March 29
MARCH 29, 2018:
TEXAS:
Death penalty testimony paints violent portrait of officer's killer
The jury that will decide whether to give the death sentence to Shaun Puente
has heard days of testimony, before and during the punishment phase of his
capital murder trial, about how dangerous he was. On Tuesday, a witness tried
to describe how smart he was.
Puente was found guilty last week of fatally shooting San Antonio Police
Department Officer Robert Deckard during a highway chase in Atascosa County on
Dec. 8, 2013, that started after Puente, according to witnesses, committed 2
armed robberies in San Antonio.
Randall Price, a Dallas forensic psychologist, told the jury Tuesday that he
tested Puente in 2017 for about 6 hours and determined his "full scale IQ"
score to be 92, far above the score of 70 thought to be the level below which
one would be intellectually disabled.
Puente's defense team had frequently mentioned that their client had been
pulled out of the 6th grade by his mother, and 1 of their witnesses, another
psychologist, had previously testified that Puente was a "low-functioning"
person.
Price, who said he found Puente cooperative during testing, testified under
cross examination by defense attorney Gary Taylor that there was such a large
disparity between Puente's verbal and non-verbal IQ scores - 78 vs. 118 - that
he could not rule out something like organic brain damage.
On Monday, prosecutors presented 2 business owners who each said Puente robbed
them at gunpoint weeks before the robberies that set off the fatal chase.
Chaitan Mugili, 33, manager of the Oak Island Ice House on South Loop 1604,
said he thought his life was over on Nov. 7, 2013, when Puente put a silver 9
mm Ruger semi-automatic pistol to his head. That encounter was caught on
security video.
"My daughter was literally 7 days old at the time," Mugili testified, as
prosecutor Audrey Louis displayed several items of black clothing - hat, shoes,
jacket, ski mask - Puente wore on his night of mayhem. "I thought I was going
to die."
Rodney Reed, owner of a car wash on South Flores Street, said a beloved
82-year-old employee nicknamed "Mac" was robbed by Puente, again on video, on
Dec. 3, 2013, and that the man was traumatized, quit soon after, and died about
2 years ago.
Previous testimony in the guilt-innocence phase of the trial implicated Puente
in 2 robberies hours before Puente and his alleged accomplice, Jenevieve Ramos,
led SAPD officers on a chase at speeds up to 115 m.p.h. through the South Side
and on Interstate 37. Deckard, then 31, was shot from 250 yards away, through a
broken back window of the fleeing car.
Puente's attorneys conceded as the trial began that he fired the shot that
killed Deckard - among about 45 shots he fired at 2 police officers that night
- and said Puente was a methamphetamine addict who robbed people to support his
habit. They said he was high on meth the night of the murder and as a
low-functioning 6th-grade dropout couldn't intelligently confess to anything to
police.
Capital murder is punishable by death or life in prison without parole.
Prosecutors in the punishment phase of the trial have lined up witnesses to
fill out their portrait of the defendant as reflexively violent and dangerous,
presenting 2 former wives among 3 women who said Puente abused them.
Rebecca Cardenas testified Monday that she was married to Puente from 1999 to
2005, and frequently did drugs with him, but reported him to police after he
violently argued with his family and forced her into a car with a hunting
knife.
Cardenas, 40, said she finally escaped the relationship when Puente came home
at 7 a.m. from seeing another woman. "I waited until he fell asleep," she said,
"and then I got my things and left."
A 3rd grade teacher testified that "around 1996," when she was 14 and at school
cheerleading practice, Puente awkwardly flirted with her, then forcefully
groped her by putting his hands down her shorts. She filed a report with
police.
Puente's defense lawyers, Anna Jimenez and Gary Taylor, both paid for by
Atascosa County as required by state law, only briefly questioned the
prosecution's witnesses Monday.
State District Judge Donna Rayes said she expects testimony in the stately
courthouse in Jourdanton to go into next week.
(source: San Antonio Express-News)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Family of Sgt. Robert Wilson seeks death penalty
The case of 2 men accused of killing Philadelphia Police Sgt. Robert Wilson
went before a judge Wednesday morning in Center City.
Wilson was gunned down at a GameStop getting a video game for his young son in
North Philadelphia in 2015.
2 suspects have been charged in the death of Philadelphia Police Officer Robert
Wilson III.
The trial has now been set for late fall with a pretrial hearing set for June.
Once that announcement was made by Judge O'Keefe there was audible reaction in
the courtroom from frustrated family members who want to see brothers Ramone
Williams and Carlton Hipps put to death.
That decision is still up in the air.
This case has ended up being the biggest test so far for newly elected district
attorney Larry Krasner who ran his campaign on his commitment to not seek the
death penalty.
Now, just months into his term, that commitment is being tested, in the killing
of a Philadelphia police officer no less.
This is only widening the divide between Philadelphia police and the DA's
office.
"My brother was a hero. He gave his all - what he signed up to do, the oath he
took to become an officer. There's no reason why we should sit here and still
keep giving more time. For what? Murderers. Killers. My brother didn't get more
time," Wilson's sister Shakira Wilson-Burroughs said.
"If we have capital cases available in the commonwealth then that's just my
opinion that that's what we probably should be looking at," Philadelphia Police
Commissioner Richard Ross said.
"If there's ever a classic case for a death penalty case, this is it,"
Philadelphia FOP President John McNesby said.
A committee has been put together by Krasner to decide whether the death
penalty will be sought.
A decision should be made by June for the pretrial hearing.
The District Attorney's Office released the following statement:
"The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office is committed to fighting for
justice in the horrific murder of Sergeant Wilson. DA Krasner, who already met
with some members of Sergeant Wilson's family, understands their trauma and
continues to extend his support and condolences during this difficult time. We
also continue to reach out to other members of his family, including the
mothers of his children. As of today, the office is continuing to review the
case through the office's Homicide Sentencing Committee. It remains a death
penalty case at this time."
(source: ABC News)
FLORIDA:
Jury botches form, clerk mistakenly announces death sentence
After about 4 hours of deliberating, the jurors had made a decision: Marco
Antonio Parilla, Jr. would be sentenced to life in prison for killing Tarpon
Springs officer Charles Kondek.
Juror Todd Stewart remembers listening to the clerk as she announced their
verdict on Friday to the courtroom crowded with police officers and Kondek's
family.
As she read the final paragraph of the verdict form, shock permeated the jury
box.
The clerk announced a death sentence, not life in prison.
Stewart couldn't bring himself to look at the Kondek family, who wanted the
death penalty for Parilla, as the courtroom erupted in cheers.
"I was completely horrified," said Stewart. "It just completely blew me away.
It was like a nightmare. I couldn't imagine that happening to that family. They
had already gone through so much."
Also in the jury box was Jonathan Morales, who grew nauseous as he realized the
mistake.
"The feeling of seeing the family get that justice taken away from them and the
false verdict, it was really hard to see," he said. "It was just really
unfortunate to put the family through that, to put all parties through that."
After noticing the error, Pinellas Circuit judge Joseph Bulone instructed the
jurors to fill out a new form. This time, it read life in prison.
The Tampa Bay Times obtained a copy of the 3-page verdict form. This is what
went wrong:
In the last section, jurors have to check either yes or no for this statement:
"We the jury unanimously find that Marco Parilla should be sentenced to death."
They checked "yes."
But below that is another sentence that instructs the jury to write down their
total votes if they checked "no." The jury foreman filled in the blanks with 2
for life and 10 for death.
It's unclear what exactly led to the error. Most jurors did not return a
reporter's calls or declined to comment. Stewart, who voted for death, said he
didn't see the form after it was filled out because he was on the other side of
the room during deliberations.
Morales, who declined to talk about his vote, said the foreman was the only
juror who handled the form.
"He would read all the questions to us, and we raised our hands to vote and
that was it," Morales said. "None of us really examined the paper. None of us
really looked at it. I guess we trusted that he would read everything right."
This is what Morales remembers: the foreman read the final question that later
led to the confusion in court. One juror, he said, "asked him to repeat the
question twice and if he was sure that that question didn't imply that we
unanimously sentenced him to death."
It wasn't until after the jury filled out the new form that Morales read the
question himself.
"It was perfectly clear to me," he said. "I understood the question. There was
no 2nd guessing."
For Chief Assistant State Attorney Bruce Bartlett and defense attorney Bjorn
Brunvand, this is the 1st time they've seen a wrong sentence announced in a
capital case.
"For a fleeting moment, you kind of go 'wow,' maybe we did do something right
here," Bartlett said. "And then a minute and a half later, it's all taken away.
And now there are tears. Not tears of joy, but tears of sorrow."
After Florida lawmakers revised the state's laws last year to require unanimous
juries in death penalty cases, only about 4 capital cases have gone to trial in
the Pinellas-Pasco circuit.
Bartlett suspects the new verdict form isn't clear enough for jurors.
"It confused these 12 people," he said, referring to the jury. "I'm quite
confident you're going to see more of it the way that's laid out."
Brunvand said he believes some of the jurors may not have understood the
meaning of "unanimous."
"You would think unanimous is pretty self-explanatory, but maybe it's not," he
said. "If there's genuine misunderstanding about what unanimous means, you
would think that wouldn't exist with 12 jurors. At least 1 of them would say,
wait a minute, this isn't unanimous."
The jury's decision wasn't what the Kondek family hoped for. Shortly after the
verdict, Kondek's widow, Teresa, said the mishap "devastated" her family.
Parilla shot and killed Kondek, a 17-year veteran, while he was responding to a
noise complaint on Dec. 21, 2014.
Bartlett said he grew hopeful that the jury was considering death after
deliberations reached 2 hours.
But a life sentence has its advantages in some cases. It takes years for a
death penalty case to wind through the appeals process, Bartlett said, causing
victim's families to relive the moments of their loved one's death.
"It's just never over and they get notice on every single little thing that???s
going to happen," he said. "The family needed to say, this is behind me, and
get on with their lives."
(source: tampabay.com)
OHIO:
Ohio Man Who Raped and Murdered 14-Year-Old Girl Gets Death Penalty: 'My Baby
Didn't Have a Chance'
An Ohio man convicted of raping, torturing and murdering 14-year-old Alianna
DeFreeze has been sentenced to death, PEOPLE confirms.
On Monday, as convicted killer Christopher Whitaker looked on, Alianna's
mother, Donnesha Cooper sobbed as she told the court, "Death is too good for
him and I won't believe he has any remorse until he suffers like my daughter
suffered," Cleveland 19 reports.
Alianna's father Damon DeFreeze addressed his daughter's killer directly,
saying, "You're lucky I'm not the same person I was 25 years ago because
there's not enough police in here to stop me and you need to know that.
"When you get where you're going, you're going to get what you got coming,
before you get to the gas, lethal injection chamber," he said.
He added, "My baby didn't have a chance."
Last month, a jury found Whitaker, 45, guilty of 10 counts including aggravated
murder, kidnapping and rape in the teen's brutal death, online court records
show.
The jury recommended that he receive the death penalty for Alianna's murder,
and the judge upheld the recommendation.
(source: people.com)
TENNESSEE:
Capital Murder Case----Case Prep Delays Jones Trial
Preparations for the capital trial of Erick Eugene Jones Jr. could not be
completed before a scheduled trial date in May, prompting a recent continuation
of the proceeding until September. Jury selection should begin on Sept. 11, and
the trial will start on Sept. 17, a court official said. Judge John F. Dugger
Jr. recently granted the continuation of the trial, which will be held in
Greene County Criminal Court with a jury drawn from another county.
Defense lawyers and prosecutors both agreed to the continuation, the most
recent in a series of delays in the Jones case.
The state will seek the death penalty for Jones, 24, who is charged with 3
counts of 1st-degree murder and 4 counts of aggravated child abuse reflecting
different theories in connection with the December 2014 deaths of 13-month-old
Kynsleigh Easterly and 2-month-old Trinity Brooke Tweed in a house on North
Hardin Street in Greeneville.
Jones was caring for the girls and another daughter of Kendra Lashae Tweed
while she worked in the early morning hours of Dec. 17, 2014. Jones was charged
several days later in connection with the deaths. Tweed, 25, was later charged
with 1st-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in connection with the case.
Tweed's case is pending.
A Greeneville police detective testified at a 2015 preliminary hearing that
autopsy results showed the girls suffered blunt force trauma, including
cerebral hemorrhaging, a spinal cord injury, contusions and abrasions. Jones,
who had an on-and-off relationship with Tweed, was living with her at the North
Hardin Street house in December 2014.
Court officials said that expert witnesses for both sides are still preparing
and reviewing reports relating to Jones' mental health and events during his
youth that could be presented as mitigating factors should the case reach a
sentencing phase.
The expert retained by the state has not had ample time to review a report on
Jones prepared by an expert retained by defense lawyers, Assistant District
Attorney General Ritchie Collins said.
In a death penalty case, all legal procedures must be followed to the letter to
avoid later potential complications, he said.
The Jones trial has been continued a number of times. Collins said he
understands the frustration felt by loved ones of the little girls who died,
but said the state wants to make sure no legal complications arise after trial.
"One thing you don't want to do in a death penalty case is rush it because of
the danger (of) problems it could pose during the appeals process," Collins
said. "We definitely don't want to have to do this but once."
At a motion hearing in February, Dugger asked for redacted transcripts of
statements voluntarily given by Jones to investigators after the girls' deaths.
The judge will then rule on what will be admissible at trial.
Dugger granted a motion by lead defense lawyer Douglas L. Payne to have a jury
drawn from another county because of pre-trial publicity the case has received.
Court officials said it is likely the jury will come from 1 of the 3 other
counties in the 3rd Judicial District - Hamblen, Hawkins or Hancock. The
prosecution team includes 3rd Judicial District Attorney General Dan E.
Armstrong, Deputy District Attorney General Cecil Mills Jr. and Collins.
Should anyone facing the death penalty be found guilty of murder counts,
defendants have certain rights that must be complied with, Collins said.
"Basically, a defendant has a right during sentencing to put on proof
concerning his mental health, and not just mental health, but put on background
information related to his mental health (and) be able to use certain aspects
of his childhood to bring up in mitigation," he said.
Prosecuors have spent months preparing for the Jones trial. Jones and Tweed
each remain held on $700,000 bond in the Greene County Detention Center.
"Make no bones about it. The state is ready to try this case," Collins said.
"We just don't want there to be any due process issues."
In June 2017, Dugger denied a motion by Payne to deny a jury the option of
considering the death penalty for Jones.
Payne argued that the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment,
while Armstrong argued that there is legal precedent in Tennessee for the death
penalty and the penalty applies to the facts of the case.
Greeneville police said Kynsleigh Easterly was discovered "in distress" after a
call was made to county 911 Dispatch.
Trinity Tweed was found in the house after first responders arrived.
Both girls were rushed to Takoma Regional Hospital's emergency department,
where they were pronounced dead.
Testimony at the February motion hearing indicated that Jones gave a series of
conflicting statements that ultimately resulted in his arrest. Jones said in
his 1st statement that he had been engaged to marry Tweed earlier in 2014 but
the 2 broke it off. He was in jail for part of the year before being released
on Nov. 18, 2014, and moving to the North Hardin Street address where Tweed was
living with her 3 children.
Another motion hearing in the case is scheduled in May.
(source: Greenville Sun)
************************
The Psychological Burden of the Death Penalty----Mock executions at Riverbend
shed light on the weight of state killings
Several years ago, in the middle of the Christian Holy Week leading up to
Easter, an execution team strapped Jeannie Alexander onto a gurney at Riverbend
Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
Alexander was then the head chaplain at the prison, which houses Tennessee's
death row. She is an ardent death penalty abolitionist, but she'd worked
closely with the execution team because, she says, "I believed that somebody
needed to be there who did not want this person to die."
On that day, the execution team - more than a dozen people with various
responsibilities, from extracting the condemned prisoner to locating a vein
suitable for lethal injection - was participating in a training session, a mock
execution known to many inside the prison as "band practice." In this instance,
they didn't have anyone to play the part of the condemned, a role staffers
refer to as the "victim." The atmosphere during these rehearsals, Alexander
says, was typically very somber. But on that occasion, she says the team was
cutting up, attempting to break the tension with laughter. She recognized it as
diffused nervousness, a byproduct of the stress that weighs on people preparing
to practice an execution. But it didn't sit well with her.
"I thought, 'You know what, they've got a woman on death row,'' Alexander says.
"'Christa Pike's on death row. Let's make them execute a chaplain. Let's make
them execute a woman and see how that affects this attitude.'"
She volunteered to be the victim. She was shackled, lifted onto a gurney and
wheeled into the execution chamber, where they injected saline solution into
her veins.
Alexander has since founded No Exceptions Prison Collective, an advocacy
organization through which she works with current and former prisoners, their
family members, and others. She describes the mock-execution experience as
surreally spiritual and also as a sort of trauma. And she struggled with
whether to share the story on the record, fearing a perception that she had
collaborated with a process she has dedicated her life to opposing. In fact,
her motivation had been just the opposite: a conviction that the humanity of
everyone involved in the death penalty - from executioners to the condemned -
must be brought into focus at every turn.
"You are constantly, I think, if you're working there, engaged in some level of
dehumanization," Alexander says. "You have to be. Which of course dehumanizes
you, as well."
Ignoring internal warnings that using a new 3-drug lethal injection cocktail
could go disastrously wrong, Tennessee is pushing forward with plans to resume
executions this year. Attorney General Herbert Slatery last month asked the
state Supreme Court to schedule 8 executions before June 1, a streak of state
killings that would have been unprecedented in modern Tennessee history. (There
were 9 executions over the course of three months in 1939.) The court denied
the request earlier this month, but there are still 5 executions scheduled for
2018. And while Slatery, Gov. Bill Haslam and the state lawmakers baying for
the blood of condemned prisoners keep their distance, the responsibility for
carrying out those executions falls to others - a warden, a physician and a
collection of other prison staffers whose low-paying jobs may soon entail
putting people to death. They, along with the prisoners, victims and their
families, are part of a small population of Americans who walk around bearing
the weight of the death penalty.
In conversations with people who have come into contact with the process from a
variety of different angles, there is a palpable sense that proximity to
executions is a trauma that lingers. Some people contacted by the Scene
preferred not to speak about it on the record or asked to remain anonymous.
Former Riverbend warden Ricky Bell, the only warden to oversee an execution in
Tennessee in the modern era (he oversaw 6 between 2000 and 2009), has long
declined to speak publicly about how it affected him personally. And even
people who worked closely with him say they've never had a conversation with
him about the experience.
For others, a stint inside the death penalty machine has inspired a mission to
dismantle it.
Gayle Ray, who served as commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction
from 2009 to 2011 and deputy commissioner before that, went on to join the
board of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
"It's asking an awful lot of people to carry out the death penalty law," says
Ray in a short film the organization released in 2015. "I think it just takes a
psychological and physical toll for those who are involved in it."
Last year, Ray was 1 of 23 former corrections officials from 16 different
states who signed a letter urging Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson to reconsider a
plan to execute 8 men in 11 days. The state ultimately carried out 4 of those 8
scheduled executions. Frank Thompson, who oversaw 2 executions as the
superintendent of the Oregon State Penitentiary, also signed the letter. He
told The Guardian, "There is absolutely no way to conduct a well-run execution
without causing at least 1 person to lose a little bit of their humanity, or to
start at least 1 person on the cumulative path to post-traumatic stress."
The mere scheduling of an execution changes the atmosphere in Riverbend's Unit
2. Ndume Olatushani, a Tennessee man who was wrongly convicted of murder and
served 27 years in prison - 19 of them on death row - before he was freed in
2012, recalls the appearance of execution dates on the calendar as a shock to
the system.
"When this stuff was pending, when it happened, just leading all up to it, it
was certainly a reminder to all of us there that if we stayed there long
enough, there would come a day when we would be those people being walked to
the death chamber," Olatushani tells the Scene.
But even if Tennessee's scheduled executions never come to pass, the process of
preparing for them is grim. Perhaps paradoxically, getting within hours or even
minutes of an execution only to have it called off can be a unique trauma as
well. Multiple men on Tennessee's death row have been moved to death watch,
preparing for their execution, more than once.
"It's an emotionally draining experience to have to prepare for it," says one
former high-ranking Tennessee corrections official who has worked closely with
executions and near-executions in several different capacities. The official
agreed to speak about their former job on the condition of anonymity. "It's an
emotionally draining experience to go through the process. And it is even more
so if you get up within an hour of an execution and that execution is
postponed. It's just something that you can't even fathom what the human
condition is having to go through during that time."
The former corrections official says that for the execution team - some of whom
will have spent years alongside the man set to be executed - "it drains them to
a level that you cannot even consider."
TDOC spokesperson Neysa Taylor tells the Scene that the department "offers
counseling for any staffer that needs it." But 2 people who spent time working
on death row say that in their experience, few if any staffers took advantage
of the counseling.
Now as execution dates loom, Taylor says the execution team's training sessions
continue to take place on a monthly basis, a regular ritual of simulated
killing. The most recent one, she says, was March 21.
The simulation, according to the state's Lethal Injection Execution Manual:
"includes all steps of the execution process with the following exceptions: A.
Volunteers play the roles of the condemned inmate and physician; B. Saline
solution is substituted for the lethal chemicals; C. A body is not placed in
the body bag."
(source: nashvillescene.com)
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