Update : June 20, 2012
Dates are subject to change due to stays and appeals
| JUNE | ||||
| 05/06/2012 |
Henry Curtis Jackson
|
Mississippi | EXECUTED | 6:13 P.M |
| 06.06.12 | Texas | STAYED | ||
| 06/06/2012 | Abdul Awkal | Ohio | Reprieve 2 weeks | |
| 12/06/2012 | Jan Michael Brawner | Mississippi | Executed | 6:18 P.M. |
| 12.06.12 | Richard Leavitt | Idaho | Executed | 10:25 A.M |
| 20.06.12 | Gary Carl Simmons | Mississippi | Executed | 6:16 p.m |
| 27/6/2012 | Samuel Villegas Lopez | Arizona | ||
May 17, 2012 Source : http://www.coshoctontribune.com
COLUMBUS — Within days of a drug-related slaying in suburban Cleveland, six men were indicted on charges that carried the possibility of a death sentence. Six months later, all had been allowed to plead to lesser charges, including four who received probation and never went to prison.
In short, the men quickly went from facing the possibility of being strapped to a gurney and having 5 grams of pentobarbital injected into their veins, to prison sentences more typical for robbers and thieves.
“It probably was a negotiating tool,” said defense attorney Reuben Sheperd, who represented defendant Alex Ford. “You’ll be more motivated than you were in other circumstances.”
Such scenarios are typical in the county home to Cleveland, where prosecutor Bill Mason pursues dozens of offenders on capital charges each year at added expense to taxpayers and at the risk of some defendants ending up on death row for charges that would be minor elsewhere, even as the number of death penalty prosecutions plummets in Ohio and nationwide, according to an analysis of records by theAssociated Press.
Elsewhere in Ohio, prosecutors are pursuing only the most heinous crimes as death penalty cases and are refusing to plea bargain, or are using a 2005 law that allows them to seek life with no chance of parole and never place capital punishment on the table.
Mason denies he uses the death penalty as a negotiating tool but also says he never rules out the possibility of lesser charges as more information about a case comes to light.
The 2010 case in the suburb of Parma cost Cuyahoga County taxpayers more than $120,000 — the price of the experts and attorneys appointed because the cases involved the death penalty.
Defense attorneys have long complained about the high number of capital indictments in Cuyahoga County, a practice that precedes Mason but that he continued after first taking office in 2000. But now one of the state’s most conservative and pro-death penalty prosecutors is weighing in.
Joe Deters, prosecutor in Hamilton County, renewed questions about Cuyahoga County’s approach during meetings of an Ohio Supreme Court task force. The group, which meets again Thursday , is looking for ways to improve the state’s death penalty law.
“To use the death penalty to force a plea bargain, I think it’s unethical to do that,” Deters said in an interview.
Hamilton County, home to Cincinnati, has sent the most inmates to Ohio’s death row — 61 over 30 years — though the county has indicted fewer than 200 people in three decades. Deters doesn’t accept plea bargains once he decides to pursue a death penalty case.
Mason says a committee of assistant prosecutors reviews the evidence of each death penalty case and encourages defense attorneys to produce reasons that could weigh against the death penalty.
“When we seek the death penalty it is not to secure a plea bargain, but instead to equally apply the law,” Mason said.
Despite the higher number of capital indictments, Mason’s record of winning death sentences is no better than other counties, some of them smaller than Cuyahoga, with about 1.3 million residents.
From 2009 to 2011, for example, Cuyahoga County indicted 135 defendants on charges that could result in a death sentence, according to records maintained by Mason’s office. Only two of those offenders were sent to death row, including Anthony Sowell, convicted in 2011 of killing 11 women.
The rest either pleaded guilty, usually with the death penalty charges withdrawn, or were convicted but not sentenced to death. In six cases, charges were dismissed.
By contrast, Butler County in southwest Ohio, with 368,000 residents, recorded three death sentences during the same time but indicted just six people on capital charges.
“The proof of guilt in a death penalty case has to be near absolute, not a crap shoot,” said Butler County prosecutor Michael Gmoser . In addition, “The case has to shock the conscience of the community,” he said.
Other prosecutors and counties have faced similar criticism for high numbers of indictment. In Philadelphia, former district attorney Lynne Abraham was once dubbed “America’s deadliest DA” by The New York Times Magazine for her aggressive pursuit of the death penalty. Some African-American groups had criticized her for her death penalty stance.
In Arizona’s Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, capital cases were so numerous that in 2007 the state’s Supreme Court Chief Justice convened a task force to look at ways “to address the unprecedented number of capital cases awaiting trial” in the county.
Cuyahoga County brings so many death penalty cases that, in a twist on tough-on-crime politics, candidates running for prosecutor promised to vastly reduce the number of indictments. Mason is not running for re-election.
Mason’s approach runs counter to a 40-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision that threw out the country’s death penalty laws in part over the arbitrariness of the laws in place at the time, said Ohio state public defender Tim Young.
The risk of someone ending up on death row for a crime that might be a far lesser offense elsewhere “seems like a wildly dangerous use” of the death penalty, Young added.
Just 78 inmates nationally were sentenced to death in 2011, the lowest number since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, and nearly two-thirds lower than the 224 death sentences in 2000.
High numbers of capital charges, and the use of plea bargains in death penalty cases, have been examined in several states by the American Bar Association. The ABA’s 2007 review of Ohio’s death penalty system also cited Cuyahoga County’s high number of indictments.
In Kentucky, the ABA noted that the large number of capital indictments — dozens if not hundreds — compared with death sentences “calls into question as to whether current charging practices ensure the fair, efficient, and effective enforcement of criminal law.”
In Tennessee, a 2004 report by the state’s Comptroller of the Treasury that examined the law’s cost found widespread disparities with how prosecutors used the law, with some treating it as a “bargaining chip” to secure plea bargains. “Meanwhile, defense attorneys must prepare their cases, often without knowing the punishment the prosecutor intends to seek,” the report said.
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.
april 12, 2012 source : http://www.nytimes.com
Connecticut is poised to become the 17th state without the death penalty and the fifth in five years to abolish it. Gov. Dannel Malloy is expected to sign the repeal bill approved by the Legislature in recent days.
Connecticut is part of a growing movement against capital punishment, with repeal measures now proposed in California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky and Washington. Other states like Ohio, Oregon and Pennsylvania are reviewing their death penalty laws.
This shift comes at a time when new analyses of capital punishment show gross injustice in its application and enormous costs in continuing to impose it. In Connecticut, a powerful, comprehensive study provided evidence that state death sentences are haphazardly meted out, with virtually no connection to the heinousness of the crime.
In California, two former death penalty proponents — a prosecutor who drafted the 1978 ballot initiative that expanded the state’s death penalty and a leading supporter of the 1978 law — are now championing a new ballot measure to repeal the penalty. They point to a study showing that, since 1978, California has spent roughly $4 billion on the death penalty to carry out 13 executions. “The cost of our system of capital punishment is so enormous that any benefit that could be obtained from it — and I now think there’s very little or zero benefit — is so dollar-wasteful that it serves no effective purpose,” Donald Heller, the drafter of the 1978 measure, said recently.
Decades of research show that racial bias pervades death penalty cases. Minority defendants with white victims are much more likely to be sentenced to death than others;35 percent of those executed nationally since 1976 were black, though blacks currently make up 12.6 percent of the population. The problem of inadequate counsel permeates the system, with many indigent defendants sentenced to death after major blunders by court-assigned lawyers. And a horrific number of innocent people have ended up on death row: 17 convicts with death sentences have been exonerated with DNA evidence since 1993, 123 with other evidence since 1973.
Any careful evaluation leads to what the American Law Institute concluded after a reviewof decades of executions: the system cannot be fixed. It is practically impossible to rid the legal process of biases driven by race, class and politics. The growing number of states reconsidering this barbaric system is a welcome sign. Capital punishment, by overwhelming evidence, should be abolished throughout the United States.
april 13, 2012 source :http://www.foxnews.com
A Scotsman released from prison four years ago after spending two decades on Ohio’s death row could be sent back to prison after he pleaded guilty Friday to threatening a judge who prosecuted his original case.
Ken Richey pleaded guilty to a felony retaliation charge and now faces up to three years in prison. He’ll be sentenced May 7.
Richey agreed to plead guilty in exchange for prosecutors dropping a charge that he violated a protection order when he called the Putnam County courthouse in Ottawa this past New Year’s Eve.
Investigators said Richey was at his home in Tupelo, Miss., when he left the threatening message for county judge Randall Basinger, warning that he was coming to get him.
Richey was on death row for 21 years after being convicted of setting a fire that killed a 2-year-old girl in 1986. He denied any involvement and became well-known in Britain, where there is no death penalty, as he fought for his release. Among his supporters were several members of the British Parliament and Pope John Paul II.
Following years of appeals, a federal court determined his lawyers mishandled the case, and his conviction was overturned. Putnam County prosecutors initially planned to retry him, but Richey was released in 2008 under a deal that required him to plead no contest to attempted involuntary manslaughter. He also was ordered to stay away from the northwest Ohio county and anyone involved in the case, including Basinger.
Richey, though, carried a lifetime of bitterness over his conviction, his friends said.
He returned to Scotland in 2008, and later came back to the U.S. where he was arrested in Minnesota in 2010 and charged with assaulting his 24-year-old son. Prosecutors have said Richey was still wanted on a warrant out of Minnesota.
april 7, 2012 source : http://www.the-daily-record.com
COLUMBUS — Attorney General Mike DeWine has released the 2011 Capital Crimes Annual Report, the yearly snapshot of Ohio’s Death Row, listing facts and figures about inmates who have been executed and those facing death.
It’s a timely survey, given the continuing debate over Ohio’s administration of the death penalty.
According to the report, 313 death sentences have been issued in Ohio since 1981, a number that includes multiple sentences for some individual inmates.
Of those, the state has executed 46. The first was Wilford Berry on Feb. 19, 1999. The most recent was Reginald Brooks on Nov. 15 of last year.
The average age of executed inmates was 45. Nineteen were black, 27 white, all men, serving an average of more than 16 years on Death Row.
They killed 76 people, including 17 children.
The highest number of executions in recent years was in 2010, when eight inmates received lethal injections. Five more were put to death last year.
Sixteen inmates had their death sentences commuted. Gov. John Kasich has granted clemency twice, for Shawn Hawkins (convicted of a drug-related double murder in Hamilton County in 1989) and Joseph Murphy (convicted of killing an elderly Marion woman in 1987).
Former Govs. Ted Strickland, Bob Taft and Dick Celeste commuted the sentences of five, one and eight Death Row inmates, respectively.
Twenty-two inmates died in prison either of natural causes or suicide before their death sentences being carried out.
Eight were deemed mentally retarded and, thus, not eligible for death sentences. Eight are pending resentencing. And 71 had their sentences blocked by judicial action.
That leaves 154 people on Ohio’s Death Row, most of whom have been relocated from the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown to the Chillicothe Correctional institution, located about 50 miles south of Columbus.
Four of those received death sentences last year. A dozen have dates set for their lethal injections.
Mark Wiles, convicted in the brutal knifing death of a Portage County teen, is next in line on April 18, pending any additional legal challenges.
Green light
The report was released a few days before a federal court ruled Ohio could move ahead with Wiles’ execution.
But Judge Gregory Frost didn’t mince words concerning Ohio and the death penalty.
In a decision last week, he declined a request from legal counsel for Wiles to stop his scheduled execution, opening the door for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to restart lethal injections after several months of delays.
But Frost made it clear prison officials better get it right this time.
He’s understandably skeptical, writing in his decision, “Ohio has time and again failed to follow through on its own execution protocol. The protocol is constitutional as written and executions are lawful, but the problem has been Ohio’s repeated inability to do what it says it will do.”
He added later, “They must recognize the consequences that will ensue if they fail to succeed in conducting a constitutionally sound execution of Wiles. They must recognize what performing a constitutionally sound Wiles execution and then returning to the flawed practices of the past would mean.”
Death penalty-free
Two Democratic state lawmakers continue to call for an end to the death penalty in Ohio, “raising fervent opposition” to Judge Frost’s decision last week,
Reps. Nickie Antonio, from the Cleveland area, and Ted Celeste, from the Columbus area, are sponsors of legislation that would ban the death penalty, replacing it with life in prison without parole.
Last week, they pointed to Connecticut, the 17th state in the country that has ceased putting inmates to death.
“Moving forward with executions is a step backward for Ohio,” Antonio said in a released statement. “Now is the time for Ohio to join policy leaders throughout the country and move to life without parole.”
Celeste added, “Connecticut will soon be the fifth state in the past five years to abolish this barbaric, outdated form of punishment. Public opinion is clearly changing with regard to capital punishment, and I am hopeful that Ohio will soon be able to capitalize on this momentum as well.”
april 5, 2021 source : the press Association
A Scotsman released from prison four years ago after spending two decades on Ohio’s death row has agreed to a plea deal over accusations that he threatened a judge who prosecuted his original case.
Ken Richey agreed to enter a guilty plea to a felony charge next week and will face no more than three years in prison, said Todd Schroeder, an assistant prosecutor in Putnam County.
Richey pleaded not guilty in January to charges that he left a threatening telephone message for the judge in the north-west Ohio county. Authorities said he called the courthouse on New Year’s Eve from his new home in Tupelo, Mississippi, warning the judge that he was coming to get him.
Richey was on death row for 21 years after being convicted of setting a fire that killed a two-year-old girl in 1986. He denied any involvement and became well-known as he fought for his release.
Following years of appeals, a federal court determined his lawyers mishandled the case, and his conviction was overturned.
County prosecutors initially planned to retry him, but Richey was released in 2008 under a deal that required him to plead no contest to attempted involuntary manslaughter. He also was ordered to stay away from the north-west Ohio county and anyone involved in the case.
Richey, though, carried a lifetime of bitterness over his conviction and could not stay out of trouble once outside of prison.
He returned to Scotland in 2008, but just over a year later, he was accused of breaking into an apartment and beating a man with a metal pipe. Those charges were later dropped when a witness failed to back the man’s story.
Richey returned to the US and was arrested in Minnesota in 2010. He was charged with assault after his 24-year-old son told police his father grew angry, smacked him with a baseball bat and threatened to kill him after the pair had been wrestling.
Prosecutors in Ohio said Richey was still wanted on a warrant in Minnesota.
Summary of Offense:
On August 7, 1985, Wiles murdered 15-year-old Mark Klima at a farmhouse in Rootstown. Mark’s parents owned the farm where Wiles had worked until January 1983. When Mark caught Wiles stealing valuables from the house, Wiles stabbed Mark 24 times and left the butcher knife buried in his back. Wiles fled to Georgia, but later confessed to authorities in Savannah, Georgia and detectives from Portage County, Ohio.
april 17, 2012 source : http://www.dispatchpolitics.com
Mark Wayne Wiles, the condemned killer from Portage County, arrived this morning at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in preparation for his execution tomorrow. He was transported from the Chillicothe Correctional Institution where Death Row is now located.
april 6, 2012, source :http://www.newsmax.com
Read more on Newsmax.com: Ohio Ready to Resume Lethal Injections
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama’s Re-Election? Vote Here Now!
march, 23 source http://www.ideastream.org
clemency be denied
audio mp3 click here
March, 16,
Mark Wiles sat in front of a window at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution, wearing a T-shirt and looking directly into the camera.
For about two minutes, the man who stabbed a teenager to death on a Portage County horse farm tried to put into words the apology he said he’s been wanting to offer for more than 25 years.
“All these years, I’ve wanted to say to you that I’ve always been sorry for what I did to your son Mark (Klima),” Wiles said, directing the comments to the parents of the boy he killed in August 1985. “He was an innocent victim of my selfish needs. I truly am sorry for taking his life and causing you and so many others so much pain and loss.”
The image, part of a taped apology presented to the state parole board Thursday and earlier sent directly to the Klima family, stood in stark contrast to the picture of Wiles painted by prosecutors: a “burglar of occupied homes” with a history of criminal behavior; “one of the most belligerent individuals” his high school principal had ever experienced; a man who tried to convince investigators that it was his 100-pound victim who threatened him with a knife.
“I can’t understand why they have to prolong (the case and the death penalty) so long when there’s a confession,” Charlie Klima, father of the murder victim, said in his own taped statement to the parole board. “He said he did it and he didn’t want to appeal it. I just don’t understand what the purpose of delaying it any longer or delaying it as long as it was. It just doesn’t make sense.”
He added, “I believe in the death penalty, and I think that he murdered our son and I think he should be executed….”
Wiles, 49, is scheduled for lethal injection next month, though it remains to be seen whether a federal judge will allow the state to resume executions, given the continuing legal battle over the constitutionality of Ohio’s death penalty protocols. A hearing on that issue is set for next week.
The parole board will offer its recommendation to Gov. John Kasich on March 23. The governor has final say on whether to grant clemency or allow the execution to take place as scheduled.
Members didn’t offer too many indications Thursday of the direction of their decision, though they did chastise Wiles’ attorneys for sending a copy of his taped apology directly to the murder victim’s family, calling the move insensitive.
The Klimas turned the tape over to prosecutors without watching it.
“I think after 26 years, an apology is kind of ridiculous,” Charlie Klima said in his taped statement to the board. “… I don’t have any interest in bringing back any more memories than has been (already) brought back in this situation.”
Wiles worked part time at Charlie and Carol Klima’s Shakespeare Acres in Rootstown from May 1982 until January 1983, when the family discovered about $200 missing from ransacked rooms of their home.
Wiles was the only other person on the property at the time; he left before being confronted.
Two years later, after serving time in prison for an unrelated burglary, Wiles returned to the farm, intent on stealing more money. He was caught in the act by Mark Klima, a straight-A student who had completed his freshman year of high school and who wanted to be a doctor.
Wiles subsequently stabbed the teen with a foot-long kitchen knife, stole $260 and fled the state. Five days later, he turned himself into police in Savannah, Ga., signed a confession and returned to Ohio.
Legal counsel for Wiles based their clemency request on Wiles’ admission of guilt, his remorse over the killing and his good behavior while in prison.
“Mark does not believe that he deserves mercy, but he wants to live,” said Vicki Werneke, a federal public defender. “… Mark is so consumed with remorse and regret. … Mark doesn’t offer any excuses for what he did.”
A neuropsychologist testified, via video, that a head injury stemming from a bar fight in the days before the murder could have affected Wiles’ behavior.
A psychologist said Wiles abused alcohol and drugs, displayed anti-social behavior and likely suffered a brain injury that affected his actions and thinking.
Former and current legal counsel described their interaction with Wiles during his trial and post-conviction proceedings, saying he was respectful but was so remorseful about the killing that he did little to avoid the death penalty.
And two sisters and a brother-in-law described Wiles’ emotionally stifling upbringing, the industrial explosion that killed their older brother and their mother’s untreated bipolar disorder.
“I need you to know that I am sorry,” Wiles said in his taped apology, adding later, “When I’m executed, honestly, I hope that in some way it eases some of the pain that I’ve caused.”
But Portage County Prosecutor Vic Vigluicci said Wiles didn’t take responsibility for the crime at the time, initially denying involvement and then attempting to blame the teen for pulling a knife.
The prosecutor showed images of the murdered boy and described, in detail, the fatal wounds Mark Klima received to his back, the defensive wounds he had on his forearms and the bruises and scrapes on this face and forehead.
mark
Prosecutors also said that Wiles had said he wasn’t drunk or high on the day of the crime. And they said a scan of Wiles’ brain days before the murder showed no damage or abnormalities.
Mark Klima’s parents were unable to appear before the parole board in person. Carol Klima recently suffered a stroke and has congestive heart failure. Her husband was at her side.
“We are a small family,” Virginia Klima Petrie, the murdered teen’s aunt, told the parole board in their place. “We don’t make a lot of noise. We live within our means and pay our taxes. We abide by the law. We are working members of our community. And we are the victims of a heinous murder of the only heir to the Klima family name.”
She added, “Enough is enough. … I beg you, let the parents of this murdered child have a moment of closure now before one of them dies. The family asks — no, we demand — justice now. Mark Wiles’ execution needs to be carried out as scheduled. Nothing else is acceptable.”
http://www.recordpub.com/news/article/5168007
march, 15
clemency hearing today
march, 9
Execution date nears for murderer of Rootstown teen
Prison officials are moving ahead with plans to execute a Portage County man who murdered a Rootstown teen more than 25 years ago, despite delays on other executions this year after a judge raised questions about the state’s lethal injection protocol.
Mark Wiles will make his case for clemency before the state parole board next week in advance of his scheduled execution on April 18.
“We have not been made aware of any postponement for the Wiles execution,” said JoEllen Smith, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. “We are moving forward with our preparations.”
Whether Wiles makes the trip to the Death House at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility remains in question, however, as the state works to convince a federal judge that its execution procedures are constitutional.
Two executions were postponed after federal district Judge Gregory Frost ruled prison officials hadn’t followed their own written guidelines for executing an inmate late last year.
A hearing on the issues is scheduled for later this month, during which the state could present a revamped execution protocol. If it meets the judge’s approval, he could allow executions to take place as scheduled.
“The governor’s office at some point will approve a new protocol that DRC has been working on,” Attorney General Mike DeWine said. “Once they approve that protocol, we will present that to Judge Frost. … Judge Frost at that point will decide whatever he decides.”
There are executions scheduled in the state through January 2014, with Wiles next in line. He was sentenced to death for the 1985 murder of 15-year-old Mark Klima.
Wiles worked part time at the Klima horse farm in Rootstown several years before the murder but left after the family discovered $200 was missing.
After serving part of a prison sentence for an unrelated burglary, Wiles returned to burglarize the home, and Mark Klima caught him in the act.
Wiles stabbed the teen, a straight-A student who had completed his freshman year of high school, with a kitchen knife 24 times, stole $260 and fled the state.
Five days later, Wiles turned himself into police in Savannah, Ga., and signed a confession.
His clemency hearing is set for 9 a.m. Thursday, March 15.
http://www.recordpub.com/news/article/5165691
Dates are subject to change due to stays and appeals
update april 27
|
4/05/2012 |
Utah |
Stay likely |
||
|
4/12/2012 |
Alabama |
DELAYED | ||
|
4/12/2012 |
Oklahoma |
STAY | ||
|
04.12.12 |
Florida |
6:19 p.m | ||
|
4/18/2012 |
Ohio |
10:42 am | ||
|
4/19/2012 |
Georgia |
CLEMENCY | commuted | |
|
4/20/2012 |
Delaware |
2:55 am | ||
|
4/26/2012 |
Texas |
6:25 p.m | ||
|
4/25/2012 |
Arizona |
10:08 a.m | ||
|
|
Claim your Innocence 