Murder

KENTUCKY – From Oct. 21, 2006: Meece gets death penalty; murderer says he is being railroaded

october 1, 2012 http://www.kentucky.com

A former Lexington taxi driver and lawn-care worker should be put to death for murdering three Adair County family members, a judge said yesterday.

Circuit Judge James G. Weddle imposed three death sentences on William Harry Meece, 33, as well as a total of 40 years on burglary and robbery convictions.

Weddle said Meece deserved the ultimate penalty for the murders of veterinarian Joseph Wellnitz, 50; his wife, Beth, 40; and son Dennis, 20. Meece invaded their farmhouse outside Columbia early one cold morning in February 1993 and shot each of them more than once, reloading in order to finish off Dennis Wellnitz.

Meece has been unusual and contentious throughout the process leading up to his trial, filing dozens of motions on his own, and his sentencing was no exception.

He read a five-page statement that said he did not kill the Wellnitzes but had been railroaded by lies — including those of his ex-wife, who testified against him.

He condemned the court system, likening it to “Nazi Germany, Communist China and Soviet Russia.”

“I bemoan the loss of the American ideal of a fair trial,” he said. He finished with a prayer in Hebrew and English and asked God to have mercy on the police, the prosecutor, the court and the witnesses against him.

Weddle, however, said he had absolutely no doubt Meece committed the murders. Weddle rejected requests for a new trial for Meece or a sentence of life in prison without parole.

The prosecutor, Commonwealth’s Attorney Brian Wright, called Meece’s statement disgusting and said he was pleased the judge imposed the death sentence Wright had sought for Meece.

The death sentence had been a long time coming for friends and family of the Wellnitzes and for police who pursued the case for years.

Meece and the daughter of the slain couple, Margaret “Meg” Wellnitz Appleton, became suspects early in the case, but it took nearly 10 years for state police to get the evidence they thought was needed for an an arrest.

That development came by way of Regina Meade, Meece’s wife at the time of the murders. The two later divorced.

When state police contacted Meade as part of a follow-up in late 2002, she told them Meece and Appleton had told her years earlier about killing the Wellnitz family and disposing of the gun and Meece’s bloody clothes in a restaurant dumpster.

She also gave state police a piece of physical evidence — a small safe Meece stole from the Wellnitz home, Wright said.

Ten years after the murders, state police arrested Meece and Appleton, who had met as students at Lexington Community College.

Meece was already in jail by then on a charge that he offered to kill a man for $2,000 in Lexington in 2002. He is serving 12 years in that case.

Wright said money motivated the Adair County slayings. Appleton got $300,000 in insurance money after her parents’ deaths, and Meece was to get a share, the prosecutor said.

The case took a strange turn in late 2004. Meece pleaded guilty and gave authorities two chilling, detailed videotaped statements about how he killed the Wellnitzes.

Appleton also pleaded guilty in return for a sentence of life in prison without parole for at least 25 years, which she is serving.

But Meece quickly recanted. He said he’d had a conflict with one of his court-appointed attorneys and thought pleading guilty and then taking back the plea was the only way to get new lawyers and a fair trial.

He got new lawyers and a trial, but the confessions came back to haunt him. Wright played them for the jury, over Meece’s objection.

Meece told jurors the confessions were a lie and he was now telling the truth about being innocent. Jurors believed the confessions and other evidence more, however, convicting Meece in less than two hours.

Under Kentucky law there will be an automatic appeal of Meece’s conviction to the state Supreme Court. One issue is likely to be whether it was proper for jurors to hear Meece’s 2004 confessions.

SOUTH CALIFORNIA – Death Row inmate’s conviction overturned – Armenia Cudjo

September 30, 2012 http://www.sfgate.com

A federal appeals court overturned the conviction and death sentence of a Southern California man in the 1986 battering death of a female neighbor because the jury wasn’t told that the defendant’s brother had admitted the killing to a cellmate.

Armenia Cudjo, now 54, was convicted of robbing and murdering Amelia Prokuda, whose partially clad body was found in her apartment in the desert community of Littlerock (Los Angeles County). A bloodstained hammer was found nearby.

Cudjo said he had been at the victim’s home that day and had sex with her but didn’t kill her. He said the killer was his brother Gregory, who more closely resembled a description of the intruder by the victim’s 5-year-old son. Gregory Cudjo told police his brother had confessed the murder to him.

Armenia Cudjo’s lawyer tried to present testimony by John Culver, who said Gregory Cudjo had admitted the killing in a cell at the sheriff’s office, but the trial judge barred the testimony. The state Supreme Court said the testimony should have been allowed but ruled 5-2 in 1993 that it wouldn’t have mattered because Culver had little credibility and the prosecution’s case was strong.

But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 2-1 on Friday that the trial judge had violated Cudjo’s right to present a defense. The ruling entitles him to a new trial.

Cudjo’s public defender obtained a sworn statement from Gregory Cudjo in 2008 acknowledging that he had made the admission to Culver, though he didn’t say whether he was telling the truth.

“After 26 years on Death Row, Armenia is glad to have a chance to get his life back,” the lawyer, John Littrell, said Friday.

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.

 

ALABAMA – Amy Bishop sought the death penalty

September 26, 2012 http://bostonglobe.com

Amy Bishop, a Massachusetts native, is accused of killing her brother in Braintree in 1986.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — A former college professor who killed three people and wounded three others during a faculty meeting wanted to go to death row and had to be convinced by her parents to accept a plea deal that spared her life, her lawyer said Tuesday.

Amy Bishop, 47, did not want to live among other ­inmates because she was terrified of being sexually abused in Alabama’s lone prison for women, defense attorney Roy Miller told the Associated Press.

‘‘She wanted to die,’’ he said. Bishop did not want to ‘‘live in a chicken coop the rest of her life,’’ he said.

A judge sentenced Bishop, a Harvard University-educated biologist, to life without parole Monday after jurors convicted her during an abbreviated ­trial.

She had pleaded guilty earlier this month, but state law ­required a trial because she ­admitted to a capital murder charge.

Authorities have said that Bishop opened fire during a University of Alabama biology department meeting Feb. 12, 2010, in Huntsville, ­because she had been denied tenure.

Bishop, who has been held without bond in the Madison County jail since the shootings, could be transferred to Julia Tutwiler, the women’s prison, at any time.

Bishop met at the jail Tuesday with a defense attorney representing her on a murder charge in her native Massachusetts, where she is accused of killing her brother with a shotgun blast in their home in Braintree in 1986.

Authorities initially ruled the shooting accidental, based partly on claims by Bishop’s mother, who said her daughter did not mean to kill Seth ­Bishop, 18 at the time.

Authorities in Massachusetts said they would make a decision later this week on whether to pursue the case.

District Attorney Rob Broussard of Madison County said a prosecutor from Massachusetts phoned him last week to ask about Bishop’s plea.

‘‘He wanted verification from me on the guilty plea and that life without [parole] really means life,’’ Broussard said. ‘‘It does.’’

A spokesman for Norfolk District Attorney Michael ­Morrissey in Massachusetts ­declined to comment.

Miller said Bishop would probably never face trial in Massachusetts because ­Alabama is unlikely to send her there.

‘‘Based on my experience, I don’t foresee her ever going up there to face that,’’ he said. ‘‘Practically speaking, it would be a disaster if she escaped or something happened.’’

Bishop accepted a plea deal in Alabama only after talking with her mother and father, Miller said. ‘‘She was never ­inclined to plead guilty to life without parole,’’ he said.

Bishop attempted suicide once in the county lockup by cutting her wrists, authorities said.

The Justice Department is reviewing allegations of rape, sexual assault, and harassment by male guards at Tutwiler prison after a legal aid group filed a complaint in May.

The Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative said it based the assertions on interviews with more than 50 women at the maximum-security prison, north of Montgomery.

Prison system spokesman Brian Corbett said Bishop would probably spend about a month in a cell by herself ­before moving into the prison’s general population.

‘‘I’m sure that every inmate entering the system has their own set of unique fears,’’ ­Corbett said in an e-mail. ‘‘I cannot address hers on an individual basis.’’

Bishop could have been sentenced to death by lethal injection if she had gone to trial and been convicted of capital murder, but none of the victims were pushing for a death sentence and some actively ­opposed it, Broussard said.

‘‘The settlement was a just outcome,’’ he said.

DEATH ROW PORTRAIT : Serial Killer James Barnes on Death Row

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EreUaDrg5Y

James Barnes ,who is currently in prison in Florida

Phila. prosecutor calls death-penalty plea by Terrance Williams bogus. “Its a complete lie” Andrea Foulkes said..

Update september 24, 2012

An accomplice who feels he was shafted after cutting a deal with Philadelphia prosecutors nearly 30 years ago tried Monday to save the life of the man against whom he testified.

Terrance “Terry” Williams, 46, is set to be the first person executed in Pennsylvania in 50 years who has not given up his appeals. A divided state pardons board rejected his bid for clemency last week but may revisit his case before the scheduled Oct. 3 execution.

Williams is on death row for killing 56-year-old Amos Norwood three months after turning 18 — and five months after killing another older man.

Williams now says both victims had sexually abused him. And his lawyers say prosecutors knew that before trial, yet failed to disclose the information to Williams’ trial lawyer or the jury.

“The arbitrary and capricious nature of the death penalty is exemplified, to me, by this case,” said Marc Bookman, executive director of The Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, a nonprofit death penalty resource center in Philadelphia. “No one would say that this guy should be the first guy executed (in recent years), that he’s the worst of the worst.”

In court Monday, accomplice Marc Draper, a policeman’s son, told Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina that a detective coerced him into lying about the motive for Norwood’s death. He said he agreed to play up the robbery motive — he and Williams had stolen $20 and two credit cards after fatally beating Norwood at a cemetery — and avoid the sex angle.

“I was a sheep, to do anything that they wanted me to do. And I regret that. I’m almost embarrassed to say that, that I was so gullible,” Draper said.

Williams had sex with several older men for money or gifts, Draper said. The defense claims that Norwood, a church deacon, began having sex with Williams when the boy was 13. And they say prosecutors knew about the relationship and had at least one other molestation complaint about Norwood that was not disclosed.

Draper is serving life without parole after pleading guilty to second-degree murder. He said he was promised a parole hearing after 15 years if he cooperated, only to learn that in Pennsylvania, a life sentence means life.

On cross-examination, Draper got tangled up at times explaining his changing story. But even without his testimony, Sarmina could stay the execution if she finds prosecutors withheld evidence.

District Attorney Seth Williams, in a weekend opinion column in The Philadelphia Inquirer, called Terrance Williams “a brutal, two-time murderer” and dismissed the new evidence claims.

“The most noticeable thing about this case is not the ‘new evidence.’ It’s the willingness of some people to believe every defense claim as if it were gospel truth,” Williams wrote.

The five-member state pardons board, which includes Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley and state Attorney General Linda Kelly, plans to meet Thursday morning to decide whether to reconsider Williams’ clemency petition. If so, the hearing would be held Thursday afternoon.

Alternately, if Sarmina grants a stay, and the decision is not overturned, Williams’ death warrant would expire on Oct. 3. Gov. Tom Corbett would then have 30 days to issue a new death warrant, to be carried out within 60 days, if Williams is not pardoned or granted a life sentence.

There are 200 people on death row in Pennsylvania, but only three people have been executed since 1976.

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Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Death-row-inmate-gets-support-from-ex-accomplice-3888691.php#ixzz27TDdBxdQ

Septembre 24, 2012, http://www.sacbee.com

PHILADELPHIA — A hearing is set to continue Monday for a death-row inmate who could become the first person in Pennsylvania executed since 1999.

Forty-six-year-old Terrance “Terry” Williams now claims he was sexually abused for years by the man he admits beating to death in 1984 at the age of 18. He’s asked a Philadelphia judge to halt the scheduled Oct. 3 lethal injection based on new evidence about the victim and the key accuser.

The hearing was continued Thursday after nine hours of testimony. It’s scheduled to resume at 10 a.m. Monday.

One of the issues at Thursday’s hearing was whether prosecutors and homicide detectives withheld from Williams’ lawyers a statement that the killing was motivated by rage over sexual abuse. The jury was told it was over a robbery.

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

The prosecutor who put Terrance Williams on death row denounced Williams’ admitted accomplice Thursday, rejecting as a lie the contention that Williams killed Amos Norwood in a sexual rage and that authorities ignored evidence of his motive.

“It’s a complete lie,” Andrea Foulkes said when asked about new statements by Marc Draper. Draper now says Foulkes and detectives ignored his information about a sexual motive behind the 1984 killing of Norwood, 56, in West Oak Lane.

Draper’s account of Williams’ alleged abuse by Norwood is the evidence being used by Williams’ lawyers to try to block his scheduled Oct. 3 execution.

Answering questions from Williams’ lawyer Billy Nolas, Foulkes said Draper “absolutely did not tell me this case was about Terry Williams having sex with Mr. Norwood.”

Draper, in affidavits provided this year in Williams’ defense, asserted that Foulkes and detectives told him to say Norwood was killed in a robbery.

Foulkes, now a federal prosecutor, testified for seven hours before Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina on a motion by Williams’ lawyers to stay his execution.

Draper, 46, who like Williams was an 18-year-old Cheyney University freshman in 1984, testified briefly and is scheduled to return when the hearing resumes Monday.

Williams, 46, has exhausted state and federal appeals and will be executed unless his legal team can convince Sarmina that newly discovered evidence merits an emergency stay.

Williams’ lawyers say that in addition to Draper’s claim of a sexual motive, the jury that condemned Williams to death should have known about Foulkes‘ promise to write to state parole officials describing Draper’s cooperation.

Foulkes acknowledged that she wrote the letter in 1988 and gave it to Draper’s father, George, a city police officer, to use when Marc Draper decided to try to get his life term commuted.

Foulkes conceded to Sarmina that in retrospect, she should have told the jury about the letter when she questioned Draper about the terms of his guilty plea.

But the prosecutor also said she made clear to Draper that a commuted sentence was a long shot and that he would serve decades in prison before it would be considered.

Sarmina puzzled aloud why Draper pleaded guilty to a crime that guaranteed him life in prison.

Foulkes said Draper might have faced the death penalty had he gone to trial, although the case against him was not as strong as the case against Williams.

“Basically, he really didn’t get a very good deal,” Foulkes said.

On that, Draper agreed. Testifying Thursday, Draper told the judge: “I guess, looking at my prosecution, I feel like I was wronged. I didn’t deserve to get a second-degree life sentence. I don’t think so.”

But Draper said his recantation was not based on anger but his rebirth as a Christian.

“As a man of faith, a man of God, I don’t want to see anybody die in that manner,” Draper said, referring to Williams.

Foulkes maintained that in trial preparation, preliminary hearings and Williams‘ 1986 trial, Draper never wavered in his account: Norwood was killed in a robbery, and he was appalled when Williams started beating Norwood with a tire iron.

In court filings Thursday, the district attorney’s office urged Sarmina to dismiss the bid for a stay of execution, saying the claims of sexual abuse had been heard and rejected by state and federal appeals courts.

Draper raised Foulkes‘ promise of support for parole in 2000, prosecutors argued.

After the hearing, Deputy District Attorney Ronald Eisenberg repeated that “none of this is new.”

“The issue of his alleged new information is not new,” Eisenberg said. “This defendant has always had it with him and if he wanted to, he could have brought it up at trial.”

Eisenberg referred to Foulkes‘ testimony that Williams never raised the issue of sexual abuse by Norwood at his trial. Instead, Foulkes testified, Williams testified that he was not there and that Norwood was killed by Draper and another person.

Norwood, a volunteer at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Germantown, was found in Ivy Hill Cemetery, his body charred beyond recognition and his skull shattered by a tire iron.

The use of some of Norwood’s stolen credit cards eventually led police to Draper, who implicated Williams and agreed to testify at two murder trials in which Williams was the accused killer.

While Draper was being questioned in the Norwood case, he told detectives that Williams had told him about a murder six months earlier: the Jan. 26, 1984, stabbing of Herbert Hamilton, 50, of West Philadelphia.

The jury in the Hamilton case convicted Williams of third-degree murder, apparently believing Draper’s testimony that Williams killed Hamilton because the older man tried to force him to have sex.

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.

NORTH CAROLINA – man once on death row charged in wife’s slaying – Joseph Green Brown

September 17,2012 http://seattletimes.com

Joseph Green Brown refused to run from his troubled past. He’d tell audiences he was only hours from being executed on Florida’s death row. He’d talk about how an appeals court overturned his rape and murder convictions in 1986 and how he walked out of prison a free man – with a goal of ending the death penalty.

Now Brown is back in jail, this time facing first-degree murder charges in the death of the woman he married 20 years ago, Mamie Caldwell Brown of Charlotte.

“This is just horrible,” said Sherry Williams, Mamie Brown’s aunt. “From what we could tell, he was sweet and caring. And now this? We are all in shock. How could this happen?”

Brown was in a Mecklenburg County courtroom Monday for a preliminary hearing. The judge ordered the 62-year-old Brown held without bond until a Sept. 26 hearing. A daughter of the victim shouted, “Oh, my God!”

Mamie Brown, 71, was found dead in her apartment last Thursday after police were asked to check on her. Joseph Brown was arrested late Friday at a hotel in Charleston, S.C.

Joseph Brown was convicted and sentenced to death for a 1973 rape and murder in Hillsborough County, Fla. His conviction was reversed in 1986 because of false testimony from a co-defendant.

During a brief hearing in Charlotte, Brown was escorted into a courtroom in handcuffs. Wearing an orange prison jump suit, he glimpsed at his wife’s family in the courtroom, but quickly turned away.

Outside, Mamie Brown’s family said Brown never hid that he was on death row. In fact, they said, he embraced it.

“He went around talking to groups about it,” Williams said. “He even talked to my church about it. He told people what they had to do to stay out of trouble. He was a good motivational speaker. That’s how he made a living.”

It’s unclear whether Brown had an attorney Monday afternoon.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police are still investigating Thursday’s slaying. District Attorney Bill Stetzer said prosecutors would present the case soon to a grand jury.

Brown’s 1974 conviction and death sentence by a Florida jury was for raping and murdering Earlene Treva Barksdale, the owner of a clothing store. He was scheduled for execution Oct. 17, 1983, but a federal judge ordered a stay 15 hours before he was to be put to death. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction in early 1986, saying the prosecution knowingly allowed false testimony from a leading witness.

The prosecution decided against retrying Brown and he was released from prison on March 5, 1987.

After his release, Brown took the name Shabaka and frequently spoke out against the injustice and finality of the death penalty, including to a U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee in 1993.

Richard Blumenthal, now a U.S. senator from Connecticut, represented Brown on appeal as a volunteer attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He was in private practice at the time.

Blumenthal said in 1987 that the Brown case changed his view of the death penalty “because it provided such a dramatic illustration of how the system could be fallible and cause the death of an innocent person.”

Blumenthal declined to comment Sunday on his involvement in the case, and did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

After prison, Brown went to the Washington D.C. area where he met his future wife. They got married about 20 years ago and moved to Charlotte about five years ago, family members said.

“We thought they were happy,” said Marcus Williams, who is Mamie Brown’s cousin.

He said the family didn’t worry about Brown’s past.

“He didn’t seem like a threat. He was upfront about everything. He was always smiling and trying to help people. He was a motivational speaker. He liked to warn people what could happen in the legal system,” he said.

Joyce Robbins, another relative, said she stared at Brown in court.

“He had a blank look. I don’t know that person. I’ve never seen him before,” she said.

J. Michael Shea, a Tampa attorney who defended Brown on the Florida murder charge, said over the years, they appeared together on television shows and spoke at law schools. He said he talked to Brown by telephone at least each Christmas, and last saw Brown about a decade ago when both appeared on the Jenny Jones syndicated TV talk show to discuss the case.

He said Brown cared about his wife.

“I can recall that he cared a lot about this woman. I mean, he always talked very favorably about her. And usually when I talked to him (on the phone) she was there. I could either hear her say, `Oh, hello Michael,’ in the background or she actually got on the phone or whatever. So it was a real shock that this has happened.”

He said Brown was an effective speaker.

“Joe was a good example of why we shouldn’t have it,” Shea said. “It’s a real sad thing that this happened because he was a real champion for the anti-death penalty group.”