Dates are subject to change due to stays and appeals
Pennsylvania execution dates and stays are generally not listed because the state routinely sets execution dates before all appeals have been exhausted.
| September | ||||||
| 09/15/2012 |
Rodney Berget |
South Dakota |
Stayed | |||
| 09/13/2012 |
Michael Travaglia |
Pennsylvania |
Stayed | |||
|
09/20/2012 |
Ohio |
Executed | 10.35 a.m | |||
|
09/20/2012 09/25/2012 |
Texas Texas |
ExecutedExecuted | 06.43 p.m.
6.43 p.m |
|||
UPDATE OCTOBER 31
Dates are subject to change due to stays and appeals
Pennsylvania execution dates and stays are generally not listed because the state routinely sets execution dates before all appeals have been exhausted.
| OCTOBER 2012 | ||||
| 3 | Terrance Williams | Pennsylvania | Stayed | |
| 9 | Terry Chamberlain | Pennsylvania | Stayed | |
| 10 | Andre Slaton | Pennsylvania | Stayed | |
| 10 | Jonathan Green | Texas | Executed | 10.45 P .M |
| 11 | David Ramtahal | Pennsylvania | Stayed | |
| 18 | Anthony Haynes | Texas | Stayed | |
| 19 | Eric Robert | South Dakota | Executed | 10:43 P.M |
| 23 | John ferguson | Florida | STAYED | |
| 24 | Bobby Hines | Texas | STAYED | |
| 10/28-11/3 | Donald Moeller | South Dakota | Executed 10/30/2012 | 10:24 P.M |
| 31 | Donnie Roberts | Texas | Executed | 6.39 p.m |
July 22, 2012 http://www.oregonlive.com/
SALEM — Oregon death-row inmate Gary Haugen is heading back to court this week in his bid to carry out his death sentence.
Gov. John Kitzhaber granted Haugen an unwanted reprieve on Nov. 22 two weeks before the twice-convicted murderer was to be executed.
The Statesman Journal reports that Timothy Alexander, a senior judge from Washington County, will hear arguments in Haugen’s civil suit on Tuesday in Marion County Circuit Court. He is not expected to decide the case immediately.
Kitzhaber vowed at his Nov. 22 announcement there would be no executions carried out as long as he was governor.
Oregon has executed two people since voters reinstated the death penalty in 1984.
July 18 2012
Hearn showed no apparent unusual reaction to the drug as his execution began. He was pronounced dead at 6:37 p.m., about 25 minutes after the lethal dose began flowing.
Asked by the warden if he wanted to make statement
he said: “I’d like to tell my family, I love you and I wish you all well. I’m ready.”
Last Meal: Same salad being fed to every other thug on the row that day
Update : Condemned prisoner Yokamon Hearn is headed to the Texas death chamber after having his appeals rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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HUNTSVILLE, Texas — An inmate who once bragged about the headlines generated by the carjacking and murder that sent him to death row will be noted in Texas history for a different reason: Yokamon Hearn will be the first prisoner executed under the state’s new single-drug procedure.
Hearn, 33, is set to die Wednesday for the March 1998 fatal shooting of Frank Meziere, a 23-year-old suburban Dallas stockbroker who was abducted at gunpoint while he cleaned his car at a self-service car wash in Dallas. Meziere was driven to an industrial area and shot 10 times before his body was dumped on the side of a road.
Hearn will be the sixth Texas prisoner executed this year, but the first since the Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced its switch to single-drug lethal injections amid a drug shortage that has left states scrambling for acceptable alternatives.
Texas said last week it will now use a single dose of pentobarbital, instead of using the sedative in combination with two other drugs. Ohio became the first state a year ago to use a single drug, and several other states have since made the switch. Courts have upheld the practice, despite death penalty opponents’ claims that it takes prisoners take longer to die with a single drug.
Hearn has not made an appeal based on method of execution or claims of innocence. Instead, his appeals have focused on his mental capacity, the competence of his attorneys and whether recent lower federal court rulings improperly blocked his current lawyers from pursuing appeals.
In 2004, a federal court spared Hearn less than an hour before he could have been taken to the Huntsville death chamber so that it could consider arguments that he was mentally impaired and therefore ineligible for the death penalty.
That appeal subsequently was rejected, and attorneys more recently told the U.S. Supreme Court that while tests show Hearn’s IQ is considerably higher than levels determining mental impairment, he suffers from a fetal alcohol disorder that should disqualify him from execution.
Jason January, the former Dallas County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Hearn for capital murder, dismissed claims that Hearn was disabled.
“He was quite capable of functioning and figuring out how to rob people,” January said this week. “What I really recall is the medical examiner at trial placing demonstrative knitting needles through a Styrofoam head 10 times through and through, depicting the different bullets that went through Meziere’s head.”
Hearn, known to his friends as “Yogi,” was 19 at the time of Meziere’s murder and had a lengthy record that included burglary, robbery, assault, sexual assault and weapons possession.
A security camera video at a convenience store next to the car wash captured images of Hearn with two other Dallas men and a woman from Oklahoma City. They had been out looking for someone to carjack, authorities said.
According to trial testimony, Hearn and Delvin Diles forced Meziere into the stockbroker’s car, and Hearn drove it to an area near Dallas’ wastewater treatment plant. The two others, Dwight Burley and Teresa Shirley, followed in a second car.
Meziere, from Plano, was shot with a stolen, assault-style rifle and then with a .22-caliber pistol. Shirley testified that Hearn shot Meziere with the rifle and then continued to fire after he hit the ground. Diles then shot him with the pistol.
She also testified that Hearn later waved around a newspaper account of the crime and was pleased it said Meziere had been shot in the head, or “domed” in street slang. According to The Dallas Morning News, Hearn told her: “I told you I domed him. I told you. I told you.”
Diles, 19 at the time, pleaded guilty and received consecutive life terms for Meziere’s death and an unrelated aggravated robbery. Shirley, 19, and Burley, then 20, pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and received 10-year prison sentences.
Hearn would be the 483rd inmate executed since Texas resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982. He is among at least nine men with execution dates in the coming months.
June 23, 2012 Source : http://www.delcotimes.com
MEDIA COURTHOUSE — A second Delaware County jury has decided on a death sentence for a Chester man who was convicted nearly two decades ago in the murder of 26-year-old Eileen Jones.
Jurors deliberated for about six hours before returning the repeat-decision for Wayne Smith. The decision capped a life-or-death battle among expert witnesses, which played out this week in a penalty phase trial resulting from Smith’s death-sentence appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Smith, now 56, reportedly showed no reaction when the decision was announced, or when Judge James Bradley remanded him to death row at SCI Rockview — where his death by lethal injection would be imposed. No execution date has been set. The last person to be executed in Pennsylvania was Gary M. Heidnik, on July 6, 1999, under former Gov. Tom Ridge.
Smith is currently serving time in a Greene County prison for the Nov. 18, 1994, strangulation of Jones. The Eddystone mother of two was three months pregnant at the time of death.
Assistant District Attorney Erica Parham, spokeswoman for the D.A.’s office, said she anticipates further legal proceedings.
“However, we are very satisfied with the decision of the jury,” she said. “The jury appropriately determined that the defendant’s prior conviction for voluntary manslaughter of a bar patron with a machete, a commonwealth aggravating factor, outweighed any mitigating factor presented by the defense.”
Under Pennsylvania law, death by lethal injections can only be sought in cases in which aggravating circumstances are present.
Smith was one of two men charged in 1980 in the fatal stabbing of a Chester resident in a bar. He pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge and served a two- to four-year jail term.
The previous conviction was one of two aggravating circumstances cited by the prosecution in 1995. The second was that Jones’ killing occurred during the commission of a second felony of attempted rape.
Parham noted that Ed Martin, Jones’ father, was in the courtroom throughout the week and left about an hour before the jury returned with a decision, shortly before 7:30 p.m.
“He bravely endured the proceedings this week,” Parham said “He has felt the loss of his daughter since 1994. His presence showed his commitment to justice, and the Office of the District Attorney is just as committed.”
Smith was convicted of first-degree murder in May 1995 and given a death sentence. At that time, after the verdict he turned and apologized to the victim’s family for the strangulation.
“I’ll never forgive myself,” said Smith. “I just hope that in time the family and her kids will forgive me,” he added, while beginning to cry.
Jones’ partially clothed body was fished from the waters of Ridley Creek near Ninth Street — between the Chester and Eddystone border — on Nov. 22, 1994.
During the initial trial, the prosecution claimed Smith killed Jones after she rejected his sexual advances. Defense counsel Raymond Williams argued Smith killed the woman while in a cocaine-induced frenzy.
According to testimony given at trial this week, Smith had made an arrangement with Jones that she would give him sex in exchange for cocaine. After several hours spent with the victim, the sexual encounter occurred in a park near the Ninth Street Bridge, where the victim was later found.
Smith told police that at some point the two began wrestling on the ground, according to a statement read in court. He then became afraid that Jones, who is white, would say Smith had raped her. Smith said he did not believe a jury would believe him because he is black.
He strangled the woman and dragged her to the creek where her body was later discovered. Smith would have had to strangle Jones for two-and-a-half to three minutes to choke the life out of her, according to former Delaware County Medical Examiner Dr. Dimitri Contostavlos.
Smith initially lied to police about the murder, but later confessed, according to a taped statement played for the court.
He appealed the death penalty sentence to the state Supreme Court. The court affirmed the murder conviction in 2010, but ordered a new hearing on the death penalty. Because the murder conviction was upheld, only two options remained open to the new jury: Life imprisonment or death.
full story : click here
June 21, 2012 Source : http://thecabin.net
LITTLE ROCK — A federal appeals panel Thursday partially reversed a federal judge’s denial of the appeal of an Arkansas death-row inmate.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis sent Ray Dansby’s appeal back to the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Arkansas for new proceedings.
Dansby was convicted of two counts of capital murder and sentenced to die for the Aug. 24, 1992, fatal shooting of his ex-wife, Brenda Dansby, and her boyfriend, Ronnie Kimble, at Brenda Dansby’s home in El Dorado. Witnesses testified they saw Dansby shoot both victims.
A three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court upheld the dismissal of some of Ray Dansby’s claims on appeal Thursday but reversed the dismissal of two claims. The panel did not address the merits of those claims but said the federal judge’s reasons for dismissing them were erroneous.
Among the witnesses who testified at Dansby’s trial was his former cellmate, Larry McDuffie. The trial judge allowed Dansby’s lawyer to ask McDuffie if prosecutors had offered him leniency in exchange for his testimony, but the judge did not allow other questions about McDuffie’s past dealings with prosecutors.
Dansby argued on appeal that he should have been allowed to try to show that McDuffie was biased by his past dealings with prosecutors. A federal district judge dismissed that claim, saying Dansby had failed to raise the point in state court before raising it in federal court.
In its opinion Thursday, the 8th Circuit said Dansby specifically referenced the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment in a brief to the Arkansas Supreme Court, so the district judge’s ruling that Dansby had not previously raised the claim was in error.
The 8th Circuit also overturned a ruling by the district judge that Dansby’s claim of prosecutorial misconduct — he alleged that prosecutors withheld evidence regarding the credibility of McDuffie — was procedurally faulty. The appeals court said the district judge reached this conclusion without allowing either side to present arguments on the issue.
“The parties were not afforded adequate notice and opportunity to be heard on the issue of procedural default,” Judge Steven Colloton wrote in the 8th Circuit’s opinion.
june 17, 2012 Source : http://www.allgov.com
Oregonian Gary Haugen is having trouble making up his mind whether he wants to live or die. The 49-year-old prisoner has been on death row since 2007 for fatally beating and stabbing fellow inmate David Polin in 2003, while Haugen was serving a life sentence without parole for beating his ex-girlfriend’s mother to death in 1981. Both crimes were exceptionally violent: Polin’s skull was crushed and he had been stabbed 84 times.
June 15, source : http://www.floridatoday.com
Terence Tabius Oliver was given two death sentences in a Viera courtoom Friday for a 2009 double murder.
Oliver, 36, was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder following a jury trial in March. Oliver shot and killed Andrea Richardson, 36, and Krystal Pinson, 25, at Richardson’s Titusville home.
Oliver suspected Pinson, a former girlfriend, was informing police about his whereabouts following other crimes he had committed in Volusia County. According to court documents, he was seen the day before the murders driving about a mile from the scene of the crime, and he was wearing a dreadlock wig to disguise his appearance.
Oliver parked outside the neighborhood and walked to Richardson’s house after dark, carrying a semi-automatic pistol with a full magazine and one round loaded in the chamber. He went through the front door of the house at about 2 a.m. and walked to the back. He shot Pinson as she was laying in bed. Richardson tried to flee toward the rear door of the house.
One of Oliver’s shots went through Richardson’s wrist and grazed his forehead, evidence that he had raised his arms in a defensive way, knowing he was about to be shot, according to police. Oliver fired two more times into Richardson, who was found lying in a fetal position, with his pants around his knees, as he was apparently trying to clothe himself.
Oliver shot Pinson eight times. He also tried to cover up the scene by making it look as if it were a robbery gone wrong.
The cold, calculated and premeditated nature of the murders led to stiffer penalties.
During the trial, Oliver’s defense attempted to show positive sides of his character by pointing out that he finished high school and attended Le Cordon Blue Culinary Academy, planning to be a chef. Oliver’s younger brother, Tyrell, testified that they grew up going to church and Oliver sang gospel songs. Tyrell said he looked up to his older brother.
Judge Robert Wohn sentenced Oliver in agreement with the jury’s 12-0 recommendation for the death penalty. Wohn also sentenced Oliver to life in prison for armed burglary of a dwelling with discharge of a firearm causing death, and five years for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Oliver previously was convicted of other felonies, including a robbery with a deadly weapon in 1995 and resisting arrest in 2002.
Oliver said he was sorry for the losses of the victims, but proclaimed his innocence and quoted from the Bible. He said he loved Pinson and they had been to church together several times.
“If I had a dollar, Krystal got 75 cents,” he said.
“I have a God who sits up high and looks down low,” Oliver said. “You call me a murderer and an animal, which I’m not.”
He admitted to doing things in the past, but said every child makes mistakes. Oliver said he and Richardson were friends who went to school together and had no ill feelings.
Oliver addressed his parents, telling them he loved them and they raised him right. Oliver’s mother ran crying from the courtroom after the sentencing, which took 30 minutes.
“Justice was served today, and it will be served again when he is put to death,” said Sandra Pinson, Krystal’s mother.
June 13, 2012 Source : http://www.texastribune.org
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday threw out the death sentence of Manuel Velez, who was convicted of killing his girlfriend’s infant son in 2005. The decision was based on what the court said was the use of inaccurate expert testimony during Velez’s sentencing.
Velez, who was convicted by a Cameron County jury, will be taken off death row, though he has not been cleared of his conviction. Velez has already filed an appeal of his conviction, said Brian Stull, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union Capital Punishment Project.
Velez’s death sentence was based on testimony from state expert A.P. Merillat, who gave the jury incorrect information about what freedoms Velez would have if not sentenced to death, according to Wednesday’s ruling.
Merillat made it seem Velez “would have a lot of freedom he truly would not have,” Stull said. “And that’s a key issue in Texas — the state has to prove future danger.”
Armando Villalobos, the Cameron County district attorney who was a prosecutor in the case, did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment.
Velez will be represented by lawyers from two private law firms when he appeals his sentence, though Stull said he will be available to Velez as well.
The lawyers have uncovered evidence that injuries to the baby were sustained before Velez lived with him and while Velez was out of the state, Stull said.
The court also found that Velez’s girlfriend had given misleading testimony at the trial, though it did not consider that testimony grounds to reverse the sentence or conviction.
Merillat’s testimony, meanwhile, was also the basis for a previous death sentence that was overturned after ACLU involvement in 2010.
June 13, 2012 Source : http://www.palatkadailynews.com
ST. AUGUSTINE – Convicted killer Timothy Wayne Fletcher should be executed for choking his step-grandmother after a jailbreak, a jury says.
It took the jury an hour to reach the decision Tuesday afternoon, faster than the 98 minutes it took them to find Fletcher guilty of murder and other crimes during a 2009 spree.
The jury voted 8-4 in favor of the death penalty.
“We’re very happy that the jury saw it the way we saw it and that is that the death penalty is appropriate for this case,” Assistant State Attorney Mark Johnson said.
Fletcher was convicted May 25 of killing Helen Key Googe, 66.
The jury’s recommendation of the death penalty concluded a two-day penalty hearing at the St. Johns County courthouse, where the trial was moved because of publicity.
Fletcher, dressed in a white shirt, tie and dark slacks, showed little reaction to the decision.
Several relatives of Googe quietly cried as the stressful first-degree murder trial inched to a close.
Security was heightened for the announcement. Nine deputy sheriffs took up positions near Fletcher before the jury returned to Berger’s courtroom.
As he stood, Fletcher appeared tense. He looked around at the small crowd seated in the courtroom.
Googe, 66, was slain in her home in Bardin, where Fletcher told investigators later he believed she kept several thousand dollars. During video-taped questoning after his capture, Fletcher blamed Googe for her murder, saying she would have left alive had she not fought.
“She was fighting and kicking the whole time,” he said. “She never did quit fighting.”
Authorities say Fletcher stole a jack from a jail transport van and smuggled it into the jail, which he and cellmate Doni Ray Brown used to move a plumbing fixture from the wall.
The pair used the utility corridor behind the wall to reach an inadequately secured door and fled the jail about 2 a.m. on April 15, 2009.
Once outside the jail, they broke into and tried to steal a pickup and van before finding a pickup with keys in it at a tire shop, then drove to Googe’s house.
Fletcher was convicted of escape, first-degree murder, home invasion robbery, grand theft of a motor vehicle and burglary of motor vehicles.
Murder and other charges are pending against Brown.
Fletcher and Brown’s escape highlighted massive problems in the county jail, including security failures, overcrowding and shoddy maintenance.
An investigation cited personnel issues at the jail and resulted in several disciplinary actions after the escape. Paula Carter, the major in charge of the jail, retired. One corrections deputy was fired and seven others were disciplined.
Fletcher consumed methamphetamine inside the jail in the days leading to the jailbreak, according to testimony.
Fletcher and Brown were apprehended at Pomona Park after a massive manhunt three days after their escape.
A majority of the jurors rejected arguments by defense attorney Garry Wood that Fletcher should be spared and sentenced to life in prison. Wood said Fletcher suffered from mental illness and had a history of drug and alcohol abuse dating to adolescence.
Fletcher had a troubled childhood marked by domestic violence, Wood said.
“All of these things together matter,” he said.
Wood described Fletcher as “a mentally ill, abused person.”
Johnson, however, said Fletcher’s actions deserved the ultimate punishment.
“He wrapped his fingers around her neck and squeezed harder and harder,” Johnson said. “Justice cries out that he be sentenced to death.”
The jury’s recommendation of the death penalty triggers another pre-sentence hearing, this time without the jury, likely to be held in July.
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