Feb. 21
GEORGIA---execution delayed, but will proceed
US Supreme Court denies Ga. execution appeal
The U.S. Supreme Court will not halt the execution of Georgia death row inmate
Andrew Allen Cook.
Cook was set to be executed Thursday at 7 p.m. by lethal injection, but the
execution was delayed while the high court weighed in on Cook's last-minute
appeal. Earlier, the Georgia Supreme Court had voted unanimously to deny a stay
of execution and denied his request to appeal a lower court's decision.
The 38-year-old Cook was convicted in the 1995 slayings of 2 Mercer University
students. They were shot several times as they sat in a car at Lake Juliette.
Cook didn't know either victim, and authorities say the crime was random.
(source: Associated Press)
**********************************
U.S. Supreme Court temporarily halts execution of man convicted of killing
former Spencer valedictorian
Andrew Allen Cook once told a friend he wanted to see if he could kill and get
away with it, according to testimony during his 1998 trial.
18 years after he killed former Spencer High School valedictorian Michele
Cartagena and her boyfriend, Grant Hendrickson, Cook, now 38, was scheduled to
be put to death by lethal injection at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Georgia
Diagnostic and Classification Prison near Jackson.
After having their plea rejected by the Georgia Supreme Court earlier Thursday
afternoon, Cook's team filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, which began reviewing
the plea around 6 p.m.
The highest court's decision wasn't apparent by 10:30 p.m.
Cook allegedly confessed to at least 4 people, including his father, a former
Macon-based FBI agent, that he killed Cartagena and Hendrickson.
The killing
Once a Ledger-Enquirer Page One nominee, Cartagena, an only child, was born in
California. Her father, Luis, was a lieutenant colonel in the Army, retiring at
Fort Benning.
She played softball, volleyball, tennis and ran track.
According to the Macon Telegraph, Hendrickson, also an only child, was an honor
graduate at Tattnall Square Academy.
Cartagena and Hendrickson were students at Mercer University in 1995.
Studying liberal arts, Cartagena was a 19-year-old sophomore, and Hendrickson,
22, was a senior majoring in engineering and physics.
After spending a few days with Cartagena's family in Columbus, the 2 returned
to Macon before school resumed.
According to Ledger-Enquirer reports, they went to see the movie "I.Q." at
Rivergate Cinema in north Macon around 9 p.m. Jan. 2, 1995. The movie ended
around 11:15 p.m.
In Cartagena's new Honda Civic that her parents gave her as a Christmas
present, Hendrickson drove to a scenic parking spot known as "lovers lane" on
Lake Juliette in Monroe County.
According to court documents, it was there that Cook fired 19 shots -- 5 from a
9 mm handgun and 14 from an AR-15 assault-style weapon -- into the driver's
side. Bullets struck Hendrickson in his hip and left shoulder, and 1 bullet hit
Cartagena in the back of the head.
Although Hendrickson was dying from the bullet that tore through his shoulder
and into his chest, Cook leaned into the car from the passenger side and shot
him in the top of the head with a pistol, officials said.
"He executed him with that 9 mm pistol," Tommy Floyd, the district attorney for
Monroe County, said during the trial.
Cartegena was probably still alive, Floyd said, when Cook drug her 40 feet from
the vehicle.
Months of investigation
Through interviews with the people close enough to hear the shots, Monroe
County Sheriff John Cary Bittick said investigators were able to determine the
shootings occurred at about 12:30 a.m.
"People heard the shots they said the shots woke them up but nobody called (the
authorities)," Bittick said in 1995. A camper nearby who spotted headlights the
night before saw the car after the sun rose.
When he went to check, he found Hendrickson slumped on the front seat and
Cartagena on the ground, both dead of multiple wounds. Almost immediately
investigators had a detailed description of a car seen near the area before the
shootings and driving on a highway headed away from the area after the
shootings.
The car was a Honda CRX, model year somewhere between 1985 and 1987, blue over
gray with a spoiler, wide tires with 5-point star rims, tinted windows and
white windshield wiper blades. Witnesses even described an Albany Warriors
sports team sticker in the rear window and identified the Georgia license plate
as possibly being from Dougherty County.
After a year had passed, the number of investigators on the case dwindled down
to two. In September 1996, a popular NBC show "Unsolved Mysteries" aired an
8-minute segment on the case.Still no progress.
"Yes, I did"
During the investigation officers began following 9 mm pistols and AR-15s on
the pawn market throughout Georgia. Investigators found a rifle that had been
pawned in Macon. It had changed hands 3 times when officers recovered the gun
in Twiggs County.
After being tested in the state crime lab in Macon, it was confirmed officials
had 1 of the murder weapons, and the owner who first pawned the rifle was
Andrew Cook.
According to court documents, Cook sold the 9 mm to a friend.DNA evidence also
connected Cook to the crime. Tobacco spit, a match to Cook, was found on
Cartagena's leg.
On Dec. 4, 1996, Cook's father, John Cook, received a call from a GBI agent in
reference to the Lake Juliette slayings. At the time the elder Cook wasn't sure
where Andrew was, but they spoke later in the evening.
This is how John Cook told officials the conversation with Andrew Cook went:
When the FBI agent called his son, John Cook asked, "What is all this about,
Andy?"
"I can't tell you, Daddy. You're one of them," Andrew Cook replied.
"What do you mean, 'one of them?'"
"You're a cop."
"Andy, I'm your father first. ... Do you know something about the Lake Juliette
murders?"
"Yes, I do."
"Were you there?"
"Yes, I was."
"Do you know did you see the shooting?"
"Yes, I did."
"Did you shoot them?"
"Yes, I did," the agent recalled his son telling him.
Andrew told him he was fishing at the lake when a car pulled up with a guy and
a girl inside. He got into an argument with the guy, who pulled a gun, so he
shot in self-defense, then threw the man's pellet gun into the woods, Cook said
his son told him.
Guilty
Andrew Cook was found guilty in March 1998 by a jury of 7 men and 5 women.
He was given the death penalty for the murder of Michele Cartagena and life in
prison without parole for the murder of Grant Hendrickson.
One of the 1st appeals the defense filed was to throw out Andrew Cook's
father's testimony. Andrew Cook's attorney said John Cook was acting as an
agent of the state during the admission.
His conviction was upheld in March 1999.
The Georgia Supreme Court rejected Cook's plea for stay for a 2nd time
Thursday.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Cook's lawyers had asked the
justices to spare him the death penalty. They asked for life without the
possibility of parole on the basis that he has changed and he is sorry for his
crime.
After losing the appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court, his lawyers appealed to
the U.S. Supreme Court, which was Cook's final option.
(source: Columbus Ledger-Enquirer)
FLORIDA:
Justices affirm death penalty in 1986 slayings of Tampa women
The Florida Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty for Oscar Ray Bolin Jr.,
convicted in the slayings of 3 Tampa women 27 years ago.
"We affirm Bolin's conviction and sentence of death," the judges said in the
order signed Thursday. "It is so ordered."
The curt statement could seal the fate of Bolin, who has been granted several
appeals and retrials in the 3 murder cases over the last 2 decades.
Juries have convicted Bolin and sentenced him to death numerous times, but
appeals courts have overturned his conviction and sentences, which led to more
trials.
Bolin, now 51, filed an appeal to dismiss his conviction and death sentence in
the case involving Stephanie Collins, a Chamberlain High School senior who was
abducted from the parking lot of a Carrollwood drugstore in 1986.
After a search that lasted more than a month, the body of Collins, 17, was
found near Morris Bridge Road. She had a fractured skull and had been stabbed
at least 6 times, court documents said.
Collins' mother, Donna Witmer, said she's hopeful the Supreme Court ruling will
keep Bolin on death row and out of court.
"It can avoid future retrials," she said.
But Witmer, who has supported the other victims' mothers by attending all of
Bolin's retrials, said it may be years before the families get closure.
"It's just 1 step," Witmer said of the ruling. "It still takes a long time for
any death warrant to be signed by the governor."
In his appeal, Bolin said the videotaped testimony of his ex-wife, Cheryl Coby,
was not admissible in court because it violated spousal privilege.
According to state law, a person has the right to not talk, or to prevent
someone else from disclosing, "communications which were intended to be made in
confidence between the spouses while they were husband and wife."
Before her death from a terminal illness, Coby testified that she had seen
Bolin hide Collins' body and noticed blood stains in their travel trailer.
The court ruled that Coby's testimony "regarding what she witnessed is not
privileged" or confidential information.
Bolin also argued that a suicide note he wrote that later was used as evidence
in one of his trials violated his Fourth Amendment right to privacy.
Bolin attempted suicide in his cell in 1991 and left the note in a stamped
envelope, addressed to one of the detention deputies, in plain view on top of a
cardboard box, court documents said.
The court ruled that Bolin's claim has no merit, because a prisoner does not
have a "legitimate, subjective expectation of privacy in his or her cell."
Bolin is on death row in Florida State Prison in Raiford for Collins' slaying.
Last year, Bolin was found guilty in the stabbing death of Natalie Blanche
Holley, 25, who was abducted after leaving a restaurant in January 1986.
It was Bolin's 4th trial in the Holley case. This time, he received a sentence
of life in prison.
Bolin also was found guilty and sentenced to die for the killing of Teri Lynn
Matthews, 26. Matthews' body was found on railroad tracks in central Pasco
County the same day Collins' body was found in Hillsborough.
(source: Tampa Bay Times)
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