Oct. 11
TEXAS:
Billie Wayne Coble appeal denied, execution date to be set
The McLennan County District Attorney's Office has confirmed that convicted
triple murderer Billie Wayne Coble has been denied his petition of certiorari
to the U.S. Supreme Court, clearing the way for the setting of his execution
date.
The Texas Attorney General's Office handled the presentation of the state's
presentation in the case, with Assistant Attorney General Gwen Vindell assigned
to it.
Coble was convicted in 1990 of killing 3 members of his estranged wife's family
in Axtell.
It was on August 29, 1989 that his wife's parents, Robert and Zelda Vicha and
her brother, Waco police officer Bobby Vicha were killed at a home in Axtell.
2 children were left restrained in the home as he abducted his wife Karen and
driving off.
During the ensuing manhunt, the vehicle Coble was driving was spotted in Bosque
County.
During the pursuit, Coble crashed his pickup into a tree.
He was given a death sentence in his original conviction, but in 2007, an
appeals court ordered a new trial for his sentencing.
However, that 2nd jury also came back with a death penalty decision.
Coble then began his appeal process again, ending up with his final appeal at
the US Supreme Court denied.
(source: centexproud.com)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
Death penalty trial for man charged with killing his 5 children
delayed----Timothy Jones was arrested in Mississippi at a drunk driving
checkpoint in 2014
A judge has delayed until next year the death penalty trial of a South Carolina
man charged with killing his 5 children.
Circuit Judge Eugene Griffith Jr.'s order says both sides agreed to delay
Timothy Jones' trial, scheduled to start Monday. It didn't give a reason.
Tuesday's order says a new date will be picked once court dates for 2019 are
set.
Authorities said the 36-year-old father killed his children at his Lexington
home in 2014, put their bodies in plastic trash bags and drove for 9 days
around the Southeast before leaving them on a hillside in Camden, Alabama.
Jones was stopped at a drunk driving checkpoint in Mississippi, where
authorities said they found blood and handwritten notes about killing and
mutilating bodies. Jones' lawyers plan an insanity defense.
(source: Associated Press)
TENNESSEE----stay of impending execution
Tennessee inmate Edmund Zagorski granted stay of execution
A federal appeals court has granted Tennessee inmate Edmund Zagorski a stay of
execution. The death row inmate's execution was initially scheduled for
Thursday at 7 p.m.
Federal courts have the authority to delay an execution when a habeas corpus
proceeding is pending appeal.
"At a minimum, due process requires that Zagorski be afforded an opportunity to
present his appeal to us," court documents read.
The current appeal stems from Zagorski's claims of inadequate counsel and
ineffective assistance at trial.
Sources close to the case say the death row inmate opted for the electric chair
instead of lethal injection for the execution. The state rejected Zagorski's
request to die in the electric chair, according to his attorney.
The last time Tennessee put someone to death by electric chair was 2007.
Zagorski's request came after the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld that the
state's current lethal injection protocol is constitutional.
The 3-drug lethal injection protocol was adopted in January 2018 by the
Tennessee Department of Correction as an alternative execution method to the
single-drug protocol using pentobarbital. 33 death row inmates filed a
constitutional challenge to the new protocol in February as TDOC eliminated the
pentobarbital alternative. The 3-drug protocol now stands as the only available
lethal injection execution method in Tennessee.
Critics say the 3-drug cocktail does not work properly, causing "torturous
effects."
Zagorski was convicted of shooting and slitting the throats of John Dotson and
Jimmy Porter, of Robertson County, during a marijuana deal in 1983. Governor
Bill Haslam denied clemency for Zagorski on October 5.
(source: WZTV news)
***********************
Federal Appeals Court grants Stay of Execution for Edmund Zagorski
A Federal Appeals court has granted Edmund Zagorski a stay of execution,
according to court records.
The Sixth Circuit United States Court of Appeals in Cincinnati granted the stay
Wednesday, saying the stay was not granted based on the method of execution.
According to court documents, Zagorski filed a federal appeal on Oct. 5. The
stay was granted because Zagorski filed the appeal in a timely manner with the
court and executing him before the appeal is heard would be a violation of his
constitutional rights.
There has also been some controversy around the method of execution.
Zagorski requested Monday night to die by electric chair. The Tennessee
Department of Corrections denied his request, saying it was filed in a timely
manner.
It's currently unknown how long the stay is for.
Tennessee Department of Corrections declined to comment, stating: "Due to
pending litigation, it would be improper for the department to comment at this
time."
(source: WKRN news)
**********************
Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals delays Edmund Zagorski execution
In a surprise move amid a flurry of legal filings, a federal appeals court has
granted a request to delay Edmund Zagorski's execution, which was scheduled for
Thursday.
It remains unclear how the order, from the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals,
will impact the execution's timing - it is possible the U.S. Supreme Court
could consider the stay Thursday and it could go forward as scheduled..
Zagorski asked federal courts to reconsider unexamined claims of ineffective
trial counsel. The federal district court in Nashville rejected that argument
Tuesday but a panel of 6th Circuit judges said the argument was provocative
enough to merit full consideration.
To do that, they said, a stay was necessary.
"We acknowledge, as the district court did, that petitioner faces an uphill
battle on the merits," the order stated. "Yet, balancing this factor with the
others, petitioner's motion presents conditions rarely seen in the usual course
of death penalty proceedings."
One judge on the appeals panel disagreed.
"A state is entitled to the assurance of finality," Circuit Judge Deborah Cook.
"Granting the stay shortchanges the State’s interests."
A separate request for a stay is pending in the U.S. Supreme Court on the
constitutionality of Tennessee's lethal injection protocol.
This is the latest in a series of legal wrangling over the method and timing of
Zagorski's execution.
More developments are likely to come quickly as the state and defense attorneys
continue to battle over the execution, which had been scheduled for 7 p.m.
Thursday.
(source: Knoxville News Sentinel)
USA:
Here's a look at some major cases Brett Kavanaugh could help decide on the
Supreme Court
And then there were 9.
Amid protests from the left and staunch cries of support from the right,
Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the US Supreme Court over the weekend
and heard his 1st set of oral arguments Tuesday.
With the balance now tilted, 5-4, in favor of conservative justices, the Globe
asked high court observers about cases they're tracking in light of the new
composition of the panel.
Kari E. Hong, a Boston College Law School professor, said she watched with
interest Tuesday as the court heard arguments dealing with the Armed Career
Criminal Act of 1984, which calls for stiffer sentences for crimes committed
with firearms by offenders with 3 or more prior convictions for certain
infractions.
"The majority of justices don't like the law," Hong said. "I don't think
Kavanaugh's vote will make a difference, but it will be interesting to see if
he still dissents." That could be a harbinger of his more conservative opinions
on criminal justice matters, she said.
Kavanaugh's questions during Tuesday's session, she said, "didn't show a lot of
empathy for the criminal defendant."
Hong said in a follow-up e-mail that the career criminal act will remain on the
books regardless of the outcome.
The "issue before the Court was not its constitutionality, but rather how to
apply 2 of its provisions to a robbery and burglary statute," Hong wrote. "2 of
the justices mentioned that Congress has bills that would fix the problems that
keep leading the [career criminal act] cases to come back to the Court with
technical issues. It appears that the Justices will side with the defendants in
that the broader interpretations of the law that would lead to longer sentences
do not apply to them."
Hong said she's also watching a 2nd case, Nielsen v. Preap, that was on the
high court's agenda Wednesday.
That case focuses on the question of whether "a criminal alien becomes exempt
from mandatory detention" for deportation proceedings "if, after the alien is
released from criminal custody, the Department of Homeland Security does not
take him into immigration custody immediately," according to a filing on the
Supreme Court's website.
Hong said she believes the Preap case will likely be a 5-4 decision, with
Justice Neil Gorsuch and possibly Chief Justice John Roberts voting in favor of
the immigrants.
"Kavanaugh will be with the dissent," she wrote in an e-mail. "He expressed
comfort [during oral arguments] with the government arresting someone on their
death bed 50 years after a petty theft offense. That was the hypothetical given
that Gorsuch and [Justice Stephen] Breyer felt would be too much power for the
state to have. Kavanaugh defended that exercise of state power."
Immigrant rights attorneys are representing lawful permanent residents who
served time for criminal offenses and then "returned to their families and
communities," the lawyers said in an August brief. "Years later, the
immigration authorities took them into custody and detained them without bond
hearings."
The lawyers contend their clients were held unlawfully because the "textual
requirement that noncitizens be detained 'when . . . released' limits mandatory
detention to those whom the [Homeland Security] Secretary detains 'at the time
of' or 'immediately' upon their release."
But the Department of Homeland Security has maintained in court filings that
there's no time limit for when it can take a convicted immigrant into custody
following their release.
"What if the alien was sentenced to time served or released without a sentence
of imprisonment, so the government could not have learned when he would be
released until after that had occurred?" the solicitor general wrote for DHS in
a brief last month. "What if the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not
have officers available in the vicinity to effectuate the arrest? What if DHS
asked the jurisdiction to notify it when the alien was going to be released,
but the jurisdiction declined to do so?"
Daniel S. Medwed, a Northeastern Law professor who teaches courses on criminal
procedure and evidence, said in an e-mail that he's watching 2 cases in
particular.
One is a Missouri death penalty case the court will hear in November.
"A man named [Russell] Bucklew claims that lethal gas would be better than
lethal injection because of his underlying medical condition (Missouri permits
both methods)," Medwed wrote. "I suspect and fear Kavanaugh will defer to the
state's discretion."
A number of parties have filed amicus briefs in the case, including the ACLU,
which is supporting Bucklew, and a consortium of death penalty states including
Texas, Alabama, Arkansas and Colorado, that are backing the state of Missouri.
The ACLU brief says Bucklew, who killed a man in 1996 and raped the man's
girlfriend, then later escaped custody and attacked the rape victim's mother
with a hammer, would be subject to cruel and unusual punishment if executed by
lethal injection.
The brief says Bucklew will "choke on his own blood and suffocate for four
minutes before dying. This does not happen with other lethal injection
executions. But Mr. Bucklew suffers from cavernous hemangioma, a rare medical
condition that will lead to these results and make the lethal injection
procedures particularly excruciating in his case."
The death penalty states counter that if Bucklew prevails, the case could lead
to "repeated and lengthy litigation and indefinite delay in carrying out death
sentences. Prisoners would challenge each alternative method subsequently
adopted by the State as lacking in some way due to the prisoner's unique
anatomy, history, or combination of conditions."
A 2nd case Medwed is following deals with the double jeopardy clause in
criminal proceedings.
"[I]n December, the Court will hear a double jeopardy clause case that
reconsiders the suitability of the so-called 'separate sovereigns' doctrine,"
Medwed wrote. "That is, even though the 5th [Amendment] bans someone from being
tried twice for the same offense, the Court has long recognized a 'separate
sovereigns' exception - while, say, Massachusetts couldn’t try someone twice
for murder for the same incident, the federal government could try the person
after a Massachusetts state acquittal."
Medwed said he believes a conservative "textualist" such as Kavanaugh, meaning
a justice who believes legal statutes should be interpreted strictly as
written, may "interpret the double jeopardy clause strictly to ban separate
trials even in separate jurisdictions," which could have implications for
President Trump.
"In theory, [Trump] could pardon someone like [former national security adviser
Michael] Flynn from a federal conviction down the road and states might be
barred from prosecuting Flynn for crimes related to the same underlying event,"
Medwed wrote.
Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of
Law, said 4 justices have to agree to hear a case, so Kavanaugh's placement on
the court could affect the types of matters that are considered.
Among the test cases that could be accepted for review are those dealing with
the Second Amendment, Waldman said, noting that Kavanaugh as an appellate judge
dissented against a ruling upholding a state assault weapons ban.
Other upcoming cases deal with gerrymandering and whether the government can
inquire about a person's citizenship status on a census form, Waldman said by
phone.
"We're a few days into a new constitutional era," said Waldman, a former
speechwriting director in the Clinton administration. "If the court is
aggressive and activist, it really will create a period of conflict" between
the court and the broader public.
(source: Boston Globe)
_______________________________________________
A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu
DeathPenalty mailing list
DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu
http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty
Unsubscribe: http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/options/deathpenalty
