Aug. 28
TEXAS----impending execution
see: http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-execution-of-robert-garza
(source: change.org)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Amanda Hein: Mum 'killed baby and hid body in bar's toilet'; The 26-year-old
then carried on drinking with her friends, it is claimed
A mum suffocated her newborn son in a pub toilet then carried on drinking with
her friends, it is claimed.
Amanda Hein, 26, who had kept the pregnancy secret, gave birth in the toilet
cubicle before putting her baby in a plastic bag and stuffing him in the
cistern, prosecutors say.
The body was found the next day by a cleaner investigating why the loo would
not flush.
District Attorney John Morganelli told a US court hearing: "Even having been a
prosecutor for 20 years, it is very upsetting. I've seen dead people... shot,
strangled. But when you're dealing with a baby, it's very difficult."
Hein has been charged with criminal homicide and could face the death penalty
if convicted.
Court papers say that on August 18 Hein went to Starters pub near Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania, with pals to watch WWE wrestling on TV.
It is also said that Hein, of nearby Allentown, went to the loo complaining of
back pain, and was gone for 40 minutes.
Prosecutors claim Hein hid the baby in the cistern, then went for a cigarette
before returning to her pals.
A friend who drove her home an hour later offered to take her to hospital
because she had blood on her clothes, but Hein said she was fine.
Mr Morganelli added that when police tracked Hein down she told them her baby
was alive when she put him in the bag.
A postmortem failed to determine if the baby was suffocated by the bag or the
cistern.
(source: DailyMirror)
GEORGIA:
State Supreme Court Considers Execution Drug
The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously agreed Monday to reconsider a stay of
execution. It's for death row inmate Warren Lee Hill. One expert says the case
could halt all of Georgia's executions.
A new state law makes certain information about drugs used in executions a
"confidential state secret".
Many companies are reluctant to make such drugs, fearing a public backlash.
Lawmakers want to keep the information confidential to ensure a supply.
Georgia's supply of pentobarbital has expired. Hill's attorneys argue they
should get more information about the compounding of the new drug to ensure it
won't cause pain and suffering during the death penalty. A Fulton County judge
agreed to stay his execution. But now the state is appealing that ruling.
UGA law professor emeritus Ronald Carlson says if the State Supreme Court
sustains Hill's argument, it will have major implications for all death row
inmates in Georgia.
He says "All death row sentences will go on hold until the compound that's
going to be used in these lethal injections gets legitimated or clarified. This
may be simply the start of a process that could last for some time."
Carlson says if the state Supreme Court does support Hill's claim the General
Assembly might have to go back and change the law.
Carlson says this is an important constitutional question. "The public does not
know what the new drug will be consisting of and how it's compounded." He says
"These are legitimate concerns. Not that they are concerns that will ultimately
wind up in freeing Warren Lee Hill. But certainly they are concerns that a
state Supreme Court ought to take a look at."
Carlson says it's likely that oral arguments won't be heard until December or
January.
The State Supreme Court is asking the parties to address 4 questions.
Is the case moot since the current supply of pentobarbital has expired and is
it unclear how the state would obtain a new supply of execution drugs?
Did the Fulton County Superior Court have the authority to stay Hill's
execution?
Could the whole issue of the statute's constitutionality be avoided if Hill
were given a sample of the drug for testing or given other information the
statute does not prohibit?
Did Fulton County Judge Gail Tusan err by issuing the stay based on Hill's
challenge of the statute's constitutionality?
A spokeswoman for the state Attorney General's office says they aren't
commenting. They will let the case play out in court.
(source: GPB News)
FLORIDA----new death sentence
Jury recommends death penalty in Michael Bargo murder trial
Late Tuesday afternoon a Marion County jury recommended death for Michael
Bargo.
Last week, the jury convicted Bargo of 1st-degree murder in the 2011 slaying of
15-year-old Seath Jackson.
"By a vote of 10 to 2, we the jury recommend the defendant be sentenced to
death," the court clerk read aloud.
Bargo stood by his attorney as he learned the same jury that convicted him
decided he deserved to die.
Investigators said in 2011 Bargo and 4 others lured Jackson to a home, beat
him, shot him to death, burned and dismembered his body. They then stuffed the
remains in paint buckets and dumped them in a rock quarry.
On Tuesday prosecutors called it a cold, calculated and premeditated murder
that was prompted by a dispute over a girl.
"He wanted Seath alive in the bathtub, so when Seath took his last breath, the
last thing he would see is the defendant standing over him," prosecutor Amy
Berndt said in court.
They asked jurors to recommend death, but Bargo's defense attorney argued that
Bargo didn't act alone. The others involved in the case are now serving life
sentences.
He also said it's clear Bargo is mentally ill and either way, he'll die in
prison. "The killing of Michael Bargo will not bring back Seath Jackson,"
defense attorney Charles Holloman said in court.
But Holloman didn't sway the jurors.
Afterward, Sonia Jackson, Seath Jackson's mother, said she finally has some
justice for her son.
"(Bargo) made his choice when he took Seath's life. He decided his own fate,"
she said.
The judge will take the death recommendation and make the final decision on
Bargo's sentence, likely sometime next month.
If Bargo is sentenced to death, at 21 years old he'll be the youngest person on
Florida's death row.
(source: WFTV)
**********************
Jury recommends death for man who killed Marion 15-year-old
A Marion County jury recommended the death penalty Tuesday for a man who beat
and shot a 15-year-old boy to death, then burned his body and dumped the ashes.
After about 6 hours of deliberation, the jury voted 10-2 in favor of death for
Michael Bargo, 21. A judge will make the final decision at a sentencing hearing
scheduled for Sept. 11.
Bargo testified during the sentencing phase of his trial. The only other option
for the jury was life in prison.
The same jury found Bargo guilty Aug. 20 of 1st-degree murder in the death of
Seath Jackson. Prosecutors said Bargo was the mastermind behind a plot to kill
the teen, who was lured to his death in April 2011 at a house in Summerfield.
After Bargo and 2 others hit Seath in the head, Bargo shot him, testimony
showed. The friends put Seath in a bathtub, where Bargo broke his knees. Then
they stuffed his body into a sleeping bag and burned it in a fire pit.
The group dumped the youth's ashes into paint cans and discarded them in a rock
quarry.
4 other young people - Amber Wright, 17, Kyle Hooper, 19, Charlie Kay Ely, 21,
and Justin Soto, 22, are serving life sentences after being convicted of
1st-degree murder.
A 39-year-old man, James Havens, is charged as an accessory after the fact to
1st-degree murder, but a judge last year ruled him incompetent to stand trial.
(source: Orlando Sentinel)
*************************
50 years later, a Florida injustice is remembered
Today marks a very important 50th anniversary in the annals of American
justice.
No, not that one.
On the day that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of his dream on the steps of
the Lincoln Memorial, Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee were beginning a nightmare
that would put them in prison for 12 years - 9 on death row. They were
convicted of abducting, robbing and murdering 2 filling station attendants near
Port St. Joe.
They didn't do it. But by the standards of what passed for Panhandle justice in
1963, it took less than 4 weeks for them to go from being free men to condemned
convicts.
Pitts and Lee said confessions were beaten out of them. They said they were
advised to plead guilty and avoid a trial, to hope a jury would spare them the
electric chair. That was a long shot.
Their appeals might not have taken a whole lot longer than their sentencing, if
not for a South Florida lie-detector expert and his friend, a Miami Herald
reporter who would earn a Pulitzer Prize and write a book titled,
appropriately, "Invitation to a Lynching." Miami Public Defender Phil Hubbart
and attorney Irwin Block took the case pro bono and found a large, target-rich
landscape of reversible errors.
There was also a courageous governor and attorney general (possibly ruining his
chance to become governor) who got them a pardon.
Years later, the Legislature gave Pitts and Lee $500,000 each for their
wrongful conviction. But even then, the case had political fallout.
The criminologist, Warren Holmes, ran a lie-detector test on a con named Curtis
Adams, who said he had killed the men in Port St. Joe. Adams was serving life
for a strikingly similar gas station holdup-murder in Fort Lauderdale.
Holmes took his tale to Gene Miller, the late Miami reporter who was to spend 9
years on the case. Miller documented all kinds of holes in it.
Hubbart and Block finally got the men a real trial, but they were convicted
again. Adams took the Fifth, which was better than taking Pitts' and Lee's
place on death row, and the court would not allow jurors to hear a recording of
his confession. That retrial was partly prompted by Attorney General Bob Shevin
filing a rare "confession of error," admitting that the state had withheld
exculpatory evidence.
Black citizens had also been consciously excluded from the grand jury and trial
jury that sent them to death row. That sort of thing was considered picky
little details in 1963.
Pitts and Lee were convicted again but the U.S. Supreme Court had thrown out
capital punishment nationwide, so they got life sentences. Hubbart and Block
began the appeals treadmill again.
By 1975, Shevin and Gov. Reubin Askew had enough. Askew moved for a pardon and
got Treasurer Phil Ashler and Education Commissioner Ralph Turlington to sign
on. The Cabinet can't declare somebody innocent, but it can grant clemency.
Askew, himself a former prosecutor in Pensacola, and Shevin, who'd been a tough
law-and-order legislator from Miami, said there was substantial evidence that
the men were not merely denied fair trials, but were factually innocent.
It might have cost Shevin the 1978 Democratic nomination for governor.
Pitts and Lee moved to Miami. Pitts became a truck driver and Lee worked in a
counseling program that tried to steer young men away from lives that were
leading to prison. He lost that job, though, when the Legislature passed a law
in 1985 saying ex-cons couldn't work with kids. Even wrongly convicted ones who
were pardoned.
The Legislature passed a claims bill in 1998, awarding each man $500,000 for
the disruption of their lives. That works out to about $114 per day in prison.
The compensation bill had failed for several sessions and the only reason it
passed was that the Democrats, who then ran the Legislature, had a major racial
mess on their hands. They had dumped Rep. Willie Logan, D-Opa locka, who would
have become the 1st black House speaker if his party had regained its majority
in 1998. Black members walked out of the Democratic caucus when the vote was
taken, and the Pitts-Lee compensation bill was a late, lame effort to patch
things up.
Fed up with clearly guilty killers languishing on death row 30 years or more,
lawmakers passed a "timely justice act" this year to move things along. It has
been challenged in court, of course.
The famous Pitts-Lee case is not an argument against the death penalty. But
it's a warning that if we're going to do it, we've got to get it right, every
time.
(source: Bill Cotterell; Tallahassee.com)
ALABAMA:
Trial begins for Birmingham drug dealer charged with murder for hire in 2010
shooting death of man
Testimony began this morning in the trial of a Birmingham drug dealer charged
with murder for hire in the 2010 shooting death of another man.
Herbert S. Dugger Jr., 25, is on trial for capital murder in the July 21, 2010
shooting death of Kelvin Smith, 25, on Steiner Avenue in Birmingham. If
convicted, Dugger could face the death penalty.
Dugger is alleged to have taken $7,000 from another man to kill Smith,
according to court documents. The man who allegedly hired him, however, has not
been charged in the slaying.
Keyon Pace testified that on the night of Smith's death he, Dugger and Dugger's
girlfriend Talisa Young, were riding around in a car. He said that he and
Dugger made a couple of drug sales. At one point Dugger said he needed to go to
Steiner Avenue, Pace said.
When they arrived at a Steiner Avenue apartment complex Young stayed in the car
while he and Dugger got out and sat down on a stoop outside waiting for what he
thought was going to be another drug sale, Pace testified. A man, who he didn't
know, walked by them and returned about 10 minutes later and again didn't say
anything to them, he said.
As the man near the top of a flight of stairs Dugger pulled out a gun and shot
the man in the back, Pace said.
Pace said he took off running after that first shot and moments later heard 2
more shots.
Deputy Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr told jurors in opening
statements this morning that Smith was shot once in the back and twice in the
face.
Pace testified that after the shooting Dugger got in the car driven by Young
and as they rode Dugger threw the gun and gun clips into sewers. Dugger also
later washed his hands off with gasoline, Pace said.
Pace testified that Dugger told him later why he had shot the man. "He told me
he did a job for the boss man," he said.
According to the indictment against Dugger and testimony today, the man who
allegedly hired Dugger to kill Smith was a man named Daryle Jones.
Jones has not been charged in Smith's death.
Pace said that two days after the shooting Dugger paid him $150 and told him to
keep quiet. Dugger was driving a used Lincoln Town Car he had bought after the
shooting, Pace testified.
In opening statements today one of Dugger's attorneys, Kate Pritchett, told
jurors that only after Pace was arrested and charged in 2011 with being a felon
in possession of a firearm did he step forward to talk to police about Smith's
death, which by then had become a cold case. Pace, who was sentenced to 10
years in federal prison, testified that he did get a lesser sentence for
cooperating.
Pritchett also told jurors that there are no fingerprints or other physical
evidence linking Dugger to Smith's slaying. She said she expected evidence to
show that Smith was holding a bag with a grassy substance in it when he was
shot.
Pritchett told jurors that the prosecutors' case relies on the testimony of
Pace and Dugger's girlfriend, both of whom were no longer friends with Dugger.
She said there are inconsistencies in Pace and Young's stories about what
happened.
Neither Pace nor Young were charged in connection with Smith's shooting death.
Dugger was a drug dealer and that explains why he had the cash to buy a car,
Pritchett said.
Attorney Katheree Hughes Jr. is also representing Dugger.
(source: al.com)
LOUISIANA:
DA: Too early for death penalty call against accused cop; Decision won't be
made until after discussions with homicide victim's family.
It's too soon to say the homicide case against a Natchitoches police officer
will evolve into a capital murder trial, Sabine Parish District Attorney Don
Burkett said.
Burkett, who's prosecuted a number of death penalty cases in Sabine and DeSoto
parishes, said more work needs to done to comb through and document the
evidence before such a call is made.
"But it certainly qualifies as one option we're seriously considering," Burkett
said.
High on Burkett's agenda is to sit down and talk with the family of homicide
victim Tony Procell, whose body was discovered Sunday in a shallow grave in
Winn Parish. Barthelemy on Monday was charged with 1st-degree murder in
Procell's death.
Burkett said he is allowing time for Procell's family to grieve and make
funeral arrangements. "So I won't make any public statements about what we will
be doing until I've visited with the family. This is not a decision that has to
be immediately made."
A grand jury indictment also is required for 1st-degree murder. The panel will
be convened in the coming days, but Burkett does not have a definite date.
He's been personally involved in the investigation of Barthelemy since the
reported kidnapping of Procell on Aug. 20 from his home in Many. But Burkett
said he still wants a written file from the Sabine Parish Sheriff's Office in
hand to review before asking a grand jury to indict Barthelemy.
And he's not pushing investigators toward a deadline. "They're all exhausted
and there's a lot of information that had to be gathered. I won't schedule the
grand jury until I get the file."
In some instances, making the decision on classifying a case as capital murder
can take weeks. For example, Burkett just last week filed a notice of intent to
seek the death penalty against Melvin C. Maxie, 29, of Many.
Maxie and another man, Philip Dewayne Jones, 22, of Many, were arrested in May
in connection with the shooting death of Tyruss Thomas, 27, also of Many. Maxie
is charged with 1st-degree murder, and Jones with 2nd-degree murder. A 3rd man,
Marcello B. Hicks, 32, was arrested last month on a charge of accessory after
the fact to 1st-degree murder.
Thomas called 911 to report he was being chased by another vehicle on state
Highway 6 in Many and had been shot in the back. His phone went dead, and
authorities found his vehicle flipped and submerged in a creek. He died at the
scene. 2 bullet holes were found in the rear of his vehicle.
The decision to pursue the death penalty against Maxie, a convicted drug dealer
who has other drug charges pending in Sabine District Court, is based on the
fact that he is alleged to have killed a man who was going to testify against
him in a criminal case.
"I feel very strongly about a situation involving a witness in a case," Burkett
said. "We had a lot of evidence that was slow in developing. Once I was sure I
could prove a 1st-degree murder then I took it to a grand jury and got an
indictment."
As for Barthelemy, even though a decision is pending on making his case a
capital offense the nonprofit Capital Assistance Project of Louisiana (CAPOLA)
has been appointed by the indigent defender board to represent him. Shreveport
attorney Daryl Gold visited with Barthelemy Monday and Tuesday at the Sabine
Parish Detention Center. He anticipates formally enrolling as Barthelemy's
attorney this week.
In addition to 1st-degree murder, Barthelemy is charged with aggravated
kidnapping and home invasion. Sabine authorities say Barthelemy, 34, a 2-year
veteran of the Natchitoches Police Department, kidnapped Procell, 25, at
gunpoint from his Many home. The men knew each other from their service in the
Louisiana Army National Guard, and a domestic situation involving the men and a
woman reportedly was at the center of their dispute.
Barthelemy was arrested less than 24 hours after Procell's abduction. He
provided conflicting information to investigators as to Procell's whereabouts
then stopped talking. Barthelemy's father-in-law found the body near Saline
Lake in an area where the 2 duck hunted.
Forensic anthropologist Mary Manhein, who heads the LSU Forensic Anthropology
and Computer Enhancement Services lab in Baton Rouge, joined Dr. James Traylor,
forensic pathologist from LSUHSC pathology department, Tuesday in Shreveport to
conduct a thorough examination of the body and skull. Manhein agreed to
reconstruct the skull to identify the cause and mechanism of death, Sabine
Parish Deputy Coroner Ron Rivers said.
A shovel suspected of being used to bury Procell was recovered near the body.
And a baseball bat with blood on it was recovered in the vicinity of the scene.
Sheriff Ronny Richardson said Monday the bat was the "probable murder weapon."
DNA samples will be taken from both items to be certain, Rivers said, adding
that Manhein's reconstruction process will take up to 2 weeks to complete.
(source: Shreveport Times)
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