June 23
ARIZONA----impending execution
Board denies mercy for Arizona death-row inmate Samuel Villegas Lopez
An almost entirely new clemency board voted unanimously to deny a condemned
inmate's request for mercy during a hearing held Friday despite the defense's
objections that the panel was improperly appointed and prejudiced against the
convicted killer.
4 board members, 3 of whom were recently appointed by Gov. Jan Brewer, voted
against recommending that the governor reduce Samuel Villegas Lopez's death
sentence to life in prison. They heard more than 5 hours of arguments from
attorneys and the family of Lopez's victim, Estafana Holmes of Phoenix.
A 5th board member was on vacation and did not participate.
Lopez is set to be executed at the state prison in Florence on Wednesday, 3
days before his 50th birthday.
He also lost a request with the Arizona Supreme Court on Friday to delay his
execution until the state gets a new governor, after his lawyers argued that
Brewer and the board were prejudiced against him.
If Lopez's execution proceeds, he will be the fourth inmate put to death in
Arizona this year.
Lopez was convicted of brutally raping and killing 59-year-old Holmes in 1986.
Police found Holmes half-naked with 3 major stab wounds to her head, 1 on her
face, and 23 in her left breast and upper chest. The 5-foot-2-inch, 125-pound
woman had been blindfolded and gagged with her own clothing, and her throat had
been slit.
Semen found on her body matched Lopez's after he was arrested in a separate
rape less than a week later.
Holmes' apartment was in complete disarray, and blood was splattered on walls
in the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom.
The state Supreme Court in 1993 upheld Lopez's death sentence, saying that the
state of the apartment and Holmes' body showed "a terrific struggle for life"
and called the killing a "grisly and ultimately fatal nightmare."
Lopez, who was 24 at the time, did not know Holmes, a poor seamstress and
grandmother who lived alone and was described by her family as hard-working,
loving and deeply religious.
Before voting, board members called Lopez "the worst of the worst" and said the
brutality of the crime and Holmes' heart-broken family members held great sway
with them.
Lopez's defense attorney, Kelley Henry, said after the vote that she didn't
think the board considered her arguments with an open mind.
"This went just exactly as we predicted it was going to," Henry said. "They
weren't listening to anything we had to say. They didn't understand, they
didn't get it."
Henry has sued the board and Brewer over how the governor overhauled the board
in April, saying that Brewer appointed three "political cronies" in meetings
that were closed to the public to ensure that no high-profile or controversial
cases land on her desk. That lawsuit was pending.
Brewer has denied those accusations through her spokesman, Matt Benson, who
said the new board members were picked to "bring fresh insight and fresh
blood."
Board chairman Jesse Hernandez also denied that he or the other 2 new members
were picked to ensure that executions be allowed to proceed.
"We're not political cronies," he said after the hearing. "There's no question
I came in with an open mind. That's the right thing to do, to listen to both
sides ... We didn't rush through this."
His decision was "heart-wrenching... something that, personally, I do not take
lightly," he said. "This is something you lose sleep over."
Kelley does not dispute Lopez's guilt, but hinged her arguments Friday on the
fact that 2 separate trial judges did not hear any evidence that Lopez had a
horrific childhood. Defense attorneys could have presented that as a mitigating
factor that often leads to a life sentence in prison, rather than the death
penalty.
She brought in a neuropsychiatrist, George Woods, who told the board that
Lopez's father was a drunk who abused his wife and children before he left the
family and drank himself to death. Lopez's mother kicked her children out of
the house after marrying another man who had children of his own.
Woods said that Lopez's childhood was filled with poverty, neglect, abuse and
periods of homelessness during which he often had to sleep in cemeteries.
He dropped out of school in the ninth grade and began sniffing paint, an
addiction that continued into his adulthood and caused brain damage, Woods
said.
He said that as a child, Lopez experienced night terrors, had visions of a
witch chasing him and often would run screaming from wherever he was living.
Board members later said that while Lopez's childhood was a mitigating factor
to the crime, they weren't convinced by Woods' testimony because he couldn't
answer whether he believed that Lopez knew what he was doing when he killed
Holmes.
In an affidavit provided to the board, Lopez wrote that he wasn't saying that
he was not responsible for killing Holmes, but that he has no memory of the
crime because he had been spending so much time sniffing paint that he would
forget entire days.
"My mom was raped. I know what an awful thing rape is," he wrote. "I've never
been able to believe that I could actually do the same thing to someone else.
What happened to Ms. Holmes was so horrible and so wrong. I've been always been
sorry for what she went through that night and for what her family has gone
through ever since."
Board members also heard from nearly a dozen family members who attended in
person or called from Texas, where Holmes was born before moving to Arizona.
Many said that they forgave Lopez because that was what Holmes would have
wanted, but described how her murder left her family nearly incapacitated by
grief and that Lopez deserved to die.
Sarah Bryant, one of Holmes' sisters, addressed Lopez directly even though he
wasn't at the hearing.
"You don't like the governor, you think that you have not been heard, you think
you had a bad upbringing and therefore your life should be spared," she said.
"Let me ask you, Mr. Lopez, did our sister plead for her life as you stabbed
her 2 dozen times? Did she beg you not to rape her? Did she plead with you to
spare her life as you almost decapitated her? Did she?"
Bryant went on to say that Lopez robbed her 12 siblings, her son and her
grandson of her life.
"Nothing will bring her back, but you should pay for it," she said. "May God
forgive you."
(source: Associated Press)
MISSISSIPPI:
State Leads Nation in Executions
Mississippi holds a dubious `st-place standing for executing more people than
any other state in the union this year.
On Wednesday, Gary Carl Simmons Jr., 49, became the 6th inmate the Magnolia
State put to death this year using lethal injection; his execution was
Mississippi's third this month.
Simmons received a death sentence in 1997 for murdering and dismembering
Jeffrey Wolfe in 1996.
Across the nation, states have executed 22 prisoners this year, 17 of those
died in a southern state, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Texas has executed 5 death-row prisoners; Oklahoma and Arizona are tied for 3rd
place in the country, each with 3 executions.
In Mississippi, the last time the state Department of Corrections put more than
4 people to death in a single year was 1961. We put 8 people to death in 1955
and 1956.
Attorney Jim Craig, senior capital attorney at Louisiana Capital Assistance
Center who has worked on appeals for Mississippi death-row inmates, believes
those who have been executed were also poorly represented.
Since 1989, more than 2,000 inmates accused and convicted of felonies have been
exonerated in the United States. Samuel Gross, a law professor at the
University of Michigan and editor of the National Registry of Exonerations,
says that the reason people are falsely imprisoned is not what people usually
think of in these cases: DNA evidence.
"[F]or homicide exonerations, the leading causes of the underlying wrongful
conviction is clearly perjury and other false accusations," Gross told NPR in
May. "For adult sexual assaults, rape cases, the leading cause is eyewitness
errors. For child sex-abuse cases, the leading cause is fabricated crimes--you
know, accusations about crimes that never occurred."
Don Cabana, author of "Death At Midnight: The Confessions of an Executioner"
and a former Mississippi corrections commissioner, believes Mississippi's
recent spike in the number of executions--2 last year, 3 in 2010, none in 2009
and 2 in 2008--has to do with timing and the pace of appeals.
"You have a number of people who have been sitting on death row for a long time
whose cases kind of simultaneously, or in close proximity, started exhausting
their appeals," Cabana told The Republic earlier this month.
On June 20, Simmons' last words before his death did not include remorse for
his victims. "I've been blessed to be loved by some good people, by some
amazing people. I thank them for their support. Now, let's get it on so these
people can go home. That's it," he said.
Mississippi Executions in 2012, to date
• Feb. 8, Edwin Hart Turner
• March 20, Larry Matthew Puckett
• March 22, William Gerald Mitchell
• June 5, Henry Curtis Jackson
• June 12, Jan Michael Brawner
• June 20, Gary Carl Simmons Jr.
(source: Jackson Free Press)
PENNSYLVANIA----new death sentence
Chester man gets death sentence for ’94 murder
A 2nd Delaware County jury has decided on a death sentence for a Chester man
who was convicted nearly 2 decades ago in the murder of 26-year-old Eileen
Jones.
Jurors deliberated for about 6 hours before returning the repeat-decision for
Wayne Smith. The decision capped a life-or-death battle among expert witnesses,
which played out this week in a penalty phase trial resulting from Smith’s
death-sentence appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Smith, now 56, reportedly showed no reaction when the decision was announced,
or when Judge James Bradley remanded him to death row at SCI Rockview — where
his death by lethal injection would be imposed. No execution date has been set.
The last person to be executed in Pennsylvania was Gary M. Heidnik, on July 6,
1999, under former Gov. Tom Ridge.
Smith is currently serving time in a Greene County prison for the Nov. 18,
1994, strangulation of Jones. The Eddystone mother of 2 was 3 months pregnant
at the time of death.
Assistant District Attorney Erica Parham, spokeswoman for the D.A.’s office,
said she anticipates further legal proceedings.
“However, we are very satisfied with the decision of the jury,” she said. “The
jury appropriately determined that the defendant’s prior conviction for
voluntary manslaughter of a bar patron with a machete, a commonwealth
aggravating factor, outweighed any mitigating factor presented by the defense.”
Under Pennsylvania law, death by lethal injections can only be sought in cases
in which aggravating circumstances are present.
Smith was 1 of 2 men charged in 1980 in the fatal stabbing of a Chester
resident in a bar. He pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge and served a 2-
to 4-year jail term.
The previous conviction was one of 2 aggravating circumstances cited by the
prosecution in 1995. The 2nd was that Jones’ killing occurred during the
commission of a 2nd felony of attempted rape.
Parham noted that Ed Martin, Jones’ father, was in the courtroom throughout the
week and left about an hour before the jury returned with a decision, shortly
before 7:30 p.m.
“He bravely endured the proceedings this week,” Parham said “He has felt the
loss of his daughter since 1994. His presence showed his commitment to justice,
and the Office of the District Attorney is just as committed.”
Smith was convicted of 1st-degree murder in May 1995 and given a death
sentence. At that time, after the verdict he turned and apologized to the
victim’s family for the strangulation.
“I’ll never forgive myself,” said Smith. “I just hope that in time the family
and her kids will forgive me,” he added, while beginning to cry.
Jones’ partially clothed body was fished from the waters of Ridley Creek near
Ninth Street — between the Chester and Eddystone border — on Nov. 22, 1994.
During the initial trial, the prosecution claimed Smith killed Jones after she
rejected his sexual advances. Defense counsel Raymond Williams argued Smith
killed the woman while in a cocaine-induced frenzy.
According to testimony given at trial this week, Smith had made an arrangement
with Jones that she would give him sex in exchange for cocaine. After several
hours spent with the victim, the sexual encounter occurred in a park near the
Ninth Street Bridge, where the victim was later found.
Smith told police that at some point the two began wrestling on the ground,
according to a statement read in court. He then became afraid that Jones, who
is white, would say Smith had raped her. Smith said he did not believe a jury
would believe him because he is black.
He strangled the woman and dragged her to the creek where her body was later
discovered. Smith would have had to strangle Jones for 2 1/2 to 3 minutes to
choke the life out of her, according to former Delaware County Medical Examiner
Dr. Dimitri Contostavlos.
Smith initially lied to police about the murder, but later confessed, according
to a taped statement played for the court.
He appealed the death penalty sentence to the state Supreme Court. The court
affirmed the murder conviction in 2010, but ordered a new hearing on the death
penalty. Because the murder conviction was upheld, only 2 options remained open
to the new jury: Life imprisonment or death.
The appeals court determined that defense counsel’s “inadequate investigation”
and “narrow focus on cocaine-induced psychosis as the key to the guilt phase,
coupled with his disregard for other forms of mental health mitigating
evidence, which would have been useful at the penalty phase, cannot be said to
have been a reasonable strategy.”
Smith’s new attorney, William Wismer, offered testimony this week from Dr.
George Woody, an expert in psychiatry and substance abuse, who found Smith’s
fear that no one would believe him could have stemmed from childhood factors
like abuse and neglect, exacerbated by cocaine use.
“I think that he developed a cocaine-induced paranoia and that cocaine
magnified the problems he had with anger and anxiety and impulse control, and
putting all that together it resulted in the behavior that caused (Jones’)
death,” he said.
Neuropsychologist Carol Armstrong also told Wismer that Smith was severely
impaired in his ability to reason and suffered post-traumatic stress disorder
from his abusive childhood.
Armstrong said the chronic stresses Smith underwent in childhood likely
resulted in brain damage and that his escape mechanism – long and intensive
crack cocaine and alcohol abuse – could have induced psychosis.
But clinical and forensic psychiatrist Dr. Gerald Cooke told Assistant District
Attorney Mary Mann that Armstrong had evaluated Smith inaccurately. There was
no determination in her report how she came to diagnose him with PTSD, said
Cooke, and none of the tests in which he was found to be impaired have a
baseline “norm” for age, education, race and sex that psychiatrists use for
comparison.
On 7 tests with norms that Armstrong did administer, Cooke said Smith did not
fall into the impaired range, and on 3 of those he even scored above normal.
(source: Delco Times)
*******************
Wayne Smith sentenced to death in Delaware County - again
Almost 20 years ago, Wayne Smith killed a Delaware County woman and was
sentenced to death. Friday, when 12 new jurors were given a chance to decide
his fate again on an appeal, they, too, chose death.
Their conclusion goes against the trend.
Statistically, about 95 % of juries - both state and national - return with a
sentence of less than life for cases in which the courts have reversed the
original decision.
In May 1995, Smith, now 56, of Chester, was convicted of killing 26-year-old
Eileen Marie Jones of Eddystone the previous November. The two met when she
asked him to come to a friend's house to get high. Later they drove to a park
to do more drugs, and he strangled her. Smith later confessed to police that he
killed Jones.
At one point during the trial, County Court Judge Anthony R. Semeraro ordered
one of Smith's defense attorneys handcuffed and locked in a courtroom holding
cell for 45 minutes. Smith's lead defense attorney, Raymond Williams, asked to
withdraw from "a proceeding so fundamentally flawed in constitutional
procedure."
In 2010, the state Supreme Court ruled that while the guilty verdict in Smith's
original trial could stand, his lawyer did not "pursue all reasonable avenues"
for developing mitigating evidence - the facts about the defendant or his
circumstances that might compel a juror to vote for a lesser penalty. The court
ordered a new hearing for the death-penalty phase.
The penalty-phase retrial began Monday before Judge James P. Bradley.
Prosecutors offered a deal for life in prison, but Smith rejected it because he
would have to agree to halt all further appeals.
In childhood, Smith and his 6 younger siblings were routinely abused by their
alcoholic father. Food and heat were in short supply. A sister was sexually
abused. Their mother, Rosalie, was often choked and beaten.
By age 13, Wayne Smith had started down the road to drugs and alcohol. He spent
time in a juvenile facility. He joined the National Guard, then the Army, but
was dishonorably discharged. He tried and failed at several jobs.
"This is a man who never had a chance," said William Wismer, Smith's attorney,
in his closing argument Friday to the jury of 6 men and 6 women.
Jones' murder was not Smith's 1st serious run-in with the law. In 1980, he
pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter after he killed a man outside a
Chester bar with a machete. He served 4 years.
"Lots of people have horrible fathers," said Assistant District Attorney Mary
Mann in her closing. "They don't kill multiple people."
After 6 1/2 hours, the Delaware County jurors returned the guilty verdict.
The likelihood Smith will be put to death any time soon is slim. There have
been only 3 executions in Pennsylvania since 1976.
"Basically, you have this awkward way of getting to a life sentence in
Pennsylvania," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty
Information Center in Washington. "Instead of getting it directly through a
plea or trial, you get it through 15 years of death-penalty appeals."
Ed Martin, the victim's father, sat stoically in court for most of the
proceedings. He knows the odds are that Smith will not face execution.
"I'm satisfied because now he is on death row," Martin said.
(source: Philadelphia Inquirer)
*****************
Judge allows appeal of death penalty ruling
A Fayette County judge granted a motion for an interlocutory appeal to
determine if a Hopwood man scheduled for retrial in a 1987 homicide can face
the death penalty if he is convicted of 1st-degree murder.
Earlier this month, attorneys Dianne Zerega and Samuel J. Davis, who represent
Mark David Breakiron, asked Judge Steve P. Leskinen for permission to appeal
his decision not to quash aggravating factors. The jurist had to permit the
appeal, which he did last week, because it was not a final order in the case.
State prosecutors alleged torture and robbery, as the aggravating factors –- a
specified list of factors that, if found by a jury, could result in a death
sentence.
Those are the same 2 factors presented when Breakiron was tried, convicted and
sentenced to death for killing Saundra Martin, 24, of Smithfield in 1987 at
Shenanigan’s Lounge in German Township. However, Breakiron's murder and robbery
convictions were overturned by a federal court when a judge found that evidence
of benefits for prosecutors' key witness, Ellis Price, were withheld from
Breakiron's trial attorney. Price, the judge found, also lied on the stand
about the nature of a prior criminal conviction, and prosecutors did nothing to
correct it. Price died several years ago, and Deputy Attorney General Laurel
Brandstetter has said that prosecutors will not read his testimony at
Breakiron's trial.
Earlier this year, Zerega and Davis challenged Brandstetter's ability to prove
robbery and torture as aggravating circumstances.
The defense attorneys contended that Price was the only person to establish
evidence of a robbery, demonstrated if prosecutors can show that Breakiron
stole the purse or money from the bar before Martin was dead. Additionally, the
attorneys contended that there was no evidence that the means by which Martin
died constituted torture because there was no evidence of how long the alleged
attack took, the order in which the blows were inflicted or when Martin died.
Brandstetter had argued that Martin had lacerations to her face, contusions to
her head, a skull fracture, had been stabbed through the ear, her neck was
slashed and she had 18 stab wounds to her chest and abdomen, resulting in 2
broken ribs.
Leskinen found that there were “multitude of fatal injures,” evidence at least
2 different weapons were used, no specific time of death shown and blood at
different locations throughout the bar, which suggested that Martin may have
lived for a longer duration of time. Additionally, he found that other
witnesses may be used to establish the robbery.
Breakiron's attorneys asked Leskinen to let them appeal his findings to the
state Superior Court because, Zerega contended, case law supports a higher
legal standard to show torture than what prosecutors can present.
Leskinen also delayed Breakiron's trial -– scheduled for August –- until after
the appeal is decided.
(source: Herald Standard)
CALIFORNIA:
Sutter death penalty trial set for April
The Sutter County death penalty trial for a Loomis man accused in the brutal
double murder of a couple in 2010 will not be held until April, prosecutors
said Friday.
Joseph Simlick, 23, is charged with the homicide of Jack and Susan Martin in
July 2010 at the couple's home in Sutter.
Assistant District Attorney Jana McClung said both sides require a lot of time
to prepare for the complex death penalty case.
"Essentially, it's preparing for two phases," McClung explained Friday. "We
have to prepare for the trial and the sentencing."
In California, all death penalty cases are appealed automatically, which
further complicates the process. The trial is scheduled for April 16, 2013.
The Loomis resident is also charged with arson and false imprisonment.
Prosecutors believe Simlick attacked the Martins after their daughter, Kendall,
ended her dating relationship with him. Simlick is accused of repeatedly
stabbing both victims and setting their house on fire afterward.
Kendall Martin said her parents had been angry with Simlick in the hours
leading up to the fire. Jack Martin made several phone calls demanding Simlick
leave his daughter alone, according to testimony during a preliminary hearing
in November.
Testimony also revealed that some of Jack Martin's stab wounds, including some
on his head, occurred after he died.
A bloody kitchen knife with a 9-inch blade was recovered at the scene.
Simlick was arrested a few hours after the fire.
He remains in custody at the Sutter County Jail without bail.
(source: Appeal-Democrat)
******************
New death sentence: South L.A. serial rapist gets death sentence for killing 3
women
A convicted South L.A. serial rapist and murderer was sentenced to death Friday
for killing 3 women between 1986 and 1993.
Michael Hughes, 56, was convicted in November 2011 of the 1st-degree murders of
Yvonne Coleman, 15, Verna Williams, 36, and Deborah Jackson, 32. A jury
recommended in December that he be sentenced to death. He had already been
serving life in prison with no parole for 4 other murders.
L.A. County Superior Court Judge Curtis B. Rappe rejected an automatic motion
to reduce the sentence to life without parole, citing later that the
“aggravating evidence substantially outweighs the mitigating evidence."
Early-life circumstances should be taken into account when considering
punishment, Hughes’ lawyer Aron Laub argued. Hughes was beaten as a child and
had witnessed his mother perform a forced abortion on his sister.
Several victims' family members who arrived at the downtown courtroom said they
felt Hughes had to take responsibility for his actions.
“I am not broken because of him, I am only broken-hearted,” said Linda Coleman,
mother of Yvonne Coleman, to the judge before sentencing. She urged the judge
to give him the maximum penalty.
(source: Los Angeles Times)
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