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Thread: Darrick U. Hall - Pennsylvania

  1. #1
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    Darrick U. Hall - Pennsylvania





    Facts of the Crime:

    Convicted of murdering Donald Johnson, the owner of a Coatesville coin-operated laundry. In October 1994, Hall was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to die for senselessly murdering laundromat manager Donald Johnson during a robbery.

    Hall was sentenced to death in Chester County on November 7, 1994.

  2. #2
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On September 17, 1997, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed Hall's death sentence on direct appeal.

    On April 29, 2005, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied his petition for post-conviction relief.

    http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/Export/case_list_792.htm

    On June 8, 2005, Hall filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/pen...v02523/191219/

  3. #3
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On October 22, 2014, Hall's habeas petition was granted in part and his death sentence vacated.

    http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal...2523/191219/32

    On November 26, 2014, an appeal was filed before the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cir...ts/ca3/14-9007

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Judge: Philly man in solitary for 24 years deserves a chance at general population

    By Samantha Melamed
    Philly.com

    Darrick Hall, 47, a Philadelphia man who received the death penalty for a 1993 murder, has been in a windowless solitary-confinement cell for 24 years — conditions that continued even after his sentence was vacated in October 2014.

    Now, a federal judge has found the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections violated his 14th Amendment due-process rights by denying him a meaningful opportunity to move into the general population, and has issued a preliminary injunction.

    “We believe that there has been a sufficient showing that he will suffer irreparable harm if he is not granted immediate preliminary relief,” U.S. District Judge Curtis Joyner, of Pennsylvania’s Eastern District, wrote in the order published Friday.

    The Department of Corrections is reviewing the decision, a spokeswoman said. Meanwhile, the prisoner convicted of the robbery and fatal shooting of Donald Johnson, a Coatesville laundry manager, remains in solitary.

    In a Jan. 30 hearing, Hall described a life circumscribed by his 7-foot-by-12-foot cell at Graterford state prison.

    Even when allowed out to shower or spend an hour or two in an exercise cage, he generally chose not to participate because of the procedure required, which he found humiliating: Each time he left his cell, he would be strip searched, handcuffed and walked on a “dog leash” to his destination.

    Hall said his isolation led to anxiety, depression, anger issues, and memory problems. He began experiencing panic attacks in 2013. Hall also described extreme sleep deprivation, because the hallway lights stay on 24 hours a day and guards check in every half hour, frequently shining their flashlights through the bars and onto his face. He said he hadn’t slept more than four hours a night in decades.

    When he sought therapy, he said, “I was given the same answer every time: These things are not available to me because I’m in solitary confinement.”

    The injunction follows a February 2017 decision in the cases of death row inmates Craig Williams and Shawn Walker. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that Pennsylvania cannot keep inmates in death-row solitary after their sentences are vacated without offering meaningful review.

    “The Third Circuit ruling, I read it over and over. I really believed it applied to me,” Hall said. But his requests went unanswered.

    He was represented by Bret Grote of the nonprofit Abolitionist Law Project, which along with the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union and three law firms filed a federal class-action suit against the DOC in January, arguing that death-row solitary confinement violates not only the 14th Amendment but also the 8th Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

    “The holding is a ratification of the Williams decision, and contributes to the growing jurisprudential shift around the issue of solitary confinement,” Grote said.

    Hall’s conviction for the Dec. 18, 1993 murder stands. His death sentence was vacated after a federal judge found the lawyer representing him in his sentencing was ineffective. The case was placed in indefinite civil suspense after Gov. Wolf in 2015 instituted a moratorium on executions.

    There are 154 death-sentenced inmates in Pennsylvania, all housed in solitary. No one has been executed in the Commonwealth since 1999.

    According to a recent report published on the website In Justice Today, 115 more are in indefinite solitary confinement. One Philadelphia man in such long-term solitary was released into general population under a federal judge’s order last year.

    As for Hall, the reasons for keeping him in solitary were not entirely clear.

    According to the judge’s fact findings, Hall’s prison record shows six misconducts in 24 years, none for violent behavior. His last one was in 2014, when he argued with a guard who had cut short his 15-minute Christmas Day phone call home after about five minutes.

    Joe Fulginiti, a lawyer for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, asked Hall if it was true that he had told the guard “next time you had the chance you would get him?”

    Hall said he had not.

    Fulginiti also asked questions that appeared to explore the theory that death-row inmates are too dangerous for the general population, because they are men with nothing to lose.

    “I want programming and treatment,” Hall responded.

    “I have a lot to lose.”

    http://www.philly.com/philly/news/cr...-20180223.html
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  5. #5
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Killer of Coatesville laundromat workers off death row, will spend life in prison

    By Michael Rellahan
    Daily Local News

    WEST CHESTER - In a one-page order, a Common Pleas Court judge has approved the re-sentencing of a Philadelphia man convicted of fatally shooting a Coatesville laundromat manager more than 25 years ago.

    Judge Jeffrey Sommer had been scheduled to preside over re-sentencing hearing this week for defendant Darrick Hall. But instead, attorneys for both the prosecution and defense asked him to forgo the Friday hearing and instead sign an order they had agreed to that formally set Hall’s sentence to life in prison without parole.

    In the agreement, the state Attorney General’s Office agreed to drop its appeal of a federal judge’s decision to vacate Hall’s death penalty sentence, and Hall agreed to forego any further appeals of his conviction.

    Hall has already been transferred out of the death penalty wing of Graterford Prison in Montgomery County and will now be held in its maximum security blocks for those serving life without parole for first-degree murder.

    Sommer, who had inherited the case after taking the bench in 2014, signed the re-sentencing order Wednesday.

    Hall is the man who fired two shots at the store manager during an attempted robbery just before Christmas that year. Donald Johnson died of a bullet wound to the head in the Coatesville Laundromat on East Lincoln Highway.

    Deputy Attorney General Christopher J. Schmidt filed a motion late last month requesting the re-sentencing. Neither Schmidt nor defense attorney Cristi Charpentier of the Federal Community Defender’s Office in Philadelphia could be reached for comment.

    Hall, now 47, is one of only two men sentenced to death by Chester County Common Pleas juries since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Coincidentally, both of those decisions have been overturned on appeal. Two other men who were convicted of murders in the county remain on death row — Robert Hughes IV, who was sentenced to death by former Judge Thomas Gavin for the 1989 slaying of two employees at a McDonald’s restaurant in West Goshen, and Dennis Miller, who was sentenced by former Judge Howard F. Riley Jr. for the 1995 stabbing death and rape of his wife.

    In 2014, U.S. District Judge James Gardner vacated the death sentence that was handed down in October 1994 after finding that Hall’s trial attorney, Robert Miller of Philadelphia, had failed to meet the legal standard for effectiveness of counsel in capital trials.

    Gardner wrote in his Oct. 21, 2014, opinion that Miller failed “to investigate and present significant mitigating evidence in the penalty phase of (Hall’s) trial regarding (his) abusive childhood, illnesses and injuries normally associated with developmental and cognitive delays, and his inability to adjust to a strutted environment during the years he attended a disciplinary school.”

    More specifically, Gardner stated, Miller, “failed to seek out, interview and present testimony from some of (Hall’s) family, friends and employers, and failed to request readily available medical, educational and court records and failed to obtain evaluations by a mental health expert.”

    On Dec. 18, 1993, Hall and two other men engaged in a plan to rob the Coatesville laundromat located in the center of the city off East Lincoln Highway. One man, Troy Davis, acted as the getaway driver, while the other, Tyrone Green, stood inside the laundromat to act as bodyguard for Hall.

    The three men had come to Coatesville earlier that month to sell a quantity of crack cocaine they had between themselves to raise money for Christmas presents, according to testimony at one of the three trials. But Davis used all of the drugs himself, so the men decided they needed a quick robbery to recoup their funds. They chose the busy laundromat, on a Saturday morning, as their target.

    Hall, brandishing a handgun, marched up to the manager’s desk at the rear of the building, where Johnson, a well-liked 59-year-old man was seated. “What’s up, Pops?” he said, according to witnesses, and pulled his handgun. When the manager made a move to disarm him, Hall fired two shots, hitting Johnson in his chest and in the back of his head. He died instantly.

    Hall was identified by witnesses in the laundry and eventually tracked down in Philadelphia. He was arrested on Dec. 28, 1993.

    One of Johnson’s surviving family member, Greg Hamm, said in a telephone message that his family continues to grieve over his death.

    “We all still care that our uncle was taken from us because of a killer,” Hamm said.

    http://www.dailylocal.com/general-ne...life-in-prison

  6. #6
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    It amazes me how many on PA DR end up being re-sentenced to LWOP.
    "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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