[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, MO., OHIO, ARK.

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 12


TEXAS:

Gang suspects in court, 1 could face death penalty----2 more suspected
Barrio Azteca members arrested


The only man identified in a murder charge as part of a federal crackdown
on the Barrio Azteca gang used tissues to wipe away tears Friday as a
federal magistrate said in court that he could face the death penalty.

Eric "Flaco" Saucedo was one of six alleged members or associates of the
prison gang who made initial appearances in federal court in Downtown El
Paso.

Saucedo, 28, looked with reddened eyes toward his sobbing wife after he
was brought before the magistrate separately from five men captured
Thursday by FBI agents and El Paso police.

Thursday, authorities arrested alleged gang lieutenant Eugene "Gino" Mona,
50; alleged sergeant Jose Martin "Spider" Garcia, 38; alleged sergeant
Said Francisco "Shorty" Herrera, 28; Johnny "Conejo" Michelletti, 37,
allegedly a soldier in the gang; and Danny Tarin, 28, allegedly an
associate of the gang.

The men, who face various racketeering, heroin, marijuana, cocaine and
conspiracy charges dating from 2003, remain jailed and are scheduled to go
before a federal magistrate on Wednesday for an arraignment and bond
hearing.

FBI spokeswoman Special Agent Andrea Simmons said authorities on Friday
arrested Saucedo and 30-year-old Arturo Enriquez in connection with a
crackdown that may turn into one of the largest federal organized crime
gang investigations in El Paso in years.

According to a federal indictment, Saucedo is accused of taking part in "a
murder in aid of racketeering activity" on or about Dec. 6, 2006.

The name of the victim was removed from the document made available Friday
evening. Saucedo also faces racketeering and drug-conspiracy charges.

El Paso Times archives show that on Dec. 6, 2006, suspected cocaine dealer
Jose Luis Oviedo was shot and killed in his apartment in South El Paso,
allegedly for refusing to pay "taxes" on drug sales imposed by Barrio
Azteca gangsters.

Another alleged Barrio Azteca member, Adam Muoz, was arrested by police
soon after the killing.

A detective's complaint affidavit alleged Muoz was accompanied by 2 other
unnamed gang members during the confrontation with Oviedo.

Muoz has not been identified in the 11-count indictment against the Barrio
Azteca suspects issued Wednesday by a federal grand jury.

Nearly 40 pages and several names have been omitted from the 63-page
federal indictment.

Tarin's lawyer, Sib Abraham, who was at the courthouse, said his client
fixes cars and is not a gang member.

"He's not an Azteca. Doesn't want to be an Azteca. Has never been one and
never will be," Abraham said.

Barrio Azteca has a military-style hierarchy and an estimated 2,000
members across the Southwest, including 1,000 in El Paso.

Mona, Garcia, Herrera, Michelletti and Tarin, who could face up to life in
prison if convicted, were walked to the federal courthouse shortly before
noon in blue jail jumpsuits with their hands handcuffed to chains around
their waist and foot shackles under heavy security by a platoon of federal
agents.

Federal prosecutors alleged Aztecas conspired to make money by extortion
and selling drugs and protected gang turf with violence, including murder.

(source: El Paso Times)






MISSOURI:

Execution nurse's criminal past


Before a Missouri executioner could go to Indiana in 2001 to help federal
authorities put mass killer Timothy McVeigh to death, he had to take care
of one detail:

He needed permission from his probation officer to leave the state.

The request, by a licensed practical nurse from Farmington, set off alarms
within the Missouri Division of Probation and Parole. At least one
supervisor spoke out to an agency administrator.

"As I stated to you previously, it seems bizarre to me that we would
knowingly allow an offender, on active supervision, to participate in the
execution process at any level," she wrote. Advertisement

But that memo and others obtained by the Post-Dispatch show that
high-level federal and state corrections officials did let the nurse make
the trip  and continue to work on Missouri's lethal-injection team.

The use of someone with such legal troubles  two felonies plea-bargained
down to misdemeanors for stalking and tampering with property  raises
further questions about the expertise and backgrounds of the people the
government entrusts to carry out the ultimate punishment.

That punishment is already on hold in 35 states and in the federal system
while the U.S. Supreme Court considers arguments in a Kentucky
lethal-injection case. Lawyers for the condemned say the process is open
to mistakes that could inflict extreme pain, in violation of the Eighth
Amendment protection from cruel or unusual punishment.

A 36th state, New Jersey, became last month the first in more than 40
years to abandon capital punishment because of wide-ranging concerns. One
more state uses only the electric chair.

Court challenges have attacked not only the three-drug lethal-injection
sequence but also the ability of executioners to get it consistently
right. Indeed, incidents in Ohio and Florida show that mistakes have been
made.

In federal court in Kansas City in 2006, the doctor who developed
Missouri's procedure  and supervised 54 executions  testified anonymously
that he was dyslexic, had problems with numbers and knowingly varied doses
of the lethal drugs by as much as half.

A Post-Dispatch investigation identified him as Dr. Alan Doerhoff, a
surgeon from Jefferson City who had provided inmate care in Missouri
prisons. The newspaper also revealed that he had been sued for malpractice
at least 20 times, had his privileges revoked at 2 hospitals, had made
false statements in two court cases and had been publicly reprimanded by
the state Board of Healing Arts for hiding his malpractice litigation
history.

Doerhoff also was part of the federal government's execution team,
according to court filings last year in a federal death penalty appeal.

Missouri prison officials have long complained about their difficulty in
finding qualified medical professionals to work at executions.
Complicating matters is that most medical professional organizations,
notably the American Medical Association, specifically ban their members
from participating.

Critics say that creates pressure for death chambers to use whomever they
can get.

A CASE ABOUT STALKING

Unlike the situation with Doerhoff, no one has publicly questioned the
competence of the nurse  David L. Pinkley, 45  as a member of the
execution team. Memos from the probation and parole division describe his
"special knowledge, skills and abilities" as "one of a kind."

His nursing license is unblemished. He works in the surgical department at
Mineral Area Regional Medical Center in Farmington. From 1986-89, he was a
psychiatric aide for the state at the Farmington State Hospital.

It is unclear when he began working on state executions, or how many he
did. The memos show he was recommended by the warden at the Potosi
Correctional Center for the federal execution team, put in place in 2000.

In 1998, Pinkley was charged with felony aggravated stalking and
first-degree tampering with property after he was accused of threatening a
man and repeatedly vandalizing his vehicle and home over a relationship
the man was having with Pinkley's estranged wife.

Between August and the year's end, the victim reported to police that his
truck's windshield and headlights had been smashed and it had been
spray-painted and scratched. He accused Pinkley of backing over his
mailbox and returning to damage it again, smashing 5 windows at his house
and breaking his daughter's bedroom window. He alleged that Pinkley had
left voice messages threatening violence against him and his family.

A police report says the victim played one of the messages for a St.
Francois County sheriff's deputy: "I'll burn your (expletive) house down
and blow your (expletive) head off!"

Pinkley maintained in court that he did not stalk anyone or cause any
damage, but he pleaded no contest in St. Francois County to misdemeanor
counts of stalking and tampering with property. He paid the victim $750
and was ordered to serve two years of supervised probation.

The judge gave him a "suspended imposition of sentence," a special
disposition that sealed the record of the conviction after completion of
his probation.

He has no other known criminal record.

OFFICIALS KNEW

The memos obtained by the Post-Dispatch say state and federal officials
were aware of Pinkley's conviction and probation status and wanted to use
him anyway.

The probation division supervisor who raised concerns, in the February
2001 memo, wrote that when Pinkley first asked to travel to the U.S.
penitentiary in Terre Haute in June 2000, he showed her a business card
from the penitentiary's warden, Harley G. Lappin.

The supervisor wrote that she called the federal prison and told an acting
warden about Pinkley's probation status and "he seemed alarmed, and
informed me he secured the services of this individual, as recommended by
authorities at Potosi Correctional Center. ..."

She also told the warden at Potosi, then home of the Missouri execution
chamber, who, she said, "seemed alarmed, not knowing the offender was on
supervision."

When she checked Pinkley's file in January 2001, the supervisor wrote, she
learned that he already had been approved for five trips to Indiana the
previous year.

In an April 2001 memo, the administrator wrote that Pinkley's request had
been reviewed all the way up through Dora Schriro, then director of the
Missouri Department of Corrections, and that "federal authorities have
apparently done the same thing."

The paperwork reflects Pinkley's explanation that he would be
administering McVeigh's lethal injection. It is not clear whether he did,
although his permits to travel to the Indiana prison included May 30 to
June 30, 2001; McVeigh was executed that June 11.

Lappin, now director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, did not respond to
a phone call and e-mail request for comment. An agency spokeswoman
declined to comment.

Schriro, who now directs the Arizona corrections system, said through a
spokesman that she did not remember the situation with Pinkley.

Pinkley did not reply to repeated phone messages left at the hospital
where he works and with his mother. Approached outside work, he walked
away from a reporter and drove off without taking questions.

Larry Crawford, the corrections department director, declined to discuss
Pinkley by name. He said that the time span was before his tenure and that
the relevant court records  which he said were about a "minor" misdemeanor
were sealed.

The director also said there were people with traffic and minor
misdemeanor convictions among the 11,000 prison employees and additional
contract workers. One misdemeanor wouldn't prevent "a doctor or nurse from
working in our facility or any other hospital anywhere in the country,''
he said.

Missouri was "diligent" in using medical personnel to assist with
executions even though it had no obligation to do so, Crawford said. He
emphasized that prison staff, not medical people, pushed the drug
plungers.

A COMPLEX PROCESS

Had either Doerhoff or Pinkley merely pulled a lever on a gallows, the
doctor's competence and the nurse's criminal record might not be at issue.

But modern chemical execution carries a risk of excruciating pain, say
lawyers who drove the issue to a test last week before the U.S. Supreme
Court.

Thirty-five of the 36 states that still have the death penalty, as well as
the federal government, use the three-drug series developed in the 1970s
as a more humane successor to methods that in various places included the
gas chamber, electric chair, noose or firing squad.

But it has its own critics, including veterinarians, who say it is
unsuitable to euthanize animals, and its inventor, who has said he has
qualms about non-doctors administering the chemicals.

Dosing is critical, say defense lawyers. They argue that if the sedative
1st drug doesn't work, the paralytic effect of the respiration-stopping
2nd drug could make it impossible for the condemned to communicate
excruciating pain from the cardiac arrest caused by the 3rd.

Court challenges have revealed that several states use poorly trained
personnel, some with little or no medical background, to give the
injection.

The process is not simple. It requires the insertion of a catheter into
the bloodstream and precise doses of drugs that arrive at the prison as
powder and must be mixed.

In December 2006, Florida's team needed 37 minutes, instead of the usual
15, to execute Angel Nievas Diaz. Nievas Diaz appeared to grimace and gasp
for breath on the gurney, according to news accounts. An autopsy found
that hypodermic needles had been pushed all the way through blood vessels
into soft tissue, causing chemical burns on both arms.

In Ohio in May 2006, an execution was delayed 90 minutes while team
members struggled to find a suitable vein as the condemned man, Joseph
Lewis Clark, raised his head from the gurney and shouted, "It don't work
... it ain't working."

Kent Scheidegger, executive director of the pro-death penalty Criminal
Justice Legal Foundation, blames the "medicalization" of the death penalty
for the latest court battles.

He proposed bringing back the poison gas chamber  a method pushed aside in
Missouri and other states for the lethal injection  but using a gas that
causes less pain than the traditional cyanide.

"Any fool can turn a valve," he said. "You'd have a much broader pool of
people to select from because you wouldn't need anyone with medical
knowledge.

"If you are determined that you need licensed professionals involved,
you're going to have the problem that very few are willing to do it," he
said.

As for employing a convicted stalker to perform executions, he said, "It
would be better not to have someone with that kind of history involved."

He added that by relying on the few medical professionals who were willing
to participate, Missouri and the Federal Bureau of Prisons were "trying to
do it right, and I don't criticize them for doing it right."

THE DYSLEXIC DOCTOR

In Missouri, a federal judge suspended the state's executions in 2006
after Doerhoff's testimony  from behind a screen to protect his identity
that he was dyslexic, did not record the actual amount of anesthetic
delivered, sometimes used only half the suggested dose and gauged the
depth of the anesthesia by watching facial expressions through a window.

Doerhoff testified that he knew of no written protocol and that he changed
it freely at his own discretion.

State Sen. Kevin Engler, R-Farmington, said last week that after reading
the Post-Dispatch story about Doerhoff in July 2006, he came away
"appalled" by the doctor's record and qualifications.

He said the Department of Corrections had "been very lax" in screening
potential executioners, but noted that it had new quality controls.

And if someone on the state's execution team has a criminal record, he
said, "I don't mind that coming out."

Engler was the Senate sponsor of a Missouri law enacted last year to
protect the identities of current or former executioners and make it
easier for them to seek civil damages if their names are exposed.

"Those are people living in my district, doing their jobs," he said. "It's
unfair to release their names so people" could harass or harm them.

The law was passed in response to the Post-Dispatch's naming of Doerhoff.

Richard C. Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information
Center, a nonprofit research group opposed to the death penalty, said,
"There is a tradition of anonymity for executioners, but until now it
wasn't necessary to know how it's being done."

"The people administering the injection  their qualifications are partly
what is in question. In order to test (their qualifications) you need to
know who they are."

Dieter said he was shocked that Pinkley "had these problems and then was
being given responsibility for a very sensitive, nationally important
federal (execution)."

"He may be good, he may not be. But you don't allow people who are on
probation, for violence, in the execution chamber or anywhere near it."

That officials signed off on his participation was "incompetence," Dieter
said. "You avoid people like that despite the fact that they might have
some skill. There's just too much risk. Is this the best way to carry out
something so serious as taking a human life? Even that of McVeigh?"

Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor and expert on capital
punishment methods, said Pinkley's involvement was "shocking on numerous
levels."

Given revelations about Doerhoff and Pinkley, said Denno, "It suggests
security is not the reason for not revealing their identities. They have
other reasons, and the reasons are that these people have troubled
behavioral and emotional histories."

KEEPING SECRETS

Several states have laws keeping the identity of executioners confidential
and exempt from public-record laws.

In Florida, the doctor who oversaw the botched Nievas Diaz execution
testified by speaker phone before a state commission on lethal injection,
but did so anonymously with his voice altered.

Missouri's new law took it a step further.

It was written by Department of Corrections lawyers, said Rep. Danielle
Moore, R-Fulton, a member of a joint committee that oversees the
department, and who sponsored the bill in the House.

"The DOC wants to be able to hire the most qualified and the best doctors
for this lethal injection, to administer lethal gas or chemicals," said
Moore. "Therefore, if anonymity is offered to the execution team, then the
very best doctors would, hopefully, feel that they could serve in that
capacity."

Crawford, the corrections director, said it had been "extremely difficult"
to find medical help for executions. But he said the Post-Dispatch story
naming Doerhoff actually helped the department make connections with
medical professionals who felt executions "ought to be done right."

Moore said her committee regularly toured prisons and inquired about every
aspect, including executions.

"Trust me, we ask all these questions. Who is now serving on the team? We
ask questions about everything."

Moore said she didn't know the department had used a convicted stalker as
an executioner until asked about it by the Post-Dispatch.

"It's never come up, and I've never even thought about it," she said. "I
can't imagine that the DOC would choose someone in that capacity."

She seemed taken aback. "I'm writing this down. A member of an execution
team who was on probation for stalking. ... I am going to be making some
inquiries for sure."

She added: "If it is true, it would give me grave concern. Because,
frankly, I didn't know anyone who was on probation would be allowed to
work in the DOC."

McVeigh, whose bomb killed 168 people  including 19 children  in a federal
building in Oklahoma City in 1995, was the 1st federal death row inmate to
be executed in 38 years.

The bureau assembled an execution team and developed a protocol using the
same 3-drug injection used by other states.

The Missouri probation and parole administrator who confirmed Pinkley's
request for travel obviously recognized the potential for controversy.

In one of the memos, she wrote, "It would be extremely problematic for
David Pinkley and this department if the media got wind of this."

(source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch)






OHIO:

Death penalty decisions were the right ones----By the numbers


There will always be questions when it comes to Ohio's use of the death
penalty.

Does the process of lethal injection involve cruel and unusual punishment?
Is the possible pain of inmates, usually convicted of murder or some other
equally atrocious crime against humanity, even worthy of consideration
compared to that of victims and their families?

Are innocent people killed by the state, even after a lengthy courts
process?

Earlier this week, 2 men formerly on Ohio's death row saw their status
change. Kenneth Richey, a native of Scotland and citizen of both the
United States and the United Kingdom, was convicted of murder by arson in
1987. His conviction was overturned by the 6th Circuit Court, and had been
scheduled for a retrial in March until a plea deal allowed him to plead no
contest and leave the country with time served.

A few times, Richey had been mere hours away from execution.

Also this week, Gov. Ted Strickland intervened in the case of death row
inmate John Spirko. The death penalty was commuted and Spirko will spend
life in prison for the death of postmistress Betty Jane Mottinger in 1982.

Strickland, a former prison psychologist who believes in the use of
capital punishment, said the lack of physical evidence in Spirko's case
led him to the decision. He rejected any idea from Spirko's attorneys that
would have freed the inmate, saying Spirko's conviction had been upheld in
both the state and federal court systems.

Capital punishment has been a part of Ohio since we became a state in
1803. Back then, public hanging was the preferred method of execution and
continued to be so until 1885.

As long as capital punishment is used in Ohio, there will always be
dissension over its implementation. There will always be questions about
whether innocent people are being executed by the state. On the other
side, the death penalty is said to reduce crime, if only by one criminal.

There are plenty of representatives of each side at the gates of the
Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville whenever there is a
scheduled execution at the death house. Both sides are passionate about
their cause, and should be.

It's a debate that will continue. Despite the passion behind the issue of
capital punishment, well-reasoned decisions were made in both these cases.

(source: Chillicothe Gazette)

**********************************

Jury recommends death penalty for Jones


In little more than 4 hours today, a Summit County jury recommended the
death penalty for Phillip L. Jones in the April beating and strangulation
of a 33-year-old Akron woman at Mount Peace Cemetery.

Jones, 37, was convicted last month of aggravated murder and 2 counts of
rape. An autopsy by the Summit County Medical Examiner's Office determined
that Susan Marie Christian-Yates died of asphyxiation.

Common Pleas Judge Mary F. Spicer, who handled the case, scheduled
sentencing for Jan. 30.

Defense lawyers Kerry M. O'Brien and Donald R. Hicks declined to comment
after the jury's decision was announced.

In little more than four hours today, a Summit County jury recommended the
death penalty for Phillip L. Jones in the April beating and strangulation
of a 33-year-old Akron woman at Mount Peace Cemetery.

Jones, 37, was convicted last month of aggravated murder and two counts of
rape. An autopsy by the Summit County Medical Examiner's Office determined
that Susan Marie Christian-Yates died of asphyxiation.

Common Pleas Judge Mary F. Spicer, who handled the case, scheduled
sentencing for Jan. 30.

Defense lawyers Kerry M. O'Brien and Donald R. Hicks declined to comment
after the jury's decision was announced.

(source: Beacon Journal)

*************************

Ohio Death Row Inmate Gets New Hearing


In Cincinnati, a federal appeals court on Friday ordered a new sentencing
hearing for a death row inmate convicted of killing 3 men 26 years ago.

The decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came 3 months after
the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death sentence for Frank Spisak, a
self-described neo-Nazi who was convicted in the shooting deaths of the 3
men at the Cleveland State University campus over a 7-month period in
1982.

The nation's high court, in upholding Spisak's death sentence, chastised
federal appeals courts for second-guessing the decisions of trial judges
in murder cases. It sent the case back to the 6th Circuit for
reconsideration.

But a 3-judge panel of the court ruled Friday  as it did in 2006  that
Spisak had received ineffective counsel during the sentencing phase of his
trial, and that a judge's instructions to the jury were unconstitutional.

"We remain convinced that had Spisak's counsel not demonized Spisak in his
arguments to the jury, there is a reasonable probability that at least one
juror would have had a different opinion of the proper outcome in this
case," decision said.

Spisak's trial in June 1983 turned into a racially and sexually charged
public spectacle in which he grew an Adolf Hitler-style mustache and
carried a copy of Hitler's book "Mein Kampf." He said he was an agent of
God in a war against blacks and Jews.

After the trial judge sentenced him to death, Spisak responded with a
2-minute tirade about white supremacy, ending it with a vigorous "Heil
Hitler" salute.

(source: Associated Press)






ARKANSAS:

State to fight death-penalty ruling


The state said earlier this week that it will appeal a federal judge's
ruling vacating a 1998 death sentence for Jason McGehee of Harrison, whose
jury was prevented from hearing about traumatic events in his childhood
involving his pet dogs.

In January 1998, a Boone County Circuit Court jury convicted McGehee, now
31, of the 1996 murder and kidnapping of 15-year-old John Melbourne Jr. of
Harrison, who had been friends with McGehee.

In an order filed Monday, U. S. District Judge James Moody said the trial
judge should have allowed McGehee's attorney to present mitigating
evidence during the sentencing phase of his trial about two violent
incidents that occurred in his "formative years," one of which his aunt
described as the "turning point" in his life.

Moody also said that the Arkansas Supreme Court was unreasonable in
upholding the trial judge's exclusion of the evidence.

When McGehee was a toddler, his father "grew tired of the family pets,"
according to his aunt, and slit the throats of the boy's 2 dogs. McGehee's
mother later blamed him, telling him God was punishing him for wanting a
new puppy, the aunt testified outside the presence of jurors.

The woman said that another time, McGehee's stepfather angrily kicked
McGehee's dog, Dusty, in the side while wearing cowboy boots, then made
McGehee watch the dog that McGehee considered his best friend die slowly
from internal injuries.

The aunt told the trial judge, "I really believe part of Jason died with
him. That was the turning point. Jason was never the same again." She said
he had wanted to be a veterinarian.

Moody said that a defendant's right to present mitigating evidence "is a
fundamental part of the jury's role in a capital sentencing case," and
that, had the jury heard that evidence, it "may have served as a basis for
mercy" prompting a sentence other than death.

On Wednesday, Moody agreed to stay his order that the state either retry
McGehee in 120 days or reduce his sentence to life, after Assistant
Attorney General Teena Watkins filed a motion to that effect, saying,
"Substantial questions will be presented to the Eighth U. S. Circuit Court
of Appeals regarding the relevancy of the excluded mitigation evidence and
the reasonableness of the Arkansas Supreme Courts decision." She noted
that McGehee, who is also serving a life sentence for kidnapping, will
"merely remain" in prison while the appeal is pending, and that a
resentencing hearing would be a waste of resources if the state wins the
appeal.

2 other men also were convicted of beating and strangling Melbourne
because the boy told police about items the friends had stolen. But only
Mc-Gehee, regarded as the "leader" of the group, was sentenced to death.

(source: Democrat Gazette)