USA NEWS

CALIFORNIA – Cost of death penalty can be calculated

June 15, 2012 Source : http://napavalleyregister.com

In his opinion piece (“Would repealing the death penalty really save money?,” June 10), Michael O’Reilley tells California voters that passing the SAFE (Savings Accountability Full Enforcement) California initiative on Nov. 6 would not result in any cost savings for the state.

Mr. O’Reilley relies on the same argument advanced by many proponents of the death penalty, which is that there is no reliable evidence that repealing the death penalty will save money because the “true cost” of the current system is “difficult to determine.”

For too many years, Californians have been kept in the dark about how much the state is spending on its broken death penalty system because, they were told, such a cost analysis was impossible to perform. That is simply not the case.

In our three-year-long, exhaustive investigation into the costs of California’s death penalty, Senior Judge Arthur L. Alarcón and I reviewed every available source of cost data. Our mission was to tell voters the truth about what they are spending on the state’s current system — one that has been described as “dysfunctional” by both the former and current chief justices of the California Supreme Court.

Our research revealed that while there is, indeed, a lack of political will when it comes to tracking these costs, there is no question that California’s death penalty has cost taxpayers billions of dollars over the past 34 years. We relied on court records, state budgets, and other objectively reliable data to calculate the costs associated with each stage of process from trials through final appeals.

The findings in our report are supported by the Blue-Ribbon Panel convened by the state Senate, the California Commission for the Fair Administration of Justice, which did a similar study and reported similar data in its Final Report published in 2008.

The following facts are undisputed:

• California taxpayers have funded roughly 2,000 death penalty trials over the past three decades;

• California houses more than 22 percent of the nation’s death row inmates, but has carried out no more than 1 percent of all executions nationwide in that time — 13 executions since 1978;

• The vast majority of condemned inmates die on death row before their sentences are ever carried out, which means that those inmates receive state-funded medical care for the entirety of their lives — an expense that Mr. O’Reilley argues (incorrectly) is incurred only under a life without possibility of parole (LWOP) sentence, but not under a sentence of death.

Voters must decide for themselves whether Mr. O’Reilley’s argument that the current system is a deterrent to violent crime that comes at no added cost to taxpayers rings true. Voters must also consider whether — when it comes to public safety — the current dysfunctional death penalty system is a good use of our state’s limited resources when more than 10,000 homicides committed over the past 10 years remain unsolved.

In the current economic climate, voters should not be satisfied with being told that it is impossible to calculate what the death penalty costs. Voters should demand to know the truth.

Mitchell is co-author (with Judge Arthur L. Alarcón) of “Executing the Will of the Voters? A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle,” and lives in Los Angeles.

ALABAMA – Prison chaplain questions death penalty value

June 14, 2012 Source : http://www.al.com

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — In 1981, Philip Workman walked into a Wendy’s restaurant in Memphis, brandished a gun, and had the employees hand him the money out of the cash drawer.
Cornered moments later by police officers in a corner of the parking lot, Workman fired the gun. A police officer fell.

In 2007, Workman was executed for that homicide.

Trouble is, says the Rev. Joseph Ingle, who will speak in Huntsville Tuesday, Workman’s gun is not the one that killed that police officer.

The officer, according to forensic evidence analyzed after Workman’s ‘82 trial, was killed by the kind of bullet that is in police pistols, not Workman’s. The officer, in short, appears to have been killed by another officer’s shot.

Ingle’s latest book, “The Inferno: A Southern Morality Tale,” chronicles what happened between that moment in the parking lot and Workman’s execution by lethal injection 26 years later.

“It was pretty much a nightmare,” Ingle said this week from his home office in Nashville. “If you ever think the issue of capital punishment and our criminal justice system aren’t politically fraught, you need to take another look. It is beyond appalling.”

Ingle himself never had taken a look until his senior year in seminary. That’s when, to satisfy a requirement, he began volunteering in a jail in Harlem for 20 hours a week for a year.

“Meeting those men just changed my life,” Ingle said.

It also changed his ministry. Rather than take a United Church of Christcongregation, Ingle chose to become a self-supporting prison chaplain. He volunteers in Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville. From 1974 until 1983, he was the executive director of the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons, a multi-state organization that sought to abolish the death penalty.

Abolishing the penalty makes sense not only to avoid executing people for crimes they didn’t commit, but also in simple dollars and cents.

“Nationally, there is a move away from capital punishment,” Ingle said, “but you don’t see that in the South. Since 1977, more than 93 percent of the executions in the U.S. have been in the South.”

And patterns for those executions follow disturbingly familiar paths of racial discrimination.

“If you kill a white person, you are 11 times more likely to die for that crime than if you kill a black person,” Ingle said. “And it’s even worse if you’re a black person and you kill a white person. Then you are 22 times more likely to die.”

Ingle said that the current mood in the U.S. of distrusting government should extend to this issue.

“Think about it,” Ingle said. “We don’t trust the state with our taxes, and we’re going to trust the state to say who lives or dies?”

 

SOUTH DAKOTA – SD death row inmate asks for execution to proceed – Eric Robert

June 13, 2012 Source : http://www.mitchellrepublic.com

SIOUX FALLS  — A man sentenced to death for killing a prison guard says the state Supreme Court’s decision to delay his execution to allow for a mandatory review is denying him his constitutional rights.

Eric Robert, 50, will ask the South Dakota Supreme Court to allow his execution to proceed and is proposing legislative changes to prevent similar cases in the future in briefs that are expected to be filed later this week or early next week.

Robert pleaded guilty to killing prison guard Ronald Johnson during a botched prison escape in April 2011. A judge sentenced him to death for the crime last fall, and his execution was set for May. But the South Dakota Supreme Court stayed the execution in February to allow more time for a mandatory review, which could delay the execution for up to two years.

In briefs not yet filed with the court but given to The Associated Press in an email, Mark Kadi, Robert’s lawyer, argues that Robert has a constitutional, due process right to be executed based on the trial court’s order.

“If this process will take up to (two) years as reported, Robert proposes we seek to answer the main underlying issue in this case: does a death row inmate have a constitutional right to die on time as ordered?” Kadi said in an email.

In the briefs, Robert proposed the Legislature consider changes to the law, allowing death penalty proceedings to be given priority in the state Supreme Court or, absent a voluntary appeal, requiring the court to review the case in a set number of days before the execution date.

The briefs noted that during the months since Robert was sentenced, the state Supreme Court has reviewed numerous cases, including civil cases such as the dispute between actor Kevin Costner and an artist about whether sculptures were appropriately displayed at a Deadwood resort.

“These civil cases are undoubtedly important to the parties involved regarding their equitable or monetary interests. Death penalty cases due to their special nature and consequences, however, deserve special consideration,” the brief said.

Attorney General Marty Jackley said he could not comment on the new briefs because he has not yet seen them. Under appellate procedure, the state is only allowed to file one brief, which it has already done.

Robert was serving an 80-year-sentence on a kidnapping conviction when he attempted to escape April 12, 2011, with fellow inmate Rodney Berget.

Johnson was working alone the morning of his death — also his 63rd birthday — in a part of the prison known as Pheasantland Industries, where inmates work on upholstery, signs, custom furniture and other projects. Prosecutors said that after the inmates killed Johnson, Robert put on Johnson’s uniform and tried to carry a large box toward the prison gate with Berget inside. The inmates were apprehended before leaving the grounds.

Berget also pleaded guilty and has been sentenced to death. Another inmate, Michael Nordman, 47, was given a life sentence for providing the plastic wrap and pipe used in the slaying.

The penitentiary made more than a dozen procedural changes less than a month after Johnson’s death, including adding officers and installing additional security cameras. Other changes, outlined in a 28-page report, included further restricting inmate traffic, strengthening perimeter fencing, improving lighting and mandating body alarm “panic buttons” for staff.

Related articles

Prosecutors often challenge DNA evidence that could clear the convicted

June 13, 2012 Source : http://www.chicagotribune.com

When Terrill Swift was released from prison after serving 15 years for rape and murder, he sought DNA testing because he wanted to prove his innocence. Cook County prosecutors opposed his efforts but relented last year after the Tribune made inquiries about Swift’s request.

After the DNA from semen in the victim’s body was matched to a convicted murderer and rapist, Swift went to court to get his conviction thrown out. But prosecutors opposed that effort, saying the DNA was meaningless, especially when considered against Swift’s confession.

A judge turned aside prosecutors’ arguments, saying the DNA was powerful evidence, and earlier this year the judge vacated Swift’s conviction.

And last month, when Swift went to court to obtain a certificate of innocence to expunge the record of his arrest and conviction and clear the way for him to seek compensation from the state, prosecutors opposed that request, too, saying Swift’s disputed confession outweighed the DNA.

Nearly a quarter-century into the DNA era, what has been called the gold standard of forensic evidence has fulfilled its promise to help police and prosecutors win convictions. Rare is the case in which DNA evidence, particularly in a rape or a murder, does not send a defendant to prison.

DNA’s potential to free the innocent has been more elusive. That has been especially true in Cook and Lake counties, where prosecutors have opposed requests for DNA testing and then downplayed the results when they excluded their leading suspects or inmates trying to win their freedom.

“When we started doing this work 20 years ago, we received opposition on requests and motions to do post-conviction DNA testing in more than three-quarters of the cases,” said Peter Neufeld, a co-founder of the New York-based Innocence Project. “Today … the overwhelming majority of prosecutors do not oppose motions for DNA testing.”

What’s more, Neufeld said, prosecutors rarely challenge DNA results that appear to indicate a suspect’s innocence. Prosecutors in Cook and Lake counties are part of a tiny group that consistently do that, he said.

“That kind of consistent rejection of logic and common sense,” Neufeld said, “is fairly unequaled around the country.”

Prosecutors counter that DNA is not the “end all” of evidence, as Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez once said, and say they are bound to consider all evidence in a case, not just the DNA. In the cases where DNA has failed to persuade prosecutors, the opposition frequently has been supported by a suspect’s confession. For decades a building block of murder cases, confessions remain remarkably potent in spite of what DNA has revealed about their frailties.

“Generally speaking, the significance of DNA evidence varies from case to case,” said Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for Alvarez. “In some cases, it may be critically important to a criminal investigation or a prosecution. In others, it can be relatively unimportant. It is the state’s attorney’s opinion and the general policy of this office that DNA evidence cannot be viewed in a vacuum, but rather examined in light of all of the other facts and evidence known at the time.

“DNA evidence certainly establishes a link between the donor of the DNA and a location or a piece of evidence, but it does not always establish the identity of the criminal,” Daly added. “The significance of DNA evidence is dependent upon all other facts available in the totality of the investigation.”

A series of cases in Lake County illustrate that standoff.

On May 15, Lake County prosecutors issued news releases announcing new murder charges in two cases — the bludgeoning of Fred Reckling, 71, in Waukegan in 1994 and the stabbings of Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9, in Zion in 2005.

Both announcements credited “newly developed leads and forensic findings … actively pursued by law enforcement.” The releases did not mention that the new sets of charges resulted from DNA tests that prosecutors had dismissed as either unnecessary or meaningless.

In the Reckling case, prosecutors fought for years to block post-conviction testing sought by James Edwards, who had confessed and was sentenced to life in prison.

Edwards, often working as his own lawyer, claimed his innocence could be proved by testing blood found at the scene from a then-unidentified man. Prosecutors argued at trial that the blood in Reckling’s appliance store and car did not clear Edwards because it could have come from a store employee. They aimed to block post-conviction testing by noting that jurors were presented with that theory, and they still found Edwards guilty.

“Testing of this showing us who specifically (the blood came from) is not going to exculpate the defendant,” said then-Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Mermel, according to a court transcript. “The defendant is wasting the time of the criminal justice system because he has nothing else to do but write these motions.”

After Edwards had spent 14 years in prison, the Illinois Supreme Court ordered the DNA tests. Last month, prosecutors said forensic evidence had guided investigators toward Hezekiah Whitfield, 42, of Chicago, who is now charged with murder.

Prosecutors agreed to a new trial for Edwards and then immediately dropped the charges, though he remains jailed on separate convictions for armed robbery and murder.

“The Supreme Court says prosecutors have a duty to seek justice, not convictions,” said Edwards’ lawyer, Paul De Luca. “Doesn’t it seem like they didn’t abide by the rules?”

In the killing of the two girls in Zion in May 2005, lawyers for the original suspect — Jerry Hobbs, one victim’s father — clashed with prosecutors over the timeline and procedures for both sides to assess the physical evidence. Immediately after the murders, authorities sent evidence to the Northeastern Illinois Regional Crime Laboratory, where analysis with a microscope found no semen evidence that would have indicated a sexual assault, according to the lab’s report.

After Hobbs had spent more than two years in jail awaiting trial, the defense team’s scientists reported the opposite — that semen from another man had been found in Laura Hobbs and on her clothes. Hobbs’ lawyers argued this proved that his confession — given after some 24 hours of intermittent interrogation — was false. Prosecutors disagreed, arguing that the girls had been playing in the woods and the girl could have touched some semen and then wiped herself.

“The defense is … misleading the court,” Mermel said in December 2008. “What they have is one errant sperm which is impossible to deposit by the offender or an offender. It’s trace evidence.”

After that hearing, Hobbs sat in jail for more than a year before the DNA was matched to Jorge Torrez, a onetime friend of Tobias’ brother, according to court records. While Hobbs was jailed, prosecutors say, Torrez murdered a 20-year-old woman in 2009 and raped another in 2010, both in Virginia. Torrez is now serving five life sentences for a series of attacks on women, including the rape, and he faces trial in the Virginia murder case.

Hobbs was freed in August 2010, but nearly two years passed before the Lake County prosecutor’s office tacitly acknowledged his confession was false by announcing that Torrez had been charged with the girls’ murders. Mermel retired this year amid controversy over remarks he made to the media about the meaning of DNA. Lake County prosecutors could not be reached for comment. Mermel declined to comment.

Hobbs’ attorney, Kathleen Zellner, said she would like to see legislation making confessions inadmissible in court unless they can be corroborated by physical evidence. Prosecutors, she said, repeatedly have proved reluctant to admit the faults of their favorite evidentiary tools.

“(DNA) takes away the power that a prosecutor would have to develop a case around an eyewitness or a confession … and I guess there’s resistance to that,” she said.

Zellner has another client fighting his case in which DNA calls into question the conviction. Though there is no confession, prosecutors say the DNA does not persuade them of his innocence. So far they have declined to vacate the man’s conviction, although they say they are “actively investigating” the case.

Alprentiss Nash was convicted in the 1995 murder of a man named Leon Stroud during a home invasion and robbery and sentenced to 80 years in prison. Nash, according to prosecutors, put on a black ski mask before committing the crime, and the mask was found near the crime scene.

Cook County prosecutors under then-State’s Attorney Dick Devine opposed Nash’s request for testing, but the Illinois Appellate Court later ordered it. When the testing was done on skin cells found on the mask, the genetic profile was matched to an inmate who recently was paroled from prison after serving time for a drug conviction. Zellner requested additional testing, to which Alvarez’s office agreed.

In an interview at Menard Correctional Center, where he is being held, Nash, 37, said he hoped the DNA results would lead to his release.

“I’m tired of doing time,” he said of his 17 years in custody.

But Alvarez’s prosecutors argue that the DNA evidence does not clear Nash, which has frustrated him and Zellner.

“They’ve got an exclusion. They’ve got the profile of the real killer,” Zellner said. “And they’re horsing around with it.”

Texas – Death Sentence Thrown Out in 2005 Murder Case – Manuel Velez

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.

TEXAS – Agreement on DNA testing in Skinner case, but “key” evidence missing

June 13, source : http://www.chron.com

Hank Skinner.Hank Skinner

DNA testing of evidence in the Henry Skinner triple murder case hit yet another snag this week as prosecutors admitted that a blood-stained windbreaker – termed “perhaps the key piece of evidence” by the killer’s lawyer – cannot be found.

In a motion laying out terms of a joint agreement to begin testing filed late Tuesday, the state and Skinner attorney Rob Owen identify 40 items to be submitted for testing. Among them are clippings from a victim’s fingernails, vaginal swabs, and knives found at the scene of the 1993 New Year’s Eve Pampa murder.

Skinner, 50, was convicted of fatally bludgeoning his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and stabbing to death her two adult sons. He consistently has maintained his innocence, saying that consumption of codeine and alcohol had rendered him incapable of killing the victims.

Prosecutors in Tuesday’s filing concede that the windbreaker, collected from the scene by the Pampa Police Department, has not been found.

“According to the state, every other single piece of evidence in this case has been preserved,” Owen said in an email. “It is difficult to understand how the state has managed to maintain custody of items as small as fingernail clippings while apparently losing something as large as a man’s windbreaker jacket. To date, the state has offered no explanation for its failure to safeguard evidence in this case.”

A spokesman for the Texas Attorney General’s Office declined immediate comment.

Owen said the jacket, which appears to be stained with perspiration and blood, may have been worn by the assailant. Owen said that, since the trial, a witness has identified the jacket as one worn by Busby’s uncle.

That man, now dead, reportedly was seen stalking Busby at a party shortly before her murder.

Skinner has had at least two execution dates set. Last November, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a stay to ascertain how revised laws regarding such testing may apply to his case.

Skinner has endeavored for more than a decade to obtain DNA testing of seemingly important evidence gathered at the crime scene.

Once a Gray County district court approves the proposed joint order, agencies or entities possessing items to be tested will have five days to send them to the Texas Department of Public Safety laboratory in Austin.

FLORIDA – Jury: Death for Timothy Wayne Fletcher

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.

TEXAS – APPEALS COURT REJECTS CLAIM OF TEXAS DEATH ROW’S BROWN

June 12, 2012 Source : Execution Watch

NEW ORLEANS — A federal appeals panel Tuesday rejected an appeal by Texas death row prisoner Arthur Brown Jr.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Brown’s assertion that his trial attorneys failed to uncover and present sufficient mitigating evidence at the punishment hearing where he was ordered put to death.

“Brown’s claims are not adequate to proceed further,” the U.S. Fifth District Court of Appeals said in denying Brown’s request for permission to continue in the appeals process.

He was convicted in a 1992 drug-related quadruple homicide in Houston.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit, one of 13 federal court districts, encompasses Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Full text of the ruling is at http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/11/11-70012-CV0.wpd.pdf

ARIZONA – Arizona court approves fifth execution this year

June 12, 2012 Source : http://www.chron.com

Tuesday approved the execution of a death-row inmate who was spared from the death penalty last year after winning a last-minute delay from the nation’s highest court.

Daniel Wayne Cook, 50, is now scheduled for execution on Aug. 8 at the state prison in Florence.

Cook was sentenced to death for killing a 26-year-old Guatemalan immigrant, Carlos Cruz-Ramos, and a 16-year-old boy, Kevin Swaney, in 1987, after police say he tortured and raped them for hours in his apartment in Lake Havasu City in far western Arizona.

Cook had been scheduled for execution on April 5 of last year, but the U.S. Supreme Court granted him a last-minute stay to consider whether he had ineffective counsel during his post-conviction proceedings. They since have turned him down.

FLORIDA – George Zimmerman’s Wife Arrested: Shellie Zimmerman Charged With Perjury

June 12, 2012 Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Shelliezimmerman

ORLANDO, Fla. — The wife of Trayvon Martin’s shooter was charged with perjury Tuesday, accused of lying when she told a judge that the couple had limited funds during a hearing that resulted in her husband being released on $150,000 bond.

Shellie Zimmerman, 25, was released on $1,000 bond on the third-degree felony that is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. George Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the teen’s slaying and had been out on bond after the April 20 hearing. However, Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester on June 1 revoked the bond and ordered Zimmerman returned to the Seminole County Jail. In a strongly worded ruling, Lester said the Zimmermans lied about how much money they had.

George Zimmerman’s attorney Mark O’Mara has said the couple was confused and fearful when they misled court officials about how much money they had. A call and email to him on Tuesday weren’t immediately returned.

Records show Shellie Zimmerman in the days before the hearing transferred $74,000 in eight smaller amounts ranging from $7,500 to $9,990, from her husband’s credit union account to hers, according to an arrest affidavit. It also shows that $47,000 was transferred from George Zimmerman’s account to his sister’s in the days before the bond hearing.

Four days after he was released on bond, Shellie Zimmerman transferred more than $85,500 from her account into her husband’s account, the affidavit said. The affidavit also said that jail call records show that George Zimmerman instructed her to “pay off all the bills,” including an American Express and Sam’s Club card.

A state attorney investigator met with credit union officials and learned that she had control of transfers to and from her husband’s account.

Jeffrey Neiman, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, said cash transactions in excess of $10,000 usually trigger a reporting requirement by the bank to multiple government agencies – including the IRS.

“If Mrs. Zimmerman intentionally structured the financial transactions in a manner to keep the offense under $10,000, not only may she have committed perjury in the state case, but she also may have run afoul of several federal statutes and could face serious federal criminal charges,” Neiman wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer, has maintained since the Feb. 26 killing that he shot Martin in self-defense because the unarmed 17-year-old was beating him up after confronting Zimmerman about following him in a gated community outside Orlando.

Zimmerman was arrested 44 days later and at the bond hearing, he took the stand and apologized to Martin’s parents.

At the hearing, Shellie Zimmerman testified that the couple, who married in 2007, had limited funds for bail because she was a full-time student and her husband wasn’t working. Prosecutors say they actually had then already raised $135,000 in donations from a website George Zimmerman created. They suggested more had been raised since then.

Shellie Zimmerman was asked about the website at the hearing, but she said she didn’t know how much money had been raised. Lester set the $150,000 bail and Zimmerman was freed a few days later after posting $15,000 in cash – which is typical.

In bringing a motion to have Zimmerman’s bond revoked lead prosecutor Bernie De la Rionda complained “This court was led to believe they didn’t have a single penny. It was misleading and I don’t know what words to use other than it was a blatant lie.”

The judge agreed and ordered Zimmerman returned to jail where he has been since turning himself in on June 3. He didn’t perjure himself, but Lester said he knew his wife was lying.

“Does your client get to sit there like a potted plant and lead the court down the primrose path? That’s the issue,” Lester said in revoking Zimmerman’s bond. “He can’t sit back and obtain the benefit of a lower bond based upon those material falsehoods.”

He has another bond hearing set for June 29.

De la Rionda presented to the judge during the revocation hearing a partial transcript of telephone conversations Zimmerman had with his wife from jail, days before the original bond hearing.

Zimmerman and his wife discussed the amount of money raised from the website, and Zimmerman spoke in code to tell his wife how to make fund transfers, according to the transcript. The code referred to amounts of “$15” in place of “$150,000.”

In the arrest affidavit, they also spoke about small amounts when really, prosecutors said, they were referring in code to thousands of dollars that Shellie Zimmerman withdrew from her account to pay the bail bondsman.

___