Oct. 1



ARKANSAS:

Zombie test-kill cited at Arkansas murder trial ---- Prosecutor: 90-year-old's slaying fit a fixation; defense says confession coerced


Richard Jordan Tarver knew he could survive a zombie apocalypse if only he knew what it felt like to kill someone, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Grant DeProw said Thursday in his opening statement of Tarver's capital-murder trial in Craighead County Circuit Court.

Tarver, 31, of Bay is accused of forcing Lavinda Counce, 90, from her Bay home and into the trunk of her car July 3, 2015. Police say he drove her to a cornfield east of the Craighead County town, forced her to walk into the rows of corn and then shot her in the back of the head with a .38-caliber handgun.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Tarver in a trial that attorneys say could last 3 weeks.

Tarver "binge-watched" the zombie television program The Walking Dead the night of July 2, 2015, before going to sleep, DeProw said.

"He wanted to feel what it felt like to kill someone, but even Tarver doesn't believe in zombies," DeProw said. "Who is the next-best thing? A 90-year-old woman who lived alone."

DeProw said Tarver walked the 100 yards between his house and Counce's house on the July morning, and knocked on her door. When she answered, Tarver pushed her inside. He took her to the cornfield, shot her and then drove her car to Jonesboro where he left it in the parking lot of NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital on U.S. 49, DeProw said.

Authorities found Counce's body July 12. Tarver was arrested 5 days later.

Randall Miller, a Jonesboro attorney representing Tarver, said his client was planning a birthday party for his daughter and was with his wife and friends at the time of Counce's death and could not have committed the slaying.

Miller said a confession by Tarver to investigators was given under duress and fear that authorities would arrest his wife and take away his daughter.

"Mr. Tarver blanked out," Miller said in his opening statement Thursday. "He was so scared he would have told them anything."

Much of testimony presented Thursday centered on a large cloth bag found in Counce's Lunsford Avenue home by family members after they reported Counce missing.

Patsy Scott, Counce's daughter, said when her mother didn't answer her telephone call the evening of July 3, she and her husband drove to Counce's home. They found Counce's car missing, and inside the house they discovered unmade beds. Counce was meticulous in making beds before leaving her home, Scott said.

The daughter also found a black bag on a chair in the living room. She thought her mother won the bag in a contest, but when she opened it she saw items that scared her. The bag contained a hammer, a hatchet, rope and a club wrapped in plastic tape.

"I can't describe the panic I had not knowing where she was," Scott testified. "I picked [the bag] up, then dropped it and started praying."

DeProw said investigators found a washcloth inside the bag that contained DNA from Tarver.

Miller said DNA found on the tools were from an unknown source -- possibly a female -- but no other DNA found in the bag matched Tarver's.

Tarver became a suspect after investigators questioned a friend of his who lived near NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital, Prosecuting Attorney Scott Ellington said.

The friend, Cory Phillips, told police Tarver walked to his home about 1 p.m. the day Counce disappeared and said he had been dropped off at the hospital to visit a friend and needed a ride home, Ellington said. The time coincided with the time on a hospital parking lot security video that showed someone leaving Counce's car and walking toward U.S. 49, Ellington said.

When police went to Tarver's home July 17, Tarver confessed.

Asked if he knew why police were at his home, Tarver replied, "I know," DeProw said in his opening statement.

Tarver then told investigators about his obsession with zombies and told them the gun used in the slaying was in his attic, DeProw said. Detectives found a .38-caliber handgun.

"He said he had no remorse, guilt or anxiety," DeProw said of Tarver. "It meant nothing at all to him."

Miller later said Tarver thought police were questioning him about a problem he had with a police officer.

He said police did not match the ballistics of the weapon to the one used to kill Counce. However, Craighead County Coroner Toby Emerson testified Thursday that investigators did not find the .38-caliber bullet that killed Counce and officials could not compare ballistics of it to the handgun.

Testimony will resume at 9 a.m. today.

Circuit Judge Cindy Thyer said she has reserved 3 weeks for the trial.

(source: arkansasonline.com)






NEBRASKA:

Nebraska Catholic church affirms position on death penalty


Tom Venzor, executive director of the Nebraska Catholic Conference, left, and Sister Jeanne O'Rourke, of Mercy High School in Omaha speak about why Nebraska should not have a death penalty.

Priest, nuns and Catholic leaders joined Tom Venzor, executive director of the Nebraska Catholic Conference (NCC), Thursday at a press conference to affirm the church's position on the death penalty.

The Catholic Church and Nebraska Bishops oppose the death penalty because they say it is not necessary to protect society. The press conference was the kick off of the church's advocacy to its 375,000 Catholics in more than 350 Nebraska parishes encouraging Catholics to be informed about the death penalty and be involved in the political process.

"We urge Catholics and all people of good will to vote to retain the repeal of the death penalty on Referendum Measure 426," Venzor said.

Nebraskans will vote on Nov. 8 whether to retain the law prohibiting the death penalty in Nebraska or to reinstate the possible use of the death penalty in the sentencing phase of trials. The message the NCC is sharing is one of mercy.

"I stand here today, urging everyone to recognize that what human life God creates, we must not destroy; that even if one feels that someone is deserving of death, we as a people are above dealing them death," said father Doug Dietrich, pastor at Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Lincoln.

Dietrich said Nebraska does not need the death penalty.

"We have other means available to ensure our safety, means which also offer the convict the chance of rehabilitation and conversion," he said. "Along with my brother priests throughout Nebraska, we are taking a principled pro-life stance and proclaiming we do not need the death penalty in Nebraska."

Venzor said Nebraska's bishops are "deeply disturbed" that 156 people have been taken off death row since 1976, many as a result of DNA evidence proving their innocence.

"Even here in Nebraska, the death penalty can sometimes be misused, as we have witnessed with the 'Beatrice 6' who were initially threatened with the death penalty and have since been released from prison on account of DNA evidence," Venzor said.

Bishops are also concerned that racial minorities and the poor are disproportionately sentenced to death, which can occur as the result of racial bias or inadequate defense, Venzor said.

"This raises serious concerns about the just use of the death penalty," he said. "Ultimately, the bishops are deeply bothered by a justice system in which the innocent might be executed."

Venzor said families of victims also suffer from the "seemingly endless appeals process" associated with the death penalty.

"The pain experienced by these families is real and agonizing as the torturous experience of their loved ones' brutal death is relived," he said.

The church is also concerned that the death penalty is used as vengeance and not justice, and that it is too costly for Nebraska taxpayers.

"These are critical tax dollars that can be used to more adequately support our prisons and corrections staff, provide assistance to families of victims, or promote other justice efforts," Venzor said. "Even if the exact cost may be disputed, whether the cost is millions or mere cents, there can be no real price placed on the value of human life."

Sister Jeanne O'Rourke, spiritual adviser at Omaha's Mercy High School, said the Catholic Church, the popes, Nebraska bishops, the NCC and religious men and women have all concluded the death penalty is not necessary.

"Even in Nebraska, the death penalty risks executing innocent lives," she said. "1 innocent person executed is too many."

Dietrich encouraged Nebraskans to consider how they will vote. He said we must decide if we are a state that, "reserves the right to execute our fellow citizens, even when, because of human weakness and sinfulness, we cannot be 100 % guaranteed of their guilt or of their capacity to be culpable of their crimes, or are we a state that will announce that we stand against the taking of human life, by ourselves following our own precept, and refusing to be the ones who bring about the death of another."

O'Rourke said the death penalty isn't merciful because it views a person as not deserving God's gift of life.

"The death penalty isn't merciful because when the state kills in our name, we have blood on our hands," she said. "As Pope Francis has professed, we are a Church of mercy. The death penalty in Nebraska is incompatible with mercy."

(source: Scottsbluff Star Herald)

************************

Midland to host death penalty program


Juan Melendez spent 17 years on Florida's death row for a crime he didn't commit. On Tuesday, Midland University's Luther College of Arts and Sciences invites students and the public to hear his story.

Melendez, the subject of an internationally acclaimed documentary, will speak at 7 p.m. in Room 304 of the Anderson Complex.

The event is designed to provide information as Nebraska sets to vote in November on whether to reinstate the death penalty. Nebraska's Legislature voted in 2015 to replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole. A petition drive placed the issue on the Nov. 8 ballot.

(source: Freemont Tribune)






NEW MEXICO:

House panel OK's death penalty reinstatement, other crime bills


A bill to reinstate the death penalty that is sought by Gov. Susana Martinez squeaked through the House Judiciary Committee on a 7-6 vote late Friday, with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats opposed.

The same committee also approved 2 other crime bills, voting 12-1 to expand an existing child abuse law, and 8-4 to broaden the "3 strikes" law that subjects those convicted of three violent felonies to mandatory life sentences.

But with the Senate already having adjourned the special session - and senators headed home - after approving a package of budget fixes, work on the crime measures could be an empty effort.

Democrats had opposed the governor's putting crime bills on the agenda for the short special session.

Critics said the death penalty bill was a flawed, ill-conceived piece of legislation whose sole purpose was political: fodder for the GOP in the legislative campaigns ahead of the Nov. 8 general election.

"The committee should be ashamed to do this," House Minority Leader Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, told fellow members of the House Judiciary Committee who were meeting close to midnight with only a handful of onlookers.

The death penalty bill was headed next to the House Appropriations Committee, while the other crime bills were scheduled to be considered by the full House, which was to meet later today.

The death penalty legislation would reinstate capital punishment for killers of police officers, correctional officers and children under 18.

The proponents of House Bill 7 pointed out that 5 police officers in New Mexico have been killed in 18 months, and impassioned family members of victims pleaded with lawmakers to endorse the legislation.

"There are just certain crimes that are inexcusable, and there has to be a deterrent," said Bernalillo County Sheriff's Deputy Michelle Carlino-Webster, widow of slain Albuquerque police officer Daniel Webster.

"These people are brazen. They don't care if you have a badge ... and we're a target for them," she told the committee.

New Mexico abolished the death penalty in 2009 after more than a decade of discussion, and the bill's opponents said it was irresponsible to revisit the issue in a brief legislative session with little public input.

Ruth Hoffman, speaking for the New Mexico Conference of Churches, said the national trend "is to end this immoral, unnecessary and ineffective practice," citing a number of people wrongly sentenced to death who have been exonerated.

And opponents said the bill was unconstitutionally flawed.

A recent horrific crime in which 10-year-old Victoria Martens of Albuquerque was drugged, raped and killed was also part of the backdrop for the crime discussions.

"I understand the rage and frustration and the political desire to get this done now," said Rep. Antonio "Moe" Maestas, D-Albuquerque, a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

But, he added, "We are in a constitutional budget crisis??? that could potentially hurt the state's credit rating, and he said that's what lawmakers should be dealing with.

Under current law, intentional abuse of a child under the age of 12 that results in the child's death is a 1st-degree felony punishable by life in prison. House Bill 6 would expand that to also cover children 12 to 18.

"We're essentially saying that under current law a 12-year-old's life is not as important as an 11-year-old's," said Rep. Sarah Maestas Barnes, R-Albuquerque, a sponsor of the bill.

Critics said the proposal was too broad in its scope and would not deter or prevent crimes against children.

House Bill 5 expands the "3 strikes" law that subjects those convicted of 3 violent felonies to mandatory life sentences.

Critics say the 22-year-old law is so narrowly written it has never been used, and the legislation significantly enlarges the list of crimes that could make an offender eligible.

(source: Albuquerque Journal)






CALIFORNIA----new death sentence

Prisoner Gets Death Penalty for 2012 Halloween Night Murder ---- A prisoner who orchestrated the Beverly Grove Halloween night 2012 murder was sentenced to death for killing a witness and lying in wait.


A prisoner who arranged the 2012 murder of a witness against him in a robbery case was sentenced to death today. Michael Thomas, 50, was convicted of murder Sept. 8 for the killing of 42-year-old Erik Poltorak.

Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry upheld the jury's recommendation of the death penalty on Friday.

Judge Perry denied a motion for a new trial and an automatic motion for a reduced sentence. In addition to convicting Thomas of murder last week, jurors found true special circumstances allegations of killing a witness and lying in wait.

The victim, Poltorak, had been burglarized on Aug. 13, 2011. He was a witness who planned to testify against Thomas in that invasion robbery case.

The 3 who Thomas coerced into murdering Poltorak are also serving time in prison. They include gunman Allen Williams, 23 years old with no prior criminal record at the time of the crime. Thomas's niece, Jessicha Thomas, was 20 years old at the time and also had no criminal record, and Yvonne Keith, 49-years-old at the time of the murder, who also pressured the other 2 into committing the murder.

Williams is serving a life sentence without the chance of parole. Jessicha Thomas testified against her uncle, Michael Thomas, in exchange for a leniency agreement for 2nd-degree murder. Yvonne Keith is also serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

On Oct. 31, 2012, Poltorak was shot to death on his doorstep in Beverly Grove.

At the beginning of the trial's penalty phase, Thomas asked his attorneys not to defend him against the death penalty.

"I don't care for anyone to know about my life ... to go into detail about my upbringing, my family," Thomas, who spent time in juvenile detention, told Judge Robert J. Perry. Thomas asked that he be excused from court during the penalty phase, and Perry allowed him to be taken back to jail over the objection of prosecutors.

During his opening statement of the penalty phase, Deputy District Attorney Bobby Zoumberakis played a 911 call in which a co-worker who arrived at Poltorak's house and found him shot in the face and back of the head sounded hysterical and was hyperventilating.

She tied the murder to Poltorak's pending court appearance, telling the 911 dispatcher, "I'm sure he did it, he did it," of the man charged in the robbery case, without citing Thomas by name.

Poltorak "left behind a 15-year-old daughter who suffered from autism," Zoumberakis said, telling the 6-man, 6-woman jury they would hear evidence of the impact of the crime on her life.

"She was 9 years old when he was killed ... she can't talk about it to this day," Zoumberakis said.

Zoumberakis said Thomas manipulated his 3 co-defendants to carry out Poltorak's killing and had a long history of criminal and violent acts, including threats to Culver City police officers, a stabbing and using a shank in jail.

"This is the type of conduct and this is the type of (individual) that warrants it," Zoumberakis told the jury, asking them to recommend the death penalty rather than life in prison without the possibility of parole. A decision which both the jury and judge upheld.

(source: patch.com)






OREGON:

Costs prompt lifting of some Clatsop County court security


Visitors to the Clatsop County courthouse can once again enter the building without being screened after some security measures were lifted due to costs.

Tougher security procedures were instituted last week in time for the county's 1st death penalty trial in more than a decade, The Daily Astorian reported (https://is.gd/mfmf2g ).

But the Sheriff's Office and other officials balked at the extra cost and resources needed to screen everyone entering the court.

Sheriff Tom Bergin said his deputies are already overworked due to patrol duty and covering shifts at the jail, and his office does not have the personnel for shifts at the courthouse.

"It all boils down to money, and we don't have the resources or the manpower," Bergin said.

A metal detector has been set up outside the courtroom where Randy Lee Roden is being tried in the killing of 2-year-old Evangelina Wing, who died of blunt force trauma in December 2014. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

County Manager Cameron Moore said the county is in ongoing talks to find a permanent solution to secure the courthouse after Roden's trial.

Moore estimates it could cost $300,000 a year to fully secure the courthouse. He also said it is unclear how much officials want to inconvenience people trying to enter the courthouse.

"This is the public's building. We don't want to make it too difficult," Moore said. "It's finding the balance between appropriate access and appropriate security."

(source: Brown County Democrat)






USA:

These states will vote on repealing or reinstating the death penalty on Nov. 8


20 states and the District of Columbia have no death penalty. On Nov. 8, 3 more states will vote on whether to keep capital punishment alive in their state.

California, Nebraska and Oklahoma all have measures on the ballot this year, according to Ballotpedia.

Death penalty vote in California

California has 2 questions on the ballot. A vote for Proposition 62 would repeal the death penalty altogether. Proposition 66, if it passes, would keep the death penalty in place, but speed up the appeals process and require death row inmates to work in prison and pay restitution to their victims' families.

Death penalty vote in Oklahoma

Oklahoma voters will decide on State Question 776. An affirmative vote on State Question 766 would add to the state constitution and note that the death penalty is "not cruel or unusual punishment."

Death penalty vote in Nebraska

Nebraska has already banned the death penalty, but this year, Referendum 426 will ask voters if they want to retain the ban, or repeal it to allow the death penalty.

Capital punishment and the presidential race

Where do the presidential candidates stand?

Hillary Clinton doesn't mention the death penalty on her campaign website.

But she has been on the record on the subject. During a Democratic primary debate co-moderated by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Clinton said she favors a federal death penalty, according to an NBC News transcript.

MADDOW: Do you still support capital punishment, even if you do so reluctantly?

CLINTON: Yes, I do. And, you know, what I hope the Supreme Court will do is make it absolutely clear that any state that continues capital punishment either must meet the highest standards of evidentiary proof of effective assistance of counsel or they cannot continue it because that, to me, is the real dividing line.

I have much more confidence in the federal system, and I do reserve it for particularly heinous crimes in the federal system, like terrorism. I have strong feelings about that. I thought it was appropriate after a very thorough trial that Timothy McVeigh received the death penalty for blowing up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Donald Trump also doesn't lay out his position on the death penalty on his campaign website. But he has said that he wants a mandatory death penalty for people who kill police officers.

"One of the first things I'd do in terms of executive orders, if I win, will be to sign a strong, strong statement that will go out to the country, out to the world, that anybody killing a policeman, a policewoman, a police officer, anybody killing a police officer: Death penalty is going to happen, okay?" he said in December in New Hampshire, according to the Washington Post.

(source: mic.com)

************************

Former prosecutors say spree killer Gary Sampson's death penalty trial was solid


Gary Lee Sampson took 3 lives in less than a week. Now, the convicted spree killer from Abington is trying to save his own.

Jury selection began Wednesday for the retrial of the 2003 penalty phase of Sampson's murder trial when the jury recommended and the judge agreed to a death sentence.

But prosecutors who handled the original trial say the case against Sampson is as solid as it was 12 years ago.

"I believed back then that the jury got it right, and I hope that the jury will get it right again," said Michael Sullivan, who investigated 2 of Sampson's murders in the summer of 2001 as the Plymouth County district attorney and later pushed for the death penalty as the U.S. district attorney for Boston.

The jury, which attorneys will continue putting together next week, will be charged with weighing some 238 mitigating factors raised by Sampson defense attorneys against the 14 aggravating factors argued by prosecutors and reach a unanimous decision about whether Sampson, now 57, deserves to die for murdering 19-year-old Jonathan Rizzo of Kingston and 69-year-old Philip McCloskey in his week-long rampage. The trial for a 3rd victim was held in New Hampshire.

Prosecutors have said they plan to call at least 71 witnesses, including several members of the Rizzo and McCloskey families.

Members of both families did not respond to requests for comment this week.

History of substance abuse and crime

Sampson was born on Sept. 29, 1959, to an Abington firefighter who married Sampson's mother when she was 18. He did poorly in school, started drinking and smoking marijuana when he was 12 and was arrested when he was 20 for robbing a 72-year-old man at knifepoint and stealing his car.

More than 2 decades later, after years spent wandering from state to state and occasionally robbing banks, Sampson returned to Abington and set up camp near his childhood home in woods where he used to play. His defense attorneys say he was looking for his estranged family; town officials suggested he had returned to seek revenge against an Abington police officer who arrested him as a teenager.

Then on July 24, 2001, a retired pipefitter named Philip McCloskey was driving through Weymouth when he saw Sampson hitchhiking and agreed to give him a ride. Once inside the car, Sampson pulled a knife on the 69-year-old McCloskey and forced him to drive to Marshfield, where he killed him in woods off Route 3A.

3 days later, on the Plymouth waterfront, Sampson forced his way into a car driven by 19-year-old Jonathon Rizzo, a college student from Kingston, and made him drive to Abington, where he tied Rizzo to a tree and sliced open his throat. The next day he drove to New Hampshire, broke into a cabin on Lake Winnipesaukee and strangled Robert Whitney, the 58-year-old caretaker, to death.

3 days later, after another carjacking, Sampson called Vermont State Police and surrendered. Prosecutors said he admitted to the 3 murders immediately.

The jurors now being empaneled in U.S. District Court in Boston will not be deciding whether Sampson is guilty of the murders, just whether he should die for them. Sampson pleaded guilty to the charges in 2003; it was only his death sentence that was thrown out years later after it was discovered that one of the sentencing jurors had lied repeatedly under oath about her background.

In addition to a new jury, Sampson has a new defense team that will face off against new prosecutors in a penalty phase that will be overseen by a a new judge, U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin. Some witnesses who testified in the first trial have since died - including McCloskey's ex-wife, Ann - and others who were too young to testify the 1st time are now old enough to take the stand.

New evidence of violent behavior

But the only new evidence that jurors are likely to hear will come from guards and prison staff at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, where Sampson has been housed for the last decade. Prosecutors plan to use the employees' testimony about Sampson's conduct, which they say includes violence against guards and death threats made toward prison staff and other inmates, as evidence that Sampson will continue to pose a threat toward others if he is not put to death.

"That's going to hurt him a lot," said attorney George Vien, who was part of the prosecution team that won a death sentence for Sampson in 2003.

Vien, now a private attorney with Donnelly, Conroy & Gelhaar in Boston, remains confident that the aggravating factors in the murders and the evidence behind them are still strong enough 12 years later to convince another jury that the death penalty is warranted for Sampson. Those factors include the "heinous, cruel and depraved" way he is accused of killing Rizzo and McCloskey; the planning that went into Rizzo's carjacking and murder; the 3rd murder in New Hampshire for which Sampson is serving a separate life sentence; the danger he poses to prison staff; and how the murders of Rizzo and McCloskey have affected their families and friends.

"The relevant facts remain the same," Vein said. "He committed horrendous crimes against completely innocent, wonderful people and there's nothing redeeming about him."

Sampson's attorneys, however, plan to argue that there is. Among the 238 mitigating factors that they plan to present is what they describe as a history of mental illness and brain damage, a troubled relationship with his father, early exposure to drugs and alcohol as a child and frequent beatings at the hands of his brother and his peers. They say he is also in poor health, with hypertension, hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver, and likely won't live long enough to be put to death.

But perhaps the most important mitigating factor is the fact that on July 23, 2001 - the day before he killed Rizzo - Sampson called the FBI and asked them to pick him up before he got into more trouble. The FBI later admitted that the employee who answered the call had accidentally dropped it and never recorded it or reported it to anyone else.

Sullivan, the former U.S. attorney, said the new prosecution team could also benefit from the fact that Mark Wolf, the federal judge who oversaw Sampson's 1st trial and later threw out his death sentence, is no longer on the case. Sullivan said that like many of the family members of Sampson's victims, he felt that Wolf had a bias against the death penalty that was reflected in some of his rulings.

Now a private attorney living in Abington, Sullivan said he still thinks about the case all the time, particularly when he drives past the Abington Ale House near where Rizzo's body was found, or his alma mater, BC High, where Rizzo and Sullivan's own children attended school. He said he knows that the prolonged Sampson trial has been painful for the Rizzo and McCloskey families, but he sticks by his decision a decade and a half ago to pursue the death penalty, which both families advocated for, instead of settling for a life sentence.

"I thought it was the right decision 15 years ago and I still believe today it was the right decision," he said. "People from the community should decide Gary Lee Sampson's ultimate fate - either life or death."

(source: The Enterprise)

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