death row

FLORIDA – Opening statements begin in death penalty case resentencing – Richard Michael Cooper

february 26, 2014 (tampabay)

LARGO — A jury has been selected and opening statements are scheduled to start at 2 p.m. Wednesday in the resentencing of Richard Michael Cooper, who has been on death row for 30 years after being convicted in a triple murder.

A federal appeals court threw out Cooper’s death sentence in 2011 after finding that a jury should have heard evidence of abuse Cooper suffered as a child during the sentencing phase of his trial.

It took a day and a half to seat a jury to hear the evidence on what sentence Cooper should receive for his role in the 1982 deaths of Steven Fridella, Bobby Martindale and Gary Petersen — remembered since as the “High Point murders.”

Cooper’s guilt is not in dispute. On the morning of June 18, 1982, Cooper and three others — Jason Dirk Walton, Terry Van Royal and Jeffrey Hartwell McCoy — drove to Fridella’s Largo residence looking for cocaine or money.

They parked a distance away and, wearing ski masks, crept toward the home at 6351 143rd Ave. Among them they carried a .357 Magnum revolver, a .22 rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun, according to court records.

They had originally planned to rob the men inside while they slept. But someone recognized one of the intruders, and the plan changed.

Fridella, Martindale and Petersen were bound with duct tape and forced to lie on the floor. Cooper, then 18, confessed to shooting Fridella twice with the shotgun. Cooper’s attorneys called no witnesses in his defense, arguing that he was under the spell of Walton, whom Cooper had described as “a Charles Manson-type figure.”

Cooper’s conviction and sentence were upheld on appeal. In 2011, the federal 11th Circuit again affirmed the conviction but tossed out the death sentence because of evidence the first jury never heard. That included frequent beatings at the hands of his hard-drinking father, Phillip “Socky” Cooper, who earned his nickname as a Golden Gloves boxing champion.

The elder Cooper beat his children with “boards, switches, belts and horse whips,” leaving welts all over their bodies, sometimes for offenses as small as not knowing their multiplication tables.

The abuse was so constant, a school principal, fearing he was making things worse, “stopped calling their father when Cooper would get in trouble because Cooper would show up at school beaten and with bruises all over him,” the court said.

Cooper’s stepbrother and sister also said no one had contacted them to testify at the first trial.

After Death Row in Texas, I’m Fighting to End the Death Penalty – Kerry Max Cook

february 22, 2014

My name is Kerry Max Cook, but for two decades, I was known as “Cook, Execution number 600.” Innocent of the murder and rape I was accused of in 1977, my home became a tiny death row cell in Texas, the state that kills more people than anywhere else in the U.S. by far — including 141 of my fellow inmates before my release in 1999. By then, my only brother had been murdered and my Dad had died of cancer. My Mom died soon after. I was stabbed, raped and routinely abused on death row. My ordeal spanned two generations of the Smith County District Attorney’s office, two wrongful convictions, two reversals of conviction, a walk to the execution chamber, and three capital murder trials. My legal team and I have been unable to find a worse case of prosecutorial misconduct in Texan history.

I avoided a fourth trial only by pleading no contest, while making no admission of guilt. I have never been officially exonerated. Author John Grisham said, “If it were fiction, no one would believe it …”

I am, in fact, innocent. Another man’s DNA was found on the victim’s clothing two months after my release. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals accused Smith County prosecutors of “willful misconduct” in my case. Nonetheless that office remains determined to stop me clearing my name. My lawyers are working to file an application for writ of habeas corpus in coming months, hopefully prompting the appeals court in Austin to officially exonerate me and end my 36-year-old nightmare.

It all began in 1977. I was 20 and working as a bartender when a waitress said the manager wanted to see me. I stepped into a pitch-black room that was usually lit by fluorescent lighting and fumbled for the switch. Suddenly, hands reached out to grab both sides of me. The silver Smith & Wesson handcuffs crashed down on my wrist and I heard the detective’s words, “Kerry Max Cook, you’re under arrest for the capital murder of Linda Edwards” — a name I didn’t even recognize.

At the police station, they used my head as a toilet plunger. I knew the policeman was lying as he rammed my head repeatedly down the bowl filled with dark urine, screamed at me to confess and told me they had found my DNA on the body. I wept for my mother and father, for anyone, to help.

Even though I still bear the mental and physical scars and ongoing indignities of my wrongful conviction and imprisonment, I consider myself lucky. I have a wife and son. I have powerful allies — including Amnesty International, which found me in a dark cell and helped raise awareness of my wrongful conviction in 1991. It literally saved my life. I was so proud to be introduced by Susan Sarandon at Amnesty’s Bringing Human Rights Home concert in Brooklyn February 5 and address the audience as my 13-year-old Kerry Justice Cook looked on. I was proud to honor a powerful, global movement of activists who carry Amnesty’s torch for human rights — including my right to life. That is why I support Amnesty’s abolition work and the efforts by courageous activists on the ground, most urgently in New Hampshire, where a repeal vote in the state House is anticipated early next month.

The death penalty should be abolished across the United States, and everywhere. We do not need any more mistakes. We know that 143 people have served time on US death rows for crimes they were wrongfully convicted of. And imagine this. On appeal, the only question becomes whether the defendant received a fair and impartial trial. So if the evidence is made up, like in my case, you die.

The price of this system is a life. Of course the odds are stacked in your favor if you have access to financial resources, but you won’t be surprised to hear that you don’t meet too many people like that on death row.

One of death row’s other dirty little secrets is that it is a repository for every conceivable mental illness. Its population consists largely of untreated, traumatized children who grew up into broken adults. There are exceptions, of course, but I do not believe that even the guilty on death row are irredeemable. As Rosalind says in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, “Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders.” If my case proves anything, it is that only time can tell if someone is guilty.

No prosecutor should have the power to end another human life. No other living soul should endure what I did. So I am praying now for victory, by Amnesty International USA and all those who are pushing to end this barbaric practice, in New Hampshire, and everywhere. Then, my nightmare will be over.

Click here to read more about Kerry’s fight for justice, and here to read about his work on self-empowerment.

CALIFORNIA : Death sentence upheld for Montebello woman who murdered her husband – Angelina Rodriguez

february 20, 2014(latimes)

Angelina Rodriguez during her 2004 sentencing for murder. Her death sentence was upheld Thursday by the California Supreme CourtSAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court unanimously upheld the death penalty Thursday for a Montebello woman convicted of murdering her husband for life insurance and implicated in the choking death years earlier of her baby daughter.

 

Angelina Rodriguez fatally poisoned her husband, a special education teacher, by serving him drinks laced with oleander and antifreeze in 2000, a few months after persuading him to take out joint life insurance policies, the court said.

It was her second attempt, according to the ruling written by Justice Ming W. Chin.  She had previously tried to kill him by loosening natural gas valves in their garage, the court said.

Rodriguez had married Jose Francisco Rodriguez several months before his death.

During her murder trial, the prosecution also presented evidence implicating her in the 1993 death of her 13-month-old daughter, Alicia. Rodriguez was married to another man at the time.

The baby died after choking on the rubber nipple of a pacifier. Two months earlier, Rodriguez had taken out a $50,000 life insurance policy on the baby—without her then-husband’s knowledge—and made herself the beneficiary, the court said.

Rodriguez and Alicia’s father also sued the manufacturer of the pacifier, which had been recalled based on five consumer complaints that it had broken apart. The company paid a $710,000 settlement.

While behind bars for the murder of her husband, Rodriguez  tried to dissuade a witness from testifying against her, the court said. The jury convicted of her interfering with the witness but failed to reach a verdict on a charge that she tried to have the witness murdered.

In challenging her conviction and sentence, Rodriguez argued, among other things, that the jury should not have been told she killed her daughter.  Rodriguez was not charged or convicted in connection with the death, but law enforcement reexamined it after the poisoning of her husband.

The court said the jury was entitled to hear about the child’s death during the penalty phase of deliberations.

“There was ample evidence that defendant murdered her daughter,” Chin wrote.

Karen Kelly, who is representing Rodriguez on appeal, said she would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision.

California supreme court /opinion : click to read, pdf file

Arizona death-row case to get unusual 13th look by high court – Richard hurles

february 20, 2014, (azcentral)

WASHINGTON – When the Supreme Court’s justices sit down Friday to consider which cases to hear, one appeal will be familiar – an Arizona murder case that the justices have taken up the last 12 times they met.

Experts say it is unusual for the justices to consider one case 13 times in a row – so far – at their regular case conference without turning it down or agreeing to hear it. And while they say no one can know for sure, they have several theories why Ryan v. Hurles has been hanging around since before the court’s current term started in October.

“Twelve is a long time,” said Dale Baich, an assistant federal public defender in Arizona. “I don’t recall seeing a case held over for that many times.”

The petition to the Supreme Court is the latest twist in the 22-year case of Richard Hurles, who killed Buckeye librarian Kay Blanton in 1992 when he stabbed her 37 times as she worked alone in the library. He was convicted in 1994 of burglary, attempted sexual assault and first-degree murder, and sentenced to death.

Hurles has filed repeated appeals since then, getting to the point that a death warrant was issued in 2000 before it was stayed.

Among the claims in his latest round of appeals is a charge of judicial bias against trial Judge Ruth Hilliard. Hurles had asked that Hilliard – the judge at both his trial and his sentencing – not be allowed to consider his second post-conviction review.

But that request was denied by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Eddward Ballinger. Hilliard then denied Hurles’ second petition, a decision that was affirmed by the Arizona Supreme Court.

But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and in January 2013 a three-judge panel of that court ordered an evidentiary hearing into Hurles’ bias claim.

The Arizona attorney general’s office appealed that ruling last summer to the U.S. Supreme Court, which first put Hurles’ case on its conference calendar Sept. 30. It has put the case on every conference calendar since then, 12 so far, without deciding whether or not to hear it.

“We really don’t know why the case is being held,” said Baich.

But he, like others, offered several possible explanations: The court could be waiting for a decision in a different case to be resolved first, it could be writing an opinion, or a justice, or justices, might be writing a dissent should the case get rejected.

“This is pure speculation on my part,” Baich said. “There could be a number of reasons.”

Amy Howe, editor for the U.S. Supreme Court blog SCOTUSblog, said it is also possible that a justice might be rewording the petition. Or it could just be that the four votes needed to issue a writ of certiorari – agreeing to hear the case – are not there yet and justices are trying to pick up that fourth vote.

Paul Bender, a law professor at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, said the delay is most likely caused by the court waiting to see a 9th Circuit decision on a similar case that “might resolve the issues in this case.”

The Hurles’ case is “an issue that they’re potentially interested in, but whether they’re really going to take it depends upon what the 9th Circuit did and what the state’s going to do after that,” Bender said.

Howe said despite the theories, there will be no way of knowing the reason for the delay until after the court has either granted or rejected the appeal.

“You just don’t know until you actually see what’s happening,” she said.

A Final Farewell to Greg Wilhoit, Who Survived Oklahoma’s Death Row, wrongfully convicted

february 20, 2014 (huffington)

America’s community of death row survivors bids a farewell to another one of its own. Gregory R. Wilhoit, who had spent five years on Oklahoma’s death row after being wrongfully convicted for the brutal murder of his wife, died in his sleep on February 13.

Greg had suffered. Suffered a whole lot. He was convicted of killing his wife Kathy — the mother of his two little daughters, then 4 months and 14 months old — on June 1, 1985. The case rested on the testimony of dental experts, one of them barely out of dental school, who said the bite mark found on Kathy’s body matched Greg’s teeth.

But that wasn’t all. Greg was a victim of bad lawyering. He hired two lawyers who were incompetent and did not defend him. In fact, Greg’s defense counsel came to court drunk and threw up in the judge’s chambers. And Greg was convicted in 1987 and sent to Death Row, because after all, somebody had to pay.

“All they wanted me to do was enter a guilty plea, despite the fact that I had pleaded not guilty,” Greg said in an interview over a decade ago. “I felt helpless and defeated. I felt I was going to be convicted and there was nothing I could do about it. The experts against me were very convincing. If I had been on the jury, I wouldn’t have hesitated to find me guilty.”

The jury took merely two hours to return with a guilty verdict for Greg. “I was sentenced to be executed by lethal injection, but I was shaken even more when the judge told me that I might be electrocuted, hung or shot if necessary,” Greg recalled. This would prove to be the most sobering moment of my life.

In 1991, Greg’s conviction was overturned when 11 forensic experts testified that the bite mark found on his wife was not his, and an appeals court ruled that Greg had ineffective counsel at trial. He was released, and ultimately acquitted on retrial in 1993.

Still a death penalty supporter in his third year on Death Row, Greg would become a strong opponent of capital punishment. Along with his sister Nancy Vollertsen, he became a member of Witness to Innocence, the national organization of death row survivors and their loved ones.

Like many innocent people who are released from prison, Greg Wilhoit never received a penny for his troubles, not as much as an apology for the suffering he endured, and for what they took from him. That would surprise those people who assume that the wrongfully convicted all receive ample compensation, set for life, with riches lavished upon them. Although the Oklahoma legislature had passed a compensation law allowing up to $200,000 for the wrongfully imprisoned, officials told Greg that he wasn’t eligible because he needed a pardon, but was ineligible because he was innocent.

The tortuous conditions of death row — in which prisoners await their own homicide in solitary confinement — took an emotional and psychological toll on Greg Wilhoit. He had to grapple with his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and deteriorating physical health challenges.

“Greg was one of those men who suffered the greatest because of his death row conviction. He not only lost his wife but his kids as well as he sat on death row for a crime he did not commit,” said Ron Keine, assistant director of membership and training at Witness to Innocence, himself an exonerated death row survivor who had spent two years on New Mexico’s death row. “Even after his release he never fully connected with his kids. This bothered him greatly. We almost lost him a few times in the past where he pulled through like a trooper. I mean like the man walked out of hospice, where he was near death, and got married to a sweet lady and began life again,” Keine added.

In spite of his deteriorating frame, the man had a strength about him that could not be denied, and allowed us to draw strength. “Greg’s style of speaking was unique. He could make the audience cry and laugh at the same time,” Keine reflected. And despite his pain and suffering and all he had seen and lost, Greg was able to crack a joke and make us laugh.

It is not funny that Greg Wilhoit never received a penny for his troubles. We will miss him.

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US- Youngest Serial Killer on Death Row – Harvey Robinson

Tales of serial killers have grown commonplace, but adolescent serial killers are rare. Harvey Robinson from Allentown, PA, is among them, and he’s currently the youngest contemporary serial killer to be sent to death row in America. His case crystallizes some issues surrounding a growing trend toward leniency with juvenile offenders, even the most violent ones.

In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for offenders who had committed extreme crimes when they were juveniles. In Graham v. Florida (2010), the Court outlawed life without parole sentencing for juveniles convicted of non-homicide crimes. The decision was based in part on neurological research that demonstrated that adolescents are more impulsive and more susceptible to negative influences than adults; mentally and emotionally, their brains are immature. On June 25, 2012, the Court took another step and abolished all mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles convicted of homicide.

 

Also in June, the citizens of Allentown collectively held their breath as Harvey Robinson went before a judge to request new sentencing, based on undetected brain damage implicated in his crimes. If the judge were to decide in his favor, they knew, he could chip at the eroding wall that stands between him and possible freedom one day.

In less than a year in 1993, Robinson attacked five females, killing three. He was just 17 years old when he committed his first murder.

He spotted this victim through her window as she undressed for bed. He broke in and killed her. Then after a brief stint in a juvenile facility for a burglary, he grabbed a fifteen-year-old girl off her bike, raped her, and stabbed her twenty-two times.

Six weeks later, Robinson entered another home, but saw his targeted victim with her boyfriend, so he attacked her five-year-old daughter, raping and strangling her. She was found unconscious but miraculously alive.

Soon thereafter, Robinson chased down a woman as she tried to flee from him. He caught up and was raping and choking her when a neighbor switched on an outside light, scaring him away. Aware that he’d left a living witness, he soon entered her home again, but she was not there.

The police believed he would return, so they implemented a risky plan to trap this killer, knowing he would continue until he was stopped. Bravely, the victim agreed to act as bait. In the meantime, Robinson had raped and strangled another woman.

Yet he’d not forgotten the one who got away. He broke in once more, but an officer was waiting for him. After a desperate gunfight, Robinson was caught.

During Robinson’s trial, a forensic psychiatrist testified that he suffered from a dependency on drugs and alcohol and had experienced visual and auditory hallucinations, which had made it difficult for him to adjust to social norms. He’d been under severe stress. Because he had a violent role model in a criminal father, he’d understandably relieved his stress with violence. The psychiatrist believed that, with help, Robinson could overcome his violent impulses.

However, Robinson did not just make an immature mistake; he was a cold-blooded rapist and killer, returning again and again to ensure that his targeted victims were dead. He even tried killing a child.

To the relief of many in the community, on November 8, 1994, Robinson was convicted on three counts of murder and sentenced to death three times.

A new attorney challenged his convictions on the grounds that there were fundamental flaws in the trial procedures. Robinson got his day in court, but he wasted it complaining about his former lawyers.

Still, in 2001 a judge vacated two of Robinson’s death sentences and ordered new hearings. Four years later, the Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for juveniles age 17 and under. This ruling commuted Robinson’s remaining death sentence to life. He knew he had a chance to get off death row.

To prepare for the new sentencing hearings, Robinson’s attorneys had neurological testing performed. The results, they claimed, showed that Robinson had suffered from frontal lobe damage at the time of the murders, which had adversely affected his ability to control his behavior.

However, as the survivors and victim’s families hoped, the judge who listened to Robinson’s new argument decided against him. He had failed to prove that these tests had shown brain damage dating back so many years. This decision restored one death penalty, which will make it more difficult for Robinson to use this reasoning during the next round (next March).

He probably won’t give up. He has many years yet in which to make arguments and await advances in neuroscience. However, for now, the threat of any argument for leniency or eventual parole has been defused. Robinson remains the youngest serial killer on death row.

Louisiana: To cut heat threat, air-conditioning proposed for Angola’s death row

february 18,2014

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The state corrections department said Monday the only way it can lower heat levels on Louisiana’s death row to a federal judge’s requirements is by installing air conditioning.

U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson ruled in December that death row gets so hot it violates U.S. constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

He demanded a plan that will cool the cells at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola so the heat index never goes above 88 degrees, a plan that state prison officials filed Monday with the court.

Windows and fans are currently the primary sources of ventilation on death row, which was built in 2006.

The heat remediation proposal submitted by the Department of Corrections and the Angola prison would involve buying air conditioning units and a climate monitoring system for the cells.

“The heat and humidity sensors will transmit their readings to the building’s existing Johnson Control energy management system every 15 minutes. The system is capable of producing graphs showing temperature/humidity conditions over any time period,” James Hilburn, a lawyer for the state, wrote in a document filed with the plan.

The 22-page plan, devised by an outside engineering consultant, didn’t include a price tag. Estimates during the trial ranged from $550,000 to as much as $2 million to install air conditioning on the death row tiers.

Jackson said he wouldn’t consider cost as a factor in his review of the plan.

Lawyers for condemned killers Elzie Ball, Nathaniel Code and James Magee argued the heat could worsen the men’s health conditions, which include high blood pressure and other ailments.

Prison officials said the conditions might be uncomfortable during the hottest summer months, but they are safe. They said the inmates have access to medical care and none of the three plaintiffs have ever been diagnosed with adverse heat reactions.

In his December ruling, Jackson said the heat data collected by a court-ordered contractor in July and August showed that inmates housed in the death row cell tiers are subjected to temperatures and heat indices that are in the National Weather Service’s `caution,’ `extreme caution,’ and `danger’ zones. He said state prison officials must change those conditions.

The corrections department is appealing Jackson’s ruling, but wasn’t able to postpone filing the cooling plan. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals refused last week to order a stay in the case, saying it was premature.

But the appeals court cautioned Jackson about requiring the Angola penitentiary to make the changes it will propose in its plan while the appeal was pending.

Jackson traveled to Angola, 60 miles north of Baton Rouge, to check out the cell blocks for himself before issuing his ruling.

The federal judge also is considering ordering sanctions against attorneys for the state, questioning whether they “conducted themselves with honesty and candor” during the court proceedings and trial last year. A hearing on that issue is set for March 12.
(Source: AP)

With 132 Death Row Inmates Readied for Execution, Lawyers Contest Fast-Track Law Before Florida Justices

February 4, 2014 (flaglerlive.com)

A new law intended to speed up executions did little to change the status quo, an attorney representing the state told the Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday.

But a lawyer representing Death Row inmates argued that the “Timely Justice Act” is premised on a faulty list that violates the constitutionally protected separation of powers as well as inmates’ rights to due process.

More than 150 lawyers and Death Row inmates are challenging the law, signed by Gov. Rick Scott in June.

The law requires the Supreme Court clerk to give the governor a certified list of Death Row inmates whose initial state and federal appeals have been exhausted. The law orders the governor to sign death warrants for the condemned on the list within 30 days and to direct the warden to schedule their executions within 180 days — but only once the executive clemency process has been completed. Scott and his lawyers maintain that the clemency process ends when the governor signs a warrant.

In October, then-Supreme Court Clerk Tom Hall certified to Scott an initial list of 132 inmates who are at least partially “warrant ready” under the requirements of the law.

Scott has signed four death warrants since the law went into effect. Prior to that, Scott ordered nine executions since taking office in 2011.

Marty McClain, who represented the lawyers and inmates during oral arguments before the court on Tuesday morning, said the “warrant ready” list was flawed and included some Death Row convicts whose litigation was still pending.

But Assistant Attorney General Carol Dittmar told the justices that “the list is just to provide for information purposes” and did not change the process by which warrants are signed by the governor. Lawmakers who sponsored the legislation said it was intended to shorten the time between conviction and execution, which now is longer than two decades.

“It seems that the argument being made is that the Timely Justice Act was all for show and didn’t actually change anything,” McClain argued. “Certainly that was not what was expressed by the Legislature at the time. They meant to make changes.”

Some of the justices took issue with McClain’s argument that the Legislature had encroached on their power by forcing their administrator to generate the list.

Justice R. Fred Lewis said he found “difficult to understand why it’s unconstitutional for this court to give information” because that is “very natural and normal” within court operations.

Justice Barbara Pariente suggested that, although “we may not all agree that this is the best policy,” the court could add more information to the list and give lawyers representing Death Row inmates the chance to show why their clients should not be included on it before sending it to the governor.

And she pointed out that there is nothing in the new law that prohibits the court from issuing a stay once a warrant has been signed, pointing to the case of Ray Swafford, whose execution was halted by the court hours before he was scheduled to be put to death in 1990. Swafford, who was deemed “warrant ready” by Hall in October, has spent 28 years on Death Row for the abduction, rape and murder of a gas station attendant in Volusia County.

In November, the Florida high court vacated Swafford’s sentence and ordered a new trial based on new DNA evidence. But McClain said the Swafford case was a perfect example why the law is problematic.

Swafford had at least five appeals before the court ordered a new trial in the fall, McClain pointed out.

“Twenty-one years after the conviction, the information develops. He could have been executed in 1990,” McClain said.

MISSOURI – Death row inmate appeals over police beating – Reginald Clemons

February 5, 2014

JEFFERSON CITY — An attorney for a Missouri man who has been on death row for two decades asked the state Supreme Court on Tuesday to overturn his conviction, asserting that prosecutors suppressed evidence indicating he may have been beaten into confessing.

Reginald Clemons is one of four people who were convicted or pleaded guilty to the 1991 deaths of sisters Julie and Robin Kerry, who prosecutors say were shoved off a St. Louis bridge into the Mississippi River after being raped.

Clemons was scheduled to die by lethal injection in June 2009. But a federal appeals court blocked the execution, and the state Supreme Court then appointed a special judge to investigate Clemons’ claims that he was wrongly convicted.

After a lengthy legal process, Judge Michael Manners issued a report last year concluding that prosecutors suppressed evidence that police may have beaten Clemons while questioning him.

Manners noted that former bail investigator Warren Weeks came forward in 2012 to say he had observed a bump the size of a golf ball or baseball on Clemons’ cheek a few hours after his police interview. Weeks had recorded that on a form at the time, but Manners said it was crossed out by someone on behalf of the state’s prosecution.

Manners wrote in his report that, had Weeks’ testimony been provided to Clemons’ attorneys, it “may have resulted” in a trial court ruling that Clemons’ confession could not be used at his trial.

The arguments before the Supreme Court on Tuesday focused on whether that would have created “a reasonable probability” that Clemons would not have been convicted.

Clemons’ attorney, Joshua Levine of New York, argued that a new trial was necessary because the confession was a critical piece of evidence.

“It’s a somewhat offensive proposition, the notion that a physically coerced confession that is the centerpiece of the state’s case could somehow not be something that results in a new trial for a defendant,” Levine told the Supreme Court. “Give Mr. Clemons what he’s been looking for all these years, which is just a fair trial.”

Clemons, who now is 43, was 19 at the time of the crimes. His parents and a busload of supporters traveled from the St. Louis area to watch Tuesday’s Supreme Court arguments.

“The whole trial was based on a lie, and based on a false confession,” said Maxine Johnson, who described herself as a “prayer warrior” for Clemons.

Condemned South Bay killer gets off California’s death row – Miguel Bacigalupo

February 4, 2014 (timesheraldonline)

A condemned Santa Clara County killer has been sprung from death row after nearly three decades, spared the possibility of execution because prosecutorial misconduct was found to have marred his 1987 trial.

The District Attorney’s Office on Tuesday notified a judge that it will not retry the penalty phase of Miguel Bacigalupo’s murder case, satisfied he will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole unless he can overturn his murder convictions in further appeals.

In an unusual ruling, the California Supreme Court in 2012 scrapped Bacigalupo’s death sentence, finding that the prosecution’s failure to turn over key evidence tainted his 1987 trial. The Supreme Court left intact Bacigalupo’s convictions for murdering two brothers in a San Jose jewelry store in 1983, but concluded the misconduct could have tarnished the jury’s decision to recommend the death penalty.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen could have retried the penalty phase, but opted for a life sentence instead of pursuing another trial so many years after the crime.

“I decided, in the interests of justice, not to retry the penalty phase because … it is unlikely that a jury would return a death verdict more than 30 years after these murders,” Rosen said in a statement.

The Supreme Court found that the lead prosecutor in the original case — Joyce Allego, who later became a judge and retired from the bench last year — and her lead investigator did not reveal crucial evidence to the defense that a Colombian drug cartel was heavily involved in the murders. The evidence was crucial to Bacigalupo’s trial defense.

Robert Bryan, Bacigalupo’s lawyer, said Tuesday he is pressing forward with an appeal in federal court to overturn the murder convictions based on the same misconduct.

“The system worked,” Bryan said of the DA’s decision to drop the death penalty. “But the system only worked after sputtering, kicking and growling.”

The lengthy legal battle stems from Bacigalupo’s conviction for killing Jose Luis Guerrero and Orestes Guerrero, owners of a jewelry store on The Alameda. At trial, Allegro argued that Bacigalupo shot the brothers in a basic jewelry heist, mocking his claim that the Colombian mafia ordered him the carry out the murders or risk the death of his family.

But evidence unearthed in the ensuing decades suggested that the prosecution team, particularly lead investigator Sandra Williams, had strong information from a confidential informant that supported Bacigalupo’s defense. And that material was never turned over to defense lawyers at trial.

Bacigalupo was unlikely to face execution soon. California has not had an execution in eight years as a result of legal battles over its lethal injection method, and none are expected at least in the next year on a death row with more than 740 inmates.

Howard Mintz covers legal affairs. Contact him at 408-286-0236 or follow him at Twitter.com/hmintz