death sentence

TEXAS – UPCOMING EXECUTION, Jonathan Marcus Green, 10/10/2012 – EXECUTED 10.45 P.M

Picture of Offender

Name Green, Jonathan Marcus
TDCJ Number 999421
Date of Birth 12/23/1967

 

Jonathan Marcus Green, is scheduled to be executed after 6 p.m. on October 10, 2012. Green was sentenced to death for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl in Montgomery County.
On the evening of June 21, 2000, 12-year-old Christina Neal disappeared after leaving a friend’s home in the small community of Dobbin, TX.
The girl’s family began looking for her the next day, after determining that she had not stayed overnight at a friend’s house. Christina’s glasses were found along a road near the Neal home. The glasses were “smashed and broken.”

On June 23, the girl’s father, Victor Neal, asked his sister to look for Christina while he was at work. Christina had run away before, so Victor told his sister to report her as a runaway if she could not find her. Later that day, having failed to locate Christina, the sister reported her missing to a Montgomery County Sheriff’s deputy. Officers then joined the family in searching for Christina.

On June 26, the FBI joined in the search. Christina’s panties were found at the edge of the woods across from the Neal home, and Christina’s bracelet and necklace were found along a pathway in the woods.

On June 28, investigators spoke with Jonathan Green, who also lived in Dobbin, because his wallet was discovered in the vicinity of Christina’s disappearance. Green said he had no information concerning Christina’s disappearance, and that he was either at home or at his neighbor’s house on the night she disappeared. He gave investigators permission to search his home and property, with the condition that he be present. Investigators performed a cursory search of the house and property, but they noticed nothing significant.

On July 19, a man who lived on the property behind Green’s, told investigators that Green had an unusually large fire in his burn pile the day after Christina disappeared. A few days later, investigators went to Green’s home and asked if they could search his property again, including his burn pile. Green again consented, but insisted that he be present during the search. An FBI agent smelled a distinct odor emanating from a disturbed section of ground which he identified as “some sort of decaying body.” The investigation team then began to dig up the disturbed area. Green, who had been cooperative up to that point, became angry and told the officers to get off his property.
The investigative team returned to Green’s property later that night with a search warrant. They discovered that part of the burn pile had been excavated, leaving what appeared to be a shallow grave. They also smelled the “extremely foul, fetid odor” of a “dead body in a decaying state.”
An officer then arrived with a “cadaver dog,” trained to detect human remains. The dog repeatedly went to the side of a recliner in the house. An FBI agent looked behind the recliner and found human remains in a bag that were identified as Christina’s. An autopsy concluded that Christina was sexually assaulted and then strangled.
During the course of the autopsy, various materials were recovered from Christina’s body.
DNA testing on black hairs found on Christina’s body indicated a higher probability the hairs came from Green.
A Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab criminalist testified that many of the fibers recovered from Christina’s body matched fiber samples seized from Green’s property and residence. On the panties that were recovered near the Neal home five days after Christina had disappeared and nearly a month before her body was found, investigators found a fiber that had characteristics identical to carpet in Green’s residence.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Green’s conviction on Dec. 17, 2004.
On March 6, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari review.
On March 23, 2005, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals adopted the findings and conclusions of the trial court and denied Green’s application for state habeas relief.
On Feb, 15, 2008, a U.S. district court denied Green’s federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
On February 27, 2009, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied a certificate of appealability.
On October 5, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari review of this decision.
No litigation is currently pending.
Green had a misdemeanor conviction for unlawfully carrying a weapon.
The State also presented evidence of Green’s history of violent behavior:
A woman testified that Green raped her about four years before he was tried for the capital murder of the 12-year-old girl.
Another woman testified that in July 1999, Green entered her home without permission, jumped on top of her, and demanded that she have sex with him. The woman said she tried to defend herself, but Green forced himself on her. The woman also testified about another time when Green tried to rape her. However, on that occasion, she was armed with a pocket knife and was able to fend him off.
Green was linked to the stabbing death of a pony that was stolen in January 2000 from a pasture in Dobbin. The pony was tied to a tree and stabbed to death. A bloody pair of shears and a bloody broken butcher knife were laying near the pony’s carcass. Green admitted that the shears were his but claimed that they had been stolen a few weeks earlier. However, the only print recovered from the shears matched Green’s left middle finger.
Green also displayed increasingly violent behavior while he was incarcerated in the Montgomery County Jail:
On the morning of September 9, 2000, Green threatened to assault an officer for taking a toothbrush and a bowl of food from him.
On February 5, 2001, Green threatened a fellow inmate asserting that he “would make his heart stop.”
On another occasion, Green threatened a deputy because he would not give him a second glass of juice.
On July 26, 2001, Green assaulted and robbed another inmate.
On March 13, 2002, Green assaulted an officer in the jail.

OHIO – Death penalty for Ohio man in triple stabbing – Caron Montgomery

May 16, 2012 Source : http://www.reviewonline.com

COLUMBUS, — A three-judge panel on Tuesday handed down a death penalty verdict for an Ohio man after he pleaded guilty to killing a woman he lived with and her two children on Thanksgiving Day in 2010.

The Franklin County death verdict for Caron Montgomery of Columbus was the county’s first in a decade and also a relatively rare case of a death penalty verdict following a guilty plea.

The panel will formally sentence Montgomery to death May 22. On Tuesday, the judges found that the circumstances of the crime outweighed evidence that Montgomery presented as to why he should be spared, and that a death sentence was the appropriate punishment.

The three-judge panel “followed the law and rendered their verdict based upon the overwhelming evidence presented,” Prosecutor Ron O’Brien said in a statement. Montgomery’s attorney, Scott Weisman, declined to comment.

Montgomery, 38, pleaded guilty earlier this month to multiple counts of aggravated murder and single counts of murder and domestic violence.

Police found Tia Hendricks and her 2-year-old and 10-year-old children stabbed to death inside Hendricks’ Columbus apartment the day after the killings.

At least seven defendants have received the death penalty after pleading guilty before such panels over the past 30 years in Ohio, including another Franklin County man, Michael Turner, who pleaded guilty in 2002 to killing his estranged wife and her boyfriend.

That’s compared to dozens of cases where three-judge panels found defendants guilty and then sentenced them to death.

Turner remains on death row. Four of the seven defendants who pleaded guilty have since been executed.

TEXAS – Death Sentence Reviews Leave Unsettled Issues

may 13, 2012 source :http://www.texastribune.org

Stanley Schneider was shocked last year when Texas’ highest criminal court sent his death row client an early Christmas gift of sorts, ordering the trial court to re-examine evidence from a psychologist who had decided thatJohn Reyes Matamoros was mentally fit to face execution.

“We were hopeful their sending it back would mean something,” Schneider said.

But his hope flagged in March when, he said, two Harris County state district judges virtually rubber-stamped Dr. George Denkowski’s findings in the cases of Matamoros and a fellow death row inmate,Steven Butler. Denkowski, the psychologist who testified in the cases of 14 current Texas death row inmates that the convicted men were mentally fit for execution, was reprimanded last year after other psychologists and defense lawyers filed a complaint alleging that he had used discredited evaluation methods.

Lawyers for Matamoros and Butler, who have filed objections with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, say any findings by Denkowski should be disregarded. They said that the trial court judges — who are husband and wife — simply adopted Denkowski’s conclusions instead of examining reams of evidence from other psychologists that they said proved their clients were mentally retarded and ineligible for the death penalty.

“This is a perfect example of the state taking science and trying to prostitute it,” Schneider said, adding, “The role of the courts is to protect us from junk science.”

 

Judge Marc Brown, of Harris County District Court, who reviewed the Matamoros case, was in trial and did not respond to a request for comment. His wife, Judge Susan Brown, declined to comment on the Butler case because it is continuing. Calls to Denkowski were not returned.

But Roe Wilson, Harris County assistant district attorney, contended that the judges had disregarded Denkowski’s findings.

The judge’s findings in Butler’s case repeatedly refer to Denkowski’s findings, but Wilson said the references were “historical.”

“There was no consideration given and no mention given,” Wilson said.

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 2002 that states could not execute people who were mentally retarded. The court allowed states to decide on guidelines for determining whether a person was mentally retarded. Texas courts have adopted a three-part definition that requires the convicted inmate to have below-average intellectual function, to lack adaptive behavior skills and to have had these problems since an early age.

Denkowski conducted tests to determine whether defendants who might face the death penalty aligned with those definitions.

But other psychologists and defense lawyers complained that he artificially inflated intelligence scores to make defendants eligible for the death penalty. (Denkowski’s lawyer has said that he vigorously denies having violated any psychology board rules and that he used his best clinical judgment in making forensic evaluations.)

Last year, the Texas Board of Examiners of Psychologists agreed to a settlement with Denkowski in which it reprimanded him, but he did not admit guilt. He 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.

 

Since that reprimand, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has asked trial courts to review at least six cases that included Denkowski’s work to determine what effect it had had on the case.

Defense lawyers argue that Denkowski’s conclusions should be completely excluded from those reviews.

“You can talk all day long about how you don’t want junk science used in these cases, but when you’re confronted with it, you have to take active steps to make sure it hasn’t contaminated the case,” said Kathryn Kase, executive director of the Texas Defender Service, which represents death row inmates.

The Butler and Matamoros cases are the first to be returned to the Court of Appeals.

Butler, who was also sentenced to life in prison for a separate conviction of aggravated sexual assault with a weapon, was sentenced to death in 1988 for the shooting death of Velma Clemons, a clerk at a dry-cleaning business.

Denkowski evaluated Butler, and he testified in the case in 2006. School records showed Butler had been classified as “educable but mentally retarded,” but Denkowski said nothing in the records indicated that he required special education. He noted that Butler could tell time and could recite his Social Security number, “highly atypical skills for a mentally retarded person.” He concluded that Butler’s I.Q. was borderline normal.

Similarly, Judge Susan Brown concluded that Butler’s poor academic performance reflected underachievement and poor choices, not lack of intellectual function. She also wrote that he had enough intellectual ability to plan, commit and then lie about the murder for which he was convicted.

Dick Burr, a defense lawyer, said the judge had ignored findings by experts hired by Butler’s lawyers, including Dr. Denis Keyes, a special education professor at the College of Charleston, and Dr. Jack Fletcher, a psychology professor at the University of Houston. Both found that Butler had a low I.Q. and was mentally retarded.  Fletcher — one of the psychologists who complained to the board about Denkowski’s work — said that Denkowski’s conclusion that Butler was mentally fit for execution “was based on outmoded, no-longer-accepted information.”

“Our evidence demonstrated very persuasively that Steven Butler has mental retardation,” Burr said.

Matamoros, whose criminal history included auto theft and burglary with intent to sexually assault, was convicted of the 1990 murder of 70-year-old Eddie Goebel, who was found in his bed with 25 stab wounds.

Denkowski concluded in 2006 that Matamoros was not mentally retarded. His low I.Q. scores and a psychologist’s finding in 1977 that at 14 Matamoros had a mild intellectual disability, Denkowski concluded, were a result of bilingualism and his rearing in a deprived environment.

Judge Marc Brown agreed, quoting from a federal court ruling in the case that in turn relied on Denkowski’s findings. Like Denkowski, the judge concluded that Matamoros’s ability to care for himself as an inmate and to plan and commit crimes also contradicted his claims of mental retardation.

Judge Brown’s findings discounted the evaluations of psychologists hired by Matamoros’s lawyers who found that he was mentally retarded.

Dr. Thomas Oakland, a psychologist and a professor at the University of Florida, reviewed Denkowski’s findings along with Judge Marc Brown’s ruling. Both, he said, showed a “reckless disregard” for established forensic psychology.

“Based upon my review of Denkowski’s affidavit and testimony, it is my opinion that Matamoros’s intelligence was and is significantly subaverage,” he wrote in an affidavit.

Wilson, the assistant district attorney in Harris County, disputed the inmates’ lawyers’ argument that the judges’ findings were largely copied from Denkowski’s work.

“I don’t think that is an accurate characterization, but that is something the Court of Criminal Appeals will determine,” she said.

Lawyers for Butler and Matamoros want the Court of Criminal Appeals to insist that the death row inmates’ claims be re-evaluated without any reliance on Denkowski’s work.

Schneider said the decision by the Court of Appeals in the two cases would also send a signal to other judges who are reviewing cases in which Denkowski had made evaluations. He said he hoped the court would continue to reject forensic methods that had been proven unscientific.

“Their role has to be that of the supergatekeeper of forensic science,” Schneider said. “They have to say we will not allow a proceeding tainted by junk science to go forward.”