Inmates on the death row

TEXAS – CCA Denies DNA Testing in Swearingen Case

UPDATE

 

Court Reverses DNA Testing Decision in Swearingen Case

The state’s highest criminal court on Wednesday unanimously reversed a lower court’s decision to allow further DNA testing in the case of death row inmate Larry Swearingen, sending his case back to a district court for further proceedings.

Swearingen was sentenced to death in 2000 after he was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing 19-year-old Melissa Trotter in Montgomery County. His lawyers say DNA testing on evidence found near Trotter’s body could prove his innocence, but prosecutors say further testing is unnecessary.

James Rytting, a lawyer representing Swearingen, said he would revisit the present motion for further DNA testing now that the case is before the district court once again.

“They remanded it,” Rytting said of the Court of Criminal Appeals’ decision. “They didn’t say DNA testing is completely forbidden.”

Bill Delmore, the Montgomery County assistant district attorney prosecuting Swearingen’s case, said he would ask the court to set another execution date, adding that there was a “mountain of evidence” of Swearingen’s guilt.

“Here we are, back where we started,” he said.

february 5, 2014

Death row inmate Larry Swearingen cannot prove that biological materials exist on evidence connected to the 1998 murder of Melissa Trotter – including on the alleged murder weapon – and therefore is not entitled to DNA testing of those items, the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled this morning.

Swearingen was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1998 murder of 19-year-old Trotter, a Montgomery County community college student who disappeared from her college campus on Dec. 8, 1998. Her body was found several weeks later, by a group of hunters, in the Sam Houston National Forest near Lake Conroe.

Swearingen was seen with Trotter on campus not long before she disappeared. He has maintained his innocence and has been seeking DNA testing for a decade. Among the never-before-tested items of evidence are two lengths of pantyhose – one used to strangle Trotter, found around her neck, the other later found by Swearingen’s former landlord inside a house Swearingen and his wife had previously rented from the man.

The state maintains that visual comparison proves the two pieces came from a single pair of hose. Neither piece has ever been subjected to DNA analysis.

In ruling against Swearingen on Wednesday, Judge Paul Womack wrote for the unanimous court that a district court ruling that last year approved the requested DNA testing would be overturned because Swearingen “cannot prove the existence of biological material” that could be tested. Although the defense presented to the district court expert testimony that biological evidence would “likely” be found on the pantyhose that is not enough to secure testing, the court ruled. “[W]e have explicitly held that appellee must prove biological material exists and not that it is merely probable.”

In other words, without testing, there can be no testing.

The court’s conclusion also precludes any testing of cigarette butts found near Trotter’s body or of Trotter’s clothes, absent a showing that biological material exists on each item.

Only finger nail scrapings taken from Trotter are considered “biological evidence per se” and thus not restricted by the need to prove DNA exists before testing can be done. Only some of the collected scrapings were tested, and material found from under one of Trotter’s fingernails produced DNA from an unknown male.

Still, that result is not enough to convince the court that if additional testing were to be performed it would do anything to convince a jury of Swearingen’s innocence. “In order to be entitled to DNA testing,” Womack wrote for the court, “[Swearingen] must show by a preponderance of the evidence (51%) that he would not have been convicted if the exculpatory results were available at trial.”

Indeed, the unidentified profile previously identified was presented to Swearingen’s jury, the court notes, apparently without effect. “Since the jury already was aware that an unidentified male’s DNA was found under the victim’s fingernails, we fail to see how other such results would have changed its verdict,” Womack wrote. “The jury chose to believe that the foreign DNA either was contamination or that it came rom outside the context of the crime.” In short, the court concluded, Swearingen “cannot show that new testing would lead to a different result.”

During a December hearing on the matter before the CCA, Montgomery County prosecutor Bill Delmore told the court that the mountain of circumstantial evidence against Swearingen is insurmountable and that even if further DNA testing revealed additional evidence from another male – even from a known “serial killer” – that he would conclude only that Swearingen had an accomplice. “Nothing will ever convince me of his innocence,” Delmore said.

FLORIDA – Carlie Brucia’s killer appeals death sentence – Joseph Smith

february 5, 2014 (mysuncoast.com)

Carlie BruciaSARASOTA, Fla. – The man convicted of killing 11-year-old Carlie Brucia in 2004 is appealing his death sentence to Florida’s Supreme Court. 

Joseph Smith was found guilty of the 2004 kidnapping, sexual battery and murder of the young girl in Sarasota County.  Smith’s attorney claims a number of errors in his trial led to his death sentence.

Florida’s Supreme Court judges will hear the argument Wednesday.  Smith’s appeal requests a new trial or penalty phase.

This is the second appeal for Smith, who is currently on death row in a Tallahassee prison

 

 

Carlie Brucia

With 132 Death Row Inmates Readied for Execution, Lawyers Contest Fast-Track Law Before Florida Justices

February 4, 2014 (flaglerlive.com)

A new law intended to speed up executions did little to change the status quo, an attorney representing the state told the Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday.

But a lawyer representing Death Row inmates argued that the “Timely Justice Act” is premised on a faulty list that violates the constitutionally protected separation of powers as well as inmates’ rights to due process.

More than 150 lawyers and Death Row inmates are challenging the law, signed by Gov. Rick Scott in June.

The law requires the Supreme Court clerk to give the governor a certified list of Death Row inmates whose initial state and federal appeals have been exhausted. The law orders the governor to sign death warrants for the condemned on the list within 30 days and to direct the warden to schedule their executions within 180 days — but only once the executive clemency process has been completed. Scott and his lawyers maintain that the clemency process ends when the governor signs a warrant.

In October, then-Supreme Court Clerk Tom Hall certified to Scott an initial list of 132 inmates who are at least partially “warrant ready” under the requirements of the law.

Scott has signed four death warrants since the law went into effect. Prior to that, Scott ordered nine executions since taking office in 2011.

Marty McClain, who represented the lawyers and inmates during oral arguments before the court on Tuesday morning, said the “warrant ready” list was flawed and included some Death Row convicts whose litigation was still pending.

But Assistant Attorney General Carol Dittmar told the justices that “the list is just to provide for information purposes” and did not change the process by which warrants are signed by the governor. Lawmakers who sponsored the legislation said it was intended to shorten the time between conviction and execution, which now is longer than two decades.

“It seems that the argument being made is that the Timely Justice Act was all for show and didn’t actually change anything,” McClain argued. “Certainly that was not what was expressed by the Legislature at the time. They meant to make changes.”

Some of the justices took issue with McClain’s argument that the Legislature had encroached on their power by forcing their administrator to generate the list.

Justice R. Fred Lewis said he found “difficult to understand why it’s unconstitutional for this court to give information” because that is “very natural and normal” within court operations.

Justice Barbara Pariente suggested that, although “we may not all agree that this is the best policy,” the court could add more information to the list and give lawyers representing Death Row inmates the chance to show why their clients should not be included on it before sending it to the governor.

And she pointed out that there is nothing in the new law that prohibits the court from issuing a stay once a warrant has been signed, pointing to the case of Ray Swafford, whose execution was halted by the court hours before he was scheduled to be put to death in 1990. Swafford, who was deemed “warrant ready” by Hall in October, has spent 28 years on Death Row for the abduction, rape and murder of a gas station attendant in Volusia County.

In November, the Florida high court vacated Swafford’s sentence and ordered a new trial based on new DNA evidence. But McClain said the Swafford case was a perfect example why the law is problematic.

Swafford had at least five appeals before the court ordered a new trial in the fall, McClain pointed out.

“Twenty-one years after the conviction, the information develops. He could have been executed in 1990,” McClain said.

MISSOURI – Death row inmate appeals over police beating – Reginald Clemons

February 5, 2014

JEFFERSON CITY — An attorney for a Missouri man who has been on death row for two decades asked the state Supreme Court on Tuesday to overturn his conviction, asserting that prosecutors suppressed evidence indicating he may have been beaten into confessing.

Reginald Clemons is one of four people who were convicted or pleaded guilty to the 1991 deaths of sisters Julie and Robin Kerry, who prosecutors say were shoved off a St. Louis bridge into the Mississippi River after being raped.

Clemons was scheduled to die by lethal injection in June 2009. But a federal appeals court blocked the execution, and the state Supreme Court then appointed a special judge to investigate Clemons’ claims that he was wrongly convicted.

After a lengthy legal process, Judge Michael Manners issued a report last year concluding that prosecutors suppressed evidence that police may have beaten Clemons while questioning him.

Manners noted that former bail investigator Warren Weeks came forward in 2012 to say he had observed a bump the size of a golf ball or baseball on Clemons’ cheek a few hours after his police interview. Weeks had recorded that on a form at the time, but Manners said it was crossed out by someone on behalf of the state’s prosecution.

Manners wrote in his report that, had Weeks’ testimony been provided to Clemons’ attorneys, it “may have resulted” in a trial court ruling that Clemons’ confession could not be used at his trial.

The arguments before the Supreme Court on Tuesday focused on whether that would have created “a reasonable probability” that Clemons would not have been convicted.

Clemons’ attorney, Joshua Levine of New York, argued that a new trial was necessary because the confession was a critical piece of evidence.

“It’s a somewhat offensive proposition, the notion that a physically coerced confession that is the centerpiece of the state’s case could somehow not be something that results in a new trial for a defendant,” Levine told the Supreme Court. “Give Mr. Clemons what he’s been looking for all these years, which is just a fair trial.”

Clemons, who now is 43, was 19 at the time of the crimes. His parents and a busload of supporters traveled from the St. Louis area to watch Tuesday’s Supreme Court arguments.

“The whole trial was based on a lie, and based on a false confession,” said Maxine Johnson, who described herself as a “prayer warrior” for Clemons.

PAMPA-TX -Testimony ends in Hank Skinner’s DNA hearing

february 5, 2014

PAMPA — A Texas Department of Public Safety expert testified Tuesday that genetic material found on a knife at the scene of a 1993 triple homicide was consistent with Hank Skinner’s DNA profile, but the death row inmate’s defense team maintains that another man killed the family.

Georgette Oden, an assistant attorney general, quizzed DPS expert Brent Hester about a battery of DNA testing results during an evidentiary hearing at the Gray County courthouse.

Testimony ended Tuesday in the two-day hearing, but attorneys for both sides are expected to submit further briefs to District Judge Steven Emmert after court transcripts are completed.

The hearing focused on whether it is “reasonably probable” that Skinner, now 51, would have been acquitted if all DNA evidence in the case had been presented at his 1995 trial, according to court records.

Skinner was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to die in the slayings of Twila Jean Busby, 40, and her sons — 22- year-old Elwin “Scooter” Caler and 20-year-old Randy Busby.

Skinner has claimed he was too intoxicated to have slain the Busbys because he drank vodka and took codeine on the night of the killings.

After the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted Skinner’s execution three times due to changing post-conviction law, prosecutors agreed to allow DNA testing, and both sides now have received the results.

Hester, a DPS analyst from the Lubbock crime lab, testified Tuesday that genetic material recovered from the blade of a knife found on the front porch of the victims’ home could be linked to Skinner. Forensic tests on the knife blade, he said, proved the presence of blood on the weapon, and the material found on the knife contained DNA traces from Skinner, Caler and Busby.

“We do not say it was that person’s DNA,” Hester said of how DPS interprets DNA results recovered from a crime scene. “They are not consistent solely with him, but they are consistent with him being a possible contributor.”

Hester also testified that some DNA recovered from the crime scene was contaminated with his DNA and that of a former court reporter who handled evidence in the case. The longtime forensic scientist also testified that some genetic material recovered from a carpet stain, door handles in the home and a door frame could be tied to Skinner.

Hester also said DNA from an unknown individual also was located in the carpet stain, which was in a bedroom where the two male victims were found. Hester said that genetic material could have been deposited when the carpet was originally laid and could have come from nearly anyone who visited the Busby home at 804 E. Campbell St. in Pampa.

Robert Owen, Skinner’s attorney, said after the hearing that testimony showed minute traces of DNA from an unknown person and Twila Busby’s blood had been found on a dish towel that had been left in a plastic bag at the crime scene.

Owen also said the prosecution has claimed that Skinner stabbed Randy Busby in the back while he lay on his bunk bed, but Owen said testimony presented during the hearing casts doubt on the state’s theory.

“If Mr. Skinner stabbed Randy Busby in the manner claimed by the state, Mr. Skinner’s blood should have been on the blanket of Randy’s bed. It was not. If Mr. Skinner’s hands were covered with the victims’ blood when he staggered out of the house, their blood should have been mixed with his on the doorknobs he touched. It was not,” Owen said in a statement.

Owen said a state expert’s testimony also indicated that three of four hairs found in Twila Busby’s hand — hairs the defense said contain DNA consistent with a maternal relative of the victims — were “visually dissimilar” to the victim’s own hair. That testimony, he said, supports the defense team’s conclusion that Robert Donnell, Twila Busby’s now-deceased uncle, killed the Pampa family.

“The state presented no compelling evidence that the hairs could have come from another maternal relative. In fact, Ms. Busby’s mother stated under oath before Mr. Skinner’s trial that she had not been inside the house in the preceding four months,” Owen said in a statement.

Owen also said he was disappointed that Emmert did not allow testimony from a key witness about a jacket found at the crime scene. The witness was prepared to testify the now-missing jacket belonged to Donnell.

“At the DNA hearing, Mr. Skinner sought to present testimony from a witness who can positively identify the jacket as Donnell’s, and to have his DNA expert explain how testing could have confirmed Donnell’s DNA on the jacket,” Owen said in a statement. “We respectfully disagree with this decision. In our view, this evidence is at the center of the case. It shows why a jury that heard all the evidence, including DNA results, would have harbored a reasonable doubt about Mr. Skinner’s guilt.”

Owen also noted that much of the DNA evidence gathered in the case was mishandled, contaminated or lost.

Owen indicated in his statement that “doubts about Hank Skinner’s guilt are far too great to allow his execution to proceed, particularly where the state’s utter failure to safeguard key pieces of evidence may make it impossible to resolve those questions conclusively.”

(Source: Amarillo Globe News)

Condemned South Bay killer gets off California’s death row – Miguel Bacigalupo

February 4, 2014 (timesheraldonline)

A condemned Santa Clara County killer has been sprung from death row after nearly three decades, spared the possibility of execution because prosecutorial misconduct was found to have marred his 1987 trial.

The District Attorney’s Office on Tuesday notified a judge that it will not retry the penalty phase of Miguel Bacigalupo’s murder case, satisfied he will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole unless he can overturn his murder convictions in further appeals.

In an unusual ruling, the California Supreme Court in 2012 scrapped Bacigalupo’s death sentence, finding that the prosecution’s failure to turn over key evidence tainted his 1987 trial. The Supreme Court left intact Bacigalupo’s convictions for murdering two brothers in a San Jose jewelry store in 1983, but concluded the misconduct could have tarnished the jury’s decision to recommend the death penalty.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen could have retried the penalty phase, but opted for a life sentence instead of pursuing another trial so many years after the crime.

“I decided, in the interests of justice, not to retry the penalty phase because … it is unlikely that a jury would return a death verdict more than 30 years after these murders,” Rosen said in a statement.

The Supreme Court found that the lead prosecutor in the original case — Joyce Allego, who later became a judge and retired from the bench last year — and her lead investigator did not reveal crucial evidence to the defense that a Colombian drug cartel was heavily involved in the murders. The evidence was crucial to Bacigalupo’s trial defense.

Robert Bryan, Bacigalupo’s lawyer, said Tuesday he is pressing forward with an appeal in federal court to overturn the murder convictions based on the same misconduct.

“The system worked,” Bryan said of the DA’s decision to drop the death penalty. “But the system only worked after sputtering, kicking and growling.”

The lengthy legal battle stems from Bacigalupo’s conviction for killing Jose Luis Guerrero and Orestes Guerrero, owners of a jewelry store on The Alameda. At trial, Allegro argued that Bacigalupo shot the brothers in a basic jewelry heist, mocking his claim that the Colombian mafia ordered him the carry out the murders or risk the death of his family.

But evidence unearthed in the ensuing decades suggested that the prosecution team, particularly lead investigator Sandra Williams, had strong information from a confidential informant that supported Bacigalupo’s defense. And that material was never turned over to defense lawyers at trial.

Bacigalupo was unlikely to face execution soon. California has not had an execution in eight years as a result of legal battles over its lethal injection method, and none are expected at least in the next year on a death row with more than 740 inmates.

Howard Mintz covers legal affairs. Contact him at 408-286-0236 or follow him at Twitter.com/hmintz

TEXAS -Day two of death row inmate Hank Skinner’s evidentiary hearing

february 4. 2014

Texas: Assistant attorney general tears down Skinner defense witness

During cross examination of defense witness Dr. Julie Heinig, PhD, a DNA expert from Cincinnati, Ohio, Georgette Oden, an assistant state attorney general, began a systematic dismantling of Heinig’s credentials as an expert witness.

Oden began by pointing out inconsistencies in Heinig’s education, and the witness’ lack of complete training with DNA evidence testing.

As an example, Oden brought out that of the 10 publications written by Heinig for her PhD., five were about lamprey eel research and two were in DNA fingerprint analysis.

Oden then asked if it’s true that Heinig’s employer, DNA Diagnostics Center, does DNA testing for the “Maury Povich Show,” a tabloid television talk show also based in Cincinnati. The lab is often called upon to perform DNA testing in child custody cases that are aired on the TV show.

Heinig answered yes, and Oden countered with, “Then it’s true that your employer’s DNA testing regimens do not follow the standard procedure of the Ohio Department of Public Safety’s crime lab?”

Heinig again answered yes.

Cross examination by Oden then delved into the defense’s contention that many of the blood samples taken were not conclusive for Hank Skinner’s DNA.

In her questioning, Oden asked Heinig if there were any samples of mixed blood that could have excluded Skinner from the crime scene. DNA testing done by the state proved it was inclusive on whether Skinner’s DNA was in those blood samples.

Heining agreed that the tests did not exclude Skinner from the crime scene.

Four hairs were found on Twila Busby’s hand at the crime scene but were not tested. Busby and her two sons were the victims in the brutal triple homicide on Dec. 31, 1993. Skinner was Busby’s live-in boyfriend.

The defense had earlier questioned why the hairs weren’t tested.

The state then brought as its witness John Lan Bundy, a former trace analyst for the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Lab in Lubbock, whose responsibility at the time was identifying the hairs found on Busby’s hand.

Bundy testified that of those four hairs, one was an animal hair and the other three were not sufficient for laboratory testing because they weren’t attached to their roots.

DNA cannot be taken from a hair unless it has a root and there are obvious differences between human hair and animal hair, he said.

At that point, the state passed the witness to the defense, who chose not to cross examine Bundy.

The hearing recessed shortly after 5 p.m. and will reconvene at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Pampa, TX – Day two has just come to a close after some 6 hours of discussion, both the state and Hank Skinner’s defense team have rested their cases.

What happens next, is both sides will submit a proposed fining report, basically explaining to the judge why they think he should side with them. After court transcripts are filed, the state and the defense team have 21 days to make those reports. After three weeks, the judge will make a decision.

No official decision has been made regarding death row inmate Hank Skinner. Over the last two days, his defense team tried to create reasonable doubt surrounding evidence that was collected from the 1993 crime scene. The state says DNA points to Skinner as the killer of Twila Busby and her two sons.

(Source: NewsChannel 10)

Why so many death row inmates in America will die of old age

february 3, 2014 (economist.com)

GARY ALVORD, a Florida man who was sentenced to death for strangling three women, died in May 2013—of natural causes. He had been on death row for nearly 40 years. The state never executed him because he was “too crazy to be killed“, as the Tampa Bay Times put it: “In 1984, he was sent to a state hospital in Chattahoochee to be restored to competence. But doctors there refused to treat him, citing the ethical dilemma of making a patient well just so that he could be killed. He was quietly returned to death row in 1987 and remained there ever since. His final appeal expired in 1998.”

Alvord’s case was extreme, but condemned prisoners in America typically spend a very long time waiting to die. The appeals process drags on for decades. It is endlessly painstaking because no one wants to see an innocent prisoner executed. Even the most enthusiastic advocates of capital punishment know that such a miscarriage of justice would undermine their cause. For prisoners who are actually put to death, the average time that elapses between sentence and execution has risen from six years in the mid-1980s to 16.5 years now. And even that startling figure makes the process sound quicker than it is, since most condemned prisoners will never be put to death. It’s simple maths.

At the end of 2011, there were 3,082 prisoners on state and federal death rows in America. That year, 43 were executed. At the current rate (which is slowing) a condemned prisoner has a one-in-72 chance of being executed each year. Since the average death row inmate was 28 when first convicted, it seems unlikely that more than a fraction of them will ever meet the executioner. In 2011 24 condemned prisoners died of natural causes and 70 had their sentences commuted or overturned. (There were 80 fresh death sentences passed in 2011, so the number of people on death row shrank by 57.)

We can expect the number who die of old age to increase. The death penalty was restored only in 1976, so nearly everyone on death row was convicted after that date, and most were young when convicted. As they get older, more will start to die each year of heart attacks, strokes and cancer. Conditions on death row are grim; inmates age fast. They are often locked up in a solitary cell for 23 hours a day. Throughout this time, they live in fear that soon they will be strapped to a gurney and pumped full of lethal chemicals. Some lawyers argue that death row itself amounts to a cruel and unusual punishment of the sort the constitution forbids.

FLORIDA – Convicted killer Emilia Carr’s lawyer argues appeal before Florida Supreme Court

february 3, 2014 (Ocala)

Counsel for a Marion County woman sentenced to death row argued for a sentence reversal before the Florida Supreme Court Monday morning, stating his client is less culpable in the crime than her co-defendant — who is serving life imprisonment for the same offense.

Standing before the panel in Tallahassee, Emilia Carr’s attorney, Christopher S. Quarles, argued the Supreme Court should rule on the issue instead of choosing another remedy: sending the case back to the trial court to deal with the sentence question, either in a separate hearing or through a post-conviction relief proceeding.

“I think the evidence is very clear Joshua Fulgham is more culpable,” argued Quarles, referring to Carr’s co-defendant. “He had the motive, he hatched the plan, he brought the victim to the scene of the crime, and it’s very unfair…he is serving a life sentence when she is sentenced to death.”

According to trial testimony, Fulgham, who was Carr’s lover, lured his estranged wife, Heather Strong, 26, to a trailer in Boardman, which is in north Marion County near McIntosh. There, the pair duct taped her to a chair, suffocated her and then buried the body.

The co-defendants were tried in separate trials, and the state sought the death penalty for both. They both were found guilty of first-degree murder and kidnapping.

In the first trial, a jury recommended death for Carr in a 7-5 vote in December 2010. The judge in that case followed the recommendation and put her on death row.

The jury in the second trial returned a recommendation of life imprisonment for Fulgham in April 2012. Again, the judge followed the recommendation.

“They had different judges, they had different juries, they had different legal teams,” said Quarles.

He argued that during each trial the state painted that defendant as the mastermind, even though evidence shows Fulgham had been manipulating both Strong and Carr in the time period leading up to the crime.

Justice Charles Canady pointed out that Carr, 29, has an IQ of 125, while Fulgham, 32, is intellectually challenged.

“In the actual commission of the crime Ms. Carr was heavily involved in what was going on,” countered Assistant Attorney General Sara Macks.

She pointed to several factors motivating Carr including the fact that Carr wanted to raise a family with Fulgham.

Carr gave birth to Fulgham’s child during her time inside the Marion County jail pending trial. Macks also pointed to threats Carr had made of hiring someone to kill Strong.

Justice Jorge Labarga wondered why the two trial court judges didn’t wait and sentence the co-defendants around the same time after receiving the respective jury recommendations.

As part of her explanation, Macks said Fulgham’s trial had been delayed more than one year when counsel from Miami had become involved.

She urged the high court to resolve the direct appeal before redirecting the case back to the trial court. Macks said if the issue is addressed at the trial court level during post-conviction relief, Carr’s defense would also be able to bring up any issues connected with mitigation.

“This is not a death case,” Quarles argued in rebuttal before the panel adjourned.

A ruling is expected at a later date.

Carr is currently housed at Lowell Correctional Institution with the other five women on Florida’s death row. Fulgham is currently housed at Florida State Prison in Raiford, according to state prison records.

In August, Fulgham sent a hand-written letter to the Marion County Jail through his mother intended for convicted murderer Michael Bargo. Inmates are not granted the same privacy as the general public and therefore their mail is public record except for medical records and legal correspondence.

In the letter, Fulgham offered Bargo advice about prison. “A lot of people will tell you a life sentence is the same as death row,” he wrote, adding that such advice is wrong.

“If you do end up in prison at all, it isn’t that bad,” Fulgham wrote, describing his access to an MP3 player, television and Playboy magazine.

ILLINOIS -Man convicted in 1970 slaying to ask for release – Calvin Madison

february 3, 2014 (http://thesouthern.com)

ROCKFORD, Ill. (AP) — A man originally sentenced to death who has spent 44 years behind bars in the slaying of a Rockford gas station attendant is scheduled to make his 33rd plea for freedom.

Calvin Madison, 66, appears to have a chance to win his release from Graham Correction Center after last year when five members of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board — three short of the number needed to be granted parole — voted last year to release him. His co-defendant in the case, Thomas Ray Charles, was released from prison in 1986 after he was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison.

Madison is scheduled to appear before a member of the Illinois Review Board on March 4, and the entire board is expected to decide on May 1 whether or not Madison should be released.

The Rockford Register Star (http://bit.ly/1n5Wih6 ) reported Sunday that Madison’s family has started to encourage people to write letters in favor of Madison’s release and the family of the victim, 19-year-old John Hogan, is arguing against his release.

The slaying took place on Jan, 22, 1970, at the Gas-For-Less service station in Rockford. According to the newspaper, when Madison and Charles ordered him to hand over money, Hogan did as he was told and gave them about $100 in cash.

Then, Madison forced Hogan into a restroom, ordered him to his knees and shot him four times in the back of the head with a pistol.

“It was premeditated murder — there’s no other way of looking at it,” said Hogan’s brother, Terry.

Madison, who was sentenced to death in 1970, was resentenced in 1972 to 75-100 years in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court suspended the death penalty in the United States in 1972. The court ultimately reinstated the death penalty a few years later.