Feb. 4
WEST VIRGINIA:
Co-sponsors of death penalty bill hope to take burden off state
Felons convicted of 1st-degree murder could face the death penalty in West
Virginia if the Legislature approves a bill calling for its implementation.
Delegate John Overington, R-Berkeley, has introduced House Bill 2595, a piece
of legislation that would make the death penalty a sentencing option for people
convicted of 1st-degree murder. The bill's co-sponsors include Delegate Joe
Ellington, R-Mercer; Delegate John Shott, R-Mercer; and Delegate Marty
Gearheart, R-Mercer.
"I have been a supporter of that, a co-sponsor, if you will," Gearheart said
Monday. "Delegate Overington has supported this every year he has been in the
Legislature. It appears to me an appropriate deterrent to the most heinous
crimes, where there is no possibility of reforming a person back into society."
The death penalty would be for the worst cases, he said.
"We're talking about the most heinous individuals who are going to be a burden
to the state of West Virginia for many, many years to come with their
incarceration and the cost associated with it," Gearheart said.
The bill would amend the state's constitution, said Ellington, who added he has
co-sponsored the bill for several years.
"It would be in cases where it was clear cut 1st-degree murder, no doubt,"
Ellington said.
Like Gearheart, Ellington said the penalty would be available for extreme
cases.
"Some people feel we should have that as a possibility," he said. "Not that we
want to terminate people, but there are probably some bad characters out there
we don't want to let back into society. It gives us an extra tool, rather than
settling on life in prison at taxpayer expense; especially since we have
overcrowded jails."
(source: Bluefield Daily Telegraph)
OHIO:
Ohio Death Penalty Under ReviewM
The controversial execution of a convicted killer in January at the Southern
Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville is under review by the State
Department of Corrections and Ohio's governor says his support for the death
penalty has not wavered.
Republican John Kasich answered questions about the execution during a
legislative forum sponsored by the Ohio Associated Press.
It took Dennis McGuire about 25 minutes to die when he received a lethal
injection using a new combination of drugs.
Kasich says his corrections chief and others are conducting a thorough review
of the procedure.
Gov. Kasich says the state is not in a hurry to put anyone to death and a
careful examination of the process will be completed.
(source: WMKY news)
********************
Motions argued in death penalty case
Attorneys for a man facing the death penalty in the fire deaths of 2 people
sparred with prosecutors in a courtroom Monday about what can be said or
presented to the jury.
There wasn't much either side agreed to in the case against Hager Church other
than for written jury instructions.
During an argument over how much rebuttal evidence prosecutors can present
should the case make it to the phase where jurors decide on a penalty, Church's
lead attorney, Greg Meyers, took offense to prosecutors' view that the motion
would require them to present the evidence twice, first to the judge to see if
it can go before the jury and 2nd to the jury.
Meyers said that was not what he had intended, only to guard against evidence
that shouldn't make it before the jury, so the verdict isn't at risk should the
case be appealed. As an example, he said pictures of dead bodies should be
limited from the view of jurors and not on display throughout the trial.
"You can set your straw man up and blow him down. I am not a beginner," Meyers
said.
Prosecutor Juergen Waldick said it was not his 1st death penalty case, either,
and he found it ironic the defense was worried about a possible reversal on
appeal.
"We're the ones concerned on appeal, not the defense," Waldick said.
Church is charged with 2 counts of aggravated murder with a death penalty
specification and aggravated arson in the June 14, 2009, house fire that killed
Massie "Tina" Flint, 45, and her boyfriend, Rex Hall, 54. The fire was at 262
S. Pine St.
The fire originally was classified an accident but additional information
surfaced that led police investigators to take a closer look. Police said
Church confessed to the killings.
Judge Jeffrey Reed granted a motion to allow potential jurors to be questioned
individually, by themselves, in the courtroom during jury selection if they
make the 1st cut.
Reed also set March 3 to hear a motion to suppress Church's statements to
investigators.
Church already is serving a life sentence with no chance for parole for the
Aug. 16, 2010, beating death of Debra Henderson in her home at 619 Woodward
Ave. He killed Henderson over a few dollars and costume jewelry, according to
testimony.
(source: limaohio.com)
ILLINOIS:
Human Rights Activist to Speak on Capital Punishment
On Thursday Feb. 6, Illinois Wesleyan will welcome guest speaker Sandra
Babcock, Northwestern law professor and international human rights advocate.
She will address how the international movement against the death penalty will
affect American laws in her speech titled, "Global Politics, Morality and the
Declining Use of the Death Penalty."
The event, which is hosted by the Political Science Department and The Center
for Human Rights and Social Justice, is free and open to the public and will be
held at 4 p.m. in Beckman Auditorium on the lower level of The Ames Library (1
Ames Plaza, Bloomington).
"Professor Babcock's work provides a model for the aspirations of many of our
own students and their planned careers in human rights," said Greg Shaw, IWU
professor of political science who will introduce Babcock at the event.
After earning a juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School in 1991, Babcock
has made a career specializing in international rights litigation, access to
justice, death penalty defense and the application of international law in the
United States. She served as a staff attorney at the Texas Resource Center, a
public defender in Minnesota and as the director of the Mexican Foreign
Ministry???s Mexican Capital Legal Assistance Program. She has argued many
cases in state supreme courts, as well as in the International Court of
Justice, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Since joining the faculty at Northwestern in 2006, Babcock has worked with her
students on diverse human rights projects. Her students have the opportunity to
gain experience in inter alia, the representation of Mexican nationals on death
row, representing Guantanamo detainees, solutions to prevent overcrowding in
Malawian prisons, documentation for the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation
Commission and advocacy for the Convention of the Rights of the Child.
Babcock has also participated in human rights fieldwork in Liberia, Malawi,
South Africa and Brazil. While serving as director of the Mexican Capital Legal
Assistance Program, which assists Mexican nationals facing death row in the
United States, she was awarded the Aguila Azteca, the highest honor the
government of Mexico bestows upon citizens of other nations.
(source: Illinois Wesleyan University news)
TENNESSEE:
Death row inmate's appeal to Supreme Court to be heard Wednesday
On Wednesday, the state Supreme Court will hear arguments for an appeal by
Jerry Ray Davidson, 70, who remains on death row for murdering a Dickson woman.
In February last year the state Court of Criminal Appeals denied
post-conviction relief for Davidson. But on June 14, the Supreme Court granted
permission to appeal from that denial.
Davidson was convicted of 1st-degree murder and especially aggravated
kidnapping for the death of Virginia Jackson, 43, in 1995 after they left a bar
at closing time. In September 1997, a jury sentenced Davidson to die in the
electric chair.
The Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee took up Davidson's appeal for
post-conviction relief during their May 2012 session, and filed their findings
Feb. 7.
The appellate court affirmed the Dickson County Circuit Court's denial of
post-conviction relief to Davidson from his convictions of 1st-degree
premeditated murder and aggravated kidnapping, and his sentence of death.
In 2003, the Tennessee Supreme Court agreed prosecutors proved the crime was
premeditated.
The case
A bartender said she last saw Jackson Sept. 26, 1995 at Bronco's bar in Lyles,
and Jackson accepted a ride from Davidson, a convicted sex offender. Jackson's
body was found nude and decapitated in a shallow grave weeks later along the
Dickson-Houston county line.
Jackson was the cousin of former state Rep. Doug Jackson, who later sponsored a
bill to put convicted sex offenders' information on the Internet.
Davidson told police he gave the 43-year-old mother of 2 a ride to the Kroger
grocery store in Dickson, then went on a long camping trip.
Investigators found a campsite about half a mile from the grave with items they
said belonged to Jackson and Davidson, including a couple of Davidson's
auto-teller bank receipts and Jackson's purse and brush. Men's underwear,
shorts and a lady's hair clip were found near the grave.
The appeal
Davidson based his appeal on: ineffective assistance of counsel; jury
selection; his lawyers' visit to the sequestered jurors' hotel; the prosecution
suppressed evidence; the testimony of the forensic pathologist who performed
Jackson's autopsy; and the constitutionality of the death penalty.
Davidson argued his counsel should have presented evidence demonstrating that
he was incapable of forming the requisite culpable mental state required for a
finding of 1st-degree premeditated murder, instead of challenging the
sufficiency of the state's evidence.
Davidson claimed the state withheld impeachment evidence concerning the
Tennessee Bureau Investigation review of Dr. Charles Harlan, a forensic
pathologist who performed the victim's autopsy. Harlan described the condition
of Jackson's body during the trial.
According to Davidson, the state already had dismissed Harlan as state medical
examiner by the time he performed Jackson's autopsy, barred him from the TBI
laboratory, and begun an investigation which would ultimately result in the
permanent revocation of Harlan's medical license. So the state was aware of
Harlan's incredibility as a medical professional, lack of integrity, and
propensity to destroy and/or desecrate evidence, Davidson said.
(source: The Tennessean)
KENTUCKY:
Lone woman on Kentucky death row loses appeal
A federal judge on Monday rejected an appeal from the lone woman awaiting
execution in Kentucky after concluding her attorney wasn???t deficient at trial
and there wasn't any evidence a co-defendant acted on his own.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves in Lexington moves
53-year-old Virginia Susan Caudill a step closer to an execution date as the
state and several inmates battle through litigation over whether a lethal
injection process involving either 1 or 2 drugs passes constitutional muster.
In a 125-page opinion, Reeves turned away a multitude of arguments brought by
Caudill concerning the effectiveness of her attorney in handling witnesses and
a strategy based on claiming that a co-defendant, 53-year-old Johnathan Wayne
Goforth, had more of a motive to rob and kill 73-year-old Lonetta White in
Lexington on March 15, 1998.
The 2 were convicted in 2000 of bludgeoning White to death with a hammer and
stuffing her body in the trunk of her own car, which was later set ablaze.
Caudill claimed at trial that Goforth, an associate who frequented the same
drug den as her, unexpectedly robbed and beat White to repay a drug debt after
tying up Caudill in a separate room.
"There was no evidence that Caudill had attempted to stop the assault on White
or flee the residence once it began," Reeves wrote.
Reeves noted that Caudill followed Goforth as he drove White's car with her
body stuffed in the trunk to a remote area with plans to burn it. During the
drive, Caudill made no attempt to flee, Reeves wrote, and continued to
associate with Goforth for months after the slaying.
"These are not the actions of a person whose motive was merely to borrow money
from White," Reeves wrote. "Instead, they are the actions of a person actively
complicit in the murder."
Prosecutors say the pair fled to Florida and Mississippi in the months after
the slaying. Police arrested Caudill in New Orleans about eight months after
the killing.
Caudill may still appeal to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati
and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Goforth has a similar appeal pending before U.S. District Judge Karen K.
Caldwell.
Kentucky is currently prohibited from executing any inmates under an injunction
handed down by Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd in 2010. In December,
Shepherd cleared the state's proposed use of 1 or 2 drugs to carry out a lethal
injection.
But, Shepherd ruled, executions cannot go forward because there are issues with
how inmates are handled and their mental state assessed in the days and weeks
leading up to an execution date.
Kentucky has carried out 3 executions since the reinstatement of the death
penalty in 1976. The last inmate put to death was in 2008.
(source: Courier-Journal)
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