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Tennesse – Memphis man released after 27 years in prison

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

A former death row inmate who won a new trial in the 1983 murder of a Memphis grocer has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to time he already has served.

Erskine Leroy Johnson, 54, was released Friday morning after serving 26 years, 11 months and five days for the shooting death of Joe Belenchia during a holdup on Oct. 2, 1983, at the Food Rite Grocery at 2803 Lamar.

“He is overjoyed at being out,” said Gerald Skahan, chief capital-case attorney in the Public Defenders Office. “He is looking forward to enjoying the rest of his life and spending it helping others.”

He said Johnson has always maintained his innocence, but entered an Alford plea, also called a best-interests plea, so he could get out of prison and avoid putting his family through a trial.

He was released Friday morning from the Shelby County Jail after entering his plea this week in Criminal Court.

Johnson was on death row from Jan. 26, 1995, to Nov. 15, 2004, but was re-sentenced to life in prison after the state Supreme Court ruled prosecutors did not give the defense a police report showing the defendant could not have fired a shot that wounded a customer in the store.

Then last December the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals awarded Johnson a new trial, ruling that newly discovered evidence raised by the defense may have caused the jury to reach a different verdict.

The court found that new evidence indicating close relationships among several of the state’s witnesses, if true, could have been viewed as a motive to protect other possible suspects and could have weakened the witnesses’ credibility before the jury.

Johnson said that around the time of the murder he was in St. Louis at a birthday party for his mother.

Prosecutors said Johnson’s palm print was found on the getaway car and that one witness told the jury that Johnson had confessed to “a cold-blooded” shooting in Memphis.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Campbell said the state offered the settlement because the case was nearly 30 years old and Johnson already had served nearly 27 years in prison. A life sentence under laws in effect at the time of the murder was at least 25 years.

Campbell said prison officials had called Johnson “an exemplary prisoner” and that the state parole board had granted his release scheduled for June 11.

 

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Mississippi may see most executions since 1950s

June 11, 2012 Source : http://www.timesdaily.com

With four execution so far and two scheduled this month, Mississippi is on pace to have more executions in 2012 than it has had in any year since the 1950s.

The last time Mississippi executed more than four inmates in any single year was in 1961, when five died in the gas chamber. There were eight executions in each of the years 1955 and 1956. In those days, inmates were put to death for crimes like armed robbery, rape or murder. Today, the only crime punishable by death in Mississippi is capital murder — a murder that happens during the commission of another felony.

The increase in executions comes as fewer people are being sentenced to death across the country. Some experts say the upward trend in Mississippi isn’t likely to last.

Don Cabana, a former Mississippi corrections commissioner and author of the book, “Death At Midnight: The Confessions of an Executioner,” said the increase “was absolutely predictable” and has more to do with timing and the pace of appeals than anything else.

“You have a number of people who have been sitting on death row for a long time whose cases kind of simultaneously, or in close proximity, started exhausting their appeals,” Cabana said.

Three of the men executed so far this year were convicted of crimes committed in 1995 and the other was convicted in the 1990 stabbing deaths of four children.

Jan Michael Brawner, who’s scheduled for execution on Tuesday, was convicted in the 2001 killings of his 3-year-old daughter, his ex-wife and her parents in Tate County. Gary Carl Simmons Jr., scheduled to die by injection June 20, was convicted of shooting and dismembering a man in Pascagoula over a drug debt in 1996.

“Mississippi went for a long time with no executions, or hardly any executions. It’s due to the slowness of the appellate process. But now these cases are coming to fruition,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group that collects and analyzes information on the death penalty.

Jim Craig, an attorney who has worked on appeals for death row inmates, believes there’s more to it than that.

Craig said that seven out of 11 men executed in Mississippi since 2008 were represented on appeal by the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel when it was led by attorney Bob Ryan, who took over the office in 2002. Glenn S. Swartzfager took over the office in 2008.

In a 2006 affidavit obtained by The Associated Press, Ryan described a situation in which the office lacked manpower and funding and he sometimes relied on trial summaries when filing appeals in numerous cases. At one point, he was essentially “the sole counsel on 21 cases,” he wrote in the affidavit.

Craig says he’s convinced that some of those men would be alive, either still appealing their cases or having their death sentences reduced, if they had better representation. Craig said many appeals were filed based only on the court transcript, and the post-conviction office didn’t bother to interview witnesses.

“This is more than just the usual things moving at the usual speed. This is a breakdown in the system of providing lawyers to poor people when the state is trying to execute them,” he said.

The Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel was created by the Legislature in 2000 to represent indigent death row inmates in appeals.

“A pace of one or two executions a year is about what Mississippi has averaged. The reason why we have had 11 since 2008, I think it has to do with the failures of the post-conviction office in those years,” Craig said.

The number of executions in Mississippi has fluctuated from year to year. There were two executions last year, three in 2010, none in 2009 and two in 2008. There also have been long gaps in executions over the years because of litigation. There were lulls between 1964 and 1983 and again from 1989 to 2002.

So far this year, Mississippi is only one execution behind Texas. Texas, however, has more executions scheduled for the remainder of the year than Mississippi. Texas has executed some 460 more people than Mississippi since 1976, but Texas has a much larger population.

There are 52 inmates on death row in Mississippi, which ranks 15th among death penalty states. Two of the inmates on Mississippi’s death row are women, though it has been decades since a woman was executed in Mississippi. California has the most death row inmates with around 723.

Richard Jordan, 66, who was first convicted in 1977, is the oldest person on Mississippi’s death row and has been there the longest, according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Jordan has an appeal pending in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Amnesty International Usa – Support a strong Arms Trade Treaty this July!

KILLER FACT: Just six countries export 74% of the world’s weapons! The world’s most powerful countries must put human rights before profits and stop arming abusers.

Support  click here

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Is The Death Penalty Moral ?

Sentencing reforms need to be set in place preventing ‘permanent’ punishments. Sentencing needs to be derived from a ‘protect us from the bad elements’ point of view and not from a ‘pay them back for their nefarious deeds’ point of view.

When a law is created from a retribution or payback perspective, it violates the spirit of law and order, particularly, when a sentence option is death, having the wrong person or an aggressive prosecution and then doing something as ‘unacceptable’ as they did sounds like childish retribution and just doesn’t weigh in as making sense.

If you have the wrong person and you kill them, then heaven save us all. It could be you, me, any family member, friend or a complete stranger; it doesn’t matter because they are dead. This is dangerous to us all and why are we paying taxes to have a law like this if there is a potential that we can be easily killed by accidentor wrongly but legally. It doesn’t matter how rarely it might happen, death just doesn’t sound smart to me.

Again, if the prosecution believes that the person is guilty, their expert experience with the judicial system give them an advantage as well as increase the likelihood that an innocent person gets the death penalty.  I am not insinuating that prosecutors are evil, maybe, maybe not; the point is when the sentencing is so permanent it leaves NO room for mistakes. In this era of human rights I find it difficult that the most valuable right we have, the right to life, is not protected.

How can we punish someone for something we say is wrong and are abhorred by and then go and do the exact same thing to them ourselves, collectively, and feel justified in our actions.  We ignore the reality of it all by saying we are more humane and we would not be doing it if they did not make the choices they have chosen.  Then we sit down, contemplate, debate, and plan laws, voting on them and finally making a decision in the first degree of culpability to impose a death penalty.

If you say killing is wrong, then it’s wrong. Period.

Source : http://socyberty.com

CALIFORNIA – Death Row suicide highlights executions’ delays

June 10, 2012 Source : http://www.mercurynews.com

SAN FRANCISCO—When James Lee Crummel hanged himself in his San Quentin Prison cell last month, he had been living on Death Row for almost eight years—and he was still years away from facing the executioner.

California’s automatic death penalty appeals take so long that the state’s 723 condemned inmates are more likely to die of old age and infirmities —or kill themselves—than be put to death.

Since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978, California has executed 13 inmates, and none since 2006. But 20 have committed suicide, including Crummel, who abducted, sexually abused and killed a 13-year-old boy on his way to school in 1979. Another 57 inmates have died of natural causes. The ponderous pace of this process has helped make the state’s death row the most populous in the nation, and it has generated critics from all quarters.

Victim rights groups say the delays amount to justice denied. Death penalty opponents say the process, like execution itself, amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

And now the state’s voters will get an opportunity this November to vote on a measure that would abolish the death penalty, which critics deride as an inefficient and expensive system for a financially troubled state.

It took the Supreme Court four years to appoint Crummel a public defender, and it took his attorney almost that long to file his opening brief after several time extensions. Crummel’s appeal was expected to consume a few more years before the high court decided the case.

While most condemned inmates welcome legal delays, even those seeking a speedy resolution are stymied.

Scott Peterson, who was sentenced to death seven years ago for murdering his pregnant wife Laci, is attempting to get his case before the Supreme Court as soon as possible, because he says he was wrongly convicted.

Peterson’s parents hired a top-notch private appellate lawyer after sentencing, while other Death Row inmates wait an average of five years each for appointment of taxpayer-funded public defenders.

“We are moving at lightning speed compared to most automatic appeals,” said Peterson’s attorney Cliff Gardner. “He wants to establish his innocence.”

The slow wheels of death penalty appeals, and the billions of dollars spent on them over the years, are making converts of some of capital punishment’s biggest backers, including the author of a 1978 ballot measure that expanded the types of crimes eligible for capital punishment in the state.

Retired prosecutor Donald Heller, who wrote the 1978 proposition, and Ron Briggs, the initiative’s campaign manager who now serves on the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors, say they support abolition in California because the system is too costly and hardly anyone is being put to death.

“We’d thought we would bring California savings and safety in dealing with convicted murderers,” Briggs said in a statement. “Instead, we contributed to a nightmarish system that coddles murderers and enriches lawyers. ”

The current measure—known as the SAFE California Act—would convert all death sentences to life in prison without parole and redirect $100 million from the death penalty system to be spent over three years investigating unsolved murders and rapes.

Despite the growing backlog, district attorneys continue to send murderers to death row. Five new inmates have arrived this year, and several more are expected, including Los Angeles gang member 24-year-old Pedro Espinoza who was convicted of shooting to death a high school football player. A jury recommended death for Espinoza, and a judge is scheduled formally sentence him in September.

Meantime, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley is attempting to immediately resume executions of two longtime Death Row inmates Mitchell Carleton Sims, 52, and Tiequon Aundray Cox, 46, who have exhausted all of their appeals. Sims has been on Death Row since 1987, Cox since 1986.

“It is time Sims and Cox pay for their crimes,” said Cooley, who is asking that the inmates be executed with a single drug rather than the three-drug lethal cocktail now being challenged in federal and state courts. The California District Attorneys Association is backing Cooley’s attempt to resume executions.

Cooley argues appeals rather than trials consume the lion’s share of what the state spends administering the death penalty in California. Cooley wants executions to remain on hold until after the November election. But if the death penalty is retained, he proposes a change in the law to allow the State Court of Appeal to start handling death penalty appeals rather than automatically sending every case to the Supreme Court for review.

Appealing the death penalty in California takes decades for a variety of reasons. There are too few qualified attorneys to handle too many automatic death penalty appeals, resulting in inmates waiting about five years each for a public defender. Once an inmate is represented by counsel, it still takes additional years to put together the voluminous trial record that serves at the heart of the appeal.

Those records often exceed 70,000 pages, according to Peterson’s attorney, adding that he wouldn’t be surprised if his client’s record reached 80,000 pages.

Gardner says he expects to file his appeal brief later this month, which would be a first for any inmate sentenced to death during the past 12 years.

None of the estimated 250 prisoners in that category is as far along as Peterson, according to a study of California’s death penalty published last year by 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Arthur Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula Mitchell.

They estimated that $4 billion has been spent on all facets of the state’s death penalty since 1978, including $925 million on appeals.

California’s death penalty, the authors said, is a “multibillion-dollar fraud on California taxpayers” that has seen “billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent to create a bloated system, in which condemned inmates languish on death row for decades before dying of natural causes and in which executions rarely take place.”

US – CANADA Luka Rocco Magnotta Case, canadian killer cannibal and necrophiliac

June 8, 2012 Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Now that accused Canadian cannibal Luka Rocca Magnotta is in custody, and body parts of his alleged victim have turned up at several locations, new questions about whether Magnotta could be a suspect in similar crimes have emerged.

In January, body parts were found strewn near the iconic Hollywood sign in California. With no suspect for that crime, even though it happened nearly 3,000 miles from where Magnotta is accused of dismembering a 33-year-old college student, some news organizations have speculated that the cases are connected.

But retired FBI agent Harold Copus laughed off this supposed connection. “There is also a possibility that martians could be responsible,” he told the Huffington Post.

He said he is not trying to make light of the situation, but indicated that the reports are overreaching.

On May 29, 33-year-old Jun Lin’s torso was found in a suitcase near Magnotta’s apartment. Later that morning, authorities were called to the headquarters of the Conservative Party of Canada to investigate a suspicious package. Inside, they found Jun’s severed foot. Another body part –– Jun’s severed hand –– was found that night inside a package at the Ottawa Postal Terminal. The package had been addressed to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Other body parts belonging to Jun were found at the apartment building, and his right hand and foot were found earlier this week at two Vancouver schools.

A head and appendages were found in the Hollywood Hills by two dog walkers in mid-January. The victim has since been identified as 66-year-old Hervey Medellin, a local resident who often hiked the area.

Contacted by HuffPost today, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department said the agency reached out to police in Montreal, but said it was only to “determine a timeline,” which is standard procedure.

According to Copus, it is far too soon to intertwine the two cases.

“Every law enforcement agency that has a similar case is going to see if there is any possibility that this guy could be responsible for it. That is normal and law enforcement has a duty to do that,” said Copus, now head of Copus Security Consultants in Atlanta. “Nothing more should be read into any of it at this point.”

Instead, Copus said the concern at this point should be about copycats.

“Whenever something like this happens, there is always the possibility that it could inspire other troubled individuals to act out in a similar manner. They might also try to outdo the person who inspired them – and take it a step further.”

ALABAMA – Mental retardation finding may save convicted Jefferson County murderer from death sentence

June 8, 2012 Source : http://blog.al.com

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — A Jefferson County murderer who served more than four years on Death Row then won a new trial and was reconvicted, may avoid a second death sentence after a state expert found he was mentally retarded, a hearing revealed today.

Esaw Jackson, 33, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2007 for a shooting the year earlier in Ensley that killed a woman and a teenager and wounded the mother’s two teen children.

A Jefferson County jury also convicted him of capital murder in 2011, and recommended a sentence of death in a 10-2 vote.

Pre-sentence testing ordered by Circuit Judge Stephen Wallace, the judge in the current trial, determined Jackson had an IQ of 56, well below the normal legal threshold for mental retardation, which is a 70 IQ.

The U.S. Supreme Court has banned executing mentally retarded murderers.

In today’s hearing, prosecutor Mike Anderson asked for more time to obtain and examine Jackson’s school records for evidence of mental retardation, another indicator courts use to determine if the death penalty should be barred.

Wallace set a July 13 hearing, and said he wants to set the final sentencing after Anderson reports back.

If the assessment holds that Jackson is mentally retarded, “the sentence would have to be life without parole,” said one of Jackson’s lawyer, Erskine Mathis.

Judges in capital cases are not bound by the jury’s sentencing recommendation, but in most cases Alabama judges have overridden the jury’s recommendation of life without parole and imposed death instead.

Fewer than 10 percent of the judicial overrides have resulted in the lesser capital sentence, according to the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery.

Jackson was 27 when he fired a rifle at least 15 times into a car stopped at a traffic light on 19th Street and Avenue V. Killed were Pamela Montgomery, 42, and Milton Poole III, 16. Montgomery’s children, Shaniece Montgomery, then 19, and Denaris Montgomery, then 17, were wounded.

The jury in Jackson’s original trial also recommended death in a 10-2 vote, and then-Circuit Judge Gloria Bahakel sentenced him to death. The Alabama Supreme Court overturned his convictionand sentence in 2011, citing improper testimony in the 2007 trial.

Four years after watching his mother and best friend die, Denaris Montgomery committed a murder himself, and now is serving a 21-year prison term.

Exonerated death row inmate to speak in Colorado Springs – Juan Melendez

June 8, 2012  Source : http://www.csindy.com

Rev. Roger Butts, organizer for Coloradans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “And God forbid we execute an innocent person.”

Juan Melendez nearly became that person. After 17 years on death row in Florida for a 1983 murder — and several denied appeals — that state’s Supreme Court finally overturned his conviction when a key witness recanted his testimony. Ten years after his release, he’s bringing his story to Colorado Springs. On Sunday evening. Melendez will speak and respond to questions at First Congregational Church, 20 E. Saint Vrain St., at 6 p.m.

“The guy is just so incredibly inspiring,” says Rev. Butts. “I have a feeling that if I spent 17 years on death row, I’d be bitter, and angry, and mean, and just a recluse or something. But this guy is so unbelievably inspiring.”

His visit is sponsored by Coloradans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, who hope to pass legislation in 2013 to make Colorado the 18th state in the union to end capital punishment. For more information, contact Rev. Roger Butts at revrogerb@msn.com

Check out the trailer for Juan Melendez 6446, a documentary about Melendez’s perilous journey through capital punishment’s legal apparatus.

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CALIFORNIA – S.C. Upholds Death Sentence for Man Who Burned Woman to Death

june 8, 2012 Source : http://www.metnews.com/

The state Supreme Court yesterday unanimously upheld the death sentence for a man who killed his son’s mother by setting her afire in a Fontana pizza parlor parking lot.

The justices rejected claims by Howard Larcell Streeter that the trial judge abused his discretion by admitting evidence that may have had a significant emotional impact on the jury, including a tape of the victim screaming in pain for 20 minutes on her way to the hospital where she died.

San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Bob Krug sentenced Streeter to death in 1999 for the 1997 murder of Yolanda Buttler, 39.  Witnesses testified that Streeter sat in the parking lot waiting for Buttler, who was bringing their son to visit with him in the pizza parlor; her two older children were with her as well.

The two had recently ended a five-year relationship, which members of Buttler’s family said was violent. Buttler had recently obtained a restraining order against Streeter, who had been unsuccessfully seeking reconciliation.

After Buttler emerged from her car, witnesses said, Streeter poured gasoline over her from a can and dragged her back toward his car, from which he obtained a lighter and set the victim ablaze. Bystanders doused the fire with water and blankets, but the burns were so severe that paramedics could not locate a vein to administer pain medication.

Died in Hospital

Buttler succumbed to her wounds after 10 days in the hospital. Streeter, who was pursued by a bystander as he tried to leave the scene and was eventually arrested, was charged with first degree murder with special circumstances of lying in wait and torture.

Streeter admitted killed Buttler. But he denied that he planned the murder, saying he acted because he was distraught over the breakup and losing the opportunity to be with his son, and was under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

A jury found him guilty and found both special-circumstance allegations to be true, but deadlocked as to penalty. A new jury was empaneled and voted to impose the death penalty.

On appeal, the defense argued that Krug should not have allowed the jury to hear the 20-minute tape. Given its offer to stipulate to the cause and manner of death, the defense contended, the admission of the tape was more prejudicial than probative.

Highly Probative

Justice Ming Chin, however, wrote for the high court that the tape was highly probative of whether Streeter intentionally caused the victim extreme pain, an element of the torture special circumstance to which the defense did not stipulate.

“In any event, the prosecution may not be compelled to accept a stipulation where the effect would be to deprive the state’s case of its persuasiveness and forcefulness,” Chin wrote, concluding that the evidence was no more sensational than was necessary to demonstrate what had occurred.

Chin went on to say that there was sufficient evidence for a jury to find that Buttler’s murder arose from a premeditated plan to cause her extreme pain and not from an“an unplanned, impulsive explosion of violence resulting from a fight that spun out of control” as the defense contended.

“Given defendant’s prior physical abuse of Yolanda, his attempts to control her by preventing communication with her family, his anger with Yolanda for leaving him and taking his child, and concealing her whereabouts, and the repeated threats against Yolanda’s family, the jury could have reasonably concluded that when defendant intentionally set Yolanda on fire as he had planned, he intended to cause Yolanda extreme pain and suffering as punishment or for revenge,” Chin wrote.

Flight Considered

Jurors could also consider the fact that he fled the scene, rather than attempting to help put the flames out, conduct more consistent with murderous intent than sudden rage, Chin said.

The justice agreed with the defense that Krug committed error when he instructed the jury that it could consider the defendant’s prior misdemeanor conviction for shooting into an occupied dwelling as an aggravating factor under Penal Code Sec. 190.3(c). But the error was certainly harmless, he said.

While Sec. 190.3(c) only applies to felony convictions, the jury was entitled to consider the underlying violent criminal conduct as an aggravating factor under Sec. 190.3(b), Chin explained. “The danger that the jury would assign significant additional aggravating weight to the fact of conviction was minimal,” the jurist said.

The case is People v. Streeter, 12 S.O.S. 2772.

George Zimmerman’s Old Cell Phone Number Given To Junior Guy In Orlando; Death Threats Begin

June 8, 2012  Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com

The moment Junior Alexander Guy activated his very first cell phone, calls started rolling in.

He was threatened, harassed and accused of murder at all hours of the day and night, according to the Orlando Sun-Sentinel.

“You deserve to die,” the callers would say. “You murderer!”

Turns out that T-Mobile had given Guy the cell phone number formerly used by George Zimmerman — the man who in February shot and killed Trayvon Martin in Florida.

When Zimmerman’s 911 tape was released, so was his number: 407-435-2400. Zimmerman got rid of the number and it was given to 49-year-old Guy, who got his first cell phone on May 7, Newscore reported.

Guy received about 70 threatening calls between the 7th and the 16th, when he turned the phone over to a lawyer and demanded compensation from T-Mobile. But the cell company refused, saying that Guy was provided with a new number and credit toward his bill.

T-Mobile then retired Zimmerman’s old cell phone number so nobody else would be threatened.

Zimmerman, 28, was charged with murder after he shot and killed 17-year-old Martin, who was unarmed during the Feb. 26 incident. He claims the shooting was in self defense and pleaded not guilty. His bond was recently revoked and he has returned to jail.

The killing of Martin sparked a national uproar over Zimmerman, the responsibilities of a neighborhood watch volunteer, and race.