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Thread: Douglas Shine, Jr. Sentenced to LWOP in 2015 OH Triple Murder

  1. #21
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Judge spares life of Warrensville Heights barbershop shooter Douglas Shine Jr.

    By Cory Shaffer
    cleveland.com

    CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A judge on Monday spared the life of Douglas Shine Jr., the 21-year-old Heartless Felon who faced death by lethal injection after he was convicted in the 2015 barbershop massacre and conspiracy to execute a witness.

    Cuyahoga County Judge Joan Synenberg chose not to follow a jury's November recommendation that Shine be executed, citing a "transient, non-nurturing and violent childhood" that left Shine with undiagnosed mental disorders and the emotional maturity of a 5 year old.

    "The adults involved in Douglas's life failed him," Synenberg said as she handed down the sentence.

    Synenberg sentenced Shine to four life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 380 years, shocking the courtroom packed with relatives of the victims of Shine's shooting spree.

    "Say your prayers, Duke," one woman shouted from the back of the back of the courtroom as court security escorted Shine back to his holding cell after the sentencing.

    Shine was convicted in November of killing three people inside Chalk Linez Barbershop in Warrensville Heights in 2015, and for orchestrating the killing of a witness to the shootings.

    Jurors deliberated for two days before recommending on Nov. 16 that Shine be sentenced to the death penalty

    Shine spoke at the hearing for the first time since his trial began in September.

    "All I gotta say is, I'll be back," Shine said as he rocked back and forth.

    Synenberg handed down the sentence after hearing from family members of Walter Barfield, Brandon White and William Gonzalez, who were killed Feb. 5, 2015 inside Chalk Linez Barbershop, and Aaron "Pudge" Ladson, the witness who was gunned down in his driveway several months later.

    "This is a mother's worst nightmare," said Angela Ladson, mother to Aaron Ladson and Brandon White. "I never thought I would bury my sons before me."

    Prosecutors at trial painted Shine as a cold-blooded and vengeful gang member whose affinity for retribution erupted in gunfire inside Chalk Linez.

    Shine, whose criminal history began when he was 10 years old, took a handgun from a member of the Loyal Always gang on a party bus that January, prosecutors said. That one slight spurred a weeks-long exchange of gunfire between rivals on the southeast side of Cleveland, prosecutors said.

    Shine fired 13 shots at one member of the gang, and engaged in a shootout with Barfield, whose gun Shine had taken on the bus.

    The next month, a hooded Shine burst into Chalk Linez Barbershop on Harvard Road in Warrensville Heights, clutching two pistols with extended clips, and opened fire into a crowd of people. He fired dozens of bullets, including 16 into Barfield as he and White looked at plane tickets to Las Vegas on a cellphone, prosecutors said.

    Shine walked over to Barfield's body and fired three execution-style shots into his head before he ran out of the shop, prosecutors said.

    Barfield and White and head barber Gonzalez all died in the killing. Three more people were wounded.

    Aaron Ladson, was gunned down in June 2015 in his driveway as he prepared for a court hearing in an unrelated case.

    Aaron Ladson was sitting in his car just outside the barbershop at the time of the shooting. He recognized Shine as the barbershop gunman, and went to police days after the shooting. He likely would have testified at Shine's trial.

    Prosecutors played Aaron Ladson's videotaped statement identifying Shine to Warrensville Heights police during the trial, and seven more witnesses in the barbershop testified that Shine was the shooter.

    Shine's brother, Kevin McKinney, is also charged with conspiracy and aggravated murder in Aaron Ladson's killing. His trial was delayed until after Shine's case ended.

    During the penalty phase of the trial, Shine's lawyers argued that he had no clear role model growing up to pull him away from gang influence. He was coerced into joining the Heartless Felons in a youth prison, and was threatened when he tried to leave, his attorneys said.

    His mother spent four months in jail when Shine was just six months old, and frequently abused him physically and mentally, Kaplan testified. Shine told a psychologist that his mother berated him, called him names, refused to celebrate his birthday, threw skillets at him and once ordered Shine's older brother to beat him with a belt.

    She also refused to sign the paperwork to get Shine into a specialized education plan when he was in elementary school, and pulled him out of football practice when he was 8 years old because she didn't want to take him to practice, Shine's stepmother, Stinner Shine, testified at trial.

    A psychologist and a social worker who was tapped as a mitigation specialist by the court testified that they believed Shine suffered from undiagnosed mental and personality disorders, and fell through the cracks of the social service safety net.

    "If appropriately diagnosed and treated....Douglas could have been administered counseling, family preservation services and possible medication to change the trajectory of his life, possibly avoiding the criminal justice system all together," the social worker, Ceci McDonnell, testified.

    One of Shine's relatives is accused of trying to tamper with jurors and witnesses, even after Shine was convicted, prosecutors say.

    LaSandra Johnson, Shine's aunt, is charged with obstruction of justice after prosecutors said she approached a relative of a juror in the case outside a school and tried to convince her not to convict Shine.

    Cuyahoga County prosecutors countered that growing up in a dysfunctional household did not excuse Shine's own choices to lead a life of escalating crimes that started when he was 10 years old and culminated a decade later when he opened fire inside a crowded barbershop.

    http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index...rt_river_index
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #22
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    Judge's refusal to accept jury's death-penalty recommendation in barbershop killings is a first in three decades

    By Cory Shaffer
    cleveland.com

    CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Common Pleas Judge Joan Synenberg on Monday became the first Cuyahoga County judge in three decades to reject a jury's death penalty recommendation when she sent the man who killed three people at a Warrensville Heights barbershop to prison for life.

    Synenberg joins Judge Frank Gorman as the only two Cuyahoga County judges since Ohio's death penalty was re-instituted in 1981 to spare the lives of convicted murderers after a jury recommended the defendants' execution.

    Synenberg said that evidence of the 21-year-old Douglas Shine Jr.'s "transient, non-nurturing and violent childhood," which was filled with abuse and undiagnosed and untreated mental disorders that left Shine with the emotional maturity of a 5-year-old, outweighed the aggravating circumstances of the Feb. 5, 2015 triple killing at Chalk Linez and the subsequent plot to murder a witness in the shooting.

    Instead of taking the jury's recommendation, Synenberg sentenced Shine to four life in prison sentences, plus an additional 380 years.

    The last time a Cuyahoga County judge rejected a jury's recommendation, according to the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office, was in 1987, when then Judge Frank Gorman sentenced Antonio Wright to life in prison with parole after 30 years for a deadly Parma home-invasion.

    Wright and another broke into a home at random and robbed the couple, according to Plain Dealer archives. When the homeowner, Grover Lang, charged at Wright, Wright shot Lang in the chest and killed him.

    The jury recommended that Wright be put to death, but Gorman defied that recommendation because he said if the homeowner had not charged Wright, there would have been no killing, the Plain Dealer reported.

    Gorman's sentence drew a strong rebuke from the assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor who worked the case, who said that jurors got the most difficult decision of their lives correct, the newspaper reported.

    "Theirs was an agonizing, soul-searching decision which put them through mental anguish. And here the judge disregards what they said," Mark Fellenbaum told the newspaper.

    Synenberg's decision drew a similar response from Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty.

    "Unfortunately, the court gave more weight to the self-serving, unsubstantiated statements of an unrepentant, malingering mass murderer than to the overwhelming evidence that he was fully capable of planning and carrying out this diabolical attack on a crowded barbershop filled with men, women and children," McGinty said in an emailed statement.

    http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index...rt_river_index
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #23
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Judge who spared triple-murderer's life once worked against death penalty in fatal cop shooting

    By Cory Shaffer
    cleveland.com

    CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cuyahoga County common pleas judge who defied a jury's recommendation to execute a man who killed three at a Warrensville Heights barbershop once worked with a team of attorneys that tried to keep Cleveland cop killer Quisi Bryan off death row.

    Judge Joan Synenberg spared Douglas Shine's life Monday and instead ordered him to spend the rest of his life in an Ohio prison.

    Synenberg shocked her Cuyahoga County courtroom on Monday when she announced that she found evidence of Shine's "transient, non-nurturing and violent childhood" outweighed the aggravating circumstances of the Feb. 5, 2015 triple killing at Chalk Linez and the subsequent plot to murder a witness in the shooting.

    Synenberg was appointed in 2000 by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Daniel Gaul as a mitigation specialist for Bryan, who killed Cleveland police officer Wayne Leon.

    She spent three months compiling three jumbo binders filled with background information on Bryan in an attempt to convince the jury to spare his life after he was convicted of shooting Leon in the face during a traffic stop outside an East Side gas station.

    Jurors took less than three hours to return a death recommendation for Bryan.

    Synenberg, who went on to become a Cleveland Municipal Court judge before she unseated Common Pleas Judge Christine Russo, also presided over the 2008 re-trial of Joe D'Ambrosio.

    D'Ambrosio's 1989 death sentence in the murder of Tony Klann was overturned after an appeals court found prosecutors failed to hand over key pieces of evidence at trial.

    But in the early stages of the case, then-Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason attacked Synenberg as being biased in favor of D'Ambrosio because she represented Thomas Keenan, a co-defendant in the original case who was also sentenced to death, Mason argued.

    Mason tried to get Synenberg thrown off the case and took his effort all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court. He lost, as justices found no evidence that Synenberg actually represented Keenan.

    In 2009, a federal judge ruled that Cuyahoga County prosecutors failed to provide 10 pieces of evidence that could have exonerated D'Ambrosio at his trial. He was released from prison that year after 21 years.

    http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index...rt_river_index
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  4. #24
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    Strange how no one complains when a judge sentences someone to life instead of death despite a juries recomendation. Douglas should be on death row.

  5. #25
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Ohio judge's death sentence rejection highlights rare trend

    By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
    The Associated Press

    COLUMBUS, Ohio — A decision by a Cleveland judge in December to overrule a jury's death sentence recommendation for a triple killer highlights how rare such judicial decisions are.

    Research by The Associated Press found just eight additional examples of judicial overrides since Ohio's current death penalty law took effect in 1981. That's compared with more than 320 death sentences handed down during the same time period.

    Overriding death sentences can be politically risky for judges, who are elected in Ohio and many other states, said Doug Berman, an Ohio State University law professor and sentencing expert.

    Many cases with strong evidence against capital punishment for a defendant are resolved with plea bargains before ever reaching a jury, he added. Those cases typically involve pretrial research turning up strong mitigating evidence — a horrific childhood or mental disabilities, for example — that outweigh what are called aggravating circumstances, such as the brutality of the crime.

    "It's relatively rare a case will get to a jury verdict if it looks like there's a pretty significant possibility that the mitigators will outweigh the aggravators," Berman said.

    Cuyahoga County Judge Joan Synenberg cited defendant Douglas Shine Jr.'s prolonged physical and psychological abuse as a child, mental health problems and years of incarceration in sentencing him to life in prison with no chance for parole on Dec. 19 instead of accepting a jury's recommendation for the death penalty.

    Testimony during the trial's death penalty phase showed that Shine's early childhood was chaotic and "characterized by persistent neglect and physical and psychological abuse," Synenberg said. She noted that Shine lived in youth detention facilities from age 10 to 16 followed by two years in an adult prison.

    Prosecutors said Shine walked into the Warrensville Heights barber shop in February 2015, pulled two guns from beneath his coat and opened fire, killing three people and wounding two men and a woman.

    "Unfortunately, the court gave more weight to the self-serving, unsubstantiated statements of an unrepentant, malingering mass murderer than to the overwhelming evidence that he was fully capable of planning and carrying out this diabolical attack on a crowded barbershop filled with men, women and children," Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty said following Synenberg's ruling.

    Highlights of the eight other cases in Ohio in which judges have thrown out a jury's death sentence since the state enacted a new capital punishment law in 1981:

    1983 — A jury's death sentence for Drewey Kiser, of Williamsport, convicted of fatally shooting Don Writsel during a robbery, was overridden by Judge Nicholas Holmes Jr., of Ross County Common Pleas Court. Holmes cited Kiser's age, 23; the defendant's lack of a significant criminal history, mental illness and alcoholism. Holmes also pointed out that a death sentence would not have been proportional to the three other death sentences in Ohio at the time.

    1987 — A jury's death sentence for defendant Alonzo Wright, of Cleveland, convicted of fatally shooting Grover Lang during a robbery, was overridden by Judge Frank J. Gorman, of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. Gorman cited the victim's decision to rush Wright, which apparently led to the shooting, instead of obeying Wright's request for money.

    1988 — A jury's death sentence for John Parsons, of Worthington, convicted of shooting a man as he fled from his burning home, was overridden by Judge Dale Crawford, of Franklin County Common Pleas Court. Crawford cited Parsons' background and lack of a prior criminal record and said a death sentence would not be equivalent to five other death sentences imposed in Franklin County up to that time.

    1989 — A jury's death sentence for Eddie Robertson, of Dayton, convicted of fatally shooting Stephanie Hiatt in a 1988 robbery, was overridden by Judge William MacMillan Jr., of Montgomery County Common Pleas Court. MacMillan cited Robertson's lack of a significant criminal history, his relative youth (30), his pursuit of education beyond high school, and the lack of an advance plan to kill anyone. MacMillan said it appeared Robertson shot Hiatt on the spur of the moment, fearing she recognized him.

    1999 — A jury's death sentence for Gregory Crawford, of Valley City, convicted of beating Gene Palmer to death during a robbery, was overridden by Judge Mark Wiest, of Wayne County Common Pleas Court. Wiest cited Palmer's age (37), his good behavior in jail, Crawford's strong relationship with his family, his work completing his high school degree and his conversion.

    2000 — A jury's death sentence for Christopher Fuller, of Hamilton, convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter after trying to rape her, overridden by Judge Matthew Crehan, of Butler County Common Pleas Court. Crehan cited Fuller's job supporting his family, his military service, his lack of a prior criminal record and the remorse he showed over the girl's death.

    2002 — A jury's death sentence for Brian Siler of Nankin in Ashland County, convicted of shooting his estranged wife, Barbara Siler, was overridden by Judge Jeffrey Runyan, of Ashland County Common Pleas Court. Runyan cited a number of factors in Siler's defense, including the absence of a criminal background and active participation in church and the community. Runyan also questioned the burglary charge against Brian Siler — an added count that made the crime a capital case — pointing out that he'd broken into his own home. Runyan then questioned whether the death sentence was an attempt by the community to avoid responsibility for failing to do more to prevent Barbara Siler's death.

    2010 — A jury's death sentence for Charles Cunningham in Clark County, convicted of aggravated murder in the fatal shooting of an ex-girlfriend, Jessica Serna (the mother of two of Cunningham's children), was overridden by Judge Richard O'Neill. Cunningham was also convicted of killing Serna's friend, Heidi Shook, but not sentenced to death for her slaying. O'Neill said there was "a fine line" between the evidence that Cunningham killed Serna "with prior calculation and design," an element necessary for a death sentence, and whether he shot her "on the spur of the moment" out of frustration with his unsuccessful attempts to re-establish a relationship.

    http://www.dailyprogress.com/ohio-ju...9d10f1147.html

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