Oct. 17 TEXAS: Federal judge denies appeal -- Execution date not set for man convicted of 1998 murder of Amarillo woman A federal judge has denied an appeal filed on behalf of a South Carolina man convicted of capital murder in the 1998 strangulation of an Amarillo woman. In 1999, a Potter County jury convicted Tony Roach, then 22, of capital murder in the death of Ronnie Dawn Hewitt, 37. She was strangled with a belt June 8, 1998, shortly before a fire set by Roach swept through her apartment at 1216 W. 11th Ave. When firefighters responded to the scene, they spotted Hewitt's body, but they originally thought it was a mannequin, according to testimony at Roach's Amarillo trial. According to Roach's confession, he entered the victim's apartment through a window, hid in the bathroom and confronted Hewitt. After a struggle, Roach strangled the woman and sexually assaulted her corpse. Before he left, Roach took rings from Hewitt's fingers, cash, a knife and a beer from the apartment before setting it ablaze. Roach later confessed to the crime after he was questioned about a bicycle theft in Guymon, Okla. DNA evidence also linked Roach to evidence recovered from the slaying. To give Roach the death penalty, jurors had to determine that he represented a continuing threat to society and that no mitigating evidence existed to merit a life sentence. Roach's appeal claimed that, among other things, the death penalty would violate his right under the Eighth and Fourth Amendments to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. The appeal also claimed that Roach was deprived of his right to effective assistance of legal counsel. In 2002, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Roach's state appeal. Roach later filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus to challenge his conviction. A writ of habeas corpus orders a person in custody be brought before a court and places the burden of proof on those detaining the person to justify their imprisonment. After a federal magistrate recommended that Roach's application for a writ of habeas corpus be denied, U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson conducted another review of the case and issued a judgment Sept. 27 denying Roach's application. An execution date for Roach has not been set. The Globe-News was unable to reach Roach's attorney, Joe Marr Wilson, for comment. (source: The Amarillo Globe-News) ********************** Insanity defense expected in UT murder trial today -- Piano student admits killing his professor When officers arrived at University of Texas music professor Danielle Martin's house, Jackson Ngai had blood splashed on his face and kept repeating "computer chip, computer chip," police said. The graduate student took officers to the kitchen of the Hyde Park house that day in April 2004 and pointed to Martin's body on the floor, according to a police affidavit. Near Martin were bloody cutting tools, including a cleaver. The 56-year-old professor had about 200 wounds. On her body, the affidavit said, was a handwritten note stating: "Computer chip in brain." Ngai, 24, had shown symptoms of paranoia multiple times since he moved to Austin to study piano at UT in 2003. He has reported thinking that others around him were CIA agents, that he was being controlled by the Chinese government and that he feared others were controlled by microchips, state mental health records show. Ngai's lawyer said his client doesn't deny killing Martin. But during Ngai's murder trial, expected to begin with jury selection today, his lawyer will argue that he is not guilty by reason of insanity, a little-used defense that is rarely successful. If a jury believes that Ngai was legally insane during the killing, he could be committed to a mental institution and remain there on a judge's orders for the rest of his life. But if at any point he is proved to be no longer dangerous, a judge could order his release. Prosecutors and at least one court-appointed psychiatrist are expected to say that Ngai was sane when he killed Martin. If the jury rejects the insanity defense and finds Ngai guilty of murder, he could be sentenced to between 5 years and life in prison, time possibly spent in a state psychiatric unit. "Professor Martin was probably his closest friend," said Jim Erickson, Ngai's court-appointed lawyer. "Part of the issue is that he did not believe that this was Professor Martin anymore. "He thinks that he was confronted with a robot or a person that was controlled by a computer chip that was trying to kill him. And so that wasn't Professor Martin to him, and I don't think he still has totally grasped what happened." Under Texas' insanity law, which is similar to that of most other states, juries may find someone not guilty by reason of insanity if the defendant has a "severe mental disease or defect" and "did not know that his conduct was wrong." In some cases, prosecutors agree with that finding before a trial. That's what happened in the case of Howard Rubenstein, 57, a schizophrenic man who set fire to a group home where he was living in East Austin in 1990, killing another resident. He has since lived in state mental hospitals and was recently ordered to remain at Kerrville State Hospital another year after doctors reported that he continues to hallucinate, hear voices and have delusions that he is being forced by aliens to eat feces, court records show. Though there are scattered examples of cases similar to Rubenstein's, nobody in the Travis County district attorney's office can think of a local case in which a jury has acquitted a murder defendant on insanity grounds, said trial chief Buddy Meyer, who has been with the office for 20 years. An insanity defense is so difficult to win that "most defense lawyers will not ever consider going for it," said state District Judge Jon Wisser, who could not recall one handed down by a jury since he took office in 1982. One reason, experts say, is that Texas law prevents jurors from learning what would happen to the defendant after an acquittal. Erickson believes that's his biggest hurdle in defending Ngai. "I am afraid a jury will say, 'He is crazy as a loon, and I am afraid he will do this to someone else,' " Erickson said. "Most people see 'not guilty' and think he walks out of the courtroom. That is not what happens." University of Virginia law professor Richard Bonnie has studied the insanity defense and estimates that it is successful in only about 1/4 of 1 % of felony cases nationwide. When presented with a "battle of the experts" over whether the defendant knew the difference between right and wrong, which is what's expected in Ngai's case, he said, juries will tend to side with the prosecution. That's what happened during the 2002 murder trial of Andrea Yates, who made headlines after she drowned her 5 children in the bathtub of her family's home in Clear Lake, near Houston. Yates pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and evidence during the trial showed that she suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression. 5 mental health experts testified that she was legally insane, and one testified that she wasn't insane, according to news accounts of the trial. The jury rejected her insanity defense, found her guilty of capital murder and sentenced her to life in prison. An appeals court threw out the verdict on a separate issue, and the case is before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Motivated in part by the Yates verdict, mental health advocates seek to broaden Texas's insanity defense to allow juries to find someone who didn't "appreciate the nature of what they were doing" legally insane, said Denise Brady, director of public policy for the Mental Health Association in Texas. "They need treatment and not punishment," Brady said. The middle of 3 boys, Jackson Fan Chun Ngai was born in Hong Kong in 1981 and moved with his family to Hawaii when he was 10. He earned a music degree from the University of Hawaii, where his former professors have described him as a talented musician who showed no obvious mental problems. In 2002, his mother died of cancer. When he arrived in Austin in summer 2003, he had his 1st psychotic symptoms, court records show. He was riding in a music professor's car and "began to believe that she wasn't who he thought and that he had been kidnapped," according to an evaluation last year by a state psychologist who found that Ngai could understand the charges against him and could assist in his defense and therefore was competent to stand trial. The evaluation did not name the music professor. Ngai jumped from the professor's car on North Lamar Boulevard and kicked in the windows of a check-cashing business to summon police, according to the evaluation and other state mental health records. He was admitted to Austin State Hospital, where he stayed for 3 weeks; he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and put on anti-psychotic medications, the records show. Ngai began to complain that the drugs affected his piano playing and gradually cut back on them, the evaluation shows. By early 2004, he began experiencing serious psychotic symptoms again, such as hearing voices and complaining of a "computer taking over his mind," according to an evaluation by psychiatrist Richard Coons, who performed a court-ordered evaluation of Ngai and his medical records last year. On April 15, 2004, Martin helped Ngai seek help, and he was admitted to the "Inn," a short-term psychiatric crisis care facility operated by the Austin/Travis County mental health center. 4 days later, Ngai had improved some but was discharged against medical advice, Coons wrote. By this time, Martin and Ngai had grown close. Martin, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, relied on Ngai, who helped her with chores such as grocery shopping and cooking, Austin homicide detectives have said. In turn, Martin tried to help him. Ngai told Coons that he had been staying with Martin for three days before he killed her April 29, 2004. The report said that Ngai told Coons what happened that day: On the way home from a performance by one of Martin's music students, Martin and Ngai stopped at a convenience store, and Ngai began thinking that Martin intended to poison him with a bottle of water they bought. Back at Martin's house on Liberty Street, they began to prepare dinner. As Ngai chopped onions, Martin asked him to chop them finer. "He felt like she wanted him to cut off his fingers," Coons wrote. While they were eating, Martin said: "Tomorrow, we will have a studio party." Coons wrote that Ngai told him: "I thought she meant it was the last night we'd spend together." "I went to the kitchen and got a knife," Coons quoted Ngai as saying. "I put it back down. I did this 2 times. The second time I decided I should stab her, and I went for it. "When I stabbed Professor Martin the 1st time, there was no blood. I thought she was a robot, and I kept stabbing her." In his report, Coons wrote that he believed Ngai was sane at the time. Coons wrote that Ngai said that if a police officer had been at Martin's house, he would have stopped. "Why did you do it?" Coons asked. "It was a combination of kidnapping," Ngai said, "and I thought she had a computer chip in her head." "What were you going to . . . accomplish by stabbing her?" Coons asked. "Save my life." (source: Austin American-Statesman) *********************** Anti-death-penalty tour visits EP National and local anti-death-penalty advocates will be in El Paso starting today to discuss alternatives to capital punishment and reach out to students as the next generation of activists. "These young people are the ones with passion, enthusiasm and fire," said Carol Tures, co-director of El Pasoans Against the Death Penalty. "It's not surprising that most of the scheduled events during the week are geared toward young people." The Journey of Hope, a national tour of anti-death-penalty advocates led by the families of murder victims, will be in El Paso through Friday. Some of the speakers who will be in the city include David Kaczynski, the brother of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski; and Bud Welch, the father of an Oklahoma City bombing victim. "There are some wonderful, well-known people coming to El Paso and that's very exciting," Tures said. "This will give us the opportunity to showcase what our issues are and help people make up their minds about what is going on in Texas as far as the death penalty goes." Texas is the nation's most active capital punishment state. Journey of Hope had its first national tour in 1993 and has made several trips to Texas. This is its first stop in El Paso, officials said. The weeklong conference includes seminars and presentations at the University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso Community College, Cathedral High School and Loretto Academy. Other events are scheduled at the El Paso County Courthouse and Keystone Heritage Park. One of the local speakers, Mary Bothner, said she's participating because she wants to spread a message of life to the city. More than 70 years ago as a child, she was brutally attacked and left for dead. "No matter what the agony I went through -- and of course there was a lot of agony -- capital punishment is not worth it," Bothner said. "We must have principles and do things right," she added. "The people in death row are poor, of color and probably can't afford to get good legal help. That's not right." (source: El Paso Times) ***************************** Anti-death penalty----Audience hears family members of murder victims About a dozen people gathered at Holy Family Catholic Church Sunday to hear three speakers brought to Victoria by the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Carol Byars and Ami White of Houston, both members of the group Murder Victim's Families for Reconciliation, spoke about their experiences as relatives of homicide victims and how they were able to forgive the murderers. Celia McWee of Augusta, Ga., shared her story about losing a daughter and a son, one who was killed and one who was put to death for a crime. McWee is a member of Families and Friends for Mercy, a support group for death row families and inmates. Sister Evelyn Korenek, who attended the meeting, said, "The pain that people go through - if you look at them, you have no earthly idea what goes on in their lives." The courage that the speakers have shown, Korenek said, "has to be a special grace, a special gift that God has given them." Carol Byars married her husband, Jimmy, when she was 18 years old. They had their first child a year later, and a second one was on the way when Byars was 21. On Labor Day, Mr. Byars went to his mother's house to watch football and was shot by a neighbor with a shotgun after an argument over a dog and a chicken. 2 of his brothers were also shot. Byars said that her husband lived for months in the hospital, in which time she gave birth to a daughter. Mr. Byars lived long enough to hold his daughter one time before he died, Byars said. "The most amazing thing about Jimmy was that he forgave the man who did this to him." Byars admitted that, at the time of the trial, she was not ready to forgive the man who killed her husband. Seeing the man's wife, who had just given birth to twins, began to turn the tide of Byars' emotions. She said that she saw in that woman's face the same pain, confusion, and anger that greeted her whenever she looked in the mirror. "I lost my husband, and she was going to lose hers, too," she said. "All these kids without a father." "The violence has to stop somewhere." She added that, if she had not learned to forgive the man who murdered her husband, she would have died from her own anger. "I'm not exaggerating. I would have died," she said. The death penalty "is too hard, too painful, and too expensive," she said. Byars finished, "I'm here today because I choose life, I choose joy, and I choose never to be a victim again." Ami White said that she was an advocate against the death penalty, because she wanted to honor her mother Cathy, who was raped and murdered at the age of 26, when White was 5 years old. 2 men were sentenced to life for the crime. White was able to forgive the people who murdered her mother and the unborn child that her mother was carrying. "It was like losing 2 loved ones instead of one," she said. White said she has always been a strong opponent of the death penalty. "How do you teach a child not to kill, by killing someone?" she asked. (source: Victoria Advocate) TENNESSEE: TN lethal injection protocal upheld In Nashville, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled Monday the state's method of execution by lethal injection is constitutional. The lethal injection protocol had been challenged by lawyers for condemned killer Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman, who argued in June that the steps and drugs used by the state present risk of unnecessary pain and suffering. The 5 justices concluded in an unanimous opinion that Abdur'Rahman's lawyers did not prove Tennessee's method of lethal injection amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment." The inmate's lawyers claimed the state's use of Pavulon, a drug that is forbidden for animal euthanasia, could create a risk for pain. Attorneys for the state said the method of lethal injection renders the inmate unconscious in seconds and painlessly dead within five minutes. Tennessee has used lethal injection only once when in 2000 it put Robert Glen Coe to death in four minutes - the state's only execution in 45 years. The lethal injection mixture Tennessee uses involves 3 drugs. The 1st is an anesthetic to put the inmate to sleep, known by the generic name sodium thiopental. The second is Pavulon, or pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the muscle system. The third drug, potassium chloride, stops the heart. Abdur'Rahman, previously known as James Lee Jones, was sentenced to die for the 1986 stabbing death of a Nashville drug dealer. He has a separate federal appeal pending on his claim of prosecutorial misconduct. OHIO: Inmates won't get to smoke Death row inmates, their move to a new prison imminent, no longer will be allowed to smoke, but will gain extra hours outside their cells, according to new prison system rules. Ohio is moving death row from Mansfield Correctional Institution to the state's supermaximum security prison in Youngstown to save money. For security reasons, the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction won't say when the move is taking place, but a document given inmates last week said the transfer "may occur within the next 7 days." Among other changes, inmates at Youngstown can spend more money at the commissary on items like toiletries and snacks - $240 a month up from $225, department documents show. They will eat outside of their cells in small groups instead of having meals served in their cells. Inmates also will have up to five hours a day of recreation outside their cell, compared to one hour a day currently for most death row inmates. Architecturally, the Ohio State Penitentiary at Youngstown offered chances to make changes because of the way the cells and units are designed, said Terry Collins, the prison system's deputy director. "Very few inmates on death row create disciplinary problems," Collins told the Associated Press. "We worked with the theory that we'll give more out-of-cell time, more privilege-type incentives, and of course if you violate those, then you'll suffer the consequences." The prison system recognizes that relatives of victims killed by death row inmates may not appreciate some of the changes. At the same time, "these individuals are still in prison, they're still under sentence of death, they're still on death row," Collins said. Ohio's privileges are more restrictive than some states in certain categories, less in others. In Florida, with 367 death row inmates, the prisoners are still allowed to smoke, but take their meals in cells. In Texas, with 411 death row inmates, smoking is banned, meals are taken in cells and prisoners are allowed out just one hour a day. In California, with 646 death row prisoners, the most in the nation, smoking also is banned, but inmates get at least 10 hours a week out of their cells. All California death row inmates take breakfast and dinner in their cells; some with good behavior records can eat a sack lunch outside their cells. 2 weeks ago, U.S. District Judge James Gwin rejected a lawsuit trying to block the Ohio move, but said he would be watching the prison system closely to make sure it made promised changes. The department's "earlier failures inspire caution in accepting future promises," Gwin said. He turned down the contention of civil liberties advocates that the move would deny inmates' constitutional due process rights because a prior court ruling blocked inmates from being sent to the supermax prison unless they prove to be a security risk. Alice Lynd, an attorney who brought the lawsuit, said inmates are still not convinced the state has enough guards to handle the increase in out-of-cell recreation time. She also is worried that the visiting areas for attorneys to meet with inmates don't provide adequate privacy. Such meetings are crucial for death row inmates, she said. "Their lives could depend on whether a sentence is changed or a conviction reversed." The state is confident it can make the changes and keep its promises, Collins said. (source: Associated Press) ARIZONA: Supreme Court rules against Arizona death row inmate The Supreme Court said Monday that death row inmates do not automatically have a right to a jury trial to determine whether they are mentally retarded, and therefore ineligible for execution. 3 years ago the court barred executions of the mentally retarded, on grounds that they violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Justices left it up to states to determine whether inmates are retarded. In an unsigned opinion on Monday, justices reiterated that states have discretion to set up their own systems. The court issued its opinion without hearing arguments. The decision leaves open the chance for a future court challenge, claiming that a system as applied is unconstitutional. The ruling overturned an appeals court ruling that said an Arizona death row inmate, Robert Smith, was entitled to a jury trial on his claims that he is mentally retarded. Smith is on death row for the 1980 murder of a mentally ill woman who had asked him for a ride to the food stamp office in Tucson, Ariz. The woman was raped, choked, stabbed and beaten with a rock. "There is no constitutional basis for requiring a jury, rather than a judge, to determine whether a defendant is mentally retarded," justices were told by Arizona state attorney Kent Cattani. Smith's attorney, S. Jonathan Young, said that because the mental retardation finding would affect Smith's sentence, it should be resolved by a jury. The Supreme Court said that "Arizona had not even had a chance to apply its chosen procedures when the 9th Circuit preemptively imposed its jury trial condition." 15 states had urged the Supreme Court to rule in Arizona's favor: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. In a filing with justices, lawyers for those states said that the process for determining if someone is mentally retarded varies state-by-state. The 2002 case that led to the mental retardation ruling involved Virginia death row inmate Daryl Atkins. A jury determined this summer that Atkins was mentally competent and could be put to death for the robbery and slaying of an Air Force enlisted man over beer money. The case is Schriro v. Smith, 04-1475. (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: Attorneys to argue over Peterson life insurance Almost a year after Scott Peterson was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife Laci and unborn son, his attorney and his former mother-in-law's attorney will be back in court arguing over money. Sharon Rocha's attorney is seeking the $250,000 from Laci Peterson's life insurance policy, but Peterson's defense attorney Mark Geragos is contesting the claim on the grounds that his client, while on death row, has not exhausted all of his appeals yet and may still have his conviction overturned. Rocha's attorney has said waiting for all appeals to be exhausted could take 25 years or more and is unfair to his client, according to media reports. A Stanislaus County Superior Court judge is scheduled to hear the matter on Oct. 21. Peterson, 33, was convicted on Nov. 21, 2004 of murdering Laci Peterson and her unborn son in December 2002. In December 2004, the same San Mateo County jury that convicted him sentenced Peterson to die for the murders. Rocha has also filed a $25 million wrongful death lawsuit against Peterson that is scheduled to go to trial next April. Attorneys for both Rocha and Peterson did not return calls for comment on this story. (source: Mercury News)
