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Thread: James E. Cooke, Jr. - Delaware

  1. #51
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Bonistall slaying: Death penalty ruling brings angst to family

    The focus for Kathleen and Mark Bonistall has always been their slain daughter's legacy.

    What became of her killer was secondary.

    But it was still jolting when the White Plains couple learned on Tuesday that the Delaware Supreme Court had ruled the state's death penalty unconstitutional. And frustrating, because no one is sure yet what that means for James Cooke and the other 12 men on Delaware's death row.

    "There's relief knowing that Lindsey's killer can never hurt anyone else," Kathleen said. "But it doesn't bode well for me that he could be let off the hook."

    Lindsey Bonistall was a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Delaware when Cooke broke into her off-campus apartment in Newark on May 1, 2005, and raped and strangled her.

    He was first convicted and sentenced to death in 2007. When that was overturned, her family went through another trial in 2012. He was found guilty again and given the death penalty.

    Delaware's highest court on Tuesday ruled that judges were given too much power in death penalty cases. They found that the Sixth Amendment requires that juries approving execution must unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt decide that aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating ones.

    The court took up the issue this year after the U.S. Supreme Court found Florida's death penalty was similarly flawed. Those two states and Alabama were the only ones of the 30 states with capital punishment that allowed judges to decide if the death penalty was warranted and even to impose the penalty if the jury did not.

    The state Department of Justice can appeal the decision. A spokeswoman for the Attorney General said Wednesday the office was not commenting on the ruling.

    Tuesday's court ruling ends all pending death penalty cases, but did not address what happens to those already on death row.

    Kathleen Bonistall said she hopes the ruling is not retroactive.

    Santino Ceccotti, who argued Cooke's case on behalf of the state public defender, said the ruling would ideally empty death row but they are still researching how the older cases should be treated.

    Kathleen McCrae, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware, said lawyers could ask the state board of pardons to recommend commutation of the death sentences to life in prison in light of the new ruling.

    But because the state's death penalty was deemed constitutional at the time the sentences were imposed, state prosecutors could argue to keep the inmates on death row. McCrae suggested most of the 13 death sentences were recommended by juries that did not come to a unanimous verdict.

    The jury at Cooke's first trial voted unanimously for the death penalty. At his retrial, the vote was 11-1.

    The judges found that found it was up to the state General Assembly to decide whether to restore the death penalty with legal adjustments.

    The ruling, however, has raised the likelihood that Delaware will be the latest state to forego capital punishment. The state Senate passed a bill this year abolishing the death penalty. The House narrowly defeated the measure, but before a new vote was taken, the matter was put on hold pending the state court review.

    Cooke, now 46, has not exhausted his appeals in the case. His initial appeal, arguing that he wasn't given enough time to prepare for his retrial after firing his lawyers, was not taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court.

    The Bonistalls have spent more than a decade building up PEACE OUTside Campus, the Lindsey M. Bonistall Foundation, which promotes off-campus student safety in college communities.

    They were never ardent supporters of the death penalty, and even pushed for a life sentence for Cooke in 2012 if he had agreed to plead guilty and forego a second trial. But he didn't, and the Bonistalls feel that the continued pursuit of justice for Lindsey means seeing Cooke's death sentence upheld.

    "I feel for the other families who have gone through these trials in capital cases, with all the extraneous angst and hardship that goes along with them. And even all the jurors who didn't come to these decisions with ease," Kathleen Bonistall said. "Those killers have been put on death row for a reason.

    "At the end of the day for it to just be over is hard to take."

    http://www.lohud.com/story/news/crim...ling/88000382/
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  2. #52
    Senior Member CnCP Addict TrudieG's Avatar
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    This is such a sad case. I live not far from White Plains and locally this has been news for years. Every year for six weeks her parents run a memorial for her from her birthday to the date of her death. I feel so much for them that the pain they have endured continues and justice has not been served.

  3. #53
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    I agree wholly Trudie, and it infuriates me how so many of these thugs in not only Delaware, but poss Florida and Alabama, may escape justice because of a legal nonsense technicality. Who cares if they were sentenced by a judge and not a jury?! Judges should be allowed to override because juries get caught up emotionally and as a result fail to make the right decision. These killers have still been given far more protection and consideration than they ever gave their victims.
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    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  4. #54
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    Bonistall slaying: Judge to meet on killer's fate

    WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) - A judge is meeting with attorneys in the case of James Cooke, sentenced to death for raping and killing University of Delaware student Lindsey Bonistall of White Plains.

    The judge scheduled an office conference Monday in the case of Cooke, who was convicted of the 2005 murder of the 20-year-old sophomore in her off-campus apartment. Cooke was convicted in 2007 and again in a 2012 retrial of the White Plains 20-year-old's murder.

    The U.S. Supreme Court last year refused to hear an appeal from Cooke.

    Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court declared Delaware’s death penalty law unconstitutional because it allows judges too much discretion and does not require that a jury find unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant deserves to be executed.

    The court will hear arguments this week on whether its ruling should be applied retroactively to Cooke and 12 other death row inmates.

    http://www.lohud.com/story/news/crim...rder/94984050/

  5. #55
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    Supreme Court vacates death sentences for Powell and 12 others

    DOVER — The Delaware Supreme Court ruled Thursday the death sentence for convicted murderer Derrick Powell must be vacated.

    Although the court specifically addressed Powell, it also said its August ruling of the unconstitutionality of the state’s capital punishment statute was a “watershed” one that must be applied retroactively.

    It appears, thus, that the other 12 men on death row will instead have their penalty changed to life in prison, although they may have to formally appeal their death convictions.

    Powell, sentenced to death in 2011 for the 2009 killing of Georgetown police officer Chad Spicer, was appealing his punishment after the court’s August ruling. Justices heard arguments last week and released their decision Thursday, unanimously concluding Powell could not be executed after being sentenced under a statute since thrown out.

    While the news was welcome for some, others disagreed.

    “I think justice for the family and justice for the victims of these crimes is definitely not being served by having these sentences that were duly handed down overturned, but that’s the system that we live in right now,” Sen. Brian Pettyjohn, a Georgetown Republican who attended the hearing last week in support of the Spicer family, said Thursday.

    The August decision is a “watershed rule of criminal procedure,” meaning it meets the standard to apply retroactively, the justices wrote in their findings Thursday.

    Before the summer ruling, “the burden of proof was governed by the lesser standard of a preponderance of the evidence set forth in Delaware’s death penalty statute,” they wrote.

    In prior cases where the Delaware Supreme Court threw out the death penalty, justices ruled it applied retroactively, meaning the individuals on death row at the time had their sentences changed to life in prison.

    August’s ruling came about after a similar federal Supreme Court decision. Delaware justices found the state’s death penalty violated the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees right to a trial by jury. The law did not require the jury to rule unanimously on whether aggravating circumstances outweighed mitigating factors and gave the judge final discretion to sentence death.

    Chief Public Defender Brendan O’Neill, whose office represented Powell when he was charged with murder, applauded the decision.

    “I think the Delaware Supreme Court made the right decision. He was sentenced to death under a death penalty scheme that was unconstitutional, so I think it appropriate that the court not allow the state to execute him,” he said.

    “No doubt Mr. Powell committed a horrible crime for which he’s going to spend the rest of his life in jail but I think we need to keep in mind that five of the jurors who heard that case voted for a life sentence.”

    The Department of Justice declined to comment.

    Several justices appeared skeptical of the arguments set forth by the state last week, a fact noted by Sen. Pettyjohn, who said he “almost expected the ruling” handed down Thursday.

    While Delaware currently has no death penalty, 15 Republican lawmakers announced in August they intend to bring legislation to reinstate it. The House of Representatives voted down a repeal attempt last year, but the Senate may have the votes to block a bill bringing back capital punishment.

    Gov.-elect John Carney, a Democrat, said in October he would “probably” veto legislation reinstating capital punishment.

    http://delawarestatenews.net/news/su...and-12-others/

  6. #56
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Del. Supreme Court Nixes Ex-death Row Inmate's Appeal in College Killing

    WBOC TV 16

    DOVER, Del. (AP/WBOC) - Delaware's Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a former death row inmate convicted of raping and killing a University of Delaware student.

    Wednesday's ruling involves the latest in a series of appeals by James E. Cooke Jr.

    Cooke was initially sentenced to death for the 2005 murder of 20-year-old Lindsey Bonistall of White Plains, New York. Prosecutors said Cooke broke into Bonistall's off-campus apartment in Newark, Del., and raped and strangled her. Court records show that Cooke took her body and placed it in the bathtub before he set the apartment on fire.

    He was resentenced to life without parole after the state Supreme Court declared Delaware's death penalty law unconstitutional in 2016.

    Cooke then challenged his life sentence, saying his constitutional rights were violated because the judge did not consider a specific number of years in prison. He also argued that a mandatory life sentence without parole for first-degree murder is unconstitutional.

    The court rejected Cooke's arguments as being without merit or any legal support.

    http://www.wboc.com/story/37575145/d...ollege-killing
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  7. #57
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    In today's United States Supreme Court orders, Cooke's petition for a writ of certiorari was DENIED.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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