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Thread: James Lee Jones aka Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman - Tennessee

  1. #31
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Well, the FSC believed that Governor Scott had authority to take cases from a DA. Hopefully TN agrees that the executive branch has similar chances here.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  2. #32
    Senior Member CnCP Addict johncocacola's Avatar
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    Need someone to do this to Larry Krasner as well.

  3. #33
    Senior Member Frequent Poster NanduDas's Avatar
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    Too bad PA is ruled by antis.
    "The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer." -Theodore Roosevelt

  4. #34
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Death row inmate’s attorneys slam AG Slatery’s 'disrespectful' appeal

    Attorneys for convicted killer Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman on Monday blasted Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery’s appeal of a death penalty deal reached in August.

    The deal, struck between Abdur’Rahman and Nashville District Attorney General Glenn Funk, replaced Abdur’Rahman’s death sentence with life imprisonment. Abdur’Rahman’s attorneys had asked for a new trial because of racial discrimination concerns during jury selection ahead of his original trial. Funk and Abdur’Rahman arrived at the deal in exchange for the inmate dropping a request for a new trial. Nashville Judge Monte Watkins later signed off on the deal.

    Last month, Slatery announced he’d be appealing the deal , saying neither Funk nor Watkins had the authority to make or approve such a settlement.

    In a legal filing submitted in response on Monday , attorneys for Abdur’Rahman say it’s actually the state AG Slattery who does not have the authority to appeal or overrule an agreement already reached by a District Attorney General acting on behalf of the state.

    Abdur’Rahman’s attorneys argue that local district attorneys general make decisions on the state’s behalf every day, including decisions not to charge suspects or to offer pleas. These agreements are routinely approved by judges, the filings say.

    “What happened here is not complicated or out of the ordinary,” the attorneys argue in the legal filing. “The agreement General Funk reached here is no different than a plea or charge agreement.”

    It’s a view shared by Nashville attorney David Raybin, who helped draft Tennessee’s death penalty statute. Raybin recently argued that the Funk-Abdur’Rahman deal may have influenced Slatery’s office to ask the state’s highest court to set execution dates for nine more Tennessee death row inmates, including all inmates prosecuted in Davidson County – the area over which General Funk presides.

    Abdur’Rahman’s attorneys say it was “disrespectful” and “erroneous” for Slatery to argue that General Funk and Judge Watkins acted “at will” outside of the duties of their offices.

    “The [Tennessee Attorney General’s] Motion casts the hearing below as baseless and its actors, including a judge of this State, as lawless. This is doublespeak,” the legal filing argues.

    (source: WTVF news)
    "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

  5. #35
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Condemned Tennessee inmate’s supporters seek clemency

    Supporters of Tennessee death row inmate Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman kicked off a clemency campaign on Tuesday amid uncertainty over whether his death sentence will be upheld.

    Abdur’Rahman was sentenced to die in 1987 for the murder of Patrick Daniels, who was stabbed to death. Norma Jean Norman was also stabbed but survived.

    In August, after 32 years on death row and with Abdur’Rahman’s execution date approaching, Nashville’s district attorney agreed to convert the death sentence to life in prison. The agreement came after the inmate, who is black, raised claims that black potential jurors were excluded from the jury pool at his trial.

    Less than a month later, Tennessee’s attorney general appealed the agreement. Since both the attorney general and the district attorney represent the State of Tennessee, Abdur’Rahman’s defense attorneys cried foul, arguing that Attorney General Herbert

    Slatery lacks the power to challenge an agreement with another prosecutor.

    While they wait for the courts to resolve the issue, Abdur’Rahman’s supporters must prepare for the possibility that his death sentence will be upheld. He’s currently scheduled to be executed April 16.

    Speakers at a “ Justice for Abu ” event at American Baptist College in Nashville on Tuesday included several people who have visited the inmate for years. They said he’s not the same man who went to prison 3 decades ago.

    They spoke about his work over many years to recover from the physical and sexual abuse he suffered as a child and young man and become a peacemaker within the prison. That work included earning a state certification as a mediator.

    Ed Miller, an attorney involved in prison ministry through Nashville’s Christ Church Cathedral said that meeting Abdur’Rahman changed his life. He refers to the prisoner as a brother and believes that if Abdur’Rahman had had a better defense attorney he would never have been sentenced to death.

    Linda Manning, who is a psychologist as well as Abdur’Rahman’s spiritual adviser, said, “He has turned the horrors of his past into a passionate mission, working to prevent violence and promote healing.”

    (source: Daily Journal)
    "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

  6. #36
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Tennessee inmates ask court to stop execution scheduling, argue death penalty rooted in racism

    NASHVILLE - One African American defendant was forced by a judge to represent himself at trial. Another was shackled in front of an all white jury during a sentencing hearing. And a third black defendant facing the death penalty is intellectually disabled.

    Those are some of the arguments made by defence attorneys in documents filed this week with the state U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to stem the pace of executions in Tennessee, which has surged to the forefront nationally in its application of the death penalty. They also argue Tennessee's use of capital punishment is rooted in a racist past and is still plagued with inherent racism.

    Attorney General Herbert Slatery is seeking to set dates for the nine death row inmates, all men, to die. Four of the nine are African American. Attorneys for the inmates point out that the justices could keep Tennessee moving in the opposite direction of the country as a whole or could join the ranks of most states in trending away from executions.

    "While the standards of decency of the nation as a whole have evolved towards rejection of the death penalty, Tennessee has fallen out of step with the rest of the country -- particularly in the last eighteen months, during which the State has executed six of its citizens at a rate not seen since before 1960," attorneys for the inmates wrote.

    One of the inmates facing a possible execution date, Tony Carruthers, would be the first person in about a century to be put to death after being forced to represent himself at trial, supervisory assistant federal public defender Kelley Henry wrote in a filing.

    Carruthers and another man were convicted of the 1994 killing of three people in an attempt to corner the illegal drug trade in their Memphis neighbourhood.

    The trial judge refused to appoint another attorney after Carruthers, whose attorneys describe him as severely mentally ill, ran off about a half-dozen lawyers with threats or lack of co-operation, the filing said. A court has never weighed in on whether Carruthers' self-representation was constitutionally adequate, Henry wrote.

    Farris Morris, an African American man convicted of a 1994 double murder and rape, was shackled during his sentencing trial in sight of an all-white panel of jurors, according to the filing that seeks to block an execution date for him. Two jurors noted the shackles in affidavits, but a court said after his conviction that nothing in the trial record showed he was visibly shackled in front of jurors, the filing states.

    In the case of Pervis Payne, who is also African American, defence attorneys sought a court order last month to find out about evidence they now want tested for DNA: a bloody comforter, bloody sheets and a bloody pillow. Payne, who has maintained his innocence, was convicted of murder for the 1987 deaths of a woman and her 2-year-old daughter. Additionally, his attorney wrote that his execution would be illegal because he's intellectually disabled.

    Tennessee resumed executions in August 2018, and four of the six prisoners put to death since have chosen the electric chair, a method no other state has used since 2009.

    Another execution is scheduled for February, where Nicholas Todd Sutton is to be executed if Gov. Bill Lee doesn't intervene in the case.

    Slatery's office has said the motion to set execution dates "is not a prerogative" and "is required by state law," citing a state Supreme Court rule that the attorney general "shall file a motion requesting that this Court set an execution date" after the prisoner fails in at least one challenge within each of the three tiers of death penalty appeals.

    The rule doesn't specify how quickly the attorney general has to request execution dates.

    Slatery requested all nine execution dates on the same day in September he sought to reinstate a death sentence for Abu-Ali Abdur' Rahman, a black man who was resentenced to life in prison in August after raising claims that racism tainted the jury selection process. The state Supreme Court has since stayed his execution date of April 2020.

    Beyond the individual cases, the death row inmates' attorneys contend that Tennessee's application of the death penalty shows "the overt racism that led to the lynching of black citizens became ingrained in the justice system."

    They cited statistics that show African Americans make up 17% of the state's population, but about half of its death row inmates.

    There also is a geographic disparity: since 2001, only eight of Tennessee's 95 counties have imposed sustained death sentences. Almost half of the men on death row are from Shelby County, which includes Memphis and is Tennessee's largest county, but only includes less than 14% of the state population, the filing said.

    https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/tenness...cism-1.4753101
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

  7. #37
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Alfred's Avatar
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    December 12, 2019

    State Supreme Court delays execution of death row inmate Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman

    The Tennessee Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the execution of a death row inmate, the first time the high court has intervened in a capital case since the state resumed executions last year.

    The high court delayed Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman's April 16 execution to allow a lower court time to consider if racial bias surrounding his trial should remove him from death row altogether.

    It's the latest ricochet in the unpredictable case of Abdur'Rahman, who has been on death row for more than 30 years.

    Abdur'Rahman, 68, was sentenced to death for his role in a 1986 stabbing that killed a Nashville man. Lingering questions of fairness have remained potent, and reanimated the case months before Abdur'Rahman's execution date.

    In August, Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk acknowledged that prosecutorial misconduct, particularly racial discrimination during jury selection, tainted the trial and the sentence.

    Funk, who took office in 2014, negotiated a new deal that canceled Abdur'Rahman's execution and replaced his death sentence with life in prison without parole.

    Allegations of misconduct and racism set the stage for latest battle

    Abdur'Rahman, also known as James L. Jones Jr., was convicted in the stabbing that killed Patrick Daniels and wounded Norma Jean Norman.

    For decades, Abdur'Rahman's legal team argued his murder trial was tainted, primarily by the actions of prosecutor John Zimmerman. Attorney Brad MacLean said Zimmerman "engaged in a pervasive pattern of suppression and deception," misrepresenting key facets of the case to the defense team and withholding others.

    Courts have occasionally been sympathetic, but they ultimately left the verdict and the death sentence in place.

    But after Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins agreed to hear arguments about the possibility that prosecutors blocked black jurors in Abdur'Rahman's case, Funk negotiated the new deal.

    Watkins approved the agreement, and in August ordered Abdur'Rahman off death row.

    Less than a month later, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery said that deal was improper, and that Abdur'Rahman should still be put to death as scheduled on April 16.

    Slatery appealed to the court of criminal appeals, and then asked for the appeal to skip to the Tennessee Supreme Court so they could keep the execution date.

    The high court denied the request to intervene ahead of time and said the appeal should proceed as normal. They granted a delay of the execution to allow more time for the appeal to be considered.

    "This is not the end of the case," Abdur'Rahman's attorney Brad MacLean said in a statement. "I greatly admire the way Abu-Ali continues to perform his good works in prison during these stressful times. We will continue to vigorously fight for his life and for justice."

    Slatery spokesperson Samantha Fisher said that, because the court ordered a stay, "there is no longer need for expedited review."

    "The Court of Criminal Appeals will now resolve the issues raised in the appeal," Fisher said in a statement.

    Supreme Court trades 'rocket docket' for lengthier appellate review

    Tennessee resumed executions in August 2018. Six condemned men have been put to death since then.

    The Tennessee Supreme Court has repeatedly declined requests to delay those executions.

    Wednesday's order was a noteworthy move for the high court, which has previously stepped in to speed up the appeals process in death penalty cases.

    In 2018, the state Supreme Court inserted itself into a legal battle over Tennessee's lethal injection method and set tight deadlines that wrapped up the appeal in time for an impending execution.

    In a blistering dissent, Justice Sharon Lee said the high court's "super-expedited schedule" shrank one part of the appellate process from about 105 days to nine days.

    Lee called the timeline "wholly inadequate," and said her colleagues had embraced a "rocket docket" to keep a steady clip of scheduled executions rolling.

    But the court's latest decision bucks that trend, allowing for a longer, more customary appeals process to proceed.

    https://eu.tennessean.com/story/news...ed/4274571002/

  8. #38
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Alfred's Avatar
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    Considering the new execution dates in Tennessee set by the Tennessee Supreme Court for June and August, what are your expectations on this case?

    It seems the court continues the pace of 1 execution per two months (Dec-Feb-Apr-Jun-Aug). Perhaps they would have set the first new date for April instead of June if they were planning to let this guy go. Now that they don't, is that a sign Jones will be executed in April?

  9. #39
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    No. They already stayed his April date. The case is thus before the Tennessee Court of Appeals and not the TNSC.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  10. #40
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Alfred's Avatar
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    Does that mean there is no chance of him being back on the schedule for April?

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