Nov. 19
TEXAS----new death sentence
Death sentence for Fort Worth man who killed pregnant girlfriend, 2 others
A Tarrant County jury sentenced a Fort Worth man to death Friday in a 2013
triple slaying.
Amos Wells was convicted on Nov. 3 of capital murder in the deaths of his
pregnant girlfriend Chanice Reed, 22; her mother, Annette Reed, 39; and Chanice
Reed's 10-year-old brother, Eddie McCuin, on July 1, 2013.
The jury deliberated for about 4 hours Friday afternoon before reaching the
decision.
"This has been a long trial," said Kevin Rousseau, Tarrant County prosecutor.
"The family is happy that justice was served. Nothing will replace the lives
that were lost. But this was a necessary first step in the healing process."
Prosecutors argued that after Wells shot his girlfriend and her mother, he
chased Eddie through the house and shot him while he cowered on the floor.
A woman who identified herself as Chanise Reed's cousin said during her victim
impact statement that she forgave Wells but still could not understand why he
killed the woman and the unborn child he claimed he loved.
"There have been 6 deaths in our family between 2010 and 2012," the woman said.
"All we have left is memories that will never fade away."
State District Judge Ruben Gonzalez allowed Wells' family to speak to him after
his death sentence was announced to a packed courtroom. Wells, who barely
showed any emotion as his sentence was read, broke down in tears as they said
their goodbyes.
One man said that he would do all that he could for Wells, including take care
of his mother and daughter and supply him with whatever he needed while he was
in prison waiting for the state to carry out his sentence.
"I did this," Wells told his relatives. "I'm an adult. Don't bear this burden.
This burden is mine. The more you see me, the more you do for me, the more I
will feel like I am putting this burden on you."
On July 1, 2013, while first responders surrounded the residence in the 2900
block of Pate Drive where the shooting happened, Wells had already turned
himself in at the Forest Hill Police Department.
Video surveillance showed Wells leaning on the counter top in front of a window
that led to the police communication division. One officer leveled his service
weapon at Wells, who begged for the police to take his life, according to
testimony.
The last man to be sent to death row by a Tarrant County jury was Cedric Allen
Ricks, who received a death sentence on May 16, 2014. Ricks got into an
argument with Roxann Sanchez, his 30-year-old common-law wife and grabbed a
kitchen knife and began stabbing the victim and her 12- and 8-year old sons.
Before Friday's verdict there had been 3 death sentences handed down in Texas
this year, according to The Texas Tribune. Last year, Texas sent 2 convicted
killers to death row, the fewest since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the
state's capital punishment statute nearly 4 decades ago, according to a
Texas-based group that opposes the death penalty, the Tribune reported.
The state has scheduled executions for 6 offenders next year, according to
Texas Department of Criminal Justice records. 3 are from Tarrant County, 2 are
from Dallas County and 1 is from Collin County
(source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
*************
Judge rules child-killer Battaglia competent to be executed
After months of uncertainty, the fate of convicted child killer John Battaglia
was sealed in a Dallas County courtroom on Friday.
Judge Robert Burns ruled Battaglia's scheduled execution date of Dec. 7 will
stand after the court found him competent to face the death penalty.
The judge's ruling concluded 'Battaglia does understand that he is to be
executed and that his execution is imminent, and he does understand the reason
for his execution."
Battaglia committed one of the most heinous and unthinkable crimes in Dallas
history back in May 2001. He shot and killed his two little girls, Faith and
Liberty, while on the phone with his ex-wife Mary Jean Pearl.
Back in March, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of execution.
Court documents at the time stated Battaglia claimed his lawyer abandoned him
and failed to call into question his mental competency.
In a jailhouse interview with News 8's Rebecca Lopez, Battaglia blamed a list
of people he called "demons" for his conviction in the murders.
Prosecutors believed Battaglia was attempting to game the system while the
defense team argued 3 out of 4 experts concluded he was delusional and should
not be executed.
In court, it was revealed Battaglia read books and case law on how he could
fool doctors into believing he was too incompetent to be executed.
(source: WFAA news)
***************************
Deadly Question
Bill Meier says he can't remember exactly how he arrived at the deadly
question, back in 1973.
"I frankly don't have the kind of memory that would allow me to remember just
what was said," he said.
Meier is a Texas lawyer whose deep drawl makes it easy to imagine him wooing a
jury. He now sits as a judge on the Texas Second Court of Appeals, but back in
the 1970s, he served as a state senator. He's a colorful character who's made
Texas Monthly magazine's top 10 legislators list both as one of the state's
best and as one of its worst. In 1973, the magazine called him open-minded,
highly accessible, and never dogmatic. It later panned him as a legislator who
"masqueraded as one who would advance the cause of conservatism; in fact, his
cause was himself." Meier holds the record for the nation's longest filibuster
after talking for 43 hours, wearing house slippers to ease his aching feet and
an "astronaut bag" to prevent bathroom breaks to try and stop a bill that he
believed would erode public records laws.
Back in 1973, Texas legislators were wrestling with how fix one of the state's
most infamous institutions - its death penalty. The previous year, the U.S.
Supreme Court had ruled the death penalty unconstitutional, finding it was too
arbitrary, too riddled with discrimination and racism. The case put a stop to
executions nationwide and sent state legislatures scrambling to write new laws
to fix these flaws. Most states passed laws that allowed juries to consider
past behavior and crimes, but Texas focused on predicting the future. Before
jurors could sentence someone to death, they must first decide if the person
will be a future danger.
The precise wording of the question is convoluted, asking jurors "whether there
is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that
would constitute a continuing threat to society." At its core, it contains an
incredible idea: Can we predict whether or not a killer will kill again?
What if hundreds of people have been sentenced to death using a question aimed
at predicting the unpredictable?
Meier was one of the key legislators who crafted the law. In the years since,
he's gotten "probably a 100 calls about this" from people asking how he and his
colleagues thought it up, he said. But he said he can't remember the discussion
that led to it.
"Imagine trying to remember what you said and did back then," he said with a
chuckle.
Texas holds a unique place in the annals of the American death penalty. It is,
by far, the country's most prolific executioner. Since 1976, when the Supreme
Court reinstated the death penalty in a case called Gregg v. Georgia, Texas has
executed 538 people. Oklahoma is in 2nd place with a relatively paltry 112
executions. And, more than 30 years later, Meier's question remains at the
heart of this deadly system.
The Supreme Court recently heard arguments in a Texas death penalty case called
Buck v. Davis. The defendant, Duane Buck, fatally shot his ex-girlfriend and
her friend in July 1995. 2 years later, a jury found him guilty and sentenced
him to death. The case arrived at the Supreme Court because of a bizarre twist
- at the sentencing, Buck's own lawyer introduced testimony by an expert who
said that Buck's race made him more likely to be a future danger. Buck is
black.
Should someone be sentenced to death, in part, because of his race? Should
expert witnesses use race to predict whether someone will be violent? Those
questions sound shocking, and rightfully so. But the circumstances of Buck's
case - where an expert testified explicitly that race should be a factor for
the jury to consider in sentencing - make it an outlier. The framing of the
question before the court in Buck's case is narrow, and doesn't address whether
future dangerousness is the right question to ask.
What if hundreds of people have been sentenced to death using a question aimed
at predicting the unpredictable?
It's a tempting notion that we can predict who will live peaceful, productive
lives and who will erupt in violence. If we could, it would certainly take some
of the arbitrariness out of the death penalty. But how good are we at making
those predictions?
The modern age of the death penalty began in 1972. That's when the Supreme
Court heard a Georgia murder case called Furman v. Georgia. The defendant,
William Henry Furman, had broken into a home in Savannah and was rummaging
around when the homeowner awoke. Furman ran off, but on his way out, he dropped
his loaded gun, which fired, killing the homeowner. A jury convicted Furman,
who was black, in a 1-day trial. In its decision, the Supreme Court held the
death penalty, as then applied, was unconstitutional, that it was too
haphazardly applied and violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against
cruel and unusual punishment.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote, "Capital punishment
is imposed discriminatorily against certain identifiable classes of people;
there is evidence that innocent people have been executed before their
innocence can be proved; and the death penalty wreaks havoc with our entire
criminal justice system."
"If we could figure out who will be a danger, then we wouldn't have crime."
The decision created a de facto moratorium on the death penalty nationwide as
states tried to craft laws that would satisfy the Eighth Amendment. In Texas,
Meier and a few other legislators hurried to draft such a bill before the end
of the legislative session.
Meier sponsored a Senate bill to revamp the death penalty. A similar bill moved
through the Texas House of Representatives called House Bill 200. That bill
passed both houses and then was reviewed by what's called a conference
committee, a small group of legislators from both houses. Meier told me that's
where he and another legislator, Terry Doyle, came up with the deadly question,
known as the "future dangerousness" question.
At the time, Craig A. Washington Sr., was a state representative. Although he
was opposed to the death penalty, he attended the conference committee
discussions about the bill because he wanted to hear the debate. But, unlike
Meier, Washington told me that he remembers the discussion around future
dangerousness, or, rather, the lack of discussion.
"It was made up out of thin air," said Washington Sr., a Houston lawyer. "Thin
air."
Washington said that the question seemed to be a way for the legislature to
create some standard that seemed scientific, while still giving jurors a way to
come to arbitrary decisions about life or death.
"If we could figure out who will be a danger, then we wouldn't have crime,"
Washington told me. He scoffed at the idea that even experts could make that
prediction. "Experts," he said."I call them a guess in an evening gown, a
g-u-e-s-s."
No one has embodied the troubling questions embedded in the "future
dangerousness" question quite like psychiatrist Dr. James Grigson, who earned
the sobriquet Dr. Death because of his willingness to testify in favor of
executing the convicted.
After Texas passed its revamped death penalty law with the "future
dangerousness" question, prosecutors used expert witnesses to testify about a
defendant's risk for violence. Grigson testified in 167 capital cases. Known
for his genial, folksy mannerisms, Grigson frequently claimed certainty in
predicting a defendant's risk for future violence, even if he'd never talked to
the person. In 1983, Barefoot v. Estelle, a case involving Grigson's predictive
powers made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that experts could
testify about a person's future dangerousness based on hypothetical questions,
even if the expert had never talked with the person.
Grigson's confident predictions led to fame - Vanity Fair chronicled his
colorful career - but also made him a pariah to many in his profession. The
American Psychiatric Association expelled him from the professional
organization in 1995 and sharply criticized Grigson's methods as junk science.
Nowadays, Texas juries rarely hear from such experts. Grigson passed away in
2004, and that type of expert witness, one who relies on hypotheticals, has
fallen out of favor.
But the "future dangerousness" question remains.
Dr. Mark Cunningham, a Seattle-based psychologist, and Dr. John Edens, a
psychologist at Texas A&M University, have devoted their professional lives to
the question of whether we can predict the future dangerousness of those
convicted of crimes. Both have published extensively on the topic. And both
have reached much the same conclusion.
"Juries show absolutely no predictive ability whatsoever," Cunningham said.
"And, in fact, experts are similar." "It's in the papers and the magazines
about how prevalent black-on-black violence is," he told me. "It's not because
they are black; it's because they're raised funny."
The American Psychiatric Association - the same one that expelled Grigson - has
taken a similar position and implored the Supreme Court to ban the future
dangerousness question in capital cases, saying in an amicus brief that "[t]he
unreliability of psychiatric predictions of long-term future dangerousness is
by now an established fact within the profession." The APA concluded that the
"future dangerousness" question relies on junk science, and found that experts
are wrong in 2 out of 3 predictions of "future dangerousness."
Part of the problem, Cunningham explained, is the sample size. Death penalty
defendants represent a small sample of people, all of whom have been convicted
of a violent act, so there's some risk for violence for all of them. Trying to
predict who will be violent again doesn't work.
The other part of the problem is the actual circumstance versus the jury's
fears, he said. In Texas, the alternative to the death penalty is life without
parole, so the defendant will spend the rest of his life in prison. But jurors
can make their decision as if the person would be released back into society.
"It renders this issue much more ambiguous and hard to define and maybe kind of
fantastical," Cunningham said.
Edens agreed. Unlike in Texas, in the federal system and in many other states,
a person's likelihood of future violence is only one of a number of factors
that a jury can take into consideration. But the person's life doesn't hinge on
that single question. And the jury isn't allowed to talk about hypotheticals,
they must focus on the actual circumstances that await a convicted defendant -
a life sentence in prison or execution.
"People are supposed to be constrained to what's really going to happen," Edens
said.
Cunningham and Edens are both skeptical about our ability to predict future
danger in society, and they're even more skeptical about it once someone is
confined to prison. "If your goal is 'let's put somebody to death before they
do something bad in the future,' then the good news is that our prisons work
relatively well at suppressing violence, but trying to pick those needles out
of a haystack, we???re not good at doing that," Edens said.
Their view - that it's very difficult to predict who will be a future danger,
especially in prison - isn't universally shared. One man who is sharply
critical of their findings is Dr. Richard Coons, a psychiatrist based in
Austin, Texas, who has testified in dozens of capital cases. Coons himself has
faced criticism for his evaluation methods. In 2010, the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals ruled that his methods for predicting future dangerousness
were not reliable, but Coons stands by his techniques. When we spoke, he
claimed that Cunningham underestimated the likelihood that a defendant would be
dangerous in prison.
"[Cunningham and his researchers] talk about how little violence there is in
the criminal justice system. Well, hogwash - that's a good old Texas term," he
said.
Coons, who is now retired, told me that there are a number of factors that he'd
use to predict a person's future danger. He'd look at their history of
violence, their attitude toward violence, the facts of the case itself, whether
or not the person has a conscience. Then, he'd make his prediction. Unlike the
expert in the Buck case, Coons said, he'd never use race as a predictor,
although he told me that it was clear to him why blacks were overrepresented in
jails and prisons. "It's in the papers and the magazines about how prevalent
black-on-black violence is," he told me. "It's not because they are black; it's
because they're raised funny."
Major studies have concluded that both the race of the defendant and the race
of the victim play a pivotal role in whether a person is sentenced to death. A
study by criminologists that was included in Buck's appeal examined racial
disparity in Harris County, Texas, the county where Buck was sentenced to
death. The study found that, from 1992 to 1999, Harris County prosecutors were
3 1/2 times more likely to seek the death penalty against black defendants than
white ones. Jurors were more than twice as likely to sentence blacks to death.
Another study of capital cases in Harris County found that juries were more
likely to impose a death sentence if the victim was white than if the victim
was black, a pattern found in studies of other jurisdictions. Another study led
by a Stanford University psychologist found that, in cases that involved a
white victim, the more stereotypically black a defendant was perceived to be,
the more likely the defendant was to be sentenced to death.
As philosophically at-odds as researchers like Cunningham and Edens are with
Coons, surprisingly, they all agreed on one thing: We're asking jurors the
wrong question. Cunningham and Edens, who often testify for the defense, have
been open about their belief that the question is flawed, an open invitation to
the jury to make a moral judgment on the defendant. But when I asked Coons
directly if we're asking the right question, he came to the same conclusion:
"Maybe not." He added, "There is no credible way of evaluating the situation to
a high degree of likelihood."
Coons, who peppered our conversation with colorful anecdotes and stories, used
this analogy when I asked him to explain what he meant about the question's
predictive power. "That's kind of like saying, "Which of these hummingbirds are
going to go to Panama for the winter and which are going to Costa Rica?'" he
said. "You can't know."
So if experts don't believe we can accurately predict whether someone convicted
of a capital crime will be a future danger, is the deadly question on its
deathbed?
The answer is likely no.
The reasons, according to mental health experts and lawyers, are 2-fold. First,
the question is written into the law, and Texas juries have answered it in
every death penalty case since 1976. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a direct
challenge to future dangerousness in a 1976 case called Jurek v. Texas, finding
that even if an expert is wrong about a person's dangerousness, the adversarial
process of a trial will sort it out. The court added that judges routinely make
predictions about people's future behavior in other contexts, like setting bail
or in hospitalizing someone for a mental illness. Experts told me that it's
unlikely the Texas Legislature would change the law. It might be viewed as an
admission the question was flawed, which could result in all 244 people on
death row challenging their sentences.
"Once a public policy is in place, it's almost like it takes on a life of its
own. It becomes a cherished notion," Cunningham said.
The second reason is that the way courts deal with the question has morphed. It
used to be that prosecutors would bring Grigson, Coons, or some other expert,
and the defense would counter with their own expert. Now, though, those types
of experts have largely fallen out of favor, said Kase, the defense lawyer.
Instead, more and more, it's left to juries. Prosecutors often present a list
of bad acts by defendants - prior convictions and disciplinary problems in
prison - and the defense offers mitigating evidence, such as evidence that
their client is adjusting well to prison.
Experts and lawyers say that trend makes "future dangerousness" even less of a
science and more of a guess or moral judgment. It's certainly not what Meier
envisioned when he wrote the question all those years ago. "The question is not
something that's subject to being answered by a non-expert because it's
predicting future conduct or the chance or danger or likelihood of future
action, and that's something that requires an expert," Meier told me.
And, for defense lawyers like Kase, it's seems proof that the Texas death
penalty is not about science, but about something much more abstract, a
troubling moral judgment about who is too evil, too dangerous to live.
"It is akin to giving jurors 2 cotton swabs, asking them to look at them and
saying, 'Does the DNA match?'" she said. "If an expert can't figure it out,
then how can jurors do that? It is no accident that African Americans are
overrepresented on death row."
(source: Abbie VanSickle is a reporter with the Investigative Reporting Program
at UC Berkeley--The Atlantic)
ALABAMA:
Jury fails to recommend 5th death sentence for convicted Dothan killer
A Houston County jury was unable to agree Friday on a sentence recommendation
in the case of a man who previously was ordered to die 4 times.
The panel, after deliberating nearly 90 minutes, voted 8 to 4 in favor
recommending Jerry Jerome Smith be executed for the shooting deaths of 3 people
at a Dothan home in 1996.
Alabama law requires at least 10 jurors vote for the death penalty. The other
option was life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Houston County Judge Michael Conaway declared a mistrial and another sentencing
phase of trial will be scheduled later.
While Smith's conviction has remained intact, his death penalty has been
overturned 4 times. Prior to Friday, other juries recommended execution and
judges concurred. Under Alabama law, a judge is not bound by the jury's
recommendation.
Defense attorneys Aaron Gartlin and David Hogg argued that Smith's life should
be spared due to his diminished mental capacity. In contrast, District Attorney
Doug Valeska portrayed him as a cold-hearted killer.
(source: WTVY news)
OHIO:
Confession from mother accused of killing 3 sons allowed for trial
A Logan County Common Pleas judge has ruled that a Bellefontaine woman's
confession to smothering her 3 young boys over a 13-month period will be
allowed during her murder trial.
Judge Mark S. O'Connor denied the defense's motion to suppress the statements
made by Brittany R. Pilkington on Aug. 18, 2015, following the death of her
3-month-old son, during a videotaped interview with a Bellefontaine Police
Department detective.
The 2-day hearing to determine whether statements made to police that day would
be permitted as trial evidence concluded in October.
Pilkington has pleaded not guilty to 3 counts of aggravated murder, 1 for each
of her 3 sons: 3-month-old Niall, who died July 22, 2014; 4-year-old Gavin, who
died April 6, 2015; and 3-month-old Noah, who died Aug. 18, 2015.
She told police that she suffocated the boys with blankets over their faces
because her husband paid more attention to them than he did their daughter. She
also said that she was abused by her father and didn't want her boys to grow up
to be abusive.
The defense had argued that police obtained Pilkington's statements
unconstitutionally, saying she didn't understand what she was confessing.
However, the Common Pleas judge ruled the defendant "knowingly and
intelligently waived her Miranda rights," according to court documents filed
Friday. Pilkington, 24, twice signed waivers the morning of Noah's death,
relinquishing her rights to remain silent or have counsel, preceding an
interrogation and polygraph test.
O'Connor stated that the initial police interview, as well as a polygraph test
and follow-up interview, was conducted appropriately and professionally. The
judge additionally said Pilkington was within her capacity to volunteer
statements made in a fourth interview session. He noted that although the
session was lengthy, the defendant was offered and declined food, water and a
bathroom break during the 9-hour interrogation.
Pilkington's trial is set to begin Feb. 27. She could face the death penalty if
convicted of aggravated murder.
(source: Columbus Dispatch)
**************
Jury recommends death penalty for man convicted of killing 3 at Warrensville
Heights barbershop
A jury unanimously decided that Douglas Shine Jr. should be sentenced to death
for the triple slaying at a Warrensville Heights barbershop in 2015.
He will be formally sentenced by a judge on Dec. 5 at 11 a.m.
Shine, a 21-year-old Cleveland man, could be seen looking placidly at the judge
while the jury's decision was read. He was charged with aggravated murder for
the triple slaying at Chalk Linez in Feb. 2015.
In February 2015, police responded to a shooting at the barbershop and found
three dead. Walter Lee Barfield, a 23-year-old Cleveland man, Brandon White, a
31-year-old Warrensville Heights man, and William Gonzalez, a 32-year-old
Garfield Heights man, were killed in the shooting. Gonzalez owned the
barbershop.
Shine and Kevin McKinney were arrested in connection to the murders. Both were
indicted on several charges, including aggravated murder, aggravated burglary
and murder. Police say the two men orchestrated the killing of a witness to the
barbershop shooting - 32-year-old Aaron Ladson.
Ladson was found shot in the head of the driveway of his grandmother's home in
June 2015. Months earlier, he was a witness to the barbershop shooting that
left his brother, Brandon White, dead.
Shine initially plead not guilty to the charges. Authorities say he's a member
of the Heartless Felons gang and previously served 2 years in prison on robbery
and weapons charges.
(source: newsnet5.com)
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