Texas – Appeals Court Orders Re-evaluation of Death Row Case

april 4, 2012 source :http://www.texastribune.org

Dr. George Denkowski conducted psychological exams for 14 current death row inmates. 1) Anthony Pierce 2) Virgilio Maldonado 3) Calvin Hunter 4) Roosevelt Smith Jr. 5) John Matamoros 6) Derrick Charles 7) Kim Ly Lim 8) Coy Wesbrook 9) Joel Escobedo 10) Jamie McCoskey 11) Warren Rivers 12) Tomas Gallo 13) Steven Butler 14) Alfred BrownDr. George Denkowski conducted psychological exams for 14 current death row inmates. 1) Anthony Pierce 2) Virgilio Maldonado 3) Calvin Hunter 4) Roosevelt Smith Jr. 5) John Matamoros 6) Derrick Charles 7) Kim Ly Lim 8) Coy Wesbrook 9) Joel Escobedo 10) Jamie McCoskey 11) Warren Rivers 12) Tomas Gallo 13) Steven Butler 14) Alfred Brown

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals today ordered a Harris County criminal court to re-evaluate whether death row inmate Coy Wayne Wesbrook is intellectually competent enough to face execution for the murders he was convicted of in 1998.

Wesbrook was sentenced to death for the 1997 fatal shootings of his ex-wife and three men. He appealed his death sentence, raising claims that he was mentally retarded. His claims were denied in 2007 after Dr. George Denkowski testified as an expert for the state in his case.

The state’s highest court has ordered similar reviews in at least two other death penalty cases involving Denkowksi, who was reprimanded last year for his work. (See story below.)

(12/15/2011) — The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday ordered lower courts to review two death penalty cases that involved a psychologist who was reprimanded earlier this year for using questionable methods to determine whether defendants were intellectually competent enough to face capital punishment.

“What we’re seeing is a growing awareness on the part of the Court of Criminal Appeals for scientific integrity in criminal cases,” said Kathryn Kase, interim executive director of the Texas Defender Services, which represents death row inmates. “The evidence of retardation in both of these cases is pretty compelling.”

The state’s highest criminal court sent the cases of Steven Butler and John Matamoros back to Harris County courts to re-evaluate the evidence used to sentence the two men to death. Dr. George Denkowski examined both of the men and told the juries they did not suffer from mental retardation.

In April of this year, the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists (TSBEP), issued a reprimand against Denkowksi, whose methods were widely criticized. Denkowksi agreed not to conduct intellectual disability evaluations in future criminal cases and to pay a fine of $5,500. In return, the board dismissed the complaints against him. The psychologist admitted no wrongdoing and defended his practice. But defense lawyers were hopeful that the reprimand would prompt the courts to review other cases where juries relied on Denkowski’s evaluations to hand down death sentences.

Denkowski evaluated 14 inmates who are now on Texas’ death row — and two others who were subsequently executed — and found them intellectually competent enough to face the death penalty.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that states cannot execute mentally handicapped people. The court, though, left it to the states to create guidelines for determining whether a person is mentally handicapped. Texas courts have generally adopted a three-part definition that requires the convicted inmate to have below average intellectual function, lack adaptive behavior skills and to have had those problems from a young age.

Prosecutors regularly relied on Denkowski to perform psychological evaluations to determine whether a murder suspect would be eligible for execution. But in 2009, other psychologists and defense lawyers complained to the TSBEP that Denkowski used unscientific methods that artificially inflated intelligence scores to make defendants eligible for the death penalty.

In his 2006 evaluation of Steven Butler, who was convicted in the shooting death of a store clerk, Denkowski rejected other IQ test scores that indicated Butler was well below average intelligence. He discounted behavioral evaluations from Butler’s family and friends, who said that Butler couldn’t understand the rules of basketball, had to have others read menus for him and that he had failed basic classes.

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed Butler’s execution pending the outcome of the complaint against Denkowksi. And on Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said it was acting on its own initiative to remand the case to the trial court in Harris County and “allow it the opportunity to re-evaluate its initial findings, conclusions, and recommendation in light of the Denkowski Settlement Agreement.”

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals had also stayed the execution of Matamoros, who was convicted in 1992 of stabbing to death a 70-year-old Houston man. As in the Butler case, the criminal appeals court said it was taking initiative to send the case back for re-evaluation based on the psychologist’s reprimand.

Kase said she hoped the court would also order re-evaluation of the other death penalty cases in which Denkowski examined the defendants.

“Exonerations, I think, have caused the court to become concerned about the integrity of forensic evidence,” she said. “That’s really, really important here, where the decision about whether someone has retardation is a matter of life and death.”

Ray’s Story – wrongfully convicted

Ray Krone was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. He has been proven innocent and exonerated, and now helps other “exonerees” share their stories of unjust sentences and close calls with state-sanctioned death penalties. Ray works for Witness to Innocence, which receives support from Atlantic, toward abolishing the death penalty throughout America. Atlantic is the largest funder of work to abolish the death penalty in the U.S.

For more info see: http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/rays-story-death-penalty-mistake

Serial killer Sowell’s execution date delayed

april 2 source : http://www.wtam.com

(Cleveland) — Convicted serial killer Anthony Sowell’s execution, originally set for October 29 of this year, has been pushed back. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Monday on a request by Sowell’s new defense team to delay the execution.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason tells WTAM that the delay is unexpected, given that there will be appeals in the case through the entire state appellate court system and also through the federal court system. Mason says the entire process in a death penalty case could take ten to 30 years.

The execution date of October 29 was set by Common Pleas Judge Dick Ambrose when Sowell was sentenced last year. It’s the third anniversary of the date that Cleveland Police went to Sowell’s house on Imperial Avenue and found the remains of the first of the 11 women he was convicted of killing.

Georgia – Daniel Greene – Execution – april 19 – STAYED 90 DAYS

april 4, 2012 source : http://www.correctionsone.com

TAYLOR COUNTY, Ga. — An April 19 execution date has been set for a former high school football star from Taylor County.

Daniel Greene was sentenced to death for the 1991 killing of 19-year-old Bernard Walker, who was trying to come to the aid of a Suwanee Thrifty store clerk in Taylor County.

Greene had forced the clerk to give him $142 from the cash register before he took her to a back room and stabbed her. She survived, but Walker, whom Greene stabbed in the heart, died in the parking lot.

Greene, a 6-foot-5, 350-pound former high school football standout, was tried in Clayton County in 1992 because of pretrial publicity.

After killing Walker, Greene drove to the home of a Macon County couple who had previously employed him as a farm laborer. Greene burst into their home, took their car keys and then stabbed Willie and Donice Montgomery multiple times. The couple survived.

Greene then drove to another convenience store in Warner Robins and pulled a knife on the store attendant, who gave Greene money from the cash register. Greene stabbed her in the back of the shoulder before fleeing. He was later arrested at a relative’s home and confessed to the crimes in a videotaped interview, saying he needed money for crack cocaine, according to court records.

Late last week, a judge signed an order scheduling Greene’s execution for a seven-day period beginning April 19. On Monday, Department of Corrections Commissioner Brian Owens set the execution for April 19 at 7 p.m.

The execution is to be carried out at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. Greene would be the 30th state inmate put to death by lethal injection.

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Death Row inmate who killed mother dies after illness

april 4, 2012 source : http://www.pressdemocrat.com

SACRAMENTO — A Death Row inmate has died of natural causes while awaiting execution for killing his own mother.

Lt. Sam Robinson, a spokesman for San Quentin State Prison, said Frank Manuel Abilez died in the prison’s hospital Tuesday.

Abilez, who was 53, had a long-term illness. Robinson says his death was expected but would not discuss the illness, citing privacy laws.

Abilez was on death row for sodomizing and strangling his 68-year-old mother in 1996. He was convicted by a Los Angeles County jury in 1997 and sentenced to die for killing Beatrice Abilez Loza, a mother of 10.

The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says 76 condemned inmates have died of natural causes or committed suicide since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978. Fourteen have been executed.

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US Debates The Execution Question

april 4 2012  source : http://news.sky.com

Courts in the United States condemned fewer people to death last year than at any time in the country’s modern history. Greg Milam reports.

watch the video : here  

Rob Will – Another Potentially Innocent Man On Death Row Faces Execution In Texas

april 2 2012  source : http://thinkprogress.org

Yet another death row inmate in Texas may in fact not be guilty of the crime that put him there. Robert Gene Will was convicted in the 2000 slaying of Deputy Sheriff Barrett Hill in Harris County, Texas. Will and another man, Michael Rosario, were caught trying to break into a car in December 2000. Both men fled, but Will says he was apprehended and placed in handcuffs by police. That’s when someone shot Deputy Sheriff Hill.

 

Will says that the shooter couldn’t have been him, on account of his hands literally being tied behind his back. And his lawyers argue that Rosario, the accomplice in the attempted car burglary, has admitted to at least five people that he was the one who pulled the trigger that morning. And now, Will’s case is attracting even more attention after a U.S District Judge voiced his own reservations about the initial conviction and the appeal that was conducted. TheHouston Chronicle reports:

“The questions raised during post-judgment factual development about Will’s actual innocence create disturbing uncertainties …,” [Judge Keith] Ellison wrote in a Jan. 17 memorandum. “On top of the considerable evidence supporting Will’s innocence and the important errors in the trial court, there must also be addressed the total absence of eyewitness testimony or strongly probative forensic evidence. With facts such as these, and only circumstantial evidence supporting Will’s conviction and death sentence, the court laments the strict limitations placed upon it.”

Judge Ellison was limited in his ability to hear new evidence before making a decision on whether to grant an appeal to Will, and despite his expressed dismay over the lower court’s verdict, was forced to deny the appeal on a technicality. But Will and his defense attorneys still have avenues open to them, including a recent Supreme Court ruling that allows for convicted criminals to, in some cases, challenge the competency of their state-assigned appeals lawyers. For Will, whose appointed attorney filed a legal brief that copied extensively from one he filed previously for a completely different case, the Supreme Court decision offers a ray of hope.

Texas has a well-earned reputation for unsympathetic governors who are undeterred at overseeing more executions than any other state in the country. Current Gov. Rick Perry presided over 235 executions during his time in office, by far the most of any governor in the modern era. This despite several questionable convictions that call into question the use of the death penalty at all.

 

my own opinion

Perry is more of a murderer than anyone who’s death warrant he has signed. Innocent isn’t  in Perry’s vocabulary, Perry loves the smell of burning flesh in the morning. What’s going wrong with him ? what’s going wrong with this state ? Maybe Perry may need psychotherapy, an event in his childhood of the trauma to become a man who happens to sleep at night knowing that he killed people and especially innocent people. I think sometimes the most dangerous people are not those caught, but those who elected to lead.

well we know  Texas-Bush-Perry .. murderers.. 

 

 

OREGON – Prosecutor agrees with OR death row inmate

april, 3 2012 source : http://www.dailytidings.com

PORTLAND, Ore. — As Oregon death row inmate Gary Haugen fights a reprieve, he has a supporter in Marion County District Attorney Walt Beglau whose office won the death penalty conviction.

Haugen wants to be executed and has asked a circuit court to rule that Gov. John Kitzhaber’s reprieve is legally ineffective because Haugen doesn’t accept it.

Beglau told The Oregonian that’s the central issue in the case. Beglau says he disagrees with Kitzhaber’s reprieve and won’t defend it. The Oregon Justice Department will.

Haugen was sentenced to die for killing another inmate in prison. The governor is opposed to capital punishment.

Michael Parrish gets death penalty in ’09 double-murder

april 02. 2012  source : http://www.poconorecord.com

A Monroe County jury has sentenced Michael Parrish to death for the 2009 double-murder of his ex-girlfriend and infant son.

Parrish was convicted last week of fatally shooting Victoria Adams and Sidney Parrish at their apartment in Effort on the night of July 6, 2009.

Sitting between his attorneys, Parrish showed no emotion to the verdict, staring straight ahead and blinking his eyes every few seconds. Though his father and a former co-worker had testified earlier on his behalf, none of Parrish’s family or friends were present for the jury’s penalty phase verdict.

Parrish remained as stoic as ever, saying nothing as sheriff’s deputies led him from the courtroom after the verdict.

“I wanted him to get death and I’m glad he got it, but it still doesn’t bring my daughter and grandson back,” a tearful Kim Adams, mother of victim Victoria Adams and grandmother of baby victim Sidney Parrish, told reporters afterward as she left the courthouse with other family members. “Nothing can ever bring them back.”

The family thanked the police, District Attorney’s Office and county Victim-Witness Coordinator’s Office.

A somber Wieslaw Niemoczynski, the county public defender who with attorney Jim Gregor has been representing Parrish, called the verdict “very sobering.”

“The jury has spoken,” Niemoczynski said. “We’ll see what, if any, issues should be appealed and go from there.”

The jury deliberated for about three hours Monday before returning its sentence just after 8:30 p.m. Testimony began in the morning with Parrish’s father.

Parrish’s father, Joseph A. Parrish, was an alcoholic who was violent toward his mother, according to Deborah Belknap, defense litigation specialist.

The elder Parrish said Michael was 5 when his mother filed for divorce.

Michael Parrish, a former prison guard, became exposed to Nazi Germany through a class at his mother’s college, his father said.

At age 14, he went back to live with his father, where he continued his obsession, his father said. His father said Michael believed he was reincarnated as a Nazi SS officer and would stand at the shoreline waiting for a German U-boat to come in.

Belknap testified that Parrish was under stress, trying to keep his job, his car running and having a baby with a heart transplant who was taking 12 medications.

During the afternoon, witnesses for the defense said Parrish had traumatic events in his life at a critical vulnerable age. Out of that came a need for imposing control in any way he could. Diagnosed as obsessive compulsive, experts said Parrish gets uptight if things are messy or out of place.

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Anti-death penalty group asks Okla. governor to reconsider clemency for man scheduled to die

april, 2 2012,  source : http://www.therepublic.com

OKLAHOMA CITY — An anti-death penalty group wants Gov. Mary Fallin to grant clemency to a man sentenced to die next week, and asked Monday that she give full weight to the Pardon and Parole Board’s 2005 recommendation to commute his sentence.

The Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty encouraged the public Monday to write letters to the governor and sign the group’s petition. Coalition members argue that Garry Thomas Allen, 56, is mentally impaired and should not be put to death.

Allen killed the mother of his children, 42-year-old Lawanna Titsworth, on Nov. 21, 1986, in Oklahoma City. He was shot in the head during a struggle with an officer.

Fallin said she and her legal team gave Allen’s case a thorough review, including interviews with family members of the victim and attorneys on both sides, and she has no plans to change her decision.

“I took quite a long time looking through his files,” Fallin said. “I watched videos of him. I’ve read the files themselves. I’ve visited with his attorneys.”

Garland Pruitt, president of the Oklahoma City chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, supported the anti-death penalty coalition at a news conference Monday at the state Capitol. The Rev. Adam Leathers and Sen. Constance Johnson also backed the group.

Leathers said executing Allen with his history of mental illness conflicts with Jesus’ promotion of life and healing. He said Allen is not a Christ figure, but talking about state-mandated execution at the close of Lent is ironic and reminds him of “barbaric crowds” that “once cried out ‘crucify him.'”

A personality test in Allen’s court file shows his “probable diagnosis is Schizophrenic Disorder, or Anxiety Disorder in a Paranoid Personality.”

Allen, who had a history of substance abuse, testified that before the day of the killing, he got drunk whenever he could.

“I can remember drinking a lot and I don’t even know if it was on that day, but I was drinking just about every day at that point,” he said.

The Pardon and Parole Board recommended 4-1 that the governor commute Allen’s sentence to life in prison without parole. But Fallin rejected the recommendation last month and ordered him to die April 12.

In 2008, jurors rejected Allen’s argument that he should not be put to death and decided he was sane enough to be executed.

Allen appealed, but the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals in December concluded there is no procedure to appeal a finding that a person facing execution is sane.

Allen shot Titsworth four days after she moved out of the home where she lived with Allen and their two sons, according to court documents. Titsworth and Allen had fought in the week before the shooting and he tried to convince her to live with him again.

On the day of the killing, she went to a day care center to pick up her sons when Allen confronted her. She left with the boys and went into the parking lot, where employees and several children were, but Allen would not let her get into her truck. He reached into his sock and shot her twice in the chest with a revolver. She was able to run toward the day care, but Allen pushed her down some steps and shot her two times in the back.

An officer in the area responded to a 911 call and found Allen in an alley. Allen grabbed his gun and they struggled, according to court documents. Allen tried to make the officer shoot himself by squeezing his finger on the trigger, but the officer got control of the gun and shot Allen in the face.