Aug. 21
PENNSYLVANIA:
Pa. death row inmate wins appeal after 21 years; US judge finds 'grave
miscarriage of justice'
A federal judge has overturned the conviction of a man who's been on death row
for the past 21 years, finding that his conviction in the death of a teenager
killed over her earrings was based on "scant evidence at best."
Senior U.S. District Judge Anita Brody called the case against James Dennis "a
grave miscarriage of justice" and found that authorities withheld evidence.
In a ruling Wednesday, she ordered the 42-year-old Dennis released from prison
unless prosecutors retry him within six months. The district attorney's office
was reviewing the ruling and had no immediate comment, a spokeswoman said.
The judge found that Dennis was convicted based on "shaky eyewitness
identifications" following the shooting at a transit stop in the city's Fern
Rock section in 1991. The 3 witnesses described 17-year-old Chedell Williams'
killer as much taller than the 5-foot-5-inch Dennis, according to the ruling.
The judge also questioned the identification techniques used during a police
photo array and police lineup, techniques that have come under frequent
scrutiny in death penalty appeals and that many police departments have since
revised.
Williams, a high school student, had been at the train station with a female
friend. Witnesses told police that at least two men were involved, and possibly
a 3rd as a getaway driver, but Dennis was the only person charged.
Also, the other girl told relatives that she knew the two assailants from high
school, although she had never seen the men. The relatives passed the
information to police, but they never followed up on it, the judge found.
"Improper police work characterized nearly the entirety of the investigation,"
the judge said.
Dennis was about 20 and had only a minor drug arrest on his record when he was
charged in Williams' death. He had a child born after he went to prison, said
pro bono lawyer Ryan Guilds, who has worked on his appeal since 1999.
"For him, as a father, for him to have been accused of this horrible crime has
really taken a toll on him," Guilds said.
Dennis now hopes to be reunited with his mother and 2 daughters, he said.
Dennis had maintained that he was on a bus the afternoon of the shooting and
offered an acquaintance who saw him there as an alibi witness. The woman told
police she had taken the bus several hours later. However, the appellate
lawyers, after the 1992 trial, found a receipt from a stop she made that day
that makes it more likely that she had taken the bus earlier than she recalled.
Lawyers from the federal public defender's office and the Pennsylvania
Innocence Project also worked on the case.
"The eyewitness identifications were highly suspect," said Marissa Boyers
Bluestine, legal director of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. "When we have
convictions based entirely on eyewitness identification, there have been calls
to disallow the death penalty at all. ... The risk of a misidentification is so
great that that should be off the table."
(source: Associated Press)
USA:
Death penalty debate a sleepy affair in slow-moving Guantanamo court
Star defendant Khalid Sheikh Mohammed appeared to doze off momentarily on
Wednesday during an arcane courtroom debate over whether the charges against
him and four alleged co-conspirators in the September 11 plot were properly
sent to trial as a death penalty case.
The issue is literally a matter of life and death, but the legal debate has
inched along over several pretrial hearings at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval
Base, rendering it torpid.
Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the hijacked plane plot, was awakened
before 5 a.m. for the trip from his cell to the top-security courtroom. Wearing
a camouflage jacket over his white tunic, he rested his head in his hands at
one point during the hearing and appeared to nod off for a moment, then seemed
to jolt awake and resumed reading along with the legal documents.
Defense attorneys asked the judge in April 2012 to drop the charges, arguing
that the Pentagon appointee overseeing the tribunal had rushed to refer it for
trial as a death penalty case without giving them a chance to present
potentially mitigating evidence. That mainly involves allegations that the
defendants were tortured during CIA interrogations.
18 months later, the request is not yet ripe for a ruling. The issue before the
judge on Wednesday was whether to compel testimony from 2 legal advisers
involved in the decision.
Navy Commander Walter Ruiz, who represents Saudi defendant Mustafa al Hawsawi,
said the appointee who signed off on the death penalty decision, retired Vice
Admiral Bruce MacDonald, was an "absentee landlord" who spent most of his time
at his home in the Seattle area and left his Washington D.C. office in the
hands of the 2 legal advisers.
The defendants have been in U.S. custody since 2002 and 2003 and face charges
that include conspiring with al Qaeda, terrorism and murder. They are accused
of training and funding the hijackers who rammed 4 commercial jets into the
World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania in 2001, killing
nearly 3,000 people.
Prosecutors hope to start the trial in September 2014. Defense lawyers say it
could take them years longer to prepare. As the hearings drag on, prosecutors
regularly accuse the defense of stalling, and the defense lawyers accuse the
prosecutors of ignoring requests for evidence.
The judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, seemed exasperated on Wednesday when a
prosecutor said he actually had some documents that Ruiz sought to obtain but
had not turned them over because he considered them irrelevant.
"Why don't you just hand them to Commander Ruiz? Why are wasting time on this?"
the judge said. "That may be a better use of our time than sitting here
discussing this for 15 or 20 minutes."
(source: Reuters)
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