Inmates on the death row

MONTANA – Canadian on death row deserves to live: co-accused – Rodney Munro

june 3, 2012 Source :http://www.ctv.ca

A man who was convicted along with Ronald Smith in the murder of two Montana men 30 years ago says his former partner-in-crime saved his life and deserves to live.

Rodney Munro, in an exclusive interview with The Canadian Press, has ended decades of silence and is speaking out in defence of Smith, 54, who sits on death row and whose fate is now in the hands of Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

“I thank God everyday for him,” Munro said about Smith in a telephone interview from his home in a quiet community in Western Canada.

On Aug. 4, 1982, Smith and Munro were hitchhiking in Montana when they caught a ride with Harvey Madman Jr. and Thomas Running Rabbit. Smith and Munro marched the two men into the woods and shot and stabbed them to death.

Both Canadians were charged with murder. Smith pleaded guilty to two charges of deliberate homicide and two charges of aggravated kidnapping in February 1983 and requested the death penalty. He rejected a plea deal offered by prosecutors which would have given him life in prison.

He later changed his mind and asked the District Court to reconsider the death penalty. That led to three decades of legal wrangling which is almost at an end.

Munro accepted the plea bargain and pleaded guilty to aggravated kidnapping. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison but was returned to Canada and released in 1998.

“It’s because of Ron that I’m out and doing as well as I am,” Munro said. “Because of what he said in court, I didn’t get the death penalty. And because of that I had a chance of actually getting out and trying to make something of myself.

“He saved my life.”

The Montana Board of Pardons and Parole has recommended that Smith not be granted clemency, even though he was described as a model prisoner during his 30 years at Montana State Prison at a hearing last month.

There was emotional testimony from both sides. Smith’s friends and family said he is a changed man who has rehabilitated himself. But the families of the victims said he deserves no mercy.

The state attorney downplayed Munro’s role in the killings and said it was Smith alone who should pay the ultimate price.

But Munro, who still speaks with Smith by phone every couple of weeks, said he was equally to blame and feels guilt about the murders.

“When you’re involved in what we were involved in, how can you not feel it? We put ourselves in a spot and two guys ended up dead and I think about it all the time,” he said quietly.

“They don’t want to know (about my role). That just brings up that he’s not the monster.

“I hate to say it this way, but it makes them feel better to think they’re killing a monster other than who he is.”

The two men had been taking 30 to 40 hits of LSD and consuming between 12 and 18 beers a day at the time of the murders.

Munro said he and Smith became friends after hanging out in the same circles and through mutual acquaintances.

“We could have been the Bobbsey twins. We kind of connected with each other and away we went. Our life revolved around booze, drugs and partying, and that’s just not who we are any more.”

Now married, employed and free of drugs and alcohol, Munro said he’s sad about what is happening to Smith.

He is also angry that the Canadian government’s support of Smith has been less than enthusiastic.

But Munro is hopeful that Schweitzer will have the political will to spare his friend’s life.

“Ron is not even close to the man he used to be. The guy has learned his lesson. I think we all have.”

Smith told his clemency hearing that he was “horrendously sorry” for his actions.

“I do understand the pain and suffering I’ve put you through,” he said to the victims’ relatives. “It was never my intent to cause any suffering for anybody. I wish there was some way I could take it back. I can’t.”

Munro wanted to send his own message to the families.

“We are just so sorry that this ever happened. If we could change it, we would, but how do you change the past?” he said.

“I think about it everyday and it’s what keeps me on the straight and narrow, making sure nothing like this will ever happen again.”

 

MISSOURI – Another Canadian on U.S. death row fights to stay alive – ROBERT BOLDEN

June 1, 2012 Source : http://www.theprovince.com

Robert Bolden, a Canadian on death row in the U.S. A lawyer representing a Canadian on death row in Indiana wants Ottawa to advocate to save her client's life. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO

While Alberta-born killer Ronald Smith awaits the outcome of his high-profile bid to avoid execution for a 1982 double-murder in Montana, the U.S. government is engaged in a court battle with another Canadian citizen facing the death penalty in a little-known case in Indiana — ensuring that the controversial issue of capital punishment will be kept alive for years in Canada regardless of Smith’s fate in the coming months.

The case of Robert Bolden — a 48-year-old, Newfoundland-born man convicted of killing a Missouri security guard during a botched bank robbery in St. Louis in 2002 — only recently came to the attention of the Canadian government, partly because Bolden moved to the U.S. as a toddler with a drug-addicted mother who used forged documents to emigrate from Canada.

Bolden’s lawyers have launched an appeal aimed at winning a new trial and overturning his death sentence, largely on the basis that he was “deprived” of what could have been “vital” consular assistance by the Canadian government when he was arrested almost 10 years ago and later in his bid to avoid execution.

“The consulate’s assistance would have been critical to Mr. Bolden’s defence,” states a petition filed on behalf of the Canadian death-row inmate by Jennifer Merrigan, a lawyer with the Kansas City-based Death Penalty Litigation Clinic.

The petition was backed by a detailed affidavit from Gar Pardy, a retired Canadian public servant who headed the consular affairs section at the federal Department of Foreign Affairs from 1995 to 2003, during which time he led several diplomatic missions to prevent Canadians from being executed abroad.

But in a 200-page counter-argument filed last week at the U.S. District Court in Missouri, the U.S. Department of Justice insisted that prosecutors “had every reason to believe that Bolden was a United States citizen” at the time of his arrest, and that defence claims that the death sentence might never have been pursued or secured because of Bolden’s Canadian citizenship are unfounded.

“Bolden alleges that the (U.S.) government deprived him of the ‘unique and pivotal role’ of the Canadian Consulate, violating his due process right and right to a fair trial,” states the Department of Justice submission. “This claim is facially implausible. The ‘unique and pivotal role’ the consulate plays is to inform a foreign national of his rights as a defendant in the United States and explain the differences in the American legal system.”

Bolden “had no need for a ‘cultural bridge’,” the statement contends, “because he was very familiar with our legal system. Bolden had been convicted of three prior felonies and has been arrested numerous times.”

The Department of Justice submission recalled Ley’s “unique qualities, his aspiration to become a police officer, his exceptional gift of helping others, the excruciating pain he suffered after Bolden shot him twice in the head, and the catastrophic impact of his death on his family.”

Bolden was born in Stephenville, Nfld., in June 1963. His mother, identified in court documents as “S.D.” Decker, is described as a heroin-addicted, white prostitute who died in the U.S. in 2001. Bolden’s father was an unidentified black American soldier stationed at the U.S. military’s former Harmon Air Force Base in Stephenville, which was closed in 1966.

Alleged racism directed at Decker because of her biracial child appears to have prompted her move to the U.S. around 1966, according to Merrigan.

Bolden was principally raised by the St. Louis-based family of another U.S. soldier with whom Decker  had a fleeting relationship in Newfoundland.

In an interview with Postmedia News, Merrigan said the option of life imprisonment was never adequately explored in the Bolden case because Canadian officials didn’t get a chance — due to the actions of prosecutors and the oversights of defence lawyers — “to weigh in on whether the U.S. government should pursue the death penalty.”

She added that a thorough investigation of Bolden’s early childhood in Newfoundland by his original defence lawyers would have illuminated deep-rooted social and psychological challenges flowing from his mother’s troubled background — a potentially mitigating factor in death-penalty cases in the U.S.

“The Decker family’s history of interpersonal violence, verbal abuse, mental illness, addiction, and diabetes — none of which was explored by counsel — is the genetic and psychosocial cornerstone of Robert Bolden’s life story,” states the petition to overturn his death sentence.

John Babcock, a spokesman for Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Diane Ablonczy — who oversees consular issues for the Conservative government — confirmed that Bolden is a Canadian citizen and added: “Mr. Bolden was convicted of the very serious charge of murder. Canadian officials are providing Mr. Bolden with consular assistance, and will continue to do so.”

Bolden is being held in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Until October 2007, the Canadian government’s long-standing policy was to automatically seek clemency for Canadians facing execution in foreign countries.

Then, in response to a Postmedia News story about Canadian diplomats lobbying Montana’s governor to commute Smith’s sentence, the Conservative government halted those efforts and declared a new policy of reviewing clemency requests on a “case-by-case” basis — which Prime Minister Stephen Harper said was more in keeping with his government’s tough-on-crime agenda.

The Federal Court of Canada later ruled that the government had acted unlawfully by ending its support for Smith and ordered it to resume clemency efforts.

In December, ahead of Smith’s clemency hearing last month in Montana, the Canadian government sent a letter requesting that Smith be spared execution for “humanitarian reasons.” But opposition critics and Smith’s lawyers panned the letter as a lukewarm expression of the Canadian government’s formal opposition to capital punishment, which was abolished in this country in 1976.

Montana’s parole board has recommended to the state’s governor, Brian Schweitzer, that Smith be denied clemency. But Schweitzer, whose final term as governor automatically ends on Dec. 31 this year, is not likely to be in office by the time an outstanding lawsuit related to Montana’s lethal-injection is resolved early next year, clearing the way for an execution date to be set for Smith.

TEXAS – State Backs DNA Testing for Hank Skinner

June 1, 2012 Source :http://www.texastribune.org

Reversing its decade-long objection to testing that death row inmate Hank Skinner says could prove his innocence, the Texas Attorney General’s office today filed an advisory with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals seeking to test DNA in the case. 

“Upon further consideration, the State believes that the interest of justice would best be served by DNA testing the evidence requested by Skinner and by testing additional items identified by the state,” lawyers for the state wrote in the advisory.

Skinner, now 50, was convicted in 1995 of the strangulation and beating death of his girlfriend Twila Busby and the stabbing deaths of her two adult sons on New Year’s Eve 1993 in Pampa. Skinner maintains he is innocent and was unconscious on the couch at the time of the killings, intoxicated from a mixture of vodka and codeine.

Rob Owen, co-director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Capital Punishment Clinic, said he was pleased the state “finally appears willing to work with us to make that testing a reality.”

The details of the testing, he said, will still need to be arranged to ensure the evidence is properly handled and identified.

“Texans expect accuracy in this death penalty case, and the procedures to be employed must ensure their confidence in the outcome,” he said in an emailed statement. “We look forward to cooperating with the State to achieve this DNA testing as promptly as possible.”

State lawyers have opposed testing in the case, arguing that it could not prove Skinner’s innocence and that it would create an incentive for other guilty inmates to delay justice by seeking DNA testing. Today, though, the state reversed its course and has prepared a joint order to allow the tests.

Since 2000, Skinner has asked the courts to allow testing on crime scene evidence that was not analyzed at his original trial, including a rape kit, biological material from Busby’s fingernails, sweat and hair from a man’s jacket, a bloody towel and knives. Owen told the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals last month that if DNA testing on all the evidence points to an individual who is not Skinner, it could create reasonable doubt about his client’s guilt. 

The advisory comes a month after that hearing before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, in which the judges on the nine-member panel grilled attorneys for the state about their continued resistance to the testing even after a spate of DNA exonerations in Texas. In Texas, at least 45 inmates have been exonerated based on DNA evidence.

“You really ought to be absolutely sure before you strap a person down and kill him,” Judge Michael Keasler said at the May hearing.

State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, praised the Texas Attorney General’s move on Friday. Legislators last year approved a bill that Ellis wrote amending the state’s post-conviction DNA testing law to allow for such analysis in cases like Skinner’s. Under the measure, inmates can obtain testing even in instances where they had the chance to test the DNA at trial but did not do so and in cases where the DNA was tested previously but new technology allows for more advanced testing.

In Skinner’s case the state had long argued that he should not be allowed to test the DNA evidence because he had the opportunity to do so at his trial but chose not to. He sought testing again after the DNA measure was approved last year.

“Now we will have certainty in the Skinner case because we will have analyzed all the evidence,” Ellis said in a statement. “There should be no lingering questions in capital cases.”

Kentucky changing its execution method

June 1, 2012 Source : http://www.wkyt.com

Executions in Kentucky could resume later this year after a move Thursday by the state’s Justice Cabinet. The death penalty has been on hold for nearly two years because of questions in part over the injection method used to execute inmates.

Dennis Briscoe has waited a long time for justice since Ralph Baze murdered his father and uncle. The convicted killer has lived on death row for nearly two decades. He’s one of several inmates who has exhausted his appeals and challenged the three-drug injection method as cruel and unusual punishment.

Claims that Kentucky’s three-drug cocktail violates the Eighth Amendment are not new. In 2007 the United States Supreme Court ruled the method constitutional. However that was before other states began using a single-drug system some consider more humane because of problems with the ingredients in the three-drug cocktail.

Debate over the competing methods was a critical factor that led a Franklin Circuit judge to temporarily halt executions across the state. Last month that judge ordered the Department of Corrections to consider a change. Now state officials say they will propose a new system by the end of July. “I’m glad to see a proactive move by the Department of Corrections in order to help fix this situation we have with the death penalty currently,” Briscoe said.

If that new system proposed allows for a single-drug execution, the judge in the case has ruled that any claims of cruel and unusual punishment by inmates will be dismissed. “I’m optimistic now that there’s going to be this recent move, this recent change,” Briscoe said, “However, I’m cautious as well because there could be a whole nother line of arguments.”

Today’s developments could lead to a new system as early as late summer.

TEXAS – 5th Circuit sends death case back to local judge – Anthony Bartee

May 31, 2012 Source : http://www.mysanantonio.com

Update

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has asked a lower court judge to rule on whether the testing of DNA evidence ordered by the Bexar County district attorney’s office in death row inmate Anthony Bartee‘s case now makes moot Bartee’s claim that the office violated his civil rights.

Bartee, on death row since 1998 for the robbery and shooting death of David Cook, 37, won a stay of execution May 2 just hours before he was set to die by lethal injection.

Chief U.S. District Court Judge Fred Biery granted the stay after Bartee’s lawyer, David Dow, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the district attorney’s office, saying they violated Bartee’s rights by not releasing evidence for testing.

The county appealed Biery’s ruling for a stay to the 5th Circuit. However, the county also submitted for testing the evidence Dow sought to have released.

Because of that, the 5th Circuit ruled on Tuesday to send the case back to Biery for the purpose of answering whether the testing makes Bartee’s claim irrelevant.

No information was available on when Biery might rule on the case.

Rico Valdez, with the Bexar County district attorney’s office, said they plan to finish the testing.

No new execution date has been set for Bartee.

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PENNSYLVANIA – Pa. governor signs 3 more death warrants

May 31, 2012 Source : http://abclocal.go.com

HARRISBURG –  Gov. Tom Corbett has signed execution warrants for three men on death row.

  • Darien Houser was convicted of the 2004 killing of a Philadelphia warrant officer attempting to serve a warrant on Houser for failing to appear at his rape trial.
  • John Koehler Jr. is on death row for persuading a teenager to kill Koehler’s girlfriend and her 9-year-old son in Bradford County in 1995.
  • Willie Clayton was found guilty in 1986 of killing two Philadelphia men during separate robberies, two months apart.

Pennsylvania has executed only three people – all of whom chose to end their appeals – since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976. The last was in 1999.

TEXAS – Man on death row for Houston slaying loses appeal – Jamie McCoskey

May 30, 2012  Source : http://www.chron.com

HOUSTON — A federal appeals court has rejected an appeal from a Texas death row inmate condemned for the slaying of a Houston man abducted from his apartment and fatally stabbed more than 20 years ago.

Attorneys for 47-year-old Jamie McCoskey contended instructions to the jury at his 1993 trial were improper. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Tuesday rejected the claims, moving McCoskey closer to execution for the death of 20-year-old Michael Dwyer. Dwyer’s fiancé also was abducted and taken to an abandoned Houston home where Dwyer was killed and she was raped. She later identified McCoskey as the attacker.

McCoskey already had been convicted of kidnapping in Travis County, was a two-time parole violator and was released from prison six months before the November 1991 abductions and slaying.

ARIZONA – Motion denied to watch executions by injection

May 31, 2012 Source : http://www.azcentral.com

Despite strong language from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and a 2002 appeals-court ruling, a federal judge in Phoenix on Wednesday denied motions to allow attorneys and reporters to watch as executioners insert the catheters that carry the drugs used in lethal injections for condemned prisoners.

The Federal Public Defender’s Office in Phoenix and other defense attorneys have complained about the practices of the Arizona Department of Corrections in carrying out executions by lethal injection. Among the concerns are the qualifications of those who insert IV lines into the condemned prisoners and why they repeatedly fail to find suitable veins in the prisoner’s arms and must resort to a surgically installed catheter in the groin area.

On May 15, the day before death-row prisoner Samuel Lopez was to be executed for the 1986 murder of a Phoenix woman, his attorneys filed a motion with U.S. District Judge Neil Wake, asking to be allowed to witness the catheterization. Wake did not rule on the motion. But the subject had come up in oral arguments on May 14 in a last-ditch appeal to the 9th Circuit.

Of concern in that appeal was a March execution in which the condemned man was not allowed to speak to his attorney when prison staff was unable to find a suitable vein in his arm and instead inserted the catheter in his groin.

The appeals court refused to stop Lopez’s execution, but one of the judges questioned why the media had not insisted on being present when the lines were inserted. The state of Ohio and California allow such witnessing, and a 2002 9th Circuit opinion ruled that the public has a First Amendment right to witness all aspects of an execution.

Lopez subsequently received a reprieve from the Arizona Supreme Court until June 27 because of problems with the state clemency board.

A coalition of Arizona journalism groups took up the challenge and asked to become part of the lawsuit over the Corrections Department policies.

That same day, another group of journalists in Idaho filed its own lawsuit asking to witness the preparation process on First Amendment grounds.

But Wake denied the Arizona motions Wednesday, citing technicalities in the timing of the motion and saying that a First Amendment violation had not been properly claimed.

Dale Baich of the Federal Public Defender’s Office said his office had not yet decided how to proceed.

Dan Barr, an attorney who represents the Arizona journalists, said his options would be to wait for Baich to amend his motion or file a separate lawsuit to assert the journalists’ claims.

“The whole trick is bringing up the issue in the right form and the right time,” Barr said.

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TENNESSEE – Tenn. Supreme Court overturns death sentence – Hubert Sexton

May 30, 2012 Source : http://www.timesnews.net

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a death sentence for a man convicted of murdering a Scott County couple in their bed and ordered that a new jury decide whether to execute him.

The state’s highest court cited numerous problems with both the evidence and sentencing phase of the murder trial of Hubert Glenn Sexton, including prosecutors making inappropriate statements to jurors and the admission of prejudicial evidence.

A Scott County jury convicted Sexton of two counts of first-degree murder for the May 2000 murders of Stanley and Terry Sue Goodman. The Goodmans were shot to death as they slept in their Huntsville home days after Sexton was accused of sexually abusing one of Stanley Goodman’s children.

In spite of the problems during the trial, the Supreme Court refused to overturn the murder convictions.

“Aside from the unfairly prejudicial nature of the inadmissible evidence and the inappropriate argument by the prosecution, however, the proof of guilt for each of the two murders was simply overwhelming,” the opinion, written by Justice Gary Wade, said. The court noted that the evidence included Sexton telling at least three of his friends that he had murdered the Goodmans.

The court said problems started even before the trial began when some people were improperly excluded as jurors. The court said jurors never should have heard allegations about the sexual abuse because Sexton had not been charged. The opinion noted that prosecutors could have elected to charge Sexton separately in the matter.

And the court said that jurors may have been prejudiced by hearing that Sexton initially agreed to take a polygraph but then changed his mind and refused. Prosecutors were also said to make inappropriate comments to jurors during opening statements and closing arguments.

PENNSYLVANIA – New trial requested for Fayette man on death row – James W. VanDivne

May 29, 2012 Source : http://triblive.com

Attorneys for a Fayette County man on death row for the 2004 slaying of his former girlfriend say they have found witnesses who contradict the testimony of a key prosecution witness.

The discovery is just one reason James W. VanDivner deserves a new trial or sentencing hearing, according to a petition filed by his attorney, Brent Peck of Uniontown.

In 2007, VanDivner, 63, was found guilty of the July 5, 2004, shooting death of his former girlfriend, Michelle Cable, 41, outside her home in Grindstone. VanDivner also shot Cable’s teenage son, Billy, who survived a bullet wound to his spine.

VanDivner received the death penalty.

“That issue is phenomenal; the eight witnesses we interviewed who were there, who said (Jessica Cable) was not,” Peck said.

Jessica Cable, who is the victim’s daughter, testified at trial she saw VanDivner grab her mother’s hair, shoot her at close range and tell her, “There, you (expletive), I said I was going to kill you and smile and walk away,” according to Peck’s filing.

Peck and his wife, Mariah Balling-Peck, also an attorney, on Tuesday said they spoke with eight witnesses who indicated Jessica Cable was not present when her mother was shot.

The witnesses, none of whom were called to testify at trial, told the attorneys Jessica Cable arrived shortly after the shooting, according to the petition.

In addition, the Pecks said they found a retired school administrator who backs up earlier defense claims that VanDivner likely was diagnosed with mental retardation prior to age 18.

By law, such individuals cannot be sentenced to death, Brent Peck said.

VanDivner attended special-education classes while enrolled in the Frazier School District, according to the Pecks.

At trial, prosecutors said the placement resulted from behavioral issues, and was not based on tests for mental retardation.

Although the school has no records of any intelligence tests being given to VanDivner, Brent Peck said he has found a retired administrator who indicated only students with an IQ of 75 or less were placed in special-education classes.

Behavioral problems were not taken into consideration, according to the former administrator, Peck said.

“Their argument he was in special education because of behavioral issues was completely unfounded and completely off the wall,” Brent Peck said.

With the mental retardation threshold pegged at 70, plus or minus 5, VanDivner would have fallen into that category as a child, Brent Peck said.

A hearing has not yet been scheduled on the petition. VanDivner is on death row at the State Correctional Institution in Greene County.

In June 2010, former Gov. Ed Rendell had signed an execution warrant for VanDivner, but a stay was issued.