June 19
TEXAS:
How many doses of lethal injection drugs does Texas have?
With execution drugs in short supply across the nation and increasing secrecy
about the companies that provide them, The Texas Tribune is keeping track of
movement in the state’s supply.
06 doses expire June 5, 2019
06 doses expire June 27, 2019
15 doses expire Jan. 12, 2020
Scheduled executions
Jul 31 Ruben Gutierrez
Aug 15 Dexter Johnson
Aug 21 Larry Swearingen
Sep 4 Billy Crutsinger
Sep 10 Mark Anthony Soliz
Oct 2 Stephen Barbee
Recent inventory changes
-1 dose May 1, 2019 Drugs removed from stock
+15 doses April 29, 2019 Drugs added to inventory
-1 dose April 24, 2019 Execution of John William King
Since 1977, lethal injection has been the method for executing Texas criminals
sentenced to death. But the drugs used in executions have changed over the
years, as the state has struggled to get a hold of enough life-ending doses.
Texas, along with other states that hold executions, has been engaged in a
battle for years to keep an adequate inventory of execution drugs. Currently,
the state uses only pentobarbital, a sedative it has purchased from compounding
pharmacies kept secret from the public.
To promote transparency, The Texas Tribune has obtained the inventory history
and current supply of execution drugs held by the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice. The information, collected through continuous open records requests,
is updated regularly with the available doses and recent changes to the state’s
inventory.
In 2011, drug manufacturers began blocking their products from being used in
lethal injections. As Texas’ struggled to perform executions, it turned to
compounding pharmacies, state-regulated agencies that mix their own drugs
without federal regulation.
When one pharmacy’s name became public, the owner said he received threats, and
asked for the drugs to be returned. Texas refused, and the state Legislature
passed a law in 2015 to maintain the privacy of any person or business involved
in an execution, from the person who inserts the needle to the company that
sells the drug.
Since then, Texas has kept enough pentobarbital in stock for scheduled
executions, faring better than some other states. But the drugs haven’t come
easy.
In 2016, Pfizer, the last-remaining open-market manufacturer of drugs that were
used in executions, banned its products from being used for that purpose.
Afterward, states that had regularly performed executions halted the practice
as they are unable to obtain any drugs. Others rushed to schedule executions
ahead of the expiration dates of their limited supply of drugs or switched to
using a controversial sedative, midazolam, which was involved in botched
executions in Oklahoma and Arizona.
Texas has been able to keep an adequate supply on hand, but part of that is
because the state has repeatedly extended the expiration date of doses in stock
— retesting the potency levels as the expiration date nears and then relabeling
them. The practice has drawn sharp criticism from death penalty defense
attorneys, who say the old drugs are causing painful executions.
Even with its relative security, Texas is always looking for new supplies. In
2015, the state attempted to import from overseas a drug previously used by
Texas in executions, sodium thiopental. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration
seized the drugs and later ruled that they couldn’t be brought into the United
States because they were unapproved and misbranded, but the state is fighting
that ruling.
****************
also: see: https://apps.texastribune.org/death-row/
(source for both: The Texas Tribune)
*********************
Man convicted in fatal 2013 shooting of West Texas deputy faces death penalty
A Nueces County jury convicted a man in the 2013 fatal shooting of a West Texas
sheriff's deputy.
The jury found Gary David Green guilty of capital murder Monday in connection
with the death of Upton County deputy Billy "Bubba" Kennedy, court records
show.
Green, who is now facing the death penalty, was arrested in October 2013 after
a shootout at a McCamey convenience store, according to the Associated Press.
The trial was moved from West Texas to South Texas because of a change of
venue.
McCamey — which is in Upton County and has a population of around 2,000 people
— is about 50 miles south of Odessa.
After weeks of jury selection, testimony began last week before visiting judge
Tessa Herr. The jury returned a verdict in less than half an hour, according to
a court official.
The trial's punishment phase is expected to start Wednesday. In Texas, capital
murder is punishable by either life in prison without parole or the death
penalty.
According to a news article from the Odessa American, Green's credit card was
declined at the convenience store and he demanded free gas.
He was approached by Kennedy and another deputy, who ran a check on the truck's
license plate, the article states. The truck has been reported stolen. When
Kennedy went up to the vehicle's driver-side door, he unfastened his gun from
its holster.
Green opened the door and fired at the deputy, the report states. Both officers
reportedly returned fire, it states.
Last week, the clerk who worked that night described seeing Green's vehicle
parked outside store and said he came in and tried to buy some items and gas.
But his card didn't work and he tried to bribe her into giving him the items,
she said.
The woman said she thought he was having a rough night and was just an upset
customer when he mentioned that he didn't want anyone to die.
He took some items she gave him through a store program and left behind a debit
card with his name - Gary Green.
(source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times)
NEW YORK:
Trump Refuses to Apologize for Central Park Five Death Penalty Ad
President Donald Trump again declined to apologize for promoting false
accusations against 5 black and Latino teenagers convicted and then later
exonerated of the 1989 rape of a jogger in New York City.
Trump has long been attached to the case of the “Central Park Five” because he
ran a full-page ad in the New York Times less than a month after the attack
calling for New York to “bring back the death penalty” for violent criminals.
He has never apologized for the ad.
“You have people on both sides of that,” Trump told reporters at the White
House on Tuesday after he was asked about the case. “They admitted their
guilt.”
Netflix Inc. recently released a miniseries, “When They See Us,” that has drawn
fresh attention to the incident. Trump has previously noted that the 5
teenagers confessed in police interrogations.
A convicted murderer and rapist named Matias Reyes who was serving life in
prison confessed in 2001 that he raped the jogger. His DNA matched 2 samples
found on and near the victim, and he claimed to have acted alone. He wasn’t
charged because the statute of limitations for the crime had expired.
The teenagers’ advocates have long contended that their confessions were
coerced. A 2002 review of the case by the New York Police Department concluded
there was no police misconduct. The review suggested Reyes’s claim he acted
alone wasn’t credible, and that there was physical evidence that at least some
of the teenagers may have been involved in the jogger’s rape or in other
assaults in Central Park the same night.
The convictions of the 5 teenagers were vacated and dismissed in December 2002.
Under Mayor Bill De Blasio, the city agreed to a $40 million settlement with
the five men in 2014 without admitting wrongdoing. Trump called the settlement
“outrageous” in 2016.
(source: bloomberg.com)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Testimony continues in Nathaniel Dixon murder trial
The testimony in the Nathaniel Dixon trial continued Monday in Buncombe County.
Dixon’s facing the death penalty after police say he killed a pregnant woman
and severely injured her young child.
Monday afternoon, jurors heard audio from Dixon’s 1st interview with police.
It was from the day after Columbus Police took Dixon into custody in Ohio.
In that interview, Dixon told investigators where he was the night of and days
leading up to the death of Candace Pickens.
Detective: "No one’s saying that we think that you like plotted this whole
grand scheme or anything like that. I think something happened where
temperaments got in a little bit maybe or something, you know, between you and
her and like a heat of the moment kind of thing."
Dixon: "We never, we never got into it like that. Never once have we got into
it that bad."
In that audio interview, Dixon goes on to tell investigators he was excited but
nervous that Pickens was pregnant.
However, he continued to tell investigators he was not the one who shot
3-year-old Zachaeus Waters and Pickens.
Asheville Police Department Detective Phil Allen also testified Monday. He told
jurors what he saw when he got on the scene of Jones Park on May 12, 2016. He
also testified how his team worked to track down Dixon by pinging his cell
phone.
(source: WLOS news)
GEORGIA----impending execution
Attorneys representing condemned killer Marion Murdock Wilson Jr. are doing
everything within their power to spare their client’s life.
Defense attorneys filed a motion Tuesday for a stay of execution in Butts
County Superior Court in Jackson.
Wilson is scheduled to be executed by the State of Georgia at the Georgia
Diagnostic and Classification Prison near Jackson at 7 p.m. Thursday.
Wilson was tried and convicted in 1997 of the sawed-off shotgun slaying of
25-year-old Donavan Corey Parks, who lived in Baldwin County and worked as an
officer with the Georgia Department of Corrections and part-time at a grocery
store in Milledgeville. He was off-duty as a corrections office when he was
shot to death on Felton Drive.
After jurors convicted Wilson of the murder of Parks, the same 12 jurors also
deliberated on Wilson’s punishment — whether he should be sentenced to death or
spend the rest of his life in prison. Jurors sentenced him to death.
Wilson’s defense attorneys, Marcia A. Widder, of Atlanta, and Brian S. Kammer,
of Decatur, filed the motion on behalf of their client.
In support of his latest motion for a stay of execution, Wilson shows the
following, according to court documents forwarded to The Union-Recorder from
Katie Byrd, communications director with the Office of Attorney General Chris
Carr.
An execution warrant was issued by Baldwin County Superior Court Chief Judge
William A. Prior Jr. on June 5, 2019, which set a time for Wilson’s execution
between June 20 and June 27, 2019.
“Mr. Wilson has filed with this court (Butts County Superior Court) a petition
for Writ of Habeas Corpus, challenging the constitutionality of his sentence of
death,” attorneys said in their motion. “Mr. Wilson has asserted grounds for
relief, which warrant this court’s careful consideration and intervention.
Thus, he respectfully requests that this court stay his execution and give him
the opportunity to prove his constitutional claims for relief.”
In addition to the motion for stay of execution filed in Butts County Superior,
defense attorneys also have filed a motion for leave to proceed in forma
pauperis.
The petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus was submitted without prepayment of fees
or costs in forma pauperis.
Wilson’s affidavit of poverty was attached to the court filing as exhibit A.
There had been no ruling from a judge in Butts County concerning Wilson’s
latest motions as of Tuesday afternoon.
Defense attorneys, meanwhile, also have filed briefings with the Supreme Court
of Georgia.
Attorneys contend that the Baldwin County Superior Court’s ruling to deny
Wilson’s Extraordinary Motion for a New Trial (EMNT) “was in direct
contravention of the procedures set forth in O.C.G.A. 5-5-41 (DNA statute) and
wrong as a matter of fact and law.”
They maintain that the Supreme Court of Georgia should grant leave to appeal
and a stay of execution to permit such appeal the consideration it is due,
according to court records.
In their argument concerning their client’s EMNT motion, defense attorneys said
the Georgia Legislature could not have been clearer in requiring the trial
court to conduct a hearing on an EMNT requesting access to evidence for
forensic DNA testing.
“The statute provides that the court shall order a hearing to occur if the
court determines that the EMNT complies with paragraphs 3 and 4 of subsection
(C) O.C.G.A. 5-5-41 (6) (A),” attorneys wrote in their briefs.
They went on to explain the purpose of such a hearing.
It shall be to allow the parties to be heard on the issue of whether the
petitioner’s motion (Wilson) complies with the requirements of paragraphs three
and four of this subsection, whether upon consideration of all of the evidence
there is reasonable probability the verdict would have been different if the
results of the requested DNA testing had been available at the time of trial,
and whether the requirements of paragraph seven of this subsection have been
established.
The statute thus contemplates that questions concerning the factual basis of
the pleadings will be addressed at a hearing conducted before the court and
that disposing of the case on the basis of briefs is not appropriate.
Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Stephen A. Bradley and Beth Burton,
a deputy attorney general for the State of Georgia, responded that because the
statute does not contemplate the filing or a reply brief in support of the
EMNT, the trial court could not have abused its discretion in ruling without
first providing Wilson the opportunity to file one.
“While it is true that the statute does not contemplate the filing of a reply —
that is because it mandates that issues regarding the validity of the
allegations be addressed at a hearing,” the respondents said. “The fundamental
requirement of due process is the opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time
and in a meaningful manner.”
Wilson’s EMNT alleges each of the specific pleading requirements of O.C.G.A.
5-5-41, defense attorneys contend.
“Even though at the pleading stage, Mr. Wilson was not required to prove his
entitlement to testing — that proof is intended to be presented at the
mandatory hearing the trial court denied — his allegations sufficiently met the
statutory pleading requirements, and accordingly mandated a hearing before the
trial court.”
In a May 30 order, the trial court concluded that Wilson’s EMNT failed to
satisfy some of the required showings — to wit that DNA results favorable to
Wilson would raise a reasonable probability that defendant would have been
acquitted if the results of the DNA testing had been available at the time of
the conviction, in light of all the evidence in the case. And that such
evidence would not have created a reasonable probability of a different
sentencing verdict; that the identity of the perpetrator was or should have
been a significant issue in the case; and that the EMNT was not filed for the
purpose of delay.
“The state defends each of these findings, although they are based on critical
mistakes of fact and law,” defense attorneys contend.
Defense attorneys said Fred Bright, the late district attorney, who was
assisted in the prosecution of the case by Bradley, who now is the district
attorney, placed significant importance on the necktie that Parks was wearing
on the night he was shot to death.
Bright did that in both the culpability and the sentencing phases of trial in
his argument that Wilson, contrary to his statement, was actively involved in
the robbery and murder of Parks, and at sentencing pointing out that Wilson was
in fact the shooter.
“The evidence, moreover, of Mr. Wilson’s guilt and culpability, apart from the
necktie, was hardly overwhelming,” defense attorneys said. “Although the
prosecutor had sufficient evidence to establish that Mr. Wilson had knowledge
of (co-defendant Robert Earl) Butts’ plans to commit a robbery and nonetheless
got into the victim’s car with him, the prosecutor’s evidence that Mr. Wilson
was actively engaged in the robbery and murder was underwhelming at best. The
prosecutor had Mr. Wilson’s statements in which Mr. Wilson admitted to knowing
that Butts intended to rob someone that evening and had a weapon, though Mr.
Wilson denied that did anything more than remain seated in the back of the car
while Butts forced Mr. Parks out of the car and shot and killed him.”
Even though Wilson was tried 1st for the murder, and Butts tried 2nd, it was
Butts who was 1st executed by the state. His execution was carried out last
year.
(source: The Union-Recorder)
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Marion Wilson Files Clemency Plea in Georgia
Arguing that Marion Wilson did not kill anyone and did not intend that a
killing occur, lawyers for the Georgia death-row prisoner have filed a clemency
petition urging the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute
Wilson’s sentence to life without parole. The Board, which declassified
Wilson’s petition allowing it to be released to the public, is scheduled to
hold a clemency hearing on Wednesday, June 19, 2019, 1 day before Wilson is
scheduled to be executed. Wilson’s petition emphasizes three arguments for
clemency: that Wilson neither killed nor planned to kill the victim, Donovan
Parks; that the prosecution grossly exaggerated Wilson’s juvenile record and
gang involvement to make him appear more deserving of the death penalty; and
that the jury was never presented significant mitigating evidence concerning
the chronic deprivation, abuse, and neglect Wilson experienced throughout his
childhood.
Wilson was convicted of the 1996 killing of Donovan Parks. Robert Earl Butts,
who was executed in 2018, was tried separately for the same murder and
sentenced to death after prosecutor Fred Bright told the jury that the state’s
evidence proved that Butts had pulled the trigger. Both Butts and Wilson were
seen asking Parks for a ride and getting into his car. Soon after, Parks was
found dead of a shotgun wound. Wilson’s attorneys argue that Bright, who
prosecuted both men, “certainly believed that Butts was the more culpable
party” because he offered a plea deal to Wilson but not Butts. Wilson, who was
only 19 at the time Parks was killed, rejected the plea offer “largely out of
fear that, as a young, small-statured inmate, he would be endangered in general
population at a maximum-security prison.” Wilson suspected Butts intended to
rob someone, but has long maintained that he had no idea Butts planned to hurt
or kill anyone. Wilson went to trial 1st and was convicted. Although the
prosecution presented no evidence that Wilson was the shooter, Bright
nevertheless argued to the jury in the penalty phase that he had been the
triggerman. At Butts’ trial 1 year later, Bright contradicted that argument,
presenting evidence that Butts committed the killing. “That the prosecution
falsely maintained that Marion was the shooter in order to obtain the death
penalty was, and still remains, highly unethical and contrary to the State’s
higher duty of probity and truthfulness in any criminal proceeding,” the
clemency petition states.
The clemency petition also highlights other false statements by the prosecution
that it says gave the jury a “grossly distorted version of [Wilson]’s teenage
years and gang involvement.” “Bright’s presentation of Marion’s juvenile record
during sentencing was rife with hyperbole and outright falsehoods,” the
petition says. Among the hyperbole, Bright told the jury that Wilson “tried to
burn down a duplex apartment” when he was 12 years old. In reality, Wilson and
two other pre-teen friends were playing in an abandoned duplex unit and tried
to warm themselves by lighting paper and rags on fire. A responding police
officer said “there was ‘not enough accelerant’ on the smoldering rags and
papers to do any damage and that the ‘fire never really caught.’” On the
subject of Wilson’s alleged gang affiliation, his lawyers say the prosecution
“took several statements of youthful bravado and presented them out of context,
playing on the county’s prevalent gang paranoia to present a hyperbolic image
of the gang menace facing the community.” Bright had twice been found by the
Georgia Supreme Court to have made bad faith statements attempting to link
crimes to gangs when there was no evidence they were gang-related. However,
Wilson’s trial lawyer failed to present evidence to the jury contradicting the
prosecutor’s false assertions.
Finally, Wilson’s clemency attorneys provided the Board with extensive
mitigating evidence that trial counsel failed to present to the jury. They
write: “Wilson’s life — from conception to incarceration — was characterized by
instability, neglect, abuse and trauma. Teachers, social workers and family
friends remember a warm, intelligent and creative child yearning for a
nurturing environment but trapped in a hopeless situation. Subjected to racism
throughout his childhood by his extended family, school and the broader
community for his biracial identity, Marion struggled to find himself and
gradually succumbed to the self-destructive lifestyle that resulted in his
imprisonment as a juvenile offender at the age of 17. What makes Marion’s
childhood even more tragic is that it is clear that for a few brief periods in
his life when he actually had a modicum of stability, security and emotional
and moral support, he was able to thrive.” Because of trial counsel’s failures,
they said, “[t]he jury that sentenced Marion to death was wholly unaware of his
history of pervasive and prolonged abuse and neglect at the hands of numerous
adults in his life, as well as evidence of impaired cognitive function and
organic brain damage.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s death-penalty statute in 1976,
the state has executed only one prisoner whom the evidence showed did not
commit the killing — Kelly Gissendaner, who was convicted of planning and
covering up her husband’s murder. The petition argues that “[b]y virtue of the
prosecutor’s misconduct and his trial counsel’s incompetence, Marion Wilson
faces death while others, far more culpable, are spared.” it states, asking the
board to “afford Marion a chance to accept the deal he did not have the
maturity or foresight to take over 20 years ago, and allow him to prove himself
worthy” of a lesser sentence.
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
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Slain man's brother frustrated by 23-year wait for justice
Chris Parks is ready to stop checking the number of days since his brother was
murdered.
For more than 2 decades he's periodically tracked how many days go by before
the 2 men convicted of killing him are executed. On Thursday, when the 2nd is
scheduled to die, the days will number 8,484.
Marion Wilson Jr. and Robert Earl Butts Jr. were convicted of murder and
sentenced to death in the March 1996 slaying of 24-year-old Donovan Corey Parks
in Milledgeville, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta.
The state executed Butts, who was 40, in May 2018. Wilson, 42, is set for
execution Thursday.
"What they did to him was not humane. It wasn't fair," Parks said, a tear
sliding down his cheek.
That day is etched in Parks' memory. He had dreamed the night before that
someone killed his brother, and he was relieved in the morning to see Donovan
on the couch.
Before the day ended, his nightmare had become reality.
Parks said his brother went to church the evening of March 28, 1996, and then
to Walmart to buy cat food.
Witnesses saw Wilson and Butts, who prosecutors said were gang members,
standing behind him in a checkout line. A witness heard Butts ask Parks for a
ride.
Butts was in the front passenger seat and Wilson was in the back as they left
the parking lot, witnesses said. Wilson told investigators Butts pulled out a
sawed-off shotgun, ordered Parks to drive and then ordered Parks out of the car
and shot him once in the back of the head, according to court documents. The
pair then stole Parks' car.
Parks' father, Freddie, found him lying along the road, but the shotgun did so
much damage that he wasn't sure it was his son.
Chris Parks, 42, is frustrated that it's taken more than 2 decades for Butts
and Wilson to be executed.
"Donovan was arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced and executed within 30
minutes for being nice, for being caring," he said.
Meanwhile, he said, Butts and Wilson had years to fight for their lives.
Lawyers for both men argued in court filings that the death penalty is an
unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.
"What's cruel and unusual is to snatch a man from his vehicle by his necktie so
tight that he probably can't speak or breathe," Parks said. "What's cruel and
unusual is to lay that man down on the cold asphalt and to take his life as if
he was worth nothing more than gum on the bottom of a shoe."
When he died, Donovan Parks was working 2 jobs — as a prison guard and at a
Winn-Dixie grocery store — to make money to study to become a prison counselor.
"He wanted to help those inmates that were in for the long ride, as well as
those who were getting ready to transition back to society," Chris Parks said.
"He believed that having those conversations and working out those issues that
they had would make them better individuals."
Donovan and Chris Parks' mother had died just under a year before Donovan's
murder, and the family's house caught fire about 6 months after. Overwhelmed by
tragedy, Chris Parks fled Milledgeville and joined the Army.
He now works in cybersecurity and lives just outside Atlanta with his wife and
4 children — the oldest, a daughter, named Corey in honor of her late uncle.
Parks thinks about his brother every day and wishes he could call him to
complain or seek advice. He's heartbroken that his children were robbed of the
opportunity to meet their uncle, who was artistic like Chris' two daughters and
sensitive like one of his sons.
Parks witnessed Butts' execution last year.
Georgia executes prisoners using an injection of the sedative pentobarbital.
Strapped to a gurney with his arms outstretched to either side, the prisoner
appears to fall asleep as witnesses watch from the other side of a large
window.
"Honestly, it made me angry," Parks said of Butts' execution. "What I saw was a
man who was unremorseful. What I saw was a man being put to sleep as if he were
getting a root canal."
Still, he plans to be there again — with his wife, his dad and his stepmother —
sitting in the front row of the witness area, to watch Wilson draw his final
breaths.
"Execution doesn't bring him back," he said, referring to his brother. "But
what execution does is it offers a starting point for myself, my dad, our
family, to finally get some sort of closure and to start healing."
(source: Associated Press)
ALABAMA:
Non-unanimous death sentences stain Alabama’s justice system
No matter how you feel about the death penalty, all Alabamians should be
troubled by at least one aspect of Christopher Price’s execution last month.
The state killed Price even though the 12 jurors who convicted him didn’t all
agree that he deserved to die for his crime.
2 jurors who heard all the evidence at Price’s trial believed the appropriate
punishment was life without parole. But because Alabama permits juries to
impose the death penalty without a unanimous vote in favor of it, that wasn’t
enough to spare his life. A 10-2 jury vote for execution was enough to sentence
Price to death.
Alabama is the only state that allows judges to impose a death sentence based
on a non-unanimous jury sentencing verdict. This practice is a travesty of
justice, and it needs to stop.
The death penalty is becoming increasingly rare in the United States, with more
and more states abandoning capital punishment entirely. 21 states have outlawed
the death penalty, and many others that still allow it haven’t executed anyone
in decades. New Hampshire abolished the practice on the same day Alabama killed
Price.
But even among states that still allow capital punishment, Alabama’s structure
is outdated. And Alabama is the only state that doesn’t provide any
post-conviction legal assistance for indigent inmates on death row.
In 2017, with the specter of federal court intervention looming, Alabama
finally became the last state to forbid judicial override. This practice allows
judges to sentence defendants to death despite a jury recommendation of life
without parole. Even so, the judicial override ban was not retroactive. More
than 30 people sent to our state’s death row as a result of this practice are
still there.
The Eighth Amendment prohibits both cruel and unusual punishments. And
Alabama’s non-unanimous death sentences are yet another cruel, unusual relic
that should be cast aside.
Almost every other state with the death penalty has decided that when jurors
disagree whether a person convicted of a capital crime deserves capital
punishment, the sentence should be life imprisonment. The threshold is high
because the stakes are so high: Putting someone to death is irreversible. It’s
a weighty moral decision that cannot be made lightly.
But errors are all too frequent. Nationwide, one person on death row has been
exonerated for every 10 executions conducted since 1976. No one would use a
doctor who accidentally killed one out of every 10 patients. And no legislator
should refuse to add legal safeguards to a system that carries so much risk of
wrongful executions.
People shouldn’t be put to death when the entire jury of their peers can’t
agree on a death sentence. Ask yourself if you are comfortable with the state
ending someone’s life even when jurors who heard all the evidence have decided
death isn’t justice.
Alabama’s criminal justice system is riddled with injustices, and many of the
needed reforms are complicated. But ending non-unanimous death sentences would
be a simple, reasonable step toward bringing sentencing practices up to modern
standards. Alabama should take that step forward.
(source: Dev Wakeley is a policy analyst at Alabama Arise, a nonprofit,
nonpartisan coalition of congregations, organizations and individuals promoting
public policies to improve the lives of low-income Alabamians----Opelika
Observer)
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Capital murder trial logjam in Autauga may be coming to an end
The logjam of capital murder cases in Autauga County, going back to 2016 and
2017, may be breaking.
Two cases are set for trial this summer, Keon Cain’s trial is scheduled to
begin the week of July 22; and Santwone Cornelius Jones’ trial on unrelated
charges is on the docket for the week beginning Sept. 16. A third case, that of
Willie Foster, is yet to be set.
There are gag orders in place in all cases, meaning prosecutors and attorneys
can’t comment. Information for this story came from court records or action in
previous hearings or court proceedings.
The trials of Cain and Jones are expected to each take 2 weeks, including the
penalty phase. If both men are convicted of capital murder, the penalty phase
begins immediately. The same jury will hear evidence from the prosecution and
defense and then determine the sentence. The only 2 options in a capital
conviction are life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death
penalty.
The death penalty is on the table in both cases, according to previous comments
from the district attorney’s office before the gag orders were in place.
Cain, of Prattville, faces three counts of capital murder in a July 3, 2017
triple homicide.
More: Capital murder trial set in Prattville barbershop massacre
Assistant District Attorney Josh Cochran addressed the court and told Circuit
Judge Bill Lewis what evidence the state expected to present during Marty
Morgan’s guilty plea last month. Morgan, 36, of Prattville, is Cain’s
co-defendant. He pled guilty to one count of capital murder.
Cochran said Morgan struck Eddie Dean Scott and Al Seals Benson in the head
with a cinder block, causing their death by blunt force trauma. Previous
testimony during preliminary hearings brought out that Morgan also shot both
men with a handgun. Anthony Smith, owner of the barbershop, was allegedly shot
by Cain with a 410.ga. shotgun inside the business.
Smith staggered out of the barbershop and collapsed in the parking lot of a
convenience store located next door. Cain approached Smith and allegedly shot
him in the back of the head, killing him, Cochran said.
The crime, with multiple victims well-known in the community, shocked
Prattville, a city that prides itself on a low crime rate. At the time,
Prattville Police Chief Mark Thompson labeled the incident an armed robbery
gone wrong at the Hook-Up Barber and Style Shop. The business is near the
intersection of U.S. Highway 82 and Highway 14.
Morgan has not been sentenced. He is expected to testify against Cain.
Jones, 26, of Montgomery, faces capital murder charges in the May 21, 2016
shooting of John Michael Taylor, 57, of Prattville, courthouse records show.
Taylor was found lying in Cobbs Ford Road by a passing motorist.
The capital murder charges were filed because prosecutors feel the murder was
committed during the commission of a robbery, said Chief Assistant District
Attorney C.J. Robinson.
2 Montgomery teenagers are also charged with capital murder the case.
Lil’ Roderick Williams, 17 and Devonte Raymon Hill, 18, were each indicted on
capital murder charges by the Autauga County Grand Jury, courthouse records
show. The trials for Williams and Hill have not been set.
(source: Montgomery Advertiser)
ARKANSAS:
Friend charged with murder of ex-Arkansas state senator who was found slain
outside her home----Rebecca O’Donnell, 48, was charged with murder, abuse of a
corpse, and tampering with physical evidence Monday.
A friend and onetime campaign aide for a former Arkansas state senator found
dead outside her home has been charged with her murder.
Rebecca O’Donnell, 48, was charged Monday with murder, abuse of a corpse and
tampering with physical evidence in the death of former state Sen. Linda
Collins-Smith.
O’Donnell and Collins-Smith, 57, were friends and worked together last year,
Collins-Smith’s former press secretary Ken Yang previously told NBC News.
O’Donnell, a former campaign staffer for Collins-Smith, was taken into custody
Friday, according to Arkansas State Police.
Police discovered Collins-Smith’s body outside her home in Pocahontas,
Arkansas, on June 4. According to Henry H. Boyce, the prosecuting attorney in
the case, it took investigators two days to identify the former senator using
dental records because her body was in an “advanced state of decomposition.”
Gregg Parrish, the executive director of the Arkansas Association of Public
Defenders, said O’Donnell does not have the means to hire her own attorney.
Collins-Smith served in both the Arkansas House and its Senate. In 2017, she
introduced a controversial transgender “bathroom bill” that would have required
people to use the bathrooms that correspond to their assigned sex.
(source: NBC News)
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