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Thread: Rodney Clark Gets Sentenced to Life in 1987 FL Cold Case of Dana Fader

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    Rodney Clark Gets Sentenced to Life in 1987 FL Cold Case of Dana Fader






    Death penalty trial stalled for sex offender in 1987 cold case

    Jury selection has been postponed in Palm Beach County in a 1987 cold case where a convicted sex offender is accused of raping and killing a 27-year-old mother of three.

    Jury selection was set to begin Thursday morning in the first degree murder case of Rodney Clark, accused in the death of Dana Fader. But legal arguments stopped that process, and the case is now set for a status check Friday.

    Fader, of Lake Worth, was found strangled to death, the tan dress she’d borrowed from her sister hiked up to her waist, in the back seat of her car shortly after relatives reported her missing.

    The case went cold until several years ago, when investigators linked DNA from semen found at the scene to Clark. By then, Clark was living in Mississippi.

    Authorities arrested Clark in 2013. His case marks the first death penalty case to go to trial locally since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the way Florida courts decide death penalty cases was unconstitutional.

    On Monday, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed into law a bill changing the state’s death penalty trial process. The new law requires a minimum 10-2 majority recommendation for judges to impose a death sentence.

    Previously, judges could impose a death sentence based on a simple majority vote from a jury, and the judge could base his or her ruling on independent findings.

    http://postoncourts.blog.palmbeachpo...987-cold-case/

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    Prosecutors cleared to seek death penalty in disemboweling and other cases

    By Rafael Olmeda
    The Sun Sentinel

    The death penalty is back on the table for a Sunrise man who admitted to police that he disemboweled his girlfriend, and for a Miami man charged with killing his ex-girlfriend and dumping her body in a ditch in Delray Beach, an appeals court ruled Wednesday.

    The Fourth District Court of Appeal struck down a February ruling by Broward Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes that blocked the state from seeking the death penalty against Fidel Lopez, 26, who is charged with first degree murder in the gruesome slaying of Maria Lizette Nemeth, whose remains were found in her apartment at the Colonnade Residences in Sunrise on Sept. 20, 2015.

    The same ruling applies to the case against John Eugene Chapman, who is facing a murder charge in Palm Beach County for the death of his ex-girlfriend, Vanessa Williams Bristol.

    Both defendants were set to go to trial earlier this year, when the status of the state’s death penalty was in flux. The judges in their cases ruled that the death penalty could not be sought because the indictments did not include the “aggravating factors” a jury would have to find in order to recommend execution.

    Palm Beach Circuit Judge Krista Marx issued her ruling in the Chapman case in January. Holmes’ ruling came a few weeks later. Prosecutors appealed both cases, arguing that aggravating factors are not always clear by the time a grand jury decides to indict.

    In a motion in the Lopez case, prosecutor Tom Coleman argued that recent Florida Supreme Court decisions make it clear that a jury needs to find that aggravating factors have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, but grand juries, which meet closer to the beginning of murder cases, do not need to make those allegations.

    “The Florida Supreme Court has consistently and unequivocally rejected the argument that aggravators must be alleged in the indictment,” Coleman wrote.

    The appeals court agreed with the prosecutor, putting the Lopez and Chapman trials back on track for jury selection, barring any other delays that are sought by defense lawyers.

    Attorneys for Lopez had demanded a speedy trial in early February, and jury selection was scheduled to begin in the middle of that month. The speedy trial demand came at a time when Florida had no legal death penalty procedure in place, giving Holmes a second reason to keep it from being considered.

    The governor signed a new death penalty law in March that requires a unanimous jury recommendation. Wednesday’s appeals court ruling said the new law addresses concerns about the constitutionality of the state’s procedure.
    Information on Chapman’s next court date was not posted on the Palm Beach County Clerk’s website Wednesday.

    Lopez is due back in court for a status conference on Friday. Defense lawyers have not said whether they will proceed with their demand for a speedy trial. Attorney Melisa McNeill said in February that the defense was ready for trial, brushing off questions about whether the timing of the demand was intended to capitalize on the uncertainty over the death penalty.

    Attorneys have said the decision also clears the path for several other cases to proceed. They include Rodney Clark, a former Mississippi man and convicted sex offender, accused in the slaying of a Lake Worth-area woman nearly 30 years ago, and Kimberly Lucas, a Jupiter woman accused of killing her former domestic partner’s 2-year-old daughter and trying to kill the girl’s 10-year-old brother on May 26, 2014.

    http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/br...531-story.html
    "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

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Jury selection begins in death penalty Lake Worth cold case murder

    A second day of jury selection began Friday in the murder trial of Rodney Clark, whose case will be the first local death penalty case to go to trial since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling found Florida’s old death penalty laws unconstitutional.

    Prosecutors will pursue a death sentence against Clark, 50, if a jury convicts him of first-degree murder in the 1987 rape and murder of Dana Fader in Lake Worth.

    Investigators in 2013 said they solved the decades-old cold case when they matched Clark’s DNA to a stain found on the dress the 27-year-old mother of three was wearing when she was found strangled to death in the backseat of her Ford Fairmont after a night out with friends.

    Clark, a sex offender living in Jackson, Miss. by the time of his April 2013 arrest, was supposed to go to trial last summer. But his case became one of the first delayed by a January 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling essentially striking down Florida’s death penalty system.

    The high court ruling deemed the state’s death penalty system unjust because it required a simple majority vote for jurors to recommend an execution and left the ultimate sentencing power to the judge. Florida lawmakers have made several revisions to the laws since then, with Florida Gov. Rick Scott in March signing a law that would require jurors to vote unanimously for a death sentence in order for it to be imposed.

    Although public defenders and criminal defense lawyers still contend that the state law remains flawed, judges around the state — for now, at least — are taking cases like Clark’s to trial under the new laws.

    Circuit Judge Charles Burton began the jury selection process in Clark’s case Thursday with 125 prospective jurors. By mid-afternoon, that pool had been whittled down to 48. Most of the people dismissed had travel plans, medical issues or other hardships that they said would keep them from spending three weeks on the jury.

    Prosecutor and defense attorneys on Monday will begin questioning the remaining prospective jurors regarding their thoughts on the death penalty.

    A trial in the case could begin sometime next week.

    http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/cr...VEDLnrUiWAAlO/

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    Death penalty trial begins in 1987 Lake Worth murder

    By Daphne Duret
    The Palm Beach Post

    It was Martha Jo Bailey’s first day on the job at the Denny’s on U.S. 1 in Lantana, hardly a good time for a friend to call the restaurant and tell her that her little sister, 27-year-old Dana Fader, was missing.

    “I said ‘I can’t do this right now,’” Bailey told a Palm Beach County jury Monday, the first day of a death penalty trial for 50-year-old Rodney Clark.

    About 15 minutes after that first call, Bailey said her supervisor called her into his office and told her she needed to go home right away. No one had to tell her that something had happened to her sister, she said. She already knew.

    It was June 20,1987, just hours after she and Fader, who were both going through rough times, decided to get dressed up and go out for the night to forget about it all. Bailey would soon find that the precious items she loaned her sister in attempt to make her feel good — a tan suede handkerchief-hemmed dress, black ankle boots and a leopard print scarf — had become elements of a crime scene in the backseat of the Ford Fairmount that Bailey had given her little sister, a mother of three, to drive.

    Her sister’s case, which grew cold until investigators in 2012 matched Clark’s DNA to semen found on the dress Fader was wearing when she was found raped and strangled in the car, has now become the first local test of new state laws involving the death penalty in the wake of a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision that deemed the state’s old death penalty laws unconstitutional.

    Bailey looked across a Palm Beach County courtroom Monday at Clark and explained to jurors that she’d never seen him before investigators linked him to her sister’s death. But prosecutors say the DNA evidence and a partial palm print left on Fader’s car are proof that he’s guilty of the crime and should be put to death for it.

    “Rodney Clark is the stranger that took Dana Fader away that night,” Assistant State Attorney Aleathea McRoberts told jurors at the start of the trial Monday. “He’s the one that did unspeakable things to her.”

    It was 25 years before the forensic evidence brought investigators to Clark, who was living in Jackson, Miss. as a convicted sex offender. He was convicted of the 1988 rape of a child under the age of 14.

    In opening statements, McRoberts told jurors that Clark at first denied having lived in Florida outside of a stint in Job Corps in Jacksonville when he was 17. He later said he remembered living in the area at the time of Fader’s death but denied ever seeing her.

    “‘I don’t know her, but she’s pretty.’ That’s what he told the detectives,” McRoberts told jurors Monday.

    McRoberts and fellow prosecutor Reid Scott list the DNA, the palm print and what medical examiners determined could be a bite mark on Fader’s left breast as important pieces of evidence in the case.

    Assistant Public Defender Elizabeth Ramsey, on the other hand, said most of the alleged DNA evidence is too muddled to implicate Clark, and that even the palm print tied to Clark was from outside the car, which Ramsey characterized as “a vehicle that was routinely parked outside.”

    There is no evidence because he did not do this, and there is no evidence because Mr. Clark is innocent,” Ramsey said.

    Clark’s case was supposed to go to trial earlier this year but became ensnared in what has been a protracted legal battle over Florida’s death penalty.

    Since the 2016 Supreme Court ruling, legislators have made changes to the laws, including requiring a unanimous 12-0 jury vote in order to impose a death sentence and giving juries ultimate sentencing power. Previously Florida juries could vote for a death sentence by a simple majority and merely made a recommendation of life or death to a judge who ultimately imposed a sentence.

    Circuit Judge Charles Burton began jury selection in Clark’s case more than a week ago and swore in a panel of 12 jurors and two alternates on Friday. Clark’s trial is expected to last two weeks.

    Testimony is expected to continue Tuesday with crime scene investigators and medical examiners. Ramsey and Haughwout objected late Monday to prosecutors’ decision to have a current medical examiner Dr. Reinhard Motte testify as opposed to Dr. Frederick Hobin, the doctor who performed Fader’s autopsy in 1987.

    Scott told Burton that Palm Beach County Sheriff’s officials had told him Hobin was deceased, and he told Ramsey as much before the trial.

    But Ramsey said a Google search uncovered Hobin alive and well — and under fire, according to published reports, for his handling of an unrelated 2010 investigation into the death of the wife of a St. John’s County Sheriff’s deputy.

    McRoberts said that Motte has examined all of Hobin’s records and is qualified to offer his opinion based on his evaluation. Burton will make a ruling on the matter Tuesday.

    http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/...HxG2pkqVRDUAP/
    "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

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    Jury to deliberate in 1987 slaying case; prosecutors seeking death penalty

    By Marc Freeman
    Orlando Sentinel

    A Palm Beach County jury will begin deliberations Tuesday in the cold case murder trial of Rodney Clark. If there is a guilty verdict, prosecutors will seek the death penalty for the slaying of a Lake Worth-area mom 30 years ago.

    But Assistant State Attorney Reid Scott, in his final words to the jurors Monday, asked them not to look ahead to a possible punishment round for the 50-year-old Mississippi man accused in the June 20, 1987, strangulation killing of Dana Fader, 27.

    “You have to follow the guilt phase at this point,” Scott said. “You simply follow the evidence.”

    The prosecutor argued clear DNA and palm print evidence leaves no doubt Clark raped and murdered Fader in the back seat of her car.

    Semen stains on Fader’s tan dress and a pillowcase found by her body matched DNA from Clark that investigators obtained in 2012, Scott said, pointing to the statistical improbability it could be from any other person on the planet.

    “Rodney Clark has finally been brought to justice,” the prosecutor said, crediting technological advances for bringing about Clark’s arrest nearly five years ago. “He was at the crime scene; he committed this despicable murder.”

    Assistant Public Defender Elizabeth Ramsey said there are simply too many loose ends and questions concerning the evidence and the murder investigation to convict her client.

    The attorney said the DNA evidence presented to the jury was unreliable, because of cross-contamination over the years.

    With the jury out of the courtroom, Ramsey moved for a mistrial over that claim. But Circuit Judge Charles Burton said he had no indication of any tampering and denied the defense’s request.

    Ramsey also argued Clark’s palm print, found on the outside window of Fader’s 1980 Ford Fairmount, could have come from him inadvertently touching the car at some other time.

    And Ramsey said detectives failed to explore a lead concerning a man on a motorcycle seen on the night of the slaying at Fader’s Willow Lakes Apartments complex, on the corner of Florida Mango Road and 10th Avenue.

    “Mr. Clark is innocent,” she told the jury.

    The defense also noted that Clark’s DNA was not found on a rope used to stop Fader from breathing; and the medical examiner did not find any proof Fader was sexually assaulted.

    Clark, a previously convicted sex offender in a separate case, did not testify in his own defense before both sides rested their cases Monday.

    But when he was visited by detectives in Jackson, Miss., and shown photos of Fader, Clark denied involvement and said, “They can have DNA. I ain't killed nobody. I don't give a damn what [they] got.”

    Prosecutor Scott said the defense’s suggestion that Clark didn’t put his hand on Fader’s car at the time of the attack was ridiculous.” He said the same thing about the notion of a “mystery man” on a motorcycle.

    But Scott, along with prosecutor Aleathea McRoberts, argued the DNA matches to Clark are undeniable.

    “There is no reasonable doubt,” Scott said, after displaying the dress and pillowcase for the jurors.

    The prosecutors said investigators ruled out the involvement of any of Fader’s relatives, as well as Fader’s then-boyfriend, and an ex-boyfriend who was then facing domestic battery charges.

    At the time she was killed, Fader was the divorced mother of a 10-year-old girl, and 5- and 3-year-old boys. She worked part-time as a seamstress at her family’s upholstery business, and also worked some hours as a cashier at the Breakers hotel in Palm Beach.

    Before sending the jurors home on Monday, Judge Burton asked them to pack an overnight bag and bring it to the courthouse Tuesday “just in case.”

    The law requires juries in cases where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty to be sequestered until there is a verdict. The jury would be put in a hotel overnight Tuesday if they have to return the following day.

    If Clark is convicted, it’s not yet clear when the punishment phase would happen.

    Under Florida’s new death penalty law, unanimous jury votes now are required to impose capital punishment. It would be the first use of the updated law in Palm Beach County.

    http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/pa...828-story.html
    "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

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    Mississippi man guilty in Florida cold-case murder

    By Associated Press

    WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- A Mississippi man faces a possible death sentence for a 1987 cold-case murder in Florida.

    Local news outlets report that 51-year-old Rodney Clark was convicted Tuesday of first-degree murder. His sentencing phase will begin Sept. 6. Under Florida's new death penalty law, all 12 jurors must vote unanimously for execution. Otherwise, it's an automatic life sentence.

    Authorities say 27-year-old Dana Fader was raped and strangled in the back seat of her car in Lake Worth in June 1987. Clark was arrested in 2012 after a national DNA database flagged him as a match for semen found on Fader's dress.

    Clark acknowledged being in Palm Beach County at the time of the murder but denied responsibility for Fader's death.

    http://www.wctv.tv/content/news/Miss...442172323.html
    "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

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Sentencing begins in Rodney Clark death penalty case

    Before her stepmother could find the words, Angela Sampler said, she knew her mother was dead.

    “She said ‘I have something to tell you,’ and I just had this feeling. I went ballistic. I started yelling ‘What happened to my mom?’” Sampler, now 40, told a Palm Beach County jury Wednesday.

    It was 1987 then, and Sampler was 10 years old. On Wednesday, not long after prosecutor urged jurors to sentence 50-year-old Rodney Clark to death for killing Sampler’s mother, Dana Fader, Sampler said the decades faded many of the memories of the mother she shared with two younger brothers. She hardly got to see her brothers after Fader was found raped and strangled in the backseat of her car.

    Still, Sampler said, she remembered the sound of her mother’s laughter, and that she laughed often.

    Her mother loved them desperately, she knew that much.

    But other details were long forgotten in the dull pain of the same grief that led her brother, Kenneth Coby Manis, to testify that his mother’s death makes it hard for him to trust people around his family — even now at 35 years old.

    If Assistant State Attorneys Aleathea McRoberts and Reid Scott get jurors to recommend a death sentence for Clark, the Jackson, Miss., man will be the first local defendant to receive the sentence in state court in nearly two decades. His case is already the first local case where prosecutors have pursued a death sentence through trial since Florida lawmakers hurriedly revamped the state’s death penalty after a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled the old system unconstitutional.

    Jurors returned a first-degree murder conviction against Clark after several hours of deliberation in the guilt phase of the trial in August, where prosecutors revealed that investigators found Clark’s sperm on the dress Fader wore that night and also linked him to a partial palm print on the outside of one of the car windows.

    The panel of 12, along with two alternates, returned to court Wednesday for what was just the first half of the sentencing phase. Circuit Judge Charles Burton asked them to return next week after an extended break ahead of Hurricane Irma’s expected weekend landfall.

    Childhood abuse

    Before they heard from Sampler and Manis along with Fader’s brother and sister, jurors listened to opening statements from McRoberts and Palm Beach County Public Defender Carey Haughwout, who started by saying she was in an awkward position to have to ask them to spare Clark’s life just weeks after they rejected her arguments that he was innocent.

    Clark’s life was one that began with oppression and went downhill from there, Haughwout said.

    Born and raised in Jackson, where his sister later testified that even the graveyards are divided to separate blacks and whites, Clark through his childhood dealt with a father who abused and eventually left him, a mother who worked two jobs, possible exposure to lead poisoning from paints and pipes and bullying from classmates who ridiculed his sensitive nature by calling him “a bag of water.”

    He was exposed to drugs and alcohol, family curses that manifested in multiple alcoholics in the family and an aunt who would give him his first hit of cocaine. Still, an uncle testified, Clark had potential to be a good man and had qualities he hoped would eventually shine through.

    “Is Rodney Clark so beyond redemption that he should die for this crime?” Haughwout asked.

    Fader’s sister, Martha Jo Bailey, thinks so.

    She shook her head several times in the courtroom as Haughwout recounted Clark’s troubled background and almost walked out as Haughwout chronicled the list on the now wheelchair-bound Clark’s many current ailments, which include diabetes, intestinal bleeding, an enlarged prostate, high blood pressure, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and that old cocaine habit.

    Haughwout asked jurors to consider those factors when determining his punishment. Under the new laws, each of the 12 will have to agree to a death sentence to make such a recommendation to the judge.

    McRoberts urged the panel to unanimously do just that by urging them to determine that several aggravating factors exist in the case. Among them, McRoberts said, was Clark’s subsequent convictions for rape and robbery in Mississippi, along with claims that he murdered Fader in a heinous, atrocious and cruel manner.

    “This wasn’t just a killing,” she said. “It was aggravated by the personal horrific things he did to her.”

    Joseph Bailey long thought of those horrific things, and said he struggled with forgiving his sister’s killer until about a year before detectives in 2012 linked Clark to the case through DNA. On the witness stand, Joseph Bailey remembered his little sister as such a fierce protector that she once beat up a classmate who bullied him because of his cerebral palsy.

    On the morning of June 20, 1987, he lived with his sister and the youngest of her three children, who was 3 years old. When he told his uncle he’d gotten dressed by himself because his mommy was gone, the revelation ignited a search that ended with the discovery of Fader’s body.

    Like his niece, a sense of dread overwhelmed Joseph Bailey as police surrounded his sister’s car, parked near a fence in the apartment complex. He rushed over and was several feet from the car when he said he decided he could go no farther.

    He knew then that she was gone. And more than anything, he felt helpless.

    “My sister was there for me so many times and I couldn’t be there for her,” Kenneth Bailey said, his voice cracking. “I couldn’t be there for her when she … I couldn’t be there for her when she needed me the most.”

    http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/cr...KUo2V8wnJhMhP/

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    Edited:

    Hurricane Irma: Courts reopen after case, judge selection delays

    By Daphne Duret and Jane Musgrave
    Palm Beach Post

    The federal courthouse in West Palm Beach will reopen on Monday.

    The closings have already delayed hundreds of cases in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, including the sentencing of 50-year-old Rodney Clark, convicted last month of the 1987 murder of 27-year-old Dana Fader.

    A jury last week had begun hearing testimony in a hearing to decide whether they would recommend a sentence of life in prison or the death penalty for Clark. But after a day of testimony, Circuit Judge Charles Burton told the panel that the courthouse would be closing in anticipation of the storm and asked them to come back Wednesday.

    On Wednesday morning however, a voicemail recording from his judicial assistant asked all jurors to return to court on Monday, Sept. 18 for the continuation of the hearing.

    The timing, in turn, makes the scheduled start of another death penalty case doubtful. Jury selection was supposed to begin this Friday in the first-degree murder and child abuse trial of Kimberly Lucas, the Jupiter woman charged with the May 2014 drowning death of the 2-year-old daughter she shared with her former partner. Lucas is also charged with trying to kill their 10-year-old son by drugging him with Alprazolam and telling him “it would help make him grow.”

    Both Clark and Lucas are represented by Palm Beach County Public Defender Carey Haughwout and one of her top assistant public defenders, Elizabeth Ramsey. And Circuit Judge Charles Burton is presiding over both cases.

    Because the judge and attorneys can’t handle two trials at once, it appears the Lucas case will be delayed until Clark’s sentencing hearing is done.

    http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/cr...k7N4m8suSHXPP/
    "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

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Rodney Clark jury hears testimony to decide life or death sentence

    Testimony resumed Monday in what could be the last full day of a sentencing hearing for Rodney Clark, who will be sentenced to either life in prison or the death penalty for the 1987 murder of 27-year-old Dana Fader.

    Jurors who convicted the 50-year-old Jackson, Miss. man of first-degree murder last month returned to court for the second day of the penalty phase of his trial Monday, which resumed after a prolonged court break due to Hurricane Irma.

    After Clark’s pastor testified, jurors heard from Clark’s daughter, Katie Boykin, who cried as she recounted not growing up with her father but meeting him as an adult while he was at the Palm Beach County jail.

    “He cried,” Boykin said. “He didn’t want me to see him that way, but I didn’t care, because I wanted to see him. I loved him and I cared for him.”

    Later, on cross-examination, Assistant State Attorney Reid Scott wondered aloud whether Boykin knew her father had been convicted of murdering a woman and had also pleaded guilty to rape in a separate case. She said she knew.

    “And you’ve testified that despite that, you still love him, correct?” Scott asked.

    “Yes, I do,” Clark’s daughter said.

    Fader, a young mother of three, was found strangled in the back seat of her Ford Fairmont. The case grew cold after police initially found no suspects, but a break in the case came more than two decades later when detectives matched semen found on Fader’s dress to a DNA sample collected from Clark after his conviction for a rape in Mississippi that occurred the same year of Fader’s murder.

    A jury last month convicted Clark of the murder.

    Prosecutors are asking jurors to vote unanimously to recommend that Circuit Judge Charles Burton sentence Clark to die. His defense attorneys are asking jurors to recommend a life in prison sentence instead, offering testimony about Clark’s hard-scrabble upbringing in the racially oppressive south in the 1960s, coupled with a bad home life and possible exposure to asbestos and lead poisoning all contributed to a bleak existence for Clark at the time of Fader’s murder.

    http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/cr...woPH9dDU5guAO/

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    Jury decides against death penalty for man who raped, killed woman in 1987

    By Marc Freeman
    The Sun Sentinel

    Palm Beach County jury on Tuesday recommended a life sentence for a man convicted last month of a strangulation murder near Lake Worth 30 years ago.

    Under a Florida law revised this year, the death penalty cannot be imposed without a unanimous vote by a 12-member jury. The jury vote was 9-3, resulting in a life in prison term for Rodney Clark.

    Circuit Judge Charles Burton immediately sentenced Clark to that punishment, as he laughed and smiled with his lawyers.

    Assistant State Attorney Reid Scott argued Clark deserves capital punishment for the rape and “wicked” slaying of Dana Fader, a 27-year-old mother of three young children.

    “There’s simply no place for him in society,” Scott said, while showing the jury a photo of the lifeless victim after she was found. “He deserves the ultimate penalty.”

    The case went cold until Clark’s arrest five years ago based on DNA evidence. The Jackson, Miss., man was found guilty at a trial last month.

    “He chose to be the boogeyman on June 20, 1987, and chose to commit unspeakable acts on Dana Fader,” the prosecutor told the jury, as two of Fader’s now grown children listened in the courtroom.

    But Public Defender Carey Haughwout said her 50-year-old client — mentally scarred by childhood abuses and racism, along with more recent physical infirmities — never intended to torture Fader during the random attack.

    “Is Rodney Clark beyond redemption?” she asked. “Is the evil so great and the act so horrible?”

    The defense highlighted the testimony of Miami forensic psychologist Jethro Toomer, who said Clark suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other neurological problems that require prescription drug treatment.

    “You’re not talking about a sociopath,” Toomer told the jury.

    Prosecutor Scott knocked the witness as biased in favor of defendants in death penalty cases, noting his previous evaluations of infamous serial killers.

    “He testified for Ted Bundy, he testified for Aileen Wuornos,” Scott said, asking the jury of eight men and four women to disregard Toomer’s opinions.

    The prosecutor also said there was no proof to support other claims by Clark’s lawyers that he was the victim of lead poisoning in his youth and was traumatized as a toddler when his mom threatened to discipline him by holding flames to his body.

    Scott, with Chief Assistant State Attorney Brian Fernandes, said a death sentence is warranted based on three so-called aggravating factors.

    One is that Clark was convicted of rape in 1988 in Mississippi; he served eight years in prison on a 20-year sentence.

    “There’s no question about the violence he did,” Scott said.

    A second factor is an allegation that Clark raped Fader before killing her, even though he wasn’t charged with sexual battery in the case.

    According to court testimony, detectives matched Clark’s DNA to a semen stain on a dress worn by Fader when she died. Also, Clark’s palm print was found on a window of Fader’s car — she was killed in the back seat.

    “He robbed her of her dignity before he robbed her of her life,” Scott said, explaining that Clark stopped Fader from breathing by pressing down on her throat.

    Finally, the prosecutor said the murder fits the definition of being extremely wicked, and designed to inflict a lot of pain, and shows indifference or even enjoyment over the suffering of other people.

    “It simply does not get more heinous, atrocious or cruel,” the prosecutor said. “This wasn’t a simple drive-by shooting.”

    Haughwout responded that said she didn’t dispute “it was a terrible crime.” But she said it wasn’t a murder with a high degree of suffering.

    “What murder isn’t heinous?” the attorney said. “What murder isn’t cruel?”

    Before Fader died, she was living with her older brother and her 3-year-old son, J.P, at the Willow Lakes Apartments complex, on the corner of Florida Mango Road and 10th Avenue.

    Fader’s then 10-year-old daughter Angela lived out of state with her dad, and her other son, Kolby, 5, lived with his grandparents in the same complex.

    She worked some days as a seamstress for her family’s upholstery business, and other days as a cashier at the Breakers hotel in Palm Beach.

    http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/pa...919-story.html

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