Feb. 25
TEXAS----change of impending execution date
John Quintanilla, Jr. has had his execution date pushed back to July 16; it
should (still) be considered serious.
********************
Executions under Rick Perry, 2001-present-----254
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982-present----493
Perry #--------scheduled execution date-----name---------Tx. #
255-------------April 3-------------------Kimberly McCarthy---494
256-------------April 9------------------Ricky Lewis----------495
257-------------April 10------------------Ribogerto Avila, Jr.---496
258-------------April 16------------------Ronnie Threadgill----497
259-------------April 24------------------Elroy Chester--------498
260-------------April 25----------------Richard Cobb-----------499
261------------May 7--------------------Carroll Parr---------500
262-------------May 15-------------------Jeffrey Williams-----501
263-------------May 21-------------------Robert Pruett--------502
264------------July 16-------------------John Quintanilla, Jr.---503
265-------------July 18------------------Vaughn Ross----------504
266-------------July 31-------------------Douglas Feldman-----505
(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
***************************************
A schizophrenic who gouged out his eyes is on Texas death row; Andre Thomas
committed heinous acts but is deeply mentally ill -- something the Texas
justice system cannot handle
In December 2008, Andre Thomas pulled out and ate his left eyeball. He had
gauged out the right eye in 2004, having taken a bible passage literally, 6
days after he brutally murdered his estranged wife, their young son and her
13-month-old daughter. His attorney Maurie Levin, who is co-director of Texas'
Capital Punishment Clinic, told Salon that her client is "transparently and
floridly" mentally ill. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic while in prison,
having heard voices in his head since childhood. What sort of system sentences
Andre Thomas to death?
Texas Tribune managing editor Brandi Grissom has followed Thomas' case closely.
As she noted in an excellent feature for theTexas Monthly, "as he awaits
execution, Andre and his tragic case force uncomfortable questions about the
intersection of mental illness and the criminal justice system." Thomas is
certainly not the only death row inmate to have been diagnosed with mental
illness; more than 20 % of the 290 inmates on Texas' death row are considered
mentally ill, as Grissom noted. But the extremity of his situation has prompted
fervid responses locally and nationally. "It's astonishing, just how many
problems in the legal system [this case] exemplifies," said Levin in a phone
interview.
Who gets to be sane? Who gets to be accountable? Who gets to be executed? -
Thomas, fully blind and heavily medicated, faces the death penalty as a limit
case for Texas' answer to these problematic questions.
To be sure, the crime for which Thomas was capitally charged was horrific.
Grissom's account bears reprinting:
By 2004, Andre was 21 years old, deeply mentally ill, and receiving no
treatment. On the bright, clear morning of March 27, he charged up the stairs
to the 3rd-floor apartment where Laura [his estranged wife] lived and kicked in
the door. Her boyfriend had already left for work. Andre was holding 3 knives,
1 for each of his intended victims. He 1st encountered Laura, who ran toward
him, screaming "No!" Andre plunged a knife into her chest. He then reached in
and pulled out what he believed was her heart (he had, in fact, extracted part
of her lung). Next, he headed for the children's room, where Andre Jr. and
1-year-old Leyha were sleeping. Andre held down his 4-year-old son and stabbed
him before moving on to Leyha. He carved out each of the children's hearts.
Finally, Andre jammed a knife into his own chest three times and lay down
beside Laura on the living room floor, expecting to die. Confounded when he
didn't, he slipped the organs he had removed into his pocket and walked more
than 5 miles home. A few hours later, he went to the Sherman Police Department,
where he confessed to the murders and asked if he would be forgiven. "I thought
it was what God wanted me to do," he later told investigators.
After undergoing emergency surgery to repair his life-threatening stab wounds,
Andre was moved to the Grayson County jail, where his behavior became more and
more psychotic. He gestured wildly and announced that he was going to save the
world. He claimed to be "the 13th warrior on the dollar bill" and said that
Laura and the children weren't dead but that their hearts had been freed from
evil.
There is no correct procedure to deal with Andre Thomas. The questions of how
someone ends up in such a tormented state - the conditions that make the above
horrors possible - are far beyond the purview of this writing. We can say,
however, that there are many profoundly wrong ways to deal with Andre Thomas -
and these are the ways he has been dealt with.
Firstly, he was deemed competent to stand trial - trial for capital murder at
that - after he had already gauged out his eye and exhibited other psychotic
tendencies. While considered competent to be tried for a death sentence, it's
worth noting that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice deemed him
incompetent to speak with a journalist. As Grissom wrote, while she was
permitted to tour the psychiatric facility currently holding Thomas, was not
allowed to speak with him. "John Hurt, a spokesman for the department,
explained that the policy is meant to protect inmates 'who may not be mentally
competent to sit for an interview.' It was a remarkable response given that
Andre had already been deemed competent for trial and is currently considered
competent to be executed," wrote Grissom.
But this is just one of many paradoxes and absurdities characterizing Thomas'
treatment - among them the fact that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found
the defendant "clearly 'crazy' but...also 'sane' under Texas law."
Undergirding the case is the problem of racism in the criminal justice system.
Thomas, a young African American man in a small town in Texas was tried in
front of an all white jury for the murder of a white woman. 4 jurors, Levin
told Salon, had written on a questionnaire that they objected to interracial
relationships. According to the attorney and legal scholar, the prosecutor went
on a "soliloquy...invoking race based fears" about the defendant "getting out
and dating your daughters."
Thomas was sentenced to death and - like all those so condemned - was confined
to a 6-by-10 ft. cell for 23 hours a day. The facility, says Levin, showed
"shocking inadequacy" in dealing with Thomas" mental deterioration. There, the
convicted man gauged out his other eye and rendered himself fully blind. Thomas
and his legal team currently await the decision of a federal court on whether
he is sane enough to be executed.
As a limit case, Thomas highlights the juridical determinations around the
right to life: What are the conditions necessary for the state to kill a
person? The arguments in Thomas' 1st capital murder trial fell around whether
the killer knew right from wrong at the time of carrying out the murders. Now,
the terrain of debate has shifted to whether Thomas is competent enough to
comprehend his own capital punishment. Levin argues that her client lacks any
such rational understanding and that, although treated with anti-psychotic
medicines, he still hears voices, she said.
The entire legal framework is troubling. The idea of justice at play here rests
on a person being able to understand, in advance of their execution, why and
for what they are being killed. Grissom cites Thurgood Marshall's 1986 majority
SCOTUS opinion on the issue of executing the mentally ill, which set up the
current legal standard: "We may seriously question the retributive value of
executing a person who has no comprehension of why he has been singled out and
stripped of his fundamental right to life," wrote Justice Marshall. While, of
course, many of us would also vehemently challenge the retributive value of the
state executing persons with full comprehension of why they have been so
singled out to face death, it seems clear that Marshall's "comprehension"
condition sets up profound problems when it comes to the mentally ill.
When it comes to the intellectually disabled (referred to in U.S. law as
"mentally retarded") the story is slightly different. The Supreme Court has
ruled that the "mentally retarded", as well as juveniles, cannot be held to the
same standards of culpability as most adults and thus the death penalty in such
cases would violate the constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Of
course, even in cases of proven mental disability, death sentences are still
carried out. The state of Georgia, for example, is currently pushing to have a
stay of execution removed in the case of 38-year-old Warren Hill, a death row
inmate found mentally retarded by physicians. Mental illness - where there is
sometimes possibility of medicating a prisoner into a state of execution-worthy
comprehension - brings up even more troubling grey areas for capital
sentencing.
Levin told Salon that there is a "deficit in forums to even discuss how to
redress the issues this case raises." If the case of Andre Thomas -
schizophrenic, self-blinded and facing death by the state - doesn't urge the
importance of such forums, it's hard to imagine what might.
(source: Salon.com)
PENNSYLVANIA----stay of impending execution
Lebanon County convicted killer's execution stayed by federal court
Freeman May was to be executed in March for the murder of Kathy Lynn Fair more
than 30 years ago.
Judge Malachy Mannion issued the order on Jan. 23.
May, who was sentenced to death in Lebanon County in March 1991, requested the
stay of execution in order to allow his federal attorney "a meaningful
opportunity" to file a petition for habeas corpus relief.
"In light of clear precedents established by the United States Supreme Court,
the court will grant the motion," Mannion wrote.
Gov. Tom Corbett signed execution warrants for May and a Lancaster County man,
Abraham Sanchez Jr., on Jan. 10.
4 days later, May filed an emergency motion for a stay of execution. May had
filed a motion for appointment of federal counsel on Dec. 20, which was granted
by the court on Jan. 3. The court then issued a scheduling order directing May
to file a petition for habeas corpus relief on or before July 1.
A writ of habeas corpus demands that a prisoner be taken before a court and
that the custodian holding the prisoner present proof of authority to hold the
prisoner.
In granting the stay, Mannion noted that May's execution was scheduled four
months before the court-ordered July 1 deadline for filing a habeas corpus
petition.
May, 55, was convicted of 1st-degree murder in March 1991 for the stabbing
death of 22-year-old Kathy Lynn Fair. The state Supreme Court upheld the death
sentence on May's final appeal in 2011.
Sanchez, 24, was convicted of shooting Lebanon County native Ray Diener, 65, to
death in front of Diener's Elizabethtown home during an attempted robbery in
May 2007. Sanchez was convicted and sentenced to death in 2009.
May's execution by lethal injection was scheduled for 7 p.m. March 5 at the
Rockview State Correctional Institute in Bellefonte, Centre County.
Fair, a young mother, was reported missing from her Lancaster County home in
September 1982. Her remains were found 6 years later in a wooded part of South
Lebanon Township by a man and his son who were cutting wood.
May became a suspect because he had been convicted of a similar crime. In
December 1982, May stabbed 2 teenage girls, 15 and 19, raping 1 and leaving
both of them for dead near where Fair's remains were later found. Both girls
survived the attacks and identified May, who had given them a ride from a
party. May was convicted and sentenced to 15 to 35 years for those attacks.
While May was serving those sentences, prosecutors charged him in 1990 with
Fair's death. May was initially sentenced to death in 1991 after he was found
guilty of Fair's murder by a Lebanon County jury.
The sentence was reversed by an appeals court but reinstated after a second
penalty-phase hearing in 1995. An appeals court again vacated the death
sentence, but it was reinstated by a Lebanon County jury in 2008 following a
3rd penalty-phase hearing.
(source: Lebanon Daily News)
VIRGINIA:
Supreme Court refuses to reinstate death penalty in Sussex St. case
The U.S. Supreme Court has rebuffed Virginia's request to reinstate the death
sentence of a man convicted in the 2002 slaying of 2 people - including a
pregnant woman - in Lynchburg.
The justices did not comment in letting stand lower court rulings that threw
out the death sentence for 30-year-old Leon Winston.
He was convicted in 2004 of the murder of Anthony Robinson and Rhonda Whitehead
who was pregnant and died in front of her 4- and 8-year-old daughters.
In 2011, U.S. Judge Samuel G. Wilson, said Winston's lawyers did not review his
school records thoroughly enough and found a "reasonable probability that but
for counsel's unprofessional errors, the outcome of Winston's proceeding would
have been different."
During Winston's trials, evidence showed he had taken IQ tests that returned
scores of 77, 76 and 73 - all above Virginia's standard of 70 for proving
mental retardation.
Another IQ test score from 1997, showing Winston scored a 66, was not found
until Winston's federal appeals were underway.
Since The Supreme Court will not hear Winston's case, the case will return to
the Lynchburg commonwealth's attorney's office for resentencing on several
capital murder convictions, explained Caroline Gibson, spokeswoman for the
Virginia attorney general's office.
"We are disappointed in the decision," she wrote in an email.
Defense counsel Jennifer Givens of the Federal Community Defender Office in
Philadelphia declined to comment on The Supreme Court's decision.
(source: Associated Press)
FLORIDA----stay of impending execution
Florida judge grants stay of execution of Jamaica man
A day before a Jamaican man is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in
the US State of Florida, a federal judge there has granted him a temporary stay
of execution.
47-year-old Paul Augustus Howell was slated to be executed at the Florida State
Prison for the killing of Highway Patrol Trooper Jimmy Fulford in 1992.
1 of his attorneys Michael Ufferman revealed this morning that the judge agreed
to stay the execution to allow him more time to further appeal his case.
But Ufferman says he expects prosecutors to file an appeal to have the ruling
set aside.
The ruling came in response to one of several court actions filed on Howell's
behalf by his attorneys, who argue that there are several factors why he should
not be put to death.
Howell's attorneys have also asked Florida's Governor Rick Scott to withdraw
the execution warrant, but to date he has not responded to the request.
The case has triggered debates across the State of Florida, with persons
opposed to the death penalty claiming that if the execution went ahead as
scheduled tomorrow, Howell would become the 1st Florida inmate since 2008 to
die by lethal injection without receiving his final federal appeal.
(source: Jamaica Gleaner)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Death penalty series at Appalachian begins Feb. 25
A series of programs addressing issues related to the death penalty is being
held at Appalachian State University. All presentations begin at 6 p.m. in Room
114 Belk Library and Information Commons. The public is invited.
"Capital Punishment and Justice in the U.S. and Abroad" is a collaborative
endeavor between Appalachian's Department of Government and Justice Studies and
student chapters of Amnesty International and the American Correctional
Association.
The schedule of programs follows:
--Feb. 25, "Does the Death Penalty Serve Victims?," presented by Dr. Jean Parks
from Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation.
--March 25, "Capital Punishment in the USA and Around the World," presented by
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
--April 15, "The Trials of Darryl Hunt: Innocence and Capital Murder," a
documentary detailing the case of Darryl Hunt who was wrongly convicted in
North Carolina.
--April 23, "Beyond Our Borders: The International Death Penalty," presented by
Amanda Moore, a senior global studies major at Appalachian. For more
information, contact Matthew Robinson at [email protected] or Amanda Moore
at [email protected].
(source: Appalachian State University)
KANSAS:
U.S. Supreme Court to hear 2nd Kansas death penalty appeal
For the 2nd time since Kansas' capital murder law was reinstated in 1994, the
United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of a death sentence
that was overturned by the state???s supreme court.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said the nation's highest court will hear
the appeal of a Kansas Supreme Court decision that overturned the conviction
and death sentence imposed on Scott Cheever, who was sentenced to death in 2007
for the murder of Greenwood County Sheriff Matt Samuels.
The Kansas Supreme Court overturned Cheever's conviction in August and ordered
a new trial. The court said in its ruling that prosecutors improperly allowed a
witness to testify about the results of a mental exam that Cheever was required
by a federal judge to take.
In an earlier death penalty case, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 in 2006 to
uphold the state's death penalty law in a decision that reversed a Kansas
Supreme Court ruling in the case of Michael Marsh. The federal court said in
that case that juries can impose death sentences if aggravating evidence of a
crime's brutality and mitigating factors behind a defendant's actions are equal
in weight. The state court had reasoned that all things being equal, the
sentence should not tip toward execution.
Marsh was charged with breaking into a home in the 1700 block of South
Washington on June 17, 1996, with the intention of committing a robbery. Once
inside, he shot and stabbed Marry Ane Pusch, then set a fire that resulted in
the death of her 18-month-old daughter, Marry Elizabeth. Marsh, initially
sentenced to death, was resentenced in 2009 to life in prison.
(source: Wichita Eagle)
OREGON:
Exonerated death row inmates to visit Oregon university campuses
During his 18 years on Florida's death row, the only thing that kept Juan
Melendez from committing suicide was knowing that his mother was praying the
rosary for him every day.
Melendez will tell his story of faith and survival on a tour of Oregon
university campuses starting March 6. He will be joined by Greg Wilhoit, who
served time on Oklahoma's death row, and was also exonerated. Wilhoit is
featured in the non-fiction book by John Grisham, The Innocent Man.
The tour is sponsored by Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and
Witness to Innocence, a national coalition of exonerated death row inmates who
travel the country. They say there are mistakes and injustice when the death
penalty is involved.
Since 1976, when the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, there have
been 142 exonerations of innocent U.S. residents who were wrongfully convicted
of aggravated murder.
The Oregon campus tour will begin at the Lewis and Clark Law School, 10015 SW
Terwilliger Blvd, in Portland, at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6. The tour
continues the next day at Willamette University, in Salem, Oregon State
University, in Corvallis and Western Oregon University, in Monmouth.
Campus chapters of National Lawyers Guild, Amnesty International, Peace Studies
and others will participate in the events and help to promote attendance. The
general public is invited to attend any of the four events.
For more information, times and locations, visit www.oadp.org.
(source: Catholic Sentinel)
WASHINGTON:
Judge rules no death penalty for accused East Precinct cop killer
Lawyers for Christopher Monfort scored a major victory Friday in their effort
to defend the 42-year-old accused of killing East Precinct police officer
Timothy Brenton in October, 2009.
A King County judge agreed with a 129-page motion brought by the defense,
ruling the state could note seek the death penalty in the case because county
prosecutor Dan Satterberg's office had "failed to exercise the discretion it is
statuatorily and constitutionally obliged to exercise."
Satterberg announced he plans to appeal the decision to the state Supreme
Court.
(source: Capitolhillseattle.com)
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