Page 3 of 5 FirstFirst 12345 LastLast
Results 21 to 30 of 50

Thread: New Mexico Capital Punishment News

  1. #21
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217

    Death penalty challenges still haunt NM courts


    Three years ago and again last year, the attorney for Michael Astorga argued that because we wiped the death penalty from the state's lawbooks before Astorga was tried for murder it would amount to cruel and unusual punishment if it were still applied to him.

    The first time that argument was made was before Astorga had been convicted. The second time was before he had been sentenced.

    The New Mexico Supreme Court passed off the hot potato both times by deciding not to decide and left unsettled one of the legal wrinkles left in the wake of the Legislature's 2009 death penalty repeal.

    Astorga eventually received a life sentence, making the argument moot for him, but the court will get other chances to rule on this life-and-death issue.

    Robert Fry and Timothy Allen, both sentenced to death years ago, remain on New Mexico's figurative "death row." Fry is in Santa Fe and Allen in Los Lunas, and they are both at various stages in the drawn-out appeals process that follows every death sentence.

    Allen received the death penalty in 1995 for the strangulation of a 17-year-old girl in Flora Vista in San Juan County. The state Supreme Court last year reinstated his habeas corpus petition, which remains pending in state District Court in San Juan County.

    Fry was sentenced to death for the June 9, 2000, slaying of a 36-year-old mother of five from Shiprock, also in San Juan County. (He has been sentenced to three life terms for three other murders.) His death sentence has been upheld and his habeas corpus petition is also pending in District Court in San Juan County.

    Both inmates have the further option of federal habeas corpus petitions after they have exhausted their remedies in state court.

    Meanwhile, attorneys for both men will pursue the argument that the death penalty, once repealed in a state, violates the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

    It's an interesting argument that involves all of us, not just the two men facing the death penalty. That's because one line of the argument is that when a society - in this case us, through our lawmakers - has agreed to no longer punish by execution, carrying out a death sentence violates our collective standards of decency, which amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

    You could certainly make the case that capital punishment is unusual when you're one of two guys among a population of 2 million that can be executed by a state that has carried out exactly one execution in more than half a century.

    Juries here have rarely handed down the penalty, it has rarely been upheld on appeal and it has been very rarely carried out.

    Allen's attorney, Melissa Hill, described the chances of being put to death in New Mexico as "almost a lightning strike." That's being generous. Only one man, Terry Clark, has been killed by the state in the past 52 years. New Mexico has more than a dozen lightning deaths every decade.

    The counterargument on the prosecution side is that we spoke through our legislators when the death penalty was repealed and lawmakers were explicit in extending the repeal only to murders committed after the repeal went into effect. That isn't arbitrary, the argument goes, but the people's will.

    And on a national landscape, capital punishment is still the rule, not the exception.

    All of the half-dozen defendants who were in the court system and facing possible death sentences when the law was changed were either found not guilty, pleaded guilty to lesser charges or, in the case of Astorga, sentenced to life in prison when jurors could not agree on the death penalty.

    If some older unsolved murders were to be solved, more death penalty cases could pop up, but it's only Allen and Fry whose lives depend on the outcome of the argument now.

    http://www.correctionsone.com/capita...unt-NM-courts/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  2. #22
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    September 3, 2014

    New Mexico Supreme Court To Hear Appeals of Death Row Inmates

    SANTA FE – New Mexico’s remaining inmates sentenced to death are asking the state Supreme Court to spare them from execution because lawmakers repealed capital punishment after they were sentenced to lethal injection.

    Timothy Allen and Robert Fry contend their death sentences violate state and federal constitutional protections because New Mexico abolished capital punishment in 2009 for future murders but left it in place for them. Both men were convicted and sentenced to death for murders committed years before the repeal.

    The court will hear arguments from lawyers on Oct. 1, but a decision by the five justices probably wouldn’t be made until months later.

    No execution has been scheduled for either Fry or Allen, and both have pending habeas corpus post-conviction appeals in state District Court. The Supreme Court has previously upheld their convictions and sentences.

    Attorney General Gary King, representing the state, contends the death sentences for Fry and Allen are constitutional and should remain in place.

    The Legislature’s decision to apply the repeal to future murders “furthers the long-standing policy of ensuring that criminals are punished according to the law that existed at the time of their crimes,” Assistant Attorney General M. Victoria Wilson said in written arguments to the court.

    A group of University of New Mexico law professors and the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association are supporting the latest legal challenge brought by attorneys for Fry and Allen.

    “These capital sentences are political vestiges of an abolished state system of death. New Mexico has no compelling interest distinguishing Mr. Allen and Mr. Fry from future defendants who will escape execution because of repeal,” the defense attorneys’ group said in written arguments submitted to the court.

    Fry, the last person sentenced to death in New Mexico, was convicted of killing Betty Lee in 2000. The mother of five was stabbed and bludgeoned with a sledgehammer in a remote area of San Juan County. Fry also has been sentenced to life in prison for three other murders in 1996 and 1998.

    Allen was sentenced to die for strangling 17-year-old Sandra Phillips in northwestern New Mexico in 1994. He also was convicted of the kidnapping and attempted rape of the Flora Vista teenager.

    New Mexico’s repeal of the death penalty took effect July 1, 2009, and it applied to crimes committed after that date. Lethal injection was replaced with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    Then Gov. Bill Richardson didn’t commute the death sentences of Fry and Allen. At the time of the repeal, one potential death-penalty case was pending. Michael Astorga was later sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering a Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputy in 2006.

    Lawyers for Fry and Allen contend their clients’ death sentences, in light of the 2009 repeal, violate state and federal constitutional provisions against cruel and unusual punishment and equal-protection guarantees.

    “Executing Mr. Fry but not other members of the same class of offenders based only on a date is arbitrary and freakish” and violates the state constitution, Fry’s lawyer, Kathleen McGarry, said in written arguments.

    She said Wednesday in a telephone interview that Connecticut’s highest court is considering a similar legal challenge involving death-row inmates sentenced before that state abolished the death penalty in 2012.

    New Mexico’s last execution was in 2001. Child-killer Terry Clark’s execution was the first in the state in 41 years.

    http://www.santafenewmexican.com/new...9a5347dca.html

  3. #23
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875
    NM Gov. renews call for death penalty as justice system reform weighed

    By Ryan Luby, Chris Ramirez and Caleb James
    KOB Eyewitness News 4

    State leaders, including Governor Susana Martinez, discussed possible solutions to New Mexico's beleaguered justice system in the wake of an investigation about the state's 'boomerang thugs.'

    KOB revealed how there are only 12 officers
    tasked with locating roughly 1,700 absconders and learned many criminals charged with child sex crimes have mastered the art of receiving sweetheart plea deals.

    Commit a violent crime, there should be expectations -- courtrooms, fines and handcuffs. However, the system that's supposed to uphold those expectations, and keep the worst of the worst criminals locked up, has fallen apart.

    "So, the problem isn't throwing people in jail, or sending people to prison, it's who we send to prison," Rep. Moe Maestas, D-Albuquerque, said.

    He's one of the state justice system's bigger critics. He's been calling for reforms for years.

    "We need swift and certain justice," Maestas said.

    He said too many criminals often languish in jail cells awaiting trial, leading judges to sign off on plea deals that raise eyebrows.

    Maestas said the system is backwards when it comes to prosecuting drug crimes versus violent crimes. He said drug users are demonized, in need of help, as violent criminals go free.

    "To prosecute violent crimes, it is very labor intensive," Maestas said. "You have to build a relationship with the alleged victim, and that's just not being done."

    Andrew Romero. Gary Coca. Abel Monje-Cardoca. They went through a system that allows violent people to fall off the grid time and again. Catching them again is nearly impossible because there's hardly anyone to do it.

    Corrections Department Secretary Gregg Marcantel is just as frustrated as the 12 people on his fugitive task force unit responsible for trying to round up the absconders.

    "It's a never-ending game, a revolving door," one of them said.

    That comes as Secretary Marcantel struggles to keep people working in the state's prisons.

    "I hate to admit this, but I compete with McDonald's in Santa Fe for my staff," he said.

    Marcantel said some prospective employees to corrections facilities in Santa Fe would prefer to flip burgers for the city's minimum wage of $10.84 rather than earn slightly more, $12.35, to be a corrections officer cadet.

    KOB approached Governor Martinez, a longtime prosecutor, to hear her thoughts on a justice system that seems badly broken.

    Last year, she supported a pay raise for some corrections officers, which helped reduce job vacancies in one office from 50 percent to five percent. Her office said it improved the career ladder and offered promotion opportunities for probation and parole officers.

    Martinez also wants to beef up the fugitive task force unit to send a message to absconders.

    "We have got to make sure that they understand there's a unit out there looking for you," she said. "[The problem is] when you abscond, there's no consequence to absconding."

    She said lawmakers should step in for once to make laws and penalties tougher while allocating more resources to the Corrections Department on the whole.

    Martinez also said she wants lawmakers to reinstate the death penalty in New Mexico, which was abolished in 2009. She said, in her experience, criminal offenders feel more compelled to cooperate with investigators when confronted with it.

    She points to the case against Andrew Romero as a good reason why the death penalty is necessary.

    Martinez is the wife of a longtime police officer.

    "When I see my husband walk out the door, you don't know they're coming back." she said. "And I want to know that there will be justice at the end of the day if he doesn't come back because someone killed him."

    Martinez agrees violent criminals should expect to be punished just as the rest of us expect to be safe.

    http://www.kob.com/article/stories/s...l#.VarKutBqubo
    "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

  4. #24
    Senior Member Member OperaGhost84's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    Volusia County, FL
    Posts
    236
    Only one death row inmate has ever murdered someone after sentencing (Donald "Pee-Wee" Gaskins). It's a true fact and you can look it up.
    I am vehemently against Murder. That's why I support the Death Penalty.

  5. #25
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Stro07's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2012
    Location
    Austria
    Posts
    843
    Wasn't there also Robert Vickers in Arizona?

  6. #26
    Senior Member Frequent Poster joe_con's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2014
    Posts
    292
    Many death row inmates have murdered someone after they have been sentenced to death. Robert Vickers in Arizona, Donald Gaskins in South Carolina, Cecil Johnson in Tennessee, Thomas Knight in Florida, and many more in Texas. Murderers will continue to murder until they are executed.

  7. #27
    Senior Member Member OperaGhost84's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    Volusia County, FL
    Posts
    236
    Let me rephrase: None of the thousand plus Death Row inmates who've been executed have ever murdered again. It's a fact and you can look it up.
    I am vehemently against Murder. That's why I support the Death Penalty.

  8. #28
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875

    Hill, (l.), is the only surviving one of the three men accused of killing Rosenbloom (r.).


    Police in New Mexico hope diplomatic thaw ends cop killer's Cuban exile

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – The diplomatic thaw between the U.S. and Cuba has one New Mexico official ready to pony up for a plane ticket -- to bring back a cop killer who has been living in the island nation since hijacking a plane there in 1973.

    Charlie Hill, now 65, is one of an estimated 70 U.S. fugitives who escaped American justice by fleeing to Cuba, and Pete Kassetas, commander of the New Mexico State Police, says he is more than willing to fly him back to face the music. Hill was one of three black militants who killed a state trooper in 1971, in a case similar to that of the better-known Joanne Chesimard.

    "I'm cautiously optimistic he'll be extradited back to the U.S.," Kassetas said, adding that he would pay for the trip himself.

    Cuba has not said whether it will consider extraditing Hill and others back to face justice in the U.S. for crimes they committed a generation ago at a time when the U.S. was experiencing profound and violent social upheaval. In Hill's case, he and two accomplices in the militant group Republic of New Afrika were stopped by New Mexico State Police officer Robert Rosenbloom outside Albuquerque. The trio, which also included Michael Finney and Ralph Goodwin, had been suspected of running weapons and explosives through the state. One suspect killed Rosenbloom, though it has never been determined which one. After hiding out for three weeks, the three stole a tow truck and drove to the Albuquerque airport, where they hijacked a plane to Cuba.

    New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez in December renewed a request for the extradition of Hill, and has sought help from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice in the matter, Martinez spokesman Mike Lonergan said Thursday.

    Safe in Cuba for the past four decades, Hill has from time to time spoke to the press. In 2007, he told The New York Times he didn't expect to be forced to go back to the U.S. to pay his debt, but didn't rule it out.

    "I don’t think there will be much change if Fidel dies," Hill said. "There might be, but I think it’s 60-40 that not much will happen. If it does, well, what can I do?"

    Finney and Goodwin have since died, which puts Hill alone in the sights of Kassetas.

    Chesimard, now 67, and also known as Assata Shakur, was charged with killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973, and fled to Cuba after escaping from prison in 1979. She is the first woman added to the FBI Most Wanted list and has been a perennial fixture on the FBI Most Wanted list with a $2 million bounty on her head. Like Kassetas with Hill, New Jersey law enforcement authorities, as well as Gov. Chris Christie, have demanded her return.

    Other U.S. criminals hiding out in Cuba include FALN member bomb maker William Morales, who has been enjoying sanctuary in Cuba for more than 30 years. He was charged with detonating more than 100 bombs, mostly in New York City. He was arrested in 1978 after blowing his hands off in a Queens safehouse, but later escaped from Bellevue Hospital to Mexico where he was briefly jailed but was handed over to Cuban officials in 1983.

    Cuba and the U.S. re-established diplomatic relations Monday and have begun talks about law enforcement cooperation but those talks are in highly preliminary stages. Cuban officials have explicitly said they are unwilling to extradite any fugitives like Hill, whose cases they consider political because they involve black and Latino militants whom Castro offered asylum during the Cold War.

    "The return from Cuba of fugitives from U.S. justice is an issue of long-standing concern to the United States that will be addressed in the broader context of normalizing relations," Bernadette Meehan, a National Security Council spokeswoman, said in a statement in April shortly after relations cooled. "We believe this is the best method for finally bringing these cases to a successful resolution, and that they are not a bar to rescission of Cuba's state sponsor designation."

    http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/07/26...r-cuban-exile/
    "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

  9. #29
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875
    Editorial: Death-penalty repeal put guards’, cops’ lives on line

    Albuquerque Journal
    The Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board

    Now that a plot by convicted murderers to kill the head of the New Mexico prison system and his top intelligence chief has been uncovered by the FBI, it’s worth harkening back to New Mexico’s repeal of the death penalty and then-Gov. Bill Richardson’s celebrated trip to the Roman Colosseum to bask in the glow of humanitarianism.

    In March 2009, the Journal recommended that state legislators and the governor preserve the death penalty at minimum for the murder of law enforcement and corrections officers, because “when you put on a uniform and a badge you should also be able to put on a little extra protection against people who would kill you just because you wear that uniform and that badge. You shouldn’t be set up and abandoned by a system that puts your life on the line – and no one else’s.”

    But the Legislature and Richardson fully repealed the death penalty that year, and in doing so, they set up and abandoned the likes of Corrections Secretary Gregg Marcantel and his Security Threat Intelligence Unit chief Dwayne Santiestevan. Now a federal indictment charges three convicted and incarcerated murderers with conspiring with a convicted drug trafficker on the outside to kill Marcantel and Santiestevan.

    And why not? They’ve got nothing to lose.

    Anthony “Pup” Ray Baca, 52, Roy Paul Martinez, 43, Robert Martinez, 51, and Christopher Garcia, 40, have pleaded not guilty to the charges; Garcia isn’t charged in the conspiracy to kill Santiestevan. All four are alleged members of the Syndicato de Nuevo Mexico, a prison gang formed in the aftermath of the deadly 1980 New Mexico state penitentiary riot.

    It bears noting that while 33 inmates were gruesomely murdered in that riot, no guards were killed. New Mexico had the death penalty then, with killing a law enforcement officer in the line of duty one of the “aggravated circumstances” that made a crime death-eligible.

    Now SNM, New Mexico’s largest and most violent prison gang known for ordering “hits” on fellow inmates, has allegedly branched out and up when it comes to targets. That’s likely because state law no longer differentiates between the murder of an incarcerated killer and a law-abiding citizen entrusted with keeping society safe from killers. But it should.

    In the A&E TV series “Behind Bars: Rookie Year,” a New Mexico corrections officer says, “The No. 1 most important part about prison gangs is ‘mess with them and God only knows what will happen.’ I know a lot of these guys; they have the ability to reach out and touch somebody.”

    According to the federal indictment, and thanks in part to New Mexico no longer protecting its law enforcement and corrections officers from murderers, they have tried.

    This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.

    http://www.abqjournal.com/732504/opi...s-on-line.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

  10. #30
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2015
    Location
    New Jersey, unfortunately
    Posts
    4,382
    Gov. to push for return of New Mexico death penalty

    SANTA FE – In the aftermath of the recent shooting death of a Hatch police officer, Gov. Susana Martinez said Wednesday she will push during next year’s 60-day legislative session to reinstate New Mexico’s death penalty – at the least for child-killers and those convicted of murdering law enforcement officers.

    Martinez, a former prosecutor, backed legislation to reimpose the death penalty immediately after taking office in 2011, but the proposal stalled that year in the Democratic-controlled Legislature, and the issue has not been part of the governor’s agenda in recent years.

    In a statement Wednesday, the two-term Republican governor told the Journal, “A society that fails to adequately protect and defend those who protect all of us is a society that will be undone and unsafe.

    “People need to ask themselves, if the man who ambushed and killed five police officers in Dallas had lived, would he deserve the ultimate penalty? How about the heartless violent criminals who killed Officer Jose Chavez in Hatch and left his children without their brave and selfless dad? Do they deserve the ultimate penalty? Absolutely.”

    Nationally, there’s been a movement away from the death penalty in recent years. Nineteen states, including New Mexico, currently do not have death penalty laws on their books, and four states – Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland and Nebraska – have abolished capitol punishment in the past five years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

    Allen Sanchez, executive director of the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Wednesday that the Roman Catholic Church will fight the effort to reinstate the death penalty.

    “We’ve been through this debate,” Sanchez said in an interview. “As sad as (the Hatch police officer) shooting is, we believe the governor is just trying to create a distraction from what’s going on in New Mexico with poverty and need.”

    The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico also vowed to oppose the latest death penalty effort, which could emerge as a campaign issue during this year’s election cycle. All 112 legislative seats are up for election, and control of both the state House and Senate are at stake.

    Rep. Antonio “Moe” Maestas, D-Albuquerque, called Wednesday’s announcement politically driven and unwise, given a looming state budget shortfall.

    “If she truly believes the death penalty is good public policy, then she should attach an appropriation to (the bill) and we can have a debate on that,” Maestas said of Martinez.

    Slaying of officer

    The governor’s announcement that she will renew her push to reinstate capital punishment comes less than a week after Hatch police officer Jose Chavez was shot and killed after making a traffic stop.

    Jesse Hanes, a fugitive from Ohio, has been charged with murder in connection with Chavez’s death. He also faces federal firearms charges. He was traveling with an accomplice on a cross-country trip funded by robbing banks and selling methamphetamine at the time their vehicle was pulled over, prosecutors have alleged.

    Third Judicial District Attorney Mark D’Antonio, whose office filed the murder charge, indicated Wednesday that he would be receptive to reinstating the death penalty in certain cases.

    “My priority is prosecuting the death of Officer Chavez, but I’m open to conversations about reinstating the death penalty,” D’Antonio said in a statement. “The death penalty should be the last resort for the worst of the worst and in certain situations like for cop-killers.”

    Meanwhile, Martinez also cited the May killing of an 11-year-old Navajo girl near Shiprock in her statement about the death penalty. In that case, Tom Begaye Jr. is accused of kidnapping and murdering Ashlynne Mike.

    “I think of poor Ashlynne and the horror she went through,” the governor told the Journal . “Does the monster who killed her deserve the ultimate punishment? Yes – absolutely.”

    Although legislation to reinstate the death penalty has not been drafted, the Governor’s Office indicated it could apply to only certain types of cases.

    “At minimum, we can all agree that it should apply to cop-killers and child-murderers,” Martinez spokesman Chris Sanchez said.

    2009 repeal

    New Mexico had the death penalty on its books for years, but then-Gov. Bill Richardson signed legislation in 2009 repealing capital punishment and replacing it with a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    Opponents of the death penalty had argued that capital punishment was not cost-effective, and Richardson, a Democrat, said at the time he signed the repeal bill into law that he did not have sufficient confidence in the criminal justice system to be the final arbiter of who lived and who died.

    However, the bill applied only to crimes committed after its effective date and several inmates remain on death row in New Mexico.

    Before abolishing the death penalty, New Mexico had executed just one inmate since 1960. That happened in 2001, when Terry Clark received a lethal injection after having been convicted of raping and killing Dena Lynn Gore, a 9-year-old Artesia girl.

    http://www.abqjournal.com/828154/gov...h-penalty.html
    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

Page 3 of 5 FirstFirst 12345 LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •