September 3
LOUISIANA:
Louisiana Supreme Court set to hear CarQuest double-murder death penalty appeal
Lee Turner Jr. began working for CarQuest Auto Parts in Baton Rouge just 11
days before the then-21-year-old fatally shot two employees, both husbands and
fathers, during a Sunday afternoon robbery in 2011.
Turner visited the company's Airline Highway location twice on March 27, 2011,
the day of the slayings, introducing himself to manager Edward "Eddie" Gurtner
III that morning and returning just before the 3 p.m. closing.
Gurtner, 43, of Denham Springs, was shot 12 times — including several times in
the back — as he tried to run from Turner.
Randy Chaney, 55, of Greenwell Springs, who was the assistant manager of the
company's Staring Lane location, was helping out at the Airline Highway store,
near Siegen Lane, that ill-fated day when he was shot once in the back of the
head by Turner.
An East Baton Rouge Parish jury convicted Turner on two counts of first-degree
murder in May 2015 and recommended he receive the death penalty. State District
Judge Richard Anderson, who presided over the trial, imposed that sentence
several months later.
5 years have passed since an East Baton Rouge Parish jury reached a death
verdict for a convicted killer, but on Friday, after less than tw…
On Tuesday, the Louisiana Supreme Court will hear arguments from Turner's
appellate lawyers and the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney's Office.
Turner, now 28 and formerly of New Orleans, is urging the high court to reverse
his conviction and death sentence and either order a new trial or a new
sentencing hearing. The East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney's Office is
asking the justices to affirm the jury's verdicts.
Turner's attorneys complain in his Supreme Court appeal about, among other
things, the jury selection process; his 11-hour interrogation by East Baton
Rouge Parish sheriff's detectives during which he eventually confessed; graphic
crime scene photos shown to the jury; a frantic 911 call made by Gurtner's wife
and played during the guilt and penalty phases of the trial; and a search
warrant that led to the discovery of bank bags and CarQuest deposit slips in a
garbage can outside the Ritterman Avenue home where he was staying with an
uncle.
Capital Appeals Project lawyers Caroline Tillman, Christopher Murell and
Shanita Farris, as well as New Orleans lawyer Timothy Yazbeck, contend Turner
did not receive a fair trial.
Assistant District Attorney Allison Rutzen vigorously disputes that contention.
"The trial court went to great lengths to ensure that each phase of defendant's
trial ... was conducted in a professional, systematic, and productive manner,"
she wrote in a Supreme Court filing.
Rutzen added that Turner's trial attorneys, Margaret Lagattuta and Scott
Collier, "diligently represented him every step of the way, sparing no expense
to present their client's case to the jury in the most favorable light
possible."
The 10 women and 2 men who unanimously found Lee Turner Jr. guilty of
1st-degree murder after 90 minutes of deliberations Monday will retu…
One of Turner's more explosive Supreme Court claims — one made previously in a
motion for a new trial that Anderson denied — is that prosecutors
systematically excluded blacks from the jury, which consisted of 9 white
jurors, 2 black jurors and 1 Hispanic juror.
First Assistant District Attorney Tracey Barbera, who prosecuted Turner, has
described as offensive and unfounded the accusation that she discriminated
against potential jurors on the basis of their race.
Turner's appellate lawyers maintain the state removed black prospective jurors
"vastly disproportionately" than potential white jurors.
"The State's point that two African Americans actually served on Mr. Turner's
jury ... does little to mitigate the State's discriminatory pattern,
particularly given that one of those jurors was seated after the State had
exhausted all of its strikes," the lawyers allege in a Supreme Court filing.
Rutzen counters that Anderson thoroughly considered Turner's objections to the
state's challenges lodged at prospective minority jurors.
"Defendant fails to prove that the trial court clearly erred in concluding that
no prima facie case of purposeful discrimination was present or in finding that
each of the state's reasons was race-neutral," she wrote.
Turner confessed the day after the killings after initially denying any
involvement. He said he shot Chaney first, then Gurtner after forcing him to
open the store safe. Gurtner died with the store's keys, including a key to the
safe, in his hand.
Turner also told detectives he drove past the store with his pregnant
girlfriend as investigators scoured the scene the evening of the murders.
Elizabeth Gurtner and one of her sons discovered Eddie Gurtner's body in the
store warehouse after he failed to answer his cellphone or the store's phone
that Sunday afternoon.
Turner complains about Elizabeth Gurtner's emotional 911 call because it was
played twice for the jury.
Turner's attorneys acknowledge the state was entitled to the moral weight of
its evidence, but they allege the recording was played a 2nd time "for the
purpose of inflaming the jury and undermining the impact of Mr. Turner's
mitigating evidence."
Rutzen argues the 911 call was played again to counter testimony about "adverse
developmental factors" that had occurred in Turner's life, including the 1998
murder of one of his uncles while the man was working as a security officer.
"Defense counsel knew of the evidence here. They knew that the 911 call had
forever memorialized young Jamie Gurtner's and his mother's traumatic
experience of finding their murdered relative at the crime scene. But the
defense still chose to emphasize the 'traumatic effect' the death of
defendant's uncle — which he did not witness — had on his life," Rutzen states.
Eddie Gurtner was not scheduled to work the day he was killed but went in to
catch up on restocking and to hang a mirror in the store's bathroom. His widow
testified that the last photo she has of her husband is a cellphone selfie he
took at the store after installing the mirror.
(source: The New Orleans Advocate)
OHIO:
Long-serving Ohio prisons director, Gary Mohr, steps down
The state’s long-serving prisons director is “disheartened” that he couldn’t
reduce Ohio’s inmate population further, he said as he announced his departure
from the agency last week.
Gary Mohr was director of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction for
almost all of Gov. John Kasich’s 2 terms. He oversaw more than 12,000 employees
and close to 50,000 inmates.
Mohr made attempts to reduce the prison population one of his top priorities,
with some success. The overall prison population was 49,534 last month,
compared with 50,670 in January 2011, the month Kasich appointed Mohr.
Mohr spearheaded efforts by Kasich and lawmakers to reduce the number of
first-time, nonviolent offenders behind bars. But those efforts collided with
pushback from some prosecutors and judges, and with the impact of the state’s
opioid crisis, which has swamped the criminal justice system in the past
decade.
“I’m extraordinarily disheartened that that number’s not more,” Mohr said in an
interview.
Mohr got a firsthand look at the opioid problem on Wednesday, two days before
stepping down, after exposure to a mix of contraband heroin and fentanyl
sickened almost 30 staff members at Ross Correctional Institution.
During his tenure, Mohr also oversaw 15 executions at the death house at the
Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. He also launched efforts to
boost the way Ohio prepares inmates for release.
Mohr weathered several negative situations, including the 2013 prison suicide
of notorious Cleveland women abductor Ariel Castro; the brief 2014 escape of
school shooter T.J. Lane, who killed 3 high school students in 2012; and the
2017 killing of an inmate in a transport van by another prisoner, 3-time killer
Casey Pigge.
The union that represents prison guards regularly criticized Mohr and the
agency, saying not enough was being done to protect guards and reduce violence.
Mohr started with the Ohio prisons agency as a teacher’s aide in 1974. Over the
years he’s worked as a warden, held several administrative posts, led the
state’s youth prisons system and consulted with the private prison industry.
Among initiatives he oversaw were boosting mental health and addictions
services for inmates and creating “reintegration units” that replicate work
requirements in the outside world,
He talked Aug. 28 about the highs and lows of his eight years as director.
On prison population reduction
“I’m a big believer that drug traffickers and violent offenders ought to be in
prison and we ought to keep people safe, and drug traffickers are violent
offenders, in my opinion. But I think that we continue to incarcerate too many
people that wake up in the morning that are addicted — these god-awful drugs —
and don’t want to be, but end up consuming drugs and they are a large part of
the intake in our prison system.”
On capital punishment
Mohr called each execution “the toughest day I spend as director.” Unlike his
two predecessors, who came out against capital punishment in retirement, Mohr
has no plans to take a similar position. “Regardless of how I feel about the
executions, I respect the people that are delivering and performing the
executions and I need to just give them the support they need to ensure that
these events, as long as the Legislature continues to keep the law, are
humane.”
On boosting opportunities for inmate rehabilitation
“If nothing else, instead of setting on their bunks for most of the day, to get
up and to have a schedule and do something productive. If we don’t do that in
prison, then how can we expect someone all of a sudden after spending 2v or 3
years or longer in prison just to go out and say, ‘OK, now we’re going to
change our regimen.’ It’s ridiculous.”
What’s next
In retirement, Mohr, 65, of Chillicothe, plans to consult with North Carolina’s
prisons department for a couple weeks a month and spend time with his
s6grandchildren.
“Even though I was a warden for about 12 of my years, when it comes
particularly to my 2 little granddaughters, 1 and 4, I’m no disciplinarian,” he
said.
(source: Associated Press)
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