Nov. 8
TEXAS----execution
Man Put to Death in Texas for Woman's 2002 Slaying
A man described as a fledgling serial killer by prosecutors was executed
Thursday in Texas for a woman's slaying during a break-in at her home a decade
ago.
Mario Swain, 33, received a lethal injection for killing Lola Nixon at her home
in East Texas' Longview two days after Christmas in 2002. When asked by a
warden if he had a final statement before his punishment, the condemned
prisoner shook his head, closed his eyes and took several barely audible
breaths.
Within a moment, all movement stopped. Swain was pronounced dead 30 minutes
later, at 6:39 p.m. CST.
No family members or friends of Nixon were at the execution. Swain also had no
relatives among the witnesses.
Swain's attorney, James Volberding, said no late attempts were made in the
courts to block the execution, the 13th this year in the nation's busiest
capital punishment state.
The U.S. Supreme Court last month refused to review the case, and the Texas
Court of Criminal Appeals last week rejected an appeal that contended a prison
expert's testimony during the sentencing phase of Swain's 2003 capital murder
trial was false and misleading.
Swain declined media interview requests as his execution date neared.
Evidence showed Swain threw the 46-year-old Nixon's body into the trunk of her
BMW after killing her, drove to a remote area outside of the city about 120
miles east of Dallas and dumped it in the back seat of an abandoned car.
Nixon missed a dinner engagement with friends on the night she was slain. Her
friends called police when they couldn't reach her the next day, and officers
who went to her home found the back door jimmied.
Once inside, they saw blood throughout the house. A neighbor reported seeing an
unfamiliar truck parked on the street the night before, and police tracked the
vehicle to Swain.
He initially blamed friends for the burglary, then led police to Nixon's body.
Authorities determined she'd been beaten with a tire iron, stabbed and
strangled.
The tire iron was recovered from a trash container where Swain said he had
thrown it. Evidence showed he used Nixon's credit cards and gave a piece of her
stolen jewelry to a friend. Nixon's blood was found on Swain's clothing in the
truck, along with her car keys and garage door opener.
According to evidence and testimony at trial, Swain gathered information about
women he wanted to rob and then would attack them, forcing them to inhale the
anesthetic halothane and hitting them over the head with a wrench or shooting
them with a stun gun.
Lance Larison, a prosecutor at Swain's trial, described Swain as "a serial
killer in training."
"A girlfriend told us he kept a list in notebooks of names and license plates
of girls he would follow," Larison said. "I think he was working up to
something."
It's not clear if Swain knew Nixon. She managed a Longview telephone call
center where Swain once worked.
One of Swain's trial lawyers, Rick Hagan, said the evidence and vivid testimony
from those who say Swain robbed and attacked them hindered the defense's
efforts to convince jurors to spare Swain from the death penalty.
Larson said blood evidence in the case was "consistent with a struggle" inside
Nixon's home, where she lived alone.
Deborah Hancock told the Longview News-Journal she and her husband were to have
dinner with Nixon that Friday night after Christmas 2002. They stopped by
Nixon's house with a carry-out package when she didn't arrive to eat with them.
When their knocks went unanswered, they left the food at her front door.
"I can't believe it's been 10 years," Hancock said. "She was very outgoing and
very direct, fun, lively. She was just one of a kind."
Swain's execution is to be followed by 2 more next week in Texas.
Swain becomes the 13th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas
and the 490th overall since the state resumed capital punishmen on december 7,
1982. Swain also becomes the 251st overall since Rick Perry became Governor of
Texas in 2001.
Swain becomes the 37th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA
and the 1314th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
(sources: Associated press & Rick Halperin)
CALIFORNIA:
Convicted murderer: Death penalty is okay
A death penalty hearing for an unrepentant killer convicted of murdering 2
people at the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge toll plaza opened with the defendant
saying he doesn't care what the jury decides.
"Life imprisonment is great. The death penalty is equally great," Nathan Burris
said Thursday in his opening statement in Contra Costa County Superior Court in
Martinez.
Burris, a 49-year-old trucker from Richmond who is representing himself,
suggested to Judge John W. Kennedy that someone should flip a coin. Whatever
happens, he told jurors, "I'm as cool as a cucumber."
Relatives of the victims walked out of court during the statement, saying they
had seen enough cold antics by Burris, who often laughed during his jury trial
and cursed his victims.
He was convicted of 1st-degree murder Wednesday for the shotgun rampage on Aug,
11, 2009 that killed toll-taker Deborah Ross, 51, who was leaving him after a
13-year relationship. Also killed was her friend Ersie "Chuckie" Everette, 58,
a Golden Gate Transit driver who had been visiting her at the toll plaza.
During the penalty phase of Burris' trial, jurors will decide if he should be
executed or spend the rest of his life behind bars.
In his opening remarks Thursday, prosecutor Harold Jewett said, "In this case,
justice is the death penalty."
The victims' relatives said they want a sentence of life without the
possibility of parole. They don't want Burris to get his own cell on death row.
"He wants the jury to think he's crazy so they'll put him on death row and
he'll get his own cell," said Ross' nephew, 48-year-old Anthony Lenoir of
Vallejo. "Let him live out the rest of his life, living with what he did."
*********************
Brown may soon face death penalty decisions
Gov. Jerry Brown has been publicly silent on the death penalty for most of the
last 35 years. The issue, and the fate of more than a dozen condemned
prisoners, may confront him shortly.
As a 21-year-old college student in 1960, Brown persuaded his father, Gov. Pat
Brown, to grant a temporary stay of execution to Caryl Chessman, the
kidnapper-rapist known as the Red Light Bandit. 7 years later, Jerry Brown took
part in a protest outside San Quentin, where Aaron Mitchell was being executed.
As governor in 1977, Brown vetoed a bill to reinstate the death penalty in
California, then stood by as the Legislature overrode his veto. That same year,
he appointed Rose Bird, a member of his cabinet, as chief justice of the state
Supreme Court. 9 years later the voters removed Bird and two other justices who
had regularly voted with her to overturn death sentences.
When Brown ran for attorney general in 2006 and for governor again in 2010,
Republicans raised the issue of his opposition to the death penalty, but he
fended them off, saying he would uphold the law regardless of his personal
views. He also brushed off questions about this year's Proposition 34
initiative until election day, when he told reporters he had "of course" voted
for the measure to repeal the death penalty.
Despite Prop. 34's defeat Tuesday, executions remain on hold in California
because of a federal judge's order in 2006 directing state officials to make
numerous improvements in their procedures and staff training for lethal
injections. The state's appeals and corrective measures have moved slowly, but
a hearing is scheduled in federal court early next year, and it's possible that
the injunction will be lifted in the near future. If so, there are, according
to prosecutors, 14 inmates who have exhausted their appeals and are in line to
be executed. The last step would be a request for clemency from Brown.
The last time a California governor spared a condemned prisoner's life was in
1967, when Ronald Reagan said there was evidence that the inmate was
brain-damaged. The current governor's father granted clemency 23 times, allowed
36 executions to go forward, and wrote a book about it called Public Justice,
Private Mercy: A Governor's Education on death row.
No executions were scheduled during Jerry Brown's 1st 2 terms as governor from
1975 to 1983. His campaign staff in 2010 said Brown would not grant
across-the-board commutations of death sentences but gave no indication how he
would approach an individual request for clemency. If those pleas reach his
desk, his response may shed some light on how Brown???s private views,
background and character affect his actions in the state's highest public
office.
(source for both: San Francisco Chronicle)
IDAHO:
Idaho high court considers death penalty reviews
The Idaho Supreme Court is deciding just how much of each death penalty case
they must consider under Idaho's mandatory review law, and the ruling could
dramatically change the landscape of capital punishment in Idaho.
The issues arose in the case of Timothy Dunlap, who is sentenced to death in
both Idaho and Ohio for 2 murders committed during a 10-day span in 1991.
Dunlap was arrested in Idaho after prosecutors said he used a sawed-off shotgun
to kill 25-year-old bank teller Tonya Crane during a robbery in Soda Springs.
After his arrest, police said he confessed to murdering his girlfriend, Belinda
Bolanos, with a crossbow and dumping her body along the Ohio River 10 days
before Crane's murder.
Dunlap was convicted in Ohio and sentenced to death there for Bolanos' murder;
but because he was convicted in Idaho first, Idaho is first in line for his
execution.
It's not uncommon for death row inmates to appeal multiple issues before
multiple courts, all at the same time. Now 44, Dunlap is no exception, and his
appeal before the Idaho Supreme Court includes more than 50 different issues.
The decision from the Idaho Supreme Court on what must be reviewed could
dramatically limit the types of appeals that death row defendants can bring.
The Idaho Legislature created the mandatory review law in 1977, requiring the
Idaho Supreme Court to review every death sentence whether the defendant wants
them to or not.
The law was designed to do two things: First, meet federal requirements that
the death penalty be imposed only on a narrow group of criminals whose crimes
were worthy of such a severe sanction; and second, speed up the appeals process
by ensuring there were no problems with the way the death penalty was imposed.
But Idaho Deputy Attorney General LaMont Anderson says the law has actually
slowed death row cases because the Idaho Supreme Court has never defined the
scope of the mandatory review.
That means that once the mandatory review is done, the federal appeals court
assumes the Idaho Supreme Court justices have considered all the sentencing
issues in a case, even if a particular issue was never mentioned before the
lower court. Many types of appeals can't be brought before the federal courts
until they've been considered by a state court, but since the federal courts
have interpreted Idaho's mandatory review law as all-encompassing, virtually no
sentencing appeal is off limits, Anderson contends.
But Shannon Romero, Dunlap's defense attorney with the state's appellate public
defender's office, maintains that the Idaho Supreme Court has implemented the
mandatory review rule correctly. The Idaho Supreme Court has an obligation to
make sure that the death penalty is being carried out in a way that's
constitutional, and that means considering everything, Romero contends.
The Idaho Attorney General's office wants to treat death penalty cases like any
other criminal case, and that's just not right, she told the court.
The U.S. Supreme Court "has long recognized that death is different from every
form of punishment," Romero wrote in a brief to the court, in large part
because it is totally irrevocable.
The justices took the matter under advisement and didn't say when they would
issue a decision.
(source: Associated Press)
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