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Thread: Lisa Jo Chamberlin - Mississippi Death Row

  1. #21
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Death sentence reinstated for Mississippi's only woman on death row

    Mississippi's only woman on death row has sentence reinstated

    By Jimmie E. Gates
    The Clarion-Ledger

    JACKSON, Miss. — The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reinstated the death sentence of Mississippi's only female death row inmate.

    The ruling Tuesday came almost three years after a federal court ruling granted Lisa Jo Chamberlin, 45, a new trial in a double homicide in Hattiesburg, Miss., about 85 miles southeast of the state's capital of Jackson.

    At the state Attorney General's Office's request, the full 5th Circuit in New Orleans — with the exception of Judge James Graves who recused himself — reviewed the judge's ruling and a ruling from a three-judge appeals court panel that voted 2-1 to affirm the ruling.

    Cameron Benton, special assistant attorney general, argued that the two appeals court judges who first heard the case put together unimpressive statistics and an incomplete comparison to find discrimination in the striking of two black prospective jurors.

    "There is ample proof in the record to suggest that the exercise of peremptory strikes was not motivated by racial animus," Benton said in court papers. "Given the dearth of proof and the deference owed to the state court, the majority opinion seems to have improperly substituted its judgment for that of the trial judge and appellate court."

    Chamberlin, housed in the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl, was listed in a summer 2017 report from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as one of 53 women on federal and 16 states' death rows as of July 1. Less than 2% of death row inmates are women.

    In 2015, federal District Judge Carlton Reeves ordered the state to grant Chamberlin a new trial within four months, saying prosecutors intentionally struck black potential jurors from her capital murder trial.

    Chamberlin is white. She argued on appeal that her rights were violated when prosecutors struck some black potential jurors for nonracial neutral reasons.

    The full 5th Circuit panel saw the scenario differently in a 9-5 ruling.

    "The prosecution in Chamberlin’s case did what it was supposed to do: It rejected some black prospective jurors and accepted others, accepted some white prospective jurors and rejected others," according to the majority opinion. "When asked why it struck individual black prospective jurors, it gave specific race-neutral reasons for the strikes."

    The five who opposed reinstating Chamberlin's conviction thought that Reeves' original ruling had merit:

    The prosecution struck nearly two times as many black jurors as it accepted (eight strikes compared to five accepted, including one alternate) while accepting more than four times as many white jurors as it struck (five strikes compared to 23 accepted, including three alternates). It exercised 62% of its strikes on black jurors, despite black jurors making up only 31% of qualified prospective jurors.

    This racial breakdown of the strikes is even more telling when compared with the results random strikes would predict. Given the demographics of the venire (the panel of citizens from which a jury is selected), the probability that random, race-neutral strikes would result in 8 of the 13 struck jurors being black was about 1 in a 100.

    Chamberlin and her boyfriend, Roger Lee Gillett, were convicted of two counts of capital murder in the March 2004 slayings of Gillet's cousin, Vernon Hulett, 34, and Hulett's girlfriend, Linda Heintzelman, 37, in Hattiesburg. Their bodies were transported to Kansas in a freezer.

    Gillett and Chamberlin were arrested March 29, 2004, after Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents raided an abandoned farmhouse near Russell, Kan., that Gillett's father owned and found the dismembered bodies of Hulett and Heintzelman in a freezer.

    Kansas state agents were investigating Gillett and Chamberlin for their possible connection to the manufacture of methamphetamine, according to published reports. Gillett and Chamberlin were living with Hulett and Heintzelman in Hattiesburg at the time of the slayings.

    In a taped confession played at her trial, Chamberlin said the victims were killed because they wouldn't open a safe in Hulett's home.

    Chamberlain was sentenced to death in 2006, and Gillett was sentenced in 2007.

    However, in June 2014, the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned Gillett's death sentence. The court said his attempt to escape jail while in custody in Kansas could not be considered as a crime of violence to support a death sentence.

    In 2011, Chamberlin filed a post-conviction challenge to her conviction federal District Court after the state Supreme Court upheld her conviction and death sentence.

    One of the claims was that the prosecution improperly struck seven African-Americans from serving on her jury. The prosecutor said he struck 12 potential jurors — seven black and five white. He denied any effort to strike potential jurors based upon race.

    In death penalty cases, federal law requires a comparative analysis be done when black potential jurors are struck compared to white jurors allowed to remain in the jury pool, Reeves said.

    Number of women on states' death rows

    More than half of the women facing capital punishment in 16 states and the federal prison system are white. Black women constitute 22.7% of all women on death rows while they are 14.6% of all U.S. females, according to calculations of Census Bureau estimates from 2013.



    http://www.wtsp.com/article/news/nat...5-b998b1a87f33
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  2. #22
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Hattiesburg man sentenced to death for 2004 murders is resentenced to life without parole

    By Lici Beveridge
    The Hattiesburg American

    A man sentenced to death for killing his cousin and his cousin's girlfriend in 2004, will no longer sit on death row.

    Roger Gillett, 44, and his then-girlfriend Lisa Jo Chamberlin were convicted of two counts each of capital murder for the deaths of Vernon Hulett, 34, and Linda Heintzelman, 37, at Hulett's Hattiesburg home, then putting their dismembered bodies in a freezer and taking them to an abandoned farm in Kansas.

    Gillett appealed his 2007 conviction. The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed his convictions in 2014 but overturned his death sentence because Gillett's jury was allowed to consider inadmissible evidence that it otherwise would not have.

    That "inadmissible" evidence was Gillett's attempted escape from the Kansas jail where he was held after his arrest. It was deemed irrelevant since it did not relate to the actual killings.

    A jury must consider a number of factors when deciding whether to sentence someone to death, including the severity of the crime, for instance if it was particularly heinous or committed during another felony such as robbery or rape. Escape or attempted escape may be considered if the capital crime was committed to help the perpetrator escape, but not in Gillett's case.

    In the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision, justices said not every escape is considered a crime of violence under Kansas law. Former Justice Ann Lamar, who wrote the majority opinion, said the Kansas crime cannot be used to support a death sentence in Mississippi.

    On Sept. 18, 2014, the court denied the state's motion for a rehearing, sending the case back to Forrest County Circuit Court.

    Four years later, Gillett was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    Before Gillett was resentenced, court documents show the victims' families were consulted by the district attorney, who "has carefully considered all matters pertinent to this case and that she will not seek the death penalty."

    Forrest County District Attorney Patricia Burchell said she could not comment on the case at this time.

    Chamberlin's convictions were vacated in March 2017 by a three-judge panel in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals only to be reviewed six months later by the full court, which decided in March the convictions would stand.

    Chamberlin, convicted in 2006, is listed as an inmate at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County. She is the only female inmate on Mississippi's death row.

    https://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/...ers/949284002/

  3. #23
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Supreme Court denies review in death row case of Mississippi woman

    Lisa Jo Chamberlin was convicted for the March 2004 killings of Linda Heintzelman and Vernon Hulett in Hattisburg

    By Waverly McCarthy
    WLBT News

    JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - The U.S. Supreme Court announced it will not review a Mississippi death row inmate’s case after her sentence was reinstated by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last year.

    Lisa Jo Chamberlin is the only woman on death row.

    She and her then-boyfriend, Roger Lee Gillett, convicted for the March 2004 killings of Linda Heintzelman and Vernon Hulett in Hattiesburg.

    Their bodies were found in a freezer at an abandoned farm in Kansas.

    Gillett also got the death penalty.

    https://www.wlbt.com/2019/06/28/supr...issippi-woman/
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    So is she ready for a death warrant when Mississippi gets new drugs?

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    Bobsicles, thanks.

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    US judge: Woman on Mississippi death row gets state appeal

    By Emily Wagster Pettus
    Associated Press

    JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The only woman on Mississippi death row can go to state court to challenge her conviction and sentence, a federal judge has ruled.

    Lisa Jo Chamberlin, 49, intends to argue she has received ineffective legal representation, according to a ruling issued June 1 by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves.

    Chamberlin is in the women’s maximum-security unit at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. She was sentenced to death in 2006 after being convicted on two counts of capital murder in the 2004 killing of two people in Hattiesburg.

    She appealed the verdict and sentence, and both were affirmed by the Mississippi Supreme Court in 2008.

    In 2015, Reeves ordered a new trial for Chamberlin, who is white, after her attorneys argued Black people had been improperly dismissed from the pool of potential jurors. A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals initially agreed with Reeves’ ruling. But in 2018, the full appeals court returned Chamberlin to death row, ruling that allegations of racial bias were insufficient to reverse her sentence. She has remained in prison, including during the appeal of the 2015 ruling.

    Evidence showed Linda Heintzelman and her boyfriend, Vernon Hulett were killed after they argued with Chamberlin and her then-boyfriend, Roger Gillet, at a home they all shared.

    Hulett was hit in the head with a hammer and his throat was slashed. Heintzelman was abandoned after being strangled and stabbed.

    When her assailants returned to find Heintezlman was still breathing, she was suffocated with plastic bags. Hulett was decapitated. The bodies were stuffed in a freezer and taken to Kansas, where Gillett and Chamberlin were arrested after state agents raided an abandoned farm house near the city of Russell.

    Gillett, now 48, also was convicted of two counts of capital murder and initially received a death sentence. His sentence also was overturned, and he was later resentenced to life in prison without parole. He is in the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

    Chamberlin filed the federal appeal in her case in 2011. While her appeal was pending, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in another inmate’s case in 2013 that it would recognize a state right to effective post-conviction legal representation in death penalty cases “even years after the initial post-conviction petition was decided,” Reeves wrote in his June 1 order. That creates the path for Chamberlin’s next appeal in state court.

    “Chamberlin’s ineffectiveness claims will be dependent, at least in part, on the facts, and the Mississippi Supreme Court has demonstrated a willingness to review such claims when they return from this Court,” Reeves wrote.

    Appeals in death penalty cases typically last several years. Reeves wrote that he is “sympathetic to the State’s frustration” at delays in Chamberlin’s case.

    “Much of the reason for the recent delay is the difficulty in conducting an investigation during the pandemic; a situation that has affected almost all of the cases on this Court’s docket,” he wrote.

    Reeves wrote that he will monitor Chamberlin’s case to ensure she pursues the new state court appeal in a timely manner.

    https://apnews.com/article/politics-...7ce7abb4b27209
    "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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