Oct. 24
SOUTH DAKOTA:
Federal judge denies request by woman to halt execution of South Dakota death
row inmate
A federal judge has denied the motion of a woman with loose family ties to
death row inmate Donald Moeller to halt his upcoming execution.
Attorney General Marty Jackley announced Tuesday that District Court Judge
Lawrence Piersol denied the motion filed by Donna Nichols to stay the execution
of the 60-year-old Moeller.
Moeller was convicted for the 1990 kidnapping, rape and murder of 9-year-old
Becky O'Connell. He recently asked a federal judge to dismiss his appeals and
let him die. His execution is scheduled for next week.
Nichols, whose mother married Moeller's stepfather, says Moeller wasn't
psychologically qualified to dismiss his appeals.
But Piersol found the motion to be without merit and dismissed it.
Jackley says a notice of appeal has been filed with the 8th Circuit Court of
Appeals.
(source: Associated Press)
US MILITARY:
USS Cole suspect defiant over chains in Guantanamo
The main suspect in the USS Cole bombing on Tuesday refused to attend a court
hearing at the US naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba to protest having to wear
chains.
Saudi national Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the deadly
October 2000 attack, declined to attend the hearing "to protest the use of
chains," a prison official told the military court.
When the prisoner was summoned about 1030 GMT Tuesday, he wrote a sentence in
Arabic refusing his right to be present at the proceedings, according to the
retransmission of the proceedings at a Maryland base, the official said.
The officer, who was not identified, said the suspect opposed using "belly
chains to transport to court."
Defense attorney Captain Stephen Reyes said "he was to be chained to be brought
to court. He wanted to attend but he refused."
Reyes argued that a defendant in a capital case could waive his right to be
present to avoid listening "over and over again how the US government tortured
him."
Nashiri, like the September 11 suspects held at Guantanamo, was subjected to
harsh interrogations while being held at a secret CIA prison in Poland, former
CIA director Michael Hayden has acknowledged.
Chief prosecutor Brigadier General Mark Martins said that rules governing the
special military tribunals make "no mention of his right of absence anywhere."
"There's a legitimate interest in seeing someone face justice for serious
crimes," Martins insisted, adding that that should not be "trivialized."
But Judge Colonel James Pohl ruled that Nashiri did not have to attend the
hearing, saying the suspect had "knowingly, voluntarily waived his right to be
present."
However, he ordered Nashiri to keep the court informed in case he changed his
mind about waiving his right to be present on other days.
"I'm just ensuring that he understands periodically the right that he's
waiving," the judge said before ending proceedings for the day.
Nashiri, 47, allegedly an associate of late Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden,
has been in US custody since 2002.
The United States is seeking the death penalty against Nashiri, who is accused
of directing the suicide attack in Yemen that left 17 sailors dead.
Militants drove an explosives-laden skiff into the side of the Cole in the port
of Aden, blowing a 30-by-30-foot (10-by-10-meter) hole in the destroyer and
nearly sinking it. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility.
Nashiri is also accused of being behind a 2002 attack on the French oil tanker
MV Limburg that killed one person.
The proceedings were monitored by journalists and relatives of some of the
victims via a live closed-circuit feed in Fort Meade, Maryland, near
Washington.
(source: Agence France-Presse)
******************************
The 9/11 Prosecutor's Quest for Transparency
Pre-trial hearings in the prosecution of 9/11 mastermand Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
began last week at the US base at Guantanamo. Chief Prosecutor Mark Martins
hopes to create as fair a trial as possible, despite the death penalty being
almost a foregone conclusion. But the challenges are daunting and the American
government is making his task difficult.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed achieved a first minor victory at 9:46 on Wednesday
morning. Three muscular US soldiers, all inexplicably wearing blue latex
gloves, led the defendant into air-conditioned Courtroom 2 on the US base at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Surrounded by the soldiers, Mohammed, the chief planner
of the 9/11 attacks, looked almost like a dwarf.
The defendant took his time. It's a moment he had long been waiting for.
Slowly, he sat down on a low leather chair in the first of the five rows of the
dock. Then he turned to face the visitors' gallery behind him, a gentle smile
on his face.
The scene could only be interpreted to mean that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, widely
known simply by his initials KSM, wants to be seen. The trial is his last
propaganda campaign, he leaves no doubt of that. On that morning in court, the
man the New York Post called the "9/11 beast" was for the 2st time wearing a
camouflage vest over his long, white robe.
For the slight defendant, who with his henna-dyed beard and turban, looks
increasingly like his former comrade Osama bin Laden, the vest is a statement.
To this day, he sees himself as a warrior locked in a bitter struggle against
the United States.
Since this spring, Mohammed, together with his four alleged accomplices, has
been waging what may ultimately be his last battle at Camp Justice, a
collection of container-style structures erected specifically for the terrorism
trial. For the second time, the US government is seeking to convict the
masterminds of the 9/11 conspiracy here in Guantanamo, far from the United
States, 11 years after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
'Crocodile Tears'
As former President George W. Bush did in 2008, the administration of current
President Barack Obama leaves no doubt that the trial of the century will end
with death sentences. But the verdict is no longer the main story in the
whitewashed, windowless, high-security courtroom. The focus has shifted to
various aspects of the trial itself, from the defense attorneys' request that
it be broadcast on television worldwide, to the media's call for more
transparency and the question as to whether the government will allow a
reasonably fair trial. After the first hearings since the 13-hour arraignment
in May, this seems unlikely.
The 9/11 mastermind took every opportunity to bark his opinions about the
proceedings into the microphone. On Tuesday, he told the judge that he could
not expect justice from the court. Then he lowered his gaze to documents and
newspapers on his table. During last week's hearings, Mohammed abruptly began
speaking on Wednesday afternoon, attacking the government and offering his
advice for a full six minutes. The military commission, he said, should not let
itself be distracted by the "crocodile tears" shed over the dead of 9/11, and
added that the real evildoers were in the White House and not in the Guantanamo
courtroom.
"When the government feels sad for the death or killing of 3,000 people who
were killed on Sept. 11," Mohammed said, it should consider the millions that
it kills in the name of national security. "Because your blood is not made of
gold and ours is made out of water." In the visitors' room, the victims'
families stare at the defendant in horror. Reading from a piece of paper,
Mohammed said: "Every dictator can put on this definition...as he chooses to
step on every definition in this world, every person and every law and every
constitution." He continued: "Many can kill people under the name of national
security, and torture people under the name of national security, and detain
children under the name of national security."
Then he turned to Bin Laden's death. "I don't want to be long, but I can say
the president can take someone and throw him in the sea under the name of
national security," he continued.
The Cordial Prosecutor
Some of Mohammed's accusations are absurd and arrogant, and yet they also
reflect the problems in this case, which, if all goes according to plan, will
only begin in earnest next summer before Colonel James Pohl's military
tribunal. The past is still creating difficulties for the prosecutors. The fact
that the defendants were kept imprisoned for many years, as well as the details
of torture in secret CIA prisons, are to be kept out of the 9/11 trial -- one
of the reasons that there is a button in the courtroom that the government can
use to turn off the audio transmission. When that happens, journalists and
family members in the visitors' room can no longer hear what defendants or
attorneys are saying.
Nevertheless, Washington wants to make sure that the upcoming trial looks
clean. President Obama has already failed to close Guantanamo as promised; it
is now all the more important that the trial be a success. Obama has appointed
Brigadier General Mark Martins as chief prosecutor, an ascetic type who only
allows himself a few hours of sleep a night and runs 10 kilometers (about 6
miles) a day. Martins is at pains to defend the resumption of military trials
for Guantanamo detainees and to insist to the world that they are fair. Almost
every evening, he speaks to the few journalists who have been flown in,
cordially addressing them by their 1st names.
The 52-year-old attended the United States Military Academy at West Point and,
like President Obama, is a graduate of Harvard Law School -- the 2 were even
there at the same time. Now he faces the most difficult mission of his career.
Dubbed the "Detox Man" in the US press, Martins' task is to wipe out the toxic
legacy of the Bush era. The general prefers to characterize his work as a
"tough challenge."
On a recent, humid afternoon outside of Washington D.C., Martins is sitting in
his office, the location of which he prefers not to divulge for security
reasons. There is no sign, not even an American flag, to indicate that this is
where the country's highest-ranking terrorist prosecutor is based. Since
Martins arrived in October 2011, uniforms have been banned at the office. He
wants everyone to look like ordinary lawyers who are involved in a perfectly
ordinary case.
'Untainted' Testimony
Even the harshest critics of the military tribunal admit that Martins has made
some changes, taking steps toward injecting transparency into the military
courts set up for the 9/11 plotters. He reformed the commission, and granted
the defendants a better defense by allowing them to be represented by civilian
attorneys. He also promised to exclude evidence obtained through torture or
hearsay.
But even under Martins, some of the absurdities of the case persist. For
instance, the government requested last week that previously published
documents about the 9/11 plot and the ensuing investigation be withheld from
the defense. Furthermore, the jury -- to be made up of soldiers -- is to remain
anonymous for security reasons.
Martins is sitting in a leather armchair beneath a copy of President Obama's
2009 executive order banning torture. By using new evidence, he says, he wants
to finally close the chapter on 9/11. Martins has a plan: In the place of the
confessions obtained at CIA "black sites," he only wants to present material to
the court that a so-called "clean team" from the FBI obtained after KSM and the
others were flown to Guantanamo in 2006 -- material which is "untainted" by
torture, sleep deprivation or other brutal methods used on the detainees.
If the government has its way, the period between the defendants' arrest and
their transfer to Guantanamo in 2006 will not even be mentioned in public
hearings, once the trial finally starts. And even if torture methods like
waterboarding, which the CIA employed 183 times with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
alone, are now banned, officials here say that any revelation could be harmful
to national security.
Tuna or Cheese?
General Martins doesn't like to talk about torture either, just about
"misconduct by some in the administration."
Such statements bring a weary smile to David Nevin's face. The 63-year-old has
been Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's civilian lawyer since 2008. On the evening after
the hearings, he was standing in shorts and a T-shirt in front of O'Kelly's, an
Irish pub on the base. It has become a gathering place for the Guantanamo
traveling court, which has to be flown in from Washington for every hearing,
earning it the nickname "the flying circus of Gitmo."
The Idaho native is a formidable opponent for prosecutor Martins. Nevin has
also had a storybook career. In the last 30 years, he has repeatedly and
successfully worked for defendants that the public had already written off as
guilty, earning him the nickname "Velvet Shiv."
Nevin refuses to accept the government's insistence on keeping torture of the
defendants out of the trial. "My client was abducted and tortured with the
government's consent, and now he is to die at its behest," he says. "How can
torture not play a role in the trial?"
Unlike other defendants, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is cooperating with Nevin, but
the US government has ordered Nevin to say nothing at all about his client or
their interactions. This explains why the attorney isn't even able to reveal
whether his client prefers to eat tuna or cheese sandwiches, or what he says
when the 2 men talk about soccer. Anything KSM tells Nevin is "presumptively
classified." After all, the government insists, it could jeopardize national
security.
(source: Spiegel Online)
WASHINGTON:
US appeals judge Betty Fletcher dies at 89
Judge Betty Binns Fletcher, considered a liberal stalwart of the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals for decades, has died at age 89, a spokesman for the
court said Tuesday.
Fletcher passed away Monday night. The cause was not immediately known, 9th
Circuit spokesman David Madden said.
Appointed to the bench by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, she was known for
rulings upholding affirmative action, allowing claims of workplace
discrimination to proceed, overturning death penalty cases and protecting the
environment. She was one of the 1st female partners at a major law firm in the
country, and the second woman appointed to the 9th Circuit.
"She had experienced discrimination herself in her life, and her perspective
included looking out for the downtrodden, the little person - but always within
the framework of the law," Seattle U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik said.
Fletcher kept hearing cases until the end, he added, and she remained sharp
even as her body failed her.
Many of Fletcher's favorite opinions were overturned by an increasingly
conservative U.S. Supreme Court, her son, 9th Circuit Judge William A.
Fletcher, wrote in a 2010 tribute. He called it her "distinguished record of
reversals."
"Mom has tried not only to do justice in the case before her, but also to shape
the law to do justice in the cases that will come after," he wrote.
She was also known for getting back at Republicans in the U.S. Senate who held
up her son's appointment to the 9th Circuit in the 1990s.
In 1996, Republican Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch insisted that because of an obscure,
19th century anti-nepotism law, Betty Fletcher needed to take senior, or
semi-retired, status before her son could join the court. That would free up
Fletcher's seat to be filled with an appointee acceptable to then Republican
U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington.
Fletcher agreed - but instead of slowing down as a semi-retired judge, she
maintained a full caseload.
"Throughout her life people underestimated her," said Seattle U.S. Attorney
Jenny Durkan. "The thought that taking senior status would mute her voice or
her ideas was a huge miscalculation."
Durkan added: "When I was growing up there were not very many women lawyers in
the community. She was one of the first and most accomplished, and a real
inspiration for me."
Fletcher was born in 1923 in Tacoma, where her father was a lawyer. When she
was a girl, he would take her to his office on weekends and sometimes let her
skip school to attend his trials. She said she always knew she would be a
lawyer.
She began attending Stanford University at age 16, and during World War II,
when many men had gone off to fight, the law school there began letting female
students take law classes to keep the professors busy. Fletcher graduated from
the University of Washington's law school in 1956, and immediately ran into
trouble: Law firms weren't hiring women.
"Prejudice came down on me like a ton of bricks because ... the professor who
was supposed to get interviews for graduating students never got one for me,"
she recalled. "So I pounded the pavement with my resume and would just go in
cold and say I wanted to see the hiring partner. The receptionist always
thought some secretary was getting sacked, so I would get in and get the
interview."
She was hired at the Seattle firm Preston, Thorgrimson and Horowitz, which
eventually became K & L Gates. She later served as the 1st female president of
the King County Bar Association. Among her clients was U.S. Supreme Court
Justice William O. Douglas.
Chief Seattle U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman said Fletcher, with a lovely
family and accomplished children, was a role model for any woman wanting to
practice law.
"She was always willing to share with other women and talk about her life of
being a mom and a judge and a lawyer," Pechman said.
Stanford University law professor Norman W. Spaulding, a former law clerk for
Fletcher, said that what always struck him was the care she took with each
case. For every case, she ordered up the full record from the lower court,
rather than relying on the briefs and excerpts provided by the lawyers - a
diligence that is far from universal, Spaulding noted.
"You might find a judge who disagreed with her, but no one ever questioned her
care with the facts and the law of a case," he said.
He added: "She just really believed the justice system ought to work as well
for the powerless as it does for the powerful."
Fletcher's husband of 69 years, University of Washington law professor Robert
Fletcher, died late last year. She is survived by her 4 children.
(source: Associated Press)
USA----new book
New Book Explores Life After Death Row
In a 1st book of its kind, "Life After Death Row," researchers chronicle the
lives of 18 death row exonerees struggling to reclaim their lives after being
set free and examine how policy changes could mitigate those struggles for
others.
Imagine losing 10, 15, 20 years of your life, convicted of murder and sentenced
to death for a crime you did not commit.
Imagine losing the opportunity to get married, start a family and watch your
children grow up. Missing vacations, birthdays, graduations and weddings.
Saundra D. Westervelt, an associate professor of sociology at The University of
North Carolina at Greensboro, and Kimberly J. Cook, chair of the Department of
Sociology and Criminology at The University of North Carolina at Wilmington,
traveled the country to meet 18 death row exonerees who experienced such
losses. Their new book, "Life After Death Row: Exonerees' Search for Community
and Identity," chronicles the exonerees' struggles to reclaim their lives after
being set free and examines how policy changes could mitigate those struggles
for others.
"They were basically ignored and neglected, and very few of them received
assistance or compensation when they got out. It seemed like the part of the
story that absolutely had to be told," Westervelt says.
"Short of being executed, they've had one of the most tragic things that can
happen to you in the criminal justice system happen to them."
Few exonerees (to date 141 death row exonerees have been released from prison,
according to the Death Penalty Information Center) receive compensation for a
wrongful conviction and imprisonment or help acclimating to life outside of
prison. Only 27 states have compensation statutes.
"It's amazing when you meet people who have had 15 or 20 years of their life
taken from them. You wonder how they function at the end of the day,"
Westervelt says. "It seems so tragic to me that we as a system would do that to
our citizens and then not provide them with any kind of help once we realized
we'd done it. It is tragic to have it happen, but the true tragedy was how
invisible they were once they got out."
Only 2 of the 18 exonerees interviewed for the book were offered compensation
by their states, and one of those had to wait 14 years to get it, the professor
said.
Some of the others sued and eventually won compensation through the court
system, but did not receive what they were due until 3 or 4 years after their
release.
"They needed a place to live, something to pay the rent with, eat on, buy
clothes with, pay for counseling and get some job skills. They didn't have it
when they needed it," Westervelt says. "How do we do that to somebody and not
help them when they get out?"
For most of the exonerees, finding employment was a formidable roadblock.
They'd been behind bars for years and the pace of technology had eclipsed any
skills they may have had. And they still had murder convictions on their
records. (In most states, getting a criminal record expunged is a separate
process.)
"Everything revolves around employment," Westervelt says. "You need a job to
provide for basic everyday needs. It gives them structure to their lives. It
gives them health care."
The exonerees struggled over the long term with managing the anger and grief
they felt because of everything they had lost - time, opportunities,
relationships, careers, good health, their sense of security. But typically
they didn't have the resources to get the professional help they so desperately
needed, she says.
"We argue for better compensation statutes. We also argue that compensation
doesn't make it all better. We like to think if we throw money at it, it makes
it better," Westervelt says. "But they need reintegration services. They need
job skill services, they need education, they need counseling - you think it,
they need it."
The authors also argue that people in the criminal justice system should own up
to the role they played in the miscarriages of justice and take part in
exonerees' reintegration into their communities.
"Part of the continuing trauma for exonerees is that oftentimes prosecutors
continue to insist on their guilt publicly, and that just keeps the public
conflicted, at best, if not believing they got out on a technicality of some
kind," Westervelt says.
"If you ask them what they want the most, they just want somebody to apologize
to them. They just want somebody to own it, to say, "Gosh I'm so sorry this
happened to you and we will try to make sure it never happens to somebody else.
But they rarely get that. Usually they get the opposite."
"Life After Death Row: Exonerees' Search for Community and Identity," 296
pages, is published by Rutgers University Press
(source: PR Web)
OHIO:
Ohioan appeals death sentence for killing 11 women
Attorneys for an Ohio serial killer convicted of hiding the remains of 11 women
around his Cleveland home say his original defense team should have focused on
sparing him from the death penalty.
Attorneys for Anthony Sowell told the Ohio Supreme Court in an appeal filed
Monday that it was a forgone conclusion he would be convicted.
The appeal says the defense trial strategy was irrational and should have
focused on avoiding the death penalty. The appeal seeks a new trial or new
sentencing hearing.
Original defense co-counsel Rufus Sims says Sowell received an aggressive
defense and that conceding guilt when he was presumed innocent would amount to
legal malpractice. Fellow co-counsel John Parker declined comment.
The women whose bodies were found at Sowell's home began disappearing in 2007.
(source: Associated Press)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
SC solicitor seeks death for man accused of raping, fatally beating woman with
baseball bat
A South Carolina prosecutor plans to seek the death penalty against a man
charged with abducting, raping and fatally beating a woman with a baseball bat.
Fifth Circuit Solicitor Dan Johnson on Monday served notice of intent to seek
the death penalty against defendant Nickolas Miller.
Authorities said 30-year-old Beverly Hope Melton went to a convenience store in
December and frantically called her grandmother to say she was being followed
by a random man. She was reportedly killed in Kershaw County.
Johnson says the decision to seek the death penalty against Nickolas Miller
came because he allegedly committed murder while in the act of criminal sexual
conduct, kidnapping and physical torture of the victim.
(source: Associated Press)
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