[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, OHIO, CALIF., DEL.

[Rick Halperin]

May 2


TEXAS----impending execution

Man convicted of killing 5-year-old set to die


In the cold hours before dawn on a morning in November 1988, Jackie Barron
Wilson broke a window of the ground-floor apartment where Maggie Rhodes
slept.

As the Roark Elementary kindergartner lay next to her puppy, Wilson pulled
her from her bed, which was pushed against the window.

He drove her from the Arlington Village Apartments near Abram Street and
Texas 360 to a field near an abandoned road in Grand Prairie, said police,
who believe that Maggie was still alive after Wilson sexually assaulted
her.

Then Wilson drove the car over Maggie as he fled in the red Mercury Cougar
he had borrowed from his sister's boyfriend.

Maggie's body, clad in shorts and a Muppet T-shirt, was found hours later
by a truck driver just north of the now-closed International Wildlife
Park.

Wilson, 40, is set to die by injection after 6 p.m. Thursday.

The execution will come 4 days after what would have been Maggie's 23rd
birthday.

"I'll just be glad when it's over with," said Maggie's mother, Toni
Rhodes, who lives in Grand Prairie. She plans to attend the execution. "It
will be hard watching someone die.

"But she was only 5 years old. She didn't have a chance to live. He did."

Wilson had 2 trials. His 1st capital murder conviction, in 1989, was
overturned on appeal because a juror was wrongfully dismissed during voir
dire, the process in which prospective jurors are questioned and
challenged for bias.

Wilson was tried and convicted again in 1994.

Jerri Sims, then a Dallas County prosecutor who worked on both trials,
said authorities were even more focused on securing the death penalty the
second time around.

Wilson knew how to reach Maggie because he had lived in the same apartment
complex, in the 2700 block of Harriett Street, and he was friends with her
baby sitter.

"I don't know that it makes anything worse," Sims said. "But the fact that
he had been around and watched her play, in my mind that makes it worse."

Wilson's guilt was never in doubt, said Mike Bosillo, who led the
investigation as an Arlington police detective.

Wilson was caught days after the killing. His fingerprints were on the
broken bedroom window, according to police reports and court testimony.
Maggie's hair was in the car, and his DNA was on her clothes. Maggie's
hair and blood were on the underside of the car. And a rare Korean tire
from the Cougar matched a tire track on the child's body.

Several women testified at Wilson's trial that he had raped them or
attempted to rape them.

"And this has been going on 18 years now," said Bosillo, who is now deputy
chief investigator for the Dallas County district attorney. "He's gotten a
free ride. But it ends soon."

>From his cell on death row, Wilson refused an interview request from the
Star-Telegram.

His attorney, Robin Norris of El Paso, said that the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals declined Monday to hear a petition alleging that Wilson
had inadequate counsel at trial.

Norris said Wilson has 2 avenues left to spare his life. There is a
clemency petition pending before the parole board, Norris said. And the
Innocence Network filed a civil case on Wilson's behalf in federal court
last week claiming that lethal injection is unconstitutional because it is
cruel and unusual, said David Dow, a professor at the University of
Houston Law Center.

Human rights groups have claimed that the drugs used in lethal injection
disguise excruciating pain. The U.S. Supreme Court heard a similar case
from Florida last week.

The Innocence Network's claim was rejected Monday morning, but Dow said
they were appealing to a higher court, hoping for a stay of execution.

Rhodes said she was asked to write a letter to the parole board, offering
her view on clemency for Wilson.

She said she wrote the letter in one draft. It took just a few minutes.

"I just want to know that my child's death did not go unpunished. I
believe he forfeited his life the day that he took Maggie's life," Rhodes
wrote of "the man who took my first-born child's life for his own sick
pleasure."

"I'm a single mom with three jobs, and I struggle every day to have what I
have," Rhodes said. "It makes me so mad that my taxes are paying to keep
him alive."

Maggie had also been abducted and sexually assaulted in June 1987 but
released within an hour. Investigators never found a link between that
case and Wilson.

News stories at the time said Maggie won a prize for best story in her
kindergarten class and idolized rock star Joan Jett. She liked pork chops
and mustard sandwiches. She was buried in Minnie Mouse earrings and a blue
velvet dress that she would have unwrapped Christmas morning.

When she died, she had one little brother. Now, she would have been the
oldest of four children. Rhodes has two daughters, 15 and 10 years old,
whom she calls blessings because they were born after Maggie died.

Her son, who was sleeping in the same room with Maggie the night she was
taken, is now 20.

Rhodes remembers him coming to her on the morning of Nov. 30.

"He said, 'Him hit Maggie! Him hit Maggie!'" Rhodes said. "Maggie did all
of his talking for him. I could never understand what he said, but she
always could."

The prosecutors and investigators who worked the case -- most of whom are
in different jobs now -- all remember the case vividly.

Toby Shook, now chief of the Dallas County district attorney's office's
felony division, was the assistant prosecutor in the second trial. He
called the case "every parent's worst nightmare."

"He stole her out of her bed in the middle of the night and left her on
the side of the road like a piece of trash," Shook said. "We were all
dedicated to putting him on death row."

Sims is now the deputy criminal chief over narcotics and violent crime for
the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of Texas. She keeps a
photograph of Maggie in her desk. It's a school picture. On the back,
Maggie had written her name and age.

Bosillo and Arlington police officer Jim Greenwell, who was the crime
scene investigator on the case, plan to attend the execution.

"I saw what that animal did to that girl," Greenwell said. "It was a
nightmare. I want to see justice played out. There's no nice way to put
this -- it's going to be a good day."

Rhodes has kept in touch with them, often calling on the anniversary of
Maggie's death or on her birthday.

"They knew her very well in death, but they didn't know her in life. I
like to tell them about her," Rhodes said. "It's not just another case to
them."

Bosillo said he'll never forget.

"At the trial, the prosecutors talked about the boogeyman -- the bad guy
in her dreams," Bosillo said. "But to Maggie Rhodes he was real. And he
came in the form of Jackie Barron Wilson."

(source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

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

National Council on Disability Statement Regarding the Forced Drugging of
a Texas Inmate with a Psychiatric Disability


Contact: Mark S. Quigley of National Council on Disability, 202-272-2004

National Council on Disability (NCD) chairperson Lex Frieden today
released the following statement regarding the forced drugging of a Texas
inmate with a psychiatric disability so he can be executed.

A state district judge in Texas has ordered inmate Steven Kenneth Staley
to take psychiatric medication so that he can be declared mentally fit for
execution. In 2003, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals permitted officials
in Arkansas to forcibly administer medication to control an inmate's
behavior, making him "competent" enough to be executed.

In the National Council on Disability's 2000 Report From Privileges to
Rights: People Labeled with Psychiatric Disabilities Speak for Themselves
( http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/publications/2000/privileges.htm ), NCD
stressed that forced drugging should be viewed as inherently suspect and
that practices that would often be illegal if administered to people
without disabilities are routinely used on people with psychiatric
disabilities in the name of "treatment." But the notion of administering
psychiatric medication to someone so that he is considered "fit" for
execution should shock the conscience of all Americans.

In Atkins vs. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executions of
people with cognitive disabilities found guilty of a crime are "cruel and
unusual punishments" prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. The Court
reasoned that it was "not persuaded that the execution of mentally
retarded criminals will measurably advance the deterrent or the
retributive purpose of the death penalty." The Court also referred to the
growing number of states prohibiting the execution of people with mental
retardation as a reflection of society's view that those with cognitive
disabilities are less culpable for their offense. The Supreme Court should
take the Atkins decision one step further and weigh in on the unresolved
issue of the constitutionality of medicating inmates to make them
competent to be executed.

The forced treatment of Staley, particularly for purposes of execution,
has severe implications for people with disabilities. NCD urges that in
the absence of judicial clarity, a closer look be taken at death penalty
legislation and the possibility of modification to make forced treatment
of inmates a cruel and unusual punishment and hence unconstitutional.

For more information, contact Mark Quigley at 202-272-2004 or 202-272-2074
TTY.

(source: U.S. Newswire - Note: NCD is an independent federal agency making
recommendations to the President and Congress to enhance the quality of
life for all Americans with disabilities and their families.)

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

Jury selection begins in starvation death case


In Fort Worth, jury selection began Monday in the death penalty trial of
an Arlington woman accused of starving a 9-year-old boy.

Lisa Ann Coleman, 30, is charged with capital murder in the July 2004
death of Davontae Williams.

Davontae, 9, was malnourished and undeveloped, prosecutors said. He
weighed 35 pounds.

Ms. Coleman, who lived with Davontaes mother, goes on trial June 7 before
State District Judge Everett Young.

The boys mother, Marcella Williams, is also charged with capital murder. A
trial date for Ms. Williams has not been set.

(source: Dallas Morning News)

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

Legislators push DA to file hate-crime charges in beating


More than 30 Hispanic legislators are asking the Harris County district
attorney to file hate-crime charges against two young men accused of
beating and sodomizing a Hispanic teen while shouting ethnic slurs.

Rep. Joaqun Castro, D-San Antonio, and the Mexican American Legislative
Caucus sent a letter to District Attorney Charles Rosenthal late Monday,
saying the actions were racially motivated.

"To ignore such an obvious case of a racially motivated crime leaves a
black eye on the state of Texas," the letter stated.

Keith Robert Turner, 17, and David Henry Tuck, 18, both of the Houston
suburb of Spring, are charged with aggravated sexual assault, the
Associated Press reported.

Officials said the pair beat the victim because they believed he tried to
kiss a 12-year-old girl.

Tuck and Turner are accused of sodomizing the victim with a bleach-filled
patio umbrella pipe, stomping his head, trying to carve something in his
chest and dousing his body with bleach, officials said.

Prosecutor Mike Trent said Monday that the 17-year-old victim remained in
critical condition at a Houston hospital.

"It looks like they were really trying to kill him and torture him in any
way they could," Trent told the Associated Press.

The district attorney's office did not add hate-crime charges, saying that
unless the victim died, the potential punishment would be the same as
without the hate-crime label added.

The legislators disagreed.

"Your conclusion that (hate-crime charges) would not enhance possible
penalties is incorrect," the letter stated, adding that the offenders if
convicted would have to attend tolerance classes and perform at least 300
hours of community service.

"Undoubtedly, the classes would be highly beneficial to violent racist
offenders," the legislators wrote.

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

Death sentence official for Neal


In a case whose defendant District Attorney Susan Reed called "the poster
child" for capital punishment, the killer of teacher Diane Tilly was
sentenced Monday to die, closing a chapter in a slaying that captivated
the public's attention for its bizarre twists and brutality.

Ronnie Joe Neal, 35, was sentenced by 226th District Judge Sid Harle after
his defense attorney declined a final opportunity to go before a jury to
argue that his client is incompetent and shouldn't be executed. In
sentencing Neal, the judge formally pronounced the death sentence handed
down by a jury April 6.

The packed courtroom included several members of Tilly's family. They
declined to address the defendant or speak to the media after the hearing.

The sentencing brought to a close Neal's capital murder trial in the rape,
abduction and shooting of Tilly on Nov. 22, 2004.

The crime started in her Northeast Bexar County home and ended in a
Schertz cow pasture.

The slaying of Tilly, lead teacher at Robbins Academy, seized the
community's attention because of its sheer viciousness, but also because
Neal's accomplice was his 16-year-old daughter, Pearl Ann Cruz, with whom
he had a sexual relationship and fathered a child.

Cruz pleaded guilty to murder and agreed to testify for prosecutors. She
was sentenced to 30 years in prison in juvenile court April 13. She could
be eligible for parole in 3 years.

After Monday's hearing, District Attorney Reed spoke for prosecutors
Catherine Babbitt and Jill Mata in expressing relief that the ordeal is
over, for now. Neal's death penalty conviction will be appealed
automatically.

Unless he hires his own lawyer, attorneys from the recently created Bexar
County public defender office will handle the appeal.

"It is at long last (over), but the judge was very careful," Reed said,
alluding to last-minute attempts by Neal and his attorneys to stave off
the death sentence. The attorneys claimed that Neal is mentally
incompetent because he has mental retardation and attempted to take his
own life April 5.

"He was seen as competent. He deserved the sentence he got. We followed
the law, and he got his just deserts in this case," Reed said after the
sentencing. "It was a very difficult case. It is the poster child of cases
that deserve the death penalty."

When asked if she ever doubted that Neal would eventually receive the
death penalty, Reed said, "I never did.

"I think he was a malingerer. I think he was manipulative. I think he
played the system. It just took a little longer for us to get where we
needed to be," she added.

Harle set the sentencing hearing after receiving a report last week from
independent psychiatrist Dr. Brian Skops declaring that Neal was competent
to be sentenced. Skops' report had also been seen by U.S. District Judge
Orlando Garcia, who rejected an attempt to stall the sentencing April 21.

Defense attorney Joel Perez was allowed to have Neal examined by defense
psychiatrist Dr. Joann Murphy, but the defense declined an offer by the
judge to hold a competency hearing before a jury next Wednesday.

(source for both: San Antonio Express-News)

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

Judge overturns conviction of man who killed officer----He says there was
a 'vocal bias' against defendant


A federal judge has overturned the capital murder conviction of a Houston
man who fatally shot a motorcycle officer, saying the state trial judge
had a "deep-seated and vocal bias" against the defendant.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt issued an opinion late Friday overturning
the conviction of Carl Wayne Buntion, convicted in 1991 of killing officer
James Irby during a traffic stop.

Hoyt said in his 61-page opinion that state District Judge Bill Harmon
deprived Buntion of his constitutional right to a fair trial by bullying
his lawyers, meeting privately with prosecutors and deferring to their
wishes, and making remarks in court such as he was "doing God's work" by
seeing that Buntion was executed.

Harmon placed a Judge Roy Bean postcard on the bench during jury
selection, giving the impression that he was a "hangin' judge," Hoyt said.

Even before hearing evidence, Hoyt wrote, "Judge Harmon decided that
Buntion was guilty and should die."

Buntion was a passenger in a car stopped for a minor traffic violation by
Irby while he was on motorcycle patrol June 27, 1990.

Buntion got out of the car and shot Irby in the forehead with a
.357-caliber Magnum that shredded half of Irby's brain.

"Mr. Buntion has never disputed the fact that he shot and killed officer
Irby that day," said Dick Wheelan of Houston, who has represented Buntion
for at least 8 years of the appeal process.

"Since the beginning he has maintained that he was acting in self
defense," Wheelan said.

Jerry Strickland, spokesman for the Texas Attorney General's Office, which
represents the state in all federal cases, said the office had contacted
the Harris County District Attorney's Office and Irby's family and were
reviewing the decision.

Strickland said his office had 30 days to decide whether to appeal to the
5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The state must retry or release him within 180 days if there is no appeal.

(source: Houston Chronicle)

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

Judge overturns conviction in Houston officer's death


A federal judge has overturned death row inmate Carl Wayne Buntion's
conviction in the 1990 shooting death of a Houston motorcycle officer,
saying the trial judge violated Buntion's rights to a fair trial.

"We do not try and put people to death, even when the evidence is
compelling and overwhelming, where the instruments of justice ridicule the
very process that they are charged to protect and preserve," U.S. District
Judge Kenneth Hoyt wrote in his ruling issued Friday.

Buntion was convicted in 1991 of the death of Officer James Irby, who was
killed during a traffic stop.

Hoyt said state District Judge Bill Harmon had a "deep seated and vocal
bias" against Buntion, the Houston Chronicle reported in its online
edition Monday.

Hoyt said the state judge deprived Buntion of his constitutional right to
a fair trial by bullying defense lawyers, meeting privately with
prosecutors and deferring to their wishes and with remarks in court that
he was "doing God's work" by seeing that Buntion was executed.

Jerry Strickland, spokesman for the Texas Attorney General's Office, said
the office has 30 days to decide whether to appeal to the 5th U.S.
District Court of Appeals. He said the office has contacted Harris County
prosecutors and Irby's family and is reviewing the decision.

If there is no appeal, Buntion must be retried or released within 180
days.

Buntion was a passenger in a car Irby stopped on June 27, 1990. He shot
Irby in the head.

"Mr. Buntion has never disputed the fact that he shot and killed Officer
Irby that day," Dick Wheelan of Houston, who has represented Buntion for
at least 8 years of the appeal process, told the newspaper.

"Since the beginning he has maintained that he was acting in
self-defense," Wheelan said.

(source: Associated Press)






OHIO:

Ohio prison chief moves on----Director calls professional, competent staff
his greatest accomplishment over 15 years


The dean of the nation's prison chiefs has confronted a long, deadly riot,
the return of executions after a 36-year absence, and a recession-driven
closing of prisons that put hundreds out of work.

What Reginald Wilkinson calls his greatest accomplishment over 15 years,
though, is leaving behind a competent, professional staff.

"I think we changed the culture at the agency to allow that to happen,"
Wilkinson said last week in an interview with the Associated Press.

He had inherited an agency that was tainted by prisoner drug abuse, staff
misbehavior and other problems. He took immediate steps to correct those
problems, plus put new prisons in urban areas, where most inmates'
families live.

Wilkinson, 55, served his last day as director of the Department of
Rehabilitation and Correction on Sunday. His 15-year tenure is currently
the longest in the country. He's taking over a nonprofit group dedicated
to bringing higher education and business together to help Ohio's economy.

Wilkinson has spent his entire career in prison work. His initial goal was
to become a warden when he was hired in 1973 as a coordinator of volunteer
services at the Lebanon Correctional Institution near Cincinnati. At the
time, Ohio had 7,000 inmates in 8 prisons. Today, it has 46,000 in 32
prisons.

Wilkinson worked his way up to warden of the Dayton Correctional
Institution and deputy director of the department. Former Gov. George
Voinovich appointed Wilkinson as director in 1991, and Gov. Bob Taft
reappointed him in 1999.

2 years into his job as director, Wilkinson got a phone call in his car on
Easter Sunday. An uprising was taking place at the maximum-security
Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. He soon learned that
inmates had taken over a cellblock and were holding guards hostage.

9 inmates suspected of being snitches were killed along with 1 guard,
whose strangled body was dumped in the prison yard.

"What was skewed was the prison was being run -- no fault of the staff or
anything -- as a medium-security prison," Wilkinson said.

Rather than having law enforcement rush in, a tactic that resulted in 39
deaths at a New York state prison riot in 1971, Voinovich gave the order
to wait out the rioters.

"We just did not do what typically the textbooks say to do," Wilkinson
said. "I credit George Voinovich for this. He said, 'Whatever we do, we
want to minimize the loss of life.'"

After the 1993 riot, a commission took a long look at Ohio's prisons, and
changes were made. Death row was moved out of Lucasville and a "super-max"
prison was built in Youngstown to house the most violent inmates. 5
inmates convicted in the murder of guard Robert Vallandingham have been
sentenced to death.

Some of the changes came from the department and others, like a ban on
weightlifting equipment, came from the legislature.

Since Republicans completed their takeover of the legislature in 1994, and
with Republican governors for the last 16 years, lawmakers have gotten
tougher on crime, particularly crimes near schools that call for increased
sentences. Prison capacity currently is about 180 %.

The department is working with the legislature to see what can be done to
have more consistent sentencing and ease crowding, Wilkinson said.

"We have 7,000 people in prison who meet the profile of somebody who got
probation," Wilkinson said. "Many people in prison -- and I have no qualms
about saying this -- shouldn't be in prison."

Wilkinson has presided over the executions of 20 inmates since capital
punishment resumed in 1999. He says he is dedicated to enforcing the law
but has reservations about the death penalty. Since a sentence of life
without parole became available in 1996, Wilkinson has seen a drop in
death sentences, a trend he welcomes.

"There's nothing to suggest the death of one person deters another person
from committing a capital crime," he said.

Wilkinson won't miss begging lawmakers for money or butting heads with
union officials over staffing levels, but he will miss the staff he is
leaving behind. The respect is mutual, said one union official.

"Our relationship has always remained very professional. On many occasions
we have disagreed on different avenues the state has taken. My respect for
the man has always remained very high," said Tim Shafer, who heads the
prisons' union of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association.

Wilkinson, who will be replaced by Terry Collins, the department's
assistant director, hopes his new job as executive director of the
Business Alliance on Higher Education and the Economy will also have an
impact on crime. His background includes a master's degree and a
doctorate, both in education.

"If you solve the education problem, in large part you solve the crime
problem. Everything falls back to education," he said.

(source: The Beacon Journal)






CALIFORNIA:

Top court to take up death sentence case Justices to review validity of
standard jury instructions


The U.S. Supreme Court granted California prosecutors' request Monday to
review a San Joaquin County death sentence and decide whether standard
jury instructions had prevented jurors from considering the defendant's
good behavior behind bars as a reason to spare his life.

The court took up the case of Fernando Belmontes after a federal appeals
court in San Francisco ruled in July, for a 2nd time, that the judge's
instructions at Belmontes' trial had probably kept jurors from taking into
account the main evidence that defense attorneys offered in support of a
life sentence.

After Belmontes' trial, the Legislature broadened the jury instructions to
specify that any sympathetic evidence about a defendant's background
character or behavior could be grounds for a life sentence.

In seeking Supreme Court review, Deputy Attorney General Mark Johnson said
the instructions in Belmontes' case had also been given in 15 other
California death penalty cases that could be affected if the appeals court
ruling stands.

Belmontes' appellate lawyer, Eric Multhaup, disagreed with that
assessment, saying the ruling was narrowly limited to the circumstances of
his case.

The Supreme Court will hear the case in the term that starts in October,
with a ruling due by June 2007.

Belmontes, now 45, was a month short of his 20th birthday and living in a
halfway house in Stockton in March 1981 when he and two friends decided to
rob a home in Victor, east of Lodi in San Joaquin County. According to
trial testimony, Belmontes was confronted by 19-year-old Steacy McConnell
and hit her 15 to 20 times with an iron dumbbell, crushing her skull. He
and his accomplices took her stereo system and sold it for $100, which
they used to buy beer.

Belmontes had a violent record, with a 1979 conviction for being an
accessory to voluntary manslaughter and an assault on his pregnant
girlfriend while he was on parole, shortly before the murder. Defense
witnesses praised his behavior while he was incarcerated in the
manslaughter case, including his work on a fire crew, and a California
Youth Authority chaplain called Belmontes a "salvageable person" who could
live a productive life in prison.

In instructing jurors who were to decide between a death sentence and life
without parole, Superior Court Judge William Giffen listed factors they
should consider, such as the facts of the crime and Belmontes' record. He
told them they could also consider any other circumstance that made the
crime less serious. Questioned by a juror during deliberations, Giffen
said the panel had to weigh the factors he had listed.

Belmontes' death sentence was upheld by the state Supreme Court but
overturned by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in
2003. In a 2-1 ruling, the appeals court said Giffen's instructions had
focused the jury on the crime and Belmontes' past behavior, and may have
led jurors to disregard the defense case for leniency, based on his
behavior in the California Youth Authority and the chaplain's testimony.

In March 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated another California death
sentence and ruled that jury instructions similar to those in Belmontes'
case left jurors free to consider a defendant's behavior in prison.

But the appeals court, ordered to reconsider, ruled again in July that
Belmontes should get a new penalty trial. The court said Belmontes' case,
unlike the one that came before the Supreme Court, had arisen under a law
that gave federal judges leeway to review state rulings.

The case is Ornaski vs. Belmontes, 05-493.

(source: San Francisco Chronicle)






DELAWARE----execution date set

Date set for execution; Ruling in California case wont have effect


Convicted ax murderer Robert W. Jackson III will be executed by lethal
injection May 19 at the Delaware Correctional Center for the 1992 killing
of a Hockessin woman, Department of Correction spokeswoman Gail Minor
said.

Jackson will be the 2nd Delaware inmate to be put to death in about 6
months and the 15th since 1992.

Brian D. Steckel was executed in November for the September 1994 killing
of a Wilmington-area woman.

Jackson could ask the state Board of Pardons to spare his life, but so far
the board has not scheduled a meeting because a request has not been
received.

A New Castle County Superior Court jury found Jackson guilty of two counts
of 1st-degree murder for the April 3, 1992, slaying of 47-year-old
Elizabeth Girardi, who was found lying face-down outside of her Hockessin
residence.

Court records show Mrs. Girardi was slain outside her home when she
surprised Jackson and accomplice Anthony Lachette leaving with property
they had stolen and planned to pawn so they would have money to buy
marijuana.

Lachette fled after meeting Mrs. Girardi, but Jackson grabbed an ax from a
nearby shed and struck her several times in the face when she fell to the
ground during a struggle, court records said.

He struck her in the face with the ax again before he left because he
noticed the first attack hadnt killed her, then fled in his car, court
records said.

Lachette and acquaintance James Burton, whom Jackson told about the crime,
were states witnesses against Jackson, who later tried to arrange James
Burtons death while in prison, according to court records.

A former cellmate taped Jackson asking him to get rid of Burton, according
to court records.

The Delaware Supreme Court initially threw out Jacksons death sentence but
it was reinstated after a 2nd penalty phase.

The states high court overturned the death sentence, ruling prosecutors
should not have been allowed to play a tape of Jackson asking a cellmate
to arrange the killing.

Mrs. Minor said a pending court case in California challenging the
legality of lethal injections would not affect Jacksons scheduled
execution.

A convicted murderer in California has filed suit arguing the drugs used
in the injections cause horrible pain for the inmate, which is not
supposed to happen.

A U.S. District Court judge has scheduled a hearing for September on the
suit, effectively putting a moratorium on executions in California.

The judge initially ruled the California execution could happen in
February as long as the state took precautions to ensure the drugs worked
properly but then called it off after the state could not find any doctors
to oversee the procedure.

Mrs. Minor said department policy forbids her from releasing the chemical
makeup of Delawares injection, but said discussions with legal counsel
indicate the execution can proceed as scheduled.

(source: Delaware State News)