Feb. 12
TEXAS:
Prosecutor seeking death penalty for man accused of killing father and daughter
The Brazos County District Attorney's Office will seek the death penalty
against the man accused of killing Mac and Noel Devin days after being released
from a state prison.
Prosecutor Brian Baker filed the notice in the 361st District Court on
Wednesday.
Dennis Wayne Brown III, 35, was arrested at the El Camino Motel on April 7,
2014, after an off-duty Bryan police officer noticed Noel Devin's stolen
vehicle in the motel parking lot.
The day before, firefighters battling a fire at a home in the 2000 block of
Vinewood Drive had discovered Noel Devin and her father Mac Devin's bodies
inside. Investigators said the fire was started by igniting fuel-soaked rags.
Originally charged with state jail felony unauthorized use of a motor vehicle,
2nd-degree felony burglary and 1st-degree felony arson, Brown was also indicted
in May 2014 on a capital murder charge in connection with the stabbing deaths
of the 32-year-old Aggie and her 63-year-old father, who was also a Texas A&M
graduate.
A trial date has not been set.
(source: The Eagle)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Pa. man facing possible death sentence
Authorities have wanted to put Hugo Selenski away on murder charges ever since
they searched his northeastern Pennsylvania yard in 2003 and found the bodies
of a missing pharmacist, the pharmacist's girlfriend, and at least 3 other sets
of human remains.
It took nearly a dozen years and one failed prosecution, but they finally got
their man on Wednesday after a jury convicted the 41-year-old career criminal
in the strangling deaths of pharmacist Michael Kerkowski and Tammy Fassett.
Selenski, already serving a long prison sentence on unrelated robbery charges,
now faces a potential death sentence after the jury concluded he killed the
couple during a 2002 robbery and buried their bodies behind his house. He had
little to say as he was led out of the courthouse.
"Not now," he told reporters. "I always told all of you that I will talk to you
when this is over, and I will do that. No questions right now."
Prosecutors said Selenski and a co-conspirator brutally beat Kerkowski to
compel him to reveal the location of tens of thousands of dollars he kept in
his house, then used flex ties to strangle him and Fassett.
Authorities found their decomposing bodies on Selenski's property about a year
later. A few months after his 2003 arrest, he escaped from prison using a rope
fashioned from bed sheets and spent three days on the run before turning
himself in.
The jury reached its verdict after deliberating more than 11 hours over 2 days.
It convicted Selenski of 8 of 10 counts, including 1st-degree murder and
robbery, and must now decide whether to send him to death row or give him life
in prison without parole. The penalty phase will start Tuesday.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers, under a gag order, were unable to comment on
the verdict.
One of Selenski's sisters cried quietly and left the courtroom after hearing
it. The victims' relatives remained stoic, hugging prosecutors after the jury
exited.
"13 years," murmured Kerkowski's mother, Geraldine Kerkowski, who had testified
against her son's killer and, from the witness stand, ordered him to wipe the
smirk off his face.
Later Wednesday, Selenski's brother Ronald Selenski Jr. rushed toward an
elevator holding the victims' relatives and prosecutors and pointed a finger at
them. Sheriff's deputies walked him away from the elevator and put him in
handcuffs. It wasn't immediately clear whether he would be charged.
Hugo Selenski has been a familiar face in northeastern Pennsylvania since his
2003 arrest on charges he killed a pair of drug dealers whose charred remains
also were found on the property north of Wilkes-Barre.
In 2006, a jury acquitted him of one homicide and deadlocked on another but
convicted him of abusing the men's corpses. After the verdict, authorities
immediately charged him with killing Kerkowski and Fassett.
Kerkowski, from Hunlock Creek, had pleaded guilty to running a prescription
drug ring that netted at least $800,000 and was about to be sentenced when he
and Fassett were reported missing in May 2002. They were both 37 years old.
The defense contended Selenski was framed by another man, Paul Weakley, who led
police to the bodies in Selenski's yard. Weakley later pleaded guilty in
federal court, testified against Selenski to avoid the death penalty and could
ask for a reduction of his life prison sentence because of his cooperation.
Weakley, who met Selenski in prison in the 1990s, told jurors how he plotted
with Selenski to kill Kerkowski and then helped him carry out the crimes and
bury the bodies. He described how he and Selenski bound the victims and covered
their eyes with duct tape.
Weakley said Kerkowski, who was beaten with a rolling pin, told them where to
find his hidden bags of cash. He said Fassett was killed simply because she was
with Kerkowski when they showed up at the pharmacist's house.
After the killings, Selenski stole tens of thousands more dollars that
Kerkowski had given to his father for safekeeping, pointing a gun at the father
and threatening him, other witnesses said.
The 5th body discovered on Selenski's property was never publicly identified.
(source: Associated Press)
**********************
Trial in Focus: 2 death sentences handed down long ago
Now that Hugo Selenski has been convicted of 2 counts of 1st degree murder, he
faces the penalty phase, in which a jury decides whether he deserves to be
executed, or to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Whatever those 12 jurors decide, there already have been 2 death sentences in
this case.
Michael Kerkowski and Tammy Fassett were sentenced to death 13 years ago - not
by a jury of their peers, but by Selenski and his associate, Paul Weakley.
Kerkowski was beaten with a rolling pin. Both he and Fassett were strangled
with flex ties tightened around their necks.
The families of those victims? Well, they already have been given life
sentences.
They must live with the loss of loved ones and the very public accounts of how
Kerkowski and Fassett were so brutally executed.
Because that's what happened to them.
Trials like this often produce words like compassion and mercy when sentences
are discussed. Those words were not part of the death sentences given Kerkowski
and Fassett.
Selenski's brother
Lest we forget, 2 families are grieving today.
After the verdicts were announced, members of the Selenski family were
obviously upset. As expected, there were plenty of tears. Selenski's brother,
Ronald, despite pleas from his aunt and sister, apparently could not restrain
himself from trying to say or do something.
With members of the victims' families in the elevator with representatives of
the county district attorney's office, Ronald ran past me and others in the
hallway, rushed toward the elevator and pointed his finger. I watched as he was
grabbed by sheriff's deputies, placed in handcuffs and taken away.
Such conduct can't be excused, but it can be understood.
His brother was just convicted of 1st-degree murder. Despite what Hugo Selenski
was convicted of, his family, too, has suffered during this 13-year-ordeal.
When the penalty phase begins Tuesday morning, the families will again be faced
with enduring more difficult testimony. Some will tell why they feel Selenski
should get the death penalty and others will tell why his life should be
spared.
If those who want Selenski to be killed prevail, he will join 186 other people
convicted to die in this state. Whether he ever gets executed is another matter
- not just because of the long chain of appeals common in death penalty cases,
but because new Gov. Tom Wolf has said he plans to call for a moratorium on
capital punishment in Pennsylvania.
What does Selenski - so often talkative and even combative over his 13 year
legal battles - have to say about his conviction and possible fate?
Selenski told the media on his way back to jail that he will talk when the
trial is over - when the penalty phase is completed.
Each night he has been brought down to the basement of the courthouse and
walked by the media and asked questions. Wednesday night was especially
difficult, yet he did vow to speak "at the end."
Quiet departures
The Kerkowski and Fassett families left quietly. They had nothing to say. They
did hug each other after court was adjourned and they spoke briefly with
prosecutors and detectives.
But there was no celebration. 2 people are dead and another human being was
convicted of 1st-degree murder. Not a time for popping champagne corks and
making toasts.
There has been anticipation throughout the courthouse and the county - perhaps
even further - as the jury deliberated.
And sitting through this all was the defendant - one of the most notorious
prisoners this county has ever seen. Can we not vividly recall his escape from
the county lockup by tying bed sheets together and repelling down a prison
wall?
I don't think anybody really knew or dared predict what the verdict would be.
But as deliberations continued, the questions asked by the jury began to show
where their thinking was headed.
When the last question dealt with only first-degree murder, most felt a
decision was imminent.
The jury decided that Selenski and Weakley went to Kerkowski's house on
Pritchards Road in Hunlock Township to kill and rob him, not that they went
there to rob him and during that felony, they ended up killing him and Fassett,
who just happened to be there.
Intent was the key. And now the sentence will be decided.
And someone is sure to ask - What might Michael Kerkowski and Tammy Fassett
recommend?
(source: Bill O'Boyle, Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader)
FLORIDA:
Mother opposes death penalty for daughter's killer----Mother of shooting victim
wants the state to accept plea deal and no longer seek death penalty so family
can get on with their lives.
20-year-old Shelby Farah was shot in the head during a robbery at the Metro PCS
store on Main Street in 2013. The state is seeking the death penalty against
her alleged killer, but now the mother of the victim, Darlene Farah, wants the
state to accept a plea deal giving him life in prison.
Darlene says it was a conversation with her 2 children that led her to no
longer support the state seeking the death penalty against James Rhodes, the
man accused of killing her daughter. Darlene says she wants to put stability
and structure back in her children's lives, as well as her own.
"They just want it to be over with so we can move on with our lives," said
Farah. "To just have to face him, it takes everything out of us. And to be
honest with you I don't know if I can get through a trial."
Farah says she was not a supporter of the death penalty prior to this incident,
and raised her kids expressing that belief. She says she always told them to
let the prosecutors handle it in this case, rather than following her personal
feelings, and did not argue against the death penalty until now.
Farah says her 2 children wanted to accept a plea deal immediately after
hearing of the offer. She says they dread going through years of appeals.
"I will be dead by the time he gets executed, I mean 20 -30 years, that is a
long time."
Farah says she understands why the state attorney is seeking the death penalty
because the crime was horrific and the 23-year old Rhodes has a long violent
past. She says she doesn't want to speak ill of the State Attorney's Office.
But she adds that this case is going on too long, it will be 2 months she says
before a decision is made on whether Rhodes is too mentally disabled to face
the death penalty. A hearing was held on Tuesday about that issue, then another
hearing was scheduled weeks later, April 7.
"Shelby suffered, I want him to suffer, to me it is more suffering, spending
life in prison. If he is on death row, we will never have closure."
Jackelyn Barnard, spokeswoman for state attorney Angela Corey, says it would be
inappropriate to comment on the specifics of this case, due to the pending
trial.
(source: First Coast News)
OHIO:
Attorney vows to fight 'state-sanctioned murder' in death penalty case
Defense attorney Jack Bradley called the death penalty "state-sanctioned
murder" during a hearing on expert reports in the capital murder case against
accused killer Donna Brown.
"I'm against the death penalty, and I'm going to fight against the death
penalty every day that I practice law, whether it's Donna Brown or anybody
else, and I think that it's state-sanctioned murder," he said.
His remarks came during a contentious hearing over whether a state
psychological expert would be allowed to interview Brown prior to her trial for
the July 2012 shooting deaths of 2 of her cousins. Bradley and Assistant Lorain
County Prosecutor Tony Cillo also sparred over the fact that prosecutors hadn't
received the raw data on Brown from a defense expert.
Earlier in the hearing, Cillo had said he took umbrage at a comment Bradley
made in a recent court filing in which he wrote that psychological information
wasn't for use in trial, but "at the phase of the case where the jury decides
whether to spare her life of whether it will be complicit in an aggravated
murder along with the Lorain County Prosecutor, albeit with an affirmative
defense."
Cillo argued that statement was inappropriate.
"I'd hope we would be better than that," he said.
Bradley later said that he understands that the death penalty is legal, but he
isn't alone in opposing it.
Lorain County Common Pleas Judge Christopher Rothgery had initially planned to
let the state's expert interview Brown, but said he would bar prosecutors from
discussing any findings with the expert until after Brown's guilt or innocence
was decided.
But Bradley said he would appeal that, something that would likely have caused
a delay in Brown's trial, which is slated to begin later this month.
Cillo said if that was Bradley's plan, he would withdraw his request for an
interview and have his expert watch Brown testify during the trial, something
that Bradley said his client was likely to do. Cillo said it wouldn't be fair
to delay the trial any longer.
Bradley said the Fifth Amendment protects Brown from being forced to talk to
anyone representing prosecutors in the case, even if the conversation was
sealed.
Brown is accused of shooting Dale Linder Jr. and Justin Linder at a West 23rd
Street home in Lorain. Defense attorneys have said that Brown was victimized by
the brothers because she is a lesbian.
(source: The Chronicle-Telegram)
KENTUCKY:
Legislature should end death penalty
2 bills introduced in the legislature this month would end the death penalty in
Kentucky. It is time to do it.
Both Democrat Sen. Gerald Neal of Louisville and Rep. David Floyd, a Bardstown
Republican, introduced bills in their respective houses that would abolish the
death penalty but maintain life without the possibility of parole. As with
attempts in the past, this one probably won't pass, but it should.
Although the use of the death penalty has dropped precipitously over the years
- the last one in Kentucky was 6 years ago - the fact that it still exists as
an option is problematic for many reasons.
For a long while, the conversation about taking life as punishment for the most
egregious acts has been framed by legal and philosophical arguments that focus
on our Constitution and both religious and secular ethics. For years now,
opponents also have pointed to studies that show the cost of prosecuting,
convicting, litigating appeals and killing someone is far more expensive than
incarcerating them for life.
We would take a simpler tack: 1 innocent person wrongly executed is 1 too many.
While it has always been difficult trying to prove the value of the death
penalty as a deterrent, the justice system has provided ample evidence of its
own fallibility over time. It is still driving home the point.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 2014 saw the fewest
executions across America in 20 years and the fewest death sentences in 40
years. Even with those dramatic drops, a more chilling total was 7 - the number
of inmates facing the death penalty who were exonerated. That represents a
5-year high.
Look no further than Kirk Bloodsworth, a Maryland man who was in Frankfort last
week to tell his story of spending 8 years on death row for a rape and murder
he did not commit. Bloodsworth was the first U.S. inmate ever exonerated by DNA
evidence and now advocates against capital punishment.
"You can free a man or woman from prison, but you cannot free them from the
grave," Bloodsworth was quoted as saying.
Many people whose loved ones have been the victims of terrible acts
understandably believe death is the only possible punishment that could fit the
crime. Many more understandably support this view.
But mistakes can happen when we substitute vengeance for justice. When it comes
to the death penalty, those mistakes are as irrevocable as they are
insufficient to restore what families of capital crimes have so often lost.
With the passing of legendary North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith,
stories of the applause-worthy stands he took away from basketball have
resurfaced.
One of the most compelling, as reported several years later by the Chicago
Tribune, involved his 1998 trip to argue for halting executions in North
Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt's office.
"You're a murderer," people in the room recounted the coach saying, pointing at
the governor before turning his finger and the accusation on a gaggle of Hunt's
staff - and then himself. "And you're a murderer, and you're a murderer, and
I'm a murderer."
Taking an innocent person's life, under any circumstances, is always a tragedy
and is never just. We should abolish the death penalty and join the 18 other
states that have removed the instrument of wrongful killing from their own
hand.
(source: Editorial, centralkynews.com)
KANSAS:
Bethel campus pastor working to abolish death penalty
Peter Goerzen, campus pastor at Bethel College, was one of several faith
leaders who spoke to legislators and spoke to a crowd in Topeka, Tuesday, Feb.
10, voicing their opposition to the death penalty.
Clergy members and other death penalty opponents met with legislators and
discussed their support for House Bill 2129, which would abolish the death
penalty in Kansas. Rep. Steven Becker, of Buhler, introduced the bill, Jan. 27
and it is now being considered by the Judiciary Committee. The bill was written
by the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty (KCADP), which favors
replacing the death penalty with life wihout parole. The faith leaders were
representing KCADP.
"In the light of God, the death penalty is morally bankrupt," Goerzen told a
crowd on the 2nd floor of the capitol building. 'Killing people because killing
people is wrong' skews morality toward revenge and contributes to a culture of
vengeance and death."
He said we should not confuse retribution with justice.
"Vengeance can never bring justice; the closest we can come this side of
eternity is to offer our steadfast compassion and love to victims' families
while restraining perpetrators from further violence," Goerzen said.
Mary Sloan, KCADP executive director, said the numerous appeals stemming from
death penalty cases prolong the misery for victims' families. Sloan said the
idea that victims' families get closure seeing the perpetrators get the death
penalty is a misconception.
"We have been told by victims' families it doesn't (bring closure)," Sloan
said. "Many were looking for closure and found it hollow."
One of the faith leaders who spoke against the death penalty - Archbishop of
the Archdiocese in Kansas City Kansas Joseph F. Naumann - has talked about how
his father was murdered in 1948 while his mother was pregnant with him.
Other faith leaders who spoke were: The Right Reverend Bishop Dean E. Wolfe,
ninth bishop of Kansas, the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas; Reverend Len Dale,
director of Evangelism with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Central
States Synod and Reverend Kay Scarbrough, Topeka District Superintendent for
the Great Plains United Methodist Church.
While the clergy members expressed religious reasons for opposing the death
penalty, the KCADP has cited several reasons why it believes capital punishment
is impractical: court and defense costs are 3 to 4 times higher in death
penalty cases, the death penalty is carried out arbitrarily, poor people and
minorities are disproportionately sentenced to the death penalty, it doesn't
deter crime, more than 150 people on death row have been exonerated since 1973
and innocent people have pleaded guilty to lesser charges to avoid the
possibility of losing at trial and being sentenced to death.
During the day, the faith leaders talked to their district representatives and
urged them to support HB 2129. While speaking before the crowd, they each gave
their representative a copy of a form bearing the signatures of more than 430
Kansas faith leaders against the death penalty. Goerzen handed the signatures
to 31st District Kansas Sen. Carolyn McGinn-R.
McGinn is in favor of abolishing the death penalty. Rep. Marc Rhoades-R, 72nd
district, couldn't be persuaded to come out against the death penalty, Goerzen
said.
"We had a pleasant conversation," Goerzen said. "We don't agree, and we didn't
agree by the time I left, but we had a nice conversation."
(source: The Kansan)
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