March 7
TEXAS----impending execution
Texas man to die for killing wife, her boyfriend
Convicted killer Keith Thurmond hopes the U.S. Supreme Court keeps him from the
Texas death chamber for the shooting deaths of his estranged wife and her
boyfriend more than 10 years ago outside Houston.
Thurmond faced lethal injection Wednesday evening in Huntsville for fatally
shooting his 32-year-old wife, Sharon, and neighbor Guy Fernandez. They were
living together down the street from Thurmond near Magnolia in Montgomery
County.
Attorneys for the 52-year-old Thurmond are arguing lawyers earlier in his
appeals process were "grossly deficient" in failing to track down background
about the former mechanic's abusive childhood.
The execution would be the 3rd this year in Texas.
(source: Associated Press)
*********************
Jury: Cop-killer Carl Wayne Buntion to return to death row
Convicted cop-killer Carl Wayne Buntion will return to death row, a Harris
County jury decided Tuesday in his resentencing trial.
Buntion fatally shot HPD Officer James Irby more than 20 years ago and was
convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1991.
But an appeals court later ruled that the jury instructions in that case were
flawed, and Buntion won a new sentencing trial.
His lawyers wanted a life sentence, arguing that jurors in the 1st trial were
not allowed to consider Buntion’s troubled childhood.
But once Buntion won the right to a new sentencing trial, prosecutors promised
Irby’s family that they would fight hard for the death penalty – again.
Irby was working as a motorcycle patrol officer when he pulled over a car that
Buntion was riding in for a minor traffic violation in June of 1990.
Prosecutors said Buntion got out of the car during the traffic stop and shot
Irby – a husband and father – in the head.
Irby’s family was present for most of the court proceedings this month,
reliving painful details and – in some cases – learning things they never knew
before.
"This whole process, everyone has been having nightmares – a lot of details
that kids didn’t know," Irby’s wife, Maura Irby said.
The Irby family said they felt Buntion belonged on death row.
"I hope he gets the death penalty," the officer’s son, Cody Irby, said. "He
made a choice to murder my father."
(source: KHOU News)
KENTUCKY:
Prosecutors: Ky. capital punishment unfair
Of the 78 people sentenced to death in Kentucky since 1976, 50 have had a death
sentence overturned on appeal by Kentucky or federal courts because of
significant legal errors. That is an unacceptable error rate of more than 60
percent.
Kentucky's justice system is at an historic moment. As a matter of basic
fairness, we must pause to understand and reform the way capital punishment is
administered in our state.
Each of us is a current or former prosecutor, some of whom have prosecuted
capital cases in our commonwealth.
As prosecutors, we continue to believe that heinous criminal conduct must be
punished severely in a way that advances public safety.
However, punishment must be a result of a fair process that produces valid
results in which we have full confidence. It is time to suspend executions in
Kentucky until the reforms recommended by a groundbreaking professional study
are implemented.
Over the last 2 years, the American Bar Association Kentucky Assessment Team on
the Death Penalty, consisting of 2 retired Kentucky Supreme Court Justices, a
former chair of the House Judiciary Committee, distinguished law professors and
bar leaders, conducted the most extensive evidence-based analysis of the manner
in which the death penalty is administered in Kentucky in the history of the
commonwealth.
Its report focuses on fairness and accuracy in capital cases. It takes no
position with regard to whether or not the death penalty should be abolished.
It is only concerned with its proper administration.
The independent, comprehensive evaluation of all death penalty cases prosecuted
in Kentucky identified a number of very serious problems with the use of the
death penalty.
The study makes a series of critically important recommendations that will
address the problems identified with the way the death penalty is administered
in our state.
We endorse these sensible recommendations:
-Adopt legislation exempting the severely mentally ill from the death penalty.
There is a bill pending before the Kentucky General Assembly that would
accomplish this reform, HB 145, introduced by Rep. Darryl Owens with 11
bipartisan co-sponsors.
-Guarantee proper preservation of all biological evidence in capital cases.
Courts should order DNA testing if the results could create a reasonable
probability that a defendant should not have been sentenced to death. The
Kentucky Supreme Court has been asked to consider a rule change that would
rectify this problem.
-Provide additional funding to ensure defense attorneys who represent indigent
capital defendants are paid at a rate that will enable them to provide high
quality legal services in matters as complex and demanding as a death penalty
case.
Recently, a report issued by the Kentucky Bar Association's Task Force on the
Provision and Compensation of Conflict Counsel for Indigents made
recommendations endorsed by the KBA board of governors to provide improved
funding for capital cases. As a result, Kentucky's statewide public defender
program has requested additional funds for this representation, but such
funding is not now a part of the budget bill before the General Assembly.
-Law enforcement training and practices should comport with well-known best
practices in areas such as interrogations, confessions and eyewitness
identification in order to promote the apprehension of the guilty and prevent
the conviction of the innocent. Rule proposals that would begin to address
these issues have been submitted to the Kentucky Supreme Court for its
consideration,
-Adopt statewide standards governing the qualifications and training required
of defense attorneys handling capital cases,
-Adopt guidelines governing the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in death
penalty cases. Today, at great expense to the system, many cases are prosecuted
as capital cases when the likelihood of a death sentence is very low.
-Establish a statewide clearinghouse to collect specific, pertinent data on all
death-eligible cases.
-Amend Kentucky's post-conviction rules and practices to permit adequate
development and consideration by the courts of an inmate's claims of
constitutional error. A rule proposal has been submitted to the Kentucky
Supreme Court to address this issue.
-Revise the jury instructions typically given in capital cases to improve death
penalty juror understanding and comprehension of the law to be applied.
-Correct shortcomings of the Kentucky Racial Justice Act to ensure that the act
serves as an effective remedy for racial discrimination in death penalty cases.
The hallmark of our criminal justice system is that its process is fair and its
results are reliable and accurate. Our reversal rate undermines this hallmark.
These troubling issues in capital cases must be addressed now.
(source: Editorial, Kentucky.com)
MARYLAND:
Maryland’s broken death penalty
On paper, Maryland courts are empowered to impose the death penalty in certain
murder cases. In practice, the state’s death penalty is in remission. 5
convicts remain on death row, and defendants can be prosecuted for capital
murder and sentenced to death, but the state lacks any legal method of carrying
out executions. No one has been put to death in Maryland since 2005.
That status quo seems acceptable to the power brokers in Annapolis, who would
rather not add to a list of controversies that now includes legalizing same-sex
marriage and subsidizing higher education for illegal immigrants.
But by ducking the issue, they are leaving in place a costly, inefficient,
unjust and dysfunctional system that exacts a terrible toll on the families of
murder victims. Rather than legislating and leading, state lawmakers are in
denial.
3 years ago, an effort to abolish the death penalty narrowly failed in the
General Assembly, which instead restricted it to cases where there is DNA
evidence, a videotaped confession or video linking the suspect to a murder. But
the legislature’s reform fixed nothing; if anything, it codified a system even
more arbitrary than the one it replaced. Now the nature of the evidence, rather
than the barbarity of the crime, is the critical factor. So a murder conviction
based on DNA evidence might result in a death sentence, but not a Virginia
Tech-style killing spree whose perpetrator is identified by multiple witnesses.
Nor did the changes in the Maryland law address the racial and jurisdictional
disparities in the death penalty’s application. And there is no evidence that
the death penalty is more effective at deterring murders than is a sentence of
life without parole.
The broken system is particularly burdensome for the families of murder
victims, who face years, even decades, of litigation. 3 of the state’s 5
death-row prisoners were sentenced nearly 30 years ago; the others were
sentenced in the mid-1990s.
Whatever moral convictions one holds about capital punishment — and we think it
is wrong — Maryland has failed to find an evenhanded, just and fair-minded way
to apply it. As a recent report by some of Maryland’s most prominent attorneys
concluded, the state’s current law “is likely to increase the arbitrariness of
the imposition of the death penalty because persons who commit the most heinous
crimes — the ‘worst of the worst’ — are not necessarily the same people who
will be eligible for the death penalty.”
A majority of the Maryland General Assembly favors an end to capital punishment
in the state. Still, legislative leaders are reluctant to allow consideration
of a bill that would repeal the death penalty and shift the anticipated savings
in the state budget to programs to benefit victims’ families. The leaders would
rather leave in place a system that is a disgrace to justice, and to Maryland.
(source: Editorial, Washington Post)
MISSOURI:
Supreme Court upholds Tisius' death sentence
The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed the death sentence for Michael
Tisius, convicted in the 2000 murders of a pair of Randolph County jailers.
In the court’s unanimous decision, it ruled that the trial court did not err on
several counts, including introducing hearsay evidence from outside the scope
of the trial. That evidence was Tisius’ 2009 guilty plea to knowingly
possessing a boot shank while in prison. It was an Alford plea, meaning he did
not admit to the act but only that sufficient evidence existed that could
persuade a judge or jury to find him guilty.
“The circuit court did not plainly err in admitting Tisius’ prior conviction
into evidence as this was relevant to his character,” said the opinion written
by Judge George Draper.
On June 22, 2000, Tisius and Tracie Bulington had planned to free an inmate
from the Randolph County Jail by intimidating jailers at gunpoint. They killed
Leon Egley and Jason Acton with gunshots to the head and chest. In 2001, a St.
Charles County jury handed down 2 death sentences on 2 counts of 1st-degree
murder. Those sentences were reaffirmed in July 2010 by a Greene County jury
after a 4-day penalty phase retrial in Boone County Circuit Court.
Tisius’ attorney, Assistant Public Defender Jeannie Willibey, argued in
December before the Missouri Supreme Court that Tisius’ death sentences should
be vacated. She said Tisius’ death sentence was disproportionate to the
sentences imposed in similar cases, considering the crime, strength of evidence
and the defendant. But the high court ruled that the sentence was not
disproportionate.
“This Court independently researched both death and life cases and has not
identified any similar case involving pre-meditated murders of two law
enforcement officers as committed by Tisius that would support a finding that
his sentence is disproportionate. Tisius’ conduct was calculating and brazen,”
Draper wrote.
(source: Columbia Daily Tribune)
************
Mo. court uphold death sentence for jail slayings
The Missouri Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence for a man convicting
of fatally shooting 2 central Missouri law officers during a botched jail break
a dozen years ago.
The court on Tuesday rejected 7 arguments raised by Michael Tisius, including
his objections about a prosecutor's closing arguments to jurors during a
resentencing hearing in 2010.
Tisius was convicted of the 2000 shooting deaths of Randolph County jailers
Jason Acton and Leon Egley as he and a woman unsuccessfully tried to free
inmate Roy Vance from jail.
The high court in 2008 had overturned a previous death sentence for Tisius,
which led to the resentencing and the latest appeal.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court called Tisius' conduct "calculating and brazen"
and said the death penalty was not disproportionate.
(source: Associated Press)
FLORIDA:
Gore's attorneys file motion citing governor was unfairly influenced to sign
death warrant
In a bid to save his life, attorneys for David Alan Gore filed papers Wednesday
listing 5 reasons his April 12 execution should be stopped, including that Gov.
Rick Scott was unfairly influenced to sign the serial killer's death warrant
after meeting in January with the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers' editorial
review board.
Calling his signed death warrant "nothing more than a rigged lottery," Gore's
attorneys claim that before meeting with members of Scripps' editorial review
board, Gore's death row case "was not even being considered for a death
warrant."
In Gore's 28 years of appealing his punishment from death row, it's the first
time attorneys have alleged his constitutional rights have been violated
because a governor took action to sign his death warrant after discussing his
case with members of a newspaper's editorial review board.
"It was during this referenced editorial board meeting on Jan. 5 when Mr.
Gore's case was pushed to the front line," wrote attorneys John Abatecola and
Linda McDermott. Neither was available for comment Wednesday.
In a 61-page motion to set aside Gore's death sentence and execution, his
attorneys cite a videotaped conversation between Scott and Scripps' editorial
review board members in which he was quizzed about the status of Gore's case
and asked, "Is that something you can look into?"
"I'll look into it," Scott replied on the videotape.
According to Abatecola and McDermott, 12 days after that meeting, on Jan. 17,
the Florida Parole Commission notified state Attorney General officials they
were updating a clemency investigation that was 1st completed in 1987.
"Less than eight weeks after Gov. Scott's meeting with the editorial review
board of Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers, the Governor signed Mr. Gore's
death warrant," the motion states. "The decision to authorize an execution
should not turn on the partial interests of those with special access to the
Governor, in this case a newspaper editorial board, or on one-sided advocacy
where the condemned is not even notified of the process."
Gore, 58, was sentenced to death in the July 1983 1st-degree murder of Lynn
Elliott in Vero Beach. He also was convicted in the murders of five other women
in Indian River County for which he received 5 life prison terms.
His co-defendant and cousin Fred Waterfield is serving life in prison for his
role in the crimes.
In signing Gore's death warrant, Scott was operating under the 1992 death
sentence imposed by Circuit Judge Dan L. Vaughn, who presided over the second
sentencing phase Gore received in the Elliott case after a federal judge in
U.S. District Court threw out his original death penalty.
Gore's attorneys, in their motion, note that at least 42 of the 397 inmates on
Florida's death row appear to have exhausted their appeals and "there's no
principled way to distinguish between Mr. Gore and the decision to sign his
death warrant ... from the decision to not sign a death warrant on these
individuals ..."
Gore's lawyers further claim the clemency process in his case was applied in an
"arbitrary and capricious manner" in violation of his U.S. constitutional
rights.
Three other claims raised in Gore's motion center on charges he received
ineffective assistance of counsel during his 1992 resentencing. A fifth claim
alleges that because of the 28 years Gore has spent on death row, adding his
execution to that punishment "would constitute cruel and unusual punishment."
"Such long-term suffering becomes a separate form of punishment," the motion
notes, "which is equivalent to or greater than an actual execution."
Assistant State Attorney Ryan Butler said the state will file papers by Friday
to respond. A hearing to review the issues is scheduled Tuesday before Circuit
Judge Dan L. Vaughn.
"There doesn't appear to be anything significant in this motion," Butler noted
Tuesday.
(source: TC Palm)
**********************
Central Florida man convicted in fatal drug robbery, faces possible death
sentence
A central Florida man has been convicted for his part for in what authorities
called a drug-related fatal home invasion.
A Polk County jury found 30-year-old Robert McCloud guilty Monday of 2 counts
of 1st-degree murder and other charges. The jury will reconvene later this week
to recommend whether McCloud should receive the death penalty or life in
prison.
The Ledger (http://bit.ly/Ajvq2h ) reports that McCloud was one of several men
charged in the October 2009 deaths of 26-year-old Tamiqa Taylor and 23-year-old
Dustin Freeman. Another victim, 29-year-old Wilkins Merilan, survived being
shot, and his 3-year-old daughter was also found at the Poinciana home.
3 others — 42-year-old Andre Brown, 40-year-old Joshua Bryson and 28-year-old
Jamal Brown — previously pleaded no contest to second-degree murder for reduced
sentences.
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA:
Effort to replace California’s death penalty with life term advances
Opponents of the death penalty in California have filed 800,000 petition
signatures to support a statewide vote on replacing the penalty with a term of
life in prison with no chance of parole.
The signatures – far more than the 504,000 required to qualify the initiative –
were collected by 5,000 volunteers in all 58 California counties, the
organizers for the SAFE California Act campaign, said March 1 at simultaneous
news conferences in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego.
Assuming the signatures are declared sufficient and valid, the question of
amending the death penalty law will appear on the ballot Nov. 6.
“California voters are ready to replace the death penalty with life in prison
with no chance of parole,” said Jeanne Woodford, a spokeswoman for the effort
and a former warden at San Quentin State Prison who oversaw four executions.
Death penalty opponents cite a report in June that the state has spent $4
billion since 1978 to fund the California death penalty system – almost all of
it for appellate court costs. The opponents say that, according to their plan,
there would be a savings of nearly $100 million – or $30 million a year, for 3
years – that could be set aside to finance investigations of open rape and
murder cases.
“Replacing the death penalty with a punishment of life in prison without parole
will free up funds for critical tools like DNA testing in the shocking 46
percent of murder and 56 percent of reported rape cases that remain unsolved in
our state every year,” said Woodford, who now heads a nonprofit, Death Penalty
Focus, opposed to the death penalty.
The Catholic Church opposes capital punishment, believing that all life has
value. Also on March 1, Auxiliary Bishop Gerald Wilkerson of the Archdiocese of
Los Angeles and president of the California Catholic Conference of Bishops, in
a statement thanked Catholic volunteers who helped with the signature-gathering
effort.
“Now, in November, California’s voters will be offered the chance to make this
prudent, life-affirming, safety-enhancing and cost-savings change in sentencing
law. Moreover, passing this initiative will prevent the execution of an
innocent person,” he said.
The state’s law was established by voter initiative, in 1978, and can only be
amended by initiative. Don Heller, a Sacramento lawyer, wrote the 1978
initiative – it expanded a law the California Legislature had written over
then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s veto – and now opposes the death penalty.
“I made a terrible mistake 34 years ago, but it is one that can be corrected by
replacing the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of
parole,” he said.
The death penalty has been on hold in California since 2006 due to a court case
over the legality of lethal injection procedures.
(source: Catholic San Francisco)
USA:
‘Death row’ is in----New series follows inmates ’til bitter end
“On Death Row”----Friday night at 10 on Investigation Discovery
TV execs are like real-estate brokers. They’re always looking for the next
great neighborhood.
First, there were the gold-digging housewives of Orange County, then
gold-wearing guidos of New Jersey, then real gold mines of Alaska and, most
recently, wild men who’ve found gold in ’gators on the Louisiana Bayou.
So where is TV’s next great golden neighborhood?
How about death row?
Just yesterday, we reported that the biggest show in China, “Interviews Before
Execution,” with 40 million viewers weekly, is a series in which a woman with a
giant bouffant named Ding Yu, interviews death-row prisoners just before they
die.
Not to be outdone in the death-as-entertainment arena comes an American show,
“On Death Row,” from acclaimed German auteur/eccentric Werner Herzog, maker of
such death classics as “Grizzly Man,” which documented one man’s summers with
grizzly bears — until they ate him.
“On Death Row”— which arose out of Herzog’s film “Into the Abyss,” about 2
death-row inmates who were executed eight days after the last taping — is a
4-episode series with Herzog in the Ding Yu role.
Herzog, a death-penalty opponent, visits death-row inmates over the course of
several interviews discussing their crimes, their regrets (if any) and their
feelings (also if any).
First up Friday night is wife-killer James Barnes.
While in prison, Barnes found religion and decided to come clean about another
murder. This confession, much to his surprise, ended up putting him on death
row.
Surprising to the rest of us is that during Herzog’s interviews, Barnes admits
to other murders.
Herzog, who is nobody’s fool, realizes that these confessions mean further
delays in Barnes’ execution while they are investigated. It becomes an
on-camera game of who is playing whom.
The problem is that “On Death Row,” makes you feel like you need a long shower.
This is especially true when a freaking murderer, who gets his 15 minutes of
fame, says “There are other crimes out there for which I never been
associated,” and other comments, such as when he describes a young man he
killed. “He was still shiny,” he says. “Before you get to a certain age you
still have a gleam, a glow.”
This one gets catergorized as both yuck and yikes TV. Not for the weak of
stomach or pure of heart.
(source: New York Post)
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