Oct. 11
TEXAS:
The fight to save Rodney Reed from execution in Texas
In 1998, Rodney Reed, who is African-American, was sentenced to death by an
all-white jury in Bastrop, Texas, for the rape and murder of Stacey Stites, a
19-year-old white woman. He's scheduled to be executed on Nov. 20.
Reed, now 53, maintains his innocence. The only evidence used to convict him
was DNA that Reed says was present because he and Stites were having a secret
affair — a claim Stites's cousin corroborates. Reed's defense attorneys believe
that further DNA tests of the crime scene could prove his innocence, but their
requests have been denied, leading them to file a lawsuit in federal court.
They also recently petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution,
citing "new and comprehensive evidence for innocence."
Among the new pieces of evidence Reed's lawyers cite are statements from two
witnesses who claim they have information that links Stites's then-fiancé,
Jimmy Fennell, to the crime. Fennell, a former police officer in Giddings,
Texas, was recently released from prison after serving 10 years for the
kidnapping and assault of a woman. There were critical inconsistencies in
Fennell's accounts of where he was and what he was doing the night of the
murder.
One of the new witnesses who's come forward is a life insurance salesperson who
said that while Fennell was applying for a policy he threatened to kill Stites
if she ever cheated on him. The other witness, a sheriff's deputy in Texas's
Lee County, said he overheard Fennell say to Stites' body at her funeral, "You
got what you deserved." In addition, forensic experts who implicated Reed at
trial have recanted, while forensic pathologists have said the prosecution's
theory of Reed's guilt is medically and scientifically impossible.
That Reed is still on death row despite all the evidence casting doubt on his
guilt is indicative of the larger issues around the death penalty —
particularly as it pertains to race.
In the U.S., race is the single greatest predictor of who gets the death
penalty, not the severity of the crime. Even though whites account for just 55
% of murder victims nationwide, they account for 80 percent of murder victims
in cases resulting in an execution. Those convicted of killing white victims
are three times more likely to be sentenced to death than those convicted of
killing non-white victims.
The disparities in who is executed are especially stark in Texas, which has the
nation's third-largest death row population and accounted for more than 1/2 of
all the executions in the U.S. last year. Of the states with more than 10
people currently facing execution, Texas has the highest number of minorities
on death row. While African Americans make up only 12.6 % of Texas's
population, 43.9 % of its death row inmates are Black.
These statistics are particularly alarming when one considers that 166 people
have been exonerated from death row. Of these, nearly 1/2 are Black, and nearly
50 are Black men from the South.
Reed's family has organized a grassroots effort called the Reed Justice
Initiative that is working to save Reed's life while also supporting families
who are dealing with similar situations. Reed's cause also has help from the
nationally recognized anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean and the
Innocence Project, which has launched a petition seeking to halt his execution.
"The evidence supporting Reed's innocence is uncontradicted and undeniable, and
without the Supreme Court's intervention, I fear the State of Texas may execute
an innocent man," said Bryce Benjet, Reed's lawyer and senior staff attorney at
the Innocence Project.
(source: Facing South)
**********************
New Podcast: Texas Lawyer James Rytting on Junk Science and the Execution of
Larry Swearingen
In the latest episode of Discussions with DPIC, Texas capital defense lawyer
James Rytting discusses the case of his client, Larry Swearingen, and the junk
science that led to the execution of a man legitimate science strongly suggests
was innocent. Rytting describes the false forensic analysis presented under the
guise of science in Swearingen’s case, the appellate process that makes it
“almost impossible” to obtain review of new evidence, and the persistent
problem of wrongful convictions.
Larry Swearingen was executed on August 21, 2019 after multiple courts declined
to review evidence supporting his innocence claim. In the interview, Rytting
explains the problems with the prosecution’s “smoking gun,” a piece of
pantyhose used to strangle the victim, Melissa Trotter. The prosecution told
the jury that a matching piece of pantyhose had been found in Swearingen’s
home. In reality, that supposedly matching piece of the pantyhose had not been
discovered in 2 initial searches of Swearingen’s house. It was only “found” in
a 3rd search of the residence after Trotter’s body was found and police learned
of the pantyhose ligature around her neck. A forensic analyst working closely
with police and familiar with the origin of both specimens compared the 2
pieces. Though she did not initially determine that the pieces matched, she
later re-examined the evidence, in Rytting’s words, “without taking any of the
basic precautions to ensure that you’re not biased.” According to Rytting, “She
was following protocols that cannot be used in anything that is considered a
scientific inquiry.” This, he said, was in itself “not unusual” and was the
“customary procedure when people are making tear-mark comparisons”—one of the
reasons the scientific validity of such forensic evidence is so unreliable.
Rytting said there were other significant problems with the evidence presented
against Swearingen at trial, including scientifically false testimony regarding
the date of Trotter’s death. Swearingen was arrested three days after Trotter’s
disappearance. Her body was discovered in the Sam Houston National Forest 3
weeks later, while Swearingen was still in jail. The state’s expert testified
that Trotter had been killed before Swearingen was arrested. Later, “no less
than five chief medical examiners with international reputations … came to the
conclusion that the body of Melissa Trotter was thrown in the woods no more
than ten days or so before the body was found,” a time during which Swearingen
was in jail and could not have committed the killing.
The prosecution also presented expert testimony that purported to track,
through cell tower records, Swearingen’s location at the time the prosecution
theorized the murder had occurred. Swearingen later showed that the testimony
that had purportedly pinpointed Swearingen’s whereabouts was badly flawed and
had reported his location and movements to the jury with much greater certainty
than was actually possible.
Rytting says that a lack of scientific training, both of the forensic analysts
who examine evidence and the lawyers and judges who must present and consider
it, contributes to the ongoing misuse of junk science in criminal trials. On
forensic analysts, he said, “They apparently do not, or did not at the time,
come in with a basic background in scientific methods – what you need to do to
blind yourself to make sure that you’re not biased, that you are not confirming
a foregone conclusion that you should not be considering when you’re doing the
test and preparing the materials.” He called the training of attorneys and
judges “antiquated” and said, “You don’t get any scientific training while you
are in law school, and yet this is a major part of life that you have to have
some fluency with if you’re going to be on the bench making decisions nowadays.
You have to know something about science.”
The insufficient judicial review in Swearingen’s case was a result of the
1990’s amendments to the federal habeas corpus statute that were included in
the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. That act, Rytting said,
sets a standard that is “almost impossible to meet” for prisoners who want to
present new evidence. “[T]he federal system,” Rytting said, “could take a
lesson from Texas,” whose legislature has passed “cutting-edge” legislation to
try to address wrongful convictions and junk science.
Rytting also noted that, while junk science and wrongful convictions get the
most attention in death-penalty cases, they affect people throughout the legal
system. “All the cases in which people are serving life sentences[,] … there
are thousands and thousands of those people, and their cases aren’t reviewed.
They are convicted by junk science. They are convicted by false scientific
testimony, exaggerated scientific testimony. Their cases aren’t reviewed,
except in the rarest of circumstances, because only death-sentenced clients are
allowed an attorney, are allowed resources in habeas corpus. So, that should be
kept in mind, that this isn’t a discrete problem having to do with people on
death row. This is a huge problem having to do with people that are wasting
away in the prison system.”
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
FLORIDA:
Hearing for Woman Facing the Death Penalty
A hearing for a Polk County woman facing the death penalty will be held
Thursday.
Cheyanne Jessie was convicted for the 2015 deaths of her father and 6 year old
daughter.
In July, a jury recommended a life sentence for killing her father and the
death penalty for killing her daughter.
Today in court, Jessie's attorney will try to persuade the judge to sentence
her to life instead of the death penalty.
Jessie's attorney also filed a motion to throw out the death penalty verdict,
stating one of the jurors may have rushed deliberations due to her family
birthday plans the following day and expressed inability to be sequestered.
(source: baynews9.com)
ALABAMA:
Witness to death: on murder, and execution, in Alabama----In June 2017, Robert
Melson was executed in Alabama for murder. I was there.
Part 1: The clock and the condemned
I was not sure when the life left his body, and for that I am still ashamed. I
stared at the clock and at him, and each time the second hand moved, it
startled me. Looming death, I had thought, would freeze time. But it would not.
In 1994, during a robbery of a Gadsden Popeyes, Robert Melson murdered Tamika
Collins, Nathaniel Baker and Darrell Collier. But now, more than two decades
later, I sat in a small pentagonal room while the people of Alabama took their
revenge.
In the 2 days leading up to his execution, Melson had been visited by his
uncle, his brother, his cousin, his aunt and 2 lawyers. On the day itself,
Melson refused both breakfast and a final meal and made no special requests of
the government that would soon end his life.
Before the scheduled 6pm execution, the US Supreme Court issued a temporary
stay, holding off the lethal injection while they considered Melson’s claim
that the drugs that would soon run through his veins would torture him, burning
him from the inside out. The State allowed Melson to move then, at least
briefly, from his death bed, where it had already strapped him down. He would
not be gone for long.
At about 9:10pm, the Supreme Court lifted its stay without comment, allowing
the execution to move forward and condemning Melson to the tomb from which he
had just arisen.
Around 9:30pm, the State moved myself and four other reporters by prison van
from a media centre – an austere trailer – to a witness room abutting Holman
Correctional Facility’s execution chamber. The room was lit by one
salmon-coloured light, and after a few minutes, the brown-blue curtain
concealing the chamber itself from the witness room was drawn back.
The State then revealed Melson strapped to a gurney with IVs entering the backs
of both his hands. The execution chamber was small and barren, with 14 rows of
exposed fluorescent bulbs lighting up the inmate below.
Moments later, at about 9:54pm, the prison’s warden read the death warrant and
asked Melson for any last words. Melson shook his head “no,” and the warden and
an assistant left the room, leaving only Melson, a prison guard, a chaplain,
and a vengeful God.
At about 9:57pm, the chaplain knelt beside Melson momentarily, placing his hand
over the condemned inmate’s and appearing to pray. As the chaplain moved away
and the execution began about a minute later, Melson’s hands, chest and face
visibly began shaking against the restraints. The shaking lasted until about
10:01pm.
At 10:03pm, the guard performed consciousness tests.
“Inmate Melson,” he said.
No response.
“Inmate Melson.” I wanted to see him move, to see him fight back against the
State that was killing him, but I saw no more movement.
“Inmate Melson,” the guard said a 3rd time.
The guard then pushed back Melson’s left eyelid 3 times and pinched the back of
his left arm. Nothing.
By 10:07pm, Melson’s breathing had ceased completely and his lips had begun
turning purple, but both his fists were still clenched with his thumbs inside.
The State then moved us, the members of the press, from the witness room, and
we were told only on the ride out of the prison that Melson’s official time of
death was 10:27pm.
They say that when it comes to executions, the time of death is simply the time
a doctor verifies what everyone involved already knew. So, I don’t know when
exactly Robert Melson died, even though it happened while I watched.
For that, I will always be ashamed.
Part 2: Fear and fast food
For nearly a quarter of a century Bryant Archer has feared what isn’t there,
because one Thursday in April 1994, he had to fear what was. That night, in
Gadsden, Alabama, at a Popeyes Chicken on East Meighan Boulevard where he
worked, Archer became a survivor. In the years since, he’s struggled to stay
one.
That Thursday was set to be Archer’s junior prom. He’d gotten the date and the
tux, and though he wasn’t much for stuff like that, he had at least made some
effort. It wouldn’t count for much. Archer’s date, whose name he remembers and
laughs about, but won’t disclose, stood him up. To recoup at least part of the
cash spent and dignity lost, Archer’s prom night turned into a work night.
At 4 o’ clock, Archer arrived at the Popeyes in a downpour that, before an hour
had passed, had knocked out the lights. The power wouldn’t come back on until 9
or so. “They wouldn’t let us leave, though,” Archer complains of Popeyes
corporate managers. So for Archer and his colleagues, the night blew on.
After 11, Archer went to take the trash out back, but didn’t make it. 2 armed
men entered, cleared the safe of $2,100, and put Archer and his 3 co-workers –
Nathaniel Baker, Darrell Collier, and Tamika Collins in the building’s freezer.
“I figured they were gonna run off,” Archer says. He sat on a crate. After
about a minute, the freezer door opened, and the men began firing.
“I didn’t know [the others] were deceased,” Archer says. “They had fell out in
front of me, and that’s when I started getting shot.” It wasn’t until over a
week later in the hospital when Archer realised he was the only survivor of the
murder – that his co-workers were already dead as he lay bleeding.
“89,” one officer had radioed in when the police arrived on scene, signalling a
need to transport slain bodies. “Multiple.”
“Everybody’s dead?” An officer asked.
“We got my man here,” another officer responded, “he’s hanging on for us. Hang
on, baby,” he told Archer, then asked his name.
“Bryant Archer,” the response came. “I need some blood. I don’t have none.”
“I know. Just hold on, baby. Hold on for me, baby. Hold on for me, buddy. Lay
still for me, baby. Where all you shot at, Bryant?”
The response was more muffled. “I don’t even know.”
“Where do you go to school?” The officer asked.
“Gadsden High School.”
“You play ball or anything?”
Archer must have shaken his head. M
“Oh, you one of the smart ones, okay. Us dumb guys played ball.”
Archer never did play ball, but he and Nathaniel Baker, now dead yards away
from him, got kicked out of English class together and liked it. They hated the
teacher. Sometimes, they were told “either you run laps, or we give you licks,”
Archer says, and lists running, then, as his extracurricular activity when
asked about his high school days. He ran track.
Years later, remembering that detail about his friend, or the fear of not
remembering, haunts Archer as much as any real-life monster. “The people who
died that night, it just seems like they just – over time they just faded away.
And that’s not something that should’ve happened to start with. Their families
went through hell.”
Archer’s hell hasn’t faded.
Years later, when he and his then wife, Lori, bought their first home in
Gadsden, Archer wasn’t comfortable. “I loved the house,” Archer said of the
three-bedroom, one-bath on Maryland Avenue, just a five-minute drive from the
Popeyes that had been robbed, “but I kept going back and forth. Is that door
open? Is it locked?”
Even after that house – and marriage – were gone, the fear wasn’t.
“I have a hard time dealing with things as far as I don’t like being
confrontational,” Archer says. “I don’t like having things happen around me. I
don’t cope well with things that don’t work. I just don’t like being around a
bunch of trouble. I don’t cope well with things I can’t control. I like to know
where I’m at and I don’t go anywhere at night.”
There’s more to Archer than the crime he suffered, too. Archer’s family moved
to Gadsden when he was 13 from Gastonia, North Carolina, because “the rent was
so damn high.” His mother had worked two jobs in the Tar Heel State, one of
which was making what Archer calls “Christmas balls” – ornaments for the tree.
She grabbed up the opportunity, though, for higher wages and lower rent when a
position making hand grenades for the military popped up in Gadsden. She passed
in 2012.
When Archer was five, his father left. “It was creeping – on and off,” Archer
says of his relationship with his dad. “Basically, the only time I ever talked
to him was when he was drunk calling me to cuss me out. I got used to hanging
up on him.” His father passed in 2013, leaving Archer little but his name.
Today, Archer takes care of his family. He has 2 children from his 1st
marriage, Rebecca and David, 21 and 17. He’s married to Hollie now, and has
taken in the children, ranging age 4 to 12, of his late brother-in-law: Kira,
Wade, Gage, and Adi.
Between carpool pickups and drop-offs, Archer runs a corpse removal service. “I
actually like dead people,” he says of the job. “They don’t bother me. They get
in the van, and they don’t say a whole lot, and I get paid to take them where
they belong.”
Part 3: The stakes and the stats
Robert Melson wasn’t the first person the people of Alabama executed in 2017.
In fact, he wasn’t even the first person executed that month. Just 2 weeks
prior, Alabama executed another person, Thomas Arthur, for the 1982 murder of
Troy Wicker.
So while the frequency of executions nationwide is decreasing, where the death
penalty is carried out, typically in southern states, it happens often and
without any seeming pause or remorse by the majority of state officials.
Nationally, for example, the number of executions each year has steadily
declined from 98 in 1999 to only 25 in 2018 according to the non-partisan Death
Penalty Information Center. This year, that number so far stands at 11. All of
these 11, though, have been in southern states: 3 each in Texas and Alabama, 2
each in Georgia and Tennessee, and one in Florida.
This year – the day after Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed one of the nation’s
most restrictive bans on abortions, proclaiming that “all life is sacred” – she
presided over the execution of another man, Michael Samra. His life, it seems,
wasn’t so sacred.
Robert Melson’s execution also wasn’t the first – or last – botched execution
in the state or around the country.
In early 2018, Alabama was warned by organisations ranging from Amnesty
International to the United Nations not to attempt the execution of Doyle Lee
Hamm, a 61-year-old man who had been diagnosed with lymphoma, a type of cancer,
years earlier.
“We are seriously concerned that attempts to insert needles into Mr Hamm’s
veins to carry out the lethal injection would inflict pain and suffering that
may amount to torture,” two UN human rights experts said. “The planned method
of execution, using Alabama’s three-drug protocol, may also have torturous
effects, because the sedative used is incapable of keeping a convict
unconscious in the presence of the excruciating pain likely to be induced by
the other drugs.”
Alabama proceeded with the lethal injection anyway, and, as predicted, what
followed can, as the UN foreshadowed, be accurately described only as torture.
Once the US Supreme Court lifted its stay of execution to allow the procedure
to move forward, officials strapped Hamm to a gurney, and their attempt to
access a vein began.
It would not be successful. Over and over again, prison officials punctured
Hamm with needles in attempts to gain access to a stable vein in which to
inject the execution drugs. They tried his feet and ankles (execution drugs are
typically injected into the inmate’s hands) with no success.
At some point during this process, two unidentified people in business attire,
wearing only gloves as protective gear, entered to take over the attempted
execution. One of them used an ultrasound to try and locate a vein in Hamm’s
groin. During this attempt, Hamm’s femoral artery and bladder were both
punctured, pooling vast amounts of blood, all while Hamm lay conscious, wishing
he would simply die.
Eventually, not for lack of trying, but out of fear that Hamm’s execution
warrant would soon expire, the attempt to kill him was abandoned. When Hamm was
unstrapped from the gurney, he immediately collapsed. He would urinate blood
for days after the torture. Photos taken following the botched execution show
severe bruising around Hamm’s feet, ankles, legs, and groin, and a total of
eleven puncture wounds from the needles that would have otherwise delivered his
death sentence.
Afterwards, Alabama’s top prison official, Jefferson Dunn, rejected the label
of torture, telling reporters that the execution attempt had not gone badly:
the state had merely run out of time. “I wouldn’t necessarily characterise what
we had tonight as a problem,” Dunn said. “The only indication I have is that in
their medical judgment it was more of a time issue given the late hour.”
Botched executions like this aren’t as rare as you would think. The Equal
Justice Initiative (EJI), a non-profit that defends those at risk of execution,
based in Montgomery, Alabama, has documented serious problems in at least five
cases in addition to Hamm’s and Melson’s since 2014. In many cases,
journalists, including myself, report that those being executed visibly shake
against their restraints, gasp, and show other visible and audible signs of
potential issues.
This problem won’t go away any time soon, either.
While some stats on executions in the United State are headed in the right
direction, the death penalty isn’t disappearing anytime soon. US
Attorney-General Bill Barr, for example, America’s top law enforcement
official, recently announced that the federal government, which has not
executed an inmate in over 15 years, will reinstate the practice. The Trump
administration has already asked the Bureau of Prisons to schedule execution
date for 5 individuals on federal death row.
There is some hope on the horizon, however. Half of US states, either by
legislative action, executive moratoria, or judicial ruling, have halted the
practice of executing inmates. And as support for the death penalty wanes
nationwide, it can be expected that this trend will continue.
On the federal level, as the 2020 presidential election nears, nearly every of
the over 20 Democratic hopefuls for that office has said they oppose the death
penalty because of lessening support but also because of the serious racial
disparities apparent in the practice.
The Supreme Court, for example, ruled in 1986 that despite statistical evidence
proving that black defendants – and those that are accused of murdering white
victims – are much more likely to be sentenced to death, capital punishment
does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Aside from policy, though, Americans have a moral choice to make. Will we allow
this barbaric practice to continue while the rest of the world watches in awe,
or will we decide that given the reality of who we kill and the finality of the
sentence, that capital punishment should be a thing of the past?
Until then, death-row inmates will continue to live every day of their life
waiting for the state to end them. Only with death will they get their freedom.
Vernon Madison Sr., who was moved to death row in 1985, laid this reality bare
in a poem called “Handcuffs in Heaven” that he wrote and provided to the EJI.
In it, he describes an inmate headed to the execution chamber who asks: “Will
there be any handcuffs in heaven & chains for my feets?”
“Some times in the wee hours of the night, when all is settle & quiet
I’ll lay & wonder if I dies before I awake, am I as sure of heaven
As he was that night, when he speak?
For he didn’t ask about Hell, for he knew he had that place beat……
He wanted to know about heaven & the handcuffs & shackle around his feets,
I’m sure as he entered the pearly gates he notices there wasn’t any locks;
And he was free for all eternity, not held bound by any stocks…
‘No SON, there will be no handcuffs in heaven or shackles on your feet;
You’ll have eternal freedom, as you walk down
Part 4: A lack of closure
In 2017, I watched as Robert Melson, the gunman who shot Bryant Archer and his
co-workers in 1994, when I was only a few months old, was executed by the State
of Alabama. At the moment when I watched Melson’s execution from the
witness-chamber at Holman Correctional Facility, Archer “ate a fat steak on a
beach” in Panama City, his family in tow.
He says he thinks Melson deserved to be held accountable for his actions, but
also that the execution does not bring him full closure. It does, though, take
away one unknown. “He’ll never do it again.” That, at least for Archer, is one
less fear he must face.
For me, though, things don’t wrap up so clearly. While the story of Melson’s
murder is harrowing – an experience Archer had to live through first-hand – so,
too, is the story of Melson’s execution and others like it.
Even further, when organisations including EJI have demonstrated that “for
every nine people executed in this country, one innocent person has been
exonerated,” it has become clear to me that despite tragedies like the one that
occurred in that Popeyes in April 1994, our nation cannot afford the moral leap
that executing potentially innocent people and torturing even guilty human
beings must take.
The day after I witnessed Melson’s execution, a veteran reporter – an
acquaintance with whom I had never been particularly friendly – messaged me on
social media. “Just checking on you,” she wrote. “You okay?”
I told her that yes, I was okay.
I wasn’t. After I left Holman Correctional Facility, I’d had to pull over at a
convenience store and cry. Even the next day – and even to this day – what I
saw that night in June 2017 had changed me, just like that night at Popeyes
changed Bryant Archer. In very different ways, but because of some of the same
events, neither of us will ever be the same.
(source: Lee Hedgepeth is a Ph.D. student in political science at Tulane
University and an adjunct instructor in Delgado Community College’s Adult
Education Program. Lee worked as a political journalist for more than 5 years,
covering events ranging from impeachments to executions----newstatesman.com)
*********************
SCOTUS advances death penalty in Alabama’s 1st prosecution for murder of unborn
child
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday made the decision to not review several
Alabama death penalty cases, including 2 for the murders of police officers and
another that was the state’s 1st prosecution for murder of an unborn child.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall welcomed SCOTUS denying certiorari in
the capital cases of Nathaniel Woods, Mario Woodward, Jessie Phillips, Gregory
Hunt, Demetrius Frazier and Cedric Floyd.
In a Wednesday statement, Marshall said, “In each of these cases, a life or
lives were tragically and viciously taken and a just sentence of death for the
killer was handed down.”
“Police officers were carrying out their duties to protect citizens, as they do
every day, and they paid the ultimate price,” he outlined. “A mother and her
unborn child, and 3 more women, were brutally killed. The U.S. Supreme Court
this week acted in its role as a last resort of justice, rightfully letting
stand the convictions and sentences for these vile crimes.”
Marshall does not just have ties to these cases as attorney general defending
the sentences.
On February 27, 2009, Jessie Phillips held his pregnant wife, Erica, in a
headlock and pointed a gun to her head. She broke away and ran, but Phillips
shot her in the head, killing her.
The crime occurred in Guntersville and was prosecuted by Marshall when he was
district attorney of Marshall County.
This case was the first prosecution under Alabama’s state law for murder of an
unborn baby. In 2012, Phillips was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to
death.
To be clear, this case does not relate to the recently enacted HB 314 —
Alabama’s abortion ban law. That law is not currently in effect.
As far as the 2 cases involving police officers, Nathaniel Woods in 2005 was
convicted of capital murder for fatally shooting Birmingham Police Department
officers Carlos Owen, Harley A. Chisolm and Charles R. Bennett and the
attempted murder of officer Michael Collins.
Mario Woodward in 2008 was convicted of capital murder for the fatal shooting
of Montgomery Police Department Officer Keith Houts.
The U.S. Supreme Court also declined to review the cases of 3 additional
Alabama death row inmates: Hunt, Frazier and Floyd.
Per the attorney general’s office, Hunt brutally murdered Karen Lane in Walker
County in 1988. Frazier was found guilty by a Jefferson County jury of the 1991
burglary, rape and murder of Pauline Brown. In 2009, Cedric Floyd murdered his
former girlfriend, Tina Jones, during a burglary of her house.
(source: yellowhammernews.com)
OHIO:
New twist in Ohio death penalty
Vicki Williams of Lima believes Cleveland Jackson showed little regard for her
daughter, Leneshia, when he killed her in 2002. As for his death sentence, the
only thing she sees as being “cruel and unusual punishment” are the 17 years
she’s waited for his execution.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with her recently. It said a
federal judge in Dayton was wrong when he ruled in January that Ohio’s
execution protocol was cruel because it created a sensation of drowning.
Now the big question is what will Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine do? He delayed
executions following the Dayton judge’s ruling, saying “Ohio is not going to
execute someone under my watch when a federal judge has found it to be cruel
and unusual punishment.” That’s no longer a factor.
(source: Jim Krumel is the editor of The Lima News----timesgazette.com)
TENNESSEE:
State Court Of Criminal Appeals Keeps Harold Wayne Nichols On Death Row
The Tennessee Court of Appeals has ruled that Harold Wayne Nichols, who was
convicting of raping and murdering a Chattanooga woman and who allegedly raped
and assaulted several other women will remain on death row.
Nichols had appealed a decision of Judge Don Ash, who dismissed his
post-conviction appeal.
Judge Ash ruled against Nichols and denied an evidentiary hearing, though the
district attorney's office had agreed to enter into a settlement agreement that
would change his status to life in prison.
The Court of Criminal Appeals said Judge Ash had the authority to dismiss the
case without a hearing and to disregard the settlement.
Nichols pled guilty to 1st-degree murder, aggravated rape and 1st-degree
burglary in 1990 in the slaying of Karen Pulley. A jury imposed the death
penalty.
The appeals court said, "The proof showed that on the night of September 30,
1988, (Petitioner)broke into the house where the 21-year-old-victim, Karen
Pulley, lived with 2 roommates in the Brainerd area of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
After finding Pulley home alone in her upstairs bedroom, (Petitioner) tore her
undergarments from her and violently raped her. Because of her resistance
during the rape, he forcibly struck her at least twice in the head with a
two-by-four he had picked up after entering the house. After the rape,
(Petitioner), while still struggling with the victim, struck her again several
times with great force in the head with the 2-by 4. The next morning, one of
Karen Pulley’s roommates discovered her alive and lying in a pool of blood on
the floor next to her bed. Pulley died the next day.
"Three months after the rape and murder, a Chattanooga police detective
questioned [Petitioner] about Pulley’s murder while he was in the custody of
the East Ridge police department on unrelated charges. It was at this point
that (Petitioner) confessed to the crime. This videotaped confession provided
the only link between (Petitioner) and the Pulley rape and murder. The evidence
showed that, until his arrest in January 1989, (Petitioner) roamed the city at
night and, when “energized,” relentlessly searched for vulnerable female
victims. At the time of trial, [Petitioner] had been convicted on five charges
of aggravated rape involving four other Chattanooga women. These rapes had
occurred in December 1988 and January 1989, within 3 months after Pulley’s rape
and murder."
The court also said, "In June of 2016, Petitioner moved to reopen his post
conviction petition on the basis that the Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson
v. United States, __ U.S. __, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), announced a new rule of
constitutional law requiring retroactive application. The post-conviction court
granted the motion to reopen, but after Petitioner amended his petition and
asserted additional claims, the post conviction court denied relief without a
hearing.
"On appeal, Petitioner argues (1) that the sole aggravating circumstance
supporting his death sentence is unconstitutionally vague under Johnson; (2)
that a judge, rather than a jury, determined facts in imposing the death
penalty in violation of Hurst v. Florida, __ U.S. __, 136 S. Ct. 616 (2016), a
new rule of constitutional law requiring retroactive application; (3) that the
State committed prosecutorial misconduct at Petitioner’s sentencing hearing,
along with a related ineffective assistance of trial counsel claim; (4) that
the post-conviction court erred in canceling the scheduled evidentiary hearing
without notice and a fair opportunity to be heard; (5) that the post-conviction
court erred in denying the parties’ proposed settlement agreement to vacate the
death sentence and enter a judgment of life imprisonment; and (6) that
Petitioner’s death sentence is invalid due to the cumulative effect of the
asserted errors.
"Following our review, we affirm the judgment of the post-conviction court."
(source: The Chattanoogan)
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