Oct. 30
OHIO:
Killer's bragging could land him on death row
If Deron Howard goes to death row, it will be because of his big mouth.
Police had no idea who killed Charles "Chas" McCray, Jr., and wounded Michael
Tucker in a July 7, 2007, Bond Hill incident - until Howard started bragging.
McCray, Tucker and two women were getting out of a car in front of McCray's
house that day when they were robbed. Tucker was shot in the back and survived.
McCray, 19, died after being shot in the stomach. Both where shot with a
.380-caliber handgun. The robbers got $30 and a cell phone.
After 4 years, police had exhausted all leads and considered the killing a cold
case.
It stayed that way until Martinez Pope's attorney called police to say his
recently-arrested client had some information about the McCray killing and
wanted to talk.
Pope called Howard, in a call recorded by police, and asked Howard about that
case. Howard admitted in the call he was with 2 other men that night, but only
one was brave enough to shoot a gun.
Howard "told Martinez that he shot them with a ... .380 and used hollow point
bullets," Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Amy Tranter told the 3-judge
panel presiding over the case instead of a jury at Howard's insistence.
"He told Martinez they got $30 and a Nokia cell phone. All of that information
was verified" during the police investigation.
Howard, through his veteran defense attorney Will Welsh, admitted he was at the
killing scene but shot no one.
"This case is like no other death penalty case I've ever done," Welsh told the
judges Monday.
"The evidence in this case is Deron Howard himself ... because he's bragging to
a friend who'd just called him."
Welsh admitted his client is guilty of murder, which can carry a potential life
sentence, but not of capital murder that could lead to Howard receiving the
death penalty.
The case is being presided over by Common Pleas Court Judges Jody Luebbers,
Robert Winkler and Jerome Metz. Like a jury, they will hear evidence, then
deliberate over Howard's innocence or guilty. If they find Howard guilty of
capital murder, the trial goes to a 2nd phase where punishment is determined.
(source: Cincinnati.com)
FLORIDA:
DNA evidence, testing make death penalty more credible
Now is not the time to abolish the death penalty.
After several years of intense effort by groups such as the Innocence Project,
the application of DNA testing to evidence from murder cases and rape cases
that resulted in convictions before routine DNA testing existed have resulted
in the release of more people from prison than we might have imagined. There is
a renewed hue and cry to abolish capital punishment.
(Since the science became available, there have been 300 post-conviction DNA
exonerations in the United States, according to The Innocence Project. In
Florida, 13 prisoners - who spent more than 250 years behind bars for crimes
they didn't commit - have been freed through DNA testing, according to the
Innocence Project of Florida.)
This conviction of the innocent has revealed systemic problems in the criminal
justice system - problems that will not be cured by getting rid of the death
penalty.
I was a prosecutor for seven years in a noncapital-punishment state and found
the systemic problems (unethical prosecutors, overreaching police, built-in
bias and prejudice) existed in that system as well. It was no different here in
Florida (where I served for another 12 years), try as good prosecutors and cops
might to avoid and prevent such abuses.
Yet, despite the recognition that more mistakes have been made by the system
than the American public is comfortable with or finds acceptable, there remain
numerous arguments for and against the death penalty, which are routinely made
by both opponents and proponents of it.
I will not repeat them, for I believe a new and better reason for retention of
the death penalty now exists. It is the availability of DNA testing and
evidence.
If a "negative" DNA test is sufficient to overwhelm whatever evidence was
presented to a jury and its unanimous finding of guilt, then isn't a positive
DNA test proof beyond any reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt of the
crime?
What is good for the innocent should be equally true for the guilty. A positive
DNA test allows us to have a higher degree of certainty that we have convicted
the right person and permits us to act on a death sentence with a higher degree
of certainty than we have ever had before. It is not hard to imagine, as our
current society evolves and surveillance cameras proliferate, cases where we
not only have positive DNA evidence but electronic surveillance tapes of the
crimes actually being committed. Under these circumstances, why would we
hesitate to impose the ultimate penalty?
As Patrick Buchanan once argued in an evocative piece on the subject, if the
criminal taking of a human life does not merit forfeiture of one's own life,
then what value have we placed on the life taken?
With all of the controversy over Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, it is worth
noting that even before that law, the doctrine of self-defense allowed a
citizen with a reasonable fear for his life to instantly take another life
without benefit of a police investigation, indictment by a grand jury, trial by
the victim's peers or any appeal to a higher court.
And yet we know that mistakes, excused by the doctrine of self-defense because
they were reasonable under the circumstances, have been made. Yet no one has
ever seriously argued the doctrine of self-defense should be abolished.
It would seem a shame to abandon a penalty that many citizens favor and that
can be argued is appropriate for the most heinous and morally culpable of
crimes when we now have a scientific standard for determining guilt that we so
highly prize. We should not hesitate to impose the death penalty when DNA
testing creates such a high probability of guilt beyond any reasonable doubt.
(source: Lee Atkinson is a former U.S. district attorney and current Tampa
white-collar criminal defense attorney and an expert on the trial of capital
cases and the insanity defense; Guest Columnist, Orland Sentinel)
**********************
Get smarter, save money by executing justice, not people
Columbia Law School found that Texas probably executed an innocent man, Carlos
DeLuna, in 1989.
Any shadow of doubt surrounding an executed man's guilt is another reason why
the death penalty's days are numbered. The mind-boggling cost of trying to
enforce the death penalty, together with its torturous effect on victims'
families, make it obvious that the death penalty is a tragic failure - an
expensive government program that just doesn't work.
It is time to cut our losses and re-allocate these huge sums of taxpayer
dollars to proven methods that protect the public: solving violent crimes,
preventing crime, and providing immediate and real relief to families of murder
victims.
Just as no one person is infallible, no government program is infallible.
Florida has exonerated far more death-row inmates than any other state. The
Death Penalty Information Center lists 23 condemned Florida prisoners
exonerated through evidence of wrongful conviction since executions resumed in
the modern era. Some of these men came within hours of being executed for a
crime they did not commit.
As in Texas, Florida has executed people who may have been innocent.
In Florida, the alternative to executions is life without parole. Not only is
it less expensive, it's carried out immediately with no wait for justice. It
provides clear legal closure for victims' families, without the decades-long
ordeals of being forced to relive the horrible crime at every appeal and every
newscast.
Also, as has happened all too frequently in Florida, if a prisoner is later
exonerated, the prisoner can be released and get some of his or her life back.
As Juan Melendez, who a decade ago became the nation's 99th death-row exoneree
since 1973 after spending nearly 18 years on Florida's death row, has said:
"You can't release a man from the grave."
There is absolutely no proof that the death penalty deters violent crime more
than a life sentence. A blue-ribbon panel commissioned by the Justice
Department recently found that there is no reliable research to determine
whether capital punishment serves as a deterrent to homicide. The prestigious
National Research Council of National Academies found current research was
useless in appraising the deterrent value of capital punishment on homicide
rates.
The cost to Florida taxpayers of trying to enforce executions is an additional
estimated $51 million every year over and above the cost of sentencing these
same people to life in prison without parole. We can't make the process
cheaper, and we can't make the process faster because it only increases the
chances of executing the innocent.
According to the Bureau of Justice and the Florida Department of Law
Enforcement, there are more than 12,000 unsolved homicides in Florida. These
murder victims' families have gotten no justice. Thousands of killers on the
loose have literally gotten away with murder. Law enforcement professionals are
doing their best, but the money to investigate more cases and apprehend more
murderers is not there - it's on death row.
Reallocating a portion of Florida's death-penalty dollars to fund permanent
cold-case squads that include local detectives, FDLE agents and prosecutors can
solve many more crimes. It's time to put down the needle and pick up the
handcuffs.
The trend is clear. Five states have abolished the death penalty in the past
five years. Public opinion of the death penalty has fallen. As punishment for
murder, polling now shows that the public supports life in prison without the
possibility of parole over the death penalty.
Even with the exorbitant amounts of money thrown at this government program to
execute prisoners, mistakes happen.
It is time for Florida to get tough and smart on crime by executing justice -
not people.
(source: Mark Elliott is executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to
the Death Penalty; Guest Columnist, Orland Sentinel)
GEORGIA:
Death sentence upheld in 2003 Cobb murders
The Supreme Court of Georgia has unanimously upheld 2 death sentences for
Lawrence Rice, who was convicted in 2008 of killing Connie Mincher and her
teenage son, Ethan, in their east Cobb home in April 2003.
This is only the beginning of appeals in Rice's case, and Cobb District
Attorney Pat Head said it could be 2 decades before he is put to death. Rice,
now 63, is on death row at the state prison in Jackson.
In Monday???s opinion, written by Georgia Supreme Court Justice Robert Benham,
the court rejected each of the 10 errors alleged by Rice's attorneys and found
that "the evidence presented at trial was sufficient to authorize a rational
trier of fact to find Rice guilty beyond a reasonable doubt on all counts."
Connie and Ethan Mincher were found dead in their home on Beaver Dam Lane, off
Holly Springs Road near Old Canton Road, by 12-year-old Marlee Mincher on April
17, 2003.
According to case documents, the family's next-door neighbor told police she
had seen Connie Mincher arrive home around 2 p.m. that day. About 20 to 30
minutes later she saw a champagne or gold-colored car parked in the Minchers'
driveway. She said a man, later identified as Lawrence Rice of Tucker, got out
of the vehicle and removed what appeared to be a tool box from the back. He
then went into the house.
20 minutes later, she saw Ethan Mincher, a freshman at Pope High School, arrive
home and go inside. Twenty minutes after that, she watched Rice quickly go down
the stairs and drive away in his car. Other witnesses had seen Rice and his
older-model gold Mercedes in the neighborhood the weeks before the murders.
Ethan Mincher was found lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.
Unresponsive but still breathing, he had duct tape on his mouth and handcuffs
attached to one wrist. He died later at a hospital.
In her parents' bedroom, Marlee found her mother lying face down on the bed
with her hands duct-taped behind her back. Duct tape was also wrapped tightly
around her neck. A bloody rug covered her head.
A medical examiner testified at trial that the wounds of both mother and son
were consistent with having been struck repeatedly with a hatchet. Connie
Mincher had suffered at least 5 blows to her head, and her skull had been
fractured and pushed into her brain. Ethan Mincher had also suffered blows to
his skull as well as 2 blows to his back, which broke his ribs.
Trevor Mincher, the husband and father of the victims, told detectives he had a
history with the owner of the Mercedes.
In 1990, Trevor Mincher???s company, Videotape Associates, had hired Rice to
work as a maintenance engineer. Trevor Mincher said that while working there,
Rice drove a gold Mercedes. He said that after less than 6 months on the job,
Rice resigned after learning that another employee was earning a higher salary.
Rice subsequently wrote letters to Trevor Mincher and others, saying Trevor
Mincher had "blackballed" him and thwarted his efforts to find another job in
the video industry. Eventually, Rice lost his home and was living in his car.
Evidence at trial showed Rice had called Trevor Mincher at home numerous times,
mostly around holidays. Trevor Mincher said he considered Rice unpredictable
and dangerous. Connie Mincher once answered the phone and told Rice to stop
harassing them. Trevor Mincher also told police he'd once received a Christmas
card from Rice depicting an angel with a blackened eye and blood dripping from
its wings. The card said the "curse of Akbar" would be on the Mincher family.
After the murders, a friend was using Rice's computer when she discovered a
disturbing entry and called police. After seizing Rice's computer, police found
a 138-page autobiography written by Rice called "Culture Shock."
In it, he detailed his complaints against Trevor Mincher and his plan to murder
him and his family with a hatchet if his situation did not improve.
Trevor Mincher died of cancer in 2005, before Rice's trial.
In July 2008, after a month-long trial before Cobb Superior Court Judge Mary E.
Staley, a Cobb jury convicted Rice of murder and burglary. He was given 2 death
sentences plus a 20-year prison sentence for burglary.
In his appeal to the Supreme Court of Georgia, Rice argued that errors were
made regarding his competence to stand trial, during jury selection, during the
guilt-innocence phase of the trial, during the sentencing phase of the trial,
and regarding the issues he raised in his motion requesting a new trial.
In Monday's 47-page opinion, the high court found no reversible errors and
concluded "that the sentences of death in this case were not imposed under the
influence of passion, prejudice, or any other arbitrary factor."
"Upon our review of the record, we conclude that the evidence at Rice's trial
was sufficient to support the statutory aggravating circumstances found as to
both murders." Georgia law requires that at least 1 of 11 aggravating
circumstances accompany a murder to impose the death penalty.
Finally, "considering both the murders in this case and Rice as a defendant, we
find that the death sentences imposed were not disproportionate punishment
within the meaning of Georgia law."
Lawyers for Rice could file a motion to reconsider, or the automatic habeas
petitions in the county where he's being held, in an attempt to get a new
trial. If the habeas is denied, he can appeal it, and after that Rice will
start filing his constitutional challenges in the federal court system, 1st in
the district court, then the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and ultimately to
the U.S. Supreme Court.
The state Attorney General's office represents the state in those actions.
"The whole process is just lengthy," Cobb District Attorney Pat Head said.
"It'll be 20 more years at least before he could be put to death. It takes that
long to go through the appellate system."
(source: The Marietta Daily Journal)
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