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Thread: Kosoul Chanthakoummane - Texas Execution - August 17, 2022

  1. #11
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Killer of Dallas-area real estate agent loses appeal

    The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review an appeal from a North Carolina parolee on Texas death row for the slaying 10 years ago of a suburban Dallas real estate agent whose body was found in a model home.

    The high court, without comment Monday, rejected an appeal from 36-year-old Kosoul (koh-SOHL') Chanthakoummane (chahn-THAH'-koo-mahn). A lower appeals court earlier this year had turned down arguments he had deficient legal help at his 2007 trial.

    He'd served time in North Carolina for aggravated kidnapping and robbery and was paroled to Dallas to live with relatives when he was arrested for the death of 40-year-old real estate agent Sarah Walker. Walker, stabbed 33 times, was found in the kitchen of a model home in McKinney, about 30 miles north of Dallas.

    http://www.kswo.com/story/33303635/k...t-loses-appeal
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  2. #12
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Killer of Dallas-area real estate agent gets execution date

    HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A North Carolina parolee on Texas death row for the slaying 10 years ago of a suburban Dallas real estate agent whose body was found in a model home has received an execution date.

    Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark says the prison agency has received notice that a judge in Collin County has set 36-year-old Kosoul (koh-SOHL') Chanthakoummane (chahn-THAH'-koo-mahn) for lethal injection on Jan. 25. The U.S. Supreme Court this week refused an appeal from him.

    http://www.michigansthumb.com/news/t...ts-9922274.php
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  3. #13
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Here's an older article that has a lot of details about the crime.

    October 9, 2007

    Chanthakoummane killed Walker, defense admits

    Kosoul Chanthakoummane killed Sarah Anne Walker on July 8, 2006, at a McKinney model home during a robbery attempt that “didn’t go very well,” defense attorney Keith Gore admitted during opening arguments on Monday in Judge Charles Sandoval’s 380th District Court.

    Gore, an associate of lead defense attorney Steven Miears, said his hope is that the jury of eight men and six women, including alternates, would not sentence Chanthakoummane to death, but instead to life in prison without parole.

    The district attorney’s office is seeking the death penalty in the murder of Walker, 40, a Realtor for D.R. Horton Homes, who was beaten and repeatedly stabbed in a Craig Ranch model townhome. However, her father, Joe Walker, has previously said he does not want Chanthakoummane to be executed.

    “If the evidence comes in like we expect it to, we expect this jury to honor its oath and find our client guilty,” Miears said. “We just hope they’ll keep an open mind and remember that execution is reserved for the worst of the worst.”

    Then, prosecutor Greg Davis spent the rest of Monday’s session placing Chanthakoummane at the murder scene and setting the stage for evidence that he committed the crime in the midst of a robbery. Among the key elements was a Rolex watch that Walker bought the day before her death.

    The first day’s evidence included a gruesome photo of Walker, lying dead, her face caked with blood after the murder, and a photo taken from Chanthakoummane’s cell phone that showed him apparently about to bite a dog.

    Davis, in his opening argument, stated that Walker was sitting at the desk at the model at 5700 Conch Train Road in the Hemingway subdivision of Craig Ranch, when Chanthakoummane entered the home, walked to the desk, picked up a plant stand and hit her with it. That broke her nose and fractured two teeth, Davis said.

    “She struggled. Then he took out a knife and stabbed her over and over and over again,” Davis said. “He took her Rolex watch off her wrist, took her ring off her finger. Then he locked the front door and dragged her lifeless body to the kitchen. He went to the sink and washed his hands, and walked out the front door.”

    Davis said that DNA evidence will show two distinct blood samples, one Walker’s, and the other Chanthakoummane’s.

    Gore focused on Chanthakoummane’s past in his opening argument. He said the 27-year-old defendant from North Carolina had spent only about eight months out of prison since he was arrested for beating up a classmate five days after his 15th birthday.

    Chanthakoummane was released on parole after serving nine years of a 142-month sentence, then came to the Dallas area to live with his sister. After losing two jobs, he got a job as a delivery man for a company run by his sister’s boyfriend, but was not doing well.

    “He started thinking like a 14-year-old,” Gore said, and returned to thievery.

    On the day of Walker’s murder, both lawyers said, he called real-estate agent Mamie Sharpless about a town home she was selling on Trolley Trail in the Hemingway subdivision, saying his name was “Chan Lee.” Sharpless and her husband saw Chanthakoummane while waiting at the Trolley Trail site, but he denied he was Chan Lee when both asked them.

    Gore said that Chanthakoummane entered the Conch Train Road townhome with the intent of robbing Walker.

    “It didn’t go too well,” Gore said. “And he killed her.”

    “I wish I could say it was self-defense, that he was fighting her off, or that it was temporary insanity. But it wasn’t.”

    Sharpless and her husband placed Chanthakoummane at the crime scene, identifying the defendant sitting at the defense table as the man they saw on the afternoon of the murder. They also said the man was driving a white Ford Mustang that was later tied to Chanthakoummane.

    Texas Ranger Alan Davidson helped Davis lead the jury on a pictorial tour of the Conch Train townhome, complete with photos of the bloody trail and concluding with a close-up of Walker that had her family in tears. He also recapped the day of Chanthakoummane’s arrest.

    The Rolex played a big part in the day’s testimony. Davidson and Walker’s cousin Jessica Davis both said they found a box with a receipt for the Rolex in her home and found her previous watch, a Tag, at the home. Surveillance photos taken on the day of the murder at a Bank of America branch in Frisco clearly show Walker, who was making a transaction at the teller’s counter, wearing a watch and a ring. Neither were on her when her body was found less than two hours later.

    McKinney police crime scene investigator Peter Coppin discussed blood evidence that was collected on the floor, kitchen sink and deadbolt lock of the murder site, setting the stage for DNA evidence that will likely be presented today.

    Gore, in his opening argument, said he believes the prosecution will not be able to show that Chanthakoummane would be a future danger in prison and therefore does not deserve the death penalty.

    http://starlocalmedia.com/mckinneyco...11d12316b.html

    Here's another article that goes on about the sentencing but im not posting it.

    http://www.tdcaa.com/node/1266
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  4. #14
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Execution of Dallas-area real estate agent's killer reset

    HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Next week's scheduled execution of a North Carolina parolee convicted of killing a suburban Dallas real estate agent more than 10 years ago has been postponed.

    The lethal injection of 36-year-old Kosoul (Koh-SOOL') Chanthakoummane (Chan-tuh-kool-MAHN') has been reset for July 19 by State District Judge Ben Smith. Collin County prosecutors asked the scheduled Jan. 25 date be moved so courts had proper time to review new appeals in his case. The inmate's lawyers had asked the execution date be completely withdrawn.

    Chanthakoummane had been paroled to Dallas to live with relatives after serving time for a Charlotte, North Carolina, abduction and robbery when he was arrested two months after the July 2006 slaying of real estate agent Sarah Walker. She was beaten and stabbed at a model home in McKinney.

    http://www.dailyprogress.com/executi...a785cec31.html
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  5. #15
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    I told you Ryan that they wouldn't do two right after each other.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  6. #16
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Kosoul Chanthakoummane Execution Halted by Appellate Court

    Breaking: TX's next execution, set for Kosoul Chanthakoummane on July 19, has been halted by state appellate court.

    His case will go back to trial court to review the use of allegedly discredited forensic sciences.

    Application for writ of habeas corpus: https://www.themarshallproject.org/d...der#.gtBYn9boX

    https://twitter.com/jsmccullou
    "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."
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    “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.”
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  7. #17
    Senior Member CnCP Addict maybeacomedian's Avatar
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    This is the episode of Forensic Files entitled "House Hunting" (Season 13, Episode 02) featuring the Kosoul Chanthakoummane case:


  8. #18
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Texas still uses hypnosis to investigate crimes. These Dallas death row inmates say it's time to stop

    By Lauren McGaughy
    Dallas News

    AUSTIN — For many people, the word “hypnosis” evokes images of swinging pocket watches, swirling vortexes and impressionable subjects mesmerized by movie villains.

    They think of Get Out, The Manchurian Candidate, even Office Space.

    But in the Lone Star State, it isn’t a parlor trick or Hollywood ploy. Here, hypnosis is a matter of life and death.

    Texas has the most robust forensic hypnosis program in the country, training police officers across the state to sharpen or recall crime witnesses’ lost memories. As more and more states ban the practice, law enforcement here turns to it at least a dozen times a year.

    Now, two Dallas-area death row inmates are arguing it’s time to stop. Their executions have been delayed as they fight their convictions, which they claim were based on “junk science.”

    “Once you have, at a minimum, serious questions that a technique sent a man to death row, you need to change the way you use that technique,” Gregory Gardner, an attorney who has defended both men, told The Dallas Morning News. Hypnosis “does so much more harm to innocent people than getting guilty people behind bars.”

    Is forensic hypnosis quackery that’s sent innocent men to their deaths, or a powerful law enforcement technique that can crack open cold cases? One of the state’s most controversial investigative tools is about to be tested.

    Devotees and detractors

    To understand hypnosis, readers must suspend their preconceptions.

    Supporters and skeptics alike agree it’s not a mind-control technique. Professional hypnotists won't make you bark like a dog. They don’t put people to sleep. Subjects are alert and awake at all times. They don't employ swinging watches or vortexes — usually. There is also agreement that hypnosis can be valuable in therapy. Mental health professionals have used it to get patients to kick addiction and as a relaxation tool to help heal trauma.

    The real rift between devotees and detractors is over whether hypnosis can sharpen or unlock lost memories. Law enforcement personnel who use "forensic hypnosis" — employing the technique as a "relaxation tool" to get witnesses and victims to recall what they saw — believe it can, and point to several cases as proof.

    In 1978, 15-year-old Mary Vincent was hitchhiking near Berkeley, Calif., when she was picked up by a merchant seaman. The man raped her, cut off both her arms and abandoned her in a ravine to die.

    The teen survived but couldn’t recall what her attacker looked like — until she was hypnotized. Lawrence Singleton, “The Mad Chopper,” was tracked down and convicted.

    Hypnosis helped recover 26 California schoolchildren kidnapped in 1978 and helped convict serial killer Ted Bundy. In Texas, it was used to catch an Amarillo bank robbery suspect in 2013 and led to the 2016 arrest of two men accused of raping and stabbing a woman and leaving her unconscious and partially clothed in a field.

    The CIA has turned to it
    , and the Justice Department believes it can be helpful "on rare occasions." The FBI requires its sketch artists to learn it.

    But since its heyday in the 1970s and '80s, forensic hypnosis has not only dwindled rapidly, but hypnotically induced evidence has been banned in some places as unreliable.

    “Use special caution before using hypnosis for age regression to help you relive earlier events in your life,” the Mayo Clinic warns. “It may cause strong emotions and can alter your memories or lead to creation of false memories.”

    Joseph Green, the two-time past president of the American Psychological Association’s Society of Psychological Hypnosis, said movies have erroneously conditioned Americans to believe it’s a kind of “truth serum.”

    “It’s pretty easy to have people change or modify memories, at least to some extent, by the use of hypnosis,” explained Green, a professor at Ohio State University at Lima. This and other memory techniques like journaling or age regression are “fraught with pitfalls and danger, leading questions and bias from the interviewer.”

    Especially, criminal defense attorneys say, if that interviewer is a law enforcement officer.

    Hypnosis in Texas

    According to a News analysis of the National Registry of Exonerations, at least 10 men have been freed after hypnosis helped put them behind bars.

    This includes Clarence Moore, a New Jersey man who spent 20 years in prison for rape before the courts determined he was wrongfully convicted. In his case, among other issues, the victim's memory of the rapist's voice and appearance changed after hypnosis. His case led the state to ban hypnotically enhanced testimony in criminal cases.

    "Twenty-six states limit the admissibility of post-hypnotic testimony," the New Jersey Supreme Court wrote in 2006. "The cases from those states represent a persuasive body of law, based on expert opinion, holding that hypnotically refreshed testimony is not generally accepted science."

    According to a 2012 study
    , half of U.S. states now have "per se inadmissibility rules" barring hypnotically induced evidence in criminal cases. Not so in Texas.

    While it's is far less popular than it used to be — 152 law enforcement officers were certified in 1999 compared with just 12 a decade ago — forensic hypnosis is still seen as a handy tool in limited circumstances. There are about two dozen forensic hypnotists in Texas at this time, the majority of whom serve in the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and Texas Rangers.

    It's unclear how many times they have used the technique, but the Rangers confirmed they conducted 24 hypnosis sessions in 2016 and 2017.

    “Hypnosis is utilized in a very small percentage of cases and is conducted only by specially trained forensic hypnotists,” Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger told The News. “Any information gained through hypnosis must be corroborated with other information/evidence during the course of a criminal investigation.”

    Last year, the Rangers adopted "a new vetting process ... to determine if the hypnotic interviewing technique is a sustainable option, before a session is scheduled." The state has no reporting or monitoring requirements for local police departments.

    While there are currently no forensic hypnotists in local police departments in North Texas, the tool played an important part in the arrests and convictions of two Dallas-area death row inmates whose executions were recently put on hold.

    Charles Don Flores, 48, was convicted in the 1998 slaying of Elizabeth “Betty” Black after a neighbor was hypnotized to recall the features of two men she’d seen going into the victim’s Farmers Branch home the morning of the murder.

    In 2007, Kosoul Chanthakoummane, now 37, was convicted of McKinney realtor Sarah Walker’s brutal stabbing death. The police found him after they released a sketch elicited from a hypnotized witness who’d seen a young Asian man at the scene.

    Both men were sentenced to death. But both have successfully argued to delay their executions, saying they deserve new trials because “junk science” put them away.

    Marx Howell, who helped design the state’s forensic hypnosis program 30 years ago, said law enforcement officials who want the certification are well-trained officers taking on a new skill. The course touches on everything from religious attitudes involving hypnosis and techniques for hypnotizing children to “misconceptions, myths and possible dangers.”

    Officers must complete the program, as well as an exam, and renew their certifications every three years. Anyone else caught conducting sessions is subject to criminal penalty.

    The court has also imposed 10 “best practices” on forensic hypnotists here. Known as the Zani rules, after the 1989 case that spurred them, they include taping the entire session, avoiding leading questions and prohibiting officers working on the investigation from conducting the hypnosis.

    Several of these rules were not followed in the Flores case. The hypnotist, a local officer in Farmers Branch, was on the team conducting the investigation and didn't tape the session from his first interaction with the witness. It was also his first — and only — time using the tool.

    Still, Howell said the officer did an "acceptable" job. Plus, there is other evidence against Flores that Howell argued is strong enough to keep him behind bars.

    “Are there some cases out there where a police officer did a bad job on hypnosis? Yes,” Howell said. “But Texas has the most well-organized, comprehensive program in the United States.

    Richard Lynn Childs, who confessed to the murder of Betty Black, has already been paroled. Flores maintains his innocence, but received the death penalty. His execution was blocked in 2016 and he is now waiting to hear whether a judge will grant him a new trial.

    Chanthakoummane, whose lethal injection date has been delayed not once but twice, awaits a July hearing in McKinney. In a letter from prison, he said standards have changed since his conviction.

    “The chiefs [sic] evidence that were used to falsely convict me were not at the time debunked as ‘junk science,’” wrote Chanthakoummane, who was also convicted using bite mark evidence. “We now know what has been either discredited entirely or isn’t up to the standards of the scientific community.”

    Gardner said he hopes these two cases encourage Texas to take another look at the efficacy of forensic hypnosis, the way it has with blood spatter and bite mark evidence. But the state forensic science commission has declined, saying hypnosis is “not an analysis performed on physical evidence” and therefore not subject to its oversight.

    Howell is more sanguine about the future of forensic hypnotism.

    “I’d be real surprised if they threw out the use of hypnosis in Texas,” Howell said. “I’m not really worried about it.”

    https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2018/05/14/use-hypnosis-question-two-dallas-death-row-cases
    "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

  9. #19
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    This stay is a complete waste of time. Who cares if the cops used forensic hypnosis? DNA evidence proves he did it.

  10. #20
    Senior Member CnCP Legend FFM's Avatar
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    ARTICLE 11.071 APPLICATION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS DENIED WITH WRITTEN ORDER:

    http://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMed...6-7ab492b85150

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