death row

ARIZONA – Death-row inmate suspected in Tempe slaying in 2000 – Albert Carreon

September 27, 2012 http://www.azcentral.com

Tempe police have arrested a gang member on suspicion of first-degree murder in the slaying of a man 12 years ago, using DNA and other evidence.

But suspect Albert Carreon, 50, wasn’t very hard to find. He already is on death row after his conviction and sentencing in a gang hit in Chandler 11 years ago.

Carreon, a New Mexican Mafia member, is now accused of first-degree murder in the slaying of Jose “Joey” Gonzalez, 20, who was found dead in a parked car on Dec. 20, 2000 at the Fiesta Village Townhouse complex in the 1400 block of West La Jolla in Tempe.

“The DNA is what really made the case. This guy was looked at as a potential suspect in 2005,” said Sgt. Jeff Glover, a Tempe police spokesman.

He said detectives determined that Gonzalez was shot to death at a different location, placed in a car he had borrowed from his girlfriend and driven to the townhouse complex, where his body was abandoned.

Jurors sentenced Carreon to death in April 2003 after finding him guilty of first-degree murder in the slaying of Armando Hernandez inside a Chandler apartment. The victim’s girlfriend testified that Carreon stepped out of a bathroom with his gun drawn, accused Hernandez of being a snitch, shot him to death and then shot her four times.

Although the girlfriend was left for dead, she survived her wounds and testified against Carreon in a Maricopa County Superior Court trial. Carreon and Hernandez had been housed in adjoining cells in a maximum security prison in Florence.

A prosecutor argued during that trial that Carreon was hired to kill Hernandez by a gang member who believed that Hernandez was responsible for the arrest and conviction of the gang member’s brother.

Carreon’s disciplinary record in prison includes three major violations, including two assaults and a drug possession or manufacturing infraction.

 

Executions Rarely Reason for Leaving Pa. Death Row

September 27, 2012 http://www.wetmtv.com

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Two-hundred Pennsylvania convicts are sentenced to die, but they’re less likely to be executed than to be removed from death row for other reasons. State Corrections Department spokeswoman Sue McNaughton, who has kept records on death-row prisoners since 1985, said Wednesday 184 inmates have left death row in that time.

The largest proportion – 133 inmates – were resentenced to life imprisonment. That’s what condemned killer Terrance Williams is seeking in court and from the governor as Williams’ Oct. 3 execution date draws near.

McNaughton says 12 other former death-row inmates were resentenced to other penalties and nine death sentences were vacated.

Twenty-four death-row inmates died of natural causes, three committed suicide and three were executed.

Pardons Board takes death row inmate Terrance Williams’ case ‘under advisement’ STAY

September 27, 2012 http://www.pennlive.com

The state Pardons Board won’t immediately rule on a condemned Philadelphia man’s clemency bid, just six days before his scheduled execution.

The pardons board heard new arguments today but will take the case “under advisement,” after earlier rejecting the clemency bid.

The fate of 46-year-old Terrance Williams now moves back to a Philadelphia judge weighing new evidence in the 1984 murder case. Judge M. Teresa Sarmina has pledged to rule Friday on a motion to stay the execution.

Williams is on death row for killing two men as a teenager. His lawyers say both men had been sexually abusing him and that prosecutors hid that information from jurors in the second trial, who sentenced Williams to death.

Williams is scheduled to be executed Wednesday.

KENTUCKY death row inmate being sent to New Mexico

september 26, 2012

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky death row inmate is set to be extradited to New Mexico to face murder charges in the 1991 slaying of a paramedic prosecutors say he kidnapped and shot and left to die remote desert area.

Kerri Richardson, a spokeswoman for Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, told The Associated Press that a governor’s warrant has been signed for 55-year-old Michael Dale St. Clair. The inmate is scheduled for trial on Jan. 22 in Clayton, N.M., on charges he killed 22-year-old Timothy Keeling, of Denver.

Dennis Gene Reese, who is serving life in prison in Oklahoma, is also charged with participating in Keeling’s slaying.

Donald Gallegos, the district attorney in Clayton who is prosecuting the men, said St. Clair and Reese should be in New Mexico by next week. Gallegos said no decision has been made on whether to seek the death penalty.

“I wanted to wait to get them here before I decided that,” Gallegos said. “I still need to talk to the victim’s family, too.”

Kentucky Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Lamb cited security concerns in declining to comment on the extradition of St. Clair, who is on death row for killing a Bardstown man in October 1991.

Tim Keeling‘s widow, Lisa Keeling Hill of Waxahachie, Texas, has pushed to have St. Clair and Reese prosecuted for the slaying.

Dennis Gene Reese, who is serving life in prison in Oklahoma, is also charged with participating in Keeling’s slaying.

Donald Gallegos, the district attorney in Clayton who is prosecuting the men, said St. Clair and Reese should be in New Mexico by next week. Gallegos said no decision has been made on whether to seek the death penalty.

“I wanted to wait to get them here before I decided that,” Gallegos said. “I still need to talk to the victim’s family, too.”

Kentucky Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Lamb cited security concerns in declining to comment on the extradition of St. Clair, who is on death row for killing a Bardstown man in October 1991.

Tim Keeling‘s widow, Lisa Keeling Hill of Waxahachie, Texas, has pushed to have St. Clair and Reese prosecuted for the slaying.

“St. Clair has never really had to answer for Tim’s death,” Hill told The Associated Press.

Retired New Mexico State Police Detective Toby Dolan, who investigated Keeling’s death, said the pending extradition of St. Clair and Reese is a relief. Dolan, the second officer to arrive at the scene, said he’s kept copies of crime scene photos and reports with him since retiring more than a year and a half ago after 21 years with state police.

“You kind of have that hollow feeling for that poor guy … who was murdered for no reason out in the middle of nowhere,” Dolan said. “It’s just one of those things that stuck with me all these years.

Reese and St. Clair had broken out of the county jail in Durant, Okla., on Sept. 19, 1991. At the time, St. Clair was serving four life sentences for murder and Reese was awaiting trial on charges of strangling and beating a woman to death.

What happened after the breakout is detailed in court testimony, documents and interviews with St. Clair and Reese. The pair went on a cross-country spree that led them through Texas and on to Denver, where they came across Keeling outside a grocery store.

St. Clair and Reese posed as buyers interested in purchasing Keeling’s truck, then kidnapped him. Reese drove as Keeling sat next to him and St. Clair held a .357 magnum revolver in the passenger seat. They stopped near Clayton, N.M., a small crossroads town, where prosecutors say St. Clair ordered Keeling out of the truck and shot him.

The run ended a few weeks later in Kentucky, where police charged them with kidnapping and killing distillery worker Frank Brady near Elizabethtown after they ditched and burned Keeling’s truck.

In an interview with The Associated Press in June, Reese acknowledged his role in Keeling’s death and said he plans to plead guilty. St. Clair, in letters to The AP, has remained defiant in his denials and doesn’t expect to live long enough to face execution in either state.

“Mother Nature has first mortgage on my death,” St. Clair said in a 2011 letter.

What happened after the breakout is detailed in court testimony, documents and interviews with St. Clair and Reese. The pair went on a cross-country spree that led them through Texas and on to Denver, where they came across Keeling outside a grocery store.

St. Clair and Reese posed as buyers interested in purchasing Keeling’s truck, then kidnapped him. Reese drove as Keeling sat next to him and St. Clair held a .357 magnum revolver in the passenger seat. They stopped near Clayton, N.M., a small crossroads town, where prosecutors say St. Clair ordered Keeling out of the truck and shot him.

The run ended a few weeks later in Kentucky, where police charged them with kidnapping and killing distillery worker Frank Brady near Elizabethtown after they ditched and burned Keeling’s truck.

In an interview with The Associated Press in June, Reese acknowledged his role in Keeling’s death and said he plans to plead guilty. St. Clair, in letters to The AP, has remained defiant in his denials and doesn’t expect to live long enough to face execution in either state.

“Mother Nature has first mortgage on my death,” St. Clair said in a 2011 letter.

Death Row Unlikely to Be Source for Organ Donations

http://www.texastribune.org

Before Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon established a moratorium on his state’s death penalty last year, Christian Longo, a death row inmate, started a campaign to allow the condemned to donate their organs.

Longo argued that a new execution protocol that many states — including Texas — have adopted leaves inmates’ organs viable for transplantation.

“While I can potentially help in saving one life with a kidney donation now, one preplanned execution can additionally save from 6 to 10 more lives,” Longo wrote in a plea that Oregon officials denied.

No state allows death row inmates to donate their organs. Although Texas recently abandoneda three-drug cocktail in favor of a single-drug method for execution, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said it did not intend to change its policy. There are 11,000 Texans on the organ transplant waiting list.

Criminal justice and medical experts say that the idea of recovering organs from willing convicted murderers is fraught with moral, ethical and medical challenges that make it unlikely to ever be an option.

“It’s complicated in ways that are very messy and very fuzzy,” said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

The Criminal Justice Department allows offenders in the general prison population to donate organs, such as kidneys, while they are alive in certain cases and after death if they complete a donor form.

The prospect of death row organ donation, though, prompts several questions, said Dr. David Orentlicher, a co-director of the Hall Center for Law and Health at Indiana University’s Robert H. McKinney School of Law. Is an inmate giving free and informed consent, or is he hoping to win favorable treatment? Would a donation affect jurors in murder cases who are weighing the death penalty versus life sentences? Or prosecutors deciding whether to seek the death penalty? Or governors deciding whether to grant clemency?

There is also the possibility that allowing death row organ donation could lead jurors to issue more death sentences, Orentlicher said.

For prospective recipients, there are emotional and mental considerations, he added.

“People might say, ‘Gosh, I’m walking around with the organ of a murderer,’” he said. “It may be irrational, but I suspect that’s lurking there.”

The condemned have a high risk of carrying diseases like hepatitis and HIV And conditions in the death chamber are not conducive to organ recovery, said Mike Rosson, regional director of the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance. To keep organs viable, they must have oxygen after the brain dies, which means the donor must be on a ventilator, and surgery must be done quickly.

“You don’t have the facility for recovery, and you have transplant surgeons whose oath is to do no harm,” Rosson said. “The situation is just ethically challenging.”

Even if all the moral, ethical and medical questions could be adequately addressed, he said, the yield of usable organs from death row inmates is likely to be small.

“I think there are avenues other than prisoners that the effort expended toward trying to increase donation would be better spent,” Rosson said.

TEXAS – Death row inmate contests the drug – Preston Hughes

September 25, 2012 http://www.chron.com

Preston Hughes, who has been on death row for 23 years for fatally stabbing a teenage girl and a toddler, is suing the state of Texas over the drug it plans to use to execute him in November, claiming officials are “experimenting” on him and other inmates.

Hughes, 46, is arguing that prison officials, facing a shortage of drugs for the three drug “cocktail” formerly used for lethal injection, did no medical testing before changing the protocol to using a single drug, according to court records.

“They are experimenting on death row inmates because there’s never been any kind of medical review, that we know about, that this is a humane way to carry out their legal function,” said Pat McCann, one of Hughes’ attorneys. “I’m not saying they can’t execute people. I’m saying they ought to give it more thought than the time it takes to play a round of golf.”

Officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice declined to comment on the pending lawsuit, but said agency officials examined the execution procedures in other states before changing the procedure.

“The one drug protocol has been adopted by several states and has been upheld as constitutional by the courts,” spokesman Jason Clark said in a statement.

Single, lethal dose

The execution protocol was changed from a three-drug sequence to a single, lethal dose of pentobarbital in July because TDCJ’s stock of the second drug expired and it couldn’t get more.

Anti-death penalty groups have for years been pressuring drug companies, especially in Europe, to stop making or selling drugs used in executions.

Since July, three Texas inmates have been executed using one drug.

No testing

The new procedure, McCann said, was put in to effect without any tests.

“They changed the cocktail, fairly dramatically, because they could get it on sale and stockpile it,” McCann said. “But they’re not doctors and they’re not entitled to experiment on my client.”

He said TDCJ did not seek out opinions from any professional in the medical, psychiatric, or psychological fields about whether the new drug would be “cruel and unusual punishment.”

‘Some merit’

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the lawsuit should be litigated, but is unlikely to stop any executions.

“There is some merit to the claim that it is experimenting,” Dieter said. “In the medical field, you would want experts weighing in on what the best protocol would be.”

However, he said, the standard to get a stay of execution is a high hurdle.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has said you have to show a substantial risk of serious pain, not just allege there may be problems,” Dieter said. “There is some merit to the claim, but it’s an ethical claim. Legally, it may have some trouble.”

Hughes is scheduled to be executed Nov. 15 for fatally stabbing a teenage girl and a 3-year-old boy in September 1988.

Girl was raped

Hughes, then 22, was convicted of killing La Shandra Rena Charles, 15, and her cousin, Marcell Lee Taylor, 3, on a dirt trail behind a restaurant in the 2400 block of South Kirkwood.

A medical examiner testified Charles had been raped. Before she died from a stab wound in her throat, Charles was able to tell a police officer that “Preston” did it to her.

When Hughes was arrested, he was on probation for raping a 13-year-old girl in 1985.

CALIFORNIA – Field Poll: Death penalty proposition support closely divided

September 25, 2012 http://abclocal.go.com

BERKELEY, Calif.  — The results of a statewide survey conducted by the Institute of Governmental Studies at University of California-Berkeley and The Field Poll were released Tuesday. The survey sought to determine prospective voting support and opposition to Proposition 34.

California’s Proposition 34 initiative would repeal California’s death penalty and make life in prison the ultimate penalty for a capital crime. It would go into effect the day after election and apply to all on death row.

More Democrats and independents support Prop. 34, while Republicans tend to oppose the proposition.

Of total likely voters, 42 percent of respondents said they would vote for Prop. 34. Forty-five percent of respondents said they would vote “no” on Prop. 34. Undecided voters made up 13 percent of likely-voter respondents.

Of likely Democratic voters responding, 50 percent said they would vote “yes” for Prop. 34, while 37 percent said they would vote “no”; 13 percent of Democrats were undecided.

Of likely Republican voters responding, 23 percent said they would vote “yes” on Prop. 34, while 65 percent would vote “no”; 12 percent were undecided.

Survey results revealed strongest support for Prop. 34 among political liberals, African-Americans, voters in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area, and those who have completed post-graduate collegiate work.

The results revealed opposition is greatest among political conservatives and inland residents, particularly those in Northern California outside the Bay Area.

Currently there are more than 700 inmates on death row, the highest in the U.S. No inmate has been executed in California in five years due to a legal battle over execution procedures.

The average delay between sentencing and execution is more than 25 years.

Seventeen U.S. states have abolished the death penalty.

Data reveal public opinion moving away from the death penalty in the past 20 years nationwide and in the state. Earlier respondents believed the death penalty was less expensive than life in jail without parole.

Former supporters working to overturn the death penalty contend the penalty is a waste of money.

The official analysis by the California Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance says Prop. 34 “could” provide savings in the high tens of millions of dollars a year.

Supporters of the death penalty say that changes could be made to speed the process and reduce costs.

The death penalty has been in contention in California since the 1970s, beginning in 1972 when the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional. The penalty has been halted and reinstated several times.

DEATH ROW PORTRAIT : Serial Killer James Barnes on Death Row

James Barnes ,who is currently in prison in Florida

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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