OCTOBER

UPCOMING EXECUTIONS 2015, UPDATE

UPTADE AUGUST 29, 2015

Month State Inmate
August
13 TX Tracy Beatty – STAYED
18 TN David Miller – STAYED
26 TX Bernardo Tercero (foreign national) STAYED
27 MS Richard Jordan (date requested by Atty. Gen.; not final) EXECUTION HALTED
27 PA Maurice Patterson – STAY LIKELY
28 PA Hector Morales- STAY LIKELY
September
1 MO Roderick Nunley EXECUTED 9:09 PM
2 TX Joe Garza STAYED
3 PA Herbert Blakeney- STAY LIKELY
16 OK Richard Glossip
17 OH Angelo Fears – STAYED*
17 OH William Montgomery – STAYED^
29 TX Perry Williams
October
6 MO Kimber Edwards
6 TN Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman – STAYED
6 TX Juan Garcia
7 OK Benjamin Cole
14 TX Licho Escamilla
28 OK John Grant
28 TX Christopher Wilkins
November
3 TX Julius Murphy
10 TX
Gilmar Guevara
17 OH Cleveland R. Jackson – STAYED*
17 OH Robert Van Hook – STAYED^
17 TN Nicholas Sutton – STAYED
18 TX Raphael Holiday

Upcoming Executions 2015

Month State Inmate
June
5 PA Hubert Michael – STAYED
9 MO Richard Strong – EXECUTED
18 AL Robin Myers – STAYED
18 TX Gregory Russeau EXECUTED 6.49 PM
23 TN Charles Wright – STAYED
July
14 MO David Zink
15 OH Alva Cambell, Jr. – STAYED*
15 OH Warren K. Henness – STAYED
August
12 TX Daniel Lopez
18 TN David Miller – STAYED
26 TX Bernardo Tercero
September
17 OH Angelo Fears – STAYED*
17 OH William Montgomery – STAYED
October
6 TN Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman – STAYED
6 TX Juan Garcia
November
17 OH Cleveland R. Jackson – STAYED*
17 OH Robert Van Hook – STAYED^
17 TN Nicholas Sutton – STAYED

 

TEXAS – Execution – Donnie Lee Roberts – 31/10/2012 – EXECUTED 6.39 p.m

“I’m really sorry. I never meant to cause you all so much pain,” Roberts said to Bowen’s father, who was seated in a chair close to a glass window in the death chamber viewing area. “I hope you can go on with your life.

“I loved your daughter. I hope to God he lets me see her in heaven so I can apologize to her and see her and tell her.”

Roberts also asked two of his friends who watched through another window to tell his own daughter he loved her.

He repeated that he was sorry and took several deep breaths as the lethal dose of pentobarbital began taking effect. He snored briefly before slipping into unconsciousness, and was pronounced dead 23 minutes later.

Last Meal: Same shit salad being fed to every other thug on the row that day

October 30, 2012  http://www.beaumontenterprise.com

This handout photo provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety shows Donnie Roberts. Roberts, a Louisiana parole violator, is set to die Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012, for killing his girlfriend Vicki Bowen at her home in Lake Livingston, Texas, in October 2003. Photo: Texas Department Of Public Safety / AP

HUNTSVILLE, Texas  — Donnie Lee Roberts, convicted in his girlfriend’s 2003 slaying, was taken from his death row cell Wednesday and moved to the Texas prison where executions are carried out, one of the final steps before his scheduled lethal injection.

After the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review Roberts’ case earlier this week, no additional appeals were filed to try to block his execution, which will be the 12th this year in the nation’s most active capital punishment state.

Roberts, now 41, is being put to death for fatally shooting Vicki Bowen and taking items from her East Texas home to sell or trade to support his drug habit. At the time of his arrest for the October 2003 killing, Roberts had violated his probation for a robbery conviction in Louisiana by fleeing to Texas after dropping out of a drug treatment program.

Authorities said he apparently met Bowen, 44, a dental assistant, at a bar and moved in with her at her home on Lake Livingston, about 75 miles northeast of Houston. Their relationship soured because Roberts wasn’t working and was abusing drugs and alcohol, investigators said, and he shot Bowen after she refused his demand for money.

Roberts was arrested at a suspected crack house in Livingston when a truck missing from Bowen’s home was spotted there the same day Bowen’s body was discovered.

“He was cooperative and confessed several times,” District Attorney Lee Hon said. “He was saying he wanted the death penalty.”

Roberts told authorities he made several trips from the house where Bowen was shot, collecting property that he took into town to sell and trade for crack.

He also surprised detectives by confessing to the shotgun death of a man a decade earlier in Natchitoches Parish, La. Louisiana authorities initially believed the victim, Al Crow, had died of asphyxiation in a fire at the camper trailer where he was living but reopened the case following Roberts’ disclosure, found shotgun pellets and determined it was a homicide.

Roberts was charged with murder but not tried for Crow’s death.

Stephen Taylor, one of Roberts’ lawyers at his Texas capital murder trial, said the confessions complicated his trial defense.

“It’s almost like somebody saying he was a serial killer, that he’s killed before and he killed again,” Taylor said. “It’s one thing to say you have the right to remain silent. Use it!

“It’s always sad for someone to lose his life, especially for something so stupid.”

Bowen didn’t show up for work on Oct. 16, 2003, and a co-worker who went to check on her found her body wrapped in a blanket and lying in a pool of blood. A medical examiner determined Bowen was killed with two gunshots to her head.

Roberts took the witness stand and tried to blame Bowen for the gunfire, saying he was acting in self-defense by grabbing a .22-caliber rifle after seeing her reach down inside a couch to locate a pistol that was kept there.

“The jury obviously disagreed,” Hon said.

Evidence at trial showed Roberts had a record for battery while being held in jail in Fulton County, Ga., that he’d threatened his wife to give him money for drugs, and that he demanded a single-person cell in Polk County when he was jailed for Bowen’s murder or there would be another killing.

His robbery conviction in Louisiana was for a Mother’s Day 2001 convenience store holdup in Baton Rouge, La., where the knife-wielding Roberts threatened to slice the throat of the female clerk.

“He was a bad dude, pretty violent,” Hon said.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice Polunsky Unit, where the state’s male death row is housed, has been Roberts’ home since his capital murder conviction in 2004. The unit is just outside Livingston and not far from where Bowen was killed.

On Wednesday, Roberts was moved about 45 miles west to the Huntsville Unit prison, where he is to be executed.

Three more Texas prisoners are set to die in November, including one next week.

SOUTH DAKOTA – EXECUTION DONALD MOELLER, 10/30/2012 EXECUTED 10.24 P.M

Before being given a lethal injection at a South Dakota penitentiary, Moeller, 60, was asked if he had any last words.

‘No sir,’ he said, then added: ‘They’re my fan club?’

Donald Moeller, 60, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls, marking South Dakota’s second execution this month in an unusual surge for a state that has carried out just two other death sentences since 1913. He was pronounced dead at 10:24 p.m.

last meal Tuesday of scrambled eggs, link sausage, tater tots and drip coffee.

OCTOBER 30,2012 http://www.chicagotribune.com

This frame grab provided by KELO-TV shows convicted killer Donald Moeller during a court appearance in Sioux Falls, S.D., Wednesday, July 18, 2012.  Ronal Moeller  Taken: Becky O'Connell was in the fourth grade when she set out to walk a few blocks from home to buy sugar to make lemonade, but never returnedBecky O’Connell

(Reuters) – A man convicted of raping and murdering a 9-year-old girl after kidnapping her from a convenience store in 1990 is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday night in South Dakota, the state’s second execution this month.

Donald Moeller, 60, who had declared his innocence and fought for two decades to prevent his execution, admitted during a court hearing in early October that he had committed the crime and stopped appeals that would further delay his death sentence from being carried out.

His execution is scheduled for 10 p.m. Central Time on Tuesday at the state prison in Sioux Falls.

According to court records, Moeller abducted Becky O’Connell from a Sioux Falls convenience store where she had gone to buy candy and repeatedly raped and stabbed her. Her body was found in a wooded area the next morning with extensive knife wounds.

Moeller was convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to death in 1992, but was granted a new trial after the state Supreme Court ruled that testimony of previous attempted sexual assaults on three other people should not have been permitted.

Moeller was convicted and sentenced to death again in 1997. He continued appeals until recent weeks but at a federal court hearing in early October he admitted the crimes.

“If the rape and murder of Rebecca O’Connell does not deserve the death penalty, then I guess nothing does,” Moeller told the judge, according to court records.

Executions have been rare in South Dakota. Before this year, the state had put to death only two inmates since 1913. On Oct 15, it executed Eric Robert on October 15 for the killing of prison guard Ron Johnson during a failed escape attempt.

If Moeller’s lethal injection is carried out on Tuesday, he will be the 34th inmate executed in the United States in 2012, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

South Dakota covers up source of death penalty drugs ahead of execution

Prison authorities in South Dakota are refusing to release information on contaminated drugs made to order for an execution tonight (30 October).

The so-called ‘DIY drugs’ – doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital produced by a compounding pharmacy for the South Dakota Department of Corrections (DOC) – were used to execute Eric Robert earlier this month, with alarming results. Robert’s eyes opened during the lethal injection process, a sign that he may not have been properly anaesthetised and the execution may have been botched.

The ingredients used to make the drugs used in Eric Robert’s execution – and set to be used this evening in that of Donald Moeller – were found to have been contaminated with fungus.

However, despite these indications that the drugs may be faulty, and therefore carrying a risk of unnecessary suffering for the prisoner, South Dakota has thus far refused to disclose any information on how they were obtained.

The drugs are known to have been made by a compounding pharmacy – a service which allows batches of drugs to be made up to order, thereby allowing customers to bypass mainstream pharmaceutical suppliers which face more comprehensive regulation. The compounding pharmacy industry has been in the spotlight lately after reports linked it to a widespread outbreak of meningitis in the US.

South Dakota DOC had previously intended to use drugs they had illegally imported from a supplier in India in the executions, but these drugs expired last month.

Maya Foa, investigator for the legal charity Reprieve said: “The use of these DIY execution drugs means that we have little idea of just what is being injected into prisoners’ veins. It is no surprise that prison authorities appear so desperate to cover up any information on where they have come from, or who made them. The South Dakota Department of Corrections must come clean: it is indefensible for the ultimate punishment to be carried out in this slipshod and unaccountable manner.”

FLORIDA – mentally ill death row inmate gets stay of execution – FERGUSON

october 21,2012 http://www.globalpost.com

John Errol Ferguson will add another week to the 34 years he has been on death row in Florida. The convicted mass killer was granted a stay of execution by a federal judge on Saturday. 

Defense attorneys have argued for decades that Ferguson is mentally ill and that putting him to death would be “cruel and unusual punishment”.

He execution was originally scheduled for Tuesday

“The issues raised merit full, reflective consideration,” the court said when US. District Judge Daniel T. K. Hurley granted the motion for a stay.

Ferguson’s attorneys told AP that the court will hear three hours of arguments on his habeas corpus petition on Friday. His lawyers are arguing that Ferguson is unfairly on death row because the court used an old and outdated definition of competency.

They contend that Ferguson is insane and that a 2007 US Supreme Court ruling prohibits the state from executing him, reports AP. 

“In order for the state to execute him, Mr. Ferguson must have a rational understanding of the reason for, and effect of, his execution,” Chris Handman, an attorney for Ferguson, told AP in an emailed statement.

“A man who thinks he is the immortal Prince of God and who believes he is incarcerated because of a Communist plot quite clearly has no rational understanding of the effect of his looming execution and the reason for it.”

Ferguson was convicted of the July 1977 murders of six people during a home-invasion robbery, reports the Miami Herald.  He was convicted separately of posing as a police officer and murdering two teenagers in January 1978.

Ferguson has had a long history with mental illness and crime. In 1971, he was declared psychotic and incompetent by a court-appointed doctor years before his first murder, reports the Tampa Bay Tribune.

“He is completely paranoid. A schizophrenic,” Handman, whose law firm, Hogan Lovells, has represented Ferguson pro bono for more than 30 years, told the Miami Herald.

“When you meet him, he is deeply suspicious of your motives. He has a very tenuous grasp on reality.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEXAS – High court stops execution of Houston cop killer Anthony Haynes

OCTOBER 18, 2012 http://abclocal.go.com

HUNTSVILLE, TX — The U.S. Supreme Court stopped the execution Thursday of a 33-year-old Texas prisoner for gunning down an off-duty Houston police sergeant 14 years ago.

Anthony Haynes had been set to die for the shooting death of Sgt. Kent Kincaid, 40, while the officer was with his wife driving in their own vehicle not far from home. Their SUV had been struck by an object from a pickup truck, cracking its windshield. When Kincaid got out to talk to the people in the truck and told them he was a police officer, he was shot in the head.

The high court ruling came about three hours before Haynes could have been taken to the death chamber.

Haynes confessed to the May 1998 slaying, was tried for capital murder the following year and sentenced to death.

His lethal injection would have been the 11th this year in Texas, the nation’s most-active death penalty state. Another is set for next week.

Evidence showed the object that hit the Kincaids’ SUV was a .25-caliber bullet from the same gun used to shoot him. Testimony at Haynes’ 1999 trial in Houston showed that same evening Haynes had committed a series of armed robberies.

Haynes’ trial lawyers showed “virtual abdication of their duty” by failing to more fully investigate and present evidence of Haynes’ good character to jurors who were deciding his punishment, his appeals attorney, A. Richard Ellis, told the high court in his appeal.

He also contended prosecutors unfairly painted Haynes, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, “as an out-of-control, violent and unpredictable individual who was subject to intermittent fits of rage.”

“This picture was totally at variance with his actual character,” Ellis said.

The appeal also faulted attorneys at earlier stages of Haynes’ appeals for not addressing the trial defense issues and contended lower court rulings and Texas appeals procedures unfairly kept Haynes from raising the claims now. Similar appeals in recent Texas death penalty cases have failed to win reprieves from the high court although at least one other did. That case, involving prisoner John Balentine, is set for conference before the justices for later this month.

The arguments center on a Supreme Court ruling favorable to an Arizona prisoner who couldn’t find a way to make an appeal under procedures in that state. Texas attorneys argued the statutes in Texas were different, did allow for appeals like the one Haynes wanted considered and that courts had determined the Arizona ruling had no effect in Texas.

State attorneys contesting Hayne’s appeal argued his previous attorneys didn’t abandon him and shouldn’t be considered ineffective because they chose issues different from those now being pursued by Ellis.

“Haynes does not now present any compelling reasons for this court to review his claims,” Jeremy Greenwell, an assistant Texas attorney general, told the justices.

Greenwell pointed out evidence of Haynes’ history of explosive temper outbursts, of police being summoned to deal with his threats against a school nurse and an ROTC instructor, that he assaulted his 3-year-old sister and tried to kill the family dog.

“He was no angel,” Mark Vinson, the Harris County district attorney who prosecuted Haynes, recalled last week.

Kincaid’s wife couldn’t describe the shooter and provided only a cursory description of the truck but said she was certain her husband identified himself as a police officer, a distinction important in that it allowed prosecutors to try Haynes for capital murder and make him death-penalty eligible. Haynes’ trial lawyers said he didn’t know the man who approached was an officer and feared for his own safety.

One of the robbery victims earlier the evening of the shooting identified a companion of Haynes as participating in the holdup, and that led detectives to Haynes. He took police to separate sites miles apart where he left the gun and ammunition clip.

TEXAS – EXECUTION TODAY- ANTHONY HAYNES – 6 p.m STAYED

October 18, 2012 

Anthony Haynes, 33, would be the 11th inmate executed this year in Texas and the 33rd in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The execution is scheduled for after 6 p.m. (2300 GMT) in Huntsville.

Haynes fired a shot from his truck at a Jeep Cherokee carrying off-duty Houston police officer Kent Kincaid and his wife, Nancy, according to an account of the case from the Texas attorney general’s office.

The officer got out of his Jeep and approached Haynes‘ truck, telling him that he was a police officer and asking to see his driver’s license, the account said.

Nancy Kincaid said during Haynes’ trial that her husband was reaching for his badge when the driver shot him in the head, according to a Houston Chronicle account at the time.

“(The driver) pulled his hand up and I saw the flash and I heard the pop,” Nancy Kincaid testified. “That was the end. He then went down.”

Kent Kincaid was declared brain-dead at the hospital.

That same night, Haynes had committed several armed robberies, Texas officials say.

“I’m not a vicious psychopath who goes around wanting to take people’s lives,” Haynes told the Houston Chronicle in a 2001 death row interview. “There was no intent to kill a cop. He did not ID himself until a second before I shot him.”

Haynes has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, raising questions about whether his trial lawyers were effective.

Related articles

These two men were both 19 when they were sentenced to death

Anthony Cardell Haynes

Anthony Haynes claimed he didn’t know that Kent Kincaid was a Houston police sergeant when he shot him in the head back in 1998. Kincaid was off-duty and driving his personal vehicle when Haynes drove by; something cracked Kincaid’s windshield, and he reportedly thought Haynes had thrown something at him. He followed Haynes, and when the 19-year-old stopped his car, Kincaid approached him. Kincaid said he was a police officer, but Haynes later said he didn’t know whether to believe him. When Kincaid reached behind his back, presumably for a badge, Haynes pulled out a .25-caliber gun and shot him.

Anthony Haynes

Anthony Haynes

Haynes blamed the tragedy in part on drugs and falling in with a bad crowd of people who reportedly made a game out of shooting at the windshields of passing cars and then robbing the drivers after they stopped. As it happened, the crack in Kincaid’s windshield was made by a bullet. Jurors in Haynes’ case deliberated for three days before sentencing the teen to death.

That sentence was overturned, however, after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Haynes’ defense that an unusual jury-selection setup in Haynes’ case had denied his right to equal protection under law. Indeed, two different judges presided over Haynes’ jury selection; one heard prosecutors interview individual jurors, and a second heard the lawyers’ arguments for striking from service the potential jurors. As it turned out, the state used its power to strike all but one of the black potential jurors, arguing that it was not their race that excluded them (which would be illegal), but their “demeanor.” But Haynes’ appeal attorney argued that the judge who allowed those strikes had not actually witnessed the jurors’ questioning and thus could not actually have seen whether their demeanor would be a basis on which to have them struck. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately disagreed with the 5th Circuit, ruling that there was no rule that would require a judge to “personally observe” the juror questioning when deciding whether a juror is lawfully struck from service.

Haynes is scheduled for execution today, Oct. 18. STAYED

Bobby Lee Hines

Hines

Hines

Bobby Lee Hines was also just 19 when he was sentenced to death for the robbery and strangling of 26-year-old Michelle Haupt in her Dallas apartment. Now, 20 years later, he’s scheduled to die for that crime on Oct. 24. But his attorney, Lydia Brandt, argues that Hines’ execution should, once again, be stayed while the courts consider whether his lawyers have done enough to save his life.

Hines was convicted of the 1991 murder of Haupt, who was stabbed repeatedly with an ice pick and strangled with a cord inside her apartment. Hines had been staying next door with the apartment complex’s maintenance man. Police found items from Haupt’s apartment, including packs of cigarettes and a bowl of pennies, under a couch where Hines had been sleeping.

Hines’ first date with death was stayed in 2003, while the courts considered a claim that he was mentally retarded and thus ineligible for execution. Although Hines had a diagnosed learning disability and was considered emotionally disturbed, the courts ruled that he didn’t meet the criteria for relief. His execution date was reset for June 2012, but was stayed again so that further DNA testing could be performed. The DNA evidence confirmed Hines’ guilt and once again his execution was back on.

Now, Brandt is again seeking a stay, arguing that Hines’ case has been plagued by ineffective assistance of counsel. Brandt’s latest appeal, filed Oct. 10 with the Court of Criminal Appeals, argues that none of Hines’ defense attorneys ever investigated his background for mitigating evidence that could have swayed a jury to sentence him to life in prison. Hines had a “nightmarish” childhood that featured chronic abuse by his racist, alcoholic father, and later by foster parents, and was profoundly affected by his mother’s decision to abandon him as a young child. But the jury never heard anything of Hines’ troubled background. The question now before the CCA is whether the prior counsel’s failings can create an avenue for reconsidering Hines’ punishment. Brandt believes it should: “Fundamental rules of equity will not suffer a right to be without a remedy,” reads the appeal

FLORIDA – Mentally ill death row inmate who believes he is the Prince of God WILL be executed after judge rules he is ‘sane’ – FERGUSON STAYED

October 15, 2012 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

A convicted killer in South Florida, who claims to be the prince of god, is one step closer to being put to death.

John Errol Ferguson has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and despite his mental illness, Circuit Judge David Allen Glant ruled on Friday that the 64-year-old is still competent to be executed next week.

Ferguson has been on death row for 34 years, after he was sentenced to death in 1978 for killing eight people.

Ferguson was found guilty in the deaths of six victims, who were killed in a drug related, execution-style mass killing in Carol City in 1977.

He was also convicted of killing two teenagers on their way to a church meeting in 1978.

But Ferguson has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and he believes is the anointed prince of god. His lawyers appealed his death sentence on the grounds that it is ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ for him to be executed given his mental state.

The United States Supreme Court has found that while the death penalty does not qualify as ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ prohibited in the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, the execution of inmates that are mentally retarded is a violation of a person’s constitutional right.

But a judge ruled on Friday that despite the inmate’s history of mental illness, ‘there is no evidence that he does not understand’ that he will be put to death as a consequence for his crimes. 

Glant also observed that Ferguson’s belief that he is the ‘Prince of God’ and expectation that he will have a place at the ‘right-hand’ of God following his death, are beliefs that are not ‘significantly different than beliefs other Christians may hold.’

Glant’s ruling upheld Florida Governor Rick Scott’s finding that the execution should proceed.

Ferguson’s defense lawyer Christopher Handman has appealed Glant’s decision to the Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee.

‘It is impossible to fathom that the State can constitutionally put to death a man who thinks he is the Prince of God and who believes he has a destiny of being the right hand of God and returning to purify earth,’ Handman, told the Miami Herald.

‘Nationally-recognized experts in neuropsychiatry and forensic psychology examined John and testified that he lacks a rational understanding of why he is being put to death,’ his lawyer added. 

As the legal proceedings play out, the Supreme Court has issued a temporary stay of execution, which is scheduled for next Thursday. 

But one of the victim’s family has said it is time for justice to be served.

‘Our tax dollars have been keeping Ferguson alive. Free food, medical care and the ability to communicate with his loved ones and lawyers,’ Michael Worley, whose sister Belinda was killed by Ferguson, said.

‘My sister was brutally killed at the age of 17. Her murder shattered our entire family. Life was never the same.’