Feb. 2
TEXAS:
Jury set in Robertson capital murder trial
The capital murder trial of Stanley Wayne Robertson is set to begin Monday now
that the time-consuming and mentally tedious process of selecting a jury has
been completed.
7 women and 7 men were selected for the panel, 2 of whom will serve as
alternates during the trial in District Judge J.D. Langley's court.
Robertson is accused of kidnapping and killing Annie Mae Toliver on Aug. 13,
2010 "by stabbing her and cutting her with a knife," according to the capital
murder indictment. Toliver was the mother of Tammy Toliver, Robertson's
ex-girlfriend.
The incident began at the Wal-Mart in College Station and ended on a freeway in
Fort Worth, police said.
Brazos County District Attorney Jarvis Parsons and assistant district attorney
Brian Price will seek the death penalty if Robertson is convicted of capital
murder.
Jurors have the option of sentencing defendants found guilty of capital murder
to life in prison without parole or execution.
Because it is a death penalty case, jurors had to be questioned individually
before qualifying for the panel.
In the event of a conviction, Robertson's attorneys, John Wright and Frank
Blazek, are expected to argue that their client is mentally retarded, which
would make him ineligible for the death penalty.
It's likely that Toliver's daughter and son will be called to testify for the
state, along with law enforcement officers involved in the investigation.
Police said Toliver was kidnapped at the Wal-Mart in College Station after she
and her son rode there with Robertson so he could get money out that he owed
Toliver's daughter.
While Toliver's son was still inside the store, Robertson went to the car where
Toliver was waiting on them and proceeded to stab her in the neck before
driving out of the county, according to the police report.
Tammy Toliver received a call during the incident from the defendant, who told
her he killed her mother and that it was her fault, investigators said.
Authorities said Toliver died shortly before Robertson drove into Fort Worth,
which is where he dumped her body in a vacant parking lot.
Robertson then initiated a chase with Fort Worth police that ended on a major
thoroughfare when he slammed the vehicle into a police car, causing an officer
to be seriously injured. That collision was caught on camera and is expected to
come up during the trial.
12 days before he was arrested for capital murder, Robertson was released from
Brazos County Jail, where he'd been locked up for about a month for an
aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charge against Tammy Toliver, according
to jail records.
The trial is expected to last about 2 weeks.
(source: The Eagle)
KENTUCKY:
Ky. officials: State ready to resume executions
Kentucky is ready to resume executions because a new 1- or 2-drug lethal
injection method that took effect Friday addresses concerns by inmates that the
previously used 3-drug mixture amounted to cruel and unusual punishment,
prosecutors said.
In a notice filed in Franklin Circuit Court, the Kentucky Attorney General's
office told Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd that the method should
cancel out any arguments made by the condemned inmates. Prosecutors want a
final ruling from Shepherd that would lift his order that stopped executions in
Kentucky.
The revised regulations that went into effect Friday specify that doses of the
drug used in the 1-drug execution - 3 grams of sodium thiopental or 5 grams of
pentobarbital - be repeated if the inmate has not died within 10 minutes.
Allison Martin, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Attorney General's Office, said
the motion speaks for itself.
"We await the ruling of the Franklin Circuit Court," Martin said.
In a 2-drug execution, the warden may authorize continued injections of 60
milligrams of hydromorphone until the inmate dies, if the initial injection is
not deadly. The regulations give the state the option of which method to use
depending upon the availability of the drugs. Kentucky previously used sodium
thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride.
An open records request filed by The Associated Press in January showed that
the state did not have a supply of any of the drugs used in an execution.
Shepherd halted all lethal injections in 2010 as the state prepared to execute
Gregory L. Wilson, 56, for the 1987 rape, kidnapping and murder of 36-year-old
Debbie Pooley in Kenton County.
Shepherd expressed concerns about whether an inmate's mental state could be
properly determined before an execution and later ordered the state to switch
to a single-drug or 2-drug method. The change brings Kentucky in line with at
least 7 states using the single-drug execution protocol.
Attorneys for the condemned inmates said in response that the new regulations
only render moot arguments that the 3-drug execution is unconstitutionally
cruel and unusual, not any other issues raised about the lethal injection
process.
Because the new regulations call for the use of sodium thiopental, a drug that
is in short supply in the United States, the state isn't really using a
single-drug option, said public defender David Barron, who represents condemned
inmate Ralph Baze.
"Being that Corrections was well-aware of the difficulty with, if not
impossibility of obtaining either sodium thiopental or pentobarbital, one would
reasonably expect that Corrections execution regulations would ensure that some
other drug is available for use in a one-drug means of lethal injection,"
Barron wrote.
Companies that make sodium thiopental, a fast-acting anesthetic, have halted
production of the drug in the United States, in part because of its use in
executions. The maker of pentobarbital also opposes its use in executions.
Kentucky has executed 3 inmates since the reinstatement of the death penalty in
1976, with the last execution being carried out in 2008. At least 2 and as many
as 7 inmates are at or near the end of their appeals.
Shepherd ordered the injunction after Wilson's attorneys argued that he was not
mentally competent to be executed. Earlier this month, the attorneys withdrew
that contention, saying they can no longer validate his school records to back
their argument because the person that produced the records has died.
"As a result, he cannot prevail on the ultimate factual issue before the
court," his attorney, public defender Dan Goyette, wrote in the motion filed in
Kenton Circuit Court.
Goyette did not immediately return a call seeking comment Friday afternoon.
(source: Associated Press)
ARKANSAS:
Letters become a lifeline for those on death row
Head south from Little Rock, Arkansas, along the Dr Martin Luther King Jr
Drive. Take the I-530 S, then Highway-65 South, past the small town of Grady
and in 90 minutes you are in the middle of nowhere. Almost.
The flat, grassy plains are empty save for a cluster of buildings encircled by
barbed wire. Among them is the Varner Unit: the Arkansas death-row supermax.
It is a route few take by choice. But this was the path a young Sydney man,
Marty Bernhaut, took when he interned last year with the Arkansas Public
Defender's office.
The destination's red brick walls house about 40 male prisoners dealt the death
penalty for crimes committed, often decades ago.
Advertisement The inmates are but a portion of the 3000 or so on death row
across the United States - 98 % of whom are male.
The US's network of jails houses the world's highest number of prisoners and
the building represents one of the many outposts of a judicial system that
relies on the customary brutality of execution.
Across death row, about 41 % are African Americans, a vastly disproportionate
representation compared to their 13.6 % representation in the general
population.
Bernhaut, a 26-year-old Sydneysider, had just finished a 2-year stint working
for a Supreme Court judge. With a few months up his sleeve, he sent out
messages to legal organisations across the US seeking experience in states that
still held on to the death penalty. And Arkansas was keen.
"The organisation [I worked for] represents a number of inmates on death row
who are putting forward habeas corpus petitions - an appeal of sorts which
contests the legitimacy of a conviction or term of custody," he said, now back
in Australia.
"These people aren't just people who are awaiting execution. They've been
convicted, but don't believe they did it, or don't believe they deserve to die
for what they did."
Bernhaut describes conditions on death row: 24 hours a day alone in a cell with
no access to an exercise yard or even communal eating. They have limited
opportunities for contact and are allowed some access to films, television,
delayed sport and books. Political news manages to seep in from the outside by
word of mouth.
But, apart from limited meetings with lawyers and family - often in partitioned
rooms where contact is not allowed - there is little opportunity for social
chitchat.
"The only way they can talk [to each other] is by shouting or screaming along
the corridors because there is no clear space between the cells. They can't see
each other. All they can do is shout down the hall and see who responds,"
Bernhaut said.
"There's not a lot of opportunity for meaningful, sustained interaction."
When he left the Arkansas Public Defender's office, he agreed to keep in
contact with a few of the death-row clients from the Arkansas death-row
supermax.
"To have someone they were able to speak easily to and were interested in [is]
really helpful," he said. "It facilitated a really open dialogue, which doesn't
always come with the clients who are often distrustful of people in authority
and lawyers, given their past experiences."
The experience got him to thinking if his correspondence could have a positive
effect on the prisoners and their cases, could it not be true if other
Australians might be willing to get in contact with them?
And so began a small, burgeoning pen-pal project between some of the public
defenders' clients and Bernhaut's friends and acquaintances.
It is early stages but he has hopes that the exchange can be beneficial on both
sides of the Pacific.
"There's a range of things they tend to talk about. They are human and they are
interested in what goes on the world. But because they have such a confined
existence, they have a limited amount of stuff they can talk about," Bernhaut
said.
"I think they just want to chat about stuff that doesn't involve their case and
the conditions of their confinement, because these are the things they have to
grapple with 24 hours a day. I imagine it would be pleasant for them to try and
get as far away from that experience as possible."
John Boyagi, a taxation lawyer at the Sydney offices of a large Australian law
firm, is one who put his hand up for the project.
While he found it difficult to find common ground to talk about, he has so far
found it rewarding. "It's sort of rehumanising them, giving them that
assistance. I can't imagine what it would be like sitting in a cell waiting for
imminent death," he said.
The appeals process can last decades. One client had been on death row since he
was 19, and is now close to 40. The last person to be executed in Arkansas by
the state's lethal injection law was Eric Nance in 2005, convicted of murder
and attempted rape 12 years earlier.
In June last year, the Arkansas Public Defender made ground against the state's
execution policy. Representing a group of death-row prisoners, they argued the
death penalty was unconstitutional. The supreme court ruled in their favour,
and executions have been on hiatus until the law is abolished altogether or new
legislation is introduced to override the ruling.
(source: Sydney Morning Herald)
LOUISIANA:
Students reflect on death penalty lecture
69-year-old Christopher Sepulvado is to be executed in Louisiana on Ash
Wednesday.
According to the Louisiana Department of Corrections, Sepulvado murdered his
6-year-old stepson by beating him with a screwdriver and then submerging him in
scalding hot water. In 1993 a Desoto Parish jury sent Sepulvado to death row
for his crimes.
On Tuesday, Jan. 22, the Loyola Jesuit Social Research Institute cosponsored
the appearance of Helen Prejean, a sister with the Congregation of St. Joseph.
Prejean is an activist against the death penalty as capital punishment and has
written several books on the controversial subject, including an award winning
book-to-film adaptation.
"They killed a man with fire one day. They strapped him into a chair and pumped
electricity into his body until he was dead," Helen Prejean said as she read
the prelude from her book, "Dead Man Walking". "I cannot walk away from this
issue. I owe it to the human beings I have accompanied to death to tell the
story to the people, to wake up the people."
"If you say you are for, or against, the death penalty, people don't really
think about it enough - unless it touches them personally," Sister Margret
Maggio, Prejean's administrative assistant said. "This is not just about
punishment. It's also about getting people rehabilitated."
Political science junior Milan Ray discussed his feelings about the death
penalty before Prejean's lecture.
"I was pretty apathetic about the death penalty," Ray said. "I think there is
something to be said about human kindness, and sticking up for people who may
not even be innocent."
Prejean's speech left students to reflect about the meaning of death as capital
punishment.
Terri Zehyoue, a criminal justice sophomore, said Prejean's message left her
thinking about true justice in terms of the crime and the capital punishment's
effect on families involved.
"Sister Prejean talked about the death penalty not really letting the victims
family heal, I thought maybe there should be better way to help them find
peace," Zehyoue said.
Gary Clemmons, the director of the Capitol Post Conviction Project of Louisiana
and a legal representative for Sepulvado, stood at the podium before Prejean
spoke on Tuesday night.
"We should not be judged by the worst five minutes of our life, and I think
that sums up the situation for Chris and his crime," Clemmons said.
Students and academics alike reflect upon this controversial issue's religious,
economic and political implications.
Based in Houston, Texas, Dudley Sharp has tried to spread his own opinions
about the death penalty in emails to Loyola students and faculty. Sharp argues
that the death penalty can save lives by placing fear into possible offenders
and provides the guarantee that the offender will never hurt anyone again.
"To say that the death penalty saves lives is a profound contradiction,"
Prejean said, in response to Sharp's assertions.
While the debate saunters on, Prejean hopes to change the fates of men and
women on death row by encouraging people of all ages to reach out to the
prisoners and actively push towards the end of the death penalty.
"College students can be pen pals to prisoners, they can vote for people who
are going to do something about the justice system," Maggio said. "These are
going to be intelligent people and future leaders, so they are going to need to
be informed and have to learn how to make this a better system."
(source: The (Loyola University) Maroon)
*****************************
Minneapolis attorney Steve Kaplan helps to free death row inmate Damon
Thibodeaux, who had been wrongly convicted of rape and murder
For more than a century, juries in criminal cases in the United States have
been instructed that defendants are entitled to the "presumption of innocence":
The state has the responsibility to prove that a person accused of a crime is
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The presumption of innocence is derived from writings that go back to the Bible
and to Maimonides, who wrote in the 12th century that "it is better and more
satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent
one to death."
English jurist William Blackstone updated this concept, in the 18th century,
when he wrote that it is "better that 10 guilty persons escape than that 1
innocent suffer."
In practice, however, the innocent sometimes are ensnared by a criminal justice
system that goes off the rails. Such was the case with Damon Thibodeaux, a
Mississippi River workboat deckhand from Texas, who traveled to New Orleans to
attend 2 family weddings. When his 14-year-old step-cousin, Crystal Champagne,
was found murdered in July 1996, police brought in Thibodeaux for a lengthy
interrogation.
After 9 hours of police grilling, and going without sleep for more than 30
hours, Thibodeaux cracked and falsely confessed to committing rape and murder.
Recalling the police interrogation, Thibodeaux said, "At first it was just
routine, but as the night goes on, things progressed to a point where you
realize that, look, they're never going to let you go, and it's either you give
them what they want or they're just going to keep at it."
The American Jewish World recently conducted a lengthy interview with
Thibodeaux and Steven Z. Kaplan, a litigator with the Fredrikson & Byron firm.
The interview took place in a conference room at the firm's offices on the 40th
floor of U.S. Bank Plaza in downtown Minneapolis.
Kaplan served as the lead lawyer for Fredrikson & Byron's pro bono work on
Thibodeaux's case. He and other lawyers from the firm worked in partnership
with Barry Scheck and his associates with the Innocence Project; Denny LeBoeuf,
of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project and the Capital Post-Conviction Project
of Louisiana; and Caroline Tillman, also formerly with the Capital
Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana.
In 1997, Thibodeaux was brought to court. After a trial that took just 3 days,
and a jury deliberation of under an hour, Thibodeaux was convicted of his
step-cousin's rape and strangulation. After another brief discussion, jurors
decided that the 22-year-old convict should be put to death.
Thibodeaux was transferred to death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at
Angola. For 15 years, Thibodeaux was kept in a 6- by 9-foot cell for 23 hours a
day.
"You can come out of the cell once a day," he explained, about the life of a
death row inmate. "And Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday you can give up that one
hour to go in the yard. But when you come out, you have to handle all of your
business: your phone calls, your shower, any legal business you have on the
phone, your exercise time, if you want to run."
When he entered the Angola prison, in 1997, Thibodeaux, who is bespectacled and
mild-mannered, with short brown hair combed down on his forehead, thought that
his future was foreclosed.
"I got this false confession sitting out there for the rape and murder of a
14-year-old girl. No one's going to take this case. That's what I thought: no
one's going to touch this case," he recalled.
The previous pro bono capital defense effort by Fredrikson & Byron involved
another Louisiana inmate, Dobie Gillis Williams. He was executed by lethal
injection on Jan. 9, 1999. He was one of the 28 Louisiana inmates put to death,
by either electrocution or lethal injection, since 1976.
"The 1st death penalty case this firm had, I knew the guy, I was in the cell
next to him," Thibodeaux commented, regarding Williams, who was convicted of
murder. "It was in '99."
Thibodeaux also said that he knew Leslie Dale Martin, who was executed on May
10, 2002; and Gerald Bordelon, who was killed by lethal injection on Jan. 10,
2010.
"He actually gave up his appeals," Thibodeaux remarked about Bordelon.
"Louisiana now has a law that allows death row inmates to easily give up their
appeals if they wish. It's not something that they have to go through an
elaborate court process anymore. They just present a document, you sign it, and
90 days later you have your execution date."
Thibodeaux, however, saw a glimmer of hope after his 1st visit from Denny
LeBoeuf. They conferred for 2 hours. "I can get you out, if you give me the
chance," Thibodeaux recalls LeBoeuf telling him. "I sat there for a minute, I
just looked at her and said, 'Okay.'"
LeBoeuf, who is now director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project and is
based in Durham, N.C., first began working on Thibodeaux's case in 1998. From
death row, Thibodeaux contacted the Innocence Project, which uses DNA evidence
to exonerate those wrongly convicted.
"Fredrikson & Byron gets involved," Thibodeaux explained. "Everyone starts
dissecting this case, and they're like: 'Well, where's the investigation?'
There was no investigation done [into the murder of Crystal Champagne]. So I
start thinking that maybe there's a chance they're going to figure this out. I
changed my mindset and started keeping in touch with everyone."
Thibodeaux started calling his lawyer in Minneapolis. "We became good friends
over the phone," Kaplan said.
The legal team working to extricate Thibodeaux from his hellish situation began
quietly. Kaplan mentioned that after the execution of Williams, in 1999,
Fredrikson & Byron began looking for another capital defense case; they decided
to work on behalf of Thibodeaux, and took his case in 2000.
By 2007, the task of freeing Thibodeaux focused on convincing Jefferson Parish
District Attorney Paul Connick that a miscarriage of justice had taken place.
And the D.A. had to deal with the sheriff's office, his main client, which
firmly believed that Thibodeaux was the guilty party.
For more than 11 years, Kaplan, LeBoeuf, Scheck and dozens of other lawyers
spent thousands of hours researching and investigating all aspects of the
Thibodeaux case. Forensic scientists and experts on false confessions were
hired. A "bug guy" was brought in, according to Kaplan, to look into the
prosecution's contention that the evidence of the alleged rape, the
perpetrator's semen, was missing because it had been consumed by maggots.
Of course, there was Thibodeaux's "confession," which he recanted. The district
attorney brought in a forensic psychologist from New York, who interviewed
Thibodeaux and about 2 dozen other people, including Thibodeaux's family
members. Connick, according to Kaplan, wanted an answer to the question: "Why
would a person confess to a rape and a murder that he didn't commit?"
Kaplan explained, "There's a very highly developed set of psychological
techniques that are brought to bear in the interrogation room." It is known as
the "Reid Technique," after the firm John E. Reid and Associates, Inc., which
developed the methods widely employed by cops.
"Basically, the purpose of the interrogation is to get a confession - it's not
to get information, it's to get a confession," Kaplan continued. "Now, if
you're going to get a confession from a guilty subject, the last thing that
that guilty subject intends to do, once he sits down with the police, is
confess...So, you have to have a set of very powerful techniques to convince
this guilty subject that his only or best option is to confess. The police are
allowed to lie to the subject, they are allowed to say they have evidence that
they don't have. They're allowed to say, for example, that an alibi witness is
not vouching for them, when, in fact, they may never have even spoken to the
alibi witness - or the alibi witness has confirmed the alibi."
In Thibodeaux's interrogation, sheriff's office investigators also conducted an
apparently bogus lie detector test. When they returned to the interrogation
room and told Thibodeaux that he had failed the polygraph test, he collapsed on
the floor.
More than 5 years after Thibodeaux's defense team began working with the
district attorney, Connick agreed that Thibodeaux's conviction and death
sentence should be overturned. On Sept. 27, 2012, Judge Patrick McCabe, of
Louisiana's 24th District Court, ordered Thibodeaux's "immediate release."
Early the next afternoon, Thibodeaux left his cell on death row and walked out
of the Angola prison.
"It's a surreal walk," Thibodeaux said about his release from prison, according
to a report in the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper. "It's not something
you can prepare for, because you've been in those [death row] conditions so
long."
Thibodeaux was the 300th prisoner in the U.S. released after DNA evidence
showed that he was innocent, according to the Innocence Project; and he was 1
of 18, out of the 300, who was on death row.
After 16 years in prison, 15 years on death row, Thibodeaux enjoyed a reunion
with friends and family, and a stay in a New Orleans luxury hotel for a few
nights. The hotel staff, when they found out who the person being trailed by
reporters and photographers was, put Thibodeaux in the presidential suite,
according to Kaplan. At the age of 38, Thibodeaux took special pleasure in
spending time with his son, Joshua, who will soon turn 21.
After his exoneration, Thibodeaux traveled north to Minneapolis, where he is
making a new life. He spent his first 7 weeks here living with Kaplan, and his
wife, Norma. The Kaplans are members of Beth El Synagogue.
Thibodeaux, who has received assistance from Project for Pride in Living, and
many others, now has an apartment in south Minneapolis, and is working on
getting a driver's license. He says that adapting to new "technology" has been
a challenge; but he now works for Pitney Bowes, the office equipment company,
in the Fredrikson & Byron office.
There is a mechanism in Louisiana to compensate those who have been wrongfully
imprisoned. Thibodeaux can petition the Louisiana Innocence Fund, which can
award $25,000 per year, for a maximum of 10 years of wrongful imprisonment.
Another $80,000 in "lost opportunity" compensation also could be available. The
maximum award of $330,000 would be paid out to Thibodeaux over 10 years, if the
Louisiana Legislature agrees to allocate the money. Compensation through this
course could take several years, according to Kaplan. There is also the
possibility of a lawsuit against certain law enforcement personnel in
Louisiana, including those who coerced a confession from Thibodeaux and sent
him to death row.
Kaplan, who is 66, allowed that he probably won't head up another capital
defense case. He said that, at his age, the time commitment is too daunting. He
mentioned that "a lot of Jewish lawyers are involved in capital defense work,"
including Innocence Project co-directors Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, and
senior staff attorney Vanessa Potkin.
He also discussed how the various streams of Judaism in North America have
taken positions opposing the death penalty.
"Damon's case is really - from my personal perspective, my moral and religious
perspective - a question of what is really the essence of justice, and how does
the death penalty fit within [Judaism's] tradition of what is justice," said
Kaplan.
"One of the things that strikes me about Damon's case is how fortunate he was
in getting the death penalty," Kaplan declares. It is a strange-sounding
statement.
But Kaplan makes the point that without the notoriety that comes with a death
sentence, Thibodeaux likely would not have benefited from the formidable legal
team that ended up working on his behalf. "The irony is, once he's convicted,
now he's going to get a defense, because somebody is going to come and look at
his case with a commitment to seeing it through. If he ended up with a life
sentence, he would disappear into the population at Angola."
"I would still be there now," agrees Thibodeaux.
"He fell into the death penalty queue, instead of the life without parole
queue," said Kaplan. "Because the jury gave him death, he actually ends up in a
better positio...He was fortunate in this odd, ironic way that he ends up with
a death sentence, which leads to his exoneration."
Steve Kaplan will deliver the d'var Torah on Saturday morning, Feb. 2 at Beth
El Synagogue. Following services, Kaplan, Damon Thibodeaux and Rabbi Alexander
Davis will lead a discussion in the Beth El Learning Center on a variety of
death penalty topics, including the views of various religious faiths on
capital punishment, and some of the key issues presented by Thibodeaux's case.
A Web site has been created (damonthibodeaux.com), which contains information
and press accounts about the case, and information about making donations to
support Damon Thibodeaux. Checks payable to "Damon A. Thibodeaux" can be sent
to: Damon Thibodeaux, c/o Fredrikson & Byron, P.A., 200 S. Sixth St., Suite
4000, Minneapolis, MN 55402-1425.
(source: TC Daily Planet)
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