Supreme Court of the United States

A history of capital punishment in Texas

Milestones in capital punishment in Texas:

1819 — George Brown is first person executed in Texas, by hanging.

1863 — Chipita Rodriguez is first woman executed in Texas, by hanging.

1923 — Lee Nathan becomes the last of 394 people executed by hanging.

1924 — Charles Reynolds becomes first inmate to die in the electric chair in Huntsville as state takes over executions.

1963 — Joseph Johnson is the last of 361 Texas prisoners to die in the electric chair.

1972 — U.S. Supreme Court finds death penalty “cruel and unusual;” death sentences of 52 people in Texas are commuted to life in prison.

1976 — U.S. Supreme Court holds Georgia death penalty statute constitutional, setting stage for resumption of executions.

1977 — Texas adopts lethal injection method.

1982 — Texas inmate Charlie Brooks becomes first in U.S. to receive lethal injection.

1998 — Karla Tucker becomes first woman executed in Texas since Civil War.

2000 — Texas executes a record 40 prisoners in one year.

2013 — Texas schedules execution of Kimberly McCarthy, number 500 by lethal injection.

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Sources: Texas Department of Criminal Justice, “Espy File” database compiled by historians M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smykla.

Texas death row inmate awaits final judgement – Hank Skinner

June 23, 2013 http://www.france24.com

Hank Skinner escaped execution in 2010 by only 20 minutes after a dramatic 11th-hour reprieve. He now regards this as a miracle.

The 51-year-old, who was convicted in 1995 of the brutal triple murder of his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two adult sons, has protested his innocence for years, despite DNA evidence against him.

Haunted by the possibility of execution, the wait has taken a mental toll, says Skinner, who admits that in one sense, death may come as a relief.

“Living under the sentence of death is never off, it’s always on your mind. It’s always sitting on your chest, it’s always on your shoulders and they’re killing people about once a week. It’s so heavy because there’s a pall of death over this place,” he told AFP in an interview.

He tries to paint a picture for outsiders: “If someone kidnaps you and takes you down to the basement and they have jail cells there, six of them. There are six people here and every morning they come down with a gun with six bullets. They point it at you and you hear somebody die right next to you”.

“The first 10 times it happens, you think you’d be glad it’s not you, but after so many times, watching it happen to somebody else, you’d be praying the gun would go off on you.”

Texas prosecutors argue that recently re-examined DNA evidence taken from the crime scene proves Skinner’s guilt.

They point to a knife found caked with his blood, and blood spattering on the walls of a room where two of the killings took place.

Skinner’s legal team counter by insisting the DNA evidence paints only a partial picture of the scene, that Skinner was injured and that questions remain about the disappearance of a bloody jacket worn by Busby’s late uncle.

Skinner points out that the first round of tests showed the presence of a third person’s DNA at the scene whose name has not been determined.

As things stand, barring another twist to his case, Prisoner Number 999-143 is still on death row, at the Polunsky Unit jail in Texas.

But Skinner said he has not given up hope of a final reprieve.

And while he insists he is innocent, he is adamant that even the guilty among his fellow death-row inmates deserve pity.

“I’ve been here 20 years now and they have killed 400 people since I’ve been here,” he says into a telephone sitting behind a reinforced glass divide. The 500th execution is scheduled for Wednesday in nearby Huntsville.

“People don’t realize, they say ‘Oh these guys are monsters’ or whatever. They’re not, they’re just regular people just like me”.

“You walk in the normal world you’d find the same people you find here, they’re just people who made terrible awful mistakes but they can’t be judged by the single worst thing they’ve done in their life.”

During his incarceration, Skinner has married a French wife, the militant anti-death penalty activist Sandrine Ageorges, who regularly visits him.

Skinner longs for a day when he can taste freedom and take Ageorges in his arms.

“The girlfriend that was killed she was the woman of my dreams,” says Skinner. “I have the same thing for Sandrine. You’ve seen love at the first sight, that’s pretty much what it was.

“I definitely see her as my second chance, we think so much alike, it’s amazing. We got married by proxy … when I get out of here we’re gonna have another marriage ceremony where I can be there and I can really kiss her.”

Despite the looming veil of execution, Skinner says he retains a lust for life. “I am a big party person, I like to make love, I like to have a good time, I like to laugh, to tell jokes,” he says.

He regards his 2010 reprieve, when the US Supreme Court stayed his execution in order to consider the question of whether DNA tests not requested by his trial lawyer could be carried out, as a “miracle.”

He vividly recalls his last meal, the journey to the execution chamber, and the realization that he had been spared.

“When they took me over there to kill me … they brought my last meal.

“I ate it all, the whole time I could look right up in bars through this door and there’s the gurney and the microphone hanging there and the witness window. Literally looking at death”.

“Getting in a bus to go to a place you’ve never been, like a different planet. The unknown, I’ve never died before. I don’t know what it’s like. But I know it’s permanent,” he laughs.

“My head was buzzing, and I dropped the phone. I couldn’t hear anything, I thought I was floating. I couldn’t believe it,” he said of the moment when he realized he had escaped execution by a matter of minutes.

Although he holds out hope of winning his freedom, Skinner has revealed the last words he then had thought of: “Before this body is even cold, I will walk again.”

TEXAS- UPCOMING EXECUTION Kimberly McCarty JUNE 26, 2013 Executed

Update june 26

Update June 25

Texas’ highest criminal court has denied a request to block a Dallas County woman’s execution this week.

Kimberly McCarthy’s execution would be the 500th in Texas since the state resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1982. She contends black jurors were improperly excluded from her trial by Dallas County prosecutors and this wasn’t challenged by her lawyers.

But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin denied McCarthy’s request on Monday. The court said it didn’t consider the merits of McCarthy’s appeal because she should have raised her claims previously.

Maurie Levin, McCarthy’s attorney, said she is “reviewing the order and considering our options.”

McCarthy, 52, also would be the first woman put to death in the U.S. since 2010 if she receives lethal injection on Wednesday.

UPDATE JUNE 20

APPEAL FILED FOR KIMBERLY McCARTHY

DALLAS – Attorneys for Kimberly McCarthy filed an appeal Wednesday designed to block her execution.

The motion was made in the 292nd District Court of Dallas County, the site of McCarthy’s original trial on a charge of murdering her neighbor.

If McCarthy does not succeed in her appeals, she is slated to be executed Wednesday..

june 19 2013 source : http://www.kwtx.com

Kimberly McCarthy (Texas prison photo)

The lawyer for former nursing home therapist Kimberly McCarthy, 52, who’s scheduled to die next week for the murder of an elderly neighbor, has filed an appeal in an effort to block the execution.

McCarthy, who’s on women’s death row in Gatesville, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection next Wednesday.

If she does, she would be the first woman put to death in the U.S. since 2010 and the 500th prisoner executed in Texas since the death penalty resumed in 1982.

She was sentenced to die for the fatal stabbing, beating and robbery of her 71-year-old neighbor, retired college professor Dorothy Booth, in 1997.

McCarthy’s state court appeal contends black jurors were improperly excluded from her trial, and that her lawyers should have challenged the exclusions.

Lawyer Maurie Levin says the punishment should be stopped in light of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision backing another Texas prisoner who raised similar arguments about attorney competence.

I. BACKGROUND

On July 21, 1997 McCarthy entered the home of her 71-year-old neighbor Dorothy Booth under the pretense of borrowing some sugar and then “stabbed Mrs. Booth five times, hit her in the face with a candelabrum, cut off her left ring finger in order to take her diamond ring, and nearly severed her left little finger as well.” McCarthy v. State, No. 74590, 2004 WL 3093230, at *2 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004). McCarthy then took Mrs. Booth’s purse and its contents, along with her wedding ring and fled in her car. Later, McCarthy bought drugs with the stolen money, used the stolen credit cards, and pawned the stolen wedding ring. This was the last in a series of robbery-murders that McCarthy committed against her elderly female acquaintances.

On August 18, 1997, McCarthy was charged with capital murder for causing Booth’s death in the course of committing and attempting to commit robbery. (Vol. 1, State Clerk’s Record, “CR”, at 2-3) Her first conviction and death-sentence in 1998 was reversed on direct appeal by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (“CCA”). See McCarthy v. State, 65 S.W.3d 47 (Tex. Crim. App. 2001) (hereinafter “McCarthy I”). She was subsequently tried and found guilty of capital murder in November of 2002, which was affirmed, see McCarthy v. State, 2004 WL 3093230 (“McCarthy II”), and her petition for a writ of certiorari was denied by the Supreme Court of the United States. McCarthy v. Texas, 545 U.S. 1117 (2005). McCarthy filed her second state habeas action on August 24, 2004, which was denied (without an evidentiary hearing in the trial court) by the CCA on September 12, 2007. Ex parte McCarthy, No. 50,360-02, 2007 WL 2660306 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007). On September 11, 2008, McCarthy filed in this court a petition for a writ of habeas corpus within the one-year limitations period.

Victim Dorothy Booth, 71.

Death-row inmate Hubert Michael Jr. will be executed soon, DA Kearney predicts

November 11, 2012

BELLEFONTE — Condemned killer Hubert Lester Michael Jr.’s temporary stay of execution won’t save him from being put to death by lethal injection, York County District Attorney Tom Kearney said.

“I believe it will happen in a relatively short window of time,” he said. “I think we’re going to get there — for the (victim’s) family and for the community. This is a temporary speed bump.”

Michael was to die at 7 p.m. Thursday, but the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of execution that returns the case to U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III. The Third Circuit wants Jones to explain why he denied Michael’s request to keep fighting his death sentence, but then issued what’s called a “certificate of appealability.”

Process

Trista Eng

at issue: Michael’s attorneys with the Federal Community Defender Office and the state attorney general’s Office then have 14 days to address their issues — all at once, Kearney said.

Kearney said language in opinions by Jones and in an unrelated case by the state Supreme Court seems to indicate federal appellate judges in Pennsylvania are frustrated by federal community defenders, who litigate death-row cases bit by bit.

“Delay is winning,” he said.

Jones addressed it directly in his order denying Michael a stay:

“Indeed, to grant the relief requested by the petitioner would make the case a monumental example of the seemingly endless and oft-criticized federal habeas practice. Over 19 years after the heinous murder the petitioner has admitted committing, it is time to draw this affair to a close.”

Hard on family: The family of 16-year-old murder victim Trista Eng wants the sentence carried out, although all have had different reactions to the decades of delays, Kearney said.

“It’s got to be terrible for them,” he said. “I have to believe that this is an emotional roller coaster no one deserves.”

He described Suzanna Eng, Trista’s mother, as a remarkable woman, “resolute in her determination tsee justice for her daughter.”

At Michael’s clemency hearing Wednesday, Trista’s siblings “spoke of their relationship with their sister, and all that she has missed,” Kearney said.

Trista’s brother and sister expressed frustration toward the system, he said, and her brother told the board he hates Michael, according to Kearney.

“The attorney general’s office and our office will do everything we can to make sure the will of the community is carried forth,” he said.

SCOTUS: Despite the stay of execution, Michael, Trista’s family, prison officials and media spent tense hours Thursday at Rockview state prison near State College, waiting to hear whether the U.S. Supreme Court would grant prosecutors’ emergency motion to halt

This is the “execution complex” at Rockview state prison, near State College, where death-row inmates are executed. Three inmates have been put to death since Pa. reinstituted the death penalty in 1972. (Courtesy of Pa. Dept. of Corrections) the Third Circuit’s stay.

But that motion was denied, according to Nils Frederiksen, spokesman for the state attorney general’s office.

It was about 8:30 p.m. Thursday when the denial was announced, ending the wait and sending Eng’s family, the media and a handful of death-penalty protesters back home.

Waited quietly:All day Thursday and into Thursday night, Michael remained in Rockview’s execution holding cell, reading a Bible and a newspaper and listening to the radio, according to Susan McNaughton, press secretary for the state Department of Corrections.

He did not write or dictate a final statement, she said.

Although the execution was set for 7 p.m., the death warrant signed by Gov. Tom Corbett remained in effect until midnight, McNaughton said, and the execution could have begun as late as 11:59 p.m.

Had the execution happened, Michael would have been handcuffed before walking the 20 feet from the holding cell to the execution chamber under escort by six corrections officers, McNaughton said.

Police escort: Michael arrived at Rockview at 6:09 Thursday morning from Greene state prison under police escort, according to McNaughton, and he will now be returned to Greene. Rockview is the only state prison designated to handle executions.

He was visited by his spiritual adviser and one of his attorneys, she said, but no family members.

Michael’s attorneys have declined interviews, but released a statement Thursday afternoon:

“On behalf of Hubert Michael, we are extremely pleased that the federal Court of Appeals has granted (him) a stay of execution. Mr. Michael has suffered from debilitating mental conditions throughout his life. Mr. Michael has compelling legal claims in his case which have never been reviewed by any court. The Court of Appeals recognized that there are complicated issues involved in this case that should be carefully considered.”

13 years: Had the execution happened, Michael, 56, formerly of Lemoyne, would have been the first murderer put to death in Pennsylvania in 13 years, and the fourth inmate executed since 1972, when the state reinstituted the death penalty.

The three men executed since 1972 had all willingly given up appeals and weren’t fighting their death sentences.

It’s the third death warrant Pennsylvania governors have signed for Michael. The first two were in 1996 and 2004. Both times, his execution was stayed.

For years, Michael maintained he wanted to die, but he changed his mind in 2004, just days before his scheduled execution.

His attorneys argue he was not mentally competent when he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder on Oct. 11, 1994, and didn’t challenge his death sentence.

They’ve also said Michael suffered from mental-health issues while he was held in Graterford state prison, but that those issues improved when he was transferred to Greene state prison.

Now that his mental health has improved, Michael is fighting his death sentence.

The background: Michael told his former defense attorney, York County chief public defender Bruce Blocher, he offered Trista a ride as she was walking to her job at Hardee’s in Dillsburg on July 12, 1993.

She accepted, at which point he kidnapped her, drove to to state game lands in Warrington Township and raped and killed her, according to testimony from Blocher at an appeals hearing in 1997.

Michael fled the state 10 days later. At the time, he was free on bail for a Lancaster County rape charge.

Captured: He was captured July 27, 1993, in Utah. Police found the murder weapon in the car he was using, officials said.

He was charged with homicide in late August 1993, after Trista’s body was found by his own family members. Michael had confessed the murder to his brother.

In November 1993, Michael escaped from Lancaster County Prison but was captured in New Orleans in March 1994, according to the Department of Corrections.

He was later sentenced to 10 to 20 years for the Lancaster County rape, according to court records.

Related articles

Lawsuit has potential to stay all executions in Pennsylvania

NOVEMBER 4, 2012 http://www.pennlive.com

It’s been more than a decade since Pennsylvania executed an inmate on death row. Although another execution is scheduled for Thursday, it’s possible the execution will not happen and that the chamber at Rockview State Prison will remain empty for some time to come.

There’s a little-known 6-year-old federal class action lawsuit — Chester v Beard — that has the potential to stay all executions in Pennsylvania until it is resolved.

04michael.jpgHUBERT MICHAEL

The suit challenges the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s execution protocol; the “class” in the action is composed of all inmates on death row, and there’s a hearing in the case Monday morning.

The immediate relevance is the pending execution of Hubert Michael, whose lawyers have asked the judge for a stay.

Michael is on death row for the July 12, 1993, murder of 16-year-old Trista Eng near Dillsburg in York County.

Michael, who was living in a boarding house in Lemoyne at the time, picked up Eng as she walked to work at the Dillsburg Hardee’s on Route 15. He drove her to a remote area of State Game Lands 242 and shot her three times with a .44 magnum — twice in the chest and once in the head.

When Michael subsequently pleaded guilty to the murder, he said he had been frustrated with women due to an unrelated rape charge in Lancaster County.

His attorneys recently asked a federal judge to reopen his appeals proceedings, citing serious mental health issues as the reason for Michael having repeatedly changed his mind on whether or not he wanted the appeal to proceed.

There’s a hearing on that later this week.

But the separate class action suit, in which his attorneys have also filed a motion for a stay, has the potential to affect all executions in Pennyslvania.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that death by lethal injection is not — in and of itself — unconstitutional, but the ruling left open the possibility that individual state protocols for lethal injection could be challenged on constitutional grounds.

At issue is the fact that two of the three drugs used in the procedure can cause excruciating pain if the first drug — a fast-acting barbiturate — is an insufficient dose or improperly administered. What’s more, the second drug paralyzes the person, so he would not be able to communicate the fact he’s in excruciating pain. For this reason several states have banned use of the second drug when euthanizing animals.

In an oft-cited concurring opinion in the 2008 decision, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, “It is unseemly — to say the least — that Kentucky may well kill [inmates] using a drug that it would not permit to be used on their pets.”

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court — including Stevens — ruled that Kentucky’s protocol passed constitutional muster.

Among the issues raised in the Pennsylvania case is the source of drugs to be used in the execution.

Certain drug manufacturers have banned the use of their product in executions, and lawyers for the prisoners argue that if black market or diluted drugs are used, the procedure could be unconstitutional.

The Department of Corrections argues that revealing the source of the drugs could result in the source refusing to sell them the drugs.

Two federal judges have ruled that the source of the drugs is pertinent and ordered DOC to reveal the information, but in doing so, both judges recognized DOC’s concern and ordered the information to be kept confidential. DOC refused.

Last week, Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel, on the advice of lawyers from the Attorney General’s office, refused to divulge the source of the drugs desipte the federal court orders.

Today’s hearing now includes a request for sanctions against Wetzel and DOC for “clear, flagrant and deliberate” violation of federal court orders.

With the parties in the case still fighting over discovery, it’s possible there might be no final resolution soon.

Experts in death penalty law say execution stays could be likely as long as the case is open.

Marc Bookman of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation said the judge in the Pennsylvania case — Yvette Kane — “is a thorough judge who wants to do it properly.”

He noted that, “Lethal injection litigation has stayed executions in other states.”

Michael’s death warrant is the only one signed by Gov. Tom Corbett that has not been stayed for some other reason.

If Kane grants a stay, and if Chester v Beard continues its path through federal court, it could render any future death warrants moot until the case is settled.

When asked about that, Janet Kelley in the governor’s press office said, “The governor took an oath to uphold the law, and the law in Pennsylvania includes signing execution warrants.”

TEXAS – Execution – Donnie Lee Roberts – 31/10/2012 – EXECUTED 6.39 p.m

“I’m really sorry. I never meant to cause you all so much pain,” Roberts said to Bowen’s father, who was seated in a chair close to a glass window in the death chamber viewing area. “I hope you can go on with your life.

“I loved your daughter. I hope to God he lets me see her in heaven so I can apologize to her and see her and tell her.”

Roberts also asked two of his friends who watched through another window to tell his own daughter he loved her.

He repeated that he was sorry and took several deep breaths as the lethal dose of pentobarbital began taking effect. He snored briefly before slipping into unconsciousness, and was pronounced dead 23 minutes later.

Last Meal: Same shit salad being fed to every other thug on the row that day

October 30, 2012  http://www.beaumontenterprise.com

This handout photo provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety shows Donnie Roberts. Roberts, a Louisiana parole violator, is set to die Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012, for killing his girlfriend Vicki Bowen at her home in Lake Livingston, Texas, in October 2003. Photo: Texas Department Of Public Safety / AP

HUNTSVILLE, Texas  — Donnie Lee Roberts, convicted in his girlfriend’s 2003 slaying, was taken from his death row cell Wednesday and moved to the Texas prison where executions are carried out, one of the final steps before his scheduled lethal injection.

After the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review Roberts’ case earlier this week, no additional appeals were filed to try to block his execution, which will be the 12th this year in the nation’s most active capital punishment state.

Roberts, now 41, is being put to death for fatally shooting Vicki Bowen and taking items from her East Texas home to sell or trade to support his drug habit. At the time of his arrest for the October 2003 killing, Roberts had violated his probation for a robbery conviction in Louisiana by fleeing to Texas after dropping out of a drug treatment program.

Authorities said he apparently met Bowen, 44, a dental assistant, at a bar and moved in with her at her home on Lake Livingston, about 75 miles northeast of Houston. Their relationship soured because Roberts wasn’t working and was abusing drugs and alcohol, investigators said, and he shot Bowen after she refused his demand for money.

Roberts was arrested at a suspected crack house in Livingston when a truck missing from Bowen’s home was spotted there the same day Bowen’s body was discovered.

“He was cooperative and confessed several times,” District Attorney Lee Hon said. “He was saying he wanted the death penalty.”

Roberts told authorities he made several trips from the house where Bowen was shot, collecting property that he took into town to sell and trade for crack.

He also surprised detectives by confessing to the shotgun death of a man a decade earlier in Natchitoches Parish, La. Louisiana authorities initially believed the victim, Al Crow, had died of asphyxiation in a fire at the camper trailer where he was living but reopened the case following Roberts’ disclosure, found shotgun pellets and determined it was a homicide.

Roberts was charged with murder but not tried for Crow’s death.

Stephen Taylor, one of Roberts’ lawyers at his Texas capital murder trial, said the confessions complicated his trial defense.

“It’s almost like somebody saying he was a serial killer, that he’s killed before and he killed again,” Taylor said. “It’s one thing to say you have the right to remain silent. Use it!

“It’s always sad for someone to lose his life, especially for something so stupid.”

Bowen didn’t show up for work on Oct. 16, 2003, and a co-worker who went to check on her found her body wrapped in a blanket and lying in a pool of blood. A medical examiner determined Bowen was killed with two gunshots to her head.

Roberts took the witness stand and tried to blame Bowen for the gunfire, saying he was acting in self-defense by grabbing a .22-caliber rifle after seeing her reach down inside a couch to locate a pistol that was kept there.

“The jury obviously disagreed,” Hon said.

Evidence at trial showed Roberts had a record for battery while being held in jail in Fulton County, Ga., that he’d threatened his wife to give him money for drugs, and that he demanded a single-person cell in Polk County when he was jailed for Bowen’s murder or there would be another killing.

His robbery conviction in Louisiana was for a Mother’s Day 2001 convenience store holdup in Baton Rouge, La., where the knife-wielding Roberts threatened to slice the throat of the female clerk.

“He was a bad dude, pretty violent,” Hon said.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice Polunsky Unit, where the state’s male death row is housed, has been Roberts’ home since his capital murder conviction in 2004. The unit is just outside Livingston and not far from where Bowen was killed.

On Wednesday, Roberts was moved about 45 miles west to the Huntsville Unit prison, where he is to be executed.

Three more Texas prisoners are set to die in November, including one next week.

TEXAS – Death penalty case reviewed – FARYON WARDRIP

October 26, 2012  http://www.timesrecordnews.com

A federal magistrate judge for the Northern District of Texas, Paul D. Stickney, is trying to decide what will happen with the death penalty case of convicted serial killer Faryion Wardrip in the appeals process.

Wardrip was sentenced to death in 1999 after being convicted of the murder of 20-year-old Terry Sims. He received life sentences for three other murders — Toni Gibbs, Ellen Blau and Debra Taylor.

Wardrip murdered at least four women in the North Texas area in the mid-1980s. The cases were unsolved for years.

Wichita Falls District Attorney Maureen Shelton was in Dallas on Wednesday to hear the appellate hearing.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals confirmed the death penalty decision.

“Once that happens, it switches over, and they can file a federal writ,” Shelton said. “The federal writ was filed Dec. 31, 2002.”

A district judge, Joe Fish, passes the case to Stickney, who makes a ruling on the case. Fish then decides whether to adopt the decision.

In July, 2008 Stickney ruled that he would allow a new punishment hearing because the defense attorney wasn’t effective, Shelton said. Fish approved the ruling April 19, 2010.

“Once that happened, the state of Texas is represented by the attorney general’s office in federal court.

The attorney general’s office appealed that decision to the Fifth Circuit, which is controlling over our area in New Orleans. The Fifth Circuit agreed with the state of Texas and vacated the district judge’s order,” Shelton said.

On June 10, 2011 Stickney and Fish were instructed by the Fifth Circuit to rework the case. Wednesday’s hearing is the result of the previous decisions.

“Once the magistrate issues his next ruling, and if the district judge adopts that, then the losing party, odds are, will appeal it,” Shelton said.

If the Fifth Circuit affirms the original decision for the death penalty, Wardrip’s attorneys can appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court does not have to hear the case.

No matter the outcome of the appeal, Wardrip still has three consecutive life sentences to serve for the deaths of Gibbs, Blau and Taylor.

Shelton said the murders were the most horrific she has ever known about in Texas.

“It’s the worst serial murder we’ve had in, certainly, our history, and I’d say even nationally this is a horrific serial murderer,” Shelton said. “I don’t know how you don’t seek the death penalty for somebody like that.”

When the case comes back to the state court, an execution date can be set.

Wardrip was sentenced to 35 years in prison for the death of Tina Kimbrew in 1986, and under old parole laws, was paroled after serving 11 years in prison.

According to a previous Times Record News story:

The time he spent in prison for Kimbrew’s death is at the heart of the appellate issue going through the federal system.

Wardrip’s request for relief on grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel during his trial included the assertion that his attorney — then-public defender John Curry, who has since died — should have presented evidence from his time in prison. Wardrip claimed the evidence should have shown he took classes, wrote for a prison newspaper and took part in a fundraiser for a young man with medical needs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ARIZONA – Supreme Court to take up Arizona death-row case; competence at issue, ERNEST GONZALES

OCTOBER 8, 2012 http://www.azfamily.com/

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is slated to hear Arizona’s argument against a court-ordered delay in the execution of a convicted murderer.

Ernest Gonzales killed Darrel Wagner in 1990. He was sentenced to death in April 1992. While on death row, however, Gonzales,went insane  becoming unable to communicate with the lawyers handling his appeals in federal court. It’s the insanity that prompted an appeals court to issue  an indefinite stay of execution.

On Tuesday, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne will go before the Supreme Court and try to convince them to lift that stay.

While Horne says the existing court record should be considered in the appeal, Gonzales’ defense attorneys say his entitlement to effective legal counsel requires the 48-year-old to be mentally competent, which he is not.

Gonzales was 25 and had already served time when he stabbed Wagner to death in the course of burglarizing his home. He also stabbed Wagner’s wife, badly wounding her.

According to court documents, Gonzales showed signs of mental impairment, as well as violent tendencies, while in prison the first time. In 1990, after nearly 10 years on death row, the symptoms of mental illness reportedly became more serious.

While psychiatrists have determined that Gonzales is  psychotic, he has never been declared incompetent in court.

For years, lawyers have fought over the issue of Gonzales‘ competence and its relevance. While the state has insisted Gonzales‘ appeal is “record-based,” the defense has countered that Gonzales’ input is necessary considering the number of attorney involved in the case over the past 22 years.

Even as Horne makes Arizona’s argument, the justices will also hear a similar case out of Ohio.

It’s not clear when the Supreme Court might issue its ruling.

Arizona’s most recent execution was in early August. Daniel Wayne Cook was put to death for strangling two people two death in 1987. It was the state’s fifth execution of 2012, just two shy of the record seven executions in 1999.

If Arizona puts seven inmates to death this year, it could become the second-busiest death-penalty state after Texas.

SUPREME COURT NOTEBOOK: Scalia says death penalty, abortion, gay rights are easy calls

October 5, 2012 http://www.newser.com/

Scalia calls himself a “textualist” and, as he related to a few hundred people who came to buy his new book and hear him speak in Washington the other day, that means he applies the words in the Constitution as they were understood by the people who wrote and adopted them.

So Scalia parts company with former colleagues who have come to believe capital punishment is unconstitutional. The framers of the Constitution didn’t think so and neither does he.

“The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state,” Scalia said at the American Enterprise Institute.

He contrasted his style of interpretation with that of a colleague who tries to be true to the values of the Constitution as he applies them to a changing world. This imaginary justice goes home for dinner and tells his wife what a wonderful day he had, Scalia said.

This imaginary justice, Scalia continued, announces that it turns out “`the Constitution means exactly what I think it ought to mean.’ No kidding.”

As he has said many times before, the justice said the people should turn to their elected lawmakers, not judges, to advocate for abortion rights or an end to the death penalty. Or they should try to change the Constitution, although Scalia said the Constitution makes changing it too hard by requiring 38 states to ratify an amendment for it to take effect.

“It is very difficult to adopt a constitutional amendment,” Scalia said. He once calculated that less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, residing in the 13 least populous states, could stop an amendment, he said.

In a lengthy question-and-answer session, Scalia once again emphatically denied there’s a rift among the court’s conservative justices following Chief Justice John Roberts‘ vote to uphold President Barack Obama’s health care law. Scalia dissented from Roberts’ opinion.

“Look it, do not believe anything you read about the internal workings of the Supreme Court,” he said. “It is either a lie because the press knows we won’t respond _ they can say whatever they like and we won’t respond _ or else it’s based on information from someone who has violated his oath of confidentiality, that is to say, a non-reliable source. So one way or another it is not worthy of belief.”

“We can disagree with one another on the law without taking it personally,” he said.

___

The issue of gay rights, or more specifically same-sex marriage, is expected to be a big one in the term that began this week. While the justices initially were scheduled to discuss the topic at their private conference in late September, it now appears likely that they will not make a decision about whether to take up a gay marriage case until after the presidential election, which would mean arguments would not take place until the spring.

The justices have a variety of pending appeals they could choose to hear that deal in one way or another with gay marriage.

One set of cases looks at whether same-sex couples who are legally married can be deprived of a range of federal benefits that are available to heterosexual couples. Another case deals with California’s constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and federal court rulings striking down the amendment. An Arizona case deals with a state law that revoked domestic partner benefits, making them available only to married couples. Arizona’s constitution bans gay marriage.

___

The audio of Roberts reading a summary of the health care decision is available online through the Oyez.org website at http://www.oyez.org/cases/2010-2019/2011/2011_11_400

SOUTH CAROLINA – Supreme Court ponders death-row inmate Stanko’s appeal in Conway

October 4, 2012 http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com

COLUMBIA — An appeal by twice convicted murderer Stephen Stanko, who was sentenced to death in both cases, is in the hands of the S.C. Supreme Court justices after attorneys made their oral arguments Thursday.

Stanko, 44, appealed his murder conviction and death sentence from the 2009 trial in Horry County for the fatal shooting of 74-year-old Henry Turner of Conway.

Stanko also was sentenced to die after being convicted in 2006 by a Georgetown County jury in the death of his 43-year-old live-in girlfriend, Laura Ling.

In April 2005, police said Stanko killed Ling in her Murrells Inlet home that he shared with her and Ling’s then-15-year-old daughter, who also was assaulted. Stanko took Ling’s car, drove to Turner’s home in Conway and killed him before taking his pickup truck, according to authorities.

Stanko fled Conway and went to Columbia where he claimed he was a New York millionaire and flirted with several women at a downtown restaurant. From there Stanko went to Augusta, Ga., where the Masters golf tournament was being held and met another woman and spent the weekend with her before he was arrested there.

Prosecutors tried Stanko for Ling’s death and the assault of her daughter and in his defense he claimed a brain injury caused a defect that caused him to not be aware of his criminal responsibility for his actions.

Stanko has already appealed his conviction and death sentence in Ling’s murder and state Supreme Court justices denied his request saying his trial was fair.

On Thursday, Bob Dudek with the S.C. Commission of Indigent Defense told the justices that Stanko’s trial in Conway was flawed because jurors were not given the opportunity to consider insanity as a possible verdict; that attorney Bill Diggs represented Stanko in Ling’s trial and Stanko had appealed that conviction on the basis Diggs was inadequate; that a juror had prior knowledge of the case and was biased toward the death penalty; and the publicity surrounding the case did not allow for a fair trial.

J. Anthony Mabry, who represented the state Attorney General’s office, told the justices that Stanko was not insane, but a psychopath.

“Under insanity the test is did he know the difference between right and wrong, not that he could form malice,” Mabry said.

But Dudek said giving jurors instructions to consider malice was part of the crime because a weapon was used does not allow them to consider that Stanko was insane at the time of the crime because he used a gun to shoot Turner.

“You are telling the jury they can infer malice by the use of a deadly weapon and they can skip over insanity,” Dudek said. “There were doctors who testified Stanko was legally insane. … Stanko was not responsible for what he did and that is totally inconsistent with malice.”

Chief Justice Jean Toal asked Dudek to explain how the inference of malice undercut Stanko’s insanity defense.

“There’s no real contest that Mr. Stanko brutally killed this person,” Toal said before describing that there was extensive expert testimony during the trial about Stanko’s frontal lobe injury and his mental defect of not being criminally responsible. “That doesn’t depend on any facts of the crime.”

Dudek replied that just because a gun was used to kill Turner does not mean that Stanko had malice and wasn’t insane.

“Everybody knows juries are very weary of finding people not guilty by reason of insanity because they feel like the person is getting off,” Dudek said.

Another issue justices must consider in the appeal is whether Diggs should have represented Stanko in the Turner case because he had represented Stanko in the Ling case and Stanko had appealed that conviction.

Justice Costa M. Pleicones asked Dudek why should a circuit court judge ignore Stanko’s request for Diggs to represent him in the second trial, and Pleicones called Stanko’s request one the “best arguments by a defendant” that he had ever heard.

“Mr. Stanko made an eloquent, lucid argument as to why he didn’t want Mr. Diggs disqualified,” Pleicones said.

Toal also said Stanko told the court before his trial that Diggs was the only attorney he was comfortable with because Diggs understood his brain injury and the defense.

“He has the ability and right to waive any conflict, does he not?” Toal said.

“No, I disagree,” Dudek said. “The good of the system comes before the right of the defendant.”

The issue of Diggs representation was decided by two circuit court judges and was shown not to be a conflict, Mabry said.

Stanko also appealed that a juror should have been disqualified because she knew about his previous death sentence and Dudek described her as being for the death penalty based on the way she answered some questions.

But Mabry questioned if the juror was confused by questions from Diggs because John said during the voir dire that he was confused. The juror later said she could set aside any prior knowledge and make her decision based on the facts of the case, Mabry said.

In the appeal, Stanko also asked for the court to consider his mental illness and that he is not fit for execution, but Toal said now was not the time to discuss the issue because his execution is not near.

“We couldn’t consider … a person’s mental status until execution looms,” Toal said. “That decision also could never be made at trial.”

It is unclear when the justices will issue a ruling in the appeal. Stanko is being held on death row at Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville.