July 9
CONNECTICUT:
Action Delayed In West Hartford Death Penalty Case
A judge on Monday delayed until October any action on a new penalty phase for
Eduardo Santiago, a Torrington man sentenced to death for the 2000
murder-for-hire killing of a West Hartford man.
The state Supreme Court overturned the death sentence a year ago after finding
that the trial judge improperly kept potentially mitigating information from
jurors considering Santiago's fate.
The court ordered a new penalty phase, but that will be delayed as the Supreme
Court decides whether the state's abolishing of the death penalty except for
those already sentenced is legal.
Hartford Superior Court Judge Joan K. Alexander continued Santiago's case to
Oct. 7, after the Supreme Court's decision is expected.
The state legislature abolished the death penalty in April 2012 for all future
cases. It left in place the death penalty for those already on death row or
whose crimes were committed before the repeal.
Santiago challenged the law, arguing that to be put to death after the state
abolished the death penalty would constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Santiago, 33, was convicted of capital felony in 2005 in the killing of Joseph
Niwinski, 45, in West Hartford on Dec. 14, 2000. 2 others involved in the crime
pleaded guilty and were sentenced to life in prison. The 3 carried out the
killing of Niwinski in exchange for a broken snowmobile.
(source: The Hartford Courant)
*************************
Connecticut death penalty case delayed pending appeal
A West Hartford death penalty case won't move forward until after the state
Supreme Court decides whether Connecticut's repeal of capital punishment last
year is constitutional, a judge ruled Monday.
Hartford Superior Court Judge Joan Alexander postponed proceedings in Eduardo
Santiago's case and scheduled a status conference in October.
Santiago, 33, was sentenced to lethal injection in 2005 for the murder-for-hire
killing of 45-year-old Joseph Niwinski in West Hartford in 2000. But the state
Supreme Court overturned the death sentence and ordered a new penalty phase
last year, saying the trial judge wrongly withheld key evidence from the jury
regarding the severe abuse Santiago suffered while growing up.
The Supreme Court ruling came two months after the state abolished the death
penalty for murders committed after April 24, 2012, leaving Santiago and the 10
other men on death row still facing execution.
The Supreme Court, in another appeal brought by Santiago's lawyers, is now
deciding whether the death penalty repeal for future murders violates the
constitutional rights of the 11 death row inmates. A ruling isn't expected for
at least several months.
Santiago, dressed in a yellow prison jumpsuit, watched the brief court hearing
on Monday from prison via video conference.
It has never been clear whether Santiago killed Niwinski. Two other men,
Matthew Tyrell and Mark Pascual, pleaded guilty in the killing and are serving
life in prison. Santiago and Tyrell were in Niwinski's home at the time of the
fatal shooting, but both pointed the finger at the other.
Prosecutors said Pascual ordered the murder because he was infatuated with
Niwinski's girlfriend, believed Niwinski was abusing her and wanted him dead.
Santiago denies being promised a broken snowmobile in exchange for killing
Niwinski.
(source: Associated press)
GEORGIA----impending execution
'Mentally Retarded' Killer Warren Hill denied stay, appeals to the Supreme
Court
A federal appeals court has denied condemned killer Warren Lee Hill one of his
last legal recourses to avoid execution.
The 11th U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta declined Tuesday to review a motion
to delay Hill's execution until the U.S. Supreme Court can consider the merits
of new evidence his lawyers claim show Hill is mentally retarded and ineligible
for the death penalty. Hill is slated to be executed Monday.
Hill's lawyers have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to grant the stay until
the Court can decide whether to take on the case, currently scheduled for
consideration Sept. 30.
If the Supreme Court decides to grant the stay, it can either decide to
consider it in September or transfer it to a federal district court in Georgia.
Or, the Court can deny the stay and the petition for appeal, and Hill will be
executed on Monday.
"I think we have a very meritorius claim," said Hill's laywer, Brian Kammer.
"It is a very unusual set of circumnstances and I think it warrants the Supreme
Court's intervention."
The U.S. Supreme Court determined in 2002 executing mentally retarded inmates
to be unconstitutional. But in Georgia, intellectual disability must be proven
"beyond a reasonable doubt," one of the strictest standards of its kind in the
nation.
Hill was already serving a life sentence for murdering his 18-year-old
girlfriend when, in 1990, he killed fellow inmate John Handspike at the Lee
State Prison in South Georgia. Hill beat to death his inmate with a
nail-studded board, prosecutors said.
Earlier this year, the 3 experts the state used to prove Hill was competent to
stand trial came forward to say they were mistaken. The doctors - 2
psychiatrists and a psychologist - had previously testified that Hill was
faking his mental disabilities. They described their evaluations of Hill more
than a decade ago as rush jobs.
The 11th Circuit granted him a stay in February until the new evidence for
Hill's mental disability could be considered. The news came less than an hour
before Hill was to be put to death.
Then, in April, the court decided that Hill???s mental retardation claim was
the same it had already rejected, despite the changed opinions of doctors and
other mental health experts who now say Hill is incompetent to stand trial.
"If all that was required to reassert years later a previously rejected claim
was a change in testimony, every material witness would have the power to upset
every notion of finality," 11th Circuit Judge Frank Hull wrote in the court's
majority opinion.
In a strongly worded dissent, Judge Rosemary Barkett wrote there is now "no
question" that Georgia will be executing a mentally retarded man.
If the U.S. Supreme Court does not grant the stay, Hill will be executed Monday
at 7 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison at Jackson, 50
miles south of Atlanta.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
*******************
Court declines to consider delaying Warren Lee Hill execution
A federal appeals court has declined to consider a request filed by the lawyers
for a Georgia death row inmate seeking to delay their client's execution until
after the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in.
Brian Kammer, a lawyer for Warren Lee Hill, had filed the request Monday. The
11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday sent him a letter saying the
court was returning his motion unfiled because Hill's case before the court is
closed.
Kammer asked the U.S. Supreme Court in May to review new evidence he has
submitted. The Supreme Court is currently scheduled to consider whether to take
up Hill's case on Sept. 30.
Kammer says he now plans to ask the Supreme Court to delay the execution until
it has taken action on the case.
(source: Associated Press)
*******************
Supreme Court is last hope to stop execution: Warren Hill----Further
information on UA 197/2012 Index: AMR 51/046/2013 USA Date: 8 July 2013
URGENT ACTION
Supreme Court is last hope to stop execution
Warren Hill is due to be put to death in Georgia, USA, on 15 July. All 7
experts who have assessed him now say that he has 'mental retardation', which
would make his execution unconstitutional. His lawyers are asking the US
Supreme Court to step in.
In 2002 a state judge found that Warren Hill - who was sentenced to death in
1991 for the 1990 murder of fellow prisoner Joseph Handspike - had
"significantly sub-average general intellectual functioning", but that he had
not, beyond a reasonable doubt, proved his "adaptive deficits'. In 1988,
Georgia's legislature had passed a law prohibiting the use of the death penalty
against anyone found "beyond a reasonable doubt??? to have "mental
retardation". The law defined this as the offender having "significantly
sub-average general intellectual functioning," resulting in "impairments in
adaptive behavior". The US Supreme Court ruled in 2002 in Atkins v. Virginia
that the execution of people with mental retardation violates the US
Constitution. Warren Hill???s lawyers appealed in light of the Atkins ruling.
This time the trial-level judge decided that the standard of proof should be "a
preponderance of the evidence", and that under this lower standard, Warren
Hill's impairment did amount to mental retardation. However, the state appealed
to the Georgia Supreme Court which in 2003 ruled 4-3 that the "beyond a
reasonable doubt" standard was acceptable in this context. The case went to the
federal courts, and in 2011 the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled
7-4 that, even if Georgia had "somehow inappropriately struck the balance" in
its statute, US law prevented a federal court from acting even if it considered
the state Supreme Court's decision upholding that law to be "incorrect or
unwise".
In February 2013, with all 7 experts involved in the case now agreeing that
Warren Hill had mental retardation (see below), the 11th Circuit stopped Warren
Hill's execution. However on 22 April the three-judge panel denied his new
petition on the grounds that it was barred under the restrictive standards
imposed on successive petitions by the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996. One of the judges dissented, arguing that "a
congressional act cannot be applied to trump Hill's constitutional right not to
be executed". She wrote that "the state of Georgia will execute a mentally
retarded man when it carries out the execution of Warren Lee Hill. There is no
question that Georgia will be executing a mentally retarded man because all
seven health experts who have ever evaluated Hill, both the State's and Hill's,
now unanimously agree that he is mentally retarded".
Warren Hill's lawyers are asking the US Supreme Court to stop the execution. It
had upheld the constitutionality of the AEDPA in 1996, finding that it had not
repealed the Court's power to consider "original habeas petitions" (in
exceptional circumstances to take a case brought directly to it rather than on
appeal from a lower court). Several US law professors have filed a brief
arguing that this is a case in which the Court should take this unusual step.
Please write immediately in English or your own language:
Noting that all seven experts who have assessed Warren Hill now agree that he
has mental retardation, which would render his execution unconstitutional;
Calling on the Attorney General to concede this and to support the petition for
Supreme Court intervention.
PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 15 JULY 2013 TO:
-
The Honorable Sam Olens, Attorney General of Georgia
40 Capitol Square, SW, Atlanta, GA 30334, USA
Fax: +1 404 657 8733
Email: agol...@law.ga.gov
Salutation: Dear Attorney General
And copies to: Governor Nathan Deal,
Georgia State Capitol, Atlanta, GA 30334, USA
Fax: +1 404 657 7332
Email: http://gov.georgia.gov/webform/contact-governor-international-form
Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country.
Please check with your section office if sending appeals after the above date.
This is the third update of UA 197/12. Further information:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/058/2012/en
--
URGENT ACTION
Supreme Court is last hope to stop execution
Additional Information
Signing the AEDPA into law on 24 April 1996, President Bill Clinton said: "For
too long, and in too many cases, endless death row appeals have stood in the
way of justice being served. From now on, criminals sentenced to death for
their vicious crimes will no longer be able to use endless appeals to delay
their sentences." The US Supreme Court has said that under the AEDPA federal
courts must operate a "highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court
rulings, which demands that state court decisions be given the benefit of the
doubt". The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary
executions expressed serious concern in 1998 that "the guarantee of due process
in capital cases [had] been seriously jeopardized" by the AEDPA, which placed
unprecedented restrictions on prisoners raising claims of constitutional
violations. In 2012, the UN Special Rapporteur reiterated concern about the
failure of the USA to address the AEDPA's curtailment of judicial review.
In its 22 April 2013 ruling in the Warren Hill case, the 11th Circuit panel
ruled 2-1 that the AEDPA barred his successive petition. In support of that
petition, Warren Hill's lawyers had filed affidavits signed in February 2013 by
the three experts who had testified for the state in late 2000 that they did
not believe Hill had mental retardation. In their affidavits, all three
revealed that they had changed their minds and now considered that Hill did
have mental retardation, thereby now agreeing with the 4 experts presented by
the defence in 2000. The 2 judges in the 11th Circuit majority said that they
had "considered with care and caution our colleague???s dissent. We are
required, however, to apply the rules of the AEDPA".
For her part, the dissenting judge wrote: "The state of Georgia and the
majority...take the position that a federal court cannot consider Hill's newly
discovered and compelling evidence because Congress's gate-keeping rules under
AEDPA preclude us from allowing a mentally retarded person to vindicate his
constitutional right to never be put to death. The perverse consequences of
such an application of AEDPA is that federal court must acquiesce to, even
condone, a state's insistence on carrying out the unconstitutional execution of
a mentally retarded person...The idea that courts are not permitted to
acknowledge that a mistake has been made which would bar an execution is quite
incredible for a country that not only prides itself on having the
quintessential system of justice but attempts to export it to the world as a
model of fairness". She further argued that the AEDPA should not be interpreted
to require the execution of a prisoner in a case where the current state of the
evidence "virtually guarantees that he can establish his mental retardation",
indeed can "satisfy even the preposterous burden of proof Georgia demands". No
other US state requires proof of mental retardation beyond a reasonable doubt
in the death penalty context. Indeed, a majority of the USA's 32 death penalty
states, and the federal government, utilize the "preponderance of the evidence"
standard, under which the Georgia trial-level judge found Warren Hill to have
mental retardation.
There is no petition for clemency before the Georgia Board of Pardons and
Paroles, which already denied clemency in 2012. The final hope for a stay of
execution rests with the US Supreme Court. Several leading mental health
professionals have signed an amici curiae (friends of the court) brief in
support of Warren Hill's petition to the Supreme Court, saying: "As clinicians
in the field of mental disabilities, amici are acutely conscious of the stakes
in capital cases, and believe that a death sentence cannot rest upon what are
now acknowledged to be diagnostic errors".
On 3 July 2013, a Georgia county court set a seven-day window in which the
execution of 53-year-old Warren Hill can be carried out. The execution warrant
is valid noon on 13 July and expires at noon on 20 July. The Commissioner of
the Georgia Department of Corrections has scheduled the execution for 7.00 pm
on 15 July at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.
There have been 18 executions in the USA this year, and 1,338 executions since
1977, 53 of them in Georgia. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in
all cases.
***************
online---see:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b=6645049&aid=520052
(source: Amnesty International)
***********************
Georgia Prepares To Execute Mentally Retarded Inmate
On Monday July 15th, Warren Hill is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the
Georgia Diagnostic State Prison in Jackson Georgia. Mr. Hill has seen execution
dates come and go as is often the custom in death penalty cases. Such appeals
and stays of execution are part of the system of checks and balances required
if the state is to use the ultimate punishment it can offer - the taking of a
life. But in Mr. Hill's case - a man who has an IQ of 70 and is mentally
retarded - the fact that we are again nearing yet another execution date is
showing that Georgia's death penalty is a system full of checks, but little
hint of balances.
This is not a column advocating for the repeal of Georgia's death penalty. Far
from it. As has been written in this space before, there is a huge difference
between cases such as Troy Davis' where last minute "evidence" appeared in
media accounts but did not appear in courts of law. This, rather, is a case
that illustrates that Georgia has the highest burden of proof for a defendant
to prove mental retardation. Furthermore, once that burden has been met, there
is almost no way under Georgia's law for subsequent evidence to clarify or
change the sentence of death once rendered.
Warren Hill's guilt is not at issue. He killed a fellow inmate while serving
time for a previous murder. He is not someone that will be returned to society
in hopes that he can be reformed and rehabilitated. At the time of his original
trial and sentencing however, the option of life without parole did not exist.
Today, instead, Georgia prepared to bring an international spotlight on itself
for the execution of a man who even the state experts who evaluated him during
his original trial now concede via sworn affidavit is mentally retarded.
The 3 state medical experts who originally stated that Mr. Hill was fit to
stand trial and eligible for the death penalty have since recanted their
testimony. Furthermore, during sentencing, the victim's family wasn't even
notified of the opportunity to give testimony to their opinion - usually the
kind of thing that makes headlines when the family wants death. In this case,
however, the family of John Handspike doesn't wish to see Hill executed.
Their victim impact statement and testimony was apparently not needed to sway
the jury when considering whether an unsympathetic person such as Warren Hill
should be allowed to continue to live, at the expense of the state. And yet, it
is precisely because he is so unsympathetic that our system of checks must have
balances. Mr. Hill is only receiving the procedural check thus far.
These customary checks made it through a 2012 appeal, where a Georgia State
Court judge ruled that Hill is a person with mental retardation, but that he
did not meet the standard "beyond a reasonable doubt". This is a check without
balance. And the headlines around the world are ready with that one declaration
to announce next Monday that Georgia has executed a man it knows to be mentally
retarded.
There is no greater power that the state has than to take a life. There should
be no greater balance applied against that state power than when this power is
contemplated. And yet, in Mr. Hill's case, it appears that his life and justice
for not only him but his victim has been reduced to a time consuming
bureaucratic maze of paper shuffling leading to an untimely but inevitable
conclusion.
Justice with respect to death penalty cases is rarely swift. But at its
conclusion, it must be certain. The appeals process cannot be allowed to be a
never ending series of last minute ploys to reexamine "new evidence" as has
become the custom in too many of these cases. But for an appeals process to be
meaningful, there must be some form of material effort to ensure that the
defendant, the victim (and victim's family), and the state as a whole receive
justice.
Warren Hill is not a sympathetic figure. Warren Hill is a murderer. Warren Hill
should not, and will not, be a person who is capable of returning to walking
among us as a free member of society.
But Warren Hill is also a person who is entitled to the checks and balances
that our system of justice affords more sympathetic and more capable members of
society. To date, he has not received this. And unless there are changes before
next Monday, he never will.
(source: Peach Pundit)
********************
GA Determined To Execute An Intellectually Disabled Man
Late afternoon on July 3 when the least possible number of people would be
paying attention, using a new law that makes the acquisition of execution drugs
a state secret, Georgia scheduled the execution of Warren Hill, who is now set
- barring intervention from the US Supreme Court or the Georgia Attorney
General - to be put to death on July 15.
Georgia authorities did this despite the fact that:
--The victim's family opposes the execution
--Several jurors from the trial now object to the execution
--All 7 doctors who have examined him now agree that Hill is intellectually
disabled
--The US Supreme Court banned execution of the intellectually disabled in 2002
--A petition on that very issue is currently pending at the Supreme Court,
scheduled to be considered on September 30, roughly 6 weeks after Warren Hill
is executed
--If the execution is carried out, it will be over the objections of whatever
companies manufacture whatever drugs Georgia officials have secretly acquired
To sum up: in scheduling this execution, Georgia authorities have managed to
display contempt for victims' families, jurors, doctors, health care companies,
and even Georgia taxpayers, who now are not allowed to know how their money is
being spent on the most awesome power a state can wield.
These actions are doubly disdainful of the US Supreme Court. Refusing to wait
until September, Peach State officials are planning an execution even though
the High Court has a petition pending, and even though the execution would
flout a landmark Supreme Court ruling. One hopes the Supreme Court will not
stand for this.
When a state has the power of life and death, particularly if that power can be
exercised with unaccountable secrecy, it can create a kind of arrogance that
might be the source of the Georgia government's contemptuous actions here. So
it is more important than ever that the rest of us, including the tax-paying
citizens of Georgia, redouble our efforts to take that power away.
This entry was posted in Death Penalty, Prisoners and People at Risk, USA and
tagged abolish the death penalty, death penalty, intellectual disability,
legislative and policy reform, lethal injection, mental retardation, prisoners
and people at risk, state of georgia, Supreme Court, us death penalty facts, us
scheduled executions, Warren Hill by Brian Evans. Bookmark the permalink.
(source: Brian Evans, Amnesty International USA, blog)
FLORIDA----stay of impending execution
Execution of Miami killer Gore halted again
For the 2nd time in less than 3 weeks, a court has stayed the execution of
Miami killer Marshall Lee Gore, who was set to die by lethal injection
Wednesday.
Gore was convicted and set to death row for the 1988 slaying of Lauderhill's
Robyn Novick, whose body was found stabbed and beaten in a trash heap near
Homestead.
On Tuesday, a Bradford County circuit judge agreed with Gore's defense lawyers
and found "reasonable grounds" that the death row inmate was too insane to be
executed. Circuit Judge Ysleta McDonald ordered more hearings.
The U.S. Supreme Court has said that executing insane inmates is cruel and
unusual punishment.
Gov. Rick Scott originally scheduled Gore to be executed on June 24 at the
Florida State Prison in Starke. However, 1 hour before the execution, the
Atlanta-based U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeal stayed the execution, giving
Gore a chance to flesh out the issue. 3 days later, the court lifted the stay,
saying Gore had not met the criteria for delaying the execution.
His attorneys turned to the state court in Bradford County, where Florida State
Prison is located.
Gore - notorious for his outrageous courtroom outbursts during his trials - is
also on death row for the 1988 murder of Tennessee college student Susan Marie
Roark, whose corpse was found in a rural area of Union County.
On Tuesday afternoon, retired Union County Sheriff's Lt. Neal Nydam talked to
her father, who had been planning to attend the execution.
"It's upsetting, but they're dealing with it," said Nydam, who was the lead
investigator on the case. "After 25 years of this up-and-down roller coaster,
they're actually a little bit understanding, knowing how [the legal] system
works."
Gore was arrested after he kidnapped a stripper named Tina at Tootsie's Cabaret
in North Miami-Dade. He raped the woman, slit her throat and bashed her head in
with a rock before leaving her to die in a rural area near Homestead.
She survived and alerted police that Gore had stolen her car - with her
2-year-old son Jimmy in the back seat.
Police later found the child in an abandoned Georgia home; Gore soon was
arrested.
Officers who had been looking for the toddler stumbled across Novick's corpse
in a trash heap near Homestead. She was last seen leaving a nearby tavern with
Gore.
Novick, 30, originally from Cincinnati, was a General Motors credit services
representative who met Gore during a brief stint moonlighting as a dancer at
Solid Gold in North Miami-Dade.
(source: Miami Herald)
*****************************
Florida man receives 2nd stay of execution
A former escort service owner who was scheduled to die by lethal injection at
Florida State Prison received a stay of execution Tuesday.
Attorney Todd Scher said a Bradford County judge on ordered a stay for Marshall
Lee Gore, who was set to die on Wednesday. Scher said he filed a motion to halt
the execution because he says his client is insane.
This isn't the 1st judge who has looked at whether Gore is mentally ill.
The 49-year-old was supposed to be executed on June 24, but the 11th Circuit
Court of Appeals halted the proceedings less than 2 hours before he was to have
received a lethal injection. A federal appeals court lifted the stay on June
28.
Gore was convicted of the March 11, 1988, killing of Robyn Novick, a
30-year-old exotic dancer whose naked body was found in a rural part of
Miami-Dade County, partly covered by a blue tarpaulin. Gore was also sentenced
to die for the slaying in January 1988 of Susan Roark, whose body was found a
few months later in Columbia County in northern Florida.
In addition to the 2 death sentences, Gore was given seven life sentences plus
another 110 years in a case involving the attempted murder of a 3rd woman.
The woman, an exotic dancer, testified during the trial for the Novick killing
that she was beaten with a rock; choked, raped and stabbed; and left near the
spot where Novick's body was found. The woman was attacked 2 days after Novick
disappeared. Novick had been stabbed and strangled.
It was the attempt against the 3rd woman's life that led to Gore's arrest: He
was convicted of stealing the victim's Red Toyota, which the FBI tracked to
Paducah, Ky.
Gore's attorneys have argued before that he is mentally ill. One previous
lawyer claimed Gore was "mentally deranged" and not responsible for his
actions. But several judges concluded he was using a claim of mental illness to
manipulate the judicial process.
When asked by a judge in the Novick case if he felt competent to proceed he
replied, "I'm absolutely competent. I'm absolutely lucid." He had frequent
verbal outbursts during the trial, laughed out loud and even howled.
********************
Execution scheduled for Fla. man in 1988 slaying
A former escort service owner who was convicted of killing 2 women is scheduled
to die by lethal injection at Florida State Prison on Wednesday.
The execution of Marshall Lee Gore is set for 6 p.m.
The 49-year-old Gore was supposed to be executed on June 24, but the 11th
Circuit Court of Appeals approved a motion filed by Gore's attorney less than 2
hours before he was to have received a lethal injection. A federal appeals
court lifted the stay of execution on June 28.
Gore was convicted of the March 11, 1988, killing of Robyn Novick, a
30-year-old exotic dancer whose naked body was found in a rural part of
Miami-Dade County, partly covered by a blue tarpaulin. Gore was also sentenced
to die for the slaying in January 1988 of Susan Roark, whose body was found a
few months later in Columbia County in northern Florida.
In addition to the 2 death sentences, Gore was given seven life sentences plus
another 110 years in a case involving the attempted murder of a 3rd woman.
The woman, an exotic dancer, testified during the trial for the Novick killing
that she was beaten with a rock; choked, raped and stabbed; and left near the
spot where Novick's body was found. The woman was attacked 2 days after Novick
disappeared. Novick had been stabbed and strangled.
It was the attempt against the 3rd woman's life that led to Gore's arrest: He
was convicted of stealing the victim's Red Toyota, which the FBI tracked to
Paducah, Ky.
Gore's attorneys have argued before that he is mentally ill. One previous
lawyer claimed Gore was "mentally deranged" and not responsible for his
actions. But several judges concluded he was using a claim of mental illness to
manipulate the judicial process.
When asked by a judge in the Novick case if he felt competent to proceed he
replied, "I'm absolutely competent. I'm absolutely lucid." He had frequent
verbal outbursts during the trial, laughed out loud and even howled.
(source for both: Associated Press)
OHIO:
Ohio lawyer pleads for client to be spared death penalty for an unusual reason
A lawyer for a condemned Ohio man says the inmate's brain was permanently
damaged by drug and alcohol abuse by the time he committed the killing that
sent him to death row.
Defense attorney Joe Wilhelm says inmate Billy Slagle committed an impulsive
crime that wouldn't have happened but for his substance addiction.
Wilhelm told the Ohio Parole Board Monday that the state can do better than
putting Slagle to death for the 1987 killing in Cleveland.
Slagle is asking the board to recommend his sentence be commuted to life
without parole.
Slagle's clemency case is unusual because the Cuyahoga County prosecutor has
also said he wants Slagle's death sentence commuted.
Slagle is scheduled to die Aug. 7 for fatally stabbing neighbor Mari Anne Pope
during a burglary.
(source: Associated Press)
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