Month: May 2012

INNOCENCE: New Evidence That Texas May Have Executed an Innocent Man

source : http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org

In one of the most comprehensive investigations ever undertaken about the execution of a possibly innocent defendant, Professor James Liebman and other researchers at Columbia University Law School have published a groundbreaking report on the case of Carlos DeLuna(pictured), who was executed in Texas in 1989.  This “Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution” is being published today (May 15) in Columbia’s Human Rights Law Review.  Prof. Liebman concluded DeLuna was innocent and was wrongly convicted “on the thinnest of evidence: a single, nighttime, cross-ethnic eyewitness identification and no corroborating forensics.” DeLuna maintained his innocence from the time of his arrest until his execution, claiming that the actual culprit was Carlos Hernandez, who looked so similar to DeLuna that friends and family had mistaken photos of the two men for each other. Prosecutors called Hernandez a “phantom” of DeLuna’s imagination, although Hernandez was known to police and prosecutors because of his history of violent crimes, including armed robberies and an arrest for a murder similar to the one for which DeLuna was executed. Liebman’s investigation found that Hernandez “spent years bragging around Corpus Christi that he, not his tocayo – his namesake and ‘twin’ – Carlos DeLuna, killed Wanda Lopez.”

The article is accompanied by a website at the Human Rights Law Review, which offers more information on DeLuna’s case, including maps, videos, timelines, and primary sources from the investigation.

(See M. McLaughlin, “Carlos De Luna Execution: Texas Put To Death An Innocent Man, Columbia University Team Says,”Huffington Post, May 15, 2012; J. Liebman, et al., “Los Tacayos Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution,” 43 Human Rights Law Review 349 (2012)).  See DPIC’s list of those Executed but Possibly Innocent and Studies.

ARIZONA – Arizona death-row inmate’s lawsuit heads to court – Samuel Villegas Lopez

May 14, 2012, Source : http://azcapitoltimes.com

Lawyers for an Arizona death-row inmate plan to argue the state’s clemency process is flawed as they make last-minute bids to stop his execution.

Attorneys for Samuel Villegas Lopez contend the execution should be delayed so new members of the state’s clemency board can be appointed. They are set to make their case Monday in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Separate proceedings will be held Monday before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, where lawyers for Lopez will challenge the state’s execution procedures and contend he was denied effective legal representation.

Lopez is scheduled to be executed Wednesday at a state prison in Florence for the 1986 murder of 59-year-old Estefana Holmes. The Phoenix woman was raped, robbed and stabbed in what court papers described as a “terrible and prolonged struggle.”

Lopez would be the fourth person executed by Arizona this year.

His lawyers say Lopez deserves clemency because the trial judge was never told he had brain damage and a difficult childhood.

The Board of Executive Clemency took no action during a May 7 hearing for Lopez when a lawyer for the inmate walked out after challenging the validity of the proceeding.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of Lopez two days later called the hearing a sham resulting from a revamping of the board’s makeup to avoid having clemency recommendations in high-profile cases land on the desk of Gov. Jan Brewer.

The lawsuit asked Superior Court Judge Joseph Kraemer to rule that Brewer’s recent appointments of three of the five members of the board were invalid. The suit cited alleged open meeting law violations by a committee that screen applicants.

“The three board members, rendered null and void by state statute, were equivalent to three empty chairs in the room,” Lopez’s attorneys wrote in a filing in the case.

As a result, Lopez has been denied his due-process right to have the board consider recommending that Brewer commute his death sentence to life in prison or grant him a reprieve delaying the execution, the lawsuit contends.

In court papers filed on behalf of Brewer and other state officials, state Solicitor General David Cole said clemency proceedings are legally a “matter of grace” that only entitle inmates to minimal due process.

On behalf of the state, Attorney General Kent Cattani also urged Kreamer to reject Lopez’s requests and said the inmate’s lawyers had an opportunity to present his case but chose not to do so.

Clemency is a political process decided by elected officials that is not subject to judicial review, Cattani said.

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TEXAS – Bobby Lee Hines – Execution – june 6 2012 – DELAYED

Bobby Lee Hines Photo: TDCJ / HC

HOUSTON — A Texas death row inmate facing execution in three weeks for the slaying of a Dallas woman at her apartment more than 20 years ago has lost an appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The justices, without comment, refused Monday to review the case of 39-year-old Bobby Lee Hines.

Hines is set for lethal injection June 6 for the 1991 murder of 26-year-old Michelle Wendy Haupt. She was found stabbed repeatedly with an ice pick and strangled.

Hines was 19 at the time of the slaying and was on probation for a burglary conviction. He was staying with the apartment complex maintenance man who lived next door to the victim and had access to all the keys in the development.

—————————————————-

Update may 21, 2012  source : http://www.chron.com

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — The execution of a man early next month for the slaying of a Dallas woman at her apartment more than 20 years ago has been delayed.

Dallas County prosecutors asked a judge to withdraw the June 6 execution date for 39-year-old Bobby Lee Hines because results of additional DNA testing in his case won’t be available by then. District Court Judge Don Adams in Dallas approved the request Friday.

Hines was convicted of the 1991 murder of 26-year-oldMichelle Wendy Haupt. She was stabbed with an ice pick and strangled.

Hines was 19 at the time and on probation for a burglary conviction. He was staying with the apartment complex maintenance man who lived next door to the victim and had access to all the keys in the development.

Docket Entries

on May 14, 2012

Petition DENIED. (orders list)

on April 18, 2012

Reply of petitioner Bobby Lee Hines filed. (Distributed)

on April 12, 2012

Brief of respondent Rick Thaler, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division in opposition filed.

on March 12, 2012

Petition for a writ of certiorari and motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis filed. (Response due April 13, 2012)

Parties

Bobby Lee Hines, Petitioner, represented byLydia M.V. Brandt

Rick Thaler, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division, Respondent, represented by Tomee M. Heining

………………………………………………………….

Facts of the  crime ( from Texas Attorney General)

On October 19, 1991, Mary Ann Linch went to the apartment of her friend Michelle Wendy Haupt in Carrollton, Texas, to spend the weekend. Linch brought with her a Marlboro cigarette carton in which only four packs remained. She had purchased the cigarettes at Brookshires’ in Corsicana and the carton contained a stamp showing “Brookshires’ Store” on the side. Linch left the carton at Haupt’s apartment when they left that evening to go to a nightclub. Linch had intended to return to Haupt’s, but instead spent the night with another friend.

Linch testified that when they went to the club, Haupt was wearing a gold sand-dollar charm necklace which she always wore. During the evening, Haupt became ill and another friend drove her back to her apartment. When he left, he testified that Haupt locked the door behind him.

Meanwhile, at Haupt’s apartment complex, Hines appeared uninvited at a party. When the hostess asked him who he was, he identified himself as the brother of the apartment manager. He told another guest that he was part of the maintenance crew at the complex. He pulled out a ring of keys and stated that he could get into any apartment that he wanted to at any time.

At about 6 a.m. on October 20, 1991, Haupt’s next-door neighbor heard a woman screaming. He could not determine the source of the screams, but his wife called the police. Two police officers were dispatched to the scene, but the screaming had ended before they arrived. After inspecting the premises, the officers could not determine where the screams had come from and they eventually left.

Two other residents in the apartment directly below Haupt’s also heard screaming loud enough to awaken them. One of the residents testified that he also heard other loud noises that sounded “like a bowling ball being dropped on Haupt’s floor.” He heard this noise at least 20 times. The screaming lasted for approximately 15 minutes.

The resident of an adjacent downstairs apartment also heard the screaming. Just before noon that morning, she and the other residents discussed what they had heard and became concerned for Haupt. Eventually, the apartment leasing manager was persuaded to check Haupt’s apartment. After knocking and receiving no answer, the manager opened the door and saw Haupt lying on the floor just inside the door. A stereo cord was tightly wrapped around her neck, her face was black, and she appeared to be dead.

Haupt was found dressed in only a robe and lying face up on the floor. There were puncture wounds to her chest area. The robe was stained with blood, but it had no holes to correspond with the puncture wounds to Haupt’s body, indicating the robe was placed on her body after the wounds were inflicted. Further, the belt to the robe was tied tighter than a person would normally tie it against her own body.

An object appearing to be an ice pick was found on the nearby couch. Hines’ palmprint was found inside Haupt’s apartment in what appeared to be blood, and his thumbprint was found on the inside of the front door. 

Later that same day, Hines was found to be in possession of Haupt’s gold sand-dollar charm. He had blood on some of his clothing and some other objects from Haupt’s apartment, including the Brookshires’ cigarette carton, were found under the couch where he had been sleeping. When Hines was arrested, he had a scratch under his right eye, scratches to the left side of his neck, and a scratch on his cheek. DNA testing conducted on a bloodstain found on Hines’ underwear indicated that the blood was consistent with Haupt’s blood. 

The Dallas County Chief Medical Examiner testified that the cause of Haupt’s death was strangulation and puncture wounds. Haupt had abrasions to her neck and jaw, contusions on her neck, and a fractured hyoid bone. She had about 18 puncture wounds. She had rectal tears with hemorrhaging. Barnard testified that the puncture wounds could have been made by the object found on the couch in Haupt’s apartment.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On October 21, 1991, Hines was indicted on charges of capital murder for intentionally and knowingly causing the death of Michelle Wendy Haupt by strangulation and stabbing, during the course of committing burglary of Haupt’s habitation, on October 20, 1991. Hines was convicted and sentenced to death on March 19, 1992. Hines’ motion for a new trial was denied on April 6, 1992. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Hines’ conviction and sentence on direct appeal on May 10, 1995. Hines’ petition for writ of habeas corpus in the state court was denied on February 24, 1999.

His federal petition for writ of habeas corpus in the federal court was denied on January 22, 2002. The district court also denied Hines a certificate of appealability (COA) on March 5, 2002. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals likewise denied COA on December 31, 2002, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied Hines’ petition for writ of certiorari on October 6, 2003.

PRIOR CRIMINAL HISTORY

Hines was arrested for car theft in 1984 at the age of twelve for which he received a year of juvenile probation. His probation was revoked and he was confined for three months in the Texas Youth Commission (TYC).

In 1986 he received ten-years of juvenile probation for burglary of a building, which was revoked in 1990. He was then confined in TYC for nine months.

In February 1986, Hines was placed on juvenile probation for getting into a school fight, and was committed to TYC for assault; He was confined 6 months and placed on probation, which he violated in 1987. His probation was revoked and he was confined for 6 months in TYC.

In January 1989, Hines was committed to TYC for attacking an elderly lady and burglarizing a church.

In June 1990, Hines received a 10-year prison sentence for a count each of burglary of a habitation and burglary of a building. Hines was placed on shock probation for 83 days, then released on 10-years probation.

 ………………………………………………………

2003 

June 22, 2003

No one deserves to die!

My name is Bobby Lee Hines, I am on Texas death row, I have been here for almost 12 years now and I first came here at the age of 19 years old. I am now into the last stage of my appeals.

I would like to take the time to say a few words, if you are willing to listen.

I often wonder if the people in the free world really understand that there’s two types of society? You have the free world society and the prison society.

When I was sentenced to death, it was because a jury was randomly picked out from the free world society and then given the power to make such a life and death decision! These people on the jury had no degree’s in psychology.  None that I remember were even a doctor of any kind!

The jury deciding I was or could be a threat to society is why I was sentenced to death, NOT because I was found guilty of a crime. There are two special issue questions the jury had to answer in the punishment phase that clearly show that! Here they are just as they were when given to the jury in my trail.

Special issue 1:  Do you find from the evidence that there is a “probability” beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant Bobby Lee Hines would commit criminal acts of violence that constitute a continuing threat to society? jury answered YES

Special issue 2:  Taking into consideration all of the evidence, including the circumstances of the offense, the defendant’s character and background, and the personal moral culpability of the defendant, is there a sufficient mitigating circumstance or circumstances to warrant that a sentence of life imprisonment rather than a death sentence be imposed? jury answered NO

Would you for a moment reread this again and notice that the state is asking the jury to take a “guess” at the answers, because again they have “no” type of degrees  and just thought (guessed) that I might be a threat to society. Now in special issue 2, last sentence asking, if life imprisonment should be imposed, nowhere do they explain that there are two types of society. They weren’t given a way to make a clear decision but only a way to make only a guess!The jury had even asked the judge how much time would I have to do in prison on a life sentence if given one! And the judge said: “you don’t have to worry about that, that is no concern to you all!”

Now how could any jury be able to make such a drastic decision when they were denied information that they had asked for? This should have been the biggest part in deciding if one should live or die! Not only that, but the state allowed witnesses to lie in my trail on the stand in front of the jury. In short, I was charged with aggravated robbery at age 14, I had a trail and was acquitted-(not found guilty)of that charge. In my capital trail, then age 19, witness got up on the stand and stated that I was convicted of that aggravated robbery charge at age 14.  Me being only 19 years old at the time of my trail, I didn’t know anything about the law.  Ask yourself, “how much do you really know about the laws of the court system?” Even more so when you’re just looking back to a younger age of 19.  My lawyers didn’t object, and my appeal lawyers said that due to that , I waved my issue on appeal for it! This was no fault of my own, but the fault of the trail lawyers. The point here is, if the jury would have known that I was not guilty of that aggravated robbery charge at age 14, they may have or could have had a different opinion in the matter of deciding whether I was not a threat to society, or at least the prison society, and may have given me a life sentence rather than a death sentence.

I truly am not a threat to either the free world-or the prison society.

After all appeals are up, there is only one way to receive a life sentence. This is through what they call a clemency hearing. There has only been one clemency given since 1976 until now June 22, 2003.  In this time there has been some 315 executions, about 265 of them have been executed since I’ve been on death row.

The people deciding whether to recommend clemency to the governor don’t look at the facts that they should be looking at. If they would look and see that the trial court in my case used just 8 years of my past for the jury to decide that I would or could be a threat to society.  If they would look at my prison record over the past 11 years that I have been locked up on death row, they would clearly see that I’m not a threat to any society. Plus if they would take an over all count of cases that are in the “prison society” that have life sentences or 40,50 to 60 year sentences or more, looking into their prison records etc….then look at mine, they again would see that I would not in any way pose any type of threat to a prison society, and that I could in fact live in the prison society with a life sentence!

To prove my point to the fact, I spent some 8 plus years on a death row work program. Now the program was closed down due to an escape. Note that I had nothing to do with it.  But 8 plus years I lived being able to move around freely everyday, all day! Sixty (60) death row inmates on one wing with the cell doors opening up everyday, every hour on the hour, with only one “unarmed guard” working inside the wing, never feeling threatened,  and no one ever hurt guards.  I worked with and around 12 inch scissors, all types of shears and many different types of tools, working, living and functioning just as any other inmate would in any prison society. Again, I’m no threat to any society. I can and would live in the prison society with a life sentence if given the chance.

No one deserves to be strapped down to that gurney  to die!

I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to me and what I’ve written. Any help or just input that you may have, please feel free to write to me at the address listed below! I’ll write more again soon!

Sincerely
Bobby Lee Hines

TEXAS – Steven Staley – execution STAYED

May 14, 2012 Source : http://www.chron.com

HOUSTON (AP) — The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Monday stopped this week’s scheduled execution of a convicted killer whose mental health had become an issue in his appeals.

The state’s highest criminal court gave a reprieve to Steven Staley, 49, who was set for lethal injection Wednesday evening in Huntsville for the 1989 shooting death of a Fort Worth restaurant manager during a botched robbery.

“This is great,” said Staley’s attorney, John Stickels. “I’m very happy.”

Prosecutors contended Staley was competent for execution, but Stickels in his appeal to the court said that was accomplished only because a state judge in Fort Worth improperly ordered Staley be given drugs to make him competent so the state of Texas could kill him.

The appeals court spent much of the ruling’s three pages recounting Staley’s case in the courts and only in a final paragraph specifically addressed the appeal, saying the court had determined the execution should be halted “pending further order by this court.”

It gave no reason. Justice Lawrence Meyers dissented from his eight colleagues but issued no dissenting opinion.

“I don’t know what’s next,” Stickels said. “It just orders the execution stayed and doesn’t order anything else. I’m not going to do anything until they tell me.”

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TEXAS – Texas death row inmate’s mental health questioned

FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, shows Texas death row inmate Steven Staley. The outcome of legal wrangling about Staleyís mental health is likely to determine if the former laborer from Denver is put to death this week in Texas for a slaying almost a quarter-century ago in Fort Worth while he was an escapee from a Colorado halfway house. Photo: Texas Department Of Criminal Justice / AP Steven Staley

may 14, 2012 Source : http://www.nydailynews.com

Prosecutors argue Steven Staley is competent to be executed

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — The outcome of legal wrangling about condemned killer Steven Staley’s mental health is likely to determine if the former laborer is put to death this week in Texas for a slaying almost a quarter-century ago in Fort Worth.

Prosecutors contend he’s competent to be executed. His lawyer says Staley is severely mentally ill, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and has been observed catatonic or lying on the floor of his jail cell covered in urine.

Staley, 49, faces lethal injection Wednesday evening for the fatal shooting of a Steak and Ale restaurant manager who was taken hostage during a botched robbery in October 1989. The arrest of Staley and two accomplices after a wild 20-mile car and foot chase ended a series of robberies, assaults and at least one other killing as the trio wreaked havoc in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

In a written statement, Staley implicated himself in the slaying of 35-year-old Bob Read. And since he arrived on death row in 1991, his mental competence became an issue as his punishment neared.

Prosecutors say he’s legally competent, and state District Court Judge Wayne Salvant has ordered him to be medicated, by force if needed.

“If he was found not to be competent, the trial judge would just withdraw the (execution) date,” said Jim Gibson, an assistant district attorney in Tarrant County, where Staley was tried and convicted.

Staley also has been examined by psychologists, who determined the prisoner was competent.

“Everybody agrees he’s competent,” Gibson said. “… I think the issue is going to be why he’s competent.”

Staley’s lawyer, John Stickels, calls the competency artificial.

“The state has given him enough psychotropic drugs that the judge found he met the definition to be competent to be executed,” said Stickels, who is asking the courts to halt the execution. “The whole reason he’s been medicated is to make him competent to be executed.”

Staley’s previous attorney called him “too nuts to be executed” when the courts stopped a scheduled execution in 2005. And Stickles said Staley’s severe mental illness has existed for several years and has been exacerbated by the forced drug regimen Stickles argues was illegally ordered by Salvant.

If lower courts refuse to stay the execution, Stickles said he’ll take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which he said has not addressed the question of involuntary medication for the purposes of execution. When administered, the drugs leave Staley “with extreme sedation and zombie-like effects,” Stickles said in an appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mental-health-texas-killer-death-row-questioned-article-1.1077770#ixzz1urc23mW2

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TEXAS – Death Sentence Reviews Leave Unsettled Issues

may 13, 2012 source :http://www.texastribune.org

Stanley Schneider was shocked last year when Texas’ highest criminal court sent his death row client an early Christmas gift of sorts, ordering the trial court to re-examine evidence from a psychologist who had decided thatJohn Reyes Matamoros was mentally fit to face execution.

“We were hopeful their sending it back would mean something,” Schneider said.

But his hope flagged in March when, he said, two Harris County state district judges virtually rubber-stamped Dr. George Denkowski’s findings in the cases of Matamoros and a fellow death row inmate,Steven Butler. Denkowski, the psychologist who testified in the cases of 14 current Texas death row inmates that the convicted men were mentally fit for execution, was reprimanded last year after other psychologists and defense lawyers filed a complaint alleging that he had used discredited evaluation methods.

Lawyers for Matamoros and Butler, who have filed objections with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, say any findings by Denkowski should be disregarded. They said that the trial court judges — who are husband and wife — simply adopted Denkowski’s conclusions instead of examining reams of evidence from other psychologists that they said proved their clients were mentally retarded and ineligible for the death penalty.

“This is a perfect example of the state taking science and trying to prostitute it,” Schneider said, adding, “The role of the courts is to protect us from junk science.”

 

Judge Marc Brown, of Harris County District Court, who reviewed the Matamoros case, was in trial and did not respond to a request for comment. His wife, Judge Susan Brown, declined to comment on the Butler case because it is continuing. Calls to Denkowski were not returned.

But Roe Wilson, Harris County assistant district attorney, contended that the judges had disregarded Denkowski’s findings.

The judge’s findings in Butler’s case repeatedly refer to Denkowski’s findings, but Wilson said the references were “historical.”

“There was no consideration given and no mention given,” Wilson said.

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 2002 that states could not execute people who were mentally retarded. The court allowed states to decide on guidelines for determining whether a person was mentally retarded. Texas courts have adopted a three-part definition that requires the convicted inmate to have below-average intellectual function, to lack adaptive behavior skills and to have had these problems since an early age.

Denkowski conducted tests to determine whether defendants who might face the death penalty aligned with those definitions.

But other psychologists and defense lawyers complained that he artificially inflated intelligence scores to make defendants eligible for the death penalty. (Denkowski’s lawyer has said that he vigorously denies having violated any psychology board rules and that he used his best clinical judgment in making forensic evaluations.)

Last year, the Texas Board of Examiners of Psychologists agreed to a settlement with Denkowski in which it reprimanded him, but he did not admit guilt. He agreed not to conduct intellectual disability evaluations in future criminal cases and to pay a fine of $5,500. In return, the board dismissed the complaints.

 

Since that reprimand, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has asked trial courts to review at least six cases that included Denkowski’s work to determine what effect it had had on the case.

Defense lawyers argue that Denkowski’s conclusions should be completely excluded from those reviews.

“You can talk all day long about how you don’t want junk science used in these cases, but when you’re confronted with it, you have to take active steps to make sure it hasn’t contaminated the case,” said Kathryn Kase, executive director of the Texas Defender Service, which represents death row inmates.

The Butler and Matamoros cases are the first to be returned to the Court of Appeals.

Butler, who was also sentenced to life in prison for a separate conviction of aggravated sexual assault with a weapon, was sentenced to death in 1988 for the shooting death of Velma Clemons, a clerk at a dry-cleaning business.

Denkowski evaluated Butler, and he testified in the case in 2006. School records showed Butler had been classified as “educable but mentally retarded,” but Denkowski said nothing in the records indicated that he required special education. He noted that Butler could tell time and could recite his Social Security number, “highly atypical skills for a mentally retarded person.” He concluded that Butler’s I.Q. was borderline normal.

Similarly, Judge Susan Brown concluded that Butler’s poor academic performance reflected underachievement and poor choices, not lack of intellectual function. She also wrote that he had enough intellectual ability to plan, commit and then lie about the murder for which he was convicted.

Dick Burr, a defense lawyer, said the judge had ignored findings by experts hired by Butler’s lawyers, including Dr. Denis Keyes, a special education professor at the College of Charleston, and Dr. Jack Fletcher, a psychology professor at the University of Houston. Both found that Butler had a low I.Q. and was mentally retarded.  Fletcher — one of the psychologists who complained to the board about Denkowski’s work — said that Denkowski’s conclusion that Butler was mentally fit for execution “was based on outmoded, no-longer-accepted information.”

“Our evidence demonstrated very persuasively that Steven Butler has mental retardation,” Burr said.

Matamoros, whose criminal history included auto theft and burglary with intent to sexually assault, was convicted of the 1990 murder of 70-year-old Eddie Goebel, who was found in his bed with 25 stab wounds.

Denkowski concluded in 2006 that Matamoros was not mentally retarded. His low I.Q. scores and a psychologist’s finding in 1977 that at 14 Matamoros had a mild intellectual disability, Denkowski concluded, were a result of bilingualism and his rearing in a deprived environment.

Judge Marc Brown agreed, quoting from a federal court ruling in the case that in turn relied on Denkowski’s findings. Like Denkowski, the judge concluded that Matamoros’s ability to care for himself as an inmate and to plan and commit crimes also contradicted his claims of mental retardation.

Judge Brown’s findings discounted the evaluations of psychologists hired by Matamoros’s lawyers who found that he was mentally retarded.

Dr. Thomas Oakland, a psychologist and a professor at the University of Florida, reviewed Denkowski’s findings along with Judge Marc Brown’s ruling. Both, he said, showed a “reckless disregard” for established forensic psychology.

“Based upon my review of Denkowski’s affidavit and testimony, it is my opinion that Matamoros’s intelligence was and is significantly subaverage,” he wrote in an affidavit.

Wilson, the assistant district attorney in Harris County, disputed the inmates’ lawyers’ argument that the judges’ findings were largely copied from Denkowski’s work.

“I don’t think that is an accurate characterization, but that is something the Court of Criminal Appeals will determine,” she said.

Lawyers for Butler and Matamoros want the Court of Criminal Appeals to insist that the death row inmates’ claims be re-evaluated without any reliance on Denkowski’s work.

Schneider said the decision by the Court of Appeals in the two cases would also send a signal to other judges who are reviewing cases in which Denkowski had made evaluations. He said he hoped the court would continue to reject forensic methods that had been proven unscientific.

“Their role has to be that of the supergatekeeper of forensic science,” Schneider said. “They have to say we will not allow a proceeding tainted by junk science to go forward.”

Justice Department investigates 2 ex-prosecutors involved in federal death penalty case in Ga.

may 13, 2012 Source : http://www.therepublic.com

ATLANTA — The Justice Department is investigating two former federal prosecutors in Atlanta because of alleged misconduct in a death penalty case, the chief federal prosecutor here said.

U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said she reported Todd Alley and Matthew Jackson to the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility last month after U.S. District Senior Judge Clarence Cooper accused the pair of repeatedly deceiving him during pretrial litigation in the capital case of Brian Richardson, according to The Daily Report (http://bit.ly/K5JgeV ).

Cooper issued an order outlining his problems with the two lawyers during the penalty phase of Richardson’s trial after a jury had found him guilty of murdering a fellow inmate at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta. The jury later deadlocked on the death penalty, leaving Cooper to sentence Richardson to life without parole.

Yates told the newspaper it was the second time she asked the department’s disciplinary arm to investigate Alley and Jackson in connection with Richardson’s case. She said she reported both prosecutors last year and pulled them from the case after public defenders accused the two of violating an order that had disqualified Alley from the case.

She said she called for the investigation after Richardson’s attorneys told her that Jackson, in a recorded conversation with another federal inmate, made inappropriate comments about the defense team. Richardson’s lawyers also accused Alley of taking multiple phone calls from the same inmate, a potential witness in the case against Richardson, even after he had been disqualified from the case.

She said it was the second time she has asked the department’s disciplinary arm to investigate the two.

Alley, who is now in private practice, declined to comment to The Daily Report. Jackson, who is now a federal prosecutor in Florida, couldn’t be reached for comment by The Daily Report. The two did not immediately return calls seeking comment from The Associated Press on Sunday.

Richardson’s defense team said in court pleadings and an interview with the newspaper that Alley and Jackson engaged in intentional and repeated misconduct. They cited recorded phone calls with the inmate in which Jackson disparaged the defense team. In one call, Jackson joked that if the inmate were to kill a defense attorney, “we’ll go light on you.”

Richardson faced the death penalty for the July 2007 killing of Steven Obara, 60, who was stabbed and choked before he was strangled to death. The inmate, who was abused as a child, told authorities he targeted his cellmate because Obara was serving a prison sentence on child molestation charges.

The death penalty case was a rarity in the federal court system, and prosecutors and federal defense lawyers devoted considerableresources to it. Authorities say Richardson was a cold-blooded killer who lulled Obara into believing they were friends and then turned on him. But his defense team argued that Richardson’s violent past was rooted in an abusive childhood that led to mental illness.

___

Death penalty violates human rights

May 12, 2012 Source : http://www.newsday.co.zw

Section 4.1 of the draft constitution has the encouraging sub-title “The right to life”, but this fundamental human right is almost immediately erased when, in subsection (2), the death penalty is announced.

“A law may permit the death penalty to be imposed only on persons convicted of murder committed in aggravating circumstances . . .” reads the draft. 
Before we advocate for the death penalty, we need to take into cognisance the old adage that two wrongs do not make a right and in this case, two murders do not bring back a life.

We should not pretend that capital punishment is not murder because of the legal technicality behind it. While we do not condone criminals, including murderers, we think the death penalty is morally wrong.

Section 4.5 of the draft constitution has the sub-title “Freedom from torture or inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment” and it clearly states: “No one may be subjected to physical or psychological torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” 

The cruel irony is that there is no worse torture than being on death row, living each day knowing that someone has the legal power to take away your life any time. By allowing the death penalty, the constitution would be presupposing the infallibility of the judicial system which is not always the case. 

Judges and juries, like any other human beings, are prone to mistakes and globally, there are documented cases where people have been wrongly executed by the State. In this country, we have had people wrongfully accused of murder; Cain Nkala’s case quickly comes to mind.

We are all aware of how the justice system is prone to manipulation by politicians in this country and it might not be surprising to have innocent people hanged for political expediency.

In a country like ours, where the police are known for lack of professional ethics, forced and falsified confessions can easily lead innocent people to the gallows.

It is also a shuddering thought that the State would employ a professional murderer in the name of a hangman. By implication, the executioner is a murderer who deserves to be executed as well.

A convicted murderer deserves severe punishment, but he or she is still a human being who deserves the chance to be corrected and rehabilitated, which is central to the modern-day prison system. 

Research has shown that although the death sentence represents a strong condemnation of brutal and violent crimes, it does not necessarily deter people from perpetrating violent crimes.
Those who clamour for the death penalty do not know that they have literally descended to ancient times where an eye for an eye was central to legislation and this, as Mahatma Ghandi once said, will make the whole world blind. It will only serve the purpose of advancing the murderous cycle.

The death penalty is a violation of human rights, especially the right to life that the constitution must safeguard

TEXAS -Texas Wants To Drug a Prisoner So They Can Kill Him – Steven Staley

may 11, 2012 source : http://www.slate.com

Can the state force a person to take drugs in order to execute him? That is the grisly question raised by the case of Steven Staley, a convicted murderer who believes polygraph machines are controlling and torturing him. Even though he’s psychotic, Staley is scheduled to be executed next week, based on a judge’s order requiring him to take medication he has refused. If Texas actually goes ahead with this deeply disturbing plan, it will be the first state, as far as I can tell, to drug someone in order to carry out a death sentence. That is a distinction that no one on the planet should want to have.

Here are the facts of Staley’s crime: In September 1989, he escaped from a Denver jail and went on an armed robbery spree, hitting up nine businesses in four states. The last one was the Steak and Ale Restaurant in Tarrant County, Texas. Just before closing, Staley and two friends came in, and Staley herded the employees into a kitchen storeroom and made manager Robert Read open the cash registers and the safe. He then took Read as a hostage, forced him into the back of a car, and shot him dead during a high-speed chase by the police.

And here are the facts of Staley’s mental illness: He has a long history of paranoid schizophrenia and depression. Staley was abused as a child by his mother, who was also mentally ill; when he was 6 or 7 she tried to pound a wooden stake through his chest. His father was an alcoholic. Staley tried to kill himself as a teenager. Doctors who have examined Staley on death row have said that he talks in a robot-like monotone yet has “grandiose and paranoid” delusions, including the beliefs that he invented the first car and marketed a character from Star Trek. He has given himself black eyes and self-inflicted lacerations and has been found spreading feces and covered with urine. Medicated with the anti-psychotic drug Haldol, Staley complained of paralysis and sometimes appeared to be in a catatonic state. He has worn a bald spot on the back of his head from lying on the floor of his cell.

Staley was found competent to stand trial back in 1991. The standard is low: A defendant has to be able to understand the charges against him and consult rationally with his lawyer so he can aid in his own defense. The standard for competency at execution was set by Ford v Wainwright, a 1986 case in which the Supreme Court said that the Eighth Amendment’s bar against cruel and unusual punishment forbids execution of the “insane.” Indeed, at the time no state permitted such an execution. The court quoted British judges in the 17th century worrying about the “miserable spectacle” of “extream inhumanity and cruelty” presented by executing a “mad man.” It served no retributive purpose, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote, to execute a person “who has no comprehension of why he has been singled out.” He also noted “the natural abhorrence civilized societies feel at killing one who has no capacity to come to grips with his own conscience or deity.”

The problem with Ford is that the justices’ holding didn’t match their rhetoric. A defendant can be executed as long as he shows some rational understanding that he is about to die and why. Many people with serious mental illness can grasp those basic facts, at least on some level. Among the many examples of seriously mentally ill people who have been found competent to be tried and executed is Scott Panetti, a delusional schizophrenic who represented himself in 1995 dressed in a purple cowboy suit. Panetti tried to call Jesus Christ and John Kennedy as witnesses. Then there’s the case of Andre Thomas, which is so horrific that I’m sorry to ask you to read the next two sentences. Thomas was tried and sentenced to death, for triple murders in which he cut out the hearts of his victims, six weeks after gouging out his right eye. In 2008, on death row, he gouged out his left eye and ate it. (Both Panetti and Thomas’s executions are on appeal in the Texas courts.)

OK, deep breath. In 2006, after Staley stopped his medication, Judge Wayne Salvant, in a moment of mercy, found him incompetent to be executed. The District Attorney for Tarrant County, Joe Shannon, Jr., unmercifully asked Salvant to order Staley to be forcibly medicated. Salvant entered the order, finding that medicating Staley was the only way to ensure his competency to be executed, and that “the State has an essential interest in ensuring that the sentence of this Court is carried out.”

What is behind Judge Salvant’s chilling decision? In two cases in the 1990s, the Supreme Court said that the government can forcibly medicate a mentally ill inmate if he is dangerous to himself or others, the treatment is in his medical interest, and there is no less intrusive alternative. In 2003, the court acknowledged concerns about side effects of the drugs, and emphasized that the treatment had to be medically appropriate. None of these cases involved pending executions, however. When death is the state’s end goal, how can anyone argue that forcible medication is in a prisoner’s medical interest? TheLouisiana and South Carolina supreme courts have both rejected that macabre contention in ruling that to drug someone in order to execute him would violate their state constitutions.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit cracked open the door to forcible medication in 2003, in ruling that the state could execute a man who’d regained competency by taking medication on death row. The constitution doesn’t preclude executing someone who is “artificially competent,” the court said. In that case, the prisoner wasn’t refusing to take his meds, so the scenario is different than Staley’s. But this is the legal precedent that Judge Salvant cited when he ruled that forcing Staley to take Haldol would be “medically appropriate”—even though the purpose of drugging him is to make him rational enough to kill him. 

I will pause in this grim tale to note, with relief, that the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association hold that it is ethically unacceptable for doctors to prescribe drugs to restore competency for the purpose of execution. This should be an easy call for the Texas courts as well. If it’s awful to imagine psychotic prisoners going without their meds, it’s more awful to force shots on them so the state can kill them. If Texas fails to grasp this, other inmates will follow Steven Staley. Mental illness is common on death row. The only reason that the issues raised in Staley’s case haven’t been decided before, defense lawyers tell me, is that humane prosecutors and judges don’t insist on executing people whose sanity is so uncertain.

There’s a larger question here, beyond the one about forcible medication. It’s about halting the execution of the seriously mentally ill in the same way, and because of similar concerns about a defendant’s impairment, that the states have stopped executing the mentally disabled. Kentucky recently considered such a law and Connecticut has one. If Texas and other states followed suit, we would be spared the miserable spectacle of executing people who commit terrible crimes, but also have terrible deficits. People like Steven Staley and Scott Panetti and Andre Thomas.

Nevada Department of Corrections lacks plan for executions due to prison closure, drug shortage

may 10, 2012 source : http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com

4 months after shutting down Nevada State Prison in Carson City, site of the state’s only death chamber, officials have no solid plan for carrying out executions and no access to a lethal injection drug.
As Nevada’s death row inmates continue to appeal their convictions and sentences, the Nevada Department of Corrections has continued to lose its ability to hold an execution.
Corrections officials shut down the Nevada State Prison in Carson City, site of the state’s only death chamber, early this year, and they have no solid plan in place for transporting and holding an inmate who is about to be executed, the Reno Gazette-Journal found.
In addition, 1 of the drugs used during a lethal injection has not been available for more than a year, and the state’s execution protocol has not been updated to address the drug shortage, the Gazette-Journal found.
The department plans to submit a bill draft request to the Legislature next year asking for $385,000 to build a new execution chamber at the Ely State Prison, said Steve Suwe, a department spokesman.
The Nevada Attorney General’s office sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder early in 2011 seeking help to deal with the lethal injection drug shortage, spokeswoman Jennifer Lopez said. But no resolution has been found.
“Should any executions be scheduled, we will do the best to help the Department of Corrections have the drugs necessary to carry out a lawful execution order,” Lopez said.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the lack of a solid plan could be problematic, especially if an inmate were to suddenly stop the appeals process and ask to be killed. Eleven of the 12 inmates executed in Nevada since 1976 “volunteered” to be executed.
“When it comes time, they just can’t say, ‘Trust us,’” Dieter said of corrections officials. “They have to have a very specific protocol. Either a state or federal court would want them to produce that information. They’ll want to make sure this isn’t done in a slipshod way.”
Source: Reno Gazette-Journal, May 10, 2012