July 24
PENNSYLVANIA-----new (and serious) execution date
Hubert Michael has been given an execution date of Sept. 22.
(source: MC/RH)
DELAWARE:
Supreme Court upholds Cooke's death sentence
In a unanimous decision Thursday, the Delaware Supreme Court upheld the
conviction and death sentence against James E. Cooke for the May 2005 rape and
murder of University of Delaware sophomore Lindsey Bonistall.
"We are relieved by the decision of the Delaware Supreme Court and we are
grateful that once again justice has been served," said Kathleen Bonistall,
Lindsey's mother.
She added that she is "tentatively" optimistic that this ruling will mean that
her family's days of sitting in a courtroom are over. "We are hoping," she
said.
The Bonistall family, of White Plains, NY, has had to sit through, and testify
at, 2 different trials. Cooke's 1st conviction and death sentence in 2007 was
tossed out by a divided Delaware Supreme Court in 2009, leading to a 2012
re-trial.
"There is absolutely no doubt that Cooke is dangerous, depraved and
remorseless," said Deputy Attorney General Steve Wood, who prosecuted Cooke at
both trials. "The evidence against him is overwhelming. We are gratified that
the Supreme Court has affirmed his conviction and death sentence."
Defense attorney Anthony Figliola said the result "was not a total surprise."
Figliola said on Thursday he had not yet fully read the 71-page opinion, but
would be reviewing it carefully to see if there was any basis for re-argument.
Failing that, Figliola said the likely next step would be to appeal the case to
federal court.
Writing for the court, Chief Justice Leo Strine said none of the 10 claims
raised by Cooke's attorneys to overturn the 2012 conviction on first-degree
murder charges provided a basis for reversing the decision of the jury and the
subsequent imposition of the death penalty by Superior Court Judge Charles H.
Toliver IV.
"What is also common to many of Cooke's arguments is that they are grounded in
the contention that he should be relieved of punishment because of his own
inexcusable and incorrigible conduct," wrote Strine in the 71-page opinion.
Cooke fired a string of publicly funded attorneys, including the legal team
that won a reversal of his conviction and death sentence. After demanding to
fire his 3rd legal team, a judge told Cooke that he would have to represent
himself if he did, and Cooke said he wanted to.
Strine noted that Cooke appeared to be playing a "cat and mouse" game with the
court, intentionally trying to disrupt his case and thereby delay the trial and
he said that continues in Cooke's appeals.
In particular, Strine wrote that Cooke's attorneys have argued that Toliver
erred both in taking away Cooke's right to represent himself when Cooke became
disruptive and disrespectful and that Toliver also erred by failing to take
that right away earlier due to Cooke's egregious conduct. "This approach is
Kafkaesque - but with the twist that it is the citizen who is seeking to
ensnare the government in a capricious web of unfair illogic," Strine wrote.
Cooke's attorneys also argued that the imposition of the death penalty in this
case was improper, but Strine wrote that it was consistent and proportional to
other death penalty cases, and it was "not a close case."
"Burglarizing an occupied home in the early morning hours is more than
sufficiently terrorizing to the victim," wrote Strine, who before taking office
said he was personally opposed to the death penalty but would follow the law
when required. "Binding, brutally beating, raping and strangling the innocent
and defenseless victim, and then dousing her dead body in bleach and burning it
in an attempt to destroy evidence of the crime is - by any minimal standard of
human decency - horrific and depraved conduct, which renders the perpetrator
eligible for a sentence of death under clear precedent interpreting the
Constitutions of our state and nation."
Cooke also alleged other mistakes by the judge and that there were issues with
the jury but the justices dismissed those claims as well.
According to prosecutors, police and trial testimony, Cooke broke into
Bonistall's off-campus apartment sometime after 1 a.m. on May 1, 2005. He then
bound, beat and raped Bonistall before strangling her with a T-shirt. He then
wrote racist messages on the wall and set fire to Bonistall's apartment in an
apparent attempt to cover his tracks and mislead investigators.
Police later tied Cooke to the crime by DNA recovered from Bonistall's body,
Bonistall's hair on a hoodie belonging to Cooke and by witnesses who saw Cooke
near the scene.
At his 2012 trial, Cooke claimed he was innocent and had consensual sex with
Bonistall before her death, though he had claimed at his first police
interrogation that he didn't know Bonistall.
Both of Cooke's trials were notable for disruptive outbursts by Cooke. In 2012,
Cooke frequently feuded with Toliver and in his opening statement, took a
confrontational tone with the jury.
Cooke began with "Good afternoon," he then paused, scowled and said, "I see, I
got no response, so I guess everyone has their opinion all made up."
All 12 jurors then responded, "Good afternoon."
Cooke then went on to charge that he was the victim of a racist conspiracy and
almost immediately charged that he was not getting a fair trial when Toliver
told him to move on and focus on the facts of the case.
On the 2nd day of trial, following several other shouting matches with the
judge, after the judge warned Cooke about following proper procedures and
courtroom decorum, Cooke called Toliver "evil" and told the judge he was going
to go to hell.
On the 3rd day, following yet another confrontation between Cooke and Toliver,
the judge ruled that Cooke had forfeited his right to represent himself and
ordered Cooke's standby attorneys, Figliola and Peter Veith, to take over.
Cooke, however, remained disruptive and at one point threatened to harm Toliver
and his family, resulting in Cooke being barred from the courtroom.
Cooke's 2007 conviction and death sentence was tossed out by a divided Delaware
Supreme Court because a majority of the court ruled that Cooke's public
defenders had improperly entered a plea of guilty-but-mentally ill over Cooke's
objections at that proceeding.
Cooke claimed he was neither guilty nor mentally ill.
Cooke now has 2 appellate options left, the 1st is an appeal to the federal
court system to raise constitutional claims related to his conviction and
sentence. The 2nd is a state claim that his attorneys provided inadequate
representation, but that claim will be difficult for Cooke in that he acted as
his own attorney during key parts of the case and because he turned down a plea
offer before trial that would have spared his life.
(source: The Daily Voice)
MISSISSIPPI:
Mississippi's Death Row: The Michelle Byrom Story
There are many stories on Mississippi's death row. Stories with different
crimes, different faces and different lessons to be learned. However, they are
stories with the same ending. One such story belongs to Michelle Byrom.
A woman initially sentenced to death on a capital murder charge, but in a rare
decision..just this past spring..the state supreme court overturned that
conviction ordering a new trial with a different judge.
Former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz is very familiar with Byrom's story.
It's a story, so far without an ending.
"I have no doubt, based on my long experience with the death penalty in
Mississippi that innocent people are indeed on death row in Mississippi."
He said he has long believed that Michelle Byrom is one of them.
"When the case came to us, right away I recognized all the problems with this
case," he said. "I had written a dissent in 2003 and pointed out all the errors
that were pointed out recently in this case by the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Had the Court listened to my dissent in 2003, she would have avoided over 10
years on death row."
Byrom was convicted in 2000 for the murder of her husband, Edward. At the time
he was killed Byrom was in the hospital after eating rat poison. Diaz says she
was trying to escape a terrible and abusive relationship she had with Edward.
Her son Edward Jr. testified that his mother hired a hit man to kill his
father. However, Edward Jr. later confessed several times to killing his
father, who had, allegedly, severely abused him for years, but none of this was
presented in court.
Michelle Byrom had court appointed attorneys. A group of attorneys that Diaz
claims put her a disadvantage from the beginning.
"They were young, this was their first capital case, they had never tried a
death penalty case," he said. "They made multiple errors and the result was a
woman ending up on death row, when she should not have been there."
Diaz says the problem is that Mississippi has never fully funded a system of
criminal defense attorneys.
"We fully fund the prosecutors, they have all the resources available to them
and that's fine, that's the way it should be, but if you are going to do that,
we should also fund criminal defense attorneys, and we don't do that in
Mississippi."
Diaz argues this flaw, a flaw he is drawing attention to may have sent innocent
people to death row unnecessarily. Byrom has been in prison for 14 years.
"From the inexperienced attorneys she had representing her at the beginning,"
Diaz said. "They waived a jury looking at her, looking at her case, let the
judge impose the death penalty by himself. All you had to have was substantial
doubt of one juror and it would have stopped the death penalty. That's just
things that no seasoned attorney would have ever consented to."
As for the fate of Byrom, Diaz says the fairy tale ending would be that
prosecutors dismiss the charges for lack of evidence, the Hollywood ending
would be a new trial where she is found not guilty.
"Probably, if I could guess at this point what will happen is that a deal will
be worked out, that she will plead guilty and agree to have time served and be
released at this point," he said. "So there are many things that could happen
and only time will tell what course will be taken in this case."
This past weekend the Mississippi Department of Corrections transferred Byrom
from the Rankin County Correctional Facility to the Tisomingo County Jail.
(source: WJTV news)
MISSOURI----new execution date
Leon Taylor has been given an execution date for Sept. 10; it should be
considered serious.
(source: MC/RH)
USA:
Rand Paul says death penalty is a state issue
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul said the racial imbalance of the nation's prisons that
convinced him to support sentencing reform has not prompted him to scrutinize
the death penalty in advance of a possible 2016 run for president.
The Kentucky Republican said he has not had a lot of feedback from minorities
about the death penalty. He said the death penalty is a state issue.
White people have accounted for more than 1/2 of all executions in the United
States since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But more
than 1/2 of the country's current death row inmates are either black or Latino.
Paul is scheduled to speak to the National Urban League's annual convention on
Friday to tout his proposals to restore voting rights to some convicted felons.
(source: Associated Press)
***********
Why the Death Penalty Is Doomed
Alex Kozinski, a federal judge on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,
has gone on the record saying he is "generally not opposed to the death
penalty." But his opinion in a recent case may nevertheless find itself in the
history books one day - in the section explaining why the death penalty in
America finally ended.
Joseph R. Wood III was sentenced to death in Arizona for the 1989 murders of
his ex-girlfriend and her father. He challenged his execution under the claim
that Arizona's secrecy surrounding its lethal-injection protocol violated his
First Amendment right to access to information. On July 19, a 3-judge panel of
the Ninth Circuit agreed, and 2 days later, the full court declined to rehear
the case.
Judge Kozinski joined ten of his colleagues in the minority who would have
reheard it and, presumably, allowed the execution to proceed as planned. (It
did proceed last night, though not as planned, after the Supreme Court reversed
the stay.) But rather than engaging the merits of the First Amendment claim as
other dissenters did, Judge Kozinski launched into a meditation on why we kill
people the way we do.
The late 1970s shift to lethal injection was undertaken, as the judge
suggested, in the belief that it was a "more humane" and "less brutal" method
of execution than earlier ones - the firing squad, the electric chair, the gas
chamber. But that belief was mistaken, he said. "Using drugs meant for
individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to
mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful - like
something any one of us might experience in our final moments."
The judge then shifted into a register generally associated with those firmly
planted in the abolitionist camp.
"But executions are, in fact, nothing like that. They are brutal, savage
events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality. Nor should it.
If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face
the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf."
So how should we do it? Judge Kozinski made the point that the guillotine is
the most foolproof method of ending a life, although he rejected it because it
"seems inconsistent with our national ethos." (Which ethos is that? The one
against state-sponsored decapitation? Or against relying on the French in
matters of punishment?)
Clearly, the 2-hour ordeal that occurred in Arizona last night is more evidence
that lethal injection is far from humane. Instead, as Judge Kozinski said, the
firing squad is the most quick and reliable of the existing methods. And then
he added this coup de grace:
"Sure, firing squads can be messy," the judge wrote, "but if we are willing to
carry out executions, we should not shield ourselves from the reality that we
are shedding human blood. If we, as a society, cannot stomach the splatter from
an execution carried out by firing squad, then we shouldn't be carrying out
executions at all."
(source: New York Times)
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