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Thread: Robert Lark - Pennsylvania

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    Robert Lark - Pennsylvania




    Facts of the Crime:

    Was convicted of killing Tae Bong Cho on December 28, 1978 during a robbery. Cho was forced to hand over more than $4,000 by a man who held a pellet gun to the head of his infant son. Cho was murdered with a single gunshot in his North Philadelphia takeaway restaurant. Lark was captured within minutes after the robbery.

    Lark was sentenced to death in Philadelphia County on June 28, 1985.

  2. #2
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On March 16, 2001, Lark filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/pen...cv01252/19627/

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On July 30, 2012, Lark's habeas petition was granted in Federal District Court with his convictions being vacated.

    http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal...252/19627/113/

    On August 31, 2012, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania filed an appeal in the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit over the granting of Lark's habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cir...s/ca3/12-9003/

  4. #4
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Fact's Avatar
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    On May 6, 2014, the 3rd Circuit affirmed the Eastern District's ruling. I assume that the Commonwealth will appeal, but even I think that the Batson claim has merit. Note that it was two Reagan appointees who were on the panel.

    http://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/129003np.pdf

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    In today's orders, the United States Supreme Court denied the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's certiorari petition.

    Docketed: September 8, 2014
    Linked with 14A96
    Lower Ct: United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/search.a...les/14-273.htm

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    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    After 38 years on death row, Philly man gets new trial - and another guilty verdict

    By Samantha Melamed
    Philly.com

    It took 32 years of legal filings from his cell on death row, but Robert “Sugar Bear” Lark finally got a new trial.

    On Friday, the jury delivered its verdict. Guilty. Again.

    Prosecutors said it was a straightforward case. On Feb. 22, 1979, Lark put on a ski mask, stuffed a gun in his belt, walked into a fast-food store at Broad Street and Erie Avenue, and shot dead the store owner, Tae Bong Cho, a 36-year-old father of two. The slaying was the night before a preliminary hearing for Lark, who had robbed Cho at gunpoint months earlier.

    “He killed him in a brazen manner, and then he boasted about it,” Assistant District Attorney Andrew Notaristefano said in his closing argument.

    The defense argued that Philadelphia police detectives systematically provided incentives and threats to induce witnesses to talk. Some had open cases or probation violations when they testified.

    “They were handpicked,” Lark’s court-appointed lawyer, James Berardinelli said. “What made someone an elite detective back in 1979 when Frank Rizzo was still mayor was a heck of a lot different from what makes an elite detective today.”

    The jury, which found the prosecutor’s version of events to be credible, will now have to decide whether Lark, 63, will face the death penalty once again. Given a statewide moratorium and the stances of the candidates running for district attorney here, some are calling it the last death-penalty case in Philadelphia.

    It was Lark’s third trial: The first resulted in a mistrial, the second in a conviction. His charges included not only the murder of Cho but also the kidnapping of a woman and her two children – he escaped into their house before police captured him and remained there for two hours – and terroristic threats against Charles Cunningham, the prosecutor in Lark’s robbery case.

    But in 2012, he won the right to a new trial, after persuading a federal judge that the prosecutor had stricken black jurors simply because of their race — a practice that is illegal but was standard operating procedure for Philadelphia prosecutors, according to a training tape of former Assistant District Attorney Jack McMahon that became public in the ‘90s. Half the jury for this trial was black.

    Proving the case beyond a reasonable doubt 38 years after the fact – when some witnesses are dead and others’ memories have faded – was a complicated matter.

    For those witnesses who are now deceased, testimony had to be reenacted — the prosecutor, defense lawyer, and judge all reading lines along with an actor in the witness box.

    Some other witnesses, brought in from out of state and, in at least one case, from federal prison, adamantly contradicted the testimony they gave at the previous trials in the 1980s.

    One, Linda Timbers, who is the mother of Lark’s daughter, said the statement police had taken in 1980 was false. According to the statement, she’d been with Lark waiting in line for a movie when a man named Stanley Coleman came up and discussed the murder with Lark. She said that Lark had never taken her to a movie, that she did not know a Stanley Coleman, and that she had not heard about the murder.

    “If somebody talked to me bragging about a killing, I would remember that,” she said. If she did sign a statement, she insisted, it was out of exhaustion. “It seems like I wasn’t going to be able to go home with my children to get something to eat unless I signed it.”

    Another witness, James Spencer, previously testified that Lark had boasted to him about the murder, but he recanted that statement on the stand. A third testified he now has no memory of the events. A fourth gave similar testimony; she said she was a drug addict desperate to get out of the interrogation room and get her next fix when she made her statement to police.

    The defense argued those recantations were clear evidence that the earlier testimony had been tainted — either by prosecutors’ promises to offer lenient treatment on open cases or by police threats of implication in the case.

    For example, Spencer was facing four open cases; two were thrown out after he testified. “This is someone who had a motive to fabricate,” Berardinelli said.

    Notaristefano, on the other hand, said Spencer’s recantation was further proof of Lark’s campaign of terror: Spencer, he said, “has to take the witness stand so he can recant everything in public in front of the defendant, so that his family can be safe.”

    The jury will be back on Tuesday to determine whether Lark will return to death row.

    Prosecutors offered to take the death penalty off the table if Lark would waive his right to appeal. But as Judge Steven R. Geroff stated the offer, Lark interjected.

    http://www.philly.com/philly/news/cr...-20171103.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

  7. #7
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    Penalty phase starts tomorrow. Have to admit, I was nervous that he'd be found not guilty and the antis would be talking about him as an "exoneree".

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Philadelphia’s Last Death Penalty Case May Be Over

    By ANDERS HAGSTROM
    The Daily Caller

    Philadelphia may have completed its final capital punishment case Thursday due to the election of a district attorney who vowed to eliminate the death penalty.

    Robert Lark, 63, was sentenced to life in prison Thursday after a jury failed to unanimously confirm a death penalty, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. It may have been the last time a jury even has the option, however. With the election of Democrat Larry Krasner as Philadelphia’s district attorney, the city is facing a bevy of changes to its justice system, and the death penalty may be the first to go.

    Lark will serve a life sentence for the 1979 murder of Tae Bong Cho. Lark was first convicted in 1985 of murdering Cho to prevent him from testifying in court, a circumstance which further raises the penalty for murder. Cho was scheduled to testify the next morning that Lark had robbed him at gunpoint two months earlier.

    Prosecutors argued that Lark’s extensive criminal history further qualified him for the death penalty. He has at least two other armed robbery convictions aside from his incident with Cho. Some on the jury, however, were convinced that Lark’s troubled childhood was a mitigating factor and that he didn’t warrant a death penalty.

    Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf has maintained moratorium on capital punishment since 2015, and Pennsylvania hasn’t carried out an execution since 1999.

    Juries across the state have held the power to sentence offenders to death regardless of the fact that the sentences are unlikely to be carried out. Krasner’s goal is to do away with the illusion and throw out the death penalty entirely.

    As DA, Krasner will control the sentences prosecutors seek against offenders. Under his leadership, prosecutors will simply never seek the death penalty, preventing juries from making the sentence.

    “If you, like us, believe it’s time to end the death penalty. If you think it’s time to end mass incarceration. If you think it’s time to stop making prisoners of poor people by using cash bail. If you are sick and tired of government stealing grandma’s house when she didn’t do anything wrong. And if you have no intention of helping Trump’s immigration agenda, we hope to hear from you,” Krasner said in his victory speech.

    http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/10/ph...e-may-be-over/

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