Dec. 16
TEXAS:
Paul Devoe's Texas death penalty conviction stands----Man is convicted of
killing spree that included a State Line woman
Texas’ highest criminal court on Wednesday upheld the conviction of a man
sentenced to death for killing 2 teenage girls as part of a cross-country
murder spree 4 years ago that left 6 people — including Betty Jane Dehart, 81,
of State Line — dead.
Lawyers for 48-year-old Paul Devoe raised 9 points of error from his trial in
2009 in Austin, including claims of insufficient evidence, improper jury
selection and jury instructions and improper conduct by trial prosecutors.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected each of the claims. Devoe does not
have an execution date. He can take his case to the federal courts and
eventually could return to the state courts for additional review.
“I’m disappointed to hear his death sentence has been affirmed but there’s a
number of avenues for relief that he still has yet to explore,” Karyl Krug, who
filed the appeal for Devoe, said. “So I’m still hopeful that he’ll get some
kind of relief.”
Deadly rampage
Devoe was arrested in August 2007 after a short standoff with police in
Shirley, N.Y., where he grew up and where his mother lived — 3 days after 4
people were killed at a home in a rural area near the northern end of Lake
Travis, outside Austin.
He also was accused of killing a bartender in Marble Falls, northwest of
Austin, and Dehart, whose car he stole en route to New York.
Devoe specifically was convicted of capital murder for the deaths of Haylie
Faulkner, 15, and a friend, Danielle Hensley, 17. Faulkner was the daughter of
his ex-girlfriend, Paula Griffith, 46, who also was killed along with her
boyfriend, Jay Feltner, 48.
They were shot at Griffith’s home after Devoe tried to kill another former
girlfriend, Glenda Purcell, at a bar. The bartender there, Michael Allred, 41,
was fatally shot as he stepped between Purcell and Devoe. The gun then jammed
as he tried to shoot Purcell and Devoe fled.
Police were alerted by Hensley’s parents after they were unable to reach her by
phone. She was with Faulkner for a planned trip to a San Antonio amusement
park.
Devoe told a psychiatrist that on the day of the Texas shootings, he smoked
methamphetamine and drank a liter of rum. He described the shooting of Allred
as an accident, said he shot Feltner in self-defense and said he killed
Griffith, the teens and Dehart because they were screaming.
Ballistics showed all the victims were killed with the same .380-caliber
pistol. Police recovered a box of 100 bullets from a bag inside the car he was
driving.
In Pennsylvania
Devoe left Texas in Griffith’s car, which began having mechanical problems as
he reached State Line. Dehart was sitting on her North Young Road home’s porch
when Griffith’s Saturn died. Police said Dehart tried to run inside and lock
the door, but Devoe chased her into the bedroom where he shot her. He then
stole $8 from her purse and fled to New York.
Devoe has not been tried for the slayings of Allred, Griffith, Feltner and
Dehart
Franklin County District Attorney Matthew Fogal opted last year not to seek a
trial in Pennsylvania for Dehart’s murder, with the blessing of her family.
“Leave (Devoe) to Texas so the wheels of justice can keep turning,” Dehart’s
daughter, Saundra Schriver, said in the family’s official statement at the
time.
Evidence showed Devoe had a lengthy criminal history and long history of
abusing women.
He was jailed in Suffolk County, N.Y., more than 20 times between 1980 and 2004
and spent 5 years in a New York state prison. His mother once obtained a
protective order against him after he tried to strangle her with a telephone
cord.
(source: The Record Herald)
CALIFORNIA:
Judge plans on tossing California's death penalty
Prison officials failed to properly adopt the state's new lethal injection
execution procedures, a judge said in a ruling Thursday that, if upheld, will
throw California's stalled capital punishment system into further doubt.
The tentative ruling from Marin County Superior Court Judge Faye D'Opal found
prison officials failed to properly consider a one-drug alternative to the
3-drug lethal injection cocktail used to execute inmates.
Attorneys representing the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation will get a chance to change the judge's mind during a hearing
Friday morning.
CDCR spokeswoman Terry Thornton said the department was reviewing the lengthy
ruling and declined to comment.
If the ruling stands, prison officials will either have to appeal or again
revise their lethal injection procedures and submit them to public comment, a
process that took more than a year last time.
It also could become the 2nd court ruling barring executions in California. A
federal judge imposed a de facto moratorium on executions in 2006 after finding
the lethal injection process flawed in the state.
One of the state's responses to that finding was to adopt the new regulations,
which D'Opal' s tentative ruling said was severely deficient.
D'Opal said that prison officials failed to properly explain why they rejected
a 1-drug process using only a barbiturate, even though one of their experts
recommended it as being superior to the three-drug cocktail CDCR adopted. The
judge wrote that critics of the 3-drug lethal injection submitted comments to
the CDCR saying that one of those three drugs—pancuronium bromide—"is
unnecessary, dangerous, and creates a risk of excruciating pain."
D'Opal said that the CDCR also failed to disclose the costs of executions, all
of which are conducted at San Quentin Prison.
The judge noted that former San Quentin Prison Warden Jeanne Woodford said each
execution costs the state between $70,000 and $200,000 in overtime for staff,
crowd control, training, security and other expenses with carrying out lethal
injections.
D'Opal also took exception to 3 new procedures introduced without explanations
in the new protocols.
"Why it is necessary for unit staff to monitor the inmate and to complete
documentation every 15 minutes starting 5 days before execution?" the judge
asked rhetorically. She also pondered "why all personal property must be
removed from the inmate's cell...or why inmates must be bound with waist
restraints during visits."
She also said prison officials didn't respond to all 29,400 comments received
from the public before adopting the new protocols, as required for adoption of
new state regulations.
Finally, the judge said prison officials failed to properly notify the 720
inmates on California's death row of the new procedures.
The lawsuit challenging the new regulation was filed last year by Mitchell
Sims, a condemned inmate convicted of killing a 21-year-old pizza deliveryman
in 1985. Sims had killed two other Domino's Pizza employees four days earlier
in South Carolina. He's also sentenced to die in that state.
Sims filed his lawsuit on behalf of other death row inmates like him who
exhausted all their appeals and were at the head of the execution line. At
least 12 inmates are in similar situations.
Sims said the new regulations were improperly drafted and violated a California
law requiring detailed explanations and public comments on the changes.
Prison officials drafted those new regulations in response to a federal lawsuit
filed by condemned inmate Michael Morales, who alleged that California's lethal
injection process amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. A federal judge in
2006 ordered the CDCR to revamp California entire execution process.
Besides the new regulations, the CDCR also constructed a new death chamber
designed specifically for lethal injections. Prison officials previously were
using the old gas chamber at San Quentin for lethal injections, which the
federal judge found to be too cramped, dark and antiquated.
The judge banned executions until a resolution to Morales' lawsuit, which was
pending in San Jose. A hearing in that case was postponed until late next year
while lawyers gather evidence.
(source: Associated Press)
NORTH CAROLINA:
No death penalty in Ackerson murder case
Prosecutors said Thursday they will not seek the death penalty in the murder of
a Kinston mother whose dismembered body was found in a Texas creek.
32-year-old Grant Ruffin Hayes, and his wife, 39-year-old Amanda Perry Hayes,
are charged with murder in connection with Laura Ackerson's death.
Ackerson's remains were found in Oyster Creek near Skinner Lane in Richmond,
Texas this past July. Identification was made through dental records days
later. The 27-year-old was reported missing on July 18.
Texas deputies said they believed Ackerson was killed in North Carolina, and
then dismembered, before her body was taken to Texas in coolers. The creek
where the remains were found is near Amanda Hayes's sister's home.
Ackerson and Hayes had been involved in a custody battle over their children
for more than a year. Hayes was granted primary custody in 2010.
Grant Hayes is a local musician in Raleigh, who is known by the stage name,
Grant Haze.
(source: WTVD)
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