September 15
PENNSYLVANIA:
Missing expert report sought before new sentencing trial for Melvin Knight
Attorneys for Melvin Knight have 2 weeks to give prosecutors details collected
from a taxpayer-funded expert hired to prepare trial evidence to determine if
he again gets a death sentence for the 2010 torture slaying of a mentally
disabled woman.
During a hearing Friday before Westmoreland County Common Pleas Judge Rita
Hathaway, defense lawyers Tim Dawson and James Robinson said that despite
paying a New York expert for her work over the last year, they have yet to
receive any written reports regarding Knight's case.
"It's a dispute over money, and we never got a report. She asked for an
additional $5,000," Robinson said.
Knight, 28, formerly of Swissvale, Allegheny County, is on death row after he
pleaded guilty to 1st-degree murder for his role in killing 30-year-old
Jennifer Daugherty. He was sentenced to die by lethal injection. A state
appeals court overturned his death sentence and ordered a new trial to
determine his penalty.
Knight was 1 of 6 Greensburg roommates convicted in Daugherty's torture and
killing. Prosecutors said she was held captive for more than 2 days and stabbed
to death. Her body was found bound in Christmas lights and garland and stuffed
into a trash can that was discarded under a truck in a snow-covered parking
lot.
In preparing for Knight's 2nd sentencing trial, which is scheduled for jury
selection to begin Oct. 29, the defense hired three experts to assist with
preparing the case in which they will seek life prison term without the
possibility for parole.
The judge last year authorized the defense to pay New York mitigation
specialist Jennifer Wynn up to $10,000 to research Knight???s background in
preparation for the trial. According to court records, Wynn was paid $7,117
from Westmoreland County for her work. Details about Knight she learned were
included in reports generated by 2 other defense-hired experts, information
that was shared with prosecutors.
Wynn was not expected to be called as a witness at trial, Dawson said.
Wynn, who is listed as an associate professor of criminal justice at City
University in New York, could not be reached for comment.
The prosecution needs to see all of the information compiled by Wynn in order
for its expert to prepare a report that will be used to attempt to convince
jurors to impose a death sentence, District Attorney John Peck and Assistant
District Attorney Leo Ciaramitaro said.
"We need to see the same stuff their experts used," Ciaramitaro said.
The judge ordered defense attorneys to contact Wynn in an effort to have her
detail her work. Prosecutors have to give the defense reports from its own
experts at the start of the trial, the judge ruled.
(source: triblive.com)
ALABAMA:
AL supreme court reverses Anthony Lane's death sentence
The Supreme Court of Alabama has reversed and remanded the death penalty
sentence for a man convicted of robbing and fatally shooting a man in 2009.
Anthony Lane was convicted in 2011 of capital murder during the commission of a
robbery in the death of 57-year-old Frank Wright, who was killed off Messer
Airport Highway while en route to pick up his wife at Birmingham's airport.
Based on the jury's recommendation, Circuit Judge Clyde Jones sentenced Lane to
death. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Lane's conviction and
sentence and the Alabama Supreme Court denied Lane's request to review his
conviction on Jan. 30, 2015.
Now, the Alabama Supreme Court has reversed the judgement of the Court of
Criminal Appeals, which upheld his sentence, and remanded the matter to the
trial court to sentence him to life in prison without the possibility of
parole, the court said in a ruling issued Friday.
"Based on Atkins, Hall, and the apparent reasons behind the United States
Supreme Court's vacation of the Court of Criminal Appeals' judgment, we must
reverse the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals and remand the cause to
that court with directions to remand the matter to the trial court," the state
supreme court said.
On Oct. 5, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated Lane's sentence and remanded it
back to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama for further
consideration. The high court asked the Alabama appeals court to look at the
case in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2014 ruling that declared
unconstitutional Florida's method of determining whether a capital murder
defendant is intellectually disabled.
Florida law says an intellectual disability is defined as an IQ test score of
70 or less. But the supreme court justices held that that Florida's "rigid rule
... creates an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will
be executed, and thus is unconstitutional."
Lane had a full-scale IQ of 70.
The Florida case focused on the medical community's interpretation
