April 28
FLORIDA:
Man convicted in sword-killing retrial
A man will face a possible death sentence for the 3rd time after a jury on
Wednesday convicted him of 1st-degree murder for hacking and stabbing another
man to death in 1991. It was the 3rd time James "Chico" Guzman had been
convicted of 1st-degree murder for killing David Colvin, a 48-year-old
businessman from Norfolk, Virginia, on Aug. 10, 1991 at what was then the
Imperial Motor Lodge on South Ridgewood Avenue. Guzman was also convicted of
robbery with a deadly weapon.
Guzman, who turned 52 on Wednesday, is facing a possible death sentence when
the trial's penalty phase begins on Tuesday before Circuit Judge Terence
Perkins at the S. James Foxman Justice Center in Daytona Beach.
The jury of 8 men and 4 women deliberated about 4 1/2 hours on Wednesday before
reaching a verdict. Earlier they listened to prosecutor Ed Davis, who reminded
jurors of the sword he had held up for them to see earlier during the murder
trial.
"You saw that sword. That sword is bent. That sword's been used very vigorously
to chop someone or something," Davis said.
According to Davis, that someone was Colvin.
Guzman has been convicted twice before. Guzman has been sentenced to death
twice before. And Guzman's convictions have been overturned on appeal twice
before.
Guzman had served only nine years of a 30-year sentence for killing a woman in
Miami when he was released from prison in April 1991 and made his way to
Daytona Beach, where he met Colvin, a businessman with a drinking problem who
had separated from his wife.
Guzman took the stand earlier in the trial and testified that it was another
man who gave him Colvin's expensive ring.
Guzman's defense attorneys, Junior Barrett and Randall Richardson, worked to
prevent a 3rd conviction and a return to death row.
Richardson said during his closing that the state's main witness, Guzman's
ex-girlfriend, Martha Cronin, was not credible because she would have told
police anything to stay out of jail.
He said Cronin changed her testimony about the time on Aug. 10, 1991, that
Guzman supposedly told her he had killed Colvin and showed her a ring he had
taken from him.
Richardson told jurors that Cronin received a $500 reward the day before she
testified before a grand jury after the murder.
Richardson said no blood or fingerprints were found on the sword. And no blood
was found on Guzman despite the attack which left blood splattered on the wall
of the motel room.
Davis, who is prosecuting the case along with Assistant State Attorney John
Reid, said blood and fingerprints can be wiped away and cleaned off and someone
should not be rewarded for cleaning up.
Davis said if Cronin was framing Guzman then she would have to be vile and
despicable to do that in the first place and continue to do it now.
Davis also said Cronin had testified that she would not falsely accuse someone
of murder to get herself out of jail.
Davis said Guzman began lying to police immediately after the killing and
continues lying today. He said Guzman even denied to police that his nickname
was "Chico."
And Davis reminded jurors that Cronin testified Guzman told her that dead
witnesses don't talk. Davis said Guzman intended to kill Colvin.
"This isn't 1 stab wound. This is a series of stabs, slices, chops. This is a
murder by someone intent on killing Mr. Colvin," Davis said.
(source: Daytona Beach News Journal)
LOUISIANA:
A Death Sentence in Louisiana Rarely Means You'll be Executed ---- Over the
last 40 years, reversals have become commonplace.
4 out of 5 death sentences in Louisiana since 1976 have been reversed. And for
every 3 executions the state carried out, 1 death row prisoner was exonerated.
These statistics are among the most notable in an analysis of the death penalty
in Louisiana, published this week by Tim Lyman, an independent researcher, and
Frank Baumgartner, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina
who has crunched similar numbers in Florida, Ohio, and Missouri.
The study comes as Louisiana - which has the country's highest rates of murder
and incarceration - faces a handful of challenges to its death penalty system.
The state's corrections department has had trouble finding lethal injection
drugs, and the legislature is studying the increasing expense of a death
sentence. After a prison guard was killed during an escape, the state spent at
least $14 million seeking death sentences for 5 men involved, and succeeded in
only 1 of those cases. The state also faced negative national headlines last
year after Caddo Parish prosecutor Dale Cox told a reporter, "I think we need
to kill more people." The attention led Cox to drop out of the parish's race
for district attorney.
The new study portrays Louisiana as an extreme example of the dynamics that
define the death penalty nationally. Since 1976, the state has handed out 241
death sentences. The appeals process takes years, so only 155 cases have been
resolved. Of those, 127 have ended in a reversal, often due to errors by
judges, misconduct by prosecutors, or "ineffective assistance" by defenders.
That's a rate of 81.9 %, compared to 72.7 % nationally.
Though the researchers did not include data on what happened to these
prisoners, Lyman says the "most common reversal scenario" is a plea for a life
sentence.
At the same time, Louisiana has carried out 28 executions - meaning the state
has executed only 11.6 % of those sentenced to death, slightly below the
national average - while exonerating 9 prisoners from the state's death row.
Louisiana also presents an extreme version of national trends on race and
capital punishment: black defendants face the death penalty more often, as do
those who kill whites, regardless of their race. According to the new study,
when the defendant is a black male, he is 30 times more likely to be sentenced
to death in Louisiana if his victim was a white woman, as opposed to a black
man. No white person has been executed in Louisiana for a crime against a black
victim since 1752; in that case, the victims, 2 black women who survived being
stabbed with a bayonet, were someone else's property.
Baumgartner has called the link between the victim's race and the likelihood of
execution "one of the most consistent findings in all empirical legal
scholarship relating to capital punishment" across the country.
All of this scholarship, including the new Louisiana study, has become an
arsenal for opponents of the death penalty as they try to persuade courts that
the punishment is unconstitutional. Last July, these efforts were given a
boost: in a dissent to a Supreme Court decision over lethal injection in
Glossip v. Gross, Justice Stephen Breyer invited lawyers to challenge the death
penalty as a whole. Arguing that the system for handing down the punishment is
unreliable and arbitrary, he cited dozens of scholarly studies, including the
work of Baumgartner.
If the court ever takes a death penalty challenge - and some lawyers believe it
could come from Louisiana - defense lawyers are sure to use studies like this
one to argue that whether or not the death penalty is cruel, it is increasingly
rare.
(source: themarshallproject.org)
OKLAHOMA:
Witness says police tortured Thacker, confessions in 2010 killing not backed up
Confessions Elvis Aaron Thacker made in the 2010 murder of Briana Ault were
unreliable because there was no physical evidence to verify them, a private
criminologist retained by the defense team testified Wednesday.
Brent Turvey accused the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation of
"professional abandonment" of the physical evidence gathered by investigators
in Ault's murder.
Thacker is charged with 1st-degree murder and forcible sodomy in the Sept. 13,
2010, death of Ault, 22. Oklahoma is seeking the death penalty for Thacker.
Turvey said once Thacker confessed to cutting Ault's throat and leaving her
nude body at a secluded pond just across the state line in Pocola, Okla.,
agency investigators became disinterested in the physical evidence and made no
effort to corroborate Thacker's confessions with the evidence.
Turvey told jurors he was the 1st person to go through Ault's pockets when he
did his assessment of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation's
investigation.
"That's shocking," he said.
Turvey said in his assessment of the investigation, there was no evidence two
perpetrators were involved in the murder as the state alleges. There was no
multiple DNA found at the murder scene, no multiple use of weapons, no evidence
Ault was restrained, and the sexual nature of the crime wasn't the type that
would have multiple perpetrators, he said.
Turvey also accused the Fort Smith Police Department of torturing Thacker by
letting him suffer with two gunshot wounds for more than 30 minutes without
offering any aid while trying to get him to give a dying confession.
Turvey said he was obligated to report Thacker's treatment by police to the
U.S. Department of Justice and to the United Nations under the Istanbul Protoco
of 1999, which bars torture and inhuman or degrading punishment. He said he
planned to file that report after his testimony.
Any confession Elvis Thacker made is invalid because of the torture, Turvey
said.
According to testimony in the trial, Fort Smith detectives raided the apartment
where Thacker and his brother Johnathen were staying Sept. 15, 2010, to serve
an arrest warrant in a separate rape case. The brothers were also persons of
interest in Ault's death at the time.
When detectives burst into the apartment, Elvis Thacker attacked and stabbed a
detective, after which other detectives shocked him with stun guns and shot him
twice, according to testimony.
The detective who was stabbed in the neck recovered. In 2011, the brothers were
sentenced to prison in Arkansas after pleading guilty to attempted capital
murder and a kidnapping charge in connection with the rape warrant.
Before the defense rested its case Wednesday, Elvis Thacker told Judge Jonathan
Sullivan he didn't want to testify.
"I'm not confident I'm able to testify properly," he told Sullivan after the
judge explained his right to testify or not.
Johnathen Thacker, also charged in Ault's death, pleaded guilty to 1st-degree
murder in April 2014 as part of a deal to avoid the death penalty in exchange
for testifying against his brother.
Johnathen Thacker said Elvis Thacker killed Ault after telling him he wanted to
rob her of $1,600 he mistakenly believed she had won at a casino. Johnathen
Thacker said he was with Ault and Elvis Thacker but didn't know that his
brother was going to kill Ault.
First Assistant District Attorney Margaret Nicholson told Sullivan that she
intended to call rebuttal witnesses when the trial resumes at 8:30 a.m. today.
(source: nwaonline.com)
UTAH:
Renowned photojournalist Caroline Planque visits USU
In 2005 Caroline Planque, a renowned photojournalist, interviewed her 1st death
row inmate; on Monday she visited Utah State University to educate students
more on capital punishment in the U.S.
Planque was born in Valenciennes, France and graduated from The University of
Texas in 1999. In 2005 she began working with inmates who were on death row to
discover more about the U.S. judicial system and how they handle the death
penalty. What she discovered was the process is unfair.
"The process isn't fair. Rich people are almost never put on death row, only
the poor," Planque said.
Planque also said when she first started investigating this topic she was only
mildly interested, but after her 1st interview with an inmate she knew her
curiosity had grown into something much bigger.
"I went to visit 1 inmate that I had been writing; when I did, many more of
them wanted to talk to me ... right there I knew I had my story," she said.
Ever since that 1st interview Planque has been working to bring more attention
to what she feels is an unjust system.
She began investigating capital punishment in the U.S. in 2005, a year when the
number of inmates executed was at its highest. According the U.S. Department of
Justice, a total of 60 inmates were executed in 2005, 19 of which were in
Texas.
Since her first interview in 2005 Planque has interviewed a variety of people
who have been affected by the death penalty in the U.S., including inmates who
are currently on death row, attorneys who have both defended and prosecuted
death row inmates, family members of inmates who have received the death
penalty, wardens who have worked in prisons with inmates on death row and have
watched them die and victims of the crimes these inmates have committed.
In these interviews Planque said she has found many people who are both for and
against the death penalty in the U.S. One of these people includes Linda White,
the mother of Cathy White, who was abducted, raped and murdered in 1986. Linda
White visited the man who had killed her daughter 14 1/2 years after he was
accused and shared with Planque her experience.
"We met (the man who had killed my daughter) ... he was very remorseful. Even
after almost 15 years he looked more innocent than when he went to prison,"
White said.
Planque has put together several accounts similar to Linda White's, and in her
lecture at USU, shared several of them. As with all her lectures on this topic,
Planque hopes to change the public's opinion about capital punishment in the
U.S.
One of the points that Planque argues is, while upper-class citizens can afford
the best lawyers in the business, those who make a lower income only have
access to court-appointed lawyers who rarely do a good job defending their
clients.
"Almost all (prisoners on death row) have court-appointed lawyers ... often
they don't get very good lawyers," she said.
Planque also pointed out that while waiting for death row many prisoners, at
least those in Texas, are kept in solitary confinement. Their time in
confinement can last anywhere from a few months to a couple years. For those
who are proven innocent and released from prison, their time in solitary
confinement can have crippling effects.
"People who come out of this normally don't do well. They aren't mentally well
and can't get a job," Planque said.
Former death row inmate Martian Draugon gave Planque his own account of his
time in prison.
"To most officers, we're not viewed as people - we're viewed as, 'How many cows
do we have to feed? How many recs do we have? How many showers do we have?' ...
It's easier to kill something than someone," Draugon said.
Though Planque admits that many officers as well as family members of the
victims don't view inmates on death row as people, they are still affected. She
shares the account of Carroll Pickett, a former chaplin at Walls, the
Huntsville prison unit in Texas.
"I think if most people saw an execution they would imminently pass out. I've
watched big tall men from the radio station collapse while observing the
process. I've seen families, I've seen guards vomit. I've seen guards removed
because they develop diarrhea. They just couldn't stand it," Pickett said.
Planque herself admits to having a hard time processing what happens to the
people she interacts with, despite the fact she herself has never witnessed an
execution.
"I always think it's not going to happen, it's not going to happen, then they
strap them down and inject them ... it's really difficult but you have to put
it in a place where you can handle it," Planque said.
As Planque continues to research capital punishment in the U.S. her hopes that
the judicial system will stop being an unjust system dwindle, she said.
"The real question is can a fair system exist ... I don't think it can," she
said.
Despite her doubt, Planque continues to investigate and work on multiple
projects to help inform the people in both the U.S. and her birth country,
France, about capital punishment in the U.S. One day she hopes to release a
book that encompasses all her work.
(source: The Utah Statesman)
_______________________________________________
A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu
DeathPenalty mailing list
DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu
http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty
Unsubscribe: http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/options/deathpenalty
