April 8
TEXAS:
Trib staffer wins award for criminal justice reporting
Tommy Witherspoon, a 30-year reporter at the Tribune-Herald, has won 1st place
in the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors contest for his coverage of
courts and criminal justice.
Witherspoon's beat reporting in 2012 was ranked first among midsized daily
newspapers in Texas. The award was announced Sunday during the Texas APME
convention in San Antonio.
On the courthouse beat for more than 2 decades, Witherspoon won for reports
ranging from coverage of a death-penalty trial to a story about a man
improperly jailed for 3 months. One of his in-depth pieces examined the slowed
pursuit of the death penalty in McLennan County. In a feature story, he wrote
about defendants wearing suits to court donated by the district attorney.
(soruce: Waco Tribune-Herald)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Senate Bill 306 Sponsor Says R.J.A. Is Wrongly Removing People From Death Row
Capital punishment is on its way back to North Carolina and one proponent says
it's been avoided for years for the wrong reason.
"We do have the death penalty here in North Carolina," says the Republican
Senator from District 9, Thom Goolsby, the primary sponsor of Senate Bill 306,
entitled Capital Punishment/Amendments. "We have 150-plus people on death row,
and no one has been executed since 2006 due to a defacto moratorium for a
number of reasons, primarily something called the Racial Justice Act, which is
not about race and it's not about justice. It's an attempt to do an end-run
around the death penalty and end it."
He says during discussions prior to the vote on the bill, he asked a few of the
senators who were against the bill what the Racial Justice Act does regarding
the guilt or innocence of the accused.
"And they didn't know," Senator Goolsby says. "They thought it can exonerate
people and take them off death row and release them, and I'm like, no, no!
There's no question as to their guilt. It has nothing to do with that. The
answer to that is the innocence commission which we always have appeals to and
motions for appropriate release and all those other avenues of appeal."
Senator Goolsby says the R.J.A. is not serving the purpose its proponents say
it should.
"The R.J.A. was passed as an attempt to just get rid of the death penalty in
North Carolina," Senator Goolsby says. "It tries to turn 1st-degree
cold-blooded killers into victims of racial discrimination by calling the
district attorneys across North Carolina racists."
In fact, Senator Goolsby says he's seen that very thing happen in New Hanover
Couty.
"My local district attorney - I'm a Republican; he's a Democrat; we've gone
against each other many times on trials - I've represented people of color;
I've never seen him show a scintilla of racism at all. And the appeals from
down here against him of course, that's what they call him. That's what they
call our D.A.s across the State."
In a previous story on WCHL, defense lawyer and Chapel Hill Mayor Mark
Kleinschmidt said he's concerned that not all D.A.s are acting free of racial
bias and that it's necessary to hold onto the R.J.A.
However, it looks as if the complete removal of the Act is coming to fruition.
It was received by the House on Thursday after passing in the Senate 33-14.
(source: chapelboro.com)
FLORIDA----impending execution
Execution nears for killer of Pinellas girl, possibly linked to more deaths
No one doubts what Larry Eugene Mann did the morning of Nov. 4, 1980.
It has been well established, through forensic evidence, witness statements and
Mann's own words - that he abducted 10-year-old Elisa Nelson as she rode her
bicycle to school that Tuesday morning 32 years ago.
Mann has never claimed he didn't snatch the blond-haired 5th-grader off a Palm
Harbor street. He has never denied taking her to the orange grove where she was
killed.
Still, years of legal wrangling has prolonged the dreadful story of one of the
worst crimes in Pinellas County history. This week, the final chapter might
finally be written.
Barring a successful last-minute appeal, Mann will be strapped to a gurney at 6
p.m. Wednesday inside Florida State Prison and injected with a lethal cocktail
of chemicals.
It will mean justice for Elisa's family. But when the 59-year-old former
well-driller draws his final breath, he may take with him knowledge of other
murders that remain unsolved.
2 states and more than 500 miles away from the place where Elisa died,
authorities in south Mississippi have scoured old case files in recent years,
trying to link Mann to 3 of the area's cold cases from the 1970s.
A Mississippi native, Mann lived in Pascagoula in that decade. Despite
remarkable similarities to Elisa's case, authorities have never been able to
say for certain that he committed any of the murders.
"I just can't fathom that he had never done that before," said Pascagoula
police Detective Darren Versiga. "Are there things he got away with?
Absolutely."
----
On Feb. 1, 1973, Rose Marie Levandoski vanished after she left class to use a
restroom at St. Martin Junior High School in southern Mississippi. 3 weeks
later, authorities found the 13-year-old's nude body floating in a river near
Biloxi. She had been stabbed to death.
In October of that year, Larry Mann forced his way into an apartment on Lanier
Street in Pascagoula, where a woman was babysitting a 1-year-old boy, according
to police. He grabbed the woman by the hair and forced her to her knees.
If you don't give me what I want, Mann told the woman, I will take it from the
baby.
He forced her to commit a sex act on him. Police later caught up with Mann. He
was convicted of sexual battery and burglary and sentenced to prison.
2 years later, Mann was living in a work-release camp, which allowed him
limited access to the outside world while he served his sentence.
On Sept. 24, 1975, Janie Sanders disappeared after walking home with classmates
along Lanier Street in Pascagoula. A wildlife officer found the 16-year-old's
body the same day, dumped in the woods near Grand Bay, Ala. She had been raped
and stabbed.
Even with numerous leads and a handful of other suspects, the Levandoski and
Sanders cases both eventually went cold.
In 2009, Pascagoula police, who investigated the Sanders kidnapping, began to
re-examine their unsolved cases. Detective Versiga looked for patterns of
predatory behavior.
He noted the obvious similarities with the Sanders and Levandoski slayings and
the December 1978 murder of 20-year-old Debra Gunter, who was kidnapped from
her job as a clerk at a Gautier, Miss., convenience store and found stabbed to
death 5 days later.
He learned of Mann and studied the Nelson case.
"He is a predator," Versiga said. "Predators don't just wake up during the
night and say, 'I think I'm going to go kill somebody today.' "
Mann once lived on Lanier Street in Pascagoula, Versiga said, where Sanders was
last seen, and where he attacked the woman in the 1973 rape case.
Despite exhaustive efforts, the detective was unable to determine if Mann was
indeed involved in the other cases.
"I have looked at him and I can't say he didn't do it," Versiga said. "He was
in jail in '81 and a lot of things stopped after that."
----
In his years on death row, Mann has maintained he is no longer the violent
sexual predator he was 3 decades ago.
After Gov. Rick Scott signed his death warrant March 1, Mann's legal team filed
a lengthy appeal with the state Supreme Court. In it, the attorneys noted
Mann's spotless prison record, his status as a revered figure among prison
guards and fellow inmates, and his in-depth studies of the Bible.
They noted remorse he has expressed for killing Elisa, an act he once described
as "the cross on which I am crucified daily."
That is little consolation for Elisa's family, who have called for the death
penalty since the day he was charged with her murder. For 32 years, they have
watched and waited and hoped as Mann's 1st execution date was stayed, as his
death sentence was twice vacated and reinstated.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Elisa's mother, Wendy Nelson, was involved in victim
advocacy issues, forming the League of Victims and Empathizers (LOVE). In 1994,
she appeared in a campaign advertisement for Jeb Bush during his 1st run for
governor. In the ad, Nelson accused then-Gov. Lawton Chiles of being soft on
crime for not signing Mann's death warrant.
This month, the state Supreme Court denied Mann's last appeal. The Nelson
family has declined to speak publicly since the latest death warrant was
signed.
"What we're pushing for is to have the law enforced," Wendy Nelson told a
reporter in 1982. "Maybe there will be a little girl alive 10 years from now
because of this."
Florida authorities have a sample of Mann's DNA in a database, making links to
other crimes possible. Still, answers in the Mississippi cases may never be
known. Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of the records and evidence there in
2005, Versiga said.
"It would be nice if he decided to give a confession in the last few days
here," he said. "He might want to cleanse his soul."
(source: Tampa Bay Times)
*****************************
Convicted child murderer files appeals; Larry Mann's execution date is April 10
On April 2, the Florida Supreme Court denied the latest appeal of a man who has
spent more than 32 years on death row.
He has since filed another appeal with the United States 11th Circuit Court of
Appeals, according to information from the Forgiveness Foundation.
Larry Eugene Mann, 59, was found guilty March 19, 1981 of kidnapping and
murdering a 10-year-old Palm Harbor girl. A judge sentenced him to death on
March 21. Since that time, Mann has filed a series of appeals, and his sentence
was overturned and reinstated twice. His execution date in 1986 was stayed.
Gov. Rick Scott signed a 2nd execution order March 1. Mann is scheduled to be
executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. April 10 at the Florida State Prison
near Raiford. If his latest appeal proves unsuccessful, Mann's execution will
come 32 years and 5 months after he murdered Elisa Nelson on Nov. 4, 1980.
According to arrest records, Elisa was riding her bicycle to school the day
Mann kidnapped her. She was late due to a dentist appointment and carried a
note from her mother explaining her absence. When she didn't show up for
school, authorities began a search, which turned up her bicycle later the same
day in a ditch about a mile away from the school.
Searchers found Elisa's body the next day in a nearby orange grove. Cause of
death was a blow to the head by a cement-encased steel pipe found next to her
body. There were no signs of molestation, according to the Medical Examiner.
Records show that Mann attempted suicide the day he murdered Elisa. He
reportedly told police who responded that he had "done something stupid and
needed help."
Mann's wife found the bloodstained note that Elisa's mom had written to excuse
her daughter from being late to school in her husband's truck Nov. 8, 1980. Law
enforcement also found a bloodstain with Elisa and Mann's blood types in the
truck. Mann was arrested on Nov. 10, 1980.
(source: Tampa Bay News Weekly)
KENTUCKY:
Death penalty serves purpose
I am responding to a letter to the editor in the March 28 issue from Nancy
Rowles, of Covington, about abolishing the death penalty.
She is so wrong! I lived my whole life thinking if an injustice was done to me
the law would take care of it. Then I found out Kentucky didn't even have a
true life sentence.
I found out when my daughter was brutally murdered by a stalker, knowing he
could never have her. He stabbed her about 30 times (a knife broken in half
lying by her body) with blood-splattered walls. She never hurt anyone. She was
kind and caring.
He showed no remorse in court. And while this case was going on, he let a
reporter know he loved the dress she had on while she was on TV.
He ruined my life. I will never see her get married or hold her children. He's
been incarcerated before. He doesn't deserve to live. I hope and pray he never
gets out, for my safety and my family's safety. He would kill again. He has a
death threat on me.
We, law-abiding citizens, should not have to worry about someone like him
lurking in society.
Isn't there enough violence?
It is getting worse and more heinous everyday.
Actually, only a few of the violent criminals meet the criteria for the death
penalty. Do your homework.
I would like a safe, peaceful place to live. How about the rest of you?
Barbara Briede----Walton
(source: Letter to the Editor, cincinnati.com)
KANSAS:
Brother speaks about his murdered sister; 8-year-old living with aunt after
Ahliyah Irvin's death
Randy Irvin quietly reads his thoughts about his sister Ahliyah Irvin, who was
murdered in March 2012.
"It is hard," Randy says. "I didn't want Ahliyah to be dead. She was the best
sister ever. We love her so much and miss her so much and care about her a
lot."
Ahliyah Nachelle Irvin was sexually assaulted, choked and placed in a clothes
dryer at the Highland Park Townhomes.
Billy Frank Davis Jr., 29, of Topeka, has been charged with 2 alternative
counts of capital murder in the killing of Ahliyah; 1 count of 1st-degree
murder of the child; rape; aggravated kidnapping; 2 counts of aggravated
burglary; burglary; and 2 counts of misdemeanor criminal damage to property.
If convicted of the child's slaying, Davis could face the death penalty. His
trial has been scheduled for Oct. 7.
Randy, who is a 2nd-grader at Bishop Elementary School, began living with his
aunt, Sherry Mason, right after his sister's death.
"I got guardianship of him in May," Mason said.
Mason said her sister - the mother of Randy and Ahliyah - had moved to Olathe
but is back in Topeka and receiving help with her grief. Randy recently spent
the night with his mother.
"I know my sister just needs guidance," Mason said.
She also said it is the family's "ultimate goal" to reunite Randy and his
mother permanently.
Randy has been attending therapy.
"It has been helping me a lot," he said. "But I still miss her. We say prayers
to her every day and can't wait to see her again."
(source: Topeka Capital-Journal)
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