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A Final Farewell to Greg Wilhoit, Who Survived Oklahoma’s Death Row, wrongfully convicted

february 20, 2014 (huffington)

America’s community of death row survivors bids a farewell to another one of its own. Gregory R. Wilhoit, who had spent five years on Oklahoma’s death row after being wrongfully convicted for the brutal murder of his wife, died in his sleep on February 13.

Greg had suffered. Suffered a whole lot. He was convicted of killing his wife Kathy — the mother of his two little daughters, then 4 months and 14 months old — on June 1, 1985. The case rested on the testimony of dental experts, one of them barely out of dental school, who said the bite mark found on Kathy’s body matched Greg’s teeth.

But that wasn’t all. Greg was a victim of bad lawyering. He hired two lawyers who were incompetent and did not defend him. In fact, Greg’s defense counsel came to court drunk and threw up in the judge’s chambers. And Greg was convicted in 1987 and sent to Death Row, because after all, somebody had to pay.

“All they wanted me to do was enter a guilty plea, despite the fact that I had pleaded not guilty,” Greg said in an interview over a decade ago. “I felt helpless and defeated. I felt I was going to be convicted and there was nothing I could do about it. The experts against me were very convincing. If I had been on the jury, I wouldn’t have hesitated to find me guilty.”

The jury took merely two hours to return with a guilty verdict for Greg. “I was sentenced to be executed by lethal injection, but I was shaken even more when the judge told me that I might be electrocuted, hung or shot if necessary,” Greg recalled. This would prove to be the most sobering moment of my life.

In 1991, Greg’s conviction was overturned when 11 forensic experts testified that the bite mark found on his wife was not his, and an appeals court ruled that Greg had ineffective counsel at trial. He was released, and ultimately acquitted on retrial in 1993.

Still a death penalty supporter in his third year on Death Row, Greg would become a strong opponent of capital punishment. Along with his sister Nancy Vollertsen, he became a member of Witness to Innocence, the national organization of death row survivors and their loved ones.

Like many innocent people who are released from prison, Greg Wilhoit never received a penny for his troubles, not as much as an apology for the suffering he endured, and for what they took from him. That would surprise those people who assume that the wrongfully convicted all receive ample compensation, set for life, with riches lavished upon them. Although the Oklahoma legislature had passed a compensation law allowing up to $200,000 for the wrongfully imprisoned, officials told Greg that he wasn’t eligible because he needed a pardon, but was ineligible because he was innocent.

The tortuous conditions of death row — in which prisoners await their own homicide in solitary confinement — took an emotional and psychological toll on Greg Wilhoit. He had to grapple with his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and deteriorating physical health challenges.

“Greg was one of those men who suffered the greatest because of his death row conviction. He not only lost his wife but his kids as well as he sat on death row for a crime he did not commit,” said Ron Keine, assistant director of membership and training at Witness to Innocence, himself an exonerated death row survivor who had spent two years on New Mexico’s death row. “Even after his release he never fully connected with his kids. This bothered him greatly. We almost lost him a few times in the past where he pulled through like a trooper. I mean like the man walked out of hospice, where he was near death, and got married to a sweet lady and began life again,” Keine added.

In spite of his deteriorating frame, the man had a strength about him that could not be denied, and allowed us to draw strength. “Greg’s style of speaking was unique. He could make the audience cry and laugh at the same time,” Keine reflected. And despite his pain and suffering and all he had seen and lost, Greg was able to crack a joke and make us laugh.

It is not funny that Greg Wilhoit never received a penny for his troubles. We will miss him.

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Florida death row inmates receive ‘consciousness checks’ at execution – Paul Howell

february 20, 2014 (theguardian)

The state corrections official who stands beside condemned inmates as they take their last breaths in Florida’s death chamber recently pulled back the veil on what has largely been a very secretive execution process.

The testimony was given during a 11 February hearing in a lawsuit involving Paul Howell, a death row inmate scheduled to die by lethal injection 26 February. Howell is appealing his execution; his lawyers say the first of the injected drugs, midazolam, isn’t effective at preventing the pain of the subsequent drugs.

The Florida supreme court specifically asked the circuit court in Leon County to determine the efficacy of the so called “consciousness check” given to inmates by the execution team leader.

The testimony is notable because it shows that the Department of Corrections has changed its procedures since the state started using a new cocktail of lethal injection drugs. A shortage of execution drugs around the country is becoming worse as more pharmacies conclude that supplying the lethal chemicals is not worth the bad publicity or legal and ethical risks.

Timothy Cannon, who is the assistant secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections and the team leader present at every execution, told a Leon County court that an additional inmate “consciousness check” is now given due to news media reports and other testimony stemming from the 15 October execution of William Happ.

Happ was the first inmate to receive the new lethal injection drug trio. An Associated Press reporter who had covered executions using the old drug cocktail wrote that Happ acted differently during the execution than those executed before him. It appeared Happ remained conscious longer and made more body movements after losing consciousness.

Cannon said in his testimony that during Happ’s execution and the ones that came before it, he did two “consciousness checks” based on what he learned at training at the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Indiana – a “shake and shout”, where he vigorously shakes the inmate’s shoulders and calls his name loudly, and also strokes the inmate’s eyelashes and eyelid.

After Happ’s execution, Cannon said the department decided to institute a “trapezoid pinch”, where he squeezes the muscle between an inmate’s neck and shoulder.

It was added “to ensure we were taking every precaution we could possibly do to ensure the person was, in fact, unconscious”, Cannon said. “To make sure that this process was humane and dignified”.

Lawyers for Howell say that they are concerned that the midazolam does not produce a deep enough level of unconsciousness to prevent the inmate from feeling the pain of the second and third injection and causes a death that makes the inmate feel as though he is being buried alive.

“Beyond just the fact that constitution requires a humane death, if we decided that we wanted perpetrators of crime to die in the same way that their victims did then we would rape rapists. And we don’t rape rapists,” said Sonya Rudenstine, a Gainesville attorney who represents Howell.

“We should not be engaging of the behavior that we have said to abhor. If we are going to kill people, we have to do it humanely. It’s often said the inmate doesn’t suffer nearly as much as the victim, and I believe that’s what keeps us civilized and humane.”

Corrections spokeswoman Jessica Cary said on Wednesday that the department “remains committed to doing everything it can to ensure a humane and dignified lethal injection process”.

Cannon explained in his testimony that each execution team member “has to serve in the role of the condemned during training at some point”.

“We’ve changed several aspects of just the comfort level for the inmate while lying on the gurney,” he said. “Maybe we put sponges under the hand or padding under the hands to make it more comfortable, changed the pillow, the angle of things, just to try to make it a little more comfortable, more humane and more dignified as we move along.”

He said an inmate is first injected with two syringes of midazolam and a syringe of “flush”, a saline solution to get the drug into the body. Midazolam is a sedative.

Once the three syringes have been administered from an anonymous team of pharmacists and doctors in a back room, Cannon does the consciousness checks.

Meanwhile, the team in the back room watches the inmate’s face on a screen, which is captured by a video camera in the death chamber. The inmate is also hooked up to a heart monitor, Cannon said.

There are two executioners in the back room – the ones who deploy the drugs – along with an assistant team leader, three medical professionals, an independent monitor from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and two corrections employees who maintain an open line to the governor’s office.

If the team determines that the inmate is unconscious, the other two lethal drugs are administered.

Judge orders new sanity evaluation for accused Colorado movie theater shooter

february 20, 2014

(CNN) — A judge has ordered that accused Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes undergo an additional sanity examination, saying there was good cause to believe previous testing was “incomplete and inadequate,” according to a ruling issued Wednesday.

Arapahoe County District Judge Carlos Samour Jr. ordered Holmes to undergo an independent exam by the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo by early March, and the report must be filed by July 14.

Samour further ruled the new examiner may not take into account any mitigating factors that are identified in the state’s death penalty statutes.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Holmes, who is accused of opening fire in a packed movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a July 2012 midnight showing of the latest Batman installment, “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Authorities have said Holmes was dressed head to toe in protective gear.

Holmes allegedly threw tear-gas canisters in the theater and then opened fire on the patrons, according to witnesses. Police say he used several weapons, including an AR-15 rifle, before fleeing the theater.

Outside the theater, the shooter was apprehended, identifying himself to police as “The Joker,” one of Batman’s archenemies.

Holmes faces 166 charges in the rampage that left 12 people dead and dozens more wounded.

Holmes was a neuroscience doctoral student at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus until the month before the attack; prosecutors have argued that he began plotting his attack while still enrolled.

The defense, meanwhile, appears to be focused not so much on what Holmes allegedly did that night but his mental state then and earlier.

A psychiatrist who treated him had warned campus police at the University of Colorado how dangerous he was, prompting them to deactivate his college ID to prevent him from passing through any locked doors, according to court documents.

(Source: CNN)

Testimony gives rare details of Florida executions

february 19, 2014

The state corrections official who stands beside condemned inmates as they take their last breaths in Florida’s death chamber recently pulled back the veil on what has largely been a very secretive execution process.

The testimony was given during a Feb. 11 hearing in a lawsuit involving Paul Howell, a death row inmate scheduled to die by lethal injection Feb. 26. Howell is appealing his execution; his lawyers say the first of the injected drugs, midazolam, isn’t effective at preventing the pain of the subsequent drugs.

The Florida Supreme court specifically asked the circuit court in Leon County to determine the efficacy of the so called “consciousness check” given to inmates by the execution team leader.

The testimony is notable because it shows that the Department of Corrections has changed its procedures since the state started using a new cocktail of lethal injection drugs. A shortage of execution drugs around the country is becoming worse as more pharmacies conclude that supplying the lethal chemicals is not worth the bad publicity and the legal and ethical risks.

Timothy Cannon, who is the assistant secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections and the team leader present at every execution, told a Leon County court that an additional inmate “consciousness check” is now given due to news media reports and other testimony stemming from the Oct. 15 execution of William Happ.

Happ was the first inmate to receive the new lethal injection drug trio. An Associated Press reporter who had covered executions using the old drug cocktail wrote that Happ acted differently during the execution than those executed before him.

It appeared Happ remained conscious longer and made more body movements after losing consciousness.

Cannon said in his testimony that during Happ’s execution and the ones that came before it, he did two “consciousness checks” based on what he learned at training at the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Indiana — a “shake and shout,” where he vigorously shakes the inmate’s shoulders and calls his name loudly, and also strokes the inmate’s eyelashes and eyelid.

After Happ’s execution, Cannon said the department decided to institute a “trapezoid pinch,” where he squeezes the muscle between an inmate’s neck and shoulder.

It was added “to ensure we were taking every precaution we could possibly do to ensure the person was, in fact, unconscious,” Cannon said. “To make sure that this process was humane and dignified.”

Lawyers for Howell say that they are concerned that the midazolam does not produce a deep enough level of unconsciousness to prevent the inmate from feeling the pain of the second and third injection and causes a death that makes the inmate feel as though he is being buried alive.

“Beyond just the fact that Constitution requires a humane death, if we decided that we wanted perpetrators of crime to die in the same way that their victims did then we would rape rapists. And we don’t rape rapists,” said Sonya Rudenstine, a Gainesville attorney who represents Howell. “We should not be engaging of the behavior that we have said to abhor. If we are going to kill people, we have to do it humanely. It’s often said the inmate doesn’t suffer nearly as much as the victim, and I believe that’s what keeps us civilized and humane.”

Corrections spokeswoman Jessica Cary said on Wednesday that the department “remains committed to doing everything it can to ensure a humane and dignified lethal injection process.”

Cannon explained in his testimony that each execution team member “has to serve in the role of the condemned during training at some point.”

“We’ve changed several aspects of just the comfort level for the inmate while lying on the gurney,” he said. “Maybe we put sponges under the hand or padding under the hands to make it more comfortable, changed the pillow, the angle of things, just to try to make it a little more comfortable, more humane and more dignified as we move along.”

He said an inmate is first injected with two syringes of midazolam and a syringe of “flush” — saline solution to get the drug into the body. Midazolam is a sedative.

Once the three syringes have been administered from one of two anonymous executioners, Cannon does the consciousness checks.

Meanwhile, the team in the back room watches the inmate’s face on a screen, which is captured by a video camera in the death chamber. The inmate is also hooked up to a heart monitor, Cannon said.

There are two executioners in the back room — the ones who deploy the drugs — along with an assistant team leader, three medical professionals, an independent monitor from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and two corrections employees who maintain an open line to the governor’s office.

If the team determines that the inmate is unconscious, the other two lethal drugs are administered.

New methods of execution would be allowed under Missouri proposal

february 19, 2014

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.  • A Missouri state senator wants to give the Corrections Department flexibility on how it carries out executions.

Republican Sen. Kurt Schaefer introduced legislation Wednesday that would allow the department to execute inmates by any lawful means. Current law permits executions only by lethal gas or chemicals.

Schaefer, of Columbia, says legal questions over Missouri’s current use of pentobarbital shouldn’t be used to block capital punishment in the state. He says his bill would give the department the necessary flexibility to carry out death sentences.

Missouri’s next scheduled execution is Feb. 26, but its current drug supplier has said it will no longer sell compounded pentobarbital for use in lethal injections. State officials won’t say whether the state has enough of the drug to proceed with next week’s execution.

Us- Upcoming Executions march 2014

Dates are subject to change due to stays and appeals

UPDATE MARCH 20

Month State Inmate
19 OH Gregory Lott – Stayed
20 FL Robert Henry executed 6.16pm
20 OK Clayton Lockett – Stayed until April 22
26 MO Jeffrey Ferguson EXECUTED
26 MS Charles Crawford Stayed as execution date had not been affirmed by state court.
27 OK Charles Warner – Stayed until April 29
27 TX Anthony Doyle EXECUTED
27 MS Michelle Byrom Update – The Mississippi Supreme Court threw out Michelle Byrom’s murder conviction and death sentence and ordered a new trial due to numerous problems, including inadequate representation, critical evidence not presented to the jury, confessions by another defendant, and the prosecution’s lack of confidence in its own story of what actually happened.
March
19 OHIO Gregory Lott MOVED NOVEMBER 19
19 TEXAS Ray Jasper EXECUTED 6.31 PM
20 OKLAHOMA Clayton Lockett DELAYED (drug shortage)
27 OKLAHOMA Charles Warner DELAYED (drug shortage)
27 TEXAS Anthony Doyle

US- Youngest Serial Killer on Death Row – Harvey Robinson

Tales of serial killers have grown commonplace, but adolescent serial killers are rare. Harvey Robinson from Allentown, PA, is among them, and he’s currently the youngest contemporary serial killer to be sent to death row in America. His case crystallizes some issues surrounding a growing trend toward leniency with juvenile offenders, even the most violent ones.

In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for offenders who had committed extreme crimes when they were juveniles. In Graham v. Florida (2010), the Court outlawed life without parole sentencing for juveniles convicted of non-homicide crimes. The decision was based in part on neurological research that demonstrated that adolescents are more impulsive and more susceptible to negative influences than adults; mentally and emotionally, their brains are immature. On June 25, 2012, the Court took another step and abolished all mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles convicted of homicide.

 

Also in June, the citizens of Allentown collectively held their breath as Harvey Robinson went before a judge to request new sentencing, based on undetected brain damage implicated in his crimes. If the judge were to decide in his favor, they knew, he could chip at the eroding wall that stands between him and possible freedom one day.

In less than a year in 1993, Robinson attacked five females, killing three. He was just 17 years old when he committed his first murder.

He spotted this victim through her window as she undressed for bed. He broke in and killed her. Then after a brief stint in a juvenile facility for a burglary, he grabbed a fifteen-year-old girl off her bike, raped her, and stabbed her twenty-two times.

Six weeks later, Robinson entered another home, but saw his targeted victim with her boyfriend, so he attacked her five-year-old daughter, raping and strangling her. She was found unconscious but miraculously alive.

Soon thereafter, Robinson chased down a woman as she tried to flee from him. He caught up and was raping and choking her when a neighbor switched on an outside light, scaring him away. Aware that he’d left a living witness, he soon entered her home again, but she was not there.

The police believed he would return, so they implemented a risky plan to trap this killer, knowing he would continue until he was stopped. Bravely, the victim agreed to act as bait. In the meantime, Robinson had raped and strangled another woman.

Yet he’d not forgotten the one who got away. He broke in once more, but an officer was waiting for him. After a desperate gunfight, Robinson was caught.

During Robinson’s trial, a forensic psychiatrist testified that he suffered from a dependency on drugs and alcohol and had experienced visual and auditory hallucinations, which had made it difficult for him to adjust to social norms. He’d been under severe stress. Because he had a violent role model in a criminal father, he’d understandably relieved his stress with violence. The psychiatrist believed that, with help, Robinson could overcome his violent impulses.

However, Robinson did not just make an immature mistake; he was a cold-blooded rapist and killer, returning again and again to ensure that his targeted victims were dead. He even tried killing a child.

To the relief of many in the community, on November 8, 1994, Robinson was convicted on three counts of murder and sentenced to death three times.

A new attorney challenged his convictions on the grounds that there were fundamental flaws in the trial procedures. Robinson got his day in court, but he wasted it complaining about his former lawyers.

Still, in 2001 a judge vacated two of Robinson’s death sentences and ordered new hearings. Four years later, the Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for juveniles age 17 and under. This ruling commuted Robinson’s remaining death sentence to life. He knew he had a chance to get off death row.

To prepare for the new sentencing hearings, Robinson’s attorneys had neurological testing performed. The results, they claimed, showed that Robinson had suffered from frontal lobe damage at the time of the murders, which had adversely affected his ability to control his behavior.

However, as the survivors and victim’s families hoped, the judge who listened to Robinson’s new argument decided against him. He had failed to prove that these tests had shown brain damage dating back so many years. This decision restored one death penalty, which will make it more difficult for Robinson to use this reasoning during the next round (next March).

He probably won’t give up. He has many years yet in which to make arguments and await advances in neuroscience. However, for now, the threat of any argument for leniency or eventual parole has been defused. Robinson remains the youngest serial killer on death row.

CALIFORNIA – Fresno serial killer dies as Sacramento inmate – WILBUR JENNINGS

February 12. 2014

An inmate of the Sacramento County Main Jail who died at a hospital Tuesday morning has been identified as a serial killer, officials said.

Wilbur Jennings was 73 years old. His death doesn’t appear suspicious in nature, according to the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department.

Jennings was convicted and sentenced to death in the 1980s for a long list of crimes, including rape, robbery and murder.

His four female victims were from the Fresno area. Jennings spent much of his time at San Quentin State Prison on death row.

He appealed the death penalty in 1991.

In 2005, Jennings was transferred to Sacramento County to stand trial on the 1981 rape and murder of Debra Chandler.

At the time of his death, the case still had not had a preliminary hearing, the Sacramento district attorney indicated, because it involved evidence from the Fresno case that was tied up on appeals in the federal court.

Then in 2008, DNA evidence tied Jennings to yet another rape and murder of a fifth Fresno woman killed in 1983.

Despite the death penalty and the new pending murder cases against Jennings, it was his terminal illness that killed him.

The Sheriff’s Department will conduct a thorough inmate-death investigation in accordance with the department procedures and state laws.

Jennings has a long medical history. He died about 10:30 a.m. Monday.

Woman’s Serial Killer Claims Can’t Be Verified: Investigators – MIRANDA BARBOUR 19 -YEAR- OLD

Authorities have expressed doubt and skepticism over the claims of a teenager who told the Daily Item, a small newspaper in Sunbury, Pa., that she had been killing people since she was 13 as part of a satanic cult.

“As of this date, there has been no verification of any of the information that has been the subject of media coverage regarding prior acts of the defendant, Miranda Barbour,” Anthony Rosini, the district attorney of Northumberland County, said in a statement today to ABCNews.com.

Any information about alleged crimes “committed in other jurisdictions has been or will be forwarded to the appropriate law enforcement agencies and the FBI for investigation,” he said.

In a jailhouse interview with a reporter from the Daily Item, Barbour, 19, said that she went on a cross-country satanic killing spree that claimed at least 22 victims, according to the newspaper.

The claim, if true, would make her a rare female serial killer.

Barbour is charged along with her husband of three weeks of murdering Troy LaFerrara, a Pennsylvania man she met on Craigslist. She claimed that she had solicited LaFerrara for sex on Craigslist in November. Authorities said Barbour and husband Elytte Barbour stabbed LaFerrara to death while in her car.

The suspect told the newspaper she had killed what she calls “bad people” from Alaska to North Carolina. Police in Alaska, California, North Carolina and Texas have been called to check out Barbour’s story, authorities said. The FBI said it “will offer any assistance requested in the case.”

Noelle Talley, spokeswoman for the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation, told ABCNews.com that authorities were in touch with their counterparts in Pennsylvania and will “remain in contact with them to determine if there is any credible information related to any unsolved homicide in North Carolina.”

Bill James, a baseball writer and statistician who analyzed prolific murderers in the book, “Popular Crime,” told ABCNews.com that authorities have every reason to be skeptical of Barbour’s claims.

“I don’t think there has ever been a 19-year-old that killed 22 people. I don’t think that has ever happened in the country,” he said.

Still, James said authorities are right to follow up on Barbour’s claims to the newspaper.

“You have to assume you could be dealing with a killer until proven otherwise,” he said. “A lot of times you never know the truth.”

Despite her confession to the newspaper, a lawyer for Barbour entered a not-guilty plea at her arraignment.

ABCNews.com was not able to immediately reach Barbour’s family members or her public defender.

february 15, 2014

Nineteen-year-old satanist Miranda Barbour admits to killing Troy LaFerrara of Port Trevorton. In a prison interview Friday night, she said that she considered sparing his life until he said the wrong thing. She also said LaFerrara was one of dozens of such victims she killed in the past six years.

Barbour, with her husband, Elytte Barbour, 22, of Selinsgrove, has been charged by Sunbury police in the Nov. 11 fatal knifing of LaFerrara. She requested an interview that was recorded by the Northumberland County Prison on Friday night.

While she offered scant details of her participation in slayings in Alaska, Texas, North Carolina and California, city police confirmed Saturday they had been working, prior to her revelations Friday night, with investigators from other states and the FBI about Miranda Barbour’s possible connection to other killings. The majority of her murders, she said, took place in Alaska.

City police on Saturday would not comment on the status of those investigations.

At 22 victims, “I stopped counting”

Asked Friday night how many people she had killed, Miranda Barbour said through a jailhouse phone: “When I hit 22, I stopped counting.”

She wants to plead guilty to LaFerrara’s murder, and said she is ready to speak with police about her other victims.

“I can pinpoint on a map where you can find them,” she said.

LaFerrara, Miranda Barbour said, was Elytte’s first victim.

The 42-year-old Port Trevorton resident was killed on the Barbours’ three-week wedding anniversary.

“I remember everything,” Miranda Barbour said. “It is like watching a movie.”

She said she agreed to sex for $100 with LaFerrara, whom she met through a Craigslist ad. The two met in the parking lot of the Susquehanna Valley Mall in Hummels Wharf, and drove nearly six miles to Sunbury.

At one point, she planned to let LaFerrara out of her Honda CRV.

“He said the wrong things,” she said. “And then things got out of control. I can tell you he was not supposed to be stabbed. My husband was just supposed to strangle him.”

Time to “get it out”

According to court documents, Miranda Barbour knifed LaFerrara 20 times as Elytte Barbour sprang from the floor of the back seat to strap a cord around LaFerrara’s neck.

As she said upon her arrest, Miranda Barbour on Friday night repeated that LaFerrara tried to grope her, but she said it was his words that set her off.

“I lied to him and told him I just turned 16,” she said.

“He told me that it was OK. If he would have said no, that he wasn’t going to go through with the  arrangement, I would have let him go.”

Miranda Barbour said she doesn’t care whether people believe her, that she wanted to tell her story to The Daily Item because she wanted to come clean and stop living a lie. She said she felt no remorse for her victims and said she killed only “bad people,” a belief she traced through a troubled childhood.

She said she was sexually molested at age 4 and was introduced to murder at 13, literally in the hands of a man who led her to satanism — beliefs that she said she held at the time of the LaFerrara homicide.

“I feel it is time to get all of this out,” she said. “I don’t care if people believe me. I just want to get it out.”

Suspect: I joined satanic cult

Miranda said when she was 4, she was sexually molested by a relative.

Elizabeth Dean, Miranda’s mother, confirmed Saturday that her sister’s husband was later arrested and charged with sexual abuse of a minor and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

“It was bad,” Dean said. “I never let (her) stay anywhere except for my sister’s house, and I was devastated when I found out.”

Nine years later, Miranda joined a satanic cult in Alaska. Soon after, Miranda said, she had her first experience in murder.

Barbour said she went with the leader of the satanic cult to meet a man who owed the cult leader money.

“It was in an alley and he (the cult leader) shot him,” she said, declining to identify the cult leader.

“Then he said to me that it was my turn to shoot him. I hate guns. I don’t use guns. I couldn’t do it, so he came behind me and he took his hands and put them on top of mine and we pulled the trigger. And then from there I just continued to kill.”

While in the satanic cult, Miranda became pregnant. The cult did not want her to have the baby, so, she said, members tied her to a bed, gave her drugs and she had an “in-house abortion.”

However, her mother on Saturday said that when Miranda told her about the abortion, she took her daughter to a doctor who said there were no signs of an ended pregnancy.

Miranda said she spent the next three years in Alaska, continuing in the satanic cult and participating in several murders.

“I wasn’t always there (mentally),” she said, adding that she had begun to use drugs. “I knew something was bad inside me and the satanic beliefs brought it out. I embraced it.”

During those three years, Miranda said she became pregnant again.

“And I moved to North Carolina,” she said. “I wanted to start over and forget everything I did.”

She left Alaska as a high-ranking official in the satanic world, leaving the father of her second pregnancy, a man named Forest, the No. 2 leader in their cult, who was murdered.

Ready to talk to police

Although Miranda would not say who else may have been involved in the alleged murders, she said all police have to do is talk to her because she is ready to speak.

“I would lure these people in,” she said. “I studied them. I learned them and even became their friend. I did this to people who did bad things and didn’t deserve to be here anymore.”

Sunbury police Chief Steve Mazzeo said authorities are aware of Miranda’s claims of murders, are taking them very seriously, and are also aware of Friday night’s interview. Prison officials have been cooperating with his department, Mazzeo said.

“We are reviewing the recording of The Daily Item interview and I will not confirm or deny anything at this point,” he said.

“I will however say that through investigations by lead officer Travis Bremigen he has been in contact with several other states and is working with law enforcement from various cities and towns.

“From information we gathered and from information gathered from her interview we are seriously concerned and have been in contact with the proper authorities.”

During the interview, Miranda was asked that, given her small stature, how people would believe she would be capable of murder.

“Looks,” she said, “can be deceiving.”

Asked why she pleaded not guilty to the LaFerrara murder, she simply said: “I didn’t want to.”

“When I was at my arraignment and the judge asked me how do I plead, I was ready to say guilty and my attorney (chief public defender Ed Greco) grabbed the microphone and said not guilty.”

Miranda Barbour said she has not spoken with her husband since the day she was arrested, but saw The Daily Item photo of Elytte Barbour’s new teardrop tattoo that he displayed at his most recent court appearance.

Husband “proud of what he did”

Elytte Barbour is being held in Columbia County Jail.

“He is proud of what he did,” she said. “I will always love him.”

Miranda said she has no regrets for any of her alleged crimes.

“I have none,” she said.

“I know I will never see my husband again and I have accepted that. I know I wanted to talk about all this because I know I had a 20-year window where I would possibly get out of jail and I don’t want that to happen. If I were to be released, I would do this again.

“By no means is this a way to glorify it or get attention. I’m telling you because it is time for me to be honest and I feel I need to be honest.”

Louisiana: To cut heat threat, air-conditioning proposed for Angola’s death row

february 18,2014

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The state corrections department said Monday the only way it can lower heat levels on Louisiana’s death row to a federal judge’s requirements is by installing air conditioning.

U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson ruled in December that death row gets so hot it violates U.S. constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

He demanded a plan that will cool the cells at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola so the heat index never goes above 88 degrees, a plan that state prison officials filed Monday with the court.

Windows and fans are currently the primary sources of ventilation on death row, which was built in 2006.

The heat remediation proposal submitted by the Department of Corrections and the Angola prison would involve buying air conditioning units and a climate monitoring system for the cells.

“The heat and humidity sensors will transmit their readings to the building’s existing Johnson Control energy management system every 15 minutes. The system is capable of producing graphs showing temperature/humidity conditions over any time period,” James Hilburn, a lawyer for the state, wrote in a document filed with the plan.

The 22-page plan, devised by an outside engineering consultant, didn’t include a price tag. Estimates during the trial ranged from $550,000 to as much as $2 million to install air conditioning on the death row tiers.

Jackson said he wouldn’t consider cost as a factor in his review of the plan.

Lawyers for condemned killers Elzie Ball, Nathaniel Code and James Magee argued the heat could worsen the men’s health conditions, which include high blood pressure and other ailments.

Prison officials said the conditions might be uncomfortable during the hottest summer months, but they are safe. They said the inmates have access to medical care and none of the three plaintiffs have ever been diagnosed with adverse heat reactions.

In his December ruling, Jackson said the heat data collected by a court-ordered contractor in July and August showed that inmates housed in the death row cell tiers are subjected to temperatures and heat indices that are in the National Weather Service’s `caution,’ `extreme caution,’ and `danger’ zones. He said state prison officials must change those conditions.

The corrections department is appealing Jackson’s ruling, but wasn’t able to postpone filing the cooling plan. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals refused last week to order a stay in the case, saying it was premature.

But the appeals court cautioned Jackson about requiring the Angola penitentiary to make the changes it will propose in its plan while the appeal was pending.

Jackson traveled to Angola, 60 miles north of Baton Rouge, to check out the cell blocks for himself before issuing his ruling.

The federal judge also is considering ordering sanctions against attorneys for the state, questioning whether they “conducted themselves with honesty and candor” during the court proceedings and trial last year. A hearing on that issue is set for March 12.
(Source: AP)