Nov. 3
UTAH:
Utah legislator wants mandatory death penalty when police are targeted, killed
With the shooting deaths of 2 Iowa police officers bolstering his resolve, a
Utah legislator is proposing a mandatory death penalty clause for anyone
convicted of targeting and killing a cop.
Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clearfield, is drafting legislation that would enhance the
penalties for anyone who specifically targets and assaults a police officer. A
1st draft of the bill is complete but not yet available, Ray said, and a number
of questions remain about how the change would work.
Regardless, the legislator is insistent that stiffer consequences are necessary
to prevent increasingly common attacks on officers.
When he received a news alert early Wednesday about the fatal ambush of two
officers in Des Moines, Ray said he became "furious" and even more committed to
stepping up the law in Utah.
"These are guys who knowingly, every day, go to a job they know they may not
return from," Ray said. "And then you've got cowards that are going out and
targeting these guys, trying to make sure they don't go home to their
families."
Urbandale police officer Justin Martin, 24, and Des Moines Police Sgt. Anthony
Beminio, 39, were gunned down shortly after 1 a.m. as they sat in their patrol
cars, The Associated Press reported. The suspected shooter, 46-year-old Scott
Michael Greene, surrendered hours later when he flagged down a Department of
Natural Resources employee on a rural road west of the city.
Ray said he began drafting his bill following attacks on police in July. 5
officers were shot and killed by a sniper in Dallas, and 3 others were gunned
down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as they responded to calls of a man prowling
the streets with a rifle.
The legislation focuses on deliberate attacks that single out officers rather
than assaults on police during the commission of other crimes, Ray said. He
acknowledged that work remains to define what constitutes "targeting" an
officer and how it would be proved under the law.
Ray's bill would create a 2-step penalty enhancement for anyone convicted of
targeting an officer in an assault, elevating a third-degree felony offense to
a 1st-degree felony, for example. And in cases where the officer is killed, he
is proposing mandatory pursuit of the death penalty, meaning district attorneys
would no longer be able to choose whether to pursue capital punishment.
Under current Utah law, murder of a law enforcement officer is an aggravated
crime, meaning it is eligible for the death penalty if prosecutors choose to
pursue it and a jury chooses to impose it.
Karena Rogers daughter is about to go through puberty - and she is terrified of
it.
Ray says his bill keeps the jury phase for capital punishment sentencing and
instead addresses the way charges are initially filed when an officer is shot
and killed.
"The thing that I'm tired of is on these high-profile cases - and I know the
DAs are going to argue the other direction, and I get it - but they just plea
them out," Ray said. "I want an ultimate penalty. If you target, you kill a
police officer, you need to pay with your own life."
In the case of Timothy Troy Walker, who shot and killed Draper Police Sgt.
Derek Johnson in 2014 when the officer stopped to check whether Walker had been
in an accident, Walker pleaded guilty to the murder to avoid the death penalty.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill, while expressing support for a
penalty enhancement, should it pass, voiced concern Wednesday about the death
penalty mandate.
Requiring prosecutors to pursue capital punishment takes away their ability to
evaluate the strength of evidence and witnesses as the case progresses, Gill
said.
"Would we want to force a trial even if the case starts to deteriorate and risk
losing the case?" he asked.
It also overrides the wishes of the victim's family, forcing them to endure a
trial and years of appeals, even if they would rather close the case quickly
through a plea bargain.
"I have had cases where this residual burden was too much for the family
members to endure," Gill said.
A penalty enhancement, however, "would certainly send a strong message as
public policy that we will not tolerate targeting law enforcement officers," he
said.
Paul Cassell, University of Utah law professor and a former federal judge, also
praised the idea of a penalty enhancement but worried about the capital
punishment requirement.
Cassell commended the way district and county attorneys in Utah have prosecuted
murders of police officers, saying that unless there is a proven issue with how
the cases are being handled, there's no need to change the law.
He also cited the financial costs of death penalty cases and appeals -
legislative analysts said last year that death penalty cases cost Utahns $1.6
million more on average than a life without parole case - and noted that
there's no guarantee a capital case will end with someone being put to death.
"I applaud the sentiment here that we do need to do everything we can to
protect our law enforcement officers, but the devil is going to be in the
details in coming up with something that really would make a difference here,"
Cassell said. "Sadly, many of the people who are attacking law enforcement
officers are not likely to be deterred by changes in criminal penalty."
(source: Deseret News)
CALIFORNIA:
Death penalty sought in killing of 2 Palm Springs officers----Prosecutors say
the officers were responding to a domestic disturbance call on Oct. 8 when John
Felix opened fire through a metal screen door
Prosecutors say they'll seek the death penalty against a man charged with the
shooting deaths of 2 Palm Springs police officers in an ambush earlier this
month.
The Riverside County District Attorney on Wednesday announced his intention to
seek the death penalty against 26-year-old John Felix.
He has pleaded not guilty to murder, attempted murder and weapons charges.
He's being held without bail in the shooting deaths of 27-year-old Officer
Lesley Zerebny and 63-year-old Officer Jose "Gil" Vega.
Zerebny was a rookie officer just back from maternity leave. Vega was just
months away from retirement.
Prosecutors say the officers were responding to a domestic disturbance call on
Oct. 8 when Felix opened fire through a metal screen door at his family's home.
Prosecutors say Felix is a gang member.
(source: Associated Press)
**************
California Has a Plan to Ban Executions, But Death Row Inmates Hate It
On Election Day, California voters will choose between two competing ballot
measures: Proposition 62, which would abolish the death penalty in the state,
and Prop. 66, which would speed up the execution process. If both pass, the one
with the most votes will supersede the other. If neither passes, California's
death penalty system will remain unchanged.
A recent poll indicates that Prop. 66 is on track to be approved, but Prop. 62
is facing some stiff opposition - including from some death row inmates.
Over the summer, a Chicago-based nonprofit called the Campaign to End the Death
Penalty sent a survey to all 741 death row inmates in California. The survey
asked them to answer 6 questions about their feelings on the death penalty,
Prop. 62, and whether the challenge of Prop. 66 should affect how people vote
on Prop. 62. All but one respondent expressed opposition to the death penalty,
yet more opposed Prop. 62 than supported it. Of the 46 inmates who had
responded as of last Friday, 22 opposed the measure, 17 supported it, and 7
took no position. (No one - including the respondent who supported the death
penalty - supported Prop. 66.)
Lilly Hughes, director of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, said inmates'
opposition to Prop. 62 has to do with the way it's written. The Justice That
Works Act - the legislative title for Prop. 62 - would make life without parole
the maximum sentence for murder and be retroactively applied to all inmates
currently on death row. "People feel that it's just a death sentence with a
different name," Hughes told me. Kenneth Hartman - who has served 37 years of a
life-without-parole sentence in California State Prison in Los Angeles County -
echoed that sentiment during a phone call. Hartman heads the Other Death
Penalty Project, an inmate-run nonprofit that advocates against
life-without-parole sentences and opposes Prop. 62. "Fundamentally, we believe
that life without parole is just another method of execution," he told me. "You
die in prison. It just takes a longer, slower time to do it."
"Fundamentally, we believe that life without parole is just another method of
execution. You die in prison. It just takes a longer, slower time to do it."
Many inmates also do not want to give up the state-sponsored resources
guaranteed them to fight their convictions as long as they're facing execution,
notes Kent Scheidegger, legal director at the conservative Criminal Justice
Legal Foundation. Only inmates on death row are guaranteed an attorney for
their appeals - and a review of their trial process by a federal court that
considers factors like attorney incompetence, potential procedural errors, and
racial bias. Death row inmates are also granted more funding for their
attorneys to investigate their cases and retain expert witnesses. "If the
inmates' primary focus is getting the conviction overturned, then they are
better off, in a sense, being sentenced to death," Scheidegger says.
The Justice That Works Act would also require all inmates serving life without
parole for murder to work and would raise the portion of their earnings paid
toward restitution for their victim's families from 50 to 60 %. It would allow
the state to continue taking money out of the funds sent to them by their
friends and family as well. Some survey respondents who opposed the act said 60
% was too high, that their families shouldn't have to pay, or that they wanted
to decide for themselves what to do with their time in prison - including not
work.
California has more people on death row than any other state but hasn't
executed anyone since 2006, when the state Supreme Court ruled the state's
lethal injection method unconstitutional and instituted a moratorium on
executions. Only 13 people have been executed since 1978, when capital
punishment was restored after the state Supreme Court had ruled it
unconstitutional in 1972. The state Supreme Court also currently hears all
death penalty appeals - a process that has often taken as long as 10 to 15
years - so many condemned inmates sit in prison for years on end without an
execution date.
"If the inmates' primary focus is getting the conviction overturned, then they
are better off, in a sense, being sentenced to death."
Back in 2012, the last time there was a ballot measure seeking to abolish the
death penalty, the Campaign to End the Death Penalty sent a similar survey to
100 death row inmates in the state. The vast majority of the 35 respondents
opposed the measure, Hughes said, for reasons similar to those expressed this
time around. She thinks the amount of inmate support for Prop. 62 has to do
with the fact that, this time, there's also a competing measure that would put
inmates on the fast track to execution.
Prop. 66 aims to shorten the death penalty appeals process by assigning
condemned inmates' initial challenges to their convictions to state trial
courts, creating a timetable for reviewing capital cases, and requiring
appointed attorneys to work on death penalty cases. An analysis by the
nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office argues that the ballot initiative
would save California taxpayers $150 million annually within a few years,
partly because the state wouldn't have to keep paying for death penalty legal
proceedings.
The Campaign to End the Death Penalty does not have a public stance on Prop. 62
or Prop. 66. Officially, however, the campaign is opposed to both the death
penalty and to life without parole. The point of the survey, Hughes says, was
not to sway voters one way or another but to bring the voices of death row
inmates into the public debate. One respondent wanted voters to know that "both
[the] death penalty and life without [parole] are cruel forms of punishment and
life without may be worse." Another, who supported Prop 62., wanted the public
to remember that innocent people have been executed. A third advised simply,
"Vote your conscience."
(source: Mother Jones)
*****************
Keep the death penalty
After spending 37 years in law enforcement and 5 years as a jail commander, I
would encourage everyone to vote to retain the death penalty.
We should demand that all appeals by attorneys be filed within 5 years of when
sentence is imposed. We have inmates who have received death sentences who have
been on death row for 20 or more years.
As a result we have put an unnecessary burden on jail staff who are responsible
for the care and safety of death row inmates who feel they have nothing to lose
by assaulting, or in some cases killing, staff or other inmates. With the
development of DNA evidence in recent years, the chance of an innocent person
receiving the death penalty in violent crimes is remote.
Those who oppose the death penalty probably have never observed how the violent
death of a loved one affects their well-being. Law enforcement has and does.
Vengeance is not relevant, it's justice.
Some would say the death penalty is barbaric. Scripture proclaims it is
biblical.
W.B. Honeycutt, Arroyo Grande
(source: Letter to the Editor, San Luis Obispo Tribune)
*****************
2 death penalty propositions on California ballot
While the focus on Election Day will be on the contest between 2 extremely
reactionary big business candidates who are both opposed by the majority of the
population, Californians will also be voting on 17 separate statewide
propositions.
2 of these, Proposition 62 and Proposition 66, concern the death penalty. One
calls for ending the death penalty and the other for streamlining the process
of state murder. If they are both passed, the 1 with the most votes would
become law.
The current law providing for the death penalty in California was passed by a
70 % majority in 1978. It came in the aftermath of a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court
decision in Furman v. Georgia, which found that capital punishment was being
applied in an unconstitutional manner while making no ruling on the
constitutionality of capital punishment itself.
In 2012, a proposition similar to the one on the current ballot calling for an
end to the death penalty in California was narrowly defeated in a 53-47 % vote.
While capital punishment remains the law in California, only 13 of the 930
individuals who received a death sentence since 1978 have been executed. The
last inmate executed in the state, Clarence Ray Allen, was killed by means of
lethal injection in 2006 at the age of 76, after having spent 23 years on death
row. As of July 1, there were 741 individuals still on California's death row,
out of the 2,905 people sentenced to die throughout the US.
Millions of people in California and throughout the country oppose the death
penalty as a barbaric practice that represents the ultimate violation of
democratic rights and the U.S. Constitution's prohibition of "cruel and unusual
punishment." A poll conducted last month by Pew Research found that, for the
1st time in half a century, less than half of those polled nationwide supported
capital punishment. The US remains the only Western advanced capitalist country
to continue the practice of state murder.
Yet both of these propositions concentrate not on these fundamental
considerations, but rather on the fact that "legal and bureaucratic hurdles"
have led to a backlog of inmates on death row and a fiscal burden upon the
state in dealing with legal appeals and the maintenance of death row
facilities.
Proposition 66 attempts to remove or mitigate these hurdles and make the entire
process more efficient, i.e., to streamline the operation of the state murder
apparatus. It does this by setting arbitrary time limits for legal review
windows, eliminating special housing for death row inmates, limiting successive
appeals by defendants, exempting prison officials from existing regulations for
developing execution methods and enabling the transfer of inmates between
prisons. It also changes the method for selecting attorneys to handle death
penalty appeals in a manner that would leave those facing execution with less
than competent counsel. Police and jail guard unions across the state have
endorsed the measure, along with the Republican Party.
Proposition 66 would additionally require the condemned to work while awaiting
their execution, and would mandate the transfer of up to 70 % of their wages to
the families of their victims.
The supporters of Proposition 66 argue that the death penalty is a necessary
and generally appropriate legal response to certain crimes, but that, in
practice, legal impediments have rendered it a waste of time and money. Its
supporters claim its proposed changes will save tens of millions of dollars
annually.
Proposition 62, dubbed "The Justice that Works Act," would legally end the
death penalty in the state. Should it be passed, California would be the 21st
state to abolish the death penalty. The legality of the death penalty is facing
judicial challenges in several other states, including Delaware and Nebraska,
and its fate in those states is still unresolved.
The arguments put forward by those motivating Proposition 62, however, are
based not on the fundamental inhumanity of the death penalty, but, like
Proposition 66, on the prospect of saving the state money. Supporters claim
that Proposition 62 will do this more effectively than Proposition 66,
estimating savings on the order of $1 billion within 5 years.
After indicting California's current system of capital punishment as both
ineffective in producing executions and a waste of money, the text of
Proposition 62 endorses the sentence of life in prison without the possibility
of parole as a preferable alternative.
The text of the proposition reads: "Violent murderers who are sentenced to
serve life in prison without the possibility of parole in California are never
eligible for parole. They spend the rest of their lives in prison and they die
in prison." (Emphasis in original)
In other words, the proposition proposes replacing what is now a very uncertain
death penalty, given the lack of any executions in a decade, with a very
certain one: condemnation to die in prison after an indefinite period of
incarceration. No one sentenced to life without parole has left prison alive in
California or any other state.
It is worth noting that this barbaric form of sentencing, based on the premise
that the purpose of the so-called "criminal justice system" is maximum
punishment, retribution and revenge, does not exist even in some countries
that, like the U.S., are notorious for continuing to carry out executions, such
as China and Pakistan.
In the US as a whole, out of 159,000 people sentenced to life in prison as of
2012, just under 1/3 - nearly 50,000 - were serving life without a chance of
parole. The numbers have grown rapidly with a decline in the use of the death
penalty.
Proposition 62 would further "require everyone convicted of first degree murder
and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole to work
while in prison, and to increase to 60% the portion of wages they must pay as
restitution to their victims."
This additional punishment is advanced under conditions where there has been a
wave of strikes in prisons across the country by inmates protesting their being
compelled to perform what amounts to slave labor.
Wages for labor in prison are already extremely low, when there are any wages
at all. Wages for prisoners working for Federal Prison Industries, a government
corporation that employs seven percent of the prison workforce, range from 23
cents to $1.15 per hour.
There are currently many more prisoners serving sentences of life without
parole than there are death row inmates. Since the new restitution clause would
apply to the entirety of the former category and not just those on death row,
the 60 percent deduction would apply to a layer of the prison population that
is several orders of magnitude larger than those presently on death row.
When Proposition 34, very similar in its content to Proposition 62, was on the
ballot in 2012, attempts were made to poll death row prisoners on their
attitude to the ballot measure. The results suggested overwhelming opposition
to the proposition ?by prisoners, who saw their death sentences being commuted
to life without parole as worsening their conditions of imprisonment and
automatically depriving them of their right to obtain state-appointed lawyers
to pursue their habeas corpus appeals and potentially prove their innocence.
Proposition 62 is endorsed by the Democratic Party and those in its orbit,
including the Peace and Freedom Party and the Greens. It also has the backing
of several California billionaires, primarily from the technology industry.
Huge sums of money have been raised in support of both death penalty
propositions. Supporters of Proposition 62 have raised $9 million for its
support and another $10 million to oppose Proposition 66. Backers of
Proposition 66 have raised $13 million for its support and another $12.5
million to oppose Proposition 62.
Opposition to the death penalty is steadily growing. This is of a piece with
popular revulsion over police violence and growing opposition to the political
establishment as a whole. The death penalty is increasingly seen as another
tool of state repression, imposed overwhelmingly against the most oppressed
layers of the working class. Yet proposition 62 makes no appeal to these mass
sentiments.
Nowhere in the arguments advanced for this proposition is there a hint of the
Enlightenment principle that the justice system should aim for reform rather
than punishment or retribution. There is no trace of the notion that "every
punishment which does not arise from absolute necessity is tyrannical," as
Montesquieu said.
In place of this, and in place of the rights of the accused, there is homage to
victims' rights, which is broadened to include revenge in the name of
"closure."
No question on the ballot can be considered outside of broader political
considerations. Each proposition comes from capitalist elements and is drafted
with capitalist political and economic interests in mind. Even where there is
an element of progressive content - ending the death penalty - it is laced with
reactionary caveats.
The barbaric practices of capital punishment and life imprisonment without the
possibility of parole are both expressions of the violent and criminal
character of the American capitalist state and the vast social inequality that
is a pervasive feature of American life. They are both predicated on the
aristocratic principle that the wealthy and powerful are free to do whatever
they want, while the poor and powerless are to be humiliated and degraded.
Those conditions cannot be changed by ballot propositions, but only by means of
the class struggle.
(source: World Socialist Web Site)
USA:
Crime on the Ballot ---- A Look at this Year???s Soft-on-Crime Attack Ads;
Campaign ads in the age of criminal justice reform.
It's campaign season, which means the long shadow of Willie Horton is with us
yet again. George H.W. Bush's 1988 attack ad, which blamed his Democratic
opponent Michael Dukakis for releasing a man who went on to commit more violent
crimes, has become shorthand for a style of political advertising that
continues to reappear every cycle. This year is no different.
But there are a few new approaches to these ads that may reflect larger trends
in the politics of criminal justice.
In an era of prominent Republican support for reducing incarceration, for
example, such attack ads can spark backlash. Last month, the Republican
National Committee ran an ad explaining that when Democratic vice-presidential
candidate Tim Kaine was a defense lawyer, he represented men who received the
death penalty. As Virginia governor, the ad goes on, Kaine commuted a death
sentence. Kaine "consistently protected the worst kinds of people," the ad
says.
The condemnation was swift. Kevin Burke, a former president of the American
Judges Association, defended Kaine as a modern-day Atticus Finch and pointed
out that the ranks of former death penalty defense lawyers include none other
than U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Amid the criticism, the RNC
deleted its own tweet, which had characterized the ad as "Willie-Horton style."
Racial politics have shifted over time, too. The Horton ad was widely perceived
as playing on racial anxieties, a perception that the new ads seem keen to
avoid. "Most of these spots flinch when it comes to going for a pure fear
appeal, a la Willie Horton," says Robert Mann, a journalism professor at
Louisiana State University who wrote a book on the 1964 "Daisy" ad. Mann noted
that an attack ad about Democratic Connecticut state Sen. Mae Flexer - which
criticizes her vote to repeal the state's death penalty and support an early
release program - "was careful to show several non-minority faces." The attack
on Kaine also features primarily white criminals.
This year, many ads in the Horton tradition focus on the subject of rape,
perhaps in an attempt to appeal to women voters. In Houston, Texas, an ad
accuses the incumbent district attorney, Republican Devon Anderson, of jailing
a rape victim to ensure she would testify. Republican ads against North
Carolina gubernatorial candidate Roy Cooper and Catherine Cortez Masto, who is
running for a Senate seat from Nevada, accuse each of them of putting a low
priority on testing rape kits and solving rape crimes in general.
Ads in North Carolina are targeting Deborah Ross, the Democratic challenger to
Sen. Richard Burr, for her efforts on behalf of a 13-year-old named Andre
Green, who was charged with sexually assaulting his 23-year-old neighbor while
the victim's toddler was in the room. In 1994, as an ACLU lobbyist, Ross
advocated against placing Green in an adult court. "If Deborah Ross had her
way, Green would be on our streets," the ad says.
In response, Ross released her own ad attacking Burr for being soft on sex
criminals. The ad points out that Burr voted against the Violence Against Women
Act, which includes funding for rape crisis centers, and voted against funding
the federal sex offender registry (in truth, his vote was against a much
broader budget bill).
Jonathan Davis, a partner at Northside Research + Consulting, an opposition
research firm in New York, sees the trend as a tactical appeal to women in an
election where their votes are not as predictable. Hillary Clinton "is poised
to win a historic percentage of Republican women," he says. "There is a large
block of female voters in key states who know they're backing Clinton for
president, but are still open to persuasion in down-ballot races."
Some of those down-ballot candidates, including district attorney hopefuls in
Florida and Colorado, are also trying different strategies with their
advertising: they are using the language of criminal justice reform, calling
for rehabilitation rather than prison for minor crimes. Colorado Democrat Beth
McCann is running an ad featuring Francisco Gallardo, a former gang-member who
now works with at-risk youth. In the ad, Gallardo says, "We need something
that's more comprehensive, that's not just about building jails, but promoting
the front end, building more empathy, more education, more opportunities...the
reason Beth [McCann] can make those hard choices is she's connected in the
community."
But at the end of the day, despite these newer trends, the soft-on-crime attack
endures. The best proof of its power is that even critics of mass incarceration
are willing to use it. The most surprising Horton-esque attack this season
comes from the suburbs of Denver, where a radio ad is targeting incumbent
district attorney Peter Weir. The ad accuses Weir, a Republican, of signing off
on a plea deal granting probation for Michael David Miller, a rapist with
numerous alleged victims. (Weir told The Marshall Project that Miller's crime
would have been difficult to prove before a jury, and his office pursued Miller
more aggressively than other jurisdictions where accusations were made.)
The ads were paid for by a political action committee linked to billionaire
George Soros, who is actually trying to bolster the campaigns of reformers
(Soros, through a spokesman, declined to comment). Soros's chosen candidate,
Jake Lilly, is running his own, separate ads promoting reform; he calls for
treatment for people with addiction and mental health issues. Weir, the
incumbent being attacked, is broadly in agreement; he has promoted the use of
specialty courts to divert drug offenders from jail time.
Lilly spoke out against the Soros-funded ads that were designed to help him. "I
don't approve of the tone," he told a local reporter. "I don't approve of the
negativity."
(source: themarshallproject.org)
********************
Jurors hear gruesome details of carjack killings in retrial
A lawyer for a man who could face the death penalty for carjacking and killing
2 Massachusetts men told jurors Wednesday that his brain "has been broken for a
very long time," but a prosecutor insisted his brain was his "most powerful
tool" in the killings.
The contrast was drawn during opening statements in the sentencing retrial of
Gary Lee Sampson, a drifter who pleaded guilty in the carjack killings and the
strangulation of a 3rd man in New Hampshire during a weeklong crime rampage in
2001.
Sampson was sentenced to death in 2003, but a federal judge granted him a new
sentencing trial in 2011 after finding that 1 of the jurors at his 1st trial
had lied about her background.
Sampson's lawyer, William McDaniels, urged the jury at his retrial to spare
Sampson's life and instead sentence him to life in prison. He said Sampson has
struggled with traumatic brain injury since the age of 4, when he fell down a
flight of stairs, and has received at least a dozen head injuries during his
life.
"There's no excuse or justification that Gary Sampson offers for the loss of
these valued human beings - these were terrible crimes. There nevertheless is a
context of how he came to be where he was in the last week of July 2001,"
McDaniels said.
At the time, Sampson was a 41-year-old drifter when he returned to his hometown
of Abington - about 25 miles south of Boston - from North Carolina, where he
was wanted in a string of bank robberies. He confessed to carjacking and
killing Philip McCloskey, a 69-year-old retiree, and Jonathan Rizzo, a
19-year-old college student, as well as the killing of Robert "Eli" Whitney in
New Hampshire.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Chao told the jury that Sampson used a pocket
knife and a nylon rope to kill his victims, but also used his brain to persuade
his victims to give him a ride, to steal their cars, and finally, to convince
them he would not kill them. Sampson wore a conservative button-down shirt,
slacks and dress shoes when he approached McCloskey and Rizzo - a "murder
outfit" he later admitted wearing so that his victims would let down their
guard and trust him, Chao said.
"He outsmarted them all, he outwitted them, he manipulated them," Chao said.
"He got them to believe that if you follow my instructions, you will live."
Since Sampson has pleaded guilty, the new jury will only be asked to decide his
punishment.
Massachusetts abolished the death penalty in 1984, but Sampson, now 57, was
prosecuted under federal law, which allows prosecutors to seek the death
penalty when a murder is committed during a carjacking.
Sampson's new lawyers have submitted a list of more than 200 mitigating factors
they hope will persuade the jury to spare Sampson's life, including their claim
that he suffers from traumatic brain injury and that he is mentally ill.
In an attempt to counter the defense claims, Chao focused on Sampson's mental
state during his opening statement, repeatedly describing how Sampson chose
victims who were Good Samaritans, willing to give him a ride and trust him.
"They were all trying to do a good thing," Chao said. "In their last moments,
Gary Lee Sampson had the power of life and he took it. In their last moments,
Gary Lee Sampson had the power of mercy and he had none."
(source: Associated Press)
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