capitalpunishment

CALIFORNIA – Death Row inmates oppose Prop. 34

September 24, 2012 http://www.sfgate.com

Like other state prisoners, the 725 inmates on California’s Death Row can’t vote. But if they could, there’s evidence that most of them would vote against a November ballot initiative to abolish the death penalty.

It’s not that they want to die, attorney Robert Bryan said. They just want to hang on to the possibility of proving that they’re innocent, or at least that they were wrongly convicted. That would require state funding for lawyers and investigators – funding that Proposition 34 would eliminate for many Death Row inmates after the first round of appeals.

Bryan has represented several condemned prisoners in California as well as Mumia Abu-Jamal, the radical activist and commentator whose death sentence for the murder of a Philadelphia policeman was recently reduced to life in prison. The attorney said California inmates have told him they’d prefer the current law, with its prospect of lethal injection, to one that would reduce their appellate rights.

“Many of them say, ‘I’d rather gamble and have the death penalty dangling there but be able to fight to right a wrong,’ ” Bryan said.

Or, as Death Row inmate Correll Thomas put it in a recent newspaper essay, if Prop. 34 passes, “the courthouse doors will be slammed forever.”

Added legal rights

The seeming paradox reflects the tangled legal procedures surrounding capital punishment and the state’s efforts to guard against wrongful convictions and executions by providing additional rights to the condemned.

All criminal defendants who can’t afford to hire a lawyer have a right to legal representation, at state expense, for their trial and appeal. But only those sentenced to death are guaranteed a state-funded legal team for the post-appellate proceedings known as habeas corpus.

Habeas corpus allows inmates to challenge their convictions or sentence for reasons outside the trial record – typically, incompetent legal representation, misconduct by a judge or juror, or newly discovered evidence. Such challenges are reviewed by both state and federal courts.

For condemned prisoners, it often represents their best chance to stave off execution by presenting their claims to federal judges, who are appointed for life, rather than elected state judges. A ruling that leads to their acquittal, or even a finding of innocence, is also more likely in habeas corpus than in the earlier direct appeal.

Life without parole

Prop. 34, on the Nov. 6 ballot, would replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole. Death Row inmates would have their sentences reduced to life – and, as a consequence, lose access to state-funded lawyers for habeas corpus, except for those who have already filed their claims.

They would have to file them on their own, or with volunteer lawyers. A judge who finds strong evidence of innocence could order the state to pay the inmate’s legal costs for further proceedings.

More than 300 inmates would be affected by the measure’s passage, said Bryan, who as a state-appointed habeas corpus lawyer won a state Supreme Court ruling last month overturning a death sentence for a double murder in San Jose.

Same legal footing

Attorney Natasha Minsker, the Yes on 34 campaign manager, said the initiative would place now-condemned inmates “in the same position as every prisoner convicted of a serious felony in California,” with the same right to go to court.

They would no longer automatically get state-funded lawyers for habeas corpus claims, Minsker said. The main purpose of those lawyers now is “to save a person’s life” from a wrongful execution, but that task would disappear if Prop. 34 passed, she said.

No one has polled Death Row inmates on Prop. 34. But an organization called the Campaign to End the Death Penalty sent letters to 220 condemned prisoners in California and received about 50 replies, all but three of them against the ballot measure, said Lily Mae Hughes, the group’s director.

The reasons were described in commentaries carried in June by San Francisco’s BayView newspaper from three condemned prisoners, two of them opposing Prop. 34.

“We are in fact taking a step backward in our ability to challenge our convictions,” said Kevin Cooper, convicted of murdering four people, including two children, in San Bernardino County after his escape from prison in 1983. State and federal courts have upheld his death sentence, although five federal judges declared in a dissenting opinion two years ago that they believed he might be innocent.

Thomas, whose death sentence for the fatal shooting of a San Diego motorist was upheld by the state Supreme Court last year, said fellow inmates agree with him that life without parole is “another death penalty.”

Donald Ray Young, one of two brothers sentenced to death for the 1995 murders of five people at a bar in Tulare – crimes they deny committing – supported Prop. 34.

“Let us choose the ballot box,” he wrote, “or the pine box will choose us.”

TEXAS – EXECUTION – CLEVE FOSTER 6.p.m. Fourth Execution Date EXECUTED 6:43 p.m.

Foster expressed love to his family and to God.

“When I close my eyes, I’ll be with the father,” he said. “God is everything. He’s my life. Tonight I’ll be with him.”

Foster also addressed the family members of the victims, saying, “I don’t know what you’re going to be feeling tonight. I pray we’ll all meet in heaven.”

September 25, 2012 

cleve foster execution

Cleve Foster has been hours away from execution on death row in Texas only to win a reprieve at the last minute, two times in just the past year and a half.

Whether or not you support the death penalty, Cleve Foster’s case is one that really seems to foreground the practice’s brutality. Twice Foster has been moments away from being put to death, and twice, he has been spared and placed back on death row as the slow wheels of justice grind in his execution.

Supreme Court refuses 4th stay for Texas execution

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CALIFORNIA – Yes on Prop. 34; death penalty in state is broken

September 21, 2012 http://www.vcstar.com

Proposition 34 on the Nov. 6 ballot would repeal the death penalty in California and replace it with life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

The Star recommends a yes vote.

The policy change would save the state and counties more than $1 billion during the next 10 years, and the savings would be larger in the future, according to the state’s independent, nonpartisan Legislative Analyst.

On an annual basis, the savings would start at around $100 million in each of the first few years and grow to roughly $130 million a year, the Legislative Analyst estimated. Also, Proposition 34 would provide a total of $100 million over the next four years for law enforcement agencies to investigate homicide and rape cases.

For the initiative to pass, it must be approved by a majority of voters. Californians on each side of the death-penalty debate hold strong opinions and understandably so.

The Star has traditionally opposed capital punishment believing that it is unevenly administered and disproportionately applied to minorities. DNA evidence, which has resulted in death-row inmates being exonerated, also proves that mistakes can be made.

In reality, few of those sentenced to death are executed. Since 1978, when the current death-penalty law was enacted, about 900 people have been sentenced to death in California. Fourteen of them were executed.

Six times as many — a total of 83 convicts — died before they could be executed.

Meanwhile, as of July, 725 criminals were in state prison with death sentences, at considerable cost to taxpayers. (If Proposition 34 passes, their sentences will change to life without possibility of parole.)

The costs include higher state and county expenses associated with death-penalty murder trials, heightened security procedures for death-row convicts, and mandatory and unavoidable court appeals that stretch over many years in most death-penalty cases.

Besides the enormous cost, the practical effect of these lengthy delays has been to reduce the death penalty in California to a myth. It exists in name only. The billions of taxpayer dollars spent over the past decades only kept a broken system limping along and preserved the illusion of capital punishment.

From The Star’s perspective, Proposition 34 offers a more practical alternative. If it passes, the worst felons would be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. They would be required to work in prison and make payments to victims of crime, though nothing can make up for a heinous crime — not cash payments, not life in prison, and not even execution.

But this way, at least there would be the certainty that heinous killers will die in prison, instead of making victims’ families suffer for decades in California’s grotesque charade about executions that probably won’t occur at all.

That’s the reality of the situation in California today. It’s time to admit this expensive system isn’t working. The Star recommends voting yes on Proposition 34.

Gary Lee Davis: Colorado’s last volunteer for the death penalty

September 21, 2012 http://blogs.westword.com

This week’s feature, “The Happiest Man on Death Row,” delves into Colorado’s execution of Joe Arridy, a man with an IQ of 46, for a murder he almost certainly didn’t commit. It happened in the 1930s, when the state’s gas chamber was kept busy with a string of customers. But times are different now, and executions are a lot harder to come by in these parts.

Even though prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty for accused Aurora theater shooter James Holmes, Colorado has only managed one execution in more than forty years — and the subject, Gary Lee Davis, practically volunteered for the job.

What’s changed since the days of Joe Arridy that’s made it so difficult for the state to execute those convicted of capital crimes? Part of the answer has to do with a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to the early 1970s, which have redefined the notion of “cruel and unusual punishment” and greatly expanded the appeals process for condemned men and women nationwide.

But other states (notably Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and some other purveyors of southern justice) still have a functional death machine, while Colorado has gone a different direction. One reason for that is its juries; folks might talk about being in favor of lethal injection at a cocktail party, but prosecutors know those same people somehow freeze up in the jury box when asked to dispense the ultimate penalty. In the 1990s, the state tried to take the decision out of the hands of juries and leave it up to a three-judge panel, but that scheme was ultimately declared unconstitutional.

Another factor is Colorado’s public defender system — particularly its appellate division. It’s considered the gold standard among such systems across the country, relentless and well-financed and good at battling death-penalty cases, to the point that Arapahoe County District Attorney Carol Chambers has complained the defense bar in Colorado makes the death penalty “many times more expensive than it needs to be.”

With the deck stacked against actual executions being carried out without years of delay and millions in legal costs, it’s no wonder that no less an authority than Sister Helen Prejean describes Colorado as “not a serious killing state.” The only killing the state has managed in the past four decades is what Prejean calls the “consensual execution” of Gary Davis in 1997.

With the aid of his wife, Davis had committed a depraved and horrible crime — the 1986 kidnapping, rape and sexual assault of 32-year-old Virginia May. He admitted to committing as many as fifteen other rapes — though his bizarre stories about the sources of his rage and violence changed over time. Davis sabotaged his own defense and shortcut the appeals process, preferring lethal injection to a life spent in solitary confinement. Yet it still took more than a decade for him to pay for his crime.

During that time, another member of Colorado’s death row died of natural causes, cheating the executioner. And Nathan Dunlap arrived on death row for killing four people in a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora in 1993.

Nearly twenty years later, Dunlap is still there. His appeals are just about exhausted. Not so the other condemned men in Colorado’s prison system, Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray; the allegations of inadequate counsel, prosecution misconduct and other ethical quandaries surrounding their trials ought to give the courts a workout for years to come.

In short, it’s hard to get the death penalty in Colorado — and even harder to get a willing volunteer. Families hoping to see the death penalty imposed on the Aurora theater shooter may have to get used to the idea of seeing justice delayed not just years, but decades.

ARIZONA – Death-row inmate’s appeal rejected by federal court-Pete Carl Rogovich

September 21, 2012 http://www.azcentral.com

A federal appeals court this week rejected multiple challenges by an Arizona death-row inmate to reduce his sentence for the 1992 murders of four people, including three who were killed in a Phoenix trailer-park “homicidal rampage.”

Pete Carl Rogovich, 46, confessed to the killings and other crimes when caught by police on March 15, 1992, after a lengthy car chase, according to court documents.

“I did it. I know it was wrong. I know I’ll burn in hell,” Rogovich reportedly told police.

 

He presented an insanity defense, but was convicted of all counts by an Arizona jury in a seven-day trial in May 1994.

In his latest round of appeals, Rogovich argued that his attorney at trial presented the insanity defense without his approval. He also claimed that his attorney failed to challenge prejudicial prosecution statements during closing arguments or to challenge the aggravating factors that led to the imposition of the death penalty.

But a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected those arguments Tuesday, saying there is no law “requiring the defendant to consent on the record to an insanity defense.” It also upheld lower-court rulings that Rogovich was adequately represented at trial.

“Of course we’re disappointed” by the decision, said Sarah Stone, Rogovich’s lawyer for his appeal. “He’s a seriously mentally ill person.”

She said there is no question that he committed the crimes, since he never denied his actions. “The question is whether the punishment (a death sentence) is appropriate,” she said.

“We think a life sentence is best for Mr. Rogovich, given his mental condition,” she said.

Prosecutors could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The case began on the morning of March 15, 1992, when a customer walked in to the Super Stop Market near Rogovich’s central Phoenix apartment at 8:45 and found clerk Tekleberhan Manna, 24, dead, shot once in the eye at close range. Nothing had been taken from the store, court documents said.

Rogovich, who had told an apartment maintenance worker that morning that he was angry with his girlfriend and would get even with her, left his apartment about 1 p.m. that day with a gun and began firing randomly. After shooting at two people in the parking lot and missing, he hopped the fence to a neighboring trailer park and began what courts described as a “homicidal rampage.”

Rogovich shot Phyllis Mancuso, 62, in the laundry room; Rebecca Carreon, 48, in her driveway; and Marie Pendergast, 83, in her trailer. All three women died as Rogovich ran off.

Some time later, he stole a radio station’s van at gunpoint from a promotional appearance at a restaurant. He was later seen at a convenience store in Goodyear, where he stole beer and cash before “casually” walking out and driving off in the van.

Goodyear police spotted him about 5 p.m. and caught Rogovich after a “lengthy chase at speeds ranging from 50 to over 100 miles per hour.”

Rogovich admitted to all the crimes, including all four killings, but said he was upset by the breakup with his girlfriend and the death of his stepfather six years earlier.

“Of course I’m sorry. It was wrong,” he said, according to the court. “I know it, but I just snapped. I was so angry. I just couldn’t stop.”

Despite his insanity defense he was convicted in 1994 of all charges: four murders, two aggravated assaults, two armed robberies and unlawful flight.

At his sentencing a year later, his attorneys presented evidence of an abusive childhood, mental illness and drug dependencies. But the court sentenced him to death for the trailer-park killings and life in prison for Manna’s death.

Stone said that Rogovich’s attorneys have not decided on the next step.

TROY DAVIS’ DEATH ANNIVERSARY 09/21/2012

Why It's Time to End the Death Penalty

All my prayers for his family . R.I.P Troy

Troy Davis’ Nephew : A year ago, on Sept. 21, the state of Georgia killed my uncle. BeforeTroy Davis‘ name buzzed all over the news and was known around the world, I called him “Uncle Troy.”

I was born in 1994, after he went on death row. I went regularly with my family to visit him in prison, before I could speak and before I could comprehend what prisons and executions meant. As I got older, I started asking my mother tough questions about her brother.

She wanted me to have a relationship with Troy; after all, he was my uncle. But she also wanted to protect me from the harsh reality of his situation. She explained why he was on death row and how the government wanted to put him to sleep, the way they do with dogs that can’t be adopted. I asked, “But Troy didn’t kill anybody, so why do they want to kill him?” She had a hard time explaining why, because she had the same question.

2011 was a very hard year for my family. I lost my grandmother just after Troy’s final appeal was lost and before his last execution date was set. The death penalty takes a toll on everyone within its reach.

My mother [Martina Correia] suffered a lot in her battle to save Troy’s life, but she didn’t let it show. She was battling for her own life, too. Around a decade ago, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and given six months to live. She asked God to let her live long enough to raise me and to clear my uncle’s name.

She made it another 10 years after that prayer. She did everything possible to proclaim the innocence of my uncle and stop his execution. And I was just about to finish high school when she passed.

People wonder why I didn’t crack after a year like that. There was nothing normal or easy about it, and my emotions have come at me at strange times like a ton of bricks. The best I can explain is that my mother raised me well, my family has stuck together and we have held firm in our faith in God.

My mother was always a fighter, and so was my uncle Troy. For many years my mother spoke out for Troy, to deaf ears. It was weird to see almost a thousand people in Atlanta stand with my family at the state Capitol, glued to her words, as we rallied to stop Troy’s execution. We were fortunate to have the help of organizations likeAmnesty International and theNAACP to pull together hundreds of thousands of people to support our cause, which was about Troy but was also about truth, justice and human rights.

People are asking me what my family wants these days. We still want to clear Troy’s name. He was innocent and his execution was wrong — this shouldn’t just fade away. We also want to help other families in similar situations. No one should ever go through what we did.

And we know that the only way to make sure the innocent aren’t executed is to replace the death penalty with better solutions. We don’t need to rely on the death penalty to ensure public safety. We know that it doesn’t deter violent crime. In fact, it costs a lot more even than life without parole. We are helping the campaign in California to encourage people to vote “yes” on Proposition 34, which would replace the death penalty with life without parole.

I hope that Californians will show my state, Georgia, what a better way looks like.

WASHINGTON Supreme Court upholds death penalty in 1997 murder – CECIL DAVIS

September 20, 2012 http://seattletimes.com

 

The Washington Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for a man convicted of randomly killing and raping a 65-year-old woman while her disabled husband was in the house.

The court issued its decision Thursday on Cecil Davis’ appeal stemming from his conviction in the 1997 slaying of Yoshiko Couch.

Davis had appealed the death sentence because jurors saw him in shackles during his first trail. In 2004, the Supreme Court vacated his sentence and Davis was re-tried in 2007, when he again was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Justices Mary Fairhurst and Charles Wiggins dissented from the ruling Thursday, saying while Davis’ crime was brutal, similar crimes have been punished with life in prison without chance of parole and not the death sentence.

They say the sentence highlights “the random and arbitrary nature of the imposition of the death penalty in Washington,” Wiggins wrote.

Wiggins also said he dissented because he thinks there is a race factor in the sentencing.

“A review of the reports of prosecutions for aggravated first-degree murder quickly discloses that African-American defendants are more likely to receive the death penalty than Caucasian defendants,” he wrote.

Davis is African-American.

According to the court, Davis was partying with a friend outside his mother’s house in Tacoma when he told his friend he wanted to “rob somebody” and wanted to kill a person. Davis along with a friend crossed the street and kicked in Couch’s front door.

Davis proceeded to beat the woman and sexually assault her. At that point, his friend left, according to court documents.

Later on, friends found Couch dead in her bathtub, naked from the waist down. An autopsy found that Couch had been suffocated and died of exposure to chemicals.

Her husband, Richard Couch, had been downstairs in the home the entire time. Because a number of strokes, he wasn’t able to walk and a telephone that usually sat by his bed had been moved to a closet and he couldn’t reach it. Investigators found extensive evidence connecting the killing to Davis, including blood, hair and fingerprints. Davis had also taken Yoshiko Couch’s wedding ring and he attempted to sell it to his mother.

Prosecutors also said that after Davis was in jail, he told a cellmate he killed Couch, but not raped her.

DA to seek death penalty for L.A. serial killer already on death row- CHESTER TURNER

September 19, 2012 http://www.contracostatimes.com

LOS ANGELES – Prosecutors today said they planned to seek the death penalty for a man already on death row for killing 10 women and now charged with killing four other women.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli ordered Chester Turner, 46, to return to court Nov. 14 for a pretrial hearing.

Turner — who was sentenced to death in 2007 for murdering 10 women between 1987 and 1998 — was charged last year with murdering four women between 1987 and 1997.

The newest charges involve the deaths of Debra Williams, who was found dead Nov. 16, 1992, at the bottom of a stairwell that leads to a boiler room at 97th Street School, and Mary Edwards, who was found dead Dec. 16, 1992, in a carport outside a motel at 9714 S. Figueroa St., less than a quarter-mile from the school where Williams’ body was discovered.

He also is charged with the June 5, 1987, slaying of Elandra Bunn and the Feb. 22, 1997, killing of Cynthia Annette Johnson.

Turner, an Arkansas native, was described by prosecutors as the city of Los Angeles’ most prolific serial killer when he was sentenced to death in July 2007.

In addition to his death sentence, Turner was sentenced to a separate 15- year-to-life term for the second-degree murder of the unborn baby of one of his victims, Regina Washington, who was found dead in September 1989.

Along with Washington’s slaying, Turner was convicted in April 2007 of first-degree murder for the killings of

— Diane Johnson, who was found dead in March 1987 and is not related to Cynthia Johnson;

— Annette Ernest, who was found dead by a passing motorist in October 1987;

— Anita Fishman, who was killed in January 1989;

— Andrea Tripplett, who was 5 1/2 months pregnant with her third child when she was strangled in April 1993. Turner was not charged with killing her unborn child because it was not considered viable under the law in place at that time.

— Desarae Jones, who was killed in May 1993;

–– Natalie Price, whose body was found outside a home in February 1995;

— Mildred Beasley, whose body was found in a field in November 1996;

— Paula Vance, who was strangled in February 1998, during the commission of a rape, which was caught on a grainy black-and-white surveillance videotape in which the assailant’s face cannot be seen; and

— Brenda Bries, who was found dead in the Skid Row area in April 1998.

Turner lived within 30 blocks of each of the killings — with Bries’ body discovered in downtown Los Angeles just 50 yards from where he was living at the time, according to prosecutors.

Turner was linked to those killings through DNA test results after being arrested and convicted of raping a woman in the Skid Row area in 2002.

After Turner was sent to death row, detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Robbery-Homicide Division continued to investigate the four murders with which he has since been charged.

Death row inmate cites brain damage while seeking new trial for killing 6-year-old Mo. girl- Johnny Johnson

September 19, 2012 http://www.therepublic.com

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A man sentenced to death for murdering a 6-year-old he abducted from her father’s St. Louis County home sought a new trial Wednesday, claiming his attorneys should have pursued a defense that he suffered from brain damage.

Johnny Johnson has admitted that he killed Cassandra “Casey” Williamson in July 2002, though attorneys at his trial said mental illness made him incapable of acting with “cool reflection” and he thus shouldn’t have been eligible for the death penalty.

During appeal arguments Wednesday to the state Supreme Court, a new attorney for Johnson argued that his trial attorneys were negligent for not hiring a neuropsychologist who could have testified that Johnson suffered from brain damage in addition to his mental illnesses. Johnson is seeking a new trial, or at least a new sentencing hearing.

“The jury heard only half the story — the mental disease. There was nothing about the mental defect,” said Bob Lundt, an attorney in the St. Louis public defender’s office who is representing Johnson.

He told the Supreme Court that Johnson suffered three head injuries as a child and two more as an adolescent. Lundt said those made it difficult for Johnson to deliberate about his actions.

But under questioning from the judges, Lundt said no brain scan could show the injury and no scientific evidence could specifically say such brain injuries cause people to commit murder.

Assistant Attorney General Shaun Mackelprang argued that Johnson’s trial attorneys made a logical and strategic decision in focusing on the mental illness as a defense. He said neurological tests conducted on Johnson after his conviction were subjective and Johnson could have intentionally performed poorly in hopes of winning a new trial.

Among those watching the Supreme Court arguments were Casey’s mother, aunt, grandmother and several other relatives or family friends.

Della Steele, who said she was Casey’s great-aunt, said she also had watched Johnson’s original trial and believes he is mentally ill. But she said she still believes he made a choice to kill Casey and should bear the consequences.

“Him being executed is not going to bring Casey back, but what it can do is protect the children of our society — to make sure he never has access to a child again,” Steele said.

Johnson, who was 24 at the time of the crime, admitted he took Casey on a piggyback ride from the home where he had been staying as a transient guest for a few days and then crushed her heard with bricks and rocks after she resisted his attempts to rape her. The killing happened at the ruins of an old glass factory in the St. Louis suburb of Valley Park.

Johnson was convicted of first-degree murder, armed criminal action, kidnapping and attempted rape. In addition to the death sentence, he received three consecutive life prison terms.

Since Casey’s death, her family has undertaken various initiatives in her memory, including a safety fair for parents and children and fundraisers for college scholarships. Steele said the family’s goal is to raise enough money to give a scholarship to each of the graduating members of what would have been Casey’s senior class from Valley Park in 2014.

GEORGIA – Golden gun’ killer Burgess dies on death row – Raymond Burgess

September 19, 2012 http://www.douglascountysentinel.com

 

A man who had been on death row for an infamous 1990 Douglas County “Golden Gun” murder has died of natural causes just months before he was scheduled to be executed.

Convicted murderer Raymond Burgess was taken “to a local area hospital for an unspecified health related issue where he was pronounced dead on Sept. 16th,” according to Georgia Department of Corrections Public Affairs Officer Gwendolyn Hogan. Hogan would not address information that Burgess had suffered a stroke.

Burgess was scheduled for lethal injection after the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that “the evidence of Burgess’ guilt was overwhelming and five different statutory aggravating circumstances supported the death sentence,” just three months ago and upheld the death sentence.

According to District Attorney David McDade McDade, Burgess and co-defendant Norris Young met while both served prison sentences in the 1980s and after being paroled in 1989 reunited and began committing a series of violent armed robberies throughout metro Atlanta.

The pair became known as the “Golden Gun Robbers” because in each instance they subdued their victims using a distinctive gold-plated revolver. McDade described the crimes as “vicious and violent attacks on innocent victims.”

He said Burgess and Young traveled around metro Atlanta interstates confronting and robbing families that were staying in hotels near highway exits. Burgess’ crime spree involved brutal attacks on at least four other victims at four separate motels prior to the brutal murder of an Alabama man staying at a Douglasville motel in July 1990, as the victim and his family were traveling to visit Six Flags.

Evidence at the murder trial established that Burgess and Young first attacked, tied up and robbed a young couple staying at the motel and held them at gunpoint until Liston Chunn and his family pulled into the parking lot and were confronted by Burgess with the “golden gun.”

Chunn was then shot and killed in front of his family by Burgess after the convicted killer demanded that the victim take his hands out of his pockets. After robbing the victims, Burgess and Young fled.

At trial Burgess was identified as one of two men who attacked and robbed victims at seven separate hotels and motels in the summer of 1990 using the gold-plated revolver in every attack. Several attacks occurred before Chunn’s murder and several in the weeks following.

Following his conviction in February of 1992 for the murder and armed robbery of Liston Chunn and his family in Douglasville, Burgess was sentenced to death and had been on death row ever since, appealing his conviction and sentence.