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Thread: Fabio Evelio Gomez - Arizona

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    Fabio Evelio Gomez - Arizona




    Facts of the Crime:

    Was first sentenced to death in June 2003 for bludgeoning next-door neighbor Joan Rachelle McBee Morane, 39, to death, sexually assaulting her and dumping her body into a garbage bin at a Chandler apartment complex on December 2, 1999. He was tied to the crime through DNA evidence.

    Gomez was re-sentenced to death on October 15, 2010.

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Death for killer to be weighed 3rd time

    A former minor league baseball player who raped and killed his Chandler neighbor in 1999 has returned to Maricopa County Superior Court a third time to determine whether he will face death.

    Fabio Gomez, 42, has been to death row already for bludgeoning Joan Morane to death and dumping her body in an apartment complex dumpster. But his death sentence was thrown out because jurors may have been influenced by seeing him shackled in leg irons.

    Gomez, from the Dominican Republic, spent 10 years as a minor-league infielder, but never rose higher than two half-seasons in AAA ball. His last season was 1996. By 1999, he was unemployed and living with his girlfriend and infant son in a Chandler walk-up apartment.

    Morane, 36, who was attending Arizona State University, lived across the landing from Gomez.

    On Dec. 2, 1999, while his girlfriend was at work, Gomez crossed the landing and dragged Morane into his apartment. He bound her with duct tape and beat her, raped her, then bashed in her skull in the bathroom.

    "And at the very end, he tossed her into the dumpster like garbage," prosecutor Patricia Stevens said.

    A friend came to look for Morane after not reaching her by phone, but found Morane's apartment door open, furniture turned over, and Morane gone. Stevens told the jury that Morane was probably still alive in Gomez's apartment at that time.

    Another neighbor heard Morane's dying screams through the wall and called 911.

    When police questioned Gomez, he first told them that there was blood on his kitchen floor because his girlfriend had cut her foot. Police had only to go into the next room to talk to the girlfriend and learn that she had not been cut. Then he claimed he had killed a cat with a baseball bat because it had walked into his apartment and scratched his son.

    There was blood everywhere - it was Morane's.

    That evening, police found Morane's body, buried under garbage in a nearby dumpster. Gomez's semen was detected by a rape kit.

    Gomez was convicted of rape, kidnapping and murder in 2001, but his sentencing was put off until 2003 because of changes in how death sentences are imposed in Arizona.

    He defended himself in the sentencing trial, appearing in court in prison attire and leg irons. In 2005, the Arizona Supreme Court threw out the death penalty because the jury might have seen the shackles. It also threw out a 21-year aggravated sentence for kidnapping.

    Both matters are now being tried before Judge Roland Steinle.

    http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/09/24/20100924maricopa-county-superior-court-death-penalty-option.html

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Chandler man gets death sentence for neighbor's murder

    A former minor league baseball player has been given the death penalty for the 2nd time in the 1999 slaying of his Chandler neighbor.

    Maricopa County prosecutors said Friday that a jury returned a death sentence again for 34-year-old Fabio Gomez. A judge also sentenced Gomez to 10˝ years in prison for kidnapping, to run consecutive to the death sentence.

    The body of 36-year-old Joanne Morane was found in an apartment trash can. Chandler police investigators say the woman was fatally beaten with a 10-pound dumbbell and bloody evidence led them to Gomez.

    Gomez was convicted of 1st-degree murder in 2003. However, the Arizona Supreme Court threw out the death sentence because jurors saw Gomez in shackles and a jail uniform before the case's penalty phase.

    (Source: The Associated Press)

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Man's death sentence upheld for Chandler murder

    The new court ruling upholds an Arizona death-row inmate's second death sentence for the murder of a woman who lived in the same Chandler apartment complex.

    The Arizona Supreme Court's unanimous ruling Friday upholds the death sentence for Fabio Evelio Gomez in the 1999 killing of Joan Morane.

    Police found her bloody and badly beaten body in a trash container at the complex.

    Police looked in the container after Morane was reported missing and officers saw blood stains in Gomez's apartment across a landing from the victim's apartment.

    The state high court overturned Gomez's first death sentence because he was made to wear shackles in view of sentencing jurors.

    http://www.gvnews.com/state/man-s-de...68fec274a.html
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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    In today's United States Supreme Court orders, Gomez's petition for a writ of certiorari and motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis were DENIED.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.a...es/12-8611.htm

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    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    On September 8, 2021, Gomez filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/ar...v01529/1275772
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    Supreme Court sends 6 death row cases back to Arizona courts after Cruz ruling

    By Jimmy Jenkins
    AZ Central

    The U.S. Supreme Court is sending six death row cases back to Arizona trial courts for reconsideration in light of a recent ruling.

    The high court on Monday vacated judgments for convicted murderers Johnathan Burns, Steve Boggs, Ruben Garza, Fabio Gomez, Steven Newell and Stephen Reeves. The cases will be returned to the superior courts in Arizona "for consideration," which could take several forms, including parties filing supplemental briefings or the courts issuing new rulings.

    Monday's ruling comes after the U.S. Supreme Court last month ruled in favor of John Cruz, who challenged his death sentence because he was not permitted to tell jurors if he were given a life sentence, if it would be without parole.

    Three people have already had their death sentences vacated by the Arizona Supreme Court, also because of the Cruz ruling, which relied on a key principle established in a 2016 case, Lynch v. Arizona.

    This week, the question before the high court was whether Arizona's courts were "required" to apply the Lynch standards to these six cases after the fact.

    The state had argued that the defense team never asked the trial court to instruct the jury they were ineligible for parole, and thus relinquished their right to appeal on that basis. They also argued that the failure to inform jurors never harmed their defense because prosecutors never brought up the key issue of their potential "future dangerousness."

    But attorneys for Burns and the other petitioners argued in briefings to the U.S. Supreme Court that federal law trumped the state courts' interpretations.

    "It is difficult to imagine a state rule that more clearly discriminates against federal law than the one at issue here. It prohibits state postconviction courts from applying decisions that federal law requires postconviction courts to apply," Burns' lawyers wrote.

    Arizona's death row:These are the prisoners awaiting execution

    The entire legal debate about this aspect of Arizona's death penalty stems from the 1996 Supreme Court case Simmons v. South Carolina. It set the precedent for defendants to be able to tell juries that they would not be eligible for parole if they were sentenced to life in prison instead of death. But for many years, Arizona refused to apply the ruling.

    In the 2016 ruling Lynch v. Arizona, the court made clear the ruling did, in fact, apply to Arizona. The six men who were granted certiorari on Monday sought post-conviction relief in light of Lynch but were denied by the state supreme court. Granting certiorari means the court agreed to review the cases.

    After the U.S. Supreme Court remanded the Cruz sentencing, the six men also sought relief, which the high court granted.

    Emily Skinner, an attorney with the Arizona Capitol Representation Project, says the Cruz ruling was important because it stated that the Lynch decision was a "significant change" in Arizona law.

    "There is a rule of criminal procedure in Arizona that allows conviction petitioners to allege that there had been a significant change in the law that applies to their case," Skinner said. "In Mr. Cruz's case, the Arizona Supreme Court had held that Lynch wasn't a significant change in the law, it was merely a significant change in the application of the law. And so, the relevant Rules of Criminal Procedure did not apply."

    Skinner said the Cruz ruling means that now the rules do apply.

    Skinner said the Supreme Court granting certiorari to Burns and his co-petitioners is doing justice to ensure that juries are properly instructed on the meaning of a life sentence in Arizona.

    She said there are likely many more cases in the pipeline that could also be revisited under Cruz.

    "There's a number of people who still have their post-conviction petition pending in the superior court, who may have lost on the Lynch claim, but they haven't made their way up to petition for review yet at the Arizona State Supreme Court."

    At least nine people are seeking post-conviction review. Still, as many as 30 capital defendants may be affected by the decision, according to Elizabeth Bentley, director of the University of Minnesota Law School's civil Rights Appellate Practice.

    Attorneys for Burns and his co-petitioners said the state's legal stance on those cases was "nothing short of the nullification of a constitutional right for defendants sentenced to death in Arizona."

    https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...g/69978631007/
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