[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, OHIO, N.J., USA, ARK.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 30


TEXAS:

Judge rejects inmate's appeal


In one of his last decisions before retiring Friday, state District Judge
David Wilson denied the mental retardation claim of a convicted capital
murderer.

Wilson denied a legal writ filed by the legal team representing David L.
Lewis, 42, according to an answer filed Friday in the Angelina County
District Clerk's Office.

The case is expected to move to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals by
defense request. In order for the higher court to overturn his decision,
it would have to find he made what is known as an "abuse of discretion,"
Wilson said.

Abuse of discretion means a trial judge has made such a bad decision
during a trial or on a ruling that a person did not get a fair trial,
according to a legal dictionary listing.

Lewis was sentenced to die for the Nov. 30, 1986, murder of Myrtle Ruby,
74. Lewis shot her to death with a .22-caliber rifle as she confronted him
in her Lufkin home during a robbery, Angelina County District Attorney
Clyde Herrington said at a hearing on the case in June.

Lewis was a 39-year-old former carpenter with an eighth-grade education
when he surprised Ruby, returning home from church choir practice,
according to a Northern Illinois University Web site study on the death
penalty. Before the murder he served two years in prison for burglary in
Brazoria County.

Lee's attorneys in June argued he was retarded, making the enforcement of
a death sentence against him illegal based on the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court
decision abolishing the execution of the mentally disabled as cruel and
unusual punishment.

At the June hearing, attorneys for Lee presented testimony on childhood
abuse and school records. He had an alcoholic mother and an unstable
childhood, contributing to his development problems, the defense said.

Herrington pointed out once Lewis was out of that home environment, he
improved, proving he was disadvantaged, and not retarded. Evidence of a
GED earned in prison also proved Lewis' IQ was higher, Herrington said.

Attending the June hearing was Lee's girlfriend Michaela Zenker, a German
journalist who met him through Amnesty International in 2000. She travels
to the United States periodically to visit him. Their visits are always
through prison glass. Her dream would be to take him home to live with
her, she said in June.

The court of appeals in 2004 overturned the Lufkin capital murder case
against Willie Mack Modden on the basis of mental retardation.

Modden, who died in prison in April, was twice sentenced to die in 1984
for stabbing 27-year-old gas station attendant Deborah Ann Fontenot
Davenport.

(source: Lufkin Daily News)

******************************

PROSECUTORS, DEFENSE REST THEIR CASES IN WILLIAMS TRIAL


Prosecutors and defense attorneys in the capital murder trial of Clifton
Lamar Williams rested their cases Friday.

Monday morning, they will give closing arguments before the Smith County
jury deliberates on whether Williams is guilty of beating, strangling and
stabbing to death 93-year-old Cecelia Schneider on July 9, 2005, before
setting her body on fire, and stealing her purse and car. Williams, 23,
faces life in prison or the death penalty if convicted of capital murder.

On Friday, the state concluded its ninth day of evidence, presenting more
than 300 items of evidence and the testimony of dozens of witnesses. The
defense rested its case without presenting any evidence.

Tyler police Sgt. Connie Castle testified Friday that a fire can make the
discovery of evidence, such as hair and blood, impossible. She said there
was no evidence in Ms. Schneider's house, 311 E. Callahan St., connecting
Williams to the case.

She said she collected blood evidence from the victim's car, which was
found wrecked in Greenbriar Road. She said she did not know how long the
car sat on the road or if anyone tampered with it before police discovered
it.

DNA analysis matched the blood stains in the car to Williams and his
fingerprint was recovered outside of the car, other witnesses have said.

Sgt. Castle said police were unable to match a palm print located on the
car to the suspect or others involved in the case and they did not have
the victim's print to compare it with.

Sgt. Castle said there were blood stains on the driver's and passenger's
sides of the car. There was more blood that appeared to have been dripping
from someone on the driver's side and more blood appearing to have been
smeared on the passenger's side, she said. Several of the blood stains
were located by the gear shift and ignition.

Smith County Sheriff's Detective Noel Martin said he used Luminol on areas
outside of the house, such as around the back door, in May 2006 to see if
any blood evidence was left undiscovered but none was found. He said he
also checked the inside of the home but it had been completely remodeled
and no blood was discovered.

He said he did a blood spatter pattern analysis of the victim's nightgown
and pieces of carpet near her body to determine if the suspect could have
dripped blood in the area. He said stains on the nightgown were consistent
with free-falling blood, which could have been left by a person standing
over the victim or from the victim bleeding on herself.

He said soot in the home from the fire makes it more difficult to find
fingerprints and the house's exposure to heat, smoke and water also make
it more difficult to find evidence.

Cassie Johnson, a DNA analyst, tested blood found underneath the victim's
fingernails for male DNA and found a mixture of DNA from 2 men. The DNA
did not match Williams or 3 other witnesses in the case. She said DNA can
come from skin cells or any type of excretion, and her tests do not show
when and how it got there.

She said there was no male DNA found on the victim's nightgown and one
stain on the carpet, was inconclusive, meaning it was suggestive that male
DNA was present but it was below the sensitivity level of the tests and
could not be compared to any individual's DNA.

DNA analyst Casey Dupont also testified to analyzing DNA in the case.

Williams has claimed Jamarist "Monterrall" Paxton killed Ms. Schneider and
forced him to go along, cut his hand to leave DNA and to drive the
victim's car. Paxton testified and denied any involvement in the murder.

The trial will continue Monday in 114th District Judge Cynthia Stevens
Kent's court. Defense attorneys Melvin Thompson and LaJuanda Lacy are
representing Williams while Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham
and First Assistant DA April Sikes are prosecuting the case.

(source: Tyler Morning Telegraph)

******************

Hearing held on parolee who made unplanned stop----Ex-death row inmate
could be sent back to prison


A former death row inmate freed last month could be sent back to prison
for allegedly violating his parole.

Parole officials claim that Martin Allen Draughon, 43, made an unscheduled
stop at a fast-food restaurant near his home Sept. 11 and did not remain
in contact with the global positioning system monitoring his whereabouts.

Draughon was arrested the following day and placed in the Polk County
jail, where he awaits a decision on whether his parole will be revoked.

Draughon said he didn't violate the conditions of his release. He stopped
briefly at the restaurant to use the bathroom and followed the proper
procedures to reconnect with the monitoring system when he was told, said
his attorney Katherine Scardino.

A hearing officer heard evidence in the case Friday and will make a
decision soon.

Draughon's parole could be revoked and he could returned to prison. He
could be sent to a halfway-house facility or he could released back on
parole, Scardino said.

His parole requirements call for him to wear a monitoring device that
tracks his location with the global positioning satellite system. He also
must meet with a parole officer 9 times each month and have any trips
outside his Livingston home approved.

He was arrested less than three weeks after he was freed from prison on
mandatory supervision. He had served almost 20 years on death row for the
1986 fatal shooting of Armando Guerrero after a botched restaurant robbery
in Houston. He said he had not meant to kill anyone.

His conviction was overturned on federal appeal and Harris County District
Attorney Chuck Rosenthal decided not to prosecute him for capital murder
again because evidence showed that the fatal bullet was a ricochet,
suggesting that it had not been fired at Guerrero.

He pleaded guilty instead to murder and received a 40-year sentence. He
had served enough time to be released under the law requiring mandatory
supervision.

(source: Houston Chronicle)






OHIO:

Ohio's Death Row diaries capture final 24 hours


John Hicks is trying to reach his mother, but a recording says her phone
isn't taking calls right now.

It's 6 a.m., and Hicks has been up almost an hour. He's shaved, made his
bed, gotten dressed and read for a while in his cell.

At 10 minutes after 6, he says he'll pass on the prison breakfast: toast,
peanut butter, cereal, pineapple juice, coffee -- with 6 packets of sugar.
At 6:25 a.m., he changes his mind and opts for a couple of sweet rolls. 9
minutes later he brushes his teeth, then sits down to read the Bible.

At 6:40 a.m. he tries the call to Mom again. Still no luck. He decides to
take a shower.

It's now 6:44 a.m. on Nov. 29, 2005. Hicks doesn't have long to complete
the call.

In a little more than 3 hours, he's scheduled to be executed.

After Ohio resumed executions in 1999, the state began documenting
prisoners' last days down to the minute and second. 23 convicted murderers
have died by injection.

The executions are carried out at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility
in Lucasville, where guards maintain a running computer log from the time
a condemned inmate arrives at the prison in the Appalachian foothills to
the moment a funeral director leaves with the body a day later.

Through a public-records request, copies of the logs were obtained to more
fully examine how the state carries out the death penalty. The request was
filed after one execution was delayed because of problems finding a vein
for the injection. Prison staff keep similar logs for inmates in other
states with busy execution chambers, including Florida, Oklahoma and
Texas.

Peppered with intimate details yet deliberately emotionless in tone, the
logs' exhaustive entries sweep up the mundane and the moving in the
sparsest and at times coldest of diaries. The log keepers offer no
opinion, attempt no creative flourishes.

"Scott is sleeping (snoring)," says the log for Jay D. Scott at 5:02 a.m.
on June 14, 2001, five hours before he would be executed for killing a man
in a robbery.

At 1:32 p.m. on April 28, 2003, David Brewer is talking about visiting
hours as he awaits execution for choking and stabbing a woman to death.

9 minutes later, Brewer offers a reflection, the log records: "States it
was hard coming down this morning because the sun was shining and he saw a
lot ov new cars for the first time in eighteen years."

Prison employees, who volunteer for the job and are not identified,
compile the log, with occasional spelling or grammar errors, at a Dell
computer. They sit at a desk directly across from the 12-foot by 14-foot
holding cell where condemned inmates spend their last day, 17 steps from
the death chamber.

Some logs show inmates accepting responsibility. When family members of
Scott Mink ask him to remember to forgive himself, Mink -- who beat his
sleeping parents to death for money to feed a drug habit -- says he has.

"And he is sorry," the log adds.

Other logs indicate little remorse.

A guard asks inmate Adremy Dennis if he needs anything.

"A chopper out of here," Dennis replies. Convicted of shooting an Akron
man in 1994, Dennis blamed the victim for disobeying an order not to move
during a robbery.

His last meal is recorded: fried catfish, garlic bread and three pieces of
pie -- pumpkin, pecan and sweet potato. He stuffs himself, then talks
about being sick to his stomach, the log says. At 7:07 a.m., 3 hours and 3
minutes before he is declared dead, he takes Pepto-Bismol.

The logs show that some inmates sleep fitfully or hardly at all.

Herman Ashworth stays awake from the moment he arrives at the prison at
9:22 a.m. on Sept. 26, 2005, until he is declared dead at 10:19 a.m. the
next day. He spends his night writing letters, listening to music,
watching TV, including Monday Night Football, smoking and drinking
Mountain Dew.

Ashworth shows little emotion until the end. The log at 9:09 a.m. says the
inmate "is on his knees softly sobbing."

The prison logs cast daily habits and decisions in a new light.

At 4:21 p.m. on Feb. 18, 2002, a guard puts an uneaten salad ordered by
John Byrd "in refrigerator for later if he request it." Later never comes.

One of the first things Joseph Clark does on waking up on his last morning
is to put on deodorant.

The day before his death, John Glenn Roe asks for salt in warm water to
treat a sore throat.

William Smith cleans his cell, washing windows, walls and doors, then
selects a fantasy novel from the prison library, Child of Flame. The log
doesn't say whether he finishes it.

The last 3 hours

Execution is scheduled at 10 a.m. for Hicks, 49, who strangled his
mother-in-law while high on cocaine in 1985 and later suffocated his
5-year-old stepdaughter.

It's now 7:02 a.m. Hicks finishes an 8-minute shower. He has not been able
to reach his mother.

7:04: Hicks closes the window in his cell, talks with a chaplain, then
speaks with his attorneys.

8:06: He asks to speak with the chaplain again. "Rev. Sims back at the
cell window talking with ... Hicks," the log notes a minute later.

8:08: A guard gets Hicks' mother on the phone. She and her son talk for
four minutes; the log doesn't give details. "Hicks finished with phone
call and requested to speak with Rev. Sims once again," the log says.

Hicks asks to see a prison nurse who gives him a sedative at his request.
He speaks again with the chaplain, pausing at 8:28 a.m. for a restroom
break.

Hicks spends the next hour talking to the chaplain, reading the Bible and
drinking from a cup of water.

9:39: The execution team leader sits on a chair next to Hicks and explains
the execution process. They shake hands and the team leader "exits cell
and secures door."

Just before the warden reads Hicks' death warrant, the log makes its final
entries on how the condemned inmate spent his last day.

"Hicks sits quietly at cell front," it says at 9:44 a.m. "Hicks takes
another drink from the cup."

10:20: "Warden announced time of death."

(source: Associated Press)






NEW JERSEY:

It's time for N.J. to eliminate the death penalty


Many New Jerseyans might not know it, but this state does have the death
penalty. It's just hard to tell because, since the death penalty's
reinstatement here in 1982, not one prisoner has been executed.

Still, in classic New Jersey fashion, capital punishment has managed to
cost taxpayers a hefty chunk of change -- $253 million, to be exact,
according to a New Jersey Policy Perspectives report, despite never being
used.

If governors aren't going to sign death warrants and death row does
nothing but cost the state millions to maintain, then lawmakers ought to
get rid of the death penalty. Why bother with it?

After all, there are many people on both sides of the political aisle who
believe firmly that it's wrong to take anyone's life, even a murderer's.

And there are others who say the death penalty is wrong because, however
unlikely, an innocent man or woman could be put to death.

Both of these arguments carry a lot of weight and, taken alone, could be
reason enough to abolish the death penalty in New Jersey.

But when combined with a very practical reason -- that the state is
wasting money to maintain a death row and an execution facility that does
nothing but gather dust -- there's plenty of cause for lawmakers in
Trenton to abolish capital punishment.

12 states and the District of Columbia do not allow executions.

And of the 38 states that do have the death penalty, only a dozen have
executed a prisoner this year.

Clearly, New Jersey, which last executed a prisoner in 1963, isn't alone
in its reluctance to use capital punishment.

And with Gov. Jon Corzine certainly not showing any eagerness to send New
Jersey's handful of death row inmates to their grave by lethal injection,
it's time the state stopped kidding itself and wasting money in the
process.

New Jersey isn't going to execute anyone. That being the case, state
lawmakers should abolish the death penalty. Save taxpayers money and save
people, including victims' families hoping for an execution, the heartache
of waiting in limbo for a day that more than likely will never come.

(source: Opinion, Cherry Hill Courier Post)

**************

For death penalty


I am so for the death penalty that it is sometimes hard to believe we
don't enforce it. It should, of course, only be used when there is no
doubt, such as for a convicted cop killer.

My biggest problem with not using it is that these low-lifes kill someone
and we end up supporting them for the rest of their natural lives. For
many of them, it is a better life in prison than what they had on the
outside.

Secondly, not having it as a bargaining chip for the prosecution is a
deterrent to law enforcement in general. Most of the time those considered
for the death penalty are not one-time offenders; they are career
criminals who just happened to get caught and deserve the ultimate
punishment.

One thing is for sure, if dead, they won't kill again.

HARRY GREENWOOD----Somerdale

***************

Use it


The following facts provide solid support for the death penalty:

Records kept since 1900 show not one innocent person has been executed in
the United States.

Dozens of innocent people are killed every year by inmates waiting on
death row (guards, fellow inmates and prison visitors).

Not one executed person has ever committed another crime.

The first 2 reasons are documented by the U.S. Department of Justice and
many other sources. The 3rd reason needs no documentation.

Numerous studies verify the deterrence effect of the death penalty. In
addition, cases are cited by criminals themselves who declined to commit a
serious crime because they feared the death penalty. According to the
Census of State and Federal Correctional Facilities, more than 100 people
are killed by death row inmates each year.

Another example: In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death
penalty, as it was being used in Georgia, was unconstitutional. Death
sentences there were commuted and those released subsequently committed 12
murders. That's 12 more innocent victims.

Let's save innocent lives by using the death penalty in New Jersey and
throughout the United States.

ANTHONY V. PERRELLA SR.----Haddonfield

(source: Letter to the Editor, Cherry Hill Courier Post)






USA:

'Cruel and Unusual' Execution Debate----How the 8th Amendment became
germane to death penalty law.


FOR THE LAST WEEK, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel has been considering
the case of Michael Morales, who was sentenced to death for the 1981
murder of Terri Winchell in Lodi, Calif. The question facing the judge is
whether lethal injection  California's preferred method of execution
violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment.

But what exactly is cruel? And what's unusual? Only a few years ago,
lethal injection was considered a fast, modern and relatively humane way
for the state to put prisoners to death, especially compared to such
earlier techniques as hanging, the guillotine and the electric chair. More
recently, though, the process has been called into question, with
suggestions that it is too uncertain, too prolonged, too painful. One
veterinarian recently said the state's lethal injection procedure caused
so much pain and suffering that he wouldn't even use it on animals.

So how exactly is Fogel to determine whether the process violates the 8th
Amendment? What can he turn to in the history of this 300-year-old legal
concept to help him make what otherwise seems like an awfully subjective
decision?

The phrase "cruel and unusual" first appeared in the English Bill of
Rights in 1689, drafted by Parliament at the accession of William and
Mary. It seems to have been directed at punishments unauthorized by
statute, beyond the jurisdiction of the sentencing court or
disproportionate to the offense committed.

After much discussion, the American colonists incorporated the same words
into most of the original state constitutions. They became part of the
federal Bill of Rights in 1791 as the 8th Amendment: "Excessive bail shall
not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual
punishments inflicted."

Based on the debates, it appears the drafters intended that the phrase
apply to torture and other "barbarous" methods of punishment such as
mutilation, burning, decapitation and drawing and quartering. What
mattered was unusual cruelty in the method of punishment; they weren't
concerned (and neither is Fogel) with whether the death penalty itself was
cruel and unusual.

Since the 18th century, "cruel" and "unusual" have been coupled in our
legal language and courts, and their rhetorical ambiguity has been
alternately used to protect prisoners and to legitimize violence against
them. Only at the start of the 20th century in Weems vs. United States,
and then again in 1958 with the opinion of Chief Justice Earl Warren in
Trop vs. Dulles, did the Supreme Court turn away from the mere ban on
"barbarous" punishments and begin to consider whether punishments were
disproportionate to the offense. In Trop, Warren wrote that it was
unconstitutionally cruel to punish a wartime deserter by stripping him of
his citizenship; in so ruling, Warren emphasized a flexible interpretation
of the 8th Amendment that would adapt to enlightened public opinion. The
"dignity of man," he posited, was the linchpin of the 8th Amendment.

The 8th Amendment attracted great attention during Furman vs. Georgia in
1972. This landmark case declared capital punishment to be cruel and
unusual  and therefore unconstitutional. Not only was it "degrading to
human dignity," wrote Justice William J. Brennan Jr., but it had proved to
be "irrational and arbitrary." Justice Potter Stewart said: "These death
sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by
lightning is cruel and unusual." The court voted 5 to 4 to strike down
every capital punishment law in the United States.

Yet it was Chief Justice Warren E. Burger's dissent that set the tone for
more recent interpretation of the clause. Burger acknowledged "the haze
that surrounds this constitutional command" but went on to note that
"there are no obvious indications that capital punishment offends the
conscience of society to such a degree that our traditional deference to
the legislative judgment must be abandoned. It is not a punishment, such
as burning at the stake, that everyone would ineffably find to be
repugnant to all civilized standards."

Within just 2 years, 28 state legislatures retooled capital sentencing
laws to make them less "capricious." In 1976, the Supreme Court reinstated
capital punishment.

Given all this, how are we to determine what threshold of suffering
triggers a violation? Twenty years after Furman, Keith Hudson, an inmate
at the state penitentiary in Angola, La., sued three corrections officers
for punching him in the eyes, mouth, chest and stomach. The bruises were
minor, but there was swelling of Hudson's face, mouth and lip; the
officers also cracked his dental plate and loosened his teeth. Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor decided that the use of excessive physical force of
this sort could constitute cruel and unusual punishment, even if no
"serious injury" resulted.

Justice Clarence Thomas vehemently disagreed, writing in his dissenting
opinion that the judgment had wrenched the 8th Amendment "from its
historical moorings." What did the framers mean, Thomas asked, by
"barbarous" punishment? They were thinking of the rack, the thumbscrew,
drawing and quartering. How then could a mere beating be "sufficiently
serious"? Thomas concluded: "A use of force that causes only insignificant
harm to a prisoner may be immoral, it may be torturous, it may be
criminal, it may even be remediable under other provisions of the federal
Constitution, but it is not 'cruel and unusual punishment.' "

WHERE THE death penalty is concerned, the courts have routinely allowed a
certain level of acceptable pain. In 1888, New York legislated a new mode
of execution, the electric chair. The condemned man would receive a
current of electricity "of sufficient intensity to cause death." During a
sensational case two years later, lawyers appealed William Kemmler's
conviction. If he were killed in this way, they argued, he would suffer "a
cruel and unusual, and therefore unconstitutional, punishment" because "a
force of electricity to kill any human subject with celerity and
certainty, when scientifically applied, cannot be generated."

The court, however, decided that although electrocution is "certainly
unusual," it is not "cruel." Then, in 1947, Willie Francis was sentenced
to death by a Louisiana court. The attempted electrocution failed because
of mechanical difficulties, and Francis petitioned the Supreme Court,
arguing that a second attempt to execute him would be unconstitutionally
cruel.

The court ruled against him too. Even though he had already suffered the
effects of an electrical current, that did not "make his subsequent
execution any more cruel in the constitutional sense than any other
execution." What mattered was "cruelty inherent in the method of
punishment," not "the necessary suffering involved in any method employed
to extinguish life humanely." To be "cruel," punishment must involve
"something inhuman and barbarous, something more than the mere
extinguishment of life."

Similarly, the constitutionality of California's lethal injection
procedure, according to Judge Fogel, has nothing to do with whether the
inmate has a painless death. "It is inaccurate to say that an execution
has to be painless," he said this week  only that it cannot "inflict
severe degrees of pain."

300 years later, we're still debating when pain or suffering becomes
severe enough to be called "cruel and unusual." I fear that the definition
will be influenced by the terrible logic, verbal parsing and
overspecificity of this administration's torture memos. In the current
climate of hyper-legality, with UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo arguing
for a "new legal regime" and a Congress that has just given the go-ahead
to reinterpret the Geneva Convention, the meaning of the 8th Amendment
could become increasingly unclear, increasingly loose, and the acceptable,
allowable level of pain and suffering will grow.

In 1895 in "The History of English Law," after enumerating such obsolete
punishments as burning, drowning, stoning and drawing and quartering,
legal historians Frederic William Maitland and Frederick Pollock added,
"but the worst cruelties belong to a politer time."

(source: Editorial, Los Angeles Times)






ARKANSAS:

TRUCKER COULD FACE DEATH PENALTY


The man accused of kidnapping and killing 17-year-old Casey Crowder was
denied bail Friday on capital murder and kidnapping charges, beginning a
legal process that could end in a death sentence if he's convicted.

Kenneth Ray Osburn, a 46-year-old widowed truck driver and father of 2
from the Wolfe Project near McGehee, had his first court appearance on
charges of capital murder and kidnapping.

He allegedly kidnapped the Pine Bluff girl during the early morning hours
of Aug. 27 when her vehicle ran out of gas on U.S 65 at Dumas, then
strangled her to death.

Casey's body, identified by dental records, was discovered in a remote
area east of Dumas on Sept. 2, 6 days after she disappeared.

"Casey was a motorist in distress and instead of coming to her aid Mr.
Osburn kidnapped and strangled her to death," 10th Judicial District
Prosecutor Thomas Deen said.

Deen asked that Osburn be held without bond.

"As (Osburn) is going to be charged with a capital offense and I
anticipate the state will be seeking the death penalty, I ask that he be
held without bond, Deen told Circuit Court Judge Teresa French, who was
presiding at Osburn's 1st appearance hearing in Desha County Circuit Court
on Friday.

Wearing handcuffs and orange and white striped jail issue clothing, Osburn
answered a few questions, telling French he didnt need a public defender.

He said his mother had contacted Erwin Davis, a Fayetteville attorney, and
he anticipated hiring Davis to defend him.

Responding to Deen's request that he be held without bond, Osburn asked
that a bond be set so he could go to work. He said he is employed by USA
Truck of Van Buren.

"I dont have to go back to the company I'm working for but I could work
around here on a farm or something," he said.

French denied bond.

Osburn, who has been charged as a habitual offender, allegedly has "4 or
more" prior felony convictions, all non-violent offenses, and while there
is no evidence he has committed offenses similar to the ones he is now
charged with, his occupation as a truck driver takes him across the
country, according to Deen.

Deen said 2 other Arkansas law enforcement agencies contacted the Desha
County Sheriff's Department about unsolved murders in their jurisdictions
but those leads did not result in any follow up by those jurisdictions.

Authorities still won't say what specific evidence led to Osburns arrest.

"It is cumulative evidence gathered over the last 4 weeks, including
interviews and surveillance tapes," Deen said.

Deen was referring to tapes from surveillance video at businesses located
along U.S. 65 at Dumas where Casey's abandoned vehicle was discovered.

Her locked vehicle was found within walking distance of a gas station.

Police said Casey, a senior at Watson Chapel High School, was on her way
home to Pine Bluff from her boyfriends home at Pickens when her vehicle
ran out of gas.

(source: Pine Bluff Commercial)