August 25
TEXAS:
Texas Trooper passes away from surgery complications following April shooting
Our sister station, KVEO has learned that Texas DPS Trooper Moises Sanchez has
passed away.
Trooper Sanchez was re-admitted to surgery then went into critical condition
earlier in the week. Back in April, Trooper Sanchez was shot in the head while
responding to a routine traffic stop.
State Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa gives this statement:
“Saddened to learn of the passing of DPS Trooper Moises Sanchez who was shot
twice back in April while responding to a routine traffic accident call in the
Edinburg/McAllen area. This is a reminder that our law enforcement men and
women risk their lives on a daily basis. There is no routine traffic stop or
routine response to a call for help. Today our thoughts and prayers are with
the family of Trooper Sanchez who has made the ultimate sacrifice for our
families. I also appreciate the healthcare teams that cared for Trooper Sanchez
while he fought bravely and courageously these past four months. May he Rest in
Peace and be in Heaven. Semper Fi! To a Marine.”
DPS Trooper Moises Sanchez was re-admitted to the hospital following his final
surgery on August 22.
The alleged shooter, Victor Alejandro Godinez, pre-trial hearings were pushed
back. Currently, Victor Alejandro Godinez is being charged with attempted
capital murder.
Local 23 has reached out to Hidalgo County Distract Attorney Ricardo Rodriguez
on if the charges will be upgraded to capital murder, and if the state will
seek the death penalty.
(source: KVEO news)
************************
Border Patrol Agent Accused of 12-Day Killing Spree: 'He Decided ... These
People Did Not Deserve to Live'
What he wanted, he allegedly told Texas investigators in a chilling confession,
was to clean the streets of Laredo. That's why, he said, he went on a 12-day
rampage, killing 4 women and leaving them on the side of rural roads.
Juan David Ortiz, a 35-year-old Navy veteran and former intelligence supervisor
for the U.S. Border Patrol, is suspected of being a serial killer who preyed
upon local women, killing 4 and kidnapping another, after picking them up along
a Laredo street last year. He shot his victims with his service weapon,
prosecutor Isidro Alaniz told InsideEdition.com, and left their bodies in plain
sight.
The women were sex workers, many of whom struggled for years with drug
addiction, their families said, and whose workplace was San Bernardo Avenue, a
tightly packed thoroughfare of cheap motels, auto body shops, taco stands and
convenience stores. All of the women knew each other; some were good friends.
But Ortiz, a married father of 2 young children, said he wanted to rid Laredo
of the women's presence, according to Alaniz.
"He decided in his own mind that these people did not deserve to live," the
prosecutor said. "It was not up to Juan David Ortiz to decide to end their
lives. Nobody has that right. Nobody has the right to unilaterally decide that
another person shouldn't live, and then execute them as if they're just an
inanimate object."
All but one of the victims had children. All had families in Laredo who are
still grappling with the women's brutal ends.
"These were mothers, they were daughters, they were sisters," said Colette
Miereles, whose sister, 42-year-old Claudine Luera, was victim No. 2. "They
didn't deserve this."
Angelica Perez, another sister of Luera's, remembers the anguish of bringing
together her nieces and nephews. "We had to tell them, 'Your mother's gone.'
It's one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, because we had to listen to
their screams.
"He left her on the side of the road like she was trash."
The sole survivor managed to jump out of Ortiz's truck after he pointed his
service weapon at her, investigators said. He grabbed her shirt, but she
slipped out of it and ran, wearing only a bra from the waist up. Erika Pena,
26, fled to a gas station, where she saw a Texas trooper filling up his
cruiser. She begged for help, according to Webb County sheriff's deputies.
In the next few hours, as deputies searched for Ortiz, he killed 2 more women,
authorities said.
The murders terrified the border town, which is one of the fastest-growing
cities in Texas and home to the largest internal port on the U.S.-Mexico
border. International trade fuels the local economy, and the metropolitan
area's population of about 260,000 is more than 95% Hispanic and Latino.
"When this case broke open, the community's tight-knit, so it was very scary
for people," Alaniz said. "Lardeo's not used to dealing with a serial killer.
... This is such a friendly town. People are so respectful."
It is particularly galling, Alaniz said, that Ortiz was "entrusted with
protection and defending the Constitution." The killings also took place as
President Trump ramped up his anti-immigration rhetoric and increased the
detention of asylum seekers — though Laredo's border crossings are more for
commerce than immigration.
As an intelligence supervisor with the agency, Oritz investigated human and
narcotics trafficking and had long patrolled the border, where he knew the back
roads and highways, authorities said.
The district attorney for Webb and Zapata counties says Ortiz knew the women
were easy targets because of their addictions and their occupations. "He knew
that and he capitalized on that," said Alaniz. The suspect also thought he
could get away with it, Alaniz said, because he was a law enforcement official
and therefore beyond suspicion.
That hubris contributed to the prosecutor filing capital murder charges against
Ortiz, he said. "It's my decision to pursue the death penalty," he said. If
Ortiz is found guilty, "his punishment should be death," Alaniz added.
*** The case began on Sept. 3, 2018, when a rancher called 911 to say there was
a body on the side of Texas Highway 255, right out in the open.
Melissa Ramirez, 29, the mother of 2 young children, had been shot multiple
times in the head with a .40-caliber handgun.
Ten days later, about 2 miles east on the same stretch of barren highway,
Luera's body was found. Again, the remains were easily seen, more so this time
because Luera had managed to crawl toward the road. She had been shot several
times in the head. "She had a heartbeat when he left her there," said Mireles,
her sister. "That's the hardest part. Knowing she was there alone."
Hours after Luera's body was found, Ortiz picked up Pena, authorities said. She
had known him for about 4 months, her relatives said. When she got into his
truck on Sept. 14, he took her to his house, Pena told investigators. She knew
his name only as David, but she was aware he was a Border Patrol agent, her
family told local reporters last year.
He had been her customer before, she said. She asked Ortiz about her friend,
Ramirez, and her death, which seemed to anger the Border Patrol agent,
authorities said. Pena became so frightened she walked out onto Ortiz's front
lawn and vomited, she told investigators. She made an excuse to get back to San
Bernardo Avenue. She needed cigarettes, she told Ortiz, authorities said.
As they drove, she mentioned Ramirez again. At a stop light, they argued, with
Ortiz grabbing his service gun and pointing it at her chest, investigators
said. She flung open the truck's door and took off screaming, finding
Department of Public Safety Trooper Francisco Hernandez refueling at an Alero
gas station on San Bernardo.
As Pena pleaded with Hernandez, Ortiz drove off, the prosecutor said. She told
Hernandez that her attacker was a Border Patrol agent she knew as David. He
tried to kill me, she said.
"Due to her courageousness in saving her own life," Alaniz said, "she broke the
case open."
She didn't know the agent's last name, but she knew where he lived. Webb County
sheriff's deputies were able to figure out his full name and issued a BOLO (be
on the lookout) alert for him.
But as they searched, Ortiz allegedly ramped up his own efforts to clean the
streets. In the next 5 hours, according to the prosecutor, Ortiz picked up and
killed Guiselda "Shelly" Hernandez Cantu, 35, the mother of four. He allegedly
shot her several times and left her on the side of Interstate 35, which bisects
Laredo and heads north all the way to Minnesota.
He turned around and headed south on Interstate 35, back to Laredo, where he
picked up Janelle Ortiz, 28, a transgender woman who got into the Border Patrol
agent's truck after he asked if she "was working," a witness told authorities.
As he did with Cantu, Ortiz shot her and dumped her body near the interstate,
investigators said.
Deputies caught up with Ortiz at 1 a.m. on Sept. 15, when he stopped at a gas
station to use the bathroom, the prosecutor said. He ran, but was arrested
after they found him hiding in the bed of a pickup truck in a nearby parking
structure, Alaniz said.
Authorities said he gave a taped, nine-hour confession, telling investigators
there were two new victims since Pena's escape, Alaniz said. Ortiz told
deputies where they could find the bodies, the prosecutor said.
Ortiz pleaded not guilty in January to murder, kidnapping and assault charges.
He has been held on $2.5 million bail since his arrest. A request for comment
from InsideEdition.com to his attorney was not answered. His next court date is
scheduled for October.
Though he knew his first 2 victims, authorities said, the last 2 were
strangers.
"They deserve justice," Alaniz said. "Their families deserve justice. These
individuals are human beings, and they have family members that love them, that
care for them, that miss them."
The families depend on Alaniz for that justice. "The district attorney is a
very humble man," said Mireles. "He did pay his respects to us." His office
stays in constant contact with family members about Ortiz's case. "I know we
will get justice," she said. "This man will be held accountable."
Though grief can't be measured by inches or time, it looms large over the five
children of Luera, as well as her sisters and their children.
Luera was a quiet child. As a teenager, she began to rebel, fighting with her
mother. "My mom couldn't understand why," Perez said. She dropped out of school
in the ninth grade and fell into drugs and the wrong company. "Our father gave
her an ultimatum, either you go to jail or you get the help you need," Perez
recounted. "She got help and went into rehab."
For the next few years, Luera straightened out. She had a daughter, and then 2
sets of twins. She was a stay-at-home mom. Then she and her partner split up
and two of her children were diagnosed as having special needs. "She hardly
left the house. It was rough taking care of them on her own," said Mireles.
Her family helped as much as they could, said her sisters, but Luera's despair,
and her demons, were stronger than they imagined.
"The bottom fell out of her life. She got depressed. She took to drinking. We
suspected it was more than alcohol," Mireles said. It was much more than that,
her family later earned — it was heroin.
But Luera always insisted she was fine, that things would work out, that she
was just making her way through a rough patch.
Five years ago, after Luera lost her home and was living in a motel with her
kids, children's services workers showed up to collect them. Social workers had
received reports Luera was neglecting them. The five children were split among
relatives. "My sister took in two," Perez said. "My aunt took the other two and
her eldest was off and on staying with me.
"That's when I believe she turned to the streets and that's when she started
doing what she was doing," Perez said. "It was very hard on us because she was
just roaming the streets."
But that didn't stop her family from reaching out to her.
"She was sleeping under the bridge. Her daughter tried to take her to rehab,"
Mireles said. "She was so ashamed of what she had done that she didn't try to
better herself."
That was February 2018. Luera did go to rehab, but she left before her
treatment ended, her heroin addiction greater than her resolve. "She said it
was a physical pain that she would feel if she went hours without it," Perez
said. "She said 'I can't. I feel like I'm going to die. You don't understand.'"
In April, Luera landed in the hospital. An abscess was eating at her leg, in
the spot where she shot up.
Mireles went to see her. "Your children need you," she said she told her. Take
this time in the hospital, her family said, to get clean, where doctors can
help you through withdrawal and your leg can be treated.
Luera said she'd try.
But she fled the hospital, checking herself out against her doctor's orders.
She needed antibiotics for the hole in her leg, and her relatives went to
Mexico, where medication is cheaper, and bought her pills.
"She started getting better," Perez said. She would talk about this hard life
she was living, and how it was wearing her out.
In September, Luera called Perez. "We talked for like two, two-and-a-half
hours. We laughed. I was going to Hawaii on vacation. She was so excited. She
said, 'Take lots of pictures,'" Perez recalled.
"We were talking about our childhood, the way my mom was, how she would make us
laugh." Their mother used to dress up her little girls and then dragged them to
see horror films. "I mean, the scariest movies ... and we would leave
petrified," Perez said, laughing at the memory.
She and Luera giggled about that. At one point, Luera said, "I miss mom, I
really miss mom," who died in 2009. "I do, too,'' Perez replied.
On Sept. 11, Mireles talked to Luera on the phone. Her sister was happy that
two of her children had recently graduated from high school. "She was so
proud," Mireles said. "She didn't give us any indication of anything being
wrong." Luera was her usual, happy-go-lucky self.
"Never would I have ever thought that would be the last time I ever spoke to
her," Mireles said, her voice catching.
They found Luera's body 2 days later. Her sisters started hearing about it long
before authorities came calling, they said. "I started getting phone calls from
people from the streets," Perez said. The body found on Highway 255, that was
Luera, the callers said.
She was the 2nd sex worker to be killed within 10 days. Mireles said she called
the Webb County Sheriff's Office, then the morgue, begging someone to tell her
if the body they had belonged to her sister.
Eventually, Mireles was told what she didn't want to hear. Yes, the coroner's
office told her, they had the body of Claudine Ann Luera.
2 days later, her family would once again be slapped with information that left
them incredulous.
A suspect had been arrested in Luera's killing. "The first thing I thought, was
that it was a drug dealer," Perez said. "I said, 'What do you mean, he's a
Border Patrol agent?' I didn't know how to react to that."
In Laredo, where the U.S.-Mexico border lies just 5 miles away, Border Patrol
agents are as common a sight as police officers. Many live in town or just
outside it. They are part of the community.
In Laredo, the families of the victims held vigils, lighting candles and
holding photographs of four beautiful women whose lives were marred by powerful
addictions and cut short by a killer who believed, according to the prosecutor,
that they didn't deserve to live.
Their families believed no such thing.
"Addiction is a monster," said Mireles. "One person uses, but the whole family
suffers. We never lost hope in Claudine," she said.
"We never stopped believing that her life would change ... We were so close, I
think, because she was realizing that she didn't want to go through it anymore.
And sadly, he took that away from us.
"For people out there who are dealing with addiction, get the help you need.
Know that you are loved, no matter what ... know your family loves you," Perez
said. "Get the help. Get better."
(sourcew: insideedition.com)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Death row inmate convicted of killing a Winston-Salem police officer claims
racial discrimination in case
Only 1 black woman was called in the jury box for a black Winston-Salem man’s
murder trial in 1995, his attorneys said in court papers. But Forsyth County
prosecutors dismissed her, even though she gave virtually the same answers as a
white woman who prosecutors approved as a juror, they said.
Years later, prosecutors couldn’t find a race-neutral reason why the black
woman was removed, the attorneys said.
Attorneys for Thomas Michael Larry, who is on death row for killing a
Winston-Salem police officer after robbing a grocery store in 1994, are
alleging in court papers filed in July that Forsyth County prosecutors
illegally used race to dismiss the black woman, resulting in an all-white jury.
They said this fits into a pattern of racial discrimination in jury selection
in Forsyth County, and that one of the prosecutors was particularly bad about
using race to get rid of potential black jurors in death penalty murder trials.
Larry, now 63, was convicted in 1995 of first-degree murder in the fatal
shooting of 23-year-old Robert Buitrago, who had just joined the Winston-Salem
police department. According to testimony, Larry robbed a Food Lion on Jan. 15,
1994, and Buitrago, off-duty and unarmed, was a customer standing in line
during the robbery. When Larry ran off with more than $1,000 in cash, Buitrago
ran after him. He tried to stop Larry by hitting him with a wine bottle. Larry
shot Buitrago in the chest, killing him. A Forsyth County jury sentenced him to
death.
Larry has unsuccessfully appealed his conviction in state and federal courts.
In 2009, the N.C. General Assembly passed the Racial Justice Act, which allowed
death-row inmates to challenge their sentences if they believed racial bias
played a significant role in their case. Larry filed an appeal under that law,
which was repealed in 2013.
That appeal in Forsyth Superior Court is still pending, and on July 22, his
attorneys, Elizabeth Hambourger and Gretchen Engel, filed an amended complaint
based on new evidence that Forsyth County prosecutors used race to dismiss the
black woman, Tonya Reynolds, from the jury.
Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill did not respond to a message
seeking comment. The N.C. Attorney General’s Office is handling Larry’s appeal,
and Laura Brewer, a spokeswoman for that office, said she could not comment
because of pending litigation.
Eric Saunders, who died in 2012, and David Spence prosecuted Larry. Spence is
now a prosecutor in Carteret, Craven and Pamlico counties. Spence also
prosecuted Russell William Tucker, a Winston-Salem man convicted of killing a
security guard at Kmart. Hambourger and Mark Pickett have alleged in recent
court papers that Spence and another prosecutor used a training document
steeped in racist stereotypes to make up non-racial reasons to exclude black
jurors in Tucker’s murder trial.
When reached at his office Tuesday, Spence said he cannot comment on Larry’s
appeal because it is pending.
During the 1995 murder trial, Reynolds was the only black person called into
the jury box to face questions on her suitability to be a juror in the death
penalty case. Tiffany Robertson, a white woman, was also called into the jury
box.
Hambourger and Engel said the women were both in their 20s, had been victims of
crime, knew people in law-enforcement and were pursuing careers designed to
help people. Robertson was a nursing student and Reynolds was studying early
childhood education. Both women were single without children and attended
Forsyth Technical Community College.
Reynolds told prosecutors that she believed in the death penalty and had no
problem recommending the death penalty if Larry was convicted of 1st-degree
murder, Hambourger and Engel said in court papers.
But in the end, Spence and Saunders used what is known as a peremptory
challenge to dismiss Reynolds. Prosecutors and criminal-defense attorneys have
a certain number of peremptory challenges where they can remove a potential
juror without giving a reason.
Spence and Saunders, however, had no problems with Robertson. Larry’s defense
attorneys ultimately struck Robertson from the jury. One of the alternate
jurors was black. Alternate jurors hear the evidence but only participate in
deliberations if one of the 12 jurors becomes sick or has to leave for some
other reason.
“The only difference between these 2 potential jurors is race,” Hambourger and
Engel said.
And prosecutors are not supposed to remove jurors solely because of race. The
1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Batson v. Kentucky, established that
prohibition. If criminal defense attorneys suspect that prosecutors used race
to get rid of a black juror, they can object. And a judge can then ask a
prosecutor to provide a race-neutral reason for removing a juror.
Larry’s trial attorneys did object to Reynolds being dismissed. But Spence and
Saunders were not asked to provide a race-neutral reason, according to court
papers. The trial judge overruled the objection.
But during litigation of the Racial Justice Act, Joseph Katz, a statistician,
sent letters to prosecutors around North Carolina, asking them to provide
affidavits outlining race-neutral reasons for striking more than 600 black
jurors in cases cited in a Michigan State University study about racial
discrimination in jury selection. One of the jurors was Reynolds.
Hambourger and Engel said in court papers that then-Forsyth County prosecutor
Patrick Weede reviewed the transcript and said in an unsworn affidavit that he
could not find a race-neutral reason for striking Reynolds from the jury.
In fact, Weede said, he couldn’t determine why Reynolds was removed as a juror,
court papers said.
Hambourger and Engel said the fact that prosecutors can’t find a race-neutral
reason for getting rid of Reynolds is enough to justify Larry getting a new
trial.
Spence, in particular, has shown racial bias in several other death penalty
murder cases. He struck 62.5 % of black potential jurors but only 21 % of white
potential jurors in four death penalty cases, including Larry’s, the attorneys
said.
And in another case, the N.C. Court of Appeals found that Spence discriminated
against black potential jurors. In the case of Henry Jerome White, Spence
specifically referenced the race and gender of two black women he dismissed as
jurors when challenged. He also said one of the women shouldn’t be a juror
because she lived with her mother, meaning she didn’t have a stake in the
community.
Spence also said the fact that she worked in the health-care industry might
mean she wouldn’t support the death penalty, according to court papers.
That reflected a pattern in at least three different cases.
“Namely, women in their 20s, single people, folks who do not own homes, and
health care providers are unacceptable jurors when they are black, but
acceptable when they are white,” Hambourger and Engel said.
In addition, Forsyth County prosecutors have historically dismissed more black
jurors than white jurors in death penalty cases, they said.
Four of the 12 people on death row in Forsyth County were sentenced to death by
all-white juries, and Forsyth has more black defendants sentenced to death by
all-white juries than any other prosecutorial district in the state, Hambourger
and Engel said in court papers.
A date to hear the amended motion has not been set.
(source: Winston-Salem Journal)
***************************
Landmark US case to expose rampant racial bias behind the death penalty----Top
capital lawyers head to North Carolina as judges consider the cases of 4
inmates who faced ‘bleached’ juries
The dark secret of America’s death penalty – the blatant and intentional racial
bias that infects the system, distorting juries and throwing inordinate numbers
of African Americans on to death row – will be laid bare next week in North
Carolina.
Some of the country’s top capital lawyers will gather on Monday at the state
supreme court in Raleigh. Over two days, they will present evidence that
capital punishment is so deeply flawed and riddled with racial animus that it
makes a mockery of basic principles of fairness and equal justice.
The court’s 7 judges will be asked to address a simple question. Will they
allow men and women to be condemned to die despite powerful evidence that
prosecutors deployed racially discriminatory tactics to put them on death row?
“We are taking an unprecedented look at whether the courts will tolerate proven
racial bias in the death penalty,” said one of the case’s leading lawyers,
Cassandra Stubbs, director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) capital
punishment project. “We’re talking about fundamental rights that go to the
integrity of the courts and the entire criminal justice system.”
At the heart of the case are four inmates facing execution: three African
American men and a Native American woman. Over the past 7 years Marcus
Robinson, Quintel Augustine, Tilmon Golphin and Christina Walters have been on
an extraordinary judicial roller coaster that has seen them taken off death row
on grounds that their sentences were racially compromised, only to be slapped
back on to it following a partisan backlash by the Republican-controlled state
legislature.
In all 4 cases, a review of their trials found racial bias had been an
“overwhelming” feature of how death sentences were secured. In particular, the
juries had been “bleached”.
Black potential jurors were systematically struck off – consciously and
intentionally – at a rate far higher than their white equivalents. As a result,
juries were produced that were almost exclusively, or in Augustine’s case
entirely, white.
“A very stark and unmistakable picture of discrimination emerges with
compelling evidence that it is not an accident, it is purposeful,” Stubbs said.
The evidence Stubbs referred to was uncovered by a commission set up under
North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act (RJA), an exceptional measure introduced in
2009 following a spate of exonerations of innocent people held in some cases
for decades on death row. That so many innocent people, most of them African
American, had come close to being killed by the state alarmed local politicians
to the extent that the then Democratic-controlled assembly decided to root out
racial discrimination from the death penalty once and for all.
In a historic break with the past, the RJA established that anyone who could
prove race was a significant factor behind their death sentences would be
deemed ineligible for capital punishment.
That new protection unleashed one of the most thorough investigations into the
practice of the death penalty in US history. What it uncovered shocked even
lawyers working on RJA cases.
‘The more we looked, the more we found’
First up was Cassandra Stubbs’s client, Marcus Robinson. He had just turned 18
in 1994 when he and his black co-defendant carjacked a white teenager, Erik
Tornblom, at a gas station in Fayetteville.
Robinson, as prosecutors privately admitted at the time, did not pull the
trigger when Tornblom was shot and killed – his co-defendant did. Yet Robinson
was still condemned to death, becoming the youngest person at the time on the
state’s death row.
When Stubbs began analyzing Robinson’s trial she discovered that the jury had
been grossly skewed along race lines. During jury selection, in which both
defense and prosecution lawyers have the right to exclude potential jurors so
long as they have legitimate reasons, the prosecutor John Dickson struck out
five of 10 black people in the pool.
That 50% dismissal rate was almost four times the rate at which eligible white
jurors were rejected: just 14%. A review of the record showed that Dickson
asked demeaning questions of one black prospective juror, including whether the
individual could read and had completed school – questions that were put to
none of the white candidates.
“The more we looked, the more we found,” Stubbs told the Guardian. “These were
explicit biases. It was overt racial discrimination.”
Investigations of the other three cases under the RJA spotlight threw up even
more disturbing evidence.
At the trial of Augustine, who was charged with killing a police officer, they
dug up handwritten notes in which the prosecutor had scrawled “thug” and “blk
wino” against the name of two potential black jurors. By contrast, the same
prosecutor described a white juror with alcohol issues as “drinks – country boy
– ok”.
Another prospective black juror had “blk/high drug area” placed beside her
name, a reference to her largely African American neighborhood.
The prosecutor ended up throwing out every single qualified black juror,
producing an all-white jury.
At Golphin’s 1998 trial on charges that he and his brother killed two highway
patrol officers, an African American man in the jury pool overheard a couple of
potential white jurors talking about the defendant. One said Golphin “should
have never made it out of the woods” – an apparent lament that officers had
arrested the 19-year-old rather than summarily executing him on sight.
When the black potential juror reported what he had overheard, he was struck
off the jury pool. The white pair were left alone and may well have sat on the
final jury.
The cheat sheet
Other stunning evidence of race bias will be raised at Monday’s hearing. At the
1993 trial of a black defendant named Rayford Burke, the prosecutor described
him to the all-white jury as a “big black bull”.
More jaw-dropping still was how the courtroom was arranged by state officials
at the 2010 trial of Andrew Ramseur for killing two white victims. Immediately
behind the defense table, four rows of benches where the defendant’s family
would normally have sat had been cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape.
In full view of the all-white jury, Ramseur’s elderly grandparents were forced
to sit in the proverbial “back of the bus” while the family of the white
victims were allowed to locate themselves right behind the prosecution table.
Perhaps the most startling discovery of all was that North Carolina prosecutors
were trained in how to get around constitutional prohibitions against selecting
juries on race grounds.
The US supreme court has been crystal clear: jury “bleaching” is not allowed.
In a 1986 ruling, Batson v Kennedy, the court ruled that jurors could not be
dismissed on a racial basis – a valid cause had to be given. That unambiguous
ban was reaffirmed just two months ago in the case of Curtis Flowers, a black
man from Mississippi who was put on death row after the state prosecutor struck
off 5 black potential jurors, leaving only 1 on the final jury.
The Flowers ruling was backed by seven of the nine justices. Underlining how
little tolerance exists at the highest judicial levels for overt racial
discrimination in jury selection, the Flowers opinion was written by Brett
Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s controversial pick, who denounced the Flowers
prosecutor’s “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black
individuals”.
None of this appears to have dissuaded some of North Carolina’s capital
prosecutors from pursuing their objective of keeping death row populated with
black prisoners. The court will hear that in 1995 a training scheme was set up
for prosecutors statewide.
As part of the training, dubbed Top Gun II, attendees were given a handout
titled “Batson Justifications: Articulating Juror Negatives”. The document was
essentially a cheat sheet – it told prosecutors how they could skirt the clear
prohibition on racial strikes by listing 10 “justifications” they could
“articulate” to dismiss black people while disguising the race motive.
The list begins with this cod ground for dismissal: “Inappropriate dress –
attire may show lack of respect for the system, immaturity or rebelliousness.”
It is followed by “Physical appearance – tattoos, hair style, disheveled
appearance may mean resistance to authority”.
Another “justification”: “Body language – arms folded, leaning away from
questioner, obvious boredom may show anti-prosecution tendencies.”
Several of the state’s capital prosecutors sat through the training and there
is evidence they went on to make use of it. The prosecutor in the Augustine
case apparently quoted from the Top Gun cheat sheet as she was trying to
justify to a judge in a separate trial why she had rejected a black juror.
‘Accept racial bias to keep the death penalty’
The evidence unleashed by the RJA investigation was so overpowering that it
persuaded the North Carolina supreme court – the same panel that will host
Monday’s hearing – to scrap the death sentences of Augustine, Golphin, Robinson
and Walters in 2012. Their new punishment was far from soft: they would spend
the rest of their natural lives behind bars.
Nonetheless, that was not harsh enough for the Republican-controlled state
legislature voted in in 2012. They made it their business to overturn the RJA
the following year, disregarding the overwhelming evidence of racial wrongdoing
and dragging the four inmates without any further judicial review back on to
death row.
For Stubbs of the ACLU, there is only one conclusion to draw: Republicans in
North Carolina were more concerned with preserving capital punishment than with
ensuring the integrity of the judicial system.
“They feared that breaking the link between the death penalty and race would
remove too many people from death row,” she said, “so they decided they were
willing to accept racial bias to keep the death penalty.”
Stubbs and her fellow lawyers are hoping that Monday’s hearing will once again
take their four clients off death row. They are also hoping that the
proceedings will put a spotlight on discrimination that remains rampant across
the state.
The statistics tell the story. North Carolina is 34% non-white, yet about 63%
of death row inmates are non-white. A similar disparity is shown in the
statewide statistics on jury selection.
A Michigan State University study found that black potential jurors in capital
cases were dismissed through pre-emptory strikes at more than twice the rate of
whites.
Frank Baumgartner, professor of political science at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-author of Deadly Justice, a recent statistical
portrait of the death penalty, said that the same racial faultline runs across
all the 29 states that still have the death penalty. His analysis has shown
that it is impossible to understand the death penalty without taking on board
its grotesque racial distortions.
Baumgartner studied the 1,394 executions that took place in the US from 1976 to
2014 and found that the number of executions carried out for every 10,000
homicides was 65 when the victim was white but only 14 when the victim was
black. When gender was factored in the disparity grew even larger, with 123
executions where the victims were white females and only 9 for black males.
“The death penalty is reserved for very special categories,” Baumgartner said.
“You would expect that to be the most heinous offenders, people who torture
their victims and so on. But it’s not like that – the one category that is
vastly more likely to get a death sentence is when a black man kills a white
woman. The parallels to slavery and southern history is clear in the statistics
nationwide.”
He added that he hoped Monday’s hearing, which he will be attending, would give
America pause.
“It’s such a visceral and powerful idea,” he said. “To expose the death penalty
for what it is: an ugly symbol of racial hierarchy designed to preserve the
southern way of life.”
(source: The Guardian)
TENNESSEE:
Tennessee governor ‘not compelled’ to witness execution
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee says he has no plans to witness an execution as
Tennessee continues to put people to death.
Lee, a Republican, was offered a witness seat after he declined to stop the
past two executions since taking over Tennessee's top political office in
January. Three more executions are scheduled to take place through early 2020.
"I've certainly thought about if I would, but I have not felt compelled to do
it," Lee told reporters this week.
While governors have a key role in deciding whether to intervene in a death
penalty case, it is rare for one to witness an execution. Instead, executions
are viewed by top prison officials, family members of the victims and inmate,
attorneys and reporters.
Unlimited Digital Access: Only $0.99 For Your First Month Executions are not
broadcast to the public, making the role of witnesses important to the process.
At the latest execution of Tennessee inmate Stephen West on Aug. 15, one media
witness at a press conference said in response to a follow-up question that he
was going to take a break after watching 3 executions in 1 year.
"I think maybe the governor or someone can take my seat if they want," said
Steven Hale, a reporter with the Nashville Scene, an alternative weekly
publication. "I think I'm done for now."
West was executed by the electric chair, one of three inmates within the last
year to choose that method of dying. Tennessee is the only state in the nation
to execute inmates with the electric chair since 2013, according to the Death
Penalty Information Center.
The increase in executions runs counter to the national trend. Nationwide they
were at historic lows in 2018.
Advocates have previously appealed to Lee's Christian faith, which he has
mentioned frequently both during his gubernatorial campaign and in his time as
governor. Lee has declined to intervene, expounding on the difficult nature of
the decisions while maintaining that the death penalty is appropriate in
extremely egregious cases.
While talking to reporters at the Tennessee Capitol last week, Lee said
reviewing death penalty clemency requests has not been easy.
"As I've said before, it's one of the most difficult decisions that a governor
has to make and I wrestle with each one of them exhaustively," Lee said.
Five inmates have been executed in Tennessee since August 2018 — making
Tennessee one of three states that resumed executions that year after long
breaks. 2 of those inmates died by the state's preferred method, lethal
injection, and three chose the electric chair, arguing it would be a quicker
and less painful way to die than the three-drug method. Three more executions
are scheduled to take place through early 2020.
Since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976, the number
of executions peaked in 1999 with 98. They were at their lowest in 2016 with
20, according to center statistics. Americans' support for the death penalty
similarly peaked in the 1990s and has declined since, according to public
opinion polls by Gallup.
A 2018 Gallup poll showed 56 percent of Americans supported the death penalty
for a person convicted of murder.
"Our justice system has put in place a process and the people have agreed with
that process," Lee said in answering a question about the difficulty of the
decisions he must make.
"In the state of Tennessee, the judicial branch has established that and it is
as it should be if that's the way the people want it to be," Lee continued.
"I'm compelled to follow the process. And I think the processes have gone on as
designed without a flaw, and for that I'm grateful."
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA:
Accused Killer of Sacramento County Sheriff’s Deputy Pleads Not Guilty to
Charges
A man charged with killing a Sacramento Count sherifff's deputy and wounding
another has pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder.
The Sacramento Bee says Anton Moore was in court Friday in a wheelchair because
he’s still recovering from wounds from a September 2018 shootout that began
with an argument at a Pep Boys auto parts store in Rancho Cordova, a Sacramento
suburb.
A judge also ruled that Moore should face trial on the charges after a
preliminary hearing during which video was played of Moore pulling a gun and
shooting Deputy Mark Stasyuk.
Deputy Julie Robertson was wounded.
Prosecutors have said they’ll seek the death penalty despite a moratorium on
capital punishment announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom this year.
(source: KTLA news)
***************
Suspect in CSUF stabbing scheduled to appear before judge
Chris Chuyen Vo, suspect in the fatal stabbing of Steven Shek Keung Chan on the
Cal State Fullerton campus appeared in court for the first time today. His
arraignment is postponed until October.
Vo is charged with the murder of Chan, who was Vo’s co-worker and a former CSUF
administrator. Chan was working as a consultant when he was killed in the
College Park parking lot Monday.
Vo is also being charged with special circumstance allegations that could add
to the severity of his sentence.
“One is lying in wait and the other is personal use of a weapon that makes this
case eligible for the death penalty if he is convicted,” said Kimberly Edds,
public information officer for the Orange County District Attorney’s office.
There are 22 special circumstances in the California penal code that make the
possible punishment for first degree murder the death penalty or life without
parole.
If convicted, the District Attorney’s special circumstance committee will meet
to determine if Vo will receive the death penalty, Edds said. It should be
noted, however, that California Governor Gavin Newsom placed a temporary
suspension on all statewide capital punishment in March of 2019. This indicates
a significant legislative bend in favor of a substantial prison sentence over
the death penalty, should Vo be found guilty.
Commissioner Susan M. Lee, who presided over the initial arraignment, has
pushed Vo’s arraignment to 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 4 of this year at the Central
court in Santa Ana.
Due to the special circumstances allegations charge, Vo will not be released on
bail.
(source: The (CSUF) Daily Titan)
OREGON:
Death penalty bill generates classing views
Nearly 2 months have passed since the 2019 Legislature wrapped up its work, but
there’s still plenty of confusion surrounding one of the session’s most
significant bills, the measure that limits how the death penalty can be applied
in Oregon.
The key question is this: Is the bill retroactive — that is, does it apply to
the 31 inmates who currently are on death row in Oregon?
One of the bill’s key backers, state Sen. Floyd Prozanski, a Eugene Democrat,
has said a special legislative session is required to make it clear the law
doesn’t apply to death penalty cases sent back for new sentencing hearings as
well as new trials.
But another backer, former House Majority Leader Jennifer Williamson,
D-Portland, has said no additional work is needed on the bill and that it
always was intended to cover situations such as new sentencing hearings in old
cases and new trials.
A recent opinion by the state Department of Justice sided with Williamson’s
interpretation, noting that the new law applies to death penalty convictions
and sentences that have been overturned, in addition to pending cases.
The measure in question, Senate Bill 1013, narrows the definition of
“aggravated murder,” the only crime in Oregon that can be punished by death.
The death penalty in Oregon now can only be applied in four types of crimes:
killings motivated by terrorism, murders of children 14 years or younger,
killings by an incarcerated person who’s serving a previous aggravated murder
sentence and premeditated killings of police or corrections officers.
Other crimes that used to be considered aggravated murder, such as slayings
committed during a rape or robbery, no longer can be punished with the death
penalty.
The bill was carefully constructed (perhaps too carefully) to ensure that it
didn’t require a vote of the people; such a vote would be required of a measure
that called for completely doing away with the death penalty in Oregon.
It’s probably fair to say that many, if not most, legislators believed that the
bill was not meant to apply retroactively. In that light, the measure didn’t
seem likely to make much difference for death-row inmates: It’s been more than
2 decades since Oregon executed a prisoner and Gov. Kate Brown is continuing a
moratorium on the death penalty that was instituted by her predecessor, John
Kitzhaber.
But the idea that the bill could be applied retroactively to some cases changes
that calculation to some extent: As The Oregonian’s Noelle Crombie reported,
it’s not at all unusual for aggravated-murder convictions or death penalty
sentences to be overturned or remanded to a lower court.
In fact, Crombie noted, seven cases have been reversed in the last
two-and-a-half years, and not one of Oregon’s death row inmates has exhausted
their legal challenges. It would be interesting to see if legislators approach
the bill differently should it come up again in a special session or next
year’s short session.
Regardless of what happens to Senate Bill 1013, legislators should stop
sneaking around the issue of the death penalty and fully confront it by
referring to voters a measure to abolish capital punishment in Oregon.
Oregonians have a long and tangled history with the death penalty. Capital
punishment was outlawed by Oregon voters in 1914 and then reenacted in 1978.
Three years later, the state Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was
unconstitutional, a ruling that paved the way for a 1984 initiative in which
voters reaffirmed capital punishment.
Since then, the topic rarely has been revisited in Oregon, and the
gubernatorial moratoriums have had the effect of sweeping the debate about
capital punishment under the rug. Meanwhile, the national conversation about
the death penalty has taken fascinating turns.
It’s been almost 4 decades since state voters affirmed the death penalty. It’s
long past time to bring this conversation to all of Oregon.
(source: Albany Demcorat-Herald)
**************************
Oregon Attorney General Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Continue to Allow
Non-Unanimous Jury Verdicts----AG Ellen Rosenblum says if the court eliminates
non-unanimous jury verdicts, it could invalidate "hundreds, if not thousands"
of convictions.
In a somewhat counter-intuitive move, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum
today asked the U.S. Supreme Court to leave in place a 1972 ruling that allows
for non-unanimous jury verdicts.
After Louisiana ended its practice of allowing non-unanimous jury verdicts
earlier this year, Oregon was left as the only state in which a person can be
convicted of a serious felony by a non-unanimous verdict.
Criminal justice reformers despise non-unanimous verdicts, which they say have
historically fostered inequitable outcomes. Lawmakers considered a bill this
year that would have ended the practice but it died toward the end of session.
So, in the current political climate in Oregon, it might be logical to assume
that if Rosenblum took a position on the 1972 case, Apodaca v. Oregon, which
upheld the constitutionality of non-unanimous verdicts, that she would urge the
justices to overturn that decision and end the practice. (Disclosure: Rosenblum
is married to Richard Meeker, the co-owner of WW's parent company.)
Here's the brief she filed today.
In a statement, however, Rosenblum explained that she fears that over-turning
that case could invalidate decades worth of convictions under existing Oregon
law.
Here's her statement explaining her position:
I want it to be understood that I fully support repealing Oregon's
non-unanimous jury rule, the origin of which has been linked to racism and
anti-semitism.
Requiring unanimous juries would ensure fair representation, promote systemic
accountability and legitimacy, and bring Oregon in line with all 49 of our
sister states. That is why I support referring an Oregon constitutional
amendment to voters that would change Oregon's law going forward.
But it is important that the U.S. Supreme Court understand the practical
consequences should it reverse its decades-old determination that the United
States Constitution allows non-unanimous verdicts. Reinterpreting federal
constitutional requirements after 40-plus years would call into question
thousands of settled criminal cases, and could require new trials in hundreds,
if not thousands, of cases.
Rosenblum's concern about invalidating previous convictions is similar to the
concern her agency recently expressed about Senate Bill 1013, which redefined
the crime of aggravated murder and effectively gutted Oregon's death penalty
bill.
Lawmakers, the DOJ and Gov. Kate Brown are all now trying to figure out how to
fix that bill, which the DOJ says could reduce the sentences handed down to
murderers in recent decades.
(source: wweek.com)
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