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Thread: Sir Mario Owens - Colorado

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    Sir Mario Owens - Colorado


    Vivian Wolfe, 21, and her fiance,
    Javad Marshall-Fields, 21





    Summary of Offense:

    Sentenced to death on December 7, 2008 for the 2005 ambush murders of Vivian Wolfe and her fiance, Javad Marshall-Fields, who wanted to testify against Owens.

    Also sentenced to death in the crime was Robert Ray. For more on Ray, see: http://www.cncpunishment.com/forums/...rado-Death-Row

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    December 8, 2008

    Sir Mario Owens sentenced to death by lethal injection

    By Carlos Illescas
    The Denver Post

    CENTENNIAL — Sir Mario Owens was sentenced to death Monday for the murders of Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiancée, Vivian Wolfe.

    The Judge Gerald Rafferty ordered that Owens, 23, be put to death by lethal injection in March 2009, but the sentenced must be reviewed by the Colorado Supreme Court.

    Owens will be the seond person on the state's death row.

    Owens didn't speak during the court procedure, nor did his defense team.

    Many of the victim's family members spoke out on the sentence.

    "The impact is enormous," says Ronda Fields, Javad's mother. "There are no words powerful enough to explain the pain."

    Mike Prosser, Vivian's father, said, "As far as I am concerned, he is merely a piece of society's refuse."

    Marshall-Fields had been set to testify against Owens' friend Robert Ray when Marshall-Fields and Wolfe, both 21, were ambushed and gunned down on an Aurora street in June 2005.

    Prosecutors were able to link Owens to the murder scene because of a baseball cap and DNA.

    Owens was already serving life in prison for the shooting death of Gregory Vann at an Aurora park July 4, 2004. Ray, also serving a prison sentence for Vann's death, in August will go to trial for the murders of Marshall-Fields and Wolfe. Prosecutors say Ray gave

    the order to kill the two. He also faces the death penalty.

    Prosecutors had argued that death was an appropriate sentence because the murders were a blatant attack against the criminal justice system.

    The other person on death row is 33-year-old Nathan Dunlap, who was convicted in the 1996 killing of four people at a Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant in Aurora.

    The last execution in Colorado was in 1997, when 53-year-old Gary Lee Davis was put to death for his conviction in a 1986 slaying.

    http://www.denverpost.com/breakingne...373?source=rss

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    DA Carol Chambers under fire for giving witness a car in death-penalty case

    Attorneys for Sir Mario Owens, sentenced to death for the 2005 murders of Vivian Wolfe and Javad Marshall-Fields, claim that Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney Carol Chambers and her prosecutors made several unusual deals with witnesses in the secrecy-shrouded case -- including donating a car to one witness and paying for six months' worth of auto insurance coverage -- and failed to disclose those arrangements to the defense before trial.

    Chambers defends her office's actions and denies any ethical violations. The donation of the car -- a 2002 Ford Taurus, which she describes as an "office pool car" -- was one of several steps taken to protect witnesses, she says, in a case in which Owens and co-defendant Robert Ray were charged with killing a witness.

    "I do not believe this has ever been done for any other witness," Chambers writes in an e-mail to Westword."This was an extraordinary situation where the witness was in danger, had to relocate so that she and her children would be protected, and needed transportation as a basic life necessity. This was the most cost-effective way we could come up with to meet those goals."

    But in a court document filed last week, defense attorneys contend that the gift of the car was one of several arrangements that should have been disclosed to Owens' attorneys before trial so that they could properly cross-examine witnesses and raise issues about their motives and credibility. The document alleges that other witnesses also received "concessions" or favorable plea bargains in exchange for their testimony, the details of which were hidden from the defense.

    Chambers says the allegations are "absolutely incorrect." She adds that many of the issues have been raised before in the post-conviction battle, and the court has ruled in her office's favor.

    Although she's pursued more death-penalty cases than any other current district attorney in the state, Chambers' efforts have been dogged by disclosure issues and ethical quagmires. Her attempts to obtain the ultimate penalty for David Bueno and Alejandro Perez, two inmates accused of killing another prisoner at the Limon Correctional Facility, were derailed repeatedly. Her office was removed from the Perez case after a judge raised concerns about prosecutors failing to disclose conflicts of interest and billing the Department of Corrections for some salaries and other costs of its death-penalty team. Although a higher court reinstated Chambers' office on the case, Perez was acquitted last February.

    As for Bueno, a jury convicted him but refused to impose the death penalty. But that conviction was thrown out by another judge, who blasted prosecutors for "withholding relevant and possibly exculpatory evidence." Chambers is appealing that ruling.

    The Owens-Ray prosecution was, by contrast, a stunning success, resulting in two death-penalty convictions. Largely because Marshall-Fields and Wolfe (his fiancee) were slain shortly before Marshall-Fields was slated to testify against the two men in another homicide, the case was conducted under high-security conditions, with jury selection closed to the public and witness names blacked out of court filings; defense attorneys weren't even allowed to interview some witnesses prior to trial.

    But defense attorneys now contend that prosecutors used the broad "witness protection" mandate of the trial to conceal exculpatory or damaging evidence, including information about concessions made to witnesses facing other criminal charges. Chambers responds that her office's dealings with witnesses were properly disclosed. But the timing of those disclosures is in dispute, as well as the extent to which the prosecution provided benefits to witnesses under the rubric of "protection."

    In the case of the witness who got the Taurus, the defense claims that the district attorney arranged for delivery of the car and title to her residence, paid auto fees and taxes and insurance, and even filled the gas tank. Chambers says the total value of the donation was less than $5,500, including the value of the car.

    "We assisted this witness in relocating to another state for her protection," she explains. "The witness did not have adequate means of transportation and had young children. We were advised at the time that she may have been receiving threats that may have been connected to the Owens-Ray murder cases."

    Chambers points out that the car was delivered after Owens received the death penalty. But the defense insists that discussions about providing the witness with a vehicle and meeting other financial needs began before the trial and should have been disclosed earlier to the defense.

    Other wrangles over when and in what detail information about witnesses was shared with defense attorneys promises to be a long-running theme in the Owens and Ray appeals. "We know of nothing we have misrepresented to the defense," Chambers insists.

    Ray attorney David Lane, a vocal critic of Chambers, says the car issue suggests otherwise: "Any compensation to a witness must be disclosed to the defense. That's basic law. You can't hint to a witness that you're going to provide something and then not disclose it to the defense. And witness protection is one form of compensation."

    As both Lane and Chambers know well, the journey from trial to the lethal injection room at the Colorado State Penitentiary is a long one, with many hurdles and possible wrong turns. If the courts end up finding some merit to the defense's claims, it wouldn't be the first time that a zealous prosecution ended up handing a defendant a way out of the death chamber.

    http://blogs.westword.com/latestword...to-witness.php

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    Colorado Court Upholds Death Row Conviction

    The Colorado Court of Appeals has upheld the conviction of a man on death row who killed a potential witness and his fiancee.

    The court ruled Thursday that Sir Mario Owens got a fair trial and there was no misconduct by prosecutors.

    Owens appealed his conviction, claiming 17 witnesses on probation may have received special treatment and a judge erred by limiting access to potential witnesses out of concern for their safety.

    Owens was convicted in 2008 of killing Javad Marshall-Fields and Vivian Wolfe. Marshall Fields and Wolfe -- college sweethearts who had just graduated from Colorado State University -- died in a hail of gunfire as they were driving through an Aurora intersection in June 2005. The ambush occurred in broad daylight -- just days before Marshall Fields was scheduled to testify in a murder case. Owens was accused of shooting and killing Marshall-Fields' best friend, Gregory Vann, in a Fourth of July shooting at an Aurora Park.

    Despite death threats and a "bounty" placed on his head, Marshall-Fields agreed to move forward and testify against Owens. He told his family he was scared for his life, but told detectives that had positions been reversed, Vann would have done exactly the same for him.

    Even without Marshall-Fields' testimony, Owens was found guilty of that murder and was sentenced to life in prison for killing Vann.

    In the murders of Marshall Fields and Wolfe, a judge sentenced Owens to two counts of death by lethal injections and 65 years for five other related charges, including conspiracy to commit murder and intimidation of witnesses.

    Colorado's Death Row

    There are three people on death row in Colorado.

    Owens is there along with Robert Ray, who prosecutors said was the mastermind in the shooting deaths of Marshall Fields and Wolfe.

    The third person is Nathan Dunlap, who was convicted of killing multiple people at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora.

    http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news...55/detail.html
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    Suit filed over Colorado death penalty appeals process

    The Colorado State Public Defender's office sue in federal court challenging the state's unified system of death-penalty appeals.

    The lawsuit, filed last week, comes in connection with the case of Sir Mario Owens, who was convicted in 2008 and and sentenced to die for killing Javad Marshall-Fields and Vivian Wolfe. Marshall-Fields had been scheduled to testify against Owens in a separate murder case.

    Owens' death-penalty case is the first subject to a unified state appellate process, in which conviction and post-conviction reviews are handled in a single appeal and can take no longer than two years to resolve.

    Previously, the reviews were handled one after the other and could take many years.

    The state legislature adopted the unified process in 1997 in an effort to speed up death penalty appeals. For instance, Nathan Dunlap, who is currently in the midst of a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court in his last legally guaranteed appeal, has been on death row for 16 years.

    Under a non-unified system, defendants have two avenues for appeal. The first, known as a direct appeal, analyzes the validity of a conviction or a sentence based on the information presented at trial. The second, a postconviction appeal, argues such issues as whether a defendant received competent representation and can also introduce new evidence.

    In the unified process, those avenues are taken up at the same time, though different attorneys are assigned to the two parts.

    The public defender's office argues that the unified process creates inherent conflicts of interest by pitting the lawyers on the two prongs of his appeal against one another. Lawyers on the postconviction side, for instance, may want to make arguments that undermine the direct appeal side.

    Because defendants not sentenced to death don't undergo a unified appeal, the lawsuit argues, the appeal process also unfairly singles out death-penalty defendants. "This conflict represents a grave constitutional flaw," the lawsuit states.

    The lawsuit names the 18th Judicial District Attorney's office, which prosecuted Owens, and Owens' current appellate attorneys as defendants. They have not yet responded to the suit.

    http://www.denverpost.com/breakingne...#ixzz22ospGGah
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    Sir Mario Owens: Attorneys decry secrecy in death penalty case

    Five years after an Arapahoe County jury decided that that he should be executed for murder, transcripts and other records in the case of Sir Mario Owens remain sealed under a court order that prohibits journalists, death penalty activists or even the defendant's family from viewing them -- an unprecedented level of secrecy that his attorneys claim is depriving the public of vital information about the case, including allegations of prosecution misconduct.

    In a recently filed petition to the Colorado Supreme Court, urging the release of unredacted records in the capital case, defense attorneys James Castle and Jennifer Gedde claim that "Mr. Owens has a present and powerful need to publish the facts and circumstances surrounding his case, which include many demonstrable instances of government misconduct, including withholding much favorable evidence, presenting false evidence, and destroying evidence."

    In separate trials, Owens and codefendant Robert Ray were both sentenced to death for the 2005 murders of Vivian Wolfe and her fiance, Javad Marshall-Fields; Marshall-Fields had been expected to testify against the two men in another homicide investigation. Their prosecution, one of several death-penalty cases pursued by former Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney Carol Chambers, was conducted in an atmosphere of exceptionally stringent security, with attorneys subject to gag orders, many court motions filed under seal, witness names purged from documents and transcripts denied to news organizations -- all ostensibly to protect witnesses from possible intimidation and reprisals.

    At the time, many of the measures were supported by the defense teams, who regarded the intense publicity surrounding the case as a hindrance to a fair trial. But the restraints also had the effect of muffling controversies over the defense's limited access to witnesses and evidence and some unusual moves by Chambers's office, including donating a car to one prosecution witness to aid in her relocation -- and then failing to disclose that arrangement to the defense before trial.

    The routine sealing and redacting of records was supposed to be a temporary precaution, but it extended well into the post-conviction stage. Last year, attorneys for Owens asked that the records be unsealed, arguing that the continuing court order was "contrary to the public's interest and fundamentally unfair." District Judge Gerald Rafferty refused, though, ruling that "witness protection issues" outweighed the right to know.

    Although news organizations have already published many witness names in press coverage of the trial, attorneys are still required to redact them from every pleading -- even the name of state representative Rhonda Fields, the mother of Marshall-Fields and an outspoken advocate of the death penalty.

    In their petition to the Supreme Court, Castle and Gedde point out that the prosecution has been allowed to release names and transcripts when it suited their purposes. Representative Fields and current District Attorney George Brauchler have been highly visible in the recent legislative debate over the death penalty and the furor over the reprieve Governor John Hickenlooper granted to condemned killer Nathan Dunlap, but the Owens defense has been unable to publicly air "many significant post-conviction claims that implicate the fairness, reliability, and wholesomeness of the process by which he ended up on Colorado's death row."

    Still bound by a gag order in the case, Castle declined to comment on the petition. Attorney David Lane, who still consults with the defense team on Robert Ray's case, says the extreme secrecy raises not only fair trial but First Amendment issues. "I think the Supreme Court should vacate any gag order in this case," he says. "The government is trying to kill these two men in the name of the public, and the public should be able to see exactly what's going on."

    Read the petition below.

    Sir Mario Owens Petition
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    Colo. court says death row inmate got fair trial

    The Colorado Supreme Court refused on Monday to hear an appeal challenging the conviction of a death row inmate after a witness was killed.

    Lawyers for Sir Mario Owens had asked the high court to consider an appeals court ruling that he had received a fair trial in 2007 when he was convicted of the first-degree murder of Gregory Vann in Aurora and sentenced to life without parole.

    Owens had been given an additional 64 years in prison for trying to kill Javad Marshall-Fields and Alvin Bell, who saw the attack on Vann and were shot as Owens tried to flee. Both men survived.

    Marshall-Fields was scheduled to testify against Owens in the 2004 killing, but he and his fiancee, Vivian Wolfe, were gunned down in June 2005 just days before he was to take the stand.

    After Marshall-Fields was killed, a judge limited access by his attorneys to other possible witnesses. The move was the basis of the appeal filed by lawyers for Owens, who also claimed 17 witnesses on probation may have received special treatment.

    The appeals court decision stated the judge had a right to limit defense attorneys' access to other witnesses because of possible threats to their safety.

    "To aid the defendant's right of confrontation, an accused generally has the right to know a witness's identity and address," the appeals court stated, "However, this right is not absolute. Here, the trial court noted that a witness in this case had been murdered ... and that charges were pending as a result."

    Owens was later convicted in 2008 in the slayings of Marshall-Fields and Wolfe and was sentenced to death.

    Owens' attorney, Keyonyu (Kee-ON'-ya) O'Connell, said Monday other appeals were pending with the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the Vann case.

    "We still have options," she said. She refused further comment, citing attorney-client confidentiality.

    Owens is one three men on death row in Colorado, which hasn't executed anyone in 15 years.

    Marshall-Fields and Wolfe were stopped at an intersection in the Denver suburb of Aurora when they were shot.

    Robert Ray is on death row after being convicted of ordering the slaying of Marshall-Fields. Owens was found guilty of being the triggerman. And Parish Carter was convicted in 2010 of witness intimidation after prosecutors identified him as the getaway driver.

    http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2013/...#storylink=cpy
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    Defense in death penalty cases seek to open court files

    The Colorado Supreme Court is asking prosecutors to explain why court records in the death penalty cases of two Aurora men should be kept secret.

    The move comes more than 5 years after an Arapahoe County District Court judge barred the files from public review.

    On Tuesday, the Supreme Court issued an order to attorneys of both men, Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray, to explain why they want the court files opened. In previous filings, defense attorneys have claimed misconduct by the prosecution.

    They are asking that the case files be made public, including transcripts, a registry of actions, pleadings or motions and court orders that had names blacked out.

    The court also asked for written arguments from the Colorado Bar Association, the state attorney general and the Colorado Press Association. The court set an Oct. 3 deadline.

    It's unusual that parts of the case files haven't been made public, said Denver attorney Dan Recht, who is not involved in the case. Add the fact that the Supreme Court is seeking outside opinions, including from the press association, the court action this week is a significant step in potentially getting the case open, he said.

    "This is a big deal," Recht said. "It says to us that the Supreme Court is taking this very seriously.

    "They see this as a First Amendment issue, and they want the input from the Colorado Press Association to flesh out these important issues. That's highly unusual."

    Owens and Ray are on death row for the 2005 shooting deaths of Vivian Wolfe and Javad Marshall-Fields, who was to testify against Ray in the murder a year earlier of Gregory Vann at an Aurora park.

    Attorneys for Owens and Ray declined to comment on the recent developments, citing a continued gag order.

    However, in court documents, Owens' lead attorney, Jim Castle, and his team write that the court's refusal to unseal and make names public ensures the case will remain sealed "for many years" to come.

    "His family, as public citizens, has also sought access to and disclosure of these items. His mother ... has pleaded with the district judge on behalf of the entire Owens family for access," the court document said.

    (Source: The Denver Post)
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    Today, the US Supreme Court DENIED Owens' certiorari petition.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.a...es/13-7444.htm

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    Supreme Court keeps death penalty case file sealed

    No. 13-8476

    Sir Mario Owens, Petitioner v. Colorado
    Docketed: January 31, 2014
    Linked with 13A528
    Lower Ct: Supreme Court of Colorado
    Case Nos.: (2013SA161)
    Decision Date: September 5, 2013
    Feb 6 2014 DISTRIBUTED for Conference of February 21, 2014.
    Feb 24 2014 Petition DENIED.

    The U.S. Supreme Court is refusing to order Colorado to open the case file of a man on death row.

    Attorneys for Sir Mario Owens asked the high court to find that keeping his case file sealed after his murder conviction violates the First Amendment. The judge at Owens' trial forbade distribution of the file or even of a transcript of testimony. Owens' lawyers say that keeps them from showing government misconduct in the trial.

    Media organizations also asked the Supreme Court to overturn the Colorado courts' decision. But the Supreme Court declined to consider the matter Monday.

    Owens was convicted of killing a witness in another murder trial.

    http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/sto.../#.UwuQooXqSsg
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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