May 31
CALIFORNIA:
DA could seek death penalty in taqueria slayings
Giovanni Pacheco's allegedly low IQ could become a factor in his defense should
the Monterey County District Attorney's Office opt to seek the death penalty in
his triple murder case, defense attorney Monique Hill said Friday.
Pacheco, 22, of Salinas, is accused of killing 3 people and attempting to kill
4 more in a shooting last year outside a Williams Road taqueria.
Wrapping a 2-day preliminary hearing, Monterey County Superior Court Judge
Julie Culver ruled Friday there is sufficient evidence to hold Pacheco for
trial on all charges, which also include special allegations for the use of
firearms and multiple murders.
The latter allegation makes the case death-penalty eligible. Prosecutor Rolando
Mazariegos would only say DA Dean Flippo will make a decision in the next few
months on whether to pursue the ultimate sentence.
On Thursday, Pacheco's IQ of 59, as stated by Hill, earned the 22-year-old
special court accommodation. Culver promised to speak slowly and repeat herself
should Pacheco become confused.
Pacheco's IQ has yet to be proven in court, but Hill said she ordered a test
herself after speaking with her client. Should the DA decide to go after the
death penalty, Pacheco's IQ could come into greater play, she said.
Earlier this week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Florida's IQ cutoff was too
rigid to spare mentally incapacitated individuals the death penalty. In the
Florida case, the cutoff was 70.
Friday continued with further testimony from Salinas police Detective Rodolfo
Roman, who said Thursday the argument, fight and eventual mass shooting started
with a dispute over a cigarette.
"John Doe 5 said Mr. Pacheco asked him why he'd given a cigarette to his
girlfriend," Roman said.
In the 1st hour of Aug. 5, a shoving match then ensued between 7 or 8 men,
Roman said. Pacheco then pulled a firearm from his waistband and shot into the
air before firing into the crowd, Roman said.
Pacheco and Ernesto Ramos, his stepfather, then left the bloodied parking lot,
Roman said. Ramos, who was captured on audio recording en route to the Salinas
Police Department, told his wife he was attempting to calm Pacheco, Roman said.
Later that morning, Pacheco's brother picked him up in Greenfield, Roman said.
Officers stopped the vehicle outside Pacheco's residence several hours later,
holding the brothers at gunpoint, Roman said.
Inside, officers recovered clothing Pacheco had been wearing earlier that day,
Roman said. That same clothing - a black jacket and baseball cap - are visible
in video surveillance footage.
Under cross-examination, Hill harped on the fact officers hadn't recovered the
firearm involved in the shooting and that Pacheco was one of few whose clothing
was collected in the aftermath.
Salinas police Officer Ernesto Sanchez later testified to a conversation he had
with Jane Doe 1, a 53-year-old woman who was shot in the buttocks inside Taco's
Choice.
Jane Doe 1 said she, her sister and a group of male friends were at Taco's
Choice when she heard "a heated argument" outside. A male friend who went to
investigate later told her "to go back inside, that everything was OK," Sanchez
said.
However, "everything was not OK," Jane Doe 1 said, according to Sanchez. She
said she saw her friend being pushed around by several other men, Sanchez said.
As she turned to go inside, Jane Doe 1 said she heard shots fired and felt
pressure near her head. Diving for the ground, the woman felt sudden pain to
her back and buttocks, Sanchez said.
Hill, while cross examining Sanchez, emphasized the questions he didn't ask.
When Sanchez followed up with Jane Doe 1 in the hospital, he acknowledged he
didn't ask if she was on painkillers nor where the woman's sister was.
2 sisters, one 22 years old and the other a teenager younger than 18, later
testified they'd sat with Pacheco and his family in the hours leading up to the
shooting. Also in attendance was the sisters' cousin, the cousin's boyfriend
and the elder sister's boyfriend.
Both sisters acknowledged drinking that night - a point Hill continued to bring
up throughout the preliminary hearing.
Shortly after midnight, the younger sister said she and her cousin went outside
to smoke. There, a man in a black cowboy hat asked if they wanted a cigarette.
The girl said her cousin accepted.
The testimony contradicted interviews several officers testified to Thursday in
which other witnesses said the girls approached the man asking for cigarettes.
Hill later questioned why the younger sister was "100 %" certain Pacheco was
the man involved in the shooting.
"He looks the same," the girl responded.
Wrapping up his presentation, Mazariegos brought into scrutiny the question of
"moment of reflection" - a legal term for the opportunity a potential killer
has to stop himself before completing the action. Ultimately, this case hinges
on that moment, Mazariegos said.
"That's the moment of reflection," Mazariegos said. "He's not shooting at
Ernesto Ramos. He's able to differentiate between friendly and unfriendly. And
unfriendly people are in 'the kill zone.'" He added, "That's what makes this
1st-degree murder."
Mazariegos further noted, "This is not an identity case." He then laid out the
clothes discovered with Pacheco in his brother's car and the sisters, both
eyewitnesses, who identified him in court.
It is a case, Mazariegos said, of men attempting to be "macho."
"Giovanni Pacheco said, 'I'm the bigger man because I have a gun. I can't fight
with my hands and fists because I'll be beaten,'" Mazariegos said. "The law
doesn't like that. The law calls that 1st-degree murder."
Hill closed with statements reflective of her continued opposition to
Mazariegos' use of still photos from surveillance video to land his points.
"It would be nice if we could go through life in a still photo," she said. "But
when things happen, like they did at Taco's Choice, they happen in real life."
She further noted most, if not everyone involved, had been drinking that night
and argued the act occurred in a momentary flash of passion without
premeditation.
"Mr. Pacheco was touched first and he was overwhelmed by more people than
himself," she said. "And most of those people were probably as intoxicated as
he was, if not more."
Culver ultimately sided with Mazariegos, ruling Pacheco could be found guilty
of all charges when he is tried. She reminded both attorneys they would need to
meet certain deadlines should the death penalty become a possibility.
The use of surveillance videos differentiates this case from others, Culver
said.
"There's really no room to speculate as to what happened, the videos absolutely
speak for themselves," she said. "There were many opportunities to reflect and
stop the carnage that occurred and those opportunities were not taken."
Hill said she plans to make a motion to dismiss on the basis of insufficient
evidence in the coming weeks.
(source: The Californian)
USA:
Supreme Court rationalizes the death penalty
On the surface, the Supreme Court's death penalty holding on Tuesday seems like
a win for rationality and smart statistics. The 5-4 decision in Hall v. Florida
said the state may not use an absolute cutoff of 70 on the IQ test as its
measure of intellectual disability, below which a murderer cannot be executed -
because the standard error of measurement on the test is 5 points plus or
minus. Freddie Lee Hall, the defendant, had scored 71, 72, 73 and 80 on his
tests. The Florida Supreme Court said he wasn't intellectually disabled because
he'd broken 70. Justice Anthony Kennedy, with the 4 liberals on his side,
overturned the capital sentence.
On closer examination, though, the decision is less satisfying than it appears.
Standard error is itself determined with reference to the degree of confidence
we seek in the measurements we're making. It is thus, in an important sense,
based on convention - and the Supreme Court was relying not on its own
statistical analysis of IQ scores, or Florida's, but on a medical consensus.
The decision therefore embraces a kind of outsourced rationality, which has the
unfortunate effect of making the death penalty seem rational.
If statistics aren't your preferred mode of expression, don't worry: The ones
in this case are actually pretty simple, and so is the law. In 2002, the
Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia held it unconstitutional to execute people
with intellectual disability - and left it to the states to define the term.
Florida defined it as "significantly subaverage general intellectual
functioning" alongside deficits in adaptive behavior. The same statute measures
"subaverage" as an IQ of 70, 2 standard deviations below the mean of 100. The
Florida Supreme Court interpreted the number 70 as an absolute cutoff: If you
score above 70 on the test, no other evidence of intellectual disability
matters.
Kennedy's opinion rejects the idea of considering only IQ evidence, then
condemns the Florida court's "refusing to recognize that the score is, on its
own terms, imprecise." Kennedy points out that "the professionals who design,
administer, and interpret IQ tests have agreed, for years now, that IQ test
scores should be read not as a single fixed number but as a range."
The range is, according to Kennedy, the same as the standard error, which he
calls "a statistical fact, a reflection of the inherent imprecision of the test
itself." The core of his argument is that when a defendant's score is less than
75, the state needs to allow other evidence of disability. As Kennedy puts it,
"a State that ignores the inherent imprecision of these tests risks executing a
person who suffers from intellectual disability."
What could possibly be wrong with this analysis, which may reduce executions of
the intellectually disabled, and achieves this worthy goal through a correct,
rational statement of the nature of standard error? Should it not be welcomed
as another incremental limitation of the death penalty?
The trouble is, each time the Supreme Court limits the death penalty, it offers
an implicit justification for preserving it in most cases. The decision in this
case accepts the argument that it's inhumane to execute people who don't fully
comprehend what they've done or why they're being punished. In so doing, it
implies that a murderer who does comprehend his crimes deserves to die.
The court presumably also allied itself with statistical rationality. But as
Justice Samuel Alito points out in his dissent, some IQ tests have a standard
error lower than 5. Of course, the very definition of "standard" error depends
the level of confidence we want to have. Some common confidence intervals are
68 %, 90 % and 95 % - but strictly speaking, these are all based on consensus.
While it's true that the error can be standardized, a standardization isn't "a
statistical fact," as Kennedy puts it. It's a statistical convention.
The upshot is that although the majority presents itself as driven by
professional, statistical rationality, it's in fact driven by medical consensus
on the definition of disability. Yet that definition was developed to
understand and, if possible, help the intellectually disabled - not to
determine who deserves to be executed. Kennedy borrows the authority of
medicine to justify executions.
The death penalty is neither nice nor rational. But with this superficially
liberal decision, it just got a little more entrenched in the court's
jurisprudence.
(source: Guest Columinst: Noah Feldman is a professor of constitutional and
international law at Harvard University----Richmond Times-Dispatch)
**************************
Torrez sentenced to death in sailor's murder
Saying Jorge Torrez had committed "unconscionable crimes," a federal judge
Friday sentenced him to death for strangling a female sailor near the Pentagon
in 2009.
Torrez, a Marine at the time of the murder, also stands accused of killing 2
young girls in Zion on Mother's Day 2005, and prosecutors in Illinois plan to
try him for those crimes.
The death sentence, handed down by federal Judge Liam O'Grady in the U.S.
District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, was expected after a
federal jury voted unanimously April 24 that Torrez should be put to death for
killing Amanda Jean Snell, 20.
Torrez, wearing handcuffs shackled to his waist, said little during the brief
court proceeding, but his lawyers said they would file an appeal in the case.
When Torrez was asked by the judge if he wished to make remarks before the
sentencing, he said: "There's nothing I want to say, your honor."
The defendant, in forest green jail-issued clothing, was led into the courtroom
at 12:32 p.m. Chicago time.
7 minutes later, Judge Liam O'Grady said Torrez's crimes supported the jury's
death penalty recommendation.
"I sentence you to death at this time," O'Grady stated.
During the penalty phase of the federal court case, graphic details emerged
about the Zion slayings, which shocked the Chicago area and led to the wrongful
prosecution of 1 victim's father, Jerry Hobbs, who was jailed for years until
DNA evidence taken from Torrez cleared him.
After the jury's decision, Lake County State's Attorney Mike Nerheim had said
he would start taking legal steps to return Torrez to Illinois for a trial in
the slayings of Krystal Tobias, 9, and Laura Hobbs, 8.
Even before Friday's sentencing, Torrez was serving 5 life sentences plus 168
years in prison for a separate series of brutal crimes against 3 women in
Virginia in 2010.
Friday's sentencing took place in a packed courtroom that included friends of
Snell's.
Defense attorney Robert Lee Jenkins Jr. told reporters afterward that he and
other lawyers for Torrez already had filed papers indicating an appeal would be
filed.
"He always adamantly denied he was responsible for killing Miss Snell," Jenkins
said, but at the same time the defendant indicated that if a court found him
responsible, he preferred a death sentence over life in prison.
Jenkins, who practices in Alexandria, Va., and has handled several death
penalty cases, told reporters he could not immediately say what would be the
basis of the appeal.
"We're going to look at and examine everything," he said.
Prosecutors had no comment to reporters.
Torrez enlisted in the Marines in September 2006, his lawyers said. That was
more than a year after the Zion double murders.
He was kicked out after his arrest in 2010 for a series of predatory crimes
against women in Arlington, Va.
One young women whom he abducted on a snowy night was tied up, raped,
sodomized, choked with her own winter scarf and left for dead in a wooded area
several miles away.
She crawled to a roadway, was rescued by a motorist, survived the terrifying
ordeal and testified against Torrez.
(source: Chicago Tribune)
***********************
UN rights office welcomes new US Supreme Court death penalty ruling
Citing a new ruling issued by the United States Supreme Court, the United
Nations human rights office today touted this latest development as a watershed
moment in the country's rulings regarding the use of the death penalty against
people with mental and intellectual disabilities.
"OHCHR (The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) welcomes the
Supreme Court's ruling as a significant step towards limiting the scope of the
death penalty in the United States," spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told the
reporters in Geneva.
According to OHCHR, the particular case involved a death row prisoner in
Florida. To date, the state of Florida has refused to evaluate any evidence
about a defendant's alleged intellectual disability unless the person scored 70
or below on an IQ test. The defendant in this case had scored 71 on one IQ
test.
"However, stating that "intellectual disability is a condition, not a number,"
the Supreme Court ruled in this case that it was unconstitutional to refuse to
consider mental factors other than an IQ test.
The current ruling will affect not only Florida, the state which has the
second-largest number of death penalty cases after California, but also other
states that have people on death row in the US. Moreover, judges will now be
required to take a less mechanical approach to mental disability in capital
cases, according to OHCHR.
In 2002, the Supreme Court clarified in the Atkins vs. Virginia case that no
state may execute people with mental disabilities. Further, Tuesday's decision
regarding the Florida case follow's up Atkins, making it clearer now who counts
as an individual with intellectual disabilities. "The death penalty is the
gravest sentence our society may impose. Persons facing that most severe
sanction must have a fair opportunity to show that the Constitution prohibits
their execution," the Court states in its judgment, adding that "Florida's law
contravenes our Nation's commitment to dignity and its duty to teach human
decency as the mark of a civilized world."
"We urge United States' authorities to go further and to establish a moratorium
on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty," added Ms.
Shamdasani.
(source: UN News Centre)
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