibility to verify as accurate all information released to the public and the media. * The article further asserts that Crittendon and these institutions of law enforcement conspired with each other as early as 2004 to implement attacks against Williams with false information to build widespread public support for killing the anti-gang author. The article, by long-time New Yorker features writer Tad Friend, disproves the following allegations that were made by Crittendon against Williams and were widely reported in the media prior to his being killed: 1. Williams was orchestrating unspecified "gangland crimes" in the very recent past and was not the redeemed man that his work -- to deflect young men from the gang life he had led indicated; "...he [Crittendon] also eventually acknowledged that Williams hadn't actually been orchestrating gangland crimes." 2. Williams did not counsel his youngest son, Stanley Tookie Williams IV, by writing letters to him. But when pressed by Mr. Friend, the New Yorker writer, Crittendon admitted, "...I can't say for sure he [Williams] wasn't writing his son." Williams, in fact, did regularly write and send pictures to young Stan. 3. Williams had a "suspiciously large" prison bank account. In an Associated Press article (November 17, 2005) Crittendon used that accusation as one of several examples to support, according to Crittendon, that Williams was "a con." Crittendon stated: "A con always will say one thing to you while the whole time he has another agenda...I'm concerned that possibly this marketing [of Williams] that's going on...leads the public to hear the words but not to see that sleight of hand." Ironically, these are statements we now know describe Crittendon himself and his behavior, not Williams. Only $1,682 was in Williams account, based on prison records. Barbara Becnel, executor of Williams's estate, responds to these revelations: "Now we know that the State Attorney General's Office and the CDCR approved Crittendon's public lies about Stan's remarkable rehabilitation. Now we know that San Quentin Prison, the CDCR and the State Attorney General's Office conspired to develop a media campaign intended to destroy Stan's credibility, undermine his fight for clemency, and pave the way to make his execution more 'acceptable' to the public. These are the same institutions that maintained throughout that Stan was guilty despite evidence to the contrary. What else have the representatives of these institutions hidden from the public? What else have they lied about? Was the Governor complicit as well?" CONTACT: Crystal Bybee Campaign to End the Death Penalty Phone: 510-333-7966 or 510-235-9780 Fax: 510-235-3112 Crystal at nodeathpenalty.org (source: Blacknews.com)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----OHIO, TENN., CALIF.
Rick Halperin Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:22:06 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)