Feb. 6
TENNESSEE:
Jury selected in Eric Azotea double murder trial
A jury of 12, plus 4 alternates, has been selected to hear the double murder
trial of Eric Azotea, the Johnson City man accused of killing and dismembering
a Sullivan County couple in 2015.
The jury will be sequestered for the duration of the trial. Opening arguments
are expected to begin Tuesday in Carter County.
If convicted of 1st degree murder, Azotea faces the death penalty.
Issues with selecting this jury included those who would never, and would
always, support the death penalty, and the pre-trial publicity this case has
received.
"Any murder case is a tough case," District Attorney Tony Clark told WCYB. "We
are seaking the death penalty in this case and there is hgihtened due process
when that happens."
(source: WCYB news)
OHIO:
Jurors see tools used in slaying of Alianna DeFreeze
Jurors on Monday saw the tools that investigators believe Christopher Whitaker
used to inflict fatal wounds on 14-year-old Alianna DeFreeze last January.
1 by 1, jurors watched as a Cleveland police crime scene investigator opened
brown bags of envelope to reveal the artifacts -- some stained with girl's
blood -- used to end Alianna's life.
Whitaker, 44, faces the death penalty if convicted of aggravated murder, rape,
kidnapping and other charges in her Jan. 26, 2017 disappearance and death.
Opening statements began Thursday in the trial that's expected to last through
this week.
Monday's testimony focused on the discovery of Alianna's body in a vacant house
on Fuller Avenue, just off East 93rd Street near Kinsman Road, after 3 days of
searching for her.
Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mahmoud Awadallah gave jurors a close-up
view of the Black and Decker drill, phillips-head screw driver, nut driver and
box cutter, and the bloody pieces of Alianna's school uniform and training bra.
Jurors also saw multiple photographs of the puncture wounds to Alianna's face
and head, depicting the aftermath of the brutal injuries that prosecutors say
matched the tools.
One of Whitaker's lawyers, Thomas Shaughnessy, told jurors during openings
statements last week that Whitaker does not contest the charges, a signal that
Whitaker's lawyers will focus on the penalty phase of the trial and try to
convince jurors not to recommend that Common Pleas Judge Carolyn Friedland
sentence the him to death.
Monday's witnesses brought the clearest and most disturbing picture yet to how
the 7th grader whose mother said still played with baby dolls spent the final
hours of her life.
A trio of Cleveland police officers assigned to search vacant houses south of
Kinsman Road entered the home on Jan. 29, 2017 and spotted a trail of blood
that led from the hallway into a bedroom behind a closed door, Hodges
testified.
Another officer kicked in the door and discovered Alianna's body, which lay
crumpled in the corner, bloodied and naked.
The officer sighed, paused and clenched his eyes shut as he recalled finding
the girl's body wearing nothing but socks in a pool of blood, with wounds to
the back of her head and to her eye.
The trail started in the home's dining room, where investigators believe
Whitaker inflicted most of the girl's injuries before he dragged her body to
the bedroom and tossed it into the corner.
Todd Clemens, a Cleveland police crime scene investigator, testified about the
tools, along with a bloodied gray glove and a backpack, found lying on a
built-in window bench in the home's dining room, which was covered in blood.
As Awadallah gave jurors a close-up view of each tool, he asked Clemens if he
saw wounds Alianna that matched each tool.
The drill matched 4 puncture wounds to the girl's cheek and a wound on her
forehead that dislodged her right eyeball from its socket, he said.
The boxcutter appeared to match several slash-type wounds to Alianna's neck,
Clemens said. "Too many to count," he said.
Many of the wounds had started to show signs of healing, a sign that she was
alive for several hours after Whitaker inflicted them on her, investigators
said.
A Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office worker is expected to testify later
this week and confirm that testing matched the exact tools found in the home to
Alianna's wounds.
Jurors also saw the pieces of Alianna's clothing, including a black tie and a
sweater with a red and white round logo on the right breast that made up
Alianna's school uniform, that were found strewn about the house.
The tie was soaked with blood, and the sweater was torn open down the front.
Awadallah also showed jurors Alianna's teal training bra that was stained with
blood.
(source: cleveland.com)
*************
Federal appeals court panel rules killer Danny Hill no longer eligible for
death penalty
A 3-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered that Danny
Lee Hill no longer be eligible for the death penalty for the brutal 1985 murder
12-year-old Raymond Fife.
The panel, based in Cincinnati, on Friday affirmed Hill's conviction but
reversed the decision of U.S. District Judge John Adams of Akron, who affirmed
Hill's death sentence.
The federal appellate court said earlier rulings by Ohio courts were wrong when
they said Hill, 51, was not too intellectually disabled to be executed.
Dennis Watkins, Trumbull County prosecutor, said he will request the Ohio
Attorney General's Office to appeal Friday's decision to a full panel of the
judges of the 6th Circuit.
"Respectfully, as prosecutor for Trumbull County and 1 of the trial prosecutors
... I strongly disagree with that part of the court's decision," Watkins said
in a news release Monday.
Miriam Fife, mother of Raymond Fife and retired longtime county victim-witness
advocate, said of the ruling, "I know this is not good news, but I am hopeful
the attorney general's office will appeal it."
She noted the long list of judges who affirmed the decision of Visiting Judge
Thomas P. Curran, who ruled in 2008 in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court that
Hill was not too disabled to be put to death.
The decision says the 6th Circuit panel found that Ohio courts have
unreasonably applied the U.S. Supreme Court's 3-part standard for determining
intellectual disability. All 3 parts must be present for someone to be declared
too disabled for the death penalty.
The ruling says there is agreement Hill's IQ score of between 48 and 71 means
he "easily meets the 1st element of the clinical definition of intellectual
disability."
But the federal court also thinks Hill meets the definition of intellectual
disability on the 2 other measurements - adaptive abilities and whether his
deficits manifested themselves before he turned 18. Earlier judges disagreed
Hill was intellectually disabled in the last 2 areas.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that execution of mentally retarded
criminals violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Hill was convicted during a 1986 trial before 3 judges of common pleas court
and sentenced to death.
Hill, then 18, and Timothy Combs, then 17, attacked the boy Sept. 10, 1985, as
he rode his bicycle along a path off Palmyra Road Southwest to a Boy Scout
meeting. He was beaten, raped and set on fire. He died 2 days later.
Fife and Watkins noted another Trumbull County murderer, Jason Getsy, had the
death penalty taken away by a panel of the same federal appellate court for the
killing of a Hubbard woman in 1995, but the decision was later overturned, and
Getsy was executed in 2009.
(source: The Vindicator)
IOWA:
We shouldn't trust the state to execute people
Although Iowa's death penalty ended in 1965, new legislation has been
introduced in an attempt to reinstate it.
During this legislative session, there has been renewed discussion of bringing
back Iowa's death penalty, which ended in 1965. There are opponents to bringing
back the death penalty who have based their opinions on financial and budgetary
concerns, opponents who have religious or moral disagreements with the death
penalty, and opponents who believe it would give murderers additional fame and
publicity when the media cover their death-penalty appeals. Without getting
into those debates, I simply raise the question if we should trust the state to
execute people based on its previous history of carrying out executions.
We have no idea what a new death penalty in Iowa would look like once it gets
out of the Legislature, and there are many scientific and case studies of
innocent people imprisoned and even executed that should give us cause for
concern. When emotions are high, we often make irrational decisions that have
unintended consequences.
Proponents of the proposed death-penalty legislation claim that the new death
penalty will only be used in rare cases. Whenever new legislation is proposed,
it almost always starts small. As time goes by, the Overton window moves, and
the Legislature grants itself more power and authority by passing additional
laws. Before you know it, the original law looks nothing like what the new
legislation is doing.
In addition to not knowing what would be in the legislation, the government has
a horrendous track record with criminal justice. The National Registry of
Exonerations lists 2,164 criminal exonerations that have taken place, and 353
of them listed were exonerated from DNA evidence. In 2014, a study released in
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claimed that 4.1 % of
people sentenced to death in the United States were likely innocent. In 2015,
the FBI admitted that the hair analysis, which was used in 32 death-penalty
cases, was a flawed analysis.
Once people are executed, we cannot bring them back no matter what evidence we
later find or confessions are made. Why should we trust the Legislature with
the responsibility of passing legislation that would end human life when we may
have such a high rate of innocent people being executed?
The role of the government is to protect life, liberty, and property. Bringing
back the death penalty will not protect any of those things. In fact, based on
previous studies and results, we know that it can be used to end innocent lives
mistakenly. Our state motto proudly says, "Our Liberties We Prize and Our
Rights We Will Maintain." How can we live up to our motto if we execute even
one innocent person?
The risks are too high. We cannot trust the state to execute people. The
Legislature should kill this bill before it gets out of committee.
- Jake Porter
Council Bluffs business consultant
2018 Libertarian candidate for Iowa governor
(source: Guest Opinion, Daily Iowan)
NEW MEXICO:
New Mexico death penalty bill denied
New Mexico will not be bringing back the death penalty this year.
According to the New Mexican, on Saturday a legislative committee turned down a
bill sponsored by Republican representatives Monica Youngblood and Greg Nibert.
It would have reinstated capital punishment for the murders of children, police
officers and correctional officers.
New Mexico abolished the death penalty in 2009.
(source: KRQE news)
UTAH:
Death row inmate's former lawyer suing Weber County, claims free speech rights
violated
The former attorney for a death row inmate is suing Weber County, claiming his
contract was terminated because he publicly criticized the lack of funding for
his client's appeal.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court, appellate attorney Samuel
Newton claims his right to free speech was violated when he was fired in
apparent retaliation for his remarks.
Newton was representing Douglas Lovell, 60, who was appealing a death sentence
for murdering 39-year-old Joyce Yost. Lovell killed the South Ogden woman to
keep her from testifying in court that he had kidnapped and raped her.
Lovell first pleaded guilty to murdering Yost in 1985 but was spared the death
penalty on the condition that he lead authorities to her remains. When he
failed to do so, he was sentenced to die in 1993. In 2010 the Utah Supreme
Court allowed Lovell to withdraw his guilty plea and ordered a new trial. He
was found guilty by a jury in March 2015.
As part of Lovell's appeal, Newton sought additional funding to thoroughly
investigate whether Lovell's previous attorney had failed him at trial, and
whether The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints interfered in the case
by limiting what LDS bishops who had interacted with Lovell behind bars could
say on his behalf on the witness stand during the sentencing phase of the
trial.
Newton was granted $15,000 of the $37,000 he requested for the effort,
according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit notes that Weber County is one of five counties in Utah that does
not rely on the state's indigent defense fund, but funds defense efforts for
indigent defendants on its own. In January 2017, the county renewed its
contract with Newton.
In June, Newton asked to be removed from the case, suggesting in the filing
that Weber County was underfunding Lovell's appeal and that the strain of the
dispute with the county was compromising Newton's health, according the
lawsuit. The motion was granted in August, and Newton continued to speak
publicly and in the media about the dispute as well as his belief that the
death penalty should be abolished.
Though Newton had been removed from the Lovell case, his contract to represent
indigent defendants in Weber County through the end of 2019 was still in place.
The county severed that contract in October, claiming Newton had "made various
representations to the media and to the court that have been untruthful and
harmful to the county's reputation."
The lawsuit claims the termination of Newton's contract based on statements he
made under the protection of the First Amendment violated his constitutional
rights.
"Unspecified 'harm' to a county's 'reputation' would not outweigh the
importance of an independent contractor's First Amendment rights, particularly
when the speech involved rights of a third party and a case unrelated to
Newton's general general appellate contract," the lawsuit states.
The claim goes on to emphasize that "the speech for which Weber County punished
Newton was on a matter of public concern, relating to matters of political,
social and economic concern to the community."
Newton's lawsuit is seeking unspecified monetary damages for Newton and his law
partners for "economic loss, emotional distress and other personal injury
resulting from the violation of their constitutional rights."
Lovell has since been appointed a new attorney, Colleen Coebergh. His next
hearing in the case is scheduled for Feb. 27.
The Weber County Attorney's Office did not respond to calls for comment on the
lawsuit. No hearings have been scheduled.
(source: Deseret News)
USA:
Ban death penalty for those 21 or younger, ABA House says
The ABA House of Delegates on Monday asked all death penalty jurisdictions to
ban capital punishment for any offender who committed their crime at the age of
21 or younger.
In the report accompanying the resolution, the chairs of the Death Penalty Due
Process Review Project and the Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice
wrote: "In light of this evolution of both the scientific and legal
understanding surrounding young criminal defendants and broader changes to the
death penalty landscape, it is now time for the ABA to revise its dated
position and support the exclusion of individuals who were 21 years old or
younger at the time of their crime."
The language of Resolution 111 makes clear that the ABA is not taking a
position "supporting or opposing the death penalty."
In a motion to amend, Robert L. Weinberg, a past president of the District of
Columbia Bar and the Bar Association of the District of Columbia, proposed
removing that language. He brought up a CLE session held earlier during this
midyear meeting by Cassandra Stubbs of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project.
"We stand almost alone among the progressive democracies in adhering to capital
punishment," he said.
He urged the ABA to take up a future resolution taking a position on capital
punishment, specifically for abolition. He said including language about the
ABA???s lack of position on the death penalty in the current resolution was not
necessary.
Michael Byowitz, the Board of Governors' liaison to the Death Penalty Due
Process Review Project, rose to speak in opposition to Weinberg's amendment.
"I do so with some trepidation and sadness, because Bob Weinberg is a personal
hero of mine," Byowitz said. "My heart pulls me in the direction he would have
us go, but my head pulls me in a different direction."
Byowitz said marginal efforts chipping away at the use of the death penalty are
the most effective ways of addressing the problem.
"We will be ignored if we are perceived in many of the councils that matter as
against the death penalty," he said. "Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of
the good."
Former ABA President James Silkenat and several others voiced support of
bringing a future resolution before the ABA House of Delegates taking a stance
on capital punishment, but urged the delegates to reject the current amendment.
"I strongly oppose capital punishment, but this amendment is the wrong way to
do it," Silkenat said.
The amendment was defeated in a divided vote. Resolution 111 was passed
overwhelmingly.
(source: ABA Journal)
*************************
Many Say He's the Least Qualified Lawyer Ever to Lead a Guantanamo Case. He
Agrees.
For years, an expert legal team defended one of the most high-profile accused
terrorists in a death penalty case at the military tribunals here. But a
courtroom dispute involving classified snooping prompted nearly all of the team
to abruptly quit this fall, leaving only a 39-year-old former SEAL turned
lawyer with just 6 years' experience, and none with a capital case.
By many assessments, including his own, the lawyer, Navy Lt. Alaric Piette, is
completely unqualified to represent Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi man
accused of orchestrating the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in 2000.
Though he was trained to hunt down the most dangerous terrorists in the world,
nothing prepared him to defend someone accused of carrying out terrorist acts.
"On another day, I could have easily taken my client out. I know it seems like
a contradiction," Lieutenant Piette said as he stood in the tropical glare
outside the dust-colored court building here, which is ringed by razor wire and
sniper netting. "But in a lot of ways being a SEAL and being a defense attorney
- you're doing the same thing. You're defending the Constitution."
No lawyer with so little experience has ever led a case before the tribunal,
and in fact, regulations prohibit it. That the Nashiri case is going forward at
all has led many to question whether the tribunals can offer a fair trial, and
has cast a harsh light on the already troubled military system, which so far
has produced no convictions at trial, despite years of effort.
President Trump has doubled down on Guantanamo, signing an order last week to
keep the prison open and vowing in his State of the Union address to send more
prisoners to the island. But the tribunals at Guantanamo have repeatedly
sputtered, dragging out for more than a decade cases that were originally
envisioned to be so speedy that they were set in temporary buildings and tents.
As further evidence of the system's dysfunction, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis
fired the top official overseeing the tribunals, Harvey Rishikof, as well as
his chief of staff on Monday. A Pentagon spokesman said the change in
leadership, which was first reported by The Miami Herald, would not affect
continuing cases.
The Nashiri case began in 2011 and is still churning through pretrial hearings.
So are the trials for those accused of being Sept. 11 collaborators. The judge
for the Nashiri case has said he would like to begin picking a military jury by
December, which puts the schedule of the case in doubt.
In death penalty cases, the military tribunal rules require so-called learned
counsel who have tried capital cases before. The team's former lead counsel had
tried 38. Lieutenant Piette has tried none. But the judge in the case has
decided to move forward with only the lieutenant - a move that has alarmed a
number of legal scholars.
"He doesn't come close to being qualified," said Ellen Yaroshefsky, a professor
of legal ethics at Hofstra University. "So a death penalty case is basically
going forward without a lawyer. If that is what we think passes as a court
system, we're in big trouble."
One of the people questioning the lieutenant's decision to stay is the
lieutenant himself. His presence in court allows the case to move forward
without experienced counsel. "That is clearly a problem, because there is no
way I qualify as learned counsel," he said. "But leaving the client without a
lawyer to protect his rights could be even worse. I don't know if I've done the
right thing, but I don't think I really had a choice."
The dispute that prompted the resignations of the rest of Lieutenant Piette's
team started this summer when the defense learned that conversations with their
client - conversations that are typically strictly confidential - were likely
being monitored by the government.
The defense team searched the detention block room at Guantanamo where they met
with Mr. Nashiri and spotted something that to them confirmed government
monitoring. The original lead defense attorney, Richard Kammen, said in an
interview that what he found was classified, so he was barred from disclosing
it, even to his client. He objected to the court, but the judge in the case
ruled this fall that the client had only limited rights to confidentiality. Mr.
Kammen quit the case in protest, saying it was ethically impossible to stay. 2
assisting lawyers followed.
"We were gobsmacked," said Mr. Kammen, who for years has jousted with the
military tribunal, making his appraisal of it clear by wearing a kangaroo pin
on his court jacket. "Under the law, we had to quit. We had no choice."
Both the judge and prosecutors were furious at the exodus, which threatened to
derail an already slow-moving case. The lead civilian prosecutor, Mark Miller,
denounced the defense for what he called "a scorched-earth strategy to obstruct
the proceeding by any means, however frivolous, however cynical."
The judge, Air Force Col. Vance Spath, ordered the defense back to court in
October. When they refused, he ordered a Marine general in charge of the
defense to force them back. The general also refused, and was confined in a
trailer next to the razor wire-ringed court in November for contempt. At the
most recent hearings in late January, Judge Spath was still trying to compel
the lawyers to appear, so far without success.
In a federal court, appointing a new experienced lawyer would be
straightforward, but Guantanamo is no federal court. Few lawyers qualified to
take death penalty cases have both the requisite top secret security clearance
and the willingness to work with the special military tribunal rules created by
Congress in 2009 for Guantanamo, said Navy Cmdr. Brian Mizer, who in the past
has represented multiple detainees at the tribunals.
"There is a perception that the tribunals are like tilting at windmills," he
said. "Many lawyers don't want to go near it."
Mr. Mizer and others said it could take at least a year for a new lawyer to be
appointed and get caught up on the case.
Experienced counsel in a case like Mr. Nashiri's is critical, Commander Mizer
said, because the thicket of charges stemming from a series of attacks is
complicated further by evidence gathered through years of torture at C.I.A.
black sites.
But after Mr. Kammen left, Judge Spath ruled that learned counsel were required
only "to the extent practicable," and pushed forward with pretrial hearings
with just the lieutenant at the helm.
Lieutenant Piette, who grew up in Texas and Wisconsin, said he was not easily
swayed by long odds. He enlisted in the Navy right after high school in 1997,
inspired by his grandfather, who had been a decorated commando during World War
II. Despite limited swimming skills and no experience with weapons, he soon
graduated from the notoriously punishing SEAL selection course in a year when
nearly 90 % of the class dropped out.
He was assigned to a cold-weather warfare team and deployed to Kosovo.
After the U.S.S. Cole and the World Trade Center were attacked, he thought the
team would be sent to hunt terrorists. Instead he was deployed again to Eastern
Europe. He finished his enlistment without seeing combat. With a young family
at home and a growing frustration at the lack of action, he left the Navy at
the end of 2003.
For years after, he said, he was dogged by regret. SEAL teams began deploying
to Iraq and Afghanistan. 3 friends were killed in combat. Men he knew shot
Osama bin Laden, he said. He worried he had fumbled his chance to make a
difference.
That changed at Georgetown University's law school, where he started his degree
program thinking he would become a prosecutor, but in his final year found the
criminal defense clinic.
Raised Roman Catholic, he described representing destitute, often mentally ill
clients as the moment he really understood the teachings of Jesus.
"It was the 1st time since the SEALs I found something really meaningful," he
said. "I was standing between a person and the system. Everything I had learned
about training and preparation and perseverance - it clicked."
After graduating in 2012, he spent 5 years as a Navy lawyer, working criminal
cases at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia. Last April he was hired to work on
the Nashiri case. He had barely started when his whole team quit.
In January, the judge repeatedly fumed at the missing defense team, calling it
a strategic tactic intended to undermine the trial.
"Never have I seen such open and notorious rejection of orders from a court,"
the judge told the court.
Lieutenant Piette stood before him, respectful but unwavering. As a SEAL
member, he said later, he was used to being yelled at.
During hearings over several days in January, the prosecution called witnesses
and moved to introduce photos and bags of blast fragments from the attack,
which killed 17 sailors. Lieutenant Piette sat silently, spinning his pen in
seeming frustration, but passed up dozens of chances to object and
cross-examine.
He felt staying nearly silent was the only effective strategy for his client,
he said. Over the course of 2 days, the judge asked 37 times for the defense to
comment on the admission of evidence. Each time the lieutenant stood and
responded, "Defense takes no position other than to object to these proceedings
continuing without learned counsel."
Though he wanted to argue at length, challenging the very idea that evidence
could be admitted without a jury present, he said he knew it would be unethical
to even try, and could sink the case. He hoped his refusal to participate would
preserve an issue for appeal. Whether it will upend the trial or be a mere
footnote in the tribunals will likely not be known for years.
The prosecution declined requests for an interview, but in court, an Air Force
major on the team denounced Lieutenant Piette's objections, calling them
"shameless, disingenuous and conceited."
The same day, though, Abbe Smith, a law professor at Georgetown who taught
Lieutenant Piette criminal defense, put his photo up in her ethics class as an
example of a "courageous and ethical representation."
"He's pretty gutsy. This legal train is in motion and he steps out in front to
protect his client," she said in an interview. "I don't know that all lawyers
would do that."
Mr. Kammen said discussions with Lieutenant Piette about staying were
"complicated" and he was not convinced his most junior lawyer did the right
thing.
"If we are obligated to withdraw, isn't he?" Mr. Kammen said. "He's a fine
lawyer, but this is way beyond what he can do."
(source: New York Times)
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