Quick Update

News Update 03.28.08

North Carolina

Nothing to report.

Elsewhere

Quick updates on several past stories:

• In Texas, a federal district court has decided that Scott Panetti is crazy, but not that crazy.
• The Third Circuit has decided that Pennsylvania‘s Mumia Abu-Jamal should receive a new capital sentencing hearing.
• The Supreme Court ruled in Medellin v. Texas that just because the President signs a treaty saying so doesn’t mean the states have to give foreign nationals access to their consulate. Lots more from SCOTUSBlog.
• The Georgia Senate rejected a proposal that would have allowed defendants to be sentenced to death by non-unanimous juries.

Life Sentence for Robert Windsor

News Update 03.25.08

North Carolina

Yesterday in Catawba County, Robert Lane Windsor was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Windsor faced the death penalty for suffocating his former girlfriend, putting her body in the trunk of her car, and abandoning it along the interstate. He then went on a crack binge. Windsor was not arrested until a week later, when he was found sleeping in a college library. Jurors deliberated for three and a half hours before finding that although Windsor killed Stephany Jo White, he did not do so because he intended to rob her.

Elsewhere

“Thank you, come again.” It could be Apu, or it could be the California Supreme Court. This time, it’s the latter. It’s very interesting that the guy who did the killing says you didn’t hire him, and that the possible murder weapon was found right where he said it would be. Please file a new petition and tell us all that stuff again. Dennis Lawley remains on death row.

CDW and StandDown point us to Nebraska, where in the wake of a state supreme court ruling that the electric chair is unconstitutional, the state legislature is considering abolishing the death penalty altogether. Death penalty reform bills were narrowly defeated there twice in 2007. Unfortunately, the governor has promised to veto the bill should it be successful this time. Three people have been executed in Nebraska in the modern era.

Meanwhile the Maryland legislature voted by a 2-to-1 margin to establish a death penalty study commission. The group will study “racial, jurisdictional and economic disparities in how the death penalty has been administered,” as well as the risk of executing innocent people and the comparative cost of the death penalty versus life without parole. The results of an earlier study by U-Maryland professor Robert Paternoster, et. al., are here.

An new article out of the University of Chicago examines what closure is, what it means to a capital trial, and whether it can truly be attained through the legal process. (c/o CDW)

Hearing in Army Fragging Case

News Update 03.21.08

North Carolina

Yesterday a pretrial hearing was held at Fort Bragg for Staff Sergeant Alberto Martinez, accused of killing two superior officers in Iraq. His attorneys urged the judge to keep gruesome crime scene photos out of evidence, and also asked that Martinez’s expert be allowed to review evidence off-base, to ensure that communications between counsel and the expert remain confidential. Meanwhile, prosecutors asked the judge to reconsider his earlier decision to suppress a statement made by Martinez shortly after the explosion. He declined. A court martial is scheduled for late June, but could be delayed if prosecutors decide to appeal the judge’s ruling.

Elsewhere

The Supreme Court ruled in Snyder v. Louisiana (opinion here, SCOTUSWiki background here) on Wednesday. The Court did not address the “sexiest” issue in the case; that the prosecutor made reference to OJ Simpson in a case involving a black man tried before an all-white jury. Instead, the decision focused on the State’s use of a peremptory challenge to remove an African-American from the jury pool, and whether the trial court properly ruled that it did so for non-racial reasons. You can read analysis from SCOTUSBlog here. The decision could be said to essentially be a reaffirmation of Batson and Miller-El (see below), with the happy addition of Justices Alito and Roberts on the side of good. CDW notes some other possible interpretations.

In Georgia, Republican legislators have put a bill through the House that would allow a person to be sentenced to death even if two members of the jury voted for life. Georgia would become only the fifth state to allow a death sentence by means other than a unanimous jury vote. You can read the bill here. I note that the bill started off as a perfectly reasonable measure, which would have allowed prosecutors to seek life without parole in aggravated murder cases without first seeking the death penalty.

In Texas, Thomas Miller-El (of Miller-El v. Dretke) has entered a plea to the murder for which he was originally sentenced to death. Three years ago, the US Supreme Court reversed Miller-El’s death sentence after finding that jury selection at his trial had been tainted by racial bias. The Court found that the prosecutor questioned black and white prospective jurors differently, claimed to strike black jurors for reasons it did not strike white jurors, and that the prosecutor’s office had engaged in pattern of racially discriminatory jury selection over the years. The opinion is online here. Miller-El will serve life in prison.

BIS Monitor Not So Great for Surgery Either

News Update 03.19.08

North Carolina

A recent article in The Washington Post questioned the usefulness of the BIS (bispectral index) monitor in surgical settings. The BIS monitor is also used in North Carolina – against the advice of its manufacturer – to monitor anesthesia during executions. One patient in the study described coming to during surgery and feeling a “white-hot fire pain” in his abdomen and his “organs and intestines moving around.” The man was unable to move, but remembers “crying and thinking, ‘If someone can see my crying, then someone can help me.’ “

I’m really not sure what’s going on a the editorial desks of North Carolina newspapers these days. First there was this piece, which I am told was satire, from the Greensboro News-Record. Then today we received this gem, which I suspect is entirely forthright, from The Charlotte Observer. Yawn.

Elsewhere

In Georgia, the state Supreme Court has declined to grant a new trial to Troy Anthony Davis. Amnesty International reports:

Troy Davis was convicted of the murder of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail in 1991. Davis was convicted solely on the basis of witness testimony, and seven of the nine non-police witnesses have since recanted or changed their testimony. No murder weapon was found and no physical evidence linked Davis to the crime. Several cited police coercion, and others fear of one of the remaining two witnesses, whom they allege actually committed the crime.

Learn more from CDW and StandDown. Davis’ fate is now back in the hands of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.

DPIC has launched a new page on Native Americans and the death penalty. The page contains information on executions going back to the 1600s, as well as the over-representation of Native Americans in prison today. Nine persons on North Carolina’s death row have their race listed as “Indian.”

The latest Harris Poll data shows that while a majority of Americans support the death penalty, a majority of Americans also believe that it does not deter crime. Ninety-five percent of those polled believe that innocent people are sometimes convicted of murder, and among those people, it was believed that over 10% of persons convicted of murder were actually innocent. More than one in three said that they would continue to support the death penalty even if a substantial number of those subject to it were shown to be innocent. (c/o StandDown et al)

Families’ Mercy Leads to Life Sentences

News Update 03.11.08

North Carolina

In Forsyth County, Denny Carson Booth entered a plea to three consecutive terms of life without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 13 to 16 years. In 2004, Booth killed three people and seriously wounded one, including two law enforcement officers, in a rampage that still defies explanation. Prosecutors agreed to the deal after multiple doctors found that Booth’s depression and psychosis impaired his ability to control his actions on the day of the shootings. The victims’ families expressed satisfaction with the resolution of the case, “We are all glad it’s over and we didn’t have to relive all of this in a trial,” said one victim’s mother.

In Rockingham County, Brian Timothy Wilson has accepted a plea to life without the possibility of parole for killing his grandmother in 2006. Wilson beat 71-year-old Rebecca Isley with a tire iron and slit her throat in an attempt to steal her medication. He then called police and told them someone else had broken in and committed the crime. Still, said Isley’s family, she would have wanted to spare his life. “Leave him be,” one relative told the court Isley would have said, “Let him live. He is my baby.”

CDW asks whether China is more open to hearing capital appeals than the Fourth Circuit (which includes North Carolina). China’s appellate courts grant relief in about one in seven cases. The 4th Circuit is more likely to take away relief given by a lower court than to find for a capital defendant.

Elsewhere

A recent study shows that over the last 20 years, Maryland has spent $189 million more chasing the needle than it would have if it hadn’t sought the death penalty. Capital cases cost more at every step along the way, from trial to appeals, including the extra $316,000 it costs to keep an inmate on death row as opposed to in general population. In related news, the state legislature is considering abolishing the death penalty. There are five people on Maryland’s death row.

Similarly, some in Illinois are calling for an end to that state’s wasteful capital punishment system. More defendants in capital trials have been found not guilty in the last five years than have been sentenced to death. The state spent over $70 million on capital cases in that period of time.

The judge in the Atlanta courthouse shooting case plans to run the trial 9 1/2 hours a day, six days a week. That ought to make jurors happy. Just the kind of folks I’d want deciding whether to sentence me to death. Brian Nichols’ trial is scheduled to start July 10th.

Executions – March 2008

There are no executions presently scheduled for the month of March.

Jonte McLaurin Found Not Guilty

News Update 03.04.08

North Carolina

Jonte Devon McLaurin has been acquitted of murder. Instead, McLaurin was convicted of conspiracy to commit armed robbery for his part in a 2006 drug-related robbery gone wrong. If convicted of first-degree murder, McLaurin would have faced the death penalty. McLaurin’s co-defendant, Ryan Omar Simmons, is still awaiting trial.

Elsewhere

In Brooklyn, federal judges are asking the Attorney General to stop wasting time and money, and start making better decisions about when to seek the death penalty. Federal prosecutors are batting one for six in the Eastern District of New York. Among the cases presently awaiting a capital trial is one in which the defendant was found not guilty of the same charges in state court. (c/o How Appealing and CDW)

A new study indicates that when the death penalty is used as a bargaining chip, defendants are no more likely to plead guilty than they would if death was not on the table. However, defendants who do plead guilty accept longer sentences when death is on the line. (c/o SLAP)