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    Texas Capital Punishment News

    Attorneys seeking a stay of execution for condemned inmates must now file their motions at least 48 hours before a scheduled execution, under a new rule adopted by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

    The rule allows for late filings if lawyers can show "good cause" that meeting the deadline was "physically, legally or factually impossible."

    The court generated controversy last September when Presiding Judge Sharon Keller ordered the court clerk's office closed at 5 p.m., though a condemned inmate's lawyers asked for more time to file an appeal after having computer troubles.

    The inmate, Michael Richard, was executed for a Harris County murder later that night.

    Following that incident, the court announced it would accept emergency e-mail filings in death penalty cases. Presumably, that wouldn't be changed by the new rule, provided attorneys demonstrated "good cause" if the e-mail filing were after the 48-hour deadline.

    Keith Hampton, a spokesman for the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, said most filing delays are "generated by the process itself."

    That is, a lawyer can't file for a stay with the Court of Criminal Appeals until after a lower state court or a federal court has ruled. Hampton said he hopes the "good cause" exception would apply in those cases.

    " 'What is good cause?' would be the next question," he said.

    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...n/5861222.html

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    Veto threat alters death-penalty bill

    Facing a veto threat from Gov. Rick Perry, members of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee voted this evening to drop a controversial provision from a bill designed to keep defendants from being executed who were involved in a capital crime, did no killing themselves.

    As amended, House Bill 2267 now will require only separate trials for co-defendants in capital murder cases, where 1 defendant committed the murder and the other did not.

    Advocacy groups immediately decried the last-minute change, but said they still supported separate trials.

    As approved by the House last week, the bill would have been significant change in the state’s death-penalty law, one that was vehemently opposed by prosecutors and cheered by death-penalty opponents.

    Under current law, known as "the law of parties," multiple defendants in a capital murder case can face execution, even if they did not pull the trigger.

    Texas has been criticized nationally in past years for cases in which the triggerman cut a deal with police and escaped execution, after testifying against a co-defendant who did not pull the trigger but was executed.

    Prosecutors have argued that if defendants participate together in a crime, even if one stands and watches an accomplice commit murder, they should be held equally liable.

    "We wanted that provision to stay in, but the Governor’s Office made it clear they would veto the bill if that went through," said state Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen. "At least we're changing it so co-defendants will have to be tried separately. You won't taint an accomplice by having them sit beside the triggerman in court at the same trial."

    While Hinojosa said he was not satisfied with the change, "we're not going to get any progress on this area of law until we get another governor. I realize that, so we do what we can."

    After the disputed wording was deleted, the bill was passed unanimously by the committee, the last stop before the measure will come for a vote by the full Senate.

    When the measure passed the House last Friday, its sponsors tagged it the "Kenneth Foster Jr. Act," after a man whose death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Perry in 2007.

    Foster was sentenced to die as a co-defendant in a case, even though he did not kill anyone. He was convicted in a trial with the killer.

    A similar case involving a condemned co-defendant, Jeff Wood, has been championed as a reason to change the law. Wood remains on death row, after his co-defendant — the killer — has been executed.

    "It will be an important reform to require separate trials in capital cases, but we will be disappointed if the provision to prohibit the state from seeking the death penalty in law of parties cases is removed from the bill. People who do not kill anyone should not be punished by death," Scott Cobb, president of Texas Moratorium Network, a death-penalty opposition group, said before the committee's vote.

    "This bill is very important because it touches the lives of innocent people that did not kill and are waiting to be executed for crimes that they did not commit."

    (source: Austin American-Statesman)

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    Two bills in House would end death penalty in Tx

    Two new bills filed in theTexas House of Representatives this session would completely eliminate the death penalty.

    Lawmakers say whether you're for it or against it housing death row inmates is just too expensive.

    Texas leads the nation in the number of executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

    314 inmates are currently on death row in Texas.

    According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice on average the cost to house an inmate is around $37.03 a day versus the $49.54 a day is costs for a death row inmate.

    Representative Jessica Farrar has filed one of the two bills this session that would eliminate the death penalty altogether.

    http://www.ketknbc.com/news/two-bill...-penalty-in-tx

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    Spotlight on Spending: Capital murder cases

    CORPUS CHRISTI — It cost Nueces County 50 times more on average to pay for court-appointed attorneys in capital murder cases last year than other types of cases.

    For the last fiscal year, the county paid about $119,000 to defense attorneys in five capital murder cases. That's an average of about $24,000 a case. Court appointments in other criminal cases cost the county an average of $480 a case that year.

    But capital murder cases are rare compared with the thousands of other cases in which indigent defendants require court-appointed lawyers. Lawyers can be appointed in many situations including in criminal cases for adults and juveniles, mental health hearings, Child Protective Services cases, guardian and probate cases and appellate cases.

    The sheer volume of those cases is what made up the bulk of the $3.9 million the county spent last year in appointed attorney fees.

    Some years there aren't any capital murder trials but there still are costs because court-appointed lawyers may be preparing for upcoming trials or working on appeals. Those attorneys also may wait to submit their bills until after a case is completed, which may be months from the time they were appointed.

    The current fiscal year has a budget of $150,000, but so far nothing has been paid for court-appointed attorneys in capital murder cases, according to officials with the county auditor's office.

    The county, which provided the information under the Texas Public Information Act, begins its new fiscal year Oct. 1. Lawyers were appointed this year in at least two new capital murder cases.

    One case involves a Corpus Christi couple accused in the death of the woman's 21-month-old son.

    Lorraine Rodriguez, 24, and Juan Javier "J.J." Garza, 22, were indicted on capital murder charges in May related to the Jan. 1 death of Texas Ruiz. Both have pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors announced at a hearing last month they likely wouldn't pursue the death penalty.

    Another case involves 21-year-old Jacob Gonzalez, who was arrested in May on suspicion of three capital murder counts in the shooting deaths of three women. His case has not yet been presented to a grand jury, according to court records.

    About $220,000 was spent in fiscal 2008-09, the most paid out in the past five years. The year before that, the total was $50,801. Four years ago, the costs dipped to a low of about $16,000.

    Capital murder carries only two punishment options — life in prison without parole or the death penalty.

    But there are few instances in which a person accused in a killing can be charged with capital murder.

    Some examples of capital murder include when the person murdered was a law enforcement officer or firefighter on duty, a child younger than 6 or if more than one person is killed in the same crime.

    Other instances include when a person is accused of killing for money, killing a judge in retaliation or committing a murder during another crime such as kidnapping, robbery, rape or arson.

    Capital murder defendants who can afford it can hire any lawyer they want no matter their experience.

    But when it comes to indigent defendants facing the death penalty, only a handful of attorneys in the area are eligible to be appointed.

    Judges are required to appoint at least two attorneys to defend an indigent person in capital murder cases in which prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Death penalty cases automatically are appealed directly to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin. Indigent defendants are entitled to have one attorney appointed for direct appeals.

    Lawyers who want to be on the list of qualified attorneys for the 11-county region must apply and be selected by a committee. Those chosen attorneys, who are required to be experienced in criminal law and trying felony cases, must continue their legal education to be recertified each year. That includes periodic training and courses on death penalty cases.

    As of April, 19 attorneys were eligible to be a lead attorney on a death penalty case in this region. Of those, five are based in Nueces County. The rest are from Hidalgo and Cameron counties.

    Six of 13 lawyers qualified only to assist in those cases are from Nueces County. Six lawyers also are eligible to be appointed to handle direct appeals, two of which are in Nueces County.

    Corpus Christi attorney Richard "Rick" Rogers, who has handled about 20 capital murder cases in his career, said defending a person facing death is a huge responsibility that is time consuming and exhaustive.

    The high-stakes, lengthy process dissuades many criminal defense lawyers from taking on the task, he said.

    He pointed out that unlike other criminal cases in which jury selection typically lasts a few hours, it can take a week or longer to pick a jury in a death penalty case.

    That's because attorneys are required to question each potential juror and find out their beliefs on the death penalty.

    The time and expertise needed for the task is why appointed attorneys in those cases are paid a higher rate than in other situations.

    The rates the county pays in capital murder cases depend on whether prosecutors seek the death penalty.

    In cases where the death penalty is pursued, lead attorneys are paid $200 an hour while lawyers who assist are paid $150 an hour.

    When the prosecution doesn't pursue the death penalty, court-appointed attorneys are paid the same rates as in any other criminal case. In those instances, an attorney could be paid $800 to $1,500 for each day of trial depending on the rate the trial judge chooses. They also could bill $100 an hour for any other court time and $60 an hour for out-of-court work.

    The county also has a flat-fee scale for attorneys handling other types of cases that relies on the degree of offense.

    BY THE NUMBERS

    Here is what Nueces County has paid for court-appointed attorneys in capital murder cases.

    Fiscal year Cost

    2005-06 $198,497

    2006-07 $16,126

    2007-08 $50,802

    2008-09 $220,018

    2009-10 $119,148

    2010-11 $0*

    *As of July 13 ($150,000 is budgeted for the 2010-11 fiscal year)

    New fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

    Source: Nueces County Auditor’s Office

    ON DEATH ROW

    Six inmates from Nueces County are on death row:

    Larry Hatten originally was sentenced in 1996 for the 1995 shooting death of 5-year-old Isaac Jackson. The sentence was overturned by the criminal appeals court, but he was given the death sentence again in 1998.

    Daniel Lee Lopez was sentenced last year for killing Corpus Christi police officer Lt. Stuart Alexander, who was struck March 11, 2009, while placing a spike strip across a road to stop a high-speed pursuit.

    John Henry Ramirez was sentenced in 2008 for the July 19, 2004, stabbing of Pablo Castro, a convenience store clerk who was stabbed 29 times and robbed of $1.25.

    Martin Robles was sentenced in 2003 for the 2002 killings of John Commisky and Jesus Gonzalez, both 19. His execution date has been set for Aug. 10.

    Jose Villegas was sentenced in 2002 for the January 2001 killings of 3-year-old Jacob Salazar; Jacob’s mother, Erida Perez Salazar, also known as Erida Rosales; and her mother, Alma Perez.

    Richard Vasquez was sentenced in 1999 for the March 1998 killing of 4-year-old Miranda Lopez.

    http://www.caller.com/news/2011/jul/...-murder-cases/

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    Perry's 200th Execution Sparks Worldwide Protest

    Dozens of death penalty opponents gathered on the steps of the Texas Capitol Tuesday evening to protest the 200th execution under Gov. Rick Perry, which was scheduled for 6 p.m.

    Perry's approval of the execution of Terry Lee Hankins marks the highest number of executions performed by any governor in American history. Hankins, who shot his wife and child in their sleep, has previously described himself as a "non-caring monster."

    Austin's protest took place in conjunction with similar protests taking places in the country and around the world, including Houston, Albuquerque, Liepzig, German and Paris, France.

    The Austin protestors, holding signs and placards, crowded the Capitol’s entrance along Congress Avenue. A symbolic "burial" took place where 200 candles were placed one by one in a cardboard coffin. The names of each person executed, and the crime they had committed was announced at the sound of a bell.

    Alexis Konevich, a philosophy senior at St. Edwards University and intern for the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said executions were ethically and morally wrong and do not support her personal moral beliefs.

    "By the standards of our Constitution, I believe it is cruel and unusual punishment," Konevich said.

    Scott Cobb, president of the Texas Moratorium Network said the protests, organized by anti-execution organizations, served to demonstrate that people are opposed to the use of the death penalty in Texas.

    "Texas just executes more people than other states," Cobb said. "When you travel abroad, and you say you are from Texas, the 1st thing that comes to mind is executions and maybe cowboys."

    Cobb said he would be protesting outside the Huntsville prison where Texas executes those on death row.

    "I think that people will have an effect on public opinion and policy makers," Cobb said. Kristin Houlé, the director for the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, who was present at the Capitol’s protest, said as people become more educated on the topic and understand the complexity of the practice, support for the death penalty is starting to wane.

    "You can't help but feel a sense of sadness for the lose of life on both sides," Houlé said 6 minutes before Terry Hankins was scheduled to die.

    (source: University of Texas Daily Texan)

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    House Panel Considers Bills on Death Penalty

    AUSTIN, Texas (AP) State lawmakers are considering bills to change the state death penalty and alter procedures in capital felony cases.

    One proposal before a state House committee Tuesday would create a commission to study capital punishment and suspend the death sentence until it completes its study.

    The committee will also hear testimony on a proposal to amend state law to allow defendants to have separate trials if both are being tried for a capital felony.

    A statute known as the law of parties allows a person to be tried for a capital offense and possibly face the death penalty even if they didn't physically commit the crime. The bill authored by state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, would prohibit death sentences in such cases.

    http://www2.wnct.com/news/2011/mar/2...lty-ar-902373/

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    Harris County loses state lead in executions

    Texas prison records show effect of 2005’s life-without-parole option

    Long the state's leader in sending convicts to death row, Harris County has fallen behind both Bexar and Tarrant counties in the number of death sentences it imposes, an analysis of eight years of records shows.

    Texas' final death sentence of the year came eight days before Christmas for inmate Jerry Martin, condemned for slaying a 59-year-old female prison guard by ramming her horse during an escape attempt in Walker County.

    Martin's case brought Texas' total to a historic low of nine new death sentences in 2009 — including cases scattered around the state but none from Harris County.

    Since a new life-without-parole law took effect in 2005, Harris County — with a national reputation for pursuing capital punishment and home to the fourth-largest city in America, with a population of nearly 4 million people — has sent fewer inmates to death row than Tarrant or Bexar counties, urban counties that include Fort Worth and San Antonio, respectively. Tarrant County's population is about 1.7 million; Bexar's is 1.6 million, U.S. Census records show.

    Bexar and Tarrant each sent eight newly convicted killers to death row in the four years since the law took effect, state prison data show. In the same period, larger Harris and Dallas counties sent six apiece, based on the Chronicle's analysis of Texas Department of Criminal Justice death row arrivals.

    Those tallies don't include killers, five in Texas in 2009, who remained on death row after their convictions or sentences were overturned on appeal but who were later resentenced to death.

    Texas was the last of the nation's 35 death penalty states to adopt life without parole as an alternative in capital cases. The law offered a legal guarantee to jurors and prosecutors alike that convicted killers sentenced to an isolation cell in lieu of an execution chamber could never be freed.

    Statewide, only about 50 inmates have been added to death row since the law took effect Sept. 1, 2005. In contrast, from September 2001 to September 2005 — the four years before the law was enacted — 90 were sentenced to death.

    The post-life-without-parole decline in death sentences exceeds 40 percent.

    State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, attributed long-term declines in death sentences to a “broader change” in public opinion driven by recent death row exonerations.

    “While Texas' 2005 life-without-parole law may have driven down death sentences even further, the fact is that death sentences have been steadily dropping throughout the country this decade,” he said.

    Texas remains the center for U.S. executions, carrying out 24 of the nation's 52 in 2009, the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center reported Dec. 18.

    But California led all states in imposing 29 death sentences and executing none. Its death row population stands at 697.

    Experts agree that the life-without-parole option has affected both Texas prosecutors' decisions to seek death and juries' decisions to impose the death sentence. But its effect appears to vary from case to case and place to place.
    Supreme Court rulings

    One 2009 death sentence came in February for Raul Cortez, who pretended to be looking for a lost puppy in 2004 and then brutally executed four people in a suburban McKinney home. But a sentence of life without parole went to another man who killed three members of a family on their remote farm near Pampa in 2005, after a Lubbock jury deadlocked over his proposed death sentence in October.

    Roe Wilson, a prosecutor who has long overseen death row appeals for Harris County, agreed the state's life-without-parole law likely has reduced death sentences. But she also cited recent Supreme Court rulings that banned executions of those convicted for murders committed before age 18 and of mentally impaired offenders with low IQs who meet certain criteria.

    Williamson County prosecutor John Bradley, who heads the Texas Forensic Science Commission, argues that widespread turnover in prosecution offices statewide, including in Dallas and Harris counties, likely played the greatest role in recent reductions in death sentences.

    No one disputes Texas' life-without-parole law has had another, more measurable impact.
    Welcome to ‘life row'

    Already, the 4-year-old law has created a kind of “life row” — a perpetual population of convicted killers and accomplices who can never win reductions in their sentence regardless of behavior, youth , mental deficiency or other factors. This group appears to be growing faster than death row itself.

    Texas' death row population stands at 332, TDCJ data show.

    As of Nov. 30, a total of 226 inmates were serving life without parole.

    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...n/6788682.html

    ************************************************** ****


    JURIES DECIDED THESE NINE DESERVE TO DIE

    Nine Texas men were sentenced to death in 2009:

    Jerry Martin: Walker County (tried in Leon County). Killed a 59-year-old prison guard.

    Fabian Hernandez: El Paso County. Killed ex-wife and her friend.

    Demontrell Miller: Smith County. Fatally beat his girlfriend's 2-year-old son.

    Paul Devoe: Travis County. Murdered two women as part of a six-person, two-state homicidal rampage.

    James Broadnax: Dallas County. Shot and killed two men.

    Armando Leza: Bexar County. Robbed and killed a disabled woman.

    Christian Olsen: Brazos County. Broke into a home and murdered a woman with a metal bar.

    Erick Davila: Tarrant County. Opened fire at a birthday party, killing a 5-year-old girl and her grandmother.

    Raul Cortez: Collin County. Killed a family of four in a home invasion.

    Sources: Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the Death Penalty Information Center, news reports and interviews.

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    Death-penalty trigger increase gets OK

    Legislation that would raise the age from 6 to 10 for which a child killer can be charged with the death penalty was approved this morning by the Texas Senate.

    Senate Bill 377 by state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, would bring Texas closer in line with other states, most of which have age 12 as the age-based trigger for capital murder charges.

    If victims are under that age, a murderer can be more readily charged with capital murder.

    For several years, Texas has had the youngest age — at 6.

    Huffman said the change “brings in ages 6, 7, 8 and 9 who have been murdered and makes it a capital crime to murder children those ages,” she said.

    A Houston case highlighted the need for the change, other senators said.

    The measure now goes to the House for consideration.

    http://www.statesman.com/blogs/conte..._increase.html

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    Lubbock Co program for capital murder expanding almost statewide

    Lubbock's Public Defender program is expanding to become almost a fully statewide program. County Commissioners on Monday are expected to approve the expansion paid for by a state grand of $3.8 million.

    "We did such a good job that now we're getting a state grant to expand," says Commissioner Bill McCay.

    It started with Lubbock and surrounding counties as a way to share the cost of an attorney in capital murder/death penalty cases. It now includes counties along the Texas/Mexico border. After Monday's vote it will include all parts of the state except North Central and Northeast Texas.

    Currently there are offices in Lubbock, Amarillo, and Midland.

    According to David Slayton, Lubbock County Director of Court Administration, the Public Defender will soon have offices in Austin and Houston. The remaining parts of Texas could be included in 2013.

    http://www.kcbd.com/story/15545818/l...most-statewide

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    TDCJ wants to block release of lethal injection drug info

    The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is refusing to disclose the size of its stock of a key pharmaceutical used in executions, saying doing so would endanger its drug makers and suppliers.

    The charge comes in a brief filed with the Texas Attorney General's Office in response to a December query by an British newspaper concerning the contents of state's death house medicine chest. The agency said releasing such information would provide ammunition for Reprieve, a British anti-death penalty group that successfully has pressured drug makers to stop selling to executioners.

    Likening Reprieve's campaigns to those of violent prison gangs, the brief written by TDCJ Assistant General Counsel Patricia Fleming asserts that releasing information "creates a substantial risk of physical harm to our supplier. ... It is not a question of if, but when, Reprieve's unrestrained harassment will escalate into violence..."

    TDCJ is seeking authorization not to answer questions posed in a December public information request by Ed Pilkington, the New York correspondent for The Guardian, a national British newspaper. An attorney general's response is expected this month.

    Pilkington sought to determine how much pentobarbital, one of three drugs used in executions, the death house had in stock. He also asked how the agency met requirements that a second "back up" dose of lethal drugs be available at executions.

    "I was very surprised by the language they chose to use, which was pretty inflammatory, really," Pilkington said. "Obviously, there is an international disagreement over the death penalty. ... Usually that discourse is conducted in a civilized manner."

    He called the claim that the prison system's drug suppliers were in jeopardy, "pretty far-fetched."

    'Public interest'

    Joseph Larsen, a lawyer for the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said Pilkington's questions go to the "heart of how effectively TDCJ performs its official functions."

    "The whole idea behind the Texas Public Information Act is that the governmental bodies do not get to control the information that underlies political discussion," he said. "Specifically, the governmental body does not even get to ask why a requestor wants certain information. How then can a governmental body base its argument for withholding on what use it anticipates will be made of the information if released?"

    In a 2008 case, the Attorney General's Office sided with TDCJ in denying Forbes magazine the names of companies that supplied execution drugs, noting that "releasing the names of the companies would place the employees of those companies in imminent threat of physical danger."

    Drug's maker pressed

    An appeals court rejected that ruling the following year.

    Pentobarbital was added to the state's lethal cocktail in May 2011, replacing sodium thiopental after that drug's maker stopped production, in part because of Reprieve's anti-drug agitation.

    Reprieve followed by directing international pressure on Lundbeck, pentobarbital's Danish maker, obtaining a July 2011 agreement that the company no longer would sell to prisons in death penalty states. The production plant later was sold, but the new owner abided by the agreement.

    Reprieve also targeted a pharmaceutical company that had supplied sodium thiopental to Arizona. On its website, Reprieve posted photos of the supplier's office along with its tax returns and the name, phone number and address of its owner.

    Reprieve investigator Maya Foa said the group posted no information that was not already in the public domain.

    http://www.chron.com/news/houston-te...on-3457080.php
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

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