Sept. 19
PENNSYLVANIA:
Retrial ordered for Pennsylvania death row inmate
An eastern Pennsylvania judge has granted a new trial to a man sentenced to
death in the murder of a friend 8 1/2 years ago.
49-year-old Bryan Galvin was convicted of 1st-degree murder in Berks County in
the January 2006 shooting death of 32-year-old Kristofer Kolesnik.
Witnesses testified that Galvin shot the victim in the head and was driving to
a remote area to dump the body when police stopped him for driving without
headlights.
The Reading Eagle (http://bit.ly/1o5xbMz ) reports that Galvin's attorney
appealed, saying several jurors had discovered information about Galvin's prior
criminal history.
President Judge Paul Yatron ruled Monday that at least one juror researched the
case and found that Galvin had been acquitted of murder in an unrelated case.
The state attorney general's office declined immediate comment.
(source: Associated Press)
NORTH CAROLINA:
DNA, exonerations and the death penalty
After 30 years behind bars, Henry McCollum and Leon Brown have been exonerated
because of DNA evidence. This is a good example of why our state should abolish
the death penalty.
It bothers me that so many Christians support executions. Jesus said that
whatever you do to the least among men, you also do to him. Prisoners on death
row can certainly be called the least among men. Christians and others should
stand against all executions.
The best way to prevent the execution of an innocent person is to abolish the
death penalty.
Chuck Mann----Greensboro
(source: Letter to the Editor, Fayetteville Observer)
FLORIDA:
Teen guilty of 1st-degree murder in 2012 St. Petersburg robbery, beating death
On what would have been Jeremy Mayers 23rd birthday, his family got the justice
they had been seeking.
In July 2012, Mayers was robbed and killed, and on Thursday, the 3rd person
implicated in his death, Franco Thomas, was found guilty of 1st-degree murder.
Christine Mayers, Jeremy's mother, was all smiles when the verdict was
announced after less than 2 hours of jury deliberation.
"It's been like a nightmare, but the nightmare is over, and I know he's
watching," she said. "I'm just so grateful to God and my family and the justice
system."
Thomas was 14 when he participated in a robbery that resulted in Mayers' death.
3 teens were charged with crimes related to the death, but Thomas' was the only
case that went to trial.
Brittany Detwiler and Scionti Hill both pleaded guilty to 2nd-degree murder
after agreeing to testify in Thomas' trial. Detwiler, facing a maximum 30
years, testified Wednesday. Hill changed his mind before the trial, a move that
likely will add time to his 35-year sentence.
In July 2012, Detwiler was 16 and had been talking with Mayers on Facebook for
about a year. On July 8, the two planned to meet for sex at Coquina Key Park in
St. Petersburg. Instead, they met where she was hanging out with some other
teens, including Scionti Hill, 16, who asked whether he could rob the man.
Detwiler said OK.
During the robbery Mayers was beaten to death with a shotgun, witnesses said.
Thomas was charged with participating in the robbery, though there was no
physical evidence linking him to it. Hill, despite attempts to wipe clean the
vehicle stolen from Mayers, left a fingerprint.
Christine Mayers testified that her son left her house about 1 a.m. to meet
friends. When he didn't return home, she filed a missing person report. She
later saw news reports of a body found in Coquina Key Park and called police.
The body was thought to be related to a car crash police were responding to in
the area. However, when the medical examiner looked, the wounds told a
different story.
Injuries often associated with car accident victims were absent. Instead,
hemorrhages were found in the eyes, defensive wounds on the hands and a swollen
brain, indicating asphyxiation and blunt trauma. The examiner couldn't tell how
many people were involved, the defense pointed out Wednesday.
Detwiler later admitted to her involvement and implicated Hill and Thomas.
Though Detwiler said she didn't participate in Mayers' beating, she faced the
same charges.
Defense attorney Frank Louderback said that because Detwiler initially lied to
police about her involvement, and because she has a chance to receive a lighter
sentence for her cooperation in the case, her testimony should be treated with
caution.
"She is getting paid - for a shorter sentence - in return for her testimony,"
he said. While on the stand, Detwiler said she hoped to get less than 20 years,
Louderback recounted.
Assistant State Attorney Susan St. John said in her closing arguments Thursday
that Detwiler wasn't promised anything. Even if Detwiler didn't lay a hand on
Mayers or physically contribute to his death, she was still a principal actor
and faced the same 1st-degree murder charge. Because Thomas participated in the
robbery, he was as guilty as Hill, even if he didn't touch Mayers, the
prosecution argued.
Thomas is scheduled for sentencing on Nov. 25. He could get life in prison or
the death penalty.
(source: Tampa Tribune)
INDIANA:
Woman killed, partially eaten laid to rest
A woman who police said was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, who then ate parts of
her organs, was laid to rest Wednesday night.
Police, in the meantime, are continuing their investigation into what they're
describing as a "gruesome, horrific" crime.
Joseph Oberhansley, 33, is in isolation at the Clark County Jail and is on
suicide watch.
Medical staff, including psychiatrists, are carefully monitoring him.
It's his state of mind last week that investigators are focusing on, as they
try to piece together the hours that led up to the killing of Tammy Jo Blanton.
"There's no such thing as a good crime scene," said Todd Hollis, with the
Jeffersonville Police Department.
And what Jeffersonville police officers discovered inside the Locust Street
home where Blanton was killed was by all accounts gruesome. According to court
records, organs had been cut out of the victim's body and eaten.
Neighbors reported seeing the pair arguing at 9:30 p.m. last Wednesday.
Blanton called police just before 3 a.m. the next morning when Oberhansley
returned.
He left and went to his mother's home at 3:30 a.m.
He parked his car 2 blocks away from the crime scene, but just how soon he
returned, Hollis said, is disputed.
"Where he went from there, if he went anywhere else between there and back to
Locust Street is part of our investigation," said Hollis.
Some believe that when police arrived for a welfare check, Oberhansley was in
the process of cleaning up.
"I commend the friends of Ms. Blanton to have that concern because if that had
gone longer, we don't know what we would have come across later," said Hollis.
"It is obviously something I will never forget seeing," said Clark County Chief
Deputy Prosecutor Jeremy Mull.
Mull, who was inside the home, met with Hollis on Tuesday. He's also met with
the victim's family and will continue to do so.
"We will discuss the death penalty, what other avenues there are going forward
and fully solicit their wishes on the matter and their opinions on it, and what
exactly that would look like playing out," said Mull.
And while the death penalty might not be out of the ordinary, Hollis said the
case is anything but.
"This situation is unique and I hope we never deal with something like this
again," said Hollis.
Mull will meet with Blanton's family sometime in the next week, briefing them
on the case and detailing the death penalty.
Police also plan on meeting with the family to, among other things, give them
the option of listening to the 911 call Blanton made for help the morning she
was killed.
(source: WLKY news)
ARIZONA:
Cameras barred from arraignment: County attorney has 60 days to decide on death
penalty in girl's slaying
A Superior Court judge banned the use of cameras in his courtroom for today's
arraignment of a Bullhead City man charged with the murder of an 8-year-old
girl.
Justin James Rector, 26, is charged with 1st-degree murder, kidnapping, child
abuse and abandonment of a dead body. He is charged with the murder of Isabella
Grogan-Cannella, whose body was found in a shallow grave not far from her
Bullhead City home.
Surrounded by almost a dozen corrections officers, Rector made his 1st
appearance Thursday in Superior Court in a hearing whether to allow cameras in
court.
Deputy Mohave County Attorney Greg McPhillips and Chief Public Defender Harry
Moore both opposed allowing cameras in the courtroom. Moore argued that the
intense media coverage from television cameras would make it harder to find an
impartial jury.
2 Las Vegas television reporters, speaking by phone, argued that cameras would
not hurt in picking an impartial jury pool. One reporter asked if a single pool
camera could be used.
Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen denied allowing cameras in his courtroom for
today's hearing only. The judge said he had a negative experience in the past
when cameras were allowed in court. The judge also set a hearing Sept. 30 to
allow television stations or any media to submit evidence to allow cameras at
Rector's future hearings.
Rector is expected to be arraigned on the charges today before Jantzen. Inmates
are normally arraigned at the jail on Fridays before Superior Court
Commissioner Ken Gregory. However, because of Rector's high-profile case, his
arraignment was moved to Jantzen's courtroom.
Rector is being held without bond in county jail. He is housed in a segregated
unit in a cell by himself. If his case does go to trial, his trial will be held
in the larger, 3rd-story Superior courtroom instead of Jantzen's courtroom.
A defendant convicted of 1st-degree murder faces a minimum of life in prison
with or without parole after 35 years. The kidnapping and child abuse charges
are punishable by 10 to 24 years in prison. Deputy Mohave County Attorney Greg
McPhillips has 60 days from today to decide whether to seek the death penalty
against Rector. That decision won't be made until lab results are back. Mohave
County does not have any other defendants facing capital murder.
Police arrested Rector in the early morning hours of Sept. 2 near Walmart after
he allegedly shoplifted clothes from the department store. According to police
documents, Rector told detectives that he smoked methamphetamine throughout
that day before Grogan-Cannella's murder. The medical examiner's office
determined Grogan-Cannella's death was from asphyxiation by strangulation.
Rector had been staying at the Lakeside Drive home for several days, sleeping
in the living room.
Rector has a history of crimes in justice court, having been arrested more than
a dozen times in the past decade. He pleaded guilty in 2006 to misdemeanor
aggravated assault and pleaded guilty to disorderly and criminal trespassing
charges earlier this year.
(source: Mohave Daily News)
USA:
Prosecutors, defense lawyers for Boston Marathon bombing suspect due in court
for hearing
Federal prosecutors and lawyers for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev were due in court for a status hearing on motions that include defense
requests to move the trial outside of Massachusetts and delay the trial's start
by at least 10 months.
U.S. District Judge George O'Toole Jr. was expected to discuss the motions
during the hearing on Thursday.
Tsarnaev, 21, has pleaded not guilty in the 2013 attack that killed 3 people
and injured more than 260. He could face the death penalty.
Prosecutors allege that Tsarnaev and his older borther, Tamerlan, detonated 2
pressure-cooker bombs near the marathon's finish line. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was
killed during a shootout with police several days after the bombings.
Tsarnaev's trial is currently scheduled to begin in November. His attorneys
have argued that they need more time to review the large volume of evidence
turned over by prosecutors. They say the November trial date would give them
about half the median preparation time allowed other defendants facing a
federal death sentence over the past decade.
The defense argues that the trial should be moved outside the state, citing the
emotional impact the bombing had on many local residents.
Tsarnaev's lawyers also have filed motions to suppress physical evidence and
electronically stored evidence. Prosecutors have filed a motion asking the
judge to order the defense to disclose "mitigating factors" it intends to cite
in arguments against the death penalty if Tsarnaev is convicted.
(source: Associated Press)
*************************
1st Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA Wants to Kill the Death Penalty----In a
forthcoming documentary, Kirk Bloodsworth fights to keep innocent people from
being sentenced to death.
When he was 22, Kirk Bloodsworth was sentenced to death for the murder of a
9-year-old girl. The case against him relied solely on 1 person's eyewitness
testimony; no physical evidence linked him to the scene. After he spent 8 years
in prison, Bloodsworth was exonerated in 1993 through "genetic fingerprinting."
It was the 1st time DNA evidence led to a reversal of a death row conviction.
"The Supreme Court has told us that factual innocence is no reason to stop a
death sentence properly rendered. I'll be damned, and so shall the death
penalty this year," Bloodsworth says in a trailer for the forthcoming
documentary Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man, which centers on his case and his
crusade on behalf of death penalty inmates and post-conviction DNA testing.
"I want to kill the thing that almost killed me."
DNA evidence has led to 317 post-conviction exonerations in the United States
since 1993, according to The Innocence Project, a legal advocacy organization
that helps prisoners who could be proven innocent with the help of DNA
evidence. Of the 317 who had their convictions overturned, 18 spent time on
death row.
For some innocent people in prison, the reversal of fortune came too late.
Thursday, in Lubbock, Texas, the state unveiled a 13-foot bronze statue in
honor of Timothy Cole. Though nothing other than an eyewitness connected Cole
to the crime, he was convicted in 1986 of raping college student Michele Murray
and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In 2007, a man named Jerry Wayne Johnson, who was serving time on other rape
charges, sent a letter to Cole's mother and confessed to raping Murray. In 2010
DNA proved the same, but it was too late to grant Cole his freedom. He'd died
in 1999 while serving the sentence. He is the 1st person in Texas history to be
exonerated posthumously.
The base of the new statue in Lubbock reads "And Justice for All." Cole is seen
holding 2 books, the spine of 1 reading "Lest We Forget."
The Associated Press reported that at the unveiling, Cole's brother, Cory
Session, told the crowd, "The arc of justice is long, but for our family, it
bends toward Lubbock today."
It's more than likely that innocent people are serving decades-long prison
sentences. The stories of Bloodsworth and Cole show that, for many, DNA
evidence is their only hope for freedom.
(source: takepart.com)
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