Death Sentence

SOUTH CALIFORNIA – Death Row inmate’s conviction overturned – Armenia Cudjo

September 30, 2012 http://www.sfgate.com

A federal appeals court overturned the conviction and death sentence of a Southern California man in the 1986 battering death of a female neighbor because the jury wasn’t told that the defendant’s brother had admitted the killing to a cellmate.

Armenia Cudjo, now 54, was convicted of robbing and murdering Amelia Prokuda, whose partially clad body was found in her apartment in the desert community of Littlerock (Los Angeles County). A bloodstained hammer was found nearby.

Cudjo said he had been at the victim’s home that day and had sex with her but didn’t kill her. He said the killer was his brother Gregory, who more closely resembled a description of the intruder by the victim’s 5-year-old son. Gregory Cudjo told police his brother had confessed the murder to him.

Armenia Cudjo’s lawyer tried to present testimony by John Culver, who said Gregory Cudjo had admitted the killing in a cell at the sheriff’s office, but the trial judge barred the testimony. The state Supreme Court said the testimony should have been allowed but ruled 5-2 in 1993 that it wouldn’t have mattered because Culver had little credibility and the prosecution’s case was strong.

But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 2-1 on Friday that the trial judge had violated Cudjo’s right to present a defense. The ruling entitles him to a new trial.

Cudjo’s public defender obtained a sworn statement from Gregory Cudjo in 2008 acknowledging that he had made the admission to Culver, though he didn’t say whether he was telling the truth.

“After 26 years on Death Row, Armenia is glad to have a chance to get his life back,” the lawyer, John Littrell, said Friday.

ALABAMA – Court won’t hear Ala. death row appeal – Bobby Baker Jr

October 1, 2012 http://www.wgme.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court won’t hear an appeal from a convicted murderer who kidnapped and fatally shot his estranged wife in 1994.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Bobby Baker Jr., who is on death row in Alabama. He was accused of kidnapping and shooting Tracy Baker four times while she sat in the back seat of his car in April 1994.

He has had his death sentence overturned once by the courts before being sentenced to death for a second time. Baker wanted the Supreme Court to rule on whether the aggravating circumstances that were used to decide to seek the death penalty were unconstitutionally vague.

Appeals court rejects request to remove judge in Arizona death-penalty case – Kevin Miles

September 28, 2012, http://www.bellinghamherald.com

 

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court Friday rejected an Arizona death row inmate’s request that a judge recuse herself from his carjacking-murder case because her own father was murdered in a carjacking close to 40 years ago.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said Kevin Miles” request that Judge Susan Graber recuse herself was inappropriate and “especially flimsy.”

Graber wrote the opinion last month upholding Miles’ death sentence for the 1992 carjacking and murder of Patricia Baeuerlen in Tucson. Graber’s father, Julius, was carjacked in 1974 by two teens wielding a sawed-off shotgun, then driven to a Cincinnati cemetery, where he was shot in the back of the head.

Miles‘ motion said federal court procedure and U.S. law require that federal judges disqualify themselves “in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

But Judges Marsha Berzon and Richard Tallman wrote that it is up to Graber to decide whether or not to step down, and they went on to defend her impartiality at some length in their published five-page order.

“Life experiences do not disqualify us from serving as judges on cases in which the issues or the facts are in some indirect way related to our personal experiences,” they wrote.

Miles‘ public defender, Timothy Gabrielsen, had no comment on the order Friday except to say, “I stand by the motion. I think it is appropriate.”

Assistant Arizona Attorney General Jonathan Bass called the timing of the motion peculiar, since it came after the court had already ruled on Miles’ appeal. If there’s any doubt, “you don’t want the judge to rule at all,” he said.

Bass agreed with the order, saying he “had no reason to think they (the circuit judges) are not impartial.”

Miles, then 24, and two underage friends were standing on a street corner in Tucson in December 1992 when Baeuerlen pulled up. Levi Jackson, 16, pointed a gun at her and the trio got into her car.

They drove to the desert, where they took her out of the car, taunted and harassed her before Jackson shot her in the chest and they drove off, leaving Baeuerlen where she had been shot.

Miles later used Baeuerlen’s ATM card to take money out of her account. He drove her car to Phoenix where he went shopping at a mall, exchanged her children’s Christmas gifts for other items and met with friends.

Police arrested Miles two days after Baeuerlen’s slaying, and he confessed after several hours of questioning. He was later convicted and sentenced to death. Jackson, who was initially sentenced to death, had the sentence reversed on appeal and is now serving a life sentence.

The recusal motion noted similarities to Julius Graber’s murder and to the post-conviction proceedings for Willie Lee Bell, an accomplice in Graber’s killing.

Bell, who was 16 at the time of that crime, was sentenced to death, but his sentence was overturned in 1978. He is now serving a life sentence in Ohio.

A motion for a rehearing before the full 9th Circuit of the latest decision in Miles‘ case is pending. If that motion is denied, Miles could then petition the U.S. Supreme Court for a hearing.

CALIFORNIA – Arsonist gets death penalty in fatal Old fire – Rickie Lee Fowler

September 29, 2012 http://www.latimes.com

Death sentence in Old fire

 San Bernardino County jury on Friday ordered a death sentence for the violent methamphetamine addict convicted of setting the catastrophic 2003 Old fire that destroyed 1,000 homes, blackened the San Bernardino Mountains and led to five deaths.

The jury in August found that Rickie Lee Fowler deliberately set the blaze by tossing a lighted road flare into brush at the base of the mountains on an October day when Southern California already was overwhelmed by wind-fed wildfires, convicting him of murder and arson.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Bullock portrayed Fowler as an evil and sadistic felon who inflicted “misery and mayhem” on those who crossed his path throughout his life — raping and brutalizing two girlfriends, one of whom was pregnant with his son, and sodomizing a jail cellmate whom he turned into a “sex slave.”

“I would like to thank the jury for doing the right thing. This is one of those crimes that reaches out and grabs you by the throat,” Bulloch at a news conference afterward.

Superior Court Judge Michael A. Smith is scheduled to sentence Fowler on Nov. 16. The judge has the legal authority to dismiss the jury’s recommendation and instead sentence Fowler to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but such an action is rare in California.

Smith noted that Californians on Nov. 6 will vote on a proposed ballot initiative — Proposition 34 — that, if approved, would abolish the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“Depending on what happens with that, it could affect sentencing in this matter,” Smith said during Friday’s hearing.

Dist. Atty. Michael Ramos said it would be a travesty of justice if California voters approved the measure, in effect granting Fowler and “baby murderers and cop killers” a reprieve from death row.

“We cannot allow a proposition to overturn what happened today in San Bernardino County for these five victims,” Ramos said.

The jury spent 11 days deliberating Fowler’s sentence, its final act in a trial that began in late July. Jurors declined to comment afterward, and no relatives of the Old fire victims attended the hearing.

Fowler, wearing a baggy dress shirt and charcoal slacks, showed little emotion when the death recommendation was read, only leaning over to whisper to his attorney Michael Belter.

Belter said his client was relieved that the deliberations had finally ended, but “obviously Mr. Fowler was disappointed with the result.”

Fowler’s attorneys plan to file a motion for a new trial, arguing that the prosecution did not present any direct evidence showing that Fowler had set the blaze or that the deaths were intentional. All five deaths were due to heart attacks triggered by the stress of the fire, according to prosecution testimony.

Belter said that during his conversation with jurors after Friday’s hearing it was clear that they spent a lot of time considering those arguments. “I think the jury went back and forth,” he said. “They had different splits, they had a lot to talk about.”

The prosecutor said Fowler deliberately set the blaze in Waterman Canyon in a fit of rage against his godfather, who had kicked Fowler out of his house at the top of the canyon.

The fire broke out Oct. 25, 2003, at Old Waterman Canyon Road and California 18, and raced through the forest and brush, forcing the evacuation of more than 30 communities and 80,000 people. It came as firefighters were battling a blaze in Upland and Rancho Cucamonga. Six men died of heart attacks, although prosecutors said one could not be directly linked to the stress of the fire.

A few months later, on Christmas Day, a huge debris flow — caused by intense rain on the denuded slopes of the burn area — swept through a church camp in Waterman Canyon, killing 14 people. Fowler was not charged in that incident.

Investigators said they questioned Fowler shortly after the fire but did not have enough evidence to arrest him at that time. Another suspect in the fire, Martin Valdez, 24, was fatally shot in Muscoy, near San Bernardino, in 2006. At the time of the fire, witnesses reported seeing Fowler and Valdez in a white van throwing a flaming object into Waterman Canyon.

Much of the prosecution’s case hinged on comments Fowler made in 2008 in which he acknowledged to investigators that he was attempting to burn down the home of a friend, but denied that he was the one who set the blaze. Fowler told investigators that he went to the back of the van and took out a flare, but that Valdez grabbed the flare and tossed it.

OKLAHOMA – Attorney General seeks execution date for death row inmate – Gary Allen

September 27, 2012 http://www.sfgate.com

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt asked a state appeals court Thursday to set an execution date for a man convicted of fatally shooting his fiancée almost 26 years ago.

Pruitt filed the request with the Court of Criminal Appeals a day after a federal judge rejected Gary Thomas Allen‘s request for a hearing on his claim that he is mentally incompetent and ineligible for the death penalty.

U.S. District Judge David Russell ruled Wednesday that Allen, 56, had not shown that a jury impanelled in 2008 acted unreasonably when it found him sane enough to be executed. Russell also lifted a stay that postponed Allen’s most recent execution date.

Pruitt said Russell’s ruling concludes Allen’s court appeals. “After a thorough review of this case, my office has concluded that the execution should be carried out,” the attorney general said.

Allen’s attorney, Randy Bauman, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.

Allen was convicted and sentenced to death for the November 1986 murder of Lawanna Gail Titsworth in the parking lot of an Oklahoma City day care. Titsworth, 24, had moved out of the home she shared with Allen and their two sons four days before her death.

Court documents indicate the two were arguing when Allen shot Titsworth twice in the chest. Titsworth ran with a center employee toward the building, but Allen pushed the worker away, shoved Titsworth down some steps and shot her twice in the back at close range, records show.

A police officer responding to a 911 call tussled with Allen before shooting him in the face, according to court documents. Allen was hospitalized for about two months for treatment of injuries to his face, left eye and brain.

Allen entered a blind plea of guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced by a judge to die. But Allen’s attorneys have argued he was not competent enough to enter the plea.

A district judge in Pittsburg County stayed Allen’s original May 19, 2005, execution date after a psychological examination at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary indicated Allen had developed mental problems. The U.S. Constitution forbids the execution of inmates who are insane or mentally incompetent.

Three years later, a 12-member jury rejected Allen’s argument that he should not be put to death. Last December, the Oklahoma Appeals court ruled that an appeal of that decision was not authorized by law. The court said there is no procedure in state law to appeal a finding that a person facing execution is sane.

The state Pardon and Parole Board had voted in April 2005 to recommend that Allen’s death sentence be commuted to life without parole. That clemency recommendation wasn’t acted on until this year, when Gov. Mary Fallin denied it.

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Gary Allen execution stayed in april

 

Ohio man on death row for killing 11 women challenging conviction with court filing- Anthony Sowell

Anthony Sowell

September 27, 2012 http://www.therepublic.com

CLEVELAND — An Ohio man sentenced to death for killing 11 women whose remains were found in and around his Cleveland home is now challenging his conviction.

WEWS-TV reports Thursday (http://bit.ly/Psqxzv) that lawyers for Anthony Sowell (SOH’-wehl) of Cleveland filed a petition to have his conviction overturned and win a new trial.

Such filings are common for those sentenced to the death penalty and often are turned down.

Prosecutors said Sowell, who was convicted last year of killing 11 women, lured the victims to his home by promising them alcohol or drugs.

The murdered women began vanishing in 2007. Police discovered 10 bodies and a skull at Sowell’s house in late 2009 after officers went there on a woman’s report that she had been raped at the home.

Related articles

Pardons Board takes death row inmate Terrance Williams’ case ‘under advisement’ STAY

September 27, 2012 http://www.pennlive.com

The state Pardons Board won’t immediately rule on a condemned Philadelphia man’s clemency bid, just six days before his scheduled execution.

The pardons board heard new arguments today but will take the case “under advisement,” after earlier rejecting the clemency bid.

The fate of 46-year-old Terrance Williams now moves back to a Philadelphia judge weighing new evidence in the 1984 murder case. Judge M. Teresa Sarmina has pledged to rule Friday on a motion to stay the execution.

Williams is on death row for killing two men as a teenager. His lawyers say both men had been sexually abusing him and that prosecutors hid that information from jurors in the second trial, who sentenced Williams to death.

Williams is scheduled to be executed Wednesday.

Incompetency to Be Executed: Continuing Ethical Challenges & Time for a Change in Texas

September 26, 2012 

Brian D. Shannon


Texas Tech University School of Law

Victor R. Scarano


University of Houston – Health Law & Policy Institute

2012

Texas Tech Law Review, Vol. 45, 2013 
Abstract: 
This Article focuses on a small, but unique group of death row inmates who have largely exhausted their post-conviction procedural rights and have a date set for execution, but while awaiting execution have become incompetent to be executed because of serious mental illness. The United States Supreme Court has determined that it is unconstitutional to execute an individual who is mentally incompetent. The Court has not, however, ruled as to whether it is constitutionally permissible for a state to order a death row inmate to be medicated forcibly for the purpose of restoring that inmate’s competency to allow an execution to proceed. This Article discusses the scope of the serious ethical concerns related to this very challenging scenario, and reviews state and lower federal court decisions that have considered the issue, as well as United States Supreme Court opinions that have considered other, related medication issues concerning offenders with mental disorders. In particular, however, the Article offers and discuss a possible legislative solution that the Texas Legislature could enact that would avoid the thorny ethical and legal issues that are at stake in such cases.

 

Number of Pages in PDF File: 32 download here 

JEL Classification: K19

ARIZONA – Death-row inmate’s appeal rejected by federal court-Pete Carl Rogovich

September 21, 2012 http://www.azcentral.com

A federal appeals court this week rejected multiple challenges by an Arizona death-row inmate to reduce his sentence for the 1992 murders of four people, including three who were killed in a Phoenix trailer-park “homicidal rampage.”

Pete Carl Rogovich, 46, confessed to the killings and other crimes when caught by police on March 15, 1992, after a lengthy car chase, according to court documents.

“I did it. I know it was wrong. I know I’ll burn in hell,” Rogovich reportedly told police.

 

He presented an insanity defense, but was convicted of all counts by an Arizona jury in a seven-day trial in May 1994.

In his latest round of appeals, Rogovich argued that his attorney at trial presented the insanity defense without his approval. He also claimed that his attorney failed to challenge prejudicial prosecution statements during closing arguments or to challenge the aggravating factors that led to the imposition of the death penalty.

But a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected those arguments Tuesday, saying there is no law “requiring the defendant to consent on the record to an insanity defense.” It also upheld lower-court rulings that Rogovich was adequately represented at trial.

“Of course we’re disappointed” by the decision, said Sarah Stone, Rogovich’s lawyer for his appeal. “He’s a seriously mentally ill person.”

She said there is no question that he committed the crimes, since he never denied his actions. “The question is whether the punishment (a death sentence) is appropriate,” she said.

“We think a life sentence is best for Mr. Rogovich, given his mental condition,” she said.

Prosecutors could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The case began on the morning of March 15, 1992, when a customer walked in to the Super Stop Market near Rogovich’s central Phoenix apartment at 8:45 and found clerk Tekleberhan Manna, 24, dead, shot once in the eye at close range. Nothing had been taken from the store, court documents said.

Rogovich, who had told an apartment maintenance worker that morning that he was angry with his girlfriend and would get even with her, left his apartment about 1 p.m. that day with a gun and began firing randomly. After shooting at two people in the parking lot and missing, he hopped the fence to a neighboring trailer park and began what courts described as a “homicidal rampage.”

Rogovich shot Phyllis Mancuso, 62, in the laundry room; Rebecca Carreon, 48, in her driveway; and Marie Pendergast, 83, in her trailer. All three women died as Rogovich ran off.

Some time later, he stole a radio station’s van at gunpoint from a promotional appearance at a restaurant. He was later seen at a convenience store in Goodyear, where he stole beer and cash before “casually” walking out and driving off in the van.

Goodyear police spotted him about 5 p.m. and caught Rogovich after a “lengthy chase at speeds ranging from 50 to over 100 miles per hour.”

Rogovich admitted to all the crimes, including all four killings, but said he was upset by the breakup with his girlfriend and the death of his stepfather six years earlier.

“Of course I’m sorry. It was wrong,” he said, according to the court. “I know it, but I just snapped. I was so angry. I just couldn’t stop.”

Despite his insanity defense he was convicted in 1994 of all charges: four murders, two aggravated assaults, two armed robberies and unlawful flight.

At his sentencing a year later, his attorneys presented evidence of an abusive childhood, mental illness and drug dependencies. But the court sentenced him to death for the trailer-park killings and life in prison for Manna’s death.

Stone said that Rogovich’s attorneys have not decided on the next step.

Here are five cases of death row prisoners who have been judicially killed over the past year

september 21, 2012 

Each representing a different flaw in the application of capital punishment in America today:

Manuel Valle

Executed: 28 September 2011, aged 61

Flaw: Cruelty of prolonged stay on death row

The case: Valle, a Cuban national who was convicted of murdering a police officer in 1978, spent 33 years on death row. During that time he was held largely in solitary confinement – conditions that it has been argued amount to cruel and unusual punishment that should be banned under the eighth amendment of the US constitution.

The US supreme court judge, Justice Breyer, voted for a stay of execution for Valle but was outnumbered by his colleagues. Breyer wrote a minority judgment in which he said: “I have little doubt about the cruelty of so long a period of incarceration under sentence of death.”

Christopher Johnson

Executed: 20 October 2011, aged 38

Flaw: “Volunteer”

The case: Johnson was one of the few prisoners who are executed every year as “volunteers” – that is they choose to die and waive all rights to appeal or clemency. That may sound like their right to do so, but the problem is that academic studies have found that about 80% of the volunteers show signs of serious mental illness.

Johnson was no exception. His childhood was troubled with psychotic episodes and in prison he tried several times to kill himself. Yet his desire to be executed for having murdered in 2005 his six-month-old son was still taken by the justice system to be a sane expression of choice, and not as some experts decried a form of judicially approved suicide.

Edwin Turner

Executed: 8 February 2012, aged 38

Flaw: Mental illness

The case: You could tell that Turner had a history of mental illness just by looking at him – his face was terribly disfigured from a rifle bullet after he tried to shoot himself aged 18. His family also had a history of suicide attempts and hospitalisations for mental illness that ran through both his parents and his grandmother and great-grandmother.

There is no law in the US preventing executions for those who are mentally ill. Unless it can be proved they were insane at the moment they committed the crime, they are not exempt from the gurney.

Despite clear evidence that Turner was ill, he was put to death for fatally shooting a clerk in 1995 during a robbery.

Marvin Wilson

Executed: 7 August 2012, aged 54

Flaw: Mental “retardation”

The case: Wilson was diagnosed as having learning difficulties – a condition still referred to by the US courts as “retardation”. He was recorded with an IQ score of 61, putting him in the lowest percentile of the population.

The US supreme court banned executions for people with learning difficulties in 2002. None the less, Wilson was still put to death for the 1992 murder of a police drug informant because his state, Texas, applies its own definition of “retardation” based on the character of Lennie Small in John Steinbeck’s 1937 novel Of Mice and Men.

Daniel Cook

Execution: 8 August 2012, aged 51

Flaw: Childhood abuse

The case: Cook was executed for the horrendous strangulation murdersof two men, one aged 16, in 1987. Though there was no doubt about the heinousness of his crimes, his lawyers argued that Cook suffered such appalling abuse as a child that he should have been shown clemency in commuting his sentence to life in prison.

He was abused from infancy into his teenage years, including rape by his mother, step-father, foster parents, grandparents and the manager of a group home where he was resident. Expert witnesses testified at his appeal that he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the abuse, leaving him prone to wild mood swings that could have been a factor behind the murders he committed.